History Characters / BerserkAntagonists

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: His name is variously spelled ''Boscone,'' ''Boscogn,'' or ''Boscogne''.

* FreudianExcuse: His whole life has been nothing but betrayal, pain, and fear. As a child his mother openly detested him and favored his younger brother to the point of poisoning her firstborn. He survived to kill his brother which drove Mom to suicide. The continued to haunt him into his adulthood, where he survived by murdering all those who tried to manipulate him(or he feared would), eventually including his own father. Despite being distant from his family he still loved his son, which is why his DespairEventHorizon came when the prince tried to kill his father out of fear himself. Then he pissed away all his remaining humanity by sacrificing his son to the Godhand and becoming one of the worst Apostles ever. None of this justifies his depravity, but it at least explains how he got that way.

* ProperlyParanoid: In his backstory [[spoiler: he tried avoiding his wife and son because he feared betrayal due to his own upbringing. His DespairEventHorizon that made him activate the behelit was when his son tried to assassinate him at a banquet. Which the son did because he was also justifiably scared that his father saw him as a threat and would try to kill him.]]
* PersonOfMassDestruction: Although he was quite capable of a truly nasty offensive when he could transform into a humanoid lightning storm, he goes over the line and beyond when he re-emerges as [[spoiler: Shiva. He smashes up Wyndham just by emerging from the Temple, squashes entire battalions of soldiers by ''accident'' and transforming their remains into horrible monsters, using his many mouths to spit full-blown firestorms onto the ground below (also by accident) and manages to create a thunderstorm ''just from his presence alone.'']]

* RoyallyScrewedUp His backstory implies that backstabbing, madness, and paranoia run in the family. [[spoiler: As a youth, he was TheUnfavorite, and his mom tried to kill him so his half-brother would rule the Empire. In retaliation he stabbed his brother, causing her to commit suicide. His father was constantly terrified of being assassinated, and sure enough Ganishka arranged his father's ''accidental'' death riding an elephant.]]

* SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler: After his mother tried to poison him, he murdered his brother thereby driving her to [[DrivenToSuicide commit suicide]]. He went on to kill his father by having an assassin shoot a dart at the elephant he was riding, causing the animal to go wild and kill him.]]

* StrongAndSkilled: They're strong enough that they're capable of crushing armor without the use of weapons at all, and fight with Karate-like punches and kicks that generally destroy whatever's unfortunate enough to get hit by them.

* SuperNotDrowningSkills: Justified. When attacked by Serpico while riding his Kundalini, Daiba opts to retreat inside the large water snake, where he explicitly uses yoga to retain his breath for a long time without drowning. This is a real yogic practice named ''kumbhaka'', and unrealistic as it may sound, the prolonged time Daiba does here is actually achievable for a trained practitioner in real life (the world's record on holding the breath is currently a staggering 24 minutes).

* HiddenDisdainReveal: Downplayed. Gambino seldom displayed any warmth towards Guts and was openly abusive to him, but he displayed a few scatteed moments of appreciation and generosity that were enough to convince the boy that he might eventually earn his adoptive father's love. Then in a drunken fury, Gambino outright says he always hated Guts, blamed him for Sys' death, and sold him to Donovan for no other reason than because Guts disgusted him.

* AbusiveDad: During the eleven years that he was Guts' adoptive father, Gambino gave the boy beatings, cut him on the nose with a sharp sword, forced him to fight as a child soldier, sold him to be raped by a pedophile, and finally attempted to murder him, most of it while trying to look like ''he'', Gambino, was the good one. His verbal and emotional abuse had a deeply scarring effect, as well since the last thing he ever told him was that he deserved to die and that everything was his fault.

* AssholeVictim: Despite all the genuine guilt Guts has for killing him in self-defense, this guy was such an asshole that even if he didn't abuse Guts, his ruthlessness as a mercenary leader and on the battlefield was such that you'd wouldn't feel sorry for him at all when Guts killed him.

