Simon Masrani (1967-2015) was an Indian billionaire businessman and entrepreneur, and the CEO of Masrani Global Corporation from 1992 until his death in late 2015. He oversaw most of the major developments of the company, including the foundation of Masrani Oil (now Masrani Energy), the expansion of Mascom Network telecommunication services, and the acquisition of International Genetic Technologies. The latter was followed quickly by the construction of Jurassic World on Isla Nublar, which became the company’s flagship enterprise and its most famous asset. Masrani was extremely fond of Jurassic World and considered it to be his company’s crowning achievement. After a few years, however, the park’s profits began to plateau; Masrani authorized evolutionary geneticist Dr. Henry Wu of InGen to use genetic engineering to create a new attraction to draw larger crowds, which resulted in the genesis of the Indominus rex.

After being unable to visit Jurassic World for a period of three years between 2012 and 2015, Masrani returned to Isla Nublar on December 22, 2015 to see the Indominus. During the inspection, the animal breached containment and caused the deaths of multiple staff members. Masrani took it upon himself to personally subdue the animal, but died in a helicopter crash during the operation.

Name

Simon is a common name of Hebrew origin meaning “hearing” or “listen.” It is currently unknown why Simon Masrani was given a name more common in English-speaking countries rather than a name from his family’s own culture.

The surname Masrani has Indian origins. Jurassic-Pedia has been unable to learn its meaning and history so far.

Biography

Early life

Simon Masrani was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India in 1967 to Sanjay Masrani. His mother’s name is currently undisclosed. The actor chosen to portray him, Irrfan Khan, had Pathun ancestry, so this may be the case with Masrani as well. In the game Jurassic World: Aftermath, a passcode of 1 9 6 7 is said to be Masrani’s birthday rather than birth year, suggesting that his birthday may be January 9, 1967, but whether that is what the game’s screenwriters intended is unknown.

Sanjay Masrani was a businessman, and by 1973 (by which time Simon would have been six years old) he succeeded in starting his own company, a telecommunications business called Mascom Network. The company started small, taking six years to really get on its feet; in 1979, it unveiled its first groundbreaking concept: fiber-optic communication. This was a new and developing technology in the 1970s, so Mascom found itself at the forefront of innovation.

Another four years passed, and finally Mascom Network was off the ground. It launched as a telecommunications provider to India, and the company as well as the Masrani family began to see the rewards for ten years of research and development. By this time, Simon Masrani would have been sixteen, easily old enough to begin learning and applying business skills taught by his father. With the company a growing success, Sanjay Masrani began forging partnerships on an international stage; he eventually befriended Scottish entrepreneur John Hammond, who had founded his own company called International Genetic Technologies in the United States just two years after the creation of Mascom. Hammond also took a liking to Simon, giving the young man another role model from whom to learn business. Simon even obtained an amber ring, similar to the amber-capped walking cane that Hammond incorporated into his iconic image.

Expanding the company

Tragedy struck the Masrani family in 1992. Sanjay Masrani unexpectedly passed away, leaving Mascom in his son’s hands. Simon Masrani, only twenty-five years old, was now faced with the task of filling his father’s shoes and taking on the immense responsibility of leading a company. Mascom’s employees looked to him now.

Fortunately, Masrani was not alone. His father’s friend, John Hammond, stepped in to act as a paternal figure and help Masrani as best he could. Hammond was plagued with his own challenges at the same time; along with mourning his friend, he was also helping his daughter with her marital difficulties and working on a secretive business project. Hammond’s silent business partner, Benjamin Lockwood, left the project in the early 1990s, presenting InGen with financial struggles.

Rumors surrounded InGen’s mysterious Jurassic Park project during the 1980s and 1990s, but little was confirmed publicly other than they had built a massive amphitheater in San Diego before abandoning it and leasing the island of Isla Nublar from Costa Rica. It is unknown whether Masrani learned any of the truth behind Jurassic Park from Hammond. In any case, Jurassic Park was briefly abandoned after an incident in mid-June of 1993, causing InGen to face Chapter 11 bankruptcy. InGen faced further trouble in 1995, when mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm claimed that Jurassic Park scientists had successfully achieved de-extinction; InGen’s Peter Ludlow worked desperately to discredit these claims, further straining their financial resources. Though InGen floundered, Mascom continued to flourish.

1996 saw the foundation of Masrani Oil Industries in Abu Dhabi, UAE. This was the first company that Simon Masrani created on his own, just as his father had done with Mascom Network. To manage both of these together, Masrani created a holding company, Masrani Global Corporation, of which Mascom and Masrani Oil were subsidiaries. Not long after, these two were joined by Data Analysys, a Johannesburg-based computing company also founded by Masrani. Having now expanded to two continents, the corporation was indeed becoming global.

With his profits growing, Masrani became able to live a more extravagant lifestyle. At some point before the early 2000s, he climbed Mount Everest; he later described this as his “first big climb,” despite it being arguably the highest summit in the world.

The InGen buyout

In May of 1997, InGen’s chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu presented a remarkable creation to the International Society of Geneticists: a genus and species of flowering plant that had never existed in nature, created through artificial hybridization on the genomic level. This advanced science fascinated Masrani, who (allegedly with Hammond’s blessing) began looking into turning InGen into a Masrani Global subsidiary.

InGen, meanwhile, attempted to save itself from ruin by removing John Hammond. Blaming him for the financial crisis of the past four years, Peter Ludlow headed a motion with the Board of Directors to depose Hammond and become his successor. The end of May came with a world-changing revelation: de-extinction was a reality, and InGen had bred dozens of Mesozoic life forms on the island of Isla Sorna. Jurassic Park, both the San Diego and Isla Nublar incarnations, was intended to be a combination theme park and zoo demonstrating this advanced technology and its living, breathing results. Masrani may have learned about this before the dramatic incident in San Diego that revealed it to the public, since he was in close communication with Hammond. The untimely death of Peter Ludlow threw InGen into uncertainty and turmoil, and at the end of the year Hammond himself passed away of natural causes. Simon Masrani was among the last people to see Hammond alive, and has claimed that Hammond’s dying wish was for Masrani to take the helm of InGen.

Before he died, Hammond had helped the U.S. government pass into law the Gene Guard Act, which prohibited InGen from furthering de-extinction research and obligating that they care for the animals they left behind. Although Hammond himself had helped create this act, Masrani does not seem to have completely agreed with its terms, since he began drafting up plans to resurrect Jurassic Park in the late 1990s. With InGen rudderless, its fate (and that of the dinosaurs) was left up to the market, and a bidding war began. Masrani Global Corporation was one of the most powerful bidders, with its main rival being Tatsuo Technology. In early 1998, Masrani Global won the bidding war, acquiring InGen as a subsidiary and obtaining all of its assets.

Even before Masrani Global acquired InGen, Simon Masrani was preparing for Jurassic Park to be reincarnated. He had a classified meeting with an undisclosed person on January 15, 1998 regarding “the next ten years,” with the person likely being the InGen scientist Dr. Wu. Within one hundred days of the acquisition, scientists possibly including Dr. Wu conducted amalgam testing and research and development on Isla Sorna for the reinvented Jurassic Park; this was in violation of the Gene Guard Act, and it is not known whether Simon Masrani was aware of it. The illegal activity concluded after about nine months. Even if Masrani was unaware of this operation, he had already begun drawing experts from all over his corporation to draft plans for the new Jurassic Park.

Masrani was also busy in 1998 growing his other subsidiaries. Masrani Oil wind power trials were successfully completed that year, marking the first renewable energy source pioneered by the company. Wind power became a staple of Masrani Oil. Thanks to innovations such as these, Masrani Oil saw the third-highest income of any oil company between 1997 and 2004 despite being the youngest oil company in the world at the time. In 1999, Mascom acquired the weather satellite Glinda, using it to study dangerous low-pressure weather systems.

Progress on Jurassic Park picked up the pace in 1999. The United Nations granted Masrani and his company limited access to the islands of the Gulf of Fernandez, and he visited Isla Sorna to see its dinosaurian inhabitants in person for probably the first time. While on Isla Sorna, he encountered a hatchling Parasaurolophus; the newborn creature became one of his fondest memories. Plans for the new park proceeded from there, but Masrani no longer wanted to use the old name, considering it too small and rooted in the past. By October 23, after some brainstorming and debate, he settled on a new name for the park: Jurassic World.

With the turn of the millennium, Masrani Global Corporation advanced farther onto the international stage. It added to its assets in the UAE by founding Axis Boulder Engineering in Dubai, and made its NASDAQ debut that fiscal year. InGen grew too; on August 25, it was reported that paleogenetics researchers Bridges and Curtis had successfully used a prototype iron analyzer to identify viable ancient DNA in a Mosasaurus fossil, ushering in a new age of paleogenetics. No longer was it necessary to cross-reference hundreds of amber samples to obtain a viable genome; now, researchers could obtain ancient DNA from any fossils preserved within certain iron structures. By December of 2000, Masrani brought Dr. Henry Wu on as an official part of Jurassic World, promoting him to lead genetic biologist.

By 2001, stock in Masrani Oil had risen tenfold since its inception, and Mascom Network serviced an ever-growing client base. Masrani Global’s profits continued to rise, providing it with the funds needed to build Jurassic World.

There was an incident that year involving trespassers on Isla Sorna which threatened to expose the illegal activities that had taken place there, but the survivors’ testimonies were buried by government officials bribed by Masrani Global; again, it is unknown if Simon Masrani himself was involved or even aware of this corruption. The incident did, however, release three genetically modified Pteranodons from their secure housing on Isla Sorna; the reptiles made their way north and were eventually subdued in western Canada by American security contractor Vic Hoskins. This performance impressed Simon Masrani, and he soon hired Hoskins to take over and reform InGen’s Security division. Hoskins got to work improving InGen Security, bringing this small, private company division into the twenty-first century world.

Jurassic World opens

In 2002, with InGen Security reformed and Masrani Global’s profits higher than ever, Masrani was ready to announce Jurassic World to the public. He did this through a lengthy viral marketing campaign to drum up even more excitement, with the campaign consisting of three boxes sent to dozens of recipients around the world. The first recipients were prominent celebrities, famous scientists, and journalists, but eventually random people became recipients. Each recipient received a box containing amber-capped paleontological tools and a card with a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton stamped onto it. No note was attached, adding an air of mystery to the gift.

In the following weeks, the recipients were given a second gift, this one a compass with the same tyrannosaur skeleton imprinted on the back. The third was more complex: it included a dinosaur tooth, a piece of parchment showing an ink drawing of a gate, and a key not meant to fit in any lock. The key was actually meant to fit into an indentation in the wooden gift box itself; this would activate a hologram chip in the key’s handle, which displayed a simple message: They’re coming. March 30, 2005.

The puzzle was solved by a Bolivian farmer’s son, who posted a video to YouTube demonstrating how to unlock the box. Soon, all the recipients had unlocked their boxes. The day after the video was uploaded, Simon Masrani was interviewed on television and dramatically revealed Jurassic World with concept art of the planned Main Street and Jurassic World Lagoon areas. Within two years the park would be mostly constructed, and on the day given by the hologram boxes, Jurassic World would open.

Isla Nublar was already changing. In early April, InGen Security landed on the island and began the process of recapturing the animals left behind during Hammond’s time. The herbivores were loaded onto transport ships and brought to Isla Sorna to keep them out of the way. This process was not overseen by the United Nations, which had permitted Masrani Global to take whatever action they deemed necessary; relocating the dinosaurs was justified as a matter of the animals’ safety. Most of the island’s carnivorous animals were retained on Isla Nublar, kept at bay by InGen Security and rounded up into paddocks in the northern region of the island. Once Isla Nublar was safe, personnel from other Masrani subsidiaries could work unhindered preparing it for Jurassic World. To facilitate this $1.2-billion project, Masrani created a new subsidiary, Timack Construction, based out of San José. Along with Timack, he brought in experts from companies such as Mascom and Axis Boulder to set up the park’s infrastructure and technology. While work went on, Masrani spent his time quelling media fears and environmental concerns regarding the project.

