Characters / Kung Fu Panda – Antagonists

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Legends of Awesomeness | The Paws of Destiny | The Dragon Knight

Kung Fu Panda

Former Jade Palace Students

Tai Lung

Voiced by: Ian McShane [films], André Sogliuzzo [TV Series during Po's illusion], Patrick McHugh [first video game, Showdown of Legendary Legends], Pat Fraley [Legendary Warriors]; Riley Osbourne, Michelle Ruff (young)^{Foreign VAs}Gao Hanwen (Cantonese); Pierre Chagnon (Canadian French); Marc Lavoine (EU French); Thomas Fritsch [KFP 1], Klaus Dieter Klebsch [KFP 4] (German); Fabrizio Pucci (Italian); Akira Nakao (Japanese); An Jang-hyeok (Korean); Cheng Yuzhu [KFP 1], Liu Beichen [KFP 4] (PRC Mandarin); Clement Fu (TW Mandarin); Sérgio Fortuna (Brazilian Portuguese); Joaquim De Almeida (EU Portuguese); Vladimir Antonik (Russian); Juan Carlos Gustems (EU Spanish); Blas García (LA Spanish); Wiktor Zborowski (Polish)

"Fly back there and tell them... the real Dragon Warrior is coming home."

The Big Bad of the first film. One of Master Shifu's earlier students and adopted son, Tai Lung is an arrogant Snow Leopard who turned evil and went on a rampage. For that, he was imprisoned for twenty years. It is the prophecy of his escape that sets the events of the series into motion and his defeat at the hands of Po that affirms Po as the Dragon Warrior.

