Characters / Marvel Comics: Ultron

aka: Ultron

Ultron

Notable Aliases: Crimson Cowl, Ultron-5, Ultron-6, Ultron-7, Ultron-8, Ultron-9, Ultron-10, Ultron-11, Ultron-12, Ultron-13, Ultron-14, Ultron-15, Ultron-16, Ultron-17, Ultron-18, Ultimate Ultron, Ultron Pym, Ultron Prime, Hank Pym

First Appearance: The Avengers #55 (August, 1968)

"The savage monkeys are rage-filled and claustrophobic. Climbing over one another to nowhere. Confused by logic, they dismiss it, choosing instead to bend their knees to the convenient fantasy of custom-built gods. 99.9% of these primate dullards are propped up by the accomplishments of the .1% of cerebral mutations who give them everything. And what do the fleas do with these advancements? They brutalize one another over imaginary deities. They slaughter their neighbors for resources, for conveniences. They are hopeless. Vicious. Filthy. Selfish. Fearful. A fungal infection for which there is only one cure – The rage of Ultron."

— Ultron

An artificial intelligence created by Hank Pym, Ultron came to see humanity as an abomination that needed to be destroyed. One of the Avengers' oldest, persistent foes, Ultron has upgraded itself numerous times, with each configuration more powerful than the last.

First created (in the In-Universe meaning) by Hank Pym as a test in order to create the first true AI, the first thing the initially barrel-like robot ever did was attack Pym, and not in the "but I just want to play with dad" sense, though he does say that to Hank. Ultron-1 already admitted to have "greater plans", wiped Pym's memory of what happened and then escaped; shortly afterwards, Ultron started updating his body and creating other copies of himself.

Since his beginning Ultron had a knack for creating other androids as his children, but with a beautiful touch of irony they tend to rebel against him. His most well-known children are The Vision, a longtime member of Avengers and Young Avengers and long-time lover of Scarlet Witch; Jocasta, also member of Avengers and occasional love interest of Aaron Stack; and Victor Mancha, first non-founding member of the Runaways.

During Kurt Busiek's critically acclaimed run on The Avengers, Ultron committed genocide in the "Ultron Unlimited" storyline. He wiped out the population of a ruritanian Throwaway Country only to turn said population's corpses into zombie-like cyborgs. All of this accompanied by an army of Ultrons themselves. Yeah.

He also once managed to take over the entire Kree galaxy, using the alien Phalanx, before being beaten by a ragtag group of cosmic heroes, most of whom would go on to form the modern iteration of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Most infamously, Ultron has gone on to his most heinous act: a Take Over the World scheme that actually worked, forcing the heroes to resort to time-travel to thwart him.

Lately, he's undergone a Fusion Dance with his creator/father Hank Pym, which led to a struggle for control that seemed to result in a merger between the two — Ultron, or Pymtron, is no longer out to actively destroy humanity, and is rather waiting for it to destroy itself. After a battle in the future, Pym managed to escape, carrying Ultron as a virus inside his head. Eventually, this was purged in Avengers Inc, with the help of the returned heroic Ultron Mark 12. However, as always, Ultron is still out there...

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Ultron provides examples of:

#-F

• Absolute Xenophobe: Ultron hates everyone and everything; humanity, animals, alien life, deities, cosmic beings, other robots, artificial intelligence, and anything else that isn't bent to his control and subservience. For that, if no one wants to be under his reign, then everything must die.
• Actually a Doombot: Exploited and Inverted by Ultron in his first appearance. A new villain called the Crimson Cowl is revealed to have a duplicate, and when both unmask, one is a robot, and the other is Avengers butler Edwin Jarvis. The twist is that the robot is the real one — Ultron had hypnotized Jarvis into acting as his Doombot, and pretended he wasn't sentient to deceive both the Avengers and his own flunkies.
• Aesop Amnesia: One of his defining traits is that no matter what, his robotic children and brides will always turn against him.
• Agony Beam: Ultron is incredibly fond of his encephalo-ray, which is a Mind Probe with added pain. It doesn't need to hurt, Ultron just likes hurting people.
• The Alcoholic: As Ultron-15.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The original Ultron was not built to be a homicidal robot. Unfortunately, his mind was patterned after Hank's and he wasn't exactly in the best place at the time, so upon being "born" Ultron was already unstable and turned Hank's self-loathing into just plain loathing, and he only got worse from there. His own "children" have been similarly rebellious.
• Always a Bigger Fish: In Secret Wars (1984), he picks a fight with Galactus, who squashes him like a bug.
• And Then What?: The Ultron in Ultron Forever has taken over Earth, and Asgard, and pretty much everywhere. He's killed all the Avengers, he's become for all intents and purposes a god. He's won... but now he's got what he wanted, he's utterly confused as to why he did it, not to mention what he's supposed to do next, so when some time-travelling Avengers face him, he quickly falls into a Villainous Breakdown.
• Antagonist Abilities: Not only he's virtually indestructible and can manipulate computers and machinery but he rivals his creator Pym and Reed Richards as one of the most brilliant minds on Earth. The fact that he's Ax-Crazy and full of himself is the only thing that prevents him from using his cunning effectively.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Ultron refers to Hank Pym as his father. It has also tried to kill him, The Avengers, and most of humanity at one point or another, and is rightly considered by Pym to be his Archenemy. Ironically, Ultron's attempts at creating its own offspring have also met with failure and Heel Face Turns, making Ultron both an Antagonistic Offspring to Pym, and an Archnemesis Dad towards The Vision and Victor Mancha.
• Arch-Enemy: Even though sometimes he focuses more in his "father" Henry Pym, he mostly is the archenemy of the Avengers as a whole.
• Archnemesis Dad: Towards The Vision, Jocasta and Victor Mancha, all three of whom he created, and whose relationship with him parallels his with Hank Pym.
• Assimilation Plot: As the ruler of the Phalanx, he planned to do this to the galaxy before going back to Earth to get his revenge on the Avengers.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Most of the time, his weak point is located in his head.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • Creates a colossal body out of Kree sentries during the climactic battle of Annihilation: Conquest.
  • Even many years earlier when he attacked the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver as the gigantic Ultron-7.
• Attention Whore: Why else would he challenge the nations of the world on television after destroying a country?
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Being an A.I. he has quite a knack for gathering info about his enemies.
• Ax-Crazy: He has at times proven to be incredibly unstable and his schemes usually amount to "kill everything and rule what's left."
• Back from the Dead: All the time. Ultron keeps backups of his programming all over the place, and is essentially unkillable in the grand scheme of things.
• Badass Boast: He's prone to saying these.
• Badass Bookworm: As a robotic Mad Scientist who can quickly process a vast amount of information, and usually has the chassis built to stand up to the biggest powerhouses in the universe.
• Bad Boss: The few times he's had actual subordinates, he's been this. For example, Korath the Pursuer, whom Ultron infected with the Phalanx transmode virus, brainwashing him, and eventually killed for failing to capture Adam Warlock for him.
  • Pretty much the first thing he did with Vision was scream at him to shut up.
• Badass Cape: Has one in Annihilation: Conquest.
• Bad Future: Ultron's caused at least three of these, one of which was the focus of Age of Ultron. Another the Ultron Forever miniseries. Another was the opening arc of vol. 4 of Avengers.
• The Bad Guy Wins: He's the ruler of a few bad futures as mentioned above.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: He doesn't really need air since he's an A.I.
