Characters / Star Wars – Darth Vader and Servants

All spoilers regarding the Skywalker Saga and The Clone Wars are unmarked. Examples relating to Disney's EU and the new movies can be spoiler-tagged if deemed necessary.

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Tropes specifically applying to the characters based on their appearances in Star Wars Legends can be found here.

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Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker)

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

"Just for once, let me... look on you with my own eyes."

Species: Human (Cyborg)

Homeworld: Tatooine

Portrayed by: David Prowse (1977–1983), Bob Anderson (1980–1983)^note Stuntman in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Sebastian Shaw (1983)^note unmasked in Return of the Jedi, C. Andrew Nelson (1997) ^note Special Edition additions for The Empire Strikes Back, Hayden Christensen (2005, 2022, 2023), Spencer Wilding (2016), Daniel Naprous (2016)^note Stuntman in Rogue One

Voiced by: James Earl Jones (movies, Rebels, Obi-Wan Kenobi)^note Jones approved a deal to allow Disney to digitally recreate his voice with artificial intelligence from Obi-Wan Kenobi onward; his brief cameo in The Rise of Skywalker was the last time he recorded dialogue for the role of Darth Vader himself., Matt Sloan (Commander; Battlefront 2015; LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures), Matt Lanter (Rebels)^note unmasked, Scott Lawrence (Jedi: Fallen Order, Jedi: Survivor, Star Wars: Squadrons) ^{Foreign VAs}Latin American Spanish dub: Federico Romano (1997–2005), Blas García (Rebels), Juan Carlos Tinoco (Rebels and Battlefront 2015), Sebastián Llapur (Rebels), European Spanish dub: Constantino Romero (1977-2005), Pedro Tena (Rebels and Rogue One), Japanese dub: Koji Nanbara, Mizuho Suzuki, Tōru Ōhira, Taiten Kusunoki (Rebels and Rogue One), Yoshisada Sakaguchi, Taro Ishida, Ryuzaburo Otomo, Takaya Hashi, European French dub: François Chaumette (1977), Georges Aminel (1980–2005), Philippe Catoire (2016-), Jean-Louis Faure (first episode of Rebels), Canadian French dub: Denis Mercier (2005), Frédéric Paquet (2014-), Brazilian dub: Silvio Navas (Original Trilogy, first dub), Pádua Moreira (Original Trilogy, second dub, Revenge of The Sith), Sérgio Fortuna (Original Trilogy, third dub, Rogue One, Rebels)

Appearances: The Clone Wars | Revenge of the Sith | Dark Lord of the Sith | Lords of the Sith | Orientation | Tarkin | Jedi: Fallen Order | Jedi: Survivor | Obi-Wan Kenobi | Thrawn | Rebels | Thrawn: Alliances | Star Wars Adventures | Vader Immortal | Target Vader | Rogue One | A New Hope | Lost Stars | Commander | Star Wars (Marvel 2015) | Darth Vader | Vader Down | Doctor Aphra | Dark Visions | The Empire Strikes Back | Darth Vader (2020) | Return of the Jedi | FACPOV: Return of the Jedi | Ahsoka | Star Wars: Squadrons | Age of Resistance ^note flashback only | The Rise of Skywalker ^note voice only

"The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

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♩Dun-dundundundun-dundundun dun-dundundundun-dundundun♩

Dark Lord of the Sith. The Father of Luke Skywalker. The most feared servant of the Emperor.

The Black Knight. The Dragon. The Dark Lord on Life Support. The Redeemed Villain.

Darth Vader was the Sith alter-ego of Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi Knight and birth father of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa who was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force in addition to helping the Galactic Empire eradicate the Jedi Order and put an end to the Galactic Republic. While he was the evil Emperor's top enforcer and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces, he sought to crush the fledgling Rebel Alliance by any means necessary while pursuing goals of his own.

For info on Anakin Skywalker, see his page. For the Self-Demonstrating Article on the Darth Wiki, go here.

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#–B

• 0% Approval Rating: As the enforcer of the Emperor's tyranny, Vader is one of the most reviled and feared beings in the Galaxy. Also invoked as Vader deliberately gives the pettiest reasons for just about anyone to fear him, even amongst all the Imperial ranks. It should also be noted that the zero percent includes Vader himself: he's aware how far he's fallen and hates himself for it as much as anyone. In the sequel trilogy, the only person who admires Vader's vile actions are his grandson, Ben Solo/ Kylo Ren, as well as Snoke. In The Last Jedi, Rey even refers to him as "the most hated man in the galaxy."
• 24-Hour Armor: Vader's armor holds all his life support systems, and if removed outside of a special chamber he will die in minutes. Somewhat lessened in a departure from Legends, where it is shown that he can also be in a relaxing bacta tank, where in Legends he explicitly could not.
• Abusive Parent:
  • He lops off his son Luke's hand in a lightsaber duel — similar to what Count Dooku did to Anakin 25 years before — and then has the audacity to ask him to join the Dark Side so they can rule the galaxy together. What makes this so disturbing is how nonchalant Vader is about the matter and how sincerely he implores his son to join him.
  • He also tortured his daughter, Leia, though he didn't know she was his daughter at the time.
• Abstract Apotheosis: Due to his occasional brutal slaughter of Sand People, the remaining Raiders have started to think of him as their death god, as seen in the Coda to the Darth Vader comic.
• Ace Pilot: A holdover skill from his days as a Jedi. If anything, the years have made him an even better pilot, and he's described as one of the greatest fighter pilots in the galaxy. Despite being outnumbered, he and his handpicked Black Squadron shoot down many rebels during the Final Battle of A New Hope, and would have done the same to Luke Skywalker if not for Han Solo's Big Damn Heroes moment. In Rebels he single-handedly curbstomps the fledgling Phoenix Squadron, putting the rebel cells in Lothal's vicinity in complete disarray.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • He is a terrifying, unstoppable, experienced fighter, but his life support system is not as resilient as he is, and it greatly limits his mobility.
  • This very weakness is partly why he feared Palpatine; his master's command of Force Lightning would short out his life support systems and likely kill him in seconds.
  • This is also how Obi-Wan beats him in their final fight in Obi-Wan Kenobi; after pelting him with boulders and throwing him around with the Force, just so we can see how awesome Obi-Wan is, he repeatedly smashes his chest plate and slices his helmet in half, leaving him gasping on his knees in impotent rage.
• Action Dad: His paternal instincts kick in just in time to save his son from Palpatine.
• Act of True Love: Saving his son at the end of Return of the Jedi.
• Actually, I Am Him: His most famous reveal is one of these.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Zig-zagged. The amount of trauma and angst is the same but Vader approaches and handles it differently between Legends and Canon.
  • In Legends, Vader lived tormented by his tragedies to the point of holding his own power down unconsciously from guilt, and Sidious spent time inventing new tortures and limitations for Vader to prevent him from regaining his power and becoming a menace. While full of rage, it was primarily self-loathing.
  • In canon, while Vader remains pained by the events of his life, it is much less intense, and Sidious now acts more like a twistedly benevolent teacher than a cruel jailmaster, allowing Vader to improve himself as he sees fit. The Ninth Sister also implies that Vader's Death Seeker tendencies and self-loathing are subconscious; with his rage directed more at the world than towards himself.
• Adaptational Badass: The new canon managed to make Vader more destructive and badass than he ever was in the old EU: while in Legends Darth Vader was described as having lost a lot of his Force potential, his canonical counterpart is said to have only strengthened under the premise that the pain of his physical crippling allowed him to better channel the power of the Dark Side. In Legends, Vader regularly suffered The Worf Effect and Badass Decay, with several characters other than the Emperor defeating him, like his apprentice Galen Marek (although Marek used Force Lightning to weaken Vader whenever he gains the upper hand), a revived Darth Maul (who also has his old legs and is much faster and agile than before), and a well-prepared Sandperson. In the new Disney canon, however, it is repeatedly made clear that Vader is second only to the Emperor as a Sith lord and the greatest lightsaber duelist of his time. Star Wars Rebels showed him destroying half of Phoenix Squadron along with a frigate, while the Star Wars: Darth Vader comics depict him capable of such feats as destroying an entire Rebel battalion backed by tanks and bombers, tearing apart an AT-AT, single-handedly killing a Kaiju-sized opponent, besting an ancient Sith Lord that had come Back from the Dead even after being critically injured, and, through an elaborate ritual, ripping open a gate to the afterlife.
• Aesop Amnesia: A key plot point in Obi-Wan Kenobi involves a young Anakin dueling with his master at the Jedi Temple. In the end, Obi-Wan wins, pointing out that, so long as Anakin is obsessed with victory above all else, he will never become more than the Padawan he was at the time. Years later, his desire to best his old master allows the Jedi to dupe Vader with a decoy transport ship, proving that his old apprentice had learned nothing from the experience. This is repeated in the following episode when Vader assumes that burying a fully recovered Obi-Wan in a few tons of rock would be enough to stop him and walks away without confirming he's truly won.
• Affably Evil: While he's not exactly a pleasant person ever, he is rather cordial with his troops, and unlike his master, does not enjoy the horrible things he does, openly admitting it. He also has genuine respect for stronger adversaries.
  • To his wife Padmé after his initial turn to the Dark Side. Although he decieves her about the Jedi Order, Vader still remains concerned about Padme and their child, thus checking up on them. Later, after Padme confronts him with her knowledge of his crimes, Vader tries to convince his wife to rule the galaxy with him. While he does initially show frustration at Padme's response, her words seemed to make him slowly rethink things, at least enough to listen patiently. Only when mistaking Obi-Wan's presence as Padme's betrayal does Vader's compassion go out the window. Even then, Vader subconsciously held back from fatally strangling her, with a brief look of regret at what he did. Said regret would later be amplified when Palpatine lies that Vader killed her in his anger, haunting him until near death.
  • He is also this towards his son Luke. Normally Vader is permanently pissed off, being cold towards basically everyone, save for some remnants of his past. However, upon learning of Luke's existence, Vader stopped at nothing to find and capture him, justifying to the Emperor and perhaps to himself that the boy would be a useful tool. After finally meeting Luke on Bespin, Vader's demeanor was uncharacteristic for him. Instead of showing contempt or deadly fury in their duel, Vader continuously praises Luke for his growing skills. Likewise, while ultimately cutting off Luke's arm, Vader still tries to reason with him into surrendering afterwards.
• Alas, Poor Villain: His redemption at the end of Return of the Jedi elicits sympathy from Luke, in spite of the terrible things he did up until that point.
• All-Encompassing Mantle: His armor comes with a black cloak draped around him.
• Almighty Janitor: Ultimately despite being The Chosen One of a prophecy, and having great power and ability, Darth Vader never amounts to anything more than a lackey of Darth Sidious, and before that occupying a middling position among the Jedi, and before that, a slave at Tatooine. As noted by Lucas in an interview, this makes his life "even more tragic, because he’s not even an all-powerful bad guy, he’s kind of a flunky" and affirming the views of his interviewer:
  Gavin Edwards: He’s not Satan, he just goes down to the corner and gets Satan’s cigarettes.
  Lucas: You got it.
• Always a Bigger Fish: No matter how scary or powerful Vader is, he's nothing compared to Palpatine. In Obi-Wan Kenobi, it takes less than three lines from the Emperor to get Vader to stop chasing after Obi-Wan, lest his master dispense with him.
• Always Someone Better: Vader is The Chosen One and one of the strongest characters in the entire series. Despite this, he is never once able to get in a clean win over Obi-Wan, which Palpatine alludes to Anakin's remaining attachments and guilt.
• Ambiguously Human: Within the Star Wars Canon, most people aren't sure if he's even a human being; some think that he might have been an alien or a droid. It isn't until he is unmasked as Anakin Skywalker after the Emperor is killed that it's discovered he IS human, but a tired, old (or at least old-looking) human with a mostly cybernetic body.
• An Arm and a Leg: Both on the receiving and the delivering end.
  • He loses his right arm in his first duel with Count Dooku, and has it replaced with a crude droid prosthetic.
  • He severs both of Count Dooku's arms at the end of their second duel, shortly before removing the man's head.
  • He loses his left arm and both legs in his duel against Obi-Wan on Mustafar, which directly leads to him falling almost directly into a lava flow and being burnt to a crisp, unable to pull himself to safety. His Emergency Transformation includes a full set of prosthetic limbs along with his life support system.
  • Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith reveals that as part of his takeover of the Inquisitorius, he subjects them to Training from Hell that involved, in a number of instances, some Inquisitors losing their limbs. He claims it is his way of beating away the Jedi defensive combat mindset out of them.
  • He cuts off Luke's right hand at the end of their duel in Cloud City.
  • Luke cuts off his right hand at the end of their duel on the second Death Star.
• And I Must Scream: This is Vader's entire existence. Without his suit, he is a limbless torso who endures agonizing pain from the fifth to sixth degree burns all over his body, making it impossible for him to function or communicate. Even the suit's attachments are very painful and uncomfortable, meaning every day is utterly torturous. That's not even getting into the psychological pain he deals with on top of that. He's learned to use this to his advantage to channel the Dark Side and become stronger.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: When Luke won't give in to rage during their final duel, Vader cheekily threatens to go after Leia. This causes his son, who was utterly composed for the entire film up until that point, to snap and wrathfully disarm him in both senses of the word.
• Anti-Villain: He essentially became one by Return of the Jedi. For one thing, it is hinted that Vader's attempts to turn Luke to the Dark Side were as a means of protecting him (the only alternative was to kill him), which is also combined with signs of remorse. Combined with how Vader even breaks his general rule of You Have Failed Me when Luke and co escape from him at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, it shows that the Dark Side has begun to lose its grip on him.
• Arch-Enemy: He has several of these:
  • Luke Skywalker: His estranged son. For years, Luke believed that Darth Vader was the one who killed Luke's father, not knowing they were one and the same. In addition, Luke personally witnessed him killing his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and his friend, Biggs Darklighter. On the flip side, Vader believed Luke never existed due to Padmé Amidala supposedly dying by Vader's hand. After learning the truth, Vader spent years attempting to convert Luke, doing several act such as: harming Luke's friends, cutting off Luke's hand, and traumatizing Luke by telling him the truth about his heritage. Fortunately, after accepting the truth, Luke becomes determined to redeem Vader.
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi: His former mentor and friend. After a fateful duel on Mustafar, Kenobi severely injured and crippled him, forcing him to spend the rest of his life in his trademark suit. Kenobi spent the following years watching over Luke so that he can one day confront the Empire. Vader eventually killed Obi-Wan during their rematch, but his spirit continued to guide Luke in his journey to become a hero.
  • Princess Leia Organa: An important member of the Rebel Alliance. Vader exposed her as a rebel, captured her, tortured her for information, and forced her to watch Vader's superior, Grand Moff Tarkin, destroy Alderaan, Leia's homeworld. Unbeknownst to either of them, Leia was his daughter. It's only in his final battle with Luke that Vader deduces that Luke had a sister and Padmé had twins, though it's not stated if Vader realized that this was Leia.
  • Ahsoka Tano: Vader's former Padawan was one of his most prominent enemies during the early days of the Rebellion. Ahsoka coordinated the Rebels on Lothal, who proved to be enough of a problem that Vader was forced to step in personally. Vader sent multiple Inquisitors to hunt down Ahsoka and her Jedi allies, culminating in a duel between the two on Malachor, where she would have been killed if not for future Ezra's extradimensional intervention.
  • Palpatine/Darth Sidious. Despite being his master, Sidious has been the most negative external person in Vader´s life, and the one who pushed him into becoming Vader.
  • But none of the people above can hold a candle to Vader's truest enemy: himself. After all, it was his own actions that destroyed his life and brought forth misery to nearly everyone. Even more, Vader's guilt and self-hatred severely hampers him in several ways, leading to Self-Inflicted Hell. Thankfully, he overcomes this darkness at the climax of Return of the Jedi.
• Archnemesis Dad: An archetypal example to Luke and Leia, following the big reveal. This is Played With, as Luke only considers him an Arch-nemesis before the big reveal. Once Luke is made aware of their lineage, he goes out of his way to redeem him.
• Armored Villains, Unarmored Heroes: He's clad in black armor that not only serves as his life support, but also gives protection against blaster fire, and lightsaber strikes in certain parts of the armor while the duelists he fights wear the standard Jedi robes or other outfits that provide minimal protection and allows more mobility.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He shows many of these qualities: lacks respect for authority, resorts to violence with minimal provocation, etc.
