Characters / Fullmetal Alchemist: Father

Fullmetal Alchemist Main Character Index
Elric Brothers | Team Mustang | Main Supporting Cast | Military | Homunculi (Father, Envy, Affiliates) | Xing | Others | 2003 Anime (Main Characters) (Homunculi)

This is a short summary page for characters from the Fullmetal Alchemist manga series and its anime adaptation Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Note: For the page about the characters from the 2003 anime, see here.

This page deals with Father, the main antagonist of the series.

Warning: Father is a Walking Spoiler, so all entries for this character are unmarked.

Homunculus / Father

Voiced by: Iemasa Kayumi (JP), Akio Ōtsuka (JP, FMA Mobile), Kent Williams (EN)^{Other Languages}Ali Rondon (Latin America), Carlos Silveira (BR), Ulisses Bezerra (BR, as Homunculus [Álamo]), Wendel Bezerra (BR, in perfect form [both dubs] and as Homunculus [IST]), Raffaele Farina (IT) Silvano Piccardi (IT as Homunculus)

^{Click here to see his dwarf form}

^{Click here to see his shadow form}

^{Click here to see his giant form}

^{Click here to see his perfect form}

Affiliation: Amestris Military/Homunculi
Speciality: Perfect Alchemy/Immortality

"When you see an insect lying on the ground, do you stop to consider it a fool? The life of an insect is so beneath you that it would be a waste of your time to even consider judging it. That would be an accurate summation of my feelings towards you humans."

The creator and leader of the Homunculi, and the mastermind behind everything wrong in the series. His true name is the Dwarf in the Flask, Homunculus — he was the first artificial human (homunculus), having a body made out of Philosopher's Stone, and all other Homunculi are pieces of him. He is almost identical to Hohenheim since he was created from Hohenheim's blood back in Xerxes. Was responsible for the destruction of Xerxes, which gave him immortality. His future plans are unknown, but they involve, between others, Ed and Al... Scheming from the shadows, he waits for the "Promised Day". His main ability is to perform alchemy by just thinking about it and without any need to move.

