User:Teugene/Sandbox/Jeff "Joker" Moreau

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.

Mass Effect
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, if Shepard talks to him, Joker talks 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 the Commander 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. Joker 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.

Joker is quite fond of the new Normandy setup around him, talking greatly about the comfort of his pilot bay, with the exception of EDI, who he fights with at times, resulting in Joker greasing the cameras to EDI spinning Joker's seat about against his will. EDI claims she is just testing Joker essentially under stress, as she noticed he works better when pushed, to Joker's dismay. After the Collector Attack and EDI's full capability unlocked, she is seen to show concern and sensitivity for Joker, in addition to calling him Jeff rather than Mr. Moreau, like she did initially. Joker also begins to show a fondness for EDI after she helps ease up his task load, to the point Shepard is forced to remind Joker not to goof off to play with EDI. Shepard can also ask if a relationship is growing between the two, which Joker laughs off as mistaken. EDI agrees, summing up the relationship as a "platonic symbiosis" rather than a "hormonally-induced courtship behaviour." Joker finds this rationalization very creepy.

In either ending for the game, Joker acquires the schematics of a Reaper, presumably Harbinger, gained from EDI hacking the Collector bases computers.

Trivia

 * As described in The Art of Mass Effect, Joker was originally intended to have a more sickly appearance, due to his ill-health.
 * Joker is the only crew member who is guaranteed to survive the attack on the Collector base. If Shepard is killed at the end of Mass Effect 2, he reports to the Illusive Man in lieu of the Commander.
 * When EDI suggests giving her control of the ship to escape the Collectors', Joker tells her "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.
 * Joker can 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 in turn is a reference to a US Navy term for a Soviet submarine tactic first popularized in the book / film The Hunt for Red October.'
 * During one of the conversations between Shepard and Joker, Joker's chair starts spinning erratically. When he questions EDI, she states that Joker insisted on manual control of his chair. This likely refers to a similar scene in Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me, which also starred Seth Green.
 * If you wait a couple of seconds when near by Joker, you will hear moaning and hyperventalating on the command deck. Then Joker will say "Sorry. That was supposed to go to the earpiece". Possibly listening to porn.