Space Quest - Roger Wilco

Roger Wilco is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Space Quest series, introduced in Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter in 1986. Roger is a bumbling if well-meaning everyman character, a spacefaring janitor who has a tendency to attract trouble and stumble into dangerous or interesting situations. Despite saving the universe on multiple occasions, he seems unable to gain any respect from society, and works as a "sanitation engineer" (in one form or another) throughout the series.

The character's name is a reference to voice procedure, one of many puns in the series (it means "receiving you, will comply"). The first two Space Quest games allowed the player to choose the character's name, which defaulted to Roger Wilco if left blank. This feature was later removed in the remake of the first game.

Roger is originally a janitor from the planet Xenon of the Earnon system. We first meet him as the janitor and sole survivor of the scientific research ship Arcada, which was overrun by the apparently hostile Sariens. After several extremely deadly adventures and a bit of janitorial work, he enters the StarCon Academy. Graduating in Space Quest V, he is promoted from a janitor to captain of the garbage scow SCS Eureka. He also meets Beatrice Creakworm Wankmeister, with whom he becomes romantically involved. In Space Quest 6 his spot in the limelight ends as he is busted back down to janitor and assigned to the backwoods of the cosmos.

It is revealed in the time travel tomfoolery that is Space Quest IV that Roger would eventually marry Beatrice and that they would have a son (Roger Wilco Jr.) As Wilco now owes his life to his son, this must happen. Beatrice is absent from Space Quest 6, but she is mentioned in the game's closing credits and by Roger himself. We also learn that by Space Quest XII, when Roger Jr. is a young adult, Roger will be "unavailable" for some reason. The details are never disclosed.

While Roger retains his basic appearance and sustains no lasting damage from his swashbucklings and repeated near-mutilations, his hair begins the series brown and changes to blonde in the upgrade between parts III and IV. (The same has happened to fellow adventure protagonists Guybrush Threepwood and Devon Aidendale, in Devon's case to the other direction.) While this retcon is never addressed in the game itself it spawned a full-fledged fangame, Space Quest: The Lost Chapter.