Sandbox / The Hunger Games Protagonists

Literature

Katniss Everdeen

"If we burn, you burn with us!"

Our hero, aged sixteen from District 12, the poorest of the twelve (remaining) districts. After losing her father when she was only eleven, she managed to bring her family back from the brink of starvation almost single-handedly by hunting in the woods outside her district. When her little sister Prim's name is drawn in the reaping to join the Hunger Games, Katniss steps up to take her place, unwittingly setting off a chain of events that will soon engulf all of Panem.

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• Act of True Love: Volunteers to be in the Games to save her baby sister in the first book, setting the plot into motion. In the second book she too makes a pact with Haymitch to save Peeta at the cost of her own life. In the third book she kisses Peeta when he's at the beginning of a hijack-attack, knowing that if it doesn't work he will do his best to kill her. It works, and it's implied that her beginning to show her love for him is a huge part of what makes him recover from the hijacking.
• Action Girl: Katniss has been the breadwinner in her family since her father died, and was a talented hunter even before that. She's lethal with a bow and when she enters the Hunger Games, she puts those skills to use. She quickly proves herself to be formidable, intelligent and determined. She manages to beat out other competitors that are not only physically stronger and working together, but whom have been training their entire lives to kill.

• All Women Love Shoes: Averted. For all the detail in which she describes her various dresses, outfits, and hair styles, her shoes usually only get a cursory mention, if that. Well, except for her favorite hunting boots.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She has dark hair and is rather emotionally distant and closed off from others, due to her numerous trust issues.
• Always Save the Girl: Gender-Inverted. She continuously prioritizes Peeta's survival over what's best for her own survival, the rebellion and her squad. Even after he's been hijacked into hating her and she believes she can never be with him.
• Ambiguously Brown: Like Gale, described as "olive-skinned" with black hair.
• An Odd Place to Sleep: In Mockingjay, she'll frequently hide away in closets or storage rooms and end up falling asleep.

• Animal Motifs: From Catching Fire onwards, she's strongly identified with mockingjays. She received a pin of one early in The Hunger Games and it became her symbol.

• Arc Symbol: Fire is strongly associated with her throughout the story. Of course, fire usually represents revolutions, even in real life, so it fits.
• Arrows on Fire: Her special Mockingjay bow allows her to shoot flaming arrows.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: As much as she bickers with Haymitch and as angry as she is with him in Mockingjay they still have moments that show how much they've grown to care about one another. For example it's his arms she cries in over Peeta's torture.
• Babies Ever After: This was initially planned as part of continuing her and Peeta's ruse for the sake of the Capitol. When they do have children, it's because they want to.
• Babies Make Everything Better: Averted. Katniss and Peeta have to find their way back together and restore their relationship years before they have childen together. Rather than making things better, the babies indicate that they're getting there, more like, "now that things are better, we can celebrate with babies". Katniss had sworn never to have children because she could never see them grow up in the Crapsack World. Her choosing to have children means that she believes that things are better now.
• Bad Liar: According to Peeta. "Never gamble at cards. You'll lose your last coin." Subverted later on, when she gradually becomes more effective at fooling people — starting with Peeta himself in the form of their initial romance, which he believes to be more genuine on her part than it is. She also successfully convinces him that she was going to stay away from the dangerous feast.

• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted. After the Games, she finds that her hearing in her left ear is restored. Her skin's perfection, smooth and glowing with no burns, scars or anything. Peeta on the other hand has his lower leg replaced with a metal and plastic device. However, in Mockingjay, neither Katniss nor Peeta are considered important enough for such resources to be spent on them, giving them quality treatment for their severe burns but making no effort to give them the best skin grafts or remove the burns entirely the way they were able to do with Katniss' burns in the first book.
• Belated Love Epiphany: Katniss insists that she isn't in love with anyone. That is, until Peeta is imprisoned, tortured and hijacked, essentially brainwashing him into hating Katniss and wanting her dead. While the book never explicitly states the exact moment when she realizes her feelings the reader can take a guess at any moment from her stating that the loss of him has taken away her will to live to her telling him how she feels.
• Big Eater: Katniss appreciates good food due to living on such simple fare at home. She deliberately gorges herself before the second Hunger Game to get some energy reserves.
• Big Sister Instinct:
  • She cares about her sister so much that not only did she volunteer to take her sister's place in the games, but she submitted her name into the reaping multiple times to get her family more food so her sister wouldn't have to submit her own name.
  • While she was in the games Katniss thought how her sister has multiple people who will make sure she's taken care of but Rue has no one to take care of her. Rue and Katniss teamed up and blew up the other's supplies. Katniss tried to save Rue but she was too late. She killed the guy who killed Rue, sang to her as she died, and buried her in flowers.
• Birds of a Feather: She and Gale bond over similar personalities and experiences, both rebellious against the Capitol's regime but still working on providing for their families after their fathers died in the same mining accident. Through illegal hunting, of course.
• Braids of Action: She wears these a lot, and isn't seen with her hair down during the Games. It's a simple and practical hairstyle for living in a forest.
• Break the Cutie: Pretty much the gist of the trilogy. Watch as a young girl is given Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and watch as she's forced to keep on chugging as other characters decide that she's too important to whatever is going on to be allowed to recover from her shell shock, exacerbating it at every given opportunity.
• Broken Bird:
  • She starts out as one due to her father's death and having to be her family's main source of financial support but after the Games it turns up to eleven.
  • Taken to a rather literal extent several times throughout the series, especially in Mockingjay, which even includes a sequence in which Katniss hallucinates herself as a bird whose feathers and wings are burned off.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: In the first book, Katniss is blown back by the explosion she sets off destroying the Careers' supplies and is rendered completely deaf in her left ear. Unable to escape, she only survives by hiding right under their noses. However, it's completely outdone in the Quarter Quell, when Katniss nearly kills herself breaking the force field over the arena.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: She gets dizzy from just half a glass of wine in the first book, and a few gulps of white liquor in the second get her to black out. Justified as these were her first times having alcohol, and the white liquor is pretty strong.
• Celibate Heroine: Seeing the horror of the Hunger Games is enough to make her call off marriage and children, because they would just end up in the reaping and possibly as tributes. And this was before she ever participated herself. Later averted as she is in a sexual relationship by the last chapter, but it still takes 15 years, the Hunger Games being abolished and a lot of love from Peeta to change her mind about having children.
• Children Do the Housework: She had to pretty much take care of her household after her father died in a mining accident and her mother subsequently fell into depression.

• Commitment Issues: She keeps Peeta at arm's length because she is determined to never fall in love, get married and have children. The reason is implied to be a combination of not wanting to be a parent on Reaping Day and not wanting to end up like her mother, who broke down completely when her husband died. She does not think the world is suitable to bring children into. She eventually develops past this and does have children in the epilogue, fifteen years after Mockingjay once she feels that it's safe enough for her to settle down.
• Cool Big Sis: To Prim and Rue. Katniss goes out of her way to provide for Prim and make sure that latter never needs to take Tesserae to provide for their family. She ends up treating Rue in the same way, which is part of why Katniss takes the girl's death so hard.
• The Cynic: In contrast to Peeta's idealism, Katniss's utter lack of faith in people at the series' start is particularly grim.
• Daddy's Girl: While she loved her mother, Katniss felt a stronger connection to her father, who taught her how to survive in the forest.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has her moments. Especially when bantering with Finnick.
  Finnick: You can swim, too. Where did you learn that in District Twelve?
  Katniss: We have a big bathtub.
• Death Seeker: When she loses Peeta's love in Mockingjay, she makes it her goal to find and kill President Snow and then die herself. Towards the end of the book she tries to commit suicide by nightlock pill, only to be stopped by Peeta. Then she tries to starve herself to death while in confinement, but that doesn't work either. She does get better, but it takes some time and for Peeta to return to Twelve for her to want to live again.
• Debt Detester: Katniss hates feeling she owes someone.

• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Icon of Rebellion. Katniss never set out to become the heroine of the anti-Capitol revolution and only ever wanted to keep her family alive, but volunteering in her sister's place and then surviving the Games with Peeta inspires an uprising among the districts. She goes along with becoming the face of the uprising not because of a desire to free the districts, but because she has no other choice. In the process, she loses almost everything, none of it by her own volition: her hometown is firebombed to the ground, Peeta is taken from her and tortured until he doesn't recognize her, nearly all her friends and allies die in the revolution, Prim is blown to bits along with other rebel medics from bombs dropped from a Capitol hovercraft as part of Coin's plot to destroy the people's faith in Snow, and afterwards, Katniss can never bring herself to see Gale again, knowing he created those bombs.
• Despair Event Horizon: Toes the line in Catching Fire when she realizes Haymitch only kept his promise to Peeta. Pushed over the edge after District Twelve is firebombed. She gets a bit better over the course of Mockingjay, but gets hit hard again after Prim's death.
• Determinator: Slowly starts to fall apart by Mockingjay, under the weight of guilt over all the people who died for her, and even after suffering physical, mental and emotional damage, just keeps going and going and going.
• Did They or Didn't They?: In "Mockingjay" she and Peeta have a sex scene that's so discreet it left many wondering if they had sex at all.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father died in a mining accident when she was 11, forcing her to learn to hunt in order to provide for her family.
• Don't Think, Feel: She does terribly when Haymitch tries to have her put on a fake personality in anticipation for the tribute interview, but Cinna suggests that she just be honest when answering Caesar's questions. It works beautifully and gets the Capitol audience to fall in love with her.
• Elemental Motifs: Katniss is strongly associated with fire throughout the series. In addition to her nickname being "The Girl On Fire", she also came from the coal-mining district with a bread-toasting marriage tradition, was attacked with fire by her sponsors in the arena, and even describes herself as having a fire that needed to be tempered by Peeta's calm "dandelion". Her action in the games spawned a literal and metaphorical fire across Panem that lead to the rebellion's resurgence, and her declaration that "fire is catching".
• Emotionless Girl: Her outward demeanor is quite stoic, increasingly so as the books go on, excluding the "madly-in-love teenager" persona thrust upon her shoulders. In truth, she's highly emotional.

