Characters / Stargate SG-1 - The Goa'uld

Stargate-verse Character Index
Stargate SG-1: SG-1 | Other SGC Personnel and Tau'ri Battleship Crew Members | Allies of the SGC | The Goa'uld | Other Antagonists
Spin-offs: Stargate Atlantis | Stargate Universe

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Goa'uld Empire

In General

In General

Goa'uld symbiote in its natural form

They're posturing egomaniacs driven by an insatiable lust for power. Each one capable of unimaginable evil.

— Daniel Jackson

The first antagonist introduced in the franchise and a major threat for seasons 1-8 of SG-1, the Goa'uld were an egotistical race of Puppeteer Parasites who used human beings as hosts in order to pose as gods and enslave the galaxy. Though they used highly advanced technology, it was often Awesome, but Impractical and most of it was stated to have been stolen from other races, most notably the Ancients. In theory they were loosely governed by a council of the most powerful Goa'uld known as the System Lords, but in practice they tended to spend the majority of their time fighting among themselves, something that was repeatedly stated to be their greatest weakness. They were also frequent holders of the Villain Ball, partly due to their reliance on the sarcophagus to stay alive, though the more dangerous ones would have occasional bouts of avoiding it.

Their stranglehold on the galaxy was absolute at the beginning of the series, but their empire eventually fell at the end of season 8. Though the odd Goa'uld would occasionally show up every now and then in the final two seasons, they were generally minor players due to the larger threat posed by the Ori, and it was implied in Continuum that Ba'al was the last System Lord remaining until his execution.

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• Agony Beam: Their signature weapon, the Kara Kesh, is a hand device that emits a fiery pulse of energy. It can be used to torture, or to emit shockwaves that can knock down many foes at once.
• Always Chaotic Evil: This trope is ensured due to the Genetic Memory they pass down to their offspring, as well as their extensive use of the sarcophagus, though the precise amount of evilness varies between them. The queen Egeria who founded the Tok'ra managed to overcome this, as did a few other Goa'uld who went over to the Tok'ra since, but it's rare and there have been none in the last century, which implies that the factors that make them Always Chaotic Evil have only gotten more entrenched with time.
• Ambition Is Evil: Near enough all of them are presented as having shades of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and The Starscream any time they have an opportunity to gain more power at each other's expense. It ends up being one of the major things that dooms them - except on rare occasions, their normal reaction to the death of any powerful Goa'uld is to scramble to take over his forces and territory instead of dealing with the threat (normally SG-1 and the Tau'ri) that killed them.
• Ancient Astronauts: They were evicted from Earth sometime during the Ancient Egyptian era. Weirdly, their technology doesn't seem to have advanced much in the several thousand years that have passed since. Justified in that there's very few scientist Goa'uld and their technology, as noted in the description, is mostly scavenged/stolen.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Bra'tac once mentioned that the children of System Lords often end up trying to usurp their parents.
• Arch-Enemy: They hate and fear the Tok'ra, chiefly for serving as a living reminder of the corrupt lifestyles they lead. Only gets deeper as the Tok'ra become allies to the Tau'ri.
• Asshole Victim: Few tears were shed when the last of the System Lords (aside from Ba'al) were killed by Replicarter in Season 8.
• Ax-Crazy: It's a plot point that the older a Goa'uld gets, the crazier they become. Repeated use of a sarcophagus alters the brain chemistry of a humanoid body, rendering them mentally unstable. Lord Yu, the oldest of the System Lords, was a prime example toward the end, barely aware of anything that was going on and relying on his First Prime to actually administer his territories.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: They either inspired or co-opted gods and mythic figures from almost every major Earth pantheon (except the Norse gods, who fell to the Asgard instead), starting with the Ancient Egyptian gods and later including figures from several other cultures.
• Berserk Button: Telling them that they aren't gods is a pretty good way to get at least smacked across the face.
• Better the Devil You Know: One of the reasons their rule endured for so long: both the Tok'ra and the Asgard were aware that the perpetual rivalry and sometime warfare between the System Lords kept them in check, and were loathe to take them out in case someone worse filled the resultant Evil Power Vacuum - as happened with Sokar, Apophis and Anubis at various points. Lampshaded by the series - the episode where Apophis returned from death to bedevil the team on Sokar's hell planet was actually called "The Devil You Know."
• Big Bad: The species in general serve as this for the show until Season 8, with Ra, Apophis, Sokar and Anubis all holding the role at various points.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Outside of a host, they're vaguely-amphibious snakelike things and pretty much defenseless against larger predators. They're all genderless apart from the queens, who are capable of either being seeded or spawning asexually, and their larvae are incubated in the stomach pouches of the Jaffa until such a time as they've matured enough to be capable of taking a human host — which they do by entering the body through either the mouth or the back of the neck and wrapping themselves around the brainstem. They also have thick bluish blood and a Genetic Memory that gets passed down to each successive generation.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: They have three options: A queen can reproduce asexually, she can mate with a male symbiote to produce an offspring that carries on the father's Genetic Memory, or two Goa'uld hosts can sire a Harcesis (a human child that has both of their Goa'uld parents' genetic memories).
• Bizarre Alien Sexes: Goa'uld (and Tok'ra) symbiotes are technically genderless (though most prefer female or male hosts and self-identify as such), but a small minority are queens, who spawn through either sexual or asexual reproduction and imprint their Genetic Memory on their larvae.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Any allegiance between them will be short-lived and purely out of convenience, due to the fact that they're all out for personal glory and (justifiably) paranoid of each other.
• Cool Mask: Some Goa'uld were fond of giving their troops these, leading to the distinct looks of Ra's Horus and Anubis Guards, as well as Apophis' Serpent Guards.
• Deflector Shields: The Kara Kesh of particularly high ranking Goa'uld such as System Lords can generate an energy shield that deflects bullets and energy projectiles. However, due to the limitations of the laws of physics, they can't move while the shield is active, and objects traveling slow enough not to trigger it (such as a throwing knife) go right through it.
• Enemy Civil War: Due to the aforementioned Chronic Backstabbing Disorder they're frequently fighting among themselves. This definitely works in the heroes' favor, since they have enough firepower between them to completely wipe Earth off the map if they could stop fighting among themselves long enough to coordinate an attack. It's stated a few times that they depleted most of their own forces this way, with the team merely tipping the balance of power between them.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The System Lords are a coalition of genocidal megalomaniacs, but they exiled Anubis prior to the events of the series for acts which even they considered unspeakable.
  • Expanded greatly in the subsequent games. Apep, the son of the Goa'uld who originally reverse-engineered the Stargates, was the Supreme System Lord, but Anubis poisoned and betrayed him, and began subjecting other Goa'uld at random to hideous and unnecessary tortures. Six other System Lords teamed up and defeated him, and put Ra on the Supreme Throne since he was the best logistician, and could hold the crumbling Empire best against the Asgard, the Ree'tu, and internal dissidents.
• Evil Is Petty: The natural Goa'uld arrogance, megalomania and paranoia means that they'll not only be loathe to work together but actively sabotage each other in face of a greater threat.
  • It's mentioned the other System Lords outright refused to contribute their forces to Apophis' early attack on Earth. Thor mentions later that the combined System Lords attacking Earth would be a hundred times greater than Apophis' earlier assault - had they joined their forces to his, it would have been a threat SG-1's limited means would have been utterly unable to deal with in Season One.
• Evil Power Vacuum: Any time a System Lord bites it, a mad scramble ensues among the others to absorb their armies and holdings. Ra had kept everyone else in check. Then the Tau'ri blew him up. Apophia came along, SG-1 got him (seemingly), etc. The Asgard even pointed out how SG-1 kept upsetting the balance of power. It's ultimately one of the major factors in why the Goa'uld Empire ultimately crumbles completely by season 8.
• Evil Sounds Deep: They speak with distinctive flanged-bass style voices, though later seasons reveal that they're perfectly capable of turning this off if they want to and they do it on purpose to intimidate their subjects and lend weight to the whole "god" thing. By the end of the series, Ba'al hardly uses it at all in the presence of the team, since he cheerfully admits to the fact that he knows he's not actually a god and only puts on the act for people who might actually be convinced.
• Evil Versus Evil: Their chronic infighting aside, they occasionally end up battling against other evil forces in the galaxy - such as Anubis (except when they aren't), the Replicators and even the Wraith.
• Evil Will Fail: It was always kind of a given that they'd eventually be destroyed (or destroy themselves) based on their tendency to indulge in backstabbing and general evilness; however, it was ultimately the SG-1 team who helped to destabilize things (as the Asgard pointed out, what they mostly did was continually mess up the balance of power among the System Lords), primarily because they were the first group to actually demonstrate effective tactics against them. The Asgard could've wiped them out ages ago, if most of their resources weren't tied up dealing with the Replicators.
• Genetic Memory: The memories of their entire line is passed down to each successive generation.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: They can make their hosts' eyes flash white-gold, usually when they're angry or want to intimidate somebody. This is also sometimes used as a tip-off to indicate that a character is now a host. The effect also occurs when they are killed; again a handy indicator to back up someone's claim that the person they have just killed was a Goa'uld mole.
• A God Am I: They all impersonate various deities and demand to be worshipped by humans/Jaffa, and after enough cycles in the sarcophagus the crazier ones actually start to believe it.
• Healing Factor: Their natural ability to heal their host's body is quite powerful; it's strong enough to even heal the disease that wiped out the Ancients, who with all their advanced technology couldn't manage to find a cure. However, they can't fix anything that would immediately kill their host, such as a bullet to a major organ.
• Healing Serpent: For starters they are very snake-like in their natural form and provide their hosts with a Healing Factor as noted above.
  • The Goa'uld created a Slave Race of Super Soldiers called the Jaffa that were genetically engineered so that their entire immune system is dependent on a larval Goa'uld symbiote^note The Jaffa eventually found a alternative in the form of a drug called "Tretonin". . The Goa'uld made the Jaffa that way to both keep their slaves under their thumb and to get incubators for their larva.
  • A invention of the Goa'uld is the sarcophagus, which was used to rapidly injuries and cure illnesses. Constant use of sarcophagus can reverse various genetic disorders, such as poor eyesight, extended one's lifespan^note Though if they have a symbiote they both become functionally immortal. and even revive the dead in some cases. Unfortunately, it can't fix various forms of brain damage, its use can become addictive, it can be used for Brainwashing and can cause psychological side effects when used regularly.
• Immortal Genius: Zig-zagged; they can naturally live for centuries and expand their lifespans into immortality through use of sarcophagi... but they're not as as omniscient or as clever as they'd like their worshippers to think. Their technology was just reverse-engineered from Ancient tech, and the Goa'uld designed it to impress rather than function. Worse still, their gigantic egos and brain-addling use of the sarcophagi prevent them from acknowledging this. However, a rare few Goa'uld have escaped this stereotype to become genuinely inventive, brilliant, and extremely dangerous - most notably Anubis, who not only has access to unique technical knowledge, but is also partially Ascended and has no need of a sarcophagus.
• Immortality Immorality: Their repeated use of the sarcophagus gradually causes them to turn psychotic and megalomaniacal the more they use it - combined with the Goa'uld inheriting the genetic memory of their lineage, it's the main explanation for their depraved and evil status. Lampshaded in-universe - Daniel found out in one episode repeated use of it left him mentally unstable to the point of attacking the rest of SG-1, with this being used as the in-universe explanation as to why the team doesn't use one as a cure-all for any medical emergency that befalls them.
• Large Ham: Some are hammier than others, but they all exhibit this to some degree.
• Magic from Technology: They claim that the advanced technology they use is magic to the less advanced cultures that worship them.
• Medieval Stasis: They invoke this by deliberately preventing human cultures from advancing to the point where they could challenge their power. Part of the reason Earth becomes such a threat to them is that, after thousands of years free from Goa'uld rule, the Tau'ri have advanced to the point where they're able to recognize that Goa'uld technology is just that, and have some fairly advanced — if significantly less flashy — technology of their own.
• Monstrous Cannibalism: A scene from "Last Stand" shows the System Lords feasting on live Goa'uld symbiotes, something which Jacob states has gotten so out of hand that they're experiencing zero population growth.
• No Biological Sex: However, they tend to prefer either male or female hosts and be referred to with the corresponding pronouns.
• No Sense of Humor: Almost all of the Goa'uld are this way. To them, even Jack O'Neill's funniest wisecracks are nothing more than petty insolence. The sole exception is Ba'al, who is a Deadpan Snarker himself.
• Opportunistic Bastard: The bigger threats among their number usually become so by taking advantage of outside events.
  • Sokar takes advantage of Apophis's forces being defeated at Earth to decimate his forces and capture him, gathering an army big enough to overthrow the System Lords in the process.
  • Apophis in turn takes over Sokar's army when SG-1 blow up his ship and becomes more powerful than any System Lord as a result.
  • Anubis takes advantage of the deaths of Apophis and other System Lords to become the pre-eminent Goa'uld threat.
  • And Ba'al quickly seizes Anubis's forces when he's thought to be dead, though in that case Anubis comes back.
• Parasites Are Evil: They regard other life-forms as nothing more than slaves, treating them with a mixture of sneering arrogance and chortling sadism, gladly leaving their hosts trapped in a tormented state of helplessness. It's made clear that they're biologically locked into this through Genetic Memory, with each new generation of Goa'uld being inclined to regard themselves as true gods - and stab each other in the back to acquire more power.
• Puppeteer Parasite: Unusually for this trope, they don't really hide their nature (aside from when they're on infiltration or intelligence-gathering missions), instead bigging themselves up to an insane degree by posing as gods to their Jaffa and human followers. They're practically helpless without a human body to possess, but grant their hosts Super-Strength and a Healing Factor. The latter has tripped them up at least once, when SG-1 puzzled out that a Russian general was possessed after seeing him read a speech without his glasses, due to the Goa'uld healing abilities rendering his poor eyesight moot.
• Really 700 Years Old: Many of them are thousands of years old due to repeated use of the sarcophagus. The RPG background materials indicate that some of the most notorious Goa'uld, like Ra, Apophis and Anubis, have been around since the start of the Goa'uld Empire a good 24,000 years ago.
• Smug Snake: A supremely literal example. They're almost always obnoxiously self-satisfied, but their position is never quite as secure as they seem to think it is.
• Stupid Evil: And how. They're chronically unable to work together for their common good unless someone like Ra is around to threaten them all into it. They can't rein in their Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and The Starscream tendencies whenever there's any sort of power hierarchy, as nearly all of them always want more of it. They're utterly unable to stop Evil Gloating when they have the upper hand, and they just can't keep themselves from acts of pointless cruelty for the hell of it that always backfire on them sooner or later. Really, it's a minor miracle their dominion lasted as long as it did.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Subverted, since almost all of their power comes from their technology (little of which they invented themselves), and even a basic grasp of how that technology works pretty quickly undermines their standing as "gods". Compare them to the Ori, who have genuine powers and are pretty much indistinguishable from actual gods.
• Super-Strength: The parasite grants its host significantly enhanced strength, enough that Goa'uld hosts can handily manhandle veteran soldiers, and Cronus was able to match or even exceed Teal'c in raw strength.
• Translation Convention: It's implied that they speak their own language among themselves and to their Jaffa, and we just hear English for convenience's sake. Most noticeable in "Summit", when Daniel specifically is chosen to infiltrate a meeting of the System Lords since he can understand Goa'uld, only for them to spend the entire episode speaking English.
• Underestimating Badassery: As a whole, the race does this with the Tau'ri until far too late - despite all SG-1's early successes against them, they largely remain focused on either their constant infighting (the other System Lords refusing to contribute anything to Apophis' attack on Earth most notably) or their Arch-Enemy, the Tok'ra. It takes until Anubis takes over as the race's Big Bad for this to be averted, as he stops underestimating the humans and makes numerous concerted efforts to destroy them.
• Villain Ball: A combination of their sarcophagus use, endless desire for more power and genetic memory of all their evil ancestors means they tend to hold onto it for dear life - if SG-1 ever gets captured, expect them to get out of it via the Goa'uld rubbing their impending doom in their faces, treating their Jaffa/human underlings terribly or not killing them when they have the chance. It's telling that the biggest Goa'uld threats the team faced - Apophis after his return, Anubis, Ba'al - defied at least some of these behaviours.
• Villain Decay: Acknowledged In-Universe when they manage to take over the Trust. It's noted that earlier in the series the presence of even one Goa'uld on Earth would be a cause for major concern, but by that stage the team have bigger fish to fry thanks to the Ori and it's a secondary concern at most.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Goa'uld genetic memory seems to bring this on. When the Harcesis child seemingly exposes Daniel to all the knowledge of the Goa'uld, Daniel (a being that was pure enough to Ascend and almost did so again) becomes a paranoid dictator that swiftly becomes Earth's Evil Overlord. Thankfully it's all a dream.

