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[[folder:Martin Brundle]]
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[[folder:Martin Brundle]]Brundle / Martinfly]]
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* EarnYourHappyEnding: Where his father was mutated into a monster and was ultimately forced to request a MercyKill, [[spoiler:Martin is able to find a cure for his condition by transferring the "infected" gene sequences into Anton Bartok while leaving him basically human]].
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* EarnYourHappyEnding: Where his father was mutated into a monster and was ultimately forced to request a MercyKill, [[spoiler:Martin is able to find a cure for his condition by transferring the "infected" gene sequences into Anton Bartok while leaving him basically Martin apparently a normal human]].
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* AllForNothing: Bartok spent five years trying to use Martin to complete the telepods so that his company could profit from them, but ultimately [[spoiler:Martin only uses the telepods to save himself while reducing Bartok to a deformed mutant]].
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* MuggleFosterParents: Bartok works to set himself up as Martin's substitute father figure, allowing him to manipulate Martin's genius to his benefit.
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* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: His short story/1958 counterpart decides to kill himself before he can hurt anyone, via being crushed by a metal press, requiring the aid of his wife to do so. Seth -- in part because his insect side is determined to live at any cost -- doesn't become suicidal until he is rendered a helpless ClippedWingAngel, whereupon he silently asks Veronica to slay him with Stathis's shotgun; she obliges by blowing his head off.
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* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: His short story/1958 counterpart decides to kill himself before he can hurt anyone, via being crushed by a metal press, requiring the aid of his wife to do so. Seth -- Seth- in part because his insect side is determined to live at any cost -- cost- doesn't become suicidal until he is rendered a helpless ClippedWingAngel, whereupon he silently asks Veronica to slay him with Stathis's shotgun; she obliges by blowing his head off.
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* VillainProtagonist: Becomes this upon deciding to forcibly merge himself with Veronica (and her unborn child) into a single entity, since that would be "More human than I am alone!" On top of that when Stathis comes to rescue her he maims him with vomit drop, clearly getting some ''enjoyment'' out of the process as he does so, and only Veronica's plea stops him from finishing him off.
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* VillainProtagonist: Becomes this upon deciding to forcibly merge himself with Veronica (and her unborn child) into a single entity, since that would be "More human than I am alone!" On top of that when Stathis comes to rescue her he maims him with vomit drop, clearly getting some ''enjoyment'' out of the process as he does so, and only Veronica's plea stops him from finishing him Stathis off.
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* SomeoneToRememberHimBy: When Veronica first learned that she was pregnant, Seth tried to convince her to have the baby basically using this argument, hoping that the baby might have been conceived ''before'' his telepod accident and thus be "all that's left of the real [him]". Sadly, this proved to not be the case.
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* SpannerInTheWorks: Early story treatment for the sequel explained that Stathis stole the information discs containing the telepods' programming before Bartok Industries took possession of the pods, justifying how the company spent five years with two undamaged pods and yet were unable to make them work. This information was not explicitly disclosed in the final released sequel, but explains another reason Bartok needed Martin to recreate his father's work.
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* GenerationXerox: Doomed from birth to undergo a SlowTransformation into a monster due to the insect genes inherited from his father, Martin also inherited Seth's intellectual brilliance and social awkwardness, with others concluding that Martin alone can complete his father's work. He even falls for a beautiful brunette who helps him with the project, likes how EndearinglyDorky he is, and doesn't reject him as he mutates. Ultimately [[spoiler:Martin's more stable transformation allows him to retain enough of his human mind that he finds a cure for his condition]].
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* GenerationXerox: Doomed from birth to undergo a SlowTransformation into a monster due to the insect genes inherited from his father, Martin also inherited Seth's intellectual brilliance and social awkwardness, with others concluding that Martin alone can complete his father's work.work on the Telepods. He even falls for a beautiful brunette who helps him with the project, likes how EndearinglyDorky he is, and doesn't reject him as he mutates. Ultimately [[spoiler:Martin's more stable transformation allows him to retain enough of his human mind that he finds a cure for his condition]].
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* LivingEmotionalCrutch: During the final clash, Beth is basically the only person in Bartok Industries Martinfly still cares for, his mutated self showing no intention of harming her even as he tears through security guards.
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* LivingEmotionalCrutch: During the final clash, Beth is basically the only person in Bartok Industries Martinfly still cares for, his mutated self showing no intention of harming her even as he tears through security guards.guards [[spoiler:and ultimately uses Anton Bartok as his "donor" to replace his contaminated gene sequences with normal human DNA]].
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* UnderestimatingBadassery: Bartok and his staff assumed that Martinfly would be like his father, who wasn't actually that much of a threat against anything more than a untrained man with a shotgun, and needed the element of surprise. Although they have a fully-armed security team ready for when Martinfly emerges, the resulting pure hybrid is a powerful monster with full awareness and no obvious weaknesses, allowing him to tear through the security staff and [[spoiler:use Bartok as an unwilling 'donor' to provide the healthy gene sequences necessary to cure Martin's own mutation]].
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* UnderestimatingBadassery: Bartok and his staff assumed that Martinfly would be like his father, who wasn't actually that much of a threat against anything more than a untrained man with a shotgun, and needed the element of surprise. Although they have a fully-armed security team ready for when Martinfly emerges, emerges from his cocoon, the resulting pure hybrid is a powerful monster with full awareness and no obvious weaknesses, allowing him to tear through the security staff and [[spoiler:use Bartok as an unwilling 'donor' to provide the healthy gene sequences necessary to cure Martin's own mutation]].
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* UnreliableNarrator: When Martin and Beth visit, Stathis discusses the circumstances of Seth's death in a manner that suggests Ronnie killed Seth in self-defence to stop him taking her into the telepod, as opposed to delivering a MercyKill on Seth's request after his final warped attempt to cure himself failed.
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*BodyHorror: Like his father, Martin undergoes a mutation from humanoid to insectoid, but in his case this was a "natural" part of his body's evolution, so the process progresses more smoothly and is fundamentally less twisted, to the extent that Martin spins a cocoon for himself at a key point where Seth's transformation just saw parts of himself falling off or breaking apart.
*ChildProdigy: By the time he's mentally and physically become a preteen (chronologically he's not even three years old yet), Martin is bored by all the intellectual testing he's being put through by his overseers because it's all too easy for him and prefers to work on his own projects. He is able to hack into computers and create his own security badge to explore Zone 4.
*CursedWithAwesome: Doubly so for Martin compared to his father, since his Martinfly form, while inhuman, turns out to be a coherent, seemingly healthy lifeform instead of a diseased, deformed mishmash of genetic goo (possibly due to being born with the fly genes instead of having them abruptly inserted into him as an adult). He's much more of a werefly / alien lifeform than the diseased corpse-like wreck Seth ended up turning into in the first film.
*EarnYourHappyEnding: Where his father was mutated into a monster and was ultimately forced to request a MercyKill, [[spoiler:Martin is able to find a cure for his condition by transferring the "infected" gene sequences into Anton Bartok while leaving him basically human]].
*GenerationXerox: Doomed from birth to undergo a SlowTransformation into a monster due to the insect genes inherited from his father, Martin also inherited Seth's intellectual brilliance and social awkwardness, with others concluding that Martin alone can complete his father's work. He even falls for a beautiful brunette who helps him with the project, likes how EndearinglyDorky he is, and doesn't reject him as he mutates. Ultimately [[spoiler:Martin's more stable transformation allows him to retain enough of his human mind that he finds a cure for his condition]].
*HonorBeforeReason: Martin discovers he can cure himself, but only if he uses a healthy human donor. He initially refuses to subject another person to what he's going through, but [[spoiler:learning the truth about Bartok's manipulations and his subsequent full mutation make it easier for Martin to reconsider that stance]].
*HorrifyingHero: Martin's final form might be a horrifying mash up of fly and human, but he's in complete control of himself and still a good guy.
*LightningBruiser: Unlike his father, who had his genes mashed together and became a strong but [[BodyHorror sickly and misshapen monstrosity]], Martin Brundle is a naturally formed HalfHumanHybrid, leaving his mind more lucid and his body healthier and more viable. He is remarkably fast and able to leap great distances, strong enough to fold a man in half ([[CruelAndUnusualDeath backwards]]), and a gunshot wound to the torso hardly slows him down, if he wasn't outright feigning injury.
*NoSocialSkills: Martin is intellectually brilliant but socially awkward by the time he's physically and mentally matured into a young adult. Since he's spent all of his life under observation by Anton Bartok and his heartless underlings, and RapidAging meant having peers around was out of the question, he never had an opportunity to form emotional and social attachments to anyone besides Anton (who is faking it) and the ill-fated dog. Beth quickly comes to like him once they meet, though, finding his curious and polite nature appealing.
*RaisedInALab: Martin was raised in a laboratory at Bartok Industries, as Anton Bartok wanted to observe how Martin's dormant fly genes would manifest themselves as he grew up.
*RapidAging: Martin ages at four times the normal human rate. He knows that this is abnormal; he just isn't aware of the actual cause. Bartok and his underlings tell him that he inherited a rapid aging disorder ("Brundle's Accelerated Growth Syndrome") from his father, who ultimately succumbed to it. It is "controlled" by their (phony) injections, while Martin eventually uses the restored telepods to work on finding a cure for it. Only later does Martin learn the awful truth.
*YoungerThanTheyLook: As a result of rapid aging caused by his unconventional genetics, Martin looks to be in his early twenties when he's chronologically five years old.
*BodyHorror: Like his father, Martin undergoes a mutation from humanoid to insectoid, but in his case this was a "natural" part of his body's evolution, so the process progresses more smoothly and is fundamentally less twisted, to the extent that Martin spins a cocoon for himself at a key point where Seth's transformation just saw parts of himself falling off or breaking apart.
*ChildProdigy: By the time he's mentally and physically become a preteen (chronologically he's not even three years old yet), Martin is bored by all the intellectual testing he's being put through by his overseers because it's all too easy for him and prefers to work on his own projects. He is able to hack into computers and create his own security badge to explore Zone 4.
*CursedWithAwesome: Doubly so for Martin compared to his father, since his Martinfly form, while inhuman, turns out to be a coherent, seemingly healthy lifeform instead of a diseased, deformed mishmash of genetic goo (possibly due to being born with the fly genes instead of having them abruptly inserted into him as an adult). He's much more of a werefly / alien lifeform than the diseased corpse-like wreck Seth ended up turning into in the first film.
*EarnYourHappyEnding: Where his father was mutated into a monster and was ultimately forced to request a MercyKill, [[spoiler:Martin is able to find a cure for his condition by transferring the "infected" gene sequences into Anton Bartok while leaving him basically human]].
*GenerationXerox: Doomed from birth to undergo a SlowTransformation into a monster due to the insect genes inherited from his father, Martin also inherited Seth's intellectual brilliance and social awkwardness, with others concluding that Martin alone can complete his father's work. He even falls for a beautiful brunette who helps him with the project, likes how EndearinglyDorky he is, and doesn't reject him as he mutates. Ultimately [[spoiler:Martin's more stable transformation allows him to retain enough of his human mind that he finds a cure for his condition]].
*HonorBeforeReason: Martin discovers he can cure himself, but only if he uses a healthy human donor. He initially refuses to subject another person to what he's going through, but [[spoiler:learning the truth about Bartok's manipulations and his subsequent full mutation make it easier for Martin to reconsider that stance]].
*HorrifyingHero: Martin's final form might be a horrifying mash up of fly and human, but he's in complete control of himself and still a good guy.
*LightningBruiser: Unlike his father, who had his genes mashed together and became a strong but [[BodyHorror sickly and misshapen monstrosity]], Martin Brundle is a naturally formed HalfHumanHybrid, leaving his mind more lucid and his body healthier and more viable. He is remarkably fast and able to leap great distances, strong enough to fold a man in half ([[CruelAndUnusualDeath backwards]]), and a gunshot wound to the torso hardly slows him down, if he wasn't outright feigning injury.
*NoSocialSkills: Martin is intellectually brilliant but socially awkward by the time he's physically and mentally matured into a young adult. Since he's spent all of his life under observation by Anton Bartok and his heartless underlings, and RapidAging meant having peers around was out of the question, he never had an opportunity to form emotional and social attachments to anyone besides Anton (who is faking it) and the ill-fated dog. Beth quickly comes to like him once they meet, though, finding his curious and polite nature appealing.
*RaisedInALab: Martin was raised in a laboratory at Bartok Industries, as Anton Bartok wanted to observe how Martin's dormant fly genes would manifest themselves as he grew up.
*RapidAging: Martin ages at four times the normal human rate. He knows that this is abnormal; he just isn't aware of the actual cause. Bartok and his underlings tell him that he inherited a rapid aging disorder ("Brundle's Accelerated Growth Syndrome") from his father, who ultimately succumbed to it. It is "controlled" by their (phony) injections, while Martin eventually uses the restored telepods to work on finding a cure for it. Only later does Martin learn the awful truth.
