Characters / Yu-Gi-Oh!: Yami Bakura

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Dark Bakura (闇獏良; Yami Bakura)

Voiced by: Tsutomu Kashiwakura (Toei anime), You Inoue (Duel Monsters ep. 12-41), Rica Matsumoto (ep. 50+), Ted Lewis (English), Michael Crouch (English, young Bakura in The Dark Side of Dimensions), Yamil Atala and later José Gilberto Vilchis (Latin American Spanish), Javier Balas (European Spanish)

"I was nice enough to let you play in my world... and you ingrates repay me by rebelling against the master! Death to all players! I'll bury you in eternal night!" —Monster World RPG arc

^{Click here to see his appearance as a child in Dark Side of Dimensions}

The evil spirit within the Millennium Ring. This malevolent being is a Killer Game Master who possesses Yugi's friend Ryo Bakura throughout the series with the goal of gathering all seven Millennium Items in one place in order to open the Door of Darkness within the Millennium Puzzle's sealed memories. Like his host, he has a penchant for tabletop role-playing games, trapping his victims in figurines or cards using Shadow Games. A cold, calculating sadist, Dark Bakura sets his Evil Plan in motion from very early on, even pretending to be a part of Yugi's group of True Companions, and eventually stepping up as the Big Bad when it comes to fruition in the series' finale - all of it to set up the final game, the Shadow RPG and reviving the Evil God Zorc Necrophades.

Throughout the manga, he plays tabletop role-playing games and his Final Boss characters are always Zorc, where the scenarios are always stacked in his favor as the Game Master. During the Battle City arc, he takes up Duel Monsters, continuing to play it in the Memory World. He uses a tarot-themed deck in the anime's Duelist Kingdom, then Ryo Bakura's Occult deck in Battle City which focuses on the uses of Dark Necrofear, Dark Sanctuary, and Ouija Board. Then, in the anime, he uses a deck that emulates the original monsters from the Ka-based Shadow Games of Egypt against Seto Kaiba, focusing on Diabound Kernel. Finally, he uses an Undead Lockdown deck, which pins the opponent down while he slowly depletes their deck.

For information on his past self, see Ancient Egypt.

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A-G

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Naturally, every game he participates in becomes this. Roll a Critical Failure in a role-playing game? Penalty Game! Your soul is now stuck in your character figurine forever. Piss off the Game Master? Death to all players! Lose to him at Duel Monsters? Penalty Game! You either just die right off the bat or get dragged into hell/sent to the Shadow Realm and die. In the anime, you could also be sent to the Card Graveyard as seen in Duelist Kingdom.
• Accent Adaptation: He's given a British accent in the North American dub and a Southern accent in the Singapore dub to reflect the real Bakura's polite speech patterns in Japanese.
• Actually, I Am Him: In both the manga and anime he refers to himself as Zorc, though to what extent is a little ambiguous. He's clearly a seed of Zorc's soul at the very least.
• Adaptational Badass: A minor example in his duel against Yugi in the Millennium Arc. In the manga, he fails to damage Yugi by battle at all as Marshmallon causes him some grief. In the anime, he promply activates Negate Defense, forcing Marshmallon into Attack Position for the rest of the duel. He thereafter exploits Marshmallon's inability to be destroyed by battle to land several hits on Yugi. In either version, he was just stalling to set up his Zombie Lockdown to mill Yugi's deck anyway.
• Adaptational Heroism: He is on the Lancaster side in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses.
• Amnesiac Villain: He knows his goal and intentions from the start, but like Dark Yugi, he doesn't know his true identity until much later. In the English dub of the anime however, this is not the case, as he explicitly states that he remembers his past to mock the Pharaoh at the beginning of the final arc. (Though considering his cunning and dishonest nature, he could have just lied to screw with the Pharaoh's head.)
• Arch-Enemy: Dark Bakura is an ancient spirit, just like Dark Yugi, whose enmity with the former Pharaoh goes back 3000 years. He's also the series longest-running, and final (sort of), antagonist.
• Artifact of Doom: The Millennium Ring, which is by far the most openly malevolent of any of the Millennium Items. Having a sociopath tomb robber and the essence of a dark god sharing space inside of you will do that.
• Ax-Crazy: Less so than Dark Marik, but that ain't saying much. In his first appearance, he's portrayed as nefariously Ax-Crazy to contrast Dark Yugi's heroically Ax-Crazy. In the manga, he licks the Millennium Eye after removing it from Pegasus's dead body, showing that he's not quite right in the head.
• Back from the Dead: He receives a Penalty Game after losing to Dark Marik in which he gets swallowed by the darkness and disappears, but he is true darkness and comes back when Ryo does.
• Badass Longcoat: In the last arc, where he adds a black trench coat over his Battle City outfit.
• Badass Long Robe: Thief King Bakura's long red robe is very badass.
