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Members of the Ghouls organization from the manga and anime series Yu-Gi-Oh.

ALL spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware major spoilers.

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    General 
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  • Death by Adaptation: In the original manga and anime, anyone who failed Marik was simply subjected to Mind Rape so he could talk with others, and left to fall unconscious afterwards, the worst being Pandora who was subjected to Psychic-Assisted Suicide, but even then it's ambiguous if Pandora actually went through with it. The English dub makes it so that whenever Marik took possession of one of their minds, he banished their actual mind to the Shadow Realm.
  • Dub Name Change: In the original the Rare Hunters were the prominent members of Marik's group while the Ghouls were the mooks; the English dub simplifies this to calling everyone in the organization a Rare Hunter. (Not that it matters, since every Duelist among them is, in fact, a Rare Hunter.)
  • Purple Is Powerful: Most of them dress in purple, and they are very aggressive duelists and card seekers.

    Marik Ishtar 

Marik Ishtar (マリク・イシュタール; Mariku Ishutaaru)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/marikishtar_duli.png
Voiced by: Tetsuya Iwanaga (Japanese), Jonathan Todd Ross (English; credited as Todd Garbell in Duel Links), Martín Soto (Latin American Spanish, first voice), Gabriel Ortiz (Latin American Spanish, second voice), Rafa Romero (European Spanish)

I will put an end to our curse... but not by welcoming the king we have waited for. I will kill him a second time and take revenge!

The initial Arc Villain of the Battle City arc, he's a former tombkeeper charged with protecting the Pharaoh's Millennium Items and carvings, until his return. As a little boy, an ancient ritual which involved carving the ancient writings onto his back using a hot dagger traumatized him so much that he created an alternate personality to cope with the pain. This became his Superpowered Evil Side, Dark Marik. He later betrayed his order, set up an underground organization within the gaming world's black market ("the Ghouls"), and sought to defeat the King of Games, the reasons for which which vary between adaptations and dub or original — in the 4Kids dub, Marik wants to claim the Millennium Puzzle and become the new Pharaoh, in the original Japanese anime and manga, he wants to kill the Pharaoh because he thinks the Pharaoh was responsible for his father's death.

He wields the Millennium Rod, which brainwashes and controls any victim that touches it.


  • Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Every battle he sets up between Yugi and one of his minions ends up being Death Games/Shadow Games. Buzzsaws that chop off the loser's legs after they lose? Check! A bomb that's set to explode, destroying the floor and sending the loser falling down over ten stories? Check! Brainwashing Yugi's best friend and placing both of them in a duel where either one or both of them get dragged into the sea by an anchor? Check!
  • Adaptational Jerkass: The English dub Bowdlerised the more horrific aspects of his childhood and the tombkeepers' duties. As a result, he comes across as considerably less sympathetic and engaging in Disproportionate Retribution in the English dub, compared to the horribly misguided, but still sympathetic antagonist in the manga and Japanese anime.
  • Arc Villain: Of the first half of Battle City, when he causes trouble in the Battle City tournament to kill Yugi. But then the finals come.
  • Artifact of Doom: Carries the Millenium Rod, which can control the minds of his victims. Not a lot of positive ways to use that, and it's confirmed by The Dark Side of Dimensions that it's one of the three Millennium Items aligned more closely with evil.
  • The Atoner: During the last bits of Battle City. Knowing the damage he's caused and that he's unwittingly freed his much worse darker half, Marik tries to make sure in whatever way he can that Yugi defeats him, thus invoking Death Equals Redemption.
  • Badass Biker: He rides a motorcycle, which is made somewhat more poignant by how it connects to his past: a motorcycle was the first thing he saw (on a television set) the first time he ever left his family's underground home.
  • Bad Boss: He pulls You Have Failed Me on most of his minions when they lose and inflicts Penalty Games on them, using his hold on their minds to break them and slaps his adoptive brother in the face when he fails to find Yugi's friends.
  • Barely-Changed Dub Name: In the French dub, his name is "Marek".
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: Played with. Normal Marik is a Bishounen who nevertheless schemes to Take Over the World/kill the king and has no problems brainwashing people into doing his fighting for him. His dark side however is far worse and is very grotesque, in addition to acting and sounding plain creepy.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: He formed this with Dark Bakura in the first half of Battle City.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: While he is played up as a major threat in the Battle City arc, the finals reveal Dark Marik to be an even greater threat than the normal Marik.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The signature power of his Millennium Rod.
    • Marik brain controls Bandit Keith (only in the anime, as Bandit Keith is dead long before this in the manga), Pantomimer (Strings), and Jonouchi during three separate duels with Yugi. He also uses mind control to punish the first Ghoul (Rare Hunter), Pandora (Arcana), and Mask of Light (Lumis) when they fail, driving them insane.
    • Ironically, Marik is under a subtle instance of this himself, as Yami Marik subconsciously took away the guilt he would feel for the actions he committed.
  • Break the Haughty: At the hands of his Superpowered Evil Side. After spending some time floating around as a disembodied ghost, and being repeatedly victimized by Dark Marik when he tries to fight back, Marik becomes The Atoner, and looks to aid the Pharaoh.
  • Cain and Abel: The Cain to Ishizu's Abel.
  • Clothing Damage: It's easy to miss, but as Dark Marik destroys his and Bakura's souls, disembodied soul Marik's clothes disintigrate before his "body" does. It's decidedly NOT a fanservice-y example, as it occurs as his spirit is effectively being incinerated (don't worry, he gets better).
  • Crystal Prison: As he "borrows" Anzu's body to talk to Ishizu, he's seen trapped in one of these as a symbol of Dark Malik's Split-Personality Takeover, which also forces him to see his other self's evil deeds while unable to stop him.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Wears black clothing in his appearances after his Heel–Face Turn. These contrast heavily with the light purple belly shirt that he used as casual clothes beforehand. In the manga, he always wore a black shirt underneath.
  • Death Equals Redemption: Tries to invoke this. Needless to say, Yugi doesn't really want to go along with this and chooses another way.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Toyed with. The real Marik becomes friends with the main cast after Dark Marik is defeated. This is following an arc-long Break the Haughty at his darker self's hands.
  • Diabolical Mastermind: Marik has dozens of Ghouls minions working for him across the globe, making bootlegs, gathering rare cards and hunting for Ishizu and the missing God Cards.
  • Dirty Coward: Marik never confronts Yugi directly, preferring to send minions after him and speak to him through mental slaves even after he's arrived in the city, has Rishid pose as him at first to avoid being found out, and relies on cheating and trickery in his plans, including turning Yugi's friends against him. This is lampshaded by Dark Marik, who outright declares the normal Marik was a wimp compared to him, and indeed he has no such problems taking care of things personally.
  • Disc-One Final Boss: To himself, being displaced by his own Superpowered Evil Side partway through the Battle City semifinals.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: In the English dub, he decides to conquer the world because he had a miserable childhood and was forced to swear fealty to a thousand-year dead spirit.
  • Easily Forgiven: This guy had pulled off a lot of schemes to kill Yugi and his friends if they got in the way, and at one point even forced Yugi and Jonouchi into a duel that would kill the loser. In the manga, it's also revealed that his Rare Hunters/Dueling Ghouls organization is pretty much the Mafia in everything except name, since they kill, steal and blackmail players for their rare cards. Along with being a Bad Boss that killed or mind-raped any of the minions that failed him. Yet, after the truth that it's actually Dark Marik who killed his father was revealed, Yugi/Yami went out of their way to save his soul and after that no one seemed to hold a grudge against him. This is lampshaded by Marik himself during Dark Marik's final Duel with Yugi, expressing total astonishment that the latter could be so forgiving after everything Marik put him through. While Marik's actions were subtly influenced by Dark Marik taking away his guilt for his crimes, it's not information the cast are privy to.
    • He also cried when his father died and went all crazy to avenge him... despite the fact that his father abused him and his siblings for years.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite the abuse he was put through, along with traumatizing ritual he was subjected to, Marik still loved his father; it was the fact that he assumed the Pharoah was responsible for his death that pushed him over the edge and drove him to seek revenge. Of course, on a subconscious level, he resented his father, which ended up cultivating Dark Marik.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: How Jonouchi manages to break free of normal Marik's mind control — he underestimates Jonouchi's willpower to not hurt his friends.
  • Evil Laugh: Very frequently.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Inverted in the English 4Kids dub. In Season 3 when Marik takes on a much more sympathetic role, his voice is lighter and softer than in Season 2 when he was a villain.
  • Evil Vegetarian: The official stats lists his favorite food as koshary, a vegetarian Egyptian dish, and least favorite food as any kind of meat dish.
  • Fair-Play Villain: Though his minions cheat like crazy, Marik always lets Yugi duel for his life and lets him go when he wins. The English 4Kids dub gives a Hand Wave that to actually use the Millennium Puzzle's powers, he has to beat Yugi in a duel, just killing him and taking the Puzzle won't do it, so it's in his interests to let Yugi live once he wins and send someone else after him. Presumably, he'd just duel whatever minion eventually got the job done and take it from them in turn.
  • Foil: To Kaiba, more obviously in the manga but still present in the anime. They're both products of abusive parents that they escaped by killing their fathers and seizing control of their own lives, their only companions are their brothers, and they steal cards to acquire the most powerful cards in the game, the Blue-Eyes White Dragons for Kaiba and the Egyptian God Cards for Marik. They also desire revenge on Yami Yugi for punishments they blame him for (Kaiba for his Penalty Game, Marik for his tombkeeper upbringing) before losing to him in a duel and coming to their senses. Marik's tombkeeper lineage and acceptance of the Myth Arc of the series also contrasts Kaiba's control of the tech giant Kaiba Corp and his disbelief in the ancient ways. Note also the Millennium Rod Marik uses was used by Priest Seto in ancient times.
  • Freudian Excuse: Marik was raised in absolute darkness and near isolation by his Abusive Dad, who cut a hideously disfiguring set of symbols into his back with a hot dagger. This drives him around the bend, and leads to the creation of Dark Marik.
  • Godhood Seeker: In the 4Kids dub, his goal is to use the Millennium Puzzle and the Egyptian God Cards to become the Pharaoh and seize his full power, implying he would become a God-Emperor.
  • Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Marik's are narrow and snakey. Dark Marik's bulge constantly and are filled with red veins.
  • Heel–Face Turn: He begins to try to atone for what he's done when he hears Ishizu tell Yugi how he began his Start of Darkness via the portion of his mind within Anzu, where he learns the Pharaoh was not responsible for his father's death. His spirit teams up with Yami Bakura against his twisted alter-ego, but they are defeated by him. Once Battle City concludes, Marik has no problem being civil towards Yugi, who helped extinguish his Superpowered Evil Side once and for all.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Marik's dirty tactics end up backfiring on him, and trying to use Rishid as a minion unleashes Dark Marik.
  • Human Shield: Is used as one during Dark Marik's Shadow Game with Dark Yugi—whenever he loses lifepoints, another part of the real Marik's soul fades away. This means that even if Dark Yugi wins the duel, he'll have been responsible for damning somebody who didn't have it coming.
  • Hyper-Awareness: Upon his second turn with Osiris, he manages to instantly guess where Black Magician Girl is hidden within Magical Hats, while also predicting Yugi's set card in dealing with Bakura's Dark Necrofear strategy. He himself claims in the manga that he has a very sharp intuition.
  • Hypocrite: Marik considers it cheating when Yugi switches places with Dark Yugi during the duel with Jounouchi (though he's more angered by the fact this means he won't be killing Dark Yugi directly). During the Battle City finals, he has Rishid pose as him so his identity remains secret, and has Dark Bakura switch places with his host during his duel with Dark Yugi to give Dark Yugi a Sadistic Choice and try and make him lose.
  • I Just Want to Be Free: Little Marik, when finally getting his chance to sneak out of the underground tomb, quickly grows fond of motorcycles as they symbolize freedom. Really, all the guy truly wants is to live a normal, free life.
  • Irony:
    • In addition to antagonizing the Pharaoh, the Ghouls (Rare Hunters) were supposed to scour Battle City for Obelisk the Tormentor so he'd have control over all three god cards. Instead, they wind up losing Osiris the Heaven Dragon, one of the two that he already had.
    • After half a season of brainwashing and mind raping people (partially even causing death), Marik gets a taste of his own medicine by his darker half and almost dies as a result.
    • Marik's surname is coincidently the same name as Ishtar/Inanna of Mesopotamian Mythology. Ishtar was a massive Yandere, a Daddy's Girl, and killed many of her lovers, not to mention a Straw Feminist in some of her depictions. Marik was a selfish, diabolical villain who doesn't give a shit about relationships, looks at all people as potential slaves or mere obstacles to get what he wants (it's just that he hates Yami Yugi in particular), had his evil alter-ego kill his father in cold-blood, and never intentionally murdered anyone he was ever close to. What's more, no one in Marik's family even remotely acts similar to Ishtar.
    • Despite never being accepted into the Tombkeepers' inner circle and legacy, Rishid/Odion is actually the modern day equivalent of one of the priests who originally owned the Millenium Items. Whereas Marik, always burdened by that same legacy, apparently has no such ties.
  • It's Personal: Marik hated Yami the most for apparently murdering his father. This contrasts how Dark Marik hates everyone just the same.
  • Jekyll & Hyde: Dark Marik is a split personality created from his repressed anger and hatred that takes control after Rishid is knocked unconscious, planning to kill Marik to keep control of the body.
  • Jerkass: Normal Marik, though he gets better.
  • Journey to the Center of the Mind: In the anime only, he's able to enter Ryo Bakura and Dark Bakura's soul rooms using his Millennium Rod. However, only Shadi should be able to enter soul rooms with his Millennium Ankh. The power of the rod is to take control and influence a person's heart, not enter it physically.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Zigzagged in-between mediums.
    • Played Straight in the anime and especially the English dub. Duelist Kingdom (or at least the anime version) was pretty light-hearted, with the only major Shadow Games all involving Pegasus—and even then, they only got truly ugly if you lost. Marik's arrival heralded an entire season of duels designed to maim, kill, or "banish the loser to the Shadow Realm" (in the English dub), and his love of Mind Rape and mind control only made things worse. Then Dark Marik made things even worse.
    • Not quite so in the manga, as while Marik was indeed built up as a major threat, slated as the wielder of the final revealed Millennium Item (The Rod), previous villains such as Yami Bakura and Mr. Otogi easily rivaled him in depravity and violence, while Duelist Kingdom had previously been the longest story arc yet, with Pegasus being the first Arc Villain to properly worf Yami Yugi, meaning he'd beaten to the punch to qualify for this trope. While still noted as a rather sick and dangerous villain with his constant death games and lack of gaming etiquette, Marik in the manga is ultimately a Big Bad Wannabe to Yami Marik, who remains this.
  • Lack of Empathy: Marik's empathy is rather... limited, shall we say.
  • Large Ham: Though not as large as his evil side.
  • Lethally Stupid: Marik orders Rishid to summon the counterfeit Winged Dragon of Ra when Jonouchi voices his suspicions that Rishid is only pretending to be Marik, dismissing Rishid's concerns about playing an Egyptian God Card without permission from the god itself. Surprise, surprise, this goes horribly wrong when the real Ra is angered by Rishid summoning the counterfeit Ra and strikes him down with divine retribution, which allows Marik's Superpowered Evil Side to be released.
  • The Mentally Disturbed: Marik's an isolated and arrogant narcissist with a split personality.
  • Mind-Control Device: One of the main powers of the Millenium Rod, he stays in the shadows for the majority of his introduction by dueling through his brainwashed pawns.
  • Mind Rape: His chosen variety of You Have Failed Me for use on his minions.
  • Morality Chain: Rishid is the only thing keeping Dark Marik in check. It's unclear though if he actually did anything to try and ground Marik otherwise, his simple presence was enough to hold Dark Marik back.
  • Mr. Fanservice: As Normal Marik, in his tanktop and tight pants.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Nearly states this word for word after learning that he was the one who killed his own father and that everything going wrong was his own fault rather than the Pharaoh's.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: When Marik forced Rishid to use Ra against Jounouchi, he enabled Jounouchi to win the duel, once an angry Ra knocked Rishid out.
    • Also, when he brought up the possibility of Dark Yugi attacking Bakura despite the latter's condition. Dark Bakura, fearing his safety, switched back with his host and told Dark Yugi to attack anyway, thus rendering the aforementioned Sadistic Choice useless.
  • People Puppets: His Mind Slaves. Pantomimer, the mime is the most extreme example, being an Empty Shell when not under Marik's control.
  • Primal Fear: The manga describes Marik as having developed an extremely severe fear of the dark due to having to grow up underground.
  • Psychotic Smirk: Frequently has one.
  • Revenge: Marik's goal in the Japanese dub and manga: he thinks Dark Yugi killed his father.
  • Sadistic Choice: Normal Marik sets it up so that Yugi can lose his Millennium Puzzle or kill Jonouchi. He even tries it again during Yami Yugi's duel with Yami Bakura in the semi-finals of Battle City.
  • Siblings in Crime: Marik was one with his adoptive brother, Rishid.
  • Sissy Villain: Normal Marik has some traits of this. Especially in the English dub, he tends to angst over his past, wears a pink midriff-bearing hoodie, and prefers to have his minions do his work for him rather than dirty his hands personally.
  • Smug Snake: Marik is eternally arrogant and confident that the Pharaoh will fall before him.
  • Sore Loser: Neither Marik takes defeat well, though the real Marik is a Graceful Loser (and a grateful one) when he surrenders to Dark Yugi during the Battle City finale.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Marik or Malik? Takahashi spelled his name in the bunkoban as Maric.
  • Split-Personality Takeover: Dark Marik successfully takes over their body following Rishid's collapse, and exiles normal Marik from his mind. Marik is left as a disembodied spirit, wandering the real world until Dark Marik's defeat.
  • Spoiled Brat: He uses the Rod's mind control to get whatever he wants. Jonouchi outright describes him as such in the English dub, albeit in the wrong context.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Marik has the same hairstyle like his father.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: Dark Marik, who's more vicious and far tougher than normal Marik ever was. And for some reason, he knows of Ra's secret while the dominant Marik doesn't. Speaking of dominant, Dark Marik is Marik's more evil side, which is why Dark Marik refers to the other Marik as the dominant personality, not his good personality.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Marik plays the same role in Battle City as Kaiba does in Death-T (and Dark Marik even more so). For more information, see the analysis under "Foil".
  • Take Over the World: Marik's goal in the English 4Kids dub.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Along with Dark Bakura, after his Enemy Without launches an attack with The Winged Dragon Of Ra, they just watch it come with an expresion of quiet dread and silent resignation.
  • Underestimating Badassery: Marik underestimates Jounouchi's willpower and loses control of him when he pushes him too far trying to make him kill Yugi.
  • The Unfought: Zigzagged. Marik is never actually fought faced to face by Yugi and is replaced by Dark Marik once his true identity is revealed. Though Yugi does duel him at several points before then through Bandit Keith, Pantomimer, and Jonouchi via his Millennium Rod.
  • The Unreveal: Downplayed with Marik’s deck. We never see him duel before his dark half took control, but it’s implied during his dark half’s duel with Mai (in the anime due to Adaptation Expansion extending the pre-Shadow Game turns) that the deck he was using was his original deck before he replaced most of the cards after to suit his own tastes. This is confirmed when his dark half duels Bakura, where he comments to himself how he’s swapped out most of the cards in his good half’s deck to suit his own tastes.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: He really did.
  • Villain Ball: Ordered Rishid to seize this by summoning a counterfeit Winged Dragon of Ra to defeat Jounouchi when Rishid's Serket could do it just fine on its own — Jounouchi has voiced suspicions that Rishid isn't the real Marik, so Marik wants Rishid to eliminate the doubt. Marik is confident that Rishid is worthy of wielding Ra despite many others testing the counterfeits suffering physical injuries, but the scheme fails spectacularly for a far more simple reason: the counterfeits pissed off the real Ra. Which is in his deck and gives a very visible reaction. How he missed this during the counterfeit's testing phase is baffling.
  • Villain Team-Up: Allies with Dark Bakura against Dark Marik to try and get his body back. It doesn't work out for either of them.
  • Voices Are Mental: In the Japanese dub, most of the victims under his mind control speak in Marik's voice rather than their own, but it's inconsistent who has it and who has it not. For example, Anzu speaks in Marik's voice, but Jonouchi speaks in his own voice.
  • White Hair, Black Heart: Sports white hair and little in the way of conscience. It's averted after his Heel–Face Turn, however.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Despite having innumerable chances to kill Yugi, especially since he has legions of brainwashed minions around town stalking him, Marik always tries to do it via a duel and lets Yugi go when he wins. The English dub excuses this, since Marik doesn't want to kill Yugi, he wants the Millennium Puzzle, and is only allowed to use its powers by beating the current owner in a duel. Killing Yugi without someone beating him first presumably wouldn't do the job.
    • Usually Yu-Gi-Oh! villains/heroes get excused with the whole Shadow Game/mental problems thing, but when you're the boss of an entire criminal organization that has access to bombs and giant buzzsaws and only want to kill the guy... Could be explained that it was Dark Marik's minor influence on the real one, and the darker personality loved to torture his victims rather than kill immediately. Indeed, while dueling through Pantomimer, Marik takes deep joy in tormenting Yugi rather than take satisfaction in killing him right away.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Marik became cynical and evil from his father's abuse of him including a painful tattoo covering his whole back, and that's not getting into his alter-ego attempting to destroy his spirit.
  • You Killed My Father: His motivation in the manga and original anime; after his father was killed, Shadi appeared and said something which Marik assumed meant that the Pharaoh had murdered his father to punish him for leaving the tomb. He doesn't quite care for the fact that his family has been enslaved for three thousand years either. Of course, it was actually Marik himself who killed his father — or rather, Dark Marik, which sort of plays this trope straight when regular Marik becomes a disembodied spirit, though only in the original.

