History Characters / Se7en

** In a meta example, [[spoiler:considering Doe and the film's climax is often cited as one of the most brutal jaw-dropping spectacles in film history, John ended up being proven right to at least some extent.]]

* MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning: [[spoiler: His own death is a part of his plan, and comprises one of the seven sins. He is confident that his killings will inspire a great deal of fascination, study, and, ultimately, a [[VillainousLegacy following]], and that his influence will change the world. Mills counters, more plausibly, that John Doe's killings will only inspire a TV movie and a T-shirt logo, a la Charles Manson. Of course, Mills says this before the full extent of Doe's plan is revealed, so it can end up either way.]]

* InvincibleVillain: Seriously, he goes unupposed throughout the entire movie and everything works out in his favour.

* GutturalGrowler: Speaks in a very gravelly voice.

* FatBastard: Invoked by John Doe but ultimately averted. There is no indication that he was a bad person. The ComicBookAdaptation reveals that he was a quiet man with major self-esteem issues - one who genuinely wanted to turn his life around but didn't know how.

* AssholeVictim: According to the villain. His victims are chosen based on what he considers to be their (unforgivably) negative traits, although their "sins" range from being morbidly obese to being a drug-dealing pederast. The movie does not contain any indication that the victims for Gluttony and Lust were bad people in any way unless you take the villain's "FromACertainPointOfView" for gospel -- or share his hatred of lawyers, obese people, sex workers, and vain women. The victims for Sloth, Greed, and Pride ''were'' nasty pieces of work, but what Doe put them through is so horrific it's hard to say if they deserved it.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Many of John Doe's victims. There's the obese man forced to eat until he's so full that his stomach fatally ruptures when kicked, the lawyer forced to carve off a pound of his own flesh and bleed out, the drug-dealing child molester tied to a bed for an entire year whose mind and body have withered away to the point that the only thing separating him from a corpse is a pulse, the model forced to choose between a drug overdose or calling for medical help after her nose is cut off, and the prostitute forced to have sex with a man with a knife attached to a strap-on.

** {{Pride}}: A beautiful model. [[spoiler: Doe severs her nose and then leaves her with a phone and a bottle of sleeping pills, giving her the choice to call for help and live disfigured or commit suicide. She chooses the latter.]]

* MistakenForBadass: Towards Somerset and Mills. He admires the pair's apparent detective skill, not knowing that they actually use a shadow surveillance network to catch him. This admiration ends up saving Mills' life when Doe has him at gunpoint. [[spoiler: On the flip side, this also puts the pair on his crosshair, leading to Doe killing Mills' wife and ruining his life.]]

* MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning: [[spoiler: His own death is a part of his plan, and comprises one of the seven sins. He is confident that his killings will inspire a great deal of fascination, study, and, ultimately, a [[VillainousLegacy following]], and that his influence will change the world. Mills counters, more plausibly, that John Doe's killings will only inspire a TV movie and a T-shirt logo, a la Charles Manson. Of course, Mills says this before the full extent of Doe's plan is revealed, so it can end up either ways.]]

* OffscreenVillainDarkMatter: Exactly how Doe survives, let alone funds his killings, is a mystery given the extent he has gone to bury his past. He has no issue renting out multiple apartments, filling his home with equipment for his killings, buying hundreds of journals, bribing cops for information, and paying five-hundred dollars to a delivery driver. The Captain notes he must be independently wealthy but there's never any explanation in the film as to how since there are no employment records. Given Doe's extreme anti-social tendencies as described in his own journals, it would be difficult for him to have pursued a career in any highly competitive field.

* TechnicalPacifist: John Doe goes out of his way not to kill most of the victims himself. He makes them take their own lives, leaves them for dead, or forces someone else to do the killing; the exceptions being Gluttony (he kicked him in he stomach, causing it to burst), Pride, who he disfigures personally but doesn't kill, and Envy [[spoiler: himself, in his murder of Mills' wife.]]. [[spoiler:Even 'Wrath' was his own death at the hands of Mills]]

* WalkingSpoiler: His appearance in the film's climax—both the actor portraying him and his actions while on-screen—make him this.

