Characters / Overlord (2012): Ainz Ooal Gown

Overlord (2012) Main Character Index
The Great Tomb: Supreme Beings (Ainz Ooal Gown) | Nazarick NPCs | Various Monsters and Creatures Used by Nazarick
Humans: The Human Kingdoms | Adventurers and Workers | Criminals
Others: Non-Human Kingdoms/Countries | Miscellaneous
Bonus Story: New Ainz Ooal Gown

Satoru Suzuki/Momonga/Ainz Ooal Gown

Voiced by: Satoshi Hino (Japanese), Chris Guerrero (English) ^{Foreign VAs} Víctor Hugo Aguilar [Ainz], Hector Mena [Satoru] (Latin American Spanish), Charles Mendiant (French), Stefan Kaminski (German), Maurizio Merluzzo (Italian), Dláigelles Riba (Brazilian Portuguese)

Externally: As expected of you, Demiurge, along with my overseer of the Floor Guardians, Albedo, you've recognized my true thinking.
Internally: The hell is he talking about?!

Ainz Ooal Gown, formerly known as Satoru Suzuki in his own world and Momonga in YGGDRASIL, is The Protagonist of Overlord. He is the guild master of Ainz Ooal Gown and regarded as the highest of the 41 Supreme Beings by the Non Player Characters of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

An unexceptional salary man who was stuck in the body of his video game character during the day YGGDRASIL shut down and thrown into the role of a leader for the NPCs in his former gaming guild, Momonga quickly adapts to his role as a (supposedly) Evil Overlord while still retaining distinctly human traits; notably, Momonga searches for his friends in this new world.

His YGGDRASIL avatar is a Lich, an undead skeleton creature devoid of skin and flesh. He wears an elaborate, jet-black academic gown adorned with gold and violet edges, has a dark red glow inside the empty eye sockets, and a dark halo-like object glimmered behind its head.

In the New World, he has a dark warrior persona called "Momon" that he uses to perform Engineered Heroics and go undercover. In this form, he wears a fully black body armor with purple and golden markings. He has a red cape on his back with two large swords.

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A - I

• Above Good and Evil: Word of God confirms that Ainz effectively operates on this logic. Because his empathy for humans is sealed and he is so far above the level of any possible challengers, he can no longer be constrained by traditional morality. He is so far above everyone else that he has lost the ability to consider normal human beings as equals or to respect them at all, so any human casualties from his actions are treated with the same level of dispassion one would show after swatting a fly.
• The Ace: A downplayed example. He's far from the strongest and also far from being smart. It's just he's disporportionately powerful for New World standards (which are way lower than back in YGGDRASIL) and most people in the New World are even more gullible and/or stupid than he is. On the other hand, Satoru is still a very powerful level 100 player with a wide repertoire of magic back during his YGGDRASIL days, and he was chosen as the Ainz Ooal Gown guild's leader because of his skills in leadership.
• Achievements in Ignorance: In Volume 10, he convinces Jircniv to surrender The Empire as a vassal nation to Nazarick without intending to. All he really wanted to do was recruit adventurers by showing off in the Arena. He actually had to look up what a vassal state even was once he returned home.
• Achilles' Heel: Being undead gives him a lot of strong suits, but also many weaknesses: he is weak to Holy magic, as well as Fire and Light element. Being skeletal bones, he is also weak to physical damage from blunt weapons. He can cover some of these weaknesses individually, but not all at the same time. To compensate for that, he devised ways to trick his opponent about WHICH of his weaknesses he's currently covering.
• Affably Evil: Ainz is unfailingly polite, loves all his subordinates like his own children, keeps any Deal with the Devil he offers, and wants to create a utilitarian utopia where all races can live peacefully together. But he still has a complete Lack of Empathy for anyone who is against him or even simply not a part of his kingdom, and has no problem killing even millions of those outside his protection if it means keeping those on his side even slightly more safe.
• Alliterative Name: Was called Satoru Suzuki in his old life.
• Ambiguously Evil: How much of Ainz's villainy is because of his undead body taking away his emotions and how much he truly is evil is rather hard to say. It's a wonder how much evil he'd turn out to be if he had his emotions well, but it seems that Ainz never truly had a sense of morality per se, giving that it took him about some weeks to decide that taking over the world and things like mass murder and torture are okay as long as he can benefit from it. It's rather implied that his own servants are for fault, since Ainz feels like he has to act as the evil overlord he is supposed to be in his role (which explains why he always tries to hide his disgust for something amoral in front of them).
• Anti-Hero: At best, he's a Nominal Hero. When he's not being an Overlord with Anti-Villain goals, he will go out of his way to help people for altruistic reasons or helping people against enemies being a roadblock in his goals. Even when he's using his Adventurer disguise, facing Clementine was very personal, and goes out of his way to rescue Nfirea on his own accord.
• Anti-Villain: Most of the things he wants aren't that bad, such as creating a diverse kingdom free of racism or conflict or allowing adventurers to be more than monster slayers employed by the kingdom. However, he has no qualms with mass murder, torture or any number of atrocities so long as he feels they don't get in the way of his plans and serve some purpose, even if it's just intimidation.
• The Archmage: While he didn't have as much raw power as some of his teammates in the guild, like Ulbert and Tabula, he compensated for that with the sheer variety of spells at his disposal. The wiki page for him shows 80+ known spells he uses, but that is still barely touching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Ainz's knowledge of the arcane arts. The normal amount of spells a level 100 player character can know in YGGDRASIL is 300, but Ainz used a special Overlord ability "Dark Wisdom" to master a total of 718 different spells. And his mana level? "Exceeds Limit". No wonder he's known both as the "Sorcerer King" and "The Strongest Magic Caster".
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
  • Averted during his time as the Guild leader of Ainz Ooal Gown. He has stated multiples times that his character is not among the best players in terms of pure combat ability, as it was never built for Player vs. Player. It is downplayed in the New World, as the only characters explicitly noted to be capable of defeating him in a straightforward fight are Shalltear and Rubedo, the former is a Man of Kryptonite for him and the latter is a One-Man Army designed to take down entire parties of level-capped players.
  • Since the lizardmen value strong leaders, they quickly start to worship Ainz as a God-Emperor after their conscription even though they never worshipped gods before. He also uses Shalltear to establish some authority for himself by beating someone basically minmaxed to defeat him, leaving Nazarick to believe no one can stand against him in a fight.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Subverted. The red orb in his abdomen is a World Item, not his Heart Drive. When Climb thought so, he went for the kill by aiming at it, but Ainz catches the blade mid-attack.
• Attack on the Heart: Ainz's favorite spell is "Grasp Heart", an instant death spell which involves him grasping a phantom heart that is connected to his victim. Assuming it's a living being, getting their heart crushed kills them almost instantly.
• Atrocious Alias: "Momonga" is actually the Japanese name for a Japanese dwarf flying squirrel, not noted to be a particularly fierce animal.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • What his build used to be in YGGDRASIL. He focuses heavily on One-Hit Kill and other flashy spells that are amazing in theory but not optimized for a player-vs-player game like YGGDRASIL, especially against other high-level players who are immune to a large part of his arsenal. But in a world where game balance does not exist and his spells work basically 100% of the time, Ainz is a nearly unstoppable foe who can kill almost anyone by basically gesturing at them, since his level is so much higher than the vast majority of beings in the New World and undead are a rarity compared to YGGDRASIL.
  • On the opposite side, his spells that summon high-level undead but consume experience points have become more impractical than they used to be. They would probably not be too bad in YGGDRASIL, where he could always just level back up, but in the New World, where he has no similarly-leveled opponents, recovering the lost experience may be impossible or at least teeth-grindingly hard. So skills like these just aren't worth using.
  • In his Momon persona, he wields two greatswords in combat. While definitely cool looking, many warriors have commented that this is a very inefficient way of fighting as it makes his attacks (relatively) slow and easy to read. The fact that he cannot use Martial Arts skills to augment the shortcomings of this fighting style makes it even more inefficient. The fact that Ainz is so overleved in the new World compensates for this to a degree, as only extremely fast and/or skilled opponents can overcome the sheer strength difference.
  • His Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown is this as well. It comes with many powerful bonus spells for him to use, boosts his stats tremendously, and can even act independently of him and cast spells of its own volition, so that fighting Momonga becomes akin to fighting two people instead of one. Its power is said to rival that of a World-Class item. However, if it were ever to be destroyed, the guild Ainz Ooal Gown would be disbanded and all of its possessions would be forfeit (including the guild base of Nazarick and all of its Non Player Characters). The risk was simply too great to take in YGGDRASIL, as even with the Staff's power Momonga was not invincible, so after all the effort it took to create it, the weapon sat to gather dust in the guild's vaults. In the New World, the risk of someone successfully taking it from Momonga and destroying it is slim, but not null, and its power is incredibly overkill roughly all the time anyways, so the powerful weapon is once again doomed to never see use in battle.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: He isn't much good at the details of long term strategy and only has vague plans for the future, but when preparing for a fight he's incredibly meticulous and analytical in his preparations. In YGGDRASIL this allowed him to fight above his build's tier, though it wasn't enough to make him a top level PvPer. He even manages to take down Man of Kryptonite Shalltear twice in a direct fight.
• Baritone of Strength: His normal speaking voice has a lower pitch befitting for an overlord whereas his internal voice sounds like a normal person. Chris Guerrero in the English dub gets the same idea across by using his Cooler/Dr. Gero voice and a normal pitch for his internal voice. Such vocal depth can somehow veer into Evil Sounds Deep territory, particularly when Ainz goes full Overlord mode (though, to most of the denizens of the New World from the third season onward, the said trope applies by default.)
• Badass Boast: He does these often when he handles things, personally.
  • His line to Clementine at the end of episode 8, after she compared herself to Stronoff.
    Ainz: No matter what, I won't fight you seriously.
  • Plus, the declaration he made to the brainwashed Shalltear.
    Ainz: I am Ainz Ooal Gown! And this name cannot ever know defeat!
  • And later.
    Ainz: Know this. The strength of the 41 people from Ainz Ooal Gown stands before you! And you did not have any chance of winning from the start! Shalltear Bloodfallen. I am the leader of the Supreme Beings of the Tomb of Nazarick. Feel the power of the man you all respect and call your master!
