Joanna is an operative for the fictional Carrington Institute, where she was given the code name "Perfect Dark" in honor of her flawless performance in training tests.

"[2] Joanna's design was influenced by a number of fictional heroines, including the seductive spy Agent X-27 in the 1930s film Dishonored, FBI agent Dana Scully from The X-Files television series, and the eponymous femme fatale of the film La Femme Nikita, whom Hollis describes as "iconic, heroic, independent, vulnerable and very damaged.

[7] Overton added more distinctive elements, including a star tattoo on the left side of her neck, a blonde streak in her hair, and a choppy outline to her hairstyle.

In the game, Joanna is an operative for the fictional Carrington Institute, where she was given the code name "Perfect Dark" in honor of her flawless performance in training tests.

In the process, she uncovers a conspiracy between world's biggest corporation dataDyne and a group of Skedars, extraterrestrials who have established an interstellar war against another alien race known as the Maians.

Afterward, she helps the Maians launch a counterattack against the Skedar homeworld, eliminating their High Priest, thereby issuing a devastating blow to morale.

Having completed her training successfully and earned the trust of Institute's leader Daniel Carrington, Joanna is sent to the South American jungle, where she must destroy an illegal cyborg manufacturing facility.

The 2005 prequel Perfect Dark Zero takes place three years before the events of the Nintendo 64 game, where Joanna is a bounty hunter working with her father Jack.

Taking advantage of their resources, Joanna avenges her father's death by killing Mai Hem and later Zhang Li, who used the artifact on himself.

The second novel, Second Front, follows Joanna as she attempts to stop a clandestine group of hackers responsible for some major accidents that allowed dataDyne to take over involved corporations.

Janus' Tears, a six-issue American comic book which is set between both novels, focuses on Joanna's attempts to unmask a mole in the Carrington Institute's Los Angeles office.

"[20] In 2013, Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly listed her as one of "15 Kick-Ass Women in Videogames", asserting that "Joanna was a standout heroine in a genre that trends, even now, toward hyper-masculinity.

"[21] Despite this, Joanna was also criticized by Trigger Happy author Steven Poole, who described her character design as "a blatant and doomed attempt to steal the thunder of Lara Croft",[22] and argued that she illustrated the challenges of characterising the protagonists of first-person shooters.