History Characters / Overlord2012AinzOoalGown

* JustToyingWithThem: His battle against [[spoiler:Shalltear]] is the only battle he has treated as serious, because it was. Against all other foes, Ainz is so far above them that by necessity having it go on longer than the evocation of "Grasp Heart!" is him intentionally toying with a foe he sees as beneath him. The one exception is his battle against [[spoiler:Gazef]], who Ainz killed with far more force than he needed to because he felt it would disrespectful not to under the circumstances
* KarmaHoudini: He's commited countless attrocities ever since he and Nazarick stepped in the new world, but he's never gotten anything close to a punishment. Justified since he and Nazarick are way more powerful than anything else in the world.

* SuperStrength: Subverted. Though he can hug Clementine, one of the strongest warriors in the New World, to death, he will still likely lose in a physical fight against anyone or anything from YGGDRASIL that's around his level bracket. He's really just so far above everyone in level that even his worst stats are above the greatest heroes that he has come across.

* ThinkingUpPortals: His ''Gate'' spell.

* WarriorUndead: His Momon Persona takes the form of himself in fully-black plated armor, with a pair of greatswords. Momonga wanted to build this character back in his YGGDRASIL days, but due to changing classes and making multiple characters being forbidden in the game, he cannot. The design for his cape and swords are also heavily inspired by Touch Me and Warrior Takemikazuchi.

* AntiHero: At best, he's a NominalHero. When he's not being an Overlord with AntiVillain goals, he will go out of his way to help people for altruistic reasons or helping people against enemies being a roadblock in his goals. Even when he's using his Adventurer disguise, facing Clementine was very personal, and goes out of his way to rescue Nfirea on his own accord.

** If you harm or kill anyone he has taken a liking to, do not expect to survive long if he knows it's you. He will get to you, he will show you no mercy, and you've essentially signed your death warrant. The surviving Eight Fingers are the only lucky ones to have "just" lost their sanity.

* JustToyingWithThem: His battle against [[spoiler:Shalltear]] is the only battle he has treated as serious, because it was. Against all other foes, Ainz is so far above them that by necessity having it go on longer than the evocation of "Grasp Heart!" is him intentionally toying with a foe he sees as beneath him. The one exception is his battle against [[spoiler:Gazef]], who Ainz killed with far more force than he needed to because he felt it would disrespectful not to under the circumstances.

* {{Salaryman}}: He was a salaryman before being transferred to the New World, and runs Nazarick and the territory he occupies as if he was a corporate executive. He also sometimes references events during his past life as a salaryman when approaching others and making decisions.

* PowerIsSexy: Explaining his KavorkaMan tendencies to a great extent. At one point, Shalltear comments that Ainz's sheer aura of power and domination [[JizzedInMyPants "caused her underwear to go through a bit of a crisis"]]. Evileye seems to be enamored with Momon because he is strong enough to overpower her, one of the absolute strongest entities in the New World, and Zesshi Zetsumei seems to be set up as another potential conquest for the exact same reasons.

* BullyingADragon: He's the dragon in question. No matter how strong he is and how outclassed his opponents are, people and monsters can't seem to realize he's the type of person who can kill literal thousands with a single spell, or that his physical strength is enough to cripple someone in an instant. [[LetsGetDangerous And that's before he decides to get serious]].

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: A good way to judge how angry Ainz is at a foe is how brutally he chooses to kill them. Clementine, a truly vile individual, was slowly crushed to death with a DeadlyHug. By contrast, if Ainz doesn't particularly care or wants to end a fight quickly, he'll just use Grasp Heart to crush their heart instantly, such as with Climb or the Frost Dragon Lord. If he's well and truly pissed, his foes don't get to die, unless they beg [[TortureTechnician the Neuronist]] for that sweet release.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: If you piss him off, he'll often make sure you either die as slowly and painfully as possible or send you to Neuronist so you'll get tortured horribly for a while before you die. If he's feeling merciful on you or he respects you as a person, he'll just [[InvertedTrope use Grasp Heart to kill you]] cleanly and easily. Compare the way he kills off Clementine and Nigun and the way he kills Gazef and Climb.

* OneManArmy: A level 100 character in a world where level 30 is considered unstoppable. His reaction to the Slane Theocracy {{Mooks}} summoning a giant badass angel was to {{facepalm}} at how weak it is. Later, by using a single spell he kills nearly two hundred thousand people.

* AwesomeButImpractical
** What his build used to be in YGGDRASIL. He focuses heavily on {{OneHitKO}}s and other spells that are amazing in theory but not all that amazing in practice due to game balance, especially against other high-level players. But in a world where game balance does not exist, suddenly Ainz can OneHitKO pretty much anybody who is not undead or has a level comparable to him, the latter of which amounts to almost '''none'''.

