Follow TV Tropes

Following

Characters / Devil May Cry - Villains

Go To

Main characters index | Heroes (Dante | Nero | V) | Villains (Vergil) | Other | DmC: Devil May Cry

This page lists tropes related to villains who appear in the classic Devil May Cry continuity.

For other characters that appear in the DMC franchise, see the Devil May Cry Character Index. For tropes related to villains in the alternate continuity reboot, see the DmC: Devil May Cry Character Page.


    open/close all folders 

    General tropes 
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
    • The villain of the first game is Mundus, the ruler of the demon world. He is portrayed as a malevolent and terrifying force whose presence is felt throughout the game even when he isn't in the same room with you.
    • Devil May Cry 2 features two villains, Arius and Argosax who serve as the Final Boss for Lucia and Dante, respectively.
      • While Mundus was the most powerful demon in the demon world, Arius is a human who relies on magic, technology, and wealth to be a threat.
      • Argosax is a demon lord who was defeated by Sparda, similar to Mundus. Argosax differs from Mundus in three ways. Firstly, while Mundus is depicted as male, Argosax is Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous. The second way they differ is how their appearances change during the final battle; Mundus starts out with an angelic visage that gives way to a hideous Blob Monster form. Argosax starts out as a weird amalgamation of previous bosses before its true form is revealed to be that of a fiery angelic creature. While Mundus relied mainly on long-ranged attacks, Argosax in its final form focused on closing the distance through teleportation.
    • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening features a Big Bad Duumvirate consisting of the half-devil Vergil who is Dante's brother and the human Arkham who seeks to claim the power of Sparda to become a powerful demon himself.
    • Sanctus in Devil May Cry 4 is introduced as the seemingly benevolent head of the Order of the Sword, but is also revealed to be coveting demon powers himself. Unlike Arius and Arkham, who sought out demonic power for more obviously selfish ends, Sanctus's main goal is the extermination of demons plaguing the human world, but it becomes more and more clear that he has allowed all the power he has attained to go to his head and is willing to harm even innocent humans for his goals.
    • Urizen from Devil May Cry 5 is the first full-blooded demon main antagonist since Mundus from the first game. He is also the first villain since Vergil in 3 to defeat Dante in their first battle — which isn't surprising, given he is Vergil's demonic half made flesh.
  • Create Your Own Hero:
    • Devil May Cry: One of the reasons Dante became a demon hunter was to eventually find and kill the demon that killed his mother. That demon turns out to be Mundus, the ruler of the demon world who makes the foolish mistake of luring Dante to his island in an attempt to kill him. Worse, Mundus' cruel treatment of his minion Trish causes her to pull a Heel–Face Turn and lend her power to Dante in his climactic battle with the villain.
    • Devil May Cry 2: Lucia is revealed to be one of the demons created by Arius, but was discarded for being a "defect". She is adopted by the demon hunting clan of the Vie du Marli and kills Arius in the game's climax.
    • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: Arkham's murder of his wife Kalina Ann results in their daughter Mary, now known as Lady, becoming a demon hunter and killing him.
    • Vergil, Dante's Evil Twin brother, begets a child named Nero who would become the protagonist of Devil May Cry 4 and Devil May Cry 5. Nero would also defeat Vergil in 5.
  • Demon of Human Origin: Arius, Arkham, and the Order of the Sword are humans who gain demonic powers at some point in the story.
  • Divinely Appearing Demons: Mundus, Argosax, Sanctus and Artemis easily qualify. See Light Is Not Good below for elaboration.
  • Light Is Not Good:
    • Mundus's first form resembles that of an angel or Greek/Roman god. His true form is a grotesque, writhing mass of flesh, befitting a terrifying demon lord.
    • Arius is an Evil Sorcerer and Corrupt Corporate Executive who wears a white suit.
    • Argosax the Despair Embodied looks like a fiery angel.
    • One of the bosses in 3 is Beowulf, a demon with the power of light. After it is defeated by Vergil, it is converted into a set of gauntlets and greaves and grants Vergil the original demon's light powers. Vergil uses these weapons in all of his playable appearances throughout the series.
    • Sanctus, Credo and Agnus are members of the Order of the Sword, a religious organization that worships Sparda and is in charge of defending Fortuna from demon attacks. They are also revealed to be experimenting with turning humans into demons to become more powerful and are willing to use humans like Kyrie as sacrifices in their goals. The Order all wear white uniforms and their demon forms are deliberately designed to look more like angels than demons, with Credo outright calling himself an angel the first time we see him transform. This gets subverted with Sanctus's final form, Sanctus Diabolica, giving him glowing red eyes, horns and sinister-looking wings.
    • Artemis is a boss fought by Nero in 5. It looks like a cross between a seraphim (six-winged heavenly being) and a mermaid. It's sobriquet is "The Illuminating Corruption".
  • Meet the New Boss: The primary villains of DMC tend to either be demon lords who were defeated by Sparda in the past (Mundus and Argosax), humans seeking demonic powers (Arius, Arkham, Sanctus, and Chen) or would-be usurpers (Sid, Vergil, and Urizen). That said, they do vary in terms of abilities, origins, methods, and relationships with the heroes as seen in Contrasting Sequel Antagonist.

Recurring

    Vergil/Nelo Angelo 
See Vergil

Devil May Cry Villains

    Mundus 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mundus_dmchdc.png
"Again I must face a Sparda... strange fate, isn't it?"
"So sad that humans will always be humans, no more. Has the Sparda blood been spoiled over the ages?"

Voiced by: Tony Daniels

Two thousand years ago, the Human and the Demon worlds were at war, and the dark emperor Mundus was at the helm of the demon side. He planned to rule both worlds, but Sparda defeated Mundus, sealing him and a number of portals to the Demon World away. Needless to say, the Prince of Darkness was not pleased.

He serves as the main villain of the first Devil May Cry game. Planning to use a portal on Mallet Island to return to the Human World, he used Trish to lure Dante there and sent his generals, particularly Nelo Angelo, to kill him. Unfortunately for Mundus, they all failed. Trish failed him as well, but Mundus decided to try a trick instead of outright killing her. Once Dante arrived in his lair, Mundus used Trish as a hostage, and took advantage of Dante being distracted to attack him. Trish took the killing blow for Dante, which wound up making Dante furious. The two then fought a legendary battle. As Dante was trying to escape Mallet Island afterwards, Mundus showed up again, albeit falling apart. Trish was eventually revealed to be alive, and helped Dante send Mundus back to the Demon World. As he disappeared, he promised that he would return.

Dialogue lines and plot points throughout the first game and the series in general heavily imply that Mundus was the one responsible for the death of Eva, the mother of Dante and Vergil. Dante himself believes this and tells Trish so after Mundus kills Griffon. But apart from Dante's line, bits of additional lore and supplemental confirmation have also been officially disclosed to confirm Mundus as the one who killed Eva.
  • Advancing Boss of Doom: The third and final phase of his boss fight has him chasing Dante around the collapsing Mallet Island.
  • Agony Beam: If you're not up to par, expect to receive this in the last fight.
  • Bad Boss: In his first scene, he kills Griffon in cold blood even as Griffon begged him for aid in defeating Dante, with it being heavily implied that it's far from the first time he's done so. Later, he uses Trish as a shield against Dante.
  • Beard of Evil: His older form sports one.
  • Big Bad: He's a devil prince who tried to take over the human world in the past but was sealed away by Sparda in the backstory. The plot of the first game is kickstarted as Mundus starts breaking free of his prison, and sends Trish to lure Dante to Mallet Island so he can exact his revenge. Later installments also reference this by mentioning Mundus as the one behind the tragedy that killed Eva in the Sparda family's home. Essentially, he is the main antagonist in the backstory of the Devil May Cry series, even if he only had a few appearances or mentions in the next games after 1.
  • Big "NO!": Both after you defeat him the second time and when Dante seals him away with help from Trish.
  • Blob Monster: His true form is a slimy orange mass with a lot of arms and eyeballs. His marble outer shell slowly but surely crumbles as you face him in mortal combat. By the time you've vanquished him for good, most of his grotesque, fleshy true form — nothing more than a writhing mass of living tissue, complete with three eyeballs dangling from their eyestalks and hundreds of arms — is exposed.
  • Combat Tentacles: In his third form, with hands at the end of them.
  • Continuity Cameo: He appears in The Stinger of DMC3 in the form of his three eyes, appearing to fight Vergil.
  • Create Your Own Hero: Dante became a demon hunter to eventually find and kill the demon that killed his mother. That demon, Mundus, makes the foolish mistake of luring Dante to his island in an attempt to kill him. Worse, Mundus' cruel treatment of his minion Trish makes her pull a Heel–Face Turn and lend her power to Dante in his climactic battle with the villain.
  • Clipped-Wing Angel: Subverted with his final form. Though the demon prince is grievously wounded from the previous confrontation and has much less powerful attacks than before, Dante is unable to put him down for good. It takes Trish's intervention for the two to triumph over the villain, and even then they don't destroy him, but banish him to the devil world again.
  • Complete Immortality: Heavily implied. Due to the power of the Qlipoth Fruit, Mundus is practically indestructible. It takes Dante and Trish combining their strength just to put him back in his can.
  • The Emperor: Mundus was the ruler of the Demon World before Sparda sealed him away.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • It's pointed out in the enemies files that even Mundus despises the Nobodies, hence why they never have an actual title.
    • While he doesn't make a physical appearance in Project X Zone 2, Mundus disapproves of Ouma crumbling the Demon World's balance, since it would mess up his revenge plans on Dante.
  • Evil Counterpart: To Sparda. The Greater-Scope Villain to Sparda's Greater-Scope Paragon, the Big Bad to Sparda's Big Good, but is everything Sparda wasn't. While both have three eyes in their true forms, Mundus looked like a gigantic fallen angel while Sparda was essentially an ascended demon. Mundus has angelic, feathered wings and his benevolent appearance is a shell that hides his hideous true form. Sparda's disguise is far more human, and unlike Mundus' stone shell is much less creepy.
  • Evil Is Bigger: He towers over Dante in all of his forms.
  • Evil Is Petty: After being defeated by Dante and reimprisoned, he devotes his time to sending out lesser demons to mess with him.
  • Evil Is Visceral: His third form, where his statue facade begins to crack and reveals his pulsating, lava-like blood.
  • Eldritch Abomination: His third form looks like something straight of a Lovecraft work, what with the the exposed tissue, the appendages coming out of it, and the Extra Eyes.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: He has a very low voice fit for a villain.
  • Extra Eyes: He's commonly associated with three-points of lights for the placement of his eyes.
  • Eye Beams: Three of them.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: Besides the eye-like core that is his weak spot, there's the whole Blob Monster with three barely-connected eyes thing...
  • Fallen Angel: Is deliberately set up to look like this.
  • Familial Foe: He has been a longtime enemy of Sparda and his bloodline, fighting not only Sparda himself, but also his sons Dante and Vergil.
  • Fantastic Racism: Does not have a high opinion on humans, as shown with his quote at the top, and claims Sparda was stupid to have children with a human, believing he inherently handicapped his children. However, Dante proves him wrong by becoming far more powerful than Sparda due to his humanity. Not that Mundus would ever realize that, or accept it if he did.
    Mundus: Sparda. Sparda. That traitor! Had he not sullied demon blood with a human womb, perhaps he could had a son with at least some grit.
  • Final Boss: For the original game.
  • Grandpa God: His old man form definitely invokes this, but he's really more like Satan than anything.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Of the entire series up until his defeat. A lot of events can be traced back to his battle against Sparda. Many of the demons that show up in the sequels, like the Assaults, Angelos, and their relations, are his creations. While he's sealed away, he still torments Dante in the prequel novel to 5 by sending demons after him.
  • Holy Halo: A promotional artwork of Mundus from the first game depicts him with a bright halo behind his head.
  • Klingon Promotion: There was an unnamed Demon King, but Mundus (who gained power from consuming a Qliphoth fruit) killed him in order to take over as the new Demon King.
  • Large and in Charge: In 1, Mundus, the demon king, is one of the largest demons Dante has to face.
  • Last-Second Villain Recovery: In the finale, Dante seemingly defeats Mundus after an epic boss battle that goes from deep space to a volcanic crater. However, just before Dante is about to escape the collapsing island, a badly-wounded Mundus reappears for a rematch; though Dante is able to destroy his statuesque facade and uncover his true Blob Monster form, Mundus is able to magically weaken his opponent until he can no longer fight back. In the end, Trish has to use her power to recharge Dante, giving him the strength to banish the Emperor of the Underworld away once more.
  • Living Statue: His first form is a giant winged statue which contains his true form.
  • Load-Bearing Boss: Defeating Mundus for the second time results in the gradual collapse of Mallet Island. Not that Mundus stays down...
  • Maou the Demon King: Mundus is the king of the Underworld and the ruler of all demonkind. After being defeated by Dante in 1, his position remains empty.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • In a way, given Mundus' basis as a Satanic Archetype, "mundus" is Latin for "the world" and is the root of the word "mundane."
    • Furthermore, "Rex Mundi" ("king of the world" in Latin) was an euphemism used by some Christians to refer to the Devil (stemming from mentions of Satan as the "prince of the world" in the New Testament), as well as a title the Cathars equated to the Gnostic Demiurge, whom they saw as a false God and the embodiment of all evil. All are traits true of Mundus.
    • Mundus' epitaph, "Prince of Darkness", is what John Milton uses to refer to Satan in Paradise Lost.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: His final form has hundreds of hands coming out of his body.
  • No-Sell: Holy Waters cannot be used during the rail shooter sequence of his first boss battle phase in Mission 22, with Dante claiming that Holy Waters don't work against him.
  • Perpetual Molt: Upon unveiling his old man form and wings.
  • Physical God: The best Sparda could do was kick his ass and then seal him away. Dante barely manages the same thing with his father's powers and a little help of Trish.
  • Playing God: The more powerful members of his army are mainly demons of his own design, including the Blades, Frosts, Nightmare and Trish in the original game, as well as the Assault and Blitz demons found in 4, and can even animate the lava in his boss fight into a dragon. Its also heavily hinted that he was the demon king that created the Leviathan from 3.
  • Post-Final Boss: Ironically, he's this to himself. While not a pushover, Mundus' third form is considerably easier than the two that preceded it, even with the loss of Sparda.
  • Predecessor Villain: In DMC5, the main villain Urizen a.k.a. Vergil's demonic half made flesh consumes a fruit from the Qliphoth tree in order to become the all-powerful ruler of the demon world. According to Trish, this was also how Mundus became the ruler of the demon world. Supplementary material of the game extended it further; there was a previous Demon King before Mundus ate the Qliphoth fruit in order to take his position by force.
  • Puny Earthlings: Looks down on humanity as a whole, and wanted to also conquer the Human World.
  • Reality Warper: Mundus can create sentient beings that are exact replicas of dead creatures, that even have the capacity for free will and the ability to betray him. He also creates a whole new dimension for the final battle of 1.
  • Red Baron: The Dark/Devil Emperor and The Devil King. In 3, Vergil also refers to him as the Prince of Darkness before rushing in to face him in a hopeless battle. Inscriptions in the first game also call Mundus by the name of Pluto.
  • Rule of Symbolism: According to a motion artist's words in the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook, Mundus's crumbling second form is meant to show how pitiful he is by that point in the finale.
  • Satanic Archetype: Mundus harbors many parallels to Satan. He is described as the Prince of Darkness and the Ruler of the Demon World, he fancies himself as God in his throne room, which is filled with light and made of perfect white marble, he calls down fire from heaven as one of his attacks, summons a serpentine dragon as another and appears as a multi-winged angel who fell from the heavens. Of course, those images are a mask to his true Blob Monster form. He also tries to use temptations against Dante, first by luring him to Mallet Island by using Trish who is created in the image of Dante's mother and then offering to make more copies of Trish after he kills her.
  • Sculpted Physique: Mundus looks like an enormous marble statue of an angel (with a gaping, open ribcage).
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Mundus was sealed away by Sparda prior to the events of 1. He suffers the same fate once more after being defeated by Dante and Trish in the finale of that game. According to the spin-offs, Mundus is still sealed away after several years, but he sends out demons to fight Dante in his stead.
  • Sequential Boss: His boss fight in Mission 22 has two back-to-back phases; the first is a rail shooter sequence that takes place in a conjured outer space universe, while the second takes place in a boiling magma surrounded by rocks. Fortunately, Dante acquires a powerful Devil Trigger form using the Sparda to match Mundus's strength. On the other hand, the third part of his boss fight happens in the next mission.
  • Shielded Core Boss: In the first phase of his boss fight, Mundus periodically summons four magical orbs to create a protective barrier against Dante's attacks.
  • Shock and Awe: One of the powers he uses the most is electrical manipulation, being able to summon barrages of lightning in his battle against Dante or unleashing a powerful stream of electricity to kill Griffon, who themselves has masterful control over the element. It also hints at his connection to Trish. It is also the element associated with his forces the most, including the Plasmas, Blitz, Trish, Griffon, Cavaliere Angelo
  • Third Eye: His three glowing eyes are his calling card.
  • Villain Respect: Despite absolutely hating Sparda with every inch of his being, he does at least seem to respect the Dark Knight's power and resolve.
    Mundus: Those eyes... deep in them I see the same light as in Sparda's eyes.
  • We Will Meet Again:
    • He pulls a variant of this; when Trish gives Dante the power to reseal Mundus, he promises to return someday. Dante is nonplussed, and implies that he will pass on the responsibility to stop Mundus to a future generation.
      Mundus: Dante, I will return! AND I WILL RULE THIS WORLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLD!!!!!!!
      Dante: Goodbye. And when you do come back, give my regards to my son, willya?
    • The novels confirm this somewhat. While other demons like Berial are stated to be his "heirs", Mundus has been sending lackeys to torment Dante despite still being sealed away in Hell. The implication is Mundus can't leave his prison, but he can send out other demons to fight in his stead.
  • Winged Humanoid: As vaguely as this one can be applied, given what he really looks like underneath that marble shell. Only displays this during his first phase and, weirdly, during his Big "NO!" after phase two.
  • You Have Failed Me:
    • He kills Griffon for failing to kill Dante (even relishing the moment with an Evil Laugh), and dialogue implies he's done the same to others that failed him in the past. Dante doesn't approve of this.
    • Mundus also dismisses Trish as a failure after she failed to kill Dante during the latter's battle with Nightmare. Fortunately, she gets better and helps Dante when he's busy fighting Mundus.

    Phantom 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/phantom_devil_may_cry.jpg
"Ack... argh... You... you're not just any ordinary human... What are you?"

Voiced by: Howard Jerome

The first of Mundus's servants encountered in Mallet Island, Phantom attacks Dante in a chapel located inside the castle and later on the roof, aside from chasing Dante in certain areas. For some reason implied to involve Time Travel, he appears again in a boss battle of DMC2 when you attempt to open the gate to the demon realm.
  • Achilles' Heel: Phantom only takes damage when struck in his two weak points; his face, and the top of his abdomen. The rest of his body is armored and fully impervious to any attack.
  • Advancing Boss of Doom: He appears behind you in some areas, trying to rush you down or shoot you with fireballs until you escape.
  • Beware My Stinger Tail: Will occasionally attack Dante with it.
  • Breath Weapon: He can shoot heat beams out of his maw.
  • The Brute: He doesn’t really have any special gimmicks like Griffon or Nightmare, or special skills like Nelo Angelo’s swordplay or Trish’s ability to pass as human. He just smashes or incinerates whatever he is ordered to.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Zigzagged. Unlike his fellow brethren under Mundus, there are no demons that resemble Phantom in the fifth game. However, a nightmare version of him does make an appearance in the prequel manga centered on V, where he is cited as an example of a rebellious demon that is not easy to make allies of.
  • Deader than Dead: The version of him spawned from Vergil's nightmares winds up fighting and getting killed by V instead of contracted, meaning anything even resembling the original Phantom is gone from the world.
  • The Dragon: One of Mundus' generals and apparently his right-hand man. Whether or not he was Co-Dragons with Sparda before the demon knight's defection or became Mundus' general in Sparda's absence is unknown.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Has a deep, harsh voice. So deep and harsh, the game turns on a closed caption feature to make sure the player understands what he's saying.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Dante and Lucia fights Phantom again in the second game. But aside from a short text implying Time Travel, he just suddenly and literally falls from the sky in his introductory cutscene without any significant build up prior to it. Dante doesn't even make any comment about him, despite having killed him some time in the first game.
  • Giant Spider: He's basically this, with scorpion features. Made of stone and lava, that is.
  • Hoist by Their Own Petard: It's possible for him to kill himself during his final battle in 1; if he performs his body smash enough times on the glass centerpiece of the boss arena, he'll end up falling through and triggering his own death scene.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He eventually falls through the glass ceiling and gets impaled on the Knight Statue's spear.
  • Magma Man: He manifests via earth and magma.
  • Meteor-Summoning Attack: In the third/final battle against the lava spider/scorpion Phantom, he utilizes an attack consisting of launching a meteor shower of fireballs from his back/stinger tail onto Dante. The attack is so powerful it makes Phantom pass out for a few seconds, leaving him vulnerable.
  • Playing with Fire: He has control over fire, channeling it to form attacks such as fireball spits or geysers.
  • Recurring Boss: With six appearances (four in 1 and two in 2), he's second only to Vergil as the most recurring boss in the series. He also holds the record of having the most recurrences in a single game.
  • Scary Scorpions: He has pincers and can turn his fat abdomen into a long scorpion-tail.
  • Tennis Boss: If you're feeling especially cocky since it's risky to pull off, you can optionally deflect his fireballs back at him with a well-timed sword slash, which does good damage.
  • This Cannot Be!: A dying Phantom wonders who Dante is, and has this reaction when he immediately remembers an image of Sparda over the latter. Dante then confirms Phantom's suspicion.
    Phantom: No... the legendary Sparda...!? It can't be!
    Dante: You're right - I'm his son, Dante. Sweet dreams!
  • Time Travel: An excerpt from the Guidepost suggests that Phantom was brought through some "door to the past" for his appearance in 2.
  • Turns Red: Phantom turns a brighter shade of red and moves noticeably faster right around when you had him at about a fifth of his life bar.
  • The Voiceless: In 2. Possibly justified, as he was only there for two boss battles and he dies after both.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: If you try to mindlessly hack and slash Phantom to death as you can do with the puppets previously, he will incinerate you. He shows you that the bosses in this series are meant to be taken very seriously.