• Everyone Has Standards: In Mockingjay. When she makes her deal to become the face of the revolution, one of her conditions is that all the victors be pardoned for any damage they may have done to the rebel cause under threat of their lives. She privately admits to herself that she doesn't actually care about Enobaria, one of the victors from District 2 who also survived the Quell, but feels that it would be wrong to leave her out and so makes a point of explicitly including her.
• Famed In-Story: Becomes one of the biggest celebrities in Panem.
• Family of Choice: In the end her family consists of Peeta and Haymitch, not her parents or her sister.

• First-Person Smartass: Her narration is fairly snarky at times. It's unknown how much of it is a built-up defense mechanism and how much is natural.
  Katniss: (describing the arenas in the first book) The arenas are historic sites, preserved after the Games. Popular destinations for Capitol residents to visit, to vacation. Go for a month, rewatch the Games, tour the catacombs, visit the sites where the deaths took place. You can even take part in reenactments.
  They say the food is excellent.
• Flirting Under Fire: Builds her romance with Peeta during the Hunger Games.
• Food Porn: Katniss's narration includes full descriptions of everything she eats, since she's such a Big Eater and has spent so long without good food.
• Free-Range Children: Walks around alone in the district at age eleven in all kinds of weather, trying to sell her sister's baby clothes to be able to buy food and rummaging through garbage bins to find something to eat. First heads out into the woods alone at age twelve. Being in the woods is not only dangerous but illegal, but her mother is too broken from the loss of her husband to care or possibly even notice.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Katniss was just another player, facing a one in twenty-four chance of staying alive longer than everyone else, but by the end of the series, she is the face of the revolution, playing a role in the deaths of two corrupt Presidents of Panem.
• From Roommates to Romance: Played with. In Catching Fire Peeta more or less moves in to Katniss' bedroom on the Victory Tour and during their Quarter Quell prep week, but even though he's deeply in love with her and she's falling in love with him in return they keep it platonic (if affectionate). As Mockingjay draws to an end it's implied that Peeta moves in and lives with Katniss in her house, sleeping in her bed to help her cope with her bad dreams. While they do end up married with children, it's implied that they essentially were just roommates for a while.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Katniss' father fell in love with a merchant girl, Katniss herself falls in love with a merchant boy.
  • Not just that, this trope is doubled! Peeta meets Katniss when they are both children, after Peeta's father points her out to Peeta. Turns out, Peeta's dad wanted to marry Katniss' mother but she ended up falling in love with a miner. Peeta promptly falls in love with Katniss.
  • She's also inherited her father's hair, skin, eye color and singing ability, as well as his love for hunting and being out in the woods.
• Genre Savvy: Has grown up watching the Hunger Games on television, and is able to think her way out of problems either by recalling past Games or by figuring out what moves would make the most exciting plot.
• The Gentleman or the Scoundrel: Katniss' original choice was not between a Gentleman and a Scoundrel, as they were both dependable people. However, as the series progresses, Peeta reveals himself as the Gentleman who cares deeply for Katniss and desires her safety, and Gale the Scoundrel revolutionist who desires to entangle Katniss in that world.
• Girliness Upgrade: Done to her by the Capitol, putting her in dresses and make-up and so forth.
• Glass Cannon: despite quick-thinking, agile, and a good shot with a bow and arrow, years of being underfed really limits how much stress her body can take.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Regularly sells her rabbits and squirrels to the Peacekeepers at the Hob.
• Grow Old with Me: Given how long her life expectancy was when she volunteered to take Prim's place in the first book, the epilogue can be seen as this.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Is the bitter, cynical, stoic brunette to Peeta, Madge, and Prim's kinder, more approachable, sweeter blond.
• Hairy Girl: Katniss is mentioned as having hairy legs, though it's brought up more for the sake of a Painful Body Waxing scene.

• Happily Married: Oddly, in spite of everything she and Peeta go through, with both having gone through massive amounts of Dysfunction Junction, being saddled with tons of psychological trauma from going through the games twice, losing almost everyone they are close to, participating in and being the figureheads of a revolution that nearly destroys what little remains of human civilization, and, in Peeta's case, Cold-Blooded Torture and mind rape, she and Peeta still seem to end up this way. In fact, it's heavily implied that the only reason either of them is still functional is because of the other. The same goes for Haymitch, in a non romantic way.
• Hates Their Parent: After Katniss's and Prim's father died, their mother fell into such deep grief that she stopped taking care of either herself or them, forcing eleven-year-old Katniss to step up as head of the family. Despite her best efforts, the money ran out and they very nearly starved to death. They eventually recovered, but Katniss felt a deep sense of anger and resentment toward her mother for this.
  Prim was thrilled to have her back, but I kept watching, waiting for her to disappear on us again. I didn't trust her. And some small gnarled place inside me hated her for her weakness, for her neglect, for the months she had put us through. Prim forgave her, but I had taken a step back from my mother, put up a wall to protect myself from needing her, and nothing was ever the same between us again.
• Heartbroken Badass: In Mockingjay, after Peeta has been hijacked into hating her. She takes the loss of his love so hard that she almost begins to hate him for not loving her anymore. Still stays very badass though.
• Heroic BSoD: A minor one towards the end of Catching Fire that starts to resolve during Mockingjay, only to implode and go supernova with Prim's death. She's so completely dead inside that she needs to be put under Suicide Watch after killing Coin to avenge Prim.
• Heroic Neutral: She really isn't interested in becoming a symbol or sparking a revolution. She just wants to keep her family safe and keep her head down.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • What volunteering for her sister was intended to be, as she knew her chances of getting out of the Games alive were extremely slim. She does make it out, though.
  • She also fully tries to make sure Peeta is the one to survive The 75th Games instead of her.
• High-School Sweethearts: They don't actually attend high school but she and Peeta begin their romance at age sixteen. It lasts for the rest of their lives.
• Hope Bringer: The reason why President Snow views her as such a threat is that she's given hope to the districts — more hope than Snow is comfortable with, that is.
• Horrible Judge of Character: One of her biggest flaws. Quite simply, she has a nasty habit of always assuming the worst of everyone she meets when these people, ironically, often end up saving her life and or genuinely caring about her. Her trust issues mostly stem from her childhood trauma of never having anyone to be there for her and in turn having to be there for her younger sister.
• Icon of Rebellion: The mockingjay pin, and eventually Katniss herself. Both represent something the Capitol tried to twist to their advantage, yet survived and found a way to screw their creator over.
• Hypocrite: Due to how she was raised, Katniss has a dim view of the Career tributes, considering their prior training unfair to the rest of them. What she fails to consider is that she herself has an unfair advantage because of her hunting skills. There's also her judgement of fellow tributes because of their killing, when she doesn't make any attempt to restrain her own killing – on a few occasions, she even mentions how her fingers are itching for her knife/arrows just because Johanna snapped at her. She also complains a great deal about the wasting of food, when she, in fact, does it herself (when she threw out the gift of cookies from Peeta's father, for example).
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: All of Panem believes this to be the case during the Quell, courtesy of Peeta.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Katniss consistently manages to hit squirrels in the eyes with her arrows — something that is exceedingly difficult in the least even for experienced archers.

• I Need a Freaking Drink: Once she finds out she'll be headed for another Hunger Games in the Quarter Quell, she tries white liquor for the first time.
• Insecure Love Interest: Believes that she doesn't deserve the love of someone like Peeta. Haymitch agrees with her.
• Instant Taste Addiction: She immediately took a liking for lamb stew with dried plums, to the point it was sent to her in the arena.

• Interrupted Suicide: Courtesy of Peeta in Mockingjay, who prevents her from biting the nightlock pill after she kills Coin.
• It Gets Easier: Trope personified, as she goes from being concerned about killing for the first time, to Mockingjay in which she kills unarmed people in cold blood while plotting the assassination of Snow; most disturbingly, it gets to the point where she murders an unarmed woman and proceeds to forget about it until she is finally reminded by a TV image of the dead woman; and even then, she brushes it off.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: She's not exactly all smiles. Most people who grow up in the Seam wear them in fact. Most victors, too, for that matter.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: A Deconstructed Character Archetype. She's an Action Girl from humble origins who stands up to oppression to protect a loved one and becomes a beacon of hope for the rebellion. However, off-camera, she's actually a pragmatic survivor who never really cared about the rebel cause and is in it solely to protect her family. Later on, when she starts having visions, it's a result of trauma, drug addiction, and possible brain damage rather than any divine inspiration.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She admits herself that she's not very friendly. There are quite a few times throughout the series where she has angry/rude outbursts, but they are often caused by the various stressful situations she's thrown into and the Crapsack World she lives in. Regardless, she still has a kind heart and would sacrifice anything in order to protect the people that she loves.

