Fanfic / Conversations with a Cryptid

The man was over a century old. There had to be more to it. In hindsight, it hadn't been one of Izuku's better ideas. ^note Used with Permission by the fruitloop-chan

"It seems we share a hobby."

— All For One to Midoriya Izuku

Months have passed since the defeat of All For One by All Might's hands at Kamino Ward. But any further investigation involving anything about him was quickly proven to be futile.

Enter Midoriya Izuku, with brimming determination, thinking that perhaps interrogating the supervillain himself would benefit the betterment of society. And hey, maybe he could learn something interesting about the guy to satisfy his curiosity in the process as well. So it's pretty much a win-win situation, right? Well, except for All For One, but nobody cares about him.

Unfortunately, he isn't quite prepared to face what his research would cause to everyone, and what role he would ultimately play in the near future.

A series by AMournfulHowlInTheNight. The first part can be found here.

Received a sequel in Kidnapping of a Cryptid which details the fallout of Conversations with a Cryptid.

A sequel entitled Woes of a Cryptid was published in August of 2021, revived after two years of inactivity in December, 2023 with the intention of finishing by the end of the year. That didn’t happen, but it is still being updated.

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This fanfiction contains examples of:

Tropes Recurring to Entire Trilogy

• Broken Pedestal: Discussed to hell and back between Izuku and All for One:
  • All for One to Shiragaki: Shiragaki reveres his "Sensei" as a kind, anti-establishment rebel, and his Parental Substitute. Shiragaki begins to grow more unhinged when Izuku verbally deconstructs All for One's modus operandi and All for One's more horrific atrocities. Izuku correctly pegs Shiragaki being due for a mental collapse when he realizes his Sensei's fallacies.
  • Stain to the general public: Stain is revered as a "vigilante" willing to stand up to the corrupt and decadent pro-hero system. Stain unintentionally inspired many people to join the League of Villains in protest. Izuku notes that the League of Villains would have a crippling publicity crisis if it were revealed that Stain was originally a Psycho for Hire and Professional Killer for a drug lord.
  • Sir Nighteye to Mirio. Mirio is crushed when he finds out that Sir Nighteye took Izuku as an intern as an excuse to bully and belittle Izuku out of being All Might's successor. Mirio feels that Sir Nighteye died all over again.
• Central Theme:
  • Sometimes working within the system one opposes is far more effective in changing it than attacking it from the outside. Compare All for One and Stain's attempts to take down the pro-hero system versus Izuku's legal but unintentional methods.
  • Regardless of one's reasons for abusing one's family, leaving a family behind or hurting someone, it does not make it okay. The story goes into how Hisashi's abandonment and Bakugou's abuse still deeply effect Izuku even after it finally stops.
  • The importance of maintaining one's health even in stressful situations. Izuku neglects his physical health in between his investigation of All for One, training in Yuuei and working for the Heroes Mirror. The sequel comes into how he pays for it.
• Crapsaccharine World: This is still the colorful, superhero-filled world of the canon, but the government is amazingly corrupt and dystopian. People are detained without trial. Hero support tech isn't allowed to be sold on the free market for prosthetics or other reasons. Media censorship is rampant, and discrimination and hate crimes are a notable concern for those with inhuman appearance, "villainous" quirks, or the quirkless. These ideas apply to the whole series but are made much more obvious in the second installment.
• Darker and Edgier: While not a Dark Fic, the story goes into darker territory than the source material, particularly when Izuku is kidnapped and tortured, albeit off-camera.
• Dramatic Irony: The story hints that All for One is Izuku's father from the beginning, something that Izuku fails to realize despite finding out every other avenue of All for One's life.
  • Bakugou warns Izuku that Izuku is most likely a target by whoever disappeared Tsubasa and the rest of Bakugou's old cronies. While he was right that Izuku in danger, the person who took Tsubasa would have never harmed Izuku.
• Driving Question: What is the mystery behind All For One's Quirk and identity?
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: All for One genuinely loves his family and is remorseful that he had to abandon them to protect them. Likewise, he genuinely cared for his brother as the brother is the only family he ever mentions having.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • For a supervillain who spent around two hundred years spreading terror all across the nation, All For One seems content that he never used his relatives as part of a eugenics experiment, unlike a certain hero. Izuku contemplates it probably isn't a good sign for Endeavor that even someone like All For One refused to be in the same category as him.
  • All for One abhors Fantastic Racism and hate crimes.
  • Shigaraki is genuinely horrified when he founds out what Noumu are made of and what All for One intended for Bakugou.
  • One of All for One's moles leaked Izuku's article to more credible news sources out of disgust of the government's abuses.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: All for One wanted his son to be safe and have a normal life. All for One is horrified at Izuku's desire to become a hero and the risks he takes. Subverted, as All for One regrets not knowing about Izuku's brilliance and cunning as he would have given Izuku a chance.
• Fantastic Racism: Emphasis on racism as the fic goes into the various Quirk-based discrimination various characters face in their society.
  • People with simple, easy to explain Quirks are beloved and given elevated positions in their society. Out of hundreds of vigilantes, only seven were allowed to become the first legally-backed and government-controlled pro-heroes. Which today colors which Quirks are acceptable by society.
  • Having a subversive or "dangerous" Quirk is practically a mark of Cain. Poor Shishou was discriminated fiercely for having a Brainwashing Quirk, while Eri didn't receive any true help in learning how to control her powers, as the doctors were more focused on containing her. And then there's All for One. He was originally a vigilante fighting to protect his family, and he didn't take being made illegal standing down.
  • Having Quirks that make you look non-human can make life very difficult. Gang Orca gets malicious comments from children and adults and prevented from rising in the Hero Rankings due to his appearance. Shu, who looks like he came from the Cthulhu Mythos, has limited work options due to his frightening appearance.
• Guilt by Association: A continuing theme of the fic
  • Bakugou warns Izuku to watch out for himself and named dropped this trope. All of Bakugou's cronies have vanished, and all they had in common was their association with Bakugou.
  • In the past if one person had a quirk, then their entire family would become targets.
  • All for One notes that families of criminals can become pariahs due to perceived criminality regardless of their actual innocence. Which is why he hasn't associated with his family for years, aside from supplying money.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter is called "(Blank) of a Cryptid."
• Inherent in the System: The current Quirk-based society sees that talented people like Izuku are at the bottom if they're born Quirkless or with the wrong 'kind' of quirk. People like Gang Orca or Shu have limited job opportunities and face discrimination for their appearances. Flashy Quirks are put at the top of society, whereas people with subtle or dangerous quirks can be treated as potential supervillains.
• Justified Title: The title Conversations with a Cryptid refers to Izuku's prison interviews with All for One, the titular cryptid whose existence and two-hundred-year history is disputed and gradually uncovered for most of the story. Izuku is also the cryptid due to being All for One's son.
  • Kidnapping of a Cryptid refers to Izuku's kidnapping by his father, since Izuku is also the cryptid.
  • Woes of a Cryptid will probably detail the many ongoing problems and regrets of All for One and Izuku.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
  • Conversations with a Cryptid: Izuku attempts to uncover All for One's long, long criminal history → Discovery of a two-century-long and ongoing conspiracy.
  • Kidnapping of a Cryptid: Izuku, Mineta and Mei investigate why it's illegal for pro-heroes to use their Support items for private use as prosthetics. Which reveals the government's massive human rights violations and corruption and how the anti-quirk laws are extremely unconstitutional.
• Mundane Solution:
  • Conversations with a Cryptid: How does Eri finally gain control over her powers so dangerous that professional heroes and doctors couldn't help her? All for One teaches her how to internalize a sense of time by grounding it to a tv schedule or important milestones in her life, so she doesn't go too far back.
  • Kidnapping of a Cryptid: When Mineta has Psychosomatic Superpower Outage, does he have a Training Montage or a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech to get his powers back? Nope. He sees a therapist to better cope with his mental health issues.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Conversations with a Cryptid: Izuku attempts to help to a stalled investigation of All for One by interrogating the villain himself. While in the short term, Izuku gains valuable intel, in the long term, it proves to be Izuku's undoing.
  • Kidnapping of a Cryptid: Toshinori makes a group assignment where the students of Hero, Support, General and Management Departments have to investigate media outlets and their coverage of pro-hero topics. It has resulted in Bakugou getting assaulted and landing in the hospital, Monoma getting arrested and Izuku accidentally starting a revolution.
• Not So Similar: Despite All for One and Izuku's many similarities, Izuku has deep compassion for all people while All for One has compassion for only those he considers family and no one else.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
  • Conversations with a Cryptid: All for One broke out of prison and with Eri's unintentional help, has been restored to his pre-All Might glory. All for One reveals his true relation to Izuku. Then he essentially legally kidnaps Izuku under the guise of an estranged father wanting to spend time with his rescued son.
  • Kidnapping of a Cryptid: Katsuki breaks out of the hospital he was forcibly institutionalized in and headed to Yuuei to tell the faculty of Hisashi Midoriya's true identity with the intention of rescuing Izuku. Izuku's article on the two-century-long abuses of the Japanese Government, specifically how quirk laws and the pro-hero system never went through proper legislative processes are technically both unconstitutional and illegal, causes their frail society to fall apart. Riots break out in the streets with people attacking pro-hero agencies, government offices, and police stations. The government is forced to shut down and review and revise two centuries of law. All heroes schools are shut down as their legality is reviewed. Izuku unintentionally fulfills his father's goal of having the populace turn against heroes.
• O.C. Stand-in: As of the time of the fic's publishing, very little of All for One had been revealed. All for One's character is created wholesale from the author from speculation from what was revealed of All for One at the time.
• Parental Hypocrisy:
  • Conversations with a Cryptid: All for One had many children experimented on or horrifically killed. So Izuku thinks its extremely hypocritical that All for One would rather have Izuku leave the heroics and investigating to the adults.
  • Kidnapping of a Cryptid: At one point Hisashi and Bakugou come face to face. He nearly strangles Bakugou to death, right in front of Shinso and Todoroki. That last part prompts All Might and Tsukauchi to inform Endeavor, as Todoroki has to talk to the police about the incident. Endeavor demands to know why such a violent man has any form of custody over Midoriya. All Might then tells him that Hisashi feels the same way about Endeavor and Todoroki.
• Related in the Adaptation: All for One is Izuku's father while in canon, Izuku's father is only described as being overseas.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: No. Despite forgiving Bakugou, Izuku is still deeply traumatized from Bakugou's bullying. When Izuku has self-doubt or empathizes with someone else's discrimination, he hears Bakugou's voice calling him useless or worthless
• Sinister Surveillance: Izuku strongly suspects that his neighborhood is being monitored as All for One is disturbingly knowledgeable about him and Bakugou. Most tellingly, All for One's stolen quirk "Search" allows him to track anyone the holder has met, can track Izuku despite Izuku never meeting him before and being separated by a Plexiglas wall when they finally meet.
  • The Midoriya apartment is bugged so All for One can monitor them and their financial situation at all times.
• Spanner in the Works: Discussed, as Izuku finds out that something caused All for One to put his plans on hold despite him successfully terrorizing Japan for 200 years. All for One cryptically tells him that plans change. It turns out to be Inko and Izuku as marrying Inko and having Izuku caused All for One to change all his long-term plans so he could be with them or keep them safe.
  • The true spanner is the Sludge Villain, as his attack of Izuku, is what drives All for One to escape prison.
• To Be Lawful or Good:
  • Conversations with a Cryptid:
    • Izuku was fully willing to destroy his reputation and chance of being the future Symbol of Peace by planning to go public with the information he gathered which implicates his father for being part of All for One's inner circle. Despite the impending destruction of his future, Izuku refused to allow All for One to continue getting away with his crimes.
    • Class 1-A had this dilemma when Izuku is kidnapped. With the scars of Bakugou's kidnapping, every one of them wants to help search for Izuku. But Yuuei threatened expulsion if they did so. Inko solves this by suing Yuuei for criminal negligence, and one of her demands was for Class 1-A to give additional assistance in the search.
  • Kidnapping of a Cryptid: The legal thing for Tsukauchi and Toshinori to do is report the entire truth to their superiors. Which would utterly destroy Izuku's and Inko's lives and careers, due to All for One being Hisashi Midoriya. So that forces them to use more indirect methods.
• Unreliable Narrator:
  • Izuku, to the point of being almost painful to read. Justified though, considering that he mainly couldn't see the "dad-shaped figure" sitting right in front of him.
  • When All Might takes over as the full-fledged protagonist, he pretty much becomes this for the same reason above.
• Villain Has a Point: All for One is a horrible person, but he's an extremely perceptive one. A big part of this story, especially the sequel, is how much this trope applies to All for One, as he is motivated by the most unjust elements of hero society.
  • All for One constantly disparages and criticizes All Might and his practices. While most of the time, it's undeserved, All for One does have a point that All Might passing down his quirk to Izuku has only been detrimental towards him.
  • All for One isn't wrong when he points out that Hero society in Japan discriminates against people with stereotypically "villainous" Quirks and that U.A. is "a military academy disguised as a high school."
  • All for One states that Izuku's continuing disregard for his health will cripple him. He's not wrong.
  • All for One's rant at Bakugou comes from a place of love for his son and genuine anger that Bakugou got away with violently bullying Deku for so many years and encouraging Deku to kill himself.
  • All for One points out that Bakugou got with his abusive behavior and bullying due to neither the schools nor his parents stopping him.
  • All for One's final opinion of the anti-government riots in the finale of Kidnapping of a Cryptid.
    Hisashi: And I wanted to be a normal person, but this is what happens when the government starts arresting people for being born wrong instead of doing the wrong thing.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame:
  • All for One applauds Izuku for not caring what others think of him and breaking the rules to pursue his goals. Izuku notes it was the closest anyone got him to reconsider his career path.
  • To Izuku's annoyance, Hisashi is extremely proud of the defamatory expose on All for One Izuku wrote and published. To the point that he wallpapers his office with the article.
  • Izuku is mortified that his expose on the government incited the populace into rioting. Hisashi is so proud that his son succeeded in six months what Hisashi couldn't in 200 years.

