Characters / Sherlock: Antagonists

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Jim Moriarty

James "Jim" Moriarty

"Every fairytale needs a good, old-fashioned villain."

Played By: Andrew Scott

Sherlock's biggest fan and his arch-nemesis before Sherlock even knows he exists. He has a vast criminal network that he manages - as a "consulting criminal" - largely as a way to stave off the boredom of a world that poses no challenges for his incredible intellect.

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• Adaptation Expansion: The literary Professor Moriarty only appeared in two short stories, and his plans were relatively simple. This Moriarty is prominently featured in three out of four seasons, and he has many, many plans which are far more complex.
• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. Here he's called "Jim" Moriarty, which is probably short for the original "James".
• Adaptation Origin Connection: It turns out that, when they were both children, he committed the first crime Sherlock ever solved.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: From what we see, in the Doyle books Moriarty's attitute towards Sherlock was a mixture of annoyance at his interference and a cold Worthy Opponent respect. This Moriarty develops an obsession with Sherlock that is pretty much a creepy infatuation, and he treasures his rivalry with Sherlock above all else.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Mildly. Unlike Doyle's original character, this Moriarty is shown to commit crimes because he has an extreme aversion to being bored, and he seems genuinely upset when Sherlock "disappoints him".
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In Doyle's stories and accompanying illustrations, Moriarty was an elderly, skinny, bald man. Jim, here, is much younger and easier on the eyes...
• Adaptational Badass: Compared to his literary counterpart, which had near-complete control of London's criminal underworld at the apex of his power, this one is shown to have a criminal network that encompasses the entire world, including North Korea, mind you.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Far more depraved and ruthless than his literary counterpart.
• Adaptational Job Change: This Moriarty isn't a professor, but works in IT as part of his cover.
• Adaptational Wimp: A downplayed case. Book Moriarity was described by Holmes as "the most dangerous man in Europe." Here, Sherlock and Mycroft play him with ease. Despite being played in the end, Sherlock still fears him.
• Adaptational Sexuality: See the entries for Ambiguously Gay and Depraved Bisexual below.
• Age Lift: Moriarty is traditionally 10-20 years older than Sherlock, though still physically close to his prime, to show that while he and Sherlock are equals in intelligence, Moriarty has the edge in experience and planning. Here, Moriarty and Sherlock are close in age (the actors born only months apart), but Moriarty has been engaged in organized crime for years longer than Sherlock's been investigating it. As well, he may have been murdering for longer than he looks, as exemplified in Enfant Terrible down below.
• Always Someone Better: As smart as Sherlock is, Moriarty is just as brilliant and has none of Sherlock's self-imposed constraints.
  • As it turns out, Mycroft and Sherlock were better than him. At least, until the reveal on his Final Problem...
• Ambiguous Criminal History: Played with. While we see him commit several crimes, they are just the tip of the iceberg to a long career of illegal activities, which we don't learn much about.
• Ambiguously Gay: He claims he's not gay, but he delights in flirting with Sherlock regardless. In fact, when Sherlock first meets him, he deliberately leaves extremely subtle hints (of the sort only Sherlock would notice) that he's gay. It's unclear if it was just to mess with his head or if he gave away more than he meant to. The fact that his actor, Andrew Scott, is openly gay doesn’t help.
  "I gave you my number...I thought you might call."
  • He makes some sexually explicit comments about his bodyguards regarding their stamina and aftercare abilities, although then again he could be doing it For the Evulz.
• AM/FM Characterization: He's been shown to play both classical music and classic pop and rock on his Ipod, or whatever vehicle he's riding in, demonstrating his diverse tastes and his many unpredictable moods. His playing of the classical piece "The Thieving Magpie" from La gazza ladra while he robs the Tower of London also underscores the casualness and ease he feels while doing what for anyone else would be the crime of a lifetime. When he arrives at Sherrinford, he listens and dances to Queen's "I Want to Break Free" and his ringtone is The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive".
• Arch-Enemy: Sherlock and Moriarty's relationship shows many traits connected with the trope.
  • It's Personal between them? Check. Moriarty is obsessed with Sherlock and Sherlock keeps his own version of Moriarty in his Mind Palace.
  • The Hero and his Evil Counterpart? Check.
  • Worthy Opponent rivalry? Check.
  • Mirror Character? Check. Moriarty is what Sherlock could become if he'd let his quirks, boredom and anti-social behavior overcome his mind and morality. Lampshaded by their talk on the roof.
  • Moriarty is the Big Bad of Seasons 1 and 2, which makes him the most consistent enemy for Sherlock to fight — another trait of the Arch-Enemy which may explain why Moriarty was teased to return in Season 4.
  • His Arch-Enemy status is consistent with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Sherlock's hallucination of Moriarty in "The Abominable Bride" yells at Sherlock that he will be there every time Sherlock stumbles or fails.
• Ate His Gun: Puts a gun in his own mouth and blows his brains out in "The Reichenbach Fall", For the Evulz.
• Ax-Crazy: Though more in the way of telling other people to kill people, rather than assaulting them himself.
• Back from the Dead: Subverted. After being killed off at the end of Series 2, he seemingly reappears at the end of Series 3. But it turns out to just be Eurus playing recordings of him made before his death.
• Badass Bookworm: Just as much as Sherlock.
• Badass Boast: "The man with the key is king, and honey you should see me in a crown."
  • "Sorry boys! I'm sooo changeable! It is a weakness with me, but to be fair to myself... it is my ONLY weakness."
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Westwood, to be precise. Which helps draw a sharp visual distinction between his scrubs-wearing false identity and the real Moriarty.
• Bad Boss: He's willing to kill, betray, or mock his own minions if it furthers his own aims, or if he just feels like it.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Destroys Sherlock's reputation in "The Reichenbach Fall", forcing Sherlock to fake his own death for a full 2 years. Then subverted, as Sherlock comes back and goes from strength to strength.
• Baddie Flattery: He frequently tells Sherlock that Sherlock is the only one who is a mental match for him.
• Berserk Button: He gets quite angry whenever Sherlock refuses to play Moriarty's little games the way Moriarty wants him to. He also doesn't take kindly to having his time wasted with lies, as his threats to Irene Adler over the phone prove. He also really hates being laughed at or people not being impressed by his intellect.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Go ahead, laugh at him. See what painful punishment he comes up with.
• Big Bad: The main antagonist of Series 1 and 2, and of "The Abominable Bride" in a roundabout way.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Of a sort; throughout Series 4 he was presented as the returning ultimate threat, but it was revealed that he was, in fact, still dead, and that Eurus Holmes was pulling the strings the whole time. Moriarty's presence came from recordings that had been made before his death, as he wanted to insert himself into the Holmes brothers' climactic deaths. But at the end of the day, all his recordings did was let him be little more than a taunting bystander.
  • He thought of himself as being Sherlock's ultimate arch-enemy. Mycroft and Sherlock were three steps ahead the whole time.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He first shows up as Molly Hooper's friendly, harmless boyfriend. He reveals his true colours to Sherlock soon enough.
• Boring Insult: Invoked. According to him, the most heinous insult to someone like him or Sherlock is to be "boring".
  Moriarty: I'm disappointed, I'm disappointed in you, ordinary Sherlock.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Downplayed. He and Sherlock are both geniuses, but Sherlock is slightly taller and stronger than him.
• Breakout Villain: While he was a prominent villain from the very start, he was such a success that the writers kept finding ways to work him in to the show even after he was Killed Off for Real, whether appearing in Sherlock's head as an Imaginary Enemy or through schemes of his that only came to fruition after he died.
• Break Them by Talking: Moriarty has developed this to an art form.
• Camp Straight: Keeps up his Camp persona after revealing his identity to Sherlock. Also delights in flirting with him, calling him "sexy" and "honey". As always, it's hard to tell what really motivates him.
• Canon Character All Along: Molly's colleague Jim at first seems like an ineffectual Straight Gay background character, until it's revealed that his last name is Moriarty.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Is openly proud of being reprehensibly evil. He even gave Sherlock his card.
• Catchphrase: He frequently alludes to "the final problem".
• Challenge Seeker: This is the main reason that he's so obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. The detective is the only one who can be a proper challenge for Moriarty's intellect. When Sherlock seems to be anything less, Moriarty is bittely disappointed.
• Character Exaggeration: The original Moriarty was amoral. This Moriarty is a total psychopath.
• The Chessmaster: He's particularly good at playing Sherlock himself — as illustrated to a devastating effect in "The Reichenbach Fall".
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He has a habit of betraying his clients, employees, and allies in order to further his own private agenda, particularly whenever Sherlock Holmes is involved.
• Circling Monologue: In the climax of "The Reichenbach Fall" he circles around Sherlock while explaining that Sherlock needs to jump off the roof if he wants to save his friends.
• Composite Character: The version of Moriarty in Sherlock's hallucination in "The Abominable Bride" is a combination of Jim and the Professor Moriarty from the books.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Prior to his first appearance in Season 1, the two main protagonists had been 1) a cabbie driver who only killed because somebody paid him to do it, and 2) a gang of cold, impersonal criminals who killed to maintain their criminal activities. Moiarty, as opposed to them, happily kills and destroys just because he finds it fun. Also, he's a Large Ham when previous antagonists had been, at most Cold Hams.
• Consummate Liar: To the point where he can claim to be the former host of a children's TV show, and have an astounding amount of evidence to back it up.
• The Corruptor: Has shades of this; he shows delight when he sees how low Sherlock was willing to go to force him into calling his assassins off.
• Crazy-Prepared: To rival the Holmes brothers. In the event that his main plans for Sherlock went south, he already had backup scheme set up with Eurus Holmes, which she out into action after his death. He went to the point of making multiple recordings of himself for Eurus to use in any event during her agenda.
• Create Your Own Hero: The first crime he ever committed was also the first crime that Sherlock Holmes ever solved (even though no one believed him).
• Creepy Child: He committed his first murder at only twelve years old and got away with it.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: He frequently goes to a higher pitch in his Shifting Voice of Madness.
• Creepy Monotone: He'll sometimes slip into this if he isn't being going all Large Ham or Creepy High-Pitched Voice.
• Crooks Are Better Armed: Although he and Sherlock are pretty much equal in intelligence, Moriarty's criminal connections give him far better resources than Sherlock.
• Darker and Edgier: Does much worse things than his literary counterpart was ever shown to, such as child abduction, mass murder, and terrorism.
• Deadpan Snarker: When he's not giggling.
• Death Seeker: Jim's excruciating boredom with the world leads him to try get Sherlock to kill them both at the end of series 1, simply because it'd be fun.
• Decomposite Character: Certain traits of Moriarty from the books, such as the "Napoleon" nickname, his appearance and personality, and the events in his brief meetings with Sherlock were given to Charles Augustus Magnussen in the show. Some elements of the literary version are even given to Sherlock's mother, of all people, who got Moriarty's age, his mathematician career and his having written a textbook on dynamics (although hers is "The Dynamics of Combustion" whereas Moriarty's was "The Dynamics of an Asteroid")
• Denser and Wackier: Subverted. While this incarnation acts far sillier than Conan Doyle's, he is ultimately just as intelligent and even more dangerous due to his sociopathic cruelty.
• Depraved Bisexual: Played with. He's had relationships with women and flirted with men, even hinting to have had sex with his bodyguards, but at least some of it was shown to be just another way he manipulates and toys with people.
