Characters / Star Wars – General Grievous

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General Grievous (Qymaen jai Sheelal)

"Army or not... You must realize... YOU. ARE. DOOMED!"

Species: Kaleesh (Cyborg)

Homeworld: Kalee

Portrayed by: Matthew Wood

Appearances: Obi-Wan^note Flashback | Jedi of the Republic | The Clone Wars | Age of Republic | Kanan | Son of Dathomir | Dark Disciple | The Bad Batch | Revenge of the Sith | Tales of the Empire | Crimson Reign^note Flashback

"I'm no errand boy. And I'm not in this war for Dooku's politics! I am the leader of the most powerful droid army the galaxy has ever seen!"

Grievous, formerly known as Qymaen jai Sheelal, was a Kaleesh warlord who served as the Supreme Commander of the Separatist droid army that engaged the Grand Army of the Republic throughout the pan-galactic conflict of the Clone Wars. Noted for his ruthlessness and extensive cybernetic enhancements, Grievous inspired fear as he traveled across the galaxy, invading entire worlds and engaging the Jedi Knights of the Republic. While not Force-sensitive, Grievous had extensive training in lightsaber combat courtesy of Count Dooku, and this plus his cyborg body enabled him to fight the Jedi on even footing.

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A-D

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: He's able to crab-walk by flipping his hands around completely, along with his head.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: In Legends, much of Grievous' aggression was fueled by the loss of his partner, Ronderu Iij Kummar, in a war with the Huk. So far, she has remained absent in canon while the Huk War remains.
• Adaptational Badass: A very downplayed example, but Legends only had Obi-Wan and Grievous encounter each other once, where it was said that Obi-Wan being the perfect counter to Grievous' offensive technique would seal the victory for him, Worf Had the Flu or not. In canon, it instead dictates that the two have clashed multiple times, Grievous even beating Obi-Wan a couple of times in combat.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Downplayed. While he was still a villain in Legends, Grievous had a genuinely sad backstory, having lost his beloved partner in a war with the Huk and being essentially strong armed into becoming a Separatist minion after initially leaving to help his people. In the canon, it's implied he chose to upgrade himself before his shuttle accident, solely to become stronger, or so he claims, given how quick he is to angrily deny that it wasn't his choice. Additionally, some of the Huk War's context and any aspect of it that made Grievous sympathetic in Legends (such as the Yam'rii's status as invaders and them trying to spin it as the Kaleesh attacking first when they were just retaliating) remains ambiguous.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Downplayed as Grievous is never perceived as an unmatched intellectual by any means, but compared to Legends which mostly focused on Grievous' skill with his lightsaber best seen in The non-canon micro-series, canon works more explicitly show his military skill as well, while he doesn't win every battle, he does employ some rather smart tactics and come close to succeeding many times and he does deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle more than a few times.
• Adaptational Wimp: Grievous gets hit hard by this in the canon. The Legends version of Grievous is a nearly unstoppable Hero Killer who could also tear through armies with no issue to an even greater degree than the franchise's other One-Man Army types. Among his feats, he tore through six Jedi including some Jedi Council Masters in his first appearance after having already killed dozens of Jedi, defeated Asajj Ventress and Durge single-handedly in a test battle to prove he was worthy to lead the droid army, and once stalemated Windu of all people in a duel, to the point the novelization of Revenge of the Sith goes so far as to say that only Obi-Wan could have beaten him one on one at that point. Meanwhile, the canon version of Grievous, while still formidable enough to cleave through mooks and curb-stomp regular Jedi, struggles a lot whenever he fights a Jedi Council Master tier foe (losing to Asajj Ventress, getting injured in inconclusive duels with Kit Fisto and Depa Billaba, and having a mixed win-loss record against Obi-Wan in The Clone Wars), could be overwhelmed by enough mooks (e.g. captured after being mobbed by a hundred Gungans and forced to flee when Ahsoka and co commandeered a single gunship). Played with, however, since the canon Grievous is the originally intended version of the character; the Legends version started out as an unstoppable force of nature simply because George Lucas gave them his (very loose) scripts and they added their own flavor to it.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • In Legends, he was essentially Dooku's sole second-in-command, as well as his main military muscle; other Separatist minions like Durge, Ventress, and the rest of the Dark Acolytes worked more like Dooku's personal agents, who were mostly expendable to him and lacked Grievous' reputation and authority within the Separatist army. In the canon, however, Ventress is the only of those agents left and has been essentially upgraded to Dooku's surrogate daughter, so she and Grievous share command equally (with Dooku favoring her over him, obviously) and have a bitter rivalry about this. Recent works also tend to paint Grievous' and Dooku's relationship as sheer Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, with the former being scornful and disloyal to the latter.
  • Despite their meeting in Revenge of the Sith indicating that Kenobi and Grievous had met before, the Jedi Master and Jedi Hunter rarely found themselves having any personal animosity towards one another, and instead their conflict was due to Grievous being an ax-crazy unhinged serial killer and Obi-Wan being one of the many that he despises due to purely being a Jedi. Disney Canon changes all that, with The Clone Wars making it so they were constant thorns in each other's side, and major rivals to one another, constantly battling with Obi-Wan getting the upper hand in large scale battles more often than not, and personally trading blows repeatedly. Obi-Wan would even understand the General's way of thinking enough to lay a trap for him, and similarly, Grievous is able to do the same in return, which would not have been possible in Legends due to lack of extended personal experience.
• Ambiguous Situation: A lot of things about Grievous have been rendered a mystery in the canon:
  • It's unclear whether Grievous was a cyborg before his fateful crash, along with the circumstances of it. It's implied he gradually made himself a cyborg, but the sabotaged crash that prompted his conversion in Legends was later confirmed to have still happened. However, the original reasoning behind it (Being that Grievous left the Banking Clan to avenge the desecration of Kaleesh burial grounds) has not been mentioned, so it's unclear as to why the crash happened and how much of him was still organic before his conversion.
  • One ambiguous element taken from Legends is whether Grievous was Force-sensitive before becoming a cyborg. While his ambiguously Force-related Dreaming of Things to Come has not been mentioned in canon, Star Wars: Age of Republic has a Force entity imply that he would be Force-sensitive without his augmentations.
• All-Encompassing Mantle: He and his bodyguards wear them.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: He takes over the planet of Florrum, where Hondo Ohnaka's base of operations was located, and places it under Separatist control as retaliation for capturing Count Dooku at an earlier point during the Clone Wars.
• Arch-Enemy: Although Grievous hates all Jedi, he reserves a particular enmity for Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• Art Evolution: During his brief cameo shot in "Old Friends Not Forgotten" and his appearance in Tales of the Empire, Grievous looks more like his live-action design in Revenge of the Sith than his more cartoonish appearance in The Clone Wars' original run.
• An Arm and a Leg: Throughout the Clone Wars, he occasionally had his secondary forearms cut off, the final time being when Obi-Wan sliced them both off during his duel with Grievous on Utapau. Being that his limbs are cybernetic, he simply had replacements installed, though the last time, he didn't get a chance to do so.
• Attack Animal: His pet roggwart, Gor, a large horned lizard-like monster similar to a rancor living in his castle on Vassek. Gor doesn't survive when Kit Fisto, Nahdar Vebb, and a group of clone troopers infiltrate his castle.
• Ax-Crazy: He is very insane due to his Hair-Trigger Temper and desire to kill Jedi. Part of this is also deliberate, as Separatist surgeons made modifications to his brain to make him more aggressive.

Grievous: Listen to me, Jedi! I do not care about your politics! I do not care about your Republic! I only live to see you die!