Tropes Unique to Conversations with A Cryptid

• A Day in the Limelight: After spending 11 chapters on Izuku's perspectives, chapter 12 brings Toshinori as the new main focus.
• Abuse Mistake: Izuku initially mistakes Inko's refusal to talk about his father and trauma as signs of past domestic abuse until she clarifies that he never physically harmed her.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Unfortunately for the Tartarus prison guards, All for One grew a tolerance for the sedatives they use on him. So once their guards are down when they think they have him sedated, All for One slaughters them all and escapes.
• Act of True Love: Corrupt Corporate Executive Hisashi Midoriya was extremely protective of his investments, despite that he refused the idea of a prenup out of love for Inko. Hisashi had it written that Inko would get part of his income and she and their children will inherit everything if he passes.
  • All for One puts aside his deep and justified hatred of Toshinori Yagi to rescue Izuku from certain death without any strings attached.
• Adults Are Useless: Growing up, the adults in Izuku's life were ineffectual at best or outright participating or abetting Izuku's discrimination at worst.
• Affably Evil: All for One comes across as this to Izuku. He despises Fantastic Racism, shows genuine concern for Izuku's health and intelligence and has a love for trashy gossip tabloids and conspiracy theory websites. He is also the head of a 200-year-old criminal empire.
• Affluent Ascetic: With the Midoriyas' working-class apartment and lifestyle, one wouldn't think that the husband is a CEO and media baron of several major news corporations.
• All Take and No Give: Hisashi Midoriya is the Giver, being Inko's absentee and rich husband who gives Inko and their son Izuku as much money as they need. Unfortunately for Inko as the Taker since she quit her job to marry him and have Izuku, she has no way of reprisal. Since she is dependent on him for income and for Izuku's tuition, she can't divorce him for disappearing on her for 8 years. Inko can't refuse his help because it would be difficult to get a job since she has been out of the workforce so long and she has no family for support.
• Almighty Mom: When Izuku wants permission to interview All for One, he ignores All Might's refusal. He asks his mom instead. Izuku jokes that he would be more afraid of his mother if All for One and Inko showed up at his school for a parent-teacher conference.
• Alone with the Psycho: Downplayed with All For One and Izuku's meeting. Not only that their session is heavily monitored from a different room, Izuku is deliberately invoking this trope while All For One is fully restrained.
  • Played absolutely straight in the final chapter All for One takes Izuku to an empty park and neutralizes his Quirk so Izuku couldn't run away. All for One doesn't actually want to hurt him and the worst Izuku gets is hugged, but it's not like Izuku actually knew that.
• Always Second Best: Endeavor gets upstaged at his own publicity gala for him becoming 1# Hero just by All Might showing up.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Izuku forces the investigation on All for One open with one:
  Izuku: So who is All for One? Do we know anything about him beyond what you told me before? He's been imprisoned for months now.
  • Izuku has a knack for them both intentionally and not, such as asking who was responsible for transporting All For One's allegedly dead body and bringing up that bodies are supposed to be stripped naked before medical examinations.
• Asshole Victim: Invoked, but ultimately averted, with Bakugo's old school friends, all of whom have disappeared. While they were all involved in bullying a quirkless kid, being kidnapped and most likely turned into Noumu is a stitch too far.
  • Played straight with Endeavour. Izuku, Todoroki and many others enjoyed seeing All Might outshine him at Endeavour's own gala and publicly humiliated when Todoroki calls him out.
  • All for One's prison psychiatrist deliberately delayed All for One's message to All Might despite the fact Izuku's life was threatened because she was jealous of Izuku's success. She hoped she could force All for One's cooperation with her for an academic paper by bargaining the message's delivery. All for One is absolutely gleeful when he reduces her to fine red paste in his break out.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Bakugou may be a bully and has a history of cruelty to Izuku, but he does help Izuku when the latter is in genuine emotional distress by sending Todoroki to help him. While Bakugou is still a massive asshole, he can be kind in his belligerent way.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Inko was a fearsome corporate executive who worked with several different hero law firms and time has not made her lose her touch as she effortlessly takes over Ashido and Yaoyorozu's budding fashion line and sues Nedzu and Yuuei to do her bidding.
• Bait the Dog: At first, All for One's hatred for hate crimes make him seem sympathetic. Only to reveal that he had a child disappeared and experimented beyond recognition for bullying a quirkless child. To make matters worse, he had many other children disappeared for the same reason.
• Bank Robbery: One of the early evidence of All for One's existence was the bank robbery of all the names of the First Generation Quirk holders through teleportation. The only proof of the robbery being a security camera recording.
• Been There, Shaped History: All for One was alive during the rise of quirks. He founded Japan's earliest vigilante association, which became the first supervillain league when it was outlawed. Behind the scenes, he has backed many government officials, doctors, and police. He also owns several major news corporations.
• Blessed with Suck: All for One's stolen Quirk Search allows him to track anyone he has met in person (with an upper limit of 100 people), allowing him a form of clairvoyance. Unfortunately since he was trapped in prison, this meant all he could do was watch his son be slowly tortured to death while his attempts to get help are stymied.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: All for One's morality is unconventional to say the least:
  • All for One has no problem having children tortured and killed. He is against the idea of Yuuei Academy as he sees it as a glorified military school making socially palatable Child Soldiers.
  • All for One is strongly against bigotry and institutionalized racism but has no problem mocking people for having weak quirks.
• Bookends: The first chapter is called Greetings of a Cryptid. The final chapter is called Greetings of a Cryptid: Part 2.
• Breather Episode: Interlude of a Successive Cryptid, where Izuku, Todoroki and Toshinori have fun ruining Endeavor's publicity gala. Izuku gets a makeover, a new suit, a job offer and accidentally stops Shigaraki's attempted assassination.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Chapter 2, Izuku refuses to explain to All for One in their second conversation how he got his leg injury. Izuku then comments:
    Izuku: You haven't grinded enough reputation with me to unlock that conversation. If you reach my maximum reputation level, you might even unlock my tragic backstory.
  • In the final chapter:
    All for One: I saved your life twice. Can I finally hear your tragic backstory?
• Calling the Old Man Out: Todoroki publicly call out Endeavor for trying to ride Todoroki's coattails to gain himself public goodwill. Then Todoroki reinforces it by giving an interview to The Mirror.
• Career Versus Man: Inko quit her job as a corporate executive to marry her boss Hisashi Midoriya. It may resulted in Izuku but man did she pay for that decision.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In the first chapter, a villain attack with someone with a liquid body is mentioned on the radio. Chapters later, its revealed that the Slime Villain escaped prison and attempted revenge by having his friends kidnap Izuku.
• Chekhov's Skill: All for One mentions missing an elemental Quirk he has which he can't use due to his oxygen mask. It's the firebreathing quirk that Hisashi Midoriya was known to have. After being restored to full health by Eri, he uses it to kill the Sludge Villain and save Izuku.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Chapter 11 ends with Izuku losing consciousness after suddenly being hit on the head by an unknown person.
  • If the previous chapter wasn't bad enough, the ending of chapter 12 seemingly implies that Izuku has been recovered brain-dead and All For One has escaped from Tartarus.
  • Chapter 14: All for One reunites with Izuku out of prison and teleports him away from home. All Might realizes who Hisashi Midoriya really is and realizes that Izuku is in his clutches.
• Closest Thing We Got: The government knows about the public's discontent with Endeavor. However with crime on the rise and Endeavor's the hero with the most captures and rescues now that All Might retired. So the government backs him out of necessity.
• Coattail-Riding Relative: Endeavor heavily endorses Shouto so he could get himself public goodwill by proxy. Shouto ends this by publicly calling him out.
• Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: The Slime Villain broke out of prison and had his friends kidnap Izuku to torture him to death in revenge for getting him arrested. Unfortunately, Izuku is All for One's son, who's very displeased with how his son was treated and teaches them why Japan is terrified of him.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Chapter 12 revealed that it happened to Izuku in his time of captivity after chapter 11.
• Contrived Coincidence: Who would have thought All Might's successor is the only son of his archnemesis?
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Hisashi Midoriya owns major news outlets such as the Heroes Mirror, Heroes Weekly, Quirk Focus and Darkweb conspiracy website the Conspiracy. He's also a massively fishy character implied to be working for the League of Villains.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: When Shigaraki and Kurogiri attempt to confront Izuku in his home, he has no mercy for Shigaraki. Izuku immediately grabs Shigaraki by the throat and strangles him to make sure neither Shigaraki nor Kurogiri are planning anything.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Izuku criticizes Overhaul in his methods of making Quirk-cancelling bullets out of Eri's blood. Izuku points out that Overhaul could have harmlessly harvested Eri's cells from a saliva swap and had her genetic code replicated in a laboratory. Then Overhaul could have made himself untouchable by the heroes and government, be rolling in money and have a ton of good publicity because he could had the cure for cancer and other incurable diseases.
• Desperately Craves Affection: After being away from his family for so long and cut off from all human contact in prison, the first thing All for One does is hug his son and is affectionate with him. Izuku is rather creeped out since he knows All for One is still a murderous supervillain.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Hisashi Midoriya is revealed to have understandable reasons for not contacting Inko and Izuku for 8 years. Being All for One, he had to clean up loose ends for his criminal empire. After his fateful fight with All Might, he stayed away so his numerous enemies wouldn't find his family.
• Deadpan Snarker: Izuku of all people.
  • He tends to get snarky with All For One.
    All For One: How are you still alive? You haven’t even had access to [your Quirk] for a full year.
    Izuku: Well, after years of Bakugou and his friends, I’m relatively good at judging which limbs I can live without.
  • Izuku also mouths off at Shigaraki when Izuku catches him and Kurogiri attempting to infiltrate Endeavor's PR gala.
    Izuku: “Shigaraki, I wasn’t aware that you were gatecrashing. You should have gotten into the group photo, it would have livened it up,”
• Did I Just Say That Outloud: Izuku has his moments.