    Griffon 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/griffon_devil_may_cry.jpg
"You! Are you the human, the son of Sparda, who challenges the Darkness Mundus?"

Voiced by: Howard Jerome

The second of Mundus' servants to face Dante, Griffon appears as a huge demonic eagle which attacks Dante several times in his journey. He's eventually defeated by Dante but is destroyed by an enraged Mundus who no longer sees his worth. His undignified death gives Dante the resolve to kill Mundus.


  • Alas, Poor Villain: It's hard not to feel sorry for him when Mundus decides to brutally kill him for failing to take down Dante.
  • Body Horror: His "face," which is a half dozen upper beaks around a hole.
  • Dying Deal Upgrade: Subverted. When Dante mortally wounds Griffon, he prays to its master, Mundus, for a final burst of strength so he might finish Dante off before he dies. Mundus appears in the sky, but declares You Have Failed Me and executes Griffon himself.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: He has a deep demonic voice.
  • Feathered Fiend: Evil eagle-like demon.
  • Giant Flyer: Emphasis on "Giant."
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: In 2, Griffon is one of the heads of the Final Boss Argosax the Chaos along with some other bosses, including the above-mentioned Giant Space Flea from Nowhere Phantom. However, what makes this worse than Phantom's is that unlike all the other bosses, Griffon was never fought in the story and, in fact, did not even make an appearance in the whole game, which means that he literally comes out of nowhere to be a part of the final boss. Quite possibly the most baffling version of this trope ever.
  • Graceful Loser: He is rather hostile towards Dante during the duration of Mission 18 but after being felled by Dante, he exchanges some words of respect before Mundus kills him.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Is pinned to a sacrificial pentagram by a giant pointy rock sent by Mundus when Griffon pleads for his master to aid him after Dante defeats him the final time.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: In contrast to Phantom, Griffon's less evil and more fighting out of true loyalty to Mundus.
  • Recurring Boss: He attacks Dante three times.
  • Shock and Awe: With red lightning.
  • Skippable Boss: Because Dante's weapons are carried over in a New Game Plus, it's possible to skip the first Griffon fight in Mission 9 by striking the torch of the locked gate with Ifrit as soon as you reach the coliseum's entrance, instead of going through the intended path of revisiting the area where you obtain the weapon then backtracking to the coliseum's entrance which would've triggered the boss fight.
  • Thunderbird: Despite his name, he has more in common with a thunderbird than a typical griffon. Unlike most griffons, he only has two legs and no leonine features, and like a thunderbird, he has the ability to manipulate electricity.
  • Undying Loyalty: Griffon is tragically loyal to Mundus to the very end even when his master has had enough and kills him for failing to kill Dante several times.
  • Villainous Valor: Even after getting a wing torn off, he still fights. Then he's crushed underneath a stone pillar. Griffon still refuses to give up. Dante even tells him he's mortally wounded, and Griffon acknowledges that Dante is the son of Sparda, but that he must keep fighting him for his master. Unfortunately for him, he's killed by Mundus.
  • You Have Failed Me: Said word-for-word by Mundus, who fries him when he's defeated for the third time. This doesn't sit well with Dante at all.

    Nightmare 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nightmare_devil_may_cry.jpg

A bionic demon-weapon built by Mundus and is one of the major threats sent after Dante. It appears as a large Blob Monster with a variety of powers. Nightmare is seemingly impervious at first, requiring Dante to take advantage of some special mechanisms that solidify it and expose its vulnerable core.


  • Attack Drone: Sends out several to cover its core, as well as make life for Dante hell in general.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: Nightmare has a weakpoint that you have to expose by first solidifying it, then smashing the glowing core.
  • Blob Monster: It's an amorphous black mass that tries to swallow Dante. If exposed to light, it morphs into a solid, organic tank.
  • Boss-Arena Idiocy: Nightmare first appears as a completely invulnerable pool of black goo which swallows Dante up if he touches it. Wherever it is found, there will always be blue circles and switches in the arena to keep it solid and make it turn to a more dangerous, yet vulnerable form. As mentioned in its Enemy File, these are justified; the same embossed circles allow it to be restrained and controlled in the first place, ensuring that it will do what its maker wanted. Therefore, charging them to solidify it is a necessary drawback.
  • Combat Tentacles: Which can become spears.
  • Damage-Sponge Boss: If you fight Nightmare with its red cores during the third fight with it, expect the fight to last a while.
  • Eldritch Abomination: A giant blob monster containing the half-digested remains of its victims that may or may not even be alive in the first place.
  • Energy Weapon: Its main attack when in "solid" state is an ice version of this.
  • Horrifying the Horror: The Visions of V Manga reveal that, when Mundus created Nightmare, even he was disturbed by the potential destructive power he had created, choosing to bind it in order to reign in it's power to a more manageable level.
  • An Ice Person: In "slime" form, Nightmare sends out little black slugs that latch onto Dante, freeze him, and explode into ice. In "solid" form, standing directly in front of it will prompt it to fire a high-damaging ice beam with a long duration from its "mouth."
  • Life Drain: Each time Nightmare absorbs Dante, it takes away some of his health and his Devil Trigger bar. If allowed to do this enough times, it will be able to activate a Devil Trigger of its own.
  • Like Cannot Cut Like: Nightmare-β cannot damage it.
  • Mook Bouncer: Nightmare is a warp boss in 1, where it's a double-edged sword: if Dante gets sucked in by Nightmare, he's sent to another dimension to fight an earlier — but weaker — boss. However, when he defeats the weaker boss, a good chunk of damage is dealt to Nightmare when Dante escapes.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: It isn't called Nightmare because of its harmless nature.
  • Nigh-Invulnerability: Whenever it's a writhing pile of gloop. You have to activate the pedestals located in the room in order to force Nightmare to turn solid and reveal its weak point.
  • Nightmare Sequence: If it absorbs Dante, he is trapped in a dream world (really just a smallish arena with floating skulls), and must beat a (much weaker) hallucinatory version of a previous boss. Success gives Dante a Green Orb (which heals him) and causes him to break violently out of Nightmare, tearing out a large chunk of its mass but not damaging the core.
  • No-Sell: As the Nightmare-β was designed in a similar fashion to the real Nightmare, its lasers (which are game-breaking if even three runes of Dante's Devil Gauge are charged) are ineffective against its brother bioweapon. Presumably, the same would apply for Trish's Nightmare-γ in 2.
  • Recurring Boss: It's fought three times, all towards endgame (Missions 16, 18, and 20).
  • Turns Red: Nightmare becomes more aggressive after you deplete its life bar for the last time. The formerly slow and predictable machine suddenly regenerates about a quarter of its health, breaking apart into a pulsing half-solid, half-goo mass that pelts Dante with lasers, missiles, and slugs while sucking away his power gauge and trying to eat him.

Devil May Cry 2 Villains

    Arius 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arius_dmc2.png
"The world is already warped. Everything that belongs to the demons will eventually revert to its original form."

Voiced by: Sherman Howard

The president of an international public corporation named Uroboros, he wishes to revive the demon king Argosax the Chaos and absorb his power. To complete this task, he travels to Dumary Island in search of the Arcana, magical artifacts necessary for breaking Argosax's seal.

It is revealed that Arius is the creator of Lucia, a "defect" whom he abandoned long ago.

In the end, his ambition is thwarted by Dante's trickery, who sets up Arius by switching the Arcana Medaglia with his own lucky coin. While Dante defeats him during their first fight, Arius is later revived as a demon and is ultimately destroyed by his own creation, Lucia.
  • Affably Evil: He's quite polite and refined... until the Villain Decay kicks in.
  • Badass Arm-Fold: Does a smug little one to signify his teleportation spell.
  • Badass Fingersnap: How all his magic is cast aside from his barrier (Arius holds up his hand for that) and his translocation ability (see directly above). He even has different animations depending on if he's merely summoning more flunkies or directly attacking.
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: He wears some pretty snazzy formal clothes, with a fur-lined longcoat over that... with a cape attached to that.
  • Barrier Warrior: Can create a dark barrier to deflect attacks, although he only does this randomly. It is completely impregnable, and Arius is smart enough to hold it up as long as Dante keeps attacking, so the only way he'll drop it is for the player to momentarily cease their offensive.
  • Beard of Evil: That is one sinister goatee.
  • Big Bad: The primary antagonist of 2.
  • Body Horror: Possessed Arius and Arius-Argosax, especially the latter.
  • Breath Weapon: One of Arius-Argosax's attacks (besides his Prehensile Tail) is puking on you. Eww...
  • Casting a Shadow: Included in his arsenal are portals of dark energy that swallow up his enemies and send them crashing down to the ground in another location, spires of darkness, and — of course — his Summon Magic.
  • Chest Blaster: Possessed Arius has two varieties: a burst of several covering a large area in front of him and a longer-lasting beam that follows you. Both can be avoided pretty easily by running under Arius when he levitates and flanking his side/back.
  • Clipped-Wing Angel: Upon somehow gaining some of Argosax's power, Arius returns to fight Lucia as a demon. He's bigger, vastly more powerful, and resistant to most of your attacks (and he gets a deeper voice, too), but he's also extremely clumsy and many of his attacks can be seen coming from a mile away, making them easily avoidable. By the time you face his second form, he's a painfully ridiculous and laughable cakewalk of a Final Boss.
  • Combat Tentacles: Possessed Arius has two.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: He is the CEO of an international enterprise that has spent decades corrupting a peaceful island into a desolate demon's paradise.
  • Create Your Own Hero: Lucia is revealed to be one of the demons created by Arius but was discarded for being a "defect". She is adopted by the demon hunting clan of the Vie de Marli and kills Arius in the game's climax.
  • Demon of Human Origin: In the end, Arius transforms into a tentacled demon, and later mutates into Arius-Argosax.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Done in a roundabout fashion. Turning himself into Arius-Argosax destroys his mind, and his previous title of Possessed Arius implies he's in little control of himself anymore.
  • Evil Sorceror: Has great magical prowess, having dabbled in the dark arts.
  • Fatal Flaw: His greed. Despite already being a rich and powerful sorcerer in his own right, he covets more and more power, trying to absorb the power of Argosax and make himself a god. Instead, he gets turned into a mindless lizardlike demon, losing his summoning magic and higher reasoning abilities. Lucia also kills him with ease in this state when he easily defeated her as a human.
  • Final Boss: Of Lucia's story in the second game, though he's the second-to-last boss in Dante's (third if you consider Argosax and The Despair Embodied to be two separate entities).
  • Foil: To Arkham. Both men are ordinary humans that wanted to gain godlike power. Unlike Arkham, he is already a rich and powerful man that owns his own island and corporation and didn't need trickery to get what he wanted.
  • Fur and Loathing: Arius wears a burgundy fur-trimmed coat that he wears like a cape, leaving the sleeves to hang loose.
  • A Glass of Chianti: Can be seen sipping on red wine while lounging around on his desk/throne during your battles against him. Interrupt him (or let Arius finish his drink and inspect it) and he'll lazily start firing upon you with his revolver.
  • Greed: As CEO of Uroboros, Arius was rich enough to own his own island, including his own helicopter and security systems, with an entire complex with the Uroboros logo on his buildings. He already has a task force of demons that serve him and demonstrates to be a far more powerful sorcerer than even Arkham or Sanctus in his own right. Despite this, he's still not satisfied with mere mortal power and wants to "transcend all living things. Even more than his overblown ego, this is his undoing.
  • Godhood Seeker: At first. When the Villain Decay hits, it then pulls a 360 and plummets straight into Drunk on the Dark Side.
  • Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The result of Lucia's battle with him. Dante's first fight against Arius subverts this as Dante is clearly the victor, but Arius gains a second wind, effortlessly dodges Dante's attempted deathblow, and then blows up his tower.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Lucia ends up being the one to finally vanquish him. All of this, after deeming her to be defective.
  • Impossibly Cool Clothes: He is EXTRAVAGANTLY dressed, to put it the least, as he's got a striking white fur-lined coat on with matching fur-lined cuffs, and a red, fur-lined cape too!
  • Life Drain: Possessed Arius has an odd variation. One of his attacks has him slide across the ground and capture Lucia with the pulsating red orb found on his chest cavity. It drains Lucia's health bar, but doesn't restore any of his own.
  • Large Ham: Sweet Jeebus. Mission 17 of Dante's disc firmly cements him as this trope, complete with a bout of chewery-scening laughter, Milking the Giant Cow numerous times, and an odd squealing battlecry right before Dante fights him.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: He's Lucia's creator.
  • Mad Scientist: Is explicitly stated to have created the Secretary demons and the Infestants were his idea.
  • Mage Marksman: He fights using sorcery and a customized revolver. He ditches the latter after being turned into a demon.
  • Man of Wealth and Taste: Look at that cigar and that suit.
  • Morphic Resonance: His slicked-back, spiky hair is preserved in each of his forms, even as Arius-Argosax.
  • Predecessor Villain: The DMC5 prequel novel, Before The Nightmare, reveals that Agnus, one of the villains from the fourth game, once worked for Uroboros, the international enterprise run by Arius. This makes Arius a predecessor villain to Agnus and by extension, the Order of the Sword as Agnus was tasked by Sanctus, the main villain of 4 to do the same thing. On a meta level, Arius can be considered a predecessor villain to Arkham and Sanctus by being the first human villain in the series with designs on becoming powerful by becoming a demon themselves. In fact, Arius' role in the game would be repeated beat-for-beat by 3 and 4; defeating Dante's main ally in the game, attaining demonic power, being defeated by Dante and then killed off permanently by the co-protagonist.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: After being very composed and refined for the whole game, once it's apparent the summoning ritual for Argosax is complete, Arius squeals in uncharacteristically childish glee over how he will become an all-powerful immortal. The moment it's obvious something is wrong, however, he essentially throws a huge temper tantrum up to his demise.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Subverted, it didn't do anything to Dante.
  • Science Wizard: Arius is a capable scientist and sorcerer.
  • Summon Magic: His main tactic. Just loves to summon various Mooks during his Boss Battle. It becomes grating when coupled with his Bodyguard Babes for Dante's second fight. Also, he summons one of the game's bosses (Furiataurus) to fight Dante in his stead.
  • Villainous Breakdown: He was already loopy by that point, but Arius has a meltdown after realizing that Dante has successfully sabotaged his ritual, screaming in anguish and hatred before they fight. When he returns as a demon to face Lucia, he's even worse.
    Arius (before Dante fights him, after he discovered that Dante set him up by switching the Medaglia with his coin): "Wheeeooooooooo!"
    Arius (post-defeat): "Oooh...! No... My dream... my life... I was meant to be the KEEEEEEEEEEEEENG of this world...!"
  • Villain in a White Suit: He wears a white suit and is an Evil Sorcerer, Mad Scientist and Corrupt Corporate Executive all rolled into one.
  • Villain Teleportation: Tends to warp around the field using portals of dark energy.
  • What, Exactly, Is His Job?: It's never really explained what product or service that Uroboros provides, although it's implied from commentary by Matier that it does urban development, mining for both ore and oil, and even mass production, given that she states that they turned Dumary Island into a modern-day city with an offshore oil rig, multiple factories, and mined for ores, all of which was just a pretense of Arius trying to get Argosax's power.
  • What the Hell Is That Accent?: His accent is usually consistent, but when it does fluctuate (which happens in the middle of cutscenes), it goes all over the place. German would be the most accurate descriptor, but there are times he sounds vaguely Eastern European. Some have even mistaken the accent as Chinese, believe it or not.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Subverted. He starts going insane before his ritual to take Argosax the Chaos's power even begins.

    The Servants of Arius 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/servants_of_arius.png
From the top left: Orangguerra, Jokatgulm, Infestant, Nefasturris, Furiataurus, Tateobesu, Bolverk, Noctpteran, Tartarussian & Plutonian, and Trismagia.

Powerful demons who serve Arius in his attempt to stall Dante and Lucia during the course of their journey. These are Orangguerra, Jokatgulm, Infestant, Nefasturris, Furiataurus, Tateobesu, Bolverk, Noctpteran, Tartarussian & Plutonian, and Trismagia. Although there's nothing much to say about them individually, they make up a significant portion of the game's boss fights.

In Dante's final missions, Nefasturris, Orangguerra, Jokatgulm, and Furiataurus later re-appear as parts fused in the body of Argosax the Chaos.


