Characters / My Hero Academia All For One Tropes O To Z

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 (League of Villains [All For One (A-F | G-N | O-Z), 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
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Back to My Hero Academia, My Hero Academia - All For One

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O

• Obviously Evil: Everything about All For One - from his character design to his personality - is fine-tuned to accentuate why he's the Symbol of Evil and one of the most wicked characters in the series. Whilst he didn't indulge in a Super villain costume back when he was in the height of his power— instead preferring to wear either sharp suits or a Badass Longcoat ensemble— when the injuries he endured at All Might's hands forced him to wear a life-support mask into combat, he went out of his way to stylize it into a menacing black skull-like appearance, fitting with how he embraces the role of a villain with glee. He even goes out of his way to get a second similar mask ready when he appears to confront Izuku directly, despite the league having to lie low and apparently lacking a lot of resources following the Hospital raid, apparently just for the sake of appearing suitably menacing and dramatic when confronting his new 'nemesis'.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • He has his first completely genuine, unambiguous one when he realizes that Star and Stripe put a rule in place right before he stole New Order to make it rebel against other quirks. This results in it rampaging through the vestige world, destroying all of the Quirks stockpiled inside Shigaraki. As his Quirk can't actually destroy Quirks, this effectively means vestige All For One is now trapped inside Shigaraki with a rampaging Quirk he can do nothing about and in serious danger of dying if he doesn't transfer it now. Notably, he actually screams 'Crap!'
  • The original All For One has one when he realizes Aoyama and Deku have outplayed him. While he openly remains composed, in his internal monologue, he's progressively taken back when each stage of their plan to take him down goes into effect.
  • His smug attitude gradually gets ground down during the fight with Team Endeavor, getting taken off-guard by the vestiges of his quirks rebelling against him because of him swapping to a copied, and thus weaker, version of his own quirk to further his plans. This leaves him vulnerable and unable to react fast enough to stop the heroes cracking, then shattering his Cool Mask, his expression of shock and disbelief palpable even with his obscured features. His further attempt to regain control of the fight and his image of invincibility is waylaid by Endeavor's return to the fight, being unable to do anything more that spitefully taunt the Number One hero for how his Determinator attitude has only left him maimed and disfigured before Endeavor shuts him up with a flaming punch that leaves him reeling and further damages his Life-Support system inside the mask. When he fails to steal Endeavor's quirk and realises that he's about to get hit with his maximum firepower, all he can do is try to frantically beg him to stop before the blaze char-broils him.
  • The Vestige of himself undergoing a Split-Personality Merge with Tomura is shocked when 'Tenko Shimura' briefly assumes control to throw a childish retort at Mira's claims that Tomura's misanthropy was born from lacking friends growing up, having believed that he'd completely assimilated both their minds into one before the Final Battle, and taken off-guard by the fact that a piece of Tomura still remains separate. As he was reliant of The Power of Hate to facilitate Tomura's merging into himself, 'Tenko's' childhood memories of happier times, compared to the absolute hell 'Tomura' went through after his quirk awakening, means that he can better resist All For One, who literally cannot comprehend the positive emotions that allow Tenko to retain his individuality, and he noticeably grows concerned upon realising that he's still mentally fractured before having to steal One For All in a battle of wills, turning his intent towards killing Bakugo immediately to demoralise Izuku with his corpse before their inevitable clash.
• 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. Notably, finding out that Star and Stripe effectively booby-trapped her Quirk by imposing a rule that would cause it to rebel against other Quirks leaves the normally calm and composed All For One in a state of genuine panic and fury, his usual smile replaced with a twisted scowl as he realizes he's trapped with a rampaging Quirk he can't control and is going to destroy him from the inside out. Even the more composed original All For One isn't smiling anymore.
  • After falling for the heroes' plan to trap him, All For One's typical aura of smugness falls apart. While openly trying to appear mildly annoyed, under the surface he's shown to be frantically trying to reassure himself he's in control. His normal manner of speaking and taunting becomes much more frustrated and angry, showing just how much the heroes caught him flat footed.
  • After Jiro inspires the vestiges to rise up against him, All For One smiles...but it's forced, frustrated smile, showing just how much the heroes have got under his skin by this point.
  • After Tokoyami shatters his mask, All For One starts screaming at the heroes and goes completely berserk almost to the degree of his vestage inside of Tomura and in complete contrast to the composed, confidence he normally radiates. This especially stands out because All For One's shallow emotions means him getting angry at all is a sign something has truly gone off the rails.
• 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.
• One-Winged Angel: During All Might's fight with him, he mutates his arm into a destructive mass of the effects of several powerful Quirks.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: All For One is only known by his villain identity. His true identity is a complete mystery and it takes over two hundred chapters before we get even the smallest detail. This is true even among the holders of One For All, despite the first of them being All For One's brother. All For One's identity has been lost over the years to the point that All Might didn't immediately realize the connection between Tomura Shigaraki and All For One even though it's revealed in Chapter 237 that "Shigaraki" is All For One's surname. This even applies In-Universe to an extent— All Might theories the original All For One went out of his way to avoid confronting Star and Stripe becuase he'd have recognised the term "All For One" as his name, and thus been subject to New Order's abilities. In his own mind, even All For One thinks of the term as his 'true' name, rather than his Quirk's, showing how he embraces every aspect of his supervilliany.
• Orcus on His Throne: Zigzagged and justified opposed to most examples, as All For One is aware of his and Shigaraki's shortcomings and that a head-to-head fight with the heroes is not a guarantee of victory despite their combined might. Early on he prefers to recuperate with his body so weakened and only steps in when he's sure Shigaraki will mature and grow capable of handling his original All For One quirk. After he frees himself from jail, he again prefers to take it slow and wait for Shigaraki to reach full compatibility with his original Quirk before attempting to steal One For All and kill Izuku again. He only ever personally takes to the battlefield if he's set up a situation where his plans will be furthered regardless of his victory or loss, or if he's absolutely confident there's no possibility of him losing, which the heroes exploit in the end by tricking him into thinking that all his plans are proceeding as he envisioned, leading him to walk straight into a trap along with his assembled forces when he tries to strike the final blow on Izuku and steal One For All for good.
• 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.

