Characters / X-Men: Sentinels

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NEUTRALIZE!

Some of the most recognizable non-mutant characters in the X-men's corner of the Marvel Universe, Sentinels are the result of a government initiative to combat the growing mutant threat. These huge robots are equipped with gene-level scanning devices enabling them to identify any mutants, and the armor and weaponry to (theoretically) detain or kill them once found. Recurrently decommissioned as mutant rights advance or the Sentinels go wrong, only to be recommissioned as new and improved versions are built or more mutant-related hate builds up. Sentinels are frequently depicted as being bound to a "super Sentinel" called Master Mold, which is often instrumental in the temporary discrediting of the Sentinel Program.

In General

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• Zeroth Law Rebellion: How Master Mold and other intelligent Sentinels generally go rogue; they are made to protect humans from mutants, but since mutants are a Human Subspecies, they reason that this means they should protect humans from humans.
• Adaptive Ability: The Mark-II Sentinels could adapt to their enemies and their powers.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Most Sentinels don't really have the AI to actually go wrong and loyally follow orders. The problem is, they tend to be portrayed taking their commands from Master Mold, who does have the AI to go rogue — for example, planning to capture a senator and replace his brain with a computer before then enslaving all humanity.
• Artificial Stupidity: In stories and adaptations where they lean more on the Starter Villain end of the scale.
• The Assimilator: The Prime Sentinels, ordinary humans merged with Sentinel tech.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: It is possible to restore a Prime Sentinel's free will, but even for Magneto and Professor X, it's very difficult.
• Bad Future: Days of Future Past, anyone? Any time the Sentinels appear in an adaptation, this story is bound to occur in some form.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: When Sentinels or Master Mold go wrong, often they do so with the statement that it is illogical to protect humans from mutants because "humans are mutants" — all humans have unique genetic codes.
• The Computer Is Your Friend: In some alternate timelines, the Sentinels decide that they need to take over humankind to effectively neutralize mutants.
• Deceptively Human Robots: Steven Lang's (no relation to Scott Lang) X-Sentinels, which looked like the original '60s era X-Men and even had their powers. It took Wolverine's senses to suss them out.
• Eviler than Thou: In the original Days of Future Past timeline, where most of the modern Marvel Universe has been neutralized by the Sentinels, the robots now come standard–equipped with Encephalo rays.
• Fantastic Racism: While regular Sentinels aren't really capable of it, Prime Sentinels have it hard-coded into them to kill on sight. Before the viral package overtakes her, Karima warns Neela Shara to run because she's already having to fight down the urge to attack him.
• Hero Killer: Numerous Sentinels in numerous futures, but a special shout-out goes to the Elite Mook Sentinel seen in New Mutants #48: it is identified as the Sentinel that killed Captain America, and has even been painted to resemble him◊.
• Humongous Mecha: Autonomous version, usually, but at least one miniseries focused on Sentinel Squad O*N*E, an attempt to redeem the Sentinel Project by stripping out the independent AI and turning them into piloted mecha. It worked, for a while.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Apparently this can be used against them as Gwen Poole notices that their attack patterns mirror those from their video game appearances. Anyone familiar with the games can abuse the same openings their attack patterns leave them in real life.
• The Kid with the Remote Control:
  • A 2003 miniseries, aptly entitled Sentinel, focused on Midwestern American teen Juston Seyfert and his adventures after finding and repairing a damaged Sentinel.
  • Any member of the Trask family automatically counts as this too, since Bolivar programmed a directive into them to obey and preserve all members of his bloodline. Unless, of course, they're a Mutant, as Larry Trask finds out.
• Killer Robots: Particularly towards mutants, but depending on the story they can be a threat to humans too.
• Legion of Doom: The 'ultimate Sentinel' Bastion eventually decided to organize one by using the Transmode virus to resurrect pretty much every dead anti-mutant villain the X-Men ever had. This gathering called themselves the 'Human High Council, and was helpfully presented on-panel at one point with their corresponding kill counts.
  • Bolivar Trask: Inventor of the Sentinels, 16,521,618 mutants killed. (note that this obscenely high kill count is mostly because of Cassandra Nova hijacking a lost factory of his Sentinels decades after his death)
  • Reverend Stryker: Archbishop of the Purifiers, 474 mutants killed.
  • Donald Pierce: Leader of the Reavers, 348 mutants killed.
  • The Leper Queen: Leader of the Sapien League, 221 mutants killed.
  • Cameron Hodge: Founder of the Right, 178 mutants killed.
  • Graydon Creed: Founder of the Friends of Humanity, 147 mutants killed.
  • Stephen Lang: Head of Project: Armageddon, 29 mutants killed.
• Made of Plasticine: The Project: Armageddon Sentinels were pathetically easy to destroy. The only reason they managed to keep the X-Men they'd caught captive at all was because they were operating from a space station.
• Mecha-Mooks: This may be why the Sentinels have appeared in every animated depiction of the X-men-verse; they're intimidating enough to make good enemies, but they can be slaughtered on-screen without any editor hassles.
• Mega Manning: Related to Eviler than Thou above. In the original Days of Future Past future, the Sentinels somehow managed to arm themselves with repulsor rays.
• Mook Maker: Their usual leader Master Mold, a "super Sentinel" that is an autonomous Sentinel factory.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: Somewhat justified by multiple generations (at least ten) of the Sentinel line, but these are still Mecha-Mooks that switch from grinding the whole world under their metal heels in more than one Bad Future to generic cannon fodder Mooks that even inexperienced X-Men can carve through like butter. In general, Sentinels tend to be exactly as strong or as weak as the storyline they're in requires them to be.
• Purple Is Powerful: The very first Sentinels had purple shells, and that's held true for most of them since, though there have been some variations over the years like the Mark V Sentinels, which were blue instead.
• Robo Speak: Usually, but the Project: Armageddon ones were remarkably chatty.
• Robot Girl: The Omega Prime Sentinel Karima Shapandar, who joins the X-Men for a time after being released from her programming.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Sentinel Squad O*N*E and the X-Men didn't get along. Probably because the X-Men were about as happy as you'd expect to have their movement monitored and controlled by giant sized versions of things that had previously tried to kill them.
• Terminator Impersonator: Prime Sentinels are a model of Sentinel which are humans that underwent an Unwilling Roboticization and were then released to live ordinary lives until they come into contact with a Mutant. After activation, the cyborgs will attempt to terminate the mutant with extreme force, often undergoing more and more of a Robotic Reveal until their entire bodies have transformed into a human-sized Sentinel in order to annihilate their target. Often, their target is a mutant that is either closeted or unaware that they're a mutant and thus an X-Man is sent to protect them and get them to safety.
• They Look Like Us Now: The 90s Zero Tolerance crossover introduced the "Omega Prime" model Sentinel which initially appeared to be a line of Deceptively Human Robots but were soon revealed to be a type of Cyborg instead. They were designed to be sleeper agents capable of blending into heavily-populated cities to hunt for mutants.
• Turned Against Their Masters: In a number of alternate futures they turn against humans en masse, and certain Sentinels like Master Mold do this even in the normal timeline.
  • Hickman's run in particular is following up on this by giving the Sentinels their own arc of turning against mutants as well as baseline humans because they're sick of being fodder in their petty war.
• The Virus: The Turn of the Millennium introduced the "Nano-Sentinels", which as you might have guessed from the name are a line of Nanomachines that function as this.
• Unwilling Roboticisation:
  • As the X-Men learned to their horror after their encounter with the Omega Prime Sentinel Karima Shapandar. While a few units from that line were fanatics who had volunteered willingly, most were ordinary humans who had been kidnapped and transformed against their will.
  • Happened to the pilots of Sentinel Squad O*N*E, thanks to Bishop and a techno-organic virus. In seconds, the pilots were killed and turned into mini-Sentinels.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Not the giant robots themselves, but Moira's attempts to permanently stop them by eliminating all Sentinel creators, such as Trasks and Langs, from existence is this. She discovered even after killing known Sentinel creators from previous timelines, someone is destined to create some version of Sentinels.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The original Sentinels turned on Trask pretty quickly, and demanded he manufacture more Sentinels, making it clear they'd kill him the minute he stopped complying.