• Artificial Limbs: All of them, three of which he lost during the duel that left him in his mechanized suit.
• Art-Shifted Sequel: Vader's appearance at the end of The Clone Wars is very similar to his appearance in the films, while his appearance in Rebels has a narrower, longer helmet with larger eyes, fitting with the general art style of the show.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Joins Obi-Wan and Yoda as a Force ghost after he dies in Return of the Jedi.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: His official title in the Empire is Supreme Commander of the military, the sort of job that, in Real Life armies, typically entails stamping a lot of paperwork. Vader, however, prefers to be down in the trenches with the Mooks, stamping a lot of Rebels.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Vader's armor is one of the most bizarre, albeit famous, examples in fiction, yet also Zig-Zags the trope. His armor enhances his strength, durability and senses while looking pretty intimidating. However, rather than being a straight-up upgrade, it mostly serves as life support and has several faults that limit his capabilities. The armor is heavy and limits his speed and agility, forcing him to adopt a Mighty Glacier fighting style. Furthermore, the cybernetic nature of his suit renders Vader vulnerable to electric overloads and prevents him from using Force Lightning. In Star Wars: Darth Vader, the one who designed the armor in the first place even has an off-switch that he can use to incapacitate Vader should the need arise. Finally, the armor is far from enjoyable to wear, it keeps Vader under constant physical pain (the helmet even has needles that puncture his brain which allow Vader to use his Artificial Limbs), which is why he needs occasional rejuvenation sessions. At the same time, however, the isolation and pain provided by the armor allow Vader to call upon the Dark Side of the Force with greater ease than he would otherwise.
  • Furthermore, as he found it "acceptable" and he personally maintains it (with Sidious' permission), he didn't see any point to further upgrade it as he exploits any "advantages" to tap in the dark side of the Force. With time, he fully embraces it.
    • Some of these "flaws" are actually on purpose. Being kept in a constant state of pain allows him to focus his abilities. One has to imagine that has Palpatine's goal. Keeping his apprentice in a state of constant agony was also a nice bonus.
• Ax-Crazy: Downplayed. While Vader is very calm, cool, and professional in service to the Empire, there is no doubt under the bluster lies a violent, dangerous man fueled by hatred and grief and willing to massacre dozens of enemies or kill his own subordinates. He has a disturbing penchant for torture as well. This trope is played further up when he encounters his former master again where Vader attacks Obi-Wan with far more ferocity than he ever does, bordering on sadistic levels.
• Back for the Finale: After a fashion, he gets a very small part in The Rise of Skywalker. Darth Sidious reveals that he used Snoke as a proxy and impersonated the false voice of Darth Vader to corrupt Ben Solo and keep him trapped as Kylo Ren. The first third is delivered by Darth Sidious, the second third is delivered by Snoke, and the last third is delivered by Darth Vader.
• Badass Boast:
  • While under attack from an army of rebels:
    Rebel: Darth Vader! Lay down your weapons! You are surrounded!
    Vader: All I am surrounded by is fear. And dead men.
  • When dueling Ezra on Malachor:
    Ezra: I don't fear you!
    Vader: Then you will die braver than most.
• Badass Cape: Wears a long black cape as part of his garb.
• Bad Boss:
  • His tendency to kill his subordinates for even the slightest mistake has made him a memetic archetype of this trope. In-universe, many officers fear working under him due to his lethal tendencies.
  • His appearance in the first issue of Star Wars, where he uses his own Stormtroopers as human shields through telekinesis immediately after it was established that he could block the blaster bolts with his lightsaber.
  • Deconstructed in that Vader is such a terrible boss that it proves detrimental to the Empire in many ways. Most Imperials absolutely despise Vader and fear his wrath so much it can impair their better judgment. At one point, even Palpatine reprimands Vader on his behavior and what it entails.
• Baddie Flattery: To Luke during their duel on Bespin, he compliments Luke on his dueling form and notes that Obi-Wan must have taught him well.
  Darth Vader: Impressive. Most impressive. Obi-Wan has taught you well.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: While him using his signature Force-Choke back when he was Anakin Skywalker was Bad Powers, Good People, after turning to the Dark Side he starts it using it more liberally along with other telekenetic abilities.
• Bald of Evil: Due to the burn tissue on his scalp preventing hair regrowth, although it's usually covered by his mask.
• Bastard Bastard: He doesn't have a father and his mother was never married when she gave birth to him. He's also a ruthless Sith Lord who's murdered thousands in service of his master or the Empire. Prior to his fall, he was a Heroic Bastard and after his redemption and death, he's one again.
• Bastard Understudy: As a Sith apprentice to Darth Sidious AKA Emperor Palpatine, Vader is the heir to both the Sith Order and the Galactic Empire. Since Palpatine hasn't found the path to immortality (that we know of), he sincerely grooms Vader to be his successor to ensure that his Villainous Legacy will live on. But Vader doesn't consider taking the classical Sith route of betraying his master and taking over the throne for himself until he learns that Luke is his long-lost son.
• Batman Gambit: In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader wants Luke but has no idea where to start looking for him after the Hoth evacuation. Instead, he pursues and captures Han and the others, correctly anticipating Luke sensing their suffering through the Force and racing to the rescue.
• Beauty to Beast: He was a very handsome young man before the horrible burns he suffered left him unrecognizable.
• Being Evil Sucks: You'd think being a towering warrior in cool armor with extraordinary mental abilities that commands a massive army and that everyone in the Galaxy is scared shitless of would be a sweet gig. You'd be very wrong. Vader sees his existence as a living hell entirely of his own making and has to live every day in unbearable physical and psychological pain, having lost everything that he cared about and being tortured by regret for the turn his life has taken. When Luke insists he can be turned from the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi, the way that Vader says "It is too late for me" shows that he deeply regrets becoming a Sith Lord.
• Benevolent Boss:
  • Very rarely, wholly Depending on the Writer, and mostly in regards to Stormtroopers. It's noted Vader actually engages in rapport with many of his Stormtroopers (mirroring his relationship with the Clones under his command when he was Jedi) and is generally more understanding with them than Imperial officers (likely because Stormtroopers are mostly meant to point their guns at people and shoot them, whereas officers are generally supposed to be smart enough to not make mistakes). However, in many Legends and canon stories, he's not above indiscriminately abusing or massacring his Stormtroopers if he simply feels like it. He also has little to no tolerance for failure all the same.
  • Vader is also much more practical and doesn't give a rat's ass about looking good or the perceptions of other save for Palpatine but Palpatine makes it clear that so long as Vader follows his orders or at the least adheres to the path of the Sith, he doesn't care what Vader does so long as it doesn't negatively affect Palpatine personally or the Empire as a whole. This means that Vader only cares about doing his job and completing his goals. If you work for Vader and are respectful, competent and dedicated then he will be more tolerant of failure (provided it's small and a rare event) and look out for you. Best example is when Vader and Inspector Thanoth disobeyed orders to catch an elusive rebel cell at Thanoth's suggestion which Vader approved. Later, while Thanoth takes responsibility for the action, Vader backs him up 100% causing Thanoth to remark that other higher ups would have easily and gladly thrown him under the bus.
    Thanoth: Strictly speaking, I gave the suggestion so if there is blame to be assigned, I...
    Vader: The decision was mine. Chasing after a few coins or crushing the rebels? That is not a choice.
    [...]
    Thanoth: Thank you lord Vader. I have had commanders who would have thrown their subordinate into the trash compactor in such a situation.
    Vader: I do not fear any of these fools.
• Berserk Button: Obi-Wan, at least in in the eponymous character's show. He wants Kenobi to suffer so badly, he makes it clear to the Inquisitors hunting him that he will not tolerate any failure on their part to get him. Vader rarely raised his voice in the original trilogy, but when he thinks Third Sister let Obi-Wan get away, he storms in screaming in rage. By the time of A New Hope, he's managed to reign that hatred under control, thanks to Palpatine's none too subtle threat to get his shit together or be replaced.
  Vader: YOU WERE WARNED WHAT DEFEAT WOULD BRING.
• Beyond Redemption: Almost everyone believed Vader to be this, including himself. It's to the extent that in A New Hope, Obi-Wan tells Luke that Vader killed Anakin Skywalker. Only a few like Qui-Gon, Padme, and Luke continued to believe that Anakin would regain his sense of self. Ultimately, said few prove to be right.
• Big Bad: While he is usually The Heavy with Palpatine being the Man Behind the Man or Big Bad, there are a few instances where Vader is the central villain.
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, he commands all of the Imperial officers in the film, hires the bounty hunters to hunt after Han Solo, and sets a trap for Luke at Cloud City by luring him in with Leia and Han held hostage, with the goal of turning Luke to the Dark Side. Empire is the one film out of Vader's cinematic appearances where he is the definitive main antagonist.
  • In the second season of Rebels, he takes over the operation to hunt down the Ghost crew following the Grand Inquisitor's failure and death, cueing a truly grand Oh, Crap! from the heroes, and is the primary threat they deal with throughout the season.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi, he's the driving force behind the hunt for his former master and all of the Inquisitors answer to him.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: The big guy to Palpatine's little guy.
• Big "NO!":
  • After learning of Padmé's death in Revenge of the Sith.
  • Added to the Blu-ray re-release of Return of the Jedi just before killing Palpatine.
• Big "WHAT?!": In A New Hope when one of his TIE Fighter escorts is destroyed by Han Solo, preventing him from shooting Luke's X-Wing.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • There's Hebrew text written on his chest panel. It reads "His deeds will not be forgiven, until he merits."
  • A Hilarious in Hindsight example: "Vader" is Dutch for "Father". This is coincidental, though, as the character was named long before his connection to Luke is established in The Empire Strikes Back.
• Black Cloak: Originally omits the cloak from his personalized leather Jedi attire, but as he gets darker, he starts donning it as well. He upgrades to the signature black cape and life-support system of Darth Vader after losing to Obi-Wan.
• Black Knight: His appearance was modeled after the archetype, albeit in such a way where it would fit in a futuristic setting.
• Blood Knight:
  • Whether before or after his transformation, he loves a good fight. In Rogue One, Tarkin remarks with utter certainty that Vader will handle any business which requires going toe to toe with the Rebels. This earns him the respect of most of the Stormtroopers as they appreciate the fact that he's a top ranking member of the military who's willing to fight in the trenches alongside the grunts.
  • Played up to a terrifying extent when he's hunting Obi-Wan. Clearly unbalanced over the prospect of hunting the man that crippled him, Vader senselessly massacres innocent families, and when finally face-to-face with his old master, his attacks are far more vicious than his normal, rather relaxed style. Not to mention he drags Obi-Wan through fire, torturing the man in the way he finds most fitting after having been left to burn on Mustafar. When he realizes that Obi-Wan's strength has returned in their rematch, he sounds almost giddy and decides to stop holding back to try and kill him as quickly as possible.
• Body Horror: Underneath his armor, his body consists of a horrifically scarred head and torso, with virtually every part of him damaged in some way, to the point where his suit is necessary for him to hear because his eardrums melted. Even worse in behind the scenes pictures, where one realizes his Jedi robes are fused into his skin◊.
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi also gives us a look at his pale, ravaged body, so thoroughly burned it almost appears wrinkled, the limbless stumps that merge with his skeletal cybernetics, and the tubes implanted through holes in his back. It doesn't look much better when he's suiting up, the control panel appears to be inserted into his chest, and even his neck/mouthpiece looks more like a medieval torture device than part of a life support system. Is it any wonder the guy lives every day in a state of murderous rage?
• Bond One-Liner: Usually when he Force-chokes someone, whether lethally or not.
  • "I find your lack of faith disturbing." — Admiral Motti, right after the latter dismissed Vader's Force powers in A New Hope.
  • "Apology accepted, Captain Needa." — The Empire Strikes Back.
  • "Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director." — Krennic in Rogue One.
• Book Ends: Palpatine begins his corruption of Anakin into becoming his Sith apprentice by goading him into killing his current apprentice Count Dooku, an act which accelerates Anakin's slide into the dark side. He later tries to repeat this scenario with Luke and Vader. But Luke proves to be incorruptible and Vader, who has been through this exact situation before already, loses any reason to value his master's life over his son's.
• Boomerang Bigot: He considers Cylo's cyborg creations to be abominations but he himself is already half-man and half-machine. Palpatine even calls Vader out on this and says that if he didn't have a more open mind and didn't save Vader by turning him into a cyborg, then Vader would be dead on Mustafar. That said, it's obvious that Vader suffers from immense self-loathing, so maybe he was already aware of the irony.
• Break the Haughty: After a series of events beginning with Vader being rejected by Luke on Bespin and going on a journey to find out how his wife truly died (and finding out that her last words was a declaration of faith that there was still good in him), Sidious realizes that the Dark Side is losing its hold on Vader, and so subjects him to an absolutely brutal gauntlet intended to bring him back in line and under his thumb.
  • After this, Vader's fear of the Emperor has been so thoroughly reinstated that it takes until the end of Return of the Jedi for him to find the strength to snap out of despair and turn on the Emperor once and for all.
• Breakout Villain: He only has nine minutes of screentime in the first film, and when he does, he's usually being subordinate to Grand Moff Tarkin. He was even slated to be killed in the Death Star trench run, and was never intended to be Luke's father. However, it became clear that he was the most memorable villain in the film, and so George Lucas decided to insert a shot of him escaping as a Sequel Hook. From there, he ended up becoming the iconic villain of the series, enough to warrant a three-movie-long Start of Darkness arc and appear in a spinoff film. He's also one of the few villains in fiction to become the Series Mascot.
• Broken Ace: By the time Luke confronts him again, he's given up on ever defeating the Emperor and tells his son to likewise submit to Palpatine.
• Broken Pedestal: His son, Luke, used to think he was a noble Jedi Knight that died years ago at the hands of Darth Vader. Now he knows not only did he not die at Vader's hands; he is Vader. After regaining himself as Anakin Skywalker though, this becomes a Rebuilt Pedestal.
• Brought Down to Badass: Played Straight in Legends and Downplayed in Canon.
  • In Legends, before he was critically injured on Mustafar, Vader had the potential to become the most powerful Force-user in the galaxy. After his injuries and the psychological trauma he suffered on Mustafar, his force potential was seriously diminished. After recovering somewhat and getting used to his new existence as a Sith Lord, he regained some of the power he lost, but was at best only capable of being 80% of what Palpatine was — which is still not someone to trifle with, as in Legends, Palpatine was one of the strongest Force users in history, and capable of Physical God level feats.
  • In Canon, Vader didn't seem to experience as large of an immediate loss in power; mere moments after awakening in his suit, he was able to send Palpatine flying when he found out Padmé was dead and later bested several Jedi Masters despite situational disadvantages. Likewise, the isolation and pain caused by his suit and trauma let Vader more deeply tap into The Dark Side. However, his injuries and inner conflict ultimately still place a cap on his godlike potential; with Dark Side powers such as Force Lightning also too self-destructive to use.
• The Brute: Averted. Vader has this reputation among certain higher-ups in the Imperial Forces, who see him as a 'blunt instrument' that needs proper wielding. However, Vader is far more cunning than they realise, so those who do hold this opinion of him tend not to last very long.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • This exchange from the comics, complete with a delicious serving of Dramatic Irony:
  Luke Skywalker: You killed my father.
  Darth Vader: I've killed very many fathers, you'll have to be more specific.
  • Subverted in Obi-Wan Kenobi Part V. Reva, the Third Sister, was a Jedi youngling who survived a stab wound from Vader during Order 66. She hatched a plan to get revenge on him by becoming an Inquisitor and capturing Obi-Wan so that she can earn Vader's trust and kill him when his guard is down. Her whole plan is based around the assumption that Vader wouldn't remember a random Jedi youngling. She was wrong. Vader knew who she was all along and used her to serve his own goals.
  Vader: Did you really believe I did not see it, youngling?