• Badass Pacifist: His dueling style involves little offensive work on his side, as he has monsters such as Dark Necrofear and Zoma, whose effects kick in once they're destroyed. He also uses spells and traps to force his opponent into attacking him and setting off his plans.
• Bait the Dog: He tells Yugi to not rely on his other self all of the time, encouraging him to beat Ryuji in DDM. Dark Bakura then sends a Mind Parasite into the Millennium Puzzle.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Ryo Bakura is a genuinely nice, polite, sweet guy. His Superpowered Evil Side is a sadistic psychopath.
• Big Bad: Mainly of the Monster World and Millennium World arcs, where he sets up an RPG in both: the first to kill Yugi and his friends, and the second to resurrect Zorc Necrophades. Though he has a great influence in between the two arcs that make him considered to be the overall series' Big Bad.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: He is this with Marik for a short time in the Battle City arc, and with Akhenaden in the Millennium World arc (especially in the manga).
• Big Bad Ensemble: While other antagonists that take the helm of Big Bad at one time or another, Dark Bakura remains proactive throughout the series and manages to be as much of a threat as the others, no matter how big his role is.
• Big Eater: As Thief King Bakura, there was a scene in the tavern where he used all his stolen gold to buy piles of food, and he wolfs it all down, killing his opponents with a spell mid-chew.
  • In the anime, there's a scene in Battle City where Dark Bakura tears into a steak like a wild carnivore. In the manga, it was Marik-brainwashed Ryo creepily eating a steak with Dull Eyes of Unhappiness.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • In the anime, he does an amazing impression of Nice Guy Bakura.
  • In the manga, he tricks the gang into thinking he's switched sides after his defeat in the Monster World RPG. He helps Tristan out of a bind while he was retrieving Mokuba's body during Duelist Kingdom, and helps Yugi defeat Duke Devlin in Dungeon Dice Monsters, all for his own gain. Yugi was devastated when he learned he was lying to him.
• Calling Your Attacks: Like the rest of the cast, every time they play a game involving monster battling.
  Zorc Inferno!
• Cannibalism Superpower: This is what makes Thief King Bakura's Ka, Diabound, so dangerous—every time it kills an adversary it gains that creature's raw power, as well as its abilities.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: He views Ryo as expendable and is perfectly willing to injure him or put him in harm's way if he needs to, but will always keep him alive in the end because he can't do anything without a host to possess.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He expresses this the first time he confronts "Yami" in the English anime, proudly calling himself "a thief and a stealer of souls [who has] done terrible things in [his] quest to possess the Millennium Items".
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • His Battle City deck relies on giving Life Points to use various cards, or letting opponents attack him while he sets up his strategy.
  • In the Memory World RPG, Thief King Bakura, like all the other characters, has to pay from his Ba Gauge (essentially his Hit Points) in order to summon his Ka.
• Character-Driven Strategy: Bakura (and his evil personality Yami Bakura) is a player that uses Anti-Meta decks; cards that focus on breaking an opponent's strategies while slowly building to an instant win. This reflects Yami Bakura's status as Yami Yugi's Evil Counterpart (Yugi's decks based on strategy), as well as hinting at the ancient history the two of them share. Theme-wise, his cards follow the occult, his monsters made-up of Fiend and Zombie-type monsters, further emphasizing his dark and ominous nature.
• The Chessmaster: Many of his plans are set up some time in advance, and all are hammered out to the last detail - including his RPG campaigns. This carries into his Duel Monsters duels as well, where he's a Manipulative Bastard who strings the opponent along while laying out an overarching strategy to spring once he's got all his cards in place. He's also good at playing with his opponent's head to manipulate their actions, and using his cards to do the same when mind games don't work.
• Clingy MacGuffin: In the anime, no matter how many times Bakura or someone else gets rid of the Ring, it and Dark Bakura always find their way back. In the manga, he simply tricks Bakura into putting the ring back on, and lies about having done a Face–Heel Turn to avoid arousing suspicion.
• The Collector: He's collecting the Millennium Items. God help you if you get in his way.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In the Duel Terminal games, one of his decks is a Monster World-themed deck that has Dark Master Zorc, his avatar for the Monster World RPG, as one of his signature cards. And he rolls criticals pretty easily.
• Complexity Addiction: His strategy involves using very elaborate drawn-out 'locks', sacrificing monster upon monster to put special cards in play, before eventually forcing opponents into a near-unwinnable position. While the locks are near full proof, on the off chance that someone manages to break out then he's usually left defenseless.
• Composite Character: Exclusively in the English dub of The Dark Side of Dimensions, there is a line added implying that Dark Diva is Aigami being possessed by the last remnants of Dark Bakura himself rather than just corrupted by the Millennium Ring.
• Confusion Fu: In the anime's Duelist Kingdom, none of Dark Bakura's monsters are very strong, but their Flip effects, combined with his spells and traps, make him a dangerous and unpredictable opponent.