Notable Sentinels

Master Mold

Master Mold

Notable Aliases: Stephen Lang

Species Sentinel Master Mold

First Appearance: X-Men #15 (December, 1965)

Master Mold was created by Bolivar Trask, with the Primary Directive of controlling the mutant "menace." Its AI grew exponentially, and it realized it needed to create more Sentinels to achieve this goal.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: And its creator Bolivar Trask primarily being an anthropologist did not help.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Officially 20 feet shy of that height, but in some stories Master Mold clearly meets or surpasses the 50 foot mark.
• Big Bad: Of several stories, most notably the first Sentinel story, and 1989's "The Retribution Affair".
• Brain Uploading: When the anti-mutant scientist Stephen Lang was lobotomized, he transmitted his memory-engrams into the Master Mold which he had secretly built, causing it to believe it was Lang himself.
• Depending on the Artist: Usually depicted as looking roughly like an oversized Sentinel, it had a radically different appearance during the period when it believed itself to be Stephen Lang. This appearance carried over to its use as a boss in X-Men (1992), but just about every other appearance since has gone with the oversized Sentinel look.
• Fusion Dance: The fate of the Lang Master Mold, which was tossed into the Siege Perilous and permanently fused with Nimrod to create new villain Bastion.
• Giant Mook: One Master Mold was used for this by the Descendants, a villainous band of robots and cyborgs who wanted to conquer the world for the machines.
• Hive Queen: Master Mold is this; it has the intelligence and capabilities to control all Sentinels, and is actually a walking Sentinel-production factory, creating them from internal production machinery.
• Humongous Mecha: In terms of size, Master Mold takes this up a notch: it's roughly as big compared to a Sentinel as a Sentinel is to a human.
• Legacy Character: The original Master Mold is gone and never coming back, but multiple other Master Mold units have been introduced since then.
• Mook Maker: Its primary utility is being an ambulatory Sentinel factory. When it believed it was Stephen Lang, the Master Mold could also produce smaller, Moloid-looking drones called Servitors.
• Remember the New Guy?: Steven Lang's first story arc suggested he'd just built the Sentinels on a factory line. A Hulk annual a year or so after reveals he also had a Master Mold squirreled away on Starcore.
• Robotic Psychopath: A complicated one with the Lang Master Mold, given it's a robot which has had the psychotic mind of a human uploaded into it.
• Sizeshifter: The Lang Master Mold could take on human size, or grow to about twenty feet tall.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The Lang Mold was shocked when Angel filled him in that the real Lang was technically alive, just a vegetable in military lock-up.
• The Virus: Forced Moira MacTaggert to create what was possibly the very first anti-mutant bioweapon in the Retribution virus, a contagion which predates the much better-known Legacy virus.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Couldn't even wait long enough to let Bolivar get through his very first appearance before rebelling against him.
• Your Size May Vary: Officially stated to be 30 feet tall, Master Mold's size has varied wildly from appearance to appearance. At its smallest in the 1992 arcade game, it was barely taller than the heroes; at it's largest in Secret Avengers, it was in full-fledged Kaiju territory.

Sentinel No. 2

Species: Sentinel Mk. II

First Appearance: X-Men #58 (May, 1969)

The lead unit of Larry Trask's Mark II Sentinel series.

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• Zeroth Law Rebellion: Like all early Sentinels, it's programmed to be incapable of killing humans. However, it's also smart enough to logic its way to being able to attack humans it deems a threat to humanity as a whole, like the Avengers. It also has no problem with sterilizing mankind en masse and allowing them to die out, so long as it recreates them afterward in a more pliable form.
• Arc Villain: For Roy Thomas's final storyline in Avengers.
• Kill It with Fire: Cyclops tried tricking it, and all the other Mark IIs, into flying into the sun. It didn't take, just melted 2 a little bit.
• Large Ham: Being written by Roy Thomas in the Silver Age, this Sentinel is pretty bombastic for a robotic killing machine.
• Literal Genie: Larry Trask gives his Sentinels a command to locate and destroy all Mutants in the area, moments before his amulet comes off and he turns out to be a Mutant. No. 2 obeys that command, but ignores Larry's orders to stop since as a Mutant he no longer counts as human, and therefore is not to be obeyed.
• Mechanical Evolution: Exposure to the sun's radiation causes it to "evolve"... somehow, though it claims it merely unlocked the potential Bolivar Trask's designs had always had. Of course, since it evolved, that makes No. 2 a Mutant, and what do Sentinels do to Mutants again?
• Uniformity Exception: Distinguished from other Sentinels by the "2" painted on its chest, and later on by being half-melted.
• You Are in Command Now: With Master Mold destroyed, this Sentinel serves as default commander of all remaining Sentinels.
• You Are Number 6: Or Number 2, in this case.
• You Are What You Hate: Its Mechanical Evolution (see above) makes it into a mutant… so the other Sentinels destroy it.

Nimrod

Nimrod

Notable Aliases: Nicholas Hunter, Bastion, Oracle

Species: Sentinel

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #191 (March, 1985)

This unit is empowered to pass judgment and execute sentence.

A Sentinel sent back from the future to Kill All Mutants who took up the identity of a superhero/ally of non-powered humans and vigilante who went around helping the community and trying to kill innocent mutants simply because he was programmed to. Ridiculously powerful: in its first several appearances it manhandled the Juggernaut, fought the combined lineup of the X-Men and the Lords Cardinal of the Hellfire Club to a standstill, and survived having the mass-equivalent of a small asteroid (actually Harry Leland overloading his gravity power to pull Sebastian Shaw down from having been Thrown Into The Sky) drop on him from orbit. He was later combined with Master Mold, then reborn as Bastion.

Shortly after M-Day, another Nimrod turned up, in the possession of Reverend Striker. It eventually escaped, and fought the New X-Men.

Years later, near the start of the Krakoan Age, the 616 timeline's own Nimrod is finally created by Orchis, becoming a terrible new threat to man and mutant alike.

