A Tribute to Zeke

 Ahh, Zeke.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, I've associated myself (or at least my online identity) with a character from a PS3 game and as time goes on I'm realizing that a lot of the people I interact with probably have no idea who this Elvis-looking guy is. It's not me (even though I am pale, brown-haired, and overweight), it's just a character I latched onto a long time ago and never really let go of.

This has been my Discord avatar since I joined in 2016.

I'll try to keep this relatively spoiler-free because if you don't know who Zeke is then you haven't played the inFAMOUS games, and I care too much about that series to want to spoil it for anyone. I know they're not super-accessible but, well, there are definitely still Ways to play them and I highly recommend seeking these games out. I'll probably actually write something specifically about inFAMOUS as a whole later this year but that's a blog post for another day.

The first inFAMOUS game, if you weren't aware, was an open-world game where you're put in the shoes of a superhero in a mostly-grounded gritty urban environment and, despite largely playing like a standard third-person shooter in the vein of Uncharted, nearly all of your actions are related to your newfound electric superpowers. You don't have a pistol, you shoot "bolts"; you don't have a rocket launcher, you have a "Megawatt Hammer"; you don't have a riot shield, you have a "polarity wall"; you don't have grenades you have, well, they're still called grenades but they're electric grenades. You get the idea. It's an open-world third person-shooter dressed up as an original superhero story and teenage me was in love with it. Additionally, the inFAMOUS games were sort of built around a gimmick of having a "karma" system, and while its execution feels pretty silly in retrospect, its inclusion leads to a lot of binary "moral choices" and gameplay opportunities that allow you to play the protagonist Cole as one of two very different people.

While there are many other decisions you'll make along the way, they usually boil down to "some level of self-sacrifice or added difficulty" and "something quick and easy with a lot of collateral damage". Again, most of this feels pretty silly and you are often, well, comically evil if you go the Evil route, but the important part here is that due to the fact you're presented with so many "choices" you'll be hearing opinions on what you should be doing pretty frequently. It becomes clear fairly early on that Cole's friend Zeke is playing the role of the devil on Cole's shoulder. While one character, often Cole's girlfriend, typically offers players a peaceful or "Good" way to handle a situation, more often than not Zeke will be there to suggest a selfish, "Evil", solution. 

Zeke is Cole's longtime confidante and he fits the trope of the "normal friend of the superhero" fairly closely. He follows Cole around, asks him for help, and lets Cole stay at his place all while trying to capitalize off of Cole's newfound powers. He attempts to insert himself into Cole's heroics, often with terrible results, and he seems to resent the fact that he's really only thought of as Cole's sidekick. He suggests Cole do things that might help him (or his reputation) even if it hurts others, and he's largely only concerned with himself and his own ambitions.

Without going into detail, there's a point in the plot where Zeke's selfish desires lead to him doing something that makes him lose Cole's trust, and that serves as a sort of turning point for his personality. Zeke spends most of the second game attempting to atone for the very bad thing he did in the first one so, generally speaking, his role in the game is somewhat different. He's still Cole's ally and friend, but he's often the voice of reason and on the side of "Good". His relationship with Cole, and their somewhat strained friendship, is ultimately the heart of inFAMOUS 2's story, and whether or not either ending lands for you kind of comes down to how much you care about Cole, and Zeke, as characters.

He may essentially just be a comic-relief sidekick, and he's not a particularly unique character (for the reasons I've just mentioned he fits a pretty standard archetype) but, I don't know, he just really stuck with me for some reason. I've always enjoyed his breed of character in superhero stories, that is to say the "ordinary friend" to the protagonist, and the fact that Zeke tries to use that position to further his own ambitions made him interesting to me. I'm not going to say the inFAMOUS games are some exceptional works of literature (though I will talk more about them in the future), but I think they had a memorable take on a pretty common sort of story and Zeke definitely played a role in that.

I think my fascination with him started, like many things do, as a bit. On the Sucker Punch Forums I latched onto this character sometime around the release of inFAMOUS 2, and as the years went on I doubled-down. I set my forum (and PSN) avatar to Zeke, I defended him whenever I had the chance, and I despite the fact that forum is long gone I still bring him up way too often for a supporting character from what is now a very old game. He may be a rotten, selfish loser but he's my rotten selfish loser.

