Ellis (Left 4 Dead)

Ellis is one of the playable survivors and protagonists of the 2009 video game Left 4 Dead 2.
Ellis' facial features are based on Jesy McKinney, and he was voiced by Eric Ladin.
==Overview==
He is a junior mechanic by trade in Savannah City, he describes himself as a goofy, beer-loving guy with artless and sometimes naive universal view. Personally, he is open, friendly, inclusive and highly optimistic. In common, he's also a risk taker and believes trusts himself to be invincible. However, he has a love interest named Zoey after meeting up with her.
Ellis' irrepressible optimism leads to some mixed relationships with the other team members, who cannot figure out if Ellis is genuinely oblivious to the danger they face or if he has a highly resilient, tough-minded personality who chooses to mask or defend it behind a light-hearted surface persona.
Whatever is supposed to be the truth, Ellis presents to his fellow team members the view that the Zombie Apocalypse is a thrill-laden adventure while his open and friendly nature allows him to form affectionate bonds with his teammates effortlessly. Ellis is quick to claim everyone as his friends, as he will sometimes say, "This is what friends are for," when using a med-kit, or will tell a fallen teammate, "I ain't leavin' you!" and he mourns the most when any member of the group dies. In overall terms, Ellis can be viewed as the group's little brother.
Although his seeming obliviousness to the severity of the situation implies that he is rather naive or even unintelligent, this view is incorrect: he is not stupid, as he proves many times over in combat and most notably when he comes up with the plan of using Jimmy Gibbs Junior's car to escape the mall.
==Quotes==
Campaign 	Quote
Dead Centre 	Man I love malls. I do. Once, I was in this mall, up in Atlanta, and these guys were dancing for like money and stuff and my friend Dave and I was all like-
Dead Centre 	My buddy Keith tried camping out on top of a building once. He was shooting crows, but the police were too busy tear gassing him to ask what he was doing up there. He screamed for an entire YEAR every single time he opened his eyes! Oh, man. At first it was funny, then it just got sad, but then it got funny again! Oh, man...
Dead Centre 	Jimmy Gibbs Jr. is the man. I mean, I don't know anybody like that, man. But there was this guy I knew, he was racing dirt track, not stock cars but open wheeled cars you know, and he was racing once and a goat- [...] Okay. But there was a goat.
Dark Carnival	I ever tell you about the time me and Keith made home made bumper car ride with riding mowers in his back yard? Mower blade wounds over ninety percent of his body. I didn't run him over, either. He somehow managed to fall under his own-
Dark Carnival	I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith drowned in the Tunnel of Love? You wouldn't think it would happen cause the water's so shallow, but that's how he gets you, man: Over confidence. Keith was with his lady at the time and he was yelling for her to save him but she didn't wanna get wet-
Dark Carnival	I ever tell you about the time me and Keith snuck up paintball guns on a roller coaster? I never heard of anybody else doing it, so I thought we might have invented a sport. So, Keith called the patent office, but-
Dark Carnival	I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith fell out the roller coaster? Yeah, he didn't drop far, mind you, just onto the tracks, but the carnival people wouldn't stop the ride cause all the other people paid good money and Keith snuck on for free, so he had to dodge for like twenty minutes or so-
Dark Carnival	I ever tell you about the time Keith and I made fireworks? Now, I didn't know sh*t about chemistry, but Keith figured, "Gasoline burns, doesn't it?". Third degree burns over ninety-five percent of his body. Man, people in the next city over were calling to complain about the smell of burning skin.
