Characters / League of Legends: Jhin

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Jhin, the Virtuoso

Alias: "Khada Jhin"

"In carnage I bloom, like a flower in the dawn."

Voiced by:
Quinton Flynn (English/Original)
Brian T. Delaney (English/Current, Legends of Runeterra-)
Claudio Serrano (European Spanish)
Óscar Flores (Mexican Spanish)
Show Hayami (Japanese)
Renan Gonçalves (Brazilian Portuguese)
Yeong-Jae Pyo (Korean), Sergey Kunitsky (Russian)
Appears in: League Of Legends Zed, Legends of Runeterra

"Art requires a certain... cruelty."

Jhin is a meticulous criminal psychopath who believes murder is art. Once an Ionian prisoner, but freed by shadowy elements within Ionia’s ruling council, the serial killer now works as their cabal's assassin. Using his gun as his paintbrush, Jhin creates works of artistic brutality, horrifying victims and onlookers. He gains a cruel pleasure from putting on his gruesome theater, making him the ideal choice to send the most powerful of messages: terror.

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Jhin is a Marksman/Catcher hybrid that excels at meticulously setting up his enemies' demise with long-range crowd control followed by devastatingly powerful burst damage.

• His passive, Whisper, has two separate effects:
  • Death in 4 Acts makes Jhin's basic attacks use an ammo system, forcing him to reload after four shots, but also making his fourth shot guaranteed to critically strike for bonus damage based on the target's missing health.
  • Every Moment Matters prevents Jhin from gaining attack speed from any source other than leveling up, instead converting bonus attack speed into bonus attack damage. His critical strikes also deal less damage than usual, but also grant Jhin a short burst of movement speed whenever he critically strikes.
• With his first ability, Dancing Grenade, Jhin throws a canister at a nearby enemy that then bounces to up to three additional enemies, damaging them. Each target it kills increases the damage of the next bounce.
• His second ability, Deadly Flourish, passively marks enemies slowed by a Lotus Trap or recently damaged by Jhin or his allies. When activated, Jhin fires an extremely long-range shot in a target direction that damages all enemies in its path and stops upon hitting an enemy champion. Hitting a marked champion briefly immobilizes them and grants Jhin his Every Moment Matters movement speed bonus.
• His third ability, Captive Audience, passively stores charges, up to two. When activated, Jhin spends a charge to place an invisible Lotus Trap at a target location that will bloom when an enemy walks close to it, slowing nearby enemies before exploding for damage. This ability also has another passive, Beauty in Death, that will spawn a blooming Lotus Trap at the corpse of any enemy champion that is killed by Jhin.
• With his ultimate ability, Curtain Call, Jhin assembles his sniper rifle and channels for a few seconds, taking aim at a huge conical area in front of him. While in this state, he can fire up to four powerful sniper shots that stop upon hitting an enemy champion, damaging all enemies in their path based on their missing health, slowing and revealing them. The fourth shot will critically strike for massively increased damage.

Jhin's alternate skins include High Noon Jhin, Blood Moon Jhin, SKT T1 Jhin, PROJECT: Jhin, Dark Cosmic Jhin, Shan Hai Scrolls Jhin, Damwon Jhin, Empyrean Jhin, and Soul Fighter Jhin. Legends of Runeterra exclusively includes Pulsefire Jhin and Maestro Jhin, and Wild Rift exclusively includes Supervillain Jhin.

In season 3 of Teamfight Tactics, Jhin is a 4 cost Dark Star Sniper. With his Whisper ability, he passively attacks at a fixed rate, converting each 1% of bonus attack speed he has into .8 attack damage. Every fourth shot also deals bonus % attack damage. He returns with the same abilities in season 4 as a Tier 4 Cultist Sharpshooter using his Blood Moon skin. He was removed in the Festival of Beasts mid-set update, returning in season 6 using his base skin as a Tier 4 Clockwork Sniper. His ability was changed to Curtain Call, which retains the attack speed conversion passive from previous seasons but loses his empowered fourth shots in exchange for an active effect. On activation, Jhin assembles his sniper rifle for his next four basic attacks, each firing piercing shots that deal bonus percent attack damage to enemies they hit, reduced for every target beyond the first, with the fourth shot being guaranteed to critically strike and dealing even more damage based on enemies' missing health. He was removed in season 7, returning in season 8's Glitched Out!! mid-set update using his Empyrean Jhin skin as a Tier 4 Riftwalker Renegade. His Otherworldly Flourish ability returns to using the attack speed conversion and 4-shot passives of his season 3 and 4 iterations, but each empowered fourth shot instead fires a piercing bullet at the lowest health enemy, dealing bonus percent damage to all enemies hit which is increased based on their missing health and reduced for every target beyond the first. In season 9, he returns to using his base skin as a Tier 1 Ionia Deadeye. In this iteration, his Curtain Call ability no longer grants him an attack speed conversion passive, and on activation instead fires a single piercing shot at his current target, dealing massive physical damage to the first enemy hit which is reduced for each subsequent enemy. His class was changed to Vanquisher in the Horizonbound mid-set update due to the removal of the Deadeye class. In season 10, he uses a TFT original skin and is a Tier 5 Maestro Big Shot. His Maestro origin is a unique trait that grants Jhin the same attack speed conversion passive from most previous iterations. His ability, Concerto of Demise in D Minor, passively grants Jhin bonus mana per basic attack, and on activation summons a Grand Finale Rifle on an empty slot on his player's bench. Once at least 4 Rifles are on the bench, Jhin begins conducting his Rifles to attack enemies in his place which each deal modified physical damage, firing at the same enemy and generating mana for Jhin at the same rate as before, with every 4th volley dealing increased damage.

