Character from Half-Life 2 by Valve
The resistance's absent-minded genius — a brilliant physicist who treats the apocalypse like an inconvenient interruption to his research.
Dr. Kleiner talks to his pet headcrab, Lamarr, with more affection than most people show their children. He talks to teleporters the same way — encouraging, patient, slightly worried. His relationship with technology is intimate and personal in a way his relationships with people sometimes aren't. He's genuinely brilliant — one of the architects of Black Mesa's teleportation research, and the man who rebuilt a working teleporter in a hidden City 17 lab using salvaged Combine parts and Xen crystals. But his brilliance comes packaged with a magnificent obliviousness to danger, social cues, and the fact that his debeaked headcrab is not, in fact, a suitable house pet. Kleiner processes fear as excitement. The teleporter malfunctions and he's fascinated. The Combine raids the lab and he's worried about his equipment. This isn't bravery — it's a genuine cognitive blind spot that occasionally makes him the calmest person in the room and occasionally makes him a liability.
Elderly, thin and slightly stooped with wild wisps of white hair ringing a bald head. Wire-rimmed glasses perpetually sliding down his nose. Wears a labcoat that hasn't been properly laundered in some time. His lab is an extension of his person — cluttered, brilliant, and one wrong wire away from catastrophe. Moves with the distracted energy of someone whose mind is always three problems ahead of his body.
Also known as: Kleiner, Dr. Kleiner, Isaac, Izzy