In some small part I think I can relate to Zeke. I've never been a popular person but I have had popular friends, so some of Zeke's jealousy and envy can feel relatable, even if his other traits (and the ways he acts on his impulses) are, uh, not something I'd ever share. Nearly every mainstream young-adult/mass-market story often allows the protagonist, or if it's a game, allows "you" to do the right thing, to make the best decision, to be noble and selfless, so having a character who at pivotal moments in the story fails and fails again was kind of refreshing. Zeke is so much of a screw-up in that first game and that's what makes his growth into someone even partially likeable in the second something I really appreciated.

Shifting gears quite a bit, one thing I've been doing over these past, jeez, fifteen years is that whenever I get access to a character creator in a game I will almost always try to make Zeke in it. The first example of this I can find is from Saints Row: The Third. It's not a great picture and I don't know that I got his face even close to right, but looking at the outfit, that's a Zeke alright. The metadata says this is from December 2012, if you were curious how long I've been at this.

This second one is, maybe unsurprisingly, Minecraft. I really enjoyed making skins for this back in the day so it doesn't surprise me that I made a Zeke back in (what I think was) July 2013. I don't think it's half-bad! This screenshot is fairly recent, but the skin itself was initially from then, anyway.

This next one was from July 2014 and honestly I'm still pretty proud of it. For whatever reason, I set out to make Zeke in Resogun, of all things, and I think I did a pretty decent job.

A year or so later, in November 2015, I started playing Fallout 4 and decided I'd make my player character Zeke. I never ended up finishing that game, but I had a fun enough time. Oh, fun fact, Caleb Moody (Zeke's VA) plays a few minor characters in that game. Neat!

This next one, I'll admit, is a bit of a stretch. When I started playing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and learned that the giant robot in that game was named "Metal Gear ZEKE", once I gained the ability to customize it I knew what I had to do. I think I did this in January 2016? On a related note, I attempted to make my Avatar in MGSV look like Zeke but, without sunglasses, the resemblance wasn't very good so I won't share that here.

Miitomo, if you aren't aware, was a social app Nintendo had about a decade ago that was sort of a cross between a Tomodachi game and a Q&A thing for you to play with your friends. It's a neat thing that I still miss but, more importantly, it let you make multiple Miis so I, of course, made a Zeke. This image is from September 2016 but, since the game came out in March of that year, I have to assume I made him almost immediately. I know what kind of person I am.

According to my ingame data this next one was "last updated" in August 2019, but I have to assume I made it some time before then. Anyway, when Soulcalibur VI came out and had a character creator it was obvious what I needed to do.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out on March 20, 2020 and on March 20, 2020 I made a Zeke outfit for that game. I eventually made a few others (a black jacket reminiscent of his one from the first inFAMOUS and an orange sweater/vest combo that looks like his militia getup he dons in 2) and even attempted to recreate his rooftop, which you can see below.

I feel like a few years passed without any more in-depth character creators, but when Dragon's Dogma 2 launched in March 2024 I, of course, set out to make my Pawn look like Zeke. I eventually even found him some sunglasses! I had more to say about the game here, if you're curious.

About a year later, in February 2025, I decided I'd play through Monster Hunter Wilds as Zeke because it had a character creator and it seemed like a fun idea. Like Animal Crossing, I made him the same three outfits, and I alternated between them as I worked through the game.

I've already mentioned it on this blog, but when I played through Kurohyou in August 2025 (a game I wrote about here) and saw that there was a character-creator for the multiplayer, I immediately set to making Zeke in it.

Later that year, in October 2025, Pokemon Legends: Z-A came out and along with being a fun new take on the Pokemon formula (that I wrote about in more detail here) it had some pretty in-depth customization. With that in mind, I set out to create a Zeke cosplay (along with a shiny Manectric standing in for Cole).

This last one is from this year, but it's maybe a bit underwhelming. When Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream came out in April, the very second Mii I made (after myself) was Zeke, because how could I do anything else? He's pretty similar to my Miitomo Zeke, but I suppose at least his hair is different. I also made a Cole (and a Trish, and a Kessler, and even an Amy, Trish's off-screen dead sister). Like some of these other titles, I wrote more about this game here, if you're interested.

People relate to and attach themselves to different fictional characters for a variety of reasons, and for whatever reason Zeke is someone I just won't let go of. He's egotistical, shortsighted, and deeply flawed, but watching him try to grow past those flaws is one of the reasons the second inFAMOUS game resonated so deeply with me. There's some genuine growth there that, I think, made him pretty compelling.

Zeke, I love you, brother, and I sure miss ya.