  • When he realized that All For One is basically drawing attention away from himself and focusing it on Izuku so he could withhold information, he unconsciously says all that in front of All For One, much to his embarrassment. The guy sure finds the whole things funny.
  • He did this again when he realized All For One's other alias, which is "Sensei", is an honorific for some professions, including doctors. It explained how he's faking his own death if he really is a registered doctor or at least, has connections with them. Cue panicking Toshinori and Detective Tsukauchi.
• Didn't See That Coming: All for One didn't expect someone that wasn't connected to him or the criminal underworld to come after Izuku.
• Disappeared Dad: Izuku's father, Midoriya Hisashi. A corporate executive who fell in love with and married a secretary in his company, then disappeared off the face of the earth shortly after Izuku's birth. He still supported his family financially and didn't divorce Inko, but that's all. Gee, ya think there's something fishy there?
• Disproportionate Retribution: All for One made several kids who bullied Izuku for being Quirkless into Noumu fodder. Note that these were elementary and middle schoolers.
• Distressed Dude: Izuku is kidnapped and it ends very badly for him.
• Dramatic Shattering: When Toshinori first sees Izuku after his makeover, he is so shocked that he drops his glass.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Frequently Izuku comes to logical and horrifying conclusions when he tries to connect the pieces of an explanation to him to what he already knows.
• Face of a Thug: Shu looks like he came out of the Cthulhu mythos but is otherwise a sweet and shy man. Unfortunately he has limited job options as no one wants to hire a man terrifying to look at.
• Faking the Dead: All for One was able to fake his demise after his crippling battle with All Might due to having one of his minions in charge of disposing his body.
• Fallen Hero: Many vigilantes of All for One's time ended up becoming villains when the first Quirk laws came to be. Despite the fact they were protecting their families and communities, they were outlawed due to not having flashy Quirks or popularity of the heroes the government chose to sponsor.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Deconstructed. After Deku is kidnapped, Toshinori bemoans that the government's censorship and suppression of important information, such as not informing the public about the existance of Trigger did more harm than good and allowed villains to continue to operate with impunity. Played with in that Japan is not fascist, but merely a repressive democracy.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Izuku's Selective Obliviousness gives him strong Nerves of Steel to maintain a level head but causes him to miss subtle but vital clues until it's too late.
  • Izuku constantly picks up more and more responsibilities due to his Chronic Hero Syndrome. Izuku ends up with so many things to do that his classmates rarely see him and gets so little rest that he gets kidnapped in a moment of distraction.
• Fate Worse than Death: Izuku's childhood bully, Tsubasa was experimented on until he was turned into a monstrous Noumu. The process of which is implied to be very painful. The fact Noumu!Tsubasa was killed by Stain is a mercy.
• Faux Affably Evil: Izuku knows that for all of All for One's civility and cooperation lies a ruthless master criminal who's not afraid to murder, mutilate and silence anyone who gets in his way.
• Fiery Cover-Up: All For One had done this to cover his tracks after he stole dementia patients' Quirks.
• First-Name Basis: All For One insists on calling Izuku by his first name, much to the latter's displeasure.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the ride to Tartarus, Izuku hears a radio report about a villain with a liquid body.
  • All for One tells Izuku when he shows up to their meeting sick that Recovery Girl should be fired if she can't diagnose a cold.
  • All for One is a lot more talkative with Izuku than anyone else, and doesn't take the chance to go Hannibal Lecter on him. He addresses Izuku by his given name sans honorifics, as though he considers them to be close. He's also very concerned with Izuku's health, despite Izuku being a One for All holder and thus supposedly his new archnemesis, and the only excuse he gives -'you aren't All Might or Nana'- is decidedly lacking (neither were the other six holders, and he still killed off them).
  • All for One can follow Izuku with his 'Search' quirk, despite not having met him (the Quirk can only track people he's seen), and has been tracking him with it for some time. Medical devices also showed that he got stressed when Izuku was in dangerous situations, and his mood improved when talking to Izuku.
  • All for One is relatively chatty with Izuku, but whenever Izuku asks questions pertaining to his civilian identity and family, he gets very evasive and warns Izuku that he (Izuku) really doesn't want to know the answer.
  • On the other hand, All for One is very curious about Izuku's family, despite it being of no direct consequence to their rivalry. He even offers a few defenses for Hisashi, and Izuku's Brutal Honesty about the consequences of his dad's abandonment gets a reaction from All for One.
  • All Might, Shigaraki, and Kurogiri all freak out when they see Izuku in formal wear, and All Might later comments that Izuku looks a lot like All for One. Inko says that Izuku takes after his father.
  • Izuku's childhood bullies have disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but he himself remained untouched, even though Izuku, a quirkless child of an unemployed single parent, was an easier target.
  • Shigaraki and Kurogiri are under the impression that Izuku had All for One's support and are genuinely surprised that he doesn't.
  • Hisashi Midoriya owns several magazines that All for One likes, knows a doctor who was in All for One's inner circle, and it's suspected that he was involved with the League of Villains. He also acted older than he looked (Okay, except when Inko was involved) and despite being a fourth-generation quirk user, his child ended up quirkless. He still communicates with his employees, but his handwriting recently took a dive, as if he'd had to re-learn it. Almost as if he was All for One, founded the League of Villains, had received nasty injuries recently, and was actually a first-generation quirk user.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: All for One was originally one of many vigilantes in the time of the first generation of Quirk users. Then he organized his fellow vigilantes when he and his contemporaries were outlawed. Now, he's been terrorizing Japan for 200 years and almost total control of the criminal underworld.
• Geeky Turn-On: Luckily for Hisashi, Inko genuinely enjoyed Hisashi's complaining about legal violations and liberal political views.
• The Ghost: Hisashi Midoriya and his influence on his family is a major part of the story but he is never present. Subverted. He's one of the main characters.
• Gilded Cage: How Izuku views his mother's marriage. Trapped in a marriage with a distant, uncontactable husband who still strangely paid for his family living expenses. Inko couldn't divorce him considering that she couldn't afford to financially support Izuku on her own.
• Glassy Prison: To monitor All for One at all times, the Tartarus staff have him in a cell with a clear reinforced glass panel.
• Gone Horribly Right: Izuku name drops Yaoyorozu and Ashido as his suit's brand at a gala to give his friends some positive recognition. Unfortunately, it gave them so much recognition that people outright tried to commission suits from them believing they were a genuine company!
• Grew a Spine: After being a Nervous Wreck for most of the story, Inko was finally had enough when Izuku is kidnapped and nearly tortured to death. Inko sues Yuuei for criminal negligence of their students and the lawsuit is severe enough to bring Nedzu to his knees. She refuses to allow Izuku back to school until her demands for better security, more transparent medical treatment and real medical professionals are met. She and Hisashi agree to have Izuku to undergo surgery to repair his damaged arm and make have a full medical rest.
• Hannibal Lecture: Averted several times by All For One, much to Izuku's bemusement. Despite the rising opportunities to turn Izuku's words back at him, All For One wholeheartedly refused to do it.
• Happily Married: Inko and Hisashi's marriage. Well, or at least for the first three years. It went downhill from there...
• Had to Be Sharp: Growing up in a society where the Quirkless are heavily discriminated against, Izuku absolutely had to develop thick skin, be analyze cost-risk benefits and forge toward his goals no matter what. Izuku had many people from his doctors, his teachers and his classmates attempt to force him to give up. Some used words, others like Bakugou used force. The only reason Izuku manage to survive but to get into Yuuei was by sheer determination.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: With a haircut and custom-tailored suit, Izuku ends up looking rather suave and handsome at Endeavor's gala.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Who would've thought that All for One is a romantic?! He abhors the idea of marrying someone to produce strong children instead of marrying the person one loves.
  • Inko used to been a ruthless corporate shark and still knows the ins and outs of the trade despite being out of the business. Once given the chance, Inko quickly gets back into the game.
• Honor Before Reason: All for One used his real name for his marriage and when he starts a family as proof of his love for them. Too bad this would expose him if anyone finds out the family's connection to him.
• Hypocrite: All for One disparages Endeavour for making his own family into a eugenics experiment. This is the same man who committed many eugenic experiments on the families of his followers and many hapless victims.
• I Read It for the Articles: Played for Laughs. When All for One finds out Izuku also reads the Conspiracy, a niche dark web news forum for criminals:
  Izuku: I read it for the articles on Quirks.
  All for One: That was my excuse too. No one believed me.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Despite his chronological age, a restored All for One still has the physical age of "a stupid twentysomething".
• Important Haircut: Izuku gets his curls trimmed so he could pull his hair back for a black-tie event. The haircut gives him a striking resemblance to his father. Which freaks out All Might and Shigaraki, who catch the resemblance to All for One.
• In Medias Res: The story opens with Izuku simply wondering how the hell did he ended up in the same room as All For One, before moving backwards to a couple of months that quickly leads to that scene.
• Irony: Inko and Izuku believe that Hisashi Midoriya might be an alias for the man that married Inko and not the name's true name. Which made Inko terrified of confronting him because it would render her marriage null and void. Since the Midoriyas were dependent on Hisashi's income, the revealing him would mean the Midoriyas won't get any income and be left destitute. Despite all the other things that he's been hiding, Hisashi Midoriya is in fact All for One's birth name.
• It's Personal: All for One personally despises All Might out of the past One for All users because All Might took something from him—namely, the chance to have a family life; see Even Evil Has Loved Ones above.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: All for One comments that Izuku has a set of these.
  All for One: It's called optimism, Izuku.(...) I shouldn't be surprised at your lack of understanding. The longer we've spoken the more I've become convinced that you've rarely had enough happiness in your life to even be familiar with the concept of optimism.
  Izuku: You're probably not wrong.
• Just Eat Gilligan: Hearing firsthand how unhappy Inko feels for her marriage now, Izuku quickly asks her why she didn't get a divorce (She can't because she's too dependent on his financial support, for the record).
