Characters / Saints Row Zin Empire

Saints Row Main Character Index
Original Universe: The Player Character | The Third Street Saints | Saints Row Gangs | Saints Row 2 Gangs | Ultor Corporation | Saints Row: The Third Gangs | STAG | Saints Row: The Third DJs/Radio Hosts | Zin Empire | Legions Of Hell | Other Characters
Other Universes: Agents of Mayhem | Saints Row (2022)

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An evil race of aliens set to invade and take over the Earth in Saints Row IV. Not much is known about them aside from the fact that they apparently have access to advanced virtual reality technology which they use to trap the Saints.

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• Alien Blood: Averted. They have the same blood color as humans and Earth's mammals.
• Alien Invasion: Their invasion of Earth and kidnapping of the President kicks off the plot.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: In his autobiography, Zinyak mentions in passing that Zin learn to read in the womb and that infant Zin are covered in hair.
• The Greys: They bear a distinct resemblance to the archetype, although a bit more spikey.
• Outside-Genre Foe: Even more so than STAG and the zombies in The Third.
• Planet of Steves: All named Zin individuals have names that start with "Zin-". Same for all their cities and states.
• Proud Warrior Race: They have universal military service, an expansionist foreign policy, and a tradition of forcing children to fight their siblings in duels to the death.
• Punny Name: Saints fighting Sin.
• Recruiting the Criminal: The wardens are stated to be former criminals against the Zin empire.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Used inside the simulation and out. If an object is red or black about 90% of the time, it'll belong to the Zin.
• Spikes of Villainy: Their whole race has these naturally, being aliens and all.

Emperor Zinyak

Emperor Zinyak

"To paraphrase the writer William Shakespeare; all that lives must die, even a Saint."

Played by JB Blanc

Appearances: Saints Row IV | Enter the Dominatrix

The leader of the Zin empire and commander of its vast army. He has now set his sights upon the Earth and intends to add it to his ranks.

• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: He studies a lot of human cultures.
• Aliens of London: Former president of the Zin Empire's English Language Appreciation Society.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Invades earth, kidnaps humanity, and fucks up Biz Markie.
• Ascended Extra: According to the Enter the Dominatrix DLC, he originally was just going to be a minor character in the DLC of the same name for Saints Row: The Third, but his role got expanded when they scrapped the DLC and decided to do Saints Row IV instead.
• Badass Cape: He has an impressive red cape, in contrast to his foot soldiers.
• Bad Boss: He stuffed Zinjai into the simulation that he built rather than testing it on one of his own enemies, and can sometimes be heard threatening his own men.
• Big Bad: Of Saints Row IV.
• Collector of the Strange: He abducts historically significant Earthlings and preserves them as Human Popsicles.
• Chewing the Scenery: Zinyak admits to doing this during his interview in Enter the Dominatrix.
• Cultured Badass: He's the ruler of a galactic empire, strong enough to knock out the Boss, and casually quotes Beowulf.
• Deadpan Snarker: Zinyak enjoys employing sarcastic humour just as much as the Boss.
  The Boss: (while being telekinetically slammed into the walls of Zinyak's ship) Fucking ass...hole, I'm gonna...
  Zinyak: Do what, exactly? Bravado me to death?
• Defiant to the End: Even when the Boss is pulling his head from his body, Zinyak swears that his people will avenge him. However, his words are proved idle boasts, because after the Boss kills him, the Zin submit to them instead.
• Dirty Coward: He spends the latter part of his boss fight behind a forcefield while he sends Zin and explosive C.I.D.s after you.
• Egopolis: Every single sign that had somebody's face on it in the third game is replaced with an image of Zinyak. Even the almighty Magarac statue is remade in Zinyak's image.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The collectibles that reveal his origin shows that he was very fond of his mother. She's the reason why he likes art.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • During one of his text adventures, should anyone click the "kill your parents option", he finds whoever selected that option barbaric.
  • Also, when clicking the option to "Play selections from the Zin Orchestra at high volume", he admits that no one, not even his enemies, deserves to hear songs from them (since Zinyak mentions that they're famous for making horrible songs).
• Evil Brit: He speaks with a posh British accent.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • The loyalty missions show off just how big of an asshole Zinyak can be, from ruining Matt's carefully constructed NyteBlade fan fiction/simulation to missinging Biz Markie so wretchedly that even Pierce is astounded.
  • After the hosts of "Mind over murder" broke down and stop stroking his ego, Zinyak had the wardens physically and sexually assault them.
  • In his text-adventure-style autobiography, he details how he conquered one civilization and accepted a bet from their leader to spare him and his people on the outcome of an arm wrestling match. When Zinyak loses (due to not taking into account the leader's cephalopodic anatomy and the species differing idea of tables) he still casually shoots him in the eye and orders the slaughter of the rest. He keeps that leader's tongue as a good luck charm.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Zinyak speaks in a deep, resonant voice which establishes him as a dangerous enemy.
• Expy: Zinyak looks and acts very similar to Killface. However, unlike Killface, Zinyak actually succeeds in destroying Earth.
• Fatal Flaw: His arrogance and overconfidence. Zinyak believes he is above everyone else, even to his own subordinates, simply because he's a leader of a galactic empire. He also severely underestimates the Boss and the Third Street Saints because he thought mentally torturing them with simulations of their greatest nightmares and blowing up the Earth would be enough to demoralize them. This hubris bites him in the ass big time when the Saints dismantle his massive empire through sheer determination despite being vastly outnumbered. Even within the brink of getting his head torn off by the Boss, Zinyak still attempts to bravado them by claiming the Zin will avenge his death, which makes the ending cutscene where they bow down to the Boss instead as soon as they take his throne rubs the salt to the wound even further.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's perfectly polite towards anyone he's interacting with, but the atrocities he carries out such as blowing up Earth and killing everyone on it make it clear that he's the worst kind of monster.
• Felony Misdemeanor: On Klassic 102.4, he tells his subjects that anyone who refers to "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" as "The Dracula Song" will be executed.
• Final Boss: The toughest one the series has had to date.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The collectible text adventures which tells his origins reveals that he started out working at a pastry shop. He also reveals he wanted to be a museum curator at one point.
• Galactic Conqueror: He expanded the Zin empire with his military campaign.
• Genius Bruiser: He's easily twice as tall as any human, yet he loves Earth literature.
• Hannibal Lecture: Attempts to convince the Boss in one mission that regardless of the fact that he conquered and destroyed Earth it's still Boss' fault. After all, he did warn him what would happen. He goes on to claim that Earth was already a Crapsack World with the Boss running it, and all he ever caused was pain and misery.
• Karmic Death: The Boss does threaten to rip his head off when they first meet. Guess what happens in the final battle?
• Hero Killer: By blowing up earth, he single-handedly thins out the Saints to just 9 members.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: A QTE one at the beginning. The Boss actually doesn't do too badly against him at first and if it wasn't for Zinyak's powers, would've killed him on their first meeting.
• Hypocrite: He really wants to drive the point home that The President is a sociopath...despite, y'know, the fact that he's a tyrannical dictator with billions of lives taken, with the icing on the cake being his reaction to blowing up earth: "Whoops."
