Characters / My Hero Academia All For One Tropes G To N

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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G

• Game-Breaking Injury: His first battle with All Might left him barely alive with most of his head destroyed. As he couldn't obtain a regeneration Quirk until after it had partially healed, he was left with most of his sensory organs destroyed, severely weakenedability to use his Quirk, and dependent on constant life support to survive. While he is a force to be reckoned with, he's nowhere near as powerful as he was in his prime.
• God-Emperor: His true endgame is to rule humanity as a functional deity, accumulating so much strength and so many Quirks using Shigaraki's body that the world will have no choice but to depend on him for resources after throwing the global economy into chaos. The only obstacles in his way after forcing All Might into an early retirement and eliminating Star and Stripe, deterring foreign countries from aiding Japan, are Izuku and Japan's remaining heroes. If he were to acquire One For All, this goal would become a certainty and the world would be trapped in a shadow dictatorship for the rest of time.
• Godzilla Threshold: He managed to get a copy of Eri's Rewind Quirk from the Quirk-Destroying bullets, but it runs the risk of deaging the target until they cease to exist and he phrases using it at all as a 'big sacrificial moment', implying he doesn't expect to survive using it. As a result, despite being clearly losing, having his Quirks rebel and his life support mask destroyed, he still doesn't use it until Endeavor has fatally burned him nearly to ashes.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Not him, obviously, but it's clear that, in the few times he's able to have a conversation with them, he takes great enjoyment out of the fact that the heroes cannot wrap their heads around the idea that he doesn't need a reason to be such a vile scumbag of a human being, mocking them for thinking that he has to have a tragic past or greater motivation for his monstrous deeds than his own self-satisfaction. Fittingly, the opposite number turns out to be much more applicable to him as time goes on, especially once the heroes do start to gain an understanding of his mentality— specifically, the flaws in his thinking and irrepressible urge to commit evil whenever possible make him extremely predictable.
• Greater-Scope Villain: For the entire franchise.
  • All Might put an end to a criminal empire that ruled Japan from the shadows when he defeated All For One for the first time. Since then, the villain pivoted his influence and resources to raising Shigaraki into a proper successor by creating the League of Villains for him to lead. Furthermore, he is the presiding evil across the entire timeline from the first generation of Quirk users all the way up to the present, and he comes back with a vengeance for the story's Final Act to reclaim the title of Big Bad for himself.
  • He's this in the first movie. When villains got together to steal David Shield's device, All For One made a point of granting their leader extra superpowers. The idea of All Might finding out his best friend is doing something evil put a smile on his face.
  • He's ultimately a Subversion for the Todoroki family storyline. Garaki reveals that he and All For One were on the lookout for 'twisted warped seeds' that could serve as his vessel beyond just Tomura, and had actually accumulated a sizeable number of children for that purpose. Toya Todoroki was one of those children, rescued by All For One himself atop the burning mountaintop after he self-combusted from losing control of his flames and then having Garaki rebuild his body through extensive surgery over three years whilst he was in a coma. However, despite All For one's attempts to manipulate the boy upon awakening, his sheer obsession with being recognized by his father lead him to reject All For One's offer despite all that had been done for him and burn down the orphanage to escape, becoming a villain later all on his own accord. In other words, All For One is the cause of Toya's survival, but he is not the reason he became the villain Dabi in the end. This doesn't stop him from revealing his role in Toya's survival to trick Endeavor into falling into a blind rage in order to gain an advantage against him and trick him into leaving himself open for a brutal counterattack.
  • Is also one for the prequel My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, shepherding his underlings Hachisuka and Number 6 to wreak havoc on Tokyo, particularly Koichi and Pop's home turf of Naruhata. He makes them conduct Trigger and Bomber experiments which serve as the main conflicts of the story, which eventually leads to him and Garaki developing the Nomu we see in the main series.
• Greed: All For One's Quirk is an embodiment of this, allowing him to amass unchecked power at a whim. He even admits that he can't resist stealing a Quirk that catches his interest.

