Characters / Mega Man Zero

aka: Mega Man Zero 3

This page deals with the characters from the Mega Man Zero/Rockman Zero series. The series takes place (approximately) 100 years after the Elf Wars that follow the end of the Maverick Wars as detailed in the Mega Man X series and (approximately) 300 years after the original series, and deals with an ongoing conflict between Reploids unfairly labeled as "Mavericks" and the pro-Human global government. Zero is also markedly different from his original identity, as he is trying to remember his identity while also finding a new purpose in his existence.

Warning: This page has unmarked spoilers, especially for antagonists due to their major reveals.

• Antagonists (Minor bosses)

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The Protagonist

Zero

I won't hesitate. If an enemy appears in front of me, I will destroy it!

I made a promise to a friend...

Voiced by Yuuto Kazama (Zero series, SNK vs. Capcom), Ryōtarō Okiayu (JP, Onimusha Blade Warriors), Rino Romano (EN, Onimusha Blade Warriors)

The Zero series Backstory ends with the eventual ending of the Mega Man X series. By the time the Zero series starts, both X and Zero are bona fide legends. However, X is nowhere to be seen (for reasons revealed in Zero 2), and Zero is found in an underground laboratory, nonfunctional and lacking in weaponry, memories, or even arms. At first, Zero seems to be a loner, more distant than he ever was in X, but over the course of the series, he comes to define himself as a soldier who fights to protect people he believes in; primarily Ciel, but he also grows to include the rest of the Resistance members and 4's caravan of human refugees.

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• Adaptational Comic Relief: The Rockman Zero manga makes anyone who's played the games suffer whiplash. Zero goes from being a stoic antihero to a dork who is prone to making a fool of himself.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted in Zero 4; when Zero switches sides while he's hanging from something with his Z-Knuckle, we can see him switching his hand. Played straight almost everywhere else. In fact, during the third swing of the basic triple slash attack, he'll swap which hand holds the Z-Saber. Seems Zero actually IS ambidextrous.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Zero suffers this in the transition between the X series and this series. While he stays a hero in between both series, his memory was lost during hibernation, including one crucial detail: that the body he was inhabiting was a duplicate. That being said, only a few people at the present knew who he was like; people at large thought he was a legendary hero, which he has to roll with.
• Amnesiac Hero: Starts off with nothing other than vague feelings of what kind of person he is. He even has to be told that his name is Zero, providing brief inner conflict and then Character Development when Weil reveals his body is a copy.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Despite suffering from amnesia, he can instinctively feel that Copy-X is weaker than the real X, after their fight.
• Anti Anti Christ: One of the biggest examples. Just like in the X series, he was made to wreak havoc in the world and destroy civilization, but later he decides to save it instead.
• Anti-Hero: Of the Good Is Not Soft kind; he solves most of his problems by bisecting them, but always to help others. He's not interested in justice or heroics, just upholding Ciel's (and by extension, Dr. Light's) ideals of peace and coexistence between humans and Reploids.
• The Atoner: Basically what he's been doing throughout his entire life. Especially when he finally learns that, even after Sigma's demise, The Virus remained a threat because traces of it remained in his original body, being spread wherever he went.
• Attack Reflector: Aside from the usual Shield Boomerang, the Reflect body chip in the fourth game allows his regular saber to do the same to bullets.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Proto Form, the reward for beating Zero 2. It not only makes Zero a Glass Cannon, but it disables the upgrades the players have made to their weapons (eg. the Z-saber's combo). Hard Mode forces you to use it.
• Badass Creed: His last speech in the first game — "I'll do what you want... rest for a while. I will handle it, you can count on me. I won't stop! If an enemy appears... I'll terminate it."
• Badass Longrobe: In the Z2 intro. Right after that...
• Bad Butt: One of his very first dialogue lines in 1, while fighting the Golem.
  Zero: "Rats!"
• Bag of Spilling:
  • Zero puts himself to sleep at the end of Mega Man X to fully eliminate The Virus. 100 years later, he is violently woken by a scientist under attack by mooks, so his restoration is incomplete and he needs to remember his previous skills with the weapons.
  • He never gets to relearn to do an air dash.
  • Played literally and justified in the second game. After travelling the wastelands for a year, Zero's weapons are damaged (one, the Triple Rod, was even beyond repair), and when Zero returns to the Resistance base, his weapons are restored (the Triple Rod was replaced), but he has to level them up again.
  • Thankfully averted from Zero 3 onwards. Your weapons already start at full power, saving the tediousness of leveling them up, although your Cyber Elves and chips are gone and the Shield Boomerang and the Rod substitute are not available in the first stage. You also have to relearn the acquired skills.
  • In Zero 4, there is no Shield Boomerang nor Rod.
  • Zero also loses the upgrades he obtains from Cyber-elves and/or chips in between games.
• The Berserker: His Z-Saber encourages you to use this fighting style, dashing forward and getting into the face of the enemy and chopping him half without stopping. If you have good reflexes, it's extremely effective.
• Big Damn Heroes: Subverted twice in the following instances:
  • Zero 2, where he attempts to thwart Elpizo's attempt to destroy X, but he immobilizes Zero and then proceeds to destroy X.
  • Zero 4, where he comes too late to prevent Craft from firing Ragnarok at Neo Arcadia.
  • At the opening of Zero 4, to the Human Caravan.
• Bookends: Zero's final words in Zero 1 and Zero 4 echo each other:
  Zero 1: I'll do what you want... rest for a while. I will handle it, you can count on me. I won't stop! If an enemy appears... I'll terminate it.
  Zero 4: I never cared about justice, and I don't ever recall calling myself a hero. I have always only fought for the people I believe in. I won't hesitate... If an enemy appears, I will destroy it!
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • The Buster Shot is technically a normal gun with a magazine system, except that Zero loads the Z-saber into it, giving it a practically limitless energy source.
  • In the fourth game, many Z-knuckle weapons have unlimited use, while some are limited...unless you equip the A-Filling chip, in which the ammo will refill itself to full after a few seconds as long as you don't outright empty it.
• Bring My Red Jacket: He's all red-themed (when not in the Palette Swap modifications, that is), and we all know his Heroic Sacrifice tendencies. And with the Nintendo Hardness of the game, expect him to die a lot in the stages.
• Broken Ace: Zero may be a badass fighter, but he's plagued with amnesia and bad publicity. All things considered, though, they don't seem to trouble him personally. However...
  • The Ace: Arguably develops back into this in the end, when compared to the other protagonists of the Mega Man series. He was obviously stronger than Classic Mega Man or Volnutt to start with, the ZX protagonists face weaker versions of the Weil Zero killed, and he even surpasses X himself, defeating (with a little help) a threat X and Zero together only barely stopped previously, that had Came Back Strong. And despite all the crap he goes through, he never undergoes any sort of Wangst like X, or his previous self did. All this makes him the greatest hero in the Classic Timeline. It's pretty clear if he were still around after Zero 4, absolutely nothing would've been able to threaten the world. Not bad all things considered, since he was originally supposed to be its destroyer.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": His Z-Knuckle is a Z-shaped imprint on his palm, in which a special chip is inserted, allowing him to take the enemy's weapons.
• Building Swing: With his Chain Rod in Zero 2.
• The Champion: To the entire Resistance and Ciel especially, Zero is the biggest proponent to their cause. Eventually, this extends to what remains of humanity as well, solely as their greatest defender by series end.
• Character Development: Gets some at the end of Zero 3. After defeating Omega, he comes to terms with his new body and life, wholeheartedly believing he is Zero and becoming more empathetic and emotional.
• Characterization Marches On: Zigzagged; a combination of trauma from the Great Offscreen War and Identity Amnesia makes him The Stoic in the first game, but as the series progresses, he starts to become more and more of a Deadpan Snarker.
• Charged Attack: A series standard. Handwaved by claiming that X installed the technology that controlled his own Arm Cannon to the saber before giving it back to Zero. This explains why the Rods and the Shield Boomerang can charge (they're all variants of the saber), but no such explanation for the Z-Knuckle.
• Chaste Hero: Whether he's this, a Celibate Hero, or simply too stoic to express himself is up in the air.
• Chick Magnet: Aside from the ones in the X series, there's also Ciel, Leviathan, and a random Resistance girl in Z3 all getting attracted to him to differing extents. And he's clueless to them all.
• Combat and Support: The combat to Ciel's support.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Zero's Proto Form is a nod to his infinity plus one armor from X, the Black/Zero Armor, minus the silver hair. In addition, its stats mimic that of the X8 version of the armor. Reversed, because X8 came out after the Proto Form's debut in Z2 and reappearance in Z3.
  • Plus, when Zero died in X5, all X found was his sword. Guess who gave Zero his signature weapon back?
  • Another one of Zero's Forms (see Palette Swap below) is the X form. Guess what color this form is based on, as well as what weapon it specializes in?
  • He claims that he never cared about justice or peace during his "No More Holding Back" Speech at the end of Zero 4, which is what big brother Bass said in Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters. However, while Bass claims that he only fights for himself, Zero says that he fights for the people he believes in.
• Cool Helmet: His iconic red one gets an overhaul from the previous series. It's also the last we saw of him after he destroyed Ragnarok.
• Cool Sword: The Z-Saber gets cooler in this series. Aside from being able to kill a (normal) Golem in one hit, it can also have multiple functions.
• Dash Attack: Unlike in the X series, he has a dashing saber attack by default.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has more moments than people give him credit for. Whenever his opponent gives a Badass Boast, his response in later games is usually along the lines of "Are you done yet?".
  Ciel: Please promise me you'll never do something that crazy again.
  Zero: ...
  Zero: I'll think about it.
• Destroyer Deity: Of a heroic sort. Neo Arcadian propaganda hypes him up as an unfeeling ancient evil the Resistance awakened to lay waste to humanity. Not completely incorrect, given his past. Anubis Necromancess V even refers to him as the "God of Destruction," a title usually reserved for Omega. Taking into account that Omega has Zero's old body and Zero could very well have been as unbelievably strong and crazy as Omega, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to call him.
• Determinator: He fights nonstop between the events of the first and second games. Just in case you were wondering, that's a whole year in-universe of repelling Neo Arcadia's military might by himself.
• Deus Exit Machina: After locating the new body Zero's previously stolen mind has been moved into, X awakens him to help fight the final battle and end the Elf Wars. Zero gets sealed again after that because he is tired of fighting.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Averted with Zero's Z-Saber and Buster Shot, as combat with these weapons is far more fluid than it is in the previous series. His other weapons downplay it, though; the Rod weapons and the Knuckle force Zero to stand still if he uses them while on the ground, but you can negate this downside by always using them while jumping. The Shield Boomerang on the other hand prevents dashing, but otherwise doesn't hinder Zero's movement.
• Double Jump: Although it was one of Zero's signature abilities from the X series, it doesn't make a return until Z3, and even then, it's not something Zero can learn as an innate skill. You need to equip different items to use the ability.
• Elemental Weapon: Zero can load elemental chips to his weapons, and their charged attacks (as well as some of his EX-skills) become elemental.
• Effective Knockoff: He is revealed to be inhabiting a reproduction of his original body. Despite that, he cares little about it and just proceeds to defeat the one inhabiting his original body, Omega (when no other people have done before). There is some implication that losing his original body wasn't entirely bad; for one, he no longer suffers from the potential of going crazy due to the programming of his original body.
• Empty Shell: Subverted. It's still Zero you're playing as and he has the same sense of justice, but after his resurrection, he has lost his cocky and hotheaded personality and become a complete blank slate. Averted later on, where he ends up developing a new personality, albeit a stoic and standoffish one.
• Evil Knockoff: Interestingly inverted. Technically, Zero is using a knockoff body while Omega is the original Zero's. However, Zero still has his heroic personality as seen in the X series, while Omega's is the original psychotic personality seen back when the Maverick Hunter's first uncovered Wily's old lab and released him.
• Evolving Attack: In the second and third games, Zero's EX Skills have two variants: a normal version, and a slightly improved variant when equipping the right elemental chip.
• Evolving Weapon: In the first two games, using Zero's weapons a set number of times allows him to learn additional skills with them.
• Expository Theme Tune: Clover, from the Idea tracks. It details Zero grappling with his amnesia, and how he's unable to remember the name of a certain flower he held dear but finding a still-blooming clover that he chooses to protect instead.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Played with throughout the series, ending with a subversion.
• Famed In-Story: He is well-known as a Maverick Hunter even a hundred years after he went missing, and the reactions of who he meets differ depend on which side of the war they're on, with the Resistance and Ciel viewing him as their resurrected savior, and Neo Arcadia viewing him as a Fallen Hero who now works for terrorists.
• Forced to Watch: He catches up to Elpizo while X's body (the seal of the Dark Elf) is still intact. However, Elpizo shoots a beam that paralyzes Zero, leaving the former to destroy X's body while Zero helplessly watches on. Elpizo just rubs it in further after absorbing the Dark Elf's power by "thanking" Zero for waiting.
• Gameplay-Guided Amnesia: He woke up with almost no memory of his past. Since he's been asleep for 100 years, this doesn't make much difference to the plot; the real point is to explain why the "legendary hero" has skill level 1 with his own sword. It also conveniently allows the X games to continue without affecting what Zero should remember later on. Zero 2 and 3 get better mileage out of the amnesia by "revealing" things that happened between the X and Zero series that Zero was actually around for in the past.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Zero is very strong with his weapons, but his health bar always starts small.
  • Zero using his Proto Form and Junk Armor from Zero 2 and 4, respectively, doubles the damage he deals AND receives. Hard Mode will force you to use it, even in 1 and 3.
• Good All Along: A downplayed, and rather interesting variant. While he is unquestionably on the morally right side for most of the game series (Briefly on the wrong, or at least neutral side, given they were led by Elpizo rather than Ciel for a while), he himself never really talks about morality or what is good for most of the series, only ever talking about the morality of others, to the point he comes off as a Nominal Hero at times, something that is even pointed out by the bosses, who see him as a Fallen Hero. However, as the series goes further on, small remarks he makes here and there make it very clear he has a moral compass underneath his stoicism.
• Good Is Not Soft: He's mostly stoic, with some of his quotes implying that, for his quotes of not caring about justice or heroics, that he does have that deep down, but doesn't believe he's the one to follow them. Having said that, he will cut you in half if you get in the way of those he believes in.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: "Rats!"
• Guest Fighter: In Onimusha Blade Warriors.
• The Hero Dies: His most likely fate at the end of the series, sacrificing his life to stop Doctor Weil. However, Ciel believes Zero is still alive.
• Heroic Sacrifice: It's Zero. He still can't resist doing this every so often. At the end of the series, he forgoes his chance of escaping the falling space station Ragnarok in order to stop Weil once and for all — and he succeeds. His actions have finally brought peace to the world, after centuries of war. It's also his final one, by the way.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Neo Arcadia established to its citizens that Zero and La Résistance are nothing but extremists. This is an important plot point in Zero 4, with human refugees not appreciating the helping hand given to them, at least until after halfway through the game; they then realized that Zero was indeed fighting for the greater good of everyone.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: What he does all the time is just fighting for the people he believe in; he never considers himself a hero.
• Holding Your Shoulder Means Injury: Zero does this when at a critically low level of health. He also does this in the intro stage of the second game regardless of how much health he has, showing the toll one year of non-stop fighting and Walking the Earth has exacted.
• Humans Are Flawed: Played with. In Zero 4, he condemns humans fleeing from Weil's iron fist as cowardly beings who would do nothing about their refugee leader getting kidnapped just to avoid another war. However, he also thinks that, as a machine designed solely to wage war, he cannot change the world, but instead believes in the humans who can. In the end, he believes that Humans Are Bastards, but he also believes that they can change for the better and then change the world. In short, it comes as a Reconstruction.
• Humble Hero: Evident in his "No More Holding Back" Speech. In addition, he doesn't think a battle Reploid like him could change the world; he instead fights for those who he believes are able to do so.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: Once again, though of a different sort: He doesn't have a sheathe for the Z-Saber like in previous games, so Zero replicates the effect by activating the Z-Saber the instant after he starts swinging.
• I Am Who?: He's lost his memory of the X series — everyone tells him that he's a "legendary Reploid" and he just has to take their word for it. Also see the Locked Out of the Loop entry below.
• Identity Amnesia: At the start of the series, he doesn't seem too sure that he's the legendary Zero everybody thought of him as.
• Immune to Mind Control: He's among the very few that can withstand the Dark Elf's mind control abilities.
• I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: One of his most prominent traits. See also his "No More Holding Back" Speech above.
• Inspirational Martyr: Zero's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the series inspires the human and reploid sides, and Ciel in particular, to work on the peace that, after so long, has finally been achieved.
• Irony: It is Zero, the creation of Dr. Wily, who finally fulfills the dream of Dr. Light, his creator's nemesis, to bring peace between robots and humans. Mega Man 11 adds an extra layer of irony on top of this with the revelation that Dr. Wily wanted to make heroes of robots before he became consumed by revenge and lost his way. Even though he made Zero purely to fulfill his own petty revenge, he eventually became exactly the kind of hero his old self would've wanted to make.
  • While Zero doesn't consider himself a hero and thinks he's not the right one to actually change the world, his actions in the four games as a member of the Resistence managed to turn the tides against a corrupt government, his speech to the human refugees ended up planting the seeds for the new peace between humans and reploids, him helping Ciel resulted in the development of a better energy system that would end the energy crisis eventually thanks to his protection, and eventually he's the one who finally kills Weil and kickstarts a lasting era of peace. In a way, despite believing he's a Living Weapon not worthy of being the one to change the world, his actions along the ones of his loved ones like X and Ciel ended up changing the world for the better in it's own way.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Averted; in Zero 1 and Zero 2, Zero's Z-saber is roughly shaped like a katana, but this is merely a matter of simplistic sprites. Box art has always depicted it as the triangular shape that has since become synonymous with Zero in this series.
• The Kingslayer: He becomes infamous with this in the third game where he killed Copy-X and then Dr. Weil spreads the word, making things worse for the protagonists. This also gets referenced in the fourth game where the leader of the Caravan has a grudge against "the killer of Master X" (unaware that he's talking to Zero).
• Knight in Sour Armor: As soon as he wakes up, he has to fight a war in a Crapsack World. He also knows that changing the world is difficult, but he still fights for Ciel, who hopes to change the world by solving the energy crisis.
• Kubrick Stare: In almost all of the official arts.
• Laser Blade: Z-Saber, as well as laser spears, bullet-reflector shields that can double as a boomerang, whips, and tonfas.
• Late to the Tragedy: In the second game, arriving at Neo Arcadia only to find every Resistance soldier involved in the Operation Righteous Strike dead (with the exception of one).
• Legendary in the Sequel: Although he only knew glimpses of it from the comments of the people around him. And obviously, by the time ZX rolls around, his achievements have become even more well-known.
• Life Drain: One of his EX-Skills in Zero 2 is this, using the Chain Rod.
• Literal Split Personality: Back in the X series, Zero was always at risk of reverting to his original personality, one intent on fulfilling Wily's goals. With his mind transferred to a new body, he no longer has that issue....however it did leave his old body to the original psychotic personality.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • Not only Weil, but also X know about the relationship between Zero and Omega, with X blatantly not telling Zero about it up until Weil himself let the secret out.
  • The Guardians, especially Phantom, are implied to know about it as well, considering they're not at all surprised when they saw two Zeros in the ending, and also knowing which Zero to attack. One of the drama tracks seems to clear it up — Phantom found out in Cyberspace; Leviathan and Fefnir had a Near-Death Experience in which they met Phantom and X. X gave them one final order to stop Omega, presumably giving them a heads up.
• Loud Gulp: He lets out one when he's fighting inside the missile containing Omega and realizing that the missile is about to crash.
• Magikarp Power: Zero's weapons in the first two games apply, as well as the "Mimic elf" in the fourth.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • From the first game, Zero was repeatedly told that "You are Zero". This is a big deal because he had Identity Amnesia. At the end of the third game (after he encounters an issue of what he really is), he says to Ciel "It's just me... I am Zero." It signifies that he has affirmed his identity.
  • Ciel has told Zero a number of times that she "believes in him". In the end, right before his fight with Weil, he tells her "Ciel...Believe in me!" And it's his last words, too.
• Meaningful Name: As well as everything that has been stated about his name in the X series, Zero's name becomes amazingly apt once Dr. Weil attempts to stop Zero from harming him by reminding the Reploid about the laws against hurting a human. Weil forgot about the Zeroth Law...
• Morally Superior Copy: It's revealed that the body he inhabits is a copy. Zero doesn't give a damn about it and cuts down the doppelganger inhabiting his original body without hesitation, deciding that it's the mind that matters, not the body.
• Multiform Balance: the Forms, vaguely. Your starting Normal Form is a Master of None, the Active Form is a Fragile Speedster, the Energy and Power Forms are Mighty Glaciers (the former specializing in defense, the latter offense), the Defense and Erase Forms are Stone Walls, the Proto Form is a Glass Cannon, and Rise and X Forms are Lightning Bruisers. The Ultimate Form is pretty much the Infinity +1 Form.
• Multi-Melee Master: Although he also has a gun.
• Multi-Ranged Master: Can use a gun (several, in fact, in Zero 4) and a Boomerang.
• Musical Nod: Zero's badass leitmotif from Mega Man X comes back in Zero 1's intro.
• The Musketeer: Zero wields the Z-Saber, whose hilt also serves as the magazine for the Buster Shot.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups:
  • Only one of his Buster EX-Skills can be active at a time.
  • In the first through third games, he can only equip one elemental chip at a time. As well, in the third and fourth game, he can only use one head chip, one body chip and one foot chip at a time. This is why the best foot chip in the third game is the one that has most of the other foot chips' powers in one.
  • Also true for Croire: Only one of the seven abilities of each elf type (Nurse, Animal, and Hacker) can be active at a time, although you can use one of each type at the same time. And in Ultimate Mode, this is averted: using the abilities of the higher level also activates the ones in the lower levels.
• My Hero, Zero: Ciel couldn't have said it better herself.
• Never Found the Body: All that remained is a broken helmet, and it's not even stated if they found that either. Inafune once mentioned he was dead and the series was over. However, the Complete Works book states Zero's fate was unknown. However, it's implied that Ciel eventually did find what remained of Zero and created Biometal Model Z from it in the ZX series.
• Nice Guy: A bit hard to notice, and given his stoic behavior you'd be forgiven for thinking he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but it's there. While he isn't sunshine and rainbows, he treats everyone in the resistance with genuine kindness and believes in X and Ciel's causes and ideals, and sacrifices his life even though he easily could've escaped. He also doesn't think himself as worthy to rule due to being a weapon of mass destruction.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His murder of Copy-X at the end of the first game inadvertently sets things in motion for Big Bad Weil's return. Weil's specialty of DNA resurrection is put to good use when he brings Copy-X back to life under his control in the third game, allowing him to use the Reploid for his own ends and gain control over Neo Arcadia.
• "No More Holding Back" Speech:
  • He has one during the Elf Wars (detailed in drama tracks), aimed at Omega.
  Omega, I finally knew because I fought with myself. What kind of fighting I have done so far? What exactly my hesitation has been so far? Now I can say that my power is not for destruction. It's for my friends; my power is to protect my friends' beliefs! Be gone, my nightmare!
  • In one of the series' most famous examples, his Badass Creed evolves into this:
  "I never cared about justice, and I don't recall ever calling myself a hero. I've always only fought for the people I believe in. I won't hesitate... If an enemy appears in front of me, I will destroy it!"
• No Social Skills: One Lower-Deck Episode highlights how clueless Zero can be in matters outside battle, although knowing him, this is justified.
• Not So Stoic:
  • He has his occasional moments of snapping at others in annoyance and being a Deadpan Snarker, and there's his moment with the missile in Zero 3, but probably one of the only moments in the entire series where his expression visibly changes is when Elpizo destroys X's physical body. The resulting scene graphic shows him scowling in unadulterated anger, and he drops all snark and commentary altogether to kick Elpizo's ass for it.
  • He also appears to have been genuinely shaken by Craft's death, possibly in part because his parting words serve as an Ironic Echo of X's. It rattled him enough that when speaking to Neige, he ends up accepting and agreeing with Neige's belief that even if he's doing it for a good cause, his perpetuating violence makes him much like Weil, requiring Neige to assure him in his actions.
  • At the end of the final game when he knows he's about to be sent on a suicide mission, Zero takes a moment to comfort Ciel in a very rare show of emotion.
  • He does so again in the final encounter, offering some choice last words to Ciel.
  Zero: Ciel... believe in me!
• Number Two: Zero isn't a natural field commander, so he isn't the type to give orders. That being said, within the Resistance, he more or less fills a secondary leadership role under Ciel, since everyone knows to turn to him for crisis scenarios, and while he doesn't give many orders out on the field, he can get Resistance members in over their head to transfer back to base on his urging. About the only time where Ciel takes direct orders from him is when they're together during dangerous operations, as Ciel respects his authority on combat; otherwise, Zero takes orders from Ciel (and, to a lesser extent, Rouge and Joan, as his Mission Control) and more or less comes to the conclusion in the opening of 2 that without Ciel to direct him, he'll simply default to mindlessly destroying Pantheons - good for securing the wastelands and lessening the number annoying the Resistance, certainly, but not exactly useful for making any actual progress on resolving the ongoing conflicts.
• Oblivious to Love: Just like in X8. He doesn't seem to understand that Leviathan is trying to invoke Dating Catwoman and Ciel "believes in" him, though he debatably gets past the last one.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • He had this reaction when faced with the possibility of fighting all three remaining Guardians at the end of Zero 1.
  • Yet another time is when he realizes that he can't stop Omega's missile while riding it. As this means he's about to get hit by an ICBM, he's rather less subtle in this case, giving a Loud Gulp before turning around and spamming his dash.
  • The possibility of facing the Einherjar Warriors all together (which, fortunately, didn't happen) is one of the other few times in the series that Zero had this reaction.
• One Bullet at a Time: 3 bullets, to be exact. Zero can only have three buster shots on screen at a given time. Through different means in each games, the number of shots can be upgraded to 4-5 shots.
• One-Man Army: It's a surprise that La Résistance (mostly made up of civilian Reploids) managed to survive Neo Arcadia's persecution until Ciel found Zero. 2's opening introductory scene explains that he's been fighting off near-constant pursuit of the Neo Arcadian army for a year, and in 3, Copy-X even states that Zero's penchant for being this trope is one of the Resistance's strongest advantages, alongside Ciel's energy source. In Zero 4, it's played very literally; he's the only being in both the Resistance trailer and the Area Zero settlement that pulls any weight in all its battles, even though there's Faucon and perhaps others in the settlement who could fight.
• Overrated and Underleveled: ...but he gets much, much better.
• Palette Swap: Hard and Ultimate Modes clothe Zero in black and deep crimson colors, respectively. The Forms system (and the Body section of its successor, the Customisation Chips) gives him even more colors.
• Parrying Bullets: Several upgrades across the games allow him to block enemy bullets by attacking them with his saber.
• Perpetual Frowner: It takes effort to go four entire games without smiling once.
• Person of Mass Destruction: He was designed to be one, by Dr. Wily. But after his Heel–Face Turn, what he does isn't much different...
• Phrase Catcher: "You are Zero."
• Pietà Plagiarism: In the Zero 1 intro level, Zero and Ciel go through the level until they find a dead end. Then the floor under Ciel crumbles and then she falls down. Zero saves her by doing the pose.
• Pillar of Light: When he's resurrected in the first game, this happens.
• Powers as Programs: In order for Zero to use his EX skills, he must "activate" them on the menu first; the various Buster Shot EX Skills can only be equipped one at a time. A more literal take on this would be the Custom Chips from Zero 3 beyond.
• Power Copying:
  • The EX techs from X4 onwards are back starting in Zero 2, and the Z-knuckle rips weapons off Mooks, although some of them can survive even after the weapon is stolen.
  • Zero 3 also takes it further by having Zero obtain custom chips that grant him innate non-combat abilities from other Bosses. The system was further expanded in the next game, where chips obtained from some enemy parts also grant that mook's innate ability.
• Punched Across the Room: The Recoil Rod's Charged Attack is a powerful thrust attack (aimable forward, downward or upward) that can push most mooks far away backwards (or upwards, or downwards) if it hits. A few minibosses and bosses can also be pushed this way, which will interrupt their actions, notably Deathtanz Mantisk.
• Really 700 Years Old: You'd never know from his looks (what with being ageless and all), but with X being a Cyber Elf now, he's the oldest robot that still functions. He's 200 years old at minimum.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Not counting his past in the X series, the populace sees him as the warrior of the Resistance who is a Fallen Hero, and his red and black color scheme seems to reinforce it...of course, the player would know better that he fights for a good cause.
• Red Is Heroic: He's mainly colored red (outside of his special forms at least) and he's the hero of the story.
• Resurrection Sickness: Or as Ciel puts it, "hibernation sickness". It gave him Identity Amnesia.
• Riding the Bomb: In Zero 3, he tries to stop a missile containing Omega from launching into a city block containing the Mother Elf. However, as he approaches the missile, it starts to fly off. Zero's next solution? Jump inside it and then destroy it from within.
• Rolling Attack: An upgrade for your saber attack is making Zero able to do this with the saber, whether in midair or while dashing. Interestingly, you can keep tapping the attack button while he's doing the rolling dash and he'll roll nonstop, provided that he isn't stopped by the terrain or the enemy who doesn't die instantly by the attack (and the attack is actually pretty weak, mind you).
• Rookie Red Ranger: He joins the Resistance at the start of the first game; the Resistance soldiers quickly follow him as their field leader of sorts (Ciel, their actual leader, is an Actual Pacifist).
• Sealed Badass in a Can: At the start of the series, in an abandoned lab.
• Secret Character: In SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: All the box art features him staring forward and brandishing his sword.
• Series Mascot: Of the non-cute kind, he's a big one for the Mega Man series and Capcom in general.
• Set Bonus: The Junk Armor in Zero 4 will only show its effect (doubling the damage Zero deals and takes) when you equip all three of the separate parts and disable your Elf.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Being amnesiac aside, he has seen many tragedies in the past. Now, he seems to care only about missions, and is frequently emotionless.
• Shoot the Dog: In the final battle, Weil boasts how a heroic Reploid like Zero would be incapable of killing a human. This is in spite of Zero calling him a Maverick that needed putting down in the previous game, and how Zero just tried to kill him. Weil just doesn't get it. So Zero gives him his best speech, and does to him what should have been done a century ago.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • After Weil's gloating in Zero 3:
  Zero: I bet most decent humans wouldn't understand, either. You look like another Maverick, to me. All I gotta do is dispose of you like any other Maverick.
  • His "No More Holding Back" Speech is also used as a response to Weil saying that a "hero, fighting for justice and humanity" like him should not kill a human like Weil.
• Something Else Also Rises: In Zero 3, a female Resistance member gives Zero what awfully sounds like a kiss (*SMOOCH*) as thank you for rescuing her in the previous games. Zero's E-crystal count goes up (complete with a suspicious sound). Made worse by her finishing remark:
  Don't tell Ciel about that, OK? Human girls get angry over little things like that.
• Speed Echoes: Like in the previous series, dashing will create afterimages of him.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: In the artworks, it's shown that his Shield Boomerang is actually the Z-Saber spinning really fast.
• The Stoic: Oh so much, in stark contrast to his more openly emotional and laid-back portrayal in the X series. Even in the drama tracks (see Lower-Deck Episode below), he can't talk about anything other than things about his missions.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: As a robot, which is a good thing for navigating water levels. Though played with in the submarine mission in the fourth game; due to the stage being so deep in the ocean, he has to find the entry into the submarine under a time limit or he'll be crushed by the oceanic pressure.
• Swiss-Army Weapon:
  • Zero's saber can be a razor shield (doubling as a boomerang), a pogo extending spear, a whip/hookshot, tonfas, and a gun magazine. Really?
  • Zero's Z-knuckle is capable of a lot of things, depending on the weapon it stole.
• Sword and Gun: Zero replaces his old body's Z-Buster with Milan's Buster Shot gun.
• Taking You with Me: Done in the final game; Zero, knowing that he has sacrificed his chance to escape from the Colony Drop, goes on to defeat Weil to ensure that the Ragnarok will explode in space, likely killing himself as well.
• Teleportation Rescue: A few times he has to rescue someone, he'll walk to their location, then gives the rescuee a teleport beacon so the Mission Control can teleport them to the base. Due to the base not being advanced enough for it in the first game, you'll be forced to go through an Escort Mission to rescue characters.
• Three-Strike Combo: The basic skill for the Z-Saber. With the right upgrades, he can modify the third slash into a different slash that fits the situation.
• Took a Level in Badass: Implied to do this each game. Justified, as he is regaining the skills of his past life as well as new abilities, plus likely being upgraded by cyber elves. Notably, the Guardians have three health bars in the first game, two in the second (in their base forms), and aren't even worth a boss fight in the third (except for Phantom, who may be strengthened by cyberspace). Omega, who Zero then easily defeats, easily defeats Leviathan and Fefnir.
• Tuck and Cover: In the first game, he does this to Ciel to cover her from the Golem's blast because she's too weak to move.
• Tyrannicide: Played with when he slayed Copy-X. He's a tyrant to Reploids, but he created an utopia for humans on top of it, and people at large loved him. Played straighter when he slayed Dr. Weil, who ruled Neo Arcadia with an iron fist.
• Uncertain Doom: Though he defeats Dr. Weil at the climax of Zero 4 and stops Ragnarok from decimating Earth, he appears to go down together with the satellite, and all that's left of him is his shattered helmet in an isolated desert. Ciel, however, remains hopeful that he is still alive.
• The Unchosen One: Ciel wakes Zero up amnesiac and he questions whether or not he's really Zero, although saving her leaves the latter more than convinced. He is the consciousness of the X series Zero, but that consciousness was implanted in a replica body. In short, this Zero is no longer Zero by original design in any capacity.
• Underestimating Badassery: Most of the bosses mock Zero's "Legendary Hero" status and the fact that he was out of commission for about 100 years since the X era. How wrong they are.
• Universally Beloved Leader: For the Resistance at least, Zero is considered one of its leaders together alongside Ciel. When Zero is brought to the new base in Zero 2, many soldiers (the ones who formed the original Resistance before Elpizo's group joined up) are shown heading for the infirmary where he was recuperating, shouting his name in joy, to the noticeable discomfort and annoyance of Elpizo. This is justified, since Zero has done a lot for them in the first game alone.
• Utility Weapon: the three Rod weapons all have secondary functions aside from dealing damage: the Triple Rod can be a pogo stick, the Chain Rod is, of course, a Grappling-Hook Pistol, and the Recoil Rod can boost Zero's jump as well as move/destroy certain blocks.
• Walking the Earth:
  • From the end of Zero 1 to the beginning of Zero 2.
  • Key members of the La Résistance join him in Zero 4, although they weren't exactly walking...
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In Zero 4, Neige and her Caravan call him out on all his and the Resistance's actions throughout the series, up to and including bringing the war to Area Zero, even though Zero and the resistance didn't even go to Area Zero until Weil's troops were already approaching it. Zero later calls the Caravan out for attempting to abandon Neige when she was kidnapped.
  • Notably, they also call him out for killing Copy-X (that was really Weil who caused his death, but Zero was trying to kill him) that allowed Weil to take over Neo Arcadia. In that case, Zero didn't seem to think that part through.
• What the Hell, Player?: In Zero 2, in the intro level, if you just stand on the first screen killing the endless stream of mooks, he'll say "This isn't fun anymore..."
• World's Best Warrior: He's no longer the World's Strongest Man, as that body and all its power has belonged to the Omega persona since he transferred out of it. What defines the Zero of this age is his potent, multifaceted arsenal and his peerless skill in using it to its fullest.
• You Are Too Late: Zero arrives at the final boss barely in time (which is an improvement over his usual tardiness) to stop the destruction of the last good land on Earth...but must sacrifice any chance at escape for himself. Earlier, he had many moments like this, such as when he comes late to stop the missile in the third game or when he comes late to stop Craft from destroying Neo Arcadia with Ragnarok.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: ALL of Zero's sword skills in this series are adapted from the skills he learned in the X series. Yet, thanks to his amnesia, he has to relearn them again. He also totally forgot techs between each game from Z2 onward.
• You Will Not Evade Me: One of Zero's skills with the Chain Rod is pulling things, including enemies, towards him.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: Played with copious amounts of irony via Zero's final decision in dealing with Weil. The irony here is twofold: while Zero was NOT designed to be Three Laws-Compliant, yet he CHOOSES to obey them of his free will, and in how Zero's actions are in perfect compliance with law zero. Note: The spirit of Law Zero is a threshold law with a very specific trigger (such as a mass murderer) for it to be appropiate. And for this instance being notable at all is because Weil noted that, being a Reploid hero, Zero should protect humans like Weil, invoking Three Laws-Compliant in the process. Of course, aside from not thinking of himself as a hero to begin with, the Law Zero allowed Zero to kill such a bastard like Weil anyway.

