History ComicBook / Apocalypse

Apocalypse is a Franchise/MarvelUniverse character created by writer Louise Simonson and artist Jackson Guice. He first appeared in ''ComicBook/XFactor'' vol. 1 #5 (May, 1986). He has since gone on to plague the Comicbook/XMen and other heroes. Born 5,000 years ago into a desert tribe in Ancient Egypt who took one look at the blue skinned mutant and left the supposed abomination behind to die, the infant who would become Apocalypse was found by the leader of a band of desert raiders called Baal, who adopted the boy and named him "En Sabah Nur" -- "The First One", as he believed that the child was the first of a MasterRace of beings who would one day inherit the Earth[[note]]He was not actually the "first" mutant, as there were others who came before him -- Selene, notably, is nearly thrice as old at 14,000[[/note]]. Baal raised En Sabah Nur and indoctrinated him into the brutal philosophy of his raiding band -- [[TheSocialDarwinist Survival of the Fittest]], and the idea that life is and should be a never ending struggle of the strong against the weak and each other to earn the right to live and prosper.

--> '''Cable''': The world won't stomach your evil forever.
--> '''Apocalypse''': Evil? I am not malevolent! I simply AM!

** He is also written this way in ''ComicBook/XMen92'', as revealed with the following exchange:
--> '''Joseph:''' You're not one of the good guys!
--> '''Apocalypse:''' Good. Bad. Meaningless words used to describe lesser beings. I am [[DarkMessiah he who was born to save the world]]. Will you join me?

** ''Film/XMenApocalypse'' establishes him as ''easily'' the most powerful mutant ever seen in the ''Film/XMenFilmSeries'', [[spoiler:excepting Jean Grey in full out Phoenix mode.]]
** ''ComicBook/XMen92'' made him one of these too, given that he survived the "Westchester Wars" in the backstory (which was apparently a big enough conflict that all the X-Men believed he was dead in the present day), terrified the duo of [[spoiler:Cassandra Nova and Joseph]] into submission, and at one point was even shown [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu casually dragging the body of defeated archdemon N'astirh behind him]].

** His video game appearances, on the other hand, usually have him playing second fiddle to ComicBook/{{Magneto}}. He's a generic mid-game BossBattle in both of the Sega Genesis [[VideoGame/XMen1993 X-Men]] [[VideoGame/XMen2CloneWars games]] (Justified in the first game, since it's just a Danger Room simulation of him and not the real deal) and a BaitAndSwitchBoss in ''VideoGame/XMenMutantApocalypse''.

* AntiVillain: In ''ComicBook/XMen92'', where he gathered a notably less evil incarnation of his Four Horsemen and recruited a [[HeelFaceTurn Heel-Face Turned]] Joseph and Cassandra Nova to stand against the threat of [[spoiler:Xodus, the Forgotten Celestial]].

** Additionally, the ComicBook/TheEternals regard him as an ancient foe. However, by this point he has managed to piss off half the cast at least, as well as many other heroes (e.g. the time he brainwashed the ComicBook/IncredibleHulk), to say nothing of the entire alternate and future Earths that have to endure his rule.

* BeenThereShapedHistory: Various flashbacks and exposition dumps over the years have shown his recurring effects on history over the centuries. There was the time he spooked Alexander the Great into fleeing Egypt, for example. He is also stated in-universe to be the reason why [[http://www.kv64.info/2008/06/amenhotep-i-undiscovered-tomb.html Amenhotep I's tomb has never been found]], as he killed Amenhotep and dragged his body out into the desert to rot.
** In ComicBook/JonathanHickmansXMen he claims to have caused the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse Bronze Age Collapse]].
* BenevolentBoss: Genocidal maniac though he may be, Apocalypse is surprisingly consistent in his treatment of those who serve him well. The best example of this is the mutant Caliban, originally put to work as his bloodhound before heavily physically empowering him at Caliban's own request (compare Caliban [[https://i.annihil.us/u/prod/marvel//universe3zx/images/b/bf/CalibanMorlock.jpg before]] and [[http://defpen.com/wp-content//2015/05/caliban.jpg after]]) as a reward for his faithful service. He took in and provided for Autumn Rolfson, the first Famine, even after she failed him as a Horseman (this became a plot point in ''Uncanny X-Force'' when TheBusCameBack for her) and fulfilled his pitch to the ComicBook/IncredibleHulk to the letter. Even with disobedient ex-minions he tends towards lenience, letting them act freely as long as they uphold his ideals (prime examples being Exodus and Mr. Sinister, though a good chunk of X-Men also fall into this category thanks to his curious habit of poaching their ranks for new Horsemen).

