Characters / My Hero Academia All For One Tropes A To F

My Hero Academia Main Character Index
U.A. High School Students: Class 1-A (1-10, 11-20, Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, Ochaco Uraraka) | Class 1-B | Students From Other Classes
Pro Heroes: School Faculty and Staff (Shota Aizawa | All Might) | Other Heroes (Endeavor) | One For All and Its Torch Bearers
Villains: Known Villains (League of Villains [All For One] (A-F | G-N | O-Z), Tomura Shigaraki, Dabi, Himiko Toga, Artificial Humans], Shie Hassaikai [Overhaul], Meta Liberation Army, Paranormal Liberation Front)
Others: Police and Government Workers | Civilians (Main Characters' Families) | Other High Schools
Characters From Other My Hero Academia Media: Video Game Characters | Movie Characters
Vigilantes: Main Characters | Villain Factory | Supporting Characters
Team Up Mission

Back to My Hero Academia, My Hero Academia - All For One

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A

• Ability Mixing: His most devastating attacks come from the combination of several quirks that complement one another. For example, mixing his Air Cannon with Kinetic Boosters, Strength Enhancers, and Springlike Limbs to make what would've been a contained burst of air into a shockwave that topples buildings. Additionally, his quirk also possessed the unique function to create entirely different quirks and effects from mixing two separate quirks together, which is the genesis of how One For All was accidentally created by him.
• Above Good and Evil:
  • All For One doesn't believe in morality, believing that people are free to do as they please if they have the power to do so. It's a belief that he tries to teach Tomura as well:
    All For One: (to a young Tomura Shigaraki) Conscience, integrity, morals, ethics... all mere fabrications invented by others. People who wanted to run the world smoothly as they saw fit.
  • In Vigilantes, he waxes philosophical to Kurogiri about what truly makes a villain:
    All For One: Kurogiri, you and I may be what the good little citizens and politicians call villains, but what is a villain, really? The term is far too emotionally charged to simply describe a certain class of criminal, wouldn't you say? If that were all, why not just say "Quirk Criminal" and be done with it? I believe that the concept should be defined by a particular relationship between a person's will and their Quirk. When that will and that Quirk support each other to form a bedrock of resolve, well, those people are called heroes. But when an extreme and violent will stimulates a Quirk into running amok, or on the flip side, when an unruly Quirk twists a person's will to its own ends, that disparity creates a dangerous imbalance. Unstable characters like that deviate from their pigeonholes in society and threaten to destroy the entire framework. As such, that sort of logical evil or enemy of society is shunned and scorned... as a villain. Meaning that at the core of villainy is that essential imbalance. Going by that definition, what is the next inevitable conclusion? Basically, forcing a person's Quirk to rage out of control or otherwise flipping their Quirk around destroys that balance, letting me turn anyone into a villain.
• Abusive Parents: Somewhat Zigzagged. True to his Affably Evil nature, he is supportive towards his adoptive son at first. However, he is fully responsible for Shigaraki's insane personality, and come the transfer of his Quirk to Tomura, begins to show disregard for his well-being.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • The wounds All Might gave him prove to be these, as they force him to rely on a respirator to keep living, not to mention severely handicapped the amount of quirks his physical body is capable of using. Hawks even points out that the fact he went the extra effort to take the life support mask and assorted equipment with him when he escaped Tartarus proves that he needs it, and cannot function for long without appropriate medical aid. This means that characters who are way below his level still have a viable chance in a fight against him, as they don't need to physically defeat him in order to win, merely damage his mask enough to stop working. Once said mask is broken, All For One's body starts shutting down, preventing him from being able to move effectively enough to attack Endeavor even when he grapples with him close-range.
  • Additionally, his fight with Endeavor and Hawks confirms that for all the multiple Quirks he possesses during a fight, he doesn't have Hyper Regeneration or a variant on him by the time of the Final Battle, meaning that damage dealt directly to him will stick, unlike Tomura or High-End Nomus. However, 'no healing' doesn't mean he didn't have a trick up his sleeve, and he reveals to Endeavor after suffering a near-fatal incineration from him that he managed to copy a version of Eri's 'Rewind' quirk from the Destroying bullets Tomura salvaged from the hospital, enabling him to Retgone the injuries and even additionally start regrowing his missing eyes and ears as the rewind power de-ages him back to a point before All Might crippled him. It was just so dangerous for him to use he saved it for when he'd have died anyway, and still doesn't expect to survive.
  • His destroyed senses prove to be a Downplayed version, as he substituted for his loss of sight with as many sensory quirks as he could to make him more aware of his surroundings than the average person. However, these quirks do not truly replace his vision or grand him sight again, and when his quirks briefly rebel against him during the fight with Team Endeavor, his awareness of the world around him and his opponents is briefly disrupted, leaving him wide open to a massive blow from Tokoyami that he could have easily reacted to if he'd still had his natural-born senses. Compounding the Wham Shot of his near-impossible survival from Endevour's Prominence Burn is his missing eyes and ears regenerating from the damage, due to him having managed to steal a variant of Eri's 'Rewind' quirk from the Destroying bullets, thus allowing him to undo the unhealable injuries that crippled him before.
  • Dangerous as his ability to steal quirks in a literal second makes the prospect of close-range combat with him, the fact that his quirk is focused around his hands means that it's possible to attack or damage them to stop his attempts to steal a quirk cold, aided by the fact that All For one himself lacks great skill with close-range fighting. This weakness is further highlighted when his broken life-support mask means that All For One's body isn't moving as he wants to anymore, meaning he can't use both hands effectively to steal Endevour's quirk and is powerless to prevent himself getting scorched alive.
  • It's subtle, but aside from a few favourites, All For One's actual quirk-handling skills with individual quirks leave much to be desired. His most dangerous and devastating abilities come from him mixing and blending the effects of multiple powers together into powerful and destructive, but straightforward attacks, a process that takes him a brief moment to properly compose and order the various quirks together to achieve the desired result, and attacking him swiftly enough forces him to abandon this in favour of more instantaneous effects in his individual quirks, which he lacks fine handling over, despite being able to unleash a multitude of powers. He obscures this with a long-range fighting style to give him the space he needs to compose his various quirks, but he is never shown mixing more than 2-3 quirks at once when under pressure, and having so many abilities at his disposal means that All For One isn't particularly skilled in using the majority of them, much like Izuku's own struggles with his newly-awakened Combo Platter Powers against Nagant actually required him to shut some of them off to better react to the situation with fewer abilities he had better handling of. In essence, attacking All For One quickly leaves him unable to enact his more complicated and devastating powers because he hasn't got time to think of a response, much like Izuku got overwhelmed by Bakugo in a Speed Blitz during their second fight.
• Adapted Out: Not him, but the holes in his palms that let him give and take quirks are absent during his most prominent appearance in season 3. Entirely averted later in season 5 where they're added following the manga drawing attention to this being an important detail to having the All For One quirk.
• The Ageless: He's older than One For All, which has been passed down for nine heroes, yet has not aged since. All Might speculates that he found a Quirk that stops aging, later confirmed to be Dr. Garaki's Quirk, "Life Force". It's implied that he's not truly ageless, but his natural ageing process has been slowly down so noticeably that he'll be alive and in good health for a very long time— and his overarching plan throughout the series is ultimately to create the 'next him' in the younger Tomura's body with said quirk copied into it, meaning All For One would outlive his original self's natural death and have an extended lifespan on top of that.
• A God Am I: Talks about becoming the greatest demon lord so often it almost becomes a chant, openly gloating about his dream to live forever and the extreme measures he is taking to accomplish it. He certainly has the megalomania that comes along with it.
• All According to Plan: For most of the story, this is played straight. All For One has an overarching goal he is manipulating both the League of Villains, and especially Tomura, and the heroes towards achieving, but is intentionally vague about what said goal is so nobody can preempt his machinations. Even defeating him and locking him in Tartarus doesn't stop his plans, because he'd set them up to be self-sustaining long before he ever stepped up to fight All Might. He later gloats to Dabi that he'd made full use of his extended lifespan to set up as many long-term contingencies and fallbacks as he could think of years in advance, so no matter what the outcome, he'd always have a fallback plan even in the worst-case scenario. When he breaks out of Tartarus and starts taking direct action against Izuku, he effortlessly outplays him at every turn and predicts his every thought and action well in advance, enough to leave a highly-detailed recording mocking Izuku over his quest to save villains. Manipulating Izuku into multiple no-win situations one after the other is one of his final schemes leading up to his ultimate victory. However, the heroes are eventually able to turn the tables on him in the final battle, in part by letting All For One think this trope is still at play.
• All Your Powers Combined: His Quirk combines this with Power Parasite and Super-Empowering. He's able to steal others' Quirks for himself, allowing him to combine several Quirks together. He can also stack multiples of the same Quirk to amplify their power.
• Ambition Is Evil: Even as a kid he loved to emulate a demon king from a manga, and came to revel in the power to rule the world. He was there at the beginning of the Quirk crisis where Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains arose, rising to power in the ensuing chaos. It can be argued that his ambition is the exact same as it was ever since he was a child — to become an invincible demon lord and successfully enact whatever plans and schemes he has to in order to ensure a future where The Bad Guy Wins, and all that changed in the meantime was the variety of quirks he could steal, export and monopolise towards that childish dream at the expense of countless people.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Anyone he offers a service to will quickly learn that he expects to gain far more than he ever gives. Answering "no" isn't an option: once the "offer" is given, he already has his hooks too deep into the targets for them to ever be free from him again. They'll be forced to serve All For One for the rest of their lives, either as a minion, a resource, a tool, or an example.
• Antagonist Abilities: The Quirk "All For One" is exceedingly powerful, and could be considered the ultimate nightmare in a society that revolves around Quirks. With the story's emphasis on putting one's better qualities in service of society, it's only appropriate that the Greater-Scope Villain's power would be to steal the "talents" of others for himself. The ability also acts as a Foil to "One For All", which enables the cultivation of a collective legacy throughout multiple generations.
• Arch-Enemy: It's difficult to find a major character he hasn't royally pissed off to the point they're personally invested in ending him.
  • In general, he's this to every user of One For All. His little brother, Yoichi Shigaraki, was the first to oppose him and created the line of heroes dedicated to ending his evil. Interestingly, whilst he acknowledges their personal enmity and even mockingly commends their defiance of him, he doesn't seem to consider any one holder of One For All his true arch-nemesis, but rather the quirk itself, seeing them as little more than temporary repositories/containers to house One For All until he's ready to end their stalemate for good. Of them, there are three he has particularly earned the ire of:
    • Nana Shimura. It was becasue of him that she was forced to give up her young son, Kotaro, for adoption to protect him from All For One. After killing her, All For One would track down her grandson Tenko and groom him to be Tomura Shigaraki, his successor. He even gave Shigaraki one of Nana's hands for his villain costume as a final defilement of her legacy.
    • All Might, as the murderer of his mentor, and the one who dealt him a crippling blow. He reciprocates the feeling towards All Might, and makes his loathing clear during their final battle. Though he later claims to have disregarded All Might as a useless oaf, his Villainous Breakdown when Star and Stripe screws him over shows that he hasn't moved on as much as he thinks, and he begins screaming at All Might in a blind rage for inspiring Star to be a hero in the first place. All Might's later plan to split All For One away from his evil forces and Shigaraki proves he will always be the man's foremost thorn in his side, no matter how much All For One tries to insist otherwise. Doubles as Irony since All For One only places value in Quirks, and he continues to be tripped up by a man who not only has lost his, but never had one to begin with.
    All For One: You know All Might, as much as you hate me, I think I probably loathe you more. I killed your master, sure, but you took away so much from me. Everything I tried to build. That's why I want you to suffer until your last breath and to die broken in disgrace for all the world to see! I will obliterate everything that you've protected!
    • Izuku. He tells him that during his time in prison all he could think about was him, and it's implied he adapted his grand plans to torment the final One For All user as much as he could to ensure he could Take Over the World once he realised All Might had passed his quirk along. He's discarded All Might as a worthless has-been, calling him a "useless oaf." He's become far more interested in grinding away at the soul of a young, fresh hero shouldered with the world's greatest responsibilities as opposed to the sickly old man he was fighting before. And the feeling is mutual on Izuku's end as All For One inspires nothing but hatred and revulsion from him, which is especially remarkable being the All-Loving Hero that he is. Although it's likely because of that somebody like All For One can get to him so badly.
  • As cemented in Chapter 338, he has slowly but gradually become this to all of Class 1-A over the course of the series. In between attacking them at the USJ and the Training Camp, targeting both Midoriya and Bakugo at different points, and finally, his exploitation of Aoyama, he is officially at the top of their shit list, and none of them are going to stop until he's finally taken down for good. The feeling is not mutual in the slightest, as when Jiro and Tokoyami join in on fighting him he simply refers to them as 'gnats that fly around One For All' and sincerely equates them to 'jobber characters' who exist only to die at the demon lord's hands as a display of his power.
• Archnemesis Dad: To Tomura, having raised the boy as his adoptive father with the express purpose of absorbing his consciousness into himself to ascend as a "more perfect Demon Lord." In the Final Act of the story he becomes as much of a threat to Tomura's goal of becoming the greatest villain as he is to the heroes, although he keeps trying to play it off as genuine respect. He only sees Tomura as an extension of himself, explaining why he was able to care about him at all. It was always in service to his own prosperity and to Tomura's detriment.
• Ascended Fanboy: Played horrifically straight which makes him a dark mirror to Izuku. Rather than be a fan of the superheroes in the comics he grew up reading, he became a fan of the Demon King, seeing many similarities between himself and the character. With his Quirk, he became able to enact his Demon Lord fantasies in real life and stops at nothing to ensure he can play the role for eternity. His dialogue during his conflict with the heroes even implies that he sincerely believes he can't be challenged or beaten by anybody other than a holder of One For All, both because of his own immense might and because of the 'roles' each are playing.
• Attack Reflector: One of his Quirks, "Impact Recoil", lets him reverse the impact of someone's attack. By combining it with his "Warping" Quirk, which lets him teleport people to his location, he can create impromptu Human Shields as Gran Torino learned the hard way. However, it only works on physical attacks, meaning attacks that uses properties like extreme heat cannot be reflected, such as a massive flaming punch.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: All For One is the true leader of the League of Villains, and the most powerful character in the whole series, only matched by All Might. It takes him seconds to defeat several top-ranked Heroes.
• Awesome, yet Impractical: Mass Quirk combinations like his 'ultimate combination of Quirks' fall into this: he has to activate the individual Quirks and spend time actually letting the changes to his body take effect. Against All Might this wasn't an issue because All Might couldn't really counter attack and no one was able to interupt, but he's notably never shown using that complex of Quirk combinations otherwise, normally settling for one or two at a time. This noticeably creates a contrast with Izuku's own usage of One For All's Combo Platter Powers, having the Weak, but Skilled abilities work effectively in tandem with each other to augment the core Super-Strength ability without issue, even turning some of the powers off if needed to get a more effective result in the heat of the moment