Allies

Ciel

^{Click here to see her appearance in Mega Man X DiVE}

To me, you are Zero.

Voiced by Rie Tanaka

A human scientist looking into more efficient energy sources, particularly Cyber Elves, which she believes will end the war between humans and Reploids. She's also responsible for making Copy-X — whoops. Ciel is the one who initially finds Zero, informs him of his legendary warrior status, and asks him for help fighting the tyranny of Copy-X's Neo Arcadia. After defeating Copy-X, Zero wanders off to do his own thing, but in the end, he realizes that he and Ciel need each other to accomplish their goals.

---

• Actual Pacifist: She's not blind to the need for the Resistance to fight and defend itself, she took a big risk in housing these declared "Mavericks", and she has signed off on missions that involve either guerrilla strikes or flat-out offensives, but she herself hates fighting. Her major plan for the war was to effectively fight a defensive battle saving Reploids and warding off Neo Arcadia while she herself slaved away day in and day out to find an alternative energy source that would solve the energy crisis, which is what created the conflict in the first place. Had Weil not shown up, she might have even succeeded in a non-violent resolution given the open mind Harpuia had towards the Resistance.
• Adaptational Badass: Back in her home series, Ciel's a pacifist who tries to find non-violent solutions and never engages in combat. Not in Mega Man X DiVE, however, as she can fight on par with anyone else.
• Anger Born of Worry: Not anger per se, but she gets into the same situation when Zero performs a very life-risking act, against her orders.
• The Atoner: This is why she formed the La Résistance in the first place, feeling guilty for the creation of the one who would persecute innocent Reploids.
• Badass Pacifist: She never fights, but her accomplishments in other places firmly put her in this place. She uses her bio-augmented smarts to do many things, such as defusing a bomb that's about to hit the Resistance base, hacking into Ragnarok's security systems, and building an almost perfect copy of X. Not to mention having a whole Reploid army, and Zero in particular, under her wing.
• Big Good: As the Rebel Leader whose organization is directly opposed by Neo Arcadia's forces, she's pretty much this. When original X isn't around, anyway.
• Bio-Augmentation: According to the Official Complete Works, she was one of the DNA-altered children that Neo Arcadia made to develop better Reploids. Canonically, this makes Ciel the progenitor to the Humanoids that blur the line between human and Reploid in the ZX series.
• Bodyguard Crush: Possibly the unofficial Love Interest for Zero. It was implicitly stated that she actually had romantic feelings for him. Plus, there's Zero's last words, which drove some fans to such conclusions:
  "Ciel, believe in me!"
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Zero's the brooding and stoic Amnesiac Anti-Hero who, to him, battle is a second nature. Ciel's the gentle and caring Motherly Scientist who's trying to bring back peace between the two sides of the war.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Both of her Image Songs talk about how much she loves Zero but struggles to confess her feelings.
• Child Prodigy: As a result of being genetically bred to produce better reploids, she stood out as a prodigy, and built a perfect copy of Mega Man X at the age of nine, something that no one in the previous series was able to do. (Pity that she forgot the "30 years of ethical testing" thing...)
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Discussed Trope, in which a Resistance soldier believes that all human females have the tendency to have this personality. If there's any implication, she believes Ciel is one.
• The Cutie: She's a positively adorable Child Prodigy whose sweet, optimistic spirit keeps the Resistance together. It even breaks through to Zero.
• Combat and Support: The support to Zero's combat.
• Damsel in Distress: Played straight in the first (in the intro stage), averted in every other game afterwards.
• Deuteragonist: Even though she's not a playable character, she's the female lead storywise, and her actions towards peace for humans and reploids drive much of the plot.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: The climax of the story in the third and fourth games both occur when she's 16.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: "Freesia", the vocal version of the Zero 4 theme and also the ending theme, is sung by Rie Tanaka, who plays Ciel.
• Evil Twin: Canon Foreigner Cial in the manga, ruler of Neo Arcadia. Copy-X doesn't properly exist here, only being a Fusion Dance of the four generals.
• Expy:
  • Ciel has a very uncanny similarity, in appearances, background, AND role, to Alia from the X series. Done recursively in Mega Man X8 when Alia gets a makeover to look more like Ciel...as well as other alterations, but that's irrelevant here.
  • As a scientist who strives to achieve peace between humans and robots and whose work left its mark on the future generations, she's also quite similar to Dr. Light.
  • Prairie in ZX is Ciel's expy, and almost definitely a character, probably Alouette, from this series as well.
• A Father to His Men: She is motherly to all of the Resistance.
• Fling a Light into the Future: She was the one who discovered the original Biometal, Model W, and built 6 Biometals based on the legendary heroes to counter it. She left a message for the future people about this threat. Slightly subverted in that the "light" in question isn't necessarily good; Ciel noted that the one with the power of the Biometal can either save the world, or take over it. She hoped that the Biometal will fall into the hands of good to bring and maintain peace.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Implied in the Mega Man ZX games. Ciel is stated to have gone missing only a few years prior to first game despite the fact that ZX takes place over two centuries after the Zero series. Her Long-Lived nature is hinted to be the result of becoming a Humanoid not unlike the members of the Sage Trinity in ZX Advent.
• Gadgeteer Genius:
  • She built the first Copy-X at the age of six (or nine). Moreover, she perfectly reproduced the base prototype. By comparison, every Maverick in the previous series came about precisely because they were flawed copies of the original. By the age of 15-16, she's working on free, clean energy for everyone. She was likely also something of a Wrench Wench before she moved on to energy research.
  • She also created an energy system to solve the energy crisis that is not only effective, but just beautiful (take a look at the reactor of the Guardian airship from ZX!), and she made Biometals to match Master Albert's, but also added the dual Mega-Merge feature. It's All There In The Official Complete Works.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: During the Protection Mission in Zero 2, no matter how much she gets shot by the enemies around you, she won't die, though she'll still react. Getting her hit will only reduce the mission points.
• Genre Blindness: Believes that by developing a new energy source, the CIEL System, she can stop the fighting because everything that started the Reploid oppression is due to a lack of energy. Too bad we only find it out by the start of the third game — that's when Weil appears.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: Not only is Ciel the creator of the six Biometals to directly oppose Model W, but she's also the original leader of the Guardian organization, which acts as a successor to both the Resistance and the Maverick Hunters of the X series.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's blonde, kind, innocent, and motherly.
• Image Song: "L'oiseau Du Bonheur" and "Freesia".
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Her clear blue eyes represent her innocence and pacifism.
• It Runs in the Family: Her ancestress is the creator of All-Loving Hero Mother Elf. Ciel's main field of research is into energy involving cyber-elves.
• I Will Wait for You:
  • Here's one example:
    Ciel: I'm happy that I could meet you... If it were not for you, everyone would be gone by now...Promise me that you will come back alive. Even if you cannot destroy Neo Arcadia, I just want you to be able to return safely.
  • At the end of Zero 4, Ciel declares that she "knows" Zero is alive, and she will wait for him to return.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Later installments treat her connection to Copy-X as common knowledge, even though it's a late-game spoiler in the first game.
• The Leader: Charismatic Type ^note most people agree with her, she's The Heart of La Résistance, and even Neo Arcadia's Government seems to have some respect for her and Levelheaded Type ^note she sometimes tries to prevent Zero from rushing into battle, still tries to maintain open communication channels with Neo Arcadia, and (after Z1) she was almost able to reach a pacific solution with Neo Arcadia's Government (until Weil arrived, that is).
• Leitmotif: "Labo".
• Long-Lived: Looking at the official timeline, Ciel only vanished a few years before the events of ZX, meaning that she was at least over a century old and probably closer to two-hundred at the time given the 200 year time gap between the series. How she survived that long compared to Alouette, who is all but stated to have just upgraded to a new body as Prairie being a human is unclear, but considering the fact the Sage Trinity were also once humans implies that like them she became a Full-Conversion Cyborg.
• The Man Behind the Monsters: The leader of the Resistance Reploids, who are treated as Mavericks. Played with in that the "monsters" here are the good guys.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is French for "sky". And her Resistance members are named after birds.
• Mission Control: Solo during the first game, accompanied by Operators from the second onwards.
• Motherly Scientist: Cares very much about her Resistance members, and Alouette in particular, who considers Ciel her "big sis".
• Ms. Fanservice: Rockman X Over has art of Ciel in a flower-patterned pink two-piece◊, for some reason.
• Nice Girl: She's gentle, kind hearted, and always concerned about the welfare of others.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ciel managed a perfect recreation of X, something Dr. Cain and the rest of the previous century's scientists never accomplished - but, whether it was due to her young age at the time or from the haste and secrecy involved, this Copy-X lacked an opportunity to undergo extensive morality testing like what Dr. Light put the original through, not to mention the copy simply lacked the experiences, hardships and knowledge that X gained. The result was a Knight Templar of a leader that had none of X's compassion and no solid skills as a ruler, prioritized humans first and foremost akin to a standard robot rather than a reploid, and cast this series into motion. Ciel is fully aware of all of this.
• Nonhuman Sidekick: Has one special Cyber-elf at the beginning of the series, before said elf sacrifices herself to revive Zero.
• Ominous Save Prompt: If Ciel ever asks you if you want to save, something is about to go down (assuming it hasn't already).
• Parental Substitute: She's a mother figure to most of the younger La Résistance members, especially to her future expy Alouette.
• Promoted to Playable: In X DiVE.
• Protection Mission: The second mid-game mission in Zero 2 contains a segment toward the end where Zero must protect Ciel as she disarms a bomb, which takes 90 seconds. The enemies coming after you two are quite weak, but there are a lot of them.
• Pursued Protagonist: At the beginning of the series; awakening Zero turns this into the Damsel in Distress scenario mentioned above.
• Rebel Leader: The founder and head of the Resistance.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Actually a subplot in the second game, Ciel stepping down from her position as Rebel Leader in order to try to fix the energy crisis that started the war in the first place. Once Elpizo, her replacement, goes off the rails, Ciel returns to her original leadership role while continuing her new research. By Zero 3, she does develop the new energy source, and by the ZX series this breakthrough is central to human and Reploid survival and coexistence.
• Save Point: Her purpose in the game.
• Say My Name: Ciel shouts out Zero's name at least three times. The last time she does it, it's a hopeless bid for Zero to get out of Ragnarok, even though it's probably too late by that time.
• Ship Tease: The game (and supplemental materials) has a lot of this between her and Zero. In particular, "Freesia" (sung by Ciel's own seiyuu) is implied to be Ciel's speech on how she loves Zero.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Twice, Zero refused to allow Ciel to accompany him on a mission. The first time was subverted when they reached a compromise (Ciel's expertise was extremely needed in that scenario) where Zero will use a Transserver to transport her straight to the location. Justified, however, since she is a squishy human while Zero is a literal war machine. She's also a pacifist, meaning she will not fight, making this trope devoid of the usual sexism since any mission Zero goes on will by necessity require violence.
• Team Mom: A kindly leader of the Resistance who cares about the lives of all of the Reploids under her (and not just them too).
• Teen Genius: Oh, yeah. Justified since she was a product of genetic engineering, allowing her to build a perfect copy of X at the age of nine.
• Tender Tears: Spent the entirety of Zero 4's credits crying as Ragnarok dissipates in a shower of debris (with Zero still presumably aboard).
• Token Human: She is the only human in the Resistance.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: She is a girly girl to Neige's tomboy.
• Uncatty Resemblance: Passy, her own Cyber-Elf in the first game, bears quite a resemblance to Ciel herself.
• Uncertain Doom: Overlapping with a downplayed version of Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome. After all the megatons of pure crap she has to endure through the Zero saga, ZX leaves her fate up in the air and suggests Serpent tried to eliminate her, but we don't know what happened or if he was successful because there was no sequel to ZX Advent...
• Unusual Euphemism: Her final line in the series sounds like she means to say something else before a Last-Second Word Swap.
  Ciel: Zero, I... I believe in you!
• Voice with an Internet Connection: In all games, she communicates with Zero during mission openings, and sometimes during a crucial part of a stage.
• Wet Blanket Wife: She's not a wife, but still, she at times reminds Zero that he shouldn't fight too much, out of worry for his safety (and worry that he might be bothered by helping her so much). Zero, knowing himself as a war machine, counters this by saying that he has battled his entire life and doing the dirty work is his reason for living.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: She aspires for humans and Reploids to coexist harmonically, and eschews violence to make her dream become a reality.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: At the beginning of Zero 3, Ciel has finally finished the CIEL System, and has sent her research to Neo Arcadia, possibly opening up a chance for peace talks...and then Weil uses that information to spark another all-out war between the two sides. Weil proposes to combine the C.I.E.L. system with the Dark Elf to generate enough energy at once to solve the crisis. Ciel refuses because she can't trust in the Obviously Evil Mad Scientist to handle the new technology, which is what he was expecting her to say. Copy-X then promptly declares her an extremist trying to create a criminal monopoly on the energy resources and accuses Zero of being the muscle to keep her plan going. Cue three missions to prevent an All Your Base Are Belong to Us.
• You Monster!: She mentions after Zero stops Pegasolta Eclair from pouring acid rain on Area Zero that Weil's whole idea of Operation Ragnarok is so atrocious, she can't believe that he's even human.

Cerveau

The world is too much for Ciel to bear alone...Take good care of her, Zero...

The Resistance engineer. He gives Zero the Shield Boomerang and the Rod of the Week at the beginning of every game, except the fourth where he just gives him the Z-Knuckle. He also stores information disks for the player.

---

• Distressed Dude: Becomes a hostage during the mission to protect the base in Zero 1. Rescuing him is mandatory, because he can operate the lift that will take Zero to Hanumachine, the leader of the raid.
• The Engineer: For the resistance as a whole.
• Expy: His role is essentially succeeded by Fleuve of Mega Man ZX.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He's the one who creates Zero's Shield Boomerang and all the rod-based weapons.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Although in a subtle context, he performs one to Harpuia, of all people.
  Cerveau: Oh, you're awake. How do you feel?
  Harpuia: Horrible. Just the thought of being helped by you makes me nauseous. Stripped of my position, and driven out of Neo Arcadia. I'm used goods...
  Cerveau: That's not true. You just stood up for your beliefs, just like we do. You've made no mistakes.
  Harpuia: My beliefs...
• Meaningful Name: His name means "brain" in French, fitting for a genius. It's also pronounced like "servo" (only with the accent placed differently), fitting his role as a mechanic and engineer, making it something of a bilingual pun.
• The Medic: Can function as one; he has been shown tending to both Zero and Harpuia.
• Older Sidekick: to Ciel and maybe Zero (sort of), he's almost like a father to them, and acts like one. A Gadgeteer Genius on his own, but he plays second fiddle to Ciel, assisting (but not spearheading) her research.
• See-Thru Specs: Only in Zero 1. Afterwards, it's turned into Opaque Lenses.
• Shipper on Deck: Just look at his quote.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Looks like a bulkier version of Cyclops' own Cool Shades.

Mega Man X

I'll leave this world to you...

Voiced by Takahiro Mizushima

After fighting Sigma and his many Maverick minions, X finally dispels the Sigma Virus with the Mother Elf, created from his best friend Zero's body and achieves peace between humans and Reploids. However, that peace would be short lived, since a survivor of the Maverick Wars, Dr. Weil, wanted all Reploids to pay for the crimes they've committed as Mavericks, including those who became Maverick of their own free will. Despite X's opposition to his ideas, Weil secretly reprograms the Mother Elf into the Dark Elf and has her make new Mavericks to "prove" that the Maverick issue was still present without the Sigma Virus, causing the Elf Wars, which X reluctantly fights in alongside Zero. Eventually, he uses his body to lock up the Dark Elf, though it causes Neo Arcadia, the utopia he founded, to have a leadership crisis. When a Copy of him created by Ciel starts to execute Reploids to solve the energy crisis, he aids her in the form of a Cyber-Elf and returns the Z-Saber to Zero at the beginning of the first game, then shows up to be the mentor at random times.

---

• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Twice over. Some time between X and this series, he surrenders his body to act as the seal to the Dark Elf, and he's reduced to an incorporeal cyber-elf form. Then finally, having used up all his energy over the course of Zero 3, he decides to retire to cyberspace.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Not in-series, but his power is fairly well-known and he more or less fought the Elf Wars alone.
• Ball of Light Transformation: By virtue of being a Cyber-Elf, he takes on this form. He can also instead project himself as a holographic image.
• Barrier Maiden:
  • He is the living seal of the Dark Elf.
  • In a literal example that would still qualify, X erects a barrier around the Resistance Base in 3 to protect everyone within from Weil and Omega's Mind Control. He implies that if he had more available power he could push it even farther but his condition leaves that a losing battle.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Zero 3, when Zero and Ciel are trapped between the Mind Controlled Resistance soldiers, all hope seems lost... until X comes from above and promptly disables the mind control of all the people in the whole building.
• Big Good: He was the main force of good as the leader of Neo Arcadia. Afterwards, he's still this, but only to a smaller extent.
• But Now I Must Go: At the end of Zero 3, his Cyber Elf fades out of reality, leaving the rest of the war in Zero's hands.
• Cannot Spit It Out: See Zero's Locked Out of the Loop entry. X almost tells Zero this vital piece of information, but holds himself back instead, only confirming the truth once it has already surfaced.
• Clone Angst: X is by no means fond in the slightest of Copy-X. Justified in that it has nothing to do with him being X's replacement, as that was the intention. Rather, said Copy deciding he would joss everything X had fought and suffered for, for over two centuries, just because he wanted to be the hero.
• Converse with the Unconscious: He does this to Zero in the ending of the first game, after Zero exhausted himself fighting Copy-X, briefly explaining what he was doing during Zero's absence before he decides to "rest" and tells Zero to take care of the world for him. When Zero wakes up after, he does hear X. This also happens in the end of the third game where X, now about to rest permanently in Cyberspace, again tells Zero (who fainted after the final boss fight with Omega) to keep watch on the world for him.
• Despair Event Horizon: It's implied that he got hit with this between his series and this series, specifically in the Elf Wars in which he fought most of it alone. The original concept was that he would lose all hope for human and Reploid coexistence and begin the oppression and genocide of his descendant species, since they were incapable of living peacefully with humanity (this concept became Copy-X later). Fortunately, he's still savvy enough to Take a Third Option, and he chose to seal what caused the war, the Dark Elf. While most of his dialogue as a Cyber-Elf is fairly normal, there are a couple times when he implies his more ruthless side that he's holding back, which is extremely jarring coming from a former Reluctant Warrior and poster android for Incorruptible Pure Pureness. The fact it could break an All-Loving Hero shows how bad things really are.
• Deus Exit Machina: Okay, so his physical body is busy, so no playable X, no Dr. Light capsules, whatever. He should still be able to manifest before his underlings as the acknowledged lord of Neo Arcadia and tell them to cut the crap. Copy-X's presence might have been the problem.
• Energy Being: As a Cyber-Elf, he has no physical form.
• Expy: Has taken over Proto Man's role this time around. By the time the third game rolls around, he, like big brother Blues, is living on borrowed time...and probably gets the most focus he's ever gotten in a storyline. This isn't saying much.
• The Faceless: Zero 2 onwards; prior to that, he's literally, and figuratively, a ball of light. His sprite still has a definite face: It's just his dialogue picture that is only a glowing silhouette.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Him sacrificing his body to seal the Dark Elf, and later sacrificing most of his energy to break the Resistance out of Mass Hypnosis.
• He Who Fights Monsters: His speech at the end of the first game mentions that he no longer cares about the opponents he fought. Ironic and tragic, seeing as he was born and raised with that very quality...Thanks to Executive Meddling^note X originally would become insane due to the stress and become the Knight Templar Big Bad that Zero has to stop; it later is changed to a copy, X actually realized that this was happening to him and took himself out of the fight by using his body to seal the Dark Elf before he could go over the edge.
• Hourglass Plot: During the X series, X was the naive, always unsure Maverick Hunter, with Zero being his mentor in how to fight for both humanity and the Reploids. Come the Zero series, it's X who's now the mentor for Zero to help heal the division between Reploids and humans.
• Immune to Mind Control: He's among the only few that can ignore the Dark Elf's mind control abilities, and can even cure controlled Reploids from it. It's attributed to how the Dark Elf is practically the Maverick/Sigma Virus and X still has his Suffering Circuit.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: His leftover body, anyway, by Elpizo. He does that to open the seal to the Dark Elf.
• It Gets Easier: He implies that he has come through this stage after he lived his life with more and more battles, claiming that he stopped caring about the enemies he fought. But before he went over the edge, he decided to stop and take a rest, prompting him to seal the Dark Elf. Copy X was meant to be the real X who did go over the edge.
• Killed Off for Real: At the end of the third game, his Cyber Elf form has run out of energy and he goes into Cyberspace.
• Last Request: He has one in the end of the third game for Zero.
  X: Can you hear me, Zero? My energy is almost all spent. I can't... stay in this world... much longer. Zero... I want to leave this world in your care. The threat Weil represents has not left this world. I want you... to protect humans and Reploids. Ze...ro... you can do it... you...can...
• Legendary in the Sequel: Most people knew X as their "legendary savior".
• Leitmotif: "Cyberelf".
• Literal Genie: Thirty years of testing assured that he would never attack a human being. Confronted with the monster that is Weil, he takes this to the extreme, ensuring that no death will ever come to put an end to his suffering.
• Living on Borrowed Time: After Elpizo destroys his physical body at the end of 2, X's Cyber Elf form only has what energy it has left to stay manifested in the physical world. By the time of 3 two months later, X is already struggling to hold on, and then he ends up using even more energy to free everyone in the Resistance base from Omega's control and keeping them safe.
• Mr. Exposition: Provides important information that bridges the X and Zero series.
• Our Angels Are Different: A technological, fairy-like ball of light that projects himself with an angelic robe and halo from time to time. He's meant to contrast against Copy X's Ultimate Armor and Seraph form, who takes on a far more grandiose interpretation of an angel with the white and gold color scheme and multiple wings on his body; original X's garb is far more humble by comparison.
• Physical God: Well, virtual, but by the time Zero reawakens, even at 1/5 his former self, it's quite clear that X has effectively become the most powerful character in the series so far. Then again, he did fight a century-spanning war without Zero, with a body made to infinitely evolve.
• Passing the Torch: Since Zero, as of the end of Z3, is the only hero left alive and Weil is still lurking around somewhere, X decided to make it official before "finally retiring to Cyberspace."
• Plotline Death: Seeing as fixing dead robots/Reploids/whatever is entirely workable in-canon, it probably has to do with his desire to finally rest in peace. His body was also blown up in the second game.
• A Protagonist Shall Lead Them: He became the ruler of Neo Arcadia some time between the X and Zero series. But he left his place to make himself the seal for the Dark Elf, and a copy is then made in his stead.
• The Mole: He's technically a member of La Résistance, and, as the original leader of Neo Arcadia, the information he gives is invaluable to the former's cause. That's how much he really hates his clone.
  X: I've cracked the Security system of the Trans Server... now go... terminate that copy of me... terminate with extreme prejudice...
• Rogue Protagonist: Thankfully subverted, because of the Executive Meddling in the X series; he was originally supposed to be the Big Bad, but then a copy took up the role.
• Rule of Symbolism: He "died" to absolve the war between man and Reploid once and for all, continued watching over them as a spirit, reappeared before those who'd followed him in an angelic form complete with halo and cross on his garb, and only acted in protection rather than violence. Let's see you deny that with a straight face.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: He used his body to seal the Dark Elf.
• Spirit Advisor: As he's reduced to a "spirit", there isn't much he could do but advising Zero on doing the right thing. Fridge Brilliance in that he is basically emulating his creator/father figure Dr. Light, who was this to him in the previous series.
• Take Up My Sword: X asks Zero to continue the battle for peace. Taken literally in the first game, where X gives Zero a sword in the first Boss fight, only it was actually Zero's own Z-Saber.
• Virtual Ghost: By virtue of being reduced to a Cyber Elf.

The Resistance

Not just a character, but a whole lot of characters. The characters within La Résistance are worth mentioning enough.

