Jim

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Jim

28DL

Vital Stats
Portrayed by

Cillian Murphy

Name(s)

Jim

Hair

Dark brown

Profession

Bicycle courier (formerly)

28 Days Later (film)

28 Days Later (comic series)

Status

Alive

Cause of Death

Gunshot wound inflicted by Major Henry West (alternate endings)

Jim was a survivor of the Rage Virus after it originally decimated Great Britain, one of the
members of the Manchester Three and the main protagonist of the film 28 Days Later (2002). He
will return in 28 Years Later Part II: The Bone Temple.

Contents
• 1 Biography
o 1.1 28 Days Later (film)
▪ 1.1.1 Alternative endings
o 1.2 28 Days Later (comic series)
• 2 Personality
• 3 Trivia

Biography
Jim was a bicycle courier for an unknown company. One day, while he was delivering a package
from Farrington to Shaftsbury Avenue, a car cut across him, causing him to crash his bike and
leaving him comatose.

While Jim was unconscious, his parents visited him. As people infected by the Rage virus overran
London, the hospital staff fled to escape the outbreak. Jim was locked into a secure room by the
staff, with slipped a key under his bed in case Jim woke up. After this, he was left behind by the
hospital staff when they fled to escape the outbreak in Britain.

28 Days Later (film)

Twenty-eight days into the outbreak, Jim awoke from his coma (naked) in an abandoned hospital.
After securing some clothes, he ventured out of the hospital to find London desolate and rife with
signs of a catastrophe. Confused, Jim travelled through the barren streets, calling out for any signs
of life. Gathering discarded cans of soda and money from off the ground, Jim observed a wall of
missing people posters before moving on.
Jim explores a deserted London after waking from his coma.

Later, Jim entered a church filled with corpses, where he was confronted by a priest infected with
the Rage Virus. When the priest attacked Jim, the latter knocked the priest over with his shopping
bag in self-defence, then fled the church, with several Infected in hot pursuit. Jim was saved in the
streets from the Infected by two strangers, Mark and Selena, who then detonated the underground
tanks at a gas station, obliterating the group of infected.

Mark and Selena then took a confused Jim with them to their hideout in a sweet shop in the London
Underground, and Selena explained to Jim that while he had been comatose, the Rage Virus had
spread through Britain and killed or infected the majority of the population. The British Army tried
holding the infected at blockades, but those were overrun, and the evacuation started too late. The
day before the TV and radios stopped broadcasting, there were reports of infection in Paris and New
York. Worried for his family's well being, Jim convinced a reluctant Mark and Selena take him
across the city to his parents' neighbourhood in Deptford the next day. When they arrived at the
home of Jim's parents, Jim found that they had committed suicide via drug overdose. They left a
note to their son:

With endless love, we left you sleeping. Now we're sleeping with you. Don't wake up.

Mark and Selena told Jim that he should be grateful that his parents had died peacefully, and the trio
decided to stay in the house for the night. During the following night, a bereaved Jim hallucinated
his parents in the kitchen and lit a candle, attracting the presence of the infected Mr. Bridges and his
daughter, who attacked him.

Jim and Selena in Frank and Hannah's flat.

Jim and Selena continued through London until they saw lights flashing in a flat in an apartment
building. They then headed to the apartment building, and climbed up the stairwell to the flat,
chased by two Infected. They were saved by Frank, and he and his daughter Hannah gave Jim and
Selena shelter in their flat with them. After Frank and Hannah went to sleep for the night, and Jim
shaved his hair and beard (somewhat painfully due to the lack of shaving cream), he and Selena
discussed whether or not to stick with Frank and Hannah. Jim believed the father and daughter were
good people despite Selena's belief that they would slow them down.

The next day, Jim discovered from Frank that resources such as water were dwindling, so the group
left the apartment in Frank's taxi on a journey to Manchester; where, according to a recorded radio
message, the "answer to Infection" and help from the military supposedly awaited them.

Jim after watching Frank die.

The group narrowly avoided a horde of Infected while they stopped in an underground tunnel to
change a flat tire, and raided a supermarket for food before travelling into the countryside. While
they were refuelling the taxi at a cheeseburger shack, Jim went into the shack in search of
cheeseburgers. There, Jim was attacked by an Infected Child, forcing him to beat the boy to death.

The group later stopped at an old castle ruin in the countryside to camp out there for the night, and
that night Jim had a nightmare of his worst fear: being left alone. The group resumed their journey
to Manchester the next morning, and arrived at the Forty-Second Blockade on the M602 near
Manchester where the radio message had stated the soldiers were, but found Manchester in flames
and destroyed, and the blockade desolate and abandoned. When Frank was infected by dripping
blood from a corpse, Selena yelled at Jim to kill the infected Frank. Jim hesitated at first, but then
got over it and was about to attack Frank with his baseball bat, when two surviving soldiers arrived
and shot and killed Frank in front of a shocked Jim, Selena and Hannah.

The soldiers then took Jim, Hannah and Selena to the nearby Worsley House in the woods, where
they were greeted by Major Henry West and given sanctuary at the fortified mansion with the
soldiers.
Jim realises from Farrell that the world outside Britain may still be alive.

During the trio's stay at the Worsley House, Jim and Selena revealed their romantic feelings for one
another, but Selena recoiled before anything could fully develop. Major West also gave Jim a tour
of the mansion, and revealed that he was keeping Mailer, an infected soldier, chained up in the
mansion's courtyard; West explained that his "answer to Infection" was waiting for the Infected to
die off from starvation, and that he was keeping Mailer alive to see how long that would take.