B

• Back from the Dead: At the exact moment of death by being nearly vaporized by Endeavor's flames no less, as he activates his artificial copy of Eri's Rewind reverse-engineered from Overhaul's bullets despite the risk of Cessation of Existence just to make the fight even harder as he heals to his prime, making all their efforts for naught to screw with them one last time.
• Bad Boss: During the Paranormal Liberation War arc, he hijacks Tomura's body and flees the battlefield, deserting most of the League of Villains members, including Gigantomachia. He frames this as Tomura's punishment for losing the battle against Deku and Endeavor. Otherwise, he averts this trope through Pragmatic Villainy.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: All For One hires Lady Nagant to capture Deku, but she is defeated by him. Deku tries to sway her to his side but All For One abruptly detonates her for failing her task. Played With, however, in that he never actually intended Nagant to win against Deku, having concealed vital information from her about his Combo Platter Powers that allowed Izuku to seize the advantage against her, and was always intending on killing her right before Izuku's eyes to break him, aware he would be compelled to try and help her and using that to mock his efforts.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: The ability to steal powers from people and forcefully implant them into others is about as villainous as it sounds.
• Bad Samaritan:
  • He made it a habit to take in desperate children harmed or rejected by society and provide guidance for them. Not because he cares for any of them, but because he was on the lookout for children with powerful Quirks and enough trauma that he could mold them into potential host bodies to replace his damaged original one. Those who were unsuitable for that were put to use as either minions or materials for his Nomu experiments. In some cases, it's implied that he was at least partially responsible for some of the circumstances that lead the kids into his clutches in the first place.
  • It turns out his entire endgame is to set up a situation where everything is so horrible, he can swoop in to 'help' with his Quirks, all so he can force the world to bow down to him as their demon king.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He is always seen wearing a suit, like Lex Luthor or many of Batman's villains.
• Badass Longcoat: Chapter 193 reveals that he used to wear one, back in his prime.
• Bald of Evil: Everything from his mouth upwards is nothing but mangled scar tissue, including his scalp. Granted, he used to have hair before his first clash with All Might.
• Benevolent Boss: Subverted. All For One seems to be genuinely lenient, patient and encouraging as leader of the League, willing to give them as many chances to succeed. However, this "compassion" is but a false front: ultimately, he sees people as mere means to an end, and will abandon them as he sees fit, without remorse.
• BFG: During his battle with Team Endeavor, All For One combines his various Quirks together to create a large, grotesque organic cannon and fire off a supercharged Air Cannon. It's only thanks to a timely save by Hawks are Jirou and Tokoyami able to dodge it, though it ends up costing Jirou her ear and half her Quirk.
• Big Bad: He is the central antagonist of the series and the founder of the League of Villains until All Might beats him and he is incarcerated. Even with him imprisoned, the story still frames him as the ultimate evil, and his presence is felt throughout. It becomes Played With later on, as upon freeing his original body from Tartarus, he takes back control over the remnants of the League in full, now focused on destroying Izuku and completing his centuries-long plan of stealing One for All, aided by the fact that Tomura's consciousness is getting subjugated by the Split-Personality Merge with his vestige. However, All For One reveals that he considers his original body and self expandable compared to his perfected 'Next Me' in Tomura and his plans still hinge upon nurturing and exploiting the boy's own rage and efforts for his ultimate goal, like a parasitic leech, meaning that Tomura himself is still a vital driving force on the antagonist's side and the focal point of Izuku's ultimate confrontation, despite All For One's attempts to twist the narrative to serve his own ends.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Shigaraki. All For One monitors him from the shadows, while Shigaraki leads the League of Villains publicly; their dynamic changes throughout the story, however.
• Big Bad Ensemble: By the time of the Paranormal Liberation War arc, once Shigaraki gains the original All For One Quirk, master and apprentice start fighting for control over their shared body. By the time he has Tomura's body retreat from battle, he has wrestled enough control that Deku sees Tomura as someone to rescue despite being archenemies.
• Big Brother Bully: He seemed to be his younger brother's primary caretaker. He also locked him in a safe, kept him from interfering with his plans, and ultimately forced a Quirk upon him. He did claim this to be a compromise, and may have had good intentions, though any details are ultimately obscure.
• Blind Seer: He's been blind since his fight with All Might, and uses an "Infrared Ray" Quirk to sense his surroundings. The prison he's kept in has so many sensors that it impairs his ability to "see". This ceases to be the case after he activates a variant of 'Rewind' he managed to get from the Destroying bullets Tomura successfully salvaged from the hospital, with his right eye regenerating as part of the Wham Shot of his survival despite lacking a direct Healing Factor like Tomura or the Nomus at that point.
• Blow You Away: One of his Quirks, "Air Cannon", fires a blast of air from his hands. He can combine this with a "Spring-like Limbs" Quirk, four "Kinetic Boosters", and three "Strength Enhancers" to increase its destructive power. It takes out several pro heroes in seconds.
• Body Backup Drive: His ultimate purpose for Tomura. Over the decades, All For One's own body had experienced difficulties storing new Quirks, as these evolved at a fast rate. When Dr. Garaki performs a body enhancement surgery on Tomura and transplants the original "All For One" Quirk onto the young villain, a vestige of All For One's consciousness, which can override Tomura's will, is carried with it. To this end, All For One starts treating his original, crippled body like a disposable pawn, willing to undertake risky moves with it that he would never do himself otherwise because he fully plans to live on through his 'Next Me', preforming faux Heroic Sacrifices with it to further his plans, such as staying behind to fight All Might to enable Tomura and the League to flee the scene despite the risk of him losing and being executed for his crimes, or using a variant of Eri's dangerous and untested 'Rewind' quirk he salvaged from the Destroying Bullets in order to 'try it out' on a body that he held no particular attachment and was already doomed anyway.
• Body Horror: With the exception of his mouth and chin, his head is a mass of scar tissue, with no eyes, nose, or ears; judging by the scars on the back of his neck, there are likely many more hidden within his suit. Then he starts using his powers. A Spring-Limbs Quirk causes his arm to compress and inflate like an actual spring. His "Rivet Stab" Quirk has black and red tendrils extend from his fingers. In an attempt to finish off All Might, he uses a mass combination of Quirks to transform his entire right arm into a grotesque sight of hypertrophied flesh and tangled arms with metallic parts sticking out. A special note goes to the Spear-like Bones Quirk, which couldn't be pretty under any circumstances. He adds a new one to the list in the final battle by showing the ability to transform parts of his flesh into mouths whether it be a single finger or his whole hand; special mention also goes to him combining this with Spear-like Bones to serve as the teeth. Once Endeavor hits him with a point-blank Prominence burn, his body is little more than a lump of blackened charcoal that visibly starts crumbling away...and then his missing body parts start growing back as he flashes a triumphant Nightmare Face at Endeavor.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: He uses All Might's "I am here" as a means to either sway others to join his cause, or to let the heroes know that things will be going south for them.
• Break the Haughty: The entire Final Battle consists of All For One's self-image of an invincible demon king being torn to shreds as the heroes completely upend his plan and he begins to be beaten by 'Jobber Characters.' All For One doesn't take this well.
• Break Them by Talking:
  • He is very good at getting under people's skin. He enjoys doing it to All Might in particular:
    All For One: Izuku Midoriya! He's the child you passed One For All onto, isn't he!? I bet he came here without your asking, you have no control over him, do you!? It sounds as though you'll die full of regrets, All Might! As a hero and as a teacher!
  • When facing off against Endeavor in the final battle, he wastes no time trying to get under his skin, bringing up his abuse of his children and accusing him of shirking responsiblity by pitting Shoto against Dabi. Hawks desperately warns Endeavor to not fall for his mind games and Endeavor is able to ignore his taunting for the most part... until All For one mentions his indirect role in Dabi's decent into villainy, enraging Endeavor and leaving him vulnerable to a brutal counter attack.
    All For One: (in Chapter 345) But you're a cruel man, Endeavor. Pitting One For All against Tomura is a deadly knife's edge to dance upon. But the most brutal part of this little scheme has to be you forcing your youngest to clean up your own mess, no matter how much it pains him. And the unceasing abuse toward your eldest child!
    All For One: (After Dabi is defeated) What does that face imply? Affection? Grief? You refused to take a good look at Toya, foisting the task onto little Shoto instead! That must have been your decision, right?! And you justify that choice by being here?! "Heroes just have sooo much to protect", right? That's why you lose, Number One!
    All For One: (Chapter 354) But Hawks... Your timing doesn't quite match up. It almost seems like Endeavor's heart isn't in it? Behold, Endeavor. Everyone is fighting so hard to fulfill their role. Even the novices among them are focused on the battle at hand. So why does it feel like your head is somewhere else? Maybe because your masterpiece mopped up your failed experiment?! Aren't you delighted?! You should know, for ages now, I've had my eye on your twisted longing for power. And the thing about me is when I come across fertile ground, I can't help but sow seeds. You never did find Toya's body, did you?
• Brilliant, but Lazy: All For One is a brilliant manipulator and schemer, capable of preparing multiple complex plans and fallback options over generations to secure his eventual victory against One For All and its wielders, as well as topple hero society and rebuild his empire from the ashes in a brand new and more powerful body after his original was permanently damaged by All Might, and nothing the heroes achieve for the majority of the manga can derail this sequence of events from occurring thanks to his extensive preparations. However, whilst he has devoted an insane amount of effort into his plans, whenever he participates in a fight it becomes clear that he's not focused nearly as much on mastering his various powers and improving both his control and the quirk's performance. In a fight he tends to combine quirks together to create devastating attacks, but rarely demonstrates more than a surface-level handing of individual powers, outside of a few favourites, meaning that people who've trained hard with their singular quirk's limits can still hold an edge against him in skilled usage of their powers. With his extended lifespan and the sheer amount of effort he's devoted to his plans and preparations, it's made clear that this lack of skilful control over every single quirk he possesses is because All For One can't be bothered to put in the effort to train himself with all his quirks and push himself to master their abilities in full when he can achieve the same effect in an instant by combining multiple quirks together instead, contrasting to Izuku's own exhaustive efforts to master One For All's Combo Platter Powers slowly but steadily over the course of the series. It's implied part of the reason he wants One For All is that it passively empowers and strengthens the quirks amalgamated into its core, and by combining that trait with his stockpiled abilities, he would become even more powerful without having to push himself to master each quirk one by one.
• Brought Down to Badass: While his Quirk didn't get any weaker after his crippling fight with All Might, his body's condition did. Due to the horrible injuries All Might inflicted, he is severely limited in how much power he can output and how much damage he can take. Compounding this, his Quirk takes its own toll: there is a limit to how many Quirks he can safely hold, and since this is dependent on his physical condition, the number and strength of the Quirks he can have has gone down as well. This trope is the only reason Team Endeavor can stand a chance against him in their fight —despite All For One's sincere belief that their efforts are worthless, as powerful as he still is, he's not as powerful as he could otherwise have been, and whilst he still mangles several of his opponents and leaves them with disfiguring injuries, his own natural weaknesses allows them to land some damaging blows on his life-support mask that leave him in danger of losing the battle regardless. He manages to exploit this fact, loading his broken and crippled body with potentially dangerous quirks in order to try them out before his perfected 'next me' can use them.
• The Bully: At his core, All For One is this. For all his power and influence, All For One is nothing more than a narcissistic, sociopathic bully who just wants to lord his power over everyone and everything, and constantly mocks and belittles anyone brave enough to challenge him. In particular, his hatred of All Might stems from him dismantling his criminal empire and ruining his image of himself as this all powerful demon lord.