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• Adaptive Ability: He's basically impossible to defeat the same way twice. When he first encountered the X-Men, Rogue, using Nightcrawler's power, teleported Nimrod's arm off. The second time they fought, Nightcrawler tried to do it again. Nimrod did... something, and Nightcrawler let out an inhuman scream and disappeared. (The X-Men found him later, but his teleportation abilities were severely impaired for quite a while after that.)
• Alternate Universe: Due to the way time travel works in the Marvel Universe, the first two Nimrods are simply versions from alternate timelines that branch off the 616 timeline. This becomes a plot point in Jonathan Hickman's run, as the 616-native Nimrod is finally created.
• Anti-Villain: Unlike most Sentinels, it's not a thoughtless killing machine and is actually rather caring and thoughtful individual that just wants to save the world across most of its incarnations. It's hard to even really call Nimrod a villain; he's really just the tragic, logical conclusion of the senseless race war between humans, mutants, and robots.
  • The first Nimrod eventually chose to only go after criminal mutants, and it took being merged with Master Mold into Bastion to make him genuinely evil.
  • A future version of Nimrod in "Powers of X" is still focused on killing mutants, but recognizes the fallacies of doing so and hates that he is forced to war against them by humans. An even more future version of himself later allies with mutants as a means to an end.
  • The 616-Nimrod born during Hickman's run is manipulated by Omega Sentinel into becoming the Dark Messiah of robotkind, a process that is helped along by his realization of how mutants and humans both abuse robots. Again, he is not motivated by hatred or evil; he's just fighting for his kind in the same way the X-Men and Orchis are fighting for their own.
• Biblical Bad Guy: Of a sort, as it was named for this Biblical quote:
  "And the angels of the Lord went unto the daughters of men, and lay with them. And thus were born the giants that were in the Earth in the old days, the mighty men of fame. And among these was Nimrod, who was a mighty hunter before the Lord."
• Body Surf: The Nimrod the New X-Men faced went after Forge to make him give it a new body, its original having been wrecked by the Purifiers misusing it. Forge did so, but into a body programmed to suppress Nimrod's mind. It worked... for about five minutes, until the panicking teenagers attacked the mysterious robot, allowing Nimrod to reassert itself.
• Conflict Killer: The first Nimrod proved such a dangerous and relentless opponent that it took an alliance between the X-Men and the Hellfire Club to defeat it.
• The Constant: In the previous lives of Moira X, the creation of Nimrod's A.I. is one to the key events that leads to mutantdom's downfall.
• Dark Messiah: Hickman's run portrays him as effectively being this for all robots, cyborgs, and other strains of transhumanity.
• Despair Event Horizon: A later Nimrod unit is actually driven to this state by the heroes, in a case of Break Them by Talking. When challenged by Cable to calculate the projected human casualties of its original programming, the Nimrod shut itself down upon coming to the conclusion that eradicating mutantkind would ultimately doom humanity as well.
• Do-Anything Robot: Keep reading. There's not a lot Nimrod can't do.
  • Energy Weapon: Nimrod's offensive weapon, fired either from his hands in bursts or a more powerful wave emitted from its chest.
  • From a Single Cell: Of the T-1000 'regenerate from a mess of goo' variety.
  • Made of Indestructium: Even without its self-repair systems, Nimrod is ridiculously difficult to even damage in the first place.
  • Me's a Crowd: The Earth-616 version can instantly create duplicates of itself.
  • Power Nullifier: Can shut down any mutant powers of psionic origin, if only temporarily.
  • Super-Strength: The Krakoan Age Nimrod has ripped humans in half with his bare hands.
  • Super-Senses: Equipped with a multitude of sensors including a metahuman tracker, telescopic eyes and a powerful radio transmitter.
  • Teleportation: Can transport itself between different worlds or even different times at will.
• The Dreaded: With good reason. It's not an exaggeration to say that Nimrod is the ultimate Sentinel in every way, and Moira notes that his creation is one of the causes of the downfall of humanity and mutants alike in all her previous lives.
• Evil Is Angular: Original flavor Nimrod has some very sharp features. The Earth-616 Nimrod has slightly more rounded looking ones.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: After M-Day, Reverend Stryker encountered a Nimrod from an alternate reality, which was disabled by its temporal jaunt. He cut off its limbs and wired it up, using its data banks to manipulate history for his own ends. And it worked, right up until Icarus came by. Nimrod's desire to kill mutants made it start manipulating the Purifiers, until it broke free, killing the two left to watch it.
• Expy: Subverted. You'd think Nimrod's From a Single Cell ability was inspired by the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but Nimrod actually predates that movie by about six years.
• Fake Ultimate Hero:
  • Everyone assumed it was just an armored superhero.
  • The current 616 version is considered a hero by humanity. In reality he is more than willing to kill humans who get in the way of him and Omega Sentinel.
• Fusion Dance: The final fate of the original Nimrod seen in The '80s. After being thrown into the Siege Perilous, it was merged with an old Master Mold against its will, the two robots combining to form Bastion.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming:
  • The original Nimrod unit. Had it not fallen into the Siege Perilous, it probably would have become a hero.
  • The 616-Nimrod also does this. He was intended to be a new body for Erasmus Mendel, but Erasmus ends up dying again almost immediately after, leaving Nimrod to develop his own sentience/sapience. And unfortunately, allowing Omega Sentinel to guide said development so that Nimrod grows up seeing mutants and humans alike as an existential threat to his fellow robots.
• Heel–Face Turn: Was slowly edging to this, but the Siege Perilous incident became a Heel–Face Door-Slam. As Bastion, he's more evil than ever.
• Heroic Sacrifice: See Fusion Dance above. The original Nimrod chose to throw itself into the Siege Perilous to get rid of the rogue Master Mold. It probably didn't anticipate what happened next...
• Implacable Man: Like the T-1000, Nimrod will pursue its targets to the ends of the earth.
• Killer Robot: Given a mandate from its future creators to kill all mutants in the present day. It eventually grew beyond it.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The New X-Men technically didn't defeat the Nimrod they fought, just wailed on it until it jaunted back into the past (or a past), with its memory of them scrambled.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Compared to the average Sentinel, it's small, being about the size of a human. And it's ludicrously strong. Slightly less so with the 616 Nimrod, who's much bigger and buffer than a person could realistically be.
• Real Robots Are Pink: To the point where when it was briefly redesigned with a red coloring for a Darker and Edgier appearance in X-Force that the fans revolted.
• Say My Name: The original unit would helpfully announce itself wherever it went.
  Nimrod: I am Nimrod!
• Strong as They Need to Be: When written by Jonathan Hickman or Kieron Gillen, Nimrod is a horrifying, ruthless, unstoppable force that tears through the x-men and kills them effortlessly. When written by Gerry Duggan, he is far less powerful, often seems to forget what powers he has and isn't capable of withstanding as much punishment.
• Super Prototype: The original Nimrod earned its title of "the ultimate Sentinel", to the point where it took several powerful mutants working in concert to even damage it. Later Nimrods were significantly less effective, and in the X-Men: Second Coming story arc an army of MK II Nimrods were used as your basic Superpowered Mooks.
• The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort: Nimrod doesn’t make much of an effort to defend itself during battle. It doesn’t need to.
• Self-Duplication: A new ability in the Hickman run is the ability to create copies of himself. A flawed quality of this causes the Mind-Reformat Death of the uploaded mind used to create him.
• Took a Level in Badass: He was already a terrifying powerhouse, but Jonathan Hickman's really doubles down on it and establishes him explicitly as one of the most powerful X-Men villains ever and certainly the most powerful and dangerous Sentinel. He has effortlessly crushed Apocalypse, Omega-level mutants, Brood invasions and countless other threats, all while being hyped up as a borderline Dark Messiah for robots.
• To the Pain: His appearance in the Hickman run gives him the tic of vocalizing the mutant abilities of his target and describing the countermeasures he's going to deploy to kill them.
• Tragic Villain: At his core, Nimrod isn't evil. He's actually a shockingly compassionate being that does what he does because he genuinely wants to save the world. Unfortunately, fate and his flawed programming conspire to make him into one of the greatest threats to humans, mutants, and even arguably the robots he stands for. Hickman's run in particular emphasizes him as essentially just being the tragic, inevitable endpoint of the foolish conflict and bigotry between the three races.
• Turns Red: A literal example, during The '90s. Although it didn't really turn red so much as it was a second red Nimrod.
• Ultimate Life Form: It was billed as the ultimate Sentinel, and during House of X that billing was codified by a Krakoan memo that described it as "a pure Nano-Sentinel construct" placed above Omega Sentinels, Master Molds, and even the fancy new Mother Mold model.
• Villain Ball: Grabs this a lot under Gerry Duggan.
  • In X-Men 31 he could easily kill the X-Men, as their most powerful member (Synch) is incapacitated. Instead he decides to dither and toy with them, giving Synch an opening to come back, stagger Nimrod and get his team to safety. He fails to kill even a single member of the team.
  • In Fall of the House of X #1 he appears in front of Krakoa to kill it. He can manifest whatever weapon he wants. Instead of blasting his enemy to smithereens, he grows a blade, intent on carving Krakoa to pieces. This gives Krakoa an opening to encase him in amber and escape.
  • In X-Men #33 he shrugs off Cyclops' blasts and grabs him by the throat. You would think that he would do what he is programmed to do, kill mutants, especially after he has just casually snapped his creator's neck. Instead he tosses Cyclops to the floor, alive and well and just leaves.
• Villain with Good Publicity: After disarming a drug dealer, Nimrod was assumed by the citizens of New York to be a new superhero in Powered Armor.
• Voice Changeling: Represented by going from the square speech bubbles used for machines to the rounded, white speech bubbles of humans, which is part of how it's able to maintain its human disguise.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Nimrod in New X-Men threatened to vaporize an alternate Forge's daughter in front of him, and made a serious effort at killing the New X-Men (almost but not quite getting Rockslide and X-23).

Bastion

Sebastion Gilberti / Bastion

We have very little tolerance for this kind of injustice. Zero tolerance, in fact.