*YoungerThanTheyLook: As a result of rapid aging caused by his unconventional genetics, Martin looks to be in his early twenties when he's chronologically five years old.
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*DespairEventHorizon: Witnessing Martin weave a cocoon and talk about how he's becoming "better" proves too much for Beth, and she's forced to basically return Martin to Bartok Industries despite knowing that they only want to use him.
*LikeParentLikeSpouse: Beth bears a rather striking resemblance to Martin's late mother Veronica, even though Martin only "met" his mother briefly before her DeathByChildbirth.
*LivingEmotionalCrutch: During the final clash, Beth is basically the only person in Bartok Industries Martinfly still cares for, his mutated self showing no intention of harming her even as he tears through security guards.
*ScienceHerosBabeAssistant: Beth doesn't do much as Martin's assistant aside from SupportingTheMonsterLovedOne in the second half (the road trip to flee Bartok's goons, in particular, ends up doing little). Her big contribution to the climax is [[spoiler:pressing a button, and only because (unlike his dad) Martin hasn't programmed an automatic teleportation sequence for the telepods]].
*WhatTheHellHero: Beth explicitly calls Stathis out on his dismissive response to Martin's pleas for help as the older man recalls the circumstances of Seth Brundle's death, asking him to show some compassion.
*DespairEventHorizon: Witnessing Martin weave a cocoon and talk about how he's becoming "better" proves too much for Beth, and she's forced to basically return Martin to Bartok Industries despite knowing that they only want to use him.
*LikeParentLikeSpouse: Beth bears a rather striking resemblance to Martin's late mother Veronica, even though Martin only "met" his mother briefly before her DeathByChildbirth.
*LivingEmotionalCrutch: During the final clash, Beth is basically the only person in Bartok Industries Martinfly still cares for, his mutated self showing no intention of harming her even as he tears through security guards.
*ScienceHerosBabeAssistant: Beth doesn't do much as Martin's assistant aside from SupportingTheMonsterLovedOne in the second half (the road trip to flee Bartok's goons, in particular, ends up doing little). Her big contribution to the climax is [[spoiler:pressing a button, and only because (unlike his dad) Martin hasn't programmed an automatic teleportation sequence for the telepods]].
*WhatTheHellHero: Beth explicitly calls Stathis out on his dismissive response to Martin's pleas for help as the older man recalls the circumstances of Seth Brundle's death, asking him to show some compassion.
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*AndIMustScream: [[spoiler: Bartok's karmic end has him reduced to a hideously deformed mutant crawling around in that same pit, pitifully squirming around, and barely able to even feed himself]].
*BadBoss: The news that Martinfly has killed some of his employees is dismissed by Bartok given his focus on taking Martin alive.
*BitchInSheepsClothing: Anton Bartok acts like a kind father figure to Martin and is very much the only person there who treats him kindly. But it's all a lie; he only sees Martin as a useful tool for his corporate interests.
*UnderestimatingBadassery: Bartok and his staff assumed that Martinfly would be like his father, who wasn't actually that much of a threat against anything more than a untrained man with a shotgun, and needed the element of surprise. Although they have a fully-armed security team ready for when Martinfly emerges, the resulting pure hybrid is a powerful monster with full awareness and no obvious weaknesses, allowing him to tear through the security staff and [[spoiler:use Bartok as an unwilling 'donor' to provide the healthy gene sequences necessary to cure Martin's own mutation]].
*AndIMustScream: [[spoiler: Bartok's karmic end has him reduced to a hideously deformed mutant crawling around in that same pit, pitifully squirming around, and barely able to even feed himself]].
*BadBoss: The news that Martinfly has killed some of his employees is dismissed by Bartok given his focus on taking Martin alive.
*BitchInSheepsClothing: Anton Bartok acts like a kind father figure to Martin and is very much the only person there who treats him kindly. But it's all a lie; he only sees Martin as a useful tool for his corporate interests.
*UnderestimatingBadassery: Bartok and his staff assumed that Martinfly would be like his father, who wasn't actually that much of a threat against anything more than a untrained man with a shotgun, and needed the element of surprise. Although they have a fully-armed security team ready for when Martinfly emerges, the resulting pure hybrid is a powerful monster with full awareness and no obvious weaknesses, allowing him to tear through the security staff and [[spoiler:use Bartok as an unwilling 'donor' to provide the healthy gene sequences necessary to cure Martin's own mutation]].
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[[folder:Seth Brundle/ Brundlefly]]
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[[folder:Seth Brundle/ Brundle / Brundlefly]]
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[[index]]
* [[Characters/TheFly1986SethBrundle Seth Brundle / Brundlefly]]
[[/index]]
[[folder:Veronica Quaife]]
!!Veronica "Ronnie" Quaife
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veronica_quaife_6903_normal.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Be afraid. Be'' '''very''' ''afraid."'']]
!!!'''Played By:''' Creator/GeenaDavis (original), Creator/SaffronHenderson (''The Fly II'')
A reporter for ''Particle Magazine'', Veronica's initial skepticism of Seth's claims of an invention "that will change the world and human life as we know it" is quickly dispelled when she sees them in action. Beyond the lure of a career-making story, she becomes drawn to Seth's passion for his work and his sweet charm, and elevates their relationship to a romantic one. At first merely puzzled by (and to an extent attracted to) Seth's changing nature post-teleportation, she comes to realize something is wrong with him but ends up being turned out of his loft/lab for her trouble. Four weeks later her worst fears for him are exceeded when he contacts her again and reveals the truth about his condition. Her love for him is so strong that she is not willing to abandon him, even as her own mind threatens to crack under the stress...but what will she do when she learns she is pregnant with his child?
* [[Characters/TheFly1986SethBrundle Seth Brundle / Brundlefly]]
[[/index]]
[[folder:Veronica Quaife]]
!!Veronica "Ronnie" Quaife
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veronica_quaife_6903_normal.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Be afraid. Be'' '''very''' ''afraid."'']]
!!!'''Played By:''' Creator/GeenaDavis (original), Creator/SaffronHenderson (''The Fly II'')
A reporter for ''Particle Magazine'', Veronica's initial skepticism of Seth's claims of an invention "that will change the world and human life as we know it" is quickly dispelled when she sees them in action. Beyond the lure of a career-making story, she becomes drawn to Seth's passion for his work and his sweet charm, and elevates their relationship to a romantic one. At first merely puzzled by (and to an extent attracted to) Seth's changing nature post-teleportation, she comes to realize something is wrong with him but ends up being turned out of his loft/lab for her trouble. Four weeks later her worst fears for him are exceeded when he contacts her again and reveals the truth about his condition. Her love for him is so strong that she is not willing to abandon him, even as her own mind threatens to crack under the stress...but what will she do when she learns she is pregnant with his child?
to:
* [[Characters/TheFly1986SethBrundle Seth Brundle /
[[folder:Veronica Quaife]]
!!Veronica "Ronnie" Quaife
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Be afraid. Be'' '''very''' ''afraid.
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Computers are dumb, they only know what you tell them. I must not know enough about the flesh myself. I'm gonna have to learn."'']]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[labelnote:Click here to see Brundlefly]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/brundleflyinthemovie.png]] [[/labelnote]]
!!!'''Played By:'''
->''"The disease has just revealed its purpose. We don't have to worry about contagion anymore. I know what the disease wants. It wants to turn me into something else. That's not too terrible is it? Most people would give anything to be turned into something else. Whaddaya think? A fly? Am I becoming a hundred-and-eighty-five-pound fly? No, I'm becoming something that never existed before. I'm becoming... Brundlefly. Don't you think that's worth a Nobel Prize or two?"''
A [[GibberingGenius brilliant, fast-talking thirty-something quantum physicist]], Seth has spent at least six solitary years working on teleportation technology. Out of loneliness and lust, he impulsively, awkwardly offers to show beautiful magazine reporter Veronica Quaife his project -- and she is impressed enough that, after a false start, she agrees to follow his work for
Seth's
* Stage 0: Pre-teleportation, when
* Stage 1: The days that follow, marked by odd hairs growing from scratches on his back and, later, facial lesions.
* Stage 2: After the
* Stage 3: Four weeks
* Stage 4: At most a few days later; PrimalStance is complete, hair is thinner, and teeth are
* [[PeopleInRubberSuits Stage 4B]]: The "monkey-cat" deleted reel (see certain non-VanillaEdition releases); body is noticeably lumpier.
* Stage 5: Final humanoid form, resembling a mass of cancerous growths and/or a chrysalis.
* [[StarringSpecialEffects Stage 6]]: [[OneWingedAngel Brundlefly proper]], completely insectoid and
* Stage 7: [[ClippedWingAngel "Brundlebooth"]] a.k.a. "Brundlepod" -- the
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* EightiesHair: As Carly Lane wrote in a Syfy Wire article, Seth's brown hair is "not yet a mullet, not yet an '80s rocker 'do. But it looks soft. So very soft." (According to cinematographer Mark Irwin, David Cronenberg thought Jeff Goldblum had a "too narrow" face, so a hairpiece known as a fall was added to his natural locks to enhance it. The upshot is that [[LookalikeLovers Seth has a similar profile to Veronica]] ''and'' his OminousHairLoss from Stage 4 on is more dramatic.
* AdaptationNameChange: His counterpart in the 1958 film and the short story it was adapted from was named Andre Delambre.
* AdaptationalVillainy: The original short story and 1958 film has NoAntagonist; the titular DoomedProtagonist TragicMonster is also a NonMaliciousMonster who manages to put himself out of his misery before his SplitPersonalityTakeover. In this version, Seth ''does'' undergo a SplitPersonalityTakeover and becomes a VillainProtagonist in the third act.
* AlasPoorVillain: The completely transformed Seth ends up in a much more pitiful state after being painfully spliced with the remains of the telepod thanks to his VillainousBreakdown.
* AllThereInTheManual: That he has a doctorate is mentioned in a deleted scene in which Veronica videotapes an interview with him the morning after his fateful teleportation (and, oddly, in one of the television ads for the film).
* AndIMustScream: The "Brundlepod" form is in ''indescribable'' agony just from ''existing''. It has just enough intellect left to nonverbally beg for death.
* BadLiar: When Tawny asks him who Veronica is upon the latter's just-in-time arrival at the loft, he is so surprised, flustered, and embarrassed that he all he can think of to say is "Oh, I forgot to tell you -- I live with my mother too. Mom, meet Tawny." Tawny doesn't buy it and takes the opportunity to leave.
* BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: Author William Beard's commentary track on the 2019 Blu-Ray discusses Seth as a case of this: He starts out introverted, controlled, and gentle, but post-teleportation becomes ''extremely'' extroverted, indulgent, and cruelly selfish as his animalistic, primitive "true" self is awakened and takes control of him.
* BigNo: Twice, after a fashion.
** Short and intense version when Veronica suggests they could consult other doctors or scientists for help.
** Although Brundlefly is TheSpeechless, when the teleportation sequence activates before he is fully out of the pod there's no doubting his anguished howl "translates" as this.
* BreakTheCutie: He is shy and awkward around Veronica, but his enthusiasm for his work and desire to share it helps him connect with her, and their blossoming love indirectly helps him figure out how to program the telepods to transport animate objects. But his insecurity over the nature of her relationship with Stathis (which she doesn't go into much detail on because she'd rather not get him involved in that drama) leads him to misunderstand why she leaves on the night of his triumph, resulting in him getting drunk and teleporting himself. He becomes DrunkWithPower for a while, but when he realizes what's actually happening to him -- that he is mutating and effectively dying -- he is brought back to his senses. He tries to see the bright side of his situation ("Don't you think [becoming Brundlefly] is worth a Nobel Prize or two?"), but as he comes to understand that he will not die as himself but an insectoid monstrosity who would harm the woman he loves -- the only person he has in the world -- he is thoroughly broken, and learning that she is pregnant but doesn't intend to keep the child pushes what remains of his sanity and morals off of a cliff.
* BunglingInventor: A dark version, in that Seth's telepods ''accidentally'' double as a gene splicer when more than one living being is sent through at a time.
* CharacterTics: He bites his fingernails when he's nervous, most prominently during the successful baboon teleportation, and this eventually helps him realize that something went wrong when he teleported when one of them ''comes off in his mouth''. Post-teleportation, he develops a lot of tics foreshadowing his final form:
** Stage 1: The first noticeable change -- ''just'' before the audience sees the strange hairs growing from the cuts on his back -- is that his kisses are lustier than in Stage 0. From there, whenever he's in heat his breathing and voice tend to be lower and raspier. The rasp becomes permanent come Stage 3. Come Stage 5 it's clearly difficult and even painful for him to talk and breathe in a human manner and his computer no longer recognizes his voice.