• Just Following Orders: Shu is too afraid of losing his job that he doesn't questions his boss' orders despite wondering why does Shu have to keep the Midoriya finances a secret from Izuku and Inko themselves
• Killing Intent: When All for One sees Izuku's maimed body, All for One releases Killing Intent so strong that neither Toshinori nor the prison guards could get near him.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Despite his nature as The Paragon for his classmates, Izuku is really cynical due to a lifetime of horrific cruelty and systematic discrimination that no one was able or willing to help him with. Although Izuku refuses to let any of that stop him and continues to be heroic person in spite of it.
• Knight Templar Parent: All for One is fiercely protective of Izuku. This leads him to torturing and experimenting on most of his son's childhood bullies, set Shigaraki up to be his fall guy, spies on his family to extremely invasive levels and slaughters everyone in his prison and his son's kidnappers.
• Late to the Tragedy: When Izuku investigates All for One's history, he uncovers many of the villain's past atrocities. One of which was the horrific experimentation of a former childhood bully.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: After Izuku is restored, his memories are up to before he was kidnapped. Considered he was nearly tortured to death, its for the best.
• Laser-Guided Karma: All For One put children through brutal experiments for bullying his son without any kind of mercy. Years later, his son would be kidnapped and tortured almost to death for an entire week, and he's completely helpless to watch him until the last minute.
  • When villains who had a grudge against Deku knock him out, kidnap him, and put him in a coma, All for One takes the first chance he has to go to their hideout and bloodily murder them all. They're so badly maimed that the coroners have to rely on dental records for identification.
• Lethal Diagnosis: Izuku's kidnappers torture him so badly that by the time he was rescued, he was brain dead. All the doctors could do was offer to euthanize Izuku. Not on All for One's watch.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: According to Izuku, Inko's "Attraction of Small Things" works on internal organs.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Invoked. Izuku tells All for One that he hasn't grinded enough relationship points for Izuku to tell him how he hurt his leg. Then he says that if All for One maxes out enough reputation points with Izuku, Izuku will tell him his tragic backstory.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • No one in Yuuei outside of Izuku and Toshinori knows about Izuku interviewing All for One.
  • Izuku knows very little of his father, not even his name, or anything of his mother's past due to Inko's trauma over Hisashi's abandonment.
• Loophole Abuse: Normally Eri would have to worry about accidentally erasing someone from existence if she rewinds time on someone too far. All for One is over 200 years old and makes himself her test subject without worry.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Hisashi Midoriya, if Shu's reminiscing is anything to go by, dropped a few dozen IQ points when around Inko. He even married her despite knowing how bad association with Japan's top supervillain would be for his family.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Izuku finally realizes that All for One is his father when All for One shows an Informed Consent form for Izuku's impending arm surgery, signed by both his mother and father. When he asks All for One why he's the one presenting the form, All for One tells Izuku that he had to sign it, so he might as well show it to Izuku.
• Madness Mantra: In his search of All For One's wrongdoings, Izuku stumbles upon one story about an elderly man who was driven into madness by losing his Quirk. The only thing he could do until his dying days was repeatedly saying "He took it".
• Mama Bear: Yuuei learns to fear Inko as she rakes them over coals for negligence and mishandling of student safety.
  • Midoriya notes to All for One that his mother's limited Telekinesis can be used to pull on a person's organs.
• Marry for Love: Hisashi Midoriya, despite being a corporate overlord, married Inko for love instead of any practical gain.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Inko was in her twenties when she got married. All for One is already over 200 years old.
• Meaningful Name: For the whole Midoriya family.
  • In Ch.9, Izuku wonders why someone would name their child Hisashi, which translates to "a long time ago". Fitting for a centuries-old being. The same kanji makes an appearance in Izuku's given name.
  • Inko is usually translated as "parakeet". The author makes reference to her "bird in a gilded cage" status in the same chapter, confirming it was intentional in the comments.
• Mirthless Laughter: When Izuku states that All for One should not concern himself with him considering his poor treatment of Shiragaki and hatred of All Might, All for One lets out a quiet bitter chuckle.
  It was here that All For One chose to laugh, a quiet, almost bitter chuckle that did more mockery than anything in the weeks prior. It wasn't a happy sound to Izuku's ears. If only he knew why.
• The Mole: How All For One managed to escape further post-mortem examination after his battle against All Might despite being pronounced dead at the scene. He has allies inside the medical field and police department to cover up his survival.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: All for One is a legitimate medical doctor, he isn't called Sensei for nothing.
  • Dr. Tsubasa considering his cruel Brutal Honesty to Izuku and the fact the most sold his own grandson to become a Noumu.
• Moral Myopia: Villains seem to embrace this mindset
  • The Sludge Villain has no problem torturing a child to death but is infuriated when all his friends are slaughtered in retaliation
  • All for One is aghast at his son putting his own life in danger despite that All for One has no problem with hurting children.
• Mugging the Monster: The villains who kidnap Izuku. To be fair, it was really unlikely that the guy they targeted for personal reasons just so happened to be the only child of one of the most terrifying supervillains on the planet. All for One still redecorates their hideout with their insides, and roasts alive the one who managed to escape.
• My God, What Have I Done?: All for One is genuinely remorseful for what his abandonment did to his family.
• Necessarily Evil: The Tartarus prison complex is a huge human rights violation on par with Guantanamo Bay, but its the only way to prevent villains like All for One or Stain from going large.
• Nerves of Steel: Izuku has an uncanny ability to stay calm and maintain a straight face when dealing with the likes of All for One or Shigaraki. While Izuku is still a Nervous Wreck at his core, he refuses to show weakness to them and refuses to give two damns about them.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Izuku attempts to uncover the mystery of All for One's quirk to get some desperately lacking intel. Not only does this make Izuku suspicious as hell since he succeeded where professionals failed it directly results in All for One breaking out of prison.
• No Immortal Inertia: A woman with a longevity Quirk rapidly aged to death and died in her sleep after All for One took her Quirk.
• No Social Skills:
  • Despite only having a single proper conversation with Izuku, All For One proceeds to call him by his first name without his consent in their very next meeting. In Japanese culture, calling someone by their first name without a honorific implies a very close relationship, which Izuku and All for One don't have. In hindsight this may actually have been a form of parental affection.
  • Midoriya Hisashi also counts, apparently. According to Shū, he would spend his time in Inko's office to make idiotic expressions at her and dramatically declared whose life in public policy he'd be ruining for the day. Fortunately for him, Inko thought it was incredibly romantic.
• Not Me This Time: When someone accidentally blew up the Heroics Department classrooms on one night, everyone logically assumes that Bakugou is the culprit. He's not amused by this. It turns out to be due to one of Mei Hatsume's experiments.
• Obfuscating Disability: Izuku accused All For One of feigning his blindness to a certain degree, considering that he could still correctly perceive All Might's facial expressions multiple times at Kamino Ward. He, at the very least, has a capability to recognize his surroundings.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: When pressed about his feelings over his father, Izuku completely dismisses his father's influence. When All for One attempts to make Izuku reconsider, Izuku shuts him down by pointing out the most negative impact his father had on both himself and his mother. He has no idea that he's being so brutally honest with Hisashi himself.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After finding out Tsubasa's fate, Bakugou goes out of his way to contact his old elementary school and middle school lackeys whom he disregarded as extras. To his horror, he can't find any of them.
  • All For One is surprisingly agitated when Izuku gets kidnapped and tortured, especially given that he should have no reason to care about it whatsoever. The final chapter reveals that he had all the reason in the world.
• Office Romance: Inko was at first a secretary and Hisashi was her boss.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Izuku is too busy handling Shigaraki and Kurogiri's trespass at the party in chapter 6, Todoroki could be heard ranting at his father to stop trying to control every aspect of his life. Keep in mind, he deliberately did all of that when there's a bunch of reporters and journalists watching the whole thing.
• Only Mostly Dead: After his rescue, Izuku is found brain dead but thankfully All for One had Eri return Izuku's body back to its unharmed state prior to his kidnapping.
• Open Secret: Endeavour's family life is non-existent in the public eye and his wife is never seen. Many reporters recognize Endeavour's behavior and actions as signs of a quirk marriage but risk lawsuits and censorship if they speak out.
• Original Character: Mai Maki, anti-Endeavor reporter and editor-in-chief of the Heroes Mirror and her Australian counterpart, Zach Smith, editor of Heroes Mirror's Australian branch and internet hero critic.
• Out of the Frying Pan: In chapter 13, Izuku is attacked by the Sludge Villain but rescued and also kidnapped by All For One, who's arguably even more dangerous if not for his friendly demeanor towards Izuku.
• Papa Wolf:
  • All For One, in his own villainous, murderous way—as the villains that kidnapped Izuku found out to their detriment. Also see Disproportionate Retribution above.
  • After All For One escapes from the prison and believing he was going to harm Izuku, All Might is ready and raring to confront the latter, even if it meant his possible death, all so he could buy some time for Izuku to escape.
• Parental Neglect: Midoriya Hisashi barely exists in his son's life, saves for being an obscure,yet dutiful parent who keeps paying for his living expenses. Which he acknowledges and attempts to make up for later.
• Parental Substitute: Toshinori is this for Izuku, since Hisashi is such a non-entity in his life.
• Pet the Dog: All For One teaching Eri how to control her Quirk. Though it was ultimately for his own purposes, he certainly could have been a lot less nice about it.
• Pity the Kidnapper: For different reasons than usual. Izuku's kidnappers end up as chunky salsa after All for One's Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Guess they probably shouldn't have kidnapped his only child.
• Politeness Judo: Izuku successfully catches Shigaraki and Kurogiri off guard in their attempted kidnapping of him by being a good host and giving them tea and snacks while threatening to murder them if they step out of line.