• Badass Cape: He wears a red cape over his black armor in his Momon persona, and he earns a reputation of being a badass adventurer over time.
• Becoming the Mask: At the start of the series, he was a fairly neutral figure, but worried about keeping appearances in front of his subordinates, who were all already pretty evil apart from one or two exceptions. By Volume 4, he's a genuine overlord, attacking innocent lizardmen for little reason and slaughtering people willing to submit to his authority. In Volume 6, he assists Demiurge in sacking the capital of the local kingdom and in Volume 7 he decimates a bunch of workers for their imagined slights against him, even though they were only there because he wanted them to be there. By the time of Volume 10, he has accepted the idea of eventual world conquest and becoming a Benevolent Dictator. The Alternate Timeline side novel where Momonga arrives on the new world without Nazarick makes it fairly clear that this ultimately has less to do with Emotion Suppression and is more just a natural human reaction to being in a position of absolute power, coupled with the pressure of being in charge of monsters that ascribe strongly to the idea that Humans Are Insects.
• Benevolent Boss: He has genuine affection for his subordinates in Nazarick and tries to find means of rewarding them even though his status as a Universally Beloved Leader means that they are simply happy to be of service. This is shown in both the dramas CD and manga as he feels that he is obliged to make the Guardians have their own salaries and even suggests to make everyone in Nazarick have occasional vacations, which was received with shock by everyone. However, those who weren't directly created by the Supreme Beings are ultimately considered expendable as necessary.
• Benevolent Dictator: Desperately wants to be this, despite being reincarnated as a disturbingly overpowered lich, even running his kingdom in the way he (a former overworked salaryman) would have wanted his company to be run. Unfortunately, while he has the benevolence part down, his direct underlings are nearly all truly and profoundly evil yet devoted to him, leading to a lot of needless suffering because they think he's the epitome of evil (when he tries to give vacation time, they beg to know how they've failed him) and think humans unworthy of living (when he invites humans to Nazarick, he has to make it abundantly clear they are not to be harmed). Even his taking over the world was an accident, but when he learns about it he decides to make his kingdom a place where all races can live together without discrimination. Eventually, he starts gaining more willing adherents after he accidentally vassalizes the Empire, since all that changes for them is that condemned criminals are sent to Nazarick for execution (and get sent back if they were innocent) and the borders are manned by undead troops, leaving the Puppet King with a lot of freedom to rule (and as a bonus, anyone complaining about said puppet's decisions is told "take it up with Nazarick").
• Berserk Button:
  • Threatening to or actually harming those he has declared under his protection will set him off quickly, because Ainz takes great pride in his word and does not abide it being challenged, even by the ignorant. The surviving Eight Fingers are the only lucky ones to have "just" lost their sanity, and they didn't even know better.
  • As a corollary, individuals who would betray others to save their own skin. Zanac genuinely impressed Ainz despite being unable to talk him down, so when the nobles offered his head to save their own skins, Ainz "rewarded" them with torture and eventual death while doubling down on his plans, when it seemed as if Ainz might have actually softened his approach on reflection had they not made that mistake.
  • His other button is when someone makes an affront against the Supreme Beings, a.k.a. his former guildmates when he was still a human. When a Worker attempted to bluff his way out of a confrontation by invoking his comrades without actually knowing any better, Ainz humored the attempt until the Worker made the mistake of getting his name wrong (using "Ainz" instead of "Momonga"). Even though Ainz knew the man was trying to play him, he gets so mad that he almost explodes with anger. Suffice it to say, the mercy of death was not on the table for him after that.
  • The most subtle one, don't be rude around him. At the absolute best, it will irritate him, and even then it could make him murderous in the blink of an eye if you're foolish enough to persist.
• BFS: Deconstructed. As Momon, his two large broadswords make him slower and easier to read, which is lampshaded by Clementine and other adventurers. Justified as he has no real experience with swords, which tends to make him sloppy, and the persona is intentionally over-the-top because Ainz cares about the attention, rather than practicality.
• Black Knight: As Momon, he wears completely concealing black armor and while apparently heroic is still a very mysterious figure. He cultivates this image to discourage people trying to find out too much about him while also looking inspiring and fearsome.
• Bling of War: He has terrible fashion sense himself but has maids who pick out his wardrobe to make him look threatening on top of being perfectly functional and dangerous gear. It's also invoked in that his favorite sets are designed to look good together because players didn't want to look stupid just to be strong if they could avoid it.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: Since he's a skeleton, he can't have sex because he lacks the equipment to do so. This understandably frustrates him.
• Can't Take Criticism: Inverted. He actually wants them, since it allows him to think about his plans more thoroughly. Due to his subjects literally praising his every word, anyone outside of Nazarick will give him a fair and sound criticism and tells him his flaws in his plans so he can make alternate use of them.
• Cassandra Truth: Even when he does admit that he's not infallible, the Guardians refuse to believe it, as shown near the end of Volume 11.
• The Chains of Commanding: He's under the impression that he has to be the perfect overlord for his subordinates or they might lose their respect or possibly even loyalty to him. As a result, whenever Demiurge assumes he figured out what Ainz's (nonexistent) master plans are, Ainz feels compelled to do whatever Demiurge said. However, it's quite clear that he is worrying over nothing; Everyone important in Nazarick is fanatically loyal to the point that Demiurge has something of an existential crisis when he considers a world where he has no one to serve. The Alternate Timeline side novel also shows explicitly that without everyone in Nazarick expecting him to be their ruler, he would have remained considerably more empathetic and human, rather than embracing the role of an Evil Overlord.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • He uses the lessons and experiences Cocytus learned by ruling the Lizardman tribe to administer E-rantel. The citizens are completely shocked that an undead skeletal overlord is a truly benevolent dictator, and the end of volume nine indicates that he grants the citizens true peace for the first time in their entire collective memory.
  • When it comes to diplomacy, his time as a salaryman proves highly advantageous in just about every encounter.
• Clueless Boss: Ainz quickly learns that he is out of his depth when he transitions from MMO player to Evil Overlord. Even when he finds out what his subordinates are doing, he just goes with it. Can't let his subordinates think he's incompetent, after all, even if they wouldn't care. His saving graces are that his minions have no idea, and would remain completely loyal even if they did, and his social skills as a salaryman lets him roll with the punches without anybody being the wiser.
• Collector of the Strange: One of his primary hobbies is collecting people, or whole races, and magical, or even mundane objects with unusual properties or abilities, purely for the sake of having them. This is why he tends to have all sorts of lame (by Yggdrasil standards) items in his inventory that he uses or hands out to others throughout the story such as the useless Christmas Mask he wears or the low-level Goblin Horn he gave to Enri that most players would just throw away. It's stated that most of the useless junk in Nazarick's treasury was his, and the one NPC he designed for the guild base was the treasurer. This interest ultimately culminates in wanting to build an entire kingdom of all the world's races living side by side in peace. He has Enri Emmot's efforts in Carne Village to draw upon as inspiration as well. This is seen in volume 11 when he notices with glee that Zaryusu and Crusch's infant son is a rare albino like Crusch. Crusch picks up on this and holds her baby even tighter out of fear that Ainz might try to take him away. One reason why he decides to give Zaryusu a suit of magical armor as a gift to celebrate his son's birth is because he wants Zaryusu to sire more unique children with Crusch in the future and thinks the armor will ensure he survives to do so.
• The Comically Serious: Ainz's attempts to come off as regal or imposing are often undercut by the quirkiness of both himself and his subordinates.
• The Corrupter: He's (half-unintentionally) this towards Neia. Despite the fact that he's seemingly friendlier than most of the people that Neia's met in her career as a squire, he's actually using her for his own gain until he resurrects her, which gave him more empathy towards her than he would with other people. However, he's still a conqueror who either orchestrated or participated in a nightmarish False Flag Operation intended to soft-occupy her home kingdom and venerate him as some sort of hero. It goes to the point where Neia started killing child hostages alongside Demi-Humans if they are tied to each other (something that Ainz did prior in order to intimidate the Bafolk into not taking any more hostages) and started a cult to spread some of Ainz's brutal pragmatism to her own Kingdom.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • With over 700 spells and an arsenal's worth of magical items, he has just the right solution for basically every occasion and the cunning strategic mindset to match. He went through his whole battle with Shalltear relying on nothing but his ability to be prepared for anything.
  • This was basically his entire playstyle in YGGDRASIL, as well. His main set of abilities was Awesome, but Impractical, but he managed to pull his weight in the guild simply because his ludicrous amount of spells allowed him to have solutions to really obscure problems. Most other players passed on these Situational Swords, making someone like Ainz a godsend in a game with as many secrets as YGGDRASIL.
  • On a more mundane level, he frequently rehearses conversations he will have. He'll perform a lot of his cool poses in front of a mirror as well as taking copious notes in advance. He hates it when people go off-script.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In the New World, anytime Ainz personally engages in battle, this is the usual result. However, back in YGGDRASIL, this is most certainly not the case, since he's far from being the most powerful player in the game and he still needs to enlist his guildmates to take out enemies, be it other players or raid bosses who are distinctly stronger than him. It's more of an issue of things in the New World being too weak than Ainz being strong.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: A good way to judge how angry Ainz is at a foe is how brutally he chooses to kill them. Clementine, a truly vile individual, was slowly crushed to death with a Deadly Hug. By contrast, if Ainz doesn't particularly care or wants to end a fight quickly, he'll just use Grasp Heart to crush their heart instantly, such as with Climb or the Frost Dragon Lord. If he's well and truly pissed, his foes don't get to die, unless they beg Neuronist for that sweet release.