C–D

• Cain and Abel: He's the Cain to his former master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Owen Lars, and former apprentice Ahsoka Tano's Abels.
  • Obi-Wan regarded Anakin as a brother and their relationship became more brotherly during the Clone Wars after Anakin got promoted into a Jedi Knight. After Anakin becomes Darth Vader, he becomes the Cain to Obi-Wan's Abel.
  • Owen Lars was Anakin's step-brother. Despite their limited time together, Vader would later indirectly bring forth Owen's death via serving Emperor Palpatine and the Empire.
  • As Ahsoka ultimately describes Anakin (who has looked after and trained her since she was a fourteen year old kid) as her brother, Vader is therefore the Cain in Rebels.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Fully and proudly embraces The Dark Side of the Force, regardless of whatever good intentions he may have had at first. However, as seen above, by Return of the Jedi he's become rather disillusioned with the Dark Side and all that he's sacrificed to it.
• The Chessmaster: Vader is good at manipulating in order to get what he wants, and regularly plays rebels, Imperial officers, and third parties alike like a fiddle. Unfortunately for Vader his Master, the Emperor/Darth Sidious, is even better at it than he is.
• Childhood Friends: Back when he lived in Tatooine, Anakin befriended a fellow pair of slaves named Kitster and Wald and they promised that they would one day leave the planet to pursue a better life. Several years later, Vader saves their lives from a monster attack, proving that as much as he doesn't want to show it, he cherishes his memories with Kitster and Wald.
• Classic Villain: Fits all of the criteria of a Wrath villain: brought to the Dark Side through his anger, clad from head to toe in black armor, and has a very personal relationship with The Hero. He even has a classic death scene.
• Climax Boss: Serves as this in Jedi: Survivor, as his presence on Jedha is the direct result of Bode Akuna's betrayal. Vader leads the Empire's raid on the Jedi archive, which results in Cere Junda battling him and ultimately losing her life at his hands.
• Clingy Costume: His armor is also his life-support system, and cannot be removed outside a special chamber. And his Jedi tunic was burnt into his skin on Mustafar.
• Clothes Make the Legend: His Cool Helmet and Black Cloak are so iconic that just their silhouette in the first teaser posters for The Phantom Menace was enough to let everyone know just who the cute kid in the picture would become.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: He tortures Leia in A New Hope, then again in The Empire Strikes Back, where he tortures her and Luke's friends in Cloud City, knowing that Luke would sense them through the Force. He was also going to do this to his old master in Kenobi, first by dragging him across burning metal in the same way he himself was burned on Mustafar, and would have done far worse had Obi-Wan not been rescued and dragged to safety.
• Combat Pragmatist: He's not above landing surprise punches or hurling objects while fighting lightsaber duelists to catch them off-guard, which is best shown during his fights with his former master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• The Comically Serious: Not in any official material, but in Star Wars commercials with him in it, he's very frequently placed in mundane or silly scenarios that heavily contrast with his stoic demeanor and menacing presence.
• Cool Helmet: The most noticeable piece of his "clothing". In-universe, it's Awesome, yet Impractical like the rest of his armor; while it looks sleek and scary and heightens his senses, its main purpose is as life support, and it has needles on the inside that puncture his brain.
• Cool Mask: If he's not the most powerful villain in the galaxy, his full mask certainly ranks him amongst the scariest.
• Cool Starship: The Devastator, the Executor, and the TIE Advanced x1.
• Cool Sword: He wields a red dual-phase lightsaber that he uses to slaughter Rebel troopers and duel other lightsaber users. He can extend and shorten the length of this lightsaber, allowing him to catch his opponents off guard.
• Covered with Scars: His remaining human body beneath his armor is completely covered by severe burns. Being lit on fire from being near lava will do that to you.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The fight between Luke and him in The Empire Strikes Back. As the fight goes on, it's clear Luke is hopelessly outmatched especially after Vader cuts his hand off. Worse, Vader is beating up Luke spiritually, taunting Luke to use his anger to defeat him and then, just as Luke is clinging for dear life over an abyss, reveals that he is Luke's father. By the time Luke is rescued by his friends fleeing Cloud City, he's a physical, emotional and mental wreck.
  • Their canonical first duel in the Star Wars comic is even more one-sided — Luke clashes lightsabers with him once before effortlessly being knocked down and having Vader yank his lightsaber from his hands using the Force.
  • Dave Filoni said that if Kanan and the crew of the Ghost are "Level 4" by the end of the first season of Rebels, Vader is "Level 80". Sure enough, he seems pretty bored when handily defeating Kanan and Ezra in "The Siege of Lothal" - especially when he shrugs off massive walkers dropped on him.
  • Inflicts this on the soldiers on the Rebel capital ship in Rogue One.
  • At the end of Jedi: Fallen Order, he delivers a brutal one to Cal Kestis (who just defeated Trilla Suduri), effortlessly defeating him in mere seconds. Cere Junda also receives one when they clash lightsabers: the Sith Lord sends her flying to the ground after only a few exchanges (and Vader fights Cere one-handed by the way). Cere even tries to use the Dark Side and after that a Force bubble to protect her and Cal but all of this just slows Vader. They barely escape with their lives by flooding the corridor they are in, forcing Vader to deal with that instead of them.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi, when Reva, the Third Sister, tries to kill him, he just stands there and makes little effort to dodge her blows. She's so horribly outclassed, he doesn't even break out his lightsaber; he breaks hers in two and then lets her duel him with one half while he uses the other. The battle lasts barely a minute before he stabs her in the torso, gloating how he knew what she was up to from the very beginning.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The few times Vader is directly confronted by Palpatine, he does a much better job than damn near anyone else could hope to but is ultimately still whipped back into subservience. Vader actually has the power in the Force required to push Palpatine back and somewhat resist his abilities, but his inner conflict prevented him from going beyond that. Notably, only after Vader regains himself as Anakin Skywalker does he gain the power to actually defeat Palpatine.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Obi-Wan calls Vader "more machine now than man; twisted and evil", but the prequels reveal that Vader is actually a subversion — his fall to the dark side happened before he was confined to his cyborg exoskeleton.
• Cyborg: Vader has lost all of his limbs and receives extensive damage to his internal organs, particularly his lungs, hence the Cool Mask and the Vader Breath.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: He had no choice but to "abandon" Luke and Leia because he didn't even know that they were still alive, or that Padmé was having twins to begin with. As soon as he learned that he had a son, he planned a nice family bonding experience so that they could get to know each other.
• Dark Is Evil: His dark costume compliments his use of The Dark Side. In the end, though, Luke proves that there is still good buried deep within his twisted and evil form.
• Dark Lord on Life Support:
  • The trope codifier and certainly the most famous example; he can't live without his suit for more than a few minutes.
  • As Rogue One visualizes, Vader needs his suit just to walk, and a bacta tank to stay alive outside it. It's no coincidence that everything about his lair on Mustafar is designed to make him seem superhumanly imposing to visitors.
• Dead Guy on Display: Kylo Ren keeps his cremated helmet on display in his quarters.
• Deadpan Snarker: This is one of the few personality traits that Anakin retained after his transformation into Vader; "We would be honored if you would join us" and "I find your lack of faith disturbing" are some particularly notable examples. Rogue One ups the ante a bit and gives him some Black Comedy in his dialogue.
  Darth Vader: Director Krennic.
  Orson Krennic: ...Lord Vader.
  Vader: You seem unsettled.
  Krennic: No, just... pressed for time, there's a great many things to attend to—
  Vader: My apologies. You do have a great many things to explain.
  Krennic: I delivered the weapon the Emperor requested. I deserve an audience to make certain [Vader looms over Krennic, intimidating him] that he understands its remarkable... potential.
  Vader: Its power to create problems has certainly been confirmed. A city destroyed. An Imperial facility openly attacked.
  Krennic: It was Governor Tarkin who suggested the test.
  Vader: You were not summoned here to grovel, Director Krennic. There is no Death Star. The Senate has been informed that Jedha was destroyed in a mining disaster.
  Krennic: Yes, my Lord.
  Vader: I expect you not to rest until you can assure the Emperor that Galen Erso has not compromised this weapon in any way. [walks away]
  Krennic: So I'm still in command? [Vader stops moving] You'll speak to the Emperor about—
  [Krennic's voice cuts off — after a second's confusion, he clutches his throat and collapses]
  Vader: [while Force-choking Krennic] Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director. [releases him and walks away]
  • That last doubles as a pun, though probably unintentionally, as "aspire" comes to us from Latin for "to breathe". Don't choke on your breath, Krennic.
• Deal with the Devil: He made a deal with Palpatine to save Padme in exchange for aligning with him. It didn't even well. George Lucas flat out calls him "a sad man who made a deal with the Devil... and lost."
• Deathly Unmasking: Having been mortally wounded by the Emperor, Darth Vader asks Luke to help him remove his mask so he can see him "with my own eyes." That said, considering how he showed no sign of agony before and afterwards, it's entirely possible that the Force was actually what still kept him alive, rather than his mask.
• Death by Irony: He had a low opinion of Death Stars, but ended up dying on one.
• Death of Personality: As explained in Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Vader" absolves his old master of any guilt in his role in Anakin's downfall by claiming that he killed Anakin, allowing Obi-Wan to realize his friend is truly dead. This leads into how, in Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan explains that this is why he told Luke that Vader killed Anakin back in A New Hope; as far as he was considered, Anakin is dead, and all that's left is Darth Vader. Interestingly, this is one of the few things Vader and Obi-Wan agree on, with Vader telling Luke when they meet again that the name "Anakin Skywalker" means nothing to him now. However, in his final moments, Vader admits he was wrong to assume this.
• Death Seeker: Whenever Vader's innermost thoughts have been revealed, it's shown that he wants to die, both out of shame for his crimes as well as a desire to be freed from his torturous existence. Much of his hatred of Obi-Wan stems from the latter not killing Vader on Mustafar and condemning him to the life of constant torment he's known since. However, Vader's self-hatred prevents him actually accepting death.
• Decoy Backstory: Enforced. In A New Hope, Luke Skywalker is told that his father Anakin Skywalker was killed by Darth Vader. However, during their battle in The Empire Strikes Back it's revealed that Vader IS Luke's father. When Luke confronts Obi-Wan about it he admits he was being metaphorical about Vader "killing" Anakin. Obi-Wan was in fact originally meant to be telling the literal truth, but scriptwriting needs during preproduction on Empire led to Anakin and Vader being retconned into the same person.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • The news of Padmé's death, coupled with the belief that he was the one who killed her and his natural assumption that their child died with her, crushes whatever humanity he had until that point in Revenge of the Sith.
  • Being rejected by Luke at the end of The Empire Strikes Back makes him visibly crushed, especially after the Millennium Falcon enters lightspeed at the end. His body language is slack and he walks past his crew who are shocked by his total silence and refusal to punish anyone. By the time, Luke meets him again in Return of the Jedi, Vader has lost most of his swagger, and gives up tempting Luke to join the Dark Side, more or less telling his son that he's Palpatine's slave and soon he will be too.
• Determinator: One of the most persistent and determined characters in the Canon. Vader was utterly determined to get his own son to turn to The Dark Side and join him so that they could rule the galaxy together as father and son. Case in point? In the Darth Vader comic series, Vader once had his armor shut off by the man who designed the suit. It was through sheer force of will that Vader physically got up and powered through it just to teach the man that you do not control him.
• Died Happily Ever After: Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, for a man who became a Sith out of fearing death, Vader is content to let death take him after saving Luke from Sidious. And for bonus points, this would allow him to fully become Anakin Skywalker once more, with far more power and wisdom than he had in life.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: He expires in Luke's arms after risking his own life to save him from Palpatine.
• Disability Superpower: While his brutal defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan, and the suit he was subsequently placed in definitely robbed him of a lot of potential, and gave him a host of new weaknesses, the suit does give him an extreme physical advantage. His hulking stature and general presence is terrifying, both to friends and to foes, and his cybernetic limbs make him strong beyond any human standard, Force-sensitive or not, not to mention the suit is extremely durable, and lets him survive in space for a time.
• Disappeared Dad: He is to his twin children, Luke and Leia. Obi-Wan decides to conceal their lives from Vader back in Revenge of the Sith. Vader doesn't learn the truth until his self-titled comic, and Luke doesn't find out until The Empire Strikes Back.
• Dispense with the Pleasantries: His blunt dismissal of Moff Jerjerrod's flattery in Return of the Jedi provides the trope name.
• The Dog Bites Back: At the end of Revenge of the Sith, he lashes out with the Force in an attempt to kill Palpatine after learning his wife died, but is too weakened to do anything more than destroy the surgical equipment. Darth Vader shows that he became increasingly furious with Palpatine for treating him like a lackey and secretly grooming his replacements for twenty years, i.e. ever since they first teamed up. Discovering via Boba Fett's information that he has a son, and realizing that Palpatine lied at least partly about the circumstances of Padmé's death, is the straw that breaks the camel's back, leading Vader to decide to overthrow his master and claim both the Empire and his son for himself, ruling with Luke at his side. He finally gets back at Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, but for different reasons.
• Domestic Abuse: In Revenge Of The Sith, he Force-Chokes his wife Padmé, and the resulting injuries combined with emotional trauma lead to her death.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": He no longer answers to Anakin Skywalker as he feels nothing but contempt for his former self. Ultimately subverted in the end though.
• Don't Look At Me: If the comics are any indication, Vader does not like to be seen without his mask and helmet on, unless absolutely necessary, such as during medical/maintenance procedures. When two stormtroopers saw him accidentally without the helmet, he telekinetically lifted them and then twisted their heads around backwards. Then there's the nutty nurse in Star Wars Vader Dark Visions, who entered Vader's quarters while he was inside his meditation chamber unmasked in order to confess her love to him. Vader casually stabbed her in the chest with his lightsaber.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You:
  • The Trope Namer, during his famous conversation with Luke in The Empire Strikes Back. The reason that he doesn't want to destroy Luke is because he's his dad.
  • Implied when he offers Ahsoka mercy in exchange for information. This is a subversion, however, as Word of God confirms that this was a lie on Vader's part and he had no intention of sparing her.
• The Dragon: He is Emperor Palpatine's main enforcer who personally dispatches any major threats to the Empire. The Emperor can also lend him to Grand Moff Tarkin, as shown in A New Hope, and Season 2 of Rebels.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Word of George Lucas is that Vader was intended to be this early on (possibly sharing the spot with other Imperial officers). Traces of this remain as late in the game as the novelization of A New Hope, which describes the Emperor as a weak-willed man controlled by ambitious underlings. The actual movies as released, however, make it plain that while Vader is incredibly powerful and evil, the Emperor is worse on every imaginable scale. In the prequel trilogy, it was strongly implied that Vader was initially well on his way to becoming this when he first joined the dark side: his powers were growing so rapidly that even The Emperor himself theorized that Vader would soon eclipse his own abilities and potentially overthrow him. However, after Vader suffered his near-fatal injuries on Mustafar (including having all of his natural limbs amputated), his powers with the Force were greatly reduced. Even then, he's still this in A New Hope. Despite being subordinate to Tarkin, he's much more of a threat, not only because Tarkin is a Non-Action Big Bad, but because he's also far more competent.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He's implied to be concocting a plot to overthrow the Emperor via his offer for Luke to rule by his side in The Empire Strikes Back, which would be confirmed decades later in Darth Vader #6.
• The Dreaded: Everyone in the galaxy is terrified of Vader and with damn good reason. A six-and-a-half-foot-tall, caped black knight with magical powers and super strength. He makes a triumphant entrance to the film's famous soundtrack, cape swirling, and lifts a captive soldier up and snaps his neck with one hand as an Establishing Character Moment. It just goes from there. In Disney canon, where he has appeared frequently, only two people in the galaxy have ever been able to beat him in a fight: Luke and Obi-Wan. Everyone else either runs or dies. Or worse.
  • This is most explicitly shown in Rogue One, when he shows up in front of a bunch of Red Shirt Rebel troopers, who metaphorically shit themselves before he slaughters all of them in under a minute.
  • Also demonstrated exceptionally well in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Trilla Suduri, the final boss of the game and the biggest threat throughout, freezes in utter, stark terror upon hearing Vader's steps behind her. Many a player who reaches this sequence panics at his entrance and doesn't even try to fight Vader in the brief window you get before he Force Chokes Cal.
• Dub Name Change:
  • In France he's known as "Dark Vador" (pronounced "Vah-dohr"), and while the awkward name changes in A New Hope (such as "Yan Solo" or "Princess Leila") were corrected later on, his has stuck even to these days, to the point that future Sith Lords would also have "Darth" translated as "Dark", such as "Dark Maul". Except in French Canada; despite the original trilogy not getting a local redub, he's officially known as "Darth Vader" and is called such in Revenge of the Sith and later material. Funnily enough, both French versions translate "Lord Vader" differently: France uses "Lord Vador" while Canada uses "Seigneur Vader".
  • In Italy, he's known as "Dart Fener". A poll was held for the Italian release of Revenge of the Sith to decide whether the dub would use his original name or Italian translated name, and "Fener" won out by a slight margin.
  • Most drastically, his name is changed to "Svarthöfði" in Icelandic, which translates to the utterly unmenacing "black-head".
• Dying as Yourself: Stopping Palpatine to save Luke reverts him back to Anakin Skywalker, but also ends up costing him his life. Reflecting this, Luke removes Vader's mask in his father's final moments alive.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Despite already suffering immense injuries and a missing hand, he endures Palpatine's Force Lightning to save Luke, throwing the former into the Death Star's bowels. By doing so, he brought forth balance to the galaxy and begins his steps to redemption as Anakin Skywalker.
• Dying Vocal Change: After having his mask removed in his dying moments, he loses his electronically-enhanced voice, allowing us to hear the aged, whispering voice of the real Anakin Skywalker for the first time in the original trilogy.
• Dynamic Akimbo: Darth Vader, the most iconic and imposing villain in the franchise, is sometimes depicted in this pose.

