History Characters / MassEffect1Antagonists

* EvilCounterpart: Can be seen as a version of Shepard who's willing to cross the MoralEventHorizon in order to achieve "greater good." This is specially made clear in the Paragon ending of ''Mass Effect 2''.

* TheExtremistWasRight: By the time you reach the final battle, his plans seem to have become to use the Reapers to merge organics and synthetics into a new unified hybrid species. Shepard quite sensibly dismisses this as simply an insane delusion brought about by Reaper brainwashing. [[spoiler: However, ''Mass Effect 3'' comes along and this becomes one of the 3 possible endings to the trilogy, as well as the one ending the Catalyst shills the most heavily for. Granted, Saren's version of the plan was flawed and would probably have resulted in everyone getting turned into Husks instead of hybrids with free will.]]

* ArtificialLimbs: Replaced his left arm with a Geth platform's arm donated by the Heretics, and later [[spoiler:gets many Reaper implants, both exterior and internal.]] [[spoiler:By the time of his death, he had so many mechanical implants and replacements that Sovereign was able to "Assume Direct Control" of them, turning Saren's Husk corpse into the FinalBoss]].

* DarkMessiah: To the Geth. [[spoiler... well, not all of them]].

'''Saren:''' [[spoiler: [[DrivenToSuicide Goodbye Shepard. Thank you]].]]

%%* ShadowArchetype: Of Shepard.

'''Shepard:''' [[ShutUpHannibal I'd rather die than live like that!]]

** His reaction to being worshipped by the Geth is to feel ''insulted''. Is it because he's just so arrogant that he thinks their worship is beneath him, [[spoiler: or is it because the Catalyst created the Reapers to stop synthetics from destroying organic life and being worshipped by synthetics kind of goes against that]]?

** Given an amusing IronicEcho in the ''Leviathan DLC'' for the third game, where Shepard repeats this comment to a piece of wreckage salvaged from Sovereign, kept within a forcefield in Dr. Bryson's lab.

** Doesn't seem to think very much of synthetics either, if what he thinks of the Geth are any indication. Maybe he just HatesEveryoneEqually, though considering the reason the Reapers were created, it's more likely all Reapers hate synthetic life.

* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Something named "Sovereign" likely doesn't have humble or benign intentions. Averted in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' when Legion reveals "Sovereign" to be a title coined by Saren and that the Reaper had previously introduced himself to the Geth as "Nazara".

** The assault on the main Cerberus base that starts out the endgame of Mass Effect 3 is this turned around on them. With the Alliance fleet finally focusing directly on them their space forces are rapidly overwhelmed, Shepard's team boards the base and EDI easily controls the security systems. Shepard is able to recover the information they stole, killing Cerberus' top agent in the progress, and the base is destroyed, basically ending Cerberus as an active participant in the war.

* EnigmaticInstitute: Has a variety of scientific endeavors.

** Though the Shadow Broker's files on TIM mention at one point he had sex [[BoldlyComing with an Asari matriarch]], make of that what you will.

** Project Overlord, an experiment to control Geth: showed progress and promise, goes wrong and they start killing their guys.

* KickTheDog: Acts irritatingly flippant when Juliana requests Shepard to find her missing daughter, even snidely cracking jokes that she might already be dead.
* LackOfEmpathy: Really doesn't care at all about using colonists that trust his company as test subjects, the people who've died due to the geth invasion, or purging the colony at his boss's behest. It's worth saying that the Paragon persuasion option mention aboved is ''much'' more difficult to pull off than talking down Wrex on Virmire. To repeat: convincing a millenia-old alien warlord to destroy what might well be the only way to save his dying species from extinction is ''easier'' than convincing this scumbag to act like a decent person. And that is not without mentioning his callous attitude towards his co-worker who was concerned about her missing daughter.

* ArcVillain: For 'Bring Down the Sky'', as the head of a batarian terrorist cell attempting to plunge an asteroid into Terra Nova as an act of revenge against humanity for defeating them in the Skyllian Blitz.

* BullyingADragon: Sure, he doesn't know that Shepard is a Spectre. But even still, maybe it's not the best idea to provoke the highly trained N7 marine who also has a great deal of firepower backing them up.