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• The Ace: His escape from the prison and easy defeat of the Five are arguably the greatest on-screen feats of physical skill and prowess in the entire trilogy- and that's after years of extreme confinement.
• Alas, Poor Villain: He was adopted and groomed by Shifu into being the Dragon Warrior of prophecy but felt abandoned once Oogway told him that he wasn't the Dragon Warrior and Shifu did nothing to sway his opinion or justify his decision to Tai Lung.
• All for Nothing: He at long last gets the Dragon Scroll only to find it completely blank save for a gold reflective surface. He spent his entire life lusting for the power of the scroll, only to find it has no such power and he fails to understand its message, even after Po spells it out for him.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Tai Lung has a huge bone to pick with Shifu, who he blames for failing him as a master and father. When it's time for the final battle with Po, he dismisses him as just a panda at first and underestimates him immensely.
  • He is Po's first enemy and his Evil Counterpart. He mocks Po for being a panda and greatly underestimates him. It is clear that from the moment he meets him, he despises Po. Po on the other hand does not openly hate Tai Lung for his misdeeds, even explaining the scroll's meaning to him and expressing regret for having to banish him to the spirit realm.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Shifu told him throughout his childhood that he was destined for greatness and trained him accordingly. Over time he became convinced that he would be chosen as the Dragon Warrior.
• Ax-Crazy: He tries to keep himself composed, but he's very quick to resort to positively vicious violence when remotely provoked, as seen when he tore through the entire Valley over being denied the Dragon Scroll. This insanity was the main reason he was locked up in the first place.
• Badass Armfold: He’s doing this in the picture above.
• Big Bad: Of the first film. His impending return and desire for revenge is what kicks off the plot, necessitating the choosing of the Dragon Warrior and thus beginning Po's journey.
• Blood Knight: Clearly relishes the idea of fighting the actual Dragon Warrior, as his Badass Boast on the bridge against the Furious Five demonstrates:
  Tai Lung: So that is his name... Po. Finally, a worthy opponent. Our battle will be legendary!
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to Tigress' Abel, with Tigress being the foster sister.
• Cats Are Mean: Aside from being the Big Bad, he's also kind of a jerk in general. Look no further than his conversation with Tigress.
• The Cameo: He returns in the third film as a jade amulet on Kai's waist, but he is never utilized as a jombie.
• The Chosen Wannabe: When he was denied the chance to be the Dragon Warrior, he decided to simply take the scroll by force.
• Color Motif: He has an association with blue; his nerve attack leaves a blue "shockwave" when he uses it, and the fire he fights Shifu with in the Jade Palace is also blue.
• Comically Missing the Point: When confronting the Five on the bridge, Tai Lung recalls stories he has heard of how the new Dragon Warrior "fell from the sky in a ball of fire", and is "unlike anything the world has ever seen". With an earlier scene in the film showing how and why these rumours actually started, Tai Lung is clearly unaware of the fact that these descriptions are actually sarcastically mocking Po, and he instead takes them completely seriously, thus setting himself up for disappointment when he eventually meets Po in person. It also adds to the Five's humbling as they visibly realise their mockery of Po earlier unwittingly chained a rumor mill.
  Monkey: Po?!
• Combat Pragmatist: During break-out from Chor Gom Prison, Tai Lung is able to turn around all the various weapons and safety measures that the guards employ to prevent his escape, and instead using them to propel himself closer to his goal.
• Deadpan Snarker: When he feels like it. Just like his father figure.
  Shifu: This is no longer your home. And I am no longer your master.
  Tai Lung: Oh, yes. You have a new favourite. So where is this "Po"? Did I scare him off?
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Whether or not it was intentional, Tai Lung is one for the traditional Kung-Fu Hero that is exiled or imprisoned by his enemies and returns to claim what (he thinks) is his. The movie also deconstructs in Tai Lung's character the idea of The Chosen One, Master of All, and Roaring Rampage of Revenge. While Tai Lung was imprisoned by his father figure, it was for a good reason as Tai Lung would do anything to get the Dragon Scroll and attacked his mentor/father figure without mercy and showed he would go to extreme lengths to get what he wants. Tai Lung believed he was the chosen one due to his father figure raising him into becoming the best student from the temple. While in most Kung-Fu stories, he would be the chosen one, the nature of the Dragon Scroll renders that belief meaningless and indeed, anathema to the purpose of Kung-Fu. Being raised to crave outside validation for accomplishments was detrimental to Tai Lung's personal growth, who instead needed to look to himself rather than others. While Tai Lung was very much The Ace and a prodigy, learning 1,000 scrolls worth of techniques, he only looked to the physical and technical aspects of Kung-Fu and never focused on spiritual enlightenment or peace within himself. Lastly, Tai Lung was let down by Shifu by not supporting Tai Lung in the ways that mattered most, and for leaving him to rot in prison for 20 years without trying to reach out to his son or helping him in a way that could have given Tai Lung a chance at redemption. Tai Lung had become so bitter and selfish that even when Shifu admits his own faults and apologizes, Tai Lung still ignores him and not only attacks Shifu but is also harming innocent people. While Shifu was at fault for some of the wrongs that resulted, Tai Lung became a cold and brutal beast willing to destroy anyone and anything to get what he wanted.
• Desperately Craves Affection: His desire to be The Dragon Warrior stems from feelings of inadequecy and abandonment since he felt betrayed when his adoptive father, Shifu, did nothing to change Oogway's belief that Tai Lung was not the prophesied warrior despite Shifu’s training giving him the impression that he was the prophesied dragon warrior.
• The Determinator: Nothing gets in his way. Not armies, not arrows, not ballista bolts, not falling stalactites, not five of the greatest Kung-Fu warriors, not his own master, and father. He often encounters obstacles that should have permanently ended him, but he keeps finding off-the-cuff solutions to overcome them and roar back into the fight.
• Doorstop Baby: He was abandoned at the Jade Temple door as an infant.
• The Dreaded: Everyone fears him. Even Vachir, the prison warden, loses his cocky bravado once it becomes clear that Tai Lung has made it past all Chorh-Gom's defenses (and is about to throw a bunch of dynamite into his face).
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: His attitude, his demeanour and his ego put the erroneous impression into his head that he was the prophesied Dragon Warrior but felt betrayed and besmirched when he was denied the title.
• Early Personality Signs: Even as a young cub, he showed physical strength and talent in kung fu, as seen when he kicked a punching bag hard enough to send it flying across the room.
• Et Tu, Brute?: The true reason behind his wrath. It wasn't so much the fact that he was denied the Dragon Scroll that caused him to become so violent as it was the fact that Shifu, who had acted as his paternal figure, did nothing to try to change Oogway's mind or even explain Oogway's reasoning why he was denied. Add to that the fact that Shifu never once visited Tai Lung after he was imprisoned, and you can understand why he'd feel that his father figure had abandoned him.
• Evil Brit: A villain who has his voice actor's natural English accent.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: His arrogance prevents him from understanding the secret of the Dragon Scroll that the secret to limitless power lies within himself. Word of God says this is the only thing that prevents him from making a Heel–Face Turn. As far as he’s concerned, why would he need to because he’s under the impression that he's in the right when it turns out he could not be more wrong about that. His ego also prevents him from seeing why Oogway said he wasn’t the Dragon Warrior because his attitude was the very antithesis of the one needed to be the Dragon Warrior.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Po — Both are orphans whose life had something to do with Kung Fu and being the Dragon Warrior. Tai Lung was shown to be gifted at Kung Fu and groomed for the role of the Dragon Warrior, but was not chosen as the Dragon Warrior and became the Big Bad he is; Po had to work his way to being a Kung Fu master and was chosen as the Dragon Warrior. Also, while Po is a Humble Hero (bordering on Heroic Self-Deprecation), Tai Lung is an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy (which is his Fatal Flaw). Finally, when it comes to the Dragon Scroll, while Po does get the message of the scroll and decides to go back to the Jade Palace and defeat Tai Lung in the final battle, Tai Lung doesn’t and decides to take his rage out on Po and eventually gets defeated in the same final battle.
  • To Tigress — Both do not know their real parents (the latter was raised in an Orphanage of Love, the former was a Doorstop Baby), and just wanted their teacher's love. Like Tai Lung, Tigress believed that she would be chosen as the Dragon Warrior by Oogway, and resented Po for 'stealing her thunder'. Also, both are big felines who suffer from Pride and a bad temper. Unlike Tai Lung, Tigress remained honorable by choosing to become an even better and more worthy warrior. This decision, combined with her defeat at the Thread of Hope, kept her from following the same path as him.
• Evil Former Friend: To Shifu, his master.
• Evil Is Hammy: He isn't a subtle character.
• Evil Sounds Deep: His overall assertive demeanor is matched by a firm, commanding voice.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • Completely averted in the first film. Tai Lung is genuinely terrified when Po catches him in the Wuxi Finger Hold, and he is last seen tensing fearfully when Po completes the move.
  • Played straight in the fourth film. Despite having been brought back to life by The Chameleon, Tai Lung and the other villains decide to go back to the Spirit Realm instead of staying on the living realm without much fuss. He outright asks Po to send them all "home", showing he's at peace in the afterlife.
• Face–Heel Turn: In a flashback, he went from Shifu's beloved son and prize pupil to a destructive Fallen Hero that went on a rampage through the Valley and tried to kill his own mentor when he was deemed unworthy of the Dragon Scroll.
• Fallen Hero: Used to be a great hero in the Valley. Then Oogway decided that he wasn't enough of a hero to deserve the Dragon Scroll and it all went downhill from there. At least, that's how it went down in his head. The truth is that his arrogance and refusal to look beyond combat and pursue self-enlightenment is the reason that Oogway denied him the Dragon Scroll.
• Fatal Flaw: Hubris. How much of this is his fault and how much of it is Shifu's is a matter for debate, but Tai Lung's immense arrogance ultimately winds up being his downfall three separate times, each worse than the last. Firstly, it prevents him from reflecting on himself enough to understand why Oogway denied him the Dragon Scroll. Secondly, it drove him to go on a destructive rampage through the Valley of Peace and challenge Oogway to a duel, a duel he loses badly. Finally, it prevents him from understanding or appreciating the true meaning of the Dragon Scroll, even when Po spells it out to him. Po offered him a chance to change, and Tai Lung's pride made him throw it away, sealing his fate.
• Faux Affably Evil: Downplayed at first. After fighting his way out of the prison, Tai Lung roughly Neck Lifts Zeng, strokes his head, and amicably tells the goose to deliver his message to the Valley of Peace before helpfully throwing him up to catch flight. As he becomes more and more enraged later on, he varies between trying his damnedest to play this trope straight and just doing away with the pleasantries entirely. He compliments the Furious Five for their performance against him before subduing them with his nerve attacks. He also acts nearly respectfully upon first meeting his master for twenty years, but he drops the act upon Shifu's answer that they must fight.
  Tai Lung: I'm glad Shifu sent you. [brings his paw close to the shivering Zeng before stroking the goose's head] I was beginning to think I'd been forgotten. Fly back there and tell them... the real Dragon Warrior is coming home.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Fighter to Shen's Thief and Kai's Mage; While sometimes turning his opponents' own weapons and environment against them, for the most part he fights using pure Kung Fu- unlike Shen- and while his nerve attacks can paralyze with a touch, they bear no similarity to Kai's chi manipulation.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric — arrogant, destructive and Hot-Blooded.
• Freudian Excuse: He turned evil because he was denied the Dragon Scroll by Oogway, and Shifu did not challenge that decision despite the tremendous amount of support he gave Tai Lung before.
• Freudian Trio: The Id to Shen's Superego and Kai's Ego. Tai Lung is the most aggressive and physically capable of the three and is also by far the most temperamental.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He went from a sweet orphan to The Dreaded.
• Furry Reminder: He punctuates a lot of his dialogue with growls and snarls.
• Genius Bruiser: While he's a strong, powerful fighter, Tai Lung is truly unstoppable due to his strategic intellect and how he easily adapts to setbacks. He's able to escape from prison by using one of Zeng's loose feathers to pick the intricate lock of his chi-disrupting restraints, and in both his escape and his fight with the Furious Five, he's able to use the environment to his advantage several times. In addition, his signature move in combat is a calculated nerve strike which, judging by his easy defeat of the Five, is an extremely rare skill among Kung Fu masters.
• The Gift: Though it's to his detriment. He has a severe ego problem that prevents him from being truly receptive of the Dragon Scroll's wisdom. This is why Oogway refused to make him the Dragon Warrior. His response to this was less than cordial.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It takes a LOT of things to make him mad, especially being denied something he wants.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: He only wears a belt and a pair of pants. Interestingly, the color of his pants seems to match the blanket he was wrapped in when he was found as a baby.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the fourth movie, after Po saves him from the Chameleon and gives him back his stolen fighting skills, he finally admits that Po is worthy to be the Dragon Warrior instead of him and bows to Po in respect. He then returns to the Spirit Realm without a fight.
  Tai Lung: Maybe Oogway was right about you. You aren't completely useless after all.
• Hero's Evil Predecessor: Downplayed. Tai Lung is Master Shifu's former pupil and a talented Kung Fu fighter who trained since his early age, and Shifu thought he was certain to become the legendary Dragon Warrior. Master Oogway didn't agree, leading to Tai Lung rebelling against the masters and then getting imprisoned for his troubles. Twenty years later, our hero Po is made the Dragon Warrior and then he's informed that he's fated to defeat Tai Lung, the former candidate for the title.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Gets hit by his own nerve strike ability when Chameleon transforms into him.
• Humiliation Conga: Has been going through one since the back half of the first movie. Realising that the secret of the Dragon Warrior he ruined his life to obtain was a blank scroll and being defeated by Po was just the beginning. In Kung Fu Panda 3 it's revealed that while in the Spirit Realm he was defeated and had his chi taken by Kai, being turned into one of his jade amulets until released following Kai's defeat. Then in Kung Fu Panda 4, he is summoned back to the Mortal Realm by the Chameleon only so she can steal his kung fu abilities from him. He eventually gets even with her, though.
• Ignored Epiphany: When Shifu tells him that he has always been proud of him and sincerely apologizes for having let his pride and love for Tai Lung blind him to what he was turning him into, Tai Lung pauses for a moment and his expression softens, seemingly moved by Shifu's words. He hardens his expression a moment later, grabs him by the throat, and demands to have the Dragon Scroll.
• Improbable Self-Maintenance: Tai Lung has been kept completely immobilized by an acupuncture needle-laced harness for years at the bottom of a prison built solely to contain him within the heart of a mountain. Despite this, he remains as clean, muscular, and groomed as the day he was imprisoned and easily fights his way through a thousand soldiers once he's finally freed.
• Incendiary Exponent: He is so badass he can set his paws on fire and not even get burned!
• Incompletely Trained: Shifu taught him to focus on the physical side of kung fu, not the spiritual one, preventing him from becoming enlightened and realizing the true wisdom of the Dragon Scroll.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Raised to believe he would be named the Dragon Warrior, Tai Lung became arrogant in his skill, entitled to his destiny, and convinced of his own heroism and perfection. However, when he yells at Shifu that "all I ever did, I did to make you proud!" it becomes obvious that Tai Lung believed he needed the validation of the Scroll to have any real worth and earn Shifu's love and pride. This is made poignantly clear when he first stares into the scroll seeing only his reflection and declares "It's nothing!", missing the entire lesson of the scroll.
• Interspecies Adoption: He was a snow leopard that was adopted by Shifu, a red panda.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Oogway deemed him unfit to receive the Dragon Scroll, seeing a darkness in his heart. Tai Lung responded by destroying the entire Valley of Peace in a fit of rage.
• Jerkass: Tai Lung used to be an adorable cub, but he grew up egotistical and smug before turning evil, partly thanks to Shifu neglecting to teach him humility. He looks down on everyone in his delusions of invincibility, refusing to accept blame for his undoings, and ultimately rejecting his mentor's heartfelt apology. When he's brought back to life in the fourth movie, he's surprisingly mellowed out into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold or a Noble Demon at least; though he still contemptuously regards Po as a duffer, he doesn't believe for one minute the panda would willingly give the Staff of Wisdom to the Chameleon and tries to return to the Spirit Realm as soon as he's summoned instead of taking the chance to have revenge on anyone. When Po proves Tai Lung's assessment of him being a broken promise wrong by defeating the Chameleon and returning the kung fu masters their strength, Tai Lung accepts him as the Dragon Warrior and returns to the Spirit Realm with newfound respect for his former enemy.
• The Juggernaut: A thousand rhino warriors don't get a hit on him, the Furious Five can't stop him and even Master Shifu is solidly defeated by him. Master Oogway seems to be the only character who stands any sort of chance against him. However, Master Oogway is confident that Po is up to the challenge.
• Ki Manipulation: His signature nerve strike causes the flow of ki in an opponent's body to become blocked causing paralysis.
• Knight of Cerebus: Played straight until the final battle. All his scenes up to then are the darkest parts of the movie, such as his escape and emotional fight with Shifu; but Po's fight with him is loaded with the same slapstick the panda's been prone to the whole movie, making Tai Lung's defeat rather lighthearted.
• Light Is Not Good: He is a pale snow leopard with golden glowing eyes and the Big Bad.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's big and muscular while also incredibly agile.
• Logical Weakness: His paralyzing nerve strikes are devastatingly effective but they don't work against Po as his layers of fat mean the strikes do nothing.
• Meaningful Name: His name (太龍, tàilóng) means "great dragon", which is everything but what he actually is (i.e., the Dragon Warrior). As Shifu gave him this name, it drives home the incredible expectations placed on him.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: He gets to read the Dragon Scroll, but he can't understand its message.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Oddly, his mouth is almost filled with tiny incisors, for his two lower fangs.
• Mundanger: He retroactively becomes this in comparison to the villains that came after him. Tai Lung does not possess an army or artillery like Lord Shen, nor mystical powers like Kai or the Chameleon. He is merely a talented kung fu master, and yet he singlehandedly poses a massive threat to the Valley and easily defeats almost anything in his way, simply using his own skills and strength.
• Never My Fault: He blames Shifu and Oogway for not being named the Dragon Warrior and his imprisonment. While there is some truth in regards to Shifu's accountability, Tai Lung had no right to lash out at everyone in arm's reach for not getting a title he wasn't fit for.
• Older Than They Look: Tai Lung was already an adult when he was imprisoned, and even after spending 20 years in there — during which he wasn't even allowed to move — by the time he escapes he not only looks no older but didn't even grow any more frail, with Shifu remarking that he's somehow in better shape than when he was first locked up. Given that he was The Ace, it's evident he's just that good.
• One-Man Army: No number of conventional soldiers is a match for him. His prison boasted of a thousand rhino guards and he took them all out within minutes. Sure, he used dynamite for the last group, but it's likely it would have only taken him a few more minutes to clean house the old-fashion way.
• Panthera Awesome: Of the snow leopard variety.
• The Paralyzer: His nerve strike which he learned from the restraining shell that held him imprisoned.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Once he's set free, one of the very first things he does is go on a rampage and take his revenge on Vachir. Considering how much of a bully Vachir was with harassing Zeng and abusing Tai Lung when he was captive, practically no one can feel sorry for Vachir.
  • After having his kung-fu restored in the fourth movie, rather than challenging Po to a final battle, he instead grabs the Chameleon by the throat and drags her with him into the Spirit Realm.
• Plot Armor: He receives a combined beatdown from every member aside from Mantis, gets tied up completely with vines by Crane, gets slugged by Tigress, and is sent flying into the misty chasm, screaming the whole time. He then flings himself back across the chasm and One-Hit KOs the Furious Five, primarily because the plot needs him to win so he can have his showdown with Po.
• The Poorly Chosen One: He was adopted by Shifu, who recognized his natural talent for kung fu and told him he was destined for greatness. He trained all his life in expectation of becoming the Dragon Warrior, but when he asked for the scroll, Oogway refused him. Tai Lung destroyed the entire village in a fit of rage, and was locked up in a Tailor-Made Prison for the next twenty years.
• Prehensile Tail: Tai Lung uses his unrestrained tail to pick up Zeng's loose feather and use it to pick the lock of his restraint.
• Purple Is Powerful: He wears purple trousers and not much else.
• Rage Against the Mentor: Combined with Calling the Old Man Out, his fight with Shifu is nothing but this, as Tai Lung lashes out against his master and adoptive father for getting his hopes up and driving him to push himself to his physical limit over some great destiny only to say nothing after Oogway denied him the Dragon Scroll.
• Redemption Rejection:
  • "I don't want your apology! I want my Scroll!" Made worse by the fact that for a moment, Tai Lung is visibly moved and it really looked like he was going to accept Shifu's unexpected apology, but then remembered why he was there.
  • Near the end of his battle with Po, as Tai Lung finally opens the Dragon Scroll. Po calmly comforts him and tries to explain to him what the scroll's message actually means. Tai Lung won't have any of it and tries to attack Po again who regretfully has to take the fight up a notch.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His irises are red, and he's a murderous Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy.
• Refused by the Call: Tai Lung firmly believed that he deserved to be the Dragon Warrior, only for Oogway to refuse to give him the Dragon Scroll.
• The Resenter: Deeply resents Shifu, and to a lesser extent, Oogway, for denying him the Dragon Scroll.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: He was this when he was young, believe it or not.
• Running on All Fours: Like Tigress, he seems to do this by default.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: A variant — he gives a deeply undignified startled-kitten squeak when Po tricks him into biting his own tail.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Chorh-Gom Prison exists for the sole purpose of keeping Tai Lung, and only Tai Lung, locked up. The one thing that keeps him immobilized is a turtle shell-shaped harness with acupuncture needles in his back... and the only thing he needed to escape from the prison carved out of a mountain that goes down for miles and is guarded by a thousand rhinoceri is a single feather.
• Seeking Ultimate Strength: Tai Lung was Master Shifu's previous apprentice trained to be the Dragon Warrior, until his arrogance got the better of him. When his training was canceled, he went on a rampage and had to be imprisoned. In the present, he escapes the Chorh-Gom Prison and aims again for the Dragon Scroll, believing it can teach him "limitless power", but is stopped by Po after learning that the scroll is just a symbolic mirror.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • He represents what Po could have been with a bad teacher. Both of them are incurable show-offs, even when the situation calls for dead seriousness. When Tai Lung appeared before Shifu out of nowhere before their confrontation, he was hiding at a distance for some time and waiting for Shifu to blink, so that his entrance could be appropriately dramatic (as explained in DVD commentary).
  • Also Tigress, due to their similar Inferiority Superiority Complex and The Resenter role for not being chosen as the Dragon Warrior. However while Tigress' honour code and loyalty to Shifu still offset that slight, Tai Lung's sense of entitlement made him turn on his masters.
• Sore Loser: His response to being told he was not the Dragon Warrior was to rampage through the Valley of Peace, and even when moments away from his final defeat, he refuses to accept that a big fat panda, of all things, can crush him in a battle.
• Starter Villain: Tai Lung is an interesting variation in that he's the first proper villain that Po faces in the entire franchise. He's already reached a high level of mastery by the time he's faced the Furious Five and Po and is more powerful and skilled than Shen, the sequel villain. However, threat level-wise, Shen is still greater than Tai Lung because he has an entire army, advanced weaponry, and more grand country-wide ambitions and Tai Lung is completely eclipsed by Kai from the third movie in both threat level and power. On the other hand, taking into consideration the different animated shows, Tai Lung would be utterly crushed by major arc villains like Ke-Pa, Fenghuang, Jindiao, the White Bone Demon, Zuma with the Tianshang weapons, and a fully Tianshang-empowered Sir Alfred whom not even Po could defeat when he was at master-level but is likely still far more dangerous and powerful compared to some of Po's regular Rogues Gallery like Fung, Hundun, Tong Fo, Temutai, Junjie, and Taotie. This all places Tai Lung in that unique niche of being a Starter Villain who stays strong relative to the entire franchise since there are some later villains who surpass him in power and threat level, but not every single major or recurring villain Po faces at a later date reaches his level either.
• Start of Darkness: He Used to be a Sweet Cub, but his own talent and Shifu's high expectations of him caused him to believe that he was worthy of being the Dragon Warrior. But Master Oogway realized that he wasn't capable of actually understanding the secret of the Dragon Scroll, and refused him. Tai Lung refused to accept this, and tore apart the temple in his search for the scroll before Oogway paralyzed him and he was imprisoned in Chorh-Gom.
• Super-Strength: Having a giant boulder hanging on a chain from each paw was not enough to restrain him. He sends rhinos flying like rag dolls with his strikes and slams through a prison door barricaded by two of them barely slowed down, and tears a piece of stone bigger than himself from the temple's stairway to hurl it at Shifu. He distinguishes himself even in the world where unnatural strength automatically comes with Kung Fu mastery.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The major reason Po defeats Tai Lung despite being less skilled is because Tai Lung is on the losing side of this trope. Po's body fat ends up making him immune to Tai Lung's nerve attacks, which are effectively his trump card in combat and what allowed him to defeat the Furious Five.
• Taking You with Me: Literally. After having his kung-fu restored in the fourth film, Tai Lung not only resigns himself to his fate in the Spirit Realm, but he also physically drags the Chameleon along with him.
• Tempting Fate: When Tai Lung first sees Po, he mockingly asks, "What are you going to do? Sit on me?" Guess what happens to him.
• This Is Gonna Suck: His expression seconds before Po uses the Wuxi Finger Hold on him at the end of the original movie practically screams this.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed. While not outright nice when he returns in the fourth film, Tai Lung does appears to have at least mellowed out during his time in the Spirit Realm. He is fairly cordial if blunt towards the Chameleon, he is more indifferent towards Po than outright hateful, and in spite of being brought back to life, he is clearly more interested in returning to the Spirit Realm than staying to take revenge on his still-living enemies. This is taken even further when he comes to genuinely respect Po in the ending.
• Tragic Villain: Tai Lung could have been a great hero if Shifu could have helped curb his growing monstrous ego and emotional insecurities, or if he had the strength of character to feel secure within his limits to do it himself.
• Tranquil Fury: Him holding Zeng in a Neck Lift and gently giving him the instructions to get his message delivered absolutely radiates subdued, divergent lividness. It's arguably the most frighteningly realistic depiction of just how resentful he is in the whole film.
• Uncertain Doom: At the end of the first film, Tai Lung is seemingly killed when Po uses the Wuxi Finger Hold on him, though he is never explicitly stated to be dead. The third film would later reveal that the Wuxi Finger Hold sends its victims to the Spirit Realm, implying that the same fate befell Tai Lung, while a brief glimpse at Kai's belt shows that he was also one of the masters that the latter overpowered and captured at some point. Tai Lung would eventually return in person in the fourth film, which confirms that he was indeed sent to the Spirit Realm following his defeat, and he willingly returns to it in the ending.
• Underestimating Badassery: He does this the first time he lays eyes on Po, mocking the panda and asking if Po will sit on him. Of course, this attitude helps contribute to Tai Lung's defeat.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Mentioned when Tai Lung returns to the Jade Palace:
    Tai Lung: I have come home, master.
    Shifu: This is no longer your home, and I am no longer your master!
    Tai Lung: Oh, yes. You have a new favorite. So where is this Po? [evil chuckle] Did I scare him off?
  • Subverted when Shifu mentions how he had become so proud of him that he failed to see what he had become.
    Tai Lung: (furiously beating Shifu with flaming fists) Whatever I did, I did to make you proud! Tell me how proud you are, Shifu! Tell me! TELL ME! (Tai Lung knocks Shifu to the ground)
    Shifu: (with a regretful sadness) I have...always been proud of you. From the first moment, I've been...proud of you. And it was my pride that blinded me. I loved you too much to see what you were becoming. What I...was turning you into. I'm s... I'm sorry. (Tai Lung pauses, then grabs Shifu by the throat)
    Tai Lung: I don't want your apology! I want my scroll!
• The Unfettered: He will stop at nothing to get the Dragon Scroll, even if it means trying to kill his adoptive father and mentor.
• The Unreveal: It’s never been revealed who Tai Lung’s biological parents are, why they left Tai Lung as a baby, and if they’re still alive or not.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: What was once Shifu's greatest pupil and adopted son, is now a power-hungry monster. He's even the current trope image.
• Villain Has a Point: His grievance with Shifu is not unwarranted: Tai Lung went through hell with his training and was raised with fatherly love and support from Shifu, who believed Tai Lung to be the Dragon Warrior... and yet when Oogway denied him the Dragon Scroll, Shifu did absolutely nothing to change his mind or explain why to Tai Lung why he was denied. When Tai Lung was sent to prison, Shifu never visited him or tried to contact him. Even when directly confronted about this, Shifu still refused to explain why Tai Lung wasn't meant to be the Dragon Warrior, and the only answer Shifu could give on the matter can be summed up as "Because Oogway said so". From Tai Lung's perspective, Shifu only loved him under the condition that he was the Dragon Warrior and once Oogway said otherwise, Shifu abandoned him without explanation, ultimately discarding their father-son relationship on a whim just because Oogway told him to. If Shifu truly cared then he should have remained in contact and met Oogway's decision with more resistance than just blindly going along with what his master said. The truth is Shifu said nothing because he didn't understand it either until their rematch where he realized his love for Tai Lung blinded him to the fact his pupil was becoming someone who would kill if denied what he wants and apologizes for his part in it as a father and teacher.
• Villain Respect:
  • His compliment to the Furious Five on how Shifu taught them well, only to show just how far the gap really was between them.
    Tai Lung: Shifu taught you well… but he didn’t teach you everything.
  • In the fourth movie, he displays some respect for Oogway with his first line, recognizing his staff for what it is, and even to Po as he believes that even though he's a doofus, he wouldn't willingly give the Chameleon the staff. Eventually, he develops a sense of more genuine respect for Po after witnessing him and Zhen beat the Chameleon, bowing to them before returning to the Spirit Realm with the Chameleon in tow.
    Tai Lung: See you on the other side, Dragon Warrior.
• Villainous Breakdown: After learning the secret of the Dragon Scroll was not what he expected the key to limitless power to be, he becomes Blinded by Rage with his attacks, allowing Po to easily counter them and beat him more easily.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Never wears a shirt.
• Wall Crawl: He can use his claws for this purpose, as shown when he breaks out of Chorh-Gom.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's implied based off his fight against Shifu that since childhood, he did everything he could to make Shifu proud. While he was initially taunting Shifu about wondering how proud Shifu was of him during their fight, some part of him still sought Shifu's praise and approval.
• The Worf Effect: It's revealed in 3 that Tai Lung is one of the warriors who was defeated by Kai and had his chi stolen from him. Downplayed in that it happened offscreen. Then in 4, he has his kung-fu stolen by the Chameleon.
• Would Hit a Girl: He doesn’t hold anything back when fighting Tigress and Viper.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He seems to think he's The Hero of the story, which Word of God has said was intentional, and is why Tai Lung has golden eyes — the color gold represents glory and heroism. Tai Lung's scenes are framed as an archetypical action Hero's Journey: he is betrayed by his master and denied prestige he feels he deserves and is imprisoned for years before escaping, and he fights his way back to his homeland (including an encounter with a Quirky Miniboss Squad of his master's pupils) to confront his old master and his new favorite student and claim the destiny they denied him. Unfortunately for Tai Lung, he isn't The Hero of this story, Po is.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Tai Lung believed that he was supposed to be the prophesized Dragon Warrior, but after Oogway denied him the title, Tai Lung believed he had been abandoned and stripped of his identity by his adoptive father.

Kung Fu Panda 2

Lord Shen and His Army

In general

• Awesome, but Impractical: Their cannons. Yes, they're extremely powerful and can overpower and kill kung fu masters, but they have a number of tactical flaws.
  • They require a great deal of metal to forge. Shen's soldiers have to rob the farthest villages of pots and tools in order to find enough metal to make them.
  • Being made of solid metal, they're extremely heavy and difficult to transport, as seen when two super-strong gorilla mooks complain about having to move one a little to the left.
  • They're slow and hard to aim. Even Po can run faster than the wolves can move and aim the cannons, and takes advantage of this fact during the final battle to confuse them.
  • The above also means that they can only hit stationary or immobilized opponents, and firing one into a crowd will kill unintended targets. Boss Wolf recognizes this and refuses to fire at Po when it means his own soldiers would be caught in the crossfire, which promptly gets him killed by Shen.
  • And — although Shen had no way of anticipating it — they are useless against an opponent who has some way of redirecting the cannonballs... such as, say, a kung fu warrior who has mastered inner peace.
  • All of the above, except that last one, is very much a Logical Weakness and a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. Cannons, as anyone with half a brain could tell you, are an artillery weapon meant for blasting enemy fortifications to pieces and cutting swaths through tightly clustered enemy troops — both being very large targets. The idea of using a cannon to hit an individual person, let alone one that is superhumanly mobile such as the kung fu masters of this movie, is a long shot at best and laughable overkill at worst. The only reason it succeeded in killing Master Thundering Rhino is he had no concept of a firearm and underestimating it. After his death gives context to everyone else, the cannons do not kill one individual for the rest of the movie.
• Badass Army: A large group of powerful fighters.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: The 2D flashback Po has of his home village destruction makes Shen and his wolves look like monsters.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: In the 2D flashback, Shen's are red.
• Killer Gorilla: Shen has a few gorillas in his army who act as the muscle, typically helping to move the many cannons he has at his disposal.