System Lords

High Council

Ra

Ra

"I created your civilization. Now I will destroy it."

Played By: Jaye Davidson (movie), Jay Williams (SG-1 and Continuum)

First Appearance: Stargate (1994)

The villain of the original Stargate movie, Ra was an ancient alien who enslaved primative mankind, founded ancient Egypt and thus regards himself as the creator of human civilization. He maintained power by using his Sufficiently Advanced Alien technology to pose as a god, and was the source of the mythology of the Egyptian god Ra. He was killed by the Tau'ri stargate team at the end of the movie. Was ret-conned in the TV series as being the most powerful of the Goa'uld, an entire species of parasitic aliens who pretty much followed the same modus operandi.

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• An Arm and a Leg: It's implied that his right hand was cut off when Daniel escaped his ship via the teleported rings, as it was pinned under said rings just before they activated and he seems to be holding said arm in pain in every remaining scene he appears in.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: The only reaction his death provoked among the Goa'uld was a bout of vicious infighting as they maneuvered to replace him, with Apophis eventually coming out on top. They didn't even bother attacking Earth or Abydos in retaliation (though Apophis did hit Earth as a direct result in one alternate reality). Hathor was shown to be particularly delighted by his death when she re-emerged on Earth.
• Back for the Finale: He has a brief cameo in Continuum, though it's easy to miss the fact that it's supposed to be him since he has one line and he's played by a completely different actor. He also appears in "Moebius", which is the last episode to feature the original cast before the Retool and was originally intended to be the series finale.
• Badass Bureaucrat: The RPG material on the Goa'uld indicated this was one of the main reasons his rule was largely accepted by the other Goa'uld - where most of the System Lords thought only of themselves, Ra proved excellent at dividing up the Goa'uld's resources (territory, Stargates, slaves) among them to avoid major infighting in the face of threats like the Asgard.
• Bad Boss: Isn't above killing his own soldiers for the sin of failure. The fact that his child retainers exist partly to deter any attack on his own person doesn't speak much to his regard for their lives, either.
• Big Bad: Of Stargate. Jack and Daniel's main enemy throughout, though his First Prime Anubis is the main physical threat. His plan to use Jack's bomb to destroy Earth drives the plot in the film's second half.
• Bond Villain Stupidity:
  • Gives Daniel a Sadistic Choice of either gunning down his compatriots to show Ra's divinity to the people or watching Ra take reprisals on Abydos' population. Needless to say, Daniel turns his staff weapon on Ra's entourage immediately, and Ra's defeat just snowballs from there.
  • After having the team's nuke enhanced with naquadah and planning to send it back to Earth to destroy humanity, he doesn't actually do anything with it until he's already under attack from Jack's group despite having at least a day after their escape from execution to send it back to Earth through the Stargate.
• Combat Pragmatist: Those kids that stop O'Neill from just gunning him down? The novelisation revealed the possibility of such was one of the reasons he kept them around.
• Cool Mask: Ra's Pharoah mask is arguably the coolest and most distinct in the entire franchise, with The Reveal of it forming the title sequence to the film and early seasons of SG-1. Where the Anubis and Horus masks of his underlings (as well as the Serpent Guard masks of Apophis' forces) are advanced helmets, this actually retracts into his face.
• Continuity Snarl: His original form as seen in flashbacks in the movie looks nothing like the Goa'uld of the TV series. Various supplementary materials have tried to explain this, one by noting he was possessing an Asgard at the time, while another had him turn out to be a different species altogether.
• Death by Origin Story: Only relevant to the TV series via his death in the movie.
• Dying as Yourself: Villainous version. His stolen body morphs back into the alien creature he truly is in the moments preceding his death, and he perishes in his proper form.
• The Emperor: Was Supreme System Lord before his death, the most powerful Goa'uld System Lord.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He was disgusted by his brother Anubis's torture of their father Apep, and actually led - in person - the coalition to depose and exile him. He did so alongside his hated brother Apophis, his rival Cronus, his scheming underling Yu, and power-mad masochist Sokar. Anubis was just that bad.
• Faux Affably Evil: Conducts himself with an air of royal refinement, and is willing to engage Daniel at length... before casually informing him, with a smile on his face, that he's going to destroy Daniel's world and force him to kill his companions. When frustrated, this veneer of civility evaporates completely.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Among other things, he set up the System Lords as the Goa'uld's governing body, was responsible for spreading humans throughout the galaxy as breeding stock for Goa'uld hosts, took Hathor as his queen, started the war with the Asgard and was the reason Seth was hiding out on Earth and Osiris was imprisoned there. The Tok'ra were also formed in response to his overlordship; their organization's name is literally "Against Ra".
  • More specifically, Aset's need for allies in order to rebel against him drives her actions in Stargate: Origins.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Rigged a naquada enhanced nuke, unable to be disarmed, to be delivered to Earth via the stargate. Jack O'Neill kills the Anubis Guard carrying it (using Ra's own transport system) and then he and Daniel Jackson used said transport system to send it back to him, right in his face. He could only watch helplessly as the counter ticked down to zero before it blasted him to atoms.
• Informed Ability: He's portrayed as powerful and dangerous in the film, but the series ups the mythology surrounding him considerably; he's described as charismatic, rich beyond measure, possessing the most territory, controlling the master map of the stargate network, being the first and last active System Lord to set foot on Earth, and being the uncontested Supreme System Lord and Emperor of the Goa'uld for over ten uninterrupted millennia. We see none of this.
• Last of His Kind: In the non-canon Bill McKay sequel novel series (set after the film but written as a separate continuity from SG-1), Ra was the last survivor of his entire race, and had survived not via the Puppeteer Parasite methods of the TV series but by transferring his soul into the human body he wears in the film.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Sure, he's incredibly ruthless and brutal - but the RPG background makes it pretty clear the other Goa'uld would rather have him in charge than a lunatic like Sokar or Anubis...
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Spectacularly so with Daniel Jackson. After Daniel gets killed by his men, Ra resurrects him out of curiosity and amusement. Daniel not only goes on to be instrumental in his downfall, but eventually helps bring down the System Lords, ending the Goa'uld's reign of terror.
  • More specifically, if he hadn't immediately fled on his ship after seeing the popular revolt Jack and Daniel would have had no way to safely get rid of the nuke he'd rigged - while he'd still have died, at least all his enemies would have been killed too.
• Nuke 'em: Daniel and Jack got rid of him by ringing a tactical nuclear warhead aboard his ship.
• Oh, Crap!: He clearly has this look, combined with sheer terror, when he sees the naquada enhanced nuke he rigged to be completely unable to be disarmed suddenly appear right in front of him at the finale of the Stargate movie.
• Older Than They Look: An ancient alien entity possessing the body of an Egyptian teenager. Especially notable as all the other Goa'uld generally seem to use adults as hosts.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Mentioned as the Supreme System Lord, and fairly heavily hyped in general, before being beaten relatively easily. He exclusively lets his Horus and Anubis guards do the fighting, and uses children as human shields. In other words, he's a serious threat mainly because at this stage humans have no clue how to deal with alien life in general, much less a Goa'uld.
• Parental Incest: Hathor tells the SGC that Ra was her father as well as her husband.
• Pet the Dog: Supplementary materials indicate he never had quite the level of Fantastic Racism against humans as the other System lords, being quite happy to use them as soldiers and even his First Prime in place of the Jaffa.
  • Horrifically subverted in Stargate: Origins, where it's shown he obliterates the memories of Wasif and Motawk as punishment for their rebellion, bestowing them with the Horus and Anubis Guard masks seen in the film - the implication being that this is generally how Ra recruits his guards.
• Predecessor Villain: Delusions of godhood? Endless sadism and cruelty? Large Ham to the fullest extent? Constant holder of the Villain Ball? Ra set the stage for every single Goa'uld villain (and hell, even the Ori) in displaying every single one of these traits in the franchise's earliest incarnation.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In his Stargate: Origins appearance the eyes of his traditional pharoah mask glow bright red.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Immediately flees Abydos in his ship the moment the popular uprising against him takes shape. He doesn't even wait around to see if his rigged nuclear weapon annihilates Earth or Abydos first.
• Slasher Smile: Dips into this sometimes.
• Starter Villain: The first villain of the franchise, but he's dispatched fairly easily compared to his successors and doesn't have anything like the same lasting impact.
  • Justified as he was also used to dealing with nothing more sophisticated than rebellion from the primitive societies that are generally depicted in the majority of the planets visited in the series; all later Goa'uld had a better idea what Stargate Command was capable of after this attack and were able to adjust their methods accordingly, whereas Ra never had the chance to learn from his mistakes.
• Vetinari Job Security: As much as one can have in a race of megalomaniacs with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder like the Goa'uld. The background materials make clear that his rule as Supreme System Lord had surprisingly few major challenges from other Goa'uld - being the best-organised and most ruthless of the lot, he was recognised as the only one able to keep the other System Lords in line and focused on threats like the Asgard and Anubis.
• Villainous Legacy: In the non-canon Bill McKay sequel novel series (set after the film but written as a separate continuity from SG-1), it turns out Ra had set up an entire empire of humans descended from those on Earth, and had elevated the most vicious and ruthless of those humans to the status of more minor figures in the Egyptian pantheon. This comes back to bite Earth in a big way when Hathor (an underling even Ra considered too vicious and power-hungry) takes control of said empire after the film and tries to destroy both Abydos and Earth.
• Villains Out Shopping: He's shown bathing (in the director's cut at least) and playing an alien form of chess with his underlings at various points in the film.
• You Have Failed Me: In an Establishing Character Moment for him (and the entire Goa'uld race), offs one of his Horus guards, seemingly at random, for failing to prevent the rebels' escape after Daniel turns on them and O'Neill and co. escape at the execution ceremony. As Bond Villain Stupidity details, a massive portion of the blame for that situation existing in the first place falls on Ra himself.

