Psychological Analysis of Samantha Maxis

[MysteryMachineX]

Hello. I am MurderMachineX. So once I was with some people that did psychological analyses of fictional characters. Unfortunately, I got stuck with Spider-Man. I wanted to do Samantha Maxis. So I figured I'd do it now. And yes, part of my reasoning is because I have some free time to kill. Samantha is my absolute favorite character in the Zombies game. I may have Richtofen as my ringtone, but that's only because I'd rather not have a creepy girl's voice on my phone. So I'll stick with the Nazi. (Don't you love choices?) Just a warning, I use a fair amount of logical deduction here.

Now, here is Samantha Maxis:

As with anyone, Samantha is a product of her genealogy and environment, with her choices thrown in the mix. To really understand Samantha, we must go through her history.

She was born around the beginning of the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. Early in her life, her mother died, leaving Samantha with a single father, Ludvig Maxis. Samantha was young, but she was able to vaguely remember it. Ludvig became very protective of his daughter. He also recently got a job where he could be the chief scientist in a technological humanitarian organization known as Group 935. He took the job, but on the stipulation that his daughter was to come with him.

Der Riese was the headquarters of Group 935, and it became Samantha's home. It was not the most hospitable place. Being a little girl in a research complex full of scientists, she became lonely, and she was often confined away from the experiments taking place. She lived here for many years. Eventually, her dad needed to go to another one of Group 935's sites, Kino der Toten, for a presentation on his work. So she got a chance to leave Der Riese, because Ludvig was not going without his daughter.

In Kino der Toten, Samantha found that there were other scientists with children. She made two friends: Abigail and Emilia. They played games of dress-up and toys. It could arguably be called the best time of her life. However, all things must come to an end. Her father needed to go back to his research in Der Riese, and Samantha never saw Abigail and Emilia again.

Back in Der Riese, Ludvig got more and more involved in his work, so Samantha saw less and less of him. Her father also got romantically interested in the secretary, something children don't typically handle very well. Ludvig noticed his daughter was unhappy, and he also needed new test subjects for his teleporting experiments. So he got a dog, knocking out two birds in one stone. He gave the dog to Samantha, and she named her Fluffy. Fluffy became her companion. Meanwhile, Edward, one of Ludvig's employees, became acquainted with Samantha. When she found out his name, she misheard it, thinking his name was "Teddy" instead of "Eddy", for Edward. She became slightly fond of Edward, who reminded her of her teddy bear. She eventually did learn his real name.

But things took a turn for the worst. Edward was charged with the task to learn how to control their recent creation, zombies. Edward tried his tests on dead bodies and the undead. However, Ludvig told him he needed to operate on people that weren't dead. To Samantha's dismay, she did not know about Edward's recent descent into insanity. She trusted him, but he decided to add her to his list of test subjects. Edward conducted many intrusive experimental tests on her. She didn't remember them specifically, either because of him wiping her mind or because of her blocking them out of her mind.

She lived this way for a few months, and it was an awful existence. One day, she couldn't find Fluffy. She looked around until she found the Animal Testing Lab and found her that her dad had used Fluffy as a teleporter experiment. What she didn't realize is that it had gone awry; Fluffy was now a H*llhound. Edward locked her and her father in the room with Fluffy, who now wanted to kill them. Ludvig took her daughter into the teleporter and escaped, but without recalibration.

Samantha reappeared in Griffin Station, Edward's secret moon base, without her father. She was scared and made a run for it. She accidentally stepped on and activated the MPD, an ancient device that connects the user to another dimension. Samantha's body became cryogenically frozen, but her consciousness acted from another dimension, peering into everything in our world. This was a very traumatic event.

Eventually, the scientists there brought Ludvig to the MPD to talk to her. He gave her a gut-wrenching speech, telling her that he did not mean to neglect her and that he loved her. She opened the MPD and said she loved him too. But her father asked her to do a favor, to kill all the rebellious scientists that had built this place. As soon as he said that, one of the scientists shot and killed him. Samantha immediately commenced to completing her father's final wish. She closed the MPD and began to off the scientists. Samantha became an agent of death.

Samantha then set her sights on the last remaining scientist, Edward. He was in Japan, surviving against an outbreak of the zombies with three of his other test subjects. Samantha found that she was able to control the zombies. It was a game to her. She was too young to understand fully that she wielded these awesome powers. She created artifacts from the dimension she resided, Aether, to help the survivors for fun, for a challenge, such as the Mystery Box and Power-Ups. She kept trying to send zombies after them, but they kept surviving until one day, they vanished. Into thin air. Edward had figured out time travel.