  • Advancing Boss of Doom: The Infested Chopper chases Dante through a burning building and across several rooftops.
  • All Your Powers Combined: Trismagia's strongest attack is to recombine and then fire a blast of powerful magical energy utilizing electricity, ice and fire.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: Noctpteran is a giant moth and can spawn huge larvae that try to swallow Dante whole.
  • Body Horror:
    • Trismagia rips himself apart in order to separate (complete with blood splashing into the air).
    • Nefasturris' second form is a deformed head known as Nefascapitas.
  • Breath Weapon: Nefasturris can shoot a devastating laser beam. Orangguerra, Furiataurus, and Trismagia all can spit projectiles (or in Furiataurus' case, a jetstream of flames) from their mouths as well.
  • The Brute: Orangguerra is a giant and hostile monster that possesses prodigious strength and agility.
  • Bullet Hell: Trismagia attacks randomly and without discretion, usually having his heads fire upon you in quick succession.
  • Bullfight Boss: Subverted. As expected of a bovine demon, Furiataurus has a charging attack, but the only things it can collide into in the arena are you and the crates holding Green Orbs, so the only mileage you'll get out of dodging is ensuring that you aren't flung halfway across the helipad.
  • Casting a Shadow: Bolverk has a dark-purple fume cloaking his upper body.
  • Cheshire Cat Grin: Trismagia's blue head is frozen in a perpetual, wide grin.
  • Cognizant Limbs:
    • Target Orangguerra's arms and you can eventually lob them off.
    • Jokatgulm's tentacles need to be eliminated from the equation if you want a clear shot at her head.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Trismagia's heads; the happy one is blue and controls lightning, the angry one is red and controls fire, while the sad one is white and controls ice.
  • Combat Tentacles: Jokatgulm is a water demon that attacks Dante by trying to slap him with its tentacles. Chopping them off is necessary in order to expose its body for attacks.
  • Death from Above:
  • Deflector Shields: Jokatgulm can erect one to protect herself should Dante or Lucia make it on top of her belly. It has a nasty habit of sending them flying across the room.
  • Degraded Boss: Orangguera shows up as an enemy a few missions after your boss fight with it in Dante's disc. He also shows up randomly as a Boss in a corresponding mission of Lucia's.
  • Dem Bones: Bolverk's body is skeletal in appearance.
  • Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: When swinging around its preferred weapon over its head, Furiataurus' hammer creates a vacuum effect that sucks in Dante towards the hammer.
  • Enigmatic Minion: Bolverk is an odd example in that he never speaks, so his personality and motives are very hazy. However, it's never clarified if he's actually a follower of Arius or just lurking around Dumary Island and Arius' HQ in wait for Dante.
  • Epic Flail: Tartarussian and Plutonian have huge spiked balls in lieu of hands.
  • Evil Laugh: Trismagia has a very creepy one.
  • Extra Eyes: Orangguerra and Tateobesu are respectively based on a monkey and a fish, but have four eyes.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: The Infested Tank and Infested Chopper, being techno-organic monstrosities, sport a single eye. Naturally, these are the demons' weak points.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Trismagia splits itself into three heads, each of whom command one of these three elements.
  • Flunky Boss: Bolverk is backed up by Freki and Geri, Plutonian can summon Agonofinis demons to aid him, Orangguerra does the same with the Msira, and Noctpteran continually lays eggs that hatch into Larvae which continue to attack even after their mother's death.
  • Fog of Doom: Jokatgulm tends to spew a poisonous mist that saps away your strength if you stay on her belly for too long.
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: Trismagia loves to hang back just outside the range of your firearms and only one of the three heads is vulnerable at a time.
  • Giant Flyer: Noctpteran is a giant moth that attacks Dante from above.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Tateobesu uses its eyes' glow to temporarily blind Lucia before their fight, though the flashing lights have no effect on her during gameplay.
  • Hellfire: Furiataurus is made of it; it even bleeds lava when attacked.
    Enemy File - Furiataurus: "Haunted by death, agony, and resentment of the condemned, its four limbs are still in flames."
  • Invisible Monster: Tateobesu can become invisible "by assimilating its body to water," but you can still see it as clear as day. While in this state, however, you can't lock-on to it. Naturally, it's stuck in its invisible state in Lucia Must Die mode.
  • Laser Blade: One of Bolverk's more potent attacks is empowering his spear and then performing a Stinger-like attack where a blade of energy extends from his (already long) weapon.
  • Living Structure Monster: Nefasturris, the Tower of Sin, is so massive that it uses a skyscraper as a conduit into the Human World.
  • MacGuffin Guardian: Tartarussian guards the Arcana Spada, and Plutonian guards the Arcana Medaglia.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Nefasturris means Tower of Sin, and the demon itself manifests from a skyscraper. Its second form, Nefascapitas, means Head of Sin, referencing how the boss decapitates itself to resume fighting.
    • The demon that resembles minotaurus is called Furiataurus (Bull of Fury).
    • The giant moth is called Noctpteran (Night Wing).
    • Trismagia means Three Mages, alluding to its ability to split into three separate magical entities.
    • Tartarussian and Plutonian come from Tartarus and Pluto.
    • Bolverk is an alias Odin once took while masquerading as a human, while Freki and Geri were two wolves who accompanied him in tales.
  • Mini-Boss: Infested Tank. You face three as Dante and one as Lucia.
  • Mix-and-Match Critter: Jokatgulm. She has the head of a cobra, the body of a jellyfish, and the tentacles of an octopus.
  • Moth Menace: Noctpteran is a humongous moth demon.
  • Multiple Head Case: Tartarussian and Plutonian, both of whom have two heads each.
  • Our Minotaurs Are Different: Furiataurus is a minotaurus made of flames and magma.
  • Playing with Fire: Trismagia's red head and Furiataurus both attack with fiery projectiles.
  • Punny Name: Oranguerra is a play on orangutan and guerra, the Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese word for "war."
  • Recurring Boss: Bolverk and his wolves. Dante first faces the two wolves alone as mini-bosses in Mission 5. They later reappear alongside their master in Missions 11 and 16.
  • Religion is Magic: Trismagia is the oracle of the Demon World. Overlaps with Evil Sorceror.
  • Savage Wolves: Bolverk's pet demon wolves, Freki and Geri. They're actually the reincarnated forms of his battle-mates.
  • Shielded Core Boss: Jokatgulm subverts this. You can bypass hacking away at her tentacles and go straight for her head, but it's a lot easier without her tentacles in the way.
  • Shock and Awe:
    • Trismagia's blue head attacks with lightning spheres.
    • Plutonian can also call forth electric beams to shoot out of the walls in its arena in order to attack Dante and entrap him by limiting his area of movement.
  • Spin Attack: Tartarussian and Plutonian tend to flail their maces around in wide, sweeping arcs.
  • Spin to Deflect Stuff: Bolverk and Tartarussian can spin their weapons to block your projectiles.
  • Super-Scream: Orangguerra can fire a bubble-like projectile of concussive force from its mouth.
  • Taking You with Me: When drained of all his health, Trismagia reforms to deliver one final blast that bites a chunk out of your lifebar. You need to survive or (more preferably) dodge it so that Trismagia can finally die. If it kills you (and given the length and structure of the battle, you'll probably be low on health at the time), you have to fight him all over again.
  • Third Eye: All three of Trismagia's heads sport a third eye on their forehead.
  • Underwater Boss Battle: Tateobesu, exclusive to Lucia's disc, is a giant fish that must be fought at the end of an underwater level.
  • The Voiceless: All of them barring Trismagia are completely silent.
  • Voice Grunting: Jokatgulm delivers a screechy wail as a death cry.
  • Wolfpack Boss: You fight three Infested Tanks at once in the fifth mission of Dante's campaign. They are parked at different spots of the highways, but it's possible for one tank to shoot you while you are busy dealing with another.
  • The Worm That Walks: Nefasturris is composed by swarms of lesser demons called "Nefasverminis" (Worms of Sin).
  • Worthy Opponent: Bolverk fought Sparda in the past, and now he wants a rematch against his son.

    Argosax the Chaos/The Despair Embodied 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/argosax.jpg

A King of the Demon World, Argosax is an ancient demon who was defeated by Sparda with the help of the Protectors clan from Vie de Marli and sealed using four magical artifacts. Arius seeks the Arcana to undo the seal, revive Argosax, and then absorb his power.

Despite Dante and Lucia thwarting Arius's plans, the resurrection ceremony commences anyway, opening a portal to the Demon World. Ultimately, Dante volunteers to go forth and defeat him. Argosax then assumes a sleeker and more powerful form, The Despair Embodied. After a long and tenuous battle, Dante ultimately emerges victorious, blasting the former Demon King to bits.

Before the Nightmare, the prequel novel to Devil May Cry 5, provides additional backstory to Argosax and supplements the lore that previously surrounded him. Argosax once waged war against Mundus two thousand years ago, which caused the Demon World to be split into two factions; one serving as Argosax's domain, and the other as Mundus's.


  • All Your Powers Combined: Argosax's first form is a pile of flesh and blood composed of pieces from Phantom, Griffon, Orangguerra, Jokatgulm, Nefasturris, and Furiataurus. Each demon will fire its signature attack at Dante if the hunter is within their line of sight.
  • Ambiguous Gender: The Despair Embodied is said to be a he, but appears as an androgynous horned being made of fire whose sex changes depending on its weapon; the male uses a Flaming Sword, while the female brandishes a whip.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Although a great war occurred between him and Mundus, Argosax ruled over the rest of the Demon World and subdued all the demons under his domain.
  • Back from the Dead: This one shouldn't come as a surprise.
  • Bishōnen Line: Argosax is introduced as a grotesque amalgamation of the other bosses' bodies, but upon taking some damage, he morphs into a more powerful humanoid form known as The Despair Embodied. More specifically, Argosax's Chaos form appears to be a cocoon/shell for his true appearance.
  • Blob Monster: When confronted by Dante, Argosax is presented as a macabre amalgamation of several bosses (Phantom, Furiataurus, Nefasturris, Jokatgulm, and Orangguerra, as well as Griffon from 1), resulting in a grotesque lump of flesh with countless demons' faces and limbs gruesomely merged into each other.
  • Body of Bodies: Combined with the above-mentioned Blob Monster, taking the form of a gigantic pile of brown flesh with the heads of most of the previous bosses in the game (and Griffon from 1) jutting out of it.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Despite being a demon king on par with Mundus, by the time of Devil May Cry 5, Dante can't even remember his name.
  • Demoted to Extra: Due to retcons. In 2, Argosax is considered THE bad guy, the toughest demon Dante has faced yet. This was of course before the full inception of Vergil, Abigail and the Savior. Come the 5 prequel novel, Argosax has been relegated to barely registering on Dante's lifelong radar to the point where he can't even be bothered to remember its name.
  • Eldritch Abomination: As Argosax, the form is constantly shape-shifting that could give Mundus's third form a run for its money.
  • Final Boss: Of Dante's story in 2.
  • Flash Step: A specialty of The Despair Embodied is disappearing from sight and then blindsiding you with one of its attacks.
  • Flat Character: Has no personality to speak of and doesn't talk, which is rather bizarre given his station and the franchise's colorful cast of demons. His closest subordinate Balrog, by contrast, has a very lively personality.
  • Foil: To Mundus. Both are angelic final bosses and rulers of hell. For Mundus, however, the angelic form is a mask to hide his true, pathetic Blob Monster form, and he fights mostly with projectiles and long-ranged attacks aside from the rare punch. Argosax, by contrast, is fought first as an immobile blob, before taking on its true form of The Despair Embodied, who focuses mainly on teleporting about trying to stab Dante with its swords or whip him to death.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Not even the slightest prior mention was given to The Despair Embodied's existence in the story. It simply bursts out of a cocoon that ejects from Argosax's withering husk and immediately challenges Dante.
  • Glass Cannon: The Despair Embodied has much less health than Argosax, but zips around the place and hits like hell.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: All of Arius's plotting in 2 is done so that he can revive Argosax and take the demon king's power for his own.
  • Horned Humanoid: The Despair Embodied.
  • Informed Attribute: Sparda had already shut down most of his power when his fight with Argoxas happened, so his being at Mundus's level doesn't seem right.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: After a lengthy battle, Dante finishes off the Despair Embodied with a charged shot from his gun, shattering the demon lord into numerous pieces.
  • Marathon Boss: Argosax has a ton of health, but most of its heads can be safely blasted with the rocket launcher from outside their attack range.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Despair Embodied.
  • Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: The Despair Embodied is able to freely shapeshift between a male and female form, depending on its weapon; the male uses a Flaming Sword, while the female brandishes a whip.
  • Physical God: Argosax is another powerful demon who was sealed away by Sparda. The DMC5 prequel novel, Before the Nightmare, states that Argosax was powerful enough to challenge Mundus after the latter had eaten the Qliphoth fruit and their battle ended up splitting the demon world into two halves, one ruled by Mundus and the other ruled by Argosax. Interestingly, Sparda did manage to kill Argosax as opposed to merely sealing him away, with the Big Bad's plot in 2 revolving around reviving the demon king and—you guessed it—obtaining his power.
  • Playing with Fire: The Despair Embodied, albeit in the form of explosive combustion.
  • Power Copying: See Blob Monster above. Notably, some of the bosses that comprise Argosax skip their Turns Red phase and whip out their more powerful attacks from the get-go.
  • Power Gives You Wings: The Despair Embodied looks like a fiery angel. It even has an attack where it fires a volley of its feathers to rain down on you.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Argosax is an extremely powerful demon lord who is trapped in the Underworld, with later lore divulged during the lead-up period to 5 establishing he was equal in power to Mundus without any mention of the Qliphoth fruit that gave Mundus his immense strength. Arius' plan is to summon him in order to harvest the creature's power. He succeeds despite Dante's interference, but is killed before we see the results of his efforts. Then Argosax's power revives Arius as demon (Possessed Arius), eventually warping him into an Eldritch Abomination that Lucia faces as her disc's Final Boss (Arius-Argosax) while Dante is off putting down the real deal.
  • Superboss: Dante's Secret Room 60 contains what is by far the hardest fight in 2 - The Despair Embodied with mooks followed by TWO Despair Embodieds. Try this on Dante Must Die at your peril!
  • Voice Grunting: The Despair Embodied. If you listen closely enough, the voices for The Despaired Embodied seem to be that of Dante (male) and Lucia (female), suggesting it may be a Voice Changeling.
  • Worf Had the Flu: He's been on both sides of this trope.
    • Sparda needed help to defeat Argosax because the former had sealed much of his power in his swords.
    • When Argosax was summoned, he was not in his full power because Arius had taken part of it, resulting in the Possessed Arius and Arius-Argosax boss fights.

Devil May Cry 3 Villains

    Arkham/Jester 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arkham_and_jester.png
"Let's welcome chaos!"

Voiced by: Adam D. Clark

Lady's father, who helped Vergil release the Temen-ni-gru from confinement. He's well-versed in the knowledge of the dark arts, even going so far as to sacrifice Lady's mother to gain more power and knowledge for himself.

He manipulates Vergil, Lady, and Dante, bringing them together, as all three characters were necessary to break Sparda's seal and open the portal to the Demon Realm. He often disguises himself as Jester in order to trick them, weaken them, and keep all of them alive at the same time until they reach the room containing the seal. He tries to claim the power of the Force Edge and Sparda, only to be mutated into a giant blob-like mass, which wasn't the power of Sparda, but in reality a reflection of the evil in his heart. In the end, after being severely weakened by the Sons of Sparda and being thrown out of the demon realm, he meets his end by Lady's hand.
  • Almost Dead Guy: He actually invokes this trope to manipulate Lady further. He fakes Vergil's attempt to kill him as being fatal, playing on Lady's lingering familial love for him by acting like he's Dying as Yourself, to claim his prior actions were a result of Demonic Possession, shifting the blame away from himself and pushing Lady to "avenge" him.
  • Ambiguously Bi: Was married to a woman and as Jester, repeatedly taunts Dante that he will spank him on his butt, and also slaps his own ass provocatively in taunt when the latter beats him. Jester has a way of showing up and getting in Dante's personal space like a creepy obsessed stalker.
  • Archnemesis Dad: To Lady.
  • Asshole Victim: After he finishes his last tantrum, Lady shows no mercy and unloads her whole clip into his head.
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: His default outfit is a good-looking suit.
  • Bald of Evil: Part of his Obviously Evil appearance is his menacing chrome-dome.
  • Bare-Handed Blade Block: As Jester, he does this against Vergil in Mission 13.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: He shares the antagonistic role with Vergil in 3. While he and Vergil only joined forces to Out Gambit each other, he is ultimately the one who manipulates the events of the game to open the portal to Hell and then get rid of anyone who can stop him from getting Sparda's power.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: However, after gaining Sparda's powers, he degenerates into a larger, dumber demonic blob monster and is easily beaten by both Dante and Vergil, the latter of whom goes on to be the Final Boss. Arkham is repeatedly shown to be a non-entity without Vergil's support as a Dragon-in-Chief. Arkham may have manipulated Vergil but he couldn't have accomplished anything without Vergil's aid.
  • Big "NO!": He shouts this before his death at Lady's hands, although he didn't even manage to completely say the word as she quickly shoots him.
  • Blob Monster: Arkham degenerates into a bulbous, slimy monster after he fails to contain the power of Sparda.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: He goes into a Bond villain-style monologue in Mission 13 detailing his plan in manipulating the twins and his daughter into spilling their blood to undo the seal. He undid the final part of the seal by stabbing Lady with her bayonet through the leg, but failed to finish the job by killing her outright, which would have prevented her from getting up and turning her weapon on him... It also would have stopped her from killing him at the end, too.
  • Bullet Dancing: Jester loves doing this as a parody, especially when he introduced himself. Dante shoots at Jester's feet when he's becoming annoying, then the clown breaks into the Charleston as he dodges the bullets. In his boss fights, Jester does this whenever you attempt to shoot him, though after a few shots, he's tired out and left wide open for some melee hits.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: He refers to the word "Evil" with almost religious reverence. Vergil ignores him in these moments.
  • Chekhov's Gag: Jester randomly shouts "You can expect a spanking from daddy later." as one of his in-game battle quotes during his optional boss fights. He repeats the same line later on to Lady when the game reveals that he's actually Arkham, Lady's father.
  • Clipped-Wing Angel: In his monster form, Arkham is much slower and dumber than he was in the form of Sparda, to the point that Dante and Vergil run rings around him and cleave him apart. The flavor text states that the evil in his heart made him unable to control Sparda's power properly.
  • Conflict Killer: The animosity between Dante, Vergil and Lady is toned down once Arkham's true intentions are revealed, as they all consider killing him to be the top priority. When Arkham becomes a monster in the penultimate mission, the brothers team up in one of the franchise's many awesome moments just to defeat him. Vergil also lampshades it when he arrives. Immediately afterwards, the brothers go back to dueling each other over the power of Sparda stored in the Force Edge.
    Dante: Look at you... making a big dramatic entrance and stealing my spotlight.
    Vergil: Well, you don't possibly believe that he deserves to be our main event, now do you?
  • Create Your Own Hero: Arkham's murder of his wife Kalina Ann results in their daughter Mary, now known as Lady, becoming a demon hunter and killing him.
  • Demon of Human Origin: Near the end, he briefly turns into a form resembling Sparda, and then accidentally transforms into a blob-like mass. It gets undone as the Sons of Sparda defeat him in the second form, and he reverts to his human appearance before dying.
  • Despotism Justifies the Means: As he states, upon acquiring Sparda's power, he will "become the ultimate ruler of this wasteland engulfed with pandemonium."
  • Dirty Coward: Unlike his partner Vergil, Arkham displays no honor in combat. Even after gaining Sparda's power, he resorts to tactics like ambushing Dante, going into hiding during the Flunky Boss phase of his boss fight, and begging Dante and Vergil not to shoot him when he's defeated. He's also genuinely scared when Lady encounters and kills him.
  • Divide and Conquer:The entire plot of the third game revolves around Arkham deliberately pitting Dante, Vergil, and Lady against each other and then capitalizing on their strengths and contributions to his plan when the time is right.
  • Double Entendre: Calling the Temen-ni-gru tower a "thick shaft that causes women to shudder."
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: He reaches near Chewing the Scenery levels when he opens the portal to Hell in Mission 13.
  • Even Evil Can Be Loved: Deconstructed. Arkham is unabashedly evil, and Lady hates him for all of the atrocities he's committed... and yet she can't bring herself to completely hate him. When she kills him, she breaks down Cry Laughing, and in 5 she tells Nero that killing Vergil will leave a huge emotional scar on him, obviously speaking from experience.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Arkham is apparently unable to understand that Sparda sealed off the Demon World to save humanity, and believes he did so to "become a legend." He even rants about this to Lady, in regards to why he sacrificed his wife for power.
  • Evil Makes You Monstrous: Once he gains Sparda's power, he devolves into a horrific Blob Monster. The flavor text states outright that the transformation isn't a result of a power overload that was too much for Arkham, but because his heart is just that rotten and corrupt.
  • Evil Laugh: When he gets to open the portal to Hell.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • During his second (optional) boss fight in SE, he summons a large, sentient ball to ride, whose scarred face calls Arkham to mind. Notice how it also has one blue eye and one red eye...
    • When he was presumably dead after being stabbed by Vergil, they were standing in a location that wouldn't be visited until Mission 13. His body was encountered by Dante and Lady at the end of Mission 10, but it was actually on a different room.
    • Jester also wears a lot of purple, while the main conflict is between a man who wears red and a man who wears blue.
  • Gag Nose: Jester has one, which even folds down when Dante sticks his handgun close to it.
  • A God Am I: His megalomania was so great that having his ass handed to him by both Dante and Vergil combined was not enough to shatter his delusion of invincibility, and he dies demanding to know why what he did was so wrong.
    I have the true power of Sparda!
  • Godhood Seeker: His ultimate objective is to possess the power of Sparda, thus becoming a god.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: The burned, pulsating, disfigured left side of his face, which is actually seen moving along that side in a few cutscenes. According to the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook, he got the scars when the ritual that sacrificed his wife ended up failing.
  • Happy Harlequin Hat: Jester unsurprisingly wears one of these as part of his outfit.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: He's one of the biggest, most evil bastards in the series, sacrificing his own wife for power and being willing to kill his own daughter for that end. Arkham is living proof of Dante's claim in the anime that "humans are often worse than demons." and given the timeline, may have been the source of that belief.
  • Humans Are Special: Played with. While Arkham doesn't think humans in general are special and clearly favours demons and monsters (wishing to become one himself), he does seem to believe that there's more to humans than beings like Vergil give them credit for. In fact, he more-or-less cites this as the reason he managed to beat Dante, Vergil and Lady.
    Arkham: You have lost... because you underestimated humans.
  • Hypocrite: Arkham mocks Vergil for "[underestimating] humans". However, as soon as he gets his hands on the Force Edge and fights Dante, he tells Dante he could not possibly win against Arkham, because Dante is merely a "half-breed" instead of a true demon. Here, he effectively dismisses Dante's human side as nothing but weakness. This despite the fact that Arkham himself is a human with some of Sparda's power.
  • I Let You Win: Jester has additional boss battles spread out in the Special Edition, but he still acts as an advisor when Dante is stuck exploring some parts of the tower. It turns out Jester is Arkham and he needed Dante alive up until a point of his plan.
  • Instant Costume Change: Besides teleporting, Arkham has apparently mastered the art of changing his entire appearance in the split-second the camera cuts away from him. Best seen when he reveals he was Jester all along, switching between his two personas in the blink of an eye. Heck, at one point, all three of the main characters have their weapons on Jester's neck. One cut shot later, and Arkham is standing in the middle, having somehow switched outfits without even moving.
  • It's All About Me: Rationalizes all of his evil deeds — including the murder of his wife — as necessary steps in his goal to become a god right before Lady kills him.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: Lets out a Big "NO!" before Lady abruptly shoots him in the head.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Despite his Large Ham tendencies, Arkham somehow manages to make every scene he's in devoid of humor and his presence is just off-putting in general, what with his throbbing, pulsating veins on the left side of his face and his constant Death Glare. The only comedic elements he has at all are when he's disguised as Jester, and that's all just an act.
  • Lack of Empathy: His defining character trait. Arkham doesn't even give a damn over his act of killing his own wife, even if daughter Lady pursues him for it. That little moment when he mentions "A Devil named Vergil" manipulated him to do so was all a lie in order to convince Lady to seek revenge on Vergil instead.
  • Large Ham: One of the hammiest characters in the whole series.
  • Laughably Evil: As Jester, he can get pretty funny with his antics.
  • Meaningful Name: His name is a reference to the fictional town from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. It was recommended by Reuben Langdon to emphasize his status as an occultist.
  • Magical Clown: Jester's abilities include teleporting and shooting a barrage of magic orbs at the player.
  • Malevolent Masked Men: Assuming it isn't a part of his anatomy as Jester.
  • Manipulative Bastard: He plays everyone for a fool from the beginning in order for all them to finally gather at the seal of Temen-ni-gru where he literally needs their blood to undo the spell that Sparda cast. This includes appearing as his alternate persona Jester in order to guide Dante whenever the latter is stuck exploring. Even Vergil, who tagged along with Arkham for around the first half of the game, didn't know the full extent of his plans.
  • Master of Illusion: If you stunlock Jester for long enough using melee combos, he will break free and teleport away while leaving behind an illusion of himself from where he used to stand.
  • Monster Clown: As Jester, he looks kinda scary. He is a demonic clown who is clearly antagonistic towards Dante from the start (and later towards Vergil and Lady as well). Though he's less of a monster than the man himself.
  • Not Afraid to Die: Zigzagged. Arkham shows no fear of Vergil's Yamato inches from his face and even slides his fingers across the blade, drawing his own blood. However, after his Villainous Breakdown and Motive Rant towards Lady, he begs in fear for her not to shoot him.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: Jester is introduced as a nuisance to Dante, but is later revealed to be Arkham and the masterminded behind the Mêlée à Trois between Dante, Vergil, and Lady.
  • Obliviously Evil: Judging by his Motive Rant to Lady at the end of the game, he honestly doesn't seem to understand that sacrificing his wife for the sake of power is not a good thing or something to be proud of, or why Lady would be disgusted with and hate him for it. This does not make Arkham more sympathetic or tragic, and just makes him come off as a selfish prick throwing a temper tantrum.
    Arkham: What have I done wrong?! Even the heroic Sparda sacrificed a woman so that he could become a legend! I wished to be a god! And I sacrificed one miserable human being for that reason. That is all! Was that really so awful?
  • Obfuscating Insanity: Jester is Laughably Evil, but it's all an act for the cold sociopath that Arkham really is. Best shown when he reveals they're one and the same and keeps swtiching almost seamlessly between the two personas to twist in how he manipulated everyone.
  • Obviously Evil: Does a guy in a black suit with half of his face pulsating and one red eye look like a good guy to you?
  • Offscreen Teleportation: Arkham is a master of this in cutscenes, oftentimes appearing and disappearing the moment the camera changes angles. It adds to his overall creepyness. The fact that Jester can do the same thing is an early hint that they're actually the same person.
  • One-Winged Angel: Arkham initially manages to take on a form identical to Sparda at his full power... before the power corrupts him and he becomes a giant blob monster instead.
  • Optional Boss: As Jester, he has a few optional fights in the Special Edition of the game.
  • Parental Abandonment: He abandoned Lady in his own quest for power and also killed Lady's mother.
  • Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Both his regular voice and his voice as Jester are reasonably pitched, but the moment he absorbs Sparda's power, his voice drops considerably.
  • Power-Upgrading Deformation: Arkham got this twice over, first when he sacrificed his wife to become a demon but messed the ritual up and became a Monster Clown instead, then in the Final Battle, he gets the power of Sparda through the Force Edge but soon dissolves into a hideous, amorphous blob. Dante lampshades it saying Arkham looks nothing like his father Sparda, using himself as proof.
  • Practically Joker: His Jester form is an expy of The Joker. He was even called "Joker" in development. The Jester boss fights in the Special Edition include a voice clip where he refers to himself as "Joker" instead of Jester.
  • Predecessor Villain: While it is the third game in the main series, DMC3 is chronologically the first time Dante fights an evil human who seeks to gain demonic powers, making Arkham a predecessor villain to Arius and Sanctus.
  • Recurring Boss: Can be played straight or subverted. You're only required to fight him twice: once as Jester and once as his Blob Monster One-Winged Angel. The extra fights added in Special Edition are optional.
  • Red Right Hand: His connection to the supernatural is signified by the pulsating burn scar on the left side of his face.
  • Sarcastic Clapping: Jester does this after witnessing Dante, Vergil and Lady fight each other. It's also when he reveals that he is Arkham and has been playing the three like a fiddle.
  • Shadow Archetype: He shares Vergil's lust for power, but doesn't have his redeeming qualities or Freudian Excuse.
  • Shared Unusual Trait: His heterochromia is used to hint both at Arkham's connection to Lady as well as the fact that he's Jester.
  • The Sociopath: Everything he does throughout the game is because he wants Sparda's power just for the sake of having it. Arkham speaks of the concept of "Evil" with religious fervor and delights in the fact that he used both Sons of Sparda and Lady for his nefarious ends. He talks about his wife's murder at his hands like it was a simple requirement, has no qualms with hurting his own daughter to get what he wants and embraces the mass genocide of humanity like it's the Rapture all because he wants to have the power of Sparda, who he says sacrificed a woman "to become a legend", completely missing the point that Sparda did it to save humanity and that the priestess was willing to do the sacrifice if it meant sealing away the demons. Even in his final moments, he furiously questions Lady what he did wrong, like she's simply bothering him, and even having the gall to ask her if it was "really so awful" and to help him, uncaring for how much of her life he ruined with his actions. While other villains in the series simply dismiss human emotion and morality as things that make humanity "weak," Arkham is just plain incapable of understanding them and makes no effort to try.
  • The Stoic: In spite of the above Large Ham tendencies, Arkham manages to remain reserved in most cases while serving as Vergil's "advisor" of sorts. All bets are off once Vergil "kills" him, though.
  • Stronger Than They Look: Though he doesn't look physically imposing at all and tends to avoid combat unlike the other characters, Arkham can display a lot of strength and agility when he wants to. He flips Dante's office desk at him with one hand and sends him, Vergil and Lady flying with one kick at the end of Mission 13.
  • Suddenly Shouting: He practically screams at Lady, unable to conceive that he may have been in the wrong.
  • Terms of Endangerment: Jester talks like this toward Lady; "It's time for your spanking, my dear!" He also refers to Dante as "my boy". However, this trope gets muddied a bit when it's revealed that Jester is actually Arkham. It's also worth mentioning that he's the only character to refer to her as "Mary", the name given to her from her mother that she's since abandoned in favor of being called "Lady".
  • Til Murder Do Us Part: Sacrificed his wife in a ritual to gain power.
  • Treacherous Advisor: To Vergil and Lady. Arkham guides the former throughout Temen-ni-gru but he still sees him as one of his pawns, and manipulates the latter into thinking Vergil as the one who killed her mother, even though it's actually Arkham himself.
  • Trickster Mentor: Jester is something of a mentor to Dante, specifically someone who advises him what to do next if he's in a pinch or stuck while exploring Temen-ni-gru. However, his methods involve riddles or mockery instead of straightforward guides. At one point, Jester provokes Dante into hitting him with a sword, only to teleport away at the last moment, causing Dante's sword to hit the switch to a locked door instead.
  • Troll: As Jester, he loves to taunt and insult his foes. So much that even Dante finds him annoying.
  • Two Aliases, One Character: Arkham is Jester, but for their screentime in around the first half of the story, they are never present in the same scene, thus creating the impression that they are two different characters. Arkham is mostly seen accompanying Vergil, while Jester is mostly seen indirectly guiding Dante if the latter is stuck while exploring. Oftentimes however, Arkham has chances of separating ways with Vergil, justifying why he can still move somewhere as Jester. When The Reveal is made known to the other characters, Arkham constantly switches between his usual form and Jester.
  • The Unfought: Before the final battle with him, Arkham appears taking on the form of a fully powered-up Sparda, but before the battle actually commences, he loses control and morphs into a Blob Monster. The Sparda form is never fought.
  • Villainous Breakdown: After he's defeated, forced to change back into a human and mortally wounded. He's confronted by his daughter Lady. He feebly tries to rationalize his actions, but only comes out looking like a selfish prick pathetically throwing a temper tantrum at the power he lost. This reaches its apex when Lady put a gun to his head to finish him off as he can only scream in terror.
  • Walking Spoiler: The first half of the game treats Arkham and Jester as if they're two separate individuals. At one point, Vergil impales Arkham with the Yamato, seemingly killing him, but a Wham Shot later shows that Arkham's body disappears. Then Mission 13 comes in with The Reveal that Arkham and Jester are the same person; having a "clown" disguise is just a necessary part of Arkham's plan.
  • Welcome to Hell: Jester says this straight away during his boss fights.
  • You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Says this word-for-word when at Lady's mercy. And that's exactly what she does.