Apophis

Apophis

Played By: Peter Williams

First Appearance: "Children of the Gods"

The original Big Bad of the TV series. The brother of Ra, Apophis attacked Earth and later Abydos, in the process kidnapping Daniel Jackson's wife Sha're, causing the Stargate program to be reformed to combat the new threat of the Goa'uld. He was actually only one of many competing Goa'uld System Lords, and over the course of the series he rose and fell in power due to SG-1's actions. After several apparent returns from the dead, he was finally Killed For Real by the Eviler than Thou Replicators.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In "Serpent's Song", he isn't above pleading for his life, and even offers all the knowledge of the Goa'uld Empire in return - though whether he would have actually done so is arguable.
• Always a Bigger Fish: He's finally killed not by the team, but by the Replicators, who make the Goa'uld look pretty tame by comparison.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To SG-1, especially Teal'c. Anubis may have been a bigger threat, but no other Goa'uld had such a bitterly personal hatred of SG-1 for both their role in his original downfall and Teal'c's defection. Needless to say, this goes both ways, given his attack on Earth, treatment of Teal'c's family and taking both Daniel's wife and Jack's friend Skaara as hosts for his queen and son. Seen most notably in "Serpent's Song", where Jack, Teal'c and Daniel all take the time to taunt him about his impending death.
  • Among the Goa'uld Sokar, Cronus and Heru'ur are all mentioned as being this to him.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: One of the few Goa'uld seen taking to the battlefield alongside his Jaffa. In "The Nox" he's shown to be good enough with a staff weapon to easily kill Jack, Daniel and Carter in a matter of seconds - and unlike virtually any other Goa'uld, he's willing to walk into Sokar's den to enact his plan to kill him personally.
• Back for the Finale: He makes an appearance in the alternate timeline created by Ba'al in Continuum, just long enough for Ba'al to take the top of his head off.
• Beard of Evil: The "real" Apophis lacks one, but his alternate selves in "Point of View" and "Moebius" sport Goatees of Evil.
• Big Bad: Zigzagged: he certainly was in the first season when he emerged as Ra's replacement as the main antagonist. The loss of his ships and most of his army at the start of Season 2 made him too weak to be the Big Bad for the rest of the season, and he was in fact defeated and tortured by Sokar midway through Season 2. Sokar would go on to be the Big Bad for Season 3, but Apophis in turn replaced him after his death at SG-1's hands, taking over Sokar's massive fleet, and would hold the role until the start of Season 5 where he was finally Killed Off for Real.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: While on Netu, he has a hidden wrist-mounted blade with which he intends to kill Sokar. He doesn't succeed, but does manage to take out Sokar's guards using it.
• Bling of War: His golden Jaffa armor. He ditches it after he escapes from Netu.
• Break the Haughty: He spends an episode dying in the SGC's infirmary after his forces are nearly wiped out by Sokar and he crashes into a planet the team just happen to be visiting. Later subverted when he's handed over to Sokar, who promptly has him resurrected and spends months subjecting him to horrendous torture; he comes out the other side more arrogant than ever, and practically takes over hell.
• The Cameo: If SG-1 end up in an alternate reality/timeline, it's a good bet he'll show up somewhere, even if it's only for a few minutes.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  Apophis: O'Neill. I am dying.
  O'Neill: My heart bleeds for you.
  Apophis: You lie poorly.
• Cool Mask: Prior to his capture by Sokar was occasionally seen in a golden version of his forces' Serpent Guard armour, including the retractable helm.
• Cool Starship: After taking over Sokar's empire his new flagship is a much larger and deadlier version of the normal Goa'uld pyramid ship.
• Death Is Cheap: He passes away on Earth after Sokar's torture and the rapid aging of his body prove too much for him - however, when Sokar retrieves the body he has Apophis resurrected in a Sarcophagus before subjecting him to even more torture (Jacob even lampshades this is likely to happen). After his return to power it takes having his ship slammed into a planet to get rid of him for good.
• Decomposite Character: In the myths, Apophis is another name for the deity Apep, but Apep is eventually revealed to be an entirely different Goa'uld.
• Defector from Decadence: Pre-eminent among the System Lords until his attack on Earth leads to his forces being weakened to such an extent he's captured by Sokar and sent to Netu. Once he returns and takes over Sokar's forces, his new massive fleet and army ensure he has enough of a power base to operate outside the System Lords and become more powerful than any of them.
• Determinator: One has to hand it to him - he suffered a Humiliation Conga (including the loss of his empire, his queen, Cold-Blooded Torture and actually dying at Sokar's hands) that would have broken lesser villains, and through sheer tenacity and taking advantage of events managed to not only survive all that but come back as a significantly greater threat than before.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He really seems to care for Amaunet (even desperately calling out for her while dying in "Serpent's Song") and his offspring Klorel (Apophis actually halts his attack on Earth so he can resurrect Klorel in a sarcophagus). Subverted with Ra and Heru'ur, his own brother and nephew respectively (the latter of whom he ends up killing), and presumably also with Shifu, whom he conceived for with the sole intention of having him as a future host.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Is utterly uncomprehending when O'Neill rejects his offer of all the knowledge of the Goa'uld in return for a new host. O'Neill even lampshades it, mockingly telling Apophis it's because SG-1 are the good guys.
• Facial Horror: When he turns up on Netu in "Jolinar's Memories" the right side of his face is a mass of scar tissue partially covered by a metal plate. He evidently had some reconstructive surgery done between "The Devil You Know" and his next appearance in "The Serpent's Venom" (shown).
• Hero Killer: In "The Nox", he singlehandedly kills O'Neill, Daniel and Carter in moments without breaking a sweat. They get better.
• Immortals Fear Death: Played straight when he's dying in the SGC and tearfully admits that he's afraid. The team later use the footage of this to convince some of his followers that he's not really a god.
• It's Personal: He hates the entire team, but it's definitely personal when it comes to "the Shol'va", thanks to Teal'c's defection in the Pilot. Needless to say, this goes both ways.
  • This enmity also ironically makes Apophis the only one of the System Lords (aside from Nirrti) to take the Tau'ri seriously initially. The other Goa'uld are at first more focused on their own domains and don't see the little backwater mudball they once ruled as a real threat. It's only after SG-1 defeats Apophis (at least the first time) and other victories that they begin to follow Apophis' lead in trying to deal with Earth once and for all.
• Kill and Replace: Not in the usual sense of this trope, as Apophis never masquerades as Sokar - but he does adopt a visual style and appearance featuring Sokar's distinctive crimson everywhere and notably doesn't try to change the look of Sokar's forces back to his own. The implication seems to be that he's not changed anything so he can establish a continuity between rulers, including Sokar's mantle of lord of Hell, more easily.
• Like Father, Like Son: Has an offspring called Klorel he genuinely cares about and tries to make into a successful warlord like himself - which backfires spectacularly during his attack on Earth when SG-1 and Bra'tac continually exploit their bond to ruin his plans.
• Manipulative Bastard: Amongst other things, he was able to brainwash Rya'c and later Teal'c fairly easily.
• Mars Needs Women: Captured Sha're to serve as a host for his queen Amaunet.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Sends Teal'c to kill a follower who had failed him, and congratulated him when he returned with the Jaffa's crushed symbiote - except Teal'c had actually spared the guy and taken the symbiote of another dead Jaffa. Apophis' falling for the ruse confirmed to Teal'c he (and the Goa'uld) were Not So Omniscient After All and would eventually led to his joining SG-1.
• Not Quite Dead: Escaped what seemed like certain death so many times, that even after he was finally slammed into a planet at superluminal speeds, Jack O'Neill was "100 percent certain ... 99 percent certain that Apophis is dead."
• Not So Above It All: When he takes over SG-1's Ha'tak (formerly Cronus') the first thing he does is criticize the decor - especially the throne.
• Off with His Head!: How Ba'al kills him in "Continuum", slicing off the top of his head and letting the bisected symbiote spill out.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When the humans actually manage to kill a few of his Serpent Guards in "Children of the Gods", he has a major look of this on his face, seemingly realising he's encountered a race advanced enough to fight back.
  • When a swarm of Replicators turns up out of nowhere in his ship's throne room. His final death follows not long after.
• Opportunistic Bastard: When he captures SG-1 on Netu and manages to gain an audience with Sokar, his plan to kill him fails - but thanks to having enough presence of mind to escape Sokar's ship as SG-1 and the Tok'ra blow up Netu and kill the devil Goa'uld, he winds up in the perfect position to take over Sokar's forces and become a much greater threat than before.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Unlike most of the other System Lords, Apophis wasn't afraid to lead from the front, and was willing to fight alongside his Jaffa on a few occasions. His original outfit was a more decorated version of Jaffa combat armor, in contrast to the dress robes worn by most other Goa'uld.
• The Starscream: After his forces are depleted and he ends up as Sokar's prisoner, he rises to power as an underlord on Netu and proposes being allowed to rule Netu for Sokar before turning on him and absorbing his armies.
• Taking You with Me: Admits when he's dying as a prisoner of the Tau'ri the reason he asked for sanctuary among them is so he'll at least have the small pleasure of Sokar annihilating them too.
• Torture Technician: In "The Devil You Know" he has all of SG-1 and Martouf/Lantash tortured and mind raped for information.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: For the Goa'uld. His visit to Earth to acquire hosts in the Pilot alerts the US military that the Stargate is still active and that Ra was just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger threat in the galaxy - setting off a chain of events that sees him dead and the Goa'uld Empire collapse within a decade.
• Villain Ball: Zigzagged: early on he was as prone to megalomaniacal stupidity as any other Goa'uld, continually underestimating SG-1 and Earth in general (his assault on Earth was a particular disaster). After his return and taking over Sokar's forces he's as arrogant as ever, but avoids some of the pitfalls that tripped him and other System Lords up earlier. He outwits Heru'ur, bringing a cloaked fleet to their negotiation when he thinks the latter has betrayed him, and immediately refuses SG-1's offer of an Enemy Mine when their latest attempt to kill him results in both parties being stranded in deep space, opting instead to blast their ship apart on the spot (though he's stopped by the Replicators).
• We Have Reserves: When his ship is besieged by the Replicators, he sends several of his Jaffa to die in trying to hold them off while he tries to escape.

Ba'al

Ba'al

Played By: Cliff Simon

First Appearance: "Summit"

A Goa'uld System Lord introduced about halfway through the series total run. Although he never became the Big Bad, he was a consistent secondary villain, often opposing both SG-1 as well as the series current Big Bad, making him something of the series Starscream. Like Starscream in Transformers: Animated, he even created a small army of clones of himself in order to cheat death and be in several places at once.

Although power-hungry, Ba'al was somewhat subtler and more reasonable than the standard "megalomaniacally melodramatic" Goa'uld villains. He also seemed to have a better understanding of human nature than was typical of the Goa'uld, including having an ironic sense of humor, and eventually even speaking in a normal voice instead of the Goa'uld's Scary Echo Speak.

