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Isaac Clarke
Played by: Gunner Wright (every game since 2)
"Oh yeah. Good times!"
Isaac in the Remake
"Stick around. I'm full of bad ideas."
The star of the series, Isaac Clarke is an engineer with the CEC, dispatched on the USG Kellion to repair the Ishimura. He is also looking for his girlfriend Nicole who is stationed there. He quickly finds that the Ishimura has been overrun with Necromorphs and has to fight through all of them while repairing the ship and rescuing Nicole. By the time of Dead Space 2, his sanity has taken a couple of hits and he has been locked away in an asylum on Titan Station. Unfortunately, another Necromorph attack happens there and Isaac has to once again fight to survive. In Dead Space 3, he travels across the galaxy in hopes of stopping the Necromorph threat permanently.
- The Ace: Extremely competent engineer, skilled pilot, occasional hacker, and seasoned Space Zombie Killer. Occasionally kills Undead Abominations with a Plasma Cutter.
- Acquired Poison Immunity: It's implied that he has gained an enhanced resistance to the Marker signal in 3 after having reached acceptance of Nicole's death, meaning he doesn’t go through the same Mind Rape hallucinations as Carver. Resistance, not immunity, as the Brethren Moons can overcome it if they turn their attention in his direction.
- Action Survivor: Isaac starts the series as a repairman.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
- Owed to the fact he can now talk, the first game's remake has him vocally distraught at each of his Kellion crewmates dying, even Kendranote . The remake also compounds this by revealing him and Nicole were near to having a falling out before the incident after Isaac's mother killed herself and Isaac's father due to a crisis of faith after Nicole tried to help her leave Unitology and Isaac, in misplaced anger, blamed her for it, which implies a greater sense of guilt from Isaac towards how he felt towards pushing for Nicole to go onto the Ishimura assignment in the later games.
- The remake also changes the context of Isaac’s resentment towards Unitology. In the original, it was over Isaac’s mother bankrupting the family by selling all their assets to the Church. In the remake not only did his mother kill herself and Isaac’s father in a murder-suicide due to Unitologist brainwashing, but the Church proceeded to confiscate their bodies before Isaac even had the chance to properly bury them.
- Adaptational Intelligence: A benefit from being able to talk in the first game's remake. While in the original it was Hammond, Kendra, Kyne and Nicole who had ideas and told him what to do, in the remake Isaac occasionally comes up with ideas of his own and tells them what he's planning to do.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Black (turning grey) hair with blue eyes in the original trilogy, brown hair with hazel eyes in Remake.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Downplayed with his treatment to Kyne. Because Isaac is a Heroic Mime in the original game, he has no issue working with Kyne. In the remake, Isaac refuses to talk with Kyne on their first conversation and hangs up on him. It is only on their second meeting that Isaac agrees to work with him for the sake of humanity.
- Aesop Amnesia: It doesn't occur to him that the Marker signals are what is driving his romantic rival, Robert Norton, insane during the events of Dead Space 3. This is in-spite of having survived two outbreaks, having the Marker blueprints imprinted directly into his brain, built one Marker and destroyed two, thus most likely being humanity's foremost expert on how Markers work.
- Almighty Janitor: He’s an engineer with no combat experience that does a better job fighting Necromorphs than the actual military.
- All-Loving Hero: His characterization in the Remake leans towards this. Aside from Unitologists, Isaac is remarkably kind and tries to help out anyone he runs across in the Ishimura. Notably, after it's revealed that the Nicole he's interacting with was Elizabeth Cross, he immediately puts aside his own grief and screams at Kendra that enough people have died already to try and save her. He even tries saving Kendra herself despite her trying to leave him for dead just seconds before. Hell, it even extends to a Necromorph, specifically the Hunter, and it's former identity as Harris if he pursues the sidequest of its origins, and upon learning of its Tragic Monster status, Isaac will express sympathy towards it.Isaac: You're done Harris. He can't hurt you anymore.
- Art Evolution: Issac's face looks almost completely different in the remake compared to the original trilogy; he looks much younger, lacking stubble and with longer, more colourful brown hair. He also has a more pointed nose and distinguishable chin. note It's a tad ironic that Isaac looks less age-appropriate when his actor is actually about the same age.
- Badass Bookworm: He's a very competent engineer who also happens to be a better One-Man Army than the actual Army.
- Berserk Button: He already had a longstanding mistrust of Unitology, but it turned into outright hatred after the events of the first game.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He is a pretty kind, level headed, and well meaning guy, but see Rage Breaking Point, Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and Unstoppable Rage below. Just those trope names should give you an idea of what happens when you finally piss him off.
- Broken Ace: Especially by 3. Isaac has gained a great many skills over the course of his life, but a lot of mental baggage, as well.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Inverted. Isaac has been betrayed about five times throughout the franchise by people who he thought to be his ally.
- Combat Pragmatist: Isaac will use just about any advantage offered in melee.
- Cool Old Guy: Isaac is actually in his 40s, according to his official bio. In the first game he was 43, in the second he's about 46, though a lot of that was in stasis so it might not count.
- Crazy Sane: Tormented by Marker hallucinations constantly by Dead Space 2 (as well as some honest-to-goodness symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder during the Ishimura level), he managed to continue to persevere in spite of this, even though his psychological record would draw some rather uneasy glances.
- Dead Man Walking: Unless Isaac can cure himself of the nasty things in his brain in the second game, he's doomed to go crazy and die. Struggling to find a way to solve this is the major impetus of the game.
- Deadpan Snarker: Isaac has turned into one of these by the second game, perhaps courtesy of being Suddenly Voiced. It's understandable, given what he's been through.Ellie: This seems like a really bad idea.
Isaac: Stick around. I'm full of bad ideas.- When Isaac is keeping the deck of the Drill Tank clear, Ellie asks him if he's fine:Isaac: Oh yeah. Good times!
- Is turned up somewhat for Dead Space 3.Ellie: Be careful.
Isaac: What, you think there's something out there that's trying to eat me?
Ellie: Not funny.
Isaac: Yeah. I know. - This is brought back for the remake.Elizabeth: The Leviathan has a ten-kiloton mass. Do you really need me to tell you this is a bad idea?!
Isaac: Well, I'm all out of good ideas, so guess what's left.
- When Isaac is keeping the deck of the Drill Tank clear, Ellie asks him if he's fine:
- Determinator:
- Isaac Clarke is not going to let a ship full of horrors stop him. He does his repair jobs alone despite the circumstances, he manages to repeatedly punch out Cthulhu, refuses to relent when betrayed and left to die, and his Heroic BSoD lasts all of five seconds when he finds out that Nicole's dead.
- And in the second game, Isaac doesn't let the fact he's been locked in a mental asylum for the past three years and he's wearing a straightjacket stop him from evading Necromorphs, fashion a plasma cutter and a stasis module out of surgical tools, before suiting up and fighting his way through yet another outbreak.
- In the 3rd game. Lampshaded by Danik, "Isaac, is that you? You are unbelievably hard to kill, are you aware of that?".
- Disappeared Dad: It's mentioned that Isaac's father vanished during an extended off-world mission, building ships for the Marine Corps. Due to his work being highly classified, Isaac's attempts to track him down have been thus far mostly futile. This is averted in the remake, with Isaac's father revealed to have been killed by Isaac's mom in a murder-suicide.
