History Characters / YuGiOhGXTeachers

* AntiHero: The classic kind. He's cowardly and snobbish, but still on the side of good.

* EvilIsPetty[=/=]SoreLoser: His initial antagonism towards Jaden, which varied from attempts at getting him expelled to him going missing or being outright ''killed'', was fueled from his anger at not being able to stand the idea that he could lose to a [[InsistentTerminology "slacker"]] like him.

* SternTeacher: Taking a level in kindness does not mean that Jaden gets let off for missing so many classes.

* WhiteHairBlackHeart: As Amnael he's a ruthless duelist who crushes his opponents mercilessly.

* AdaptationalJerkass: In the dub, his beef with Jaden is a petty grudge and he blames Jaden for things that are his own fault, i.e. stretching himself too thin and ruining his own professional career and being a dull, uninteresting teacher. In the original, he's still misdirecting his anger, but his reason for being so spiteful is far more justified.

* BadassTeacher: A former pro player and he would have outright defeated Jaden if he had just attacked instead of attempting a TakingYouWithMe.

* NapInducingSpeak: In the dub, his voice seems to have been intentionally made to sound as boring as humanly possible. Jaden falling asleep in class isn't surprising, but there's something to be said about him putting ''everyone else'' to sleep as well. For the record, even [[BadassBookworm BASTION MISAWA]] is shown having fallen asleep and eventually stopped attending.

* ShadowArchetype: He is essentially what Jaden could have become if Jaden completely lost sight of his passion for dueling, a character arc in season four. Coincidentally, he is essentially Zane if Zane broke down instead of snapped.

* VillainHasAPoint: A villain he might be, but he is right about Jaden having a negative impact on other students. Due to his apathy towards actual schoolwork and talent in dueling, other students have stopped going to class believing that they don't need to work hard to become great duelists themselves. It is downplayed given that Jaden is commonly [[DudeWheresMyRespect held in contempt]] despite his feats so it's not that surprising that he doesn't realize he's seen as a role model.

* BadassTeacher: He may seem wimpy, but when push comes to shove (such as when Shadow Riders or Duel Ghouls get involved), he ''will'' put his foot down to protect his students and is not to be underestimated.

* BerserkButton: Being ignorant in any way is one for him, to the point wherein the analogy of two people encountering a piece of trash on the floor (the first person notice it, but didn't pick it up whereas the second one didn't pick it up since he didn't see it), he believes that the second one is the worst compared to the first one.

* CorruptedCharacterCopy: In the original version, he can be seen as one to [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Frank Grimes]]. Like Grimes, Satou was constantly beaten down in life, in his case dueling ten times as much as the average pro to support his family, only to collapse at his most critical moment, and when trying to become a teacher, went over the DespairEventHorizon thanks to Judai's laziness becoming a negative impact on the students, not unlike how Grimes went insane dealing with Homer Simpson, another IdiotHero. But whereas Grimes limited his grudge to Homer and was a CosmicPlaything, Satou is fully on-board with Professor Cobra's plan to essentially kill of Duel Academia's students via the Dis-Belts; upon learning that even Asuka abandoned his classes, he had no problem with her being drowned. Satou is thus [[TragicVillain tragic]], but an enemy that has to be defeated nonetheless. While Grimes never succeeded in impacting his personal enemy, Satou ''did'', becoming the first villain to actually get Judai to seriously question himself, leading to his own breakdown later down the line.

* DetrimentalDetermination: In his backstory. He pushes his physical and mental limits to the max when making his family's financial situation better as a Pro Duelist along with juggling his academic studies for a teaching degree. Unsurprisingly, his body collapse from the stress and he became so ill to the point of having to retire from Pro Dueling altogether.

* JadedWashout: A rather more tragic example. The burden of his family obligations alongside his pro career caused him to literally collapse, so he had to turn to teach instead. Then he ends up teaching a bunch of lazy students who barely listen to his lectures, which is such a depressing experience that it drives him insane. In the dub, this is changed to him being unable to handle studying for his teaching degree and a pro-dueling career at the same time, and being so boring that he barely notices that he's teaching an empty classroom.

* ScarsAreForever: In a mental and figurative sense, where his Scab Scarknight is a representation of being broken down by the responsibility he upholds prior to becoming a teacher at Duel Academia.