** Stage 2: He begins clutching the left side of his abdomen. Come Stage 4 he reveals to Veronica that there's a growth there, but he doesn't know what it is. Stage 4B had a payoff in which an insect leg emerged from it, whereupon he ''bit it off''; in the finished film its right-side counterpart emerges during his OneWingedAngel transformation. Back to Stage 2, when he broaches the idea of Tawny being teleported, he's also rubbing his forehead (just above his left eyebrow); this turns out to be a sign of the transforming body beneath his skull. He also is more physically sensitive -- he brushed off the circuit board getting stuck to his back ''and'' pulled out by Veronica in Stage 0, but a few drops of alcohol rubbed into his skin hurts him enough to knock a glass out of Tawny's hand (alcohol is deadly to flies). Also, when Veronica talks to him he takes a bite out of a candy bar and makes a face as if it tastes bad, indicating that his taste buds and digestive tract are starting to change as well.
** Stage 4: He has fully developed a fly-like twitch[[note]]hinted at in Stage 1 during the arm wrestling match[[/note]].
** Also, it's subtle but in Stage 0 his hands tend to stroke or fidget with his tie when he's anxious or thoughtful. The latter is the case when he's lying on his bed after the disastrous baboon teleportation. As Veronica joins him there and tells him he's cute, she gently takes his tie in ''her'' hand...
* ClippedWingAngel: Thanks to a VillainousBreakdown he ends up getting fused with ''part of a telepod'', left helpless and in terrible, dying pain -- although it's clear that he was already physically and mentally unstable.
* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: Downplayed. During the month Seth spends alone he is fearful and repulsed by what he's becoming, but adjusts to it because he has no choice. This results in embarrassment when Veronica returns and he doesn't think to warn her about how he now eats before helping himself to a doughnut. In Stage 5 his reaction to several teeth tumbling out of his mouth and onto the keyboard is not horror, as he displayed when his fingernails started coming off, but mild annoyance and resignation.
* ConspicuousGloves: After his fingernails start coming loose, Seth puts on a pair of gardening gloves so he can use the computer's keyboard without leaving sticky pus on the keys. He is still wearing them in Stage 3 (when he's using canes to walk), and discards them come Stage 4, having figured out that the changes to his hands allow him to WallCrawl.
* CursedWithAwesome: Even though the transformation makes Seth a diseased mutant, he gains wall-crawling skills, corrosive vomit, and superhuman strength and stamina as well. In fact, because the strength and stamina begin to manifest before the PowerUpgradingDeformation needed for the other abilities does, he initially doesn't realize he's cursed. It's unclear what the absolute end result of Seth's changes would be; the state he ultimately reaches (where he wordlessly begs for death by placing the muzzle of a shotgun to his own head) has at least as much to do with being caught partially outside the telepod when it activates as with having genetic problems.
* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: His short story/1958 counterpart decides to kill himself before he can hurt anyone, via being crushed by a metal press, requiring the aid of his wife to do so. Seth -- in part because his insect side is determined to live at any cost -- doesn't become suicidal until he is rendered a helpless ClippedWingAngel, whereupon he silently asks Veronica to slay him with Stathis's shotgun; she obliges by blowing his head off.
* DyingAsYourself: Tragically, Seth realizes that he ''cannot'' do this; by the time he dies as Brundlefly there will be nothing left of his original mind and morals. [[DoubleSubversion Or so he thinks]]. The broken Brundlefly managing to silently request that Veronica end his life with the shotgun means Seth Brundle died more man than fly.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Although he briefly falls out of love with Veronica in Stages 1 and 2 as his SplitPersonalityTakeover and DrunkWithPower feelings blind him to her concerns over all the changes he's exhibiting, his learning what's actually happening to him brings him back to his better self and the only reason he doesn't reconcile with her right away is because he's scared that, among other things, he might be contagious. His love for her is such that he decides to send her away in Stage 5 for fear he'll eventually hurt her without meaning to. Although his mind completely snaps with the realization that she's pregnant and doesn't want to keep the child and he subsequently decides they will be the "pure" human beings who will unwillingly help him with his EvilPlan to save himself, even in this deranged state the only reason he doesn't kill Stathis with vomit drop is because she begs him not to, and he clearly sees the prospect of RomanticFusion as a wonderful culmination of their relationship as well as his last hope of retaining humanity.
* EvilutionaryBiologist: In Stages 1-2, Seth believes that his enhanced strength, stamina, etc. are the direct result of teleporting himself so he starts pressuring Veronica to "go through" -- "And I won't be able to wear you out; we'll be the perfect couple! The Dynamic Duo!" When she objects he declares her a coward and sets out to find "someone who'll keep up with me", leading to his tryst with Tawny. Only Veronica's timely arrival stops him from forcibly teleporting her; shortly after this he realizes what's ''actually'' happening to him, which smashes this trope to pieces.
* EvilPlan: He plans to genetically splice himself with a healthy human being, since that would make him more human than fly again. Not evil enough? Well, the human subject he chooses is ''Veronica'' -- and it's implied it's partially because she doesn't want to keep his child, but he does.
* FaceHeelTurn: By the end, his desperation to retain his humanity combining with his mind becoming more selfish and instinctual like that of a fly leads him to forcefully trying to merge Veronica and their unborn child with him. He is fully aware that this is in effect, and urges Veronica to leave him before he hurts her, but that's before he learns she's pregnant.
* FatalFlaw: '''{{Lust}}.''' He ''must'' follow things that fascinate and matter to him -- his work and his relationship with Veronica, who understands and is attracted to his passion for that work -- to their ultimate conclusions. His fateful teleportation arises from his response to Veronica leaving to confront Stathis just as they were celebrating his successfully teleporting a baboon. The careful, patient scientist gets drunk -- loosening his self-control, whereupon he throws caution to the wind for his ultimate professional goal ("What are we waiting for? Let's do it!") and ends up fused with a creature that operates purely on instinctual urges. He's initially euphoric and desperate to teleport Veronica or ''any other'' woman because he needs "someone who'll keep up with me" -- that is to say, is capable of sating his lust -- and only realizing what's actually happening to him breaks the spell. Faced with the prospect of a painful, awful metamorphosis and death, he still takes comfort in becoming something that never existed before -- and that he accidentally invented a "very good" gene splicer. He's fascinated and even ''delighted'' by the process (as when he shows off his WallCrawl skills to Veronica), but still seeks a way to retain his humanity. In the climax, with his mind ''almost'' completely ruled by insect instinct, he decides using the pods to fuse himself with her and their unborn child -- creating "the ultimate family" and making her part of him forever by way of his work -- will do that. Instead, he ends up only wanting death and accepts it, having seen an incredible experience through to a logical end, a ''triumph'' of sorts as Cronenberg points out in his DVD commentary for the film.
* GeniusCripple: Played with. When he allows Veronica to see him again (Stage 3), he is using two canes to slowly walk because he's now hunched over and cannot maintain his balance otherwise. At this point he believes he is dying. By her next visit (Stage 4), he has not only adjusted to the PrimalStance but is downright jumpy and spry -- having discovered an ability to WallCrawl and realized that he isn't dying but becoming ''something else''.
* GentlemanAndAScholar: He's a "socially-awkward but nice and polite" example of the trope prior to his transformation; his losing his gentlemanly nature is an early sign of it.
* GibberingGenius: The TropeCodifier, bar none, as Creator/JeffGoldblum's subsequent career bears out. Seth is a cheerful chatterbox from the start, admitting early on that after years of working alone he feels a need to talk to ''someone'' about what he's doing. Post-teleportation, he becomes ''even more'' talkative because his metabolism is working a lot faster and the resultant exponentially surging energy is affecting his brain. In Stage 5 his speech is slower and halting, likely because his vocal cords are decaying, but he still clearly wants to speak as long as he's able to.
* GreaterScopeParagon: He, or at least the good in him prior his SplitPersonalityTakeover FaceHeelTurn, becomes this in the sequel. His son Martin ends up carrying on and redeeming his legacy by not only figuring out how to make the telepods work again, but also finding a cure for the mutation he inherited from his father.
* GreenEyedMonster: Upon realizing that the smug, confident Stathis is an ex-lover of Veronica's as well as her editor, Seth jumps to the conclusion that she's cuckolding him and bitterly drowns his sorrows even though she's promised to return to the loft in a few hours (which she does). The resultant loosening of his self-control is what sets him on the path to becoming a ''literal'' monster. When Stathis comes to rescue her from his clutches in the climax, Seth cruelly maims him before attempting to MurderTheHypotenuse, ''only'' stopped by Veronica's desperate pleas.
* TheGrotesque: Once his DrunkWithPower "high" has ended and he realizes what's actually happening to him, his sweet self re-emerges in Stage 3 but is now laced with GallowsHumor, fear, and shame as he continues to deteriorate. Upon re-establishing contact with Veronica, he initially tries to avoid physical contact with her (concerned he might be PatientZero), sadly saying in passing "You look so pretty..." at one point. When he finally reaches out to her for an embrace -- after he has vomited upon a doughnut ''and'' his right ear has tumbled off -- she returns it ''without hesitation''. Even though it's upsetting and exhausting for her to be witness to his unfolding tragedy, she loves him too much to abandon him altogether. Ultimately he decides to send her away upon realizing that, due to his mind and morals fading away, he will hurt her if he doesn't.
* HalfHumanHybrid: Brundlefly is this, and in his final "natural" form he does not bear an obvious physical resemblance to either a human or a fly as a result.
* HellBentForLeather: He's not seen wearing the brown leather jacket Veronica purchases for him until ''after'' his trip through the telepods, and then it's specific to his DrunkWithPower stretch -- especially his setting out to find another partner after she refuses to be teleported. For bonus points, that she bought him a ''leather'' jacket ties into Seth's growing understanding of and fascination with ''flesh''.[[note]]For even more points Seth buys her a golden necklace with a heart-shaped pendant later, which she wears for almost all of her subsequent scenes. His world, after all, is that of the machine/metal.[[/note]]
* HiddenDepths: GibberingGenius though he may be, he's eloquent when it comes to explaining his work. He's socially awkward but he's also capable of deep love and devotion, though this is tragically perverted by his transformation. He retains his eloquence even as the rest of his humanity fades away, and losing his ability to speak (when Veronica accidentally rips his decayed human jaw off) is tellingly the moment he moves from Stage 5 to 6. These depths are foreshadowed by his sole hobby -- playing piano.
* HollywoodHomely: He's quite muscular for a scientist who doesn't get out much. (Not that any of the female viewers are complaining, or anything!) The shooting script did have him as out-of-shape prior to the teleportation, a detail that may have been dropped because the film was made in a compressed timeframe (shooting began in December 1985 for a locked-in August '86 release date). William Beard's commentary on the 2019 Blu-Ray points out, however, that the audience doesn't ''notice'' how shapely Seth is until he teleports himself because his concealing LimitedWardrobe, expressive face, and awkward-but-sweet personality are holding their attention.
* HowlOfSorrow: To say nothing of pain -- having been merged with broken telepod parts, his Stage 7 self howls in agony as he tumbles out of the prototype pod.
* HumbleHero: While the plot gets rolling by way of his wanting to impress Veronica with his marvelous telepods, after his demonstration he freely admits that he didn't create them from scratch, saying "I'm really a systems management man" in that their individual components (lasers, molecular analyzers, etc.) were commissioned from people "much more brilliant than I am [...] and I just stick them together." Moreover, Veronica apparently only learns of his noteworthy past (he was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in physics at the age of ''20'') from Stathis. Seth loses this humility in the DrunkWithPower stage of his metamorphosis, becoming a braggart in the wake of his belief that his invention has made him a superman.
* IAmAMonster: He basically warns Veronica of this in his "insect politics" speech.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: In the end, seeing the pathetic creature that was once Seth Brundle crawl out of the third telepod, fused with pieces of machinery and in horrifying agony, is probably sadder than watching the end of ''Literature/OldYeller''. This can obviously end only one way, and in one final display of humanity Brundlefly [[MercyKill silently begs a shotgun-armed Veronica to end its life]], and after some painful hesitation, she does.
* InSeriesNickname: He dubs himself "Brundlefly" upon realizing he's becoming a new lifeform.
* IntelligenceEqualsIsolation: Trying to convince Veronica to chronicle his work for a book, he notes "I don't have a life, so there's nothing for you to interfere with." Stathis learns that Seth's been working on the telepods for six years, which implies he's been alone ''at least'' that long, though earlier in his career he successfully worked with others. However long it's been, by Seth's own admission it's been "too long."
* IronicName: Crossing over with ShoutOut, his surname is that of a famous British racecar driver (Martin Brundle), which is completely unsuited to someone who has suffered from motion sickness his entire life. (The sequel carries on the reference by simply naming his son Martin.)
* {{Irony}}: A situational case: Seth's devoted his life to teleportation technology due to his chronic motion sickness and resultant hatred of vehicles. His TeleporterAccident results in him having to constantly vomit ''just to survive'', as he cannot digest solid food and must use vomit drop to dissolve whatever he eats.
* KubrickStare: As Veronica adjusts her videocamera in preparation for interviewing him about what exactly happened to the first, ill-fated baboon, Seth -- struggling to contain his anger, frustration, and guilt over the accident -- glares in this manner.