Lord Shen

Voiced by: Gary Oldman, Andre Sogliuzzo (Showdown of Legendary Legends) ^{Foreign VAs}Kenny Lai Kar Hay (Cantonese), Daniel Picard (Canadian French), Bernard Alane (EU French), Hans-Jürgen Dittberner (German), Massimo Lodolo (Italian), Keiji Fujiwara (Japanese), Liu Qin (PRC Mandarin), Hsia Chih Shih (TW Mandarin), Márcio Simões (Brazilian Portuguese), Vasily Dakhnenko (Russian), Gabriel Jimenez (EU Spanish), Sergio Gutiérrez Coto (LA Spanish); Krzysztof Dracz (Polish)

"Call in the wolves! All of them! I want them ready to move! The Year of the Peacock begins now!"

The Big Bad of the second film. He's a wicked peacock whose clan rules over Gongmen City. However, that wasn't enough for him as he is possessed by a desire to take over all of China. For that, he invented the cannon, which poses a threat to the very existence of kung fu itself.

---

• Agent Peacock: Perfect Pun aside, by the time the credits roll, you will believe a peacock can be a skilled fighter and a cruel and terrifying villain. And sure enough, on top of his glorious white-and-red train, he dresses in elegant and expensive clothes, wields exquisite masterwork weaponry (compare his spotless shining feather-pattern knives to Boss Wolf's basic maul), and is exactly as vain as he is badass. The best indicator is when Shen angrily points out to the Soothsayer that his robes are made of "the finest silk in the province" when she starts chewing them.
• Albinos Are Freaks: It's heavily implied that his childhood as a sickly albino is what fed into his power-hungry nature.
• Ambition Is Evil: Ever since Shen became obsessed with his invention, he desires power for the sake of power. When Soothsayer points this to him, Shen sort of admits that he doesn't really know what he's going to do with all this power if he succeeds at taking over China, but immediately shrugs the thought off.
• And Then What?: The Soothsayer asks him if conquering China and destroying kung-fu will finally make Shen happy. Shen is clearly shocked, never having considered what he'll do after he's done conquering and if it will be worth everything he's lost but is quick to push away his doubt.
• Animal Facial Hair: Two thin feathers grow from the corners of Shen's beak to give the impression of a Fu Manchu mustache.
• Arch-Enemy: Defied. Shen is the one who orphaned Po, is arguably the most dangerous villain in China during the time of the second movie and is the one antagonist with the most personal connection to Po's past. Throughout the movie, Shen repeatedly tries invoke this with Po, lying to him about his parents, trying a big dramatic speech and trying to torment Po about the panda genocide. The problem is Po does not hold a grudge and he was too young to know his birth family. Most importantly, what little trauma there is Po is able to let go of and find inner peace. Shen's just an annoyance to him, and Po tells him so to his face. This dumbfounds Shen.
• Audible Sharpness: His many bladed weapons. Even his train feathers and flight have an almost mechanical sound to them.
• Ax-Crazy: As befitting the most deranged villain in the movies, Lord Shen is the only character seen who unambiguously kills someone on-screen (his right-hand man). Furthermore, he's constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown and plagued by paranoid delusions about his parents not loving him. He deals with all of them by starting wars and committing genocide, which he sincerely thought would make his parents proud.
• Badass Boast: Overlapping with Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor, Shen is very confident in the strength of his new weapons, and as the Kung Fu masters of Gongmen City soon discover, he has every right to be:
  Master Ox: What's in the box, Shen?
  Shen: You want to see? It's a gift! It's your "parting" gift, in that it will "part" you: part of you here, part of you there, part of you waaay over there, staining the wall.
  [...]
  Master Rhino: You are no match for our Kung Fu.
  Shen: I agree. But this is!
• Badass Bookworm: Studied gunpowder from fireworks to make his cannons.
• Badass Long Robe: His clothes, plus his train feathers.
• Bad Boss: Had no problem whatsoever firing at his own men to defeat Po and the Five and kills the Boss Wolf just because he did have a problem with that. He also once punched a Gorilla soldier in the face.
• Being Evil Sucks: Spends decades plotting his revenge and relentlessly pursuing his ambition to rule over China in an attempt to assuage his emotional pain and find happiness. This only succeeds in making him feel more bitter and miserable.
• Beyond Redemption: It's implied that he feels like he has no chance for redemption, as seen with his final talk with the Soothsayer. In the end, he even refuses Po's offer to repent for his actions.
• BFG: He invented the cannon, in order to destroy Kung Fu and take over China.
• Big Bad: Of the second film. His campaign to conquer all of China and destroy kung fu is the main conflict and his genocide of the pandas is an integral part of Po's character arc in that film.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Of the "match-the-width-of-his-shoulders-so-he-can-fit-through-gaps" variety.
• Break Them by Talking: Successfully does this to Po in the Fireworks Factory.
• Broken Ace: Shen is incredibly intelligent, ambitious and charismatic, commands the respect and loyalty of entire armies and is skilled enough to give Po a run for his money in combat (he's also the villain who came closest to killing him). Underneath all this, however, Shen possesses some deep-rooted issues and a very complex internal struggle.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Inverted. Shen massacred Po's village in an attempt to kill him, but Po has no memory of this until later in the movie. Shen finds this quite entertaining.
• The Cameo: Briefly appears in the third film in the same flashback from the end of the second.
• Combat Pragmatist: Uses throwing knives in addition to his spear, conceals his movements with his train, and the entire purpose of inventing the cannon was to deal with kung fu masters he can't beat one-on-one. When confronted with a fight he can't possibly win, against Po and the Furious Five, he flies out the window and calls down a barrage of cannon fire to destroy his own tower.
• The Comically Serious: Despite being the evilest foe Po has faced so far, he has his hilarious moments, usually when Po is in the same scene. He takes his evil seriously, but pretty often Po doesn't (or doesn't understand) and it ends up angering Shen.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • Tai Lung was a physically formidable Kung Fu fighter and a One-Man Army who worked alone and whose main goal was to get the Dragon Scroll. Shen is physically smaller but a genius noble who has an army to do his bidding, and his goal is to destroy Kung Fu and take over China. While Tai Lung didn't have any kind of past history with Po, the conflict with Shen becomes more of a personal matter to Po due to Shen's connection with his past.
  • His backstory has significant parallels with that of Tai Lung — promised power by his parent figure, denied and exiled, returns to claim his place and prove himself. However, Shen's Freudian Excuse is weaker and his vengeance is more sinister. Tai Lung wanted the Dragon Scroll to prove to himself and Shifu he was worthy of it and was a Worthy Opponent to Po, whereas Shen wants to conquer China and casually kills because he has done too much harm, came too far to stop, and has nothing else left in his life.
• Cowardly Lion: His first response to a battle not going his way is to flee and/or hide behind his cannons. In particular, he tries to avoid a direct confrontation with Po because of the prophecy. However, since he does fight well when necessary, it's likely that these actions are due more to pragmatism than fear.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Using a cannon to win a fight certainly helps. It's not treachery, it's pragmatism!
• Death by Irony: He's flattened by his own invention.
• Death Equals Redemption: He doesn't bother to save himself from the cannon falling on top of him, preferring to die in peace rather live with agony. Next we see him in Kung Fu Panda 4, the revived Shen actually bows to Po in gratitude for defeating the Chameleon and willingly returns to the Spirit Realm with no fuss.
• Death Glare:
  • As Po sends all his weaponry back at him and his armada is about to blow up, Shen, rather than panicking, just fixates on Po with pure hatred.
  • He gives an indignant scowl from his cage when the Chameleon replicates his wings in her One-Winged Angel form in the fourth film.
• Elemental Motifs: Fire and metal, which in Chinese culture are associated with red and white, respectively.
• Epic Flail: Uses a meteor hammer to incapacitate Master Ox at one point.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: An understated aspect of his character, but Shen employs armies of wolves and gorillas and sees no issue with it whatsoever. You'd actually think he'd be the opposite considering his Pride at being a peacock. It might be because they're easy for him to use, however, but the fact he's not ashamed of having different species working for him heavily implies he has this viewpoint.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
  • The Soothsayer effectively raised him, and he clearly cares about her to some extent, albeit not enough to stop his plans. He shows hints of this when he encounters Po and the Furious Five for the first time. Despite being at the end of his patience, he never actually loses it unless Po makes a comment about the Soothsayer, the second time driving him to point a knife in Po's face. His treatment of the Soothsayer is more akin to that of a family member than a prisoner. The Soothsayer is also the only character in the movie that he never physically harms -– as embittered as he is –- despite the cynical, discourteous attitude (and the prophecies) she gives him.
  • It's made clear that for all his posturing, Shen genuinely loved his parents and wanted nothing more than to live up to their expectations. Pretty much all of the horrible things he did in his life were his own frighteningly misguided way of trying to make them proud. The Soothsayer's words about their love for him is the only time in the movie Shen seems to be human again and the consequences of his actions truly sink in.
    Soothsayer: They loved you. They loved you so much that having to send you away killed them.
    [Shen's face is stricken with My God, What Have I Done?]
• Evil Brit: Is very evil, and has his voice actor's accent.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • He thought his parents would be proud of him for slaughtering the pandas, and doesn’t understand why they’re horrified at his act of genocide.
  • Is shocked that Po doesn't hold what he did to his species, and his family, against him, and that he was able to let go of his pain, because his own pain has never gone away, and he doesn't believe it ever will. In truth, Po's pain hasn't gone away, he simply came to terms with it and thus became at peace with it, something Shen refuses to do.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Po. Both have parental abandonment issues and are real animals likened to mythical beasts (Po the Panda is the Dragon Warrior, while Shen the peacock is clearly meant to be a phoenix with his passion for fire). Both are nervous and unsure of themselves, having many a Failed Attempt at Drama moment. Both are black-and-white animals who are (apparently) the last of their kind, and both fight using unconventional methods. They achieved their places of power by using fireworks and by defeating highly skilled masters (Tai Lung and the Masters' Council) who stood in their way. Both their destinies were set in motion when the Soothsayer predicted their eventual conflict, and both sought inner peace to deal with their tragic pasts. However, while Po was able to move on from the tragedies of his past, Shen was unable to do so and found only defeat.
  • Though the closest point they come to interacting with each other is the second movie's final battle, Shen can be seen as Master Shifu's villainous foil. They both had a clairvoyant elder who watched their development (the Soothsayer and Master Oogway) and who foretold a disaster (Shen's demise and Tai Lung's return). Both proteges then tried to avert said disaster, only to inadvertently cause it to happen. Like with Shifu in the first movie, Shen's present is influenced by the pains of the past, making him demanding and biased, with his high expectations in regards to his subordinates mirroring those of Shifu's in regards to his students. In particular, neither of them believed initially that someone like Po could be a mighty warrior, only for the determined panda to defy their expectations. Their main difference is in regards to the advice offered to them by their mentors; Shifu didn't want Oogway to leave and afterwards respected his master's wish to train Po despite his doubts, but Shen eventually sends the Soothsayer away when he decides he can't find happiness from her advice. Shifu ultimately found inner peace by listening to Oogway, while Shen could find peace only in death through his own self-destructive decisions.
  • Also worth noting is that Po and Shifu found inner peace by coming to terms with great suffering, while Shen actively refuses to do so.
    Shifu: Po, the day you were chosen as Dragon Warrior...was the worst day of my life. By far, nothing else came close. It was the worst, most painful, mind-destroying, horrible moment I have ever experienced....But once I realized the problem was not you, but within me, I found inner peace, and was able to harness the flow of the universe.
• Evil Genius: He discovered that fireworks could also serve as gunpowder, and then invented the cannon to put that discovery to use.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He presents his cannon to the kung fu masters as "your parting gift, in that it will part you. Part of you here, part of you there, and part of you way over there, STAINING THE WALL!"
• Evil Is Burning Hot: He is strongly associated with fire and bright light—his smoking forges and torches, his name that can be translated as "flame", his fireworks factory, his cannon that "breathes fire and spits metal", and his burning of the panda village. At one point, he even lights his sword aflame in a burning brazier and uses it to incinerate a map of China as a symbol of his Evil Plan.
• Evil Is Hammy: He has his moments. Here's his voice actor hamming it up while recording him in the studio.
• Evil Old Folks: He was banished as an adult when Po was a baby, and took thirty years to ready his forces. This puts him within his fifties at least during the film.
• Evil Plan: Take over China and destroy Kung Fu while he's at it.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: His home in Gongmen City, which he's shown perching atop of during a travel montage.
• Face Death with Dignity: When his cannon is about to fall on him, he just closes his eyes and accepts it. It's not made clear if he was too far beyond the Despair Event Horizon from seeing his ambition he sacrificed so much for crumble around him or if he simply realized that he was the foretold warrior that would lead to his downfall.
  • Once more in the fourth film despite having been brought back to life by The Chameleon, Shen and the other villains decide to go back to the Spirit Realm instead of staying on the living realm without much fuss.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: He has his moments. Most notably, Shen was visibly nervous prior to meeting Po and spent a lot of time rehearsing his speech for when they finally stood face to face, only for the panda he was so afraid of to not even know who he is and just casually greet Shen, completely taking the wind out of his sails and leaving him momentarily baffled.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's respectful, well-spoken, and philosophical ... until something makes him mad, then he shows the true Ax-Crazy monster beneath it all.
• Feathered Fiend: Well, he is voiced by Gary Oldman, who (according to Celebrity Deathmatch) "can go from zero to psycho in 2.5 seconds".
• Feather Fingers: Uses them for his knife throwing.
• Feather Motif: Peacock feathers symbolize vainglory, especially appropriate for Lord Shen. Unlike normal peacock feathers, however, his are white and red, for madness and death.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Thief to Tai Lung's Fighter and Kai's Mage. Unlike Tai Lung, Shen is in no hurry to fight his own battles as he fears a prophesy foretelling his defeat by a "warrior of black and white". So instead he sends out armies of underlings to do his fighting for him, though unlike Kai, these minions are just normal wolves and gorillas and not magically enslaved spirits of kung fu masters embodied in jade. But when he personally joins the field he fights dirty, making use of numerous throwing knives, concealed weapons, and mind games and misdirection. And should a fight not go his way, he has no qualms about flying off and calling in the artillery.
• Fire Is Red: As a consequence of the series' color motif, the fires that Shen and his mooks use, both in the cannon and in regular torches, are of an unusual crimson tone. Justified as in Shen is explicitly stated to be working off of firework chemicals, so it stands to reason his cannonballs would have a colorful glow to them.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric — he is commanding, controlling, decisive, and a born leader. He also has a spontaneous hint of aggressiveness when things don't go his way.
• Fragile Speedster: Physically frail, but blindingly fast when the situation requires it: he can cover short to moderate distances in an instant. Paired with his knife skills, his speed makes him an extremely dangerous opponent.
• Freudian Excuse: Dowplayed, as his excuse was caused by his own evil actions. His parents decided to banish and disown him for massacring the pandas, which is a pretty reasonable reaction, if not outright tame; Shen's crimes could have been grounds to have Shen imprisoned for life or even executed. He saw this as an act of abandonment and has let the pain and resentment fester in him ever since. He does seem genuinely hurt by this despite everything. This being said it is shown that he was heading down the path of villainy even before his banishment, so it is likely that the exile only accelerated his decline.
  • If one takes into account his original expanded backstory, it's even worse: Shen was born an ill albino and his parents were so ashamed they left him in the care of the Soothsayer (this aspect can still be seen in the way Shen tolerates the Soothsayer's attitude and when he lets her go).
• Freudian Trio: The Superego to Tai Lung's Id and Kai's Ego. Shen has a more outwardly suave demeanor than the other two villains, and is the most likely to think before acting (hence the gradual creation of his slew of cannons in preparation for his obliteration of kung fu).
• Furry Reminder: He occasionally lets out a peacock scream.
• Genocide Backfire: Shen overhears a prophecy that he will be defeated by "a warrior of black-and-white". He proceeds to massacre a panda village. However, Po's mother leaves the infant panda in a case of groceries that get delivered to Mr. Ping. This results in Po being in the right place and the right time to become the Dragon Warrior, receiving the training he will need to stop Shen. In fact, it's remembering the massacre and his mother's sacrifice that allows Po to master the skill he needs to overcome Shen's cannons.
• Glass Cannon: Very agile and quick and has a lethal aim with his throwing knives, but he's one of the few characters who is not Made of Iron and is clearly at a disadvantage when his blades aren't enough to overwhelm a more defensive foe. That's where the literal cannon comes in.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: His feet are covered in burn scars from weapon forging, so he partly hides them with his metal talons.
• Heel–Face Turn: Downplayed but somewhat present. In the fourth movie, after Po saves him from the Chameleon and gives him back his stolen fighting skills, he bows to Po in respect and returns to the Spirit Realm without a fight. Though given that he doesn't speak, it's hard to nail down what his actions indicate, The fact that he went back at all shows that he no longer desires to pursue his old aspirations or ambitions and is at peace with himself in death.
• Hero Killer: He very nearly kills Po in the Fireworks Factory. If the Soothsayer hadn't been around...
• Hidden Weapons: He hides an arsenal of blades under those robes of his and he is terrifyingly skilled with them.
• Hoist by His Own Petard/Karmic Death: Crushed by the very weapon he was going to use to conquer China, which only happened because he accidentally cut the ropes holding it up while trying to kill Po.
• Humiliation Conga: His cannons, which he spent thirty years to invent, are obliterated in mere seconds by Po's cannonball deflection technique. Even more so as the event unfolds right before the eyes of the Kung Fu Masters and the entire population of Gongmen City, to the point where they actually cheer. He eventually gets crushed to death by his own cannon.
• Ignored Epiphany: When the Soothsayer tells him his parents did love him, so much that it killed them to banish him, Shen looks genuinely moved for a few seconds before closing his eyes and brushing the information aside.