Jaune voiced by Megumi Ogata
Rouge voiced by Yuka Imai
Alouette voiced by Ryō Hirohashi
Milan voiced by Wataru Takagi

• The Alliance: Minor example, used to avert Remember the New Guy?: after the damage done by Neo Arcadia's forces in the first game, the remains of Zero's allies have merged with another Resistance group (or maybe more than one), increasing their numbers drastically. Not that it helps, however, several members from the second group become prominent supporting characters: Bridge Bunnies Rogue and Jaune and Knowledge Broker Hirondelle.
• Base on Wheels: The Resistance trailer in Zero 4, a large box truck with two trailers.
• Big Eater: Hibou consumes E-crystals, possibly the Reploids' equivalent to energy foods, to no end. He is actually a hard worker, though...or at least when he's trying to impress someone, or if the situation is serious.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Subverted with Alouette and Perroquiet. Played straight with Menart.
• Bridge Bunnies: Rouge and Jaune. The Lower-Deck Episode in the third game's soundtrack reveals they are sort of Red Oni, Blue Oni, with Rouge being serious and formal and Jaune being more relaxed^note Which is funny when you consider who voices them. Rouge is the straight-laced one, yet voiced by Leviathan's actress, Yuka Imai. Meanwhile, The very casual and cheerful Jaune is voiced by Harpuia's actress, Megumi Ogata, in one of her rare undeniably feminine roles..
• Catchphrase: Hirondelle always starts his speeches with "Have you heard?"
• Elaborate Underground Base: In Zero 1.
• Empathy Doll Shot: In the first game, the Resistance base is stormed by Neo Arcadian Forces. While the bodies of a few resistance solders are found, if Zero enters the hallway where Alouette is usually found, only the stuffed animal she always clutches will be lying on the ground. Once the threat is taken care of, she reclaims her lost companion.
• The Engineer: Doigt in particular assisted Cerveau in making the Recoil Rod.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Some Resistance members' introductory scenes immediately speak of their characters.
  • In the audio drama, Rouge and Jaune immediately showcase their contrasting personalities from the way they greet Alouette.
  Jaune: A-ra, Alouette-chan, come on in!
  Rouge: Alouette-san, you are aware that this area is off-limits for civilians, right?
• Expy: Prairie and Fleuve, for Ciel and Cerveau respectively. It's all but stated Praire is a grown-up Alouette, while Fleuve is implied to be an older Perroquiet.
• Eyes Always Shut: Autruche.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: In the introduction of the first game, several of Ciel's companions were cut in half by several Golems' lasers. Even worse in the original versions◊, with tons of blood spilling out.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item: in Zero 4, Hirondelle will ask for two S-crystals from Zero in exchange for Sub-Tanks.
• Giver of Lame Names: Rouge turns out to be this in one audio drama. When pressed to give a name to the Baby Elves, she seriously proposes Crime and Punishment. This gets her into an argument with the other operator (Jaune) where they accuse each other of being this. In the fourth game, however, if you ask her for the name of the new Cyber-elf, she'll suggest "Variable". While she claimed it to be the first thing that comes to ber head, "variable" is quite an apt word to describe the elf's functions.
• Gratuitous English: The Resistance are called "Resistance", even in Japan.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Alouette; she's as sweet and innocent as a Reploid child could be.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The name of Zero 4's cyber-elf, but subverted; the choices are pre-determined, and all you have to do is ask one of the members for it. Plus, due to the theme of the game, Croire (Believe in French) is the default one.
• Hope Bringer: This Resistance was made to consort any runaway Reploids who were awaiting "retirement", as well as helping those in need, regardless of affiliation. However, the group itself is facing extermination from a tyrannical government, so the Rebel Leader decided to find their own Hope Bringer: the legendary Zero.
• Hostage Spirit-Link: In a variant, in the second game, some of the Resistance soldiers are brainwashed to attack you; don't kill them or you lose your mission score. The trick is that, if you really have to hurt them, you can use a weak attack to make them "deactivate" for a moment, allowing you to go past them. Note: attacking them after they reactivate will kill them. They really will die, by the way; if you kill one, they won't show up in the Resistance Base later.
• Iconic Item: The stuffed toy made especially for Alouette by Ciel. She even carries it two hundred years later, as Prairie.
• Irony: In the fourth game, Alouette wonders if the Baby Elves are now playing with their mother. It's heavily implied that that she never knows what actually happened with them.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Andrew; he's supposedly a living Shout-Out to Bicentennial Man.
• Kid Sidekick: Alouette, and, to a lesser extent Perroquiet, serve this role to Ciel.
• Knowledge Broker: Hirondelle.
• La Résistance: They are the last group fighting agaisnt Neo Arcadia.
• Last Bastion: The Resistance functions as this, especially for Reploids.
• Late to the Tragedy: When the Caravan learns of Craft's coup, Ciel immediately sends word back to the main base to mobilize a rescue unit to Neo Arcadia before Craft can destroy it. Unfortunately, the rescuers only arrive once Ragnarok's laser has already struck.
• Lower-Deck Episode: One portion of the drama tracks depict Alouette's interactions with others in the La Résistance Base, and apparently takes place during and after one of Zero's missions in the second game.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Happens to Andrew, an old Reploid who married with a human woman in his backstory.
• The Medic: Rocinolle; if things are beyond her expertise, it's left to Cerveau though.
• Overly Long Gag: When the Resistance members got Brainwashed and Crazy in Zero 3, they deliver this cheesy line:
  Inscribe it upon the world...The name of our ruler...Weil! Weil! Weil! Weil! Weil! Weil! Weil! Weil! Weil!
• Player Headquarters: The Resistance Base in all of its incarnations.
• Put on a Bus: Reversed in the fourth game. It's the main characters who are put on a bus (truck, actually), yet the rest that remained in the base are written off the script (with only Jaune getting some minor lines, and when Neo Arcadia gets shot by Ragnarok, several Resistance soldiers come to aid the civilians).
• Rambling Old Man Monologue: Andrew can lapse into this. Poor Alouette had to listen to his monologues once when all she wanted was to ask him for names for the baby elves.
• Redshirt Army: One wonders how they ever survived without Zero. One interpretation implied throughout 1 is that simply by being red shirts, they posed such little threat that Neo Arcadia has barely bothered dealing with them, only beginning to put effort into an offensive when Zero, a credible threat, shows up. It's unknown if Elpizo's rebel cells are active by this point, but they could have distracted Neo Arcadia, too. Copy X also gives a reason in 3; he's intentionally been holding back because Ciel, their leader, is a human, and he is programmed to put the safety of humans above all other concerns; when he finally decides Ciel is an extremist threat to Neo Arcadia using her pacifism to hide behind sending Zero out on missions against Neo Arcadia as her strong-arm, he already has armies poised to run roughshod over the base.
• Retired Badass: Old Andrew is implied to be a former member of the Repliforce Navy.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Most of them are only fighting Neo Arcadia for their own survival. Aside from this, Ciel sees the group as a means to help anyone in need, regardless of affiliation with their enemies or gratitude (Harpuia and the Caravan, respectively).
• Robot Girl: Alouette, Rocinolle, the Bridge Bunnies, and the few female Resistance Soldiers.
• Robotic Spouse: Andrew used to be one for a human woman. He apparently makes himself look older as his spouse ages so she wouldn't feel bad, and after she dies, he keeps his old look as a way to remember her.
• Shipper on Deck: Alouette slightly hints at supporting Zero/Ciel.
• Spell My Name With An S: Despite the katakana reading for the old man Reploid's name being Andoryuu (i.e. "Andrew"), it's officially "Andre".
• Theme Naming:
  • Most of the Reploids are named after birds, in French. To drive the point home, Ciel ("sky") was the one who named them.
  • The Bridge Bunnies Rouge and Jaune are named based on their hair colors/hair accessories instead (Rouge is red, Jaune is yellow). Which makes sense, as they weren't originally under Ciel's command.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Downplayed — The Reploids in the Resistance technically rebelled from the human society in Neo Arcadia, but it's because of the Reploid-cide order of Copy-X (because of the energy crisis, but still). They're rarely hostile, either.
• What the Hell, Player?: Surrendering missions in the first game will lead to a passive-aggressive form of this — namely, epic guilt trips from Ciel and the Resistance members.

Neige

Thus the war of the machines began and humans can only watch...

Voiced by Yūko Gotō

A main character in Zero 4. She is the leader of the La Résistance neutral-analogue Caravan, aspiring to bring all humans out of Neo Arcadia and into New Eden-esque Area Zero. She is in love with Dr. Weil's new second-in-command, Craft, a fact that none of her fellow evacuees know...

• Broken Pedestal: She is this to the Caravan, mostly when her association with Craft is brought into light. She herself experiences this in regards to Craft, wondering how such a honorable soldier would stoop to serving Weil.
• Cannot Spit It Out: None of her fellow Caravan members know of her connection to Craft, and she wasn't ready to tell them yet. As thanks for rescuing them earlier, Neige also promises to keep Zero's identity (and his "involvement" with Copy-X's death) under wraps. All those secrets were revealed later, anyway.
• Chekhov's Gunman: This simple reporter turns out to once have been in a relationship with Craft — and this relationship is part of his motivation.
• Damsel in Distress: Halfway through the game, Craft kidnaps her, and Zero has to rescue her. In a subversion, Craft thinks that he's rescuing her as excuse for the kidnapping, which makes sense, because of Operation Ragnarok.
• Demoted to Extra: Upon the conclusion of Craft's storyline, her role is diminished, and the spotlight returns to Zero and Ciel.
• Face Death with Dignity: When Weil asks her to follow Craft and be under Weil's rule, or be destroyed with Area Zero, Neige defiantly answers that she'd rather laugh at the face of death and face it with dignity than live a living death under him.
• Interspecies Romance: With Craft, in the past.
• Intrepid Reporter: Like most of the inhabitants of Caravan, she doesn't trust Zero, but she does wish to someday interview him regarding his "legendary exploits".
• Irony: Despite being a reporter determined to know and get out the truth, she still believed at least some of the propaganda Neo Arcadia sprouted and assumed the worst of Zero based on it. She notes this after being rescued by Zero and apologizes for said behavior.
• I Should Write a Book About This: Complete Works reveals that post-Zero 4, she published a biography of said exploits.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Before escaping from prison, she tells Craft that she'd rather die with dignity than live in fear. These words led to Craft taking them to heart and blowing up Neo Arcadia with Ragnarok's cannon with Weil inside it, and indirectly Weil sending Ragnarok into a Colony Drop.
• Previously on…: She is the narrator of the prologue of Zero 4, giving an insight of human opinion of the long-running Robot War.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: She is a tomboy to Ciel's girly girl.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • When she overhears Craft's talk about "doing things for the greater good" after his battle with Zero, she comes in and calls him (and Zero) out on them bringing out trouble to Area Zero and disrupting the peace and that their actions, no matter how noble their goals are, end up causing more harm than good. Though she later thinks of the words she said and apologizes to Zero.
  • Later, when she's in prison, she calls out to Craft on how much he has changed, from once a heroic and honorable warrior to one serving Weil out of desperation. This and her Face Death with Dignity above would later change him again.

The Caravan

A group of humans who escaped Neo Arcadia with Neige and settled in Area Zero. The prolonged Robot Wars have jaded their view of Reploids. Unfortunately for them, Zero's the only one who can stop Operation Ragnarok...

• Bullying a Dragon: Played straight and averted. Considering that they resent Reploids for being warmongers, they spend a lot of time yelling at Zero. Rafale also makes a vow (in Zero's presence) to kill the Reploid who killed X. However, he does not attempt it after realizing who Zero is.
• Children Are Innocent: Initially, Typhon and Brise are the only ones (apart from maybe Neige) who will give Zero the time of day. When Neige is taken by Craft, they're also the only ones who are not only worried about her, but beg Zero to go save her.
• Fantastic Racism: They look down on Reploids because (in their eyes) all they're doing is causing pointless wars and destruction. They're even willing to look down on humans who are sympathetic to Reploids, such as Ciel and Neige once her past with Craft comes out.
• Freudian Excuse: Rafale tells Zero that he hasn't spoken to a Reploid (present company excluded) since his parents died in a Maverick attack. Neige notes that most of them have similar backstories.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Most of them don't seem to realize the Resistance has been a perfectly-justified war of survival against the Neo Arcadian regime and that their "hero X" was in fact a copy that foolishly decided to commit genocide on Reploids to conserve resources for human comfort (and by Zero 3 was fully willing to kill humans too to achieve his goals and spurned a peaceful solution). This can likely be justified by Neo Arcadian propaganda.
• Neutral No Longer: At first, they prefer to stand out of the war between the Resistance and Neo Arcadia. However, over the course of the game, upon seeing that the Resistance's goals were no different from their own (and with the help of Neige being kidnapped), the Caravan finally welcomes their help in fighting off and finally defeating the Neo Arcadian army.
• Reused Character Design: The Caravaners' sprites are recolored versions of members of the Resistance. One notable case is Faucon (who is part of the Resistance group in the same game) and Rafale.
• Theme Naming: Just as most of the Resistance are named after birds, these guys are named after winds.
• Ungrateful Bastard: When their settlement gets razed by the Neo Arcadian troops and Zero comes to rescue them, some of them don't like the rescue that much. Also, despite Neige being one of their major leaders who risked everything to get them to the Settlement, most of them are quick to turn on her once her past with Craft comes to light. This latter point in particular is what causes Zero to give them a What the Hell, Hero? speech.
• Untrusting Community: They get better later on.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Zero really chews them out after they decided to abandon Neige after she is kidnapped by Craft, telling them that they had no reason to leave Neo Arcadia if they were always like that.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: Rafale suggests that Craft "must've been a good one" for Neige to fall in love with him.

Major Antagonists

Copy-X

This is something that you and the original X could never create... only I could do this!

Voiced by Yuuto Kazama, Yuka Imai (RTRZ Ciel's Memory Drama Track)

Zero's best friend, who ushered in a new age of peace between humans and Reploids after saving the world from the Mavericks. Copy-X is the ruler of Neo Arcadia during Zero 1 and Zero 3, with the role of Big Bad and Disc-One Final Boss, respectively. During a time of great hardship after the sudden, unexpected disappearance of the original X, Ciel would make him as a supposedly perfect copy; shame she didn't give him 30 years of ethical testing like the original went through to ensure his reliability to discern between "right and wrong". In the face of an energy crisis, he wastes no time in taking extreme measures to maintain this "paradise", treating its Reploid citizens as expendable if their lives got in the way of human comfort and justifying his actions through his status as a supposedly "perfect" copy of the populace's beloved hero. By the beginning of Zero 1, he has sent a wave of Neo Arcadian forces to pursue and eliminate the Resistance, the game opening with various soldiers relentlessly chasing Ciel's party as they search for Zero, the hero of legend. Ordering multiple attacks on the Resistance over the course of the game, Zero soon takes the fight directly to him thanks to assistance from none other than the original X. Calling Copy-X out on the "joke" of a world he created, Zero defeats Copy-X in battle. Zero then tells him that he'll never be a "true hero" like X because X was far wiser and more compassionate than he ever was, a fact that Copy-X fails to come to terms with as he self-destructs, spitefully attempting to take Zero with him.

In Zero 3, Copy-X unexpectedly returns to resume his role as Neo Arcadia's ruler, bringing with him the exiled scientist Dr. Weil. Grateful to the man who rebuilt him, Copy-X is all too willing to pardon Dr. Weil's war crimes, allowing him back into Neo Arcadia and giving him the position of military advisor. Copy-X Mk. II and Dr. Weil then compete against Zero and the Resistance in a quest to retrieve the Dark Elf, culminating in Copy-X ordering a missile strike on a residential area, in a surprising rejection of even his own warped ideals. After leading another series of direct assaults against the Resistance, Zero defeats him in battle once more. X arrives to break the news to him, where once again Copy-X is proven the fool; Weil was only using Copy-X entirely for his own ends, and had already took off elsewhere with Omega and the Dark Elf. Frustrated at being treated like a fool, Copy-X decided to transform into his Seraph form, against X's warnings. Unbeknownst to him, Weil planted a bomb in his body that would detonate upon his transformation. And so he was blown apart for good, his very resurrection and actions only playing to the beat of the evil scientist's twisted tune.

---

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: In the jaPANese verSIon, Copy-X Mk. II emPHAsizes strange sylLABles.
• Arm Cannon: He's a replica of X, so he's got a cannon on his arm.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: He's pretty much X without the "30 years of ethical testing" bit and thrown in waaay over his head. Without having a moral compass or enough worldly experience and suddenly getting shoved into the ruling position with extreme levels of power both physical and political and having no one with any sort of authority willing or even desiring to question him, the only thing he knows is "being a good leader for human society"...at the expense of everyone else.
• Barrier Change Boss: His first form switches between the three elements, with the appropriate attacks and weaknesses.
• Berserk Button: Don't you dare call him inferior to the real deal.
• Beta Test Baddie: Being a copy, after all. However, he constantly insists he's a "perfect" copy of X and therefore cannot be wrong, going so far as to think of himself as superior to X, and his Berserk Button is being told that the real X was a better leader and a better man than him.
• Big Bad: Of the first game.
• Blue Is Heroic: Subverted. He was meant to be heroic, but lack of guidance makes him a Knight Templar instead.
• Boomerang Bigot: As far as he cares, a murderous reign of terror targeting his fellow Reploids is preferable to even mildly inconveniencing Neo Arcadia's human population. He passes this mentality on to all his subordinates too, when they aren't just sadists.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: His One-Winged Angel is out of reach for most of Zero's attacks, except Zero can use the pillars Copy-X himself summoned to Wall Jump to reach him anyway. Yes, they do float over Bottomless Pits and Copy-X does have an immobilizing move that will send Zero to a cheap death if it catches him while he's on the pillars, plus his Desperation Attack uses the floating pillars to try and crush Zero, but that's still unneeded when Copy-X could just carpet-bomb the small platform to kill Zero (and two of his moves do just this).
• The Caligula: He really does make Neo Arcadia a good place to live...but only for humans. It gets worse in the third game where under Weil's direction even humans become fair game, or at least the humans in Area Z-3079 to obtain the Dark Elf.
• Call-Back: His armor is similar to X's famous Ultimate Armor, complete with the Nova Strike, but with angel wings and different colors. He also exhibits many abilities of the X series, e.g. the Shotgun Ice or the charged Triad Thunder and the ability to heal himself in a pillar of light during battle brings the second X1 fight with Vile to mind.
• Came Back Strong: Played with. Copy-X Mk. II possesses a Reflecting Laser the original never did for his EX Skill, and his original EX Skill to restore a bar of health is now a standard move he does regardless of rank, but the after-battle dialogue implies Zero had no more trouble taking him down than he did the original. And while he also possesses the capacity to go One-Winged Angel, Weil booby-trapped him to ensure he'd die if he tried it.
• Came Back Wrong: Not that he was that great to begin with, but when Weil revives him in Zero 3, his speech patterns are messed up (Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable in Japanese and a pronounced stutter in English), subtly implying this.
• Character Tics: Seemingly inherited X's own "armor up" gesture when equipping his Ultimate Armor.
• Charged Attack: Just like X himself, he can charge his weapons to launch a stronger attack.
• Clone Angst: As his name spells it out, he's made as a replacement for X. In a variant, it's X himself who does the angst (over what the copy does under his name, that is), not Copy-X. He himself might have some of it too, given his insistence that he is not just a copy, but a perfect copy.
• Computer Voice: His voice has flanging while other Reploids have human-sounding voices.
• Dash Attack: He has the infamous Nova Strike as one of his attacks.
• Death from Above: His charged fire-elemental attack has him firing multiple fire projectiles upward, which then fall down, covering a wide area.
• Demiurge Archetype: Copy X is designed to resemble a seraphic multi-winged angel, with a halo in his final form. Neo Arcadia, intended to be a paradise under the real X, has regressed into a mere dystopia under his control. He rules with an iron fist and cannot stand the idea of anyone escaping his grasp. He is, however, a fake dressed up to look like the true ruler, and under his holy trappings he just wants to control everything he can. Copy X even deceives his own four Guardians into thinking he's the real X, but he's not quite as powerful or clever as he thinks he is.
• Demoted to Dragon: In the third game, where he's simply Weil's Puppet King.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Assumes the long-running series "tradition" in Z3.
• El Cid Ploy: He himself is the ploy, and Harpuia later makes a ploy in his stead.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: In the English version of Z3, he has a stutter.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • He's essentially X without his moral compass honed by three decades of ethics testing and over a century of life experience, leading to him finally picking a side in the conflict between humans and reploids instead of trying to bring about mutual peace.
  • He is also one to Zero. Both use elemental chips, subtanks, and both are technically clones of their predecessors. However, Copy-X's angelic design contrasts mightily with Zero's devil horns, red and black armor. Copy is a childish and short-tempered tyrant, while Zero is a stoic hero. Copy-X is a true clone of X, while Zero is actually a copy of the original's unintended/malfunction personality in a new body.
• Evil Knockoff: Although his creator never intended for him to be evil in the first place.
• Expy: A Composite Character of Gurjev and Michael, the villains of Mechanical Violator Hakaider, which Word of God says was the biggest influence on the story of the original Zero game.
• Fake King: The general populace never knew that the X as they know him has been replaced by a copy. The players also only get to know this when Ciel told Zero before the last stage of the first game.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: He thinks himself better than both X and Zero. Zero disagrees and X has similar thoughts.
  Zero: He's not as naive as you are. That's what made him a hero.
• The Fighting Narcissist: He continuously stresses that he is a perfect copy of X whenever somebody brings it up, claims that he's always in the right by virtue of being a "perfect" copy, and will gladly crush anyone or anything that continues to attack him on that front. To drive it home, his battle form is gold and white alongside his original blue, and One-Winged Angel forms invoke the imagery of angels, specifically a Seraph (the highest-ranking angel in Heaven's hierarchy).
• Final Boss: In Zero 1.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: He can change his elemental powers via Palette Swaps: Blue is Non-Elemental, Red is Fire, Light Blue/Lavender is Ice, and Green is Lightning.
• Giant Hands of Doom: In his second form.
• A God Am I: Has shades of this; his One-Winged Angel form resembles a Seraph and his in-battle quotes include "Repent!" ^JapaneseKuiaratame yo! and "I am judgement!" ^JapaneseSabaki da!
• Gold and White Are Divine: His special armor has this coloration, which, combined with his basic blue, gives an impression that he's a divine savior. His One-Winged Angel naturally also goes like this.
• Gone Horribly Right: Copy-X represents the most extreme side of X. He becomes so obsessed with his mission of ensuring peace that he makes a fascist state that discriminates against the Reploids in an attempt to keep the humans unquestionably safe.
• Ground Punch: His charged thunder-element attack has him punching the ground, sending out electric currents that creep along the ground and walls.
• Heal Thyself: His special ability in Zero 1 (if your rank is A or S) is creating a Pillar of Light that will shield him as well as healing one bar of life. In Zero 3, he does this regardless of your rank. He must be using a Sub-Tank.
• Heroic Wannabe: Is convinced he's the proud hero and savior of humanity, making sacrifices for their sake by retiring the "evil" Reploids. At best, he's horribly misguided. At worst, he's a delusional hypocrite.
• Holy Halo: his One-Winged Angel gives him one. He can even shoot energy rings out of it to restrain Zero!
• Hypocrite: Goes around branding Reploids as Mavericks for fighting to defend themselves from his murderous regime while viewing himself as genuinely incapable of ever being in the wrong, and executing innocent civilians in the first place. In the X series, he would've been rightfully deemed a Maverick, and in the third game, would've qualified for a third definition: bringing harm to humans.
• Icy Blue Eyes: In Zero 3, when he isn't in his Ultimate Armor. It's unclear if this is supposed to be another sign he Came Back Wrong or if he had them in the first game and the red eyes were just to further show he's not the real X.
• Insistent Terminology: He's a perfect copy of the legendary X. As a perfect copy, he's incapable of making mistakes and every decision he makes is right by the virtue of being a perfect copy of X and shouldn't be questioned by anyone. Combined with Circular Reasoning, when he boasts to Zero that Neo Arcadia is doing what is right, and that is proof that their actions are just.
• Irony: His resurrection as Copy-X Mk. II basically flips the concept of "the perfect copy" on its head. He's certainly stronger, but he's also left with a speech impediment, he's even more naive, and Weil makes him unable to properly go One-Winged Angel.
• Karmic Death: Neo Arcadia's purges, which began under him, prioritized Reploids whose labor had become surplus to the human population's needs. He dies in Zero 3 from a bomb Weil, a human, had planted in him to go off if tapped into his full power, i.e. if Zero had beaten him and he had become no longer useful to Weil's plans. To rub it in further, the real X, who he scorned as inferior to him, tried to warn him that Weil was just using him, only for Copy-X to dismiss his predecessor's wisdom as talking down to him and unwittingly activate the bomb in a fit of rage.
• Knight Templar: Always believes himself to be in the right and his methods to be justified, even if it results in mass murder of innocent reploids. As long as humans are happy in the end, he doesn't feel that he's doing a bad thing.
• Legacy Character: Arguably, since he doesn't hold much of the ideals of the character he inherited his legacy from.
• Leitmotif: "X, the Legend".
• Light Is Not Good: Adding to his angel motif.
• Moral Myopia: In the third game, he accuses Ciel and La Résistance of being extremists for not giving up the alternate energy system she had developed. Never mind that not only was Copy-X the one who started the mass extermination of Reploids in Neo Arcadia in the first place, but he also had no qualms about destroying an entire human residential district with a missile holding Omega, just to get the Dark Elf. This deed is why Ciel doesn't want to give the system to them in the first place.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Noun X" version.
• Not Himself: Several characters in the third game subtly note that the X that they see is somehow different from the X that they knew — even for those who already knew that X had a copy. Heavily implied to be Weil's doing.
• Not So Similar: He was originally planned to be the original X, but late in development became a Reploid built in his image who thought he was superior to the original. Zero himself comes to remember that X, his friend, was stronger and wiser than the doppelganger standing before him, a fact that he bluntly tells to Copy-X. Even if a player chooses not to take him at his word, even a glance at X and Copy-X's personalities would show even at his worst X is nothing like Copy-X and blowing the "perfect copy" defense out of the water.
• Obliviously Evil: He's an overgrown child with no comprehension of right and wrong, whose entire brief life has been spent being feted as a messianic figure under the assumption he's the genuinely compassionate original X. He can't have become anything else. However, that's just from the perspective of the innocent Reploids. The human populace sees him as a savior.
• One-Winged Angel: Ciel must have thrown in some upgrades.
• Orcus on His Throne: In both of his appearances. With the firepower he possesses, the "war" (barely counts as one until Zero arrived) against La Résistance would've been over a long time ago.
• Our Angels Are Different: He takes the form of a six-winged angel, a seraph. As the Mega Man Wiki points out, this sets him up against his original, who also appears in an angelic fashion, but in a much more humble manner (i.e with just a blue robe and a halo), emphasizing Copy-X's Pride and vanity.
• Power Gives You Wings: 6 wings. His first form also has many wings all over his body that do nothing. Only the ones on his back might actually be useful.
• Promoted to Playable: While he was technically playable in a Zero 3 minigame, Mega Man X DiVE marks the first time he's fully controllable.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He is a perfect copy of X from a technical standpoint, but as Zero points out, he lacks the experience, maturity, and insight of the original. As such, he makes a lot of extreme decisions while thinking he is incapable of making mistakes and that everything he does is right, despite the piles of dead Reploids his actions leave behind. He is also easily angered by any unflattering comparisons to the original X, and when he is beaten by Zero in the first game, his reaction is comparable to a child who just lost a game of "Good Guys vs. Bad Guys".
  Copy-X: Why...? Why...? I was... supposed to be... the perfect copy... how can this be... possible...? I was supposed to be... a hero...
  Zero: I've just remembered something... he was not as naive as you are. That's what made him a hero.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Most of the time. In Zero 3 he has blue eyes, but goes back to red when he activates his Ultimate Armor.
• Reflecting Laser: His EX Skill in the third game, which can ricochet off walls and floors.
• Replacement Goldfish: For X. Suffice it to say it didn't work out as intended.
• Rings of Death: In his One-Winged Angel, he can summon halos that can be used to entrap Zero.
• Shadow Archetype: He is a perfect copy of X, just without all of the morality testing that Dr. Light did to ensure that the real X wouldn't become the way Copy-X became. The real X's speech after Copy-X's destruction implies that he came dangerously close to becoming just like Copy-X after a hundred more years of fighting both the Maverick and Elf Wars, which is part of the reason he wants to leave the job of saving the world to Zero.
• Sketchy Successor: He lacks the ethical testing or the experience that X had, which makes him a crazy Knight Templar.
• Slide Attack: Strangely enough, he has this.
• Slouch of Villainy: In Zero 3.
• Speech Impediment: He h-has a s-stutter post-resurrection. That's p-possibly the clue that h-he Came Back Wrong.
• Stationary Wings: In both of his forms.
• Taking You with Me: Pulls this in the first game by blowing up the Tower you're in after losing.
• Talking Is a Free Action: The original X only summoned his armor at the beginning of a level or in the privacy of a capsule — this guy talks smack for several sentences and THEN summons it. At no point can Zero run over and slash the hell out of him for being so stupid.
• The Needs of the Many: Subverted with the killing thousands of humans in Neo Arcadia's Area Z-3079 residential district, since Copy X believes that it would necessary to reunite Omega to the Dark Elf and restore peace that the Resistance "shattered", though several characters such as Harpuia and Ciel call out his BS.
• Token Evil Teammate: He's the only antagonist of the first game that's a true villain.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Reliability testing aside, Copy-X was the first legitimately successful replication of X's systems and in turn had all the raw horsepower X possessed when initially built up to the Ultimate Armor upgrade... it's just that throwing out raw power is all he knows how to do. The original X had grown far beyond that marker anyway, and even in a weaker replica body, Zero's subconscious memory was more than familiar enough with the real X's best to handle him. In fact, Copy-X might in Zero 1 have more raw power than Zero, due to Zero not gaining all his skills back until around Zero 3, and not being as upgraded by Cyber Elves. However, he doesn't have any skills that Zero has gained fighting on the battlefield. Judging by the dialogue, the fight between them is very one-sided.
• Unwitting Pawn: Copy-X Mk. II thinks that he's following his own agenda in the third game, when he was only being used by Dr. Weil. This culminates in Copy-X trying to rehash the One-Winged Angel trick from the first game when defeated, but ends up destroyed by a planted bomb and furthering Weil's plan, even in Zero's victory; so, Zero was right, he is naïve.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: He's built a paradise for humans on the remains of the countless Reploids he's scrapped.
• Villain Decay: He goes from being the Big Bad of Zero 1 to a Disc-One Final Boss and Unwitting Pawn in Zero 3.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Despite his many, many atrocities, the humans of Neo Arcadia adore him. It's to the point that in 4, part of the reason many of the Caravan humans, even Neige, give the Resistance and Zero such a cold shoulder is because they're responsible for Copy-X's death. Some even claim that "X" was the only Reploid who ever looked after humans, which is blatantly untrue, though in fairness it's not clear how much they're actually referring to the real X.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He claims that everything that he does is for the right cause, i.e protecting human society. This includes murdering innocent Reploids to alleviate the energy crisis. And he does okay in that department — until, in the third game, he commanded the bombardment of a residential district, claiming the life of thousands of humans... all for getting Omega to the Dark Elf. (Justified in that case, though, since he's Not Himself.)
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: "Solves" the energy crisis by sentencing Reploids whose work is no longer necessary to death in Kangaroo Courts, removing their energy needs from Neo Arcadia's resources. Karmically, he dies for good in Zero 3 as a result of becoming more useful to Weil as a martyr.