In Legends of Runeterra, Jhin is a 4-mana 4/4 Runeterra Champion who casts Deadly Flourish on attacking, which does 2 damage to all stunned enemies. When you've played 12+ Slow spells, Fast spells, or Skills he levels up, gaining Quick Attack and upgrading his skill to Curtain Call, which does 4 damage to all stunned enemies and the enemy Nexus. His Origin is The Virtuoso, which allows you to incorporate any follower which has a Skill into your deck regardless of region, and casts a Lotus Trap for every 3 Fast spells, Slow spells or Skills you cast while you Behold Jhin, which deals 1 damage to the enemy Nexus and also stuns the weakest enemy if Jhin is in play. His Champion Spell is Jhin's Dancing Grenade (4-mana Slow spell that deals 1 to a unit and, at the start of the next round, gives you a Second Bounce, a 0-mana Slow spell with Fleeting that deals 4 to a unit).

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A-J

• Achilles' Heel: Tanks. Jhin draws his strength from incredibly powerful critical hits and execution power, but he has significant trouble making dents in those who have high health and/or armor, enough to stay well above his threshold for Injured Vulnerability that his damage is balanced around. Most marksmen are able to overcome tanks with high attack speed and appropriate itemization to augment their DPS, but Jhin not being able to change his attack speed significantly reduces his options, so if an enemy is able to shrug off his burst damage, he could be in serious trouble.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: For players who are not too keen on manually zooming in/out the screen often and/or having to click on the map to see far, Jhin's ultimate has the screen immediately zoomed out so that you can see the full extent of his firing range.
• Artificial Limbs/Bling of War: One of his arms and both his legs have a brassy, mechanical look that gives the appearance of artificial limbs, but eventually it was confirmed that it's just armor. Unfortunately, the art team mistakenly drew him with ball joints in his splash art. Amusingly, he appears in Teamfight Tactics as a Clockwork unit, a class which is otherwise populated by champions with mechanical limbs.
• Ax-Crazy: Don't let yourself be fooled by his quiet and calm demeanor: he's a psychotic mass-murderer and among the most twisted characters in the game.
• Batman Gambit: His entire plan in Zed's comic hinges tropes on Zed making the sort of rash instinctive decisions that he would make.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Appears to believe this of himself.
  Jhin: I'm misunderstood, beauty can't be evil.
• Cane Fu: Carries a meticulous cane-like object on his hip at all times. It's actually loaded, and Jhin uses its precise shots to cripple enemies. It also acts as the extended barrel for his shoulder-mounted ultimate.
• Chessmaster Sidekick: Legends of Runeterra reveals that Jhin has a partnership with a figure known as "The Maker", an Ionian artisan and creator of Jhin's ornate hextech arsenal. Their exact relationship is unclear, though it's implied that she was involved with Jhin's release from prison, and may be serving as his current patron. What is clear is that The Maker shares in Jhin's ethos of death as an artform, and Jhin deeply respects her and will immortalize her craft with his "performances".
• Cold Sniper: He already is this, if not a little theatrical, but this trope is highlighted extremely well in his High Noon skin, where he gains unique taunts and finishing quotes for killing enemies with his ultimate. They're both brutal and utterly devoid of feeling.
  Jhin (to Yasuo): "It's fun to kill a man, to take all that he had, and could ever have."
• Combat Aestheticist: Not in the sense that he finds fighting itself beautiful, merely a well-crafted death.
• The Comically Serious: Jhin's directed taunts are either critical or funnily insulting.
  Jhin: (towards Draven) You shout and throw machetes? How quaint.
  Jhin: (towards Illaoi) When you speak, I don't hear god, I hear an idiot babbling.
  Jhin: (towards Lucian) Your story is revenge with guns, AND ghosts. How droll.
  Jhin: (towards Sion) Break a leg! Hehe, oh. 'Break a leg', hehe... ah, delightful. I do cut myself up.
  Jhin: (towards Tahm Kench) Oh, before you ask, yes, your whole ensemble makes you look fat. Very fat.
• The Corrupter: He tends to cause this in various major characters, and surprisingly, it's often unintentional:
  • His initial killing spree was stopped by the trio of Shen, Zed, and Master Kusho, but his horrific murders and the frustration in the incredibly difficult to track patterns of his killings led to Master Kusho becoming old, wizened, and eventually set him on the path towards disillusionment and dangerous. Shen went from witty and jovial to somber and collected after seeing how his master spared Jhin despite his crimes, and Zed began to have trouble with his studies due to being disgusted at Jhin being spared, eventually setting off his resentment for his family and his later Start of Darkness.
