Characters / Sword Art Online - Laughing Coffin

Sword Art Online Main Character Index
Main series: Major Characters (Kazuto Kirigaya, Asuna Yuuki, Shino Asada, Eugeo, Alice Zuberg) | Aincrad | Alfheim Online | Gun Gale Online | Underworld (Integrity Knights, Dark Territory) | Unital Ring | Antagonists (Laughing Coffin, Nobuyuki Sugou) | Bosses | Others
Alternative Gun Gale Online Characters: Team LPFM | Team SHINC | Team MMTM | Others
Video Game Continuity | Gameverse Characters (Gameverse Main Characters) | Mobile Game Exclusives

Real world names are in western naming order. Followed by their online name and worlds they played in.^note If only the online name is known, then display as normal.

The notorious Player Killing guild that terrorized SAO. After the clearing of the game, many members would return in later arcs to continue antagonizing Kirito.

Note: Unmarked spoilers ahead. If you're starting the anime, do not read this page!

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In General

• Arch-Enemy: All of them (particularly the three highest ranking members) come to despise Kirito for defeating them in SAO. Members of their guild return in subsequent arcs to menace Kirito repeatedly in different games and in the real world.
• Ax-Crazy: A guild of psychopathic murderers who lust for bloodshed and would rather let themselves be killed in battle than surrendering.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: During Kirito's recount of the Assault Team's raid on the Laughing Coffin HQ, over twenty Laughing Coffin members choose to let themselves be killed rather than surrendering. One particularly psychopathic member already had his HP reduced to red and was cornered by three Assault Team members, yet instead of giving in, he chose to maniacally lunge and stab at the Assault Team members, managing to kill all three of them, all the while cackling like a lunatic. Kirito is just in time to see the three die before the guy decides to attack Kirito, and he does not stop until Kirito deals the killing blow himself.
• The Conspiracy: The Progressive Novels implies that the guild started out as this, being a small group of players led by PoH, or as he was known then "the man in the black poncho", dedicated to sabotaging the frontlines and prevent everyone from escaping the game.
• Dissonant Serenity: Part of what makes them so intimidating is how casually they generally treat their cruel actions, such as when PoH, XaXa and Johnny Black ambushed Golden Apple, and discussed what to do with them, with Johnny suggesting that they force them to fight each other to the death and kill the survivor, as if it was just every day for them... which, well, it kind of is, but still.
• The Dreaded: Were this as a group, with multiple Hero Killer types like PoH, Xa Xa, and Johnny Black among their ranks. It's bad enough that in the GGO arc Kirito lapses into PTSD upon seeing Death Gun's LC tattoo, while Klein drops his alcohol and panics when Death Gun utters PoH's Catchphrase.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • PoH, XaXa, and Johnny Black are first seen during the "A Murder Case in the Area" story, as very minor antagonists. However they will all go on to become Arc Villains later in the story.
  • In a blink-and-miss shot of the players names list Kayaba brings out when telling Asuna and Kirito about everyone being logged out you can see XaXa, Johnny Black and PoH's names on the list of players logged out having survived SAO.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Knights of the Blood Oath, being a large and famous guild, but one that is feared for being murderers, rather than attempting to save the players by clearing the game.
• For the Evulz: Their entire M.O. is to kill other players without consequence, on the grounds that if it's a death game, then killing is a must. In fact, the entire Phantom Bullet arc was set in motion because two of the members wanted to continue the death game.
• Grayscale of Evil: Their signature symbol/tattoo is always black and white.
• In the Hood: Members of the guild are fond of draping themselves in black cloaks.
• Karma Houdini: Due to all blame being placed on Akihiko Kayaba, none of their crimes were revealed to the public and none of the surviving members were punished for their crimes. However, after the guild's kill count climbed into the triple digits, the Knights Of Blood put the floor-clearing on hold and with a lot of other like-minded players, initiated a purge to track down all members of the guild and bring them to justice. Many of them chose to let themselves be killed rather than to be captured. Some of them, including XaXa and Johnny Black, managed to escape, though, and remain at large. At least, until the Death Gun incident.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: While they get off scot-free for their actions in SAO due to Kayaba getting the blame, the surviving members return in later arcs and finally get their comeuppance: XaXa and Johnny Black are arrested and incarcerated after perpetuating the Death Gun incident (although the latter escapes justice long enough to attack and nearly kill Kirito in real-life), and PoH himself is subjected to a Karmic Death by Kirito during the climax of the Alicization arc.
• Loophole Abuse: Because the Laughing Coffin cannot be recognized as a guild by the system given their abnormally high count of orange and red players, their members are free to join and infiltrate other guilds. Kuradeel exploited this by posing as a frontline soldier in the Knights of the Blood Oath, unbeknownst to everyone until he reveals his tattoo to Kirito.
• Master Poisoner: Most, if not all, members of this guild are skilled in potion mixing, usually to paralyze their victims before going for the kill, chief among them being Johnny Black.
• Murder, Inc.: Sometimes, some players will hire their services to kill a target as a means to avoid having their Karma Meter changed to orange or red.
• Offscreen Villainy: Most of their more brutal crimes such as the killing of hundreds of players occur entirely offscreen. Aside from Kuradeel, the only time we see them in action during the Aincrad arc was during "A Murder Case in the Area" story where they are hired by Grimlock to carry out the murders of his old guild. It isn't until the Phantom Bullet arc via a flashback that we finally get to see just how monstrous these guys truly are when a battle between them and the Assault Team results on a bloodbath on both sides.
• Player Killing: Some time after Laughing Coffin, a ragtag bunch of orange players, was founded, PoH spread the belief that killing other players was alright, uncaring of the fact that SAO was a death game.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Girls Ops reveals that there were times when they actually opted out of killing other players, instead forcing them to join their guild as Green Player Spies, who were tasked with doing tasks that the Red Player member players were incapable of, such as entering towns to do shopping, and spying on rival guilds or scouting out farming spots without arousing suspicions. The only instance when they killed them was if they ever tried to escape, which happened before Lux encountered them, prompting them to force her to join instead of killing her.
• Psycho for Hire: They are willing to get payed to perform their Player Killing, with Grimlock hiring them to kill his wife Griselda, and then again to kill his former guildmates when they got too close to the truth.
• Refuge in Audacity: As noted by Kirito in the Floor 7 Arc, what makes them (or as they were at the time) so dangerous is how non-sensical their actions can come off as to everyone else, as it can easily come off as them trying to stop people from clearing the game and getting everyone trapped there forever. As a result, it makes a lot of their actions unpredictable due to how hard it is to understand their mindset.
• Tattooed Crook: Members have their guild symbol tattooed on their avatar's bodies.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: They know their game-world actions have lethal real world consequences and yet they kill anyway.
• Villain Team-Up: When they started as The Conspiracy, they apparently joined up with the Fallen Elves faction of the Elf War campaign, with Kirito suspecting that they somehow discovered a unique Villain Protagonist questline. This gives their members at the time, such as Morte, access to unique weapons such as specially poisoned throwing knives.

Members

Leadership

Vassago Casals / PoH

Vassago Casals / PoH (SAO, GGO, UW)

Voiced by: Keiji Fujiwara (Games), Tsuyoshi Koyama (Anime) (Japanese), Xander Mobus (English), Alfredo Gabriel Basurto, Rafael Escalante (younger) (Latin American Spanish)

^{Click here to see PoH}

^{Vassago as a Dark Knight}

"It's showtime."

Laughing Coffin's Leader and founder, having drawn people in by preaching about how all the actual deaths will blamed on Kayaba once SAO ends. He later returns in the Alicization Arc working for Gabriel Miller in his attempts to capture Alice.

For Hollow PoH, his counterpart from the Gameverse, see this page.