• The Corrupter: The Millennium Ring seems to have a pretty negative effect on whoever is holding it. See Artifact of Doom, above.
• Cosmic Retcon: He tries to invoke this with the Shadow RPG, with his ultimate goal being altering the historical events of the game so Zorc never loses in the first place.
  • In the anime version, this is taken to the next level where they're playing the game in another dimension, and the game's events are having an effect in the real world.
• Cosmic Chess Game: The final arc's Memory World turns out to be an elaborate role-playing game designed by Bakura.
• Crazy-Prepared: His plan when he seals a portion of his soul falls into Crazy-Prepared territory. Dark Bakura considers the fact that he may be taken out by the other villains or heroes and arranges the situation so that if the heroes succeed, he will still advance his plan.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: He is voiced by a woman in the Japanese version despite looking like a teenage boy, which creates an impish, Creepy Child effect and an odd juxtaposition with his rude speech patterns. He also giggles.
• Deadpan Snarker: His snarkiness, especially in the English dub, is only rivaled by Kaiba, and even then it's a close call.
  Sid: Aw, disappointed that you can't move?
  Bakura: On the contrary. I'm disappointed because this duel has to end, and I wanted to prolong your misery.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: While almost anyone else who loses a Shadow Game ends up Deader than Dead, it's just an inconvenience for Dark Bakura. He isn't happy about losing his games against Yugi or Dark Marik, but he knows he can eventually come back.
• Demonic Possession: Half the time Bakura doesn't even know what's going on, Dark Bakura has so much control over him. And that's leaving out Dark Bakura's possession of its own past self, Thief King Bakura (although, in the manga, no possession occurs - Thief King Bakura is just a character card). There's also his various decks that involve this through certain means.
• Determinator: Dark Bakura is by far the most relentless and determined of all of the villains in the series. In spite of numerous setbacks and interferences, he continues on his path towards his objective.
• Didn't See That Coming: Dark Bakura thought his victory was inevitable with Zorc resurrected and menacing the Pharaoh (who can't remember how he beat Zorc before) and his human self menacing Yugi (who he thinks is just a weak mortal the Pharaoh has to protect)... well shit, Yugi wasn't so helpless and beat Dark Bakura in their final duel, freeing Yugi and friends to crash Zorc's party with their newfound understanding of how the Memory World works. This blunder is what finally undoes him.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Plays this role in the Big Bad Duumvirate of the final manga arc, in a lower position than Akhenaden's spirit but more of an active force given that Akhenaden's spirit is presently confined to a mummy. Not so in the anime, as Akhenaden's spirit was Adapted Out.
• Dragon with an Agenda: Dark Bakura plays this role to Marik during Battle City, dueling on his behalf, but only so that it can gain access to the rest of the Millennium Items.
• Enemy Mine:
  • In the manga, after his initial Monster World RPG with them, he occasionally and openly helps the main group, particularly during Duelist Kingdom and Dungeon Dice Monsters, and a couple of times he shows up then willingly gives Ryo back control of his body. He decided that keeping Yugi alive until the Shadow RPG is more beneficial to his agenda than outright opposing him as he did in the original RPG. The only reason he openly helps the group is because their adversaries are getting in the way of his own plans, such as trying to kill Yugi and take the Millennium Puzzle, but it's also a way to gain Yugi's trust and then easily stab him in the back afterward. He rarely has shades of this in the anime, where he's permanently in-control and impersonating Ryo, and the gang have no idea that the spirit of the Millennium Ring is controlling him.
  • In both the anime and the manga, he teams up with Marik to take down Dark Marik, both having different vendettas against the entity. Marik wishes to stop his Dark side from causing any more harm and Dark Bakura wishes to keep Yugi alive until the Shadow RPG, so he wants to kill Dark Marik, who wants to kill Yugi. He was also promised the Millennium Rod for his cooperation.
• Evil Brit: In the English 4Kids dub.
• Evil Counterpart: To Yami Yugi, and from his first appearance in Monster World to the Millennium World arcs, he viewed Yami Yugi as his "opposite number". They're both ancient spirits sealed in Millennium Items who use mortal vessels, and are experts at games, but while Yugi and Yami Yugi are partners who change control when appropriate (eventually), Ryo Bakura is possessed by Yami Bakura who uses his body to further his own intentions without Ryo's knowledge. This is also reflected in their gaming styles, the two both rely on trickery and cunning to win by strategy rather than force, but Yami Bakura is a Chessmaster to Yami Yugi's Guile Hero, and thus in their games Yami Bakura usually controls the game until Yami Yugi pulls a move he doesn't see coming and reverses the situation.
• Evil Laugh: As both Thief King Bakura and Dark Bakura/Spirit of the Ring.
• Evil Sounds Deep: At least when compared to his normal self in the English dub.