• Badass Biker: He rides a pretty cool looking speeder bike in "Bound for Rescue". He also has a Wheel Bike in Revenge of the Sith, which is essentially a giant buzzsaw with four legs for support, a seat, and a blaster cannon attached to it.
• Badass Boast: The caption quote.
• Badass Cape: He wears a nice cape that he usually removes before fighting.
• Badass in Distress: He is captured by the Gungan army in "Shadow Warrior". He is later released in exchange for Anakin Skywalker during a Prisoner Exchange.
• Badass Transplant: The mechanical version. Aside from his eyes and some internal organs, his body has been cybernetically augmented, making him far more dangerous than any of the Separatist droids in his command. This is also invoked on his part, as he claims that not only are these modifications an improvement over his original body, but he volunteered to become a cyborg to be like a Jedi. This is deconstructed in his issue of Age of Republic, as while Grievous became a cyborg to match the Jedi in power, he has a very shallow comprehension of the Force, only perceiving it as a power and not something present in all life, including himself. This shallow understanding of the Force is not only why he is unable to draw upon the Force and truly be the Jedi's equal, but why he gets very little respect from Count Dooku.
• Bad Boss:
  • He hates the battle droids under his command, deeming them useless (not hard to see why, though) and regularly destroys or abuses them whenever he loses his temper.
  • He doesn't limit his abuse to B1s either, as shown when he picks up and smashes a Droideka in "Destroy Malevolence" and leaves his loyal spy droid R3-S6 to perish (and be killed by R2) without bothering to rescue him in "Duel Of The Droids".
• The Bad Guy Wins: In "Lair of Grievous", he kills all the clone troopers and one of the two Jedi attempting to capture him, which results in Kit Fisto being forced to escape on his own.
• Battle Trophy: All of his lightsabers were taken from Jedi he'd killed.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Despite his internal organs being not completely covered up, Grievous can survive in the vacuum of space without any drawbacks.
• Bat Out of Hell: Before he got his mechanical body, he was a Kaleesh, a reptilian alien resembling a humanoid bat.
• Berserk Button:
  • If you want to live, never, ever, ever compare him to, or mistake him for, a droid.
  • As far as he's concerned, he chose his cybernetic upgrades and suggesting otherwise will piss him off. Even his medical droid EV-A4-D, who's usually able to get away with snarking at Grievous, wasn't spared a tongue-lashing for that offense.
    EV-A4-D: Sometimes I wonder why you submitted to the changes—.
    Grievous: Improvements! I submit to no one! I chose them!
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Sidious busy running the Republic, and Dooku (generally) being an Orcus on His Throne, Grievous serves as one of the main antagonists of The Clone Wars, leading the Separatist Army as The Heavy, and eventually The Dragon, to Dooku. Later seasons place more focus on Sidious' machinations and Maul's growing criminal empire, however, and Grievous never manages to outdue his superiors.
• Big Bad Wannabe: In the eyes of the Republic at large, upon Count Dooku's death, Grievous took over as the Big Bad. The Galactic Senate even voted to continue the Clone Wars for as long as Grievous lived. However, while he is a fairly huge threat, he can't hold a candle to the likes of Count Dooku and Darth Sidious and doesn't realize (or rather doesn't want to realize) that he is merely a disposable pawn for his so-called allies.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: He sports black sclerae and yellow irises, and his obsession with killing Jedi should make it clear he's a bit messed up in the head.
• Blood Knight: According to him, his only reason for being involved in the war is to kill Jedi.
• Body Horror: The only parts of his physical body that are still intact are his eyes, the skin around his eyes, his brain, and his vital organs condensed into a small sack.
• Bond One-Liner: After he makes short work of Gha Nachkt when the latter demands a bonus payment, the former responds rather smugly, "There's your bonus!".
• Boomerang Bigot: Absolutely despises droids, despite for all intents and purposes being a droid carrying a sack of organs himself. Though given how comically inefficient the droid army at his command is, it's not exactly an unfounded hatred.
• Bring It:
  • In "Lair of Grievous", after he escapes from the team's initial ambush he pauses while hanging from the ceiling to growl "Come and get me!" at the Jedi before swinging away. This is after Kit had just cut off his legs.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, right before splitting his arms to wield four lightsabers against Obi-Wan:
    Grievous: You Fool! I've been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku! Attack, Kenobi!!
• The Brute: In relation to Count Dooku and Darth Sidious, Grievous is a blunt instrument who does the grunt work while the Sith play the political game from the shadows. Grievous doesn't much care for their machinations nor the profit-oriented goals of the Separatist Council. He only cares that the war enables him to kill Jedi. This exchange with Obi-Wan sums it up:
  Obi-Wan: I hear a lot of talking, General, but in the final accounting, what does all that talk get you? A futile quest for power, a mutilated body? Your place is Dooku's errand boy!
  Grievous: I'm no errand boy. And I'm not in this war for Dooku's politics! I am the leader of the most powerful droid army the galaxy has ever seen!
  Obi-Wan: An army with no loyalty, no spirit, just programming! What have you to show for all your power? What have you to gain?
  Grievous: The future. A future where there are no Jedi!
• Card-Carrying Villain: He's a shamelessly bloodthirsty killer who delights in plundering the lightsabers of slain Jedi. And come on, General Grievous?. He also orders his ship the Malevolence to shoot at fleeing escape pods on the grounds that he has a reputation to keep.
• Character Catchphrase: He tends to say "Kenobi!" and "Impossible!" a lot.
• Character Death: In Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan shoots Grievous multiple times and the blasts incinerate his internal organs (the only remaining organic parts of his body); this injury finally kills the cyborg General once and for all.
• The Coats Are Off: After being challenged by Obi-Wan, he shrugs off his cape after pulling his lightsabers out of it.
• The Collector: Grievous collects the lightsabers of the Jedi he's slain, and is very happy about new additions to his collection.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • He's explicitly trained to fight like this: he's supposed to use surprise, fear, intimidation, and power to overwhelm his opponents, and to flee when that doesn't work. He also likes to shoot people with a blaster using one of his extra arms while they're focused on his regular two.
  • One of his favorite tactics is to lock blades with an opponent and then quickly kick them in the chest, taking advantage of his greater reach and Super-Strength. He does this to Adi Gallia, quickly winning him the fight. He does the same thing as a first resort after blocking Obi-Wan's first attack. The kick launches Obi-Wan a considerable distance with more than enough force to break every bone in his body. However, Obi-Wan gets off with nothing more than the wind getting knocked out of him. Grievous still forces Obi-Wan to retreat, though.