** In his Momon persona, he wields two greatswords in combat. While definitely cool looking, many warriors have commented that this is a very inefficient way of fighting as it makes his attacks (relatively) slow and easy to read. The fact that he cannot use Martial Arts skills to augment the shortcomings of this fighting style makes it more inefficient.

* DidntSeeThatComing: There some points where he will not see something coming. Perhaps the best example is when Enri, the village girl whom he saved in order to honor Touch Me, summons an army of '''''5000''''' goblins, each with their own class, with what he initially saw as nothing but a JokeItem. Another after he defeats Jircniv's strongest orc, the latter, out of unfounded paranoia, tells him he wishes the Baharuth Empire to be a vassal state. Ainz had no idea what was even going on, and even tells him to submit the request in writing.

* DualWielding: Wields a pair of greatswords as Momon. Clementine mocks him for this impractical combat style, but she's also frustrated since she still can't win. This is ironic considering Clementine herself dual-wields short swords with hidden elemental effects.

* TheFool: Ainz has very little idea as to what he's doing outside of very narrow situations, but the world seemingly bends over backwards so that everything goes well. People end up vastly overestimating him as a result, which makes it even easier for him to secure information or their outright submission. It gets to the point where while indulging in a pet project he accidentally subjugates an entire nation with no bloodshed and actually ''worries'' that he might have screwed up by securing their surrender. Demiurge, the actual genius in Nazarick, is stunned by his seemingly "brilliant" plan because he had thought it would take months at least to conquer the Empire without destroying it outright and result in massive casualties.

* HeartDrive: Subverted. That glowing red orb in his stomach is actually a World Item. Though a few have thought this was his weak point.

** A variant. Before coming into the new world, Ainz (formerly Momonga) was merely Satoru Suzuki's in-game avatar, and as such, all the spells he has were learned through level-grinding and the related skill progression requisites. Once he becomes his in-game avatar in the new world, he also gains the knowledge of how to cast these spells. However, once somebody begs Ainz to provide tutelage, Ainz realized that while he knows ''how'' to use magic, he cannot teach them to somebody else because he doesn't understand the fundamentals of magic from an academic standpoint.

* MercyKill: The kindest thing he can do for prisoners is to give them a swift painless death, a mercy he gives to those who have done nothing to offend him [[spoiler:such as the children taken by Demiurge]]. Well, he could just set them free, but that wouldn't be good for his overlord figure. He considers death mercy, at least compared to what the most evil denizens of Nazarick can do to others, and proves when he orders Shalltear to kill Arche without pain.

* PunchClockVillain: He was originally just a gamer who played as a member of a LegionOfDoom-esq guild before finding himself trapped in the game. While he continued to play the part of an EvilOverlord, it became more and more genuine as time goes on.

* PersonOfMassDestruction: His super tier spells place him in this category. While Ia Shub Niggurath destroyed an entire army numbering over 200,000, it could just as easily depopulate an entire city if cast in an urban area.

** To honor Touch Me, he went out of his way to save Enri and Nemu, [[TerrifyingRescuer despite their initial reactions]]. While he somewhat doesn't care for the remaining villagers, Enri particularly stood out as he's gifted her two Horns of the Goblin General, which became ''extremely'' handy [[spoiler:in defeating Prince Barbro and his men]].

->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/SatoshiHino (Japanese), Creator/ChrisGuerrero (English), Creator/VictorHugoAguilar (Latin American Spanish/Ainz), Hector Mena (Latin American Spanish/Satoru)

* OutOfCharacterMoment: Any time he acts bombastic or undergoes LargeHam, it's often to be Pandora's Actor in his place. For example, when Riku Aganeia attacks him while he was in the middle of monologuing, he frantically ''bows'', which is something the real Ainz doesn't do. Albedo calls him out on this and Pandora's Actor had given a thought, but Ainz doesn't mind if it meant dropping his enemies' guard.

* TomTheDarkLord: The most horrifiying EldritchAbomination in the New World used to be a salaryman gamer called Satoru Suzuki a.k.a Momonga (as in the animal known as a flying squirrel). He however, goes by his guild name in the New World, which most certainly sounds way more intimidating than his real name.