* TooDumbToLive: If Shepard doesn't talk him down, Jeong will try to kill the Commander. Not only is there not even a proper fight, but Jeong won't even get a shot off before being [[BoomHeadshot given a headshot]]. His mooks immediately stand down.

* ArcVillain: For the Citadel arc before Shepard's Spectre induction.

'''Charn:''' ...Dammit.

%%* ArcVillain: For his quest.

* ArcVillain: Of ''Bring Down the Sky''. He's leading a batarian terrorist cell to plunge an asteroid into Terra Nova in an act of revenge against humanity.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Invoked about his entire plan in ''Bring Down The Sky''- if Balak's plan to drop an asteroid on Terra Nova had succeeded, both the Alliance and the Council would consider it a war crime and a violation of several treaties and immediately declare war, a war the Batarian Hegemony couldn't win...and since Balak is implied [[RogueAgent not to have the Hegemony's backing]], a lot of his own people would be likely to demand his head for getting them into a war of annihilation.

* DarkMessiah: To the geth. [[spoiler:.. well, not all of them]].

* DyingAsYourself: [[spoiler:With a Charm/Intimidate, the last lucid independent thought Saren can have is to kill himself to make the [[MoreThanMindControl indoctrination]] end.]]

* EvilCounterpart: Can be seen as a version of Shepard who's willing to cross the MoralEventHorizon in order to achieve "greater good." This is especially made clear in the Paragon ending of ''Mass Effect 2''.
* EvilHand: [[spoiler:The implants that reanimate him at the end of the game were given to him after Virmire; Sovereign became suspicious of him, and wanted to keep a closer eye on his enforcer.]]

** In ''[[Literature/MassEffectRevelation Revelation]]'', he [[spoiler: blew up a refinery, killing hundreds of civilians, just to sabotage Anderson's prospects at becoming a Spectre.]]

* TheExtremistWasRight: By the time you reach the final battle, his plans seems to have become to use the Reapers to merge organics and synthetics into a new unified hybrid species. Shepard quite sensibly dismisses this as simply an insane delusion brought about by Reaper brainwashing. [[spoiler: However, ''Mass Effect 3'' comes along and this becomes one of the 3 possible endings to the trilogy, as well as the one ending the Catalyst shills the most heavily for. Granted, Saren's version of the plan was flawed and would probably have resulted in everyone getting turned into Husks instead of hybrids with free will.]]

* MasterOfAll: When he's finally confronted he has: extremely powerful shields, a high level assault rifle and pistol, the Damping and Sabotage tech powers, the Shield Boost and Carnage combat powers, and the Throw, Barrier, and Warp biotic powers. It's impossible for Shepard or any squadmate, even via NewGamePlus, to have that combination of powers and weapons. He's effectively a combination of all the game's classes; no wonder he was considered the best Spectre.

* AbusivePrecursors: The first Reaper you meet, he is the one to establish that ''they'' created the relays, and intend to destroy the galaxy's current civilizations as they have so many others.

They return in the second game, where they bring back Shepard after his death with the Lazarus Project, in order to stop the Reaper threat. There, they serve as Shepard's main financial backer, rebuilding the Normandy, giving Shepard's team custom weapons, providing intelligence, and paying Shepard after each mission.

* BadassArmy: Cerberus soldiers in the third game are all badass. For example, Centurions are PowerArmor-wearing cyborgs with rocket boots and electrified batons that wield Mattock rifles and are highly skilled in infantry tactics (and will resort to GrenadeSpam if that doesn't work). A single Cerberus cruiser is also viewed as a significant threat to a small Alliance battle group, and superior to the ''Normandy'' itself. Cerberus's military manages to consistently outwit and overpower the most badass organizations in the galaxy including the salarian STG, the turian Blackwatch special forces, and the Citadel Defense Force. Campbell even comments that, with Cerberus's technology [[spoiler:at that point augmented with [[AbusivePrecursors Reaper]] tech]], the salarians may as well have been throwing rocks. Shepard and their squadmates are the only ones who manage to have any notable success against them until the end.

