John Wick

John Wick is a fictional character created by American screenwriter Derek Kolstad and portrayed by Canadian actor Keanu Reeves. He is the titular protagonist of the American media franchise John Wick. In the franchise's film series, he is introduced as a legendary Belarusian-American ex-hitman who left the criminal underworld after falling in love with and marrying a woman named Helen. While suffering from a terminal illness, Helen made arrangements for a puppy to be delivered to John in order to serve as his companion after her death. Days after her funeral, a Russian-American mobster — the son of John's former mafia boss — takes an interest in John's car after seeing it a gas station and is angered when John refuses to sell it to him. That night, he leads a group and breaks into John's house, assaulting him and killing his puppy before stealing his car. The attack sets John on a path of revenge, returning him to the violent lifestyle that he had left behind and eventually bringing him into conflict with the international organization of assassins of which he was once a part. Fictional character biography John was born Jardani Jovonovich in a Padhorje village somewhere in the Byelorussian SSR of the Soviet Union to a Ruska Roma family on September 2, 1964. He was orphaned at a young age before being taken in by an old friend of his father, Winston who would eventually become John's mentor. It is revealed in the John Wick comic book mini-series that he spent a significant portion of his adolescence in El Sauzel, Mexico. At one point, he was recruited by a Ruska Roma organized crime group and trained by its leader, a woman known as The Director, in New York City. Under the Director's supervision, John was trained as a hitman and learned skills including martial arts, firearms and other weaponry, tactical driving, infiltration, escapology, and more. After leaving the Ruska Roma organization, he was arrested for an unspecified crime and incarcerated. Upon release, he was manipulated into joining the underground crime world operating out of the Continental Hotel chain. John became the top enforcer for the New York Russian crime syndicate, becoming an infamous hitman. He was nicknamed "Baba Yaga" after the supernatural Boogeyman-like entity in Slavic folklore. Eventually, John fell in love with a woman named Helen.