Biography

Early Life

Barry Allen was born to Henry and Nora Allen in Fallville, Iowa, alongside his twin brother. However, the Allens were told only Barry survived. In reality, the doctor, desperate to cover up a tragic accident involving another couple’s child, secretly gave Barry’s brother to the grieving parents and told the Allens their second son had died. Barry grew up unaware of this deception. His parents never spoke much about that night, choosing instead to pour all the love meant for two sons into the one they thought survived. Barry never doubted their love, feeling fully supported in everything he pursued.

As a child, Barry found joy in science and comic books. He and his childhood friend Daphne even won a science fair together, which led to his parents taking him to his first comic shop, a place Nora had loved as a child. Barry quickly became enamored with superheroes, learning early lessons about right and wrong through their stories. Life was good, but everything changed when Barry was eleven.

After winning an academic achievement award, he ran home eager to share the news. Instead, he found police cars surrounding his house. His father was being arrested, and inside, Barry saw his mother lying dead, in a puddle of her own blood, murdered. Evidence pointed directly to Henry, whose fingerprints were on the knife. Barry’s world was shattered.

Following the tragedy, Barry was placed in the care of his godfather, Darryl Frye, one of his father’s closest friends and a respected officer in Fallville. Inspired by Darryl’s sense of duty, Barry initially dreamed of becoming a police officer. However, a school lesson on forensic science revealed a new passion, one that could potentially prove his father’s innocence. From that moment on, Barry dedicated himself to mastering forensics, often at the expense of friendships, including his bond with Daphne. The trauma of his mother’s death also caused him to develop obsessive tendencies, becoming meticulous about order and cleanliness. Darryl helped Barry work through some of his trauma, but Barry’s focus on forensics only deepened.

Barry excelled academically, eventually graduating from Fallville High and enrolling at Sun City University, where he majored in Criminal Science. Though he passed with top marks, he remained distant from others, rarely forming close bonds. After graduation, Darryl, now Captain of the Central City Police Department, offered Barry a position as a junior CSI. Barry accepted, undeterred by accusations of nepotism, preferring to focus on the work rather than office politics. He kept himself busy solving cases and visiting his father whenever possible, refusing to give up on proving Henry’s innocence, even when his father begged him to move on.

Despite his isolation, Barry found two genuine connections. Detective August Heart, who shared Barry’s disdain for false imprisonments due to his own experience with his brother’s murder, quickly bonded with him. In the lab, Barry became close with CSI Patty Spivot, whose skill and passion for forensics helped push Barry to improve. However, one thorn in his side was Iris West, a determined reporter who constantly pushed Barry for information. Barry hated dealing with her persistence, but Iris never gave up. One day, August jokingly told Iris that Barry was shy but wanted her number, leading Iris to give it to him with a playful wink.

Later that night, Barry sat alone in the lab, debating whether to text Iris after a conversation with his father left him wondering if he should do more with his life. Just as he worked up the courage, a bolt of lightning struck through the window, slamming Barry into a rack of chemicals. Before losing consciousness, the last thing Barry saw was August and Patty rushing into the lab, calling out his name.

“Life is locomotion…if you’re not moving, you’re not living. But there comes a time when you’ve got to stop running away from things…and you’ve got to start running towards something, you’ve got to forge ahead. Keep moving. Even if your path isn’t lit…trust that you’ll find your way.”

Real Name	Bartholomew Henry Allen
Aliases	The Flash
Afilliated With	Justice League

Characteristics

Gender	Male
Height	6’0″
Weight	195 lbs.
Eye Color	Blue
Hair Color	Blonde

Family

Iris West

Wally West

Bart Allen

Don Allen

Dawn Allen

Ace West

Malcom Thawne

Beginning to Ride the Lighting

Three months after the lightning strike, Barry Allen woke up in the hospital with a start. The last thing he remembered was working in his lab, but now he was staring at unfamiliar ceiling tiles. A doctor soon entered and explained what had happened, Barry had been in a coma, struck by lightning during a freak accident that had also sent him crashing into a rack of chemicals. The explanation felt surreal, but there was no time to dwell on it. After being discharged, Barry’s first mission was finding something to eat that didn’t come through an IV. He headed to Big Belly Burger, his stomach growling with intensity.