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A-G

• Abusive Parents: He raises his children specifically to act as pawns in his plan and likely feels no parental attachment to them. After Greed refuses to rejoin Father's plans, he decides to melt him down to a Philosopher Stone in what looks like molten metal: possibly gold. He later resurrects Greed while purging his memories and making him kill his loved ones so Father can be his sole emotional support and focus. Although they do later come back, it shows how Father is willing to go in order to manipulate his children. As for the rest of Homunculi, he isn't outwardly cruel but more so distant and neglectful, not caring about their inadequacies or needs. He sheds no tears when they die one by one, and before the final battle, he flees his lair while leaving Pride behind. And while Hohenheim hints he does have some care for them given that he has them call him in the first place, his selfishness outweighs any hidden feelings he has towards them.
• Adaptational Sympathy: As noted below, Brotherhood plays his final fate more tragically than the Manga does. In the manga, he simply screams when the heroes watch him be absorbed by the Truth, whereas in the anime he shouts that he only wanted freedom and knowledge, followed by a reaction shot of Hohenheim looking at him in pity.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In Brotherhood, and only in Hohenheim's eyes. After being absorbed by God after his defeat, Hohenheim shows pity for him as he's dying, remembering how he once used to only desire freedom from his flask. This is averted in the manga where no one pities him.
• All for Nothing: Everything that he did was for the sake of gaining true freedom. In the end, he's simply sent right back to where he originated from. Furthermore, whereas everyone else gets a Gate representing everything they've learned, gained, and people they're connected to, Father's is blank, hammering in what the Truth tells him: in the end, Father ultimately never did anything but steal from others, and thus has nothing at all to show for his time with the freedom he so coveted.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: He shares many similarities to Griffith. Both are villains with light motifs who sacrificed the protagonists' loved ones and friends during an eclipse in pursuit of immense power.
  • He's also similar to Naraku in terms of their relationship with their children. Both split parts of themselves into "children" who act as their operatives, with both even sharing identifying marks to boot; Naraku's incarnations with their spider symbols and the Homunculi with the Ourobourus. However, Father also splits specific aspects of his personality to create each Homunculus.
  • His overall plan also bears some slight similarities to the Third Impact, seeking to assimilate humans to attain immortality, though SEELE/Gendo's plan didn't outright kill the human race like Father planned but ascended them to a higher plane of existence that could be escaped. The scene where Father emerges in a giant form to absorb the Truth also mirrors Lilith rising in End of Evangelion, too.
• Antagonistic Offspring: In a bizarre way, he's this to Hohenheim, who gave him lifeblood but later actively works to undermine him.
• Anti-Magic: He can turn off alchemy. Not just the alchemy of one person, but all the alchemy in the country. This only applies to Amestrian alchemy, so people who use Alkahestry like Scar or May Chang are immune to this. This is because all the Amestrians have to go through a layer of his Philosopher's Stone to draw on energy. Once Scar activates a circle that nullifies it, Ed and Al resume throwing things at him.
• Arch-Enemy: To Van Hohenheim after killing the entire population of Xerxes to achieve immortality and the reason Hohenheim left his family is to stop Father from absorbing God.
• Archnemesis Dad: To Greed after he joins the heroes to stop Father's plans, as well as wanting payback for causing his friends' demise.
• Assimilation Backfire:
  • After absorbing Greed again in the end for his Philosopher's Stone, Greed rebels from within by turning Father's body into frail graphite.
  • Happens to him again and for keeps when the Truth claims him after his stone is depleted. All he can do is to cry and scream as he's stripped of his freedom and individuality, but as Truth pointed out, he wanted to be God — so it is the fate he desired and had been working towards, all along.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: His Door of Truth manifests as being completely blank, like a pair of stone slabs that hadn't been carved into yet. This symbolizes how, despite gaining the freedom and means to gather knowledge like he wanted, he chose to squander both by focusing on power instead of learning compassion and human value like Ed did, ultimately learning nothing in the end.
• Atomic Superpower: After Father consumes The Godly Being in his quest to become a perfect being he gains the power of nuclear manipulation, which he demonstrates by creating what he calls a sun in the palm of one's hand.
• Autocannibalism: He eats his Hohenheim "skin suit" after his shadow form is exposed.
• Ax-Crazy: Not immediately obvious, but his grin when he's about to gun down Mei and his Evil Laugh when he's about to absorb God show just how little sanity he has beneath his stoic facade.
• Bait the Dog: When he meets the Elrics, he cheerfully chats with them about their relationship with Van Hohenheim, mends their wounds, and gently admonishes them for not taking care of themselves. Then he tells Gluttony to eat Ling and responds to Ed's plea for Ling's life with "I don't care."
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He started out as a small piece of God separated and given independent life, eventually wanting to consume the rest of God itself to gain absolute power, knowledge and freedom. However, the sabotage of his efforts causes him to lose control, and he dissolves into it instead. So in a sense, he was a drop of water with the arrogance to think he could envelop the ocean — with the inevitable result.
• Berserk Button: A subtle one. Van Hohenheim points out that Father is more stoic than he used to be as the Dwarf in the Flask, whom he described as vibrant and full of life, and goes on to point out that by excising his 7 deadly sins into the Homunculi, he's made himself a more flawed, less human being. Father doesn't say anything but immediately begins attacking Hohenheim, refusing to answer him or say anything, as the latter continues to point out that he used to crave what humans have. This culminates with him becoming annoyed enough to try and absorb Hohenheim's philosopher's stone - just as Hohenheim had hoped he'd do.
• Beta Test Baddie: Due to having Inferiority Superiority Complex, Father's motivation for trying to become a perfect being was motivated by his own inferiority complex. Truth calls him out on it and condemns him for it, saying that they lost "Because you refused to believe in yourself".
• Beyond Redemption: In spite of all he's done and intends to do, Hohenheim still tries to talk to him and make him see reason. However, his pride causes him to ignore Hohenheim's words, and in the end, he's banished to the Gate of Truth from whence he came for all eternity.
• Big Bad: Everything that happens in the series is directly caused by him since he is the leader and creator of the Homunculi. Not only would Amestris not have been created, but most of the cast would never have been born if it weren't for his plans. Although he doesn't do much himself for most of the series, relying on his Homunculi children to drive the action for him.
• Bishōnen Line: Form 1 — A tiny black blob with one eye. Form 2 — A middle-aged man. Form 3 — A human-shaped Living Shadow covered in eyes. Form 4 — A miles-tall one-eyed giant. Form 5 — A golden-haired youth. Form 6 — A vein-covered, white-haired youth. Form 7 — Back to Form 1.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He initially appears as a jovial old man to the Elric brothers and even heals Ed's wounds. This, unfortunately, does not last, as he reveals he plans to use them and drops the act to become antagonistic to them for the rest of the series. On a more general note, his stoic, less obvious sadistic self is a literal skin length mask to hide his blatant sadism and arrogance.
  • Back when he was just the Dwarf in the Flask, he acted as Hohenheim's mentor and friend just so he could work up the ranks enough to get the king of Xerxes to enact his plan to absorb the souls of the nation and gain a physical body.
• Blow You Away: Can create tornadoes from his hands in his perfect form.
• Body Horror: He can generate a Third Eye at times, generate his Homunculi and other souls he's collected from his physical body and when he's out of his Hohenheim shell, he can shapeshift his limbs into pistols amongst other things.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Father needs five alchemists who've seen the Gate of Truth for his plans to come to fruition. Thus, he never kills the Elric brothers, Hohenheim, Izumi, or Mustang, no matter how much they interfere with his plans. He even heals Ed and Al's injuries when he meets them for the first time.
• Cain and Abel: Of a sort. He's Ed and Al's brother kinda, as he was created using Hohenheim's blood.