* LegoGenetics: Averted, as the change in DNA affects Seth slowly as his cells replicate, and his Stage 7 form isn't anything resembling a properly functioning body -- though being fused with a telepod isn't exactly natural. Stage 6, his final "natural" form, is noticeably asymmetrical; his transformed human legs and arms don't remotely match each other. He also has a fifth, fly leg-like appendage on the right side of his body -- the reason he doesn't have a corresponding one on the left is because ''that'' emerged back in the deleted Stage 4B sequence, and he desperately bit it off.
* LimitedWardrobe: Lampshaded! After Veronica mentions he apparently wears the same outfit every day -- charcoal grey suit jacket, white dress shirt, red necktie, black trousers, and brown Oxford shoes -- she learns that it's actually one of five identical sets of clothing. He explains to her that he got the idea from Einstein, who supposedly had five sets of clothes to avoid wasting mental energy on deciding what to wear. Of course, Einstein likely didn't have five jackets and five pairs of shoes!
* LittleNo: After his fingernails start coming off, he tremulously whispers "Oh no...what's happening to me? Am I dying? Is this how it starts -- am I dying?"
* LovecraftianSuperpower: Becoming a BodyHorror via botched teleportation means Seth develops amazing strength and the abilities to WallCrawl and vomit corrosive enzymes on food ''and enemies''.
* MadScientist: Initially subverted, later played straight. Prior to his teleportation, he is a '''driven''' scientist, and doesn't have great social skills, and is, well, working on teleportation, but he is a sane man working for the greater good with a clear ethical code. Even his choice to become ProfessorGuineaPig as soon as possible is one he makes while he's ''drunk''. Post-teleportation, the gradual SplitPersonalityTakeover (plus, at least before he learns what's happening to him, a DrunkWithPower feeling) turns him into a straight version of the trope, albeit a sympathetic one with a TragicDream end goal. In an interview Creator/JohnLandis did with Cronenberg for the book ''Monsters in the Movies'', they argue over whether Seth can be called this trope or not: Landis says yes, Cronenberg no.
* MilkingTheGiantCow: He has lively hand/arm gestures in Stage 0, but in Stage 1, as he rants to the increasingly distressed Veronica about the wonders of diving "into the plasma pool" via teleportation, his gestures are ''extravagant'' -- particularly when he points. This trope disappears post-Stage 2 due to his transformation affecting the speed and range of motion of his limbs.
* MonsterProgenitor: Due to the events of the sequel. His son by Veronica, Martin, was conceived after Seth became a mutant and is an UnevenHybrid of man and insect; unusually for this trope, he is ''stronger'' than his father was because he was born part-insect and is also able to retain his human intelligence and morals because he's 75% human. The villains' EvilPlan is to use Martin's monstrous form and Seth's telepods to create an entire ''race'' of monster soldiers, but Martin fights back and ends up becoming ''completely'' human while the BigBad ends up a helpless mutant, ending the line.
* {{Motifs}}: Critic/filmmaker Steven Benedict points out in his podcast episode on this film that Seth Brundle is marked by evolution/transformation even before his TragicMistake.
** He lives and works in a ''converted'' floor of an AbandonedWarehouse.
** He has a SignificantWardrobeShift in the wake of Veronica becoming his lover and expanding his wardrobe.
** Once he starts mutating, slowly but surely his loft "decays" along with him, and he becomes associated with shadow rather than light (see OrangeBlueContrast on the main page for more).
** ''What'' is Seth? The answer to this question is brought up and changed by him and others to the point that ''I am / You are / Are you / He is'' verge on ArcWords:
*** Veronica notes "You're not a very accomplished drunk" during the drive to the loft. While he's actually nauseous due to motion sickness, [[AlcoholInducedIdiocy her observation turns out to be true.]]
*** [[HumbleHero "I'm really a systems management man."]]
*** The skeptical Stathis dismisses him as "Your magician" to Veronica when Seth arrives at the ''Particle'' offices. Veronica notes to Seth "He thinks you're a con man." Later Stathis refers to him as "Your new playmate" and "The nightclub act" to her, but goes on to note that "He's actually quite brilliant."
*** The lines leading into Veronica and Seth's first night together are, respectively, "You're very cute. You know that?" "Am I?"
*** Tawny wonders in turn if Seth is a bodybuilder or magician of some kind. [[DrunkWithPower He responds that he is both times]], specifying in the former case that "Yeah, I build bodies. I take them apart and put them back together again."
*** Veronica warns him shortly thereafter "You're changing, Seth".
*** Explaining what went wrong with his teleportation, he notes "Now I'm not Seth Brundle anymore. I'm the offspring of Brundle and housefly."
*** Later: "Am I becoming a 185-pound fly? No, I'm becoming something that never existed before. I'm becoming ''Brundlefly''."
*** Seth Brundle and the film's final assessment, of course, is that he's "an insect who dreamt he was a man, and loved it."
* MrExposition: In the first scene at the loft, he demonstrates and explains the telepods to Veronica and goes on to explain how he's realized them and why no one else, not even his financiers, knows about them as yet. Later on, after he's learned exactly what the nature of his transformation is and why it's happening from his computer, he explains it to Veronica in layman's terms. Not only is this justified because he's the ''only'' person who can explain these things and events to her, he admits that "I have a strong urge to talk about what I'm doing" to ''somebody'' after years of working alone.
* MustHaveCaffeine: Implied if one knows from coffee culture. As Emma Westwood's book on the film notes, "no one had a cafe-style coffee machine in their home in the late 1980s", but Seth does. (He specifically identifies it as a Faema, which is espresso-specific; he also knows how to prepare cappuccino.) This trope also applies, albeit downplayed, on a meta level: Creator/JeffGoldblum used coffee as an aid in playing Seth's post-fusion, hyper and unstable scenes.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Seth's eyes widening in horror as he learns from the computer that he was genetically fused with the fly is this trope expressed without words. (The fade to black that follows, helping to establish a four-week time jump between this and the next scene, is one of only two such fades in the film -- the other being at the very end.)
* NerdsAreSexy: He is presented as attractive, though he doesn't realize it. As socially awkward as he is, it's in a sweet way, but it's really his passion for his work that serves as the CommonalityConnection between him and Veronica. After his initial teleportation, he ''at first'' becomes noticeably more alluring -- but also dangerous.
* NerdsAreVirgins: It's not stated in-universe but according to David Cronenberg Seth is a virgin before he meets Veronica. Thus his relationship with her marks a crossing of a metaphorical threshold into maturity...and with that, the sorrows of aging, disease, and death when it inadvertently leads to his TeleporterAccident.
* NightmareFetishist: Justified: He becomes this as a way of coping come Stage 4, having realized that he's not dying (at least not in a conventional sense) but becoming a new lifeform. He ''is'' a scientist, after all; he needs to thoroughly understand and even ''embrace'' what he's becoming, no matter how disgusting it is by human standards. He insists that his ''eating habits'' be recorded for posterity in this stage, but the trope reaches its apex in Stage 5 with the reveal that he's preserving all of the human body parts he molts, which are "of historical interest only", in his medicine cabinet -- aka "The Brundle Museum of Natural History".
* NonMaliciousMonster: Once he becomes TheGrotesque with Stage 3, he also becomes this...for a while. Because he is also undergoing a SplitPersonalityTakeover, he cannot hold himself to this trope forever and come Stage 5 tells Veronica IAmAMonster in hopes of keeping her safe. It doesn't work since he learns about her pregnancy (and her intent to abort it) as he watches her leave with Stathis, and this pushes him over the edge. It's worth noting that in the shooting script he stopped being this trope sooner: A storyboarded but unfilmed scene had him vomiting on a homeless woman and preparing to eat her before he realized [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone what he was doing]].
* NoSocialSkills: Downplayed and justified. He's spent his entire adult life -- and probably much of his adolescence, given he was shortlisted for a Nobel Prize at ''20'' -- consumed by his work in physics, and has worked alone for at least six years as the film begins, so while he is polite, pleasant, and okay with social cues, he's initially at sea dealing with others on a personal level. He regrets this, and post-teleportation is excited that he can finally work on personal growth now that he's achieved his professional ambition. But that's before he realizes the ''real'' reason he feels so great...
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Defied. He explicitly explains that most of the technical apparatus is stuff he himself doesn't understand, designed by colleagues he says are far more brilliant than himself and only assembled by him. He also explains his initial difficulty with transporting organic matter as being a result of his inexperience in biology. His own fields seem to be mathematics and programming.
* OminousHairLoss: As Seth's mutation progresses he begins shedding hair. By the time Veronica arrives at the lab to say goodbye, Seth's hair has been reduced to a few stray lengths of hair across his misshapen skull.
* {{Permafusion}}: What ends up setting up the movie's events is him accidentally merging with a housefly as a result of a transporter accident. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there: as the movie progresses, so does Seth's transformation ito a horrific human-fly hybrid, until a second transporter mishap causes him to merge with ''shrapnel'', forcing Veronica to kill him in order to end his misery.
* {{Phlegmings}}: By the time he reaches Stage 3, poor Seth can no longer digest solid food and must eat the way a fly does -- via "a corrosive enzyme, playfully called 'vomit drop'" as he puts it, resulting in this trope whenever he has to consume anything. The vomit drop stains his face and clothes too, and is a key reason he ends up with ScaryTeeth.
* PosthumousCharacter: In ''The Fly II'', he casts a long shadow over the story. While Bartok Industries has no problem restoring the telepods, no one can figure out how to get them to teleport living matter properly, with Anton Bartok explaining to Seth's son Martin that it's one of the "secrets [that] died with him." Martin, who knows that his father was brilliant but ''not'' how he died (rather he is told that he succumbed to a RapidAging disorder that Martin has inherited), is convinced by Anton to try and finish his father's work. The tipping point for Martin's decision is watching (some of) the tapes Veronica made chronicling Seth's work, incorporating a deleted scene from the first film in which, the morning after his fateful teleportation, Seth describes how the experience felt.
* ThePowerOfLove: The original HBO plot rundown of this film called him a man "transformed by love", and indeed he is in a myriad of ways. LoveHurts, indeed:
** His succumbing to ThePowerOfLust and approaching Veronica at the Bartok press event starts the story.
** In an inversion of LoveMakesYouUncreative, the EurekaMoment that points him towards solving the riddle of teleporting living matter via the telepods comes via Veronica's playful pillow talk.
** His mistaken belief that Veronica is cheating on him with Stathis leads to him [[DrowningMySorrows getting drunk out of jealousy]]. In his compromised mental state he decides to jump ahead to the climax of his experiments and teleport himself, which ends up being his TragicMistake.
** Upon realizing he is succumbing to a SplitPersonalityTakeover that is eradicating his human morals and reason, he sends Veronica away -- despite her being the only person he has -- so he won't hurt her.
** Immediately afterward, however, he learns that she is pregnant with his child and intends to have an abortion. His heart ''and'' mind break together, rendering him [[LoveMakesYouCrazy crazed]] and [[LoveMakesYouEvil wicked]]: he kidnaps her and upon realizing he cannot convince her to bear the child decides he will create "the ultimate family" ''and'' retain what remains of his human self by forcing her to undergo RomanticFusion with him.
** On top of this, when Stathis arrives at the loft to rescue her Seth attempts to MurderTheHypotenuse -- ''piece by piece'', by using his vomit drop to dissolve first Stathis's hand, and then an ankle. He only stops short of dissolving his ''face'' because Veronica begs him not to.
** When LaserGuidedKarma renders him a ClippedWingAngel, he uses this trope to end his suffering (and, perhaps, atone for his crimes) by silently communicating to Veronica that he wants to die by her hand.
* PowerUpgradingDeformation: Seth's strength and stamina only grow as his transformation into Brundlefly progresses, but at the cost of his beauty. His fingernails coming off reveals that the fingers themselves are now secreting a pus that is extremely sticky, which turns out to tie in to his ability to WallCrawl (and while it's hard to see watching the film on a small screen, the palms of his hands and soles of his feet end up with little gripping "pads" for this). Losing the ability to digest solid food and having to use vomit drop upon it results in ScaryTeeth.
* PrimalStance: He starts developing this by Stage 3, and come Stage 4 has fully adjusted to it.
* ProfessorGuineaPig: A rationalized version of this trope. Seth admits early on that he intends to teleport himself as the GrandFinale of his experiments, but shortly after the first time he successfully teleports ''any'' living organism he gets drunk and decides he doesn't need to wait on making sure the process doesn't have any aftereffects or anything like that. In fact, he's having a "conversation" with that baboon and tells it "I'm sorry I killed your brother...but he didn't die in vain, if that's of any comfort. And as the general said, 'There's nothing I'd ask you to do that I wouldn't do myself, boys.'"
* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: His character arc, and his attempts to resist it only end up furthering it. He spends most of Act One as the sweetest of nerds...then comes the TeleporterAccident. Most of Act Two sees him as a would-be {{Ubermensch}} who rages at the woman he loves, gruesomely maims a man in arm wrestling just to win an evening with another woman, and tries to put each woman through the teleporter in turn. The InternalReveal deals a much-needed blow to his ego, but in Act Three he realizes his mind is ''still'' losing its human reason and compassion; the selfish ruthlessness that began to show in Act Two will eventually consume him. Come the climax, it does and he becomes a monster in every possible sense of the word.
