List of Blade Runner characters

Blade Runner is a 1982 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, which stars Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos. Written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, the film is an adaptation of the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Its 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049, stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, with Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista and Jared Leto.

Rick Deckard
Rick Deckard is a "Blade Runner", a special agent in the Los Angeles police department employed to hunt down and "retire" replicants. His ID number is B-263-54, which is stated twice in both the 1992 Director's Cut and the 25th-anniversary Final Cut of the film.

He is the protagonist of the film and the narrator in the original theatrical release.

Agent Deckard was played by Harrison Ford.

Gaff
Gaff is a Los Angeles police officer who escorts Deckard throughout his mission. He primarily uses Cityspeak, a creole of Spanish, French, German, Hungarian, Chinese, and Japanese, which Deckard pretends not to understand. Gaff is never shown participating in Deckard's investigation, preferring to linger in the background crafting origami figures.

Gaff was played by American actor/director Edward James Olmos.

The sequel by K. W. Jeter mentions that Gaff is killed in the line of duty. At the beginning of the novel, Bryant has just returned from the funeral and expresses his distaste for the Cityspeak written on Gaff's headstone.

In the sequel, Blade Runner 2049, Gaff is questioned by Officer K (Ryan Gosling) in a retirement home asking about Deckard's whereabouts.

Rachael
Rachael, sometimes referred to as Rachael Tyrell, was the latest experiment of Eldon Tyrell, the sole Nexus-7 replicant. He believed that since the replicants had such a limited lifespan, they have little time to develop control of their emotions, causing difficulty in managing these emotions. He believes implanting the replicants with memories would create a cushion that would allow for emotional development, and make them more controllable.

Rachael has the implanted memories of Tyrell's niece, and Rachael is then led to believe that she is human. It is not revealed in the film how long she has been living, but Tyrell admits that he thinks she is beginning to suspect the truth of her nature.

Tyrell refuses to discuss the issue with Rachael. In desperation, she turns to Deckard, who has been told by Captain Bryant to retire her. However, he falls in love with her instead.

At the end of the film, the four replicants Deckard had been assigned to kill are dead. Rachael and Deckard then flee and presumably go into hiding to have a future together.

In Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human, non-canonical to the chronology of the film series, she is kept within a Tyrell transport that slows down her aging process located in an isolated shack outside of Los Angeles. Near the end of the novel, Sarah Tyrell, who is Eldon's niece and Rachael's template, brings her to Tyrell headquarters in order to meet with Deckard and allowed to flee. However, it is ultimately learned that Rachael is killed by Tyrell agents while Sarah and Deckard escape, allowing Sarah to reclaim her place as Tyrell's niece.

In Blade Runner 2049 it is revealed Rachael, as the sole Nexus-7, was given the ability to reproduce by Tyrell. During an apparently routine investigation, Blade Runner Officer K uncovers a box containing bones and hair buried under a tree. The remains are shown to be that of a being who died after a caesarean section, and upon the discovery that the being was a replicant K is ordered by Lt. Joshi to track down and kill the replicant's child. K later learns the pregnant replicant was Rachael.

Rachael was played by Sean Young in Blade Runner. In Blade Runner 2049, Rachael was portrayed by actress Loren Peta with Sean Young's facial features de-aged and overlaid via CGI. In Blade Runner 2049, a replicant designed by Niander Wallace to be physically near-identical to the real Rachael in an attempt to convince Deckard to reveal the location of the "replicant resistance"; Deckard rejects Wallace's offer, pointing out that the real Rachael had green eyes. Wallace then has the double shot.

Roy Batty
Roy Batty is the leader of the renegade Nexus-6 replicants and the main antagonist of the film. He was activated on January 8, 2016, which makes him 3 years and 10 months old by the time of the events of the film. He is highly intelligent, fast, and skilled at combat, and yet still learning how to deal with developing emotions. With an A Physical Level (superhuman strength & endurance) and an A Mental Level (genius-level intellect), he is probably the most dangerous of all the fugitive replicants. He is a combat model, used off-world for military service. He and five other replicants come to Earth hoping to find a way to lengthen their lifespan. He is able to use J. F. Sebastian to get a meeting with Tyrell, the head founder of the company and his creator. Tyrell refers to him as his "prodigal son", and tells him his life cannot be extended, but that he should revel in the life that he has, as he has done and seen things others could only dream of. Following this, Batty kills Tyrell and likely is the killer of Sebastian.