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• Ascended Extra: Was introduced amidst a bevy of System Lords in "Summit". He was such a great character that they brought him back as a recurring character, and ultimately became the last System Lord to fall.
• Affably Evil: Played with. He's undoubtedly charming, charismatic and very much a practitioner of Pragmatic Villainy - but at the end of the day he's a System Lord, with all the viciousness and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder that implies, frequently leading him to come across as more Faux Affably Evil.
• Arch-Enemy: O'Neill hates him more than any other Goa'uld for torturing him endlessly, though he's subtle about it. Ba'al seems to despise O'Neill in turn.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: When he's undercover on Earth posing as the CEO of some corporation.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: A ton with Adria, despite their relatively limited interaction. Similar in many ways to the tension between Mal and Inara in Firefly, and thus possibly a deliberate reference. Gets a little strange, complicated, and maybe a little squicky when Ba'al implants himself (a clone Goa'uld) into Adria in an effort to take control of the Ori forces in the Milky Way. It works, for a while.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Despite his prominence as a villain he never actually makes the jump to Big Bad, as for most of his early appearances he's either one of a bevy of System Lords or The Dragon for Anubis. He only attains prominence as the main Goa'uld antagonist in Seasons 9 and 10, where the Ori emerged as a far greater threat and overshadowed Ba'al's scheming. In Stargate: Continuum he sort of shares Big Bad status with Qetesh: She's the Big Bad of the Alternate Timeline after she kills him, but he was the one who started the whole thing and ends up being the final boss for Mitchell.
• Breakout Villain: Initially just one of many similarly evil and backstabbing System Lords in his first appearances, a combination of Cliff Simon's charismatic performance being a hit with fans and the writers' desire for a Goa'uld villain different from the norm led to Ba'al repeatedly returning and gradually taking on a larger role in later seasons, eventually ending up as the last surviving Goa'uld threat in Continuum.
• Brick Joke: A rather dark Continuity Nod. In "Abyss," he repeatedly tortures O'Neill to death, often using knives. Fast-forward to "The Quest", when he has to relinquish a posession, they tell him to drop in his knife, which he at first refuses, claiming it has... "sentimental value."
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: For a System Lord, particularly after his time on Earth resulted in him Going Native.
• The Chew Toy: In "The Quest", when he tags along with the team (and Adria) to find the Sangraal and undergoes something of a Humiliation Conga that includes having his vocal cords frozen by Merlin, getting punched in the face by Carter and finally getting shot by a random Ori Mook. Since it's Ba'al, the entire team finds his misfortune pretty hilarious.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Betrays pretty much everybody he ever allies himself with, only to fall victim to it himself in Continuum when he makes the mistake of trusting Qetesh.
• Crazy Enough to Work: All of Ba'al's plans are ludicrously audacious, which is a big part of why they generally succeed. It's a testament both to his skill and the sheer, unmitigated gall of his plans that he manages to outlive all the other villains on the show, lasting five seasons and one movie.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's the only Goa'uld shown to have a sense of humor and can engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat with the heroes when he wants to.
• Death Is Cheap: After he became a series of clones rather than an individual character, it kind of became a running joke to have him killed repeatedly (often within the same episode), only to have him be back for more a few episodes later. Defied eventually in Continuum, where the last of the clones is executed by the Tok'ra (while saving the host) and the real deal is killed by Mitchell when he eventually prevents the plot's time-travel shenanigans.
• Demoted to Dragon: For a while, he is the most dangerous System Lord around and waging a successful war against all the other ones combined when he seizes control of the Kull Warriors following the destruction of Anubis's fleet over Earth. Anubis survived, but it takes him a while to return to his seat of power. Ba'al reluctantly starts serving Anubis, although he also starts to work with SG-1 against him when he realizes the true scope of Anubis' plans.
• Emperor Scientist: Is a genius in his own right, and definitely has ambitions to rule the galaxy (which he almost managed in the aftermath of Anubis' defeat, but before the arrival of the Replicators, and in the alternate timeline of Continuum). A brilliant computer scientist, he understands the Gate system and the Ancient's incredibly complex, elegant dialing program better even that Samantha Carter. He also managed to clone himself many times over, increasing his power manyfold, managed to steal Asgard beaming technology from Anubis (who stole it from Thor), took control of the invincible Kull warriors from Anubis, defeated the Replicators (SG-1 couldn't have wiped them out without his dialing program, though Nerus may have had a hand in that), managed to crack quick and easy time travel (a feat even the Ancients struggled with), the list goes on.
• Enemy Mine: Ba'al is more than willing to work with SG-1 whenever there's a greater threat that needs to be dealt with. After all, he doesn't want someone else taking over the galaxy.
• Evil Versus Evil: Helped SG-1 enact their plan to use the Dakara superweapon to destroy the Replicators after realising how much of a threat they were, and some of his later plans after the fall of the System Lords were geared towards contesting the Ori invasion of the Milky Way.
• Final Boss: Ultimately, he's the final opponent that SG-1 faces in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Qetest during Stargate: Continuum. With his death at the end of the film, the Goa'uld System Lords are no more.
• A God I Am Not: Very pointedly evoked compared to the other Goa'uld in the series. After the fall of the System Lords, he freely admits that he, and all the other Goa'uld, are not Gods and speaks dismissively of fallen Goa'uld who believed their own hype.
• Going Native:
  • In Season 9, he spends some time hiding on Earth and afterwards started to incorporate into his schemes ideas he got from past missions of the SGC. He also started using the human voice and, in Stargate: Continuum, he called the president with a cell phone to discuss a "peaceful" solution. (The other Goa'ulds thought he went insane because he didn't use the traditional "blast them back to the Stone Age" solution.)
  • He also starts to dress in Earth fashions by the end of the series, and even implies in Continuum that the reason he never bothered to invade Earth was simply because he's become rather fond of it, recognising that Earth is far more valuable an asset if it remains as it is.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Qetesh kills him in Continuum by slicing him in half vertically from the chest up.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Looked to be the new Big Bad (or at least part of a Big Bad Ensemble with the Replicators) for season 8, seizing command of the Kull Warriors and systematically decimating the other System Lords - then it turned out late in the season that he's been working for the thought-vanquished Anubis all along.
• Informed Attribute: When he's introduced in "Summit" he's made out to be the typical bloodthirsty Goa'uld: "Gifts from Ba'al have a habit of exploding," as Daniel puts it to Lord Yu. When he's adapted into a Recurring Character, he's turned into a far smarter and more subtle character.
• Insufferable Genius or Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Depending on the episode.
• Karma Houdini: For most of the series he escapes justice, although his plans often fail. Ultimately subverted when he's executed by the Tok'ra in Continuum.
• Killed Off for Real: In Stargate Continuum. The last of Ba'al's clones is executed by the Tok'ra, and the original Ba'al is shot by Mitchell.
• Last of His Kind: He's the last System Lord standing after Replicarter massacres the rest at the end of season 8. Technically his former master, Anubis, is still out there as well, but the chances of him getting released again are next to nil.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Maybe not love per se, but his infatuation with Qetesh becomes his undoing when he decides to make her his queen in the alternate universe of Continuum despite the fact that she really can't be trusted.
• Near-Villain Victory: In Continuum. Technically his plan does succeed, he just doesn't anticipate Mitchell, Carter and Daniel somehow avoiding the ripple effect and managing to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When O'Neill cheerfully shreds his offer of an Enemy Mine against the Replicators and essentially throws him to the wolves.
  • In the next episode as well, when Anubis makes clear to him his ultimate plan will kill Ba'al and everything else in the galaxy.
• Only Sane Man: The only major System Lord who isn't a short-tempered, petty, borderline Ax-Crazy megalomaniac. Well, he is a megalomaniac, but he's got enough marbles left to see how the traditional Goa'uld lifestyle is doomed once the Tau'ri show up on the scene. And enough smarts and patience to shift to a long game.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: His usual combination of Faux Affably Evil and Smug Snake mean he's usually calm and almost jovial, but watch how openly livid - tightened jaw, twitches and all - he gets when O'Neill first makes him near-beg for an alliance against the Replicators, then turns it down in favour of watching them annihilate him.
• Opportunistic Bastard: He's initially introduced as just another petty System Lord without a great deal of power, but he takes advantage of the conditions surrounding Anubis's rise to power to build himself quite the formidable empire that stays standing even after the other System Lords have been wiped off the map.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Quite the misogynist, making several sexist comments toward Carter throughout the series. It eventually gets him punched in the face.
• Power Parasite: Attempted to control Adria, and briefly succeeded until the intervention of SG-1.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • The moment that establishes him as one is Jack's torture scene. When Jack begins to crack, and answers just one question, Ba'al immediately stops the session, gives him painkillers, and (for a moment) sends him back to his cell. When other Goa'uld would continue the torture out of sheer sadism, Ba'al values incentivising his prisoners to keep answering questions, and genuinely will stop torturing them.
  • He also, unlike most Goa'uld, actually seems to understand that the "A God Am I" act is just an act, propaganda to intimidate the ignorant into obedience. As a result, he doesn't allow indignant outrage at the notion of mere humans daring to oppose him get in the way of carrying out his plans.
  • Ba'al wants to win, but win long term. Stargate: Continuum shows that ultimately we would've loved him as our ruler, and he would've kept Earth safe, being probably a safer and better world if he won, except for the whole God-Emperor thing... He's also shown to be on the level about giving Teal'c the Free Jaffa homeland he so desires. As he was previously established as not giving a fig about the Jaffa, it's likely so he can keep Teal'c's martial and leadership abilities firmly on his side.
• Refuge in Audacity: The main reason he gets away with some of his plans, in particular his Wounded Gazelle Gambit with his clones taking over the SGC.
• The Remnant: The last of the System Lords by season 9, and retains enough of his old power in some episodes to serve as this for the Goa'uld as a whole, still having at least one mothership and a good amount of Jaffa still serving him
• Send in the Clones: Starts cloning himself in Season Nine, which leads to amusing circumstances where he gets killed multiple times in the same episode.
• Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: Apparently has a reputation for this among his enemies. In his introductory scene, Daniel states that gifts from him "have a habit of exploding".
• The Starscream: Specifically was this to Anubis, reluctantly working with Stargate Command and the To'kra to stop him wiping out all life in the galaxy.
• Torture Technician: Repeatedly tortured O'Neill to death. He doesn't just employ the usual Goa'uld methods either; no, Ba'al gets creative, using knives and acid to get the job done until the ever-irreverent, ex-Special Forces O'Neill is begging for death as an alternative.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In "Continuum" his failure to predict Qetesh's treachery undoes his attempts to peacefully deal with Earth, leading to a full-scale Goa'uld invasion.
• Villain Decay: Looks to be the Big Bad for season 8, but then it turns out he'd been Hijacked by Ganon and was working for Anubis all along. He returned to plague the team repeatedly in seasons 9 and 10, but was generally a much lesser problem than the Ori. Subverted at the end, when he managed to possess Adria, and comes roaring back as the main threat in "Continuum".
• Who's on First?: Gets a couple of these from SG-1.
  • Even held prisoner and tortured, Jack O'Neill couldn't resist.
  Ba'al: I am Ba'al.
  Jack: That's it? Just "ball"? As in bocce?
  • After he starts cloning himself in season 9, Cam Mitchell drops this gem:
  "We've got a full count, Sergeant. Two strikes, three Ba'als."
• Worthy Opponent: While he's far too pragmatic to let something like honor get in the way of a chance to take out SG-1, it's clear that he holds at least some degree of respect for them.

Hathor

Hathor

Played By: Suanne Braun

First Appearance: "Hathor"

A Goa'uld queen who was discovered sealed inside her sarcophagus in a Mayan temple on Earth halfway through the first season. Upon being freed, she immediately headed to the SGC and tried to take it over as her base of operations; that plan was thwarted by Carter and Fraiser, but she showed up again a season later and tried to turn O'Neill into a host before she was finally killed in the season 3 premiere.

As a queen, Hathor was able to spawn larvae and initially used a mind-controlling substance that caused any male to lust after her and do her bidding. She was also shown to be capable of turning humans into Jaffa, an ability that has not been demonstrated by any other Goa'uld since.

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• Adaptational Modesty: Of a sort. If concept art of her debut episode is to be believed, her initial under-dress outfit was intended to be far more revealing than what the show ultimately went with.
• Baddie Flattery: She calls Carter an "exceedingly beautiful woman" when they first meet.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When she first shows up, she claims that My Species Doth Protest Too Much, but while she does want to overthrow the System Lords, it's only so she can get to work on rebuilding her own empire and it doesn't take long for her to show her true colors. Carter sees through it from the get-go, but unfortunately the men are all taken in due to her working her pheromones on them.
• Complexity Addiction: Her grand plan when she returns in the Season 2 finale involves building a detailed mock-up of the SGC, capturing the human members of the team and cryogenically freezing them before leading them to believe that eighty years have passed and using memory recall devices on them to find out what they know. Surely it would have been easier to just put a symbiote in one of them, especially since that's what she ends up doing anyway.
• Disney Villain Death: She doesn't actually die onscreen, we just see her falling to her death after O'Neill pushes her.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In addition to the above-mentioned turning humans into Jaffa, the details of Goa'uld reproduction as established in her first appearance were later retconned, presumably to avoid the Squick and consent issues, and in later episodes the queens are shown to spawn asexually.
• Evil Redhead: Has bright red hair for some reason, despite the fact she's supposed to be impersonating an Ancient Egyptian deity.
• Filler Villain: Despite being the Final Boss for season 2, she only appears in three episodes and doesn't have enough of an impact on the plot to qualify with as a true Big Bad or even an Arc Villain.
• Invisibility Cloak: She uses one to escape through the Stargate after her initial plans unravel, and again in the Season 2 finale.
• Kill It with Ice: O'Neill eventually kills her by shoving her into a vat of liquid nitrogen.
• Living Aphrodisiac: In her first episode, she all but takes over the SGC using some unknown cocktail of pheromones to turn all the men into mindless, lust-addled slaves, leaving it up to Carter, Fraiser and a handful of female airmen and Marines (and Teal'c, who's immune) to take her down.
• Locked Out of the Loop: As a result of being sealed in a sarcophagus for 4000 years, she has no idea what the state of play among the System Lords is and intends to use the team to bring her up to speed before she makes her grab for power.
• Monster Progenitor: As a queen, she's one of the few Goa'uld capable of producing offspring, and calls herself "The Mother of All Pharaohs".
• Parental Incest: Hathor tells the SGC that Ra was her father as well as her husband.
• Royal "We": She always refers to herself in plural first person for some reason. Though, when you think about it, she is technically two beings (the host and the symbiote).
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Spent several millennia sealed inside her own sarcophagus, and likely would have stayed there if some hapless archaeologist hadn't decided to open it.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Impersonates the Egyptian goddess of "fertility, inebriety and music", or as O'Neill puts it...
• Stalker with a Test Tube: She rapes Daniel in order to obtain his "code of life" for the creation of her larvae.
• Unholy Matrimony: She was the mate (and possibly also the daughter) of Ra. She's thrilled when she hears that he's dead, and "rewards" Jack and Daniel for killing him by turning them into her First Prime and her sex slave, respectively.
• Villainous Legacy: A rare positive variant: her death convinces the System Lords that Earth is a threat and is to be dealt with. However, the Asgard mediate to offer Earth a place in the Protected Planets Treaty and thanks to a bout of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder by Nirrti Earth ends up safe from Goa'uld attack until the reign of Anubis.

Heru'ur

Heru'ur

Played By: Douglas H. Arthurs

First Appearance: "Thor's Chariot"

The son of Ra and Hathor, Heru'ur was a particularly militaristic Goa'uld whom Teal'c described as a conqueror. Despite this impressive lineage and reputation, however, he never had much of an impact on the plot, and was killed by Apophis after the team sabotaged an attempted alliance between them. This turned out not to be a good thing, as it led to Apophis absorbing his fleets and becoming more powerful than ever.

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• Authority Equals Asskicking: Like his uncle Apophis (and very much unlike his father Ra) he's seen taking to the battlefield alongside his Jaffa.
• Bald of Evil: He's very bald and has a reputation for extreme ruthlessness, even among the Goa'uld.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Introduced as being ruthless and despotic even for a Goa'uld, but his main achievements in the series were fleeing for his life from Thor and getting killed by Apophis.
• Cool Mask: Sports a golden version of the Horus Guard masks seen in the original film.
• Evil Versus Evil: Versus Apophis, after the team turn them against each other.
• Impaled Palm: Thanks to O'Neill throwing a knife through his personal shield to disable his hand device.
• Informed Ability: Despite the fact that he has a reputation for bloodthirstiness and Teal'c says that he's feared even by other Goa'uld, he never gets to do anything particularly impressive onscreen.
• It Only Works Once: in his first appearance, he relies on the same energy field Apophis used in "The Nox" to deflect SG-1's gunfire. Jack, already having gone through this before, thwarts him by throwing a knife through it and impaling his kara kesh before he can use it.
• Killed Offscreen: When Apophis blows his ship up.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His arrival on Abydos to search for the Harcesis as Sha're is giving birth provides the perfect cover story, allowing Daniel and Teal'c to send Apophis on a wild goose chase by blaming him for stealing the child, who they actually send into hiding with Kasuf.
• Oh, Crap!: When he sees Apophis' fleet suddenly uncloak right in front of him and realises that Apophis has the means to blow him out of space despite the minefield.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Even more than Apophis, he has a tendency to fight on the frontlines with his troops and usually wears armor in place of the flouncy robes favored by other Goa'uld.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: He makes a pretty hasty getaway when Thor shows up in the Beliskner and proceeds to Curb Stomp his forces.
• The Worf Effect: Introduced as a ruthless foe, feared by even other Goa'uld - but his main purpose in his appearances is to get easily beaten to show the power of others, both good (Thor) and bad (the returned Apophis).

Cronus

Cronus

Played By: Ron Halder

First Appearance: "Fair Game"

One of three ambassadors sent to Earth along with Yu and Nirrti early in Season 3 to discuss whether Earth should be included in the Goa'uld-Asgard protected planets treaty. Cronus was especially loathed by Teal'c for killing his father — who was Cronus's First Prime — prior to the events of the series. He later captured the team only to find out that it was actually their robot doubles, and ultimately got killed by robot!Teal'c, after which the real team decided to commandeer his Cool Starship.