* PuppyDogEyes: Albeit the most grotesque version of this trope ''ever''. Brundlefly proper doesn't have insectoid eyes, but gigantic opalescent ones that blink, stare, and twitch (Cronenberg and the effects team effectively caricaturing Jeff Goldblum's eyes). When Veronica objects to Brundlefly's silent request to MercyKill him, he sadly stares up at her in this manner and moans softly...and this last expression of humanity convinces her to pull the trigger.
* RealAwardFictionalCharacter: He was, according to Stathis, "an inch away from the Nobel Prize in Physics" when he was just 20. Later, Seth figures he might have a shot at the Nobel just for becoming Brundlefly.
* RevengeBeforeReason: He has a VillainousBreakdown upon seeing Veronica's telepod severed from the other two and smashes the door of his open so he can finish Stathis off. With so little time left in the countdown and Stathis already maimed and near-helpless, the safe option would be to let himself be sent to the prototype pod alone and ''then'' come after him. Sadly justified in that at this point, instinct and rage have overpowered what remains of his human reason.
* SanitySlippage: Brundle's gradual transformation and his futile attempts to reverse it eventually drive him insane, to the point where he decides that the best way to reclaim his humanity is to fuse himself, Veronica, and their unborn baby into "the ultimate family." He lampshades this earlier in his "insect politics" speech, describing himself as "an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake."
* SayingTooMuch: In the opening scenes, due to ThePowerOfLust clouding his mind he either misses or forgets the rather important fact that Veronica is a journalist when he offers to show her what he's working on in his lab. He doesn't realize his mistake until he realizes she's recording part of their conversation ''after'' his demonstration, and she correctly points out that everything he said was on the record and refuses to give him the resulting tape. After she leaves, he decides to make the best of it with a deal: If she'll hold off on writing an article on his work, she can be the sole chronicler of the creation, development, and refinement of the telepods, the stuff of an entire book.
* ScaryTeeth: His teeth in Stages 4 and 5, the result of being corroded by vomit drop ''and'' sugar. Several of his front teeth gruesomely tumble out when he pulls a pencil he's been idly chewing on from his mouth.
* SecondLove: As far as the audience knows he is this to Veronica, whose first love was Stathis. Seth is her true love as well, to the point that '''no one''' working on the film was satisfied with the two epilogues shot in which Veronica and Stathis ended up a couple again.
* SignificantWardrobeShift: He initially has a nice but ''very'' LimitedWardrobe because he doesn't like expending mental energy on choosing what to wear; never mind he's a recluse and it wouldn't matter ''what'' he wore most of the time. Veronica decides to change that after learning this and buys him some new wardrobe pieces -- a plaid shirt, a brown leather jacket, etc. The next time he's seen he's wearing said shirt and coordinating pants, suggesting he adopted the new look immediately; the suits are never seen again. It's a sign of how his relationship is transforming his entire life; in fact in the same scene he ''finally'' successfully transports a living being through his telepods, which he couldn't have done had his relationship with her not led to a EurekaMoment. But later that night he teleports ''himself''...and the early stages of the SlowTransformation that results have him become more virile, sensual, and aggressive. That's when the audience starts seeing him in that [[HellBentForLeather leather jacket]] -- first with a shirt, but later ''without''.
* SinisterSweetTooth: One of the earliest signs that Seth's teleportation experiment is turning him into a monstrous, amoral fly hybrid is his growing taste for sugar: at first, he's merely ladling the stuff into his coffee and calling loudly for a cannoli to go with it, seemingly uncaring of how weird it looks (or perhaps he thinks [[GeniusSweetTooth an alternative trope is in play]]); then, as he grows more violent and obsessive, he begins munching on chocolate bars while wandering the town in a rage, leading to a scene in which he gives a man a potentially lethal compound fracture without feeling a flicker of concern. By the time his degeneration becomes plainly obvious, his once-relatively tidy lab is littered with boxes of donuts and other sweet foods -- a sign that his humanity is undergoing a very steep decline.
* TheSleepless: Post-fusion. Before he realizes what's actually happening to him he's ''happy'' about it: "I hardly need to sleep anymore, I feel wonderful!"
* TheSpeechless: Come Stage 6, he is this. As Cronenberg points out in the DVD commentary, Seth's final metamorphosis into Brundlefly only comes after Veronica accidentally rips his decaying human jaw off. Since he's no longer able to communicate with others, there's a tragic sense in the rest of his body giving itself up to the insect form.
* StagesOfMonsterGrief: He goes through all of them in his one-month-plus transformation.
** '''Denial''': Upon realizing that going through the teleporter somehow changed him, he never denies the actual changes, but rather that they're anything but ''good''. He doesn't mind that his skin is developing lesions and his temper is shorter and more explosive. He even likes the prospect of gaining a CarpetOfVirility! Once the fingernails start coming off, though...
** '''Acceptance''': He realizes the true nature of his condition, resigns himself to his eventual fate of disintegration and death, and comforts himself with GallowsHumor and by exploring what he's becoming in the meantime, seeing the upsides of it where no one else can. Veronica's love and presence helps here. However, he ''does'' long to be human again upon realizing he's also losing his mind and morals, resulting in...
** '''Defiance''': He starts formulating a plan "to reduce the percentage of fly in Brundlefly" at the very least. But it requires him to fuse himself with another human, and with his insect survival instincts starting to kick in he moves to...
** '''Betrayal''': With his sanity cracking upon learning Veronica is pregnant and intends to have an abortion, he decides to fuse her and the fetus with him. He also maims Stathis -- who indirectly set Seth on the path to his TragicMistake -- when he tries to rescue her, only for Stathis to get a second wind. The result is that Seth, now completely Brundlefly, gets merged with parts of a telepod. Now in horrible pain, he is...
** '''DrivenToSuicide''': Except he's ''unable'' to kill himself, so he manages to convince Veronica to finish him off with Stathis's shotgun.
* SuperStrength: Merging with the fly gives him a mild form of this -- enough to perform impressive gymnastic feats, ''rip open'' a strongman's arm in an arm-wrestling contest, and BridalCarry objects of his affection/lust over long/steep distances. It's implied he's also capable of {{Roofhopping}}, and the script outright showed him doing so.
* TallDarkAndHandsome: Played with. Initially, his awkward nature downplays his attractiveness, as does the fact that Veronica is also tall. When she tells him he's cute, his response is "Am I?" In the first days after he's merged with the fly, the trope is played straight as he explores his new strength and virility and Veronica is more attracted to him than ever...only for his personality to become uglier as the transformation slowly works its dark magic on him. Once it kicks into high gear, Seth's beauty is decimated piece by piece -- he succumbs to a PrimalStance, his dark hair gradually falls out, and his face becomes a ruin.
* TeenGenius: He's implied to have been one. Stathis tells Veronica that Seth was "An inch away from the Nobel Prize in Physics...he was only 20 at the time" he ''led a team'' of physicists.
* ThatManIsDead: When he explains his TeleporterAccident to Veronica he tells her "Now I'm not Seth Brundle anymore...I'm the offspring of Brundle and housefly." Later, having realized he's becoming a new lifeform rather than merely dying, he starts referring to himself as "Brundlefly".
* TragicMonster: Alas, poor Seth! Probably one of the most profound examples of this trope ever.
* TragicVillain: He becomes a TragicMonster who desperately tries to regain his humanity -- even if it means harming his love.
* UncleanlinessIsNextToUngodliness: He's tidy in his appearance and the upkeep of his apartment/lab, going so far as to wear a clean set of clothes (one of five identical sets, down to the ''shoes'') every day. As his mutation progresses apace and his mind declines as he tries to find some way to hold the inevitable back, he gives up on taking care of himself, the apartment becoming a wreck of discarded garbage (especially empty food and soda containers) -- fitting in a sad way, flies being commonly associated with garbage and rot. He even turns his medicine cabinet into a museum for his ''falling-off appendages''. As early as Stage 2 Veronica notes that he looks and smells bad compared to how he was before, but he brushes off her concerns with "I've never been much of a bather."
* VampireRefugee: Seth becomes desperate to retain if not regain some of his humanity, but his plan to do so fails spectacularly, in part because it makes him a...
* VillainProtagonist: Becomes this upon deciding to forcibly merge himself with Veronica (and her unborn child) into a single entity, since that would be "More human than I am alone!" On top of that when Stathis comes to rescue her he maims him with vomit drop, clearly getting some ''enjoyment'' out of the process as he does so, and only Veronica's plea stops him from finishing him off.
* VillainousBreakdown: In the climax, Seth/Brundlefly's reaction to seeing Veronica's telepod disconnected from the other two is to smash the glass door of his open so he can at least have vengeance on Stathis. But just as he's partially outside it the countdown ends and the result is ''not pretty''.
* WasOnceAMan: His loss of humanity is such that he describes himself to Veronica as "an insect who dreamt he was a man" when he turns her away for the final time. He currently provides the trope's page quote. He's also an atypical example of the trope in that the audience fully gets to know him as a human before his TragicMistake transforms him.
* {{Workaholic}}: By his own admission, he has no life beyond his work on the telepods before he meets Veronica. In hindsight this points to his FatalFlaw being desire. Whatever or whoever it is that matters to him, he must pursue it with all of his heart to the exclusion of all else -- and what self-control he has ends up first compromised, then destroyed, over the course of the story.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Veronica Quaife]]
!!Veronica "Ronnie" Quaife
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veronica_quaife_6903_normal.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Be afraid. Be'' '''very''' ''afraid."'']]
!!!'''Played By:''' Creator/GeenaDavis (original), Creator/SaffronHenderson (''The Fly II'')
A reporter for ''Particle Magazine'', Veronica's initial skepticism of Seth's claims of an invention "that will change the world and human life as we know it" is quickly dispelled when she sees them in action. Beyond the lure of a career-making story, she becomes drawn to Seth's passion for his work and his sweet charm, and elevates their relationship to a romantic one. At first merely puzzled by (and to an extent attracted to) Seth's changing nature post-teleportation, she comes to realize something is wrong with him but ends up being turned out of his loft/lab for her trouble. Four weeks later her worst fears for him are exceeded when he contacts her again and reveals the truth about his condition. Her love for him is so strong that she is not willing to abandon him, even as her own mind threatens to crack under the stress...but what will she do when she learns she is pregnant with his child?
----
* AdaptationNameChange: His counterpart in the 1958 film and the short story it was adapted from was named Andre Delambre.
* AdaptationalVillainy: The original short story and 1958 film has NoAntagonist; the titular DoomedProtagonist TragicMonster is also a NonMaliciousMonster who manages to put himself out of his misery before his SplitPersonalityTakeover. In this version, Seth ''does'' undergo a SplitPersonalityTakeover and becomes a VillainProtagonist in the third act.
* AlasPoorVillain: The completely transformed Seth ends up in a much more pitiful state after being painfully spliced with the remains of the telepod thanks to his VillainousBreakdown.
* AllThereInTheManual: That he has a doctorate is mentioned in a deleted scene in which Veronica videotapes an interview with him the morning after his fateful teleportation (and, oddly, in one of the television ads for the film).
* AndIMustScream: The "Brundlepod" form is in ''indescribable'' agony just from ''existing''. It has just enough intellect left to nonverbally beg for death.
* BadLiar: When Tawny asks him who Veronica is upon the latter's just-in-time arrival at the loft, he is so surprised, flustered, and embarrassed that he all he can think of to say is "Oh, I forgot to tell you -- I live with my mother too. Mom, meet Tawny." Tawny doesn't buy it and takes the opportunity to leave.
* BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: Author William Beard's commentary track on the 2019 Blu-Ray discusses Seth as a case of this: He starts out introverted, controlled, and gentle, but post-teleportation becomes ''extremely'' extroverted, indulgent, and cruelly selfish as his animalistic, primitive "true" self is awakened and takes control of him.
* BigNo: Twice, after a fashion.
** Short and intense version when Veronica suggests they could consult other doctors or scientists for help.
** Although Brundlefly is TheSpeechless, when the teleportation sequence activates before he is fully out of the pod there's no doubting his anguished howl "translates" as this.
* BreakTheCutie: He is shy and awkward around Veronica, but his enthusiasm for his work and desire to share it helps him connect with her, and their blossoming love indirectly helps him figure out how to program the telepods to transport animate objects. But his insecurity over the nature of her relationship with Stathis (which she doesn't go into much detail on because she'd rather not get him involved in that drama) leads him to misunderstand why she leaves on the night of his triumph, resulting in him getting drunk and teleporting himself. He becomes DrunkWithPower for a while, but when he realizes what's actually happening to him -- that he is mutating and effectively dying -- he is brought back to his senses. He tries to see the bright side of his situation ("Don't you think [becoming Brundlefly] is worth a Nobel Prize or two?"), but as he comes to understand that he will not die as himself but an insectoid monstrosity who would harm the woman he loves -- the only person he has in the world -- he is thoroughly broken, and learning that she is pregnant but doesn't intend to keep the child pushes what remains of his sanity and morals off of a cliff.