There was only one obstacle left for Jurassic World: the legality of de-extinction. This issue was addressed in March 2003 by a currently-unidentified Masrani Global representative who made a case for watering down the Gene Guard Act before the U.S. House Committee on Science. With the argument that genetically engineering new species and cloning these species would result in advancements in medical science that would benefit the dinosaurs, humans, and other animal life, the UHCS permitted the rollback. Behind the scenes, InGen had bribed key members of the Committee in order for the rollback to be approved, but it is unknown if Simon Masrani knew about this. A new Masrani Global subsidiary, Medixal Health, was founded in New York City that year; it is unclear whether this was related to the medical science rationale for the rollback.

With the Gene Guard Act effectively nullified, InGen and the rest of Masrani Global could move ahead with Jurassic World. New species could be created, and preexisting species could be modified and cloned. Construction of the park was also well underway in 2003, with the old park’s infrastructure being repurposed, deconstructed, or cordoned off. The maintenance tunnels were refitted for a modern park, and the old entrance gates were torn down and rebuilt in a different location to service Jurassic World. The old park’s Visitors’ Centre was considered for reuse, but like the park’s change in name, Simon Masrani determined that it would be against their interests to tie Jurassic World to its own shady past. Instead, the Centre was left in a restricted area; plans were in place to eventually rebuild it as a kind of museum and tribute to Hammond, but these never came to pass and the Centre was allowed to be retaken by the forest.

During this time, Masrani’s personal finances grew immensely as his companies flourished. At some point before 2004, he became a billionaire.

Public interest in the park was mounting, and Masrani could not keep people away forever. Already, supposed drone footage of the park gates had leaked online, and the patent for a unique vehicle called a gyrosphere had been illegally photographed and leaked the following year. Masrani set up an alert to inform him whenever Jurassic World-related news broke, trying to keep tabs on the rumor mill. He turned away photographers, declined bribes, and kept an eye out for spies in order to keep some amount of secrecy. Masrani’s head of the Asset Containment Unit, Oscar, warned him that infiltration of the park was a threat, but Masrani believed corporate spies would be more likely to hack their computer systems. Therefore, their cybersecurity was beefed up.

In the winter of 2003, Masrani initiated a classified internship program at Jurassic World, selecting the most promising of university students to supervise the first herbivorous animals being reintroduced to the central valley. That area was slated for the gyrosphere attraction. The internship program was supervised by Beverly Jamison, who answered directly to Masrani himself. Interns arrived in January of 2004, but their involvement was a highly guarded secret; only park staff and high-ranking Masrani employees knew about this. One of the interns, a biochemistry student named Isobel James, was involved with two of the returning Brachiosaurus which had recently come back home to Isla Nublar. These were the first animals to be transported, but plans were in place to round up and transport all of the creatures on Isla Sorna. As the dinosaurs were rounded up, Masrani Global staff began to name them; each species was given a naming theme. For example, the brachiosaurs were given stereotypical “old person” names, while the Triceratops were named after scientists.

There was some urgency with shipping the dinosaurs from Isla Sorna to Isla Nublar, as a sudden and alarming drop in the dinosaur population began that year; theories were proposed, but the true cause was the illegal cloning that occurred in the late 1990s, which had unbalanced the delicate ecosystem. Simon Masrani largely blamed the population drop on poaching, and had InGen Security patrol the Muertes Archipelago with U.N. security forces while the relocation procedures were underway. Of particular difficulty were the Pteranodons, which were notorious for breaking glass walls of enclosures and escaping, and the Velociraptors, which could use their intelligence to coordinate escape attempts during transit. Masrani and his employees devised strategies to deal with the more problematic species; a transparent polymer was in development as of 2004 to better contain the Pteranodons, and plans were drafted to transport the Velociraptors one at a time beginning that September. Isla Nublar was prepared for them, with calcium-boosting supplements added to the island’s watering holes. New metal alloys were developed for the enclosure structures, some of which were so exclusive to Masrani Global companies that not even major governments had access to them yet.

Issues also arose once the dinosaurs arrived to Isla Nublar. On January 31, the intern Isobel James discovered a possible tumor on the neck of the brachiosaur named Olive, and measured it at an increased size on February 1. Since the head veterinarian Savannah disliked her, she had reported this to Savannah’s assistant Dr. Tim O’Donnell. The park’s veterinary staff surgically removed it the following day, finding that it was only an abscess, but a similar ailment was found in the other brachiosaur Agnes on February 3. This one was caught soon enough that it could be dealt with using antibiotics, but the brachiosaurs (and eventually all the other animals) were put on antibiotic regiments to insure against the disease. While the veterinarians had debated how best to perform surgery on a dinosaur (which had never been attempted before), Savannah attempted to punish James, but Simon Masrani intervened on behalf of the helpful intern. Later, Savannah was removed as head veterinarian and replaced by her assistant.

In March, a severe thunderstorm struck Isla Nublar, damaging the main electrical grid and forcing the temporary evacuation of the island. Due to the overloaded backup generators, a fuse box blew out and started a fire at the quarantine pen where Olive was recovering from surgery. In her weakened state, smoke inhalation could be fatal. Isobel James did not evacuate with the others, going back to manually open the quarantine pen and save the animal. Masrani tried to hold the boat, but with conditions worsening, the captain insisted upon leaving without her. James was later found the apparent victim of a jeep accident, most likely having tried to reach the dock in time to evacuate and crashed in the storm. Although there is evidence to suggest otherwise, James’s death was officially listed as accidental.

This death threatened Masrani’s insurance policy and construction timetable, as well as being a tragedy. Such an incident would lead to investigations and a public relations disaster, slowing down the park’s development and delaying its opening date. Determined to keep the opening date and believing that James would have wanted the same, Masrani paid her family handsomely to keep quiet, and cancelled the internship program. The other interns were sent home with cover stories, being told to claim that they had interned at other companies during that time. Companies involved with these cover stories were all Masrani Global subsidiaries, making falsified paperwork easy to create. A second internship program, this one open to the public and called Bright Minds, had already been planned since the winter of 2003, and so was now set to become the first officially-known internship program at Jurassic World.

Before the next interns’ arrival, more dinosaurs were introduced: a Parasaurolophus herd, a flock of Gallimimus, fifteen female Triceratops, and six hatchling female Ankylosaurus. When the ankylosaurs were hatched, Masrani had suggested naming them all after mountain peaks, but ultimately the winning theme was historical female warriors. Two more Brachiosaurus were brought in, including a subadult named Dot and a particularly spirited juvenile named Pearl. Each time a new dinosaur arrived from Isla Sorna, Masrani held a champagne toast atop the command center. So far, no carnivores were introduced; the only carnivores on the island were those that had been there all along, including the original Tyrannosaurus and several Dilophosaurus, as well as a large number of feral Compsognathus which continued to evade containment efforts. The company’s economists projected a strong first quarter once the park opened; ticket sales were planned to be made available in small batches online six months before opening day, but lotteries for all-expenses-paid stays on the island would also be held to combat ticket scalping. Partnerships with major brands, which would pay for some of the park’s operating costs, were in place.

Application letters began to come in once Bright Minds opened, and once again Masrani hand-selected twelve of the most academically impressive college students from all backgrounds. The application process involved an essay in which the applicants should detail a significant problem and present a solution; Masrani personally read all of them. His personal favorite was from nineteen-year-old political science student Claire Dearing, whose focus on the future of the world impressed him. Dearing’s acceptance letter was delayed in the mail and she nearly missed the deadline to respond, emailing Jamison the day before the deadline. Another of his favorites was business student Justin Hendricks, whose ambition reminded Masrani of himself at a younger age when he was learning under his father’s guidance. The interns arrived to Isla Nublar by ferry in August, nine months before the park was set to open.

Masrani himself personally greeted the interns each by name the morning after they arrived, treating them to an orientation breakfast and giving an overview of the park’s current status and future. He then accompanied them on a tour of the park. The monorail system was under construction still, so they took the service roads to Gyrosphere Valley, the interns being delighted that the gyrospheres turned out to be real. The vehicles’ futuristic design had caused many to suspect that the leaked patent was a hoax. At the valley, he accompanied the interns as they watched the twelve-person herbivore trainer team and their leader Bertie release the sixteenth female Triceratops, an adolescent named Lovelace, into the habitat. He was thrilled to see the interns as enthralled with the animals as he had been when he first saw them alive. As early as that day, he began working with the film student Eric Skye to obtain video footage of the Bright Minds program in action.

During lunch at the Samsung-sponsored Innovation Center, Masrani had lunch with his two favorite interns: Justin Hendricks and Claire Dearing, whose forward thinking and confidence continued to impress him. After discussing business and politics with Hendricks and Dearing respectively, he accompanied the interns to the Hammond Creation Lab. His lunch had been interrupted by a call from Dr. Wu, who had requested that this visit be cancelled due to his busy schedule, but Masrani insisted that the interns be allowed to tour the lab as some of them would be doing rotations there. After the tour, Dr. Wu admitted that Dearing had some amount of foresight, and some weeks later selected her as well as botany student Tanya Skye to monitor his up-and-coming Pteranodon eggs.

As September arrived, so did the time for the first theropod transport from Isla Sorna. A female Velociraptor was slated to be shipped over on September 8. Masrani had just come from a meeting with Dr. Wu on September 2 when he encountered interns Claire Dearing and Wyatt, who were the first interns to learn about the raptor. Masrani departed the command center with Wyatt, who was interested in discussing business, while Dearing left to work on a behavioral program for the youngest brachiosaur Pearl.

The raptor arrived on schedule, probably being delivered to the East Dock and shipped to the western carnivore quarantine paddock. It would spend twenty-four hours in the habitat area recovering from its transport ordeal, then spend a few weeks in the quarantine paddock as it was conditioned to a life in captivity. Masrani had the interns stay in the hotel during this time, though he and the staff likely held their usual toast at the animal’s arrival.

That night, the Asset Containment Unit alerted Masrani to a terrible disaster at the quarantine paddock. Two of the interns, the Skye twins, had attempted to hack into the paddock system to steal data, and had been stealing trade secrets for weeks. The twins had been apprehended by Dearing and Hendricks, who had suspected Wyatt of being a corporate spy instead, but during the confrontation the power to the paddock was accidentally cut and the raptor was released. It was recontained by the interns within the habitat area, but mauled Hendricks to death. ACU had captured the twins and brought them to the detention hall, but Dearing was in a state of shock. Masrani personally rushed to the paddock with ACU, ensuring that Dearing had not sustained any mortal wounds.

Dearing was brought to safety, but Masrani did not leave her side until he was convinced she was not in serious danger due to her ordeal. He consulted with his company’s lawyers about the recent incident, reassuring Dearing that the Skye twins were being dealt with and that she should focus on confronting her trauma for now. Masrani spoke with Hendricks’s mother, and convinced her using his not-inconsiderable resources to stay quiet about the incident. Two days after his death, his body was removed from Isla Nublar and returned to Portland, Maine so that his family could hold a funeral. A cover story for his death was presumably concocted, and a clause in the NDA signed by each intern ensured that the true cause of his death could not be shared publicly. Like with Isobel James’s death, Masrani justified the coverup by claiming that Hendricks would not have wanted the public relations disaster and investigation slowing down the park’s development or getting its insurance revoked. The raptor involved in the mauling was euthanized, as per company policy.

The twins, on the other hand, were still giving him trouble. Tanya seemed to have taken charge of their situation and Eric was following her lead; she refused to speak to InGen Security until she had a chance to speak with Dearing, as did her twin brother. Masrani requested Dearing’s audience and explained the trouble to her, and Dearing agreed to talk to Tanya, if only to confront her for causing Hendricks’s death. Oscar disagreed with Masrani’s decision to cater to the twins’ request, but Masrani acknowledged and overrode this criticism and brought Dearing in.

From the other side of a one-way frosted glass panel, Masrani and Oscar witnessed Tanya Skye give Dearing not only her apology, but a full explanation and confession. She and her brother had been contracted by one of Masrani’s major rivals, Mosby Health, to steal InGen trade secrets from Jurassic World in exchange for their younger sister Victory‘s free participation in a medical therapy trial. Victory was afflicted by a congenital heart disorder that threatened her life, and this experimental therapy was her only chance at surviving. Tanya had already sent out six extreme-strength tranquilizer darts, though InGen’s groundbreaking fusion bandage compound and the park’s security details were not yet sent. Masrani began making phone calls to his company advisors and other personnel, though he did not report the crime to the U.S. government yet.