* DarkActionGirl: His cultist follower [[CatGirl Anais]], who tried to resurrect him when he was reduced to a ghost and possessing Cyclops.
* DarkMessiah: Occasionally written this way, such as in 2006's ''Blood of Apocalypse'' where he claims to have literally been awakened by the screams of millions of mutants (due to M-Day) and offers his titular Blood to all of mutantkind as an antidote to a plague (that he himself created to weed out humanity). Made very apparent since he's apparently a servant of the Celestials aka Space Gods. The movie version also has some elements of this, but his ''ComicBook/XMen92'' incarnation might be the most triumphant example yet.

** Apocalypse himself does this quite a bit, empowering Bennet du Paris, Nathaniel Essex, and a slew of modern-day mutants (including a few of the X-Men) in exchange for service. Ironically, this has helped the X-Men more than once, since it restored Angel's wings and ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}'s adamantium. He also created one of his own worst enemies by empowering and granting immortality to Sinister.

* DependingOnTheWriter: Whether he is a cosmic-level entity that can pimp-smack the likes of the High Evolutionary and go toe-to-toe with Asgardians like Loki and even ComicBook/TheMightyThor, or is a has-been dependent upon regeneration chambers. Justified partially by Apocalypse's original body being killed in ''ComicBook/XFactor'' #68 by Comicbook/{{Cyclops}} channeling the full power of the Summers bloodline, aka DeusExMachina. His evil quotient is also writer-dependent, with Louise Simonson tending to write him as more of a NobleDemon and WellIntentionedExtremist while later writers tend to dial his evilness as far in the other direction as possible.
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: In ''ComicBook/XMen92'' he effortlessly defeats the Limbo arch-demon N'astirh.

** In ''ComicBook/XMen92'' [[spoiler:Joseph and Cassandra Nova]], both of whom have absolutely dominated every other villain in the series up to that point, are positively ''petrified'' when he drops in on them.

** He teams up with the X-Men to fight Stryfe in the ''X-Cutioner's Song'' and even helpfully saves Professor X from the weaponized virus Stryfe infected him with.

** Despite the fact that his solution to the problem was to [[WouldHurtAChild try to kill]] [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Franklin Richards]], even he was horrified by the actions of ComicBook/{{Onslaught}}.

* EvilerThanThou: To Exodus, Mister Sinister, Bishop, Stryfe, ComicBook/{{Sabretooth}}, ''{{Dracula}}'' and even ''ComicBook/{{Loki}}'' at one point. He frequently pulls this, but puny lesser villains keep thinking they can take him and have to find out the hard way how wrong they are.

* EvilutionaryBiologist: Of the "fight to the death and prove your worth" variety.

* GeniusBruiser: Not a natural genius like Mr. Fantastic or Dr. Doom, but he's had five thousand years to build upon the basic education he received as a nomadic Egyptian raider. He's also had the benefit of Celestial technology to tutor himself with.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: When he's being written by his co-creator Louise Simonson, usually (with the monsters in question being either malevolent gods like Loki or the Celestials).

* HorsemenOfTheApocalypse: Used as the name and titles of his four top lieutenants. Because most Horsemen tend to either die or turn on him, he's constantly on the lookout for new mutants to serve as his bringers of Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. A number of X-Men have served in these roles over the years: Archangel, Wolverine and Gambit have all been Death for a time, Sunfire was Famine and Polaris was Pestilence. As of ''ComicBook/SecretWars2015'' and ''ComicBook/XMen92'', his last known Horsemen were [[RoboticPsychopath Bastion]], [[KnightTemplar Exodus]], ComicBook/{{Mystique}} and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers Senator Kelly]].

* LoveMakesYouEvil: He was pretty well on his way to villainy already when Nephri rejected him, but said rejection was probably what pushed him over the edge. During the time he convinced Hulk to be one of his Horsemen it greatly hinted that while he sees emotions and love as a weakness, he himself still have not gotten over the rejection of his first love.

* NewAgeRetroHippie: [[spoiler: His Age Of X-Man incarnation, as yet unseen beyond cover art, appears to be this - trying to bring romantic love back to a world where its banned.]]