Swamp Fever 	I ever tell you about the time Keith tried to deep fry a turkey? Third degree burns over ninety percent of his body. His doctor called up, like, other doctors to look at him cause they'd never seen burns on top of existing burns-
Swamp Fever 	Man, all this mud remind me of my friend Keith. Yeah, he was goin' to build a shack once, to live in and all, and I know most people here, they build houses and they become shacks, but Keith, he was about jumpin' right to the shack stage. But he had no wood. So he got some mud and was makin' what we were all thinkin' was gonna be this adobe bricks, you know, like when them people out west made bricks and sh*t? Well, he had mud and-
Swamp Fever 	I ever tell you guys about the time my buddy Keith got rolled by a gator in a swamp? Man, he didn't agonize it or nothing, we were just trying to grab two so we could p*ss 'em off and get 'em into a fight. Well anyway, the third time Keith went under, I realized something was wrong, so I-
Hard Rain 	I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith drove a car off a cliff, broke both his legs? It's not a funny ha-ha story so much as a make-you-think story. For instance: Windshields look pretty durable, right? Not the case, according to Keith. Son of a b*tch flew right through that sucker-
Hard Rain 	I ain't never been to a sugar cane field before. I mean, I seen 'em and all, but no real reason to go into one, but now you go into a peach grove, you find all sorts of cool sh*t. This one time, I was in-
Hard Rain 	I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith and I were on the top of a burning building, and we had to fight our way down like five floors of zombies? Wait a second. I guess that was you guys. Aww, sh*t, man, I can't wait to tell Keith about that one!
The Parish 	Do you know what "suck the heads" means? Cause I came down here with Keith once, and he didn't know and... I mean, it ain't nothin' bad. It's about eatin'.
The Parish 	Did I ever tell you about the time me and my grandpa took the bus the Memphis to go visit Graceland and-
The Parish 	I ever tell you about the time me and Keith filled up water balloons with our own-
The Parish 	I ever tell you about the time buddy Keith fell down an open manhole? He was unconcious down there for like a week. During that time, unbeknownst to Keith, they paved over him. Keith had to-
The Parish 	My buddy Keith lived in a graveyard once for a whole year. It wasn't a dare or nothin', he just got kicked out of his house. He said he NEVER saw a single ghost 'cept for this one time when a ghost stabbed him from behind and took all his money, and he might've just been a homeless guy, 'cause he had a robe on with two eyes cut out his face-
The Parish 	One time, the army bombed my buddy Keith. He went camping and didn't bother to read the signs, and I guess they were just testing bombs that day. All sorts of stuff too, not just regular bombs. Like biological nerve gas bombs, shrapnel bombs, these bombs that break up in the air into like a hundred smaller bombs-
The Passing 	I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith snuck into a wedding? He thought he was being smart getting all dressed up and like... but it seems the preacher wasn't there and they thought he was the preacher and, well, he married them the best he could. I think that counts for them being married but, I don't know, maybe not. I think they named one of their-
The Passing 	This one time, my buddy Keith started up a historic tour, on account of his mom took him to Colonial Williamsburg, and it's like a license to print money at them places. Now you might ask yourself how an honest attempt to recreate the majesty of Colonial times turned into raccoon fights at five bucks a pop in Keith's backyard, ha-ha. Man, the answer to that particular question is that Keith is sharing a place with his two brothers and them being a******* who wouldn't let them do it anywhere but the backyard; well, add that to Keith didn't technically have any, y'know, history to put on display, but he did have a whole family of raccoons living in the chassis of an old car and you'd begin to understand.
The Passing 	This one time, my buddy Keith, on a DARE, got a tattoo: "I'm a moron" right across his forehead, man. 'Course, he made two hundred bucks off that, so...you ask yourself: Who's the REAL moron, huh?
The Passing 	Yo, my buddy Keith had his car drop in a lake off a bridge just like this one here... Yeah, see, he was driving over it late at night and there in the middle of the bridge was what looked like, In Keith's estimation, like a dead bear, so Keith gets out his car to find a stick to poke at it right? Well, it turns out it's just some lady's fur coat that musta fallen out her car, so, hey, free coat, right? Now, owls won't normally attack a man, but in this case, they were hungry, and that made them reckless, man. Keith reckons that they musta been there for hours watchin' what they thought was a bear carcass, 'cause as soon as he picked it up, them owls had claws in him inch deep. Well, Keith figures his best bet is to jump in a lake, 'cause owls can't swim. Well, them owls could. He fought them for like 20 minutes treading water, and during that time, a boat came, bridge went up and down went Keith's car. Man, sometimes nature's just tryin' to teach us, if we'd only listen.
