Frank Archer

Archer begins the series as an ordinary, sharply groomed military officer. His look turns grotesque in the story's back half: after much of his left side is consumed, he is rebuilt as a cyborg, his flesh threaded through with automail and a gun mounted inside his mouth, an image as unsettling as the mind that now drives it.

Archer presents a cool, unflappable surface that masks a genuine hunger for bloodshed and war. He treats the battlefield as a ladder, dreaming of glory that will carry him up through the ranks, and he tailors nearly every act to flatter his superiors and draw favorable attention. As the plot deepens he grows fascinated by the military's darker experiments, the homunculi, the chimeras, and the Philosopher's Stone above all. That final obsession costs him dearly: part of his body is spent trying to make a Stone, and the automail reconstruction that follows fractures his mind, after which he cuts a murderous path through the capital carrying out Bradley's execution orders. He is also among the few who know their leader is no human, and he takes the Führer's commands without flinching all the same.

Written into the 2003 continuity as a stand-in for the slain Maes Hughes, Archer first drifts through the background at Hughes' funeral and beside Major General Hakuro before stepping properly into the tale down south. There he works the Laboratory 5 affair, pressing Winry Rockbell for Edward Elric's whereabouts and closing in on the homunculus Wrath. When Izumi Curtis storms in to save the boy and Envy spirits Wrath away, the operation collapses into a wrecked headquarters, yet Archer still walks off with a prize: he offers the imprisoned Crimson Alchemist Kimblee a clean slate and a return to service, which Kimblee accepts.

Archer then leads the successful raid on the Devil's Nest, pulling Edward and Izumi out of the fire while formally folding Kimblee and the chimera-maker Shou Tucker into his ranks. Promoted to colonel, he marches seven thousand troops toward Reole, setting Edward to hunt Scar and ordering Tucker's chimeras to clear the city. Mustang, Hawkeye, and Armstrong try to arrest him, but he slips off behind Tucker's monsters and drives his army into Reole against Edward's warning, a blunder that gets nearly all of them slaughtered while he barely escapes with his own life.

Rebuilt as a machine-limbed cyborg, Archer stays behind to hold Central and turns on Edward's group with the gun set in his mouth. He overwhelms Izumi until rebel soldiers loyal to Mustang rescue her, then breaks off once word reaches him that the Führer's mansion is under attack. Speeding there by car, he plows into a cluster of military police and even tries to execute the captured Riza Hawkeye. He finally corners Mustang outside the mansion and shoots out one of his eyes, only for Hawkeye to arrive an instant later and gun him down through the living half of his body.