  • During his confrontation with Eeth Koth, he softens him up by sending in commando droids and MagnaGuards first.
  • After Ventress defeats him one-on-one, he orders his Separatist droids to continue the attack, despite (seemingly) agreeing to Ventress' terms of leaving in case she won.
• Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: In "Duel of the Droids", Grievous tries taunting Ahsoka into giving up her hiding place in the storeroom where he corners her.
• Conflict Killer: When he is sent by Count Dooku to exact his revenge against Ohnaka for his earlier capture several seasons later, Hondo and his pirates then team up with Ahsoka and the Jedi younglings whom he had just stolen lightsaber crystals from to escape Grievous' forces.
• Cool Starship: His ship during the early Clone Wars, The Malevolence, is armed with an EMP main gun that can disable entire fleets.
  • He also has a personalized Belbullab-22 starfighter dubbed the the Soulless One.
• Co-Dragons: With Asajj Ventress for Count Dooku during the early years of the Clone Wars. Dooku appears to favor Ventress, but is forced to betray her to demonstrate his loyalty to Sidious. As a result, Grievous becomes Dooku's sole Dragon.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: By the time of Revenge of the Sith, he is famed as a coward and retreats as soon as things fall out of favour. When Obi-Wan sabotages his escape however, he continues to fend him off, actually leaving the Jedi on the defense for a while when he begins knocking and throwing him around like a rag doll.
• Creepy Souvenir: He takes the lightsabers of the Jedi he kills as trophies. He also has Padawan braids in his hideout on Vassek 3.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He meets his end when Obi-Wan fires one of his blasters at his exposed gut sack. Unlike most deaths by blaster, Grievous takes a few shots directly to his organs before being set on fire and painfully burning to death.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He has his moments:
  • In "Lair of Grievous", Jedi Knight Nahdar Vebb lasts about twenty seconds against Grievous before getting killed by him, showing that Grievous is pretty effective against "regular" Jedi.
  • In "Nomad Droids", Jedi Master Adi Gallia doesn't fare much better against Grievous via getting out-dueled without Grievous even using his second set of arms and knocked out by Grievous delivering a powerful kick that sends her sprawling.
  • During their first duel in "Duel of the Droids", he effortlessly defeated Ahsoka, who escaped only because Grievous got distracted for a moment by an explosion. She put up a better fight during their rematch in "A Necessary Bond", but Grievous still bested her rather easily.
  • Although Ventress gained the upper hand in their one-on-one duel in "Massacre", he had her shot by his Separatist droid army and tore apart the other Nightsisters and their undead army with ease.
  • His confrontation with Obi-Wan in "Bound for Rescue" has him handily defeat his opponent's fleet and then swiftly beat him in a lightsaber duel.
  • In Son of Dathomir, his army crushes Maul's Shadow Collective in two consecutive battles and personally forces Maul to retreat during the first. While he and Dooku get captured during the second issue, after Dooku provided him an opportunity to escape his cell, he tore apart several Death Watch soldiers who tried to stop him. He even told the few survivors to go and ask their master for reinforcements. In the final issue, his army crushes the Shadow Collective on three fronts, while he deals the death blow to Mother Talzin. (Specifically, by brute-forcing his way through a Force bubble that was holding back the Sith lightning of both Darths Sidious and Tyranus, and stabbing her through the chest.)
  • In the Kanan comics (specifically "First Blood" parts three and five), Jedi Master Depa Billaba was decisively defeated by Grievous in a duel sometime in her past, during which Grievous' Separatist droids also wiped out her command. In their rematch, the Jedi Master does a lot better, lasting a while and managing to cut off one of his hands, but is still at a clear disadvantage and takes significant injuries from his slashes that necessitate her being kept in a bacta tank for days after the battle. If not for the timely arrival of her clone troopers to drive Grievous off, she surely would have been killed.
  • Age of Republic shows him overwhelming and killing a Jedi Master and Padawan, by himself, in mere seconds.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: While he ultimately loses against Obi-Wan, he does put up a decent fight and comes very close to killing him.
• Dastardly Whiplash: Downplayed a bit, but in Revenge of the Sith, he has the black cloak, hunched posture, and hand-rubbing gestures.
• Decapitation Presentation: One of the statues of him in his hideout on Vassek 3, from prior to any of his cybernetic alterations, depicts him holding the severed head of an opponent.
• Depending on the Writer: Grievous' loyalty to Dooku varies; sometimes he's portrayed as a loyal servant of the Count, other times their relationship is pure Teeth-Clenched Teamwork.
• Dirty Coward: For all his proclaimed superiority over the Jedi, Grievous only humors a fair fight if he's confident he'll win, and when things start getting difficult, he'll either flee or resort to underhanded tactics to cheat victory.
• Dispense with the Pleasantries: He says these exact words to Hondo Ohnaka after the latter tried to make small talk with Grievous.
  Hondo Ohnaka: General Grievous, I presume? What a surprise. Have a seat. What may I ask is the honor?
  Grievous: You can dispense with the pleasantries, pirate. This planet is now under Separatist control.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In Revenge of the Sith, He assumes leadership of the Separatist Alliance after the death of Count Dooku at the hands of Anakin Skywalker in the opening minutes of the film. During the first half of their film, the Jedi concentrate their efforts on finding Grievous and bringing him down. The Jedi believe that the capture or elimination of Grievous will result in the Clone Wars ending, and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine either relinquishing his emergency powers, or being forcibly removed from office. However, around the same time Grievous' killed, the heroes discover that Palpatine is a Sith Lord, and therefore will not be removed from power so easily. After that, Palpatine / Sidious takes center stage as the main villain for the remainder of the film.
• The Dragon: After Ventress is betrayed by Dooku under Sidious' orders, Grievous becomes Dooku's full second-in-command for the rest of the Clone Wars until the Count's death. He then becomes Sidious' Dragon for a short time before kicking the bucket himself.
• Dragon Ascendant: Subverted. After Count Dooku is killed by Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi think Grievous has become this, when in reality he's just become a pawn for Sidious to dispose of to end the Clone Wars.
• The Dreaded: According to the Obi-Wan, he gained his reputation as a Jedi-killer when his existence was reported at the Battle of Hypori.
• Driven by Envy: According to supplemental material, he developed his hatred of the Jedi due to their skill with the Force.
• Dual Wielding: By splitting his arms, he can wield four lightsabers at once.