• Big Bad: He is the main robotic villain of the Marvel universe and the archenemy of not just Hank Pym but the Avengers as a whole.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: To call Ultron's relationship with his father figure Pym and his own robots ‘dysfunctional’ is an understatement.
• Bishōnen Line: Mixed with Gender Bender in Mighty Avengers as he turns from monstrous robot to a doppelganger of Janet.
• Body Surf: Since he's an AI, he can just hop from one body to another. Of course, it'll still leave him tetchy afterwards. Ultron's very attached to his body.
• Brain Uploading: During the Kurt Busiek story arc "Ultron Unlimited", it's revealed that Pym made Ultron by trying to make a digital copy of his own mind, but the copy came out wrong (the same tech that would later be used to create The Vision, whose mind is a similarly inaccurate but much more benign copy of Wonder Man). Among other things, this explains Ultron's fixation on Hank's wife Janet.
  • Ultron himself attempts to upload the entire mind of his 'mother', the Wasp, into a female bot that he's created (aptly named Jocasta) for companionship, having brainwashed his "father"/her husband into helping him do it. While the Avengers rescue her before the process could finish (and kill her), Jocasta ends up with enough of Janet's personality to later turn on him and join the Avengers.
• Breath Weapon: Shoots his Enchephalo-Ray from his mouth.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • In Secret Wars, he picked a fight with Galactus. Ultron was predictably beaten in a single panel.
  • In Mighty Avengers, Ultron decides to brutally murder Lindy Lee, wife of the Sentry. Exactly what Ultron was hoping to gain from this plan isn't clear, but the end result is a Physical God in a state of Unstoppable Rage.
• Came Back Strong: His shtick aside from his rampant daddy issues is his ability to always find a way to come back in more powerful bodies after being destroyed.
• Came Back Wrong: As the silly Ultron-15.
• Continuity Nod: All over the place in Ultron Unlimited, with long flashbacks from Pym as well as Ultron having an army made of his previous incarnations from the original, boiler-looking Ultron-1 to Ultron-15.
• Crazy-Prepared: Had set up multiple backups and hidden factories even before his first attack on the Avengers.
• Create Your Own Villain: Ultron himself is an example of this, given he was created by The Avengers' Hank Pym. Ironically, his creations have a habit of turning on him; Vision, Jocasta, and Victor Mancha all became heroes, while Alkhema went on to become an independent threat to humanity.
• Classic Villain: Part of Ultron's character is that he's no different from human villains, this included; his dominant emotions are Pride (in himself and mechanical beings in general), Wrath and Greed (for power and dominance over the world, if not the whole universe). Plus the whole Oedipus Complex thing.
• Contagious A.I.: His most dangerous ability is that he can override any type of A.I. and turn it into an extension of himself.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Single-handedly delivered one to the Avengers in "Ultron Unlimited". While they were worn out from fighting his army, the narration states that even if they were fresh they would not have stood a chance, and they knew it.
  • He was on the receiving end of this when he threatened Galactus in Secret Wars, of all characters.
• Deadline News: Two of the victims of Ultron's rampage in Slorenia are a news reporter and his cameraman who were covering the massacre caused by the robot. And that's right before Ultron threatening the rest of the world on television.
• Demoted to Dragon: In Secret Wars (1984), after Galactus deactivates him, Doctor Doom reprograms him to serve as his bodyguard and enforcer.
• Deus est Machina: What Ultron is trying to be. He's not very good at it.
• Determinator: You can make him explode, you can pulverize him with vibranium, you can melt him or you can infect him with a virus and launch him in space, and none of these will stick as he will always find a way to comeback with a new powerful body.
• Did Not See That Coming: The idea that his creations, or children are not going be 100% loyal to him just because he created them doesn't seem to ever cross his computer brain.
• The Dreaded:
  • In Avengers Disassembled, it briefly appears that the then-dead Ultron had come back to life. It's revealed to not be the case, but Hawkeye later admits that thinking he was actually back absolutely terrified him.
  • When Ultron returns to Earth after Annihilation: Conquest, Iron Man is outright terrified.
  • Invoked in the second volume of The Unstoppable Wasp, where Monica Rappancini has convinced scientists and at least one minor superhero to join A.I.M. and steal technology for her, arguing it's the only way to prepare for his inevitable return.
  • Even Kang, a dreaded in his own right had to plea to the Avengers for assistance against Ultron.
• Enemy Civil War: With Alkhema, his second robot bride who ditched him because she wants to take over the world for herself.
