Jack Hodgins (Bones)

Hodgins comes from an especially wealthy family and is the sole heir to the fictional private corporation known as the Cantilever Group, although he hid his wealth from his coworkers for a long time.[4]

Son of the late Jonathan and Anne Hodgins ("The Heiress in the Hill", season 9), Jack Hodgins is thought to have been an only child until he discovers in Season 9 that he has an older brother named Jeffrey, institutionalized with schizoaffective disorder.[1] In "The Blonde in the Game", his uncle Preston is introduced. Hodgins' grandfather served as a "code-breaker" under Admiral Chester W. Nimitz during World War II.[5] His family is the single largest donor to the Jeffersonian.[6] In season 8, after serial killer Christopher Pelant hacks into Hodgins' savings and drains his bank accounts and the accounts of the entire Cantilever Group, he and Angela are forced to scrimp; yet, in season 9, he tells Dr. Sweets that he is content as he still has his work at the Jeffersonian and family—the two things which he values the most.[7]

Hodgins, like Zack, was bullied in school: in elementary and middle school for being a "rich boy" and in high school for his small physical stature and diminished social skills. He "managed to stand up for himself" on the last day of senior year, which Sweets believes to have given him closure.[8]

Hodgins owns an original Mini, which Booth jokingly calls a "toy car",[9][10] although in later seasons he is seen driving a Toyota Prius as well.[3] He is an experienced cave diver.[11]

Although a noted conspiracy theorist, Hodgins temporarily abandons his paranoid thoughts and beliefs after it is revealed that his best friend, Zack Addy, has become the most recent apprentice to a cannibalistic serial killer known as "Gormogon". Devastated by his best friend's poor judgment, as well as his recent break-up with Angela, Hodgins finds his beliefs and feelings of paranoia turning into misanthropy. After being repeatedly confronted by Sweets about his behavior in the lab, Hodgins explains during a therapy session that he "hates everybody". Sweets determines that Hodgins' misanthropy is a way to cope with the overwhelming stresses in his life, and assures him that it will turn into something more pleasant in time.[12]

In "Aliens in the Spaceship", in season 2, Hodgins advances the notion of a "King of the Lab". Hodgins and Zack, and, later, other interns, compete sporadically and informally for this informal title by trying to come up with particularly crucial items of evidence in various investigations.

Later in season 8, Hodgins loses his money due to the machinations of killer and hacker Christopher Pelant, who hacks Hodgins' accounts while using the same computer system to target a military drone at a school in Afghanistan, forcing Hodgins to sacrifice his money by allowing the computer to keep running so that the team can focus their efforts on hacking the drone and stopping the destruction of the school. In "The Maiden in the Mushrooms", after using the last of Finn's late grandmother's hot sauce, Hodgins deduces the ingredients and opens a side business called "Opie and Thurston's" to market a re-creation of the concoction. In season 10, in "The Eye in the Sky", Hodgins invents a packaging material and receives an advance of $2 million, restoring a portion of his wealth.

In Season 11, a bomb planted at a crime scene causes Hodgins such serious injuries that he is left permanently paralysed from the waist down, with various subsequent episodes focusing on Hodgins adjusting to his new limitations and the team trying to help him cope. He experiences a few moments of movement, such as an involuntary muscle spasm in his leg, but the series ends with him still in his wheelchair, now acting as interim head of the lab while Cam and Arastoo are on their honeymoon.

Hodgins has three doctorates, in entomology, botany, and geology/mineralogy. He is known around the Jeffersonian as the "bug and slime guy" and Booth often calls him "bug boy", a reference to Hodgins' expertise in and affection for all insects in general. During an investigation, he primarily deals with particulates and trace evidence and determines the time of death by examining insect activity.

Hodgins eventually gets his own lab suite, known as the "Ookey Room", where he does most of his lab work, keeps his collection of arthropods, and performs most of his experiments. In episode 10 of season 4, "The Bones That Blew", Hodgins stated that his passion to "figure stuff out in amusing ways" was why he chose a career in science. In several episodes he has cooked edible food using the lab apparatus, much to his co-workers' bemusement.[13][14]

Hodgins is one of the more sarcastic members of the group, and initially deals with some anger management issues.[15] He also had some initial difficulty in working with Dr Goodman, the Jeffersonian's administrator, as Dr Goodman frequently used conjecture or imagination to make inferences about the victims of crimes.[16] He is sometimes "the funny man" with a notable impression of the character Seeley Booth.[17]

Hodgins is one of the more socially adept "squints" and uses pop-culture references and jokes that Dr. Brennan and Zack Addy often fail to grasp. As such, he has little difficulty "translating" scientific terms into layman terms to Booth and is sometimes exasperated when Zack fails to understand a joke or quip.

Throughout the series, Hodgins has been known for his "insane conspiracy ravings", as Booth calls it,[18] and in many of the show's early episodes his knowledge of conspiracy theories was demonstrated.[19] In several cases, Booth, despite his disdain for most of Hodgins' conspiracy theories, uses it to his advantage for a case; in the episode "The Girl in Suite 2103" he asks Hodgins to call the FAA with his "craziest" conspiracy theory in order to stall a plane so the FBI can get to it in time to do a search. At the end of the episode when government agents come to take Hodgins away for questioning in relation to the hoax call, Booth declines to intervene telling Dr Brennan that being taken away by "Men in Black" would be his dream come true. Whenever different aspects of the government, such as the Department of Defense or the State Department, become involved in cases, Hodgins will often be the first to suggest that a cover-up is involved.[9][20] In Seasons 9 and 10, his conspiracy theorist side comes to the fore and his theories often aid Booth and the team in finding clues in the major story arc in which the discovery of "The Ghost Killer" and her connections lead the team to uncover a widespread and deeply rooted conspiracy going on in the FBI.[10] By the time of "High Treason in the Holiday Season", Booth and Hodgins have reached a stage where Hodgins not only takes Booth's perspective on exposing cover-ups into account but Booth is willing to acknowledge Hodgins' own perspectives; when the case sees the team acquire a hard drive of classified NSA operations, Hodgins agrees with Booth that they can't expose the data on it because it would put the NSA agents at risk even if the operations are technically illegal.