Cpl. Merriell "Snafu" Shelton

Snafu Shelton is a Marine already worn smooth by war when Eugene Sledge's company meets him — a wiry Cajun with a bayou drawl, a switchblade calm, and a taste for macabre jokes. He kills without visible hesitation and needles the newer men, treating horror as routine, as if feeling anything about it went out of him long ago.

Malek plays him almost entirely through stillness — a flat stare, an unreadable half-smile — so that the character's occasional flashes of humanity land like small shocks. The writing never explains Snafu, never softens him for sympathy; Malek instead lets you glimpse the person underneath by refusing to perform anguish, making restraint itself the performance.