The Passing 	Hey, y'all, yeah, I like this bridge you got. You know, this reminds me my buddy Keith and I were once on a bridge just like this, man. Well, kinda, I mean, I was on the bridge and Keith was sure he could jump the river without the bridge, so I raised the bridge and well... Did you know cars can float? I mean, for a little while at least.
The Passing 	I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith made sushi? Yeah, his mom took him to a sushi place for his birthday and he didn't want to go, but he turned out he LOVED it, man. But it's like 10 bucks a su-sho in one of them places, so Keith figures, "Hey, how hard can it be to roll up some raw food in seaweed," right? As it turns out, it's hard. Now, they say experience is the best teacher, and experience taught Keith that if you ever eat three pounds of raw chicken, it kills you. Now luckily, Keith's brain went into self-defense mode and started shutting organs down to head the chicken off at the pass, and the doctors were able to get 'em out before his heart stopped. But to this day, Keith has no sensation in his right foot, and he doesn't recognize his own brother Paul no more.
==Gallery==
EllisFace.jpg|Close-up.
JessyMcKinney.jpg|Real life.
==Trivia==
*He is 23 years old, making him the youngest survivor in the Left 4 Dead 2 group.
*Keith is a friend of Ellis, as noted from his saferoom stories. If Ellis' stories are true, Keith has suffered from third-degree burns over most of his body twice (95% making fireworks, 90% deep frying turkey), lost two fingers and a thumb to frostbite, broken both legs after driving his car off a cliff, been stabbed by a guy, been tear-gassed by the police (its traumatic effects lasting a year), snuck a paintball gun on a roller coaster, been attacked by an alligator, been bombed by the military, nearly drowned in the Tunnel of Love, been in prison, been cut up by his own "bumper-car" lawnmower (leaving him with wounds over 90% of his body), had cement paved over him in a sewer after falling down an open manhole, lived in a graveyard for a year after getting kicked out of his house, invented several types of soft drink, hung spit on the overhang in the Tunnel of Love, fell off a roller coaster onto the tracks with the ride still going, purchased an "I'm a moron" tattoo on his forehead for a dare (winning $200), consumed three pounds of raw chicken (the in-game subtitles say catfish; he no longer recognizes his brother Paul and lost sensation in his right foot because from this), attempted to build a house out of mud, been attacked by owls, turned a recreation of Colonial times into a raccoon fight in his backyard, pretended to be homeless, had a water balloon fight with balloons full of urine, driven across a river without using the bridge, and illigally married a couple. He also would have even gotten married himself, had he not ran away from his wedding.
**In Hard Rain, Ellis confuses Nick, Rochelle, and Coach fighting their way through the burning hotel in Dead Center for something that happened to Keith. It is unknown if Keith is alive, infected, or even real. If Keith is real and alive, he is likely fighting the Horde, seeing as so many incidents failed to kill him. However, in certain cut lines, Ellis states that Keith was evacuated, claiming he was the first on a helicopter.
**Two pieces of graffiti mention a "Keith", but don't specify if this is the same man. One piece of graffiti reads "Keith: Waited 3 days at the meeting spot after we got separated. I can't wait anymore. Meet me at Mercy Hospital — Krista". Another piece of graffiti in The Lighthouse reads, "My name is Keith Marshall, And I'm going to die here". If this is the same Keith, this could mean that he made it to the lighthouse, but gave up hope. Since L4D2 takes place a week after The Lighthouse (which is in L4D), he could have already died.
**After asking Gabe Newell if Keith is real, he answered with, "Keith isn't imaginary, except, well, it is a video game, so it's all imaginary". Ellis sometimes mistakes the Fallen Survivor for Keith, but then notices it isn't him.
==Licensing==
This article contains content derived from the "Ellis" article on the L4D Wiki, licensed under CC-BY-SA
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