History Characters / XMenSentinels

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The half-human, half-robot result of Nimrod and Master Mold falling into a magic portal (it's a long story), Bastion was a high-ranking government operative who initiated ''Operation: Zero Tolerance'' in response to the Onslaught Saga and Mystique's assassination of Graydon Creed. Eventually, he learnt of his true origin, got reduced to a head, and then disappeared from comics for a good long while.
In the aftermath of M-Day, the Purifiers recovered his head from a S.H.I.E.L.D. holding facility, intending to use him to wipe out Mutantkind once and for all. It didn't go as expected, and Bastion usurped control of them, proving a horrifically dangerous adversary to the X-Men. Eventually, however, he was annihilated by Hope Summers... [[DeathIsCheap Or so it seemed]].\\\

* TheChessmaster: As a robot, this trope comes more or less built in. He anticipated and was able to counter a lot of the X-Men's strategies. His plan in ''Second Coming'' comes very nearly close to finishing them off for good.
* ColdBloodedTorture: In the ''Zero Tolerance'' crossover, he had abused Jubilee who was held prisoner with both physical and psychological torture.

* IHaveYouNowMyPretty: Bizarrely with Jubilee during the ''Operation: Zero Tolerance'' story, as he seemed to be keeping her close solely so he could have someone to gloat at and monologue to.
* [[KillerRobot Killer]] RidiculouslyHumanRobot

* OhCrap: Has this reaction when he learns that Apocalypse has sent his newest Horseman of Death after him.

* TheUnfettered: He is designed, programmed to kill all mutants, and has absolutely no qualms about killing hundreds of humans in horrific ways if it helps that agenda.

* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: Subverted, as he ''claims'' to have moved beyond simple mutant hating to Hope but in practice his goal is always mutant extermination. Even when he realizes that its accomplishment would leave him without a purpose and acts to revive mutantkind, he's still just doing it so he'll have more mutants to kill in the future. Like Characters/BatmanTheJoker, Bastion is permanently defined by an adversarial relationship and has no desire to ever grow beyond that.

* TheVirus: The TurnOfTheMillennium introduced the "Nano-Sentinels" which as you might have guessed from the name are a line of {{Nanomachines}} that function as this.

* AdaptationalBadass: In the X-Men cartoon it was given the ability to fight even as a disembodied head via sprouting legs to become a SpiderMech.
* AdaptationalWimp: ... on the other hand, it was also defeated in its debut appearance via an AchillesPowerCord, leading it to spout the immortal line: "I AM STILL PLUGGED IN!

* BadFuture: In the cartoon it vied with Apocalypse for the title of "villain most likely to rule the world in the horrible future".
* BigBad: Of several stories, most notably the first Sentinel story, 1989's "The Retribution Affair", and the first season of ''WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries''.
* CloneByConversion: When the anti-mutant scientist Stephen Lang was lobotomized, he transmitted his memory-engrams into the original Master Mold which he had secretly rebuilt, causing it to believe it was Lang himself.
* DependingOnTheArtist: Usually depicted as looking roughly like an oversized Sentinel, it had a radically different appearance during the period when it believed itself to be Stephen Lang, even though that Master Mold was supposedly the same one from the older stories. This appearance carried over to its use as a boss in ''VideoGame/XMen1992'', but just about every other appearance since has gone with the oversized Sentinel look.
* FusionDance: The fate of the original Master Mold, which was tossed into the Siege Perilous and permanently fused with Nimrod to create new villain Bastion.

** In X-men 31 he could easily kill the X-men, as their most powerful member (Synch) is incapacitated. Instead he decides to dither and toy with them, giving Synch an opening to come back, stagger Nimrod and get his team to safety. He fails to kill even a single member of the team.
** In Fall of the House of X #1 he appears in front of Krakoa to kill it. He can manifest whatever weapon he wants. Instead of blasting his enemy to smithereens, he grows a blade, intent on carving Krakoa to pieces. This gives Krakoa an opening to incase him in amber and escape.
** In X-men 33 he shrugs off Cyclops' blasts and grabs him by the throat. You would think that he would do what he is programmed to do, kill mutants, especially after he has just casually snapped his creator's neck. Instead he tosses Cyclops to the floor, alive and well and just leaves.

The half-human, half-robot result of '''Nimrod''' and '''Master Mold''' (it's a long story), Bastion was a high-ranking government operative who initiated ''Operation: Zero Tolerance'' in response to the Onslaught Saga and Mystique's assassination of Graydon Creed. Eventually, he learnt of his true origin, got reduced to a head, and then disappeared from comics for a good long while.

* ComicBookDeath: During ''X-Men: Blue'', Shen Xorn sucks him into his black hole head, apparently killing both of them.

* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: Subverted, as he ''claims'' to have moved beyond simple mutant hating to Hope but in practice his goal is always mutant extermination. Even when he realizes that its accomplshment would leave him without a purpose and acts to revive mutantkind, he's still just doing it so he'll have more mutants to kill in the future. Like Characters/BatmanTheJoker, Bastion is permanently defined by an adversarial relationship and has no desire to ever grow beyond that.

An early villain in the Creator/ChrisClaremont run, and ultimately a rather minor one, but were it not for him, ComicBook/TheDarkPhoenixSaga would never have happened. Killed by Jean Grey at the conclusion of his original story arc, though a version of him was later briefly brought back by Bastion as part of his schemes.

* KilledOffForReal: Courtesy of a well-passed angry [[BewareTheNiceOnes Jean Grey]] and Cyclops making him crash his flying machine. Well, more or less. His brain got stolen and used to make a Master Mold Sentinel. Bastion brought him back a few decades later, but the X-Men kill Lang all over again at the end of ''Second Coming''.

* WouldHitAGirl: Loses it and slaps Jean Grey when she tells him he's full of it -- Possibly because her insults hit too CloseToHome.

* AintTooProudToBeg: Pleads with Jean Grey to save him from his crashing hovercar, after having just tried to murder her and Scott (and we should note, Jean's the one who ''made'' it crash).

* GodwinsLaw: Jean Grey calls him a Nazi when he explains his motives to her. Then again, in the Marvelverse the Nazis ''[[FantasticRacism are]]'' opposed to mutants ...

* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Played with. Lang is able to relaunch the Sentinels program precisely ''because'' the Trasks ''did'' keep detailed notes on their construction, to which the Federal Government granted him privileged access--But some of the documentation was lost when the X-Men trashed Trask's base, so he and his team had to fill in the resulting blanks with their own kludges, making the new Sentinels somewhat less formidable war machines.
* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Like Bolivar Trask, he's not stated as such but by simple virtue of what he does has to have mastered at least three different fields of science. See RenaissanceMan below