* BunglingInventor: A dark version, in that Seth's telepods ''accidentally'' double as a gene splicer when more than one living being is sent through at a time.
* CharacterTics: He bites his fingernails when he's nervous, most prominently during the successful baboon teleportation, and this eventually helps him realize that something went wrong when he teleported when one of them ''comes off in his mouth''. Post-teleportation, he develops a lot of tics foreshadowing his final form:
** Stage 1: The first noticeable change -- ''just'' before the audience sees the strange hairs growing from the cuts on his back -- is that his kisses are lustier than in Stage 0. From there, whenever he's in heat his breathing and voice tend to be lower and raspier. The rasp becomes permanent come Stage 3. Come Stage 5 it's clearly difficult and even painful for him to talk and breathe in a human manner and his computer no longer recognizes his voice.
** Stage 2: He begins clutching the left side of his abdomen. Come Stage 4 he reveals to Veronica that there's a growth there, but he doesn't know what it is. Stage 4B had a payoff in which an insect leg emerged from it, whereupon he ''bit it off''; in the finished film its right-side counterpart emerges during his OneWingedAngel transformation. Back to Stage 2, when he broaches the idea of Tawny being teleported, he's also rubbing his forehead (just above his left eyebrow); this turns out to be a sign of the transforming body beneath his skull. He also is more physically sensitive -- he brushed off the circuit board getting stuck to his back ''and'' pulled out by Veronica in Stage 0, but a few drops of alcohol rubbed into his skin hurts him enough to knock a glass out of Tawny's hand (alcohol is deadly to flies). Also, when Veronica talks to him he takes a bite out of a candy bar and makes a face as if it tastes bad, indicating that his taste buds and digestive tract are starting to change as well.
** Stage 4: He has fully developed a fly-like twitch[[note]]hinted at in Stage 1 during the arm wrestling match[[/note]].
** Also, it's subtle but in Stage 0 his hands tend to stroke or fidget with his tie when he's anxious or thoughtful. The latter is the case when he's lying on his bed after the disastrous baboon teleportation. As Veronica joins him there and tells him he's cute, she gently takes his tie in ''her'' hand...
* ClippedWingAngel: Thanks to a VillainousBreakdown he ends up getting fused with ''part of a telepod'', left helpless and in terrible, dying pain -- although it's clear that he was already physically and mentally unstable.
* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: Downplayed. During the month Seth spends alone he is fearful and repulsed by what he's becoming, but adjusts to it because he has no choice. This results in embarrassment when Veronica returns and he doesn't think to warn her about how he now eats before helping himself to a doughnut. In Stage 5 his reaction to several teeth tumbling out of his mouth and onto the keyboard is not horror, as he displayed when his fingernails started coming off, but mild annoyance and resignation.
* ConspicuousGloves: After his fingernails start coming loose, Seth puts on a pair of gardening gloves so he can use the computer's keyboard without leaving sticky pus on the keys. He is still wearing them in Stage 3 (when he's using canes to walk), and discards them come Stage 4, having figured out that the changes to his hands allow him to WallCrawl.
* CursedWithAwesome: Even though the transformation makes Seth a diseased mutant, he gains wall-crawling skills, corrosive vomit, and superhuman strength and stamina as well. In fact, because the strength and stamina begin to manifest before the PowerUpgradingDeformation needed for the other abilities does, he initially doesn't realize he's cursed. It's unclear what the absolute end result of Seth's changes would be; the state he ultimately reaches (where he wordlessly begs for death by placing the muzzle of a shotgun to his own head) has at least as much to do with being caught partially outside the telepod when it activates as with having genetic problems.
* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: His short story/1958 counterpart decides to kill himself before he can hurt anyone, via being crushed by a metal press, requiring the aid of his wife to do so. Seth -- in part because his insect side is determined to live at any cost -- doesn't become suicidal until he is rendered a helpless ClippedWingAngel, whereupon he silently asks Veronica to slay him with Stathis's shotgun; she obliges by blowing his head off.
* DyingAsYourself: Tragically, Seth realizes that he ''cannot'' do this; by the time he dies as Brundlefly there will be nothing left of his original mind and morals. [[DoubleSubversion Or so he thinks]]. The broken Brundlefly managing to silently request that Veronica end his life with the shotgun means Seth Brundle died more man than fly.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Although he briefly falls out of love with Veronica in Stages 1 and 2 as his SplitPersonalityTakeover and DrunkWithPower feelings blind him to her concerns over all the changes he's exhibiting, his learning what's actually happening to him brings him back to his better self and the only reason he doesn't reconcile with her right away is because he's scared that, among other things, he might be contagious. His love for her is such that he decides to send her away in Stage 5 for fear he'll eventually hurt her without meaning to. Although his mind completely snaps with the realization that she's pregnant and doesn't want to keep the child and he subsequently decides they will be the "pure" human beings who will unwillingly help him with his EvilPlan to save himself, even in this deranged state the only reason he doesn't kill Stathis with vomit drop is because she begs him not to, and he clearly sees the prospect of RomanticFusion as a wonderful culmination of their relationship as well as his last hope of retaining humanity.
* EvilutionaryBiologist: In Stages 1-2, Seth believes that his enhanced strength, stamina, etc. are the direct result of teleporting himself so he starts pressuring Veronica to "go through" -- "And I won't be able to wear you out; we'll be the perfect couple! The Dynamic Duo!" When she objects he declares her a coward and sets out to find "someone who'll keep up with me", leading to his tryst with Tawny. Only Veronica's timely arrival stops him from forcibly teleporting her; shortly after this he realizes what's ''actually'' happening to him, which smashes this trope to pieces.
* EvilPlan: He plans to genetically splice himself with a healthy human being, since that would make him more human than fly again. Not evil enough? Well, the human subject he chooses is ''Veronica'' -- and it's implied it's partially because she doesn't want to keep his child, but he does.
* FaceHeelTurn: By the end, his desperation to retain his humanity combining with his mind becoming more selfish and instinctual like that of a fly leads him to forcefully trying to merge Veronica and their unborn child with him. He is fully aware that this is in effect, and urges Veronica to leave him before he hurts her, but that's before he learns she's pregnant.
* FatalFlaw: '''{{Lust}}.''' He ''must'' follow things that fascinate and matter to him -- his work and his relationship with Veronica, who understands and is attracted to his passion for that work -- to their ultimate conclusions. His fateful teleportation arises from his response to Veronica leaving to confront Stathis just as they were celebrating his successfully teleporting a baboon. The careful, patient scientist gets drunk -- loosening his self-control, whereupon he throws caution to the wind for his ultimate professional goal ("What are we waiting for? Let's do it!") and ends up fused with a creature that operates purely on instinctual urges. He's initially euphoric and desperate to teleport Veronica or ''any other'' woman because he needs "someone who'll keep up with me" -- that is to say, is capable of sating his lust -- and only realizing what's actually happening to him breaks the spell. Faced with the prospect of a painful, awful metamorphosis and death, he still takes comfort in becoming something that never existed before -- and that he accidentally invented a "very good" gene splicer. He's fascinated and even ''delighted'' by the process (as when he shows off his WallCrawl skills to Veronica), but still seeks a way to retain his humanity. In the climax, with his mind ''almost'' completely ruled by insect instinct, he decides using the pods to fuse himself with her and their unborn child -- creating "the ultimate family" and making her part of him forever by way of his work -- will do that. Instead, he ends up only wanting death and accepts it, having seen an incredible experience through to a logical end, a ''triumph'' of sorts as Cronenberg points out in his DVD commentary for the film.
* GeniusCripple: Played with. When he allows Veronica to see him again (Stage 3), he is using two canes to slowly walk because he's now hunched over and cannot maintain his balance otherwise. At this point he believes he is dying. By her next visit (Stage 4), he has not only adjusted to the PrimalStance but is downright jumpy and spry -- having discovered an ability to WallCrawl and realized that he isn't dying but becoming ''something else''.
* GentlemanAndAScholar: He's a "socially-awkward but nice and polite" example of the trope prior to his transformation; his losing his gentlemanly nature is an early sign of it.
* GibberingGenius: The TropeCodifier, bar none, as Creator/JeffGoldblum's subsequent career bears out. Seth is a cheerful chatterbox from the start, admitting early on that after years of working alone he feels a need to talk to ''someone'' about what he's doing. Post-teleportation, he becomes ''even more'' talkative because his metabolism is working a lot faster and the resultant exponentially surging energy is affecting his brain. In Stage 5 his speech is slower and halting, likely because his vocal cords are decaying, but he still clearly wants to speak as long as he's able to.
* GreaterScopeParagon: He, or at least the good in him prior his SplitPersonalityTakeover FaceHeelTurn, becomes this in the sequel. His son Martin ends up carrying on and redeeming his legacy by not only figuring out how to make the telepods work again, but also finding a cure for the mutation he inherited from his father.
* GreenEyedMonster: Upon realizing that the smug, confident Stathis is an ex-lover of Veronica's as well as her editor, Seth jumps to the conclusion that she's cuckolding him and bitterly drowns his sorrows even though she's promised to return to the loft in a few hours (which she does). The resultant loosening of his self-control is what sets him on the path to becoming a ''literal'' monster. When Stathis comes to rescue her from his clutches in the climax, Seth cruelly maims him before attempting to MurderTheHypotenuse, ''only'' stopped by Veronica's desperate pleas.
* TheGrotesque: Once his DrunkWithPower "high" has ended and he realizes what's actually happening to him, his sweet self re-emerges in Stage 3 but is now laced with GallowsHumor, fear, and shame as he continues to deteriorate. Upon re-establishing contact with Veronica, he initially tries to avoid physical contact with her (concerned he might be PatientZero), sadly saying in passing "You look so pretty..." at one point. When he finally reaches out to her for an embrace -- after he has vomited upon a doughnut ''and'' his right ear has tumbled off -- she returns it ''without hesitation''. Even though it's upsetting and exhausting for her to be witness to his unfolding tragedy, she loves him too much to abandon him altogether. Ultimately he decides to send her away upon realizing that, due to his mind and morals fading away, he will hurt her if he doesn't.
* HalfHumanHybrid: Brundlefly is this, and in his final "natural" form he does not bear an obvious physical resemblance to either a human or a fly as a result.
* HellBentForLeather: He's not seen wearing the brown leather jacket Veronica purchases for him until ''after'' his trip through the telepods, and then it's specific to his DrunkWithPower stretch -- especially his setting out to find another partner after she refuses to be teleported. For bonus points, that she bought him a ''leather'' jacket ties into Seth's growing understanding of and fascination with ''flesh''.[[note]]For even more points Seth buys her a golden necklace with a heart-shaped pendant later, which she wears for almost all of her subsequent scenes. His world, after all, is that of the machine/metal.[[/note]]
* HiddenDepths: GibberingGenius though he may be, he's eloquent when it comes to explaining his work. He's socially awkward but he's also capable of deep love and devotion, though this is tragically perverted by his transformation. He retains his eloquence even as the rest of his humanity fades away, and losing his ability to speak (when Veronica accidentally rips his decayed human jaw off) is tellingly the moment he moves from Stage 5 to 6. These depths are foreshadowed by his sole hobby -- playing piano.
* HollywoodHomely: He's quite muscular for a scientist who doesn't get out much. (Not that any of the female viewers are complaining, or anything!) The shooting script did have him as out-of-shape prior to the teleportation, a detail that may have been dropped because the film was made in a compressed timeframe (shooting began in December 1985 for a locked-in August '86 release date). William Beard's commentary on the 2019 Blu-Ray points out, however, that the audience doesn't ''notice'' how shapely Seth is until he teleports himself because his concealing LimitedWardrobe, expressive face, and awkward-but-sweet personality are holding their attention.
* HowlOfSorrow: To say nothing of pain -- having been merged with broken telepod parts, his Stage 7 self howls in agony as he tumbles out of the prototype pod.
* HumbleHero: While the plot gets rolling by way of his wanting to impress Veronica with his marvelous telepods, after his demonstration he freely admits that he didn't create them from scratch, saying "I'm really a systems management man" in that their individual components (lasers, molecular analyzers, etc.) were commissioned from people "much more brilliant than I am [...] and I just stick them together." Moreover, Veronica apparently only learns of his noteworthy past (he was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in physics at the age of ''20'') from Stathis. Seth loses this humility in the DrunkWithPower stage of his metamorphosis, becoming a braggart in the wake of his belief that his invention has made him a superman.
* IAmAMonster: He basically warns Veronica of this in his "insect politics" speech.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: In the end, seeing the pathetic creature that was once Seth Brundle crawl out of the third telepod, fused with pieces of machinery and in horrifying agony, is probably sadder than watching the end of ''Literature/OldYeller''. This can obviously end only one way, and in one final display of humanity Brundlefly [[MercyKill silently begs a shotgun-armed Veronica to end its life]], and after some painful hesitation, she does.