P-R

• 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. During the Final Battle, inside his Mental World, which showcases his full range of expression underneath his Cool Mask —such as it is— All For One is shown to break out into a wide smile even when he's going This Cannot Be! at the efforts of the vestiges contained within him in fighting against him, inspired by the efforts of a 'side character' like Jiro. This implies that no matter what negative emotions All For One experiences, he habitually defaults to a smile irrespective of how he's truly feeling, just in this case, this smile is visibly more forced and frustrated than he'd otherwise shown before. The smile finally vanishes from his face after Tokoyami manages to shatter his damaged mask into fragments, forcing All For One to recognise that he's actually losing the fight and literally explode into a Villainous Breakdown in denial of that fact. His inner self is shown to be actually screaming in rage as it brutally subdues the attacking vestiges with a feral [[Unstoppable Rage Wrath]] despite his sociopathic nature, showing just how badly the situation is going for him.
• 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.
• Person of Mass Destruction: This guy is capable of completely obliterating multiple city blocks with a single attack.
• Play-Along Prisoner: It's all but stated outright that he can break free from Tartarus at anytime he wants and only stays there because it will force his protégé, Shigaraki, to become independent and develop as a villainous mastermind. And at the end of the Paranormal Liberation War Arc, he finally decides to free himself from Tartarus.
• 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. In some cases, an entirely new Quirk is created from two other Quirks being blended together. This is how "One For All" was formed. 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 it's 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. Despite his lack of emotional depth, he is very skilled at stoking his enemies' Wrath towards him, and even revels in the animosity he invokes in everybody who meets him. 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' Tomura's childhood self and remaining innocence, still exists, able to resist his mental assimilation because of the happier childhood memories he does possess, a possibility All For One was completely blind to. Ironically enough, despite believing it to be superior, All For One's sociopathy means he himself can't actually get invested enough in the conflict to actually hate anybody— and even then, he mockingly invokes this in a roundabout manner to further piss everybody off.
• Power Palms: While it's easy to miss, in the manga, All For One has small holes in the palms of his hands. While not directly stated, it's implied that these are holes are what allow him to steal and give Quirks. This implication is furthered when Shigaraki gains holes in his palms as well after gaining "All For One" for himself. 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 sociopathy 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.
• 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. In Chapter 297, he takes advantage of the Psychic Link created by his body and Shigaraki's to shut down the security system at Tartarus 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.
• Psychopathic Manchild: More outwardly composed and dignified than the usual, but as the manga goes on and his character is explored in depth, it becomes increasingly clear where Shigaraki got his own childishness from at the beignning of the story. As a child, he was enamored with the demon lord from an Isekai manga he read to the point that he ignored the part where the heroes triumphed over said demon lord. When he gained the ability to steal Quirks, he saw it as an opportunity to live out his childhood fantasy of being a demon lord by establishing his own criminal empire. And that fantasy persists well into the present day as he constantly likens himself to being a demon lord and at times seems to sincerely believe he's living in a real-life comic book, coming off as someone who never grew up emotionally. All For One takes an almost childish glee in his villainy and reacts violently to any perceived threat to his image of himself as an all-powerful devil king. In one particular example, when Star and Stripe gives an impassioned speech about how they'll always be someone ready to oppose him, All For One simply declares himself the winner by virtue of being the one still alive at the end, coming off less like a Diabolical Mastermind and more like a petulant child who doesn't want to admit he lost.
• Pyrrhic Victory: His battle with Star and Stripe effectively amounts to this. Though he managed to kill her and remove the biggest obstacle to his plans, it came at the cost of many of his stockpiled Quirks thanks to New Order going on a rampage within his Vestige World. Also, because he had so many Quirks, New Order ended up destroying itself, thus keeping the Quirk he fought so hard to obtain forever out of his reach. On top of that, because he was forced to fight Star while Shigaraki's body was incomplete, the damage from the fight ended up delaying Shigaraki's perfection by a week, giving the heroes more time to prepare for the final battle.
• Rage Breaking Point: When the heroes' plan to enact the Final Battle on their terms goes into motion and successfully Out-Gambitted him despite his extensive planning, his Smug Super attitude is rapidly undermined, and his attempts to remain outwardly calm and composed only make it clearer just how pissed he's becoming from suffering repeated setbacks and unable to do anything himself to influence the outcome. After his Life-Support mask is successfully smashed to pieces and he realises that switching to a copied version of his quirk weakened his control over the vestiges of his stockpiled power, enabling them to resist him, he snaps, violently suppressing them with an animalistic fury, his vestige self deforming into a monstrous shape as it literally devours the vestiges' consciousness to forcibly regain control and his physical body exploding with his Combat Tentacles in order to both reassembles his mask through sheer force of will and to skewer the heroes who managed to humiliate him so, with only Endeavor return preventing his vicious counter-attack from working.
• Randomly Gifted: As one of the first people with a Quirk, he is this by necessity. It is especially notable as he has arguably the greatest Quirk to ever exist.
• 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's actually a first generation Quirk user, 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.
• 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.