As he waited for his order, he noticed something strange, a waiter dropping a tray of food, and it all seemed to be happening in slow motion. Barry blinked, unsure of what he had just seen. Before he could think more about it, he ran into Iris West. She told Barry she’d heard what happened from August and had been worried. Before leaving, she said she’d love to catch up sometime.

Barry’s next stop was CCPD. He figured he owed it to his boss, Captain David Singh, to let him know he was awake. Singh welcomed him back but insisted Barry take personal days to recover fully. As Barry left the station, he ran into August Heart. August explained he was transferring to another city. The reminders of his brother in Central City were too much to bear. Barry understood. He’d felt the same way when he left Fallville. He wished August the best but told him sincerely that he would miss him.

Back at his apartment, Barry made one last important call, to the penitentiary to call his father. But the voice on the other end wasn’t what he expected. His father had passed away, succumbing to an illness. Barry froze, the phone slipping not just from his hand but through it. His hand had vibrated so rapidly that it had phased through the device. Panic set in. He didn’t understand what was happening. Without even thinking, Barry ran.

He ran all the way to Fallville, stopping only when he reached the cemetery. But stopping proved harder than starting, he stumbled and skipped across the ground, finally crashing into the chain-link fence surrounding the graveyard. Bruised and rattled, he made his way to the graves of his parents, standing over the two names etched in stone. He confessed everything to them, the strange powers, the confusion, the sense of aimlessness now that the mission of proving his father’s innocence had ended. Through his grief, he remembered those childhood nights reading comics with his parents, and how the heroes always used their powers to help others. That memory grounded him.

Barry returned to Central City with a new purpose. The soles of his shoes were scorched from friction something he realized he’d need to fix. Using his time off from CCPD, Barry began studying his abilities. He analyzed his blood and found it was saturated with some kind of unknown energy. He discovered he could run at incredible speeds, but more than that, his perspective had changed, things didn’t move in slow motion; he was just moving too fast. He also experimented with vibration, learning to match the frequencies of objects. But getting the exact resonance was difficult, often ending in explosions.

To address the friction problem, Barry looked to a Wayne Enterprises science journal detailing heat-resistant fabrics developed for firefighters. Using this information, he crafted his first pair of friction-proof yellow boots. A field test showed that the boots held up, even at speeds exceeding 200 mph.

As his time off neared its end, Barry received a text from Iris asking to meet for coffee. They met at Jitters and talked casually about life. Iris mentioned how she wished Central City had a superhero to report on, the way Metropolis had Superman and Gotham had Batman. She also admitted she’d visited Barry in the hospital several times, worried about him. Before Barry could respond, alarms blared across the street, Central City First Bank was being robbed.

Barry told Iris he’d get in touch with CCPD, but in reality, he was already moving. Within seconds, he had dashed across the street, entering the bank through a side door before the robbers even noticed. Using his speed, he disarmed the criminals, returned their weapons to the guards, tripped them up, and even locked two inside the vault, all in the blink of an eye. As he sped out, he saw Iris approaching the bank, already interviewing witnesses. Barry looped around the block and returned to her side at a normal pace, claiming he had made the call but when he came back, Iris had already vanished from their table to chase the story.

She refused to sit back when something big was happening. As they spoke, she told Barry all the hostages were describing the same thing, a red and yellow blur that saved them. Barry smiled to himself and simply said, maybe Central City did have a protector after all.

Mirror Reflections

Barry returned to work at CCPD not long after recovering, only to be met with one of the strangest cases he’d ever seen. A jewelry store had been robbed, but no alarms had been triggered, and no one had entered or exited the premises. Initial theories pointed toward an inside job but surveillance footage told a different story. The video showed the jewelry case glass rippling like water before a pair of gloved hands emerged from the surface. The store owner was yanked into the reflection, and seconds later, the same hands returned, quickly clearing out the cases. It all happened without anyone ever physically stepping foot inside.

