Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell)

Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell)
Sam Fisher is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series of video games developed by Ubisoft as well as a series of tie-in novels. He was created by the writer JT Petty and designed by artist Martin Caya.
Fisher was originally voiced by veteran actor Michael Ironside in the first five installments of the series. In 2013, Eric Johnson provided the voice and motion capture for the character in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Ironside later returned to the role in 2018, participating in a crossover downloadable content for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands and again in 2020 for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. He was also added as a playable character in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, voiced by Jeff Teravainen, and as a supporting character in Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, voiced by Nigel Barber.
Conception and design
Sam is 178 cm (5 ft 10 in) tall, weighs 77 kg (170 pounds).
Appearances
Sam Fisher (LCDR, USN-Ret.) is a former employee of Third Echelon, a top-secret black bag operation sub-branch within the National Security Agency (NSA) and a former member of its subsequent "Splinter Cell" program. Sam is currently the commander/head field operative of Fourth Echelon, a newly created covert special operations/counter-terrorism group that reports only to the President of the United States.
Samuel Leo Fisher was born on August 8, 1957, in the Baltimore suburb of Towson, Maryland. While not much is known of his childhood, it is known that Sam was raised by his paternal grandmother and attended a military boarding school after the death of his parents when he was a child until being accepted into the United States Naval Academy, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political Science and was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy. Soon after, his personnel file was flagged for recruitment by the Navy SEALs, which he joined after passing their grueling selection process and training program.
In the mid-1980s, while Fisher was attached to the CIA (though still on active duty with the Navy) and working under an official diplomatic cover in Georgia (at the time part of the USSR), he met an NSA crypt-analyst named Regan Burns and they were married in a small ceremony at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany, after learning that Regan was pregnant with their child. On May 31, 1985, Regan gave birth to the couple's only child, a daughter whom they named Sarah. Fisher and Regan divorced after three years of marriage, and after gaining custody of Sarah, Regan reverted to her maiden name and changed Sarah's as well. When Regan died from ovarian cancer sometime in 2000, Fisher gained guardianship of Sarah, moved back to the U.S., and took a job with the CIA, where he worked in weapons development as well as studied experimental weaponry and information warfare, to spend more time with her and focus on her upbringing.
While Fisher was on a mission in Iceland, he was informed that Sarah was allegedly killed by a drunk driver in late 2007 or early 2008; however, three years later, he heard a rumor that her death was no accident and went to Malta to investigate. After being captured by Third Echelon in Malta, Grim revealed that Sarah is alive but if Sam wanted to see his daughter again he had to help her investigate new Third Echelon director Tom Reed. At Third Echelon HQ, Grim played a recording that Lambert made before his death in New York explaining that Sarah's death was faked to prevent her from being used as leverage by a mole inside Third Echelon to compromise Sam and the agency. After learning of this revelation, Sam reluctantly continued to help Grim in stopping Reed from assassinating the President of the United States, all the while reuniting with his daughter and retiring from government work.
Bored with civilian life, Fisher accepts a job from his old associate and best friend, Victor Coste at Paladin Nine Security which specialized in high-tech defense solutions and kidnapping recovery work. But when Coste is injured during the Blacklist attack at Anderson Air Base in Guam, he is then offered by President Patricia Caldwell the position of commander of Fourth Echelon, which consisted of himself, alongside civilian hacker Charlie Cole, former CIA officer Isaac Briggs and lastly his former co-worker at Third Echelon, Anna Grimsdottir, to hunt the Engineers, the faction responsible for the attack. Despite several setbacks, such as accidental exposure to VX nerve gas from a bomb put together by the Engineers, Fisher, and the team would stop several attacks before being forced to save their plane from an Engineer's computer virus; at the same time as an attack on the Sabine Pass LNG facility, resulting in continuity of government being activated. Fourth Echelon would stop the Engineers by infiltrating a government bunker, with Sam disguising himself as a hostage before taking on Majid Sadiq, leader of the Engineers, in a one-on-one fight. Sam would cripple Sadiq in this fight; to prevent the latter from revealing American secrets on trial, or starting a world war with the Engineer's backer countries should Sadiq die, Sam decides to secretly detain Sadiq for interrogation while it is publicly reported Sadiq was killed.
In other media
An alternate version of Sam Fisher appears in the 2023 animated series Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix. This version of Fisher is depicted as an amputee who lost his legs in battle. Following the rise of the Eden megacorporation and its takeover of the United States, he becomes a revolutionary fighting against their control, while his daughter Sarah willingly joins Eden, becoming the warden of its Supermaxx prison.
Reception
The character Sam Fisher received critical acclaim, being hailed as one of the biggest characters on Xbox and one of the console's synonyms in 2002, with praise going to the characterization used by Microsoft Game Studios and Ubisoft. In 2008, The Age ranked Fisher as the seventh greatest Xbox character of all time, stating "he's a man of action rather than words and a lone wolf, and sometimes, you've just got to respect that." On the other hand, PC Zone staff listed Fisher as the eighth worst character in PC gaming history, declaring "Once a great, iconic character - now one in freefall due to a genuine lack of imagination on the part of his creators." Text of this critique targets Splinter Cell: Double Agent.
Although Fisher ultimately did not make the cut, Game Informer staff considered his inclusion in their "30 characters that defined a decade" collection, with Bryan Vore saying, "Before Splinter Cell ... it was easy to assume that Sam Fisher was simply a poor man's Solid Snake. But [he] quickly won over gamers thanks to his quiet and deadly efficiency, gruff yet sarcastic demeanor, and the willingness to disobey orders that he doesn't believe in."
References
Action-adventure game characters
Fictional assassins in video games
Fictional American people in video games
Fictional characters from Baltimore
Fictional double agents
Fictional Gulf War veterans
Fictional knife-fighters
Fictional lieutenant commanders
Fictional National Security Agency personnel
Fictional prison escapees
Fictional private military members
Fictional spymasters
Fictional sleeper agents
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Fictional Krav Maga practitioners
Fictional eskrimadors
Fictional Systema practitioners
Fictional jujutsuka
Fictional Pencak Silat practitioners
Fictional torturers and interrogators
Fictional United States invasion of Panama veterans
Fictional United States Navy SEALs personnel
Male characters in video games
Fictional intelligence analysts
Fictional martial artists in video games
Fictional military personnel in video games
Fictional secret agents and spies in video games
Fictional soldiers in video games
Tom Clancy characters
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Ubisoft characters
Video game characters introduced in 2002
Video game mascots
Video game protagonists