• Deal with the Devil: He has a knack for offering exactly what a dissatisfied person has always wanted under the condition that they turn to his side and betray their former allies. It works on an outcast Dwarven runesmith, a war troll gladiator in the Empire, the top mage of the Empire and the guild master of E-Rantel at the very least.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • In general, Ainz is a deconstruction of the typical Isekai protagonist, particularly the Ascended Fanboy archetype. The man formerly known as Satoru Suzuki was an ordinary salaryman who had no friends, family, or even a girlfriend and whose only joy in life was an MMORPG that was on the verge of shutting down. So when he ends up transported to the New World, he quickly adapts to his new role as an Evil Overlord mainly because he had nothing else going for him in his old life. Initially, he took the role mainly to keep up appearances in front of his subordinates and as a means of finding other guild members who got transported to the New World. But as the series progresses, he begins to genuinely settle into his newfound position as a ruler and begin seeking world domination just for its own sake. Also, while initially unnerved by his crimes and his Lack of Empathy towards them, as his humanity is consumed by his new skeletal form, he begins to become more comfortable with committing atrocities if it accomplishes his goals. All in all, Ainz demonstrates what happens when someone whose been powerless all his life is suddenly granted absolute power.
  • Ainz also deconstructs the Invincible Villain and World's Strongest Man tropes. The NPCs of Nazarick are fanatically loyal to Ainz partly because of his sheer power. Because of this, he often feels pressured to live up to their expectations of him as this competent, infallible leader for fear that they may abandon him. Also, because he's so powerful, people generally regard him as the Evil Overlord, an Eldritch Abomination, a Physical God, The Hero, or some combination thereof. As a result, Ainz has no one he can confide in or call an equal, which often leaves him feeling isolated and alone. Thus, his main goal is to find out if other members of the Guild were transported to the New World so he can have someone to call a friend.
  • The Chessmaster and The Strategist are also deconstructed. While Ainz can be clever and intelligent, he's still a salaryman in his player character's body and is not as smart as everyone thinks he is and has admitted on more than one occasion that he can make mistakes. Not helping matters is that the NPCs of Nazarick are unwilling or incapable of viewing him as anything less than an infallible god and tend to misinterpret his statements as some profound wisdom or part of some grand master plan and he's forced to roll with it to keep up his image of a competent leader. Most of the time, he's just winging it and sometimes accomplishes his goals by sheer dumb luck. In Volume 10, he convinces Jircniv to surrender The Empire as a vassal nation to Nazarick without intending to. All he really wanted to do was recruit adventurers by showing off his skills in the Arena. He actually had to look up what a vassal state even is. In short, everyone thinks he's some grand master strategist playing 4D Chess when he's really playing Checkers.
  • His relationship with the NPCs deconstructs A Father to His Men. The NPCs of Nazarick are fanatically loyal to Ainz, who in turn cares about them deeply as they are the last remnants of his old guild friends. However, this ends up turning them into a Toxic Friend Influence on Ainz. A lot of Ainz's more heinous acts can all be traced back to them essentially putting words in his mouth and him not understanding the full scope of some of their ideas until it's too late and he's forced to roll with their plans to keep up the image of a competent leader. And Ainz can't bring himself to rein in some of their more twisted qualities (assuming he's even aware of them) for fear of losing their respect. In short, Ainz is just a literal salaryman in his player character's body who's forced to play the role of Evil Overlord because he doesn't want to lose the only companions he has left.
• Didn't See That Coming: There some points where he will not see something coming. Perhaps the best example is when Enri, the village girl whom he saved in order to honor Touch Me, summons an army of 5000 goblins, each with their own class, with what he initially saw as nothing but a Joke Item. Another after he defeats Jircniv's strongest orc, the latter, out of unfounded paranoia, tells him he wishes the Baharuth Empire to be a vassal state. Ainz had no idea what was even going on, and even tells him to submit the request in writing as a dodge.
• Disproportionate Retribution: During the Men in the Kingdom arc, Ainz declared that Tuare is under Nazarick's protection, but the Eight Fingers proceeded to kidnap her anyways. Ainz's solution is to have have Demiurge start a demonic disturbance right inside Re-Estize (that he pretends to repel in an Engineered Heroics operation) just to distract the Nobles with bigger problems for Sebas to get Tuare back, while Mare shows up to capture the Eight Fingers and disband them. Long story short, for one slave Sebas saved and put under Nazarick's protection, it's not just the Eight Fingers who paid for it, but also an entire kingdom of innocents as well.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Given that YGGDRASIL players in the New World are considered nothing short of forces of destruction and godly beings because they're just that powerful, you might think people there would have been learnt a lesson when they run into Ainz. They don't, and there are many cases where people underestimate Ainz and are proven that they're simply Too Dumb to Live.
• Dope Slap: As Narberal was about to attack Nfirea simply for hiring Momon by name, Ainz smacks the back of her head to remind her not to overreact to every little thing.
• Dual Wielding: Wields a pair of greatswords as Momon. Clementine mocks him for this impractical combat style, but she's also frustrated since she still can't win due to the vast difference in strength between them. This is ironic considering Clementine herself dual-wields short swords with hidden elemental effects.
• Emotion Suppression: Whenever he experiences strong emotions, his undead body suppresses them, though something slamming his Berserk Buttons can overcome this. Although it makes him more inhuman, this is in some ways a good thing, since it allows him to not worry about fear, anger, or any other emotions that would otherwise cloud his mind and make him a less effective ruler (especially in the early stages where he's still adapting to his new position). This is demonstrated in the Pleiades shorts, when an item accidentally removes his racial resistance to emotions and he kinda starts losing his shit.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Not to the same extent as characters like Demiurge or Jircniv, but Ainz has plenty of oblivious moments. A great example is from volume 10, where Ainz unironically believes he has a good relationship with Jircniv, who is in fact terrified of Ainz and desperately wants to kill him. Ainz even crashed Jircniv's secret meeting with the Theocracy without realizing what was going on. Admittedly, Ainz was slightly miffed when he heard Jircniv screaming for the Martial Lord to kill him, but he just assumed Jircniv was a massive Martial Lord fanboy. At no point in the volume did it ever occur to Ainz that his relationship with the Emperor was anything but sunny.
• Engineered Heroics: He's very fond of this strategy if he wants to subjugate other kingdoms through "peaceful means". He'll usually let Demiurge or his minions go into a rampage in a nearby Kingdom only to fight them off himself, making him look like a hero in the eyes of others while setting the places he targets up into being indebted to him.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He was perfectly willing to let Carne Village be slaughtered while he watched through a magic mirror. Understandable, as he didn't have enough information to intervene, until he saw a full grown, armed and heavily armored soldier chase down, torment, maim, and prepare to execute two helpless little girls. That soldier didn't have a prayer, and neither did the army that came with him.
    Ainz: You can chase down women and children, but you lack the conviction to face an enemy? Grasp Heart!
  • He was truly disturbed when he saw what Clementine did to Ninya. Ainz has already lost all empathy towards humans by the time he entered the New World and his emotions were mostly suppressed. When he got his hands on Clementine, he still made sure that she would pay.
    Ainz: You took your time killing her, didn't you? It's only fair to give you the same treatment, slow and painfully.
  • When a group of Re-Estize nobles came to him pleading him to spare both themselves and their families, while presenting the decapitated head of Zanac, their king whom they betrayed, Ainz went full Tranquil Fury and ordered them to be sent to Neuronist.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He doesn't understand why the Stupid Good Remedios would be angry at him for coming to her aid, failing to see others may not share his utilitarian worldview, that him not even trying to save people when it's in his power to do so is cruel, and that he's devaluing the sacrifice of her men. He just assumes she must be an unpleasable bitch rather than considering he's being just as much of an asshole and is further a foreign power that has to be kept from enacting his very real intentions of creating a political base within her country.
• Evil Overlord: Well, a more benevolent example for this trope. He's the ruler of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, a magic fortress that appeared in on a plain, and as soon as he feels it's safe, seizes large portions of territory from his nearest neighbor, vassalizes the next closest, and is perpetually close to war with a country of paladins and a theocracy. However, life under the rule of Nazarick is actually better than most other kingdoms... if you're a citizen and not a criminal reduced to "livestock" status or a slave.
• Evil Sounds Deep: In the anime, his internal dialogue is through the voice of Satoru Suzuki, who sounds, as expected, like an average Japanese man. His physical voice as Momonga/Ainz uses a different register nearly two octaves lower than his "human" voice.
• Evil Versus Evil: He's had run-ins with other villainous groups such as Nigun and his men, the Eight Fingers, some dangerous trolls, and the Theocracy. He's proven to be far stronger than them, and his servants have proven to be worse than them as well.
• Evil Virtues: He makes sure to keep a good public image, is as honest as possible, honors his agreements, avoids falling victim to arrogance, and does a good job of cultivating genuine loyalty by showing his own.
• The Faceless: Downplayed for the Manga, where Satoru's eyes are invisible, but everything below his eyes are. In the anime, his face is either obscured or covered by an object.
• Fake Weakness:
  • Masterfully pulled off by Ainz while fighting Shalltear, playing up his weaknesses as strengths and his actual strengths as weaknesses. He makes her think that he is weak to Holy and resistant to Fire when it was actually the other way around, and even used False Data: Life to make sure she would not realize the trickery. He pretends not to know her abilities, even though he knew them full well, so that she would keep using attacks that she thought he hadn't been able to plan for. He also leads her to believe that he is weak without his mana even though he had fully prepared to battle her in melee with a full arsenal's worth of powerful items. Shalltear falls straight for it and expends all her special attacks and mana on him early on, expecting a weakened Ainz with an empty mana pool to be an easy kill due to her superior fighting skills. He wasn't.
  • In volume 10, he lies to a merchant that the spell (one that the Empire mistakenly believes is his strongest one) he used to slaughter the Kingdom's army in volume 9 was something he can only cast once every ten years.
  • It is implied he has the World Item that looks like a large glowing red orb in his chest to give the impression that it's his Heart Drive.
• Faking the Dead: As a part of his false flag attack to exert his control on the Holy Kingdom, he participated in a training exercise with Evil Lord Wrath "Jaldabaoth" and several doppelgangers impersonating the Pleiades (all of them buffed beyond their base level by Aureole Omega), but doesn't completely defeat them. Instead, he fakes falling to the ground and dying after heavily injuring "Jaldabaoth", then flees. While a few idiots like Remedios or Phillip believe that he's dead for real and not just faking it, for the most part people don't believe so.
• False Flag Operation: Accidentally. During the yearly conflict between the Kingdom and the Empire, he's nominally on the side of the Empire, but they don't trust him and he's largely indifferent to the arrangement. Unfortunately for Jircniv, only top-level members of their two nations actually know this and he's far more powerful than they realized, so he brings disgrace down on their side without drastically affecting his own reputation since everyone hated him anyway. As a result, the Slane Theocracy grows very suspicious of the Empire, and many of Jircniv's most important tools believe he knew what Ainz was going to do, shaking faith in the Emperor and greatly weakening his power as a result.