  • He also played a major hand in defining Hwei's life — initially, the two met as artistic peers when Jhin visited Hwei's village and temple, providing the young artist a path to genuine enlightenment, teaching him to unfetter himself from the "limits" of artistic expression and his emotions... before destroying Hwei's temple, killing his loved ones, and leaving him all alone. This left Hwei in a rather philosophically muddied situation, as while he remains noble, empathetic, and kindhearted, he's perpetually gloomy and struggles between seeing Jhin as a mentor that guided him with his teachings of unfettered expression and creativity, as well as the monster who effectively ruined his life.
• Cowboy: High Noon Jhin. According to this Champion Insights, Jhin's character concept was originally along the lines of a "mysterious robot cowboy bounty-hunting sniper", and this would've likely been his default look, hence the amount of unique lines he has for the skin.
• Crazy-Prepared: Jhin's extremely meticulous nature makes him naturally adept at this, making him a very big threat to his pursuants in universe:
  • Back when he performed his initial killing sprees, Jhin herded civilians to the center of their towns by lighting their houses fires in a planned fashion, essentially forcing them to be where he wanted them to be or burn to death. All so that he could have an audience for his work.
  • When he baits Zed into a meeting by giving him an spirit touched scalpel (his tools in previous killings), he makes sure to ambush him by setting up a firing line in the trees, and quickly snipes down several of his disciples. As Zed begins to pursue him, Jhin flees to a nearby fishing village where he encountered Zed for the first time as a means to taunt him, quickly ferries himself to safety with a pre-planned getaway galley, and then detonates the village during their festival of light as coup de grace, leaving Zed in shock without so much of a scratch.
  • His plan to get Zed and Shen to combine forces culminates in him both successfully bombing the village of Nathee with explosives disguised as festive lanterns, an escape vessel to Piltover (where his clients are sending him as an agent anyway), and him being able to have Zed and Shen fight each other all due to a combination of good planning and observation.
  • His theater gig at the Mistfloor in Piltover eventually has Camille and her men come after him due his massacring of Piltover civilians. Jhin in anticipation of this sets up the theater with dozens of Lotus traps that surprise Camille's men, fights off the enforcer herself, and then escapes through a trap door beneath the theater floor.
  • His encounter with Akali shortly after has him both blowing up the bridge they're dueling on to block off her escape, holding captives for an audience, setting up multiple harpoon death traps, and his ace in the hole is rigging fans that can be switched on to blow away the twilight shroud that Akali relies on for cover. To top it all off, he brings enchanted knives to use upon Akali instead of killing her with his typical firearms out of her own proficiency with knives.
• Critical Hit Class: Most marksmen build for critical chance, but Jhin really puts it over the top, trading constant DPS for quirky, but potentially nuclear amounts of burst damage. Every fourth shot of his magazine is a crit that increases based on his target's missing health, and all crits also give him a burst of movement speed (which scales off his otherwise inert attack speed), granting a Jhin building for full crit-chance absolutely insane damage numbers.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Regardless of whatever type of weapon he feels like using that day, his magically-enhanced arsenal tends to explode his victims into a display of beautiful flowers. Seeing what Jhin does to his victims has driven lesser minds to insanity, and even stronger ones like Shen and Zed come out irrevocably changed.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Jhin has legitimate talent in most of the careers he dabbles in, be it a stagehand, engineer for hextech technology, or pursuer of the arts. And yet because of his mental issues, he ends up a government sanctioned Psycho for Hire instead.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: His appearance in the Awaken music video has dozens of Lotus Traps deployed at once. In-game, he can only store two at once, and each one lasts only two minutes, making it borderline impossible to have that many set up in one sitting.
• Deadpan Snarker: Several of his taunts towards enemy champions, as well as item purchase quotes are dripping with snark.
  upon buying a Rapidfire Cannon: "Rapid fire? Huh. Where's the drama in that?"
  upon buying a Liandry's Torment: "Not sure I needed another mask, but oh well."
• Depending on the Artist:
  • Jhin was supposed to have Creepy Blue Eyes, which was properly depicted in-game during his laugh animation, where he takes off his mask, but in his official artwork and other promotional images, they're reddish-brown. Riot seems to have rolled with them being brown, and they've since been that color everywhere else, including the Season 2018 Start login, Awaken, and his appearances in the Zed comic.
  • A miscommunication between his writers and the art team resulted in his splash art depicting his right arm's gold-colored armor as having mechanical ball joints, making it look like they were Artificial Limbs.
• Dissonant Serenity: Speaks with a rather tranquil tone about the many murders he'll commit in the name of "art". Perhaps best shown with the humming he sometimes does at the start of a match.
  • Dark Cosmic Jhin only makes it worse, with him starting games by quietly humming "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" before chuckling ominously.
• Easter Egg: The Collector is an AD burst damage/assassination item which executes enemies below 5% of their maximum health with 999 raw damage, an arbitrarily high number to fully guarantee that the target dies outright. If Jhin is using it, he instead does 4444 damage.
• Enemy Mine: Jhin caused this between Shen and Zed, causing them to an agreement to cease hostilities between each other when Jhin's return was made known, simply because they both know they're the only two who stand a chance of capturing him.
• Exact Words: Lead designer RiotAugust said that "his next champion will not have a 3-hit passive". Jhin has a four-hit passive.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His rivalry with (and desire to kill) Yi stem from the fact that the martial art school of Jhin's father was overshadowed by Yi's Wuju.
• Evil Genius: Count the ways.
  • He is a master artist. Half of the reason people are shattered by his 'work' is that he makes his victims genuinely beautiful.
  • He is a master marksman. And while his gun is powered by Hextech, his traps and grenades are his personal handiwork.
  • He is a master tactician and saboteur, able to set up his traps without raising the alarm and able to set them off on his cue to either get his effect or cover his escape.
  • He is a master of human psychology, knowing exactly what people most want and care about (so he can hurt them more). He pushes all of Zed's buttons in the comics, up to and including trapping him with Shen so he'll be Forced to Watch as Jhin butchers his friend.
• Evil Is Petty: Not only is Jhin a sadistic monster, but he can also be incredibly petty regarding who he targets.
  • Jhin's reasons for wanting to kill Master Yi and Sona are respectively for being an advocate of a martial art school that opposed his father, and being more famous than him.
  • In the Zed comic, Jhin goes through a lot during his new killing spree specifically to torment Zed. He makes arrangements to bring him back to the place where he first encountered his "work" decades prior to kill him, but also went the extra mile by killing and displaying one of the few survivors that Zed looked after in the past and the innocent messenger that was sent to lead him there. He also arranges another disaster at Nanthee specifically to watch Zed and Shen fight, needing to improvise "a new incentive" when he realizes the two weren't going to partner up in search of him.
• Evil Laugh: He has probably some of the most off-kilter, and insane-sounding laughs in the game.
• Evil Sounds Deep: As well as very heavily distorted, thanks to his mask.
• The Faceless: Even when he removes his mask to laugh, he's wearing a leather cover that covers everything but one of his eyes, and he remains masked with alternate skins. The closest we've ever come to seeing his bare face is concept art shown for the Zed comic, but even there, it's deliberately blotted out.^note If you're really curious, an uncensored version uploaded accidentally.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: With a shoulder-mounted mass accelerator, gold armor on his arm and a covered eye on the right side of his body Jhin's a prime example of this.
  Jhin: Symmetry is so boring.
• Faux Affably Evil: Is noted as being quite polite towards people, in spite of his being a Serial Killer/Psycho for Hire.
  • Perhaps best noted with this taunts towards Shen and Zed, said in a very calm manner, positively dripping with hate.
  (to Shen): I have been planning your final performance for a very... long... time.
  (to Shen): Your father's death denied me a performance. You will be his stand-in.
  (to Zed): I remember your master. He was worth remembering.
  (to Zed): You were wrong to kill your master. I needed him for this performance.
• Finishing Move: Curtain Call is intended for finishing off opponents from afar, either have they retreat from battle or are being locked down by Jhin's allies. Every bullet fire deals increased damage the closer an enemy is to death, with the final critical shot being the most surefire way to end them.