Deckard retires the remaining replicants and is hunted by a dying Roy. Trying to escape, Deckard ends up dangling from a building and is saved from the fall by Roy. As he dies, Roy tells Deckard about the things he saw in his life and how all those memories would be gone forever, "...like tears in the rain". He then smiles, saying, "Time... to die", and passes away.

In the original novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, his name was spelled "Roy Baty", and was the leader of the eight androids who killed their human owners so that they could escape their life of slavery on Mars. Roy was married to Irmgard Baty, another android. In the novel, Roy's relationship with Pris (who was his lover in the film) is only one of friendship.

In the novel Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human, Batty is one of a series of replicants based on a mercenary of the same name. The template for these replicants suffered from "neural malformation", which made them unable to experience fear. This, it is suggested, might be one of the reasons replicants of that particular series were so difficult to kill.

Roy Batty was played by Rutger Hauer.

Harry Bryant
Harry Bryant is the captain of the Rep-Detect department of the Los Angeles Police Department. His job in the film is to deal with a group of escaped Nexus-6 replicants (whom he refers to as "skinjobs") that have landed on Earth. His top Blade Runner, Holden, was in hospital on a medical ventilator after an encounter with the Leon replicant, earlier in the film. Bryant uses thinly-veiled threats against Rick Deckard, a retired Blade Runner, to enlist his aid.

In the original theatrical version, Deckard, during his narration, compares Bryant to the racist cops of the past. "Skinjob, that was Bryant's term for Replicants. In history books, he's the kind of cop that used to call black men niggers."

Capt. Bryant was played by Michael Emmet Walsh.

Hannibal Chew
Hannibal Chew works for the Tyrell Corporation as a genetic engineer. His job is to create the eyes for the replicants, Roy's and Leon's, in this case.

In the film, the replicants visit him while he is working in a freezer. The replicants pressure him into telling them that J. F. Sebastian can get them into Tyrell's inner sanctum.

He was played by American actor James Hong.

Dave Holden
Dave Holden is the Blade Runner testing new employees at the Tyrell Corporation on the premise that the escaped Replicants might try to infiltrate the company.

During a Voight-Kampff test, Leon shoots Holden and leaves him for dead. Later, Bryant mentions that Holden is alive, but his breathing is assisted by machines.

There were two hospital scenes with Holden and Deckard that were filmed, but not used in the movie. One scene is shown in the documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner. Both scenes appear in the deleted scenes section on the Blade Runner Special Edition DVD.

He was played by Morgan Paull.

Leon Kowalski
Leon Kowalski is a replicant who came to Earth with five others looking to extend their lives. He has an A physical level, which means he has superhuman strength and endurance (according to the Final Cut he was used as a 180 kg/400 lb nuclear-head loader in the outer space colonies as well as a front-line soldier). Leon is classified mental level C. He doesn't have the speed of thought that Roy does when it comes to solving problems. He was activated on April 10, 2017, making him 2 years and 7 months old by the time of the film.

Leon shoots Blade Runner Holden as he administers the Voight-Kampff test on him while he works at the Tyrell Corporation, which he has infiltrated. Leon attacks Deckard after he witnesses Deckard kill Zhora, but is himself killed by Rachael who shoots him with Deckard's gun, which Leon had knocked out of Deckard's hand as he drew it.

Leon cherishes photographs of his friends. Unlike Rachael's false photos of her childhood, these include current photos of people who mean something to him.

Leon Kowalski was played by Brion James.

Taffey Lewis
Taffey Lewis is the owner of Taffey's Snake Pit Bar. The bar features music, exotic dancing, and something being smoked in pipes. He dismisses Deckard's threats with a free drink.

He was played by Hy Pyke.

Pris Stratton
Pris Stratton is a "basic pleasure model" incepted on Valentine's Day, 2016, making her the second-oldest of the four fugitive replicants at 3 years, 9 months. She is the girlfriend of Roy Batty and is responsible for gaining J. F. Sebastian's trust. At an A Physical Level, she is shown to have superhuman endurance (as in the scene where she grabs a boiling egg with her bare hand without harm). Her B Mental Level puts her at a lower intellectual level than Roy but higher than Leon. She sets a trap for Deckard in the Bradbury Building, disguising herself as one of Sebastian's toys and then attacking Deckard with her gymnastic skills. As she rushes Deckard for another attack, he retires her.