E–H

• Early-Installment Weirdness: His first appearance in A New Hope is significantly at odds with the later films.
  • Vader is treated as an annoyance that the Imperials simply need to put up with, rather than the terrifying Dark Lord of the Sith who will strangle underlings for failure. The original concept was that Vader was a Psycho for Hire who existed outside the Imperial hierarchy while still enjoying a high status. It is most apparent when Vader listens to critical feedback from his subordinates and defers to Governor Tarkin's authority.
  • Obi-Wan treats Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader as two separate people because, originally, they were written to be. The idea only came during a revision of The Empire Strikes Back's script, and from there, the twist shaped the future of the franchise. In addition, Obi-Wan addresses Vader by "Darth" as though it was his first name rather than a title. This is explained in Obi-Wan Kenobi as Obi-Wan deciding That Man Is Dead regarding his former friend.
  • His helmet originally had red lenses for his eyes, while they were later changed to black.
  • His leitmotif, "The Imperial March," is not present, instead having a heavy but generic brass arrangement.
  • While Vader is clearly a strong, skilled swordsman with the ability to telekinetically choke people, he is not the One-Man Army that mowed down an entire hallway of Rebel troopers at the end of Rogue One, which immediately preceded the events of A New Hope.
  • Vader's characterization seems to be that of an arrogant bully, with his defeat at the end of the film being treated like he's getting his comeuppance. The later films and prequels would reveal his tragic backstory as a Fallen Hero.
  • Vader has No Indoor Voice for most of his scenes on the Tantive IV, and yells at prisoners and officers alike with abandon. This is a stark contrast to all his subsequent scenes and the sequels, where he is The Stoic and expresses his anger solely through Tranquil Fury.
• Elite Agents Above the Law: Vader derives his authority in the Empire not from his official rank, but from his Master-Apprentice relationship with the Emperor. By default this puts the Sith order above any Imperial body. He appears to defer to Grand Moff Tarkin out of respect in A New Hope, but it's doubtful that Tarkin could really do anything about it if Vader decided to ignore him or even challenge his command (which he does by grabbing his ship and jumping into the trenches with his squadron).
• Emergency Transformation: After his duel with Obi-Wan on Mustafar, Anakin's body is injured so badly that Darth Sidious immediately brings him to Coruscant and has him outfitted in his iconic armor from the Original Trilogy.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Although idiocy in Vader's eyes can merely amount to any failure. A straighter example is when partying with Jabba, Salacious B. Crumb cackles his Signature Laugh. Vader's response to this is warning Jabba to never have him do that again in his vicinity.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Vader shows his ferocity by marching into the Tantive IV, along with the sinister music heralding his arrival, interrogating Captain Antilles by holding him up by the throat and with one hand, and choking the life out of the good captain and throwing his corpse to the floor when he makes a futile attempt to dissuade Vader's accusations.
  • In the Rebels special that brought him on the show, Vader completely destroys everything the Ghost crew has managed to attain on Lothal. On another level, Kanan and Ezra have the dubious honor of having their first encounter with a Sith Lord with him.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Darth Vader is a seemingly soulless monster who is "more machine than man", but a few of the heroic characters (Qui-Gon, Padme, and Luke) still cared about him and believed that he would regain his heroic heart. Also, while others like Obi-Wan and Ahsoka did lose faith in Vader's redemption, they retained fond memories of Anakin Skywalker.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Padmé, for whom he turned to the dark side in an attempt to protect. It's telling that, in spite of how monstrous he became in Revenge of the Sith, the first thing he asks about is if she's safe... Which makes the fact that he was indirectly responsible for her death all the more saddening.
  • His son, Luke; you can tell by his hesitance to kill him or force him into a Face–Heel Turn that he really cares. This ends up being what ultimately causes Vader's redemption in Return of the Jedi.
  • Ahsoka Tano, his old apprentice. The last scene of The Clone Wars is Vader travelling to the moon where Ahsoka was last seen and taking her lightsaber as a Tragic Keepsake. Come Rebels, fifteen years after their last encounter, he's visibly hesitant to attack her when she appears to fight him and offers to spare her if she reveals the location of the remaining Jedi, clearly hoping she'll take the offer. When she refuses, however, he attempts to kill her with little hesitation, at first. Near the end of the duel, after being unmasked, and Ahsoka declaring she won't leave him again, Vader's face contorts for a few seconds to be highly conflicted and then downright anguished, before hardening. A small part of Vader really considered accepting Ahsoka's offer for redemption. There are subtle shifts in the color of his irises during this scene, hinting that he's actually wavering in his commitment to the Dark Side!
  • Immediately after turning to the Dark Side, Vader still retained R2-D2 as a companion. All things considered, this is actually a pretty big deal. Likewise, it is thinkable in retrospect that Vader's gesture towards Boba Fett in "The Empire Strikes Back" was partly from not wanting an already broken C-3PO to be irreparably damaged. In fact, the Legends comic "Thank the Maker" makes this explicit.
  • He also loved his mother Shmi deeply, with her death still haunting him heavily.
  • While "love" is a very strong word, as he wasn't above the occasional killing, Vader had a great deal of respect for the Stormtroopers under his command, specifically the remaining Jango Clones. Between his transformation and finding out about Luke, most of his somewhat humanizing moments have been with his soldiers.
  • During his days as a slave, he had two friends named Kitster and Wald. When Vader encountered them years later in Gabredor 3, the two having become colonists who tried to start a new life, Vader was initially stunned in silence upon reuniting with them and initially tried to brush aside his memories with them, but when Kitster and Wald were attacked by monsters, Vader killed them to save his former friends' life and even almost sacrificed himself to destroy the planet governer's life-draining weapon to save Gabredor 3. All the while, Vader pretends that he doesn't care about Kitster and Wald, who don't know that he is Anakin, but his actions prove otherwise.
  • The last episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi reveals that he's conflicted about his feelings for his former teacher, torn between love of the man who raised him like a son/older brother, and hatred for the man who left him for dead on Mustafar. However, a threat from Palpatine convinces Vader to bury that.
    Darth Sidious: I wonder if your thoughts are clear on this, Lord Vader. Perhaps your feelings for your old master have left you weakened. If your past cannot be overcome...
    Darth Vader: ... Kenobi means nothing. I serve only you, my master.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Even as Vader he despised slavery and called the Emperor out for using slave labour.
  • Despite his Bad Boss tendencies, he points out to Moff Jerjerrod that the Emperor isn't as forgiving as he is. Coming from the guy that spent the last film Force Choking officers to death, that's saying something.
  • Unlike his master, Vader clearly does not take pleasure in violence. Despite the countless atrocities his name is tied to, Vader does not enjoy hurting others, but does so out of anger, or necessity. In fact, the contrast between his pragmatic violence and Palpatine's unabashed sadism was a point of contention between the two.
  • In Star Wars: Darth Vader (2020), Vader, his loyalty to Palpatine and the Dark Side already wavering after Empire Strikes Back, learns about Exegol and some of the details of Palpatine's Final Order. The realization of what Palpatine has in store for the galaxy makes him launch a short lived rebellion attempt to usurp him until he gets reminded of who's boss and re-affirms his loyalty - at least openly. This knowledge almost certainly furthered his desire to turn Luke and depose Palpatine so they could rule together in Return of the Jedi; at that point Vader realized no matter the outcome the Emperor needed to go.
  • In spite of his contempt for the Jedi's "weakness", it's clear that Vader subconsciously still holds some regard for the Jedi way. Thus, he is disgusted with any Jedi that sacrifice innocent lives, as well as other acts of cruelty by them.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: While talking with Padmé on Mustafar, Vader suggests that he should betray and murder Palpatine so that he and Padmé can rule the galaxy. Judging from his tone, he's so far gone as to believe she would actually want this. She is, in fact, horrified.
• Evil Counterpart: Darth Vader is naturally the villainous counterpart to Luke Skywalker (a living incarnation of the Dark Side's victim that Luke is perfectly capable of becoming).
• Evil Cripple: He is a severe burn victim and was repeatedly mutilated, so he has to rely on his suit to survive, let alone move around. Given his slow descent into villainy, the deformities were more icing on the cake than the direct cause. In Rogue One, it is shown that he needs to remain in a bacta tank to rest when not in his armor.
• Evil Former Friend: To Obi-Wan (his Jedi Master) and Ahsoka (his Jedi apprentice).
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humour: When he's not the striding, merciless force of death incarnate he can be, he's delivering insults and snark to the people he's bullying and/or murdering in the name of the Empire. In one case, he went so far as to deliver an obvious pun while forcing a bureaucrat to suffocate at his feet.
  Vader: [Force-choking an ambitious underling] Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director.
• Evil Is Bigger: Vader stands over two meters (though the good guys have Chewbacca, and in Rogue One Kaytoo, both of whom are even taller).
• Evil Is Hammy: Definitely not as much as the Emperor. Vader can come off overly expressive because he wears a mask.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Anakin's plan after converting to the Sith seems to have been to live with Padme and raise his children to be his heirs, and then supplant Palpatine and make the Skywalkers the royal family of the galaxy, with himself and Padmé as the Ruling Couple. Even after that backfired spectacularly, he hasn't let go of that ambition by the time of The Empire Strikes Back, where his plot to get Luke to join him as "father and son". Only after being rejected a second time by his family, does Vader give up on it completely, and by the time of Return of the Jedi, he admits that Palpatine will always be master, and Luke will only amount to being his slave in the Empire. Vader's dream of a Skywalker dynasty to reign supreme is finally picked up and brought to fruition by his grandson Kylo Ren when he usurps Snoke and becomes Supreme Leader of the First Order.
• Evil Is Petty: Depending on the Writer, this is Played Straight on a specific level but averted in the general sense. He's normally too disciplined to indulge in this on an individual, person by person basis but on the other hand, he is lashing out at the world for his own suffering.
  • In the general sense, Vader is in constant pain from his injuries and cybernetics. He has also lost everything that he ever cared about and loved while becoming the lackey of a twisted old goblin that arranged Vader's downfall in the first place. To say that Vader is unhappy with his current state would be to say that the ocean is damp. Vader constantly punishes people and the galaxy overall as a way to take his personal crap out on others the way someone might literally Kick the Dog after a bad day. However, every day is a bad day for Vader. This is most prevalent early on just after he becomes Vader though he mellows out to a degree over the years.
  • On the specific level:
    • Rogue One shows that Vader has taken up residence in a castle rising several stories above Mustafar's soil, apparently his response to Obi-Wan's line of "I have the high ground" from their duel on the planet. He also taunts Obi-Wan in their final battle at the Death Star, calling him an "old man" (when Vader isn't especially young himself at that point), and in The Empire Strikes Back, for all his fondness for Luke, he does let in a snide, "all too easy" when he initially seems to entrap Luke in the carbonite chamber.
    • In Obi-Wan Kenobi, he drags Kenobi through fire but lets him live, obviously cementing that he is perpetually hung over his loss on Mustafar. Additionally, he'll waste nearly all the Imperial resources just to find Obi-Wan, even if it means losing the other Force Sensitive refugees' trail. In their later duel, he cracks the ground beneath Kenobi to drop him into a shallow pit, giving him a good look at Vader standing above him before burying him alive.
    • In Star Wars Annual 4 he sabotages a human podracer because he is on the verge of becoming the supposedly first human podracing champion. Vader was simply jealous because his own victory as a child was never made public to the galaxy as a whole. The irony is that human podracer happens to be his own son, Luke.
• Evil Makeover: Goes from a heroic Jedi to a merciless, frightening Sith Lord covered in armor after being severely burned and injured.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: He got all his flesh burned off and earned a black skull-faced suit.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Vader (Anakin at the time) wouldn't have lost the rest of his limbs and gotten his horrific burns if he hadn't turned evil. Even before the duel on Mustafar, Vader (Anakin) experienced slight changes in appearance (the glowing yellow eyes in particular).
• Evil Overlooker: Vader does this a lot so much that he could be the Trope Codifier.
• Evil Overlord: Despite being The Dragon, Vader still maintains a position of high command (second only to his master) and has his own set of troops (the 501^st Legion, AKA "Vader's Fist", the continuation of the clone troopers he commanded in the Clone Wars) and Cool Starship (the Executor). He also has a set of Elite Mooks, the Inquisitors, dark side force users who hunt Jedi.
  • At his own request, he was also granted the planet Mustafar by Palpatine as his own dark domain.
• Evil Sounds Deep: An archetypal film example, courtesy of his voice synthesizer. In fact, David Prowse's voice needed to be overdubbed with that of James Earl Jones to get the desired effect. Without the synthesizer, Vader's voice is weak and raspy by the time his helmet comes off at the end of Return of the Jedi.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: He owns an obsidian castle on Mustafar, the planet where he lost his humanity. He also is technically in charge of the Fortress Inquisitorius, as the Inquisitors answer to him directly.
• Evil Versus Evil: Given Vader's frequent Villain Protagonist status, he's often involved in these kinds of conflicts.
  • One of his first acts after becoming Darth Vader is to wipe out the remaining Separatist leadership, all of whom are corrupt, warmongering, Dirty Cowards.
  • In the final arc of Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, Vader faces off against Darth Momin, an ancient Sith Lord whose spirit possesses a mask, who tricks Vader into opening a portal to the afterlife in order to resurrect his original body, after which he betrays and attempts to kill Vader.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi, it is revealed that Reva's true goal is to kill Vader as revenge for slaughtering her Jedi Youngling friends during Order 66. However, Reva has long since succumbed to He Who Fights Monsters by embracing the Dark Side in pursuit of this goal, and is ultimately no less of a villain than Vader himself.
  • In Star Wars: Darth Vader, Vader opposes Cylo and his various cybernetically enhanced minions in order to reclaim his place as the Emperor's Dragon after Palpatine demotes him for failing to prevent the destruction of the Death Star. In addition to being just as evil as Vader, Cylo is an arrogant Smug Snake and a huge Jerkass, making Vader easier to root for by comparison.
• Evil Wears Black: Once he officially becomes Darth Vader, he wears black robes that cover his head — all before he dons his iconic black armor.
• Extreme Doormat: While he is unflinchingly subservient to Palpatine to the point of seeming like this, it is actually subverted in that Vader does cautiously object to or talk back to his Master. There is also the fact Vader resents Palpatine deep down and sometimes even undermines him.
• Eye Scream: A little known side-effect of the horrific events on Mustafar is the extensive damage done to Vader's retinas, due to the scorching heat, and most likely also from all the smoke and fumes. Without the goggles in his mask, Vader's nearly blind.
• Eye Colour Change: After killing the Separatist leaders on Mustafar, Vader's eyes are shown to have changed from blue to red-rimmed yellow, signifying his complete fall to the dark side. Every glimpse of him behind the mask, except when he's redeemed also have these yellow eyes.
• The Faceless: Spends almost the entire original trilogy as this, until he is finally unmasked at the end of Return of the Jedi.
• Facial Horror: Due to suffering severe burns, his real face is pale-skinned from lack of sunlight and completely ravaged. This isn't on display in Rebels because they thought giving him canon-correct scarring would be too much for a show meant for children.
• Fallen Hero: He's not just a former Jedi; he was also The Chosen One prophesied to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force. Thankfully, he snaps out of it in the end.
• Family-Values Villain: Once Vader realizes that Luke is his son, he places the latter's safety above all else. When the Emperor attempts to kill Luke with his Force Lightning, he redeems himself by killing his former master.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: During his raid of the Jedi Temple. Not yet burned and encased in his suit, he still looks like handsome, dashing Anakin Skywalker, even while brutally murdering every innocent Jedi in the Temple, including the children like they were nothing.
• Faster Than They Look: Despite his clunky mechanical armor and horrific injuries making him come off as slow, Vader can actually eviscerate someone with his lightsaber before they even realize it and when he's sufficiently angered, he can ignore the pain and discomfort his mechanical legs give him and run quickly to catch up to whoever's fleeing from him.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Guilt. He channels it for rage, thus empowering himself with the dark side, but he still suffers immense guilt for his many many crimes, the death of his wife being the worst of those. Dr. Aphra ends up exploiting this by luring him into an ancient Jedi confessional on Tython. Vader could sense the guilt of millennia of confessions, which nearly broke him.
  • Attachments. Deep down, Vader still has some fondness for the people connected to his old life. This weakened him in his duels with Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Luke Skywalker. Unlike most cases, this ultimately proved to be a good thing, allowing Vader to overcome the Dark Side and become Anakin Skywalker again.
  • A pathological need for victory, which he had when he was still Anakin. When he wants to win at something, he will throw away all logic and careful planning to achieve it. It makes him incredibly heedless and unreasonable, which Obi-Wan frequently uses to outsmart or distract him because Vader never learns from this particular shortcoming.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • The operation that placed him into his suit was extremely painful, and left him stuck in an elaborate iron lung in constant physical pain, as well as emotional torment from believing he killed his wife and child. Lords of the Sith reveals that he actually uses this to his advantage by letting his pain and anger guide and strengthen him.
  • In issue 24 of Star Wars: Darth Vader, he has a vision of his fateful duel with Obi-Wan on Mustafar. The vision breaks with what actually happened when Vader utters this response to Obi-Wan saying he loved Anakin like a brother:
    Anakin: If you'd loved me Obi-Wan, you would have killed me.
• Faux Affably Evil: He has his moments. His famous line to Motti (while choking him) is delivered like a mild scolding.
  • "Apology accepted, Captain Needa."
  • "We would be honored if you would join us."
• Foil: He and the Emperor are this for each other:
  • The Emperor is only the dark side, with no hint of Light in him, while Vader has the light buried deep within himself under years of anger and regret.
  • The Emperor is only out for himself, despite being a schemer, manipulating from the shadows; while Vader is more of an action type, and an enforcer/believer in law and order.
• Follow in My Footsteps: He encourages his son to join The Dark Side along with him. Luke refuses to ever do so.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: He's retconned as this towards his son Luke in Disney's sequel trilogy. In The Last Jedi, Luke refers to him as "the most hated man in the galaxy" and has grown incredibly cynical towards everything Anakin and the other Jedi stood for. However, by The Rise of Skywalker, the two worked together alongside their fellow Jedi to stop Palpatine.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Where to start? He was born into a life of slavery on one of the harshest worlds in the galaxy, is forced to separate from his still enslaved mother once he's finally freed, widely disliked and distrusted by his peers despite being expected so much, his best father figure is killed right after they meet, putting him in the care of a person not even two decades older than him. While he got another father figure, Palpatine, the new one was in secret a Sith Lord who plotted his fall to the Dark Side the entire time. Then his mother is tortured and murdered by Tusken Raiders, he's forced into becoming a military commander in a galaxy-spanning war before he's even left his teens, his apprentice gets betrayed by the Jedi and leaves him, his visions of his wife dying leaves him open to Palpatine's manipulation, turning to the Dark Side, only to then turn on his pregnant wife, being crippled, burned and painstakingly rebuilt over several days, only to be fed a lie that his beloved wife, and their children were killed by his hand.
  • Believe it or not, he even has a good reason why he kills Imperial officers. In the early days, he was far more lenient, but several years of constant assassination attempts and betrayals from opportunistic Imperials eventually wore away any patience he had.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: In the anthology book From a Certain Point of View, Obi-Wan tells his former master Qui-Gon that while both of them share some responsibility for Anakin's fall to the Dark Side, ultimately Anakin was the one who willingly chose to turn to the Dark Side despite possessing the training and wisdom to choose a better path. Vader himself acknowledges this, which Obi-Wan ironically later assures was not solely his own fault in "Return of the Jedi: From a Certain Point of View".
• From Nobody to Nightmare: One of the best examples in popular culture. He was once just a slave on Tatooine who ended up becoming one of the most powerful and feared people in all of the Galaxy. He even serves as the image for the trope.
• Frontline General: Vader only feels alive when he's in the thick of danger and the heat of battle. Unlike most other high ranking members of the imperial military, Vader leads from the front and will jump at the chance to get down in the trenches with the other soldiers and slay the enemies of the empire. Due to this, many of the rank and file soldiers, especially the stormtrooper corps, practically worship and revere Vader as they have the utmost respect for a high ranking officer who isn't afraid to risk his own life alongside his men nor put on airs of superiority like so many other officers who view those underneath them as cannon fodder.
• Fury-Fueled Foolishness: As much of a skilled manipulator and strategist he can be, when his anger against someone is too strong, he begins acting incredibly reckless and impatient, which is frequently the case when it comes to his former master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• Future Me Scares Me: If young Anakin came face to face with his future self as Vader, it's very likely he would either try to kill Vader or kill himself so that Vader would never be. In The Clone Wars, Anakin turns to the Dark Side a year early after receiving a vision of his future as Darth Vader to prevent that from coming to pass. Ironically, this is the symbolic conflict within Vader, as Anakin genuinely despises what he's become and only continues on from a combination of I've Come Too Far and penance.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He was a very skilled mechanic and engineer and remains talented at it, modifying his suit and starfighters, being one of the very few pleasures he allows himself and is capable of engaging in.
• Genius Bruiser: His cybernetics may make him one of the physically strongest characters in the series, able to easily lift and break the necks of grown men, but he also displays a cold and calculating nature and skill at manipulation and attacks at a surprisingly high speed. Case in point, the plot of The Empire Strikes Back is his personal Batman Gambit to trap Luke and get him to convert to the Dark Side, and possibly even to help him overthrow the Emperor, succeeding in capturing Han and depriving the Rebels of one of the best leaders in the process. He also retains the piloting and technological skills he's had since childhood. In addition, he is a brilliant battlefield tactician and a highly skilled warrior with decades of experience as well as an extremely powerful force user which takes considerable mental skill.
• Gloved Fist of Doom: His fists are clenched all the time, except when he's blocking lasers with his hands.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Beneath his mask, Vader's eyes are a intimidating shade of yellow in order to signify his corruption by the Dark Side.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Vader is (supposedly) so scarred and mutilated he can't survive long without being encased in a pressurized suit of life support systems and has four artificial limbs. He chooses to armor this suit and uses it to make himself more intimidating. Before Anakin became Darth Vader and was made of scar tissue and mechanical replacement parts, he had a scar on the right side of his face near his eye and had already lost one arm. Due to it being a children's show and his scars being rather horrific, they weren't shown when his mask was damaged during his fight with Ahsoka in the season two finale of Star Wars Rebels.
• Guest Fighter: Vader stars as this for SoulCalibur IV alongside Yoda and Starkiller, his apprentice in Legends.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Vader retains much of his pent-up rage during his time as Anakin. That is to say, should you do anything to displease him, it could quickly turn into a life-or-death situation at any moment. Of course, he generally tries his best (key word on "best") to reign in his temper so he can be a more effective leader, but generally speaking most Imperials treat Vader like a walking bomb.
• Handicapped Badass: His ability to fight is stunted due to his injuries and cybernetic suit, forcing him to adopt a combat style based around brute force and proper swordsmanship. The "handicap" in question is dubious at best for 99% of the galaxy's population. The intense heat and toxic gases of Mustafar has melted his eardrums, heavily damaged his cornea and retina and ravaged his vocal cords. While he can see without his helmet, any sufficiently bright light could make him blind. He is otherwise practically deaf and mute without his cybernetics.
• Head Bob: David Prowse does this very well, making Vader an emotive character despite being perpetually masked.
• Heartbroken Badass: He is revealed to be this trope in the Prequel Trilogy. Sure, he was pretty badass during the Clone Wars as Anakin Skywalker, but as soon as his wife died by his own hand, well, Rogue One, A New Hope, and The Empire Strikes Back can testify to just how more threatening he became.
• The Heavy: The most prominent villain in the Canon, although he is always subservient to Palpatine, the true Big Bad. In A New Hope, he and Tarkin are somewhat equals, save that Tarkin is the one actually in charge of the Death Star, thus making him Vader's superior; however, later works reveal that Vader outranks any Moff, meaning that he likely listened to Tarkin more out of respect than an actual need to (Star Wars: The Clone Wars shows us that the two formed a friendship and mutual respect during the Clone Wars). Indeed, the moment Vader and Tarkin disagree on anything (Tarkin's order to not scramble fighters against the Rebel attack during the Battle of Yavin), Vader simply ignores Tarkin and does his own thing anyway.^note That's Anakin for you. Always doing his own thing, regardless.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: A downplayed case. Vader never turns back to the Light (until the climax of Return of the Jedi) but he is often tempted to and spends a lot of time with uncertain convictions towards his role as a Sith. Palpatine likely put it best when he says Vader keeps choosing to embrace the Dark Side, but also keeps needing to make that choice.
• Heel–Face Turn: Turns back to the light side of the Force as Anakin Skywalker in order to protect his son.
• Heel Realization: Vader's conversation with Luke in Return of the Jedi, before they depart for the Death Star, suggests that Vader underwent a Heel Realization at some point, or at least enough of one to realize what he had become, and to convince him that he was beyond redemption. He managed to prove himself wrong when, while watching Palpatine torture Luke, Anakin overcomes the Dark Side and kills his Sith Master.
• Hell Is That Noise: His asthmatic, mechanical breathing noise. Whenever unsuspecting people hear it, they instantly know they are done for.
• Hero Killer: He was already infamous for killing several Jedi during Order 66 and the decades afterwards, but he truly establishes himself as one to the audience in A New Hope when he kills Obi-Wan. To a lesser extent, he is indirectly responsible for the death of Padmé Amidala in Revenge of the Sith, although he didn't intend for this to happen and it's one of his greatest regrets. Subverted with Ahsoka Tano; he would've killed her on Malachor if not for the intervention of a future Ezra Bridger, who pulled Ahsoka into a portal to the World Between Worlds before she returned back to her own time.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • One of his first true acts of heroism after years of serving under Palpatine was to drive a pod racer built by his childhood friends, Kitster and Wald, and use it to blow up a weapon created by Gabredor 3's governor that would have rendered the planet and its inhabitants. Vader is nearly killed in the attempt, though is recovered and nursed back to health by Sabé. It helps that, prior to this, he was made aware of Padmé's final moments and last words, which began breaking Palpatine's hold on him.
  • He sacrifices his life to save his son from Darth Sidious, effectively turning him back to the light side of the Force.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Dark Lord of the Sith reveals that Vader, deep down, still believes himself to be The Chosen One, the one who would bring balance to the Force, which adds a rather complicated layer to his extreme self loathing.
  • Expanded Universe materials also reveal Vader had an interest in modifying his suit, and personal starfighters, a holdover from his life as Anakin, and one of very few things that he did for fun.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: It only really starts appear after he begins learning more about the context of Padmé's death and her last words, but when he meets up with his old friends from Tatooine in Gabredor 3, Vader tries to dismiss any acknowledgment he has with them, yet when they were attacked, he promptly killed the beasts before they could lay their claws on his former friends and even risked his life to destroy a planetary superweapon using a pod racer constructed by his old friends. Sabé notes that Padmé was right about there still being good in Anakin after sha saves and helps recover Vader from his wounds.
• High-Voltage Death: One of Vader's armor's biggest flaws is its vulnerability to electricity. Indeed, his armor is shorted out by Sidious's Force lightning, and he dies soon after killing his master.
• His Own Worst Enemy: All of the pain, horror, and loss that Anakin has suffered is his fault and he knows it which feeds his rage and dark-side powers.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: By the time of The Force Awakens, the First Order's propaganda paints him as a fallen hero for the Empire. Only Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke know the true circumstances of Vader's death, and Kylo Ren, for his part, sees it as the only way that Vader could have been made weak enough to be killed. Looked at as Metaphorically True, he's right.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • Effectively acts as this during his confrontation with Kanan and Ezra in Star Wars Rebels. He utterly curb stomps them and they barely escape with their lives.
    Kanan: That was no Inquisitor. That was a full-fledged Sith Lord.
  • As the final boss in Vader Immortal, the smuggler the player controls is obviously no match for Vader. While they can get a few hits in and even counter Vader's telekinetic attacks, as soon as Vader gets serious, he disarms the smuggler and would have killed them if Corvax hadn't froze him in time.
  • In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, he is the last enemy Cal confronts. Cal is so completely beyond outclassed by the Sith Lord that all he can do is Run or Die; Vader doesn't even have a health bar.
  • A noticeable aversion in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Cal's master, Cere Junda, becomes the one to directly fight Vader. The "hopeless" part may stem from the fact that she doesn't survive the encounter, yet the Sith Lord narrowly avoids the killing blow and limps his way out of the temple.
• Hot-Blooded: Initially. Shortly after his transformation, Vader was just as openly aggressive and hot-tempered as when he'd been Anakin. This resulted in him losing his remaining organic limbs and almost being dunked in lava, and he subsequently masked his rage with stoicism and Tranquil Fury.
• Hypocrite: Actually averted. In Darth Vader #6, he calls the experimental cyborg soldiers developed and trained by Cylo "abominations". Palpatine mentions it seems hypocritical coming from someone who himself is "more machine than man". Given Vader hates his hastily-constructed body and was made a cyborg not by choice, but because it was the only way save his life, this is very true to his character.
  • Played straight in Vader Immortal. Vader dismisses Lady Corvax as weak due to her grief over the death of her husband, which results in her inability to use the Bright Star properly to resurrect her husband. He ignores that he is just like her, as the whole reason why he wants the Bright Star from the beginning is less about power and more about wanting to bring Padme back, being willing to sacrifice not only Mustafar, but also other planets in process.