S

• Sadist: All For One specializes in tormenting and psychologically breaking others to catch them off guard and cause them suffering just for the hell of it.
  • In his final battle with All Might, he gleefully reveals that Tomura Shigaraki is actually Tenko Shimura, Nana Shimura's grandson, knowing the knowlege would hurt All Might the most. He even rebuffs All Might's claim that it's a lie by ponting out that this is exactly the type of thing he would do.
  • During the Villain Hunt Arc, he has Lady Nagant explode in front of Midoriya jsut as he's about to turn her to his side solely to demoralize the boy. Afterward, he sends villain after villain to wear him down and make it easy to steal One For All.
  • During the Final Battle, the vestige of himself that's undergoing a Split-Personality Merge with Tomura derides Bakugo's efforts to become strong enough to be the number one hero, mocking him that all his impressive progress and potential means nothing before him. Nonetheless, he is singularly focused on killing Bakugo as painfully as possible for one reason only — because he's Izuku's Friendly Rival, and All For One is ever focused on hurting and breaking Izuku as much as he can both to steal One For All from him and for the sheer pleasure of watching his suffering. He even notes with genuine glee that his quirks being sealed by Erasure is actually a benefit to him in this case, because it means that when he gruesomely crushes Bakugo to pieces, he'll leave a body behind he can dangle in from of Izuku to further demoralise him. He even goes the extra mile of taunting Bakugo that his hopes of becoming the number one hero are useless when contrasted against One For All's sheer might, and that Bakugo is doomed to forever be a mere side-character to Izuku's story regardless of how strong he gets. Notably, whilst it's hard to tell at times whether Tomura or All For one is in command of the body, it's made crystal clear that this sadistic tormenting is all from All For One.
  All For One: Your thoughts? Feelings? What you strive for? No. Katsuki Bakugo... the only thing about you that catches my interest is how you're closer to Izuku Midoira than anyone else.
• Sanity Has Advantages:
  • All For One's Sociopathy makes him a ruthless, dangerous individual...but also, as Hawk points out, is one of his biggest weaknesses, as it blinds him to certain things and makes him physically incapable of becoming truly emotionally invested in anything. This is a problem, as his inability to become invested means he underestimates his opponents and can't work up the emotional will needed to achieve his goal of stealing One For All.
  • All For One's sheer love of Kick the Dog, no matter the circumstances, makes him extremely predictable to the heroes once they've figured out his overarching goals. They simply set up a situation that would allow him to mentally break Izuku all alone and he reacts precisely as predicted, simply because he just can't resist reveling in his own monstrous nature at the expense of others.
  • His genuine belief that the world they're in ascribes to comic-book logic because of the advent of quirks and that there's no way for mere 'Jobber Characters' to meaningfully damage the 'Demon King' or do anything more than demonstrate his overwhelming power in a fight with them leads to him critically underestimating his opponents, allowing them to take him off-guard and severely damage his Life-Support mask because he does not have any kind of narrative Plot Armour protecting him or guaranteeing his victory against anybody.
  • His pathological obsession with One For All has screwed him over repeatedly because no matter how much of an pragmatic move just killing its bearers when it was still week would've been, he simply couldn't stand doing so before he had the chance to steal it. When the heroes spring their counterattack, the Vestige of All For One inside Tomura stops him from using Decay Wave because Deku is in the line of fire.
• 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 Aoyama's parents into accepting him giving Navel Laser to their son, only to met out worse punishments as "rewards" to keep them in line, like how All for One blackmailed Aoyama into becoming the U.A. Traitor otherwise he would kill his parents, leading to Aoyama's breakdown.
• 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. According to his doctor, it's 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. This ends up getting proven when Tomura inherits his quirk, along with the attached Hyper Regeneration. He gets pummeled, blasted and basically charred to a crisp during the ensuring battle, but he's able to regenerate all the damage, no matter how severe, with the only hard limit being his physical stamina from the toll the healing takes on him. When he's almost killed from Endevour's firepower, he counters his impending death by activating a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk he gained from the Destroying Bullets Tomura scavenged from the hospital, the first sign of their effect being his right eye and left ear regrowing from his charred husk of a body as he's de-aged years in seconds, back to a time before All Might ever scarred him.
• 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.
  • Pride. Goes without saying. Everything from his name to his powers serves to mark him out as somebody who stands separate from the rest of humanity. All For One is also sickeningly proud of the various villainous actions he's taken over the years, showing zero remorse or empathy for the lives that have been lost or the damage done, especially if it inconveniences the heroes who stand against him. In fact, he waxes poetic to a young Tenko about how he sees emotions like guilt or remorse as weaknesses, and considers himself superior to others precisely because he isn't inconvenienced by them like other 'lesser' villains. Fittingly, he suffers his first couple of actual setbacks largely due to his overblown ego, assuming that he's won by stealing New order only to find out that Star body-trapped the quirk itself, causing irreparable damage to his 'next him', and by assuming that Izuku's falling for all his carefully-crafted schemes, he walks right into a trap and summons all the heroes' primary targets along with him, just as the heroes were counting on and were actively pretending was the case.
  • Greed and Gluttony. His powers allow him to steal any quirk he wants to, and he admits he feels compelled to take an interesting quirk for himself if it catches his eye, despite having multitudes of powers at his disposal. If someone has something he wants, he'll devote his efforts to taking it, even if he already has more quirks stocked up than he could reasonably use by himself. This is part of why he's so fixated on stealing OFA for himself— because its innate resistance to his Power Parasite abilities means that, unlike any other quirk in the series, he cannot just easily steal that one, and has to devote special efforts into taking what he wants, regardless of the cost or complexity needed to succeed. Rather than just accept that his brother's quirk is something beyond his reach, he feels that it belongs to him by rights because he wants it, and the fact it refuses to become his despite all his efforts only deepens his twisted obsession with obtaining it, despite the astronomical cost and effort involved to do so. He's later shown to lack skilful handling of several of his individual powers, preferring to combine them together for devastating and powerful attacks instead, implying that his interest in having and using the quirk beyond a surface level waned once he actually succeeded in taking it. Having so many quirks, and with Quirks growing stronger with each generation, also means that, as time goes on his body is under risk of a Superpower Meltdown as time goes on, but rather than relinquish any of his stolen quirks, he seeks to use Dr Garaki's research to improve his current vessel to keep hoarding powers, or potentially facilitate him taking over Tomura's younger enhanced body for his own so as to keep ahold of what he sees as 'his'. In effect, rather than lose what he's gained, he'd rather work on expanding his vessel to hoard as may ill-gotten powers as he desires, even with the risk of his body collapsing from the strain.
  • Lust and Envy. All For One possesses a near-unquenchable lust for power, wanting to be nothing more than the powerful Demon King character of his beloved manga he read with his brother in their childhood. His desire to steal and hoard quirks is also rooted in this, as it gives him extensive control over people and unbelievable influence in a society that is governed by superpowers. Whilst he expresses satisfaction with the evil empire he'd built in the past to allow him to govern Japan from the shadows, it's also clear that his ambitions would have eventually extended to ruling the world if not for the interference of OFA and its Torchbearers, and in the present day, his focus is squarely upon claiming OFA's power as his own in part because of the amazing power it's gained by the present time and the threat it poses to his grander, long-term ambitions. His self-admitted desire to steal any quirk that catches his fancy also speaks to an envious wanting of what other people naturally possess, hinted to be because his own quirk, for all its vast and varied power, cannot actually do anything on its own without other quirks to steal and utilize for himself. In effect, because he has no special talent of his own, he steals what others have to repurpose it as his own going forward, feeding into his desire to hoard as many special abilities as catch his interest, regardless of how practical it is for him to stock up on more abilities than his body can contain.