H

• Handicapped Badass: He is currently blind, having used an "Infrared Ray" Quirk to faintly sense sounds and vibrations, so to remain aware of his surroundings. He's also heavily implied to be in declining health, given his constant need for life-support systems. He still overpowers every hero not named All Might, and both times All Might defeats him, it comes at a huge cost: the first time ravages All Might's internal organs, effectively cutting the time he can use One For All to a few short hours. The second time forces All Might to burn out the remaining embers of One For All, permanently ending his crime-fighting career. When he's nearly incinerated by Endeavor's firepower, he counters the damage by using a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk to undo his injuries, resulting in his face regrowing his missing eyes and ears in a manner of seconds from him getting rewound years before he was ever handicapped.
• Hated by All: Nearly everybody speaks of him with either fear, loathing, or both despite All For One claiming to have what he calls friends who will help him (read as: terrified lackeys he coerces into helping him). Even his protégé Shigaraki ends up hating him for stealing his body and trying to merge their consciousnesses without his consent. Although in that case, Shigaraki mostly Hates Everyone Equally aside from the League and Aizawa, and likely fostered resentment for his adoptive father all along deep inside for what he put him through. He later reveals to Hawks that he wants to be this, as he considers villains to be those who are universally hated and feared by everybody for their villainous deeds, and thus he goes out of his way to commit as many of these as possible and revels in the animosity he inspires in others. His ultimate end goal, every since he was a child, has been to commit the ultimate villainous act of 'thwarting the future of the whole world', so that everybody will recognise him as a hateful villain. There are only three exceptions:
  • His loyal toady Dr. Garaki, and they are both equally reprehensible human beings for engaging in Garaki's grotesque Body Horror experiments on people and conspiring to rule the world.
  • Gigantomachia, whose higher brain functions were destroyed by Garaki's aforementioned experiments making him little more than an attack dog loyal to whoever commands his respect for being the strongest. Namely All For One and Shigaraki.
  • Lastly there's his brother, Yoichi, who comes off more disappointed in All For One than hateful even after All For One implies he killed him. It could be argued Yoichi still values their sibling bond, despite everything. That doesn't stop him from constantly condemning and standing up to his brother long after his physical body has perished, there simply isn't any real malice behind it.
• Healing Factor: At some point, he managed to acquire a healing Quirk, but by that time, it was useless for restoring his body from the damage All Might inflicted on him. It is the signature Quirk of the League's Nomus. During the final battle, Endeavor notes that he doesn't have a Hyper Regeneration Quirk (having given it to Shigaraki), or any regeneration Quirk, for that matter, as their attacks are able to damage him and it will stick. However, he reveals that he'd prepared a trump card of Eri's Rewind quirk synthesised by Garaki from the Quirk-destorying bullets to counter this. He only activates it at the exact moment he's hit with a fatal attack, because once active, it can't be stopped and will eventually kill him, but with the Rewind active, he's restored to his physical prime of health and further injuries inflicted upon him heal in seconds, shown by a slice Hawks leaves on his restored face vanishing instantly, thus leaving the heroes no choice but to wait for the Hour of Power to eventually erase him.
• Hero Killer: He and his followers have become infamous for killing any heroes who try to stop them. When he starts taking the field in the latter parts of the story, at least one known hero meets their end at his hands. This is especially true of the holders of One For All: before All Might defeated him in their battle, he killed each of the wielders as soon as they had passed it on, with only Hikaga Shinomori, the fourth user, managing to evade him long enough to die of premature aging.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Inverted, as he pulls this off without actually intending to really sacrifice anything of value to himself, despite summoning the spirit of the trope from his past experience with heroes, making it come off as a mocking jab at heroes for their illogical fantasy of 'saving' people through their sacrifice.
  • The first time, he rescues Tomura and the league from their certain capture at Kamino ward, gives Tomura words of encouragement to motivate him to move past his defeat and grow into abetter villain and then stays behind to hold off All Might whilst the league escapes through Kurogiri's portal, the framing of All For One's actions making it seem like All Might is the villain and himself pulling an Obi-Wan Moment to ensure his protege survives, even at the cost of getting thrown into Tartarus for life. However, this is later revealed to be a mere falsehood. All For One considers his broken and disfigured original body disposable and honestly doesn't care what happens to it — instead, his plan is for Tomura to undergo enough Character Development to eventually develop into a hate-filled villain capable of inheriting his stored original quirk with Garaki's help, upon which the vestige of his ego then begins possessing Tomura and undergoing a Split-Personality Merge with him, effectively allowing All For One to be 'reborn' within Tomura's body as the 'Next Me', meaning that his actions were not to protect Tomura, but rather, himself.
  • When Endeavor incinerates his original body to the point of nearly dying, he again mocks them for thinking he cared about his old broken shell when he now lives on through his ideal self in Tomura, but nonetheless uses the opportunity to test out Eri's rewind quirk despite the dangers of mishandling it, comparing it to the heroes' own efforts in risking their lives and sacrificing their bodies to achieve victory, even though All For One isn't really sacrificing anything he values.
  All For One: Heroes don't have a monopoly on big sacrificial moments, you know?
• Hidden Depths: He is remarkably familiar with One For All's mental world, and isn't the least bit surprised when the previous users appear. He explains that his Quirk allows him to interact with the vestiges of its victims, and confesses to feeling unease when their specters confront him. It is clear, however, that he feels no real guilt for it.
• Hidden Eyes: In Midoriya's vision, his eyes were always twisted or blurred and his full face is never revealed. This is inverted with Vol.0 chapter, where his eyes are the only visible part of his face when he fights Nana. Season 5 of the anime reveals that his eyes were originally red. His right eye regrows from the charred husk of his burned face as part of a Wham Shot when he reveals he'd managed to access a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk, using her power to restore the injuries he'd suffered, past and present. Once his full face is restored, the Rewind energy bursting from his body covers up his left eye, but leaves his right one freely shown afterwards, demonstrating his natural soulless gaze.
• Hidden Villain: He first appears talking through a computer screen up until later in the story, so for the first part, the audience won't know who he is, what he looks like, etc. just that he's plotting something with Shigaraki as his direct underling. His face shows up after the conflict with Stain, but he maintains himself Shrouded in Myth even then.
• History Repeats: All For One is only known to have permanently meshed together multiple Quirks to form a new one twice: once accidentally making One For All and creating Warp Gate. This ends up blowing up in his face both times, as Monoma copies Warp Gate as part of the plan to finally bring him down, something only possible because it counts as a single Quirk.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Occurs several times, as befits a Classic Villain whose name echoes the sin of Pride.
  • Was brought down in the past by the very Quirk he had (inadvertently) created. Notably, this was a partially self-inflicted example, as All For One was well aware that One For All was growing more powerful through the generations and was capable of being passed only to heroes who would oppose him to their dying breath, but his absolute obsession with absorbing and subjugating the quirk and it's immense power meant that he actively avoided killing any of the holders before the next user received it, effectively allowing the Master-Apprentice Chain to succeed and One For All to grow powerful enough to nearly kill him by All Might's generation. Even afterwards, he still hasn't learned his lesson, as his vestige self actively prevents Tomura from spreading his Decay against the heroes so long as Izuku is in the line of fire.