    Dark Marik (Yami Marik) 

Dark Marik (闇マリク; Yami Mariku)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yamimarik_duli.png
Voiced by: Tetsuya Iwanaga (Japanese), Jonathan Todd Ross (English; credited as Todd Garbell in Duel Links), Martín Soto (Latin American Spanish, first voice), Gabriel Ortiz (Latin American Spanish, second voice), Rafa Romero (European Spanish)

Keh keh keh... You're lucky you got away with your life... But you'll regret it... You'll wish you had died here painlessly.... The loser of a Shadow Game must be penalized!

Marik's Superpowered Evil Side, formed from the trauma, pain, and hatred Marik felt as a child. He performs a Split-Personality Takeover late in Battle City, becoming the Arc Villain of the rest of the arc. Unlike the original Marik, who had actual goals and plans, Dark Marik only seeks to cause as much pain and misery as he can, to anyone he can.

All of the duels Dark Marik employs are Shadow Games. Dark Marik uses a Fiend deck which focuses on summoning and reviving the Winged Dragon of Ra and is meant to signify immortality. Many of his cards emulate torture devices; thanks to his ability to make the duel real, he tries to get the opponent to give up, pass out, or die from the extreme pain and injury before the game is even over.


  • Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Every Shadow Game with him has lives on the line.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: When he's called to duel Mai right as he's about to kill Rishid, he's amused enough by the timing that he spares the guy and heads to the duel.
  • Adaptational Wimp: A very minor example, as he's no wimp in either continuity, but when comparing his duels with Mai and Jonouchi in the manga to the anime, he has a clearer lead and/or strategy. For Mai, he basically held the lead throughout the duel via Makyura the Destructor's hand-trap effect and Viser Des' indestructibility, and knew fully well that Mai would not be able to control Ra, compared to the anime, where his pulling of All Your Powers Combined via Revival Jam and Masked Beast Des Guardius enabling Mai to pull an early lead. His duel with Jonouchi in the manga is an expansion of said strategy, having a clear burn/disruption-based win condition. His anime counterpart goes through similar hoops to pull said strategy off, compared to the more straightforward plan in the manga.note 
  • All Your Powers Combined: His deck draws on those used by other Ghouls. Like Rishid, he has Trap Monsters. Like Pandora, he has designed his cards to counter Yugi's. He has Jam monsters like the Silent Doll, and he mimics the Rare Hunter by focusing his efforts on a single powerful monster. The anime also adds in him using the Mask monsters, including Des Gardius, which he brings out far more quickly than his minions did.
  • Anime Hair: His hair stands up in a storm of spikes.
    Joey (4Kids version): Hey, get a load of Marik, guys! He's so scared his hair is standing up. Oh wait, he always looks like that.
  • Arc Villain: Of the second half of Battle City, when he hijacks Marik's body and attempts to kill the other duelists, driving everyone to defeat him.
  • Artifact of Doom: Keeps Marik's Millennium Rod.
  • Ax-Crazy: Dark Marik is a raving madman, whose sanity only slips further and further away the longer he's free. While in the English dub he wishes to continue his alter-ego's plans to become Pharaoh and hurts anyone who stands in his way, in the Japanese version he's just interested in killing people via Shadow Games and causing them as much suffering as he can before he wins.
  • Badass Cape: Dark Marik adds a cape to his wardrobe. It flares and billows appropriately whenever he does something sufficiently evil or over the top.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: With Dark Bakura during the second half of Battle City as both villains are aiming to realize their goals of defeating the heroes and each other.
  • Big "NO!": Gives one when the normal Marik surrenders their duel to Dark Yugi, destroying him forever.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: Just before his duel against Mai, Dark Marik tries to murder Rishid (or send him to the Shadow Realm in the English dub) with the Millennium Rod, who is in a coma and therefore powerless. Instead of murdering Rishid in five-seconds flat, the psychopathic sadist indulges in Evil Gloating towards an unconscious Rishid who can't even hear him, wasting time and resulting in him being interrupted by a broadcast announcing that he has been chosen to duel Mai.
  • Blood Knight: Dark Marik doesn't care who he has to play a game with, as long as he gets to torture them.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Dark Marik gets a bonus prize—while he doesn't brainjack anyone himself, in the anime continuity, his mental torture of Mai leaves her open to being brainwashed by Dartz in the Doma arc.
  • The Bully: Despite being an open sadist and his claims of being a Combat Sadomasochist, he has no actual courage and when Jonouchi stands up from Ra's attack and almost plays a card to win, Dark Marik is so terrified that he almost throws up.
  • Cain and Abel: Dark Marik would not only happily kill both of Marik's siblings along with Marik himself, but he tries to do it.
  • The Cameo: Briefly appears in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX's episode 85 when The Winged Dragon of Ra was discussed.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: In contrast with regular Marik, who has particular motives and goals, Dark Marik is more or less evil for its own sake. Then again, he's not a fully-formed personality so this should come as no surprise.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Many of Dark Marik's cards, and most notably Ra, draw on the player's life points. During his Shadow Games this becomes even more literal, with both players' cards drawing on their life force to stay on the field.
  • Character-Driven Strategy: When Yami Marik duels, he uses a Immortality-Torture Deck; strategies that draw out a duel, crippling his opponent's options and bleeding them of their Life Points (usually with cards themed around torture devices), reflecting Yami Marik's sadistic personality.
  • Characterization Marches On: His duelist tactics. In his first couple of duels, he plays like a normal duelist and uses the Winged Dragon of Ra as his trump card like the Black Magician or Blue-Eyes. By the time his duel with Yugi comes around, his deck is devoted to summoning Ra over and over and giving him ways to power it up once he has it in play. This is justified given that Yugi has two Gods of his own and Ra is Dark Marik's best offense/defense against them, indeed when Yugi summons out Obelisk, Dark Marik had to focus on powering up God Slime's defensive abilities; any other tactic would just get smashed.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Dark Marik does this in every Shadow Game, using psychological and physical pain to break the will of his opponent. Sometimes you lose part of your memory when you lose a card. Sometimes part of your life force. Sometimes part of your body, or that of someone you care about. Regardless, it's gonna hurt, in every sense of the word.
  • Combat Sadomasochist: Justified in that he's a personality Marik created to protect him from pain. Inflicting pain or suffering from it, it's all the same to Dark Marik. He actually starts laughing after he's struck by Obelisk the Tormentor.
  • Combo Platter Powers: The Winged Dragon of Ra has as many special abilities as a swiss army knife has attachments, and Dark Marik reveals new ones every time he duels which let him win when otherwise Ra would be useless.
  • The Corrupter: It's implied that once he was created as Marik's split personality to cope with his traumatic childhood, bits of his psyche leaked over throughout the years and drove the normal Marik crazy too.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: His deck is a torture deck that centres on locking down an opponent and slowly draining away their lifepoints, which compliments his Shadow Game-based strategy. As such, he has problems in settings where he's unable to take advantage of this, and is forced to rely on the power of Ra to bail him out.
  • Dark Is Evil: Dark Marik is a hideous man in dark clothes, whose deck uses Fiend-monsters and Traps and Spells that mimic torture devices. He even states that, while the normal Marik feared darkness, he loves it.
  • Deader than Dead: After having his soul swapped for normal Marik's (in a Shadow Game where the stakes are the destruction of his or Yugi's host body's soul), Marik surrenders, utterly erasing the threat of his evil half.
  • Deadpan Snarker: He certainly gets his moments.
  • Deranged Animation: Especially in later episodes, Dark Marik is very good at showing very psychotic faces.
  • Diabolus ex Nihilo: Dark Marik appears in the middle of the Battle City with no warning or foreshadowing, and proceeds to wreak uninhibited havoc for the rest of the arc.
  • Dragged Off to Hell: This is his final fate. When Dark Yugi destroys Ra while Dark Marik is fused with it, he suffers such a shock that the real Marik is able to switch places with him so his soul is at risk in their Shadow Game. The real Marik immediately surrenders, and when he loses the game Dark Marik pays the price.
  • Dystopia Justifies the Means: His only motivation is he enjoys seeing people suffer and wants to plunge the world into darkness for the fun of it.
  • Evil Costume Switch: After taking over Marik’s body, Dark Marik dons a black shirt, purple cape, and white pants to replace Normal Marik's pink tanktop and tight black pants. In the manga, Marik had actually been wearing all of those save the cape, so all Dark Marik did then was switch the hoodie for the cape.
  • Evil Laugh: Dark Marik crosses into Laughing Mad territory.
  • Evil Makes You Ugly: Pretty-boy Marik was hardly a good guy, but he's got nothing on his disfigured Superpowered Evil Side for sheer malice. Notably, the more Ax-Crazy Dark Marik gets, the more his veins stand out, the more his eyes bulge, and the more his face stretches. Yet impressively, his base facial structure is the same as his dominant half.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Dark Marik's deep Voice of the Legion in the English dub. In the Japanese dub, the other effects aren't present, but his voice still drops considerably.
  • Evil Sounds Raspy: In the Japanese version, Iwanaga gives Dark Marik a very raspy voice to contrast dominant Marik's smooth and youthful voice.
  • Eviler than Thou: Dark Marik has this with both Dark Bakura and the normal Marik. In the anime, he's also a Spanner in the Works for Noah, destroying much of the machinery in his headquarters during his rampage.
  • Face Framed in Shadow: During Dark Marik's duel with the Pharaoh, his face (and sometimes his whole body) is frequently concealed in shadow, leaving only the Eye of Wdjat standing out on his forehead.
  • Fan Disservice: He's not nearly as pretty as his normal half, and it only gets worse. Thank God he puts on a less revealing outfit within an episode of his first appearance.
  • Fatal Flaw: His sadism, particularly his preference to extend others' suffering for as long as possible before killing them, ends up backfiring spectacularly.
    • When dueling against Jonouchi, his game plan forgoes depleting Jounouchi's Life Points in favor of torturing him into submission through the Shadow Game. Dark Marik ends up passing up several opportunities to attack, which gave Jounouchi the chance to launch a counterattack once Marik's stranglehold on his field is broken.
    • He repeatedly fails to kill an unconscious Rishid because he would rather deliver a taunting speech or delay his "inevitable" death than kill him at the first opportunity, letting unexpected circumstances interfere. During the final duel of Battle City, Rishid regains consciousness in time to reach out to normal Marik and give him to strength to overpower his Superpowered Evil Side.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Dark Marik will often act this way, giving sarcastic compliments, offering to "help" his opponents, and using Terms of Endangerment. Everyone knows it's an act and that he's just taunting them, and he's quick to revert back to Ax-Crazy at a moment's notice.
  • Final Boss: Dark Marik is the last opponent Yugi faces in Battle City, and easily the strongest.
  • Fixing the Game: Dark Marik sets up the rules of his Shadow Games to favor him even as they apply equally to both players.
    • Against Mai, each time a monster is destroyed the duelist forgets someone from their life. Mai, of course, actually has people she cares about, while Dark Marik doesn't. In the manga, the stipulation is the same as the duel with Jounouchi, see next entry.
    • Against Jounouchi, when a monster is weakened or destroyed the controller feels the pain; Dark Marik is a Combat Sadomasochist. In the English dub, they lose Life Energy instead, Dark Marik then boast to himself in his Inner Monologue that he has a lot more lifeforce than he does.
    • Against Dark Yugi, when a duelist loses Life Points their alter-ego fades away bit by bit. Dark Yugi has to deal with the fact that hurting Dark Marik will hurt and potentially destroy the real Marik he wants to save; Dark Marik on the other hand gets to destroy both Yugi and Dark Yugi, and get rid of his other self by paying Life Points until Marik is too weak to stay alive any longer even if Dark Marik wins the duel.
  • Foil: To Dark Yugi. They both have spiky hair and a glowing third eye. Also, Dark Yugi used to be just as sadistic as Dark Marik, but Dark Yugi always had a sense of justice, while Dark Marik is just in it for kicks. Both are Dark alter egos, but while Dark Yugi is a spirit inhabiting the Millennium Puzzle, Dark Marik exists independently of the Millennium Rod, due to being a Literal Split Personality of Marik.
  • For the Evulz: When asked by Dark Yugi, Dark Marik outright states he has no reason for what he does aside from simply enjoying torment and suffering.
  • Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Normal Marik's are narrow and snakey. Dark Marik's bulge constantly and are filled with red veins.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: He has an influence on the first half of Battle City, though the normal Marik is the one trying to kill Yugi. In particular, he took away Marik's guilt for his evil actions, letting him commit worse crimes without feeling bad.
  • Irony: In the English dub, Yami Marik generally calls Joey "Little Joey", but in the Japanese version Jonouchi constantly calls Marik "Marik-chan" to get on his nerves.
  • Jerkass: Dark Marik blows right past this and into full on psychopathy.
  • Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: In his Shadow Game against Mai, he makes it so that every time a player's monster is destroyed they will forget someone they know. Dark Marik sees this as a win-win, as he doesn't consider anyone he knows worth remembering.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard:
    • In the four-way duel to determine the semi-final matches, Jounouchi uses Graverobber to use Dark Marik's spell card to redirect his effect damage against him, causing him to lose.
