Jorge Pikale

Thin hair falling loose to his shoulders and a dark mustache mark Jorge as a man well into his later years. Heavy, prominent eyebrows sit above a face that habitually projects confidence. His clothing tracks his career: the Survey Corps gear of an earlier era during his captaincy, traded for the Training Corps standard issue once he takes up instructing.

Years of command have left Jorge fluent in both combat and leadership. Status never curdles into arrogance with him; humility and self-assurance coexist, and he stays committed to fighting for humanity's future. He also carries a conscience heavier than his fame: accepting credit for a kill that was never his disgusts him, and he bears the lie only because the Survey Corps' survival depends on the legend.

Fifteen years before the main events of Before the Fall, in the aftermath of the Titan breach of Wall Maria, Captain Jorge Pikale leads sixty Survey Corps soldiers, his son Carlo among them, on an expedition to take a Titan captive and probe it for weaknesses. The inventor Angel Aaltonen talks his way onto the mission, and his iron bamboo net succeeds in snaring one. Blades accomplish nothing, simultaneous explosive charges only prove the limbs regrow instantly, and when the captive tears loose and the Wall-breaking Titan called Mammon arrives, Jorge orders a retreat that costs many lives, including his friend Sorum. The disaster still yields a crucial clue, pointing to a vulnerable spot somewhere around the head or neck, and a quiet follow-up mission confirms it. When Angel vanishes soon after, Jorge reluctantly claims the Titan kill as his own so the government will keep funding the Corps, and the title Jorge the Hero follows him ever after. He eventually hands the captaincy to Carlo and becomes a Training Corps instructor.

Years later Carlo alerts him that two prisoners, Kuklo and Cardina Baumeister, are to be cast beyond Wall Maria as Titan bait. Rather than contest the sentence openly, Jorge waits until the pair are officially dead men, then hauls them up the Wall by cable after they hold off Titans in the dark, having borrowed the prototype vertical maneuvering device for the rescue. He also arranges safe passage to the Industrial City for Sharle Inocencio, the young woman whose warning set the rescue in motion.

Escorting the two survivors to the Industrial City, Jorge returns the borrowed equipment to his old friend, the craftsman Xenophon Harkimo, and lays out its history: it enabled humanity's only confirmed Titan kill, yet a fatal flaw limits it to straight vertical movement, and the man who actually made the kill disappeared before more could be built. Kuklo's hunger to master the device and join the Survey Corps delights him. On a trip into the iron bamboo forest he demonstrates how the material outclasses standard swords and finally shares the whole truth behind his heroic reputation.

When rebellion breaks out in the Industrial City, Jorge draws off the Military Police so Kuklo can slip inside, though the upheaval ultimately costs him access to the city once Bauduin Bernhart takes command there. He pivots to scouting the training academies for Survey Corps candidates and building an instruction program for the improved equipment, insisting it stay open to recruits of every build. Angel's return with a newly perfected model moves the old captain to silent tears at its first demonstration, though he erupts on learning that a mere three months, the window Gloria Bernhart can guarantee, will separate raw trainees from a live expedition among Titans.

Among the recruits he takes particular interest in Rosa Carlstead, daughter of Maria and the late Sorum, cautioning her that vengeance alone makes poor fuel for a soldier and pointing to Kuklo, who fights so that others will never live caged as he did. When sabotage strikes Rosa's equipment, Jorge provides the alibi that clears the visiting Xavi Inocencio, and the culprits prove to be jealous fellow recruits. At the training period's end he brings the new members to Shiganshina, argues without success for postponing the expedition after rainstorms ruin the terrain, and watches from atop Wall Maria as Carlo leads the Corps out, explaining that the mission must both test the equipment against Titans and extend maps that so far chart only ten kilometers beyond the Wall.