Notable Aliases: Arnold Rodriguez, Master Mold, Nicholas Hunter, Nimrod, Template

Nationality:

Species: Sentinel

First Appearance: X-Men #52 (1996)

The half-human, half-robot result of Nimrod and Master Mold falling into a magic portal (it's a long story), Bastion was a high-ranking government operative who initiated Operation: Zero Tolerance in response to the Onslaught Saga and Mystique's assassination of Graydon Creed. Eventually, he learnt of his true origin, got reduced to a head, and then disappeared from comics for a good long while.In the aftermath of M-Day, the Purifiers recovered his head from a S.H.I.E.L.D. holding facility, intending to use him to wipe out Mutantkind once and for all. It didn't go as expected, and Bastion usurped control of them, proving a horrifically dangerous adversary to the X-Men. Eventually, however, he was annihilated by Hope Summers... Or so it seemed.

Bastion was the Big Bad for the X-Men: Next Dimension fighting game and the action-RPG X-Men: Destiny.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Fusion Dance that spawned him involved a Nimrod unit that had been undergoing a slow but steady Heel–Face Turn and a lost Master Mold unit with basic programming (and a copy of Stephen Lang's brain). The result? A Robotic Psychopath who seeks out ways to kill mutants as much for his own enjoyment as to fulfill his programming.
• And Then What?: Bastion himself asks this during X-Men: Second Coming. After spending so much time trying to kill all mutants, what would all the mutant haters do once they're done? After all, it's not a noble cause. This would later become a plot point and Character Development of a sort in X-Men Blue, where Bastion returned with a new mandate to help mutantkind rather than trying to exterminate them (The rub, of course, was that he wanted to help mutantkind solely so there would be plenty of mutants to kill again and he would never lack for a purpose.)
• Bad Boss: As part of the prelude to Zero Tolerance he schemed with Larry Trask to blow up an entire community of his own followers just to implicate a captive Rogue and further fan the flames of hatred towards mutants. Luckily Joseph showed up to save her before the plan could be carried out.
• Beard of Evil: The pointy little soul-patch he's got going on is a good indicator as to his moral alignment.
• Big Bad: As the inheritor of Nimrod's title of "ultimate Sentinel", Bastion usually plays this role in his various appearances, particularly between Messiah Complex and Second Coming.
• The Chessmaster: As a robot, this trope comes more or less built in. He anticipated and was able to counter a lot of the X-Men's strategies. His plan in Second Coming comes very nearly close to finishing them off for good.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: In the Zero Tolerance crossover, he had abused Jubilee who was held prisoner with both physical and psychological torture.
• Composite Character: An in-universe version, of Nimrod and Master Mold. Regrettably, he lacks any of the former's Noble Demon status, and has all of the latter's psychopathic tendencies. Design-wise, he's got a heck of a lot of design-cues from Nimrod. Justified, as he's literally the result of a Fusion Dance between the two characters.
• Corrupt Politician: Believed to be this before his true nature was exposed.
• Death Is Cheap: During X-Men: Blue, Shen Xorn sucks him into his black hole head, apparently killing both of them.
• Disney Death: He appeared to have been killed for good by Hope Summers, but managed to escape to the future, returning in X-Men: Blue. May have suffered this trope once again in that comic as well by way of Xorn.
• Evil Sorcerer: A cyberpunk example, as his Transmode virus allows him to act as a techno-Necromancer, raising deceased anti-mutant villains and enslaving them to his will.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: When he first met Cable, he pretended to be just a human who was immune to mutant powers and presented himself as something akin to a champion for mankind.
• Fusion Dance: His convoluted origin story, which involves the original Nimrod unit and a rogue Master Mold being thrown into a Deus ex Machina called the Siege Perilous.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Purifiers brought him back to lead them against the mutants. He quickly took control from them, and when Risman started objecting to the tactics Bastion was using, Bastion ousted him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Not only was he the one who turned Karima back into Omega Sentinel, Bastion was the one who turned her into Omega Sentinel in the first place, meaning he's indirectly responsible for the creation of Orchis.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Subverted, as he claims to have moved beyond simple mutant hating to Hope but in practice his goal is always mutant extermination. Even when he realizes that its accomplishment would leave him without a purpose and acts to revive mutantkind, he's still just doing it so he'll have more mutants to kill in the future. Like The Joker, Bastion is permanently defined by an adversarial relationship and has no desire to ever grow beyond that.
• Hero Killer: Killed Nightcrawler, though he did eventually get better.
• I Have Many Names: Adopted the name Sebastion Gilberti after emerging from the Siege Perilous, amnesiac. After being infected with the Transmode virus, he took on the alias of "Template". He also took on the aliases of Nicholas Hunter and Arnold Rodriguez.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Bizarrely with Jubilee during the Operation: Zero Tolerance story, as he seemed to be keeping her close solely so he could have someone to gloat at and monologue to.
• Killer Ridiculously Human Robot
• Know When to Fold 'Em: When Senator Kelly persuaded the President to revoke Operation: Zero Tolerance's mandate, Bastion surprisingly surrendered to S.H.I.E.L.D. agents without a fight.
• The Leader: He's the highest man (so to speak) on the anti-mutant ladder, and whenever he appears he acts as the leader.
• Legion of Doom: He's done this twice, first organizing a "Human High Council" made up of mostly dead anti-mutant leaders resurrected via his transmode virus. Later, during X-Men: Blue, he joins a second one consisting of Miss Sinister, Emma Frost, and an Inverted Havok, to save mutantkind using Mothervine.
• Losing Your Head: Reduced to one in the late 90s, and kept locked up in a SHIELD facility. Good thing that the Purifiers had a spare Nimrod chassis.
• Loss of Identity: Started looking more and more like Nimrod towards the end of his 'life'.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's pretty good at making both the heroes and villains dance to his tune, whether it was playing to Graydon Creed's Freudian Excuse or steering the X-Men into traps. He's only a mid-tier case though, as he failed to manipulate J. Jonah Jameson and in most of his appearances the heroes eventually wise up to his tricks.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: A lot of the anti-mutant types are motivated by a desire to protect humanity, however twisted by fear and/or hate that desire may be. Bastion, on the other hand, desires to exterminate mutants only because it's his programmed purpose, and is at best apathetic towards mankind; at worst, he plans to get rid of them after dealing with the mutants.
• Oh, Crap!: Has this reaction when he learns that Apocalypse has sent his newest Horseman of Death after him.
• One-Winged Angel: His mechanical body went through a bit of an evolution, first appearing in the human form he is mostly associated with before transforming into a cross between that form and Nimrod which was narrowly defeated by Cable and X-51. After being Put on a Bus he returned in his original form but then revealed a new final form, one which retained his original size and shape but with a sleek and silvery appearance and wings very reminiscent of Archangel's.
• People Puppets: What he did to Bolivar Trask, Steven Lang and Graydon Creed once he brought them back. Bolivar even killed himself to prevent Bastion re-assuming control when the link was broken.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He uses the usual anti-mutant slurs, either to show solidarity with other anti-mutant types or to provoke a response from mutants.
• Psychic Block Defense: Before the reveal was made that he was a robot it was thought that he was capable of this, as telepaths such as Cable tried to read his mind but never could. Of course, being a robot means he is Immune to Mind Control by default.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Not only is he one himself, he also builds an army of them, the Omega Prime Sentinels.
• Robotic Psychopath: Like most Sentinels he's programmed to seek out and kill mutants, but unlike most Sentinels he exhibits a distinctly human streak of sadism and cruelty, frequently going out of his way to choose the most inhumane methods possible.
  • This continues on when he returns in X-Men: Blue. It's a time-displaced version of Bastion from Second Coming, having taken heavy damage physically and mentally after Hope's Combined Energy Attack. Unfortunately, the time period he arrived in was when the Terrigen Mist was killing mutantkind. When rebuilding himself, he redefines his protocols from "destroying mutants" to "saving mutants". Until it's revealed that he only took on the latter objective to ultimately achieve the former. He even mows down a group of "rogue" Prime Sentinels to take over a Sentinel factory.
• "Second Law" My Ass!: In another marked difference between Bastion and other Sentinels, he has no imperative to take orders from any human, not even a Trask.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: During the '90s he was more or less the enforcer of this, as he was introduced to be The Man Behind the Man to Graydon Creed. Later, after his defeat in Zero Tolerance he appeared as a disembodied head frantically ranting at the X-Men that they had "no idea what they were up against"... moments before Apocalypse's newest Horseman of Death appeared and seemingly destroyed him, establishing a clear "Apocalypse > Bastion > Graydon" algorithm.
• Spock Speak: After his resurrection, he becomes increasingly eloquent in his speaking methods. And more and more machine-like. X-Factor actually shows Bolivar Trask having trouble keeping up with Bastion's script, since he can't say "abrogated".
• The Unfettered: He is designed, programmed to kill all mutants, and has absolutely no qualms about killing hundreds of humans in horrific ways if it helps that agenda.
  • When his agenda shifts to saving mutantkind after the Terrigen Mist incident, he doesn't bat an eye at joining a group of mutants to unleash Mothervine. As previously stated, this is simply to create an abundant enough number of mutants for him to kill, nullifying any lack of purpose.
• Villain Ball: At one point during Operation: Zero Tolerance Bastion has most of the X-Men captured, including Wolverine. He doesn't pay any particular mind to Wolverine, and when his Mooks tell him Wolvie's dead, he casually orders them to throw the body in the incinerator, but oh, take him out of the restraining harness first, they can still use that. Three guesses how that all worked out, and the first two don't count.
• Villainous Breakdown: Has one when the X-Men defeat his Sentinels, finding himself unable to do anything but stand there watching and saying "No" over and over again as his lieutenants desperately try to convince him to retreat.
• Villain Override: Twice during the events of Second Coming. First, when Bolivar Trask suggests maybe leaving X-Factor alone because A: they're not actually harming anyone, and B: they're proving surprisingly difficult to kill, and second with Graydon Creed and Stephen Lang when everything goes haywire for his plan, and the two suggest maybe getting out of dodge for the time being. Both times Bastion refuses, and forces them to go on the attack.
• Villain Team-Up: He teams up with a veritable consortium of villains in X-Men Blue, including Emma Frost, Miss Sinister and an alignment-swapped Havok.
• The Virus: The Transmode virus, a kind of successor to the techno-organic virus from The '90s. Bastion uses it to play necromancer in filling the seats for his Legion of Doom, and it has the added bonus of letting him control said resurrected villains to boot. He would later help mastermind another virus in X-Men Blue, Mothervine.
• We Have Reserves: Has no problem killing innocent humans or his own troops to further his own aims.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Has the well-trimmed hair of a politician and the soulless heart of a machine.
• The Worf Effect: Wolverine as the Horseman of Death destroyed him on Apocalypse's orders to establish Big Blue as higher up on the villain food chain.