    Guardians of Temen-ni-gru in General 
The various high-level Devils that guarded the demonic tower Temen-ni-gru, a passageway between the Human World and the Demon World. Many of them fought Sparda in the past and recognize Dante because of his association with his father. All of them are later defeated, and (with the exception of Leviathan) are turned into Devil Arms (or powers) for Dante to use. They are Cerberus, Agni and Rudra, Leviathan, Nevan, Beowulf, Geryon, and Doppelganger.
  • Broken Armor Boss Battle:
    • Cerberus covers himself in ice armor that absorbs gunfire and melee attacks and needs to be broken off with repeated attacks before his body parts (his three heads and two forelegs) can be damaged. At random intervals once at least one body part is uncovered, he'll repair the ice armor to repeat the process.
    • Nevan surrounds herself with a cloud of bats that will deflect bullets and interfere with melee attacks. Killing all the bats will leave Nevan stunned for a few seconds during which she can be damaged directly... until she teleports away and re-summons them.
  • Defeat Means Respect: Several of them (Cerberus, Agni & Rudra, and Nevan) express admiration for Dante's abilities after he defeats them, and either willingly transform into Devil Arms for him to wield, or outright beg him to take them with him.
  • Gate Guardian: Cerberus' main duty is to guard the front entrance of Temen-ni-gru, mostly to prevent humans from coming in. Agni and Rudra meanwhile guard another door deeper within to deal with anyone who managed to get past Cerberus.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: Each of those whose names are references differ from the actual myths in varying degrees.
  • Seven Deadly Sins: Just like the mooks in this game, every boss is themed after one of the sins. Cerberus's dismissal of Dante as a weakling is Pride, Nevan is an object of Lust, Beowulf is full of Wrath towards Sparda and his sons, Doppelganger copying Dante's form represents Envy, Leviathan is Gluttony incarnate, Geryon induces Sloth with its time-slowing power, and Agni and Rudra demand to be taken with Dante out of Greed for powerful opponents. Gigapede is the only one not to give a Devil Arm for its defeat, to return as a Degraded Boss, and to show no signs of intelligence, so it's exempt.
  • Threshold Guardians: Considering that 3 thrives on this trope as a way of displaying Dante's gradual Character Development, it should come as no surprise that this group consists almost exclusively of these. By the time Doppelganger, the final member, is faced, Dante is well-aware of what each fight represents for him as a person.

    Cerberus the Ice Guardian 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cerberus_1.png
"Leave now, mortal! The likes of you are forbidden in this land! You who are powerless are not worthy to set foot here!"

Voiced by: Larry Leong

A three-headed hound who wields the power of ice and serves as the gatekeeper of Temen-ni-gru's entrance. After Dante fought well against him (and blew up two of his heads), Cerberus deemed Dante as a worthy individual, granting him passage and ice powers via the form of a three-rod nunchaku.
  • Achilles' Heel: His heads are his most vulnerable parts once you break off his ice covering. They receive further damage from Agni's fire element after obtaining Agni and Rudra. The latter can only be exploited by replaying Mission 3 or during New Game Plus playthroughs.
  • An Ice Person: Covered in, and can manipulate ice.
  • Breath Weapon: Breathes very cold air.
  • Back for the Dead: The Cerberus Devil Arm is shattered during Dante's fight with Balrog in the Before the Nightmare novel.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Especially his last head.
  • Graceful Loser: After being defeated by Dante, he calmly acknowledges Dante's worthiness.
    Cerberus: "Regardless, you have proved your strength. I acknowledge your ability. Take my soul and go forth! You have my blessing!"
  • Hellhound: A giant demonic ice-elemental three-headed guard dog named after the Hellhound of Greek mythology.
  • Icy Blue Eyes: His right head has these, fitting with his powers.
  • Logical Weakness: Agni and Rudra, thanks to the former's fire element. You can't use it on your very first try since the Devil Arm can only be unlocked later on, but subsequent fights and New Game Plus are fair game.
  • Mythology Upgrade: Cerberus has ice powers. It might make sense if you remember that in The Divine Comedy, Cerberus is the keeper of the Gluttony sinners, who are tormented by hailstorms.
  • Noble Demon: A literal example. While he is ruthless when fighting Dante, his first words to him are a warning that no human can enter the Temen-ni-gru, demanding that he leave. When Dante defeats him and proves that he isn't human, he humbly acknowledges his mistake and allows Dante to proceed while transforming into a Devil Arm as a blessing for the young Devil Hunter. This stands in contrast to the arrogant and boastful King Cerberus from 5.
  • Puny Earthlings: Cerberus holds this view. Imagine his surprise once he realizes Dante holds demon blood within him.
  • Red Baron: The Ice Guardian.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The middle head sports these.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: Although he is still a three-headed hound just like the guard dog of the Underworld in Classical Mythology, this Cerberus has ice powers, making him more of a Mythology Upgrade to his Divine Comedy counterpart.
  • Shielded Core Boss: Cerberus is covered in ice armor over his body that needs to broken through to attack his body parts, which he'll restore after at least one ice covering is fully destroyed with some time.
  • Telepathy: Apparently his form of communication.
  • Turns Red: If you try to take on more than one head at a time, Cerberus will literally turn red and you will have a serious problem on your hands, as his attacks become faster, more aggressive, and gain more devastating properties, while he becomes stunned less often. Woe betide if you manage to trigger this near the beginning of the battle, although this will also occur when his health gets low enough.
  • Uniqueness Decay: Come 5, it’s revealed that Cerberus is just one member of the Cerberus race.
  • Volcanic Veins: Has glowing blue lines of icy energy all over his limbs and heads.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: This boss is the first really nasty boss that you have to fight in this game, requiring reading of the boss's behavior in order to deal with his attacks, and some actual strategy instead of just charging in and swinging your sword at him since recklessly attacking will trigger his Turns Red phase earlier. Quite a few DMC newbies have died to this guy the first time they fought him.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Outright asks Dante if he, a "mere human", is actually trying to make a mockery of the giant three-headed Hellhound threatening to tear him apart if he doesn't leave, and then roars that Dante'll regret his words once he's done with him when Dante still keeps taunting him.
  • Your Head Asplode: Happens to Cerberus whenever you damage one of his heads enough; the death of a head prevents him from using a specific attack. He only has one head left after he's defeated by Dante.

    Agni & Rudra the Firestorm 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/agni_and_rudra.png
"We must entertain our guest."
"You're right, we need to be gracious hosts."

Voiced by: Larry Leong
Kazuya Tatekabe (Agni's voice; Drama CD Vol.1)
Kaneta Kimotsuki (Rudra's voice; Drama CD Vol.1)

A twin pair of living demonic scimitars who guard another gate of Temen-ni-gru. They are wielded by two brutish headless host bodies when fighting Dante, though they willingly allow themselves to be wielded by him after their defeat.


  • Achilles' Heel: Agni to Cerberus's ice.
  • Affably Evil: They muse about how they've been bad hosts for their visitor (Dante) and act quite cordial towards him. They only attack when Dante expresses his desire to pass through the gate they're guarding and then, upon defeat, show admiration of his skills.
  • Always Identical Twins: Agni and Rudra are twin living demon swords that have identical designs, including their headless bodies. They are also color-coded; Agni is orange-themed while Rudra is turquoise-themed, fitting for their respective fire and wind powers.
  • Blow You Away: Rudra has wind powers.
  • Bumbling Henchman Duo: They can be rather comical in nature.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: If one is defeated and the other isn't finished off quickly, the survivor grabs the other sword and starts Dual Wielding.
  • Dual Boss: After all, they are Bash Brothers who are adept at fighting together, although they have a tendency to bicker with one another and can actually hurt each other with their slashes in-battle by accident. Defeating one of them before the other gives the remaining boss a power-up.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: After Dante defeats the two of them, they join his side out of respect for his strength. Agni and Rudra are very enthusiastic about this trope, practically begging Dante to take them with him after their defeat.
  • Degraded Boss: In the Bloody Palace.
  • Dual Wielding: When one is defeated, the other picks up his fallen brother's sword and resorts to this.
  • Evil Laugh: During the Million Slash combo. As a Call-Back to their agreement to remain quiet while traveling with Dante, Dante will yell "SILENCE!" as the combo finisher.
  • Flaming Sword: Agni is a fiery scimitar.
  • Graceful Loser: They decide to work for Dante after he defeats them.
  • Kill One, Others Get Stronger: Kill one of them and the survivor takes his fallen brother's weapon, introducing new and more difficult combos than when you fight the both of them.
  • Logical Weakness: Cerberus, but only against Agni. Rudra doesn't have a specific weapon he's weak against.
  • Loyal Phlebotinum: In a sense. Having spent their imprisonment waiting for someone stronger than them to appear, the brothers hastily plead with Dante to take them along with him on his journey.
  • Playing with Fire: Agni has fire powers.
  • Red Baron: The Firestorm.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Rudra.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: They are no longer the Hindu gods of fire and the storm respectively, but instead sentient scimitars wielded by headless brutes. While Rudra in Hindu mythology does have a secondary rubric in storms (and thus connected to winds), his primary shtick is as an archer. The Hindu god of wind is Vayu.
  • Serrated Blade of Pain: They take the form of serrated scimitars.
  • Sinister Scimitar: Since they are living weapons, their scimitar forms' pommel and blade respectively serve as their heads and spinal cords.
  • Talking Weapon: Agni and Rudra start their introductory cutscene being very talkative swords. They remain silent because Dante told them to keep quiet after he gets to use them, but their voices can be heard when using one of their more powerful combos, calling out "Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust".
  • Turns Red: Agni or Rudra become more vicious once the other twin has been slain, attacking with both swords and gaining new moves in the process.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: If Cerberus didn't send you the memo these two will. Agni and Rudra will more than often block and counter if you attack recklessly and they tend to coordinate their moves, so if you don't pay attention to your second foe you will get hit in the back.

    Leviathan, the Evil God-Beast 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/leviathan_93.png

A giant flying whale-like creature that's circling around Temen-ni-gru. It swallows Dante when he attempts to head straight down the tower's edge from its roof, forcing him to fight his way from the inside out.


  • Achilles' Heel: The hearts. Using Agni and Rudra on them will deal more damage.
  • Animalistic Abomination: Leviathan, whose body is a living gateway to the Hell of Envy, looks similar to a giant whale.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: It can be seen floating near the tower during the final cutscene of Mission 2.
  • Extreme Omnivore: In Leviathan's stomach, you can find several ships, a bus, some skyscrapers, and the remains of a bridge.
  • Eye Scream: Dante leaves Leviathan's body by bursting out of its eye.
  • Giant Flyer: Leviathan is probably the largest boss of the whole series, as a giant flying whale.
  • Just Eat Him: Leviathan does this to Dante. Backfires when Dante sliced apart the heart of the behemoth from inside.
  • Missing Secret: The only boss who doesn't give you a new weapon or style. Though considering how much damage the heart's lasers and bombs do to enemies, that's probably for the best.
  • Reactor Boss: An organic variant. When travelling through Leviathan's insides, you end up fighting his heart. Destroying it naturally kills him.
  • Shielded Core Boss: Leviathan's Heart is encased in a hard shell that opens up for a short time when one of two adjacent organs is destroyed. The other organs recover quickly and you are also constantly swarmed by mooks that make it difficult for you to directly attack the heart.
  • Red Baron: The Evil God-Beast.
  • Womb Level: Due to his size, Leviathan is fought from the inside out, traveling through his body to kill his heart.

    Nevan, the Lightning Witch 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nevan.png
"I'll treat you so nicely, you'll never want to leave."

Nevan is a demon gatekeeper who is known to seduce humans to the path of hell. She willingly transforms herself into a Devil Arm after being defeated by Dante.


    Beowulf the Lightbeast 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/beowulf.png
"It's the stench of betrayal, the odor of that accursed Sparda. I will annihilate every last blood relation of Sparda!"

Voiced by: Larry Leong

A half-blind beast who has a grudge against every blood relative of Sparda. He recognizes Dante through a familiar scent, but is killed by Vergil when he made the mistake of trying to follow a similar scent... without knowing that the latter is also a son of Sparda.


