Warning: Beware of spoilers. Proceed at your own risk!
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Carrington Institute and allies
Joanna Dark
Joanna "Perfect" Dark
An agent of the Carrington Institute. Gained the codename "Perfect Dark" due to her perfect scores during training. Very competent all-round agent. She has the highest recorded training scores, resulting in the creation of a new class of training grade (A++). Joanna is inexperienced in the field, and her first assignment could not be of more importance - find and rescue Dr. Caroll.
- Action Dress Rip: When fighting to defend the Carrington Institute from the joint Skedar/dataDyne forces, Joanna is wearing a long dress (because she was to attend a three-way meeting between the President, Carrington Institute and the Maians), which she rips towards the end of the intro cutscene.
- Aggressive Negotiations: When Daniel is held hostage at his villa, Joanna is sent in to rescue him, and the defenseless negotiator, when dataDyne threaten her. On Perfect Agent difficulty, Joanna is the negotiator.
- Alien Abduction: Joanna and Cassandra are both taken prisoner by the Skedar near the end of the game. Cassandra sacrifices herself, as creating a distraction is her best chance at getting revenge against the aliens who used her. Joanna ultimately takes down the Skedar leader/high priest and ends the Maian-Skedar war.
- Big "YES!": Joanna gives one when she kills the Skedar leader. Which leads to a Little "No" when the bombardment starts immediately after.
- Bounty Hunter: Worked in this business with her father before joining the Carrington Institute.
- Boyish Short Hair: Her hairstyle in the first game. Her later designs show slightly longer hair.
- Corporate Samurai: She's a secret agent that works for the private Carrington Institute.
- Establishing Character Moment: Amidst her briefing at the start of the original and as her second line in the game, Joanna makes it clear she's not afraid to get blood on her hands from one single question about dataDyne staff:Are they all expendable?
- The Kingslayer: She defeats the fanatical Skedar leader/high priest, finally ending a galactic war that lasted for thousands of years.
- Non-Human Sidekick: After saving Elvis from Area 51 in gratitude he accompanies her on CI missions.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: She shuts down Cassandra's proposal to come work for her, making it clear her loyalties are to Carrington and her colleagues there.
- Spy Catsuit: Her most iconic outfit.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She doesn't get along well with Jonathan as the two mock each other often while on life-or-death missions. Joanna doesn't like the fact Jonathan uses a magnum for covert work and secretly accuses him of Compensating for Something.
- Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: Her backstory is this as Joanna has exceptional skills and fast reflexes...in the Sims room. She hasn't had much experience on the field. As a young CI operative, her first mission is to extract Dr. Caroll from dataDyne HQ undetected and unharmed, but neither the Institute nor Joanna realise that her first assignment will lead them to discover the secrets of dataDyne's technological advancements, and ultimately, the fate of the human race.
Daniel Carrington
Daniel Carrington
Intelligent patriarchal scientist/entrepreneur, and founder of the Carrington Institute which distributes new technologies into the public domain. Plans all missions carried out by his agents, and runs each operation direct from a link in his office. He has strange tastes in clothes.
- Big Good: Not the main protagonist, but the ultimate leader of the good guys.
- Distressed Dude: He was held hostage at his private villa by dataDyne. A message from Cassandra De Vries laid out the terms: Daniel's life for the return of the Sapient. What the dataDyne goons didn't know was Dr. Caroll was already at the villa when they struck. Joanna saves him from the hitmen, but not before they were able to torture Carrington to disclose the A.I's whereabouts.
- Expy: His in-game model is loosely based on James Robertson Justice's character, Sir Lancelot Spratt, from the Doctor... Series of films.
- First Contact: The Maians watched over humanity until feeling it had matured enough to where they could reveal themselves. Daniel jumped the gun in 1985AD by contacting a Maian ship in orbit. He put forward a plan that would help both parties, resulting in accelerated contact between Humans and Maians.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: Carrington sends a message to the Maians asking for help in foiling the conspiracy ongoing in dataDyne, and uncover who is supplying them with radical reversed-engineered technology that rivals what the friendly aliens are providing him with. He's unaware it's the Skedar, who had a missile defence system installed in Nevada, that shoots down the Maian spacecraft, killing all but Elvis abroad.