- The Dreaded: Come 3, he's known as "The Marker Killer" by Unitologists, and even the Brethren Moons consider him a big threat enough to the Necromorphs that one of them personally tries to kill him in 3 and the rest tries to distract him long enough before they make their move on Earth in Awakening.
- The Engineer: Isaac's definitely the Combat Engineer variety. This characterization is much better reinforced in the second game than in the first game, where his status as an engineer was more of an Informed Attribute. This time around, his first tools are improvised devises he jury-rigs out of medical equipment, and he occasionally has to do a little rewiring of control panels in the form of a hacking mini-game to bypass inoperative doors. It's taken even further in Dead Space 3, where Isaac is able to make his own guns. The remake of the original also makes his engineering skills more apparent, with him building his own Plasma Cutter and demonstrating his knowledge of ship systems and functionalities.
- Featureless Protagonist: Is this in the first game; he never speaks and we never see what he looks like beneath his RIG suit until the final cutscene (though the player can see his face earlier than that if they move the camera around during the opening cutscene). This was dropped in subsequent games and even the remake of the first installment.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Goes from barely surviving the Ishimura outbreak to fighting space zombies, government troops and religious fanatics. By the third game he's "The Marker Killer". After the third game you could probably go ahead and call him The Moon Killer or something.
- Gadgeteer Genius:
- In the first game, an Informed Ability on par with Dr. Freeman's Theoretical Physics degree, but in the second game Isaac's first tool is a Kinesis Module he cobbles together out of parts he rips from a malfunctioning hover-bed. His new plasma cutter is a mash-up of a flashlight and a surgical operating laser, and his new guns in Dead Space 3 will be made from scratch. By him, customized by you.
- The second part of this (the Genius part) is what makes him so effective at combating the Necromorphs and the Marker. Several logs indicate that smart people that come into contact with the Marker are more functional afterwards than people of less intelligence. Isaac takes this to the natural conclusion: the smartest people are able to defeat the Marker, rather than being consumed by a desire to replicate it.
- Giving Up on Logic: In Awakened, the Playable Epilogue Downloadable Content to 3, he notes that he's taken on this approach a long time ago with respect to the various issues he comes across. It's hard to blame him, all things considered.Isaac: I quit trying to make sense of it all back on the Ishimura.
- Guest Fighter:
- Appears as part of Team EA with Faith in NBA Jam: On Fire Edition. Also appears as a skin in Dante's Inferno, Skate 3, and a suit of armor said inspired by him is a DLC bonus in Dragon Age II. Also a costume for Sackboy in LittleBigPlanet.
- Isaac makes his fighting game debut as a playable character in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale.
- Heroic Neutral: After the events of Dead Space 2, his response to Norton's request for help is a resounding no. But then he learns the Ellie is missing, and Unitologists try to kill him.
- Heroic Mime: In the first game, with nothing but Voice Grunting and screams. Interestingly, he does have things to say if you look at his notes on the objectives. He's intelligent, and not gullible or naive. He is, however, scared out of his mind. The grunts and screams are somewhat on the extreme side, almost making him a Screaming Warrior. Entirely justified in that, when he's stomping the crap out of the monsters he comes across, he's scared to death, and likely is trying to resolve some of that fear any way he can.
- Subverted in that he actually does speak a single line - namely, "Come on!" - near the end of the game, when trying to get the shuttle door open. However, he screams those words in such manner that they can be easily missed and mistaken for another unintelligible grunt.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In 2, he willingly sacrifices himself to stop the Golden Marker's Convergence, but Ellie will have none of that. Again in the end of 3 to shut down the Marker signal from the Tau Volantis Brother Moon... but it doesn't work. Luckily, he's still not dead.
- Heroic Willpower: Isaac takes debilitating hallucinations quite well. At least one other character mentions that out of everyone exposed to the Marker, he was by far the most stable. In the end, this is what saves him. In fact, his Battle in the Center of the Mind seems to even destroy the giant Marker! No surprise he looks totally drained afterwards.
- Hollywood Atheist: Supplemental lore unlocked in the New Game + mode for the first game reveals he's actually very negative towards Unitology, mostly because his mother joined the group and spent money that was supposed to pay for his college education on getting up the ranks, forcing him to go to a substandard college, which severely impacted on his career choices. It's zigzagged in that, according to setting lore, atheism is the norm in the Dead Space universe, and he's actually validated in disliking Unitology, what with The Reveal of the church over the series as a mad cult worshipping the Necromorph. That being said, Isaac still takes God's name in vain occasionally yelling Jesus (spelled "Jeezus" in the subtitles) or "God damnit". While the concept of a god is part of Unitology, this is either a hold over from our lexicon or some form of Judeo-Christianity still exists. It also seems Christianity was more common 200 years ago in the Sovereign Colonies.
- Informed Ability: Averted more and more as time goes on: Isaac must physically rewire control panels in order to activate different machines or devices in Dead Space 2, which certainly requires more engineering know-how than simply pushing a button on a screen. He can also make guns as of Dead Space 3, which definitely requires a lot of know-how. Justified by the developers as a way to highlight and emphasize Isaac still being an engineer rather than a Space Marine.
- Special mention goes to the remake's aversion of this; in the original game, Isaac was a Heroic Mime that merely took orders from others and made fixes according to the instructions of others, whereas the remake shows that Isaac has a very, very strong understanding of ship systems. He's frequently the one to suggest solutions to the ship's many technical issues, comes up with workarounds to problems he encounters with the ship's systems on the fly, and is even able to correctly identify a busted comms array before the Kellion even docks on the ship.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Averted at first, as he had no actor to begin with in the original. But then played straight in the sequels, with him Suddenly Voiced, which called for a redesign of his appearance to fit Wright's. By the remake, this is made even straighter as he's now a transplant of Gunner Wright's appearance wholesale, with even his eye color changed from blue to brown like his actor.
- Irony: Since Nicole's body is never found and she killed herself in a manner that would leave herself open to infection, it's possible that she might have been one of the countless Necromorphs killed by Isaac, whilst he searched through the Ishimura looking for her. His hallucinations of Nicole guilt-trip him with this as he makes his way through the Ishimura a second time.
- It's All My Fault: Sees Nicole's death as this, due to pushing her to take the job on the Ishimura in the first place.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Isaac steals more or less everything he comes across. Mostly justified, since the previous owners are all dead. Everything he doesn't steal is readily purchased from your local Ishimura Store terminal. With looted money. That he acquired by selling other stolen stuff.
- Made of Iron: Let's see, he has survived the outbreak on the Ishimura, the destruction of Aegis VII, the destruction of the Sprawl (during which he got two Javelin Spears through his chest and palm), has defeated several massive creatures, and recently killed a moon. Did the destruction of the moon kill him? Nope. He survives that too! And in every single one of these instances, he constantly gets injured or attacked, and yet he keep on trekking. This man refuses to die.
- Meaningful Name: A meta version. Isaac (Asimov) (Arthur C.) Clarke - which of course was mocked by Zero Punctuation. And he's the son of Octavia and Poul.
- Mind Rape: Repeatedly suffers these during Dead Space 2 as a result of what happened in 1.