On the day following Tanya’s confession, Dearing left the hotel unaccompanied and visited Dr. Wu at his office before going to Gyrosphere Valley alone. Masrani’s security staff informed him of her unusual movements and he went to join her. They talked, Masrani informing her that he would soon report the crime to the authorities and turn in the Skye twins. An FDA investigation of the Mosby Health trial would ensue, and almost certainly shut the trial down.

Dearing asked him for a favor: she wanted him to fund the trial to completion, as well as provide lifelong support for Victory Skye’s education. This would mean not reporting the Skye twins’ crimes, and letting them go free, which she insisted he would do since (by his own admission) she had saved Jurassic World. Furthermore, he knew that she could potentially reveal Hendricks’s true cause of death, giving her another advantage over him in this deal. Masrani was hesitant to meet her daring demands, but he was genuinely impressed that rather than ask him for benefits, she was advocating for someone else. This show of compassion swayed him, and he agreed to her terms. She then revealed that she knew about Isobel James, and had solved the problem of the dinosaurs’ infections; it was a mutated strain of cyanobacteria in the water sources of the valley, created by accident when InGen treated the water with calcium. Masrani, impressed by Dearing’s investigative skills and selflessness, offered her the chance to stay on Isla Nublar until the park opened, and then to take a job in administration after that. She accepted his offer.

Jurassic World operates

Just as scheduled, Jurassic World opened its doors to the public on May 30, 2005 with a total of eight species on exhibit and plenty more tucked away in the island’s northern sector waiting to be ready for display. The park was an immense success, seeing a total of 98,120 guests over the course of June, for which Masrani credited his employees’ tireless efforts. By this time, all the dinosaurs had supposedly been relocated off Isla Sorna and to Isla Nublar, but the presence of poaching vessels near Isla Sorna as well as InGen Security and the United Nations maintaining a tight watch over the island suggest that it was still in use.

Even with the park open, there was still work to be done. Concerns abounded in the public opinion not only about the park’s safety, but about its impact. To alleviate these concerns, Masrani signed an agreement with the Costa Rican Environmental Protection Society in which he ensured that his company would work to reduce pollution on and around Isla Nublar, maintain wild spaces for its native animal and plant life, and promote sustainability in park operations. He also made reparations to the island’s indigenous Tun-Si tribe, who had been displaced by InGen in the 1980s and 1990s when Jurassic Park was first built. Masrani established a reservation on the island where these people could resume their traditional ways of life, and ensured that their culture was acknowledged and respected as the foundation of Isla Nublar’s human past. Masrani’s business partners also found their place on the island, such as his friend Daniel Kon, whose family was among the park’s top investors. The Kon family was allowed a private penthouse on Isla Nublar complete with its own dock.

As they had agreed, Claire Dearing continued to stay on Isla Nublar. In August, to commemorate her first year working at Jurassic World, Masrani gifted her a package of memorabilia from her time as an intern, including most of the personal items that had been confiscated during InGen’s investigation such as her postcards and journal. By 2007, when the park had been open for two years, Dearing became its Senior Assets Manager. She would go on to become Operations Manager as well, and from 2008 onward, she lived on Isla Nublar full-time. Her stellar rise through the ranks meant that she was among Jurassic World’s youngest upper management, and Masrani trusted her with all its day-to-day operations.

New animals and attractions came to the park as well, including a Mosasaurus bred by 2007, which was kept in the massive lagoon. Some, such as the Brachiosaurus, were removed in later years to be set aside for coming attractions, while other such as Carnotaurus had to be retired from exhibition due to behavioral problems. However, the park gained more attractions than it had to close, and in many cases the removed animals were replaced by exciting new species. For example, when Brachiosaurus was retired from Gyrosphere Valley and relocated for later use, Apatosaurus took its place as the park’s primary sauropod attraction. With each new attraction coming to Jurassic World, attendance spiked and investors were drawn in.

As time went on, Masrani busied himself with his company’s other branches as well. The corporate umbrella expanded with the creation of Aerospace Dynamix in 2007, and four years after that, Masrani bought his longtime rival Tatsuo Technology. InGen Security continued to grow and expand its services as well. While Masrani grew busier, he entrusted more and more of his company’s success to his loyal employees. InGen Security was still managed by Vic Hoskins, who grew it into a global operation, and Claire Dearing now supervised all of Masrani’s flagship theme park and the twenty thousand people who visited it daily.

By early 2008, there were some concerns that Jurassic World might not be sustainable in the long term. With its attractions growing more expensive (the mosasaur, for example, had necessitated the industrial-scale cloning and accelerated breeding of great white sharks for its food source) and profits tending to flatten over time, the Board of Directors held a meeting with Masrani to come up with a solution. They proposed that Dr. Wu use genetic engineering to craft not just a new de-extinct species, but a wholly new kind of organism to attract visitors and draw new investors to Jurassic World. Masrani agreed, and with Dearing’s authorization, Wu began work on this concept. He was given Masrani’s explicit blessing to create whatever was necessary, with Masrani telling him to come up with something “cooler” than any dinosaur they already had. Wu and InGen’s geneticists got to work.

Within a year, Wu had yielded results: his Experiment E750 was a success, creating an organism he named Scorpios rex. This hybrid theropod was a combination of traits from many different species, stemming from the wide range of genes Wu and his team sourced to build its genome. It was intelligent and fierce, and looked stunningly different from any natural dinosaur. In June, Masrani was confident that Wu’s techniques would revolutionize not only Jurassic World, but genetic science itself. However, as the E750 specimen grew, Masrani realized that it was actually quite an ugly creature and would not appeal to tourists. Wu disagreed, but found that the specimen experienced violent moodswings and was easily triggered to attack out of the blue. Soon, there was an incident in which it struck Wu himself after escaping its containment, nearly killing him. Masrani demanded that Wu euthanize and destroy the hybrid and start over. Although this first result had been a failure, it had proven that animal hybrids were viable, and Jurassic World’s scientific capabilities had grown as a result.

The company’s partnerships grew as well. In the early 2010s, Dearing met with the manager of the Lockwood Foundation, Eli Mills, at a fundraiser. The Lockwood Foundation had been created by Benjamin Lockwood, an old business partner of Hammond’s who had parted ways with him on bad terms. Dearing and Mills negotiated a new partnership between the foundation and Jurassic World, opening up a new source of philanthropic funding for the park’s sciences. Jurassic World continued to gain investors from other areas as well.

Four years after the Board’s order to have Wu invent a new species, a second hybrid theropod, named Indominus rex, hatched and was transported to a clandestine facility to be kept hidden from the public. Masrani was thrilled, but could not come to see the animal; he was now busy enough with his expanding company that he was unable to visit Jurassic World as often as he liked. Other major programs began in 2012 as well, including a behavioral genomics program at the North Mount Sibo Centre which Masrani was among a select few people to know about. Another was the Integrated Behavioral Raptor Intelligence Study, an InGen Security effort to better understand raptor behaviors and cognition. If this program was a success, then the problematic Velociraptor could be integrated into Jurassic World; for the project he and Hoskins hired former U.S. Navy animal trainer Owen Grady, who had previously worked on the Marine Mammal Program. Finally, the Siberian paleontological facility Martel was established in order to excavate woolly mammoth remains in the permafrost. Masrani Oil grew too; in 2013, it was commissioned to build the Cerberus Array, a set of 120 wind turbines off the coast of the United Kingdom.

More developments with Masrani Oil occurred the following year. Its top minds were working on a new design for three-bladed wind turbines which would hopefully be completed by 2016, and it was commissioned to build wind turbine arrays in multiple countries. Unfortunately, an East Pacific hurricane in August 2014 caused serious damage to Platform L-12, a Masrani Oil rig, halting production. Repairs began in October, and Masrani authorized this division to replace the rig with a semi-submersible platform within five years. Martel was completed that November as well.

Masrani Global was prominent in the tech world that year, establishing a presence at InventiCon 2014 with Aerospace Dynamix presenting the XL25 wind turbine it had been developing for Masrani Oil. This presentation garnered enough support to bring the project into Phase II, which Simon Masrani was pleased with. He planned to make an appearance at InventiCon 2015 the following year. Mascom’s long-lived weather satellite Glinda was decommissioned, replaced by the satellite Ervic; Masrani personally promoted their new satellite on social media with the hashtags #GoodbyeGlinda and #HelloErvic. With all these developments, Masrani was still unable to visit Isla Nublar and see the Indominus, estimating that by May or early June of 2015 he would be free to witness his new dinosaur.

InGen flourished in the mid-2010s under Masrani’s leadership, possessing the world’s most complete genomic library by the end of 2014. In January of 2015, Masrani announced a $225 million boost to InGen’s funding, most of which went to Security for the development of new projects and continuation of ongoing ones. He also revealed the Indominus rex on his corporate blog, though access to this information was limited. Although the general public did not know the animal’s name or appearance, they were told that a brand-new theropod was being introduced to Jurassic World by the end of the year, and online ticket sales soared as predicted.

2015 was a major year for Masrani Global, as its various companies collaborated on more and more projects and benefited from one another. InventiCon 2015 was a success, with Simon Masrani making an appearance to display Mascom’s virtual reality technologies and the upcoming Tanius 7 smartphone. Masrani Oil was rebranded Masrani Energy in April, reflecting the company’s growing use of sustainable and renewable energy sources as oil became increasingly scarce and the effects of air pollution and carbon emissions became evident. In Jurassic World, the Indominus exhibit was planned to be completed by May and the animal put on display in July, but it was not ready for display by that time. Masrani was largely unaware of these issues, as he was in China at the time overseeing solar nanotechnology research at several universities.

Although Masrani was not able to go to Jurassic World in May or June like he had planned, he did have one further plan to help the park succeed. He established a youth adventure camp, called Camp Cretaceous, to bring kids and teenagers to his park and get them invested in science. While the camp was not complete by the end of 2015, a trial run was planned for that winter vacation season with two counselors and six campers. Four of the six campers were chosen for their connections to Jurassic World; the fifth was social media influencer Brooklynn, whose popularity among young people on the internet would ensure Jurassic World publicity. For the sixth camper, a kind of lottery was held; the first player to win a virtual reality game released by InGen would be awarded a stay at Camp Cretaceous. The winner of this lottery was a boy named Darius Bowman. Simon Masrani never met these six youths, arriving to Isla Nublar two days after they did.

By December 22, 2015, Masrani was well on his way to achieving his helicopter pilot’s license; he was scheduled to get the license on December 24. He had also become the eighth richest man in the world by this date. This means that his personal wealth was more than Christy Walton ($41.7 billlion) but less than the Koch brothers ($42.9 billion each).

Death

On December 22, Masrani arrived to Isla Nublar in his personal Eurocopter, JW001, along with his flight instructor. He passed south over the island to arrive at Jurassic World’s command center, landing on the helipad to pick up Claire Dearing. She was surprised to see him flying, and he claimed to already have his license, though the flight instructor reminded him that he was still two days away from this. Dearing updated him on the park’s status and current issues, though Masrani was not bothered by costs or problems and only wanted to know whether the guests and animals were happy. They traveled north again, heading to Paddock 11 where the Indominus was kept.

Masrani was surprise to see that the Timack Construction workers were still building the paddock, which had been constructed three years ago at this point. He was also confused to see a large crane positioned over the paddock. Dearing informed him that the animal had grown bigger than expected and showed signs of high aggression, having nearly dismembered a worker during feeding time. From then on, they had to feed the animal using the crane. Despite the potential dangers, Masrani was pleased that the dinosaur was large and spirited.

Inside the paddock’s observation deck, Masrani learned that two Indominus had been bred originally, but that one had cannibalized the other. The survivor kept itself mostly concealed in the trees, but watched them carefully; seeing it for the first time, Masrani was stunned by its deathly white color. He also learned that it had tried to break the observation deck’s glass some time shortly before his visit, and that the dinosaur could sense thermal radiation like a pit viper. Masrani was convinced that this creature would sufficiently thrill and terrify his guests, but since it was more intelligent and dangerous than he had anticipated, he instructed Dearing to bring I.B.R.I.S. trainer Owen Grady in to look over the paddock for weaknesses. This would ensure that they knew what security measures to implement in the eventual Indominus exhibit. Masrani selected Grady for this mission due to his successes with the I.B.R.I.S. Velociraptors, as Hoskins reported, since these dinosaurs were also highly intelligent and aggressive theropods that attempted escapes often.

