Characters / Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Major Villains

A character subpage from the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX anime and manga series, the Oddly Named Sequel to Yu-Gi-Oh!. For the main character page, see here.

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Season 1

Seven Stars Assassins (Shadow Riders)

The antagonists for the second half of season 1. Recruited by Kagemaru to obtain the Sacred Beast cards, each of them challenge the heroes to duel for their keys.

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Here is a list of tropes that can be applied to all of the Shadow Riders:

• Co-Dragons: They serve as this to season 1's main villain: Kagemaru.
• Dark Is Evil: The more evil ones all have dark-themed decks.
• Dragon with an Agenda: All of them have their own reasons for dueling the heroes.
• Monster of the Week: Functionally, they're one-time antagonistic opponents for the main cast to deal with.

Darkness/Nightshroud (Possessed Atticus)

The first of the Shadow Riders. Although he appears to be Alexis' lost brother Atticus, he was possessed by the entity known as Darkness before the series began. He ran a Dragon deck focused on the Red-Eyes Black Dragon and a new alternate form for it, Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon.

• Brainwashed and Crazy / Deal with the Devil: After having lost a Shadow Game and faced with the prospect of losing his soul, Atticus let Darkness possess him to survive.
• Composite Character: Unintentional, but he seems to be this with Rex Raptor and Joey Wheeler in the second Yu-Gi-Oh! anime. Like Joey and Rex, his ace card is the Red-Eyes Black Dragon, but his entire deck is dedicated one type (Dragons, in his case), much like Rex and his Dinosaur-only deck. But unlike Rex, his Red-Eyes has an upgraded form, which originally only Joey's Red-Eyes was capable of.
• Dark Is Evil: Just look at him.
• Knight of Cerebus: Is the second actual threat Judai and his friends face in the series, setting the tone for the rest of the season.
• Lava Adds Awesome: For some reason he duels Judai in a volcano. Given how both are in pain when they sustain battle damage from each other, it's likely to weaken him throughout the entire duel.
• Malevolent Masked Man: He's possessed by Nightshroud. He wears a mask. The rest should fall into place from there.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Not him, but his trump card is Red-Eyes Black Dragon.
• Signature Mon: Has a dragon-themed deck, specifically focused on Red-Eyes Black Dragon.
• Simple, yet Awesome: His strategy with Red-Eyes Black Dragon involves either overwhelming through brute force or burning out the opponent's life points quickly. In a 4000-LP duel, getting hit with a Inferno Fire Blast spell card to shave off 2400 life points is nasty. He's also revealed in season 4 to have Red Eyes Burn, a card that burns both players for a Red-Eyes's attack power, which is again, 2400. Between that, Spear Dragon's piercing attacks, and other nasty tricks exclusive to dragon types, it's not hard to imagine him as a quick-kill player.
• Starter Villain: The first Shadow Rider Jaden faces.

Camula (カミューラ)

The second of the Shadow Riders. A vampire who seeks the Sacred Beasts cards to resurrect her extinct race. Run a Vampire/Zombie deck.

Voiced by: Kanako Irie (Japanese), Erica Schroeder (English)

• Abhorrent Admirer: She makes creepy and suggestive comments about Zane, both before and during their match. He manages to ignore most of it, but he's obviously uncomfortable (note that she's several hundred years old and he is seventeen).
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite her utter lack of mercy, it's hard not sympathize with her motives, or feel sorry when she dies, even though she does so completely unrepentant. (Something rare for this franchise.)
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Spied on all her opponents' cards with the help of her bats, and when that was not enough against Zane she takes his younger brother's soul hostage to make him throw the game. When she tries to cheat again in her duel against Judai, his dark item prevents her from targeting his friends and forces her to put her own soul on the line.
• Creepy Doll: She traps her opponents' souls in dolls if she wins against them.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She was on the receiving end of one from Zane before she cheated, giving him no option but to throw the duel.
• Dark Is Evil: Her deck is full of werewolves and vampires.
• Fate Worse than Death: After Judai defeats her, she loses her soul and her body falls apart.
• Freudian Excuse: Her race was annihilated during the middle ages.
• Hero Killer: She defeats both Crowler and Zane, although she cheated against both of them by spying on their cards and beat Zane by threatening Syrus's soul.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Because of a card she played.
• Knight of Cerebus: One of the earliest cases of a villain being completely played for horror in GX. She's not only cruel and merciless, but competent, tying the record of Keys gained (two) with Amnael.
• Meaningful Name: Her name sounds very similiar to Carmilla.
• Nightmare Face: Occasionally she unhinges her jaw and shows a rather lizard-like tongue when she gets mad.
• Never Recycle Your Schemes:
  • Inverted and downplayed. She did use the same trick twice, but got far too dependent on it. Spying on Crowler to learn how his deck worked enabled her to defeat him easily, but Zane was wiser to her afterwards, and was able to counter such a plan. Not having learned from that mess, she was surprised when Judai switched the cards in his deck more thoroughly, and it cost her badly.
  • Even worse because she also tried using Phantom Gate a second time, after Judai knew exactly how it worked. As did Atticus, who was able to relay information about it to Judai. Not very smart there.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Has fittingly fiendish-looking red eyes.
• Smug Snake: Dub only, where she was so confident she would beat Judai after playing Illusion Gate that she offered up her own soul. In the Japanese version, Illusion Gate required her to offer up her own soul if she couldn't take anybody else's.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Subverted. While she is a cheat, Camula is still a much deadlier and more competent opponent than most Shadow Riders that come after her. Tania and Amnael are arguably the only ones who surpass her when it comes to dueling prowess.
• Story-Breaker Power: Her Illusion Gate is quite possibly the most broken card in the anime, destroying all opposing monsters on the field and then letting her use a monster her opponent has played. While that effect can be overcome, the card forces her to give up a soul to the Sacred Beasts if she loses. Not her soul, any soul she wants. The result is that she can easily pick the soul of anybody to use as a hostage and force her opponent to throw the duel. Only Judai having an Shadow Charm to protect everyone's souls kept her from exploiting the latter.
• Token Evil Teammate: Atticus can vouch for this, claiming she's crueler than the others. Her methods are sadistic, and unlike most villains of the franchise, she dies unrepentant.
• Toy Transmutation: Those she defeats become dolls holding their souls, which she plans to use to help awaken the Sacred Beasts and also resurrect her deceased kind.
• Underestimating Badassery: Considered Zane the only one that was a danger, and after capturing his soul, believed the others, especially Judai, were no threat. Unfortunately, this attitude ended up costing her her soul when Judai ended up defeating her.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Despite being only the second Shadow Rider, she manages to acquire two of the seven spirit keys, with one of her victories being against Zane, Duel Academy's top duelist. She also doesn't play fair when things start to go badly for her.
• Vampire Vords: Only in the dub, where her accent is stereotypical "vampirish".

Tania (タニヤ)

The third of the Shadow Riders. An Amazon warrioress who doesn't seem interested in the Sacred Beasts cards as much as finding a Worthy Opponent she can duel with. Uses an Amazoness deck.

Voiced by: Kazue Komiya (Japanese) and Alyson Johnson (English) and Erica Schroeder (English, Episode 148 onward)

• Action Girl: If her looks alone don't convince you, the fact that she beats Bastion and comes very close to beating Judai too proves it.
• Amazonian Beauty: Is extremely muscular, and Bastion falls head over heels for her.
• Ambiguously Human: It's not exactly clear whether she's a human who can turn into a tiger, the opposite, or even some type of Duel Spirit. (She reappears in one of the Spirit Dimensions in season 3.)
• Animorphism: Inverted, she is actually a tiger who transformed into a human through the help of a dark item.
• Anti-Villain: Although she technically works for Kagemaru, she isn't malicious like most of her teammates and doesn't have evil intentions with her actions.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: A strange example, as her "Hercules" needs to be strong at Duel Monsters and not physically.
• Blood Knight: Her main motivation seems to be finding someone who matches up to her dueling skills.
• Cuteness Proximity: Acts like this with Bastion to throw him off his game.
• Dating Catwoman: Seems to be the case with Bastion in season three, as he elects to stay in the other dimension with her. For extra points, she is actually a tiger that can take human form.
• Friendly Enemy: With how she and Judai act towards each other during their duel, you'd be excused if you forgot her role as an antagonist.
• Graceful Loser: Takes her loss against Judai very well, being happy that she finally found someone who measured up to her standards.
• Great White Feline: After being defeated by Judai, Tania transforms into a white tiger which is apparently her true form. She also aids the heroes in the third season.
• Heel–Face Turn: Though she wasn't much of a villain to begin with, in season 3 she actively aids the heroes.
• The Bus Came Back: Appears in season 3 again.
• Token Good Teammate: Although you can hardly call the two Shadow Riders who come after her evil, she is the only one of the Shadow Riders who doesn't start a Shadow game with anyone. All she wants is to find a good challenge.
• Tough Spikes and Studs: Tania is an Amazon warrior princess who defeats Bastion and comes very close to besting Jaden. She wears a spiked collar.
• Worthy Opponent: Regards Judai as this after seeing firsthand how good he is at dueling and how readily he uses her "Amazoness Arena" spell card to engage in spiritual fistfights with her. Judai, being very impressed by her, tells her the feeling is mutual.

Don Zaloog (首領－ザルーグ)

The fourth of the Shadow Riders. Pretends to be a detective who assists the heroes in hiding their keys so he and his accomplices can easily steal them, and is actually the spirit of the card of the same name granted life by his dark item. Runs a Dark Scorpion deck.

Voiced by: Taiten Kusunoki (Japanese), Pete Zarustica (English)

• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Subverted, despite being the ringleader of the group, Don Zaloog is only the second strongest in terms of ATK, being somewhat edged out by Gorg the Strong, the only level 5 monster of the group.
• Bowdlerization: Amazingly enough, averted. 4Kids didn't edit out his revolvers at all, even though Upper Deck did edit them on his card.
• Eyepatch of Power: Which allows him to physically manifest.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: He and his cohorts are really more of a nuisance than a threat.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He and his friends come across as kind of goofy, and Chazz defeats him pretty easily.
• Famed In-Story: Inverted twice-over. Don Zaloog's card is rather popular in the real-life game, but the main cast has clearly never heard of him.
• Made of Iron: Don gets crushed by a beefed up Ojama King (and realistically, he should be destroyed as a result of battle), but he's still alive and well after the ordeal.
• Mundane Solution: Attempted. He and his cohorts do successfully steal the keys, but because the gates require the holder to lose a duel, it doesn't work.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After Gorg returns Armed Dragon LV7 to the top of Chazz's deck, Cliff the Trap Remover sends both it and another card from his deck to the Graveyard. This allows Chazz to resurrect Armed Dragon through Level Modulation and allow him to attack directly.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In the English dub, Don Zaloog speaks in an imitation of Christopher Walken.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: He and his gang infiltrate Duel Academy by disguising themselves as faculty (or a student, in one case). Exactly why this didn't initially raise suspicion isn't clear, seeing as they don't seem very convincing. (Especially in Meanae's case. She posed as the school nurse, and Duel Academy already has one.)
• Ship Tease: Seems to have this with Meanae the Thorn, though it's very subtle. The card Dark Scorpion Tragedy of Love involves the two of them and requires Maenae be sacrificed to destroy an opponent's monster, and Zaloog actually expresses regret at having to do so before he even plays the card (it was Maenae who insisted on using it). Clearly there's something going on between them.
• Stupid Crooks: He and his pals aren't exactly "in" with the program here, as they don't seem to know how the Keys work.
• Taking the Bullet: Don uses his Retreat of the Dark Scorpions card to protect the others from the effect of Chazz's Armed Dragon, at the cost of a direct attack. (Although, as far as gameplay is concerned, this was a smart move, as he'd have lost five monsters if he hadn't, and would still have been attacked directly.)
• True Companions: He and his four cohorts genuinely like each other.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He and his friends join Chazz's other duel spirits in his room after being defeated by him, but never appear after it.

Abidos the Third (アビドス３世, Abidosu San-sei)

The fifth of the Shadow Riders. An ancient Pharaoh who is said to have never lost a duel in his time. Runs an anime-original deck focusing on a Continuous Trap called "The First Sarcophagus."