  • Wrath. This is actually a Subverted Trope. Despite his claims to hate All Might for all he'd done to destroy his empire and permanently disfiguring him beyond the point of recovery, which initially seemed to be the reason why he'd gone to such lengths to corrupt Tenko Shimura into Tomura Shigaraki, All For One, as a Sociopath, cannot feel strong emotions towards others, which is the reason why he cannot steal One For All, and he's eventually revealed to have a much more pragmatic reasoning for his tormenting of the Torchholders, building up Tomura's own Wrath against hero society to substitute for his own lack of strong emotional willpower to eventually override OFA's resistance to him, whilst also simultaneously wearing the willpower of his opposition down in the process to maximize his chances for success. This also falls into Sloth, as, rather than recognize his own faults and attempt to correct them, All For One simply has others do for him what he cannot achieve by himself, under the belief that he has no faults to fix. Similarly, despite his accumulated powers and the centuries he'd had to train with them, his fight with Team Endeavour shows that he has sub-par handling of individual quirks, never having bothered to master his stolen ability once he'd claimed it as 'his' due to being capable of achieving the same result through creative quirk combinations in an instant. Similarly, he's implied to be so obsessed with One For All because its Super-Empowering trait would allow him to accumulate more power with his stockpiled quirks without having to put in exhaustive effort training with each individual quirk to bring further greater power from it. Played straight, however, in the Final Battle, as it's implied one thing can genuinely stoke his vengeful anger is being outsmarted and humiliated, which is part of the reason he's willing to go to extensive lengths to destroy and demean everything All Might stood for after his victory over him.
• 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.
• 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: All For One's backstory and motives are really vague. Even his own protégé, Shigaraki is not aware of this. No one even knows about his real name. The public is largely unaware of his existence until recent events. The audience does not know how All For One actually looked like before he fought All Might. All Might lampshades that no one knows whether All For One transferred a Quirk on Yoichi out of kindness or to force him to submission. Even the first fight between All For One and All Might is not very well known. This mildly subverted in Chapter 193 where the spirit of Yoichi Shigaraki shows past memories to Midoriya, to answer some questions. All For One still remains a mystery, though. Chapter 237 reveals that his surname is Shigaraki.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With his younger brother Yoichi. AFO is a sociopathic Card-Carrying Villain who revels in power and sadism, was born with (arguably) 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 The Sociopath, 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?
  • Subverted after Jiro manages to inspire the vestiges to stand up to him. In the vestige world, he tries to give one of his signature smiles, but due to his Villainous Breakdown, it comes across as forced and frustrated rather than it's typical evil glee. It whole-heartedly vanishes from both his physical and vestige self's faces when Tokoyami breaks his mask, forcing him to face the fact he's actually losing the fight and devolve into apocalyptic rage in spiteful denial of reality.
  • When he activates a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk to reset his impending death by Endeavor's hands, his smug smile compounds his Nightmare Face as he taunts the heroes for thinking he wouldn't have a trick up his sleeve to compensate for his lack of a Healing Factor.
• 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: All For One espouses this belief during his battle with Team Endeavor, mocking Jirou's defiance against him. To him, it doesn't matter how much willpower and determination you have. If you don't have the strength to back it up, you're worthless. He's quickly proven wrong, however, when the collective wills of the people whose Quirks he's stolen rise up and hold him back long enough for Jirou and Hawks to land a decisive blow and crack his mask.
  All For One: Aw, she's trembling. Poor girl. Having shown up to this like just another lesson at school like a deluded extra. You children just happened to be paired off with these big shots. Yet you imagine yourselves special somehow? Worthy of facing the demon lord himself?
  Jirou: You wanna talk about being scared? Or strong? Or weak? Or "special?" Well I don't give a crap! You hear me? Screw all that! My problem is that you're the one WHO MADE MY PALS CRY!!!
  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: Befitting one know as the Symbol of Evil, All For One carries all the traits of a classic sociopath: He has no empathy or remorse for all the things he has done, shamelessly bragging to his brother about how his followers had wiped out a faction of Quirk users who refused to join him. He views others as mere pawns to be used. He lies and manipulates others with ease. He's a Sadist who enjoys getting under other people's skin, often taunting All Might about the death of his mentor. He is incredibly arrogant and condescending to the point of megalomania and is charismatic enough to gain a loyal following of villains to serve under him. Even when he does something to help someone, it's never out of pure altruism and he always has an ulterior motive:
  All For One: [in response to a Heroic Sacrifice] Thank you for such wonderful comedy!
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: His simmering malice is made all the more unsettling by his casual, borderline jovial manner of speaking.
• Sore Loser: Rather than graciously accept defeat in his fights or admit that his brother was right about his doomed quest to become like the demon lord in their favorite comic, All For One will scheme, insult, and squirm his way out of every situation no matter how unethical the means. It's implied that part of his surviving his defeat at All Might's hands, even without Hyper Regeneration, was his sheer refusal to accept the loss, motivating him to cling to life no matter what, and he goes out of his way to torment Yagi in ways large and small afterwards, in part because it benefits his plans, but also because he's that spiteful towards the man who emerged victorious against him. He taunts All Might and Izuku at every opportunity, speaks of every other hero he encounters with gleeful disdain, and screams in a blind rage when Star out gambits him during their battle. When he's lured into a trap by the heroes, his response is to openly try and appear mildly annoyed by it, but internally is frantically trying to convince himself he's still in control. His Cool Mask getting broken pushes him into a Villainous Breakdown wherein he demonstrates a feral anger towards the vestiges weakening him from within, appearing to literally consume their consciousness to regain control and his vestige self appearing like an inhuman beast from the lengths he's going to to win. All in all, he's not a pleasant person.
• Stepford Smiler: A twisted example. He almost always has an evil grin on his face, which acts as a Foil to All Might.
• 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.
• 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.
• Superpower Meltdown: What he worries might happen to him as time goes on. With each generation, Quirks get stronger and more complicated as they mix and mutate, but his own body has limits. While All For One can take any number of Quirks from others, his body hasn't changed much from the beginning. As long as he continues collecting Quirks, there will time will come when the powers he takes are too much for his body to handle. His funding of Dr. Garaki's research is to find a way to enhance his body enough to keep up with the advancing power of Quirks.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Once Tomura's 'evolution' to enable him to withstand the full abilities of All For One's quirk is underway, the vestige of himself contained within the quirk turns Tomura into this the instant he awakens, seeking out Izuku's location and homing in on him to the exclusion of everything else, including Tomura's own desires, and using a combination of his enhanced toughness and multiple abilities to power through everything the heroes throw at him in futile attempts to slow him down. It is subsequently revealed that All For One himself has always been this towards One For All, with the only cravat being that he was fundamentally incapable of overcoming the quirk on his own merits, and rather than accept that, instead enabled its survival to the present day whilst he devoted a significant amount of his plans towards finding out a way to overcome its resistance to his Power Parasite abilities, in addition to building his empire. As Tomura's hatred-driven willpower is capable of finally forcing One For All to submit, All For One makes that his priority before moving forward with any other plans, only granting Izuku respite when Tomura's incomplete state proves incapable of fully absorbing the quirk immediately, and whilst he spends time perfecting his 'Next Me' to definitely succeed on the subsequent attempt, All For One devotes every resource, scheme and manpower he can towards targeting Izuku in the intern to ensure he's utterly ground down both mentally and physically to further increase his odds of success, his absolute obsession with taking One For All from him making it clear that he will never stop coming after Izuku by any means he can until he succeeds. It's implied that his interest in Ragdoll's 'Search' was primarily so he would always have a means to tracking Izuku no mater where he went, to further limit his opponent's chances of victory or rest before Tomura was ready.
• Super Prototype: He's from the first generation of Quirk users and has perhaps the single strongest Quirk in the world. Especially notable because Quirks are supposedly becoming more powerful as time goes on, with some grade school children wielding Quirks with the potential to be stronger than those of top heroes, and yet the generations out of date All for One still remains the strongest. Of course, even he recognized this wouldn't always be the case if he ever started taking on Quirks too powerful for his body to handle.
• 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: 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. It's also technically Played With, as 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