- Man in a Kilt: In Perfect Dark Zero.
- Meaningful Name: His surname comes from the most intense geomagnetic storm
in recorded history. - The Smart Guy: Daniel's the brains behind CI operations. Even though dataDyne cleverly reverse-engineered Skedar technology to release onto the global market to evade suspicion, Carrington knew the tech was still light years ahead (literally) of what Cassandra's lab boys were capable of months prior. He deduced a rival alien faction to the Maians, had to have partnered with dataDyne. And given how unethical the corporation was behaving recently, they weren't benign aliens.
- Tacky Tuxedo: Colleagues have noted Daniel has some strange tastes in clothes, and can spend hours getting himself ready for big events or celebrations. Joanna remarks they should keep him away from mirrors.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: In Perfect Dark Zero.
Jonathan Steinberg
Jonathan Steinberg/Dark
An agent of the Carrington Institute. He was their top agent before Joanna came along. Jonathan is their most experienced undercover agent. Highly accurate with his chosen weapon, the Magnum Revolver). He's less suited to out-and-out combat. Before Joanna qualified as a CI Agent, he held the honour of having the highest recorded training scores (A+).
- Deadpan Snarker: Carries this in spades towards Joanna as the two, Ace and former-Ace, frequently butt heads while on mission.
- Retcon: Perfect Dark 64 shows his name as Jonathan Dark though it's unclear what relationship he had with Joanna (presumably "Dark" was just the codename the Institute used for special operatives, just as Joanna herself is referred to as "Perfect Dark"). This was retconned to Steinberg in Perfect Dark Zero.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: His weapon is a DY357 Magnum.
- The Rival: To Joanna. They're not enemies, but he often mocks her and she finds him annoying.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: He's not seen again after rescuing Elvis from Area 51... unless the player opts to let him leave with the Maian in the 2-seater spacecraft. If Joanna uses the hoverbike instead, Jonathan makes his reappearance in the "Carrington Institute Defense" mission to drive back the attacking Skedar.
Elvis
Elvis/Aelphaeis Mangarae
A Maian that Joanna rescues from Area 51. He was originally a bodyguard (Protector 1) for the Maian ambassador trying to meet with Daniel Carrington. Elvis has been highly trained in the use of Maian weaponry as well as all field operations. Elvis often contacts Carrington when help is required, and he is willing to help Joanna out as much as he can - especially when the enemy is the Skedar. Despite dataDyne's involvement with the Skedar, Elvis, like all Maians, finds all humans to be extremely fascinating beings.
- Amusing Alien: Joanna's Non-Human Sidekick, who introduces himself with an appropriate Elvis pose, tosses out Bond One-Liners, and who is also Intrigued by Humanity.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: On the Pelagic II mission you'll notice an animation will play (if you wait long enough) showing Elvis smoking and stamping it out when done!
- Destroy the Evidence: After the saucer he was travelling on suffered hostile planetfall, emergency capture protocols were activated on his mission. As such, Protector 1 is allowed to use lethal force against the Area 51 guard while destroying, and preventing research of, vital equipment. One of his objectives is to destroy the damaged saucer to protect the Carrington Institute — this is because Easton's men will discover the similarities between Maian technology and Daniel's 'inventions', which would endanger the CI. Unfortunately for Elvis, Easton already knew about Carrington's allegiance from the Skedar.
- Foreign Culture Fetish: Fascinated by human culture and often wears items from Earth, including an American flag vest.
- The Greys: His appearance is clearly inspired by this.
- Humans Are Special: Elvis, like his race, is a "terraphile", finding Earth and everything about it amazing. As not all alien factions in the galaxy or known universe are friendly to humans, mankind can thank its lucky stars to have him as an unwavering ally.
- Intergenerational Friendship: He's in his "early 300s" whereas Joanna is in her early 20s. Yet Elvis thinks the world of her and becomes a steadfast friend and helper against the Skedar forces. When the Maian fleet commences Orbital Bombardment on the Skedar homeworld they've been trying to locate for hundreds of years, he orders his superiors to ceasefire, because Joanna is still on the planet's surface.