Voiced by: Mamoru Miyano (Japanese), Darren Dunstan (English)

• Ambiguously Gay: After being beaten by Judai, he takes his hands◊ and asks him to come to the afterlife with him while gazing into his eyes. Judai just asks Abidos to give him about 100 years, which the latter accepts. It doesn't help that his voice in the dub sounds much more flamboyant than the original.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Highlighting his status as an ancient pharaoh, he communicates with archaic vocabulary in the Japanese version. He's notably the only character in the series to refer to himself with the antiquated pronoun "yo".
• Anticlimax Boss: In-universe, he doesn't live up to his reputation as an undefeated legendary duelist. Jaden notes that his deck isn't much better than that of a beginner duelist, and Abidos is shocked when Jaden tries to destroy his Sarcophagus cards before Abidos completes the summoning of his boss monster.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Subverted and deconstructed. All of his subjects purposely lost to him, thus he seems to be the best Duelist of his bunch, when he's actually someone who was handed his legacy. After losing to Jaden, he swore to learn more about dueling before he truly becomes a legend.
• Challenge Seeker: His motivation for being one of the Shadow Riders is his desire to play a satisfying duel. Jaden obliges.
• Cool Airship: Where he duels Jaden. It's made out of gold, and presumably stays in the air because of magic.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Jaden is rather excited to duel someone who has never lost a duel before. However...
• Death or Glory Attack: His strategy boils down to spamming weak Zombie monsters from the Graveyard using Spirit of the Pharaoh and then buffing them with Thousand Energy, which boosts all of their ATK but destroys them at the end of the turn. While this can easily overwhelm the opponent with sheer numbers and stats, and take them down right away, he doesn't have much of a backup plan if it fails. Jaden simply makes Sparkman unable to be destroyed by battle, weathers all the attacks without taking too much damage, and then finishes Abidos off on the next turn.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Despite his reputation as an undefeated Duelist, the crew quickly finds out that he doesn't quite live up to the hype. Syrus calls his strategy common and Jaden thinks he's "kind of weak", which isn't unjustified since the majority of his monsters have a whopping 900 ATK and no effect, and he's one of the few opponents that Jaden beats without using any Fusion monsters. Abidos isn't actually a bad duelist; he is reasonably competent and gives Jaden a pretty decent duel, it's just that it doesn't come close to his reputation.
• Foil: Possibly one to Yami Yugi, both being ancient Egyptian pharaohs who are reborn into the modern world. Unlike Atem, though, he didn't earn any of his victories (not from the lack of trying, though).
• A God Am I: Among other things, he was called the "God of Duelists". Considering he turns out to be a fairly grounded person, it's doubtful that he started it.
• Graceful Loser: Proves that no one actually had to let him win when he acts like a good sport after Jaden defeats him.
• I Let You Win: Turns out the only reason he was undefeated in his time was because everyone lost to him on purpose because he was the Pharaoh.
• Malevolent Masked Man: But he removes it when he decides to face Jaden on his own.
• Meaningful Name: Abydos is an old Egyptian city.
• Mummy: Uses some as Mooks, though only to bring everyone onto his airship. The mummies don't actually hurt anyone. Also the theme of his deck. Abidos himself might qualify, though he's handsomer than most.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: Subverted; despite being a pharaoh on the side of the bad guys, Abidos is an Anti-Villain at worst, as he couldn't care less about the Spirit Keys and is more focused on finding a worthy opponent. His Spirit of the Pharaoh plays this a bit straighter, though.
• Royal Brat: His servants seemed to think he was one, but he's more competent than most.
• Self-Made Lie: When he faces off against Judai, it becomes clear that Abidos is a mediocre duelist who only won because his opponents pretended to lose because they feared retribution from him.
• Victory Is Boring: The reason he's a Challenge Seeker.
• Was It All a Lie?: He realizes that it was, but gets over it rather quickly.
• Weaksauce Weakness: His entire deck is based around the activation of the First Sarcophagus, which has to stay on the field for three entire turns while activating the Second and Third from his deck. This is, in fact, what causes Jaden to realize what's going on with him, as Abidos is completely caught off-guard when Jaden tries to destroy it, even though pretty much any sane Duelist would try that (to his credit, though, he did have a Magic Jammer ready to negate that attempt).
• Zerg Rush: His strongest monster, Spirit of the Pharaoh, special summons all level 2 or below Zombie-type monsters from his Graveyard, thus completely occupying his field with monsters to attack with.

Titan (タイタン, Taitan)

The sixth of the Shadow Riders. Originally hired by Crowler to get rid of Jaden, he was possessed during their duel and forced to become one of the Shadow Riders in exchange for not losing his soul. Runs an Archfiend deck.

Voiced by: Norio Wakamoto (Japanese), Eric Stuart (English)

• Arch-Enemy: Possibly to Alexis/Asuka as they first meet when Titan took her to be used as bait only for both of them to face each other in a shadow duel later on. Titan even appears at the end of Alexis' story in Tag Force 2 where he seeks to exact revenge on her for his defeat.
• Brainwashed and Crazy / Deal with the Devil: Similarly to Atticus, he made a deal to become one of the Shadow Riders to prevent his soul from being taken by dark powers. The Brainwashed and Crazy part comes in when he is revealed to be much more sadistic than he was before, positively revelling in Alexis' agony while dueling her.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: When Alexis's duel with Titan becomes a real Shadow Game, she can feel pain course throughout her body when he attacks her with his monsters, which Titan clearly appreciates.
• Dark Is Evil: His deck is full of Archfiend cards. Also he literally uses the dark to hide his monsters.
• Discard and Draw: He ditches the chess themed Archfiends after losing to Jaden for new ones based around Spanish bullfighting.
• Evil Counterpart: His second Archfiend deck could be considered this to Alexis' as both feature monsters based on performance sports with Ritual Monsters as the ace cards but Titan's deck is full of demons and focuses on the violent aspect of bullfighting to reflect his sadism whereas Alexis' deck contains angels and the playstyle of the Cyber Girls highlights her will to protect others such as when she takes direct damage from Titan's attack to save her monsters from destruction.
• Expy: As a hired gun tasked with removing the protagonist from an island premises who uses the darkness to hide his monsters and suffers a Fate Worse than Death after their Absurdly High-Stakes Game goes wrong, Titan takes a lot of cues from Panik from the original series.
• Fate Worse than Death: Loses his soul for good after Alexis defeats him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Started out as a simple hit man (or rather, the card game version of it) assigned to scare Jaden.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: A sinister example as he tells Asuka that if she loses their duel he will claim and take her to the dark realm he came back from.
• Malevolent Masked Men: To further unnerve his opponents. Then he actually becomes malevolent.
• Master of Illusion: He's pretty good at making his opponents imagine they're in a real Shadow game. Of course, after he becomes one of the Shadow Riders he doesn't need to use tricks anymore...
• Non-Indicative Name: Despite continuing to use an Archfiend deck in his duel against Alexis, his new Archfiend cards are now Warrior Type monsters instead of the usual Fiend Type.
• Phony Psychic: Initially he is. In the dub, Jaden accuses him of being an "out of work carnie", and he accidentally lets slip that he is one.
• Smart People Play Chess: The theme of his first Archfiend deck, with the ace monster predictably being Terrorking Archfiend.
• Took a Level in Badass: Though he wasn't a slouch before, he is a lot more formidable after coming back as one of the Shadow Riders.

Amnael

See Daitokuji/Lyman Banner's folder here.

Kagemaru

Kagemaru (影丸)

The main antagonist of the 2nd half of season one, who spends most of said season off-screen. Also the chairman of Duel Academy's board of directors.

He uses a Sacred Beast deck.

Voiced by: Mugihito (Japanese, old), Nobutoshi Canna (Japanese, young), David Wills (English, old), and Marc Thompson (English, young)

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• A God Am I: He gets on this kick once he regains his youth.
• Big Bad: Of the second half of Season 1 due to being the one who send the Shadow Riders to Duel Academy to get all the keys to unlock the Sacred Beasts.
• The Chessmaster: Plays both the Shadow Riders and the main cast against each other to gain control over the Sacred Beasts. (Revealing that the true requirement to control the Sacred Beasts is large amounts of spiritual energy, and that the "keys" are actually siphons to gather it, with him establishing the entirety of Duel Academia just to amass strong duelists who could be drained.)
• Deal with the Devil: With the Sacred Beasts. Also on the supply side to Titan, trading his loyalty for freedom from the shadows.
• Evil Cripple: At first he's an elderly invalid kept alive by a liquid-filled tubular stasis chamber with robotic arms and legs. Halfway through the final battle with Jaden, however, the power he gains from the Sacred Beasts make him a muscular young man, who not only breaks out of it, but effortlessly throws the entire device away.
• Final Boss: While he's not focused on during the conflict against the Shadow Riders, he shows up after they've all been defeated and the day is seemingly saved to serve as the last opponent revolving around the Shadow Riders.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: During his first turn, he Sets three Trap Cards and explicitly identifies them as such. This comes across as unusual to those spectating the duel, as a player never needs to state whether or not a card he is Setting in the Spell & Trap Zones is a Spell or Trap Card. This proves relevant, however, as he immediately sends the cards he Set to the Graveyard to fulfill Uria's Summoning conditions. Later on, when he Sets three Spell Cards and once again identifies what he is Setting, it's a dead giveaway that he plans to once again send said cards to the Graveyard to Special Summon another Sacred Beast, this time Hamon.
• Fountain of Youth: Sought to obtain the Sacred Beasts to restore his youth. He gets it for a few moments.
• Godhood Seeker: He wants to harness the power of the Sacred Beasts to "become the God of the world" and restore his youth.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Until the very, very end of Season 1, the most the viewer sees of him is through a television screen and talking to the Chancellor.
• Heel–Face Turn: He just kind of... stops being evil after he's defeated.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: His goals aren't revealed until he finally appears on screen.
• Hunk: Post-Fountain of Youth, he gains an utterly ripped body and flips his long, silky black hair out of his face.
• It's All About Me: He's willing to have the Sacred Beasts completely eradicate Duel Monsters just so he can use their energy to be young again.
• Karma Houdini: Absolutely nothing happens to him after he's defeated by Jaden. Unless you count Jaden giving him a hug and accidentally breaking his back.
• The Man Behind the Man: The one behind the Shadow Riders.
• Olympus Mons: His deck uses all three of the Sacred Beasts and revolves around a strategy attuned specifically to them.
• Teen Hater: He even flat out admits it; after yelling at the assembled crowd of students to be silent when he finally shows up, he remarks, "This is why I hate teenagers".
• Testosterone Poisoning: Gets pretty worked up as he regains his youth and muscles.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Once he's gotten the Sacred Beasts, they turn out to be far stronger than their real-life counterparts, and he easily spams the field with three 4000+ monsters. He also has a Field Spell, Fallen Paradise, that pretty much lets him draw two extra cards every turn. However, he demonstrates no particular understanding of their abilities, wastes lots of cards on trying to summon them, and fails to exploit their effects - compare to Yubel, who actually does try to exploit their effects and come up with ways of summoning them besides tributing random cards and hoping for the best. In particular, he completely forgets Uria's facedown-killing effect after the first few turns, which would have won him the game.^note According to the Yu-Gi-Oh! wiki, Uria's destruction effect cannot be used on the same turn as its (anime-only) revival effect, which he was using almost every turn due to Jaden repeatedly destroying Uria. It's never explicitly stated in the show, however.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • His actions in the 1st season are a contribution to the 4th season's Rising Conflict with Darkness.
  • Given how he was the one to arrange for the Sacred Beasts to be hidden under Duel Academy, it could also be argued he contributed to Yubel being such a menace in the third season too.
• Xanatos Gambit: The entire conflict with the Shadow Riders was one for him. Either the Shadow Riders succeeded in collecting the spirit keys, or the duelists wielding the keys defeat the Riders and fuel the keys to open the Spirit Gate anyway, while at the same time, reveal the duelist he needs for the final ritual to control the Sacred Beasts.

Season 2

Takuma Saiou (Sartorius Kumar)

Takuma Saiou (斎王 琢磨, Saiō Takuma) (Sartorius)

The leader of the Society of Light cult, the main threat of Season 2; the vessel for the Light of Ruin.

He uses a Tarot-themed Arcana Force deck.

Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (Japanese), Maddie Blaustein (English, GX), and Daniel J. Edwards (English, Duel Links).