• 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: After taking a full power Prominence Burn from Endeavor and nearly being reduced to ashes, All For One admits he's pretty much dead, but decides if he's dying anyway, he might as well 'try something out.' Namely, a copy of Eri's Rewind Quirk reverse engineered from the Quirk-Destroying bullets to restore himself. He flat out admits this will be fatal regardless, but is beyond caring.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Played With. He tends to favour 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 All Might had 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.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: One of his favourite tactics to use against his enemies, with the sheer extent he goes through fulfilling the trope and his absolute childish glee at revelling in the target's misery or envisioning it making it clear that he enjoys personally doing this so much it verges on being a sick hobby he does for fun as much as practicality.
  • Nana Shimura went to the extreme of cutting ties with her son Kotaro and putting him into foster care to avoid this happening, despite the clear anguish it caused both of them, aware All For One would relentlessly focus on him as a weakness of her as she chose to face him. Tragically, not only did her fears prove to be utterly Justified, All For One went to the extent of tracking Kotaro and his family line down anyway even after Nana was killed and manipulating her grandson Tomura into becoming a hate-filled villain in utter defiance of his heroic lineage, apparently just for the simple reasoning of wanting to defile Nana's legacy as much as possible and to hurt her student All Might as collateral when he finally revealed the truth. Even being dead didn't stop him from taking this further, as he recovered Nana's corpse and had it preserved apparently just for the sake of using it to demoralise All Might in some capacity and loaned one of her hands to Tomra as a 'spare', making her remains an intrinsic part of Tomura's appearance as a villain afterwards apparently just to ensure that nobody would remember Nana's actions as a hero compared to the monstrous villain that Tomura would become.
  • Even discounting what he did to Nana's legacy, All For One takes a special joy out of inflicting this against All Might, mocking for for having 'so many things to protect' as he uses intentionally wide-range attacks in a crowded residential area, forcing All Might to exhaust himself canceling them out with brute force lest civilians get killed as collateral. He clearly takes some enjoyment out of holding All Might away from the League of Villains attacking Bakugo before his eyes and later uses Gran Torino as a Human Shield to take one of All Might's punches to distract him. His final move during their fight was to intentionally damage the faith the public had in him and all his efforts to uphold peace by exposing the extent he'd desecrated Nana's legacy after forcing All Might's weakened true form to be seen on national television, planning on pushing him past the Despair Event Horizon with the Awful Truth just to spit on the concepts of peace and security he'd spent his life and wellbeing upholding as the 'Symbol of Peace', showing him to be just an ordinary, fallible man to the masses. When that failed to fully break him, he tried the same tactic again by revealing his knowledge of Izuku as the ninth inheritor to bait All Might into attacking him in righteous anger to protect his protege from his machinations next, only for that to backfire on him instead.
  • He's ecstatic when he finally breaks out of Tartarus and is free to turn his attention towards Izuku, aware that between his youth and kind nature pulling this off against him will be easy, as simply attacking anybody around Izuku in ways he's powerless to prevent will lead to him blaming himself for their suffering especially since All For One intentionally plays up the angle that One For All is the only power that can truly challenge him, but Izuku is an Inadequate Inheritor who can only waste its immense potential in his hands. He detonates Lady Natant right in front of Izuku after sending her out to fight him and lose, aware that Izuku would recognise her as a Tragic Villain and be compelled to save her from her suffering. He has several pawns he's coerced into serving him intentionally turning the public opinion of Izuku for the worst, making them aware that Izuku is a Living MacGuffin whom a great deal of the societal collapse is focused around, aware this in turn will further grind down Izuku's spirit because of his Chronic Hero Syndrome and belief that he has to end the fighting by beating All For One himself as quickly as possible.
    • Furthermore, he takes a specific focus towards hurting Izuku as much as possible through his fellow classmates, which leads to Izuku trying to distance himself from them to avoid that in the first place, akin to Nana's own experience. He takes immense joy in revealing Aoyama as the Regretful Traitor in 1A to Izuku's face, and is dismissive of this fact coming out beforehand, as learning about how he'd used and manipulated one of his classmates against him would still demoralise Izuku greatly and he has further backup plans to get at him. He's later revealed to be aware of the members of class 1A, but grades them in terms of how close they are to Izuku, aware that hurting any one of them will also further break his spirit, and wanting to start with those closet to him first. The Vestige of himself merged into Tomura becomes laser-focused on killing Bakugo first out of any of his more experienced or veteran opponents precisely for this reason, even appreciating the fact that his quirks being nullified at the time means that he'll leave a bloody mangled corpse he can use to taunt and belittle Izuku with, and immediately turning his attention towards repeating the action with the survivors when he apparently succeeds, intending to confront Izuku standing amidst his friends and allies' bloody remains just to further break him.
  • He doesn't limit this attitude just to the holders of One For All, but extends it to every hero he encounters, choosing to deliberately target civilians to mock their practice of protecting others at their own expense, and becoming more specific in his attacks if he identifies others his opponents care about, just to enjoy their suffering. He pointedly mocks Aizawa after Bakugou takes a fatal blow in their battle, laying the blame for his student's passing at him not getting involved in the fight despite Aizawa's crippled body and quirk preventing him from doing so. Despite not fully believing in the Liberation ideology, he's supportive of Skeptic's hacking skills exposing all the civilians who sought protection in the mobile shelters to Villains, just to turn them into an example of the foolishness of trusting in heroes, and to simultaneously spit on the heroes' efforts to keep them safe, with it being clear the latter reason is what motivates him more. He makes it clear that he and the villains on his side will not stop until they're torn down everything the heroes are trying to protect, including the innocent people trying to stay out of danger.
  All For One: Heroes are those who defend, whilst villains violate. Behold, as we plunge headlong towards our dreams!!
• Taught by Experience:
  • His near-lethal loss against All Might informs much of his subsequent actions whilst in battle, as whilst he still has a tendency to belittle or underestimate his opponents if they're not a holder of One For All and believes his overall victory is assured regardless thanks to his multiple contingencies, he nonetheless readily admits that 'wounded heroes are the scariest' and is fully aware the tide of battle can turn against him in an instant if he ever lets his guard down too much. He maintained a long-range attack strategy at Kamino ward to keep All Might at bay and also wear away as his Hour of Power Achilles' Heel, only going close-range for the final attack —which was a bluff to bait All Might into using the remaining furious strength left to him for All For One to return full-force on him with Impact Recoil, in essence replicating All Might's victory against him last time and turning the same kind of blow that nearly killed him into a Finishing Move against his nemesis. He understands full well that he's in grave danger when Endeavor returns to attack him even after he gouges out a chunk of his chest and rips off his right arm, and tries every move he can think off to gain as much distance from his furious attacker as he possibly can, only for Hawks's speed to counter that. He himself even decides to adopt the same 'self-sacrificial' mindset to thwart the heroes when they almost succeed in killing him, using Eri's Rewind quirk to undo the damage despite the risks, quipping that villains too can be scary when they're wounded.
  • Relatedly, his defeat and crippling at All Might's hands informs several of his choices with the type of quirks he utilities against the heroes, as he tends to prioritise or equip several of his High-End Nomus with Hyper Regeneration as a standard feature, and made certain that his original quirk contained that power when Tomura inherited it, meaning that any damage the heroes do to their foes or against his 'Next Me' is incapable of leaving any lasting scarring or damage, thus ensuring that he or his pawns will never be broken and reduced in such a manner as he was ever again. Even when he can't use or lacks access to Hyper Regeneration, he nonetheless equips himself with substitutes that achieve the same effects whilst fighting the heroes in the Final Battle, such as attaching a variant of Eri's Rewind quirk to his original body despite the risks, or using Tomura's evolved ability to 'grow' to recover from any damage the heroes inflict.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: In his prime form, he can be seen as relatively ordinary-looking, once he rewinds to his prime in Chapter 363.
• The Tape Knew You Would Say That: When the heroes raid the former hideout of the Creature Rejection Clan due to having been given vital information from Lady Nagant the heroes find themselves an empty mansion and a tape recording All For One left behind. The recording had him applaud Deku indirectly and mock him for his efforts in trying to save Lady Nagant meaning All For One knew and anticipated Izuku's actions enough to leave a recording for him. He lampshades in said recording 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, further underlying how outmatched Izuku is in trying to combat a foe who's infinitely more experienced and cunning than him in physical and psychological warfare.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • Downplayed, but still noticeable example. When Deku and Aoyama manage to actually trick him despite his Living Lie Detector Quirk, his inner monologue shows he has no clue how it happened and is visibly shocked. This happens again when Kurogiri's Quirk is used to warp Deku's reinforcements to his location, something he has no clue how they're doing and then sees someone other than Kurogiri is using it when it's supposedly a one of a kind artificial Quirk.
  All For One: What is the meaning of this? Not in our direct phone calls, nor in my contact with his parents, did I sense any traces of lies or ill-intent. How in the Hell...
  • He has this again when Jiro's defiance of him despite his power edge inspires the vestiges inside of him to rise up against him, wondering how this is even possible. Her and Hawks successfully shattering his apparently-unbreakable Cool Mask with a Vibroweapon move exposes his expression of sheer shock and disbelief underneath, visible even with his lack of a full face. This swiftly turns to anger and a spiteful denial of his unfavourable position after Tokoyami follows up on that by breaking the rest of his mask to smithereens, violently suppressing his rebelling quirks and attacking the heroes with everything he's got to regain control of the fight.
• 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. 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.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: A variant. 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.
• 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.

