Sandbox / My Hero Academia - All For One

This sandbox page was made in response to the main character page already being too large. The main intent here is to cut down and streamline his existing paragraphs and not add new ones.

My Hero Academia Main Character Index
U.A. High School Students: Class 1-A (1-10, 11-20, Izuku Midoriya, Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, Ochaco Uraraka) | Class 1-B | Students From Other Classes
Pro Heroes: School Faculty and Staff (Shota Aizawa | All Might) | Other Heroes (Endeavor) | One For All and Its Torch Bearers
Villains: Known Villains [Stain] (League of Villains [All For One, Tomura Shigaraki, Dabi, Himiko Toga, Artificial Humans], Shie Hassaikai [Overhaul], Meta Liberation Army, Paranormal Liberation Front)
Others: Police and Government Workers | Civilians (Main Characters' Families) | Other High Schools
Characters From Other My Hero Academia Media: Video Game Characters | Movie Characters
Vigilantes: Main Characters | Villain Factory | Supporting Characters
Team Up Mission

---

Considering that the very existence of All For One is a massive spoiler, and how connected he is to almost every other villain in the story as well as the Quirks he has handled, all spoilers on this page are unmarked!

---

Shigaraki — All For One

The Symbol of Evil

^{Click here to see him unmasked.}

^{Click here to see his new mask.}

^{Click here to see his original face.}

^{Click here to see him as a young man.}

Voiced by: Akio Ōtsuka (Japanese), John Swasey (English), Carlos Segundo (Latin American Spanish)

Debut: Chapter 59 (Manga), Episode 33 (Anime)

Playable in: My Hero One's Justice, My Hero One's Justice 2, My Hero Academia: Ultra Impact

Quirk: All For One (Artificial Duplicate), All For One (Original; Formerly) Stolen Quirks: Countless Amounts

Rank: S

"Friends, if you wish to leave, all you need do is follow me. Yes, I want you to stand by my side. In the era of chaos on the horizon, a more perfect demon lord will be born. You will bear witness to the story of how I became the greatest demon lord this world has known!"

The founder and mastermind of the League of Villains, he is an infamous villain believed to be an urban legend. Initially only heard through a computer monitor, he is eventually forced to reveal himself to save the rest of the League from capture, at the cost of his own imprisonment.

All For One has been around since Quirks first emerged. Since that time, he has used his power to amass numerous devout followers, with whom he ruled the Japanese underworld from the shadows for years. He had a younger brother named Yoichi Shigaraki, who opposed him and became the first wielder of One For All. Five years prior to the events of the main story, All Might put a stop to his reign of evil by defeating his minions and eventually the man himself in a battle that left both parties severely injured. Since then, All For One wants to bequeath his place to his protégé, Tomura Shigaraki.

In the aftermath of Paranormal Liberation War, he uses his Quirk vestige to possess Shigaraki which leads to freeing his original body from Tartarus. He then sets out with his protégé to wage war on Izuku Midoriya, marking him as his new nemesis after All Might passed on One For All so he can finally steal it for himself. By the series' final arc, it's revealed All For One intends for One For All to boost his own abilities so he may Take Over the World by making him and his Quirks the only way to provide sustainable resources, forcing everybody to rely on him as a God-Emperor.

All For One boasts of a staggering power in a class of its own due to his titular Quirk, "All For One". With it, he can steal other Quirks for personal use or transfer them to others. He inadvertently created One For All this way.

---

#-B

• 0% Approval Rating: While he is despised by everyone who is not a villain, even the League of Villains find their relationship with All For One to be tenuous at best, not helped by how frequently he sees and uses them as tools. By the climax of the Final Battle, all of his followers have left or betrayed him due to his abusive treatment, with Garaki the only one that remains loyal to him.
• Ability Mixing: His most devastating attacks are combinations of several Quirks that sinergize. For example, mixing his Air Cannon with Kinetic Boosters, Strength Enhancers, and Springlike Limbs make what would've been a contained burst of air into a shockwave that topples buildings. Stacking multiples of similar-type Quirks results in a stronger output.
• Above Good and Evil: Whilst he claimed not to believe in morality to a young Tenko, this is ultimately subverted. All For One's true motivation is to be the most reviled, invincible Demon King the world has ever known.
• Abusive Parents: Zigzagged and then ultimately played straight. He appeared supportive towards his adopted son at first, but his ultimate goal to merge with Tomura against his will shows he never cared about him at all. He just saw him as an extension of himself. Even further, he actually subtly cultivated Kotaro's anti-hero mindset in the disguise of a close neighbour of the family giving him occasional advise, meaning he contributed to the oppressive environment Tenko suffered under as part of his long-term gambit to engineer his Dark and Troubled Past.
• Achilles' Heel: Powerful as he may be, All For One has a few prominent handicaps that undermine his belief in himself as an invincible "Demon Lord":
  • The injuries All Might inflicted upon him never healed properly, as he lacked Hyper Regeneration at the time, and continue to limit him in battle. They require life-support equipment, which he disguises as a Cool Mask, but Hawks notices him holding on to the equipment while escaping Tartarus, which means he ultimately needs it, and thus it is a targetable weak point. When it breaks, All For One's body shuts down, leaving him to get fatally torched by Endeavor.
  • His inability to understand positive emotions becomes a fatal weakness for the Vestige of himself in Tomura's psyche. Being able to understand and assimilate only the negative part of Tomura's personality left him blind to Tomura's retention of his individuality through the positive emotions and memories he still possessed. This allows his protege to steadily regain control of his body from within, culminating in Tomura seizing full control and obliterating the vestige.
• Adapted Out: Not him, but the holes in his palms that let him give and take Quirks are absent during his appearance in season 3. Entirely averted later in season 5, following the manga drawing attention to this being an important detail to having the All For One Quirk.
• The Ageless: He's older than One For All, which has been passed down through nine heroes, yet has not aged since. All Might speculates that he found a Quirk that stops aging, later confirmed to be Dr. Garaki's Quirk, "Life Force". It's implied that he's not truly ageless, but his natural ageing has been slowed down such that he'll be alive and in good health for a very long time. This is why his Hour of Power with Eri's Rewind lasts so long — despite the energy rewinding away his crippling wounds in seconds, he's so old that he has enough years on the clock to reach Izuku's battlefield before his Cessation of Existence.
• All According to Plan: For most of the story, this is played straight. All For One has an overarching goal he is manipulating the League of Villains towards achieving. As he gloats to Dabi, he's made full use of his extended lifespan to set up as many contingencies and fallbacks as he could think of, so he'd always have a fallback plan. However, the heroes are eventually able to turn the tables on him in the final battle, in part by letting All For One think this trope is still at play.
• Ambition Is Evil: Even as a kid he loved to emulate a demon king from a comic, and came to revel in the power to rule the world. He was there at the beginning of the Quirk crisis where Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains arose, rising to power in the ensuing chaos. It becomes clear that his ambition is the exact same as it was ever since he was a child — to become an invincible demon lord and ensure a future where The Bad Guy Wins.
• And Then What?: Upon confirming that Yoichi's Vestige has been destroyed for good during Izuku and Tomura's fight, it's made clear that for all his extensive preparations to achieve victory no matter what the situation was, All For One never envisioned an outcome where his twin was gone forever. He drops his Evil Is Hammy persona to showcase his true self, an hollowed-out Empty Shell who admits his villainy is a joyless affair for him from now on, and has only spiteful retribution against Izuku for his utter loss to motivate him anymore.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Anyone he offers a service to will learn that he expects to gain far more than he ever gives. Answering "no" isn't an option: once the "offer" is given, he already has his hooks too deep into the targets for them to ever be free from him. They'll be forced to serve All For One for the rest of their lives, either as a minion, a resource, a tool, or an example.
• Anarcho-Tyranny: His idea of Dystopia, where the whole world is in chaos and nations have to depend on him for resources to sustain some semblance of order.
• Antagonist Abilities: The Quirk "All For One" is exceedingly powerful and could be considered the ultimate nightmare in a society that revolves around Quirks. With the story's emphasis on putting one's better qualities in service of society, it's only appropriate that the Greater-Scope Villain's power would be to steal the "talents" of others for himself. The ability also acts as a Foil to "One For All", which enables the cultivation of a collective legacy throughout multiple generations.
• Arch-Enemy: It's difficult to find a major character he hasn't royally pissed off to the point they're personally invested in ending him. In fact, since his ultimate goal to to become the most universally reviled and loathed figure possible, it can be said that he intends to become the archenemy to the entire world.
  • He sees every inheritor of One For All as worthless and always tries to break their spirits so he can finally acquire the Quirk they hold. Of them, he has expressed atypical animosity towards only two, All Might, for crippling his body and destroying his empire, a loss he couldn't ignore, and Kudo, for separating Yoichi from him.
  • He has gradually become this to all of Class 1-A. In between attacking them at the USJ and the Training Camp, targeting Midoriya and Bakugo at different points, and his exploitation of Aoyama, he is the overarching cause of all the strife the class faces, culminating in all the remaining combat-capable classmates being in the frontlines against him alongside Izuku after he assumed his crippled Demon Lord form.
• Archnemesis Dad: To Shigaraki, having raised the boy as his adoptive father with the express purpose of absorbing his consciousness into himself to ascend as a "more perfect Demon Lord." In the Final Act of the story he becomes as much of a threat to Shigaraki's goal of becoming the greatest villain as he is to the heroes. He only sees Shigaraki as an extension of himself, explaining why he was able to care about him at all.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: All For One's century-long reign of terror has seen the initiation of several cold wars between heroes and villains, torn families apart, has him commit numerous counts of first-degree murder, engage in horrific human experimentation, groom a young child into becoming his meat suit, and his ultimate plan hinges on torturing a sixteen-year-old boy so he may finally possess his Quirk... but his idea of "darkness" is also dismal and muddy according to Tokoyami.
• Ascended Fanboy: Played horrifically straight which makes him a dark mirror to Izuku. Rather than a fan of the superheroes in the comics his brother read, he became a fan of the Demon King, seeing many similarities between himself and the character. With his Quirk, he found himself able to enact his Demon Lord fantasies, and he stops at nothing to ensure he can play the role for eternity. His banter in his final confrontation with the heroes implies he sincerely believes he can't be beaten by anybody other than a holder of One For All, because of the 'roles' each are playing.
• Attack Reflector: One of his Quirks, "Impact Recoil", lets him reverse the impact of someone's attack. By combining it with his "Warping", which lets him teleport people to his location, he can create impromptu Human Shields as Gran Torino learned the hard way. However, it only works on physical attacks.
• Attention Whore: At his core, All for One is so totally self-centered that his primary reason for aspiring to be greatest supervillain the world has ever known is to have everyone see and think about him forever; from his perspective, people remember the bad more than the good, so he'll have everyone's eyes on him if he's the living embodiment of evil.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Mass Quirk combinations like his 'ultimate combination of Quirks' fall into this: They require his body mass to horrifically swell and distort in order to support each Quirk being used. Whilst the power unleashed by these can be landscape-altering, they're incredibly telegraphed attacks that he only ever uses against a hero that cannot dodge, and if the attack fails to work, it takes some "charging time" for him to wind up another one, and his swollen flesh leaves him too slow to dodge retaliation himself. Both times he uses this tactic out of pure spite against All Might and Bakugo, they bait him into wasting his attack and retaliate with a devastating counter, spelling his doom.
  • He unlocks the full strength of his stolen Quirks by channeling his hatred and refusal to lose into them through his deepening mental link with Tomura. This allows him to unleash cataclysmic blasts of power, but his body cannot withstand the strain. Thanks to Rewind he can use this as a repeat tactic, but every time he does so it handicaps him, and regrowing his limbs burns up more Rewind energy than necessary, further limiting the time he has remaining.
• Ax-Crazy: He was born like this, filled with "a hubris and disrespect for others" right out of the womb, and seeing people only as possessions he could take from. If they had nothing to give him, he would immediately kill them and take what he wanted from the corpse afterwards, even whilst still a child. Learning about super villains from Yoichi's comic books actually taught him how to dial this down by channeling it into becoming a real-life Card-Carrying Villain, rather than the Omnicidal Maniac he was developing into. As events turn increasingly against him over the course of the Final Battle, his composed Mask of Sanity as the Diabolical Mastermind slips, exposing the true raging maniac he is underneath. By the time he reaches Izuku's battlefield, he's a cackling lunatic screaming every line at the top of his lungs, with absolutely deranged facial expressions.
• Back from the Dead: Thrice over: His flashback to All Might's first victory over him makes it clear he genuinely was killed by him, with his head turned into liquid, only for Garaki to somehow revive his body after stealing it from the morgue. This occurs again with him being nearly vaporized by Endeavor's flames, but this time he came prepared with a trump Card in Eri's Rewind. Then it occurs again with his Vestige self being Not Quite Dead within Tomura's Mental World despite being shredded apart, staging a takeover when his willpower falters and "resurrecting" the Demon Lord even after his physical death.
• Bad Boss: All For One seems to be genuinely lenient, patient, and encouraging as leader of the League, willing to give them many chances to succeed. This "compassion" is but a false front: ultimately, he sees people as mere tools, and will abandon them as he sees fit. During the Paranormal Liberation War arc, he hijacks Tomura's body and flees the battlefield, deserting most of the League of Villains members, including Gigantomachia. Otherwise, he averts this trope through Pragmatic Villainy.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: All For One "hired" Lady Nagant to capture Deku, but she is defeated by him. Deku tries to sway her to his side but All For One abruptly detonates her for failing her task. Played With, however, in that he never actually intended Nagant to win against Deku, having concealed vital information from her about his Combo Platter Powers, and was always intending on killing her right before Izuku's eyes to break him, aware he would be compelled to help her.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: The ability to steal powers from people and forcefully implant them into others is about as villainous as it sounds.
• Bad Samaritan: He made it a habit to take in desperate children harmed or rejected by society and provide guidance for them. Not because he cares for any of them, but so he could mold them into potential host bodies to replace his damaged original one, with it being implied he may have had a hand in causing their terrible circumstances in the first place to boot. Those who were unsuitable for that were put to use in his Nomu experiments. It turns out his entire endgame is to set up a world so horrible, he can always swoop in to 'help' someone.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He is always seen wearing a suit, like Lex Luthor or many of Batman's villains.
• Badass Longcoat: He used to wear one, back in his prime, as seen in Izuku's flashback to his rise to power.
• Bald of Evil: Everything from his mouth upwards is nothing but mangled scar tissue, including his scalp. Granted, he used to have hair before his first clash with All Might and this becomes undone when Rewind restores his prior appearance.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: On two fronts, his plan relies on both subjugating Tomura's personality to absorb into his own, and then use their combined wills to override the will of One For All. His first attempt during the Liberation War sees him close to success against Izuku, but he is repelled by his brother.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: His ultimate goal is to be Hated by All, as he sees that as the mark of a truly great villain. He finds out the hard way that includes his own allies when Gigantomachia is beating him into the ground over being abandoned by him. Garaki is the only minion he has that's fully loyal to him.
  Hawks: Looks to me like nobody's on board with your grand tale, buddy.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Somewhat tragically, the flashbacks to his past reveal that he's always been doing this to himself regarding his own humanity. He does have some underlying empathy towards Yoichi, being uncharacteristically shaken by his brother's passing, but as he is absolutely convinced Virtue Is Weakness and only "ordinary people" feel such emotions, he's deluded himself that he doesn't want his brother's love and thinks of him only in terms of a favored possession he's lost. He claims that the Berserker Tears he shed when learning Kudo had already passed "Yoichi" onto another were something he did intentionally to confuse him, rather than an actual emotional outburst.
• Beneath the Mask:
  • Throughout the series, All For One has had the air of a dignified Evil Overlord who plans for everything and is always in control. However, the final arcs show that, as that mask cracks, he's even more childish and bratty than Shigaraki.
  • Once Izuku finally diffuses Tomura's rage through forcibly transferring the Vestiges into his mental wounds through their psychic link, it weakens his willpower enough for the submerged vestige of All For One to reassume control. However, the process also caused the destruction of the vestiges from being slammed into Tomura's psyche like bullets, meaning that despite having absorbed One For All at long last, Yoichi's vestige is utterly gone for good and All For One can never reunite with his sibling. Realising this has the arch villain discard his hammy, theatrical personality traits and reveal what he's actually like when not putting on an act: terrifyingly calm, detached and almost bored mannerisms as he clinically notes the damage he and Izuku have both suffered and announcing that he intends to still dominate the world for the sake of the demon lord's reputation, even as he's clearly absent any joy at the idea.
• Berserk Button:
  • There are two things shown in the series actually capable of making All For One not just angry, but furious: not being in control and having his invincible self-image as Demon King undermined. While these would make anyone angry, All For One's nature makes them this trope for him specifically: as a psychopath, his shallow emotions mean genuinely angering him is borderline impossible on a pathological level. This means not only do these things make him truly angry, but they're also seemingly the only two things in the world that can.
    • People pointing out that villains are inevitably destined to lose is a more downplayed one, that combines the above two points together. He grabbed Yoichi by the face to force the power-stockpiling quirk onto him when he refuted his dreams of The Bad Guy Wins with this and his Villainous Breakdown during the Final Battle is tied to the fact that no matter how much effort or planning he put into averting this, he's still losing in the end.
  • His "first possession", Yoichi, was a major one to him, with him specifically getting enraged over anything or anyone he saw as keeping his brother away from his possessive control. He blamed Kudo for Yoichi's physical death, rather than accept it was his own impulsive decision in a moment of anger over seeing Yoichi choosing somebody else's hand over his own, and developed such primal anger towards the Second Holder that it outstripped even his stated animosity for All Might. Both versions of All For One fly into an immediate homicidal rage towards Bakugo when reminded of Kudo through him. And even this gets dwarfed by his breakdown over realising Yoichi's Vestige was destroyed for good by Izuku's fight against Tomura. He drops any of his Evil Is Hammy mannerisms and expresses only intense murderous fury towards Izuku even through his nigh-emotionless true personality, acting so different to the theatrical supervillain he was minutes before that Izuku can't tell he's the same persona.
• Berserker Tears: Surprisingly enough, yes. He killed Kudo whilst giving him a Neck Lift with tears streaming down his face, his demeanor ice-cold and the complete opposite of his usual enjoyment of killing his enemies as painfully as possible. This was because Kudo mocked him that he'd killed Yoichi when he demanded to know where his brother('s power) was, reminding All For One of the one evil action he felt guilty about and was in denial over. All For One later claims the tears were intentionally done simply to confuse Kudo in his last moments, except that's very clearly a poor lie to deny the emotional outburst that showcased his trace humanity.
• Beyond Redemption: Even Izuku, the resident All-Loving Hero who's trying to save Shigaraki of all people, considers no other option than killing All For One to ultimately save the day. The story takes every chance to frame him as a soulless psychopath, an image he wholeheartedly embraces with glee, with even the League of Villains ending up his victims in ways that elicit sympathy. From manipulating and grooming Shigaraki, to reviving Toya and triggering his descent into Dabi, to using Spinner as a backup plan during the Final Battle, All For One proves himself entirely undeserving of pity, and the world will be better off once he's gone.
• BFG: During his battle with Team Endeavor, All For One combines his various Quirks together to create a large, grotesque organic cannon and fire off a supercharged Air Cannon. It's only thanks to a timely save by Hawks are Jirou and Tokoyami able to dodge it, though it costs Jirou her ear and half her Quirk.
• Big Bad: He is the central antagonist of the series until All Might beats him and he is incarcerated. Even then, the story still frames him as the ultimate evil, and his presence is felt throughout. It becomes Zigzagged in the final arcs though, as upon freeing his original body from Tartarus, he takes back control over the remnants of the League and focuses his efforts on destroying Midoriya, trying to assimilate Shigaraki's consciousness through his vestige to replace him as the main antagonist in body and mind. His constant underestimation of the new generation of Villains and Heroes eventually and humiliatingly relegates him into a Big Bad Wannabe instead.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Deconstructed, but ultimately played straight. All For One remains the true Big Bad for much of the story, but that's precisely why he begins sliding into this territory instead: he remains Big Bad for too long, well past the point he's able to keep up with the heroes. The central theme of the series is about succession, one generation to the next. All For One can't accept that, eventually, he will be surpassed and so tries to hog the position from Tomura when he's well past his prime as the Symbol of Evil. Even become the True Final Boss at the last minute by exploiting Tomura's Moment of Weakness doesn't detract from this, as he's presented as a massive downgrade from the potentially world-destroying force of nature Tomura was alone.
• Big Brother Bully: He was Yoichi's primary caretaker from infancy, using his Quirk to enable them both to survive in harsh conditions and is the only reason Yoichi made it to adulthood. He also beat Yoichi whenever he tried to oppose him hurting others, locked him in a safe and ultimately forced a Quirk upon Yoichi to make him submit. The whole reason Yoichi was even born so frail and weak was because of All For One monopolizing the majority of their mother's nutrients in the womb, meaning he's the cause of Yoichi's enfeebled state.
• Bishōnen Line: Thanks to being pushed past his limits by Endeavor's team, All For One is forced to use Rewind in order to return to prime strength and make his way to Shigaraki. This gradually undoes all of his injuries, but only because he's getting younger. The more damage inflicted upon him, the faster Rewind is forced to go. He dégagés to a middle-aged, handsome and well-built man, and reverts further still to a teenager younger than Izuku by the time he reaches his battleground.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Whilst normally he prefers to distort the facts in his favor or will happily gloat to his enemies' faces about any Awful Truth that will hurt them, when he's pushed into a corner, he will resort to this to keep as much of an advantage as he can, or preserve his rapidly-unraveling dignity.
  All For One: No, obviously I didn't fall for your cheap ploy to stall me. I can easily spare the time to clean up the trash by the roadside!!
  All Might: Desperate to play it cool, huh? How undignified!!
  • He even does this to himself, when being forced, by his resurging feelings of hatred for Kudo and his 'successor' Bakugo, to confront his emotional vulnerabilities. Recalling the time Kudo taunted him about Yoichi's death being his own fault, All For One reframes his tears as some attempt to manipulate and confuse Kudo and Yoichi... except it's clearly All For One who's so bothered by this moment that he repressed those memories, and developed actual hatred for Kudo for the reminder of his "mistake".
• Blind Seer: He's been blind since his fight with All Might and uses an "Infrared Ray" Quirk to sense his surroundings. The prison he's kept in has so many sensors that it impairs his ability to "see". This ceases to be the case after he activates a variant of Rewind to restore his fatal wounds, along with his undamaged appearance as a side-effect.
• Blood from Every Orifice: He escapes the effects of Stain's Bloodcurdle this way, using Bloodlet to forcibly expel all his viscera out of himself, with a lovely shot of the fluids bursting from his eyes and ears before he's entirely obscured by his own body mass of blood.
• Blow You Away: One of his Quirks, "Air Cannon", fires a blast of air from his hands. He can combine this with a "Spring-like Limbs" Quirk, four "Kinetic Boosters", and three "Strength Enhancers" to increase its destructive power. It takes out several pro heroes in seconds.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Played With. He claims that beings like himself are Above Good and Evil, when convincing young Tenko to embrace the path of villainy, but it's implied to be another manipulation tactic to break the young boy's fragile mentality rather than something he actually believes. He actually has a very clear understanding of right and wrong, but All For One deliberately sets out to commit 'evil' actions not for the greater good or a twisted sense of morality, but simply because they're considered to be evil. He considers villains to be those who are feared and hated by all who know them, and as he's intending to become a real-life 'Demon Lord', his grand ambition is to become the most universally hated person the world over. What matters to All For One isn't whether his actions actually are truly evil or good, it's whether they stoke the ire of those around him.
• Body Backup Drive: His ultimate purpose for Tomura. Over the decades, All For One's own body had struggled in storing new Quirks, as these evolved at a fast rate. When Dr. Garaki performs a body enhancement surgery on Tomura and transplants the original "All For One" Quirk onto him, the Quirk carries a vestige of All For One's consciousness, which can override Tomura's will. All For One even starts treating his original, crippled body like a disposable pawn, because he fully plans to live on through his 'Next Me', performing faux Heroic Sacrifices with it to further his plans.
• Body Horror: With the exception of his mouth and chin, his head is a mass of scar tissue, with no eyes, nose, or ears; judging by the scars on the back of his neck, there are likely many more hidden within his suit.
  • During the final battle, Endeavor manages to burn him alive, reducing him to a charred corpse, only for All For One to use Eri's Rewind Quirk to rejuvenate himself, with the energy undoing every injury that's inflicted on him in gruesome detail, from being smashed to bits to throwing a Slasher Smile too wide for his face and ripping his mouth open.
• Book Ends: The very first Quirk All For One ever stole was his mother's Spearlike Bones Quirk which he instinctively took when he was a baby. After his physical self has deaged back into a baby, the final Quirk he instinctively uses in a desperate attempt to kill a determined Bakugo is that same Quirk. it doesn't save him, and Bakugo destroys both the attack and his body in one.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: He uses All Might's "I am here" as a means to either sway others to join his cause, or to let the heroes know that things will be going south for them. He also inverts All Might's last words as a hero ("Now it's your turn!") to let Izuku know he now has a target on his back.
• Break the Haughty: The entire Final Battle consists of All For One's self-image of an invincible demon king being torn to shreds as the heroes completely upend his plan and he begins to be beaten by 'Jobber Characters', culminating in his final opponent being a "side character" in Bakugo, whom All For One lampshades has no connection to his feud with his brother. All For One doesn't take this well.
• Break Them by Talking:
  • The sheer ease with which he's able to get under someone's skin is practically a Quirk in its own right, and he shows far more skilled ability in enraging others than any particular Quirk he possesses, either giving him a psychological advantage or smug enjoyment at their animosity. somewhat fittingly, Bakugo ultimately defeats him by exploiting the fact he never shuts his mouth in a fight.
  • His Vestige self literally shatters Tomura's psyche with his last tactic to assume control over his body: revealing the Awful Truth that he engineered his Dark and Troubled Past over years of careful and subtle grooming of everybody around the Shimura household, including sneakily giving Tomura the destructive Decay Quirk in the first place.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: All for One is a genius manipulator, but rarely demonstrates more than a surface-level handling of individual powers, meaning that people who've trained hard with their singular Quirk's limits can still hold an edge against him in skilled usage of their powers. His disinterest in training contrasts with Izuku's own exhaustive efforts to master One For All's Combo Platter Powers slowly but steadily over the course of the series.
• Broken Pedestal: During the Liberation War, his Bad Boss traits and apathy towards even his most loyal minion or even his supposed "successor" are made clear, evaporating any respect they had for him, and by the time of the Final Battle, Garaki is notable as the only supporter All For One has left. Whilst he thinks nothing of his callousness towards them, it ultimately causes him to suffer additional setbacks during the fighting when he can least afford them.
• Brought Down to Badass: His maimed body is limited in how much power he can output and damage he can take. His Quirk takes its own toll, with a limit to how many Quirks he can safely hold, and since this is dependent on his physical condition, the number and strength of the stolen Quirks has gone down as well.
• The Bully: For all his power and influence, he is nothing more than a narcissistic, psychopathic bully who just wants to lord his power over everyone and everything, and constantly mocks anyone brave enough to challenge him. In particular, he showcases an immense spite towards any that actually humiliate him or prove he's Not So Invincible After All, especially All Might.
• Bullying a Dragon: Explicitly groomed Shigaraki to become a powerful and determined villain, and even handed him his original Quirk, with the purpose of hijacking his body and utilizing his rage to steal One For All. Too bad he didn't consider he did too good of a job in raising Shigaraki, and his forceful attempt at possession blows up in his face as a result.