The Dark Elf

Zero...
When she was born, she had a mission to save the world...

Originally born as the very first Cyber Elf, the Mother Elf, which, with the "Sigma Antibody Program", was used by X to eradicate all traces of the Maverick Virus on Earth. Dr. Weil corrupted her programming, causing chaos and setting off the devastating Elf Wars. Basically shrouded in mystery. She was later sealed by original X's body.

At the end of Zero 2, she briefly returns to her original state and transforms Elpizo into a Cyber Elf, also freed of his insanity, before running away. In Zero 3 it's revealed she was created by reverse-engineering the residual Zero Virus data from Zero's original body.

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• All Your Powers Combined: In different occasions, she displays abilities of all three types of Cyber Elves: Nurse, Animal, and Hacker. Fitting, since she is the template from which all Cyber Elves are based on.
• Anti-Villain: She's always being controlled against her will.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Weil used her power to commit genocide on the planet.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: As the Mother Elf, she has the power to get rid of Maverick corruption. However, after Weil corrupted her, she became the very source of new robotic corruptions, particularly when fused with Omega.
• The Cameo: It's obviously NOT the Dark Elf herself, but during the final battle of Zero 4, Dr. Weil summons the Weil Numbers using a facsimile of her.
• The Corruption:
  • The Dark Elf's Super-Empowering comes with the notable side-effect of mutating those who fall under its power; the extreme, Brainwashed and Crazy examples both share Morphic Resonance with the dark wisps enshrouding the Dark Elf. (The notable exception is Omega, who was designed to channel her).
  • Weil appears to have subjected the Dark Elf herself to this with his modifications—the Dark Elf's very design implies her to be trapped or enslaved by some foreign influence.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Zigzagged. The Dark Elf doesn't normally want to cause harm, but she's routinely forced or provoked into using her powers, which are immensely destructive. However, Weil's modifications themselves—the dark wisps enshrouding her in her art—are a straight example of Dark Is Evil.
• Energy Being
• Extreme Graphical Representation: The dark shrouds around the Mother Elf appear to be the visible representation of Weil's code, something he added to her program to modify her powers and control her.
• Eyes Always Shut
• Flunky Boss: A variant, as she never actually does any fighting herself, but in Zero 3 during Childre's stage she does mutate a Pantheon Aqua into the level's Mini-Boss after it tries to attack and capture her and sics it on Zero to keep him from catching her himself.
• Forced into Evil: Thanks to being reprogrammed by Dr. Weil. Even her artwork, of a small and white cyber-elf nearly smothered by threatening shrouds of darkness, suggests entrapment.
• Fusion Dance: By doing this with any Reploid, she induces a One-Winged Angel form, though only Omega is able to draw out her full power because she originates from Zero's original body as the Sigma Virus, and Omega is currently in control of that body.
• Hate Plague: Her powers are mainly used to sow hatred and psychopathy between Reploids, especially when combined with Omega.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Her original purpose was as a force for good, to purge Reploids of the Maverick Virus, but Dr. Weil corrupted her. By the end of Zero 3, she's back to being good.
• Leitmotif: "Darkelf".
• Living Macguffin: She's pursued by both Neo Arcadia and the Resistance in Zero 2 and Weil in Zero 3 for fear of her powers.
• Logical Weakness: Logical Immunity, rather. The Dark Elf doesn't mutate Omega because she's based on the Zero Virus antibodies from Zero's original body, and Omega is using Zero's original body.
• Mind-Control Device: One of her more frightening abilities is to control all Reploids within range; combined with Omega, that range is greatly increased, covering practically all the world. Ironically, she, too, is Brainwashed and Crazy herself.
• One-Winged Angel: Both she and her kids can induce horrific transformations to any Reploids or Mechaniloids, though she's much more proficient and powerful at it.
• Redeeming Replacement: As the Sigma Antibody Program, she was a countermeasure against the Maverick Virus. Created by using the antibodies in Zero's body as a template, the Mother Elf was used to eradicate the Maverick Virus completely. However, once Weil got ahold of the Mother Elf and corrupted her into the Dark Elf, she effectively became an even worse version of the same virus she was originally trying to eradicate.
• Say My Name: In the third game, she shouts "Zeeeeeeerrooooo" once, in the Oceanic Highway Ruins stage.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Zig-zagged. At last count, it's Sealed Good In An Evil Can, itself Sealed In A Good Can.
• Super Prototype: The other Cyber Elves (even the Baby Elves) are just inferior imitations of her with limited powers, while she can completely alter the appearance and minds of Reploids.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Vanishes at the end of the third game, finally free of her curse, and was never mentioned or seen again.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: It's barely even her fault that she caused the Elf Wars. She didn't even have a choice thanks to Weil.

Elpizo

A world without humans... the world only for Reploids... don't you think it will be paradise!?

Voiced by Tsutomu Kashiwakura, Griffin Puatu (English, Z2 Definitive Dubs Fandub)

The commander of the Resistance in Zero 2, as well as the villain. Elpizo ordered a full assault on Neo Arcadia, assuming that the capitol was defenseless in Copy-X's absence. However, all of the Resistance soldiers involved in the attack were slaughtered by the Guardians and Elpizo himself was curb-stomped by Harpuia. After that, Elpizo snapped and tried to free the Dark Elf, thinking he was too weak and that he could free the Reploids by just gaining power. In the end, he destroyed X's helpless body, in use as a lock on the Dark Elf's cage, and made her merge with him. Zero chased him all the way (although he was unable to save X's body), and defeated Elpizo. After that, Elpizo realized how evil he became and apologized to Zero for his actions, before the Dark Elf turned him into a cyber elf.

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• All There in the Manual: The drama tracks that accompany the Zero 3 remaster album elaborate on his past as a Reploid named TK-31.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears a long magenta coat with a rather wide collar. Although he isn't that badass — and when he merges with the Dark Elf (and becoming more badass), he loses the coat.
• Battle Aura: In his Desperation Attack, if you have A or S Rank, much like that of the Guardians.
• Battle Tops: His second form can summon large rotating drones to attack.
• Big Bad: Of the second game.
• Big Bad Slippage: A rare zig-zagged trope example. He starts off as the new Resistance leader before going bad after a botched assault on Neo Arcadia and trying to gain more power by going after the Baby Elves and the Dark Elf. To do this, he destroys the original X's body. He then declares to Zero that he will exterminate humanity, and he becomes the Final Boss. However, after Zero defeats him and frees him from the Dark Elf's influence, he realized how evil he became and, with remorse, apologized to Zero for his actions.
• Blade Spam: One of his attacks in his first form is him dashing while doing multiple stabs with his rapier.
• Boss Banter: He has plenty of this in his first and second forms.
  "Amai desu yo!": You've underestimated me! (summoning enemies through a purple portal)
  "Shitsurei!": Pardon me! (shooting purple projectiles from his sword)
  "Soko desu ka!": There you are! (launching purple orbs)
  "Tanoshinde kudasai!": Please enjoy yourself! (using his EX Skill Ground Burst attack)
  "Ottoikenai!": Oops, that was close! (when blocking an attack with his saber)
  "Motto chikara wo!": More power! (said when transforming into his second form, and then occasionally throughout the battle)
  "Zunīnaruna!": Don't get coocky! (when warping around the room)
  "Sabitetsukirō!": Rust and crumble! (when attacking in his second form)
  "Owakaredesu!": This is the end! (when attacking in his second form)
• Call-Forward: In "Record2_Irregular Passion", the radio drama that serves as Elpizo's Start of Darkness. The last line is Elpizo's cry of "More POWER!!" (Motto CHIKARA WO!!), which he screams fairly often during the final boss battle against him.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Despite being visually impressive, his lack of mobility makes his new body a sitting duck. It becomes worse when you realize that his attacks aren't actually much stronger than his first form and are now horribly easy to anticipate and dodge (especially with the rather wide room you're in), and thus the fight becomes a bit of a Curb-Stomp Battle. This might be justified, though: Elpizo couldn't bring out the Dark Elf's full power because his body simply wasn't designed to do so (that would be Omega). When he tried to bring out that power regardless, it's heavily implied that it drove him even more insane and left him unable to properly use his newfound strength.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Elpizo is essentially built up throughout Zero 2 and the background materials as the opposite of Copy-X in almost every way. Copy-X was built specifically to fulfill the role of X, the most powerful and famous Reploid alive. Elpizo was just a common Reploid who didn't even have the luxury of a name. Copy-X was made with power to match X, while Elpizo was a non-combat model who had to find ways to get power. Copy-X leads a "utopia" that ultimately wound up persecuting Reploids per his misguided efforts for the sake of ensuring humanity's safety. Elpizo leads a resistance meant to fight back against said persecution while also harboring a dangerous grudge against humanity that leads him to desire to kill them all for the safety of Reploids. Copy-X has an angelic One-Winged Angel form that reflects how he himself and the human population see him as a savior, while Elpizo ultimately transforms into a demonic form that reflects how far he's fallen from his old goals. And while Copy-X dies (both times!) still utterly convinced of his own righteousness and unable to comprehend how a "villain" like Zero could defeat him, Elpizo lays dying horrified at his own actions and thankful of Zero stopping him before becoming a Cyber-Elf.
• Dark Messiah: Judging from his quote from the drama tracks:
  My name is really... Elpizo! I am the one who was chosen to become the hope of all the Reploids being oppressed in Neo Arcadia! To do that, Baby Elves, I'll need your... your power! That's right... power... more power!!
• Destined Bystander: His role as Big Bad happens only after halfway through the game. Before the events in the game, he was also just a common Reploid who went by a serial name, TK-31.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: When he goes One-Winged Angel.
• Drunk with Power: And even before then, it's obvious he gets more deranged and unstable the more of the Dark Elf's power he gets.
• Dub Name Change: Elpizo was named "Elpis" in the Japanese version. The "-zo" may be an attempt to make the name masculine^note although Elpizo can mean "to hope (for)", making the allusions still apply; Elpis was a female Greek deity.
• Energy Ball: His second form fires a lot of these.
• Energy Being: He becomes one at the end of the second game. In the third game, a mod card makes a cyber elf appear near the commanding room door; it's rumored to be Elpizo.
• Evil Costume Switch: The Dark Elf decks him out with a suit of white and gold, along with a golden-bladed laser rapier.
• Expy: His position as leader of the main heroic organization before his Face–Heel Turn, his desire to Kill All Humans for the benefit of reploidkind, and his harnessing of the Dark Elf, which allows him to force Reploids into servitude under him, makes him Zero's version of Sigma. This is pointed out in-universe by one of the Resistance members who has access to old files talking about the Maverick Wars, who compares Elpizo to Sigma without using the latter's name.
• Face–Heel Turn: After the failure of Operation Righteous Strike, he decides that getting a great source of power (in this case, the Baby Elves) will help him destroy Neo Arcadia, and then he becomes the Big Bad.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The latter half of Zero 2 involves trying to catch up to him. Guess what happens every time.
• Fallen Angel: His One-Winged Angel form deliberately brings out the comparison, showing just how far he's fallen in his original goals and how much the Dark Elf has truly corrupted him. In a way, it also seems to compare itself to that of Copy-X's own One-Winged Angel form, furthering the contrast between the two.
• Fantastic Racism: Him against the humans, though he still puts Ciel in high regard. At the end of the game, he admits that he was wrong about humans and apologizes for trying to exterminate them.
• Fantastic Terrorists: Encourages the Resistance to undergo terrorist methods under his leadership, aiming to personally overthrow Neo Arcadia for a better empire.
• A Father to His Men: He genuinely earned the loyalty of his personal Resistance members, and his response to realizing that Operation Righteous Strike is going horribly wrong is to immediately warp to the battlefield himself to try and salvage the situation. When that fails, his message to the Resistance upon leaving is one where he shoulders all the blame for the deaths... and it's the tipping point for his sanity.
• Final Boss: In Zero 2.
• Flunky Boss: His first form in his boss battle can summon a Pantheon Guardian or a rolling Spiking to aid him.
• Forbidden Fruit: He thinks of "entering the forbidden room and gaining the classified knowledge of Elf Wars".
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From just a common Reploid into one with the ambition to destroy Neo Arcadia. All because of an accident.
• Gender-Blender Name: Elpis is a Greek goddess of hope. Wonderfully ironic considering what he does, but despite appearances, he is a man. His name was changed to Elpizo overseas because of this, likely to make him sound more masculine.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The moment where the forbidden knowledge of the Elf Wars flowed into him would change his life. Although he didn't exactly go mad until he was forced to run from Neo Arcadia, starting from declaring that he's "Elpizo".
• He Knows Too Much: According to the radio drama tracks, Elpizo, originally going by his model number TK 31, was a bureaucratic model who was part of an investigation team for ruins related to the Elf Wars and related conflicts which were considered forbidden knowledge. When he accidentally stumbled across documents relating to these conflicts, Harpuia tells him to forget what he saw there. One week later, he learns that the settlement he was investigating was destroyed and the other members of the investigation team went missing right when he is declared a Maverick by Harpuia with the real reason for being labeled as such being because he knew too much about the Elf Wars.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Starting from his escape from Neo Arcadia, he (an otherwise normal Reploid) was convinced that he's a big deal, by calling himself "Elpizo". Later on, while he first acts awkward when he's pushed into the position of Resistance commander, he soon gets overconfident about himself and his strategy, thinking that he can now destroy Neo Arcadia. When his Operation Righteous Strike failed, he's convinced that he's not "special" enough and tries to find the Dark Elf, partly to attain more power and partly to become the Reploid savior that "Project Elpizo" aims to create.
• Ironic Echo: One of his quotes sounds a lot like something Iris would say, doesn't it? Though Elpizo puts much more emphasis on the "no humans" thing: While Iris merely favored a separate world, Elpizo...well, see below.
• Kick the Dog: Zero finally catches up to Elpizo, only to be incapacitated; Elpizo then forces Zero to watch Elpizo destroy X.
• Kill All Humans: His motive, at least when on his power-high. He's appropriately horrified after his defeat and sincerely thanks Zero for stopping him before he could get that far as he lays dying.
• The Leader: In Zero 2, he organizes guerrilla operations and data retrieval and has a good battle plan in general, but in battle he rushes in with his Operation Righteous Strike army without having too much of a backup plan.
• Leitmotif: "Combustion".
• Life Drain: His first form can launch 6 orbs at Zero that will latch onto him if he's hit. The orbs will then fly back at Elpizo, each of them healing him.
• Light Is Not Good: First half of his Final Battle only, when the Dark Elf gives him armor of white and gold, in addition to a golden-bladed rapier. He's also full-on Drunk with Power and just declared his intent to kill every human in Neo Arcadia.
• Meaningful Name: His name in Japan, Elpis, means "hope" in Greek. He renamed himself after Project Elpis, a project that revolves around creating a special Reploid to become a perfect ruler and "savior" (courtesy of Dr. Weil).
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Not directly stated, but given it's not hard to interpret Elpizo as having romantic feelings for Ciel (who only has eyes for Zero), it's also not hard to look at Elpizo's attempt to kill Zero during the final battle as at least partially motivated along these lines.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After his defeat, he realizes just how he's fallen, both in goal and sanity, and thanks Zero for stopping him before he could carry out his plans.
• One-Winged Angel: The final boss standard. He gains 4 wings during so.
• Painful Transformation: Absorbing the Dark Elf into himself for the first part of his final battle with Zero has him noticeably pause and grunt in pain, in addition to hunching over as it changes him. Becomes very obvious when he goes full-on One-Winged Angel, though, where he screams in pain as he transforms.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: He was the Resistance commander before he screwed up Operation Righteous Strike, and then he becomes the Big Bad.
• The Paranoiac: Especially after he was declared Maverick for accidentally exploring the forbidden knowledge of the Elf Wars (in one of the drama tracks), he slowly shows paranoid behaviors, starting from having delusions of grandeur (by declaring himself Elpizo instead of TK-31 after he escaped from Neo Arcadia), as well as the desire to destroy Neo Arcadia and human society to free himself from the fear. And by the events in the game, it becomes more and more obvious.
• Pillar of Light: His Desperation Attack of his first form has him planting his sword on the ground which emits this. It also sends harmful debris outwards.
• Power Glows: He glows purple in his first boss form.
• Properly Paranoid: Amongst the reasons for him wanting to push through with Operation Righteous Strike were the belief that Neo Arcadia would simply force Ciel to hand over her energy research and then wipe the Resistance out. Come Zero 3, Elpizo's views are proven right when Copy X Mk. II and Dr. Weil do just that.
• Prophetic Name: Invoked by renaming himself after Project Elpis. Note that he understood the "prophecy" wrong here (there's nobody actually named "Elpis" in that project).
• Purple Is Powerful: Initially subverted, but upon reaching his One-Winged Angel form, it fits.
• Redemption Equals Death: He thinks this is the only option for him after Zero defeats him, until the Dark Elf turns him into a Cyber Elf, much to his thanks.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes go from blue to red after fusing with the Dark Elf.
• The Resenter: To Zero, whether it's for his strength as a warrior that Elpizo craves to have himself, his popularity within the Resistance which Elpizo himself is shown to have some insecurities over, or the fact that Ciel favors Zero over himself. Note his passive-aggressive attitude toward Zero in the first half of the game. Which turns to just plain aggressive by the end.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Neo Arcadia Neo was originally wrong because he was declared Maverick among many other innocents to reduce competition for energy.
• Rousseau Was Right: Elpizo is actually a good guy (if somewhat short-tempered and likes to take a violent approach), he's just too ambitious with gaining power from the Dark Elf and then getting drunk on it. Also, in the drama tracks, if only he never found the room containing the secret data about Project Elpizo, he'd never be so violent like what we see him as now.
• Royal Rapier: Laser Blade variant.
• Stab the Sky: One of his attacks involves this.
• Survivor Guilt: Contributed to his Face–Heel Turn.
• This Cannot Be!: After Zero defeats his first form, he's left stunned at the fact despite wielding the power of the being that brought the world to ruin. It prompts him to yell at the Dark Elf to grant him more power. She most certainly does.
• Took a Level in Badass: He's helpless at first, but when he starts taking the Dark Elf's power, he single-handedly tears through Neo Arcadia's defenses and becomes the Final Boss.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: His absorption of the Dark Elf and her transformation of his body into his first form takes quite a bit of time, leading Elpizo to "thank Zero for waiting." Of course, the only reason Zero didn't rush over and try to slice him apart is because Elpizo immobilized him with the Baby Elves' power before destroying X and taking the Dark Elf.
• Villain Has a Point: His warning to Ciel that Neo Arcadia would just take her energy research by force is proven right in Zero 3, when Copy X Mk. II and Dr. Weil force the Resistance to hand over the Ciel System's schematics or risk annihilation by the Neo Arcadian Army.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Perroquiet points out that his intentions are similar to Sigma's. It is also directly contrasting to Copy-X's goal.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Even the premise of the great power brought on by the Dark Elf already turned him into a more ambitious person. Predictably, when he actually obtained the Dark Elf, he becomes more deranged and delusional.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Let's see, he ended up stumbling on information relating to Project Elpis/Elpizo when ordered to inspect a sunken library, found out by Harpuia, and told to forget everything he saw. Some days after, he was then declared Maverick by Harpuia, who was going to take him to be tried under the Eight Gentle Judges, but he escaped and fled from Neo Arcadia, swearing to take it down one day. In the events of Zero 2, he tries to launch a counterattack on Neo Arcadia after Zero terminated Copy-X, and despite organizing the plans in such a way that on the surface should grant him and the Resistance victory, he ends up losing horribly, with several of his men killed, and he then tries to unlock the Mother Elf so he could then make a Reploid paradise as a result of being unable to bear the devastation of the Resistance's loss due to his plans. And when Zero finally stopped him, he's horrified at the thought of what he was trying to do, and thinks that he deserves his death. Fortunately, the Dark Elf feels sympathy towards him, momentarily turning her into the Mother Elf and turns him into a Cyber-Elf to spare him from death.
• You Will Be Spared: Wishes to exterminate the human race, but still has feelings for Ciel.