U

• Underestimating Badassery:
  • A Fatal Flaw of his: All For One's such an egomaniac that he has difficulty truly seeing anyone as a genuine threat. While he does see All Might as a threat, he believes he's adequately prepared for their rematch, which he loses. He's pretty much written off Deku as a threat, despite Deku having the potential to dwarf All Might in power, though in his case, he also has no intention of allowing Izuku to ever capitalize on his potential. Justified, as Hawk points out that, being The Sociopath, All For One is fundamentally incapable of being emotionally invested in things like a normal person. Thus, his mutual animosity with One For All and its Torch Bearers still isn't enough for him to care strongly enough about it.
  • It's heavily implied from his commentary and admitted concerns about 'wounded heroes' that his disfigurement at All Might's hands came about from him landing the blow to his insides that would cripple him and underestimating his tenancy, getting a return blow at a distance he couldn't dodge that nearly killed him and which he barely survived or recovered from even years later.
  • He spends all his screentime for several chapters stating with complete confidence he's planned for everything and his victory is inevitable. The fact he genuinely believes he's more or less already won results in him not even considering the possibility the heroes might be smart enough to make their own plans exploiting his flaws. As a result, when he finally confronts Deku, he plays right into their hand is genuinely taken completely off guard.
  • He underestimates Jiro and Tokoyami when they show up in the Final Battle, seeing them as 'Jobber Characters' and 'gnats that flock around One For All.' They proceed to being the ones to finally help Hawks shatter his mask.
  • His Vestige inside of Tomura shares this flaw, seeing the heroes who aren't Deku 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.
• 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 even cites this as the reason why he doesn't want Best Jeanist's Fiber Master Quirk: Taking someone like Best Jeanist's Quirk, where most of the power comes from years of training and intimate knowledge of what it can and can't do, is much less attractive to him since he won't be able to use it to its full potential right off the bat, versus an unsubtle but powerful Quirk like super strength. Plus, he plans to pass down (correction: had passed on)^note All For One had his original Quirk extracted and preserved by Dr. Garaki so that the latter would implant it to Tomura at the right time.All For One to Shigaraki and feels a Quirk like Fiber Master wouldn't mesh well with his student's personality.
  • 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. The one time he tried to go for a Finishing Move close-range was mainly a ploy to gambit All Might into using his remaining strength for him to reflect upon him with Impact Recoil, showing that All For One never fights up close unless he has some advantage he can press. Even then, he has no answer for All Might's counter except to try and charge up a powered up Air Cannon and being left wide open as a result. When Endeavor grapples with him close-range, All For One's only response is to try and steal his quirk rather than attack him, and once his hands are scorched he has no response to answer to Endeavor incinerating him despite the former laking an arm at that point. He mentally admits that his busted life-support mask means that his body is shutting down and won't respond to him anymore, but it's still notable that he was unable to fight off an injured one-armed man despite his immense power.
• Unperson: Due to his age and secretive nature, not to mention his near-death at All Might's hands and needing to recover in the shadows for his comeback, the number of people who know about him towards the start of the series could be counted in the single digits, and even they aren't aware of who he was prior to the supervillian identity of AFO. His past identity has been so effectively erased by the passage of time, not to mention his own selfish nature leading him to accumulate power and resources for his own use, rather than attempting to leave a legacy, that once All Might destroyed both his empire and his body there was basically nothing left. His own name has been so thoroughly forgotten that All Might didn't make the connection to him when he christened Tomura with his own last name of 'Shigaraki', and it's clear that he has no 'normal' life outside his villains schemes and plans. Even his own appearance reflects this, as his normal face has been destroyed and replaced with the 'mask' of a supervillian, and even that reflects his lack of identity.His own quirk even feeds into this— in a world of Personality Powers, his quirk does nothing but steal the talents/identities of others for his own usage, and similar to his brother, he would be considered quirkless if he didn't have other powers to interact with. Unlike most other comic book supervillians, who posses both a civilian identity and a villainous one, All For One's willing acceptance of becoming a real-life supervillian just because he could have led to his civilian identity being utterly consumed by his villainous one— not that he minds, of course. Star even tauntingly refers to him as a 'John Doe' when mocking him about how the will of a hero will always be passed down as long as people will save each other, and someday, somebody with that will shall put an end to him. All Might later theories that the original All For One avoided facing Star himself because he would have recognised the term 'All For One' as his own name, rather than his quirk's, and thus been vulnerable to New order's rules, showing again how his villain identity has utterly consumed his original self.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: oh god, yes. 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 as an inevitability 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 for even trying, all with his signature grin on his face and wrapped in a veneer or politeness. Pairing nicely with his Sore Loser mentality, the best way to shut him up is to actually start beating him— Aoyama and Izuku's trap taking him off-guard turns him into a Terse Talker who can only deride their counterattack as pathetic whilst he internally scrambles to figure out a way to regain control of the situation. When the heroes successfully warp him to a new location, he only starts his monologuing again by taunting the heroes about the risks they've taken with the situations on the other battlefields away from him, rather than admitting how out-played he was personally. Since All For One sees other humans as inferior to himself because of his Sociopathy, it makes sense that he'd only interact with other people who aren't his UnwittingPawns needed to further his ongoing plans if he can leverage some advantage over them that showcases his superior status over them.

V

* Vagueness Is Coming:

• He reveals to Spinner that, contrary to what the latter had believed and his actions thus far had indicated, he does have an Evil Plan underway to achieve some mysterious end goal, but it is not simply claiming One For All for himself - that is 'the midgame goal.' He has grander ambitions that will proceed after he's absorbed and subjugated his brother's quirk once and for all as a necessary first step, though he doesn't elaborate further. He attempts to steal New Order after his hand is forced by Star's rapid arrival, but even that is implied to be yet another step toward his true endgame as it'd make him invincible enough to accomplish what he truly wants. Just about the most concrete explanation of his end goal is that he's determined to achieve his childhood dream of becoming 'The Greatest Demon lord', but what exactly he intends to do to achieve that state of being is left unclear to everybody, which makes attempts to thwart his plans extremely difficult, as the heroes cannot predict what his next move will be, not to mention all the contingencies he has in place to proceed with his ambitions however the situation turns out.
• Aoyama provides a brief overview of his overall plan in chapter 343: he intends to use the ongoing societal breakdown in Japan and spread it to other countries with the aid of his allies worldwide To Create a Playground for Evil and prevent any international aid, and then use his amassed quirks over the generations to provide necessities for the citizens like electricity, gas or water to take control of the country. Once the groundwork is laid, he'll turn his attention to the rest of the planet. All For One admits that his explanation isn't totally accurate, but is close enough for their purposes.