• Depraved Kids' Show Host: One of these turns up in series 2. Jim Moriarty's cover identity as 'The Storyteller' includes kidnapping children and slowly poisoning them.
• Determinator: He will do anything he has to in order to conquer and destroy Sherlock.
• Devil in Plain Sight: On John's blog, he leaves several mysterious and ominous comments with an anonymous account. Nobody else comments on it.
• Diabolical Mastermind: He's a "consulting criminal" behind dozens of illegal schemes. He even has enough power and cunning to commit a crime in public, offer no defence at his trial, and still get off scot-free.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the books, Moriarty dies plunging into Reichenbach Falls. This version shoots himself in the head as his final attempt to force Sherlock to kill himself.
• Dies Wide Open: Complete with a seriously creepy smile after having supposedly blown his brains out.
• Doing It for the Art: In-Universe. Like his book counterpart, he orchestrates crimes to alleviate his own boredom rather than for material desires.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Takes control of every TV set in Britain for his return at the end of "His Last Vow".
  • Although far more likely he took control of the transmitters and ground stations.
• The Dreaded: Everyone who knows of him is afraid of him. Even Mycroft is wary of him.
• Driven to Suicide: Zig-zagged. Looks suicidal when he realizes that in destroying Sherlock, he's actually won, and now has nobody who will pose a challenge to him anymore. Then changes his mind and says he'll manage. Unfortunately Sherlock then convinces him that as long as Sherlock has Jim alive, Sherlock can also stop Jim's plan. Moriarty promptly shoots himself in the head to make sure Sherlock can't beat him.
• Enfant Terrible: He's been murdering since grade school without anyone but Sherlock the wiser. And even then, with all his intelligence Sherlock couldn't solve the case until present-day, when Moriarty began taking prominence in his investigations, making you wonder how utterly demented and intelligent the younger Moriarty truly was.
• Establishing Character Moment: He gets one where he isn't even seen or heard! In "The Great Game", Sherlock gets an anonymous phone call. It's a sobbing woman who is forced to say "Hello, sexy." She goes on to say the words Moriarty is typing for her, calling herself a "stupid bitch" and telling Sherlock that unless he solves a mystery within twenty-four hours, that she will be blown up with a bomb. Although Moriarty's only presence in the scene is the words that the woman is relaying, it chillingly establishes his sadism, sick sense of humor, obsession with Sherlock, and horrifying talent for what he murder and destruction.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Predicted Sherlock would shoot Mycroft in Eurus' Deadly Game (he even made a specific message for that eventuality), but not that Sherlock would threaten to shoot himself, or that presumably Eurus wouldn't kill Mycroft for Sherlock cheating.
• Evil Counterpart: To Sherlock. In this version, he lists his occupation as "Consulting Criminal", and his Insufferable Genius tendencies are played up just as much as Sherlock's. His goal, as it turns out, is to find a perfect counterpart — someone who is him. Sherlock indulges him, in the end, and admits as much.
• Evil Genius: He has intelligence to rival Sherlock and Mycroft, and none of their ethics.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He cracks jokes at the most inappropriate (to anyone else) times.
• Evil Is Petty: He tends to mock those around him for various slight reasons.
• Evil Mentor: He very briefly became one to Eurus Holmes, during a five-minute meeting where he instructed her how to get at Sherlock and what to do in the event of his death.
• Evil Plan: His crimes are often pretty random and impulsive, but in "The Reichenbach Fall" his plan is to manipulate the entirety of London in order to force Sherlock to throw himself off a building.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: One of the styles of speaking he alternates to is a raspy whisper.
• Evil Wears Black: While he wears normal clothing when posing as a normal person, as "himself" he always wears dark suits.
• Expy: Aspects of Jim's personality are similar to that of Moriarty expy Professor Ratigan. He also shares a lot of traits with John Simm's Master.
• Face Death with Dignity: Moriarty is unconcerned with his own life and is even willing to accept the possibility that he could die in the games that he’s made, especially if it allows him to win his game. This is shown in the season 2 finale where he willingly decides to kill himself to ensure that Sherlock will never be able to use him to call off his subordinates that were about to kill Sherlock's friends.
• Faux Affably Evil: He puts on the facade of a soft-spoken gentleman, but it does little to disguise his sadism.
• Faux Yay: He claims he was only pretending to be gay in his "Jim from IT" persona, but whether he's telling the truth is unclear.
• Flaying Alive: Threatens Irene Adler with this.
  Jim: Say that again, and know that if you're lying to me, I will find you, and I will skiiiiiin you.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Invokes it with Sherlock, every chance he gets.
• Foe Yay Shipping: In-universe, no less, judging by one of the members of Sherlock's fanclub who puts forward the theory that Sherlock and Moriarty faked their deaths to run off into the sunset together!
• For the Evulz: Has no real reason behind his cruel Evil Plan except that he is a psychopath and he "got bored". Remarkably like our hero, in fact.
  Sherlock: People have died!
  Moriarty: That's what people DO!
• Friendly Enemy: With Sherlock. Each has the other in their line of sight, ready to kill each other, when Moriarty asks to answer his phone. While he's talking, we get this gem:
  Moriarty: [mouths] Sorry!
  Sherlock: [mouths] It's fine!
• Gambit Pileup: He and Eurus Holmes concocted a plan to trick Sherlock and his friends into playing Eurus's cat-and-mouse game. However, Moriarty later enacts his own plan to try and manipulate Sherlock into killing himself, completely separate from, and mutually exclusive with, Eurus's scheme (presumably without Eurus's knowledge). Moriarty's plan fails, getting him killed in the process (although he was actually happy about that, for his own personal reasons). Eurus later enacts her plan, which is partially successful.
• Genuine Human Hide: Uses this as a threat. Given what we've seen of him, it's very likely that he wasn't simply being theatrical.
  Jim: If you have what you say you have, I will make you rich. If not, I'll make you into shoes.
• Giggling Villain: His laughter is truly creepy.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: His hair is usually much more slicked than Sherlock's messy locks.
• Go Out with a Smile: In his twisted attempt to beat Sherlock, Moriarty gives out a very disturbing smile before blowing out his own brains.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Most of the crimes in seasons 1 and 2 are connected to him in some way. He continued to be this even after he died. Sherlock's continual Faking the Dead in season 3 was due to him, as Sherlock spent the time dismantling his criminal network. In Season 4, while he didn't actually return from the dead, as the vidoes of him seemed to indicate, the plot that Eurus Holmes carries out through the season had been partially orchestrated by him before his demise.
• Hated by All: Despite the mind-boggling extent of his connections and organizations, no one actually likes him. The only positive references made to him are about how useful he is as a consulting criminal. He only gets along with people as evil as he is.
• The Heavy: In the finales of seasons 1 and 2, he steps out of his shadowy role as Greater-Scope Villain to become this.
• Hero Killer: Subverted. It really seems like he has killed Sherlock, and everyone believed he had for two years. Then Sherlock revealed himself to be alive, first two the audience than to the other characters. Still, Moriarty got closer than anyone else to doing Sherlock in.
• Hidden Depths: While the Moriarty we know is never shown to give a single solitary flip about what other people think of him, when he was a little boy he murdered another little boy, apparently because the other boy laughed at him. So it's implied that he does have, or at least had, a sense of self-consciousness and insecurity.
• Hidden Villain: Until the ending of Season 1, his identity was obscured as he connected with all the crimes Sherlock and John encountered.
• Hotter and Sexier: He has Adaptational Attractiveness, has affairs with women to further his goals, and makes several suggestive comments, particularly towards Sherlock.
• I Control My Minions Through...: Material benefits, such as money for Jeff Hope or valuable information for Irene Adler.
• Imaginary Enemy: He appears as a malevolent hallucination to Sherlock several times. Once when Sherlock was unwittingly put under the influence of a hallucinatory chemical, once in Sherlock's mind palace when Sherlock was close to death, and once when Sherlock was having an extended drugs episode. While the former is too brief for Moriarty to say anything, the latter two times he pushes Sherlock to give up on survival.
• Incoming Ham:
  Jim: [said in goofy voice] I gave you my number. I thought you might call.
• Irish Accents: His normal speaking voice (when he's not shifting accents for no reason) is a very Camp, hammy Dublin 4 (read: posh) accent.
• It's All About Me: He doesn't care about anything except alleviating his own boredom. His obsession with Sherlock stems from finally having a fun Worthy Opponent.
• It Amused Me: He clearly does the majority of what he does because it entertains him.
• Jerkass: Unless your name is Sherlock Holmes, he'll either be dismissive of you (at best) or take an interest in you only as another stupid normal person to screw over for fun (the more frequent option). This even applies to the people he works with.
• Joker Immunity: Subverted. At first, it seems like Moriarty is returning in Series 4, despite having been seemingly Killed Off for Real in Series 2. However, it turns out to just be Eurus Holmes enacting a plan that she and Moriarty had concocted before his death. Moriarty is still definitely dead.
• Kick the Dog: His frequent unnecessary taunting and intimidation to both his victims and his own allies.
• Killed Off for Real: No Joker Immunity for Moriarty. Despite a fair bit of speculation otherwise, this seems to truly be the case after shooting himself in "The Reichenbach Fall", as Sherlock finally seems to conclude for sure in "The Abominable Bride".
  • Played with in "The Final Problem" where we see him alive and kicking with Eurus until it's revealed that the scene played out five years ago.
• Knight of Cerebus: The series was never the most lighthearted, but there was plenty of humour. When Moriarty enters as an indirect antagonist, the death toll escalates and the show gets darker. When he appears in person, things get seriously disturbing.
• Lack of Empathy: He shows no interest in the feelings or well-being of others, except for how he can indulge his own depraved and sadistic desires.
  Sherlock: People have died.
  Moriarty: That's what people DO!
• Large Ham: His high-pitched voice and psychopathic mannerisms make him constantly appear on the edge of psychotic madness. He also changes his tone of voice and his mannerisms about every other line, rapidly going through affected personas and acting styles just to mock Sherlock. He's always hammy, though.
• Last-Name Basis: Everyone calls him "Moriarty", the only time he goes by "Jim" is when he's pretending to be Molly's boyfriend.
• Laughably Evil: He may be menacing and dangerous, but he's still quick to pull out a goofy voice, make a snarky comment, and just be an all-around Large Ham.
• Mad Bomber: His chosen way of getting Sherlock's attention in "The Great Game" is to strap time-bombs to innocent people.
• The Mad Hatter: He's out of his damn mind and proud of it.
• The Man Behind the Man: Every major antagonist in Series 1 and 2 either answered to or was advised by him. In "A Study In Pink," the killer was "sponsored" by Moriarty. In "The Blind Banker," it's revealed at the end that he helped the Chinese gangsters that served as the episode's antagonists as well. Finally, in "The Great Game," it's revealed that it goes so far back that Moriarty committed the first murder Sherlock tried to solve, all the way back when they were both teens.
  • He seemed back from the dead to return for Series 4, but in reality those were a bunch of recordings he made with Eurus.
• Manipulative Bastard: He is really good at this. His attempted ruination of Sherlock in "The Reichenbach Fall" is his crowning achievement. Unfortunately for him, Mycroft and Sherlock are better.
• Man of Wealth and Taste
  Jim: [straightens suit] Westwood!
• Master Actor: When he wants to, he can play the part of a normal person seamlessly. His "Jim from IT" and "Rich Brook" fake identities fool almost everone.
• Mood-Swinger: Holy shit. He goes from calm and collected to practically screaming in about two sentences. He even acknowledges it.
  Jim: Sorry boys! I'm sooo changeable!
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: "His Last Vow" ends with his image appearing on every screen in the United Kingdom, suggesting he had plans in place even in the event of his death, if he even died at all. Then subverted, when it turns out that he really is dead.
• Narcissist: His only goal in life is to do what feels good to him, and he's only fascinated with Sherlock because Sherlock reminds him of himself. Tellingly, when he sees how far Sherlock is willing to go to stop his plan, Moriarty's joyful words are "You're not ordinary, no... you're me!"