Tropes exclusive to him in the Society of Light arc:

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• Affably Evil: As you might expect from the head of a cult.
• All of the Other Reindeer: When he was a child he was shunned because of his power to see destiny.
• Anime Hair: Even by the standards of this series, Sartorius's three-pronged, three-colored hairstyle is pretty wild, and it only gets wilder as the Light gets worked up.
• The Assimilator: His scheme to have everyone join the society and help everyone see the light. But that isn't really his true motive because he's actually an Omnicidal Maniac.
• Because Destiny Says So: His primary power was seeing into the future with the aid of his tarot Deck and because his predictions were never wrong he embodied this trope.
• Becoming the Mask: As a young boy, Sartorius knew one day he would be corrupted by evil, so he befriended Aster in hope that one day Aster would save him. As Sartorius implies he feels guilty about this truth, Aster invokes this trope and states that Sartorius did become his friend.
• Beneath the Mask: Or rather beneath the Light of Destruction's facade.
• Big Bad: Of Season 2 due to being the founder and leader of the Society of Light.
• Blessed with Suck: His power to see the future.
• Break Them by Talking: With You Can't Fight Fate.
• Character-Driven Strategy: Sartorius is a Seer who sees the future through tarot cards who runs a cult that worships an Eldritch Abomination made of cosmic light. He plays an Arcana Force deck, a LIGHT-Attribute, Tarot Motif deck with Lovecraftian designs who's effects are based around random chance, made all the easier since he is able to predict the future.
• The Chessmaster: Only natural considering he could see the future.
• Childhood Friends: With Aster. Deconstructed when he admits he befriended him in hope that Aster would one day save him from his own demise. Aster isn't bothered because Aster does see him as a friend.
• Charm Person: He brainwashed members into the Society's fold by defeating them in a duel or losing to one of his representatives, using his own mystical powers of fate-prediction and his talent for pushing an opponent's buttons to make them lose faith in themselves. This was all possible because of the Light of Destruction's influence of controlling others.
• The Comically Serious: The one comedic moment with him has him struggling to turn on a Duel Disk. As he states himself, he never used one before.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Kagemaru. Kagemaru wants to regain his health and youth by sucking the energy of Duel Monster cards and become a god by gaining the Three Phantasms for his plan. Sartorius, however, is the leader of a cult that worships a deity, has the power to see into the future and is an Omnicidal Maniac planning to remake the world in his own image.
• Cthulhumanoid: His Arcana Force monsters, definitely. Even Aster is noticeably unnerved at one of them.
• Creepy Monotone: While under the sway of the Light of Destruction.
• Cutting the Knot: Aster manages to summon Destiny Hero Plasma during their duel, have it absorb what appears to be Sartorius ace (boosting its ATK to 3450), and powers it up further with D-Force, a card that makes the monster immune to card effects of any kind. Prevented from using his usual assortment of cunning tricks, Sartorius gets around this situation by simply summoning a monster with enough attack points to get rid of what's left of Aster's already dwindling life points by fighting Plasma head on.
• Dark and Troubled Past: When he and his sister were young they were shunned and humiliated by others out of fear of their abilities to tell the future.
• Demonic Possession: By the Light of Destruction which is responsible for all his villainous actions in Season 2.
• Depower: He loses all his supernatural powers when he is defeated by Jaden.
• Didn't Think This Through: Showing Jaden a vision of his future in the middle of their duel was meant to demoralize him, however, the vision he shows Jaden has the opposite effect because it explicitly shows Jaden alive in another dimension, which means he won't die due to the satellite and thus he will win their duel. What's worse is that by Saiou's own logic, he's going against the very same fate he believes in so much if he does win, so not even he himself believes what he is saying.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Arcana Force are not a very good archetype. Sure they have some powerful effects, but their roulette wheel mechanic (an effect determined by a coin flip in real-life) means that half the time they backfire, and why bother risking it when you could just use monsters with effects that are always good? However, because Sartorius can see the future, he's able to time his plays so that the roulette always lands in his favor, making the archetype viable.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: As the Light continues to gain more and more control he becomes more pale and demonic looking in appearance.
• Evil Plan: Using a Kill Sat to destroy the world, but only by obtaining the Satellite keys that the real Sartorius gave to Jaden and Aster.
• Exotic Eye Designs: His sclera are tinted slightly yellow as a side effect of being possessed by the Light of Destruction. When he is freed they turn back to white.
• Expressive Hair: When completely corrupted by The Light, his hair becomes wild.
• Expy:
  • Of Marik, including the loss of control over his body, his soul siding with someone else (Marik with Bakura, Sartorius with Aster) to fight the being now possessing his body, and a sister who presses the protagonists into saving him.
  • Satorious also bears more than a passing resemblance to Dio Brando/DIO from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure; specifically from Part 3: Stardust Crusaders. Aside from looking similar facially, both are charismatic cult leaders whose bodies are possessed by evil, with a tendency to ham it up when excited, as well as a Tarot theme and a strong belief in destiny. Aptly, Takehito Koyasu who voices Sartorius would go on to voice DIO in the animated adaptation of Stardust Crusaders, making the reference recursive.
• The Fatalist: His dueling strategy has elements of frightening his opponent by displaying his ability to see straight through the duel and claiming that he already knows the outcome of every turn from the start.
• Fighting from the Inside: Throughout the second season, Sartorius attempts this. The best he's able to do is give the 2 satellite keys to Jaden and Aster for safe keeping.
• Final Boss: Satorious serves as this for Jaden in season 2 since Aster tries (but fails) to defeats the former.
• Fortune Teller: Even without his psychic powers, he relies on more traditional methods.
• Genre Savvy: He's perfectly aware that Judai can make a miraculous comeback even when he has an overwhelming advantage over him. When Judai starts making a comeback during their duel and Light Barrier ends upside down (which means it's deactivated for that turn) Saiou starts to worry if he can actually survive that turn enough for Light Barrier to activate again. Bear in mind he has the 3100 attack point The World out while Judai only has the 1600 attack point Sparkman on his field and just a few cards in his hand. He's right to be afraid given that Judai manages in one combo to bring out Neos while destroying The World thanks to Hero Counterattack and bring out Glow Neos on his turn to destroy Light Barrier before it becomes a problem again.
• Hannibal Lecture: His modus operandi, which also serves as a recruitment tool. In the dub, he even talks like Anthony Hopkins playing the trope namer.
• Heel–Face Turn: Once the Light of Destruction is defeated, he's set free from it's possession.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Is present in all of season 2, with his motives and purpose of the Society of Light slowing being revealed to be destroying humanity because he is possessed by the Light of Destruction.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Flip-flops on this one throughout the series.
• In Their Own Image: He's poised to remake the world in the image most befitting to the extraterrestrial radiance within him.
• Invincible Villain: Due to his ability to see the future and his Arcana Force monsters always having their effects go the way he wants them to at the right time, he never loses for most of the season. One duel he manages to negate a first turn kill and turns it against his opponent, winning before his own turn ever begins. When facing Aster, Sartorius just skips the part where his Arcana Force monsters effects are left to chance and automatically makes them trigger their positive effects, and when that isn't enough against Destiny Hero Plasma, he turns out to have a ludicrously strong ace monster up his sleeve.
• I See Dead People: He's able to sense the Ojamas and sever their link to Chazz while he's a member to the Society of Light.
• Kill Sat: Plans to use one to destroy the planet. In the dub, it's to beam the Light across the world and brainwash everyone at once.
• Light Is Not Good: Not only him, but the monsters in his deck, which are Obviously Evil.
• Manipulative Bastard: Using individuals from the Society of Light to further his goals. Even without being possessed, he manipulates Aster and Jaden on a few occasions to help himself.
• Mask of Sanity: For the most part, Sartorius remains stoic in behavior without anyone possibly suspecting he is possessed. Until the Light comes straight forward with its plan and duels Aster or Jaden, behaving like a maniac in the process.
• More than Mind Control: Part of how Sartorius brainwashes members into joining the Society by making them lose faith in their own lives and convincing them that joining the Society is a much more preferable alternative.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: In both of his duels with Judai, he employs a strategy that practically doesn't let him do anything and gives him an overwhelming advantage while at it (The Light Barrier in the first duel and implanting The Fool in his deck for the second one) because he is aware of Judai's strength and capacity for miraculous comebacks...and he's right to fear it. He's arguably the least cocky villain in the series.
• Obviously Evil: Eerily pale skin, unhealthy yellowed eyes, sunken cheeks with huge cheekbones, freaky hair, pointed teeth, speaks like Hannibal Lecter in the dub... even Ojama Yellow thinks the guy looks shady.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Possessed by the Light of Destruction, he plans to use a Kill Sat to destroy humanity.
• Only One Name: The dub never assigns him a last name, although some video games give him the surname "Kumar."
• Our Angels Are Different: His monsters are Fairies, technically, but more resemble Humanoid Abominations than the typical ones.
• Powers via Possession: Sartorius wields supernatural powers given to him by the Light of Destruction, including the ability to materialize Duel Monster effects and to embed his power into Duel Monster cards, as well as other people, putting them under his control. He can also ward off weak spirits, cast illusions, and temporarily render others immobile. In addition to these skills, Sartorius' "other self" can use light to blast objects and perform telekinesis on them.
• Press Start to Game Over: The first, and so far only player in the anime to perform a Zero Turn Kill. He defeats Prince Ojin before his first turn ever arrives using cards that can be discarded from the hand on the opponent's turn to negate damage and start further combos.
• Seers: His main power, both before and after his possession, is the ability to see the future through tarot cards.
• Sharing a Body: With the Light of Destruction in season 2.
• Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: In the original, the good side of him is convinced he is a puppet of destiny and his actions have just been for his interests, he apologizes to Aster that their friendship may just have been his attempt to save himself from his demise. Aster doesn't think so...
• Split-Personality Takeover: When his good half tries to help Aster and Jaden, the Light of Destruction fully possesses him.
• Straw Nihilist: He is the leader of the Society of Light convincing people to join because life is meaningless, and later he tries to destroy the world with a Kill Sat.
• Tarot Motifs: His entire deck, to go along with his Fortune Teller persona.
• Tragic Villain: He was driven to evil by Demonic Possession, always being haunted by his eventual demise and continued to become more possessed by the Light of Destruction.
• Übermensch: Seeks to end the world's "age of darkness" by destroying it and recreating it to his desire.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Sarina emphasized that her brother had once been a kind and caring person and that it was because of a Hero card shown to him by a guest Duelist, before the events of season 2, that he began acting with evil intentions. It was confirmed he had been possessed by the Light when he came into contact with the Hero card which was previously stolen by the D from Aster's father.
• Villainous Cheekbones: Which contribute heavily to him looking much older than he actually is, as other characters with well-defined cheekbones tend to be Duel Academy faculty.
• Villain with Good Publicity: He's a highly respected Pro Duelist Manager of several top pros, most notably Aster Phoenix.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: To Aster and the Society of Light as a whole.
• You Are Not Alone: The good Sartorius appears right next to Aster as a ghost for support while he duels against the Light of Destruction possessing his body.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Possessed or not he believed everyone was at the mercy of fate, but that didn't stop him from befriending Aster in hope that one day he could save him from the Light.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Towards Aster halfway through season 2. Later on revealed this was solely the Light's intention.
• Younger Than They Look: He's around 17 or 18 years old, but he looks like a full-grown adult.

Tropes exclusive to him in the Darkness arc:

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• Always Need What You Gave Up: Loses his powers at the end of season 2 and misses them dearly now.
• Ambition Is Evil: Comes to believe this. Only with more and more power would he have been able to save his sister instead of dueling Jaden.
• Big Brother Instinct: Willing to capture Jaden for Darkness to save his sister, Sarina.
• Big Damn Heroes: His rescue of Jaden from Trueman. Subverted, Sartorius was merely drawing Jaden away to duel him himself.
• The Bus Came Back: Returns this season to warn Jaden of the rising threat.
• Cavalry Betrayal: When he saves Jaden from Mr. T but instead lures him into a duel surrounded by explosives in the Kaiba Corp building.
• Combat Pragmatist: He asks to check Jaden's deck for signs of Darkness, and instead slips a card into his deck to recreate a You Can't Fight Fate scenario in their duel.
• Death By Genre Savvy: When the fight turns against him, he does not as most villains do, believe that his ace monster - Arcana Force EX - The Dark Ruler - is indestructible or unbeatable, but he thinks it's safe to assume Jaden will try using a card effect to destroy it. (An honest assumption, seeing as both its scores are 4,000.) So he uses multiple protective card effects to prevent such an effect. Unfortunately for him, Jaden can indeed summon a monster with over 4K ATK, and when he does, Dark Ruler - and Saiou - are pretty much defenseless. If he wasn't so hasty to set up his defenses for his ace monster right away instead of waiting at the right time, Jaden could have made the mistake of summoning Elemental Hero Grand Neos instead of Magma Neos to try to return The Dark Ruler to Sartorius' hand although Jaden may have also learned from his first duel with Sartorius that Sartorius may have defenses against Grand Neos.
• Deconstruction: Of any villain that loses their powers.
• Depower: Deconstructed. Though he initially welcomed losing his precognition, he came to bitterly regret it when the Darkness arc rolled around and he was unable to predict it and save his sister.
• Despair Event Horizon: When his sister is captured and he is manipulated by the Darkness to defeat Jaden. Made worse by the fact he could have prevented that if he still had his powers to see the future.
• Drives Like Crazy: In a van, then on a motorcycle.
• Expressive Hair: His hair stands on end while possessed and only returns to normal once he is defeated.
• Forced into Evil: He has to defeat Jaden to save his sister from the World of Darkness.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Originally asks Jaden to investigate and defeat Darkness, but ends up being a pawn for the latter instead. Something he is regretfully aware of.
• Heel Realization: While he admits he will defeat Jaden to save his sister, he acknowledges his evil deeds since he himself asked Jaden to stop Darkness in the first place.
• Herald: Despite losing his powers he was able to sense the coming danger and informed Jaden of the rising threat in season 4.
• Not Brainwashed: Jaden suspects he is being controlled, but he confesses he is the despicable villain once again.
• The Pawn: Becomes one for Darkness.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: His sister is able to recognize that he is being corrupted into evil once again because of his negative thoughts, and instead of herself asks Jaden to save him instead.
• Tears of Remorse: As he admits how helpless he was protecting his sister and becoming a pawn for Darkness.
• Tragic Villain: Once again very tragic, he loses his sister to the World of Darkness, admitting that he was no longer at peace because he had lost his ability to see the future. He takes sole responsibility of rescuing her and didn't want to involve Jaden because he had already asked him to defeat Darkness, and as a result has to capture Jaden to rescue his sister.
• Treacherous Advisor: To Jaden. He offered to check his deck for signs of darkness, but instead slips a card into it so he can defeat Jaden.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His actions in the 2nd season are a contribution to the 4th season's Rising Conflict with Darkness, which he suspected in the first place.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Hits him hard after losing his powers and his sister being captured, he realizes he should have been trying to acquire more power or otherwise live in constant fear of destiny.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Because he lost his ability to predict the future, he started to believe his destiny from then on was to live in failure.

