History ComicBook / Mephisto

Mephisto is responsible for a number of evil acts, including capturing and holding the soul of Cynthia Von Doom – the mother of ComicBook/DoctorDoom — until Doctor Strange and Doom free her to ascend to heaven. He was jealous of the worship of the fire demon Zarathos, so, posing as Satan, Mephisto creates the Ghost Rider by bonding Zarathos to Johnny Blaze. In one story where he battled Thor, he was shown to have various historical villains in his realm, such as Adolf Hitler, Blackbeard, and Attila the Hun. He has also created his 'son' Blackheart, a demonic entity that plagues many of Earth's heroes. And naturally, it's almost impossible to forget his actions in ''ComicBook/OneMoreDay''.

Mephisto is responsible for a number of evil acts, including capturing and holding the soul of Cynthia Von Doom – the mother of ComicBook/DoctorDoom — until Doctor Strange and Doom free her to ascend to heaven. He was jealous of the worship of the fire demon Zarathos, so, posing as Satan, Mephisto creates the Ghost Rider by bonding Zarathos to Johnny Blaze. In one story where he battled Thor, he was shown to have various historical villains in his realm, such as Adolf Hitler, Blackbeard, and Attila the Hun. He has also created his 'son' Blackheart, a demonic entity that plagues many of Earth's heroes. And naturally it is impossible to forget his actions in ''ComicBook/OneMoreDay''.

* ActuallyADoombot: He has sometimes been impersonated by lesser demons who imitate his form. Such demons are defeated far more easily than the virtually invincible Mephisto.

* {{Archenemy}}: To ComicBook/GhostRider, ComicBook/BlackPanther and ComicBook/SilverSurfer (he see the Surfer's pure soul as the greatest prize imaginable). Fighting him also falls under the jurisdiction of ComicBook/DoctorStrange. But by this point there are very few heroes he hasn't screwed around with.

* BigRedDevil: THE big red devil of the Marvel universe.
* CardCarryingVillain: He is evil and proud of it, sometimes going as far as to claim to be the origin of evil.

* TheChessMaster: He will often allow himself to be beaten if he can use the event to give a greater enemy more grief down the line.

* DemonLordsAndArchdevils: He is only one of a number of powerful and rival demon Hell Lords, others being the likes of Thog and Sataanish. He is generally depicted as the strongest of them all, though not by a significant standard.
* DemotedToDragon: Willingly submits himself as Thanos' servant following the latter's acquisition of the Infinity Gems, and acts is his adviser for much of the storyline. Ultimately, though, he's TheStarscream.

* EnemyMine: He is willing to help the Ghost Riders against common threats, though he rarely gets involved directly.

** This is why no one should ever make a deal with him. He absolutely ''loves'' overly specific interpretations of deals that fuck over the other party as much as possible while still technically being within the terms.
** Such when he pits Blaze and Zarathos against Asmodeus, saying they would be freed from each other if they managed to outrace him but if they weren't fast enough to win they'd have to serve Asmodeus. Ghost Rider wins the race but Mephisto finds some reason to back out of the deal. Ghost Rider was really bait to get his rival to accept a small fine, Mephisto might consider being blasted into non existence "small" (see FightingAShadow below) but it probably wasn't what Asmodeus had in mind.
** Had the tables turned and this used against him by Thanos. He offered to help in one of the Thanos's quests in exchange for a Cosmic Cube. Once it was over, Thanos gave him a Cube and Mephisto immediately tried to use it to obliterate Thanos. Turns out that Cube's power had already been drained and it was useless. Thanos pointed out he never specified a functional Cosmic Cube and that even devils should be careful when making deals with the Mad Titan. Needless to say, Mephisto was not pleased.
* FauxAffablyEvil: He's usually polite, or at worst, affably snarky - and, of course, he is exceptionally charming when he wants to be. But it never does to forget that he is, in fact, evil.
* FightingAShadow: He will always come back as long as his dimension is still around. A powered up Alejandra came close to killing him for real.

