Barry the Chopper

In armor form Barry is a towering, grim figure built from long silver plates, with gauntleted hands whose knuckles taper into spikes above cloth fingers. Leather belts strap two broad plates across his chest, a fur-trimmed tunic wraps his waist and one shoulder, and his skull-like helmet is stitched from iron, bone, and pale hair, marked with the number 66 and a pair of small horns above hollow eye sockets. As with Alphonse, his eyes glow as two points of light and his blood seal is inscribed inside the neck plate.

His original human body is glimpsed only in pieces: lean and aproned in an abstract flashback, while the reanimated version stuffed with a dog's soul is muscular, wild-haired, masked, barefoot, and slowly rotting. The 2003 anime instead gave the living Barry a slim frame with short blond hair.

Barry cultivates a theatrical, terrifying entrance, yet he is far more chatterbox than brooding menace, happy to talk with anyone at all, intended victims included. He takes unrepentant pride in killing, treating it as compulsion and identity rolled into one, and he sulks whenever a target refuses to be frightened. Beneath the comic bluster he is sharper than he lets on, quick to spot leverage and opportunity, and he clings fiercely to his sense of self, summed up in his motto that killing is proof he exists.

Loyalty barely registers with him; he swaps sides on a whim purely for the fun of it, though he genuinely warms to Mustang's people and follows Riza Hawkeye's orders. His recall for his own murders is flawless, letting him name every victim, date, and circumstance from memory.

Once a Central City butcher, Barry grew bored of slicing livestock and turned to hunting people, claiming twenty-three victims starting with his wife before a well-publicized hanging that was only a front. Rather than die, he became a test subject; his soul was torn from his body and bound to armor, rebranded Number 66 and stationed alongside Number 48 to guard Laboratory 5. He first tangles with Alphonse there, needling the boy with the notion that his memories and very existence might be fabricated, until Maria Ross and Denny Brosh arrive and the collapsing lab lets Barry slip into the night. He resurfaces stalking Riza Hawkeye, who neither flinches nor is fooled; smitten, he is taken in by Mustang and Falman, verified through his exhaustive recall of the Chopper killings, and trades what he knows about Lab 5 and the Philosopher's Stone for a promise of secrecy. Later he springs Maria Ross from jail as bait in Mustang's plan, freeing Ling Yao along the way. The homunculi then send his reanimated body to track him down; drawn to butcher his own decaying flesh, Barry chases it to Laboratory 3, where Lust cuts his armor to ribbons. His blood rune holds until his dying body crawls over and scratches the mark away, ending body and soul together, a bitter irony given how badly he had wanted to carve himself up.

In the 2003 anime Barry is darker and far crueler. He abducts Winry Rockbell, binds and torments Edward, and is captured only with Alphonse's help, an arrest that cements Ed's standing as a State Alchemist. He too ends up soul-bound in Laboratory 5, toys with Al's mind, and escapes, before returning with a mercenary band to butcher Ishvalans while posing as the military. There Scar splits his armor and ruins his seal, and after a malfunctioning weapon flings him aside, Scar crushes his head, finishing him off for good.