* EvilCripple: Losing his leg did nothing to diminish his callousness.
* EvilIsPetty: He sold out his own adopted son to a pedophile mercenary for one single night, for ''3 silver coins''. Said mercenary then proceeded to rape him outright. Gambino failed to exist for long after this came out. And why did he do that? Because Gambino blamed Guts for his girlfriend Sys's untimely death[[note]]Which was due to a plague[[/note]].

* TheFarmerAndTheViper: Saw himself as the farmer and Guts as the viper, saying that Guts gave him nothing but evil for good after he took him in. Although blatantly untrue, the other mercenaries were convinced of it when they discovered that Guts had killed Gambino.
* GoneHorriblyRight: Gambino put Guts through relentless combat training practically from the moment he could walk so he would be profitable to him as a mercenary. When he eventually tries to kill Guts, it all explodes in his face since the twelve-year-old boy is already a far better fighter than he ever was and Guts kills him in a reflex action.
* HiddenDisdainReveal: Downplayed. Gambino seldom displayed any warmth towards Guts and was openly abusive to him, but he displayed a few scatteed moments of appreciation and generosity that were enough to convince the boy he had some value to the mercenary. Then in a drunken fury, Gambino outright says he always hated him, blamed him for Sys' death, and sold him to Donovan for no other reason than because he Guts disgusted him.
* {{Hypocrite}}: While training Guts, Gambino has absolutely no qualms against hitting and slicing the kid. When Guts actually succeeds in cutting him, however, he reacts angrily with a nasty slash across the nose.
* {{Jerkass}}: Gambino was never nice to anybody, especially not to his adopted son and even to Sys, who was probably the only person he ever loved. Unfortunately, he only got meaner as the years went by, especially after he lost his leg.

* KickTheDog: Commits several memorable acts of cruelty against Guts, such as the incident where he cut Guts across the bridge of his nose during sword practice. The worst might have been when he sold Guts to Donovan for three silver coins.
* MasterSwordsman: An absolutely vile person, but to his credit he does know how to use a sword even against heavily armored soldiers.

* MinorInjuryOverreaction: When Gambino got cut across the cheek while training Guts with sharp swords, he got so pissed that he deliberately slashed Guts across the bridge of his nose, incapacitating him for quite a while and giving him the first of the many scars that he would carry as an adult.

** Shortly after the practice where he lost his temper and cut Guts on the nose, he gave Guts a seashell containing medicine to rub on his wound. Even if it was only to ease his guilty conscience, it was one of the only nice things that he ever did for Guts, who remembers it during his first time with Casca.

* WeHaveReserves: A favorite tactic of his on the battlefield was to send the rookies and fresh recruits in first to trigger the enemy archers. [[AbusiveParents Including his adopted son]].

* AffablyEvil: Unflappably jolly, and even when Guts spits in his face he takes it as a good sign that he's full of vigor instead of getting offended.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: While he sees no problem in throwing away the life of a captured enemy soldier to his violent son when his son attempted to murder a peasant, the Viscount is noted to have stepped in on the peasant's behalf.

* ImplausibleFencingPowers: The tricks he is able to perform with his exotic weapons are way past what can be done in real life. He makes his chakram fly in any trajectory he wants and still has them come back to him like a PrecisionGuidedBoomerang, while claiming the ability to manipulate each of a total of ten urumi blades independently like CombatTentacles! How does he do it? Rule of cool, son. RuleOfCool.

-->'''Guts''': "What are you up to?"
-->'''Silat''': "Your [[DoomyDoomsOfDoom DOOM!!]]"

* KickTheSonOfABitch: He drove his mother to suicide by killing his little brother. While killing his brother was unjustified, killing his mother, who previously tried to kill him to ensure his younger brother would inherit the throne, is understandable.

* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: Their first and second knuckles are visibly enlarged, probably as a consequence of calcification due to extensive barehanded punching training, very much like the most hardcore UsefulNotes/{{Karate}} practitioners do in real life.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Ganishka can be best described as a middle-eastern Father Mozgus. An extremely brutal, ObviouslyEvil

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Silat and the Bakiraka clan in general tend to go barefoot everywhere. Silat does have a pair of boots which he wore during the Golden Age Arc, but he's been barefoot since then.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Unlike Silat, they are never seen with footwear.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: As accustomed to the Kushan.