• Nerves of Steel: Mycroft and the British government can put Moriarty through months of interrogation and torture, but if he doesn't want to do something, it will be no use. Moriarty even brags about it.
  Jim Moriarty: "Sherlock, your big brother and all the king's horses couldn't make me do a thing I didn't want to."
• Non-Action Big Bad: He's never seen to actually commit violence or murder himself. Thanks to his extensive criminal network, there's always somebody to do it for him.
• Noodle Incident: We never find out the details of why his first ever murder victim laughed at him.
• No Sense of Personal Space: He has no qualms about getting in Sherlock's face.
• Mirror Character: To Sherlock - they're both motivated by a complete inability to handle boredom. It makes it very easy for people to start assuming Sherlock made him up.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: With a side of obfuscating sexuality thrown in. His obfuscating stupid/gay fake persona makes a seemingly pitiful attempt at obfuscating clumsiness. Which may make this a very rare case of Obfuscating Obfuscation.
• Offstage Villainy: He has an entire criminal empire that we only see just a fraction of.
• Out-Gambitted: Series 3 reveals that while he thought he was playing them, Mycroft and Sherlock played him in order to draw out and destroy him and his criminal network.
• Outside-Genre Foe: His first appearance is a stark departure from the subtler, more grounded villains that had thus far faced Sherlock and John. Moriarty's MO and mannerisms are more like a Supervillain.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He grins about pretending to be a stereotypical gay man in his "Jim from IT" persona. He also seems to have a misogynistic streak, tending to manipulate and gaslight women in his schemes with little necessity for it, and sexually intimidating a young female police officer when he's being prepped for his trial.
• Pop-Cultured Badass: He's a criminal mastermind who proves to be a match for the Holmes brothers, who listens to The Bee Gees and Queen, and who references Klingons, Darth Vader, and Glee.
• Posthumous Character: In Series 3, he appears as a mental vision in Sherlock's mind, tormenting him further. He also appears in a few flashbacks or Imagine Spot moments. In Series 4 it is constantly hinted that he may still be alive. Nope, he really is dead, but the new Big Bad is using recordings of him, made with his consent, to troll Sherlock.
• Post-Mortem Comeback: Maybe. He appears at the end of "His Last Vow" via mass broadcast around the UK, but it's unclear if he's dead for real or not. It's eventually established that he is very dead and it's all part of a plan he set up in case he died.
• Practically Joker: He's an Ax-Crazy Faux Affably Evil Psychopathic Manchild hammy Mood-Swinger Giggling Villain who commits crimes to alleviate his boredom with life. Little is revealed about his past, and his feelings towards Sherlock are a twisted combination of infatuation and a desire to break him, much like Mr. J's feelings towards Batman.
• Predecessor Villain: In Season 4, he is revealed to be the one who helped set up Eurus's Evil Plan, leading to her rising to the level of Big Bad after his death.
• Psycho for Hire: He acquired his wealth and connections by working as a "consulting criminal". Once Sherlock gets his attention, he's happy to cut loose several clients as part of the game.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Flamboyant, petulant, has a habit of using Totally Radical slang, prone to creepy, giggling laughter, and without a shred of morality.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When he appears as a hallucination in Sherlock's mind after Sherlock has been shot:
  Moriarty: You always feel the pain, BUT YOU DON'T. HAVE. TO. FEAR. IT.
• Quizzical Tilt: Has a habit of doing this, which comes off as both twitchy and mocking.
• Red Herring: His "resurrection" in Series 4 isn't his doing at all, but rather the work of Eurus Holmes.
• Red Is Violent: In "The Final Problem", the recordings of him are all tinted red, as he eggs on Eurus to torture her captives and delights in the idea of Sherlock shooting someone.
• Refuge in Audacity: A large part of how he gets away with his crimes.
• Sadist: He takes almost any opportunity to torment his victims, such as mocking their imminent death after strapping bombs on them, only feeding them chocolates laced with poison, or... well, almost anytime he interacts with Sherlock.
• Secret-Identity Identity: Until he and Sherlock meet at the end of the first series.
• Serial Killer: He's definitely one. His first proper debut episode has him attempt to murder several people just to get Sherlock to play his game, he references other people he's killed several times, and he has a made a career out of assisting other criminals with their acts, including murder.
• Shadow Archetype: He's Sherlock if our protagonist had decided to commit crimes rather than solve them to pass the time, and didn't have the moral guides of John, Mrs Hudson, Molly, and Lestrade (plus the ones that followed as he Took a Level in Kindness).
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Unless he's living under a false identity, he takes pride in wearing his high-class suits.
• Shifting Voice of Madness: One of his more peculiar habits is to sometimes change accents, from an Irish accent to an RP London accent to, most strangely, an American accent (he does this during his Rooftop Confrontation with Holmes in "Sherlock S2 E3 "The Reichenbach Fall"").
• Sibling Rivalry: Implied; Eurus's brother mentions that Moriarty's brother is a station master and speculates that Jim, who is no less than a criminal mastermind, is jealous .
• A Sinister Clue: If you watch closely, when Sherlock hands him a cup of tea he gives it with the handle on the right side and Moriarty irritably turns it around to pick it up.
• Sissy Villain: How Jim liked to portray himself to Sherlock, at first.
• Sliding Scale of Villain Threat: He is at least a National Threat, with England being the main location of his criminal empire and having committed several crimes against the country, but there are indications that his reach extends far beyond the UK borders.
• Smug Snake: He makes no secret of believing that his genius makes him superior to everyone around him, except for Sherlock.
• Snarky Villain, Earnest Hero: Played with. Jim and Sherlock are both snarkers extraordinare, but Sherlock has a point where he will drop the quips and talk seriously, whereas Moriarty seemingly doesn't.
• Sneaky Spider: During Moriarty's trial, Sherlock compares him running his empire of crime to a spider at the centre of a web.
  Sherlock: James Moriarty isn’t a man at all – he’s a spider; a spider at the centre of a web – a criminal web with a thousand threads and he knows precisely how each and every single one of them dances.
• The Sociopath: A genuine example, unlike Sherlock. He views other people as toys or pets.
• Sore Loser: Inverted. In "The Reichenbach Fall", Moriarty gets moany and depressed when it looks like he has Sherlock beaten because Sherlock wasn't enough of a challenge and proved to be "ordinary" in Moriarty's eyes. When Sherlock convinces Moriarty that Sherlock will do anything to stop him, Moriarty is gleeful that Sherlock is just like him. Of course, in the end, Moriarty, sort of "wins" in his own way by killing himself so Sherlock will have no options.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: He (and by extension, the viewers) often listens to music that doesn't fit whatever he's doing, such as pleasant classical music while he robs the Tower of London^note although the title of the piece, "The Thieving Magpie, is appropriate or The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" while meeting Sherlock on the roof for a big climactic confrontation.
• Speak of the Devil
  Jeff: There's a name no-one says, an' I'm not gonna say it either.
• Stalker with a Crush: His obsessive behavior towards Sherlock is reminiscent of this, even if the "crush" part isn't explicitly stated.
• Straw Nihilist: He does a lot of moaning and whining about how the the worst thing in the world is "just staying" and that he and Sherlock need to do what they do to stave off sheer boredom, and that it's the only point to anything.
• Suddenly Shouting: Tends to shout certain words for emphasis when upset.
  Sherlock: People have died.
  Moriarty: That's what people DO!
• Suicide Is Painless: Grins right before shooting himself in the head in "Reichenbach Fall".
• Thanatos Gambit: "The Reichenbach Fall". To ensure that there is no way for Sherlock to stop his plan, he kills himself, intending to force Sherlock to commit suicide to protect his loved ones... apparently all For the Evulz.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: He has few problems blending in and/or pretending to be a normal guy. When he puts on a jacket and baseball cap, hardly anybody gives him a second glance.
• Totally Radical:
  Jim: "Big G" mean "governor". Street speak. I'm a bit down with the kids, you know. I'm relatable that way."
• Troll: He loves to troll Sherlock especially. Notable instances are where he masquerades as Molly's gay boyfriend, and when he uses a cab ride to taunt him about his plan to ruin Sherlock's life.
• The Unfettered: Ultimately a deconstruction. Having absolutely no empathy and no limits, Jim's one and only concern is to try and stave off his endless boredom... even if that means putting his own plans and well-being at risk to do it. Best illustrated in the second series finale where Moriarty gleefully shoots himself in the head for no reason other than he thinks it's the best way to "win" his game with Sherlock.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: He committed his first murder as a child and got away with it, establishing that he's always been sick in the head.
• Unknown Rival: To Sherlock before he (and the audience) meet him face to face.
• Unseen Evil: For most of Series 1, while he has an effect on every case Sherlock and John tackle, he's never shown. He is finally revealed at the end the season's final episode, and revealed to be the "Jim from IT" character that had shown up a little earlier.
• Unwitting Pawn: Makes one out of Molly Hooper, Sally Donovan, and the entire British legal system and tabloid press in "The Reichenbach Fall". Such is his Manipulative Bastardy that he even makes pawns out of the Holmes brothers themselves. Although Sherlock claims in season 3 that Moriarty was the one being played all along.
• Victory Is Boring: As Sherlock points out, there is nothing that Moriarty can't already steal or buy. No problem presents a challenge for him. And Jim absolutely can't stand it. (This is one of the creepy Holmes/Moriarty parallels.)
• Villainous Breakdown: In a strange flipping of the trope's normal use, he actually falls into a bitter despair when he's about to win, as Sherlock disappointed him by not being a better challenge. He cheers up when Sherlock threatens him to gain the upper hand, and is totally happy to kill himself in order to have the best of both worlds by both beating Sherlock and being given the ultimate challenge.
• Villainous Crush: He seems to be attracted to Sherlock.
• Villainous Friendship: With Eurus Holmes. They're both Ax-Crazy and obsessed with Sherlock.
• Villainous Legacy: Even after his death, he makes his mark in Sherlock's life, whether by appearing in hallucinations or via tapes he recorded when he was still alive.
• Villainous Valor: Moriarty may be a sociopathic criminal mastermind, but he’s also shown to be extremely courageous to a very suicidal degree. Case in point: When Sherlock holds Moriarty at gunpoint, the latter merely expresses mild disappointment at the attempt while feigning surprise solely to mock Sherlock, and later gleefully shoots himself in front of Sherlock without an ounce of hesitation or fear so that Sherlock won’t be able to use him to save Sherlock’s friends. However all of these moments of bravery actually paints Moriarty as an even more horrific and monstrous villain; while Moriarty’s valor shows that he isn’t a coward, it also reveals that he has zero regard for human life, including his own, and will gleefully toss it aside if it means that he can alleviate his boredom, win his games and ensure that his opponents will suffer in the long run.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Despite being caught red-handed committing a crime, Moriarty is completely exonerated and later declared to not even exist. He receives widespread public sympathy as Rich Brook, the manipulated and pitiable minion of the real villain: Sherlock Holmes.
• Villain Song: He uses the already-existing song "Stayin' Alive" to explain his own hatred of boredom and monotony.
• Wicked Cultured: He plays La Gazza Ladra by Gioachino Rossini on his MP3 player when breaking into the Tower of London and he can tell anecdotes about Bach.
• Worthy Opponent: He views Sherlock as this, to the point where Sherlock is the only human beign worth his time at all, and he finds the idea of Sherlock not living up to his expectations quite upsetting.
• Would Hurt a Child: In "The Great Game", he straps one of his bombs to a boy and gives Sherlock ten seconds to prove the Vermeer painting is a fake, while the boy counts down to his own demise. In "The Reichenbach Fall", he poisons two more and almost kills them, as they could play into his plans well.
• Younger and Hipper: He's definitely younger than in the books, and as for the hipper part... well, see the entry for Totally Radical above.
• You're Insane!: Sherlock says this to Moriarty in "The Reichenbach Fall".
  Moriarty: You're just getting that now?