  • Achilles' Heel: His eye. While Dante lacks a specific weapon which is super effective against Beowulf, Vergil's Yamato makes his own fight against Beowulf easier due to its darkness which counters the beast's light.
  • Asshole Victim: Beowulf ends up being blinded and killed by the Sparda bloodline, but considering how Ax-Crazy he was, his Humiliation Conga was fully deserved.
  • Boss Banter: Apart from his grunts, Beowulf has dialogue lines when he performs his Ground Punch, and when he Turns Red. Both are simply about wanting to kill or crush Dante.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Unceremoniously killed by Vergil after being defeated by Dante.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Has one of the deepest voices of any character in the game, besides maybe Agni and Rudra.
  • Eye Scream: Beowulf had his left eye sliced out by Sparda in the past. In the present, Dante takes out the right eye after their battle.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: Beowulf attacks Vergil and ends up having his head diced by him.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Beowulf has a single glowing red eye which becomes more evident as he Turns Red.
  • Go for the Eye: The other eye on Beowulf is his weak spot, as Sparda had permanently taken off the other years ago.
  • Ground Punch: Beowulf is fond of punching the ground to create light-based shockwaves during his combos, which justifies why Dante and Vergil inherit ground punches in their Beowulf Devil Arm moveset.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Posthumously; Vergil slices his corpse in two while demonstrating his new powers.
  • I'll Kill You!: Says this when he Turns Red during Dante's fight with him.
  • It's Personal: He has a grudge with Sparda, and with Dante by proxy. It's referenced in the backstories as well; notably, Sparda was the one who took out an eye of Beowulf in the past.
  • Knight of Cerebus: He's the most antagonistic guardian of the tower; all of his compatriots are either monstrous forces of nature of Affably Evil enough to give the devil hunter Dante his due. Beowulf, on the other hand, has a murderous vendetta against Sparda's bloodline and is played completely seriously as a character, never showing a moment of lightheartedness or humor.
  • Light 'em Up: His element, as well using beams of light to attack Dante.
  • Lightning Bruiser: He's a towering behemoth who is surprisingly agile and loves to beat you down with nothing more than his claws.
  • Logical Weakness: Darkness, but the catch is Dante doesn't have any weapon with that element. Vergil's Yamato, on the other hand, exploits the weakness.
  • MacGuffin Guardian: His room contains a faulty Haywire Neo-Generator you must take.
  • The Nose Knows: Tracks down Dante because his scent is so similar to that of Sparda's. After being blinded, he retreats, only to follow the scent's trail again... leading him right to Vergil.
  • Oh, Crap!: Ensues when he realizes that there's not only a second son of Sparda, but that Vergil just killed him.
    Beowulf: "Y-You are not the one I faced before... But this smell... There are two of them! That excrement Sparda had two sons...!"
  • Red Baron: The Lightbeast.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes are red and perfectly embody his rage. They also stand out compared to his white wings and light powers.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: He is simply pissed at Sparda for gouging out his eye. His dialogue hints that he didn't take Sparda's betrayal of his demon brethren too lightly either.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: The character design for Beowulf is different from the human folk hero from Denmark/Germanic myth. With those four wings, a scorpion tail, claws and talons and a lion-like face, he greatly resembles Pazuzu.
  • Tennis Boss: You can deflect the pillars Beowulf throws at you. It's Difficult, but Awesome to do, yet it's not required while fighting him.
  • Turns Red: Beowulf moves aggressively faster and uses light-based attacks once his health has been whittled.
  • Volcanic Veins: He has glowing white lines in his arms and wings. His Devil Arm form of gauntlets and greaves are also stylized with the same lines.
  • White and Red and Eerie All Over: Along with Red and Black and Evil All Over. It is an angelic being with white wings and light powers... with a black body and red eyes. This dissonance between angelic and demonic attributes is apparently intentional.

    Geryon the Timesteed 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/geryon.png

A demonic horse that can control time, fought by Dante in the underground arena and had its soul repurposed as Dante's Quicksilver Style.


  • Achilles' Heel: His carriage, if one manages to hit both him and his wagon. He also takes more damage from Cerberus.
  • Bullet Time: The playable character is temporarily slowed down if hit by one of his time orbs.
  • Face–Heel Turn: His entry in the game's bestiary states that he was once a noble horse that served as a steed to legendary heroes, corrupted into a monster after ingesting demonsoul essence.
  • Hellish Horse: A demonic time-manipulating horse wreathed in wisp-fire and pulls a large wagon.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Probably inside his carriage, since it can conjure and fire a large amount of missiles and spears. Either this or Summon Magic.
  • Red Baron: The Timesteed.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: A fiendish horse, whereas in Dante's Inferno, he is a serpent-like creature with wings and a human face. Meanwhile in Classical Mythology, he was a giant with three bodies, but he did own a herd of wild horses, so it's not entirely without precedence.
  • Time Master: He has control over time.
  • Time Stands Still: He can cause time to stop or at least slow down significantly.
  • Uniqueness Decay: Downplayed. Another Geryon is used as a mount by Cavaliere Angelo as the Elder Geryon Knight in 5, but Griffon is surprised to see one and V clarifies that Geryons are a rare species that could potentially go extinct.
  • Wreathed in Flames: He's covered in blue flames.

    Doppelganger the Deathvoid 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/doppelganger.png

A shadow demon that copies the appearance of its foes. Doppelganger is the last demon gatekeeper fought by Dante as he makes his way to the underworld's portal. Just like Geryon, Dante acquires a new Style mechanic after defeating it.


  • Battle Aura: Always shrouded in shadowy, dark aura unless when under a particularly strong ray of light.
  • Boss Banter: In between its attacks, Doppelganger can taunt you by imitating Dante's trademark brand of Trash Talk, no less.
    Doppelganger: Come on, wimp.
  • Casting a Shadow: The shadowy demon appears as a dark copy of its opponents by using his body mass of darkness to refract light around its true form. Bonus points for actually appearing from Dante's shadow.
  • Dark Is Evil: The Doppelganger is basically a malevolent shadow with murderous tendencies.
  • Doppelgänger: With his powers, he can replicate Dante's Ebony and Ivory, Rebellion, and even Devil Trigger, and his is permanently active unless flashed upon.
  • Enemy Without: He is not actually Dante's, but the symbolism underlining the fight (particularly, understanding that the shadow represents a part of the person they must overcome) is actually lampshaded by Dante.
    Dante: I know why you're here. You want to ask me some questions. Well, too bad. I've already answered them myself. I don't need you anymore. Come on, you poser.
  • Ground Punch: Doppelganger has two variants of mimicking the "Volcano" ground punch of the Beowulf Devil Arm; one that turns the shockwave into a ranged attack, and another that serves as its desperation move to force a blackout if all lights are turned on.
  • Living Shadow: That can morph and refract light to take any form he wants.
  • Logical Weakness: Beowulf, due to utilizing light.
  • Mirror Boss: Doppelganger takes on Dante's form, initially adopting his Devil Trigger state and mimicking his attacks with the Rebellion and Beowulf Devil Arms as well as his Trickster Style, but resembling his normal state when exposed to the light.
  • Nigh-Invulnerability: Even if you attack him, Dante can't even damage him as he simply morphs to phase through your attacks. You either have to weaken him by turning the lights of his arena on, or reflect his projectiles back at him.
  • Puzzle Boss: The quickest way to defeat him is by turning the lights on as he approaches and forces him out of his Darkness Devil Trigger.
  • Red Baron: The Deathvoid.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: In what seems to be his default form, his face resembles a Ghostly Gape but with black complexion and red eyes and mouth.
  • Tennis Boss: If you don't want to turn on the lights, you can stall and wait until he decides to fire a dark ball of explosive energy at you. You can deflect it back with your sword, which he will reflect back. The projectile gets quicker with each deflect, but keep it up and it will end up taking out a nice chunk of his health. Repeat this enough times and he will be defeated entirely by his own attacks.
  • Voice Changeling: Naturally emulates Dante's voice, but his tone randomly switches between Dante's normal inflection and higher/lower pitches.
  • Weakened by the Light: You can only directly hurt him after shining light on him. Using Beowulf in this state also deals more damage to him.

    Gigapede 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gigapede_8.gif

A giant centipede that crawls in the air and has electric abilities. Dante fights one of these in an early mission, but encounters more of them as "parasites" living inside the Leviathan's intestines.


  • Advancing Boss of Doom: Granted they are a Degraded Boss by the time this happens, but the Gigapedes inside Leviathan's intestines act this way. Fortunately, you can fight back and kill them to stop them from advancing, and to reward yourself with some Red Orbs.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: The Gigapede's most vulnerable part is its head.
  • Creepy Centipedes: It resembles a monstrous, demonic myriapod or a tape worm that doesn't technically fly around certain parts of Temen-ni-gru, as it crawls through the air.
  • Degraded Boss: The first one you fight has more abilities (plus a health bar) and is harder to defeat. The ones you meet after that are much easier to deal with and completely optional to kill.
  • Logical Weakness: Ice has an advantage against electricity in this series, therefore Gigapede receives more damage when attacked with the Cerberus Devil Arm.
  • Meaningful Name: Its name when translated means "giant foot". Gigapede a giant millipede-like demon with several legs.
  • My Friends... and Zoidberg: It isn't a guardian of Temen-ni-gru nor is associated with them. According to its in-game data file, it's an Eldritch Abomination that freely travels through rifts in the space-time fabric. Due to this, it lacks a fancy title like the other bosses.
  • Proportionately Ponderous Parasites: Given the fact you face at least two of these in Leviathan's stomach, it's safe to say its species qualifies as giant parasites.
  • Shock and Awe: It's an electric elemental demon akin to Nevan.
  • Tennis Boss: The Gigapede in Mission 4 throws electric balls of energy at you that you can send right back.

Devil May Cry 4 Villains

    Credo 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/credo_render.png
"You jest so lightly in a time of crisis?"

Voiced by: T.J. Rotolo (English)
Rikiya Koyama (Japanese)

The well-respected Supreme General of the Holy Knights of Fortuna, a position he gained through his incredible skill with a blade and his unwavering loyalty to the Order of the Sword and its ideals. Likewise, he holds the same loyalty for Sanctus and his teachings. He is the older brother of Kyrie and treats Nero as family, despite not agreeing with Nero's lifestyle habits. When demons attack Fortuna, Credo leaves the task of demon-slaying to Nero.

Behind the scenes, he is plotting with Sanctus as well as overseeing the situation regarding Dante. He also expresses mixed concern behind the motives of Gloria. Eventually, he is charged with the job of defeating Nero. In the conclusion of their fight, Kyrie is kidnapped by Agnus, a move that shakes Credo's faith in the Order. He makes one final charge against Sanctus later on to free Nero, but things end bleakly. In his dying plea, he requests that Dante save Nero and his beloved sister.
  • Anti-Villain: He's actually not evil at all and Nero doesn't really have a problem with him (at least not any more than he does with typically any other authority figure, and he gets along with him for Kyrie's sake). The battle you have to fight with him happened simply because he was told to subdue Nero, so he's Just Following Orders. He's not privy to any of the real machinations of the Order, and when Sanctus shows his true colors, he immediately turns his back on his organization and urges Dante to stop Sanctus.
  • BFS: His sword as Angelo Credo.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Towards Kyrie. Oddly enough, he's not vehemently against Nero and Kyrie's mutual attraction, but he does take major exception to Sanctus's use of her in his Evil Plan.
  • Big Brother Mentor: It's implied that he plays this role to some degree in regards to Nero. According to the Deadly Fortune novel, it was Credo who taught Nero how to use a sword. Nero also admired Credo for his kindness and sense of justice (much like the rest of his adoptive family), which were some of the reasons why Nero decided to join the Order in spite of being an atheist (the other was to protect the home of his beloved Kyrie).
  • Blocking Stops All Damage: As Angelo Credo, he can put up a defensive stance to stop your attacks cold, although his wing shield can be temporarily broken with enough hits or by using heavier attacks.
  • The Brute: Unlike Agnus or Sanctus, Credo relies more heavily on his swordplay and strength as Angelo Credo.
  • Death Glare: Sports these before he fights Nero in Mission 8. Nero even notices and comments on it.
    Nero: That's a look you shoot your enemy.
  • Defector from Decadence: Credo turned on Sanctus in disgust when the latter decided to use Kyrie against Nero.
  • Demon of Human Origin: Credo gained a demonic form thanks to the Ascension Ceremony. In line with the Order of the Sword's goals of presenting themselves as pseudo-angelic knights, Credo's Angelo form matches that description.
  • Disappears into Light: Credo disappears into particles of light after issuing his final words.
  • The Dragon: He's Sanctus' right-hand man.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: After his death, no one, not even Kyrie, mentions him at the end of 4. However, he's mentioned in solemn passing in the prequel novel of 5, with Nero admitting, despite him being such a hardass, he and Kyrie both miss him dearly. Eventually subverted in 5, as Nero does consider being unable to save him his worst failure, and Nero's determination to not allow himself to lose someone else he cares about like he lost Credo is what motivates him to awaken his true Devil Trigger and put an end to Dante and Vergil's sibling rivalry.
  • Hero Antagonist: Credo genuinely wants to protect the citizens of Fortuna and believed that the Ascension Ceremony was a good idea. He was also very reluctant in fighting Nero, but couldn't actually disobey Sanctus at first as he's Just Following Orders. However, he sides with the heroes when Kyrie has been hostaged, an act that would lead to his death.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
    • Nero can catch his javelin with a well-timed Buster and throw it back at him, piercing him and leaving him vulnerable for another Buster.
    • Credo dies after Sanctus impaled him up-close with the Yamato.
  • Informed Ability: Subverted. His excellent swordsmanship is mostly just mentioned in his profile, and not much in cutscenes. You do get to see it in battle, but by that point, he's not even human. The Deadly Fortune novel also reveals that Credo taught Nero how to use a sword.
  • Javelin Thrower: He has the ability to conjure and hurl magical javelins but Nero can Catch and Return them.
  • Knightly Sword and Shield: As Angelo Credo, he uses a shield in tandem with a sword as a proper knight should.
  • Knight Templar: When ordered to find and kill his friend Nero, he just goes and does it... Or tries anyway, as Nero ends up canonically triumphing against him even if their fight got interrupted.
  • Knight Templar Big Brother: Credo completely betrays the Order when he learns that Sanctus and Agnus used Kyrie in their plans. He implies he has more philosophical reasons for his flip, but this is clearly his primary objection.
  • Last Request: Credo, in his dying moments, asks Dante to save Kyrie and Nero, as he is in no condition to perform the task himself. Dante was planning to do that anyway, but says he will honor Credo's request.
    Credo: Please... honor my one last request... Save them... Kyrie... and... Nero...
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Angelo Credo uses a purple wing-shield to block your attacks, and it takes several hits or Buster punches to even break it temporarily.
  • Master Swordsman: An exceptionally skilled swordsman, he taught Nero everything he knows. You get to see how good he is during his boss fight.
  • Menacing Stroll: During his boss fight, he will occasionally just walk towards the player, inviting you to attack him. However, do it carelessly and he will introduce you to a whole world of pain.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Extremely handsome, even by the standards of the series.
  • Noble Top Enforcer: Credo is the staunchest believer in the ideals of the Order, and the most heroic of them aside from Nero.
  • Not What I Signed on For: Credo was devoted to the Order of the Sword, but defects when his sister gets caught up in the Church's schemes. He denounces Sanctus when he finally sees the folly of his actions.
    Credo: "I served the dream of a world you spoke of, the Savior you preached of... But you used my sister, Kyrie, who has nothing to do with this, and that is beyond forgiveness."
  • Not What It Looks Like: Used to dramatic effect in the aftermath of his fight with Nero. Kyrie arrived in the scene, shocked at the sight of the two men closest to her having just fought each other.
  • One-Winged Angel: A literal example in his One-winged Dark Knight form.
  • Parental Abandonment: The Deadly Fortune novel reveals that his and Kyrie's parents died in a demon attack. The culprits were actually Order members who could not fully complete the Ascension ceremony (for lack of physical and/or mental strength, coupled with the fact that demon energy might not be so good for the skin) and instead devolved into mindless, insane demons. As commander of the Order's forces, Credo was privy to this information, but never disclosed it to Kyrie or Nero for obvious reasons.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Is not remotely evil or sadistic, Credo only opposes Nero because Sanctus ordered him to.
  • Recurring Boss Template: Is the latest version of the Nelo Angelo boss fight.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Tries to save Nero and Kyrie, but Sanctus fatally impales him.
  • Red Baron: One-winged Dark Knight, although his Japanese title literally translates to "Proud Blade: One-winged Dark Knight".
  • Rule of Symbolism: According to the lore, the shield on Angelo Credo's left arm symbolizes his willingness to remain loyal to the Order of the Sword.
  • Signature Move: Deadly Fortune describes the 3-hit combination attack Angelo Credo uses as Credo's specialty move.
  • Symbolic Wings: As Angelo Credo, the shield on his left arm has subtle feather-like designs on its rim, thus making it look like a wing when viewed from certain angles. However, it's mostly just in terms of appearance because he primarily uses it like a shield for defense, but not for flight. Per his title of "One-Winged Dark Knight", the actual wing that allows him to fly is on his right side.
  • Tennis Boss: With proper timing, his giant spears can backfire on him with Nero bustering them,grabbing his spears and hurling them right back at him.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: Subverted. While furious and appalled at how Sanctus used his sister as bait in his plans, thus shaking Credo's unwavering loyalty to the Order, he utters this line after he was wounded by Sanctus. Things only get worse from there.
  • The Unfought:
    • Agnus and Sanctus are both battled in human and demon forms. Credo, however, is only battled in a demon form, and his swordsmanship in human form remains an Informed Ability.
    • He is also the only boss that Dante doesn't get to fight other than himself, as he is already dead by the time you start playing as Dante.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: Relentless hack-and-slashing has been more than sufficient to defeat most of the prior bosses. Try that on Angelo Credo and he dodges or blocks your attacks, then immediately runs right in for a counter-attack which kicks the living crap out of you. Angelo Credo's slow and calm Menacing Stroll also tricks the player into thinking that he has a lot of openings, but it mostly just serves as a bait. He's not particularly difficult when you know what to do, but he moves and reacts quickly, making him the first boss fight where you need to actually use Nero's attacks and combos properly while reading the boss's attack patterns. Same with your Buster—if you haven't gotten the hang of it, good luck getting through his shield.

    Agnus 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/agnus_dmc4.jpg
"Humans, they are but stubborn and foolish. It takes a journey to Hell for them to accept and praise their God! A fact that tickles irony's judgment."