After this, Masrani returned to the control room where he, along with technicians led by Lowery Cruthers and Vivian Krill, observed the park. An urgent call came in from Dearing, who was on her way to the control room from Paddock 11 after she was supposed to have brought Grady there; she requested that Cruthers locate the Indominus. He found it in Paddock 11, as expected, but then saw on the monitors that there were three employees (Owen Grady, paddock supervisor Nicholas Letting, and construction worker Nick Kilgore) within the paddock. Horrified, Krill radioed Letting to warn the workers of the danger. The three men fled, but the dinosaur blocked them from escaping through the maintenance entrance. Letting opened the dinosaur gates to escape, and Masrani ordered Cruthers to close them to prevent the dinosaur from getting out. Cruthers hesitated, giving Grady but sadly not Kilgore enough time to make it out of the paddock; unfortunately the dinosaur also reached the gates before they closed again and forced its way out. In the ensuing violence, Letting was killed, leaving Grady as the only survivor of the three.

Dearing joined the others in the control room. Using footage from earlier in the day, Cruthers had discovered that the Indominus had lowered its body temperature to an ambient level, thereby avoiding detection from the paddock’s infrared sensors. This, combined with claw marks on the paddock walls, was why Dearing believed it had escaped. She had not sent the workers into the paddock to inspect it; they had done this without her authorization, apparently with Grady making the decision instead. Although everyone involved was partly responsible for the disaster, Masrani blamed no one. Krill attempted to issue a park-wide alert to shut the island down, but Masrani vetoed this, wanting to capture the animal quietly before causing a panic. A Code 19 was issued to park security, and two ACU squads were dispatched to deal with the situation.

Grady arrived to the control room for no reason other than to berate Dearing, blaming her completely for the escape rather than distribute blame fairly among those responsible. He joined them to watch as the ACU squads tracked the animal via its RFID implant, though he criticized their use of nonlethal weapons. Masrani insisted that the Indominus should be captured alive, since there were millions of dollars invested in it. When the ACU teams arrived to the animal’s location, it was nowhere to be found; team commander Katashi Hamada located the implant, which had apparently been clawed out after it began administering an electric shock to the creature. Movement in the forest caught their attention, and the Indominus appeared suddenly; an alert from Hamada indicated that it had been camouflaged among the trees, hiding in plain sight. A pitched battle took place in the woods, but the nonlethal rounds could not penetrate the animal’s thick hide. Even real bullets did minimal damage to it. All in all, six of the eleven troopers died, and the survivors had to retreat without subduing their target. Grady insisted to Masrani that the island be evacuated and boldly told Masrani to have a word with Dr. Wu. Masrani, horrified by the carnage and confused as to why the animal was able to camouflage itself, took Grady’s advice. A Real World scenario was declared, closing down all attractions in the northern park and bringing all the visitors to Sector 3 and the other southern areas.

Masrani then went to the Hammond Creation Lab, meeting with Dr. Wu in his office. Masrani expressed his bafflement that the Indominus could cloak itself both visually and thermally, which Wu explained was a result of the gene donors used to create it. Wu claimed that these genes had been intended to help the animal survive and that he had no intention of these more extreme results (though there is significant evidence that the camouflage, at least, was intentional). Masrani did not accept Wu’s explanation, and was incensed that Wu would not disclose the contents of the hybrid genome to him. Wu outright stated that Masrani himself was not authorized to know this, though he also said that it was Masrani’s instruction to create a “cooler” animal for Jurassic World and that he had authorized Wu to do whatever he saw fit. Masrani rejected Wu’s justifications and resolved to turn him over to the Board of Directors, ending not only Wu’s research but also his employment at InGen and temporarily shutting down the park if it was necessary. Before doing this, though, Masrani chose to ensure the Indominus died before it could hurt any more of his employees, so he left Wu after their argument and set off to right what had gone wrong.

From the control room, Masrani worked with Cruthers and Krill to devise a plan of attack. Since the tracking implant in the Indominus was ripped out, her location could only be discerned by visual confirmation. Each attack was successively farther south than the one before, suggesting that the animal was moving toward Sector 3 and the body heat of the thousands of visitors. Hoskins joined them, insisting that the only way to stop the Indominus was to utilize the I.B.R.I.S. raptors to track it down and kill it. Masrani recognized Hoskins’s real motivation: he was more interested in testing the raptors’ combat abilities, since he wanted to breed them as military animals. Masrani considered this idea utterly unacceptable, but as Hoskins correctly stated that they did not have enough boats for an immediate evacuation from such a remote island, killing the animal quickly and efficiently was their best option. Ground teams of human soldiers were ineffective against this adaptable and crafty theropod, which Hoskins used to justify his unrealistic dinosaur-on-dinosaur combat plan.

Not about to let Hoskins risk both human and animal lives to field-test an unproven idea, Masrani took matters directly into his own hands. He took two ACU troopers with real combat experience, strapped a GE M134 minigun to JW001, and took the helm. Krill attempted to find Masrani’s flight instructor but was unable to. Masrani assumed that his instructor had gotten caught up in the evacuation and expressed confidence that he could fly the helicopter on his own, despite not having a valid license. He and his two troopers departed from the command center’s helipad and flew north toward the animal’s last known location.

On their way to the target, Masrani tried to boost the morale of his troopers, acknowledging their military service and asking if their generals had ever flown into battle with them like this. They discovered the Indominus by unintentionally flushing it out of the old Visitors’ Centre ruins in a restricted area of Gyrosphere Valley, pursuing it eastward across the island. As they drew within firing range, Masrani had his troopers open fire. Unfortunately, the dinosaur kept within tree cover for much of the chase, and Masrani’s flying was still shaky. These factors caused the troopers to miss their target. They came quite close to striking the animal, though, and the creature sought shelter.

It ran for the Jurassic World Aviary, built with the transparent polymer that Masrani himself had brainstormed. While the polymer was indeed capable of withstanding the pinpoint stabbing attacks of Pteranodon beaks, it was in no way prepared for the brute-force headbutt of the Indominus and gave way. The animal chased several Pteranodons out from the aviary. These stressed reptiles sighted JW001 and quickly took it to be another territorial threat, closing in on the helicopter. Masrani’s gunner opened fire, but was struck and killed during the aerial battle. His other trooper, in the seat next to him, was stabbed to death by another angry pterosaur’s beak. It was pure chance that Masrani was not the one being stabbed, and that he was left alone. JW001 sustained damage from the reptiles’ impacts, causing the controls to become nonresponsive. It listed to the side, unable to right itself and regain altitude.

Masrani had mere moments to consider his situation. He had always believed that the only way to be happy was to accept that life was beyond his control. Now, he was truly not in control, neither of the disaster or his helicopter. He was plummeting to certain death in a vehicle he had bought, surrounded by animals he had helped create, breaking through a polymer he designed, and all in service of killing a creature he authorized for a park he financed and owned. Everything around him existed because of his ambition and his money, and now it all rose up to claim his life. In the end, none of his vast resources could save him as his helicopter collided with the aviary dome, breaking apart on one of the struts and falling to the ground. Its fuel was ignited by sparking electronics on impact, causing a massive explosion which killed him instantaneously.

Legacy

In the wake of his death, Masrani’s employees mourned him. More than just a boss, he had been their leader, and a well-liked one at that. Hoskins, shocked but opportunistic, took advantage of Masrani’s death. The pterosaurs were now driven into a frenzy by their stressful situation and flocked to the Jurassic World Lagoon where they attacked visitors in broad daylight, causing a public relations disaster that the park could never recover from. The Board authorized Hoskins to take full control of Jurassic World in place of Simon Masrani, and he did so with full force.

Hoskins defied Masrani’s last order to him and performed the I.B.R.I.S. field test, which ended just as disastrously as Masrani had predicted. The raptors did not attack the Indominus, but instead chose to turn on their handlers in a bid for freedom. Hoskins did not survive the night, becoming one of the raptors’ victims. In the end, it was Dearing, his old favorite intern and now most loyal employee, who took charge and defeated the Indominus by releasing the park’s senior tyrannosaur to engage it in territorial combat. The hybrid was driven to the edge of the Lagoon and snatched by the mosasaur, and was drowned.

Jurassic World never recovered; the pterosaur attack, and later the revelations about the Indominus, ensured that there was no hope of reopening. However, Dearing did discover Dr. Wu’s corruption, learning that he had collaborated with Hoskins to deliberately make the Indominus geared toward combat rather than a park attraction. She also learned that they had plans to further this project. Wu disappeared, going into hiding, but his criminal activities were brought to light thanks to Dearing and he was charged with bioethical misconduct by the U.S. government.

Though Dearing went on to become a champion for de-extinct animal rights, citing Simon Masrani as one of her inspirations, the same could not be said for the company Masrani left behind. The corporation’s COO Richard Wiesner took charge of Masrani Global in the aftermath, though it is not known who the new CEO is at this time. In any case, the new leadership of Masrani Global does not have a stance on animal rights. While the environmentalist policies of its subsidiaries may still be held in place by employees Masrani hired, they are no longer endorsed by the corporation’s highest leaders. This led to a falling-out between Masrani Global and Dearing’s organization the Dinosaur Protection Group, particularly after Masrani Global refused to aid the dinosaurs when Isla Nublar became increasingly unsafe for habitation in 2017 and 2018. Although Masrani Global is considered to have failed its creations, the DPG still remembers Simon Masrani as a strong supporter of animal rights and a hero to the de-extinct creatures he had a hand in making.

Since Masrani died without having any children, and it is unknown if he willed his personal wealth to anyone, it is most likely that his property and money went to his immediate surviving family. Various non-canon media have indicated that his mother was still living as of 2015 and that he had a twin brother; if they exist in the film canon proper, they would have received his assets after his death.

Skills

Business

Simon Masrani’s wealth was partly inherited from his father, and this was probably key to his start, but his enduring success was the result of his genuine skill as a businessman. Like his initial wealth, this was also given to him by his father, who taught him everything he knew before his death in 1992. From the tender age of twenty-five until his death in 2015, Masrani managed his father’s company and expanded it into a truly global operation.

Of all the companies under the Masrani Global Corporation umbrella, Mascom Network was the only one not founded by Simon Masrani. By expanding this company and using its profits, he was able to found the massively successful Masrani Energy (originally Masrani Oil), which dramatically increased the corporation’s overall income. He went on to found at least five other companies and even purchased two more, including a major rival company.

In terms of being a corporate leader, Masrani was widely considered to be one of the most excellent in the world. He supported innovation and interdepartmental cooperation, encouraging his companies to work together to develop new technologies and techniques that they would have taken longer to do on their own. He was beloved by most of his employees, with many of his higher-ranking staff remaining with the company for long periods of time. In terms of working conditions, Masrani’s record was above average, and his treatment of his employees was exceptionally good. The company used its profits to provide excellent benefits to its employees. Even interns were treated quite well under his leadership, with nearly all interns ending up finding careers in Masrani Global and many programs such as Bright Minds paying for all the interns’ expenses in exchange for full-time labor. Simon Masrani was a progressive and empathic leader who saw incredible rates of employee loyalty as a result of his good treatment of those working for him.

He was also a shrewd businessman who knew how to take advantage of any opportunity. In his time as CEO, he established a number of valuable partnerships with other companies and organizations, and not all for profit: many of these partnerships improved Masrani Global’s public image, such as his partnership with the Costa Rican Environmental Protection Society, and thereby increased support for his company from the common people and special political interests. Masrani was a master of achieving long-term sustainability rather than the short-term profits favored by many capitalists, making him more successful over time. His business strategy could overall be characterized as waiting patiently for the right moment to make a move.

