Jeff "Joker" Moreau

'"I'm not good, I'm not even great, I am the best damn helmsman in the Alliance fleet!" '

Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau is the pilot of the SSV Normandy and Normandy SR-2. Joker is an excellent pilot and confident to the point of arrogance, wasting no time in pointing out his prowess to others. He's quick to ensure everyone knows his many accomplishments and commendations were all earned, and not due to charity for his medical problems.

Joker is voiced by Seth Green.

Dossier
Born in 2155, Joker's upbringing and career have been colored by his health. Joker has a moderate to severe case of Vrolik syndrome, which causes extreme brittleness in the bones; he was born with severe fractures to his legs and even with modern medicine he finds walking nearly impossible, relying on crutches and leg braces.

Joker spent his early life on Arcturus Station because of his mother's job there as a civilian contractor, and grew up around ships. When he was old enough to enlist, he joined the Alliance Navy. He got his nickname from a teacher at flight school, due to the fact that he rarely smiled - he was working too hard. At the end of training he was better than all the other students, even better than his instructors. "They all got their asses kicked by the sickly kid with the creaky little legs. One guess who was smiling at graduation." When the Normandy was commissioned, Joker was chosen as her pilot.



Because he has difficulty walking, Joker rarely leaves the Normandy's bridge. Despite the fact that he is continually making wisecracks, Joker takes his job very seriously and claims he's the best pilot in the entire Systems Alliance. An example of his exceptional skill was a risky maneuver where he was able to successfully drop the Mako with only twenty meters of open ground (even as other crewmen declared such a drop to be impossible with anything less than a hundred meters). He has complete faith in Commander Shepard's leadership and the two of them share a good camaraderie.

Joker's is essentially the "voice" of the Normandy while Shepard is ashore, and often acts as Shepard's eyes and ears, particularly on Feros and Virmire. Though lighthearted, Joker is not completely insensitive; after Virmire he talks to Shepard about having to choose between Ashley Williams and Kaidan Alenko, and needs some time on his own to grieve. If Shepard decides not to bother telling the Council about Sovereign after Virmire, Joker rather prophetically snorts that Sovereign will have to be sitting on the Citadel's roof before the Council will listen to them, but Joker promises Shepard he's in it to the end. He wants to be there when Shepard makes Saren pay.

While Shepard's team is on Ilos (thanks to Joker's expertise in dropping the Mako) and investigates the Conduit, Joker takes the Normandy to the Andura Sector and rallies the Fifth Fleet to defend the Citadel against Sovereign. When Shepard returns to the Citadel, the Commander manages to get in-touch with Joker, who's sitting beside a mass relay waiting for Shepard to unlock the relay network. Joker then coordinates strategy with Shepard, asking if they should defend the Destiny Ascension to save the Council, or go straight in for the kill. Either way, the Normandy leads the Alliance forces in the battle against Sovereign - Joker's skills mean that despite Sovereign's heavy firepower, the Normandy barely gets a scratch.

Mass Effect 2
Joker is on board the Normandy as it is attacked by an unknown enemy. Shepard tries to convince Joker to abandon the ship, but Joker insists that he can save it, despite the rest of the crew evacuating and the ship sustaining catastrophic damage. Shepard tells him that going down with the ship won't change anything and hauled him to the nearby escape pod. Unfortunately, just as the Commander places Joker in the pod, a blast separates them. Joker makes it to safety, while Shepard suffocates in the void of space due to a breach in the Commander's hardsuit.

When the Alliance found the Normandy's crew, they were reassigned, presuming Shepard lost. The Cerberus organization spent two years after the crash rebuilding Shepard, and brought him back to life. This is what led Joker to joining the pro-human organization, mainly to be the pilot of the new Normandy SR-2 as a member of Lazarus Cell, and working with the shipboard A.I., EDI, much to his dismay. He also received an upgrade for his legs that allows him to walk on his own, albeit with some difficulty. Despite his initial hostility towards EDI, Joker later gains a begrudging respect for the ship's A.I. This trust is later put to the test when the Normandy is attacked by Collectors. With Shepard and his team away from the ship, Joker is forced to make his way down into the ship, avoiding Collectors, while other members of the crew die or are captured around him. He succeeds in linking EDI directly to the ship's control systems allowing them to escape and reunite with Shepard.

In the main story, Joker becomes a playable character for a short period of time. After Shepard leaves the Normandy SR-2 on a shuttle, the ship comes under attack by the Collectors. He must first make his way down to the A.I. Core room and connect EDI to the ship's main systems, and then sneak into the engine room and power up the Normandy's power core. If he is careless, it is possible for him to be spotted and taken by a Scion or killed by a Praetorian, resulting in a non-standard game over.

Trivia

 * During the attack on the Normandy SR-1, as Shepard ascends the stairs to the CIC deck, Joker can be heard begging "C'mon baby, hold together. Hold together". This is a direct reference to Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars.
 * As described in The Art of Mass Effect, Joker was originally intended to have a more sickly appearance, due to his ill-health.
 * In the scene on the Normandy's descent towards Ilos, you see Joker not wearing his hat for the first time when it cuts to him in the cockpit.
 * In Mass Effect 2, during the majority of the campaign, EDI refers to Joker as Mr. Moreau, but near the end she begins to refer to him as Jeff. For his part, Jeff starts to refer to EDI as "she" and "her" and will, on occasion, sarcastically call her "Mom".
 * Joker is currently the only character in the Mass Effect universe to be playable aside from Shepard and Jacob.
 * When EDI suggests giving her control of the ship to escape the Collectors', Joker refuses, screaming "If you start singing 'Daisy Bell' I'm done!" This is a reference to the last moments of the homicidal HAL computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, itself a reference to the first song ever performed by a computer running speech synthesis software. Before he connects EDI to the control systems, he says "Great, this is where it starts, and when we're all just organic batteries, guess who they'll blame?" referring to The Matrix. This suggests that Joker is a fan of old science-fiction movies.
 * If one stands near Joker, he will begin to say many random things. An example is when he says that 98 percent of his job is watching flashing buttons. And that sometimes he presses one. If that is to be taken literally, it brings into question just what he's really typing on his keyboard.
 * After standing near Joker for a short amount of time, he will say "Sometimes I just get the urge to turn off the inertial compensators and pull a Crazy Ivan," in reference to the TV series "Firefly," which is a reference to a US Navy term for a Soviet submarine tactic first popularized in the book/film The Hunt for Red October.
 * Tali seems to be the only crew member other than Shepard whom Joker likes. When Tali is recruited he claims it's great to have her back, though he jokes about if it's really her under the helmet. If asked his opinion of the squad when Tali went out on the mission before, he will state "I always liked Tali, so moving on there". This could also be a veiled reference to her immense popularity among Mass Effect fans.
 * If you ask EDI about her technology she will say that she got some of it from Sovereign. Joker will comment, "So if she starts claiming to be the "vanguard of our destruction," I call shotgun on the first lifeboat".
 * Joker, will also mention Garrus if questioned about the crew saying, "Glad to see Garrus finally got that stick out of his ass, but now he's beating people to death with it. Never thought I'd want the old Garrus back."