- My God, What Have I Done?: How he views convincing Nicole to take the job on the Ishimura, which indirectly lead to her death.
- Mysterious Past: Very little is known of Isaac's past. Some logs in the first game indicate strong familiarity with the crew of the Ishimura such as Gabe Weller, implying that in addition to Nicole, he had several friends serving onboard at the time. Some have even theorised that Isaac himself may even have served on the ship previously or at least repaired it a few times and that was how he found out about the job opportunity for Nicole.
- Nice Guy: Isaac is a pretty chill, funny guy to be around. Even after losing his sanity, he is still pretty sociable and willing to work with others.
- One-Man Army: Despite being little more than a humble engineer, he fights his way from one end of the Ishimura to the other and back again, plying his trade while doing so even as the belligerent former crew do their best to cut his shift abruptly short, before going down to the epicentre of the outbreak below to deliver the Marker back to its pedestal, engage the Hive Mind in a heated slugfest and come out on top then completely wreck the joint by dropping a continent sized chunk of rock on it from orbit. In 2 not only is he still chopping up lovecraftian zombies like a pro, but caps it all off by defeating the mastermind of the outbreak in a battle of wills and nuking Titan Station, along with any infected former residents still lurking around on it off the face of the Solar System in the process. By 3, he’s throwing hands with both Necromorphs and heavily-armed Unitologist terrorists at the same time and wiping both of them out in droves, eventually taking on the final stage of Necromorph evolution and killing it dead before beelining it back to Earth regardless of the Brethren Moons’ psychic assaults and persistent attacks from both the infected and a newly-formed coven of lunatics dedicated to profaned worship of their undead gods.
- Parental Neglect: You will find in Isaac's bio that he was not priority number one for his parents.
- Somewhat justified in the case of his father, who vanished during an extended mission off-world whilst building ships for the Marine Corps. That said, his father did make sure to spend the first four years of Isaac's life on Earth with the family. His mother on the other hand, threw herself into Unitology out of loneliness and later depression when her husband disappeared. Her fanaticism lead her to blow most of their family's wealth on getting herself risen to the rank of Vested within the Church, preventing Isaac from attending a prominent engineering college in the process and driving a permanent wedge between them.
- Parting-Words Regret: In the remake, Isaac lashed out at Nicole after she failed to truly break his mother free from Unitology‘s grasp, resulting in her killing herself and his dad. Nicole’s hurt “Go to Hell, Isaac” was the last thing she said to him.
- Perma-Stubble: Which turns into a Beard of Sorrow in 3.
- Precision F-Strike: At the end of Dead Space 2:"Fuck you! And fuck your Marker!"
- Rage Breaking Point: For the most part of his adventures, he is running scared out of his mind (literally), completely surrounded by mutated horrors that want to tear him into bloody chunks (when his own insanity isn't trying to force him to kill himself). But in 2 and in 3, he eventually reaches a point where he has had enough and starts gunning for the monsters themselves. When this happens, he has been shown capable of killing what are essentially cosmic eldritch gods.
- Reluctant Hero: In 3 due to his experiences. This shakes off when he's told to help Ellie.
- Right Man in the Wrong Place: In Dead Space 1 he was just an engineer that only volunteered to go to the Ishimura in order to find his girlfriend, only to get way more than he bargained for with Necromorphs, yet he still managed to eliminate the Necromorph scourge on Aegis VII. In Dead Space 2 he's yet again caught in the middle of another Necromorph infestation, and manage to stop a Convergence event from happening.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When he believes Ellie is killed, Isaac loses it, rushing ahead with the intent to put a bullet in Danik's brain.
- Sanity Slippage:
- Isaac suffers from hallucinations because some of the Red Marker's influence still lingers.
- He's cured of the hallucinations at the end of 2, although there are signs he suffers from lingering mental trauma. He relapses into hallucinations in the Awakened DLC, mostly because there's an entire Eldritch Abomination race trying it on him and Carver.
- Second Love: Subverted. Isaac and Ellie initially got into a relationship after the events of the second game, but broke up by the beginning of the third, when Ellie wanted him to face his demons. Isaac, however, was of the mind that some things should just stay buried. Double subverted by the end of the game, when Isaac and Ellie share one final kiss before he takes on the Brother Moon.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: The events on the Ishimura have quite an impact on him. The Sprawl does as well in terms of both trust and horror.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Quite literally after hallucination!Nicole starts taunting him about Stross's death. Isaac gets more pissed than we've ever seen him.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Justified, given the sheer amount of shit he goes through. Also downplayed, as he seems to only swear when he's under duress... which is often.
- This can be played straight in Dead Space 2: While repeatedly stomping, Isaac will let out a stream of loud, angry swearing.
- In the remake, Isaac has several profane lines for if he runs out of ammo, several of which have him actively cursing CEC for their equipment failing him at the worst time possible.
- This can be played straight in Dead Space 2: While repeatedly stomping, Isaac will let out a stream of loud, angry swearing.
- Suddenly Voiced: In Dead Space 2. As the game drops the "Alone in a Haunted House with Apocalyptic Log" storytelling, it makes sense he'd speak to other characters about his... problem. Though some find his new voice a bit less... imposing... than some of his grunts in the original game would suggest. Maybe it's just the Sanity Slippage. He also speaks at the end of the first game, though it's easy to miss. On the final chapter a muffled and disgruntled "Come on!" can be heard when Isaac is banging on the door for it to open.
- Survivor's Guilt: After the events of the first game. Also because Isaac was the one to push Nicole to take the job on the Ishimura in the first place, thus indirectly making him responsible for her death.
- 10-Minute Retirement: Had slipped into a life of seclusion after the events of 2, tired of hunting down Markers. Fortunately for the galaxy, The Call Knows Where You Live and pulls him out of his brief retirement.
- Took a Level in Badass: He was just an engineer, but was forced to take a level at the beginning of the first game.
- Uniqueness Decay: While the producers implemented his skills as an engineer in the games for Isaac to put more emphasis on him being an engineer and not a space marine, in gameplay they're shared with whoever else is playable, even though the other characters' background doesn't hint at such skills.
- In 2's DLC, Severed, Gabe Weeler can also rewire control panels.
- In 3 Carver can create his own weapons much like Isaac can.
- Unwitting Pawn: To Kendra, the Golden Marker, and eventually the Brother Moons.
- Unstoppable Rage: The man is perfectly capable of taking on undead legions while running scared witless, but once the forces that be manage to piss him off he is capable of slaughtering necromorphs, trained soldiers, religious fanatics, and Eldritch gods. He is a pretty nice guy, but you have no chance if you finally managed to get on his bad side.Danik: Where is everyone?
Unitologist Soldier: All dead! Isaac Clarke... he shot the rest! - You Are Better Than You Think You Are: He tells Carver this towards the end of 3 when he asks if is his actions have helped him atone for his past mistakes.
- Zombie Apocalypse Hero: Eventually becomes one as the games go on, and when the undead start to rise and overrun both the Sprawl and the New Horizons Colony, hits the ground running and starts chopping his way through the hordes of reanimated citizenry without missing a beat.