** [=ME2=] starts with a Cerberus project to bring the deceased Commander Shepard back from the dead, Project Lazarus.

** Project Overlord, an experiment to control geth: showed progress and promise, goes wrong and they start killing their guys.
** Resurrecting Shepard: showed progress and promise, defeated the Collectors, turned on each other six months later, resulting in massive casualties and the ultimate collapse of the organization itself. [[spoiler: And depending on options taken, betrayed Cerberus by destroying the Collector Base.]] Also just to note, the project had a traitor, who also started killing their guys, with only Jacob and Miranda surviving. Shepard also took Jacob and Miranda with them, both of whom start killing their guys.

* PragmaticVillainy: It takes care to preserve its thralls and won't make them take pointless risks. This behavior has been likened in-universe to a craftman taking care of his tools.

An asari who followed Matriarch Benezia when she allied herself with Saren. She was later sacrificed to the Thorian in exchange for its knowledge of the Conduit and was ultimately freed by Commander Shepard. Due to the unique mind meld she experienced as the Thorian's thrall; she is the only known person to have completely recovered from the effects of Reaper indoctrination.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: She only shows up for a few minutes of the first game (and in a minor sidequest in the second). But in that time, she telepathically gives Shepard the Cipher, which imparts an understanding of Prothean history and culture, allows Shepard to understand Prothean language, and causes Prothean beacons to treat Shepard like one of their own. Throughout all three games this allows Shepard to acquire intel critical to stopping the Reapers. Were it not for Shiala, it's likely the Reapers would have won.

* WhenSheSmiles: Upon completing her mission in ''Mass Effect 2'', she smiles for the first time when thanking Shepard. She also smiles when [[ShipTease asking the commander to see her some time in the future when they're not busy.]]

* AssholeVictim: In most scenarios where he doesn't get talked down into surrendering, he'll be shot dead on the spot by Shephard. Considering that he's a slimeball whose actions ruined the lives of the people on Feros, he won't be missed.

* HateSink: There's not a single positive thing to say about him, from his LackOfEmpathy to his irritatingly smug demeanor. It's clear that the game doesn't want to make you feel bad at all once Shephard shoots him dead.

* KickTheDog: Acts irritatingly flippant when Juliana requests Shephard to find her missing daughter, even snidely cracking jokes that she might already be dead.
* LackOfEmpathy: Really doesn't care at all about using colonists that trust his company as test subjects, the people who've died due to the geth invasion, or purging the colony at his boss's behest. It's worth telling that the Paragon persuasion option mention aboved is ''much'' more difficult to pull off than talking down Wrex on Virmire. To repeat: convincing a millenia-old alien warlord to destroy what might well be the only way to save his dying species from extinction is ''easier'' than convincing this scumbag to act like a decent person. And that is not without mentioning his callous attitude towards his co-worker who was concerned about her missing daughter.

* TooDumbToLive: If Shepard doesn't talk him down, Jeong will try to kill the Commander. Not only is there not even a proper fight, but Jeong won't even get a shot off before being [[BoomHeadshot headshotted]]. His mooks immediately stand down.

A small-time crime boss who owns Chora's Den. Formerly an agent for the Shadow Broker, but betrays his boss to work for Saren. Shepard confronts him while looking for evidence to prove Saren's guilt, and has the choice to kill or spare him. If he's spared, Fist shows up in the second game where he shows how far he's gone down.

* ButForMeItWasTuesday: If you spare him and choose the Renegade response while talking to him in the second game, Shepard says something to this effect, to which Fist replies that the least Shepard can do is remember the guy who's life they ruined.

* SmugSnake: She's certain that just because she has Shepard cornered in a small lab they'll be easy pickings. It doesn't end well for her.

[[caption-width-right:234:Who's the real terrorist here?[[note]][[PreMortemOneLiner You, but you're dead.]][[/note]]]]

* CurbStompBattle: He has the dubious honour of being the weakest enemy in the game. Talk Garrus out of executing him and he pulls a gun anyway, only to die in one hit from ''any'' weapon.