Voiced by: T.J. Storm (English)
Yūya Uchida (Japanese)

The Chief Alchemist of the Order of the Sword, he is the one responsible for artificially creating several of the game's Mook enemies, such as the Cutlass, Gladius, Basilisk, and the Angelo Armors. He even takes credit for creating the Hell Gates that the bosses and other enemies use to enter the Human World (since he had to use many of their souls in the creation of the armors), but due to his shut-in behavior, few among the Order know of his existence.
  • Ambiguously Brown: Agnus has a darker skin tone than almost everyone else we see in Fortuna. The only other Fortuna resident that we see in Gloria who is revealed to be Trish in disguise.
  • Asshole Victim: Played hysterically straight in 5. Nico, his own daughter felt nothing after her "asshole daddy" died. To be fair, he was never around and was too busy scheming global conquest with Sanctus. The only way she acknowledges him was through biological factors of her birth, and that Nero pilfered his research and gave it all to her.
  • Badass Fingersnap: Angelo Agnus snaps his fingers whenever he commands his summoned demons during his boss fights. Its animation may not be noticeable, but a distinct fingersnapping sound effect gives it away.
  • Bare-Handed Blade Block: Against Nero. With pinkies extended.
  • Berserk Button:
    • He does not take kindly to Nero calling his secret underground lab a "hellhole" or making fun of his stutter. Both acts get him mad enough to send the Gladii after Nero and initiate a boss battle.
    • He gets particularly upset when Nero spits blood in his face, at which point he jams his sword into Nero's chest before angrily ordering his Bianco Angelos to "T-t-t-t-take. Him. OUT!"
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: His demon-form is a humanoid insect.
  • BFS: The Gladius Demons he uses as his swords are not exactly small.
  • Black and Nerdy: Closer to Ambiguously Brown, but he is noticeably darker skinned than other characters in the Order of the Sword, and early concept art of his daughter Nico in V, who points out that she takes after him in appearance, shows her with prominently African features.
  • Blunt "Yes": Angus has no patience for Credo's passive-aggressiveness, and is quick to confirm to his face that he is indeed questioning his command once Credo asks him.
  • Boss Banter: Agnus is talkative even during his boss fights. In the Containment Room, he constantly taunts you from behind the glass wall as you are busy dealing with his Gladius demons. As Angelo Agnus, many of his attacks are cued by specific dialogue lines. He also has situational lines which depend on you either getting caught or evading his Life Drain grab.
  • Chewing the Scenery: No. Seriously.
  • Demon of Human Origin: It's revealed that the Order of the Sword's chief alchemist, Agnus has been experimenting with turning humans into false-angelic demon knights. Agnus even converted himself into a demon, although his "Angelo" form resembles an insectoid or a locust, contrary to his claims of being an "angel".
  • Dirty Coward: Likes to send minions after you instead of facing you himself like Credo does, and for your first fight against him, he's behind a tough-to-break glass window. He's also quite fond of dirty tactics in Angelo form (such as his opening cheap shot).
  • The Dragon: While Credo is Sanctus' Noble Top Enforcer, Agnus is the guy responsible for much of the Order's more evil doings aside from Sanctus himself, and is the final opponent that both Dante and Nero fight before their requisite final battles.
  • Easter Egg: Data-mining or looking through the game's texture files reveals that a page from Agnus's research notebook has the header "Nero = Dante ???", implying that Agnus has been suspecting a connection between the two.
  • Energy Absorption: One of his attacks.
  • Evil Genius: He's an alchemist and is working with the bad guys. Bonus points for personally creating the angelic-looking demons.
  • Fantastic Racism: He hates humans, viewing them as inferior. He was all too willing to shed his own humanity in pursuit of power.
  • Flat "What": His understandably confused reaction to Nero relating the day his Devil Bringer first awakened.
  • Flunky Boss: Agnus will constantly send out demons of his own conception when you fight him. In the Containment Room, he sends a lot of Gladii. He puts a spin on this trope when he transforms into Angelo Agnus because he can wield his summoned creatures as his own weapons aside from just letting them attack independently. It can also be subverted since you can actually use these demons against him by grabbing them with Nero's Buster.
  • Foil: To Credo, being a callous, cowardly Evil Genius to Credo's Noble Top Enforcer and status as The Brute.
  • Genius Bruiser: He personally created many of the various mooks, he fights you himself in his One-Winged Angel form, and to reiterate, in his human form he catches Nero's sword bare-handed. With pinkies extended.
  • I'm Melting!: His refight during the Boss Rush has him writhing on the floor after beating him as his body apparently begins to give up and audibly splash into nothingness.
  • Ink-Suit Actor: According to Lead Motion Manager Hiroyuki Nara in page 216 of the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook, Agnus's voice actor, T.J. Storm, "looked just like him".
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: Runs for his life after Nero restores and claims Yamato. The hole he just made in the wall probably helped, too.
  • Large Ham: Did we mention this guy tried to out-ham Dante? He had a good try at it, too, what with the posturing, and pausing every word or two...
  • Life Drain: This is his specialty in his demon form; Angelo Agnus has a unique move where he grabs the playable character in order to drain their health and heal himself, while his other special attack drains your health if he fully charges it. You can see (and hear) these attacks from a mile away, but if you're too busy fighting the mooks he sends at you, they can catch you off guard.
  • Mad Scientist: Agnus is a technology researcher and alchemist working for the Order of the Sword. Everything he does is For Science!, but the purpose of his research is to harvest and control demonic power to further the Church's goals. The Hell Gates and the artificial demons that can be encountered? He's responsible for them.
  • Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: While traveling outside Fortuna long before the events of 4, he fathered Nico, your Wrench Wench friend in 5.
  • Moe Greene Special: How Dante kills him. With the added effect of destroying all of his written research. Or at least the research he had on him at the time as Nero swiped the rest of it to give to Nico.
  • Non-Standard Character Design: Most of the human characters look realistic with the exception of the hammy and cartoonish Agnus.
  • Obviously Evil: He's just such an obvious villain that meeting him almost single-handedly tips Nero off that the Order of the Sword might not be the good guys.
  • Oh, Crap!: Agnus reacts with fear when Nero restores the Yamato and cuts a hole in the wall right behind him, aware that he is next unless he gets the hell out of there.
  • One-Winged Angel: In his "Angelo Agnus, the One-eyed Dark Knight" form, Agnus looks like an insectoid instead of an angel.
  • Parental Abandonment: According to Nico, Agnus abandoned her and her mother and left them for dead. As such, she doesn't care much for him nor the fact that Dante killed him.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Agnus is the official scenery chewer of the Order of the Sword.
    Agnus: "The true Utopia... CAN! BE! BORN! JUDGEMENT DAY! HAS! ARRIVED!"
  • Puzzle Boss: You're in for a very long fight against Agnus in Mission 6 if you don't figure out you need to throw the Gladius demons at the glass protecting him to do any more than mere Scratch Damage to it.
  • Recurring Boss: This guy is fought a total of four times. Nero fights him three times; first in his human form where he just sends Gladius demons your way, another in his Angelo form, and the last during the Boss Rush re-fight in Mission 19. On the other hand, Dante only fights him once in order to reclaim Yamato, and this fight leads to Agnus's death.
  • The Shut-In: Self-imposed. Agnus's Character File outright describes him as a "lab shut-in" who's rarely seen by the other members of the Order, and Agnus himself knows how very few people are aware of his existence. Given his obsession for research and his responsibility of conducting behind-the-scenes experiments for the Order, it's no wonder Nero finds him holed up in his hidden laboratory when they first meet.
  • Spin Attack: One of his attacks has him spin around on the battlefield while two Cutlasses are attached to his arms. He then hurls them. Buster him at the wrong time and he'll spin-kick you away too.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Agnus doesn't get along well with Credo despite the both of them working under Sanctus in the Order. While Credo isn't upfront with this from the start, Agnus makes his contempt obvious, which is sometimes coupled with irrational anger. When Agnus is pissed off at Nero discovering his secret lab and mocking his stutter, he rants how the circumstances that led up to it and the ensuing resurrection of the Yamato are entirely Credo's fault simply because Nero is Credo's subordinate.
  • This Cannot Be!: Goes into this when Nero resurrects Yamato and awakens his Devil Trigger for the first time.
    Agnus: This is preposterous! Preposterous!
  • Verbal Tic: His s-s-s-stutter, which Nero naturally mocks.

    Berial - the Conqueror of The Fire Hell 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/berial.jpg
"When I came to this world 2,000 years ago, there was no such human as the likes of you."

Voiced by: Larry Leong (English)
Taiten Kusunoki (Japanese)

The Conqueror of the Fire Hell, Berial is a huge, centaur-like devil who's wreathed in flames from hell. He fights Nero in an abandoned mine village, but is defeated. He later reappears, but is stopped and slain by Dante. His Hell Gate is powered by the Lucifer Devil Arm, which Dante claims.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Berial once conquered and ruled a domain called "Fire Hell".
  • BFS: In this case, F can also stand for Flaming.
  • Blocking Stops All Damage: Berial can use his flaming BFS to put up a defensive stance and block your attacks.
  • Burning with Anger: Stun him and his flames go out. Once he recovers, he gets pissed and his fire gets bigger than it was at the start.
  • Continuity Nod: He's said to be the conqueror of the Fire Hell, from which the devil Furiataurus (met by Dante in 2) probably came from. The novel states he is Mundus's heir as well.
  • Defiant to the End: After defeating him, Dante offers to spare his life if he'll go back quietly through the Hell Gate he came from. Berial refuses and performs a last desperation attack on Dante instead, getting blown away for his trouble.
  • Early-Bird Boss: Berial in Mission 2. Aside from Dante, the player has only fought against Scarecrows until that point. Berial is not only incredibly big and resistant, but has MANY attacks at his disposal, and the lack of upgrades and skills for Nero really turns him into an incredibly hard boss the first time you fight him, even in Human Mode. However, there's a catch to his fight; the houses in his boss arena give you Green Orbs if they're destroyed, which can be a lifesaver for the newbies.
  • Lost in Translation: Just like Nelo Angelo, the "R to L and vice-versa" problem when translating between Japanese and English happened to Berial. His name is (almost certainly) supposed to be "Belial" because the series uses Religious and Mythological Theme Naming for its major demons and Devil Arms, while his Katakana, ベリアル, translates to "Belial" but is misspelled as "Berial", and as such, his English voice actor pronounced it like the word "burial". Either the Japanese are apparently incapable of getting that right, or the English translation team never catches it.
  • Playing with Fire: He's a huge, centaur-like devil who's wreathed in flames from hell. Of course he has fire powers.
  • Recurring Boss: He's fought thrice in total; two with Nero (including the Boss Rush in Mission 19) and one with Dante.
  • Red Baron: The Conqueror of The Fire Hell
  • Silence, You Fool!: Roars this in response to Nero's quip after the quote above ("Wanna make it another two thousand?").
  • Sphere of Destruction: Berial can unleash an explosive shockwave to restore his flames. Although it has a limited radius, getting hit by it sends the player character flying across the arena.
  • Taking You with Me: Attempted on Dante but failed. After sacrificing most of his body and using his flaming, flying head for one last Desperation Attack, Dante finishes him off with one pistol shot.
  • Villainous Valor: He wanted to avenge all the fellow Devils slain by Dante (which, by now, are quite a lot).
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: Especially in Bloody Palace, where the 101 stages are filled with enemies of increasing difficulty with bosses every 20 stages; the mooks preceding and after him are at Devil Hunter (Normal) difficulty level, but he himself is at DMD (Harder Than Hard).

    Bael & Dagon - the Masters of The Frozen Soil 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bael_with_rusalka_feelers.png
"Don't think this is the end... there are more of us."

Voiced by: Kyle Hebert (English)
Kosei Hirota (Japanese)

Two twin devil toads from the coldest inferno. Bael attacks Nero in the castle on Fortuna but is slain by Nero. Later, his brother Dagon assaults Dante but meets the same fate. Their Hell Gate is powered by the Devil Arm Pandora, which Dante claims after killing the latter.
  • Achilles' Heel: Their tongues are vulnerable to Nero's Buster once they're staggered.
  • Amphibian Assault: They attack both Nero and Dante.
  • Amphibian at Large: They are gigantic toad-like demons each with two anglerfish-like glowing feelers called Rusalka that they can use to lure and attack prey.
  • Bait-and-Switch Boss: Used creatively. The boss of Mission 5 appears to be two luminescent female devils with ice powers, fought in a snowing courtyard. But as you fight them, they seem unusually pathetic, rarely ever attacking and doing little damage when they do. Damage them enough though, and a massive toad demon with ice powers will suddenly lunge out of the blizzard, trying to swallow you whole. He's the actual boss — the female devils were just his lures.
  • Combat Pragmatist: They tend to lure in victims to the darkness and use sneak attacks.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: A single devil toad serves as an in-game boss fight. In a cutscene of Dante's campaign, five of them are easily dispatched simultaneously using the Pandora.
  • Curse Cut Short:
    Bael: "You think... you've... beaten me!? Never! You piece... of..."
    Nero: "That's exactly what I think!"
  • Evil Smells Bad: Nero and Dante both cite the toads' awful smell as being a dead giveaway to their tricks. Neither is pleased with the observation.
    Dante: You can hide that body. But that smell, woo!
  • Hot as Hell: The Rusalka twins resemble naked females, used to attract victims.
  • An Ice Person: They can use ice and conjure blizzards.
  • Just Eat Him: Can try this on the playable characters when they are busy with the Rusalka feelers.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: Their death animations in the rematches, where they are frozen and shattered.
  • Luring in Prey: Dagon and Bael's species can create darkness and disappear into it, only leaving their antennae/lures visible, which resemble beautiful, naked nymphs called Rusalka who play with each other to entice victims to get within swallowing range. Dante plays along with the Rusalka, but is not fooled by the trick, while Nero simply ignores their seduction and fights them afterwards.
  • Me's a Crowd: For some reason, there are many Dagon-like demons. Bael refers to them as his brothers.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: They look like a hybrid of a toad and an anglerfish.
  • Ominous Fog: They create a thick fog that serves as their hiding spot while they toy with their victims using the Rusalka feelers. A few moments later, the demon toad reveals its true form.
  • Palette Swap: The only difference between Bael and Dagon lies in their color palette; the former has a white body with a blue Rusalka, which are inverted by the latter. This is even lampshaded by Dagon's Boss File description:
    "A demon much like a Bael, adaptation has caused it to evolve a different body color. This proves to be the only difference between the two, including the particularly weak tongue."
  • Recurring Boss: They're fought thrice just like Berial, though both Dante and Nero kill members of the same species, and Dagon is fought again in the Boss Rush of Mission 19.
  • Red Baron: The Masters of The Frozen Soil.
  • Those Were Only Their Scouts: After Nero defeats the demon Bael, Bael boasts that he is just the first of many and his brothers will avenge him. Nero looks at the nearby Hellgate's portal and sees an army of demons that look just like Bael approaching from the other side. Nero closes the portal in time, then later on, Dante kills Bael's brothers and destroys the Hellgate.
  • Twin Threesome Fantasy: The imagery the Rusalka twins give off, sensual embraces and everything. Dante, ever the cunning fox, decides to go along with it to toy with Dagon, who does not take kindly to the Son of Sparda's practical joke.

    Echidna - the She-Viper 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/echidna.jpg
"You may jest, but the kindest fate I offer is to unify and spend eternity with a child of mine!"

Voiced by: Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (English)
Urara Takano (Japanese)

A huge demon who has infested the forest on Fortuna Island. Appears as a huge serpent-like dragon, but hides her true body in the mouth and can appear as a part woman-part serpent devil. She's laying a bunch of eggs which gives birth to the hellish Chimera. Her Hell Gate is powered by a Devil Arm, the Gilgamesh, which Dante claims after slaying her.
  • Advancing Boss of Doom: A short segment of Mission 7 makes you run ahead as Echidna approaches you and destroys the platforms you are standing on.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Echidna ruled the great forest in the Demon World before she took over the Mitis Forest in Fortuna.
  • Fisher Queen: Although her boss fight's environment starts off with clear clouds, a thunderstorm arrives when she becomes enraged after her health bar drops down enough.
  • Flunky Boss: To a lesser extent, as she sometimes spawns Chimera Seeds to distract you.
  • Giant Flyer: She hovers over the forest the whole time.
  • Green Thumb: She seems to have some relationship with plants.
  • Mama Bear: She gets pissed when Nero blows her eggs out of the sky with Blue Rose and when Dante starts kicking them around like footballs.
  • Meaningful Name: Named after the monster from Greek myths. Echidna's name meant "she-viper," and she was the mother of various other monsters, including the Chimera and (humorously enough) Cerberus. This also thematically explains and justifies DMC4 Echidna's feminine appearance, Mama Bear tendencies, her Chimera Seed "children", and her snake-like form (never mind the fact that serpents are seen as symbols of fertility in certain cultures).
  • Monster Is a Mommy: Echidna is the mother of the Chimera Seeds and berates Nero for killing them.
  • Navel-Deep Neckline: Her Organic Bra has a plunging neckline that ends on her midriff.
  • Non-Mammal Mammaries: Her real appearance may be unmistakably feminine, but she's still a reptilian demon at the end of the day.
  • Ominous Fog: When Dante ventures through Mitis Forest, the area is now shrouded within a dense fog accompanied by a fierce thunderstorm. Set up by Echidna to prevent Dante from making his way to her, the fog creates dimensional warps that make the task of navigating the forest even more haphazard and difficult than usual. All the while, you can hear Echidna's laugh echoing in the distance. Naturally, the forest clears up when Echidna is finally slain.
  • Puny Earthlings:
    Echidna (trying to escape from Nero): "How shameful to be beaten by a human...!"
  • Recurring Boss: She's fought thrice just like Berial and Bael/Dagon. Nero fights her twice (including the Boss Rush in Mission 19), while Dante fights her once.
  • Red Baron: The She-Viper.
  • Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Echidna and her Chimera Seed children are fittingly and respectively named after the Greek mythology monsters Echidna and her offspring Chimera.
  • Snakes Are Sexy: Her humanoid form, maybe?
  • Turns Red: After hacking her life bar down past the half-way point, not only does her attack pattern change, the scenery is also suddenly engulfed in a storm, and Echidna herself starts glowing menacingly.
  • Vagina Dentata: It doesn't help that the mouth of her serpentine form folds back to resemble a Venus Flytrap when she reveals her true self.
  • Villainous Valor: She really cares for her children. And her forest.
    Echidna (shortly before her death): "My forest...! My children...!"
  • Weaponized Offspring: Echidna uses her Chimera Seeds as weapons, both as projectiles and as a Mook Maker. She then has the nerve to act outraged when you blow said seeds out of the sky or smash them with your Devil Bringer.

    Sanctus 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sanctus_dmc4.gif
"2,000 years ago... the Dark Knight Sparda, turned against his demon brethren and took up his sword for the sake of mankind. Though despite his brave efforts in our names, I fear some have forgotten the great truth of that great sacrifice."

Voiced by: Liam O'Brien (English)
Ikuya Sawaki (Japanese)

The Vicar of Sparda, Sanctus is the leader of the Order of the Sword (and by proxy, Fortuna). He is a kindly and benevolent man who is praised and loved by his subjects. In the middle of one his Sparda-centered sermons, Dante swoops in and kills him, setting off the events of the game.

Shortly afterward, he is revived via the Ascension ceremony. It is revealed that he is the mastermind of the Order's plot to conquer the world using the vast power of The Savior. He lures Dante to Fortuna by using the Yamato to open up Hell Gates so that he can use Dante as The Savior's core, but switches his plans when he kidnaps Kyrie to instead goad on Nero. While he does gain immense power thanks to the Sparda sword, Dante and Nero work together to quell his goal of world domination.
  • Back from the Dead: Thanks to the Ascension Ceremony, which infuses its participants with demonic energy.
  • Barrier Warrior: One of the more frustrating tactics Sanctus employs during your battles with him.
  • Big Bad: The main antagonist of Devil May Cry 4.
  • Blocking Stops All Damage: In the finale, Sanctus Diabolica can use the Sparda to block Nero's attacks and stagger him.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Gets this treatment from Dante at the very start of the game. He gets better.
  • Clipped-Wing Angel: Once Nero and Kyrie leave The Savior's body, Sanctus becomes its core instead, transforming it into the False Savior. Since the giant statue is no longer stable after the second "merge", it can barely even stand upright, can only just swing its fists and roar at Nero, and is defeated by three properly-timed Busters.
  • Corrupt Church: And he's the head of it.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: He's the head of a seemingly Roman Catholic church, resembles the Pope (and is even called "His Holiness"), and worships a statue in Sparda's image known as The Savior. Need we go on?
  • Dash Attack: When he's about to go down in the final battle with Nero, Sanctus Diabolica will keep on lunging forward with the Sparda.
  • Dirty Coward: Spends all of his fights hiding from the player characters behind something, be it a shield, the Savior, or the Sparda sword. He only beats Nero the first time because he uses Kyrie as a human shield. After the final boss fight, he holds her hostage when his stolen powers prove insufficient to beat Nero. It is very satisfying when Nero guts his ass like a fish.
  • Demon of Human Origin: Sanctus is revived and converted into a demon via the Ascension Ceremony. Although he retains most of his human form in his next appearances, Nero fights him in his demonic form (known as "Sanctus Diabolica") in the final mission.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: See his merciless stabbing of Credo when Credo is pissed by the use of his sister in Sanctus' plans. The man's reply? "Love...? For a sibling? How foolish. All that is needed... is absolute power." Nero calls him on this after kicking his ass in the final battle, pointing out that Sanctus could never hope to be like Sparda, even with his power, because he considered love, which Sparda had for Eva, to be a weakness.
  • Evil Laugh: Sanctus does it while playing the act of the hero who saves the day.
  • Final Boss: In Devil May Cry 4.
  • Final Boss Preview: You fight Sanctus twice: once after his ascension in Mission 11 and then again in Mission 20 as "Sanctus Diabolica" when he's using Sparda's sword. Ultimately, both fights employ similar strategies.
  • Fusion Dance: When he merges with The Savior in the finale, the giant statue's face would resemble Sanctus's.
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: This guy loves to dart away when you try to get close to him after you break his shield, forcing you to pursue him often in order to pin him down.
  • A God Am I: Sanctus sought to create an artificial God and unify with it to reign over a new utopia purged of chaos.
    "A Savior is among you!"
  • Hat of Authority: Given his resemblance to a Pope, it's inevitable for Sanctus to wear a mitre that represents his role as the Order of the Sword's Vicar.
  • Hypocrite: The first dialogue from Sanctus is him lamenting how people have forgotten the importance of Sparda's stand against the demon world in favor of humanity. As pointed out by Nero, who never put much stock in the legend of Sparda, Sanctus lacks the heart that made Sparda a hero.
  • Informed Ability: His swordsmanship. You might be surprised to find the Data File of the game saying he used to be a Supreme General of the Holy Knights. In the actual game, he primarily lets his powers do the fighting for him, and isn't even in Nero's league, let alone Dante's or Vergil's. Of course, he is an old man by this point and would much rather rely on his newfound demonic power and the might of The Savior than any sort of technical skill.
  • Love Is a Weakness: Derides Credo's brotherly love for Kyrie, and Nero's romantic love for her, as foolish. This bites him in the ass, since this view is what prevents him from being able to truly harness Sparda's power.
  • Obviously Evil: Not his human form, but as Sanctus Diabolica.
  • One-Winged Angel: He gains a demonic appearance as "Sanctus Diabolica" during the Final Boss battle.
  • Recurring Boss: He's fought twice — once in Mission 11, and once in Mission 20. The latter battle has him in full red-eyed Sanctus Diabolica mode, and with the Sparda sword to boot.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Briefly when he is revived. His eyes become red for good when he becomes Sanctus Diabolica.
  • Shielded Core Boss: During both fights against Sanctus, he is protected by a force field that you must destroy to damage him.
  • Silence, You Fool!: Yells "Silence!" after Dante mocked him via the Angelo armor he's controlling.
    Sanctus: You travelled this far to fight me!? You could never touch the power of the Savior!
    Dante: Sounds like you're overcompensating... Besides, I didn't want you to get a creak in your neck from lookin' down at me.
    Sanctus: Silence! What would it take for you to alter your position?
  • Sinister Minister: In Sanctus's case, a very sinister Pope version — even more so when he gets his hands on the Sparda sword and becomes Sanctus Diabolica.
  • Turns Red: Halfway through the first major battle with him, Sanctus involves the incomplete Savior when he needs to flee or recover.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Is absolutely revered and adored by the inhabitants of Fortuna. Of course, this was probably made null around endgame, where the dwellers of Fortuna see him on top of The Savior, cackling as demons swarm the city. According to the semi-canon tie-in novel Deadly Fortune, some of the citizens had a hard time believing Nero's words about Sanctus' true nature until Kyrie vouched for him.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: If you don't know how to move quickly in the air, and especially the use of Calibur, you will have a bad time against Sanctus.
  • White and Red and Eerie All Over: Sanctus wears a white and gold alb with a red stole. As Sanctus Diabolica, he gains red eyes and red fiery wings. He is also the leader of a Corrupt Church with goals of taking over the world.

