Franco

Franco Barbi was born to a Louisiana mafia don and an unnamed woman. According to him, he never knew his birth mother and instead grew up with his father's numerous wives. He committed his first murder at the age of 12 and would later become a debt collector and hitman for the crime syndicate. He would become problematic for the Mafia due to his total disregard for human life, especially to those he attempted to engage in sexual activities with. Due to his impotency he would frequently murder his sexual partners for psychosexual reasons. Franco would eventually be sent to Miami, supposedly for Mafia business but the real reason was far more complicated. At some point, Franco engaged in a sexual relationship with his stepmother Angelina Barbi, as her degradation brought him sexual pleasure. Franco's father found out about the affair and severely beat him before exiling him, his life spared due to their blood relation.

Franco would eventually move his operations to Cuba and briefly become involved in CIA operations. He participated in numerous raids against revolutionary forces. However, he would once again begin to indiscriminately murder just as he did in New Orleans, seemingly for no benefit to the CIA, leading to his expulsion from operations. Franco would eventually catch the attention of Murkoff after he witnessed a Reagent commit an assassination. Seemingly inspired by the kill, he would go on to murder seven people, leading to Murkoff dispatch Clyde Perry to investigate. Perry would later track down Franco to a hotel where he was meeting a prostitute. Perry was alerted by the hotel clerk that there was an incident in one of the rooms, upon investigation he found a dead prostitute along with Franco's possessions, including his shotgun, Lupara. When Perry attempted to investigate, Franco emerged from the dead prostitutes chest cavity. Clyde Perry was nearly beaten to death and sent to Texas for leg reconstruction and skull surgery, Franco Barbi was later captured and sent to the Sinyala Facility. Franco Barbi is a man of average build and height. His outfit consists of a dirty oversized white pinstripe suit, a purple dress shirt, and light blue bowtie, a common ensemble for gangsters of the time. He wears a brown ammunition bandolier around his upper torso that holds the buckshots for his shotgun. In contrast to this intimidating outfit, a pacifier dangles from said bandolier—its hue matching the color of his shirt—secured with a ribbon in the same shade as his bowtie. His skin is pale white, he has bulging blue eyes, and dirty blonde hair. Franco is mostly bald, with his remaining hair in disarray. His eyes are bloodshot, indicative of hemorrhage, or brain damage. The most prominent feature of Franco's is his extremely large cranium, nearly double the size of an average man's. The deformations of his skull and face are the result of both a birth defect, and frequent physical abuse from his father[2]. The left side of Franco's skull is heavily mutilated from probable head trauma; visible sutures extend from the site of the injury toward his eye. Despite his disability and sustaining injuries through both his field of work and domestic abuse, he remains in otherwise excellent health and physical condition. Franco Barbi poses a unique threat to Reagents due to his ranged shotgun attack. While he is still significantly dangerous up close, his ability to attack at a distance forces Reagents to break his direct line of sight or seek cover to avoid damage. His ranged attack has a short "windup" period where he aims his weapon before firing, which can give Reagents time to seek cover and avoid the shot. When Reagents are within his line of sight, Franco remains stationary and continues firing his shotgun twice before reloading. Once they break out of his direct line of sight, the Reagents can gain distance while Franco will attempt to catch up. When hit by the Lupara, Reagents become staggered and briefly deafened. The Lupara can also deafen any Reagents that are near the firing noise of Lupara, though it does not affect other Ex-Pop. Since the Lupara fires a spread of projectiles, each shot can hit multiple Reagents at the same time so it is best to split up while being chased. Due to the Lupara using tooth-filled shells instead of proper shot, it cannot instantly kill a healthy Reagent. However, taking a full spread of projectiles inflicts significant damage, with its severity increasing on higher difficulties. The firing shot damage from Lupara is not affected by the Deadly Prime Asset variator but a melee hit from Franco can still deal a maximum of four health bar damage on Reagents.

Franco still behaves similarly to other prime assets, when in melee range he will prefer to simply beat Reagents with the stock of the Lupara or his head, but his melee attacks do not have any additional effect. Like other Prime Assets, he is resistant to hits from throwable items but the effects of rigs will work on him.

Franco can be somewhat difficult to track during a trial, as his weapon does not produce any kind of audible noise like Mother Gooseberry's drill and Leland Coyle's electric prod, instead his primary audio cue is his heavy breathing and constant dialogues while patrolling, which can reveal his approximate location to perceptive Reagents. When Franco is alerted by noise or spots a Reagent while patrolling, he will quickly shoot at the direction of the sound or a Reagent that alerted him. Reagents are advised to avoid stepping on broken glasses and minimize noises from walking, jumping, and running. Franco Barbi tends to act as a stereotypical gangster, using blunt threats and aggressive displays of violence to prove a point. Franco is also extremely sexually depraved in nature and takes pleasure in murdering out of arousal, killing one of the female Giants and engaging in necrophilia with her corpse. In particular, he has a fetish for being infantilized; in his origin comic, he goes so far as to sleep inside the torso of a prostitute's corpse to simulate a womb. He frequently expresses his fetish with a twisted sense of humor, sardonically and sadistically threatening Reagents while referring to himself as a "little baby" and using childish expressions such as "caught with your hand in the cookie jar". His compulsively infantile behavior causes him to bawl like a baby[7] when he is frustrated, although he is embarrassed by his habit of crying and defensively claims "that's just water from [his] eyes". This defensive action is likely to protect his fragile ego.

His aggressive and explosive nature reflect a deep-seated insecurity, stemming from his abusive childhood and his feelings of sexual inadequacy. As a result, he views Reagents as interlopers who threaten both his territory and his ego, and he is determined to hunt, punish and kill them using blunt force and homemade buckshot from his shotgun. Franco does appear to possess a level of intelligence and craftsmanship, being able to produce his own ammunition within the trial environments as well as having instincts not dissimilar to a hunter. According to his own quotes and Dr. Easterman, Franco's ammunition is produced by using human teeth which is likely ripped from Reagents or anyone else foolish enough to approach him.