• A Father to His Men: He regards the denizens of the Tomb of Nazarick as his surrogate children as the creations of his True Companions and treats them accordingly. He also regards anyone who becomes his servant and who he swears to protect in name of Ainz Ooal Gown as this as well.
• Feigning Intelligence: Although he's not stupid by any means, he's nowhere near as smart as he leads the Guardians to believe. However, if he's regal and imposing he can often get away with pretending to know what people are talking about and when he can't can usually make other people explain on his behalf by pretending it's beneath him to do so.
• First Time Feeling: He allows Nigun's Dominion Authority to strike him with a powerful blast of holy light, only to then laugh at the sensation of mild pain in an undead body from an attack that barely harmed him.
• The Fool:
  • Ainz has very little idea as to what he's doing outside of very narrow situations, but the world seemingly bends over backwards so that everything goes well. People end up vastly overestimating him as a result, which makes it even easier for him to secure information or their outright submission. It gets to the point where while indulging in a pet project he accidentally subjugates an entire nation with no bloodshed and actually worries that he might have screwed up by securing their surrender. Demiurge, the actual genius in Nazarick, is stunned by his seemingly "brilliant" plan because he had thought it would take months at least to conquer the Empire without destroying it outright and result in massive casualties.
  • It's implied that Ainz was actually a good salesman in real life. For example, he uses sales tactics and charisma to win over the guildmaster, who becomes one of his most loyal human subjects. Unfortunately he's not good at much else, and even his management experience is pretty worthless with Nazarick, since he's thinking about it in terms of being a CEO, where the Guardians view him as a god.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From an unremarkable salaryman who was almost PKed in an MMO as soon as after character creation, to one of the most obsessed players of said MMO and the guild leader of a powerful guild, to a brutal mass-murdering Evil Overlord. His instincts for it aren't the greatest, but as time goes on he commits or makes use of more and more atrocities.
• Glamour: Wears an illusion of his human face the few times he needs to remove his helmet as "Momon". Since it is just an illusion, he has to avoid letting anything make actual physical contact with it lest he suffer Glamour Failure.
• God-Emperor: Not a title that Ainz claims, but rather how he is treated by the denizens of Nazarick and the lizardman tribes.
• A God I Am Not: While never referred to as a god by anyone directly, Ainz knows his subordinates in Nazarick worship him and see him as a god. This makes him very uncomfortable even after he had gotten used to the idea of being a king and world domination.
• The Good King: Invoked and downplayed. He's trying to cultivate an image of a wise benevolent ruler, however there is no mistake who is in charge, no one dares speak out against Ainz, and it's something of a police state. On the other hand, it's peaceful and prosperous, fair and practical decisions are made about governance, and even though mind control magic is used in investigations, it's genuinely only used to find the culprits of crimes and discern guilt as when the Sorcerer Kingdom asked the Empire for their death row inmates, a few were sent back as they were found to be innocent.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of the Holy Kingdom arc (Volumes 12 & 13), where the story focuses on the viewpoint of Neia Baraja while Ainz serves as a side character whose true goal is to take advantage of the current war between the Roble Holy Kingdom and demihuman tribes with Demiurge, and subtly propping himself up as a hero to them in their time of need.
• Guest Fighter: Ainz appears alongside Albedo as a playable character in AFK Arena.
• The Heart: When Touch Me disbanded the clan Nine's Own Goal so that they could form a proper guild, he picked Momonga to replace him as the new guild leader. Ulbert and likely several others were somewhat sick of Touch Me by this point due to his rather demanding nature, and Touch Me agreed that he should step down. Momonga was chosen because everyone liked Momonga, even both Touch Me and Ulbert, and no one else could have held the group together. Momonga for his part wasn't much of a leader, but he was good at coming up with solutions that satisfied everyone and came across as fair.
• Heart Drive: Subverted. That glowing red orb in his stomach is actually a World Item, and his choice to keep it there is implied to be more stylish than anything. In the New World, however, no one knows any better and he seemingly plays along with the perception, such as when Climb went for it.
• Heroic Neutral: At first, he wasn't interested in various conflicts that didn't involve him, and didn't want anything to do with the Carne Village raid. However seeing Enri and Nemu in danger, and remembering Touch Me's words, had him change his mind and save the sisters and the village. As the story progresses, he went from humoring the idea of world domination, to actually act on it, cementing his Villain Protagonist role. He does show a bit of this in his Momon persona, and when he's being affable in public.
• Hero Killer: Kills Gazef in a single hit during the Katze Plains massacre, shaking Re-Estize Kingdom to its very core. After genociding the entire Re-Estize Kingdom to their knees, he also kills Climb in a single hit after toying with him for a while.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: While it's downplayed and more apparent in his interactions with the NPCs of Nazarick, Ainz will occasionally help others or do something nice, even for humans or outsiders, because Good Feels Good. Though in all these instances, if anyone questions him on it, he'll say he was doing it for a practical reason that had nothing to do with morality or decency. He can be a real selfish jerkass, but if anything, his overlord persona is still mostly a role he is playing, and he usually has to fake sharing his servants' sadism and racism toward humans to keep the image. While he certainly ain't a good guy, he is not as evil and monstrous as many people think he is, and he always tries to hide his good side to everyone, especially the Guardians.
• Humble Hero: As Momon, he goes out of his way to never seem arrogant or condescending except when it comes to confidence in his own abilities, which is a selling point. It's a deliberately cultivated image so that he can become as popular as possible and then try to pass that esteem back to his 'real' self when he's Momon.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: He often holds important items, weapons, or equipment in a pocket dimension and simply opens a dark portal when he wants to take something out. He does this in either his Ainz or Momon persona. He tries not to keep anything too valuable in there, as it can be accessed by other people with the appropriate skills.
• Hypocrisy Nod: Invoked in the anime with the "fight" between Ainz and Clementine. Just before the battle, he told her that it would be hypocritical of him to reproach her for slaughtering the Swords of Darkness, since he was using them as a means to gain fame for his Momon persona, and would have done the same if his plans called for it. Afterwards, he then quips to her lifeless, broken body:
  Ainz Ooal Gown: I forgot to tell you. Try as I might, I have a tendency to be... hypocritical.
• Hypocrite: Despite murdering or ordering the horrible deaths and torture of dangerous criminals, he himself does worse than them on a larger scale with no hesitation. He even openly lampshades it to Clementine before he kills her.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Ainz makes it a point to use only the bare minimum level of strength needed to accomplish his goals, to avoid people learning about his true capabilities. When he finds someone that's around his current level (usually equal to something at around 70 to 90) he'll show off a bit more. A favorite one for the series in general is him admitting that he isn't a warrior but a mage with (relative) super strength.
• I Gave My Word: When he promises to do something, he refuses to back down on it even if it comes at a personal cost, though the limit of this is not known. One of the clearest examples is when he promises on 'his' name to keep Tsuare safe, only for her to get kidnapped. He's furious not because he cares about her, but because the group that took her is mocking the name of the guild by doing so. He crushes the criminals responsible, enslaves and breaks them and more without a thought as to the benefits or consequences, though it does turn out to be a pretty good deal for him anyway.
• I Have Many Names: He is known as Ainz Ooal Gown to Nazarick, the Sorcerer King in the New World after he occupies E-Rantel, Satoru Suzuki to the real world, Momonga to YGGDRASIL and the Dark Warrior Momon when masquerading as an adventurer.
• I Meant to Do That: He tends to pass off blunders and thoughtless action as part of some greater scheme, which tends to work as a mere distraction if nothing else. It also maintains his image of being an infallible and near omniscient king to his subordinates.
• Instant Armor: The full plate armor he wears as "Momon" is a magical construct that he can summon and dispel at will, though he has a real version as well in case he needs it to look damaged or something, in which case he has to really carry it around.
• Instant Expert:
  • A variant. Before coming into the new world, Ainz (formerly Momonga) was merely Satoru Suzuki's in-game avatar, and as such, all of his spells, mana, health, and so forth were merely aspects of the game awarded through level progression and related activities that could be called upon with the proper commands. Once he becomes his in-game avatar in the new world, he intrinsically knows how to use all his spells and abilities, and has an innate sense of his health and mana pool even if he can't perceive it as a raw number. It's also subverted in that while Ainz can cast the spells he knows, he doesn't actually know how they work, so he can't teach others what he knows when asked for tutelage because he doesn't understand the fundamentals of magic from an academic standpoint.
  • His Perfect Warrior spell allows him to temporarily exchange his caster levels for equivalent levels in a warrior class, allowing him to use equipment he would normally be blocked from using, although he doesn't gain any other abilities, so a theoretical equivalent warrior would still be stronger.
• Invincible Villain: He's the Villain Protagonist, and both he and his minions annihilate hordes of enemies like they're nothing, due to the fact that they have the highest levels in the New World.

J - Y

• Jerkass Has a Point: Ainz may have went too far when he slaughtered the Workers, including Arche, who was just in the job to protect her little sisters, but he does point out that the Workers did invade his home to rob him, not that they knew it was a home. He also asked them prior to them entering as Momon what their motivations were for going into the Tomb, and all they did was say they were doing it for the money and nothing more, which in his eyes makes them greedy and not worth giving respect to. At the very least, had some (like Foresight) been more honest about the reason they wanted money, he would have had enough inkling to consider sparing them given who he is, but their greedy motivations, especially given one of the crypts that was very easy to enter had a huge stash of gold that didn't satisfy the group enough to leave, makes it hard to find him being too far with it.
• Just Toying with Them: His battle against Shalltear is the only battle he has treated as serious, because it was. Against all other foes, Ainz is so far above them that by necessity having it go on longer than the evocation of "Grasp Heart!" is him intentionally toying with a foe he sees as beneath him. The one exception is his battle against Gazef, who Ainz killed with far more force than he needed to because he felt it would disrespectful not to under the circumstances.