  • Even his passive plays into this as well; the fourth shot in Whisper's chamber deals increased damage based on missing health, giving Jhin a lot of execute potential in normal skirmishes.
• Foreshadowing: Jhin's duel with Camille in the "Awaken" cinematic would later turn out to be relevant to canon, as in issue 4 of the Zed comic, he would make his way to Piltover. Issue 5 takes place a week after the brawl, with Akali coming across the remains of the theatre in which they fought, also revealing that he escaped the conflict through a hidden trapdoor.
• Foul Flower: Jhin's "art" tends to have a heavy floral/plant motif. Beautiful flowers, but arranged to do horrific things to his victims. He also refers to himself as the Lotus blossom, while his abilities and promotional artwork tends to incorporate the buds of roses and white tree roots.
• Four Is Death: Four is his Arc Number, and it's attached to everything involving his murders. In addition to being a parallel to the Chinese origins of the original concept (Jhin being from Ionia), it also fits with the "virtuoso" concept as well, as most music is composed in Common Time, consisting of 4 bars with 4 beats each. Keeping that in mind, this trope reaches its logical conclusion with his theme, whose first half is in 4/4 time set to the sounds of his gunfire.
  • In League Of Legends, his passive means that he has four shots before he has to reload, the 4th shot dealing extra damage. His Dancing Grenade can bounce to up to four targets. His ultimate shoots up to four shots, again with the fourth shot dealing extra damage. The gun itself is even marked with four strokes, like an alt-style Roman numeral IV.
  • This also carries over to Legends of Runeterra: he costs 4 mana, features 4 power and 4 health, even when he levels up (the only champion in the game whose stats do not improve when they level). His Dancing Grenade costs 4 mana of its own and generates a Second Bounce that deals 4 damage, Curtain Call deals 4 damage to all stunned enemies and the Nexus, and after you cast 3 spells or skills Jhin automatically casts a fourth (Lotus Trap). In Path of Champions, his star power generates a Captive Audience spell in hand for every four spells or skills you play.
  • In the Zed comic, it also becomes a Calling Card of sorts, with Zed recognizing that Jhin kills with four knives, four shots, etc. In issue 4, Zed correctly deduces that the bombs Jhin planted will go off when the port's bell rings the fourth time.
• Glass Cannon: As with most non-Graves Marksmen, Jhin is one of these, but special mention goes to just how much "cannon" he can be, in exchange for having no escapes and minimal self-peel.
• Green-Eyed Monster: He wants to kill Sona — not because of any personal wrongdoing, but because Jhin believes she's taking the spotlight away from his "art".
• Gun Twirling: Does it now and again, but most notably he'll do it constantly while his fourth shot is primed. His joke also involves fumbling with his gun while spinning it.
• Hidden Eyes: It's not immediately noticeable, but beneath his signature white mask, he wears a leather cover over his head that only leaves his left eye exposed. His color story explains that this is deliberate — there's no practical purpose for taking away his ability to see out his right eye, but for whatever reason, he needs this to be the case for his performance to be "perfect".
  Annie: You've got a weird eye, Mr. Jhin.
  Jhin: The better to aim with, my dear.
• The Heavy: Jhin serves as the central villain of the Zed comic. Although Master Kusho is the true Big Bad responsible for his release, Jhin's murderous rampage in both the past and present is the main conflict as Zed and Shen work to stop the madman.
• Hope Spot: Not necessarily to the extent of global ults, but his ultimate is great for picking off fleeing opponents as they think they're safe.
• Hypocritical Humor: He tells a couple of different champions that they talk too much. Jhin himself has perhaps the largest variety of different quote thus far.
  • For the record, the average champion, especially older ones range with around 20-50 distinct quotes. Jhin has 241, not counting vocal grunts. Tahm Kench, who is subjected to one of Jhin's taunts, has only about 224.
• I Call It "Vera": His weapon is named "Whisper."
  Jhin: Yes, the gun is ironic.
• It's All About Me: Jhin is obsessed with his art being front and center. He's bitter towards other artist champs like Sona for, what he perceives, drawing his audience away. He also talks down at the Rift and all of the other champions occupying it, believing them not worthy of his grandeur.
  "This stage is beneath my talent, but I shall elevate it."
  "My talent justifies all actions."
• It's Personal: He still has it out for Shen and Zed for capturing him years ago.
  Vs. Shen: "I have been planning your final performance for a very... long... time."
  Vs. Zed: "You wanted to kill me back then, didn't you? You will learn - art cannot be killed."

