Richard B. Riddick

Richard B. Riddick is the titular main protagonist of the Chronicles of Riddick franchise.

Richard is a Furyan, a member of a warrior race obliterated by a military campaign that left Furya desolate, and is one of the last of his kind.

Personality
Riddick has often been described as a sociopath. He has never shown any remorse for the murders he commits nor does he show much empathy for those around him. However, Riddick may more accurately be called an animal, as his crimes originate from his ruthless will to survive rather than for the sake of killing. He has even referred to himself as an animal at times. Due to feeling the rage of his kind for as long as he can remember, Riddick's mental state has been regularly pushed to its limits.

Despite this however Riddick's personality most reflects a true survivor. He will do whatever he must to survive and will kill anyone who tries to end him or his freedom. At the same time, he is not without some form of morality, refusing to kill those he does not view as a threat to himself. Likewise, if someone gets close enough to him they become part of the "Kill All Who Threaten" mindset, willing to defend them. Noticeably, Riddick also has a sympathy for children,[13] as he was willing to risk his life to help Kyra and Lynn.

Riddick has a low opinion of himself, despite valuing his continued existence. This conflicts with his destiny to avenge his race. When Fry died trying to save him, Riddick could only scream "Not for me!" believing his life was unworthy of her sacrifice. He also expresses deep regret and sadness when Kyra sacrifices herself for him.

In The Chronicles of Riddick, he considered it an insult when he discovered the bounty placed on him was around a million of the currency for most planets, as well as when Toombs has a small crew to capture him (it was originally four crew members, then later five).

Additionally, he seems to have an intolerance for cannibalism, as seen in Riddick where, after disemboweling a Mud Demon, he displayed visible disgust at seeing it eating its own innards.

Eyeshine
Due to Eyeshine, Riddick's eyes developed a night vision-like quality, allowing him to see and detect things in pitch darkness. A draw back to these eyes is his high sensitivity towards light, unable to properly see through too much of it.

In the flash comic on the Pitchblack.com website, Riddick gets the eyeshine to avoid disadvantage following an encounter with humanoids called "shiners" (who refer to Riddick as darkeye) who already have the same operation to see in the dark bowels of the Ursa Luna prison where the guards do not tend to go. The eyeshine surgical procedure seems to be performed by a bovine veterinarian on board a prison facility at which Riddick arrived only a few hours before and from which he is already in the process of escaping. Riddick elects to have no anesthetic despite the procedure involving cutting the cornea and drilling through the eye to inject a reflective substance behind the retina. The cost quoted to Riddick is 1000 creds. Having no cash, Riddick offers down payment of a pack of Kool cigarettes which he earlier took from a guard. He also takes welders goggles from the facility.

The video game, Escape from Butcher Bay (which serves as a prequel to Pitch Black), clarifies that Riddick's eyeshine is more than just something he picked up in a prison. After helping a character called "Pope Joe" retrieve his "blessed voice box", a radio that picks up religious programming (including a Necromonger Talk Show), Riddick goes into a den to get stitches for an injury. After he is finished receiving stitches, Joe tells him how to escape, and, perhaps coincidentally, warns Riddick not to "trust [his] eyes"; at that moment, a ghostly voice informs Riddick that he has "been blind for far too long..." and that he is to receive a gift. It is at this moment that Riddick receives his eyeshine. The mysterious voice belongs to a character named "Shirah", who appears to serve as a sort of spiritual guide to Riddick, helping him awaken the Furyan abilities that lie dormant within him. In the Chronicles of Riddick film, Jack/Kyra angrily tells Riddick that when she was sent to prison, she found out that it is impossible to find anyone who can perform a "surgical shine job" at any price, and accuses him of lying about how he received his night vision.

Light amplification surgery, somewhat similar in effect to Riddick's eyeshine, has been patented in real life.

Wrath of the Furyans
Aside from helping Riddick unlock his eyeshine, the character Shirah also either allows or helps Riddick discover his ability to unleash a sort of energy wave. It is shown in the director's cut of The Chronicles of Riddick after she lays her hand on Riddick's chest, leaving a glowing blue hand print, and says, "this mark carries the anger of an entire race... but it's going to hurt". After either receiving a shot from Vaako's energy handgun or a fraction of a second before the discharge of said weapon, she immediately emits a large blast of blue energy from Riddick (or Riddick himself does so with her guidance), leaving the group of surrounding Necromongers dead. This ability is also displayed in Escape from Butcher Bay.

Physical Abilities
Aside from his more supernatural skills, Riddick is in superlative physical condition and is an exceptional fighter with or without the use of his eyes. Whether as a result of his Furyan heritage or simply training, Riddick is stronger, faster, more agile, tougher, more resistant to damage and injury (a very noteworthy testament to his durability is shown in Riddick where, upon confronting a Mud Demon, it used its tail to knock him headfirst into a nearby rock, and he walked away with no visible injuries, nor signs of a concussion [though he did briefly growl in annoyance]), possesses more acute senses, immense stamina, and superior healing when compared to most humans; he is shown on more than one occasion dislocating his limbs for brief moments with only slight signs of discomfort, although he was in more obvious pain when his leg was broken in a fall, and had to use a heated rock to cauterize a wound when he was impaled in the chest by a creature's sharpened tooth. In general, Riddick possesses an abnormally high threshold of pain and psychologically channels what pain he does feel into anger. His ability to cope with toxins is also heightened; when a merc team was attempting to take him out with horse tranquilizers, it took four darts just to make Riddick stop running, and he still remained conscious until he was hit in the head.