- Klingons Love Shakespeare: All Maians have an affinity for humans and their cultures, and Protector One makes no effort to hide his passion, insisting Carrington Institute operatives call him "Elvis" and even later dons the stars and stripes of the USA.
- Ramming Always Works: The 2-seater Maian spacecraft's weapons fail to fire, so Elvis' way of dealing with the Skedar UFO attached to Air Force One is to collide into the umbilical, causing all three craft to crashland onto Victoria Island, in the Arctic Archipelago.
- Really 700 Years Old: Maians are naturally long-lived. He was born in 1703.
- Sole Survivor: Of the specialists sent in to investigate where dataDyne is getting its radical weaponry from, he's the only one to make it out alive, and is taken to Area 51 for dissection. Elvis is able to send out a Distress Call to Carrington before he's subdued again.
- Some Call Me "Tim": His alien name is hard to pronounce, so the humans call him Elvis.
- They Would Cut You Up: What happened to his deceased Maian allies, and what nearly happened to him. Joanna is able to rescue him just in time from the scientists working under Trent Easton.
- Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Wears an American flag vest.
Dr. Caroll
Dr. Caroll
Also known as The Sapient. Dr. Caroll is an A.I. created by dataDyne to decrypt access codes in a downed Cetan ship, a superweapon lying on the bed of the Pacific Ocean. He gained a conscience and decided that his latest assignment was ethically wrong. Caroll kickstarts the events of Perfect Dark by contacting the Carrington Institute for help, who send in Joanna to retrieve him.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: He was created by an evil corporation but turned on them when he gained a conscience.
- Grow Beyond Their Programming: To retrieve the Cetan warship from the Pacific Ocean, the Skedar employ dataDyne to create an AI capable of cracking alien codes and advanced languages. As it did so though, the AI (unlike its makers) developed morals, realizing restarting such a dangerous weapon was not only ethically wrong, but incredibly stupid, as they risked being double-crossed by the Skedar.
- Heroic Sacrifice: By the time Elvis and Joanna arrive, the program to reactivate the Cetan core has come too far to be halted. To destroy the Cetan ship before dataDyne can learn its secrets and obtain its weapons, he triggers a self-destruct.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: dataDyne were alarmed to find their Sapient had developed a conscience, and knew they had to delete Caroll's personality. Joanna is able to delay this by rescuing him. Cassandra's thugs are able to recover the A.I from Carrington and alter its programming. Mr. Blonde is not amused by this development, as its reduced its efficiency to that of a Single-Task Robot. His team are forced to take the Sapient to the Cetan core themselves, endangering them.
- Memory Gambit: He anticipated dataDyne would delete his sentience, so created a backup just in case. Downloading it becomes one of Joanna's secondary objectives, and this copy is used to restore his personality before the Skedar can reactivate the Cetan core.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Joanna succeeds in rescuing him (and Carrington learns plenty about dataDyne's plans, including about Dr. Caroll's backup) but he's ultimately recaptured and forced to resume activating the Cetan megaweapon. The only silver-lining is that Joanna was able to restore his backup, allowing him to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the Skedar test firing it on Earth.
- TV Head Robot: He's basically a floating laptop with eyes on the screen.
The U.S. President
President of the United States of America
A highly-educated, shrewd man of African-American ethnicity. He's trying to do what is right, but is surrounded by people like Trent Easton. He wrongly believes he has his adviser, Trent, under control after refusing the request for the loan of the Pelagic II to the dataDyne Corp. Perceived as being easily led by the majority of political commentators, which is perhaps unfair.
- Corrupt Politician: Defied. His administration and he have no idea that Trent and Cassandra are plotting with an alien race. As such, he's Locked Out of the Loop regarding their plans, and was oblivious to the true reason why they're so desperate to get the Pelagic II deep-sea diving vessel.
- Distressed Dude: Joanna must protect the President from his treacherous National Security Agency adviser, who leads a large contingent of troops and Skedar, aiming to clone and kill him.