• The Chessmaster: With four hundred years of planning behind him. Having created Amestris with the sole intention of sacrificing its population on the Promised Day to create a Philosopher's Stone powerful enough to absorb God/Truth and gain his power and knowledge.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Father undergoes this soon after going One-Winged Angel. Thanks to Hohenheim's planning, a secondary Transmutation circle activates which expels the souls of the people of Amestris and returns them to their proper bodies. Without those souls Father is left desperately trying to keep God trapped within his body using his original, depleting, Philosopher's Stone giving the heroes a chance to take him down for good. This is even reflected in the fact that Father's "perfect" body gets covered in veins after losing the souls of Amestris, along with his eyes slowly becoming totally white and his hair becoming increasingly pale as the final battle progresses.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He comes off as one, but only because his concerns are so far above humans' that they can rarely understand his thought processes. Subverted when Hohenheim confronts him and breaks down the motivations behind his goals, showing that he's more human that he would ever admit.
• Cold Ham: In his Hohenheim guise, he speaks with a stoic, flat tone while making bold statements. This is his actual Evil Is Hammy behavior being filtered through his false pretense of being a modest and perfect being without sin.
• Crazy-Prepared: He spread a corrupted form of Xerxes alchemy to Amestris as the Philosopher of the East so that he could control the entire alchemic development of the country, and nullify its use when needed.
• Creative Sterility: Hohenheim points out that even after capturing god, Father is just a mimic and a parasite with no ability to create anything new; he owes all his power and achievements to the fact that humans are the source of creation. His response is to resurrect a few of the souls of Xerxes as a demonstration before reabsorbing them, which to Hohenheim is hardly more than an impotent "Fuck you." This is actually telling when we see his Gate of Truth. While the others we've seen have alchemy symbols on them, his is completely blank, indicating that he didn't learn anything and instead stole what he knew from more talented people.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: In his original form, he had a much squeakier and nasally sounding voice than the deeper voice he later acquires. When forced to remove his skin his original voice is layered over his skin's deeper voice in the original Japanese version to illustrate he's still the same being he was before the Xerxes assimilation. In the English dub, his voice starts out sounding like his previously skinned self, but becomes increasingly crazed and high pitched as the eclipse occurs and he enacts his grand plan.
• Dark Is Evil: Father was originally a small, flask-dwelling blob of darkness before taking Hohenheim's likeness. Even still, this form is revealed to be more of a container and that he is actually a human-sized, eyeball-covered being that is completely black. This gets taken to further lengths in Brotherhood. Whenever we're shown Father's lair, it seems to glow with a strange silver light. When he sheds his human form and becomes the black blob during his fight with Hohenheim, the room becomes much darker, almost insinuating that his old body had been emitting that light.
• Deal with the Devil: Specializes in this, especially the "Be Careful What You Wish For" part. The King of Xerxes and Central Command were both promised immortality for their participation in many horrific projects culminating in the sacrifice of every soul in their respective countries, none the wiser that this all meant his feast of souls included them as part of the meal. These Faustian deals are in fact the driving force behind the entire plot. There's also appealing to Solf J. Kimblee's sadistic sense of curiosity to get Kimblee to work with the Homunculi and cornering Ling Yao into accepting Greed, though these two came back to bite him in the ass.
• Death by Irony:
  • In an early conversation with Hohenheim, Father dismisses the human importance of building a family and wishes that he could survive outside of his flask. His container is broken by Greed, one of his 'children', and Edward, Hohenheim's first true son.
  • Father never really separated his greed from himself, given that he needed motivation to absorb the souls of Amestris and eventually Truth. Instead, it seems Greed the Avaricious was mostly made of any ability he might have had to desire companionship and treasure those important to him, which eventually became his undoing when the homunculus sacrificed himself to fatally weaken his container.
  • All over the place with the loss of his Stone – his reserve of human souls is whittled down with Amestrian war machinery, Amestrian alchemy, and chimera powers (all three of which he either used to build the nationwide transmutation circle, provided the founding knowledge for, or both), and Xingese alkahestry (founded by his counterpart, Hohenheim). At the climax, he's bare-handedly beaten around the arena by Edward, and he struggles to comprehend how a 'perfect being' like himself could be at the mercy of human hands.
  • Invoked by Truth in Father's final scene. After Father gives a speech to the human sacrifices about Truth's tendency to mete out "despair for the conceited", that's exactly what he receives in a Breaking Speech from his own Truth. In the end, Father – no more than a sentient bit of truth and knowledge himself – is dragged back into the Gate, sobbing and pleading with Truth to tell him what he cannot understand and cannot know.
  • His main goal in the series was to become God and absolutely superior to humans. His desire is essentially granted as he once again becomes a part of God and superior to humans; however he loses all freedom in the process.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: He's fine with sacrificing 50 million+ Amestrians as long as he achieves his goal of absorbing God and his power.
• Devil in Plain Sight: During his early days as the "shadow in the flask", he was obviously up to no good but unfortunately no one in Xerxes picked up on it enough to avoid becoming an Unwitting Pawn.
• A Dog Named "Dog": His original name, Homunculus or "little one inside the flask".
• Dragged Off to Hell: His fate of being absorbed back into the Gate plays very similarly to this. He is forcibly assimilated into a superior being against his will, which is something he did to others many times. It also plays into a very ironic fate, especially based on his earlier boasting on the Gate punishing the conceited, with Father's losing all his arrogance as he's forced back into the Gate.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He appears twice, each time for only a moment, in the first episode when he detects the Freezing Alchemist's huge transmutation circle in Central.
• Eldritch Abomination: His true form, a human-shaped blob of Living Shadow covered in massive eyes and mouths. It's also never made clear what exactly he is, only that he was made partly from Hohenheim's blood, and that he came from the Gate of Truth — (which he says as he is being dragged back into it). Knowledge of alchemy all but states him to be a piece of Mercurius. An alchemical god that in the F M A seems to dwell on the other side of the Gate of Truth.
• Elemental Powers: He gains a few after consuming the Truth.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Even after witnessing the powers of love and friendship on full display, he still doesn't understand what he did wrong.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Hohenheim. They have similar appearances at first glance, but contrasting goals and philosophy.
  • Becomes one to Ed during the climax, attaining a youthful body that looks just like him thanks to taking DNA from his father. Furthermore, while Ed accepts his shortcomings as a mortal and resists the lure of Alchemy to save Alphonse without sacrificing his dad, Father tries to sacrifice an entire nation to seal God inside of him. It was only thanks to Hohenheim's painstaking countermeasures and everybody wearing him down that he failed. This is shown in how both Father and Ed's Doors of Truth manifest in God's realm — Father's Door is completely blank, showing how he learned absolutely nothing about the world despite gaining the freedom and means to do so, while Ed's is lavishly decorated with an alchemical, tree-like design, showing the experiences he went through and how he ultimately came to realize that alchemy isn't worth having when he has something far better in comparison.
• Evil Gloating: Normally he averts this, but when he loses his Hohenheim guise, he proceeds to gloat about how the Truth's purpose is to punish the arrogant with an appropriate punishment. However, he didn't expect the Truth to be listening in to that part and using it as justification to finally put him back into the Gate after being fed up with his behavior.
• Evil Is Hammy: He normally averts this, but when his Hohenheim skin is removed, he acts in a more overtly bombastic and fiendish attitude that his own children share.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: He uses a massive-scale alchemy technique to absorb Truth and obtain his power. While he initially keeps control, he is soon overwhelmed and dragged into the Gate.
• Evil Plan: To achieve 'perfection'. Hohenheim states it is actually to escape his flask which was only made bigger after the depopulation of Xerxes.
• Evil Virtues: He's patient to an impressive degree, carefully orchestrating the events of an entire country over the course of over three hundred years with no-one except Hohenheim, the Homunculi and the Military senior staff knowing about his existence until near the time of the Promised Day.
• Exact Words:
  • "Those who dare to play God must pay a steep price for their arrogance." Needless to say, this came back to bite him in the most humiliating way imaginable.