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• Abusive Parents: His mother wanted to abort him and named him after a demon to illustrate that she hated him, while his father only forced her to have him so he could give his kidney to a relative (outright stated to be a legitimate son in the anime).
• Adaptational Badass: In the source material, PoH is strong enough to the point of overpowering Asuna in her Stacia account but is already worn out from his previous battles by the time he fights a recently recovered Kirito, resulting with being turned into a tree by the latter. In Last Recollection, however, he's in much better shape, manages to take out the regular accounts of Asuna, Silica, and Lisbeth in their first confrontation, and Kirito had help from Dorothy to bring him down.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Somehow manages to be even worse in the War of Underworld anime than in the novels. His flashbacks don't show anything to do with the Korean mafia or his voluntary SAO entrapment being because of a job; he just sees a news report about 10,000 Japanese gamers getting trapped in SAO, their brains being fried because of their in-game deaths. He gets a Nerv Gear off the black market, arrives in the Town of Beginnings, and proclaims that "Now I can kill as many Japanese as I want."
• Animal Motifs: Vassago has a snake motif going around. He created the Laughing Coffin guild, whose weapons of choice include Poisoned Weapons, poisons people with his philosophy, and and he openly defies the god-like entity and its messiah like the snaky devil. Some characters (and even the author) even compare him to snakes.
• And I Must Scream: His ultimate fate. After PoH declares he'll never stop coming after Kirito and Asuna until he's killed them in real-life, Kirito declares that he's never logging out of Underworld and traps him in a tree, leaving him to rot in Underworld forever. It's made even worse by the fact that time in Underworld runs on Year Inside, Hour Outside; years can pass in-game while mere days pass in the real world. Kirito even takes the time to describe such a fate to him: PoH will spend ten or more years of isolation and insanity, and then die after another 30 years of brain activity; as Kirito puts it, he better pray his allies bail him out, otherwise he's stuck in there, rotting for the rest of his life until someone else cuts him down with an axe. This is possibly Subverted when it's revealed that when the remaining Glowgen mercenaries are retreating, those in charge of securing Gabriel and Vassago's corpses reveal that they were only able to recover Gabriel's body, and that Vassago's had mysteriously disappeared, implying that he escaped his fate somehow and disappeared from the Ocean Turtle without anyone noticing.
• Antagonist Abilities: In addition to his Mate Chopper absorbing life from others, in the Underworld his Incarnation manifests in the form of a Hate Plague that drives all of the foreign players into a killing frenzy.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To Kirito, being quite possibly the strongest holder of that claim out of all of Kirito's enemies. A vast majority of the things that have gone wrong in Kirito's life can be traced back to him. PoH's strong desire to kill Kirito has driven him for years, with him being willing to go back into the Underworld upon finding out he was present there. With Kirito he displays an almost a Stalker without a Crush obsession with Kirito, awed by the boy's indomitable will that keeps pushing him forward and providing PoH with so much fun. In Alicization, his desire to seek out the Black Swordsman leads him to wish to awaken Kirito from being an Empty Shell, willing to kill as many people and demons as needed to bring the boy back to his senses.
  • To a lesser extent Asuna, Klein, and the rest of the Assault Team, with all of them bitterly hating or fearing him. Due to being the leader of the murder guild and being responsible for many of the tragedies that occurred in SAO, all of them know about him and despise him. As such, his threats towards murdering Kirito and Asuna in real life also become Implied Death Threats to the rest of the group, which the anime makes more explicit. The anime further adds Eiji as having personal beef with him too, despite the two never technically meeting.
  • Ascends to this in Integral Factor as well for that game's protagonist. He proceeds to kill a quest important NPC that would be able to lift a curse from Koharu that, unless removed, would result in her automatic death when the boss of Floor 61 was defeated. He continuously goads the protagonist into trying to fight him and it is one of the very few times the lead of that game is shown losing their cool.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Goes from being a scarcely seen villain part of a Big Bad Ensemble in the Aincrad arc to The Heavy of the second half of the Alicization arc. Progressive also makes him a more direct threat too.
  • His gameverse counterpart takes it even further in Hollow Fragment, with his Hollow AI counterpart being upgraded to Big Bad for the Hollow Area.
• Asskicking Leadsto Leadership: Vassago is not only the founder and leader of Laughing Coffin, but also it's strongest member.
• Ax-Crazy: Easily the craziest below Gabriel Miller. However, he's at least calculated in his insanity. Vassago emphatically isn't and everything he does is purely For the Evulz.
• Bad Boss:
  • He's the one who leaked the Laughing Coffin's hideout to the other players while giving partial information about the raid on their HQ to his followers, all so he can watch both sides kill each other.
  • It gets worse in Alicization when he's more than willing to even kill the underlings and summoned Korean and Chinese players working for him just to get Kirito to awaken from his coma, treats Gabriel's men with even less respect than he does, and his threats towards Asuna to kill everyone in Underworld implies he intends on doing in Gabriel as well.
• Badass Cape: His leather cape is a short but sinister example.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In regards to the Laughing Coffin Raid. While he did lose his entire guild and had to rely on manipulating random guys like Kuradeel to cause trouble from then on, The Reveal that he was the one who ratted them out in the first place brings a new perspective; he manages to cause the Assault Team to lose a number of their people and force the surviving ones to become murderers, and as a bonus, he got a good show out of it.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: He's an Ax-Crazy murderer who kicks the dog For the Evulz and his weapon, the Mate Chopper, gets a stat increase every time it kills another player. In Alicization, it's transfer into the Underworld combined with his own incarnation alters it so that it gets more powerful the more people die in general.
• Bastard Bastard: He's revealed to be an illegitimate son of a Japanese man and a Mexican woman, and he's definitely a bastard to boot.
• Batman Gambit: Implied. When Moonphase notices how eerily calm PoH is in the face of his army turning against each other due to him convincing them a number of them about how off the whole situation is, he realizes, to his horror, that PoH may have already suspected that certain parts of his army might start realizing that they're being lied to, but that there'd still be a number of them who would cling to their hatred of Japan and insist on continuing the fight, giving him prime opportunity to provoke them into killing each other for his own amusement.
• Beauty Is Bad: He is described as being quite attractive with an exotic Latino look. He's also quite possibly the most evil character in the series, with an unparalleled bodycount, with his good looks only further driving his status as a Satanic Archetype.s
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • While beating up the still brain dead Kirito, he demands the latter to stand up and fight him despite Asuna's pleas. Guess what Kirito did to him after waking up.
  • His end goal in Floor 61 of Integral Factor also ends up becoming this as well. He acquires an immortality skill that automatically revives him when his HP drops down to zero and proclaims nothing will stop him. However, after dying over and over again, all of the pain catches up with him and the damage eventually kills him and leaves him with no choice but to keep getting painfilled revivals so as to not die in real life.
• BFS: His Mate Chopper absorbing all the death to occur in War of the Underworld causes to grow substantially, making it go from a Chinese Kitchen Knife to a giant cleaver.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Given the damage he and his guild did, he rivals Kayaba for the biggest problem of the arc as well, necessitating most frontline players to put off the progression and actively hunt Laughing Coffin down. Additionally, in Alicization, he serves as the other half in the Big Bad Duumvirate along with Gabriel Miller.
• Black Knight: Uses a Dark Knight avatar when he enters the Underworld.
• Boomerang Bigot: He deeply hates East Asians and wants them to kill each other. His father is Japanese.
• Breakout Villain: PoH was featured in the announcement trailer for Variant Showdown and was featured prominently in advertisement as the main antagonist, with a short story about his first day in Sword Art Online being posted close to the games release. In reality however, the PoH who appears in the game isn't the real one, but a Fanboy under the employ of Epsilon seeking to become him.
• Bullying a Dragon: After Kirito beats him, PoH decides to mouth off to him, gloating that even if Kirito kills him in-game, he'll just keep coming after him and Asuna again and again until he finally kills them for real as payback. Of course, this bites him in the ass immediately afterwards, since Kirito proceeds to make sure that PoH is in no condition to come after them, ever again.
• But Not Too Foreign: He was conceived from an illegitimate relationship between a Japanese father and a Mexican mother.
• Catchphrase: "It's Showtime." (said in English) When the Death Gun utters this phrase in the BoB tournament, Kirito is quick to (incorrectly) assume that PoH might be the perpetrator; Klein similarly recognizes Death Gun as ex-Laughing Coffin, although the differences in speech tell him that he's not PoH. Indeed, XaXa is the one operating the avatar.
• Characterization Marches On: In Aincrad he seemed to be more of a patient planner who would enjoy the show from the sidelines, while in Alicization he's noticeably more restless and loses his temper easily while requiring Gabriel to calm him. Asuna suspects that the shift in personality is due to PoH letting go of the facade he uses to manipulate others and embracing his bloodlust.
• The Chessmaster: In the early days of SAO, he's revealed to have been the ringleader of a Conspiracy consisting of himself and a few other players, including the Beta-Tester Morte, who aim to hinder the frontlines in any way in order to keep SAO from getting cleared, with methods such as tricking the frontlines into almost committing the first Player Kill by giving the Legend Braves an idea for a scam to allow them to join the frontlines, trying to get the two DKB and ALS to come to blows by spreading false info about the Elf War Quest and making sure they picked different sides, and trying to get one of them to get a Game-Breaker item so that the other guild would drop out of the frontlines due to not wanting to be absorbed by the other. Knowing PoH's reasons for being in SAO and his general personality, this could be either to give himself as much time as possible to locate the player he was sent in to kill or just to cause as much harm For the Evulz.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Has a tendency to throw his partners under the bus at any given opportunity.
• Combat Sadomasochist: When Vassago is going on about how awesome the Underworld is, Gabriel attempts to rein him in by mentioning how the lack of a Pain Absorber will mean that every wound will hurt. Vassago just replies that that's the best part.
• The Corrupter: His modus operandi. Sowing the seeds of hatred in people and turning them on each other.
  • While his guild did a lot of damage back in SAO, there is still long-term damage in that he cultivated a number of potential real-life serial killers because of his influence. XaXa and Johnny Black are two examples.
  • He even tried to do this to the Assault Team, pitting them and his entire Laughing Coffin guild against each other to not only watch them slaughter each other, but with the intent of turning the Assault Team into killers.
  • In the Underworld, he does this to the Foreign Players, fueling their hatred for the Japanese. He even tries this on Kirito himself, but isn't as successful.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
  • He managed to get a stable, good-paying job after leaving Japan back to America following Aincrad but to him what good is it if he can't go back to killing people in the VR world to his heart's content?
  • A more mundane example, but the Light Novel speculates that his exotic looks, which is the result of his mixed Japanese-Mexican heritage, could probably help him make a living as a model.
  • He sarcastically tells Gabriel that they can use the STL's realistic virtual world to make it big in the film industry.
• Dark Messiah: On top of being a Satanic Archetype, he is also revered as a Messianic figure who inspires wrath and hatred in his followers.
• Deadpan Snarker: Particularly with Critter. It's played for horror as his detached and blase attitude in the face of the horrible things he does demonstrates what a monster Vassago really is.
• Death by Irony: Goaded Kirito into killing him in the Underworld so he can get out of the STL and kill him and Asuna in real life. Kirito finds another way to do that, just without the getting out of the STL part....
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Recruits people for his red guild by promising them that all the blame for any murderers they commit will be placed on Kayaba.