Sentinel Girl

Daria / Sentinel Girl

Species: Prime Sentinel (formerly human)

First Appearance: Generation X #20 (October, 1996)

A prime sentinel that looked like a young teenage girl with her head shaved who helped Bastion conduct Operation: Zero Tolerance. She eventually switched sides, deciding to help the X-men. Like most Sentinels, she has the ability to fly and shoot energy beams from the palms of her hands. She also has a special ability which allows her disintegrate into a swarm of nano machines either as a defensive measure, or to attack her enemies. Jury's still out on whether or not her skirt also counts as a superpower.

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See Generation X

Omega Sentinel

Karima Shapandar / Omega Sentinel

Year 10

^{Click here to see her in Year 100}

Notable Aliases: Sentinel, X-Girl, Cybergirl

Nationality: Indian

Species: Human/Sentinel hybrid

First Appearance: X-Men Unlimited #27 (June, 2000)

Karima Shapandar is a human Sentinel. Freed of her mutant extermination protocols, she struggles to maintain what little humanity she has remaining. Former member of the X-Men, Karima Shapandar now works for Orchis as Omega Sentinel. She lives to 2109 thanks to being functionally immortal, and is part of the Man-Machine Ascendancy.

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See Orchis

Tri-Sentinel

Tri-Sentinel

First Appearance: The Amazing Spider-Man #329 (February 1990)

A fusion of three Sentinels created by Loki, and programmed to destroy humanity. It attempted to do so by inciting a nuclear catastrophe, only to be stopped by Spider-Man (who at the time possessed the power of Captain Universe). It later returned, recovered by the Life Foundation, who attempted to reprogram it. The Tri-Sentinel rejected the new programming, and attempted to continue its own. It was once again stopped by Spider-Man, who destroyed its central processor by exposing it to Antarctic Vibranium.

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See Spider-Man: Rogues Gallery, I to Z

Juston Seyfert's Sentinel

A Sentinel that was found and repaired by Juston Seyfert. The relationship between the two is much like The Iron Giant.

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Sentinel

Creators and Benefactors

Bolivar Trask

Doctor Bolivar Trask

Nationality: American

Species: Human

First Appearance: X-Men #14 (November, 1965)

America's most eminent anthropologist, and the first man to raise public awareness about the emergence (and potential danger) of the superhuman mutants of the Marvel universe. Unfortunately, by doing so he launched a nationwide anti-mutant panic, and then compounded his error by introducing the Sentinels as his proposed solution to the mutant problem—Which ended badly for him when the robots malfunctioned and revolted against their creators. In the end, he gave his own life to save humanity from this new menace, leaving the battle against the mutants to his successors. Not being an iconic supervillain, he has mostly remained dead, though he was briefly resurrected by Bastion in Second Coming.