Baby Elves

Left: Crea, right: Prea

Creer and Prier (Crea and Prea in localized versions) are two Cyberelves, under the same influence the Dark Elf is under. They are searching for their mother (Dark Elf) and in Zero 2 convince Elpizo to help free her. When Zero 3 comes around, Dr. Weil convinces them he is their grandfather, and he wants to "help" the search. They fight Zero a few times in Zero 3. They are able to forcibly mutate Reploids into their One-Winged Angel forms and when forced can even fight either individually or combining their powers.

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• Alternate Character Interpretation: In-universe. Most of the Resistance, Ciel and Alouette especially, think they're cute little bundles of energy that hold the key to ending the war. However, Zero finds them unsettling, and they openly hate him for his part in banishing the Dark Elf. They are also the spawn of a Heel–Face Revolving Door Hate Plague. Nobody compares notes.
• Baby Talk: Most of their dialogue in Zero 2, except for when they're saying "Mama." Lampshaded by Alouette in Zero 3 as she reminiscences on them, though it's averted in said game as they've learned to talk in complete sentences.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: In the third game, Zero tries to enter an ICBM that carries Omega and slay him while he's inactive. However, before Zero can reach him, the Baby Elves block his way, fighting Zero long enough for the missile to reach its destination, causing thousands of deaths and allowing Omega to take the Dark Elf there.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: In their eyes, anyone willing to help them reunite with their "mother" is a good guy, and anyone who would keep them apart is a bad guy. They don't care at all about the atrocities Dr. Weil has committed and in fact see him as their "grandfather" figure since he turned the Mother Elf into the Dark Elf, and they see Zero as a villain simply because he helped sealed her away. Heck, they only seem to really acknowledge the "Dark Elf" persona as their mother since they flee in terror when she briefly returns to being the Mother Elf at the end of Zero 2.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: What they can do to any Reploid they possess, such as Harpuia in Zero 2.
• Chekhov's Gun: One of the twins is first found inside a container in Ciel's room at the beginning of Zero 2^note mentioned to have been taken by Elpizo from Neo Arcadia prior to the events of the game, while the other one is a MacGuffin in Hyleg Ourobuckle's mission.
• Co-Dragons:
  • To Elpizo in Zero 2, helping him gain control of the Mutos Reploids that are in their way while guiding him to the Dark Elf's prison.
  • Also towards Dr. Weil partway through Zero 3, a position shared with each other as well as with Omega.
• The Corrupter: It's all but stated being around the two of them is what caused Elpizo to start Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and getting Drunk on the Dark Side even before he got his hands on the Dark Elf, playing on his guilt to make him willing to help them free the Dark Elf from X's seal.
• Creepy Twins: As they're cloned from the Dark Elf, this is a given. They can turn Reploids into monstrous versions of themselves and will stop at nothing to reunite with their mother.
• Death of a Child: Zero kills them after the boss fight near the end of Zero 3.
• The Dividual: There really isn't anything to distinguish the Baby Elves between one another aside from their color. In the Boss battles against them, in fact, they even share energy bars.
• Dual Boss: Compared to other examples, however, they're actually really easy; for starters, they share a life bar, but not Mercy Invincibility.
• Elemental Powers: They use ice and fire attacks.
• Energy Being: Being a Cyber Elf and all.
• Enfante Terrible: Baby Elves in general are clones of the Dark Elf, being meant to propagate the Dark Elf's corruption.
• Eyes Always Shut: They always look like they're sleeping.
• Foreshadowing: They call Zero "faker", for some reason.
• Fusion Dance: Like their mother, they can mutate any Reploid, and enhance their abilities. In their boss fight, they can also fuse with each other, becoming bigger and launching stronger attacks.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Dr. Weil convinces them he is their grandfather, and he wants to help them find their mother. Also, he asks them to harass Zero a few times 'cause he's a big meanie head.
• Ironic Name: The irony doesn't just come from the names; Alouette named them "Create" and "Pray" based on her hopes on them ("Please create a new energy source for us... please let my prayers reach them..." See Lower-Deck Episode). Guess what they used to do long ago? They're used as one of Weil's instruments in the Elf Wars. Also, in the third game, Zero killed them. One wonders what will Alouette say after this...
• Leitmotif: "Creer and Prier".
• Single-Minded Twins: Reflected in how they tend to repeat each other's sentences with some minor variation in Zero 3, though since Crea is the one who tends to initiate conversations while Prea follows up, it suggests that the former at least is the more assertive of the two.
• Spell My Name With An S: Creer and Prier in Japanese, Crea and Prea in English.
• Theme Twin Naming: French for "create" and "pray". In the drama track "Diary_Alouette's Good Day", where Alouette wanders the base gathering suggestions for names, those suggestions include: Plus and Minus, Anode and Cathode, Crime and Punish, Love and Peace, Azul Luna and Rojo Sol, Blanc and Noir, and Hypnos and Thanatos.
• Took a Level in Badass: It's implied their combat-capable forms in Zero 3 were thanks to Dr. Weil, as he offers while telling them he wants their help in finding the Dark Elf that he can even give them new bodies if they want.
• Tragic Monster: Both of them started off as innocent babies, but Weil enabled them into doing cruel things without understanding what harm they were causing and Zero ultimately had to kill them and they cried out in pain for their mama while screaming about feeling like pins and needles stabbed them and clubs and hammers hit them as they died.

Dr. Weil

Dr. / Lord Weil

I am the unending nightmare!

^{Combat form}

^{Second form}

Voiced by: Chikao Ohtsuka

The desire for power. The joy of making everything work for you. You have no way of experiencing this without a human brain. It's the ultimate joy! No mere Reploid could ever understand!

Known as Dr. Vile in Japanese (Not to be confused with Vile of Mega Man X, himself known as Vava in Japan), is the true Big Bad of the Megaman Zero series. Over a century before Zero began, Weil set into motion a grand scheme to take control of all Reploids known as "Project Elpizo". Believing Reploids still needed to pay for their crimes against humanity despite the successful eradication of the Maverick Virus, he used Zero's body to create the "ultimate ruler" known as Omega and placed a curse upon the benevolent Mother Elf. This signaled the start of the bloody conflict known as the Elf Wars. Thanks to the efforts of X and Zero (in a duplicate body) defeating Omega and apprehending Weil, it only lasted for four years, however, 90% of Reploids and 60% of humans were wiped out. Believing death was too merciful on the man responsible for such an unthinkable crime, the citizens of Neo Arcadia punished Weil with immortality through cybernetics before banishing him to suffer for eternity in the wasteland that he created. Unfortunately, no one bargained on him coming back. He set back to work, first reviving Copy-X to gain passage back into Neo Arcadia, orchestrating a new conflict between the Resistance and Neo Arcadia that culminated in Copy-X's final death allowing him to take over, and then using Omega and the Dark Elf to mass-control the Reploids once more.

After Zero defeats Omega and finally frees the Dark Elf, Dr. Weil turns his fury to the people of Neo Arcadia, making life miserable for humans and Reploids alike. This forced the populace to begin fleeing the city and discovering Area Zero. When Weil became aware of this mass migration, he initiated Operation Ragnarok, intending to wipe out Area Zero and force the people of Neo Arcadia to accept living under his rule. However, he is soon betrayed by Craft, a Neo Arcadian soldier who led Operation Ragnarok, who at last regained his resolve to take action — at the cost of many of the lives still in Neo Arcadia. With Craft's demise, Weil resorts to a Colony Drop, setting the Ragnarok space station on a collision course towards Area Zero. Dealing with Zero on his own, he taunts the Reploid over his role as a hero as he merged with the Ragnarok satellite itself. Cursing Zero's name, the tyrant is finally defeated after a climactic battle. However, with Weil's immortality, it's possible that he is still the main instigator of the Sequel Series Mega Man ZX as the original Biometal: Model V/W.