• Demoted to Dragon: He was the leader of Laughing Coffin during SAO, while in Alicization he is only the second-in-command to Gabriel Miller. When he decides that the only way to Wake Kirito up from a coma is to kill as many people as he can in Underworld, he goes on to include the foreign players he summoned, and in turn Gabriel and his army of demons, in his threats.
• Determinator: Even in defeat, PoH remains Defiant to the End and attempts to threaten Kirito with a We Will Meet Again speech and continue to Kick the Dog... which doesn't end well for him.
• Devious Daggers: PoH is a Manipulative Bastard par excellence, masterfully convincing any lesser person to give in to their darker impulses to have them act out his whims or just to sic them on others for his amusement. And when he wants in on the killing himself, he does with his Mate Chopper backed up by his masterful knife skills.
  • When he first meets Kirito on Floor 5, he threatened him with a knife that he near successfully bluffed had level-5 Paralyzing Venom and Damaging Poison.
  • Even as a Dark Knight in the Underworld, which comes with a high priority sword, he opts to use a dagger when sneaking into human army encampment.
• Didn't See That Coming: When Kirito defeats him in Underworld, PoH expects Kirito to give him a warrior's death, since he'll be able to pursue him and Asuna and kill them for real after being booted out of the system. What he didn't expect was Kirito to subject him to a Fate Worse than Death by imprisoning him in a tree and leaving him to rot in Underworld, vowing that this is the last time they'll meet and PoH will never log out of the Soul Translator.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In Alicization, while his defeat stops the immediate danger towards the Human Empire, Gabriel is still at large and he needs to be prevented from capturing Alice which will lead to him destroying the Underworld.
• Disease Bleach: After being defeated and turned into a tree in the Underworld, his IRL hair turns completely white.
• The Dreaded: The Assault Team are utterly terrified by his very existence. Klein freezes in fear at the mere possibility of his return.
• Eagleland: Was born in America, and is clearly a vicious Boorish variety.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • He is built up to be a parallel to Heathcliff. While Heathcliff rallied the strongest players in the game into forming an elite guild known as the Knight of the Blood Oath, PoH brought together all of the psychopathic orange players in the game into a guild and spread the belief that it was acceptable to kill in a death game. Much like how Heathcliff is respected among most players, the Laughing Coffin members idolized PoH.
  • To Kirito himself, especially in Alicization. Both are SAO survivors who ended up in the Underworld, with a generally black Color Motif, but on opposite sides of the war. Both are candidates for World's Best Warrior, with Kirito being considered the strongest Frontline player outside of Heathcliff, and that was partially because he was Kayaba and rigged himself to never die, while PoH was an infamous Hero Killer with an already powerful weapon that got stronger and stronger with every player kill he committed. In addition, while Kirito is a Hero with Bad Publicity scorned for being a Beater and was a solo player, Vassago is a Dark Messiah who built himself a reputation among the villainous players who he rallied into the murder guild Laughing Coffin. Both also had less than ideal family histories and histories of adoption, with Vassago being an illegitimate child and Kirito having lost his parents when he was little. In the Underworld, both also possess swords with the power to absorb spatial resources with Vassago's Mate-Chopper and Kirito's Night Sky Sword respectively. The anime drives the point even deeper by making Vassago's half-brother an Identical Stranger to Kirito.
  • Believe or not, to Eugeo. Both were raised in loveless environments, with PoH having an abusive mother and a Disappeared Dad who effectively saw him as spare organs for his real son, whereas Eugeo was a victim of severe Parental Favouritism towards his older siblings, as well as just generally being unfairly treated by his parents. As a result of their pasts, both have a very skewed idea of love, with PoH seeing his twisted desire to torment Kirito, as well as his loved ones to drive him into action, as some form of "love" towards him, while Eugeo believed that it was something you had to earn from others, to the point that he Desperately Craved Affection and was tempted to use the position of Integrity Knight to send money to his family. The difference is that, while Eugeo eventually came to believe in a more healthier definition of love, PoH never had a revelation that his beliefs were wrong and his obsession ultimately bites him in the ass.
• Evil Duo: He works with Gabriel as partners with, Vassago as his The Dragon and the second biggest threat in the War of the Underworld arc. He does however shows shades of The Starscream by the end during his threats to kill everyone in UW to wake Kirito from his coma.
• Evil Sounds Deep: For both his gameverse and his anime voice. Though gameverse PoH voice sounds raspier while in the anime he tends to have No Indoor Voice.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: The Light Novel describes Vassago as being very attractive due to his exotic appearance, to the point where he could probably make a living as a model. Now if only he could do something about the Nightmare Face he sprouts every so often...
• Fatal Flaw: Bloodlust and sadism. He can't stop being obsessed with killing and violence or resist the opportunity to Kick the Dog, even when doing so is clearly not in his best interests. Him bragging to Kirito that he'll never stop coming after him and Asuna until he finally kills them IRL after, or during it in the Anime's case, his final fight with Kirito leads directly to his undoing.
• Fate Worse than Death: Got turned into a tree by Kirito, left to rot in Underworld, and driven to insanity as a result. That being said, he's Implied to have somehow escaped his fate.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • When in the company of other Glowgen members, Vassago downplays his bloodlust and seems like a boisterous and eager soldier with a snarky sense of humor. When he learns that Asuna and other SAO survivors are in the Underworld, he can barely restrain his malice and wears a smile so cruel that Critter immediately realizes that Vassago's previous behavior is just a facade.
  • He is nothing but polite and full of praise towards Kirito, having genuine Villain Respect for the boy. Of course, this doesn't change the fact he desires nothing more than to murder Kirito and all of his allies.
• Foil: To Gabriel.
  • Both are Sociopathic Sadists with a severe Lack of Empathy for others, by far the most powerful and psychotic foes Kirito has faced, and serve as Big Bads for their own Arcs, Gabriel for War of Underworld, taking the role of the Dark God Vecta for the purpose of invading the Underworld and capturing Alice for his own twisted ends, and PoH for Progressive, being the head of The Conspiracy that are trying to make the Frontlines fall apart. However, whereas Gabriel is largely The Stoic, doesn't even know who Kirito is, and is more reliant on sheer brute force and power to achieve his goals of attaining godhood, PoH is a gleeful Manipulative Bastard and Corruptor who's made it his mission to screw with Kirito whenever possible, and has no greater ambitions beyond causing as much pain, death, and misery as possible solely For the Evulz, regardless of whether they're on his side or not.
  • There's also differences in their backgrounds and how it made them who they are; Gabriel was a privileged child growing up, even being able to avoid falling victim to a financial crash, and had loving parents and friends like Alicia, yet still went on to become a cruel homicidal megalomaniac, who killed Alicia out of misplaced sense of entitlement to her soul and deluded that he could take it for himself, ultimately lacking any kind of Freudian Excuse. Vassago on other hand grew up being shifted from negative environment to negative environment, living in a shitty neighborhood selling drugs with a verbally and maybe even physically abusive mother who literally named him after a demon to illustrate her hatred of him with a Disappeared Dad who only stopped his mother from aborting him in case he ever needed an organ donor for his real son, and later on went to Japan as part of a deal with said Disappeared Dad and was forced to join the Korean Mafia as Professional Killer to avoid getting deported, heavily hinting that while PoH is an irredeemable bastard, he may have turned out differently if he was raised in a healthier, more loving environment.
  • Their classes also contrast as well; Gabriel is a Wicked Cultured upper-class person, whereas Vassago is a Lower-Class Lout par excellence
• Forced Transformation: His final fate is getting turned into a tree by Kirito, to permanently end his threat and make sure he can never logout.
• For the Evulz: His entire motivation is to have people (East Asians in particular) kill each other for his own amusement. He displays this trait way too much for his own good, as his sadistic tendencies introduce him to a world of hurt when, after being defeated by Kirito in Alicization, he insults, threatens, and gloats to him that he will be hellbent on him and Asuna until he finally manages to brutally murder them in real life and continually threatens to kill them, their allies, and everyone else in Underworld, including Gabriel's demon army, the humans and monsters native to the land, and the summoned players multiple times, leading to Kirito trapping him in the Underworld so he will never log out.
• Fun with Acronyms: His username stands for "Prince of Hell". Also, see Meaningful Name.
• Freudian Excuse: He has nothing but hatred for East Asians because his biological father, a Japanese man, forced his mother to have him so he can be used in a Kidney transplant for a relative and basically abandoned them after he was born. Upon arriving in Japan as part of a deal with his father, he's forced to join a Korean crime gang as a hitman since the laws would have otherwise had him deported. He starts the Laughing Coffin guild just so he could see Japanese people kill each other, and later brings in Chinese and Korean gamers to fight the Japanese gamers who want to rescue Kirito and later tries to turn them against each other solely because he wants to watch East Asians kill one another. That said, this isn't treated as sympathetic or redeeming, and he is never shown to have loved his mother (who, to be fair, didn't love him, either).
• Glass Cannon: His Mate Chopper can boost his attack strength at the cost of his defense and armor stats.
• Gratuitous English: He slips a fair bit of English phrases into his dialogue. Somehow, he also spouts the word "suck" as if it is an expletive. Makes sense as he's American.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • His presence can be felt in almost every arc, from Aincrad, to Phantom Bullet, and Alicization arcs. While he is personally uninvolved in the GGO incident, he is still responsible for the corruption of many SAO players through Laughing Coffin, including his two right-hand men who become the villains for that season, and one of his right-hand men almost comes close to killing Kirito, leading to him ending up in the Underworld.
  • He's also this for the Girls Ops' Spin-Offs, being the one who gave Lux the Sadistic Choice of either joining Laughing Coffin or being left for dead, which is the starting point of the Trauma Conga Line that is her Dark and Troubled Past. His recruitment of her is also what led to her meeting Gwen, the leader of one of LC's subsidiary guilds, and he unintentionally^note  Although all things considered, he would have been happy to hear he did ruins their friendship by leaking Laughing Coffin's location, leading to Gwen becoming an antagonist in the second arc.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Doesn't take much to piss him off.
• Handsome Lech: Implied. Thankfully, he's not shown to take it as far as most instances of this with antagonists, but PoH is Implied to be appreciative of women. He lets out a Wolf Whistle when Dee Eye Ell introduces herself, Gabriel has to make sure he doesn't go out killing or womanizing (or both) before the Dark Territory Army marches to the Great Gate, and he responds to Ronye catching him sneaking up on her with a casual "Hey, baby" before asking how she spotted him.
• Hate Plague: One of his abilities in the Underworld is emitting a corruptive miasma that drives players into killing each other.
• Hero Killer: Had this reputation, with even Kirito respecting his abilities. Given that he had the highest body count of almost any player, this is understandable. He also swears that once he logs out of Underworld, he'll keep coming after Kirito and Asuna until he kills them in real-life... so Kirito makes sure that he can't log out.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Vassago was so begging to fight Kirito that it ultimately leads to his defeat.
• I Let You Win: He reveals that he was the one who leaked Laughing Coffin's location to the Assault Team, implying that he could have possibly led them for longer and allow them to cause even more havoc if he didn't get tired of leading them and thought it'd be fun to force the Assault Team, namely Kirito, to become killers by forcing the two groups to come to blows.
• Implacable Man: Almost nothing can put this guy down for good. Getting a severe beatdown by gives him a Torso with a View, but he gets right back up as if nothing happened. He then gets frozen in ice by a Perfect Weapon Control Art, to which he breaks out using sheer willpower. The only way to put a stop to him is Kirito subjecting him to a Fate Worse than Death by forcibly turning him into a tree and leaving him in the Underworld, and even that's hinted to not be enough, if his body disappearing from the Ocean Turtle with no explanation is anything to go by.