* BecomingTheMask: At the start of the series, he was a fairly neutral figure, but worried about keeping appearances in front of his subordinates, who were all already pretty evil apart from one or two exceptions. By Volume 4, he's a genuine overlord, attacking innocent lizardmen for little reason and slaughtering people willing to submit to his authority. In Volume 6, he assists Demiurge in sacking the capital of the local kingdom and in Volume 7 he decimates a bunch of workers for their imagined slights against him, even though they were only there because he wanted them to be there. By the time of Volume 10, he has accepted the idea of eventual world conquest and becoming a "benevolent" dictator. The AlternateTimeline side novel where Momonga arrives on the new world without Nazarick makes it fairly clear that this ultimately has less to do with EmotionSuppression and is more just a [[DrunkWithPower natural human reaction to being in a position of absolute power]], coupled with [[TheChainsOfCommanding the pressure of being in charge of monsters]] that ascribe strongly to the idea that HumansAreInsects.

* BenevolentDictator: Desperately ''wants'' to be this, despite being reincarnated as a disturbingly overpowered lich, even running his kingdom in the way he (a former overworked {{salaryman}}) would have wanted his company to be run. Unfortunately, while he has the benevolence part down, his direct underlings are nearly all [[OverzealousUnderling truly and profoundly evil yet devoted to him]], leading to a lot of needless suffering because they think he's the epitome of evil (when he tries to give vacation time, they beg to know how they've failed him) and think humans unworthy of living (when he invites humans to Nazarick, he has to make it abundantly clear they are not to be harmed). Even his taking over the world was an accident, but when he learns about it he decides to make his kingdom a place where all races can live together without discrimination.\\
Eventually he starts gaining more willing adherents after he accidentally vassalizes [[spoiler:the Empire]], since all that changes for them is that condemned criminals are sent to Nazarick for execution (and get sent back if they were innocent) and the borders are manned by undead troops, leaving the PuppetKing with a lot of freedom to rule (and as a bonus, anyone complaining about said puppet's decisions is told "take it up with Nazarick").

* TaughtByExperience

* HeroicNeutral: At first, he wasn't interested in various conflicts that didn't involve him, and didn't want to do with the Carne Village raid. However seeing Enri and Nemu in danger, and Touch Me's words had him change his mind, and save the sisters and the village. As the story progresses, he went from humoring the idea of world domination, to actually act on it, cementing his VillainProtagonist role. He does show a bit of this in his Momon persona, and when he's being affable in public.

* HeroKiller: Kills Gazef in a single hit during the Katze Plains massacre, shaking Re-Estize Kingdom to its very core. Later on, in their final battle, he kills Climb in the same way by toying with him.

* HeroKiller: Kills Gazef in a single hit during the Katze Plains massacre, shaking Re-Estize Kingdom to its very core.

** His relationship with the [=NPCs=] deconstructs UndyingLoyalty. The [=NPCs=] of Nazarick are fanatically loyal to Ainz, [[AFatherToHisMen who in turn cares about them deeply as they are the last remnants of his old guild friends]]. However, this ends up turning them into a ToxicFriendInfluence on Ainz. A lot of Ainz's more heinous acts can all be traced back to them essentially putting words in his mouth and him not understanding the full scope of some of their ideas until it's too late and he's forced to roll with their plans to keep up the image of a competent leader. And Ainz can't bring himself to rein in some of their more twisted qualities (if he's even aware of them) for fear of losing their respect. In short, Ainz is just a literal salaryman in his player character's body who's forced to play the role of EvilOverlord because he doesn't want to lose the only companions he has left.

* HeroKiller: Kills Gazef in a single hit during the Katze Plains massacre shaking Re-Estize Kingdom to its very core.

* HeartDrive: Adverted. That glowing red orb in his stomach is actually a World Item. Though a few have thought this was his weak point.

* FakingTheDead: As a part of his false flag attack to exert his control on the Holy Kingdom, he participated in a training exercise with Evil Lord Wrath "Jaldabaoth" and several doppelgangers impersonating the Pleiades (all of them buffed beyond their base level by Aureole Omega), but doesn't completely defeat them and instead fakes falling to the ground and dying after heavily injuring "Jaldabaoth". While a few idiots like Remedios or Phillip believe that he's dead for real and not just faking it, for the most part people don't believe so.

* FakingTheDead: As a part of his false flag attack to exert his control on the Holy Kingdom, he participated in a training exercise with Evil Lord Wrath "Jaldabaoth" and several doppelgangers impersonating the Pleiades (all of them buffed beyond their base level by Aureole Omega), but doesn't completely defeat them and instead fakes falling to the ground and dying after heavily injuring "Jaldabaoth". While a few idiots like Remedios or Phillip believe it, for the most part everyone under him reacts with "Bullshit, there's no one strong enough to kill him."