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• Ambadassador: First appears as part of a team of ambassadors but is still as powerful and dangerous as other System Lords.
• Arch-Enemy: Apparently Apophis was this to him, which becomes important in the backstory - Teal'c vowed to become Apophis' First Prime, as it offered him the greatest chance of striking back at his father's killer.
• Back for the Finale: He's one of a handful of former System Lords who show up as Ba'al's lieutenants in the altered timeline of Continuum.
• I Warned You: He warns the team at the end of "Fair Game" that, though Earth might be protected by the Asgard, he won't be kind to them should they decide to stray into his territory. He later reminds them of this when he captures them the following season, but since the team he's captured are actually the robots they obviously have no idea what he's talking about.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: He instructs one of his followers to execute robot!Daniel in order to prove his loyalty.
• In the Back: Robot!Teal'c shoots him in the back just as he's about to kill the real Teal'c.
• Not So Omniscient After All: The first indication he gets that the team are actually robots is when robot!Daniel's head comes off and the inner wiring is exposed. It's a little difficult to continue claiming to be all-knowing when you can't seem to pick your jaw up off the floor.
• You Have Failed Me: In the backstory, he executes Teal'c's father in the most painful way possible for a Jaffa ^note crushing the larval symbiote and allowing its blood to mingle with that of the Jaffa, which causes an agonizingly slow death for retreating from an unwinnable battle.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: The team claim his ship after his death, despite the fact that they didn't technically kill him. It gets blown up two episodes later.
• You Killed My Father: Teal'c harbors a particular grudge against him because of this.

Nirrti

Nirrti

Played By: Jacqueline Samuda

First Appearance: "Fair Game"

First introduced along with Yu and Cronus as one of three Goa'uld ambassadors sent to Earth at the beginning of season 3, though she was mentioned as early as the first season as being responsible for the plot to use Cassandra Fraiser as a Trojan Horse with which to destroy Earth. She was later exiled by the System Lords for performing unsanctioned experiments and attempting to sabotage the negotiations with Earth, and became a prisoner of Cronus until his death the following season. One of the few Goa'uld scientists, Nirrti had a particular interest in genetics and was obsessed by the idea of creating an advanced human to use as a host, which eventually bit her on the ass when she ended up getting killed by some of the people she'd been experimenting on.

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• Ambadassador: First appears as part of a team of ambassadors but is still as powerful and dangerous as the other System Lords.
• Back for the Finale: She's one of a handful of former System Lords who show up as Ba'al's lieutenants in the altered timeline of Continuum.
• Evilutionary Biologist: She has a habit of experimenting on humans in her quest to create the perfect genetically-engineered host, which frequently has nasty side-effects for her subjects.
• The Exile: The other System Lords kick her out after they find out she's been experimenting with phase-shifting technology without mentioning it to anyone, and she remains a rogue operative for the rest of her time on the series.
• Frame-Up: She attempts to sabotage the negotiations to place Earth under the Protected Planets Treaty by attacking Cronus and framing Teal'c.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: She eventually killed by her own experiments after they find out that she's not really a god and that, rather than "helping" them as she claims, she's responsible for turning them into horribly disfigured mutants.
• I Warned You: When she captures the team in "Metamorphosis", O'Neill reminds her that when the SGC had her prisoner they let her go in exchange for her saving Cassandra's life... to which she reminds him that she told him at the time she wouldn't have done the same thing in his position.
• Invisibility Cloak: She has a wrist-worn device that allows her to become invisible at will, which lets her snoop around the SGC undetected on at least two different occasions.
• Mad Scientist: She's known amongst the Goa'uld for being particularly fond of biowarfare, which includes everything from wiping out planets with engineered viruses to implanting a child with a bio-organic bomb.
• Neck Snap: Her death combines this with Psychic Strangle.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her attempt to sabotage the negotiations in "Fair Game" result in Earth getting a better deal than they would have done, since Yu was initially going to insist that they give up the Stargate(s) before her intervention.
• Power Parasite: It's her goal to engineer a superpowered host so that she can benefit from those powers secondhand.
• We Can Rule Together: She makes this offer to Jonas after she puts him in her gene sequencing machine and realizes that he's further along the evolutionary path than most humans. He turns her down.
• Would Hurt a Child: The first time she's mentioned it's in the context of her planting a bomb inside a twelve-year-old girl.

Lord Yu

Lord Yu

Played By: Vince Crestejo

First Appearance: "Fair Game"

The eldest of the Goa'uld System Lords. Yu was introduced in the third season when he came to Earth as a Goa'uld ambassador alongside Cronus and Nirrti. Though never a Big Bad, he is noteworthy for being one of the longest-running Stargate villains and for his unusual personality among the Goa'uld.

Yu was a pragmatic villain: untrustworthy, but more practical than most System Lords. He cooperated with the Tau'ri when it benefited him and followed a personal code of honor. However, by the seventh season, old age was catching up to him. He became increasingly senile and his Immortality Inducer was beginning to lose its effect on him. Ultimately, Replicator Carter killed him in season eight.

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• A God Am I: Downplayed. He seems to believe in his godhood, but rarely asserts it until his senility starts kicking in, and on Earth he assumed the role of an emperor instead of a god.
• Ambadassador: First appears as part of a team of ambassadors but is still as powerful and dangerous as the other System Lords. Later forms a similar delegation with Camulus and Amaterasu. Generally, he is more willing than most other Goa'uld to negotiate when he has to.
• Back for the Finale: He's one of a handful of former System Lords who show up as Ba'al's lieutenants in the altered timeline of Continuum.
• Beard of Evil: His long goatee makes him look all the more sinister.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: He was one of China's earliest emperors, Yu the Great. According to the RPG and the EU novel Four Dragons, his First Prime Oshu is the last of a line of clones of Sun Tzu, who was a member of Yu's royal guard.
• Composite Character: He has been referred to as both Yu the Great and the Jade Emperor, separate figures in Chinese mythology. Though he could have posed as both figures at different times, which makes sense, considering that Yu the Great was supposed to be a mortal human.
• Determinator: It's mentioned several times that he refuses to give up in fighting Anubis despite massive losses and the other System Lords abandoning him to side with Anubis.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Due to his mind failing, his First Prime, Oshu, ended up basically running Yu's domain for him. Unlike most examples, he stayed loyal to his master right up to the part where RepliCarter killed them both.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: After several seasons as a recurring antagonist, he's killed off very abruptly in the first five minutes of "Reckoning" when Replicarter decides to attack the System Lords. Most of the Goa'uld other than Ba'al quickly get wiped out in the same episode.
• Enemy Mine: When it suits his goals, he cooperates with the SGC, such as when both parties turn their attacks against Anubis.
• Evil Old Folks: The oldest System Lord - and despite his bouts of Pragmatic Villainy he's still a vicious old conqueror upholding an order that has seen billions of humans and Jaffa enslaved.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: RepliCarter runs him through with her arm-blade.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Lampshaded in-universe by Daniel Jackson when Elizabeth Weir briefly took over Stargate Command. Daniel points out that while he's still a Goa'uld, and does nasty things, in addition to going senile, he is still, by far, the most reasonable and benevolent of the bunch, but that's not saying much.
• Noble Demon: As the most honorable of the System Lords, Yu generally keeps his promises and has made several positive influences on Earth during his reign. He also lets Teal'c go in "The Warrior". Unfortunately, when he begins to go senile, he can no longer be trusted to keep his promises because he doesn't always remember making them.
• Only Sane Man: Of the System Lords, before his senility begins to set in. Notably, he's the only one who votes against letting Anubis back into the fold.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Unlike other Goa'uld, he's more concerned with strengthening his own domain than wasting resources for galactic domination. According to Daniel Jackson, Yu cannot be trusted, only counted on to make a practical decision. Daniel also noted during Yu's first appearance that, though a tyrant, he was responsible for a number of positive influences on humanity.
  • Probably his biggest moment of this comes in "Warrior", where he informs Teal'c of K'tano's true identity and allows him to go free after capturing him — not out of the goodness of his heart, but because he fully expects Teal'c to kill K'tano (actually the minor Goa'uld Imhotep) for him, and his mothership is already on the way to attack the Jaffa Rebellion's base planet.
• Sadly Mythtaken: In his first appearance he's said to have been the early Chinese emperor Yu the Great, but later episodes conflate this Yu with Yu-Huang Shang Ti the Jade Emperor, the Chinese Top God. It's possible he played both roles at different times.
• Sanity Slippage: He grows increasingly unstable and irrational in his later appearances due to his advancing age and the sarcophagus no longer having an effect.
• Who's on First?: His name is the subject of so many "Yu"/"You" puns that the cast actually put a moratorium on them.
  Daniel Jackson: Don't. Every joke, every pun, done to death. Seriously.

Kali

Kali

Played By: Suleka Mathew

First Appearance: "Summit"

A System Lord who previously served under Shiva and Ra, and was one of the first to take a human host. She briefly attempted to ally with SG-1 to make contact with the Retou in the novel "Kali's Wrath".

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• Noble Demon: Talking with Daniel Jackson, she argued that she was relatively tolerant of humans beyond their role as slaves, such as ordering her Jaffa to protect any humans of Hindu ancestry and only being aggressive to those who defied her, but Daniel countered that the fact that she had kept a host proved she was fundamentally no different from the rest of the Goa'uld.
• Pragmatic Villainy: While she disliked Anubis, she voted to let him back in power as she hoped he would be able to help deal with the Tau'ri.

Camulus

Camulus

Played By: Steve Bacic

First Appearance: "New Order, Part 1"

A System Lord who debuted in the first episode of season eight following the downfall of Anubis and the rise of Ba'al. Coming to Earth as an ambassador along with Yu and Amaterasu, he ends up taking asylum on Earth for a while. He was apparently killed by Ba'al sometime after his release.

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• Ambadassador: In his debut, he leads a three-member delegation of ambassadors to Earth, along with Yu and Amaterasu. He's still pretty badass, though. At one point, he sets up a trap that could have destroyed Earth if one of the SGC's scientists hadn't discovered it in time.
• Back for the Finale: He's one of a handful of former System Lords who show up as Ba'al's lieutenants in the altered timeline of Continuum.
• Enemy Mine: Dr. Weir offers to release him on the grounds that they'd all be better off if he were off fighting their common enemy Ba'al. Camulus returns the offer by saying that, since his forces were wiped out, he might be of some use to the Tau'ri if he stayed.
• Killed Offscreen: Well after he leaves Earth in the episode "Zero Hour", Daniel reveals that Camulus is dead, but it was never seen happening.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He decides to stay in asylum on Earth for a while. Not because he likes it on Earth, not because he thinks he deserves asylym, but because, with his own forces gone, there's nothing to keep his enemies from attacking him.
• Seeking Sanctuary: Camulus asks to be granted asylum on Earth as his forces have been decimated by Ba'al.
• Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: The ZPM Camulus leads the SGC to is rigged to explode when an electrical charge is introduced. Carter later estimates that if plugged into the Ancient outpost in Antarctica, it could explode with enough force to destroy the entire solar system.
• War God: Impersonates and takes the name of a Celtic god of war.

Exiled Members

Anubis

Anubis

"I'm not such a bad guy. I just know what I like, and I'm willing to kill everyone and everything to get it."

Played By: David Palffy, Gavin Hood, Dean Aylesworth, Rik Kiviaho, George Dzundza

First Appearance: "Revelations"

Replaced Apophis as the series main Big Bad upon the latter's death in Season 5. Initially introduced as a mysterious new Goa'uld who launched attacks against all major galactic power-players (including the other Goa'uld and also the Earth), and was able to gain power rapidly due to possessing technology significantly more advanced than anyone else's, eventually becoming the most powerful power bloc in the galaxy. He was eventually revealed to be an evil Energy Being, having Ascended and gained scientific knowledge on par with that of the Ancients. He was smarter and eviler than the series' other Goa'uld villains, yet at the same time was also significantly more melodramatic, drawing comparisons to Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine even amongst the show's own characters. He differs from other Goa'uld in that he doesn't simply want to rule the galaxy, but to annihilate all life in it.

He was opposed by an alliance of all other galactic power blocs (including the Earth and the Goa'uld), and ultimately was defeated in a massive finale that also saw the destruction of both the Replicators and the System Lords, thus ending the original Stargate SG-1 series (making way for the Post-Script Season involving the Ori plot arc).