Then Samantha was alone. She spent the next 16 years without anyone to play with and send zombies to. She ended up finding a way to entertain herself. She found a Russian scientist named Yuri Zavoyski, who she could talk to in his head. She kept talking to him, but it drove him crazy. She liked his boss, Gersch, better. Over the past many years, she had matured in her own unique way. She told Yuri what to do to make Gersch fall into a black hole of his own design to Aether. Then she had an eternal playmate. Gersch was tortured by her, even though Samantha likely didn't realize she was being torturous.

Finally though, Edward and his subjects reappeared. She then resumed her games with them. However, they managed to free Gersch from her confinement. And then they just left. Samantha was alone, again, for seven more years until they reappeared again. She then wanted revenge and sent zombies after them yet again. This happened a few more times. Eventually, Edward came to the MPD directly. He could not figure out how to get her out, but he managed to switch consciousness with her, or rather, switch bodies. She was human again, and we last saw her on the Moon.

IN CONCLUSION:

Samantha's normal life was short-lived. She was abused as a child by Edward. She became basically a deity with enormous power by the age of 10. It wasn't until she was nearly 90-years-old that she was released from the MPD by Edward. Her body was frozen, but she was still conscious. She aged in a stranger way that any other person in history. She became much darker from the things she had done and seen, but she retained her whimsical ways of a child.

Samantha was conflicted about becoming human again. On one hand, she lost ultimate power and more importantly her body. There is nothing more stressful than being a little girl in a creepy German man's body. However, she was finally not alone. Every companion she had ever had, besides her father, turned on her. Edward's test subjects, Tank, Nikolai, and Takeo, were just trying to survive. She saw herself in them. And it may have just been due to rashness inherent in a zombie outbreak, but they accepted her for who she was. They realized that "the Doctor" had [bleep] her up just like he had to them. She finally had companions who accepted her for who she was. Things weren't perfect; they bickered. But she was part of a group.

It's been twenty years, and the whereabouts of her and her new companions are unknown.

[Hannibal]

Amazing. Pure gold. I look forward to future ones by you. If I may suggest, I would like to see one on Peter McCain?

[MysteryMachineX]

Thank you. I appreciate it. To be honest, if I did more, I'd probably do all the playable characters before non-playable characters. But thank you nonetheless. :)

[Lenne]

Samantha is definitely the most interesting character for me personally.

Which means that I like this.

Good job,MMX it was a very nice read. :)

[MysteryMachineX]

Thank you.

If you (not you Lenne) cannot sympathize with her in the last paragraph at all, you're not human.

[Shooter]

I really like this.

Is this currently part of the Zombie Trilogy or have you not added it in? I don't recall. If not you should definitely add it in. It's very easy to follow and explains very well just what happened to Samantha. I would go through and add some more details if you do use it.

I like the part about Emilia and Abigail. I never considered that.

Some things you could add in

“I Hate Edward, he has lied to daddy since I was just a little girl” - Samantha. Moon.

The quote makes it sound like she did know that Richtofen was lying to her father at some point before the betrayal.

Also, I'm not sure Samantha (or her soul or whatever) actually aged in the Aether. Her voice does sound like it's been altered after leaving the Aether, but as far as aging I don't know. I've just never heard any of them mention anything about aging whilst in Aether.

And one last thing. I think Richtofen knew how to get Samantha out of the MPD (probably because he knew how Groph and Schuster initially opened it). One of the Moon audio tapes confirms Richtofen knew how to get her out.

Dr. Richtofen: How did she end up there? No matter, I know what must be done, in the meantime see if you can find Dr. Maxis, perhaps he can talk some sense into her.

Dr Groph: Did you not deal with him already?

Dr. Richtofen: Yes, but if the child ended up here, then Maxis must be somewhere too. Find him.

Dr Groph: How do you propose-

Dr. Richtofen: Dr. Groph I cannot do everything for you. I leave this in your capable hands. There is much to be done.

Dr. Groph: Yes Doctor.

Dr. Richtofen: Oh and Groph?

Dr. Groph: Yes?

Dr. Richtofen: I'd keep an eye out for an evil looking dog while you're at it.

Again, this was a great read. You should certainly add it to the Zombie Trilogy when it's done.

[MysteryMachineX]

Thank you.

To be honest, I really don't know how I would add it to that thread. This uses a lot of deduction and while I do agree with it, it kinda strays from that thread's likeness to a historical retelling. It could; I just don't know the best way to do it.

And good point about the lying.

As for the aging, she did age. It's just a matter of your concept of "age". If heaven was considered another dimension, wouldn't George Washington's soul be 281-years-"old"? Samantha has been consciously functioning for a looong time. Souls are eternal and don't truly age, and her body can't age. So she doesn't show any signs of aging. But if you were to catalogue her memory, you'd have "year 1, year 2, year 3" all the way up to "year [big number]".

Ah, I didn't consider that Richtofen knew how to get her out. Thank you.