Her surname Stratton appears in the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but is never explicitly used in the movie.

Her punk outfits were inspired by a new wave calendar.

It is suggested in Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human that Pris, actually, was an insane human woman who believed that she was a female replicant.

She was played by Daryl Hannah.

J. F. Sebastian
J. F. Sebastian is a genetic designer working for Tyrell. He is not allowed to emigrate off-world because he has Methuselah Syndrome. Because of this, he ages faster and has a shorter lifespan, something he has in common with the replicants. He is only 25 years old, but his physical appearance is of a middle-aged man. With the Bradbury Building all to himself, he makes the most of his considerable talents creating automata companions. He is loosely based on the character J. R. Isidore from the novel.

He is approached by Pris, whom Sebastian takes in because he thinks she is homeless, and Roy comes to stay with him soon after. Roy and Pris point out that because of his condition, Sebastian has much in common with them, and argue that if they don't get Tyrell's help to extend their lives, Pris shall die soon. Sebastian is playing correspondence chess with Tyrell, and Roy suggests a bold move which gives rise to an opportunity to visit Tyrell and smuggle Roy in. When Tyrell claims that he cannot extend Roy's life, Roy kills him.

Sebastian is seen running away from Roy, who later descends the elevator alone. A police radio message heard by Deckard after Tyrell is killed states that Sebastian's body was also discovered by the police with Tyrell's at the Tyrell Corporation.

The makeup for Sebastian was a "stretch and stipple" technique with no prosthetics.

He was played by William Sanderson.

Dr. Eldon Tyrell
Dr. Eldon Tyrell is the founder of Tyrell Corporation. His creations are Replicants, some of whom have been given away as an incentive for people to emigrate to the Off-World colonies. Others are used in combat to protect those settlers. Roy Batty, along with J. F. Sebastian, finds Tyrell, and asks him to extend his life beyond the four-year limit built into Nexus Six replicants. However, Tyrell claims this request is impossible to satisfy due to the inherent instabilities of replicant genetics. Upon hearing this, Batty kisses Tyrell before gouging out his eyes and crushing his skull with his bare hands, killing him.

He was played by Joe Turkel.

Zhora Salome
Zhora Salome is a replicant with an A Physical Level (super-human endurance) and a B Mental Level (intelligence equal to that of Pris), and has been used in murder squads. She was activated on June 12, 2016, making her 3 years and 5 months old. She gets a job as an exotic dancer at Taffey's Bar, creating an act using her own pet snake. Deckard tracks her down at Taffey's after finding her snake's scale, and she soon realizes that he is dangerous. She attacks him, but Deckard narrowly escapes death when people walk in just before she delivers a killing blow. Zhora tries to escape by running into a busy street, but Deckard chases her and finally shoots her in the back, "retiring" her.

She was played by Joanna Cassidy.

Unnamed replicant(s)
According to dialogue spoken by Bryant in the Final Cut of the film, two other unnamed replicants (only one in earlier versions) were killed while attempting to enter the Tyrell Corporation. The term used by him when describing their deaths ("Two of them got fried running through an electrical field") suggests they were stopped by an electrical barrier or security device of some sort. (In the theatrical cut of the film, the spoken line is "One of them got fried running through an electrical field" leaving one replicant unaccounted for.)

Earlier drafts of the script name these replicants as Hodge and Mary. In Hampton Fancher's early drafts of the script, Mary lives and Hodge is the only replicant fried in the electrical field. Mary was intended to reflect the novel's character of Irmgard Baty, and was meant to be a "mother figure" model of replicant, performing housework and childcare duties, and she was supposed to be reminiscent of the stereotypical housewife of the 1950s. Her incept date is given as November 1, 2017. Mary was to be played by Stacey Nelkin, who had originally tried out for the role of Pris, but Mary's scenes were cut before filming.

