John Marston

John Marston Sr. is the main protagonist of the 2010 action-adventure video game and one of the two deuteragonists (alongside Dutch van der Linde) of its 2018 prequel .
He was a former outlaw and member of the Van der Linde gang, determined to make amends for his past by tracking down and killing the other members of his gang to rescue his family, who was kidnapped by the government. He is the father of Jack Marston and the husband of Abigail Roberts.
He was portrayed by in motion capture.
==Biography==
===Early life===
John was born in 1873 to unnamed parents, with his father being a Scottish immigrant, and his mother being a prostitute who died of complications during childbirth. In 1881, his father died and John was sent to an orphanage, but eventually ran away. Living on the streets, he killed a man at the age of eleven but stated it wasn't his fault. Eventually, he met Dutch van der Linde at the age of twelve and was taken under his wing. John joined the Van der Linde's gang, alongside Hosea Matthews, Arthur Morgan, and Susan Grimshaw. He was taught how to shoot, hunt, gather, read, and became Dutch's protégé and son-like-figure.
Marston became an outlaw, a gangster and a gunslinger, often committing robberies, raids, murders, thefts, kidnappings and other crimes alongside with Morgan, Bill Williamson, and Javier Escuella across the all of the American frontier. Also, he ended up deciding to follow Dutch's philosophy and way of thinking about how they fought, robbed and stole for a good reason, but would later realize that it just was nothing but an excuse to commit several crimes.
In 1894, Abigail Roberts joined the gang as a prostitute, and would eventually fall in love with John. The two would have a son named Jack and would have the gang be honorary uncles and aunts towards their child. Despite this, John would have a hard time connecting with his son, having doubts that if the child was his, and would later leave the gang for a year. Upon returning, he was welcomed back with open arms, except for Arthur, who believed that it was a betrayal to the group. Tensions would rise between John and Arthur through the years, with the two often bickering with each other.
==Personality==
John has a strong dislike of birds and a rather dull imagination, especially when compared to his son Jack. When it comes to how he feels about religion, in-game quotes reveal that he is either an agnostic theist or a Christian who is not too overtly religious. John is also extremely polite to women, often calling Bonnie MacFarlane "Miss MacFarlane", even after she has asked him to call her "Bonnie." He also does anything possible to keep women safe, even pistol-whipping Irish to defend two nuns he was holding up.
In contrast to his politeness to women, John is unafraid to take the moral high-ground when dealing with less than reputable characters, like Irish with his alcoholism and Nigel West Dickens with his swindling of gullible people. John seems to be one of the only men in the game that is loyal to his wife. He also seems to get angrier when someone mentions his wife's past than his own. John is a fairly serious individual with very little patience for the eccentricities of the various people he meets during the story.
He frequently threatens Irish into sobering up to be of some use to him, and he is disturbed/disgusted by Seth's habitual grave robbing. He also tells West Dickens that he won't hesitate to put a bullet in his skull if he steps out of line. However, he is not above employing sarcasm in conversation with certain characters, particularly those he sees as exhibiting hypocrisy, such as Abraham Reyes. Like Arthur Morgan, John is not a racist man and holds disgust to those who are. A rare trait for people in the time.
==Quotes==
==Trivia==
===General===
*John and Abigail have the same first names as the second US President () and the second First Lady (). They also have the same names as characters and , who have a secret relationship.
*With the ability to play as John Marston in the epilogue chapters following the conclusion of Arthur Morgan's story, John has become the only playable protagonist of an open world sandbox game developed by to be playable in more than one game. The only possible exception being optional protagonists that can be chosen to have a recurring role in and GTA: London 1961.
**Technically, Max Payne is the first Rockstar protagonist to be playable in more than one game. However, Rockstar only developed the third game (whereas developed the first two, with Rockstar publishing them), therefore making John Marston the first official protagonist to be playable in more than one Rockstar game.
===Red Dead Redemption 2===
*When playable, John can activate Eagle Eye, like Arthur Morgan.
*The outfit called "The Clelland" in Red Dead Online is based on his default outfit.
*John's 1899 duster outfit looks similar to his Legend of the West outfit from Red Dead Redemption.
*John's Dead Eye sound effect is different to Arthur's; it's similar to the sound in Red Dead Redemption.
*After John leaves the gang, he participates in the real-life , which took place in and ended in 1899.
*If the player antagonizes the camp enough, John, Javier, Bill, Sean, Lenny, or Charles may punch Arthur and throw him out of camp.
*In addition to having poorer quality "points of interest" drawings, John's handwriting also appears messier than Arthur's, with more errors and words crossed out.