  • All For One's quirk can only 'Give or take' other quirks, not destroy them outright. When Star and Stripe booby-traps New Order with a rule that makes it revolt against other quirks as All For One absorbs it, the quirk immediately begins tearing Tomura's body apart from the inside and permanently destroying several of the stockpiled quirks All For One has accumulated over the generations. Since he can't destroy the quirk outright, All For One cannot stop the assault, leaving his only option being to offload it to somebody else to save himself— and since he turned Star to dust as they were fighting over the ocean, and forced his Nomu transportation to self-detonate to give him an opening to steal her quirk, there's nobody else around he can offload it onto. The time it takes for him to flee to the mainland to find somebody to pass the quirk onto is more than enough for New Order to tear itself apart in the process of permanently damaging All For One's quirk, making all his efforts to empower himself further All for Nothing.
  • His hyper-focus on Izuku— and by extension, his allies and the remaining top heroes still in active duty— leaves him blind to the actions of heroes-in-training who haven't been involved in his long-term plans to steal One For All and destabilize society at the same time. Monoma is able to use his quirk to utilise Kurogiri's versatile ability to summon an army of heroes arrayed against him right as he's summoned every remaining Villain on his side against Izuku. Shinso being able to control his pawns into communicating falsehoods to him leads to him walking right into the heroes' trap fully confident in his victory, and left utterly dumbfounded when the tables turn on him. He'd accurately predicted every move Izuku would make— aware that as the successor to One For All, he'd eventually become a greater threat to him than All Might— but that means he couldn't predict the actions of people who were beneath his notice.
  • He made Kurogiri the first Nomu, but instead of having multiple different Quirks inside him, All For One made a single artificial, Warp Gate, composed of multiple ones. Because it's only one Quirk rather than multiple working together as with All For One himself and the other Nomu, Monoma was able to copy it wholesell.
  • With his original body is badly damaged, he swaps his original All For One quirk for a copied version of the same power so the vestige of himself stored within the original can undergo a Split-Personality Merge with Tomura in order to use his boundless hatred to finally steal One For All. During the fight with Team Endeavor, the consequences of this decision gradually start to backfire upon his original body. He has accumulated a multitude of quirks throughout his lifespan all out of his desire to have more power than anybody else and to enact his dream of being a real-life 'Demon lord'. Though he is plagued by bad dreams of the vestiges of his victims, he's strong-willed enough to subdue them and use their powers for his own gain without interference. However, switching to a copied version of his quirk apparently weakened his control over the vestiges, allowing them to rebel against him at a crucial moment and leave him vulnerable to take irreparable damage from the heroes whilst he's off guard. Giving Tomura as many powers as he could to ensure his 'next me' would be both all-powerful and invincible means that All For One himself lacks those same powers, such as Hyper Regeneration, meaning he's nowhere near as durable as Tomura and can be whittled down over a prolonged battle. Finally, him having been planning on confronting Izuku in a battle rather than the opponents he actually ended up fighting meaning he devoted much of his available powers towards abilities that could handle a Lightning Bruiser in a fight, meaning some of his powers like Impact recoil are useless agaisnt the flame-wielding Endeavor.
  • He revels in his inability to feel guilt or remorse for his evil deeds, seeing it as a sign of him being naturally superior to other humans who are burdened with them instead, instilling in Tomura his mindset that strength, and the ability to use that strength to shape the world around you to your whims without caring for those caught in the crossfire, is the only that that truly matters in the world, and speaking contemptuously of 'ordinary' people when confronting Nana and Tomura. However, his inability to understand positive emotions not only leads to him getting blindsided in multiple ways by the heroes during the Final Battle, but also handicaps his ultimate plan for Tomura. As All For One can only comprehend the negative side of people and how to manipulate them through that, he is only able to assimilate the negative aspects of Tomura's psyche, whilst the few positive traits that do exist within Tomura, however suppressed, are able to retain their individuality, and unexpectedly emerge during the fighting when All For One wrongly assumed he'd gained full control over Tomura's mind and body, genuinely concerning him over realising he's still 'imperfect'. Notably, this had nothing to do with the heroes' own efforts, and is purely down to All For One's own failure to comprehend that there is more to people than their worst instincts.
• Hope Crusher: He absolutely revels in destroying others' hopes and idealism about the world, at times seeming ecstatic at the chance to mentally destroy Izuku both for the sake of his plans and just because he is that unbelievably spiteful towards what he sees as an illogical delusion that has no place in reality. Contrastingly, Aoyama points out to him that such views and the resistance against his rule that they inspire are the one thing he fears and abhors above all, which is why he demonstrates anger towards All Might whenever he's thwarted by those who were inspired to be heroes by his example.
  Aoyama: You fear the world learning that Japan isn't finished yet, and you fear Japan inspiring the world to unite once more. So today is the day, and this is the place where you fall!
  • He later espouses his opinion to Hawks that being this is the epitome of what defines a Villain, which is why he goes out of his way to invoke this with everybody he interacts with in ways large and small, punctuated by him stealing a nearby hero's quirk, as well as her hopes of a future using her abilities to protect others, almost causally as an afterthought, despite acknowledging that he's soon going to die and take her powers with him before he could make practical use of them. He even reveals that his grand goal that he's been aiming to achieve through his villainous plans since childhood, is to successfully destroy the world's hope through his oppressive rule over all, just so that he'll be seen by all as a universally reviled and feared villain in a class of his own.
  All For One: It's simple. I'm quite influenced by comics. The world always fears the big bad villain. Why do you think that is?...In a world teeming with myriad cultures and values, "bad stuff" would be an act that universally makes the masses turn up their noses in disgust. An act that thwarts the future they envision. So I intend to thwart the future of the whole world. That's all I've ever wished for.
• Humans Are Insects: His god complex and obsession with quirks means he tends to look down upon people in general if they don't serve a purpose in his grand plans and sees them mainly as walking containers for their powers than individuals with their own thoughts and feelings. This crops up a bit with his original self sincerely seeing the events unfolding around him as if he were living a real-life comic book, claiming that 'Jobbber Characters' like Izuku's classmates have no chance against the 'Demon Lord', and referring to them in terms of their closeness to One For All. His wording even implies that he doesn't see Izuku himself as anything less than a convenient means of finally stealing One For All, a mere vessel for the quirk rather than an opponent to be taken seriously. The vestige version of himself merged into Tomura, in the process of becoming the 'perfected demon lord', really lets this show, looking down on all his opponents' efforts as futile attempts to overcome an all-powerful god, and riding a constant power high as he adapts to or destroys every tactic they pull against him.
  All For One (Through Tomura): (After expelling Amajiki's poison through a mouth grown on his body) Pathetic!! My body continues to adapt!! Scurry away like insects! Nothing can bring me down!
• Hunk: When he rewinds further to his prime in Chapter 363, he is revealed to have a chiseled jaw and refined, almost beatific looks that complements his tall height and muscular physique. However, even with his good looks, his regenerated dead eyes underscore the monster that hides beneath his mask of humanity.
• Hypocrite:
  • During his fight with Endeavor, he tries to get under his skin by bringing up his abuse of his children, lambasting him for forcing Shoto to clean up his mess by having him battle Dabi. While he isn't entirely wrong, those words ring hollow coming from a man who himself groomed a little boy for the express purpose of turning him into his new vessel for his Quirk and Vestige. Hawks' mental narration makes it clear that All for One doesn't actually give a damn about being right or having any kind of moral superiority over Endeavor, he just wants to use whatever advantages he can to unsettle his opponent and regain control of the fight and his situation.
  • On several occasions, he lambasts others for not knowing when to quit even when they really should. When things start turning against him to the point his life support system is destroyed, he can't stand the fact he's been humiliated to the point he keeps fighting in a rage. In fact, he does this while accusing Endeavor of the same thing.