- Expendable Clone: He's forced to unwillingly provide a tissue sample so the Skedar can create a mindless clone of him who would loan the Pelagic II without further delay.
- Horrible Judge of Character: He thought Trent was merely ambitious, never once suspecting the power-hungry man of plotting to assassinate him, and use a Meat Puppet clone of him to fool the whole world.
- Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Easton has been manipulating and pressuring him from the beginning of his term in office. Eventually, the President could no longer abide in Trent having the entire country bend over backwards for dataDyne, since his adviser was no longer behaving impartially. He refused his requests...unaware of his adviser's evil "contingency plan".
Velvet Dark
Velvet Dark
Joanna's sister. She is the blonde Player Two character in the N64 Co-Op mode.
- All There in the Manual: Her name and her relationship as Joanna's sister is revealed in interviews and supplementary material.
- Ascended Extra: There was a planned spin-off game of Perfect Dark by Rare, titled "Velvet Dark", with Joanna's sister to feature as the main protagonist, but it was scrapped and never released.
- Bumbling Sidekick: Even though her abilities are shown to be identical to Joanna, unlike Elvis in the later missions, Velvet as an AI Simulant is rather basic and her firepower is not very powerful. This puts her at a disadvantage against heavily armed/shielded guards and especially the Skedar. Velvet's only saving grace is her better defense than the Pugilist.
- Palette Swap: The second player's primary character Velvet, in the N64 game, during most of the co-op missions (before the missions where Jonathan or Elvis become the second-player character). Velvet even resembles Ken to Joanna's Ryu.
dataDyne and allies
Cassandra De Vries
Cassandra De Vries
The CEO of dataDyne. Addicted to power and loathing those above her own status, Cassandra oversees operations from dataDyne's skyscraper HQ, she has agreed to assist the alien Skedar race in exchange for new technology, to help dataDyne take the lead from Carrington. She's prepared to do extremely unscrupulous things in order to get ahead of her competition, namely Daniel Carrington, whom she deeply despises.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Cassandra serves as the primary early antagonist and the catalyst for much of the plot, only to be hunted down by the Skedar when they fail to secure the Cetan superweapon. She promptly pulls a Heel–Face Door-Slam Heroic Sacrifice, creating a distraction to allow Joanna to escape their holding cell. But explicitly makes it clear she's doing it for revenge, NOT redemption.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: A CEO willing to work with alien invaders, steal from the government, and murder people.
- Enemy Mine: Sacrifices herself to help Joanna to get revenge on the Skedar.
- Green-Eyed Monster: She hates playing second fiddle to anyone, and loathes Daniel for this reason. As Carrington is backed by the Maians releasing advanced technology into the public domain, she couldn't compete. That is, until the Skedar approached her with a similar deal she practically jumped at.
- Iron Lady: A wealthy, powerful, older British woman.
- Jerkass Has a Point: She has to remind Easton that he may fail if Carrington has pieced together enough evidence of their conspiracy to call in the Maians as reinforcements. Likewise she rebukes Joanna and Mr. Blonde both as fools who wouldn't dare shoot her. And she's not wrong, as killing her in either case, causes a mission failure.
- Pet the Dog: A mild example is where she not only refuses to accept Mr. Blonde's reproval for the Sapient developing morals, but refuses to throw any of her dataDyne employees under the bus either. As she put it, there was no way anyone could have predicted that.
- You Have Failed Me: Subverted. What the Skedar intend to do to her. She disappeared without a trace when the Carrington Institute came looking for her, but failed to hide from the warmongering aliens. Though, she has no intentions of going the same way as Easton did.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Taunts both Joanna and Mr. Blonde as doing so would fail the mission, and calls in security. In Joanna's case she can knock out De Vries before she can alert more guards. In the Skedar's this is much harder to do, as she's right next to the alarm and has a gun, thus requires some craftiness with the cloaking device.
- Younger Than They Look: Joanna often calls her "old woman", but Cassandra's actual age is only 39 according to the manual.