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• A God Am I: Zigzagged: he's initially much less prone to flaunting it than other Goa'uld, indicating that he recognises the limits of his species' claim to divinity (not surprising, as he's partially Ascended, and as such is fully aware of actual God-like Ascended beings). He only really claims to be a god when he's trying to intimidate the Tau'ri and notably admits to his First Prime that Daniel's defeat was not his doing. Played straight towards the end of his appearances when he's on the verge of victory, bragging to Ba'al all is proceeding according to his grand design and hinting that after exterminating all life in the galaxy he planned to start over and actually become a God to his new creations.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: He managed to ascend, then was chucked halfway back down to the lower planes.
• Bad Samaritan: Jim seems awfully friendly, but he's actually the ascended half of Anubis. This should have been evident from the fact that he's the only "Ancient" to interact with Daniel in the cafe.
• Batman Gambit:
  • When confronted by the ascended Daniel as he prepares to annihilate Abydos, he practically dares him to strike him down, knowing full well the other Ancients will intervene to stop the former SG-1 member.
  • When the Rebel Jaffa marshal in force to claim the Dakara Superweapon, he actually subtly encourages it on the basis that he'd never be able to get them all out in the open to crush otherwise.
• Big Bad: Season 5 saw a power vacuum develop among the System Lords following the deaths of Sokar, Heru'ur, Cronus and Apophis in quick succession due to Tau'ri and Tok'ra actions. As the remaining System Lords jockeyed for position, a new mystery Goa'uld started hitting them hard, also finding time to flatten Tollana. The "Summit"/"Last Stand" two-parter revealed that the Goa'uld in question wasn't so new. Anubis remained the Big Bad through season 8's "Threads".
• Big Bad Ensemble: He shares the role with the Replicators (specifically Replicarter) in season 8, with both jockeying to use the Dakara Superweapon to facilitate their plans.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's surprisingly good at hiding the fact he's probably the worst Goa'uld in the series when he wants to - he was able to con Oma into believing he was benevolent long enough for her to help him try to ascend, is remarkably polite to Thor while describing his imminent torture, manages to masquerade as a Russian officer for a while without raising suspicion, and, as Jim in "Threads", is both friendly and chatty with Daniel before he works out who "Jim" actually is.
• Body Surf: After his initial "body" was destroyed, he instead manifested by possessing human hosts, hopping to a new host when his energy caused the current one to start melting into goo.
• Came Back Wrong: After Ascending, the others kicked him out of their realm for being unspeakably evil. Except they were pissed at Oma for letting him in in the first place, so to punish her they left him as a half-ascended abomination of a Physical God with enough Ancient knowledge to become the pre-eminent threat among the Goa'uld.
• Card-Carrying Villain: It's implied that he is very much aware of how evil he himself is. In his disguise as "Jim", he repeatedly describes Anubis as a cruel villain who deserves to be stopped, just to taunt Oma Desala and to play games with Daniel.
• Cool Starship: His flagship is not only of a unique design, with a non-pyramidal superstructure resembling a sacrificial altar, but is the largest Goa'uld ship seen in the series and houses his planet-killing superweapon. The first one gets destroyed but he shows up for battle at Earth in another.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: Technically he can survive without it, but he needs assistance in order to interact with our world. Through "Lost City" that assistance was the force-field suit shown in the page image. After it went up with his flagship courtesy of the Ancient outpost's drone weapons, he was forced to Body Surf between human hosts, which treated him like a disease and gradually broke down.
• Deceptive Disciple: He fooled Oma Desala into thinking he was a "good Goa'uld" until she helped him to ascend, at which point he got right back to the whole "destroy the universe" thing.
• The Dreaded: Among the Goa'uld - just watch the horrified/disbelieving reactions of Osiris and the System Lords when they discover he's still alive in "Summit"/"Last Stand".
• Elite Mooks: He has a Praetorian Guard of "Ninja Jaffa" who wear black robes and carry ninja swords in addition to the usual staff weapons. We only see them in combat briefly in one episode, where they do seem to demonstrate more tactical movement than the typical Jaffa, but get taken out by Teal'c fairly quickly.
• Energy Beings: After ascending thanks to Oma's help, he was rejected by the other ascended beings but only partially turned back to punish Oma, so he's still an immortal "half-ascended" being made of pure energy.
• Evil Counterpart: For Daniel, as a formerly ascended being and pupil of Oma Desala who got banished for interfering in the lower planes. Particularly obvious in the season 6 finale, when Daniel confronts him wearing Obi Wan style robes in contrast to Anubis's Emperor Palpatine look.
• Evil Is Petty: Keeps popping into the Ancients' realm (manifesting as a diner) so he can rub his impending victory in Oma's face. Backfires when he finally goes too far and Oma stops him for good.
• Evil Gloating: Jim takes a perverse glee in the Ancients' punishing Oma by forcing her to watch him do his thing.
• Eviler than Thou: Was opposed, at one time or another, by pretty much every remaining major villain on the show, sometimes in conjunction with SG-1. The various petty Goa'uld who served him were fools; his end game included the annihilation of even his own race along with the rest of all life in the Milky Way.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Inspired this with both Ba'al and the Replicators - both took issue with Anubis' plan to annihilate all life in the galaxy, with Ba'al working with SG-1 to stop him and the Replicators launching an all-out attack on the Goa'uld.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Season 9 reveals that he once dabbled in genetic experiments similar to the kind conducted by Nirrti and succeeded in creating an advanced human with the Goa'uld Genetic Memory from his own pre-ascended DNA.
• Expy:
  • Of Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. Evil emperors who are exceptionally evil even for their own kind, mostly remaining on their thrones after taking power. They actually wear the same type of dark cloak.
  • Also of Sokar. Both are introduced as exceptionally evil Goa'uld, exiled from the System Lords for being too evil, even by their standards. They even have a similar fashion sense, and were played by the same actor to boot.
• The Faceless: Sported the classic Black Cloak look, due to really being disembodied energy occupying a man-shaped forcefield body.
• Faking the Dead: Background materials indicate that the last time the System Lords thought they'd killed him, he was content to let them to believe it as he had become focused on Ascension.
• Fat Bastard: The form he takes as "Jim" is a rotund man who seems friendly and jovial at first, before he reveals that he's an Evil Overlord in disguise.
• Faux Affably Evil: As Jim, he becomes this after Daniel figures out his identity, keeping up his jovial tone while openly plotting to wipe out all life in the galaxy.
• For the Evulz: Most notably when he destroys Abydos just because he can.
• Handicapped Badass: He's one of the smartest and most ruthless foes the team ever encountered - but he's not only physically helpless without his forcefield projector to contain his essence (he can possess humans, but they break down very quickly), he can't use any of the powers he gained while Ascending for fear the Ancients will take action against him.
• Hero Killer: He devastated the Tok'ra, wiped out the Tollan, and destroyed Abydos. He also destroyed the Alpha Site, which lead to the fracturing of the Earth, Tok'ra, and Jaffa alliance; and one of his men killed Dr. Fraiser.
• Hijacked by Ganon: He disappears early on in season 8 after the team trick him into steering a possessed Russian officer through the Stargate to a frozen wasteland, and Ba'al becomes the most prominent Goa'uld on the scene for a while. Then it's revealed towards the end of the season that Ba'al has actually been working for him the entire time.
• In the Blood: Anubis is the grandson of the Goa'uld who first discovered how to activate the gate network, the son of the second Supreme System Lord, and the brother of the longest-reigning System Lord. He is even more of a jerk than any of them were.
• In Their Own Image: It's implied that the reason he wants to wipe out all life in the galaxy using the Dakara superweapon is so that he can then use it to recreate life to his liking.
• Kneel Before Zod: He tries this on President Hayes, who promptly laughs it off.
• Large Ham: Even by Goa'uld standards.
  Anubis: I am Anubis. Humans of the Tau'ri. Your End Of Days finally approaches. There will be no mercy!
  Jack O'Neill: Aw c'mon. Who talks like that?

  (later)
  Rodney McKay: Ya, Anubis? This your agent. You're playing it way over-the-top! You need to get serious!
• Loophole Abuse: How he becomes the threat he does - when Oma almost ascends him, the other Ancients cast him down when she realises how evil he is. As punishment to Oma however (for helping him Ascend, strictly against their rules), Anubis is able to retain any Ancient knowledge he could have learned as a Goa'uld. And as all signs are he was an Evil Genius to begin with, that's a lot. As in, enough to upgrade his ships to slaughter the previously-invincible Tollans, hold off the Asgard, create the Kull Warriors and understand how to use the Dakara Superweapon to wipe out all life in the galaxy.
  • A rare example in that the Ancients know full well he's exploiting this loophole, but are letting it happen so they can inflict their petty retribution on Oma.
• The Man Behind the Man: Turns out to be this for Ba'al late in Season 8.
• The Mole: In the form of Jim he pretends to be a good guy to Daniel, but ultimately reveals himself to be the most evil Goa'uld SG-1 has ever fought. Although, he doesn't really have any ulterior motive for hiding his identity like information that Daniel possesses (unlike Replicator Carter when she assumes Oma's form), he's just doing it to fuck with Daniel.
• Must Have Caffeine: A minor Running Gag during "Threads" is Jim asking for coffee from Oma. Played with, as it's only a representation of Daniel's mind, so we don't really know what Jim is "consuming" (or if he even needs to).
• Near-Villain Victory: He was seconds away from wiping out all life in the galaxy before Oma made her decision.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Despite being even more melodramatic and hammy than most Goa'uld, he is actually a good deal less arrogant, and manages to avoid falling into the kinds of pitfalls that doomed dozens of System Lords. Notably, he accepted input from his subordinates and never underestimated SG-1 or the humans of Earth. After all, he showed up above a planet with a single ship (Prometheus) equivalent to, at most, one and a half standard Goa'uld motherships with the largest fleet ever assembled by a Goa'uld. He lost, but that had nothing to do with preparations for or actions during the battle. What arrogance he does display is warranted, given that he does possess technology far superior to that of most Goa'uld.
• Obviously Evil: Both of his material forms have him dress in a Black Cloak. Probably even more so after he starts using human hosts instead of his old energy field, which rapidly decay under the strain, giving his meat suit disgusting lesions and blood-shot eyes.
• Omnicidal Maniac: His final plan was to use the Dakara superweapon, whose gate had been reprogrammed to link to every gate in the galaxy in the previous episode so it could be used against the Replicators, to cleanse the Milky Way of life and make himself its new god.
• Predecessor Villain: An Ascended being with far greater powers than the Goa'uld, a technology edge over the heroes and a desire to be worshipped as a true god - Anubis would foreshadow the nature of the Ori in seasons 9 and 10. He and Adria even go out the same way, forced to duel an Ascended Ancient in an eternal stalemate.
• Sanity Slippage: Implied. After the destruction of his forcefield generator, forcing him to rely on human hosts which quickly rot from his Ascended form's influence (not to mention getting marooned on an ice planet), he's far more openly megalomaniacal and prone to A God Am I behaviour. He also noticeably starts slipping into Bad Boss territory, something he'd previously only invoked on occasions of You Have Failed Me.
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: Oma Desala's Heroic Sacrifice in "Threads" involved her binding him on the higher planes by forcing him to battle her for all eternity.
• The Starscream: He's allowed back into the System Lords in season 6, but turned on them by the end of the season as his power increased.
• Super-Soldier: His Kull Warriors are Implacable Genetically Engineered Goa'uld Hosts.
• The Symbiote: A truer parasite than most Goa'uld since the host body actually treats his half-ascended form as a disease.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Thanks to his possession of Ascended knowledge, Anubis had access to advanced technology well above even that of the Goa'uld. He was able to steamroll his way through a number of SG-1's extraterrestrial allies who had been holding their own against the Goa'uld or, in the case of the Tollan, significantly outmatched them. Only the Replicators and the Ori ever really exceeded him.
• Touched by Vorlons: Due to ascending and then getting "stuck" between the planes after the Ancients tried to cast him out. He's not actually supposed to use any powers that he wouldn't have had as an ordinary Goa'uld in case the Ancients decide to intervene, but just the fact that he still has access to their knowledge gives him a huge advantage over just about everybody else.
• Villainous Legacy: Succeeded in creating a human clone of himself called Khalek, with Ancient powers and all Anubis' memories, that popped up to bedevil the team in Season 9.

Sokar

Sokar

Played By: David Palffy

First Appearance: "Serpent's Song"

Sokar took advantage of the Evil Power Vacuum created by the team severely depleting Apophis's forces and began to rise to power towards the end of season 2. He had a reputation for being nastier than most other Goa'uld and is notable for impersonating Satan, up to and including terraforming a moon to resemble Christian depictions of Hell and using it as a dumping ground for his enemies. He ultimately signed his own death warrant by choosing to imprison Jacob Carter, prompting a Rescue Arc that culminated in the team blowing his moon up with him still on it. His armies and territories were subsequently absorbed by Apophis.

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• Arch-Enemy: Seems to regard Apophis as this, given his obsession with capturing and torturing him. To explain this, the RPG materials had Apophis originally be the one that defeated Sokar's rebellion against Ra, leaving Sokar with a major grudge to nurse.
• Bald of Evil: Completely bald and so evil that even other Goa'uld think he's taking things a little far.
• Big "NO!": Gets one in just before Netu explodes.
• Composite Character: He takes his name from the Egyptian god of the underworld, but he specifically impersonates the Devil of Christian mythology.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He's initially set up as the Big Bad for season 3, but he gets killed off fairly anticlimactically halfway through the season, allowing for Apophis to once again take up the reins as the show's primary antagonist.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: How the Tok'ra and SG-1 kill him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Believe it or not, even he was disgusted by Anubis, though this was all in supplemental materials and he was long-dead by the time Anubis came back into play.
• Everybody Hates Hades/Hijacked by Jesus: In Egyptian mythology, Sokar was a relatively benign god of the underworld, also associated with craftsmen. In SG-1, the Goa'uld Sokar's God Guise is merged with the Judeo-Christian Devil and painted as somebody whose actions even most of the other Goa'uld considered beyond the pale.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Deliberately invokes this with Netu, and also when he fires a particle beam accelerator through the Earth stargate to try and melt through the iris, causing temperatures in the control room to skyrocket.
• Evil Versus Evil: He spends a good long while torturing Apophis after taking him prisoner, though Apophis gets his own back eventually.
• Eviler than Thou: Considered to be particularly evil even among the System Lords.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: Netu features active volcanoes and lava flows and seems to have permanent reddish glow after he apparently got inspired by Christian conceptions of Hell and deliberately terraformed it that way.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Got word to Apophis (stuck on Sokar's hell planet at that point) of his queen Amaunet's death, seemingly just to twist the knife.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Insanely, he actually seems to be considering letting Apophis run Netu after killing Bynarr as long as he can deliver the Tok'ra base - likely because with his imminent attack on the System Lords, he has other things to focus on.
• Satanic Archetype: He deliberately impersonates Satan.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Speaks in a soft monotone and doesn't raise his voice even when angry.
• Torture Technician: Though we don't see it onscreen it's stated that he spends months torturing Apophis in the most horrendous ways imaginable, and he has his own tailor-made hell, though he generally leaves his underlings to preside over it. The psychotropic drug that Apophis uses to Mind Rape the team while they're imprisoned on Netu is also named after him — the "Blood of Sokar".

Other Goa'uld

Anubis's Forces

Osiris

Osiris

Played By: Anna-Louise Plowman

First Appearance: "The Curse"

Osiris was once a powerful System Lord until he was removed from his host and placed in stasis in a canopic jar on Earth, where he remained for thousands of years until archaeologists discovered the jar and decided to open it. He promptly took one of the archaeologists — Dr. Sarah Gardner, who just happened to be Daniel's ex-girlfriend — as a host and set out into the galaxy to establish a new power base, eventually becoming an agent of Anubis.