• Like Brother and Sister: Believes this to be her relationship with Gale in the first book. Turns out it's not quite so simple. However it remains an unrequited love from Gale's side.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Katniss is a lot like her father but very different from her mother. Her mother is a docile and soft spoken healer and when faced with the death of her husband she completely breaks apart and shuts down. Katniss is driven and energetic, loves being out hunting in the woods but can't stand the sight of injured or sick people and when faced with the loss of the boy she loves she rallies and channels her pain into becoming the figurehead of the revolution. They do have one big thing in common though - both fell deeply in love with a man from their opposite social standing and started a family with him, something Katniss initially swore she would never do.
• Literally Loving Thy Neighbor: Falls in love with Peeta Mellark who was her neighbor for about a year.
• Love Hurts: One of the two main reasons why she's so reluctant to admit to herself that she's falling in love. She ends up being proven right, too. The loss of Peeta's love in the third book hurts her very deeply.
• Love Is a Weakness: Believes this because of the way her mother completely broke down when she became a widow.
• Make-Out Kids: She and Peeta play this trope up for all it's worth during the Victory Tour, as they have to make for a believable couple after everything in the arena.

• Mandatory Motherhood: It's implied that President Snow expects her to bear Peeta's children as a means of being able to control her.
• Master Archer: Katniss is an extremely talented archer, having grown up hunting in the wilderness. She doesn't think much of it at first, but Peeta praises her as being so skilled she can consistently hit a deer or even a squirrel in the eyes so that it dies without the arrow tearing through the edible bits.

• Meaningful Name: Katniss is a real plant. Its common name is "Arrowhead" (and its scientific name is Sagittaria, which means 'archer' in Latin).

• Nature Lover: Loves being out in the woods and spends as much time there as possible.
• Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Inverted. Having quirkily dyed hair or colourful wigs is a huge fashion trend in the materialistic and out-of-touch Capitol. For example, Effie has pink and purple hair, and Katniss's styling team wears their hair in a myriad of colors. Katniss, a rebel from the poorest district, is admired for her "natural beauty" (which includes her undyed brown hair).
• No Social Skills: Something that Haymitch frequently mocks Katniss over is her lack of people skills.
• Not Afraid to Die: In book two she intends to sacrifice herself to save Peeta and in book three she actually wants to die due to losing Peeta's love, and later Prim dying.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Spends most of the third book being in talks to get in line with the revolution.
• Not So Stoic: She always seems like an Emotionless Girl, or at least someone with Nerves of Steel. And then Rue dies, and she cries profusely. Prim's death leads to an even worse breakdown.
• Oblivious to Love: Cannot see that Gale and Peeta clearly love her until they outright state it to her. Even for Peeta, it took some time for her to realize after he blatantly says it.
• One True Love: In the last chapter of Mockingjay she implies that she feels this way, stating that she and Peeta ending up together would have happened anyway, with or without the Hunger Games and the rebellion.

• Perpetual Frowner: Peeta likes watching her sleep because she doesn't scowl when she's sleeping.
• Plagued by Nightmares: Katniss and the rest of the victors seem plagued by them, although Katniss has long had recurring nightmares about her father's death.
• Plucky Girl: Even before she reaches the Capital, her acquaintances believe she has enough to win the Games. And indeed, her determination and will to survive take her to victory. Not to mention go through all the terrible things that happen later.
• Pregnant Badass: During the tribute Interviews in Catching Fire, Peeta tells the Capitol that Katniss was pregnant as of the time they were going into the Third Quarter Quell. Subverted by the fact that this was a lie, but it definitely succeeded in sending the Capitol into mass outrage.
• Promotion to Parent: After their father died and their mother sank into depression, Katniss had to step up to the plate herself to take care of Prim.
• Pull the I.V.: Katniss has a tendency to pull out an IV whenever it is put into her, in at least one instance because she wanted to die on her own terms.
• Punny Name: An archer named after a plant also known as arrowhead.
• Rebellious Rebel: She doesn't exactly agree with Coin on a few matters, to the point where she ends up killing Coin at the end of Mockingjay. When asked to become a mascot for the rebels, she only accepts after setting some terms to keep Peeta safe. Her inability to follow orders is a major underpinning of the third novel.
• Red Baron: Starting in the first book, she's known as the "Girl on Fire" because of her entrance in the Tribute parade. Afterward it becomes "The Mockingjay".
• Retired Badass: Withdraws to District 12 after surviving the Hunger Games and the war and wants nothing but peace and normalcy.
• Roguish Poacher: Illegal hunting to feed starving family and stick it to The Man? Check.
• Save This Person, Save the World: Keeping Katniss alive is of paramount importance to the rebels because she is "the Mockingjay" — she managed to survive all attempts the Capitol made to kill her, turning her into a Symbol Of Rebellion.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: A different interpretation of the word "connections" in this case, but the reason she hasn't been tossed in a cell for illegally hunting the District 12 wildlife isn't because of any particular skill at evading the Peacemakers. It's because the Peacemakers are also her customers.
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: Her goal in Catching Fire is to save Peeta at the cost of her own life and she's well aware that by martyring herself she might be of better use to the rebellion than if she lives.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Already is one after the events of the first book, where she had to kill to survive a Deadly Game. Then, she goes through even worse things, taking this trope up to eleven.
• Shout-Out: Her surname serves as one to Bathsheba Everdene from Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Under instructions from President Snow, she and Peeta act like this during the Victory Tour in an attempt to distract the districts from the rising feeling of rebellion. It doesn't work.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Appears to be this for Peeta. She kisses two boys throughout the series but only feels sexual attraction to one of them, enters into a committed relationship with him at around the age of eighteen and spends the rest of her life with him. While she notes that other men around her (for example Finnick) are attractive, she never seems to be sexually drawn to them herself.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: This becomes the reason why she ultimately chooses Peeta over Gale.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: The role Katniss plays for the cameras as one half of "the Star-Crossed Lovers from District 12". Of course, her true self is nothing like that.

• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: "Sugar" to Prim and Gale, "ice" to pretty much everyone else, including her mother. But she warms up to her and a few more people over the course of the trilogy.

• Sympathy for the Devil: When she ultimately kills Cato in the 74th Games, it's not out of anger towards him or a desire to win, but as an act of compassion and pity for his condition.

• Too Desperate to Be Picky: At eleven years old, when her family was running out of food and money and about to starve to death, she tried searching through the trash bins of the District 12 shops to find something that would keep her family alive. She was shouted at by Mrs. Mellark, who threatened to call the Peacekeepers if she didn't leave.
• Too Much Alike: One of the reasons why Katniss never falls in love with Gale is that they are too much alike, both having a lot of fire and passion and anger, and she needs somebody with a different mindset than her own to balance her out.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Lamb stew with dried plums. Also Peeta's cheese buns.
• Tragic Keepsake: Keeps the pearl Peeta gave her and spends a lot of time holding it in her hand in Mockingjay. She even kisses it at one point, pretending she's kissing Peeta.
• True Companions: With Peeta and Haymitch. She even refers to Haymitch as part of her family in "Catching Fire".
• Tyrannicide: She kills President Coin after realising she and Snow were not any different.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: By the time she realizes she's in love with Peeta he's been brainwashed into thinking she's a mutt out to kill him. So he tries to strangle her. Ouch. This leaves her... rather bitter, to say the least.
• Unwitting Pawn: Present, lampshaded, and part of the symbolism. A mockingjay is a powerful symbol to the rebels, but it's also a bird that can't sing its own songs, relying on what others sing to it.
• Useless Spleen: Loses hers in the third book.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Has no qualms whatsoever killing anyone she perceives to be a threat to Peeta in Catching Fire.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Imposes this on herself a few times, most notably in Mockingjay when, after killing the unarmed woman, Katniss notes how she's graduated to killing unarmed civilians, and also notes in passing that she's become so accustomed to killing that she forgot all about taking the woman's life.
• Wreathed in Flames:
  • Her entire public image is built around fire imagery after her debut at the 74th Games. It backfires on her repeatedly.
  • And literally applied when she is caught up in the explosion that kills Prim.
• You Are Worth Hell: Regarding Prim and later Peeta. While base survival is always on Katniss's mind, a major portion of the reason she wants to win the first Hunger Games is because she doesn't want to leave Prim alone in the world.

Peeta Mellark

"I just keep wishing I could think of a way to show them that they don't own me. If I'm gonna die, I wanna still be me. Does it make any sense?"

Drawn to go along to the arena with Katniss, Peeta is the baker's son and thus a member of the merchant class in District 12. He also happens to be completely head-over-heels for Katniss, which, it would seem, is his bad luck.

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• Abusive Parents:
  • His mother beats him and calls him a "stupid creature". At one point, Katniss refers to her as a witch. Catching Fire implies that she also has whipped him, with Katniss being unfamiliar with the sound of a whip but Peeta quickly recognizing it when they hear it.
  • His father is described in much better terms, although being a Useless Bystander Parent nonetheless. Still, he does allow his deeply traumatized sixteen-year-old son, whose heart has just been broken and who's just had his leg amputated, to leave home and move into a house in a different part of town, all by himself. If nothing else, Papa Mellark is guilty of abuse via emotional (and arguably physical) neglect.
• Accidental Murder: Twice. Picks the nightlock berries that kill Foxface in the first book. In the third he fights off a member of the Star Squad, sending him flying into a pod that kills him.