* SternTeacher: Deconstructed; the reason he is such as SternTeacher is due to the tragedies in life that he experienced, which bled into his learning style. Unfortunately, because of these tragedies (and some convincing from Viper), he takes his job of molding young minds so seriously that he comes to regard any form of ignorance as ''deserving of death'', planning on doing so to Judai, hoping that Viper's goals kill all of the students, and having no problem with Asuka drowning once learning that she also skipped his classes.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Certainly the nicest of all of the teachers at Duel Academy. And also one of the Seven Stars/Shadow Riders with probably the most powerful deck and greatest skill out of them all, as ''well'' as his fellow teachers.

* CoolTeacher: In the first opening, "Kaisei Josho Hallelujah", you can see him on a motorcycle. And in episode 13, he sicces his cat Pharaoh on some evil scientists.

* CorruptedCharacterCopy: In the original version, he can be seen as one to [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Frank Grimes]]. Like Grimes, Satou was constantly beaten down in life, in his case dueling ten times as much as the average pro to support his family, only to collapse at his most critical moment, and when trying to become a teacher, went over the DespairEventHorizon thanks to Judai's laziness becoming a negative impact on the students, not unlike how Grimes went insane dealing with Homer Simpson, another IdiotHero. But whereas Grimes limited his grudge to Homer and was a CosmicPlaything, Satou is fully on-board with Professor Cobra's plan to essentially kill of Duel Academia's students via the Dis-Belts; upon learning that even Asuka abandoned his classes, he had no problem with her being drowned. Satou is thus [[TragicVillain tragic]], but an enemy that has to be defeated nonetheless. And, while Grimes never succeeded in impacting his personal enemy, Satou ''did'', becoming the first villain to actually get Judai to seriously question himself, leading to his own breakdown later down the line.

* DoubleAgent: He took the job at Duel Academy in order to gain access to Spirit Keys.

* EvilMentor: Subverted in that while he's both evil and a mentor, he doesn't actually try to turn Jaden evil, nor are his true intentions actually evil.

* MechanicallyUnusualFighter: For the time period, Amnael's Alchemy Deck is treated as such. Rather than relying on Normal Summons or an immediate Fusion Summon for his opening play and then build on from there, all of his monsters are Nomis (meaning they cannot be Normal Summoned) and all rely on being directly banished rather than going to the graveyard. The end result is that he is able to swarm the field with monsters much faster than his contemporaries, and due to the self-banishing strategy, is able to either draw a ''lot'' more cards to maintain his hand advantage, or power-up his ace monsters to ''very'' high levels.

* WeakButSkilled: His monsters either have a measly 500 ATK or [[GatheringSteam depend on having a large number of banished cards to be strong]] but he's still a threat thanks to the 500 ATK ones being direct attackers and have more than enough methods to banish cards easily.
* WhiteHairBlackHeart: As Amnael, he is a ruthless duelist who crushes his opponents mercilessly.

** His personal grudge for Jaden aside, his overall dislike for the Osiris Red students ''does'' have valid reasons, since Duel Monsters are SeriousBusiness by their current time and any underperforming student treating it as some run-of-the-mill children's card game where it can be a potential ''career occupation'' would be something that Crowler would be intolerant of. His initial dislike of Judai is also based on the latter's cavalier attitude, which actually does cause some serious problems down the road and is called out by others.

* CripplingOverspecialization: Aside from the fact that his Alchemy Beasts are capable of attacking his opponent directly, at its core, Amnael's Deck revolves around banishing his own monsters to beef up the ATK of his Golden Homunculus and Helios cards. Once Jaden manages to summon Elemental HERO Electrum, his entire playing style is rendered useless as his cards that were banished are returned to his Deck.

* KindheartedCatLover: Think about it. He has a cat, he says "nya" at the end of his sentences? That's proof enough.

%%* RedEyesTakeWarning: As Amnael.

** For Judai's third year, he thought it was a good idea to hire the ObviouslyEvil Professor [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Cobra/Viper]], which puts his students in serious danger no thanks to the Survival Duels.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Presented as this when it comes to allowing Jaden to enroll and protecting him from Crowler's schemes...but ''[[AvertedTrope not]]'' so later on in the later story arcs. He played right into Kagemaru's hands concerning the duels for the Spirit Keys in the second half of Season 1, and while the students are overjoyed in Season 2 when he returns from his sabbatical to replace the head-butting Crowler and Bonaparte, he ultimately allows the White Dorm to stay and thus enabled Sartorius to continue with his plans. This gets at its worst in Season 3; it's Crowler and Bonaparte who are the reasonable ones who want to shut down Professor Cobra's dis-duels, but Sheppard allows them to go on and leaves on a trip at the most critical point.

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Certainly the nicest of all of the teachers at Duel Academy. And also one of the Seven Stars/Shadow Riders.