Despite never being a Big Bad, he was among the more dangerous Goa'uld, even capturing Thor at one point, and was a recurring antagonist for several seasons until he was removed from Sarah and presumably killed. He also had a certain interest in Daniel due to both his knowledge of the Goa'uld and his previous relationship with Sarah.

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• Badass Boast: He's pretty good at these in general, but the best example has to be the parting shot at the end of his debut episode:
  "Make no mistake, Osiris will return, and the rivers of Earth will run red with blood."
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Gives one to Thor of all people in the season 5 finale after Anubis equips his ship with Ancient weapons and defenses, illustrating the fact that shit just got real.
• The Dragon: For Anubis. He represents Anubis's vote among the System Lords and generally has more personal confrontations with the team, while Anubis prefers to remain behind the scenes and makes most of his appearances via hologram.
• Evil Brit: Comes across this way since Sarah is British and he uses her voice to speak.
• The Exile: He was banished by his brother Seth for some unknown reason prior to the events of the series and put in a stasis jar.
• Faux Affably Evil: Most notably when he has Thor strapped to a torture table and starts apologizing about the accommodation.
• Gender Bender: Despite the symbiotes themselves having No Biological Sex, Osiris seems to have identified as male in the past and yet keeps the very much female Sarah Gardner as a host, which is commented on by Zipacna. Osiris in Egyptian mythology is also a male deity, making this a case of Gender Flip as well.
• Locked Out of the Loop: As a result of being imprisoned in a stasis pod for several thousand years. Unlike Hathor, he manages to catch up and consolidate his power base remarkably quickly.
• New Old Flame: Sarah is initially introduced as Daniel's old college girlfriend until The Reveal that she's really been Osiris all along.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Implied towards Daniel. He certainly isn't happy when Carter informs him that Daniel's gone and died of radiation poisoning.
• Quirky Curls: Has a distinctive mane of tightly curled reddish-blond hair.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Takes the trope about as literal as it can get due to being sealed in a canopic jar until Sarah let him out.
• Slouch of Villainy: Has a tendency to drape himself over everything while looking as smug as possible.
• Stalker with a Crush: Some of his behavior towards Daniel can be a bit suspect. Particularly "Chimera", where he spends several consecutive nights beaming down into Daniel's bedroom and mind raping him as he sleeps, using intimate memories of his relationship with Sarah to search for the location of the Lost City in his subconscious.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He makes no secret of the fact that he thinks little of Zipacna when they're forced to work together.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: After Daniel stabs him with a tranquilizer dart at the end of his first episode he quickly staggers off to his hidden spaceship and leaves Earth.
• We Have Reserves: He quite deliberately causes the deaths of several of his own Jaffa in the season 5 finale by diverting coolant from the engine room where they're working in order to flush out the team, callously remarking that they'll be "greatly rewarded in the afterlife".
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never stated what happened to the symbiote after he was removed from Sarah, though it's likely he was killed.

Zipacna

Zipacna

Played By: Kevin Durand

First Appearance: "Pretense"

A minor Goa'uld who first appeared to represent Klorel when the latter was put on trial by the Tollan. He later became a servant of Anubis and personally destroyed the Tok'ra base at Revanna before disappearing completely. Had an appalling fashion sense — even for a Goa'uld, which is really saying something.

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• Co-Dragons: Briefly becomes this along with Osiris for Anubis, though he doesn't have anywhere near as much plot-relevance as Osiris does.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Especially in his first appearance, where he wore a kind of straw hat and something that looked like a Hawaiian shirt-dress.
• Jerkass Has a Point: During Klorel's trial he actually makes some legally valid, if not morally distasteful, points in his argument. Goa'uld physiology does require them to take another lifeform as a host; being parasitic is a biological fact that the Goa'uld have no control over. If they remove Klorel from Skaara, he has to be put in another host in order to live. He's also technically right that the human host of a Goa'uld is still alive and aware, so leaving Klorel in Skaara means they will both continue to live. Of course he glosses over the whole And I Must Scream aspect of being a host.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Vaguely ridiculous in his first appearance, he later obliterates the Tok'ra base, killing several Tok'ra and SGC personnel in the process.
• Race Lift: His host is a white guy despite the fact that he's posing as a Mayan deity.
• The Right of a Superior Species: During Klorel's trial he insists that the Goa'uld have a right to use humans as hosts because they're fundamentally superior, drawing a comparison with human attitudes towards hunting and fishing animals.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: When he reappears as Anubis' herald in "Summit" and "Last Stand", he is fulfilling a role similar to that of the more prominent reoccurring Goa'uld Tanith, who was abruptly killed off a few episodes earlier due to scheduling conflicts with his actor.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He and Osiris make no secret of the fact that they can't stand each other while they're both in the employ of Anubis.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never made entirely clear what happens to him after the attack on Revanna.

Tanith

Tanith

Played By: Peter Wingfield

First Appearance: "Crossroads"

Tanith was originally the larval symbiote of the Jaffa Shaun'auc, and he convinced her via their telepathic connection that he recognized the evil of the Goa'uld and wished to convert to the Tok'ra. To the surprise of no-one, this turned out to be very much a lie and he killed her as soon as he got a body of his own, sending Teal'c into revenge mode. The Tok'ra were aware of his duplicity, but insisted on keeping him alive as they figured they could use him to send misinformation to Apophis. He was never particularly powerful on his own, but he was unusually cunning for a Goa'uld and managed to be a constant thorn in the team's side until Teal'c eventually killed him halfway through season 5.

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• Bullying a Dragon: He decides to taunt Teal'c over Shaun'auc's death despite the fact that he's being held prisoner and completely at Teal'c's mercy at the time.
• Deceptive Disciple: He manages to convince Shaun'auc that he wants to defect to the Tok'ra, but he soon shows his true colors. Subverted by the Tok'ra themselves, who don't buy his story for a second.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He's rather abruptly killed in the opening scene of a filler episode that doesn't have anything to do with him when Teal'c snipes the cockpit of his al'kesh.
• Feed the Mole: The Tok'ra keep him around in order to feed Apophis false information about their operatives.
• Hero Killer: For a loose interpretation of "hero", but he wipes out the Tollan after they renege on their deal with him.
• Gender Flip: The Tanith of Punic Mythology was a woman.
• Kick the Dog: Murdering Shaun'auc in cold blood, establishing himself as a Bad Guy in the process.
• Loophole Abuse: He attempts to get around the fact that the Protected Planets Treaty prohibits the Goa'uld from attacking Earth directly by instructing the Tollan to send the bomb on his behalf.
• Orbital Bombardment: When he destroys Tollana.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: The team are rather surprised when he shows up again after they assume he was killed by that sun they blew up.
• Social Climber: After he swiftly changes allegiances from Apophis to Anubis following the former's death, O'Neill comments on his habit of ingratiating himself with whoever the current Big Bad happens to be since he has no real power of his own.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Rarely ever raises his voice and is exceptionally cruel, even by Goa'uld standards.
• Spanner in the Works: His escape during an otherwise routine mission to help the Tok'ra move base sets off a chain of events that culminates with the team stranded in another galaxy and held prisoner by Apophis on a ship crawling with Replicators.
• We Will Meet Again: Says this to Teal'c at the end of his first appearance.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Tok'ra intend to leave him behind on a barren desert planet when they move their base at the end of season 4, as they're aware of the fact that he'll alert Apophis of their new whereabouts if they bring him along.

Minor Officials

Klorel

Klorel

Played By: Alexis Cruz

First Appearance: "Children of the Gods"

The son of Apophis, Klorel represented a particularly thorny issue for O'Neill, as his host throughout his appearances was O'Neill's young friend Skaara. Was eventually separated from his host and never seen again.

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• Antagonistic Offspring: Subverted: Bra'tac explains this is so common amongst the Goa'uld that Apophis would believe his attacking the System Lord's ship to be Klorel's doing, but Klorel actually seems to be more of an eager-to-please "Well Done, Son" Guy (of a thoroughly evil variety) who never openly shows any traces of being The Starscream towards his father.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Is desperate to impress his father Apophis - but in the space of two episodes he almost gets his own ship blown up when he can't quite suppress his host, gets killed by O'Neill, and then is taken hostage and used as a human shield by SG-1 during their escape. Notably, Apophis shoots him a particularly scathing Death Glare as they escape.
• The Load: Causes so many problems during Apophis' attack on Earth he's probably the main reason the whole thing failed.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gets a pretty searing one from Bra'tac:
  Klorel: Why do you defy me?
  Bra'tac: Because you are a not a god. You are a parasite within a child, and I despise you!
• Unwitting Pawn: Seems unaware that Zipacna's principal reason for defending him in his trial is to buy time for his forces to disable Tollana's defences.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He shows some shades of this with regards to Apophis.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: One of the conditions placed by the Tollan on his transfer to the Tok'ra for removal from Skaara was that Klorel would be extradited to a Goa'uld world rather than executed outright, so it's unclear what his final fate was. Given that Zipacna launched an attack on Tollana rather than accept the tribunal's judgement, it's possible no one was particularly motivated to ensure the Tok'ra followed through on repatriating Klorel instead of quietly disposing of him. In other episodes, it's said that the extraction process kills the symbiote.

Setesh

Setesh

Played By: Robert Duncan

First Appearance: "Seth"

Better known as Seth, Setesh was a System Lord when Ra was at the height of his power. Convincing Isis and Osiris to rebel against Ra, he backed out and betrayed them at the last moment. Fearing Ra's retribution, he fled, and was marooned on Earth after the burial of the Stargate. He was killed by Carter with a Kara Kesh at the end of his first appearance.

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• A God Am I: Particularly pronounced. Cut off from his followers, he spends millenia leading suicide cults so he can get the worship he was accustomed to as a System Lord.
• Beard of Evil: Has a sleazy-looking goatee.
• Butt-Monkey: Not him personally, but his Setesh guards are apparently the butt of many jokes among the Jaffa for their poor helmet design - to the point where one of these jokes is the only thing ever seen evoking uproarious laughter from Teal'c (sadly the cultural humour is Lost in Translation).
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Hugely - betrayed Osiris (his brother) and Isis to Ra to both take over his brother's empire and curry favour with the Supreme System Lord.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: His cults' tendency toward mass suicides and the ATF siege of his compound are rather close to some then rather recent events surrounding some real world cults.
• The Exile: Due to being hunted by both the System Lords and the Tok'ra, he had to lay relatively low on Earth and couldn't use his advanced technology to Take Over the World, as that would draw too much attention to himself.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He's the principal reason Osiris ends up on Earth in a stasis jar, which in turn led to his escaping, taking Sarah as a host and plaguing Daniel for several seasons.
• Identically Named Group: His current host is also called Seth, which is one of Setesh's alternate titles.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Is marooned on Earth yet somehow manages to operate suicide cults worshipping him for millenia without the System Lords, Tok'ra or humans ever realising what's happening. Not only that, but he somehow retains quite the arsenal of Goa'uld weaponry.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When he realises he's been uncovered, he immediately flees disguised as one of his followers.
• Villains Blend in Better: He'd been hanging out on Earth for a couple of millennia without anybody catching on.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He's terrified of being uncovered by either the Tok'ra or Ra, so he periodically does this to his followers, so his cults never grow large enough to attract attention.

Bynarr

Bynarr

Played By: Bob Dawson

First Appearance: "Jolinar's Memories"

One of Sokar's underlines and the lord of the moon Netu. Jolinar had an affair with him so she could obtain the means to get off Netu, which cost Bynarr his left eye as punishment from Sokar. Bynarr was murdered in his introductory episode by his First Prime Na'onak, who was revealed to be a revived Apophis in disguise.

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• Bald of Evil: Takes after his master in this regard.
• The Dragon: Bynarr acts as this for Sokar, ruling over Netu in his stead while Sokar prepares to attack the System Lords.
• Eye Scream: After Jolinar became the first and only prisoner to escape Netu, Sokar punished Bynarr by gouging out his left eye.
• Facial Horror: Thanks to Sokar, Bynarr now has a mass of horrific-looking scar tissue surrounding where his eye used to be.
• For the Evulz: Even though killing Jolinar's host won't fulfill his revenge, he decides to do it anyway and take whatever pleasure he can get from it.
• Handicapped Badass: Losing an eye hasn't made Bynarr any less feared or powerful.
• In the Back: How Na'onak/Apophis kills him with a staff weapon. This doubles as a Villainous Rescue, since Bynarr was planning on killing Samantha Carter when it happened.
• Revenge: He swore revenge on Jolinar after she escaped. At first, he was pleased to hear Carter identify herself as Jolinar's host when she arrived, but he became angry when he learned that her symbiote was already dead.
• Revenge by Proxy: If he can't take his revenge on the now-dead Jolinar, he'll happily take his pound of flesh from her former host Carter.

Adrian Conrad

Adrian Conrad

Played By: Bill Marchant

First Appearance: "Desperate Measures"

Originally, Adrian Conrad was a rich businessman and the owner of Zetatron Industries. When he was dying from an incurable illness called Berchart's syndrome, he got his hands on a Goa'uld symbiote and let himself be implanted to cure himself. The Goa'uld was too much for Conrad's associates to control, but Col. Frank Simmons managed to take Conrad into custody.

Later, Simmons and the rogue NID agents made a deal with the Goa'uld, and together, they hijacked the Prometheus. While they were in space, Simmons had Conrad killed, but the symbiote simply took Simmons as its new host until both were Thrown Out the Airlock.

