Aside from having his name put on many video games, military fiction mainstay Tom Clancy is known for creating Jack Ryan. Starring in more than 30 novels, Jack is the ultimate defender of American interests and values who uses his deep understanding of politics to save the day.
The character returned in Amazon’s Jack Ryan, but it's a unique Clancy adaptation that doesn’t adapt any of his books. While spiritually faithful, there’s a lot about Jack that the show – and the movies, as well – leave out. With Krasinski the fifth man to play the Tom Clancy hero, there will almost surely be a sixth in the future and possibly more as the popularity of the hero remains high. However, in neither the movies nor the TV show, the actual reach of Jack Ryan in the world inside his fiction has never been fully reached. There is still a lot that fans who haven't read the books still need to learn about the analyst turned spy turned President of the United States.
Jack Ryan Left Wall Street For Teaching
In live-action, Jack Ryan usually has a cushy if unfulfilling Wall Street job before ing the CIA. In Shadow Recruit and the Amazon series, he notices questionable cash transfers that are actually connected to terrorist cells. What these adaptations usually omit is Jack’s even more boring job in between managing stocks and black ops: teaching.
After securing his financial future, Jack quits Wall Street to get a degree in education. He becomes a professor at the US Naval Academy, teaching and writing books about Naval history. This is a plot point in the movie The Hunt for Red October and nowhere else. Also, in the books, his father-in-law never forgives him for this career change since he was the Senior Vice President of Merrill Lynch, where Jack worked before quitting.
Jack’s Best Friend Is John Clark
One of the most glaring omissions in any Jack Ryan adaptation is John Clark. An ex-Navy SEAL, John is an integral part of the “Ryanverse,” where he worked with Jack in different capacities. Outside the covert world, the two are practically brothers. He was also very important in the books, described in the novels as Jack Ryan's dark side. This is barely acknowledged in the live-action Jack Ryan movies and TV shows, though.
John appears in Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears. Both times, Jack is only introduced to him. Worse, John is absent in the Amazon series due to copyright disputes, leading to his in-everything-but-name carbon copy, Matice. Paramount owns the aforementioned rights, which were used for the adaptation of Without Remorse in 2021 with Michael B. Jordan as John.
Jack Ryan Is Not An Action Hero
Right now, Jack could be easily mistaken for yet another spy like Jason Bourne. This is the farthest thing from the books, where Jack is basically a nerd with some gun training. Firstly, Jack is a CIA intelligence analyst. While he did have a stint with the peacetime Marines, he was discharged early after sustaining a back injury during a chopper accident.
He makes up for this with his unwavering determination and intellect, outsmarting terrorists and would-be despots at every turn. This is best seen in Alec Baldwin played Jack Ryan, providing diplomacy to help the Red October’s officers defect and avert nuclear conflict. Additionally, his latest novels revolve more around his understanding of political machinery than machine guns.
Jack Became The CIA’s Boss
Jack is always the right man for the job who just finds himself in the worst possible situation, making him one of the most unappreciated guys around. His efforts paid off in Clear and Present Danger when his mentor and close friend James Greer appoints him as acting CIA Deputy Director (Intelligence) while he recovers from cancer.
Sadly, Greer ed away and Jack has no choice but to take his friend’s place. In the succeeding book The Sum of All Fears, Jack is officially the CIA head, but he quits after barely stopping a global nuclear war. While some would call this transition of power a bit much, it pales in comparison to Jack’s next promotion.
Jack Ryan Became President Of The United States
Most people know Jack as a reluctant yet unfaltering patriotic hero. What many don’t know is that Jack is also a two-term American president. In Debt of Honor, Jack is pressured to take the vice presidency after the Vice President resigns following a sex scandal. Jack accepts what he thinks is a temp job, only to find himself president when a pilot rams his plane into the Capitol Building, killing the president and half of the government.
From Executive Orders onwards, Jack protects American interests as the most powerful man in the world. Because of how contrived Jack’s path to becoming President is, it’s unlikely that his presidential arc will be adapted any time soon.
Jack Basically Ended The Cold War
It’s hard not to see the Ryanverse as an American superhero fantasy, as Jack saves the world more than once through the power of good old-fashioned patriotism. In fact, his pre-presidential adventures can be read as single-handedly ending the Cold War – which he arguably does.
Some of Jack’s achievements include: assisting key Soviet defectors, stopping impulsive action that would’ve turned the Cold War hot, and keeping the American government in moral check. The Sum of All Fears is Jack’s last Cold War escapade and without him, America would’ve been turned into a nuclear wasteland. Right now, President Ryan fights transparent stand-ins for whoever fits the bill of “America’s Enemies.”
Jack Ryan Named A Real Life Intelligence Leak Contingency Measure
Jack Ryan and Tom Clancy are synonymous with spies, so it’s unsurprising that real-life intelligence agencies have a soft spot for the novels. The love was shown when the intelligence community adopted a term made by Tom to name an actual security measure.
In Patriot Games, Jack uses what Tom calls a “Canary Trap,” wherein multiple versions of the same document with subtle differences in the text are purposefully leaked to suspicious agencies or persons. The leak will be traced back to whichever document makes it to the public first. This failsafe has been around for years and was once known as the “Barium Meal Test.” After Patriot Games, the term Canary Trap was used instead.
Tom Clancy Wrote Only Half Of Jack’s Adventures
Arguably, Jack Ryan is the most prolific Tom Clancy character. In of popular relevance, longevity, and number of adaptations, Jack beats Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell) and the elite Rainbow Six, which ended up as a successful spy video game franchise. That said, Tom only wrote 18 of Jack’s 33 (and counting) books, where he appears either in a main or ing role.
Tom ed away in 2013, with Command Authority being his last ghostwritten Jack-centric novel. Since then, four authors stepped in to continue Jack’s story including Grant Blackwood (a frequent Clancy and Clive Cussler collaborator), Mark Greaney (The Grey Man), Mike Maden (Troy Pearce’s creator), and Marc Cameron (Jericho Quinn’s creator).
Jack Ryan Is Now A Senior Citizen
Believe it or not, Jack’s story is far from over. Jack first appeared in 1984 in The Hunt for Red October, and his 22nd book – Red Winter – came out in December 2022, with more possibly on the way. Since his books are set in our reality but with some significant geopolitical changes, Jack aged naturally, making the implications of his unending patriotic odyssey both hilarious and insane.
Assuming he was in his late 20’s during the Red October incident, Jack would be somewhere in his late 60’s by the midpoint of his second term in 2019’s Code of Honor. Realistically and canonically, Jack is now a senior citizen, and he’s still protecting American interests with his pencil-pushing skills and fists. While Red Winter is a story from Ryan's past, most of his recent books showed him working as the U.S. President.
Jack Ryan Is A Tom Clancy Self-Insert
Like many action movies and thrillers before it, the Ryanverse is an obvious power fantasy. This is especially the case for Tom, who clearly wrote Jack as an idealized version of himself. This isn't a theory since Tom literally based Jack on himself. The movies and shows toned this down, but the books have no time for such subtlety. Jack and Tom are military history aficionados who started in the financial sector (Tom was an insurance agent) before moving on to writing. Jack’s books gained him military respect despite never serving in combat, which happened to Tom as well.
Similarly, both were rejected from military service for health reasons, with Tom’s myopia paralleling Jack’s bad back. The two are conservative Irish Catholics, which is clearest when Pres. Ryan turns Tom's right-leaning political takes into policy while holding the same disdain for anyone remotely liberal. It’s hard not to see the Jack Ryan books as Tom’s way of fixing what he deems wrong with the world with a dash of wish fulfillment.