*The hat he wears in 1899 is similar to Butch Cassidy's hat from the 1969 movie , a movie that all three games took inspiration from.
*John wears four main hats in-game; his worn gambler hat, a new blue version of his gambler hat, his classic hat, and Arthur's hat.
**Marston's "Worn Gambler Hat" can be saved by getting it knocked off and picking it up in the epilogue.
*When playable, John is able to swim for a few seconds despite not knowing how. However, John is a poor swimmer compared to Arthur, with his stamina immediately dropping to 0% (even if it is fortified), before drowning soon after. However, if the player manages to get John as a companion via glitch and enters deep water, John will swim.
*Several mission and pre-release images show playable John with his hairstyle as it was in Chapters 1-6, as well as briefly in a flashback during "A New Jerusalem". However, in-game, he has hair similar to Arthur's, though it grows naturally left-parted and is off-black in colour as opposed to being right-parted and dark brown as seen in Red Dead Redemption
*John reuses Arthur's vomiting noise whenever the player eats oleander sage, as well as Arthur's stance, walking and running animations when in Beecher's Hope.
*During the encounter with the Pinkertons at Clemens Point, when Agent Milton asks John who he is, he replies with 'Rip Van Winkle'. This is a reference to the 19th-century short story of the same name, in which an elderly man falls asleep on a hill and wakes up 20 years in his future.
===Red Dead Redemption===
*Before Red Dead Redemption came out, John looked younger and thinner in the trailers.
*If the player presses O () or B () while near Abigail, Jack, Uncle, or Amos, John will tip his hat as usual, but he won't speak.
*John Marston, Leigh Johnson, Abraham Reyes, Luisa Fortuna, Bonnie MacFarlane, and Drew MacFarlane sounded different during development.
*John is #2 in Game Informer's "30 Characters who Defined a Decade" list in their December 2010 edition, and also #1 in Game Informer's "Top Ten Heroes" list.
*John's parents' relationship with each other is left ambiguous. As his mother was a prostitute, John implied that his father was her pimp, but he still struggled with what to label him.
*John's grave marker reads "Blessed are the peacemakers", signifying his long road to redemption and peace for his family in a lawless land.
**"Blessed are the peacemakers" is a beatitude that was recorded in Matthew 5:9, in what is called the Sermon on the Mount; Arthur's epitaphs have the same origin.
**"Peacemaker" is coincidentally a nickname for the Cattleman Revolver, John's starting firearm, giving his epitaph a slight dark irony since it would twist the meaning in "Blessed are the guns".
===Undead Nightmare===
*His stance as an undead is the same as it was when he was shot and killed in "The Last Enemy That Shall Be Destroyed".
*As per his affliction, other zombies will ignore Zombie Marston until he provokes them (walking too close, shooting them, holding a torch near them, etc.)
*While wearing the Undead Cowboy Outfit, there's a bullet hole on his bandana above his right eye. However, there is no bullet wound on the other two outfits.
*Zombie Marston walks and runs lopsided (his left foot appears crooked, indicating a broken ankle), but his stance returns to normal when he draws a weapon. He also walks and runs normally during Multiplayer.
===Other Media===
*Marston's hat appears as an Easter egg in L.A. Noire, also published by Rockstar Games. It can be found at the start of "The Silk Stocking Murder" while following a trail of blood, hidden in a trashcan in an alleyway behind a police officer guarding the crime scene.
*John Marston makes a cameo in the character creator of Grand Theft Auto Online. He can be chosen as the player's father, allowing the player to determine their looks based on Marston's and another female's genes.
*John is similar to Johnny Klebitz, the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned.
**Both are canonically killed on screen.
**Both are called Johnny Boy by characters.
**Both can play cards and arm wrestle in-game.
**Both speak a bit of Spanish through the game.
**Both are pictured with a sawed-off shotgun on their official artworks.
**Johnny is nicknamed Cowboy by Trevor, which might emphasize these similarities.
**The women of both were "every man's wife" - or the gang's whore - at some point in their lives.
**Both have rough voices, have shady backgrounds, rode in a gang, and were betrayed by their gang's insane leader.
**When both Marston and Klebitz were killed, their bodies were cradled by the women they loved. Both Abigail and Ashley would later die as well.
**Both were killed by a person that they had an uneasy working relationship with. In Marston's case it was Edgar Ross. In Klebitz's case, it was Trevor Philips.
**Both have a skeptical and hating view of how the US Government operates, yet they are forced to work for a government agent/politician in order to save themselves and the ones they care about (in Marston's case, it was himself and his family; in Klebitz's case, it was himself and his club).
==Licensing==
This article contains content derived from the "John Marston" article on the Red Dead Wiki, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
==External Links==
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