Nicole Brennan
Played by: Iyari Limon (DS1), Tanya Clarke (DS2, remake)
Nicole in the Remake
"Isaac, it's me. I wish I could talk to you."
Isaac's long-term girlfriend, a medical officer stationed aboard the Ishimura at Isaac's suggestion. Nicole didn't suffer any negative effects from the Necromorphs, and managed to send out a message to Isaac saying that the place is falling apart (though she doesn't say what the problem is), alerting Isaac that something is wrong. Isaac spends most of the game looking for her. Nicole also makes cameo appearances in Downfall and Extraction.
- Adaptational Badass: In the remake, the additional side content introduced to allow Isaac to retrace Nicole's footsteps through the ship show her actual handling of the Ishimura crisis firsthand through recordings, presenting her to be far more capable in holding things together with the surviving crew than in the original who is implied to have committed suicide early enough just as things really started to go to hell.
- Adaptation Expansion: Nicole is partially a Satellite Love Interest in the original game to give Issac some character while she herself lacks any, especially after the relevation that she is dead by the time of Isaac's arrival. In the remake, her role and character have been greatly expanded, from her relationship with Isaac, how they met and why the had a fallout prior to the game, to a sidequest explaining her role during the outbreak.
- Age Lift: The remake portrays her looking physically older than in the original, looking closer to her appearance in Dead Space 2. Likely to help clear up any implications that she and Issac might have had a significant age gap in their relationship, since her original design made her look twenty years younger than him.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Her reason for committing suicide, she preferred to die by her own hand rather than be ripped apart by Necromorphs.
- The Cameo: In both Extraction and Downfall.
- Dead All Along: She killed herself long before the Kellion crew reached the Ishimura. In fact, the first letter of each chapter spells out. "Nicole is dead."
- Damsel in Distress: Isaac's initial goal is to rescue her, believing she's trapped in some kind of terrible situation. This is strengthened when he finds out about the space Zombie Apocalypse aboard the ship, but it's subverted in the cruelest of ways; she's already dead by the time he sets out.
- Driven to Suicide: She killed herself via lethal injection to spare herself a painful death at the hands of the necromorphs.
- Guile Hero: Following her side quest in the remake demonstrates Nicole using her wits to survive against Unitologists among the Ishimura. The last meeting between her and Mercer is the best example, who finds her rummaging in his room and she manages to leave alive while keeping a cool head.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's got beautiful blonde hair and, from all appearances, was a very nice woman in life.
- Hope Spot: Briefly inspired in her final moments to fabricate a counteragent to the Necromorph infection by using Lexine’s brain scan as a template, Nicole settles on killing herself after realizing that the remaining medical staff had already used up all the equipment she needs to make it work.
- Hospital Hottie: She's a fully trained and accredited nurse, and very beautiful to boot.
- The Lost Lenore: She becomes this in 2, although Isaac's Second Love, Ellie, displaces her more or less by the time of 3.
- My Greatest Failure: In the remake, it's failing to save Isaac's mother from falling back to the church of Unitology, leading to her committing a murder-suicide in the name of the church, taking Isaac's father with her. In an audio log found early on, Nicole even outright says that she "...won't lose another patient to Unitology bullshit. Not again."
-
The Other Darrin: Her voice actor changes between 1 and 2, and her character design was also changed as a result due to the series' use of facial capture for the characters' faces. - Never Found the Body: Isaac at one point encounters the room she's later revealed to have died in, but her body is no longer there. This suggests that she did indeed end up becoming one of the Necromorphs onboard the Ishimura and ironically might have been one of the countless number killed by Isaac as he ventured through the ship searching for her. The Nicole hallucination pointedly guilt-trips Isaac about this in Dead Space 2.
- Nice Girl: By all accounts was a loving woman to Isaac and others.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Nicole is well known among her friends and family to be an anti-Unitologist who provides assistance to members trying to escape from the cult. When Isaac seemingly encounters her in the mining section of the Ishimura, she leaves him with the words, "Make us whole again", providing a big clue that Isaac was hallucinating the encounter.
- Posthumous Character: The first letter of each chapter in the original game spell out "NICOLE IS DEAD".
- Proper Lady: She is very kind, sweet, compassionate, and calm. When the Marker vision of her isn't guilt-tripping Isaac, that is.
- Super Doc: Nicole specialized in neuropsychiatry but is also well versed in other fields, from basic ones that were covered during residency such as trauma and emergency surgery to those that require a degree such as forensics, pathologist, genetics and space medicine. Somewhat justified as the number of wounded begin to pile up and every doctor on board the Ishimura is required to give a helping hand.
Ellie Langford
You stay back. You wanna talk, talk from there. And don't say you're here to help. The last person who said that tried to kill me.
Played by: Sonita Henry
A Class 4 heavy equipment pilot working on the Sprawl when all Hell breaks loose. She and a few of her friends lasted for a while, but by the time Isaac finds her she is the only one left. She is at first reluctant to trust Isaac, but goes along with his plan to destroy the new Marker and stop the Necromorphs.
- Action Girl: Best shown in 2. A CEC Class Four Heavy Equipment pilot who can easily fly while under pressure, kicks major ass, and calls Isaac a nerd. Sadly, while she doesn’t face Chickification by not being overtly feminine and still helps Isaac quite a bit with her knowledge, she becomes a Faux Action Girl in 3.
- Action Survivor: Like Isaac, Ellie has no military experience, and is just a pilot. Despite this, she's one of the very few characters to survive a Dead Space game. And only one of three people who has survived two outbreaks.
- Aesop Amnesia: Just like Isaac in Dead Space 3, Ellie seems to have completely forgotten that Marker signals drive people insane, claiming that she has no idea why her boyfriend, Norton, is becoming increasingly hostile toward Isaac and possessive towards her. This is after she had survived the Necromorph outbreak on the sprawl, has seen first hand what Marker signals do to people, and was so knowledgeable on Markers that she was the lead on an expedition to find the source of the Markers and shut them down.
- Ambiguously Brown: Ellie's apparently modeled after her voice actress Sonita Henry, who's mixed-race.
- Badass Bookworm: When you first meet her, she's fighting off Necromorphs. No big deal, right? Except she knows they can rip her apart, and is safely taking them apart from behind a security fence. No one else thought to do this in the chaos of the outbreak.
- Big Damn Heroes: At the very end of 2, Ellie manages to save Isaac while piloting a ship and successfully escape.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Starts of rather cold towards Isaac but warms up and even in the final chapter goes out of her own way to save him to stop him from committing a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Determinator: After Stross gouges out her eye her RIG shows she only has about 15% health left, yet she struggles on and continues to kick ass unabated.
- Electronic Eye: In 3, having two eyes of different colors and no coordination problems. Isaac even mentions having gotten it. It was a replacement after all.
- Eyepatch of Power: After Stross gouges out her right eye roughly two thirds of the way into 2, she covers the wound up with an medical eyepatch. This doesn't hinder her for the rest of the game.
- Eye Scream: When you reach a certain point in 2, Stross goes nuts and tries to impale her through the eye-socket with a screwdriver. He "just" gouges it out instead due to her struggling against him.
- Faux Action Girl: In Dead Space 3. Granted, she is still a helpful asset to Isaac and narrowly avoids Chickification by helping him out and not being a Damsel in Distress for the most part. However, she hardly does anything to defend herself onscreen despite having to be shown as an Action Girl in the previous game and the only time her skill at piloting comes up is during times when flying isn’t hectic.