* AssholeVictim: According to the villain. His victims are chosen based on what he considers to be their (unforgivably) negative traits, although their "sins" range from being morbidly obese to being a drug-dealing pederast. The movie does not contain any indication that the victims for gluttony and lust were bad people in any way unless you take the villain's "FromACertainPointOfView" for gospel -- or share his hatred of lawyers, obese people, sex workers, and vain women. The victims for Sloth, Greed, and Pride ''were'' nasty pieces of work, but what Doe put them through is so horrific, it's hard to say if they deserved it.

** {{Lust}}: A woman who happened to be a sex worker.[[note]]Although, one could interpret the actual victim to be the man who was forced to have sex with her, who was implied to be an adulterer ("He asked if I was married"). Though he lived, he is left thoroughly scarred for life.[[/note]] [[spoiler: Doe forces a man to rape her to death with a bladed strap-on.]]

* FanDisservice: The morbidly-obese victim is naked on the autopsy table.

* SaltAndPepper: Somerset (black) and Mills (white).

* SaltAndPepper: The salt to Somerset's pepper.

* HairTriggerTemper: Mills is very quick to anger and takes most things to heart, which John Doe uses to manipulate him.

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Says Victor, a paedarest and a drug dealer, deserved what he got in as many words.

* KickTheSonOfABitch: He certainly seems to believe this is the case for his crimes, that his cruelty is acceptable because his targets were deserving. But it's clear he's just trying to justify his actions to himself.

* KnightInSourArmor: Solemnly reminds Sommerset that the world has ''always'' been this bad.

* MistakenForBadass: Towards Sommerset and Mills. He admires the pair's apparent detective skill, not knowing that they actually use a shadow surveillance network to catch him. This admiration ends up saving Mills' life when Doe has him at gunpoint. [[spoiler: On the flip side, this also puts the pair on his crosshair, leading to Doe killing Mills' wife and ruining his life.]]

* ManipulativeBastard: Even with [[GenreSavvy Summerset]] having worked in homicide in the city for a long time, and being farmiliar with Doe's inspirations ([[Creator/DanteAlighieri Dante]], [[Creator/JohnMilton Milton]]), AND knowing that Mills is a hothead, Doe is able [[spoiler: to change his plan on the fly after the detectives find his apartment, and twist both of them and the rest of the police department around his finger to complete his plan.]]

* GoodCopBadCop: They never interrogate anyone jointly, but Somerset is very patient and soft-spoken, in contrast to Mills's more aggressive, volatile demeanour. This is particularly evident when [[spoiler: they are driving John Doe to the site of the last two victims.]]

* RedOniBlueOni: Mills and Somerset. The Blue is a fatherly mentor trying to harden the Red's heart to the harsh realities of life, and the young and emotional Red [[spoiler:loses EVERYTHING to John Doe.]]

* CynicismCatalyst: A retroactive example. Somerset explains to Mills that his whole life in the city gave him a pretty dark, pessimistic view on the world.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: From the starting of his pessimistic views of the world to how he convinced the woman carrying their child to get an abortion because he didn't want the child to grow up in a CrapsackWorld.

* {{Foil}}: To Mills who is a HotBlooded ManChild. Somerset is a calm professional who thinks before acting.
* GenreSavvy: He very quickly catches on that the murder case will be much larger than expected, and tells the chief this shouldn't be his last case with only six days left until retirement, nor should it be Mill's first [[spoiler:and he's proven right at the end.]]

--> Creator/ErnestHemingway once wrote, "[[Literature/ForWhomTheBellTolls The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for]]." I agree with the second part.