• Informed Flaw: Downplayed. Despite the claims that he was born weak and sickly enough for his parents to have the Soothsayer care for him, he is a deadly, acrobatic fighter — a whirlwind of white feathers and steel death in combat, skilled enough to pose a serious challenge to Po in a one-on-one duel, and falling short of only the greatest of kung fu masters in battle. Of course, a lot of time has passed since his childhood, and he has likely mostly recovered from whatever illness was plaguing him by now. To this day, though, his fighting style does emphasize agility over strength or durability.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: According to Gary Oldman in this interview.
• I've Come Too Far: It's implied that this is the reason why he feels compelled to go on with his evil instead of repent. After every evil action he has done, he feels like there's no path of redemption for him.
  Shen: (solemnly) The dead exist in the past, and I must tend to the future.
• It's Personal: Played with. Shen expects this of Po. He ordered the panda genocide, and even has the implied circumstances that he personally had a hand in killing Po's mother. However, when Shen actually meets Po, he's surprised and extremely amused that Po has no idea of what Shen did. And then at the end, when Po finally does know what happened, he's not interested in revenge on Shen at all, instead of finding inner peace because of knowing it.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The introduction shows him to be experimenting with a more destructive side of fireworks, which isn't downright evil in itself ... until the genocide happened.
• Kick the Dog: Lying to Po that his parents left him behind and that they didn’t love him.
• Killer Rabbit: Who knew a peacock could be such a threatening, efficient villain?
• Knight of Cerebus: Tai Lung craved only the Dragon Scroll and there has been no solid on-screen evidence he ever murdered anyone. The second film opens with Shen ordering the genocide of the pandas, and ten minutes later, he kills Thundering Rhino with a cannon before going on to wage a war against China and Kung Fu. Tai Lung was little more than an arrogant, swaggering thug; Shen is a mass-murdering warlord. Additionally, Po literally gets a Heroic BSoD from seeing his peacock tail (because it awoke traumatic childhood memories). While he still has some Laughably Evil elements, Shen is still easily the darkest villain in the franchise.
  Shen: Kill him, somebody kill him!
• Laughably Evil: His threat level is played dead seriously. However characterization-wise, he routinely breaks his own mystique with his bleak sense of humour and occasional tantrums and awkwardness, still filling his quota for the series' standard humour.
• Last Disrespects: One of the first things he does when he finally comes back to his family's mansion is find his father's throne and have his minions throw it out the window. He later does this on a much broader scale by trapping the heroes in the main tower and firing cannonballs at it.
• Last Villain Stand: He spends the entire film running from a direct confrontation with Po because of the Soothsayer's prediction. In the end, after he's killed his own second-in-command, had everything he built be obliterated before his eyes, and Po tries to impart to Shen the secret to inner peace, he finally stops running and fights Po with everything he has if only out of pure anger.
• Leitmotif: "Ancient China/Story of Shen", which is first played in the opening scene, and accompanies Shen at a few points afterward, most prominently during the Fireworks Factory battle.
• Light Is Not Good: Both to Chinese and Western imagery. In the west, white is obviously seen as the "good" color, while red is the "good" color in China (white is actually symbolic of death there). Add this to the fact that his name can be translated as "divinity", his association with fire and the resemblance to the mythological Feng Huang, and you got yourself a heavenly monster.
• Man of Kryptonite: Even though he falls short of Tai Lung when it comes to martial arts, he gives Po one hell of a run in their final duel and loses solely because he basically defeats himself in his wild frenzy. Indeed, his focus on bladed weapons makes him as much of a counter to Po's Stone Wall fighting style as Po himself was to Tai Lung: the panda's bulk is great at repelling bare-handed and other blunt attacks, especially those aiming for pressure points... but against a sharp blade, it mostly just makes him an easier target to gut like a fish.
• Manipulative Bastard: He was able to manipulate Master Storming Ox into striking first during his return to Gongmen City and subsequently imprisoned both Masters Storming Ox and Croc with the fear of turning the cannon on the city. That and the entire exchange with Po in the Fireworks Factory.
  Shen: [to Po] Your parents didn't love you.
• Meaningful Name:
  • One of the meanings of 'Shen' (神) is "divinity", which relates to his quest for power and attention.
  • An alternate reading of 'Shen' (焴) is "flame", which connects to his cannons.
  • His official Chinese dub name (沈) means "to sink".
• The Mentally Disturbed: He seems to suffer from chronic depression, paranoia (as far as his parents are concerned, thinking they never loved him), and is deeply insecure.
• Moral Myopia: His parents supposed 'betrayal' that sent him down the path of villainy is exiling him after he committed genocide against the pandas; which is actually a rather tame punishment considering such a high crime could actually be grounds to have Shen imprisoned for life or even executed. He seems to consider this a 'betrayal' on his parent's part, completely ignoring the horrible atrocity he committed that made them punish Shen in the first place.
• Moral Sociopathy: As an extreme Narcissist who believes that he is above all others, Shen has inordinate self-worth, a sense of self-entitlement, is violent, unsympathetic and more than willing to kill anyone who questions him. Unlike most sociopaths, he does have some moral fiber buried deep down (the writers and the movie strongly suggest the reason he doesn't abandon his goals is because he knows how awful his actions were and he seems to silently acknowledge he has no chance of redemption) and has some connection to humanity. Just look at his interactions with the Soothsayer or his plead with Po to understand how he moved on from all that happened to him. In fact, it was the paranoia that his parents didn't love him that caused his Start of Darkness, rather than any superficial or greedy motivation (though it was shown he was heading towards a dark path even back then. His delusions just made it worse).
• My God, What Have I Done?: When the Soothsayer tells Shen that his parents truly loved him and that sending him away caused their grief to kill them, Shen has a face that looks like a face of realization and pain after learning of what happened to them and their love for him was real. Unfortunately, he still continues with his evil plot, but that's mainly because he feels like he has gone too far with his actions and that he has no hope for redemption.
• Narcissist: Shen is highly prideful and vain, extremely assured of his victory and despises anyone interrupting or contradicting him. He also loves to envision himself in a grandeur fashion and can't stand it when something doesn't go his way.
• Never My Fault: When his parents banish him for committing genocide, he takes it as further proof they don't care about him instead of as punishment. Even more so because being banished as opposed to being executed may have been an act of mercy on their part.
• Never Say "Die": Averted hard. While other films in the franchise both preceding and succeeding his skirt around the topic of death (the nebulous relationship between the mortal plane and Spirit Realm being a big part of that), Shen kills people. In the second film, he's seen leading the genocide of the pandas, blowing up Master Rhino with one of his cannons, and even murdering the Boss Wolf during its final battle.
• Obi-Wan Moment: He just closes his eyes before he is flattened by the weapon he knocked onto himself.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Despite being a sickly albino, relying on artillery and trickery over brawn, Shen is still a deadly skilled blade wielder. It's just that the kung fu masters are so powerful they overshadow him.
• The Perfectionist: He wants everything to be perfect. He practices his Pre-Asskicking One-Liner before meeting Po and demands his weapon be placed "a little to the left", much to the tirement of the gorillas.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He lets the Soothsayer go, unharmed, with no selfish intent behind it. Indeed, he never harms her, in spite of the attitude she gives him (and the fact that she keeps eating his clothes).
  • He was also rather kind to the wolves in his youth, which is what made them swear their loyalty to him. Of course, one could argue that this was all he was really after, as he's not so kind to them in the present. However, given his slow and gradual decay, it could also be argued that he once legitimately used to be A Father to His Men, at least before his Villainous Breakdown.
  • In 4, he comes to respect Po and bows to him and Zhen after he's saved from the Chameleon's prison.
• The Phoenix: What he is meant to symbolize.
• Practically Joker: His Ax-Crazy behavior, Mood-Swinger tendencies, Hammy tendencies, taste for violence, and the fact that he is a villain with a rather sober humor (despite being Laughably Evil) makes him a noticeable parallel to Heath Ledger's Joker. Ironic, considering that Gary Oldman previously portrayed Commissioner Gordon.
• Proud Peacock: His ego leads him to attempt to take over China and commit genocide against the pandas. Being a villainous example, his feathers are mostly white with red eyespots on his train rather than colorful, giving him a more eerie appearance than most other peacocks. At one point, Shen declares it's the "Year of the Peacock" effective immediately, though Boss Wolf points out that it's the middle of the year and Shen would only get half the year. Shen simply glares at Boss Wolf while holding a knife to his face, causing the latter to quickly agree that it's the Year of the Peacock.
• Psychological Projection: He never recovered from the pain of being exiled by his parents and thinks they never loved him. He believes it must be the same for Po, and tries to abuse this perceived trauma to his advantage, toying with Po's emotions and claiming that his parents didn't love him either. He assumes this would break Po the same way it broke him, so when Po achieves inner peace in spite of his manipulation, Shen is thoroughly shocked.
• Razor Wings: His throwing knives are in the shape of feathers to help him conceal them, and he also uses his train feathers as a weapon and distraction similar to what real-life martial-arts styles with metal folding fans do.
• Redemption Rejection: After Po destroys all his ships and cannons, Po gives him a chance to change his ways, which he soundly rejects in favor of trying to stab Po. Given how he dies shortly after, this can be interpreted as both an attempt at Suicide by Cop and Death Equals Redemption.
  Po: You gotta let go of that stuff from the past 'cause it just doesn't matter! The only thing that matters is what you choose to be now.
  Shen: (eyes widening) You're right. Then I choose THIS! [pulls out blades from his robes and starts attacking Po with them]
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Aside from his regular eyes, the eyespots on his train are also red, reflecting his albino status.
• Satanic Archetype: He is not only the Knight of Cerebus of the entire franchise and represents a great threat to China, but also his fall is announced from a prophecy in which a savior (Po, a Messianic Archetype) is going to defeat him. Consumed by his Social Darwinism and blinded by his narcissism, pride, and thirst for power, Shen attempted to commit genocide against the species he feared. The fact that his scenes are associated with fire and dark colors only enhances his Satanic qualities. In fact, the flashback of Po recalling the trauma of his village being decimated by Shen gives us Shen himself surrounded by fire, almost as if he were Satan.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: Both his spear and sword have wavy edges.
• Screw Destiny: Shen's goal to conquer China is partially motivated by his desire to prove the Soothsayer wrong about her prediction that he will be defeated by a panda. His actions to change his fate led to him being banished.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He originally planned to sail out of China with his armada in three days. After he fails to kill Po the first time, he decides to leave immediately rather than try to confront him again.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: If Shen had not killed the panda village, his nemesis would never have had any reason to go after him, let alone become the Dragon Warrior. Even if all the pandas were dead, he was the "warrior in black and white" who led to his own downfall.
• Self-Made Orphan: He is an indirect example. He massacred a village of pandas and was banished by his parents as a result. According to the Soothsayer, the grief of sending him away caused them to die from despair.
• Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: While he's known to have been weak and sickly when he was younger, he's now a very skilled and dangerous fighter.
• Signature Move: Throws a quick flurry of knives, accompanied by a staccato whirring noise.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: Shen's walking is accompanied by his metal talons scraping the ground.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: For the most part, he's very calm, cool, and collected, and his voice is usually monotone...at least until someone angers him, or something doesn't go his way.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Shen presents a larger scale threat than Tai Lung. Though not as skilled and not Made of Iron, he has an army, a powerful weapon in the cannon, and ambitions to both conquer China and destroy Kung Fu. Additionally, his blade-based fighting style actually makes him much more of a threat in combat to Po than Tai Lung.
• Start of Darkness: He discovered a practical use for fireworks and subsequently became obsessed with it.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: As a reverse of Tai Lung, Shen's sharp weapon-based fighting style is well suited to battle Po, as it just makes him a larger target and Po's not immune to being stabbed or cut the way he is resistant to pressure point strikes and blunt hits.
• Third Time's The Charm: Po confronts him three times throughout the film (tower, factory, harbor) before finally getting over his Heroic BSoD and defeating him.
• Token Minority: Of the main villains first three films, he's the only non-mammal: Tai Lung is a snow leopard and Kai is a yak. The fourth movie introduces the first reptile villain, so Shen loses this status.
• Tragic Villain: Zigzagged, but ultimately Shen does have shades of this. Shen's actions were deplorable, but they were born from a desire to avert the prophecy of his downfall, believing he would make his parents proud and ensure his future as ruler of Gongmen City. His subsequent exile and disownment from his parents also deeply scarred him and fed into his insecurities and self-loathing, which pushed him further down a dark path. Shen takes no real joy in any of his actions and even acknowledges his conquest will bring him no peace, but he has simply come too far to find redemption, but he refuses the Soothsayer when she tries to guide him towards it. In many ways, Shen's life was never truly lived by him, but rather by fear and obsession with fate, but his actions still caused irreparable damage that can never be undone. And only in accepting his fate and dying by his own hand does he finally attain some measure of peace.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • After Po decimates his armada and proceeds to lecture him about his inner pain, his rage finally breaks and he begins fighting Po to the death with only a Death Glare to show his anger.
  • Early in the movie, when Po is brought before him as a prisoner, and Po's antics finally get on his nerves, he points one of his blades at the panda's face and says the following line in a low, quiet tone that is utterly drenched in venom.
    Shen: The only reason you are still alive is that I find your stupidity... mildly amusing...
• Took a Level in Kindness: His time in the Spirit Realm did wonders to calm him down. When Po frees him and the other villains from the Chameleon's prison, he doesn't attack him in revenge or show resentment for his defeat, but rather bows to him respectfully recognizing him as the Dragon Warrior before leaving back to the Spirit Realm in peace.
• Twitchy Eye: Who could also be an Actor Allusion: Gary Oldman previously voiced Ruber who had the same tic.
• Unstoppable Rage: After Po destroys his fleet, Shen goes into a very calm rage and attacks Po with the intent to kill him. However his rage also speeds along his death as in his fit of anger he cuts a cannon loose, which falls and crushes him.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Easily one of the darkest villains of the entire franchise. He is bent on destroying kung fu with heavy artillery, terrorized many innocent pigs and bunnies with his army of wolves, and almost pushed the entire panda species (which includes Po) to the point of extinction. All of this is enough to make Tai Lung, the snow leopard villain of the first Kung Fu Panda film look like a house cat. When Shen's right hand and the leader of the wolves objects to him opening fire on his own soldiers to get at the heroes, Shen responds with a dagger to his neck, making it the first time in a DreamWorks movie a villain actually kills someone onscreen.
• Viler New Villain: As violent as Tai Lung was, he was also a tragic figure and his path into darkness was greatly aided by those around him, especially Shifu. Shen is also troubled, but his Freudian Excuse is much weaker and his actions on screen much more loathsome, including killing his own soldiers and actual genocide.
• Villain Has a Point: Shen has a smaller example of this when Po tries to tell him to let go of his past, correcting the panda that it's wounds that heal rather than scars.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Po returns after being hit by cannon fire and assumed dead, Shen, in a fit of fearful desperation, loses it and opens fire on his own men after killing his second-in-command. After Po obliterates his armada by redirecting cannon fire, Shen is left in shock, not only because that he'd lost everything he'd spent years creating, but because Po had managed to overcome his own troubled past without succumbing to rage, instead finding inner peace. Po tries to explain that the secret to inner peace is the acceptance of the pain of the past. This only succeeds in angering Shen. Best summed up in his rant during the final battle:
  Lord Shen: Keep firing! KEEP FIRING!!
• Villain Respect: After Po and Zhen defeat the Chameleon and free him, Shen joins the other deceased kung-fu masters in bowing to Po, showing that he has developed respect for the Dragon Warrior.
• The Voiceless: In Kung Fu Panda 4 he doesn't speak for the duration of his appearance.
• Walking Armory: He always carries a large number of knives and wears metal claws on his feet. Besides that, he uses a spear and a meteor hammer at different points. He also uses a sword against Master Ox and Master Croc.
• Weak, but Skilled: Physically he doesn't demonstrate the strength of the kung fu masters and he's one of the few characters that isn't Made of Iron, but he can he hurl blades with the best of them.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Has an insecure relationship with his parents and is deeply hurt by his parents' rejection of him for his evil ways, causing him to believe they never loved him. Considers it an Awful Truth when Po demands to know about his parents and Shen lies, claiming that his parents didn't love him. He is also completely unable to understand how Po is able to come to terms with him killing Po's parents because he was never able to properly cope with the loss of his own.
• White and Red and Eerie All Over: An albino peacock with red eyespots on his train, Lord Shen is a frightening villain whose association with red and fiery imagery is contrasted by his white feathers and robe. (See Light Is Not Good above).
• White Hair, Black Heart: It's implied in background material that the former is partially responsible for the latter.
• Why Won't You Die?:
  • He never says this outright, but his shouted orders to his gun crews after Po starts deflecting cannonballs hints that this is his mindset:
    Lord Shen: Kill him! Somebody KILL him!!
  • Occurs when Shen witnesses Po's return to Gongmen City.
    Lord Shen: How many times do I have to kill the same stinking panda?
• Wolverine Claws: Shen wears metal talons for both combat and to cover up the burn scars on his feet. They also resemble the ornaments Chinese nobles wore to protect their long nails.
• Would Hit a Girl: He led his troops to slaughter a village of pandas, including female pandas such as Po’s mom. He also tries to kill Tigress and Viper.
• Would Hurt a Child: He clearly didn't hesitate with trying to kill Po when he was just a cub.
• You Cannot Fight Fate: Played with. It was predicted that a "warrior of black and white" would defeat him, but it was also mentioned that he could change his fate if he stopped his destructive ways. He doesn't.