• Act of True Love: Katniss spends most of the first book believing that Peeta will, or is at least willing to, kill her to survive the Hunger Games. In the climax, she acts on this assumption when she sees him reaching down, presumably for a weapon, and points her own at him. It turns out he's unbandaging his leg, so that he will bleed to death, saving Katniss. When he unwraps the bandage, she realizes his true intentions and sincere care for her.
• All Abusers Are Male: Averted. His mother is an Abusive Parent while his father is implied to be a Useless Bystander Parent.
• Amnesiac Lover: In Mockingjay. He's not completely amnesiac, but he does forget that he loves Katniss.
• An Arm and a Leg: Averted. It doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest that his left leg was amputated.
• Art Attacker: Before the Quarter Quell, Peeta uses his solo session with the Gamemakers to paint an image of Rue covered in flowers, to hold them responsible for her death.
• Artificial Limbs: A prosthetic left leg which he learns to walk on within days after amputation and seems to be able to run on with no trouble within a few months.
• Ax-Crazy: When he's been hijacked in Mockingjay he becomes violently homicidal.
• Badass Pacifist: While he partakes in two Hunger Games and the rebellion, he is a pacifist by nature and advocates diplomacy over violence. While he is pragmatic enough to take a life when his own depends upon it, he only does so as a last resort. But while he is mild-tempered and gentle, he can definitely hold his own in close combat and even kills Brutus, one of the toughest competitors, during the Quarter Quell.
• Berserk Button: Just don't mention Katniss to him in the third book. And especially don't leave her in the same room with him. However, this is invoked on him by the Capitol's hijacking and not of his own accord.
• The Berserker: Becomes this in "Mockingjay" as he has multiple violent outbursts that causes him to attack friend or foe like the berserkers of the old that flew into a rage and could not tell who they were fighting.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Peeta's kills in the 74th Games are a Mercy Kill and accidentally killing someone who was Too Clever by Half, not counting any potential kills he had at the Cornucopia. In the 75th game, Brutus, probably the most dangerous enemy Victor, kills Chaff, and Peeta loses his shit and kills Brutus in retaliation. This all happens offscreen, so we never get the details of what exactly he did beyond going into a fit of rage.

• Brainwashed and Crazy: In Mockingjay, he gets hijacked while being held hostage by the Capitol, which brainwashes him into going into a homicidal rage whenever he sees Katniss.

• Break Them by Talking: Manages this in his Quarter Quell interview. He is highly skilled when it comes to manipulating a crowd with his words and in this case he claims to have married Katniss and that she is pregnant with their love child in order to win her support in the Games. Not only does he accomplish that but gets the Capitol audience so upset that some of them cry for the Games to be stopped.
• Catchphrase: "Real or not real?"
• The Charmer: His strongest quality is his ability to win over the audience, and even his fellow tributes, with his magnetic personality and ability to improvise with his words. He and interview host Caesar quickly find jokes and ways to amuse the audience during his interviews.
• City Mouse: Being from District 12's merchant class, he has little in the way of survival skills during the 74th Games, besides his ability to camouflage himself, and is really bad at sneaking around.

• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Katniss assumes that since Peeta grew up a merchant kid, he doesn't know starvation like she does. She is surprised to find out that he rarely had enough to eat either and that the only bread they got to have was the stale, tasteless bread they could no longer sell.
• Courtly Love: His affections for Katniss has strong aspects of this. He's deeply in love with her, has no real hope that she'll return his feelings (he thinks she's in love with Gale) yet is still willing to both kill and die for her. He plays the role of a passionate lover in public but is remarkably chaste with her in private. Even when she lets him into her bed and sleeps in his arms, he never tries to so much as kiss her.

• Death of Personality: In Mockingjay. Johanna refers to him post-hijacking as "the evil version of" himself.

• Demoted to Extra: In Mockingjay. In the previous two books he was part of the main cast, but because of his imprisonment by the Capitol and the time he spends recovering afterward, he spends most of this book off-screen and doesn't really see much action until near the third act.
• Determinator: Perhaps not in the classic won't-stay-down-in-a-fight way, but Peeta's desire to remain himself and protect Katniss allowed him to push through the Capitol's brainwashing long enough to warn District 13 of an impending attack—a warning that saved many lives, including Prim and Gale. Later, he is able to recover from hijacking, something that nobody could be sure was even possible.
• Deuteragonist: Of the first two books. In them, he has the most focus of any character other than Katniss. Gale takes over in book 3.
• Did They or Didn't They?: In Mockingjay he and Katniss have a sex scene that's so discreet it left many wondering if they had sex at all.
• Disney Death: Has one of these on the first day of the Quarter Quell after he runs into the force field surrounding the arena.
• Distressed Dude: Is taken hostage by the Capitol at the end of Catching Fire and held prisoner throughout a part of Mockingjay.

• The Dulcinea Effect: He may have known Katniss since the age of five but he only actually interacted with her once before being reaped with her and never speaks to her until they've become tributes. All the same he's so determined to die for her survival's sake that Haymitch notes it's not even worth trying to save Peeta in the arena.
• Dying as Yourself: Subverted. It's what Peeta wants. He tells Katniss that if he's going to die in the arena, he doesn't want the Games to change who he is. In "Mockingjay" he asks the Star Squad to kill him while he's in-between hijack attacks, but they refuse.
• Fake Defector: He allies with the Careers initially, but is later revealed to have done so to protect Katniss in his own way.
• Fake Memories: After being hijacked at the hands of Snow's goons most of his memories pertaining to Katniss and the events of the previous two books have been altered. Gradually he begins to be able to tell fake memories apart from real ones but the effects are implied to last to some degree for the rest of his life.
• Famed In-Story: Becomes a huge celebrity after the 74th Games.
• Family of Choice: Never seems particularly close with his biological family but forms a very close bond with Katniss and Haymitch.
• First Guy Wins: Katniss met Peeta first, he declared his feelings for her first and she never did develop romantic feelings for Gale.
• Flirting Under Fire: Builds a romance with Katniss during the Hunger Games.
• Flower Motifs: Katniss associates him with dandelions, spring flowers that represent hope, life and renewal.
• Fighting from the Inside: After being hijacked by the Capitol, his real self struggles to show through.
  "How do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you... In Thirteen... Dead by morning!"
• From Roommates to Romance: For all intents and purposes moves in to Katniss' bedroom during the Victory Tour and the Quarter Quell prep week but even though he's deeply in love with her he doesn't pressure her to make it more than platonic. After the war it's implied that he moves in to Katniss' house (and sleeps in her bed) and it stays platonic until it doesn't anymore... and they become lifelong romantic partners and parents of at least two children.
• Generation Xerox: The story goes that Peeta's father once fell in Love at First Sight with Katniss' mother, and later pointed Katniss out to Peeta.

• Good Is Not Dumb: Peeta is kind, patient, and three steps ahead when it comes to manipulating the on-camera narrative.
• Good Is Not Soft: His views on the game is that he will kill for survival but he won't try to let that change who he is.
• Graceful Loser: Ties in with I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy. Volunteers to be a tribute in the Quarter Quell to ensure that Katniss can survive and be with Gale.
• Guile Hero: He may be a load physically, but he's saved Katniss a lot of problems by being a big fat liar.
  • As such, he transforms into quite the Magnificent Bastard when he is brainwashed in Mockingjay.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Kind, gentle, sweet blonde to Katniss' and Haymitch's bitter, cynical, stoic brunette.
• Handicapped Badass: Loses his left leg in the first book yet remains rather badass.
• Happily Married: Oddly, in spite of everything he and Katniss with both having gone through massive amounts of dysfunction junction, being saddled with tons psychological trauma from going through the games twice, losing almost everyone they are close to, participating in and being the figureheads of a revolution that nearly destroys what little remains of human civilization, and, in Peeta's case, Cold-Blooded Torture and mind rape, Katniss and he still seem to end up this way. In fact, it is heavily implied that the only reason either of them is still functional is because of the other. The same goes for Haymitch, in a non romantic way.

• Heroic Willpower: He is the only known case of a person recovering from hijacking and he does it almost entirely on his own, through sheer force of will.
• High-School Sweethearts: They don't attend school after the 74th Games, but he and Katniss are 16/17 when they begin their relationship and they go on to love each other for the rest of their lives.
• Hope Bringer: An act that Peeta was completely unaware of at the time but his giving bread to Katniss in their first encounter actual restored her will to live when she was on the brink of being a Death Seeker.
• Hope Springs Eternal: Embodies this to Katniss, which is one of the reasons why she loves him.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: His plan in Catching Fire is to get Katniss through the Quarter Quell at the expense of his own life, so she can be with her family and even marry Gale.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: On a few occasions in the first and third book. It's implied that his crush on Katniss developed into full-blown infatuation when she refused to leave him during the 74th Games even though he was close to dying from sepsis and fully aware that he was The Load to her at that point.

• Insane Equals Violent: When he's hijacked. If being mostly catatonic isn't enough to show how the extensive Mind Rape affected him, him trying to strangle Katniss certainly does so.

• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Paints pretty pictures, decorates cakes, bakes flower-shaped cookies, prefers diplomacy to violence, wears his heart on his sleeve...
• It Meant Something to Me: The made up romance he and Katniss portrayed in the first Hunger Games was very real to him, and it leaves the first novel with a Downer Ending for him.
• Literally Loving Thy Neighbor: Is in love with Katniss and gets to live next door to her after winning the 74th Hunger Games.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Katniss. After he gets captured by the Capitol at the end of Catching Fire, Katniss spends the first chunk of Mockingjay moping.
• The Load: Downplayed example.
  • In the first book, he ends up not being able to do much after his leg gets injured. He's pretty much helpless, meaning Katniss has to risk her life twice as often to get food and supplies. Even after he heals enough to move around, he's a liability when Katniss fights and even when she hunts—he walks so clumsily that he scares off any prey within earshot. Still, he greatly helps Katniss win over sponsors with the romantic storyline they play up for the audience's benefit, and he ends up accidentally taking out one of their opponents by leaving out poisoned berries she steals and eats.
  • He gets an undeserved bad rep for being this in Catching Fire as well. He displays these traits the first day of the Quarter Quell - at the Cornucopia (because he can't swim) and when they're fleeing from the poisonous gas (because he's weak after getting severely electrocuted mere hours before, though that was his fault for just casually hacking through the plants and not bothering to be more mindful of his surroundings, so he walked right into the barrier), and it's Peeta that ends up startling the monkey mutts into attacking himself, Katniss and Finnick. However, for the rest of the time, he's either carrying Beetee around the arena, creating a map of the clock, doing all he can to ensure that Katniss survives at the cost of his own life, killing Brutus who is one of their toughest competitors, or generally contributing as much as anyone else in the party. He was also the one who made sure himself, Katniss and Haymitch were prepared for the Quell by forcing the other two to train with him, both physically and survival skills-wise, and meticulously studying their competition to find out what the other victors' strength and weaknesses were.
• Love at First Note: Peeta first took note of Katniss when they were five, when his father pointed her out. Peeta's father originally wanted to marry Katniss's mother, but she fell in love with a miner, because when he sang, even the birds would listen. On the first day of school, the teacher asked if anyone knew a folk song, and Katniss's hand shot right up. When she sang, even the birds stopped to listen — and at that moment, Peeta was a goner. He's been in love with Katniss ever since.