Jeff Hope

Jeff Hope

"It's not chance, Mr. Holmes, it's chess. It's a game of chess."

Played By: Phil Davis

The killer in "A Study in Pink," who has a sponsor and receives money for his family for every kill.

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• Adaptational Villainy: The literary version of him was a Sympathetic Murderer who targeted Asshole Victims for hurting the people he loved. Here he's a Serial Killer whose motivation is much less sympathetic, targets completely innocent people, and is overall much more cold-blooded and cruel.
• Adaptational Nationality: Like Adler, he was originally American, this time from Utah. In the TV series, he is a Cockney cab driver.
• Almighty Janitor: His career is rather dull and unimportant, yet he shows himself to be rather intelligent and calculating. He lampshades that someone like him who drives a cab doesn't look all that bright.
• Alone with the Psycho: A variation. Sherlock actually volunteers to be alone with the psycho because the aforementioned psycho's promised to tell Sherlock how he's been committing his murders.
• Asshole Victim: Although he suffered a pretty nasty and painful death, the fact that he murdered 4 innocent people and was also a smug, psychopathic sadist who clearly enjoyed doing what he did solidifies him as this.
• Beneath Notice: As he says, nobody ever thinks about the cabbie. It's like he's just a back of a head. He's able to take advantage of his job to hide in plain sight and be inherently trusted by his victims.
• Break Them by Talking:
  "I'm not going to kill you, Mr. Holmes. I'm going to talk to you, and you're going to kill yourself."
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: He's very intelligent but working in a low income job, even Sherlock lampshades it:
  "Either way you're wasted as a cabbie."
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: There was some subtle foreshadowing about what the character's profession was, but the character himself is never introduced, nor is he ever clearly seen onscreen, until the climax of his episode.
• Driven to Suicide: It looks like this is what he does to his victims. It turns out he's forcing them at gunpoint to choose between two pills, one of which is poisonous.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He's an unrepentant killer and borderline misanthrope to boot, but the main reason he poisons people is to make sure his children have some kind of inheritance when he's gone.
• Evil Old Folks: His exact age is unknown, but he's definitely getting on in years.
• Faux Affably Evil: His tone is certainly friendly and cordial, but the actual content of what he says shows him to be a pretty massive asshole.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: His glasses only add to the eerie appearance that he has, although they're more subtle than most cases of this trope.
• Irony: Greatly values intelligence in people, and prides himself on his own ability, yet is suffering from a brain aneurysm that threatens to kill him.
• Lack of Empathy: He doesn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that he has to kill people in order to secure money for his children. In fact, he seems to like killing and holds most people in contempt.
• Love Makes You Evil: The entire reason behind his killings is because, once he's dead, there'd be no income to provide for his children. Moriarity acts as a "sponsor," paying him loads for each person he kills.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's able to play on Sherlock's constant curiosity and desire for excitement to get Holmes to, not only go alone somewhere with him, but also to play the "game" even when there’s no reason for Sherlock to do so. His game also depends on manipulating people based on what he's deduced about them and what he believes they've deduced about him.
• Misanthrope Supreme: He despises all people around him and believes they're too stupid to measure up to his intellect.
• Never Suicide: The plot of his episode, really. Though since these are "serial suicides" it's kind of obvious.
• No Name Given: His name is only revealed in the credits, and even then his last name's not given.
• Not Afraid to Die: Whenever he plays his "game" with his victims, there's a good chance he could die too, but he just doesn't seem to care. Most likely it's a combination of this trope due to the knowledge he's dying anyway, and confidence that he'll always be able to outsmart his opponents.
• Not The Illness That Killed Them: He confides in Sherlock that he has a brain aneuryism that could cause him to keel over and stop breathing at any second. He ends up being gunned down by Watson instead.
• Papa Wolf: The more people he kills, the more money Moriarty gives to his children.
• Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo: His method of killing involves offering his victims a choice between two identical pills, one of them harmless, the other poisoned.
• Psycho for Hire: For Moriarty. He kills people partially for money to provide his kids and also to satisfy his sense of superiority over others.
• Serial Killer: He's murdered at least four people and he aims to take a fifth in Sherlock Holmes.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: He may not look it, but he is a genius behind the simplish look.
• Smug Snake: While he is a very clever man, as proven by how he's managed to survive four rounds of his "game," his arrogance, cold-bloodedness, and firm belief in the stupidity of everyone around him does little to earn anyone's admiration.
• Starter Villain: He's the villain of the first episode of the series, and, while clever and dangerous enough to arouse Sherlock's interest, he's just the opening act for Moriarity.
• Surrounded by Idiots: At least in his own opinion.
  "Between you and me sitting here, why can't people think? Don't it make you mad? Why can't people just think?"
• Take a Third Option: If anyone tries to refuse his game, he offers them a bullet from his gun instead. Gun's a fake.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: He's a perfectly ordinary-looking man, which aides him in committing his murders.
• Worthy Opponent: While he talks about all his other victims as if they were idiots, he seems to hold Sherlock in some regard. Granted he still thinks Sherlock's not as smart as him, but he's conversational with him and even compliments Sherlock on the ideas Sherlock's put on his website.
• Your Days Are Numbered: He has a life-threatening aneurysm, meaning he lives with the knowledge any breath could be his last.

"The Golem"

Oscar Dzundza AKA "The Golem"

Played By: John Lebar

A mysterious assassin hired by Jim Moriarty.

---

• Bald of Evil: He has no hair.
• The Brute: Tall and tough, he acts as muscle on behalf of Moriarty in "The Great Game".
• Canon Foreigner: He has no basis in Doyle's original stories.
• The Dreaded: He's infamous in the criminal underworld, and for very good reason.
• Emerging from the Shadows: In the planetarium, he emerges from the darkness right behind Sherlock's back before attacking.
• Evil Is Bigger: He's an assassin working for Moriarty who's taller than any of the heroes.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: The only scenes he appears in take place in a dark tunnel and a planetarium during a show.
• Lightning Bruiser: In addition to being big and strong, he's also agile and fast.
• Mythology Gag: His build and behavior are highly reminiscent of Dredger from Sherlock Holmes (2009).
• Professional Killer: He's an assassin-for-hire, and very good at it.
• Psycho for Hire: If his Slasher Smile while battling Sherlock and John is any indication, he quite enjoys his job.
• Red Baron: "The Golem" is his nickname.
• Sinister Silhouettes: When Sherlock and John first catch up with him, all we can make out is his (very tall) silhouette and shadow.
• Slasher Smile: He grins nightmarishly when he's about to kill Sherlock
• Stealthy Colossus: Despite his size, he's very sneaky and quick, managing to get the drop on even Sherlock Holmes.
• The Voiceless: He never speaks onscreen.

Irene Adler

Irene "The Woman" Adler

"Do you know the problem with a disguise, Mr Holmes? However hard you try, it's always a self-portrait."

Played By: Lara Pulver

The Woman, perhaps the only person to ever consistently flummox Sherlock Holmes. She's a dominatrix who first enters the story due to blackmailing the royal family.

---

• Adaptational Badass: In the original stories, Irene Adler's impressive feat was simply seeing through Holmes' ruse, pulling one in turn, and then having the good sense to skip town while she has the chance. Here, she manages to con him into decoding top-secret, vital information which she then passes along to Moriarty, ruining Mycroft's day. It takes a last-second epiphany for Sherlock to recover himself and make up for his own royal screwup.
• Adaptational Nationality: In the original series, Adler is American, from New Jersey. In the new series, she's played by English Lara Pulver. They do allude to her original American background with her going to America for witness protection, but really being captured in Karachi, and seemingly beheaded...
• Adaptational Sexuality: The original Irene Adler was straight, but this version identifies herself as a lesbian, attraction to Sherlock aside.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the original short-story, Irene was guilty of nothing worse than owning a potentially inconvenient photograph and just wanted to be left alone.
• Adaptational Wimp: Irene Adler's original claim to fame was that she was the only character who managed to completely outsmart Sherlock and get away with her scheme with no strings attached. Though Irene here does have more time to show her stuff, she's also ultimately completely beaten by Sherlock, and even has to get rescued by him a few times.
• Badass Boast: "This is how I want you to remember me... the woman who beat you."
• Big Bad Wannabe: For all of Irene’s cleverness, it’s still clear that she wouldn’t have gotten away with as much without Moriarty’s assistance. This is made more evident after she loses his support, and is captured and almost put to death.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She may not have been a sweetheart when she was introduced, but by the time the episode ends, it’s revealed that she’s complicit in terrorist plots and Moriarty's willing accomplice.
• Brains and Bondage: A dominatrix who caters to the highest echelons of society. One of very few people to get several over on Sherlock Holmes.
• Brainy Brunette: Brown hair and nearly as smart as Sherlock.
• Broken Bird: She's very clever, but also clearly rather damaged; Irene routinely drugs her 'friends', keeps blackmail material on her phone just in case she needs it, and her career is sex — it's not fun, it's a job.
• The Cameo: Irene very briefly appears in Sherlock's mind palace in "The Sign of Three", suggesting that Sherlock still thinks about her sometimes. She's completely naked, naturally.
• Catchphrase: She mentions a couple of times she knows somebody, then amends, "Well, I know what he/she likes."
• The Chessmaster: Outplays both Holmes brothers, at one point.
• Consummate Liar: She's very good at manipulating and deceiving people. Ironically, she even convinces herself she's only pretending to have feelings for Sherlock.
• Dark Action Girl: She can handle herself in a scrap, as seen when she and Sherlock are ambushed in her drawing room, she easily disarms and pistol-whips her attacker.
• Dominatrix: Mycroft specifically describes her as such.
• Easily Forgiven: She was perfectly willing to extort the British government for millions, enlist the skills of a psychopath, aid in a terrorist plot, and manipulate and betray Sherlock, yet she still gets saved by Sherlock in the end and lives without any apparent consequences or moral development.
• Excessive Evil Eye Shadow: Prior to meeting Sherlock, she is seen liberally applying copious pearlescent eye-shadow and blood-red lipstick.
• Faking the Dead: Twice.
• Femme Fatale: A classic example.
• Femme Fatale Spy: One of her many tricks for stealing blackmail material.
• Friendly Enemy: Whether he still has any animosity towards her is debatable, but "The Lying Detective" reveals that, wherever she is now, she and Sherlock still text sometimes. She even wishes him a happy birthday. Sherlock has mixed feelings about the situation, but John encourages him to pursue it (he knows better than anyone he might not get another chance).
• Fun with Subtitles: When Sherlock does his trademark scan, a subtitle floating beside the clue says what he's noticed. When he first meets Irene, all his scans get is "???????".
• If It's You, It's Okay: She describes herself as a lesbian but is attracted to Sherlock; she implies in a conversation with John that he's the exception.
• In Name Only: Even as far as many adaptations tend to depict the character as a more morally ambiguous and cunning character, the Irene Adler of Sherlock has little in common with the original stories other than possessing an incriminating photograph that Sherlock is hired to procure from her. In Doyle's writings, Irene was rumored to be a courtesan but was actually an opera singer, was somewhat sympathetic in her blackmail motives, and by the end of the story she escaped but had no intent to actually use the blackmail leverage she had; she just wanted to be left alone with her new husband. In the series, Adler is a professional dominatrix who caters to high-end clientele including royalty and military officers, steals sensitive information from her clients to use for criminal purposes, and is working with Moriarty on a plan to fool the Holmes brothers.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Let's be honest, whether she has feelings for Sherlock or not, it still doesn't stop her from treating him terribly or excuse her for working with Moriarty. She's made it pretty clear all through that episode that her self-interest comes before anything else.
• Karma Houdini: For all the havoc and damage she caused, she still gets to survive in the end, albeit with her reputation destroyed and her "occupation" taken away from her.
• Laser-Guided Karma: She does everything she can to exploit Sherlock’s naivete when it comes to sex and intimacy but in the end her own feelings for him prove to be her downfall. Verges on Dramatic Irony.
• Ms. Fanservice: Struts into the drawing room to greet Sherlock stark naked.
• Naked on Arrival: Pulls this on Sherlock to defeat his trademark scan. Can't tell anything from a person's clothes if they're not wearing any, right?
• No-Sell: When first meeting Adler, Sherlock's scan can only come up with "??????"
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Admittedly, she might not be from New Jersey in this version, but the fact Pulver uses her normal accent is a notable departure from past portrayals of the character.
• Show Some Leg: Calculates that showing some leg would simply be analysed for what it is by Sherlock. So she takes it up to eleven.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Elegant. Ruthless.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Caters to both male and female clients, claims to self-identify as being gay, yet the only man (or indeed anyone) she actually shows any serious interest seems to be Sherlock. Her chosen password is particularly telling.
  I Am SHER Locked
• Troll: She loves to troll Sherlock, even altering his phone so that every time she messages him, it plays a soft, pleasured sigh.
• Unusual Euphemism: At one point, her occupation is described as "recreational scolding".
• The Vamp: A dangerous, beautiful woman who uses sex as a tool to get what she wants.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: Very much taken with Sherlock.
• Woman Of Wealth And Taste: The phone everybody was fighting for in "A Scandal in Belgravia" was a Vertu Constellation Quest smart phone, with a price tag of £17,300. There was more than one reason she was fighting tooth and nail to get it back.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never find out what became of her after the events of "A Scandal in Belgravia", presumably she's in hiding in somewhere. In "The Lying Detective," she is revealed to be in contact with Sherlock.
• Whip of Dominance: She's a ruthless Femme Fatale Spy that is introduced holding a riding crop, which features extensively in her website's photos, and uses it for reasons very different from Sherlock's.