  • He promised the Amestrian Central Command that he would grant them immortality. What this really meant is that their souls would be absorbed into the Philosopher's Stone created on the Promised Day ritual.
• Expy: This video by Max Derrat identifies him as Mercurius, an alchemical god who served as an inspiration, except that Father is more likely just a tiny piece of Mercurius.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: His true form has a mass of eyes covering its shadowy body.
• Fan Disservice:
  • His perfect form after absorbing God is that of a pretty, muscular Bishōnen, but his voice is still that of an old man.
  • Averted in the Brazilian dub where he is given the voice of a young man after transforming.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • His condescension towards humans, outlook on them as being simple energy for his goals, and inability to comprehend what makes them tick in a spiritual/moral/ethical/psychological sense beyond base desires is ultimately what comes back to bite him in the ass. All he sees in the sins he separated from himself are bad and thus only the bad in humans, but in truth, those deadly sins aren't all bad as Greed told us. He certainly never expected Scar to be a thorn in his side, for instance.
  • A larger one is his fundamental inability to actually grow or change as a person. As the Truth points out, he didn't believe in himself, and saw no point in putting in the effort to change who he was. So all he could ever do was steal from others in order to improve himself, but without actually becoming more than what he was when he was made since he could never understand that stealing the result of the change made by someone else wasn't the same as gaining the result by making the change himself.
• Fat Bastard: While Humanoid Blob form his belly gets more pronounced after absorbing Hohenheim. He becomes lean and muscular in his perfect form.
• False Friend: Subverted. It can seem like the Dwarf in the Flask was this to Hohenheim, given how he manipulated him, but the Dwarf did genuinely see him as a friend; giving Hohenheim immortality was his twisted way of showing gratitude for his companionship. This is further supported by Greed, the personification of the Dwarf's desire, realizing that what he wants most in life is to have friends, as well as his genuine surprise and almost happy expression to realizing the Elric brothers are Hohenheim's sons.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • When he first meets the Elric brothers he does act genuinely Affably Evil due to having Greed inside of him influencing his behavior (or more accurately, absorbing Greed allowed him to regain some of his initial genuine affability he had before he discarded his emotions), but drops this quickly once he notices Ling's presence and orders Gluttony to eat him without so much as batting an eyelash. And once he puts Greed into Ling, he goes back to being the nigh-emotionless being with an ominous and foreboding nature for the rest of the series until he temporarily loses his guise to go briefly fiendishly evil before resuming his stoicism when he absorbs God.
  • When his Hohenheim shell is destroyed, Father abandons his pretenses of being a stoic and polite older man; revealing himself as a sadistic and condescending hypocrite who is prone to making tormenting speeches meant to deconstruct others.
• Flat Character: Deconstructed. As the Truth tells him, he's fundamentally incapable of growing or changing as a person because all he does is to steal from others for improvement instead of actually having enough belief in himself to become more by his own efforts. No matter how much power he steals, he never actually became more than what he was born as. This is why his Gate of Truth is blank: he's one-dimensional because he doesn't believe in himself to become more and everything he ever possesses is something he stole from someone else.
  • Also Justified given his attempts to purge himself of his "sins" making him more cold and one-dimensional.
• Foil:
  • To Edward Elric. Edward begins his journey trying to recover something that he lost (his mother, then his limbs, and his brother's body), relies solely on his own abilities, but eventually understands his pride. By renouncing the lure of Alchemy and accepting his nature as a simple human — along with learning to rely on others, he is able to recover his arm and his brother's life. On the other hand, Father yearns for something he never had a right to, uses the strength of others to obtain it, always considers himself above humanity, and loses everything he has as he fails to understand that relying on Alchemy and God stunts his own development. In the end, Edward frees himself from God and alchemy while Father returns to it. To drive the connection even further, during the final confrontation between Father and Edward in the manga, after Greed turns Father's body in graphite, his left leg and right arm shatter (in Brotherhood, he loses both arms instead). Additionally, he initially acts like a smug tone that is similar to Ed but while the latter grew out of it, the former never truly matured in spite of looking like an old man most of the time.
  • Also to Van Hohenheim, obviously. Physically, there is literally no difference between them. Both are spirits inhabiting body-like shells created at the same moment from the same template (Hohenheim's blood) and both are powered by the souls of half the Xerxian population. The main difference however is empathy. While Hohenheim comes across as a bit of a Jerkass at first, it is obvious that he places inherent value in human beings, and he has taken the time to personally get to know the more than 500 000 souls that are imprisoned within him. Father, on the other hand, does not respect the autonomy of his soul. To him, they are merely another resource to exploit. While he acts cordial and respectful at first, it becomes increasingly clear that this literally makes his true nature- an egotistical, insane hypocrite with a massive god complex willing to step on anyone to get his desires fulfilled.
  • This also extends to their treatment of their children. While Hohenheim abandons his children, he does it for the greater good to stop Father's plan and become mortal so he doesn't outlive them- caring for both sons unconditionally. In contrast, Father forces his family to be with him at all times with Blind Obedience to his goals, with any hint of actually caring for them beyond being plans out of a subconscious desire for a family being overshadowed by his selfishness as he'd abandon even his supposed favorite offspring- who was suffering a meltdown to die when he himself was undergoing a meltdown without even noticing him.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: His reason for being in his Hohenheim shell is that his true form is unsettling to look at so having a human form allows him to manipulate others more successfully. It also serves an additional purpose of feeding into his facade of stoic perfection that he genuinely believed he had achieved before getting God.
• Frankenstein's Monster: He bears similarities to the original novel's version. A super-intelligent, poetically spoken, and adaptive artificial being created from alchemy who grows to resent both his creator and humanity. His final form even slightly resembles early depictions of the monster (a towering, vaguely inhuman long haired man). Unlike Adam Frankenstein, Father actually got to create a family of kin (something Victor feared), destroyed many, many more lives, and had innate malice and selfishness that Adam never had. Essentially he is everything Victor feared his creation would become.
• Freudian Excuse: He started his life as piece of Truth in the form of a black dwarf that couldn’t survive without being contained in a flask, and used as a source of knowledge. Desperate to not be bound by anything and anyone (included God), he’s willing to commit mass genocide by absorbing people’ souls (twice) in order to become God himself. He then created the Homonculi both to “purify” himself from his Seven Deadly Sins and to have a family of his own.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He started out as a small, limbless, rather unimpressive-looking creature trapped in a flask. Then he happened to strike up a conversation with a young slave, and things just escalated from there, becoming a Physical God by the end.
• Gambit Roulette: Manipulating the development of an entire country to suit his plans.
• A Glass of Chianti: He swivels a glass around at one point, although that's not wine he's drinking. It's Greed's Philosopher's stone.
• A God Am I: Has this attitude throughout the manga; he believes all other life forms are too far beneath him to even be worthy of contempt. Accomplishes it for real, but not for very long.
• God-Eating: He seeks to achieve godhood by using a massive transmutation circle to absorb the Truth and the souls in Amestris to have the power to contain the Truth within him. While he does succeed, it backfires with the souls he absorbed being freed of his body and his losing control of his newfound power almost immediately afterwards.
• Godhood Seeker: He doesn't just want to be a god, he wants to usurp the throne and merge with God himself. He's actually successful until Hohenheim's reverse transmutation circle strips him of his powers.
• Good Powers, Bad People: He can heal people and repair things, but he views people as being so lower than him that he doesn't care about mankind and is, in fact, willing to murder millions of people in order to achieve his goal. Bonus points for white clothes and appearing surrounded in light in Brotherhood.
• Grandpa God: His appearance definitely invokes this, but he's really more a Satanic Archetype than anything.