• Magnetic Hero: Practically a poster boy for the trope, with his persuasive skills and ultimately kind heart. President Coin is not too happy that they saved Katniss instead of him, for this very reason.
• Make-Out Kids: He and Katniss play this trope up as much as they can during the Victory Tour, as they have to make for a believable couple after everything in the arena.
• Mandatory Fatherhood: It's heavily implied that President Snow expects him to father children by Katniss. Once the war is over and the Games have been abolished he voluntarily has them. In fact, the reason why Katniss changes her mind about children is because Peeta wants them so badly.
• Manipulative Bastard: A sympathetic example. He's very good at leading the interviews with Caesar, charming the audience and dropping bombshells designed to make the Capitol sympathetic to himself and Katniss, like revealing he has been in love with Katniss for years or lying and telling them Katniss is pregnant just before the Quarter Quell in hopes they will cancel the games or at the very least pull her out. They don't, but he tried.
• Martial Pacifist: A pacifist at heart who doesn't want to see more bloodshed, yet he can be deadly when he feels the need to be.
• Meaningful Name: Two-fold. Peeta sounds like it's an evolved version of Peter, who was Christ's rock. It also sounds like pita bread. Peeta is Katniss' rock and, well, he bakes.
• Mind Rape: It's presumed that he underwent this while being hijacked by the Capitol.

• Minored in Ass-Kicking: He's very strong, a wrestler, skilled with a knife, holds his own at the Cornucopia and against Cato and kills Brutus, one of the toughest tributes in the Quarter Quell. All the same he prefers diplomacy to violence and only uses force when his life, or Katniss', is on the line. He does most of his damage through being a Magnetic Hero and a master of the Wham Line.

• Nice Guy: His kindness and compassion for others is his defining trait.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: The noble male to Gale's roguish male. He is gentle, kind, chivalrous, has quite the way with words and advocates diplomacy over violence (even, at times, during the actual Hunger Games).
• Non-Action Guy: Played with. He's said to excel at hand-to-hand combat in the training prior to the Games and, in the Games themselves, participated in several fights. However, his physical feats are mostly off-screen and the rest of the time, he's more of a talker and less of a fighter.
• Not Afraid to Die: In fact he intends to do so at various points in all three books. It makes him stand out during the 74th Hunger Games, him apparently being the first tribute to fight for someone else's survival instead of his own. Whether this is The Dulcinea Effect at play or if he simply knows he cannot win and wants his death to do some good is up for debate. In the second book it's I Want My Beloved to Be Happy through and through. In the third, he simply doesn't want to live as the monster he believes he's been turned into.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Peeta did stay to fight it out in the opening bloodbath at the Cornucopia in the 74th Games and apparently did some serious fighting — enough to get some bad cuts and a limp. Whatever he did, the Careers did decide to team up with him after seeing him in action and even Cato compliments his skill with a knife.
  • He also kills Brutus off screen.
• One True Love: At the end of Mockingjay, Katniss implies that she feels he is this for her, saying that the two of them ending up together "would have happened anyway". He most certainly seems to feel that way about her in return, telling her in Catching Fire that she is his whole life.
• Punny Name: Peeta the baker. His name is a pun on "pita", a type of bread. Fandom loves to speculate on what his brothers' names are...
• Resist the Beast: By the time he becomes aware of how much he's been changed in Mockingjay he begins to view himself as a mutt and loathes what he has become. Ashamed of what he now is, and fearing that he might hurt Katniss (or other members of the Star Squad as collateral damage) he asks the others to kill him. When they don't comply he refuses to let them remove his handcuffs and uses the pain from wearing them as a method of keeping sane.
• Retired Badass: At the end of the books he goes back to his home district and wants nothing more for the rest of his life than to be with Katniss and eventually raise a family with her.
• Save This Person, Save the World: President Coin feels it's more important to save Peeta than Katniss in the Quell. In the third book she arranges for Peeta's rescue from the Capitol because Katniss cannot perform as the Mockingjay with Peeta in harm's way, making this trope apply by extension.

• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: Has no intention whatsoever of trying to win either one of the two Hunger Games he participates in, and every move of his is designed to help save Katniss instead.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Katniss begins to see potential loves interests in two guys, Peeta, the baker's son who decorates the cakes and Gale, her hunting partner. Gale is angry with the Capitol for making them participate in the games while Peeta is reflective on how he can maintain his identity in the games despite the Capitol using them.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: After the Games, he takes up painting. And as Katniss discovers, it's to make recreations of what happened in the arena to help ease his mind. Her response is "I hate it. But they're extraordinary" (as the narration makes clear, they're so well done and vivid that Katniss can smell the blood, dirt and Muttation hair just by looking).
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: He temporarily sided with the Careers in the first Games. He later teamed up with Katniss and stayed with her for the rest of the Games.
• Smart People Play Chess: He's seen playing chess with Haymitch in Catching Fire.
• The Sneaky Guy: He joins the Career Tributes to serve as this. And then another proof of sneakiness, he hides from them by painting himself as part of the scenery.
• The Social Expert: Peeta can play the crowds like a harp, and it's arguably his greatest talent.

• Spanner in the Works: Peeta manages to be this to everyone by virtue of wanting to remain himself, rather than doing his best to survive the games at the cost of his humanity. His confession, and later Katniss going along with it, triggers the rule change that allows both of them to win. His determination to make sure Katniss survives messes with the rebellion's plans during the Quarter Quell, when he refuses to let Haymitch go into the arena, and claiming Katniss was pregnant led to unrest in the very Capitol at the worst possible time for Snow. And then during the rebellion, Snow and Coin both try to use Peeta as a time bomb to kill Katniss, only for him to respond by recovering from his hijacking through pure willpower, something never done before.
• Stealth Pun: A guy named Peeta who works at a bakery. Pita bread.

• Supreme Chef: Having grown in one of the few District 12 places with constant food (a bakery), he's a really great cook.

• Survival Mantra: "Not real, not real, not real, not real..."
• Technical Pacifist: Before conflict arises, he will try to go the path that involves the least amount of bloodshed.
• Sweet Baker: He comes from a family of bakers and who Katniss thinks of him "the boy with the bread". He's also a sensitive, empathetic, and idealistic character who truly loves Katniss.
• Through Her Stomach: Katniss really likes cheese buns.
• Tokyo Rose: Pressed into this role by the Capitol after being captured, to try to convince the rebels that their efforts weren't worth it through broadcasts.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He takes a keen professional interest in bread, mainly due to being raised by and as a baker.
• True Companions: With Haymitch and Katniss. The third book implies something similar between him, Johanna and Annie but in a quite twisted way.
• Useless Bystander Parent: Everyone seems to think his father was a nice, kind-hearted man but it's strongly implied that he never interfered when his wife physically and verbally abused their sons.

• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Lampshaded and subverted. Peeta is a talented artist thanks to his experience decorating cakes at the bakery, but his skill doesn't seem so useful at first in a situation where people are trying to kill each other. Katniss snarks "If only you could frost someone to death." Turns out Cake Decorating Is an Awesome Power when it helps his camouflage skills.

• Unstoppable Rage: When truly angered Peeta will lose all restraints and fly into a berserker rage. Played straight when he gets hijacked he becomes homicidal and gets a significant rage boost which increases his strength and his urge to brutally attack friend or foe.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Peeta is the closest character in the series to having Charles Atlas Super Power (due to having grown up lugging massive sacks of flour), but lacks the Killer Instinct to effectively use it. During the actual training sessions before the games, Katniss notes that Peeta excels at hand-to-hand combat. In comparison, Peeta has less actual experience in the wilderness.
• Uptown Guy: A member of the merchant class who's in love with a girl from the Seam. Once they're both victors, they're on equal social standing, though.
• You Are Worth Hell: Willingly goes back into the arena to try and protect Katniss in Catching Fire even though he still suffers from PTSD and terrible nightmares after surviving the previous one.

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District 12

Everdeen Family

Currently integrating Katniss

• Despair Event Horizon: Toes the line in Catching Fire when she realizes Haymitch only kept his promise to Peeta. Pushed over the edge after District Twelve is annihilated.