Riddick's abilities at hand-to-hand combat is a mix of krav maga, hapkido, eskrima, and ninjutsu; he uses his formidable fighting skills while confronting one of the night-creatures of Pitch Black with only his bare hands and a shiv he had made, killing it with relative ease, as well as defeating one of the Lord Marshall's best Necromonger warriors in a matter of seconds in Chronicles. Also, he was able to hold off the Lord Marshall and even injure him which the Lord Marshall admitted hadn't happened in a long time. While Riddick was no match for him in speed, he was able to hold off the Lord Marshall for several minutes.

A very tactical and methodical man, Riddick is shown able to quickly adept to seemingly any situation or environment, able to forge tools from his surroundings, perform minor medical care to himself including usage of hot rocks to cauterize serious injuries, forage for food, and ultimately even survive alone and isolated on a barren planet.

Intelligence
Despite his harsh upbringing and violent attitude, Riddick has been shown to have a certain knack for deductive reasoning, rapidly deducing what had happened to the original inhabitants of the mining base where he and the other crash survivors had been staying, as well as finding the creature's blind spot in Pitch Black and swiftly deducing what had caused the firefight between the Warden's and Toombs' men in The Chronicles of Riddick. He has also been described as having "a knack for escape", surviving not only the Lord Marshall's purge of the Furyans when he was an infant but subsequently escaping from various prisons over the course of his life. He is also able to quickly judge the quality of, and find even seemingly minor flaws in most weaponry, down to very specific details.

In one case, Riddick concluded that the prized dagger of a Necromonger was "a half gram too heavy on the back end" after an inspection lasting all of a couple of seconds, although the tone of voice in which he delivered this appraisal suggested pre-fight bravado rather than abstract fact. His only weakness (other than light sensitivity, leaving him in pain when in daylight without his goggles), as stated in the Pitch Black DVD, is his soft spot for children and anyone who really grows on him (those people become his friends), which resulted in his capture by the bounty hunter Johns.

In addition to raw analytical skill power, Riddick is generally an astute judge of character, especially in the dark side of human nature. A killer himself and resident of several maximum security facilities, he is often able to predict an individual's negative impulses before they act on them. He has been known to be surprised on occasion, such as when Carolyn Fry in Pitch Black altruistically gave up a fast escape to save Jack and Imam from the alien creatures. Riddick was also surprised when he underestimated Jack's (Kyra's) affection toward him between Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick, only learning of it after she had become a mercenary and resident of a maximum security prison in order to see him once again.

Otherwise, he correctly predicted which of the group in Pitch Black would turn on each other (in particular that Johns would try to double-cross Fry), and that the mercs and guards on Crematoria would turn on each other prior to his escape attempt. In Riddick, he appeared pleasantly surprised to learn that Johns' father was a better man than his son, complimenting Johns' nerve when he came back to help Riddick when he didn't have to.

Willpower
One major characteristic of Riddick is his indomitable will. Despite finding himself in situations where the odds of survival and/or escape would seem insurmountable, Riddick always pushes forward and never gives up. Faced with several creatures far more powerful than himself, or any human for that matter, he has shown himself to be capable of evading, killing, or even taming them. He has escaped out of prisons when most prisoners would resign themselves to captivity.

When Riddick was mentally probed by the Quasi-Dead of the Necromongers, he not only resisted them, but also retaliated, the Quasi-Dead's containers actually exploding from the strain of trying to process Riddick. Given the Necromongers' apparent faith in and respect for the power of the Quasi-Dead, this is a very impressive feat. Perhaps even greater was his ability to resist the Lord Marshall's attempt to steal his soul. The one time his will seemed to waver was when Kyra was killed, sacrificing herself to save him and help him defeat the Lord Marshal, and even then he channeled his loss into new strength.

Weapons
Riddick is a very well-trained hunter and combatant. He is shown to be highly proficient if not deadly with any tool at his disposal, from firearms and melee-weapons to simple tea cups. His weapon of choice, to which he has shown undeniable precision, are knives. Likewise, Riddick is proven to be a fearsome hand-to-hand combatant, showing impressive and methodical attack patterns. However, Riddick's most famous weapons are a pair of Ulak blades that he is seen using during his escape from Crematoria in The Chronicles of Riddick.

Trivia

 * Richard B. Riddick first appeared in Pitch Black: Slam City, a Shockwave prequel comic on the official Pitch Black website, one month before the release of the movie. In the film, and in all subsequent appearances the character has been portrayed by Vin Diesel.
 * Riddick is 36 years old as of Riddick. The invasion of Furya took place 30 years ago as mentioned in the Chronicles when Riddick was a baby.
 * In the theatrical cut of the Chronicles, it's Vaako who says "You keep what you kill", but in the unrated director's cut Riddick speaks these words.
 * In the theatrical cut of the Chronicles, Lord Marshal Zhylaw never remembers Riddick as being familiar to him but in the director's cut he does.
 * In Jim and Ken Wheat's original script for Pitch Black the Riddick character was a woman named Tara Krieg.