* EvilMentor: Subverted in that while he's both evil and a mentor, he doesn't actually try to turn Jaden evil.

* IAmNotLeftHanded: His Alchemy Deck is pretty strong. He defeats Chazz, Alexis, and nearly Jaden.

* TreacherousAdvisor: Moreso in the dub, where he claims to have rigged all of Jaden's previous Duels to make him think he was a good Duelist (once beaten, he admits he lied about that as a test of character for Jaden). Ultimately downplayed as while he ''is'' the penultimate boss for the arc, his end goal was to stop the release of the Sacred Beasts all along and genuinely does try to mentor Jaden; in the original, he continues lecturing about alchemy even as he and Judai face off, believing that Judai has the potential to learn from it.

* WhiteHairBlackHeart: As Amnael.

* AdultsAreUseless... and depressed by his awareness of that.

** He left for most of the second season to let Crowler and Bonaparte run the school and allowed the Society of Light to take root, and when he came back, he started the [=GeneX=] Tournament, which failed to attract the person it was meant to attract or redeem the person it was meant to redeem, and decided to comply with Sartorious' request to invite Ojin, indirectly handing the laser satellite to him.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: When he knows what he's doing, which is not often. The students are overjoyed in Season 2 when he returns from his sabbatical to replace the head-butting Crowler and Bonaparte, but his ridiculously bad judgment continuously allows the villains' plans to take flight. This gets worse and worse, to the point where in Season 3 it's Crowler and Bonaparte who are the reasonable ones who want to shut down Professor Cobra's dis-duels.

* AscendedExtra: She becomes much more prominent in Season 3, due to Viper's survival duels, and later the Duel Ghouls, meaning that the students require constant medical attention. She is notably the first staff member to turn on Viper and suspect he is not to be trusted.

* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: Temporarily turned into a Duel Ghoul in Season 3 when duel academy was sent to the different dimension by Yubel.
* BigBadWannabe: Tries to destroy the Slifer Red dorm during the first half of Season 2, much to Dr. Crono's disgust. But other than that isn't any more of a threat than the already unthreatening professor and falls far behind Saiou and the Society of Light.

* TheCameo: His final appearance on episode 157.

* HeelFaceTurn: Season 3 forces him to come to terms with how much of a jerk he is. He ends up better for it.

* SadistTeacher: He loves to torment students that don't live up to his expectations.

* BrokenPedestal: He idolized Alexis as the ideal student, but eventually found out that even ''she'' stopped attending his class.

* DemotedToExtra: In the dub, Professor Viper takes most of Professor Stein's impact.

* {{Expy}}: Of Creator/BenStein in the dub.

* KilledOffForReal: Which, quite frankly, is unusual for this series.

* SternTeacher: Deconstructed, given that he takes his job of molding young minds so seriously that he seems to regard ignorance as ''deserving of death''.

* EvilAllAlong: [[PlayingWithATrope Played with.]] While Banner is revealed to have always been a Shadow Rider, his intentions were to find a duelist who can defeat them and keep the Sacred Beasts sealed away.

* EyesAlwaysShut: He only opens them when he duels Jaden as Amnael.

* TookALevelInKindness: Starts creeping in more and more as the series goes on. At the end of Season 1, despite beating Chumley in their duel, Crowler expresses genuine admiration for his dueling skills and allows him to graduate. He also is shown clapping with everyone else after Jaden and Zane tie in their duel in the season finale. In Season 2, he goes on to defend the red dorm (something that would have seemed wildly out of character at the start of the character). By Seasons 3 and 4, he is practically a NiceGuy. Depending on interpretation, he could be seen as always having been a nice guy with some wounded pride over losing to Jaden.

* TrapMaster: Crowler's Ancient Gear Engineer monster can {{No Sell}} the opponent's trap cards. When it destroys an opponent's monster in battle, it can also destroy an opponent's trap. Crowler uses this in his duel with Bonaparte to destroy the Gulliver Chain trap preventing his Ancient Gear Golem from attacking.

* WeCanRebuildHim: Crowler's Ancient Gear Factory card allows him to summon an Ancient Gear monster by banishing Ancient Gear monsters already in his Graveyard instead of tributing monsters already on the field. His Duel Disk depicts it as building a new Ancient Gear monster from the junk parts of the monsters already in the Graveyard.

** He loses to Camula due to her using vampire bats to spy on his deck in order to learn how it works ahead of time. [[spoiler: Fortunately her bragging about this allowed Zane and Jaden to work around that.]]
** Due to being pulled into the portal only by accidental proximity, he's without his deck and can't duel for the latter half of season 3.