* NiceGuy: He's a pessimist, but still a good man underneath it all.
* {{Retirony}}: Averted, when the movie begins it's seven days until his retirement. [[spoiler:And survives with both his life and his sanity unlike Mills.]]

* BloodKnight: Mills wants to be this way, which is why he got reassigned to the city. [[spoiler:While he does become it by killing John Doe, it's poisonous and completely destroys him.]]

* CowboyCop: He [[spoiler: breaks down Doe's door and bribes a woman to say she reported suspicious noises from inside the apartment. Deconstructed by the end: his aggression and impulsiveness leads to him playing straight into the villain's hands and ruining his life in the process.]]

* {{Deuteragonist}}: He gets the second amount of screentime after Somerset.

* FateWorseThanDeath: John Doe seems to regard his ending as this. [[spoiler:He's the only victim not killed by Doe.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: David may be a hot-blooded, immature CowboyCop, but he correctly points out that Somerset's [[StrawNihilist cynical attitude]] isn't much better than the apathetic attitude of the city that Somerset decries. He also shoots down John Doe's claims that Doe's actions will change the world, saying (probably correctly) Doe will end up "a T-shirt, a Movie of the Week, at best," and that Doe has delusions of grandeur.

* RedOniBlueOni: The inexperienced, short-tempered Red Oni to Somerset's wiser, cool-headed Blue Oni .

* WideEyedIdealist: He tends to believe that the world isn't as crappy as Somerset believes. [[spoiler:He most definitely isn't by the end of the film.]]

* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler:Witnesses the entire confrontation between Doe, Mills, and Somerset from a helicopter and is audibly horrified after Mills shoots Doe.]]

[[caption-width-right:340:[[labelnote:Click here to see John Doe's identity.]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kevin_spacey_john_doe_se7en_4.jpg]] [[/labelnote]]

* BerserkButton: Mills' suggestion that his victims count as "innocent" immediately sends the SoftSpokenSadist into a loud MotiveRant.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: John Doe believes that nearly all humans are inherently sinful, wicked, and deserving of death. He isn't completely self-righteous or hypocritical about it because he concedes that he too is full of sin and unworthy to live. However, he doesn't think that his murders make him sinful, but rather his envy of another man's happier personal life. It's beyond bizarre for a man who tortures and murders random people to believe that his biggest sin is envying another man's attractive wife and happy home life.

* CreepySouvenir: Took [[spoiler:Mills wife's head]] as a souvenir.

* TheCynic: He has a pretty dim view of humanity to say the least.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: He attempts to invoke the VillainHasAPoint trope by discussing how horrible his victims were but it falls flat as most of their supposed crimes (being overweight, being vain, working as a prostitute) are hardly the awful sins he makes them out to be and Doe is several magnitudes worse than any of them.
* EvilCounterpart: For Somerset; the two are very well-read and believe that the world is an evil place, but have conflicting views on how to deal with it.

* ManipulativeBastard: Even with [[GenreSavvy Summerset]] having worked in homicide in the city for a long time, and being farmiliar with Doe's inspirations ([[Creator/DanteAlighieri Dante]], [[Creator/JohnMilton Milton]]), AND knowing that Mills is a hothead, Doe is able [[spoiler: to change his plan on the fly, after the detectives find his apartment, and twist both of them, and the rest of the police department around his finger to complete his plan.]]

-->'''Doe''': Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man, a disgusting man who could barely stand up, a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him, a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer, and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets!...A woman, so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug-dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point: we see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed… forever.

* OffscreenVillainDarkMatter: Exactly how Doe survives, let alone funds his killings, is a mystery given the extent he has gone to bury his past. He has no issue renting out multiple apartments, filling his home with equipment for his killings, buying hundreds of journals, bribing cops for information and paying five-hundred dollars to a delivery driver. The Captain notes he must be independently wealthy but there's never any explanation in the film as to how since there are no employment records. Given Doe's extreme anti-social tendencies as described in his own journals, it would be difficult for him to have pursued a career in any highly competitive field.