• Eviler than Thou: With Pegasus and Yami Marik, whose Millennium Items he tries to add to his collection by force. He's successful with Pegasus (he ends up killing him in the original manga), but his clash with Yami Marik ends very badly for him, with him being sent off into the darkness (along with Ryo) with a Penalty Game until Yami Marik himself dies later on.
• Evil Plan: Capture the other items to open of the Door of Darkness and unleash Zorc.
• Evil Versus Evil: Yami Bakura holds a duel with Yami Marik over the possession of their Millennium Items. Both of them are evil villains. Although we're made to root for Bakura as his Evil Plan is at least more gradual and doesn't result in imminent death for the heroes, while Yami Marik is just batshit crazy and would spell certain doom for all.
• Eye Scream: His left eye goes out when the adventurers take out Dark Master Zorc's left eye during Monster World.... but he does not scream, he just looks angry. And similarly, as a comparison, in the Memory World RPG, when Thief King Bakura's Diabound gets shot right in the left eye, his left eye goes out as well... but he does scream. Does he no longer feel pain after fully merging with Zorc?
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • Doesn't really do it with his first defeat in the Monster World arc (he was, in all honesty, shitting his pants at his host and his friends' unity), but later on (although not really death, as he comes back). During his battle with Dark Yugi in the Battle City arc, Dark Bakura's only reaction before having Osiris strike him down was laughing wildly and gleefully. No fear of death here, people. Likewise, when he loses to Marik's evil side, he simply taunts him and laughs while he fades away. All of this has far less to do with a sense of dignity and more with him knowing that these 'deaths' are minor setbacks, what with him being Zorc Necrophades and all.
  • Averted within the Shadow RPG, where the mind parasite version of him does not take kindly to losing to what he considers a "mere vessel" (the regular Yugi). This is at the point where his ultimate plan is in motion, and he's Out of Continues as a consequence, so Yugi's victory here lets him become a genuine threat.
• Fair-Play Villain: Despite being a literal Killer Game Master who claims victims through games, he's actually very fair about it. He never cheats in any of his Duel Monsters games, and in the two tabletop game arcs he participates in, he explains the rules and gives the heroes a fair chance. In the Shadow RPG, he explains the rules to Dark Yugi and, in the manga, gives Dark Yugi a unique power to use during the game since he as Game Master has one of his own. The only time he cheats is during the Monster World RPG when he starts using magic to rig his dice rolls. It actually infuriates him when Marik attempts to use Bakura as a shield when it's clear he's about to lose his duel with Yugi, stating that he would rather lose than win that way.
• Faux Affably Evil: Polite and soft spoken, but still an irredeemable sadist. He also occasionally helps the heroes, but to further his own plans.
• Final Boss: Of the Millennium World arc and the show as a whole. He and Dark Yugi face each other in a Shadow Game-tabletop RPG, he and the normal Yugi battle it out via Shadow Game-Duel Monsters within the RPG, and (in the anime only) the last part of his soul rejoins Zorc and rampages throughout Ancient Egypt. No matter where you look in that arc, the last battle that each group of characters fights is against Dark Bakura.
• Final Boss Preview: In the manga, the "Monster World" game he plays with the four heroes in Bakura's introductory chapters is revisited for the Shadow RPG that serves as the final story arc. Dark Bakura even says directly that he considers the Monster World game a warm-up for the Shadow RPG.
• Fixing the Game: In sharp contrast to almost every other major antagonist in the manga, he cheats like crazy in his first appearance. First by rolling the dice in such a way that he always gets the desired result, then by sealing souls into the dice to decide how it ends up after Dark Yugi manages to counter his first cheating technique. During the anime's version of the Shadow RPG, he gives himself Time Master abilities that basically ensure that he'll resurrect Zorc regardless of what the Pharaoh does (in the manga, he gives Dark Yugi a special skill, an "Imperial Order" action, of his own to balance it out, while Dark Yugi's ability in the anime is something out of left-field he didn't know about).
• Fusion Dance: He's a combination of Zorc's soul with the soul and memories of Thief King Bakura, though exactly how the two ended up becoming Dark Bakura varies between adaptations. The anime implies Zorc has been in the Ring since it was made and incorporated Thief King Bakura into himself when Bakura came into ownership of it, while in the manga, the two combined upon Zorc's defeat and sealing.
• The GM Is a Cheating Bastard: For the reasons described above.
• GMPC: He is a literal Killer Game Master that frequently uses his own Player Characters to go against the players in his Tabletop RPG campaigns. In the first RPG, Dark Bakura is in control of a Big Bad Evil God and Ryo Bakura (the good one) manages to save Yugi and his friends from it using his own GMPC. In the second RPG, Dark Bakura is in control of two, Thief King Bakura and Priest Akhenaden. When Thief King Bakura dies, Akhenaden manages to summon Zorc Necrophades, and the demon replaces the thief as one of Dark Bakura's avatars.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Dark Bakura's eyes are cold and narrow to contrast Bakura's big open ones.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Dark Bakura's objective is to gather all the Millennium Items in one place. Some time after Monster World, he's actually alright with keeping Yugi alive until it happens.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of the series as a whole, since his plans are in the background until the final arc.