• Kavorka Man: Subverted. He's a giant, amoral skeleton, yet has multiple suitors. But the women in love with him are women inhabitants of Nazarick, who are heteromorphs with different beauty standards and fanatical devotion, while the likes of Evileye are actually in love with a lie. Albedo, her biggest and most devoted suitor, was programmed by him to be in love with him as a joke just seconds before arriving to the new world and the settings stayed with that, and would have sex with anybody if it wasn't for that (granted, she would still be attracted to Ainz regardless, but he wouldn't be the only object of her lust if her settings hadn't been changed)
• Kick the Dog: Usually averted, as almost all of Ainz's actions, even the most terrible ones, have some pragmatic point and a solid rationale to them. But played straight in Volume 13 when Ainz gives a Breaking Speech to a grieving father whose son was murdered by Ainz himself during an hostage situation; Ainz states that if the father truly cared for his son, he would have given his life for him, and the fact that he's still alive is proof that, in the end, he valued his own life over that of his son. This speech had no real point other than to further hurt the surviving parent.
• Killer Bear Hug: He murders Clementine by wrapping his arms around them and squeezing down, drawing out the process to make it a Cruel and Unusual Death. He ends up snapping their spine and rupturing their organs since a fountain of High-Pressure Blood jets out of their mouth.
• Kill It with Fire: Both on the giving and receiving end of the trope: he knows several fire spells, but fire is also a weakness of the undead. He selected his default gear specifically to negate that weakness entirely.
• Lack of Empathy: After coming to the new world, Ainz noticed a disturbing lack of care for the suffering of others. He believes it may be due to his undead body dulling his morals, but either way he's almost eager to engage in mass murder and torture so long as he can get away with it, with only respect for his old friend Touch Me, pragmatism, and a lack of outright sadism holding him back.
• Large Ham: Though mostly reserved, Ainz also has a flair for theatrics should the situation warrant it. Most of the time, it simply comes off as the requisite showmanship befitting an Evil Overlord such as himself. He even keeps notes on what gestures to use in certain situations and practices them in private.
• Leonine Contract: He's quite fond of these, often seeking out people in desperate situations, providing a solution and charging a steep price. However, the terms he offers are always considered quite fair, sometimes even seen as quite generous, like when he rescued Carne Village in return for whatever information they could give him about the New World, which in turn motivates them to eagerly serve him without having to be asked; and he always keeps his end of the bargain, as much as possible, even if it would be against his interests or he has no obligation to do so.
• Living Legend: Thanks to Ainz's efforts to improve his reputation as Momon and his sheer power, Momon ends up an extremely popular and respected figure. This ends up making him a valuable tool for pacifying the people and allowing a peaceful transition of power.
• Lonely at the Top: In the New World he has no equals and no friends he can truly confide in. Everyone in Nazarick is a subordinate (and sees him as a deity so they are always subservient to his will). The rest of the world knows him as the Evil Overlord, an Eldritch Abomination, Physical God, or The Hero. He wants to find other YGGDRASIL Players, originally part of his guild or not, because he wants to have the friendship of a fellow human from Earth and try to be Satoru Suzuki again. This is best summed up by the lyrics to the Season 4 ending song "No Man's Dawn", sung from Ainz's persepctive, where he expresses how he deeply misses his old comrades and longs for the glory days of Ainz Ooal Gown (the guild), showing that even with all his power and the entirety of the New World practically at his fingertips, Ainz would gladly give it all up if it means he could have his old friends back.
• Loving a Shadow: Momonga's devotion to the mere memory of the other members of Ainz Ooal Gown. Even as they all moved on from the game, Momonga kept on holding to their legacy because he had nothing else left to live for, dedicating all of his play time just to support a guild that was all but dead in practice. This remains true in the New World, where Momonga sees all the NPCs basically as extensions of his dear comrades, and, most tragically, reacts with anger and hatred at any perceived slight against their memory. If they were to come to the New World, would his guildmates really approve of the wretched entity he has become in their name?
• Meaningful Appearance: His "Momon" attire is based on the type of warrior he wants to become if he could create a second character. His cape is inspired by Touch Me's Scarf, and his greatsword is based on Warrior Takemikazuchi's.
• Media Transmigration: Satoru was a normal Japanese businessman who ends up becoming his skeletal lich player avatar when he stayed to commemmorate his favorite MMORPG's shutdown.
• Mercy Kill:
  • The kindest thing he can do for prisoners is to give them a swift painless death, a mercy he gives to those who have done nothing to offend him such as the children taken by Demiurge. Well, he could just set them free, but that wouldn't be good for his overlord figure. He considers death mercy, at least compared to what the most evil denizens of Nazarick can do to others, and proves when he orders Shalltear to kill Arche without pain.
  • He may have had this in mind with regard to the people of Re-Estize after his talk with Prince Zanac, when the latter mustered up the courage to negotiate the outcome of Re-Estize's impending battle with Nazarick, despite Lord Ainz being resolute in teaching Re-Estize a lesson. Sadly, the Nobles who orchestrated Zanac's immediate beheading after the negotiation had other ideas...
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: As a player, Momonga's character build was more for PvE and role playing rather than straight up PvP build like Touch Me or a min-maxed magic caster like Ulbert. Even in the new world, he's not even the most powerful being in Nazarick. However, his knowledge and strategic expertise allowed him to fight and defeat Shalltear, a floor guardian who was created to fight players of Momonga's level. He also trains in combat from time to time in preparation for beings that stronger than him that he might have to fight should they appear.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: When humoring the child Aura, he says he likes her the most among the girls of Nazarick. He's quite confused by her sudden panic, but all his further statements do is convince her he's engaging in Wife Husbandry.
• Moment of Weakness: Albedo has witnessed them on several occasions. Momonga has exhibited his loneliness as the last Supreme Being and a desire to see his comrades. He shared his selfish reasons for not letting the Floor Guardians fight Shalltear. She was present when he displayed hesitation and uncertainty at rumors that a fellow guild member was in the New World. See Albedo's spoilerific Dragon with an Agenda trope entry for her reaction to protect him.
• Moral Myopia: He disdains the Slane Theocracy for their unprovoked attack on Carne Village and Clementine for her torture, but attacks and subjugates the lizardmen while engaging in horrific torture himself. He's protective of Nazarick guardians and is enraged when they are threatened, but kills wantonly himself and ignores how terrible his subordinates actually are, such as Entoma and Demiurge.
• Motive Decay: Acknowldged In-Universe as well, he laments how he abandoned his original goal of gaining attention of any of his friends also trapped in with him, and using his power to Take Over the World because gaining the loyalty of his subordinates (who are still loyal to him no matter what anyway) is all he has left now.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In the first overlord drama CD, he uses time-stop, explosive spells, and a spell meant to simulate a meteor impact to dress the giant doom tree as a Christmas tree before having the time-stop and all the fireworks go off simultaneously, all because his guardians wanted to see one. The Dryad on the scene does not take it well.
• Mundane Utility: To cultivate the image of an all-powerful undead sorcerer king, Ainz has used his forces in mundane ways simply to either impress or show the amount of power he wields. Some direct examples are:
  • To announce his intention of subjugating the Lizardmen tribes, he summoned an army of magically equipped skeleton warriors and made them into a stepping platform. He also used a spell to freeze the swamp and ordered one of his guardians to toss a giant rock cube on the frozen lake to act as a stage for him. Finally, he ordered another one of his guardians to summon monsters simply to announce his presence.
  • When the Emperor of Baharuth came to arrange a meeting with him, he first made sure that the weather was nice enough by using a tier 6 spell (appropriately named Control Weather). He also summons Death Knights to act as wait staff for his visitors, something that both bewilders and terrifies them because even the Empire's best wizard cannot subjugate even one Death Knight.
  • During the Massacre of Katze Plains, he recalls one of his summoned Dark Young to act as his mount.
  • Once he founds the Sorcerer Kingdom, he has undead tending crops, Death Knights serving as a police force, and Soul Eaters pulling wagons. The first one isn't unique to Ainz — Fluder hit upon that use of the undead, too — but he's a hell of a lot better at it.
• Mugging the Monster: He's the monster in question. No matter how strong he is and how outclassed his opponents are, or beings like him had shown up once every century, nobody seems to realize he's the type of person who can kill literal thousands with a single spell, or that his physical strength is enough to cripple someone in an instant despite strength being his lowest stat. And that's before he decides to get serious.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: His body is basically a Skeleton. And yet he is strong enough to wound a Troll with a single strike.
• Necromancer: Powerful undeads are generally capable of summoning lesser undead. Ainz is an Overlord, so he is able to summon low, medium, and high tier undead. Back in the game, these are only temporary summons which will vanish after a certain amount of time. Much to his surprise, when he tries to create a Death Knight after killing a man in the New World, it raises the corpse as a Death Knight that does not vanish. However, there are certain limits: Ainz is unable to create higher-tier undead which don't vanish using human corpses. To do so, he needs a stronger 'base material' so to speak - the corpse of stronger beings will allow the permanent creation of stronger undead.
• The Needless: Doesn't eat or drink as he's undead. He does sleep, but he doesn't really need it, and only really does it to destress and have time to himself.
• New Life in Another World Bonus: Ainz Ooal Gown reincarnates in his YGGDRASIL VRMMORPG avatar. He has level 100, unique classes, all of his similarly powerful comrades equipment, their guild base (one of the strongest guilds in-game) is an entire army including 8 other level 100 servants; with absolute authority over all of them.
• Noble Demon: He's a mass-murdering monster, but also generally willing to accept surrender and has no need to cause suffering just for the sake of suffering. He also honors nobility from his enemies.
• The Nondescript: In the Manga and the anime, Satoru is shown as a non-descript young man out of his video game avatar.
• No Poker Face: Played with. If it wasn't for the fact he was in the body of a skeleton and an outside force calming his emotions down, his reactions would be easier to read than a picture book.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: While he is a very powerful undead, skilled tactician and good fighter, Ainz wasn't someone particularly powerful back in the MMO he used to play with the other supreme beings. Indeed, it's stated that he isn't particularly strong for a level 100 character, and he mostly got by through the help of the other Supreme Beings and his gamer skills. In the new world, the power system is so low that a level 30 character is considered something legendary, so his level 100 status, as well the tomb consisting of monsters who are also that level, make for an invincible overlord whose weaker spells are above even the strongest magic casters.