* HostageSituation: When he realised C-Sec was going to bust him, he destroyed his lab, took his staff hostages and fled with them aboard a ship from the Citadel. Garrus ordered that the ship be shot down, arguing it would be [[MercyKill an act of mercy]] for the hostages given [[FateWorseThanDeath what Saleon would do to them]], but his superiors countermanded his order, fearing destroying the ship so close to the Citadel would result in massive collateral damage to the station.

* AIIsACrapshoot: A thief created a simple AI to siphon money from Quasar machines in Flux. Unbeknonwst to the thief, the AI became self-aware. It then created a second AI, the one that Shepard encounters, and that one began siphoning funds for ''itself''. [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters It then exposed the thief and got them arrested by the turians]].

* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler:He was originally corrupted by the Arca Monolith, a Reaper (mistaken for Prothean) artifact that his brother Desolas discovered during the First Contact War. Sovereign finished the job. He saw this coming (since his history with the Monolith made him aware of the effects of Indoctrination), but underestimated the danger.]]

* PreAsskickingOneLiner: ''"I am Sovereign and this station is '''MINE'''!''"

-->'''Saren''': [The geth] believe Sovereign to be some kind of god, the pinnacle of their own evolution, but the reaction of their deity is most telling... it is insulted. Sovereign does not want the petty devotions the geth hurl at it; they are just tools, and no amount of belief on their part will change that.

** The assault on the main Cerberus base that starts out the end-game of Mass Effect 3 is this turned around on them. With the Alliance fleet finally focusing directly on them their space forces are rapidly overwhelmed, Shepard's team boards the base and EDI easily controls the security systems. Shepard is able to recover the information they stole, killing Cerberus' top agent in the progress, and the base is destroyed, basically ending Cerberus as an active participant in the war.

-->'''Codex, Cerberus Assault Troopers:''' The backbone of Cerberus forces. Those candidates who make it through the grueling basic training are submitted to an intensive psychological program that renders them fearless, disciplined, and unrelenting. Outfitted with custom-designed armor and rifles, these soldiers function with determined precision and practiced teamwork.

** In [=ME3=] Cerberus again has a number of projects, but many of their scientists defect after they begin [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness to vanish once their projects are complete]]. [[spoiler:Their main project at this point is Sanctuary, set up as a place where people can be safe from the Reaper invasion. Instead, they are taken to be used as test subjects to study how Reaper indoctrination works.]]

* EternalRecurrence: [[spoiler:An element of the Cycle of Reaping is that some clandestine splinter faction often gets the notion that the Reapers can be harnessed and dominated, and said splinter faction ends up as indoctrinated pawns of the Reapers instead. Cerberus becomes this element for this cycle.]]

* FacelessGoons: In the third game. [[spoiler:There is a reason for this though; to hide the their new husk-like appearance.]]
* FantasticRacism: Somewhat of a given considering their motives, and to varying degrees among their members. Certain characters like Jacob and Miranda are at least willing to cooperate with aliens while others like Kai Leng (at least in the books) and [[spoiler:Maya Brooks]] play this pretty straight. Its not made overtly clear what the Illusive Man's view on the subject is.

** The creation of Subject Zero: showed progress and promise, things went wrong and all their test subjects massacred the Cerberus project managers. Subject Zero later aided Cerberus in defeating the Collectors, before (possibly) thwarting their attempts to abduct the students of Grissom Academy, which, of course, involves using the biotic powers they gave her to keep killing their guys.

* HatedByAll: By the third game, Cerberus has become despised by many across the Milky Way. Even those with [[EveryoneHasStandards pro-human sentiments]] realize that Cerberus's actions are not only crossing a line they themselves could not stomach, but are actually being counter-productive to saving humanity. The clincher, however, is the exposure of their horrific experiments on Sanctuary to the public.

* KungFuProofMook: Dragoons from the ''Retaliation'' DLC of the third game are immune to Pull, Throw, Stasis, and other biotic powers that rely on throwing around enemies at all times due to having an armor bar instead of a health bar. This is not true of any other Cerberus foot soldier. Also, Phantoms are one of the small list of humanoid enemies immune to over-cover grabs. They can also project a spherical biotic barrier that both reduces damage from your weapons and completely cancels out damage from your powers.