* InSeriesNickname: He dubs himself "Brundlefly" upon realizing he's becoming a new lifeform.
* IntelligenceEqualsIsolation: Trying to convince Veronica to chronicle his work for a book, he notes "I don't have a life, so there's nothing for you to interfere with." Stathis learns that Seth's been working on the telepods for six years, which implies he's been alone ''at least'' that long, though earlier in his career he successfully worked with others. However long it's been, by Seth's own admission it's been "too long."
* IronicName: Crossing over with ShoutOut, his surname is that of a famous British racecar driver (Martin Brundle), which is completely unsuited to someone who has suffered from motion sickness his entire life. (The sequel carries on the reference by simply naming his son Martin.)
* {{Irony}}: A situational case: Seth's devoted his life to teleportation technology due to his chronic motion sickness and resultant hatred of vehicles. His TeleporterAccident results in him having to constantly vomit ''just to survive'', as he cannot digest solid food and must use vomit drop to dissolve whatever he eats.
* KubrickStare: As Veronica adjusts her videocamera in preparation for interviewing him about what exactly happened to the first, ill-fated baboon, Seth -- struggling to contain his anger, frustration, and guilt over the accident -- glares in this manner.
* LegoGenetics: Averted, as the change in DNA affects Seth slowly as his cells replicate, and his Stage 7 form isn't anything resembling a properly functioning body -- though being fused with a telepod isn't exactly natural. Stage 6, his final "natural" form, is noticeably asymmetrical; his transformed human legs and arms don't remotely match each other. He also has a fifth, fly leg-like appendage on the right side of his body -- the reason he doesn't have a corresponding one on the left is because ''that'' emerged back in the deleted Stage 4B sequence, and he desperately bit it off.
* LimitedWardrobe: Lampshaded! After Veronica mentions he apparently wears the same outfit every day -- charcoal grey suit jacket, white dress shirt, red necktie, black trousers, and brown Oxford shoes -- she learns that it's actually one of five identical sets of clothing. He explains to her that he got the idea from Einstein, who supposedly had five sets of clothes to avoid wasting mental energy on deciding what to wear. Of course, Einstein likely didn't have five jackets and five pairs of shoes!
* LittleNo: After his fingernails start coming off, he tremulously whispers "Oh no...what's happening to me? Am I dying? Is this how it starts -- am I dying?"
* LovecraftianSuperpower: Becoming a BodyHorror via botched teleportation means Seth develops amazing strength and the abilities to WallCrawl and vomit corrosive enzymes on food ''and enemies''.
* MadScientist: Initially subverted, later played straight. Prior to his teleportation, he is a '''driven''' scientist, and doesn't have great social skills, and is, well, working on teleportation, but he is a sane man working for the greater good with a clear ethical code. Even his choice to become ProfessorGuineaPig as soon as possible is one he makes while he's ''drunk''. Post-teleportation, the gradual SplitPersonalityTakeover (plus, at least before he learns what's happening to him, a DrunkWithPower feeling) turns him into a straight version of the trope, albeit a sympathetic one with a TragicDream end goal. In an interview Creator/JohnLandis did with Cronenberg for the book ''Monsters in the Movies'', they argue over whether Seth can be called this trope or not: Landis says yes, Cronenberg no.
* MilkingTheGiantCow: He has lively hand/arm gestures in Stage 0, but in Stage 1, as he rants to the increasingly distressed Veronica about the wonders of diving "into the plasma pool" via teleportation, his gestures are ''extravagant'' -- particularly when he points. This trope disappears post-Stage 2 due to his transformation affecting the speed and range of motion of his limbs.
* MonsterProgenitor: Due to the events of the sequel. His son by Veronica, Martin, was conceived after Seth became a mutant and is an UnevenHybrid of man and insect; unusually for this trope, he is ''stronger'' than his father was because he was born part-insect and is also able to retain his human intelligence and morals because he's 75% human. The villains' EvilPlan is to use Martin's monstrous form and Seth's telepods to create an entire ''race'' of monster soldiers, but Martin fights back and ends up becoming ''completely'' human while the BigBad ends up a helpless mutant, ending the line.
* {{Motifs}}: Critic/filmmaker Steven Benedict points out in his podcast episode on this film that Seth Brundle is marked by evolution/transformation even before his TragicMistake.
** He lives and works in a ''converted'' floor of an AbandonedWarehouse.
** He has a SignificantWardrobeShift in the wake of Veronica becoming his lover and expanding his wardrobe.
** Once he starts mutating, slowly but surely his loft "decays" along with him, and he becomes associated with shadow rather than light (see OrangeBlueContrast on the main page for more).
** ''What'' is Seth? The answer to this question is brought up and changed by him and others to the point that ''I am / You are / Are you / He is'' verge on ArcWords:
*** Veronica notes "You're not a very accomplished drunk" during the drive to the loft. While he's actually nauseous due to motion sickness, [[AlcoholInducedIdiocy her observation turns out to be true.]]
*** [[HumbleHero "I'm really a systems management man."]]
*** The skeptical Stathis dismisses him as "Your magician" to Veronica when Seth arrives at the ''Particle'' offices. Veronica notes to Seth "He thinks you're a con man." Later Stathis refers to him as "Your new playmate" and "The nightclub act" to her, but goes on to note that "He's actually quite brilliant."
*** The lines leading into Veronica and Seth's first night together are, respectively, "You're very cute. You know that?" "Am I?"
*** Tawny wonders in turn if Seth is a bodybuilder or magician of some kind. [[DrunkWithPower He responds that he is both times]], specifying in the former case that "Yeah, I build bodies. I take them apart and put them back together again."
*** Veronica warns him shortly thereafter "You're changing, Seth".
*** Explaining what went wrong with his teleportation, he notes "Now I'm not Seth Brundle anymore. I'm the offspring of Brundle and housefly."
*** Later: "Am I becoming a 185-pound fly? No, I'm becoming something that never existed before. I'm becoming ''Brundlefly''."
*** Seth Brundle and the film's final assessment, of course, is that he's "an insect who dreamt he was a man, and loved it."
* MrExposition: In the first scene at the loft, he demonstrates and explains the telepods to Veronica and goes on to explain how he's realized them and why no one else, not even his financiers, knows about them as yet. Later on, after he's learned exactly what the nature of his transformation is and why it's happening from his computer, he explains it to Veronica in layman's terms. Not only is this justified because he's the ''only'' person who can explain these things and events to her, he admits that "I have a strong urge to talk about what I'm doing" to ''somebody'' after years of working alone.
* MustHaveCaffeine: Implied if one knows from coffee culture. As Emma Westwood's book on the film notes, "no one had a cafe-style coffee machine in their home in the late 1980s", but Seth does. (He specifically identifies it as a Faema, which is espresso-specific; he also knows how to prepare cappuccino.) This trope also applies, albeit downplayed, on a meta level: Creator/JeffGoldblum used coffee as an aid in playing Seth's post-fusion, hyper and unstable scenes.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Seth's eyes widening in horror as he learns from the computer that he was genetically fused with the fly is this trope expressed without words. (The fade to black that follows, helping to establish a four-week time jump between this and the next scene, is one of only two such fades in the film -- the other being at the very end.)
* NerdsAreSexy: He is presented as attractive, though he doesn't realize it. As socially awkward as he is, it's in a sweet way, but it's really his passion for his work that serves as the CommonalityConnection between him and Veronica. After his initial teleportation, he ''at first'' becomes noticeably more alluring -- but also dangerous.
* NerdsAreVirgins: It's not stated in-universe but according to David Cronenberg Seth is a virgin before he meets Veronica. Thus his relationship with her marks a crossing of a metaphorical threshold into maturity...and with that, the sorrows of aging, disease, and death when it inadvertently leads to his TeleporterAccident.
* NightmareFetishist: Justified: He becomes this as a way of coping come Stage 4, having realized that he's not dying (at least not in a conventional sense) but becoming a new lifeform. He ''is'' a scientist, after all; he needs to thoroughly understand and even ''embrace'' what he's becoming, no matter how disgusting it is by human standards. He insists that his ''eating habits'' be recorded for posterity in this stage, but the trope reaches its apex in Stage 5 with the reveal that he's preserving all of the human body parts he molts, which are "of historical interest only", in his medicine cabinet -- aka "The Brundle Museum of Natural History".
* NonMaliciousMonster: Once he becomes TheGrotesque with Stage 3, he also becomes this...for a while. Because he is also undergoing a SplitPersonalityTakeover, he cannot hold himself to this trope forever and come Stage 5 tells Veronica IAmAMonster in hopes of keeping her safe. It doesn't work since he learns about her pregnancy (and her intent to abort it) as he watches her leave with Stathis, and this pushes him over the edge. It's worth noting that in the shooting script he stopped being this trope sooner: A storyboarded but unfilmed scene had him vomiting on a homeless woman and preparing to eat her before he realized [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone what he was doing]].
* NoSocialSkills: Downplayed and justified. He's spent his entire adult life -- and probably much of his adolescence, given he was shortlisted for a Nobel Prize at ''20'' -- consumed by his work in physics, and has worked alone for at least six years as the film begins, so while he is polite, pleasant, and okay with social cues, he's initially at sea dealing with others on a personal level. He regrets this, and post-teleportation is excited that he can finally work on personal growth now that he's achieved his professional ambition. But that's before he realizes the ''real'' reason he feels so great...
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Defied. He explicitly explains that most of the technical apparatus is stuff he himself doesn't understand, designed by colleagues he says are far more brilliant than himself and only assembled by him. He also explains his initial difficulty with transporting organic matter as being a result of his inexperience in biology. His own fields seem to be mathematics and programming.
* OminousHairLoss: As Seth's mutation progresses he begins shedding hair. By the time Veronica arrives at the lab to say goodbye, Seth's hair has been reduced to a few stray lengths of hair across his misshapen skull.
* {{Permafusion}}: What ends up setting up the movie's events is him accidentally merging with a housefly as a result of a transporter accident. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there: as the movie progresses, so does Seth's transformation ito a horrific human-fly hybrid, until a second transporter mishap causes him to merge with ''shrapnel'', forcing Veronica to kill him in order to end his misery.
* {{Phlegmings}}: By the time he reaches Stage 3, poor Seth can no longer digest solid food and must eat the way a fly does -- via "a corrosive enzyme, playfully called 'vomit drop'" as he puts it, resulting in this trope whenever he has to consume anything. The vomit drop stains his face and clothes too, and is a key reason he ends up with ScaryTeeth.
* PosthumousCharacter: In ''The Fly II'', he casts a long shadow over the story. While Bartok Industries has no problem restoring the telepods, no one can figure out how to get them to teleport living matter properly, with Anton Bartok explaining to Seth's son Martin that it's one of the "secrets [that] died with him." Martin, who knows that his father was brilliant but ''not'' how he died (rather he is told that he succumbed to a RapidAging disorder that Martin has inherited), is convinced by Anton to try and finish his father's work. The tipping point for Martin's decision is watching (some of) the tapes Veronica made chronicling Seth's work, incorporating a deleted scene from the first film in which, the morning after his fateful teleportation, Seth describes how the experience felt.
* ThePowerOfLove: The original HBO plot rundown of this film called him a man "transformed by love", and indeed he is in a myriad of ways. LoveHurts, indeed:
** His succumbing to ThePowerOfLust and approaching Veronica at the Bartok press event starts the story.
** In an inversion of LoveMakesYouUncreative, the EurekaMoment that points him towards solving the riddle of teleporting living matter via the telepods comes via Veronica's playful pillow talk.
** His mistaken belief that Veronica is cheating on him with Stathis leads to him [[DrowningMySorrows getting drunk out of jealousy]]. In his compromised mental state he decides to jump ahead to the climax of his experiments and teleport himself, which ends up being his TragicMistake.
** Upon realizing he is succumbing to a SplitPersonalityTakeover that is eradicating his human morals and reason, he sends Veronica away -- despite her being the only person he has -- so he won't hurt her.
** Immediately afterward, however, he learns that she is pregnant with his child and intends to have an abortion. His heart ''and'' mind break together, rendering him [[LoveMakesYouCrazy crazed]] and [[LoveMakesYouEvil wicked]]: he kidnaps her and upon realizing he cannot convince her to bear the child decides he will create "the ultimate family" ''and'' retain what remains of his human self by forcing her to undergo RomanticFusion with him.
** On top of this, when Stathis arrives at the loft to rescue her Seth attempts to MurderTheHypotenuse -- ''piece by piece'', by using his vomit drop to dissolve first Stathis's hand, and then an ankle. He only stops short of dissolving his ''face'' because Veronica begs him not to.
** When LaserGuidedKarma renders him a ClippedWingAngel, he uses this trope to end his suffering (and, perhaps, atone for his crimes) by silently communicating to Veronica that he wants to die by her hand.