C

• Cain and Abel: He had a younger brother named Yoichi who had a strong sense of justice and opposed him. Yoichi became the first wielder of One For All.
• Came Back Strong: In a twisted variant, this is his actual goal for Tomura — to have the young man undergo enough biological remodelling from Garaki to withstand the strain of All For One's quirk's full stockpiled power to inherit the quirk, so the vestige of himself contained within it can undergo a Split-Personality Merge with Tomura and effectivly allow All For one to be 'reborn' in a younger, more powerful and more durable body to ensure he can never again be reduced to the crippled state he was left in at All Might's hands, no matter what the heroes do to him. This will also have the advantage of enabling him to use Tomura's boundless rage against the world as a tool to enable him to win the battle of willpower that results whenever he tries to absorb One For All, finally stealing the quirk than poses the most resistance to him and being able to utilise its immense might towards fulfilling his ambitions to Take Over the World. In another example, he exploits the fact that his old body is irreversibly crippled beyond repair as an excuse to test out the version of Eri's Rewind quirk he managed to gain from the Destroying Bullets, despite the danger of it Retgoneing the target, reasoning that his body is 'destined for the scrap heap' anyway, so he might as well use it to gauge the benefits of dangerous quirks without fear of risking his 'Next me'. However, his words imply he fully expects to die, he was just already mortally wounded and has nothing to lose.
• Came Back Wrong: After he survived his almost-fatal defeat at All Might's hands during their first battle, he was nonetheless left in a visibly disfigured state and with a body that was unable to restore itself to his prior glory, even after he discovered quirks that were later capable of undoing similar massive bodily trauma, because his wounds had already healed over by that point. Despite the lengths he goes to to obscure his weaknesses or pretend that he's still as fearsome as before, the fact that he isn't is repeatedly proven when he fights the heroes during the Final Battle, with him suffering attacks from heroes far below his actual power level because of the limitations of his current body, incapable of holding as much power as he used to and physically inferior to his opponents, even when he compensates for his lack of natural senses with quirks. He decided to exploit this however, managing to absorb a variant of Eri's 'Rewind' from the Destroying Bullets to test it out despite the dangers of its usage potentially Retgoneing him from existence, as he sees his original body as 'destined for the scrap heap' anyway, thus he had no problems subjecting it to potentially lethal danger as long as he'll live on through his 'Next Me'. When he activates it after being mortally wounded, the first sign of its effect on him is his permanently-lost eyes and ears regrowing as a sign he's restoring his body back to the prime of health, before his fight with All Might.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Downplayed. All For One isn't completely delusional, and is fully capable of understanding the reality of his situation and adapting it to suit his long-term plans with practiced skill, but as the series approaches the Final Battle and he escapes from Tartarus, it becomes clear that on some level, he genuinely does see the entire story unfolding around him like it was a real-life comic book, helped by the fact that he exists in a world with actual superpowers. He sees himself as being a real-life 'Demon lord' and sincerely refers to other heroes who oppose him as 'Jobber characters' who only exist to showcase his strength in a fight. Whilst this somewhat counts as Leaning on the Fourth Wall, All For One actually lives in a world where the narrative doesn't always align with the 'traditional' outcome of a superhero story, and by the time the fighting starts, he gets repeatedly blindsided in part because he thought his only opposition would come from Izuku and his close allies, getting outwitted, attacked and badly damaged by the efforts of heroes who weren't even on his radar, and whom he never saw as a real threat because the comics from his childhood only ever had 'one' hero, but in reality, there are hundreds of them aligned against him, and not even he can account for all their moves to keep control of the situation.
• Can't Catch Up:
  • All For One acknowledges that as Quirks get stronger, there might be an upper limit to how powerful and complex of a Quirk his body is physically capable of containing, let alone stealing. Part of his entire plan for Tomura is to circumvent this by making his 'next me' so physically powerful this isn't an issue.
  • It becomes apparent that while All For One is capable of becoming stronger, One For All's ability to improve is superior to his own. With each transfer, it exponentially increases in power while also retaining and empowering their Quirks as well. All For One can only stockpile powerful Quirks and thus is limited to what he can find. In addition, he can't actually increase the power of the Quirks he's stolen unless he can find Quirks close enough that he can stack them on top of one another. To note, it took All For One stacking 13 Quirks on top of one another just to match All Might using the final embers of One For All, eight of which were strength enhancers. It is greatly implied that part of All For One's obsession with One For All is his acknowledgment of this as if he were to combine the Super-Empowering trait with his own stockpiled abilities and an extended lifespan in Tomura's enhanced body, he would effectively become a God in name and deed.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Later in the story it's revealed that he knew who the holders of One For All were the entire time. He just let them live long enough to cultivate the Quirk and pass it on to a new wielder before he personally killed them. All to ensure that One For All would become as strong as possible before he stole it. Even after it grew powerful enough to overwhelm him, he refused to kill All Might or Izuku and risk losing his prize before the next "him" could claim it.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: He's not only narcissistic, megalomaniac and lacking any semblance of empathy; he revels in it. It goes a long way when, in Japanese, he's the only character whom the normally polite All Might refers to with the extremely hostile pronoun kisama.
• Card-Carrying Villain: When All Might visit him in prison, he outright asks All For One for his motives. The villain plainly states that being "an all-powerful devil king" had always been his ambition. This sets All For One apart from the rest of the League and villains in a big way: most of the main League members have some other goal or blame society for their problems in some way, and thus are more using the word 'villain' as taking a label society put on them. Other major villains like Overhaul or Re-Destro have grand ambitions and end goals for wanting to change the world outside of ruling. All For One? He chose to be a villain entirely of his own free will for no other reason than that he wants to be. He knows he's evil, he simply doesn't care because being a demon king is his end goal in and of itself.
• The Caretaker: He seemed to have been his younger brother's caretaker and did not seem bothered by it, as he was the only person All For One ever treated with anything close to genuine kindness, though even there he was possessive and controlling.
• Casting a Shadow: Many of the Quirks he uses evoke darkness: his signature "All For One" manifests as red and black flames; the "Warping" Quirk is a pool of black liquid that emerges from those he teleports; and "Rivet Stab" manifests as red and black tendrils he extends from his fingers.
• Character Development: Defied. All For One is the exact same evil, manipulative, scheming Jerkass he was back when he developed his quirk, which is most pronounced by the fact that he's chronologically the oldest living character in the series and yet has never once considered changing himself for the better in all the time he's been alive. He was outright worried when he first encountered the vestiges of his past victims and mistook them as a sign he was capable of guilt for his sins, and grew relieved to find out that wasn't the case. This is why he cannot overcome One For All's resistance to his Power Parasite abilities, as his lack of emotional depth and unwillingness to better himself means he's forever incapable of growing strong enough to steal the quirk on his own. To which end, his overarching plan throughout the series is to cultivate Tomura's own development and then hijack it to finally steal One For All, meaning he'd rather go through such a complicated plan than try and grow as a character—fitting for somebody who runs counter to the manga's theme of change and growing into a better person through your choices.
• Classic Villain: A petty, sociopathic madman representing Greed and Pride to the extreme who is designed as the ultimate foil to All Might, Izuku, and the philosophy behind heroes as a whole.
• The Coats Are Off: When he shows up to confront Izuku for their final battle, he does so with a similar suit and Cool Mask getup as when he confronted All Might at Kamino. However, Aoyama's surprise attack against him burns off part of the left sleeve, and he removes the whole jacket as he summons the villains en-masse.
• Combat Pragmatist: For all his power, All For One is a very dirty fighter and will use any tactic to gain the advantage in a fight. He'll play mind games to get under his opponent's skin, use sneak attacks, take others as human shields, and even threaten innocent bystanders to win. In Volume Origin, he knew that Nana was using the final dregs of One For All, yet he does not hesitate to kill her with a massive explosion that ravages an entire island. During his fight with Endeavor, he immeadiately engages in psychological warfare, bringing up his abuse of his children to throw Endeavor off his game. Endeavor is able to ignore his taunting for the most part... until All For one mentions his indirect role in Dabi's decent into villainy, enraging Endeavor and leaving him vulnerable to a brutal counter attack. Hawks notes that they need to keep him hard-pressed with constant attacks in order to prevent him unleashing the same kind of wide-range blasts that leveled much of Kamino ward against the forces fighting on the ground, a tactic which would also hit the villains fighting on All For One's side, yet which would clearly affect the heroes more adversely than himself.
• Combat Tentacles: One of his Quirks, "Rivet Stab", manifests as black and red tendrils he extends from his fingers. He uses them to attack All Might, and as a contact point for his "Forcible Quirk Activation". The same ability manifests in Tomura Shigaraki, which he uses to skewer Endeavor and Bakugo.
• Control Freak:
  • All For One is defined by his pure selfish ego. As far as he's concerned, everything exists only for him. Him giving his brother Yoichi a Quirk was done purely in an attempt to make Yoichi submit to him and his obession with stealing One For All stems from him wanting to make a part of his brother bend to his will. This is best shown by his visceral reaction to Star and Stripe booby-trapping her Quirk to destroy him from the inside. For the fist time in his life, things didn't play out to his script and he can't handle it. Garakai later comments on this tendency of All For One's, noting that he had known "absolute control far and wide", and finding the few times he failed to achieve control over somebody notable enough that he easily remembered Toya Todoroki because of the latter's refusal to accept All For One's offer to help him.
  • The final arc showcases another factor in this: All For One doesn't just want to control everything, he needs to feel he's in control of everything. When the heroes manage to outplay him completely, his internal monologue consists of him frantically trying to convince himself he's still in control even as every one of his back up plans is shredded. His speech also takes on a more frustrated and angry tone, showing that he genuinely can't handle things being out of his control.
  • Though he tries to remain as outwardly composed as possible, losing control over both the fight with Team Endeavor and his accumulated powers from the vestiges' rebellion, leaving him vulnerable enough to take some severely damaging blows from 'Jobber Characters' makes him absolutely snap, his vestige self appearing to literally consume the consciousness of the attacking vestiges whilst screaming in pure denial of his impending loss, and him unleashing a truly vicious attack with his Combat Tentacles to both maim the heroes and almost literally hold his broken mask and chances for victory together through pure willpower, showcasing his absolute intolerance of the idea that the 'Invincible Demon Lord' could actually lose.
• The Corrupter:
  • Took Tenko Shimura, the grandson of his most hated adversary, and groomed him from childhood to become his own successor as a villainous symbol of evil.
  • In Vigilantes, All For One muses that he can turn anyone into a villain by either making their Quirks go berserk or igniting their rage to violent proportions.
  • It's later revealed that he was able to turn Aoyama to his side by offering them a quirk, as said person was naturally born Quirkless, enabling them to live their dreams of being a hero before the demands he made of him in return for his 'favor' turned into a twisted nightmare for him. This is exactly what Yoichi warned the two unnamed individuals whom All For One demonstrated a similar 'deal' with about far in the past.
    • Befitting his status as a monstrous villain, it's also made clear that All For One is very aware that his quirk allows him to empower others to succeed in their dreams or goals, similar to One For All's line of succession, but he only ever empowers others to give himself power over them and use them for his own ends, rather an any genuine altruism. It's implied that he's repeated this tactic many times over the generations to help spread his influence and set up his eventual preparations for becoming 'the greatest demon king'.
• Costume Evolution: As his previous helmet was destroyed during his battle with All Might, for the final battle with Midoriya, All For One sports a sleeker, more futuristic version of his original helmet that somewhat resembles Kurogiri's. This helmet has more armored plating as it was able to withstand a slash from Hawks' feather blade, which makes sense as he was planning on facing Izuku in a fight and wanted his Achilles' Heel to have adequate protection against his raw power.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • He has Dr. Garaki replicate the Quirk All For One, takes the replica for himself, and gives the original to Shigaraki, after foreseeing his own defeat. He furthermore rigged the hospital data on Shigaraki's medical procedure to give an inaccurate timeline for the stabilization of his perfected body. This was set up back before All Might took him down at Kamino, months before Tomura even underwent the procedure.
  • He waxes poetic to Dabi about this principle of his in Chapter 335, making it clear that he's made full use of his extended lifespan to prepare every angle he can imagine to guarantee his victory, regardless of what Spanner in the Works the heroes try to throw at him. Given this comes on the heels of him suffering his first actual setback against Star and Stripe, it underlines how much effort and preparation All For One has put into place before the series even began, that even that can be overcome eventually.
    All For One: Listen well... When I find myself with a goal, I'm sure to plan out a number of...routes to the goal, shall we say. To be exact, I weave my plots years or even decades prior, so that I may employ a viable route when the time comes. A route that inevitably achieves my ends.
  • Dabi's backstory in Chapter 350 reveals that All For One and Garaki ran an orphanage to groom several children in hopes of having a backup vessel if Shigaraki proves to be a failure.
  • This trait gets deconstructed during the Final Battle with him. Firstly, the fact that he honestly believes he's planned for all possible outcomes means he's not capable of adapting quickly to unexpected changes or the heroes genuinely managing to lure him and his forces into a trap. Secondly, the fact that he has a limit to the amount of quirks he can store at once means that, despite his versatilely with multiple types of powers, he's obviously devoted much of his available stock towards facing a preferred opponent. He was able to match All Might in a physical grapple with stacked strength-enhancing quirks and clearly intended on repeating the process with Izuku, but when Endeavor attacks him, he can only defend himself with a single fire-resistance quirk that gets overpowered by Endeavor's superior firepower.
  • Once the heroes apparently manage to successfully damage him with fatal injuries, exploiting the fact that he demonstrably doesn't have a healing quirk on his original body, he mocks them for thinking he'd show up to a fight without some trick up his sleeve to compensate for such a weakness. The visual imagery implies that he'd successfully managed to absorb a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk from the Destroying Bullets Tomura salvaged, with his previously irreparable injuries from All Might's hands restoring themselves before the horrified heroes' eyes. He doesn't expect to survive using it, but it comes in handy when he's already mortally wounded and on death's door anyway from Endeavor nearly turning him to ash.
• Create Your Own Hero: When he gave his brother the mediocre Power Stockpiling Quirk in an attempt to make his brother submit, it merged with his brother's then-unknown power-transfer Quirk, accidentially creating One For All. Out of a mix of greed, a need for control, and his obsession with the fantasy stories of his youth, All For One allowed this new Quirk to spread down a lineage of heroes until it evolved into the one Quirk powerful enough to defeat him no matter how much he stole from others.
• Creator Thumbprint: In-universe example. Anyone with an extra Quirk can be traced back to All For One. The Artificial Humans/Nomus are a direct example. The users of One For All are an indirect example, as All For One had inadvertently created their Quirk. Izuku even gets mistaken as a minion of his thanks to his multiple abilities when saving civilians in the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation War, which is only technically true.

