General CR post
(Contains Legacy spoilers as per AU plottage, mostly from 
grid_lined, and some who factor in Ram's AU backstory. Much canonically unprovable material, such as whether Ram was acquainted with Yori in the old system, is also woven in without remark. For more about Ram's characterization, see the OOC/HMD post.)
Encom-system characters (some with Legacy updates)
Tron
Old system or new Grid, Tron remains the most important program in Ram's directory. Ram first met him in the holding area for the MCP's Game Grid. They didn't speak much at first, but when microcycles went by and Ram kept coming back alive from his matches, Tron slowly began to take an interest in the young conscript. By the time they escaped from the MCP, they'd forged a strong rapport and become a formidable team. Ram tried to keep Tron grounded and talking when their situation weighed on him, and Tron's strength and unshakable faith in his User helped Ram to hold onto hope as well; he trusted Tron implicitly and was willing to follow him to the ends of the system. After they were separated during their headlong flight from the Game Grid, Ram's last words implored Flynn to go help Tron, and Tron mourned his friend's loss for a long time.
Flynn's new Grid was an ambitious project, needing millions of programs to support it. One of them was a next-generation copy of Ram, taken from Encom's files and rezzed in as part of a packet of statistical support programs shortly before Clu's coup. By the time he recovered his Encom-era memory cache from an imported bad sector, Flynn was in hiding and Tron had been reported dead. The ages before an inexplicable time-skip brought him face-to-face with a version of Tron from the far future were the worst in Ram's runtime; afterwards he would compare the revelation to a wakeup from cycles of forced inactivity. Knowing Tron would reappear someday, he held on until after the events of Legacy, and returned to the side of his friend and leader as soon as he could, throwing all his energy into supporting him in rebuilding the Grid and healing the scars left by his cycles as Rinzler. Remembering Tron best as the unbeatable, incorruptible security program from the old system, he's had difficulty understanding how profoundly Tron was affected by his past -- in some ways, interacting with him now, in freedom, is like meeting him for the first time -- but despite and beyond all that, Tron will always be his guiding star, and their friendship is something that Ram never wants to lose.
Flynn
There was always something different about Flynn, even when Ram thought he was just another program. He knew the name of Alan's User, he figured out how to escape from the lightcycle grid, he seemed to think nothing of taking on the MCP with no resources but a security program (admittedly the best in the Grid) and an actuarial program who'd just happened to be there.... but the greater difference was in the way he took in everything that surrounded him as if it was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen. The discovery that Flynn was a User gave Ram hope even as he was dying of destabilization -- knowing that Flynn would go on to help Tron when Ram could not.
After recovering his Encom memories on the new Grid, Ram searched for Flynn but was unable to locate him; Clu claimed the User had deliberately deserted his creations, but Ram refused to believe it. It flew in the face of everything he remembered about Flynn. Rumors abounded but the truth remained hidden until Tron returned -- and by that time it was too late. Flynn will always hold a special place in Ram's memories; a brief meeting at End of Line with a version of Flynn from far in the past was emotional for both of them, and he still hopes that the crazy malfunctioning Portal will return the User to their world someday.
Sark
Sark has been Ram's worst nightmare ever since he was appropriated. Usually conscripts were matched against the MCP's loyalists, but the standouts were eventually pitted against other conscripts as well -- a demoralizing tactic that had almost worked all too well on the actuarial program. Those programs only lasted as long as Sark found their conflict amusing; after that, the MCP's enforcer would face them himself... and he had never been defeated. As a long-term survivor, Ram had known that he'd be slated to face Sark sooner or later, and that as good as he was, he'd never survive it -- but before it could happen, Flynn came to the Grid, and whatever else happened, at least he never had to hear that cold voice again.
Yori
In the old system, Ram never met Yori. He knew a lot about her, though. Tron always spoke of her, with deep respect and affection, as the first program they would look for when they finally broke out of the Game Grid. Anyone who meant so much to Tron must be something special, and if Ram had met her, he'd have fought for her sake as willingly as he'd have fought for Tron's... but he never had that chance.