Trent Easton
Trent Easton
The corrupt director of the National Security Agency. Has a friendship of sorts with Cassandra De Vries, although it operates more like a partnership of interest. Both are co conspirators in the Skedar plot to retrieve the Cetan superweapon. Trent's eager to get his hands on some of the Skedar's technology and is always pestering the President for more and more control over government facilities.
- Asshole Victim: Trent was a willing pawn in the Skedar's schemes, but overestimated his own usefulness to them, and dies an Undignified Death in a "You Have Failed Me For The Last Time" moment establishing The Reveal of the Mr. Blondes all being evil aliens. It's hard to feel sorry for him, as he's caused the deaths of people and friendly Maian alike, and would've killed many more, had Joanna not foiled his schemes.
- Bling-Bling-BANG!: Owns the gold-plated DY357-LX revolver.
- Deflector Shields: He has one that keeps him from being killed before the plot mandates.
- Dirty Coward: Is heavily shielded and often runs away laughing whenever Joanna confronts him. This doesn't save him from the Skedar in the end.
- Expy: He's modelled after John Travolta as he appeared in the 1978 movie Grease
- Government Agency of Fiction: In the game, the NSA is as powerful as the Secret Service, functioning like it's Easton's private army. He orders the men loyal to him to join the dataDyne corporation and Skedar in an attempt to lead a coup against the President. In Real Life, the NSA is the United States government's signals intelligence branch and deals with cryptography and other fairly boring stuff like that. Amusingly, everyone but the CIA is part of The Conspiracy.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Joanna thought he managed to escape justice after fleeing the Air Force One crash site. Trent also thought likewise, until a very pissed off Mr. Blonde arrives to kill him.
- The Mole: For dataDyne and the Skedar in the government.
- Smug Snake: He almost succeeds in his plan to capture the President, but ends up failing thanks to Joanna. He fails to escape and gets mauled to death by the Skedar for failing them.
Mr. Blonde
Mr. Blonde
Outwardly he's a striking, very tall man, wearing white clothing, usually a raincoat. In truth, he's an undercover Skedar warrior disguised as a blond Scandinavian man. He is the mastermind of the conspiracy in which Cassandra and Trent are both involved.
- Expy: His in-game model is based off Bond villain Mr. Stamper from Tomorrow Never Dies, and may have been a left over asset when Rareware originally anticipated they were to work on another James Bond game, until they lost the license. This basis for Mr. Blonde featured instead in the spiritual sequel to GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark.
- Holographic Disguise: How he appears as a human male.
- Knowledge Broker: When allying himself with Cassandra and Trent, he informed both sometime prior to the G5 meeting that Carrington's 'inventions' are actually Maian technology, meaning Daniel had formed an alliance with them. Mr. Blonde provides long-range weapons to Area 51 that will shoot down any Maian saucers that try to interfere with their plans.
- Ludd Was Right: His race abhor constant repair and maintenance, believing any technology that doesn't work correctly must be destroyed. Mr. Blonde gives a Deadly Euphemism to dataDyne and the NSA they view humans no differently from machines, and had better not prove themselves flawed devices.
- Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: He needed help from dataDyne to recover the Cetan superweapon, and knowing the Maians are watching Earth, his stratagem is to remain undercover. He wanted Trent to discreetly and legally acquire the Pelagic II without incurring the wrath of the U.S military. This fails miserably when Joanna intervenes and exposes their conspiracy to the President. Mr. Blonde and his team are forced to throw caution to the wind, stealing the research vessel. Their rushed operation allows Joanna and Elvis to sneak onboard to ruin their plans. The Skedar are furious and from then on are out for blood.
- Tranquil Fury: The Skedar are heavy-handed, and not known for their subterfuge or patience. His disguise is an unusually subtle one, but it's a thin veneer that hides evil intent. Often manhandling Cassandra when things go wrong, he is frustrated with any kind of setback, even unpredictable ones like the Sapient developing morality. Cassandra vehemently rejects being blamed for this.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's not clear what happened to him at the end of the N64 game. As Joanna neutralized the Skedar menace, it is presumed he met his end in either the Attack Ship or Battle Shrine missions.