• In the Hood: His face is partially shadowed by the black hood he wears, concealing part of his identity.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Inverted then played Straight. It's implied that his time as a Professional Killer for the Korean Mafia benefited him in SAO in fighting and Player Killing other players. After he escapes and returns to the States, he's praised as an expert in simulation combat thanks to his two-year experience trapped in VR.
• It Amused Me: Why did he pit Laughing Coffin against the Assault Team in a bloodbath massacre? Because he thought it would be entertaining to watch.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: Interestingly becomes this for Kirito in Alicization. He is firmly established as one of Kirito's Arch Enemies from his time in SAO, where he was part of a Big Bad Ensemble. However come Alicization he now serves as Gabriel's second-in-command, yet remains the one Kirito and really all of the SAO players have the most animosity with. By contrast, Kirito lacks personal connection to Gabriel with the two of them simply being the Big Good and Big Bad as well as the most powerful threats on the field to one another.
• Just Between You and Me: For starters, he brags to Kirito's face that he's going to cut off his limbs, then torture Asuna and make him watch. And when he's defeated in Underworld, he declares that no matter how many times Kirito beats him in-game, he's not going to stop coming after him and Asuna until he finally kills them for real by slitting their throats and ripping their hearts out. This proves to be the final straw; rather than kill him, Kirito gives PoH a Karmic Death by turning him into a tree and trapping him in Underworld, declaring that he'll never log out. The anime alters this by having him say this as Asuna and the rest of the group watch the two fight, the implication being that he intends to target the others in some form as well.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After having gotten away with spreading his reign of terror across SAO, PoH finally gets what's coming to him in the Alicization arc, when Kirito turns him into a tree and leaves him to rot in Underworld for the rest of his life, unable to log out and ultimately dying.
• Karmic Death: As the man responsible for many a bad thing that has befallen on Kirito and the others since Aincrad, including having an obsession over Kirito, it was only natural that Kirito is ultimately the one who kills him at the end of Alicization. Extra karmic in that one of his former acolytes, Johnny Black, was the person who got Kirito trapped in the Underworld in the first place.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Does this a bunch and revels in it, such as establishing the Laughing Coffin guild so he can make people kill each other for his own amusement, to beating up a comatose Kirito in front of his True Companions entirely to spite them, to inducing players and Underworld residents, human, beast and demon alike to start killing each other solely to provoke Kirito into snapping out of his catatonia so he can fight and kill him, to even his announcement to Kirito that he will always be hellbent on him, Asuna and the others no matter what until he brutally murders them in real-life.
  • A short story released in the lead up to Variant Showdown shows that he was doing this as early as his first day in SAO. Shortly after logging in, he ran into a player duo named Castor and Pollux who invited him to party with them to take on the Secret Medicine of the Forest Quest. Agreeing, he went with them and stayed back with Pollux while Castor fought the Nephentes, during which the latter revealed that he feels guilt for convincing a reluctant Castor to play SAO with him, worsened by Castor being a gifted student who went to a famous university and was in the middle of job hunting while Pollux was an average student who would skip classes, and feels a need to pull his weight in their partnership to make up for it. In response, PoH decides to tell Pollux a weakness of the Little Nephenetes that he learnt from his employers, when in reality he was tricking him into attacking the ones with the red berries on their heads that summon more when attacked. This gets Pollux killed while Castor, while surviving, is left tired and traumatised by the death of his friend. PoH then proceeds to finish him off and posthumously mock him for his naivety, claiming that the friends' bond was a sham.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: PoH reaches an all-new low during the Alicization arc when he knocks a catatonic Kirito out of his wheelchair and beats him to a pulp in front of Asuna and the rest of his friends, all while demanding Kirito snap out of it. If it weren't for Moonphase's intervention in the Light Novel or Eiji and Yuna's in the anime, PoH would have killed him outright. And this was after he threatened to kill everyone in the area to get him to wake up.
• Laughably Evil: For a psychopathic player killer, he can be somewhat humorous when interacting with his allies. He has a tendency to make Gabriel uncomfortable by calling him "bro," constantly butts heads with Critter, shows childish glee in logging into the Underworld and joining the front lines, confuses his Underworld allies with MMO terminology, and frequently makes random tension-breaking comments. In a dark twist, his goofiness is just an act to hide his monstrous nature from his fellow Glowgen mercenaries. Once he logs into the Underworld as PoH and abandons the act, his physical and psychological violence against enemies and allies alike is played for horror.
• The Leader: Of Laughing Coffin. He led the guild with a mix of his devil-like Charisma, having drawn other players in by preaching his Player Killing views like some kind of cult leader, and keen, Levelheaded intellect, having been extremely careful when going out on excursions, having headed it when it started as The Conspiracy in Progressive and almost dismantled the frontlines a few times, and managing to have his guild evade capture for a good while before they were finally discovered and taken down, and that's because he leaked their location out of the boredom.
• Leave No Survivors:
  • Ultimately his intentions in Underworld is to do this to everyone, including the Chinese and Korean players he personally summoned, Gabriel, and all the humans, demons, and monsters of Underworld itself, just to get Kirito out of his coma.
  • In the anime, while the threat of killing both Kirito and Asuna in real-life is still directed at them, he says this to Kirito in front of their allies as the two of them fight for the last time. turning it into an Implied Death Threat for their allies as much as it is a direct threat to Kirito.
• Left for Dead: After defeating him, Kirito turns PoH into a tree to make sure he's unable to log out of the Underworld. His body mysteriously disappears from Ocean Turtle after this happens, making it unclear if this worked or not.
• Louis Cypher: Although not literally Satan/Lucifer, he is the closest equivalent to him in the franchise, and his real-life name is Vassago and his avatar's name is PoH (Prince of Hell), which already speaks of his character.
• Lower-Class Lout: Par excellence. He grew up in a trashy abusive family as an illegitimate son whose sole purpose was to be an organ donor and spent a good majority of his youth and early adult life in the criminal underworld. He checks quite a number of boxes of the stereotype: loud, crass, vulgar, less-than-educated, violent, bigoted, and a criminal. Even after getting a stable good-paying job he doesn't drop any of his lowbrow behavior and attitude.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: This was what he was in SAO for. For starters, an unnamed crime syndicate had been wanting to eliminate someone; but had no success at it since the target was too well-guarded in reality. When they find out about Kayaba's death game and the fact that the target is trapped in SAO, they seize upon the opportunity given to them, and tasked Vassago with killing the target's avatar in-game, which would lead to the target dying in reality. He is then provided the necessary NerveGear and copy of SAO. But how did he even get into SAO after the death game kicked off, when Pitohui and many others who were unable to log in on launch day (Due to scheduling conflicts, other sorts of personal obligations on that day, etc.) could not? This is answered in the Sisters' Prayer side story. After all the players were moved to hospitals and reconnected, the server stopped allowing logins from new IP addresses, but it would still accept logins from someone sharing an IP address with an SAO player. Ergo, someone in the same hospital as a player could log in. This is exactly what Merida had been counting on to be able to log in before Yuuki and Aiko talked her out of it, and is also the method Vassago used to get into SAO.
• Manipulative Bastard: When he isn't getting in on the action himself, PoH has just as much fun manipulating other people into killing each for his own amusement. He preached his twisted "Player Killing is okay" views in SAO, formed Laughing Coffin, and then leaked their location to the Clearers solely so he could watch them all kill each other and force the clearer's to kill, and it's hinted that when he invited the Chinese and Korean players to the Underworld to act as his reinforcements, it's Implied that he knew that they would figure him out sooner or later, but banked on a number of them clinging to their hatred of Japan so that he could spur all of them into killing each other just by killing the one who started pointing out how he was manipulating him.
• Mask of Sanity: Downplayed. While PoH has always been a murderous psychopath, he's a low-functioning sociopath who's able to pass himself off as a high-functioning one.
  A cold gust of wind rustled his leather hood, revealing the eyes underneath for a brief moment. They were red and dimly glowing. A devil. He was not human, but a true devil. That was the true nature of PoH. The mask of the cheerful agitator he wore in Aincrad and the mask of the harsh commander he wore here were both just that: lies. In truth, he was a cold, cruel agent of vengeance who sought only to inflict pain, to torment and wipe out all traces of humanity...
• Meaningful Name: His given name (Vassago) is a reference to a certain Prince of Hell. It also adds to his satanic character. Apparently his mother gave it to him because she never wanted him to begin with.
• Not Quite Dead: Implied. Despite his fate in the Underworld, Vassago's body is revealed to have mysteriously disappeared when the GDS survivors went to collect his, Gabriel, and Brigg's bodies, to which Critter remembers that while he did confirm Gabriel's death and witness Brigg get killed, he never confirmed whether or not that Vassago was dead.
• Obviously Evil: With his name, satanic character and Red Right Hand, you could see villain from a mile away.
• Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction after figuring out that Kirito intends to imprison him in a tree instead of killing him.
• Omni Glot: According to the novels he is apparently fluent in Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, Russian, and Latin American Spanish. Kirito even wonders if he's of mixed ethnicity, which is verified later on: He was born as the illegitimate son of a Japanese man and Mexican woman and joined a Korean crime gang upon coming to Japan. His multilingual fluency is much more relevant later on during the Alicization arc, where he's part of a 12-man team of operators from Glowgen Defense Systems making an assault on Ocean Turtle, led by GDS's own Gabriel Miller. All of the team speak English, with only him and Gabriel being fluent in Japanese. This meant that they would enter the Underworld via non-password protected accounts (Vassago chose an account of a dark knight, while Gabriel got the account of Emperor Vector), in an attempt to locate Alice.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He has zero regard for the lives of anyone, including his fellow teammates in Laughing Coffin or would-be boss Gabriel in Underworld. Upon entering Underworld, his goal is to pit all of the Japanese players by summoning thousands of American, Filipino Chinese, and Korean players and have them all fight to the death. Then brag to Asuna that he'll kill thousands of beings, including her, their allied forces, and every other human and monster down there, including the foreign players he just summoned and the demon army under his and Gabriel's command just to get a comatose Kirito to wake up and fight him. His threat to Kirito about ripping out his and Asuna's hearts out and slitting their throats carries the implication that he'll do so knowing that their friends or family will find out, and that he'll be around to take them out in much the same way.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: He's enraged when he enters Underworld and sees the broken Kirito, but only because he wasn't the one to leave him that way. Part of his reason to get everyone around killing each other, as well as declaring to kill everyone himself is to try and snap Kirito out of it so he can fight and destroy him himself.
• One-Winged Angel: Transforms into a literal "Prince of Hell" during his fight against Kirito.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: In his backstory, it's stated that after SAO ended Vassago killed his old employer, a Korean Mafia boss who was the one who sent him into SAO in the first place, after he tried to swindle him out of his payment.
• Personality Powers: Invoked weapon example. His weapon, the Mate Chopper, is largely dependent on what the wielder does with it; the lore of Aincrad labels it as a cursed weapon that gets more powerful if it kills other players, but weaker if it kills monsters and other mobs. If you kill enough monsters and "break the curse", it turns into a powerful katana but if you do what PoH did and just keep killing other players with it, you get a weapon that just keeps getting more and more powerful whenever you kill someone.
• Phenotype Stereotype: Latino and has brown skin.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: His hatred towards his Japanese father translates to hostility towards East Asians as a whole, to the point that he relishes the sight of East Asian players killing one another.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Not child per se, but the more his Mate Chopper is used to kill other players its stats increase more and more. The inverse of killing monsters, while apparently awarding you with a powerful Katana, actually decreases its stats. In the Underworld, it just gets empowered by death in general.