* BladeOnAStick: He uses a trident that harmonizes with his knight division's whale/shark theme. He later uses a ranseur when he dons his shark armor at Doldrey.

* BladeOnAStick: His favorite weapon is a long-hafted berdiche, with which he is capable of cutting men in half.

* AlluringAnglerfish: His CoolHelmet is shaped like the head of an anglerfish, fitting with the Blue Whale Knights' sea creature theme.

** Both are stockier than you typical soldier and wield heavy weapons; Bazuso is large enough that his axe at least seems proportionately normal-sized in his hands compared to Guts and his clearly oversized sword(s).
** Bazuso is known throughout as the 'Thirty-Man Slayer' and the 'Grey Knight'; Guts would later earn the epithets the 'Hundred Man Slayer' and the 'Black Swordsman.'
** Both have an AnimalMotif -- Bazuso's is bears, fighting as fiercely as one and apparently having killed one himself with his bare hands (no pun intended), while Guts' is wolves, given how much he embodies the classic LoneWolf and having once slain an entire pack himself.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: He is the emperor of the Kushan, and quite probably the single most powerful Apostle seen in the series, being more than a match for all of Griffith's new Band of the Hawk's strongest Apostles.

* AbusiveDad: During the eleven years that he was Guts' adoptive father, Gambino gave the boy beatings, cut him on the nose with a sword, forced him to fight as a child soldier, sold him to be raped by a pedophile, and finally attempted to murder him. His verbal and emotional abuse had a deeply scarring effect as well since the last thing he ever told him was that he deserved to die and that everything was his fault.

* EveryoneHasStandards: Downplayed, and perhaps subverted. Gambino referred to the late Donovan as a "freak", showing that he viewed a man's desire to rape a young boy as sick and abnormal. Nevertheless, he must have at least tolerated Donovan’s sordid tastes during their association, and selling Guts to him was an intentional act of spiteful cruelty.

* EvilIsPetty: He sold out his own adopted son to a pedophile mercenary for one single night, for ''3 silver coins''. Said mercenary then proceeded to rape him outright. Gambino failed to exist for long after this came out. And why did he do that? Because Gambino blamed Guts for his girlfriend Sys's untimely death[[note]]Whuch was due to a plague[[/note]].

* MinorInjuryOverreaction: When Gambino got cut across the cheek while training Guts, he got so pissed that he slashed Guts across the bridge of his nose, incapacitating him for quite a while and giving him the first of the many scars that he would carry as an adult.

* UngratefulBastard: After he was crippled, Gambino was largely fed and cared for by Guts since he could no longer fight. Guts, in turn, did it with more eagerness for Gambino than Gambino ever did for Guts. Gambino didn't care. He was still abusive and eventually attempted to kill Guts, blaming him for everything. Having to rely on Guts was utterly humiliating for Gambino and likely further increased his anger and hate toward Guts.

* HateSink: Donovan is a mercenary and sadistic pedophile who rapes Guts for a meager sum of three silver coins early in his life. This act traumatizes Guts for the rest of his life and nobody spares a glance when Guts kills him on the battlefield a mere day later. In-universe, Gambino even referred to the man as a freak…albeit when he confessed to selling Guts in the first place.

* DeadlyDisc: His ''chakra'' are small discs of metal sharpened on the outside, which he uses with deadly effectiveness. They also act as a PrecisionGuidedBoomerang and can be made to follow improbable trajectories.

* FragileSpeedster: So speedy that [[spoiler: he survives Guts' sword strike by dropping his urumis, switching to his katars to block it, realizing they would break anyway and finally jumping away to dodge it.]] It all happens in less than a second. But tripping him is all it takes to defeat him, and he dodges a lot because he knows that he can't shrug off a direct hit.