E-H

• Evil Cripple: All that's left of Grievous are his internal organs, his brain, and some of his face. That's about as crippled as you can get. However, he doesn't see himself as a cripple and sees his new body as an improvement over his old one.
• Evil Is Hammy: He is pretty hammy, spouting movie-villain cliches in a ridiculous "Transylvanian" accent.
• Evil Laugh: He does this from time to time, often interrupted by his constant wheezing cough.
  Grievous: Ha HACK COUGH COUGH HACK ha!
• Evil Sounds Deep: Grievous's voice is this in addition to being gravelly, sickly, and partially synthesized.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: He has this combined with a cough.
• Expecting Someone Taller: He and Anakin do this back and forth.
  Grievous: I was expecting someone with your reputation to be a little...older.
  Anakin: General Grievous, you're shorter than I expected.
  Grievous: (coughs) Jedi scum.
• Eye Scream: In his death scene, his eyes catch fire. Mercifully, we don't really get a good look at it.
• Fantastic Racism: An interesting variation as Grievous does not hate a specific species or even Force-sensitives in general (as he has no hate towards Sith), but rather all Jedi and views them as filth to be eradicated. This is due to a combination of envy towards their skill and the Kaleesh having been driven to starvation by the Jedi backing the Huk in the war between the two species.
• Faster Than They Look: Grievous is a rather tall, lumbering monstrosity of a cyborg who appears to be sickly. As it would turn out, his mobility (especially when all fours) is ridiculously fast which enables him to get the drop on opponents or escape from fights rather easily.
• Faux Affably Evil: Whenever he's not insulting his enemies, he's usually mockingly complimenting/humoring them.
• Firing One-Handed: This is how he uses his blaster.
• Four-Fingered Hands: He's depicted this way in The Clone Wars despite having six-fingered hands in Revenge of the Sith and five-fingered hands in the Legends Clone Wars cartoon. This means that Grievous only has two fingers per hand when he splits his arms into four.
• Four-Star Badass: He's one of the highest-ranking Separatist military leaders and can fight one-on-one with Jedi.
• Frontline General: Whenever he isn't beating a retreat, he's usually leading from the front.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: He was originally a fully biological Kaleesh warrior, but has converted himself into a mechanical body with only the necessarily organs for him to live — his eyes, brain, and some others in his chest. He also opted to receive a number of upgrades to make himself a deadlier warrior, such as an extra pair of arms, immense strength, and brain implants that gave him much faster reflexes and dexterity, turning him into a living weapon.
• Furry Reminder: Occasionally will scale walls similarly to a bat, and he comes from a race of bat people. Downplayed in that he no longer looks like a bat after becoming a cyborg.
• The Generalissimo: In fact, if not name. He's the Separatists' real second-in-command and takes over as head of the Separatists after Dooku is killed.
• General Failure:
  • Zig-zagged. Although he is lauded as one of the best generals in the Separatist Alliance, his poor showings get more focus than his successes as far as Canon goes: in a general sense he's a fairly poor tactician, often becomes blinded by his own temper and impulsiveness, and pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here whenever things go marginally pear-shaped. His forays into fleet command are even less successful than his ground combat, most infamously when he fell into Anakin's trap (which crippled his flagship by hiding AT-TE walkers on an asteroid and having them fire on his ship's unshielded rear). However, Grievous does have shades of tactical brilliance both in ground and fleet command via the fact that he predicted Obi-Wan's battle plan for rescuing Eeth Koth and set an ambush for Anakin, deliberately sacrificed the frigates in his fleet so the debris carrying the Trident drill ship components could fall into Kamino's oceans (enabling him to attack the cloning facilities undetected), and successfully ambushed and wiped out Obi-Wan's fleet (destroying four cruisers and two Star Destroyers for the loss of only one frigate and a couple ships damaged at rough numerical parity). His craftiness and ruthlessness has also allowed him to use underhanded tactics to great effect. Grievous managed (on Dooku's orders) to orchestrate and successfully act out a terrorist attack on Coruscant via blowing up the Senate District's power generator, causing a massive power failure all over the planet. This stops the peace negotiations and ensures the continuation of the Clone Wars. Later on, he even manages to defeat Maul's Shadow Collective on three separate fronts, showing he is far from someone to be underestimated.
  • While he may struggle at times with tactics and strategies thanks to his temper, Grievous' real talent shows through his ability to muster and organize a massive and relatively cohesive fighting force out of so many disparate groups. A fighting force that, even factoring in Palpatine's manipulations, was able to fight a relatively back-and-forth slugging match against the millennia-old Republic for over three years. This hints at an incredible talent for organization and logistics.
• General Ripper: He would gladly stand on a pile of what remains of his subordinates, droid and organic alike, if it meant victory.
• Genius Bruiser: Not only is he a formidable and brutal warrior, but despite a few embarrassing losses, he is considered one of the Separatists' finest tacticians to the point where it was stated multiple times that his capture or death could turn the tide of the war.
• Go, Ye Heroes, Go and Die: He gives a Rousing Speech to a bunch of droids designed for suicide-bombing.
  Grievous: You've been designed for this mission, to be the ultimate infiltration units. Some of you may not return... actually none of you will.
• Going Down with the Ship: Defied. Not only does he abandon the rapidly-disintegrating Invisible Hand, but he also launches every Escape Pod to make sure that he's the only one who escapes.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: He's quite fond of discarding his lightsabers and using his hugely augmented strength and his sharp, claw-like appendages when he wants to be particularly sadistic.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: He has one integrated in his cyborg body. He uses it in Revenge of the Sith after being spaced out by the windows of the bridge shattering, anchoring to the ship so as to not drift into space.
• Green-Eyed Monster: His resentment of the Jedi and the Force itself stems from him being unable to understand the Force beyond simply seeing it as a source of power (as opposed to a cosmic force present in all life), a power he cannot achieve with his mindset.
• Gun And Sword: Rarely, Grievous uses a blaster and his lightsabers at the same time.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: There are a lot of things besides incompetent battle droids that can make him angry. According to Star Wars: In 100 Scenes, he was given some brain implants that increase his coordination while making him more angry and aggressive, which serves to make him even more dangerous. Like in Legends, supplementary material reveals that his brain was modified without his knowledge during his cybernetic surgery that aggravated his hatred for the Jedi.
• Handicapped Badass: Many of the fights he gets into involve him getting one of his arms amputated. It doesn't stop him from fighting effectively with the others until he can get them repaired.
• Hated by All: Grievous is absolutely unsympathetic, lacks his redeemable or likable traits of Legends, and manages to be a nasty psychopath who has caused endless misery and destruction on numerous planets, and the times he does show respect towards like Gor and Dooku is ultimately for his own selfish benefit. In-Universe, he is feared and/or despised by anyone who knows about him, with even his allies only tolerating him for his usefulness.
• The Heavy: While Dooku and Palpatine technically rank above him, the latter is The Man Behind the Man, and the former largely delegates his duties to Grievous (and more than once has needed rescue). This leaves Grievous as the de facto Big Bad in The Clone Wars. In "Shadow Warrior", Padmé Amidala believed Grievous's capture could cost the Separatists the war, even with Dooku still at large. Likewise, Sidious and Dooku considered him to be a critical part of the Separatist war effort, to the point where Dooku was willing to release Anakin Skykwalker, who was a major thorn in Dooku's side, from Separatist captivity in exchange for Grievous's own release from Republic captivity. During the Malevolence arc, Grievous personally commanded The Malevolence on a campaign to destroy Republic targets while Dooku transmitted him orders from afar. After the arc, Grievous continued to be a constant presence on the front lines throughout the war. Throughout the war, he inflicted considerable damage to the republic military using the information provided to him by the Skytop Station, he captured Jedi Council member Eeth Koth, leading to the Battle of Saleucami, he led and participated in an assault on Kamino alongside Ventress, thwarted negations between the Republic and the Separatists on Dooku's orders, commanded an invasion force against Naboo, led a massacre against the Nightsisters on Dooku's orders, and led an attack on Hondo Ohnaka's base on Dooku's orders. He ends up getting killed in the last third of Revenge of the Sith.
• Hellish Pupils: He has yellow, reptilian eyes.
• Hero Killer: Dirty Coward tendencies aside, those Jedi that he got his lightsabers from were killed by his own hand. And Tarpals.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite Grievous being a violent killer who has little interest in the politics surrounding the entire galaxy, Grievous is capable of some tactical brilliance that either earns him a win or causes him to become very close to winning multiple times.
  • He's undeniably Ax-Crazy with a Hair-Trigger Temper, though he does display respect to Asajj (until Dooku betrays her), Sideous, and Dooku, though the latter has Teeth Clenched Team Work. He also was apparently a capable pet owner when it came to Gor, given that he's a major psychopath, the fact he was able to have any kind of pet is impressive.
  • It's hinted that there's more to his apparent decision to undergo a Badass Transplant than him carrying a murderous hate, if his Berserk Button about submitting to his mechanical changes are any indication.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Obi-Wan kills him by shooting him with his own blaster.