D

• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Played With. His long-term goal runs counter to the idea of him ever risking himself from using powerful quirks that could have dangerous consequences upon him if mishandled, thus there were sometimes abilities All For One encountered that were Too Awesome to Use even if he stole them. However, once his vestige self starts undergoing a Split-Personality Merge with Tomura to become the 'invincible Demon lord' he dreamed about becoming, in a new and enhanced body capable of withstanding the strain of hosting multiple powers beyond his original self's capacity, All For One considers his original damaged body expendable, and has no problem using it with dangerous Quirks like Eri's Rewind quirk is, content in the knowledge that he'll still live on as the 'Next Me' regardless of what happens to him. However, even then, he reserves actually using it for after Endeavor mortally wounds him anyway, since if he's going to die anyway, he might as well try it.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Averted. The world during his childhood certainly was this for many people, with the onset of quirks creating societal breakdown on a global scale and Fantastic Racism running rampant, but All For One clearly loved the chaotic situation because it was so miserable for everybody else. He was able to use his powers to enforce control and amass power in a time where there was no overarching authority to stand in his way, and create an empire from nothing thanks to so many people being willing to turn to him for safety and stability. In fact, a large facet of his ongoing Evil Plan is reversing the progress society's made since then, destabilizing Japan into an anarchic dystopia so that he once again has the ability to rebuild his empire from the rubble, showcasing a sort of twisted Nostalgia Filter for 'the good old days'. Banjo even notes how similar the situation is in Japan to when he was at the height of his powers.
• Dark Is Evil: Wears dark clothes, has a black helmet, has dark colored Quirks, and is the most powerful villain in the series.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: His previous battle with All Might has left him severely incapacitated. He has tubes running into his face and neck. When he finally steps outside, he wears a black mask that doubles as a life support system. After causing the Tartarus break-out, he literally has to carry the life-support machine from his cell with him. This is a major plot point during the Final Battle, as the heroes are entirely aware of this and make a point to target his life support. When it breaks for good, even though he's still able to move and fight somewhat his body won't respond like he wants it to, leaving him open to getting pummelled by Endeavor close-range and almost fatally incinerated to death. However, he reveals that he'd successfully managed to absorb a variant of Erik's Rewind quirk from the Destroying Bullets before the fight to compensate for his lack of a Healing Factor going in, the quirk's energy restoring his lost eyes and ears before the heroes' sight. Downplayed, however, as his words flat out imply he expects to die in the process and is only trading one form of life support for another.
• Dark Messiah:
  • How All For One was portrayed in the past. He used his ability to assist those who were oppressed by the new phenomena of Quirks, by granting powers to those who didn't have any, and taking them away from those who didn't want them (or abused them). This allowed him to amass an immense amount of devoted followers whose gratitude grew into blind fanaticism, to the point of carrying out his will even without his command. His Power Palms also feed into this, as they give him the appearance of a stigmata.
  • Furthermore, his goal to become a demon lord is not merely for show. After bringing the world to ruin, he plans to emerge as its lone savior with the quirks necessary to replace all the resources that had been destroyed and ensuring global domination.
  • During Tomura's battle with the heroes, the All For One vestige overriding his consciousness waxes lyrical about this point, noting that in a world with unique superpowers that grow stronger by the generation, and bodies that further mutate away for the perceived 'normal' human template to handle said powers, a status quo is impossible to achieve, and people will inevitably come to fear and persecute the next generation of humanity for being too different to them, resulting in societal breakdown. He uses their own disbelief and rejection that Tomura's current Body Horror abilities as a natural function of his evolved body and not the reusult of a quirk to underscore how his claims are simply the facts. All For One further goes on to claim that it is necessary for the world to be ruled over and controlled by him, as he will not allow persecution between different groups, and will rule over all with impartially. Despite this, it's also made clear that his preaching is simply nothing more than a poor cover for his desire to Take Over the World because he has the power and the ambition to.
  All For One: With this body, and this power, all will come to rest in the palm of my hand. Giving rise to a world of my own, or one beyond me entirely. Appearance, Form, Function... For a world split beyond any hope of a status quo, all that awaits is schism and destruction. These massive disparities give rise to incomprehension. And that lack of understanding in turns leads to dread and rejection. That's the present state of the world, no? But under my rule, all will be exploited as the working class! All will be equal! Don't heroes yearn for world peace? Is it that hard to imagine taking a step towards that?
  • Once Eri's Rewind quirk restores him to the prime of health, with his old unhealable injuries rewound to a point they never existed, the combination of his clothing having been burned off by Endeavour's prominence burn move, the Rewind energy covering parts of his body like divine energy and the paneling all frame him like a renaissance art painting, akin to The Creation of Man, a parallel furthered when he fashions a makeshift toga out of a nearby hero's cape. Despite his otherwise holy appearance, All For One ruminates that his dream ever sicne childhood has always been to obstruct the future of the world, just because that is something a villain does to be feared by all.
• Deadly Upgrade: His words fully imply he expects using a copied version of Eri's Rewind to restore his body will be fatal. As a result, he only resorts to using it when Endeavor fatally burns him almost to ashes, as at that point he has nothing left to lose.
• Death by De-aging: Discussed. He considers his permanently-disfigured and broken body to be 'destined for the scrap heap' in favour of his ideal self as undergoing a Split-Personality Merge within Tomura's strengthened body, thus he has no issues using potentially dangerous but highly-useful abilities with his old body despite his entire endgame being to find a way to become an immortal and invincible demon lord. To this end, he 'tests out' a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk he absorbed from the Destroying Bullets to see how it will effect his broken body in place of a proper Healing Factor, despite the potential risk of him being Retgone from mishandling the quirk. This is in part because Endeavor manages to fatally burn him almost to ash, so he has nothing to lose.
• Deal with the Devil: What his services amount to. Found yourself to be Quirkless or your own Quirk is detrimental? If you can find him, he'll gladly grant you a Quirk or take yours, in exchange for loyalty towards him. Practically everyone who sought his help including Aoyama's family found out the hard way. His ultimate plan is basically forcing everybody into one of these, by causing complete societal breakdown nationwide so he can step in and use his accumulated abilities to provide for the people's needs and restore order under his rule. People will be given whatever they desire to live a life of safety and comfort, but it will mean giving All For One complete power over them.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: As All For One's character is explored throughout the series, particularly in the final arcs, he's gradually revealed to be a deconstruction of the classic comic book supervillains like Lex Luthor and the The Joker.
  • The Villain Hunt Arc deconstructs All For One's sociopathy. As befitting one called the "Symbol of Evil", All For One has all the traits of a classic sociopath: He's narcissistic, charismatic, manipulative, intelligent, and utterly devoid of empathy. And it was these traits that allowed him to rule as Japan's Shadow Dictator for a time. Ironically, however, it is because of his sociopathy that he is unable to accomplish his lifelong goal to steal One For All. As Hawks notes, to steal One For All requires a powerful will to overpower the collective willpower of the spirits residing in it. But as an unfeeling sociopath, All For One is incapable of generating the emotional willpower necessary to overcome the collective will of the Torch Bearers. Thus, his goal is to possess Shigaraki and use his body in hopes that his burning hatred for Hero society will allow him to counter the vestiges. Also, because he has no ability to form meaningful bonds or be selfless, those things are beyond his ability to grasp. As a result, every setback he suffers is normally due to his inability to understand good.
  • All For One deconstructs the idea of an Invincible Villain. For much of the story, his plans continue with little in the way of slowing down, with even being defeated factoring in. However, towards the endgame, the fact he genuinely believes himself to be invincible and his victory assured is precisely why cracks start showing and his plans begin to crumble. The heroes know All For One thinks he can't lose, so they allow him to keep thinking that until it's too late. Furthermore, being so used to things going his way leaves All For One flat-footed and unable to react properly when he's genuinely taken off guard.
  • Of the cunning, Crazy-Prepared Diabolical Mastermind. All For One is a genuinely clever and intelligent villain with grand ambitions and the forethought to achieve those ambitions over time, and has various backup plans in place in case his original plans fail, but he's so arrogant and self-absorbed that he mistakenly believes victory is an absolute certainty. The concept that his enemies might be stronger or smarter than he thinks never even crosses his mind. His attempts to isolate Izuku all end in failure, his gambit against Star and Stripe ends with a good chunk of his Quirks destroyed and Shigaraki's completion delayed, and most damningly, the heroes are able to lure him into a trap simply by acting like his plans are still proceeding as he thinks they will. When they spring it, he can't comprehend how it's possible for them to have done so. Even his Vestige in Tomura falls into this, as his inability to comprehend that Tomura might actually have connections that would interfere with their fusion and can't really think of any viable response other than 'try to do what I was doing quicker' to the point of taking his attention off the other heroes.
  • The final arcs, particularly his battle with Team Endeavor, deconstructs the Ascended Fanboy, namely demonstrating the negative aspects of this trope. What do you get when someone who constantly likens himself to a demon lord from an isekai manga he read as a child is suddenly given the power to live out his childhood fantasy? A dangerously narcissistic and megalomaniacal sociopath with delusions of grandeur. All For One, at times, seems to genuinely view the world as a real-live comic book starring him as the invincible Demon Lord. Thus, he believes that he will easily win his fight against the so-called "extras and jobber characters" and go on to have his destined battle with his real Arch-Enemy and main protagonist Midoriya. Also, because he, by his own admission, skipped the part where the heroes triumphed over the demon lord, He doesn't seem to realize that most real-live comic books lean into an idealistic edge, which means that while heroes will struggle fighting him, there is also a chance that he will be taken down just like the demon lord he so admires. Sure enough, this mindset ends up being his undoing as Jirou, Hawks, and Tokoyami, with the help of the collective wills of all the people whose Quirks he has stolen, manage to actually break his life-support mask and leave him vulnerable to a devastating attack from Endeavor.
  • His battle with Team Endeavor also deconstructs the Handicapped Badass and the Dark Lord on Life Support. No matter how much he's compensated for his disabilities, and no matter how hard he tries to hide his weakness and pretend that he's unfathomably powerful, a handicap is still a handicap, and no matter how strong he is, he's nowhere hear as strong or dangerous as he could be at full health. He's left with a massive Achilles' Heel that heroes far below his power level can exploit to weaken him and no matter how much he protects it, the damage starts piling up on it as the fighting continues, eventually leading to him basically holding his Life-Support mask together almost with sheer force of will in desperation. His damaged body also cannot contain as many Quirks as he could before, limiting the amount of strength he can bring to bear, and given he swapped out his original Quirk for a copied version to further his plans for Tomura, he discovers too late that the copied version has a weaker "authority" over the vestiges contained within it compared to the original, leaving him more vulnerable to a mental counter-attack than he was with his old Quirk. And even when he compensates for his lack of natural senses with Quirks, he's still not actually regained said senses through them, only substituted them with alternatives as a crutch. The vestiges rebelling against him cuts off his control over his Quirks and leaves him unable to sense Tokoyami rushing straight at his head with a Megaton Punch, leading to his mask getting fully shattered.
  • During the Final Battle, his Combo Platter Powers is deconstructed in his fighting style. His most dangerous ability is being able to combine various quirk effects together to create massive, devastating attacks, but these are however extremely straightforward. Furthermore, it takes All For one several minutes to properly combine his quirks together to achieve the destructive force One For All could unleash in an instant, for example, stacking 13 quirks together against All Might for a Finishing Move was only possible because the latter was on his last legs and couldn't dodge or attack him, and All For One needed to forcibly create space for himself with his Arm Cannon against the other heroes regardless. During his fight with Team Endeavour, their swift blows pressure him enough he can only react with individual quirks to fight with, of which he isn't particularly skilled with because he has so many to choose from, and he was only able to enact combos of 2-3 quirks together once he successfully made Endeavour lose his focus and took him momentarily out of the fight to get some breathing room. He obscures this weakness with a long-range fighting style, but All For One simply has too many quirks to have mastered all of them, and combining them mid-fight leaves him open to being attacked by the heroes if he has to spend too much focus on complex quirk combinations, much like Izuku couldn't think of a way to fight back against Bakugo because the latter was intentionally pressuring him with a Speed Blitz.