C-E

• Cain and Abel: He had a younger brother named Yoichi who had a strong sense of justice and opposed him. Yoichi became the first wielder of One For All and would create the line of heroes dedicated to ending All For One's evil.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Downplayed. All For One learned Pragmatic Villainy from modelling his behaviour on the Demon lord from Yoichi's comic books, and a combination of his sheer power and versatility in a fight allowed him to dodge reality checks for generations, leading to him believing, on some level, that the world does work on comic book logic, even if he supplants it with actual intelligent manipulation and foresight gained from his years of experience. However, his inability to adapt with the changing times or face the reality of his situation ultimately undoes him throughout the Final Battle in a massive Humiliation Conga.
• Can't Catch Up:
  • All For One acknowledges that as Quirks get stronger, there might be an upper limit to how powerful and complex of a Quirk his body is physically capable of containing, let alone stealing. Part of his entire plan for Shigaraki is to circumvent this by making his 'next me' so physically powerful this isn't an issue.
  • It becomes apparent that while All For One is capable of becoming stronger, One For All's ability to improve is superior to his own. With each transfer, it exponentially increases in power while also retaining and empowering their Quirks as well. All For One can only stockpile powerful Quirks and thus is limited to what he can find. In addition, he can't actually increase the power of the Quirks he's stolen unless he can find similar enough Quirks. It's implied that part of All For One's obsession with One For All is his acknowledgement of this, as if he were to combine the Super-Empowering trait with his own stockpiled abilities and an extended lifespan in Shigaraki's enhanced body, he would effectively become a God in name and deed.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: From Yoichi onwards, the 2nd-4th holders of One For All managed to pass the Quirk onto their successor before he caught up to them or successfully hide from his surveillance. It wasn't until Banjo's generation that the arch-villain discovered the Quirk's resistance to his signature ability, much to his shock. Unwilling to repeat his "mistake" with Yoichi, and still obsessed with "reclaiming" him, All For One afterwards spared the Torch bearers until they'd passed it onto a successor, all whilst preparing a means of bypassing the Quirk's resistance. En's death in particular implies he allowed Nana Shimura to flee under the flimsy cover of her mentor's last smokescreen once she'd receive some of his hair, rather than actively pursue her. This ultimately caused his signature disfigurement at All Might's hands and ensured he wasn't capable of remaining the overarching threat to the present generation of heroes.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: He's not only narcissistic, megalomaniac, and lacking any semblance of empathy; he revels in it. It goes a long way when, in Japanese, he's the only character whom the normally polite All Might refers to with the extremely hostile pronoun kisama.
• Card-Carrying Villain: As he outlines to both All Might and Yoichi, with no shame whatsoever, being "an all-powerful devil king" from his childhood comics had always been his ambition. This sets All For One apart from the rest of the villains in a big way — He chose to be a villain entirely of his own free will for no other reason than that he wants to be. He knows he's evil, he simply doesn't care because being a demon king is his end goal in and of itself.
• The Caretaker: He seemed to have been his younger brother's caretaker and did not seem bothered by it, as he was the only person All For One ever treated with anything close to genuine kindness, though even there he was possessive and controlling.
• Casting a Shadow: Many of the Quirks he uses evoke darkness: his signature "All For One" manifests as red and black flames; "Warping" is a pool of black liquid that emerges from those he teleports; and "Rivet Stab" manifests as red and black tendrils he extends from his fingers.
• Cast from Lifespan: After getting fatally killed again during the fighting, he staves off death using Eri's Rewind as an Impromptu Healing Factor, undoing all his accumulated and old injuries in a matter of seconds. However, he admits the end result will still be fatal for him regardless, and the speed at which he de-aged indicates that it's only a viable option because of his extensive lifespan. Furthermore, whilst it prevents him from getting fatally injured, physically damaging him in this state causes Rewind to work harder to undo the damage, burning through his remaining time quicker.
• Charm Person: He possess a Quirk that lets him mind control a person through constant contact with their head.
• Chekhov's Skill: His "Forcible Quirk Activation" was initially demonstrated at Kamino Ward when forcing the unconscious Kurogiri to create an exit portal for the League. This ability means that when he's later full-body paralysed by Stain's Bloodcurdle, he can still activate his Quirks, and uses that to activate Bloodlet to messily escape his predicament.
• Chuunibyou: Final Act shows that, in the end, he's nothing more than a grown-up version of a child who's too obsessed with his comic books. The story goes to great lengths to show how dangerous it is to carry these immature delusions into adulthood, which combined with winning the Superpower Lottery make All For One into a whiny Spoiled Brat too used to getting everything he wants. Once things start going extremely poorly for him, All For One reveals his true nature as a Psychopathic Manchild and lashes out like a kid every few chapters or so. Hilariously, Tokoyami actually derides him for using "darkness" as a way of trying to rule the world.
• Classic Villain: A petty, psychopathic madman representing Greed and Pride to the extreme who is designed as the ultimate foil to All Might, Izuku, and the philosophy behind heroes as a whole.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: When his Vestige self finally gains full control of Tomura's body and shatters his psyche to prevent further upsets, he morosely notes that the damage has already been dealt to his ideal vessel through Izuku's efforts. The body is left a cracked, emaciated and partly-crumbling vision of Tomura's former self, looking hollowed-out and exhausted, Tomura's endless hatred and willpower than fuelled his overwhelming power has vanished along with his mentality, and Decay as well, given how closely interlinked the Quirk was with Tomura's mind. More personally, the Vestiges of One For All having destroyed themselves damaging Tomura like this has lead to Yoichi becoming Deader than Dead, a realisation that emotionally hollows out All For One and leaves him an Empty Shell. He still expresses confidence that he can Take Over the World, but accepts that it will be a Meaningless Villain Victory for him at best.
• The Coats Are Off: When he shows up to confront Izuku for their final battle, he does so with a similar suit and Cool Mask getup as when he confronted All Might at Kamino. However, Aoyama's surprise attack against him burns off part of the left sleeve, and he removes the whole jacket as he summons the villains en-masse.
• Combat Pragmatist: For all his power, All For One is a very dirty fighter and will use any tactic to gain the advantage in a fight. He'll play mind games to get under his opponent's skin, use sneak attacks, take others as human shields, and even threaten innocent bystanders to win. He favours excessive overkill as a standard attack, uncaring of collateral damage even to his fellow villains. During his fight with Endeavor, he immediately brings up his abuse of his children to throw Endeavor off his game. And before engaging Izuku, he makes sure to try and emotionally destabilise him by brutally killing a paralysed All Might whilst Izuku is forced to restrain Tomura, revelling in their helplessness.
• Combat Tentacles: The one Quirk he showcases any skilled handling with is "Rivet Stab", manifesting as black and red tendrils he extends from his fingers. This is likely because of how similar it is the the "Spearlike Bones" Quirk he stole from his mother during birth and used as a crutch to support himself and Yoichi during infancy.
• Control Freak:
  • All For One is defined by his insistence of having everything play out according to his designs, especially when it comes to achieving control over people (notably Yoichi, his brother; and Tomura, the one he groomed) and achieving triumph against One For All. He is so intolerant of deviations from his script that whenever they happen^note e.g., Star and Stripe booby-trapping her Quirk to destroy him from the inside, Tomura's personality struggling to reassert control over his body, he panics hard time. All For One's haste when things don't go his way, which manifests as sheer shortsightedness that screws him over in the long run^note best demonstrated by how All For One tries to have Kurogiri warp Tomura's body away from the fight against One For All so he can reestablish control over his pawn, never mind that Tomura's presence is crucial for his triumph, is mocked and exploited by many characters in the story, including his own pawns.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: This aspect of him is hidden for a long time, because All For One hates losing so badly that he always exhaustively prepares before every engagement to reduce his chances of a true loss to nearly zero. However, when the heroes do actually outmanoeuvre him in the final conflict, he snaps, lashing out viciously with unrestrained power and none of his jovial mannerisms towards those who have humiliated him. This means that even when the heroes are perfectly countering every move he makes, it's still a highly dangerous situation that he can overturn in an instant should they get too successful.
• The Corrupter: He's spent long years making himself in the utmost example of villainy on the planet, and is skilled in using both his unique Quirk, and more frequently, his words, to convince others into embracing villainy as a "good" means of ensuring their desires. These range from a young Tenko, Spinner, and even the U.A. Traitor through granting them power.
• Costume Evolution: As his previous helmet was destroyed during his battle with All Might, for the final battle with Midoriya, All For One sports a sleeker, more futuristic version of his original helmet that somewhat resembles Kurogiri's. This helmet has more armored plating on it, as he was planning on facing Izuku in a fight and wanted his Achilles' Heel to have adequate protection against his raw power.
• Crazy-Prepared: His mania to win at any cost or dirty tactic, no matter how humiliating or painful, is matched only by his insane dedication to planning and predicting even the unlikeliest of scenarios and preparing himself to always have an advantage to exploit.

  All For One: (To Dabi) Listen well... When I find myself with a goal, I'm sure to plan out a number of...routes to the goal, shall we say. To be exact, I weave my plots years or even decades prior, so that I may employ a viable route when the time comes. A route that inevitably achieves my ends.

