Casca Highbottom

The Academy dean publicly credited with creating the Hunger Games, and the first victim of Snow's poison.

Casca Highbottom runs the Academy, Panem's most prestigious high school, as its academic dean, and in public he is credited as the creator of the Hunger Games. The idea came from a university assignment: Crassus Snow got him drunk to extract all his ideas for a thought experiment, and that experiment later morphed into the Games.

Quick Facts

Post: Dean of the Academy
Former friend: Crassus Snow
Addiction: Morphling

Facts from the source article.

Background

The betrayal by his former best friend left Highbottom traumatized and dependent on morphling, and the young Coriolanus Snow mocked him behind his back as "High-as-a-kite-Bottom". Unable to forgive Crassus, he took revenge on the son, assigning Coriolanus to mentor Lucy Gray Baird. When he later proves that Coriolanus cheated in the Games, he has him punished with Peacekeeper service, with no idea that Dr. Gaul is backing the boy from behind the scenes.

Coriolanus pays him a final visit just before entering the university, and his return to the Capitol is itself proof that, for all Highbottom's efforts to finish his hated enemy, "Snow lands on top." Soon afterwards Highbottom takes tainted morphling that Coriolanus deliberately left behind and dies, the first person killed by Snow's signature weapon, poison.