H-S

• Hair Antennae: After absorbing God, he gains one, as he resembles a younger Hohenheim, which in turn makes his Evil Counterpart aspect to Ed even more apparent.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: He uses a massive-scale alchemy technique to absorb Truth into his body. He was never weak, to begin with, but Truth is definitely far more powerful. He eventually loses control and gets dragged into the Gate of Truth.
• Humans Are Insects: He claims to view humans this way, explicitly describing them as ants and worms in comparison to himself. However, since Envy (the personification of that sin within him) turns out to be intensely jealous of humans' ability to form bonds with each other, and he constantly mimics the human form in creating bodies for himself, it's all but stated that this aspect of his views on humanity stems from his Inferiority Superiority Complex.
• Human Resources: He is basically a living Philosopher's Stone. When Hohenheim makes a comment about Father's Creative Sterility, he recreates the bodies of the Xerxes souls... right before melting them down AGAIN and turning them in a Wave-Motion Gun.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Once the final battle sees his Philosopher's Stone worn down, Ed proceeds to beat the living daylights out of him with his bare hands. Unable to even land a single blow, Father charges at Greed, in an attempt to get the souls from his stone. Greed uses his ultimate shield in reverse to turn Father's body into an incredibly weak substance, which Ed promptly punches a hole through. As he is absorbed by Truth's hands in an embarrassingly undiginified manner, Ed lets him know how much of a piece of shit he is just to rub salt in the wound.
  • It doesn't get any better for what happens to him in the pseudo-afterlife. Truth breaks down everything he believed in before banishing him behind the gate. On top of this, the normally calm and stoic Homunculus breaks down in fear at the thought of going back there and begins to weep uncontrollably and scream as he's taken back to the Gate he came from, confined for all eternity.
• Hypocrite:
  • He looks down on humans and gloats about how they deserve to be punished for their arrogance in attempting to play God by performing human transmutation punish them for their arrogance, yet his ultimate goal was to become a god by absorbing the real one. And this is after he has Pride force Mustang to perform human transmutation for the sake of said ultimate goal, and specifically in response to the "karmic punishment" he received through no fault of his own, and right after he outright refused to do Human Transmutation. Not to mention his truly arrogant personality when he's not in his Hohenheim guises. He attempts a Breaking Speech about how "humans who play God must pay a steep price for their arrogance" right before using all the lives in the entire country to create a Philosopher's Stone powerful enough to overpower Truth, believing that the same doesn't apply to him because he is a Homunculus. It comes as a complete shock to him when Truth deconstructs his "logic" and sends him back to the Gate from whence he came, proving that yes, yes it does.
  • He considers humans Pitiful Worms beneath his notice unlike his children who view humans with disdain. And yet his plan relies heavily on them, his existence is reliant on human souls' giving him an extended lifespan, and he later gives a Breaking Speech to the sacrifices on their specific faults, showing how much he actually has in common with his children.
  • For someone who tries to be less sinful, Father is actually more sinful than his children. He is prone to irrational anger when cornered because he can't think with a calm head when things aren't going his way; he feels so insecure that he prefers the form of another person instead of his own; he shows a bloodlust to hurt others while also having a visceral reaction to absorbing souls; he eats in a bestial manner as well as devouring more than he needs; he desires for more power despite already having an entire country as well as God-like powers at his beck and call; he fights in a stationary style with his powers' doing the work and relies on others to enact his plans despite being capable of doing it himself; and lastly, he places himself on the pedestal of God as well as being an obnoxious, unpleasant person underneath his false pretenses.
  • Father expects Undying Loyalty from his Homunculi children and melts the first Greed down into a Philosopher's Stone as punishment for betraying him and doing things on his own terms, but his definition of "loyalty" is essentially one-sided Blind Obedience; he does not return the Homunculi's loyalty at all. This is proven near the end of the series, where Father does not hesitate to abandon Pride to escape to the surface in an attempt to create new Philosopher's Stones, after the latter is left in a critically vulnerable state from using the souls in his own Philosopher's Stone to force Mustang through the Gate of Truth. As Ed points out and as Pride realizes for himself, this proves Father demands complete "loyalty" (read: obedience) while giving none in return.
• I Have Many Names: Father, Homunculus, Dwarf in the Flask, The Philosopher of the East.
• I Just Want to Be Free: His initial reason for all he's done is the desire to escape the flask. Even when he gets a body, it's noted to just be a larger flask, something that both Hohenheim and Truth note. He doesn't want to be bound by anything — not even God. Unfortunately, as the Truth points out, Father did nothing except just that, clinging to God, and ultimately ends up losing his freedom forever. It's also pointed out that for as much as he wanted freedom, once he actually had any, he wasted it in pursuit of stealing power from others and in the end, learned and accomplished nothing.
• Immortals Fear Death: Not directly stated, but implied in the narrative. Father is aware even with the amount of souls he has, he will eventually die if they're worn down. So his plan to absorb God in addition to power, would be to extend his existence on Earth because he dreads going back to the Gate.
• Immortality Immorality: The Philosopher's Stone is made by melting down the bodies of living people and trapping their souls within a red liquid.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: If the Seven Homunculi were truly born from Father's desires, then this might be a possibility of his desire to become God. Greed admits that all he truly wanted was friends and Edward realized that Envy was jealous of humans' inner strength and the fact they support each other no matter what, so Father might have a serious case of inferiority complex, and thus tried to compensate it by growing a superiority complex and trying to become a perfect being.
• Insane Troll Logic: Father believes that humans who make decisions that deeply affect other people's lives are arrogant fools and must be punished, but he himself has no problem using the lives of an entire country to create a Philosopher's Stone powerful enough to become God. His "logic" is that he's a homunculus, not a human, and is therefore exempt from arrogance or punishment. Truth would later take delight in telling Father just how wrong he is.
• "Instant Death" Radius: During his and Scar's brief scuffle when they first meet, when Father releases an aura of destructive alchemy from his whole body. Scar manages to leap backward in the nick of time, still receiving quite serious injuries and noting that if he'd jumped only "a second" later, he'd have been dead.
• Ironic Echo: During the final battle, he talks of how despair is truth. After he's defeated and sent back to the gate, the physical interpretation of "Truth" throws these words right back at him before the Gate pulls him in. Also, right before getting sucked back to the gate, he yells how he wishes to know everything and be free. Little does he realize that he actually gained everything he wanted when he got a physical body. Regardless, he chooses to imprison himself down the central command of Amestris, cutting contact with everyone else and therefore becoming no different from the time when he was living inside a small flask.
• Ironic Hell: His plan is to absorb God (by dragging it down to Earth) and take his place. When he is dragged into Truth at the end of the series for his actions, he is instead being dragged inside of God — essentially, his punishment is a reversal of his plans: he is part of God, but unable to do anything, while keeping his conscience and stripped totally of the freedom he craved... Karma's a bitch, isn't it?
• Irony: He is an individual that only cares about himself and has no problem sacrificing innocents and even his own children for his goals. But the only genuinely selfless thing he did, giving Hohenheim immortality, would later be what ruins his plans.
• It's All About Me: In spades. He founded an entire country for the sole purpose of turning all its people into a particularly powerful Philosopher's Stone to use for himself. He created his Homunculi children by separating parts of himself to transmute embodiments of his seven vices, and keeps them around because they're useful to him.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: When an alchemist meets Truth, their Gate is adorned with a mural representing their knowledge and the things that are important to them. When Father is dragged before the Truth, his Gate is just a blank door - for all his boasting, he learned nothing during his centuries of existence. Lampshaded by Truth, who points out that he never grew beyond his days in the flask.