    • Merging with Ra, Dark Marik's best move, results in his defeat, as the shock of losing Ra is enough to let normal Marik regain control of their body.note 
  • Irony: He wants to cover the world in darkness, yet his strongest monster is based on the Egyptian sun god.
  • It's Personal: Although Dark Marik does seem to Hates Everyone Equally, he holds a special grudge against Rishid for being the only one who can hold him from taking over Marik's body.
    • It's implied that he also hates his father greatly for abusing Marik/him. The fact that when Marik accuses him of killing their father, his reaction can pretty much be summed up as "well, he deserved to die" only confirms this. In fact, their father and Rishid are the only people who Dark Marik attempted physical abuse to, while the others are only mind-raped.
  • Knight of Cerebus: He is one of the most deranged, flat-out evil characters in the original series, with only Yami Bakura matching him. The other villains were evil too but few of them were insane maniacs who killed for fun.
  • Kubrick Stare: His default expression.
  • Lack of Empathy: Dark Marik's empathy is nonexistent.
  • Large Ham: His English voice actor was definitely having fun.
  • Laughing Mad: Hoo, boy....This guy is constantly, always laughing, which does not exactly illustrate a sound state of mind.
  • Literal Split Personality: Dark Marik started out as Marik's even worse side, but by the end of Battle City he gains a separate soul, kicking his other half out of the body. This comes back to bite him when Marik surrenders their final match, letting him vanish into the shadows while Marik remains unharmed.
  • Loophole Abuse: He would have flat-out lost his duels with both Mai and Jonouchi if they played under normal rules:
    • Mai outsmarts him and manages to steal and summon Ra for herself. The only reason she can't use it is because it's sealed with a special hieroglyphic text she can't read;
    • Jonouchi gets the better of him in their duel, and only loses due to exhaustion from the strain of the Shadow Game.
  • Maniac Tongue: He has a disgusting obsession with letting his tongue out, which only increases as time goes on, showcasing his increasing lack of sanity.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Screws with his opponents' minds during duels. It's especially obvious against Mai, whose mind he breaks so badly that she's more afraid of him than Dartz.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Is he just a split personality of Marik, or is he something more? On the one hand, he doesn't seem to be a Millennium Spirit like Atem or the Thief King, and seems to function like a dissociative identity does in the real world; on the other, his ability to manipulate Shadow Game magic rivals their own (and is certainly far more advanced than the normal Marik could do), and even in the manga he says he has been waiting to fight Atem for 1000 years, hinting that there may be more to him than a simple case of split personality.
  • The Mentally Disturbed: Dark Marik's a gleefully psychopathic sadist whose grip on reality gets looser by the moment, in addition to being the alter-ego of a traumatized teenager. Sanity is nowhere in sight here.
  • Mind Rape: Dark Marik loves doing this in his Shadow Games. His Penalty Game for Mai involved her being trapped in an hourglass, and either attacked by scarabs, or drowned in sand.
  • Nightmare Face: He has this expression perpetually since he is prone to having veins randomly pop up on his face, usually while his eyes are out of proportion and his tongue sticking out. Even the Off-Model shots of his faces are nightmarish.
  • No-Nonsense Nemesis: The first thing he does once he's out is try and kill the comatose Rishid to make sure he can't wake up and bring back the real Marik. He later banishes Marik from his mind so he can't fight his control over their body.
  • No Social Skills: Not in a humorous way. He sticks out his tongue, makes faces, and doesn't have a single line of dialogue that doesn't relate to hurting somebody.
  • Nothing Personal: Marik wanted to kill Yugi/Yami for apparently murdering his father, but Dark Marik held no personal grudge against anyone. He hated everybody just the same. The only exception is Rishid, as he could stop Dark Marik from taking over Marik's body.
    • In his duel with Mai, Dark Marik either called her by full name, or "onna" (woman), or "ano onna" (that woman), emphasizing that he has no personal feelings one way or the other towards her. Which doesn't stop him from torturing her. Not only did this just emphasize that he's a sadistic bastard, it also becames more creepy when you think about how he would torture someone he actually hates...
  • Obviously Evil: He's the manifestation of Marik's pain and hatred from enduring the Tombkeeper's Initiation, and while he is capable of acting polite, he doesn't bother to conceal the fact that it's an act to smooth over his depravity. He gloats about how his only real desire is to see everything else destroyed, almost always has a Slasher Smile across his face, wears dark clothing complete with a cape, openly laughs at other people's suffering, and his Deck is generally themed around torture. It doesn't get much more Obviously Evil than that!
  • Ominous Visual Glitch: In the manga, Dark Marik’s face is often drawn with multiple overlapping expressions to highlight both his utter insanity and the real Marik Fighting from the Inside.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Implied in the manga/anime, and made explicit in the video game adaptations. Dark Marik's goal is to destroy everything but himself, plunging the world into shadow, and laughing over the remains in the dark. During the Virtual World Arc in the anime, he destroys the computers that control Gozaburo's missiles so no one can stop the launch, then heads back to the airship and snickers that he's waiting for them to launch and kill everyone.
  • One-Winged Angel: To the normal Marik in a manner of speaking; his usage of Ra takes advantage of its strongest effects compared to the normal Marik's knowledge, and thus he devotes his deck space to more trap-based stun and burn rather than waste resources on getting out three Tributes. The downside for regular Marik is that he isn't in control. In a more literal example for himself, he fuses with Ra to deal the final blow in his duels.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • A notable one when Jonouchi comes within an inch of defeating him during their duel. Even after Jonouchi collapses, he actually vomits out of shock that he had almost lost.
    • When the shock of having Ra destroyed while he's merged with it weakens him enough to let the normal Marik take back control of their body, making him the soul at stake when the Shadow Game is lost.
  • Only the Chosen May Wield: Ra not only needs to be summoned to the field, but also have a special hieroglyphic spell chanted to activate it. The only reason Mai lost her duel with Dark Marik is because she couldn't read the spell's text and also because she didn't just attack his Holding Arms with her Cyber Harpie note 
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Yami Marik's only redeeming trait is murdering Marik's father.
  • Practically Joker: He's an Ax-Crazy, sadistic, sociopathic Serial Killer who enjoys killing, inflicting pain, and spreading terror which by his own admission is motivated solely For the Evulz. He's Laughing Mad and is dangerously unhinged, but in spite of this still manages to be The Chessmaster and a formidable duelist. He also appears to be an Omnicidal Maniac who would be happy to bring about the end of the world had he been allowed to have his way.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Torture and murder, it's all a game to him.
  • Red Right Hand: Dark Marik has Tainted Veins, bloodshot eyes, and the Eye of Widjat displayed prominently on his forehead. That's without even getting into the facial stretching.
  • Reflectionless Useless Eyes: While it's not usually noticeable due to how warped he makes his faces along with eyes, but unlike Marik who has visible pupils, Yami Marik has these sorts of eyes normally, hinting he's not truly a person, but a split personality given physical form.
  • Sadist: Dark Marik's the most blatant example in the anime/manga, possessing a textbook case of what used to be called Sadistic Personality Disorder.
  • Sadistic Choice: Dark Marik frequently creates set ups like this, such as forcing Dark Yugi to sacrifice either Yugi or the real Marik during their final duel.
  • Sanity Has Advantages: His rampant sadism and obvious insanity causes him to make major mistakes and screws him over on several occasions.
  • Sanity Slippage: As the finals progress, Dark Marik becomes increasingly unhinged, displaying his sadism and bloodlust more openly. By the time he faces off against Dark Yugi & Yugi he's degenerated from a criminal mastermind to a slavering animal, though he maintains enough of his intelligence to be very dangerous.
  • Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: He turns most of his duels into Shadow Games that give him a blatant advantage. He can Mind Rape his opponents (Mai), make them feel the pain of their destroyed monsters (Jonouchi) or even put their soul at risk (if Yami Yugi loses, present Yugi gets Dragged Off to Hell).
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Dark Marik is this to normal Marik, sealed away unless Rishid is knocked out.
  • Slasher Smile: Dark Marik almost always has one.
  • Smarter Than You Look: Dark Marik is considerably smarter and saner than he appears to be, though every bit as evil.
  • The Sociopath: Dark Marik hits every one of the requirements for the trope and the real life personality disorder, being a physical and psychologicalnote  sadist with no impulse control, a staggering Lack of Empathy, No Social Skills, a love for manipulating others, and an ingrained belief in his own superiority.
  • Spanner in the Works: In the anime, after Noah has a change of heart and runs back to change the missile controls to save the heroes, he discovers Dark Marik was there in his absence and the control console has been destroyed.
    • His presence at Kaiba and Ishizu's duel resulted in the Millennium Rod recognizing the soul of its former master, giving Kaiba a vision of his Blue Eyes White Dragon rather than his original plan of defeating Ishizu with Obelisk. This counteracted Ishizu's vision of having Kaiba lose by self-destructing Obelisk when he attempted to play it.
    • He's this to normal Marik as well, with his appearance foiling the original Evil Plan. In the end, the original Marik manages to do this to Dark Marik, regaining control of their body after the loss of Ra, and surrendering to the Pharaoh.
  • Split Personality: An actual one, unlike the spiritual possession of Yami Yugi and Yami Bakura. He surprisingly has traits of actual DID, where the mind fractures as a result of childhood trauma.
  • Split-Personality Takeover: Seizes Marik's body for himself when Rishid collapses, and banishes him from their mind to make sure he can't fight back.
  • Stress Vomit: He really doesn't take Jonouchi's near victory well, and starts gagging and drooling profusely into his hand. He's back to his usual cocky and psychotic self after a few minutes, but this is one of the few times that Dark Marik's composure completely breaks.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: Dark Marik is more vicious and dangerous than normal Marik ever was. And for some reason, he knows of Ra's secret while the dominant Marik doesn't. Speaking of dominant, Dark Marik is Marik's more evil side, which is why Dark Marik refers to the other Marik as the dominant personality, not his good personality. He is quite notable in this regard, since he already existed before he even touched the Millennium Rod. The Rod just drew out more of his more sadistic personality thanks to Zorc's influence.
  • Sword Cane: In the manga and Japanese version, he has a dagger hidden in the handle of the Millenium Rod, which he uses to kill his father and menace a couple other characters.
  • Tainted Veins: Dark Marik's veins aren't a different colour, but they bulge quite unhealthily out of his face, and the crazier he gets, the more they stand out.
  • Taking You with Me: His Shadow Game against Dark Yugi, where the antes are the souls of their other halves. In this set-up, even if Dark Marik loses, the normal Marik will be lost as well. Within his deck, Newdoria possesses this power.
  • Terms of Endangerment: Dark Marik is rude to everyone, but there are two people whom he refers to with a respectful term: Ishizu by "aneue-sama" (meaning "honored big sister") and Marik by "shujinkaku-sama" (roughly translated "Master Other Personality" or "Master Main Personality"). This is understandable as he actually respects Ishizu a little, and doesn't hate Marik personally but just wants to get him out of their shared body. (In fact, he actually seems thankful that Marik created him.) But they are still endangering terms as, in the end, he still wants to kill them.
  • Torture Technician: Dark Games already take a toll on people, but he adds extra rules to make them extra painful.
  • Underestimating Badassery: He thinks there's no way Jounouchi can survive an attack by Ra. He not only does, but Jounouchi was seconds away from winning the duel afterwards because Dark Marik had no plan to defend himself if Jounouchi survived and kept dueling.
    • This, alongside his Crippling Overspecialization, is essentially his Fatal Flaw as a duelist. While he’s by no means a bad Duelist, the problem he has is that he far too often underestimates his "victims", toying with his food and letting them mount a comeback. When this happens, he's forced to rely on Ra to survive the duel.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Has a big one when Yugi and Dark Yugi manage to reduce him to a single eye and begging his normal ego to win the duel. Also has one when Jounouchi manages to stand up after Ra's attack and almost manages to defeat him.
  • Voice of the Legion: In the 4Kids version.
  • Walking Spoiler: Dark Marik came out of nowhere when he was first introduced and took over the season.
  • We Can Rule Together: Dark Marik tries this on the real Marik after the latter regains control of their body.
  • White Hair, Black Heart: Dark Marik being in the running for "worst person in the series."
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Though he makes the wise decision to kill Rishid once he's freed so he can't be sealed again, just as he's holding his dagger over Rishid, he gets called away to duel Mai and decides to take care of him later. He then sticks around to watch Kaiba duel Ishizu, and by the time he finally gets around to going back to Rishid and finishing the job, Ishizu had already hidden him. Later, after Ishizu has given away her Necklace and thus her only protection against him, he confronts her to try to taunt and intimidate her, before leaving her be so she can witness his victory over Yugi. In the manga, he makes no effort to try to find Ishizu, and when Rishid does awaken, he smugly proclaims that he's become too strong to be sealed away by that point anyways.