• Power Nullifier: All for One steals a Quirk with this ability from an unnamed government official to contain Izuku.
• Pre Nup Blowup: Shu, who's Hisashi's subordinate and lawyer, recommends to his boss that he get a prenup before his marriage to Inko. To his surprise, Hisashi not only refuses but has it explicitly written that Inko is entitled to half of his wealth.
• Promoted to Scapegoat: Izuku theorizes that Shigaraki's true purpose is to be All for One's fall guy so Shigaraki will get all the blame while All for One could retire quietly.
• Quitting to Get Married: Both Inko and Hisashi quit their jobs as executive and CEO when they marry. Inko quits to start a family, Hisashi quits to spend time with his new wife and run his criminal empire.
• Rags to Riches: It happened to someone who's heavily implied to be Kurogiri. Born Quirkless, but somehow managed to develop a powerful Warp Quirk and becoming filthy rich in the process by some assistance from All For One.
• Randomly Gifted: As it turns out, All for One and his brother were born to an ordinary Quirkless couple back when Quirkless people were still the majority and were nothing special genetically. Yet, All for One is a premier example of a winner of the Superpower Lottery and his brother is an example of Heart Is an Awesome Power.
• Revealing Cover Up: Izuku finds out the depth of the public's hatred of Endeavour by tracking the many commenter blocks, article take-downs and utter lack of discussion.
• Revenge: The Sludge Villain broke out of prison and attempts revenge on Izuku for getting him arrested in the first place. He and his friends had Izuku kidnapped and attempted to torture him to death.
• Revenge Before Reason: The Sludge Villain attempts to kill Izuku after All for One kills his friends rescuing the kid. The guy fails to consider that maybe, All for One wanted Izuku alive, and that attacking someone protected by the man who just invoked the Chunky Salsa Rule on all your co-conspirators is a bad idea. All for One promptly sears him to death with a fire breath quirk.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Izuku finds out that the magazines and the companies All for One enjoys are all owned by his estranged father Hisashi Midoriya. Inko and Izuku moved to their current apartment at Hisashi's insistence, and it turns out the place is monitored by All for One. Hisashi's money supply to the family increased at around the time All Might punched All for One's face off. Hisashi was the one to recommend Dr. Tsubasa, who turned out to be deeply involved with All for One and sold his grandson to the Noumu project. Izuku correctly concludes that his dad's a criminal, but incorrectly concludes that Hisashi is one of All for One's direct subordinates. Hisashi isn't a subordinate, he's All for One himself.
  • Bakugou points out that if someone was specifically targeting people around him, Izuku was probably also in danger. And he was, but for reasons entirely unrelated to his bullies' disappearance.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Izuku is rescued, All for One cleans house. He left the Tartarus prison complex and Izuku's kidnappers a pile of rubble, blood and viscera.
• Secret-Keeper: Hisashi Midoriya has an unwilling one with Shu. Shu handles the Midoriya finances and sends them their funds on his boss's commands without ever seeing him in person. Shu knows something is seriously wrong and wanted to tell Inko. Unfortunately, Shu knows that Hisashi could fire him in retaliation and Shu couldn't find a job outside of Hisashi. Shu is overcome with remorse when it reveals it to Izuku.
• Secretly Wealthy: To Izuku's surprise, the Midoriyas are loaded. Helps that his dad is a CEO and a media baron that owns several major news companies.
• Selective Obliviousness: Izuku had to develop this as a coping mechanism to willfully ignore the systematic discrimination and bullying he faced in order to pursue his goals. While this trope gives him Nerves of Steel, it causes Izuku to ignore All for One's more subtle hints because he lacks the context and desire to figure it out.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Despite Endeavour's massive lack of popularity and criticism against him, the government needs him as their attack dog. The government censors much of the hate against Endeavour.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Izuku dressed as one in Endeavor's hero agency's annual PR ball. He apparently pulled this off really, really well.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: After hearing Izuku dismiss his biological father, All for One points out that without his father, Izuku wouldn't exist. Only for Izuku to reply that if he didn't exist then he wouldn't be complaining or having to deal with exams.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Despite how much Toshinori hyped up his enmity with All for One and All for One's general dislike of One for All users, All for One holds no grudge against Izuku and acknowledges that Izuku has nothing to do with his hatred.
• Spotting the Thread: Izuku notes that All for One knows a lot about Izuku but is missing a lot of information as well. When All for One admits that it was due to negligence, its very telling. Negligence implies that All for One has the duty to care for Izuku despite them never meeting each other before.
• Streisand Effect: In-Universe The hero magazine "The Mirror" gets most of their publicity from all of Endeavour's attempts to sue them over their accurate articles on him.
• Stress Vomit: When Izuku finds out Tsubasa's fate when he puts two and two together, he vomits in his wastebasket and starts sobbing.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Izuku, who greatly resembles his father, which is an upsetting fact for Inko. The resemblance even gives Shigaraki and All Might moments for pause.
  • It's revealed that All for One looks like an adult Izuku with black hair, less round face and a different complexion.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Izuku knows that no one was going to save him so he wants to be the hero that he never got to have.
• The Bad Guy Wins: All for One successfully escapes prison, restores himself to his past glory, evades suspicion for himself and Izuku, rescues his son, slaughters most of his son's enemies and reunites with his family.
• The Bet: All for One bets that unless Izuku gets Endeavor on the cover of Heroes Mirror, All for One won't speak to him anymore. Izuku unintentionally fulfills the bet and uses it as an excuse to continue their regular meetings.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: Endeavor's security team at the gala arrive after Izuku scares Shigaraki and Kurogiri retreat as an extension of Endeavor's incompetence.
• The Don: It becomes increasingly clear that All for One is less of a supervillain and more of a mob boss with superpowers.
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: Kurogiri and Shigaraki teleport directly into Izuku's apartment, which he doesn't take kindly since Inko had barely left.
• They Look Like Everyone Else: To Izuku's disappointment, the fully restored All for One looks looks like a normal person that he would see on the street.
• Time Skip: It takes four in-fic months for Izuku to be approved to join the investigation and for the prison to arrange him to interview All for One after he initially volunteers himself.
• Trauma Button:
  • Formalwear and business wear is this to Inko since her husband only wore suits and they painfully remind her of her husband's unexplained abandonment.
  • Poor Iida was catatonic when Izuku was kidnapped and tortured due to his brother's crippling.
  • When Shiragaki sees Izuku in a suit, he has a meltdown in sheer terror and confusion. All for One is a bit confused that it supposedly happened from seeing Izuku with a haircut. He most likely recognized Izuku's resemblance to All for One.
• Triple Shifter: Izuku maintains his grades, trains his Quirk and his martial arts, is a superhero-in-training, does research on behalf of the police and regularly interrogates Japan's most fearsome super-villain. This kills Izuku's social life and proves to be his undoing.
• Trying Not to Cry: Both Toshinori and Bakugou have watery eyes trying not to express relief at Izuku's recovery.
• Unequal Pairing: Inko was a secretary for the HR department for the Heroes Mirror. Hisashi Midoriya was the CEO of the company she worked for and was the one to hire her. Deconstructed as Inko had no way of retaliating against Hisashi when he abandons her and Izuku without a reason why.
• Villain Takes an Interest: Upon finding out Izuku's competence in Quirk's analysis, All For One rather seriously ponders whether he and All Might should switch students with each other or not.
• We Need a Distraction: Zach distracts a mob of paparazzi away from Izuku's hospital release by yelling that a hero's sex tape is on sale online.
• We Will Not Have Appendixes in the Future: Hisashi joked that he was a mutant since he still had the extra jointed toe despite having a quirk. Makes sense since he was a first-generation quirk user.
• "Well Done, Dad!" Guy: As shown with his genuine joy for Izuku's safety, All for One wants to reconcile with Izuku and become father and son in truth.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 3: Motivations of a Cryptid. Izuku finds out that he lived through one of All for One's atrocities when he discovers the fate of childhood bully Tsubasa. Unlike canon, Improbable Infant Survival is nonexistent here (although to be fair, Tsubasa is implied in canon to have something to do with the winged Noumu).
  • Chapter 11: Condition of a Cryptid. Izuku is still kidnapped and has been missing for a week. The story switches to Toshinori's perspective so Izuku's fate isn't immediately apparent. Inko has had enough of Yuuei and sues them for criminal negligence. All for One goes out of his way to contact Toshinori; he knows where Izuku is and needs Toshinori's permission to rescue him. Izuku is rescued, but is found horrifically mutilated which All for One takes poorly. While Izuku is taken to the hospital, All for One escapes.
• Wham Line: This conversation in chapter 8.
  Izuku: You're not actually Japan's most prolific supervillain.
  All For One: Then what am I?
  Izuku: You're Japan's most prolific vigilante.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Averted by Izuku, who is neither sad nor angry by his father's absence in his life. The only problem he has is the fact that his negligence had badly affected his mother. Talking about how it with All For One even seems to make the latter feel guilty about his abandonment.
• Who's Laughing Now?: All for One was originally a vigilante who was trying to protect his family and working alongside with his brother, the First One for All wielder. But then unauthorized Quirk use was deemed illegal and out of hundreds of vigilantes, only seven were permitted to become the first pro-heroes. While All for One didn't make the cut, his brother did. In protest, All for One gathered his fellow vigilantes and formed the League of Villains. From then on, All for One terrorized Japan, for two hundred years and become the most feared supervillain.
• Why Are You Not My Son?: All for One makes it clear that he admires Izuku's intelligence and cunning and wants him as his own successor. All for One doesn't even consider Shiragaki as his child despite Izuku pointing out at multiple occasions that All for One is effectively Shiragaki's adoptive father since he raised him since childhood. Which is doubly ironic considering that Izuku is his biological son.
• Would Hurt a Child: All for One and his associates have no problem torturing or killing children.
  • Izuku's kidnappers have no problem torturing him to near death.
• Would Harm a Senior: All for One has no problem hurting the elderly either, seeing how he burned down a retirement home full of his victims.
• You Do NOT Want To Know: After much effort has been put to disclose All For One's past, Izuku notes that the only thing left to discover is his real name. All For One immediately warns him not to do that, for fear of the social consequences that would befall his own family.