• Power Of Hate: Ultimately, PoH's powerful Incarnation in the Underworld, which allows his Mate Chopper to absorb the spatial resources caused by the resident's deaths, allows him to spread a Hate Plague, and survive having a Torso with a View, stems from his Sadistic hatred of East Asians stemming from his experiences with his father.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In Girls Ops. In Lux's backstory, he stops one of his underlings from killing her by pointing out that they're down a town infiltration member, as they had to kill one of them when they tried escaping. Plus, from the sinister sneer he flashed when he forced her to join, he probably figured she'd suffer more if forced to work for them.
• Practically Joker: PoH is an Ax-Crazy Manipulative Bastard Serial Killer whose default expression appears to be a Slasher Smile, generally has a jovial attitude, derives a good deal of pleasure from his murderous actions, and is hinted to have a twisted sense of showmanship with his "It's Showtime" Catchphrase. He also delights in his Arch-Enemy relationship with Kirito, constantly expressing a desire to break him and wants to be the one to kill him personally, and acts as an agent of chaos by corrupting people into killing each other, as shown with the Laughing Coffin guild and what he does with the Chinese and Korean players he invites. Furthermore, his two Co-Dragons XaXa and Johnny Black are basically his Harley Quinns, with them being otherwise loyal followers who he honestly couldn't care less about. The only things different from the other examples are that his backstory is shown and he lacks the clown aesthetic completely (though he does wear purple as his Dark Knight avatar in Alicization).
• Professional Killer: Upon coming to Japan, Vassago joined the Korean Mafia as an assassin, and pulled off nine successful hits before SAO. Even his presence in SAO was part of a job, logging in after the Death Game started since the target was too well-guarded IRL.
• Psycho for Hire: A murderous Sadist who cares only for killing, and not only did his guild take jobs to kill other players for a price, but before SAO he was a Professional Killer for the Korean Mafia, who were the guys who sent him into SAO in the first place, and after it ended he returned to the USA to become a mercenary for a PMC company that specializes in wetwork.
• Psycho Knife Nut: Kirito himself admits that PoH is probably the best One-Handed Dagger user to have come out of SAO, which fits with his Ax-Crazy Blood Knight personality that he hides beneath a veneer of charm.
• Psychopathic Manchild: While he can maintain his Mask of Sanity like Sugou, underneath it is little more than a vicious schoolyard bully, just flanderized into murderous sociopathy. His reaction when he logs into the Underworld is comparable to an overexcited kid on a sugar rush.
• Purple Is Powerful: As a Dark Knight, he dons dark purple armor and, while not as powerful as he is using his SAO Avatar, he's still plenty skilled, being able to sneak into the Human Army camp without notice before encountering Ronye, and almost killing her when they get into a brief duel.
• Red Right Hand: Vassago has a large vertical scar on the right side of his head. Also his eyes glow red when he's hooded.
• Sadist: Born to a Japanese father, who forced his mother to have him so he can be used in a kidney transplant for a relative, he joined a Korean crime gang to kill Japanese people and he created the Laughing Coffin guild just to watch them kill each other. PoH later brings Chinese and Korean gamers into Underworld to fight the Japanese gamers who are rescuing Kirito, just to revel in the sight of Asians killing each other. But wait, there's more. PoH proceeds to beat down a helpless Kirito in front of his True Companions just to spite them, planning to cut off his limbs and force Kirito to watch him torture Asuna and everyone else down in Underworld, regardless of their affiliation or species. And when Kirito has recovered from his Game-Breaking Injury and defeats him, PoH vows that he will never stop coming after Kirito and Asuna until he finally manages to kill them in real-life by cutting their throats and ripping their hearts out. This backfires on him epically; after hearing this, Kirito has had enough of him and subjects PoH to a Karmic Death by permanently trapping him in a tree and leaving him to rot in Underworld.
• Satanic Archetype: Perhaps the closest example in the series. He was considered an outcast having been born as an illegitimate child similar to Lucifer being cast from Heaven. Not only is he responsible for the corruption of many an SAO player and the post-SAO incidents but he dons a dark robe, is named Vassago (one of the demons in the Ars Goetia) and calls himself PoH (meaning Prince of Hell). Also adding to his Satanic character is that he deceives players from America, China, Korea, Philippines and Russia to fight the Japanese players in the Underworld, which neatly parallels Satan gathering the nations around the world to fight the people of God in the Book of Revelation. To further add to the Messiah-Satan contrast, Kirito's recovery from his Game-Breaking Injury and victory over PoH and his forces during the final battle parallels the Second Coming of Christ and him defeating Satan's forces in the final battle in the Book of Revelation.
• Self-Duplication: He creates several shadowy duplicates of himself using his Incarnation during his duel with Kirito in the War of the Underworld.
• Simple, yet Awesome: It's noted that the simplicity of his Incarnation, which generates from his single-minded desire to kill and torture, ends up making him incredibly powerful, to the point where he can survive having a Torso with a View.
• Slashed Throat: Attempts to do this on both Kirito and Asuna should he get kicked out from UW, with the anime adding in the implication that he won't stop with just them. Kirito kills him for this shortly afterward (via a cruel and unusual method).
• Slasher Smile: He loves giving these, fitting for the Serial Killer that he is.
• Small Role, Big Impact: For the franchise as a whole. Although getting much less screen-time than Kayaba in the Aincrad arc, the repercussions of his actions extend far beyond him. His establishment of the Laughing Coffin in Aincrad and the subsequent corruption of many a player into player killers and even real-life serial killers was what ultimately led to the Phantom Bullet and Alicization arcs.
• The Sociopath: Misanthropic, bloodthirsty, manipulative, and utterly devoted to dog-kicking, Vassago shows among the darker, more dangerous depictions of sociopathy. He establishes the Laughing Coffin guild so he can have people kill each other to satisfy his bloodlust, and even corrupts many an SAO player into player killers and even real-life serial killers.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Like Gabriel, he has yet to suffer the fate he has in canon in the Gameverse. The closest Kirito gets to encountering him is his confrontation with his just as Sociopathic Hollow Copy.
• Stalker without a Crush: His obsession with Kirito can be described as this, he claims he does not hate Kirito but loves and respects him. He became fascinated by Kirito's unbreakable will, always remaining defiant and continuing to fight no matter how much pain he caused the boy, never becoming corrupted no matter how much he was tempted. When PoH finds Kirito in the Underworld, his desire is not to kill the boy but to wake him up from his coma (by having everyone else regardless of affiliation be killed) and restore him to his former state... and then kill him.
• Stupid Evil: As highlighted under Fatal Flaw, PoH is far too sadistic and bloodthirsty for his own good and simply can't resist "twisting the knife" or opportunities to Kick the Dog, actively antagonizing Kirito and his friends even when doing so is clearly not a good idea. This backfires on him when he openly mouths off to Kirito that once he logs out of the Underworld, he won't stop coming after Kirito and Asuna until he manages to brutally murder them in real life; in response, Kirito traps him in a tree and leaves him to rot in Underworld.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: Vassago's end goal is to create a virtual world where people reveal their true colors... by killing each other, for his own amusement.
• Too Dumb to Live: After Kirito defeats him soundly in the Alicization arc, PoH decides to openly mouth off to him and brag that as soon as he logs out of Underworld, he's going to keep coming after Kirito and Asuna until he finally kills them in real-life. He cements his downfall by doing this; Kirito has no intention of letting him walk away after such a threat and decides to trap him in a tree and leave him to rot in Underworld forever rather than kill him.
• Torso with a View: Gets one when Asuna uses Mother's Rosario on him, but his Mate Chopper sucking in all the death occurring on the battlefield helps him survive.
• Übermensch: Vassago has antisocial behavior, presenting himself as a cheerfully sadistic man who believes that the virtual world reveals people's true colors and that people should give in to their murderous impulses and murder each other to their heart's content, which was why he founded the Laughing Coffin so he can murder other players For the Evulz and influence others into doing the same. His love of killing and violence serves its purpose as a twisted value; he doesn't care which side was winning, such as when he leaked the Laughing Coffin guild's location to the raiders or tried to make the Chinese and Korean players kill each other when they start to find out about his scheme, because all he cared about was watching people kill each other. Understandably, most people see his philosophy as little more than murder and sadism For the Evulz, but he was able to influence several of the Laughing Coffin members to his ideals, such as XaXa and Johnny Black. Kirito here would be the Last Man.
• The Unfettered: PoH can't be reasoned with and he'll do whatever it takes to get what he wants. This is also his "double-edged sword".
• Villain Has a Point: He founds Laughing Coffin with the sole intent of killing other players for fun, stating that since Akihiko Kayaba is the one who set up the death game in the first place, he'll get all the blame for any deaths that occur in SAO while any and all player killers will get off scot-free. Sadly, he's proven right when SAO is cleared.
• Villainous Breakdown: Starts losing his composure when after Kirito starts using his Night Sky Sword, which was made from the Gigas Cedar, to absorb the spatial resources from the deceased his Mate Chopper was previously absorbing, desperately waving his enlarged dagger to try cut off the flow going to Kirito's sword. He is so unnerved that he doesn’t even indulge in any of his gloating while doing so, not saying a word.
• Villainous Rescue: Subverted. He did save Lux from getting killed by a monster, but he then immediately forced her to join the Guild as a town infiltrator and threatened to leave her to die if she didn't comply.
• Villain Respect: Contrary to what Asuna believes, PoH admits that he has nothing but respect for Kirito, even claiming he loves him, not only for his strength, but for being able to resist his attempts to manipulate and corrupt him. Unfortunately, this "respect" and "love" compels him to do increasingly horrendous acts and being obsessed with killing him himself.
• We Will Meet Again: He attempts this, declaring that even if Kirito does kill him in UW, he'll just keep showing up in front of Kirito over and over again until he finally manages to brutally murder Kirito and Asuna. Unfortunately for him, Kirito has no intention of letting him walk away after such a threat and traps him in a tree, declaring he's never logging out.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite being trapped as a tree in the Underworld, his IRL body somehow disappears from the Ocean Turtle with not even the GDS mercenaries, who went to the STL Room to collect Gabriel's body, not knowing where it went. Leaving it uncertain if he somehow managed to make good on his threat to leave Underworld and go after Kirto and his allies in real life, or if the spell made it so that his real body was erased from existence at the same time it was cast.
• Willfully Weak: Zig-zagged. His Mate Chopper was apparently a very unique weapon in that if it killed enough mobs, an action that lowers its stats each time, it turns into a powerful Katana with the same name. This being PoH, he naturally stuck with its dagger form and its ability to get more powerful the more players it killed.
• The Worf Effect: Despite being the former leader of Laughing Coffin and Gabriel's right-hand man, PoH ends up being defeated, and then unceremoniously killed off by Kirito to show off the latter's Dual Wielding of the Night Sky and Blue Rose Swords.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • When he's initially logged in as a Dark Knight, Vassago gets into a duel with Ronye while he's infiltrating the human camp, and would have killed her if it wasn't' for Asuna's Deus ex Machina. Later on, when he logs back in with his SAO Avatar, he casually shoves her out of his way when she tries to block him off from Kirito.
  • Would've slit Asuna's throat along with Kirito's if it weren't for the latter's interference putting a Spanner in His Works. By that token, his threats to kill everyone in Underworld to awaken Kirito from his coma also has him threaten her life first before moving on to every other human, monster, and demon in the area.
• Worthy Opponent: To Kirito. There is no one who can satisfy Vassago more than Kirito, with his obsession of the boy being to Stalker with a Crush levels. Vassago has nothing but respect and praise for Kirito and had longed for batle with him for years.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: It's said that he set up Laughing Coffin to be killed by the Assault Team when he got "bored" of running it.