K-Z

• Karma Houdini: In the Zed comic, his plan to bomb the port town of Nanthee (and by extension, torment Zed and Shen) goes off without a hitch, and he makes his escape on a boat departing to Piltover.
• Kick the Dog: Some of his taunts are rather low-brow, such as calling Tahm fat or mocking Miss Fortune for her Stripperiffic attire. This is of course just extra salt in the wound for the atrocities he commits for what he perceives to be a good cause.
• Laughing Mad: Similar to Singed, his laughter really stands out compared to his otherwise fairly calm lines.
• Lean and Mean: He's one of the lankiest champions around not named Fiddlesticks. Combined with his style of dress and awkward, dramatic movements, it gives him a mannequin-esque aesthetic.
• Left Hanging: Jhin's exact fate since the end of the Zed comic is uncertain — while Zed, Shen, and Akali successfully track him down and defeat him in Piltover, whether or not he was put back in prison is unresolved as the rest of the final issue centers around Zed's confrontation with the still-living Master Kusho. Originally he was more involved in the ending, but it was changed around due to editorial decisions.
• Leitmotif: As with every champion release since Lulu, he got a login theme, with his filled with vibrant strings, an ominous choir and mechanical percussion. Jhin takes a step further by having his theme incorporated in his ultimate, with separate elements of his theme playing in the background once it activates. The same melodies remain with each skin, but with different instrumentation: High Noon Jhin makes it sound like something out of a spaghetti western, Blood Moon Jhin replaces most of its instruments with ominous, east-Asian counterparts, and PROJECT: Jhin mixes it with a synthesized cyberpunk aesthetic. The title theme for Dark Cosmic Jhin doesn't feature the exact same melody, but it retains almost the exact same choral and strings arrangement.
• Light Is Not Good: Dressed in white and regal purple, and being accompanied by an angelic choir could almost make Jhin seem like a hero, if not for the disturbing mask and his moral psychopathy.
• Mad Artist: His broad thematic is this.
  • He considers his killings to be akin to a theater performance, wherein he is the director. What makes things especially disturbing is that according to his writer, his "pieces" are as legitimately beautiful as they are horrifying.
    WAAARGHbobo: How would you react to seeing your mom's body completely destroyed —but at the same time more beautiful than it's ever been? His work F's you up bad.
  • Blood Moon Jhin makes the "artist" part a bit more literal, where many of his particle effects have a thin, blood-red ink feel to them, and even his recall animation has him use his gun to form a giant brush pen, which he uses to write the Blood Moon symbol.
• Mad Bomber:
  • In the Zed comic, one of Jhin's killing sprees takes the form of planting bombs disguised as festive lanterns around the port city of Nanthee. Unfortunately for Zed and Shen, they explode without interference, and the entire city is obliterated.
  • His own Lotus Traps can be used to finish off opponents in colorful and violent blasts.
• The Mad Hatter: He basically admits that he, as well, as all artists, are mad.
  Jhin: They call me mad. All artists are mad.
• Madness Mantra:
  • He has a thing for counting to four. He does announce the number of his shots regularly, and you can also hear him mumbling "One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four." when he has Whisper's fourth shot loaded.
  • He has a tendency to induce this in those unfortunate enough to survive his performances, all of which seen are left gibbering wrecks muttering "The flower... the flower..."
• Mage Marksman: His weaponry, from his Ionian Hextech manufacturer-crafted gun and Hextech Mass Accelerator, to his self-crafted bullets and lotus traps, are powered by magic, rather than say, gunpowder. This carries over to gameplay, where Jhin is played as an "AD Caster", a subset of ADC Marksmen champions that make extensive use of their mage-like abilities along with basic attacks to deal damage.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Jhin is regarded as an ADC with a particularly slow laning phase, and is ill suited for some higher skill level early game strategies (such as as Top/Bot lane swaps and turret trades at the start of a match), and while lacking his core items, easy to trade or engage against, while often coming up short on securing a kill himself due to his ammo system. After he gets his core build completed and his ultimate, Jhin can start easily racking up multi-kills in team fights, thanks to his high damage poke and clean up potential thanks to his 4th shot passive, Captive Audience's on-kill/assist effect of spawning detonating lotus trap, and his ultimate.
  • Inverted however, by the popular Armor Piercing Item Builds that became popular on ADCs that played more as "AD Casters" during Season 6 (2016). While Jhin's lategame takes a bit of a hit, Jhin's Early and Mid-game power significantly improve, allowing his attacks to bypass a good amount of opposing champion's armor at a point where losing 10 to 30+ armor practically means he's almost dealing True Damage. Not to mention the lower gold costs to build the items for it, allowing Jhin to more easily keep up or outpace the enemy ADC. And the flat AD scales well with his abilities and the Deathfire Touch keystone mastery.