* SirNotAppearingInThisTrailer: [[spoiler: Kevin Spacey]] deliberately avoided doing promotion for the film, and his name was left out of the opening credits and his voice even replaced in trailers and promotions in order to keep John Doe's identity a secret until he is revealed.

* SmallNameBigEgo: As noted above, he has a very high opinion of what he imagines his legacy will be. This is despite the fact that he's a low-level killer working in a nondescript city and whose crimes, while certainly shocking and brutal, hardly took much in the way of intelligence or cunning. John imagines he's a revolutionary rather than the sadist he is.

* StrawNihilist: Being a MisanthropeSupreme [[spoiler:whose final gambit is a StrikeMeDownWithAllOfYourHatred]] makes him this by default. Also, one of the journals in his apartment perfectly illustrates his pessimism.

* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Completely averted in the film, but played straight in the graphic novel, where his early life [[AbusiveParents is very much what you'd expect]] from a serial killer.

* XanatosSpeedChess: Mills and Somerset turning up at his apartment is unexpected and forces him to change his plans, but he adapts quickly [[spoiler:and even incorporates both detectives into his EvilPlan.]]

* AssholeVictim: According to the villain. His victims are chosen based on what he considers to be their (unforgivably) negative traits, although their "sins" range from being morbidly obese to being a drug-dealing pederast. The movie does not contain any indication that the victims for gluttony and lust were bad people in any way, unless you take the villain's "FromACertainPointOfView" for gospel -- or share his hatred of lawyers, obese people, sex-workers, and vain women. The victims for Sloth, Greed, and Pride ''were'' nasty pieces of work, but what Doe put them through is so horrific, it's hard to say if they deserved it.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Many of John Doe's victims. There's the obese man forced to eat until he's so full that his stomach fatally ruptures when kicked, the lawyer forced to carve off a pound of his own flesh and bleed out, the drug dealing child molester tied to a bed for an entire year whose mind and body have withered away to the point that the only thing separating him from a corpse is a pulse, the model forced to choose between a drug overdose or calling for medical help after her nose is cut off, and the prostitute forced to have sex with a man with a knife attached to a strap-on.

** The Pride victim has her nose cut off (to spite her face) and has a bottle of sleeping pills glued to one hand and a phone to the other, giving her a choice between committing suicide by overdose or calling for medical attention but living with a permanent and obvious disfigurement. She chooses the former.

** Just imagine John Doe [[spoiler:fingerprinting "HELP ME" with Victor's severed hand.]]

** The Pride victim has her nose cut off (to spite her face) and has a bottle of sleeping pills glued to one hand and a phone to the other, giving her a choice between committing suicide by overdose or calling for medical attention but living with a permanent and obvious disfigurement. She chooses the former.

** [[VillainousGlutton Gluttony]]: A man whose sole crime was being morbidly obese. [[spoiler:Doe forces him to eat a massive amount of spaghetti before kicking him in the abdomen, causing his stomach to burst.]]
** {{Greed}}: A lawyer who got criminals acquitted for profit. [[spoiler:Doe forces him to cut a "pound of flesh" off of himself. He slices off one of his lovehandles and bleeds to death.]]
** [[LazyBum Sloth]]: A man who squandered his potential by engaging in drug dealing and pedophilia. [[spoiler:Doe chains him to a bed for an entire year, taking care of him and his affairs just enough that he doesn't die or get discovered. He becomes skeletal, deformed, and insane, and dies of shock in the hospital.]]
** {{Lust}}: A woman who happened to be a sex worker.[[note]]Although, one could interpret the actual victim to be the man who was forced to have sex with her, who was implied to be an adulterer ("He asked if I was married"). Though he lived, he is left thoroughly scarred for life.[[/note]] [[spoiler:Doe forces a man to rape her to death with a bladed strap-on.]]
** {{Pride}}: A beautiful model. [[spoiler:Doe severs her nose and then leaves her with a phone and a bottle of sleeping pills, giving her the choice to call for help and live disfigured or commit suicide. She chooses the latter.]]
** [[GreenEyedMonster Envy]]: [[spoiler:John Doe himself, who murdered Tracy Mills because he was jealous of her husband's normal life. As part of his plan, he is shot to death by Detective Mills.]]
** [[HairTriggerTemper Wrath]]: [[spoiler:Detective Mills, who was quick to anger and killed John Doe, an unarmed prisoner, in a rage for killing his wife. Having already lost his wife and unborn child, he will likely lose his job and be traumatized for the rest of his life. Given the circumstances, he's not likely to go to prison, but there's no guarantee.]]