Mizuchi Saiou (Sarina Kumar)

Mizuchi Saiou (斎王美寿知, Saiō Mizuchi) (Sarina)

Sartorius' younger sister, who has ambiguous Psychic Powers of her own. Although initially appearing to be her brother's minion, her primary goal in Season 2 is to get Aster and Jaden to save her brother from the evil possessing him.

She uses a Taoism-themed deck, with Yami no Kami - Dark God as her trump card.

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• Anti-Villain: She dueled Jaden and Aster to see if they were capable of saving her brother.
• Arc Villain: For episodes 75 through 79.
• Bad Boss: She punishes the Four Monarchs by sealing them in a mirror (possibly intending to do so forever), even though two of them really did nothing disobedient at all; she simply had no use for them anymore.
• Blessed with Suck: Much like Sartorius, her powers only ever seem to make things worse for the two of them.
• The Bus Came Back: She returns at the end of season 2 to stop the Kill Sat from destroying the planet from within Cyber Space.
• Damsel in Distress: Defied in season 4, she is captured by Darkness under unknown circumstances in order to force Sartorius to accept the power of darkness. He corners and duels Jaden in order to save his sister but she appears to Jaden and urges him to defeat and save her brother instead.
• Elemental Powers: Not via her cards, which are all LIGHT and DARK; she seems able to communicate with and summon the Elemental Monarchs, and grant similar powers to whoever uses their cards.
• Enigmatic Minion: She acts as one for Sartorius until her defeat.
• Expy: For Ishizu, as she's also her series' second season's Herald with Psychic Powers who's trying to save her brother from his Enemy Within.
• Light Is Not Good: Much like her brother, most of the cards she uses are LIGHT Fiends. (Except the most important one.)
• Magic Mirror: Uses them to channel her powers. Also, her monsters are Shikigami, or Mirror Spirits.
• Lunacy: Her deck strategy depends on a card called "Full Moon Mirror", which starts with a full moon which wanes as each monster is destroyed. When it disappears completely, she can use the full effect of her Dark God.
• Miko: Possibly a real one.
• Put on a Bus: She stayed behind in cyber space after her duel with Jaden and Aster...
• Self-Duplication: She Tag Duels Aster and Jaden alongside a copy of herself. Taken further with her ace monster, which can fill the entire field with duplicates of itself.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She can take a lot of punishment for a girl who's barely older than Aster is.
• Younger than She Looks: She's around 14-16 years old, but looks like a mature woman in her twenties.

DD (The D)

DD (The D)

The first vessel for the Light of Ruin, which infected the card he stole from Aster Phoenix's father before he killed him.

His deck is based around summoning Destiny Hero Plasma.

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese) and Marc Thompson (English)

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• Arch-Enemy: To Aster, after he remorselessly confesses to be the one who murdered his father.
• Asshole Victim: It's hard to feel sorry for a guy who orphaned a kid over a trading card.
• Beneath Suspicion: The D took the role of Aster's legal guardian to avoid suspicion for his father's murder.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Is he ever. The only reason the guy took Aster in is to cover up the fact that he murdered the kid's father.
• Blatant Burglar: Dressed this way the night he stole the Ultimate D card from Aster's father.
• Blood Magic: Bloo-D itself has an attack that consists of blasting gore at the opposing monster, and is summoned with a card called Blood Note, which creates Blood Tokens.
• Crippling Overspecialization: His deck is probably the most extreme example of overspecialization in the series: when he has Bloo-D and D - Force out, he essentially can't use anything but Bloo-D. He can't even draw. Of course, this all-in strategy is rather effective, as Bloo-D with D - Force is just so overpowered that nothing can really defeat it, barring a level of brute force that most opponents simply can't manage.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: He is killed in the explosion that resulted in the Light of Destruction being purified from the Ultimate D card.
• Demonic Possession: By the Light of Destruction. Granted, he was kind of an asshole even before then as indicated by his attempted theft of the Bloo-D card; the Light turned it up a notch, making him downright murderous.
• Devil in Plain Sight: And it worked. He was able to hide his true intentions from Aster for ten years after adopting him. Aster never suspected anything.
• Evil Is Petty: Even in a world where a trading card game is Serious Business, orphaning a kid because their father tried to stop them from stealing a card is seen as going way too far. Granted, D did not premediate murdering Aster's father; the original plan was merely to steal his powerful Bloo-D card and escape with it, but Bloo-D held a portion of the Light of Destruction within it, and the rest is history.
• Evil Hero: A Trope that his ace card lampshades, and what D himself plays straight. Even the other D-Heroes seem far more heroic than Bloo-D does, and D is a remorseless killer who poses as a hero.
• Faux Affably Evil: His polite and civil personality is a complete and total act, which he drops when he summons Bloo-D.
• Fighting from the Inside: When his normal personality is in control, his hair is slicked back and he rarely cracks a smile.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: His evil personality.
• Hidden Depths: Prior to his duel against Doctor Collector, it's implied by his evil personality that he did feel guilt over killing Aster's father and probably did genuinely care for the boy upon becoming his legal guardian. Whether if this was true or not goes unexplained as his evil personality takes over completely.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: He was a cunning thief with a talent for manipulation from the beginning, but he had no intention of committing murder until he became subjected to Demonic Possession, no thanks to the Light of Destruction. After that, he had no problem murdering Aster's father in cold blood in the process of stealing Bloo-D.
• Killed Off for Real: One of a very select few. Of course, no tears are shed.
• The Magic Poker Equation: His deck at first seems to have too much focus on two cards, with a strategy that has a liability unthinkable in the OCG (he has no draw phase when using it). But the Bloo-D and D-Force combo are nearly unstoppable and unavoidable, and he makes ample use of the cards he does have. Many of them break some basic rules of the game, like D-Boost (allows two draws without drawing the top card), D-Time (forces both players to skip one phase of their turn), and the blatantly broken Unfair Judge (allows two battle phases for one monster, and on the second one, it can attack every monster the opponent controls).
• Man of Kryptonite: Even with D-Force active, Destiny Hero Bloo-D has two vulnerabilities in that it can still be destroyed in battle (unlike with the Relinquished/Restrict archetype, the equipped monster cannot be destroyed in its place) and any monster it absorbs can still be targeted for removal by spells and traps. Since Aster's deck leans heavily on Weak, but Skilled monsters with most of his spells and traps supporting the same, and since Bloo-D immediately absorbs his best beatstick at the time (Dogma) upon being summoned with it negating the effects of his other monsters so long as D-Force is in play, he struggles to defeat his father's murderer more so than other duelists in the series who use attack power-centric decks would.
• Manipulative Bastard: When he met Aster, he befriended him with false hopes about his father and taught him how to duel.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In his ten years as a champion, he only used Plasma in unofficial underground duels, as revealing it out and the open would reveal he was the thief and murderer Aster and Pegasus were looking for. The one time he brought it an official duel was against Doctor Collector, where it set the ablaze.
• Relative Button: Taunts Aster about his father during their duel.
• Sharing a Body: With the Light of Destruction, much like Sartorius.
• Shout-Out: In the dub, he states his real name is Kyle Jables, a pun of the band members' names, Kyle Gass and Jack Black ("Jables" to his friends).
• Small Role, Big Impact: Only appears in-person for two episodes near the end of Season 2, but his murder of Aster's father ten years ago is felt throughout the entire season as Aster tries to find the Bloo-D card that will lead him to the culprit. The trauma from said murder naturally contributed much to Aster's personality. Finally, he ended up (unintentionally) turning Sartorius into the season's Arc Villain by showing him the card while it was carrying the Light of Destruction.
• The Sociopath: Ten years previously, he broke into Aster's home and murdered his father, becoming possessed by the Light. From then on he established his title of world champion and adopted Aster to avoid suspicion while manipulating Aster's hopes the entire time.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Everyone loves this guy, the students at Duel Academy, the teachers there, and pretty much every Pro-League fan, up until his true nature is revealed.
• Vigilante Execution: His fate by Aster. Not that he doesn't deserve it, of course.
• Walking Spoiler: It's pretty much impossible to talk about this man without mentioning that he's responsible for murdering Aster's father, the impact of which is felt throughout the entire Society of Light arc. All while D has a minimal active role.
• World's Best Warrior: Or in this case, world’s best gamer, he has been the reigning champion of the Pro League for the past ten years.

The Light of Destruction

Light of Destruction (破滅の光, Hametsu no Hikari)

A malevolent celestial entity that possessed Sartorius when he first came into contact with the "Ultimate-D card" and the main antagonist of the second season. Highly dangerous, The Light of Destruction wreaks unholy calamity on the world in the second season and its influence triggers the conflicts of the third season.

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• The Corruption: Its foul sentience corrupts anything it touches, spurring mortals to evil and destruction.
• Demonic Possession: It first inhabited the Ultimate-D card, then DD, and finally Sartorius as its main host.
• Eldritch Abomination: Some sort of demonic, extraterrestrial entity that is almost as old as the universe itself.
• Evil Counterpart: To the Gentle Darkness, which nurtures creation and is the source of the powers of Neo Space.
• Evil Is Hammy: At least in the original version, particularly when it excitedly summons Arcana Force EX - The Light Ruler to defeat Aster.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: A being made of light that seeks the ruin/destruction of all life. Yep.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of season 2, and even then, the Light's influence over Sartorius is only a small part of it's entire essence, with its source being a white hole somewhere in the depths of space. It was also the Light that drove Yubel mad, indirectly causing the conflict of season 3.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: The Light's purpose throughout human existence has been to inhabit humans to cause destruction.
• Light Is Not Good: In this series, it's straight up evil.
• Obviously Evil: Even though it's light, it's just as evil looking as anything that embodies Dark Is Evil.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Its ultimate goal is the eradication of all life in the universe. In the dub, this is changed to a desire to brainwash and be worshipped by everything.
• Time Abyss: Its origins are unknown, but it's evil influence has been around for eons.
• Put on a Bus: Despite all the trouble it causes in Seasons 2 and 3, it's nowhere to be seen in Season 4. It's implied that Jaden and Yubel defeat it at its source during the gap between seasons.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Its source is a white hole, a celestial object that is supposed to be the inverse of a black hole. (In Real Life, the existence of white holes is only a hypothesis.) Rather than absorb light, it exudes it, like some colossal "volcano of light", with said light exerting its wicked influence on populated worlds.
• The Virus: Spreads its malevolent influence from person to person through its cult.

Season 3

Professor Cobra (Professor Thelonius Viper)

Cobra (プロフェッサー・コブラ, Purofessā Kobura) (Thelonius Viper)

Yubel's initial pawn, who aides them in order to revive his adopted son.

He uses a Venom deck, which consists entirely of snakes and snake themed monsters.

