History Characters / LostMainOtherCharacters

* SuperpowerLottery: Being trapped on the island, he has some pretty nifty abilities to compensate. Aside from being immortal and turning into a giant mass of smoke that is invulnerable to harm and incredibly strong, he is an extremely skilled telepath, a shapeshifter who can become anyone just as long as they are dead and is even said to be able to revive the dead. Kind of makes Jacob's power to bestow immortality look a bit lame by comparison.

* FreudianExcuse: Like pretty much all of the other main characters. He's been stuck on the island his entire life and is desperate to see the world beyond and has lost basically any sanity from his time trapped there.

* StartOfDarkness: "Across The Sea"

* SuperpowerLottery: Being trapped on the island, he has some pretty nifty abilities to compensate. Aside from being immortal and turning into a giant mass of smoke that is invulnerable to harm and incredibly strong, he is an extremely skilled telepath, a shapeshifter and is even said to be able to revive the dead. Kind of makes Jacob's power to bestow immortality look a bit lame by comparison.
* SuperSmoke: He is known as the smoke monster for a reason.

* VoluntaryShapeshifting: Prior to killing Jacob and being stuck in the form of Locke, he could appear as his original self and virtually anyone else. Usually these would be people who have a connection to those he was trying to manipulate, especially dead loved ones.

* DeadPersonImpersonation: A favourite of his. He is able to impersonate any person who has died and appear to those on the island as them. They don't need to have died on the island either and he gains all of their memories and personality traits, allowing him to easier prey on those he wants to manipulate.

* DeadpanSnarker

* DeadPersonImpersonation: A favourite of his.

* FreudianExcuse: Like pretty much all of the other main characters.

* {{Telepathy}}: Is able to "scan" people in his Smoke Monster form and read their memories, which makes his ManipulativeBastard tendencies that much more effective.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Desmond has been through emotional and physical pain that would drive most people to insanity, but he's one of few main characters to survive the series. With their LoveInterest intact, nonetheless.

* EveryoneHasStandards: He might be an smug jerkass, but even he's horrified that his son would think so low of him to think that he would be having an affair with Jack's ex-wife.

* ArmorPiercingSlap: Delivers one to Widmore after he reminds her that Daniel is his son as well.

* TravelingLandmass: The Island is constantly moving due to the mystical energy it sits upon. Because of this, leaving the Island is very difficult unless you follow an exact compass bearing.

A mysterious island supposedly somewhere in the South Pacific. It was settled as far back as the age of antiquity, was colonized by the DHARMA Initiative, and is the location of the crash of Flight 815.

* {{Cult}}: Over the years, Jacob cultivated a group of inhabitants who worship him as a deity and do his bidding to protect the Island from outsiders.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Christian uses his situation with Jack to encourage Sawyer to finish whatever he started in Australia, which leads to the death of an innocent man. His actions are also directly responsible for both Ana Lucia and Jack being on the plane.

Prior to having his license stripped for performing surgery under the influence of alcohol, he was the Chief of Surgery at St. Sebastian Hospital.

* AmbiguousSituation: Christian makes quite a few posthumous appearances, which the Man in Black eventually takes credit for, but given the confirmed presence of ghosts on the Island, as well as Christian making a few appearances off of the Island and the Man in Black being a ConsummateLiar, it's less clear as to whether ''all'' of Christian's appearances were the Man in Black; a few of them were definitely him (abducting Claire, manipulating Locke, instructing Frank and Sun to trust "Locke"), some others are less certain to be him (Christian appearing to Michael on the Freighter when the Man in Black can't leave the Island), and others still [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane aren't definitely supernatural at all]] (Jack seeing him after leaving the Island).

* GoodIsNotNice: Arrogant yet self-loathing, callous, selfish, an alcoholic, verbally abusive to his son, an adulterer, absent parent...and still a good man who feels he's failed his son in almost every way.

* DrJerk: Averted while he's on the job; he's aware of what bedside manner can do to help someone.

* MeaningfulName: 'Christian Shephard'? It’s lampshaded in the finale.

* YouAllShareMyStory: Christian turns up over and over in the flashbacks of other characters like Sawyer and Ana-Lucia.

** Both Rousseau and Robert describe the Monster as a "security system" that protects the Island, and Ben is shown to use an ancient pedestal to summon the Monster to sic it on Keamy and his men and to submit himself to it's judgement. How the Man in Black is connected to such a thing is never mentioned, especially as he's later confirmed to be a sentient being who ''despises'' the Island.

* IslandOfMystery: Caves, ancient ruins, castaways, physical anomalies, weird creatures, angry natives, secret research stations, doomsday devices, a monster, the Island has it all.

** Another criticism he has of humans is that they "corrupt"; the Man in Black is evil incarnate and will happily corrupt others, either through manipulation or the "sickness" to get them to do what he wants.