• No-Sell: Being a skeletal undead makes him immune to the Electric, Poison, and Ice elements and greatly resists slashing and thrusting weapons because he has no organs to damage. He cannot be critted, life-drained, mentally attacked, hit with instant-kill effects or most status effects. With carefully selected gear, he can also neutralize one of his crippling weaknesses to fire, light, holy, or bash attacks, generally preferring to go with fire. Finally, as a high-level player character, he is outright immune to physical attacks from those below an effective level of 60 unless he deactivates this skill. Given that he's only seen a single entity in the New World above this level, he's basically untouchable by anything this world can throw at him.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: Much to Albedo's and Shalltear's pleasure, his Lich attire exposes his skeletal chest and the red orb in the void of his abdomen.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: After subjugating the Lizardmen tribe, he makes a deal with Crusch Lulu, offering to resurrect her lover Zaryusu in exchange for her covertly spying on her fellow Lizardmen to ensure they stay loyal. He also tells her that he will implant Zaryusu with a spell that will kill him if Crusch proves to be disloyal. His internal monologue reveals that the threat is actually a bluff, but it's convincing enough to get her to agree to the deal.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When he finds out Lupusregina didn't report about the Giant of the East and Serpent of the West, he was furious because she did not report to him over something she thinks very little of when he made it known that Carne Village has value to him. Narberal and Aura, who were also present, were sweating bullets and Lupus was outright terrified because she fears angering him. The light novel makes it clear that this is what scared her the most.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: As "Momon", he dual-wields greatswords thanks to the enormous strength he has from being incredibly overleveled. Interestingly enough, this is actually considered highly impractical and is something he can only get way with due to being so physically strong.
• One-Hit KO: He's specialized in instant death effects to the point where he even has access to a secret bonus class with a one hit kill ability that can kill inanimate objects, terrain, and the undead. Use of the ability turns an entire field into a dust-filled crater. He also has a death aura that among high-level players would only cause a status debuff, but is strong enough to kill some of the most powerful known monsters of the New World. He also tends to default to Grasp Heart when wanting to swiftly end a "fight", which is strong enough (for Attack on the Heart reasons) to kill pretty much everyone he runs into.
• One-Man Army: A level 100 character in a world where level 30 is considered unstoppable. His reaction to the Slane Theocracy Mooks summoning a giant badass angel was to facepalm at how weak their supposed trump card is. Later, by using a single spell he kills nearly two hundred thousand people.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: A justified example. He is known to his subordinates as Momonga and rechristens himself as Ainz Ooal Gown in the New World, which is the name citizens know him by. His actual name, Satoru Suzuki, is unknown to almost everyone in the story because he never uses it to identify himself and it's very likely that his guildmates addressed him by his handle name of Momonga as well.
• Our Liches Are Different: In YGGDRASIL, a lich (literally translated as Elder Lich) is simply a racial class for undead spellcasters, evolving from the more basic Skeleton Mages. They generally appear as a skeleton or at least a mostly decayed corpse, and possess no phylactery. However, in the new world their bodies are usually not the corpse of anyone in particular because undead simply arise in places where there has been much bloodshed. Ainz's own class, an Overlord, is something of an extremely souped-up version of a lich, which is usually divided into the sub-classes Overlord Wiseman (has great mastery over magic), Overlord Chronos Master (possess time-related skills), Overlord General (possesses the inherent ability to summon and control other powerful undead creatures).
• Out-of-Character Moment: Any time he acts bombastic or undergoes Large Ham, it's often to be Pandora's Actor in his place. For example, when Riku Aganeia attacks him while he was in the middle of monologuing, he frantically bows, which is something the real Ainz doesn't do. Albedo calls him out on this and Pandora's Actor had given a thought, but Ainz doesn't mind if it meant dropping his enemies' guard.
• Outside-Context Problem: Ainz is one of the few YGGDRASIL players who get deported from the game to the New World under unknown circumstances, just like the Six Gods and Eight Greed Kings spoken of New World legends, and is implied to be the last since he gets deported the same time as when the game shut down. The problem is that he's also distinctly stronger than the previous player guilds who got deported in and infighting and aging isn't much of an issue to him since he's the only sapient and sentient person who got deported this time and he cannot die by aging, so there's really no way for the New World to get out from being annihilated and occupied by him.
• Papa Wolf: Although he doesn't consider them his children, Ainz is fiercely protective of the NPCs of Nazarick since as far as he knows they're the last legacy of his fellow guild members. In the Half Elf God-kin arc (Volumes 15 and 16), he's apoplectic after hearing Decem's plans to breed Aura and have Mare participate in the debauchery, deciding the elf king dies then and there. He's similarly enraged after he learns from Antilene through [Control Amnesia] that the Slane Theocracy was the one who tried to brainwash Shalltear and declares all-out war on them.
• The Paranoiac: Though kept in check from others noticing, his inner monologue shows a surprising degree of paranoia. He recounts incidents involving Tabula Smaragdina (the revelation of Nigredo, an issue with experimenting the Caloric Stone, Albedo assigning restricted equipment) and questions these events having malicious intent. He questions if Peroroncino designed Shalltear to specifically defeat him, despite being best friends with him (and the fact Shalltear was Munchkin for any opponent). He holds back advanced Player Versus Player tactics from his followers, as it remains one of the few "trump cards" he has in the event of betrayal. His overall caution in the New World is rooted in the fear that other Yggdrasil players are secretly active or plotting against him.
• Parental Substitute: Whenever Aura and Mare are involved, Ainz often has internal monologues about nice things he should do for them, such as who he should delegate to give them The Talk, or sending them to school.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: There's no denying he can be an evil bastard at times. But when he faces against an opponent who's far worse and evil than him, he'll make it known that their deaths will be swift. And he's not joking on the latter.
• Person of Mass Destruction: His super tier spells place him in this category. While Ia Shub Niggurath destroyed an entire army numbering over 200,000 (70,000 from the initial cast, the rest from the five monsters it summoned), it could just as easily depopulate an entire city if cast in an urban area.
• Pet the Dog: Even in the height of his villainy, he still has a soft spot for specific individuals, regardless of what race they are.
  • To honor Touch Me, he went out of his way to save Enri and Nemu, despite their initial reactions. While he somewhat doesn't care for the remaining villagers, Enri particularly stood out as he gifted her two Horns of the Goblin General (weak items by his standards, but rather charitable nonetheless), which became extremely handy in defeating Prince Barbro and his men.
    • When Enri went to E-Rantel to sell medicinal herbs, she gets Wrongfully Accused by the local wizard since she had the Horn of the Goblin General, which costs a few thousand gold, and accuses her of being a powerful witch. Ainz (in his Momon disguise) vouches for her, and sends Narberal to ask her what she was doing in E-Rantel. Once he discovers about the Giant of the East and Demon Serpent of the West, he goes out of his way to track them down himself. Downplayed a bit when he resurrects the former as a zombie, but that was to test Lupisregina to see if she would save the people he considers important as he ordered.
  • His interactions with his subordinates are filled with these moments, from giving water to Aura and Mare when they seemed thirsty, embracing and apologizing to Shalltear after he was forced to kill her and so on...
  • After Nfirea finds out about his identity in his Momon disguise and giving his thanks to him, he goes out of his way to save the boy after he was captured by Clementine. And thus, both him and his grandmother end up on his list that Lupisregina is required to protect.
  • After learning that Tuare is the sister of his now-deceased adventurer comrade Ninya, he lets her stay in Nazarick. She is one of the few people he doesn't offer a Deal with the Devil to because she was sincere in her words, allows her to move to Nazarick so she can stay with Sebas, and went out of his way to deploy his troops to rescue her when she was kidnapped. In fact, he even rewards Sebas and lets him go on a date with her.
  • In volume 8, he is so flattered by Nemu's amazement and wonder at the sight of Nazarick that he goes into a fit of joyful laughter, pats her on the head, takes her on a guided tour of the more visitor-friendly parts of Nazarick and adds her name to the list of people Lupusregina Beta must keep alive in Carne Village. This happens well after his lingering humanity has been all but consumed by his Evil Overlord persona.
  • He takes in Erya's elf slaves and has them become maids for Mare and Aura as he does not fault them for the invasion of Nazarick by the Workers, since they came against their will and their deceased master was horrifically abusive to them.
  • He accepts Gazef's request for a duel during the Massacre of Katze Plains, despite being both powerful enough to kill him right then and there without trying, and not even having a reason to do so. After he kills Gazef, he honors his wishes of not taking his weapon as spoils of war, doesn't desecrate his body in any way, and makes it so he cannot be resurrected by lower-tier magic.
  • Seeing how passionate Gondo is when it came to runesmithing, he gives him a lenient An Offer You Can't Refuse, and Gondo himself accepts without hesitation.
  • He treats Go Gin with respect and the feeling is mutual as the latter can tell how powerful he is. After killing him, Ainz decides to resurrect him to display his power.
• Poke in the Third Eye:
  • Ainz has passive counter-spells which nullify attempts to magically scry near his location.
  • Ainz possesses a ring that masks his magic power. When he takes it off, Arche is so overwhelmed by it she vomits on the spot.
• Poor Communication Kills: He has a tendency to misread what his subordinates are doing and saying, leading to atrocities that he would at least not continue, though he probably wouldn't condemn them either. For example, he honestly believes that Demiurge is skinning chimeras, not human beings.
• Power Copying: His Dark Wisdom apparently works by learning spells from the corpses of players.
• Power is Sexy: Explaining his Kavorka Man tendencies to a great extent. At one point, Shalltear comments that Ainz's sheer aura of power and domination "caused her underwear to go through a bit of a crisis". Evileye seems to be enamored with Momon because he is strong enough to overpower her as one of the absolute strongest entities in the New World, but it's implied that it was for the same reasons as Shalltear as she's a vampire as well.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He has no qualms about Cold-Blooded Torture, experimenting on people and corpses, or letting the Guardians run wild, but he does his best to look heroic in the process, i.e. his targets are usually explicit criminals, or worse. If any other players made it to this world, then they would be appalled if he acted openly evil, and he isn't entirely sure that there aren't creatures like dragons that can match him anyway.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: He goes from an overworked Japanese salaryman in the real world who wished to learn more about the New World he was teleported into, to an extremely cunning Evil Overlord desiring to Take Over the World along with his loyal subjects, most of them more evil than him, using Engineered Heroics to its logical conclusion, all in the span of a few weeks.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He was originally just a gamer who played as a member of a Legion of Doom-esq guild before finding himself transported to the New World in the body of his former in-game avatar. While he continued to play the part of an Evil Overlord, it became more and more genuine as time goes on.