Voiced by: Masaya Takatsuka (Japanese) and Sean Schemmel (English)

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• Ambiguously Brown: He could be black or just have a dark tan.
• Anime Hair: He sports an enormous, pointy, gravity-defying pompadour.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite his actions, at the end of the day, all he wanted was to resurrect his son.
• Anti-Villain: Type 2; he just wants his son back.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He is in control of the duel for the majority of it, foiling every attempt by Jaden to stop his strategy. He only lost when Jaden managed to summon Magma Neos and drastically overpowered him.
• Deal with the Devil: Forms one with Yubel in order to see his deceased son again.
• Disney Villain Death: Yubel hypnotizes him into believing that Rick is alive and well again, and he tearfully approaches his adoptive son to embrace him... but he's actually walking right off the edge of the tower.
• The Dragon: To Yubel.
• Evil Laugh: He's quite good at this, despite his more noble cause.
• Evil Teacher: He's a teacher at Duel Academy's west branch and joins Duel Academy in season 3 with Axel and presents his Disclosure Duels as a required academy course. His true motive is to use the Disclosure Duels to drain energy from the students and restore Yubel so they can revive his son.
• Genre Blind: In his Deal with the Devil. Yubel promised to let him see his son again. They modified his memories to make him believe the car accident was prevented. Then lured him off the platform to his death.
• Fatal Flaw: Overconfidence, seriously. He's far too confident in his own - understandably powerful - strategies and as such, fails to see the flaws. Regarding his final move, he didn't have to attack Necro Darkman at all, as it was no threat to Vennominaga; had he used her effect to summon her in Defense Mode before playing Snake Rain, he could have revived it six more times, taken no damage, and gained a win by its effect.
• Killed Off for Real: By Yubel, once he loses to Jaden.
• Love Makes You Evil: Used the Bio bands to drain energy from the students of Duel Academy to restore Yubel's strength, so Yubel could revive his dead son.
• Meaningful Name: Uses a Deck of venomous snake monsters.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: A guy with the name of a venomous snake can't possibly be good news. Lampshaded by Syrus in the dub.
• Necromantic: Everything he does is to revive his dead son.
• Nerf: In the actual game, his cards are not nearly as powerful as they are in the anime. (For example, the real version of Rise of the Snake Deity cannot not be activated in response to an attack, and the real Vennimonaga's victory condition relies on "Hyper Venom Counters", which it would have been lost if sent to the Graveyard.)
• Papa Wolf: So much that, unfortunately, he's willing to make a Deal with the Devil to restore his son.
• Obviously Evil: He isn't exactly nice looking nor his name gives any hints he's a good guy. Adrian even lampshades it in the 4kids dub, as does Syrus by pointing out the Evil Laugh and the creepy music in his debut.
• Olympus Mons: His ace monster is the demonic Vennominaga the Deity of Poisonous Snakes, and its effect certainly borders on godlike compared to other cards, being nearly indestructible and able to achieve an Automatic Win Condition.
• Poison Is Evil: His Venom deck.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He calls Jaden out on having no real motivation to duel other than for his own desire to be the best, while he himself duels for his son.
• Red Right Hand: Literally and figuratively. His arm under his glove is red and scaly, a result of his bargain with Yubel.
• Retired Badass: He used to be a special forces operative.
• Snakes Are Sinister: He uses a deck of Venom monsters, which are snakes. Also, his name!
• Would Hurt a Child: Blair, who was 10.5 (dub) or 13 (japanese) is given a bio band like everyone else in the school body.
• Unwitting Pawn: Ironically, while he uses the students as this, he is little more than one himself to Yubel.
• Villain Has a Point: Jaden in episode 139 considers whether he is selfish.

Amon Garam (Adrian Gecko)

Amon Garam (アモン・ガラム) (Adrian Gecko)

I Am King

The champion of Duel Academy's east branch. Initially a neutral character, he actively attempts to thwart Viper's plans before aiding Yubel. Disappears for a considerable length of time and appears in the third alternate dimension harnessing the powers of Exodia in an attempt to rid himself of Yubel's influence.

He initially uses a Cloudian deck, and later gets an Exodia deck.

Voiced by: Nobuya Mine (Japanese) and Darrun Dunstan (English)

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• Always Second Best: He was the primary heir to the Gecko Family/Garam Group until their first child was born. He contemplates killing his younger brother but chooses not to, putting himself under him and worked diligently for his future. Then Adrian found himself in a different dimension where his brother wasn't present...
• Ambition Is Evil: His desire to become King.
• Alas, Poor Villain: He feels terrible about his actions towards Echo during his defeat by Yubel, and Jaden and the group feel he didn't deserve what happened to him.
• Badass Bookworm: Sure, he may look like your typical glasses-wearing smart guy, but just look at those muscles! He’s also one of the most skilled duelists we see in the show.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Turns on Yubel when they are at their most vulnerable as part of his plan. It ends with them dishing out an Eviler than Thou to him.
• Big Brother Instinct: Deconstructed. While he does prioritize his little brother over himself, it's a major source of inner conflict for him and his own desires.
• Blatant Lies: He tells Jaden and the group that he hasn't seen Jesse, even though he was associated with Yubel who had been in control of Jesse's body.
• The Chessmaster: When Viper not-so-subtly blackmails him into dueling and then sets the Bio Bands to potentially fatal levels, Adrian responds by holding a huge dueling party involving much of Duel Academy. Viper has to hastily turn the Bio Bands down to barely non-fatal levels to avoid killing off most of the student body. Both of his decks reflect this. Cloudians are not an aggressive deck; focusing on defensive plays and biding time until they have the fog counters for their powerful effects. Likewise, his Exodia deck sometimes treats the instant-win condition as an afterthought and he's one of the few players of the deck seen to have backup strategies in place in case the limbs hit the graveyard when he can't easily recover them. By the flipside of that coin, he still does have methods such as Fog Palace to recover lost limbs to try the instant win condition again if direct battle fails. He's basically one of the few players with an Exodia deck not completely reliant on stall and draw tactics.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Of Seto Kaiba. He, like Kaiba was adopted into a wealthy family, he's a Badass Bookworm, and he has a little brother who he wants to protect...except not really on that last one. Unlike Kaiba, who truly cared for Mokuba, Amon secretly despises Sid, his adoptive younger brother, for stifling his ambitions, being a weak and naïve child pampered by his blood parents compared to Amon's talents and hard work. Echo can be seen as a Shadow Archetype to Kisara as well, since she sacrificed herself out of love to help him obtain the ultimate monster - the difference being, of course, that Amon wanted this to happen and deliberately sacrificed her, whereas Seto was driven to villainy because Kisara was lost thanks to Akhenaden's machinations and would never desire to hurt her. Amon also generally lacks Kaiba's ego and bombastic qualities, being a much more calm, calculating schemer. It's worth noting that Amon ultimately abandons his Cloudians in favor of Exodia, the monster that caused Kaiba's most noteworthy defeat, while Kaiba, no matter how he changed or upgraded his deck, never abandoned his Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Essentially, he's Kaiba, minus all the things that make Kaiba likeable.
• Deadpan Snarker: Particularly in the dub.
  Adrian: Hold on. Before you "Chazz" me, I activate two of my facedowns!
  Chazz: But how?
  Adrian: Easy, I just call out their names dramatically and they pop up. Haven't you played this game before?
• Deal with the Devil: Makes a deal with Yubel in a bid for power, then later tries to use Exodia's power to escape her grasp. While he at least succeeds in breaking free of Yubel, he does not succeed in defeating her and his deal with Exodia ends up being for nothing.
• Didn't Think This Through: Tries to beat Yubel with the same cards they willingly gave him, apparently not considering that they might have a way to counter them.
• Didn't See That Coming: Although he comes close to assembling Exodia near the end of his match against Yubel, he's completely blindsided when they summon their own monster card and, having never seen it in action before, he's completely unprepared to deal with its Attack Reflector ability which ultimately costs him the duel, and his life.
• The Dragon: He starts out working for Yubel after Viper is removed, having been promised power in return for loyalty. Once Adrian reappears, searching for Echo, it's clear he isn't going to settle for working with Yubel or relying on someone else's power...
  • The Starscream: He's not shy about the fact that he's really only in it for himself (and Yubel is very well aware of it). Once Viper and Yubel's motives become clear, he turns on them without a second thought.
• Enigmatic Minion: Until he sacrifices Echo and kills Aster-at least to the protagonists. The viewer knows that he's aiming for greater power in the Spirit World, the issue is if he'll succeed.
• Evil Hand: Uses Yubel's arm before switching for Exodia, which destroys the scales that grew there.
• Evil Redhead: Has red hair that stands up in tall spikes.
• Evil Versus Evil: Against Yubel.
• Face–Heel Turn: Not exactly a nice guy to begin with, Adrian becomes ruthless after Yubel gets rid of Viper.
• Family Honor: Deconstructed. He was extremely loyal to the family who saved him from poverty as a boy, but felt his own potential was hindered serving them. He was relieved to discover another dimension where he didn't have to serve them.
• Faux Affably Evil: On the outside, through the first half of Season 3, Adrian goes about like a friendly and supportive guy. But it’s clearly for show, as his ruthless methods and selfish motives become apparent. Once Adrian fully reveals himself as a villain, he outright embraces it, dropping the friendly exterior almost entirely.
• Foil: To the Supreme King. Lampshaded by Jaden. He is after greater power and is willing to be The Unfettered to achieve a lofty goal of a better world. The difference however, arises from their motivations; Jaden became the Supreme King thanks to the trauma of losing his friends to the depravity of the Dark World Army and his own flaws coming to truly bite him in the rear. Adrian, by contrast, only seemed to ever have Echo as his main confidant, and willingly sacrificed her to gain more power, not to mention essentially betraying the Gecko Family-while his hatred of his adoptive parents is understandable, Sid by all accounts in flashbacks seems to have adored Adrian, a love that was ultimately not reciprocated, versus how Jaden cares for all of his friends, even with his laser-focused obsession on saving Jesse.
• Foreign Exchange Student: Champion of East Academy.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Amon's glasses form a major part of his appearance, and while he supposedly has good intentions, he's an entirely antagonistic character and his morality is skewed at best on account of his ambition.
• Freudian Excuse: He lived his childhood orphaned in poverty, and was saved by chance by the head of the Garam Finance to potentially become their heir ...until Sid was born, resulting in all of Amon's training and effort going into just becoming their personal agent instead. This is why he is driven to create a world void of poverty and unfairness and gain power for himself rather than for another.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Once he finds Exodia's sealed chamber, he makes up his mind that he needs a personal sacrifice to acquire Exodia and become King. Echo was his sacrifice.
• Godhood Seeker: He wants to become the king and god of all alternate dimensions.
• Good Is Not Nice: Exaggerated. His principles are unambiguously good, but he is willing to defeat anyone and make any personal sacrifice to achieve his goal. Then he becomes not-so good.
• Hand Blast: When he confronts a weakened Yubel, he channels Exodia's power to do this before they settle to have a duel instead.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Adrian knew that his actions had moral shades but believed that he needed to do so in order to make the world a better place and thus, he wasn't consumed by any darkness. Too bad for him, Echo didn't share the same sentiment. Turned out that Echo, despite her claims, was actually quite bitter about being sacrificed as a mere pawn for a bid for power. It also exposed Adrian as a false emperor: Adrian couldn't realistically bring about his goals and would find himself compromising his own standards even in his own Utopia, something Yubel blasted him for. Echo's darkness gave Yubel a power source and ended up being the means needed to defeat Adrian in their duel.
  • Actually downplayed, in that Echo's anger was not towards Adrian sacrificing her, but towards Yubel for daring to try to stop him. It was still exactly what Yubel needed though.
• Improbable Weapon User: He uses what appears to be a card called "Short Circuit" as an explosive device.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Sacrifices Echo to obtain Exodia.
• Killed Off for Real: Ambiguously. Most of the main cast who died in the alternate dimensions were shown to have been revived upon Yubel's defeat. Adrian wasn't. Neither was Echo, for that matter.
• Kick the Dog: He had the majority of Duel Academy students take part in survival duels, which resulted in them requiring medical attention, so he wouldn't be the sole target of Viper's plan to have him killed through the bio-bands (though he expected this move to force Viper not to use his bio-bands' killing mode on anyone to begin with since it would also affect the others; no one died, as planned, but Viper still used the bands with enough power to send everyone to the hospital). He also kills Aster in his attempt to make Echo take part in his ritual to obtain Exodia.
• Knight Templar: Subverted. It's not so much that he's convinced that he's a hero, it's just that his moral compass is entirely subsumed by his ambition.
• Lack of Empathy: Is revealed to hold no remorse over sacrificing Echo, believing Utopia Justifies the Means. Until he loses to Yubel that is, becoming racked with guilt when his actions become All for Nothing.
• Light Is Not Good: Revealed to have a heart without darkness when soul-searched by Yubel.
• Made of Evil: Subverted. He has no inner darkness within him to be exploited by Yubel, but Echo did...
• Meaningful Name: His Japanese name is derived from an Egyptian cloud deity, Amun. Adrian uses a Deck of cloud cards in his first two duels.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Upon being defeated by Yubel, he can no longer tell himself that his goals justify his actions, and Adrian becomes wracked with guilt for sacrificing Echo, screaming her name in anguish before dying.
• Necessarily Evil: Is perfectly willing to sacrifice anyone to become king of the alternate dimensions.
• Nominal Hero: In the beginning, he actively attempts to thwart Viper's plans, but as soon as he becomes involved with Yubel, it's clear he's motivated to acquire power for himself. The reason turns out to be his desire to become king of a world without conflict. Unfortunately, he wasn't held back from committing awful actions to achieve his goal.
• Not Brainwashed: He denies being corrupted by some evil influence and is acting freely in his decision to sacrifice Echo.
• "Not So Different" Remark: To Jaden, when he angrily accuses Adrian of killing Aster, and Adrian points out it isn't any different than what the Supreme King did before.
• One-Hit Kill: His second deck is quite nasty. It's Exodia, but as mentioned above, it's not solely reliant on Exodia itself. It also uses Exodius, which easily powers up quickly enough to land the 4000 damage necessary. It's also packing Fog King which quickly gains attack power and his sword magic card that, when it wins enough battles, something Fog King has no problem doing, also deals 4000 damage. As for Exodia itself; he's also got Fog Palace and Backup Soldier to add limbs back to his hand, Break the Seal to add Forbidden One pieces to his hand, and Exodius's effect also completes Exodia from the graveyard.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite his resentment for his younger brother, when he falls ill, Adrian has the opportunity to let him die and retake his place as heir to the Gecko family, knowing he could’ve saved him. But Adrian ultimately does the right thing, and saves his life, even staying by him to make sure he’s ok.
  • He also saves Bastion from an incoming Harpie’s attack, despite already making a Face–Heel Turn.
• The Philosopher: "Cogito ergo sum."^note I think. Therefore, I am.
• Psychotic Smirk: Pictured above, near the end of the duel with Aster when he declares his victory.
• Pure Is Not Good: Yubel discovers that he has no inner darkness, and he admits he was never corrupted and remains focused on his cause.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: During his bid for power.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: He cooperates with Jaden and the group the first time Duel Academy is transported to a different dimension volunteering to help on missions even though he's aligned with Yubel at that point and looking out for his own interests. The second time they see him in a different dimension, he's purely villainous.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: He's one of the more buff characters in the series and his standard outfit is sleeveless.
• The Smart Guy: Among the foreign champions.
• Story-Breaker Power: Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord is immune to destruction and gains 1000 ATK for each Forbidden One card in the Graveyard - and it sends two to the Graveyard just to summon itself and sends another one when it attacks. If you do happen to send all five pieces of Exodia to the Graveyard, then that also completes Exodia.
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: Deconstructed. He's able to prevent himself from generating any darkness by telling himself that Echo's sacrifice is for the sake of his utopia, allowing him to remain focused on dueling Yubel as a twisted way to honor that sacrifice. However, Echo herself harbored darkness, due to being zealous enough for Amon's cause to hate Yubel.
• Targeted Human Sacrifice: Echo for the ritual to obtain Exodia.
• Token Evil Teammate: He's the only transfer student in Season 3 who went Face–Heel Turn.
• Too Dumb to Live: He's actually very intelligent and can plan long-term, but just when Adrian's goal is within reach, he ultimately lets his ambition get the better of him and challenges Yubel with the very cards they willingly gave him, apparently not realizing that Yubel would use a Deck that can counter them. While he did try to include some of his own cards as a backup plan, he already committed so many resources to the Exodia strategy that it wasn't enough to win. It does not go well for Adrian, and unlike the rest of the cast that fell victim to Yubel's dimensional prison, he and Echo do not return.
  • In fairness to Adrian though, he had a backup to his backup plan that would have had him gather all 5 Exodia cards in one turn, had Yubel not been able to disrupt that due to sheer dumb luck. (and even then he was poised to win on his next turn)
• The Unfettered: If Kill the Ones You Love wasn't already a big indication of this trope.
• Uncertain Doom: It's never specified if he or Echo were brought back like the other characters after Yubel's defeat.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: His goal is to become the king of the last dimension and build a world without suffering, hatred and poverty, and he's willing to kill the woman he loves to do it.
• Villain Has a Point: As he points out, Chazz's own Misery Builds Character journey is pretty mild compared to what he had to suffer through as a child.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: At the end of the day, he really does want to make the world a better place, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from his methods alone.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never elaborated what exactly became of him after the conclusion of the third season.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: According to Chazz in the dub.

