Johan Ross

"You are the snake, Simon! Now strike at the heart!"

- Johan tells Simon to destroy WAU

"You did good, Simon. But you can't leave. The only way to make sure the WAU stays dead is to destroy the only one who's immune to the new pattern. Don't worry, I'll make it quick."

- Ross about to kill Simon

Johan Ross is an antagonist in the video game SOMA. Originally an A.I. psychologist on Patho-II, he, as almost every inhabitant of the underwater station was affected by the WAU.

He sends the protagonist Simon to destroy the WAU but afterwards considers him expendable and plans to kill him.

Past
Involved in the development of the WAU, Ross witnessed its mutations and concluded that the WAU needed to be eliminated. After the comet's impact, Ross joined his colleagues at Tau. During a failed evacuation of Pathos-II many employees were killed but Johan was among those surviving.

The WAU seemed to manipulate eletromagnetic fields around it in order to instruct the structure gel within Ross's body to repair it, thus causing anomalous phenomena around it, such as system failure and interference in blackboxes, but it also resuted in Ross being reanimated

Later, Ross was found presumably dead in the climber by Omicron staff. As his body was being kept in a glass box in a sort of coma, the WAU seemed to manipulate eletromagnetic fields around it in order to instruct the structure gel within Ross's body to repair it, thus causing anomalous phenomena around it, such as system failure and interference in blackboxes, but it also resuted in Ross being reanimated. During this time, Ross apparently tried to contact Omicron employee Raleigh Herber to fulfill his plan to destroy the WAU's heart at site Alpha, but this led the WAU to react by killing Omicron employees by overcharging their blackboxes until their heads exploded.

SOMA
Ross was reanimated by the WAU, but acts against it throughout the game. Unless any other WAU controlled being, Simon does not attack Simon, providing him with minimal assistance instead. Throughout Simon's voyage through Pathos-II, Johan contacts him multiple times, guiding his way to the heart of the WAU underneath Tau, where he tells Simon to destroy it, as this would spread the structure gel all over Pathos-II and destroy the WAU. After Simon has destroyed the WAU, Ross reveals that he now plans to kill Simon, as this is the only way to ensure that the WAU stays dead. However, before he can do so, the Leviathan bursts into the room and swallows Ross whole, killing him.

Alternatively, Simon can also chose not to destroy the WAU. In this case, Johan furiously tries to force him but is also eaten and killed by the Leviathan.