He was delighted, though, to meet Yori in the new system, albiet a Yori scarred by losing Tron and being forced to erase important parts of her memories to preserve secrets while the Grid was under Clu's control. Her Tron has not yet reappeared on the Grid, but to Ram, she's a kindred spirit, and he is glad to call her friend.
The MCP
Ram was one of the programs for whom the MCP had no use -- that was why he ended up in the Games. While there, he learned a lot about Master Control's goals and methods, but was never brought before him, and generally speaks of him with wry disrespect.
Alan One
Ram knows Alan through Tron -- through what he's seen of his program, and what Tron has said about him. Back in the holding cells, Tron's faith that Alan still cared gave Ram the strength to believe he hadn't been abandoned either. Though not as awed by Users in the abstract as Tron is, Ram would be awed by Alan if he ever met him.
Legacy characters
Rinzler
Long aware of Rinzler as the most dangerous program in the system (other than Clu), Ram didn't actually encounter the Monitor until quite late in the post-Flynn era. It was like something out of a twisted comedy -- their eyes met in End of Line, and Clu's horrible, scary, dangerous watchdog was suddenly inviting Ram along on a tank mission to clean up fragmented data near the Outlands. (It was a cryptic, deadpan, ominous invitation, but still.) Following that brief encounter, during which Rinzler couldn't figure out why he was so drawn to Ram and Ram couldn't figure out why he was somehow not terrified of riding around in an enclosed space with Rinzler, the two programs didn't meet again* until after Flynn had freed the system from Clu. By then, another version of Tron had told him everything.
The Rinzler whom Ram knows now is confusingly both like and unlike Tron: cold and uncaring toward most programs, his memory and priority trees full of holes, yet still the most powerful program in the system except for Tron and any other duplicates of either of them, inexplicably (even to himself) kind to Ram, and honestly confused about where his directives should lie in this new era. Ram still hopes that there's still enough of Tron left in him to restore him to his old self someday, but he's anything but certain, and that's hard to bear too.
*For an alternate continuity where they did meet again, with very different results, see here.
Clu
Ram never met Flynn's first Clu program -- if he had, he would have recognized Flynn as someone familiar in the cell block back in the old system. Everyone on the new Grid, though, was aware of the second Clu as Flynn's proxy and system administrator. Before recovering his old-system memories, Ram seldom met Clu in person, finding him oddly familiar but no more than that. Afterwards, he saw Clu as a perversion of everything Flynn used to be, and would go out of his way to avoid seeing news of him.... in part because something in him is fascinated by Clu, as a bird by a snake, drawn to the aspects of Flynn that shine through his parameters but repelled by the way he uses them. He fears him and respects him, hates and is heartbroken by what he stands for and what he's done, knows he'd never win against him and never, ever wants to see him again. Unfortunately, the Grid's not big enough to avoid him forever.
Gem
Before the Portal opened again, Ram met the Siren Gem in End of Line while looking for information about Flynn. Their cautious circling about the subject of their conversation (amusedly on Gem's part, clumsily on Ram's, as clandestine operations were never his forte) led to an unexpected rapport. Ram respects Gem for the strength she shows in striving to transcend her original functions, as well as for her growing connection with Tron.
Castor
The End of Line's proprietor has so far taken no particular interest in Ram, who doesn't mind that fact at all. He's heard the rumor that the flashy program might once have been an actuarial algorithm, and finds the notion hilarious, though he might not have had he met him back in the old days, when he was still Zuse and fought for the ISOs. He also hasn't heard about Castor's betrayal of Sam Flynn during the events of Legacy. Discovering that would put a very different twist on things.
Sam Flynn
On seeing Sam in End of Line after the Portal opened again, Ram was struck by how much the young User reminded him of Kevin Flynn. Sam, for his part, recognized Ram from his resemblance to Zack, whom his father had nicknamed 'Ram' in the real world, and each was glad to have been able to meet the other.
Lizor (Disc Opponent #1)
Ram first met Lizor during a clandestine Resistance meeting focused on getting imperiled programs out of the way of the red guards; they exchanged few words at the time, but Lizor's powerful configuration impressed the actuarial program. After a few other meetings, Ram lost track of him, and first met him again when he was rerezzed in the new, free Arena. Lizor's compromised memories made it difficult for him to adjust to living in a free system, but he and Ram seem to be developing a friendship, in part based on the fact that Lizor, too, looks up to Tron.