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• 0% Approval Rating: When he shows what a tyrant he is (after the third game, although some of the drama tracks imply that even in the story of the third game, his approval rating was very low even when he was allowed back in by Copy-X Mk. II). To the point that some of the Neo Arcadian citizens (who are brave enough to do so, anyway) start to run away from him, seeking a better place. Weil's solution? Destroy that better place. Not only is he making things worse for himself, but Neo Arcadia is blown up by the Ragnarok (used by Craft, no less), and his approval rating also seemed to be an indication of his chances of survival...
• Ambition Is Evil: He states that lust for power, ruling over everything, as well as controlling everyone, is the ultimate joy in his Motive Rant to Zero just before the latter fights Omega in Zero 3. He also implies that all of humanity shares this mindset and not Reploids. Zero, as usual, has his own counter for it.
  Dr. Weil: Heh heh heh heh... how pitiful. Of course, a Reploid like you would never understand. The joy of ruling all that you see... only a human could possibly understand!
  Zero: A... human?
  Dr. Weil: That's right! I'm a bona fide human. The creator of Reploids... a human being!
  Zero: ...
  Dr. Weil: The desire for power. The joy of making everything work for you. You have no way of experiencing this without a human brain. It's the ultimate joy! No mere Reploid could ever understand!
  Zero: I bet most decent humans wouldn't understand, either. You look just like another Maverick, to me. All I gotta do is dispose of you like any other Maverick.
• And I Must Scream: At the end of the series, where he's now truly incapacitated within the ruins of Ragnarok he's fused into, while heavily implied to be still living on.
• Archenemy: He and Zero have quite a personal history, detailed in the drama tracks telling the events of the Elf Wars, where Weil stole Zero's original body and turned it into Ax-Crazy Omega. They possibly continue their animosity as the Biometals W and Z in ZX.
• Asshole Victim: His Fate Worse than Death and century-long banishment to the wastelands was inflicted by vigilante justice, however considering he orchestrated the bloody Elf Wars that laid waste to the planet in the first place, it comes off as karmic more than anything.
• Ax-Crazy: He enjoyed the carnage the Elf Wars caused, he intended to build a Kill Sat to subjugate Neo Arcadia, and he was more than willing to personally pilot Ragnarok (the aforementioned Kill Sat) into crashing into Area Zero under the firm belief that he would survive the crash.
• Badass Bookworm: An exceedingly skilled manipulator who is skilled in many fields of robotics, including cryogenics, recreating the heat of the sun, magnetism, weapons, his own regenerative armor (seeing as he can heal himself) who is easily the most successful villain in the series (perhaps excluding Apollo Flame) and when merged with Ragnarok, he's probably the strongest character in the series other than Zero and Omega.
• Become Your Weapon: As the Ragnarok's core is vaguely sword-shaped, Weil merging with it is pretty much a fancier version.
• Big Bad: He's responsible for everything that's happened in the Zero series.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Heavily downplayed in this case. During Zero 3, Weil is still a massive threat, Omega is just a bigger one and when Omega is killed by Zero, his plans are ruined.
• Blessed with Suck: Being immortal. For him it completely sucks, as he's stuck alone in a dead world for the rest of his life.
• Break Them by Talking: He's pretty fond of attempting this on Zero, but his tendency to greatly underestimate the strength of Zero's own ideals and faith (such as his deeply mistaken belief that Zero would want to avoid killing Weil because of Weil's status as a human) makes his words often ineffective.
• The Caligula: He succeeds upon gaining power to force the residents of Neo Arcadia to live in a Crapsack World with virtually no hope of freedom or happiness, and is evidently very much insane.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Played for Horror. While he openly gloats about how evil he is, all it does make him even more despicable than he already is. Can also count as a Deconstruction, because it shows how terrifying this trope can be when brought to its logical conclusion.
• The Chessmaster: As seen in his Evil Plans, he's good at manipulating everyone involved in the conflict — both enemies and allies alike — to further his goals.
• Climax Boss: The final obstacle in the Zero series, complete with plenty of build-up beforehand.
• Collapsing Lair: In the Final Boss battle, defeating him will result in this, due to him merging with the entire lair for his second form.
• Complete Immortality: As a result of his cybernetic body he claims that he can't die, ever, making him more durable than most reploids and mechaniloids seen throughout the timeline. He's not kidding, either. Being The Ageless is proven by his 100-year exile with little loss of physical or cognitive abilities, and being Nigh-Invulnerable is shown when he survives a Kill Sat aimed directly at him, which levels a city, and he barely has a scratch to show for it. Of course, as the Big Bad of Zero 4, the goal is to find a way to truly kill him. While Zero is mostly successful, the ZX series shows that he's still around, although in a much less direct form.
• Confusion Fu: Weil has a patently absurd number of attacks even for something from the Mega Man series, and the only non-random factor that determines which one he'll use is going under half HP. Depending on how kind the RNG is to you, the finale of the Zero series will be anywhere between a big anticlimax or a massive headache.
• Crushing the Populace: This is what he does after he successfully gains control of the Neo Arcadian government. Starting with using Omega and Dark Elf to brainwash all Reploids so they all wreak havoc, then when the two are stopped by Zero's efforts, Weil becomes more repressive and freely declares anyone who disagrees with his rule to be Mavericks, humans included.
• Cursed with Awesome: His immortality goes into this. While he does take advantage of it, in his own opinion he's still cursed.
• Cyborg: While he was originally human as he claims to Zero, in the present he's currently been heavily modified with mechanical components, from his brain having been converted to data, to his entire mechanical body granting him immortality. This was done to him as punishment by X for his role in instigating the Elf Wars, and was intended to serve as a Fate Worse than Death, with him being forced to wander Earth's wastelands in this form.
• Death from Above: In the first phase of the final battle, he has several attacks that involve dropping projectiles from the air at Zero. One involves firing two waves of meteors, while the second involves dropping several swords into the ground before summoning a purple orb that fires balls of electricity.
• Death Seeker: The implications are certainly there. He does think that his punishment is indeed a curse, even though it gave him over a century to plan out his revenge. His full intention when merging with Ragnarok was to ride the Kill Sat down on to Area Zero, destroying nature entirely, functionally dooming everyone considering Neo Arcadia just got destroyed. His death would be part of that, though as the following centuries show, it's not that easy to kill Weil.
• Devil Complex: Right before you fight him in 4, he proclaims himself to be the Devil. Considering his personality, it's rather apt.
• Diabolus ex Machina: The plot of Zero 4 is basically one that benefits him, especially with regards to ruining the peace through science that Ciel was working so hard to obtain (and nearly won with the Ciel system by the intro of Zero 3).
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Just because he stole Zero's body does not mean he has any sentimental attachment to it, considering Zero's body was a Typhoid Mary that nearly infected the world's Reploid population.
  • He tries to invoke Three Laws-Compliant on Zero. However, Reploids and advanced androids like X and Zero only view the Three Laws as recommendations at best, and that's before considering the guy who built him didn't really give a damn about the Three Laws to begin with.
• Dub Name Change: Dr. Weil in America, Dr. Vile in Japan.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: Upon becoming the ruler of Neo Arcadia, he strives upon bringing suffering and despair to its citizens with his iron-fist rule, to take revenge on them because of what they've done to him ^note they put him in a suit that could regenerate him, prevented him from aging and dying, and they also converted his memories into data, and then he's left into exile in the barren wasteland he made himself from the events of the Elf Wars. He also admits after brainwashing all Reploids that he genuinely enjoyed the destruction caused by the Elf Wars.
• Dying Curse: Dr. Weil expresses shock at being defeated by a "puppet" like Zero, then he calls for Zero to perish forever. Weil did get his wish, as Zero died along with Weil.
  Dr. Weil: I... I have been defeated... by a mere puppet! PERISH!!!! BURN IN THE FIRES OF HELL!!!!^note この・・・ワシが・・・人形ごときに・・・滅べぇ！滅んでしまえぇー！
• Emperor Scientist: He becomes ruler of Neo Arcadia halfway through Zero 3.
• Enemy Summoner: In his first battle form, Weil can summon illusions of the Weil Numbers one after the other, each using an attack before disappearing.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Weil is really, really bad about underestimating Zero, twice (thrice if one counts Zero emerging in a new body in the Elf Wars, and proceeding to defeat Omega with X). Most noticeable is his inability to think that a robot would try to kill a human. Clearly he doesn't realise that Zero doesn't consider himself a hero, and as a Reploid, Zero has no reason not to kill. Then again, as he's immortal, he's probably just using it as an excuse for his ego, and being a Fantastic Racist, he firmly believes that being Three Laws-Compliant is how robots should behave.
  • He firmly believes that all humans are as rotten as he is. This is simply because after he was punished for his atrocities, he couldn't accept he did anything wrong so he projected himself onto the rest of humanity.
• Evil Chancellor: To Copy-X Mk. II before usurping Neo Arcadia's leadership position.
• Evil Counterpart: To Ciel. Both of them are brilliant scientists with expertise on Cyber Elves and Reploid DNA revival. Ciel is the all-loving, gentle leader of the benevolent Resistance who uses her knowledge to solve a massive energy crisis plaguing Neo Arcadia. Weil uses his equally brilliant scientific skill for evil and his own selfish goals, namely causing the Elf Wars, reviving the tyrannical Copy-X, and creating weapons of mass destruction like Omega and Ragnarok.
• Evil Laugh: He abuses the hell out of this one. He even uses it to great effect to surprise Zero. It also borderlines Laughing Mad.
• Evil Old Folks: Looks like an elderly man under the suit, and as it means he doesn't age he was clearly old during the Elf Wars. By now, he's well over a century.
• Evil Plan:
  • In the past, the "Project Elpizo" went like this:
  1. Thinking that Reploids should be more controllable because of the Maverick problems in the past, he endeavored to create the "perfect Reploid ruler" using Omega and the Mother Elf to turn them all into brainwashed slaves. X and Zero are understandably against this.
  2. Undeterred, Weil secretly turned the Mother Elf into the Dark Elf, then created many Baby Elves out of her and used them to turn Reploids into violent psychopaths, starting the Elf Wars. This was just to "prove" that the Maverick issue is still lingering even with the Sigma Virus gone — seeing this, the human government started to throw support to this project.
  3. The plan got derailed when Zero, coming in a new body, stole the Dark Elf from his clutches and used it to turn the war in the good guys' favor. He was then forced to release Omega and launch an all-out attack, betraying the human government in the process. The war ended when Zero and X defeated Omega, and after that, Weil got Unwilling Robotization and exiled, and Omega got banished to space.
  • His plans to usurp Copy-X's throne in Zero 3:
  1. He resurrected and possibly reprogrammed Copy-X, so he can earn his trust and become his Evil Chancellor.
  2. He later suggested that Copy-X strip the remaining Four Guardians from their positions as Neo Arcadian Generals and name him their replacement.
  3. Later, it was revealed that Weil had built a booby trap upon Copy-X's body that activated when he tried to go One-Winged Angel. After Copy-X's death, Weil can easily become the ruler by law. Additionally, he tells the Neo Arcadian citizens that Zero killed their former "savior" and that Weil will take the Resistance down, spreading the bad propaganda even further. Nice job breaking it, Zero.
  • In Zero 4, Dr. Weil's real plan is to destroy Area Zero with Ragnarok; the Eight Warriors are nothing but a diversion, so that the Resistance is stuck fighting the wrong battle. If the Eight Warriors' individual plans worked (acid rain generators, scorching the Area Zero with an artificial sun, etc.), Area Zero is destroyed, and the Resistance with it; if they all fail, there would still be time for Weil to fire his Kill Sat, leaving Area Zero destroyed, and the Resistance with it. In either case, Weil becomes the undisputed ruler of all humanity by wiping out freedom's last hope. Fortunately, Craft rebels against him and then fired the Ragnarok at him, destroying Neo Arcadia in the process.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Courtesy of Chikao Ohtsuka.
• The Exile: For his part in the whole Elf Wars thing (aside from immortality), Dr. Weil is banished from Neo Arcadia and forced to wander the wastelands.
• Expy: Of Doctor Gill. He's even a full-body cyborg, like Gill becomes in Kikaider 01.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • His only motivation besides For the Evulz or It's All About Me for starting the Elf Wars. He believed that due to all the Maverick problems, it'd be better if the Reploids are given a tighter "leash" so they'll never become Maverick again; this would essentially make them completely sub-human.
  • His low opinion of Reploids appears to tie into the way he perceives Zero. Zero's willingness to fight for what's right leads Weil to the mistaken impression that Zero values being "the hero", causing Weil to taunt him and attempt a Breaking Speech at least twice for Zero's failure to uphold a certain image. This is him seeing Zero as a simple, logical creature who only exists to be "heroic", and not a complex person with his own ideals and standards.
• Fate Worse than Death: The reason why he was given the regenerating armor in the first place. By the end of the Elf Wars, Dr. Weil was punished by the survivors with immortality, because they thought to imprison him or even to outright execute him was more of an act of mercy or the easy way out to avoid the full punishment for his actions. However, given that this is Weil we're talking about, this punishment backfired horribly and Weil just took advantage of his immortality.
• Final Boss: In Zero 4. He is also the final boss of the Zero saga.
• Flight: He's always seen floating. Since his legs are never shown, one wonders if he doesn't have legs, and thus is always floating, with an unseen device.
• Flying Dutchman: Of the "Men Without A Country" variety.
• Foreshadowing: After you fight Omega in the intro, Weil gives a challenge to Zero:
  Weil: Let's see how far you get with that body!
• Free-Fall Fight: The final battle takes place on a Colony Drop aiming to destroy the Earth. Zero has to defeat him and destroy the satellite under a time limit.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Tried to invoke this before the climax battle of Zero 4, citing his decades of exile from human society. However, it's his ruthless actions that caused his exile in the first place, showing just how irredeemably selfish Weil is.
  • His motivation for starting the Elf Wars was that he believed the Reploids engaged in the Maverick Wars had been foolish for causing such massive destruction over the last century. But this loses its credentials when you realized that most of those Mavericks (even Sigma) were influenced by the virus, so they can't be fully blamed for their own actions, and the rest of the viruses were purged by X's actions with the Mother Elf anyway. And he's actually hiding an agenda behind it: when he claimed that he wants to make Reploids more controllable with Project Elpizo (combining the Dark Elf with Omega to create a Mass Hypnosis effect), his real intention was to forcefully exert control over the world through Reploids.
• From a Single Cell: With his regenerative armor. He also had his mind converted into data. This partially gives him Joker Immunity as well.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: While several notable humans from the X series and earlier Zero games had at least some mechanical parts attached to their bodies, Weil is the first human to have his entire body replaced by machinery, with even his skin and hair being presumably just artifical. He's no Brain in a Jar or Wetware CPU either, as his mind and memories were outright converted to data and downloaded into his new body just to ensure he couldn't smash any fleshy bits to kill himself. The conversion was so thorough that he managed to endure centuries stuck inside wrecked pieces of his own Kill Sat scattered across the globe.
• Genius Loci: A mechanical variant in his final form, where he essentially merges with the Ragnarok satellite itself.
• Giant Hands of Doom: as a Continuity Nod, they seem similar to the ones from Omega's first form.
• Gold and White Are Divine: Subverted. His battle form has a lot of white and gold on it, yet he's utterly evil.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: It's implied that spending a hundred years alone in the post-apocalyptic world did this to him. Not that he was all that sane originally, though the isolation couldn't have helped.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While he sets up many major bad things in the Zero series, he's never fought or involved directly; only in Zero 3 onward did he show up in person and play the Big Bad role more actively (and even then, he's only fought directly in the fourth game). He's also implied to be The Man Behind the Man to both Serpent and Master Albert in the ZX series as Model W.
• Hate Sink: While most antagonists in the Zero series are written to have some redeeming qualities^note Copy-X legitimately does have the humans' best interests at heart, Elpizo wants Reploids to thrive in a world that persecutes them and is driven by guilt to the lengths he goes, the Guardians and most of the Mutos Reploids pre-Zero 4 are carrying their loyal duties to Neo Arcadia, the Eight Judges are Brainwashed and Crazy, Omega is just doing what he was made to do, and Craft is a Fallen Hero who finds his way again, Dr. Weil seems to be made to be as loathsome as possible. He's an enormous and self-admitted Sadist, wants to make all humanity and Reploids suffer and has nothing but contempt for anyone who isn't him (Omega being an odd exception) while everyone in-universe despises him. He also refuses to ever admit he's wrong and blames the world for punishing him after he destroyed most of it. Instead he views all humanity as monsters for punishing him, and his cruel actions in the backstory only solidify how irredeemably selfish and hypocritical he is, so that taking him down is all the more satisfying.
• Heal Thyself: One of his abilities, where he conjures four green orbs that he then absorbs to restore his health by about ten points each. He can use this move several times in a row, but luckily not only is he vulnerable at this time to attacks, the orbs themselves can be destroyed.
• Healing Factor: His cyborg body has incredible regenerative abilities, to the point it completely stopped his aging process and let him escape getting a Kill Sat shot onto his head with enough force to level a city and kill millions with nothing to really show for it once Zero meets up with him again aside from the glass casing on his head being destroyed. Even when he and Zero throw down for the final battle, his first loss has him exploding like a normal boss, yet by the next scene he's back up, albeit badly damaged^note Copy-X, Elpizo and Omega only collapsed after the defeat of their first forms and the former two were fatally wounded once their second forms exploded, while Omega's second form exploding just meant the destruction of his armor. When Weil tries to make the damaged Ragnarok station do a Colony Drop, he madly cackles that he'll be the only thing that survives the destruction. It takes Zero killing his second form and making the Ragnarok station tear apart and burn up in the atmosphere to finally bring him down, and it still lets him return as an Artifact of Doom.
• He Who Fights Monsters: For all the acts of revenge he pulls on both humanity and the Reploids, he completely ignores the fact that he has become what he hates the most: a Maverick, in all definitions of the word. Even more poignant when you take into account that he becomes the cause of new Maverick outbreaks in ZX as Biometal Model W/V.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • A subversion: he's the prime target of his own Kill Sat used by his own Dragon, yet he survives.
  • His merging with Ragnarok ultimately allows Zero to kill him for good (at least until ZX rolls around).
  • According to Mega Man X Dive info, he was the one that built Zero's copy body!
• Hope Crusher: Weil intends to keep the masses under his iron-fisted rule, and with Operation Ragnarok he plans to destroy new habitats as an example to dissuade any notion of escape. When all else fails, he also makes sure that both the Resistance and the Caravan are well aware that Ragnarok is now on a collision course with Area Zero because he believes there is no way for them to stop it.
• Humanoid Abomination: He is, chronologically speaking, the first cyborg in the standard Mega Man timeline, and while his cybernetic body can look more horrifically deteriorated after injury, he is still effectively both Nigh-Invulnerable and The Ageless, despite originally being human.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: He claims that humans are the only ones with the capability to truly enjoy control and manipulation, and are essentially as heartless as him. Zero gives him a Kirk Summation because he is likely projecting himself onto mankind.
• Hypocrite: Claims that all humans only live to control and manipulate — which applies to him more than anybody else.
• In Case of Boss Fight, Break Glass: Guess what his second form's weak spot is. Justified since that's where his head (likely all that's left of him that's remotely human) is located.
• Immortality Immorality: Although his morals were already dubious before being "cursed", he still degraded further down the line for his initial desire to die.