** Amusingly, in 2011 a new moon of Pluto was found and it was named "Kerberos"[[note]] A variant of the name[[/note]] in 2013.

* NGOSuperpower: In the first game, they were relatively tame, just running a few outposts and research facilities on isolated planets. Later in the series, their power is massively increased. However, in ''2'', they still had limits; constructing the ''Normandy'', a single frigate (albeit a very high-tech one twice the size of a normal frigate), was supposed to have consumed a significant fraction of their budget. In the third game, it gets insane. They possess, among other things, super advanced fleets of cruisers and fighters that can challenge the Alliance in straight-up combat, a battleship (in a universe where an entire race having one battleship denotes them as a great power), enough funds to fund the building of their own weapons, vehicles, and armor, dozens of facilities spread out across the galaxy, and hundreds of thousands of super soldiers (plus the [=APCs=] and shuttles to carry them and the high tech weapons and armor to equip them), including enough soldiers to [[spoiler: ''attack the Citadel'', basically the capital of the galaxy, flat-out occupy several colonies with millions of people like Eden Prime and Benning, and completely take Omega, casually sweeping aside the other four or so NGO Superpowers there.]] Even with the financial backing they receive from major corporations, their power is ridiculous for a simple human terrorist group.[[note]] Though, in [=ME3=], it's revealed that much of their forces are indoctrinated slave soldiers and that they had to take over Omega's Eezo mines just to get funding from ''somewhere'' [[/note]]
* NoOSHACompliance: A lot of the reasons why so many Cerberus experiments go horribly wrong is that they play a lot more fast and loose with safety regulations, being extremists and existing outside the law and all. Engineer Adams mentions that it took ''months'' to bring the second ''Normandy'' up to Alliance spec, as for all the technical achievements present in its design, Cerberus liked to cut corners ''everywhere''.

** Project Overlord's audio logs note that the main reason that Archer went off the rails was because The Illusive Man doesn't broker failure, and has a success at any cost mentality, leading him to do what he did, in a desperate measure to get any results at all to give The Illusive Man and justify all the money he's poured into the project. So it's easy to imagine that a lot of the projects the Illusive Man sets up are similar, and don't get good enough results as quick as he would prefer, leading to the scientists cutting corners, and doing the more crazy and unethical experiments, just to try and get some kind of results to give the Illusive Man, for fear of his reprisals.
* ReplacementMooks: [[spoiler:Indirectly become this to the Reapers, in a way. Their leader is indoctrinated, and does a lot of what the Reapers want unwillingly, even if the factions still do fight each other directly numerous times.]]

-->'''Dr. Gavin Archer:''' You do the job, or die trying to quit.

* WeWillWearArmorInTheFuture: Assault Troopers, Centurions and Guardians wear ridiculously bulky armour that looks like it weighs over 100 pounds.[[note]]Mass Effect: Infiltrator states their armor is a ceramic-tungsten alloy, making that volume even more ridiculous.[[/note]] Centurions complement this with an equally-bulky backpack, making them look even wider and heavier. Guardians have a reason as to why their armour is so bulky; they come equipped with hydraulic assists and a dedicated power supply, all to accommodate the weight of the polycrystalline-composite shields they carry.

* ArcVillain: For Feros. It's lying beneath Zhu's Hope controlling the colonists against the Geth and later Shepard, and possesses knowledge of the Protheans.

* BotanicalAbomination: It seems to be the organic equivalent of a Reaper. [[TimeAbyss Impossibly old?]] Check. [[MindControl Can control sentient beings?]] Check. Leader of them committing suicide in order to [[DyingAsYourSelf die as himself?]] Check. [[BlueAndOrangeMorality Bizzare alien morality?]] Check. [[EldritchAbomination looks like something you'd see in Cthulu's herb garden?]] Check. The main difference is that the Reapers care nothing for anything else beyond needing them for resources, while the Thorian seems to have a god complex. [[spoiler:It also seems to be a botanical, terrestrial version of the Leviathans. It even looks down on the other races in the same way]]. It's also a little gentler than the Reapers. It takes care of its thralls like a craftsman does their tools, and despite causing debilitating agony at even ''thoughts'' of resistance, when it's not using them it lets them perform a 'pantomime' of normal life. The zombielike Thorian Creepers are things it creates, it doesn't make them out of people [[WildMassGuessing as far as we know]].