Ed Dillinger Jr
A User who wandered through the Portal and encountered a number of programs, including Ram.
Game/ARGverse characters
ZackAttack (Roy "Ram" Kleinberg)
Since his beginning, Ram had never been too strongly attached to his own particular User. I've given you the tools you'll need, his creator had said (or metaphorically said, through the coding he'd given him from his real-world cubicle next to Alan's); now go forth and rejoice in helping people to make their lives better. And that was what Ram had done, thanking ZackAttack for his gift of life by using it in the way he'd have wanted him to. In his work for the insurance company who'd acquired him, he was called upon for help by many Users, and occasionally remembered his own with fondness but without expecting to encounter him again. But when, one microcycle, Roy somehow fell through the Portal, Ram recognized his presence immediately, and was delighted to show him around and help him out in any way he could.
ISOlatedThinker (Alan Bradley)
(See Alan One.)
OCs from the Internet~
Jazz
This feisty music-mixing program, now turned bartender in End of Line, became a good friend of Ram's near the end of Clu's reign. Fun-loving, but traumatized by losing close friends in the Purge and being hideously tortured and sentenced to the Games before Clu's reign ended, she currently lacks self-confidence and makes up for it with (sometimes ill-advised) bravado. Ram tears his hair over her tendency to mouth off at the likes of Clu and Rinzler, applauds her generally positive outlook on life, and attempts to console her when things get rough.
Sky
Clu's red-lined security chief, but labors under the false directives that he implanted in her. Outside her official function, she does a great deal of thinking for a security program and has assisted Ram in quelling an infestation of gridbugs, lending a helping hand that was at the time sorely needed. However, she still has a strong sense of loyalty toward Clu. What she'll get up to in the future is still uncertain.
Nicholas Claggert
A User who fell through the Portal -- writer, so far, of no one Ram knows. Ram helped him out during a gridbug infestation. He seems like a nice guy.
Ram has met himself on the interwebs a few times, in the persons of
derezzes, benignspybot, and religiousnut.
grid_lined, and some who factor in Ram's AU backstory. Much canonically unprovable material, such as whether Ram was acquainted with Yori in the old system, is also woven in without remark. For more about Ram's characterization, see the OOC/HMD post.)Encom-system characters (some with Legacy updates)
Tron
Old system or new Grid, Tron remains the most important program in Ram's directory. Ram first met him in the holding area for the MCP's Game Grid. They didn't speak much at first, but when microcycles went by and Ram kept coming back alive from his matches, Tron slowly began to take an interest in the young conscript. By the time they escaped from the MCP, they'd forged a strong rapport and become a formidable team. Ram tried to keep Tron grounded and talking when their situation weighed on him, and Tron's strength and unshakable faith in his User helped Ram to hold onto hope as well; he trusted Tron implicitly and was willing to follow him to the ends of the system. After they were separated during their headlong flight from the Game Grid, Ram's last words implored Flynn to go help Tron, and Tron mourned his friend's loss for a long time.
Flynn's new Grid was an ambitious project, needing millions of programs to support it. One of them was a next-generation copy of Ram, taken from Encom's files and rezzed in as part of a packet of statistical support programs shortly before Clu's coup. By the time he recovered his Encom-era memory cache from an imported bad sector, Flynn was in hiding and Tron had been reported dead. The ages before an inexplicable time-skip brought him face-to-face with a version of Tron from the far future were the worst in Ram's runtime; afterwards he would compare the revelation to a wakeup from cycles of forced inactivity. Knowing Tron would reappear someday, he held on until after the events of Legacy, and returned to the side of his friend and leader as soon as he could, throwing all his energy into supporting him in rebuilding the Grid and healing the scars left by his cycles as Rinzler. Remembering Tron best as the unbeatable, incorruptible security program from the old system, he's had difficulty understanding how profoundly Tron was affected by his past -- in some ways, interacting with him now, in freedom, is like meeting him for the first time -- but despite and beyond all that, Tron will always be his guiding star, and their friendship is something that Ram never wants to lose.