Boss Wolf

Voiced by: Danny McBride, Mark Allen Stewart [second video game, Showdown of Legendary Legends] ^{Foreign VAs}Gao Hanwen (Cantonese), Sylvain Hétu (Canadian French), Gilles Morvan (EU French), Jörg Hengstler (German), Stefano Mondini (Italian), Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese), Chen Xusheng (TW Mandarin), Reginaldo Primo (Brazilian Portuguese), Marco Delgado (EU Portuguese), Radik Mukhametzyanov (Russian), Rafael Calvo (EU Spanish), Andres Garcia (LA Spanish); Jacek Radziński (Polish)

"Guess nobody told you: If you mess with the wolf, you get the fangs."

Lord Shen's oldest (and probably only) friend and most loyal servant. He is the commander of the wolf army.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: The Boss is an awful person who was complicit in Shen's genocide against the pandas, yet the fact that he's killed simply for refusing to fire on his own men makes his death somewhat sympathetic.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He's the best fighter among the wolves.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Him and every other wolf.
• The Brute: Strong, not very bright, and has only rudimentary kung fu skills.
• Carry a Big Stick: Occasionally uses a giant war hammer as a weapon.
• Character Death: Most likely, considering he was hit in the throat with several of Shen's knives point blank. Word of God via DVD Commentary states that he's alive but that particular comment about him being "alive" was a joke by Rodolphe Guenoden ("But he's not dead! He just fell off... yeah..."). While it's never confirmed that he's alive, it is true that it's never confirmed he is dead, either; in fact, Melissa Cobb did mention that she wondered if he ever died, and that she didn't know.
  • If he did die, that would make him the only character to be murdered on-screen in the 3 primary movies and 1 of only two (the other being Oogway) to die onscreen rather than being killed off-screen or kicked/punched out of frame. The movies usually cut away just before the moment of death.
• Combat Pragmatist: Aside from being a dirty fighter, he also knows when to strategically retreat.
• Comically Missing the Point: Prone to this. When Shen tells him that the "year of the peacock" has begun, he gets confused because it's already the middle of the year.
• Dark Is Evil: Dark grey fur and armor.
• The Dragon: To Lord Shen.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He refuses to fire at Po while knowing his own men would be caught in the crossfire. Shen kills him for it. Makes sense, since wolves operate as a pack. You can't just attack one and hope to get away with it. Fits nicely into the animal motifs.
• Evil Eyebrows: Has thick arched eyebrows and serves as a supporting antagonist.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In contrast to his boss.
• Eye Scream: He lost his eye during the attack on the Panda Village. When he tried to attack baby Po, Po's father, Li Shan, smashed his face with a hammer.
• Face–Heel Turn: He and his wolves used to be the royal guards of Gongmen City, but flocked to Shen's side because he treated them better than the rest of the royal family.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Considering the Bloodless Carnage of the rest of the series and its focus on slapstick kung-fu fighting, taking a volley of throwing knives to the throat and falling to the side is pretty brutal.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: The whole "eye ripped out with a hammer" thing isn't very kid-friendly either.
• A Father to His Men: He stands up to Shen for ordering him to fire on his own men and gets killed for it.
• Handicapped Badass: He lost one eye during the attack on the panda village, after Po's father smashed his face with a hammer. Despite this, he can still fight well.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Dressed (almost) entirely in leather armor.
• Kick the Dog: Not above throwing innocent bystanders in front of danger to slow down his foes. He even throws children.
• Large and in Charge: He's a good deal larger than all of the other wolves, making him easily stand out.
• Laughably Evil: He's really more comic relief than anything.
• Logical Weakness: Wolves operate as a pack, so he's not much of a threat when he's alone. When he faces Po with only two mooks and they're instantly taken out by Monkey and Crane, he says, "uh-oh" and runs for it.
• No Name Given: He is only listed as "Wolf Boss" in the credits. That's what he does.
• Noble Wolf: One would think he would belong to Savage Wolves for the villainy but as stated above he's similar to Po and has a solid pack-oriented mentality.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Given his more comedic nature, it's easy to forget that he was at the forefront of the panda genocide and in fact would've killed Po if not for Li Shan stepping in.
• Papa Wolf: Since the alpha male of a wolf pack is also the father of many members, it could apply. Being ordered to fire upon his own men is what gets him to go against Shen.
• Pet the Dog: He refuses to fire on his own men in the final battle and takes a knife or five to the throat for it.
• Savage Wolves: Despite having a code of honor, he's still The Dragon of Shen, is willing to threaten innocents, and led the massacre of the panda village.
• Smarter Than You Look: He at first appears to be Dumb Muscle and is more obsessed with Po being fluffy rather than a panda being alive. Then he successfully leads Po and the Furious Five into a trap, capturing them for Shen.
• Spikes of Villainy: Has a couple on his armor. His fur is also a bit on the spiky side.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: He can't seem to stop talking about how soft and cuddly Po is. Somewhat justified, as one of Po's main strategies in a fight is to use his... er... bulk, as a weapon, so he was probably exposed to the "Soft and Cuddly," nature of Po several times...
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Heilang and the Lin Kwei wolves in Legends Of Awesomeness.
• Top-Heavy Guy: Like Storming Ox, his legs are way smaller than the rest of his body.
• Trash Talk: Played for Laughs. His "insults" consist of calling Po big, soft and cuddly... except that he talks about Po that way even when Po isn't around, and he isn't making fun of him. He describes him to Lord Shen as "Big and furry, soft and squishy... uh, kind of plush and cuddly."
• Unskilled, but Strong: He doesn't seem particularly skilled in kung fu, but he sure knows how to use that hammer.
• Would Hurt a Child: He led the wolf army in massacring the pandas, including cubs, and tried to kill Po as a baby. He would have succeeded, too, if Po's father hadn't smashed his face in with a hammer.

Kung Fu Panda 3

Kai

Voiced by: J. K. Simmons, Pat Fraley (Showdown of Legendary Legends) ^{Foreign VAs}Li Jiaxi (Cantonese), Patrick Chouinard (Canadian French), Jérémie Covillault (EU French), Oliver Stritzel (German), Roberto Draghetti (Italian), Kouji Ishii (Japanese), Jiang Wu (PRC Mandarin), Xu Min (TW Mandarin), Leonardo Jose (Brazilian Portuguese), Sergey Chikhachev (Russian), Miguel Ángel Jenner (EU Spanish), Humberto Solórzano (LA Spanish); Andrzej Blumenfeld (Polish)

"The Jade Slayer. Master of Pain. You may know me as the Beast of Vengeance. Maker of Widows?"

The Big Bad of the third film. An evil spirit with the ability to siphon away the Chi of those he defeats. He has a serious axe to grind with the masters of the Jade Palace... and isn't very fond of pandas either.