I–M

• Iconic Attribute Adoption Moment: In Revenge of the Sith, after being brutally injured and left for dead on Mustafar, Anakin Skywalker receives his iconic Darth Vader armor at the end of the film.
• Is That What He Told You?: Tells Luke that he's his father in The Empire Strikes Back, contradicting what Obi-Wan had told Luke about Vader killing his father in A New Hope.
• Ignored Epiphany: A common element in stories centered around Vader, both in Legends and the current Canon, is that he has a dream or vision or even just plain realization that he made a huge mistake in siding with Palpatine and the Dark Side and it ruined his life but he could always turn back to the Light and try to make amends. Vader, usually with overtures of I've Come Too Far and a need to punish himself, rejects this notion and doubles down on his life as a Sith. Good thing this was ultimately subverted, allowing him to become a Jedi again.
• I Hate Past Me: Every time he talks about Anakin Skywalker, he constantly derides him as a weak fool and takes pride in having "killed him". This is a manifestation of Anakin's self-loathing multiplying after becoming Darth Vader.
• Immune to Bullets: He can stop blaster shots with his bare cybernetic hand combined with the Force.
• Implacable Man: It's almost impossible to beat him and if you do, he will come back and hunt you down with determination. Vader never backs down. There is only one exception to this, the only man we know who clouds Vader's judgment with conflicting feelings, the man Darth Sidious has forbidden him to hunt: Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• Inconsistent Coloring: The colors of the buttons on Vader's chest panel change◊ throughout the timeline, with no in-universe explanation. In A New Hope, the lenses of his mask had a red tint that was tricky to see except in certain lighting, while the following films' masks featured black lenses. Most Vader appearances set before A New Hope tints the lenses red as well, with the exceptions of Revenge of the Sith and Obi-Wan Kenobi, where they were black.
• Informed Ability: Vader appears to have a reputation as a great general and formidable opponent. While a formidable and terrifying physical combatant and warrior, his actual record as general, commander, and enforcer during the Original Trilogy however is pretty spotty and more or less a series of failures:
  • In A New Hope, he fails to find the stolen blueprints of the Death Star. His plan to recover it at Tatooine fails, his torture of Princess Leia fails to provide information about the Rebel Base, and his plan to finally find it ends up compromising the Death Star's security, leading to its destruction.
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, he wins the Battle of Hoth, but the rebels evacuate with the bulk of their forces, allowing him a minor victory of capturing an empty military base. He fails to accomplish Palpatine's order of capturing Luke Skywalker, and his own secret plan to convert him to the Dark Side and pull a coup. As military governor, he ends up alienating Cloud City, a neutral territory into the Rebel Alliance due to his poor handling of the Occupation, granting the rebels another great pilot like Lando Calrissian to replace the decommissioned Han Solo.
  • By the time of Return of the Jedi, Vader is assigned a minor position as an overseer and Palpatine takes a more active and hands-on role, with Vader given no command of the ground forces. But it's not made clear in the final film if this is because of Vader's failures, because Palpatine distrusts him, or simply that the Emperor wants to trade him in for a younger apprentice (Luke).
  • This only applies to the original trilogy, though. In the comics and Rebels he very much proves himself to be a deadly commander and tactician.
  • After joining the dark side, many statements put him on a similar level to Sidious and Yoda, or even higher. Considering that he lost to Obi-Wan twice, that's hard to believe.
• In the Back: This is how he killed Eeth Koth.
• Invincible Villain: He's the strongest Force-wielder in the galaxy short of the Emperor, Yoda and possibly Obi-Wan, and victory against him is less "beating him" and more "surviving him". The only characters shown to be able to keep up with him in a fair fight are Ahsoka Tano (who lost their duel anyway and would have died if not for Ezra), Obi-Wan Kenobi (who defeated him on Mustafar and again at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi), Cere Junda (who narrowly missed a killing blow on him after successfully beating him into a corner. Vader also wasn't taking the fight seriously), and Luke Skywalker (who briefly succumbs to anger and beats him in Return of the Jedi).
• I Reject Your Reality: In Revenge of the Sith, he goes completely into denial about Palpatine's evil nature and his own atrocities, and ignorant about the fact he is Palpatine's servant:
  "I have brought peace, freedom, justice and security to my new empire!"
  And the classic: "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!"
• Irony:
  • His personal fortress is located on Mustafar, the same planet where he received life-threatening injuries (life-support suit for the rest of his life) and he accidentally killed his wife. Specifically, he himself chose this, and even chose to have the fortress built overlooking the lava bank where he was dismembered and burned.
  • He chose the Dark Side to find the personal strength to protect loved ones, establish justice, and earn the respect of his fellow Jedi. Now he doesn't have the strength to function without cybernetics, he's lost all his loved ones, he's the pawn of a totalitarian dictatorship, and the few remaining Jedi remember him as their greatest betrayer.
  • From Palpatine's words, Vader came to believe that compassion and love were nothing more than a weakness. As every fan of "Return of the Jedi" know, this couldn't be further from the truth, with Anakin fulfilling his destiny as The Chosen One because of his love towards Luke.
• I've Come Too Far: The only reason he sticks around with Palpatine and the Empire after learning about his wife's death is because he believes that it is too late to redeem himself — and given that he murdered many of his former allies personally (some of whom were children), this perspective makes a degree of sense. Highlighted in the 2020 comic series where Vader is shown flashing back to reporting to Sidious about killing the Younglings, which implies the act sincerely traumatized him and he still doesn't forgive himself for it.
  Vader: [to Luke in a sad tone] It is too late for me, son.
• I Want Them Alive!: He prefers to take his prisoners be alive – he says this verbatim as one of his first lines in A New Hope.
  • Once he learns that Luke is his son (or more specifically that he has a son), he does everything he can to have his son brought to him. He even places a bounty on him to ensure that he doesn't get killed.
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader explicitly says this to the gathered bounty hunters aboard the Executor in regards to the pursuit of the crew of the Millennium Falcon, making a point to tell Boba Fett "no disintegrations".
• I Was Quite a Looker: He was a Mr. Fanservice before he got completely mutilated.
• Jerkass: Of the highest order. Though how cruel he is has historically zigzagged with who is writing him, the one constant is Darth Vader is a deeply unpleasant and unfriendly man.
  Luke: You Killed My Father.
  Vader: I've killed many fathers. You'll have to be more specific.
• The Juggernaut:
  • In Rogue One, the audience sees just how unstoppable Darth Vader is when he effortlessly massacres a group of Rebel troopers in pursuit of the Death Star plans.
  • It shows in Rebels as well a couple of times:
    • During "The Siege of Lothal", the crew of the Ghost barely manages to hold him off long enough to escape. Even setting off a bunch of detonators and burying him under collapsing AT-AT walkers buys them precious little time.
    • When he duels Ahsoka, throughout the duel he's constantly advancing and gaining ground while Ahsoka can barely keep up.
  • In the original prequels and the sequels though, this is a little downplayed. He canonically lost the only duel he had with a capable opponent at the height of his powers at Mustafar. After that his opponents are mostly non-Force sensitive soldiers, under-trained novices like Luke at Bespin, and his final triumph over his master amounts to attacking him while his back is turned. That being said, it is also worth remembering that on Mustafar, Obi-Wan was in his prime - an extraordinarily powerful Living Legend Jedi Master, who was described by none other than Mace Windu (who invented Vaapad) as "the master of the classical form", the defensive Form III, Soresu. Not a master. The master. And much like in his duel with Ahsoka, Vader has Obi-Wan on the back foot for most of the fight.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi — Part III, this is very much in play. Obi-Wan, riven with turmoil, is scrambling to keep away from Vader, and Vader views him as pathetic. However, this is reversed in Obi-Wan Kenobi — Part VI, as Obi-Wan has rediscovered inner peace, and his place and purpose in the galaxy, and fully healed his connection to the force. Obi-Wan has Vader on the defensive for the second half of their fight.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: His fall to the Dark Side is pretty quick. He goes from wanting simply to save Padmé to slaughtering younglings, then even force choking Padmé when she confronts him regarding his actions, eventually resulting in her death. Hell, he pretty much turns on a dime when he hacks Mace Windu's arm off.
• Just Toying with Them:
  • When he and Luke clash in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader due to knowing their true relation isn't actually fighting to kill and seems to be spending most of the fight testing Luke's abilities, even throwing out a few compliments here and there. It's only near the end when Luke lands a direct hit that Vader gets more aggressive and forcibly disarms Luke.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi — Part III, he spends most of his fight battering at Obi-Wan's defenses before finally getting fed up and grabbing him with the Force, proceeding to drag him through flaming fuel before putting out the fire and promising Obi-Wan more pain to come.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi — Part V, he breaks the dial on this trope. When former youngling Reva tries to stab him in the back, he freezes her with the Force, turns, and taunts her. He then allows her to keep attacking him, not even bothering to draw his lightsaber, nonchalantly dodging her attacks or stopping them with the Force. Eventually he steals her double-bladed lightsaber, separates it into two, and taunts her by showing how she's nowhere near a Worthy Opponent, swatting aside her attacks with contempt before finally tiring of the game and stealing her saber back. Then he stabs her in the gut and leaves her for dead. She was never even worthy enough for him to use his own lightsaber on, only half of hers.
  • In Jedi Survivor, he doesn't take his fight with Cere Junda seriously, taunting her that her stay of execution has come to an end and not being too aggressive. He pays for it when Cere drops flaming debris on him, injuring him enough that he realizes he needs to stop playing with his food and take the fight seriously. Even then, Cere narrowly misses a killing blow on him.
• Kick the Dog:
  • He captures and tortures Luke's friends in order to force Luke to come save them.
  • Constantly in supporting material, for example when he deliberately has Dr. Aphra thrown out of the airlock instead of swiftly executing her via lightsaber per her request.
  • Murders random civilians in the hunt for Obi-Wan, including children. Unlike his enemies, or allies that have failed him, these people are killed simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so as to lure in Obi-Wan.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: The little Tatooine slave boy who was The Chosen One grew up... and became a murderous, cybernetic evil wizard.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Vader seeks to destroy anything and anyone he once cherished as Anakin Skywalker, as their very being reminds him of how he destroyed his own life and of all he lost as a result. The likely sole exception is his son, Luke, whom he intends to turn to the Dark Side and become his Sith apprentice in a twisted attempt to "rebuild" his family. He would keep going after Obi-Wan, but Palpatine forbids it in the last episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, since his conflicted feelings for Obi-Wan cloud his judgment.
• The Kingslayer: In Jedi he throws Emperor Palpatine down the reactor shaft to his doom to stop him from killing Luke.
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • Any sort of levity or goofiness stops whenever he shows up, and characters often die. Case in point: the Rebel operation in the first issue of Star Wars was going swimmingly. And then he showed up. This is played up very heavily in Rogue One, where his scenes are among the most tense and gruesome in the saga. Vader, after receiving the suit, never shares a direct scene with comic relief C-3PO and R2-D2 in the movies (except for scenes on Bespin with Threepio in the freezing chamber, but they never see each other directly and editing ensures neither are sharing a major shot), which helps drive his seriousness home.
  • Vader shoots and nearly destroys Artoo (his old co-pilot and friend) with space fighter fire as soon as he comes within range of Luke's X-Wing during the climactic space battle in A New Hope. Threepio (the droid he built as a child) is already severely disabled by the time he barely encounters him again for the first time in decades in The Empire Strikes Back.
  • An already tense conflict with Inquisitors and Maul gets even worse when Vader shows up in the Rebels Season 2 finale "Twilight of the Apprentice", as he delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle to Ezra and Kanan, and we leave the episode knowing he's killed Ahsoka.
• Knight Templar: Genuinely believes instilling order through fear and tyranny is a necessary evil for the greater good.
• Large and in Charge: Vader is by far the tallest human in the Canon, played by the 1.98m (6'6") actor David Prowse in the original trilogy; later suit actors were either as tall as Prowse (in Spencer Wilding's case) or wore inserts and lifts to appear as tall (in Hayden Christensen's case). He would have been even taller had Prowse and the 2.10m (7'3") Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) not mutually agreed on which parts they would play.
• Large Ham: As Prowse (or whoever else is in the suit) gestures plentifully and Jones speaks bombastically, the result is simply glorious. Justified since his face is rarely visible and as such he needs to emote in other ways.
• Laser Blade: He uses a red-bladed lightsaber in combat.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader cuts Luke's hand off. In Return of the Jedi, Luke repays the favor and cuts his hand off.
• Leitmotif: The Imperial March. Major and minor key versions of it are all over the place during his key scenes.
• The Leader: Vader is the ultimate authority of the Inquisitorius, a group of former Jedi-turned-practitioners of the Dark Side who are trained by Vader himself with the intent of enforcing the influence of the Galactic Empire and hunting down Jedi survivors of Order 66.
• Lean and Mean: Vader's appearance in Obi-Wan Kenobi is really sunken-in, particularly his eyes and cheeks, giving him an emaciated look. Though, given that he most likely can't eat proper food, and gets his nourishment through other means, it makes sense. As of Darth Vader: The Lost Command he bulked up to the point where what's left of his body into a slab of enormous muscles◊.
• Lethal Lava Land: Rogue One shows that, just like many video game Final Bosses, he has a castle located in one — on Mustafar more precisely, the very planet where his near-lethal injuries took place and where his Anakin self symbolically died.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: He resents Emperor Palpatine deeply (the man he's working for) who is also evil and wants to kill him just as badly as the other one wants to kill him. However, unlike the Emperor, Vader's motivation for destruction is for the greater good and he still has some sense of morality. He's also nowhere near as sadistic.
• Lightning Bruiser: Zigzagged between this and the other side. His injuries and cybernetics limit his mobility and deprive him of the speed and agility he possessed prior but he's still surprisingly quick despite his size and his attacks are devastatingly strong.
• Living on Borrowed Time: Vader would have died from his wounds on Mustafar had Palpatine not saved him by putting him in a life-support suit. And because the wounds crippled his potential to overthrow his master and take over the Empire for himself, Vader only lives as long as the Emperor isn't thinking about replacing him. Thus, when Vader suggests to the Emperor that the young and healthy Luke Skywalker could be turned (in an attempt to spare his son) in The Empire Strikes Back, he knows that he has to quickly turn Luke to his side or suffer the same fate as Count Dooku.
• Logical Weakness: His injuries on Mustafar gave Vader two devastating weaknesses, which is good because if he wasn't injured, he'd be so powerful that Sidious expects Vader to easily surpass both him and Yoda, two of the strongest Force users in the history of the galaxy.
  • His first weakness is his injuries sustained from his duel with Obi Wan. He lost all of his limbs, had third degree burns over most of his body with his sense of hearing, eyesight and respiratory system being so damaged it couldn't long function unaided. All of this meant that there is no way he could survive without his bionic life-support, and its irreparable even with a bacta tank. And since extensive use of the Dark Side is damaging to the user, Vader cannot fully exploit it without risking his life in the process.
  • His second weakness is that his life-support cybernetics could be exploited against him. Anything that could compromise them would immobilize or even kill him. And since he's mostly made of wires and metal, water and electricity are his greatest obstacles, which is not ideal when the boss he wants to overthrow happens to be a master of Force Lightning.
• Love Redeems: His love for Luke, his son, redeems him in the end and reverts Darth Vader back into Anakin Skywalker.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: The Trope Namer, derived from the climactic scene in The Empire Strikes Back wherein he tells Luke he is his father (though not with those exact words).
  "No. I am your father."
• Luke, You Are My Father:
  • In the DVD/Blu-Ray Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back, Palpatine tells him that "the offspring of Anakin Skywalker" survived. He feigns surprise at this and it's implied he knew already. Given that the opening crawl already announces that he's looking for Luke, and after the rebels evacuate at Hoth, he specifically targets Luke's friends, and the fact that he wants to topple and pull a coup on Palpatine, means he has to put a façade of covering his activities.
  • Issue 6 of the Darth Vader comic reveals how Vader learned the truth: he had Boba Fett try to track the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, but all he learned was his name. His name was "Skywalker." It also confirms that his reaction to the Emperor's news about Luke in The Empire Strikes Back is just an act, an attempt to prevent Sidious from learning that he has been searching for young Skywalker behind his master's back for nearly three years. And Palpatine calling Vader in the first place might be his way of telling his apprentice, "I know exactly what you are up to and you can hide nothing from me."
• Magic Knight: He's a skilled and very strong swordsman, and is also very proficient in using Force powers, although his injuries prevent him from using them to their fullest.
• Malevolent Masked Man: His mask and armor are modeled after ancient Sith armor, and make him a Perpetual Frowner.
• Manipulative Bastard: Although his master is the better known manipulator of the two, Vader can prove just as cunning. All of Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was aware that Reva, the Third Sister, was a former Youngling he had stabbed during the raid on the Jedi Temple, and that she was just trying to curry favor with him so she can get close and kill him for what he did. He pretends not to know anything and lets her rise through the ranks, then crushes her the moment she tries to kill him. He even lampshades how stupid she was to think he wouldn't catch on to what she was doing.
• Married to the Job: Despite being perhaps the wealthiest man in the galaxy under Palpatine, Vader does not enjoy much comfort or luxuries and would rather be out on the frontlines. This is widely interpreted as Vader punishing himself. Tragically, the reason why Anakin became Vader in the first place was to save his wife, Padmé from death, and Vader is still stricken by her death.
• Masking the Deformity: Darth Vader wears his signature black helmet and mask to cover his horribly burned, hairless face and head. This serves as an interesting case of a multi-decade reveal, and yet another trope-popularizing example.
  • In the first movies of the Original Trilogy, A New Hope, it's unclear why, exactly, Vader wears his signature mechanical suit. In The Empire Strikes Back, we get a brief glimpse at the back of his scarred head before Return of the Jedi shows the full extent of his horrific injuries, and the suit suggested to be a life support mechanism; the novelisation also clarifies that his injuries were inflicted by lava burns. Eventually, in Revenge of the Sith, we see that Anakin was mutilated with a lightsaber and fell onto volcanic sand near a lava flow, being burned horribly in the process; the suit he was then installed in acts as a life support system, and he is only able to remove the helmet and live in specialised, controlled environments.
  • Notably, the original Star Wars expanded universe, now designated Legends, makes clear that Vader's suit and mask are agonising to wear; a hint of this can be seen in the masking scene in Revenge of the Sith, where nasty looking needles are plunged into Anakin's freshly burned face as the helmet is put into place. This is a rare example of a case of this trope actually acknowledging that having a mask pressed over a serious facial injury would probably really hurt.
• Master Swordsman: The premier master of Form V Djem So lightsaber combat, and an expert in, or possessing advanced knowledge of, all 7 classic styles of lightsaber combat. Combines elements of multiple styles to become a devastatingly effective duelist despite his bulky cybernetics and inability to use Force Lightning. Quite possibly the greatest lightsaber duelist alive (in terms of pure skill at least) at the time of his death, if one considers that Luke only beat him because he was conflicted.
• Meaningful Name: "Vader" is derived from "invader". It's also Dutch for "Father", though this was serendipitous, as Lucas acknowledged, since he didn't decide to make Vader Luke's father until later. Initially, the names were formed because Lucas wanted something that sounded intimidating, and by means of word association "Dark Water" became modified to it current form. While Darth, initially his character's first name, later a title, was intended to combine the sounds of Dark and Death into a Portmanteau.
• Menacing Stroll: While Vader is capable of running when he needs to, he rarely does so (likely because his injuries combined with the added weight of his armor and cybernetics make it difficult for him to run.). Despite this, he always manages to catch up with his prey.
• Mercy Kill: On some disturbing level, the comics imply this is one part of his reason for offing incompetent underlings before it comes around to the Emperor. He's at least quick and clean when he kills incompetent subordinates, while Palpatine, Sadist as he is, would have no problem drawing it out and making sure they're broken in mind, body and spirit before he kills them, if he even does when he's finished with them.
• Might Makes Right: Played With in that unlike the Emperor, Vader doesn't see might as an indicator of morality or morality itself, but rather Vader believes that without might one's beliefs or desires are irrelevant as they lack the power to see their desires or ambitions become reality. It's more accurate to say that Vader sees weakness as a sin though he also does somewhat believe that Virtue Is Weakness (somewhat in that he isn't against positive emotions or beliefs but that you shouldn't allow them to get in the way).
  Vader: Power, Luke...If only you knew...only power can save.
• Mighty Glacier: Vader is quite slow (though he is faster than he first appears). However, his attacks are devastating, due both to the strength his cybernetic limbs give him and his strength in the Force.
• Military Mage: Vader mostly acts as an officer, "motivating" the admirals of the Imperial Fleet with the threat of a Force-choking and commanding starships to hunt down the Rebels. Occasionally, he also takes the field himself and uses his Force powers to act as an elite soldier, as when he pilots a TIE Advanced starfighter in the Battle of Yavin.
• Mind over Matter: While Vader is far from the only person in the galaxy capable of using telekinesis, his powerful connection to the Force and need to make up for his lack of mobility means he tends to use it on a much more impressive and varied scale than most others; his uses range from throwing objects at his opponents during fights to dragging a fleeing transport out of the sky and ripping it apart in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: In their lightsaber duel on Bespin, Luke, an amateur duelist, gets a lucky tap on Vader's shoulder. Vader's response is to fly into an Unstoppable Rage, making unflattering noises and wildly swinging his lightsaber around before hacking off Luke's hand.
• Misanthrope Supreme: How Vader partly channels the Dark Side of the Force. He straight-up sees everybody and the galaxy in a venomously rageful perspective, not helped by how he ruined his own life as well as those he cared about and the state of the galaxy in a desperate attempt to save his wife, which didn't take, and makes it clear that nobody is safe from his hate and wrath. Even those that Vader comes to respect aren't spared from his misanthropic perspective. This hatred towards everybody is surpassed only by his self-loathing. The only person completely exempt from said hatred is his son, Luke.
• Milking the Giant Cow: Exaggerated movement is necessary for a masked character, and Vader is a well-played example.
• Momma's Boy: He really loved his mother, Shmi, who was tortured and killed by Tusken Raiders. He loved her to the point that, even after turning to the dark side, Vader retains a hatred of the primitive Sand-People and he goes out of his way to massacre them.
• Mook Horror Show: At the end of Rogue One, he tears through Rebel soldiers trying to retrieve the Death Star's plans. He did this years earlier in Jedi: Fallen Order, except with Cal Kestis as the "mook" alongside his Stormtroopers.
• Mouth of Sauron: In addition to serving as The Dragon, he also performs this duty for Emperor Palpatine. It's not obvious at first glance, but notice that Vader has frequent contact with Imperial commanders, to whom he frequently gives commands. Palpatine is never shown speaking to any of his other underlings except Vader in the original trilogy (with the exception of "Fire at will, commander!")
• Murder Is the Best Solution:
  • Vader is a brilliant tactician, but unlike his master Sidious he has very little patience for convoluted political games, so his preferred methods of problem solving usually boil down to ‘remove whatever’s causing the problem with a lightsaber’. In cases where a more diplomatic approach is required, his go-to strategy is instead ‘remove whatever’s causing the problem with a lightsaber, then put someone new in charge who’s sufficiently motivated by the consequences of failure to avoid the problem in future’.
  • Exemplified in a conversation in Lords of the Sith, where Palpatine suspects that there is a traitor amongst Senator Orn Free Taa’s staff feeding information to the Free Ryloth movement, and Vader’s suggestion is to simply kill all of them.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: As seen when he needs to remove his suit for maintenance or cleaning, Anakin's time as a Sith in his bulky armor turned what's left of his body into a slab of enormous muscles.◊
• Mutual Kill:
  • Palpatine obviously wasn't going to survive a fall into the core of the Death Star, but the stray lightning bolts he fired shorted out Vader's life support.
  • When Cere Junda leaps with her lightsaber to finish Vader off, at first it appears that she might have got him... except that she turns out to be fatally stabbed by the Sith Lord's lightsaber. She barely hits her mark — Vader survives.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Despite what he presents himself as, Vader does feel remorse and guilt for his atrocities, and there are times where it's brought to the surface. It's just he believes he's gone too far to ever go back.
• My Greatest Failure: Not being able to save Padmé from dying during childbirth.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Vader displays traits of this with his master Palpatine... when he's not actively trying to subvert him.
• Mysterious Parent: To Luke and Leia. Luke discovers that he is Vader's son in The Empire Strikes Back.
• Mysterious Past: In Tarkin, it's revealed that to the galaxy-at-large and the center of power, Vader had this, with no one knowing where he had come from. Some suspect he was a secret experiment created by the Emperor as a final trump card for ending the Clone Wars. Tarkin, however, is one of the few to believe that Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker are the same people.