Warning: The following folder contains unmarked spoilers for Conversations with a Cryptid. VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED

Tropes Unique to Kidnapping of a Cryptid

• A Mistake Is Born: Izuku is the result of an unplanned pregnancy due to All for One not realizing that he was still virile despite his advanced age.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: Izuku is only a teenager but acts as Eri's parent when he's with her.
• Apathetic Teacher: Mineta and Tsuyu hatch a scheme to get the former suspended for groping the latter but every teacher either ignores his actions or encourages him. It took two months for Mineta to get suspended and he admits later he had to be extra obnoxious for it to happen.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In response to a reporter asking him if Hisashi is a supervillain:
  Izuku: He murdered all of my friends, used their corpses for cannon fodder and then tried to strangle the one that got away, and he won't stop hugging me.
• Bait the Dog: For four chapters, All for One shows genuine love and affection to Izuku despite his rather stifling protectiveness and made rather valid points. Then Chapter 5, All for One shows that he still a horrible person when he assaults Bakugou in broad daylight in front of Izuku, Todoroki and Shishou.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Conversations With A Cryptid, All for One jokes that he and All Might should switch apprentices. By the final chapter of Kidnapping of a Cryptid, they did. Shiragaki starts to help All Might out of sheer spite, and Izuku unintentionally helps All for One take down the government.
  • A rather literal one occurs when Izuku comes back from Hokkaido with a cinderblock for "research purposes." This brick reappears when Izuku takes it with him to visit Bakugou and leaves it, allowing Bakugou to use it to break out of the hospital.
• Brutal Honesty: When Monoma's parents attempted to have Toshinori contest Monoma's arrest for trespassing. Toshinori replied that its Monoma's entitlement that made him think he would have gotten away with trespassing, which is a result of their poor parenting.
  It wasn’t the job of the school to teach the students how to be decent human beings, after all, that was preliminary knowledge and if young Midoriya had turned out to be to an excellent human being then absolutely no one had an excuse.
• Bullying a Dragon: When All for One pays a visit Bakugou in the hospital, Bakugou persists in calling Izuku useless even after the guy had warned him that doing so again would lead to Consequences, and proving that he was indeed willing and able to badly injure him (this being why Bakugou was in the hospital in the first place). All for One follows through on his threat by stealing Bakugou's quirk.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Izuku refuses to call All for One dad and pointedly calls him by his given name. All for One is ok with it as it is still better than what Endeavor gets from his own family.
• Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': To rig his odds of ending up Izuku's project partner, Mineta needed to get himself suspended. So Mineta and Tsuyu decide to have Mineta get caught groping her so he would get suspended. Unfortunately, they underestimated how many Apathetic Teachers Yuuei had, who flat out didn't care or encouraged it. It took months for Mineta to get caught and suspended.
• Can't Stop the Signal: Izuku unintentionally reveals the government's injustice to the world when his article is published and leaked to the media and the populace. This article is what breaks people's faith in the government and pro heroes.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: In Conversations of a Cryptid, the earliest evidence of All for One's existence is a video of him teleporting into a bank that had a list of all the First Generation Quirk Users and stealing the list. Izuku slows down the recording to see the list. The list confirms that Hisashi Midoriya is All for One's true name and the only external connection to All for One's true identity.
• Chekhov's Gun: Toshinori decides to make a cross-division group assignment for students to investigate various new outlets in hopes of distracting the Heroes Mirror and other news outlets. Working on this school project leads to Izuku discovering the massive government corruption.
• Downer Ending: Due to Izuku's article being released to the public, the injustices of the Japanese Government were made public. However, this comes at the cost of society completely collapsing. The government has entered a shut down, the Hero System is under massive scrutiny placing it in jeopardy, funding has been cut for all Hero Schools like U.A., forcing Class 1-A to disband, riots are erupting all over Japan, and criminals in Tartarus like Stain are at risk of escaping justice due to improper handling of their crimes. The world as Izuku knew it is effectively over.
• Everyone Has Standards: Doctor Yuasa and Hisashi are horrified when Izuku tells them that Recovery Girl refused to heal him after Izuku had crippled his arm in the Summer Camp Arc as that outright violates the Hippocratic Oath.
• Evil Is Petty: All for One rules the underworld, is a two-century-old Serial Killer and uses his great power to skip to the front of lines.
• Exact Words: When Hisashi expresses surprise that Izuku didn't help with a hostage situation at an elementary school, Izuku claims he helped as best he could, but he's not in the best shape at the moment (due to a broken arm and months of inactivity). Izuku defused the entire situation himself but could've done it in half the time if not for his broken arm.
• Exiled to the Couch: Because they haven't seen each other in years, Inko and Hisashi live in separate houses.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Hisashi Midoriya is strongly against his son Izuku from being a superhero. One as the top supervillain, Hisashi wants Izuku to avoid people from finding out their relation, which could destroy Izuku's life. Two, he rather justifiably thinks that Izuku will get himself maimed or killed. Third, he knows how smart Izuku is and believes that Izuku could be more successful in other careers.
• Foil: Endeavor to All for One. Both are mighty men in both society and actual physical power with families they abuse and/or neglect. However, Endeavor is eugenicist, who sees his wife as a broodmare, treats his unfavored children like disposable pawns and treats his favored son like a trophy. All for One sees Inko as the love of his life and loves Izuku dearly and neglected Izuku out of a sense of over-protectiveness.
• For Your Own Good: Inko and Hisashi force their son to go on medical leave due to Izuku's previous disregard of his health. They decide to keep Izuku out of Yuuei until the school gives in to their demands of increased security, proper adherence to medical procedures, and for Izuku to make a full recovery even though Izuku could fall behind his studies or get kicked out.
• Frame-Up: Mei Hatsume was framed so that one of her inventions destroyed part of the school. She's furious because she's banned from her labs and suspended from school.
• Freak Out: When Izuku finds outside evidence that Hisashi Midoriya is All for One's true name, he has a panic attack. Izuku is terrified that people will find out of All for One's true identity and find out Izuku's connection to him and attack their family.
• Gilded Cage: Izuku gets to spend time with his father in a comfortable apartment that's painted in bright neutral colors, has plenty of nice furniture and have his every move monitored 24/7.
• Given Name Reveal: Izuku finds out that Hisashi Midoriya is All for One's true name when Izuku finds his name on the list of First Generation Quirk users.
• Gone Horribly Right: Mineta had to get caught groping Tsuyu as part of a Zany Scheme to get suspended. To Mineta's horror, it took so long for him actually to get in trouble that he become desensitized to sex.
• Gossip Evolution: Toshinori tells Mononma's parents off for their poor handling of Monoma's entitlement issues. When Hisashi hears it:
  Hisashi: I heard that Monoma’s family marched down to the school after you implied that baboons wielding kitchen implements would have greater competence in raising children than whatever methodology they turned to for child-rearing. And would produce children with better manners to boot.
• Henpecked Husband: All for One is over 200 years old and has been terrorizing Japan and ruling its underworld for that long. Inko Midoriya is sweet and fiercely intelligent Housewife. When they reunite again, All for One does what he can to stay on Inko's good side and bows to her demands. Which is rather justified since she's understandably furious with him abandoning their family and returning without a word and All for One is trying to get her not to divorce him.
• Hilarity Sues: A dramatic example as Inko sues Yuuei for criminal negligence after Izuku is kidnapped and Recovery Girl for medical malpractice for her unlicensed and uninformed medical treatment of Izuku. For the criminal negligence suit, Inko gets the backing of another woman whose child died in one of Yuuei's exam. For the medical malpractice suit, Inko has the backing of the Japanese Medical Association!
• Hoist by Their Own Petard:
  • Japan took the common law approach to accelerate court resolution of superhero cases. It bit them in the ass when Inko successfully sues Yuuei, which causes a massive scandal and knee-capped the hero industry.
  • Izuku's neglect of his health and physical well-being becomes his undoing as he gives Hisashi and Inko a legitimate reason to pull him out of school and cause a massive scandal for Yuuei.
  • Recovery Girl already made things worse for herself by refusing to allow other medical professionals heal her patients, but she shot herself in the foot when Izuku reveals to Hisashi and Doctor Yuasa that she outright refused to heal him anymore after Izuku crippled his arms. They are both disgusted by Recovery Girl's unethical behavior and have her banned from school premises along with her getting disbarred from practicing medicine period.
  • Due to the government favoring a controlled populace over human rights, all anti-quirk laws, the apprehension of villains, censorship rules and the pro-hero system had to skip the judicial and legislative process. The regulations even contradict the Japanese Constitution and no evidence that the current government had followed Parliamentary procedures. Which means everything they had done was illegal. When Izuku's article reveals these facts to the media and the general populace, the government's hold immediately broken down. That has led to mass riots, and a government shut down.
• Honor Before Reason: Izuku wants to force Hisashi to tell Inko the entire truth despite it being simpler and faster if Izuku told her himself.
• Hostage Situation: On paper, Izuku is spending time with his dad pending surgery to get his arm fixed. It's technically true but misses the fact that his dad is holding him, hostage, to prevent Izuku and Toshinori from acting.
• Hourglass Plot: At first Endeavor is the abusive and powerful Control Freak of a parent that trapped Shouto through his physical might and his media dominance that Izuku sees right through. Then Izuku is kidnapped by his father, All for One who keeps him trapped through his power and media dominance. Shoto even notes it during their temporary rescue of Izuku that he and Izuku have similar sperm donor problems.
• I Reject Your Reality: Bakugou refuses to admit that Izuku is a genuine threat to him and refuses to recognize that he wronged him through his horrific bullying. When Izuku gives Bakugou his quirk back, Bakugou recognizes Izuku's strength but not the bullying.
• Immortal Procreation Clause: All for One is immortal while Izuku is a regular mortal.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Hisashi makes one about how he was the awful one, and his brother was wonderful aka All For One and One For All. Izuku asks to go back to his mother when he figures it out.