I-P

• I Know Karate: During his final confrontation with Obi-Wan on Utapau, he exclaims to Kenobi "You fool! I have been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku!" Followed by General Grievous using all four arms to wield four lightsabers at once.
• Implacable Man:
  • He will keep trucking no matter how horrific his injuries. It's probably best shown after Kit Fisto cut off his legs, which led to Grievous proceeding to climb on the ceiling with just his arms, fighting off a Jedi Master with his spare arm while doing so, and made an escape, killing several clone troopers in the process.
  • His death came after Obi-Wan smashed him hard into a metal ceiling (cratering it), smacked him in the face with an electrostaff, stuck it directly into his gut, cut off two of his arms with a lightsaber, ripped open his chest plate with Force-enhanced strength, and shot him directly in the heart with a blaster when he was seconds away from delivering the killing blow. Even after all of this, and with his insides on fire, he still made one last effort (propelled by sheer malice) to inch closer to Obi-Wan to finish him off, resulting in Obi-Wan pumping half a dozen more shots into his heart. He only finally stopped when he was burnt alive from the inside out.
• Inadequate Inheritor: After Count Dooku's death, he briefly became the leader of the Separatists as a whole. However, the Separatist Council had no trust in his leadership compared to Dooku's. And appropriately enough, he dies directly after being called out on this by Nute Gunray and the war ends shortly afterwards.
• Incurable Cough of Death: This was mostly due to his cybernetics, though it doesn't hinder him in any noticeable way. Though in Legends this was done when Mace Windu crushed his chest with the Force during the Battle of Coruscant, severely crippling him and would explain the considerable Badass Decay by Revenge of the Sith.
• Informed Attribute: His species, the Kaleesh, are often referred to as reptilian, but beyond their snakelike eyes they generally resemble humanoid bats, with pointed external ears, leathery skin, and fleshy, squished-up noses.
• Irony: He mutilated his own body and turned himself into a cyborg in the hopes of matching the Jedi in power. However, Grievous only understood the Force as a source of power and not something present in all forms of life. In fact, gutting away most of his body has made it even more difficult for him to connect to the Force. In his issue of Age of Republic, he only gets a Force vision (plus a lecture from the Force about how he fails to understand what the Force is and why he'll never be able to match the Jedi) from a strange waterfall when he douses his head and chest (which contain the few organic components he has left) in it.
• Insane Admiral: He is a mad ruin of a Kaleesh warlord who is trapped inside his cybernetics and takes out his anger on any populace he can get his hands on.
• Intimidation Demonstration: In Revenge of the Sith, he pulls out all four of his lightsabers and begins spinning them and cutting up the floor as he moves towards Obi-Wan. However, Obi-Wan isn't fazed by this and makes short work of him.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Subverted in "Grievous Intrigue". When facing him, Eeth Koth called Grievous a "coward and murderer". Usually, one would expect for the villain to be insulted by being called a coward. Grievous instead took issue with being dubbed a murderer, stating that he didn't consider "ridding the galaxy of you Jedi filth" to be murder.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While it doesn't excuse his cruel treatment of battle droids, his complaints to Dooku over how incompetent and stupid they are and how he can't win battles against the clone army because of it aren't wrong.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Yeah, he's not a nice guy in the slightest. Any person he does show any type of respect is out of ulterior motives.
  • A misconception is that he loves his pet Gor. He doesn't. It may seem like it at first when he shouts his name after entering his lair, wondering where he is and sounds playful when talking to him. But when he sees that the Jedi escaped and that Gor his dead, he angrily wonders out loud where they are first, says his name in a briefly somber tone, and then yells in frustration of the Jedi escaping instead of Gor's death in and of itself, never mentioning Gor ever again. In the same episode, he only allows his medical droid to mock and insult him out of Pragmatic Villainy since he needs a medic to repair him whenever he gets damaged and isn't concerned at all when it's decapitated by Kit Fisto.
  • When not engaging in Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, he can respect Count Dooku, but only for his benefit (vice versa as well) and not out of any sincere loyalty. While he did save Dooku's life from Talzin's torture and attempted murder in "Massacre", he takes his sweet time doing so while showing no actual reaction other than the anger and brutality he always has. Also, he has no problem openly threatening his life several times and he doesn't actually mourn his death either, seeing it only as a loss that could derail the war efforts.
  • In Kanan, he seems to be more fair and forgiving with his allies such as Coburn Sear, but it's not a case of Took a Level in Kindness because he still wants the Jedi dead and the Separatists to win the war.
• The Juggernaut: He might be the single toughest humanoid in the canon, as his duranium armor lets him ignore most man-portable blasters and slugthrowers, large explosions (such as when Padmé Amidala self-destructed her ship in his hangar while he was in it and when Obi-Wan used the Force to throw an explosive barrel at him), heavy physical impacts (such as Obi-Wan pushing him sixty feet with enough Force left over to crater him in the metal ceiling) and near-misses from fighter cannons (such as when Hondo's gang opened fire on him with the guns on Slave I).
• Just You and Me and My GUARDS!: He's incredibly fond of this tactic. Whenever he loses his ground, he is sure to have a few MagnaGuards around to stab his opponent in the back.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Throughout the first six seasons of The Clone Wars, Grievous always manages to escape with his life no matter what attempts any of the protagonists make to catch or kill him. His immunity finally expires halfway through Revenge of the Sith, which runs concurrently with the latter portion of Season 7 of The Clone Wars.
• Karmic Death: He gets killed by Obi-Wan wielding a E-5 blaster, in a similar vein as killing Nahdar Vebb with a DC-17 hand blaster.
• Kick the Dog: In "Shadow of Malevolence", Grievous decides to attack medical frigates as a prelude to attacking the whole medical outpost.
• Kill It with Fire: Obi-Wan manages to kill him by shooting at his "gut sack", which then bursts all the living tissue in his body into flames.
• Knight Templar: He doesn't see killing Jedi as murder as much as riding the galaxy of Jedi "filth" and claims to doing this for the future, one without Jedi.
• Lack of Empathy: He feels nothing for the countless Jedi and Padawans he has killed, nor does he care about the innocent civilizations he and his armies have terrorized and subjugated across the galaxy.
• Large Ham: He tends to be rather overly dramatic when speaking.
  Grievous: YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT GRIEVOUS! NEVER!
• Laser Blade: Thanks to his many arms, he can wield four lightsabers at once.
• Laughably Evil: His irritability, constant coughing, and general overdramatic speech make him a delight to watch.
• Lean and Mean: He is tall and lean, and he is an Ax-Crazy mass murderer.
• Leave Him to Me!: Being a Hero Killer who loves murdering Jedi, he predictably does this when Obi-Wan boldly jumps down next to him to challenge him to a duel. Although Grievous is surrounded by countless droid minions, he tells them not to interfere.
• Light Is Not Good: He is a mass murderer covered in white-ish armor and toting an arsenal of green and blue lightsabers (that are trophies from the Jedi he killed) wherever he goes.
• Lightning Bruiser: He can move extremely quickly and hit really hard.
• Literal Disarming: He has this happen to him during his fight with Obi-Wan on Utapau, costing him both of his upper limbs' hands and the lightsabers he was holding in them.
• Lizard Folk: His race, the Kaleesh, are reptilian in appearance, at least in theory, though see Informed Attribute above.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Unlike Dooku, Grievous has no clue that Palpatine and Sidious are one in the same. Likewise, he's implied to be unaware that Asajj was betrayed by Dooku, calling her a "traitor" despite the circumstances being far from her choice.
• Logical Weakness: Grievous is powerless against Force techniques, as he has no way of repelling them and isn't Force-sensitive himself; nearly all of his defeats involve the Force being used against him. He compensates for this by blitzing his opponents with overwhelming sword play, to either distract them or finish them before the Force can come into play. And being a heavily-robotic cyborg, EMP weaponry such as Gungan boomers can also shut him down. However, this one isn't quite as easy to exploit since he most likely knows to be wary of anti-droid weaponry and can cut down the boomers with his lightsabers. The Gungan Army was only able to exploit this weakness when General Tarpals sacrificed his life to pin Grievous down.