Shouichi Shinkawa / XaXa

Shouichi Shinkawa / XaXa (SAO)

Voiced by: Soichiro Hoshi (Japanese) Ben Diskin (English), Brandon Montor (Season I), Alfredo Gabriel Basurto (Season II) (Latin American Spanish)

One of the top members of the Laughing Coffin, who survived the assault on the guild.

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• Adaptational Dye-Job: It's stated that in SAO had red eyes and hair. However, while his eyes appear as such, the anime depicts his hair as being a dark color, potentially the same as it is IRL.
• Ascended Extra: A very minor character in the Aincrad arc before going on to become the Big Bad Duumvirate of the Phantom Bullet arc, namely as The Heavy among them.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He's stated to be the Guilds Master Swordsman, and he was Co-Dragons to PoH alongside Johnny Black.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Of Phantom Bullet, alongside Johnny Black, and his brother Kyouji. XaXa actually serves as The Heavy and given he is the mastermind behind the "Death Gun" plot this also makes him the overall Big Bad.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: In contrast to Vassago's Beauty Is Bad, Shouichi, when under the mask, looks kind of ugly.
• Call-Forward: In the light novel version of "A Murder Case in the Area" (Episodes 4 and 5 from season 1 for reference), he threatens to chase down Kirito on a horse after he rides in on one to save Yorko, Caynz and Schmitt. In GGO, he, as Death Gun, chases down Kirito and Sinon on a (mechanical) horse.
• The Chessmaster: The mastermind of the Death Gun plot, having been Crazy-Prepared in the equipment the Death Gun avatar possesses and carrying out kills with immense precision. He's also able to remain ahead of Kirito including luring him into a trap.
• Co-Dragons: To PoH alongside Johnny Black.
• Cool Big Bro: Implied. Growing up before SAO, he was apparently this to Kyouji, with Kikuoka noting that they were close growing up when reading their profile. These days... not so much.
• Creepy Souvenir: His appearance in "The Safe Zone Murder" hints that he makes a habit of stealing rapier and estoc weapons from his victims to wield himself, such when he takes the Estoc made by Grimlock that Yolko was using to intimidate Schmitt for himself upon noticing it's good stats. Seeing as deaths in SAO result in the victim exploding into shards, this is likely the closest he gets to collecting body parts from his victims.
• Curtains Match the Window: His avatar in SAO has red hair and eyes.
• Dragon Ascendant: Along with Johnny Black, XaXa becomes the Arc Villain of GGO.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • In Hollow Realization, while he doesn't make a direct appearance, Kyouji (as Richter) does make mention of him multiple times as his "brother", particularly when threatening Kirito and including a part where, upon gaining an orange cursor after attacking Sinon, he notes it happened just like his "big brother" said it would.
  • After the above event happens and a later event with Sinon finishes, he uses his brother's account to talk to Kirito and say he'll be the one to eventually bring his story to an end, heavily giving hints to who he is without outright revealing it.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played With. While he has a Villainous Friendship with Johnny Black, Kikuoka speculates that not even he fully comprehends how messed up Johnny is.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • For Yuuki Konno. Both are very ill in real-life and wanted to prove their strength in the VR world, which gave them more opportunities than the real world. Unlike Yuuki, XaXa completely gave up on real world ethics and became a killing machine, equating strength with murder.
  • Also one to Kirito, who's also a SAO Survivor and had a Master Swordsman reputation. However, Kirito was left traumatized by taking the life of other players, while XaXa took pride in it and his status as a true red player. There's some similarities in their backgrounds, the both of them having felt unwelcomed in their families, Kazuto due to his Happily Adopted status and Shouichi due to being an Inadequate Inheritor because of his poor health, and the both of them having younger siblings who cared for them, though Kazuto tried to distance himself from Suguha due to them not being blood related, while Shouichi, at least initially, was apparently a Cool Big Bro to Kyouji.
  • To Asuna. Both are the rapier-wielding Number Twos of their respective organisations who have red as part of their respective Color Motifs, and in real life are from wealthy families who wished for them to excel academically. However, while Asuna's mother doesn't seem to mind what career Asuna pursues so long as it appropriately provides for her, Shouichi was initially raised with the intent of taking over the family hospital. While Asuna became a top student and had no gaming experience by the time she was trapped in SAO, Shouichi's poor health caused him to become a high school drop-out who turned to gaming to cope. And while Asuna wears a white clothes that give off a Knight in Shining Armor vibes, XaXa wore a black poncho and other dark clothes that made him resemble a brigand.
• The Faceless: The audience never gets a clear look at Shouichi's face, and the heroes never get a chance to meet him in real-life. He wears a skull mask as XaXa and as Death Gun, and his brief shots in the anime always obscure his eyes.
• Freudian Excuse: Shouichi lived his entire life suffering from frailty and sickness to the point he was constantly moved between his home and the hospital after middle school. By the time he entered high school a year late, his father had all but given up on him becoming a doctor and coming into the family business. He eventually dropped out of high school entirely and turned to the internet and MMORPGs as an escape from the disappointment of his real-life. Then he ended up in SAO, where he met PoH and was molded with the mindset of a serial killer.
• The Heavy: While Johnny Black and his brother Kyouji are also part of Death Gun, it is XaXa who poses the most direct threat to Kirito and Sinon during the events of Phantom Bullet, controlling the avatar that engages them in combat and culminating in the final duel that results in his identity (and indirectly those of consorts) being made known. His defeat also signals the end of most of the conflict of the arc, minus the last bit with his brother Kyouji.
• Hero Killer: Earns this reputation in SAO and GGO. As one of the few players who can match Kirito in a sword fight, it is not unwarranted.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Of a different stripe than his brother Kyouji. Due to his life of illness his father eventually gave up hope of him ever inheriting the family business of being a doctor and pushed his expectations on his little brother, which lead to Shouichi dropping out of high school and committing himself to the internet and videogames.
• Informed Ability: Downplayed. Many characters state that he wielded Estoc and Rapier like weapons, yet the sword he's depicted with appears to be a single-edge sword, bearing a closer resemblance to a Sinister Scimitar. That being said, it's likely that the weapons themselves were classified as Rapiers and simply had their appearance due to Rule of Cool.
• Lack of Empathy: Due to his past, XaXa only sees value in that which is beneficial to him. He has no qualms killing other people if the mood strikes, and he actually spent his time in GGO before he became Death Gun stalking other players from afar and imagining ways to kill them. He also sees no problem in manipulating his brother into joining on his murderous exploits with seemingly no concern for his future.
• Malevolent Masked Man: His entire face is never fully shown as it is always obscured by a skull mask.
• Manipulative Bastard: The Death Gun incident can be largely attributed to him taking advantage of his brother's fragile mind and his hatred for XeXeeD to give himself an excuse to kill again.
• Master Swordsman: The best swordsman in the Guild, and a match for Kirito. He gets to duel once more against the latter during the climax of GGO's BoB tournament, this time posing as the Death Gun and using a hidden estoc within his sniper rifle. He also goes into detail about how Kirito is rusty and uses technical jargon.
• Psycho for Hire: To the point where he could not stop killing after being released into the real world.
• Red Baron: "Red-Eyed" XaXa
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His avatar in SAO has red eyes which helped earn his nickname. His helmet as the Death Gun in GGO has red lenses that glow.
• Royal Rapier: He's a master fencer and he wields an estoc, a thin, sharply pointed sword meant for stabbing. It's zigzagged with the archetype associated with rapier-users. He turns out to be the scion of a rich family that owns a hospital, but he doesn't have any personal refinement or manners, being rather thuggish and blunt towards other characters.
• Serial Killer: In SAO and out of it, he kills others that match his profile.
• Skull for a Head: Wears a skull helmet. His preference carries over into GGO, where he poses as the Death Gun.
• The Sociopath: While he's Implied to have been fairly decent person growing up, with hints that he was a Cool Big Bro to Kyouji, getting trapped in SAO and joining Laughing Coffin seems to have morphed him into this, with him displaying clear sadistic tendencies, spending his time post-SAO stalking other players in GGO and imagining ways to kill them, and even manipulating his brother's anger at XeXeeD and desire for strength to create Death Gun so he can fulfil his murderous desires.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: XaXa and Death Gun are fairly reserved and even keeled for sociopathic madmen.
• Unknown Rival: Invoked on Kirito's part, with him not wanting XaXa to tell him his name after the Laughing Coffin raid, wanting to push the trauma of incident to the back of his mind. This ends up biting him the ass when, while he figures out that Death Gun is former Laughing Coffin member, he doesn't know his username, meaning he can't report him and get him arrested.
• Weak, but Skilled: Played With. Shouichi was an ill boy IRL, but SAO showed him to be a Master Swordsman, something that made him one of the most feared Player Killers alongside PoH and Johnny Black. However, it's unknown if his stat build in-game Invoked this or Strong and Skilled, and his Death Gun Avatar doesn't provide many indicators to which since A; his improvised estoc was likely much weaker statistically compared to his ones in SAO and mainly gave him the advantage in that he was more used to wielding weapons like it, and B; he was fighting someone with a Laser Blade, which are essentially One-Hit Kill weapons.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Averted. After his capture and imprisonment in SAO, he did nothing but train with his rapier skills, to the point where like Kirito, he can replicate SAO moves via muscle memory and can actually beat Kirito in a sword fight (though it should be noted that Kirito couldn't fight all out as his lightsaber had no weight, and he's too used to heavy swords).
• Villainous Friendship: XaXa is very good friends with Johnny Black which is likely why it was so easy for XaXa to convince Black to help him as part of Death Gun.
• Walking Spoiler: Even more so than the rest of his Laughing Coffin comrades due to the fact that he comes back in Gun Gale Online as the avatar known as Death Gun, and carries out public virtual executions while his accomplices inject their victims with succinylcholine in the real world.