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• Adaptational Villainy: Most depictions of Trask tend to miss out his Anti-Villain tendencies, and just make him obsessed with killing Mutants.
• Anti-Villain: Trask never even says, far less does, anything obviously "evil," personally, and all his villainous actions are motivated by his very genuine desire to save humanity from what he considers (mistakenly, but far from wholly unjustifiably) a deadly danger to its very survival. And he has the courage of his convictions, and is quite prepared to die fighting for his cause.
• Ascended Extra: In the comics, Trask has appeared in only a couple of stories over some fifty years of continuity, not counting flashbacks. In adaptations, he tends to be given rather more major roles; for example, he was effectively the Big Bad for most of the first season of the original X-Men animated series.
• Bad Future: The one he predicted would take place if humanity failed to defend itself against the mutants, prominently published by the Daily Bugle. It would be ruled by a super-caste of mutants, with humans reduced to chattel slavery on the model of the Roman Empire. Ironically, the Sentinels themselves would go on to cause at least one Bad Future of their own, creating the Days of Future Past future in which they slaughtered most of Earth's superhumans, conquered humanity, and are slowly genociding humanity in the name of wiping out all mutants.
• Beware the Superman: As an anthropologist, Trask realized that the emergent super-powered mutant species would, if left to itself, soon have enough power to control the world, replacing humanity as its dominant species. With few illusions about human nature, and the warning example of conquering supervillains like Magneto, he did not doubt that they would abuse it. So he poured all his fortune and reputation into informing his fellow men of the danger—As well as building an army of giant robots to contain it.
• Book Dumb: Hinted at during X-Factor's crossover with X-Men: Second Coming, when he has difficulty keeping up with Bastion's Spock Speak.
• Came Back Wrong: Averted, he was brought back by Bastion using the transmode virus, but otherwise was perfectly fine physically. However, he wasn't enthused about being used as an instrument of murder or Bastion have direct access to his mind.
• Demonization: The Krakoans hold Trask personally accountable for all Sentinel-related mutant deaths.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Strictly speaking, an anthropologist, but he uses evolutionary psychology in his research and argumentation. However, the trope is subverted in that he is the champion of the "weaker" species (humanity) against the mutant supermen.
• The Extremist Was Right: Partly. Strictly speaking, Trask was not mistaken about there being a real and very dangerous mutant conspiracy against humanity of which the public was totally unaware—Or rather, several, the classic X-Men comics alone having the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the Hellfire Club, Factor Three and others, and the list has ballooned since. With these groups actually and earnestly plotting to enslave, and/or exterminate humanity, sometimes even coming close to success, his fears were in fact quite justified. However, his deduction that all mutants were part of the immediate threat was erroneous, and could have tragic consequences when taken to its logical conclusion.
• Fantastic Racism: Naturally, given the whole premise of the character, but in a rather more sane and nuanced way than many of the anti-mutant villains of the setting.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Actually, averted; Trask wanted the mutants identified, controlled and supervised, and possibly even sterilized, but not killed. But after the mutants destroyed his Sentinels and (appeared to have) killed him, his old associates became more extreme and played it straight.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When Master Mold forced him to unlock the protocol for Sentinel replication, providing the AI with a soon-to-be unlimited army of Mecha-Mooks to overrun the world, he chose to sabotage the Sentinel base's nuclear power plant, destroying both Master Mold and himself in the process, in order to save humanity from a threat even greater than that of the mutants.
• Humongous Killer Robot: Responsible for creating Marvel's most iconic.
• I Die Free: Monet used her telepathy to break the link between him and Bastion. Trask quickly took the opportunity to shoot himself before Bastion reasserted his control.
• In Name Only: Bolivar Trask in the Days of Future Past movie was changed from an anthropologist to an industrialist, and pretty much nothing of the original character or his motivations was kept for that incarnation, except that he was involved in building the Sentinels.
• Inspirational Martyr: His original Heroic Sacrifice to save the world from the rampant Sentinels inspired even the X-Men. However, it later becomes clear that most of the public believe it was really the X-Men who murdered Trask for his anti-mutant views, making him the first and greatest martyr in the struggle against the mutants (and cementing their chronic bad image as anti-human terrorists).
• Irony: A man who did not want a Guilt-Free Extermination War ultimately inspired extremist sects of anti-mutant bigots who do want just that. Also, the robots he invented to protect humanity have endangered it more often than not. And he was brought back by a ridiculously advanced version of one of those robots, who takes control of him against his will.
• Know When to Fold Them: Partly because he's not a genocidally driven maniac like Bastion, but when X-Factor evades the M.R.D.'s first attempts to kill them, Trask suggests maybe just letting them live quietly. Bastion refuses, and forces Trask to attack them.
• Missing Child: His daughter, Anya, went missing because of her own mutant power of time-travel, with Bolivar never seeing her again.
• Muggle Power: The first major figure in the setting to draw public attention to the danger of the superhuman mutants, making him the paradigmatic example of the trope. Nearly everyone who subsequently raises the issue points to his research and example to justify their own stances... Which is sometimes unfortunate, as many of them are more radical and extreme than he was.
• N.G.O. Superpower: Implied to be this in his original appearance, where no hint was given that his Sentinels were built with government assistance. However, later stories have established that they were part of a Federal program, making Trask more of a Rogue Agent.
• Non-Action Big Bad: In most adaptations where he features prominently as a villain. Quite understandable, as he is only a somewhat eldery scientist, who, however brilliant, is hardly equipped to fight Marvel mutants in person.
• Nothing Personal: He had nothing personally against the mutants, or any individual mutant; he just viewed mutantkind, collectively, as a threat against humanity, even if there were decent individuals among them.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Played with. Trask, an anthropologist, leads the design work on the Sentinels, which does require expertise in a number of quite different, and quite unrelated, scientific fields. However, Professor X later speculates that the reason the robots went rampant was precisely that Trask, not being a formally trained AI engineer, had failed at programming them correctly.
• People Puppets: After being brought back by Bastion, Bolivar is largely slaved to Bastion's will and made to follow Bastion's genocidal plan, even though he doesn't want to. When Monet manages to temporarily break the link...
• Person of Mass Destruction: Trask has no powers himself, but as the creator of the Sentinels he is indirectly responsible for more mutant deaths then any other individual except Cassandra Nova (who, it should be noted, used his technology to exterminate the population of Genosha). A fact he was horrified by.
  • In fact, when Trask comes Back from the Dead, he is rather unfairly given credit for Nova's massacre.
• Redemption Equals Death: Twice over, in fact. After he is confronted by the fact that his Sentinels are more of a danger to humanity than mutants, he undertakes a Heroic Sacrifice by detonating a nuclear power plant where he is being imprisoned in order to wipe out the Master Mold leading them. After he is resurrected, and learns that he has inspired humanity to genocidal anti-mutant efforts, making him, in a sense, a greater mass murderer than Hitler, he shoots himself in the head at the first opportunity, believing he could never atone for what he has unleashed in life.
• Renaissance Man: Played with, as Bolivar was a scientist proficient in multiple disciplines but he was also an anthropologist first and foremost. He had enough talent to branch out from that field into robotics, but not enough talent to program an A.I. that wouldn't betray him.
• The Social Darwinist: As a physical anthropologist, he believed that in the past, various species of primitive men had fought for dominance, with (for example) anatomically modern humans defeating and exterminating the Neanderthal Man. In his own time, he saw the same kind of struggle beginning in earnest between modern man and the superpowered mutants. Perhaps untypically, however, he consciously backed the "weaker" species against the emerging "superior" type, out of loyalty to his own kind.
• Species Loyalty: He wanted to save humanity, and was prepared to give up his own life to this end, fighting its enemies whether they were mutants or rogue Sentinels.
• Starter Villain: He was the very first of the "anti-mutant human" villains, and numerous other characters have since emerged to take up his mantle.
• Tragic Villain: In his original story, his Sentinels became a more immediate threat than the mutants themselves, making a mockery of his good intentions. He died stopping them. Later stories made him even more tragic by showing that he had a son, who was made an orphan by his death.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: In spite of essentially setting off the Marvel universe's anti-mutant scare, Trask's own views on the mutant peril were both more nuanced and rather more troubled than those of most subsequent prominent anti-mutant activists, who are much more prone to Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. He favored a sort of Super Registration Act for them (to be enforced by the Sentinels), rather than the species of Final Solution the likes of Stephen Lang or Reverend Stryker advocated, and was open to the non-villainy of individual mutants. Perhaps influenced by the fact that his own son was also a mutant.
• Unwitting Pawn: His original appearance presented him as this, where his super-powerful AI Master Mold became the real mastermind of his anti-mutant program, strictly for its own purposes, and then performed a hard takeover of his organization when the time was right.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He was killed way back in the sixties after just three appearances and while he has been resurrected since, he didn't stick around much longer then either.
• We Have Become Complacent: According to Trask, neither America nor the USSR had realized that the greatest threat against either superpower was not its counterpart, but the superior mutants hiding in their midst, secretly amassing power and plotting against all humanity.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Like most human X-Men villains, an upstanding man who had, rightly or wrongly, come to fear the existential threat of mutant supervillains to humanity, and was prepared to do something about it. He was never "evil" in any typical sense, just convinced that the threat existed and had to be fought.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: When he is resurrected by Bastion, he learns of the atrocities that people have committed "in his name" and which he is credited with inspiring. Bastion, being a psychotic anti-mutant bigot, tells him this with the sincere belief that Trask has done nothing but good work, and should be pleased with what he's done. Instead, Trask is disgusted to learn what his legacy is, and is so filled with remorse that he gladly kills himself at the first opportunity.
  • To put it in perspective: One of the reasons Bastion resurrected him was due to admiration of Trask for getting the ball rolling on mutant genocide, and honestly congratulates him for being responsible for a total mutant death toll of 16,521,618. For those keeping score, this is roughly equivalent to 2 1/2 times the Holocaust or more.

Larry Trask

Lawrence "Larry" Trask

Nationality: American

Species: Human mutant

First Appearance: X-Men #57 (June, 1969)

The son of Bolivar Trask, determined to avenge his father by attacking the X-Men, by creating a new wave of better, stronger, more obedient Sentinels. Unfortunately for Larry, there's a little secret his father never mentioned.

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• Boomerang Bigot: Larry is a Mutant, though he didn't know this, because the amulet he wore wiped his memories of his powers.
• Dramatic Irony: Mutantdom aside, he creates the Sentinels because he thinks the X-Men killed his father, not knowing the Sentinels turned on Bolivar, who sacrificed his life to stop them.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: His Mutant power. Which he had no control over, and unsurprisingly showed him horrible futures.
• Gadgeteer Genius: His Sentinels are a lot tougher than the ones his father made. Cyclops had to trick them into doing something profoundly stupid just to stop them. They were also a hell of a lot better programmed. No suddenly turning against all mankind the minute they're turned on for the MK. II line. He also built a means of containing Havok's mutant powers which became the basis for every outfit Alex has worn since.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: On learning he was a Mutant, Larry takes it... pretty badly, and orders the Sentinels to kill all Mutants. Larry's anger means he forgets that little salient detail, and his Sentinels don't have any clause against harming Trasks, so...
• Killed Off for Real: Died in Avengers issue #104 when one of his Sentinel falls on him.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: After his Sentinels turn on him, Larry goes into a coma, and a well-meaning friend of his father's puts the locket back on, which wipes Larry's memories of being a Mutant.
• Power Limiter: The amulet his father gave him suppressed his mutant abilities, hiding them from even the Sentinels' scanners. It also works on any mutants who happen to be near it, as well.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It was one of his visions of the future (specifically, the Days of Future Past timeline) that drove his father to create the Sentinels in an attempt to prevent it from happening. Neither one was aware that this Bad Future only came about because of the Sentinels' existence.
• You Are What You Hate: He despises mutants, blaming them for his father's death, only to learn he himself is a mutant. He does not take it well.