Flynn
There was always something different about Flynn, even when Ram thought he was just another program. He knew the name of Alan's User, he figured out how to escape from the lightcycle grid, he seemed to think nothing of taking on the MCP with no resources but a security program (admittedly the best in the Grid) and an actuarial program who'd just happened to be there.... but the greater difference was in the way he took in everything that surrounded him as if it was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen. The discovery that Flynn was a User gave Ram hope even as he was dying of destabilization -- knowing that Flynn would go on to help Tron when Ram could not.
After recovering his Encom memories on the new Grid, Ram searched for Flynn but was unable to locate him; Clu claimed the User had deliberately deserted his creations, but Ram refused to believe it. It flew in the face of everything he remembered about Flynn. Rumors abounded but the truth remained hidden until Tron returned -- and by that time it was too late. Flynn will always hold a special place in Ram's memories; a brief meeting at End of Line with a version of Flynn from far in the past was emotional for both of them, and he still hopes that the crazy malfunctioning Portal will return the User to their world someday.
Sark
Sark has been Ram's worst nightmare ever since he was appropriated. Usually conscripts were matched against the MCP's loyalists, but the standouts were eventually pitted against other conscripts as well -- a demoralizing tactic that had almost worked all too well on the actuarial program. Those programs only lasted as long as Sark found their conflict amusing; after that, the MCP's enforcer would face them himself... and he had never been defeated. As a long-term survivor, Ram had known that he'd be slated to face Sark sooner or later, and that as good as he was, he'd never survive it -- but before it could happen, Flynn came to the Grid, and whatever else happened, at least he never had to hear that cold voice again.
Yori
In the old system, Ram never met Yori. He knew a lot about her, though. Tron always spoke of her, with deep respect and affection, as the first program they would look for when they finally broke out of the Game Grid. Anyone who meant so much to Tron must be something special, and if Ram had met her, he'd have fought for her sake as willingly as he'd have fought for Tron's... but he never had that chance.
He was delighted, though, to meet Yori in the new system, albiet a Yori scarred by losing Tron and being forced to erase important parts of her memories to preserve secrets while the Grid was under Clu's control. Her Tron has not yet reappeared on the Grid, but to Ram, she's a kindred spirit, and he is glad to call her friend.
The MCP
Ram was one of the programs for whom the MCP had no use -- that was why he ended up in the Games. While there, he learned a lot about Master Control's goals and methods, but was never brought before him, and generally speaks of him with wry disrespect.
Alan One
Ram knows Alan through Tron -- through what he's seen of his program, and what Tron has said about him. Back in the holding cells, Tron's faith that Alan still cared gave Ram the strength to believe he hadn't been abandoned either. Though not as awed by Users in the abstract as Tron is, Ram would be awed by Alan if he ever met him.
Legacy characters
Rinzler
Long aware of Rinzler as the most dangerous program in the system (other than Clu), Ram didn't actually encounter the Monitor until quite late in the post-Flynn era. It was like something out of a twisted comedy -- their eyes met in End of Line, and Clu's horrible, scary, dangerous watchdog was suddenly inviting Ram along on a tank mission to clean up fragmented data near the Outlands. (It was a cryptic, deadpan, ominous invitation, but still.) Following that brief encounter, during which Rinzler couldn't figure out why he was so drawn to Ram and Ram couldn't figure out why he was somehow not terrified of riding around in an enclosed space with Rinzler, the two programs didn't meet again* until after Flynn had freed the system from Clu. By then, another version of Tron had told him everything.
The Rinzler whom Ram knows now is confusingly both like and unlike Tron: cold and uncaring toward most programs, his memory and priority trees full of holes, yet still the most powerful program in the system except for Tron and any other duplicates of either of them, inexplicably (even to himself) kind to Ram, and honestly confused about where his directives should lie in this new era. Ram still hopes that there's still enough of Tron left in him to restore him to his old self someday, but he's anything but certain, and that's hard to bear too.
*For an alternate continuity where they did meet again, with very different results, see here.