• Dented Iron: As unbelievably powerful as he is now, the injuries that All Might inflicted on him means he's nowhere near as powerful as he used to be. All Might notes this when All For One comments on his diminished strength, pointing to the life support system he constantly has to be on. This is exploited during the final battle as the main goal of the heroes is to weaken him by targeting his life support helmet. He in turn also exploits the state of his body as an excuse to test out extremely useful but potentially dangerous quirks through it, before risking letting his 'Next Me' use them, such as Eri's Rewind quirk to compensate for his lack of a Healing Factor, though he implies he fully expects it to still be fatal.
• Determinator:
  • He is completely obsessed with claiming One For All for himself (as it houses the spirit of his younger brother whom he had always wanted by his side in his schemes). His ego even permeates his very Quirk: when his protégé Tomura undergoes the intense medical procedure to transfer it to himself, he finds his master's desire consuming his thoughts. He enacts multiple plans aimed squarely at breaking Izuku's willpower to increase his chances of success in their 'rematch' and makes it clear that he will stop at nothing until he can finally absorb the quirk for good from him — even refusing to allow Izuku to be hit by Tomura's Decay wave, showcasing that this obsession runs counter to any pragmatic solutions to dealing with his 'nemesis'.
  • This pairs nastily with his preferred tactic of using psychological warfare mid-battle to get inside his opponent's heads. No matter the situation or how ineffective it seems to be at first, All For One keeps up a ceaseless barrage of verbal abuse, taunts and mockery against the heroes he's fighting, pointing out their personal failing and shortcomings, deriding the things they're putting their lives on the line to protect, and ridiculing their actions as being pointless and all for naught against him. Despite his opponents being aware of what's he's doing, he's so good at it that it has never failed to get under their skin and give him some advantage, and the longer the fight goes on, the more chances he has to get inside their heads, making prolonged combat with him a dangerous tactic.
  • When the vestiges of his stockpiled quirks rebel against him, cutting off his access to his multitude of abilities, he winds up taking several damaging blows to his Life-Support mask that shatter it to fragments because the quirks he was using to keep track of his opponents no longer respond to his will, and he notes his absolute control over his powers seems weaker than it was with his original quirk. Rather than accept his loss, he proceeds to snap, subduing all the rebelling quirk within with an almost feral intensity and literally exploding his physical body with his Combat Tentacles, both to attack the heroes surrounding him regardless of where they are are to catch and reassemble his broken mask pieces before they hit the ground, holding his Achilles' Heel together almost out of sheer force of will and absolute refusal to lose.
• Devil Complex: In his younger days, he was enamored with a demon king character in a manga he and his brother read. His admiration for the character inspired him to become the most powerful, influential villain the world has ever known. As he himself states at the end of chapter 297:
  All For One: This will be the story of how I become the greatest demon lord of all!
• Diabolical Mastermind: He was considered the King of the criminal underworld before his imprisonment in Tartarus and was immune to the law because he kept his existence shrouded in myth.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • All For One is taken entirely off guard by the heroes' plan to have Aoyama lure him into a trap. The main reason is the idea Aoyama was both able to actually deceive him and the heroes had the means to bring in back up without him knowing it, but it's clear the idea that Aoyama would actually turn on him, let alone the heroes were in on his betrayal and working with him never occurred to him. While on the surface he remains composed and brushes it off, internally he is is left questioning how it's possible.
  • His hyper-focus on Izuku and his classmates, as well as the other top heroes, leaves him unaware of the potential of other heroes who've not had a chance to shine in the narrative so far, allowing Monoma to copy Kurogiri's portal abilities and successfully turn them against All For One's assembled forces right when he thinks he has Izuku dead to rights. Shinso's powers also never factored into his plans at all, allowing the heroes to manipulate him for once simply because he didn't believe there was a quirk out there can could circumvent his Living Lie Detector ability.
  • He didn't think Hawks and Jiro's attacks were doing anything, only to be surprised when it turns out Hawks was actually hitting the same spot over and over again. He doesn't realize this until Hawks lands a vibration empowered slash that breaks his helmet open.
  • Jiro's refusal to back down despite just how much stronger All For One is combined with All For One's will being shaken by his Villainous Breakdown results in the vestiges inside him rising up and dogpiling him inside the Vestige World holding him still and preventing him from responding fast enough to Hawks and Jiro's Vibroweapon blow cracking part of his mask.
  • A literal case with Tokoyami's follow-up attack afterwards, as the vestiges' rebellion against him also disrupts his access to the quirks he was using to substitute for his destroyed senses, meaning he literally can't see or respond to Tokoyami's full-force blow coming at him head-on despite his considerable power, and winds up eating a punch powerful enough to almost complete break the mask, furthering his shock at him actually losing the fight with inferior opponents.
  • The merged vestige of himself intertwined with Tomura's psyche and personality gets this when 'Tenko Shimua', the childhood aspect of Tomura's personality and remaining innocence, briefly surfaces and assumes control of the body to shout a childish rebuttal at Mirio's assertion that he lacks any true friends, realising that despite assimilating the 'Tomura' personality entirely, there's still a mental division within his perfected self, and he's not as fully in control over Tomura's now near-godlike powers housed within his enhanced body as be previously believed.
• Dirty Coward:
  • He's not afraid of a fight thanks to his staggering power, and has no problems openly confronting his enemies face-to-face, but he will never confront anybody in a fair battle. He will manipulate the situation as much as possible to give himself as much of an advantage as he can, taking whatever cheap potshots he can manage. He takes full advantage of the fact he's fighting All Might in a crowded residential area to force him to expend his dwindling reserves of One For All protecting civilians from his intentionally wide-range attacks. After he escapes from Tartarus, he refuses to engage openly with Izuku whilst using psychological mind games to trick him into running himself ragged against his catspaws, weakening him mentally and physically so he can strike when Izuku's on his last legs. And when he does arrive to 'fight' him, he brings every ally he has on his side to mob him all at once. The heroes manage to anticipate this though, precisely because they understand how cowardly he actually is.
  • During his fight with Team Endeavor, he goes on at length about the hopelessness of the heroes opposing him without the current holder of One For All backing them up, mocking them for thinking 'Jobber Characters' can actually defeat the Big Bad, and deriding all their efforts as pointless in the face of his overwhelming power. However, when they do manage to turn the tables on him and Endeavor is about to hit him with a point-blank Prominence Burn, his last words are a panicked scream for him to stop before the fires cut him off. Even his survival of the fatal burns afterwards showcases this, as he manages to heal from the injuries through using a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk, gloating that he exploited the fact his crippled old body was expendable to test out useful but potentially dangerous quirks through it whilst keeping his 'Next Me' safe, highlighting both his fear of death and how far the heroes pushed him that he was forced to resort to the rewind quirk despite acknowledging the potential risks. Notably, he only does this when he's already about to die anyway, no matter how much of a disadvantage he was at before, implying even with his 'back up' body, he was scared enough of death not to try it if he had another choice.
• Discard and Draw:
  • Apparently, he used to have a very different power set when he first fought All Might. In a flashback showcasing his fight with Nana Shimura, he is seen utilizing gruesome landscape-altering Quirks. In the Kamino Ward battle, he seems to prefer strong ranged abilities paired with diversions and attrition strategies, specifically to counter All Might's Lightning Bruiser abilities and exploit his Hour of Power weakness until he can no longer use his quirk at all.
  • During the fight with team Endeavor they deduce that he lacks the HyperRegeneration or any similar quirks on him, meaning the injuries deal to him with stick. However, after Endeavor managed to scorch him to a charcoaled husk with a point-black Prominence Burn, he mocks the heroes for thinking he's show up for the Final Battle without a trick up his sleeve to compensate, revealing he'd managed to absorb a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk from the Destroying Bullets Tomura salvaged, using that to undo his injuries instead despite the potential risks from mishandling the quirk, due to seeing his old crippled body as disposable next to the perfected body he has in Tomura. With his body now back in the prime of health, he's twice as dangerous as he was before with no weakness the heroes can exploit, but he also acknowledges that this state is only temporary and will eventually result in him vanishing regardless, so he intends to make the most of it breaking his 'Next Me' free of the heroes' trap.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Despite being the one of the two Big Bads of the series, he's defeated by All Might in their final battle and is imprisoned. This enables Tomura to be the sole Big Bad and the new leader of the League of Villains. Eventually subverted when All For One’s consciousness possesses Tomura and frees his original body from prison, becoming the Big Bad once more. Izuku is even ultimately determined to save Tomura from his evil influence, offering so such sympathy towards his original self.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!:
  • Fitting with his narcissistic personality, when entering combat All For One goes out of his way to wear stylised and heavily-armoured Cool Masks, both for function and to maintain his image as a terrifying force of evil incarnate, covering up his facial disfigurements to project the image of an untouchable being beyond those he faces. His first mask at Kamino ward was capable of working even after All Might smashed straight through the visor on it, so long as the mouthpiece and associated machinery around the neck were suitably protected, but when Tokoyami succeeds in shattering his second mask to a greater extent than before, he goes out of his way to grab as many pieces of it with his Combat Tentacles as he can and piece them all together, including the otherwise-superficial visor pieces, almost literally trying to hold the mask and his image of an untouchable demon lord together out of sheer refusal to be seen as 'lesser' or weakened by his opponent's efforts.
  • When he successfully returns himself to a physically healthy state through Eri's Rewind quirk, despite his body and face now looking quite attractive his first order of business when he touches the ground is to use his new speed to steal a nearby hero's cape to fashion into a makeshift toga to preserve his dignity as much as he can, noting that fighting naked isn't exactly his style, despite also acknowledging that he's going to disappear shortly from the same power and needs to make every second he's still around count to break his 'Next Me' out of the heroes' trap. He's just so narcissistic that he refuses to abandon his dignity even when he's on the verge of [[Retgone erasure]].
• Dramatic Irony: He became a young Tenko Shimura's foster father after the death of his family, and was (initially) a better father-figure to him than his own biological father ever was. And then his ultimate plans for Tomura proved so horrific for him that the ghost of said father even tried to save him from accepting All For One's quirk and the side-effects that came with it, only to be rejected because of his prior abuse of the boy and his viewing his actions as 'rejecting' him again.
• The Dreaded: Though his threat has largely been diminished, when he showed up in person, even Midoriya, who went toe-to-toe with Stain and Muscular, was left frozen in terror, likening the experience to "seeing death". He, and the students who were with him, could be seen on the brink of throwing up out of sheer fear.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Back in his prime, he clearly reveled in the newfound status his Quirk gave him, at one point bragging to his brother about how his followers killed a group of people who refused to follow him even though he didn't order them to. It can be argued that he never stopped being drunk on the sheer power and potential his quirk gave him at the expense of others, and a large aspect of his Evil Plan is to set up a situation that will allow him to lord his power and control over everybody forever, after All Might successfully stripped him of his empire and limited what he could do with his original body. The aspects of his character as an Ascended Fanboy of villains and desires to succeed in reality where they failed in the comic books underscores this, as he's ecstatic when he's succeeding in his villainous plans, but an immense Sore Loser in the few rare times where a hero takes him off-guard and fails his plans, upset that they're 'spoiling his fun' and ruining what he sees as the 'proper' way for the story to turn out in reality.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: As befitting a person who self-proclaims a desire to be an invincible demon king, according to Aoyama, All For One's endgame is to plunge the entire world into social instability and anarchy to the point villains run rampant and things are hanging by such a thread that the slightest shortage of anything, be it food, water, or power, will give All For One the chance to swoop in with his stockpiled Quirks and force his will on them. All For One has no greater goal or philosophy he wants to enforce by taking over, taking over and ruling as an Evil Overlord is his endgame in and of itself. All For One admits this isn't 100 percent accurate, but close enough. When he specifies later, he reveals his real goal is to 'thwart the future of the whole world' solely to be as hated as he possibly can.