Bob Frankland

Bob Frankland

Played By: Clive Mantle

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• Adaptational Villainy: Frankland wasn't the bad guy in the original "Hound of the Baskervilles" story. He was at most a crabby, litigious old man.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dr Frankland is very polite and friendly despite being a murderer involved in highly unethical scientific experiments.
• Gaslighting: Frankland has been drugging Henry in order to discredit him as a witness to his father's death.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the climax of "The Hounds Of Baskerville", Frankland attempts to escape through the Grimpen Minefield and steps on a mine, which blows him to bits.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Double-subverted. Frankland was ultimately responsible for the death of Henry's father, and got away with it because even though Henry witnessed it, Henry was drugged by the Project Hound drug and rationalized it into thinking it was the hound to cope with the trauma. When Henry finally learned and accepted the truth about the hound and his father's murder twenty years later, he furiously tried to attack Frankland before being stopped by Lestrade. Frankland then attempted to escape through the Grimpen Minefield and, predictably, ended up getting blown up.
• Mad Scientist: Killed a colleague who threatened to expose his unethical experiments, then spent decades psychologically tormenting the only witness, to guarantee that witness could never plausibly explain what he'd seen.
• Monster of the Week: Only appears in "The Hounds Of Baskerville".
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Subverted. Once he's caught, he attempts to escape through the Grimpen Minefield, only to end up stepping on a mine and gets blown up.

Lord Moran

Lord Moran

Played By: Uncredited

A Member of Parliament who was actually working for North Korea with an underground terrorist cell. He planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament using a tube train that was rigged to detonate.

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• Adaptational Job Change: In the Doyle books, Sebastian Moran was a colonel and assassin for Moriarty. This Moran is an MP. Although Sebastian Moran's father was a Minister to Persia, so this might be a case of Mythology Gag.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the books, Moran was an employee of Professor Moriarty. In the show, they are never shown to have any connection.
• Adaptational Wimp: His literary counterpart was an expert sharpshooter and former soldier who Holmes described as "the second most dangerous man in London", here he's never shown to have any of those skills.
• Corrupt Politician: He's a member of Parliament who is secretly orchestrating a terror strike.
• In Name Only: Aside from his surname, he has little in common with Doyle's Colonel Sebastian Moran.
• Mythology Gag: To the Giant Rat of Sumatra from the Conan stories: his rigged train is on Sumatra Road, and Sherlock calls him a "big rat".
  • He's also a member of the British government, like the literary Moran's father.
• Western Terrorists: He's a member of the British government who's working with an underground terrorist cell.

Charles Augustus Magnussen

Charles Augustus Magnussen

"Knowing is owning."

Played By: Lars Mikkelsen

A media mogul who owns the majority of Western civilization through very careful application of blackmail.