  • Even more pronounced in his text-adventure-style autobiography, in which he extols on how his own sociopathic tendencies are to be lauded. Granted, he has nothing but a high opinion of himself.
  • While Zinyak tries to paint himself as a good guy (at least in comparison to the Boss), the biggest and perhaps most defining difference between them is this: Loyalty to the crew. During one mission, the Boss admits that he would gladly take a bullet for any member of his crew. Zinyak, however, treats his underlings, including his closest and most loyal underling, as though they were disposable.
• Klingons Love Shakespeare: Fascinated by Earth literature, theater, and classical music. Particularly enamored of Shakespeare and Jane Austen, claiming that her works in particular inspired his rise to power. It turns out that he actually abducted Austen and kept her as a Human Popsicle. She's the game's narrator.
• Klingon Promotion: How he got the job of Emperor. In the Grand Finale, the Boss inherits his throne after killing him in personal combat.
• Knight of Cerebus: Affability aside, Zinyak is still one of the most threatening opponents that the Boss has ever faced, even going so far as to destroy the Earth itself.
• Large and in Charge: Zinyak stands at least twice as tall as his minions, who are all human-sized.
• Large Ham: A text adventure even as him admitting he doesn't talk meekly.
• Leitmotif: He has a booming, industrial-esque theme that plays when he's shown on-screen. It's also remixed for the final fight against him.
• Laughably Evil: Zinyak would make for a far more threatening and serious villains if his antics and quirks weren't so goddamn hilarious and contribute much to the game's humor.
• Mind over Matter: Makes his entrance into invading Earth by showcasing Not Quite Flight and he tosses the Boss around like a ragdoll during their first confrontation in the second mission.
• Neck Lift: He does this quite a bit. It helps when you're double everyone's height.
• Neck Snap: He admits to killing a schoolyard bully in his youth this way.
• Not So Above It All: Joins Pierce and the Boss in singing Biz Markie's Just A Friend at one point, much to their horror.
• Off with His Head!: The Boss physically pulls off his head, along with a small section of his spine, Sub-Zero style.
• Pride: Man, does this guy have such an excess of it. Unlike SHODAN, he still keeps acting egotistical even after you defeat him.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: He invented a form of Time Travel...and uses it to fill his collection of historically significant humans.
• Red-Flag Recreation Material: Played with. Galactic conqueror Zinyak demonstrates his Wicked Cultured credentials through dark works, quoting from Macbeth and playing music like Night On Bald Mountain on one of the Mind Prison's radio stations. However, the dark works aren't actually his favourite: Zinyak's true passion is for the lighter classics, most prominently the works of Jane Austen. It turns out that he's such a Loony Fan of her that he's actually used his time machine to kidnap Jane Austen herself from the past and is currently keeping her imprisoned aboard his mothership. Following the events of the game, Jane is freed from the Mind Prison by the Boss, hence the mysterious narrator of the game.
• Self-Made Man: He comes from humble beginning but his ruthlessness and cunning made him the emperor of Zin.
• Shadow Archetype: To the Boss. Both are self-made individuals who rose from nothing to fame and power through determination, guile, the application of extreme violence, and both are fans of Jane Austen. However, what contrasts the most between the two of them are their loyalty; Zinyak is what the Boss would become if they continue to be arrogant and self-centered, even towards their own closest lieutenants.
• Smug Snake: Nearly every word out of his mouth consists of him saying how he's better than you. Even as the Boss is kicking his ass, he doesn't stop with how your defeat is inevitable. Taken to ridiculous levels when he still doesn't stop even as the Boss is ripping off his head. His text-adventure-style autobiography half consists of how brilliant and peerless a commander he is.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Talks in a polite manner as he breaks his enemies down.
• The Sociopath: The collectibles reveal that he was considered as such by several Zin during his early military career. He killed most of them too.
• Teleporters and Transporters: He has some sort of teleportation device on his wrist, which he uses to abduct Shaundi in "The Saints Wing" and in both of his fights with the Boss.
• Troll: Olympic level skill at this. From wanting the Saints to suffer by being forced to live their worst nightmares to hijacking a radio station to mess with Boss and Pierce, everything Zinyak does is essentially to cause misery to people. Only Terumi Yuuki can match him in terms of dickassery.
• Unreliable Narrator: While his description of his homeworld paints the Zin as boorish and crude, remember that this is from an autobiography written by a sociopathic intellectual with a big ego.
• Villain Ball: The idiocy of Zinyak leaving the data clusters lying around simulated Steelport is lampshaded in the mission that introduces them. He compounds his error by failing to get rid of the remainder once it becomes clear that the Boss and the Saints are using them to undermine his control of the Simulation.
• Villainous Breakdown: His smug attitude shatters when the Saints come to help the Boss in the Final Battle.
  Zinyak: What is this intrusion?!
• Viral Marketing: He has a Twitter account.
• Virtual-Reality Warper: Has administrator-level control over each simulation under his control. On top of stacking the deck against the imprisoned Saints well in advance through brainwashing, unwinnable puzzles and flat-out trolling, he also has the power to create and destroy elements of the simulation at will, ensuring that the Boss doesn't even have the benefit of a home base when they escape into the Steelport simulation. In fact, Zinyak's only real weakness is his own monumental arrogance and his need to break the Boss instead of killing them.
• Warrior Poet: He clearly considers himself one.
• Wicked Cultured: Seems like it, at least. He's a big fan of Downton Abbey, and he DJs the classical music radio station in the virtual Steelport.
  • He also does live readings of Shakespeare and Pride and Prejudice, with Jane reading opposite him.
• Zero-Effort Boss: In the Enter the Dominatrix DLC. Not so much in the game itself.