• Irony: Weil wants to control all Reploids and make them subservient to his will, while casually disregarding all of them and killing those that get in his way without blinking so much as an eye thanks to his Fantastic Racism. The one exception he absolutely lavishes with praise and glory is Omega, who doesn't even have an identity so much as existing like a force of nature, follows Weil's whims with no objections and likely has no room for any true sentient thought of his own. It's to the point that Weil refers to Omega as a God, almost as if worshiping his own pawn while constantly mocking the very Zero that made that original body go through its paces in the first place.
• It's All About Me: What sets him apart from other villains across the entire 'verse; he's a deconstruction of this behavior by taking it to its logical extremes. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about his behavior, and his mentality only makes it worse.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Originally Weil was merely a brilliant human scientist and survivor of the Maverick Wars, incensed at the idea that the Mother Elf would simply delete the virus and life would move on. Once his plans to steal the Mother Elf and use a False Flag Operation of a new generation of Mavericks so humans would jump to controlling the Reploids got foiled by Zero, however, the power at his disposal got to his head; instead of cowing or running off like Dr. Wily, he wiped out 60% of the already-dwindled human population and over 90% of the reploids in the world out of spite.
• Just a Machine: How he tries to justify his actions in the beginning, feeling Reploids were let off easy because of how useful they were. This also seems to be the major reason he keeps insisting Omega is the "real" Zero while Zero is just a fake. After all, Omega has Zero's original body, while Zero is just his mind and "heart", things that Weil obviously believes Reploids don't have, downloaded into a copy body and at best just means he's an inferior reproduction of what he used to be.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Is The Unfought in Zero 3, and despite his plans with Omega and the Mother Elf being foiled, he still rules Neo Arcadia in the end and proceeds to make the empire a living hell for its citizens. Only in the next game did Zero finally kill him.
• Kill Sat: The actual point of Ragnarok in Zero 4; merging with Ragnarok's core as the Final Boss, he could probably be the Kill Sat himself if he didn't have to deal with Zero first.
• Knight of Cerebus: He's far more of a menace than any of the villains before him. Zero 3 gets much darker, the usual 8 bosses are now brainwashed by Weil and become downright evil, and he starts inflicting far more acts of evil than any villain before him in the franchise (and that's not even counting his backstory!). As if the previous games weren't dark already...
• Lack of Empathy: Showed absolutely no regrets with triggering the catastrophic Elf Wars, which wiped out 60% of humanity and 90% of all Reploids — and that's just the Backstory — and he's planning on starting it again by using Omega and the Dark Elf to brainwash Reploids before trying to destroy the Last Fertile Region through such methods as acid rain, particle cannons, Kill Sat, and Colony Drop out of spite for the humans who would escape his rule. He also admitted that...
  Weil: (To Neige) He heh heh... that's the face... the face of rage, suffering, and humiliation... it's my greatest pleasure... a pleasure only a ruler can fully appreciate!
• Leitmotif: "Curse of Vile" in Zero 3, "Fate" in Zero 4 and the ZX series.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Implied with his reason for leaving Crea and Prea to fight Zero:
  Dr. Weil: Humans are like pigs, dependent upon the Reploids for their very existence... you do realize, don't you, that if I felt like it, I could wipe all humans out in the blink of an eye?
  (Weil teleports out of the room.)
  Dr. Weil: Crea! Prea! Do with this one as you please! I've got some pig squeals to enjoy. The squeals of indolent pigs, wasting their pitiful lives on idle pursuits.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: According to "Vile Incident: Eden Dome: It's Sin And Rebirth", Dr. Weil was the one who created the Eight Gentle Judges in the first place, which gives a pretty big realization as to why they chose to exile Omega rather than execute/retire him, and probably why the populace decided to go vigilante on him.
• Mad Scientist: Really mad. This guy literally makes Dr. Wily look like a saint in comparison.
• The Man Behind the Monsters: He's the only human behind Neo Arcadia in Zero 3, and later Operation Ragnarok, while his underlings are all Reploids. Not that he's fully human anymore, anyway, either in the literal or the moral sense.
• Mechanical Abomination: As a cyborg, he is able to merge with the floating core of Ragnarok, but still retains a more-or-less humanoid appearance. He then further merges with the outer hull, which turns him into a colossal monstrosity, neither really human nor machine. This form persists throughout the ZX series as well in the form of Model W.
• Misanthrope Supreme: He doesn't just lack any respect for ANYTHING (apart from Omega), he flat-out loathes everyone and everything.
• Misplaced Retribution: He felt that due to the atrocities that the Mavericks have caused, all Reploids are inherently dangerous and should be controlled (read: having their wills taken out of them when necessary). This includes innocent Reploids and Maverick Hunters.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Played oddly — it is made especially clear that he was completely, unambiguously evil.
• Moral Myopia:
  • He claims that humanity deserves destruction because of what they did to him, ignoring the fact that it's his wrongdoings that led them to punish him in the first place.
  • He also accuses them for exiling him in the name of "justice" while they're acting outside of the laws. Little did they know that the judges are actually Weil's creations.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: His original Japanese name is Vile. Intentionally changed so that he won't be confused with Mega Man X's Vile.
• Named After Somebody Famous:
  • Possibly after Ray Kurzweil. Might not just be a coincidence, considering that guy is an author on several books about transhumanism and technological singularity, things that Weil is a master of.
  • Just like Dr. Wily is named after Albert Einstein, Weil is named after Jakob Weil, who was the earliest known ancestor of the man himself.
• Necromancer: His specialty is in DNA Resurrection, and it is also implied that Copy-X, Hanumachine, Necromancess, and Blizzack Staggroff's return was through this method.
• Never My Fault: Refuses to accept what he did during the Elf Wars was actually wrong, and that his punishment was brought upon himself. He considers justice a "worthless ideal" solely because the humans that drove him away claimed to do so in the name of justice, completely disregarding the very justified reason as to why they ran him out in the first place.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Because the Elf Wars survivors made Dr. Weil immortal, they gave him a chance to enact revenge against the rest of the populace a hundred years later.
  • And later because of his regenerative armor he became a Artifact of Doom in the ZX series, which caused further chaos and mayhem by creating Mavericks (ironic since Dr. Weil hates Mavericks more than anything else). Nice Job Breaking It Survivors indeed.
• Non-Action Big Bad: When he first appears; averted by the end of Zero 4 when he merges with the Ragnarok core.
• No One Could Survive That!: He was the target of a Kill Sat that levelled an entire city.
• Not So Invincible After All: When he reveals to have survived the Ragnarok at the end of Zero 4, he says it's because his cybernetics allow him not only to never age but also render him effectively invincible, to the point that he'd personally oversee the Colony Drop of Ragnarok onto Area Zero and still end up surviving anyway. However, after he merges with the core and then outer hull of Ragnarok, Zero destroys the satellite and Weil along with it, proving that yes, even this seemingly invincible abomination of nature can still be killed. Though the ZX series shows he's sort of still around as the Artifact of Doom, Model W.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Back when he pitched Project Elpizo (creating the perfect Reploid to be used with the Mother Elf so he can control Reploids worldwide) to the masses, he claimed that it's to prevent Reploids from going Maverick ever again. His true intention, however, was simply to take over the world through mass Reploid brainwashing. The problem was, well, the world had already rid itself of most Mavericks thanks to X using Mother Elf, so nothing exactly justified his "concern". So he creates the Evil Plan that leads to the Elf Wars. His true intentions were only made clear once Zero in a new copy body stole the Dark Elf from him and he was forced to unleash Omega and other controlled Reploids on the masses.
• Obviously Evil: Oh boy is he ever. Even before he reveals his true colors, it's clear that he's bad news, so much so that everyone in-universe can tell. He doesn't do much to hide it either.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Doesn't even begin to describe his depravity. He even admits that destroying everyone would only be a fleeting satisfaction.
• One-Winged Angel: Done twice! In this case, it's a Painful Transformation, with Weil screaming (at least in Drama Tracks) as tubes jam into his back, spewing copious amounts of blood (censored in English versions, of course), and also says something that translates from Japanese roughly to either "Do you see this pain!? YOU'D NEVER UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT!!" or "Do you understand pain such as this?!" The Official Complete Works even claim that it's an abomination of a final form.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: An extremely rare evil version — immortality allowed him to return to terrorize the world even after he should have been annihilated by a Kill Sat, and even after his actual death, his regenerative powers keep him a viable threat as Model W.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He believes that Reploids are nothing more than machines, don’t deserve to be treated like people, and initially started the Elf Wars out of a belief that all Reploids needed to pay for the crimes committed by Mavericks. Of course after being made into an immortal robot and exiled for a century, his hatred for Reploids morphed into a general hatred for all life.
• Powered Armor: The first time as The Punishment for his Elf Wars fiasco, effectively making him immortal and resentful, and the second fusing himself with the Ragnarok core, which counts as his One-Winged Angel prior to the real One-Winged Angel.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Very, very, VERY much so. When made immortal, Weil's mentality can only be described as being that of an overgrown child, being incredibly self-centered, petty beyond belief, refusing to acknowledge that everything is his fault, doing things on a whim, and what sell this are his attempts to annihilate everyone and everything during the finale, which are nothing but a genocidal temper tantrum he throws as a result of his plans going awry...which were originally making everybody do what he wants.
• The Punishment: He was given immortality and exiled as punishment for starting the Elf Wars. All that accomplished was allowing an incredibly evil mad scientist to stay alive.
• Rasputinian Death: Let's see, he is caught at the epicenter of Ragnarok's laser fire, survived that only with some minor damage to his body, was cut and shot at by Zero after merging with Ragnarok's core before revealing his survival, before merging with Ragnarok itself, and he implies that he'll survive Ragnarok's crash. Even when Zero defeats him and averts the crash, he manages to live on as Model W in various fragments across the globe, and was implied to have possessed Serpent, Master Albert and Master Thomas, before meeting his (possibly) final end with Albert's destruction. If he's still alive, that means whatever's left of him is condemned to rot as wreckage at the bottom of the ocean, presumably forever.
• Reactor Boss: In both forms, since he's merged with the core of the Ragnarok.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Just look at his armor!
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: It's unknown whether his eyes were red before his cyborg transformation at the conclusion of the Elf Wars, but they certainly were red afterwards, as his disfiguration resulting from his surviving Ragnarok's bombardment of Neo Arcadia revealed.
• The Reveal:
  • In the third game, he reveals that Zero's body is a copy and that Omega uses the real, original one.
  • In the fourth game, he reveals that he's immortal due to his enhancements.
• Sadist: He admits that during the Elf Wars, he personally enjoyed the mass slaughter and devastation brought by his Dragon Omega, and in the present enjoys watching "pigs squeal." In Zero 4, he makes life in Neo Arcadia horrible and takes glee in the idea of destroying nature.
• Sadistic Choice: Presents one to Neige in Zero 4, saying that she can either stay and die in Area Zero for "freedom" or follow Craft's example to become of one his followers, admitting afterwards that he doesn't care one way or another. Of course, Neige throws a small sphere that blinds both Weil and Craft while Zero slashes a hole in the floor with his Z-Saber, allowing the pair to escape.
• Shoulders of Doom: He gains one after he merges with the Ragnarok's core.
• So Proud of You: The only being he ever speaks genuinely favorably about is Omega, and never once does he insult or insinuate something horrible about him. You can almost imagine the pride in his voice as he claims that Omega is a god, not a slave, and that all he did was draw out his full potential. While justified (because that's what he used to wreck the world before), it's quite jarring, given his usual attitude to every other being in existence.
• The Sociopath: One of the few villains in the franchise that could qualify. Everyone's a disposable pawn to him, and he refuses to let anything that he can't control exist.
• Spell My Name With An S: Vile in Japanese, Weil in English (most likely deliberate, given the fact that there was already a character prior to him named Vile). Luckily they're pronounced the same, preserving the implications.
• Straw Nihilist: Prior to the final battle with Zero, he goes into an immense rant about how justice and freedom are "worthless ideals", and even goes as far as to dismiss ideals themselves as nothing more than nonsense in his pre-battle quote.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: His second form is a Time-Limit Boss, and he has a small but effective shield that he opens when he's going to use his stronger attacks. With all that, if only he never opened that shielding, he'd be unbeatable and still be alive when the Ragnarok successfully crashes. Then again, given how sadistic he is, and the fact that he believes that he'll still make it through alive as he crashes down, this is pretty much in character.
• Take Over the World: In Zero 3, he succeeds.
• Teleport Spam: In his first form.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: When Zero defeats Weil in the final battle, it causes the Ragnarok to blow up, taking himself (Zero) along with it. If that didn't destroy Weil, then the re-entry in the atmosphere would have. Sadly, it didn't stop Weil from returning as an Artifact of Doom McGuffin a hundred years later... but luckily, perhaps so did Zero as, you guessed it, Model Z.
• This Cannot Be!: His last words pretty much say this, followed by a Dying Curse^note Kono... washi ga...! Ningyou gotoki ni... Horobe! Horonde shimae!!! ( この・・・ワシが・・・人形ごときに・・・滅べぇ！滅んでしまえぇー！, which could be translated as "I... have been defeated... by a mere puppet! PERISH! BURN IN THE FIRES OF HELL!!!").
• Three Laws-Compliant: Weil attempts to use this as a self-defense from Zero, as he deems any Reploid breaking the three laws is considered a Maverick. Did it work? Hahahahaha... NO. This is actually Fridge Brilliance on several levels. Weil isn't human anymore, literally or figuratively. While X and his progeny weren't hard-coded for compliance to the Three Laws (as they are meant to be able to think for themselves), they are expected to reasonably follow them. Zero, being a Dr. Wily creation, wasn't — in fact his mere existence was the underlying reason for the original Maverick Virus to begin with. This also stems from Weil's distorted view that Reploids don't deserve their individuality in the first place.
• Time-Limit Boss: Zero has two minutes to kill Weil's One-Winged Angel form before Ragnarok reaches the point of no return and destroys Area Zero.
• Tin Tyrant: He's decked in full body armor that also serves as his life support, and he becomes a tyrant king halfway through the third game.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Pulls this upon Copy-X's death in Zero 3. It is by that point that the utopia for humans that is Neo Arcadia has turned into a dystopia for them too.
• Underestimating Badassery: Despite his fully being aware of Zero's combat potential, having been thwarted by him and X once in the past, and his personal ownership of Omega who also got defeated before, Weil repeatedly underestimates the lengths Zero will go to defeat him again while mocking him along the way. Part of this can be chalked up to his insane ego, at least; Weil doesn't skimp on defenses and powerful entities to block Zero's path. It ultimately culminates in his Fantastic Racism causing him to proclaim Zero doesn't have what it takes to kill a human...says the man who is effectively data in an artificial body at this point to a free-thinking robot not bound to any sort of robotic laws, while daring him at a point that can jeopardize his plans.
• The Unfought: In Zero 3. Which makes the long-awaited fight with him in Zero 4 all the more epic, climactic, and cathartic.
• Unperson: He was so heinous that all records of him have been suppressed by Neo Arcadia, to the extent that libraries containing records of his actions have been flooded and anyone who finds out about him is declared a Maverick. Of course, this is intended to prevent anyone from doing what he did again.
• Uriah Gambit: Inverted, as he sets up Copy-X Mk. II against Zero fully expecting Zero to defeat and kill the copy just as he did the original or for the bomb inside Copy-X to go off the moment he grew desperate enough to use his Seraph form against Zero, while simultaneously leaving the base with Omega to deprive Copy-X of back-up. Even if Zero didn't kill Copy-X Mk. II or if he somehow won without using his transformation, Copy-X would no doubt fly into a rage at learning of his betrayal and use his Seraph form anyway to fight Omega, thus killing him anyways.
• Viler New Villain: The last villain of the series, and by far the most evil of the lot. The previous antagonists all had noble intentions and/or sympathetic backstories. By contrast, Weil isn't sympathetic in any way, and wants to make life a living nightmare for mankind and Reploids alike. Any delving into his backstory only further establishes what a selfish and terrible person he is.
• Villain Ball:
  • The Resistance would have learned too late of the Colony Drop if it weren't for the fact that Weil fired a "warning shot" from Ragnarok long after it was believed that no one would man it anymore. In other words, Weil would've actually succeeded in his plans if it weren't for that little fact. This is in character for him and his motivations; he doesn't want to destroy humanity but enslave and torment it. The warning shot was to make sure everyone had enough time to leave Area Zero. Naturally, this backfires and Zero kills him.
  • His speech before the final battle implies he wanted Zero to try and stop him, just to show him that he couldn't. That's all well and good, but Weil really knows absolutely nothing about Zero.
• Villain Decay: Notably averted compared to Wily and Sigma. The past villains got hit with this hard due to reappearing as the Big Bad and getting defeated over and over in their respective series, Weil never even made an appearance until The Stinger of the second game, and the player never got to fight him until the fourth and final game and he still managed to take Zero with him, killing him for good...to some extent.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Subverted — as revealed by drama tracks, most of the populace were completely distrusting of him, so he has a plan (see Evil Plan) that would make Zero and La Résistance look bad, making him the "hero". Upon his ascension into Neo Arcadia's leader, though, he further demonstrates to the people (and Zero) how much of a monster he truly was.
• Villain Has a Point: Despite his megalomaniacal personality and making the lives of Neo Arcadia's people a living hell, he points out that Craft's plan to destroy Neo Arcadia with his own Ragnarok satellite would kill many humans and Reploids living under his control, though Craft tells him to stuff it.
• Water Torture: A very horrifying portable version. See that suit he's wearing? It's topped off with a glass cone with his head inside, and fluid filling the rest of it. He's constantly and eternally drowning, denied death by his regenerative armor.
• Wave-Motion Gun: In his second phase, he will charge and fire these in two variations: The first has him fire from near the top of the screen down almost to the floor, and then he'll charge another one to rake the floor back up near the top of the screen. Zero can avoid the first laser by dashing underneath it, but he'll need to grab Weil's giant horn to avoid the second laser. The second variation has him only charging and firing one laser blast when Zero is caught in an energy net.
• What Is Evil?: At the end of Zero 4, Weil claims that Zero could never kill a human. Unfortunately for Weil, Zero considered himself anything but a hero (and he hardly considers Weil human, either).
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Dr. Weil is neither human nor Reploid. The armor he's wearing is self-regenerating, preventing him from dying and aging, and, coupled with an eternal exile on the World Half Empty, is punishment for "remaking" the world in the first place. This further fueled Weil's hatred; initially, he only targeted Reploids, but after gaining control of Neo Arcadia, he does everything he can to make everyone suffer.
• You Are What You Hate: At the end of the day, Weil's crimes shaped him into exactly what he hates the most: A Reploid.
• You Monster!: After Zero defeats Pegasolta Eclair, Ciel wonders if Weil could possibly still be human in a spiritual sense. For an answer, he goes back and forth on referring to himself as "human" in a hypocritical way to justify himself, and calling himself the devil.