• Large Ham: Normally, he's more of a Cold Ham with his speech being emotionless while making bold claims; however, when his skin is removed, he goes over the top in his fiendish delivery and up to eleven when he makes an epic boast after absorbing God/the Truth.
• Light Is Not Good: After Father reshapes his body to resemble Hohenheim, he becomes a light-haired man in white robes, invoking traditional depictions of Top Gods. Later, after showing his true form as a bizarre eyeball-covered mass of darkness, he absorbs God and takes the form of a younger Hohenheim, once again retaining the light motifs.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Father's final form after absorbing Truth has waist-length hair.
• Magma Man: At one point, he summons a large lava stream.
• The Man Behind the Man: Initially it appears that the Homunculi's grasp on Amestris is based on Wrath's position as Führer, but it turns out Father secretly controls the entire government; he was responsible for Amestris' founding and the Senior Military Staff is in on his plan. Wrath was created not to grant him control of the government but to win the people's support and wage war needed to annex land for the nationwide transmutation circle.
• Manipulative Bastard: One of his last tricks involves calmly having the rotting, moaning population of Xerxes emerge from his body. As a distraction. In his earliest days as the Dwarf in the flask in Xerxes, he took advantage of the King of Xerxes's wish for immortality and tricked him into creating a Philosopher's Stone for himself (and Hohenheim by extension) by lying to him about what would be the cost of immortality (the lives of the entire city) and where he had to place himself to fulfill the ritual (he made sure that both him and Hohenheim were in the center, not the King ).
  • On a more general level, he's manipulated everyone from Xerxes, the Amestris military, his Homunculi children, the sacrifices and countless others in order to obtain God. Initially, he used guile and charisma to do this, but he has since relied on indirect planning with the Homunculi doing the dirty work.
• Mask of Sanity: It is strongly implied that his aloofness and unsmiling nature of his Hohenheim shell hides his truly sadistic and psychotic nature, best exemplified when he tries to gun down Mei with his finger that he transformed into a gun. The mask resumes when he absorbs the Truth, but unlike before, the mask is loosened enough for him to do menacing grins every so often.
• Meaningful Name:
  • He is the father of the Homunculi. In addition, his eye catch illustration refers to him as Our Father. Our Father is the term that refers to God in The Lord's Prayer of Christianity: His ultimate goal is to become a perfect being by attaining the power of God.
  • His original name, Homunculus, means "little person". His original form was a tiny ball inside a flask (which he couldn't leave as it would mean his death). His humanoid form is only a bigger, mobile flask-so when it's broken, he can't maintain himself any longer.
  • Additionally, he's the literal single parent of all of the Homunculi, who are all named after the Seven Deadly Sins. Given his Devil-inspired goals and schemes to screw over the party he makes deals with he's literally the Father of Sins.
• Monster Progenitor: To the rest of the Homunculi. Hence the name "Father."
• Mortality Phobia: It is strongly implied that in addition to wanting an increasing amount of power, the reason Father wants to absorb God along with all of Amestris is a desperate attempt to escape death and return to the Gate.
• Motive Decay: He started out as a lab experiment who couldn't survive outside of the tiny flask he was created in, and caused the end of Xerxes to gain a human body of his own. After that, he starts an elaborate Ancient Conspiracy, sealing himself in a dark underground hideout, preparing for the day he can absorb God. Hohenheim even lampshades it, pointing out that Father is essentially right back where he started.
• Not Even Human: While Father did some unusual things with his body like a third eye, dispelling his essence into the homunculi and regrowing them from his body; nothing suggests at first that he wasn't more than an extremely powerful human alchemist aside from the unusual presence he has sensed from people of Xing. However, it's made clear from Hohenheim's backstory and when his true identity is exposed is that he's actually an entirely shadowy black, multi-eyed entity from beyond the Gate that's using a pseudo-Hohenheim shell to move around in.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He taught Hohenheim alchemy and gave Hohenheim an immortal body to thank him for giving the blood that created him. Later, Hohenheim used this same alchemy to fight him, took advantage of his immortality to create another circle to nullify Father's and it is Hohenheim's children who in the end defeat him.
• Nonstandard Character Design: Compared to the cast that has simpler facial features, Father's initial form is drawn with more realistic detail with his wrinkles and sharper features which contrasts Hohenheim who looks exactly how he did 400 years ago in spite of having the same face. Justified as it's implied powering the alchemy of Amnestris has sped up the aging process of his outer shell.
  • His nightmarish true form compared to the more down-to-earth designs of the characters is surreal and alien- being a pitch-black entity with slanted eyes with red irises with slits and a grin, which is justified as he's an entity beyond the Gate and thus is not supposed to exist naturally. Pride shares this trait with his shadow.
• No Sense of Personal Space: When he meets the Elric brothers he gets very close to their faces trying to recognize them, much to Ed's discomfort.
  • Taken to extremes when he forces Hohenheim into his true body, showing no respect for him.
• Not So Stoic: During his fight with Hohenheim he opens his eyes in surprise. Lampshaded by Hohenheim.
  • When his skin finally falls off, his stoicism falls apart as he resorts to gloating, laughing like a lunatic, and violent behavior. In fact, when he undergoes the transformation into his perfect form, he's more prone to occasional Slasher Smile and overtly sadistic actions than before.
• Obliviously Evil: Invoked in a bizarre way. In the end, Father seems unable to acknowledge that anything he did was wrong as he believes anyone seeking knowledge or perfection would do the same and even begs the Truth to tell him what he should have done differently. Subverted in that Truth's comment after trapping him in the gate ("You should have seen the answer with your own eyes") all but states that he doesn't buy it at all and that Father subconsciously did know what he had done wrong and what he should have done differently, but was too stubborn and proud to admit it.
• Oculothorax: His first form is a floating black eyeball with one eye and a mouth.
• Offing the Offspring: He reabsorbs Greed to steal the power of his Philosopher's Stone then expels him, causing his son to fade into nothingness. But while in his body, Greed reverses the Ultimate Shield and transmutes Father's body into fragile carbon, allowing Ed to defeat him.
• Oh, Crap!: When he's about to be sent back to the gate and realizes he's been talking to the Truth the whole time, revealing his earlier gloating on the flaws of the sacrifices is about to earn him an eternity bound to God.
• One-Winged Angel: During his fight with Hohenheim, Father gets the souls forming his body to "vomit him up", revealing his true form, a Living Shadow in the shape of a man, covered in eyes. He undergoes a second transformation when his "perfect" form is that of Hohenheim as an adolescent.
• Orcus on His Throne: He doesn't even leave his throne room until the Promised Day!
• Parental Favoritism: Pride is considered to be Father's favorite. Not that it stops him from abandoning Pride to recharge his own Philosopher's Stone without a second thought!
• Parental Neglect: He doesn't care when any of the Homunculi die. He just keeps them around because they're useful. Ed eventually points this out to the physically crumbling Pride, whom Father abandons in order to go replenish his own Philosopher's Stone.
• Perpetual Frowner: When he doesn't have his Sins inside him, Father will not smile and act in a stoic manner. However, it is strongly implied to be an act to hide his sadistic nature.
• Perpetual Smiler: What he truly is under his Hohenheim skin, having a near constant smile in his true form. Even when he resumes his pseudo-stoicism, the mask has slipped enough to show his true nature.
• Phlebotinum Overload: After the 50 million Amestrian souls are removed from him, Hohenheim invokes this on him, pointing out that "the few Xerxian souls [he has] left aren't enough to contain [his] so-called 'God'". After a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from the combined forces of the entire Briggs army, a blinded Roy Mustang, Greed and finally Edward Elric (with his arm restored) completely depletes his Philosopher's Stone, the power of God causes him to immediately implode.
