Background
Sonny Bonds is a veteran police officer of the Lytton Police Department. Created by Sierra's police consultant and producer Jim Walls, Bonds served as the player character in all of the Walls produced games. In every game he is featured in, Bonds goes through a change from a regular patrol officer to some form of detective. This can be visually noted as a change from a police uniform to regular street clothes.
Jim Walls' Police Quest
In Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, Sonny Bonds starts out as a regular patrolman whose duties mostly involve cruising the city looking for drunk drivers, people breaking the speed limit and having coffee breaks with his colleague Steve at Carol's Caffeine Castle. However, things change when a new major dealer, going by the nickname "The Death Angel", arrives in town and causes an increase in the flow of heroin to the street.
Police Quest 2: The Vengeance primarily deals with a plot of Jesse Bains escaping prison, and kidnapping Marie (who has become Sonny Bonds' girlfriend). Ultimately, Bonds succeeds in rescuing Marie, and killing Bains in his hideout in the sewers of Lytton.
In Police Quest 3: The Kindred, Bonds has been promoted to sergeant, and has married Marie. But a Satanist drug cartel led by Jesse Bains' brother is moving in on Lytton, and Bonds has to find a way to stop them. Marie suddenly gets stabbed, leaving Bonds with a multitude of problems to solve.
After Jim Walls
Police Quest 4: Open Season was the first new Police Quest game made after Jim Walls left Sierra. The new police consultant and producer, Darryl F. Gates, made this game with a brand new main character and leaving the familiar Lytton, California locale for real-world Los Angeles.
It is unknown what happened to Bonds after Police Quest 3, but he makes cameo appearances in the SWAT franchise;
- In Police Quest: SWAT 2, Sonny is inexplicably featured as a SWAT officer instead of a homicide detective.
- In SWAT 4, he takes a role as an instructor in the tutorial.
Trivia
Towards the end of Police Quest 1, Bonds bleaches his hair in order to go undercover at Hotel Delphoria. This makes Sonny Bonds appear light-haired in Police Quest 2, although he's dark-haired again in Police Quest 3.
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