I

• I Control My Minions Through...: In the past, All For One was shown to control his minions by giving them Quirks, thus indebting them to him. However, he's also shown a talent for manipulating people frustrated with hero society through their philosophical ideals, such as feeding Shigaraki those ideals and using them to groom him, or appealing to Lady Nagant's to convince her to work for him. Part of what makes him such a Manipulative Bastard is that, whatever the reason for those people's convictions, he's convincing them to fight to tear down one of the only things keeping him from turning Japan into his own personal dictatorship.
• I Need You Stronger: He always knew who the wielders of One For All were since the Quirk's creation. He let them think they evaded him long enough to empower the Quirk as much as possible and killed them as soon as he confirmed that they passed it on. All so that he could make the Quirk as strong as possible before he stole it. By the time All Might came along, One For All had grown powerful enough to overwhelm him in battle and repel any attempt of his to take it, which only made him more obsessed with having it.
• I Reject Your Reality: In Chapter 333 All For One thinks back to the discussions he had with Yoichi about the comics they would read together and how the hero would always triumph in the end. All For One states that, contrary to what Yoichi thought, he was aware of how the stories ended, he just choose to stop reading at that point because he didn't like the outcome.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Before he was horribly disfigured by All Might. All For One used to look like a clean-shaven man in his late 20s, having an imposing build (if not outright muscular), chiseled facial features, and a mop of white hair. His red eyes are still shrouded in shadows. It's later revealed that Dr. Garaki had given him his Life Force Quirk, which slows aging and extends lifespan at the cost of athleticism. His lost looks start growing back when he uses Eri's Rewind quirk to counter the burn damage from Endeavor's flames, but by that point, it's not a pretty sight to see.
  • Played completely straight in Chapter 363 as he rewinds further into his prime, revealing his chiseled jaw and angelic facial features, looking almost like a textbook example of a hero, befitting his desire to become the 'saviour' for humanity... as its overlord and ruler.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • A more symbolic than literal example — though he is capable of forming mouths on his elongated body parts as weapons to attack and rip chunks out of his opponents through his various amalgamated quirks. When the vestiges within his copied quirk successfully rebel against him due to the copy possessing a weaker authority over them than the original and proceed to hold him still whilst the heroes successfully land some major damaging blows whilst he's weakened and disoriented, he snaps as the realisation that he's actually losing hits him, his vestige self deforming into a monstrous shape that appears to consume the vestiges attacking him whole, representing how he's violently suppressing their consciousness to keep control at any cost.
  • Relatedly, his Greed and desire for any quirk he takes a fancy to, preying on and 'feasting' upon any 'delicacies' or interesting quirks he finds regardless of the amount he's stockpiled already, has shades of a Villainous Glutton, aided by the fact he refuses to relinquish any of his abilities even at the risk of a Superpower Meltdown, and has instead devoted significant effort into expanding the capacity of his 'vessel' to contain all that power and as much as he desires besides that. This is furthered by the fact that the vestiges contain the imprint of the original user within them, which All For One can interact with after he's stolen it, giving the impression the vestige realm within his quirk houses the souls of all those people he's 'devoured' over the years. His treatment of One For All, allowing it to accumulate power despite the potential risk it poses in opposition to him because of his desire to wield that self-same power himself, has elements of him intentionally fattening up a meal in preparation for the day he's finally ready to consume it.
• Immortals Fear Death: In the 'not quite immortal but powerful' catagory, All For One has lived for over a hundred years and is nigh unkillable, but the only time he's ever displayed genuine fear is when Endeavor is on the verge of killing him and most of his planning revolves around 'upgrading' from his crippled, aging body to a young, fresh one. Of note, even in his 'expendable' old body, he only resorts to using his copy of Eri's 'Rewind,' a potentially fatal gambit he doesn't expect to survive, when he's already fatally wounded and going to die anyway. His mental references to his near-fatal defeat at All Might's hands and how 'wounded heroes are the scariest' throughout fights when he's struggling to put his opponents down imply that he gained a massive trauma from the one time his accumulated powers, abilities and plans failed to prevent him from almost dying after centuries of being an unbeatable 'Demon Lord' and how he's ultimately Not So Invincible After All.
• Immortality Seeker: While he as already extended his life for two centuries, All For One wants to find a way to live on forever as part of his dream of being an eternal Demon King. Part of why he funded Dr. Garaki's experiments is to make that fantasy a reality.
• Invincible Villain: All For One has proven to be practically unstoppable. Until the very end of the series, nothing has been able to inflict lasting damage to him or his schemes. Even in his crippled state, All For One is such a menace, that any hero who rises against him is instantly defeated, regardless of their strength or skill. All Might defeated him twice, but was unable to kill him despite his best efforts, and was unable to win without sustaining serious injury in the process. In his prime, All For One was on another level of his own. Indeed, his first true loss in the series comes at the cost of the strongest hero in the world, whose quirk was an outright Reality Warper, having to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to stop him, and even then, the method she used to beat him relied upon indirectly weakening him rather that outright overwhelming him with her quirk, because the enhancements he'd made to Tomura's body meant that not even pulling a direct hit with a [WMD] was enough to stop him. Even after the the original All For One's body is reduced to a charcoal husk during his fight with team Endeavor, he survives an immediate death and starts regenerating despite lacking a healing factor, due to having absorbed a variant of Eri's rewind quirk to compensate, horrifying the heroes at his apparent refusal to die despite everything they do to him.
• Ironic Echo: All For One ends up borrowing significant lines from two of the main heroes and delivering twisted variations on them.
  • At the start of the series, Midoriya declares that this is the story of how he became the world's greatest hero. When All For One uses Tomura Shigaraki to recover his original body from Tartarus, he declares that this is the story of how he became the perfect demon lord. It's like he's trying to usurp him as the main character, which befits his monstrous ego.
  • After All Might defeats All For One in Kamino, he says, "You're next!", which sounds like a warning to the other villains, but is actually a way of telling Midoriya that he's no longer the Symbol of Peace, and it's now Midoriya's turn to step up. In Chapter 316, All For One leaves a recording for Midoriya declaring that he has no interest in All Might and has moved onto Midoriya before concluding the recording with the same phrase. Given that he ended chapter 94 with his own version of the same phrase, apparently directed at only Tomura to pick up where he left off, his repetition of the same words implies that he was also referring to Izuku as his next target when he said it with All Might having then been eliminated as a threat to his plans. He also admits he couldn't stop thinking about Izuku whilst in prison, and the paneling at the end of 94 prominently features Izuku alongside Tomura in focus when he says it.
• Irony:
  • While in his prime he looked handsome with striking features hardly befitting of an evil supervillain mastermind, after his devastating fight with All Might, ended up resembling the demon king from the manga he used to love reading with his younger brother.
  • One of the reasons he was as successful an Evil Overlord as he used to be is his sociopathic nature, as it's made clear that part of his success comes from being able to accurately identify what drives people and how best to coax them to serve him loyalty, without actually feeling anything for them in return. Hawks theorizes that he's been corrupting Tomura into his heir precisely because his own sociopathic nature prevents him from taking and subjugating One For All: as the Quirk is Many Spirits Inside of One, it would take strong emotional willpower to counter theirs and absorb the Quirk; however, despite the generations-long history of animosity between AFO and the wielders, he himself cannot care strongly enough to steal the Quirk that opposes him.
  • It's later revealed through Izuku's conversation with the vestiges that people who are naturally born with a quirk cannot receive additional quirks on top of their innate one without cost. In their case, inheriting One For All resulted in Rapid Aging for the wielders as the quirk burnt up their lifespan, though only one of them lived long enough to actually perish to the side effect. Despite this, All For One was able to amass hundreds of powers without suffering the same cost. It's hinted that the reason that he's unaffected is that, as his own quirk has no effect unless it has other quirks to interact with, it technically doesn't count as a quirk in its own right, and thus allows him to stockpile quirks because his own vessel is 'empty' without other powers to fill it. In effect, like Izuku and Yagi, he's technically quirkless if he has nobody to receive powers from.
  • He prides himself on being The Chessmaster, with even setbacks factoring into his plan and his 'friends' being puppets serving his whims. The Final Battle begins with the heroes putting him in a situation where he has no control at all, and he's left isolated from everyone he could control. This means he effectively has no say in the rest of the Paranormal Liberation Front's battles with the heroes and has to rely on them to try and win by their own agency, with even his 'new me', Shigaraki, being so far away his psychic link is rendered pointless.
  • At the end of the prequel series Vigilantes, he begrudgingly marvels at Koichi's rapid improvements with his Quirk despite starting as a complete average nobody and accepts that so long as the right conditions are met, any random citizen can be inspired to do a heroic act and, eventually, become a "superman." This criteria applies strongly to Izuku, an average high school student who was physically unsuited to using One For All who still managed to become its final holder and All For One's next Arch-Enemy. All because he did perform that heroic act and proved to All Might he was worthy of being his successor.
  • He is the overarching Big Bad of the series and its related spinoffs, deeply connected to the lore of the succession about One For All and being the one who set in motion that chaotic destabilisation of society. He clearly sees himself as destined to triumph over Izuku as the current receptacle of his brother's quirk and culmination of all the heroes' efforts over the years to oppose him. Yet by the time of the Final Battle, his plans are waylaid completely due to the efforts of those heroes he overlooked as side-characters instead, who force him away from his 'destined' fight with Izuku, into combatting them instead, which he derisively mocks them for, calling them mere 'Jobber Characters' who exist only to showcase his strength and are presumptuous for sincerely thinking they have a chance to defeat the 'Demon lord' without the aid of the powerful hero at their side. Them successfully breaking part of his life-support mask during the fight serves to showcase that his opponents can defeat him even without the overarching history between All For One and One For All on their side — in fact, they almost kill him outright before he uses a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk to undo the damage.
• It Is Dehumanising: Though his constant reference to his faith in Tomura being capable of becoming the 'Next Me' initially seemed to be him believing his protege could become a better villain than him, once Tomura inherits his original quirk it's revealed that he was being very literal — the vestige of All For one attached to the quirk starts to assume control over Tomura and eventually undergo a Split-Personality Merge with him, resulting in a mental fusion of the two within Tomura's mindscape, though All For One's personality traits are becoming more dominant as time goes on. The original All For One even corrects himself when he refers to Tomura by name before shifting back to calling him his 'other self' whilst he's mid-flight with team Endeavor, showcasing that he cares nothing for Tomura's individuality and only cares about him as a literal extension of his plans to become a perfect, immortal demon lord. It's to the point that, despite the vestige merging with Tomura being independent and basically a clone of him, All For One literally cannot comprehend it, and by extension Tomura, as seperate from him at all.
• It's All About Me:
  • His Quirk name says it all. In keeping with his narcissism, he hates All Might for defeating his previous gang of villains — not because he viewed them as comrades — but because he gave them their powers and it reflected poorly on him. Not even Tomura or Gigantomachia are exceptions to All For One's egomania.
  • This shows in his 'bonds' with his brother and Tomura: while he claims to care about them, said 'care' is twisted and self-serving, more based around what they can do for him or having them almost as possessions rather than actually having any genuine compassion. More literal in Tomura's case, as All For One intends him to be the vessel for his Quirk and the vestige inside of it, and thus views him as little more than an extension of himself.