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• Achilles' Heel: Magnussen stores all the information about his victims not on a computer, which would be hackable, but in hard copy form in a vast underground vault underneath his high-security home. Only he has access to it, and he doesn't let anybody in. ... Except that he doesn't. There is no such vault. He just remembers it all. As a result, Sherlock is able to eliminate Magnussen as a threat by shooting him in the head.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: While he isn't gorgeous in either the books or the show, in the book he is a Fat Bastard while in the show he's Lean and Mean.
• Adaptational Badass: His literary counterpart was content blackmailing England's nobility and gentry, specifically ladies, who were either married or engaged. Here he's blackmailing world governments, and instead of keeping all of his information in a locked safe, he keeps it all in his own head.
• Adaptational Nationality: His book counterpart was British. Magnussen is probably from a Scandinavian country but we never find out which one.
  • His actor being told to keep his native accent (more distinctive to Scandinavians than Anglophones, admittedly) and the spelling ("Magnussen" rather than "Magnusson") strongly suggest he's meant to be Danish.
• Adaptation Name Change: From Milverton to Magnussen.
• Always Someone Better: Sherlock's hatred of him is exacerbated by the fact that Magnussen is genuinely smart enough to outwit him.
• Animal Motifs: Sherlock compares his appearance and behavior to that of a shark.
• Asshole Victim: He's so cruel and unlikable, you can't help but cheer Sherlock on when he shoots Magnussen in the head.
• Bad Boss: By his own account, he cruelly toys with his own employees as much as he would toy with anyone else.
• Beard of Evil: He has a goatee.
• Big Bad: He's the one for Series 3.
• Blackmail: Specializes in extortion.
  Sherlock: ... he attacks people who are different and preys on their secrets!
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: He says that what he does isn't "blackmail" it's "ownership".
• Boom, Headshot!: Sherlock shoots him in the head after he makes it clear that if he dies, his information goes with him.
• The Bully: What he is, and the specific reason Sherlock hates him as he picks on people for being different, hinting at a bit of bullying in Sherlock's own past.
• Bullying a Dragon: Seriously, revealing that there are no physical Appledore vaults, that all the information is in his head, and there are no tangible copies of data or backups or contingencies that can be disseminated in the event of his death to cause chaos, and then being utterly unrepentant and physically humiliating the people who hate him and want to stop him. Did Magnussen really not consider someone would be desperate or stupid or self-sacrificing enough to simply kill him where he stood? Because that is the one thing that will easily and definitively eliminate the threat of his blackmail scheme by leaving all that sensitive information completely dead inside his equally dead brain. It is especially puzzling that he would admit as much to Sherlock, after just barely escaping a similar fate by Mary's hand earlier in the episode.
• Card-Carrying Villain: To the people he's blackmailing. In public, he presents himself as a simple businessman. Defied at the end, though — he mocks Sherlock and John precisely for treating him like some kind of villain. He seems to honestly believe that he isn't a villain due to some Insane Troll Logic like, for instance, the fact that he technically hasn't killed anyone (even though he has ruined several lives and puts others in mortal danger, both for his own amusement).
• The Chessmaster: His ultimate goal in Series 3 is to get leverage on Mycroft to blackmail and control him. He achieves this by blackmailing Mary, then manipulating Sherlock and John when they react as he expects they will, relying on a series of "pressure points" to control the involved parties. Once Sherlock implicated himself for high treason by trying to sell him Mycroft's laptop full of government information, Magnussen would have the leverage he needs to get to Mycroft.
• Composite Character: Largely based on Charles Augustus Milverton, from the short story of the same title. However, the larger scale of his activities, the "Napoleon" nickname, his appearance and personality, and the events in his brief meetings with Sherlock, make him a more faithful depiction of Moriarty as he originally appeared in the Conan Doyle stories than the Sherlock Jim Moriarty is.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: In addition to his blackmailing activities, he has no problem printing false information in his papers.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Averted. He's already extremely wealthy and powerful. He doesn't do what he does for any greater goal or profit but simply because he can.
• Deadpan Snarker: He has a lot of snide remarks which fit with his condescending nature and disdainful view of others:
  John: I don't understand.
  Magnussen: You should put that on a t-shirt.
  [later]
  John: I still don't understand.
  Magnussen: And there's the back of the t-shirt.
• Dirty Coward: No problem with begging for his life when he's got a gun to his head.
• Dirty Old Man: He can go anywhere from small, simple actions and words that will leave your skin crawling, to licking a woman's face and molesting Sherlock while he's nearly unconscious in a deleted scene.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: His interactions with his victims strongly resemble those of a rapist (and in Britain, forcibly licking someone like that counts as sexual assault).
• The Dreaded: Sherlock mentions that Magnussen is the most dangerous threat he's faced up to that point and nobody's ever made his stomach turn quite like Magnussen.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: When he and Sherlock meet in the cafe, Magnussen pokes around Sherlock's pasta and takes an olive from it, rinsing his fingers off in Sherlock's glass to add salt to the wound.
• Ephebophile: If his comment about a 15 year old girl being "delicious" is anything to go by.
• Establishing Character Moment: His second scene is what really establishes who he is. He intimidates and harasses Lady Smallwood and threatens her with compromising letters between her husband and a 15-year-old girl, while vocally preferring the term "ownership" to "blackmail". The scene sums up his MO, his pettyness, and his will to "own" other people with disgusting clarity.
• Even Evil Has Standards: A truly bizarre case as he draws the line at actually having anyone murdered and seems to believe that makes him morally righteous. Putting people in situations that would certainly result in death or destroying their lives to the point of suicide are fine in his view as long as he doesn't pull the trigger himself or ask someone else to do it. Exactly how he reasons this is anybody's guess.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: For all the ways that he managed to outwit Sherlock and take advantage of the fact that John is Sherlock's pressure point, he was apparently unaware of how far Sherlock would go to protect John.
  • A smooth talker with a thousand enemies and a gun presently to his head: "What's this obsession with honesty?!"
  • Also, for all the truly vile and horrible things he does every single day, he scoffs and laughs at the idea that he is actually the bad guy.
• Evil Chancellor: He plays an "off-the-books" version of this role when he consults with Britain's top officials. Officials which he has nothing but petty contempt for and loves to blackmail whenever he can.
• Evil Counterpart: Another one to Sherlock. Like Sherlock, he's a genius who stores vast amounts of information in his head via the Mind Palace technique. This is the secret of his serial blackmailing. He doesn't need to store the information corporeally or digitally. He's Sherlock's logical side, if taken to a cold, logical extreme.
  • Like Sherlock, Magnussen specializes in uncovering secrets and solving mysteries, but while Sherlock uses it to put evil away and better society, Magnussen uses it as power to assert his dominance over people and countries.
  • He is an evil counterpart of Mycroft. Both have extensive influence over governments, both have direct yet ethically-questionable access to leaders of Britain, both are chessmasters, and both are strongly implied to actually be smarter than Sherlock (and both definitely like reminding him of it). It's strongly implied that Magnussen has clashed with Mycroft before and has found a way to blackmail or control him which may be threats against Sherlock and at one point Sherlock tries and fails to bribe him with Mycroft's laptop, because Magnussen craves the information on it. In the original stories Sherlock muses that if Mycroft had the inclination he could easily become the most successful criminal the world had ever seen- Magnussen could be read as an attempt to see if that is true.
• Evil Gloating: Magnussen likes to do this. And in classic villain fashion, this ultimately leads to his downfall: When he thinks that he has beat Sherlock Holmes, he tells him the reason why - this way exposing his own biggest weakness. Namely that the police can't confiscate his blackmail vault because it only exists in his head. Thus the vault will simply cease to exist and stop causing any more trouble with Magnussen's death.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: His first few scenes take place in dimly lit rooms.
• Evil Is Petty: Mainly because of all the information he has on people, he fully believes he can do whatever to whomever he wants. In fact this seems to be his main motivation.
  • He licks Lady Smallwood's face after declaring he can ruin her husband.
  • He pisses in 221B's fireplace, and when he wipes his hands, he throws the towelette on the floor.
  • He picks up and eats an olive off Sherlock's pasta meal and cleans his fingers with Sherlock's drink.
  • When Sherlock and John are shown into his room, he sips a glass of wine and says "I would offer you a drink, but it's very rare and expensive."
  • He flicks John in the face repeatedly, because if the latter doesn't allow him, Magnussen will have Mary killed (or rather, expose her as an assassin in his newspapers and thus make her a fugitive from the law and on the run from people who want her dead). He also does it with his middle finger as a petty insult. It's implied he did something similar to Janine. He points out he does this metaphorically to whole countries.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. He's arrogant enough to think he can do basically whatever he wants. Even after he nearly gets shot by a (retired) assassin who he's trying to blackmail. He knows John is Sherlock's "pressure point", but doesn't realize Sherlock is willing to kill for John.
  • Related to that is his sadism and petulance. Magnussen is obsessed with reminding everyone of the hold he has over them and treating them horribly for no other reason than that he can. This means that it's only a matter of time before one of his victims becomes desperate to fight back.
• Evil Laugh: He finally lets one out when Sherlock confronts him at Appledore, and again a little later when he is flicking John's face.
• Faux Affably Evil: He rarely gets angry, and almost always speaks with the same polite tone of voice. It makes him even creepier and even more disgusting.
• For the Evulz: He's a wealthy newspaper magnate, so he blackmails people because he enjoys the power it gives him, not for the money.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: A criminal mastermind with a pair of rimless glasses.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In "The Empty Hearse". He's around, and arranges for John's life to be put in danger, but he doesn't become the full Big Bad until a couple episodes later.
• Hated by All: He has incredible wealth and power, but absolutely no positive relationships with anyone. Even Moriarty at least had the respect of some of his clients and one or two Villainous Friendships. Meanwhile, nobody feels anything to Magnussen but fear and/or loathing.
• Hate Sink: Unlike Moriarty, who was crazy and wild enough to be fun, or other past villains, who were evil but not exceptionally repulsive, Magnussen is written to be completely creepy and unsympathetic, constantly shown doing sadistic or disgusting things on small whims, making the audience totally root for Sherlock when he shoots Magnussen in the face.
• The Hedonist: He has no big Evil Plan or personal vendetta. He does what he does because he enjoys screwing over people in petty ways whenever the opportunity presents itself. He just uses blackmail to let the opportunity present itself as often as possible.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His fatal mistake was showing Sherlock and John that there is no actual Appledore records vault and that any information he may have on his blackmail targets merely exists within his mind. At first both of them think they're defeated but in reality, the solution is quite simple.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: His first action in the series is to almost have John burned in a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day.
• Hypocrite: He loves threatening people with ruination and does so with the utmost apathy and grace, but as soon as his neck's on the line, he breaks down into a quivering, pleading mess.
  • He also insinuates that one of his questioners is prejudiced against him because he's from another country, and yet he himself makes snide comments about the English.
• I Own This Town: He is implied to have this attitude when he decides that Sherlock's flat is his office. Sherlock himself states that, as long as Magnussen has power, the free life of anyone in the Western world is an illusion.
• I Control My Minions Through...: ...fear, specifically fear that he will expose her secrets. While not directly stated, it's implied that his personal employees only work for him because of this (see his mistreatment of Janine, for example).
• Icy Blue Eyes: Sherlock compares his eyes to the "dead eyed" gaze of a shark.
• Immoral Journalist: Snoops into the dark secrets of major political figures and then uses those secrets to blackmail them. Sherlock considers him so disgusting that he opts to simply shoot him in the head rather than find a way to outsmart him.
• Interim Villain: After Series 1 and 2 had Jim Moriarty as the Big Bad, Magnussen was in that role for Series 3. Almost immediately after Magnussen's death, Moriarty seemingly returns. (although he's actually still dead, he nevertheless has an important effect on Series 4's REAL Big Bad.)
• Irony: Sherlock shoots Magnussen in both his literal and metaphorical computer (where he stored all his oh so valuable blackmail information), which is directly caused by two separate instances of the dog biting back.
• It Amused Me: He gets his kicks from people having no choice but to take the torment he dishes out. Flicking John's face, with Mary's life on the line if John doesn't comply, makes him giggle.
• Jabba Table Manners: When he meets Sherlock in the cafeteria, he pokes around Sherlock's pasta with his fingers, picks an olive out of it, rinses them off on Sherlock's glass of water, and then waves the water off on Sherlock..
• Jerkass: He's a pretty big one. He blackmails people just for the hell of it and because it gives him power over them, consequences (to them) be damned.
• Kick the Dog: To all of his onscreen victims.
• Knight of Cerebus: For Series 3. At first, it appeared "The Empty Hearse" would be more lighthearted and funny... then John Watson is nearly burned to death. From there, he only gets worse.
• Lack of Empathy: In his view, if he hasn't killed anyone, then there's no problem with his blackmail and manipulation, even if it leads someone to commit suicide.
• Lean and Mean: In a conspicuous contrast to the portly Milverton of the original story, Lars Mikkelsen's sharp, angular features◊ help to create the effect.
  • His height helps the sharp, skeletal effect. Mikkelsen at six feet three and a half inches looms over even Cumberbatch and Gatiss, and positively towers over 5'7" Martin Freeman and 5'4" Amanda Abbington.
  • Ironically, the actor's brother Mads Mikkelsen is another tall, thin actor who is well-known for playing Le Chiffre, the villain of Casino Royale, who like Milverton is described as short and fat in the book in which he appears.
• Logical Weakness: Having a magical mind palace where he stores all his information and draws it upon it as needed is certainly an impressive mental feat and protects him from having to use physical copies, removing the threat of it being stolen or destroyed. But it has the massive drawback of meaning all anyone has to do to stop him is simply prevent him from drawing upon said information. [[Spoiler: Say, by murdering him as Sherlock does.]]
• Loophole Abuse: He claims that he isn't evil because he has never killed anybody, even though he has let people be killed by releasing delicate information and has driven others to suicide.
• Necessarily Evil: For the British government, as described by Mycroft:
  "He's a businessman, that's all. And occasionally useful to us. A necessary evil."
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Of Rupert Murdoch. Both are wealthy, powerful foreigners who run controversial news organizations. Also Robert Maxwell.
  • The fact that he keeps tabs on everyone whom he has dirt on, including politicians and governments in order to blackmail them arguably makes him a Harsher in Hindsight Expy of Jeffrey Epstein. Made worse by the fact that Magnussen is implied to be an Ephebophile.
• No Plans No Prototype No Back Up: He reveals that he doesn't keep information on a computer which can be hacked, stolen or destroyed or on physical copies which can also be stolen. He simply stores it all in his head. This means Sherlock can stop all his schemes by simply killing him.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Oh, he probably has one, but he takes perverse pleasure in violating other people's because he knows he can get away with it. He'll lick people's faces, flick them in the eye, or root through their food with his bare hands, after making it clear they can't react in any way without him exposing their secrets.
• Not So Stoic: He keeps a cold and emotionless facade, but on rare moments it will break, such as when he's begging and blubbering for Mary not to kill him, or when he lets out a delighted Evil Laugh as he flicks John's face.
• Old Media Are Evil: He's an international newspaper magnate who blackmails people as a sideline and for his own enjoyment.
• Out-Gambitted: For all of his planning and manipulation, he'd never anticipated Sherlock shooting him in the head.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: After a Kick the Dog moment courtesy of him, this is what two of his onscreen victims do back.
• Photographic Memory: There are hints that he's using some sort of Google Glass-esque Heads-Up Display, and that's the conclusion Sherlock initially comes to, but it's a Red Herring. He keeps all his secrets in his "mind palace", with no backup whatsoever.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He gets inappropriately physical with almost every female he comes across, and he insults all English people with several backhanded compliments, calling them "a nation of herbivores" and saying that he tries things in England before he tries them in "REAL countries".
• Psychopathic Manchild: Type C. He is the most powerful man in the world, but he acts like a Spoiled Brat or Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up, since he uses said power mainly to bully and humiliate people For the Evulz.
• Red Right Hand: In his interaction with Lady Smallwood in Claridge's, he reveals that he suffers from hyperhydrosis.
• Sadist: Absolutely revels in the power his information, influence and public standing gives him over other people- to the point of forcefully licking the arm and face of a government minister or pissing in Sherlock's fireplace, just because he can.
• Saying Too Much: He gloats to Sherlock about how there are no copies of his blackmail information, it's all just in his head. Sherlock decides to solve the problem with his trusty mind eraser, also known as a handgun, and promptly decorates the terrace with Charles' brain matter.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Even though he's seen blackmailing MP's (and it's implied the Prime Minister) Mycroft wants him left alone for reasons that are unclear.
  • Mycroft himself claims that Magnussen's intel network is sometimes of use to the British government, possibly making him another "consultant" like Moriarty. If that is true, then it's very clear most of the British government is not happy with the arrangement.
  • Sherlock accuses Mycroft of also being blackmailed by Magnussen. It's implied that he actually got to Mycroft by threatening to use his papers to go after Sherlock.
• Shadow Archetype: If Moriarty is the more chaotic, wild counterpart to Sherlock, Magnussen is Sherlock to his absolute coldest depths.
  • He is also a more smug, sadistic, and unprincipled version of Mycroft, what the latter could be if he stopped caring about the defence of the realm and instead decided to rub its face in the mud.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Always dresses in suits and despite having a condition that makes him sweat constantly, he always looks immaculate from his hair to his clothes.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: He claims "ownership" over people he has information on, and makes it quite clear he can and will do anything he wants to them.
• Smug Snake:
  • He considers John and Mrs. Hudson to be "unimportant".
  • He tends to underestimate the people he blackmails. Some like Lady Smallwood and Mary refuse to put up with it and act to bring him down.
  • All his information is memorized, so there's no hard copy of it. But he tells this all to Sherlock, thinking he got one up on him, which is a rare but severe miscalculation on his part. Sherlock has no problem putting a bullet in his brain when he threatens John and Mary's happiness.
  • He dismisses Sherlock as a hero who can't do anything to stop him. Sherlock calls him out on this and shoots him.
• Snarky Villain, Earnest Hero: Averted with Sherlock, who is snarkier than Magnussen, but played straight with John. See the quotes on Deadpan Snarker above.
• The Sociopath: He likes to use blackmail to control others simply for the thrill of having power over them, and even if he doesn't kill them, he doesn't care at all about how his manipulation affects them mentally and emotionally or even if they die by suicide due to his actions. He is not shown to have any genuine good relationships at all, and views everyone around him with a cold and clinical Lack of Empathy and regards human life and other people in general with a mix of disinterest and disdain. He also has terrible impulse control, never able to refrain from fucking people over even if it hurts him later, and is extremely arrogant, boasting about his mind palace to show his intellect.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Is always soft spoken, even when pleading for his life. Also, torments people he doesn't need to just because he enjoys it.
• Stat-O-Vision: His glasses show information useful for blackmail on anyone he looks at including their porn preference and "pressure points." It turns out that his glasses are completely ordinary and the information he sees is just his "mind palace." It still fits this trope, though.
• The Stoic: He presents himself as this, and lives up to it most of the time, staying cold and even-toned in almost any situation. The exception is when Mary threatens his life, where he reveals himself to be a Dirty Coward who hypocritically blubbers and begs for mercy.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He only appears on the show after Jim Moriarty's death, and is very similar to him. Like Moriarty, Magnussen is a criminal mastermind with the whole of England and beyond in the palm of his hand, who Sherlock has a personal rivalry with. Both characters are also Faux Affably Evil Deadpan Snarker sociopaths, although Moriarty is a Large Ham while Magnussen is a Soft-Spoken Sadist. The biggest difference is that Magnussen only appears in one episode before being killed off, and after that Moriarty still continues to have a posthumous effect on the show.
• Take That!: Arguably to another newspaper executive Rupert Murdoch (leading to more accusations of BBC bias from the Daily Mail.)
• Thou Shall Not Kill: Villainous version, and an extremely borderline case. He has no problem arranging for John to be put in a bonfire just to see how Sherlock would react... but says he had a man on-site who would have saved him had Sherlock not made it in time, so it doesn't really count. His final fate is to be on the receiving end of Sherlock defying this trope. Also, at least one of his blackmail victims committed suicide after he threatened them, and he doesn't give a damn.
• Too Dumb to Live: After putting Sherlock and John through hell and threatening to destroy their lives and that of the people they love, Magnussen decides to do some Evil Gloating and reveal that all the information he uses to blackmail people is in his head, no need for external storage. Cue Sherlock blowing his brains out.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Mycroft has him under protection, yet Magnussen has no problem stealing data from British Intelligence if it gives him more power. But he's savvy enough to not get caught doing it.
• Villain Ball: Magnussen makes two mistakes:
  • He decides to blackmail Mary, a recently retired assassin. He presumably knows everything about her, and takes joy in amusing himself with the nature of her assassinations. Except this also means she has no moral or practical issue in just sneaking into his office and shooting him in the head as soon as she could fit it in her schedule. Which she was seconds away from doing if not for Sherlock and Watson making an appearance and forcing her to improvise to avoid them being suspected in Magnussen's murder.
  • The reveal that the Appledore blackmail vault is entirely in Magnussen's head, and he controls no records other than what he remembers, makes him pretty impotent. Perhaps the only reason he hasn't been killed before the episode is that his targets think that Magnussen has some sort of failsafe in case he's killed, such as physical records that would be disseminated if he dies under suspicious circumstances. Magnussen likes the idea of showing up Sherlock by getting the police to search his home and find nothing incriminating. However, he seems ignorant of the fact that this also will reveal to lots of current and future unhappy blackmail victims that it might be better to just kill him instead of pay him. The reveal is intended to demonstrate Magnussen defeating Sherlock's plan to expose him, but it also suggests Magnussen is far and wide the stupidest criminal Sherlock has ever faced, as even after Mary attempting to kill him, he seems unaware that any of his victims might attempt to kill him, and therefore makes no effort to use his extensive blackmail library to protect himself.
• Villainous Cheek Bones: Has these to go along with his Lean and Mean build.
• Villains Want Mercy: He's even more of a Dirty Coward than his literary counterpart, who was obviously also terrified to face some who would Just Shoot Him but never quite stooped to invoking her (husband's) better nature.
• Villain with Good Publicity: To the general public, he's simply a businessman with some good connections.
• White Void Room: His "vault", which helps him in accessing his mind palace.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He labels Sherlock a "hero", and assumes that Thou Shalt Not Kill is in place. This leads to his downfall when Sherlock straight-up shoots him.