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• Acrofatic: Despite his weight, he’s a master of kung-fu and can leap great heights and distances.
• The Ageless: As a spirit warrior, he doesn't age on account of technically being dead already.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Judging by the jade amulet of Tai Lung; Kai met Tai Lung at some point during his stay in the spirit realm and was able to overpower and absorb his chi. Kai presumably did the same thing to Lord Shen, since he told Oogway in the beginning of the third movie that he had absorbed the chi of every kung-fu master in the Spirit Realm and the fourth movie revealed that Lord Shen had gone to the Spirit Realm after his death. He later ends up on the receiving end of this trope when Chameleon steals his kung fu.
• Ancient Evil: He was banished to the Spirit Realm five hundred years ago and has only now returned. The "Ancient" part actually annoys him because it means very few people, i.e. Oogway even know who he is anymore.
• Arch-Enemy: To Oogway, who he hates for betraying him to the Panda village. When Kai returns to the mortal realm, his main goal to to make sure Oogway's memory is forgotten the same way he was.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: He sure doesn't put much effort into skill. To be fair, he doesn't really need to.
• Attention Whore: He insists on being front and center at all times, has a flair for theatrics and gets annoyed if you don't know who he is. Po being the first person to recite his many accolades ever since he returned to the mortal world genuinely thrills him and almost makes him feel like sparing the panda's life. Almost.
• Ax-Crazy: While he's not outwardly violent and unstable like Tai Lung and Shen, his obsession and hatred for Oogway led him to stealing the chi, aka life force, from masters all across China and the Spirit Realm^note effectively killing and/or enslaving their souls and he planned on targeting and wiping out the entire panda village next.
• Badass Boast: Good lord, he lets these fly in nearly every scene he's in!
• Badass Cape: He wore a cape while carrying an injured Oogway, though this is the only time he’s seen wearing it.
• Back from the Dead: Broke out of the afterlife himself using the chi taken from Oogway.
• Battle Trophy: The jade amulets that he wears on his belt, created from the very masters he takes his chi from. He can also reform the chi from the amulets into a Jombie of that master. The one around his neck is Oogway himself.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Throughout the film, Kai's goal has been to greedily take the chi of every kung fu master he's encountered. He only begins to understand the idiom "too much of a good thing" as Po gives him exactly what he wants:
  Po: You want my chi so bad? Then take it.
  Kai: (absorbing Po's chi energy) Yes, the power is mine! (His body glows and his jade amulets float away) Wait, no. It's too much. That's too much. No! NO!
  • In the fourth film, Kai is among the many historical kung-fu warriors resurrected by the Chameleon to capture and steal the abilities of. A most unfortunate circumstance for Kai to finally have the legacy and recognition he always wanted.
• Beard of Evil: It's easy to miss, but he has three goatees growing from three spots under his muzzle. Two of those goatees grow from the lower sides of his muzzle, making them resemble a Fu Manchu mustache.
• Berserk Button:
  • Being betrayed. After Oogway turned against him and banished him to the Spirit Realm, Kai not only steals his chi, but once he gets back to the land of the living, he’s bent on destroying Oogway’s legacy as revenge for his betrayal.
  • People not knowing who he is, which unfortunately for him, is almost everyone due to his status as an Ancient Evil. He also hates people praising Oogway, since he feels Oogway received praise and prestige that should have been his.
• Best Friend: He used to be Oogway’s. Oogway wrote that Kai was his closest friend, before he turned against him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He may act all hammy and crack dark jokes while Trolling his foes, but he's still very dangerous.
• Beyond Redemption: Handled subtly - Po never even offers him the chance to turn back, implicitly because Kai never shows any remorse or hesitation over his atrocities.
• Bifurcated Weapon: His chained butterfly knives appear to have been repurposed from the blades of the double-ended spear he used when he was still alive.
• Big Bad: Of the third film. His desire to steal the chi of the pandas and destroy Oogway's legacy is what drives the plot and Po's spiritual character arc.
• Big Entrance: All of them. No really, every entrance he makes is a Big Entrance. Po even compliments him on it.
• Black Comedy: He's a master of this as much as he is a master of chi.
• Blade on a Rope: Kai's go-to weapons are a pair of jade-bladed butterfly knives attached to chains which extend and abbreviate mystically from around his wrists.
• British Teeth: His teeth are crooked and have a few small gaps in them.
• Brutish Bulls: A murderous bull warlord turned spirit warrior obsessed with stealing the chi of others and empowering himself with it.
• Cain and Abel: While he and Oogway aren't blood brothers, they considered each other brothers-in-arms. He's the Cain.
• Card-Carrying Villain: The way he proudly rattles off the old nicknames he used to have and insists on being as over-the-top as possible speaks of someone who knows he's the Big Bad and really really enjoys it. This plays into his motivation, as people failing to recognize his carried "card" and properly dread him ticks him off.
• Carpet of Virility: Type 2 — his fur is notably more unkempt than that of other mammals in the series and he has a large belly. It serves to make him look more savage and unkempt than Tai Lung or Lord Shen and also emphasizes just how much older he is than either of them.
• Came Back Strong: Thanks to his mastery over chi and essentially being immortal, he's now much more dangerous than he was when Oogway first defeated him.
• Chain Pain: He uses butterfly knives connected by chains.
• Character Tic: Idly swinging his butterfly knives in circles by the chains. This makes a signature sound and alerts others that Kai is drawing near.
• Classic Villain: Embodies Greed (for chi and greater ability), Pride (his ego and hatred of obscurity), Envy (towards Oogway and the success he's achieved) and Wrath (anyone who reminds him of his obscurity).
• The Collector: It was even his original name. What he "collects" is chi, the life energy of other beings and the strength that it grants him.
• Color Motif: Green. He has green, glowing eyes, he uses a pair of knives with blades made of jade, he turns people into jade pendants (which he can then turn into jade zombies), his fists and feet glow green when he charges them with chi and he travels from the Spirit Realm to the mortal world in a huge burst of green energy. The Spirit Realm also turns green when Kai is the most powerful being there.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • Tai Lung was a kung fu master; Shen was a weapons master; Kai wields supernatural powers.
  • In comparison to Tai Lung and Shen, he's also a lot more outright evil and Laughably Evil at that. Not to mention, he's also the first villain that Po outright couldn't beat by himself.
  • The most telling aspect of Kai that sets him apart from the previous villains is that unlike Tai Lung and Shen, he doesn't have a reason why he turned to evil and began stealing chi from others. He's also even more sociopathic than Shen, who unlike Kai, genuinely did have some connection to humanity (in the form of his parents and the Soothsayer, who unlike Kai with Oogway, Shen never harmed in any way). Kai betrayed Oogway, the one person he ever actually seemed to care about and the reasoning is never really explored.
  • On a more trivial note, he's the only Big Bad of the first three films to be an herbivore (snow leopards like Tai Lung are of course carnivores, while peafowls like Shen are omnivores) or who doesn't speak with a British accent, due to his voice actor being American.
• Cool Sword: Wields a pair of Kratos-esque butterfly knives made from jade.
• Creepy Souvenir: He turns his victims into jade amulets and wears them on chains around his waist, though he particularly hangs Oogway's amulet around his neck.
• Crown of Horns: Formed from his actual horns for added effect.
• Crystal Weapon: He carries two jade butterfly knives on chains. This symbolizes his blasphemous attitude, since in Chinese culture, jade is a sacred substance and must not be used for combat.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Almost everyone he fights directly, up to and including Po himself. Oogway and Shifu do better, but only marginally. Only when Po gains his Golden Chi Dragon Aura in the Spirit Realm is this reversed and he's on the receiving end of this trope.
• Dark Is Evil: Kai is an Ancient Evil that possesses dark chi that’s dark green in color and he uses his chi to take the chi of others to increase his strength.
• Death by Irony: Po destroys him by overloading him with so much chi that he explodes.
• Death Glare: In the fourth film, when the Chameleon mimics his horns in her One-Winged Angel form, Kai is shown seething at her from his cage.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Po overloading him with Chi results in his soul exploding in a huge blast of golden light.
• Determinator: Kai never gives up. After Oogway banishes him to the Spirit Realm, he spends 500 years getting enough chi to get back to the mortal world and he tells Po he’ll take his chi even if it takes him another 500 years. Even when Po attains his Golden Super Mode, Kai still refuses to give up and goes down fighting.
• Double Weapon: He wields what appears to be a double-bladed polearm in Oogway's flashback. The similarities to it and the jade knives he wields as a spirit warrior indicate that he converted the former into the latter while banished in the Spirit Realm.
• The Dreaded: Played with. He used to be this, judging by some of his nicknames, but by the time he shows up again, he's long been since forgotten to time and nobody besides Oogway remembers or fears him anymore. Once the heroes learn who he is and what he can do however, they're understandably frightened.
• Dreadlock Warrior: His mane gives him this appearance.
• Dual Wielding: Uses a pair of butterfly knives carved from jade.
• Dub Name Change: Kai is called Tiansha (天煞), meaning "Heaven's Demon/God of Evil", in the Mandarin dubs.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: He expects everyone in the present day to still know and fear him, not accounting for just how long he's been gone. It becomes enough of a Running Gag that Kai is delighted despite himself when Po correctly identifies him and some of his monikers.
  Kai: Aha! You must be the Dragon Warrior.
  Po: And you must be Kai! Beast of Vengeance, Maker of Widows!
  Kai: (Beat) Yes! Finally! Thank you! Almost makes me want to spare your life.
• Escaped from Hell: A variant. Kai finds a way to escape the afterlife, but it's hardly a "hell" — at least, not now that he's gone.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He and Oogway were brothers in all but blood during their warlord days. Deconstructed in that their brotherly bond didn't stop Kai from being greedy and evil and eventually Oogway was forced to banish Kai to the Spirit Realm when his lust for power became unbearable. In the present day, the "love" is pretty much fizzled as Kai is dead set on obliterating Oogway's memory as revenge for being forgotten, but even then, he briefly cracks when the Furious Five confront him that shows Oogway's "betrayal" still genuinely hurts him, as warped as his perspective is on the matter.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Can't seem to comprehend why Oogway turned on him and banished him to the Spirit Realm, despite the atrocities he's committed.
  • In a more subtle way than the previous villains: Kai has no idea what to make of Po when he becomes a true Chi Master by coming to a realization of who he really is. Kai never reached enlightenment like Oogway did and his control over Chi comes from stealing it, so the sheer power Po had from his realization and having Chi shared with him by his friends is something Kai can't understand.
• Evil Counterpart: To Po.
  • Po has issues with identity. Likewise, Kai finds that his own identity has been lost to time and seeks to reclaim it, but with force rather than self-enlightenment. He also wanted power like Po in the first movie, but Po realised that he has power within himself and mastered belief. He also couldn't move on from the past like Po in the second movie. In the third movie, he seeks to regain an identity through reconnection with the world but only by hurting people, not by connecting with them. Like Po, he also doesn't take things 100% seriously.
• Evil Genius: Even though Kai is incredibly strong like Tai Lung, he is also intelligent like Shen and can manipulate people like Shifu by using personal issues to disorient them. He also is shown to be clearly the most intelligent of the villains so far, able to create a technique to steal Chi for his own selfish desires just by observing the pandas using a technique to give their Chi to other.
• Evil Is Bigger: He is a huge bull that towers over all of the other characters.
• Evil Is Easy: Played with. He learned how to drain others of their chi by simply observing the pandas's technique of giving Chi to others and then doing the complete opposite. However, failing to train himself on how to give chi left him with no way to expel excess amounts of it which leads to his defeat.
• Evil Former Friend: Oogway's. They were brothers-in-arms and the best of friends up until Kai decided to drain the pandas of their Chi for himself and causing him to have an unbearable lust for power.
• Evil Gloating: Prone to this. It backfires on him when he inadvertently gives Po an idea of how to send him to the Spirit Realm.
• Evil Laugh: Indulges in a few here and there.
• Evil Plan: Destroy Oogway's legacy and engorge himself on a ton of chi along the way.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He has a habit of making cruel jokes at the expense of others.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Has a deep, gruff and powerful voice, courtesy of J. K. Simmons.
• Eviler than Thou: At some point between the first and third movies, he met Tai Lung in the Spirit Realm, defeated him, and stole his chi. If you look closely, you can see he wears a jade amulet resembling Tai Lung, though Kai never uses him as a jombie, for some reason. Between the second and third movies, Kai presumably did the same thing to Lord Shen, since he told Oogway he had absorbed the chi of every kung-fu master in the Spirit Realm, and the fourth movie revealed that Lord Shen had gone to the Spirit Realm after his death. He's later outclassed by Chameleon in ''Kung Fu Panda 4", who steals HIS kung-fu powers for a change.
• Face Death with Dignity: Despite having been brought back to life by The Chameleon, Kai and the other villains decide to go back to the Spirit Realm instead of staying on the living realm without much fuss.
• Face–Heel Turn: Subverted. While it seemed at first glance when Kai went from friend of Oogway to a Chi stealing monster, several of his titles and Oogway saying he was an ambitious warrior in his.youth, indicates that he was never a good guy to begin with and that Oogway actually did a Heel–Face Turn.
• Fantastic Racism: Seems to look down on mortals, despite having formerly been one himself.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Repaid the pandas for their kindness by perverting their chi techniques and trying to harvest their chi for his own selfish desires.
• Fat Bastard: He’s the villain of the third film and he has an overweight physique (though he has muscular arms).
• Fatal Flaw: His Greed, as noted above in Classic Villain. Oogway tried to warn him "the more you take, the less you have", meaning he'd never be satisfied with what power he had stolen and always wanted more. This, coupled with Po driving him into a Villainous Breakdown, is what undoes him. He was focused purely on stealing power for its own sake without refining or honing his own. When Po unloads all of his and his friends' Chi into him all at once, he lacks the skill to keep it in check and is overwhelmed.
• Faux Affably Evil: Is generally soft-spoken and prone to cracking jokes, but is without a doubt a destructive monster; briefly subverted when Po recognizes him as the Beast of Vengeance and Maker of Widows, yet he is still determined to take Po's chi.
• Feather Fingers: A non-bird variant. Being a bull, he has three small hoof-claws on each hand, which qualify as fingers enough for Po and Oogway before him to give Kai the Wuxi Finger Hold.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Mage to Tai Lung's Fighter and Shen's Thief. He spends much of the movie fighting at range, either using his chain blades — which see just as much use as grapnels or tools for manipulating the battlefield as they do actual weapons — or with the enslaved spirits of Kung Fu masters which he controls directly with his mind. On that note, while physically large and intimidating he was written to be Po's first explicitly supernatural foe, capable of stealing and manipulating chi, either using it to summon the afore-mentioned spirits or to augment the power of his own strikes. His first major act in the movie is stealing the chi of Master Oogway and using it to escape the spirit realm. While Tai Lung relies on his muscle for winning his fights and Shen relies on cunning and manipulation, Kai can use both brute strength and intelligence in battle as well as supernatural powers to ensure a victory.
• Final Boss: The final enemy of the trilogy and Po's most dangerous opponent yet. This is especially fitting, as each villain marks the pillars of kung fu: the body (Tai Lung), the mind (Lord Shen), and the spirit (Kai). However, after the release of Kung Fu Panda 4, Kai becomes a Disc-One Final Boss.
• Finger Poke of Doom: At one point, he bowls over Master Crane with a chi-augmented flick to the beak.
• Flat Character: Unlike the villains of the first two films, Kai's motivations are not explored. He has no relationships with any characters besides Oogway. He wants chi just because he likes power, rather than any deep insecurity. The depths of his anger at Oogway are not looked at significantly and only briefly implied. Also, unlike Shen or Tai Lung, he never has a Redemption Rejection moment where he considers changing his ways and is instead treated (accurately) as Beyond Redemption.
• Flunky Boss: He can summon the spirits of the many kung fu masters whose Chi he has absorbed as "jade zombies" to do his bidding.
• Four-Star Badass: One of his most prominent titles is "General Kai".
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic with a couple of Choleric elements — he can switch between being quite calm with emotions under control and being passionate and vengeful when facing his opponents; he's also a bit bigheaded and sometimes uses a mysteriously calm tone of voice when being Faux Affably Evil to anyone he runs into.
• Furry Reminder: Sometimes he'll snort in typical bovine fashion, run on all fours, and attack with his horns in a similar manner.
• Gag Nose: He has a huge snout.
• Gemstone Assault: Kai's swords are made of jade, as are the "jombies" made from the masters he drained chi from.
• General Ripper: Once known as "General Kai, Supreme Warlord of all China." Given what we know about his past, he probably wasn't a very kind general.
• Genius Bruiser: He was once a general EQUAL to Oogway. He was easily able to develop a technique to STEAL chi from pandas by reversing the pattern they used. When he arrived in the mortal world, the first thing he does after he gets info is planning on luring masters to an abandoned ship to scan their chi, find their weaknesses and use against whoever sent them.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: His green eyes sometimes literally glow, showing off his supernatural abilities.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Kai did this in the Spirit Realm by hunting down and absorbing the chi of every Kung Fu Master there before moving onto Oogway to escape. He later planned on absorbing the chi of every master in China to reign supreme.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Literally. He is implied to not only be resentful towards Oogway, but deeply envious that the tortoise became so successful and famous while most people don't even recognize Kai anymore.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the fourth movie, after Po saves him from the Chameleon and gives him back his stolen fighting skills, he bows to Po in respect and returns to the Spirit Realm without a fight.
• Hero Killer: Nearly the entire main cast ends up defeated, drained of chi, and under Kai's control by the time he reaches the panda village, not to mention the numerous other masters he did this to on the way. Even Po himself is completely outmatched at first.
• Horrifying the Horror: He ends up on the receiving end of this trope, Played for Laughs. He cringes in fear and disgust when he gets a close-up look at Hom-Lee’s horribly crooked teeth.
• Horns of Villainy: Being a bull, he naturally has massive horns.
• Humiliation Conga: Once Po is given the chi of his family and friends and becomes a literal Dragon Warrior, everything that follows is the previously unstoppable Kai getting his ass handed to him in glorious fashion.
• Immortal Immaturity: He doesn't take things very seriously for a guy literally centuries old. Compared to Oogway, who was wise beyond his (considerable) years, Kai simply hasn't grown up in any way, shape, or form.
• Immortality Immorality: He's among the evilest characters encountered in the series thus far. Immortality wasn't even his goal, just a side-effect of being a spirit.
• Immortality Inducer: Being killed, ironically enough. He still had to spend five centuries stealing power from other deceased masters before he could cross back over into the living world.
• Implacable Man: He just keeps on taking chi, with the masters' efforts doing little-to-nothing to stop him. Po eventually has to resort to essentially killing himself just to keep him away from the other pandas.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Short, broad butterfly knives, fashioned of glowing jade. They're linked to chains, making them something like a kusarigama in general use. The connecting chains seem weightless, which makes them something close to Combat Tentacles.
• In a Single Bound: He can leap at least a few stories high in the air.
• Incoming Ham: He announces himself to the world in the most grandiose way possible.
  "KAI HAS RETURNED!"
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Like Tai Lung, a lot of Kai's anger stems from the fact that he's bitter about Oogway erasing all historical records of his deeds, so he constantly boasts of his threatening titles and malicious plans to bolster his ego. When Po recognizes him in the climax, he's elated enough to contemplate sparing the panda.
• Interspecies Friendship: He used to have this with Oogway, a tortoise. Nowadays, not anymore.
• It's All About Me: He's a self-centered and power-hungry warlord who wants all the chi he can get his hands on for himself. He can't comprehend the reason Oogway had a problem with him turning on the Pandas who saved Oogway's life and trying to steal their chi.
• The Juggernaut: Due to being so immensely powerful and also to being a returned spirit, pretty much nothing used against him even fazes him. He even casually shrugs off Po's Wuxi Finger Hold, gloating that it only works on mortals. In the end, it takes the combined Chi of every single panda in the village plus Tigress and Mr. Ping for Po to outmatch him, and even then he is not destroyed until Po induces in him a catastrophic Phlebotinum Overload.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Subverted: he regularly does the familiar gesture, but he uses it for energy absorption, rather than projection. Unlike Master Oogway, Kai does not actually employ chi blasts, preferring to use chi for empowering his blows and his weapons, as well as summoning an army of zombified kung-fu masters.
• Karmic Death:
  • Is destroyed by the very chi he was so power hungry for. To add another layer of karma, he was stealing the chi of deceased Kung Fu masters, therefore denying them their afterlife.
  • He was also a chi stealer defeated by someone willingly given chi by others.
• Ki Manipulation: He is a master of chi, specifically of stealing it. He cannot expel or give it, which ends up being his weakness.
• Knight of Cerebus: Sort of. He's less serious than Tai Lung and especially Lord Shen, having many more comedic moments and being willing to make some actual jokes. That being said, whenever he shows up, the stakes become much higher, his relative seriousness is also well contrasted against the third movie being Lighter and Softer than the first two. He is also much more of The Dreaded than either of the previous villains, being far more powerful than both.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: He utilizes both formidable martial arts skills and supernatural powers.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Tries to inflict this on Oogway. In Kai's reckoning, Oogway stole his legacy by sealing him, going on to become incredibly famous while no one else alive knows who Kai is. So Kai intends to erase everything Oogway has built, so no one will remember him either. In the end, he is undone by his own chi stealing abilities, overloading on Po and the entire Panda villages' chi.
  • He steals power from others for powers own sake and is purely dependent on it instead of refining his own strength. When a large amount of it is dumped into him, he's unable to handle it due to his lack of mastery and it overwhelms him.
  • His shtick is stealing power from other people for his own gain. In the fourth film, he gets a taste of his own medicine when the Chameleon steals his fighting skills for herself and puts him in a cage.
• Last-Second Chance: Notably averted. He's the first Big Bad that Po does not offer any chance of redemption, either because he knows Kai is too far gone, or because he was simply too dangerous to leave alive. In fact, the last second chance seems to come from Oogway in the beginning, if his quote "When will you realize the more you take the less you have?" is any indication. Though he does sort of redeem himself by the fourth film, if only redeemed enough to respect Po and return to the Spirit Realm of his own volition and without a fight.
• Laughably Evil: He may be the most dangerous threat the heroes have yet to face, but he is also the funniest. Even if his sense of humor isn't always the most pleasant.
• Leitmotif:
  • A very distinct one that plays most prominently in "The Arrival of Kai", but is used throughout most of his scenes.
  • It bears a partial resemblance to "I'm So Sorry" by Imagine Dragons (and was in fact sampled from it), yet ironically, Kai himself isn't sorry for anything he does.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen:
  • Beyond a token ambush attempt, Kai opts to duel Oogway by himself, opting not to summon minions or use his chi magic offensively until he has Oogway bound.
  • When he arrives at the Jade Palace, he first fights Shifu, Viper, Monkey and Tigress on his own and doesn't involve his jombies until Tigress gets a clean hit on him. Afterwards, he quickly overwhelms them with his jombies and chi magic.
• Madness Makeover: Formerly a well-groomed and fully armored warrior, hundreds of years spent hunting down the souls of martial artists in the Spirit Realm have rendered him disheveled and half-naked.
• Meaningful Name: Can mean "victory" in Mandarin Chinese (凱). Additionally, 'kai' or 'kye' serves as an alternate pronunciation for "chi." 'Kai' also has several meanings in Japanese, some of which are "restoration" and "recovery".
• Mighty Glacier: Kai is very strong and almost impossible to take down. But he's on the slow side and prefers to remain stationary in fights, having his jombies chase his enemies instead.
• Mind Control: By draining people’s chi, he turns people into jade amulets which he can turn into mindless jombies he can control with his mind.
• Moral Myopia: Is bitter and angry at Oogway for betraying and sealing him away...but is a psychopathic, soul-stealing monster whose modus operandi is stealing the life force of others.
• Near-Villain Victory: Comes within seconds of absorbing Po's chi when his family and friends give him the help he needs to turn the tables.
• Never My Fault: Claims that after everything they had been through together, Oogway betrayed him, defeating him in battle, and allowing his existence to fade in obscurity for over 500 years, yet he neglects to mention that he turned against Oogway first when he pulled a The Farmer and the Viper on the pandas that helped him and started using their knowledge of chi to begin stealing it from others.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His actions ultimately ensured that not only will Oogway's legacy live on, it will live on through a new successor.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Delivers one to Po after the latter's plan to defeat him falls flat. Po then sends them both to the Spirit Realm, where Kai promptly beats him down again. But Po gets to return the favor soon after.
• No-Sell: He shrugs off almost everything thrown at him, figuratively or otherwise. He even No Sells the Wuxi Finger Hold. Even Po in his Golden Super Mode does not do any visible damage to him until overloading him with chi.
• Non-Standard Character Design: One look at him would tell you he is no ordinary animal. He still looks like a yak, but a few features, such as his glowing green eyes, crooked teeth, and unnaturally large, abnormally-shaped horns, give him a more demonic appearance.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Defeating Oogway aside, he's treated as more of a Running Gag than a serious threat during his first few scenes, especially given his more humorous tone than the villains of the first two movies. Then he captures Crane and Mantis and it all goes downhill from there.
• Offscreen Villainy:
  • Long before the movie's events, he and Oogway led a mighty army on a mission to conquer China, carrying out untold amounts of violence and war - presumably enough to earn Kai all of his nicknames - before they eventually found the original Panda Village.
  • While only his battles with - and subsequent captures of - the main characters (Oogway, Shifu, the Furious Five) are shown, Kai also manages to defeat every master in China - both alive and dead - and absorb their chi. A Freeze-Frame Bonus shows that even Tai Lung - who was widely renowned and feared for his deadly skills - was also one of Kai's victims at some point between the first and third films.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • His perfectly justified reaction to seeing Po summon a giant chi dragon right in front of him, which prompts a Who Are You?.
  • He has another one when he realizes he can't handle the amount of Chi Po's forcing into him moments before he explodes.
• "Oh, Crap!" Fakeout: When Po uses the Wuxi finger hold on him, Kai feigns despair and shock, before telling him that the Wuxi finger hold does not work on him.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: He's an entirely physical entity who managed to manifest in the living world after he stole Oogway's chi.
• Outside-Genre Foe: Kai's debut in the third movie is a huge departure from the villains seen so far, a Kung Fu legend in Tai Lung and an evil, non-superpowered warlord in Lord Shen. Kai meanwhile is an undead Spirit Warrior and boasts powers that surpass anything seen in the film series so far. This trope only applies to the movies, because the TV shows already used demonic spirits as villains.
• Personality Powers: He's a necromancer who's obsessed with the past, his own legacy, and seeks to undo Oogway's legacy.
• Pet the Dog:
  • When Po's the first one in the mortal realm who calls Kai by his titles, Kai is so pleased that he thanks Po and says that he's almost tempted to spare the panda's life. As bad as Kai is, he also deeply cared for Oogway during their warlord days and carried Oogway for days in the snow looking for aid when Oogway was injured in an ambush.
  • He also is genuinely grateful when Po defeats the Chameleon and returns his Kung Fu back to him, bowing to him in respect before leaving back to the Spirit Realm without any further conflict.
• Phrase Catcher: All attempts to introduce himself results in his current audience asking him "Who?"
• Power Incontinence: How he ends up Deader than Dead as Po's chi proved to be too much for him to handle.
• Power Parasite: He can steal other people’s chi, giving him their strength and fighting skills, as well as turning his victims into jade amulets he can turn into jombies.
• Psychotic Smirk: Gives a particularity heinous one as he watches the Jade Palace crumble.
• Red Baron: The "Jade Slayer", "Master of Pain", "Beast of Vengeance", and "Maker of Widows" are some of his nicknames. He's got quite a few apparently.
• Running on All Fours: He sometimes does this, like when he's nearing the panda village.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Sealed in the Spirit Realm for five hundred years by Master Oogway.
• Sensory Overload: His ability to see and hear through his jombie soldiers backfires tremendously when the panda villagers start beating the tar out of all his jombies at the same time.
• Sickly Green Glow: His Color Motif. It constantly surrounds him, his abilities, and even his weapons.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: His jade knives make this sound, which alert everyone else that he's nearby.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Subverted. Oogway's uncharacteristic seriousness in the scroll describing Kai and Kai's ability to defeat and seal numerous kung fu masters is plenty of proof that he rightfully earned all those unpleasant titles. Kai is annoyed no one has any idea who he is anymore, and one can see his point.
• Smug Super: He's the most powerful villain in the first three movies by a long shot and boy does he know it. He's incredibly over-the-top, constantly boasts about his power, and has a tendency to taunt and troll his opponents just to make their defeat as humiliating as possible.
• The Sociopath: Kai is shamelessly power-hungry and wants all the chi just out of sheer selfishness. He betrayed without remorse the same pandas who cured his friend Oogway and is unable to understand even after five centuries why his friend would turn against him because of this. Like real-life sociopaths, Kai refuses to change his behavior because he sees nothing wrong with it and considers himself the victim of his own shortcomings. And unlike the previous villains, he's not even presented with a Freudian Excuse that'd even remotely explain his bitterness and cruelty.
• So Last Season: That Wuxi Finger Hold that Po used to finish off Tai Lung? When he tries it on Kai, all he gets is mockery and a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Ultimately subverted, however: Po manages to use it on him indirectly by using it on himself while holding onto Kai.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: He's by far more powerful than either Tai Lung or Shen from the past movies, demonstrating greater strength and durability, while also having supernatural powers. Whereas Shen did defeat some Kung Fu masters and was prepared to do an invasion, Kai actually defeated all of them and took their chi offscreen.
• Stout Strength: Kai is extremely strong, despite his chubby physique (though he has the large, muscular arms you would expect to see on a warrior).
• Supernatural Martial Arts: A norm for the series, but Kai takes it to a whole new level, displaying various feats of Ki Manipulation and even able to outright steal the chi from his victims.
• Super-Strength: He's able to lift a giant statue of Master Oogway off the ground and toss it through the Jade Palace with little effort.
• Taken for Granite: Kai's chi stealing is a variation of this trope. Instead of just turning his victim into a statue, he encases them in jade, then transforms that statue of them into an amulet which allows them to be redeployed as a jombie. He seems to be able to do this at a long range, but he commonly defeats or has his target bound before he does it.
• Theme Music Power-Up: A villainous example. When Kai's theme starts playing, it usually means he's about to kick some ass.
• Third-Person Person: He refers to himself in the third person a couple times.
  "KAI HAS RETURNED!"
  "KAI IS COMING!"
• Tom the Dark Lord: While Kai is a powerful name in Chinese that can mean "victory" (凱), the name is very average in many European countries (having multiple origins and meanings)^note a 2015 survey even crowned it the most popular boy's name of that year, which might give the sense of this trope to overseas viewers.
• Took a Level in Kindness: By the time of Kung Fu Panda 4 he's completely abandoned his grudge against Po and even his own prior goals of collecting the Chi of every master in the Spirit Realm; when he's freed by Po he also bows to him in respect and willingly returns to the Spirit Realm.
• Troll: When Po attempts the Wuxi Finger Hold on him, he pulls an "Oh, Crap!" Fakeout for no other reason than to screw with him.
• The Undead: Why he's immune to the Wuxi Finger Hold.
• Unexplained Recovery: He's seemingly rendered Deader than Dead at the end of 3 but he's shown to still exist as a spirit in 4, to the point the Chameleon summons him and drains him of his power.
• Ungrateful Bastard: He wasn't exactly grateful to the pandas for restoring his closest friend to health. Subverted in the fourth movie, where he bows to Po and Zhen for freeing him and returning his fighting skills and returns to the Spirit Realm without a fight.
• Unknown Rival: Because he's been gone for so long, he isn't particularity well-known outside of his connection with Master Oogway, which royally ticks him off.
• Unperson: In part due to being part of Oogway's less-beloved past that the old tortoise cast off for self-realization later in life, literally no mention or trace of Kai exists anywhere in the world other than a single scroll Oogway himself wrote. It's this very status of having might as well never existed that truly gets under his skin.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Relatively compared to the experienced heroes. He's a very competent martial artist, but he depends more on raw supernatural power and strength than finesse or tactics. It's all he needs.
• Vampiric Draining: His most dangerous ability. He can drain the chi from his victims, after which they turn into jade amulets that he can freely summon to fight for him.
• Viler New Villain: Yes, again. Unlike Tai Lung and Lord Shen, Kai doesn't even have a Freudian Excuse, with the closest thing being his former friendship with Oogway, but at that point, he was already evil. There is no element of sorrow or tragedy to him. He is a monster through and through and thoroughly enjoys the fear he inspires. It really says something that even Po, All-Loving Hero who had given Tai Lung and even Shen (the man he believed to be responsible for the death of his parents) a chance at redemption, makes no attempt to redeem Kai and commits to obliterating him with extreme prejudice.
• Villainous Breakdown: He loses it when Po manages to drag them both back to the Spirit Realm. Not only is he furious, almost all comedy from him vanishes. When Po overloads him with chi, he briefly enjoys the power, but then helplessly says "it's too much! it's too much!" before dying in a Big "NO!".
  Kai: It took me 500 years to take Oogway's chi. I will have yours even if it takes me 500 MORE!
• Villain Cred: He lost his to the passage of time. Now he wants it back.
• Villain Respect: After Po and Zhen defeat the Chameleon and free him, Kai joins the other deceased kung-fu masters in bowing to Po, showing that he has developed respect for the Dragon Warrior.
• The Voiceless: In Kung Fu Panda 4 he doesn't speak for the duration of his appearance.
• We Used to Be Friends: Him and Oogway.
• Who Are You?: This is all he can say in shock when Po becomes a true master of chi, turning the tide back against Kai, just as Kai was about to absorb all his chi.
• Would Hit a Girl: Kai attacks Tigress and Viper, steals Viper’s chi, and later attacks the panda village to steal the chi of every panda there, including the women.
• Would Hurt a Child: Kai planned to wipe out the entire panda village, seemingly uncaring that there were children there.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Kai is expertly skilled with his chained swords, able to entrap his enemies with them and drag them close.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Well, chi to be exact, but he more or less still plays this trope straight since chi is one's life force.