* ImplausibleFencingPowers: The tricks he is able to perform with his exotic weapons are way past what can be done in real life. He makes his chakra fly in any trajectory he wants and still has them come back to him like a PrecisionGuidedBoomerang, while claiming the ability to manipulate each of a total of ten urumi blades independently like CombatTentacles! How does he do it? Rule of cool, son. RuleOfCool.

* LogicalWeakness: Guts figures out that because the blades of Silat's urimis are flexible and being manipulated by centrifugal force, he can make them stall in the air by generating a sufficiently powerful gust of wind and immediately rush in before Silat can get them back into play.
* MeaningfulName: In real life, UsefulNotes/{{Silat}} is a type of martial art indigenous to Indonesia and Malaysia. The usage of the term is similar to kung fu in China, where it's actually a catch-all term that encompasses a large variety of styles. It's a fitting name for a person who fights with such exotic weapons and unorthodox styles.

* WeaponTwirling: He intimidatingly twirls his chakram around his fingers before throwing them, and uses his urimis by swishing the blades in circles.

* BodyHorror: Judging for their looks, ''all'' of the skin in their bodies is heavily scarred to the extent of disfiguration. The kind of TrainingFromHell they must have endured is unimaginable.
** Take another look at the picture above; you see those large lumps on their hands and knees, among other places? Those are ''callouses'', ones the size of a softball that are hard and durable enough to deflect swords and arrows and ''cave an armored soldier's skull in through his helmet.''

* MeaningfulName: In real life, a tapasa is a practitioner of ''tapas'', which translates as ascetism or body mortification in ancient Indian religions. Seeing the marks left by those guys' hard training, it fits pretty well.

* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: Possibly. if they weren't mutated through sorcery, their body traits might have been accomplished through artificial bone deformation and lifetime training.

* DrunkOnTheDarkSide: [[spoiler:When he succeeds in becoming all-powerful [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity at the cost of his sanity]], he loses all restraint and proceeds to flatten both Windham and his own armies!]]

* AGodAmI: Played with. Ganishka is fully aware that he isn't god. At the same time, he believes that his position as Emperor of Kushan makes him superior to the "gods" like Griffith and the Godhand.

* BlackEyesOfEvil: He has these ''very'' weird, almost completely pitch-black eyes, which are never explained, and is ([[spoiler:initially]]) a powerful antagonist.

* SuperNotDrowningSkills: Justified. When attacked by Serpico while riding his Kundalini, Daiba opts to retreat inside the large water snake, where he explicitly uses yoga to retain his breath for a long time without drowning. This is a real life practice named ''kumbhaka'', although needlessly to say, real yogis cannot retain their breath for the clearly prolonged time Daiba does here.

* MeaningfulName: ''Daka'' is a practitioner of transformative supernatural powers in Indian religions. In this case, they are human fetuses transformed into supernatural creatures.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: He’s the most skilled and esteemed general in Tudor, and is easily a match for [[OneManArmy Guts]]!

The Tudor Empire (チューダー帝国 ''Chuuda Teikoku'') is a powerful state within the Holy See territories to the East of Midland. They instigated the ongoing war with Midland a hundred years ago by invading its territory and capturing the fortress of Doldrey. They are able to field more heavy knight brigades than any other state. The Tudor Empire is also prominent in ''LightNovel/BerserkTheFlameDragonKnight'', which depicts its war of conquest against the Grand Duchy of Grant. In the Millennium Falcon Arc, Tudor sends forces to join the Holy Alliance against the Kushan Empire.

A posthumous antagonist from ''LightNovel/BerserkTheFlameDragonKnight''

* AllGaysArePedophiles: The only male character besides Gennon in the Golden Age Arc guilty of raping pre-pubescent boys. It's questionable whether he's actually gay or if targeting young boys is just more convenient for him.

* DemonicPossession: Like the Pishacha above, these whales are also possessed by undead spirits.

* PantheraAwesome: After four years Abecassis finally decides he needs to get rid of Grunbeld, so he brings in a Kushan man-eating tiger that's about nine feet long and over six hundred pounds. Bad news for Grunbeld and friends, but the resulting fight is awesome.