Clu
Ram never met Flynn's first Clu program -- if he had, he would have recognized Flynn as someone familiar in the cell block back in the old system. Everyone on the new Grid, though, was aware of the second Clu as Flynn's proxy and system administrator. Before recovering his old-system memories, Ram seldom met Clu in person, finding him oddly familiar but no more than that. Afterwards, he saw Clu as a perversion of everything Flynn used to be, and would go out of his way to avoid seeing news of him.... in part because something in him is fascinated by Clu, as a bird by a snake, drawn to the aspects of Flynn that shine through his parameters but repelled by the way he uses them. He fears him and respects him, hates and is heartbroken by what he stands for and what he's done, knows he'd never win against him and never, ever wants to see him again. Unfortunately, the Grid's not big enough to avoid him forever.
Gem
Before the Portal opened again, Ram met the Siren Gem in End of Line while looking for information about Flynn. Their cautious circling about the subject of their conversation (amusedly on Gem's part, clumsily on Ram's, as clandestine operations were never his forte) led to an unexpected rapport. Ram respects Gem for the strength she shows in striving to transcend her original functions, as well as for her growing connection with Tron.
Castor
The End of Line's proprietor has so far taken no particular interest in Ram, who doesn't mind that fact at all. He's heard the rumor that the flashy program might once have been an actuarial algorithm, and finds the notion hilarious, though he might not have had he met him back in the old days, when he was still Zuse and fought for the ISOs. He also hasn't heard about Castor's betrayal of Sam Flynn during the events of Legacy. Discovering that would put a very different twist on things.
Sam Flynn
On seeing Sam in End of Line after the Portal opened again, Ram was struck by how much the young User reminded him of Kevin Flynn. Sam, for his part, recognized Ram from his resemblance to Zack, whom his father had nicknamed 'Ram' in the real world, and each was glad to have been able to meet the other.
Lizor (Disc Opponent #1)
Ram first met Lizor during a clandestine Resistance meeting focused on getting imperiled programs out of the way of the red guards; they exchanged few words at the time, but Lizor's powerful configuration impressed the actuarial program. After a few other meetings, Ram lost track of him, and first met him again when he was rerezzed in the new, free Arena. Lizor's compromised memories made it difficult for him to adjust to living in a free system, but he and Ram seem to be developing a friendship, in part based on the fact that Lizor, too, looks up to Tron.
Ed Dillinger Jr
A User who wandered through the Portal and encountered a number of programs, including Ram.
Game/ARGverse characters
ZackAttack (Roy "Ram" Kleinberg)
Since his beginning, Ram had never been too strongly attached to his own particular User. I've given you the tools you'll need, his creator had said (or metaphorically said, through the coding he'd given him from his real-world cubicle next to Alan's); now go forth and rejoice in helping people to make their lives better. And that was what Ram had done, thanking ZackAttack for his gift of life by using it in the way he'd have wanted him to. In his work for the insurance company who'd acquired him, he was called upon for help by many Users, and occasionally remembered his own with fondness but without expecting to encounter him again. But when, one microcycle, Roy somehow fell through the Portal, Ram recognized his presence immediately, and was delighted to show him around and help him out in any way he could.
ISOlatedThinker (Alan Bradley)
(See Alan One.)
OCs from the Internet~
Jazz
This feisty music-mixing program, now turned bartender in End of Line, became a good friend of Ram's near the end of Clu's reign. Fun-loving, but traumatized by losing close friends in the Purge and being hideously tortured and sentenced to the Games before Clu's reign ended, she currently lacks self-confidence and makes up for it with (sometimes ill-advised) bravado. Ram tears his hair over her tendency to mouth off at the likes of Clu and Rinzler, applauds her generally positive outlook on life, and attempts to console her when things get rough.
Sky
Clu's red-lined security chief, but labors under the false directives that he implanted in her. Outside her official function, she does a great deal of thinking for a security program and has assisted Ram in quelling an infestation of gridbugs, lending a helping hand that was at the time sorely needed. However, she still has a strong sense of loyalty toward Clu. What she'll get up to in the future is still uncertain.
Nicholas Claggert
A User who fell through the Portal -- writer, so far, of no one Ram knows. Ram helped him out during a gridbug infestation. He seems like a nice guy.
Ram has met himself on the interwebs a few times, in the persons of
derezzes, benignspybot, and religiousnut.