Yubel

Yubel (ユベル)

The main antagonist of season three, behind all the others.

Yubel uses a variety of decks depending on who they are possessing. As Marcel, Yubel used an Exodia deck and then a Sacred Beasts deck. As Jesse, they used an Advanced Crystal Beast deck and still have the Sacred Beasts deck as an alternate. Finally, as themself, Yubel uses the Yubel series while also using cards to utilize their final plan with the Super Polymerization card.

Voiced by: Hiromi Tsuru (Japanese, female voice; GX & Duel Links), Hisao Egawa (Japanese, male voice), Cassandra Lee Morris (English, GX), Eileen Stevens (English, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time), and Alyson Leigh Rosenfield (English, Duel Links).

Tropes exclusive to them in the Dimension World arc:

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• Adaptational Badass:
  • Yubel's namesake card in GX has an Attack Reflector effect that triggers any time they enter battle, so they can just throw themselves at the enemy to deal damage. They abuse this every chance they get. The real-life trading card game of the monster card is mostly the same, except for one difference: it requires the opponent to declare an attack on them to activate their Attack Reflector effect. Damage calculation is subtly different too, the anime version reflects any kind of battle damage taken, rather than dealing the opposing monster's ATK like the real-life version, so high DEF monsters are also fair targets.
  • Yubel - Terror Incarnate is also weaker in real life: the anime version of it, in addition to retaining Yubel's trait above, can sacrifice monsters on the controller's side to destroy an equal number of monsters on the opponent's side. Why is this better than the real life version that wipes every other monster off of the field? Because Yubel - Terror Incarnate can't directly attack with 0 ATK points, and being able to choose to let an opposing monster stay on the field means they can always deal damage.
• Ambiguous Gender: In the original, Yubel's human self could have been male or female: they had pretty but androgynous features and a feminine voice, but had the same green eyes and purple hair as Yubel's male half and used boku, which is primarily a masculine pronoun. The dub went with the interpretation of "female".
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: This is essentially what makes referring to them by the "right" pronoun so difficult: they don't even seem to identify themself of any gender. In the Japanese version, not once did Yubel express any stereotypically masculine or feminine behavior and didn't explicitly call themself either a "she" or a "he". However, they seem to lean a bit more to the masculine side, as the pronoun they use is "boku", call Judai "kimi" and have a somewhat masculine speech pattern despite their feminine voice.
• Anti-Villain: Yubel is the guardian of the Supreme King's vessel, and just wants to keep him safe from anything. Unfortunately, this doesn't extend to themself, at least not initially.
• The Assimilator: Once drained of their duel energy, Yubel would turn a student into a Duel Ghoul, either to take over Duel Academy in the other dimension or mess with Jaden.
  • Yubel's ultimate plan was also to unite the 12 dimensions, so only they and Jaden remained.
• Attack Reflector: When Yubel's namesake card engages in battle, the user takes no damage nor is the card destroyed, and the battle damage the user would have taken is dealt to the opponent instead.
• Ax-Crazy: As a result from coming into contact with the Light of Destruction when Yubel was sent into space.
• Bad Boss: Has no problem offing Viper for failing to defeat Jaden and/or serving his purpose.
• Batman Gambit: Yubel obtains Jaden's Super Polymerization card by possessing Jesse, knowing Jaden would use that card to save him which would be Yubel's opportunity to steal it.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Before their encounter with the Light of Ruin, they were at worst a very overprotective Knight Templar. Meeting and being tortured by it drove them to insanity and evil in one.
• Big Bad: Of Season 3 due to being the one who manipulates everyone from Cobra in creating the Bio Bands to the death of Jaden's friends and his fall into the Supreme King.
• Bond Breaker: Yubel basically breaks apart Jaden and his friends by manipulating his emotions and infecting them with curses to bring out their worst emotions. The end result is Jaden watching helplessly as his friends are sacrificed in a horrific ritual, all of them cursing his name in the process. Only Syrus is spared, and the actions cause him to distance himself from Jaden (made worse in the subs; Sho's usual designation of Judai as "aniki" is replaced by his name up until the finale of the season).
• Break Them by Talking: To both Jaden and Adrian, continuously taunting them over their sacrificed loved ones in their concluding duels with them.
• The Chessmaster: Yubel orchestrates all the events in the 3rd season to perfection.
• Climax Boss: The final duel with Yubel is where Jaden's Character Development comes full circle, and in the 4Kids version is outright the Final Boss since the fourth season wasn't dubbed. Said fourth season mostly involves Jaden trying to wind down while dealing with Nightshroud.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Yubel takes great pleasure from being attacked by Jaden in their duel. Also, reflected in their card effect of being able to return the damage they take back to the opponent.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Yubel's plan to awaken and successfully turn Jaden into the Supreme King.
• Creepy Monotone: While possessing Jesse, Yubel lets their real voice slip out on occasion and it comes off as this trope.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: When Yubel crash-lands on Earth, only their left arm survived, requiring Duel Energy to reconstitute themself - until then, they are stuck in a glass tube. They eventually gain enough power to directly possess people thanks to Viper, but don't fully revive themself until halfway through the season.
• Declaration of Protection: Deconstructed. In a past life, Yubel vowed to always protect Jaden from harm. In present time Yubel took that over the top by hurting Jaden's friends and was sent away, and came back to hurt them more. After all of Yubel's horrible actions, Jaden recognises Yubel's sacrifices and forgives them once he learns the truth.
• Demon of Human Origin: Was once Jaden's normal human friend in a past life that volunteered to become a duel monster to protect the Supreme King's vessel.
• Demonic Possession: Over Marcel and Jesse.
• Determinator: If Yubel's constant ability to stay one step ahead of Jaden in every duel and devotion of him isn't a sign, they survived re-entry from outer space and all that survived was their arm. Then they found Viper and began their plot.
• Dimensional Traveler: Yubel transports Duel Academy to a different dimension in the 3rd season.
• Disproportionate Retribution: During Jaden's childhood, they would hurt any of his friends who beat him in a duel.
• Dragons Are Demonic: Yubel is a demon (even classified as such in the real card game with the "Fiend" typing) but was also described as draconic in their past life. This is far more obvious in their Terror Incarnate and Ultimate Nightmare forms.
• Duality Motif: Yubel has one orange eye and one green eye, as well as grey hair and purple hair split vertically. Additionally, one side of their body is distinctly female (with a rounded breast and a wider hip) while the other is more masculine (with a well-defined pectoral muscle and a more muscular leg).
• Emotion Eater: After dueling Zane, Yubel required the darkness of another to restore their strength. They sought to take it from Adrian, but he was void of any inner darkness; so instead Yubel drew darkness from Echo, who's hatred was held within Exodia.
• The Empath: Sensing the negative thoughts and doubts of others allows them to manipulate people for their own use, such as Viper, Marcel, Adrian, Echo, etc.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Yubel wants to hurt Jaden, but this is because in their insanity, they genuinely believe sharing pain is a way of expressing love. When they discover Amon doesn't feel a thing after sacrificing Echo, Yubel is disgusted. They point out that despite Amon's utopian goals, he's putting the burden of sacrifice all on his loved one, making him a case of All Take and No Give.
• Evil Hand: Yubel can share their power with servants by transforming that person's left arm into a replica of their own.
• Evil Gloating: Yubel usually recounts what they've done to Jaden, admitting all their bad deeds and plans for him.
• Evil Laugh: Has a good one towards Zane when it seems his heart is about to give out. Cue Oh, Crap! when Cyber End Dragon appears with 16,000 attack points, but the duel ends at that point.
• Expy: Of Yami Bakura and Yami Marik. Yubel has the same hairstyle as both, a third eye like Yami Marik, gets similar bulgy veins and a Nightmare Face to the latter as well, and has just as much craziness as both before their own Heel–Face Turn. They're also the Knight of Cerebus for their series, being a major game-changer not unlike Yami Bakura in the manga, and Yami Marik in the anime.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: A vertical one in their forehead, and that's before they reveal their evolved forms. Their ultimate form has eyes and faces all over, including a pair in their knees.
• Face–Heel Turn: Got corrupted by the Light of Ruin after being sent into space...
• Fallen Hero: While the title of "hero" is a dubious one at best, they were at least focused on protecting Jaden and ignored anyone who left him alone. Ten years of torture later...
• Final Boss: Yubel is the final opponent Jaden faces in Season 3 (as well as the final opponent overall in the dub).
• Flaw Exploitation: Yubel's biggest scheme against Jaden in their last 2 duels was using his self-doubt and the doubt of his friends to weaken him. Also, increasing Jaden's guilt by outlining his mistakes.
• Forgotten Childhood Friend: Twice-over. In their past life, they were his childhood friend, whom he forgot about when he was reincarnated; in the present, they were a card Jaden owned as a child that would hurt others who upset Jaden, so Jaden had the card sent into space and his memory wiped to stop his nightmares. They're not too happy about either of these.
• Forgotten Friend, New Foe: The "forgotten friend" part was invoked by Jaden's parents when he kept having nightmares of Yubel suffering under the Light of Destruction.
• Fusion Dance: With Jaden.
• Gone Horribly Right: Yubel was originally a friend of Jaden's in a past life who vowed to protect the spirit of the Supreme King from harm. Yubel did end up protecting Jaden from any harm and awoke the Supreme King's powers within him, but the ordeal was very troubling for him.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Towards Jesse and the Neo Spacians. Yubel is also literally a green eyed monster, on one side at least.
• Guardian Entity: Was this during Jaden's childhood, and not exactly the good kind.
• Heel–Face Turn: Regains their sanity after fusing with Jaden.
• Hermaphrodite: They literally have a female right side of the body and a male left side, and switch back and forth between a male voice and a female voice. Averted when they were human, but it isn't clear which gender they were in the past life. They consistently had the feminine voice back then, but with a masculine speech pattern and their body looked androgynous.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Their obsession with Jaden, revealed at the end of season 3, revolves around being declared the guardian of the Supreme King several life times ago.
• Hypocrite: Yubel often mocks their opponents when they summon a 0 attack point (or 1 attack point) monster, treating them as idiots for doing so ...this is coming from a 0 attack point monster themselves.
• Identity Concealment Disposal: Before Yubel is actually involved with the plot, their body was destroyed during re-entry from space and they require Viper to restore their strength, being held in a chamber draining energy from the students with the bio bands. Then they gain enough energy to wander around in an energy-being form with a solid arm, find Marcel and use his body as a host. By the time Yubel duels Jaden and Jesse, they no longer require a host (discarding Marcel) and reveal their true form to Jaden and the viewer.
• Invincible Villain: Yubel is an amazing duelist who knows all the ins and outs of their cards perfectly, and despite having the Sacred Beasts, doesn't fully rely on them, packing plenty of their own nasty tricks. Contrary to every other Duel Spirit duelist or villain in the franchise, Yubel gets a large number of onscreen duels and only loses once due to Jesse pulling a Heroic Sacrifice,^note It's a triangle duel between them and Jaden, with Jesse taking his and Yubel's LP to 0 while Jaden still has 1,000. which they later work into their plan anyway by defeating Jesse offscreen and possessing him. Every other duel not with Jaden has Yubel come out on top, which includes two Obelisk Blue students (top students of the Academy), post freakout Zane (a bloodthirsty pro), and Adrian twice (who even has an overpowered Exodia deck the second time around).^note The first duel is inconclusive, but Yubel would've won if they'd continued because they had, ironically, four Exodia cards in their hand and the fifth about to be drawn. Even Jaden himself can only draw with them at best, and has to revive the power of the Supreme King just to stand a chance in their final battle.