* ColdBloodedTorture: What Doe put him through was horrific, and all the more so given how long it went on for: as if force-feeding the poor bastard to the point of physical exhaustion wasn't bad enough, Doe ran out of ingredients halfway through the fatal feast, and actually went to the store to pick up more supplies just so he could continue torturing him.

* ForceFeeding: The crux of his torture at the hands of Doe, being forced to scarf down plate after plate of spaghetti - hands free - until he starts passing out. The comic expands on this treatment by showing that Doe also went so far as to shove a few forkfuls into the victim's mouth... [[NauseaFuel complete with a stray cockroach]].

* NoNameGiven: Only in additional materials he is given a name. Two, actually: Peter Eubanks in the {{Novelization}}, and Peter Eugene in the GraphicNovel.

* GreedyJew: The Greed victim is an amoral defence attorney named Eli Gould, an unambiguously Jewish name. However, his ethnicity is never explicitly pointed out. Our only clue to John Doe's implied anti-Semitism is the "One pound of flesh, no more, no less..." note left at the crime scene, a reference to Shylock's punishment for Antonio in ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice''.

* SadisticChoice: He was forced at gunpoint to extract a pound of flesh from his body, and eventually chose one of his love handles. As a result, he bled to death.

* AlasPoorVillain: He was a drug-dealing pedophile and is rightfully loathed by the police for that reason. Yet even they are left disturbed by Victor's absolutely hellish fate, [[spoiler:even more so when they discover he's still alive.]]

* AndIMustScream: Spends an entire year strapped to a bed, drugged into semi-consciousness and unable to speak; though Doe's photographs show Victor with his mouth gaping open as if to scream, no complaints over noise are ever issued by the landlord, meaning that he couldn't even call for help. [[spoiler: Eventually, he's able to let out a cough and gasps for air, but by then, the damage to his brain and body is irreversible.]]

* BringMyBrownPants: Played for horror. In keeping with the 'sloth' punishment, Victor was not allowed to leave his bed for any reason, and was thus forced to simply soil himself - and lie there in it (although Somerset does mention that Doe inserted a catheter into his urethra to collect his urine). Suffice to say, thanks to the smells of excrement and putrefaction, Victor smelled absolutely putrid by the time his year of hell came to an end, to the point that Doe had to cover the apartment in air fresheners just so he wouldn't arouse suspicion; when California finally whips the bed sheet off him, the stench is so horrendous that even Mills and Somerset are disgusted.

* EmptyShell: [[spoiler: After a full year spent being repeatedly drugged, bound to a bed, and wasting away into a husk of a person, Victor is barely even capable of screaming in agony; his doctor claims that his brain has been reduced to "mush," and that he wouldn't be able to speak even if he hadn't chewed off his own tongue.]]

* GettingHighOnTheirOwnSupply: A drug-dealer by trade, the comics demonstrate that Victor definitely isn't above using his own product, to the point that Doe is able to recognize four distinctive signs of long-term addiction just by looking at him - including the pockmarks from crystal meth, speed-induced deterioration of bone mass, the erosion of nasal cartilage due to cocaine, and the needle scars from heroin use. For good measure, crime scene photographs reveal that Victor's apartment is cluttered with what have to be several months worth of drug paraphernalia, from crackpipes to used syringes.