• In Love with the Mark: All for One originally planned to have Inko killed in the crossfire of his battles with All Might and deliberately got close to her. He ended up falling in love with her.
• Insult Backfire: Izuku is advised to use a pen name reflective of someone he doesn't like and chooses A41. All for One considers it a compliment.
• Insurance Fraud: Hisashi theorizes that Hatsume Mei was framed for the Heroics Department classrooms as part of an insurance scam on behalf of Yuuei.
• Jail Bake: When Bakugou Katsuki is forcibly hospitalized and is under nurse guard, Izuku visits and gives him a heavy bag of homework. Izuku takes advantage of the fact that Katsuki's parents trust him to sneak Katsuki a cement brick. Katsuki uses the brick to break a window open and escape.
• Jerk Ass Has A Point: At one point while Deku is recovering from surgery and after a kidnapping that nearly ended with his death Endeavor encourages Todoroki to watch out for Deku and keep him safe, saying that he doesn't want there to be a need for him to be protected and guided through a throng of paparazzi.
• Kangaroo Court: Izuku and Shu discover that neither All for One, Stain or any apprehended villain in Tartarus were given a trial. No warrant or real evidence was linking them to their arrests. The fact that charges were never brought has also wasted time as limitation statutes approach. By the time new laws and regulations were put in place, most crimes would be too old to be prosecuted, a large amount of evidence considered illegally gained, and one cannot be charged for a crime retroactively if there was not already a law for it. The one exception to this is most likely murder charges, which never have time limitations.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch:
  • A complicated example. On the one hand, plenty of readers were glad to see Endeavor wind up a literal dumpster fire, and Toshinori suspects All For One thought Izuku would get a kick out of it, too. On the other hand, it's horrible news for our heroes because All For One just proved that he could swat their very best like a fly.
  • Another complicated example when All for One nearly strangles Bakugou. On the one hand, Bakugou got away with physically and verbally abusing Deku for years, and is rightly furious about how he'd encouraged Deku to kill himself at a very low point in his life. On the other hand, he's a mass murderer who puts a teenager with anger management issues that could be better dealt with via therapy in the hospital.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Does not hide the major reveal of the previous fic that All for One is Izuku's father.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Despite Izuku's and All for One's many similarities, ultimately Izuku has empathy for other people while All for One cares only for his family and no one else.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Deconstructed with Mineta. Its shown that his perversion is an attempt to self-medicate his unrecognized depression. While he enjoys ogling girls, even he was disgusted that no adult bothered to stop him. He becomes significantly less perverted once he starts attending therapy.
• Mirthless Laughter: Hisashi laughs at the irony of Izuku accidentally succeeding in six months what he had been trying as All for One for 200 years: causing people to turn against the government and pro-heroes.
• Mundane Utility: All For One uses one of his quirks to skip to the front of the line at grocery store check-outs without people noticing. Two hundred years have not taught him the virtue of patience; it seems.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Doctor Yuasa treated one of Recovery Girl's former patients, but it was too late for the patient. As a result, Doctor Yuasa spend years campaigning to draw attention to Recovery Girl's medical malpractice and Yuuei's shady handling of their students. When he gets to treat Izuku, its a chance to save someone from Recovery Girl before its too late.
• Not Hyperbole: All for One promises if Bakugou ever calls Izuku useless again or threatens him, he will either rip his fingers off or make something karmic happen to him. When Bakugou does so out of spite, All for One has Bakugou hit with Laser-Guided Karma for his bullying of Izuku by making Bakugou quirkless.
• Not What It Looks Like: Toshinori fears that if Izuku's relation is revealed, Izuku will be accused of being the Yuuei mole.
• Open Heart Dentistry: Recovery Girl's hero license only allows her to give first aid on crime scenes. Despite that she practices surgery, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, physiotherapy, sports medicine, pediatric medicine, and general practice, all without licenses or schooling for any of them. Subverted that it's implied that Izuku's crippled right arm is due to her and several students died due to improper medical treatment.
• Pet the Dog: After talking with Mirio, who genuinely didn't realize Sir Nighteye was bullying Izuku and promises to apologize for missing it, All for One restore's his Quirk.
• Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Mineta's Sticky Ball quirk loses their stickiness when he becomes desensitized to sex. Mineta regains his powers after seeing a therapist to better cope with his depression and sexual dysfunction.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Mei Hatsume is trying to fight the government patent system which refuses to allow Support item for private uses, despite the utility of Support items as prosthetics.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hisashi Midoriya has hated Bakugou for a long time due to the latter's cruel treatment of his son Izuku through most of their childhood. So when Bakugou is alone and defenseless during his hospitalization, he verbally tears Bakugou a new one:
  Hisashi: You haven’t noticed, Bakugou? You’re the most disliked person in your class. One of the best achieving, yet they have nothing but contempt for you. For your attitude, for your mannerisms, for your complete lack of social skills(...)For your lack of control and temper. You’re a liability, which is why you failed and they succeeded.
  Bakugou: Fuck off. You don’t know anything.
  Hisashi: What an excellent view. We must be on, what, the tenth story? I know plenty Bakugou. I know that your father was so worthless that your mother had to chase him. That he’s a spineless, pathetic wimp that’s at the beck and call of his emotionally abusive wife. That not once in all your years has he ever defended you from her stupidity about strength and weakness, as though she were a chimpanzee frolicking about in the jungle as opposed to a functional human being raising a vulnerable child.
  Bakugou: I turned out fine.
  Hisashi: Oh? Is that why my son beat you in your first combat simulation? Is that why he had his provisional license before you? My disadvantaged boy, so new to the world of violence, still surpassed you. It’s almost like there’s more to life than having a Quirk and money. For all that my son once lacked, he still had more than enough substance to his personality to utterly destroy you in all the ways that matter.
  Bakugou: Deku is as fucking useless as he always will be. Nothing can fucking change that.
  Hisashi: Ah, Bakugou, remember what I said about calling my son that name?
  Hisashi: (( Grabs Bakugou by the neck ))
  Hisashi: This Bakugou, is why Tomura saw such likeness to himself in you. Another spoilt, emotionally driven brat who’d step on others to achieve their goals. A menace to society.
• Remembered Too Late: Izuku writes an article exposing the Japanese government's abuses of power and queues it to be published later. Izuku completely forgets about due to major events until he finds out the article's publication has driven people to riot.
• Revenge by Proxy: This is All for One's favorite method of dealing with his enemies to break them.
  • All for One's horrific experimentation of Tsubasa was revenge on Tsubasa's grandfather for ruining Izuku's life with his Brutal Honesty in his diagnosis.
  • The fact that Toshinori doesn't have any family is what leads All for One tracking down Nana's surviving family like her grandson and her daughter.
• Schmuck Bait: All for One threatens to hurt Bakugou if he dares to insult Izuku again. Bakugou dares him to do something about it. All for One then strangles Bakugou.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Toshinori and Tsukauchi resolve to find a different way to take down All for One without risking the livelihood of the Midoriyas.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After being disregarded and stifled by his parents and his doctors, Katsuki breaks out of the hospital the moment he can.
• Side Bet: Shu and Maki had a bet going that their boss was a supervillain, with the latter claiming there was no way they could pay for all those Endeavor lawsuits legally.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: Hisashi Midoriya is over 200 years old, has a 16-year old kid and looks like a "stupid twenty-five-year-old."
• Surprise Pregnancy: All for One was shocked that he was virile enough to sire children when he accidentally impregnated Inko with Izuku. It turned out to be a result of his vitality quirk.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: Bakugou and his former cronies hate Izuku with the implication they're unconsciously afraid of him. Despite Izuku's quirklessness, Izuku's observation gave him an intimate knowledge of their quirks, which includes their weakness. All for One verifies that Izuku could have maimed Bakugou even when he was quirkless had Izuku been driven to do so.
• There Are No Therapists: Despite the fact the Class 1-A has been traumatized by the past school years to the point of not sleeping, it isn't until All for One and Mineta bring it that the UA faculty consider getting mental health professionals involved.
  • Averted for Mineta, whose mental health improves once he sees a therapist to the point that he willingly stops being a pervert.
  • Hokkaido's mental health institutions are being shut down due to a corrupt administrator stealing all the budget. As a result, Hokkaido becomes a hellhole due to mentally unstable quirk users being let out with nowhere else to go.
• True Companions: Class 1-A. They enact an elaborate plan to get in contact with Izuku by getting suspended to be his study partner. They happily catch up with Izuku when Todoroki temporarily frees him from his father's clutches. They stage a breakout for Bakugou and plan to later free Izuku.
• Villainous Rescue: Izuku was ambushed by the Sludge Villain attempting revenge but is rescued by All for One who burns the villain alive with his fire breath.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 13.
  • Inko was born Inko Shimura, making Nana Izuku's grandmother and Shigaraki his first cousin.
  • Izuku was not Quirkless before getting One for All. His original Quirk is All for One.
  • Chapter 14. The publication of Izuku's expose has lead people to rioting against pro-heroes and the government. The government is forced to suspend all hero schools as they go through the past century of legislation.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Despite All for One's possible ties to the medical community being discussed in the previous fic, it never comes up.
  • Whatever happened to Recovery Girl once she's disbarred from practicing medicine and from Yuuei.
• You Are Grounded!: Izuku is on medical leave from Yuuei due to his kidnapping, but in spirit, he's grounded. Izuku is forbidden to do any hero work due to his impending surgery, and his parents fully intend him a long recovery due to Izuku's previous neglect of his health.
• You Are What You Hate: All for One despises Abusive Parents like Endeavor and Mitsuki Bakugou. He frequently invades Izuku's privacy, disregards what his son wants, keeps Izuku isolated and feeling helpless. Not to mention his treatment of Shiragaki.

