Joanna Dark

Joanna Dark is a fictional character and protagonist of the Perfect Dark fictional universe, created by Rare. She made her debut in the Nintendo 64 first-person shooter Perfect Dark and is a player character in all the games of the series. Outside of video games, Joanna also appears as the lead character in all the Perfect Dark novels and comic books. Joanna is an operative for the fictional Carrington Institute, where she was given the code name "Perfect Dark" in honor of her flawless performance in training tests.

Joanna Dark was originally devised by video game designer Martin Hollis, who found inspiration in a number of fictional heroines such as FBI agent Dana Scully from television series The X-Files, and the eponymous femme fatale of the film Nikita, among others. Her Perfect Dark Zero model was redesigned by manga artist Wil Overton. Joanna Dark is among Rare's most well known characters and is also featured in several "top lists" by the gaming media.

Character design

The character of Joanna Dark was originally devised by Martin Hollis, the director and producer of GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, before he left Rare in 1998. Hollis explained that the suggestion of having a female lead in a first-person shooter was inspired by Kim Kimberly, the protagonist in the first two instalments of Level 9 Computing's interactive fiction trilogy Silicon Dreams, where the player experiences the shock of discovering that they are a woman fairly late in the first game. He also felt that there should be more games with female leads. According to him, "Having just made a game starring a man it seemed logical to create one around a woman."