J-K

• Jerkass Genie: Sure, you can ask him for a favor like transferring a Quirk to a person, but exactly how good of a Quirk he will give out is all up to him. For example, when Aoyama's parents asked him to give their child a Quirk since he was born without one, he decided to give him an Awesome, but Impractical Quirk that actively harms his body upon use. Part of this was due to All For One giving him a Quirk stronger than his body could fully handle so he would be able to pass the UA entrance exam even without fine control over the power, but it's made clear he really didn't care for his well-being, and gave him the power partly because he couldn't be bothered to put in the effort to train him to properly handle a less-powerful but more useful Quirk.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: His adoption and wholehearted support of Tomura, a.k.a. Tenko Shimura, at first seems like the only genuinely kind deed (other than giving Yoichi a Quirk to make him more powerful) he's ever done. Some people even thought of it as a heartwarming, if twisted, father/son relationship. In the end, he didn't save Tomura because he cared whatsoever. He just did it because he knew of the child's heritage, and manipulated Tomura into being dependent on him. All to reveal that his right-hand man is the grandson of All Might's mentor turned to villainy, and emotionally shatter the Symbol of Peace. Don't let the below quote fool you; in later chapters he's perfectly fine with hijacking Tomura's body and using him like a puppet against the heroes and to break his real body out of prison. Yoichi speculates that All For One groomed Tomura as a tool to capture One For All.
  All For One: No one's come to save you, have they? You've had a hard life, Tenko Shimura. "He'll be fine, eventually the heroes will help." I'm sure that's what everyone thought as they looked away and ignored you. The world shouldn't be so unforgiving, don't worry... I am here for you.
• Join or Die: A variant. In the past, All For One managed to rule over Japan by giving Quirks to those who didn't have any and stealing Quirks from those who either didn't want them or were using them to abuse others. This earned him a legion of loyal followers whose gratitude soon turned to extreme fanaticism to the point that they killed a group of people who refused to join his faction even though he didn't order them to. Of course, he was quite happy with that.
• Kick the Dog: Has committed so many examples of this through the series and for decades before the story started that it could take up an entirely separate page, and once he gets out of Tartarus and starts taking direct action against Izuku for his endgame, he wastes no time racking these moments up one after another non-stop, all for the purposes of breaking the young hero's spirit and making it easier for him to achieve his overall goal of stealing One For All— and also because he finds it incredibly fun to do so as well.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach:
  • A metaphorical example. All For One manages to successfully absorb New Order from Star and Stripe during their fight, but shortly thereafter discovers that Star imposed one last rule upon her quirk before it was taken from her— 'New order revolts against other quirks'. This results in the vestige version of Star now within All For One's vestige realm Hulking Out and beating the living hell out of him with its bare hands and teeth, damaging and outright destroying the stockpiled quirks he'd hand-picked for Tomura's body to use, which also causes Tomura's body to start exploding from the inside out. By the time All For One manages to reach the mainland to find a suitable host to offload New Order into, its relentless assault has resulted in New Order tearing itself to pieces, along with an untold number of All For One's quirks, including damage to his original quirk itself, thus permanently weakening him before his inevitable rematch with Izuku.
  • Another example occurs during his fight with Team Endeavor. Having switched to a copied version of his original quirk to still make use of his accumulated power in a fight even after passing the original onto Tomura, All For one's mental subjugation of the vestiges of his stored quirks isn't apparently as strong as it was with the original, allowing them to unexpectedly rise up and ambush him together in a joint effort once moved by Jiro's sincere defiance of him despite their power gap. This allows the heroes to enact irreparable damage upon All For One's Life-Support mask whilst he's unable to move properly or keep track of them, ending only once All For One's mental self literally consumes the vestiges' consciousness to regain control once more.
• Killing Intent: When he's a fight, he radiates an aura of sheer menace so strong that Izuku and the other kids nearly vomited from sheer fear just by being nearby him at Kamino, even though he was unaware of their presence. His malicious intent leaves Jiro shaking badly after Hawks pushes her out the way of his attacks against her, noting that he attacked so fast that her body only started reacting to his desire to kill her after the attack had missed, leaving her cowed at the threat that had been targeting her classmates.
• Knight of Cerebus: He is the mastermind behind the League of Villains, mentoring the leader of said group, and he is the personal enemy of All Might. When he finally steps in to fight, he takes out several heroes in mere seconds. His actions continue to haunt the heroes of the world even in the present day. While Stain and Chisaki also made the story much darker upon their entrance, All For One's arrival is the point where the series really goes from a somewhat lighthearted (but not without danger) Academy of Adventure series to constant life-or-death situations against people hell-bent on destroying society as we know it.