* PowerUpgradingDeformation: Seth's strength and stamina only grow as his transformation into Brundlefly progresses, but at the cost of his beauty. His fingernails coming off reveals that the fingers themselves are now secreting a pus that is extremely sticky, which turns out to tie in to his ability to WallCrawl (and while it's hard to see watching the film on a small screen, the palms of his hands and soles of his feet end up with little gripping "pads" for this). Losing the ability to digest solid food and having to use vomit drop upon it results in ScaryTeeth.
* PrimalStance: He starts developing this by Stage 3, and come Stage 4 has fully adjusted to it.
* ProfessorGuineaPig: A rationalized version of this trope. Seth admits early on that he intends to teleport himself as the GrandFinale of his experiments, but shortly after the first time he successfully teleports ''any'' living organism he gets drunk and decides he doesn't need to wait on making sure the process doesn't have any aftereffects or anything like that. In fact, he's having a "conversation" with that baboon and tells it "I'm sorry I killed your brother...but he didn't die in vain, if that's of any comfort. And as the general said, 'There's nothing I'd ask you to do that I wouldn't do myself, boys.'"
* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: His character arc, and his attempts to resist it only end up furthering it. He spends most of Act One as the sweetest of nerds...then comes the TeleporterAccident. Most of Act Two sees him as a would-be {{Ubermensch}} who rages at the woman he loves, gruesomely maims a man in arm wrestling just to win an evening with another woman, and tries to put each woman through the teleporter in turn. The InternalReveal deals a much-needed blow to his ego, but in Act Three he realizes his mind is ''still'' losing its human reason and compassion; the selfish ruthlessness that began to show in Act Two will eventually consume him. Come the climax, it does and he becomes a monster in every possible sense of the word.
* PuppyDogEyes: Albeit the most grotesque version of this trope ''ever''. Brundlefly proper doesn't have insectoid eyes, but gigantic opalescent ones that blink, stare, and twitch (Cronenberg and the effects team effectively caricaturing Jeff Goldblum's eyes). When Veronica objects to Brundlefly's silent request to MercyKill him, he sadly stares up at her in this manner and moans softly...and this last expression of humanity convinces her to pull the trigger.
* RealAwardFictionalCharacter: He was, according to Stathis, "an inch away from the Nobel Prize in Physics" when he was just 20. Later, Seth figures he might have a shot at the Nobel just for becoming Brundlefly.
* RevengeBeforeReason: He has a VillainousBreakdown upon seeing Veronica's telepod severed from the other two and smashes the door of his open so he can finish Stathis off. With so little time left in the countdown and Stathis already maimed and near-helpless, the safe option would be to let himself be sent to the prototype pod alone and ''then'' come after him. Sadly justified in that at this point, instinct and rage have overpowered what remains of his human reason.
* SanitySlippage: Brundle's gradual transformation and his futile attempts to reverse it eventually drive him insane, to the point where he decides that the best way to reclaim his humanity is to fuse himself, Veronica, and their unborn baby into "the ultimate family." He lampshades this earlier in his "insect politics" speech, describing himself as "an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over... and the insect is awake."
* SayingTooMuch: In the opening scenes, due to ThePowerOfLust clouding his mind he either misses or forgets the rather important fact that Veronica is a journalist when he offers to show her what he's working on in his lab. He doesn't realize his mistake until he realizes she's recording part of their conversation ''after'' his demonstration, and she correctly points out that everything he said was on the record and refuses to give him the resulting tape. After she leaves, he decides to make the best of it with a deal: If she'll hold off on writing an article on his work, she can be the sole chronicler of the creation, development, and refinement of the telepods, the stuff of an entire book.
* ScaryTeeth: His teeth in Stages 4 and 5, the result of being corroded by vomit drop ''and'' sugar. Several of his front teeth gruesomely tumble out when he pulls a pencil he's been idly chewing on from his mouth.
* SecondLove: As far as the audience knows he is this to Veronica, whose first love was Stathis. Seth is her true love as well, to the point that '''no one''' working on the film was satisfied with the two epilogues shot in which Veronica and Stathis ended up a couple again.
* SignificantWardrobeShift: He initially has a nice but ''very'' LimitedWardrobe because he doesn't like expending mental energy on choosing what to wear; never mind he's a recluse and it wouldn't matter ''what'' he wore most of the time. Veronica decides to change that after learning this and buys him some new wardrobe pieces -- a plaid shirt, a brown leather jacket, etc. The next time he's seen he's wearing said shirt and coordinating pants, suggesting he adopted the new look immediately; the suits are never seen again. It's a sign of how his relationship is transforming his entire life; in fact in the same scene he ''finally'' successfully transports a living being through his telepods, which he couldn't have done had his relationship with her not led to a EurekaMoment. But later that night he teleports ''himself''...and the early stages of the SlowTransformation that results have him become more virile, sensual, and aggressive. That's when the audience starts seeing him in that [[HellBentForLeather leather jacket]] -- first with a shirt, but later ''without''.
* SinisterSweetTooth: One of the earliest signs that Seth's teleportation experiment is turning him into a monstrous, amoral fly hybrid is his growing taste for sugar: at first, he's merely ladling the stuff into his coffee and calling loudly for a cannoli to go with it, seemingly uncaring of how weird it looks (or perhaps he thinks [[GeniusSweetTooth an alternative trope is in play]]); then, as he grows more violent and obsessive, he begins munching on chocolate bars while wandering the town in a rage, leading to a scene in which he gives a man a potentially lethal compound fracture without feeling a flicker of concern. By the time his degeneration becomes plainly obvious, his once-relatively tidy lab is littered with boxes of donuts and other sweet foods -- a sign that his humanity is undergoing a very steep decline.
* TheSleepless: Post-fusion. Before he realizes what's actually happening to him he's ''happy'' about it: "I hardly need to sleep anymore, I feel wonderful!"
* TheSpeechless: Come Stage 6, he is this. As Cronenberg points out in the DVD commentary, Seth's final metamorphosis into Brundlefly only comes after Veronica accidentally rips his decaying human jaw off. Since he's no longer able to communicate with others, there's a tragic sense in the rest of his body giving itself up to the insect form.
* StagesOfMonsterGrief: He goes through all of them in his one-month-plus transformation.
** '''Denial''': Upon realizing that going through the teleporter somehow changed him, he never denies the actual changes, but rather that they're anything but ''good''. He doesn't mind that his skin is developing lesions and his temper is shorter and more explosive. He even likes the prospect of gaining a CarpetOfVirility! Once the fingernails start coming off, though...
** '''Acceptance''': He realizes the true nature of his condition, resigns himself to his eventual fate of disintegration and death, and comforts himself with GallowsHumor and by exploring what he's becoming in the meantime, seeing the upsides of it where no one else can. Veronica's love and presence helps here. However, he ''does'' long to be human again upon realizing he's also losing his mind and morals, resulting in...
** '''Defiance''': He starts formulating a plan "to reduce the percentage of fly in Brundlefly" at the very least. But it requires him to fuse himself with another human, and with his insect survival instincts starting to kick in he moves to...
** '''Betrayal''': With his sanity cracking upon learning Veronica is pregnant and intends to have an abortion, he decides to fuse her and the fetus with him. He also maims Stathis -- who indirectly set Seth on the path to his TragicMistake -- when he tries to rescue her, only for Stathis to get a second wind. The result is that Seth, now completely Brundlefly, gets merged with parts of a telepod. Now in horrible pain, he is...
** '''DrivenToSuicide''': Except he's ''unable'' to kill himself, so he manages to convince Veronica to finish him off with Stathis's shotgun.
* SuperStrength: Merging with the fly gives him a mild form of this -- enough to perform impressive gymnastic feats, ''rip open'' a strongman's arm in an arm-wrestling contest, and BridalCarry objects of his affection/lust over long/steep distances. It's implied he's also capable of {{Roofhopping}}, and the script outright showed him doing so.
* TallDarkAndHandsome: Played with. Initially, his awkward nature downplays his attractiveness, as does the fact that Veronica is also tall. When she tells him he's cute, his response is "Am I?" In the first days after he's merged with the fly, the trope is played straight as he explores his new strength and virility and Veronica is more attracted to him than ever...only for his personality to become uglier as the transformation slowly works its dark magic on him. Once it kicks into high gear, Seth's beauty is decimated piece by piece -- he succumbs to a PrimalStance, his dark hair gradually falls out, and his face becomes a ruin.
* TeenGenius: He's implied to have been one. Stathis tells Veronica that Seth was "An inch away from the Nobel Prize in Physics...he was only 20 at the time" he ''led a team'' of physicists.
* ThatManIsDead: When he explains his TeleporterAccident to Veronica he tells her "Now I'm not Seth Brundle anymore...I'm the offspring of Brundle and housefly." Later, having realized he's becoming a new lifeform rather than merely dying, he starts referring to himself as "Brundlefly".
* TragicMonster: Alas, poor Seth! Probably one of the most profound examples of this trope ever.
* TragicVillain: He becomes a TragicMonster who desperately tries to regain his humanity -- even if it means harming his love.
* UncleanlinessIsNextToUngodliness: He's tidy in his appearance and the upkeep of his apartment/lab, going so far as to wear a clean set of clothes (one of five identical sets, down to the ''shoes'') every day. As his mutation progresses apace and his mind declines as he tries to find some way to hold the inevitable back, he gives up on taking care of himself, the apartment becoming a wreck of discarded garbage (especially empty food and soda containers) -- fitting in a sad way, flies being commonly associated with garbage and rot. He even turns his medicine cabinet into a museum for his ''falling-off appendages''. As early as Stage 2 Veronica notes that he looks and smells bad compared to how he was before, but he brushes off her concerns with "I've never been much of a bather."
* VampireRefugee: Seth becomes desperate to retain if not regain some of his humanity, but his plan to do so fails spectacularly, in part because it makes him a...
* VillainProtagonist: Becomes this upon deciding to forcibly merge himself with Veronica (and her unborn child) into a single entity, since that would be "More human than I am alone!" On top of that when Stathis comes to rescue her he maims him with vomit drop, clearly getting some ''enjoyment'' out of the process as he does so, and only Veronica's plea stops him from finishing him off.
* VillainousBreakdown: In the climax, Seth/Brundlefly's reaction to seeing Veronica's telepod disconnected from the other two is to smash the glass door of his open so he can at least have vengeance on Stathis. But just as he's partially outside it the countdown ends and the result is ''not pretty''.
* WasOnceAMan: His loss of humanity is such that he describes himself to Veronica as "an insect who dreamt he was a man" when he turns her away for the final time. He currently provides the trope's page quote. He's also an atypical example of the trope in that the audience fully gets to know him as a human before his TragicMistake transforms him.
* {{Workaholic}}: By his own admission, he has no life beyond his work on the telepods before he meets Veronica. In hindsight this points to his FatalFlaw being desire. Whatever or whoever it is that matters to him, he must pursue it with all of his heart to the exclusion of all else -- and what self-control he has ends up first compromised, then destroyed, over the course of the story.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Veronica Quaife]]
!!Veronica "Ronnie" Quaife
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veronica_quaife_6903_normal.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"Be afraid. Be'' '''very''' ''afraid."'']]
!!!'''Played By:''' Creator/GeenaDavis (original), Creator/SaffronHenderson (''The Fly II'')
A reporter for ''Particle Magazine'', Veronica's initial skepticism of Seth's claims of an invention "that will change the world and human life as we know it" is quickly dispelled when she sees them in action. Beyond the lure of a career-making story, she becomes drawn to Seth's passion for his work and his sweet charm, and elevates their relationship to a romantic one. At first merely puzzled by (and to an extent attracted to) Seth's changing nature post-teleportation, she comes to realize something is wrong with him but ends up being turned out of his loft/lab for her trouble. Four weeks later her worst fears for him are exceeded when he contacts her again and reveals the truth about his condition. Her love for him is so strong that she is not willing to abandon him, even as her own mind threatens to crack under the stress...but what will she do when she learns she is pregnant with his child?
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[[folder:Martin Brundle]]
!!Martin Brundle
!!!'''Played By:''' Creator/EricStoltz
The child of Seth Brundle and Veronica Quaife, Martin was unfortunately conceived ''after'' his father's fatal telepod accident, resulting in him being born with some of his father's insect genes. As intellectually brilliant as his father but suffering from accelerated aging, Martin looks like he's in his early twenties when he's chronologically only five years old, and attempts to devise a way to cure his condition using the telepods as his condition accelerates.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Beth Logan]]
!!Beth Logan
!!!'''Played By:''' Creator/DaphneZuniga
An employee of Bartok Industries, Beth meets and falls for Martin Brundle once he begins officially working at the company, becoming his only confidant and ally as he begins to suffer his father's fate of mutating into a giant fly-monster.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Anton Bartok]]
!!Anton Bartok
!!!'''Played By:''' Lee Richardson
The head of Bartok Industries, Anton Bartok funded Seth Brundle's original telepod experiments, and subsequently convinced Veronica Quaife to give birth to her and Brundle's child. When Veronica died from the shock of seeing the larval sack she had given birth to, Bartok set himself up as the father figure to Martin Brundle, but truly intended for Martin to use his brilliance to solve the problems of the telepods and make them available for mass production.
[[/folder]]
