Birthdate: September 8, 1978
Crime: Attempted armed robbery
Sentence: 5 years (parole in two and a half years)
Education: Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Loyola University in Chicago with a B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering
After Michael Scofield's father abandoned the family before his birth, he took his mother's maiden name as his own name. His mother died of liver cancer when he was 11 and Lincoln was 15. His older brother, Lincoln Burrows tried his best to raise him. Having lost their parents, Lincoln descended into a life of crime. However, Lincoln worked hard to prevent Michael from suffering the same fate. Michael was a gifted pupil and finished Morton East High School with an impeccable record. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Civil Engineering from Loyola University in Chicago. He went on to become a successful structural engineer at the firm of Middleton, Maxwell and Schaum in downtown Chicago.Clinically diagnosed with low latent inhibition, Michael is unable to block out periphery information and instead processes every aspect and detail of any given stimulus. This, combined with a high IQ, theoretically makes him a creative genius. Due to a feeling of abandonment during childhood, Michael developed very low self-worth making him extremely empathetic towards other peoples emotions, as he is unable to block out their suffering. This explains Michael's desire to make huge sacrifices to help others in the show.[1]
Three years before Lincoln was imprisoned at Fox River, Michael and Lincoln's relationships had grown strained because of their differing lives. Michael viewed Lincoln as irresponsible and became tired of "being the older brother to his older brother".[2] After Lincoln was arrested for Steadman's murder, Michael initially thought that Lincoln was guilty. However, upon discovering that his brother had taken a $90,000 debt to pay for his education, Michael realized that his brother was not the man he thought he was. Remembering how Lincoln had always looked after him when he was a child, Michael swore to do the same. He reviewed Lincoln's case countless times but could not find a way to help him via any legal means. After Lincoln's last appeals were denied, Michael decided to take matters into his own hands. Coincidentally, Michael's firm had been responsible for retrofitting the prison where Lincoln was incarcerated (Fox River State Penitentiary), so Michael had access to the blueprints of the facility. From this information, Michael spent a year creating an elaborate plan to break out his brother.
The plan
Michael Scofield's tattooMain article: Escape plan (Prison Break)Over the course of four months, Michael had specific sections of the prison tattooed onto his upper body, hidden within gothic imagery of battling angels and demons. His chest features an image of a demon slaying an angel and contains blueprints of the prison's underground tunnels and passageways. His back has the angel attacking the demon and hides an overhead view of the layout of the prison. His right arm has an image of the demon, and the left, the image of the angel, as well as numerous clues and reminders (e.g. chemical formulae, phone numbers and names of necessary parts he must procure within the prison).[3] His arm also contains the image of a Native American "Moaning Man".[4] At present, there are no explanations provided for the Moaning Man tattoo.
In order to get into Fox River, Michael staged a bank robbery, pled no contest at his trial, and requested that he be sent to the prison nearest to his home. Once there, he needed to recruit a number of people to aid in the escape: his cellmate (Fernando Sucre) to help him dig, mob henchman John Abruzzi to get him on PI (Prison Industries, the maintenance crew) and provide air transport once they escaped, and D. B. Cooper (a.k.a Charles Westmoreland), whose $5 million in cash Michael needed to finance their lives as fugitives. Michael also had to feign diabetes, which would give him daily access to the infirmary (the escapees' exit point from the prison) and allow him to build a relationship with Dr. Sara Tancredi, who happens to be the daughter of Governor of Illinois, Frank Tancredi.
Character development
Season 1
Before he entered into prison, Michael analyzed every detail of the prison and the people inside. He formed relationships with other inmates he needed to recruit for his plan and prison staff members he needed to manipulate. However, not everything went according to plan.
Michael Scofield in season 1Two of Michael's toes were cut off by John Abruzzi, a mafia boss who wanted to extract the location of mob informant Otto Fibonacci from Michael. When Michael refused to crack, he struck a deal: Abruzzi would supply an escape plane in exchange for Fibonacci's address. In addition to this, a section of Michael's tattoo, on his back, was burned off as he hid from a guard, compromising the plan, and eventually landing him in Solitary Confinement for a while (when he refused to disclose information as to how he received the burn), dealing a severe blow to his motivation and morale. These, however, are only a few setbacks he faced in his attempt to break his brother out of prison.