Zinjai

Zinjai

"Excellency, I'm Zinjai, your personal steward."

Played by: Mark Allen Stuart

Appearances: Saints Row IV | Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell

Zinyak's Manservant. He later becomes the Boss's manservant.

• Anti-Villain: Type IV.
• Extreme Doormat: According to Zinyak's text adventure game, he used to be a great soldier and scientist. Being the first test subject to be put into the simulation changed that.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He was the one who built the entire simulation under Zinyak's orders. Guess who also got to be the first to test it out?
• Last Episode, New Character: He only shows up in person during the last mission of the game to explain the Zin's technology to the Boss, who is now his new emperor.
• The Quisling: Whether because he's that broken from the Simulation, or because he really had good reason to hate Zinyak.
• The Smart Guy: He's the one that invented Zinyak's simulation. How does Zinyak thank him? By making him be the first victim of the simulation.
• Yes-Man: To both Zinyak and The Boss,

The Dominatrix

The Dominatrix

"Your pitiful technology won't change anything. I am the goddess of this simulation! You will all grovel at my feet!"

Appearances: Enter the Dominatrix

The simulation AI gained sentience and the personality of a ruthless dominatrix. She was originally set to be the villain of a Saints Row: The Third DLC that was scrapped and now appears as the Big Bad of... a Saints Row IV DLC.

• Big Bad: Of the "Enter The Dominatrix" DLC.
• Bondage Is Bad: She takes the form of a dominatrix and attempts to completely take over the entire simulation and turn everyone in it into her pets. Given that she is up against the Saints, it doesn't go too well.
• Dark Action Girl: She has super powers of her own and an army of minions.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Exactly what is her motivation for trying to enslave the entire simulation? No-one knows, and the Saints aren't in the mood for asking.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Well, she is a dominatrix after all.
• Punny Name: While dominatrix is an actual word consisting of “domination” and the Latin suffix “-trix”, it is also being used here as a portmanteau of “domination” and “matrix”, as she is the sentient AI controlling one.
• Stripperiffic: It shouldn't be surprising that the outfit she wears is like this.
• Virtual-Reality Warper: With similar rule-breaking powers over the simulation, she not only easily imbues herself with superhuman abilities, but divides herself into dozens of replicas - each new iteration growing progressively stronger for each one the Boss kills.
• What Could Have Been: An in-universe example. The DLC is framed as a DVD extra explaining what the "Enter The Dominatrix" expansion for Saints Row 3 could have been like.

Santa Clawz

Santa Clawz

"The spirit's alive but still I stand! Once you're dead, I'll corrupt this land!"

A psychopathic VR Santa Claus created to torment the real deal in his simulation by corrupting the meaning of Christmas and the Big Bad of "How The Saints Saved Christmas".

• Bad Santa: Of course.
• Badass Boast: Said in rhyme when he first appears:
  "Those who are naughty, look to the sky
  and see your doom with the naked eye.
  You willingly break the world's laws,
  now feel the wrath of Santa Clawz!"
• One-Winged Angel: Becomes a large monster right before the last mission.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice On a giant Christmas tree to finish him off.
• Rhymes on a Dime: In the style of a Dr. Seuss book, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Because his powers come from destroying and mangling the holiday spirit, he can be harmed by Christmas (or any other holiday) cheer. The Boss actually defeats him by giving him presents and dropping him on a Christmas tree.