Devil May Cry 5 Villains

    Urizen - the Nefarious Usurper 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/urizen_rooted_dmc5_artbook_render_2.jpg
"It has begun!"
Click here to see his true form. 
"I will show you your worst nightmares. I will give you despair, and... death."

Voiced by: Dan Southworth (English)
Shunsuke Sakuya (Japanese)

A demon king behind the demonic invasion in Red Grave city and the primary antagonist of Devil May Cry 5. According to V, Urizen is a demon stronger than even the likes of Mundus. He slaughters humans by the hundreds in pursuit of more power for himself, creating the Qliphoth so he can eat its fruit and become more powerful still.
  • Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: He has a very strange and deliberate way of emphasizing certain words, with long bouts of silence in-between other words in the middle of a sentence.
  • Accidental Pun: When V is bringing Dante into the fight, he describes Urizen as "your reason" to fight. One would be forgiven for mistaking his name as a corruption of "Your Reason." That is the root of his name, but the name "Urizen" is taken from William Blake's "The Four Zoas." The fact that V, a fan of Blake's work, chose to call him that is not a coincidence.
  • All for Nothing: Vergil sacrifices his humanity for more power, slaughters an entire city of humans, and turns himself into a three-eyed devil just like Mundus all for the sake of beating Dante. As Urizen, he only manages to beat Dante in round one, like always, and in the long run Urizen's lack of humanity and overreliance on brute strength means he's weaker than he was as Vergil. Urizen's entire plan was for nothing.
    Dante: You've been chasing this for an eternity... and it's nothing but useless shit!
  • All Your Powers Combined: As a nod to his drive to seek power at any cost, he can utilize the attacks of the other bosses in the game. He can use Goliath's fireballs, Artemis' lasers, the time slowing magic of Geryon, and Malphas' teleportation. And in Dante's final fight with him, he starts summoning spikes from the ground and spectral swords.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: A demon with blue skin.
  • Ambition Is Evil: He's literally Vergil's ambition and greed manifested into a malevolent, power-hungry demon.
  • Archnemesis Dad: He's the demonic half of Nero's father Vergil, who is more than happy to kill a useless human like Nero.
  • Bait-and-Switch: His identity. Given how V refers to him as "your reason to fight" to Dante and his many many similarities to Mundus you'd be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that he's Mundus re-incarnated or reborn. In truth, he's Vergil.
  • Barrier Warrior: Can generate a crystal made of demonic energy that in turn create barriers that block any attack against him, forcing you to first crush the crystal completely to actually damage him before he eventually restores it again. He can also have the crystal jut out spikes to attack. The crystal is actually Yamato.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis: As Urizen, Vergil becomes a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Mundus, a multi-eyed Demon Lord concerned only with advancing his own aims who corrupts others into his slaves. For extra points on this front, he even enslaves Mundus' old servant Trish and seals her within a suit of Angelo armor like Mundus did to him so long ago.
  • Big Bad: Of 5, as the one in control of the demonic Qliphoth tree terrorizing Redgrave City. If V's words are any indication, he's also responsible for Nero losing his arm and may be even more powerful than Mundus. Until he is defeated by Dante and merges back together with V. Vergil then takes over the main antagonist role for the last few missions, though in the end it's mostly over what form his atonement for Urizen's actions should take.
  • Bishōnen Line: Kind of. After eating the Qliphoth's fruit he loses the demonic tree root armor, taking on a more acrobatic humanoid form. However, the armor was simply a way to keep his body from falling apart and the humanoid form was the form he'd had all along. A more straight-forward example comes after V forces a re-merge with him into Vergil, he becomes an attractive human man again rather than a monstrous demon.
  • Blood Upgrade: Nero slashing the palm of his hand is the first time he's seen getting angry, even though he quickly regenerates from it. He's really more mad about being forced to get up off his ass and fight seriously.
  • Boomerang Bigot: Hates humans, but is part of a half-human demon. This is justified, as he's partly made from Vergil's own self-hate over being born part-human.
  • Boss Subtitles:
    Nefarious Usurper: Urizen
  • The Brute: Lacking any of the original Vergil's finesse or skill, he relies solely on spamming his magic and brute strength to beat any opponent. When faced with an opponent of equal strength and superior skill, he is easily beaten into the ground.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: After defeating Trish and Lady, he decides to turn them into his demonic servants rather than kill them.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Urizen's "magic" attacks consume a portion of his floating crystal's HP bar, though this is very subtle; it's easily unnoticeable unless you lock on to the crystal to keep track of what's happening.
  • Character Exaggeration: Urizen is effectively an exaggeration of the power-hungry, Dante-hating Vergil from DMC3. Gone are any of Vergil's more sympathetic traits; he has truly become a demon obsessed with obtaining power solely for its own sake. He has no idea what he even wants to do with all that power aside from defeating Dante, and all he recalls is a sense of loss in the past. This is even shown in their fighting styles. Vergil was a fighter who valued efficiency, hardly moving at all until instantaneously teleporting in for the kill. Urizen doesn't move at all preferring to fight sitting on his throne, throwing out powerful AOE attacks. Only when he is enraged and finds a worthy enough opponent does he deign to get up.
  • The Coats Are Off: The many tentacles trailing from his organic armor resemble a cape, and they're the first things he sheds after gaining the power of the Qliphoth fruit.
  • Combat Tentacles: He can use the demonic tree tentacles covering his body and throughout the Qliphoth to stab his enemies.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Effortlessly defeats all of the main heroes without even leaving his chair. Even Dante, who has taken on the likes of Mundus and Argosax, is no match for him initially and it takes Dante absorbing the power of both the Sparda and Rebellion to finally even the odds.
  • Dark Lord on Life Support: Urizen spends most of the game on his throne in what appears to be armor made of the Qliphoth itself. Due to Vergil separating himself into V and Urizen, Urizen's body would decay just like V's. So to counter this, Urizen attached himself to the Qliphoth Tree to feed off of its power until the Tree was ready to bear its fruit. After he ate the fruit, his armor falls off, revealing his true form underneath.
  • The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Urizen is so obsessed with power that he no longer remembers his past or the reason why he wanted it in the first place. At most he only has a vague sense of having lost something important to him and believes that power will fill that hole inside of him. This lack of true motivation is the reason he finally loses to Dante, who actually has something he means to protect.
  • Death by Irony: After all the power he stole, you'd expect Dante to be the one who ended up destroying him, not his own powerless, weak human half.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: He's referred to by V as "Urizen the Demon King".
  • Demon of Human Origin: He is the physical embodiment of Vergil's demon half.
  • Despotism Justifies the Means: He only cares about gaining power, and if he has to unleash a blood-sucking demon tree upon the human world and slaughter an entire city full of humans to get it, then so be it. Sadly, this bites him in the ass; Dante is ultimately able to defeat Urizen because he actually fights to protect others and those he cares about, whereas Urizen just wants power for power's sake.
  • EmPHAsis On The Wrong SylLAble: Urizen speaks in a very slow and stilted speech pattern, often placing odd emphasis on various words or syllables. This makes him sound somehow "off". Which makes sense, as he's Vergil's demon half, and without the thoughtful and poetic word usage that V has.
  • Enemy Without: Vergil had simply wanted to heal all the damage that had been inflicted on him over the years by removing the human part of himself, in hopes it would release more of his demonic power. But instead, he got a far more evil version of himself without any of his Noble Demon qualities or even a reason for seeking power. His unfettered actions similarly disgust his human half and the recompleted Vergil alike.
  • Evil Is Hammy: A villainous demon behind the invasion of Red Grave city who talks about over the top things like bringing about people's worst nightmares, a world of demons, despair, and of course death. Also isn't above unnecessarily shouting "It has begun!" when the Qliphoth starts doing something everyone can clearly see.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He can't understand how Dante is beating him in their final confrontation, despite Dante being part human and in Urizen's eyes having given up nothing to pursue power. Dante then points out that simply fighting for the sake of something, in his case to protect others, makes him stronger than Urizen, who has no real motivation to his actions other than gaining more power, could ever be.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: Has a multitude of eyes growing on his body. Like Mundus before him, he has an eye in the middle of his forehead as well. After eating the Qliphoth's fruit, he sheds his tree armor and reveals his true form, which has eyes covering every inch of it.
  • Final-Exam Boss: It's not immediately obvious, but most of Urizen's attacks are taken from various bosses you face later—Goliath's fireballs, Geryon's time stopping magic, Artemis's lasers, and so on.
  • Flanderization: He serves as a Flanderized version of his true identity of Vergil, more specifically his thirst for power. Where Vergil wanted power to protect himself from another tragedy like Mundus' forces raiding his family home, Urizen simply wants more and more power for its own sake and doesn't even remember why he wants it aside from a vague sense of loss. This even translates into their fighting styles as while Vergil is a skillful swordsman and applies his intelligence as much as his strength, Urizen is nothing more than a brute that focuses entirely on swamping his opponents in attacks with no care for strategy or finesse. Even when he's defeated and mortally wounded by Dante, all he can do is whinge about how he needs "more power!" rather than realizing that his zero-thought fighting style lead to him being a Paper Tiger before an opponent who could keep up with him.
  • Foreshadowing: There are multiple hints to his true nature as a part of Vergil.
    • The contrast between two of the cutscenes which were released prior to the full game, where one clearly shows a broken-down and cloaked Vergil stealing Nero's devil arm and another has V telling Nero that Urizen was the culprit of the same act.
    • V claims Urizen is one of Dante's reasons for fighting hinting at him being a member of Dante's Freudian Excuse, his lost family.
    • When Urizen punches and breaks Rebellion, knocking Dante out of Trigger and sending him flying back, the camera zooms in close to Dante's right eye and Urizen's image is reflected there. In 3 after their first boss fight, Dante gets knocked back by Vergil and the camera zooms in close to Dante's right eye with Vergil's image being reflected just before he stabs Dante with Rebellion.
    • He's a demon with blue skin and green eyes. Just like Vergil's 3 and 4 Devil Trigger forms.
    • His voice actor in English is a pitch shifted Dan Southworth, who is also Vergil's voice actor.
    • Look closely at his arms and legs. Their armor resembles Nero's original Devil Bringer arm from 4. Vergil is Nero's father.
    • His name: From The Book of Urizen, Chapter III,
      Los wept howling around the dark Demon:
      And cursing his lot; for in anguish,
      Urizen was rent from his side
  • Freudian Excuse: He is a being born of Vergil's painful past and is the reason for Vergil's lust for power. While Urizen himself no longer remembers his mother and the reason why he desired power in the first place, he still seems to retain a sense of loss, which he believes to be the reason for his power. He says this once he begins to be overwhelmed by Dante, claiming that Dante has lost nothing compared to him.
  • Fusion Dance: V forcefully re-merges with Urizen after Dante beats the crap out of the demon to make a recompleted, fettered Vergil again.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: Deconstructed. Urizen has no real motivation for his actions beyond seeking power for power's sake. Justified as he is the physical manifestation of Vergil's demonic side, specifically his lust for power, but with none of humanity to balance it out, thus reducing him to a monster mindlessly seeking power with no rhyme or reason for it. And this ends up being Urizen's Fatal Flaw. Having no real motivations beyond seeking power is what causes him to lose to Dante in their final battle. As Dante himself points out, simply fighting for the sake of something, in his case to protect others, makes him stronger than Urizen, who has no real motivation to his actions other than gaining more power, could ever be.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: A powerful demon with eyes that glow bright blue.
  • A God Am I: Labels himself divine, despite being a monstrous demon.
  • Ground Punch: In Mission 17, Urizen would often punch the ground when he's near the playable character.
  • Hate Sink: Invoked and narratively justified. Urizen is Vergil stripped of all his humanity. With that, he has completely lost his honor, empathy, and even most of his memories. All that remains is a cruel, loathsome shell that craves power so much he doesn't even know why anymore. Even his rivalry with Dante is all but gone, as Urizen sees him as little more than an insect.
  • Hero Killer: Non-lethally, thankfully. He single-handedly wipes out all the heroes and even breaks Dante's sword, Rebellion.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: He's essentially replaced Mundus as the Emperor of Hell, and has become a giant mass-murdering three-eyed devil in the process. He traps people in suits of armor as living batteries, just as he was trapped as Nelo Angelo. He's become everything about demons Vergil despised.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: After defeating Dante, Urizen claims that the Devil Sword Sparda no longer serves a purpose and tells his subordinates to leave it be, despite Malphas thinking otherwise. This comes back to bite him when Dante absorbs it and Rebellion to create his own Devil Sword, and in the process, acquire the Sin Devil Trigger.
  • Homing Lasers: Can generate multiple laser blasts that fly into the air before homing in on you.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: You face him five times throughout the game, but only two of them are winnable from a narrative standpoint. The others are scripted to end as soon as your vitality drops to a certain threshold. It is technically possible to win the Prologue fight or his second phase in Mission 8, but the game assumes that you're going to lose. Winning these scripted fights unlocks an alternate secret ending, complete with fast-rolling credits.
  • I Am the Noun: "I am without a name. I am power, absolute."
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of his moves has him using the giant pointed roots of the Qliphoth to stab straight through your body.
  • Irony: The Yamato is the sharpest blade ever forged, capable of cutting through nearly everything, which was put to good use in the hands of Vergil. Urizen on the other hand uses the Yamato as the ultimate shield, a barrier so impenetrable that Dante in his Devil Trigger state could not even dent it.
  • Karmic Death: He spends most of the game labeling humans as worthless and weak despite being part of a half-human demon, and espouses Social Darwinist pseudo-logic that even Vergil would find disgusting. So it's only fitting that his own powerless, dying, weak human half is the one who finally destroys him.
  • Large and in Charge: He's a demon king who's about five times taller than a normal person.
  • Line-of-Sight Name: V choosing to call the nameless demonic half of Vergil "Urizen" is a case of this, as while holding a book full of William Blake's he proceeds to name his worse self after the Satanic Archetype of Blake's mythos.
  • Literal Split Personality: He's actually Vergil's demonic half, without any of the humanity.
  • Maou the Demon King: Urizen is introduced as the one behind the demon invasion in Red Grave City, he's repeatedly called a "Demon King" by the protagonists, and he spends most of his early screen time sitting on his throne while waiting for the heroes to arrive and fight him.
  • Meaningful Name: Urizen is the god of reason and order in William Blake's lore. The Urizen here is an exceptionally powerful being of pure logic in his pursuit of power that he will ignore all scruples if it means the most efficient way in obtaining it. Also, "Urizen" sounds awfully similar to "your reason", which is the term V uses to describe Urizen to Dante. Additionally, given that V is a Blake enthusiast and is the one to name Urizen, it makes sense that he would name his antithesis as such given that the original Urizen is the main antagonistic figure of the Blake mythos.
  • Mighty Glacier: Urizen opts for a form of maximum power and prefers to fight while completely sessile. This strategy actually works very well for him due to Urizen being unfathomably powerful and also having a nigh-impenetrable force field that blocks every attack, removing the need to dodge. Urizen's sheer might allows him to ragdoll anyone who comes his way until he is faced with Dante in his Sin Devil Trigger form, who is strong enough to keep up with Urizen.
  • Minor Injury Overreaction: When Nero actually manages to wound him in their second fight, Urizen is so pissed that a mere mortal could hurt him that he rises from his throne to confront him directly even though the wound in question is a relatively minor cut across the palm of his right hand that heals up quickly thanks to his demonic Healing Factor. However, this may have actually been a Berserk Button that triggered a memory of Vergil slicing Dante's palm twice in the same way. It likely reminded Urizen of his past defeats against Dante.
  • Motive Decay: A justified example. As the living incarnation of Vergil's desire for power, he has no memory of the reasons why Vergil desires power and simply amasses it for its own sake.
  • No Name Given: His name was completely left out of Capcom's promotional material, only starting to show up once news sites started running their own previews of the game.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: "Urizen" is just what V dubbed him. He himself claims he has no name, he is simply power incarnate. As you learn in the finale, his actual name is Vergil.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Urizen only sits on his throne and never bothers to stand up during his early appearances, and the lore justifies it by saying he needs to stay rooted to his throne in order to absorb the Qliphoth's power. So the moment he does stand up after Nero injures him in Mission 8, it's only when Urizen starts fighting seriously. Nico's second Report on him also lampshades it:
    Nico: That makes it all the crazier that he cut himself off to move around!
  • Orcus on His Throne: Urizen doesn't seem to have any interest in actively aiding his fellow demons in wreaking havoc, just intent on lounging around inside that hellish tree of his. That being said, he's far from incompetent.
    • Turns out to be justified; he retains enough of Vergil's memories to hate demons and view them as nothing but means to an end of more power. Also, the armor he wears is physically connected to the Qliphoth tree so he can leech its power. It's only when Nero actually manages to wound him does he finally get off the throne to confront him directly.
    • Also justified for another reason. While he hides it better than his human counterpart, he is just as damaged as V, who is literally crumbling to dust, and uses the constant supply of blood from the Qliphoth to keep himself stable until the fruit is matured, as only that can properly heal the immense damage he’s suffering from. Essentially, the throne provides him with dozens of IV drips.
  • Outside-Context Problem: The story already presents Urizen as a "Demon King" right at the start, yet Nico's reports point out that he doesn't have a previously-documented infamy in some demonology texts to back his reputation. Then comes Trish's Wham Line: "Urizen is not a demon." and she's sure of it because she's from the Demon World herself. Their suspicions are eventually justified because Urizen is actually the embodiment of Vergil's demon half, and not some denizen of the Demon World.
  • Physical God: After eating the Qliphoth fruit, he becomes a demon with godly powers, like Mundus before him. And all Dante could do now is kick his ass.
  • Playing with Fire: Can summon fireballs into his hands or generate balls of flaming magma around his body and then send them hurtling at you.
  • Puny Earthlings: Like most demons, Urizen believes humans are weak, as evident by his words to Nero. Given the reveal that he's half of Vergil, it becomes clear he's a Boomerang Bigot, or at least Vergil's Inferiority Superiority Complex made manifest.
    Urizen: You will regret being born useless and human!
  • Recurring Boss: You fight him five times, although only the last two are mandatory to win. Add two more as Vergil.
  • Red Herring: The three eyes on his face, his status as Demon King, and control over demons like the Angelos seemed to imply he was connected to Mundus. He's actually half of Vergil.
  • Rule of Symbolism: When Urizen's entire body is still covered by the Qliphoth's roots, several root-like spikes are layered on the top of his head, resembling a "crown". It makes sense considering his role as a Demon King.
  • Scary Teeth: Like Dante in Devil Trigger form or Sparda, despite his humanoid appearance, his mouth is filled with jagged teeth. It runs in the family.
  • Shadow Archetype: To Vergil. As Vergil's enemy without, he is all of Vergil's ambition and greed for power and represents the logical extreme of what Vergil's quest for power turned him into.
  • Shared Unusual Trait: Upon eating the Qliphoth's fruit and revealing his true form, Urizen's arms subtly resemble the appearance of Nero's Devil Bringer arm in 4. It's interesting how even if he's just the embodiment of Vergil's demonic half, Urizen has a shared physical trait that connects him to Vergil's son, Nero.
  • Shed Armor, Gain Speed: After eating the Qliphoth fruit and shedding the roots that serve as his layer of armor, he starts moving much faster, using acrobatic kicks, Teleportation, and more flexible punches against Dante. Nico's third report on Urizen also points out how the Qliphoth roots encasing him were only slowing him down. This tactic doesn't help him much in the aftermath though.
  • Shielded Core Boss: Urizen puts up a shield that Nero or Dante must destroy before he can be damaged. After some time, he will regenerate the shield and while it goes down easier, his attacks became more aggressive and hit much harder.
  • Shout-Out Theme Naming: He is named after the godlike being of reason and order from William Blake's lore, which makes sense because his other half, V, quotes Blake's poems as well.
  • Slouch of Villainy: He is shown sitting contently on his throne with an elbow propped against the armrest, giving off a bored vibe. He clearly has the power to back up this attitude as he fights the heroes while sitting in this pose and effortlessly crushes Dante in Devil Trigger, who is at the strongest we've seen him the series.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The game's narrative and some pre-release materials mention that Urizen apparently surpasses Mundus himself.
  • Spikes of Villainy: The tree roots/tentacles on his body end in spikes that cover the top of his head and shoulders, just so you're clear he's a villain.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: Without Vergil's humanity holding him back, he steals power from anyone he can and becomes strong enough to easily beat Dante during their first confrontation. V is noticably shocked Urizen managed to get this powerful this quickly in the prologue.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Of Mundus both visually in his tri-eyed head, and action-wise in his vicious pursuit of conquest and converting his enemies into demonic slaves. He even copies Mundus In-Universe by replicating his feat of eating the Qliphoth's fruit to gain more power.
  • Third Eye: His face contains not only two regular eyes, but a third one in the middle of his forehead.
  • This Cannot Be!: His reaction during the final showdown; Urizen is utterly shocked and bewildered that even after he consumed the Qliphoth fruit, Dante is still overpowering him.
  • Throne Made of X: Has a throne made of nothing but demonic tree roots and demon skulls which he is bound to.
  • Time Master: Can create spheres of energy that slow down everything caught inside them to a crawl.
  • Tomato Surprise: V and Dante both know the truth about him from the start, namely that he's Vergil, or at least Vergil's demonic half, but Nero and the audience don't get this completely confirmed till the finale of the game.
  • The Unfettered: All Vergil's selfishness and ambition without any of his humanity. He kills thousands upon thousands with his own hands, steals Mundus's army for himself, and turns anyone who seems powerful enough into his slaves, things the original Anti-Villain Vergil would have been disgusted with and found beneath him.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: He has none of Vergil's fighting skills and defaults to raw power to see him through his battles.
  • The Usurper: He's taken control of all Mundus's remaining forces following the Demon Prince's resealing by Dante, using Mundus's various Angelo demon knight prototypes and so on in his army. His Boss Subtitles even call him the "Nefarious Usurper".
  • Villainous Breakdown: He spends the first part of the game sitting on his throne completely styling on Dante and Nero, not even bothering to move against them. However, in the middle when Nero's sheer determination allows him to land a lucky blow, Urizen becomes enraged enough to actually stand and fight, but is promptly interrupted by Sin Devil Trigger Dante who overwhelms him. This prompts Urizen to opt for a retreat to obtain the fruit for a power-up before confronting Dante. Despite the power-up, Dante still proves to have the upper hand, reducing Urizen to howling in disbelief in how powerful Dante has become despite having never lost anything. It's at that point Dante finally tells him to his face why he always ends up losing in the end. He takes this about as well as you could expect and screams Dante's name in rage. After finally being defeated, all Urizen can do is repeatedly state that he will not lose to Dante and that he needs more power until V re-merges with him.
  • Walking Wasteland: During his final fight with Dante, the ground decays where he steps, revealing the red flesh of the Qliphoth. This becomes more dangerous as the fight goes on as he can make spikes erupt from those areas to pin the player in place, right before trying to nail them with a Megaton Punch.
  • When Trees Attack: Seems to have some level of control over the demonic Qliphoth tree, using its roots as weapons or making it erupt in fountains of blood on command. His armor/body similarly appears to be covered in demonic tree roots.
  • Worthy Opponent: The only person in existence he seems to have any respect for is Dante, whom he is far more subdued and respectful towards. He hardly even bothers talking to anyone else.