• Looks Like Orlok: Has the narrow face, the sunken eyes, the spindly arms and legs, and the cloak.
• Love Is a Weakness: He claims that the care Jedi show for the clone troopers is a weakness.
• Made of Incendium: Obi-Wan kills Grievous by using a discarded blaster to shoot Grievous' few remaining organic parts. He quickly catches on fire and Grievous' face explodes.
• Made of Iron: He's ridiculously durable, with very few things outside of a lightsaber or the Force, which he is specifically used to dealing with, being able to even to slow him down.
• Mage Killer: He has killed dozens of Jedi without even being a Force user himself thanks to his mechanical body, battle skills and aggression. He usually trusts on blade-spamming his opponents with his multiple arms, capitalizing on his close quarters advantage, and using other weapons when opportune, which typically works wonders against overconfident opponents. Even if many Jedi in the setting typically forget about their Force powers when the script requires them to lose against non-sensitive opponents, in Grievous' case it is implied (and vaguely confirmed in Legends, as seen in his appearances in Star Wars: Clone Wars) to be because his metal body is so heavy and mobile than it makes difficult to catch him telekinetically: only when hit point blank, like Obi-Wan does in Utapau, he can be fended off this way.
• Man in the Machine: He can be considered either this or a case of the man being the machine. His brain, eyes, heart and lungs are still organic, but almost everything else consists of cyborg implants, leading many to assume he is a droid on the first encounter.
• Master Swordsman: The only people who have held their own against him without resorting to using the Force were Obi-Wan Kenobi and Asajj Ventress, and the latter usually goes Dual Wielding.
• Malevolent Masked Man: What's worse is that it's grafted to his face.
• Mechanical Horse: His Tsmeu-6 Bike is able to function both as a monowheel and a four-legged running beast
• Monowheel Mayhem: In Revenge of the Sith, he tries to escape Obi-Wan by riding a Wheel Bike that also has some legs for rough terrain.
• More Despicable Minion: There's a reason Dooku initially intended to pin all the Separatists' atrocities on Grievous. While Dooku was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who believed in the Separatist cause, Grievous only cared about killing Jedi.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: His arms can divide in half, giving him four limbs and allowing him to use four lightsabers at a time.
• The Musketeer: Apart from having multiple lightsabers, he also has a blaster that he uses for long-range combat and sometimes to cheap shot Jedi combatants if he engages them in a Blade Lock and he has an arm that can use a blaster.
• Mysterious Past: In canon, Grievous refuses to divulge his past to others, insisting he chose his cybernetic conversion. While much of his backstory has been recanonized, some elements have been left vague. This is also an enforced by the Separatists, as cybernetic implants were installed in his brain to suppress his memories of his past.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The head of the Separatists' military forces is called General Grievous. "Grievous" is an adjective that means to cause a great amount of pain or suffering, somewhat fitting for the slaughterer of millions.
• Near-Villain Victory: Admittedly, Grievous comes very close to killing Obi-Wan, closer than Anakin himself was in their fateful duel. Had Obi-Wan not managed to grab Grievous's blaster in time, the outcome of the movie would've been quite different.
• Neck Lift:
  • In "Duel of the Droids", he does this to Ahsoka when he corners her in the storage room.
  • In "Lair Of Grievous", he does this to one of the clones before swinging the unfortunate trooper into several of his comrades.
  • In "Grievous Intrigue", he does this to Koth after wearing him down.
• Neck Snap: He does it to a clone trooper in "Bound for Rescue", with his foot claw no less.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: He is a reptilian alien Cyborg who uses lightsabers.
• No Badass to His Valet: EV-A4-D, Grievous' medical droid, is snarky and downright insulting to the general. Grievous presumably lets this slide as A4-D is the only one who can put him back together when he's been dismembered in combat.
• No Indoor Voice: Although, to be fair, his voice is so grating and deep that even if he were speaking at a normal volume, it would still come across as rather loud.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: During his battle with Obi-Wan in "Grievous Intrigue", he makes it clear that he's not in the Clone Wars out of any real belief in Count Dooku's politics, but only because he wants to lead the strongest droid army in the galaxy and exterminate the Jedi Order.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: His kidnapping of the Chancellor is not shown in canon, but it was quite the accomplishment.
• Oh, Crap!: He has this reaction in "Destroy Malevolence" when he sees that Padmé's ship is set to explode.
• Ominous Opera Cape: He tends to wear one.
• One-Man Army: Clone troopers are no match for Grievous; he tears them to pieces during his duel with Ahsoka and her clone troopers in "Duel of the Droids" and his attack on a Republic Star Destroyer in "Bound for Rescue". In Son of Dathomir, he also cuts through a bunch of well-equipped Mandalorian Death Watch troopers in the first issue and then kills at least a dozen more with his bare hands in the third issue.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is Qymaen jai Sheelal, but no one calls him that.
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • Grievous suffers from this to a lesser extent in The Clone Wars. Nearly every lightsaber duel he has in the series is with a top-level Jedi Master (or equivalent), usually Obi-Wan Kenobi. He can generally hold his own against Obi-Wan (he has even come out on top in some of their encounters) and other high-level Masters in lightsaber duels, but always fails to decisively defeat them before their duels are interrupted or one side books it. On the other hand, he's been confirmed to have killed dozens of Jedi ("Lair of Grievous" shows his trophy room) and generally curb-stomps the few "regular" Jedi he fights on-screen (Ahsoka Tano, Nahdar Vebb, Adi Gallia) as well as mooks, so it's not like his reputation is all talk.
  • The same is true in Revenge of the Sith since he was featured in three scenes and had only one fight. His opponent? Obi-Wan Kenobi, who a few hours later in-universe would defeat Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, who is the most powerful Jedi ever in the canon, without taking a wound. Grievous did manage to hold his own for a while in their lightsaber duel (which is far better than any member of the Order not named Mace, Anakin, or Yoda could hope to do), and nearly killed Obi-Wan when he resorted to his usual dirty tricks, but him decisively losing his only duel in the film made his fearsome reputation come off as an Informed Attribute.
• Pet the Dog: Downplayed since it's more out of pragmatism than anything but there are occasions where Grievous doesn't act like a temperamental jackass to his underlings.
  • While he is very abusive to his Separatist droids, he's shown to have slightly more patience with his organic subordinates. He praises Gha Nachkt's work in extracting data from R2-D2 and was seemingly intent on following through on their bargain, at least until Nachkt tries to demand more money. When Coburn Sear fails his mission, he also doesn't kill, injure, or even berate him, instead simply telling Sear to let him handle the Jedi.
  • He is more lenient towards his Magnaguards than he is to the less competent Battle Droids. He doesn't like it when the ones in his lair were deactivated by Dooku.
  • Subverted with his actual pet Gor. While he seems to be a fair owner and is upset and enraged when he's killed, it's less out of actual care for him and more because the Jedi continue to evade him and deprived him of a useful killing machine.
• Pet Monstrosity: He has a pet roggwart, a large horned lizard-like monster, named Gor.
• Pistol-Whipping: He wacks a battle droid with his blaster after said droid complimented Obi-Wan's escape of the Malevolence.
• Praetorian Guard: He has a personal guard of MagnaGuard droids, who fight with electrostaffs.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He doesn't fight back or destroy his medical droid EV-A4-D not because he cares about him, but because he is needed to repair the damage he sustains in battle due to his cyborg body. This is also why he wasn't too happy about Gor's death. He was useful to him as a Pet Monstrosity to trap intruders and his latest attempt to kill the Jedi who infiltrated his lair was a failure.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: He used to be a Kaleesh warlord before he became a cyborg general.
• Psycho for Hire: He may not get paid for what he does, but his involvement with the Separatists is just an excuse for him to kill Jedi, and he enjoys it a little too much if the image quote is any indication. Even his boss, Count Dooku, is a more sympathetic character than he is.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He has a very short fuse and when things don't go his way, his reaction amounts to throwing very violent temper tantrums akin to that of a spoiled child.