L

• Lack of Empathy:
  • Whatever praise or concern he shows for others is only a false front, because ultimately, All For One sees his followers as a means to an end and is utterly devoid of compassion. All For One actually views guilt and other such emotions as signs of inferiority, and was actually concerned when he first started encountering the vestiges of those whose quirks he'd stolen, thinking it was a sign that he was showing remorse for what he'd done, disturbed that he might actually be capable of feeling such 'lesser' emotions, and relieved when Gakurai identified the true cause.
  All For One: In my dreams, those whose quirks I've stolen show up to hurl abuse my way. These episodes often leave me discouraged. Am I really capable of feeling guilt for my sins like some utterly ordinary person?.
  • This shows with Tomura in specifically, as it's Double Subverted. While at first he seems to care about him, it's eventually revealed Tomura was never more than a vessel to become his 'Next Me' and he's fundamentally incapable of seeing Tomura as a seperate being. IE, any care he shows Tomura is only caring about himself.
• Large and in Charge: Played with. While running the League of Villains and even during his later time in prison, he's never shown beside another character to judge his height, on top of never standing up in the first place. The one time we see him beside others is at Kamino with Shigaraki, who's kneeling, and All Might, who's a mountain of a man who'd make anyone seem small by comparison. It's not until Chapter 312 that we properly see him standing with other characters, which reveals that he stands literally head and shoulders above the likes of Overhaul and Lady Nagant.
• Large Ham: Starts screaming his head off into a tirade of insults against Deku when his younger brother openly defies him in the vestige world.
• Leitmotif:
  • "The Power of All For One" — A melancholic, haunting, and terrifying piano piece with a One-Woman Wail Opera.
  • "All For One" — A battle theme consisting of an intense and nightmarish orchestra complete with Ominous Latin Chanting.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Deliberately invoked and purely for his own benefit, as All For One takes advantage of chaos he causes or caused by others to advance his goals. It's taken to such extremes it's revealed All For One's ultimate goal is to become an invincible "Demon Lord" out of the comics he read so that everybody has no choice but to turn to his stockpile of quirks in place of the resources they lost thanks to him. This would ensure absolute control. He just needs One For All to make his maniacal dream a permanent reality.
• Light 'em Up: With some unnamed Quirk, he can create crescent-shaped blades of light to throw at a target, though they aren’t strong enough to pierce Endeavor’s Hell Curtain.
• Lightning Bruiser: Casually dodged an ambush from Edge Shot, who can transform and attack at the speed of sound, simply by tilting his head. He can also match a serious All Might blow-for-blow.
• Like a Son to Me: In a twisted sort of way. He effectively adopted a young Tenko Shimura off the street when he was scared and alone after killing his family. He raised the boy as a successor, nurturing his worst impulses and even bestowing him with his own family name on the boy as Tomura Shigaraki. While his goal was to use the boy as a tool of revenge and to gain a body powerful enough to use his Quirk to its full potential, he seems content to accept Tomura rebelling against him as long as Tomura’s goals remain the destruction of superhero society. Ultimately subverted, however, as All For One doesn't care about Shigaraki and instead sees him as 'the next me' and an extension of himself.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: His Quirk seems to have this going with One For All. All For One initially dwarfed One for All in power, to the point early users were well aware they didn't stand a chance. Despite this, the potential for growth was far from equal: All For One can add Quirks to itself by stealing from others and mix their powers, it doesn't change the fundamental properties of any Quirks it assimilates, leaving it limited by the strenth of the pre-existing Quirks he can find and take. One For All, on the other hand, can only gain a new Quirk by being transferred to a new user, but it incorporates all the strength of each user and extends that power to enhance its formerly lackluster Quirks far beyond their original abilities. As a result, while All For One had hundreds of Quirks and All Might only had the basic built-up physical strength from eight users, All Might was powerful enough to defeat All For One twice.
• Living Lie Detector: All For One has a Quirk that allows him to sense malicious intent and use that to sense if someone is lying, which was apparently stolen from the ancestor of Naomasa Tsukauchi. However, It doesn't work on someone who has no intent in their voices at all, such as those controlled by Shinso's quirk. His usage of such implies that, for all his long years alive and skill with manipulating people over the years, All For One's Sociopathy prevents him being able to acutely gauge when others are being untruthful towards him.
• Logical Weakness:
  • He has two, although they're more obstacles than outright flaws. The first is that while he may be able to take any Quirk, he can't use them with the same level of skill as the original user who may have had years to practice with them. This is why he avoids taking abilities from people like Best Jeanist, instead preferring powerful, yet straightforward abilities like Super-Strength or Super-Toughness. His second is that he's Unskilled, but Strong. He may be clever in a fight with his abilities and has lots of combat experience, but because he has so many abilities, he's only average at best in using his abilities on an individual level. Most of the time, he depends on sneak attacks or fighting dirty (like using bystanders as hostages to force a handicap on the heroes he fights).
  • His Quirk has one in that, while it can take any Quirk and seems to have no limit to how many it can hold, the user does have physical limits which the Quirk, All For One, does nothing to mitigate. As more powerful Quirks appear, it won't be long before All For One reaches the limit to how much power he can handle. His funding of Dr. Garaki's research was to find a way to enhance his body and raise the limit of power he can handle.
  • It turns out that while he can transfer Quirks he's stolen, unlike One For All, he can't transfer his Quirk itself. That was his brother's Quirk. To transfer his Quirk, he requires outside aid, and even then there are difficulties and complications.
  • He's shown repeatedly that, while he is capable of stealing any Quirk he can get his hands on except One For All, he quite literally has to get his hands on them. For his Quirk to activate he needs to physically touch somebody, so anybody who is fast or agile enough to avoid being grabbed by him will be capable of avoiding losing their Quirk. Likewise, targeting or damaging his hands stops his attempts to steal a quirk cold, as his attempts to steal Endeavor's quirk resulted in his hand becoming a singed mess. Compounding that is the fact that his broken life-support mask meant that his body was no longer responding or moving as he wished at that point, meaning he could not effectively move properly in order to steal the quirk or counterattack.
  • The injuries All Might inflicted on him in their fateful battle severely crippled him. Even with a Super Regeneration Quirk he requires constant life support and is physically unable to fight at even half his original strength.
  • His Super Regeneration, while extremely strong, is still just a Quirk. It has limits like any other. If an opponent can do enough damage in a short enough period, it can be overwhelmed and start failing and not even it could save a user if their brain were destroyed. Certain types of damage, such as intense heat can destroy cells so thoroughly that Super Regeneration can't undo the damage without a rest period.
  • There's also the fact that, no matter how many quirks he has, an ability like Eraserhead's that can cancel Quirks, would leave him defenceless in a fight.
  • As All For One admits in chapter 333 his Quirk only allows him to steal Quirks or bestow them, he can't destroy Quirks once he's already taken them. While this would normally not be an issue, it becomes a huge problem in said chapter when Star and Stripe gives her Quirk New Order the rule to rebel against other Quirks after All For One steals it. This causes the rampaging Quirk to destroy the vestiges inside Shigaraki/All For One causing their body to start tearing itself apart, leaving All For One desperate to reach someone he can transfer New Order into.
  • The Living Lie Detector Quirk he has works by sensing malicious intent to lie. This completely fails to work on Aoyama and his parents when the heroes are luring him into their trap, however, because Shinso's upgraded quirk allowed them to communicate to All For One without any intent at all, following Shinso's commands.
  • One the heroes figured out: he never used his warping Quirk when Kurogiri's was available to use Warp Gate and only revealed it when Kurogiri was incapacitated, which means logically All For One's is inferior or he wouldn't have relied on Kurogiri. This is even more of a logical assumption given Warp Gate is an artificial Quirk made by merging multiple Quirks together, meaning it is more powerful than a natural Quirk by its nature and only one Quirk like it exists. This assumption turns out to be correct: All For One can't warp himself with his Quirk and its range is much lower. This means once they've scattered his forces far enough from one another, there's nothing All For One can do about it.
  • While All For One can steal any Quirk except One For All, it's not instant, rather it takes a few seconds. This means it can be interrupted or allow a counterattack. This was how Star was able to order herself not to Decay while he was stealing it and All For One implies she could have ordered New Order not to be stolen if she'd chosen to, she just had something else in mind.
  • His Psychic Link to Tomura would make the two an extremely effective team in a fight...but they actually have to be on the same battlefield for it to be of any use whatsoever and it has a limit to how far it can go. The one time he actually could have exploited it, the heroes had figured out how it worked and separate him and Tomura miles from each other so they can't actually use it.
  • Impact Recoil is extremely useful...but it only works on impact attacks. As such, All For One flat out admits that it's completely worthless against someone like Endeavor whose attacks don't use it.
  • All For One's Quirk doesn't actually empower Quirks he takes, unlike One For All. He can only power up his Quirks by stacking multiples on top of each other. As such, despite the amount of power he possesses, his individual Quirks can still be overpowered. This is shown when his Hardflame Fan Quirk is overpowered by Endeavor's Hell's Curtain and he begins to be damaged by the fire that's making it through.
  • All For One subjugates the vestiges of those whose quirks he's stolen inside his Mental World through force of will, in contrast to how One For All's vestiges advise, guide and mentor Izuku in cooperation with his own willpower in using their powers. Whilst he's powerful enough to subdue them individually, he is ultimately just a lone will against many. Even somebody as overwhelmingly powerful and strong-willed as him can be given pause if they attack him in a group effort, as occurs during his brief face-off with the 'extra' Jiro. He's shocked to realise that the efforts of such 'inconsequential' characters could motivate the vestiges to move against him as one, freezing him in place long enough for Hawks to combine his Katana with Jiro's quirk to create a Vibroweapon that shatters part of his mask. He further rationalises this unexpected assault as being because he switched to a copied version of his original quirk, meaning that whilst it can achieve the same effects as his original, his mental control over the imprisoned vestiges is actually ''weaker' than it was with the original, a copied quirk being inferior in fully replicating All for One's original powers.
  • While Garaki can replicate Quirks, it's a long, expensive, time consuming process and Garaki was captured. As such, All For One lost access to any Quirk he gave to Shigaraki permanently. This includes the actual Hyper Regeneration Quirk itself. As regeneration Quirks are rare in and of themselves (something noted with the Nomu having replicas of the one All For One stole), All For One no longer has any regeneration Quirk on him, something Endeavor makes note of. He reveals that he compensated for this with a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk to try and see how the power would affect him in a body he considers disposable, due to how the quirk has the potential to negatively affect him if he uses it.
  • He lost all his sensory organs above his upper jaw during his battle with All Might, meaning he can't see, hear, or smell in the traditional sense and must rely on stolen sensory Quirks to compensate, quirks that make him more aware of his surroundings than an ordinary person would. However, even if these allow him to fight against high-level opponents like Endeavor or All Might without issue, they're ultimately no true substitute for his missing senses. Having to rely on a quirk to keep track of his opponents means that when his access to his quirks is temporarily disrupted by all of them rebelling against him in unison, he's unable to see or react to Tokoyami's Megaton Punch coming straight at his face from head-on, leaving to his mask getting further shattered due to his inherent limitations resulting from his damaged body. When he activates Eri's Rewind quirk, the first things to reappear as his body is restored to it's prior health is his right eye and left ear, showing how he's overcome his prior limitations through the risky use of the quirk.
• Long-Lived: Midoriya's the ninth wielder of One For All. All For One was directly responsible for creating the power in the first place, and even taking into account the possibility not all the wielders lived to their prime or gained it as children, it still puts him at living for a long while. When questioned how this is possible, it's pointed out that he could have possibly stolen a Quirk that delays aging or something similar. It's later revealed that he took a copy of Dr. Garaki's Life Force Quirk, which extends his life span at the cost of athleticism.
• Long-Range Fighter: All For One does have a lot of physical power enhancing Quirks, but he seems to prefer hanging back and spamming powerful ranged attacks and rarely willingly enters melee combat with others except on specific situations. The few melee attacks we've actually seen him use are large power attacks. This helps him enact his preferred and far more devastatingly effective tactic of using psychological warfare to rattle his enemies mid-battle and make them lose focus enough to give him an opening to enact a devastating blow.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: His finishing attack qualifies as it's both quite dangerous and described in detail above, under body horror. There's also whatever Quirk he used in the battle that killed Nana Shimura, which involved massive amalgamations of random body parts◊.

