Ed Dillinger Jr.



Ed(ward) Dillinger Jr. is a computer programmer. Before arriving in the game, he worked as the head of the software engineering department at ENCOM. Currently lives in the barracks of Kurzweil.

Age: 34

Origins: TRON: Legacy [ canon. ]

App link: Here. 

HMD: Here. 

Played by: Sid.

Contact: veryfiller [ AIM ]

Setting
ENCOM is Microsoft. Kevin Flynn is Computer God. That's about it, really.

Personality
See app, or copypasta'd here:

'''CANON UPDATE: With the release of the TR3N tie-in trailers (#1 & #2), a few things have come to light/been invalidated. The invalidated things are struck out; the additions are in purple (seen in the linked app). Carry on!'''

Since Dillinger has less than three minutes’ screen time in the film, his canon is a bit — okay, way underdeveloped. However, from those 2+ minutes, we can safely assume a few things: the guy is hyper-competent, pretty useful in a crisis, and knows his way around a computer. Apparently, he also harbors absolutely no regard for that idiot Richard Mackey — but seriously, who does? You don’t yell at stuff and expect it to work, idiot. We’re not in high school.

Before, during, and after the film, Dillinger holds the position of head of software engineering department at ENCOM. He’s the guy that designs, implements, and modifies most of ENCOM’s programs, with (presumably) a team of other software engineers at his disposal. He sits on those very important board meetings in order to either figure out the company’s direction or give presentations on what he and his team are coming up with down in the bowels of ENCOM, and his most recent contribution to the company was OS 12. Which was originally Flynn OS. Clearly, neither he nor the company have as much compunction about adapting software in the name of SCIENCE!!! as Alan Bradley does, but hey, it's Dillinger Sr.'s kid we're talking about here. He's climbin' in your software, he's snatchin' your coding up. Only not really, because there wasn't actually any stealing involved; Dillinger merely works for the guys who adapted Flynn's code into the OS 12. Dick move, yes. His fault? No.

— Actually, let's delve into the Daddy Issues for just a teeny bit. Dillinger Sr. — you know the guy — that dude in that one film before this one who totally stole all of Flynn's video games? Yeah. Knowing him, he probably did this in the middle of the night, under cover of darkness — with a ski mask over his head —just to drive the point that he's a cheating skeeze all the way home. He then locked Flynn out of the system and presented the games to ENCOM as his own creations. Due to the success of the games he 'invented', Dillinger Sr. quickly rose through the ranks of ENCOM until he reached the nice and lofty position of Senior Exec. It only took him three years, but man, that's a sweet place to be, am I right? Right?

But I'm totally right, though, because during those three years, Dillinger Sr. then wrote Sark and modified the Master Control Program (or MCP, an AI program that used to be Dillinger's chess buddy) which mostly controlled the company until [insert plot of the entire movie here, AKA The Adventures of Flynn and His Digital Pal Tron (and Ram, and Yori) as They Embark On A Noble Quest to Shiv the Fuck Out of the Shiny Red Cylinder of DOOM]. The End! Dillinger is then likely thrown in white collar jail for being a fraudulent dick, and little Dillinger is left at home wondering how his daddy could have possibly been so mean like that. Stealing is wrong, kids.

Fast-forward a few years; Flynn's gone missing, and Dillinger Jr. is entering high school with a wish to follow in his father's footsteps. His father is out of jail (because fraud is only a class C felony, damn it, he's got contacts), and has probably learned from his mistakes, what with the MCP being an almighty control freak all those years ago and the whole, y'know, jail thing. Still, who wouldn't harbor a grudge against the guy who was responsible for terminating your former Chess Pal (plus or minus a Sark program)? So it's safe to say that Dillinger Sr. wasn't at all quiet about his hate towards Kevin Flynn over the family dinners, and Dillinger Jr. grew up to dislike the Flynn Clan on principle. (The dislike only increases when Sam starts pulling that yearly check-in shit on ENCOM, trust me).