• Knight of Cerebus: The first villain to really start hurting Jaden emotionally-targeting his friends and his personal weakpoints specifically to corrupt him, leaving a very large body count and emotional torment in their wake. Even in the dub of the third season where a ton of humor is added in the style of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, none of the scenes with them are played humorously-unlike Kagemaru and Sartorius, two very straightforward villains, Yubel's Establishing Character Moment in the dub, asking why Jaden won't "play" with them is psychopathic and disturbing (not that the original wasn't creepy either though, what with Yubel just repeating Judai's name in a loving, yet pained and disturbed tone).
• Lack of Empathy: Toward everyone except Jaden.
• Life Drain: The Bio bands were designed by Viper to drain duel energy from the students of Duel Academy so Yubel's power would be restored, which they keep doing until they can manifest into physical form.
• Literal Genie: They eventually do reunite Viper with his son... by killing him. They also grant Amon power...so that he'll be a good emergency energy ration later on.
• The Masochism Tango: Their primary character trait. Consequently, they're obsessed with hurting Jaden and having him hurt them in return.
• The Man Behind the Man: Yubel confesses that they were behind Brron's actions to sacrifice Jaden's friends and awaken the Supreme King along with everything else in season 3.
• Manipulative Bastard: Yubel has exploited several characters for their schemes, such as promising Viper he could have his son back or offering Adrian the power he secretly desired.
  • They're not limited to manipulating minds and hearts. With regards to dueling, they acknowledge that they can win in more ways than one, such as allowing a powerful monster to attack them (which, by their card's effect, will deal battle damage to the opponent). Also, in Zane's case, they figured they could stall for time and allow his weakened heart to kill him off before he could win.
• Mass Teleportation: Yubel teleports the entire Duel Academy in the first place to a different dimension.
• Medical Horror: The surgery that turned Yubel into a Duel Monster, implied to have involved getting all their skin peeled off and replaced with a dragon's hide. Unanaesthetised.
• Misery Builds Character: Yubel believes this was the purpose of Jaden sending them into space, which is why they wish to return the favor to Jaden.
  • To elaborate, Jaden wanted to expose them to the gentle darkness to curb their psychopathic tendencies towards anyone who upset him. When they instead suffered painful exposure to the Light of Destruction, they assumed that this was Jaden's intent, unwilling to believe that Jaden would ever bring harm to them without good intentions.
• Multiversal Conqueror: Yubel's plan to destroy the 12 dimensions using Super Polymerization, which they obtained by having Jaden complete it and stealing it from him.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Or possess him, in this case.
• Near-Villain Victory: Yubel nearly destroys all 12 dimensions using Super Polymerization until Jaden was able to fuse himself and Yubel instead with a counter card.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Teleportation, Demonic Possession, exploiting the emotions of others, telekinesis, etc.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: During Jaden's childhood, because Yubel would hurt his friends, they were sent into space so that they would gain the same purity that the Neo Spacians would eventually gain, in hopes that it would correct whatever was wrong with Yubel's soul. Instead they came into contact with the Light of Destruction, making them highly emotionally unstable.
• Numerological Motif: Zero. Not only do many of the cards in all of their decks have 0 ATK and DEF (including their namesake card series) or have "Zero" in their name, but Yubel's character and motivation almost match the listing on the trope page exactly: they're villainous, they barely have any sense of self outside of the fact that the Light of Destruction warped their mind, and their ultimate plan is to end everything by uniting the 12 dimensions into a big, empty void.
• Offstage Villainy: Took possession of Jesse offscreen and also caused disturbances of the stability of the 12 dimensions as described by Bastion.
• Omnicidal Maniac: After their Villainous Breakdown they tried to destroy the 12 dimensions, so they could be together alone with Jaden.
• One-Winged Angel: Yubel's transformations in the last duel with Jaden.
• Organic Technology: Yubel's Duel Disk grows out of their left arm and is every bit as functional as any other model.
• Our Dragons Are Different: While Yubel is officially a Fiend-type, they are told before their transformation into a Duel Monster that they'll become "a dragon too hideous to look at", and their two evolved forms are indeed quite draconic.
• Painful Transformation: The process of changing them from a human to the dragon-like demon that they now are involved them screaming and Jaden averting his gaze.
• Playing with Syringes: A rare voluntary example. The surgery that turned Yubel into their powerful current form is implied to have been horrific.
• Psychotic Smirk: Several times, notably when Yubel is possessing Jesse.
• Recurring Boss: Jaden duels Yubel three times. The first duel, Yubel was using Marcel as a host and after they revealed their identity to Jaden, Jesse was able to force a draw with Yubel and send the rest of Duel Academy home. Later on, Yubel is possessing Jesse and Jaden has to rescue him, succeeding but ending the duel in a draw. Finally, Jaden was able to duel Yubel in their true form at the end.
• Red Right Hand: Their left arm is attached to Marcel during their possession, which doubles as their Duel Disk. It can also give people a literal red left hand, making them stronger but binding them to Yubel's will.
• Relative Button: Yubel does this to both Jaden and Adrian about their lost loved ones.
• Revenge Through Corruption: Yubel possesses Jesse to force Jaden to feel the trauma of fighting his own friend.
• Sadist: Took pleasure in seeing Jaden suffer from the loss of his friends and expressed excitement at the thought of destroying the Neo Spacians.
• Sanity Slippage: Starts entering this towards the end of the duel with Jaden while he uses the Supreme King's powers to strike them.
• Self-Duplication: When they summon their own card, Yubel creates a duplicate of themself on the battlefield. By contrast, all the other Duel Monster Spirits that summon themselves in a duel enter the field personally.
• She's a Man in Japan: 4Kids altered◊ their design to make them a convincingly-looking woman, but they are half-female and half-male in the original Japanese version. Their gender in the past life, while never explicitly stated, was heavily implied to be male via the character designs.◊
• Strong and Skilled: A habit among villains in the franchise is that they latch onto their strongest cards and put all their eggs in one basket. What makes Yubel so scary is that they don't make this mistake, both having alternate avenues of attack in their decks and being able to alter plans and strategies on the fly. The one and only time they laser-focus on a single monster (their namesake card), it's because they're intentionally stalling for their master plan that would make winning or losing the duel a moot point.
• Teach Him Anger: Yubel does this to Jaden to awaken the Supreme King's power.
• Training from Hell: From Yubel's point of view, being sent into space was this. Also returning to earth as a mere arm and regaining strength to confront Jaden is all this as well.
• Underestimating Badassery: Yubel is prone to this. While they're a good duelist, they tend to greatly underestimate their opponents (Johan, Hell Kaiser Ryo, Amon and Judai to some extent), even mocking them whenever they summon a 0 attack point monster [[Hypocrite when they're one themselves]]. Predictably, this blows up in their face constantly and caused them to nearly lose several times.
• Undying Loyalty: Willingly took part in the horrifying surgery that turned them into their current form, for no other reason than to be able to protect their best friend.
• The Unfettered: There is no boundary Yubel won't cross to hurt Jaden and mold him into the Supreme King, whether it involves emotionally crushing him, killing his friends, possessing his best friend or playing endless mind games with him.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Jaden makes it clear he won't accept them, they decide they have no need for the 12 dimensions, they opt to just destroy them and keep his body for themself.
• Villain Teleportation: Not just with themself - Yubel was actually revealed to be teleporting the duelists who lost duels to another dimension when they were believed dead.
• Voice of the Legion: During their stint as the Arc Villain, Yubel would occasionally slip into a deep male voice, or use both voices at once. A third voice may come from their current host. The female voice is exclusively used after their Heel–Face Turn.
• Was It Really Worth It?: Yubel points this out when Adrian seems to be fine dueling without Exodia, who was obtained by sacrificing Echo.
• Weak, but Skilled: Other than the Advanced Crystal Beast deck that used Jesse's deck as a base, Yubel's preferred dueling strategy across all of their decks utilizes monsters that all have 0 ATK, but devastating monster effects. This includes their namesake monster card.
• We Can Rule Together: Yubel wanted to rule the 12 dimensions along with the Supreme King.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Towards Jaden, reminding him of sending Yubel into space, sacrificing his friends or his intentional decisions, such as using the Supreme King's power in their final duel. When he sacrifices Rainbow Neos they point out he really is the Supreme King.
• Would Hurt a Child: Hurt several of Jaden's childhood friends when he was young.
• You Have Failed Me: To Viper.
• You Never Did That for Me: Yubel is outraged at the lengths Jaden will go to save Jesse, and his relationship with the Neo Spacians doesn't make Yubel any nicer either.

Tropes exclusive to them in the Darkness arc:

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• Creepy Good: Banner's spirit seems afraid of them but they're harmless by this point.
• Damsel in Distress: Darkness takes control of Yubel to defeat Jaden, he saves them and does so by fusing Yubel and Neos together with Super Polymerization.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Making Darkness angry by calling him a coward and weakling was obviously a bad idea...
• Duality Motif: After Jaden merges with Yubel, his normally brown eyes change to Yubel's heterochromic orange and teal when using his newly acquired powers.
• Fusion Dance: To save Yubel from Darkness, Jaden fuses Yubel with Elemental Hero Neos using Super Polymerization and summons Neos Wisemen.
• Guardian Entity: Just as during Jaden's childhood, he is able to use Yubel's powers to protect himself this season.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When Neos Wiseman is destroyed, they convince Jaden to banish them from the game to bring back Neos, who becomes instrumental to his victory.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Jaden gets to play with this since he has Yubel in his soul - Yubel's power allows him to sense people's thoughts and emotions, see visions of the future, and makes him immune to hypnosis.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Formerly human sidekick in any case, but Yubel isn't above ribbing Jaden from time to time.
• Spirit Advisor: During the duel with Darkness, Yubel appears for the first time again onscreen to lend strategy to Jaden after spending much of the season as The Ghost. They also drop comments during Jaden's duel with Yugi.
• Symbiotic Possession: With Jaden, Yubel being the spirit in this case.
• Terror Hero: In the movie, they appear to scare the crowd away to prevent them from being slaughtered by Paradox.
• Tsundere: Mildly Type B. Despite being affectionate towards Jaden, they don't have a problem with verbally dressing him down to get him back in the game.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: During the duel with Darkness once Neos Wiseman is destroyed, Yubel urges Jaden to use Neos and reminds him he's capable of winning the duel.
• You Are Not Alone: To Jaden during the duel with Darkness, which is the first time they appear on screen this season.