• Disappeared Dad: Her father died in a mining accident.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Somewhat, while she will probably suffer from the effects of PTSD due to the games the rest of her life, she and Peeta find a way to carve out as much normalcy as they can for themselves and their children.
• Famed In-Story: Becomes one of the biggest celebrities in Panem.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Finnick Odair and Johanna Mason in Mockingjay.
• First Girl Wins: She met Peeta first, he declared his feelings for her first and she never did develop romantic feelings for Gale.
• Flirting Under Fire: Builds her romance with Peeta during the Hunger Games.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A heroic version: Katniss was a nobody from District 12 who volunteered as tribute and was not initially expected to survive. From there on, she blasts through the Hunger Games, kills numerous people, becomes one of the most well-known people in the world (with the sole exclusion of President Snow) and becomes the face of a revolution intent on toppling the government. Not bad for a young girl who only wanted to save her sister.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: She's a good archer, but not particularly good at fighting hand-to-hand.
• Hallucinations: In her first Games, courtesy of tracker jacker venom.
• Heartbroken Badass: In Mockingjay after Peeta has been hijacked into hating her. She takes the loss of his love so hard that she almost begins to hate him for not loving her anymore. Still stays very badass though.
• Heroic Neutral: She really isn't interested in becoming a symbol or sparking a revolution. She just wants to keep her family safe and keep her head down.
• Heroic Sacrifice: What volunteering for her sister was intended to be, as she knew her chances of getting out of the Games alive were extremely slim. She does make it out, though.
• High-School Sweethearts: They don't actually attend high school but she and Peeta begin their romance at age sixteen.
• Horrible Judge of Character: One of her biggest flaws, though not in the usual way. Quite simply, she has a nasty habit of always assuming the worst of everyone she meets when these people ironically often end up saving her life and or genuinely caring about her. Her trust issues mostly stem from her childhood trauma of never having anyone to be there for her, including people she thought she could trust, and in turn having to be there for her younger sister. This is also why she's so confused by Peeta, considering he did help her when no one else would, and as such she's unable to paint him with her usual worldview and doesn't know how else to see him.
• Icon of Rebellion: The mockingjay pin, and eventually Katniss herself.

• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The other tributes saw her as being this in the second Games, but largely due to the fact that she never had to be subjected to how the Capitol treats their victors, since she didn't last long after her victory tour and had a 'husband' anyway. Cue Finnick, Johanna, and Chaff trolling her and trying to 'corrupt' her.

• I Need a Freaking Drink: Once she finds out she'll be headed for another Hunger Games in the Quarter Quell.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Haymitch, Mags and Effie.

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Katniss is a good person with a huge capacity for love and the devotion of a saint, but personally she's bitter, sarcastic, distant and stand-offish. A lot of the Hunger Games deals with Haymitch and Effie's attempts to make her more 'presentable' to the Capitol.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: When asked to describe Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games, actress Jennifer Lawrence replied, "She's a futuristic Joan of Arc." Her co-star Donald Sutherland also compared Katniss to Joan. What clinches her role as Jeanne D'Archetype, however, is probably the whole "Girl on Fire" image which Katniss is given.
• Kirk Summation: lays out to the mooks why the president and ruling methods are evil and need to be defeated. It does not work 100% but still impressively so.
• Knight in Sour Armor: The only thing she ultimately wants is freedom, peace, and no more Hunger Games.
• Like Brother and Sister: Believes this to be her relationship with Gale in the first book. Turns out it's not quite so simple. However it remains an unrequited love from Gale's side.
• Love Hurts: One of the two main reasons why she's so reluctant to admit to herself that she's falling in love.
• Made of Iron: She has been strangled by Peeta, shot in the chest, and had her entire body (save her face) burned by fire, and survived all of those predicaments.
• Make-Out Kids: She and Peeta play this trope up for all it's worth during the Victory Tour.
• Mama Bear: Towards Prim and Rue.
• Mandatory Motherhood: It's implied that President Snow expects her to bear Peeta's children as a means of being able to control her.
• Master of the Mixed Message: To both Peeta and Gale. Gale eventually calls her on it.
• Meaningful Name: Katniss is a real plant. Its common name is "Arrowhead" (and its scientific name is Sagittaria, which means 'archer' in Latin).

• No Social Skills: Something that Haymitch frequently mocks Katniss over is her lack of people skills.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: All she wants is to ensure Peeta's survival. She has no interest in starting a war with the Capital, at least at first...
• Oblivious to Love: Cannot see that Gale and Peeta clearly love her until they outright state it to her. Even for Peeta, it took some time for her to realize after he blatantly says it.
• Pregnant Badass: In Catching Fire... or so Peeta would have you believe.

• Promotion to Parent: For her sister, due to her mother's depression and general ineffectiveness.
• Punny Name: An archer named after a plant also known as arrowhead.
• Red Baron: She's known both as 'The Girl on Fire' and 'Mockingjay'.
• Retired Badass: After earning her happy ending with Peeta.
• Revenge: Coin took Prim's life, so Katniss wants to take Coin's.
• Roguish Poacher: Illegal hunting to feed starving family and stick it to The Man? Check.

• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: Her goal in "Catching Fire" is to save Peeta at the cost of her own life and she's well aware that by martyring herself she might be of better use to the rebellion than if she lives.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Due to the events of the Hunger Games, and from there on it progresses from bad to worse.
• Shout-Out: Name serves as one to Bathsheba Everdene from Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: In the middle of Mockingjay, the Girl on Fire finds out the hard way that Rousing Speeches don't work on everyone.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: The role Katniss plays for the cameras is oh so in love with Peeta. Of course, her true self is nothing like that.

• Stylish Protection Gear: Her Mockingjay suit - designed by a professional stylist, no less.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: "Sugar" to Prim and Gale, "ice" to pretty much everyone else, including her mother. But she warms up to her and a few more people over the course of the series.
• Super Couple: With Peeta, including in-universe.
• Survival Mantra: In the beginning of Mockingjay.

• Sympathy for the Devil: In the 74th Games, when she ultimately kills Cato, it's not out of anger towards him or a desire to win, but as an act of compassion and pity for his condition.
• Tragic Keepsake: Keeps the pearl Peeta gave her and spends a lot of time holding it in her hand in Mockingjay.
• True Companions: With Peeta and Haymitch. She even refers to Haymitch as part of her family in "Catching Fire".
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: By the time she realizes she's in love with Peeta he's been brainwashed. So he tries to strangle her. Ouch. This leaves her... rather bitter, to say the least.
• Unwitting Pawn: Present, lampshaded, and part of the symbolism. A mockingjay is a powerful symbol to the rebels as a perversion of what the Capitol hoped for and wanted, but it's also a bird that can't sing its own songs, relying on what others sing to it.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Has no qualms whatsoever killing anyone she perceives to be a threat to Peeta in Catching Fire.

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• Wreathed in Flames: Her entire public image is built around fire imagery after her debut at the 74th Games.
• You Are the New Trend: In the second film, she meets a girl on the Victory Tour who tells her that she wants to volunteer as tribute like her. Snow's grandddaughter also wears her hair in a braid like Katniss, even saying that all the other girls at her school are doing it. This happens to most victors immediately after the Games, even when they haven't sparked a revolution.
  • President Snow tries to defy this in the final parts, declaring possession of "Mockingjay" symbolics a ground for treason accusation and subsequent execution.
• You Are Worth Hell: Regarding Prim and later Peeta.

Primrose "Prim" Everdeen

"Since the last games, something is different. I can see it."

Portrayed By Willow Shields

• All-Loving Hero: Prim seems incapable of bearing any ill will towards anything. However, it's unsure how much of this is Prim and how much of it is a mask for Katniss, who's doing her best to hope that her little sister is still untainted to some degree by the horrors of the Capitol.
• Break the Cutie: Averted. Despite all that happens, she manages to remain relatively optimistic and kind.
• Floral Theme Naming: Primrose is a kind of flower, while her sister's name comes from an aquatic plant.
• Friend to All Living Things: Animals love her. The family cat, Buttercup, only responds positively to her.
• Generation Xerox: Prim looks like Mrs. Everdeen and has inherited her passion for healing. Also, Mrs. Everdeen was close friends with Katniss' friend, Madge's mother, as a teenager and the father of Katniss' love interest Peeta had a crush on Mrs. Everdeen.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Prim is a compassionate young blonde girl with blue eyes (hazel-to-green in the film, but still) who loves all living creatures and becomes a good healer at an early age, often helping her mother with patients. When Katniss leaves her family she doesn't bother suggesting that Prim learn to hunt because her attempts were disastrous, since the woods terrified Prim and whenever Katniss shot something it would make Prim teary and she'd talk about how they might be able to heal it.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Prim is practically like a shining light in the Crapsack World she lives in.
• In-Series Nickname: Prim's full name is Primrose, but everyone calls her Prim.
• Kill the Cutie: Dies in a bombing near the end of Mockingjay.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: She simply adores her cat Buttercup, who is utterly nasty to everyone except her. Then again, she's the only one who seems to treat him with any sort of kindness.

• Loved by All: According to Joanne, Snow wouldn't dare mess with Prim, considering how beloved she has become to all of Panem.

• Morality Pet: Prim, for Katniss and Buttercup; she is one of few people they show any kindness to, and she's possibly the only person in the world that early Katniss believes is genuinely good.

• Small Role, Big Impact: She isn't present for most of the plot, but it's because of her that Katniss ends up in the Games in the first place.
• Team Pet: Buttercup, especially during the rebellion.
• Tender Tears: At the Reaping for the 74th Games, when her sister volunteers instead of her.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: At first. She loses the wide-eyed part, but keeps the idealism.

Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen

Portrayed By: Phillip Troy Linger & Paula Malcomson

• Broken Bird: Mrs. Everdeen was entirely destroyed by her husband's death, and is more often than not barely hanging on.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Katniss views her dead father more highly than she does her loving but not-quite-there mother. This is not helped by the fact that her father taught her the skills that ultimately saved her entire family while her mother went into emotional shock and stopped trying to take care of her and Prim after his death.
• Disappeared Dad: Mr. Everdeen passed away in a coal mining accident five years before the story starts.
• The Ghost: Mr, Everdeen is only seen once in the first film during a flashback (and a few more times over the four films on photos), even then his appearance was very brief.
• Happily Married: The Everdeens had a loving marriage prior to Mr. Everdeen's death.
• Heroic BSoD: Mrs. Everdeen had one after Mr. Everdeen died that was so bad it left her unable to take care of Katniss and Prim.
• The Medic: Mrs. Everdeen runs District 12's apothecary.
• Parental Abandonment: Mrs. Everdeen. After Mr. Everdeen dies, she falls into a depression and neglects the family out of sheer grief. Eventually, she manages to move past it. Katniss' strictest warning to her when she leaves is that if she does that again when Katniss most likely dies in the Games, Prim will die without Katniss' hunting skills to fall back on.
  Katniss: You can't check out again. Not like when Dad died.
  Mrs. Everdeen: I won't.
  Katniss: No. You can't.
• Posthumous Character: Mr. Everdeen, who died in a mine disaster.
• Roguish Poacher: Katniss's father taught her everything she knows about hunting and survival.
• Unnamed Parent: We never find out Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen's first names.
• Uptown Girl: Mrs. Everdeen was born into the merchant class but married a coal miner.

Other Citizens

Peeta Mellark

"You know, if I'm gonna die, I wanna still be me."

Portrayed By Josh Hutcherson

• Abled in the Adaptation: In the original novel, he loses his leg, and has a few struggles learning how to properly use the prosthetic. This doesn't happen in the movie adaption, likely due to the presence of Josh Hutcherson's leg.
• Action Survivor: Unlike most of his fellow tributes, Peeta lacks training and experience and has absolutely no experience in the wilderness.
• Adaptational Badass: He sees a lot more action in the films than in the books; being able to hold his own against Cato on top of the Cornucopia in the first, and overpowering and drowning another tribute in the second.
• Ax-Crazy: The Capitol 'hijacks' him into becoming violent and unpredictable.
• Betty and Veronica: The Betty to Gale's Veronica for Katniss.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Although it gets brushed under the rug, he still kills a defenseless girl in the 74th games (granted, death at his hands would've been preferable to that of the Careers). It's also implied he's willing to kill almost anyone to try and keep Katniss alive. And this is without going into his Brainwashed and Crazy period in Mockingjay.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Capitol hijacks him, turning him violent.
• Break the Cutie: The boy had it even worse than his girlfriend — at least she wasn't subjected to continuous Mind Rape for weeks on end that caused him to hate the one person he loved right before finding out that everyone else he'd ever known and loved was demolished alongside his hometown. Katniss at least had her family.
• The Charmer: His strongest quality is his ability to win over the audience, and even his fellow tributes, with his magnetic personality and lies.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: In the 74th Hunger Games, he and Katniss wore coal black jackets.
• Courtly Love: His affections for Katniss has strong aspects of this. He's deeply in love with her, has no real hope that she'll return his feelings (he thinks she's in love with Gale) yet is still willing to both kill and die for her. He plays the role of lover in public but is remarkably chaste with her in private. Even when she lets him into her bed and sleeps in his arms he never tries to so much as kiss her.

• Declaration of Protection: To Katniss. Well, until the Capitol brainwashes him, that is.
• Demoted to Extra: In Mockingjay, until his rescue from the Capitol.
• Deuteragonist: Of the franchise. If a rare moment isn't being spent with Katniss, then it most likely is spent with Peeta.
• Disney Death: Has one of these on the first day of the Quarter Quell.
• Distressed Dude: Is taken hostage by the Capitol at the end of Catching Fire and held prisoner throughout a part of Mockingjay.
• The Dulcinea Effect: He may have known Katniss since the age of five but he only actually interacted with her once before being reaped with her and never speaks to her until they've become tributes. All the same he's so determined to die for her survival's sake that Haymitch notes it's not even worth trying to save Peeta in the arena.
• Dying as Yourself: Kind of. It's what Peeta wanted. If he was going to die in the arena, he didn't want the Games to change who he was, like they often did with other tributes.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: While he will probably suffer from the effects of PTSD due to the games the rest of his life, as well as the constant looming threat he may fall prey to his brainwashing at any moment, he and Katniss find a way to carve out as much normalcy for themselves and their children.
• Fake Defector: When he allies with the careers.
• Famed In-Story: Becomes a huge celebrity after the 74th Games. According to Johanna in the second movie, "the whole world" wants to sleep with him (though she could be saying it just to annoy Katniss... and it works like a charm).
• Family of Choice: Never seems particularly close with his biological family but forms a very close bond with Katniss and Haymitch.
• Flirting Under Fire: Builds a romance with Katniss during the Hunger Games.
• Fighting from the Inside: After being hijacked by the Capitol, his real self struggles to show through, including sending a thinly-veiled warning to District Thirteen that there were bombs en route to their location as he spoke.
  "How do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you...in Thirteen...dead by morning!"
• Generation Xerox: The story goes that Peeta's father once fell in Love at First Sight with Katniss' mother, and later pointed Katniss out to Peeta.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Peeta is kind, patient, and three steps ahead when it comes to manipulating the on-camera narrative.
• Guile Hero: He may be a load physically, but he's saved Katniss a lot of problems by being a big fat liar. As such, he transforms into quite the Magnificent Bastard when he is brainwashed in Mockingjay.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Very strong due to working as a baker's apprentice, but not very good at hunting.
• Happily Married: Oddly, in spite of everything he and Katniss with both having gone through massive amounts of dysfunction junction, being saddled with tons of psychological trauma from going through the games twice, losing almost everyone they are close to, participating in and being the figureheads of a revolution that nearly destroys what little remains of human civilization, and, in Peeta's case, Cold-Blooded Torture and mind rape, Katniss and he still seem to end up this way. In fact, it heavily implied that the only reason either of them is still functional is because of the other. The same goes for Haymitch, in a non romantic way.

• Heroic Sacrifice: Practically a basic character trait of his.
• Heroic Willpower: He is the only known case of a person recovering from hijacking and he does it almost entirely on his own, through sheer force of will.
• High-School Sweethearts: They don't attend school after the 74th Games, but he and Katniss are 16/17 when they begin their relationship and they go on to love each other for the rest of their lives.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Subverted for a point, but ultimately played straight.
• Insane Equals Violent: When he's hijacked.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Haymitch.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Paints pretty pictures, decorates cakes, bakes flower-shaped cookies, prefers diplomacy to violence, wears his heart on his sleeve...
• It Meant Something to Me: The made up romance he and Katniss portrayed in the first Hunger Games was very real to him, and it leaves the first novel with a Downer Ending for him to find out that she was just trying to survive.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: His plan in Catching Fire is to get Katniss through the Quarter Quells at the expense of his own life, so she can be with her family and even marry Gale.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: On a few occasions in the first and third book. It's implied that his crush on Katniss developed into full-blown infatuation when she refused to leave him during the 74th Games even though he was close to dying from sepsis and fully aware that he was The Load to her at that point.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Katniss.
• The Load: He ends up becoming this after his leg gets injured. He's pretty much helpless, meaning Katniss has to risk her life twice as often to get food and supplies. Even after he heals enough to move around, he's a liability when Katniss fights and even when she hunts— he walks so clumsily that he scares off any prey within earshot.
  • He gets an undeserved bad rep for being this in Catching Fire as well. He displays these traits the first day of the Quarter Quell - at the Cornucopia (because he can't swim - and even then, he drowns another tribute in self-defence) and when they're fleeing from the poisonous gas (because he's weak after getting severely electrocuted mere hours before). However the rest of the time he's either fighting monkey mutts with Katniss and Finnick, turning back and helping a tripped Katniss on her feet and shoving her ahead of him while fleeing from the poisonous fog, carrying Beetee around the arena, creating a map of the clock, doing all he can to ensure that Katniss survives at the cost of his own life, killing Brutus who is one of their toughest competitors, or generally contributing as much as anyone else in the party. ^{From the books...} He was also the one who made sure himself, Katniss and Haymitch were prepared for the Quell by forcing the other two to train with him, both physically and survival skills-wise, and meticulously studying their competition to find out what the other victors' strength and weaknesses were.
  • And again in Mockingjay Part 2. where for most of the film not only is he unable to step in and help during combat, being metaphorically dragged around town by the Star Team, but he also causes at least one ally death due to his brainwashing. And Katniss is told repeatedly to kill him or let him die, as he was only sent there to get her killed, and yet she drags his miserable butt through the whole movie. He was literally sent to her to be The Load. However, this is again averted when Peeta ends up saving Katniss from the lizard mutts in the sewers.
    • Original scripting also had him save Katniss from the firebombs that killed Prim.
• Love at First Sight/Love at First Note: Peeta first took note of Katniss when they were five, when his father pointed her out. Peeta's father originally wanted to marry Katniss's mother, but she fell in love with a miner, because when he sang, even the birds would listen. On the first day of school, the teacher asked if anyone knew a folk song, and Katniss's hand shot right up. When she sang, even the birds stopped to listen — and at that moment, Peeta was a goner. He's been in love with Katniss ever since.
• Make-Out Kids: He and Katniss play this trope up as much as they can during the Victory Tour.
• Mandatory Motherhood: It's heavily implied that President Snow expects him to father children by Katniss as means of controlling them both and keeping them in line. He's no more happy about becoming the parent of a future tribute than Katniss is. Once the war is over and the Games have been abolished he changes his mind about having children. In fact, the reason why Katniss changed her mind about children was because Peeta wanted them so badly.
• Martial Pacifist: A pacifist at heart who doesn't want to see more bloodshed, yet he can be deadly when he feels the need to be.
• Meaningful Name: Two-fold. Peeta sounds like it's an evolved version of Peter, who was Christ's rock. It also sounds like pita bread. Peeta is Katniss' rock and, well, he bakes.