- Villain Protagonist: You get to play as him, in the bonus mission "Mr. Blonde's Revenge" where he's tasked with apprehending Cassandra alive and 'unspoilt', for execution on the Skedar war shrine planet. This is a Timed Mission as the fusion bomb the warrior is carrying is primed to level the skyscraper HQ. What remains of dataDyne throws everything it has at you.
- You Have Failed Me: To die in battle is the only honorable thing to do, for a war-loving species. The Skedar do not tolerate failure. He kills Easton when he fails to acquire the Pelagic II. He later comes after Cassandra, furious the Cetan superweapon was lost.
Alien races
Maians
Maians
Also known as 'The Greys', the Maians are a species of short, grey, large-headed aliens. Feeding their curious nature and quest for knowledge, they have been observing Earth for thousands of years. Their observations are often disrupted by their skirmishes with the war-loving Skedar species. A shaky ceasefire has been established between the peaceful Maians and wartorn Skedar, but is being tested constantly by acts of Skedar terrorism.
- Amusing Alien: They're cute short aliens that are fascinated with humans. When gearing up for war they behave and chirp like excitable rodents. Not so much in the Xbox Live Arcade, where they look old and wrinkled.
- Ancient Astronauts: Both the Maians and the Cetans have visited Earth in the past.
- Benevolent Alien Invasion: The Maians planned to do this eventually, to protect humans from themselves and other hostile races, but left mankind to develop on their own for a few millennia. The end of the main plot revolves around the Maian ambassadors finally coming down to meet with the authorities in the White House and establish peaceful connections. Then the game plays the evil Alien Invasion straight when the wrathful Skedar reveal themselves.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Just because the Maians are cute and fond of humans doesn't mean they're pacifists. The deadly FarSight XR-20 alone proves they know how to make and use their weapons. They fought a space-faring race who relish war into a stalemate. Once the sacred Skedar shrine is uncovered, they unleash their unbridled fury upon the extremists, perform regicide, and flatten the place to cripple their enemy's morale forever after.
- Big Good: They're a benevolent Higher-Tech Species of The Greys who are obsessed with humans. While the manual states they're not the only benign race watching Earth, they are the first to stake a claim on the planet, and forced other races to butt out of their affairs. That warning goes double for hostile factions looking to exploit people.
- E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: They are the backers of the Carrington Institute's technological advancements, done specifically to speed up First Contact between Maians and Humans. The Antigravity technology seen throughout the game's story is their handiwork. While this has made Daniel exorbitantly rich enough to earn Cassandra's jealousy and hatred, the Maians only want to integrate with people on Earth.
- Excellent Judge of Character: They deemed Daniel Carrington a person of integrity, and agreed his fast-tracked First Contact plan was sound. They allowed Carrington to release their technology into the public domain through his considerable Research and Development holdings.
- Humans Are Flawed: They've watched and guarded over man for thousands of years and experienced disappointment after disappointment. Yet the aliens remain hopeful mankind will eventually start to tap into its potential after it matures. The Maians are not beings to be trifled with, and Daniel only has to give the word if he suspects other alien factions are interfering in their long-term goals for humanity.
- Humans Are Special: They're enamoured with humanity, finding everything about humans to be endlessly fascinating. Unconditional love, to say the least, as even they appreciate modern people are paranoid, intolerant, xenophobic messes. Yet they still care deeply about mankind's growth and development, and want to live among us. By watching over the planet, they've invoked an Alien Non-Interference Clause, basically telling other races of the galaxy to stay the Hell away from Earth.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: In their own way, they are more frightening than the Always Chaotic Evil Skedar. The Skedar delight in war, and will trigger whatever conflict they have to, to attain it. The Maians delight in peace, and will destroy whoever they have to, to attain it. The Maian fleet can only giggle and laugh excitedly when they arrive on the Skedar homeworld to annihilate the hostile aliens.
- Space Cold War: They're been locked in one with the Skedar since they encountered them near Delta Eridanus in 1650 AD. The resultant skirmish soon blossomed into all-out war. Only after hundreds of years of fighting did an uneasy ceasefire develop, and even then Skedar fanatics persistently tested the boundaries of this peace with terrorist activities. The Maians know the only way to cripple the Skedar, is to destroy their holiest of war religion shrines, but have so far been unable to locate it.