• Pieces of God: Father is essentially one, pulled and created from the Gate of Truth using alchemy and human blood, and trapped in a flask. Much of his existence has been spent trying to usurp the godly being it was created from.
• Pitiful Worms: He views humans to be the equivalent of insects.
• The Power of Creation: Personally created each of the Homunculi.
• The Power of the Sun: Once he absorbs Truth, he becomes so powerful that he can induce nuclear fusion and create mini-Suns in the palm of his hand. Goes great with his Light Is Not Good motif.
• Practically Different Generations: In a sense he's Ed and Al's sibling due to being created from their father's blood, yet was created at least 400 years before they were born.
• Pure Energy: He can fire massive, Wave-Motion Gun-calibre energy blasts.
• Pure Is Not Good:
  • He claims to have purified himself of emotions by giving those aspects of himself to his "children", but as noted by Hohenheim, he's probably worse now than he was when he had those emotions.
  • We see in one of the final chapters that his Gate of Truth, unlike those of others, is completely blank.
  • Though it's stated numerous times that Father has expelled all of his sins, it's interesting to note he still commits them: he wants all of the knowledge in the world for himself (greed) which Truth would label as taking more than his fair share (gluttony); views himself as far above the humans who created him (pride) but secretly wants the human construct of family (envy); refuses to take an active role in his own plans until he has no other choice (sloth); slaughters millions of innocent people without justice or restraint (wrath); and, although he's most likely asexual, he has a very visceral, "pleasures-of-the-flesh" reaction when he activates the national transmutation circle (lust).
• Psychopathic Manchild: Not immediately obvious as Gluttony due to Father for the majority of his screen time as a stoic and foreboding older looking man but deep down he's this. When Hohenheim describes to Ed that his attempts to burn their home were akin to a child's hiding the mess they made, it is strongly implied that he's referring to Father's hiding the existence of Xerxes when he makes the comparison. When forced to remove his pseudo-Hohenheim skin, Father acts in a sadistic and childish manner until he absorbs God, resuming his trademark stoicism, implying he only acts stoic as a means to act in a manner of what he sees an adult as. His rebellious attitude towards Hohenheim and Truth plays into a child trying prove he's superior to his father, both in literal and a a biblical devil aspect. When he finally gets taken back to the Gate, Father whines like a brat begging not to be punished. It is very telling of his Gate of Truth being blank that truly speaks of his lack of maturity.
• Red Herring: The audience is initially meant to assume that Father and Hohenheim are one and the same, due to their identical appearances and Hohenheim's mysterious absence from his sons' lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.
• Sadist: Not immediately obvious, but "The Reason You Suck" Speech he gives to the sacrifices and his Slasher Smile he gives Mei when he's about to gun her down, demonstrates beneath his pious facade, Father is a monster that likes to inflict mental and physical pain to others.
• Satanic Archetype: He is the secret chief commander of a deep shadow cult conspiracy using a country run by a military-industrial dictatorship with a sinisterly-manipulated source of prosperity and power, ALL his doing. In spite of being responsible for all of the known mass bloodshed within the series universe, few know that he or his conspiracy even exist. His seed Homunculi, surrounded in occult symbolism the whole nine yards, largely born as the results and walking icons of every single vice known to man and to his own personality, refer to him as "Father". He's about ten insidious layers of misguiding light, and that's putting it mildly. The King of Xerxes made a deal with him to become immortal at the expense of the freedom of every soul in his own entire nation, only to quickly find out the hard way how Faustian it really was for himself. Meanwhile, Solf J. Kimblee is heavily implied to have wagered his own soul in a way just to see how the Homunculi's games would play out. Knowing this makes it fairly easy to connect the dots about all the main officers in Central Command. His ultimate goal/desire is to conquer and replace God and he originated from the Gate of Truth, essentially making him a literal Satan/Lucifer equivalent.
• Self-Duplication: He "perfected" his soul by splitting off parts of it into separate bodies (in this case, the parts corresponding to the seven deadly sins). Rather than destroying the beings created by this separation, he kept them around to do his dirty work for him.
• Seven Deadly Sins: As all the Homunculi are born from him, he embodies each of their vices in different ways.
  • Lust: Seemingly averted, as Father is never depicted as interested in sex. However, the core definition of lust is actually an uncontrollable desire for something immaterial rather than sexual, which fits his quest to understand everything there is to know by absorbing Truth.
  • Gluttony: Freely consumes his "children" when he deems there is no further use for them. He indulges in any resource he can get his hands on, freely taking what isn't his and having more than this fair share. Ironically enough, he has even less Xerxian souls in his body than Hohenheim does.
  • Envy: Father is unable to cultivate meaningful relationships, leading him to feel intensely jealous that humans are able to create lasting bonds. In part, his insane quest is driven by the desire to understand how humans can do this, and he creates his own twisted family of Homunculi as a form of mimicry more than anything.
  • Greed: An insatiable desire for all knowledge and power in the known universe? Textbook example. It's not so much riches that Father wants as it is understanding. Sadly, he chooses to do this at the expense of humanity.
  • Sloth: For all his power, Father is a rather lazy individual. He spends centuries beneath Amestris just sitting and contemplating. Even when forced to fight, he prefers to stand still and let his Philosopher's Stone do all the work for him without a transmutation circle or even needing to clap his hands together. This works against him in the Final Battle, as he's grown so used to not needing to think on his feet that whatever energy his new body has left is quickly depleted by Ed and his allies without Amestris' souls to contain God's power.
  • Wrath: Being petty and self-centered, Father often lashes out like a child when cornered and is bitter toward humans for having the connections he craves but is unable to attain being such an enormous Jerkass. Leads into Villainous Breakdown by the climax where he's screaming and raging at his plan being counteracted. Especially by a human (Ed), who beats the snot out of him without alchemy.
  • Pride: Is extremely proud of his intellect and vast power, taking many opportunities to gloat about how much better he is than humans. This is largely driven by insecurity rather than ability, with Truth plainly telling him that for all his clever tricks, he ended up little more than a thief despite all the time he had to actually learn something on his own merit instead of stealing a higher power to do it.
• Shadow Archetype: To Hohenheim. While Father is willing to sacrifice anyone for the sake of fulfilling his desires, Hohenheim will do anything to keep people from dying. Bonus points for looking like him at first.
• Shock and Awe: He uses it as a protective shield around his entire body, though he needs to bring it down momentarily in order to attack on his own.
• Smug Snake: A more cold and restrained version, but he never once misses a chance to put down those he sees as lower than him, especially regarding humans.
• The Sociopath: He manipulated a king into destroying his own country so he could become immortal, then spent the next centuries creating a military dictatorship so that he could destroy that country to become God. He has no emotions because he cast them off into the Homunculi, and genuinely sees humans like they see ants.
• The Stoic: An Invoked Trope; he put almost all his emotions into the Homunculi to "purify" his mind, so he himself is almost incapable of emoting or feeling anything whatsoever, aside from anger and panic when he realizes he's about to die after he's finally defeated.
  • As noted in Mask of Sanity, it is strongly implied that the stoic attitude he exhibits is just a facade to his truly sadistic nature complete with a near constant smile in his true form under the shell.
• Stepford Smiler: As the Dwarf in the Flask. He needed to be this to fool Hohenheim into going along with his plan.
• Straw Nihilist: Has this entire attitude towards humanity. Naturally, he absolutely loses it when faced with being returned to nothing by The Truth.

