Joseph Stallion

> The sky was the color of fire the day Übercommander Metze took papa away. Same color as the fire fading out inside me. {..} Now, the Nazis were about to put an end to my story. Well, that's what they thought...One thing was clear. Metze was a dead man walking.
>
> Gunslinger Joe in the opening of Volume 2., The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe

**Joseph "Gunslinger Joe" Stallion** is a former quarterback turned resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation of the United States (now the American Territories). One of his missions involved fighting his way through Nazi forces in Chicago, up to the reaches of space.

## History

### Biography

**(The following events are depicted in The Freedom Chronicles, which exist as works of fiction within the Wolfenstein setting; their veracity in the actual timeline is questionable at best.)**

Joseph "Gunslinger Joe" Stallion is former quarterback who used to play for the Springfield Firebirds in Springfield, Illinois before the occupation. During his youth, Joseph fell in love with football and taught by his father, alongside how to shoot a gun on the farm due to his father believing it would come in handy one day. After the war, his father formed a resistance group and managed to cause a lot of trouble for the Nazis. However, he was eventually captured and sentenced to hard labor in Hillsboro by Übercommander Roderick Metze, a former American dentist turned Nazi member who's holds his families belief of the white man being superior.

Joseph and his fellow Americans were forced to play games against the German Superteam that Metze was part of during the 1950s. On March 12, 1950, Joe scored one point for his team (the only point for them) despite Metze scoring his fourth goal and winning the game. Joe was captured and taken with resistance members.

## The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe

Joe is enslaved by Metze himself and forced to play in an unfair football game. After managing to defy his oppressors, he is arrested and sentenced to be dissected by Metze. He manages to free himself out of Metze's lab after learning of the activity of the Resistance group in the area, located in the Oak Street Hotel, during the beginning of the Second American Revolution. After fighting through the Nazis to the hotel, he is ambushed by Metze, who subsequently executes the Resistance members. Due to Metze's overconfidence and lack of caution, he tasks a soldier to kill Joe, only for Joe to escape his execution and jump out of the hotel building. Before leaving the hotel, Joe remembered where he saw Metze before: He was the man who sent his father to the coal mines years before.

He reunites with his father in the prison of a local Nazi police station after disposing of Metze's death trap. Destroying the Secret Police HQ, Joseph takes his father to safety and goes across the Midwest looking for Metze. Going to a Nazi facility in Topeka, he learns Metze had run off to Venus. He hides in a container that has a Venus atmospheric suit inside. Stallion manages to go into the Venus Oberkommando base to stop Metze from firing the Sun Gun, which was to be used to suppress the activities of the American Resistance in the midwest. After disposing of nearly all of Metze's men, he is shot by Metze in the hip. As Metze stupidly gloats his triumph, Joe asks why Metze didn’t fire the Sun Gun. Metze reveals that it is not operational yet. Taking the opportunity, Joe tackles Metze out of the window to his death, and he fights his way out of the Venus base.

## Personality

> I knew one thing. That I would introduce Metze to the bitter taste of revenge. The taste of dirt after getting laid out by a man you shouldn't have pushed into a corner.
>
> Joe in the sewers before reaching the Secret Police HQ., The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe

Joe shows himself to love football, making frequent references through his journey across America to Venus. Joe holds deep anger to the Nazis, who not only took over America, but forced him and everyone else to be beaten into submission. Joe's retaliation inspired many to fight against the Nazis as notes around state that they want to save him from capture. Joe shows great determination and persistence on his vengeance to Metze, crossing the Midwest in search for the commander. By the end of the second volume, Gunslinger Joe become what he called a man of vengeance, wanting to exact revenge on Metze (and possibly the Nazis and KKK) for putting him and the American people into a corner.

## Abilities

> Didn't see that one coming, did ya!
>
> Gunslinger Joe after breaking through a wall., The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe

Joe possesses physical prowess far beyond human norms, and in fact is the strongest character in the Freedom Chronicles and quite possibly the entire Wolfenstein franchise. He can lift and carry heavy weapons such as the Lasergewehr, Dieselgewehr and Hammergewehr which normally have to be placed on a fixed mount or carried by Super Soldiers, throw simple metal cans hard enough to kill armoured soldiers, snap necks with trivial ease, knock out or kill enemies with a single punch and even smash through (weakened) concrete walls, knock men off their feat or smash them into piles of gore simply by running into them even without the use of Ram Shackles.

Furthermore he displays an immense resilience to physical trauma, only being knocked out and displaying no sustained injury after falling several stories from a hotel window and retaining the strength to carry an adult man at running speed and smash through a reinforced glass window even after being shot in the hip at point-blank range. No explanation is ever given for his inhuman physicality beyond his years of football training and possibly his preceding work as a farmhand in his youth.

## Trivia

* Joe is so far the only playable character in a Wolfenstein game who carries no melee weapon, exclusively using his fists and feet for close combat.
* Ironically, the nickname "Gunslinger Joe" is a reference to Joseph "Gunner Joe" McCarthy, an anticommunist.
* Joseph's line about "Illinois Nazis" is a reference to s similar line spoken by wikipedia:John Belushi in a scene from the film *wikipedia:The\_Blues\_Brothers*.

## Gallery

1. ↑ Whitaker, Ron (July 28, 2017). Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Season Pass and Pre-order DLC Revealed. The Escapist. Retrieved on July 30, 2017