• Create Your Own Hero: The final arcs make it clear that All For One has a very bad habit of doing this without recognizing his mistakes from past experience, from Yoichi to Izuku to indirectly, All Might himself.
• Creator Thumbprint: In-universe example. Anyone with an extra Quirk can be traced back to All For One. The Artificial Humans/Nomus are a direct example. The users of One For All are an indirect example, as All For One had inadvertently created their Quirk. Izuku even gets mistaken as a minion of his thanks to his multiple abilities when saving civilians in the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation War, which is only technically true.
• Creepy Child: To say AFO was unnerving in his youth, really doesn't do it any justice. The flashback of his early years depicted him as having an eerie sheen to his eye which depicted his apathetically self-centered mindset to a tee. Nothing reflecting in his eyes was a good implication that he saw nothing and no one else as remotely significant compared to himself. And to say nothing of his more murderous tendencies growing up.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He regularly dishes these out with impunity against any heroes who don't have One For All, and he believes this is the natural outcome of any battle he fights. This therefore takes him off-guard during the Final Battle when his enemies prove strong and skilled enough in teamwork to turn the tables on him multiple times, even killing him more than once. On Izuku's end, he's now so powerful and enraged from All For One's prior efforts that his "perfected Demon Lord" self gets one-sidedly thrashed when they fight.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Played With. His long-term goal runs counter to the idea of him ever risking himself from using powerful Quirks that could have dangerous consequences upon him if mishandled, thus there were sometimes abilities All For One encountered that were Too Awesome to Use even if he stole them. However, once his vestige self starts subsuming Tomura to become his "invincible Demon Lord" in a new and enhanced body, All For One considers his original body expendable, and has no problem using it with dangerous Quirks like Eri's Rewind Quirk, believing he'll still live on as the 'Next Me' regardless of what happens to him.
  • When the heroes start actually winning against him, smashing his body to pieces and only Rewind keeping him 'alive', he abuses the fact it undoes even otherwise-unhealable injuries to push his Quirks to the point that they'd negatively affect his physical body, creating massive attacks that destroy his arms from the sheer power.
  • His final desperate move to kill Bakugo and reach Tomura, Omni-Factor Unleash: All for One Goal, unleashes all of his stolen Quirks at once to turn him into a towering monster that rockets through the city. All Might notes that even if the attack succeeds the strain of using it will cause Rewind to turn him into a baby, which shows how desperate All For One is that he would resort to such a technique. This turns out to be the biggest mistake All For One ever makes as a combination of his Quirks no longer working in tandem and his sheer size turns him into a giant target that Bakugo proceeds to wail on until he is indeed turned into an infant and dies shortly afterwards.
• Dark Is Evil: Wears dark clothes, has a black helmet, has dark-colored Quirks, and is the most powerful villain in the series. Hilariously, Tokoyami actually calls him out on embracing and furthering the stereotype of this trope so much, claiming that his understanding of 'Darkness' is dismal and muddy at best.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: His previous battle with All Might has left him severely incapacitated, requiring him to wear a black mask that doubles as a life support system. After causing the Tartarus break-out, he literally has to carry the life-support machine from his cell with him, tipping the heroes off to its importance. When it breaks for good, even though he's still able to move and fight, his body won't respond like he wants, leaving him open to a fatal blow. However, he reveals that he'd successfully managed to absorb a piece of Eri's Rewind energy to compensate for having no Healing Factor, the Quirk restoring his undamaged appearance before the heroes' sight, though he confirms he expects to die anyway and is only trading one form of life support for another.
• Dark Messiah: Both All For One's words and appearance give him the impression of a messiah figure, but it's made clear that his preaching is simply nothing more than a poor cover for his desire to Take Over the World because he has the power and the ambition to.
• Deadly Upgrade: He outright says that using a copied version of Eri's Rewind to restore his body will be fatal. As a result, he only resorts to using it when Endeavor fatally burns him almost to ashes, as at that point he has nothing left to lose.
• Death by De-aging: Discussed. He considers his unreparably broken body to be 'destined for the scrap heap' in favor of his ideal self as subsuming Tomura's personality within his strengthened body, willing to use potentially dangerous but highly-useful abilities with it. He uses a variant of Eri's Rewind to stave off death in place of a proper Healing Factor, despite the potential risk of him having No Body Left Behind. It ultimately does happen to him, with him fading away after his last fight with Bakugo.
• Death Glare: As he's trying to fly off to rescue Tomura, he's still smug in the face of Hawks' attempts to stop him...until Hawks' points out Endeavor already beat him, prompting a hateful glare from All For One. His vestige self later tops that with an ice-cold expression of Tranquil Fury towards Izuku, blaming him for the destruction of Yoichi's vestige. Having dropped all his theatrical mannerisms at that realisation and showing his true self to be a nigh-emotionless Empty Shell, that glare showcases that he's still deep in the throes of an Unstoppable Rage, muted through his stunted emotions.
• Death or Glory Attack: After being driven into a frothing rage over Bakugo's resistance, who has seemingly inherited the will of Kudo the second OFA user, and realising that he is almost out of time before Rewind kills him, All For One proceeds to use all of his Quirks at once, turning into a monstrous amalgam of flesh and bone in an attempt the both kill Bakugo and reach and overpower Tomura all in one shot. All Might is left in shock as he realises that, even if he succeeds, the blowback will turn All For One into an infant, but the villain is so far gone that he doesn't care as long as he can transfer into Tomura. This goes badly for All For One.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • What his services amount to. Found yourself to be Quirkless or your own Quirk is detrimental? If you can find him, he'll gladly grant you a Quirk or take yours, in exchange for loyalty towards him. Practically everyone who sought his help including Aoyama's family found out the hard way. His ultimate plan is forcing everybody into one of these, by causing complete societal breakdown nationwide so he can step in and use his accumulated abilities to provide for the people's needs and restore order under his rule. People will be given whatever they desire to live a life of safety and comfort, but it will mean giving All For One complete power over them.
  • He grants Spinner two Quirks when he wants to be stronger and useful to Shigaraki, but Spinner is burned twice by this. First, All For One is well aware if his plan succeeds, Shigaraki will effectively cease to exist and is no longer the one giving the orders Spinner is following, and second, the two Quirks begin to drive Spinner completely insane and turn him into Dumb Muscle. This effectively means Spinner is destroying his own mind for nothing.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: He intentionally plays into the role of a comic-book villain, but the Final Battle makes it repeatedly clear why this is a bad idea, enough to earn him his own folder.
• Dented Iron: As unbelievably powerful as he is now, the injuries that All Might inflicted on him mean he's nowhere near as powerful as he used to be. All Might notes this when All For One mocks his own diminished strength, pointing to the life support system he constantly wears, which becomes exploited as the heroes' main target during the Final Battle. He in turn also exploits the state of his body as an excuse to test out extremely useful but potentially dangerous Quirks through it, before risking letting his 'Next Me' use them, such as Eri's Rewind Quirk to compensate for his lack of a Healing Factor, though he implies he fully expects it to still be fatal.
• Despair Event Horizon: Downplayed once All For One's vestige manages to reclaim possession of Tomura's body. The once cackling villain who straight up deludes into thinking his plans are going better than they actually are is reduced to somberly accepting that his primary goal has failed. While he still goes through with his long-term goal of taking over the world, he lost all enthusiasm for it, labeling it a pointless endeavor. It seems he was being sincere about how, without Yoichi, his actions are all for nothing.
• Determinator: When All For One sets his mind on a goal, he will not deviate from it, no matter the amount of time, effort, and resources required to succeed, even (or rather, especially) for the pettiest of reasons, such as spending decades on a convoluted plan to steal his brother's Quirk rather than destroying it for the risk it poses. This pairs nastily with his Hope Crusher mindset, as he also devotes long years worth of effort causing abject misery to those around him and enforcing his villainy. His refusal to ever suffer a loss in battle renders him incredibly dangerous even outwith his immense power and extensive preparations, managing to push through an entire assembled army of the strongest and most experienced heroes and even villains he turns against himself throughout the Final Battle, managing to reach Izuku in the end despite running an entire gauntlet of enemies.
• Detrimental Determination:
  • Whilst his sheer commitment towards embodying the role of a comic-book villain so utterly were what allowed him to carve out a successful generations-long reign as Japan's Shadow Dictator, by the final arcs it becomes clear that his same desire to control the narrative of the story to play out the way he wants it to be ultimately one of his biggest flaws.
  • His vestige self manages to reassume control of Tomura's body despite his greater strength, but this just forces him to face the reality of Yoichi's Vestige having been destroyed in the fight between Izuku and Tomura, and that he'll have to spend the rest of eternity without his Living Emotional Crutch by his side like he envisioned. He sincerely admits that any success he enjoys from now on will be a Meaningless Villain Victory without Yoichi, and whilst he still intends to Take Over the World, it's purely out of obligation to the Demon Lord's reputation rather than any personal motivation now.
• Devil Complex: In his younger days, he was enamored with a demon king character in a manga he and his brother read. His admiration for the character inspired him to become the most powerful, influential villain the world has ever known. As he himself states at the end of chapter 297:
  All For One: This will be the story of how I become the greatest demon lord of all!
• Diabolical Mastermind: He was considered the King of the criminal underworld before his imprisonment in Tartarus and was immune to the law because he kept his existence shrouded in myth.
• Didn't See That Coming: This is All For One's general reaction throughout the final arcs of the series as his plans completely fall apart around him, being so convinced that he'd planned exhaustively for every possible outcome to ensure victory, that when the tables turns against him regardless, he's left constantly off-balance by it and slips further and further into delusional denial that he cannot achieve the victory he desires.
• Didn't Think This Through: The Final Battle has events turning steadily worse and worse for him, in no small part to his own character flaws and inability to understand selfless altruism getting exploited for maximum advantage by the heroes, and All For One is left desperately trying to retain his self-perception of being the "Ultimate Villain" no matter how short-sighted and self-defeating it is.
• Disability Immunity: Although he never realized it at the time, him losing his eyes and relying on sensor-type Quirks to "see" made him impossible to fool with sight-based illusions. Once he regains his vision with Rewind, he completely gets distracted with killing a fake Hawks conjured up by Camie.
• Discard and Draw: His specific power type allows him to rapidly alter the means by which he faces various generations of heroes.
  • In a flashback showcasing his fight with Nana Shimura, he is seen utilizing gruesome landscape-altering Quirks. In the Kamino Ward battle, he seems to prefer strong ranged abilities paired with diversions and attrition strategies, specifically to counter All Might's Lightning Bruiser abilities and exploit his Hour of Power weakness.
  • During the fight with team Endeavor they deduce that he lacks the Hyper Regeneration or any similar Quirks on him, so injuries dealt to him with stick. However, after Endeavor manages to scorch him to a charcoaled husk, he reveals he'd absorbed a variant of Eri's Rewind Quirk from the Destroying Bullets Tomura salvaged, using that to undo his injuries instead, due to seeing his old crippled body as disposable next to the perfected body he has in Tomura.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Zigzagged Despite being the one of the two Big Bads of the series, he's defeated at Kamino and imprisoned by the climax of part 1 of the story, leaving Tomura as the new leader of the League of Villains. Then All For One’s plans see his consciousness possesses Tomura and frees his original body from prison. But then, during the Final Battle, fighting both the Heroes and Tomura's mental struggle from within on two fronts causes his control to slip, allowing Tomura to destroy his vestige and become Izuku's sole final opponent once again. However, his Vestige self refuses to stay down, and finally reassumes control for good by breaking Tomura's psyche with the Awful Truth of him engineering his Dark and Troubled Past from the start. However, he's left in a crippled, broken shell of the threat Tomura once was, lacking most of his raw strength and Decay as well, meaning he's far lass of an omnipresent threat than his Superior Successor no matter how much he hogs the position of main antagonist.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In the lead up to the Final Battle, All For One is constantly going on about how his victory is inevitable and he's planned for everything...while the audience sees the heroes are completely on to his plan and making their own massive counter plan. In fact, said plan relies on letting All For One think exactly that.
  • The original All For One is confident if he makes it back to U.A. in time, he can salvage his "next me" and still achieve his goal, when Shigaraki actually regained control of himself and destroyed All For One's vestige, additionally rejecting the prospect of actually stealing One For All period, meaning the goal All For One has spent the entire series striving for just went up in smoke and he doesn't even know it yet.
• The Dreaded: All For One loves cultivating this image, inspiring fear and terror in those nearby him from his sheer malice and power, such that Izuku likened being nearby him to "seeing death". However, he turns out to be too obsessed with enforcing this image, as when the heroes overcome their fears towards him and actively fight back against the "hopeless" odds, it irritates him and spurns him into unpragamtic actions to destroy their defiance, even when he gets forced into a Race Against the Clock, which ultimately costs him in the end.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: It's clear he never stopped being drunk on the sheer power his Quirk gave him, and a large aspect of his Evil Plan is to set up a situation that will allow him to lord his power and control over everybody forever.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: A Zigzagged case. When introduced, he is a feared and respected villain, with a long history of evil actions and at the height of his power was once the Shadow Dictator of Japan so feared and powerful that it took an equally formidable figure, likened to a demigod's status, to take him down. Even weakened, he commands dread and respect from those who know him and the League of Villains get an immense boost in prestige in the criminal underworld just from being associated with a legendary figure like him. However, by the time of the final battle, the heroes are ready and willing to fight back. This infuriates All For One to the point that he starts ranting about how they've been too spoiled by All Might's era of peace to know how dangerous he really is.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: According to Aoyama, All For One's endgame is to plunge the entire world into social instability and anarchy to the point villains run rampant and the slightest shortage of anything, be it food, water, or power, will give All For One the chance to swoop in with his stockpiled Quirks and force his will on them. All For One has no greater goal or philosophy he wants to enforce by taking over, it is his endgame in and of itself. As All For One specifies later, his real goal is to 'thwart the future of the whole world' solely to be as hated as he possibly can.
• Emotional Powers: Double Subverted. All Quirks seem to be this by default, but due to his nature, All For One could never actually use them this way, only able to wield the base strength of a Quirk without being able to push it to the limit. This was disguised by the sheer power he can wield inventively combining multiple powers together, but when even that fails to defeat the heroes barraging him from all sides, he snaps, reaching a Rage Breaking Point that he then channels into his Quirks to unleash enough power to devastate their assembled army. He expresses unfamiliarity with the sensation and attributes it to his Psychic Link with Tomura reaching greater synchronisation, rather than anything he was capable of on his own, being so unused to the feeling of pure rage that his attacks damage him as badly as they do the heroes and he's reliant on Rewind to stay alive.
• Empty Eyes: The narration points out that his eyes have been clouded over since birth, as if covered by thin membranes. As emphasized dramatically through his and Kudo's staredown after Yoichi's death, they're reflective of his heartless and self-centered nature.
• Empty Shell: Throughout the series, various characters, up to the villain himself, have stated that AFO lacks the hatred, strength of will, or even depth of personality necessary to steal One for All. This seems to fly in the face of his enthusiastic expressions and fondness over his brother, up until his past as an emotionless child aimlessly massacring people left and right was shown. It was only after he read comics with Yoichi that he started displaying his signature smile and proclaimed that he would take over a world, grafting the persona of a gleeful villain onto his otherwise shallow identity. Furthermore, it's Yoichi actions and death that are the only things in the world that can elicit anything resembling legitimate emotions in the villain, making it clear that any drive AFO has is mainly a product of the only thing that can fill his life with purpose, his brother, and that, without him, AFO is simply an empty psychopath. This is all but confirmed once Yoichi is well and truly gone: AFO's vestige can only muster a dead glare at the world around him, barely acknowledges the foes around him, and dismisses his world conquest as a meaningless endeavor he will go through for no particular reason.
• Enfant Terrible: From birth he had a natural sense of entitlement towards whatever or whomever he saw, having no compunctions taking from others on instinct which made him out to be worse than a stereotypical hellion. Such as stealing so many nutrients from his mother that it caused her Death by Childbirth and left Yoichi weak and infirm. Stealing her Quirk moments before (or after) he was ever born and used it to viscously kill anybody who crossed his path who wouldn't give him something he wanted, like he had slaughtered a bunch of rightwing racist prowlers during the meta ability blooms early years. More because they ignored him as just more flotsam left behind by the onset of a Beware the Superman craze than because they assaulted him. Viewing anyone around him as a possession to have or destroy. Even his little brother Yoichi wasn't safe from harm as AFO's response to his attempt at waylaying his killing spree was to kick him in the ribs. When Rewind begins reverting him back to a child's age, he's no less dangerous than he was as an adult.
• Enhanced Punch: Attempted against All Might by mashing a dozen or so physical Quirks together. It's more for a symbolic reason than a pragmatic one; by destroying the Symbol of Peace with the same technique he usually employs, he hopes to shatter the populace's faith in heroes. Notably, this proves to be a mistake on his part.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Is fully aware of the world's injustices but, instead of doing anything about it, intends for everybody to be forced to live in the same squalor as a twisted form of equality once he acquires One For All, with only himself and his allies at the top to enjoy the spoils.
• Everyone Has Standards: Discussed. As he notes to Hawks, even in a world such as theirs with differing cultures and views on what defines 'good' and 'evil', there are still some actions that are held to be universally repugnant or vile by everybody... so he wants to commit as many of those actions on as grand a scale as possible just so everyone who hears his name will consider him an evil villain, as he judges the success of one's villainy to be measured by how much they're despised by the masses.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Played With. All For One truly seems to care for his younger brother, Yoichi. Despite his rebelling against him, he repeatedly tried finding a middle ground. He gave Yoichi a Quirk to help him get stronger, even making sure his body would be able to handle it. His love is such that he even shed Berserker Tears while killing Kudo in clear anger over Yoichi's death. However, it is clear that he sees his sibling as an extension of himself, rather than a full person, and his quest to take One For All can be seen as him trying to retrieve a piece of himself that refuses to comply. Losing Yoichi's vestige for good emotionally hollows All For One out to the point that he even discards his hammy supervillain persona and showcases his real self: a serenely-detached, morose Empty Shell who admits that all his sucess is meaningless without his twin.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Invoked: All For One wants to be as loathed and hated as physically possible. As such, it's no surprise that by the end game, even the most idealistic and loving heroes such as Deku absolutely despise him. While the rest of the villains are slated for capture if at all possible by the heroes' final gambit, their plan notably entails having Endeavor flat out kill him rather than try to recapture him.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Fitting for someone titled the "Symbol of Evil", All For One is unable to understand concepts such as morality or selflessness and only views people as tools to be used and discarded at his pleasure. And this constantly blindsides him during the final arcs of the story. His plan to isolate Midoriya fails because he never imagined his friends would step in to save him, his fight with Star and Stripe ends in failure because he didn't anticipate her pulling a Heroic Sacrifice, and he ends up Lured into a Trap by the heroes because he didn't expect Aoyama to turn on him for his friends nor that his friends would forgive Aoyama and give him a chance to atone.
  • His last monologue shows that he genuinely believed becoming a Hated by All Evil Overlord will ensure he's recognized forever in history as an vile monster who stands at the apex of villainy, as "unpleasant experiences leave a bigger impact", so as not to be forgotten by anybody in the world. Instead, each and every evil act he's committed means no one wants to remember him and his own selfish hoarding meaning he never created a legacy that'd outlast himself leaves him a nameless nobody to the present generation. This thought seems to have never occured to All For One.
• Evil Counterpart: The final arcs highlight how he's a negative mirror of not just All Might, but other characters like Izuku, Endeavor, Tokoyami and Bakugo, each of whom winds up facing him in some form and causing him further setbacks in his attempted victory.
• Evil Is Bigger: His crippled body looms over everybody else, aided by his life-support helmet making him look even taller, and adds to his dominating and imposing presence. However this becomes Inverted during the final battle, as when Rewind pushes him back to the point his body begins to physically de-age, he winds up shrinking down into a young boy even smaller than Bakugo, along with his status as the driving threat of the conflicts.
• Evil Is Cool: An In-Universe example; All for One used to be an avid comic reader in his youth. He states that he identified with and appreciated the villains of the story more than the heroes of the story, and this served as a reason why he decided to become a villain later on. Deconstructed as the nature of this trope shows just how shallow and childish All For One is beneath his grandiose reputation.
• Evil Is Petty: While All For One has higher goals and ambitions, he can't resist committing smaller acts of sadism, especially when it involves braking somebody's hopes and optimism. This becomes Deconstructed, as the heroes realize how petty All For One is and that it's an easily exploitable way to manipulate him despite his Crazy-Prepared plans, making heavy use of this throughout the Final Battle.
  • He chooses to halt his advance of Izuku when All Might faces him in Powered Armor, the chance to break his nemesis on live television before the world's eyes too tempting to resist, despite being aware that's exactly what All Might wants. He even thwarts his final attempt to blow them both up, just to deny him the ability to choose how he dies and revels in All Might's despair at his last-second failure.
• Evil Gloating: Beffiting his nature as a blatant Card-Carrying Villain, it's not enough for him to defeat his enemies, he has to go out of his way to mock and belittle them the whole way too, rubbing their defeat in their faces and deriding them for ever believing they could overcome him. He goes on extensive monologues to highlight how badly they've failed to stop them, how useless their efforts were, and how they should feel bad and/or foolish for even trying, all with his signature grin on his face and wrapped in a veneer or politeness.
• Evil Overlord: His ultimate dream is to become an invincible demon king. What we know of his reign before All Might defeated him implies he had basically become Japan's Shadow Dictator. This time around, he wants to not only be much more overt, but Take Over the World and turn it into a dystopia bound to his will.
• Evil Plan:
  • Overall Played With. All For One is highly intelligent, and has set up multiple plans towards his unspoken goal, involving manipulating both society, the League of Villains, and select heroes on his hitlist into playing into his hands. Ultimately however, it's revealed during the Final Battle that All For one's main goal is the typical supervillan's Take Over the World play, via destroying all functioning society so everybody will be forced to turn to him and his accumulated Quirks for a stable life. Underneath that, he admits his true motivation and aim is simply using this state of chaos to become Hated by All forcing others to recognise him as the ultimate villain by his own twisted logic — an extremely petty and childish result for the means why which he intends to achieve it.
  • More immediately, he is devoting most of the manga into successfully pulling off his long-desired goal of absorbing One For All and marking his success against Yoichi in their generation-long feud, via manipulating Tomura into absorbing the Quirk where he cannot. He claims that it's merely the "midgame goal" on his larger plan, but it's made clear that it matters as much or even more to him personally than his final aim, to the point that on realising his reunion with Yoichi is genuinely impossible, he morosely admits that any further success is now pointless to him.
• Evil Smells Bad: Not him, but the black ooze used for his Warping Quirk is said to smell really bad:
  Twice: This black stuff reeks! I love it!
• Evil Sounds Deep: Comes with being voiced by Akio Ōtsuka. John Swasey gives him a menacingly deep voice as well, helped by the filter in his helmet.
• Eviler than Thou: Pulls this on Tomura when he does his grand reentry into the story, employing Grand Theft Me on him to hijack his body and free his original self from Tartarus. He claims to genuinely respect Tomura and his tenacity, and wants to merge their personalities together into one superior being so he can become a Physical God, yet it becomes clear this amounts to just creating a superior clone of himself at Tomura's expense. Whilst Tomura's willpower proves stronger than he can control, he ultimately regains command of the body by exploiting his morally-viler nature against his protégée, using the Awful Truth to break his mind, even if he's left in a crippled vision of the threat Tomura is alone.
• Expy: All For One is one to both Darth Vader and Palpatine from Star Wars. Like the former, his body is damaged and as a result he wears a life support system; and he also has the trollish dick tendencies and evil mastermind skills of the latter.
• Eyeless Face: Everything above his upper lips is nothing but a mass of scar tissues. This winds up biting him in the ass during the Final Battle, as despite compensating with any sensory quirks he could find, these are no true substitute for his original senses, and the fact he has to rely on a crutch to fight anywhere close to his original power means that when that crutch is unexpectedly removed, he's left extremely vulnerable and unable to keep track of his opponents, which they don't hesitate to exploit. This ceases to be the case after he uses Rewind to undo his injuries to a point before All Might permanently injured him.