He uses an anime exclusive spice deck.

* ADayInTheLimelight: After barely making any significant appearances throughout season 1, he finally gets an episode focusing on him as well as getting lines and his own duel.

* HatesBeingAlone: His main reason for trying to get the Ra students back to their dorm is because most of his students have graduated to Obelisk Blue dorm, while Syrus and Hassleberry (who are currently in his dorm) choose to spend their days at the Red dorm instead.

He uses an alchemy-themed deck based on removing monsters from play.

* BadassBookworm: He can put up quite the fight with his alchemy-themed deck while punctuating it with a lecture about alchemy.

* CripplingOverspecialization: Aside from the fact that his Alchemy Beasts are capable of attacking his opponent directly, at its core, Amnael's deck revolves around banishing his own monsters to beef up the ATK of his Golden Homunculus and Helios cards. Once Jaden manages to summon Elemental HERO Electrum, his entire playing style is rendered useless as his cards that were banished are returned to his deck.

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: He's a Shadow Rider who's undercover as a professor at the Academy, but in the end his goals are still more noble than some of the others and he actually wants to stop the Sacred Beasts from being released by nurturing a strong duelist capable of taking them on.

* SignatureMon: Ancient Gear Golem, a [=3000 ATK/3000 DEF=] behemoth that deals damage to Life Points regardless of if the target monster is in Defense mode or not, in addition to the standard "Ancient Gear" ability to prevent Magic and Trap cards from activating during its attacks. He has ''three'' of them and a plethora of ways to summon them.

* MagicPokerEquation: A bizarre example as this trope completely works against him more often than not. He's obscenely lucky in his starting draws to the point that he'll have the means (of which he has a lot of in his deck) to summon an Ancient Gear Golem in his first few turns if not the very first. But because this would necessitate a DramaPreservingHandicap to stop him from winning right away, his opponents will have just the right counters to survive or even neutralize his Golem's attacks. When Crowler finds a way to free his Golem from his opponent's counters, things usually tend to go very badly for them.

* JerkassToOne: Overall, he doesn't have a good opinion of the Osiris Red students mostly from the result of the elitist dorm system in the Academia and duel monsters being SeriousBusiness, but when it comes to Jaden specifically, then Crowler would stop being reasonable altogether and find any excuse to expel the latter. It's only until CharacterDevelopment to where Crowler starts to let bygones be bygones.

* AdvancedAncientAcropolis: Crowler's deck is based on this theme. His Ancient Gear monsters are implied to be LostTechnology, and some of his other monsters stem from Myth/ClassicalMythology, such as the TrojanHorse.

** His personal grudge for Jaden aside, his overall dislike for the Osiris Red students ''does'' have valid reasons since duel monsters are SeriousBusiness by their current time and any underperforming student treating it as some run-of-the-mill children's card game where it can be a potential ''career occupation'' would be something that Crowler would be intolerant of. His initial dislike of Judai is also based on the latter's cavalier attitude, which actually does cause some serious problems down the road and is called out by others.

* HiddenDepths: He's a very capable duelist who usually only loses because of the plot and a good enough teacher that even Jaden, who by his own admission sleeps through most classes, has been known to quote his lessons. When he dueled Chumley, even though Chumley lost, he was impressed enough by Chumley's performance to still recommend him for a job at Industrial Illusions, despite his claim that he would expel him on the spot if he lost.

* {{Expy}}: Of just about every teacher unfortunate enough to antagonize Yugi and his friends. However, he does become a lot nicer later on. Even though he's not Jaden's rival, he serves as the first Kaiba stand-in of GX, most notable in his dueling style, with Ancient Gear Golem and Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem in particular being clearly expies of Blue-Eyes White Dragon and it's own ultimate form.

* ExplosiveOverclocking: The "Limiter Removal" spell card doubles all machine monsters' attack power but destroys them at the end of the turn. Crowler uses Limiter Removal to win his duel with Chumley by powering up his Ancient Gear Golem so it's stronger than Chumley's Master of Oz. The Golem's being destroyed doesn't matter because it defeating Chumley's monster wipes out his Life Points.

* DeusExitMachina: He is without his deck during the Dimension Arc, and thus can't duel. This does however, allow him to survive it unscathed.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Despite being used mostly as PluckyComicRelief after Jaden defeats him in the pilot, he has his moments. He tends to [[PapaWolf vigorously defend his students when they're in peril]], [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold even at great danger to his own life.]] And when it's time for him to duel, he ''always'' has a way to get his beloved Ancient Gear Golem on the field no matter what his opponents throw at him, at which point it's time to clean house.