  • Of the Yu-Gi-Oh! R spin-off manga in an Ensemble with the Wicked Avatar. Though neither he or the normal Bakura appear in the spin-off, the villain, Yako Tenma, is trying to avenge the death of Pegasus. And guess who killed Pegasus.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters he's also this. Dark Bakura, who inhabited the Millennium Ring, corrupted Alexander's soul and led him on the path to darkness. He's not mentioned by name at all, but the Ring and its effects tie into the backstory as well as present day events.
  • He has a significant role in the backstory of Aigami, the villain of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, and the evil essence of the Millennium Ring corrupts Aigami similar to how it corrupts Alexander in Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters, making Dark Bakura the Greater-Scope Villain for that movie as well.

H-Y

• Heel–Face Revolving Door: In the manga, he fakes this, but it's never genuine and is all part of his plans. Yugi becomes wary after the Marik incident, but has no choice but to accept the Millennium Items offered to him. On the other hand, it seemed like Yugi really did try to have faith that Dark Bakura is able to have a change of heart and genuinely wanted to help his other self regain his memories. When Dark Bakura reveals who he is (a part of Zorc, not just the spirit of the Thief King) and why he helped Yugi gather the Millennium Items in the first place, Yugi visibly feels betrayed. "I trusted you!".
• Hero Killer: According to the flashbacks of both Bakura and Aigami, Bakura witnessed his father die in front of him and put on the Ring. Then he takes over and kills Shadi while the boy was only four years old.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Until the Millennium World arc we know he wants all of the Millennium Items, but what he plans to do with them and even who/what he is remains a total mystery. He reveals that he desires to gain the power of darkness by inserting all the items in their stone slab during the Dungeon Dice Monsters and Battle City arcs, but what it would mean isn't delved into.
• Hive Mind: He's the spirit of Thief King Bakura, and much like Akhenaden, he was taken over by the essence of Zorc Necrophades. Furthermore, through the power of the Millennium Ring, he's able to imbue his soul in any object, such as brainwashed dice or a piece of the Millennium Puzzle.
• Humanoid Abomination: For ninety percent of the series, Dark Bakura is set up as being the spirit of an evil person trapped in a Millennium Item, much like Dark Yugi, and we're even introduced to Thief King Bakura in the Millennium World Arc. Surprise: Dark Bakura isn't the spirit of the Thief King, at least not completely. The being the audience knows as Dark Bakura is an extension of an incredibly old, incredibly powerful, incredibly evil Physical God.
• Hyde Plays Jekyll: In the anime, Dark Bakura is infamous for this. It quickly gets to the point it's hard to tell which is which, especially since Dark Bakura can imitate the real Bakura's voice and mannerisms perfectly.
• Idiot Ball:
  • During his Shadow Game duel against Dark Marik, Dark Bakura forced Dark Marik to draw Ra from his deck, so he could activate Exchange to get Ra from Dark Marik's hand. Then when it's made useless in the anime, he tributes it despite knowing Marik had a Monster reborn card to easily get it back, while in the manga he just discards it, also letting Marik get it back.
  • Also when he dueled Dark Yugi in the anime's Duelist Kingdom arc. His whole strategy banked on Yugi playing all 4 of the monster cards that contained his friends' souls, out of the fear that Bakura's Morphing Jars would send them to the graveyard. Still, for some reason, he activates his Just Desserts trap when only three of the monsters were on the field, reducing Yugi's life points by 3/4. If he waited for Dark Yugi to play a fourth monster, Dark Bakura could have activated Just Desserts and he would have won.
• Instant-Win Condition:
  • His Duel Monsters deck is built on Destiny Board, which allows him to instantly win the game when all of the proper cards are assembled. This comes at the cost of being extremely vulnerable if his combo is broken, as he has no way to fight back the old fashioned way. This happens again in the Memory World arc, this time focusing on Deck destruction, only for him to be beaten again because Yugi overpowered him first.
  • This trope is a built-in mechanic in the Shadow Game RPG though in Atem's favor. When Atem learns and evokes his true name, he summons Horakthy to destroy Zorc and win the game.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He refuses to allow Bakura to come to harm, even at the cost of his own success. However, this is almost entirely because he needs Bakura as a vessel, so it's more a case of trading short-term triumph for long-term survival.
• Joker Immunity: Beat him in almost half-a-dozen duels, many of which are Shadow Games, throw the Millennium Ring away. He always comes back undeterred, until the final arc.
• Kaleidoscope Eyes: His eye color changes across adaptations, from purple in the manga and Toei anime to brown in the second-series anime. They've also been turquoise in cover art, varying shades of purple and pink in the video games, and are blood-red in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Trapping Yugi's friends inside of their RPG figurines/favorite cards was totally irrelevant to his plan to take the Millennium Puzzle. And then he goes and holds their corpses hostage while their souls were in the Memory World RPG in the manga.
