John Rambo

Rambo arrives in Hope, Washington, looking for an army buddy and learns he died of cancer. With nowhere to go, he is run out of town by Sheriff Teasle and arrested when he tries to return. At the station, the abuse sets off memories of torture in Vietnam. He escapes into the forest and takes down the cops one by one with traps. When the National Guard shows up, Rambo goes back to town and leaves it in the dark. Trautman stops him, and Rambo breaks down, talking about the friend he saw die.

In prison, Rambo accepts Trautman's offer: leave jail to photograph a POW camp in Vietnam. The order is not to fight. He finds living Americans and tries to take one out, but Murdock cancels the extraction and abandons him. Rambo is captured and tortured, escapes with his guide Co Bao and watches her die. He returns to the camp, frees the prisoners and escapes in a helicopter. He settles accounts with Murdock's base. In the end, he tells Trautman he only wants the country to love its soldiers as much as they love it.

Rambo lives in a monastery in Thailand and fights in tournaments to help fix up the temple. Trautman asks him to go to Afghanistan, and he says he is done fighting. When the colonel is captured by the Soviets, Rambo changes his mind and travels there. The mujahideen guide him, and he storms the fortress and pulls Trautman out. The escape ends surrounded. Rambo and Trautman face Colonel Zaysen and the helicopters with the Afghans beside them, and Rambo brings down Zaysen's helicopter.

Twenty years on, Rambo lives in northern Thailand, catching snakes and running a boat. He wants nothing to do with war, and tells the missionaries who want to go up the Salween. Sarah talks him round. On the way, he kills the pirates who wanted to take her. When the Burmese army raids the village and takes the missionaries, Rambo guides the mercenaries the church hired. During the rescue he takes over a heavy machine gun and turns the battle. After that, Arizona: a man walking a country road toward his father's house.

On his father's ranch in Arizona, Rambo raises horses and looks after Gabriela like a daughter. Under the house he keeps tunnels where he spends his nights. Gabriela travels to Mexico to find her biological father and is kidnapped by a cartel. Rambo goes after her, takes a beating and rescues her, but she dies afterwards. He lures the Martínez brothers to the ranch and turns the house and tunnels into a trap. When it is over, he is wounded, in the porch chair.

Rambo was born in David Morrell's novel First Blood (1972). In the book, he dies at the end. Sylvester Stallone played him in five films, from 1982 to 2019. The prequel John Rambo, with Noah Centineo, is set to open on 06/04/2027.