• Magitek: While Hextech isn't rare in lore, Jhin is the first Ionian champion to not only put an emphasis on it's use, but also demonstrate how far Ionia has come along in technology since the war with Noxus. According to background info for Jhin, while Hextech is generally very efficient and requires only a little magic, Ionia has a different philosophy. Ionia's chief weapon manufacture, Kashuri Armories, took their knowledge of hextech from reverse-engineering Noxian weapons, and decided to take Ionia's high magic ability to make hextech weapons that are empowered with magic far beyond the normal standards of other nations. Jhin's gun, Whisper and the Hextech Mass Accelerator, has been further enhanced, either at his request to the Ionian Cabal, or by his own skills at crafting and magic. As mentioned above, these are combined with Jhin's personally crafted traps and bullets, which is how they have their special properties.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Murderous artist in a white mask? Oh yeah, definitely malevolent.
• Mascot: Jhin is the headliner for Legends of Runeterra's "Worldwaker" expansion, being the game's first champion independent of a specific region.
• Manipulative Bastard: Jhin has been playing with Zed and Shen for decades at this point, and he frequently is able to set up accomplices by bribes or threats to get them to play the part he needs them to play prior to his acts of mass murder. In Legends of Runeterra, his most recent accomplice is represented by a card known as "the Stagehand", an unnamed Ionian priestess who is plagued by guilt for inaction against Noxians during their invasion. Jhin manipulates her to be a suicide bomber.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: His play style is significantly different to most other marksmen — rather than being focused primarily on building up to intense DPS, Jhin's attack speed is completely locked off, with an ammo system and crit modifiers that instead emphasizes singular shots that hit instantly and extremely hard.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: Weird case. He normally shoots with a pistol, but for his ultimate, he assembles his pistol into a sniper rifle.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Dark Cosmic Jhin occasionally generates an additional pair of arms for a full total of four. Ironically enough, he doesn't use any of them to actually fire his gun.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Finds the highest form of art and beauty in rending his victims, and watching them perish in their last moments.
• Not the Intended Use: While Jhin is most often played in the botlane, being an ADC, much like Lucian he can also quite successfully be played in the midlane due to his emphasis on burst damage and weaving abilities with his autoattacks. People running Jhin in the midlane often build lethality over crit, allowing Jhin to reach his powerspike early around the same time as mages and assassins do.
• Obsessively Organized: He has an obsession with maintaining order and his craft, with a particular fixation on four and death. Several of his in-game lines have him sound noticeably nervous or impatient in ensuring his victims "perform" the way he wants them to, and his short lore also notes his obsessive thought process in more detail.
  He wiped the gun’s stock a fourth time. He couldn’t be sure it was clean until he wiped it down four times. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t used it. Didn’t matter that he was only going to stow it in the bag under the bed. He couldn’t put it away until he was sure it was clean. And he couldn’t be sure it was clean until he had wiped it down four times. It was getting clean though. Four times makes it clean.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Implied by Aurelion Sol that he could become one if he ever got his hands on the power to do so.
  Aurelion Sol: Imagine what you could do with a larger canvas.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His full name is Khada Jhin, but it's unknown if that is an alias.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: He had some great plans in mind for Shen's father for locking him up. But then Zed got to the kill long before that could ever come to pass. For this, he now wants to exact his denied revenge on both Zed and Shen.
• The Paralyzer: Deadly Flourish is a long-range skillshot that allows Jhin to root anyone it hits if they've been recently hit by anything from him or his team. It's got low damage, a notable casting delay, and an extremely thin hitbox, but it has a range that extends past Jhin's own vision radius, making him one of the few marksmen who can catch out targets with crowd control.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The most obvious reason for his release is so Ionia can use him against Noxus (since the Noxian invasion of Ionia is still canon). That being said, Jhin clearly has other ideas.
• The Perfectionist: Reinforced in his gameplay as a slow, meticulous marksman. Killing is his art; everything must go perfectly to turn a common murder into a beautiful masterpiece.
  Jhin: I cannot be good. I must be perfection.
• Pet the Dog: Murderous to many, condescending to even more, yet Legends of Runeterra shows Jhin displaying a marginally softer side when Annie is involved, seeing her obsession with starting fires as not too unlike his obsession with creating "art". In a few interactions, he even comments how she should probably be in school rather than in battle, even if she's on his side.
  Annie: And then I went wush! Wush! And they died-ed.
  Jhin: Both your parents with the toy they made you? (amused) Ha.