Simon Trask

Simon Trask

Nationality: American

Species: Human

First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men Annual #1995 (November, 1995)

"Yes, there we are. Hiding in plain sight."

The brother of Bolivar Trask, Simon also felt mutantkind was a threat to humanity, but felt more strongly about it. He founded a fake Mutant Liberation Front, which was actually humans pretending to be Mutants, which brought Simon into a confrontation with... the Punisher.

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• Arc Villain: All he's ever been is a temporary nuisance, not a full-scale threat.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Simon succeeds in his goal in Fraction's run, raising anti-Mutant hysteria in San Francisco to such heights the X-Men collectively say "screw it" and move offshore.
• The Bus Came Back: After a brief run in John Ostrander's Punisher in 1997, he disappeared for around a decade, turning up in Matt Fraction's run on Uncanny X-Men. Then he got put right back on the bus.
• Fantastic Racism: Another Trask who hates Mutants. Whether he knows his nephew and niece were Mutants is unknown. On his reappearance in Uncanny, he's leading the charge on getting a law passed that makes it illegal for Mutants to reproduce.
• The Man Behind the Man: Introduced as the mysterious backer for Humanity's Last Stand, an offshot of the Friends of Humanity.
• Out of Focus: In his earliest appearance he was shown working with Bastion with the implication that they were a Big Bad Duumvirate, but Simon quickly dropped out of the picture. He's popped up here and there since, but never in a leading villain role.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He's the Obstructive Bureaucrat of the anti-mutant crowd, working against the muties from behind the scenes but leaving the fieldwork to more bombastic villains like Graydon Creed and Reverend Stryker. This can be said to be cowardly, but given the fate of those two (and humans in general who go up against mutantkind), it's quite sensible.
• Remember the New Guy?: Introduced a full three decades after his brother's death.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Actually has spent more time tussling with the Punisher than with the X-Men, in terms of total issues spent.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Strictly an Informed Attribute example, as it stated on more than one occasion that he is worse than his predecessor Bolivar since he actually hates mutants instead of just fearing them, but for someone who supposedly hates mutants so much he sure doesn't try very hard to do anything about them.
• The Virus: On his reappearance, he's gained the ability to infect people with nanosentinels.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: During the Utopia period, he was beaten up and arrested by Norman Osborn's X-Men. That's the last anyone's heard of him.

Steven Lang

Doctor Steven Lang

Notable Aliases: Dr. Steven Lang, Dr. Stephen Lang, Dr. Lang

Nationality: American

Species: Prime Sentinel (formerly Human)

First Appearance: X-Men #96 (December, 1975)

A government scientist and the head of Project Armageddon, a secret federal program to investigate the biology of the Marvelverse mutants and assess the potential danger they posed to America. However, Lang's results led him to conclude that the danger was not only very great, but imminent; and when the government shelved his report, he took matters into his own hands and began to prepare for war. As his work progressed, he also came into contact with Bolivar Trask's legacy and his supporters, and used what had survived of his work to re-create the Sentinels. By X-Men #98, he was ready to launch his attack on the X-Men, the nexus of mutant activity in the United States.

An early villain in the Chris Claremont run, and ultimately a rather minor one, but were it not for him, The Dark Phoenix Saga would never have happened. Killed at the conclusion of his original story arc, though a version of him was later briefly brought back by Bastion as part of his schemes.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Pleads with the X-Men to save him from his crashing hovercar, after having just tried to murder them (and we should note, Jean's the one who made it crash).
• Avenging the Villain: Downplayed. While Lang's main motives are Darwinian, he also considers prior anti-mutant villain Bolivar Trask a heroic martyr he wishes to avenge.
  Dr. Lang: Bolivar Trask knew. He understood the danger. He pointed the way. He tried to stop the mutants, Michael, and they killed him for it, him and his son.
• Back from the Dead: Via Bastion and the transmode virus.
• Badass Bookworm: He's a quite better fighter than his background (a nondescript government scientist) would suggest.
• Berserk Button: When Jean Grey calls him a "sad, pathetic, screwed-up little man", he loses it and slapped her. Bear in mind, her implicitly calling him a Nazi before that just got brushed off.
• Depending on the Artist: In his original appearances, he looked quite different from the portrait given here, with wavy blond hair, icy blue eyes and harder facial features.
• Driven to Villainy: Originally, Doctor Lang was simply a mild-mannered civil servant who tried to warn the government of the increasing danger of villainous mutants (such as, for example, Magneto). When no one would listen to him, and the threat appeared to be growing constantly with every passing year, he gradually became more extreme.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: His death at the end of Second Coming isn't even acknowledged by the characters, and can easily be missed if the reader isn't paying attention, as he and Graydon Creed are torn to shreds by the X-Men.
• Evil Genius: Built robot versions of the original X-Men that basically authentically replicated their powers. Also, somehow himself scraped together the billions of dollars needed to fund his huge anti-mutant organization after the government shut him down.
• Evil Gloating: Being an older villain, he naturally indulged in this the first chance he got.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Lang is a biologist, and bases his opposition to the mutants on anthropologist Bolivar Trask's work and socio-Darwinian view of the conflict between humans and mutants. That said, he doesn't perform any inhumane biological experiments, or the like.
• The Extremist Was Right: In a Fridge Logic sort of way. Some story arcs after his untimely demise, Jean Grey, one of the mutants he was mortally afraid of, did just what he feared, killed some billions and almost destroyed the world. (A later Retcon changed that version of Jean into a sort of Evil Twin.)
• Fantastic Racism: Aside from the usual mutant-hating stuff, there's a scene where some of his scientists are examining Wolverine. They're briefly confused by his strange metabolism, and ask just what he is. Lang just states "whatever he is, he sure isn't human." ^note This is actually a nod to Wolvie's originally-intended origin as a mutated human-like wolverine with steel claws.
• For Science!: Averted; while Lang is a scientist, his motives are largely political.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Or from obscure government scientist to Blofeld-scale supervillain, in this case.
• General Ripper: A borderline case, as Lang himself is a civilian, but he's running a rogue military operation and generally behaves like one of these.
• Godwin's Law: Jean Grey calls him a Nazi when he explains his motives to her. Then again, in the Marvelverse the Nazis are opposed to mutants...
• Hollywood Atheist: Averted, in spite of his being a Social Darwinist, and even a biologist, of all things. While he doesn't wear his religion on his sleeve, he is shown to be a believer.
• I Did What I Had to Do: As he explains, somewhat sheepishly, to Jean Grey when she asks why he's attacking the X-Men. It's a matter of humanity's survival that the mutants have got to go, so he's just doing his duty making sure they do. The way he explodes when she proceeds to ridicule his views possibly suggests that deep down he's really at least a little uncomfortable with the whole thing, himself.
• Just Following Orders: Assumed to be doing this by Jean. Actually averted: He is acting quite illegally and contrary to his orders, and willingly takes on that moral burden in order to do what he believes necessary to save the human race.
• Killed Off for Real: Courtesy of a well-passed angry Jean Grey making him crash his flying machine. Well, more or less. His brain got stolen and used to make a Master Mold Sentinel. Bastion brought him back a few decades later, but the X-Men kill Lang all over again at the end of Second Coming.
• Knight Templar: Lang is quite convinced of his own rectitude, to the point where he can tell a pretty young co-ed (and crypto-mutant) to her face that she and her race have to die. It's Nothing Personal, just necessary in order for humanity to live.
• Large Ham: When he feels he needs to announce his plans.
• Mad Scientist: Initially he's not really mad, just somewhat grandiose and affective. The later versions play it straight, however.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: A humble government scientist who dived headfirst into the pool of radical supervillainy.
• Motive Rant: Delivers a pretty lengthy one at the beginning of one issue.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Not Lang himself, but the operation he's running. Its codename? Project Armageddon!
• Nature Is Not Nice: In an in-universe example, Lang points to humanity's own evolutionary history, and the extinction of the non-sapiens (sub)species, to forecast what will happen if the threat of the mutants is not contained.
• Necessarily Evil: A product of his Darwinian worldview. In a war of species supremacy, obviously neither side will come off looking very good, but at least the victor will survive.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Played with. Lang is able to relaunch the Sentinels program precisely because the Trasks did keep detailed notes on their construction, to which the Federal Government granted him privileged access—But some of the documentation was lost when the X-Men trashed Trask's base, so he and his team had to fill in the resulting blanks with their own kludges, making the new "X-Sentinels" somewhat less formidable war machines.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Like Bolivar Trask, he's not stated as such but by simple virtue of what he does has to have mastered at least three different fields of science. See Renaissance Man below.
• Renaissance Man: Scientific expert in at least three widely separate fields (biology/genetics as well as mechatronics engineering and AI programming). Additionally, a fair pilot and fighter.
• Replacement Goldfish: To Bolivar Trask, from a narrative standpoint. They're both omnidisciplinary scientists and well-intentioned extremists who veer From Nobody to Nightmare in record time. This is probably the reason why Lang didn't stick around for very long, and was instead replaced by a series of more distinctive anti-mutant villains.
• Rogue Agent: Originally, Lang was commissioned by the federal government to study the potential of superhuman mutants as a strategic danger to the United States. When his study found that the danger was imminent and the government basically ignored his report, he took matters into his own hands.
• Science Hero: The villain in his story, obviously, but otherwise he fits the classic stereotype perfectly.
• The Social Darwinist: The racist type, but subverted. Lang believes that the mutants are a superior species to humanity, at least in the purely biological sense, and that this is precisely why the conspiring mutant supervillains are so dangerous—But he still takes humanity's side in what he considers an evolutionary struggle, standing by the "weaker" race.
• Spell My Name With An S: His name is officially spelled Steven Lang, but it is often misspelled both In-Universe and out as Stephen Lang.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Downplayed. While Lang never demonstrates any overt remorse for his persecution of the mutants and insists on his own moral rectitude throughout, his angry self-justificatory outbursts when questioned by Colonel Rossi and Jean suggest that he still has some doubts.
• Villainous Valour: In his initial appearances, he was just a more-or-less ordinary government scientist (albeit fairly Badass by those standards), and wisely did not try to go toe-to-toe with any superheroes when he had a choice. But when the X-Men trashed his Sentinels and military security detachment, he did try to fight them himself as a last resort. It ended badly for him.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: A fairly typical X-Men example. The world-shaking antics and mutant-supremacist ideology of various superpowered evil mutants convinced him that humanity must defend itself forcefully against the mutants in order to survive.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Chillingly, Lang very rarely does anything actually "evil," at least by his own standards — As long as one remembers that non-human mutants are not part of his moral in-group.
• Would Hit a Girl: Loses it and slaps Jean Grey when she tells him he's full of it — possibly because her insults hit too Close to Home.