Public relations

As discussed above, one of Masrani’s greatest business skills was his ability to present an overwhelmingly positive public image. He is largely remembered for providing excellent working conditions and employee benefits, genuinely empathic leadership, ensuring equal opportunity, promoting scientific innovation, and protecting the environment on both the large and small scales. All these progressive appearances made Masrani quite popular, especially among younger and more liberal-minded people. Rebranding Masrani Oil as Masrani Energy in 2014 was an excellent example of this. He cared deeply about the happiness of his customers, frequently trying to stay ahead of the curve on what was popular and predicting what kinds of products would be the most successful in the near future.

Of course, the reality of running a multibillion-dollar business meant that there would invariably be issues behind the scenes. Masrani Energy, by its very nature, has always in the business of extracting fossil fuels, damming rivers, and other environmentally harmful practices, though Masrani did try to mitigate the damage. Jurassic World, his beloved flagship enterprise, was wracked with security concerns and afflicted by corruption that ultimately caused its demise. During construction of the park, there were two separate intern deaths, both of which were covered up (one through bribery, and under highly suspicious circumstances). In private, Masrani expressed regret that he had to engage in such underhanded activities, but considered them to be a necessity for his company’s success.

In any case Masrani was highly skilled at covering up any suspicious or otherwise concerning aspects of his business. He maintained a corporate blog on the Masrani Global website, though some of his posts appear to be restricted to limited audiences. Maintaining a social media presence was paramount to his public image, as it ensured he stayed relevant to the younger audiences he so often sought to draw in. Along with an online presence, Masrani often appeared at events to represent his company in person, such as InventiCon.

He not only cultivated a highly positive image for himself, he also did the same for his higher-ranking and long-term employees. While many of his company’s leaders were often quoted on the corporate website and in other media, special attention was given to Vic Hoskins, the head of InGen Security, and Claire Dearing, the Senior Assets Manager and Operations Manager of Jurassic World. By doing this, Masrani enhanced the apparent unity and competence of his companies and portrayed himself as a supportive leader.

During the 2015 incident in Jurassic World, Masrani initially tried to cover up the escaped Indominus so that park activities could continue unhindered. When it became apparent that this was only bringing harm to his employees, Masrani took it upon himself to confront the man he considered responsible and actually take to the air to kill the dangerous creature himself. He ultimately died in the course of this self-imposed mission, meaning that even his dying act paints him as a heroic martyr sacrificing his life for the safety of his employees and customers alike.

Driving

As of 2004, Masrani drove an SUV of unidentified make and model on Isla Nublar. It is not known if this was his personal vehicle or a company car. A man of his means could probably own many vehicles off-island as well, and since much of his time would have been spent conversing with business partners and members of his company, he probably relied on chauffeurs to drive him around more often than he drove himself.

Helicopter piloting

In 2015, Simon Masrani began training to get his helicopter pilot’s license. He owned a Eurocopter EC130 B4 (this model has since been renamed the Airbus H130) with callsign JW001, leading to it being referred to as “Jurassic One.” He sometimes loaned the helicopter off to Jurassic World for visitors who purchased the Adrenaline Package. As of December 22, Masrani was still training, with Claire Dearing being surprised that he was the one flying; he was scheduled to get his license two days later, but considered himself competent enough that he could fly without an instructor.

In reality, his flying was still amateurish and shaky, notably having a near-collision with birds that day and later flying too unsteadily for his gunner to strike a fairly large, if moving and partly concealed, target. He was in his helicopter at the time of his death; he lost control through no fault of his own, since the vehicle was damaged by pterosaur strikes during the incident. The helicopter lost altitude and collided with the Jurassic World Aviary, falling to the ground. Masrani was killed in the crash.

Language

Simon Masrani was at least bilingual, speaking Hindi and English fluently. Since he did business in dozens of countries around the world (with major operations in China, Japan, the UAE, South Africa, France, and Costa Rica), it is plausible that he learned other languages to some degree or other too.

Views

Life philosophy

In general, Masrani believed that life should be enjoyed and opportunities taken advantage of, but that in the end people do not have real control over the events happening around them. In his own words, the key to a happy life is admitting that you are never actually in control. This philosophy was applied surprisingly well to his business ventures; while his companies pushed boundaries on all fronts, their research and development proceeded in a logical fashion, moving from one discovery to the next as a natural progression.

Politically, Masrani held a mixture of liberal and conservative views. He was a multibillionaire capitalist who enjoyed a life of luxury, but supported environmental conservation and indigenous rights among other progressive ideals. Science and technology were among his top investments and he supported the accumulation of knowledge. Despite his mostly humanistic stance, there were occasions in which he valued company success and profit over safety, most infamously with Jurassic World’s security issues.

On economics and business

Although he was a capitalist, Masrani credited his success to the work of his employees and ensured that they were awarded top-notch benefits for their labor. He is remembered for treating his interns fantastically well also; even his unpaid interns generally had their living expenses covered during their time at Masrani Global, and nearly all of them were offered jobs at the end of the internship. Masrani believed that his wealth should go toward humanitarian and environmentalistic causes, or else go to fund technological and scientific innovation that would benefit the world, although he kept a significant amount for his own luxuries. Even these he was willing to share with others; for example, his personal helicopter JW001 was loaned to Jurassic World for tourists who purchased the park’s Adrenaline ticket package, meaning that Masrani repeatedly delayed his own flight training so that tourists could have a source of thrilling entertainment.

Masrani did not describe himself as especially generous for his acts of charity, instead appearing to consider them par for the course as a wealthy man. This contrasts dramatically with most wealthy capitalists, who tend to develop a disdain for the poor and gradually lose their empathy. Masrani was taught humility from an early age by watching his father’s company grow from nothing into a success, so he remembered his roots, and acted with kindness toward those who had less than himself. Still, being so wealthy meant that he was to some degree dissociated from reality; he considered Jurassic World accessible to everyone, but in actuality the expenses of traveling to a remote Costa Rican island were prohibitive to many people.

In general, Masrani favored opportunistic business practices, using any fortuitous situation to further his interests. Once he had become a billionaire, he had sufficient money to take advantage of virtually any situation, and could afford to fail before he succeeded. Masrani was well aware of how his wealth gave him an edge and how it gave him the ability to view failures as opportunities. He also frequently partnered with other companies and organizations that he believed would bring him benefit, either through economic partnership and promotion or through goodwill gestures that helped his public image and causes he supported.

On nature

With a firm stance on environmentalism and animal welfare, Masrani held a great respect for nature and reminded himself and others that it was ultimately the master of humanity and not the other way around. This was one of his main goals with Jurassic World: by exposing people to the unfathomable depth of nature’s history, and some of its most impressive creatures, he hoped to remind them that humanity is small and new.

However, not everyone shared this view with him; the public quickly started losing interest in the dinosaurs once they were accessible. This was one of the main reasons behind the creation of the Indominus, which Masrani authorized. He considered this hybrid to be a celebration of the fearsome evolutionary traits that helped animals survive, rather than an effort to domineer and control nature, but most of his employees (including the hybrid’s engineer, Dr. Henry Wu) thought just the opposite. To most people other than Masrani, the Indominus was indeed a way of bending nature to humanity’s will on the genetic level, but whether this was for good or ill was up for debate. When Masrani learned how efficient and remorseless a predator the animal turned out to be, he condemned it, realizing that his visionary attraction had become corrupted. Using genetic engineering to deliberately encourage violence was, in Masrani’s opinion, a perversion of nature rather than a celebration of evolutionary successes.

Many of Masrani’s corporate efforts were damaging to nature, although he tried to mitigate this. The whole of Jurassic World’s construction tore apart an island ecosystem that had already suffered from alteration during the age of Jurassic Park; he ensured that the island’s native life forms were given some form of protection, but the fact remained that the park heavily altered Isla Nublar. His other ventures, such as Masrani Energy’s oil-drilling operations, were similarly destructive to the global biosphere. He gradually reduced his company’s reliance on oil and attempted to move toward less damaging energy sources, but this was a slow process. The varied effectiveness of his environmentalist efforts were compounded by his largely naïve understanding of nature, not understanding the inherent instability of any ecosystem. This simplistic and wholesome, but ultimately wrong, image of nature resulted in travesties such as the Indominus incident occurring under his watch.

On humanity

One of Masrani’s best-remembered traits is his philanthropic and humanistic outlook. He had a wholly positive attitude toward his fellow human beings, which was sometimes considered as naïve as his trust in the inherent “goodness” of nature. It took quite a lot to get Masrani upset with anyone, resulting in his accidental permittance of corruption within his companies. He opposed war and believed that people were inherently good, with mistakes and poor judgment being vastly more common than actual malice.

Overall he seems to have held the view that while humanity is small and childlike before the grandness of the natural world, humans are special in that they can study the universe and thereby give the universe a way to know itself. This is strongly suggested by his unwavering support for scientific research of every kind, as well as his desire to exhibit nature’s greatest evolutionary accomplishments for the world to see.

He seems to have struggled to reconcile his value for human life with his value for non-human life. In 2004, he had a Velociraptor euthanized because it mauled an intern to death, but in 2015 was hesitant to kill the escaped Indominus even after it caused the deaths of workers. His compromise seems to depend on a bigger-picture image of costs versus benefits. The incident with the raptor was covered up to protect the park as a whole, with the animal being euthanized to prevent it from causing any more deaths that could threaten the park’s insurance. The Indominus, on the other hand, represented years of work and millions of dollars worth of investments, so keeping it alive was in the best interest of the park and the company. However, when the Indominus proved to be so brutally efficient a predator that it could not be easily recaptued, Masrani changed his stance and attempted to kill it to prevent even greater loss of life.

In the end, Masrani’s final act was to try and protect his employees and customers by putting himself directly on the front lines. He intended to survive, believing himself fully capable of carrying out the mission, but died due to unforeseen circumstances. During his final moments, he had just a brief time to contemplate everything he was about to die for. In the past, he had described sacrificing one’s self to help others as a “good death.” It is only fitting, then, that his death would come in such a manner.

On genetic engineering

Masrani’s respect for nature and support for scientific innovation intersected in an unusual way in the field of genetic engineering. He believed that this was a tool for good, not just for science, but also for nature. While he had a great love for all naturally-occurring life, he also believed that science could enhance humanity’s relationship with the natural world. His first interest in this was the use of genetic hybridization to generate new forms of life with the flowering plant Karacosis wutansis, which was first created in early 1997 by Dr. Henry Wu and his team. This led Masrani to become involved with InGen, purchasing it a year later. For a time, this form of artificial hybrid speciation fell by the wayside and more traditional (by that time) de-extinction took the spotlight.

De-extinction was a marvel of science in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Simon Masrani was fully supportive of it for both capitalist and naturalist reasons. While the marketing potential of animals from the past cannot be denied, Masrani also believed that seeing these magnificient species come back to life would give people a better, healthier respect for what nature was capable of creating. It would also expose people to the sheer scale of deep time, hopefully instilling a sense of awe and humility at how new humans were in the grand scheme of the universe. All together, de-extinction and paleogenetics had the potential to preserve countless species that would otherwise be lost to extinction forever, and to allow humans unprecedented insight into the history of life. Masrani believed that, together, a greater respect and appreciation for nature could be achieved. He was of the opinion that cloned animals should be treated with equal respect.

He supported the I.B.R.I.S. project, which used genetic engineering to create a superior form of Velociraptor in terms of manageability. Masrani’s goal for I.B.R.I.S. was to study the raptors’ intelligence as to best determine how to peacefully integrate them into the park. He opposed Hoskins’s goals, which were to determine how to utilize the raptors as military animals; Masrani was against biological warfare, especially where genetic engineering might play a role.

Artificial hybrid speciation became important again beginning in 2008, when the Board of Directors and Masrani proposed that Dr. Wu use this process to create a new park attraction. Masrani believed that this would draw crowds to the park, but while most of his colleagues saw it as a means to bend nature’s will to suit humanity’s aims, Masrani does not seem to have taken this view. Instead, he considered the creation of new species to be a way to respect evolution by crafting a life form using traits from preexisting organisms: essentially, flattery through imitation. This was a very uncommon way to view the hybridization process, but it suited Masrani’s naïve outlook on nature and evolution.