  • In the manga and anime, he didn't need to kill Ghost Kozuka and his friends in his search for needed Puzzle Cards.
  • During the Shadow RPG of the final arc, while Dark Yugi's characters were subject to paralysis for several rounds, Zorc is about to launch its Zorc Inferno. Priest Seto being one of the characters in question that was within the target range of Zorc's ultimate AOE damage spell, Dark Yugi tries to convince Dark Bakura as a role-player to have the High Priest of Darkness stop Zorc from attacking, because he's Seto's father. In a horrifying break from his previously-characterized obsession with the concept of players "becoming their characters" in his Tabletop RPGs, he calls Dark Yugi a fool for thinking that would work and says that he is in control of Zorc, launching his attack anyway.
• Killer Game Master: Both figuratively and literally.
  • On the literal side, he's a murderer who claims his victims through Shadow Games.
  • For the actual trope, he plays two Tabletop Role Playing Games with Dark Yugi, with explicit intent to kill him and his friends. However, he doesn't create Unwinnable by Design scenarios even though he probably could, he just makes the games very difficult to win. In the final arc, though Dark Bakura doubts he'll find out how to use it, he informs Dark Yugi of an Instant-Win Condition he's set for him, since otherwise "it wouldn't be fair".
• King of Games: Like Dark Yugi, he is a jack-of-all-trades gamer and proficient at all the games he has played/witnessed, particularly tabletop roleplaying games and Duel Monsters. In the manga, just one glance at the current game board lead him to correctly conclude Yugi's eventual victory during his match with Ryuji in Dungeon Dice Monsters, and during Duelist Kingdom, having also figured out the Meikyuu Brother's trap, he helped Dark Yugi in his Labyrinth Coin game by shouting and distracting them. Dark Yugi admits that without Bakura's intervention, the brothers may have seen through his double-sided coin bluff. In the manga Dark Yugi is surprised to see him in Battle City, since up to that point there was no indication that Dark Bakura knew much about Duel Monsters, but he proves himself a formidable opponent and pushes Yugi to the brink of defeat before he summons his God Card. In an anime filler episode he duels Kaiba, and although the duel ends prematurely with no conclusion, Dark Bakura is able to match him turn-for-turn and neither has a clear advantage when he calls it quits and takes off.
• King of Thieves: He self-describes as the greatest thief and graverobber, and lives up to his title by effortlessly seeing through the Meikyu Brothers' labyrinth trap. The Memory World arc reveals that (part of) his past self was Bakura, the Bandit King, who earned the title through the sheer volume of stolen treasure he had acquired.
• Knight of Cerebus: In the anime and the manga, due to being a whole new level of evil compared to the other enemies present. Kaiba and Pegasus are more pressing threats, but Bakura is downright evil.
• Lack of Empathy: Dark Bakura has no empathy for anybody, not even for his good side. This extends even to his past self, Thief King Bakura, whom he cheerfully sacrifices as part of his game against Dark Yugi.
• Large Ham: Goes in and out of this in the manga. In the second anime, never with his first seiyu, and always with his second. Ted Lewis veers between this and a Cold Ham depending on Bakura's moods.
• Larynx Dissonance: Both of his voice actors in the second series, You Inoue and Rica Matsumoto, were female. Averted in English, where he's voiced by Ted Lewis and in the Latin-American dub, where he's voiced by Yamil Atala and José Gilberto Vilchis.
• Leitmotif: Dark Bakura's theme.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Essentially, the point of the Shadow RPG in the final arc. He recreates the battles of the Pharaoh Atem and his servants against Zorc and his minions, but stacks the game with insider knowledge the Pharaoh doesn't remember and special Game Master powers so he can change the outcome of the battle. It's ambiguous between adaptations and translations if he's actually rewriting history, or if it's just the backdrop he chooses for the Shadow Game to revive Zorc in the present, but either way he's aiming for this trope.
• Manipulative Bastard: In the manga, he succeeds in faking a Heel–Face Turn. Yugi is devastated when he learns the truth. In the anime, since he posed as Ryo to help out, Yugi is suspicious of him... but falls for his lies anyway.
• Me's a Crowd:
  • Eventually during the final arc in the anime version, there's:
    • Dark Bakura, who runs the Shadow RPG.
    • Thief King Bakura, who fights Atem inside the Shadow RPG.
    • A second manifestation of Dark Bakura in the Shadow RPG via Honda to duel Yugi.
    • And that's not getting into the fact that Dark Bakura is actually Zorc, the very being the three Bakuras are all working to release in the game, and that the Dark Bakura overseeing the Shadow RPG is still controlling the body of Ryo Bakura.
  • This is less confusing in the manga version, where there's just Dark Bakura just running the Shadow RPG, and the Dark Bakura who appears to duel Yugi is the separate piece of Bakura's soul that was inserted into the puzzle during the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc. Thief King Bakura is just a character in the RPG.