* SingleSpecimenSpecies: Never explicitly stated, but no evidence of other thorians ever turns up. That said, [[MonsterProgenitor it does produce a heck of a lot of spores]]...

An asari who followed Matriarch Benezia when she allied herself with Saren. She was later sacrificed to the Thorian in exchange for its knowledge of the Conduit and was ultimately freed by Commander Shepard. Due to the unique mind meld she experienced as the Thorian's thrall, she is the only known person to have completely recovered from the effects of Reaper indoctrination.

* TheAtoner: [[spoiler:If you spare her life, she becomes the protector of Zhu's Hope, saying they suffered for her misdeeds and she needs to make amends.]]

* ShipTease: In ''Mass Effect 2'', upon completing her side quest she thanks Shepard, but subtly implies that she has a crush on the commander by stroking their muscles and saying she wished to know Shepard better if they weren't responsible for their duties in separate worlds. Note that this only happens if Shepard went ouf ot their way to save the Zhu's Hope colonists in the first game; if they were killed off, Shiala won't flirt with Shepard.

* SmallRoleBigImpact: She only shows up for a few minutes of the first game (and in a minor sidequest in the second). But in that time she telepathically gives Shepard the Cipher, which imparts an understanding of Prothean history and culture, allows Shepard to understand Prothean language, and causes Prothean beacons to treat Shepard like one of their own. Throughout all three games this allows Shepard to acquire intel critical to stopping the Reapers. Were it not for Shiala, it's likely the Reapers would have won.

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: An [=ExoGeni=] corporation representative on Feros, he really doesn't care about ethics or morals so much as he does boosting [=ExoGeni's=] profits. He knew about the Zhu's Hope colonists being infected by the Thorian and was one of the ones who allowed it to go on in order to study the Thorian's effects on its victims. He's then willing to kill the remaining colony survivors for knowing too much.

* GuideDangIt: Trying to talk Jeong down and avoid killing him requires an absurd amount of Paragon or Renegade points, and filling out the entire Paragon or Renegade point chart. Even if Shepard has managed to get all possible side missions, and the associated morality points from them, it will be very hard to get the amount needed for a successful persuasion attempt.

* IronicName: Jeong (as a surname) pertains to a feeling of loyalty and strong emotional connection to people and places. Ethan is none of these[[note]]the very opposite, in fact[[/note]].

* LackOfEmpathy: Really doesn't care at all about using colonists that trust his company as test subjects, the people who've died due to the geth invasion, or purging the colony at his boss's behest. It's telling that the Paragon persuasion option mention aboved is ''much'' more difficult to pull off than talking down Wrex on Virmire. To repeat: convincing a millenia-old alien warlord to destroy what might well be the only way to save his dying species from extinction is ''easier'' than convincing this scumbag to act like a decent person. And that is not without mentioning his callous attitude towards his co-worker who was concerned about her missing daughter.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Anxious of what could happen to him and the company he works for if their dirty secrets were revealed, he attempts to keep anyone from liberating the [=ExoGeni=] headquarters from geth forces by citing reasons like possible corporate espionage and trespassing on private property. That includes a MamaBear who wants to search for her missing daughter as well as the squad of badass fighters that cut an oily swath through an army of killer robots just to get to him. It works on the former; not so much on the latter.

** In Revelation, he [[spoiler: blew up a refinery, killing hundreds of civilians, just to sabotage Anderson's prospects at becoming a Spectre.]]

* FlunkyBoss: Has 8 mercenaries protecting him.

* SchrodingersGun: He'll make a comment based on whatever background you have. For example, have the Ruthless background and he'll say "Your only mark of distinction is that you stupidly got your own soldiers killed on Torfan."

%%Zero Context Examples have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

[[quoteright:240:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Shiala_5255.bmp]]

[[quoteright:240:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/220px-RanaME2_88.jpg]]

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Averted, since he has to rely on turrets to protect him, and he goes down fairly quickly.