The following night, Jim, Hannah and Selena had dinner with the soldiers, which was cut short
when the men were forced to fend off an attack on the Worsley House by the Infected. Afterwards,
when Corporal Mitchell tried to force himself on Selena, Jim tried to intervene until Sergeant
Farrell violently forced Mitchell to leave Jim and Selena alone. Major West then talked with Jim
over a drink about who Jim had killed since the Rage Virus broke out. A guilty Jim admitted to
killing the Infected Child at the cheeseburger shack, and West then explained to Jim that he had
promised Hannah and Selena to his men for sexual slavery in order to repopulate Britain after the
Infected starved to death.

A horrified and disgusted Jim then tried to flee the Worsley House with Hannah and Selena, but the
trio were attacked and captured by the soldiers. Major West asked Jim to join him and his men in
their new society, but Jim refused, so West had Jim locked in the cellar for the night with Sergeant
Farrell and scheduled to be executed the next morning. Over the night, Jim overheard Farrell
theorising that the Rage epidemic was confined to Great Britain, and that the rest of the world was
continuing normally.
Jim prowling the Worsley House, enraged at the soldiers for what they were planning to do to his
friends.

The following morning, Jones and Mitchell took Jim and Farrell out to a body dump in the woods to
be shot. While Jones and Mitchell were distracted arguing after killing Farrell, Jim managed to
escape them and fled over the perimeter wall. There, Jim saw a jet flying overhead, giving him hope
that Farrell was right and that civilisation outside of Britain has survived.

Jim subsequently set about re-infiltrating the Worsley House and rescuing Hannah and Selena,. He
returned to the Forty-Second Blockade and sounded the siren, luring Major West and Davis away
from the mansion and to the blockade. Jim bludgeoned and killed Davis with a crowbar, then
disabled his and West's jeep and left West to the Infected. Jim subsequently returned to the Worsley
House and released the infected Mailer to kill the other soldiers. Jim then prowled the Worsley
House, looking for Selena and Hannah and avoiding Mailer and the new-infected Clifton as the
latter two rampaged through the mansion and began killing the remaining soldiers.

Jim eventually found Selena taken hostage by Mitchell, and watched from in the attic as Mitchell
made vulgar taunts towards Selena. Enraged, Jim then jumped down from the attic and took
Mitchell by surprise, brutally killing the soldier by gouging his eyes out and beating him to death.
Selena, believing Jim to be infected, then prepared to kill Jim but hesitated; prompting Jim to
jokingly remind her that she had previously warned that she would kill Jim "in a heartbeat."

"That was longer than a heartbeat."

Jim and Selena then kissed, and Hannah then met up with them and the trio fled the overrun
Worsley House and headed to Frank's taxi in the grounds.

There, the group found a vengeful Major West, who then shot Jim in the abdomen for the deaths of
his men. The trio quickly fled the Worsley House in the taxi with the injured Jim, leaving West to
be killed by Mailer. Hannah and Selena took the dying Jim to an abandoned hospital, where Selena
was able to revive him. Jim is still alive and saved by Selena. The trio subsequently took refuge at a
remote cottage in west Cumbria, where Selena and Hannah used cloth and fabric to sew together a
giant banner spelling out "hello" to get the trio's presence noticed by passing aircraft.

Twenty-eight days after escaping the Worsley House, Jim, Hannah and Selena put out the last piece
of the banner as a Finnish jet flew by overhead and apparently noticed their message. The jet
subsequently sent a helicopter to pick the trio up and fly them to mainland Europe.
As of 28 Weeks Later, Jim's whereabouts are unknown, along with Selena's and Hannah's, though it
is presumed they are residing somewhere in Europe, however, he is definitely alive, as he will
appear in the film 28 years later 2.

Alternative endings

In the three alternative endings, Jim's fate is different. In the first ending, Jim dies of his gunshot
wounds at the hospital. In the second, the outbreak is revealed to be a dream. In the third, a more
radical departure, Jim undergoes a blood transfusion in order to save Frank, who was tied up and
taken to a research laboratory after being infected, rather than being killed by the soldiers.

28 Days Later (comic series)

Jim wakes up in recovery in Cumbria, twenty-eight days after escaping the Worsley House.

After Jim, Hannah and Selena were rescued, they were taken to France and were remembered as the
Manchester Three. Jim was arrested for his role in the deaths of Major West and his soldiers, and
was scheduled to be executed by firing squad.

Personality
Jim was at first confused and frightened in the aftermath of the Rage outbreak, but over time, he
adapted to the change of everyday life. Jim is a kind, gentle, nervous, grateful and warm-hearted
person, and greatly fears being alone. Despite this, Jim can be extremely sadistic, vicious and
merciless to those who want to hurt his friends; he left Jones and Bell to die slow and painful
deaths, and brutally beat Mitchell to death for attempting to rape Selena.

Trivia
• The scene in which Jim kills Mitchell is similar to a scene from 28 Weeks Later, in which Don kills his
wife, Alice in the same fashion.
• In all of the three alternative endings for 28 Days Later, Jim was either killed or infected at the
film's climax.
• It is unknown why Jim would confess to causing the deaths of West and his soldiers, as given the
situation, it would have been practically impossible for the authorities to find out the truth any
other way.
o Even if Jim were forced to confess for some reason, any justification that the military had
for executing him would have been completely unfounded, considering how the soldiers
attempted to rape Selina and Hannah, which is considered a war crime in most countries. It
is possible that Stiles pulled some strings for the military junta to ignore this.