M

• Made of Iron:
  • Superpower Lottery or not, taking All Might's strongest punch ever to the face and not being crippled for it definitely counts. Even before that, he somehow survived his grievous injuries at All Might's hands— which apparently included everything above his jawline getting turned into paste— without Hyper Regeneration, as he laments the fact that despite possessing it, it cannot fix his injuries because they'd already healed over by the time he acquired the quirk, meaning it doesn't recognise that there's anything to fix about his appearance.
  • His life-support masks are this— by necessity, as both times he's wearing them into combat against a Lightning Bruiser who is/going to be the World's Strongest Man. Having inadequate defenses on such an obvious weak spot would result in his loss if they got in a single strong blow in the right spot. His first mask is still functioning even in a crippled state after All Might smashes him in the face twice, the second time containing the full force of his power. That said, All Might's strength had started running out for good at that point, so as powerful as his attacks were, they couldn't be compared to what he was capable of in his prime. His second mask survived without even a scratch after Hawks launched a sneak attack straight on it when the heroes warped him into their trap, Hawks admitting that he guessed that All For One wouldn't have brought weak protection to his final fight with Izuku. However, no matter how tough his defences are, they're ultimately just strengthened metal, and Hawks' repeated blows to the same spot eventually manage to crack off a significant portion of the mask, followed up by Tokoyami's Megaton Punch breaking the damaged portions open further to the point All For One literally has to hold the mask together afterwards.
• The Man Behind the Man: Shigaraki Tomura leads the League of Villains, and all members meet him upon joining... only a few seem to know that Shigaraki answers to All For One.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • A specialty of All For One's who manipulates people and events around him without ever getting directly involved. His gifting of hands to a young Tenko Shimura is perhaps his greatest work. He gifted Tenko with the hands and told him to always keep them with him so that he could never heal from the pain of losing his family. By wearing them it also helped suppress Tenko's memories of the event and aggravate them more to increase the rage in his heart and complete his Quirk. All to turn Tenko into a Symbol of Fear.
  • During the Tartarus Escapees arc, it turns out that, rather than the two months' worth of time he would apparently need to complete Tomura's vessel, the original AFO apparently told his vestige counterpart within the boy to have him ready in 38 days, just to be certain to catch the heroes off-guard when they were expecting more time, meaning by the present time he'll be ready to take OFA in 3 days. All Might notes he could have faked the data they were likely to recover from the hospital to support his false timeline. If not for Hero killer Stain recovering a recording of the radio-wave conversation monitored by the security system as the prison was being breached, the heroes would have completely fallen for his ploy.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: A side effect of him stealing Quirks is that he inherits vestiges of their personalities. When he gives that Quirk to someone else, he loses those traits as well. All For One believed that property to be exclusive to him, but was surprised to learn that One For All had that property as well. In contrast to One For All, it's clear that All For One actively suppresses the vestiges that come attached to the quirks he hoards through sheer willpower, leaving him in utter control over the mental world formed inside his quirk. However, even this suppression has its limits.When he faces off against Jiro in the Final Battle, her sincere efforts to fight him despite the power difference because of how he mercilessly hurt and targets those she cares about sparks a combined effort from the vestiges to hold him back, taking him off-guard that they could even do that at this point, all from the efforts of a 'nobody' like Jiro.

  All For One: The quirks I've stolen in the past..their very wills?! Impossible!! Even New Order didn't manage this! They were spurred on by this?! By the efforts of such pushovers?!

• Maou the Demon King: All For One's one and only ambition outside of relishing his power over others is the become an 'invincible Demon King' like the one in the manga he and his brother read as kids. As such, he does everything he can to model himself as the 'Symbol of Evil' and set himself up as an Evil Overlord.
• Meaningful Name: "All For One" is a fitting moniker for someone who steals and hoards Quirks for his own purposes, and it highlights his defining personality trait - egoism. All Might even brings up the fact that the original All For one avoided meeting Star and Stripe in a fight was a sign that he considers the term to be his real name, rather than his birth one, showing how he's embraced the identity of a real-life supervillain to the exclusion of his original civilian one.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: In a world where people are limited to using only one Quirk, All For One can use several Quirks of his choice, both individually and simultaneously, without suffering from Quirk overload.
• Memento MacGuffin: One For All is this to him because it originated from his younger brother and it is the one Quirk that defies him. It takes a new meaning when it is revealed that Quirks carry the consciousness of its users, and that his brother is alive as a spirit within One For All. By stealing One For All, All For One could finally accomplish one of his greatest desires: making his younger brother surrender to him.
• Mentor Archetype: He's an old guard supervillain raising up the next generation's leader, Shigaraki.
• Me's a Crowd: He's not directly possessing Shigaraki, rather his vestige inside of his original Quirk is. As a result, there are technically two All For Ones existing at the same time. This is shown directly when the original attempts to calm down his clone after their defeat from Star and Stripe, noting that the letter is undergoing Split-Personality Merge with Tomura's psyche and as a result he can sense his counterpart shares Tomura's boundless hatred of heroes and society, despite All For One being characterized by his lack of strong emotions.
  • It should be noted, All For One does not see the fusion of Tomura and his vestige as an independent being, rather as the same being in two bodies, as All For One is so selfish he can't comprehend anything else. When he's fatally wounded by Endeavor's flames, he gloats that he considers his damaged and weakened body expendable anyway in favour of his idealised self in Tomura, showing that he'll discard even himself in favour of his maniacal ambitions of becoming an 'invincible demon lord'. However, his old body being disposable gives him a good excuse to test out risky abilities with it, such as Eri's Rewind quirk to undo his past and present disfigurements.
• Moral Myopia: As is fitting for someone who sees themselves as Above Good and Evil, All For One will gladly scapegoat others for any perceived flaw, while sneering at them when they challenge him. Most notably, when he spoke to his younger brother in Midoriya's subconscious, he likened his growing power to that of a supervillain from a comic book; when his brother pointed out that said supervillain was eventually defeated, All For One invoked notions of reality to maintain superiority in the conversation.
• Morality Pet: The only person he's ever shown genuine love towards is his younger brother Yoichi. While he easily could have killed him to end his rebellion, he instead imprisoned him and gave him the stockpiling Quirk that his body could handle in an attempt to make him stronger (but also to make him submit to him as well).
• Morton's Fork: Even though he is captured and it is possible to make him give back Ragdoll's Quirk, the whole point of All For One's imprisonment actually working is that he is unable to do anything, thus he cannot perform the action necessary to restore the Quirk to her. Ragdoll has no choice but to remain benched behind a desk.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: When Eri's Rewind quirk restores him back to the prime of health before All Might crippled him, his burnt-off clothing exposes his muscular physique, showing that he was apparently quite fit and toned before his injuries. Upon touching the ground, he demonstrates that his speed is now quick enough to near-instantly rush behind a nearby hero, steal her cape and fashion a makeshift toga out of it to preserve his modesty before she even realises he's there. Hawks, the fastest hero around, can barely keep up with him, and it's clear that at his physical prime, he's now unbeatable by anybody present. The only hope the heroes have is that his current state will eventually kill him in the end, but otherwise he's now completely beyond their ability to fight.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Apparently, his multiple Strength Enhancer Quirks don't necessarily affect his appearance, as he can grapple with All Might despite his unintimidating businessman physique. He only gets beefier when he uses a specific "Hypertrophy" Quirk.