E

• Empty Eyes: Though they're absent for the majority of his appearance throughout the manga due to his facial injuries from All Might, they are briefly shown during the flashback of his rise of power that Yoichi shows Izuku through One For All, and are fittingly revealed to be this, reflective of All For One's heartless and self-centred nature. When his vestige self begins enacting a Split-Personality Merge between himself and Tomura's psyches to effectively revive himself as the 'perfected Demon Lord', Tomura's eyes being to take on this trait whenever the All For One vestige is in control, and eventually starts getting them full-time as the merging nears completion. However, when the 'Tenko Shimura' personality within Tomura's mind surfaces, his eyes regain their pupils for an instant, before visibly changing back to their dead-eyed prior state as the merged All For One/Tomura reasserts command, showing how they're now indicative of who's driving their shared body.
• Enhanced Punch: Attempted against All Might by mashing a dozen or so physical Quirks together. It's more for a symbolic reason than a pragmatic one; by destroying the Symbol of Peace with the same technique he usually employs, he hopes to shatter the populace's faith in heroes. Notably, this proves to be a mistake on his part.
• Entitled to Have You: A twisted non-romantic version that's subconsciously revealed through Shigaraki towards Midoriya. All For One genuinely believes that One For All belongs to him and the vestige of his ego attached to his quirk pushes hard for Shigaraki to steal the Quirk from Deku. Even when he fails to do so the first time, he makes it clear that he will not give up until he has stolen One For All, having enacted a complex plan spanning centuries all in the effort of taking the power regardless of the costs involved. Afterwards, he enacts multiple plans aimed squarely at grinding down Izuku in body and soul to improve his chances at success in their 'rematch' and whilst he does mention that having One For All is necessary for his overall plans, it's also made clear that he's absolutely obsessed claiming it out of a twisted desire for its immense power, even preventing Tomura from decaying the assembled heroes because Izuku was in the line of fire, making it clear that he won't allow the quirk to be destroyed before he can absorb it. To a lesser extent, this is also the case with most of his assembled quirks, as he admits to being compelled to steal a quirk if it catches his attention regardless of the practicality of it — One For All is simply the one quirk that can deny his non-consensual stealing of quirks, which informs his long-standing mania over claiming it.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Played with. While even his love is twisted, All For One truly seems to care for his younger brother, Yoichi. Despite his rebelling against him, he repeatedly tried finding a middle ground. He gave Yoichi a Quirk to help him get stronger, even making sure his body would be able to handle it. However, despite his twisted affection, it is clear that he sees his sibling as an extension of himself, rather than a full person, and his quest to take One For All can be seen as him trying to retrieve a piece of himself that refuses to comply. This is best shown when they interact in the vestige world of One For All.
    All For One: It's such a shame that I could never make you mine!
  • At first, he seemed to genuinely care about Shigaraki and wanted him to be his successor, but like his brother, me sees Shigaraki as little more than an extension of himself and he was merely grooming him to becoming his next vessel.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Fitting for someome titled the "Symbol of Evil", All For One is unable to understand concepts such as morality or selflessness. And this constantly blindsides him during the final arcs of the story.
  • All For One is defined by his sheer selfishness. As a result, selflessness is something he is fundamentally incapable of understanding, as he only sees how others can serve him, not for their value as people. He didn't understand why Yoichi continued to defy him, and gave him a Quirk in hopes that he would finally submit. That mistake would lead to the creation of One For All, and his eventual downfall. This is something his brother tears into him for in the vestige world.
  • He believed exposing All Might's true form would go towards breaking people's faith in the hero. It didn't, people still cheer him on regardless, resulting in his Heroic Second Wind and All For One's defeat.
  • As The Sociopath, All For One is fundamentally unable to form genuine connections with anything. This is one reason his 'affection' for Shigaraki and his brother is so twisted and possessive: he literally can't understand how bonds actually work.
  • In an example where he demonstrates how removed he is from humanity, All For One fails to understand what drives the good and evil sides of the conflict between Koichi and Number 6 in Vigilantes. He understands that the two of them are drawing upon some mysterious strength that keeps pushing each of them past their limits and into greater and greater levels of power to overcome the other, but fails to understand that what drives them is each one's complicated desire to become their own version of a 'great hero' and that their emotions are pushing them to constantly evolve their control of their quirks to keep fighting back, regardless of the outcome to themselves. He assumes that it's something that he'll understand if he keeps watching, only to get called out by Knuckleduster, who mocks him that as somebody who can only steal from others, he'll never understand the power that comes with being willing to sacrifice yourself to achieve victory.
  All For One: How to explain this? It's not just the Crawler now. Even Number 6, on the verge of burning away to nothing, seems to be dancing. Frolicking, even. In this ceaseless exchange of passionate blows. Where does their energy spring from!? What are their respective Quirks tapping into!? Nothing visible! Nothing I yet comprehend! Some unknown frontier, beyond the shining light. The domain beyond the singularity. How does one arrive there?!
  Knuckleduster's Shade: A scumbag collector like you would never get it.
  • His plan to wear down and isolate Midoriya was going perfectly...until Midoriya's friends got involved and instantly stopped it in its tracks. As All For One can't comprehend how bonds work, so the thought of his friends being willing to drag him back to U.A. never crossed his mind. This in turn starts unraveling his plan to undermine hero society as a whole, as they in turn start inspiring civilians to support heroes again out of empathy for the heroism Midoriya did.
  • This is part of why Star and Stripe's final gambit completely blindsides him: as it was an act of self-sacrifice in which she knew she'd die. As All For One is defined by his pure selfishness, he never thought she might sacrifice herself to do such a thing.
  • The heroes forgiving Aoyama for being The Mole and working with him to lure All For One into a trap never occurred to him, allowing Aoyama to actually deceive All For One with aid from Shinso's quirk, something he genuinely didn't believe was possible.
  • After being fatally burned by Endeavor, he activates a copy of Eri's Rewind Quirk reverse engineered from Overhaul's Quirk-Destroying bullets and equates it to a hero pulling a Heroic Sacrifice. This shows All For One is incapable of truly grasping why someone would sacrifice themselves, as his only intent in doing so is spite and only did so at all because he was dying anyway and had nothing to lose from doing so.
  All For One: Heroes don't have a monopoly on big sacrificial moments, you know?
  • The aspect of himself merged into Tomura's mentality is taken off-guard when 'Tenko Shimura' briefly surfaces to shout a childish rebuttal at Mirio's assertion that he lacks any friends, having believed that he'd assimilated all of Tomura's mind into his own and shocked that a portion of him still remains separate. 'Tenko' flashing back to the brief times he got to play with children his own age and appearance within the Mental World resembling how Tenko used to look before his traumatic quirk awakening implies that this part of Tomura is able resist All For One because it has memories of happier times despite his abusive homelife, and emotions that All For One cannot comprehend, being reliant on The Power of Hate to one-sidedly merge all of 'Tomura', but unable to do the same to 'Tenko' because he lacks memories of Tomura's rage and hatred.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • All Might, a textbook example of The Cape with a Heroic Build and a beaming smile, is an incredibly kind and upstanding man who fights For Great Justice. On the other hand, All For One is a Lean and Mean Card-Carrying Villain who does all he does For the Evulz. Both are mentors to disciples who revere them and strive to inherit the positions they once held, with numerous So Proud of You moments in between. However, All Might met Midoriya by chance, while All For One gleefully exploited the trauma Tenko suffered in order to turn him into his protégé. While All Might is something of a bumbling teacher who tries to let Midoriya find his own way, All For One goes to incredible lengths to prepare Shigaraki and gives him all the resources he needs to lead the League of Villains. Their powersets are also diametrically opposed. All Might is a Lightning Bruiser who beats foes with nothing but sheer speed, power, and his own hand-to-hand combat technique, where All For One is a Power Parasite who uses a gruesome multitude of powers in unusual combinations for devastating effects. Both All Might and All For One are Stepford Smilers, yet All Might does this to inspire hope among his rescuees. All For One has an evil mocking grin and enjoys breaking his victims.
  • To Midoriya as well. Both have Quirks that can stockpile multiple abilities for personal use. Both have an inner obsession bordering madness that drives them and both are charismatic leaders. All For One's signature colors are red and black, while Midoriya's are green and white. All For One is a Manipulative Bastard while Midoriya is The Strategist. Midoriya has difficulty in controlling One For All because his body cannot handle much output. All For One faces a similar issue: some Quirks are too advanced for his body to handle. Further illustrating this is that Midoriya is the endpoint of the long string of inheritance behind One For All that began with All For One himself, the Quirk slowly gaining greater purpose as it passes from hero to hero until it ends up in his hands. All For One is the beginning of the story's conflict, and Midoriya is tasked with bringing about its end.
