Halcrow

Blue-eyed and carrying himself with the stiff authority of a senior officer, Halcrow bears one lasting mark from his early misadventures: a small notch shot into his left ear by the hijacker Bald aboard the train. That wound shows up in the manga and in his fifth-episode debut of the 2003 series, yet the artists rarely keep it visible in his later scenes.

Ambition and insecurity drive most of what Halcrow does. Sitting one rung below Lieutenant General Grumman, he lacks the standing to openly block Mustang, so he settles for needling and belittling the younger colonel whenever the chance arises, and each jab lands flat. The 2003 continuity sharpens this into open scheming for the presidency, while the 2017 live-action film reimagines him as a far more twisted figure who conspires with the Homunculi.

He enters the tale in the manga's fourth chapter, riding toward a holiday with his wife and two children when Bald and the Blue Squad seize the train to trade him for their jailed leader. Edward and Alphonse Elric, fellow passengers, put the hijackers down before the family suffers real harm. Halcrow later travels from New Optain to East City to scold Mustang over the slow hunt for Scar, and much further on he reports Mustang's Central City coup to Fuhrer Bradley, never realizing that Mustang and Grumman had folded that very report into a scheme to lure Bradley into a killing trap.

The 2003 anime reworks his arc: Mustang stages the Elrics' rescue partly to pressure Halcrow into waiving the age limit on the State Alchemist exam. Assigned to pacify Reole after the brothers pass through, Halcrow ignores Rose's plea to let the townsfolk rebuild on their own terms and abandons her to a horrific fate, then reaches for the presidency while Bradley is sidelined. Near the finale he chases the runaway Elrics out of wounded pride and is sent against Mustang's Drachma uprising, a diversion drawing forces away from Central. His ultimate fate goes unstated, though arrest as a fellow conspirator seems likely.