T-Z

• Tears of Fear: Truth really set off the waterworks when he chose to banish him.
• Third Eye: Although his true form has a lot more eyes than that, he's shown a couple of times forming a third eye on his forehead and pulling out a spare Philosopher's Stone. When the souls he absorbed from Hohenheim rebel, they cause a drill bit to painfully burst out from the same place.
• This Cannot Be!: Absorbs God, and is later getting pummeled by a human with his bare hands.
• Tin Man: Although he claims to have no emotions he actually does display them, sometimes as seemingly friendly ditziness, but also anger and great cruelty. If anything, it's more like his emotions are fairly low key. Hohenheim points out that while he claims to not want a family, the fact that he created seven "children" and had them call him Father betray his motives.
• Truly Single Parent: Each one of the Homunculi is born from him. Each is a representation of one of his Seven Deadly Sins, or so he claims.
• Undignified Death: Both his physical and spiritual death are very humiliating compared to the powerful and stoic persona he put on, especially after becoming a Physical God.
  • Tendrils from the Gate of Truth pull his body inside of himself without much dignity all while complaining about not being able to become the omniscient being he desired.
  • When facing God at the Gate, Father is left weeping and begging not to be sent send beyond the gate he came from. His pleas fall on deaf ears and he spends his last seconds screaming in sheer terror.
• The Unfettered: He sees everyone, enemy and ally alike, as pawns or stepping stones to his goal.
• Unskilled, but Strong: While he is incredibly powerful, he has very little actual fighting experience. This is mainly because whenever he must fight someone, he prefers using overwhelming brute force and unhanded tactics to defeat them. As such when he is forced into an actual fight and cannot rely on these strategies, he is relatively easy to defeat since he has little knowledge of how to defeat his opponents.
• Villains Want Mercy: He begs Truth not to seal him beyond the gate when he's rendered powerless. Unfortunately for Father, his pleas are ignored as he's banished to whence he came. FOREVER.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Undergoes this when he is Out-Gambitted by Hohenheim.
  • He then has a major one when he loses control of God.
  • As Ed proceeds to beat him to a pulp, he gets reduced to frantic yelling and becomes even more insane.
  • He has another one after Greed turns his body into graphite and Ed opens a hole in his chest, desperately lamenting about how he seeks freedom and how he can't obtain it.
  • His final breakdown is when Truth returns him to the gate: he breaks down crying and weeping, demanding to know what he had done wrong, before screaming as the gate closes.
• Vocal Dissonance: In Brotherhood, he keeps his "elderly man" voice even after transforming into his sexy younger form.
• Vocal Evolution: His voice changed from high-pitched to "old man" once he got a human body. Conversely, in his final moments in the mortal plane, after Ed destroys his Philosopher's Stone, his voice reverts back to its original pitch.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: In Chapter 104, after Father absorbs God, he ends up looking like a shirtless, teenage Hohenheim and spends the next several chapters in that form. He quickly turns into Fan Disservice after Hohenheim's countermeasure strips him of the souls needed to comfortably contain his new power, causing unsightly, bulging veins to pop all over his body.
• Walking Spoiler: Simply talking about his existence is a major spoiler, being the leader of the Homunculi and all, as well as looking almost identical to Hohenheim which gives away that there's a connection between them.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He tries to unleash a miniature Sun on Hohenheim, Roy, Izumi, and the Elric brothers after they have fulfilled their role as his "sacrifices". Luckily, Hohenheim is able to protect them all with the power of his Philosopher's Stone.
• Zerg Rush: It takes the combined efforts of Ed, Izumi, Mustang, Hawkeye, Major Armstrong, Zampano, Lan Fan, Darius, Greed/Ling, Al's heroic sacrifice and an entire military company just to wear him down to the point to where Ed can move in to close combat.

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