    Rishid (Odion) 

Rishid (リシド; Rishido) (Odion)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rishid_duli.png
Voiced by: Konta (Japanese), J. David Brimmer (English; credited as Michael Alston Baley), Cholo Moratalla (European Spanish)

Marik's older brother by adoption and his dragon. Abandoned as a child, Rishid was taken in by Marik's mother prior to the latter's birth. However, his father never accepted him as a suitable heir to their family of tombkeepers and treated him as a servant rather than a son. Despite this, Rishid had always desire to become a true part of the family and a heir to the tombkeeper clan. When Marik was born, he was told by his dying mother to take care of his younger brother. Although they were close siblings, Rishid harbored a resentment for him as the true heir to the tombkeeper's clan and legitimate son of his parents. When young Marik was bitten by a cobra and became ill, their father beat Rishid for allowing Marik to be harmed, and ordered that he not leave Marik's bedside until he recovered. Rishid attempted to kill Marik in his sleep, but Marik awakens and murmurs "brother", which causes Rishid to drop the weapon in shock: Marik sees Rishid as his brother, despite the fact they are not blood related. Thus, Rishid stood by Marik's side, even when he turned to a life of evil.

He poses as Marik while the real Marik tries to infiltrate Yugi's gang as "Namu". In the Duel Monsters card game, he uses a deck themed on Egyptian mythology, which consists almost entirely of trap cards. His trump card is Holy Beast Serket.


  • Affably Evil: Is very polite in his duel with Jounouchi, using proper honorifics (calling him "Mr. Wheeler" in the English dub) and clearly respects Jounouchi's dueling skills even when Jounouchi is about to lose. It's what gives his Marik disguise away. In addition, he himself isn't so much evil as he is completely devoted to protecting Marik.
  • Anti-Villain: He only follows Marik to protect him and keep his dark personality in check.
  • Badass Longcoat: Wears the standard Rare Hunter robes, and being that he duels on an airship, it billows and flares dramatically all the time.
  • Bald of Evil: Has only long black ponytail for hair.
  • Big Brother Instinct: He will do anything to protect Marik, even from himself.
  • Cannibalism Superpower: His Holy Beast Serket gains half the ATK of every creature it devours. This is a bad thing.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: His strategy of Trap Cards works extremely well ...until Jounouchi plays Jinzo, a monster card that destroys Trap Cards. He does manage to pull together a backup plan, though.
  • The Dragon: To Marik, serving as his second-in-command, never gets brainwashed and he's truly loyal to Marik out of genuine affection rather than out of fear.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In Season 2, the English dub writers have him thinking that he must follow Marik's orders because "Master Marik always knows best". This is blatantly contradictory to his original characterization,note  and this is only highlighted when that characterization actually pops up later in the English dub (though this could be explained as him deceiving himself out of guilt).
  • Happily Adopted: Subverted hard. While the Ishtars' mother always seemed to treat Rishid well, their father was indifferent to him at best and only took Rishid in because he didn't know if he would ever have a son of his own. Once he and his wife finally had a biological son to inherit the tombkeeping responsibilities their father was outright abusive of Rishid.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold: In his duel with Jounouchi, as he's supposed to be impersonating Marik. Jounouchi eventually sees through it.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick: Rishid won enough Puzzle Cards for he and Marik to enter the Battle City finals (and given his conduct during his duel with Jounouchi, he likely won them fairly), and would have defeated Jounouchi in a fair duel had Marik not forced him to use the Sun Dragon Ra. Conversely, Marik:
    • Would've lost his duel against Jounouchi, had he not collapsed at the last second;
    • Loses (or is in the process of losing when they are called off) all three of his duels with Yami & Yugi, despite cheating (while controlling Bandit Keith), having an Egyptian God Card on his side (while controlling Pantomimer), and using Yugi's best friend as a shield (while controlling Jounouchi);
    • Only wins his duel with Mai due to Loophole Abuse and her grabbing the Idiot Ball, as she outplays him and manages to steal and summon Ra herself, only to be unable to use it since she couldn't read the text needed to summon it;
    • It's pretty clear who the better duelist is here...which ironically ends up giving the game away, because Marik being an underhanded duelist who needs to cheat in order to win his duels is such a signature aspect of his character, that Rishid's genuine talent and fair-play methods stick out as contradictory.
  • Irony:
    • He's a noble-hearted character and the only decent Rare Hunter, while his strongest monsters are based on Apophis, the Egyptian god of chaos and Ra's opposite.
    • Despite never being accepted into the Tombkeepers' inner circle and legacy, he's actually the modern day equivalent of one of the priests who originally owned the Millennium Items. Whereas Marik, always burdened by that same legacy, apparently has no such ties.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: It's downplayed as he isn't really a Jerkass and was only pretending to be louder and more arrogant than he really is so as to impersonate Marik during his Duel against Jonouchi, but when Jonouchi tries calling out his Trap Master tactics as cowardly, Rishid counters that running a Deck of Trap Cards is well within the rules despite being an unorthodox strategy, and that those who don't know how to deal with his strategy have no right to call him a coward. Jonouchi himself would later acknowledge that Rishid doesn't cheat, and that proves he isn't really Marik. In the English dub, Rishid/Odion makes his point more snarkily:
    Odion: If you can find the rule that forbids me from playing Trap Cards, I'll stop, Mr. Wheeler.
  • Large and in Charge: Downplayed as he is second-in-command, so not completely in charge. He's a really tall man, nonetheless.
  • Living Prop:
    • He becomes this in the anime adaptation of the Memory World arc, where all he does is drive the heroes to the Stone Tablet, is standing next to his siblings, but never speaks whatsoever.
    • In the English dub of the anime, at the end of episode 62, Marik is uttering a villainous monologue to himself while Odion is just standing there in the scene, with the camera zooming in his face for several seconds, making him this, as he has no significance in that version of the scene. This is different in the Japanese dub, where Rishid has a brief inner monologue where we get to hear some of his concerns about Marik, indicating that he's close and loyal servant to him.
  • Meaningful Name: Rishid is only one letter away from the Arabic name "Rashid", which means "rightly guided". Seeing as Rishid serves as Marik's Morality Chain, the name suits him.
  • Mind Rape: Happens to him in the English dub courtesy of Marik's father using the Millennium Rod to punish him for helping Marik get to the surface. In the Japanese dub, Mr. Ishtar instead whips him to near-death.
  • Morality Chain: He keeps Marik's dark personality in check. When he's taken out of commission following his duel with Jonouchi, this allows Dark Marik to take control of the real one.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: The English dub, in stark contrast to how he is in Japanese has him utter "Master Marik always knows best" despite the fact that it's shown he's aware Marik is very much in the wrong for what he's doing.
  • Noble Demon: He's a villain, but he is honorable and moral. Unlike the other Rare Hunters (and indeed, most of the other villains in the show), he never even entertains the thought of cheating in a duel, nor does he need to.
  • Noble Top Enforcer: Unlike Marik (and every other Ghoul), Rishid forgoes cheating in favor of kicking ass fairly; also unlike Marik, he's talented enough that he doesn't need to cheat to win.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: His polite nature and fair dueling methods eventually clue Jounouchi in that he isn't Marik. The real Marik then forces him to play a false version of Ra in order to remove any doubt, which ends with him in a coma.
  • Obvious Trap: His Duel Monsters deck consists of almost nothing but traps, so when he ends his turn by just setting two cards, you know they're going to protect him. But you have to attack him sooner or later, and when you do, he's ready. Try to destroy his traps? He's got protection for them, though not foolproof.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: Serket is Fairy Type, and clearly doesn't resemble most other Fairies in the game, being a giant scorpion thing. This can be explained by the Fairy type being known as Tenshi/Angels in the original Japanese version of the game (just as Fiends are Akuma/Devils), reflecting Serket's divine purpose. Granted, it's still an oddity among them even with this context.
  • Red Right Hand: The scarring/tattoos on his face.
  • Scary Black Man: He's an Egyptian and is cold and stoic, giving a very intimidating presence. Ironically, he is probably the most polite and affable of the Rare Hunters.
  • Tattooed Crook: His face is tattooed in Egyptian hieroglyphs. He did it himself to prove his loyalty to the Tombkeepers since Marik's father would not officially induct him into the group.
  • Token Competent Minion: Rishid is the only one of Marik Ishtar's Rare Hunters who gains enough Puzzle Cards to enter the Battle City finals. In fact, Rishid would have won his duel with Jonouchi if Marik hadn't forced him to play the Winged Dragon of Ra card, which turned on Rishid and sent him into a coma.
  • Token Good Teammate: The only Rare Hunter who doesn't cheat when he duels. Plus he's mostly there to keep an eye on Marik.
  • Trap Is the Only Option: His deck consists of almost nothing but traps, so when he ends his turn by just setting two cards, you know they're going to protect him, he isn't stupid. But you have to attack him sooner or later, and when you do, he's ready.
  • Trap Master: Relies on masses of Trap Cards to duel.
  • The Stoic: Contends with Shadi for the title, although he can get angry if pressed far enough.
  • Undying Loyalty: He swore his absolute loyalty to Marik.
  • The Un-Favourite: His adoptive father never saw him as more than a servant, and it only got worse once Ishizu and Marik were born.
  • The Unfought: He's the only rare hunter Yugi never duels.
  • Villain Ball: He had Jonouchi beat. Then Marik forces him to grab this by summoning a counterfeit copy of Ra, an act that had zero good results for all the others who tried before him. His lacking a Millennium item of his own, and the divine right of the family, probably did him no favors either.
  • The Voiceless: During the anime adaptation of the Memory World arc, Rishid never utters a single piece of dialogue in either language. This is especially odd during the Ceremonial Duel, where everyone but Rishid has at least something to say.
  • Worthy Opponent: Plays totally fairly and respects Jounouchi's skills as a duelist. The sentiment is returned by Jounouchi, who notes that unlike a lot of his past opponents, Rishid has played a fair duel and it's been one of the toughest yet. The problem is that he's supposed to be impersonating Marik, who has shown no problems cheating and setting up unfair games.