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Whether by [[EpilepticTrees accident or design]], a lot of his attempts to recruit new horsemen end with him helping the heroes in the end, such as him rebonding Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, regenerating Sunfire's legs and restoring Polaris's sanity. Sometimes he at least has the sense to add in a touch of BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor, as was the case with the 'improved' wings he granted to Angel when remaking him as Archangel.

* PutOnABus: His current fate as of 2015, after the Celestials abducted him for reasons unknown. [[StatusQuoIsGod He'll be back sooner or later, of course]].

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: In DawnOfX, Apocalypse does an apparent HeelFaceTurn, joining the newer incarnation of Excalibur and ''[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking wears a business suit]]''

* WouldHurtAChild: His solution to end the ComicBook/{{Onslaught}} crisis (and rid himself of a potential rival) was to kill Franklin Richards. Needless to say both Apocalypse's archenemy Cable and Franklin's mother [[MamaBear the]] [[ComicBook/InvisibleWoman put a stop to that.

** His video game appearances, on the other hand, usually have him playing second fiddle to ComicBook/{{Magneto}}. He's a generic mid-game BossBattle in both of the Sega Genesis [[VideoGame/XMen1993 X-Men]] [[VideoGame/XMen2CloneWars games]] and a BaitAndSwitchBoss in ''VideoGame/XMenMutantApocalypse''.

* SuperEmpowering: In addition to Mr. Sinister, Apocalypse has also empowered most of his Horsemen, either giving them brand new powers or upgrading what was already there. This has even helped the X-Men on occasion (despite the brief episode of brainwashing), as he has restored Angel's wings, Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, and Sunfire's legs. Though it later turned out that Angel had a HealingFactor and his wings would have regrown naturally anyway, and Wolverine probably wasn't too happy with having the adamantium once again forced upon him, so it's for a given value of "help".

* WouldHurtAChild: His solution to end the ComicBook/{{Onslaught}} crisis (and rid himself of a potential rival) was to kill Franklin Richards. Needless to say both Apocalypse's archenemy Cable and Franklin's mother the [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Invisible]] [[MamaBear Woman]] put a stop to that.

* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: He supposedly has an Arabic birth name, even though he was born in Egypt around 3,000 B.C.--several thousand years before the Arabic language existed, and ''long'' before it would have been spoken in Egypt. Semi-{{justified|Trope}}; although "En Sabah Nur" has an Arabic translation (roughly, "The Seven Lights") he was actually named by the leader of a band of desert raiders with their own tribe and- fictional- language, so this can be easily {{handwave}}d as coincidence.
*** The name isn’t remotely correctly Arabic. It definitely doesn’t mean “the seven lights,” which would be (الانوار السبعة), roughly transliterated as “al-anwaar as-sab’a.” It could be a list of three words (عين صباح نور) which would mean “eye morning light” which sounds really silly. It could also be, most likely, a garbled form of (صباح النور), pronounced roughly, sabaah an-nuur, literally meaning “morning of light,” but in actual context, Apocalypse’s name would then mean “good morning.” Both Sabaah and Nuur by themselves ARE names, but...usually women’s names. It sounds even sillier in the film adaptation, where they have modern Egyptians speaking in correct colloquial Egyptian Arabic...reciting a name over and over which is obviously supposed to be Arabic...but makes no grammatical sense at all.

** In ComicBook/JonathanHickmansXMen he claims to have caused the Bronze Age Collapse.

** In ComicBook/JonathanHickmansXMen he claims to have caused the Bronze Age collapse.

** In JonathanHickmansXMen he claims to have caused the Bronze Age collapse.

* FreudianExcuse: Abandoned at birth due to his obvious mutations, adopted by a tribe of violent raiders who imparted their [[TheSocialDarwinist "only the strong are worthy"]] ethos that later became a defining element of his character, saw his entire tribe killed and also saw his adoptive father die in front of him not long after as a result of Kang the Conqueror's attempts to find him, was enslaved, had a particularly bad encounter with Kang himself, was rejected by the girl he had fallen in love with... his formative years definitely weren't pleasant. He's still an absolutely vile being, but it's not hard to see how he became as awful as he is.

* DarkMessiah: Occasionally written this way, such as in 2006's ''Blood of Apocalypse'' where he claims to have literally been awakened by the screams of millions of mutants (due to M-Day) and offers his titular Blood to all of mutantkind as an antidote to a plague (that he himself created to weed out humanity). The movie version also has some elements of this, but his ''ComicBook/XMen92'' incarnation might be the most triumphant example yet.