Jombies

Kai's minions, a collection of former kung fu masters he has stolen the chi from. Kai is able to form that chi into mindless jade warriors that serve his purposes.

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• Back from the Dead: Many of them are long-deceased masters that Kai snatched from the Spirit Realm.
• Bad Ol' Badger: The Badger Twins, though presumably they were less malicious before they became Jombies.
• Bears Are Bad News: Master Bear, though only as a Jombie.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Kai controls them against their will.
• Cocky Rooster: Even before becoming a Jombie, Master Chicken was pretty fight-eager. Too bad it led to him running into Kai's grasp.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: They are shown to be more dangerous the fewer of them there are, likely because Kai controls them directly and the fewer there are the less his attention is diverted. It's also shown that Kai is somewhat capable of feeling the blows inflicted on them, which further breaks his concentration.
• Creepy Twins: The Master Badger Twins, though they were probably a lot less creepy before being jombified.
• Dual Wielding: Master Bear has two axes.
• Elite Mooks: They are capable of taking on kung fu masters one-on-one, which makes sense given that they're masters themselves, at least in the first two acts
• Fake Ultimate Mook: In the third act they are demoted to this, being unable to defeat a group of fledgling Pandas.
• Green and Mean: They are corrupted jade green kung fu masters who are controlled by Kai to be his army.
• Killer Gorilla: Master Gorilla, though the trope only applies to him as a Jombie.
• Malicious Monitor Lizard: One of the old masters is a monitor lizard, though the "Malicious" part only applies when he's a Jombie.
• Martial Arts Staff: The Master Badger Twins each use a staff, as their stubby limbs don't give them enough reach.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: When Kai gives them an order, they do it, and they don't stop until it's done. Po finds this out the hard way when Master Porcupine ignores all attempts at banter and just keeps trying to kill him.
• Portmanteau: Of "jade" and "zombie". Naturally, it was Po and Monkey who came up with it.
• Sibling Team: The Master Badger Twins always fight together, even as Jombies. Presumably, they also did when they were alive.
• Silent Antagonist: Kai can talk through them, but otherwise, they never say a word. The most sound they ever make at all is the clinking of jade. However, Jombie Master Chicken still makes clucking sounds when "hurt" and Jombie Mantis audibly grunts when tearing the stone ax off of Oogway's statue, so it seems that they can make sounds, but just don't bother most of the time.
• Sinister Swine: Two boars are among the Jombies. The "sinister" part presumably didn't apply to them before they were Jombified.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: Master Porcupine, who fires his own quills as arrows.
• Super-Toughness: They're made of jade, able to take most blows with little sign of injury and they most likely Feel No Pain. The only effect most attacks have on them is to disrupt Kai's focus, as he experiences feedback from the blows.
• Villain Override: Kai is able to see through their eyes at all times or talk through them when necessary.
• Voice of the Legion: When Kai speaks through the Jombies, all of them speak at once. Po wants to try it with the Furious Five.

Kung Fu Panda 4

Stingray

The opening opponent of the fourth film.

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• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Stingray is blue with yellow speckles along its back and yellow eyes.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: It attempts to stab Po with its tail several times in quick succession.
• Bit-Part Bad Guys: Valley of Peace example. Po's rogues gallery is usually comprised of large menacing animal-people, which the Stingray is a nonspecific and non-urgent example of.
• Boss Arena Urgency: While fighting, the Stingray lures Po onto a dock so it has both air and water supremacy. It then begins destroying the dock behind Po, leaving him stranded on a single wooden pole out in the middle of the water to fight him on.
• Cartoony Eyes: Stingray's eyes pop out the top of its head, like a more humanized version of a stingray's real eyes.
• Eats Babies: When Po finally defeats it, he reveals that it consumed several children entirely, putting them through a rollercoaster inside it as it battled with Po.
• Furry Confusion: The Stingray is largely non-anthropomorphic, is not shown to be capable of speech, and actually eats people, leaving it ambiguous whether it's actually sapient like every other animal is shown to be.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: It holds three kids inside its stomach during the entirety of its fight with Po (with no visible bulge on the outside), carrying them into the sky, underwater, and being skidded across a wooden dock, and yet they emerge at the end no worse for wear and consider the experience to have been rather fun.
• Giant Flyer: The Stingray is twice Po's size and capable of both swimming and flight, requiring midair combat to defeat it.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: It shows up, says no lines, and is defeated by Po in order to show what a badass he is.
• Silent Antagonist: Despite being presumably as sapient as any other animal, the Stingray doesn't even grunt or yell during its fight, only emitting animalistic growls.
• Sinister Stingrays: A villainous Ray that attacks the Valley of Peace and Eats Babies.
• Starter Villain: It is the first opponent that Po fights in Kung Fu Panda 4.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The Stingray has no name or clear motive. Presumably, it arrived in the Valley of Peace to eat babies.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Has these, matching the yellow spots on its back.

The Chameleon

Voiced by: Viola Davis^{Foreign VAs}Johanne Garneau (Canadian French), Alice Lau (Cantonese), Céline Monsarrat (EU French), Martina Treger (German), Rulu Jiang (PRC Mandarin), Chen Meifeng (TW Mandarin), María Jesús Nieto (EU Spanish)

"We've both risen to the highest of heights. It's a shame only one of us can come out on top. My combined powers of Sorcery and Kung Fu make me unstoppable."

The Big Bad of the fourth film. A nefarious shape-shifting chameleon sorceress that can copy others' kung fu by absorbing their abilities and commands a fearsome army of komodo dragons.