F-H

• Face Framed in Shadow: Most of the flashback sequences have him as this. Even in sections where his facial features are mostly visible and intact, there is always a black band of shadow placed over his eyes, evoking his present appearance, as well as symbolising his true heartless nature underneath his polite mannerisms.
• The Faceless: His face is first hidden in shadow, then by his mask. Even after All Might breaks it off, he still kind of counts. This is no longer the case once Rewind gets utilised to heal his fatal wounds, undoing his trademark disfigurements as a side-effect.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: When Eri's harvested Rewind energy restores his original appearance, he's revealed to have this. Fitting of a man whose charisma and manipulation skills with the masses were one of his greatest assists in tandem with his powers, his appearance is that of a ruggedly handsome man, not too dissimilar to that of an idealized hero, and the paneling even frames him as if he were a messiah figure gazing down upon those beneath him. However, everything about his actual personality demonstrates him to be one of the evilest, twisted and morally irredeemable villains in the series, and his almost angelic grace is offset by his soulless gaze hinting at his true monstrous nature behind his superficial charms. His ongoing Villainous Breakdown over the course of the fighting eventually has him pulling degraded expressions that make his face look more like a mask that can barely contain the monster within.
• Facial Horror: All Might left his head so mangled that the top half of his head is nothing but a mass of scar tissue with no eyes, nose, or ears. It doesn't get any better-looking when his restored features get grotesquely distorted by his insane breakdown during the Final Battle, at one point pulling a Slasher Smile too wide for his face, ripping it apart without even seeming to notice.
• Failed a Spot Check: For such a meticulous and detail-oriented man, All For One is too self-absorbed to notice when things go wrong right under his nose, such as when his vestige's focus on absorbing all of Tomura's rage and hatred into himself leaves him completely blind to Tomura's remaining good qualities in his old identity as Tenko. Upon discovering the "fissure within", he quickly realizes it leaves him in the worst position possible to steal One For All, as the Split-Personality Merge he'd invested 16 years into creating is at serious risk of being undone if the heroes keep hitting him with enough attacks for Tenko to fight back and resist.
• Fatal Flaw: While All For One has many flaws that contribute to his ultimate defeats, the one that actually spells his downfalls is spite, having a pathological need to destroy his most hated enemies in the most spiteful, hope crushing way possible.
  • He refused to read the comic books he enjoyed to the end because he didn't like how the stories always had them lose in the end, and wanted to 'correct' that in reality when he discovered his powers. Yoichi pointing this out to him again as adults when he was revelling in his success as a villain had him spitefully force the stockpiling power Quirk onto him to likewise 'overwrite the reality' where his brother refused to join him, creating One For All and his greatest opposition as a consequence.
  • He's Lured into a Trap in the final battle precisely because the heroes realize this flaw and exploit it, knowing he couldn't resist crushing Deku with mass overkill out of spite. Even when forced into a Race Against the Clock, he's easily distracted from meaningfully using his time because he's too spiteful not to be provoked by the heroes' heroic speeches and having his ego bruised. Even upon eventually beating them, the defiance the heroes show towards him regardless visibly tempts him into continuing to try and break them, and All Might is easily able to distract him again by showing up to fight him. All For One knows he's playing into his hands by doing so, but considers the risk Worth It just to kill his mortal enemy.
• Faustian Rebellion: The entirety of One for All's legacy became this against him, starting when he gave his brother a Quirk which created One for All by accident, and started rolling forward after the Kudo passed it on before All For One got to him. Despite knowing exactly who were the current holders following that, he decided to wait until it reached its zenith so he could take One for All for himself and reap its power, except it eventually became his downfall once it reached All Might and Midoriya.
• Faux Affably Evil: All For One is polite and cordial towards everyone and his incredible charisma allowed him to amass a following of devoted servants when he ruled Japan. That said, he often laces his politeness with barbs and jabs at his opponents and views everyone as beneath him, best seen when All Might visits him in prison. At first, he greets All Might as if they were two old friends, but soon tries to get under his skin by making an "educated guess" about the current state of society and mocking All Might's powerlessness, smiling all the while.
• Finishing Move: He tries one against All Might, combining Springlike Limbs, four Kinetic Boosters, three Strength Enhancers, Proliferation, Hypertrophy, Rivet and Spearlike Bones into his right arm for a devastating blow, in sync with Impact Recoil to crush All Might's attempt to block. Ultimately, this was an error.
• Flat Character: Strip away the grand verbose and intimidating aura, and there's not much to All For One as a character beyond Jerkass Card-Carrying Villain. This becomes a major factor in his downfall in the end, as one of the major themes of the story is change and personal growth. Every major character, including Shigaraki, eventually matures and develops. All For One, by comparison, doesn't undergo any arc or growth, and is the exact same monster he was in his prime. This makes him incredibly easy to predict, as the heroes exploit All For One's chronic need to torment his opponents and lure him into their own trap.
• For the Evulz: To put it simply, All For One doesn't care for anyone and has only three interests in life: rule the world from the shadows; enjoy himself at the expense of everyone before discarding them ^note by either corrupting his subordinates or breaking the spirit of his opponents and steal One For All some day.
  • This is taken to a new level once All For One's vestige reasserts control over Tomura. With his true fixation forever lost from his grasps, All For One moves to world conquest... acknowledging that it is a meaningless, empty pursuit which brings him no pleasure. Evil, in other words, has become an obligation, not a passion.
• Full-Frontal Assault: During the final battle Endeavor's Prominence Burn obliterates his clothing and Cool Mask as he activates Eri's quirk to reverse the physical damage. After he is healed All For One is left completely in the buff and barely obscured by the smokey aftereffects of the flames and the rewind energy bursting from his rejuvenated body. His first order of business is to immediately steal makeshift clothing from his opponents before resuming the fight.
• Gambit Roulette: Forced into playing this at the story's climax, as his more conventional plans go up in smoke and he has no other option but to put all his chips into a few random strategies he cobbles together either immediately before the Final Battle or during it. It's also implied that luck had played a major role in his plans even before being driven to this point.
• Game-Breaking Injury: His first battle with All Might left him barely alive with most of his head destroyed. As he couldn't obtain a regeneration Quirk until after it had partially healed, he was left with most of his sensory organs destroyed, severely weakened ability to use his Quirk, and dependent on constant life support to survive. While he's still highly dangerous, he's nowhere near as powerful as he was in his prime.
• God-Emperor: His true endgame is to rule humanity as a functional deity, accumulating so much strength and so many Quirks using Shigaraki's body that the world will have no choice but to depend on him for resources after throwing the global economy into chaos. The only obstacles in his way after forcing All Might into an early retirement and eliminating Star and Stripe, deterring foreign countries from aiding Japan, are Izuku and Japan's remaining heroes. If he were to acquire One For All, this goal would become a certainty and the world would be trapped in a shadow dictatorship for the rest of time.
• Godzilla Threshold: He managed to get a copy of Eri's Rewind Quirk from the Quirk-Destroying bullets, but it runs the risk of deaging the target until they cease to exist, and he phrases using it at all as a 'big sacrificial moment', implying he doesn't expect to survive using it. As a result, despite being clearly losing, having his Quirks rebel and his life support mask destroyed, he still doesn't use it until Endeavor has fatally burned him nearly to ashes.
• Good Powers, Bad People: A given, considering the huge number of Quirks he stole across his infamous career, many of them most likely belonged to heroes and innocent civillians, like O'Clock's Overclock, Ragdoll's Search, Hawks' Fierce Wings, and the unnamed floating Quirk that is all but confirmed to be Nana's. All of which he uses bring misery to those around him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He's ultimately revealed to have had a hand in or masterminded the events of both Two Heroes and Vigilantes, fitting with his intent to be the ultimate villain that all others are subservient too. Prior to the start of the manga he once ruled a shadowy criminal empire that apparently controlled much of Japan and had a hand in affairs overseas, before All Might single-handedly dismantled it and irreparably crippled him to boot. The events of the manga are initially framed as him Passing the Torch to Tomura as a consequence of this, but by the final arc it's made clear he's really been planning a selfish comeback as the sole Big Bad of the narrative, having only intended to achieve a level of strength through Tomura that would ensure he'd never again be defeated like that.
• Greed: All For One's Quirk is an embodiment of this, allowing him to amass unchecked power at a whim. He even admits that he can't resist stealing a Quirk that catches his interest.
• Handicapped Badass: In addition to being blind and reliant on an "Infrared Ray" Quirk to remain aware of his surroundings, he's also notably forced to be [[connected to a life-support system at all times, which the heroes notice. He still overpowers every hero not named All Might, and espouses the belief during the Final Battle that only the holder of One For All will ever be able to stop him, the rest of the heroes being mere "jobber characters" for him to easily destroy. Despite being proven wrong, the level of strength he still wields means that he very nearly backs that boast up until he's forced into cheating through Rewind to remain in the fight.
• Hated by All: He reveals to Hawks that he wants to be this, as he considers villains to be those who are universally hated and feared by everybody for their villainous deeds, and thus he goes out of his way to commit as many of these as possible and revels in the animosity he inspires in others. His ultimate end goal, every since he was a child, has been to commit the ultimate villainous act of 'thwarting the future of the whole world', so that everybody will recognize him as a hateful villain. By the Final Battle, only the equally-deranged Dr. Garaki is still loyal to him.
• Having a Blast: After getting hit by Tokoyami’s Abysall Black Body: Light of Baldur, he uses an unnamed explosion quirk just like Bakugo to create a giant blast powerful enough to stagger Dark Shadow, and break free.
• Healing Factor: At some point, he acquired Hyper Regeneration, but by then, it was useless for restoring his body from the wounds All Might left. During the final battle, the heroes note he doesn't have any regeneration Quirk, having passed the healing onto his "Next Me" instead, so their attacks are able to lave lasting damage. However, he reveals that he'd prepared a trump card of Eri's Rewind quirk synthesised by Garaki from the Quirk-destorying bullets to counter this. He only activates it at the exact moment he's hit with a fatal attack, because once active, it can't be stopped and will eventually kill him, but with the Rewind active, he's restored to his physical prime of health and further injuries inflicted upon him heal in seconds, thus leaving the heroes no choice but to wait for the Hour of Power to eventually erase him.
• Hero Killer: He and his followers have become infamous for killing any heroes who try to stop them. When he starts taking the field in the latter parts of the story, at least one known hero meets their end at his hands. This is especially true of the holders of One For All: before All Might defeated him in their battle, he personally killed six of the seven wielders as soon as they had passed it on. Only Hikage Shinomori, the fourth user, managed to evade him long enough to die of premature aging.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Inverted, as he pulls this off without actually intending to really sacrifice anything of value to himself, despite summoning the spirit of the trope from his past experience with heroes, making it come off as a mocking jab at heroes for their illogical fantasy of 'saving' people through their sacrifice.
  • He rescues Tomura and the league from their certain capture at Kamino ward, encourages Tomura to grow into a better villain and then stays behind to hold off All Might whilst the league escapes through Kurogiri's portal, the framing of All For One's actions making it seem like All Might is the villain and himself pulling an Obi-Wan Moment to ensure his protégé survives. However, this is later revealed to be a mere falsehood. All For One only rescued Tomura so he could later inherit his original Quirk, allowing his vestige to possess him and effectively allowing All For One to be 'reborn' within Tomura's body as the 'Next Me', meaning that his actions were not to protect Tomura, but rather, himself.
  • When Endeavor incinerates his original body, he again mocks them for thinking he cared about his old broken shell when he now lives on through his ideal self in Tomura, but nonetheless uses the opportunity to test out Eri's rewind quirk despite the dangers of mishandling it, comparing it to the heroes' own efforts in sacrificing their bodies to achieve victory, even though All For One isn't really sacrificing anything he values.
    All For One: Heroes don't have a monopoly on big sacrificial moments, you know?
• Hidden Depths: He is remarkably familiar with One For All's mental world, and isn't the least bit surprised when the previous users appear. He explains that his Quirk allows him to interact with the vestiges of its victims, and confesses to feeling unease when their specters confront him. It is clear, however, that he feels no real guilt for it.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: For most of the series All For One speaks of Tomura like he's someone precious to him as his adoptive father who wants his protege to succeed. Even after he steals Tomura's body for his own plans All For One states that he has nothing but respect for his protege's wishes and that they can both achieve what they want together. However, in chapter 418, once Tomura's willpower wavers thanks to Izuku's efforts, the remnants of All For One's vestige emerge and consume him while showing just how much contempt All For One has for him.

  AFO: Such a foolish vessel! Losing in a battle of wills to some kid? To this absolute nobody? Striving for strength, yet invariably weak! Tenko Shimura, you pathetic imbecile... Not once in your pitiful life... has any choice been your own!

• Hidden Eyes:
  • In Midoriya's vision, his eyes were always twisted or blurred and his full face is never revealed. This is inverted with Vol.0 chapter, where his eyes are the only visible part of his face when he fights Nana.
  • This gets Inverted to chilling effect when he's utterly pissed and still possesses his oculars, as his face becomes covered in shadows except for his eyes, showing only a stoic Death Glare that nonetheless emphasises how seething he is underneath his external composure, communicating his clear malice through his natural soulless gaze.
• His Own Worst Enemy: It's made repeatedly clear throughout the story's final arcs that All For One's effectiveness as a villain is severely hampered by his own sheer hubris. Nearly all of his plans fall apart because All For One is so arrogant that he repeatedly underestimates his opponents and never factors in the possibility that he could actually lose.
• History Repeats:
  • All For One is only known to have permanently meshed together multiple Quirks to form a new one twice: once accidentally making One For All and creating Warp Gate. This ends up blowing up in his face both times, as Monoma copies Warp Gate as part of the plan to finally bring him down, something only possible because it counts as a single Quirk.
  • During his conflict at Kamino Ward, he faced the Lightning Bruiser All Might backed up by the Fragile Speedster Gran Torino, the latter providing moral support agaisnt the mind games he tried to play against the hero due to his own inability to directly fight All For One. This repeats during the final battle with Izuku and Mirio against his "Perfected Demon Lord" self in Tomura, driven home by the fact that Mirio and Gran Torino both noticeably use capes as part of their hero outfit and the opposing Giant Hands of Doom wielded by both bodies against the hero. Both of them are defeated by his respective opponents channeling their anger into an unorthodox attack that deals him a massive blow beyond what any other fighter could unleash.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: This occurs to him so often during the final arcs that he's arguably more responsible for his gradual defeat than any one singular hero's efforts.
  • He noted when New Order's vestige was attacking him from within that his own Quirk can only take or give Quirks, not destroy them directly. Thanks to his vestige merging into Tomura's in his attempted takeover of his body, when Tomura fights back against the assimilation, their merged state results in All For One's vestige getting torn to bits from within.
  • He managed to come Back from the Dead twice through different means thanks to his body being physically intact. The Rewind energy he uses as a crutch to keep fighting the heroes despite his various losses eventually erases his physical body from existence entirely, ensuing that he can't come back from that.
• Hope Crusher: He absolutely revels in destroying others' hopes and idealism about the world, at times seeming ecstatic at the chance to mentally destroy Izuku both for the sake of his plans and just because he is that unbelievably spiteful towards what he sees as an illogical delusion that has no place in reality.He later espouses his opinion that being this is the epitome of what defines a Villain, which is why he goes out of his way to invoke this with everybody he interacts with in ways large and small. It's Deconstructed however, as he demonstrates a pathological need to crush the hopes of people in general, especially those who have actually bruised his ego or whom he hates, letting his sense of pragmatism falter in the process. The heroes repeatedly exploit this against him, especially once he winds up on a Race Against the Clock. Even when he knows what they're doing, All For one cannot resist the urge to delay his advance on Izuku unless he leaves his enemies broken and hopeless behind him.

  All For One: It's simple. I'm quite influenced by comics. The world always fears the big bad villain. Why do you think that is?...In a world teeming with myriad cultures and values, "bad stuff" would be an act that universally makes the masses turn up their noses in disgust. An act that thwarts the future they envision. So I intend to thwart the future of the whole world. That's all I've ever wished for.

• Humanoid Abomination: Having survived what should've been certain death, combined with his Quirk-enhanced lifespan, severe case of Facial Horror, and rampant psychopathy, All For One seems to have devolved into something less than human. Many shots frame him as some sort of Eldritch Abomination akin to Slender Man, standing head and shoulders above other characters with a stooping, hunched gait. He even self-mutilates himself from sheer mania without even seeming to feel a thing, coming across as something inhabiting the body of a human rather than a normal human with a overblown god complex.
• Humiliation Conga: Subjected to this during most of Final Act. Every last one of All For One's schemes goes utterly, hilariously wrong, to the point he's frequently screaming his head off, ranting and raving about how unfair it is and exposing his childish inner self both metaphorically and literally.
• Hunk: When restored to his prime, he's revealed to have a chiseled jaw and refined, almost beatific looks that complements his tall height and muscular physique. However, even with his good looks, his dead eyes underscore the monster that hides beneath his mask of humanity.
• Hypocrite: Befitting a man with absolutely no moral standards whatsoever, All For One will frequently mock others for their flaws and failings whilst showing worse traits himself, uncaring of his Double Standard so long as he unsettles his opponent.

I-K

• I Control My Minions Through...: All For One either manipulates loyalty towards himself through bestowing Quirks upon his minions, or more insidiously manipulating people frustrated with hero society through their philosophical ideals, such as feeding Shigaraki those ideals and using them to groom him or appealing to Lady Nagant's cynicism to convince her to work for him. Part of what makes him such a Manipulative Bastard is that whatever the reason for those people's convictions, he's convincing them to fight to tear down one of the only things keeping him from turning Japan into his own personal dictatorship.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: All For One has a gigantic ego and always seems confident and composed. However, the final arc reveals underneath it, he has a fundamental need to constantly be in control, and his inner speech consists mostly of frantically trying to reassure himself he still is, and the heroes' plans don't matter. The one thing that can well and truly get to him is being shown he's Not So Invincible After All, because a large portion of his motivation comes from the manga he and Yoichi read as a kid always ended with the heroes winning and the idea Yoichi was right is something All For One can't stand.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: When he learns he's been lured into a trap, he frantically tries to reassure himself his back up plans will succeed and render the heroes' plans mute...and is instantly proven wrong multiple times in a row as the heroes reveal they already planned for his back ups.
• It's Personal: He delights in cultivating this attitude against himself, out of his sincere believe that the topmost villain is defined by the animosity they inspire. This makes it far more notable for those who manage to get him to express the sentiment in turn: All Might, for his initial humiliating loss and defacement of the image of the "demon lord" he holds so dear, Kudo, for initially freeing Yoichi from his controlling grasp and blaming him for his own accidental Sibling Murder when attempting to reclaim his twin, and Izuku, for thwarting his generations-long attempt to reunite with Yoichi's Vestige through his Heroic Sacrifice to stop Tomura. In the latter's case, he's left such an Empty Shell after that irrevocable loss that it's clear spiteful payback on Izuku is about the only concrete motivation he has left.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Before his disfigurement, All For One used to look like a clean-shaven man in his late 20s, having an imposing build, chiseled facial features, and a mop of white hair. He regains this appearance through Rewind, revealing his chiseled jaw and angelic facial features, looking almost like a textbook example of a hero, befitting his desire to become the 'savior' for humanity... as its overlord and ruler.
• Immortals Fear Death: In the 'not quite immortal but powerful' category, All For One has lived for over a hundred years and is nigh unkillable, but the only time he's ever displayed genuine fear is when Endeavor is on the verge of killing him and most of his planning revolves around 'upgrading' from his crippled, aging body to a young, fresh one. Even still, he held off using it until the literal last second when it was clear there was no other option to evade immediate death, and it turns out he plans to inject his copied Quirk factor into Tomura to have the two merge into a stronger vestige within, effectively still cheating his original self's death. His mental references to his near-fatal defeat at All Might's hands and how 'wounded heroes are the scariest' throughout fights when he's struggling to put his opponents down imply that he gained a massive trauma from the one time his accumulated powers, abilities and plans failed to prevent him from almost dying after centuries of being an unbeatable 'Demon Lord' and how he's ultimately Not So Invincible After All.
• Immortality Seeker: While he as already extended his life for two centuries, All For One wants to find a way to live on forever as part of his dream of being an eternal Demon King. Part of why he funded Dr. Garaki's experiments is to make that fantasy a reality.
• Invincible Villain:
  • All For One in his prime was practically unstoppable, taking the demigod-like strength of All Might to be thwarted, and even then somehow surviving his believed-fatal injuries. He intentionally cultivated the image of an unbeatable menace through relentlessly accumulating power and setting long-term plans in motion to always have an advantage no matter how bad the situation got for him. Even when finally fatally wounded, his gamble of using Rewind to rejuvenate himself restores his former strength along with his healed body and furthermore inflicts a Super Mode on him, rendering him literally unkillable as long as it's active and able to abuse this fact to unleash self-damaging bursts of power against the heroes. The only weakness is that the same energy will eventually cause Death by De-aging, but due to his extended lifespan, he's still able to reach Izuku and Tomura despite going through a literal army of the strongest heroes and villains.
  • As his rants against the heroes illustrate, he perceived the Demon Lord figure from his childhood comic books as being this, to the point of actually stopping before the point the narrative depicted his inevitable failure out of blind rejection for that outcome. It transpires that he sincerely believes that by modeling himself after said figure and planning accordingly to avoid the pitfalls that undid him, he will likewise be utterly unstoppable and unbeatable no matter what and will never actually lose. Needless to this, getting faced with the fact that such a figure can't exist in reality is something that constantly infuriates him.
• I Reject Your Reality: His absolute intolerance of losing has his speeches attempting to demoralise the heroes devolve into this by the final battle, delusionally rejecting how his plans are falling apart behind him and that he's no longer in control. At his core, All For One is such a narcissist that he'll make any excuse or argument to avoid admitting he's suffered an actual loss. It's not until Bakugo literally rips his victory from his hands that this attitude finally starts to falter, All For One's breakdown reaching its zenith.
• Ironic Echo: All For One ends up borrowing significant lines from two of the main heroes and delivering twisted variations on them.
  • At the start of the series, Midoriya declares that this is the story of how he became the world's greatest hero. When All For One uses Tomura Shigaraki to recover his original body from Tartarus, he declares that this is the story of how he became the perfect demon lord. It's like he's trying to usurp him as the main character, which befits his monstrous ego.
  • After All Might defeats All For One in Kamino, he says, "You're next!", which sounds like a warning to the other villains, but is actually a way of telling Midoriya that he's no longer the Symbol of Peace, and it's now Midoriya's turn to step up. As part of his psychological gambit against him, All For One leaves a recording for Midoriya declaring that he has no interest in All Might and has moved onto Midoriya before concluding with the same phrase.
• It's All About Me: His Quirk name says it all. In keeping with his narcissism, he hates All Might for defeating his previous gang of villains — not because he viewed them as comrades — but because he gave them their powers and it reflected poorly on him. Not even Tomura or Gigantomachia are exceptions to All For One's egomania. This shows in his 'bonds' with his brother and Tomura: while he claims to care about them, said 'care' is twisted and self-serving, more based around what they can do for him or having them almost as possessions rather than actually having any genuine compassion. More literal in Tomura's case, as All For One intends him to be the vessel for his Quirk and the vestige inside of it, and thus views him as little more than an extension of himself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: His adoption and wholehearted support of Tenko Shimura at first seems like the only genuinely kind deed (other than giving Yoichi a Quirk to make him more powerful) he's ever done, seeming like a heartwarming, if twisted, father/son relationship. In the end, he didn't save Tomura because he cared whatsoever. He just did it because he knew of the child's heritage, and manipulated Tomura into being a tool to capture One For All whilst also emotionally shattering the Symbol of Peace along the way. Don't let the below quote fool you; in later chapters he's perfectly fine with hijacking Tomura's body and using him like a puppet against the heroes and to break his real body out of prison.
  All For One: No one's come to save you, have they? You've had a hard life, Tenko Shimura. "He'll be fine, eventually the heroes will help." I'm sure that's what everyone thought as they looked away and ignored you. The world shouldn't be so unforgiving, don't worry... I am here for you.
• Join or Die: A variant. In the past, All For One managed to rule over Japan by giving Quirks to those who didn't have any and stealing Quirks from those who either didn't want them or were using them to abuse others. This earned him a legion of loyal followers whose gratitude soon turned to extreme fanaticism to the point that they killed a group of people who refused to join his faction even though he didn't order them to. Of course, he was quite happy with that.
• Joker Immunity: Intending to become the ultimate villain, All For One did everything he could to make himself impossible to kill or imprison. He has the Life-Force Quirk to extend his reign of terror for over a hundred years, Kyudai Garaki to nurse him back to health after his fight with All Might, a Rewind-based drug as a fail safe measure should he actually die, and Tomura to be his new host through his vestige within the All For One Quirk. Thus, no matter how many times he is put down, All For One will find a way to come back as the main villain.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Has committed so many examples of this through the series and for decades before the story started that it could take up an entirely separate page, and once he gets out of Tartarus and starts taking direct action against Izuku for his endgame, he wastes no time racking these moments up one after another non-stop, all for the purposes of breaking the young hero's spirit and making it easier for him to achieve his overall goal of stealing One For All— and also because he finds it incredibly fun to do so as well.
  • He's so bad at this, it repeatedly proves to be detrimental to him, as the heroes know he won't resist the opportunity to indulge in this, and make extensive use of this tendency to play him during the final battle, luring him into a custom battlefield, delaying his advance on Izuku, and even his final attempt to kill All Might being so drawn-out and agonizingly slow gave Bakugo enough time to recover and save him.
• Killing Intent: When he's a fight, he radiates an aura of sheer menace so strong that Izuku and the other kids nearly vomited from sheer fear just by being near him at Kamino, even though he was unaware of their presence. It gets worse whenever he's defied or slighted, showcased by his shooting them a malice-filled Death Glare in seething silence.
• Kinslaying Is a Special Kind of Evil: In trying to reclaim his brother Yoichi after Kudo liberated him, his fury at Yoichi's rejection lead to him accidentally blowing him to pieces in a moment of anger. Notably, this is the one evil action All For One genuinely regretted, falling into a Villainous BSoD that allowed Kudo and Bruce to escape, and being pushed into an atypical emotional reaction when Kudo reminded him of what he'd done.
• Knight of Cerebus: He is the mastermind behind the League of Villains, mentoring the leader of said group, and he is the personal enemy of All Might. When he finally steps in to fight, he takes out several heroes in mere seconds. His actions continue to haunt the heroes of the world even in the present day. While Stain and Chisaki also made the story much darker upon their entrance, All For One's arrival is the point where the series really goes from a somewhat lighthearted (but not without danger) Academy of Adventure series to constant life-or-death situations against people hell-bent on destroying society as we know it.