- Girlish Pigtails: In 2, despite a severe girlishness deficiency otherwise.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Her eye gets gouged out by a madman with a screwdriver, and her response to this is to insist Isaac owes her a new one after kicking the assailant's ass. It's probably the adrenaline keeping her going.
- Second Love: Zig-zagged. She and Isaac became a couple after the events of 2, but she broke up with him by the start of 3, ultimately starting a relationship with Captain Norton. After Norton's betrayal and death, their love blossoms again.
- Stiff Upper Lip: Given her mixed heritage and accent, she's British. She pretty mellow for losing an eye.
- Survivor Guilt: She was the only member of her CEC crew who escaped the CEC facility on the Sprawl and displays some shades of survivor's guilt. She's reluctant to team with Isaac at first, and is not happy when Isaac forces her to leave on a shuttle while he prepares to go off on a Heroic Sacrifice. In 3, she does it again.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: To a minor degree in 3, as she's revealed to have broken up with Isaac because he refused to face his demons in lieu of simply running from his past. While her frustration is somewhat understandable and it would put pressure on any relationship; considering she knows Isaac's survived two Necromorph outbreaks, spent three years being tortured in a hospital for information and been subjected to a ton of Mind Rape by the Markers, you'd think she'd understand why he's so shell-shocked and reticent to deal with it?
- Uncertain Doom: She ends the third game by shocking back to Earth, which Awakening reveals is already being fed upon by the other Brethren Moons. However, she may be able to escape being eaten because she's already in an FTL capable ship, though there really isn't anywhere to flee to. Word of God is that they were planning to have her be the protagonist of Dead Space 4, which apparently would have taken place after the destruction of Earth.
Factions
Necromorphs
The reanimated dead, revived and reshaped by the alien Markers into twisted forms. Extremely durable and uncontrollably violent, they are driven to hunt and kill any living organism they find to expand their own numbers for an unknown, yet sinister purpose.
- Animalistic Abomination: The eldritch nature of this affliction is made extremely clear through the effects of the Markers and the godlike beings tied to them, and it has absolutely no qualms with infecting the bodies of animals, as seen with the Dog Lurkers in 3 and the Necromorph fish in Martyr.
- Assimilation Plot: Each and every Necromorph ranging from the mightiest to the smallest is driven by the single-minded desire to trigger a Convergence Event, which if completed would result in all life on the targeted world being merged into a Brethren Moon, a titanic undead monstrosity that serves as the final (and most dangerous) stage of an outbreak. This creature will then travel from world to world slaughtering and assimilating their populations until everything in its vicinity has been absorbed.
- Achilles' Heel: Despite their proven track record of overrunning population centres within hours of the first bodies reanimating, regardless of any attempts to quell the infestation, they are entirely dependent on a Marker to remain active. Destroying it will cause the outbreak to grind to a sudden and immediate stop. That said, it will require the complete and utter obliteration of the Marker to accomplish this, as even a minute shard will continue to transmit the energy signature keeping the corpses on their feet.
- Ax-Crazy: With the exception of the Guardians and Wheezers, each and every Necromorph encountered is a snarling volcano of undying malice out to savagely murder anything living that crosses their line of sight. Even when taking into account that it's what the Markers made them for, the gratuitous violence they inflict upon their victims goes far beyond mere brutal efficiency and straight into blatant sadism, sometimes going so overboard with killing their target that they actually hamper the infection process because of just how mutilated the body is afterwards.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Despite Unitology revering them as benevolent bringers of salvation, there isn’t a single Necromorph encountered throughout the franchise that has been anything more than a pitiless, merciless killer destroying everything in their path.
- An Arm and a Leg: One of the quickest and most efficient ways to take down a Necromorph besides burning them is to dismember the creature. Some Necromorphs take more punishment than others however, so it’s recommended to simply keep cutting apart the abomination until it finally dies.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Due to being undead, Necromorphs are perfectly capable of surviving and thriving in space unprotected with no side effect whatsoever.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In a way, the Unitologists were right about ascending to become one through death. It’s just that the process involves being gruesomely butchered, turned into a hyper-violent, twisted zombie and then, if allowed to get that far, being whisked into orbit by the Marker and merging with the others sucked up with you to become a moon-sized Undead Abomination. Fortunately for many Unitologists involved, they’re either ignorant of the true nature of their ascension or are so insane that even when they know the truth, want it to happen anyway.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: Anyone who happens to be unlucky enough to be killed by a Necromorph will likely be horrifically and extensively mutilated by the time their attacker is finished with them. However, because the Necromorphs are extremely hardy creatures, killing one usually involves inflicting at least the same degree of extensive physical trauma upon them. As a result, many infected find themselves being impaled, torn and chopped apart by clued-in survivors, brutalised in much the same way as their victims out of necessity.
- The Berserker: Their disregard for injuries and straightforward attack patterns make them this. Only Infectors and forms with ranged capability do more than just rush their target and hope they can kill their victim before being shot to pieces, but even then they don't seem to pay too much attention to taking cover when fired upon. The only true exception is the Stalkers, who actively use cover and strategise fairly efficiently when hunting prey.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Doesn't get much weirder than a hive-mind species made of morphed and twisted reanimated necrotic flesh that are created, resurrected and controlled by an alien psychic signal from even more massive members of the species. Also the fact that limbs are their weakness; since the only goals of the Necromorphs are to kill and further spread the infection, by removing their limbs and thus their mobility, there's little point in an infected individual remaining active. Isaac might not be so much killing them, but simply rendering them
dormant. Heck, they defy biology as we know it. - Body Horror: Almost all of them were, in some form, human at one point, although the larger ones tend toward several corpses fixed together. It sometimes goes up to a truly absurd degree where you can get confronted by what was once a normal corpse and now a borderline-Eldritch Abomination in terms of physiology.
- As if that wasn't enough, Dead Space 3 reveals that Necromorphs become even more disfigured as time goes on. The S.C.A.F personnel that had succumbed to the infection some two centuries prior are even worse off than their freshly turned brethren, as not only do they seem to have become mummified in the years since, but some among their number are shown to be sprouting multiple sets of redundant limbs from random parts of their bodies.
- Body of Bodies: The Markers can merge infected bodies together to create even larger and formidable creatures. Necromorphs such as the Brute and Tripod are made from between three to a dozen corpses, while boss Necromorphs can be made out of hundreds to tens of thousands of bodies. And then there’s the Brethren Moons, which are composed of at least millions to trillions of infected organisms per member.
- Burn the Undead: Besides dismemberment, burning the infected is another way of quickly dispatching them, with all but the strongest succumbing to a flamethrower within seconds of exposure.
- Came Back Wrong: Each and every Necromorph was once a living creature, twisted into a hideous, bloodthirsty monster after their death through exposure to the Marker signal or the Infector variants.
- Creepy Long Fingers: Some subspecies have elongated, clawed fingers.
- Elite Mooks: Several have a black version with Glowing Eyes of Doom and enhanced strength.
- Evil Is Visceral: All necromorphs are warped and twisted, with a proprensity for Combat Tentacles and claws as long as your forearm.