When he discovered that the Indominus was an abnormally aggressive and sadistic predator possessing predatory traits that had nothing to do with being a park exhibit, he was appalled and angered. Rather than simply being a celebration of predator evolution, the Indominus posed a real threat to Masrani’s employees and customers by being more dangerous than necessary. For this he blamed Dr. Wu, accusing his scientist of making a “monster.” Although aggressive and efficient predators are not unknown, and the Indominus was crafted using traits that already were present in other animals, Masrani considered the result to be an unnatural abomination and an insult toward nature rather than a flattering imitation of it.

Relationships

Family

Simon Masrani’s father was Sanjay Masrani, a telecommunications mogul and shrewd businessman. When Simon was six years old, his father founded Mascom Network, and from then until 1992 he grew and developed this company and taught his son everything he knew. Simon learned much about business, but was also brought up with a healthy sense of humility and generosity. Mascom became the first subsidiary of Masrani Global Corporation, which Simon inherited from his father after his death in 1992. It is largely due to Sanjay Masrani’s early successes and lessons learned that Simon Masrani was able to become a multibillionaire by the time of his death in 2015.

Other members of the Masrani family are described in other canons, but their status in S/F canon is not confirmed. Simon Masrani’s mother was said to still be alive as of the summer of 2015 in the mobile game Jurassic World: The Game. The animated LEGO shorts introduce Sedrick Masrani, the twin brother of Simon and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Masrani Global; if Simon Masrani had any siblings in S/F canon they have yet to be mentioned.

Dr. John Parker Alfred Hammond

Simon Masrani became acquainted with Dr. John Hammond through his father, with whom Hammond was close friends. Over time, the young Masrani became friends with Hammond as well, probably learning business skills from him as well as his father.

In 1992, Masrani’s father passed away unexpectedly, and Masrani inherited Mascom Network and was entrusted with bringing it into the future. Despite Hammond’s stressful and busy schedule working on Jurassic Park at the time, he stepped in to comfort the young man, becoming a kind of father figure to Masrani in the absence of his father. After 1993, Hammond fell on hard times as well; Jurassic Park failed, and InGen faced bankruptcy. This all came to a head in 1997, when Hammond was removed as CEO. In the meantime, Masrani’s company flourished and expanded greatly.

Masrani probably learned about Dr. Henry Wu’s creation, Karacosis wutansis, through his relationship with Hammond. From then on, Masrani became interested in buying InGen, which Hammond apparently approved of. Hammond died by the end of 1997, by which time de-extinction was public knowledge and InGen was in even greater financial chaos. According to Masrani, Hammond’s dying wish was for Masrani to take the helm of InGen. Masrani interpreted Hammond’s wishes to mean that he should rebuild Jurassic Park, despite Hammond’s insistence that Isla Sorna and Isla Nublar remain untouched nature reserves.

Although it is questionable whether Masrani truly did as Hammond had wished, it was clear throughout the operation of Jurassic World that Masrani really believed he was honoring Hammond’s memory in the best way possible. Hammond’s legacy was featured in many aspects of the park, including the Hammond Creation Lab, a statue of Hammond in the Innovation Center, clothing items reminiscent of Hammond’s iconic outfit, Hammond Buddha statues in the Bamboo Forest, and the Hammond XB-20 gene sequencer. Masrani also kept an amber ring with an insect inclusion reminiscent of Hammond’s amber-capped walking cane, wearing this ring until the day he died.

Masrani was known to frequently bring up Hammond when discussing Jurassic World for the rest of his life. Not only was he determined to live up to Hammond’s name and do right by his memory in the only way he knew how, Masrani was insistent that the rest of the world should honor Hammond’s legacy just as well, and never missed an opportunity to pay his respects to the man who had started it all.

Dr. Henry Wu

In 1997, Masrani first learned about the groundbreaking work of Dr. Henry Wu in the nascent field of artificial hybrid speciation. He most likely heard of this through his friend John Hammond, with whom Wu had worked for many years and was still friends with. Wu had created a species of flowering plant, Karacosis wutansis, that had never existed in nature; he did this by combining genes from multiple other plant species. Masrani was fascinated, and since InGen was struggling financially at the time, he started looking into buying and saving the company.

Masrani Global Corporation formally bought InGen in 1998, and work promptly began on research and development for the resurrection of Jurassic Park. While Wu was probably involved in these early stages (with or without Masrani’s knowledge), he was not formally added to the Jurassic World team until December of 2000. Nonetheless, his expertise and skill with de-extinction and other novel forms of genetic engineering was second to none, and Masrani understood the potential applications for Wu’s work from the very beginning.

These two men had a difficult relationship, despite their reliance on one another. Masrani was appreciative of Wu’s contributions, but did not fully understand the science Wu was working on with hybridization other than the basics. Wu was sometimes frustrated with Masrani’s lighthearted and naïve personality, especially his tendency to allow outsiders into the laboratory as a means of promoting the park. During Jurassic World’s pre-opening months, Wu was irritated at the number of interns being allowed in the lab, especially as they sometimes broke things; however, Masrani’s interns did provide at least two helpful individuals, Claire Dearing and Tanya Skye, who Wu trusted and valued. Masrani was aware of Wu’s crotchety and arrogant nature, but always believed that Wu would eventually open up and become more welcoming; when Wu admitted that the aforementioned two interns were useful, for example, Masrani teased him for having doubted.

During Jurassic World’s operations, Masrani relied on and trusted Wu completely despite their philosophical differences and Wu’s sometimes brash arrogance. He tolerated attitude from Wu that he would never have gotten from another employee. There was never a time when Masrani thought Wu unable to provide for the park; he always believed that his lead genetic biologist had a solution up his sleeve. This was best exemplified in 2008, when the Board informed Masrani that a new attraction would be necessary to draw investors and increase ticket sales to combat rising operating costs. Masrani had total faith in Wu to solve this problem, and recalling K. wutansis, authorized him to use genetic engineering to hybridize a bigger, “cooler” kind of dinosaur. There is some suggestion that Wu once more became frustrated with Masrani’s lack of understanding of this process, but he still delivered, creating the Indominus rex genome by 2012.

Unbeknownst to Masrani, Wu was no longer convinced that Jurassic World could always provide him with the funding and scientific opportunity he desired. This sentiment was echoed by Vic Hoskins, who similarly thought Jurassic World’s revenue would one day fail them. Together with money from the Lockwood Foundation supplied by Eli Mills, they conspired to make the Indominus a born fighter that could be refined into a marketable weapon. Between 2012 and 2015, Masrani was unable to visit Isla Nublar, so he had no way of noticing any strange goings-on with his new hybrid dinosaur species. Instead, he trusted Wu to help Dearing and the other top brass run the day-to-day operations of the park while he was busy with other areas of Masrani Global.

When he returned to the island, he spent most of his time either with Dearing or in the control room with its lead technicians Lowery Cruthers and Vivian Krill, rather than with Wu. It was not until after the Indominus escaped and caused multiple staff deaths due to unexpected physiological traits that Masrani went to Wu’s office. There, Wu outright stated that he could not disclose the genetic makeup of the Indominus even to Masrani, though he also placed blame for the incident on Masrani for authorizing Wu to make the Indominus. Wu attempted to justify the unexpected traits of the dinosaur as side-effects of the genes supplied to its genome, but Masrani rejected Wu’s explanation and accused him of making a monster. Unlike Hammond before him, Masrani declared his intention to kill Wu’s creation and turn Wu over to the authorities rather than protect him from investigation. Masrani vowed to have the Board shut down Wu’s research completely, even if this meant temporarily closing Jurassic World. This is notably one of the extremely few times that Masrani expressed genuine anger toward one of his employees, or anyone else.

Of course, Masrani would not succeed at killing the Indominus, as he died in a helicopter crash during this effort. Wu, however, was found guilty of bioethical misconduct by the U.S. government, becoming a wanted criminal as he went into hiding. While Masrani’s death allowed Wu a chance to escape justice, the government action taken to stop his research was essentially what Masrani had intended to have happen.

Vic Hoskins

An incident on Isla Sorna in the summer of 2001 threatened Jurassic World’s clandestine security, and also released three genetically-altered Pteranodons into the Pacific. The reptiles migrated northward and settled in Victoria, Canada; this posed a major risk to InGen’s public relations, which was a major concern to Masrani since the 1997 San Diego incident was still fresh in the public mind. To clean up the escaped reptiles, the Canadian government hired American security contractor Vic Hoskins, whose wartime experience made him suited to unexpected combat situations. He and his team performed admirably, and Masrani was impressed. InGen’s private security division was in need of reform for Jurassic World, and so Masrani reached out to Hoskins to offer him a job. Hoskins accepted, becoming the Head of InGen Security.

Over the next few years, Hoskins was a major help with Jurassic World, recapturing the wild dinosaurs of Isla Nublar and overseeing the animals being shipped to and from Isla Sorna. These included some of the most troublesome species InGen had originally created, such as the highly intelligent and social Velociraptor. With his leadership, the Asset Containment Unit was established, providing safety and security to Masrani Global employees as Jurassic World was built.

Safety during the construction and opening of Jurassic World was far from Hoskins’s last contribution, as he not only reformed InGen Security but grew it into a global operation. It began providing services to nations across the world, which Masrani was deeply impressed by and appreciative of. InGen became safer than it had been in the 1990s, and Masrani now had a peacekeeping force that he could use to advance his humanitarian interests around the globe. Jurassic World operated for ten continuous years without any major public scandals, largely due to the efforts of Hoskins and the ACU maintaining the park’s animal exhibits.

Much like his relationship with Dr. Wu, Masrani had his disagreements with Hoskins, some of them quite extreme. The most significant of these was their stance on war. Hoskins, a veteran of war in the Middle East and with some Social Darwinist leanings, believed that war was a part of nature and should be embraced rather than resisted, while Masrani supported world peace and sought to eliminate violent conflict instead of winning fights. Like Wu, Hoskins considered Masrani’s views naïve, but he was more amicable about their disagreements than Wu. For this reason, he and Masrani did not butt heads in quite the same way as Wu and Masrani, allowing them to have peaceable disagreements and tolerate one another.

As is so often the case when peace-loving and war-mongering philosophies agree to coexist, the more aggressive of the two crept up within InGen and Masrani Global. Hoskins believed that genetic engineering was the solution to the international arms race that could keep the United States on top, and took an interest in Dr. Wu’s artificial hybrid speciation research. If it were possible to combine traits from multiple organisms to create something new, there was no reason that the result could not be made to be a clever and evasive but loyal predator. This resulted in the Indominus being designed for combat, but Masrani was unaware of this, and in fact never learned the truth before his death. Hoskins believed that once his theories were put to the test, everyone would come around to his way of thinking, so he probably thought that it was acceptable to hide his plans from Masrani until they were proven and demonstrated.

He was much more open with his plans for I.B.R.I.S., a theropod intelligence research program that began in 2012. Masrani approved of the project, hoping to learn about the cognition and social behavior of animals such as Velociraptor that had thus far been impossible to safely integrate into the park. Hoskins, on the other hand, promoted the idea that since raptors were intelligent and could be trained to respond to commands, they had the potential for military use in the same manner as dogs, dolphins, and other modern animals. With this Masrani firmly disagreed, and declined Hoskins’s requests to perform field tests of the I.B.R.I.S. raptors. Masrani was adamant that the project was only to learn how best to bring the raptors into Jurassic World without trouble.

Hoskins took advantage of the 2015 incident to propose a field test once more, claiming that the raptors could track down the escaped Indominus more efficiently than human ground teams. Masrani once again declined the request, but Hoskins correctly noted that Isla Nublar’s remote location would make the evacuation slower, and that a solution was necessary now. This prompted Masrani to strap a machine gun to his personal helicopter and fly off after the Indominus with two ACU personnel in tow, aiming to kill it himself. Hoskins watched the chaotic chase with glee, but his expression turned grim when Masrani’s helicopter crashed, killing the CEO. This presented Hoskins with an opportunity, and he took it: with the Board authorizing him to take full control of Jurassic World to end the crisis, he defied Masrani’s last order and performed the I.B.R.I.S. field test anyway. The field test was just as disastrous as Masrani had predicted, though, and Hoskins himself was among the resulting fatalities.