More people joined the escape team than Michael had speculated. This, coupled with other obstacles Michael faced, forced him to reformulate the plan time and time again. Michael's cool facade also began to wear off.
Michael's relationships with the warden and the prison doctor deepened over time. However, he regretfully manipulated both Warden Pope and Dr. Sara in the end to save his brother's life. Sara was part of Michael's secondary plan. When his original plan failed, Michael pleaded Sara to talk to her father. Also, he later relied on their relationship when he revealed his escape plan and asked her to leave the infirmary door unlocked, on the night of the prison escape. With the aid of an unlocked infirmary door, Michael finally escaped over the walls of Fox River with his brother and other inmates. However, Michael and the others were left stranded at the airfield after the plane took off before their arrival.
Season 2
After daybreak, Michael finds himself in the wilderness with his brother Lincoln and three of his partners in escape. They narrowly escape the authorities on foot by passing a freight train. When being held at gunpoint by a concerned citizen turns into a precarious hostage situation, Michael and his group find themselves an SUV and a means to get to his hidden cache in Oswego. The group of five gets a fresh change of clothes, while Michael and his brother have a backpack which among other things has money, a mobile phone with pre-paid phone cards, and fake passports. Michael's monniker is Phineas McClintock, while his brother has the pseudonym Archie Ryan.
Unfortunately for Michael, however, an FBI Agent named Alexander Mahone has realized that Scofield was the mastermind of the operation, and is intrigued by Michael's meticulous intellect. In short order, Mahone discovers the meanings of three of his tattoos, and almost catches him at the graveyard when he discovers the meaning of "Ripe Chance Woods". From his vantage point at the graveyard however, Michael gets a good look at Agent Mahone, and even notes the Agent's penchant for consuming pills hidden in his pen. In the meantime, a frustrated Captain Bellick falls for Michael's ruse and takes a contingent of officers with him to a storage facility where they find nothing inside Michael's container.
Shortly after vacating the cemetery, Michael steals a backpack of food from a picnicking couple in order to feed Sucre, C-Note, Abruzzi, Lincoln and himself in the cover of an abandoned industrial plant. After giving each of the three remaining escapees a wad of starter-cash, Michael and Lincoln part ways with the convicts; after Lincoln vicariously plays witness to Veronica's murder, however, Lincoln demand that the two of them stage another minor prison-break to liberate L.J. from the Cook County Courthouse before the teenagers hearing for the double murder of Lisa and Adrian Rix. Michael protests, but Lincoln is adamant, and Michael relents.
Michael leads Lincoln to a car that has been kept in a parking garage for the last several weeks and jump starts the battery. The brothers then stop at a store to pick up supplies, but Lincoln gets noticed by a woman walking a dog who notifies a passing squad car; forcing Michael and Lincoln to flee the store through a back entrance. With police swarming the front of the store, Michael loses the car with all of their escape supplies, but the two stage an incursion of the courthouse and nearly manage to break L.J. out of the elevator. Despite procuring Agent Mahone's loaded sidearm, Lincoln drops his spray-painted water-gun, and Mahone manages to keep L.J. in the elevator car. Michael and Lincoln manage to flee the building, but Lincoln takes a bullet in the leg, and Michael hears the quickly approaching police.
Michael immediately rushes Lincoln to the home of Nika Volek, where he performs a bit of impromptu first-aid (using iodine, cayenne pepper, and booze) to mend Lincoln's bullet-wound. While Lincoln recuperates at Nika's house, Michael returns to the supply store to find the getaway car missing and tracks it down to Brewsters Towing. He pays the $84 fee to recover the car and narrowly avoids Mahone, who tracks the towed vehicle to the same towing yard and gets the clerk on the phone while Michael finalizes his recovery. Michael then picks up Lincoln, bids Nika farewell, and heads out to mile-marker 12 on Route 38 where he and Lincoln set off an explosive in the radio just minutes before Mahone tracks them to the bridge. Nika delivers another getaway car to Michael and Lincoln, who are unaware that Bellick and Geary are on their tail.
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