  Bakura: Oh, just wait until Season 5 when there's three of me running around! Even the fans have trouble keeping up with that one.
• Mysterious Past: We know nothing about Dark Bakura's past, up until the final arc.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: In the second series anime he was able to erase others' minds with the Millennium Ring and summon Duel Monsters cards into reality. He never used these abilities again after Duelist Kingdom.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Does this in response to Marik's sadistic choice during his duel with Dark Yugi in the Battle City Semi-Finals, as he needs regular Bakura in one piece due to the fact that they're sharing the same body, effectively costing himself the duel.
• Nightmare Fetishist: During the Battle City arc he uses an occult deck, which he openly admits caters to his facination with their "creepy" aesthetic. In that arc, his signature card is Dark Necrofear, who was originally called Dark Necrophilia (ダーク・ネクロフィリア) in the original Weekly Shonen Jump print of the manga.
• No Name Given: He's never given a proper name or lays claim to one, though he answers to Bakura, since that's the name of his host and no one knows what else to call him. Even his true identity, a fusion of Thief King Bakura and Zorc, doesn't definitively assign him a name. He largely considers himself either Bakura or Zorc depending on what's convenient.
• Non-Indicative Name: While his associated relic is officially known as the Millennium Ring, it more resembles a dreamcatcher.
• Non-Player Character: The part of his soul that he used to invade the Millennium Puzzle during the Dragons Dice & Dungeons arc - his Shadow - follows Yugi/friends and Bobasa into the Memory World and becomes an NPC in the Shadow RPG.
• Obviously Evil: When not pretending to be Ryo, he almost always sports either a Slasher Smile or Psychotic Smirk, enjoys other peoples' suffering, and his Deck uses occult themes.
• Offstage Villainy: He was inflicting many Penalty Games in the modern world before the main characters ever met Ryo, as seen with his collection of souls trapped within his RPG figurines. On top of that, at least in the manga, we only see his final preliminary Battle City duel against Ghost Kozuka where he kills him - and the previous unseen duelists he faced for the rest of his Puzzle Cards presumably met the same fate. However, in the anime, all of his Puzzle Cards were taken from Ghost Kozuka, so that was his only murder in that arc.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Has shades of this towards Yugi, since Yugi's the chosen one for the Millennium Puzzle and thus won't allow other villains to kill him/take it until his plans are met. This is most prominent in the anime when he frees Bandit Keith from Marik's mind control.
  "Whoever is an enemy of Yugi Mutou is an enemy of mine."
• One-Winged Angel: (In the anime only) Transforms into Zorc at the end of the Millennium World arc.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Dark Bakura, or Spirit of the Millennium Ring.
• Only One Name: In some depictions, it's apparently canon that his own name happens to be Bakura as well, and was in Ancient Egypt.
• Our Souls Are Different: He and Ryo Bakura are two distinct entities inhabiting the same body.
• Out of Continues: His Joker Immunity is finally revoked at the end of the Memory World arc. He looked to have things made with Zorc resurrected and his mind parasite controlling Tristan as insurance... except Yugi (regular Yugi, not the Pharaoh) beat the mind parasite before it could truly get away with anything, leaving Dark Bakura/Zorc with all his eggs in one basket. Once Zorc is struck down in the finale, he stays down for good.
• Pragmatic Villainy: While it may seem that he was legitimately disgusted when Marik attempts to use Ryo as a hostage to force Dark Yugi to forfeit his duel, this was only because he needed Ryo to survive at the time.
• Power Copying: In the Millennium World arc, his Ka, Diabound, steals the abilities of the other Ka it defeats.
• Properly Paranoid: When he managed to get his hands on a piece of the Millennium Puzzle that Marik shattered when he first lost to Yugi, he transferred a portion of his soul into it in order to explore its secrets and guarantee he could continue to live on if he were ever separated from his host. This proved fruitful when Dark Marik beat him and Marik in a Penalty Game, disintegrating Bakura's body.
• Reincarnation: Although his version is more complicated...
• Signature Mon: The Duel Monsters card he's associated with the most is Dark Necrofear. In the manga, she's essential for Yami Bakura to play his Destiny Board, whereas in the anime, she's necessary for his Dark Sanctuary. The Destiny Board cards are also strongly associated with him, and the video games keep the connection between Dark Necrofear and Destiny Board. Dark Necrofear is a perfect representation of Yami Bakura's connection to demons, death and his unorthodox strategies. The OCG/TCG would later release a retrained of her: Curse Necrofear. Curse Necrofear is treated as a pseudo-Signature Monster for the DSOD version of Ryou Bakura in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
• The Sociopath: Dark Bakura hits all of the requirements.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: As played by You Inoue. Ted Lewis also does this for much of the dub, at least when he's not trying to out-ham Dan Green.