* ShoutOut: His above line is an inversion of the infamous one from from ''Literature/AnimalFarm''.

[[quoteright:240:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/balak_138.png]]
[[caption-width-right:240:Who's the real terrorist here?[[note]][[PreMortemOneLiner You, but you're dead.]][[/note]]]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/haliat_mele_charshot_resized_3.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:His model in Legendary Edition]]

* SocialDarwinist: He has elements of this.

* IncompetenceInc: Called so by Joker in the ''Citadel DLC'', that in the old days, Cerberus were hilariously incompetent, referring back to several encountered projects that failed because the subjects "got loose and started killing all their guys". When Miranda attempts to use the Lazarus Project as an example of Cerberus' ''successes'' for managing to resurrect Shepard:

* LaResistance: Convinced that he is but the first of a wave of batarian terrorists who will initiate a campaign of terror across human space.

->'''"Voiced by:''' John Wright

* NGOSuperpower: In the first game, they were relatively tame, just running a few outposts and research facilities on isolated planets. Later in the series, their power is massively increased. However, in ''2'', they still had limits; constructing the ''Normandy'', a single frigate (albeit a very high tech one twice the size of a normal frigate) was supposed to have consumed a significant fraction of their budget. In the third game, it gets insane. They possess, among other things, super advanced fleets of cruisers and fighters that can challenge the Alliance in straight up combat, a battleship (in a universe where an entire race having one battleship denotes them as a great power), enough funds to fund the building of their own weapons, vehicles, and armor, dozens of facilities spread out across the galaxy, and hundreds of thousands of super soldiers (plus the [=APCs=] and shuttles to carry them and the high tech weapons and armor to equip them), including enough soldiers to [[spoiler: ''attack the Citadel'', basically the capital of the galaxy, flat-out occupy several colonies with millions of people like Eden Prime and Benning, and completely take Omega, casually sweeping aside the other four or so NGO Superpowers there.]] Even with the financial backing they receive from major corporations, their power is ridiculous for a simple human terrorist group.

[[caption-width-right:234:Who's the real terrorist here?[[note]][[PreMortemOneLiner You, but you're dead.]][[/note]]]]

'''VideoGame/MassEffect2:''' [[Characters/MassEffect2EarlyPartyMembers Early Party Members]] ([[Characters/MassEffectMirandaLawson Miranda Lawson]]) | [[Characters/MassEffect2LatePartyMembers Late Party Members]] | [[Characters/MassEffect2SecretPartyMembers Secret Party Members]] | [[Characters/MassEffect2MainAntagonists Main Antagonists]] | [[Characters/MassEffect2SecondaryAntagonists Secondary Antagonists]] | [[Characters/MassEffect2NormandyCrew Normandy Crew]] | [[Characters/MassEffect2CouncilSpaceNPCs Council Space NPCs]] | [[Characters/MassEffect2NonCouncilSpaceNPCs Non-Council Space NPCs]]\\

* ArcVillain: While Saren's {{Dragon}} in the game's overarching plot, she's the central villain for Noveria.

* CloningBlues: The Thorian used her to continuously produce asari clones to fight Shepard when they killed it on Feros.

* ShipTease: In ''Mass Effect 2'', upon completing her side quest she thanks Shepard, but subtly implies that she has a crush on the commander by stroking their muscles and saying she wished to know Shepard better if they weren't responsible for their duties in separate worlds.

* BelievingTheirOwnLies: Sovereign more than any other Reaper seems to truly believe all the hype that his race is immortal and incapable of losing. Even if he's merely bluffing in an attempt to throw Shepard off their game, his complete lack-of-focus on defending himself against the Alliance ships attacking him in the end (instead focusing much of his attention on fighting Shepard through Saren) implies that he had a much higher standing of himself than reality.

* AmbiguousSituation: In conversation with Vigil, it speculates that Sovereign's actions by that point could be overconfidence or the Reaper equivalent of a mad scramble to get things back on track.

* KickTheDog: They do this. A lot. Best exemplified during on Thessia in the third game.