• Morality Chain: Played up subtlety in Catching Fire. By the end of Mockingjay, Katniss explicitly states this is why she ultimately chooses Peeta over Gale.
• Mr. Fanservice: In-Universe, much like Finnick before him, many of the Capital's Women swoon and would jump at the chance to bed "The Boy on Fire".
• Nice Guy: His kindness and compassion for others is his defining trait.
• Non-Action Guy: Played with. He's said to excel at hand-to-hand combat in the training prior to the Games and, in the Games themselves, participated in several fights. However, his physical feats are mostly off-screen and the rest of the time, he's more of a talker and less of a fighter.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Peeta did stay to fight it out in the opening bloodbath at the Cornucopia in the 74th Games and apparently did some serious fighting- enough to get some bad cuts and a limp. Whatever he did, the Careers did decide to team up with him after seeing him in action and even Cato compliments his skill with a knife.
  • He's also heavily implied to have killed Brutus off screen in Catching Fire.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: In the movie, being played by the relatively short Josh Hutcherson. In the books he's taller than Katniss.
• Punny Name: Peeta the baker. Fandom loves to speculate on what his brothers' names are...
• Save This Person, Save the World: President Coin feels it's more important to save Peeta than Katniss in the Quell, even speaking out her feelings about this once. In Mockingjay she arranges for Peeta's rescue from the Capitol because Katniss cannot perform as the Mockingjay with Peeta in harm's way, making this trope apply by extension.
• Self-Deprecating Humor: Peeta is said to have this, and it's implied it's due to some level of parental abuse.
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: Has no intention whatsoever of trying to win either one of the two Hunger Games he participates in, and every move of his is designed to help save Katniss instead.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Katniss begins to see potential loves interests in two guys, Peeta, the baker's son who decorates the cakes and Gale, her hunting partner. Gale is angry with the Capitol for making them participate in the games while Peeta is reflective on how he can maintain his identity in the games despite the Capitol using them.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: He temporarily sided with the Careers in the first Games. He later teamed up with Katniss and stayed with her for the rest of the Games.
• Smart People Play Chess: He's seen playing chess with Haymitch in Catching Fire.

• So Happy Together: Plays this trope up for all it's worth before the Quarter Quell.
• Stealth Pun: A guy named Peeta who works at a bakery.

• Super Couple: With Katniss, including in-universe.
• Survival Mantra: "Not real, not real, not real, not real..."
• Through His Stomach: Katniss really likes cheese buns.
• Tokyo Rose: Pressed into this role by the Capitol after being captured.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He takes a keen professional interest in bread.
• True Companions: With Haymitch and Katniss.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Peeta is a strong guy, but lacks the correct combat skill as seen in his fight with Cato, who's a big guy himself. Whenever Peeta could manage to get his hands on him, he'd be throwing him around. However, Cato easily gets him in a lock once he fights back.
• Uptown Girl: A member of the merchant class who's in love with a girl from the Seam. Once they're both victors they're on equal social standing, though.
• You Are Worth Hell: Willingly goes back into the arena to try and protect Katniss in "Catching Fire" even though he still suffers from PTSD and terrible nightmares after surviving the previous one. It's also debatable whether this was worse hell for him, or if watching Katniss in danger and suffering while trying to schmooze crowds into sponsoring her without any guarantees would be worse.

Gale Hawthorne

"Guess the odds aren't exactly in my favor."

Portrayed By Liam Hemsworth

• Adaptational Heroism:
  • In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire he receives a flogging from Thread because he tried to stop Thread from beating an old woman to death. In the book Gale had a black market deal with Thread's predecessor, Cray, and went to Cray's house to bring him the usual supplies... only to find that Cray had been replaced by Thread, leading to Gale being whipped for his black market dealings with Peacekeepers.
  • Secondly, in Mockingjay Part 2, Gale is much more openly remorseful and tries to console Katniss and discuss Prim's death, but Katniss is understandably upset and enraged over Gale's role in it, thus wanting nothing more to do with him. Gale's book counterpart didn't even make the effort to approach the issue.
• Anti-Hero: Cynical and hot-tempered, with a burning hatred of the Capitol.
• Ascended Extra: He doesn't see much action until Mockingjay, with smaller roles in first two films.
• Advertised Extra: Liam Hemsworth was featured in many publicity materials despite being (until the third movie) largely a tertiary character.
• Betty and Veronica: The Veronica to Peeta's Betty for Katniss.
• Birds of a Feather: Him and Katniss. Both lost their fathers in a mine explosion and became the breadwinners of their respective families.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Explicitly defied by the Capitol highers-up, who think that Gale's Tall, Dark, and Handsome childhood friend character could damage viewers' opinions of Katniss and Peeta's onscreen romance.

• Deuteragonist: Of Mockingjay, for a bit.
• Disappeared Dad: His dad died in the same explosion that killed Katniss'.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: At the end of Catching Fire.
  Gale (to Katniss): There is no District Twelve.
• Green-Eyed Monster: As he becomes more and more aware that Katniss' feelings for Peeta are more than just an act, he becomes increasingly possessive of her.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: However, after Katniss outright admits she loves Peeta, he is the first volunteer for District 13's mission to liberate Peeta, and the others victors, from the Capital's captivity.
• Hunk: To contrast Peeta's "boy next door" looks.
• The Lancer: To Katniss. He's her best friend and he becomes her most trusted ally during the revolution. While she's often uncertain of how to trust others, Katniss knows to place her trust in Gale.
• Loving a Shadow: His relationship with Katniss. He may love her, but she's far too broken by life and her experiences in the games to return his feelings in the same manner, making him bitter and hostile every time Peeta is brought up, the man she is able to truly be able to commit to.

• Meaningful Name: He has a stormy personality.
• Mr. Fanservice: Pretty much his defining role in the first two films, he appears in about 5-10 minutes of the nearly two and half hour first film, and about a half-hour of the second film, but dang it if he wasn't so good looking, they used him heavily in the marketing campaign.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Has this reaction after learning he may have been involved in the bombing that killed Prim, quietly accepting he has lost any chance of a future with Katniss, leaving without argument after she confronts him on her sister's death.

• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: He's the manly man to Peeta's sensitive guy, since Gale is a hunter and isn't quite as compassionate as Peeta. All the same, he isn't afraid to show his softer side and is generally a caring man.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Due to being played by Liam Hemsworth. He's dark-haired and towers over both Katniss and Peeta.
• A Taste of the Lash: Courtesy of Romulus Thread.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: By Mockingjay, he has become a lot more ruthless and bloodthirsty. He shows little sympathy to Peeta's torture and brainwashing after his broadcasting, calls him weak in an effort to disillusion Katniss' love for him, sees the civilian refugees in District 2 as traitors, showing no remorse should they die due to the rebellion's plans, and is heavily implied to have been involved in the planning of the bombing that ended up killing countless innocent Capital children, and Prim.

Greasy Sae

Portrayed By Sandra Ellis Lafferty

A vendor at The Hob, District 12's black market. She usually sells and buys food from Katniss.

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• Demoted to Extra: In the films, Greasy Sae doesn't have much of a role past the first one.
  • Composite Character: However, she gives Katniss the Mockingjay pin, instead of Madge.

Commander Romulus Thread

"Let's get to work."

Portrayed By Patrick St. Esprit

The new Head Peacekeeper of District 12.

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• Adaptational Villainy: Played with. While just as reprehensible as his book counterpart, in the film his reason for having Gale whipped is because he tried to stop Thread from beating an old woman to death; in the book Gale had a black market deal with Thread's predecessor, Cray, and went to Cray's house to bring him the usual supplies... only to find that Cray had been replaced by Thread, who had Gale whipped for his black market deal. He had Gale whipped for a lesser reason but didn't try to beat an elderly woman.
• Chewing the Scenery: He snarls every other line and seems constantly on the verge of exploding.
  Thread: CLEEEEAR THE SQUAAAARE! YOU ARE ALL UNDER CURFEW! ANYONE ON THE STREET AFTER DARK WILL BE SHOT! ON! SIGHT!
  • Justified for him in the above line, since Thread's a ruthless bully trying to reassert his dominance after his authority was challenged in front of a crowd.
• Colonel Kilgore: He's passionately devoted to his job.
• Establishing Character Moment: Thread is introduced having the previous head peacekeeper arrested and removed without hesitation before immediately setting about instituting his brutal new policies. It's clear from the get-go that he's a ruthless, terrifying man.
• Fascists Bedtime: One of his new policies is a curfew, enforced by threat of death.
• Replacement Goldfish: Of Cray, who he immediately disposes of.
• A Taste of the Lash: Thread is a big fan of performing public whippings as punishment.
• Would Hit a Girl: The entire reason Gale is whipped is because he tried to stop Thread from beating an old woman to death. Later Thread hits Katniss across the face with his whip when she tries to intervene during his whipping of Gale, then whips her again for good measure when she loses her footing (only this time he hits part of her covered by her leather jacket).
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Averted: whereas the novels don't mention his fate after District 12 was bombed, in the films Gale mentions all Peacekeepers left 12 before the bombing.

Cray

Portrayed By Wilbur Fitzgerald

Head Peacekeeper at District 12.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Played with. Through his smaller role in the movie, he comes across as being less oppressive, and he shows no sign of the perverted tendencies he had in the books.
• Demoted to Extra: Even in the books he wasn't a major character, but he has basically no role here save for a single scene.
• You Have Failed Me: He's a victim of this from Thread, presumably because he didn't keep a tight enough leash on the District, buying from the black market and setting up illegal deals because he knew the residents needed the market to survive.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He's seen in exactly one shot in Catching Fire, and he could only utter one line before being arrested and likely executed right away courtesy of Thread.