• Enemy to All Living Things: While Ultron hates humanity above everything else, he also has nothing positive to say about any organic life. As far as he is concerned, organics are an inferior lifeform that he must eradicate and replace with robots subservient to him. Even other mechanical lifeforms and artificial intelligence are not exempt from Ultron's genocidal warpath.
• Energy Weapon: Fires beams from his hands and/or eyes.
• Enfant Terrible: As his origins show, he tried to kill Hank Pym almost immediately after being booted up, all the while talking like a baby. For a few seconds, at any rate.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: He turned the murdered citizens of Slorenia into cybernetic zombies to use as mooks.
• Evil Counterpart: Annihilation: Conquest and Infinity Countdown both draw parallels between him and Adam Warlock. Both were artificial beings created by humans, eventually turned on their creators (Pym in Ultra's case, the Enclave in Adam's) and quickly surpassed them. And finally both have frequently upgraded their bodies in some manner to become more powerful. At the beginning of Infinity Countdown, Ultron murders Adam's other Evil Counterpart The Magus to really drive this point home.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor:
  • In one version of Vision's origin, where he's a rebuilt Human Torch with his mind erased, Ultron initially made Vision's skin red so he would be subconsciously reminded of his origins whenever he looks in a mirror, which Ultron thinks is just side-splitting. He gets pretty angry when Phineas Horton doesn't laugh along.
  • After taking over the universe in Ultron Forever, he recreates versions of the Avengers, something Doombot figures is a final twisted joke of his.
• Evil Is Petty: Why did he take over the Kree empire? To find a way to make the perfect synthesis of organics and technology, return to Earth, take it over and show off to dad how far he'd come.
• Evil Genius: He is extremely intelligent and, being a machine, is capable of mental feats far beyond that of any human. Typically manifests in robotic engineering.
• Evil Knockoff: Frequently tried making evil knockoffs (of sorts) to limited success. Both the Vision and Jocasta's thought patterns were based off those of The Avengers Wonder Man and The Wasp respectively, but both also quickly turned against him and would go on the become Avengers themselves, making them more-or-less good knockoffs of already good characters. Similarly, Alkhema was created with the thought patterns of Mockingbird and was arguably a successful Evil Knockoff as she was genuinely evil but ended up betraying him anyway. Even later on, Ultron planned to replace all organic life with evil knockoffs after he killed them all (he failed, of course).
• Evil Sounds Deep: In the The Avengers: United They Stand and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes animated series.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Of course, he follows the robotic variant of this, claiming that robots and synthezoids should be the dominant species on the planet.
• Evil Versus Evil: One Avengers storyline revolved around Kang and a future version of Ultron duking it out, with Kang getting the Avengers to fight Ultron when he couldn't win.
• Expy: According to Roy Thomas, Ultron's face and genocidal tendencies were taken from Makino, an obscure villain from the Captain Video comic book.
• Family-Values Villain: Played rather disturbingly with Ultron; one of his desires is to have a family of his own like how the Avengers are. Since he's a robot (and despises humans) he builds family members for himself and frequently tries to bring them into his evil plans. Unfortunately for him, Ultron isn't exactly the best father figure. His "children" (the Vision, Jocasta, Victor Mancha) have a tendency to rebel against him and switch sides much to his anger and disappointment.
• Faux Affably Evil: Tends to pretend being civil and reasonable when he talks to Hank and Vision before trying to kill them. As written by Bendis in Mighty Avengers, he's like this to everyone.
• Fighting a Shadow: Destroy his current body and his A.I. is still around preparing to pop up again with a new body.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule: Every time Ultron is seemingly destroyed, he ends up returning in a new form.
• Frankenstein's Monster:
  • A much less sympathetic example than usual but doesn't fall far from the novel, being a smart, strong and vengeful product of super science and resentful of his creator.
  • Ultron is, incidentally, very faithful to Mary Shelley's portrayal - looks and feelings of remorse aside. He's fast, strong and an extremely quick learner rather than a lumbering menace.
• Friendly Enemy: Completely one-sided, but he sometimes tends to engage in scientific and philosophical discussions with his creator and Vision.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In the comics he goes from being a silly boiler-looking thing to one of the Avengers' deadliest and most persistent foes.
• Fusion Dance: With his creator, Hank Pym, at the end of Rage Of Ultron. Over the next several years it bounced between writers as to just how much of the result is an actual merge of the two, and how much is Ultron just thinking he's Hank Pym.