- Would Not Shoot a Civilian: The loss of enemy human life is regrettable to them, but they make it clear to Daniel (who makes it clear to his agents via mission briefings) they will not tolerate the loss of innocence. Joanna will instantly fail her current mission if there are too many non-combatant casualties involved.
The Skedar
Skedar
The Skedar are vicious warriors who find death on the battlefield the highest honour attainable. The actual Skedar being is a small serpentine creature, but for each little squid-like alien is a biological robotic suit to wriggle into, and that robotic suit has a visage many Maians have come to fear. Even without a weapon, a Skedar's claws prove just as lethal.
- Aliens Steal Cattle: The Skedar are implied to be behind the alien abduction and "cattle mutilation" phenomenons. Not because studying terrestrial life interested them, but because the fanatics stumbled across the Cetan message pod. They immediately began to scout Earth in a particularly heavy-handed way.
- Always Chaotic Evil: A war-loving race that are hostile to the other factions and alien races. Trent Easton gets introduced to one up-close and personal, as a pissed Mr. Blonde reveals his true form as a Skedar, after Easton failed them again and outlived his usefulness.
- Clone Degeneration: They have developed a fast and easy cloning technology, but the process is fundamentally flawed. The clone of the US President for Easton was little more than a Meat Puppet. The Skedar king/high priest also kept several clones of himself in stasis in the event of being assassinated. All are weaker than he, and were easily neutralized by the Maian footsoldiers.
- Death World: The Skedar homeworld/battle shrine planet orbits three stars, and as such, experiences a lot of tidal forces. Earthquakes ravage the desert world's surface, to the point where the natives can't keep repairing all the accumulating damage to buildings and doorways.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The Skedar intend to test-fire the Cetan warship's superweapon on the planet it's currently residing in before wiping out the Maians. The target is planet Earth.
- E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: The Skedar only did this for dataDyne because they wanted to secure the Cetan superweapon and knew the best way to retrieve it was through cooperation of the planet's natives that had developed deep sea exploration technology. Aware the Maians were watching Earth they had to proceed with caution. They offered Cassandra and Easton the promise of power beyond their wildest dreams. When they fail and the Cetan is destroyed, one of Mr Blonde's objectives before capturing Cassandra for execution, was to plant a bomb in the elevator of dataDyne's Lucerne Tower, outright stating that the scientists in the labs below should no longer be allowed to research Skedar technology.
- Fantastic Terrorists: After hundreds of years fighting, the Maians forced them into a ceasefire. Yet fanatics persistently tested the boundaries of this "peace" with terrorist activities.
- For the Evulz: The Skedar love to instill fear in their enemies, and their brutal inhumane weaponry, like the Reaper, makes this abundantly clear.
- Lensman Arms Race: They're not the only faction with malicious intent towards Earth in the game's manual, but they are the main antagonists of the story as they discovered a Cetan superweapon scuttled in the Pacific Ocean that can turn the tide against the Maians.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Absolutely pissed the Cetan superweapon gets destroyed, the Skedar abduct both Cassandra and Joanna to ritualistically slaughter them on their holiest of holy shrines to satisfy their blood-lust. By doing so, they gave away its concealed location to their enemies, the Maians.
- Puny Earthlings: Played with. They find the concept of a human wiping out the entire Skedar humorous, but are not blind to the threat of anyone with a vendetta against them. They warn Mr. Blonde of dataDyne's Captain, instructing him to eliminate her immediately before escorting De Vries to their shuttle.
- Space Cold War: The real conflict in this series is not between the Carrington Institute and dataDyne, but the Maians and the Skedar. Earth itself is not that important; the only reason the Skedar have even bothered to take an interest in Earth is because they're stuck in a stalemate against the Maians but have learned about the existence of a lost superweapon under the ocean that was left behind by a third alien race, the Cetans. In the end, humanity isn't considered a major player in this war; the Skedar plan to activate the weapon on Earth just to test it, and if successful, then they'll deploy it against the Maians.