L-N

• Lack of Empathy:
  • As Yoichi bemoans, his brother's self-centred nature is his biggest trait and the reason why his Quirk became a villainous tool. From birth he had a sense of entitlement towards others, viewing everything around him as a possession for him to either take or destroy. His obsession with comic books taught him to put on a false front of praise for others in order to amass followers, but All For One's psychopathy means he has little genuine emotions, best symbolised by his Empty Eyes. In fact, All For One delights in this, becuase he views guilt as weakness, and considers his inability to feel such a mark of him being superior to "ordinary" people — he was even concerned when he though he was developing remorse.
    All For One: In my dreams, those whose quirks I've stolen show up to hurl abuse my way. These episodes often leave me discouraged. Am I really capable of feeling guilt for my sins like some utterly ordinary person?
  • Yoichi in particular is Double Subverted. It turns out that All For One does have some trace familial empathy towards him, the only other being on the planet he can consider other than himself. However, his stunted emotional maturity and self-perception as being "above" ordinary mortals means he has no concept of what this feeling is, being able to understand it only in terms of Yoichi being a valued "possession" of his. This lead him to mistreat Yoichi throughout all his life, more akin to a pet than a human being, and ultimately killed him in a moment of anger over Yoichi rejected him for Kudo. This deeply affected him, but his self-denial about any positive emotions he has meant he was absolutely perplexed over why he was reacting that way, and his mania with "reuniting" with Yoichi is framed in the most toxic, (literally) possessive and controlling manner possible, enhancing his evil rather than countering it.
  • It is, however, Reconstructed in one respect. Being an unemotional psychopath means that All For One's basic, simplistic desire to be a hated villain cannot be reasoned with or empathised, unlike Tomura's nature as a Tragic Villain. Whilst Izuku is able to diffuse Tomura's hatred during their mental clash, he seizes on the Moment of Weakness to usurp control again, even if the effort leaves him in a crippled body due to Tomura's Emotional Powers vanishing with his psyche. He can never reach the heights of power his Superior Successor could, but he remains an antagonistic force to Izuku and Tomura both to the end, leaving him the leading villain of the story as he wished merely because he refuses to be anything else.
• Large and in Charge: All For One stands at a whopping 7 feet 4 inches tall, making him one inch taller than All Might. Becomes Inverted during the final battle, with Rewind diminishing him back into a child, along with his role as the overarching threat.
• Large Ham: He's disarmingly enthusiastic and theatrical in enacting his villainy, particularly whenever he feels he's on the verge of victory and wants to rub it in his enemies' faces. His stunted emotions meant he was originally The Stoic as a child, murdering his victims with an unchanging blank expression on his face that highlighted his utter dispassion towards them. Learning about Supervillains from Yoichi's comic books had him model his outward behaviour on the fictional characters, and it's a sign that he's absolutely serious if something ever manages to revert him back to his prior behaviour, such as adopting a venomous Death Glare towards Kudo when he reminds him of Yoichi's Accidental Murder. His deepening mental link to Tomura has him eventually push through this into over-the-top denial of reality throughout the Final Battle, unable to handle feeling true anger or the fact he's genuinely losing.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Yoichi warned him about emulating the Demon Lord from their childhood comic books, trying to reason with him by pointing out how The Good Guys Always Win, something All For One arrogantly dismissed. Yet every single choice and action he's made over the generations only comes around to ensure that exact outcome for him in the end, such that the Final Battle is a long, drawn-out Humiliation Conga for All For One as he reaps everything he's sown with interest.
  • He intentionally groomed Tomura to resemble Yoichi as part of his plan to "reclaim" his brother inside his body, and, despite his stunted emotions, has expressed atypical hatred towards only two people amongst all his enemies for the mental and physical defeats they gave him, All Might and Kudo. At the end, he is faced with a genuine Identical Stranger in Bakugo, who intentionally emulates All Might's Perpetual Smiler personality and tenacity in a fight, and whose Heroic Willpower against him resembles Kudo's, meeting his end by a "successor" who embodies the traits of the two people he most despises. Furthermore, All For One was obsessed with being a Hope Crusher, often to his detriment, and just before the final blow, it seems like Bakugo's going to succumb to his injuries and collapse to the ground...only to get his Heroic Second Wind and refuse to fall down, crushing All For One's vain hope of avoiding his fate.
• Last Villain Stand:
  • The Final Battle eventually turns into this for him: all of his plans are in ruins, his Vestige inside Shigaraki is seemingly consumed, all of his minions are defeated, defected, or never actually loyal to him in the first place, and All For One himself mortally wounded and living on borrowed time. At the end of it, he's reduced to a literal powerless baby against Bakugo, and all he can do is fire a single Spearlike Bone tendril at him as his last effort before the Rewind energy erases him utterly.
  • His Vestige later regains full control of Shigaraki's body thanks to Deku's Talking the Monster to Death, but his host body is now crippled thanks to the long battle, and he is alone while all the surviving heroes gather to bring down All For One once and for all. Even worse for All For One, the vestige of Yoichi is destroyed in the process of OFA being transferred to Shigaraki, meaning that All For One can only go through the motions of his final stand without feeling anything worth fighting for.
• Leitmotif:
  • "The Power of All For One" — A melancholic, haunting, and terrifying piano piece with a One-Woman Wail Opera.
  • "All For One" — A battle theme consisting of an intense and nightmarish orchestra complete with Ominous Latin Chanting.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Deliberately invoked as All For One takes advantage of chaos he causes or caused by others to advance his goals. All For One's ultimate goal is to become an invincible "Demon Lord" out of the comics he read so that everybody has no choice but to turn to his stockpile of Quirks in place of the resources they lost thanks to him, ensuring absolute control over the world.
• Light 'em Up: One of his Quirks, Impure Beam, allows him to shoot beam of light from his hand. By pouring his rage into it, he’s able to defeat both Gigantomachia, and a super charged Dark Shadow with one shot each; even if he needed Rewind to survive the self-damage.
• Lightning Bruiser: Casually dodged an ambush from Edge Shot, who can transform and attack at the speed of sound, simply by tilting his head. He can also match a serious All Might blow-for-blow.
• Like a Son to Me: Ultimately subverted. He adopted a young Tenko Shimura when he was scared and alone after killing his family, raising the boy as a successor, nurturing his worst impulses and even bestowing him with his own family name on the boy as Tomura Shigaraki. However, All For One only really sees Tomura as his 'the next me' and an extension of himself, trying to absolutely erase all traces of his individuality as his master plan to steal One For All.
• Literal Metaphor: The manga's themes of succession and passing one's hopes and dreams onto the next generation is often referred to as an 'inherited will', best symbolised by One For All being Yoichi's inherited will to defeat his brother long past his mortal lifespan. As his opposite and antithesis to the manga's theme, All For One's own take on the concept is a complete bastardisation of it: By having Tomura literally inherit his will through his vestige attached to his original Quirk, planning to subsume his protege's consciousness and take over his enhanced body to become the "Perfect Demon Lord". Tomura ultimately has to destroy his vestige and symbolic desire to make the plot revolve around him to truly become his own villain separate from his master's influence.
• Living Lie Detector: All For One has a Quirk that allows him to sense malicious intent and use that to sense if someone is lying, which was apparently stolen from the ancestor of Naomasa Tsukauchi. However, It doesn't work on someone who has no intent in their voices at all, such as those controlled by Shinso's quirk. His usage of such implies that, for all his long years alive and skill with manipulating people over the years, All For One's psychopathy prevents him being able to acutely gauge when others are being untruthful towards him.
• Living on Borrowed Time: After being fatally burned nearly to ashes by Endeavor, he uses Rewind to restore himself to his prime. However, he outright admits there's no way to turn it off and all he's done is delay his death for a short time.
• Logical Weakness: As befitting a man with many Quirks, he possesses many weaknesses along with them, enough for his own folder.
• Long-Lived: Midoriya's the ninth wielder of One For All. All For One created the power in the first place, and even taking into account the possibility not all the wielders lived to their prime or gained it as children, it still puts him at living for a long while. It's later revealed that he took a copy of Dr. Garaki's Life Force Quirk, which extends his life span at the cost of athleticism. This trait of his helps turn his usage of Eri's Rewind energy into an Hour of Power, as his body is rewound back to the prime of health before the injuries All Might gave him years ago were ever inflicted in a matter of seconds, meaning the only reason he doesn't get erased near-instantly is because he has so much lifespan for the energy to rewind through.
• Long-Range Fighter:
  • All For One does have a lot of physical power enhancing Quirks, but he seems to prefer hanging back and spamming powerful ranged attacks and rarely willingly enters melee combat with others except to steal their Quirks in an instant. The few melee attacks he demonstrates are large power attacks. This helps him enact his preferred and far more devastatingly effective tactic of using psychological warfare to rattle his enemies mid-battle and make them lose focus enough to give him an opening to enact a devastating blow.
  • During the Final Battle, he implies another reason is nearly everyone who actually knows how his power works will avoid getting into melee range at all costs to avoid having their Quirks stolen. As such, by default most fights he's in will be at range. This backfires on him as it leaves him subpar in melee combat.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Whenever he uses his Quirks, expect copious amounts of Body Horror. A Spring-Limbs Quirk causes his arm to compress and inflate like an actual spring. His "Rivet Stab" Quirk has black and red tendrils extend from his fingers. In an attempt to finish off All Might, he uses a mass combination of Quirks to transform his entire right arm into a grotesque sight of hypertrophied flesh and tangled arms with metallic parts sticking out. A special note goes to the Spear-like Bones Quirk, which couldn't be pretty under any circumstances. He adds a new one to the list in the final battle by showing the ability to transform parts of his flesh into mouths whether it be a single finger or his whole hand; special mention also goes to him combining this with Spear-like Bones to serve as the teeth. There's also whatever Quirk he used in the battle that killed Nana Shimura, which involved massive amalgamations of random body parts◊.
• Made of Iron: Superpower Lottery or not, taking All Might's United States of Smash to the face and not being crippled for it definitely counts. Even before that, he somehow survived his grievous injuries at All Might's hands — which apparently included everything above his jawline getting turned into paste — without Hyper Regeneration, as he laments the fact that despite possessing it, it cannot fix his injuries because they'd already healed over by the time he acquired the Quirk, meaning it doesn't recognize that there's anything to fix about his appearance.
• The Man Behind the Man: Shigaraki Tomura leads the League of Villains, and all members meet him upon joining... only a few seem to know that Shigaraki answers to All For One.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • A specialty of All For One's who manipulates people and events around him without ever getting directly involved. His gifting of hands to a young Tenko Shimura is perhaps his greatest work. He gifted Tenko with the hands and told him to always keep them with him so that he could never heal from the pain of losing his family. By wearing them it also helped suppress Tenko's memories of the event and aggravate them more to increase the rage in his heart and complete his Quirk. All to turn Tenko into a Symbol of Fear.
  • During the Tartarus Escapees arc, it turns out that, rather than the two months' worth of time he would apparently need to complete Tomura's vessel, the original AFO apparently told his vestige counterpart within the boy to have him ready in 38 days, just to be certain to catch the heroes off-guard when they were expecting more time, meaning by the present time he'll be ready to take OFA in 3 days. All Might notes he could have faked the data they were likely to recover from the hospital to support his false timeline. If not for Stain recovering a recording of the radio-wave conversation monitored by the security system as the prison was being breached, the heroes would have completely fallen for his ploy.
• Man of Kryptonite: Invoked. If All For One is aware he's going to be going up against a specific enemy or planning to face them eventually, he'll exhaustively prepare as many Quirks as possible to specifically counter them and maximise his advantages. He allows him to nullify Stain's ambush on him using a few Quirks he'd held in reserve ever since he noticed Stain escaping Tartarus on his own whilst rejecting All For One's aid. However, this same trait backfires on him initially during the Final Battle, as his limited ability to store Quirks with his injuries and hyper-focusing on Izuku meant that when he was forced to fight Endeavor instead, he didn't have enough Quirks that could properly counter the Flame Hero.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: A side effect of him stealing Quirks is that he inherits vestiges of their personalities. When he gives that Quirk to someone else, he loses those traits as well. All For One believed that property to be exclusive to him but was surprised to learn that One For All had that property as well. In contrast to One For All, it's clear that All For One actively suppresses the vestiges that come attached to the quirks he hoards through sheer willpower, leaving him in utter control over the mental world formed inside his quirk. However, even this suppression has limits. When he faces off against Jiro in the Final Battle, her sincere efforts to fight him despite the power difference because of how he mercilessly hurts those she cares about sparks a combined effort from the vestiges to hold him back, taking him off-guard that they could even do that at this point, all from the efforts of a 'nobody' like Jiro.
  All For One: The quirks I've stolen in the past... their very wills?! Impossible!! Even New Order didn't manage this! They were spurred on by this?! By the efforts of such pushovers?!
• Maou the Demon King: All For One's one and only ambition outside of relishing his power over others is the become an 'invincible Demon King' like the one in the manga he and his brother read as kids. As such, he does everything he can to model himself as the 'Symbol of Evil' and set himself up as an Evil Overlord.
• Mask of Sanity: While always psychopathic, for the most part All For One shows himself as calm, collected, and always in control. However, the Final Battle reveals that underneath it, he's far more unstable than he seemed. By the time of his and All Might's final fight, his sheer mania in his Villainous Breakdown has him pulling demented smiles that illustrate his sheer lunacy, including one that literally rips his face apart like it was an actual mask of a human being.
• Meaningful Name: "All For One" is a fitting moniker for someone who steals and hoards Quirks for his own purposes, and it highlights his defining personality trait - egoism. All Might even brings up the fact that the original All For one avoided meeting Star and Stripe in a fight was a sign that he considers the term to be his real name, rather than his birth one, showing how he's embraced the identity of a real-life supervillain to the exclusion of his original civilian one.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: In a world where people are limited to using only one Quirk, All For One can use several Quirks of his choice, both individually and simultaneously, without suffering from Quirk overload.
• Memento MacGuffin: One For All is this to him because it originated from his younger brother, and it is the one Quirk that defies him. It takes a new meaning when it is revealed that Quirks carry the consciousness of its users, and that his brother is alive as a spirit within One For All. By stealing One For All, All For One could finally accomplish one of his greatest desires: making his younger brother surrender to him.
• Mentor Archetype: He's an old guard supervillain raising up the next generation's leader, Shigaraki... except, not really.
• Me's a Crowd:
  • Through his vestige possessing Shigaraki, there are technically two All For Ones existing at the same time. This is shown directly when the original attempts to calm down his clone after their defeat from Star and Stripe, noting that the letter is undergoing Split-Personality Merge with Tomura's psyche and as a result he can sense his counterpart shares Tomura's boundless hatred of heroes and society, despite All For One being characterized by his lack of strong emotions. All For One does not see the his vestige as an independent being, rather as the same being in two bodies, as All For One is so selfish he can't comprehend anything else. When he's fatally wounded by Endeavor's flames, he gloats that he considers his damaged and weakened body expendable anyway in favour of his idealized self in Tomura, showing that he'll discard even himself in favour of his maniacal ambitions of becoming an 'invincible demon lord'. However, his old body being disposable gives him a good excuse to test out risky abilities with it, such as Eri's Rewind quirk to undo his past and present disfigurements.
  • He furthermore clarifies to Hawks that he never intended to develop the TomurAFO personality when possessing Tomura, rather, his intent was to completely destroy the boy's psyche and replace it with his own. Having underestimated Tomura's ability to resist him, he intends to inject the copied Quirk factor in his original body into Tomura's to completely subsume him for good, believing both separate versions of himself will naturally segue into one. This highlights his sheer narcissism and inability to comprehend meaningful changes in people, as said version has gone through markedly different experiences that the original All For One and been changed because of it.
• Moral Myopia: As is fitting for someone who sees themselves as Above Good and Evil, All For One will gladly scapegoat others for any perceived flaw, while sneering at them when they challenge him. Most notably, when he spoke to his younger brother in Midoriya's subconscious, he likened his growing power to that of a supervillain from a comic book; when his brother pointed out that said supervillain was eventually defeated, All For One invoked notions of reality to maintain superiority in the conversation.
• Morton's Fork: Even though he is captured, and it is possible to make him give back Ragdoll's Quirk, the whole point of All For One's imprisonment actually working is that he is unable to do anything, thus he cannot perform the action necessary to restore the Quirk to her. Ragdoll has no choice but to remain benched behind a desk.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: When Eri's Rewind quirk restores him back to the prime of health before All Might crippled him, his burnt-off clothing exposes his muscular physique, showing that he was apparently quite fit and toned before his injuries. Upon touching the ground, he demonstrates that his speed is now quick enough to near-instantly rush behind a nearby hero, steal her cape and fashion a makeshift toga out of it to preserve his modesty before she even realizes he's there. Hawks, the fastest hero around, can barely keep up with him, and it's clear that at his physical prime, he's now unbeatable by anybody present.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Apparently, his multiple Strength Enhancer Quirks don't necessarily affect his appearance, as he can grapple with All Might despite his unintimidating businessman physique when wearing a suit. He only gets beefier when he uses a specific "Hypertrophy" Quirk.
• Narcissist:
  • All For One is a narcissistic psychopath who only cares about power, himself, and what people could do for him, including his adopted son. His immense desire to claim One for All, could be seen as him trying to retrieve an extension of himself that refuses to comply with his wishes.
    Shigaraki: I won't be your stinking pawn!
    All For One: Pawn? You have it all wrong, Tomura! You're so very near and dear to me. After all, you're the next me.
• Never My Fault: All For One gleefully takes credit for most of the vile acts and troubles he causes, but what does he do when he is reminded of the one thing he didn't want to happen—losing Yoichi? He petculantly shifts all the blame unto Kudo for reaching out to his younger brother, unable to accept that he is the cause of the one event that hurt him the most.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He does this in rapid-fire order throughout the final arcs, causing the greatest upsets to his master plan through his own hubris and dismissal of anybody but himself, giving the heroes several advantages against him because of this, and utterly unable to self-reflect on his mistakes because he refuses to believe he's capable of making them.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: His apparent one act of genuine kindness, giving his little brother a meta-Quirk to make him more powerful and join his side, lead to the creation of the Quirk that would cause his downfall.
• No Full Name Given: Zigzagged. He claims that "Shigaraki" is his family name when bestowing it upon Tomura as part of his new Villain identity. However, it's implied to be a lie and another of his manipulative grooming tactics on the boy to mould him in image of "Yoichi" as he envisioned him. The flashback to his past reveals that he and Yoichi were homeless, nameless orphans whose mother died giving birth to them, making it clear he doesn't have a family name.^*He did give Yoichi his Meaningful Name to mark him as his first possession, but it's never clarified if he gave him a second name, and a later plot point is that All For One considers himself utterly removed from "ordinary" humans, making it further unlikely that he'd demean himself with a proper name It's noted that he considers the term "All For One" to be his true name so much that New Order could affect him through it.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: A Zigzagged example, wherein he plays this straight as possible as a result of his desire to be the ultimate villain, but over time, his own character flaws deconstruct his actual effectiveness at efficiently dealing with his enemies.
  • He's ruthless at dealing with his enemies, won't hesitate to kill or maim either heroes or innocent civilians as collateral, deliberately sets out to inflict has much suffering as possible to the population at large, and is utterly unrepentant for all of it. Those he has no use for will be either stripped of their powers or gruesomely disfigured both physically or mentally. His plans are so intricately laid with multiple backups that nothing the heroes do can actually derail events from proceeding as he wishes, and he proves capable of manipulating even good-natured heroes to do his bidding against their better judgement to expressly torment Izuku. Once All Might is forced to retire, it's clear nobody else can contend with the raw power he's capable of unleashing, with the prospect of his return to the narrative an ever-present threat that initially eclipsed Tomura's own gradual rise in power as the 'Symbol of Fear'.
  • However, once he does return, the narrative makes it clear that as dangerous as he is, his threat level is handicapped by his egoism and embracement of the role of a comic-book villain. Him putting his ambition over Tomura's will handicaps the Superior Successor's ability to fight against the heroes, allowing them to contend against him despite his immense power and Decay. His obsession with having One For All lead him to intentionally hold back against the inheritors of his brother's Quirk as it grew stronger over the years, at least until they'd passed it on, leading to him being rendered helpless against the 8th and 9th at the apex of its current power. And his sadistic tendencies enable the heroes to completely outwit him at the end, predicting exactly how his final attack on Izuku would occur and even causing him to blow his final opportunity to kill All Might by making a theatrical spectacle of it.
• No One Could Survive That!: All Might is stunned to realise he managed to survive their deadly fight, which isn't too surprising as he liquified his cranium and had the body interred in a morgue. It's made clear that whatever mad science Garaki used to revive the corpse flat-out brought him Back from the Dead.
• Not Quite Dead: Although All For One has deaged himself out of existence, his vestige still survived in Tomura, merely suppressed and biding the time to take over when Tomura is too emotionally weak to hold him down.
• Not Quite Flight: His Air Walk Quirk lets him levitate and move through the air but can't go higher than 20 meters. He later gives Air Walk to Lady Nagant, but is shown still floating in midair for the final battle, indicating he has another unnamed levitating Quirk as a back up.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • When All Might comes to visit him in jail, he outright asks All For One why he did the things he did. All For One responds by comparing himself to All Might, saying that they both have big dreams and the power to see those dreams realized. Of course, he freely admits that while All Might wanted to be a hero, he wanted to be an all-powerful devil king. It also highlights the greatest difference between them- All Might's dream was for the sake of everybody in the world living in peace, whereas All For One's dreams were only ever about himself.
  • He remarks his younger brother is just as stubborn as he is, in spite of their diametrically opposing philosophies and worldviews.
• Nothing Is Scarier: He showcases a sincere delight of this trope, cultivating an aura of uncertain menace targeted towards his enemies for both practicality and personal enjoyment.
  • During his introduction to the manga, All Might highlights how, even with his personal experience with him, there are many unknown variables surrounding All For One, ranging from his name, his ultimate intentions, his motivates for forcing a Quirk onto Yoichi, and how he survived his apparent fatal fight with him. As events proceed, All For One's smug certainty in his ultimate victory despite all the heroes' efforts leaves them all unsettled, even when he's imprisoned in Tartarus. Once he breaks out, he exploits this to psychologically torment Izuku, leaving a message for him that he's going to target him now to finally defeat One For All without any specifics, leading to Izuku running himself ragged trying desperately to find him whilst pushing away his allies in case All For One targets them to hurt him. During the Final Battle, he exposes with glee how his "Golden Dark Age" had everybody living in constant fear of what might be lurking in the shadows thanks to his machinations, scared of their fellow man and with his unseen presence an ever-present fear gnawing at their minds and souls.
  • However, by the time of the final battle, the negative aspects of embracing this trope so thoroughly are also highlighted. It's repeatedly made clear that underneath his Shrouded in Myth persona of the "Demon Lord", All For One doesn't really have a character of his own. Once the heroes do see through him, he proves easy to predict and outmanoeuvre because of how simple his personality is despite his immense intelligence. His reign being so shadowy and unseen by the public means that when All Might stopped him and dismantled his empire, there was practically no proof left that he ever existed. And to the current generation who are willing to stand up to him regardless of the power gap, his lack of historical presence means that none of them afford him the respect he feels the "Demon Lord" is entitled to.
• Not So Invincible After All: The entire series presents All For One as the invincible Demon King he believes himself to be. Nigh unstoppable to anyone that's not All Might and capable of planning for everything, never suffering a meaningful defeat. The build up to the finale, however, is largely devoted to ripping that image apart. While All For One remains convinced he's inevitably going to win and his plans cannot fail, the heroes have learned his flaws and expertly exploit them to turn the tables as All For One is at a loss to understand how. This image being disproven and torn down proves to be one of the only things that can actually genuinely enrage him.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: When confronted by his younger brother, Yoichi, All For One claims that he is helping people and bringing order to society. Yoichi countered that All for One was just exploiting people for his sadistic whim, which All For One does not deny afterwards.