    • Another interesting note is that, similar to Midoriya and Shigaraki both sporting red shoes, Midoriya receives a final version of his costume with gold highlights for the final battle that matches All For One's perfected mask's own gold highlights.
  • To Endeavor. Both are terrible fathers who submit their children to harsh abuse that eventually molds them into villains who bring about the collapse of Japan's society. While Endeavor comes to be deeply ashamed of his past actions and how they turned Toya into Dabi, and desperately tries to atone, All For One is incapable of such remorse and continues using Shigaraki to his own ends, effectively representing what Endeavor could've been if he didn't grow a conscience. The heroes even select Endeavor as All For One's main opponent during the final battle due to process of elimination, as Midoriya is the only one strong enough to defeat Shigaraki and Dabi still isn't so much a threat he demands Endeavor's attention, leaving Shoto to deal with him.
  All For One: Pitting One For All against Tomura is a deadly knife's edge to dance upon. But the most brutal part of this little scheme has to be you forcing your youngest to clean up your own mess, no matter how much it pains him. And the unceasing abuse toward your eldest child!
• Evil Is Cool: An In-Universe example; All for One used to be an avid comic reader in his youth. He states that he identified with and appreciated the villains of the story more than the heroes of the story, and this served as a reason why he decided to become a villain later on. Deconstructed as the nature of this trope shows just how shallow and childish All for One is beneath his grandiose reputation.
• Evil Is Petty: While All For One has higher goals and ambitions, he can't resist committing smaller acts of sadism, especially when it involves All Might.
  • He claims to All Might that his taking in young Tenko to be his protégé wasn't done just to have a successor, but to give a giant middle finger to both All Might and Nana Shimura by raising her grandson as a villain, pointing out how such a low blow is exactly the sort of thing he would do. Likewise, when giving Tenko the hands for his villain outfit, one of those hands (the one on the back of his head) is revealed to be Nana Shimura's, showing just how far he went to defile his legacy.
  • In the movie, Two Heroes, when he learns of Wolfram's plot to steal David's Quirk Enhancing Device, he grants him a Muscle Augmentation Quirk to aid him in the full expectation that Wolfram would fail, not because he wanted the device for himself, but just so he can give All Might more grief with the knowledge that his former sidekick turned to villainy.
  • His ultimate goal to be the 'Demon Lord', and basically Take Over the World for eternity, ultimately boils down to him being enamored with comic books and the villains therein, desiring to use the phenomena of Quirks to "role-play" a real villain and make the story end "the right way" as The Bad Guy Wins. To achieve this personal desire, he's committed countless atrocities without remorse over decades, killed and maimed hundreds of people, or had them experimented on to further his study of Quirks to amass all the power he wants and makes it clear that he'll keep doing so, all to satisfy his personal ego as an extremely warped version of an Ascended Fanboy.
  • He has already amassed a nearly uncountable number of Quirks by the present day, enough that he'd be unbeatable in a fight if not for the power of One For All, but even with his accumulated power threatening to cause a Superpower Meltdown in his body from storing more strength than he can naturally handle, rather than surrender any of it, All For One instead invested a large amount of resources and funding into Garaki's quirk research in order to find a way to "enhance his vessel" to keep hoarding power. For All For One, it's not matter of having more power than anybody else, or more quirks than he could conceivably use by himself. If he sees somebody with a Quirk that he wants, he'll take it regardless of the practicality of it, simply because he desires to, and he'd rather go through immense effort to keep what he's stolen than surrender any of it. This is part of his mad obsession with One For All — because it is the one Quirk that can resist his Power Parasite ability, he desires it all the more strongly, no matter the time or effort he has to put in to claim it, even across decades of effort.
  • After being nearly reduced to ash by Endeavor, All For One decides since he's dying anyway, he might as well try to use a reverse engineered version of Overhaul's Quirk-Destroying bullets to Rewind himself, not out of any attempt to survive, but because he's just that petty and vindictive that he'd prefer to die in the way that'll harm as many of his enemies as possible.
  • When the vestige of himself merged into Tomura is on the verge of killing Bakugo, he uses the latter's helplessness against his sheer power to deride his dreams of becoming number one hero in a world where he can to contend against the power level of One For All and All For One, mocking him that he'll forever be a side character in Izuku's story no matter how hard he tries. Notably, despite the mental fusion ongoing between Tomura and All For One making it unclear which one exactly is in command of the body, its made crystal clear that this sadistic mockery of a child's hopes and dreams right as he's about to perish anyway comes squarely from All For One.
  • He espouses to Hawks that his grand dream since childhood has always been to be seen as a universally reviled villain by everybody, pointing out that even in a world with differing values and cultures, the one act that is considered universally abhorrent by everybody is 'something that takes away the future they envision'. To which end he goes out of his way to ruin and destroy as many people's livelihoods and dreams as possible through this trope, revelling in the misery he inflicts unto others, and intends to 'thwart the future of the whole world' so that everybody recognises him as a villain to be loathed and feared above all. Punctuating this, he casually steals a nearby hero's quirk as an afterthought after stealing her cape to fashion into a makeshift toga, despite acknowledging that Eri's rewind quirk will shortly kill him, and thus he has no chance of being able to put it to practical use.
• Evil Knockoff: Gran Torino notes that All For One radically changed his fighting style since the last fight with All Might, and judging from the heavy use of appropriately hideous and overpowered strength and wind Quirks, it's implicit that All For One has been taking pages out of All Might's book.
• Evil Mentor: He is the one who raised Shigaraki to be the villain he is. As he is imprisoned in the super villain jail, Tartarus, he even echoes All Might's line to Midoriya when thinking of Shigaraki, "Now...it's your turn."
• Evil Overlord: His ultimate dream is to become an invincible demon king. What we know of his reign before All Might defeated him implies he had basically become Japan's Shadow Dictator. This time around, he wants to not only be much more overt, but Take Over the World and turn it into a dystopia bound to his will.
• Evil Plan:
  • Chapter 329 has him confirm privately to Spinner that all the events that have proceeded in the manga thus far are part of his overarching grand ambitions, but that, contrary to what the latter thinks, it is not merely to steal One For All for himself— rather, that is the 'Midgame Goal' and a necessary step for him to achieve his final objective, though he's intentionally unclear about what exactly that is, save that he's been preparing for it for a long time with his extended lifespan.
  All For One: I've planned ahead for a long life.
  • Chapter 343 somewhat expounds on this, as Aoyama reveals that his parents told him something of All For One's overall goals. Firstly, the societal breakdown he's created in Japan has tanked the value of the yen and forced multiple Japanese corporations into bankruptcy, in tandem with All For One's allies in other counties enacting coordinated uprisings to further spread the chaos worldwide. Thus, internal aid will not be sent to stabilize Japan as said countries work on prioritizing their own stability and Japan's society devolves into one seeking stability at any cost. All For One would then monopolize certain quirks he's stockpiled over the years to provide necessary resources for the citizens, such as water or electricity on demand, taking control of the country and rebuilding it in his image, before using that as his starting point to turn his attention to subjugating other countries as well. All For One admits that said Aoyama's explanation isn't 100% accurate, but is close enough to outline the idea.
• Evil Smells Bad: Not him, but the black ooze used for his Warping Quirk is said to smell really bad:
  Twice: This black stuff reeks! I love it!
• Evil Sounds Deep: Comes with being voiced by Akio Ōtsuka. John Swasey gives him a menacingly deep voice as well, helped by the filter in his helmet.
• Eviler than Thou: Pulls a version of this on Tomura when he does his grand reentry into the story employing Grand Theft Me on him to hijack his body and free his original self from Tartarus. He claims to genuinely respect Tomura and his tenacity, and wants to merge their personalities together into one superior being so he can become a Physical God, yet it becomes clear this amounts to just creating a superior clone of himself at Tomura's expense. Tomura fights tooth and nail to stop the merger. At present, he is losing the battle since he accepted the original All For One quirk all too easily.
• Eyeless Face: No nose either. Everything above his upper lips is nothing but a mass of scar tissues. This winds up biting him in the ass during the Final Battle, as despite compensating for his destroyed senses with any sensory quirks he could find, these are no true substitute or replacement for his original senses, and the fact he has to rely on a crutch like a quirk to fight anywhere close to his original power means that when that crutch is unexpectedly removed, he's left extremely vulnerable and unable to keep track of his opponents in a pitched fight, which they don't hesitate to exploit for all it's worth. When he reveals that he's successfully absorbed a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk to compensate for his lack of healing, it's punctuated by the shot of his right eye and left ear growing back from the quirk's effects, demonstrating how his crippled body is being rebound to a point before All Might permanently injured him.