K
KD6-3.7 ("K" for short) is a Nexus-9 replicant model created to obey and works as a "blade runner" for the LAPD, hunting down and "retiring" rogue older model replicants. He was played by Ryan Gosling. K is aware he is a replicant, and like the rest of his line, was programmed with implanted memories to aid his mental stability—though the new model replicants are fully aware that these fake memories never really happened, to them or other people, but are fictional fabrications. In contrast to Deckard in the first film, a human blade runner who suspects that what he thinks are his real memories might actually be implanted, K is a replicant blade runner, who begins to suspect that his implanted memories are actually real. When he begins to suspect that he may be Rachael's child, and thus a "real" person, Joi suggests that he needs a real name and picks "Joe" for him.

Joi
Joi is an artificial intelligence projected as a hologram, designed and commercially sold by Wallace Corporation to be a fully customizable live-in romantic companion. K, an artificial intelligence himself, has a Joi copy but treats her as a person, and tries to have a real romantic relationship with her, while wondering about how "real" it can truly be given that she is programmed to like him. K obtains a mobile "emanator" unit for her at the beginning of the film, a control rod which he can transport in his coat, allowing Joi to accompany him anywhere in the world. Joi is nonetheless intangible and cannot physically interact with her surroundings. Played by Ana de Armas.

Niander Wallace
Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) is the sinister CEO of Wallace Corporation, which dominates replicant production in 2049. A genius genetic engineer, his genetically modified crops and livestock solved a global food crisis - which then gave him enough political clout to lift the ban on replicant production. Wallace improved the genetic programming of his new "Nexus-9" replicants to the point that they cannot disobey the orders of humans, even if the order is to commit suicide. Wallace then bought out the bankrupt Tyrell Corporation (which failed after several revolts by Nexus-8 replicants). By 2049, Wallace Corporation has revitalized the replicant industry and is a major megacorporation with numerous other subsidiaries in other fields, such as Joi unit digital AI holograms.

Wallace is blind, but uses cybernetic implants in his neck to interact with various computers and "see" through camera units.

The secret of making replicants that can reproduce died with Tyrell, and Wallace is obsessed with learning it. By 2049, Earth is suffering from resource depletion and heavy pollution, and it was Wallace's genetically modified foods and new replicants that not only staved off extinction, but allowed humanity to spread to the off-world colonies. Nonetheless, Wallace is frustrated that humanity has only spread to nine other planets, when he wants to see it explode across thousands of planets in the galaxy. Lacking the capacity to build enough replicants for such an endeavor, Wallace is convinced that replicants capable of reproduction on their own are the answer.

Ana Stelline
Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri) is a scientist who designs the implanted memories that Wallace Corporation installs into its new replicants: the replicants are aware that these memories are implants they did not personally experience, but their presence drastically improves their mental stability. Empathetic to how replicants are used as slave-labor, Ana tries to give them pleasant memories to carry with them, even if they know they're artificial. Due to the complications that can arise, it is forbidden to base memory implants on the real memories of another person: they must be fabrications with no basis in real events. Nonetheless, Dr. Stelline secretly sneaks in a few of her best memories into some of the memory implants, as a gift. Ana actually doesn't directly work for Wallace Corporation: her "Stelline Corporation" is an independent sub-contractor (Wallace offered to buy her out, but she enjoys her creative freedom).

Ostensibly, Dr. Stelline developed an immune system deficiency as a child, and has spent the past two decades living in a sterile clean-room in her company's compound, keeping her in seclusion from the outside world. Secretly, Ana is actually the daughter of Deckard and Rachel: living proof that replicants can be capable of reproducing on their own (and making Ana at least part-replicant through her mother). The replicant underground hid her as an infant and scrambled the records, seeing her birth as a miracle and Ana as their savior.

K comes to Ana's lab to investigate the wooden horse he found, which was in his allegedly fake memory implant. She confirms that it is a real memory, but not who it is from - either K or someone else. The wooden horse was a gift from Deckard to his child, later etched with the child's birth date (the same day that Rachel died, from her grave marker). K suspects the memory of the horse is his own, and he is Rachel's son, but when he meets the replicant underground they reveal that Rachel's child was female. K then realizes that Ana was Rachel's child and it was her memory of the horse - because the best memories she gives to replicants like K are actually based on her own.