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• Anti-Villain: Adrian Conrad isn't really evil per se, just a rich man who's scared of dying from an incurable disease. His Goa'uld, though, is just as evil as the rest.
• Asshole Victim: No-one is particularly sorry to see Adrian Conrad or his symbiote go.
• Body Surf: The Goa'uld possessing Adrian Conrad jumps into Simmons after the original host is killed.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Conrad used his massive wealth and resources to buy a smuggled symbiote and have Samantha Carter kidnapped for experimentation. And all just to save his own skin.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: Conrad is reliant on medical intervention to keep him alive before he becomes a Goa'uld.
• Emergency Transformation: The whole reason he became a Goa'uld was that it was the only way to save his life.
• Everyone Has Standards: Conrad apparently drew the line at actually killing Carter in order to find his cure, despite okaying the kidnapping and medical experimentation.
• Gender Bender: At least from the symbiote's perspective. It has No Biological Sex, but one of the novels reveals that it would have preferred Simmons' secretary over Adrian Conrad, aligning itself with a more feminine mentality.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Adrian has one until the symbiote cures him.
• Killed Off for Real: Both host and symbiote are killed separately in "Prometheus".
• No Name Given: The Goa'uld's name is unknown.
• The Quiet One: Teal'c describes him as "uncharacteristically silent for a Goa'uld".
• Send in the Clones: Scientists working for one of Conrad's companies cloned his symbiote. In "Nightwalkers", the clones have taken over an entire town in Oregon.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Between Simmons and Conrad. It doesn't take long for them to turn on each other once the ship is in orbit.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: After the symbiote takes over Simmons' body, both it and Simmons share this fate.

Imhotep

Imhotep

Played By: Rick Worthy

First Appearance: "The Warrior"

A minor Goa'uld renowned for his backstabbing ways and lust for power. Posing as his own First Prime K'tano, he seeks to take advantage of the Jaffa Rebellion by attracting Jaffa followers of other Goa'uld to his cause, creating an army with himself at the helm. After Lord Yu exposes his true nature to Teal'c, the SG-1 member subsequently kills him in a duel.

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• Authority Equals Asskicking: Probably the most physically lethal Goa'uld seen in the series: he's a master of the Jaffa martial art of Mastaba, utterly outclasses Teal'c in their duel, and would have killed him had he not decided to indulge in some Evil Gloating.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's able to keep up a friendly and polite facade to the Jaffa, and can even feign humility fairly convincingly (especially notable since many Goa'uld are outright incapable of behaving civilly even when not doing so would disadvantage them), but there's lots of little hints to O'Neill about his true nature - his viewing the Jaffa as expendable for his grand goals, his sexism towards Carter and disdain for human technology.
• Faking the Dead: Faked his own death so he could pose as his own First Prime K'tano to achieve his goals.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: His motives for taking over the Jaffa Rebellion are to gain more power - but he ends up creating greater unity among the Jaffa than anything else up to that point.
• Rousing Speech: Was genuinely very good at this.
• Unknown Rival: Was this to the System Lords until he started ordering attacks on their forces, including suicide bombing. Up until that point he'd been so minor they barely had any idea who he was.
• Uriah Gambit: As K'tano, Imhotep tries to do this with Teal'c by sending him to attack Lord Yu; unfortunately for him, he didn't count on Yu allowing Teal'c to return in one piece.
• Villainous Valor: He may be pretty reprehensible, but he displays nerves of steel when he walks through a firefight to convince the other side's Jaffa to join him.
• We Have Reserves: He is remarkably blase about sending Jaffa to their deaths, yet another indicator to the team that there's something not quite right with him.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Imhotep walks right up to the staff weapon of one of Nirrti's Jaffa and practically dares the guy to shoot. He doesn't.

Nerus

Nerus

Played By: Maury Chaykin

First Appearance: "Beachhead"

A minor Goa'uld who was once in the service of Ba'al, and famed for his many "appetites". Despite his general sense of buffoonery, he was a skilled scientist and offered to help the team with their Ori problem at the beginning of season 9 only for it to be revealed that he was acting as The Mole, having already converted to Origin. After a brief incarceration in Area 51 he returned to Ba'al, who killed him soon after.

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• Affably Evil: Despite being a Goa'uld and tricking the team more than once, he's extremely jovial and it seems to be his genuine personality.
• Aliens Love Human Food: Good Lord does he ever! A mere roast chicken is all it takes to get him to start giving the SGC the info they need, and when General Landry introduces Nerus to cupcakes, he practically declares it humanity's greatest achievement! He even takes a suitcase full of cupcakes with him when he leaves to rejoin Ba'al, which leads to his final downfall.
• Ascended Fanboy: Bizarrely enough, he's a huge fan of the original team and spends a long while gushing over Teal'c and Daniel when he comes to Earth, acting disappointed when he realizes that O'Neill and Carter aren't there.
• Denied Food as Punishment: Landry does this to him in order to make him give up information while he's imprisoned at Area 51. It works, but only up to a point.
• Enemy Mine: Subverted; he comes to Earth offering his assistance with the Ori threat, but it turns out he's working for the Ori and providing the team with false information.
• Evil Genius: He's one of the few Goa'uld scientists on the show and he takes credit for Ba'al's simultaneous gate-dialling program that was used to help destroy the Replicators, claiming it was his idea.
• Jabba Table Manners: He ends up with food smeared all over the entirety of his cell after Landry brings him a "feast" in exchange for information. Landry comments that he's never seen a human being eat in such a way, to which Nerus points out that he's not actually human, despite appearances.
• Les Collaborateurs: He helps for the Ori to come into the Milky Way, hoping that he will be ascended.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: With the exception of Vala, nobody takes him seriously to begin with since he comes across as a bit of a joke. This allows him to effortlessly trick the team into playing right into the hands of the Ori.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He lampshades this to impress upon Landry the fact that he won't give up Ba'al's location for anything less than his freedom, no matter how much food Landry tries to bribe him with.
  Nerus: My dear General. I rarely say this, so please take it to heart when I say that for the moment... I'm full.
• Sense Freak: Through his host's sense of taste, he has a love of food.
• Villainous Glutton: Practically his defining characteristic. He's also one of the few Goa'uld who doesn't seem to be vain about his appearance and is quite severely overweight (even with the restorative powers of a symbiote).
• You Have Failed Me: Ba'al eventually kills him after he unwittingly uploads a virus to Ba'al's ship and disables all his systems.

Qetesh

Qetesh

Played By: Claudia Black

Appears In: Stargate: Continuum

Qetesh was a minor Goa'uld who used Vala Mal Doran as her final host for some time prior to the events of the series. She was never particularly powerful, but she had a reputation for being both ruthless and treacherous and made herself a considerable amount of enemies before she was eventually captured by the Tok'ra and extracted from Vala. Ba'al had a fascination with her that bordered on obsession, and when he altered the timeline in Continuum, he deliberately arranged events so that she would survive and become his queen. Unfortunately for him, however, this alternate version of Qetesh turned out to be just as devious as the original, and had her own designs on galactic domination.

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• Antagonistic Offspring: One of the spin-off novels indicated she was a daughter of Ra, and was scheming to usurp and kill him before O'Neill and Daniel beat her to it. The canonicity of the novels are unclear though.
• Bad Boss: In "The Powers That Be", it's stated that she would carry out mass torture and mass killings if her slaves didn't fulfill their quotas in the naquadah mines.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: She was actually an enemy of Ba'al's in the main timeline, but he at least seems to think there was some spark between them.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Ba'al in Continuum. He's the one who gets the plot rolling, but she becomes the main antagonist for the team after she kills him and takes over his plan to invade Earth.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: It's mentioned a few times that she has a reputation for this even among the Goa'uld, something that Ba'al really should have taken into account before making her his queen.
• Eviler than Thou: She's disgusted by Ba'al's plan to invade Earth "peacefully" and sets about performing the more traditional invasion after killing him.
• Fatal Flaw: Greed, just like that of her human host. After getting rid of Ba'al and taking over his invasion of Earth, she sighs that "this world is not enough" and heads to his time machine, the implication being that she plans to use it to conquer more worlds. If she hadn't done so, she wouldn't have gotten blown up by Teal'c, though she still would have been erased with the rest of the timeline.
• For the Evulz: When Ba'al asks what the point of blasting Earth to the brink of distinction would be, she replies that it would be "enjoyable".
• Hero Killer: Her forces manage to kill Daniel, Carter and an alternate version of Teal'c before the timeline is reset.
• Hot Consort: For Ba'al, not that she's satisfied with being just a consort...
• Oh, Crap!: The look on her face when she realizes the fatally injured Teal'c she's just been gloating over has a grenade and is about to blow them both to hell.
• Posthumous Character: She's already long dead in the main timeline by the time Vala shows up, but she manages to be a major character in Continuum thanks to Ba'al screwing around with time.
• Shame If Something Happened: Her speech after she impales Ba'al with his own fancy blade:
  Qetesh: The edges of the Shikra blade have been honed to the thickness of a single atom. I must keep my hand very still, for fear that one slip will cut you... in half.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Uses a very soft speaking voice and is utterly sadistic even for a Goa'uld.
• Spanner in the Works: It's her Chronic Backstabbing Disorder (and Ba'al failing to anticipate it) that causes the peaceful Goa'uld takeover of Earth to escalate into her attempted genocide of humanity.
• The Starscream: To Ba'al in Continuum. Her betrayal is the one thing he overlooks in his otherwise flawless plan.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: Ba'al makes her his queen after changing the timeline, but she later kills him to usurp his throne.

Aset

Aset

Played By: Salome Azizi

Appears In: Stargate Origins

Aset was a minor Goa'uld who served as Ra's underlord on Abydos, watching over its people and Naquadah mines in Ra's absence. Despite an unspecified backstory involving Ra apparently resurrecting her, she schemes against him, and when the Gate activates from Earth, bringing Brücke and his Nazi soldiers, she sees an opportunity to acquire a disposable army.

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• Action Mom: Her introductory scene features her cradling her Harcesis child lovingly, then blasting a German soldier with a Goa'uld hand device and killing him the moment he tried to take her prisoner.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Serves as this with Brücke for the series.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She was a skilled scientist, engineer and overseer (enough that Ra resurrected her after her death), but she's also pretty flippant about Goa'uld tradition, having a Harcesis child (which is explicitly forbidden even to System Lords) by the time the series starts, and seeing nothing wrong with working with the Nazis instead of enslaving/massacring them. It's what motivates Serqet to turn on her in the end.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Loves her Harcesis child, and seems genuinely heartbroken when her guard Serqet betrays her to Ra.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • She's visibly unhappy when Brücke kills her champion in his honour duel with one of Brücke's men when it looks like the Abydonian will win, indicating she's got some sense of fair play.
  • In the same scene she's quite upset when she snaps the Wand of Horus that could have resurrected the man so she doesn't look weak in front of the German, even shedding a tear as she does so.
  • She looks like she's going to off Langford and Catherine - but when she finds out they're father and daughter spares them and mindwipes them instead so they'll be spared Ra's retribution.
• Killed Off for Real: Ra kills her via orbital bombardment after finding out about her treachery.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Aset may be as power-hungry as any other Goa'uld - but she genuinely loves her Harcesis, seems to be quite well regarded by the Abydonians, isn't into sadism as much as her contemporaries (her breaking the Wand of Horus seems to be motivated by a desire to not look weak in front of Brücke rather than genuine malice) and when she discovers Catherine is Langford's daughter mindwipes them both instead of killing them in recognition of their family bond. She's still not in any way nice though, as seen when she casually questions Langford as to whether the other intruders should be enslaved in the mines or killed on the spot.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Instead of doing the famous Goa'uld eye glow, Aset's eyes are a non-changing sickly yellow throughout her appearances (though rather bizarrely, there are a few moments throughout the series when they do make the associated sound effect).
• Oh, Crap!: When Ra's ship arrives unexpectedly on Abydos, and she realises how screwed she is.
• Pragmatic Villainy: She's only a minor underlord in Ra's employ, and has few resources of her own. Consequently, when Brücke arrives and offers her both German military might and those oppressed by the Nazis anyway as slaves, she's willing to listen (unlike absolutely any other Goa'uld, who would have just conquered their world) and even overules the concerns of her guard Serqet.
• The Starscream: To Ra, as is Goa'uld tradition.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Abydonians regard Aset as their friend, implying she's not nearly as barbaric about their treatment as other Goa'uld. Even after she breaks the Wand of Horus, they blame Brücke for making her wicked.

Serqet

Serqet

Played By: Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez

Appears In: Stargate Origins

Serqet was a minor Goa'uld who served Aset on Abydos at the time of Catherine Langford's arrival on the planet. Much more of a traditionalist than her boss, she's often at odds with Aset over her casual attitide to Goa'uld law.

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• Even Evil Has Standards: As with Aset, she's visibly displeased when Brücke kills the Abydos champion in his honour duel with one of his own men when it looks like the Abydonian will win, and even more so when the Nazi leader kills his own man regardless. Afterwards, she looks like she's trying to convince herself as much as the natives when she tells them the fallen champion died with honour.
• Hero Killer: Kills Beal as he buys time for Catherine and Professor Langford to escape.
• Hopeless with Tech: When Brücke shows her and Aset a cinecam showreel of Nazi might she's utterly baffled by it, waving her staff weapon through it several times to see if it's solid. Aset has to tell her to knock it off. All the more notable as she's a Goa'uld and should be used to much more advanced technology than this.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Like Aset, her eyes are a non-changing sickly yellow throughout her appearances.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Or gal in this case. Unlike other Goa'uld she's martially orientated, acting as Aset's bodyguard and posing the biggest martial challenge to the heroes in the series. She's also fiercely proud of her Goa'uld heritage, prompting her eventual turning on Aset.
• The Starscream: To Aset, informing Ra of her transgressions. Unlike other Goa'uld though, it's actually for reasons of principle - Aset's flouting of Goa'uld law and eventual alliance with the humans are against her sense of Goa'uld superiority enough she eventually calls in Ra to deal with her.
• Villain Has a Point: While it can be read as the usual Goa'uld disdain for other species, she's actually got more sense than her boss Aset in that the Nazis are not the sort of people anyone should trust as allies.
• Villainous Friendship: With Aset. Notably, she makes several attempts to talk her out of her alliance with the Germans before calling in Ra. When her treachery is revealed, she can't even meet Aset's gaze.

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