• Soul Jar: The Millennium Ring is Thief King Bakura's soul jar; the Thief King himself is Zorc's. He's been shown to trap the souls of those he challenges into R.P.G. figurines, and in the anime, in their favorite cards.
  • His Millennium Ring allows him to seal a portion of his soul inside any object. He uses this to create his special 2d10 percentile dice that always rolled critical hits and also putting a portion of soul within one of Millennium Puzzle's pieces (essentially invading its labyrinth).
• Split-Personality Merge: Similar to Dark Yugi's modern relationship with Yugi, his interest in role-playing games and skill in games in general may have been inherited from his possession of Ryo Bakura, as there's no precedence for the Thief King or Zorc to be role-playing fanatics (although being a gestalt entity, a good level of in-character acting may be ideal). He also presumably got his accent and speech patterns from Ryo in the English dub, and in all versions of the anime, picked up enough of Ryo's mannerisms to be able to convincingly pass as his host.
• Stepford Smiler: Type C. Crossed with Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and Hyde Plays Jekyll (he's an Axe-Crazy ancient spirit impersonating a Nice Guy who happens to be a member of The Hero's circle of friends).
• Stone Wall: His Memory World deck revolves around erecting an impenetrable wall of monsters while he mills his opponent's deck. He brings Yugi down to one card before losing.
• Superpowered Evil Side: To Bakura. Ultimately revealed to be the Greater-Scope Villain, Zorc, merged with the Big Bad, Thief King Bakura.
• Taking the Bullet: At the end of his duel against Yugi in Battle City, he decides to take Osiris' attack instead of letting it strike his host (because, as demonstrated early on in the manga with Dark Yugi and the regular Yugi, if Dark Bakura's host dies, then he dies with him).
• This Cannot Be!: In the Memory World, when the shard of his soul is defeated by Yugi (as opposed to Dark Yugi), he has a remarkably restrained version of this, complaining that he never thought he'd "lose to a mere vessel".
• Time Master: Two of Dark Bakura's special Hourglass items allow him to use Zorc's time manipulation abilities in the Shadow RPG, but each of them can only be used once.
• Unreliable Narrator: For the Shadow RPG, which supposedly recreates the events of the original battle between him and the Pharaoh. He claims they're recreated, but he's definitely changing things as he goes along, and in the manga, he mentions his own memory of the events is cloudy, so it's hard to say how much of anything shown in the story arc is what actually happened.
• Voices Are Not Mental: He and Ryo Bakura always share the same voice actors, and he even gains Ryo's signature British accent in the dub. He turns out to be an extension of Zorc, who has a deep, rumbling voice provided by Yoshitaka Kaidu in the original Japanese anime and Mike Pollock in the dub.
• Villain Respect: Hate him though he might, The Spirit is one of the few people who openly praises and acknowledges Yugi's skills independently of the Millennium Puzzle. In part, this is because he's the only one among the main cast who understands the significance of Yugi having been able to solve the puzzle in the first place. It doesn't stop him from underestimating Yugi when the two face off, which bites him hard in the ass.
• Villain Team-Up: With the normal Marik until Marik's Heel–Face Turn.
• Villains Never Lie: Averted. Unlike almost every other villain in the show, he does lie, and it's hard to tell when he isn't lying.
• Weak, but Skilled: His dueling style follows this, as he depends on traps and effect-based cards even as the heroes go for increasingly strong monsters. His decks in Battle City and his final bout with Yugi are based on pinning enemy monsters down as he sets up instant win secenarios.
• White Hair, Black Heart: He has white hair and is evil enough to count.
• Wicked Cultured: In the dub, he's exceedingly polite and formal when doing or saying awful things. The manga and Japanese version has him be more openly vulgar and ax-crazy.
• Worthy Opponent: To Dark Yugi: "To roll a Super Critical at this junction... Yugi! I salute your skills as a gamer!"
• Xanatos Gambit: His plans often involve foregoing the direct path to victory, yet he emerges as the final threat to Dark Yugi in the Memory World RPG. His first plan to gather the Millennium Items himself fails; it's Yugi who gathers most of them, but they're all together so Dark Bakura can still put his plan for them into motion, thanks to an earlier contingency where he placed a piece of his spirit inside of the Millennium Puzzle.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: There is no plan from the start; he takes advantage of opportunities as they appear. For instance, he exploits Pegasus's exhaustion to take his Millennium Eye and when Ryuji Otogi & his vengeful father (in the anime, a mind-controlled Bandit Keith) steals the Millennium Puzzle and then the latter breaks the Millennium Puzzle, he uses the opportunity to put a piece of himself inside for the Millennium World arc.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: His earlier Penalty Games often involved trapping souls inside of RPG pieces (later he often prefers outright death), and in the anime only, apparently he's able to put people inside their favorite cards (though it doesn't work as well on those with Millennium Items).
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dark Bakura sacrifices the Thief King to resurrect Zorc. That's right—he pulls this on himself.

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