Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham

Will Graham is the main protagonist of NBC's Hannibal. He is a criminal profiler and hunter of serial killers, who has a unique ability he uses to identify and understand the killers he tracks. Will lives in a farm house in Wolf Trap, Virginia, where he shares his residence with his family of dogs (all of whom he adopted as strays). Originally teaching forensic classes for the FBI, he was brought back into the field by Jack Crawford and worked alongside Hannibal Lecter to track down serial killers. Will has a unique psychological ability that he refers to as "interpreting the evidence". In reality, he is able to assume the state of mind a murderer has after visiting the crime scene and recreates the thinking (as well as the actions) with himself as the killer in order to understand more about them. Hannibal Lecter describes his ability as "pure empathy". Despite suffering from Anti-NMDA encephalitis

Hannibal is a psychiatrist who works with Special Agent Will Graham to track down serial killers. Unknown to his colleagues, Hannibal is a cannibalistic serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper, who works behind Graham's back to further his own crimes. However, he sometimes uses them for other purposes such as committing two murders as a 'copycat' of the crimes of Garret Jacob Hobbs to present Graham with a clearer picture of the true killer's motives. Hannibal Lecter was born in Lithuania to Count Lecter, a Lithuanian aristocrat and Simonetta Sforza-Lecter, an Italian mother. He despises banality and has an acute love of fine arts, food, literature, and music. He is depicted as a man of taste and details, and a nearly-obsessive perfectionist. He takes an instant dislike to "rude" people, such as Fredricka Lounds. Hannibal is very particular about what he eats, most of his meals are self-prepared. He claimed once that he does not believe in cruelty to animals and only purchases meat from ethical butchers, although this may have just been an abstruse joke about his true appetite. While talking with Abel Gideon, Hannibal noted that he did not consider himself a 'cannibal' as that implied eating one's equals, reflecting his usual standards of only eating those he considers inferior in some regard while leaving those he respects relatively alone. He has a very good sense of smell, evident in how he often identifies Will by his aftershave before he even enters the room. He claims that when he was younger, he was aware of his teacher's stomach cancer, even before he was. Hannibal also frequently holds small and extravagant dinner parties for his colleagues and friends.