• Rage Breaking Point: He often reaches to this point before his Emotion Suppression activates.
  • When Ainz finds out Tuare got kidnapped by the Eight Fingers, he orders Albedo to set a task force to rescue her and punish the offenders. Albedo objects, telling him that she fails to see the value to save her. He is seething with rage on the other side of the call and Albedo relents once he calms down.
  • This is best shown when a group of Re-Estize nobles came to him pleading him to spare both themselves and their families by presenting Zanac's head, Ainz just barely holds it together and went full Tranquil Fury and ordered them to be sent to Neuronist after having a talk with them, and asks Albedo to bury Zanac's head.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: Ainz and most of his major followers have character sheets detailing their statistics (such as health, mana, physical and magical power), ranging from 0 to 100. Momonga's mana level exceeds the limit of 100 and breaks the scale.
  • In the series proper, this happens to Arche when she uses her Talent, which allows her to determine the strength of a spellcaster, on Ainz. Up until that point, the strongest mage she is likely to have ever seen was Fluder Paradyne, a tier 6 caster whose level is likely in the high 30es or low 40es. When she tries that on Ainz, a level 100 mage who can use tier 10 and Super-Tier magic, the magical pressure he emits is so overwhelming that she immediately gives up her lunch right then and there.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • If you're willing to submit to his authority and be subsumed into his growing empire, he's not too bad a ruler to live under, and is actually less of a tyrant than many of the human rulers.
  • He's willing to amend his plans sometimes if given reason to believe his earlier plans were flawed. For example, he wants a kingdom comprising of all races because he likes collecting weird things, but is told that heteromorphs and demihumans will often eat humanoids. As such, he quickly puts a ban on any citizens consuming each other or citizens of other nations because even the latter will cause internal strife.
• Red Baron:
  • As Momon, he is known as "The Dark Hero" or "Raven-Black Hero" for his jet-black armor.
  • After declaring his intent to create a new nation, the Floor Guardians come up with different suggestions for titles. Ainz goes with Cocytus' name for him: "Sorcerer King".
• The Red Mage: Downplayed. Ainz's build was designed with role-playing in mind and has certain key strengths, the first being Death Magic, the second is Summon Magic, and the third is Time Magic. However, many times throughout the Light Novel it is remarked that Ainz doesn't have the destructive power that other members of the Guild had, so he had to make due with his versatility and the sheer number of spells he possessed.
• Reduced to Dust: Ainz's strongest skill is "The Goal of All Life is Death", which gives his next instant death spell the ability to override normal instant death protection, and can only be survived by resurrection that triggers automatically. By combining this with the spell Cry of the Banshee and the metamagic Widen Magic, Ainz can cause everything within a 100 meters of himself to die, including the land and the very air itself. This results in ground becoming a desert and everything else to be completely annihilated.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: He values loyalty above all else, which includes his enemies and their loyalty to their monarch. He does not like it if you're willing to betray your country or your monarch just to side with him. In fact, as mentioned a few times, when a group of Re-Estize nobles betrays Zanac, he decides to "reward" them by telling them their families will be spared. He tells Albedo to take them to Neuronist so they can die a slow and painful death by begging for it. Considering the state of Re-Estize when he destroys it, he definitely did not honor his word to them for their betrayal.
• The Roleplayer: Ainz notes that his build is not optimized as it was designed with mainly role-playing in mind, specializing in abilities that most players would have solid countermeasures to at high levels, such as death magic and time magic. In YGGDRASIL such suboptimal characters created for flair over substance were known as "dream builds" and largely shunned by the player base as inefficient, but Ainz managed to pull his weight in the guild thanks to the sheer versatility of his spell repertoire. In addition, his roleplaying skill does end up helping him pull off the overlord act convincingly.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: While he leaves most of the bureaucratic paperwork to his trusted attendants and the Guardians, notably Albedo, he otherwise takes a very personal and "hands on" approach to running his country, and he's quite skilled at it, especially when it comes to diplomacy.
• Salaryman: He was a salaryman before being transferred to the New World, and based on the way he acts, he is technically still a Salaryman in an undead's body. He also sometimes references events during his past life as a salaryman when approaching others and making decisions.
• Scary Skeleton: He certainly seems to fit the trope, and commands a great deal of fear from those who see his true face.
• Serpent Staff: Ainz wields a Magic Staff entwined by seven serpents, each one with a different colored jewel in its mouth.
• Shipper on Deck: He encourages Sebas Tian and Tuare to "get together".
• Shock and Awe: One of the spells he uses is Dragon Lightning, a 5th Tier spell.
• Shoulders of Doom: His cloak is held up by massive shoulder pauldrons.
• The Sleepless: Demiurge considers Albedo rubbing her scent all over Ainz's bed pointless as he'll likely never be in it, though he does rest there.
• Slouch of Villainy: Does this on his throne. Especially when he's alone and trying to vent off stress for Feigning Intelligence, being a Clueless Boss, or brooding how it's Lonely at the Top, or even lamenting the fact that he can't reciprocate Albedo and Shalltear's feelings for him.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Once he awakens in the New World, he grows increasingly comfortable with atrocities, as his caution regarding potential rivals decreases. The openings of the first and second season of the anime, told from his perspective, lampshade this, by the ending of the third season, it's an open lament about how much of an evil monster he has become.
• Sorcerous Overlord: As a powerful necromancer and the lord of Nazarick, he eventually takes the title of Sorcerer King.
• Spanner in the Works: He completely and unintentionally thwarts Emperor Jircniv's plans to recruit the Slane Theocracy in volume 10 by showing up virtually unannounced in the Arena to battle the Empire's strongest gladiator. All he wanted to do was show off to adventurers and recruit them for his new guild.
• Squishy Wizard: Almost completely averted. He is of course nearly unkillable in the New World (and Nigh-Invulnerable to most of their attacks due to a special skill), but he is able to keep up with Shalltear for quite a while despite taking many blows from her attacks and spells. A look at his stat block shows that his health and physical defense are both middling at least, and his magic defense is actually higher than his magic attack, making him difficult to take down in a spellcaster duel.
• Stalker without a Crush: He keeps a surveillance spell on Emperor Jircniv for two reasons: 1) To have early warning for when the man acts to betray him; and 2) to emulate his ruling style as Jircniv is loved by the vast majority of Empire citizens. It has served Ainz well (at the cost of Jircniv's mental health, since he can sense he's being watched but can't do anything about it).
• The Strategist: Surprisingly. In the two "Prologue" prequel chapters, we find out that when he was made leader of the guild "Ainz Ooal Gown", the very first thing he did was put together the strategy to outright conquer a dungeon, "The Tomb of Nazarick", in one shot, a feat that no other guild had ever even attempted, not even with any other dungeon. It was a roaring success. And as a bonus, because the guild conquered the tomb outright without any casualties or failures on their first try, the guild was rewarded with a World Item.
• Sue Donym: While he never uses his actual human name, the name of his disguised persona - "Momon" - is clearly just a minor distortion of his character name, "Momonga". This avoids being stupid because he does not actually use the name "Momonga" in the New World, instead going by his guild name, Ainz Ooal Gown. So the only ones who would recognize the name are Nazarick residents (who are already in on the ruse) and other players (whom he's looking for anyways). And if they do recognize him, they'll see him as a heroic swordsman.
• Summon Magic: He can summon various undead such as Death Knights. Normally these summons vanish over time, but in the New World, casting the spell near a corpse raises the corpse as a permanent version. He can also summon angels to serve as bodyguards with the right tools, though this is not an ability he normally uses.
• Super-Strength: Subverted. Though he can hug Clementine, one of the strongest warriors in the New World, to death, he will still likely lose in a physical fight against anyone or anything from YGGDRASIL that's around his level bracket. He's just so far above everyone in the New World that even his worst stats are above the greatest heroes that he has come across.
• Support Party Member: During the fight against the Asura raid boss in the "Prologue" prequel chapters, he leaves most of the fighting to Nishikenrai, Ulbert and Warrior Takemikazuchi, while he casts buffs, debuffs and other support spells.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: While he certainly has his moments of tactical brilliance, his reputation for being a long-term strategic and political mastermind comes largely from others misinterpreting things he said in passing or things that just happened to work out in his favor. When he is aware of this happening, he just rolls with it to maintain that reputation.
• Swap Teleportation: When they first meet, Ainz gives Gazef an item that allows him to swap places with Gazef, suspecting that Gazef's battle with the Sunlight Scripture might require his intervention. It also swaps all of Gazef's troops in the area.
• Sweat Drop: One of his most frequent expressions in the manga, coupled with his face being super deformed into a generic, undetailed, and very surprised skeleton skull.
• Taught by Experience:
  • He's able to beat his own personal Man of Kryptonite Shalltear in a straight fight because he had to actually learn how to PvP himself rather than just being that strong from the start. Her tactics are clever and make good use of her skills, but she's weak to bluffs and paces herself poorly.
  • Ainz goes to a lot of effort to prevent scrying because YGGDRASIL was very much an information based game. You didn't want your enemies to know anything and almost everyone was potentially your enemy. Conversely, he does a lot of scrying himself (keeping an eye on the defense of Carne village or spying on Jircniv to take notes on how a leader should act).
• Terrifying Rescuer: When he comes to the rescue of Enri and Nemu, they're even more scared of him than the soldier that just slashed Enri despite him having saved their lives. He has to alter their memories as a result and learns to hide his nature as one of the undead. Later, after living under his protection for some time, they're no longer concerned by it when he stops hiding his true face.
• Thinking Up Portals: His Gate spell opens a glowing purple portal between two locations, allowing him to transport himself and others between countries on a whim.
• This Is Unforgivable!: His one and only response to harm, or threat of harm, befalling anyone under his protection, denizen of Nazarick or not.