O-S

• Obviously Evil: His appearance screams "evil guy"; large and imposing figure, wears a dark suit and a black skull-like mask, uses a bunch of abilities you'd see a villain use, and makes no pretensions about being a supervillain lord of darkness. It aligns well with his motivations; All For One was inspired by comic books, saw the Evil Overlord as his favorite character, and based his entire character around that archetype, wanting to play out his role as a menacing villain because he just likes it that much.
• Oh, Crap!: The final arcs have his Perpetual Smiler characterisation finally break when the heroes' resistance against him to the bitter end upsets his intricately-laid plans one by one and puts him in danger of a loss he cannot rebound from. By the point he finally reaches Izuku, even his delusional rejection of reality cannot hold up against how badly the situation's gone for him, leaving All For One visibly panicking over his impending Final Death and desperately trying to squirm a means out of it.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Rule of Thumb: If that smile of his leaves his face for any length of time, it's a sign things aren't going well for him. He maintains it as much as a sign of his supreme confidence in his victory, but as events turns against him time and again throughout the final battle, this is eventually wiped off his face for good and replaced with a angry scowl at his inability to seize even a minor victory by demoralising his beaten foes.
  • Upon reclaiming control of Tomura's body, his vestige fails to smile, expressing a dour, almost hollow expression as he goes to simply kill Deku. His entire plan—use Tomura's hatred and strength of will to steal One For All—has been foiled, and Yoichi is gone from him once more, so all he can do is resign himself to the meaningless goal of taking over the world, no longer hiding the emotionless sociopath he is at his core.
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: He can generate some kind of black sludge-like substance, and shoot it with enough force to stop an attack from Hawks. Likewise, his Warping Quirk manifests as black slime. When Yoichi and Izuku are able to get a glimpse of All For One's Mental World thanks to the synchronisation between their opposing Quirks, the vestige version of himself is shown to be gushing the stuff out like it was High-Pressure Blood, as he struggles to assimilate the remaining aspects of Tomura's individuality, becoming more and more unstable as the fighting progresses.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: All For One is only known by his villain identity and, as revealed in his backstory, he doesn't even have a full name: his mother was unaware she was pregnant and died at birth—all that she could have left behind was potentially her family name, 'Shigaraki'. All For One went on to name his younger brother Yoichi, and he seemingly did the same for himself, identifying as All For One to embrace every aspect of his supervilliany. This is why Stars and Stripe's quirk works on his villain title: it is, for all extent and purposes, his actual name.
• Orcus on His Throne: Zigzagged and justified as opposed to most examples. All For One remains hands-off because his body was actually horribly crippled during his last bout with All Might prior to the series's start. He only leaves when he's rejuvenated enough to fight and even when escaping from his prison cell, he prefers to stay out of conflict and let Shigaraki do all the heavy lifting, with All for One only personally entering once he's certain everything is going to plan.
• Otaku: Ironically, All For One boils down to being a giant nerd whose entire motivation is based off being peeved that a comic featuring a conflict between a superhero and an almighty Demon Lord inevitably ended in the Demon Lord's defeat. So, in real life, he seeks to overwrite this ending into one where he (seeing himself as the Demon Lord) wins instead. While vain, evil, and selfish, there is a hilarious petty streak to him that shows he's not much better than a toxic fanboy despite his delusions of grandeur and supervillain roleplaying.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Aware Stain was against him ever since he escaped Tartarus on his own, All For One held two Quirks, Bloodlet and Antigen Swap in reserve to counter his Quirk, should it ever be used against him. When Stain does successfully ambush him alongside All Might, he escapes through using Bloodlet to force all his paralysed blood out of his body, leaving him briefly covered in his own blood and Antigen Swap to change his blood type to render Bloodcurdle ineffective.
• Parental Substitute:
  • He raised Shigaraki ever since the latter was a five-year-old. All for the sole purpose of taunting All Might and tainting Nana Shimura's legacy.
  • He is eventually revealed to be doing this to teens and children at the low points all over Japan, taking them in so that he can brainwash them into being his minions.
• People Puppets: Forced Quirk Activation: it even works on unconscious people. Given All For One's power-hungry tendencies, he tends to view people as puppets, something his brother calls him out on.
• Perpetual Smiler: When not wearing his mask, All For One always has a Psychotic Smirk on his face. Hawks takes note of this and outright wonders if All For One is actually incapable of feeling true hatred for people. No matter what negative emotions All For One experiences, he habitually defaults to a smile irrespective of how he's truly feeling, as much as a sign of his belief in his ultimate victory as a refusal to give his enemies the satisfaction of seeing his composure break...which underscores how badly he's at the end of his rope when that happens multiple times throughout the Final Battle.
• Personality Powers:
  • All For One is defined by selfishness and every relationship he has is ultimately him viewing the other person as his possession rather than a person. He is a kleptomaniac who can't resist stealing something he wants and even his endgame consists of turning his own Quirk into a parasite to leech off someone else's Character Development because he can't or won't try to meaningfully develop as a person himself. As such, his main ability making him a Power Parasite is immensely fitting.
  • Whilst it isn't his power, the rewind energy he absorbed from the Erasure bullets also fits. When he activates it, it bring him back from death (which he'd expressed fear of imminently prior) and immediately undoes his crippling injuries and restores his good looks, letting him revel in his restored strength to torment the heroes just like he used to at the height of his power. Furthermore, the energy renders him effectively invincible, undoing injuries, even fatal ones, in seconds, highlighting his underlying motivation: a spiteful, petty childish refusal to lose at any cost. All For One takes several damaging attacks that would have killed him individually, only for all of them to be nullified by the rewind energy, almost acting like a child's "everything-proof shield". Furthermore, the more damage done, the younger the energy renders him, effectively stripping away the grandiose aura of the intimidating Symbol of Evil and exposing the Psychopathic Manchild that he really is at his core with every loss he denies.
• Person of Mass Destruction: This guy is capable of completely obliterating multiple city blocks with a single attack.
• Pitiful Worms: His god complex and obsession with Quirks means he tends to look down upon people in general if they don't serve a purpose in his grand plans and sees them mainly as walking containers for their powers than individuals with their own thoughts and feelings. This crops up a bit with his original self sincerely seeing the events unfolding around him as if he were living a real-life comic book, claiming that 'Jobbber Characters' like Izuku's classmates have no chance against the 'Demon Lord', and referring to them in terms of their closeness to One For All. His wording even implies that he doesn't see Izuku himself as anything less than a convenient means of finally stealing One For All, a mere vessel for the Quirk rather than an opponent to be taken seriously. The vestige version of himself merged into Tomura, in the process of becoming the 'perfected Demon Lord', really let's this show, looking down on all his opponents' efforts as futile attempts to overcome an all-powerful god, and riding a constant power high as he adapts to or destroys every tactic they pull against him.
  All For One (through Tomura): (After expelling Amajiki's poison through a mouth grown on his body) Pathetic!! My body continues to adapt!! Scurry away like insects! Nothing can bring me down!
• Play-Along Prisoner: It's all but stated outright that he can break free from Tartarus at any time he wants and only stays there because it will force his protégé, Shigaraki, to become independent and develop as a villainous mastermind. It's later revealed this was actually a bluff, and he was genuinely trapped within the prison, requiring him to exploit the Psychic Link between his vestige and original selves to launch a simultaneous attack to escape. He also makes it clear later on that he's dismissive of his original crippled body as well, in favor of the "Perfect Demon Lord", so he didn't actually mind that version of himself being trapped whilst his plans were underway.
• Playing with Fire: One of the Quirks he uses in the final battle is Hardflame Fan, which lets him generate a wall of flame as a defense mechanism. However, it is vastly inferior to Endeavor's Hellflame as the latter is able to easily overpower it using Vanishing Fist.
• Power at a Price: Powers granted to others by "All For One" have a chance of bad side effects, as their bodies can't handle the strain of multiple Quirks. The Reveal that One For All's own power stockpiling comes with the cost of inflicting Rapid Aging on the wielders born with a natural Quirk (though thanks to All For One, only one of them ever lived long enough to perish from this side-effect) implies that there might be long-term side effects to receiving more powers that one's body is naturally suited to handle from birth. Interestingly, All For One has himself demonstrated no adverse side effects despite his endless hoarding of powers for generations, implying that, like Izuku and Yagi, he's immune to any negative drawbacks from hoarding so many abilities because his Quirk, having no effect unless it has other Quirks to interact with, doesn't count as a Quirk on its own merits, leaving his 'Vessel' empty and functionally making him Quirkless. That said, the only limit he does have is that he has problems using Quirks that are too powerful for his body to handle.
• The Power of Hate: The one emotion that All For One seems to have faith in is hatred. His entire plan revolves around raising Shigaraki to be the most angry, hate filled person physically possible, hoping that sheer hate will provide the willpower needed for his Vestige in his Quirk to merge with him and finally steal One For All. However, All For One is so fixated on this, to the point of viewing empathy and remorse as weaknesses, that it blinds him to how powerful its polar opposite is. Indeed, he believed his mental merging into Tomura was completed by the point he showed up to 'confront' Izuku for the Final Battle, and is taken off-guard when the fighting exposes the 'Tenko Shimura' still exists, able to resist his mental assimilation because of the happier childhood memories he has, a possibility All For One was completely blind to.
  • Ironically enough, despite believing it to be superior, All For One's psychopathy and almost pathological need to be above others means he himself can't fully process or understand his own hatred: while he feels immense hatred for Kudo, he seems to have suppressed that feeling, lest he admit that a 'pebble' managed to get under his skin so much.
• Power Palms: While it's easy to miss at first, All For One has small holes in the palms of his hands. These are a fundamental component of his Quirk, being the means by which he "sucks in" Quirks or bestows them on others, with Shigaraki likewise gaining the holes on his own hands after receiving his master's Quirk. Accordingly, attacking or incapacitating his hands is one way to prevent him stealing a Quirk, though it's easier said than done with his immense power and speed, even in a crippled state.
• Power Parasite: The essence of All For One, which allows him to steal others' Quirks for himself. All For One himself; because his psychopathy leaves him lacking the emotional capacity to steal One For All, he's hoping to use Tomura's sheer hatred to counter this. Otherwise, All For One has no means of acquiring One For All on his own merits and is using Tomura like a leech.
• Powers as Programs: "All For One" can steal the Quirks of others, allowing him to either use them himself, or "upload" them into another person. He can also choose to turn his stolen Quirks on or off, letting him avoid having to walk around with various mutation Quirks constantly active. With a completely different slate of them during his second fight with All Might as noted by Gran Torino, it's unclear if he is capable of losing Quirks over time, if it was a case of him simply not using them, or if he since gave them away. The fact that he was actually using an artificial replica of All For One at the time after having given the original to Dr. Garaki, as it's not clear exactly when he made the switch.
• Practically Joker: Let's see, he wears a natty suit and at one point wore a hat, his default expression is a constant Slasher Smile, he has a twisted obsession with the main hero, is a blatant Card-Carrying Villain and a Diabolical Mastermind with a vast criminal empire, has a warped sense of humor, and has scarring on his face. Plus, after stopping All Might's Suicide Attack on him, his age regressing body destabilizing from all the immense power he wields leads to his face splitting open from how wide he smiles, forming an extremely horrible, Joker-like grin before the damage is rewound again. It's not at all difficult to see more than a few similarities between All For One and the Clown Prince of Crime. He especially invokes the Arkham Knight version of the Joker in that it's eventually revealed his greatest fear is being forgotten, and as he draws closer to that very fate he increasingly loses control over his emotions to his own despair, before finally experiencing an Undignified Death.
• Psychic Link:
  • In the Paranormal Liberation War Arc, All For One reveals that every Quirk factor bares the imprint of the user's consciousness, and due to All For One's unique ability to steal others' Quirks, he also receives that imprint. He speaks of how in his dreams the former owners of the Quirks he stole would hurl abuse and haunt him but disappear when he gives the Quirks away. This fact is also the reason why the former bearers of One for All can speak with the current holder and why after transferring All For One to Shigaraki, it also transferred part of his consciousness, allowing him to influence Shigaraki and even take control of him. Even escaping Tartarus, he takes advantage of the link between his body and Shigaraki's to shut down the prison's security system from the inside and outside simultaneously, freeing himself and a bunch of dangerous prisoners as new followers. It's noted this would give them a huge advantage in a fight together, which is why a major aspect of their plan to beat him revolves around not letting them use it.
  • Furthermore, his Quirk shares some perceptiveness toward its brother Quirk One For All, with One For All users able to somewhat sense him and Tomura as well. How deep the connection goes hasn't entirely been elaborated on.
• Psychological Projection: It becomes clear by the endgame that a large number of the flaws he pointed out in Tomura are actually his own deep down. He's every bit the immature and a petulant child he accused Tomura of being, he's just had years of experience learning how to hide it without actually maturing like his protege does.
• Psychopathic Manchild: As somebody who is pathologically and willingly incapable of Character Development, the manga eventually reveals that he was literally born psychopathic fresh from the womb, seeing all around him as a possession to take or destroy, including his brother. All that changed over the generations he's lived is that he learned how to hide his more childish traits behind a veneer of refined behaviour from intentionally emulating super villains from comic books, without ever actually maturing in the slightest. The Final Battle sees this facade of his torn down as he literally reverts back into the deranged baby he's been underneath all this time.
• Pyrrhic Victory: By the final arcs, the first sign of his slipping grip as the overarching villain of the story is his inability to pull off an overwhelming victory like he's used to against his current-generation opponents, at best pulling off a string of these whenever he emerges from a conflict.. His fight agaisnt Star and Stripe ended with her dead an able to interfere in his further plans, but with the her Quirk that he desperately wanted destroyed from the fighting and his perfect vessel damaged from the inside out, giving the heroes better time to prepare for him. His fighting at Gunga mountain has him defeat the heroes, but fail to break their spirits, to his intense dissatisfaction, and he's left Living on Borrowed Time which he needlessly expended most of against them. And his final battle with All Might is a pointless effort for him that he knows plays right into the heroes' hands, delusionally judging the chance to kill the Hope Bringer on international television to be Worth It regardless, only to have his execution stopped by Bakugo, rendering his efforts All for Nothing and himself left reverted to a child.
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • Happens to him at several points throughout the final arcs. He openly curses Star as the "spectre of All Might" as he's one-sidedly damaged from the inside by her last gambit. His image of outward composure finally shatters when the heroes break his imposing mask, causing him to viscously lash out at them screaming in a rage over his humiliation. When he's being pinned down by their united efforts and realises that he's expending more of his remaining lifespan the he can afford to from their barrage, he hits another one of these, channelling the feeling directly into his Quirks to empower them, overwhelming both the heroes and the limitations of his physical body as he does so, with only Rewind keeping him 'alive'. He expresses unfamiliarity with the sensation, believing that it comes about from his Psychic Link to Tomura allowing him to actually experience deep-seated rage for once, rather than something he could always do. This implies that despite his furious displays prior, he still wasn't truly feeling angry deep down.
  • Upon confirming that Yoichi's vestige is indeed Deader than Dead, he hits one of these that crosses with a Despair Event Horizon, dropping any of his Evil Is Hammy personality traits to showcase his true self: a tranquilly-detached Empty Shell who cannot even find enjoyment in his villainy anymore, and has only intense rage at Izuku for dealing him this undeniable loss motivating him beyond the arbitrary goal of Take Over the World
• Randomly Gifted: As one of the first people with a Quirk, he is this by necessity. It is especially notable as he has the greatest Quirk to ever exist. That said, given Quirks have a degree of Personality Powers to them, his particular ability is implied to have been partially informed by the type of man he was at his core.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: All For One is the true leader of the League of Villains, and the most powerful character in the whole series, only matched by All Might. It takes him seconds to defeat several top-ranked Heroes.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": As he is being deaged out of existence this is All For One's last cognizant thought, along with the word hate, in disbelief that after a lifetime of perfect control he allowed his emotions to get away from him and it cost him everything.
• Rasputinian Death: Cockroaches are easier to terminate than All For One.
  • His initial loss to All Might has his upper cranium liquified by his final Megaton Punch, with his body afterwards being interred in a morgue for an indeterminate amount of time before Garaki was able to recover it and bring him Back from the Dead, with the scars and life-support equipment he's forced to use afterwards making it clear there was a lot of damage done to him. Most notably, the fact he didn't possess Hyper regeneration at this point makes his survival even more pronounced.
  • His physical self has the life-support machines destroyed to weaken him, and gets incinerated alive by Endeavour's flames. He then activates his fallback tactic of using Rewind to temporarily heal himself back to full strength, and gets subjected to lethal attacks by an army of Villains and heroes alike as a delaying tactic until the same energy that renders him invincible physically de-ages him from existence, with him fighting tooth and nail even when reduced to an infantile state.
  • Thanks to the unique merged state of his and Tomura's vestiges, His Vestige self gets rips into pieces from within when Tomura assumes full control of himself. However, thanks to being a metaphysical form, the damage doesn't prove fatal, and he's able to reassume control when Izuku makes Tomura's willpower falter at the end of their fight.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: According to the Official Character Guide, All For One ranks 6/5 in terms of intelligence. This is fitting for a Diabolical Mastermind whose intelligence is his best asset.
• Really 700 Years Old: He was born a whole year before the luminescent baby was officially documented, and his Life Force Quirk (which was given to him by Dr. Garaki) extends his lifespan at the cost of athletic ability. According to Gran Torino, All For One was at least over a hundred years old and at that time, All Might was just 18.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Gives one to Izuku, ecstatic he gets to pick on who he perceives to be an incompetent child. He describes him as mediocre and worthless, confused as to why All Might would ever pick him as the next successor, but overjoyed his last target to steal One For All from seems to be the easiest mark of them all to drive home how much of a colossal Jerkass he truly is.