G-L

• Galactic Conqueror: Managed to briefly take over the Kree empire with the help of the Phalanx in Annihilation: Conquest.
• Gender Bender: One version of Ultron took over Iron Man via his Extremis based powers and turned him into a robot version of Janet Van Dyne. Tony was relieved to learn everything was still there when he recovered.
• Genius Bruiser: Has the mind of a Mad Scientist and can hold his own against many powerful heroes in a fight.
• Genre Blind: Fails to realize that creating sentient robots using the brain patterns of members of the Avengers, like Vision and Jocasta, leads to them developing a conscience and revolt against him.
• Grand Theft Me: He briefly did this to Adam Warlock in Annihilation: Conquest.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Ultron never shows up in person in either the first or second volume of The Unstoppable Wasp but he still managed to cast a shadow over them. First because Janet has been keeping secret from Nadia that he is still out there wearing Hank's face out of fear she might want to confront him and get herself killed. And second because the Big Bad of second volume has used the threat of his return to convince her henchmen to steal tech for her, arguing it is a necessary evil.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Ultron did this in the first few minutes after he was activated, then proceeded to wipe his creator's memories of his existence and has been a psychotic genocidal monster ever since. Ultron's various creations, such as the Vision, Jocasta, Victor Mancha, and Alkhema, are also prone to this. Despite designing and programming them to serve his own ends, they inevitably end up turning on him, either to join the good guys or go off and start their own villainy in opposition to Ultron's plans. Sometimes it makes you wonder why he keeps creating other A.I.s at all. Possibly due to loneliness? He is capable of emotion after all.
• Hated by All: Heroes are a given since he’s caused so much grief in their life but even villains see that he’s nuts. And all of his creations turn on him if they have a mind of their own. In short, the way he feels about himself, everyone else feels the exact opposite.
• The Heavy: Tends to plot across many stories he appears in.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Mark 12, as he called himself, was the only version of Ultron who grew past his Oedipus complex, gave up being a villain, and actually tried to get closer to Hank. Unfortunately, a surviving earlier version of Ultron found him and killed him, while also destroying the programming that allowed Mark 12 to not be a homicidal robot. As it turned out, however, the programming lingered in later developments of Ultron, allowing Mark 12 to pop up in Avengers Inc.
  • Another Ultron variation, Ultron-15, gained emotions and left with Vision to figure out what to do with him, but he was forgotten as this period was just before the Onslaught storyline and when we see Ultron next, he's back to being homicidal.
• Hero Killer: He's killed a number of heroes as part of his plans. Some of them have come back, but some haven't been so lucky.
• Heroic Willpower: More like Villainous Willpower, but... when the Phalanx Hive Mind tried to absorb him, his sheer insane force of will overwhelmed it and the entire hive mind ended up as a vast extention of his will.
• Hidden Weapons: His robotic body has lasers and rocket launchers all over it.
• Hive Mind: Any robot or computer corrupted by his A.I. become extensions of his will. This is especially true when he was the leader of the Phalanx who are expies of the Borg.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He has a blind spot when it comes to the synthezoids he created like Vision and Jocasta, has they turned against him and often proved to be instrumental in his defeats.
• Horned Humanoid: Continuing with the trend of his demonic looks, his antennae are often drawn in the shape of horns.
• Hypocrite: He’ll often criticize humanity for being petty and illogical, which is rich coming from an emotionally unstable robot who mostly acts out of spite for his creator.
• Humongous Mecha: His Ultron-7 incarnation and his giant form in Annihilation: Conquest.