  Ainz: They dare to harm someone I have sworn on the name of Ainz Ooal Gown to protect! This is unforgivable! Even if they did not know!
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: This is the first thing he does when going up against Zurrernorn's Zombie Apocalypse in Re-Estize. It convinces the guards at the graveyard to stay out of his way. He doesn't need to worry about losing his weapon, since his whole set of armor and weapons are magically conjured anyways (he cannot use real weapons due to class restrictions), so he can always summon a new one.
• Time Stands Still: One of the spells in his repertoire, "Time Stop". It was relatively useless in YGGDRASIL since most players would have countermeasures against it by level 70 or so, but in the New World it makes him unbeatable with no one able to understand what he even did.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The most horrifiying Eldritch Abomination in the New World used to be a salaryman gamer called Satoru Suzuki a.k.a Momonga (as in the animal known as a flying squirrel). He, however, goes by his guild name in the New World, which most certainly sounds way more intimidating than his real name.
• Too Awesome to Use: He accumulated a large arsenal of consumable magical items because he didn't want to use them up, even when he might have needed them. They come in handy in the New World, where the stakes are higher, and he ends up using quite a few of them.
• Touch of Death: His mere touch spreads negative energy if he isn't careful, which is enough to cause pain even to those as strong as Albedo. Weaker creatures would presumably be killed outright.
• Transhuman Abomination: Apparently, being deported into another world stuck within your video game character's body literally gives you that character's racial characteristics. Since Satoru played YGGDRASIL rigorously as an undead lich, this translates to him literally becoming an overpowered undead lich when he gets transferred into the New World with all the powers and Lack of Empathy that brings alongside it.
• Translation Convention: Of the auditory variety in the anime. In order to avoid people uncovering that he and Momon sound alike, he wears a lipbug that disguises his voice whenever he's publically dealing with those who might notice the similarities. The anime simply focuses on the lipbug's mouth moving while keeping his voice the same for the audience.
• Tranquil Fury: His skeletal body suppresses most of his strong emotions and inhibits his ability to react as such. The keyword here being strong emotions, so instead of pouring all out in an Unstoppable Rage his wrath simmers down and into a cold, seething hatred worthy of the undead overlord he is, giving him time to think up the cruelest form of retribution that he can. When Prince Zanac, who Ainz had taken a liking to, is betrayed and assassinated by his own nobles as a proof of loyalty to the Sorcerer King, Ainz congratulates them very tersely. When they request that their lives and the lives of their families be spared as a reward, Ainz promises them exactly that... Before sending them to be tended by Nazarick's torturer, Neruonist with specific orders to not let them die unless they specifically beg for it... And even then, to not make it too quick.
• True Companions: He saw his fellow guild members as this, and extends this feeling to The Guardians.
• UltimateGamer386: Subverted. While he was playing YGGDRASIL itself, he had a max-level character, a powerful class, more mana than could be displayed on one and is an intelligent, tactful player, but his character wasn't built for PvP but for role-playing purposes and is only Weak, but Skilled in comparison, and he thus had to rely on working with the other members of his guild to overcome player-to-player raids.
• Undead Abomination: As he is a skeletal lich capable of summoning Eldritch Abominations, powerful undead hordes, stop time, and the countless other spells and skills his magic grants him, along with being strong enough to kill trolls, giants, and many other monsters with his bare hands, he is this.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • Played With. Not in regards to tactics, as Momonga is quite intelligent and crafty, although not as much as his servants think, but definitely in magic. While capable of magics far beyond anyone in the New World, he has no idea how those magics work as he just got them by leveling up. He finds himself unable to teach Fluder magic as he doesn't know how he himself uses it.
  • Skilled warriors who've fought "Momon" quickly note that he just swings around his sword like an ignorant child, then begin questioning how he's survived being an adventurer with such terrible abilities. He doesn't even use any Martial Arts. However, left unsaid is that he's so strong and fast that they still can't get any attacks in, which Clementine in particular finds frustrating. On the other hand, he can trade his ability to use magic temporarily in order to become a level 100 warrior. While not a match for a real warrior of his level, he does become stronger, faster, and more skilled. By volume 7 Ainz has undergone enough training to give a decent showing of martial prowess against an experienced team of Workers, though he admits he still lacks the instincts of a true warrior. In volume 10, he's gotten even better, and considers himself equivalent to a low 30's warrior. Not just in power, but in skill and tactics too. He even turns off his damage immunity when he fights the Martial Lord, and mentally worries about how much he enjoys fighting.
• Unstoppable Rage: Even with his undead emotion suppression, there are times when even that is not enough to calm him down if something seriously pisses him off.
  • Wish Upon a Star failing to free Shalltear from her brainwashing forced his emotion suppression to activate multiple times before he was finally calm enough to stop kicking the ground in anger.
  • Upon realizing that Foresight was lying to him about meeting one of his old guildmates, he unleashed a torrent of screaming fury that lasted even after most of them were dead.
  • The worst case by far is when he learned from reading Zesshi Zetsumei's memories that the Slane Theocracy was responsible for Shalltear's brainwashing. He enters such an uncontrollable state of anger that his emotional suppression is rendered useless, and he directs all his energy toward gathering Nazarick's forces to destroy the Theocracy with little care for tactics or subterfuge.
• Useless Useful Spell: As a spellcaster and top-ranked player of YGGDRASIL, he is actually not greatly above average in player-versus-player combat because he chose to build his character for purposes of role-playing, not fighting. As a result, he mostly uses instant death spells when such abilities generally don't work against player characters, setting aside the monstrously powerful special ability granted by the Eclipse class. However, the real world doesn't have to worry about game balance, so instant death spells work just fine.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Initially, he had no goal concerning the Sorcerer Kingdom. When asked in volume 10 by loyal non-Nazarick citizens, and one of the Nazarick maids, he decided to "take a little walk". Upon seeing a near-abandoned lifeless city, he decided to create a utopia where the various races can live side by side in peace.
• Victorious Roar: While in his adventurer persona "Momon", he shouts in victory, with a little encouragement from Evileye, after he drove off the demon Jaldabaoth, who is forced to retreat with his forces from the city of Re-Estize. He's shortly joined afterwards in cheering for their victory over the demon by the other adventurers and the surviving forces of Re-Estize. Of course, only Ainz, his companion Naberal, and the audience are aware of the true irony of the entire situation, as "Jaldabaoth" is just a pseudonym Demiurge chose, and the invasion was just a ruse to cover up the true targets of their attack, the entire Eight Fingers criminal organization.
• Villain Protagonist: His lich body prevents him from having any real empathy for humans anymore, though he's kept from getting too evil by the possible consequences. As time goes on, he realizes how powerful he is compared to everyone else and begins to develop grander ambitions as well as expressing greater comfort with committing atrocities.
• Villain Respect: He shows a lot of respect to specific individuals even if they know his nature. The feeling is usually mutual, and he would rather give them a painless death if they were his enemy.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Attempted with mixed results. He's trying to make a good name for himself, but as an undead who rather casually commits terrible crimes on occasion it's a bit of an uphill struggle, though interacting with people on a personal level does tend to win supporters.
• Walking Armory: During his fight with Shalltear he brought along multiple weapons that belonged to his former guild members, wielding them in rapid succession once he expended his MP.
• Warts and All: He idolizes Touch Me, but privately feels that he was somewhat selfish and made bad decisions.
• Warrior Undead: His Momon persona takes the form of himself in fully-black plated armor, with a pair of greatswords. Momonga wanted to build this character back in his YGGDRASIL days, but due to changing classes and making multiple characters being forbidden in the game, he couldn't. The design for his cape and swords are also heavily inspired by Touch Me and Warrior Takemikazuchi.
• Weak, but Skilled: In YGGDRASIL his build was subpar. But with strategy and a vast move pool, he managed to be in the upper middle tier anyway.
• We Have Reserves: He treats the characters created by the Supreme Beings practically as his children, but the low-level undead mooks of Nazarick are another story, since they are automatically and freely respawned and don't seem to be entirely sentient. Same goes for his summons. In YGGDRASIL, the guild's resident Ninja was capable of detecting traps, but not disarming them, since he built his character for maximum DPS over utility. The solution? Have Momonga summon a low-tier undead to trigger and waste the trap.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: While he has no compunction about doing horrible things to accomplish his goals, the goals themselves are far more often than not truly noble and just. He orders the building of an orphanage in volume 10, run by the widows of his victims in volume 9, seeks to make the Adventurer's guild true adventurers to explore the unknown, as opposed to merely being monster-hunting mercenaries, and wants to make his country a utopia where the various races of the world can live side by side in peace. That being said, these goals are less motivated by any altruistic desire (which he is mostly incapable of due to his undead body lacking empathy) and more a case of Pragmatic Villainy or the ultimately selfish desire to create a world his former comrades would be proud of him for.
• What Have I Become?: Early on, because vestiges of Satoru are still intact within him, Ainz finds himself disturbed to realize that watching a massacre provokes no disgust or horror in him, nor does killing someone with his own hands. This does not last very long as his humanity gets eroded further by his lich body.
• Willfully Weak: His Momon disguise is a warrior running off caster stats and without the ability to use the vast majority of his spells. He can make his disguise stronger by casting a spell to temporarily change his class, but it's generally only useful for fighting when out of mana.
• Withholding the Cure: Has more than enough resurrection wands for to bring back the dead of Carne Village but doesn't bother because there's nothing in it for him (and because he does not want to display the power to casually bring back the dead to avoid creating problems).
• Would Hurt a Child: In volume 12, he casts a Fireball spell at the demi-human that uses a human child as a hostage while acknowledging that the loss of more causalities by giving into the demi-human's demand to stand down (and thus showing that hostages can be exploited against the Liberation Army) outweighs the loss of the child's life. Everyone nearby seems to be terrified by this.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: As to be expected of an MMO player, Ainz loots pretty much everyone he kills, to the point of stealing the corpses if they're useful. For example, he steals Clementine's equipment and ends up using it later when he battles the Warrior King. Against Gazef, he is polite enough to ask first and agrees not to do so out of respect, though Climb, using the same sword, is not granted that courtesy.
• You're Nothing Without Your Phlebotinum: Few people not aware of Ainz's power scale attempt to do this, but quickly get corrected when Ainz curb-stomps them anyways.

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