As Barry and Patty analyzed the scene, Iris interrupted briefly, but once she left, the two CSIs made a startling discovery. The glass itself had been molecularly altered, it was caught in a state of flux, behaving like a solid and a liquid simultaneously. Patty gave their mysterious thief a nickname on the spot: “Mirror Master.”

Back in the lab, Barry ran a deeper analysis on one of the samples taken from the jewelry case. From the pattern of thefts, he guessed the culprit was targeting places with high-value items. While digging through the data, a silent alarm tripped at an auction house across town. Barry grabbed a duffel bag from his locker containing his makeshift costume: a red T-shirt with a lightning bolt, goggles to help with wind resistance, a comms unit for police radio chatter, and his yellow friction-proof boots. He sped out of the station and arrived before the police had even left the parking lot.

Inside the auction house, Barry spotted Mirror Master reaching into one of the glass cases, his hands vanishing into the reflection and emerging on the other side. Barry moved fast, hoping to take him down quickly — but when he struck him, Mirror Master shattered like glass. The illusion caught Barry off guard. Suddenly, beams of light fired toward him as the real Mirror Master revealed himself, taunting Barry and claiming he wanted to be the one to catch the speedster criminals had been whispering about. In a surprise move, he shoved Barry into a massive glass panel but instead of breaking, the two tumbled through.

Barry found himself surrounded by mirrors on all sides. It was a warped, distorted place that Mirror Master called the Mirror World, a dimension between reflections. Barry tried to strike, but his target slipped back into a mirror. When Barry followed, he collided with the solid surface and rebounded hard. Trapped, he realized he wasn’t alone. The store owner was also there, alive but frightened. He explained that Mirror Master used a specialized gun to alter the vibrations of the glass, creating portals. If Barry could match that vibration, he might escape.

Determined, Barry attempted to vibrate at the same frequency as the mirror. His first few tries ended in failure and small explosions. But seeing the hope in the man’s eyes gave him the strength to try one last time — and it worked. Barry vibrated through the mirror and emerged back into the auction house, pulling the store owner with him.

The next morning, Barry grabbed breakfast with Iris. She talked about the new Central City hero she’d been covering. Barry deflected suspicion by joking that maybe Superman was doing double duty. Iris shut the idea down quickly, pointing out eyewitness reports that placed Superman and the speedster in two places at once. When Barry mentioned being stumped by a current case, Iris brought up an article she had written about a break-in at Mercury Labs. A prototype device had been stolen, but the suspect had seemingly vanished from a locked storage room.

Barry was intrigued. He asked if there was more information on the thief. Iris told him the man’s name was Sam Scudder, a low-level criminal who owed money to dangerous people. She added that Patty had worked the case — and that Scudder had once said he was “done letting people get in his way.” That raised alarm bells. Barry rushed to check on Patty, only to arrive just in time to see her pulled into a mirror by Mirror Master. A message was left behind: You know where to find me.

Refusing to be caught off guard again, Barry whipped up a chemical compound that could dull reflective surfaces, cutting off Mirror Master’s escape routes. He tracked him to an abandoned mirror factory, where Patty was tied up. Barry applied the compound to the mirrors, preventing any quick exits. But Mirror Master struck first, trying to pull Patty through a reflection and failing. Confused and frustrated, he found himself trapped.

That didn’t stop him from trying. Dozens of Mirror Master duplicates emerged, each one shattering as Barry struck them. But the real one remained out of reach. Thinking quickly, Barry vibrated his foot, sending a wave through the floor that shattered every illusion, exposing the real Mirror Master. Barry slammed him into a blank pane of glass, knocking him unconscious.

He freed Patty and told her to wait for the police. Then, with a red and yellow blur, he was gone.