* GoodHurtsEvil: He is the trope image.

* JackassGenie: He is not remotely trustworthy except that he is magically bound to technically fulfil the terms of his agreements (at least, those agreements pertaining to souls). He ''will'' use LoopholeAbuse to either ensure that he benefits the most or, and far more likely, that the recipient [[EvilIsPetty will have whatever they got out of the deal ruined for them.]]
* JerkassGods: Powerful enough to convincingly pass for a deity of sorts, and he's also a total asshole who loves to fuck people over for absolutely no good reason.
* JokerImmunity: On top of being immortal, even when he has seemingly been destroy, he still comes back.
* TheJuggernaut: Mephisto almost never loses, regardless of whether or not his fighting inside his realm. The only reason heroes survive a meeting with him most of the time is because he wants to claim their souls, and killing them would leave their souls beyond his reach.

* LargeAndInCharge: He is sometimes depicted as being as tall as a small building, big enough to easily pick human-sized characters up with one hand. Thanks to VoluntaryShapeshifting he can appear as big or small as he wants, but this is often implied to be his ''true'' size, or close enough to it.
* LargeHam: Depending on his mood, a stand case being a fight with Galactus where Mephisto managed to match him in HamToHamCombat.
* LegionsOfHell: Among his many servants, they are not used very much surprisingly. Then again, he is ''far'' more powerful than most of them anyway.

* ManipulativeBastard: Despite his vast power and armies, he prefers guile. For example, he convinced Spider-Man of all people to make a deal with him, and a ''Silver Surfer'' storyline had him goad the Surfer into apparently killing him so he'd have to live with the guilt and become impure, while the real Mephisto was unharmed.
* MultipleChoicePast: Writers can't seem to agree on exactly what he is or where he came from; since he is The Prince of Lies, this has been explained as Mephisto either not knowing himself and / or Mephisto making stuff up to better confuse people.

* MediumAwareness: In ''Invincible Iron Man'' #12 he pauses a battle between himself, Doctor Strange, and Victor von Doom to complain to the reader of the comic.

* OurSoulsAreDifferent: He likes to stick the souls he gets into the bodies of demons who follow him. The process was reversed for his rival Zarathos. On many other occasions he is seen [[ToServeMan eating and drinking]] them.
* PhysicalGod: Within his own dimension. Exactly ''how'' powerful he is comes down to the old DependingOnTheWriter but two of his best showings are fighting ComicBook/{{Galactus}} to a near-stalemate and casually destroying an entire galaxy from his ''chair''. Both are older examples and both, again, occurred while he was in his native dimension. Outside it, while he is still quite powerful and always very dangerous, he is nowhere near as strong as he normally would be.

* RageAgainstTheHeavens: He occasionally speaks of being at war with God himself and claims that many of his actions are done to spite Him. Its not clear if he is genuinely serious about this (regardless of whether he is actually the Devil or not- being a demon might be enough) or if this is just him playing up his Satan image for effect.
* RealityWarper: His chief power, though the exact strength of it varies. Within his own realm he is virtually TheOmnipotent.
* RoguesGalleryTransplant: Originally started out as a villain of the ''ComicBook/SilverSurfer''. But he's not exclusively a Ghost Rider villain either. He also often pops up as a ComicBook/BlackPanther nemesis, and more generally he has crossed paths with nearly every important Marvel hero at one point or another. He could even count as an enemy of many ''villains'', including Doctor Doom.
* SatanicArchetype: He's not ''the'' Satan; there are many wannabes who have equal claim to that title (equally invalid claims) but Mephisto is generally the most used stand in with only one or two people introduced so far who are ''maybe'' more legit. His name comes from Mephistopheles, a demon in Germain literature who was a ''reluctant'' servant of the devil.