F

• Face Framed in Shadow: Most of the flashback sequences have him as this. Even in sections where his facial features are mostly visible and intact, there is always a black band of shadow placed over his eyes, evoking his present appearance, as well as symbolising his true heartless nature underneath his polite mannerisms.
• The Faceless: His face is first hidden in shadow, then by his mask. Even after All Might breaks it off, he still kind of counts. The clearest image of his face shown so far in the manga is shown hanging over the UA traitor's head◊, visually demonstrating the absolute control he has over them. When Endeavor nearly kills him with a point-blank Prominence burn, he activates the variant of Eri's Rewind quirk he managed to scavenge from the Destroying Bullets to counter the damage, rewinding not only his present injuries, but his past, unhealable ones, demonstrated by his face regrowing his eyes and ears once more.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: When Eri's harvested Rewind energy restores his original appearance, undoing the otherwise unhealable disfigurements that were his trademark appearance before, he's revealed to have this. Fitting of a man whose charisma and manipulation skills with the masses were one of his greatest assists in tandem with his powers, his appearance is that of a ruggedly handsome man, not to dissimilar to that of an idealised hero, and the paneling even frames him as if he were a messiah figure gazing down upon those beneath him. However, everything about his actual personality demonstrates him to be one of the most evil, twisted and morally irredeemable villains in the series, and his almost angelic grace is offset by his soulless gaze hinting at his true monstrous nature behind his superficial charms.
• Facial Horror: All Might left his head so mangled that the top half of his head is nothing but a mass of scar tissue with no eyes, nose, or ears. He originally had white hair and red eyes. It doesn't get any better-looking when his missing features start growing back.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • As Hawks points out: his sociopathy is one of his biggest weaknesses. His pride bites him in the butt on several occasions, he's fundamentally incapable of genuinely caring for anyone but himself, and most importantly for his long term goals. As sociopaths have shallow emotions, he literally can't become intensely emotionally invested in anything. Not even his grudge with One For All and its Torch Bearers can get enough of an emotional response from him to actually genuinely care about the threat of either as much as he should. So, despite his immense willpower, he is psychologically incapable of being emotionally invested enough to overcome the combined will of the vestiges in One For All, making it impossible for him to steal the Quirk. His sociopathy also leaves him with multiple blind spots in his planning, as he literally can't comprehend how selflessness, bonds, and other emotions stemming from caring about things beyond yourself work. This results in him mistakenly showing up to the Final Battle after he believed he's perfected his Split-Personality Merge with Tomura into a singe consciousness, only to be taken off-guard after the fighting revealed that Tomura's childhood self of 'Tenko' still persisted separate from him, as he was only capable of merging the negative aspects of Tomura into himself.
  • Fittingly for someone who aspires to be a demon lord, Pride. All For One is a genuinely powerful and intelligent villain, but he tends to buy too much into his own hype. Never once does he consider the possiblity that he could lose or that his opponents are smarter or stronger than he anticipates. This frequently bites him in the ass during the final arcs of the series. His plan to isolate Midoriya backfires, his fight with Star and Stripe ends with him losing several of his Quirks, and the heroes manage to lure him and the League of Villains into a trap for the final battle. He often sabotages himself solely to play into his own need to prove his superiority over his opponents, which has allowed people who should be far beneath him in power to gain critical blows on him in the final battle.
  • His sheer and utter Greed is astonishing to witness, and another thing that frequently comes around to impede him. One of the more prominent examples is the fight with Star and Stripe: had he settled for killing her rather than attempt to steal New Order in an extremely risky situation, he would've reaped the benefits and likely been able to steal One For All faster than he'd hoped and crush the heroes. But the allure of combining New Order with a Quirk like One For All, which boosts all Quirks it combines with, was too much for him to resist. His plan falls apart spectacularly, as you would expect. It was his sheer greed that made him deliberately avoid killing the wielders of One For All for nearly two centuries. He wanted the Quirk for himself and to grow as powerful as possible before that point, so he deliberately let holders live until they passed it on to a successor. He allowed One For All to evolve to the point that it could defy his attempts to steal it and overcome him in combat out of pure avarice.
  • As ironic as it is for someone as manipulative and cunning as All For One, it becomes clear he has yet another one: predictability. It's the exact thing he regularly mocks the heroes for. All For One relies on keeping his hand hidden and what his actual goals are in the shadows... but once the heroes do know what those goals are and see what he has available to use in carrying them out, All For One's mix of sadism, egotism, and selfishness makes it very easy to predict how he's going to carry them out. All the heroes need to do to lure him into a trap is have his mole tell him 'I have Deku in an isolated place with no one around' and sit back while All For One takes the bait hook, line, and sinker in the exact way they expect him to: summoning every villain and ally he has on his side to one location to attack Izuku at once. Because such an unfair move was the simplest way he could rub Izuku's total defeat in his face. All For One himself foreshadowed this in his confrontation with All Might when he revealed who Tomura actually was.
  All For One: You know it to be true, because it's just the kind of thing I'd do.
  • His sadism. All For One commits acts of petty cruelty both large and small so regularly, he almost seems compelled to do so, as if he can't resist hurting others either mentally or physically if the opportunity arises, even if there are other methods that would achieve the same end result. If faced with a choice between two options, All For One will always pick the one that leads to the suffering of others for his own amusement, which in turn, makes him extremely predicable despite his intentionally vague explanations of his plans and goals to help obfuscate the heroes' attempts to thwart him. When the heroes are struggling to locate all the various scattered villains in hiding awaiting All For One's signal to rise up against them, they instead allow him to believe he's lured Izuku into a trap, isolated and alone, and wait until he summons all his scattered forces into one place just to gang up on the lone Kid Hero before arriving en-masse to attack all their prime targets in one location. All For One himself would arguably have been enough to subdue Izuku at that point, or even just a few of the elite villains in addition to himself that he could have summoned, but he just couldn't resist the opportunity to crush Izuku's spirit with the full might of his forces all together, which allowed the heroes to settle things in one Final Battle based simply off the fact that he'd choose the most sadistic method of defeating Izuku possible.
  • All For One is an expert at planning for everything he can think of, but it's implied the fact he's so used to everything going to plan, he doesn't know how to react when they don't. This leaves him on the backfoot, frantically trying to convince himself he's still in control rather than actually adapting to the situation.
  • He embraces the changes to the world brought about by the advent of quirks, due to his genuine love of comic books in his youth, ecstatic at the chance to effectively be a real-life supervillian straight from his childhood fantasies. However, he has basically been 'role-playing' being the Demon Lord for so long, he looks upon everything as if it were a real-life comic book, and ascribed to the rules therein. This correlates with his tendency to underestimate his opponents, as he sees himself as being the all-powerful, untouchable Demon Lord whose only real challenge to his rule is the holder of One For All, and any other opponents won't meaningfully inconvenience him because it's impossible for the Big Bad to lose against 'minor characters' in a fight. This leads to him not taking the fight with Team Endeavor with any seriousness, especially once he incapacitates their main attacker, thinking that the rest won't be much more than mere 'sacrifices' to showcase his strength. Instead, their earnest opposition of him motivates the vestiges within his quirk to hold him still long enough for them to shatter his life-support mask and seriously inconvenience him, showing that All For One's belief in superhero tropes actually blinds him to the reality of his situation and makes it easier for the heroes to take him off-guard.
  • Though expressed subtly, Impatience. All For One is well aware of the value of patience and playing the long game, especially when it comes to ensuring that no matter what, his ultimate victory is assured through planning for every possible situation. However, when he's close to, but not quite, within reach of his goals, he becomes noticeably eager to succeed and 'win', getting tunnel vision in his efforts to achieve his desired victory. When Tomura first awakened and their mental assimilation began, his obsession with stealing One For All was so powerful it made Tomura head straight for Izuku and made it easier for the heroes to somewhat corral Tomura's rampage, limiting the potential damage he could unleash, and he only stopped his attempts to pursue Izuku when he finally forced Tomura to begin stealing One For All from him and verified that he wasn't quite at the stage where he could steal One For All. His singular focus with tormenting and targeting Izuku afterwards allows the heroes to eventually outmanoeuver him despite his plans, based partially on the fact they know he won't resist the first opportunity he sees to steal One For All at Izuku's lowest point. His desire to steal New Order likewise blinded him to the possibility of retaliation from Star and Stripe, who boody-trapped the quirk with one of her rules, aware he'd never consider the possibility with his prize within his grasp, leading to the destruction of several of his stockpiled abilities within his 'Perfect Demon Lord'. He refused to engage Izuku until he'd completed his mental assimilation with Tomura to increase his chances of success, but at the same time, his eagerness to steal One For All lead to him overlooking the fact he'd only assimilated the negative aspects of Tomura, and his positive traits were still capable of resisting him within, leading to him discovering this mid-fight when it was too late to fix his mistake. And befitting his controlling nature, whilst he's confident and willing to patiently await his victory when his envisioned schemes are underway, when he's genuinely taken off-guard, he becomes irritable and hasty to take any action to reassume control over his situation immediately, leading to him making further mistakes that allow the heroes to press their advantage.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • All For One is glib towards everyone and his incredible charisma allowed him to amass a following of devoted servants when he ruled Japan. That said, he often laces his politeness with barbs and jabs at his opponents. This is best seen when All Might visits him in prison. At first, he greets All Might as if they were two old friends, but soon tries to get under his skin by making an educated guess about the current state of society and mocking All Might's powerlessness, smiling all the while.
  • All For One offered support to the traumatized Tenko Shimura. Even when he repeatedly failed, All For One calmly encouraged to him to keep trying. However, he slowly warped Tenko's mind against heroes while keeping him emotionally dependent on him: he sees even him as nothing more than a pawn for his twisted ideals.
  • When he meets Yoichi Shigaraki and Nana Shimura in the vestige world, All For One treats the whole thing as if it's a big family reunion, but his polite conversation is laced with insults towards Nana and Midoriya.
• Finishing Move: He tries one against All Might, combining Springlike Limbs, four Kinetic Boosters, three Strength Enhancers, Proliferation, Hypertrophy, Rivet and Spearlike Bones into his right arm for a devastating blow, in sync with Impact Recoil to crush All Might's attempt to block. Ultimately, this was an error.
• Flat Character: Played for Horror. He's an evil asshole who revels in spreading misery to those around him and will shamelessly exploit everybody who comes into contact with him for his own benefit, and that's all there is to his personality. Any Hidden Depths he appeared to have towards Tomura or his subordinates are revealed to be mere falsehoods in the end, and it eventually becomes a plot point that All For One is incapable and unwilling to change his nature from being such a monstrous person, seeing it as a sign of his superiority over others, even when it handicaps his ability to successfully steal One For All. He even goes to the extent of manipulating Tomura into undergoing Character Development for him so he can use that to achieve his ambitions, rather than change himself. His utter lack of any redeeming traits is highlighted by the fact he's the oldest character in the series, but has actively resisted changing his nature for all the untold years he's spent alive, and demonstrates the worst traits of humanity at every possible opportunity almost out of a compulsive need to flaunt his heinous nature just to mock his enemies.
• Flashback: The original One For All user, Yoichi, shows Midoriya flashbacks about All For One. His personality and megalomaniac ideals are explored upon.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the vestige vision Izuku receives upon beginning to pass the singularity with One For All, Yoichi is seen futility attempting to prevent his brother from preforming a quirk transfer between a quirkless person and a Quirk-user whose mutation has warped his appearance and lead to him offering Fantastic Racism, warning the two that taking his offer would be nothing but harmful for them in the long run. It's later shown that taking a similar deal was how All For One was able to create the U.A. traitor, a fact they very much regret by the present time.
  • His inability to comprehend altruism, on full display during his battle with All Might in Kamino Ward, plays into the later reveal that his sociopathic nature handicaps his ability to steal One For All. As he can't understand what it's like to care for something beyond your own wellbeing, he cannot grow as a character, and thus has remained the exact same Card-Carrying Jerkass for generations. This is why One For All can't be assimilated by his Power Parasite abilities, as it is comprised of people whose collective Heroic Willpower are too strong for him to ever overcome without a strong emotion like Shigaraki's hatred.
  • He waxes lyrical to the immobile Izuku and Nana Shimura when they briefly meet inside the vestige realm during his first attempted absorption of One For All, mentioning his own experiences with the vestiges of his former victims and how they were antagonistic towards him in his dreams until he passed the associated quirk to another. This antagonism comes to the fore during his battle with Team Endeavor, as Jiro's defiance of him and resolve to fight regardless of his power succeed in motivating all the vestiges stored within himself to rebel against him as one, leaving him vulnerable at a crucial moment and allowing the heroes to badly damage his life-support mask before he regains control.
• For the Evulz: To put it simply, All For One doesn't care for anyone and has only three interests in life: rule the world from the shadows; enjoy himself at the expense of everyone ^note by either corrupting his subordinates or breaking the spirit of his opponents and steal One For All some day.

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