Woes of a Cryptid

• Batman Gambit: Shigaraki pulls off a double layered one to help capture Dabi. First, Dabi will definitely go after Endeavor while the latter is in the hospital. Second, if they live stream the attack, All For One will almost certainly continue his pattern of stealing quirks and snatch Dabi's allowing them to arrest him. (Though it's actually Izuku stealing the Quirks)
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Izuku starts dealing with the riots by using Kurogiri's Warp along with his own All For One to snatch the Quirks of rioters.
  • Endeavor's suggestion for dealing with the reveal of how many villains never got trials is to go over old court case records and keeping an eye out for forgeries or other discrepancies. Something he notes could be done without the constant rioting or people attempting to break open prisons.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: To quote the embodiment of Izuku's All For One:
  All For One: He could actually be Endeavor's son, I suppose, but does it matter when he hasn't had anything to do with the family for years? He's a dime a dozen serial killer with excuses that'd make Freud blush. We doing Todorokis' a favour by cleaning up this mess for them.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: People attempting to catch All For One stealing the Quirks of rioters on camera merely makes it easier for Izuku to steal them in the first place.
• Not Me This Time: Despite what Shigaraki and the authorities think, it's not the original All For One stealing Quirks from rioters but Izuku, who's trying to peacefully end the riots.
• Metaphorgotten: Izuku describes Hisashi's reaction to being given Dabi's Quirk as "It was like a kicked puppy, if the puppy was two hundred years old, a mass murderer and kicking it as hard as possible was a service to society."
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Recovery Girl has to deal with an entire council of these in order to do literally anything with her Quirk. Under normal circumstances, she'd be accompanied by a single supervisor who would approve or disapprove of her Quirk usage but current circumstances are such that she can't even save someone who's dying until the council makes a decision. If Endeavor is to be believed, one of the council members actually died of old age before they reached a verdict.
• Rage Breaking Point: Shiragaki points out that A41's government expose was only so effective thanks to previous revelations working to undermine the people's faith in the government and heroes system. With the failures of heroes, police and government fresh on their minds, the revelation that the government was running on illegal powers was the last straw.