** Sort of. While he's certainly very, very powerful and competent and has a not-insignificant amount of major accomplishments to his name, he also likes to act like he's a far bigger deal than he actually is, as beings like Chthon, Set, and Dormammu greatly dwarf him in power (unless he is in the confines of his own realm, but they aren't dependent on that) and potential reach (he generally accomplishes far more than they do, but that's because they're either locked away or act on a far larger scale, which understandably takes more time and effort).
** This is partly strategy, however- he makes himself out to be the Ultimate Evil because that works to his advantage, making his enemies and victims fear him more as well as spreading misinformation about who and what he really is (if he even knows himself). Still arguably counts as this since he's rarely quite as successful or menacing as you'd think a genuinely powerful demon like him should be. Then again, he is ''also'' wont to appear ''weaker'' than he is, so maybe he's playing a long-game. Regardless, he is ''never'' one to be underestimated.

* StupidEvil: A defining trait of his. Yeah, he always fulfills his part of a deal because he is bound by oath. That being said, he will ''always'' fulfill it to the letter and nothing more while going out of his way to screw over the other party as much as he can within the confines of the oath, and if the terms of a deal don't really allow him to do that much to fuck someone or he really feels like being a dick, he'll just rob them of everything that they gained from the deal somewhere down the line. He has no reason for doing any of this, either; "just felt like being an asshole" is about as deep as his rationale gets. Needless to say, it tends to come back to bite him in the ass, but since he's virtually impossible to destroy and has a seemingly neverending supply of new entrants for pacts, "don't shit where you eat" has never really crossed his mind.

* VillainousWidowsPeak: Considering he can look like whatever he wants one would think he would at least project the image of better hair. His is not as bad as Lilith's though.
* VoluntaryShapeshifting: He can and does take several forms, though his favourite seems to be a stereotypical BigRedDevil (well, tall and thin at least). Its implied that his real form is a large red lizard...[[EldritchAbomination thing]]... that he sometimes shows up as, though there is variation there as well as sometimes it is thin, and sometimes it is an obese FatBastard. Likewise, and regardless of his form, sometimes he is human size and sometimes he is [[LargeAndInCharge several stories tall.]] He also has no qualms about [[GenderBender changing his gender.]]

Mephisto is a Franchise/MarvelUniverse character created by writer Creator/StanLee and artist John Buscema. He first appeared in ''The Silver Surfer #3'' (Dec. 1968). Based on Mephistopheles – a demon character from the {{Faust}} legend, who often went by Mephisto as a nickname.

* ManipulativeBastard: Despite his vast power and armies, he prefers guile. For example, he convinced Spider-Man of all people to make a deal with him.

* AffablyEvil: He's usually polite, or at worst, affably snarky - and, of course, he is exceptionally charming when he wants to be. But it never does to forget that he is, in fact, evil.

* {{Retcon}}: Johnny Blaze's origin has become a bit of clusterfuck in regards to whether it was Mephisto, Satan[=/=]Lucifer, Zadkiel or a combination of the three who orchestrated the Ghost Rider deal with him. That all three are compulsive liars doesn't help.

* ExactWords: This is why no one should ever make a deal with him. He absolutely ''loves'' overly specific interpretations of deals that fuck over the other party as much as possible while still technically being within the terms.

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler: In ''Comicbook/SpiderManDeadpool''; he hasn't forgotten his last interaction with Spider-Man and now seeks to corrupt his soul.]]

* SmugSnake: Sort of. While he's certainly very, very powerful and competent and has a not-insignificant amount of major accomplishments to his name, he also likes to act like he's a far bigger deal than he actually is, as beings like Chthon, Set, and Dormammu greatly dwarf him in power (unless he is in the confines of his own realm, but they aren't dependent on that) and potential reach (he generally accomplishes far more than they do, but that's because they're either locked away or act on a far larger scale, which understandably takes more time and effort).

* ChessWithDeath: He's willing to play games and engage in competitions for souls, with one of the more mundane instances of this being when he wagered a golden violin to an alien if the fellow could beat him in a musical duel. [[spoiler:Mephisto lost. ''[[https://abload.de/img/6w4lpn.jpg Badly]]''.]]