Brron, Mad King of Dark World

Brron (暗黒界の狂王　ブロン)

Brron serves as the first main antagonist of the Dark World arc of season 3. Demented and sadistic, Brron rules the alternate dimension as its vile dictator. Although his role in the anime is brief, his actions are vital in Jaden Yuki's transformation into the Supreme King of the alternate dimension.

He uses a Dark World deck.

Voiced by: Kentarō Itō (Japanese) and Jamie McGonnigal (English)

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• Arc Villain: The main villain for the initial part of the Dark World arc.
• Artifact of Doom: He sacrifices Jaden's friends in order to complete the Super Polymerization card, which Jaden acquires after defeating him.
• Asshole Victim: He ends up becoming the very first victim of Jaden's Superpowered Evil Side.
• Ax-Crazy: The name "Mad King" should be a pretty big clue.
• Blatant Lies: He tells Jaden that Jesse died, even though he was associated with Yubel who had been in control of Jesse's body.
• Break the Cutie: He directly sacrifices most of Jaden's friends and causes the Supreme King to awaken.
• Bring Him to Me: He sends his minions to capture most of Jaden's friends.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Claims that several duelists have been defeated in his lair when asked of Jesse at first.
• The Chessmaster: During his duel with Jaden he plays a combo to force Jaden into attacking and sacrificing his friends.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Of the first half of the Dimension World Arc. He's the leader of the Dark World Army at first, but his defeat is only the beginning of the whole ordeal.
• Evil Laugh: While taunting Jaden over losing his friends.
• Evil Overlord: As his name suggests, he's the king of the Dark World monsters.
• Giggling Villain: About half of his dialogue is evil cackling.
• Gone Horribly Right: He planned to make Judai angry enough that he would lose his sense of judgement and make a mistake during the duel, which seemed to be the case once he sent Neos against Majin Reign even if it was a double ko just to destroy Reign, which would allow Brron to set up the play to win the duel...unfortunately for him, Judai was so angry that he activated Requiem Duel to resurrect both Neos and Reign just to destroy Reign again, unfortunately for Brron he wasn't able to special summon the turn corridor to Dark World was activated, thus Neos did a direct attack that won Judai the duel.
• Hero Killer: He sacrifices Chazz, Alexis, Hassleberry and Atticus for the Super Polymerization card.
• Hope Crusher: He kills most of Jaden's friends and tells Jaden that Jesse is dead.
• Knight of Cerebus: The series had already been taking a darker turn when he showed up, but once he does, it quickly plunges off the deep end.
• The Man Behind the Man: Yubel confesses that they were behind Brron's actions to sacrifice Jaden's friends and awaken the Supreme King.
• Obviously Evil: Besides his name, just look at him. If the skull-face with talons for hair doesn't raise a red flag...
• Oh, Crap!: Just as he's sure Jaden has finished his final attack, Jaden activates Battle of Sleeping Spirits to revive both Elemental Hero Neos and Reign-Beaux, but Brron was unable to special summon since he activated a card earlier that prevented him from having monsters summoned any further to his side.
• Sadist: He thoroughly enjoys watching Jaden's suffering.
• Sadistic Choice: He sets up Jaden having to attack and sacrifice his friends in the process.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Brron is only around for one duel spanning two episodes, but in that duel, he kills off most of the main cast and drives Jaden off the deep end, setting up the rest of the arc.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Yubel.

Season 4

Trueman / Mr. T

Trueman (トゥルーマン)

The envoy of Darkness, who demonstrates an ever-increasing number of inhuman powers - teleportation, shapeshifting, ripping holes in the dimensional fabric to duel Jaden, possession and the ability to erase people from existence, to name a few.

Voiced by: Hozumi Gouda

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• Cool Shades: Constantly wears a pair of snazzy sunglasses.
• The Dragon: To Darkness. Subverted when the real Yusuke Fujiwara appears.
• Exact Words: He claims that he always speaks the truth, and he does. Illusions, however...
• False Memories: He can implant these in people, usually to manipulate them.
• Grand Theft Me: He doesn't so much swap bodies as copy their appearance, but he fools the entirety of Duel Academy's student body into thinking he's Sorano.
• Made of Evil: He materializes and is made from the cards of Duelists who have felt negative emotions and assumes their form, but not before eliminating the original.
• Manipulative Bastard: To defeat Axel, he copied the Deck and appearance of Axel's father and exploits Axel's negative emotions relating to an incident that nearly killed both of his parents. In his duel with Hassleberry, he deconstructs his love for dinosaurs.
• Master of Illusion: His chief method of deception, since he always speaks the truth.
• Meaningful Name: He claims he has no name, but tells Jaden to call him "Trueman" as he always speaks the truth. He's also called Mr. T.
• Me's a Crowd: Can split himself into several copies.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The sheer volume of powers he demonstrates (from transformation to teleportation and everything in between) is ridiculous. Justified, considering he has no true physical form. He may literally just be making up new powers as he goes.
• Physical God: His usage of his powers borders on this trope.
• Power Copying: His deck becomes more and more powerful every time he duels as he collects cards from his fallen victims. The first time he dueled Jaden, he got curb-stomped hard. By the third and final duel between them, Trueman had established himself as a legitimate threat.
• Recurring Boss: He duels Jaden several times in the first few episodes of season four.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Against his opponents.
• Sinister Shades: Wears sunglasses to obscure his eyes and increase his alien, inhuman aura.
• Starter Villain: The first villain to appear in Season 4.
• Telepathy: Can look into a person's mind and find their inner darkness.
• Unperson: Any duelist he defeats is erased from existence and memory, and all evidence that they ever existed vanishes.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Trueman averts this by increasing both the attack points of his ace monsters and the depths of his strategies. In his debut duel with Judai, he uses a simple beatdown deck with the 2500 ATK points strong "Reign-Beaux, Overlord of Dark World" being his ace. Trueman upgrades his tactics in his rematch against Judai, combining clever field control with the brute force of his 3500 ATK "Meteor B. Dragon". The final duel between he and Judai shows Trueman at his most dangerous, using a Skill Drain deck to cripple Judai's effect monster heavy deck and making the 5000 attack "Five-Headed Dragon" his ultimate ace. Even given his losses to Judai, Trueman's power only grows as the season progresses. From this point on he doesn't lose a single onscreen duel.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can transform into different people and replicate their Decks.

Darkness (Nightshroud)

Darkness (ダークネス) (Nightshroud)

"I am Darkness. The Truth of the other world."

Initially a minor villain in season one possessing Asuka's brother, Fubuki, he briefly returns in season two for a minor role, and ultimately comes back for real as the main antagonist of season 4. He works through Trueman before revealing himself in the end, plotting to plunge all the world into darkness for eternity.

In possession of Atticus, he uses a dragon deck based around Red-Eyes Black Dragon and Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon. In possession of Fujiwara he uses a Clear Deck. In his final appearance his deck is themed after the Darkness archetype.

Voiced by: Hozumi Gouda (Japanese) and Jason Griffith (English; while possessing Atticus)

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• A God Am I: Claims this, but Downplayed by Yubel who mocks him for using a strategy that requires him to check his facedown cards.
• Above Good and Evil: Again, claims himself to be this, insisting he's nothing more than a force of nature just doing what it does, "like water flowing from a high place to a low place".
• Affably Evil: Although entirely antagonistic, he speaks in a very polite and business-like way.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Of Darkness. He's actually the personified fear of the future most of the graduating class seems to have; as well as the rest of the world, who fear what might happen if they fail.
• Anti-Villain: He claims his actions are justified in that, with no more hope or individuality, humanity's suffering will finally end.
• As Long as There Is Evil: He is born of the darkness that exists in human hearts; as long as it exists, he will exist.
• Assimilation Plot: His goal is to destroy individuality and hope, as he believes they are the source of all suffering.
• Big Bad: The last one in the series due to being the cause of all the disappearances in the abandoned dorm and later on the entire world's populace.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Believes it's only natural for humans to be drawn into the World of Darkness.
• Chekhov's Gunman: A Shadow Rider possessing Atticus in season 1, until 3 seasons of near world ending disasters allow him to manifest physically.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Darkness is a being born from the idea that Dark Is Evil, rather than Light Is Not Good as presented by the Light of Ruin. Yubel is a monster card, while Darkness is a field spell. Also, unlike the past main villains, Darkness' ambitions aren't driven by his evil personality, but because he is acting as a force of nature.
• Dark Is Evil: In contrast to The Gentle Darkness.
• Dem Bones: His true form is a cloaked skeleton with glowing blue eyes resembling a Grim Reaper.
• Demonic Possession: Of Atticus a few times in earlier seasons, and also Yusuke as his final host.
• Eldritch Abomination: Has existed even prior to the origin of life in the universe, with a distinct antipathy to bonds between living things.
• Enemy Within: For Atticus.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He believes his nihilism is perfectly natural, and can't understand why someone would believe otherwise.
• Evil Counterpart: Due to its naming, his ace monster Darkness Neosphere is technically part of the Neos archetype. The background in the art of the real life card also appears to be a corrupted Neo-space, further suggesting a connection.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He has a very heavy voice.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: In the original Japanese, an avatar of darkness called Darkness. Averted in the dub, which renames him Nightshroud.
• Expy: Partially for Yami Bakura, in that they are both initially minor recurring villains that end up being their respective series' final antagonist. They even come from the same source: darkness and despair.
• Final Boss: In terms of villains, Nightshroud is the final opponent Jaden faces in the GX anime.
• Fixing the Game: His main strategy relies on his Darkness field spell that sets up 5 face down trap cards (without him being allowed to look at them) that are required to activate in a specific order to be effective, and at the end of the turn are reset at random. To counter the sheer luck required, he uses a monster effect that allows him to check his face down cards. Once Judai destroys said monster and later bricks the field spell entirely, Darkness quickly gets stomped.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Darkness is initially a minor villain in Season 1, introduced while possessing Atticus, but his true role comes to light in Season 4 as the will of the World of Darkness. Three long seasons of potentially world-ending catastrophes and the people associated with them give Darkness a lot of negativity to feed on, to the point that in the final season he can forcibly abduct all living beings into his world to, according to him, "end all suffering by destroying all kinds of individuality and dreams".
• Growing Up Sucks: One of the things that fuels his power is fear of the future and fear of failure. Case in point, Alexis fears that no one will accept or listen to her if she decides to become a teacher.
• God of Evil: Controls the World of Darkness where people will ultimately give up on their own lives, because while in the dark world, they will be mentally tortured by visions of failing at their hopes and dreams.
• The Grim Reaper: More or less has this look physically, though he lacks a scythe.
• The Heartless: He's a manifestation of the inner darkness humanity has within itself.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The turning point in the final duel against him comes when Judai uses Black Panther to copy his Neosphere's ability and re-set his Darkness field spell. Since his traps can't be activated without the Darkness field spell in play, yet said field spell wipes the player's spell/trap zones when activated to make room for those same traps, this bricks Darkness' strategy entirely.
• Hope Crusher: Desires to end all hope under the belief that having nothing to aspire towards means acceptance of one's fate instead of wanting better.
• Lack of Empathy: Free will is absolutely meaningless to him.
• Made of Evil: Powered by the darkness of others.
• Obviously Evil: A giant goat-headed skeleton in dark robes who happens to be born of darkness itself.
• Oh, Crap!: "God Neos, you said?"
• Omnicidal Maniac: Attempts to drag all of humanity into the World of Darkness.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Oddly enough, not to Judai, his actual opponent, but to the rest of the world, as he explains that their inability to solve their own problems is what fuels his existence.
  Darkness: You indeed have the power to fight. However, they do not.
• Rule of Symbolism: His claim to being simply a force of nature is somewhat backed up by the fact that his own card is a field spell rather than a monster card like previous antagonists.
• Sentient Cosmic Force: The skeletal form we see is just the avatar of negativity as a concept.
• Starter Villain Stays: He's the first Shadow Rider Judai fights, and later shows up to be the final main villain of the anime.
• Strong, but Unskilled: In his final duel, Darkness's main strategy is simply to let his powerful Darkness traps do most of the work in bringing down Judai as well as summon powerful beatsticks to harass Judai. Whenever Darkness can't use his traps properly, he struggles a lot more. Even his strongest monster is reduced to being little more than a massive beatstick once Judai permanently bricks his strategy since its main effect relies on said traps.
• What the Hell Are You?: Darkness sees Judai ability to fight his power as less of a Worthy Opponent flag and more like some kind of anomaly to be deleted.

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