    The Rare Hunter (Seeker) 

The Rare Hunter (レアハンター; Reahantā) (Seeker)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rarehunter.png
Voiced by: Eiji Takemoto (JP), David Wills (EN), Lorenzo Beteta (European Spanish)

The first Ghoul encountered in the manga and the second in the anime, he's never given a name other than "Rare Hunter". He beats Jonouchi and takes his Red-Eyes, and is in turn beaten by Dark Yugi. He runs an Exodia deck that focuses on assembling counterfeited Exodia cards and using them to defeat his opponents.


  • Adaptational Name Change: Video game adaptations tend to call him "Seeker". His manga and anime incarnation was anonymous, and he was referred to only as "Rare Hunter" in the English dub. Doubles as Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep".
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: In addition to loading his deck with three copies of each Exodia piece, he also marks his cards in the English dub (in the original, his cards are counterfeit). He still loses, and it's largely because his deck is so filled with Exodia pieces that he can't draw anything else.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: His deck and strategy are based entirely around summoning Exodia. Once that's no longer possible, he goes down like a chump.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • On the receiving end of one from Dark Yugi after Yugi activates a trap that destroys the same cards, rendering him unable to receive an insta-win with Exodia. To know how it's a curb-stomp battle, Dark Yugi never lost a single life point (upgraded to 4000 rather than the usual 2000), which is a rarity for the series. Somewhat justified, given how his strategy is based less on taking out opponents' life points and more on biding time for his hand to be filled with Exodia cards.
    • In the manga, his battle against Dark Yugi is arguably one of the shortest chapters ever - it was only a few pages long. It ends as soon as Dark Yugi pins down the Arm of Exodia with Lightforce Sword and activates Chain Destruction to take out all the copies in his deck. In the anime, these moves were separate and Yami Yugi still depleted his LP.
  • Dub Name Change: If his name can be treated as such. The Spanish dub refers to him as just "Exodia's Hunter".
  • Egomaniac Hunter: Displays this attitude towards card hunting.
  • Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": He's always addressed as "Rare Hunter" in the anime; the name "Seeker" is only used in various video games.
  • Meaningful Name: Seeker, his name in many of the video games, is quite appropriate given that his strategy involves using various cards that let him search his deck for the five Exodia pieces.
  • Obviously Evil: If the portrait above doesn't show it, his scary dark robes don't help. The guy is creepy.
  • Smug Snake: Seems to think that simply having Exodia makes him invincible.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: This guy doesn't even have a real name (or at least no confirmed one), and in-universe is treated as little more than a common Mook that Yugi defeats without even trying. But his defeat of Jounouchi essentially provides the starting point for the latter's entire arc and growth for the rest of Battle City.
  • Stone Wall: Uses monsters with high DEF but low ATK, like Stone Statue of the Aztecs and Gear Golem the Moving Fortress, to defend his Life Points while he searches for Exodia.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: For the Battle City arc. He demonstrates how dogged and dangerous the Ghouls actually are in their pursuit of rare cards by beating the tar out of Jonouchi after he defeats him in a duel. He also demonstrates the fact that they have access to much better cards than the prior individuals, through his triple-Exodia deck.
  • The Worf Effect: He serves to kick off Jounouchi's arc by showing off that the gap between him and Yugi is actually pretty significant through a double-use of this. He takes down Jounouchi pretty easily, with the latter never even figuring out what his strategy was until it was too late. Then Yugi steps in and not only figures it out within only a few turns, but creates a combo that not only wins the duel, but effectively destroys his deck's entire purpose. This is what triggers Jounouchi to set out to improve himself.
  • You Have Failed Me: Courtesy of Marik in the dub, who sends his mind to the Shadow Realm as punishment for losing.

    Pandora the Conjurer (Arkana) 

Pandora the Conjurer (パンドラ; Pandora) (Arkana)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pandora_duli.png
Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (JP), Sam Riegel (EN), Eduardo Bosch (European Spanish)

A former stage magician who either had his mother die at one point in his life and his lover dying in a magic trick gone wrong, then joining the Rare Hunters in his despair (in the manga), or lost his good looks to a fire and his girlfriend to the BSOD that followed and serves as one of Marik's Ghouls in the hopes of winning her back (in the anime). He challenges Yugi to a deathmatch, where the loser will get their legs chopped off by buzzsaws.

He runs a Spellcaster deck designed specifically to counter many of Yugi's best cards, and many of the cards emulate a magician's act. His trump card is the Black Magician.


  • Absurdly High-Stakes Game: His battle against Yugi is Death-T level of ridiculously dangerous. As each player loses life points, buzzsaws get closer and closer to the player's legs. The loser will ultimately die from blood loss by having their legs chopped off. The English dub changes this to dark energy discs with the threat of sending the user's mind to the Shadow Realm, which would leave them brain-dead at the very least.
  • Adaptation Personality Change: In the manga, he's a legitimate duelist, considering the game to be an extension of his skills as a master conjurer, but considers his cards to be slaves and indeed chastises Yugi for 'coddling' them. He's also much more overtly crazy. His anime incarnation doesn't care about Duel Monsters whatsoever, only playing it on Marik's orders, and his madness is softened slightly through the expansion of his backstory.
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: He trims his cards and uses trick shuffling to bring his Black Magician into his opening hand, and cares so little about his deck he plans to throw it away after he wins. Dark Yugi is disgusted by the way he treats his cards for the sake of winning. If it wasn't for the regular Yugi, Dark Yugi would have probably left Pandora to get his legs chopped off.
  • Death by Irony: On several levels. He's defeated by Black Magician Girl, after claiming he's a Black Magician master but didn't know she even existed, underestimates her power and attacks her with his own Black Magician causing it to be destroyed, and it's because Black Magician Girl has gained power from his own Black Magician that he let be destroyed earlier.note 
  • Dirty Coward: Panics every time the duel is turning against him.
  • Driven to Suicide: In the manga, Pandora considered suicide twice; when his mother died and when his lover died. After losing his duel with Yugi, Marik stirs up those feelings to make him commit suicide when he wakes up.
  • Evil Counterpart: Not Pandora himself, but his Black Magician, with its white hair and evil smile. It's the evil counterpart to Yugi's Black Magician. Until he sacrifices it for a cheap shot at Yugi's life points.
  • Expressive Mask: His mask's eye holes change sizes and shapes depending on his moods.
  • Facial Horror: The upper half of his face was ruined in a botched escape trick.
  • False Reassurance: He does this in the English dub, while setting up his deck to give him a Black Magician.
    Yami Yugi: I'm watching you. Don't try any sleight of hand, Arkana.
    Arkana: Card tricks are strictly for amateurs, Yugi Mutou. [later] Sure, card tricks may be for amateurs, but as a duelist, knowing how to pick any card, any time comes in very handy.
  • Foil: To Pegasus, particularly in the anime. While they share similarities in their characters and backstories (worldly showmen in red suits which lost a lover and use creepy trickster magic-themed cards), Pandora treats his monsters very differently than Pegasus, and evokes Yugi's pity instead of respect.
  • Giggling Villain: He does a lot of laughing.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: He went mad after the loss of his mother and fiance in the manga, and his fiance and good looks in the anime after a magic trick gone wrong. In the anime he's so deluded that he thinks a doll is the real Catherine even as it falls apart in his arms.
  • Love Makes You Evil: He turned to Marik to get Catherine back in the anime.
  • Man of Kryptonite: His deck was made to specifically counter Yugi's, employing multiple Black Magicians and many monster, trap, and magic-destroying cards to keep him pinned down.
  • Masking the Deformity: He wears a mask to conceal his face after a magic trick went wrong severely scarring it. At one point, he takes it off to show Yugi the damage that was done; we, the viewers, never see it.
  • Mask Power: Wears a mask to conceal his scarred face.
  • Meaningful Name: His dub version is named Arkana, the name of the tarot suits, which fits his personality being a magician.
  • Mirror Boss: Uses the same ace as Yugi, Black Magician, and many of the same spells.
  • Save the Villain: Yugi saves him from his own trap, but in the manga Marik stirs up his suicidal thoughts so the moment he wakes up he'll kill himself (it's unknown whether he did or not). In the anime what happens to him afterward is unknown, though he's completely broken by the fact that Marik lied.
  • The Sixth Ranger: Pandora does not have the trappings of typical Ghoul and has little passion for Duel Monsters, but nonetheless follows Marik's orders.
  • Slasher Smile: Does a lot of grinning and smirking.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: He considers himself a master user of the Black Magician, and (especially in the 4Kids version) constantly taunts Yugi that he doesn't know the card's true potential like he does. In practice, all that this amounts to is having a couple of Black Magician support cards that Yugi doesn't, like Dark Renewal and Dark Magic Curtain (but then, Yugi has Black Magician support that Pandora doesn't seem to, either), and otherwise his dueling is unremarkable and abstracts down to him leaning heavily on Spell and Trap support with basic destruction effects. He's also entirely unaware that Black Magician Girl exists, showing his ignorance of the archetype he claims to have mastered.
  • Smug Snake: Arrogantly declares he's a true master of the Black Magician and Yugi can't hope to compare to him. Yami Yugi, for his part, pities him rather than respects him.
  • Stage Magician: His original profession. Things went wrong as this though.
  • Uncertain Doom: Marik claims that he'll leave Pandora alone with his reawakened suicidal thoughts, but since Dark Yugi doesn't stick around, we don't know if he followed through.
  • The Unreveal: He shows Dark Yugi his unmasked face. Dark Yugi is repulsed, but we don't get to see it.
  • Worthy Opponent: Early on in the duel, Dark Yugi praises him for fighting against his Black Magician and openly tells Pandora that his skills are wasted on a lowly organization like the Ghouls. Of course, this goes out of the window once Pandora starts disrespecting his cards.
  • You Have Failed Me: Courtesy of Marik, who forces his suicidal thoughts back to the surface in the manga in an attempt at Psychic-Assisted Suicide. It's not clear if he actually did though.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Has no problem with sacrificing his monsters willy-nilly, and has the gall to insult them. In the Japanese anime version, he explains that he doesn't care about the Duel Monsters card game and only reason why he learned to duel, built a deck, and challenged Yugi was because Marik ordered him to. As soon as he beat Yugi and got his reward, he would have thrown the deck away as it is meaningless to him. While his manga counterpart is more genuine in being a duelist, his philosophy of ruthlessness and considering his monsters as slaves and servants still causes him to fit this.