* FauxAffablyEvil: He's remarkably charming to people whose deaths he's orchestrating, but it's all superficial, and disappears the moment that he no longer needs them alive. The sadism that exists beneath his friendly façade is very clearly shown in the season 6 premiere, where, after posing as Locke, he reveals his contempt for the man, cruelly mocking his belief in his destiny and his confusion at his death.

* {{Irony}}: The Man in Black's stated mission in life is to "go home"; he was born, raised, and has lived his entire life on the Island, the very place he wants to escape from and the only home he's ever known. It's not clear if he has any idea of where the "home" he seeks even is, or if he even has a specific place in mind.

* StrawNihilist: Despite his obsession with escaping the island to the world "across the sea", The Man in Black really looks down on humanity. Even what he knows of life outside of the Island from looking into people's memories doesn't impress him, as he considers the lives that the Oceanic survivors left behind to be "pitiful." [[JerkassHasAPoint Not that he doesn't have a point.]] [[{{Hypocrite}} And not that he's one to talk, of course.]]
** You'd be forgiven for thinking this was a symptom of his being, well, ''The Monster'', but no. He loathed everything about other people even when he was still a man.

* KarmicDeath: His death directly mirrors his murder of Jacob. Jacob was stabbed in the chest, the Man in Black was shot in the back. They both give ominous warnings to their killers (Jacob warns the Man in Black that "they're coming", and the Man in Black tells Jack that it's too late to save the Island; Jacob is right, the Man in Black is wrong). And Jack kicks the Man in Black off a cliff into the ocean, the same way the MIB kicked Jacob into the fire pit.

* TragicMonster: All the Man in Black wanted was to leave the Island, which his Mother refused to allow for reasons she refused to elaborate. When he eventually snapped and murdered her in revenge for her destroying his efforts, the Man in Black was subjected to a FateWorseThanDeath by Jacob, turning him into the inhuman Smoke Monster. By the present day, however, there's very little about him that's remotely sympathetic, as he proves willing to go through as many people as necessary to get what he wants.

* CatchPhrase[=/=]VerbalTic: He has a tendency to call people 'brother' or 'sister'. It's a habit he picked up from his time in a monastary.

* ConsummateLiar: Which of the Man in Black's claims can be trusted is very difficult to determine, especially when he has everything to gain from lying.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: His plan to use the wheel to escape the Island, had he actually gone through with it while still just a man. The Man in Black would have indeed escaped from the Island... but only to find himself stranded in the middle of the Sahara Desert, with none of the 21st Century conveniences that ended up saving Ben and Locke.

* KarmicDeath: His death directly mirrors his murder of Jacob. Jacob was stabbed in the chest, the Man in Black was shot in the back. They both give ominous warnings to their killers. And Jack kicks the Man in Black off a cliff into the ocean, the same way the MIB kicked Jacob into the fire pit.
* KnifeNut: He's proficient in firearms, but his weapon of choice is typically a knife, whether he's using them himself or giving them to people he uses to do his killing for him. This makes his final form as resident Knife Nut John Locke all the more fitting. Although, there is greater emphasis on the ''nut'' part in the Man in Black's case, as displayed when he threatens to use his hunting knife to slowly kill Bernard and Rose to force Desmond to go with him.
-->''"I'll make it hurt."''

* NeverGivenAName: His birth mother never gave him a name, and neither did his adoptive mother.
** It's likely that he did have a name, but it was simply never said for the sake of this trope's effect. And after he became the Monster, the person he used to be is pretty much gone.

* ShapeshifterModeLock: He doesn't appear to be able to shapeshift like he could before, stuck between either smoke cloud mode or fake!Locke.

* TragicMonster: He was just a poor bastard with an abusive mother, and his dweeby brother killed him and trapped him on a place he hates for thousands of years.

%%zce* OnlySaneMan: Within the Dharma Initiative.

* AbortedArc: Her entire storyline - Zuleikha Robinson says that Jacob was meant to be her character's actual father, but the only hint at this that wasn't cut is in "Dr Linus" (also the only episode of the season in which she plays a major role).

'''BEWARE OF SPOILERS.''' Due to the nature of the show with its many WalkingSpoiler characters, twists and turns, no spoilers are whited out so a page of pure white can be avoided.

* [[BreakHisHeartToSaveHim Break Her Heart To Save Her]]: He had to be harsh to his wife Lara to get her to take baby Miles off the Island so they'd be safe from The Incident.

* OnlySaneMan: Within the Dharma Initiative.

* [[DroppedABridgeOnHim Dropped A Bridge On Her]]: Probably the most abrupt and unexpected one in the whole series- she literally '''blew up mid-sentence''', without any foreshadowing. According to Carlton Cuse, this was a quick way to remove her from the story once they decided to cut her arc.

* AbusiveParent: She crushes Daniel's dreams and pushes him into a scientific career, manipulating him his entire life so he can go to the island and die. However, she takes no happiness from this. She's merely ensuring things happen as they should, but she's devastated inside.

* ActionGirl / DarkActionGirl: During the time in which the younger versions of her appear. Either way, it's UpToEleven with "Ellie" in the 1954 timeline.