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• Ambition Is Evil: Her lust for power and respect leads her to become a ruthless dictator.
• Abusive Parents: Zhen is her adopted daughter and outright tells her that she will not hesitate to get rid of her as soon she no longer serves her any use. She demonstrates she is quite willing to follow through on this threat when Zhen defends Po in the final battle and viciously attacks her.
• And I Must Scream: Her final fate. Tai Lung returns to the Spirit Realm, forcibly taking her with him, and she’s going to spend eternity stuck with all the evil kung-fu masters she attacked and imprisoned, who will probably spend a long time beating her up as payback.
• All Your Powers Combined: She steals the combined fighting skills of Tai Lung, Lord Shen, Kai, and several other deceased villainous kung-fu masters.
  Chameleon: I’m stronger than every opponent you’ve ever faced, because I am every opponent you’ve ever faced.
• Ambitious, but Lazy: The Chameleon intends to become the greatest kung-fu master of all time, though rather than actually learning any of its skills or techniques, she resorts to abducting other masters and forcefully stealing their abilities for herself. This is subverted by her backstory, as she explains that she did want to legitimately learn once, but all the masters she approached refused to train her.
• Ax-Crazy: Downplayed, but still present. She generally presents herself as a calm, regal, charismatic individual, but she shows signs of being utterly deranged underneath. Notably, during her final battle with Po, Chameleon jumps onto the panda and tries to bite him. Though the moment is brief, in that moment she's not just fighting him; she's savage and outright primal, like a wild animal, showing her desire to cause bodily harm outside of beating people with kung fu.
• Bad Boss: She tells Zhen right to her face that she would get rid of her if she were no longer useful to her, and she tells her that nobody cares about her feelings.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: She doesn't wear shoes, although it's hard to tell because her long dress covers her feet for much of the film.
• Berserk Button: Being underestimated or mocked for her size.
• Big Bad: Of the fourth film. Her actions to copy and steal other fighters' Kung Fu abilities puts her in direct conflict with Po who attempts to end her scheme. She also makes an enemy of Zhen as well later on in the film.
• Blunt "Yes": When Zhen asks her if she only took her in as her protege because she thought Zhen could be useful, the Chameleon replies that she did and that if she stops being useful, she will get rid of her.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: She copies Po’s “Ska-doosh” when she turns into a copy of him - only in the trailer, however, as the line is cut from the movie.
• Breaking Old Trends: The first female Big Bad of the movies.
• Card-Carrying Villain: She happily admits that she is ruthless, and claims that she will resurrect “every master villain who came before her” meaning that she considers herself a master villain. She even outright claims to "be every villain" that Po has ever faced.
• The Chessmaster: The Chameleon orchestrates and executes a complex, but successful plan to trick Po into giving her his Staff of Wisdom by simultaneously sending Zhen to befriend him and pretending to be Tai Lung to spread stories to lure him in.
• Color Motif: Keeping with her forte, the Chameleon lacks a specific thematic color and borrows that of all three previous villains to demonstrate she gets her power from emulating them. Her skin is green (Kai), her costume is red (Shen), and her shapeshifting powers often ooze a cold blue (Tai Lung). Her lair is even lit with a dark blend of all three gradients.
• Combat Pragmatist: Rather than fight Tai Lung directly, she disguises herself as one of the unconscious soldiers he defeated and incapacitates him with a nerve strike while his attention is away from her.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: While Chameleon does have some things in common with the franchise's previous villain, Kai, she is still very different from him. Kai was a very independent and power-oriented antagonist, having a massive size and build, a brutal fighting style, and a small self-controlled army of jombies. Chameleon, however, is smaller, more intelligent and patient, relying more on brains and psychological tactics than brute force, and has a larger army of living beings that, while loyal and obedient to her, still have free will. She is also much less humorous and thus more of a Knight of Cerebus than Kai, and unlike him has a Freudian Excuse.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: Her eyes glow blue when she shapeshifts.
• Cruel Elephant: One of the forms the Chameleon takes is a huge, ferocious looking elephant. She uses the form to intimidate the crime lords of Juniper City to give her 60% cut of their money and uses her trunk to push one of them down a flight of stairs. She later takes on the elephant form again to grab Zhen with her trunk and tell Zhen she should've left her in the gutter after siding with Po.
• Dead Person Impersonation: As part of her plan, she impersonates Tai Lung after his death.
• Distaff Counterpart: Has a similar scheme (and green color motif) to Kai's, though it's more about collecting the kung-fu of powerful warriors than their chi specifically.
• Ditto Fighter: Almost her signature move:
  • After the Chameleon absorbs Tai Lung's kung fu powers, she briefly transforms into Tai Lung himself and subdues the real Tai Lung with his signature nerve attack.
  • After her chimeric One-Winged Angel form fails to defeat Po and Zhen, the Chameleon transforms into Po himself — albeit a giant, horrifying version of Po with fangs, scales, and horns along his shoulders.
• Dragged Off to Hell: After she is beaten by Zhen, all the masters whom she stole talent from bring her with them back to the Spirit Realm.
• The Dreaded: Almost everyone who knows about the Chameleon, even those who haven't personally met her, are terrified of her, due to her shapeshifting prowess and evil nature. Every mob family in Juniper City fears the Chameleon and even when standing up to her, her adoptive daughter Zhen is visibly intimidated by her.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": She's only referred to as "The Chameleon". Her actual name is never stated.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Unconventionally, she's one to Po, being an individual who wanted to do kung-fu and was underestimated due to her appearance, but turned out to be secretly quite powerful. However, whereas Po uses his talents to help other people, she's only interested in punishing those who looked down on her. This ends up taken further with their relationship with Zhen, as while the Chameleon raised and mentored Zhen, it was merely as a pawn for her own power play, while Po's bond with Zhen is much more sincere, playing into her Heel–Face Turn and Po choosing to mentor her as the future Dragon Warrior.
  • She also serves as a dark mirror to Shifu, who adopted Tai Lung like The Chameleon did to Zhen. Both trained their adoptive children in their own arts with intentions to fulfil their own goals too, with Shifu wanting Tai Lung to be the Dragon Warrior and The Chameleon wanting Zhen to be her second in command. However, while Shifu genuinely loved Tai Lung and even apologised after his own foster son turned away, The Chameleon used hypocritical statements to manipulate her daughter and never accepts her faults.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Viola Davis gives her a very low, sophisticated voice, fitting for her sinister personality. Her voice gets even lower during some of her transformations, especially in her elephant form.
• Eviler than Thou:
  • Towards the crime lords of Juniper City, who she intimidated and threatens into sharing their stolen money with her.
  • Towards Tai Lung, Lord Shen, and Kai^note Who was no slouch in the evil department himself. After resurrecting them, she steals their fighting skills and puts them all in cages.
• Eye-Dentity Giveaway: Although she can choose whether or not they show, her blue eyes are the first sign that whoever she's shifted into is not the real deal.
• Fatal Flaw: Greed, Envy and Vindictiveness: The Chameleon seems to be incapable of forgiving anyone who wronged her or being satisfied with what she has, driving her to get more, until it gets the better of her.
• Faux Affably Evil: She normally speaks in a calm, often genial tone, even towards her enemies. That is, until she gets angry enough to reveal her true, Ax-Crazy self.
• Freudian Excuse: The Chameleon was once looked down on and underestimated for her appearance, and her attempts to learn kung-fu were met with rejection and mockery. Out of spite, she resorted to learning sorcery, developing the power to forcefully steal Kung Fu from others instead, and began abducting masters to take their abilities for herself, intending to vanquish the legendary Dragon Warrior to cement herself as the greatest kung-fu master and then take over the world and get revenge on everyone who looked down on her.
• Green and Mean: A green lizard who serves as the fourth movie's main antagonist.
• Hated by All: Being a sadistic Bad Boss, her rule over Juniper City is maintained largely through fear over respect, with other criminals wasting little time turning on her when given the motivation. The kung fu masters she resurrects express their contempt for her sapping off their own abilities, and seem intent on punishing her in the Spirit Realm following her defeat. Even her closest lackey, Zhen quickly turns on her after witnessing her cruelty first hand and realising she only values her as a pawn.. In spite of all this, Po makes an earnest attempt to offer her a redemption, which she promptly shoots down.
• Height Angst: She’s very bitter about how people have underestimated her for her small size all her life.
• Hidden Depths: Before resorting to sorcery, Chameleon attempted to learn Kung-Fu by finding a master, but she was rejected by them. During her fight with Zhen, Chameleon actually fights her former student in her original form, and holds the upper hand by using genuine martial arts. Considering that Zhen can hold her own against many enemies and even give Po a challenge, it shows that Chameleon does have some genuine skill.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard:
  • She tells Zhen that she doesn’t care about her and would get rid of her if she stopped being useful to her, which obviously leads Zhen to pull a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal and help Po defeat her. Then, the deceased kung-fu masters that she stole their kung-fu skill from imprisoned forcibly take her back to the Spirit Realm with them, probably planning to get revenge on her.
  • When Po arrives for the final battle, she gives him back the Staff of Wisdom, claiming she no longer needs it. The staff ends up being instrumental in her defeat.
• Hollywood Chameleons: Rather than merely changing her colors as the real animal does, the Chameleon is capable of outright shapeshifting into any form she desires and can even change in size.
• Hypocrite: She tells Zhen the first rule of the streets is “Never trust anyone”, but she’s shocked and outraged when Zhen betrays her. She also told Zhen the third rule of the streets is “Nobody’s interested in your feelings”, but she begs Zhen for mercy as Tai Lung is about to take her with him to the Spirit Realm.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Her entire reason for stealing kung fu is due to her being rejected by various dojos due to her height. As such, she now desires to steal the kung fu of every master in order to make all of China pay for underestimating her.
• Informed Species: While she has a head crest and long tongue, she's missing the distinctive eyes that real chameleons have (instead having typical reptilian eyes) and has unusually long spines along her tail (more akin with the spines of an iguana).
• Interspecies Adoption: She's a chameleon who adopts Zhen, a corsac fox, who also becomes her second in command, though she couldn’t care less about the well being of her own daughter as she sees her as more of a tool to fulfill her own plans.
• The Irredeemable Exception: The Chameleon is shown to be a completely vicious and self-serving monster, and she displays none of the (however brief) moments of regret or sympathy that any of the previous films' villains did. And as shown with her consistently cruel treatment of her allies and underlings, including her adopted ward Zhen, the Chameleon doesn't even have loving or genuine relationships that the previous villains had (Tai Lung with Shifu, Lord Shen with his parents and the Soothsayer, and Kai with Oogway) to humanize her in any way. This is taken to its full extreme following her defeat, as the Chameleon remains completely unrepentant while her predecessors all bow to Po in respect for restoring their skills to them.
• Jerkass: She's cruel, completely apathetic, and downright abusive towards Zhen whenever the latter questions her commands.
• Killed Off for Real: Zig-zagged. Of all the villains in the films, the Chameleon is notably the only one who doesn't explicitly die in the mortal world. However, she is forcefully taken to the Spirit Realm by Tai Lung when he and the other villains return to it, and with her no longer possessing Po's Staff of Wisdom - and Zhen outright refusing to help her - she is likely never coming back from it.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Chameleon is easily one of the scariest and most intimidating villains Po has ever faced. Every time she appears, the mood of the scene becomes drastically darker, her treatment of her apprentice, Zhen, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of parental abuse, and her shapeshifting abilities are consistently Played for Horror. Also, while still The Comically Serious to some level, her menace is deflated by gags far more sporadically than the other more thin-skinned Big Bads.
• Lack of Empathy: She has no sense of compassion. She even tells Zhen that the third rule of the streets is “Nobody’s interested in your feelings.”
• Laughably Evil: Incredibly downplayed, as she is usually played quite seriously, but she does have a few comedic moments, such as when she grows impatient with how slowly the blood moon is rising and asks if it is always this slow.
• Manipulative Bitch: She uses Zhen as part of her scheme to steal Po's staff of wisdom.
• Misplaced Wildlife: A chameleon living in China. There were prehistoric chameleons that lived in China, but this series doesn't take place in prehistoric times. Chameleons primarily live in Africa and some southern parts of Eurasia.
• More Deadly Than the Male: She's the first female villain Po has ever faced (at least in the movies) and arguably the most powerful, dangerous and intelligent.
• Mister Big: Her army consists of komodo dragons, who naturally tower over her.
• Mrs. Exposition: She gives a brief expository explanation about her background where she was rejected because of her small size and because of that she decided to dedicate herself to sorcery in order to achieve more power. It isn't never shown, just explained.
• Multipurpose Tongue: Like real chameleons, the Chameleon's tongue is extremely long and strong. By firing it out of her mouth like a harpoon, she can grab and ensnare her enemies. Notably, she used it in the past to capture Zhen when she tried to steal from her and uses it to grab and toss around Po during their final battle. She can also use her tongue to steal a spirit warrior's fighting skills just by touching them with it.
• The Napoleon: She’s a small, evil chameleon who’s obsessed with ruling the world and getting revenge on anyone who disrespected her.
• "Not So Different" Remark: She makes one to Po, claiming that they had similar backgrounds.
  Po: If only I had a dumpling for every time a villain said how much we had in common.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: By telling Zhen that she will abandon her when she's no longer useful, Chameleon ensures that Zhen will side with Po to defeat her. Given that Zhen was a very close student of Chameleon, Zhen's defection was a huge tipping point. This ultimately results in Chameleon losing her stolen Spirit Warriors and being dragged into the Spirit Realm by all the angry warriors who want to dispense comeuppance.
• One-Winged Angel: During the final battle, she undergoes a chimeric transformation that's a mixture of several kung fu masters; these include Lord Shen, Kai, and Masters Cobra, Osprey, Scorpion, and Wolf.
• Overly-Long Tongue: As expected. She can unfurl her extremely long tongue at lightning speeds to steal powers and restrain attackers.
• Power Parasite: Using sorcery, she can steal another warrior’s fighting skills by touching them with her tongue.
• The Queenpin: The Chameleon rules over every mob family in Juniper City and is feared by all of them due to her shapeshifting prowess.
• Redemption Rejection: Po tries to convince the Chameleon to change her ways... she refuses.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In their natural state, her eyes are red.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Chameleon is, well, a chameleon, and is absolutely cold-hearted and evil.
• Revenge: She’s partly motivated by the desire to get revenge on everyone who mocked and underestimated her.
• Scary Teeth: Her teeth are rather unnervingly pointy, which becomes even more pronounced when she shapeshifts into a truly demonic version of Po.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • She's Po if he chose to lash out over his insecurities rather than prove himself. Both are animals that are underestimated for their appearances, since they were initially not suited for kung fu and were the subject of mockery by their peers (Po for being a fat panda and Chameleon for being a little lizard). However, while Po pushed himself to get into the good graces of the Furious Five in spite of the mockery he received and was eventually given a chance to learn kung-fu by Shifu after the latter's change of heart, Chameleon forsook actually learning kung-fu after one too many insults thrown her way and decided to just steal it from others instead and get revenge on the people who mocked her.
  • She is also in many factors a dark mirror of Mr Ping. She adopted Zhen much like Ping did Po, and both tried to integrate them into their own practices and agendas, shaping a lot of their qualities and abilities as adults. However, while Mr Ping legitimately loves Po, and despite his occasional greed and overbearingness, does accept his own goals and desires over time, the Chameleon sees Zhen merely as a means for her own agendas and nothing more, with no hesitance at crushing her the moment she doesn't do what she wants. Also, while materialistic, Mr Ping offers Po many impressive doses of wisdom in his lowest moments, while the Chameleon, abiding by the "rules of the street", discourages empathy from Zhen and shows her zero compassion, both exemplified when the two are simultaneously reeling over Zhen's betrayal.
  • She also may be more of a darker reflection of Tai Lung, Lord Shen and Kai, as all four have gone down the path of villainy and are at odds against Po due to his reputation as the Dragon Warrior, which in turn led to their defeats. However, despite their crimes, Tai Lung, Shen and Kai have a weird (yet genuine) sense or honor, while the Chameleon shows none as she finds the idea of honor to be a laughable concept; she even summons Tai Lung, Shen and Kai so that she can steal away their abilities and leave them to rot in cages while she can defeat Po herself. And when Po finally defeats the Chameleon and restores the abilities to everyone, Tai Lung, Shen and Kai (along with the other villains) all bow down to Po in honor before heading back to the Spirit Realm in peace while taking the Chameleon with them to make her pay for her actions. Additionally, while all three previous villains were embittered by a broken family or brotherly relationship, the Chameleon invokes that relationship via Zhen, with her having little sentiment on her part.
• Shapeshifter: Her magic allows her to take on the forms of others.
• Shapeshifter Mashup: During her fight with Po and Zhen, she takes on an amalgamated form, with elements of several of the Masters she drained.
• Slasher Smile: She makes a pretty blood-chilling grin when she pushes Po to his apparent death and after she steals Tai Lung's kung-fu skills.
• The Sociopath: Beneath her polite façade, the Chameleon is completely selfish, uncaring, sadistic, manipulative, and downright violent when things don't go her way. She even gloats about her own Lack of Empathy to Zhen.
  The Chameleon: What's the third rule of the streets? […] Some would say it's the most important. No one is interested in your feelings.
• Spell My Name with a "The": She's only ever referred to as the Chameleon.
  Po: How do we defeat this "The Chameleon"?
• Sorcerous Overlord: More sorcerous overlady. Chameleon is a powerful sorceress who rules over an entire city and seeks to take over the entire world.
• Staircase Tumble: She inflicts this on the bear crime boss by pushing them down a flight of stairs while in a Cruel Elephant form.
• Stating the Obvious: When Po escapes from the cage she dropped on him, the Chameleon drily notes "Well, that's frustrating for a number of reasons".
• Take Over the World: This is more or less her ultimate goal; to gain enough power to conquer all the lands.
• That Wasn't a Request: Outright says this when Tai Lung refuses to share his kung fu secrets to her and tries to go back to the Spirit Realm.
• Transformation Horror: Her transformations, when played for drama in a scene, are long and drawn out with lots of cracks and pops as her parts shift into place. The in-betweens are equally uncomfortable looking, such as placing her tiny head on an elephant body before it explodes outwards into shape.
• Trap Master: She built several different kinds of traps and cages in her castle in case of intruders.
• Virtue Is Weakness: When Zhen feels guilty about betraying Po and the Chameleon seemingly killing him, the Chameleon comments that she doesn’t know where Zhen picks up her “bad habits”.
• Villain Ball: Even if she was going to dispose of Zhen after she stopped being useful to her, she paved the way towards her own downfall by outright telling Zhen to her face that she was nothing more than a disposable tool towards her. It shouldn't have come as a shock to her when Zhen sided with Po to take her down afterwards.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: She can transform into any creature, big or small, whenever she wants.
• Warrior vs. Sorcerer: The Chameleon turned to magic after she was refused a teacher in Kung Fu, and in the present day throws herself against one of the greatest Kung Fu warriors in China.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: She outright tells Zhen that she would get rid of her if she felt that Zhen was no longer useful. This is what prompts Zhen to make a Heel–Face Turn before that event ever happens.

Shorts

Secrets of the Masters

The Wu Sisters

Voiced by: Sumalee Montano, Jennifer Darling [Wu Sister 1, first video game], Susanne Blakeslee [Wu Sister 2, first video game]

Su, Wing, and Wan Wu form a trio of infamously deadly criminals. First appearing in the Kung Fu Panda video game, the sisters were conceptualized as characters for the first film, but were ultimately left out. They make their canon debut in Secrets of the Masters.

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• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Sharp enough to cut straight through stone.
• Big Bad: Of the Secrets of the Masters short, as well as the Kung Fu Panda #4 story "Divide and Conquer".
• Canon Immigrant: First appeared in the tie-in game before making the jump to the main continuity in Secrets of the Masters.
• Cats Are Mean: Evil enough to warrant being in the crosshairs of Master Oogway and proud of their infamy.
• Cat Ninja: Wing and Wan are shown being very ninja-like in Secrets of the Masters when they sneak into a room to free Wu.
• Combination Attack: They can tie themselves together by their tails to perform a spinning vortex attack.
• Conspicuous Gloves: Their gloves lack fingers, to accommodate their claws.
• Dark Action Girl: All of them, but especially Su.
• The Dreaded: Po describes them as "the most feared and notorious villains who ever terrorized China" and even Oogway considers them a serious threat.
• Ear Notch: Su has one in her left ear.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The sisters are unfailingly loyal to each other, working together and never leaving anyone behind. Secrets of The Masters begins with two of the fugitive triplets sneaking into the Jinzhou Palace to break their sister/leader out of her sarcophagus.
• Obviously Evil: They dress in dark black/grey outfits, live in a volcano fortress, and their leader has differently colored eyes and a hole in her ear. Enough said.
• Red Right Hand: Su's heterochromia, one blue and one yellow eye.
• Siblings in Crime: They're mercenaries for hire with at least one attempt at conquering China.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: They don't wear sleeves.
• The Syndicate: The sisters try to form one by bringing all of China's gangs together.
• Terrible Trio: They are three fierce leopard sisters who's signature move involves the three of them locking their tails together and spinning into a destructive wheel of force.
• We Can Rule Together: Su tries to pull one of these on the leaders of China's gangs.

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