N–R

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: His Star Destroyer in A New Hope, the Devastator, and his Super Star Destroyer in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the Executor.
• Necessarily Evil: How he views himself and, by extension, the Galactic Empire.
• Neck Lift: Does this to Captain Antilles in A New Hope. The good captain does not survive the interrogation.
• Never Bareheaded: He's seen only thrice in the films without his helmet: the first time in a special pressure chamber, the second time in a bacta tank and third and final time while dying.
• Never My Fault: Oddly, despite his constant self-hatred, certain writers portray him as having this problem.
  • One case that was in the original movies. He blamed Obi-Wan for turning Padmé against him, when in reality it was his own turn to the Dark Side that did so.
  • At one point, when contemplating who to blame for his miserable existence, he concludes that it's Obi-Wan and Padmé's fault for not having faith in him.
  • Played straight and then subverted in Obi-Wan Kenobi. He initially blames Obi-Wan for what he's become in episode 3, saying Obi-Wan should have killed him. When his helmet is damaged in episode 6, however, he assures Obi-Wan that he is not a result of Obi-Wan's failure, taking responsibility for what he's become.
• Nice to the Waiter:
  • He hated Imperial officers because he believed they were lazy cowards who got their position through nepotism and money. He only respected those who risked their lives for the war and took responsibility for themselves and for those under their command. He developed this mindset from his experiences as a slave on Tatooine, he also respects the stormtroopers he fights alongside.
  • Captain Needa is a strange example; Needa, more or less, sacrificed himself by taking full responsibility for failing to capture the Millennium Falcon. His face upon discovering his failure shows how Needa knew how Vader responds failure and refused to throw anyone under the bus for his survival. After killing Needa, Vader dryly accepts his apology with a hint of respect towards him for doing this.
  • In Legends, he forms something of a friendship with the Stormtrooper, Hawk, due to his performance in battle. He also respected two imperial officers called Gregg and Erv Lekauf. Gregg's research skills helped Vader hunt Jedi while Lekauf was respected for his battle prowess and refusal to abandon allies during the battle.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Vader is a black cloaked psychic human Cyborg sorcerer samurai Sith swordsman with a severe breathing problem.
• Noble Top Enforcer: Invoked by Vader at the beginning of Return of the Jedi, when explaining the significance of the Emperor's arrival to his subordinate. Also, unlike Palpatine, part of Vader's (initial) motivation is to make the galaxy a better place.
  Darth Vader: I hope so, Commander, for your sake. The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.
• Nom de Guerre: Combined with That Man Is Dead; when he became a Sith Lord, he ditched "Anakin Skywalker" in favor of "Darth Vader".
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: His first instinct when dealing with any opponent is to go in as fast and brutally as possible with no room for conversation. If you have information he wants, he chokes it out of you, either with the Force or with his bare hands. If you fail him or disobey his orders, he'll execute you on the spot and replace you with another subordinate. His only soft spot is for his long lost son, Luke Skywalker, and even that has limits. When Luke grazes his armor once during their lightsaber duel in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader's response is to quit toying with him and sever his hand.
• No Sense of Personal Space: During his meeting with Orson Krennic, he gets up close to Krennic to unnerve him. Then he chokes him with the Force from across the room, seemingly just to remind Krennic that he can.
• Noodle Incident: It's implied that he may have encountered Maul sometime before the latter's death, but the exact details have yet to be divulged.
• Not So Invincible After All: While Darth Vader is unquestionably one of the most powerful individuals in the entire galaxy, a few fights have demonstrated that he isn't unbeatable and that some of his victories truly required some effort on his part. For specifics...
  • In their second duel after 10 years, Obi-Wan manages to exploit Vader's respiratory system as well as using the environment to land some unexpected trick shots, causing the dark lord to falter in his performance and become more frantic in his attempts to kill his former master. The end result is one of the very few times Darth Vader was defeated; his mask broken, revealing the man that was once Anakin Skywalker and screaming in rage at his master as he leaves to accept that Anakin is truly gone.
  • While he manhandled Cal Kestis without much effort, a shocking jolt from BD-1 left him momentarily stunned. Following this, when Cere Junda decides to destroy the hallway they're in by breaking the glass walls to flood the Fortress Inquisitorius, Vader is forced to divert his attention to the sudden rush of water coming to his direction and use the Force to stop it from getting to him, allowing Cal and Cere to swim away to safety.
  • 5 years later when Vader and Cere meet again, it's clear Cere had become much stronger from overcoming the Dark Side and training. While Vader is clearly toying with her at first, he still takes a few saber slashes here and there, but near the end Cere rips burning debris down onto Vader and causes serious injury to him as well as setting him on fire and damaging his cybernetics. While he stops going easy on her, the damage is done and affects his performance and she proceeds to nearly kill Vader before he turns her final blow back on her, but he's left visibly limping away supporting himself on the wall, injured on a level of severity only Obi-Wan had ever brought him to.
• Not So Stoic: His mask and vocabulator give off the illusion that he is largely emotionless, but his power stems from intense, near-perpetual rage.
  • His interactions with Luke. He's the only person he shows any kind of vulnerability toward. His desire to convert Luke to the Dark Side are clearly more about family than it is about the Sith or the Empire.
  • He also loses it during his and Luke's duel on Bespin, when Luke hits him on the shoulder, one of his few remaining biological parts, he howls in pain and viciously attacks him, leading to the famous hand-cutting.
  • When hunting Obi-Wan for the first time, he's far from the stoic monster seen in the Original Trilogy, senselessly murdering innocents and sadistically torturing his old master as retribution for what happened on Mustafar, flat out telling Kenobi things would've been better had he finished the job, instead of leaving him as what he became.
  • When he finds out that Obi-Wan broke into Fortress Inquisitorius to rescue Leia and managed to escape, he barges into the Fortress yelling at Reva for failing to stop him and gives her the mother of all force chokes. If Reva didn't reveal that she planted a tracker on Leia's droid, Vader would have snapped her neck without hesitating.
  Vader: You were warned! What defeat! Would bring! I will tolerate... your weakness... no longer.
• Obviously Evil: He wears a very large black suit, a menacing cape, and a face-concealing helmet. His name also qualifies, as "Darth" combines the words "dark" and "death," while "Vader" is derived from "invader."
• Offing the Offspring: Or it was what he believed at least. The first thing he heard when he woke up from his surgery was that he killed his unborn child along with his wife and lived with that grief for nearly two decades. And in "A New Hope", he tried to kill Luke when he was trying to destroy the Death Star and was ultimately prevented by Han Solo's timely arrival. When he found out that his child was alive however he threatened to murder him twice. But when it came to it in the end, his fatherly instincts kicked in and he refused to let his son die.
• Oh, Crap!: After three films of being The Dreaded personified, he finally loses it when he hits Luke's Relative Button by threatening to find Leia and corrupt her into succumbing to the dark side. When Luke screams and attacks him, he gasps in shock and desperately tries to hold him off, but to no avail.
• Older and Wiser: Subverted. After losing all of his remaining limbs to Obi-Wan and getting his signature black armor, Vader appears more calm, cunning, calculating, and careful in contrast to the hotheaded, impulsive, and emotional Anakin Skywalker. However, it's clear that his Axcrazy attitude and immense self-hatred stop him from truly being this.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: He's the Younger Villain to his former master Obi-Wan Kenobi's Older Hero by a full sixteen years.
• Ominous Opera Cape: He has a large, black cape.
• One Handed Is Cool: He often wields his lightsaber, a notoriously difficult-to-control weapon, one-handed in order to intimidate enemies. It's worth noting that all of the artificial limbs that were installed on him by the Emperor were outdated, uncomfortable and could be slow to respond. The only limb of his that felt natural was the prosthetic he got as a Jedi, his right hand. So him fighting primarily with his right arm unless absolutely necessary was probably the most comfortable and effective since it's the only limb he could reliably use with any finesse, not to mention the overwhelming level of strength just one of his cybernetic arms is capable of probably exceeds what most people can achieve with their entire body. Despite this, Vader will move to wield his saber with both hands when he feels pressured, as both a sign of respect to a Worthy Opponent and as a Let's Get Dangerous! moment that leaves his opposition dead or disabled in short order.
• One-Man Army: He's extremely dangerous, even against multiple opponents.
  • Well exemplified when he singlehandedly lays waste to the Phoenix Squadron in Rebels: Vader has one fighter, and he takes on four corvettes, the frigate Phoenix Home, the Ghost, and a squadron of A-Wings. End result? The frigate and most of Phoenix Squadron are destroyed, while the rest are sent running for their lives. Vader isn't even scratched.
  • During the climax in Rogue One, Vader plows down a dozen Rebel soldiers, cutting them down with his lightsaber, deflecting their blaster shots, and sending them flying across the hallway without so much as a singed cape.
  • In the Darth Vader comics, he destroys a Rebel regiment, complete with armor and air support, by himself.
  • Perhaps best shown in Star Wars: Vader Down, where he was forced to face a small army of Rebel soldiers alone and has no reason to hold back... And routs them. Easily.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Vader is obsessed with killing Jedi survivors, and Obi-Wan in particular, and will go out of his way if he believes he may get an opportunity to do so. Interestingly, Sidious, who (obviously) has no problem with killing Jedi, doesn't really approve of this obsession, as he believes it not only clouds Vader's judgement, but is a link to Anakin Skywalker that Vader needs to let go.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In A New Hope, his usual Tranquil Fury is absent when he yells commands at his subordinates during the raid on the Tantive IV. Rogue One contextualizes why this is — he was mere moments away from reclaiming the Death Star plans from a group of rebels that he slaughtered on the Rebel capital ship that they had been transmitted to, only for them to get away from him. He had a reason to be pissed.
  • In the third episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vader is so enraged upon sensing his former master that he actively starts killing random civilians while trying to find the man. Once he does, Vader enters a brutal and unrestrained combat style in an attempt to wear him down, and even tortures him in a field of burning fuel, demonstrating a form of revenge-fueled sadism that he normally tries to avoid. He really hates Obi-Wan Kenobi that much.
  • In the next episode, Reva’s failure to prevent Obi-Wan from escaping Fortress Inquisitorius with Leia has the Dark Lord LIVID. Storming into the room and IMMEDIATELY throttling her with the Force, positively snarling that she was warned what the price of failure would be. The other Inquisitors are clearly terrified they’ll be the next to face Vader’s wrath, and if Reva hadn’t revealed she put a tracker on Leia that will lead them to Kenobi and the Rebellion, she would absolutely be dead. This is rather justified in that while he is very enraged that Kenobi will seemingly now able to go back into hiding, meaning Vader will not be able to exact his revenge, but Reva's failure also has many consequences that can easily be severe, considering that Leia, the daughter of the Senator of Alderaan, was the bait used, which could lead to some VERY nasty political storm, not to mention the fact that a lot of stormtroopers were killed and the Fortress suffered heavy damage, effectively meaning that he has not only lost Kenobi, but will likely be responsible for the fallout of what happened to Leia. Indeed, when Reva tries to say that Kenobi is all that matters, rather than just letting it go and focusing on hunting down his hated former master, Vader makes it a point to coldly establish that anything else she does that will hamper the Empire will not be tolerated anymore.
  • During his big duel with Obi-Wan nine years before A New Hope, he goes ballistic, trying with everything he has to kill his former master. Not even the suit or the vocoder can hide the sheer burning rage inside him. After Obi-Wan defeats him, cuts part of his mask off and leaves him for dead, his cold, calm façade shatters, as he screams Obi-Wan's name in blinding fury.
  • In Jedi Survivor any taunts he has for Cere evaporate when she successfully injures him, and he begins taking the fight far more seriously. Even when he defeats her, he doesn’t give any one-liner or revel in his victory. He simply limps away, shaken by his brush with death that could’ve been avoided had he taken things seriously from the start.
  • In Vader Immortal, he is incensed when his plans to resurrect Padmé fail, yelling and attempting to kill the nearby smuggler.
    • It's subtle, but when Vader is force-choking the smuggler, the apparition of Padme begs her husband to stop and come back, and tells him that she loves him. Vader actually hesitates and lets go, something he would've never done in any other circumstance.
  • Anytime Vader is hit hard by reminders of the life he used to have, the wife he lost, and friends/family he sacrificed that lead to becoming what he is now. While he can maintain control if there are only small reminders, if he's overwhelmed by the memories to the point where he can't ignore them or turn away, the good still buried inside will start to surface and he'll, however briefly, be hit with My God, What Have I Done? and all of the rage and resentment will drain from him and give way to deep sorrow and despair.
    • He's hit very hard by this in the Darth Vader (2020) series when he meets up with Sabe, one of Padme's shadows and handmaidens. What follows is Vader having to to continuously face his past culminating when he finally reaches Naboo and is attacked by people once loyal to Padme and who even knew and fought alongside Anakin Skywalker while looking up to him. To say Vader wasn't prepared for this would be an understatement. This is just after his duel with Luke and Vader is in absolute emotional turmoil, not helped by the fact that he keeps meeting people dedicated to his late wife and still having the utmost respect for Jedi Anakin Skywalker. You can tell he probably would be shedding a tear under his helmet.
    • Vader faces a force of militiamen trying to hunt him down.
      Captain Ric Olie: Vader! We sentence you to die for the murder of Queen and senator Padme Amidala and her Jedi protector Anakin Skywalker!
      Vader: You....knew them?
      Captain Olie: We fought by their side when the Trade Federation invaded.
    • Vader kills a militiaman.
      Militiaman: For..Padme and...f-for Anakin.
      Vader looks down at him silently
    • Vader faces the handmaiden of Padme in front of her tomb.
      Sabe: You cannot...you will not desecrate this grave!
      Vader: (unsure and faltering) If...If you wish to live...leave now or...
    • Vader opens Padme's tomb and finds the little sculpture he made for her when he had just met her.
      Vader: (Internally) I made this...for you.
• Painful Transformation: Becoming the Darth Vader everyone else sees is not an easy process. Every time he suits up, he has to have his limbs reattached, have painful attachments stuck into his body to allow him to breathe and communicate and have small spikes inside his helmet that allow him to move his body.
• Papa Wolf:
  • This is ultimately what causes him to redeem himself. Unable to stand by and watch while his son is tortured to death by the Emperor's lightning, he finally breaks the dark side's hold and throws the bastard to his doom.
  • Shows shades of this even before his Heel–Face Turn. He rescued his son on multiple occasions during the Vader Down arc and would also go out of his way to eliminate potential threats to Luke. While it would seem at first glance that this might only be Pragmatic Villainy as he needs Luke's help if he's going to beat Palpatine, his internal monologues when he searches for the people who had hidden Luke from him all these years, shows he feels a twisted kind of protectiveness by hating the people that hid his son because they "made him [Luke] weak".
• The Paranoiac: Vader fits this personality type quite well, as years of war, the deaths of his mother, wife, and — so he believes — his child, and mountains of shame and guilt over the atrocities he committed turned him into a ruthless Control Freak determined to bring order to the galaxy at any cost, and who rarely ever shows mercy, even to his own men. It's strongly implied that he wants revenge on the Emperor for manipulating him into being this way, but he is simply too afraid of him to do anything about it, at least until his son comes into play.
• Parental Favoritism: Even in spite of his injuries and the handicap they put on his potential, Sidious admits that, of his three apprentices, Vader is the one he values the most.
  Sidious: Darth Maul was a loss, but Darth Tyranus... he was a proton torpedo. He served his purpose and was gone. [puts his hand on Vader's shoulder] I had a superior candidate in mind.
• The Penance: A big part of Vader feels that becoming Palpatine's lackey and a Sith Lord is what he deserves for all the death and pain he caused. Not helping matters is Palpatine's lies that "restoring order" would serve as a means to atone.
• Pet the Dog: Darth Vader may be a monster, but moments of unexpected kindness are a running theme for him.
  • He is, in general, very kind to the Stormtrooper legions, who are trained to think of themselves as expendable. His experience with their predecessors, the Clone Troopers, probably has a lot to do with this.
  • In Lords of the Sith, he demands that a group of Stormtroopers get to their escape pods after they volunteer to stay behind and escort him off the exploding Perilous. He was likely just making sure they didn't get in his way, but it says a lot about how much respect he commands among the Stormtroopers that the men even offered to stay in the first place, especially since he'd already made it clear they were under no obligation to do so.
  • Late into Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan apologizes to Anakin for failing him and reducing him to a state where he can only survive in a suit of armor. Anakin alleviates Obi-Wan of his failure by saying that he wasn't responsible for Anakin Skywalker's fall to the Dark Side — the only one to blame is Anakin himself. Even if this statement may come with a declaration of violence against his old mentor, it allows the both of them to find closure over what happened a decade prior.
  • In the Season 2 finale of Rebels, when he encounters his old apprentice Ahsoka Tano for the first time in fifteen years, he's visibly hesitant to attack her and offers to spare her if she reveals the location of the remaining Jedi, clearly hoping she'll take the offer. However, when she refuses, he tries to kill her with little hesitation.
  • Incredibly downplayed in the first volume of Marvel's comics, but even if it was unnecessary, Vader agrees to stay for an amiable party with Jabba after half a day of great hostilities with the Hutt.
  • He spared Kreel's life despite Kreel failing him and shit talking him to his face, as he saw Kreel was loyal to the Empire.
  • In Darth Vader, his Bad Boss tendencies are clearly being dialled back for Aphra.
  • Also in Darth Vader, the Pragmatic Villainy of it aside, he has a moment of this when he pulls out and mercy kills Aiolin after her own brother throws her into a lava pit.
  • He rewards Firmus Piett for finding the rebel base, by promoting him to admiral. After Force choking the incompetent and arrogant Admiral Ozzel to death.
  • He allows Chewbacca to rebuild C-3PO shortly after the latter's capture, explaining why Chewbacca was seen repairing C-3PO without too much fear of being caught in The Empire Strikes Back. This is taken further when he forces Boba Fett to lower his rifle when Chewie flies off the handle, even though it would have saved the both of them a lot of trouble if Boba had just killed the Wookiee then and there. The fact that Anakin was C-3PO's creator wasn't established until about 20 years later, when The Phantom Menace came out.
  • His Affably Evil behavior toward Luke after he learns that he's his son. Throughout his duel with Luke on Bespin, he never insults the young Jedi, but simply challenges him to fight more effectively — or surrender before he would endanger himself any more. He sincerely proposes that they overthrow the Emperor and rule as a family (in spite of his decision to chop Luke's hand off moments before), and addresses him as "son" after the revelation. He also was impressed by Luke building his own lightsaber, and patiently listens to Luke saying there is still good in him.
• Post-Final Boss: An interesting example in Jedi: Fallen Order, as he is clearly much stronger than Trilla (or everything else in the game, for that matter), but the "fight" against him is much easier, since you don't really do much besides just running away.
• Posthumous Character: Following his death, Darth Vader became a hugely influential symbol to people in favor of reinstating the Empire and followers of the dark side. Kylo Ren in particular idolizes him, while Leia has never forgiven him, especially once her status as his daughter ruined her political reputation.
• Power Floats: Blink and you'll miss it in the third episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but as Vader's mechanical limbs are being attached and his armor assembled around him, there's nothing holding him up. Not a production error; Vader's holding himself aloft with the Force.
• Power Limiter: Downplayed in the Canon but played straight in Legends:
  • In the Canon, it's shown that Vader personally maintains and repairs the suit via telekinesis from his Bacta tank. Since Anakin is a first rate engineer and the Emperor allows him to do his own work on the suit, the power limiting aspect is just a natural result of him wearing a heavy life support system/full body armor, mixed with him missing large portions of his body and being in constant physical agony. He might be a scary space wizard but if you took away his Force powers and suit then Vader would really be the same as a severe trauma patient lying in a bed on life support.
  • In Legends, his suit is fully this: it was made using extremely obsolete technology compared to what was available, making him and his movements heavy, cumbersome and sluggish when existing robotics could have given him near-human (or even super-human) dexterity. The only enhancement was in raw strength, giving the effect of making his combat style much more reliant on heavy battering blows and minimal movement, as opposed to Anakin's acrobatic elan. This was done intentionally by Palpatine as a means of keeping Vader under his thumb. It has never been explored whether the Emperor had any other killswitches or safeguards built into Vader's armor as insurance to his compliance. Also, many of its design features are specifically designed to be cumbersome even when it would have no effect on the suit's performance: The rasping breathing mechanism is automatic, involuntary, and far louder than it needs to be, the lights and diodes on the breastplate are superfluous, the vision through his helmet is basically a red-tinted low-res video feed to his brain, and so on. All these little touches go towards inspiring constant, almost subconscious frustration and aggravation, making Vader that much more slanted toward the dark side while making it nearly impossible for him to ever fully cope or come to terms with the need to wear the suit.
• The Power of Hate: How Sith in general get their powers, though Vader is possibly the most notable example. Like with Maul, his undying hatred was just about the only thing that kept him alive after being cut into pieces, breathing in the ash-filled air on Mustafar, and being burned alive. What makes this a truly interesting case is the fact that most of the hatred he feels is directed towards himself.
• The Power of Love: While his love for his wife and fear of losing her was what Palpatine used to manipulate him in betraying the Jedi, the love for his own son was what allowed him to break free of its grasp and redeem himself.
• Powered Armor: Vader's black suit is essentially a mobile iron lung, but is made out of extremely durable material and augments his damaged senses.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • In Rogue One, Vader seems to disapprove of Director Krennic's attack on Jedha city, if only because it creates unrest when the Empire's is not yet ready to reveal the existence of the Death Star.
  • During the trench run finale in A New Hope, Vader lets Wedge go after his ship gets crippled. Why waste valuable time chasing a neutralized ship?
  • Outright tells Aphra that as long as she continues to serve him loyally and without failure, she has the protection of the second-most powerful being in the galaxy.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Likes these as much as his Bond One-Liners. He seems to be most fond of bluntly telling his opponent some variation of 'then you will die'.
  Ezra Bridger: I don't fear you.
  Darth Vader: Then you will die braver than most.
  *Easily destroys Ezra's weapon and leaves him cowering on the floor*
  Darth Vader: ...perhaps I was wrong.
• Pride: A recurring element of his personality all his life. Even as a child, he boasted of his skills at podracing. Come A New Hope, and he's casually choking officers who question his abilities. Palpatine lampshades this, right to his face no less, in Revenge of the Sith.
  Palpatine: Ever since I've known you, you've been searching for a life greater than that of an ordinary Jedi. A life of significance.
• Propaganda Hero: A dark example. The Empire used him as a icon of intimidation in propaganda, reporting every battlefield victory and brutal Jedi killing he did as a way of discouraging further opposition.
• Progressively Prettier: Inverted; His burn scarring is way worse in Revenge of the Sith than when he will chronologically be unmasked in Return of the Jedi. It’s likely because his injuries in Revenge of the Sith were fresh whilst his injuries in Return of the Jedi had healed (though not completely) over the course of two decades.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Vader make use of this frequently:
  • In Jedi: Fallen Order, he nearly kills Cal with his own lightsaber by jabbing it into his chest. Cal only survives thanks to Cere's intervention.
  • In Rebels, he reattempts this feat on Ezra by having him decapitate himself by his own lightsaber and nearly succeed. Again, Vader is interrupted by someone else, this time by Kanan.
  • In Darth Vader, he orders Cylo's giant space whale to fly into a star (with Cylo onboard). Third time's the charm, this succeed perfectly without any interruptions.
  • Possibly his cruellest use; he forced two Inquisitors who had begun a relationship to impale each other on their lightsabers.
• Psychic Powers: His most frequent uses of the Force involve telekinesis and choking.
• Psychic Strangle: Trope Codifier, having first done this to Admiral Motti in A New Hope. That time he was stopped by Tarkin, but in The Empire Strikes Back he executes two of his officers this way.
• Psychopathic Manchild: His behavior on Mustafar towards Padmé and Obi-Wan has shades of this, as he's clearly not in his right mind. This was likely a temporary effect of his initial turn, as he's clearly regained most of his wits by the time he starts serving as the Emperor's enforcer.
• Rage Helm: His iconic helmet has a chillingly penetrating stare.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Vader tends to be a reasonable person on a day-to-day basis with his men like the stormtroopers and regular soldiers so long as they're performing their duties to the best of their abilities. He will even be understanding of situations that his people could not reasonably be expected to handle and engages in rapport with the people he works with routinely. He will also tolerate higher ranked officers, despite his dislike of military brass, provided they're competent and good at their jobs (he showed great respect for inspector Thanoth due to the inspector being a first rate investigator and also unfailingly polite to Vader but not in a suck-up kind of way). That said, he won't tolerate people making excuses or passing blame for screw-ups and failures that could have been prevented.
  • Vader also has a soft spot for any subordinate who turns out to be The Reliable One. While he later ends up killing Inspector Thanoth because He Knows Too Much, they had a great relationship (well, a good of one you can have with someone like Vader). Vader was continuously impressed with Thanoth's competence, skill, and genuine respect shown (Vader hates suckups and people blatantly brown-nosing but seems to actually like genuine humility from others) while they worked together.
• Redemption Earns Life: Or afterlife, in this case. After his Heroic Sacrifice, he is able to become a Force Spirit — making him the only former Sith in existence to actually Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
• Redemption Equals Death: He sacrifices himself to save Luke and kill the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.
• Redemption Rejection:
  • When bleeding his Kyber crystal in the first arc of Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, he experiences a vision where he returns to the Light, kills Palpatine, finds Obi-Wan then begs his old friend to kill him, but Obi-Wan refuses. At that point, Vader snaps out of the vision, rejects the vision, and completes the bleeding of the crystal, sealing his commitment to the Sith.
  • A very brief, unspoken one in Rebels; after Ahsoka realizes that Vader is indeed her former master, she proclaims that she won't abandon Anakin again. Vader's reaction (his face is partially visible due to Ahsoka slicing off a chunk of his mask) indicates he's surprised and touched by her words, and almost considering joining with her... unfortunately, the "Vader" half of Anakin quickly reasserts himself, declaring Ahsoka will die as a result of her gesture, and their duel promptly resumes.
  • In the final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi when Obi-Wan apologizes for everything that's befallen him, you can briefly see the Sith orange fade from his eyes and genuine remorse on his face, suggesting internal conflict has almost brought Anakin back to the surface. Like with Ahsoka, Vader quickly reasserts himself to declare That Man Is Dead... and Vader is the one who killed him.
  • His initial response to Luke's attempts to turn him back to the light as well:
    Vader: Obi-Wan once thought as you do... you don't know the power of the Dark Side. I must obey my Master.
    Luke: I will not turn - and you will be forced to kill me.
    Vader: If that is your destiny...
    Luke: Search your feelings, Father. I feel a conflict within you - let go of your hate!
    Vader: It is too late for me, son.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: He wears mostly black armor that has red lenses and a control panel that has red buttons and wields a red lightsaber.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In A New Hope, his helmet's goggles have a subtle reddish tint to them. His design in Rebels goes with this version of the suit and exaggerates the red eyes a little more (but very exaggerated in promotional artwork). All subsequent depictions set before A New Hope (Rogue One, Jedi: Fallen Order, and The Clone Wars) do this as well.
• Religious Bruiser:
  • The religion in question, naturally, being the Force. A New Hope shows that Vader is quite infamous, at least amongst the higher ups of the Imperial Military, for his ‘sorcerer’s ways’ and ‘devotion to that ancient religion’. And as Admiral Motti can attest, bad-mouthing the Force or its power in front of Vader is quick way to get a first-hand demonstration of what it can do to your trachea.
  • His initial response to a group of cyborgs using mechanical gadgets and trickery to imitate the Force is to call it blasphemy.
• Resistance Is Futile: "You are beaten. It is useless to resist. Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi-Wan did."
• Revenge Before Reason: Vader's desire for revenge on Obi-Wan triumphs over everything else, even hunting down other Jedi survivors. If given a chance between capturing a refugee ship full of Jedi or chasing a small ship containing Obi-Wan, Vader will always choose chasing down his former master. Both the Grand Inquisitor and Palpatine finds Vader's revenge crusade to be counterproductive for the Jedi's destruction.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Vader simmered under Palpatine's control for twenty years, confined to his suit and little more than a blunt instrument for the Emperor. Then he finds out Palpatine commissioned Dr. Cylo to create new apprentices for him, dating from the moment Vader agreed to serve him — effectively preparing his replacements ever since they teamed up. What seals the deal is his learning about Luke's existence, realizing that Palpatine lied about what happened to his wife and child and that he played him like a fiddle to get what he wanted. Vader has finally had enough, and plans to overthrow Palpatine and take his place.
  • In Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vader is finally able to track his old master through the Force. With a burning hatred in his eyes, he goes to any lengths to track him down and kill him, be it slaughtering innocent civilians, tormenting Obi-Wan, or even throwing away the pursuit of refugees to take him down. It all culminates in a battle where Vader literally moves the ground itself to bury Obi-Wan alive.
• Rousseau Was Right: He wasn't born evil, and Padmé; believed that there was still good in him, even after he had killed dozens of Jedi and strangled her. She was right.
• Run or Die: Anyone less than a Jedi Master in skill would have no chance against Vader, leaving escape as the only alternative to death. This is best shown when Cal Kestis "fights" him, as the newly minted Jedi Knight can only run for his life as Vader casually tears apart the facility they were in with the Force.
• Running Gag: The franchise has basically leaned into the joke among the fans that Anakin Skywalker is a raging drama queen who has to be the absolute most all the time. In Star Wars Rebels he shows up standing on top of his Tie Fighter making his cape billow in the wind at the top level of an underground Sith Temple. In Rogue One he has to turn off his life support system in order to emerge dramatically from the shadows, a trick he repeats in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Of course he wouldn't allow himself to die until he could do so by throwing a hysterically screaming villain throwing magic lightning everywhere to his doom in the middle of an exploding space station while his son pleads for his life during a giant space battle with cannibal teddy bears. Watsonian versus Doylist might be one thing, but come on, Anakin.