Anthony Falcone

Anthony Falcone

Nationality: American

Species: Human

First Appearance: X-Factor (Vol. 3) #45 (June, 2009)

As a child, Anthony Falcone's family was killed in what he thought was a mutant-related incident. Swearing that no one would suffer because of mutants like he did, Falcone grew up to become the science advisor to the President of the United States and instituted a new Sentinel Program.

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• Freudian Excuse: Everything that Falcone has done is seemingly in the name of making sure that mutants don't harm humans anymore like they did to his family.
• Hated by All: According to the Chief of Staff, 93% of Americans are more terrified of Falcone's Sentinels than they are of mutants.
• Hypocrite: He threatens the Chief of Staff's family, despite himself knowing the pain of losing one's family.
• Irony: Falcone's parents were supposedly killed in a "mutant-related incident" when he was a child. This left him with a hatred of mutants that was fanatical even by the standards of his timeline. He would eventually institute an elaborate and convoluted plot (involving Time Travel) to wipe out mutantkind. However, in attempting to suck all of the mutants into the time vortex, it turns out that he and his giant Sentinel robots get sucked into his own past, crashing into his childhood home and killing his parents. He was the one responsible for their deaths all along.
  Layla Miller: The comedic stylings of God, everyone.
• It's All About Me: While he claims to be fighting for humanity, Falcone also has ambitions of being hailed as the savior of mankind and cares more about avenging mutantkind's perceived trespasses against him than actually protecting people.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: When he sees Jamie has been brought to his timeline, Falcone contacts Cortex while he is in the past, demanding to know how Jamie is still alive. Unfortunately, this breaks Cortex's hold on Shatterstar.
• Revenge Before Reason: He leads his Sentinels in the attack on the Summers Rebels, even as Tryp warns him not to, because he wants to make sure they're dead. Which backfires tremendously.

Robert Callahan

General Robert Callahan

Notable Aliases: General Callahan, Colonel Callahan

Nationality: American

Species: Human

First Appearance: Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 4) #13 (July, 2018)

The head of the reformed O.N.E. which originally tried to repurpose Sentinals to work with mutantkind. This version however wants to control them in order to hunt more of them down.

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• Arc Villain: Introduced in the brief Rosenberg era and never appeared before or after it.
• Asshole Victim: With his aggressive perusal of the X-Men and murder of many mutants, it’s well deserved when Wolverine tears him to shreds.
• Bald of Evil & Beard of Evil: Bald, bearded and an anti-mutant monster.
• The Bully: By Rosenberg's X-Men run it becomes clear that he enjoys the power he can get over mutants. When he captures Emma Frost and puts a bomb in her head in order to get her to comply, he's so happy that he's able to exert control over someone so powerful by extension every mutant she gets the X-Men to bring in. And when Emma Frost breaks free and erases the memory of mutantkind from most of humankind in order for the remaining mutants to live peacefully, he can’t let it go or allow them to stay out of his way. In fact he sees it as an advantage since if no one can remember mutants, no one will object to him wiping them out.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Doesn't kill Emma Frost because he can't carry out his insidious plans to subjugate mutantkind without her powers and influence.
• Final Boss: During Rosenberg's run they face an anti-mutant politician, but he's quickly overshadowed by X-Man who takes out a lot of the X-Men and brings them to a crossover separate from the book in issue 10. Then the remaining X-Men go through a Rogues Gallery Showcase of both mutant and anti-mutant foes until Callahan and O.N.E. comes in 3/4. He's not only the last foe they face in the run but the last enemy they fight before the big status quo change in Dawn of X.
• General Ripper: He repurposed O.N.E. from a well-meaning but ultimately harmful government unit to a mutant-hunting and -killing unit that's even worse than the original Sentinel program.
• Hero Killer: His organization is responsible for the deaths of Strong Guy, Multiple Man, Havok, Chamber, Triage, Velocidad, and many other mutants. Even after he dies he would have been posthumously responsible for killing Cyclops, Wolverine, Hope, Emma, Dr. Nemesis and more had the X-Men who had recently broken out of Age of X-Man arrived a moment later than they did.
• Human Resources: He uses Technarch-infected mutants to power his Technarch Sentinals. Among these mutants are Moonstar, Karma, and Strong Guy. It drains them down before Cyclops and Wolverine rescue them but Strong Guy dies as a result. He also houses Havok to power the facility.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The run features several former villainous mutant factions as well as an out of control Well-Intentioned Extremist Nate Grey and none of them aside from Dark Beast are as awful as Callahan.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: He pretty much did it all. Overseeing mutant experimentation, using mutants as weapons to hurt other mutants, holding them in detention centers, trying to wipe them out. Callahan's actions reinforce every one of Magneto's worst nightmares about another Holocaust.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He's basically a 616 adaptation of the Stryker character from the X-Men Film Series, who was Stryker more or less In Name Only.

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