Culverton Smith

Culverton Smith

"We're going to have endless fun, Mr. Holmes, aren't we?"

Played by: Toby Jones

A well known philanthropist and media personality who is secretly a serial killer.

---

• Adaptational Attractiveness: Rotten teeth notwithstanding, he's Brad Pitt compared to how Smith was described in the novel.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Culverton Smith was no saint in "The Dying Detective"; he did kill his nephew for inheritance. But this version is a complete sadist killing scores of people.
• Attention Whore: He loves being famous - no matter what he has to do to obtain it.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Played with. While he doesn't get to kill Sherlock and he gets caught and arrested, once he confesses to the police he realizes how much he loves confessing, and he gloats about how he'll go down in history for his crimes. While he didn't get what he wanted at first, he ends the episode perfectly happy.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: He has a vaguely defined job as a corporate CEO and describes life as "a balance sheet" on which he is "in credit".
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Downplayed and likely subverted; Sherlock theorizes that Culverton "cares deeply" for his daughter, but Culverton's actual interactions with the young woman come off as emotionally and psychologically abusive towards her, giving off the impression that any care he has for her is just part of his Faux Affably Evil personality.
• Evil Laugh: Subverted. In one scene he appears to laugh mockingly at Sherlock, however it turns out that it's really just a drug-addled Sherlock hallucinating. Needless to say, this doesn't help Sherlock's credibility when he accuses Culverton of the murders.
• Fatal Flaw: Culverton has an obsessive need to confess his crimes. This screws him over when, after being arrested for murder on the basis of an inadmissible recorded confession, Culverton repeatedly makes willing confessions of his crimes to the police.
• Faux Affably Evil: He has a jovial attitude, but he's a thoroughly unpleasant human being and if pressed will drop the attitude.
• For the Evulz: He kills because he enjoys doing it. After the killing, however, he discovers that he enjoys the attention he gets from confessing as well.
• Gaslighting: Culverton attempts to gaslight Sherlock into thinking that all Sherlock's accusations are just coming from the drugs he's on. The fact that both the drugs and Eurus are messing with Sherlock's head makes it pretty easy for him.
• Giggling Villain: He's constantly smiling and chuckling, especially when he'd describing his murderous tendencies.
• Graceful Loser: He's doesn't mind being caught because it means he'll live forever in infamy.
• Hate Sink: His overt repulsiveness rivals even Magnussen's. Made explicit when he disgustingly spits out food into a spit bucket after filming a commercial and then proceeds to creepily hit on the young female PA holding the bucket, implying that he'll pay her for sex.
• Hedonist: A very dark example. Culverton is a wealthy and successful philanthropist who indulges in his crimes at his own leisure whenever he gets the urge. He also uses his influence and resources to make sure he can get away with it for as long as possible, all the while satiating his compulsive need to confess using his memory altering drug room. He's essentially able to have all his sick needs met to the fullest and consumes his need to kill at every possible turn; his wealth is just another means to do it.
  Faith: Ignorance is bliss...
  Culverton: What's wrong with bliss?
• It Amused Me: Killing people makes him, in his own words, "very happy".
• Laughably Evil: As vile as he is, his penchant for Sarcastic Confession and Crosses the Line Twice Black Comedy make it easy to be amused by him.
• Never One Murder: Culverton's confession at the beginning reveals that he's not looking to kill a specific person; he's actually addicted to the thrill of murder and has the constant urge to kill anyone without discrimination. Once he confesses at the episode's end, he discovers he has an even stronger addiction to confessing his crimes and letting the world see and know.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: He never acts as if his addiction to killing is horrifying or even very abnormal.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • It has been speculated in The Guardian and elsewhere, that this version of Smith is based off disgraced BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, including using his influence to access restricted areas (including a hospital mortuary) and others being subtly complicit in his crimes thanks to his fame. The only difference is Savile was a serial rapist, not a serial murderer. He even inherits Savile's habit of Sarcastic Confession in public. Steven Moffat has denied this however, claiming that Smith was meant to be an embodiment of the dark side of celebrity in general. Still, the parallels are unmistakable.
  • There are also parallels to H. H. Holmes, who Culverton explicitly references, including the serial murders, the hidden tunnels inside their building of choice, firing their architects, and the anonymity of their victims because of the locale.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: In-universe. His reaction to Sherlock accusing him of being a serial killer is to use it in advertising campaigns, and invite Sherlock for an interview.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Type B. He giggles about his crimes with childish glee, and treats his victims like toys to play with.
• Red Herring: All of the promotional materials and press releases made a really big deal about Culverton Smith to hide the fact that Eurus Holmes is the true villain of Series 4.
• Sadist: By his own admission, he doesn't kill out of hatred for anyone nor vengeance or any "dark" motive as he puts it. He kills because he enjoys it. He also admits he loves to watch it happen and forces them to maintain eye contact. He even seems to get off on making people show him how frightened they are to die before he kills them, if his attempted murder of Sherlock is any indication.
• Sarcastic Confession:
  "You know I'm a killer, but did you know that I'm... a CEREAL KILLER!"
• Scary Teeth: Visibly out-of-place and rotten, specifically mentioned by the producer "symbolic of the rot inside him", which just adds to the idea that they're imported from "The Case of the Illustrious Client" and Baron Adelbert Gruner.
• Serial Killer: He uses a hospital he built in order to murder people and get away with it by making them look like natural deaths.
• Shame If Something Happened: He built a hospital and hired most of the people in it. When he wants to do something and one of the employees bristles at his command, he asks them how long they've been working there. They'll tell him, and he'll repeat their answers VERY deliberately, coupled with a very unnerving stare. They then proceed to let him do what he asked for.
• The Sociopath: Culverton has no real empathy for anyone. He's also highly manipulative, a master of the Sarcastic Confession, has no issue threatening others (sometimes not-so-subtly) who cross him and he has a twisted compulsion to kill. He outright compares dead people to "things" and claims he likes killing because he likes making people into things so he can "own" them forever.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Much like Charles Magnussen, Smith has many similarities with Jim Moriarty, who had been Killed Off for Real by the time Smith appeared. Like Moriarty, Smith is a Faux Affably Evil Laughably Evil Serial Killer who views his rivalry with Sherlock as a big game and uses his Villain with Good Publicity status to to nearly discredit Sherlock. Interestingly, Smith seems to inherit whichever of Moriarty's main traits Magnussen didn't.
• Too Clever by Half: Culverton is exceptionally clever and cunning, but his Fatal Flaw and his strong urges cause his downfall. He was savvy enough to have Sherlock's possessions searched and all recording equipment found and disposed of, but never thought that Sherlock would hide a backup. Additionally, he's charming and charismatic enough for most people to dismiss him as just an odd (and more than a bit creepy) but decent fellow, but it's shown many times that his morbid fascination with death and serial killers is something he can't contain. Even John, despite being preoccupied with his own issues, does come to see that Sherlock had a point about his behavior and regards him with the appropriate caution and disdain.
• Trumplica: Like Trump, he is an entrepeneur who has used his financial success to gain media celebrity, as well as having a dark sense of humour.
• Villain Has a Point: One thing that gave him an edge over John and Sherlock besides his double bluffs is that he's 100% correct that Sherlock is high as a kite for the majority of the episode. Culverton outright calls John's doctorate into question, claiming that if he were a real doctor, he'd know instantly that Sherlock was delirious from drug use and not in his right mind, since Culverton could tell straight away despite having no proper medical training.
  Culverton: Either I'm a serial killer... or Sherlock Holmes is off his tits on drugs!
• Villainous Friendship: Eurus mentions that Culverton has one with her and, it's implied, with Jim Moriarty (before the latter died). This allowed her to get enough information to impersonate his daughter and fool Sherlock.
• Villain Respect: He treats John with a condescending and abrupt air, but he seems to genuinely respect Sherlock for his wit and brazen attitude. When he tries to kill him, he shows obvious admiration at how Sherlock figured out how he got away with his killings and why the mortuary is his favorite room.
  Culvertion: You're rather good at this.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Culverton is a beloved philanthropist and entrepreneur, and he gives to charity which makes the public dismiss his rather morbid quirks as him fooling around.

The Final Villain (ALL SPOILERS UNMARKED)

Eurus Holmes

"Didn't it ever occur to you, not even once, that Sherlock's secret brother might just be Sherlock's secret sister?"

Played by: Siân Brooke

The long lost sibling of Mycroft and Sherlock, who comes back into their lives around the same time as Moriarty's "resurrection".

