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Jack, otherwise known as the Dad by his children, is the main antagonist of the survival indie horror game MOTHER. He used to be Mary's husband and a father of Kyle and Kayla before taking his own life and presumably transforming into a humanoid paranormal creature after his death.
Biography[]
Before the game's events, Jack was married to Mary and had two normal children with her, Kyle and Kayla, but later she gave birth to a horribly deformed child named Tommy. Through either lying to Jack about Tommy being miscarried or pressuring him into keeping the disfigured child a secret, Mary has managed to lock the child into one of the house rooms, raising him in horrible conditions, while being isolated most of the time. Eventually, Jack either finds out about what she's done to Tommy or refuses to participate in his abuse any longer and commits suicide. Mary then moves with her children to a new apartment, presumably to cope with a shocking event.
Seven days after the funeral, Jack, filled with remorse and anger towards Mary, comes back from the dead in a form of a tall humanoid creature and tracks her down. His presence in the building where she has just moved into is obvious from the very beginning, where he's shown to murder one of Mary's neighbors and their child while she passes by the door to their apartment.
Jack appears again only on the seventh night of Mary's life in her new apartment. While Mary is watering a potted plant that has been gifted to her by the funeral service on the balcony, she accidentally drops the watering bottle on the plant, making it fall from the balcony on the street concrete. There she spots a tall humanoid figure of Jack staring at her from below. He bursts into maniacal laughter, making Marry leave the balcony in panic, before disappearing into the night.
From now on, all of Jack's appearances pose an actual physical threat to Mary. The paranoia of encountering Jack forces Mary to install an alarm near the door and even arm herself with a gun used by him to commit suicide, while he continues toying with her sanity by picking her neighbors off one by one.
Eventually, despite all Mary's precautions, Jack enters the apartment on the thirteenth night and removes the shelf covering the secret door to Tommy's room, thus granting his son's relative freedom. He continues to assist Tommy by roaming the apartment's hallways and trying to catch Mary, but disappears once Tommy gets killed on the fifteenth night.
His goal of avenging Tommy's terrible life is either only partially succeeded if all Mary's children are alive and she's arrested, or fully accomplished if at least one of the two children dies, forcing Mary to shoot herself in the head, ironically the same way Jack had ended his own life prior to the game's events.
Appearance[]
After Jack's passing and his return from the dead, his appearance is warped with the accordance with his tragic life and the future fate.
He's an extremely tall, slender humanoid with disproportionately long limbs, especially arms. Jack's true face is always obscured by the maliciously smiling white theater mask, reminiscent of him pretending to be happy while suffering internally due to his son's fate during his life. Jack's body is composed of a substance that looks like a combination of gravel and ash, which might be an homage to the fact that he's been cremated after his death.
Personality[]
According to his brother Carl, prior to his death, Jack was a caring husband with a great love for his children. He also mentioned that Jack was "devastated" after hearing about Mary's miscarriage of Tommy and seemed happy and normal up until his suicide, meaning that he was good at playing along with his wife's plan of keeping Tommy a secret.
However, even though he was presumed to have somehow being pressured by Mary, Jack still loved Tommy despite all his physical abnormalities, to the point where he had decided to kill himself since he couldn't stand seeing his own child being treated in such a way.
Most of these traits basically evaporate once Jack becomes the entity that we see in the game. After his transformation, Jack seems to be almost fully driven by the urge to find Mary and break her mentally and then bring about her painful demise for what she did to Tommy and himself.
Jack is shown to be quite keen on delivering psychological torture to Mary, since even after finding out about her location, instead of simply killing her, he proceeds to sadistically stalk and torment her, whether it be by disguising himself as Kyle and luring her down the hallway only to assume his real appearance and start chasing her or by making it harder for Mary to sleep, scratching a hole in the wall near her bed and sending her a playful message, asking if she feels safe in her apartment, in order for her to feel being watched all the time.
Jack seems to have become a rather chaotic and malevolent being after his death, since he's capable of the same cruelty towards the people who have no relevance to his matters. Once he spots his victim, he proceeds to laugh maniacally, flailing his arms and contorting his body, before attacking and brutally murdering her, although after doing so he's seen to be sobbing loudly, either regretting his decision or being disappointed after realizing that it wasn't Mary. He also bursts into the same hysterical laughter if Mary shoots him, either being amused by Mary's inability to get rid of him or finding it ironic that she tries to murder him with the same gun he had killed himself with.
Despite all these negative traits, Jack isn't a complete monster without any conscience. While haunting the hallways of Mary's apartment, he never attempts to harm Kyle and Kayla and at one point releases Tommy from his secret room, still showing awareness of his actual goal and most likely feeling the same affection for his children as he did while he was still alive.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Paranormal Powers: Overall, Jack possesses a number of various supernatural abilities, some of which cannot be specifically named or identified. One of them is his ability to cause bodily harm by merely touching Mary. It should be also noted that after she's touched, Mary becomes severely disoriented, including blurry and shaking vision and slow movement speed.
- Shapeshifting: This ability is demonstrated by Jack when he takes on the appearance of Kyle and lures Mary down the building hallway, only to resume his true form in a blink of an eye and start chasing her.
- Teleportation: Jack is able to instantly appear and disappear from one location to another on will, which can be both seen while he's stalking Mary in her apartment during the night and when he vanishes right after chasing Mary during the eleventh night.
- Immortality: Being the spirit of a deceased person, Jack cannot exactly be killed by conventional means. Firing a pistol at him only makes him burst into a fit of maniacal laughter, giving Mary a few seconds to get away.
- Speed: Despite his disproportional and morbid physique, Jack is able to run at a considerable speed, catching up to Mary should he detect her in her own apartment or while chasing Mary in the building hallway.