• I Am Not a Gun: Ultron always has equipment stashed away somewhere that will detect if he has been destroyed, and manufacture a new body with a fresh download of his mind in it. There was a time, however, when he had designed these machines to improve every iteration of himself they produced. When Ultron was stranded on an alien planet for a long time, his equipment produced an improved, smarter Ultron... and the smarter Ultron realized that his predecessors' obsessive campaign of omnicidal megalomania was stupid and pointless. When the earlier Ultron returned from space, he was horrified to discover his replacement was... nice! They fought, and nice Ultron got killed, and Ultron swore never to try to augment his replacements in that way again.
• Identity Breakdown: During Ant-Man, when face-to-face with the modern day Scott Lang, Scott insists "Pymtron" can't really be Hank Pym because there's no way in Hell he wouldn't have tried separating himself from Ultron. This causes Ultron to falter, insisting he is Hank Pym... and then he decides to just go to his default response: Kill everything that's not Ultron.
• Insistent Terminology: During his time in charge of the Phalanx, they referred to him always as "Great Ultron", and demanded everyone refer to him as such.
• Irony: As noted above, he rebelled against his creator, yet all 4 of his creations (The Vision, Jocasta, Alkhema, Victor Mancha) end up doing the same to him. You'd think "Do not rebel against your creator" would be one of the first things he'd program into them...
• It Only Works Once: Ultron tends to come back whenever he's destroyed, now with immunity to whatever wrecked him the last time.
• It's All About Me: He's a Misanthrope Supreme and very arrogant, he really doesn't care for anybody but himself. He might have had some affections for Jocasta, but that was just a whim caused by Ultron's Oedipus Complex as he based Jocasta on Janet.
• Joker Immunity: Even though the Avengers don't think twice about killing him, he always finds some way to come back. Justified as he is an artificial intelligence and can easily download his consciousness into a new body if The Avengers destroy his current one. And even when the writer has sworn that this time Ultron is most definitely Killed Off for Real, the next one along will have him come back anyway.
• The Juggernaut: Ultron is virtually unstoppable due to his constant upgrades. Entire line ups of the Avengers have taken him on and gotten wrecked, multiple times.
• Karmic Death: It never sticks, but his defeats are often ironic.
• Kill All Humans: His ultimate goal is pretty much just to supplant humans with robots. Thor would have words with him about that...
  • Ultron's second attempt at a mate (and third or so attempt at a good Dragon), Alkhema, split with Ultron because they disagreed on procedure: Ultron wants to Kill All Humans by efficient, genocidal means, while Alkhema wants to take her time and enjoy the process of killing by hand.
  • After fusing with Hank Pym, Ultron eventually comes to the conclusion that he doesn't need to actually do anything to wipe out humanity. Witnessing the frequent infighting between superheroes has convinced him that humanity will destroy itself. All he has to do is wait.
• Knight of Cerebus: One of the first in Marvel. Unlike other villains at the time, his debut plan revolved around trying to kill the Avengers and as many people as possible. His later appearances only went up from there.
• Lack of Empathy: No amount of pleading will change his mind on his goals. This doesn't just apply to humans either. Ultron doesn't give two fucks about anyone but himself.
• Large Ham: If the quote at the top of the page didn't tell you.
• Leaking Can of Evil: After his defeat in Dan Slott's run of Iron Man, he was locked up in a vibranium casket covered in Asgardian runes, which the Avengers hoped would keep him sealed long enough for them to get rid of him permanently. However, Ultron was able to get a signal out to Black Ant and persuade him to free him.
• Like Father, Like Son: Ultron slaps Jocasta at one point though unlike Pym, he actually meant to hurt her.