• 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:
  • The All For One vestige inside Shigaraki has one in Chapter 333 after stealing Star and Stripe's Quirk and finding out it has been given an order to go on a rampage inside his body. For the first time in the series All For One is left completely blindsided and desperately tries to find someone to transfer New Order into before it destroys him, screaming his lines for the first time in the series. The chapter ends with All For One damning the specter of All Might that Star represents as her bros fire at All For One on all sides to keep him pinned.
  All For One: DAMN YOU, SPECTER OF ALL MIGHT!!!
  • While more minor, but still noticable, this happens to the original All For One when Aoyama and Deku reveal that they've successfully duped him. While on the surface he tries to pretend he's only mildly annoyed, his internal monologue shows he's left completely befuddled and noticably trying to convince himself their plans aren't going to matter as he brings out another back up plan...only to instantly have his composure broken again when they reveal they thought of that too and have a countermeasure already prepared.
  • Whilst he swiftly continues taunting Endeavor for his personal failings upon them hearing about Dabi's defeat, his speech has a noticeably frustrated and contemptuous tone to it compared to his usual smug confidence, demonstrating that he's struggling to keep his cool as the heroes continue to gain the decisive advantage against his forces whilst he's stuck fighting Endeavor and unable to affect the outcome at all. He grows more and more frustrated the more enemies show up to 'distract him,' which is implied to be part of the reason that the vestiges inside him are able to start rising up on top of Jiro's defiance inspiring them, as he'd been keeping them under control by willpower. This is best shown when we're actually shown his face beneath the surface as it happens: his normal Slasher Smile is replaced with a forced, frustrated one as he can't believe this is happening.
  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 weakness of such push-overs?!
  • This all comes to a head when Tokoyami's follow up attack shatters his mask entirely, causing All For One to completely snap. His outward composure completely fails, resulting in him screaming at the heroes and going completely berserk. Meanwhile, in the vestage world, All For One's inner self has devolved almost into a feral beast. When Endeavor returns to the fight All For One's demeanour shifts straight into panic as he realises there's nothing he can do to stop Endeavor burning him alive.
• 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.
• Villains Never Lie: As manipulative as he is, All For One has not once lied 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.
• Villain Protagonist: Invoked: All For One seems to the world as revolving 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, highlighting his contrasts to Izuku, the actual protagonist of the manga.
  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.

W

• 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.
• 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?: Surprisingly enough, for all his twisted actions, All For One appears to not actually hate anyone. Hawks speculates that the entire reason he took on Tomura was because he himself lacks the hatred necessary to steal One For All.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
  • Despite the long-standing animosity between them and the fact they become more of a hindrance to his plans as time goes on, All For One has never actually killed any of the holders of One For All before they passed the quirk onto the next hero to take up the mantle against him. Whilst at first it was ambiguous if he was aware of One For All's unique ability to be passed on with the first few holders, by Izuku's time it's become clear that he's intentionally not killing them until they've safely transferred One for All along. All For One's absolute 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 find out a way to subdue it rather than destroy it, apparently sincerely believing he'll always be strong enough to overcome the holders in combat no matter how strong they get. Therefore, whilst he's a No-Nonsense Nemesis who frequently goes for the killing blow at the first opportunity, he always pulls his punches with the current holder before he's ready to finally steal it and they're in a position to pass it on. However, that's the only reprieve he's willing to grant them. Maiming the holder mentally and physically is very much still on the table and once the quirk has been transferred along, he's downright gleeful at the opportunity to execute the previous holders once they've served their purpose. At the commencement of the Final Battle, Tomura immediately attempts to unleash his decay wave at the assembled heroes before him, only to find out that his hand won't reach the ground due to interference from the All For One vestige inside him, Izuku being in the line of fire and him having no way to steal a quirk if there's no body left.
  • It's also Inverted against him when he's locked up in Tartarus. Despite the monumental damage he caused and the loss of life from his fight with All Might, as well as his clear Lack of Empathy for the suffering he inflicted against uninvolved civilians, the heroes don't immediately execute him and instead lock him away in prison for the rest of his life, despite the threat he poses in a world without All Might. It's later stated that they are attempting to pass the death sentence on him, but correctly processing the sheer scope of his crimes makes progression with that a slow one. Though unstated, it's heavily implied that the reason they don't try to kill him is the risk that doing so could give him a chance to break free and cause mass casualties once more, especially since All Might lost his powers for good getting him locked up. Not to mention, he somehow survived All Might crushing his head before he gained access to Hyper Regeneration, meaning that without All Might's sheer power, they might not have the ability to kill him at all. All For One demonstrates absolute confidence during the whole time he's incarcerated, furthering the implication that he's aware the heroes cannot simply kill him even if they tried, but he nonetheless remains as a prisoner for the sake of his long-term plans. He eventually reveals during his battle with team Endeavor that his considers his damaged and permanently-weakened body expendable in favour of his idealised self in Toura's body, thus he has no problems risking it's existence to further his goals.
    • With that said, however, All Might actually did try to just kill him during their climactic confrontation that resulted in their mutual disfigurement, but he came to regret that decision during their rematch, as his assumption that All For One was dead simply allowed the villain to continue plotting and preparing in the shadows to destabilize society without his knowledge.
• Why Won't You Die?:
  • Compounding his already dangerous threat level is the sheer resistance he has towards what would easily kill a lesser man several times over, even without quirks specifically tailored to enable his survival, meaning that even if the heroes actively attempt to just kill him, he can still shrug off their best efforts and steamroll over them all regardless. All Might outright admits he's reluctant to believe that All For One could have survived what he did to stop his threat for good despite the evidence of his return, and from what was seen, it's implied that nobody else could have pulled off such a feat. When Endeavor chars his original body to ashes after verifying that he doesn't possess a Healing Factor quirk, he's dumbstruck that All For One is not only still alive at the end of it, but actively begins regenerating all his injuries present and past through the variant of Eri's rewind quirk he managed to absorb from the Destroying Bullets, meaning he's returned from certain death in a stronger body than before, a fact he takes glee in mocking Endevour's efforts with.
  • Ironically, it's implied the self-same 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.
• Windows of the Soul: Inverted. Befitting somebody with such a twisted, heartless and self-centred nature, when the reader is first introduced to him, he no longer has them, which leads to his unsettling and foreboding appearance. His eyes have only been seen twice, in flashback to him killing Nana Shimura, and during Izuku's vision of the past of OFA (and fittingly enough, they look dead and empty◊, reflecting the heart of their owner). Otherwise, all his appearances in flashbacks whenever he still possessed a face have the upper half of his face shadowed to obscure his eyes. As Tomura's Split-Personality Merge with All For One's vestige continues, he starts showing the same dead eyes by the time of the Final Battle, a sign that All For One is getting closer to successfully merging their psyches and personalities together into his 'Perfected Demon lord' self. Tomura's eyes even briefly regain their pupils when his 'Tenko Shimura' personality briefly surfaces, showing how his eyes are reflective of which one of them is commanding the body in their mixed state.
• 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 demon lord and showcase his power. Jiro tells him to save that line until he's actually beaten them. Turns out, she was right and he finds out he spoke too soon.
• 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 the capacity to finally absorb One For All, the only power that can challenge his reign, and finally 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 his old body fully expendable once it became incapable of achieving his ambitions.
• Worthy Opponent: Generally Zigzagged all over the place, as whilst All For One is capable of acknowledging the heroes who oppose him as skilled and talented in their own right with the way they utilise their quirks, he considers himself an existence far beyond ordinary humans, and thus the concept that somebody could match or defeat him is something he cannot tolerate. Furthermore, whilst he mockingly admires the skills of his enemies, 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, seeing more value in the Quirk than the soon-to-be-dead opponent facing him.
  • His obsession with One For All is a twisted case of this, as he seems to consider the Quirk itself his true Arch-Enemy and opponent, rather than any of the holders who fight him. His desire to possess — but not destroy —it informs many of his plans, as he goes out of his way to set up a situation that will enable him to eventually defeat and absorb the quirk once and for all, and even refuses to allow any of the holders to perish without passing it on first, even as it gets stronger and more powerful over time. His infatuation with the Quirk borders on a twisted love for it, and despite its eternal resistance to his powers, he seems to relish the genuine challenge it provides him time and again in forcing him to go to extensive lengths to finally claim it. Whilst All For One absolutely detests the idea of the villain of the story actually losing, he nonetheless seems to make an exception for the holders of One For All in opposing him, having a 'hero' who can contend against his immense full strength and push him to his limits to seize victory, even to the point of mocking any other heroes that tries to face him as an 'extra' who hasn't got a chance against him without the power of One For All backing them up.
  • He is derisive and spitefully mocking towards Toshinori Yagi, considering him a weakened and useless oaf after he passed on his quirk to Izuku and treating him as a non-entity in his plans after he forces him to burn out the remaining embers of One For All in defeating him, but he expresses a backhanded respect of All Might, the Symbol of Peace. He admits that he has traumatic memories of his disfigurement at his hands with almost sincere admiration for his tenacity in seizing victory against him and mocks him throughout their battle at Kamino for being lacking compared to the last time they fought, even as he also bluntly tells the other heroes that try to back up All Might that none of them save him have a chance at winning. His plans for Tomura were focused around creating him into a powerful Symbol of Fear specifically to counter the influence All Might had made on society towards his grand ambitions, and part of those involved having Garaki biologically remodel Tomura into having a body with physical feats on par with All Might in his prime, with Tomura frequently comparing the two of them when fighting the heroes to illustrate how unstoppable he is. Whilst he had nothing but contempt for Yagi, he nonetheless seems to respect the powerful figure he became through cultivating the power of One For All, and seeks to emulate that same power through Tomura for his own goals.
  • He specifically seeks to avert this attitude with Izuku, gleefully mocking him as a Sketchy Successor and an Inadequate Inheritor of One For All's sheer strength every chance he gets, in part because of his infatuation with the quirk's power by the present day, considering it 'wasted' on him. However, to finally steal One For All, he requires stronger willpower than Izuku, and is thus going out of his way to relentlessly demoralise him in body and spirit at every opportunity in preparation for that moment. Part of his urgency in stealing One For All as soon as possible seems to be rooted in his acknowledgement that One For All's full power is a dangerous threat to his ambitions, even in the hands of an untrained child, backed up by the fact that Izuku was capable of unlocking the full Combo Platter Powers of One For All — something no other holder was capable of— and All For One's own mockery of the heroes who try to fight him without Izuku present, believing their defeat is certain without One For All's might to oppose him. In essence, he is willing to accept the principle that Izuku could become his greatest threat amongst the holders if given enough time, and thus he is devoting every effort he can to deny him that opportunity.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Implied: In the Volume 7 omake, Horikoshi's (self-proclaimed) "oblique hint" — as to why the Winged Nomu killed by Stain had grabbed Midoriya specifically — was just a drawing of Tsubasa, a boy with wings seen alongside Bakugo from the first chapter. This implies that at one time between then and the Field Training Arc, All For One somehow got hold of Tsubasa... and turned him into a Nomu.
  • His psychological manipulation of Tenko and molding him into the monstrous supervillain Tomura Shigaraki is another example. Worse yet, he holds some degree of fondness for him as his adopted son but it's nothing compared to his desire to use him to steal One For All.
  • After he escapes from Tartarus he makes it extremely clear that his focus is now on Izuku, the current holder of One For All, and that he intends to devote as much time, resources and disposable pawns as it takes in order to break him. It's also made apparent that he's having the absolute time of his life watching Izuku and his allies futilely try to thwart his plans and be slowly worn out by the downfall of society he helped orchestrate.
    • When he finally makes his move to steal One For All for good, he plans to use Izuku's trust in his allies to lure him to an isolated area. He not only confronts him in person, but summons every ally he has on his side just to attack a lone teenager, it being clear that Izuku wasn't going to survive such an attack no matter how strong he'd become. This thankfully backfires magnificently when Izuku and Aoyama summon The Cavalry, giving them the element of surprise and gathering their enemies all in one place to end their reign of terror permanently.
  • When Jiro and Tokoyami step in to cover Hawks during the Final Battle once All For One downs Endeavor with a massive gash in his torso, the pro hero frantically tells them to flee the fight, yelling that All For One is way out of their league power wise and he will slaughter them without remorse. All For One derisively and un-ironically calls them 'jobber characters' who exist only to showcase his power, showing not only that he's fully willing to kill them, he doesn't consider their existence worthy of note at all. In fighting him, Jiro gets mangled by one of his massive attacks and gets her left ear brutally torn off, and it's made clear she was lucky to get away with that little damage.
  • The vestige of himself merged into Tomura's psyche mangles Bakugo's right arm and makes it clear that he's focused on killing him personally out of all his opponents as painfully as possible for one reason only — showing his ravaged body to Izuku will help immensely with his personal commitment to breaking the child's Heroic Willpower to finally steal One For All from him. Despite this goal, it's also made clear he's having the time of his life imagining Izuku's suffering as well and is enjoying brutalising an opponent far below his power level and rubbing his superiority in his face whilst he does so. He even notes with glee that Decay being sealed by Erasure means that when he'll physically crush Bakugo with Tomura's Body Horror abilities, he'll leave a corpse behind that he can further taunt Izuku with, going on to belittle Bakugo's dream of becoming the number one Hero against the kind of awesome might that All For One and One For All possess, just to drive Bakugo into despair before he kills him, just because he can, and eventually succeeds in killing Bakugou when a blow to his chest causes an internal detonation from his own quirk that blows his heart to pieces.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Played With. It's actually because he's Genre Savvy that he falls into this, All For One having read 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 superhero comic books, and that he cannot be meaningfully challenged or defeated 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 even 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 defeat won't come about from a bunch of 'side characters' instead, and his belief this was the case lead him to underestimate the threat they posed.