Atsushi Kanamoto / Johnny Black

Atsushi Kanamoto / Johnny Black (SAO)

Voiced by: Ryōta Ōsaka (Japanese), Alejandro Saab (English), Alberto Bernal (Season I), José Ángel Torres (Alicization) (Latin American Spanish)

^{Click here to see him in RL}

One of the top members of the Laughing Coffin, and a survivor of SAO.

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• Adapted Out: There is no mention of him in Fatal Bullet, the gameverse adaptation of the Phantom Bullet arc, with Death Gun instead being solely operated by the Shinkawa brothers.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Much like XaXa, Johnny Black is skilled enough to be one of PoH's Co-Dragons.
• Ax-Crazy: While his cohorts are able to show a degree of subtlety, with PoH being capable of putting up a convincing façade to better manipulate people and fit in with general society, and XaXa being a quiet, Soft-Spoken Sadist, Johnny makes it no secret what a monster he is. He specifically chose to use paralysis poison so he could torture his victims before killing them, he apparently makes it a habit to force his victims into Involuntary Battles To The Death, and he was easily convinced to take part in Death Gun. To put this all into perspective, PoH, who is easily the most Ax-Crazy character outside of Gabriel Miller, is better-functioning compared to Johnny.
• Beard of Evil: His real-life appearance shows that he has a stubble, though it's oddly absent in the anime.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Whereas his partner-in-crime Shouichi just looked merely ugly in real life, his real-life appearance is basically a Nightmare Face.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Of GGO, alongside XaXa and his brother Kyouji.
• Co-Dragons: To PoH alongside XaXa.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: For a person of his appearance, he's got a noticeably high-pitched voice, which only goes to make him even more disturbing.
• Dragon Ascendant: Subverted. He is part of the Big Bad Ensemble with XaXa in Phantom Bullet, and while they technically share equal power, ultimately it is still XaXa who is the mastermind with Johnny Black being an accomplice.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He appears in the first Progressive movie as part of the first floor raid team. Naturally, he tries to goad the crowd into anti-beta tester hate after Kibaou starts trouble.
• Establishing Character Moment: His first on-screen appearance was when he, XaXa and PoH incapacitate the Golden Apple guild. Black planned on making the guild fight each other to the death before killing the last man standing. Based on PoH's comment to him, this isn't the first time he did it, and it shows how sadistic he is.
• Evil Is Hammy: Compared to PoH and XaXa, Johnny's Ax-Crazy nature is much more obvious, with him often talking loudly about his murderous inclinations and cackling.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: In the manga, at least, Johnny Black is seen smoking a cigarette and tossing in down onto the ground before squishing it with his shoe. It may have been a habit he picked up from PoH
• Hate Sink: Even compared to his fellow Laughing Coffin leadership trio, Johnny Black really stands out with how despicable he is. Johnny Black is far and far the most Ax-Crazy member of the trio, lacking the restraint and cunning of XaXa and PoH. He's gleefully sadistic, as he specifically chose to use paralysis poison for the purpose of torturing and killing his victims, and shamelessly boasts about the sadistic games he will play with his would-be victims. Additionally, he's involved in the Death Gun plot, so that he can satiate his desire to kill once more. Upon the Death Gun plot being foiled by Kirito, he attacks him and puts him into a coma, making the Alicization arc possible to begin with, and becomes indirectly responsible for all the misfortune that befalls that befalls on Kirito in the Underworld.
• Hero Killer: Has this reputation in SAO like many others in Laughing Coffin. He also nearly killed Kazuto in real life.
• Involuntary Battle to the Death: Plans to force the members of the Golden Apple Guild into one. The survivor gets to live!
  PoH: But the last time you did that, you killed the winner anyways.
  Johnny: Agh, don't tell them that!
• Lack of Empathy: Expresses joy in others' pain.
• Kick the Dog: Everything he does in his on-screen appearances is to show how petty and wicked he is.
  • Incapacitates the Golden Apple guild and wants to force them to kill each other before killing the last man standing anyway, with PoH revealing that he's done this before.
  • Him stalking Kirito and Asuna and then attacking Kirito with the succinylcholine syringe in his final attempt on him.
• Master Poisoner: Was infamous for using poisons, and equipping the rest of Laughing Coffin with them.
• Meaningful Name: Johnny Black alludes to another insane character.
• Nightmare Face: From what little IRL screentime we get, he wastes no time in showing some pretty disturbing and twisted faces, almost always with a Slasher Smile. Little wonder why there was the burlap sack.
• Obviously Evil: Let's see, Player Killer, Torture Technician and Master Poisoner in-game with a burlap sack for a mask, and his real-life appearance having a haggard-looking appearance with narrow eyes and a stubble, what else could you guess what kind of person he is from all that?
• Poisoned Weapons: His specialty, which only serves to highlight his Obviously Evil character.
• Practically Joker: He's PoH in training. Like his former superior, he has a perpetual Slasher Smile expression, is prone to Laughing Mad fits, is a completely insane lunatic who's in it for the torturing and killing, as well as obsessing over Kirito and even coming close to killing him. Closer to most examples, he has unnatural hair and skin color in real life, and little is known about his backstory. And while it's not quite Joker Venom, he's well-known for his use of poisons.
• Psycho for Hire: Loves to kill, in both the real world and the games.
• Psycho Knife Nut: Johnny is an Ax-Crazy, Sadistic lunatic who's well known for his use of poison-coated knives.
• Put on a Prison Bus: After his final attack on Kirito, he soon gets arrested and is never heard of ever again.
• Revenge Before Reason: Chooses to use his last shot of succinylcholine to attack Kirito and avenge his comrades rather than attempt to flee the country for good. Justified in the end since while he had no way of knowing it, the authorities discovered his role in the Death Gun incident from interrogating his two co-conspirators and even without that, as an SAO survivor he'd likely be under great scrutiny from the government anyway.
• Sackhead Slasher: Wore a burlap sack for a mask in Aincrad.
• Sadist: You know how sadistic he is when they not only force their captives to fight to the death but kill the last man standing anyway.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After XaXa is revealed to be Death Gun and their plans are foiled Black gets the hell out of dodge as quickly as possible.
• Serial Killer: In SAO and out of it, culminating in an attack on Kirito and Asuna in the real world.
• Small Role, Big Impact: His attempted murder of Kirito was what lands him in Underworld, and considering all the misfortunes that happen to him over there.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The name "Johnny" doesn't really give off any particularly scary vibes, but this guy is still an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer.
• Torture Technician: Uses his poisons so he can incapacitate and then torture before killing them.
• White Hair, Black Heart: From what little is seen of him, his real-life counterpart has very fair (or grey) hair.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Which goes hand-in-hand with his IRL Nightmare Face.