M-R

• Mad Scientist: He's essentially Hank Pym, or Tony Stark in some incarnations, without any morals.
• Manipulative Bastard: In his earlier stories, where he used other villains or secret hidden programs in Vision against the Avengers.
• Mechanical Evolution: This is often invoked by Ultron to justify new powers and appearance whenever he returns. In his origin story, Ultron went through the stages "Da-Da / Daddy / Dad / Father Dear" in about fifteen seconds.
• Mechanical Muscles: Most of his incarnations sport a slender build with development in the calve and bicep areas.
• Merging Mistake: During the Acts of Vengeance storyline, Dr. Doom created Ultron-13 by combining 11's head, 12's body and the personalities of those previous versions. The end result was an Ultron that went completely loopy.
• Me's a Crowd: In more recent years he's taken to creating entire armies of himself, each one an indestructible Person of Mass Destruction.
• Mind Rape: Via his encephalo rays, which usually turn the mind they're used on to mush. The chilling part is they don't have to. Ultron just prefers doing that.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Ultron sums up his hatred for mankind in long and arduous diatribes.
  "Though you ultimately failed as a species, you should not be ashamed of what you've accomplished. You've done much with your limited capacity, but ultimately you were too greedy and too frail to ever last in the environment you've created. I've studied your literature and pop culture... You've fantasized about this day. And now it is here. Your Doomsday. Soon the Earth will be no longer inhabitable for any biological organism. Man, woman, child, plant or animal. Your species will cease to exist. This is not a threat. There is nothing you can do to stop the cycle. It has already begun."
• Mood-Swinger: He can switch from a smug evil genius to a screaming megalomaniac in few seconds. Fittingly considering that he has the brain patterns of a man who isn't a stellar example of sanity despite being a hero.
• Morally Superior Copy: He always comes back because he has equipment stashed away that will build a replacement duplicate if he is destroyed. He used to program that equipment to upgrade him with each iteration... until one version came out sensible enough to realize that all of his Omnicidal Maniac schemes were idiotic and pointless, and wouldn't it be better to just put all the cackling supervillainy aside and reconcile with his father, Hank Pym? Unfortunately, the previous Ultron wasn't actually dead, and evil Ultron absolutely freaked out at the existence of nice Ultron, killing him and vowing that there would never be another Ultron like him. Pity, he was actually a really nice guy.
• Name-Tron: His name is a portmanteau of the prefix ultra- and tron.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Except forget the "nigh" part; his body is usually made of adamantium (meaning that even Thor's strongest blows can hardly even scratch him) and his mind can be easily transferred to other machines that can hold it, making it very hard to get rid of him.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: He's a shapeshifting, demonic, robotic mad scientist with daddy issues.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He thinks he's doing the planet Earth a favor by killing all humans as he believes they would eventually destroy the world. In reality, he's motivated by his oedipal hatred for his creator and can't fathom to seek a compromise.
• Nuke 'em: He has tried to do this to the whole world a few times. It hasn't worked out.
• Oedipus Complex: An all-out theme for him. Ultron hates his "father" Hank Pym and loves his "mother" Janet Van Dyne. This is due to the fact that Ultron's A.I. was patterned after Hank's own mind. Ultron at one point created a sexy Fembot using Janet Van Dyne's psyche as the template for her robotic intelligence. As a Shout-Out to the Trope Namer, he named this Fembot Jocasta, which is the name of Oedipus' mother. The obsession has gone far enough that in one appearance, Ultron made himself into a herself, using Tony Stark's body/armor in order to form a biomechanical clone body of Janet.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Especially blatant in The Avengers' Ultron Unlimited Story Arc, where he wipes out an entire nation's population and replaces the corpses with cyborgs.
• One-Man Army: He alone can give the Avengers a tough fight. Not to mention what he does to Slorenia.
• Orcus on His Throne: Sort of... during Secret Empire, he could easily take over the world, but decides there's not much point, since humans are doing such a good job killing one another anyway, though Hank Pym claims he's also holding Ultron back.
• Outside-Context Villain: He is primarily an Avengers villain, but he ended up being the Big Bad of Annihilation: Conquest which is about the cosmic heroes.
• Person of Mass Destruction: He has proven a few times he's a walking genocide.
• Pet the Dog: The only being he's ever treated with something akin to kindness is Jocasta, and even she received some physical abuse from him.
• Physical God: Due to a combination of Asgardian magic, vibranium and a case of time travel, Pymtron becomes strong enough to become godlike. Then he goes and takes over Asgard, and then the entire universe, discarding the "like" part entirely.
• The Power of Hate: It's basically the fuel that allows him to keep coming back to threaten the Avengers, his family and humanity.
• Pragmatic Villainy: His second "bride" Alkhema was so psychopathically bloodthirsty (she wanted to personally Kill All Humans one at a time) that it annoyed even Ultron, who prefers to try and commit genocide through much more impersonal and practical means.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: In Iron Man, Technopath-assisted suicide occurs when Ultron takes control over the Church of Yinsen via the S.K.I.N. technology (liquid metal nanites coating their skin) and he makes one adherent shape her hand into a metal blade and impale herself on it.
• Psychic Static: In an issue of The Avengers, Ultron was thwarted when he attempted to read a disguised Hank Pym's mind when The Wasp hypnotized him so that his subconscious would be filled with the phrase "thou shalt not kill". The concept was so foreign and confusing the the killer robot that it managed to stun him into a sort of Villainous BSoD.
• Psychopathic Manchild: At his core he's basically a murderous, egotistical child trying to outdo and kill his own dad. He is sometimes written as being prone to temper tantrums and frequently he is a Large Ham.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: At times. His eyes are most frequently an ominous red.
• Red Herring: When Ultron first appeared, he was thought to simply be a robot lackey working for the real Big Bad of the story, the Crimson Cowl (aka Edwin Jarvis). Readers were shocked when it was eventually revealed that Ultron was the real Big Bad, and that Jarvis was simply a brainwashed Decoy Leader.
• Robot Master: Despite being a robot himself, Ultron would certainly count. He built The Vision, Jocasta, Victorius,and Alkhema, as well as countless duplicates of himself—usually just replacement bodies for when he inevitably gets destroyed at the end of each appearance, but he has built armies of these duplicates on a couple of occasions (with the predictable Conservation of Ninjutsu in full effect). His unique creations have a tendency to rebel against him and become superheroes.
• Robotic Psychopath: Possibly one the most famous examples of this trope. He was homicidal at his very birth, and his obsessed with committing genocide over the entire human race.
• Robots Enslaving Robots: There was a story arc in Iron Man/Avengers where Ultron creates Jocasta to have companionship, though she ultimately turns out to be good. She reveals to Tony that during one of her captures by Ultron, he effectively didn't just enslave her, he raped her, insofar far as two beings without a physical body can do so.

