Bertolt Hoover

Height defined Bertolt twice over. As a human he towered near two meters, the tallest of every known Titan inheritor, with a lean build, an elongated face, thin eyebrows, brown eyes, and dark hair kept short. He spent most of the story in a trainee or Survey Corps uniform; by the battle for Shiganshina he had cropped his hair shorter and fought in a collared shirt, dark trousers, and maneuvering gear.

His Colossus Titan dwarfed everything else in the early series at roughly 60 meters, tall enough to peer over the Walls. The form looked flayed: no skin covered it, its jaw and facial structure barely resembled a person's, its arms hung slim and unnaturally long, and its swollen feet resembled pillars. Steam vented constantly off its body, an eerie echo of the nervous sweat that followed Bertolt everywhere in human form.

Bertolt described himself as a follower, someone whose will bent toward whatever the room already believed. His instructor saw huge potential wasted by zero initiative; comrades knew him as the quiet one at the edge of any conversation. Beneath the passivity sat real conflict: cornered by the friends he betrayed during Eren's kidnapping, he broke down in tears, insisting he never wanted anyone dead and that his years among the 104th had been genuinely happy, even as he refused to surrender.

His loyalty ran hottest toward his fellow Warriors. He acted as Reiner Braun's anchor, pulling him back whenever his partner's fractured mind slipped into a soldier persona, and any threat to Annie Leonhart could tip him instantly into fury. By the final battle at Shiganshina he had hardened into something colder, telling Armin calmly that the people inside the Walls had done nothing wrong yet still had to die, reasoning that nobody carries fault in a world so cruel. That fatalism let him face destruction without flinching, but when his own death arrived he shattered, screaming for Reiner and Annie as Armin's Pure Titan closed its jaws around him.

Born an Eldian in Marley's Liberio internment zone, Bertolt entered the Warrior program as a child, where his marksmanship stood out among the candidates. He befriended Reiner after helping him up from a bullying incident, inherited the Colossus Titan around 843, and mastered its power almost immediately. In 845 he shipped out with Reiner, Annie Leonhart, and Marcel Galliard to seize the Founding Titan from Paradis Island. Ymir's wandering Titan devoured Marcel on the way, and the shaken survivors pressed forward: Bertolt kicked through Shiganshina's outer gate, the Armored Titan smashed the inner one, and Wall Maria fell.

Posing as mountain refugees, the trio enlisted in the 104th Training Corps, where Bertolt graduated third in his class and earned a reputation as its finest hand with vertical maneuvering equipment. Five years after his first attack he transformed again above Trost, wrecking the wall-mounted cannons before dissolving his Titan and vanishing into the steam. He then followed Reiner into the Survey Corps instead of the Military Police, surviving the 57th Expedition and the siege of Utgard Castle. Everything collapsed when an exhausted Reiner confessed their identities to Eren. Wounded by Mikasa, Bertolt produced a partial transformation atop Wall Rose, swallowed Ymir and a soldier whole, then dropped his burning skeletal form onto the duel below to help snatch Eren away. The kidnapping failed once Erwin's Titan horde and Eren's awakened Coordinate power turned the field, and the pair fled empty-handed to rejoin Zeke Yeager.

At the battle for Shiganshina, Zeke hurled Bertolt over the Wall inside a barrel. Finding Reiner crippled by Thunder Spears, he brushed off Armin's attempt to negotiate, transformed in midair, and released a blast on the scale of a small nuclear device that leveled the district's heart and annihilated much of the Survey Corps, Moblit Berner among them. His scalding steam repelled every assault until Armin let himself be burned nearly to death as a decoy; Eren slipped out of a hardened Titan shell, carved open the Colossus Titan's nape, and tore Bertolt free. Levi chose Armin over Erwin for the single dose of Titan serum, and Bertolt died begging as his former friend's Pure Titan devoured him. Years later, during the Rumbling's final battle, Zeke's power briefly restored him within the Paths; his Titan fought one last time, shielding Annie from a Titan swarm and lifting Armin toward the transformation that destroyed Eren's Founding Titan.