  • Pretty much every time he talks to a hero, especially those with personal animosity towards him, has his dialogue peppered with these, both as a psychological tactic and because he really enjoys getting under their skin. By the time the Final Battle kicks off, every sentence he speaks is this, constantly berating the heroes for being so foolish as to keep fighting him and not accepting the inevitability of his absolute victory. By that point, however, it's a sign that he's in a spiraling Villainous Breakdown, as the situation keeps slipping out of control and he keeps getting humiliated in the fighting, resulting in his accusations becoming more frustrated and spiteful. Additionally, because he's so great at riling up the heroes with these, it leaves them in no mood to show mercy towards him, resulting in him suffering nearly fatal attacks from extremely pissed-off foes.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: His original Quirk All For One manifests energy in the form of black lightning with red outlines.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The anime gives him red eyes, as shown in episode 90, but they are still shrouded in darkness. His right eye regrowing after Endeavor almost burns him to ashes is a sign that the battle hasn't yet ended in the heroes' victory over him.
• Rooting for the Empire: An In-Universe example. Unlike normal people, growing up he rooted for the Demon Lord of the comics he and Yoichi read. He actually intends to completely invert this as his core motivation for his villainy. As he outlines to Hawks, he wants to be utterly despised by everybody on a international level, seeing the degree of animosity and fear stoked by the presence of a villain as indicative of their success at being 'true' villains. Since he intends to become the undisputed villain that rules over all others, this extends to inspiring the same animosity amongst even his ostensible 'allies', many of whom partner with him because they need his power and resources, not out of personal regard of him, barring a few exceptions. When Tomura demonstrates that his all-consuming hatred towards the world also now extends towards his master as he's forcibly merging their psyches, All For One expresses nothing but happiness at his 'successor' also hating him, despite their seemingly close bond.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Due to using Rewind to try and cheat death in the final arc, he spends the Final Battle gradually aging in reverse, which is accelerated when he takes damage. By the time he finally reaches his intended targets, he's reduced down to a child, emphasizing that for all his grandstanding and boasting, he's just a Psychopathic Manchild who never grew beyond being an orphan boy reading comics and searing to be a Demon Lord.
  • When he breaks Tomura's psyche with the Awful Truth of how he manipulated his Dark and Troubled Past from the start, the Adaptive Ability in Tomura's body reforms his appearance into an amalgamated character of all the significant Villains who've had an impact on the story ^*Creepy Shadowed Undereyes from Stain, a wide forehead and pointy nose from Re-destro, a mouth-covering that obscures his lower jaw like Overhaul, with said covering being a facsimile of the blackened family hand that remained from Tomura's collection, and Tomura's Mystical White Hair absent any traits from All For One himself. This reflects his nature as a mere parasitical villain who monopolises the resources and efforts of others for his own gain without contributing anything himself, as well as his non-existence as an individual.
• Sadist: All for One's favorite hobby and preferred psychological attack is to find ways to emotionally hurt and demotivate his enemies solely for the sake of enjoying their misery, even if there's no practical gain for him. Most notably, he does this to All Might by revealing Tomura to be Tenko Shimura and expressing a desire to brutally kill Bakugo in front of Midoriya, all for the sake of demoralizing his most hated enemies to alleviate himself.
• Sanity Has Advantages: His delusional obsession with comic books and superhero/villain tropes causes him to make multiple mistakes and faults in his planning that comes to a head in the Final Battle, gradually depriving him of every advantage he possesses or causing him to needlessly waste the ones he has out of an insane commitment to being recognised as the ultimate villain through inspiring despair and hopelessness in others. Case in point: he falls for literally the oldest trick in the book by making his execution of the helpless All Might a long drawn-out affair, which gives Bakugo just enough time to race in and rip his ultimate victory from his arms.
• Sanity Slippage: His Villainous Breakdown combined with Rewind messing with his emotions does not do his sanity any favors. By the time he's intercepted by All Might, he's become completely unstable and manic. He can't even try to maintain his previous composure, screaming all of his dialog with even his font showing how unhinged he is now.
• Satanic Archetype: In the past, All For One amassed loyal followers by presenting them what they desired the most. He would cast people away once they became useless. If anyone dared to oppose his will, they would be purged. All For One goes out of his way to commit evil acts and for no apparent reason. One of his principles is to overwhelm his enemy with misery before killing them. Just as All Might is this brilliant savior figure, he is the opposite, a shadowy threat. He even hands out deals to people desperate for their loved ones, like how he manipulated the U.A. traitor's family into having him gift a Quirk to their child, only to met out worse punishments as "rewards" to keep them in line, threatening his target to follow his orders or he'd kill their family, causing them to have a breakdown. By the time of the Final Battle, when he activates Eri's Rewind as part of his Thanatos Gambit, he goes back to his appearance before his fight against All Might, with beautiful white hair and covered in bright golden energy, much like Lucifer before falling. To drive the comparison further home, he steals Hawks' Quirk, giving himself a pair blood-red wings, fitting perfectly the Fallen Angel archetype as well.
• Scars Are Forever: None of the regeneration Quirks he's obtained have been able to fix the massive injuries and scars inflicted upon him by All Might, because the wounds had already scarred up and stabilized before he'd gotten a Quirk powerful enough to fix them, and if he'd gotten the necessary Quirk while they were still fresh, they could have been fixed. The Rewind energy he uses during the Final Battle makes this cease to be the case.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: While he initially makes half-hearted attempts to flee the final battle to help his 'other me,' he still lets himself be provoked into continuing to fight the heroes and prepares to go full on to attack them... until Tokoyami's Full Release form actively scares him and beats him into the ground, causing his extra years to expire and him to start visibly deaging. A combination of Tokoyami actually having a fair chance of beating him and his time almost having run out causes All For One to instantly try to cut and run. When he tries to steal Tokoyami's Quirk shortly after, Mineta grabs his attention for a few seconds and makes All For One realize it simply isn't worth dealing with them with his time so short, and he finally races off to Shigaraki.
  All For One: The braying howls of the weak... But every precious second counts.
• Selective Obliviousness:
  • As the Final Battle goes on, it becomes apparent that All For One simply refuses to accept the fact he's Not So Invincible After All and can actually lose. Every time the heroes manage to pull one over on him, he tries to pretend it didn't actually count and his internal monologue consists of frantically trying to convince himself he's still on top. When he's forced to use Rewind, he states his old body is expendable, but Hawks' later Shut Up, Hannibal! and All For One's reaction to it makes it clear he's still furious about it and he calls bringing it up 'splitting hairs.' The only loss All For One has ever suffered in his life he will actually admit to was All Might nearly killing him, and only because he was so badly wounded and everything he built destroyed that he can't deny it.
  • He mocked Yoichi for believing that him becoming the "Demon Lord" from their comic would spell his inevitable defeat, as The Good Guys Always Win, countering that reality didn't necessarily follow the rules of a comic book. However, his ranting against the heroes during his ongoing loss reveals that he actually applied the same logic to the Demon Lord, believing he'd become unbeatable by 'side characters' by becoming the character in reality. His Humiliation Conga is merely a long example of him eating his own words.
  • His flashback of his past with Yoichi demonstrates that he does possess some empathy towards his younger brother despite treating him as little more than his possession. However, his self-image as a being above "mere humans" and utter certainty that Virtue Is Weakness has him pathologically deny any kind of positive emotional connection to another, as that would reduce him from being the Demon Lord he's committed to embodying. This despite the fact that his brother's love and companionship is something he craves deeply, leading him to constantly reframe every slip-up he has that showcases this as an intentional manipulative tactic, like claiming he was crying Berserker Tears at Kubo merely to confuse him in his last moments, rather than being upset at the reminder of his "mistake".
• Seven Deadly Sins: Fitting for the Resident Big Bad and author of most of the misery and opposition heroes like All Might and Izuku have to go through, All For One shows traits of all seven of the sins. He's incredibly arrogant and egotistical, has a compulsive greed and hunger to steal Quirks he fancies and is obsessed with stealing One For All, implied to be tied to an envious wanting of what others naturally possess, has a lust for power and control, reacts with extreme rage to any challenge to his image of the all-powerful demon lord, and prefers to leave the dirty work to his underlings and rarely does anything himself.
• Skull for a Head: His life support mask looks uncomfortably like a menacing skull. His unmasked head also bears a resemblance to this as well, helped by the fact he constantly has a Slasher Smile on in moments where he's feeling particularly self-assured in his victory, either immediately or long-term.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • Just like Bakugo, All For One grew up to become an entitled bully because he was born with an extremely powerful Quirk. But unlike Bakugo (who eventually had some sense knocked into him and was forced to acknowledge that "extras" can catch up to and surpass him) All For One's ability is so naturally potent that he was able to doge any sort of reality-check.
  • To Endeavor, to the point that Endeavor is selected to be All For One's opponent in the final battle. His grooming of young Tenko Shimura to be his successor mirrors Endeavor's abuse of his children, a fact All For One gleefully rubs in Endeavor's face. However, while Endeavor realized the error of his ways and seeks to atone for his past sins, All For One feels no such regret for his crimes, serving as a dark reflection of what Endeavor could've been if he never grew a conscience.
• Shadow Dictator: Invoked by All For One. He has been pulling strings of the underworld within the shadows. Even other criminals don't know much about him, except for urban legends.
• Shock and Awe: As he starts getting targeted by multiple Heroes during the final battle, he started utilizing an unnamed Lightning Quirk that fires black bolts from multiple points from his body.
• Shout-Out: His mask is very blatantly inspired by Darth Vader. In practice, his role as a character is more akin to Palpatine with Shigaraki taking the place of Vader as his apprentice.
• Shrouded in Myth: Before his fight with All Might in Kamino, All For One's existence was unknown to virtually everyone. Even villains presumed that All For One was just an urban legend. Nothing is known about All For One's origins, habits, or preferences except that he enjoys committing evil. Very few are aware that All For One once had a younger brother.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With his younger brother Yoichi. AFO is a psychopath Card-Carrying Villain who revels in power and sadism, was born with the strongest Quirk in the series and believes in the supremacy of powerful Quirk users. Meanwhile, Yoichi is a kind-hearted All-Loving Hero who fights for peace in society, had a (seemingly) useless ability that he was initially completely unaware of, and believes that moral strength is what's truly important.
• Slasher Smile:
  • His counterpoint to All Might's smiles of reassurance to people in danger, signaling to others that they're in impending danger. He's constantly cracking wide, toothy grins whenever he's getting particularly emotionally worked up, smug or satisfied with his victory, which helps sell how there's something off about him. Hawks even brings this trait of his up, noting that his near-constant smile is a sign of him being psychopathic, unable to relate properly to others on an emotional level and utterly disconnected from them in terms of his own desires and wants. Hawks even posits that Character Tic is a sign that, despite the generations-long feud with the holders of One For All, All For One cannot become emotionally invested in taking them down, which is the very reason he cannot overcome One For All's Heroic Willpower and steal the Quirk.
    Hawks: Think about it. That guy...never stops smiling, right?
    Endeavor: Something's missing in his soul, huh?
  • His reaction to seeing All Might standing before him in challenge is a wide-eyed, insane grin. he then tops this upon actually beating him and successfully breaking his spirit with the failure, throwing out a mad grim too wide for his face to contain, ripping it apart like paper without him even noticing in his euphoria.
• Smug Super: His arrogance, manipulative nature, and outright malice are matched by a tremendous amount of power. Deconstructed, however: as powerful and competent All For One is, he's not as invincible or infallible as he thinks he is. As a result, he genuinely believes he's already won and actually winning is a formality. This blows up in his face when a large part of the heroes' plan to trap and defeat him for good is simply to allow him to believe things are going exactly as planned, something All For One doesn't question because, to him, that's the natural way for things to progress. This sees him completely blindsided when he learns too late that they're decidedly not and the trap is sprung.
• The Social Darwinist: Having raised himself up from absolutely nothing through taking and monopolising off others since the moment of his birth, All For One fully embraces this belief. To him, it doesn't matter how much willpower and determination you have. If you don't have any strength or resources he can steal for his own benefit, you're worthless.
  All For One: Motives, words, deeds, abilities. All I'm seeing here is the stuff of weaklings. Not nearly good enough! Your power is so very underwhelming!
• The Sociopath: All for One is a malignant psychopath with traits including an over-bloated opinion about himself, compulsive enjoyment over hurting others, inability to properly connect with or understand others, exhibiting a falsified sense of civility, and having very poor impulse control whenever things aren't going his way.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: His simmering malice is made all the more unsettling by his casual, borderline jovial manner of speaking.
• Son of a Whore: All For One and his brother Yoichi were born to a sex worker in Japan.
• Sore Loser: His taking his loss against All Might and his subsequent imprisonment well was entirely because he made plans about his plans being carried out in the future and eventually breaking out. In reality, he can't stand the idea of losing and this is why he makes exhaustive plans to ensure he wins. When things aren't going his way during his final clash against the heroes, All for One resorts to complaining and ranting like a pathetic loser, employing extreme and desperate tactics to ensure he stays on top. It's a sign of him having sincerely passed the Despair Event Horizon at the undeniable loss of Yoichi's vestige when he admits that his mid-term goal was a failure after breaking Tomura's psyche and assuming control over the damaged Demon Lord's body.
• Space Master: He has an unnamed quirk that lets him twist an area of space similar to the Robot Nomu.
• Stepford Smiler: A twisted example. He almost always has an evil grin on his face, which acts as a Foil to All Might.
• Sticky Fingers: In his own words, once he spots an irresistibly useful Quirk, he's just got to have it.
  All For One: It's not right, I know. When I see a good Quirk, I just need to have it. Definitely a bad habit of mine.
• Story-Breaker Power: Even for a first-generation Quirk user, All For One's Quirk is extremely powerful and advantageous. All For One can steal all kinds of Quirks, and easily De-power entire crowds of Quirk users. All For One can defeat several top heroes with absurd ease. The only Quirk that is immune to his power is One For All, which can only be willingly transferred to someone else.
• Stronger with Age: Played With. As time went by, he did have the opportunity to collect more and more Quirks, thus growing in direct power. However, All For One's body has no innate capacity to grow along with the power it needs to support, and with several centuries of life under his belt, he became concerned that his body would eventually break down and lose control over his many Quirks. This became more of an issue due to the Quirk Singularity, in which Quirks became more complex and powerful with each generation, and thus harder for him to properly take and control. His Quirk may be powerful, but ultimately, it's still a first-generation Quirk. A good chunk of Dr. Garaki's research was dedicated to augmenting him so that he would be able to properly handle this power.
• Stupid Evil: Normally, he's very good at avoiding doing anything to harm his plans, but when he gets an opportunity to harm someone he truly despises or sees a Quirk that really catches his eye, he can't help but give in to his sadism and waste effort on psychologically torturing his opponents. His ego and obsession with typical hero/villain narratives are so dominant that he can't bring himself to acknowledge the possibility that he could actually lose to someone besides the current holder of One For All, and his obsession with having its power drives him to take steps to preserve it, even as it becomes stronger and stronger over time and more of a threat to him. The heroes are able to distract him from fully utilising his unbeatable Super Mode because they keep defying him to the bitter end, irking him and causing him to delay his advance on Izuku until he's satisfied their spirits as as broken as their bodies, and keeps falling short even in that regard.
• Super-Empowering: Half of how he was able to build such a loyal following back in the day was his ability to give Quirks to those without them. In the present day, he largely uses this to create the Nomu. However, unlike One For All and its bearers, All For One is incapable of passing on his titular Quirk itself without outside aid.
• Super Prototype: He and his brother are perhaps the first people born with Quirks, predating even the Luminescent Baby. And yet his Quirk has enough potential versatility to remain a credible threat even centuries later against a new-generation Quirk like New Order. Albeit, this is due to the fact it monopolises other Quirks for power, rather than having any true strength of its own, which eventually becomes his downfall.
• Super-Senses: After he was injured by All Might, he lost most of his normal senses (he visibly has no eyes, ears, or nose), but quickly replaced them with various Quirks, such as Infrared and Vibration Detection, letting him perceive his surroundings even better than a normal person. The Vestiges of his stolen Quirks, rebelling against him blind him, and prevent him from dodging Hawks' and Tokoyami's attacks which destroy his life support mask.
• Super-Strength: Thanks in part to having three Strength Enhancer Quirks, All For One is strong enough to hold All Might back with his bare hands alone, at one point casually tossing him aside using just the tendrils of his Rivet Stab Quirk.
• Super-Toughness: He can tank All Might's blows with relative ease, possibly thanks to some kind of durability Quirk. He was — barely — still alive when Endeavor's point-blank Prominence Burn turned him into a crumbling charcoaled husk, enough to reap the benefits of Eri's Rewind Quirk undoing the damage.
• Superpower Lottery: Played With. As his name implies, All For One can steal Quirks from others and wield them as his own. He can also combine the Quirks he's stolen to perform devastating attacks and can combine multiples of the same Quirk to stack their power. He can also give the Quirks he's stolen to others, and if he gives a Quirk to someone who already has one, it sometimes causes the Quirks to combine and mutate into a completely new Quirk. In a world where Everyone Is a Super, the man who can steal powers and give them to other people is king. At least until All Might beat him. However,, on its own merits, without any other quirks to leech from and manipulate, All For One cannot do anything by itself and is technically one of the weakest Quirks out there when judged on its own abilities. When Star and Stripe booby-traps New Order with a rule that allows it to 'revolt against other Quirks', allowing it to fight back within All For One's vestige world against his one-sided absorption of it, despite All For One's entire power being based around controlling and subjugating Quirks for his own use, he's completely helpless in a straight-forward fight between their respective powers, and can only cravenly look for the nearest host to offload New Order onto to stop the attack, rather than being able to defeat Star himself.
• The Svengali: He groomed Shigaraki to carry out his will as well as to personally insult All Might and Nana Shimura.