After the whole ENCOM company fiasco and probably indictment, Dillinger Sr. then started up his own company; 'Dillinger Systems', a rival software corporation that seemed to yank the rug right out from underneath ENCOM's feet when Flynn disappeared.

But this doesn't make Dillinger a bad guy, or a good guy; he's just a guy with a healthy interest in programming (and Daddy Issues), who presumably either gets into Caltech or MIT, depending on which side of the country is most convenient. When he graduates, he's good enough to get a job working for ENCOM as a software developer, and likely rises through the ranks on his own merits (he "earned his place", according to now-chairman of the board Alan Bradley). Considering his family name, this is probably a feat — though I'm not too sure how the company's morals change when Flynn goes missing, so it might be easier than we think. Anyway, we'll just hand-wave most of that and say that Dillinger's MAGICALLY department head of software engineering and call it day.

But why, exactly, Dillinger Jr. is working for ENCOM? Either he maintains a tense relationship with his father and has chosen to oppose him, or he is working for ENCOM to give the appearance of such.

It has been revealed that the person he is calling after the OS12 leak is, in fact, his father. This throws the second idea into a more favorable light. Indeed, in the second unreleased TR3N trailer, he is supposedly speaking with his father about how everything is 'all going according to plan' — which makes us wonder what, exactly, he has hidden up his sleeve.

That brings us back to his .000004 seconds in the film: him, saving ENCOM's ass, and Sam, stealing the OS 12 in order to release FOR FREE!! on the intraweb. It's clear that he can be a real deadpan snarker asshole when he wants to, as evidenced by his 'bitch plz' attitude towards Alan Bradley. It's also clear that he's calm in a crisis, as evidenced by his 'RELAX, BITCH, I GOT THIS' attitude towards Chairman Richard — Dickhead — Mackey. Despite this, he doesn't seem to have any ulterior motives; when things go wrong, he just rolls with it. It appears he's just a guy with a snazzy wardrobe and hipster glasses who likes to get shit done. Sure, he might be a little bit of a jerk when it comes to misappropriation and security and he probably hates theshit out of Wikileaks, but hey, that's life, man.

AND, though Dillinger's presence is a mere cameo in Legacy, the character is potentially being set up as a more major role in future sequels. What this role could be, we can really only speculate at; but for now, I'll just be playing him according to all I've just written and hope that works out. Which will all likely turn out to be invalid if they do decide to make a sequel. Just saying.

Abilities & Weaknesses
See app, or copypasta'd here:

+PROGRAMMING. Department head of software engineering, guys. He knows his shit. I'm betting he's got a firm grasp on just about any kind of CLI there is, as well as a crapload of programming languages. Also, he adapted and designed "the most secure operating system ever created" —and never you mind that Sam Flynn cracked it, okay, because that's just DETAILS, man. Let's just hope he doesn't start getting any funny ideas about creating artificial intelligences capable of instituting a dictatorship of the inhabitants of a digital world, because I'm pretty sure he could do it. Relatively sure. Yeah.

+CRISIS MANAGEMENT. "It's okay. I've got it under control." 'Nuff said.

+LEVEL-HEADEDNESS. Again, in a crisis, he'll wait until cover of night to freak out in his head. Unless your name is Sam Flynn, in which case he has absolutely no problem letting you know just how much he dislikes you.

—HUMANITY. Yeah, he's just made of flesh and bone, here. If you break him, he'll go squish.

—CONTEMPT. If he doesn't like you, good luck on trying to win his respect. He's definitely jumping at the opportunity to assume everyone is stupid, and because of this, he can seem like he's riding on a high horse. Most of the time, he can hide this behind a facade of bland disinterest.

—TRIGGERS. You mention his dad/his dad's jail-time, shit is on. Not cool bro. Low blow.

—A LACK OF SELF-DEFENSE TRAINING. AKA, he's going down in a fist-fight. One skinny computer nerd, coming right up.

Character Relationships
TBA.

Free Space
TBA.