Other members

Kuradeel

Kuradeel (SAO)

Voiced by: Koji Yusa (Japanese), Doug Erholtz (English), Sergio Capelo (European Spanish), Christian Strempler (Latin American Spanish)

A Two-Handed Sword user and Asuna's bodyguard. Later revealed to be The Mole and actually a member of Laughing Coffin.

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• Adaptational Wimp: He has one less kill to his name in the anime than in the light novel, since the unnamed KoB member who joined him, Godfree, and Kirito on a training mission was Adapted Out.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's never outright stated whether Kuradeel was always a Laughing Coffin spy or, as the anime implies, PoH manipulated him into joining after seeing him lose to Kirito in a duel.
• Ax-Crazy: Laughs madly while slowly torturing Godfrey to death, then takes his sweet time trying to torment Kirito as the latter lies paralyzed.
• BFS: His weapon of choice was a heavily decorated yet fragile Two-Handed Sword named Tyrant Dragon. Kirito breaks it during their duel, but he's able to get a new one.
• Bodyguard Crush: A very twisted version. He uses his position as an excuse to exclude Asuna from romantic rivals like Kirito, though it obviously doesn't stick.
• Dark Is Evil: In contrast to his armor, Kuradeel's BFS, and a matching dagger he has in his inventory, both have dark purple blade.
• Didn't Think This Through: His entire plan was to poison the party he was with, eliminate the two other KoB members and Kirito, then return to headquarters and claim they were killed by bandits. However, even if Asuna didn't intervene, he wouldn't have been able to return to headquarters in town with his new orange cursor and he would have to explain how he got it if he was able to return.
• Dirty Coward: He poisons the rest of his party, paralyzing them, and slowly tortures Godfrey to death before trying to do the same to Kirito. When Asuna turns the tables on him and nearly kills him, Kuradeel pathetically tries to appeal to her conscience before trying to kill her.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In Episode 1, his name is one of many seen on the Monument of Life.
• Hate Sink: He was already pretty unlikable from the outset, given how much of a clingy stalker of a bodyguard he was for Asuna while being extremely condescending towards Kirito for being a kid and a beta-player. However, he loses all sympathy when it's revealed he's actually an Ax-Crazy murderer who is a member of the Laughing Coffin.
• Hypocrite: Condemns Kirito as a murderer for killing him with his last breath, coming from the guy who joined up with the Laughing Coffin Guild, murdered Godfrey and another unnamed KoB member, and made an attempt on Kirito's life just a moment ago.
• If I Can't Have You…: While his initial plan was to kill Kirito so he could "comfort" Asuna in her grief, he seems content with killing her when she pulls a Big Damn Heroes and attacks him.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the anime, Kirito blocks a strike from Kuradeel intended for Asuna (at the cost of his hand) and then proceeds to stab him in the ribcage with an Embracer speartip hand. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to attack her in front of Kirito.
  Kuradeel: God damn you... you murdered me.
• Informed Ability: Him being part of the KoB, who largely scout other players based on their skills, hints that he's a highly skilled player. However, his duel against Kirito is over in seconds, he resorts to poison when he enacts his betrayal, and Asuna delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle to him when she arrives to save Kirito.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Pulls this on Asuna in both the light novel and anime. It works, unfortunately, and Kuradeel knocks her rapier away before attempting to kill her.
  Kuradeel: The oldest trick in the book... AND YOU FELL FOR IT, BITCH!
• Jerkass: He treats Asuna like a trophy despite being her subordinate and treats Kirito like trash despite being ten levels lower than him. Even in his dying words, he accuses Kirito of "murdering" him, even though he tried to kill Kirito and Asuna (and did kill Godfrey), forcing them to fight back in self-defense.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: When Kirito encounters him again after joining, he apologizes for his previous behavior and goes along with Godfree's attempt at putting their bad blood to rest. Unfortunately, he turns out to have been lying out of his ass and attempted to use Godfree's plan to kill Kirito.
• Karmic Death:
  • Asuna was the object of his crazed affections, and he personally tries to make sure no one can get near her. In the webnovel, it's Asuna who personally kills him without a moment of hesitation or feeling any guilt over it once he reveals his true colors.
  • In the anime he's using his position as a guard to keep romantic rivals away from Asuna, so it's also pretty ironic that Kirito is the one who kills him.
• Light Is Not Good: Like other KoB members, Kuradeel wears bright white armour and clothes to invoke a Knight in Shining Armor image. While the group itself doesn't always live up to the chivalric standards it seems to set itself, Kuradeel is bare none the last person who should be wearing it, being an Ax-Crazy, Sadistic Stalker with a Crush.
• Master Poisoner: He was able to learn how to craft poisons after joining Laughing Coffin, which he used when he tried to kill Kirito.
• Obviously Evil: Downplayed. If his stalkerish and rude behavior wasn't enough, his weapon is a darkly colored sword called Tyrant Dragon.
• Psycho Knife Nut: He has dagger with a similar design to his BFS, which he uses to try and stab Kirito after losing their duel.
• Slasher Smile: Busts out a few while he's killing Godfrey and attempting to kill Kirito.
• Stalker with a Crush: Towards Asuna. He lurks around her house in the morning (and implied at night) because "it's his job" as her bodyguard. Asuna doesn't appreciate this.
• Tattooed Crook: He bears the Laughing Coffin insignia on his forearm.
• Younger Than They Look: According to Kirito, Kuradeel is in his early 20s despite his older-looking face.

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Morte

Morte (SAO)

Voiced by: Yūsuke Kobayashi (Japanese)

A mysterious player who appears to be obstructing the efforts to clear the game for some unknown reason.

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• Ax-Crazy: He's a sadistic murderer, and he's got the axe to prove it.
• Arc Villain: He was one of the main threats during Progressive.
• Break the Haughty: Throughout the previous Arcs of Progressive, Morte always presented himself as cheerfully Sadistic and smug, never taking his fights with Kirito seriously and treating it more like a game if anything. However, after Kirito almost kills him due to the Accuracy upgrade he gave his Sword of Eventide^note  While upgrades to Sharpness increases it's attack power and Weight increases the power behind attacks, Accuracy adds something of an auto-aim feature to attacks to increase the chance of hitting an enemy's weak point, Morte is noticeably panicked and he becomes despondent after Kirito pulls the sword out, laying on the ground unmoving with the fact that his Avatar was still there being the only sign he was still alive.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: Played With. While Morte is the Sadistic Heavy who's shown to wield an axe, called the Harsh Hatchet as if to drive the point home, he's also a skilled swordsman and is much more devious than most characters of this type, using his dual specialties to serve as a double agent for the ALS and DKB.
• Evil Counterpart: Like Kirito he identifies himself as a Beater, but unlike Kirito who was pretending to be a bad person due to his Zero-Approval Gambit, Morte is legitimately evil.
• Evil Genius: He's this for The Conspiracy. Being a Beta-Tester, he has a generally good idea of things from the Beta that can cause trouble depending on if and how they were adapted to the main game, such as tricking both frontline guilds into taking different sides in the Elf War Campaign by claiming that it led to vital information on the Floor Boss and revealing that the Floor 5 Boss drops the "Flag of Valor", a low-power spear that compensates by being able to grant buffs to the Guild it's affiliated with when stabbed into the ground, which would have shattered the Frontline's power balance and caused it to fall apart if only the ALS or DKB got it.
• Faux Affably Evil: Kirito notes that Morte speaks in a polite tone, but this only serves to make him unnerving.
• The Heavy: For The Conspiracy and "the man in the black poncho", PoH.
• In the Hood: He wears a chainmail coif that, while less protective than a helmet, can also hide his identity.
• Loophole Abuse: When we first meet him, he tries to use one of these in the dueling system to avoid a red cursor. His plan to challenge Kirito to a half-off duel so make it seem friendly, only to deal enough damage to not win but get it close to half, and then use a powerful Sword Skill to guaranteed Kirito loses the rest of his HP, killing him and preventing himself from getting a Red Cursor since the duel system is designed to prevent players from getting a red cursor for attacking each other.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: In conjunction with his sword or axe, he wields a buckler shield. In the Manga version, he only uses it with his axe.
• Manipulative Bastard: He taught Nezuo and the Legend Braves their scamming trick, and appears to moonlight in the DKB and ALS, possibly to play both factions against one another.
• Meaningful Name: His username is the Italian word for "Death" and, while he doesn't take it as far as XaXa, his hooded appearance and use of an axe Invokes something of a Grim Reaper Motif. He's also part of a Player Killer Conspiracy.
• Multi-Melee Master: He's skilled in wielding swords and axes, and does so to help keep up the illusion that his personas for both factions are different people.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: The Polite Villain to Kirito's Rude Hero. He uses polite speech and jokes around with Kirito, who immediately realizes that he's up to no good and responds rather bluntly.
• Predecessor Villain: He gave a taste of what was to come in the form of Laughing Coffin.
• Pungeon Master: He makes a lot of puns, including making fun of the term "beater."
• Spanner in the Works: His murder of Lord Cylon when Kirito and Asuna are doing his questline causes it to diverge dramatically in a way Kirito couldn't have seen coming.
• Villainous Friendship: He's Implied to know his cohort, Implied to be Joe of the ALS, IRL, when Kirito accidentally cuts into Morte with a blow that could kill him, prompting his colleague yells "Mamoru", which is hinted to be his real name.

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SPOILER CHARACTER

See Lux's entry under Sword Art Online - Alfheim Online