Ghost

Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley is a British special forces operator, and a prominent member of Task Force 141, known for his iconic skull-patterned balaclava, headset, and dark red sunglasses. Simon Riley had a very traumatic childhood while growing up in Manchester, England because of his heartless father. His father often brought dangerous animals back to their home and taunted him with them, even going so far as to force Simon to kiss a snake. When he and his younger brother Tommy grew older, Tommy would always wear a skull-mask at night to scare Simon. Simon's father would sometimes take him to the Bone Lickers concerts. At one concert, his father made him laugh at the death of a prostitute who had overdosed on drugs. Simon used to be an apprentice butcher at a grocery but joined the military after the September 11 attacks occurred. He eventually was accepted into the Special Air Service. Returning home on leave in January 2003, Simon found his mother and brother had hit rock bottom. His brother, Tommy, was addicted to drugs and had been stealing from their mother to support his habit. Simon chose to not return to the military until he had straightened things out for his family. He worked to help Tommy overcome his drug addiction and, in March 2004, beat his father and threw him out of the house for all the abuse he had inflicted on Riley and his mother. By June 2006, Tommy had been clean for some time and married a woman named Beth. Riley served as the best man at Tommy's wedding. Beth also gave birth to a young boy named Joseph who would become Riley's nephew. Simon was pulled from shipping out for an operation in Iran and was attached to an American team tasked with taking down the Zaragoza Drug Cartel headed by Manuel Roba. When he and his team made their move on the Day of the Dead, the team's commanding officer, Major Vernon, betrayed them to the enemy. Riley and his teammates were brought to a brainwashing facility and tortured for months. Despite the torture, Vernon was Unable to fully break Riley. Roba had Vernon killed for his failure and later buried Riley alive in Vernon's casket, leaving him to die. Using the jawbone from Vernon's rotted corpse, Riley was able to break through the casket, claw his way to freedom, and somehow make it back across the border to Texas.

After four months, his injuries had healed but he still suffered from temper-management issues, which prevented him from returning to active duty. After meeting up with the other two former teammates from that mission, Kevin Sparks and Marcus Washington, he realized that Roba had broken and brainwashed them both. He attempted to kill Sparks but was forced to flee when Washington turned up unexpectedly. Fleeing, he returned home to find Washington had killed his mother, brother Tommy, sister-in-law Beth, and nephew Joseph (alternately referred to as Jacob).

He killed Sparks and Washington before returning to Mexico to take down Roba once and for all. Riley ambushed Roba's right-hand man, Gilberto and tortured Roba's location out of him. Arriving at Roba's compound, he methodically eliminated Roba's guard patrols before assaulting the mansion itself and, after a prolonged gunfight, killing Roba. Armed with information on Roba's contacts and business dealings, he prepared to leave but was approached by General Shepherd who recruited him into Task Force 141. On October 8, 2013, a joint Task Force 141/Delta Force operation codenamed Operation Kingfish was launched. Ghost worked alongside John Price, John "Soap" MacTavish, Gary "Roach" Sanderson, Sandman and Derek "Frost" Westbrook as they hunted down Vladimir Makarov. They assaulted the main compound and were able to recover some intel, but got ambushed by a bomb, forcing the team to evacuate. During the evac, Soap was wounded by an RPG and was partially knocked out. An AC-130 tried to defend the team as they sprinted toward their evac point, but was shot down, leaving the team completely vulnerable. Price selflessly stayed behind to facilitate the team's escape and was wounded and captured. Following Makarov's massacre at Zakhaev International Airport, Ghost assisted in the operation in Rio de Janeiro to locate and capture Alejandro Rojas, the man who supplied Makarov with weapons and ammunition, maintaining radio contact with Captain MacTavish and Roach while they searched for Rojas' assistant. After MacTavish and Roach began pursuing the assistant, Ghost met up with them at the Hotel Rio and joined the chase. Once the assistant was taken down by Roach, Ghost prepared to interrogate him through torture. Ghost was heard via radio for the rest of the mission as he attempted to pursue Rojas through the favela. After the capture of Rojas, Ghost was heard requesting extraction from Command, but to no avail. Despite this, Ghost managed to narrowly escape the favela with Captain MacTavish and Roach aboard Nikolai's helicopter. After escaping South America, Ghost joined the rest of Task Force 141 as they prepared a counterattack with the US 6th Fleet against the Russians. Using information recovered from Rojas, they learn that Prisoner 627, the only man Makarov hated worse than the Americans, was locked away in a gulag, though the path leading to the prison was blocked by oil rigs, which were captured by the Russians and turned into makeshift SAM sites. Targeting the least-defended rig, Ghost and the rest of the 141 and Navy SEALs infiltrated and cleared the rig of hostiles and rescued several hostages in order to safely deactivate the SAM sites. Following the mission, Ghost joined the attack on the gulag holding Prisoner 627, where he would take control of gulag's security systems and guide his allies to the prisoner, who was soon revealed to be Captain John Price. With Captain Price back in their ranks, he soon devised a contingency plan to end the war in America by infiltrating a Russian submarine base. Though Ghost and his team were initially separated from Price and Roach following their insertion, they would later meet up and converge on the Russian base, where Price took control of a Russian sub. However, Ghost was shocked when Price launched an ICBM at Washington D.C. where the Russian-American war raged on. Ghost contacted Command about Code Black, which was the statement that a threat of a nuclear weapon was launched and must be disposed of immediately. It was possible that he retracted this though after he learned about Price's intention. Using resources from his blank check, Shepherd deduced the last two safe havens for Makarov and his men at a safehouse on the Georgian-Russian Border and an airplane boneyard in Afghanistan. Knowing they have to be at two different places at once, Ghost nominates himself and Roach, along with a bulk of Task Force 141, to take the safehouse, while Soap and Price investigate the boneyard. After raiding the safehouse however, Makarov was nowhere to be found, though the safehouse was loaded ("A bloody gold mine" as Ghost said) with intel. Ghost, along with Roach, Ozone and Scarecrow, with sniper support from Archer and Toad, protected a DSM from Makarov's men while it downloaded sensitive information regarding Makarov's operations. After finishing the download, the team headed to the LZ that was set up by Shepherd, though Ozone and Scarecrow were both gunned down by enemy mortars, and Roach was injured. Ghost managed to get Roach to the LZ, but both were ultimately betrayed by Shepherd, who fatally shot the two in the chest at point-blank range with a .44 Magnum, just before Ghost could use his ACR. After Shepherd retrieved the DSM from Roach, Ghost's body was thrown into a ditch and set on fire along with Roach's.