    The Silent Doll/Pantomimer (Strings) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pantomimer_duli.png
A mime under Marik's control, he uses a Jam-themed deck along with Osiris the Heaven Dragon. He has no will of his own, but his deck is nearly unbeatable.


  • Bald of Evil: He has no hair at all.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Looks like an unassuming mime but has a Egyptian God Card in his deck.
  • Empty Shell: He is catatonic, and pretty much a vegetable by himself, an easy target for Marik's mind puppetry. When Marik isn't controlling him, he is rendered comatose. In the manga, it is explained that he was a mime who went mad after killing his parents, and sealed his own consciousness away out of guilt.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: His deck revolved around a God Card that becomes more powerful the more cards he has in his hand and decreases an opponent's attack by 2000 points (and if said stat is 2000 or less, automatically destroys it instead), a permanent spell card that allows him to draw three cards every time a monster is summoned, a monster that can automatically be resummoned to the field when it's destroyed, a permanent trap card that makes said monster the first target of any attack, and a permanent spell card that removes the 6-card limit to his hand. Yugi uses a spell that shifts control of the indestructible monster to his side of the field, which causes Osiris to attack it, and it respawns, which triggers the "draw three cards" effect, and repeat until he decks Pantomimer out. This applies even more so in the manga, which limits each player to a maximum of 5 permanent cards, so setting up the combo made him unable to play anything else and surrendered any decision-making to Yugi.
  • Implacable Man: Had Yugi lost, Marik would have had the mime kill him. He would not have stopped his pursuit for any reason.
  • Nerf: Almost every card he uses was de-powered for the actual game, with Life Point payments and summoning conditions instated. His version of Card of Safe Return allows three draws with each Special Summon rather than one. (And to put this in perspective, even the real version of that card is illegal in OCG and TCG.)
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Played with. He has a black shirt and baggy red pants, but, at least in the anime, he isn't evil under his own power.
  • The Voiceless: As a mime, he never speaks (or rarely speaks in the video games). Averted when Marik takes him over, where he speaks quite a lot.
  • Voices Are Mental: In the Japanese version, he speaks in Marik's voice. This is averted in some dubs of the 4Kids version.

    Masks of Light and Darkness (Lumis and Umbra) 

Mask of Light (光の仮面; Hikari no Kamen) (Lumis)
Mask of Darkness (闇の仮面; Yami no Kamen) (Umbra)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/masksofdarknessandlightduli_5.png
Mask of Light/Lumis voiced by: Yuu Mizushima (JP), Jimmy Zoppi (Duel Monsters, EN), Wolfe Scott (Duel Links, EN), Carlos Ysbert (European Spanish)
Mask of Darkness/Umbra voiced by: Kouji Ishii (JP), Andrew Paul (EN), Fernando de Luis (European Spanish)

Two of Marik's Ghouls, whom he orders to take on Dark Yugi and Seto Kaiba in a double deathmatch on top of building, where upon losing, a bomb will destroy the glass beneath them, sending them to their deaths (in the English dub, the Shadow Realm).

They run a Mask Deck that focusses on locking down the opponents' options and draining their Life Points. Their trump cards are The Masked Beast (3200/1800) and Masked Beast-Des Gardius (3300/2500).


  • Absurdly High-Stakes Game: The tag battle they challenge Yugi and Kaiba to is a deathmatch, where anybody who loses all of their Life Points will be sent falling down a 130-foot building. However, the stakes turn out to be a bit uneven, as when Mask of Darkness is sent falling, he's revealed to have a parachute (though he faints due to shock, but it's implied in the English dub that Marik banishes him). In the manga, Dark Yugi, the master of high-stakes gaming, reacts with "Some death match THIS turned out to be..."
  • Acrofatic: Mask of Light is surprisingly agile.
  • Bald of Evil: Lumis is bald and happy to duel two people on top of a skyscraper that will be destroyed if they lose.
  • Bash Brothers: Before Kaiba starts screwing with them, they're a talented pair of tag duelists. (Although, their talent is kind of diluted since they only had the upper hand due to Kaiba's stubborn refusal to work with Yugi, not to mention they had speakers hidden under their masks in the anime to better plan out their strategies.)
  • Combat Pragmatist: They stop short of cheating unlike many antagonists in Battle City, but they still take full advantage of the Tag Duel format by using hidden communicators whereas their opponents have to discuss their strategies aloud, play decks that fully synergize with each other and also an anti-God card strategy in the form of Mask of Restrict.
  • Composite Character: The original anime, which reused the character models from the first Rare Hunter duo, but stuck to the manga script, implies that Mask of Darkness and Mask of Light are the same characters as them. The manga's models have distinct differences confirming that the two pairs are different. The English dub simply makes Lumis and Umbra the same pair of Rare Hunters as before, up for a second round.
  • Dark Is Evil: Ironically Mask of Darkness uses mostly LIGHT monsters, though he has The Masked Beast, a DARK Attribute monster, as well as Nuvia the Wicked in the manga, who is also DARK.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: While Dark Yugi and Kaiba just dealt with a bunch of miscellaneous Ghouls in the manga before going up against the duo, the anime set things up by having them briefly duel the unmasked Mask of Light and Darkness before quickly meeting up in a deadly rematch (or, at least, their voices implied that they were the same characters in the original anime, the English dub adds a flashback to confirm them as the same duo).
  • Light Is Not Good: Ironically, Mask of Light's monsters are all DARK Fiends while Mask of Darkness uses the LIGHT Attribute Shining Abyss, as well as Rogue Doll in the anime.
  • Mask of Power: Most of their cards are masks that make their monsters stronger or their opponents' monsters weaker. They themselves wear half-masks and are a fairly effective tag duo.
  • Mask Power: Far more competent with their masks on (if the previous Ghouls that Dark Yugi and Kaiba battled were them. The anime implied that this was the case, using the same character models as the first Rare Hunter duo, with the English dub straight-up making them said duo, but the manga uses designs with key differences in facial structures that show that this isn't the case).
  • Meaningful Name: Their dub names, Lumis and Umbra, mean light and dark.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: Assuming that they are the same characters (more so implied in the anime than the manga, which used different character models that further distinguish them), in their first appearance, they don't wear their masks and are easily defeated. In their second, they keep Yugi and Kaiba busy for four anime episodes.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: They play dumb the first time they ran into Yugi and Kaiba in the anime, which used the same character models and voice actors before the proper introductions of Masks of Light and Darkness. The second time, not so much.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: In the Japanese version their real names are never mentioned.
  • You Have Failed Me: Marik pulls it on Mask of Light (Mask of Darkness had already fallen off the building).

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