[[folder]]

[[/folder:X-Z]]

• 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. Sometimes they work, sometimes they fail. But he always keeps all of them in effect in some way or another 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 Hyper Regeneration to heal his body completely, 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.
  All For One: 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.
  • Deconstructed in the final arc: All For One is very good at coming up with back up 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 in the heat of the moment precisely because he's so used to his plans working as he predicted. Taking him off guard was partially 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 back up plans are countered, All For One can only throw angry, frustrated attempts at psychological warfare at Endeavor without his usual smug confidence or any actual way to turn things around. The Vestige of him inside Tomura has no real reponse 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.
• 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.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: All Might confronts him about this after he's imprisoned in Tartarus. He questions him about all the death and misery he'd caused over the generations, asking him point-plank Was It Really Worth It? after he'd apparently been defeated for good in the end, wanting to know what All For One wanted to achieve with all the power and control he tried to amass when he could have instead used the time and abilities he'd been given to help others. All For One mocks him that the conversation isn't a productive one, as All Might wouldn't be able to understand his motives even if he told him. 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 all his efforts into achieving it because he could. All For One even fires back that for him, he cannot comprehend All Might's own selfless drive to help others at his own expense, lampshading how incompatible their views are despite being so similar to each other.
• 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, because he didn't tell Nagant about Izuku possessing multiple Quirks. It is likely that he wanted to use that incident to mock Izuku's ideals of saving everyone.
• 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 his stockpile of life sustaining quirks and 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 to face the remaining villains for the Final Battle, it's pointed out that despite All For One's obvious weak spot meaning that the normal tactic would have been to surround him with numbers and swarm him until he was overcome, All For One's ability means that doing so would only deprive the heroes of valuable fighters and give him a power boost at the same time. Therefore, they instead aim to fight him with the smallest number of opponents possible, but with the highest skillset to make up for that.

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