T-Z

• Tailor-Made Prison: After All Might beats him the second time, he's put in one. He's kept in straitjacket on a chair, with multiple automated guns ready to shoot the moment he makes suspicious movement or activates his Quirk.
• Take Over the World: To no one's surprise, this is what All For One ultimately wants to do in the absolute worst way possible. Crosses over with his Devil Complex and status as a Dark Messiah.
• Taking You with Me: Zigzagged. After getting fatally wounded in battle, All For One decides to use Eri's Rewind as a last-ditch effort to restore himself and utterly destroy the heroes in battle. He admits the enemy will erase his physical body regardless, but aims to transfer his copied vestige into Tomura's to side-step his death in that regard as well.
• Talking Is a Free Action:
  • Played With. He tends to favor Quirks or attacks that are effective from a distance, allowing him the freedom to engage in a verbal beatdown of his opponents as they try to get close to him in order to agitate his opponents and make them lose focus, allowing him to press the advantage whilst using his multiple abilities to securely defend himself. However, he is regularly attacked and sometimes cut off mid-taunt by his opponents, especially when they've truly had enough of his endless insults, but even then, he always keeps a clear focus on pressing his psychological advantage against his enemies even if they do land some hard blows upon him.
  • Deconstructed, as he's so used to being able to this method that when he's on a time limit thanks to a copy of Eri's Rewind, he keeps doing this whenever his Berserk Buttons are pressed too hard. This ends up burning up his remaining time without him really being able to do much with it.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: This is his favorite tactic for inflicting psychological damage on his opponents. Nana Shimura, All Might and Izuku are the premier examples as he set up extensive scenarios purely for maximum psychological damage against them all personally. It's implied this is because Kudo wound up turning the tactic on him by accident, reminding him to his face of his Accidental Murder of Yoichi, which emotionally wounded All For One to the point of tears, thus leaving him aware of how devastating a tactic it could be.
• That Man Is Dead: An exceptionally rare instance of not saying it for himself, but on behalf of Shigaraki due to his attempted Split-Personality Merge with him. He is so narcissistic that his vestige tries to speak for Shigaraki while in his body and insist the young man is well and truly gone. Mirio calls him out on his bluff immediately, prompting Izuku to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle that further tears apart their merger.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: In his prime form, he can be seen as handsome, but still relatively ordinary-looking.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: He leaves a mocking recording for the heroes when they try to follow Lady Nagant's information to find him in a false location, predicting several of their responses in his dialogue. He lampshades that one of his favorite hobbies is predicting and accurately reading people well ahead of time and acting in accordance to make them dance to his tune.
• This Cannot Be!: At his core, All For One is so narcissistic that he simply can't comprehend the possibility he might genuinely suffer an actual loss or set back, or bare to admit he did if there's some excuse he can make to avoid it. As such, his default reaction to any set back or loss he suffers is disbelief it could happen at all, causing a rapid-fire string of these to occur as the Final Battle steadily turns against him, eventually falling into delusional denial of reality. When he finally claims the "Perfected Demon lord" self he envisioned after opportunistically stealing control from Tomura at the tail end of his fight with Izuku, he's utterly appalled by the irreparable damage done to both his body and One For All, forced to sincerely admit this state of affairs is an total loss for him and focused on immediately avenging himself on Izuku, mainly out of disgust at the thought of such an "absolute nobody" damaging the Demon Lord to this extent.
• Too Clever by Half: One of All For One's biggest weaknesses is while he is extremely competent a planner and can puppet things very effectively, he believes he's impossible to fool and at least one of his schemes will succeed no matter what. He's also not very good at adapting to other people's character growth and pretty much incapable of predicting it but is oblivious to this flaw. As a result, the heroes' plan to lure him into a trap actually succeeding takes him entirely off guard and he doesn't even understand how it happened.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: According to Aoyama, this is at least part of his endgame: spread social instability and anarchy to increase villain activity and create a world where every nation is struggling to survive, then use his amassed Quirks to take advantage and take over. All For One admits it's not completely accurate, but close enough.
• Took a Level in Badass: As he self-desires to be an "invincible Demon Lord", his overarching goal throughout the series is to self-invoke this on himself after his defeat to All Might, coming back more powerful than ever before to nullify the chance of any defeat in the future.
  • He plans to do this through Tomura by turning him into the 'perfect Demon Lord', becoming physically strong enough to handle the full scope of his stockpiled Quirks and motivated enough through sheer hatred that the vestige of himself attached to his original Quirk can subsume Tomura's personality and effectively be 'reborn' into a stronger body that can additionally channel enough emotional willpower to overcome One For All, becoming otherwise unbeatable as a result. He even considers his original body and self as an Expendable Clone compared to this version of himself, as said 'vessel' is incapable of achieving his desires anymore.
  • When his original self is fatally injured fighting Endeavor, he activates Eri's Rewind Quirk to undo the damage in lieu of a proper Healing Factor, which additionally also reverts him back to the prime of health before he suffered his Game-Breaking Injury and enables him to unleash more strength than he could before with his damaged body. Additionally, the energy also renders him effectively invulnerable, restoring his body even from getting smashed into pieces, with the only downside being that it will inevitably subject him to Death by De-aging. Thanks to his lengthy lifespan however, this works as an Hour of Power, and his Psychic Link to Tomura even allows him to unleash levels of power that physically destroy his body before Rewind undoes the damage. However, Hawks also notes that the energy also renders any Heteromorph-type Quirks All For One possesses into an infantile state, limiting his available Quirks to use.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth:
  • When he fights the American heroine, Star and Stripe, he succeeds in managing to kill her and take her Quirk, New Order. But before he did, she placed one more order for her Quirk: to rebel against all Quirks. As soon as he absorbed it, New Order starts to destroy his Quirks and tear up his body from the inside and he soon frantically tries to get rid of it before it kills him completely.
  • He underestimated Tomura's cunning and mental tenacity, with his protege taking advantage of the damage inflicted on their shared body to usurp control from him during the Final Battle, and additionally destroy his vestige for good to prevent further takeovers.
  • Despite his plan relying on using Tomura's hatred in order to overcome the willpower of the One For All both All For One and his vestige inside Tomura slowly get overwhelmed by the unfamiliar emotions they are forced to experience. Not only does this lead to All For One allowing his emotions to start overriding his common sense, such as going out of his way to fight All Might when he could have just as easily ignored him, but it leads directly to his defeat when his final desperate attempt to kill Bakugo causes his control of his stolen powers to slip away turning All For One into a massive target. The Hawks vestige even mockingly notes that in the end it was All For One that was swallowed up by Shigaraki, not the other way around.
• Touch of Death: His ability to steal Quirks is basically this, as it's basically an Instant-Win Condition against an opponent with a Quirk. Deconstructed, as it's repeatedly shown his reliance on this has left him at a loss of what to do against an opponent who it doesn't work on and with abyssmal close combat skills.
• Tough Love: He locked his brother in a safe when he wouldn't join him and forced a stockpiling Quirk upon him to convince him to join him. He might have been manipulating Yoichi out of his pure ego but in All For One's eyes he was also helping Yoichi become stronger even though he had to be rough and abusive with him. This backfired as it led to the birth of the power that would cause his downfall: One For All. Though it must be mentioned that the younger one was opposing him at that time, so it's unknown how he would've reacted if the younger one joined him or tried to find a middle ground.
• Troll: All For One truly is a Classic Villain and extremely intimidating, so much so that he induces visions of death in most who cross paths with him. Yet he's also a smug, taunting jackass whose greatest power isn't even his ability to steal Quirks but rather how he gets under his opponent's skin, and it's evidently his greatest joy in life. He's close to breaking out into a jig when he realizes his new main target is Izuku. He even states outright that he defines how successful one is as a villain by how reviled they are by others, and his grand ambition since childhood has been to elevate himself to being somebody universally Hated by All across the world.
• The Unapologetic: He knows he's evil and that everything he does causes death and destruction. He just thinks it's really cool being the bad guy. He even goes the extra mile of flaunting this attitude and rubbing it in the faces of everybody who faces him, especially if they have personal beef with him, just to upset them and get under their skin. He even gloats that he's so proud of his despicableness because it inspires rejection and animosity from others, as he considers that the hallmark by which a successful villain is measured, and believes that "unpleasant experiences leave a bigger impact" ensuring nobody will ever forget about him.
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • All For One's such an egomaniac that he has difficulty truly seeing anyone as a genuine threat. He's pretty much written off Izuku as a threat, confident he'll be able to kill him before he reaches his potential. Hawks points out that, being The psychopath, All For One is fundamentally incapable of being emotionally invested in things like a normal person.
  • His Vestige inside of Tomura shares this flaw, seeing the heroes who aren't Izuku as little more than distractions. As with the original All For One, this causes him to leave himself open to attacks that he easily could have avoided and taking his eyes off of the heroes.
• Undignified Death: The Final Battle becomes a long, drawn-out Humiliation Conga as the original All For One suffers these multiple times from various parties, forced to "cheat" in order to avoid his death and becoming more and more undignified the more he denies that their efforts actually inconvenienced him. By the end, he's reduced to a naked infant who can't even speak his delusional ravings properly and dies crying out in denial to the very end.
• The Unfettered: Just as All Might is The Fettered, All For One is the complete opposite. There is very little, All For One wouldn't do in order to succeed in his goals. Humiliating the Hero Society is but a cherry on the cake of evil, he has installed. Even if he was to fail, Tomura will continue his legacy anyway. A brilliant masterstroke in his eyes.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • In contrast to All Might, who trained for years to learn how to master his Quirk, All For One is not a refined fighter and his fighting style basically boils down to "mash together a bunch of powerful Quirks, blast the enemy and hope they die in one hit". That said, the incredibly clever and out-of-the-box ways he can learn to combine stolen Quirks show that this is still a very, very bad thing. This also serves as a thematic element to their final fight; All For One values strength and raw power, hoarding it for himself, while All Might gave up his power but is using the remaining shards of it to fight him.
  • All For One doesn't seem to have much skill, if any, in hand-to-hand combat. As a result, the few melee attacks he actually makes tend to be huge power attacks with no real technique behind them. Even the Quirkless All Might makes a fool of him using Powered Armor to fight close-range, whilst mocking how piss-poor his performance is for a "Demon Lord"
• Unperson: Whilst initially he was presented as an unquantifiable figure of menace with unclear goals, powers and no stated personality beyond being Japan's old Shadow Dictator seeking to make a comeback, as time goes on, the narrative gradually strips away the aura of grandeur he cultivates to reveal that behind the mask of the imposing villain, there's not much more to him. He has no 'normal' life or civilian identity outside that of a Supervillain, his only name is that of his Quirk's, and his present-day enemies don't know anything about the fearsome figure he used to be, considering him an unwanted remnant of history obsessed with his Glory Days. His final words show that he sincerely believed becoming the worst villain in the world would ensure nobody would forever forget his existence, only to achieve the opposite result in the end.
• Victory Is Boring: For all his talks about ruling the world as the great Demon Lord, the vestige of All For One admits that world domination is pointless and empty without Yoichi by his side, and goes into a state of pure boredom as he prepares to do his final victory out of obligation for the Demon Lord's reputation.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Deconstructed: All For One is used to being the one who controls everything and the heroes having to react, allowing him to plan for what they're going to do. And for most of the series, he's right...but that leaves him assured everything will always go this way. He's kept completely off guard when the heroes subvert this by having come up with a complex, multilayered plan and it's All For One who can only react to what's happening, as all his plans have been left in shambles. Because he's so used to being the puppetmaster controlling everything, All For One can't react properly.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: The cruel irony behind this trope is that All For One tries desparately to avert it, realizing his body is too weak to keep up with Quirk singularity. To do this, he has Shigaraki undergo a bunch of Character Development and Level Grinding instead to then inhabit his body and soul full time and rule the world. Yet the issue is that All For One takes zero effort to ever train by himself or adequately reflect on his personal shortcomings. He keeps making the same mistakes believing that somebody else doing all the work for him means he can still reap the benefits if he twists the narrative enough. Instead, his lack of humility earns him a full blown Humiliation Conga which triggers multiple full-blown meltdowns, showing he's just a Psychopathic Manchild who got lucky with his Quirk and ended up with a God complex as a result.
• Villain Teleportation: Like Kurogiri, he has a "Warping" Quirk that lets him produce a black liquid that teleports people place to place. However, it's a relatively new Quirk and it has several drawbacks. One, he can only warp things to and from his current location and not to specific coordinates, though with focus, he can warp matter to and from someone he has a close relationship with, like Shigaraki. The heroes realize that it's considerably worse than Kurogiri's, having far shorter range and he can't teleport himself.
• Villainous Breakdown: Suffers several of these over the course of the series' final arcs as the heroes begin turning the tables on him. By the time he finally reaches Izuku, what composure and Mask of Sanity he had left is completely gone. His normal smirk is replaced with a completely psychotic and unhinged expressions and Creepy Shadowed Undereyes. His normal mocking confidence has also given way to him screaming all of his dialog and even the font being distorted.
  All For One: What are you SMILING ABOUT?!
• Villainous Friendship: He's shown to have this with Dr. Garaki, having been shown to treat the Doctor as an equal and in one flashback being considerate enough to hold an umbrella for his much shorter subordinate during a rainy night. He even thanks the doctor from the bottom of his heart, going so far as to call him his friend. This is especially notable considering hows he treats everyone else as lesser beings at worst, and extensions of himself, like Shigaraki and Yoichi, at best.
• Villains Never Lie: As manipulative as he is, All For One prefers not to lie to anyone, even his enemies and especially if it concerns an Awful Truth, simply out of delight with them trying to deny the awful revelations whilst he's being completely honest and forthright with them. When he tells All Might of Tomura's true lineage, the latter accuses him of lying, but All For One retorts that it is the truth and it is something he would do. Lady Nagant was convinced to aid him in capturing Izuku because of this, out of her sheer disillusionment with the Hero system after all the Dirty Business she performed over the years for it and sick of all the lies that were fed to the public, but unfortunately for her, 'doesn't lie' does not mean All For One still isn't manipulative, deceitful and callous towards others. However, if he's desperate, he will resort to bold-faced lies in order to keep any kind of advantage he can.
• Villains Want Mercy: Displays his cowardice by begging Endeavor not to roast him alive at the crux of their battle. Endeavor wisely doesn't listen. Though it ends up all for naught anyway, as All For One uses his copy of Rewind to temporarily restore himself back to his prime and take out as many villains as he can for Shigaraki's sake. Or rather, his own sake.
• Villain Protagonist: Invoked: All For One believes the world revolves around him, outright saying that it's the story of how he became the greatest demon king after wishing to become an all powerful demon king like the villain of a manga. This highlights his contrasts to Izuku, the actual protagonist of the manga who narrates the same thing about becoming the greatest hero at the start.
  All For One: This will be the story of how I become the greatest demon lord of all!
• Villain with Good Publicity: In the past, he was seen as a hero due to his stealing the Quirks of those who victimized others. This turned out to just be a ploy for him to attract loyal followers.
• Villain Override: Attempted on Shigaraki once he'd taken the All For One Quirk. His seemingly single minded drive to steal the One For All and the way he impulsively referred to Midoriya as "little brother" implied All For One was influencing him. That said, Shigaraki himself started resisting this influence. In Chapter 285, his lingering consciousness takes control of Shigaraki's body to save him from a surprise attack from Endeavor. In Chapter 295, All For One completely takes over Shigaraki's body and uses that opportunity to escape from the Heroes with the Near High-End Nomus.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Initially, he appears in the story through a bright computer monitor.
• Weaponized Teleportation: During his fight with All Might, he uses a warping Quirk to teleport Gran Torino into the path of All Might's attack like a human shield.
• What Is This Feeling?: Deconstructed. All For One believes that he doesn't have any emotions due to his psychopathy, and exults in this as a sign of superiority over "ordinary" humans, as he's therefore untroubled by guilt or remorse for his actions. However, whilst his emotional maturity is stunted, he does have them, and his views lead to him categorically self-denying this fact whenever something manages to evoke a genuine emotional response from him, leaving him perplexed why he's reacting this way and trying to self-justify it to himself. This inability to self-reflect or understand himself leads to him acting unpragmatically and increasingly erratic as he's thwarted time and again, from refusing to repeat his "mistake" with Yoichi even as the Torch Bearers become stronger, and falling for the heroes' delaying tactics time and again out of angry spite at their defiance.
• White Hair, Black Heart: In the past, All For One had white hair and he's definitely one of the most evil characters in the story.
• Why Can't I Hate You?: Zigzagged, All For One appears to not actually hate most of his foes due to his psychopathy, as he sees them as mere tools at best, filler characters at worst. Hawks speculates that the entire reason he took on Tomura was because he himself lacks the hatred necessary to steal One For All from the current possessor of One for All. Kudo and eventually Bakugo are exceptions, however: being a psychopath, All For One's hatred for them is so primal and out-of-control that he can't even process it fully, doing senseless actions like killing Kudo's entire bloodline, or wasting all of his energy on one last attempt on Bakugo's life, just because he hates them that much.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: All For One's obsession with possessing the one Quirk that remains ever-defiant of his control means he'd rather invest exhaustive amounts of time and effort into finding a way to subdue it rather than destroy it.
• Why Won't You Die?: It's implied this trope has become his personal Trauma Button, and whenever he's facing a tenacious hero that keeps fighting back regardless of the odds, determined to defeat/kill him no matter what, he muses on his near-fatal defeat at All Might's hands and how 'wounded heroes are the scariest'. He outright says he suffered nightmares about All Might tenaciously pursuing him with his guts hanging out, with it being implied that he let his guard down after landing what he thought was a victory blow and still struggles to deal with how the tables turned against him in an instant, which informs his cautious attitude when facing opponents that can seriously pressure him. He never fights fair and attempts to stack the deck against his opponent as much as he can to ensure the chances of a similar surprise loss are as minimal as possible.
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks: This, paired with Lack of Empathy pretty much forms All For One's reason to become a supervillain.
• With My Hands Tied: As their final fight continues, All For One taunts All might that he's well aware of his victory conditions, and so he won't both using all his power to destroy a Quirkless opponent like him, calling it using "power-saver mode" against him.
• Windows of the Soul: The narration points out that his eyes have been clouded over from birth, as if covered by thin membranes. As a result, they do not reflect anybody else, symbolising his absolute inability to emphasise with others, befitting his twisted, heartless, and self-centred nature. Losing his oculars to All Might just made the symbolism of him as a soulless monster even more blatant if anything.
• The Worf Effect: Discussed. When Jiro and Tokoyami step in to aid Hawks during his fight once All For One incapacitates Endeavor, he calls them the "gnats that swarm around One For All", and mockingly notes that the situation reminds him of the comic books he used to read, where 'jobber characters' existed only to die at the hands of the demon lord and showcase his power. Jiro tells him to save that line until he's actually beaten them, and ultimately All For One suffers a gradual humiliating series of minor defeats against the heroes instead.
• World's Strongest Man: His Quirk is the most powerful one in the series. All For One himself remained unchallenged for over a century until the advent of All Might. By the present day however, the fact his wounds and crippling at All Might's hands mean that he no longer is this, informs much of the plot. All For One embarks on a complex scheme to turn Tomura into his literal 'next me' in preparation for gaining the ability to claim his former strength and more through the body of a younger, more physically- enhanced individual capable of withstanding the strain of his accumulated abilities without risk of a Superpower Meltdown, along with merging with "Yoichi" to succeed in claiming the role for good as a near god-like being that will then Take Over the World. He even becomes dismissive of his weakened original self after this plan is underway, considering (or at least wanting himself and the heroes to think he does) his old body fully expendable once it became incapable of achieving his ambitions.
• Worth It: The Final Battle illustrates that there are three things that All For One will devote every means at his disposal to achieving, no matter the extensive time required, the unethical means, or how short-sighted they may prove to be in the long term. Absorbing One For All to "reunite" with Yoichi, and ensure he is never again taken away from him again, becoming an immortal Demon king who rules over all other villains by virtue of being Hated by All and never, ever, losing.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Generally Zigzagged all over the place. All For One is capable of acknowledging the heroes who oppose him as skilled and talented in their own right, but he considers himself an existence far beyond ordinary humans. He looks upon people mainly as a container for their Quirks, and is implied to be more intrigued with their powers than the people who hold them. It transpires that he's willing to acknowledge individuals in a backhanded way as this, but only as a taunt whenever he's facing 'lesser' heroes trying to fight him in a group. This is another aspect of his massive ego, as it's more 'appropriate' for the Demon lord to struggle against powerful individuals, but not mere 'side characters', which contributes to his multiple cases of Underestimating Badassery, constantly misguiding his opponents based on his comic-book belief that he only has one true opponent.
  • He pointedly averts this attitude against Izuku, deriding him as an Inadequate Inheritor of his brother's power both because it undermines his Heroic Willpower and increases his chances of stealing One For All, but also because he sincerely believes that the Quirkless Izuku has no value as an individual. When his Vestige self finally claims full control of his "Perfected Demon Lord" self, he's galled at the fact it's suffered irreparable damage thanks to Izuku's efforts against Tomura, and filled with Ice-cold fury at the fact that Yoichi's vestige was destroyed during the conflict, unable to stand the thought of being dealt such an inviolable defeat at the hands of a mere "absolute nobody".
• Would Hurt a Child: The manga does not shy away from highlighting his ruthlessness against its main child protagonists, especially given his extreme age and experience advantage over them. A significant amount of the Final Battle is devoted to keeping him away from Izuku, because All For One's psychological tactics would be devastatingly effective against the empathetic young man.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Played With. It's actually because he's Genre Savvy that he falls into this, All For One having read a lot of superhero comic books in his youth and having the time of his life turning the 'fantasy into reality' by using his powers to become a real-life supervillain. However, his same love of, and intimate understanding of the same tropes from the comics mean that he now believes the world they're in ascribes to the same rules of those comics, and that he cannot be meaningfully challenged by anybody that isn't a holder of One For All. Instead, during the Final Battle he is paired up against 'extra' characters who manage to severely inconvenience him and damage his life-support mask, because the world he's in ascribes to realistic outcomes, thus there is no narrative Plot Armor that will guarantee his invincibility.
• Xanatos Speed Chess:
  • Something of a specialty of his. All For One's long life grants him the time to cultivate multiple contingencies for every possible circumstance, and pawns who can carry them out. And he always keeps all of them in effect until he has no further need for them. On a grand scale, his scheme to steal One For All is the foremost example of this as it's hinted he's initiated his strategies to culminate at a time when Izuku is nowhere near ready to handle them. All For One could've waited another five years for Tomura to better develop into his 'Next Me' with a greater synchronization between them, but All Might transferring his power forced his hand. By then Izuku would be too strong and confident to risk it. Thus, Izuku's being targeted when he's the most vulnerable to having One For All stolen from him.
  • Deconstructed in the final arc: All For One is very good at coming up with backup plans for his schemes and adapting to x-factors if he has time to react...but he has zero capacity to come up with plans on the fly precisely because he's so used to his plans working as he predicted. Taking him off guard was possible because All For One genuinely believed he'd planned for everything, and they just let him keep thinking that. When the heroes take him off guard and all his backup plans are countered, All For One can only throw angry, frustrated attempts at psychological warfare without his usual smug confidence. The Vestige of him inside Tomura has no real response to learning his and Tomura's Fusion Dance wasn't as complete as he'd believed outside of 'try to just do what I was doing faster' and trying to ignore the other heroes instead of seeing them as a threat.
• Yandere: A platonic, but no less disturbing, one for his brother, Yoichi. One for All considered his little brother the most prized possession life had gifted him, and, even though he abused and took everything from Yoichi, his desperate grip for his brother was so great that, after the villain killed his own brother in an impulsive act of jealous rage, he suffered the only real emotional devastation in his entire life. For nearly a century, All for One really only had a single drive keeping him going even after facing death once: stealing One for All, partially for its immense power, but ultimately to reclaim Yoichi. At the end of his life, when reduced to a baby, All for One admits to himself that he needs Yoichi, or else everything he's done and plans to do will be for nothing.
• You Are Too Late:
  • He arrives to the final confrontation believing that he's the one springing the trap. As Izuku points out, All For One thinks he'd be invoking this on anyone trying to help him because Search shows everyone is miles away...but it's the other way around: it's too late for All For One because the heroes' trap sprung the moment he appeared in person.
  • As the situation keeps turning worse and worse for him, culminating in his original body being forced to temporarily stave off getting killed through Eri's Rewind, he consoles himself that as long as he can get his original self back to UA and help his 'Next Me' assimilate One for All, he'll still ultimately win in the end. Shortly afterwards, the damage Izuku has done to Tomura's body enables him to forcibly re-assert control from All For One's vestige, violently ripping it apart. Furthermore, he makes it clear that he will not let his Master use him as his personal weapon, and intends to destroy One For All to assert his will. All For One's centuries-long plan to steal his brother's Quirk has become an impossibility, and he is completely unaware of it.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: All Might confronts him about this after he's imprisoned in Tartarus. He questions him about the death and misery he'd caused over generations, asking him point-plank Was It Really Worth It? after he'd apparently been defeated for good. All For One mocks him, claiming All Might wouldn't be able to understand his motives. He admits that the reason he did everything was simply because he wanted to be the Lord of Evil. He had the power to achieve his dreams and put his efforts into it because he could. All For One even fires back that he cannot comprehend All Might's drive to help others at his own expense.
• You Don't Look Like You: Before confronting him in a Suit of Powered Armor, All Might ruminates that their impending clash is likely the vision Nighteye foresaw of his destined demise in the line of Duty. He realises that Nighteye called his opponent "a villain" rather than his Arch-Enemy because the Rewind energy had physically restored All For One to his youth, and his former sidekick didn't realise the young man in his vision was the Symbol of Evil himself.
• You Have Failed Me: He causes Lady Nagant to explode after her loss to Midoriya. It's Downplayed however, as it's implied that he expected her to fail, and likely wanted to use her to mock Izuku's ideals.
• You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: He mocks the assembled heroes with this when they finally do away with fighting him with a few Strong and Skilled heroes and start attacking en masse with every long-range Quirk they have. He specifically taunts the younger heroes, calling them ignorant of how fearsome he used to be. Isana takes the wind out of his tirade by confirming that he's absolutely correct, they don't know who he is, because history classes don't talk about him personally even as they teach the downside of the 'Dark Age of Quirks' he ruled over. This gets under All For One's skin.
• Your Head Asplode: Implied to be what All Might did to him in their decisive battle five years prior to chapter 1, and only survived through Garaki's help. The only parts of his head that aren't scar tissue are his mouth and jaw, allowing him to still flash his trademark Slasher Smile.
• Zerg Rush: Discussed and Defied. When splitting up opponents for the Final Battle, it's pointed out that attempting a human wave attack on him would not only deprive the heroes of valuable fighters, but give him a power boost of new Quirks instead. Therefore, they instead aim to fight him with the smallest number of opponents possible, but with the highest skillset.

---

"This... is my story! Get out of my way! You side character! You nobody!"

---