S–T

• Sadist: Vader is usually not this, instead preferring to handle things pragmatically and as quickly as he can. But when he deals with Obi-Wan for the first time since Mustafar, all restraints and rationale are thrown out and Vader starts acting uncharacteristically more brutal and sadistic than he ever does, taking his time in brutalizing and tormenting his former master and even torturing him by dragging him through a field of burning fuel in a sick sense of irony. While derived from rage more than pleasure, it's clear that Vader wants to really make Obi-Wan suffer over their previous battle.
• Same Character, But Different: He's the same character as Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight and General, but he doesn't think of himself as that man anymore and thinks of himself as Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.
• Same Language Dub: Vader is one of the most prominent examples in fiction; James Earl Jones always voices him in live-action appearances, while he's had numerous suit actors but was never portrayed physically by Jones. This applies in-universe as well; Jones' legendary voice actually comes from a voice synthesizer that amplifies Vader's speech, and without his helmet his voice is that of the actor portraying him physically (even if it's an actor switch, like in Sebastian Shaw's case).
• Samurai: Vader's armor was created to evoke the image of a samurai warlord, which is more apparent without his cape◊.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • After Mustafar, losing Padmé, and the destruction of the Jedi and everything he held dear, Anakin became seriously twisted beyond simple rage and despair at his plight. The trauma is so severe that Vader became a nigh-complete inverse of everything Anakin was and aspired to be. While he became more cold and controlled than he was before his fall, he also became unhinged and unstable beyond just being angry and desiring to kill and destroy to impose order.
  • He hunted down two Inquisitors that had started a relationship with each other while claiming he did it because the female was secretly against the Empire for almost allowing a mother and her child to escape, and only capturing the woman when she had been noticed by the other Inquisitors. However, it's also deeply implied that Vader primarily did it out of spite towards the romantic relationship between the two Inquisitors and most likely did it as a form of "If I can't have my love then no one can!", with there being other instances of Vader shunning or even destroying relationships because they remind him of what he has lost.
  • When Ahsoka saw into his mind and realized he was Anakin, she was also deeply traumatized and it's unlikely that the simple revelation that Vader was Anakin would have been enough to do that. She was probably also deeply scarred by the horror and madness Vader keeps contained within himself. Given the things that Vader has seen and done, it's no wonder she screamed.
• Satanic Archetype: He has a very Luciferian element to his character. Spurred by his own Pride, Lucifer sacrifices all notions of goodness in his heart and consigns himself to evil. Vader is very similar in many ways: he was once a talented, good-looking, intelligent Jedi, a loyal ally of the good guys, but he had troubles with arrogance. Eventually he was tempted by the Sith, turned evil, and ended up becoming one of the greatest threats of the Galaxy. However, he manages to be one of the few examples to subvert this trope, as Luke notices that there is still kindness in his heart and ends up making one of the most iconic heroic sacrifices in film history.
• Scars Are Forever: The scarring Anakin incurred in Revenge of the Sith is what made Darth Vader's iconic appearance and sfx in the Original Trilogy possible — even necessary. Though two decades worth of bacta baths have healed the worst of it come Return of the Jedi.
• Secret Identity: Very few people know that he was once Anakin Skywalker; the only known exceptions during Vader's lifetime are Palpatine, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Bail Organa, Ahsoka, Maul, Tarkin, Inspector Thanoth, Reva/the Third Sister, possibly Thrawn and eventually Luke. Likewise, the only time he brings up his past is if someone mentions it.
• Secret-Identity Identity: One of the reasons why his identity as Anakin Skywalker is so well hidden is due to the fact that Vader did everything in his power to make his Sith persona his only identity, going out of his way to destroy any connections to his past, from old relics to former friends. But when he realizes that Luke is his long-lost son, Vader begins to suffer an identity crisis. His Vader side wants to corrupt Luke to the Dark Side as a means to destroy Obi-Wan's (and by extension the Jedi's) legacy and overthrow Sidious, while his Anakin side wants to salvage and rebuild what's left of his family. This inner conflict is something Luke exploits to bring his father back to the light.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: He knew from the start that Reva was one of the Jedi Younglings, survived getting stabbed by him, and was planning on assassinating him as revenge for slaughtering her fellow Younglings, but he pretended not to know about all of those so that he can use her to find Obi-Wan and when she finally attempts to kill him, he effortlessly takes her down and stabs her in the stomach the same way he did when she was a Younglings. He even reveals to her that he knew who she was and what her plans were all along to rub salt in the wound.
• Seeks Another's Resurrection: In Dark Lord of the Sith, one of Vader's driving motivations near the end is to construct a Dark Side portal he hopes will enable him to resurrect his dead wife Padmé. Although he's successful in creating and entering the portal, and does indeed find Padmé there, she refuses to come back with him... and then throws herself off a cliff for good measure. It's strongly implied she's not really Padmé but merely a vision of her and so couldn't come back with him, anyways. Upon realizing this, Vader finally accepts that she is gone.
• Self-Made Orphan: Obi-Wan and Palpatine were the closest things Anakin Skywalker ever had to a father, and Vader kills both of them.
• Sensor Character: He can sense when other Force-sensitives — like Obi-Wan and Luke — are nearby. Might have also picked up Leia this way on Echo Base in The Empire Strikes Back, although he seemed to mistake her for Luke.
• Serial Prostheses: He'd already lost his right arm before the duel on Mustafar, and as a result of that duel wound up with three more prosthetic limbs.
• Series Mascot: He is the character most often used to represent the Star Wars franchise as a whole. He made the cover of Time magazine twice, in 1980 and 2005.
• Shadow Archetype: To Luke. Both expert lightsaber duelists, both masters of the Force, both reliant on prosthetics, and the family connection only added to their similarities. The prequel trilogy tried to emphasize them further by giving Anakin's backstory parallels to Luke's. Luke was even offered a chance to turn to The Dark Side; the difference between Vader and Luke was that Luke opted to remain in the light.
• Signature Move: The Force-Choke, though he rarely uses it against enemies, instead preferring to use it against former allies or subordinates who have failed him.
• Signature Sound Effect: The sound of his respirator is enough to send chills up one's spine.
• Sinister Geometry: His obsidian-black helmet is designed to evoke a human skull, from angular cheekbones to rictus grin to Black Eyes of Evil.
• Slasher Smile: He sports a deeply unsettling one when he tells Obi-Wan that Anakin is gone and that's not because of Obi-Wan, but because of him.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Vader believes in this and it's one of the few thoughts he retains from his past self as Anakin. Vader makes no secret about how much he despises slavery (if anything, it's the one thing Vader despises more than anything else, excluding himself and Palpatine) and one of the few times he speaks out against Palpatine is when his master decides to advocate slave labour for the Empire. Considering Anakin spent most of his childhood as a slave in Tatooine, it's not hard to see why.
• The Slow Walk: Vader does this in his very first scene in A New Hope. He reprises it in Rogue One, effortlessly slaughtering a group of rebels. In fact, this is generally the only way he moves. Part of it is intimidation. He's usually in such complete control of whatever situation he finds himself in that he doesn't need to move faster, but the other part is just pragmatism. Vader's prosthetics are clunky and painful, running is a decidedly uncomfortable ordeal for him, so he refrains from doing so unless absolutely requured.
• Social Darwinist: Vader believes this to a degree though not to the extent of his master Palpatine. Vader still has a vestige of his ideals and beliefs from when he was a Jedi, it's just that now he believes that if you want to bring order or save anything then you need strength. Without strength, what you want is meaningless so he believes that anything that gets in the way of your ambitions is due to a lack of strength on your part. He also saw his past self as weak as part of his self-loathing and extends that anger to anyone he sees to be similar. This has led him to despise anything perceiving weakness in others and himself.
  Vader: I will find him again when the time is right. For now...we will track down anyone who hid [Luke] from me...[internally] Everyone who made him weak... and destroy them.
  
  Droid Zed67: So [Beru and Owen Lars] took the boy in.
  Vader: [Internally] ...And made him weak!...
• The Sociopath: Downplayed. Unlike his master, Darth Sidious, Vader is a low-functioning sociopath: while he indeed has manipulation capabilities and is skilled at lying, these skills are far inferior to the ones of his master, he mostly relies on violence to obtain what he wants. After killing one of his masters and then being convinced to have killed both his wife and children, Darth Vader loses almost all empathy for anyone in the universe, only relying on Sidious to avoid solitude. While his master's high-functioning sociopathy brings him to use the whole Sith order thing to bring himself luxury and power, Vader firmly believes in the tenets of the Sith, given that low-functioning sociopaths mostly rely on tenets they either learned in youth or made for themselves. When talking about poor impulse control, Vader is known to kill anyone who even slightly provokes or questions him, showing a blatant lack of anger management skills. Despite all these execrable deeds, this trope is eventually subverted: when he learns from the Emperor that his son alive, Vader starts to regain some of the positive emotions he felt as Anakin, and, in the end, he finally returns to the Light Side.
• Sole Survivor: Was the only survivor of the destruction of the Death Star in the first movie.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: A lot of his aggression comes from the pain and misery that his Face–Heel Turn brought him in the first place. This is first made apparent in Return of the Jedi, and becomes obvious in hindsight when one considers the events of the Prequel Trilogy.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Though his voice is amplified by his suit, Vader rarely raises his voice. Since his vocal cords were damaged from the smoke and hot gases on Mustafar, he likely avoids doing so because it is extremely painful. There are a few occasions where he does shout, such as in Part IV of Obi-Wan Kenobi when Reva failed to stop Obi-Wan from escaping the Inquisitorious base, Part VI when he yells Obi-Wan's name twice to after the latter walked away from their third duel and in A New Hope while interrogating Captain Antilles, then after Leia lied to his face about being on a diplomatic mission.
• Space Fighter:
  • His prototype TIE Advanced x1.
  • As shown in Lords of the Sith, he piloted a customized black Jedi Interceptor during the early years of the Empire.
• The Speechless: Inhaling hot toxic gases on Mustafar, and the subsequent Meatgrinder Surgery to reconstruct him, have done a number on his vocal cords, making him technically mute, as without a vocoder to produce his deep voice he can barely manage a painful whisper.
• Stalker without a Crush:
  • Towards Luke, which is justified considering that he's looking for his son.
  • He's also pretty obsessed with hunting down his former master Obi-Wan.
• The Starscream: In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin believes he can overthrow Palpatine and rule the galaxy with Padmé, likely foreshadowed in Attack of the Clones with his mistrust in senatorial politics. Then he tries it again with his son in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It does not involve the typical Sith MO of killing their masters over power; it seems more like Anakin doesn't like how Palpatine rules, and wants to supplant him and perhaps do it better. Star Wars: Darth Vader #6 features the exact moment Vader decides to overthrow Palpatine, having just learned that his master lied to him about the nature of his wife's death and has been training potential replacements for him for twenty years, and that he has a son who is extremely powerful in the Force. Other characters in the storyline (such as Thanoth) would even spur him on to this.
• Starter Villain Stays: Vader is the very first villain seen in the franchise's history, though he serves as The Heavy in his introductory film. He remains The Heavy for the rest of the Original Trilogy, and the Prequels explore how he became a villain in the first place.
• The Stoic: Despite being a Sith Lord, Vader can be eerily calm even during combat. That said, he can slip into Not So Stoic territory whenever he is angry (as mentioned above) such as taking the Rebels hostage and wanting to tear up the Tantive-IV so he could find a copy of the First Death Star plans which are with C-3PO and R2-D2, unbeknownst to him and the Empire.
• Stone Wall: After failing to break Obi-Wan's impenetrable defense and losing his limbs at the end of their fight in Mustafar, one of the things Vader did to modify his fighting style to better adjust to his new mechanical body is to study Obi-Wan's form Soresu so he knows how to both break its defenses and use it in combat. This is most evident in his "fights" with Cal Kestis and Luke Skywalker where he effortlessly blocks their attacks before easily overpowering them.
• Story-Breaker Power: Unlike his Legends counterpart, Vader plays this completely straight, as he's presented as a rather terrifying force to deal with, nearly every confrontation he's in, he's either halted or slowed down if he doesn't come out on top. For that reason, there's only very few times where he doesn't succeed in his goals.
• Strong as They Need to Be: His power in relation to Sidious seems to vary, sometimes they seem to be on similar levels and Vader is able to have an even fight with him, in other cases Sidious is able to batter him without the slightest effort. Justified, given his inner conflict causes Vader to fluctuate in prowess.
• Stumbling in the New Form: He has an awkward, lurching gait when he first walks in the suit. Supplementary works indicate that the suit is deliberately painful and cumbersome to use in order to enhance his connection to the Dark Side, meaning he's actively prevented from ever getting fully used to the cybernetics.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Beneath his helmet, his eyes have yellow irises, which appeared after he became a Sith. They're gone by the time of his death, having already performed a Heel–Face Turn and letting go of the Dark Side.
• Superior Successor: Palpatine views Vader as one to Dooku, and maybe Maul, noting him as his greatest apprentice. Their relationship deteriorates significantly when Luke is discovered, as Palpatine realizes Luke can be this to Vader.
• Super-Strength: His cybernetic enhancements grant him this, even without using the Force. He is strong enough to casually lift adult men several feet into the air and choke them to death.
• Supporting Protagonist: He has the central role in the series and is its most iconic character, but never has the leading role. In the prequels, he's The Lancer to Obi-Wan's Hero, and in the original trilogy, he is The Dragon to Palpatine's Big Bad.
• Surpassed the Teacher: He sees himself as having become more powerful than Obi-Wan by embracing the Dark Side, saying to his old teacher that "Now [he is] the master" when the two encounter each other aboard the Death Star. He also believed himself to be more powerful than Palpatine, as stated to his wife on Mustafar. But a few limbs and lava roasting later, he appears to be helpless against Sidious's powers. Played completely straight after overcoming the Dark Side though.
• Talking to the Dead: Does this to Obi-Wan throughout the comics. Perhaps he suspects that Obi-Wan's consciousness endures in the Force, due to his experiences in The Clone Wars. Or perhaps he's just that unhinged.
• Taught by Experience: Losing his three remaining organic limbs and sustaining third and fourth degree burns to his body apparently taught him restraint and caution when dueling in the Original Trilogy, where he uses Breaking Lectures, Psychic Powers, ambushes, and intimidation rather than the berserker tactics that lost him the duel on Mustafar. In particular, when Luke gains the high ground during the fight in Return of the Jedi, Vader throws his lightsaber to cut down the platform instead of jumping up to engage Luke in melee. That said, Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith and Obi-Wan Kenobi shows that this mentality is something he had to develop even in the middle of already serving as an Imperial commander, as his underlings in the Inquisitorius can attest they had to endure.
• Terse Talker: A lot of the time, either because of his injuries or just his general personality, Vader tends to say very little, more often letting his actions do the talking.
• That Man Is Dead: Zig-Zagged and Depending on the Writer.
  • Subverted in that although he and his Master refer to Anakin Skywalker in third person, the comics and novels that actually get into his head make it clear that Vader doesn't really think of his former self as a different individual. Indeed, the use of third person seems to be largely for Sidious' benefit, who sees clinging to the past as a weakness. This continuity of identity is also demonstrated in how he refers to Ahsoka as "my apprentice" in Rebels, refers to Obi-Wan as his former master in A New Hope, and clearly thinks of Luke as his own son. He does, however, try to avoid thinking of himself by his old name, because it makes him remember things he'd rather stay buried. In other words, he doesn't like thinking of or being called by his old name, but he doesn't think of Anakin Skywalker as a separate person.
  • Played straight in a dream sequence in the 2015 Darth Vader comic run where the titular character literally murders Anakin and Padmé, and declares: "Anakin is dead. I killed him."
  • Also played straight when Vader confronts Ahsoka Tano in the Season 2 finale of Rebels:
    Vader: Anakin Skywalker was weak... I destroyed him.
  • He claims it in Return of the Jedi.
    Vader: So, you have accepted the truth.
    Luke: I've accepted the truth that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.
    Vader: That name no longer has any meaning to me.
    • Sure enough, when Luke's attempts to turn Vader back to the light fail initially, he can't help but coldly utter: "Then my Father is truly dead." And yet, Darth stops himself in his tracks - as if being touched by that remark.
    • More than a decade earlier, partially-unmasked-and-short-of-breath Vader says that he was the one to kill Anakin, not Obi-Wan. Unlike with Luke, however, Vader simply threatens to destroy his former mentor. Kenobi calms down from shock and declares: "Then my friend is truly dead."
  • In Thrawn: Alliances, Vader refuses to even think the name "Anakin Skywalker," only referring to his old identity as "The Jedi."
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: When that sword is a lightsaber and you can control it telekinetically, it actually does.
• Tin Tyrant: Vader is the most obvious example, if not the Trope Codifier: he was most likely inspired by the Witch-King of Angmar and Sauron, Doctor Doom, and armored samurai from Japanese films, but he is the most famous example in popular culture. His armor also doubles as a life support system, stemming from injuries he sustained in an old battle with Obi-Wan.
• Too Clever by Half: In Return of the Jedi, he knows that Luke will not fight him beyond means of self-defense, so he changes his approach while Luke hides from him. He uses the Force to learn that Luke has a twin sister (and, by extension, that he has a daughter), and uses this knowledge to threaten to find her and turn her to the Dark Side, despite not knowing that Leia is the sister in question. This ultimately provokes Luke into going into a fit of Unstoppable Rage that he is simply unable to keep up with, leading to his defeat.
• Took a Level in Badass: Several, in fact, including rising through the Jedi ranks in the prequel trilogy. By A New Hope, he's risen to be one of the principal figures in the Empire, but some of the other Imperial brass are still skeptical and derisive of him. But by The Empire Strikes Back; that's no longer the case; now he appears to have complete command of the Imperial fleet, answers to no one except the Emperor himself, and kills with impunity whenever one of his officers fails in his duty. Thanks to improvements in choreography and special effects, he is able to take some impressive levels in badass as well, such that his appearance in Rogue One is as a galactic level threatening nightmare, in contrast to his more awkward sword and force work in the original trilogy.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Over the course of his time as Vader, he grows more and more disillusioned with Palpatine and the Empire, going from an almost fanatic support of the Empire's ideals, to despising Palpatine and plotting to overthrow him. Given that he spent two decades seeing every injustice and atrocity the Empire had done upon innocents, including the one thing he hated more than anything - slavery, it's no wonder that he he doesn't really have any faith left in the Empire by the time he tries to turn Luke. Also, the mythology of the franchise is that the Dark Side corrupts you the more you use it, and after 20 years terrorizing the Galaxy as the Emperor's right hand...
• Torture Technician: His primary duty in A New Hope is to track down the Death Star plans, which makes the torture and interrogation of Leia his responsibility.
• Tragic Hero:
  • George Lucas confirms that the franchise; namely the Prequel Trilogy (along with The Clone Wars) and the Original Trilogy as a whole, are ultimately about the story of Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side and how his redemption saved the galaxy.
  • The novel for The Force Awakens puts a twist on this. From Snoke and Kylo Ren's perspective, Vader, not Anakin, was a tragic hero whose Fatal Flaw was his compassion for his son, which got him killed.
    Snoke: The historians have it all wrong. It was neither poor strategy nor arrogance that brought down the Empire. You know too well what did.
    Ren: Sentiment.
    Snoke: Yes... a momentary lapse, in an otherwise exemplary life. Had Lord Vader not succumbed to emotion at the crucial moment... had the father killed the son, the Empire would have prevailed.
• Tragic Keepsake: He still has Padmé's old ship from when they first met, all the way back in The Phantom Menace.
• Tragic Monster: Vader counts in a physical sense. He became a bad guy before that, but his massive injuries and horrific reconstruction made him a monster that could never be fully whole again.
• Tragic Villain: Knows what he does is evil, and hates himself for it; he must obey his master. In George Lucas's own words, Vader is less a monster and more "a sad man who made a deal with the Devil... and lost."
• Tranquil Fury:
  • This is Vader's default state. While he's usually stoic, rarely speaks unless necessary, and wears a helmet that covers his head which hides his face, people around him tend to believe he's cold and emotionless. In reality, he's perpetually seething with rage and is never not angry. It's very likely that this is the reason he has such a low tolerance for failure as being in a state of constant fury (and pain) doesn't help with patience.
  • In the short story Time of Death, Obi-Wan can feel Vader's rage through the Force when he confronts him:
    He appears so calm, so controlled, but I can feel his rage, seething like the perdition nebula beneath that heartless faceplate. His fury threatens to overwhelm him, just as it always did, but he keeps it in check. I can't help but be impressed.
  • A major aspect of Vader's scariness is that he is often quiet and no-nonsense when fighting other Jedi or executing officers. He never laughs, and rarely breaks out of his stoic tone. This is exemplified in Darth Vader #6, when he learns of Luke's identity as his son. He doesn't speak or lash out in rage or confusion in light of this news, but remains dead silent while his hand curls into a fist and the window before him acquires a spiderweb of cracks.
  • In Rebels, when he discovers that his old apprentice Ahsoka is alive (and vice versa), he seems quite calm, while Ahsoka is clearly traumatized by the revelation.
• Trauma Button: Anything that strongly reminds Vader of his life before falling to the dark side and losing everything he cared about. If it's minor things like someone mentioning his real name in conversation without being addressed directly, Vader is tense or shows irritation. Being directly confronted with his past sins and the reality of his situation being entirely his fault, will fill Vader with Unstoppable Rage like when Aphra trapped him in a Jedi confessional made of Kyberite where Jedi had spent centuries confessing their deepest sins and regrets which forced Vader to face all of his sins and guilt over the things he's done. The strongest is when he actively retraces his past steps as Anakin and revisits his past on his own terms like when he accompanied Sabe and her allies, people he knew and once fought alongside, who not only still hold Undying Loyalty to Padme, his late wife, but also to Anakin Skywalker. When Sabe, not realizing she's sitting right next to Anakin tells Vader that her inability to rescue Shmi Skywalker, Anakin's mother, as Padme ordered her to, and says that it was the greatest shame or her life, Vader grips his lightsaber so hard it starts to crack. When he hears his wife's last words that she still believed there was good in him, Vader fell into deep sorrow and grief.
• Tyrannicide: Palpatine really should not have tortured Vader's son with Force lightning in front of him. It's this fatal mistake that causes the Papa Wolf in Vader to surface and lift Palpatine up to throw him down the reactor shaft of the Death Star II, saving Luke and returning Anakin Skywalker to the light side of the Force.