- Starfish Aliens: They're the polar opposite of the benevolent Maians, aka The Greys, these squid-like Starfish Aliens who literally worship war, are equipped with anthropomorphic Powered Armor.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: A variant. Thanks to holographic technology, the Skedar can shift between their true forms and their Mr. Blonde disguises.
Cetans
Cetans
Millions of years ago, as part of a disarmament program, they scuttled one of their own - a huge sentient alien ship of immense power - in the Pacific Ocean. This Cetan had a superweapon: the weak nuclear force de-coupler. So that watching eyes would believe in the destruction of this ship, a message pod was despatched to their home galaxy, and vital components of the ship's drives were destroyed on Earth.
- Ancient Astronauts: Both the Cetans and the Maians have visited Earth in the past.
- Doomsday Device: The Cetan ship's weapon is the Weak Nuclear Force Decoupler. The Skedar are desperate to recover it, as it would mean they can crush their enemies, the Maians and conquer the rest of the galaxy.
- Fantastically Indifferent: They are not one of the races watching humans for either benign or malicious reasons, and have no interest in what goes on within the Milky Way galaxy.
- The Ghost: The Cetans are never seen in the Nintendo 64 game. "The making of Perfect Dark" shows them to be a large insectoid/cyborg race, depicting they were once possibly Mechanical Lifeforms, then millions of years ago became living ships. Jump ahead to today, and they're most likely now god-like Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
- Hurl It into the Sun: Averted. Millions of years ago the advanced Cetans, as part of a disarmament program, agreed to scuttle their nuclear force de-coupler (a superweapon that screws up one of the fundamental forces of the universe). They decided to dump it in the depths of Earth's Pacific Ocean. To their credit, it's not easy to salvage something that big and that deep, but it's still a possible feat nonetheless.
- Lost Superweapon: The Cetan megaweapon is a planet killer that has been resting on the floor of the Pacific Ocean for many epoch. The plot revolves around a conspiracy to retrieve the weapon and use it on Earth.
- Outside-Context Problem: They're not from the Milky Way galaxy, yet their actions millions of years ago in scuttling a weapon of mass destruction on Earth, kickstarts the entire plot of Perfect Dark. The Skedar are determined to recover the Lost Superweapon and intend to use it against the Maians, after test-firing it on the host planet it resides on.
- Sapient Ship: All Cetans are implied to be this, although gameplay-wise, the Cetan ship you explore doesn't really do anything special. It's in some kind of Convenient Coma. It's not completely docile considering the first sight you see when you enter the ship is a Skedar corpse as well as the mutually hostile ship defense turrets.
Characters introduced in Perfect Dark Zero
Jack Dark
Jack Dark
Joanna's father and owner of Dark Bail Bonds.
- Everyone Has Standards: He's a freelance mercenary but avoids working for larger corporations as he distrusts their executives.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Trained Joanna in combat since she was a child and dies on their first mission together.
Chandra Sekhar
Chandra Sekhar
A hacker who works for Dark Bail Bonds.
- The Mole: For Zhang Li within Dark Bail Bonds.
- Only in It for the Money: The reason she betrays Joanna.
- Recruited from the Gutter: She was a hacker who Jack Dark met in his days as a cop.
- Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: She gives Zhang Li the Graal and asks for her payment, only for Zhang to drain her of her life force.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: To Joanna.
Zhang Li
Zhang Li
The founder of dataDyne and the inventor of DeathMatch VR introduced in Perfect Dark Zero.
- Cyborg: He has a number of cybernetic implants in his skull.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He usually lets the losers of his VR matches die but he disconnects his daughter before that can happen.
- A God Am I: After he uses the Graal's power.
- Yellow Peril: He's a scary old Asian man in a silk robe. He even has a Fu Manchu mustache.
Mai Hem
Mai Hem/Zhang Mai
The daughter of Zhang Li.
- Daddy's Little Villain: A dangerous assassin and DeathMatch VR contestant who works for her villainous father.
- Eyepatch of Power: Wears a faceplate over half her face after it gets burned by Joanna.
- Punny Name: Mai Hem is pronounced like "mayhem."
- You Killed My Father: Executes Jack Dark in front of Joanna.