N

• Naked People Are Funny: Defied. When Eri's Rewind power restores his physical injuries after Endeavour nearly incinerated him to death, his clothing and mask were completely obliterated from the fires, but his first order of business as soon as he touches the earth is to use his newly-restored Super-Speed to steal part of a nearby hero's cape to fashion into a makeshift toga to preserve his modesty before turning his attention towards defeating the heroes with his new Hour of Power.
  All For One: (whilst stealing the hero's quirk) I'll take the cape too while I'm at it. Fighting in the buff is hardly my style.
• Narcissist:
  • All For One is a narcissistic sociopath who only cares about power, himself, and what people could do for him. The same could be said for his love towards his adoptive son Tomura Shigaraki as during the Tartarus prison break, he makes it clear that he sees Shigaraki as an extension of himself. His immense desire to claim One for All, could be seen as him trying to retrieve an extension of himself that refuses to comply with his wishes.
  Shigaraki: I won't be your stinking pawn!
  All For One: Pawn? You have it all wrong, Tomura! You're so very near and dear to me. After all, you're the next me.
  • When he's almost killed by Endeavor's Prominence Burn, he gloats to the heroes that he considers his damaged, disfigured and weakened body expendable anyway, implied to be because of how pathetic he looks hooked up to multiple apparatuses to approach anywhere near to his original level of power and strength, and how his physical form is incapable of achieving his dreams of becoming an invincible demon lord anymore. Compounding that is the fact he goes out of his way to stylise his life-support masks into imposing visages when wearing them into combat, as if literally trying to cover up his true weakened appearance and present himself as powerful as he used to be. When his body is rewound back into the prime of health by Eri's salvaged Rewind quirk, he revels in both his restored physical health and looks, but makes his first priority upon touching the ground to use his restored Super-Speed to instantly steal a nearby hero's cape (and quirk) to fashion a makeshift toga out of to preserve his modesty, despite also noting he needs to make every second he's like this count, as eventually the power will erase him. He's just so obsessed with his appearance that he considers such a small issue overwhelmingly important despite the fact he's now living on borrowed time.
  • The negative aspects of this trope show themselves when he faces a genuine setback or otherwise has his ego bruised. His entire hatred of All Might stems from All Might being the only person to ever hand him a true defeat, something that motivated All For One to go to extreme lengths just to make him suffer. When he's genuinely outplayed in the final arc, not only is he clearly livid with the situation, his internal monologue consists of him frantically trying to reassure himself he's still in control and it's not possible for him to be outsmarted at all. One of his minions flat out states All For One cannot stand anyone to actually outsmart him and he can't tolerate them living to tell about it. When his self-image as the invincible demon lord is finally completely shattered when a group of 'Jobber Characters' (in his words) manage to destroy his mask, All For One can't take it and goes completely berserk.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Besides the whole 'creating OFA in the first place' deal, an extremely downplayed and indirect example occurs during the Paranormal Liberation War arc, wherein his hyper focus on stealing OFA from Izuku causes him to induce Tomura to relentlessly pursue him to the exclusion of everything else, regardless of the heroes attempting to pursue him or his host's own wishes. Given that Tomura's first action upon waking up was to decimate the landscape around the city with his Decay, causing countless casualties, and he shows no hesitation in pulling the same move at the earliest opportunity whenever's he's in control and can access his quirks again, it's safe to say that AFO's interference and putting his own agenda above Tomura's limited the damage he was capable of inflicting, saving lives in the process and allowing the heroes to somewhat coral Tomura's rampage, though obviously AFO himself didn't care about that one way or the other.
  • In chapter 343, his last move to checkmate Izuku and take him down involved luring him to an isolated area, and then not only appearing to confront him himself, but using his black goo warp quirk to summon literally every villain on his side against the young hero, including Tomura, Dabi, Toga, the remaining near High-End Nomus and all the assorted remaining forces of the PLF and the miscellaneous villains attracted to their cause. Whilst this seemed to guarantee his certain victory, Izuku and Aoyama had planned ahead to summon their own army of all active heroes in Japan to the scene, allowing them to confront all of All For One's remaining forces as a united effort, whereas beforehand their hiding in the shadows and the chaotic situation left the heroes too widespread to accurately track them down.
  • His actions allowing the heroes to learn about his Psychic Link to Tomura comes back to bite him hard. It's noted their link would give them a huge advantage fighting together...but because the heroes know about it ahead of time, they explicitly separate him and Tomura too far for it to work, not allowing him to capitalize on it.
  • His reliance on non-consensually stealing the strength of others to fuel his own ambitions and desires at the expense of so many people over the centuries unintentionally created his own massive weakness, as the vestiges within him are all united in their hatred of the man who robbed them of everything and shamelessly exploits their powers to hurt other people. Jiro's opposition of him in spite of the power difference motivates the vestiges to mob him en masse and hold him down at a crucial moment for the heroes to badly damage his life-support mask, all because he never treated them as people or anything more than a receptacle for their powers, and his massive strength being effectively 'stolen', rather than something he created himself, means it's not something that truly belongs to him, and opposition from within can unexpectedly weaken him when he most needs that power.
• Nominal Hero: Started out as one. He did use his powers to help people... but in exchange for their servitude. He killed those who didn't accept his will.
• No Name Given: His first name is unknown, instead going by his Quirk's name All for One and acknowledges that his last name is Shigaraki, which he also names Tomura after taking him in. All Might later theorizes that the reason All For One didn't show up to fight Star and Stripe alongside 'TomurAFO', despite their shared mental link giving them an unparalleled combat advantage, was that All For One would have recognized the term 'All For One' as his name, and thus been subject to New Order's abilities, despite that technically just being the name of his quirk, showing how he considers his 'supervillain' name his actual name, rather than a title for others to refer to him by.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: His apparent one act of genuine kindness, giving his little brother a meta-Quirk to make him more powerful and join his side, lead to the creation of the Quirk that would cause his downfall.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis:
  • All For One doesn't play around. When he sees Best Jeanist and the group in the Nomu factory, he distracts them with small talk, then blasts them away with a supercharged Air Cannon. The only reason they weren't killed on the spot was due to Best Jeanist using Fiber Master to pull the others out of the line of fire.
  • When he puts his final plan in motion to checkmate Izuku, it involved him having Aoyama lure Izuku outside of UA to an isolated location, counting on Izuku's All-Loving Hero nature to blind him to the possibility of his classmate's betrayal, before appearing before him himself after verifying that there were no other heroes in the vicinity that could reach him in time and then using his black-goo warping quirk to summon literally every villain on his side to mob Izuku all at once, whilst he's alone and isolated. This includes Tomura, Dabi, Toga, The Near High-End Nomus as well as a small army of the PLF survivors and associated villains attracted to their cause. Luckily, Izuku and Aoyama had planned ahead to summon The Cavalry to turn the ambush on its head, but the sheer amount of forces All For One brought arrayed against one target, even if he will one day become the World's Strongest Man, is complete overkill.
  • Subverted in that while All For One is no nonsense, he has an almost pathological need to pick the method that offers him the most sadistic pleasure rather than the most pragmatic.
• No One Could Survive That!: Even All Might is wondering just how he could've survived all those deadly injuries after their previous fight. Given the one image we saw of his last defeat and his scars imply All Might crushed his head, he has every reason to think that. Even in the last battle, All Might's Finishing Move only knocked him out.
• Not Quite Flight: His Air Walk Quirk lets him levitate and move through the air but can't go higher than 20 meters. He later gives Air Walk to Lady Nagant, but is shown still floating in midair for the final battle, indicating he has another unnamed levitating Quirk as a back up.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • When All Might comes to visit him in jail, he outright asks All For One why he did the things he did. All For One responds by comparing himself to All Might, saying that they both have big dreams and the power to see those dreams realized. Of course, he freely admits that while All Might wanted to be a hero, he wanted to be an all-powerful devil king. It also highlights the greatest difference between them- All Might's dream was for the sake of everybody in the world living in peace, whereas All For One's dreams were only ever about himself.
  • He remarks his younger brother is just as stubborn as he is, in spite of their diametrically opposing philosophies and worldviews.
• Not So Invincible After All: The entire series presents All For One as the invincible Demon King he believes himself to be. Nigh unstoppable to anyone that's not All Might and capable of planning for everything, never suffering a meaningful defeat. The build up to the finale, however, is largely devoted to ripping that image apart. While All For One remains convinced he's inevitably going to win and his plans cannot fail, the heroes have learned his flaws and expertly exploit them to turn the tables as All For One is at a loss to understand how. This image being disproven and torn down proves to be one of the only things that can actually genuinely enrage him.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: When confronted by his younger brother, Yoichi, All For One claims that he is helping people and bringing order to society. Yoichi countered that All for One was just exploiting people for his sadistic whim, which All for One does not deny afterwards.

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