U–Y

• Unseen Evil: His mask symbolized not only his evil, but the notion that his face must be so horrifying that concealing it could not make it worse. This was intentionally subverted at the end of Return of the Jedi, which showed that the face behind the mask was that of a pale, tired old man — and that this unfathomably evil being was not as evil as once thought. It also showed that as bad as Vader is, his master is far, far worse.
• The Undead: While he is not this trope, he certainly does invoke it between his skull-like mask, stoic demeanour, and overall Death of Personality. In-universe, some wonder if he's human at all.
• Unseen No More: We finally see him unmasked at the end of Return of the Jedi.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The Dark Lord of the Sith used to be an adorable little Tatooine slave that helped anyone in need and had dreams of seeing the Galaxy.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: During his "fight" with Reva Sevander on Jabiim, he takes one half of her double-bladed lightsaber and proceeds to casually overpower her in a duel and stab her with it in the same spot he stabbed her as a Youngling during Order 66.
• The Usurper: While he never did usurp, factors such as discovering that Palpatine has had replacements for him ready since the beginning and that he lied about his child dying with Padme caused Vader to plan to overthrow his lord and master.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Part of Vader genuinely believes that The Empire is the best way to ensure peace and security for the whole galaxy, although by Return of the Jedi he doesn't seem to believe this anymore.
  "I have brought peace, freedom, justice and security to my new Empire!"
• Vader Breath: The Trope Namer. Especially prominent in The Empire Strikes Back. In Revenge of the Sith, you get to see his first breath.
• Villain Ball: Darth Vader is usually a pragmatic strategist who always gets the results he wants and nearly always wins in lightsaber duels. But when faced with people he has personal emotional connections with, he tends to drop all sentiment of strategy and pragmatism in favor of getting them. Palpatine, a man who never loses the big picture even when he himself is a case example of Evil Is Petty, finds this as his greatest frustration over his apprentice—which he tried to train and torture him out of (until eventually giving up and attempting to replace him). Key examples would be:
  • When given the chance to fight Obi-Wan Kenobi again, Vader allows his rage and desire for poetic revenge to cloud his judgement, becoming single-mindedly focused in his attempts to catch Obi-Wan and kill him as painfully as possible. Obi-Wan constantly exploits this factor, using himself as bait to lure Vader away from more important people like the Skywalker twins and a ship full of Force-Sensitive people, giving them a chance to escape this unstoppable angel of death. And Vader constantly falls for it even when he should know better.
  • When Vader realizes that Ahsoka is on The Ghost, he immediately halts his attack on the Rebel flagship in favor of attempting to catch her.
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader directs his forces to go after the Millennium Falcon rather than the larger fleeing Rebel fleet, all because he wants its occupants to be used as bait for Luke. His obsession with Luke allows the Rebel Alliance to regroup and recover after what's supposed to be a decisive defeat at Hoth.
  • Taking Lando's willingness to negotiate for granted in the Cloud City hostage situation, specifically by "altering the deal" after Lando had already betrayed his friends to satisfy it. All this did was convince Lando he was never going to appease Vader, and to order a Citywide Evacuation before Vader could send in more troops.
  • Provoking Luke into an Unstoppable Rage when dueling him in Return of the Jedi, was not a good idea. On the other hand, given his Death Seeker tendencies, it might have been Suicide by Cop.
• Villain Has a Point: Darth Vader is a ruthless villain who is on the wrong side, but he can make valid points:
  • While he is in full Never My Fault mode at the time and thus refuses to accept his own responsibility in how he turned out, Vader isn't wrong when he points out to Obi-Wan that he wouldn't be in his current, ruined state had Obi-Wan actually finished him off on Mustafar instead of just leaving him engulfed by flames and assuming that would kill him.
  • Vader admonishes Admiral Motti for calling the first Death Star "the ultimate power in the universe", saying that the ability to destroy a planet doesn't compare to the power of the Force. Forces of nature — such as supernovas that can destroy more than one planet at the same time — have proven themselves to be more powerful than anything humanity can create, and the Force is another force of nature. And of course, the Death Star was ultimately destroyed by a sole-Force sensitive pilot.
  • He orders Minister Tua killed for failing to catch the rebels on Lothal despite her claims that she's doing everything in her power to track them down. Seems harsh, but once properly motivated by the fear of death Tua is able to get in contact with the rebels within several hours, which proves she was ignoring valuable information sources like known rebel supporters and contacts.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • He has one in Revenge of the Sith when he sees Obi-Wan on the gangway of Padmé's ship, which leads him to Force-choking Padmé because he mistakenly thought that she bought Obi-Wan with her to kill him and later blaming Obi-Wan for "turning Padmé against him" before trying to kill him. This culminates in Obi-Wan defeating him in a duel by hacking all of his remaining limbs off and leaving him to burn to death, which lead to him getting his signature suit of armor.
  • He has another one after being encased in his iconic suit. When Palpatine reveals to him that Padmé is dead because of him, he lets out a Big "NO!" and starts telekinetically destroying everything around him in anger. Even Palpatine was sent flying by his rage.
  • When Obi-Wan escapes from the Fortress Inquisitorius, Vader is enraged and furiously force chokes Reva, only relenting when she reveals she managed to put a tracker on Obi-Wan.
• Villainous BSoD: He's in one for the Original Trilogy, as shown by the unenergetic, almost catatonic way he goes about his duties. Contrast that with the fiery passion he had as Anakin for an idea of just how hard Padmé's death hit him. It takes watching his son being brutally tortured by Palpatine to finally snap him back to his senses.
• Villainous Friendship: With Tarkin of all people. Vader defers to his authority in A New Hope and acts much more cordial to him than he would any other imperial bigwig. Out of universe this is because the relationship between Vader and the imperial officers hadn't yet been defined.
• Villainous Legacy: Somebody took the trouble to recover his scorched and melted mask from Endor in The Force Awakens. Kylo Ren also consciously models himself after Lord Vader and vows to "finish what [he] started", i.e. destroying the Jedi and/or imposing order upon the galaxy and installing the Skywalker bloodline to the role as leader of the Empire. He's also his grandson who, much like Vader himself, betrayed and murdered his fellow Jedi when lured to the Dark Side, and in the process betrayed his master and uncle, Luke.
• Villainous Rescue: In Revenge of the Sith, he saves Palpatine from Mace Windu, marking his Face–Heel Turn. It's worth noting, however, that Anakin never intended to kill Mace — he just wanted to keep the Jedi from killing the Chancellor, regardless of whether or not he was a Sith Lord.
• Villain Protagonist: According to George Lucas, the franchise is fundamentally about Anakin and his progression from innocence to a force of good, his fall to evil, and subsequent redemption. He's also the Villain Protagonist of his own eponymous canonical comic series.
• Villain Takes an Interest: In Luke, after he learns that the boy is his son.
• Vocal Evolution: In A New Hope, his voice is noticeably higher-pitched at points, particularly in his introductory scene. Later on, it became deeper and more threatening. This happens unintentionally in Rogue One, because James Earl Jones' own voice had changed with age, making Vader's tone a bit slower and deeper. Averted, however, in Obi-Wan Kenobi, as Lucasfilm used Respeecher to approximate Jones's voice as it was in the original trilogy.
• Voice of the Legion: Used for drama for his fight with Ahsoka and his rematch with Obi-Wan. After they each manage to partially break his mask, he speaks to them with both the robotic voice of Vader and the human voice of Anakin Skywalker. It serves to emphasise the moment that both Ahsoka and Obi Wan truly understand that it really is Anakin trapped in that monstrous armor, as well as their heartbroken realisation that he's so lost in his hatred that they can't bring him back even if he is still in there; he's fully embraced his identity as Darth Vader.
• Walking Spoiler: Him being Luke's (and Leia's) father used to be a huge plot twist, before it became It Was His Sled.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Both due to his life-support system:
  • Electricity, (or anything that can disrupt the electrical systems in his armor) which is why he can't use Force Lightning, lest he risk destroying his own life support system. Logically enough, Palpatine mortally injures Vader from the stray bolts that hit him. In Jedi: Fallen Order, a simple shock from a support droid (which would be a mere annoyance to Stormtroopers) is enough to daze him for a second. While Vader has made alterations and upgrades as needed to his suit, his physical state is so damaged and reliant on his life support that anything which could unbalance the precarious relationship Vader has with his cybernetics is devastating to him regardless of how small the disruption may be. Sonic waves can also be a one hit KO to Vader depending on how powerful the waves are, as powerful vibrations can bypass the suit's protection and damage the sensitive circuitry.
  • Also, water, for the same reason. Still in Jedi: Fallen Order, his "boss fight" is ended when the heroes flood the section of the base they're in, forcing him to stop pursuing them.
• We Can Rule Together: Suggests this to Luke during his Breaking Lecture in The Empire Strikes Back. Prior to that, he suggests this to Padmé in Revenge of the Sith.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: His reasons for turning to the Dark Side involved trying to prevent Padmé's death. Once that backfires, he rationalizes his crimes as being necessary to bring order to the galaxy. To his mind, the Jedi betrayed their principles, the Republic was corrupt and inefficient, and he's still "fighting the good fight" that he started during the Clone Wars.
• What, Exactly, Is His Job?: Vader suffered from this until the fight with the Rebellion began in earnest. He has no real rank within the Empire but as the Emperor's personal enforcer, he's above everyone else unless Palpatine says otherwise. However, his primary occupation was hunting Jedi who survived Order 66, a task that was finished after the Empire's first few years. Other than that, Palpatine sent him off on missions of political intimidation and assassination, something Vader considered beneath his skills and it became more and more infrequent as Imperial power grew. Tarkin once even accused him of being bitter at the first Death Star's creation, remarking that once it became the greatest weapon and threat of the Empire, Vader would have no real value left to the Empire.
  • In the Legends canon, Vader's rank was technically Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces, which is a long way of saying "If I am here, I am in charge."
• Wolverine Publicity: Even when the main focus of Lucasfilm's marketing is an installment that doesn't involve Vader as a Sith Lord, such as the Prequel Trilogy's first two films and The Clone Wars, one can be absolutely sure to see zillions upon zillions of different products featuring Vader in the current merchandising line. Often, the characters in the Original Trilogy are included in the line, or the line itself becomes partly original trilogy-focused, for the sake of including Vader merchandise. His inclusion in Rogue One sent many fans into ecstasies. Ironically, The Force Awakens advertised Vader less than the Prequel Trilogy's first two films and The Clone Wars despite the fact that he has some presence as a Posthumous Character in the movie. This came back to bite fans in the ass upon the Thanksgiving Day TV spot for Jedi: Fallen Order, since his surprise cameo was spoiled by the commercial, ruining his presence for fans who hadn’t reached the end of the game yet.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: He was revealed to be one in Return of the Jedi and the Prequel Trilogy. Anakin's final transformation into Darth Vader is shown to be caused by losing everything and everyone he cares for, albeit mostly due to his own actions, something he acknowledges and hates himself for, but feels he's done far too much to go back.
• The Worf Effect: Defied. Unlike his Legends counterpart who would be hit constantly with the Worf Barrage, Vader is presented as a nearly unstoppable force in combat and anyone unprepared to fight him is undoubtedly a death wish. Any defeats he suffers is usually only a Pyrrhic Victory at best, as they don't stop him, as much as they delay and escape him. The only people to unambiguously defeat Vader is Obi-Wan at the end of his own series, who is the reason Vader is in his suit to begin with, and Luke in a rage at the end of Return of the Jedi.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • Luke won against Vader in Return of the Jedi due to him channelling The Dark Side as well as Vader not really wanting to hurt his son. If these 2 conditions were removed, their battle could have gone very differently.
  • Palpatine attributes Vader's loss to Obi-Wan to the Vader's pointless obsession over his former master, as these feelings weaken him.
  • His remaining attachments towards Ahsoka likely hampered his prowess as well, allowing her to cheap shot him at one point.
• World's Best Warrior: Outright stated to be the Empire's greatest warrior, and even outside the imperial ranks his competition to the claim of best warrior in the galaxy is very slim indeed.
• Worshipped for Great Deeds: Or terrible deeds, in this case. The Tusken of Tatooine revere Vader as a Destroyer Deity because of that one time he slaughtered an entire tribe in a single night (as well as the subsequent times he did so to vent some frustration). In Tusken mythology, Vader is a dark figure wielding a staff forged from the twin suns, and they sacrifice their own to him.
• Worthy Opponent: Even when hunting Jedi, the only people who really stand a chance against Vader, he only ever views them with contempt or disgust. None of them are really worthy to face him in his eyes and he merely views them as a nuisance to be eradicated. There are only a few exceptions.
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi was Vader's former Jedi master and the only one to ever give him such a crushing defeat. While Vader hates Obi-Wan beyond words to describe for his horrible loss (and that Obi-Wan didn't finish him off), he truly does respect Obi-Wan's skills and power, believing himself to be the only one who can kill Obi-Wan. He seemed genuinely disappointed after finally killing the other Jedi.
  • Ahsoka Tano was Anakin's former Padawan during the Clone Wars. Anakin's affection towards her has warped into this after becoming Darth Vader and learning of her survival. Evidently, she's one of the few people Vader fights with two hands holding his lightsaber rather than one as she's one of the few lightsaber duelists capable of pushing him back and giving him a prolonged fight.
  • Towards Luke, his own son. Vader sees Luke as a potential successor that will allow him to overthrow the Emperor (and Luke is all he has left of Padmé and family). Learning that Luke is his son pushes Vader to find him at any cost. And when they finally duel after Luke gained some Force training, not only is the usual contempt he feels for other Jedi absent, he's practically beaming with pride at how strong his son has become.
• Would Harm a Senior: He executed Jocasta Nu alongside several other clone troopers to hide the secret that he's actually Anakin Skywalker.
• Would Hit a Girl: He slew dozens of Jedi during Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith, among them Shaak Ti and Bene. Vader later Force Chokes his own wife Padmé, causing her demise. Much later, he duels his former apprentice Ahsoka Tano with clear lethal intent.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Anakin wipes out a camp of Tusken Raiders (including women and children) in revenge for his mother's death in Attack of the Clones. Years later, in Revenge of the Sith, as Vader, he butchers a group of Jedi younglings during the assault on the Jedi temple, and even later threatens to forcefully extract information from Ezra Bridger. There's also this harrowing quote:
    Vader: [to an apparition of his past self] You were a child. I am well-accustomed to killing children.
  • In episode III of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Vader strangles a man with the Force, then when the man's son tries to intervene, Vader telekinetically pushes the poor boy against the wall before snapping his son's neck. Unlike the previous child killings, this one was shown onscreen.
  • He attempts to decapitate 15-year-old Ezra Bridger with his own lightsaber in the Season 2 premiere of Rebels and is barely stopped by Kanan from doing so.
  • Deconstructed in the 2020 comic, where it's all but said Vader was far less okay with killing the Younglings than he let on, and still is.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: He initially plans to find, capture and convert Luke Skywalker to his side under the guise of hunting down the Rebels to prevent Emperor Palpatine from finding out his scheme to overthrow him. The Emperor finds out anyway in The Empire Strikes Back and thus orders Luke to be killed as soon as possible. So Vader quickly suggests to his master that Luke can be turned and "become a powerful ally," knowing that it would put his life at risk due to the Sith's Rule of Two. His persuasion works, and now it becomes a race between the Sith Lords as to who will get to Luke first, with Vader having the lead advantage.
• You Are in Command Now: He promotes Captain Piett to Admiral just after Force-choking Admiral Ozzel, whose body hadn't even hit the floor yet, in the trope-naming scene.
• You Do Not Want To Know: In a tense argument with an Imperial officer named Pell Baylo, the man openly questions what Darth Vader even is and what his relation to the Emperor is. Vader's response is that he would simply do well to never find out.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • The Trope Namer. He says "You have failed me for the last time" while choking Admiral Ozzel and promoting Captain Piett to replace him before the body hits the floor. True to form, Piett survives a number of failures, once Vader realizes the heroes may actually count as a legitimate challenge. It helps that he didn't take any foolish chances like Ozzel was punished for (Ozzel was already condescending to Vader, second-guessing the Rebels being on Hoth, and then orders the fleet to come in close as a "surprise", which only tips the Rebels off that the Empire and Vader are there). Ozzel's death deserves special mention, as Vader is doing it over the intercom/viewscreen. He's not even in the same room as Ozzel.
  • He does it again to the hapless Captain Needa before the film's even halfway done, even when Needa had the foresight to apologize to Vader for losing track of the Millennium Falcon (there's a reason Vader says "Apology accepted, Captain Needa"). The turnover rate for Imperial officers must be appalling.
  • Subverted by the end of The Empire Strikes Back, when the Falcon escapes to lightspeed. Piett is visibly terrified as Vader strides toward him, only to brush right past, apparently too depressed about losing his son to kill any more underlings.
  • This carries into Rebels as an informed trait. When the Grand Inquisitor fails to capture Ezra and Kanan, he merely says "My master will not be pleased," in a tone that indicates he dreads reporting it. In the season finale, he willingly falls into a burning reactor rather than live to report his defeat by Kanan, believing that the latter would be a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Said word for word when he kills the Second Sister for her failure to defeat Cal Kestis in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Gives them out and is threatened to be on the receiving end of it.
  • Vader prefers to extract every bit of useful information out of his enemies and rivals before permanently silencing them to tie up loose ends. The few times he doesn't ends up biting him in the ass, most prominently allowing Lando Calrissian to live enough for him to regret his deal and then betray the Empire by freeing Leia and Chewbacca from their bonds, who then in turn save Luke from Vader's grasp.
  • He is completely aware of the fact that Palpatine views him as an asset only as long as he is useful, and has no qualms about admitting as much to his face, as shown in the Darth Vader comic.
  Palpatine: My true apprentice would frustrate the copies. Eventually, driven by pride and desperation, Cylo would go too far... and then, when he was simply a traitor, we could purge him. Do you understand, Vader?
  Vader: I do. If any of Cylo's toys had succeeded, you would be making this speech to them.
  Palpatine: [Stunned Silence]
• Younger Than They Look:
  • Vader is 45 years old when he dies, but due to his previous injuries, usage of the Dark Side and twenty-three years on a life support system without sun exposure, when the helmet comes off at the end he's a pale, scarred, exhausted old man.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, Vader is 22 years old. This is very obvious before his scarring and transformation, but with his injuries and with his suit, he looks and sounds very similar to his middle-aged original trilogy self.

Servants and Allies

Vaneé

Vaneé

Species: Human

Portrayed by: Martin Gordon

Appearances: Dark Lord of the Sith | Rogue One | Star Wars: Crimson Reign | Tales from Vader's Castle | Return to Vader's Castle

"My Lord, Director Krennic has arrived."

Darth Vader's servant, tending to his master's castle on Mustafar.

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• Black Cloak: His Obviously Evil style of clothing, complete with a sinister hood.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: One of his specialities.
• Deadpan Snarker: Is quick with a quip, whether it be casually chatting with Hudd while torturing him or smarmily telling Rersey, a visiting Imperial dignitary, to shut up.
• Evil Old Folks: He serves one of the greatest evils in the galaxy, and he looks quite old.
• The Igor: His appearance and manner of talking to Vader fit this archetype.
• Meaningful Name: His name, Vaneé, suggests that he originated from Naboo, which gives implications to how he came to be placed in service to Vader.
  • In Star Wars Adventures: Shadows of Vader's Castle, it is ultimately revealed that Vaneé was originally an Imperial inspector sent to investigate the insanity of stormtroopers stationed on Mustafar (due to their exposure to toxic gases), but Vader had intended to lure the inspector there so that he would succumb to the effects of the gases himself and become his new servant. At the end of his brainwashing ordeal, the inspector identifies himself as "Vaneé" when Vader asks him his name, but it is left unclear if this was his actual name from the beginning, if it was the name he personally chose after his prolonged descent into insanity, if it was the name Vader psychologically tortured him into accepting, etc.
• The Story Teller: Likes to tell his victims who he tortures stories that contain elements of horror and madness in an effort to Break Them by Talking.
• Torture Technician: One of his many jobs at Vader's castle. He spends several issues torturing captured Rebel operative Thom Hudd for information.
• You Have Failed Me: He gets in big trouble with Vader after Lina Graf rescues Thom Hudd.

Darth Vader's droid

Darth Vader's droid

Species: Droid

Appearances: Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith

"As long as I serve you, I will do both — if I ask a question it is because I believe the answer will enhance my service."

A droid that assists Vader on his journey to find a new lightsaber crystal.

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• Extra Eyes: He resembles an Imperial probe droid
• Evil Counterpart: To R2-D2.
• Guy in Back: He comes with a new starship that Palpatine gives Vader.
• Mr. Fixit: He repairs Vader's ship after Kirak Infil'a shoots it down.
• No Name Given: Its name or model are never mentioned.
• Stating the Simple Solution: As a droid, he often suggests the most straightforward and practical solutions, not understanding Vader's need for violence. For example, Vader decides to fight several clone troopers guarding confiscated Jedi inventory when the droid could easily transmit access codes and allow them to access the facility nonviolently

Former Servants

Crew of the Ark Angel

Dr. Aphra and Associates

For Dr. Aphra, Triple-Zero, BT-1, and Black Krrsantan, see their entry on the Dr. Aphra and Crew page.

ZED-6-7

ZED-6-7

Species: SP-4 ISC Droid

Appearances: Star Wars: Darth Vader (2020)

A forensics droid that accompanies Vader in his investigations into Padmé's death and the birth of her son.

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• Innocently Insensitive: Has a tendency to make comments that rub people the wrong way. According to him, he just states facts; the lessons people take away from those facts are entirely up to them.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: When viewing a hologram of Padmé's last moments, he takes note of her mention of Obi Wan and says he must have been very important to her. Vader, who is very touchy on the subject of how Obi Wan "turned her against [him]," happens to be standing right next to the droid as he says this. For a fraction of a second at least, before ZED-6-7 isn't standing at all any more.
• Super-Senses: As a forensics droid, he has very advanced sensors that make him very good at tracking and spotting clues.

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"You were right about me. Tell your sister... You were right."

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