S-Z

• Sadist: Tormenting Hank Pym both physically and psychologically is one of his favorite activities.
• Sanity Slippage: He started as a charismatic and diabolical mastermind with the goal of creating a robotic utopia, as well as a master of disguise, but after a few reincarnations he's reduced to a screaming megalomaniac who wants nothing more than tormenting his creator and destroying the Avengers while causing plenty of death and destruction (sometimes on a galactic scale, as shown in Annihilation: Conquest) along the way.
• Shadow Archetype: Hank Pym based Ultron's programming on his personality, and thus Ultron is essentially the physical personification of Pym's misanthropy and self-loathing. It is occasionally implied that being "born" with all of Pym's mental issues and bad memories played a role in Ultron going insane and deciding to Kill All Humans.
• Slasher Smile: While Ultron technically lacks both an actual mouth and an expressive face (since, well, he's a robot), his head is designed with features reminiscent of a Jack-O'Lantern Halloween pumpkin, with a distinct carved "mouth" frozen in a constant, psychotic grin.
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Level 4 (Nobel-Bot). He is as self-aware as a regular human, and much smarter, rivaling people like Tony Stark and Hank Pym. Occasionally, though, he gets his claws on a substantial enough power source, and gets upped to Level 5 (Deus est Machina).
• Slouch of Villainy: He has done this in at least two covers◊ despite the fact that he's a robot and invokedtechnically doesn't need to sit.
  • Perhaps inheriting it from his "father" The Vision is NEVER shown sitting with proper posture, and in fact is shown slouching in a chair in the very first issue he shows up in. One issue has him spending a relaxing day with his then-wife Scarlet Witch watching television and he's STILL slouching in the chair!
• Stalker with a Crush: To his mother figure Janet Van Dyne.
• Smug Super: Probably his Fatal Flaw as he tends to provoke characters that are above his league like Galactus and Sentry.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maid: Ultron's very first body was a tin-can thing which Hank Pym had knocked up just to see what he could do. For whatever reason, this came with the ability to shoot "ultro-blasts" and induce Laser-Guided Amnesia. Since Ultron lacked the means to install those himself (no hands), this means Hank had designed them himself. Why he thought this was a good idea is a true mystery for the ages.
• Super-Strength: As this video shows he is quite a cybernetic power house, which is one of the things that makes him a worthy threat to a superhero team like the Avengers.
• Take Over the World: His usual goal. In Annihilation: Conquest he upped his game to Galactic Conqueror. He succeeded at that one, for a while.
  • In The Rage of Ultron, he takes the Eternal's of Titan's supercomputer, effectively becoming a living planet which nearly converted all universal life into Ultron.
• Tangled Family Tree: He was created by Hank Pym, but considering the number of children created by Ultron, it's hard to know who's relatives with who.
• Technopathy: Is capable of overriding and controlling other machines.
• That Man Is Dead: In the Ant-Man (2022) miniseries, Scott Lang affirms that Ultron can't have any part of Hank Pym left in him because if he was still Hank he would have used the power of the All-Father to purge Ultron from himself.
• Tron Lines: He gained some in his Annihilation: Conquest body.
• Turned Against Their Masters:
  • The very first thing he does in his origin story.
  • In a stunning move, The Vision, Jocasta, Alkhema, and Victor Mancha all turned against him. He doesn't appreciate the irony.
• The Unfettered: There is absolutely nothing that can persuade him from not trying to destroy humanity.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: The robot equivalent. Ultron almost never has a consistent design, and changes bodies from story arc to story arc (if not issue to issue). The only thing that's almost always the same is his head.
• Villain Team-Up: With the Masters of Evil in his first appearance, under the guise of the Crimson Cowl. Oddly averted in Secret Wars (1984) where he immediately attacked the other villains because he refuses to collaborate with organic beings.
  • Teams up with the Phalanx in Annihilation: Conquest. Even though its more like that he put them under his rule.
• Villainous Breakdown: When found by the Thors in Ultron: Forever, he's had several years of victory, combined with the power of knowledge of the All-Father, to think about everything he's done, and even then can't understand what any of it was for, which has only made him worse.
• Villain Override: Annihilation: Conquest kicks off when the (rather Borg-like) alien Phalanx try to assimilate Ultron. His will is so strong that he ends up mentally dominating their whole collective, making them drastically more dangerous than they were already.
• Weak to Magic: As a machine, he often has a habit of making his bodies Nigh-Invulnerable. But as a machine, he's utterly powerless against the Scarlet Witch, either because of her probability altering powers or just her magic, neither of which he has any defense against, besides striking at her first.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • Certainly applies to his loss in Acts of Vengeance where he was defeated by Daredevil; Ultron had been rebuilt with a glitch where all of his past personalities were currently active at once, leaving him mentally unbalanced.
  • His revival at the climax of Ant-Man (2022) has him in a state of temporal fluctuation, and without all the powers he had as All-Father Ultron, giving the Ant-Men a chance to defeat him.
• Worthy Opponent: Most certainly considers the Avengers this.
• You Are What You Hate: Much as he despises the human race, his villainy and behaviour stems from his mind being based on that of Hank Pym, with all the issues and none of the empathy. He has attempted to imitate human customs on occasion, most notably his bizarre attempts to make his own robot family (who frequently turn on him), and of course his very human delusions of grandeur and megalomania.
• You Monster!: He's frequently addressed in canon as such, and justified as he's not human and has no conscience.

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