    Goliath - the Incandescent Colossus 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goliath_0.jpg
"Human! I wasn't expecting any survivors!"
"Your blood... is a very precious sacrifice... Eating you would do me no good."

Voiced by: Joey Camen (English)
Kenta Miyake (Japanese)

A large demon encountered by Nero in Red Grave City. He seeks to become the King of the Underworld, but is sadly not in Nero's league.
  • Belly Mouth: He can suck anything close to him into the mouth on his stomach and spit out a huge fire storm or magical fire balls in return.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: He plans to get the fruit before Urizen and becoming king of the Underworld. He gets tossed around by Nero and finished by V before achieving much.
  • Boss Subtitles:
    Incandescent Colossus: Goliath
  • Car Fu: Goliath hurls an ambulance at Nero before they fight.
  • Dumb Muscle: Goliath is a huge hulking demon but he isn't actually that smart. It's such a defining trait for him, the game jokingly references it at least thrice; he's mocked by Nero for not being the sharpest tool in the shed, from comments on Nico's Report (where she describes Goliath as a "roided-out musclehead demon" who's "dumber [than] a sack of pork chops"), and as the caption of his Game Clear Bonus Art in New Game Plus ("All brawn, no brains").
  • Extra Eyes: He has eyes all over his body, mixing with Eyes Do Not Belong There.
  • Extreme Omnivore: As a result of his Belly Mouth's sucking in anything nearby.
  • Fireballs: Goliath can pick up objects in the environment to be swallowed by his Belly Mouth, which are later spit out as huge fireballs. And when the playable character is caught by his vacuum attack, they are later sent flying several meters by a huge fireball directly pushing them back.
  • Groin Attack: One of in battle quotes has him screaming "My balls!", indicating you may have nailed him in the gonads.
  • Hellfire: Nico's Report on Goliath states hellfire as the substance that's in his Belly Mouth.
  • Leitmotif: Blazing Muscle.
  • Precision F-Strike: Sometimes when being hurt, Goliath can drop some swear words, such as F-bombs.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: He's convinced his overthrowing Urizen by eating the fruit of Qliphoth first is viable. He's the first boss Nero fights. Do the math.
  • The Starscream: One much, much lower on the totem pole than usual. He's a member of Urizen's invasion force, but aspires to betray and overthrow Urizen to claim his position.
  • Vacuum Mouth: One of his attacks involves using his Belly Mouth to violently suck up everything around him. If caught, Nero can escape this attack by detonating one of his Devil Breakers.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Says this nearly verbatim if you manage to stun him in the third phase of the fight.

    Artemis - the Illuminating Corruption 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arttt.jpg
"This demon... Something different about it..."
Nero

A winged female demon encountered by Nero.


  • Boss Subtitles:
    Illuminating Corruption: Artemis
  • Continuity Nod: She's the previously unseen demonic form of the Devil Arm Artemis, fused with a human to give it a body of its own.
  • Energy Weapon: Uses various types of blasts of pure energy and light to attack you.
  • Leitmotif: Lunatic Ray.
  • Living Weapon: A demonic gun fused with a living host to be able to act on its own with that host being none other than Lady.
  • Magic Music: Her song seems to conjure her laser attacks.
  • More Teeth than the Osmond Family: While she seems to have the face of an ordinary woman (albeit one without the upper half of her head), she reveals herself to have these before Nero fights her.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different: A flying woman with multiple scaled wings and a finned tail.
  • Phlegmings: These can be seen when she bares her teeth before her boss fight.
  • The Speechless: Unlike the other bosses, it cannot speak and merely tries to kill you.
    Nero: What, no chit-chat or monologue? Just getting right to the point, huh?
  • Torpedo Tits: She uses her breasts as a makeshift Attack Drone, which Nero questions.
    Nero: Hey! Don't you, uhhh, need those?

    Nidhogg - the Parasitic Fiend 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nidhogg_6.jpg
"I'm heeeeerrreee!"
"Did you insult me?! You insulted me! I'm going to kill you!"

Voiced by: Jay Preston (English)
Tadashi Miyazawa (Japanese)

A parasitic demon encountered by V and his familiars during their trip to the Qliphoth.
  • Berserk Button: He really hates being insulted as shown with Griffon.
  • The Blank: He has no face. It's not explained how he can see or talk despite this.
  • Boss Subtitles:
    Parasitic Fiend: Nidhogg
  • Doppelgänger Attack: On Dante Must Die, once his health gets low enough, he starts summoning clones of himself instead of the usual serpents.
  • Dumb Muscle: He can barely talk coherently, is genuinely confused how you managed to dodge his overly obvious attacks, and is generally just dumb as bricks. Goliath even pales in comparison to him, because while the former simply overestimates his power, strategy, and place in the demonic pecking order, Nidhogg barely seems to comprehend anything. He's even unaware of Griffon and Shadow's nature as demons! Nico even makes a hilarious footnote out of this in her report:
    Nico: Oh, and by the way...this thing is as dumb as they come.
  • Evil Is Visceral: His "core" body is mostly made of red, skinless flesh.
  • Flunky Boss: He can summon plantlike serpents to aid him in battle.
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: Nidhogg's main humanoid body can hide in the massive Qliphoth root-nest behind him, requiring you to eliminate his plant-like snake "tentacles" first to force him out. However, said tentacles can regrow and he can repeat this tactic throughout the fight.
  • Lame Comeback: His "rebuttals" to V and Griffon's mockery are lacking, to say the least.
    Griffon: [laughs] Even the big bad kitty knows you got shit for brains!
    Nidhogg: Qu-qu-qu-quiet! You... you... bird and cat!
  • Leitmotif: Splitting Fool.
  • Meaningful Name: The mythical Nidhogg was a monster that gnawed at the roots of Yggdrasil. While this Nidhogg may not be a draconic Beast of the Apocalypse, it is a parasite that eats the roots of the Qliphoth, which is essentially an evil World Tree.
  • Plot-Irrelevant Villain: He is not part of Urizen's army nor is he racing for the fruit like Goliath, he is just a parasite that lives in the Qliphoth. His hatchlings have a more important role than him in the story and Griffon tells V they shouldn't bother with him as he is probably too dumb to even know what is going on. The only reason he's a fight at all was because he heard Griffon's insult and the only reason he's not a pointless diversion is because killing him crumbles a Qliphoth root.
  • Sand Worm: A giant parasite that travels through the Qliphoth.

    Gilgamesh - the Marauding Titan 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gilgamesh_2.jpg
A giant demon formed by Qliphoth's roots combined with a pile of demonic metal.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: It gets taken down by attacking a certain spot on its back. Nero even lampshades it:
    Nero: Gotta hammer that soft spot up there...
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: It's a giant quadrupedal demon that smashes everything in its way. After it's defeated, it's revealed to be a giant mass of large Qliphoth Roots similar to the relatively smaller things you've previously found everywhere in the city, but this time being fused with the "Gilgamesh" metal from the Underworld.
  • Boss Subtitles:
    Marauding Titan: Gilgamesh
  • Colossus Climb: It's big enough that Nero generally has to swing up with Grim Grips and climb it in order to get at its weak spot on its back.
  • Continuity Nod: Much like Artemis, its existence references a previous Devil Arm from an older game. In this case, the Gauntlet/Greave weapon Gilgamesh. Nico's file on it explains that Gilgamesh is the name of a demonic metal from the underworld, and it happens that the boss is an organic Qliphoth root fused with said metal.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: A rather humorous example in its first appearance. After V kills Nidhogg, it's revealed that Gilgamesh, a much bigger and more dangerous Demon that the physically frail V isn't capable of taking on, was patrolling nearby and it notices him and Griffon. Barring their stroke of luck in evading it, Gilgamesh would've killed them both right there.
  • Leitmotif: I'd Also Like to Jump.
  • Notice This: In the cutscene preceding its boss fight, the camera zooms in and focuses on its weak point for a few seconds.
  • Shapeshifter Weapon: It can shift the demonic metal plating itself to attack. This can be problematic for Nero when it gets him off its back by turning the metal there into spikes.

    Cavaliere Angelo - the Voltaic Black Knight 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cavaliere_angelo.jpg
"SPARDA!!!"

Voiced by: Jamison Boaz (English)
Takayuki Nakatsukasa (Japanese)

A powerful Angelo demon warrior that is first encountered by V as the vanguard of Malphas upon a demonic mount called Geryon, and then fought again by Dante.
  • BFS: It wields a serrated sword with multiple blades on one hilt that's about as long as Cavaliere Angelo's own height.
  • Boss Subtitles: It has two sets of these:
    Abyssal Cavalry: Elder Geryon Knight (when fought in Mission 5)
    Voltaic Black Knight: Cavaliere Angelo (when fought in Mission 11)
  • Car Fu: Cavaliere Angelo hurls a motorcycle at Dante to get his attention.
  • Cool Bike: When Dante destroys this demon, its parts merge with a sliced-up motorcycle to become Dante's new ride/weapon, Cavaliere.
  • The Dragon: Cavaliere Angelo works under the orders of Malphas in finding the Devil Sword Sparda in order to destroy it and prevent Sparda's descendants from finding it.
  • Hellish Horse: When V fights the Cavaliere Angelo, it is astride a powerful demonic mount called an Elder Geryon.
  • King Mook: When it's fought alone as Cavaliere Angelo, it's essentially a larger, stronger version of the Angelo-type enemies you encounter throughout the game, as it uses swordplay and can block your attacks just like them.
  • Leitmotif: "Abyssal Time" and "Voltaic Black Knight".
  • Living Battery: Its suit of armor contains a comatose Trish. As implied by Nico's report file, having Trish inside the Cavaliere Angelo allows it to channel lightning.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Nico's Report on the Elder Geryon Knight says that Geryons are a proud race of horses; they're not a simple kind of horse you just jump onto and ride around. Therefore as she phrases it, Cavaliere Angelo being able to ride one is already "some mighty impressive stuff" in itself. It's not mentioned how he managed to do so in the first place.
  • Recurring Boss: Fought twice, first as V while it is riding an Elder Geryon (it flees after being beaten), then again as Dante (where it's finally defeated).
  • Shock and Awe: It likes to channel lightning into its swordplay, and can blast you with lightning bolts if you're far away.
  • Sucksessor: Of Nelo Angelo. It was designed to be an upgrade to Nelo Angelo, but Nelo Angelo is Vergil and was very much a match to Dante in DMC1 even if he ultimately proved weaker, and this game makes it clear that Cavaliere Angelo is ultimately a non-threat to him, even if admittedly a Best Boss Ever. And even though Dante has grown in power since the first game, even V sends it packing once he kills the Geryon it's riding on. What's more, Cavaliere Angelo is ultimately dependent on its host to act as a "battery" in order to even function and generate lightning, and having defensive capabilities Nelo Angelo noticeably lacked doesn't help it fight Dante any more effectively (and said capabilities may have been a result of trying to overcome its inherent weaknesses). And this isn't mentioning the fact that while Trish is admittedly pretty powerful, she's nowhere near as powerful as Vergil.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Of Nelo Angelo, as it's a demonic suit of armor that contains a living being inside powering it. Fittingly, this one contains an ex-servant of Mundus in Trish.
  • Teleportation: Uses this every once in a while to get away from you, especially if you exhaust it enough.
  • Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The Elder Geryon it's first seen riding on is killed by V in Mission 5, but it managed to escape because V was too exhausted to catch up to it after the fight.
  • Wing Shield: It has a pair of metallic wings that normally wrap its shoulders like pauldrons, but it can also expand one of them to form a frontal shield.

    Malphas - the Diabolical Amalgam 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/malphas.png
"Feast your eyes upon Hell's mightiest sorcery!"

Voiced by: Becky Boxer (English)
Toa Yukinari (Japanese)

A three-armed, three-headed demonic sorceress attached to a demonic, birdlike creature, and Urizen's second-in command, coordinating the other demons to make sure Urizen's plans are flowing smoothly. Nero ultimately fights her down in the Qliphoth.
  • Body Horror: Nico is not sure where the bird parts start or end.
  • Boss Subtitles:
    Diabolical Amalgam: Malphas
  • The Dragon: Serves as Urizen's second-in-command.
  • Evil Laugh: Delivers one to V after capturing his familiars and forcing him to fight her illusions.
  • Evil Smells Bad: During their fight, Nero taunts her that she "stinks."
  • Evil Sorcerer: Claims to be using the strongest art of demonic sorcery.
  • Fusion Dance: The upper and lower halves have different body tissues, implying it used to be two separate entities fused into one. Nico speculates the "sorceress" upper-half initiated the fusion with the "bird chick" lower-half.
  • I Shall Taunt You: Her Boss Banter mostly consists of her mocking Nero for his "weakness".
  • Leitmotif: Diabolical Incantation.
  • Meaningful Name: In demonology, Malphas is a demon who manifests as a crow, or a man with a crow's head. Thus the bird bits.
  • Merging Mistake: Nico's Report implies the fusion of the two halves is imperfect, stating the "sorceress" upper-half couldn't actually keep the "bird chick" lower-half under control.
  • Multiple Head Case: Has three heads and is very, very creepy.
  • Oh, Crap!: Her reaction when Nero performs a Buster move on her.
  • Puny Earthlings: She calls Nero "human" in a mocking tone before they fight. During the fight, she challenges him to follow her with his "foolish human eyes."
  • Thinking Up Portals: Her main power, used both for movement and to attack through.
  • This Cannot Be!: She thinks Nero is just a "foolish human", so she's in complete disbelief after being defeated by him.
    Malphas: How do you have so much power left!?

    King Cerberus - the Gatekeeper Unleashed 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/king_cerberus.jpg
Voiced by:
Pauk Stanko, Nicky Scorpio, and Patrick Seitz (English)
Naomi Kusumi, Tetsuo Gotoh, and Tsuyoshi Koyama (Japanese)

The alpha of the Cerberus Demon tribe, and a more powerful version at that.
  • Boss Subtitles:
    Gatekeeper Unleashed: King Cerberus
  • Evil Sounds Raspy: Appropriately for an ice demon, the ice head has a very raspy voice.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Unlike his counterpart from 3 who only uses ice, King Cerberus can call upon fire, ice and lightning, and is even more powerful than some of the other elemental demons Dante has taken on. His heads manifest the power of each element, and he can instantly cover his entire boss arena with any of the three. His Devil Arm grants these same powers to Dante.
  • Gate Guardian: King Cerberus guards the hole to the innermost chamber of the Qliphoth where the fruit grows. Dante defeats him in order to move forward, and comes face-to-face with Urizen for the last time before Nero and V do. It's made obvious by the dialogue lines of King Cerberus's three heads.
    King Cerberus: Leave at once! Only kings of the Underworld may enter these gates. You shall not pass!
  • Hellhound: He's based from and named after the three-headed hellhound of the Underworld in Greek mythology just like his less powerful kin, although this one also sports fire and electrical powers in addition to ice-based attacks.
  • Jerkass: Unlike Cerberus, who was a Noble Demon and a Graceful Loser, King Cerberus is a boastful arrogant jackass who calls Cerberus weak for losing to Dante and never acknowledges Dante's strength.
  • King Mook: An interesting variation where he's a "royal" version of a previous boss rather than a generic enemy.
  • Leitmotif: Roar, Roar, Roar!!
  • Multiple Head Case: He's a Cerberus demon. Do the math.
  • No Indoor Voice: His lightning head is the most aggressive in terms of talking, if nothing else.
    YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!
    Feel my THUNDER!!!
    Taste the most powerful lightning, IN ALL OF HELLLLLLLLL!!!!
    Not bad, but I'll be even BETTER ONCE YOU DIIIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!

Devil May Cry Manga and Anime-exclusive Villains

    Chen 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chen_dmc_volume_2.jpg

The main villain of the Devil May Cry 2 prequel light novel, the head of a human underworld crime syndicate who seeks the power of the Beastheads. Dante and Beryl join forces to stop him.


    Sid 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sid_devil_may_cry_20053.jpg

Voiced by: Nachi Nozawa (Japanese), Chris Ayres (English)

A villain who is featured in the anime series.


  • Big Bad Wannabe: Subverted when he manages to acquire the powers of Abigail and becomes a legitimate threat. He even manages to rough up Dante for a bit, though the favor is returned in full once Dante activates his Devil Trigger. Offscreen. In a matter of seconds.
  • Dirty Coward: Sid not only runs whenever in the presence of stronger enemies, but also pules and whines when the tables are finally turned against him in the final episode. No pity is had for him when Dante finally kills him.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Dante tells him that love is superior in strength to selfishness shortly after Sid is Brought Down to Normal, he simply accuses him of being a lying bastard.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: He appears in the very first episode and is spared by Dante. He later comes to regret that when Sid gains Abigail's power.
  • I Have Your Wife: Holds Patty's mother hostage and uses her as leverage so that he can obtain Aeron's Tear and unseal Abigail from his prison.
  • Living Bodysuit: The secret Big Bad, Sid, is a weak demon who late into the series shows to have the power to literally wear humans like the trope's name suggests, gruesomely tearing the skin from the body and using black magic to make himself appear as the now dying or already dead victim.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Sid in a nutshell, most prominently shown in Episode 10 when he manipulates Baul and Modeus into getting killed by Dante.
  • One-Winged Angel: In the last two episodes of the anime.
  • Villainous Breakdown: After he's depowered and left at Dante's mercy, he dances around the prospect of Dante letting him go again. When Dante says it isn't going to happen, Sid charges at him in a blind fury before being shot down.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: Subverted in that Dante could've easily thwarted the first stage if he simply took care of Sid in their first meeting. Because Dante didn't deem Sid a threat (which was an admittedly valid assessment at the time), he let him go, an act of mercy that came back to bite him the ass when the Myth Arc of TAS was front and center during the final three episodes.

    White Rabbit 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rabbit_7.png

    Mad Hatter 


Top