Luv
Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is a Nexus-9 replicant and personal assistant to Niander Wallace. He entrusts her as his right-hand agent running day to day affairs over Wallace Corporation. As KD6-3.7 notes, Wallace was fond enough of her to give her a name (and not just a serial number like he has). She also acts as his personal enforcer, ruthlessly killing police officers in the search for Rachel's child. Luv has an outer air of poise, but with a powerful fury simmering barely underneath.

Freysa
Freysa (Hiam Abbass) is the leader of the replicant underground. Apparently an older Nexus-8 model, she took care of Rachel's baby after she died in childbirth (K recognizes her in a photo of the baby from around 2022). Freysa helped to hide Rachel's child and erase the records of its past, but is organizing the underground to one day lead another replicant revolt. At some undisclosed point, Freysa lost her right eye: as seen with Sapper Morton, blade runners by this time remove the right eye of replicants as proof of a successful retirement (death), due to having their serial number stamped along the bottom. Whether someone cut out Freysa's eye and left her for dead, or perhaps she cut out her own eye so she cannot be identified, is left unexplained.

Freysa sends Mariette to keep tabs on K, and later saves K after Luv captures Deckard. She explains the stakes of the situation to K and her past with Rachel's child, causing him to realize that it is actually Ana. Freysa warns K that if Wallace is able to interrogate Deckard and capture Rachel's child all will be lost, and urges K to kill Deckard before that can happen. K, however, saves Deckard while managing to fake his death by drowning in the ocean.

Sapper Morton
Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista) is an older Nexus-8 replicant, living in hiding on a protein farm in the industrial outliers of Los Angeles. Despite his large size and strength, he is polite and well-read, collecting antique books. Morton used to be an army medic on the off-world colonies in several campaigns. K's encounter to "retire" him starts off the events of the film, as it leads K to discover Rachel's skeletal remains buried on Morton's farm. Morton was a member of the replicant underground and, along with Freysa, helped hide Deckard and Rachel's baby - whose birth Morton describes as "a miracle". Using his army medic training, Morton personally conducted an emergency C-section on Rachel to save her baby after Rachel died in childbirth. Morton is contemptuous that K, a replicant himself, is a blade runner hunting his own kind (though K points out that he's a Nexus-9, not the same model as him).

Mariette
Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) is a replicant prostitute, and secretly a member of the replicant underground. Joi wants to experience sex with K, but the holographic projection of her AI lacks physical substance, so she hires Mariette to have sex with him - while overlaying her projection on Mariette's body. Secretly, Freysa instructs Mariette to keep tabs on K, slipping a tracking device into his coat, which enables the replicant underground to save him after Wallace's agents assault him and capture Deckard in the ruins of Las Vegas. Mariette then brings K to meet Freysa personally.

Doc Badger
Doc Badger (Barkhad Abdi) is a street-wise fixer on the black market, who talks in City-speak creole. After obtaining a wooden horse that was in his allegedly fake implanted memory, K goes to Doc Badger's shop to have it analyzed. Badger is surprised that it is made of real wood (which is worth a fortune), and on chemical analysis, discerns that it was exposed to high radiation levels - allowing K to narrow down his search to the ruins of Las Vegas.

Mister Cotton
Mister Cotton (Lennie James) runs a combination orphanage and salvaging operation in the vast junkyards on the outskirts of Los Angeles, putting the children to work picking apart piles of e-waste for useful scrap-metal. K's investigation leads him to discover that Rachel's child was passed off as a human child at Cotton's orphanage, though he doesn't remember it. K strong-arms him into revealing his records books, only to discover that someone stole the pages from that year to destroy the evidence.

Lt. Joshi
Lt. Joshi is K's superior on the police force. She doesn't think replicants like K are as "real" as humans like her, though she does respect K. Played by Robin Wright.

Coco
Coco (David Dastmalchian) is a police forensics investigator. He analyzes the ossuary that K found, revealing to him and Joshi that they belonged to a replicant female who died in childbirth (Rachel). Wallace's agent Luv later ambushes and kills him in his lab, to steal Rachel's skeletal remains and return them to Wallace for analysis.

Nandez
Nandez (Wood Harris) is another police investigator. He is disdainful of Coco's conclusion that Sapper Morton must have cared for Rachel's baby, though Coco points out that Morton clearly cared enough to give her a proper burial.