---

• Accent Relapse: Once she's revealed, she reverts to her natural accent, but keeps changing accents in order to mess with John (see Brief Accent Imitation below).
• Always Someone Better: She is able to outwit both of her brothers despite their intelligence and connections.
• Ambiguously Bi: Claims to have raped a nurse before killing them. When asked about the gender, she nonchalantly states she didn't notice.
• Ax-Crazy: The reason why she was locked away. She killed Sherlock's best friend and then set fire to the house to kill her brother when she was younger, and she's only gotten worse in this regard with age.
• Beneath Notice: Takes advantage of how most people don't look twice at a woman. Or so she claims, she might've just been messing with John.
  "Amazing the times a man doesn't really look at your face. Oh, you can hide behind a sexy smile or a walking cane, or just be a therapist, talking about you... all the time."
• Big Bad: For Series Four.
• Black Sheep: Of the Holmes siblings, she's the only one who is decidedly not on the side of the angels.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: She's the low-functioning sociopath to her brothers, and it shows. She used to cut herself open to inspect her muscles, not realizing she was feeling pain.
• Break Them by Talking: Eurus's M.O. when she isn't killing her victims. She talks people into helping her if they aren't sufficiently intelligent to be immune (like Mycroft claims to be) or are just inclined to help her anyway (like Jim Moriarty).
• Brief Accent Imitation: A very dark example. Not only is she able to disguise herself physically, but she adopts three different accents and moves fluidly between them and her natural accent while revealing herself to John.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to Sherlock and Mycroft's Abel.
• The Chessmaster: She is utterly brilliant in this regard. She concocts a decades-long plan for Sherlock, Mycroft and John, and it works beautifully. The only reason why the three won in the end is because her fragile sanity more or less gave out, and that's assuming it wasn't her 'real' plan all along.
• The Corrupter: She is terrifyingly good at manipulating people to do as she says, to the point where a psychiatrist sent to evaluate her ended up committing murder-suicide simply because she told him to. There is a reason why Mycroft explicitly prohibits anyone from speaking to her without his personal supervision and everyone is required to stay at least three feet away from her at all times.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: Spends most of her featured episode staring at the camera with them. She doesn't blink much.
• Dark and Troubled Past: We don't know the exact details, but apparently she became a "security risk", so Mycroft had her locked up or exiled. It's pretty much revealed that she murdered Sherlock's friend Victor as a kid and then attempted to kill him by burning down the first Holmes residence; this resulted in her being thrown into a mental institution where she "died", when all Mycroft did was send her to Sherrinford.
• Decomposite Character: Shares traits with Moriarty. In the books, Moriarty was surprised when he first met Holmes face to face, expecting him to have a larger head (phrenology was still respected at this time). Eurus is also surprised when she meets her brother; he's nicer than what she expected.
• Depraved Bisexual: Perhaps. We find out that Eurus raped and killed a nurse. But wasn't fussy about the gender — not noticing it beforehand — and apparently couldn't distinguish the gender from the resulting mess.
• Disproportionate Retribution: "My big brother won't play with me. He's always hanging round that boy. I suppose I must remove him from the equation..."
• Does Not Like Men: Has shades of this, as she expresses contempt at how easily men are fooled by her disguises, not to mention she's mildly irritated that John naturally assumed she was Sherlock's secret brother instead of his sister. Also appears to be slightly annoyed when Sherlock assumes the nurse she raped was a man (even though she herself admitted the nurse may or may not have been male)
• The Dreaded: She is this to Mycroft. The very mention of her name puts him on edge and he is utterly cowed by the very memory of her, going as far as to give her "treats" so that she's dissuaded from breaking out and causing mayhem. Considering the possible carnage she could (and did) cause when she combined her prodigal intelligence with her Ax-Crazy nature, his fears were quite justified.
• Driven by Envy: She killed Sherlock's best friend because she was jealous that her brother played with Victor instead of her.
• Easily Forgiven: Despite all the awful and inhumane things she did that made her arguably a worse antagonist than Moriarty himself, Sherlock forgives her by the end of the episode — after she'd already killed multiple people and attempted to kill John.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Maybe. She burned their old house, but it's never clear if her parents were inside when she did it. Despite kidnapping and threatining to her brothers, she did not endagenered her parents with her "family experiment." Also when we see her "little-girl-version in the plane" she calls for her mom to wake up.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Despite being the Big Bad of series 4 and a Psychopathic Manchild, Sherlock, Mycroft and their parents still love her.
• Fighting from the Inside: That little girl on the plane is actually her conscience, understanding and horribly aware that she's doing horrific things to people and trying to stop herself, although she doesn't manage to until Sherlock helps her to "land the plane."
• For the Evulz: She doesn't really have a true goal so far, other than causing hell for John and her brothers for little more than sick amusement. Deconstructed; the reason she does these things is because she doesn't know how else to act, and mostly does vicious things in order to feel something.
• Freudian Excuse: Turns out she did what she did because Sherlock wouldn't play with her. Played with, in that this is only one of many problems she has. It could also be implied she became so obsessed with Sherlock (to the point of deranged love for her brother), she went out of her way to screw with him.
• Gambit Pileup: Eurus and Jim Moriarty concocted a plan to trick Sherlock and his friends into playing Eurus's cat-and-mouse game. However, Moriarty later enacts his own plan to try and manipulate Sherlock into killing himself, completely separate from, and mutually exclusive with, Eurus's scheme (presumably without Eurus's knowledge). Moriarty's plan fails, getting him killed in the process (although he was actually happy about that, for his own personal reasons). Eurus later enacts her plan, which is partially successful.
• Gender Flip: The third Holmes sibling is traditionally a male - Sherrinford.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Inverted; historical Sherlock's nemesis Moriarty is a willing pawn of her scheme instead of being the real mastermind.
• Honey Trap: That woman that John met on a bus and started texting? That was one of her disguises.
• Karma Houdini: Compared to every other villain (and some of the good guys like Mary) on the show. Eurus gets off from murdering uncounted numbers of people, frequently in grotesque ways, psychologically torturing victims For the Evulz, raping someone and mutilating them so badly ''she can't remember if they were male or female'', and having started by murdering another child and trying to burn down the family home to kill her brother. Her punishment? Hugs, visitation with her parents, and being treated nicely because she's family.
• Light Is Not Good: Her Sherrinford garb is all white, yet she is the villain in "The Final Problem".
• Mad Scientist: The core of her Deadly Game is, by her estimation, understanding emotional reactions.
• Manipulative Bitch: Knows exactly how Sherlock and John tick, and everything she does is to sow discontent in their friendship.
• Master of Disguise: She's a human chameleon; to wit, her disguises so far:
  • She disguised herself as an attractive woman to flirt with John.
  • She disguised herself as Smith's daughter so that Sherlock was completely fooled (and in part to discredit him).
  • Pulled a Kill and Replace on John's second therapist. John was completely fooled until she ousted herself to him.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is Greek for "East Wind", traditionally a bad omen in British folklore. Remember that an East Wind was foreshadowed in the last minute of "His Last Vow".
  Sherlock: The east wind takes us all in the end.
  John: What's that?
  Sherlock: It’s a story my brother told me when we were kids. The east wind. This terrifying force that lays waste to all in its path. Seeks out the unworthy and plucks them from the Earth.
• The Mentally Disturbed: It is extremely likely that she's genuinely clinically insane. She also shows a bit of conflict over what she is.
• Mood-Swinger: At some points she switches from stoic, to playful, to psychotically enraged.
• Not So Similar: To Moriarty. Unlike him, she's genuinely mentally ill; Moriarty knows the difference between right and wrong, he just doesn't care.
• Outside-Genre Foe: She acts more like a supervillain from Batman than a Sherlock Holmes villain, being an inmate in a secure prison for all the worst people in the world whose incredible intellect allows her to predict what is going to happen years in advance while being able to bring people under her control by simply talking to them.
• The Ophelia: She carries a sort of childlike lust for understanding the complex world around her, and is completely bonkers.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Turns out the reason behind her killing Victor and burning down the house was to get back at Sherlock for not playing with her. Although she is played somewhat more tragically because she is genuinely suffering from her condition.
• Red Right Hand: Taking out one brown contact to reveal her naturally blue eyes (but leaving the other in) gives her subtly disturbing heterochromia.
• Reluctant Psycho: As revealed in the climax, she knows fully well what she does is evil, but she doesn't know how to stop herself.
• Revenge by Proxy: In her own word, she is Moriarty's revenge on Sherlock after his death.
• The Sociopath: A more genuine example than either of her two siblings; she has no regard for human life, not even her own family.
  Eurus: [While holding John at gunpoint] "Oh, please don't go anywhere, I'm sure the therapist who actually lives here wouldn't want blood on the carpet. Oh, hang on, it's fine. She's in a sack in the airing cupboard."
• Straw Nihilist: Eurus comes across as one of these to some viewers, especially as she's presented as being groundbreakingly intelligent and apparently having no understanding of morality as a partial consequence. (Of course, this is an aspect of her general presentation as The Sociopath.)
• Thicker Than Water: She's largely given a pass where other antagonists who committed far less heinous acts are imprisoned, forced into life on the run, commit suicide (on purpose or by accident) or are straight-out murdered themselves. Because she's family, not because she's innocent.
• Troll: All her efforts are aimed just to cause Mycroft, Sherlock, and John grief. However, unlike many examples of this trope, she's less mischievous and more Ax-Crazy.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Her first "unsettling" act was nothing short of leaving her brother's best friend to die in a well. She followed this up with drawing pictures of Sherlock's grave and burning down their house to kill him.
• Unstable Powered Woman: She's an inhumanly brilliant criminal mastermind described as being able to gain complete mental control over others just by talking to them for a few minutes. The plot of the episode is set in motion when she enacts an escape scheme she has spent years planning, eventually gaining absolute power over the high-security prison she was previously being held in. It's set up to look like she's planning world domination. At the end of the episode, however, Sherlock deciphers her clues for him and tracks her down to her hideaway, where he finds her curled in a ball and sobbing, claiming all she really wanted was his brotherly love. Sherlock remarks that underneath all her brilliance, she was just a scared little girl after all, with the implication that she was unable to handle the power she thought she wanted.
• The Vamp: Disguised herself as an attractive redhead to flirt with John and cause a wedge in his marriage. Lampshaded during a late night text with John as she describes herself as a "Vampire."
• Villainous Breakdown: She begins losing control of her torture run of Sherlock, John and Mycroft when Sherlock openly disobeys her attempt at a Sadistic Choice. When she's forced to endanger John further, Sherlock beats time and solves her remaining puzzles. By the time Sherlock finds her, gone is the composed lunatic from the TV screen—and in her place is a badly traumatised Psychopathic Womanchild sobbing near-incoherently in the corner. By the time she's locked up again, she's gone almost completely catatonic.
• Villainous Friendship: With Jim Moriarty. They're both Ax-Crazy and obsessed with Sherlock.
  • She also mentions that she has one with Culverton Smith. This allowed her to get enough information to impersonate his daughter and fool Sherlock.
• Walking Spoiler: The biggest in the show's history, since we had no idea she existed until the closing minutes of "The Lying Detective".
• Wham Line: "My parents loved silly names, like Eurus... or Mycroft... or Sherlock.''
  • And yet another: "You never had a dog, Sherlock."
• Yandere: Towards Sherlock. She became obsessed with him as a child and her jealousy over his friend Victor drove her to murder and arson. The fourth series makes it clear her obsession with him never wavered and the entire reason for her horrific spree is to torment Sherlock, but it's clear that in her own twisted way, she does love him, but is too insane and sociopathic to actually recognize it. Sherlock threatening to kill himself is the only thing in the entire episode that caused her to completely lose her shit.
• Youngest Child Wins: She is the youngest Holmes sibling and Mycroft openly admits that she is the smartest.

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