- Evil Takes a Nap: If for some reason the Necromorphs are unable to trigger a Convergence Event during an outbreak, they’ll eventually curl up and enter a state of dormancy until someone stumbles upon them and wakes them up again. In 3, the infected members of the S.C.A.F forces are revealed to have spent the last two-hundred years in this state before Isaac and company rouse them and they resume their killing spree.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Most of their names are exactly what they are or do.
- Humanoid Abomination: Any humanoid variant of Necromorph is this by default, as they are horribly mutated corpses reanimated and driven by an ancient, incomprehensible Hive Mind that would cause the psyche of those even slightly exposed to it to succumb to madness and suicide.
- Human Aliens:
- Completely subverted, but in an ironic way, since all the Necromorphs are made from human corpses and have just enough recognizable human parts for a fully-horrific Uncanny Valley feel.
- After the going into the Eye Scream machine in Dead Space 2, their screams and grunts sound distinctly less animalistic and more like the shrieks of humans in agonizing, unconscionable pain.
- High-Voltage Death: Another reliable way to kill Necromorphs besides fire and dismemberment is by electrocution.
- Immune to Bullets: A downplayed case, but still a notable one. While Necromorphs are not bulletproof and it is possible to kill a Necromorph with body shots, it requires massive quantities of gunfire just to bring one down. Many people have ended up falling victim to the creatures after plugging them with magazine after magazine to little effect, before inevitably getting rushed and jumped on by their zombie gunshot victim.
- It Can Think: While savagely violent, animalistic and bloodthirsty beyond compare, Necromorphs are not stupid. Time after time, the undead have proven themselves to be smart enough to set up ambushes, hunt in packs of mixed individuals, dodge and time their attacks to even the odds against armed survivors, play dead to trick a victim into striking range and openly utilise stealth to stalk and surprise their targets.
- Along with the above, there are also subtle signs that while the Markers may reanimate and guide the creatures, it does not outright control them. Throughout the series, nearly all of the Necromorphs encountered have shown a sadistic preference for toying with and brutalising their victims (with some of their kills being so protracted and gruesome that it becomes flat-out torture), with a deliberation and gratuitousness that goes far beyond that of a mindless beast simply piling up bodies for Convergence. And, as seen with the Unitologist Slashers on the Sprawl that are still twisting their hands in prayer even in undeath (a now-useless gesture in their new existence), as well as a log recorded by a S.C.A.F Soldier reporting on how the undead still seemed to recognise him even as they tried to break into his base, it's implied the infected are still self-aware on some level.
- Losing Your Head: While Slashers are the most reactive about it, most Necromorphs that still have a head won’t care too much about being decapitated and will usually keep on going unless they’ve sustained too much damage.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: The Necromorph infection can more or less mold the biomass of its host bodies like clay to get what it wants out of them. As a result, the array of abilities and weapons that Necromorphs can possess is almost limitless. Tentacles, blades, claws and stingers are just the tip of a humongous iceberg.
- Made of Iron: Most Necromorphs are extremely tough creatures, with even a single individual able to soak up dozens and dozens of bullets to almost no effect. Even when survivors find out how to quickly and efficiently kill them, it can take prolonged fire from military grade ordnance capable of smashing bones and flesh apart like paper, or multiple blasts from mining equipment meant to cut through rock and ore just to chop off a single limb.
- Meat Puppet: The Necromorphs are ultimately organic meat puppets under the telekinetic control of the Markers, which in turn, are controlled by the Brethren Moons.
- Monster from Beyond the Veil: A newly-turned Necromorph is a violent, insane undead beast that will attempt to attack and kill any uninfected person in their vicinity. Even friends or family, regardless of the bonds they may have had in their former life, are no more safe from their unimaginable brutality. Nearly all traces of the host’s personality is gone, and if they are still in there, they’re not all that inclined on making it known.
- Mystical Plague: The Necromorph infection holds some of the traits of one as it is created by mysterious energy signals from an artifact of dubious origin, reanimates corpses into violent and grotesque zombies that don’t so much subvert biology as completely defy it and scrambles the minds of any living subjects within its radius into Ax-Crazy lunatics to help look for viable future hosts. Even discounting the involvement of the Brethren Moons, it’s such a strange affliction in nearly everything it does that it resembles less of a disease and more the result of a particularly messed up Necromancer. It turns out, there's a very good reason for that: It is.
- Nightmare Face: All of them, since they are based on human bodies. These can range from relatively tame, such as a blood-streaked face untouched by damage but wearing an expression of blank indifference or snarling homicidal fury, to a disjointed, mismatched mess of teeth and tentacles, sometimes with the skull exposed.
- No Ontological Inertia: Want to stop an outbreak dead in its tracks? Target the Marker(s) behind it. Because the Necromorphs are entirely dependent on the eldritch energy they emit to keep "living", destroying the obelisk(s) feeding them their strength will result in each and every one of them dissolving into rotten slime, their bodies falling apart all the way down to the cellular level as the signal keeping them going is cut.
- Organic Technology: They're more like organitek robots jury-rigged out of corpses than proper zombies. Without a marker signal within range, they degenerate into raw biomass (read: rot away into slop).
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Necromorphs are spread by a pathogen that reanimates and mutates dead bodies. But the person has to be dead for it to work, no slowly becoming weaker until they die. That said, the person can be dead remarkably recently (as in immediately) and it still counts, which is probably why the Necromorphs infect by stabbing with giant mandibles. They can also shrug off body shots, headshots and decapitation with little issue and can only be put down with extreme bodily trauma such as dismemberment or incineration, are just as fast and agile as they were when alive if not faster, are effectively immortal and will eventually curl up and go dormant if left unable to hunt.
- Perpetual-Motion Monster: Necromorphs don't rot and can survive centuries with little to no problem, suffer no damage from being frozen, and to top it off rarely if ever seem to need to eat.
- Precautionary Corpse Disposal: Anyone who dies or is killed during a Necromorph outbreak, regardless of the cause, will reanimate as another undead monster should they attract an Infector to their location. However, even the bodies who elude such a fate will transform eventually, albeit at a significantly slower rate, through simple exposure to the Marker signals permeating the outbreak zone. Even the corpses of slain Necromorphs are not safe to be around as they will eventually reconstitute themselves and return for round two. As a result, even the untouched dead are ticking time bombs, and at least one group of survivors has been known to go out of their way to cremate the Necromorphs they put down to see that they don't rise again.
- Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: Averted, which is unusual for zombie-archetype monsters. Instead of headshots, the quickest way to take them down is to shoot their limbs, since that prevents them from moving.
- Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration:
- Necromorphs, despite their appearance, do not rot and appear to get stronger the longer they last; Necromorphs formed 200 years ago are equally as potent as Necromorphs infected in the modern day. Shooting them in the midsection does little damage, while dismembering them only disables them; they can get reinfected and come back later. Only by destroying the entire body (whether it be by grinding it up, melting it, or through gratuitous use of Isaac's stomp ability) will permanently put an end to them.
- The Regenerators take this even further, being capable of rapidly regenerating damaged limbs and surviving all but catastrophic damage.
- Super-Strength: The Markers transforms anything not required in the mutation into additional musculature, making them much, much harder to overcome in close quarters.