Claire Dearing

In 2004, Simon Masrani initiated two internship programs at Jurassic World as it neared completion; the first took place during the winter and was highly secretive from the beginning, with only those involved knowing about its existence. This program was cut short due to an intern’s death in early March, and remained classified information. A second program, now renamed Bright Minds and officially said to be the first internship at the park, took place over the late summer. Twelve academically-impressive American college students were selected for it, hand-picked by Masrani directly based on personal essays in which they detailed a problem and proposed a solution. His personal favorite essay was from an East Coast political science freshman named Claire Dearing, whose future-focused thinking spoke to him deeply. Dearing, along with the eleven other chosen interns, arrived to the island that August.

Throughout the program, Dearing was consistently one of Masrani’s favorite interns, and she demonstrated her value through determination, hard work, and thorough analytical skills. She was one of only three interns to be personally taken in by Dr. Wu, and one of the two which actually impressed him with her skill and work ethic. This cemented her status in Masrani’s opinion as one of their most promising interns.

After the tragedy on September 8 in which one of her fellow interns was mauled to death, Masrani took it upon himself to comfort her as best he could. She was distraught for days, but at the same time refused to leave the island, considering it the closest thing to home at that time. Dearing was instrumental in getting a confession from the guilty party who had accidentally let the dinosaur loose, and also in solving a major health issue in the park. Masrani was greatly appreciative of her help, but she also had a request for him as she began to emotionally recover. The other interns who had let the dinosaur out and caused the tragedy were doing so on behalf of their sick younger sister, who was getting free life-saving medical treatment by Mosby Health in exchange for Masrani Global trade secrets. Dearing requested that Masrani fund the treatment to completing as well as provide for the young girl’s education, a request that Masrani found bold, but empathic. He granted this request, and also offered Dearing a job at Jurassic World, which she took.

Over the next few years, she rose from being a promising intern to one of Jurassic World’s top employees, becoming Senior Assets Manager by 2007. She also became Operations Manager, meaning that Masrani entrusted her with all Jurassic World’s day-to-day functions; this placed her on the upper rung of InGen’s hierarchy, second only to Masrani himself and in equal standing with veteran employees like Henry Wu and Vic Hoskins. He trusted her completely, having seen her rise to every challenge presented before her and overcome them.

However, authority changed Dearing over time. The position of Operations Manager necessitated a degree of separation between her and park assets, meaning she no longer worked with the dinosaurs in person and chiefly executed her duties remotely. This caused her to gradually become detached, losing sight of her original animal rights goals. She came to view Jurassic World in terms of numbers, rather than the idealistic emotional qualities Masrani saw in it. Although they no longer saw eye to eye, Masrani remained cheerful when interacting with her, perhaps recalling the youthful foresight and idealism she had once been defined by. Like many of his other employees, Dearing showed signs of frustration with Masrani’s apparently naïve outlook and acted as his reality check. Her more measured and realistic view of the park came from the fact that she was perpetually there managing it, while Masrani became increasingly busy with his other companies’ developments.

She of all InGen’s top brass proved to be the most loyal to Masrani during the 2015 incident, where she stood by his side rather than oppose his non-lethal efforts to recontain the Indominus. Masrani was met with opposition from Vic Hoskins, who wanted to use the incident as an excuse to test out the combat abilities of Velociraptor, and resistance from Henry Wu, who flat-out refused to condemn the Indominus as a danger to the park’s future. Both of these once trusted authority figures in the company were now prioritizing their personal aims over the lives of visitors and staff. Dearing alone wanted solely to recontain the animal and save the park without any ulterior motive.

During the incident, Dearing was separated from Masrani while trying to locate her nephews during the chaos of the evacuation, so she was not there to back up Masrani when Hoskins proposed his ill-concieved plans. Even so, she located the Indominus in the field with the help of Owen Grady, and was actually saved from the dinosaur when it was distracted by JW001 flying overhead. She was not in communication with Masrani during the chase, but bore witness to his tragic accident and was one of only a few people to actually witness the crash in person.

Masrani’s de-extinct animal rights ideals did not die with him. The incident reminded Dearing of who she once had been, and after those events she committed herself once more to fighting for the rights of other creatures. One of Masrani’s chief concerns about Jurassic World had always been the emotional wellness of the animals, which Dearing had forgotten how to understand; now she remembered, and strove to support animal welfare as best she could. Her organization, the Dinosaur Protection Group, opposes Masrani Global but remembers Simon Masrani himself as an animal rights icon.

Other Masrani Global employees

When he took over the company from his father in 1992, Simon Masrani was CEO of just Mascom Telecommunications Network. The next twenty-three years saw him establish a great many other companies under the Masrani Global Corporation umbrella: Masrani Energy (originally Masrani Oil), Data Analysys, Axis Boulder Engineering, Timack Construction, Medixal Health, and Aerospace Dynamix; he also purchased two other preexisting companies, International Genetic Technologies and Tatsuo Technology. Many of these companies were parents to subsidiaries of their own, making Masrani Global incredibly diversified. This gradually overwhelmed its CEO, and by 2015, he was said to be so diversified he didn’t know what he owned.

As his company grew, Masrani entrusted more and more of his operations to his employees. He is widely considered to have been an effective and kind leader, providing his staff members with some of the best compensation and benefits of any major corporation and treating his employees with respect regardless of their rank.

For the most part his relationships with his individual employees are not well known, though he was quite liked by virtually everyone who worked for him. Those he worked most closely with were those involved with Jurassic World, by far his favorite brand within Masrani Global; these included Mascom’s James McClure, who worked alongside Masrani and Hoskins for many years establishing the communications and scanning technology of the park, his intern director Beverly Jamison, the park’s lead veterinarians Savannah (who he presumably fired), Dr. Tim O’Donnell, and Dr. Suzanne de Lange over the park’s eleven years of existence, and Masrani Global’s COO Richard Wiesner. All throughout his career, Masrani attributed his success to the hard work of his employees.

Masrani also had a positive relationship with most of his interns. During the original, classified internship program, he appreciated the keen eyes of biochemistry student Isobel “Izzie” James, who was the first to notice a possible tumor on one of the Brachiosaurus. Masrani defended James against at-the-time senior veterinarian Savannah, who was later replaced by Dr. Tim O’Donnell. During a major power failure amidst a powerful thunderstorm, the island was evacuated, but James turned back in order to help the brachiosaur as conditions threatened it; Masrani tried to hold the boat for James, but was forced to allow it to depart to protect everyone else on board. James later was found to have died in a vehicular accident while attempting to return to the harbor. Masrani was saddened by his intern’s death and cancelled the program, creating numerous cover stories and paying off James’s family to remain silent. He justified this by believing that James would not have wanted any investigations or insurance being revoked, as these would delay the park’s progress.

He was similarly closely involved with the Bright Minds program, where he found his future Senior Assets Manager Claire Dearing among eleven others. All of the interns were hand-picked by Masrani, who knew them each by name and tried to find where they best fit into the park. His second-favorite intern after Dearing was Justin Hendricks, whose essay reminded Masrani of a younger version of himself. Hendricks was a business major, placing him in the same field of work as Masrani too, so they got along quite well. The other interns included Tanya and Eric Skye, a botany student and a budding filmographer respectively, who Masrani seems to have liked. In particular he entrusted Eric with filming activities at Bright Minds for posterity. His relationships with other interns, such as Amanda, Art, Veronica Torres, and Wyatt, are mostly unknown.

Unfortunately, an accident resulted in Hendricks being mauled to death by a Velociraptor in September, which greatly saddened Masrani. This time, he had added a clause in the interns’ NDAs to ensure that these kinds of incidents were not at risk of coming into the public eye. The Skye twins were the ones responsible for accidentally releasing the raptor, and were found to be corporate spies for Mosby Health. Masrani intended to turn them over to the authorities, but Dearing discovered that the twins had been bribed to spy for Mosby in exchange for their younger sister being given free treatment for a rare medical disorder. Dearing coerced Masrani into letting the twins go, considering the death of their friend to be punishment enough, and funding the medical trial to completion after the FDA took action against Mosby.

While Jurassic World opened, Masrani was mostly involved with his ever-growing array of companies off of Isla Nublar, but the park was always his pride and joy. While on the island, he spent much of his time in the control room where he could observe all park operations. Here, he relied on the control room’s lead technicians Lowery Cruthers and Vivian Krill to communicate with other parts of the island and gain information for him. Of the two, he got along better with Krill, due to her generally neutral position while Cruthers maintained an unrealistic nostalgia for the original Jurassic Park. Cruthers opposed Jurassic World’s corporate partnerships in general and also opposed the concept of artificial hybrid speciation, and so was a critic of Masrani’s business practices and goals for the park.

One of the six campers in the trial run of Camp Cretaceous, Ben Pincus, was the son of a prominent employee of Simon Masrani. At the moment, Ms. Pincus’s role in Masrani Global is not known, but she worked closely with Masrani.

When selecting new employees, Masrani had the selection of the world’s best. Many of his employees began as interns or were poached from other companies, but InGen Security in particular had a history of acquiring employees with military backgrounds. One notable example was Owen Grady, a former sailor with the U.S. Navy who had worked on the Marine Mammal Program. Grady was chosen to be the lead trainer on the I.B.R.I.S. Project, which sought to understand the eumaniraptoran dinosaur cognition, because of his prior experience with intelligent animals. Masrani was deeply respectful of Grady’s ability to get inside the mind of an animal, since this made him capable of analyzing paddocks for weaknesses. When Paddock 11 needed inspecting, Masrani selected Grady for the job. On the other hand, he considered Grady’s order to evacuate the island upon the Indominus escape to be alarmist and unnecessary. All along, Grady had opposed the creation of hybrid species and considered them inherently wrong due to their being a manipulation of nature, but he accused Claire Dearing of being solely responsible for not only the hybrid’s creation but also its escape. While he was openly disrespectful toward Dearing, his disagreements with Masrani’s methods and plans were more reasonable and measured, even though Dearing and Masrani were implementing the same things during the 2015 incident.

Along with Dearing, Grady was one of the only park employees to see Masrani’s fatal helicopter crash in person. During the chase with the Indominus, Masrani did bring two ACU personnel with him, one standard trooper and one gunner; he was supportive and appreciative of their help, though his shaky flying made it difficult for them to hit their target. By random chance, Masrani was the only person on board who did not die before the crash happened, meaning these two men were the last people to see Masrani alive in person. The last staff members to see him in person and survive the incident were Vivian Krill and several security guards at the helipad.

Masrani’s death was widely mourned by all the employees, though InGen Security under the direction of Vic Hoskins quickly mobilized to take charge of the situation. His death removed the only obstacle to Hoskins’s field test of I.B.R.I.S., which was immediately authorized by the Board of Directors and implemented that night. Evacuation of the island now expanded to include park employees, who would be permanently relieved of duty; private InGen Security forces took control and managed the park’s final hours from then on. The company was managed by Richard Wiesner for a period of time after Masrani died, but Masrani Global Corporation has since failed to uphold the values that Simon Masrani once imbued it with.

Corporate and political figures

As one of the wealthiest people in the world, Simon Masrani had the attention of other figures from corporations and governments globally. He had interests in thousands of other companies spanning hundreds of fields; Jurassic World alone had partnerships with such prominent brands as Samsung, Verizon Wireless, Mike & Ike, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Barbasol, and non-governmental organizations like the Lockwood Foundation. As early as 2004, he was said to have influence in political campaigns through activities such as founding super PACs. The extent and type of his political influene is undisclosed, but his firm stances on scientific progress, environmentalism, and global peace were certainly key factors in his involvement in world politics. He is known to have hosted numerous celebrities and heads of state at Jurassic World over the years. Among some of the park’s most famous guests was Dr. Evelyn Mae West von Hapsburg-Kennedy, a widely known matchmaker who gave her seal of approval to the Isla Nublar Hilton’s Romance Suites. Less farmous but far more wealthy was Daniel Kon, a close friend of Masrani’s who was a major investor in the hotel complex and had a family penthouse on Isla Nublar. Unbeknownst to Masrani, Kon was secretly the president of a rival corporation called Mantah Corp, and used his friendship to spy on Jurassic World for his own company. Masrani had many corporate rivals he did know about, such as Mosby Health; this company committed acts of corporate espionage during Jurassic World’s construction which resulted in the death of an intern.