* OrgyOfEvidence: Doe went out of his way to take samples of Victor's hair, fingernails, urine and stool, along with photographs of the victim's horrific deterioration, just so the police could have enough evidence of what happened and how long it went on for. However, this isn't a prelude to a setup, but - as Mills puts it - a sign that Doe is toying with them.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: John Doe cuts off her nose while glueing a phone and sleeping pills to both her respective hands, offering her a SadisticChoice between calling for help and living with her disfigurement or killing herself, and chooses the latter.

* FateWorseThanDeath: Invoked. [[spoiler:The victim prefers committing suicide than having to live disfigured without her nose.]]

* ParentalNeglect: In the comics, she barely gives enough of of a damn to dismiss her daughter from her presence.
* RedShirt: She receives considerably less focus than Gluttony, Greed, Sloth and Lust, and her scene is quickly overshadowed by the Envy/Wrath climax of the film.

* KilledOffscreen: [[spoiler:By John Doe, right before he turned himself into the police, in fact.]]

* OffWithHisHead: [[spoiler:Gets decapitated by Doe in order to goad Mills into shooting him to death.]]
* StepfordSmiler: She plays up the optimistic housewife role when her husband is around, because she knows how stressful and demoralizing his job can be. But she later meets with Somerset at a diner and confesses to hating the city, and is unsure if she wants to bring a baby into such a CrapsackWorld.

* NoNameGiven: It was 'Lucas'[[AllThereInTheScript in an earlier draft]], but here he's only known by his title.

* {{Envy}}: [[spoiler: Towards the end he admits that Envy is his own deadly sin, since he is jealous of Detective Mills' life, saying it is perfect, a life Doe could only dream of having. So he kills Mills' wife so Mills can become Wrath, the only remaining sin.]]

* {{Envy}}: [[spoiler: Towards the end he admits that Envy is his own deadly sin, since he is jealous of Detective Mills' life, saying it is perfect, a life Doe could only dream of having. So he kills Mills' wife so Mills can become {{Wrath}}, the only remaining sin.]]

* HairTriggerTemper: Mills is very quick to anger and takes most things to heart which John Doe uses to manipulate him.

* {{Wrath}}: [[spoiler: Invoked by John Doe. At the end of the film, John Doe kills Tracy in order to provoke him into becoming a victim of this sin.]]

* DeathBySex: Invoked. There is a blade and a sex toy and... well, best not to dwell on it.

* TechnicalPacifist: Apart from 'Envy' (and possibly 'Gluttony'), John Doe does not actually *kill* any of the victims himself. He makes them take their own lives, leaves them for dead, or forces someone else to do the killing. [[spoiler:Even 'Wrath' was his own death at the hands of Mills]].
** Averted with Pride, since he did mutilate her. Nor does he object to his some of his other murders being described as torture.

* MistakenForBadass: Towards Sommerset and Mills. He admires the pair's apparent detective skill, not knowing that they actually use a shadow surveillance network to catch him. This admiration ends up saving Mills' life when Doe has him at gunpoint. [[spoiler: However, this respect turns out to be a catastrophically bad thing down the line, as Doe now chooses Mills to be the person who will help him complete his murders.]]

* MistakenForBadass: Towards Sommerset and Mills. [[spoiler: He expresses admiration for the pair's detective talent, not knowing that they actually catch him by using a shadow surveillance network. However, this ends up biting them hard in the ass since they now have his attention, culminating in Doe invading Mills' house and killing his wife.]]

* MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning: [[spoiler: His own death is a part of his plan, and comprises one of the seven sins. He is confident that his killings will inspire a great deal of fascination, study, and, ultimately, a [[VillainousLegacy following]], and that his influence will change the world. Mills counters, more plausibly, that John Doe's killings will only inspire a TV movie and a T-shirt logo, a la Charles Manson.]]