- Undead Abomination: Mysterious creatures born from the corpses of other living creatures, they overrun planets until they combine into grotesque living moons. Given that they come from strange, alien markers, it is unlikely that they are natural.
- Unstoppable Rage: Nearly every Necromorph is permanently locked into a psychotically violent killing frenzy that only comes close to abating when there is no signs of any life whatsoever in the area. The only other way to stop it is to kill them dead.
- The Virus: Zigzagged. While there is clear evidence of a pathogenic factor, most obviously the Infectors and the strange yellow fluid they inject into corpses to transform them, it's clear that this is merely an accelerant for the outbreak rather than the cause itself, that being genetic manipulation via an electromagnetic pulse emitted from the Markers.
- You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: Necromorphs are some of the most insanely tough and adaptable undead out there, capable of surviving all but the most devastating trauma and needing to be literally shot to pieces to put down. However, even this is a stopgap more than anything, as the infected individual will only stay dead for so long before they reform, sometimes into something else, and return seeking revenge. As a result, only complete destruction of the body, all the way down to the very last scrap of meat and bone, will be enough to kill a Necromorph for good.
- Zombify the Living: Under certain circumstances, it is possible for the Necromorph pathogen to start transforming living hosts. One case of this was Grote Guthe, who began to change into an Infector immediately after jabbing a sample of viral culture in his arm with a needle while playing around with the stuff.
Earth Government Colonial Alliance
The main government of Earth and its colonies. EarthGov came into power at the start of the 24th century during the Secession War and replaces the Sovereign Colonies. Their military force is known as the Earth Defense Force.
- Great Offscreen War: Two of them. The first being the civil war between the Sovereign Colonies and the faction that eventually became EarthGov, which took place two hundred years before the events of the games. Then there was a war between EarthGov and the Church of Unitology which occurred between the second and third games. EarthGov won the first, obviously, and lost the second.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: EarthGov is a brutal government that doesn't blink at using torture, murder, and staging terrorist attacks to maintain its power. But it's still leagues better than the Church of Unitology, with EarthGov at least trying to keep things from getting too bad.
- Meet the New Boss: It's strongly implied that EarthGov really isn't that much different than their predecessors, the Sovereign Colonies, both of them being tyrannical regimes.
- The Remnant: By 3, EarthGov is on the ropes, having lost the war against the Unitologists. Most of the colonies and outposts have fallen to the Unitologists, who are unleashing Necromorph outbreaks wherever there are Marker research facilities. All EarthGov has left is Earth itself and, with the colony on Luna destroyed, it's likely only a matter of days before Earth falls.
- Too Dumb to Live: Unlike The Sovereign Colonies, who at least were intelligent enough to place their Marker test sites on uninhabited worlds where they could do little harm should they get uppity, EarthGov would go on to conduct their own Marker experiments near or within the heart of major population centers. As a result, if and/or when an outbreak occurs they'll end up with massive collateral damage at best. And at worst, if the architects have been assimilated and there are enough bodies to pull it off? An extinction-level event for all of humanity.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: EarthGov aren't exactly the nicest of people, but they're at least trying to keep society functional and prevent the extinction of the human race. The main reason they're experimenting on the Markers is to try and solve the energy crisis that is dooming human civilization.
Concordance Extraction Corporation
In the wake of Earth's energy crisis, the CEC introduce planet cracking as a solution. With the use of giant Planet Cracker-class starships, the CEC commercialized deep space mining and become one of the largest company in the Solar System.
Church of Unitology
A religion founded by Michael Altman after the discovery of the Black Marker. The Church believes in Unity and that humanity will be eventually "made whole" by the markers through an event known as Convergence. By the events of the third game, the Church becomes more violent, with a group of militarized fanatics known as the Circle committing acts of terrorism at Marker Research sites.
- Ax-Crazy: Due to the influence of the Markers they worship, Unitology tends to be a breeding ground for homicidal maniacs, to the degree that it's easier to count the Unitologists who don't go postal at the first opportunity.
- Apocalypse Cult: What the Church Of Unitology is at heart, regardless of the pretences they hide behind or how each member chooses to express their faith. Even discounting the more proactive and murderous of their flock, everything they do, from how they treat their dead to their entire belief system, revolves around Convergence. And while they try their hardest to paint it as a rapturous experience, the horrific reality of the event in question involves humanity being remade into an undead god-beast through indescribable madness, cruelty and butchery.
- Belief Makes You Stupid: As detailed below, Unitologists don't even know what Convergence truly is, yet they'll throw away the lives of themselves and others by the dozens and without a care in the world to see that it comes to pass. Most of them even go so far as to venerate the Necromorphs themselves as an ascended form of life when many others would rightfully see them as Ax-Crazy undead horrors and react accordingly. It's implied that their religion not only stems from those first driven mad by exposure to the Black Marker on Earth, but that sincere belief in its teachings actually makes a person more vulnerable to Marker madness.
- Church of Happyology: Unitology's operating structure is clearly corrupt and built to this trope's mold. They pressure members to perpetually seek to climb the ranks in order to pursue both the esoteric rewards of greater understanding of the church's secrets and religious lore and the literal reward of obtaining preservation aboard one of the chuch's mausoleum ships, thus preserving their remains for Convergence. But to get up the ranks requires ever-escalating sacrifices of loyalty and, especially, cash, further manipulating the victim into binding themselves to the church over all else.
- The Fundamentalist: The uncompromising dogma the religion instills in its believers along with the mentally corrosive effects of their objects of worship ensure that many Unitologists are transformed into Ax-Crazy hardliners hellbent on forcing Convergence on everyone around them, whether they like it or not, simply because they think they know better than those they're victimising.
- Join or Die: At their worst, the Unitologists will happily devolve into this line of thinking. In their mind, all of humanity must be made whole and they will not take no for an answer. If anyone refuses to go along with it, they'll simply be killed in order to railroad them into accepting their perverse paradise.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: It becomes clear that even the most devoted Unitologist has no idea what Convergence really is and the leaders are simply making up as they go. Both Danik and Mercer for example have different views on how Convergence and the Markers work and once the former learns about the Brethren Moons, his view changes again.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: At first glance, their ramblings about humanity ascending into a heavenly unity through death does sound pretty nice. However, the fact that they often try to force Convergence on others through acts of murder, without giving two figs about their choice in the matter, greatly sours the sense of altruism behind their actions to no small degree. In 3, the mystery of Convergence and what it means for humanity is finally given an answer, in the process revealing Unitology as little more than a bunch of bloodthirsty psychotics, working, unwittingly or otherwise, on behalf of the Brethren Moons to doom the human race to a Fate Worse than Death.
- Path of Inspiration: Unitology is a textbook example, using pretences of benevolence and promises of paradise beyond death to entice possible converts in. But behind all the sickly sweet embellishments lies a malevolent and fanatical death cult, hellbent on ensuring the only future that humanity has left is that of being tortured, hateful undead, twisted forever by their profane ascension into a hideous mockery of godhood.