* SmugSnake: Sort of. While he's certainly very, very powerful and competent and has a not-insignificant amount of major accomplishments to his name, he also likes to act like he's a far bigger deal than he actually is, as beings like Chthon, Set, and Dormammu greatly dwarf him in power (uness heis in the confines of his own realm, but even then they are still stronger and aren't dependent on that) and potential reach (he generally accomplishes far more than they do, but that's because they're either locked away or act on a far larger scale, which understandably takes more time and effort).

* AbusiveParents: Though given his kids are, like him, both invincible and pure evil, this might cross into HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood. He's still a gigantic dick to them, very purposely for the reason of making them ''more'' evil.

* PublicDomainCharacter[: Is either Mephistopheles or [[CaptainErsatz a stand in for him]], depending on who is writing.

* PublicDomainCharacter[=/=]CaptainErsatz: Is either Mephistopheles or a stand in for him, depending on who is writing.

* SmugSnake: Sort of. While he's certainly very, very powerful and competent and has a not-insignificant amount of major accomplishments to his name, he also likes to act like he's a far bigger deal than he actually is, as beings like Chthon, Set, and Dormammu greatly dwarf him in power and potential reach (he generally accomplishes far more than they do, but that's because they're either locked away or act on a far larger scale, which understandably takes more time and effort).

Mephisto is responsible for a number of evil acts, including capturing and holding the soul of Cynthia Von Doom – the mother of ComicBook/DoctorDoom — until Doctor Strange and Doom free her to ascend to heaven. He was jealous of the worship of the fire demon Zarathos, so, posing as Satan, Mephisto creates the Ghost Rider by bonding Zarathos to Johnny Blaze. In one story where he battled Thor, he was shown to have various historical villains in his realm, such as Adolf Hitler, Blackbeard, and Attila the Hun. He has also created his 'son' Blackheart, a demonic entity that plagues many of Earth's heroes. And naturally is impossible forget his actions in ''ComicBook/OneMoreDay''.

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler: In ''Comicbook/SpiderManDeadpool''; her hasn't forgotten his last interaction with Spider-Man and now seeks to corrupt his soul.]]

* WorthyAdversary: In ComicBook/{{JourneyIntoMystery}} he seems to view Loki/Kid Loki as this, and it seems relatively mutual. Both are ''fully'' aware that their apparent cooperation and pseudo-friendship is entirely a façade... but a façade both make use of and appreciate the artistry in maintaining it.

** Had the tables turned and this used against him by [[Thanos]]. He offered to help in one of the Thanos's quests in exchange for a Cosmic Cube. Once it was over, Thanos gave him a Cube and Mephisto immediately tried to use it to obliterate Thanos. Turns out that Cube's power had already been drained and it was useless. Thanos pointed out he never specified a functional Cosmic Cube and that even devils should be careful when making deals with the Mad Titan. Needless to say, Mephisto was not pleased.

Mephisto is responsible for a number of evil acts, including capturing and holding the soul of Cynthia Von Doom – the mother of ComicBook/DoctorDoom — until Doctor Strange and Doom free her to ascend to heaven. He was jealous of the worship of the fire demon Zarathos, so, posing as Satan, Mephisto creates the Ghost Rider by bonding Zarathos to Johnny Blaze. In one story where he battled Thor, he was shown to have various historical villains in his realm, such as Adolf Hitler, Blackbeard, and Attila the Hun. He has also created his 'son' Blackheart, a demonic entity that plagues many of Earth's heroes.

An embodiment of ultimate evil, powerful Hell Lord and Marvel's most common stand in for Satan. He has antagonized just about every hero (from ComicBook/GhostRider to ComicBook/DoctorStrange), but tends to single out those who are especially noble like the ComicBook/SilverSurfer and [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]]. As can be expected, many of the traditional tropes associated with Satan are part of him. His origins are unclear, but it seems that he was not one of the Hell Lords created by Dormammu, and has no ties to him, and though he is not as powerful as the latter he is stronger than perhaps all other Hell Lords under his control.