R-Y

• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: He belongs to a reptillian species known as the Kaleesh.
• The Rival: He has a lasting enmity with Obi-Wan that borders on this trope. Obi-Wan even invokes it in "Grievous Intrigue", where he's certain that Grievous will board his ship and face him personally rather than simply blow him up with his ship.
• Rousing Speech: Played for Laughs when he gives one to a bunch of droids designed for suicide bombing. He even explicitly tells them that none of them will be coming back.
• Sadist:
  • He's only in for the slaughter, and for Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi, he would spare the lightsaber in favor of a torture device to make their deaths slow and painful.
  • His torture of Eeth Koth is definitely sadistic because not only does he torture him to death, but he broadcast the torture by hologram to the Jedi just to hurt them mentally.
    Grievous: But death will not come so easily for Master Koth, I will make him suffer endlessly, because I know It is painful for you all.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In "Downfall of a Droid", he ditches it and flees in his starfighter after realizing that the command cruiser is too large to make a quick escape.
• Schrödinger's Canon: While his real name, Qymaen jai Sheelal, has been recanonized, the reasons he chose to go by the name "Grievous" have not been revealed. In Legends, he adopted that name after losing his partner and lover during the Huk War as a vow to make his enemies suffer just as much as he does over his loss. However, given that Canon has not reestablished any of Grievous's more sympathetic traits, it's unknown if this is why he goes by that name.
• Serial Killer: He has the traits of one, like only going after a specific community of people and keeping trophies to remind him of his past murders.
• Shadow Archetype: Of pre-Face–Heel Turn Anakin/Vader. A twisted mixture of machine and man which causes problems in breathing and combat.
• Shame If Something Happened: After being captured by Maul in Son of Dathomir, he warns Dooku that it "would be a shame if he had to add the Count's lightsaber to his collection", before being taken away, leaving Maul and Dooku to "negotiate".
• Shoot the Medic First: On Dooku's orders, Grievous attempted to destroy an unprotected Republic Medical Station treating over 60,000 wounded clones. Grievous and Dooku intended for the destruction of the medical station to prevent wounded clone troopers from being treated, resulting in their deaths. However, Grievous was thwarted by Shadow Squadron before he could do so.
• Shrine to Self: His secret base on Vassek 3 has a hall full of statues and tributes to his former (non-cyborg) self.
• Sinister Surveillance: He has cameras throughout his lair on Vassek 3, and he uses them to watch as the group of Jedi and clones are whittled down by his traps and other security while he is repaired from his initial confrontation with them.
• Sink the Lifeboats: He orders his ship the Malevolence to shoot at fleeing escape pods. On the grounds that he has a reputation to keep. He also had the slightly more legitimate reason of ensuring that the Republic does not learn of the Malevolence's secret weapon (a giant ion cannon) and begin countermeasures. Sure enough, it doesn't take long after some survivors are successfully recovered that the Malevolence is crippled and scuttled.
• SkeleBot 9000: His slender, bone-white mechanical body and skull-like faceplate make him resemble a skeleton.
• Smarter Than You Look: Many people are quick to assume that Grievous is nothing but a big, dumb, glorified Paper Tiger due to his smug personality and mechanical appearance. In reality, he's a Genius Bruiser who's much more a threat than any single droid would be, even Obi-Wan relents that Grievous is deceptively smart despite the way he presents himself. Tellingly, despite being a crazed, murder happy sociopath who only really cares about himself, he can Pragmatic Villainy because he knows that it can be a good thing not to let anything useful go to waste.
• Smug Snake: Played with. He tends to be overconfident about his own abilities and boast at his enemies before being defeated in combat, forced to flee and/or pull a fast one on his enemies, but every now and then, he gets his own victories and shows some instances of tactical brilliance.
• The Sociopath: Of the low-functioning variety. Grievous is a bloodthirsty monster who thinks nothing about subjecting planets and their billions of inhabitants to death and starvation. He only cares about himself and how many Jedi, clones, and civilians he can kill. The only creature he seems to have empathy towards is Gor, but only because he is useful as a pet killing machine and didn't expect the Jedi and clones to actually kill him.
• Spanner in the Works: The timing of his attack on Coruscant and abduction of Palpatine causes Obi-Wan and Anakin to be unable in help in the Siege of Mandalore, meaning Ahsoka goes instead. Maul was planning to kill Anakin in a duel to stop Palpatine, and the change causes him to try and salvage the plan.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: A tactic he employs a number of times. Considering how effective it is with his abnormal number of limbs, there's little reason for him to not do so.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Subverted. Yes, he's evil, and yes, he has gold eyes, but he isn't a Sith (or even a Force-sensitive) and only ever received lightsaber training from Count Dooku.
• Super-Strength: He is extremely strong thanks to his cybernetics, which is his main advantage when fighting Jedi. He can toss around armored soldiers one-handed like hacky sacks, kick a 5+-ton chunk of metal hard enough to send it flying thirty feet with enough force to kill an armored soldier behind it,^note In "Grievous Intrigue", the object he kicks is an ellipsoid-shaped piece of a cut out starship wall that's about 3/4 his height, as wide as it is tall, and at least half a foot thick. With dimensions of 1.6m x 1.6m x 0.13m, the object would have an internal volume of 1.39 m^3; its weight would be anywhere from 4 to 11 metric tons depending on what metal its density was closest to (e.g. aluminum at 2,700 kg/m^3, steel at 8,000 kg/m^3, or titanium at 4,500 kg/m^3). launch grown men across the room with backhands, decapitate droids with a casual swipe of his hand, leap over ten meters vertically despite weighing close to four hundred pounds, dent starship armor with his punches, and so on. Jedi can enhance their strength significantly with the Force (cf. Obi-Wan leaping thirty feet vertically in The Phantom Menace, or Luke launching Vader's 300-pound weight across the room with a kick in Return of the Jedi), and are still much physically weaker than him.
• Super-Toughness: His armor is proof against low-powered blasters used by most characters, and he was unharmed by Obi-Wan throwing an explosive barrel at him with the Force. His durability comes in handy whenever his Jedi opponents actually get to use the Force in more than a passive manner (e.g. Force pushes and pulls, as opposed to merely precognition and strength amplification), as he can shrug off impacts that would kill a normal human ten times over, such as when Eeth Koth telekinetically slams him into a transparisteel window hard enough to crack it, or when Obi-Wan telekinetically punts him twenty meters horizontally and into a metal wall.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His aggressive tactics sometimes fail because his battle droids can't follow up competently, resulting in his immediate temper and a battle droid's decapitation.
  Grievous: You expect victory over the Jedi, but all you give me to fight them are battle droids!
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: George Lucas created him as a deliberate Darth Vader variation who was half-man, half-robot. Or in his words, "20% alien and 80% robot".
• Sword Drag: He spins four lightsaber blades like propellers during his confrontation with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Utapau. The blades are shown to be chopping into the floor as he advances on Obi-Wan.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In most canon works, he and Count Dooku do not get along; Dooku admonishes Grievous for his failures in The Clone Wars' first season. Grievous angrily tries to deflect the blame, and later disobeys Dooku's directives. In "Massacre", he takes his sweet time leading the decapitation strike on Mother Talzin and her Nightsisters, despite Dooku imploring him to hurry since Talzin is in the process of painfully killing him with her magic. In Son of Dathomir, he outright calls Dooku "useless" and said it would be a shame if next time they met, Grievous had to add the Count's lightsaber to his collection. Despite this, he does respect his master, as he boasts about being trained by Dooku with pride in Revenge of the Sith.
• This Is Gonna Suck: in Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir, he admits that he and his droid army are in for a rough fight against Maul and the Shadow Collective.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: He does this to himself during the Battle of Coruscant in order to escape the Jedi (he can survive in space, and had a grappling hook that allowed him to reattach to the ship). Blast panels come down soon after to prevent others from getting blown out.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • He undergoes this multiple times in The Clone Wars:
    • In "Grievous Intrigue" and "The Deserter", he defeats Eeth Koth, predicts Obi-Wan's battle plan (doesn't quite work, but he gets points for cleverness), fights his way through two more Jedi Masters and a legion of clones in order to escape, and manages to flee Saleucami while under fire and despite Obi-Wan's attempts to stop him, laughing as he escapes.
    • He took another in "Massacre", where he and his droid forces decimate the Nightsisters (aside from a minor setback against Ventress).
    • He took another one in "Bound for Rescue", where he defeated Obi-Wan in a space battle, then one-on-one in a duel.
  • He took another in the first issue of the Son of Dathomir comic adaptation, where he matches Darth Maul, of all people, in one-to-one combat and utterly trounces his forces in the over-all battle. In the fourth issue, he kills Mother Talzin.
  • In Kanan (released after The Clone Wars, and set chronologically after as well), he curb stomps a Jedi Master and Council member (Depa Billaba) in a duel, and engineers a successful ambush that wipes out her battalion.
  • His issue of Age of Republic begins with him utterly curb-stomping an unnamed Jedi Master and her Padawan. No dirty tricks, no running away, no backup. He just takes them both on by himself and cuts them down in seconds, adding their lightsabers to his collection.
  • In order to kidnap Palpatine during the Battle of Coruscant, Grievous duels Shaak Ti and manages to defeat the Jedi Master, stealing her lightsaber as a trophy for his victory. He is also confirmed to have killed the Jedi Roron Corobb in this battle as well.
• Trophy Room: He has on in his lair on Vassek 3, which is filled with items, including Padawan braids, taken from Jedi he's killed.
• The Unfavorite: Of Dooku's two main minions, Grievous is this relative to Asajj Ventress. Whereas Dooku seemed to have a genuine soft spot for Ventress, he views Grievous as merely a pawn; the version of Sidious' plan that Dooku was eagerly ready to follow even involved Grievous being used as the scapegoat for the Separatists' atrocities. This may be in part because Grievous is not Force-sensitive, and so unlike Ventress cannot be trained as a true Sith apprentice by Dooku. This is in contrast to Legends, where he (rightfully) considered both Ventress and Durge inferior to Grievous, that said, he still viewed Grievous as a pawn like Durge and Ventress. It would ultimately be downplayed in Legends however, due to Grievous embodying many things Dooku hated (using more than one lightsaber, being non-human), and ultimately still viewed Grievous as a pawn.
• Underestimating Badassery: He once tried to take on Yoda with only one lightsaber. It ends about as well as you'd expect.
• Unknown Rival: Grievous considers Ventress to be his rival, and gives her some level of respect while they both serve Dooku, which only turns to hate once she seemingly defects. Ventress for her part, doesn't share the sentiment, though she finds the thought of them being equals amusing.
• The Unreveal: In "Lair of Grievous", his mask has to be replaced by a new one. As the medical droid starts to remove it, it seems that his real face will be revealed, but the scene cuts to the Jedi and when we next see the General, he already has a new mask on.
• Unrobotic Reveal: In Revenge of the Sith, in what is intended as Futureshadowing for Vader's nature, he is revealed to still possess internal organs.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Played with. He does have formal training, but his combat skills don't quite meet Jedi standards. Therefore, he uses a much more rough-and-tumble, frenzied style backed up by droids and plenty of room for cheap shots.
• Unwitting Pawn: He never realizes that the Chancellor he's kidnapped is actually the man he's working for.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: After losing his lightsaber and being forced to take on Grievous in a hand-to-hand brawl, Obi-Wan manages to finish him off with his own dropped blaster.
• Vader Breath: He has a rather nasty sounding hacking cough, which George Lucas has stated is deliberate Foreshadowing that Anakin will turn into Darth Vader, with Obi-Wan fighting both. In Revenge of the Sith, he also has noticeably labored breathing, most noticeable on Utapau before he contacts Sidious.
• Villain Has a Point: Grievous surmising that the compassion the Jedi show towards the Clones will their undoing eventually proves to be correct, since they were fighting for Palpatine and waiting for Order 66 to go down, despite the bond they shared with the Jedi throughout the whole war.
• Villainous Legacy: While Grievous is long dead, his massacre of the Nightsisters is one of the main reasons that Merrin doesn't trust outsiders, especially ones that use lightsabers. In addition, that same massacre would later be the Dark And Troubled Pasts of various Nightsisters who would either fight the Galactic Empire, such as Deathstick, or those who would aid it, most prominently Morgan Elsbeth, who channeled her anger into helping the Empire build its infamous Imperial Navy.
• Villainous Rescue: Though he's attacking another villain, he does save Count Dooku's life from Mother Talzin in "Massacre".
• Vocal Evolution: He spoke with a thick Russian accent in Revenge of the Sith, but it was toned down for The Clone Wars and all subsequent appearances. His voice also became deeper and more modulated.
• Wall Crawl: In "Lair of Grievous", he gets away after Kit Fisto cuts off his legs by crawling along the walls and ceiling using his arms like a giant murderous spider.
• Was It Really Worth It?: In his confrontation with Obi-Wan in "Grievous Intrigue", the Jedi lays this out to him in a massive "The Reason You Suck" Speech, angrily snarling if getting a mutilated body and becoming Dooku's errand boy was worth throwing in his lot with the Separatists. Grevious responds by denying he's an errand boy and saying he's not doing this for Dooku's benefit.
• Was Once a Man: He's a Kaleesh, but his rebuilding into a cyborg has limited his organic body to a sack of organs and a horribly-scarred face, to the point that he barely resembles his original species at this point.
• Wave-Motion Gun: One of his early cruisers, The Malevolence, had a giant, ship-mounted ion cannon.
• We Have Reserves:
  • He takes a very laissez-faire attitude towards the lives of the Battle Droids under his command.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, when escaping the Invisible Hand, he launches all the escape pods, thereby dooming the ship's Neimoidian crew members and a few Battle Droids in an effort to kill Obi-Wan and Anakin.
• White Mask of Doom: His mask resembles a Kaleesh skull.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Despite having Obi-Wan on the ropes, Grievous goes to finish him off with a Magnaguard staff that he picked up, rather than picking up his blaster that was only a few more feet away and shooting him with that. This dooms him moments later.
• Worthy Opponent: Considers Yoda this, as he considers dueling him a unique privilege. Unlike with Count Dooku, Yoda doesn't return the sentiment and demonstrates to Grievous exactly why.
• Would Hit a Girl: Definitely; he commits outright genocide against the Nightsisters.
• Would Hurt a Child: He has no problem does this to Ahsoka when he corners her in the storage room in "Duel of the Droids", has several Padawan braids among his trophies in "Lair of Grievous", and relishes the idea of killing the younglings and adding their newly-built lightsabers to his collection in "A Necessary Bond".
• Worf Had the Flu: Before he duels Kit Fisto (a duel that seemed to be going Kit's way before the MagnaGuards interrupted), Grievous' medical droid warned him that he wasn't fully repaired and was "in no condition to fight".
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: His eyes are yellow and as the rest of this page demonstrates he's not at all nice.
• You Fool!: He says this to Obi-Wan immediately prior to their final duel.
  "You fool! I have been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku!"
• You Have Failed Me: Upon learning he and Dooku had been captured by Maul, Sidious simply left them to die, stating that he has no further use for them if they're this weak.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When he's confronted by an army of Gungans outside his ship demanding his surrender, Grievous laughs incredulously, clearly not taking them seriously. The Gungans proceed to hand him one of his most embarrassing defeats in the war and capture him.
  Grievous: (laughs) You can't be serious!
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Indirectly, Palpatine directs the Jedi to the planet where Grievous is hiding so he can be killed to end the Clone Wars and bring a new era of peace with the Empire.
  • Grievous himself kills Gha Nachkt once he's finished hacking into R2's memory. He might have let him live if Nachkt hadn't demanded a bonus payment or he might have killed him anyway. It's hard to tell with Grievous.
• You Rebel Scum!: Grievous and his "Jedi slime!" epithet. He also referred to Hondo Ohnaka as "pirate scum".

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"Time to abandon ship!"