- Religion of Evil: While they don't look or really act the part under normal circumstances, sometimes to the point that their whole talk of "paradise and unity through death" does sound fairly appealing at first glance, it turns out they are really just pretty good at hiding their darker nature. Behind closed doors, they reveal themselves as fanatical psychopaths dedicated to carrying out the will of the Markers and the dark gods that speak through them, many of their number eager and willing to brutalise and butcher as many and as much as possible to realise their goal of ascending to their eternal paradise, an afterlife so hellish and twisted that it would shatter the mind of all who gazed upon it like glass.
- Resignations Not Accepted: Once you are a member of the Church, you are a member for life. Anyone who even dares to leave the religion will be considered an enemy to humanity and pay a terrible price. To counteract this, the Church's neuropsychiatrists will hypnotize any members attempting to leave to commit suicide, which was what happened to Olivia Clarke in the 2023 remake.
- The Quisling: The more fanatical of the Church tend to veer towards this, doing all they can to assist the Necromorphs in any way possible. The more short-sighted members tend to go on spontaneous killing sprees, commit suicide in a spot where they know the infection can claim them, or both, while the more calculatingly vicious among their number go so far as to instigate outbreaks, all the while undermining any parties or factions that may be capable of weathering the impending storm.
Miscellaneous Spin-Off Characters
Dead Space (comic)
Abraham Neumann
A P-Sec officer and the protagonist of a comic prequel to the game.
- Despair Event Horizon: It’s very clear by the time he records his warning log that the hellish events surrounding the colony and its infection have destroyed his will to live. By the end of it he just simply walks away, unarmed and vulnerable, into the derelict, monster-infested halls of the lost colony after giving a final warning not to bother looking for him. It’s not hard to imagine his intent, nor his likely fate.
- Noble Bigot with a Badge: Has a very dim view of Unitology, based on his ex-wife's devotion to it. He's not hesitant about spouting off his distrust of it, even around his Unitologist partner. Despite this, he is generally trying to help people. Given what happens to many Unitologists later, it isn't completely unjustified.
- Only Sane Man: Not quite, but he figured the Marker was bad news as soon as it was dug up.
- Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: In his final recording, he tells the watcher to order the lost colony nuked off the face of the planet to stop the infection. He eventually gets his wish in a roundabout way thanks to Clarke.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After leaving a final recording, he wanders off into the Necromorph-filled hallways of the colony, likely killed by them. Isaac can find his recording in-game.
Dead Space Mobile
Vandal (Karrie Norton)
Played by: Anna Vocino
A newly converted Unitologist who takes on a secret mission to sabotage the Sprawl, believing it is some sort of protest against EarthGov, but is actually a way for the Necromorphs to reach the Sprawl. After a My God, What Have I Done? moment, Vandal starts working with Tiedmann to keep the Necromorphs from reaching the residential part of the Sprawl. The protagonist of the Dead Space iOS game.
- Action Girl: Being female in no way stops her from fighting her way through a spaceborne Zombie Apocalypse. Of course, it's not initially revealed that she's female.
- The Atoner: After causing the Necromorph outbreak on the Sprawl, Vandal works to keep it contained.
- Badass Bookworm: She's an engineer much like Isaac, and while she may have died at the end of the game, she survived constant necromorph attacks more than most.
- Chainsaw Good: In contrast to Isaac, who was limited to punching Necromorphs, Vandal starts out with a one-handed plasma saw (a chainsaw with an energy blade) for melee attacks.
- Left Hanging: After killing the Boss Necromorph, Vandal suffers serious wounds, and messages Tiedemann, saying they aren't going to make it. Soon afterwards, all that's left is their helmet, and a trail of blood. Whether Vandal escaped, or was turned into a Necromorph is unknown.
- In 2 you can find her second to last audio log and her first one in that order, both near corpses. Whether either of them are her corpses is unknown, though it is worth nothing neither of them are wearing RI Gs, though even if neither corpse is her's it doesn't mean she's still alive.
- One-Steve Limit: There's nothing to suggest that Karrie Norton is related to Robert Norton.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Vandal is the codename given to Vandal by Tyler Redikov, Vandal's handler.
- Samus Is a Girl: The shocking twist behind Vandal's true identity in the ending proves that this trope is not dead yet.
- Sanity Slippage: Vandal struggles with this throughout the game.Vandal: ''I'm losing it... I'm fucking losing it!"
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: As far as she knew, her vandalism were just acts of protest against EarthGov. She had no idea what necromorphs were, much less that Unitologists were planning an invasion with them on the Sprawl.
Dead Space: Martyr
Michael Altman
- Dramatic Irony: Altman is not the founder of Unitology, but a figurehead used by his assassins to take the heat off them.
- Historical Villain Upgrade: In-Universe, though Historical Hero Upgrade also applies, from the view of Unitologists. Non-Unitologists view him as the founder of a sinister cult, while Unitologists view him as a visonary who discovered the path to salvation. In reality, he was just a scientist who wanted to study a strange artifact, then tried to get rid of it once he realised how dangerous it was, wanting nothing to do with Unitology.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His discovery of the Black Marker setup the plot of the franchise; the creation of the Red Marker, the Aegis VII incident, the creation of the Church of Unitology and worst of all, leading the Brethren Moons to Earth. Tragically, he actually realised it was trouble and tried to get rid of it, only to be assassinated by the Unitologists.
Creeper
An amorphous necromorph in Dead Space: Martyr.
- The Assimilator: Absorbs everything organic in its path. It’s even seen devouring still-living humans and Necromorphs alike.
- Blob Monster: Basically the mobile phase of the Meat Moss found throughout the Ishimura. Think a slime-mold made out if rotting skin cells instead of fungal spores.
- Implacable Man: Only fire has any effect on the creature, and even then the exposure doesn’t kill it, only make it back off enough to give Altman and the other survivors some breathing room.
Splitface
A spider-like necromorph seen in Dead Space: Martyr.
- All Your Powers Combined: It's got a Lurker's whipping tentacles, an Exploder's Action Bomb attack, a Spitter's organic grenades (although it launches skulls instead of tumors), and a Brute's size.
- Captain Ersatz: of one of the monsters from The Thing (1982).
- Multiple Head Case: Possesses several heads instead of one, and they can detach from the main mass and attack prey on their own, like a Divider.
Black Marker
An alien artifact that was believed to have arrived on Earth via the asteroid that killed the dinosaur 65 million years ago. Discovered by Michael Altman in 2214, the Black Marker is used by the Sovereign Colonies, and later EarthGov, to create more Markers to solve the energy crisis on Earth as well as revered by the Church of Unitlogy.
- Came from the Sky: It is belived that the Black Marker was sent to Earth by an asteroid (or is the asteroid'') during the Cretaceous period.
- Irony: The Brethren Moons send Markers across to other planets to hasten the native lifeforms' evolution but for the Black Marker, it wiped out the dinosaurs.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Black Markers are sent by the Brethren Moon to a planet populated with life and were thought to help in the evolution of certain species to sentient beings. Once discovered, the species will be given codes to create more Markers. After triggering a Necromorph outbreak and enough bodies have been gathered (which include the Markers creators), a Convergence Event will be triggered, in which the bodies and a good chunk of Earth are pulled into the sky to create the final form of the Necromorph, a Brethren Moon.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Black Marker's last known status was being sunk into the ocean by Altman to prevent it from causing a Convergence Event. Its current status in the present day is unknown.