InGen and Masrani Global both have a long-lasting relationship with the United Nations, which controlled access to the islands in the Gulf of Fernandez during the 1990s and early 2000s. Simon Masrani was granted limited access in 1999 by the U.N., allowing him to travel to Isla Sorna and encounter dinosaurs. Today, InGen and the U.N. cooperate to patrol the Muertes Archipelago. Masrani’s companies also have a difficult relationship with the United States government; InGen violated the Gene Guard Act created by the U.S. House Committee on Science and later engaged in bribery to cover up an incident on Isla Sorna that threatened to expose this previous crime. Later, more corrupt practices led to a rollback of the Gene Guard Act, relaxing its regulations and allowing InGen to resume work. It is unknown if Simon Masrani was directly aware of any of this; he had a considerable history of employees engaging in corruption behind his back for the good of the company, so these events may have occurred with or without his knowledge.

Two of the six campers at Camp Cretaceous were selected due to being related to prominent corporate allies of Masrani Global. Kenji Kon was Daniel Kon’s son, and Sammy Gutierrez was the daughter of the family which supplied all of the cattle meat to Jurassic World. The Kon family was known to be close with Masrani, and the young Kenji idolized him and was particularly shaken by his death. A third camper, Yasmina Fadoula, was a youth athelete sponsored by the Jurassic World brand, while a fourth, social media influencer Brooklynn, was made a Jurassic World partner in the process of being chosen as a camper.

According to Jurassic World: The Game, some of Masrani’s business associates and friends as of mid-2015 included the United Nations Secretary-General, the First Family of the United States, and other U.S. government members. According to the game, these prominent world leaders were always welcome at Jurassic World, though Masrani had turned down requests (particularly from the Secretary-General) to use the park’s locale as a military technology testing ground.

General public

Far from being a secluded and aloof billionaire, Simon Masrani considered himself a friend of the common people and believed it his purpose in life to share the world’s resources with others. His economic philosophy was implemented in every company he founded, and the far-reaching effects of his work were among the proudest aspects of Masrani Global Corporation.

Although he showed great levels of empathy for people with less than himself, being increasingly wealthy meant that Masrani naturally became distanced from the lower classes through no deliberate action of his own. Working in high-stakes business and dealing in billions of dollars meant that most of the people he interacted with were themselves quite wealthy. This caused him to lose touch with “normal” society; Jurassic World was probably the best example, since he believed that anyone in the world should be able to see the dinosaurs, but traveling to Isla Nublar is prohibitively expensive on its own. Twenty thousand people visited Jurassic World every day, which of course is an enormous number, but the park was not accessible to people of lesser means at all. Masrani seemed to be at least a little aware of this, though, and as of 2015 was working on a virtual reality tour of the park. This would make Jurassic World accessible to, at least, anyone who could afford a virtual reality system.

Masrani maintained an active internet presence and kept the public updated on what was going on with his companies, particularly Jurassic World as it was his most popular franchise. He always made sure to announce when new attractions were on the way, as this reliably boosted ticket sales. Throughout his career, Masrani remained in good public standing due to his progressive stances on the environment, human rights, and science, setting him distinctly apart from the staunch conservativism of most of the billionaire class.

Only one of the members of the Camp Cretaceous trial run was a member of the general public with no established connection to Jurassic World. The sixth camper was chosen via competition, with the first winner of a virtual reality video game being awarded the spot at camp. This competition was won by a young teenager named Darius Bowman, the only middle-class member of the camp’s trial run; all the others were wealthy. Simon Masrani did not visit the campers in person, though because the 2015 incident interrupted normal park operations, it is unknown whether he planned to visit them.

Masrani is remembered positively by the general public, but his legacy is not as famous as that of the more enigmatic John Hammond before him. Because Masrani operated largely in the open with only brief periods of secrecy (and even then, only regarding certain projects), he is not considered as mysterious. In recent times, new controversies surrounding de-extinction have become prominent, and the public has mostly lost interest in topics centered on Jurassic World as a park as well as the man who founded it.

InGen animals

It is unknown when Simon Masrani first learned that de-extinction had been realized by InGen, but considering he knew Hammond during the time of the original park’s construction, it is possible he was one of the first people to know (or at least suspect) that it was real. If not, his first exposure to it would have been the 1997 San Diego incident, in which a bull tyrannosaur was accidentally loosed into San Diego, California. This animal and its infant were eventually returned to Isla Sorna, but the news had already broken, and the world knew about the dinosaurs. Shortly after, Masrani purchased InGen and obtained the rights from the United Nations to see the dinosaurs in person.

The first confirmed encounter that Masrani had with a de-extinct animal was with a hatchling Parasaurolophus on Isla Sorna in 1999 while exploring the island in preparation for Jurassic World. It is unknown if Masrani was aware of the illegal genetic engineering and cloning taking place on the island over the previous nine months, which created at least four new species (Ankylosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Corythosaurus, and Spinosaurus) and new members of existing species.

Isla Nublar was retaken in 2002, with the park’s tyrannosaur being recaptured during the third week of operations; many other dinosaurs were contained, though all of the herbivores were shipped to Isla Sorna to make way for Jurassic World’s construction. During this phase, many of the dinosaurs were given names to help identify them. 2004 saw the return of many dinosaurs to Isla Nublar, starting with two female brachiosaurs named Olive and Agnes who had inhabited Hammond’s original park. They were followed by two of their younger female kin, Dot and Pearl, and subsequently by fifteen female Triceratops. Each of the Triceratops was named after a female scientist; the oldest was named Hypatia and the youngest Lovelace, while two others were named Curie and Johnson. At this point in time, it appears that Jurassic World was chiefly focusing on integrating female animals to the park, as had been the intention with the original; a controlled breeding program was later established.

It was always the plan to introduce marine life to Jurassic World, and so a massive three-million-gallon artificial inland lagoon was built in the middle of the island. Scientists working under Dr. Wu had discovered intact Mosasaurus DNA in 2000, which Wu was modifying to ensure that the animal could survive in the modern-day climate. This was not the only genome he was modifying for the new park; Masrani provided him with a list of the top ten most wanted species, which included some that had already been cloned (such as Baryonyx) but could be further modified to obtain a more authentic complete genome.

Other dinosaurs, such as Parasaurolophus and Gallimimus, were introduced to Isla Nublar by the summer of 2004. There were already carnivores on the island, not only the solitary Tyrannosaurus, but smaller species including Dilophosaurus and Compsognathus. Six female hatchling Ankylosaurus were eventually cloned and introduced to a habitat by that summer as well; the plan was to integrate most of the herbivores into the island’s central valley, which was named Gyrosphere Valley after the attraction intended to be established there. However, the ankylosaurs were young enough that they could be endangered by the territorial Triceratops; as of 2015 the ankylosaurs were nearly ready for introduction, but the park closed before this could be implemented. Masrani had wanted to name the ankylosaur hatchlings after famous mountain peaks, but park staff decided on a female warriors theme instead. By now, Isla Sorna’s population was beginning to collapse due to a myriad of factors, though Masrani personally believed poaching to be the biggest danger. Therefore there was some urgency in bringing the animals into captivity.

Carnivores were more troublesome to transport, particularly the intelligent ones. Masrani was already having difficulty with the Pteranodons, which often made spirited escape attempts by breaking glass enclosures with their beaks. An aviary had been under construction on Isla Nublar to contain them, but until a more durable transparent polymer was developed, they would have to stay within the old containment on Isla Sorna. Velociraptors were another difficulty; these animals were intelligent enough to coordinate and cause issues during transportation, so they had to be kept separate and transported one at a time. Arrival to Isla Nublar did not always mean an end to an animal’s problems either; many were infected with disease while in the wild and needed treatment, and a notorious throat affliction occurred in many of the arriving herbivores which went unsolved until Claire Dearing found the cause. When new animals reached Isla Nublar, though, Masrani always celebrated their safe arrival with a champagne toast. Each new arrival would spend twenty-four hours in isolation before its training began; Masrani had his animal handlers train each new creature to accept a human presence so that it could be acclimated into the park. A few weeks of this process generally left the animal ready to be released into its habitat area.

Not all species readily took to the park, of course. Velociraptor continued to be a problem, with the first arrival mauling an intern to death within hours of reaching the island. This animal was euthanized, and the rest of its kind were gradually shipped over. The rest also resisted training and could not be integrated into the park due to their aggressive and unpredictable behavior. Because of this, Masrani eventually authorized the Integrated Raptor Behavioral Intelligence Study to determine a better way to integrate them. This project was still not complete by the time the park closed down. Raptors were not the only animals that could not be integrated successfully; Carnotaurus also proved dangerously aggressive and had to be taken off exhibit.

Many of the herbivores, even the territorial Triceratops, were bigger successes thanks to the diligent work of the animal trainers Masrani hired. By the time the park opened in 2005, eight species were on exhibit and many more were kept in habitats in Sector 5 while staff attempted to find ways to integrate them into the park. It is unknown how many of the animals Masrani personally encountered from that point on, since he spent much time away from Isla Nublar dealing with other aspects of his corporation. He did continue to take special interest in Velociraptor, which remained a concern to him for life after the tragedy in 2004.

Although Masrani loved all of his animals and wanted them to live the most comfortable lives possible, he was eventually forced to acknowledge that the public would eventually grow bored of the animals. By 2008, in order to draw new investors to the park, Masrani authorized Dr. Wu to use genetic engineering to create a new species, one that had never existed before. Wu had already proven that this was possible using flowering plants, and now worked on an animal equivalent, the Indominus rex. Masrani’s only real stipulation was that the new animal be “cooler” than anything they had made before. Few people can claim that they have had an entire new species created on their behalf, but Simon Masrani is one of them.

Two Indominus hatched in 2012, but by that time Masrani was busy with developments in his other companies and was unable to visit Isla Nublar for several years. He was not even aware that two of the animals had been hatched until Claire Dearing informed him of this during his 2015 visit. By that time, the stronger sibling had cannibalized the weaker. Even though the Indominus was not a natural animal, Masrani still considered it an incredible and fascinating creature worthy of respect and a prominent place in the park. Its aggressive behaviors could be marketed as thrilling, and he considered this animal to be the pinnacle of predator evolution accomplished through science.

His opinion on the Indominus changed after its escape. To his horror, it killed two employees after a paddock inspection went wrong, and an attempt to capture it left many ACU personnel dead. It was discovered that the animal could modulate its body temperature and change color, allowing it to blend in visually and thermally; it also clawed out its tracking implant, making it impossible to locate digitally. Masrani was confused as to why a park attraction would need such abilities, and when Wu refused to give a satisfactory explanation and essentially revealed that he had acted of his own accord rather than following the spirit of Masrani’s orders, Masrani became angry. He would go on to try and kill the Indominus himself as it continued slaughtering park animals and staff that tried to confront it, chasing it down to the Aviary. Here it rammed its way through the polymer wall, scaring several Pteranodons out through the entrance hole. The pterosaurs then spotted JW001 and, interpreting it as a territorial threat, attacked. Masrani’s helicopter was damaged and fell through the dome of the Aviary; he was killed in the crash, and the explosion frightened all the remaining animals out from the Aviary.

In the ensuing chaos, numerous animals and staff were killed, and scores of tourists were injured. Eventually the Indominus was killed through a joint effort of Claire Dearing, Owen Grady, and Lowery Cruthers, as well as several park animals that were lured into combat. Although the incident was now over, Jurassic World would never reopen, and mass animal suffering continued for years to come as Masrani Global abandoned the island. Simon Masrani’s ability to protect the animals ended with his death, and their protections were discarded by the company almost immediately. His desire for the animals’ wellbeing is now carried on by people who share his philosophy, such as Claire Dearing, through organizations like the Dinosaur Protection Group.

Portrayal

Simon Masrani is portrayed by Irrfan Khan. He is not based on any particular character from Michael Crichton‘s novels, but is instead a unique character created for Jurassic World. In earlier drafts of the film, his surname was Sourian, and he would have been the CEO of Patel Corporation rather than Masrani Global.

The character’s birth year of 1967 is a nod to Irrfan Khan’s birthday, which is January 7, 1967.

Disambiguation Links

Simon Masrani (L/M)