* KilledOffForReal: In the ComicBook/UltimateMarvel universe, he was killed by Phoenix.

* NewPowersAsThePlotDemands: No one's ever been able to give a precise listing on what his powers actually ''are'', and the writers of his comics have admitted they just give him whatever abilities are needed to make him effectively menace the heroes.
-->'''Frank Tieri:''' So what... this guy's kind of like Mr. Fantastic on steroids? Yeah, his powers have always been sort of nebulous, but as long as he's cutting through X-Men teams like Kirstie Alley through Sizzler, I don't think the fans care.

* AGodAmI: He may or may not believe he is an actual god, but he is certainly happy to be worshipped as such if it furthers his interests, and he definitely has a monstrous God complex [[note]]A God complex is when you think you should be treated as or act ''like'' you are a god; actually believing yourself to be a god is a god delusion, not a god complex[[/note]]. There was also the Twelve storyline, where Big Blue literally attempted to become a god by absorbing the power of the titular Twelve[[note]]Technically thirteen, as Nate Grey was intended to be his new host body[[/note]].

* WellIntentionedExtremist: En Sabah Nur's plans are horrific in scope and devastation, yet he's not in it for the power. He genuinely buys his own sell about making the world a better place through ruthless Darwinism.

* WouldHurtAChild: His solution to end the ComicBook/{{Onslaught}} crisis was to kill Franklin Richards. Needless to say both Apocalypse's archenemy Cable and Franklin's mother the [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Invisible]] [[MamaBear Woman]] put a stop to that.

*** The name isn’t remotely correctly Arabic; it could be a list of three words (عين صباح نور) which would mean “eye morning light” which sounds really silly. It could also be, most likely, a garbled form of (صباح النور), pronounced roughly, sabaah an-nuur, literally meaning “morning of light,” but in actual context, Apocalypse’s name would then mean “good morning.” Both Sabaah and Nuur by themselves ARE names, but...usually women’s names. It sounds even sillier in the film adaptation, where they have modern Egyptians speaking in correct colloquial Egyptian Arabic...reciting a name over and over which is obviously supposed to be Arabic...but makes no grammatical sense at all.

*** The name isn’t remotely correctly Arabic; it could be a list of three words (عين صباح نور) which would mean “eye morning light” which sounds really silly. It could also be, most likely, a garbled form of (صباح النور), pronounced roughly, sabaah an-nuur, literally meaning “morning of light,” but in actual context, Apocalypse’s name would then mean “good morning.” Both Sabaah and Nuur by themselves ARE names, but...usually women’s names.

Apocalypse has featured in various adaptations of the ''Franchise/XMen'' as an ArcVillain, including the 1990s ''WesternAnimation/XMen'' and ''WesternAnimation/XMenEvolution'' cartoons, and. He is the BigBad of the 2016 movie ''Film/XMenApocalypse'', making his live-action debut, played by Creator/OscarIsaac.

He is the BigBad of the 2016 movie ''Film/XMenApocalypse'', making his live-action debut, played by Creator/OscarIsaac.

* EvilIsBigger: He's 7 foot tall in his usual form, but he'll often invoke this by using his shapeshifting powers to increase his size and utterly dwarf his opponents.

He is the BigBad of the 2016 movie ''Film/XMenApocalypse'', making his live-action debut. He is played by actor Creator/OscarIsaac.

* ArchEnemy: To Angel (because of the whole Archangel thing), Comicbook/{{Cable}} (because he's Apocalypse's prophesied enemy who's spent a lifetime trying to destroy him), and [[ComicBook/XMan Nate Grey]] (Cable's ''ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse'' counterpart, engineered as a weapon against Apocalypse, who actually succeeded in killing his version of Apocalypse - or at least, leaving him for AoA!Magneto to rip in half). Technically the latter's grudge is against his version of Apocalypse, but his hatred for Apocalypse transfers over just fine.

** Apocalypse is feared by even high-tier supernatural monsters like [[Comicbook/TheTombofDracula Dracula]] - though Apocalypse has a certain wariness of Dracula in turn, since Dracula very nearly succeeded in killing him in the 1890s. [[ComicBook/{{Deadpool}} Deadpool's]] wife Shiklah tried to attack Evan (En Sabah Nur's clone) when she thought she saw the real deal reborn.'