• Psycho for Hire: Operates as a sanctioned assassin of the Ionian leadership, but all he really wants are subjects for his "artwork." It's noted that he may not be satisfied with assassin work for long, especially with access to a wide variety of government-sanctioned arms and funds.
• Power Echoes: An interesting case; many of his voice lines have a slight distortion effect under it, as if accompanied by a choir, but ones that can be heard by other players (such as while attacking or taunting) do not. This gives off the implication that this is what Jhin hears in his head, which was pretty much confirmed to be intentional.
• Psycho Knife Nut: During his original murder spree in Ionia, he used enchanted knives to do his killing.
• Pure Is Not Good: He considers himself and his works of art "pure," yet he is a sadistic mass murderer:
  Jhin: I am pure. My work is pure.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Played for Laughs in his joke emote, where he does one of his usual gun twirls only for it to suddenly flip out of his hand, sending him into a bit of a freak-out trying to catch it before it hits the ground, causing it to discharge four times around him as he cowers in fear.
• Renaissance Man: He's a painter, poet, pianist, stagehand, marionettist, potter, gunsmith, world traveler and... assassin and mass murderer.
• The Rival: To Shen, Zed, and Sona. Shen and Zed have personal history with him, as Shen's father was responsible for capturing him in the first place and tossing him into an Ionian. Zed tried to kill him at one point (possibly during the attempt to capture him before he betrayed the Kinkou Order), and Jhin is annoyed that Zed killed Shen's father before he had the chance. With Sona, he's simply pissed that people have more love for her music than for his twisted version of "art".
• Shoulder Cannon: That covered hunch on his right shoulder is a Hextech Mass Accelerator, which combines with his gun and a heavy long barrel to create a Shoulder Cannon for his ultimate, Curtain Call.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He rarely raises his voice, and when he does it is usually only for the lines giving orders as if he were a theater director. For the most part, he merely calmly talks about the beauty of death and his own "genius". The only times when he raises his voice are when he does his Evil Laugh and potentially when firing Curtain Call.
  • He also has some unique lines for his High Noon skin, where his voice grows noticeably deeper and somewhat gravelly, and becomes completely devoid of emotion.
  Jhin: I like the way you die, boy.
• Start of Darkness: Unbeknownst to Jhin, his murders were this for Zed, as the investigation took a huge mental toll on the young ninja, his rival, and their master.
• Supermodel Strut: He does what can be best described as the male version of this as his default movement animation, casually and confidently strutting around and occasionally twirling his gun around.
• Theme Music Power-Up: In a sense. During his ultimate, a heavenly choir plays. "High Noon Jhin" has a western-style guitar riff instead, while "Bloodmoon" features the slow beating of drums, and Project features dubstep synthetics.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: No one suspected the illusive murderer known as the "Golden Demon" would turn out to be an unassuming stagehand.
• Token Evil Teammate: For Ionia. Jhin fits this trope far better than Zed or Syndra (who are both renegades who stand apart from or even opposed to the rest of the nation) in that he's a secret weapon of the Ionian Council itself (or at least a previously unmentioned "cabal" within it), adding a new dark side to the formerly pure nation of Ionia.
• Tragic Monster: Surprisingly enough, Jhin does have several lines in which he grimly reflects on how he's literally unable to resist the urge to keep killing and committing atrocities, and even seems to be genuinely (albeit briefly) conflicted and remorseful about it.
  This art is a compulsion. I cannot resist it.
  There is nothing for me but this.
  I swear each performance is the last, but I lie every time.
• Trap Master: Jhin's lotus traps offer Jhin a decent deal of utility, including limited vision in bushes, slows so he can set up his root combo, and the ability to farm in lanes he's not currently in by laying multiples of them down where minions will inevitably step on them.
• Walking Armory: Despite his lithe frame, Jhin carries his signature gun Whisper, spare ammunition, throwable grenades, a loaded cane that doubles as an extended barrel, Lotus traps, and a hextech accelerator also loaded with artillery canisters. In material outside the game, he also carries a plethora of enchanted knives and various other explosives as tools to work on "material".
• White Mask of Doom: Beautiful, vaguely skull-like, and looks to be made out of ivory.
• Wild Card: In the lore, Jhin is deliberately set free by the Ionian government to be used as a weapon of terror against their Noxian occupiers. However, due to his psychosis, he's has been equally likely to kill his fellow Ionian countrymen as he is to kill the targets that are actually marked for him, which is largely (and terrifyling) dependent on his whims. Him traveling to Piltover has likewise had him kill a number of random civilians for no apparent reason besides wanting to, and Legends of Runeterra highlights this trait of his by having Jhin be the first champion to not have a region to be aligned with (despite most of his trademark spells and associated cards being Ionian).