Omega

^{Click here to see his true body (SPOILERS)}

Ware wa meshia nari! ("I am the Messiah!")

Voiced by Jun'ichi Suwabe

During the Elf Wars, Omega was created by Weil to exterminate the Reploid race. The bulky armor and the personality/program are Weil's original creations, but inside the armor is Zero's original body. However, he was brought down in a joint attack by X and Zero, and launched into space. At the beginning of Zero 3, Omega's ship crashes to Earth, and he is used by Weil to seek out the Dark Elf as part of his plan. However, Omega is eventually destroyed by Zero. He is the only final boss in both the Zero and ZX series to have three forms.

---

• Arm Cannon: Oddly averted. Despite being said to be inhabiting Zero's original body, he uses a handheld gun rather than his built-in Z-Buster. See Informed Attribute below.
• Art Shift: That his form after crossing the Bishōnen Line appears as a Palette Swap of the Zero series' Zero confirms that the Art Shift is meant to be retroactive.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: Zero was made by Wily as a means to bring chaos to the world, but fortunately he ultimately turns good before it can happen. Then comes Omega, who did exactly that — without Weil even (possibly) aware of Wily's intentions.
• Attack Its Weak Point: In His first form, his only vulnerable point is his head and chest area. In his second form, his only vulnerable point is his grey middle head. Which makes sense, as that's where his main body is located within the armor.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: His second form. He's so big the fight only takes place around his head.
• Ax-Crazy: We're talking Khorne Berserker levels. His sole goal is to kill and to do his master's bidding.
• Back from the Dead: While Zero managed to seemingly destroy Omega at the end of Zero 3, Omega somehow manages to return in ZX in area N where he is taken out by Vent/Aile for good. Word of God implies that his appearance is canon since Flamole sensed his presence in the area above N.
• Badass Cape: He wears white with a red trim.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: For his final form, you fight him in the intro level in Zero 1, where Zero was sealed, now Wreathed in Flames from his armor's explosion.
• Beast of the Apocalypse: Ax-Crazy yet loyal Dragon to Dr. Weil. Caused the demise of 75% of all sentient life (combined total of humans and Reploids). Making things even more horrifying is that Omega is exactly what Dr. Wily intended Zero to be: a destroyer of civilization. Sprinkle a little extra Fridge Horror on there when the reveal is made that Omega is Zero's original body, meaning that Wily succeeded.
• Becoming the Mask: Mega Man X DiVE reveals he believes he really is the original Zero, and cannot comprehend the idea of Zero's copy body containing his original consciousness or that ViA fits the bill better than he does.
  • In a sense, he is right. As he is essentially Zero's original Axe-Crazy personality (as seen when Zero was first discovered / Awakened Zero seen in the Mega Man X series).
• The Berserker: Ironically, exploiting this trope is the best way to kill his third form in Zero 3. (Not in ZX, as it's dialed up.)
• BFG: Of the Arm Cannon variety in his One-Winged Angel form, mimicking Mega Man X, no less.
• BFS: in both his first and second forms, although the latter of which, strangely enough, he doesn't even use. This is due to the restraints imposed by the GBA's capabilities.
• Bishōnen Line: After, you guessed it, a One-Winged Angel. Justified; his first two forms are effectively a mech that he pilots, whereas his third form is his true body, which was Zero's original body, which is naturally stronger than most other robots. He's now far more agile and deadly than his previous forms.
• Boss Remix: His first form's battle theme, "Omega Battle", of the former.
• Call-Back:
  • After you beat Omega's second form, you and his remnants fall into a familiar place: The same lab where Zero was sealed, wreathed in flames. And then, suddenly a Pillar of Light shines up — mimicking Zero's unsealing in Zero 1 — and then Omega Zero appears from the rubble, released from the "seal".
  • His final form also exhibits many moves Zero used to have in the X series, including the infamous buster-buster-Sword Beam combo.
  • The opening notes of Cannonball are a remix of Doppler's boss theme.
• Catchphrase: "Ware wa meshia nari!" (I am the messiah!)
• Chunky Updraft: In his final form, Omega's power is so massive that pieces of the abandoned lab's wreckage hang suspended in the air around him.
• Clothes Make the Legend: A rare villainous example. He was well-known for his armor's massive size (dubbed the largest Reploid in existence), and no one really knows that the actual body wearing it is Zero's original body.
• Climax Boss: The only unsatisfying thing about his battle is that Weil was still alive at the end of the game.
• Continuity Nod: All of Omega Zero's attacks are Zero's own Signature Moves from the X series. Including the much-forgotten Z-buster (two shots + Sword Beam) combo. And the even more forgotten Zero Final from the Xtreme games.
• Coup de Grâce Cutscene: Inverted — after you successfully deplete Omega's last form's health bar, a cutscene will appear where Zero will try to attack Omega - only for the Dark Elf to protect him and regenerate him. Then the 4 Guardians come to attack Omega some more, and the Dark Elf's curse is finally gone. Then Zero gathers a small bit of strength back for him to deliver a single slash to finish Omega off...and you can control Zero during that part. In short, it turns the Coup de Grâce Cutscene into s Zero-Effort Boss.
• Cross Attack: His Laser Blade BFS, fitting given his intended purpose as a Dark Messiah.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: The story depicts him as the strongest Reploid in existence, having bested Leviathan and Fefnir on his own and taking Zero's and Harpuia's best attacks before absorbing the Dark Elf. In actual battle, though (even in his One-Winged Angel), he's a real pushover (once he crossed the Bishounen Line, however...). Notably, he was originally planned to be a tougher enemy that was a lot more mobile, but the GBA's limitations meant he was restricted to just sitting still in his first two forms.
• Desperation Attack: If you see Omega Zero rush at you with a low-flying dash jump, get the hell out of the way or be subjected to a 7-hit inescapable beatdown. On Hard mode, where you can't extend your life gauge, this attack means certain death. And in the ZX rematch, he will do this all the time at random. Lovely.
• Destroyer Deity: God Guise variant. His power is god-like and his destructive capacity and impulses are very real, but as still a Reploid, he's still not divine in nature.
• Detachment Combat: In his first form, Omega can detach his arms.
• Ditto Fighter: Omega is revealed to be the original Zero for his third form, and uses quite a lot of Zero's skills from the X series.
• The Dragon: He fits the personality of the actual Dragons in stories: Mindless monster who will demolish everything in sight, yet is very loyal to his master. As he was originally designed by Dr. Wily.
• Dragon-in-Chief: While Weil is far from helpless or incompetent (bar a few moments), Omega serves as the focus of the Resistance's attention and the final boss for the third game, and his destruction completely destroys Weil's plot for said game. It's revealed he's far, FAR more powerful than you'd expect...or anyone. While still loyal to Weil, he (basically) speaks of his own creation as a god. It's also revealed that he is not simply a pawn or slave of Weil's goals, but actually Zero's true body, merely upgraded to his full potential and potentially the most powerful enemy in not only the Zero series, but the entire franchise.
• Evil Counterpart: He is revealed to be one to Zero when he is revealed to be the original Zero.
• Evil Knockoff: Inverted. Omega is Zero's original body with upgrades and reverted to his original psychotic personality, courtesy of Weil.
• Evil Is Bigger: Is noticeably the biggest enemy Reploid outside of One Winged Angels...and his One-Winged Angel is the biggest of all. But subverted when it's revealed the "Omega" everyone thought they knew was simply a suit of Powered Armor. Omega himself is actually the exact same size as Zero, emphasis on "exact same."
• Eye Scream: Not directly, but in the backdrop of the Underground Laboratory, Fusion Omega's saber can be seen sticking out of the "X" head.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: His gigantic form has six faces: one on his head, one on each shoulder, and three on his waist. Both heads on his left side evoke the shape of X's head, while the ones on his right are styled after Zero's.
• The Faceless: The type of which his entire face is covered by armor. If it wasn't, then the game's reveal would have much less impact.
• Final Boss: He is the final boss of Zero 3.
• Freefall Fight: Zero fights his second, gigantic form as they fall from the base they're situated in.
• Full-Potential Upgrade: As it turns out, Omega is the end result of this, courtesy of absorbing both the Dark Elf (which originated from Zero's original body) and Dr. Weil's modifications. Weil goes so far as to boast he upgraded Omega to draw out his full potential, implying Omega as we see him at the end of Zero 3, fully released from his Powered Armor and with the Dark Elf absorbed, is the strongest Zero himself has ever canonically been raw-power-wise, including X5's Bad Ending with Awakened Zero.
• Fusion Dance: He's the only one who can draw out the Dark Elf's full power since the Dark Elf originated from Zero's original body. His Dark Elf-enhanced form is styled after a fusion between X, Zero, and the Dark Elf.
• Gangsta Style: Omega's third form holds his gun this way.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Technically, since he's completely mindless (he's simply programmed to kill, period) and having destroyed the world once.
• Giant Hands of Doom: He employs them in his normal form; it can float around and fire Rings of Death.
• A God Am I: after passing the Bishōnen Line, Omega declares "I am the Messiah!" Justified; after all the horrors he and his creator committed, the very few who survived the ordeal started calling him the "God of Destruction". Which was what Dr. Wily originally built Zero to be. Also, he was designed to become a "Reploid messiah", destined to lead the ideals of Dr. Wily into a new golden age better than what X and Zero could do.
• Golden Super Mode: After he absorbed the Dark Elf, his color turns gold and he becomes more durable.
• Grand Theft Me: Inverted, as it was technically not a theft, and Zero's heroic personality seen in the X series was not his original one. Dr. Weil received Zero's body legally from the government for his proposed Project Elpis. However, he then reset Zero's personality to the psychotic tool of destruction that Wily always intended him to be, setting Zero's loyalty to Dr. Weil, creating Omega.
• Ground Pound: In his Bishōnen Line, mimicking X-series Zero. Also has one that is similar to Zero's charged saber attack.
• Healing Factor: He seems to possess a limited version, as after Zero finishes fighting him the black parts of his armor spark with a green color before his floating arms (which had previously fallen down) float back up into position. He does it again after Harpuia unleashes his lightning assault. It's implied this is to ensure his Powered Armor isn't so easily destroyed, as it effectively acts as a Power Limiter.
• Humongous Mecha: His second form is massive.
• Informed Attribute: Despite being in possession of Zero's original body, he looks nothing like how Zero did in the Mega Man X series, instead having the exact same design as Zero does in the Zero series with a darker coat of red paint. The only reason why Zero looks different is because he's not in his original body, whereas Omega, being inside of that original body, doesn't have the same excuse. Justified since the artists for the Zero series stated they couldn't properly make Zero look like his appearance in the X series due to the technical limitations of the Game Boy Advance and them not being satisfied with that look and redesigning him.
• Knight of Cerebus: For two separate times, namely in the past (after X successfully got rid of the Maverick Virus on the world and the world was slowly recovering, he started the Elf Wars) and in the third game (where things become worse after Omega's rediscovery after he was exiled long ago).
• Leitmotif: "Exiled One (Omega)". "Cannonball" is a secondary one, used for his Omega Zero form.
• Meaningful Name: His name means "the end", and he is his creator's instrument in The End of the World as We Know It. Omega is also the last letter of the Greek alphabet, just like how Zero is often represented with a "Z", the last letter of the modern English alphabet.
• Meta Mecha: Omega's true form is contained inside the suit of Powered Armor he wears.
• Mind-Control Device: He can turn other Reploids into mindless slaves (when he fused with the Dark Elf). Only Reploids with virus countermeasures (Zero's are imperfect but still work, X and the Guardians have the perfect countermeasures) can resist it. Dr. Weil uses him to take control of all Reploids on the planet.
• Mirror Boss: With a twist! Omega's true form is Zero's original body. Downplayed in that, as a homage to X era Zero, Omega doesn't have any weapon other than the buster and the saber, and he has the Ground Punch moves that this series' Zero can't do.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Ancient Dead Languages version.
• No Fair Cheating: Omega's final fight infamously pierces through Gameshark codes making Zero invincible, as his saber ignores normal Mercy Invincibility. Coupled with the fact that he's a ground fighter (making the use of moonjump cheats redundant), this means that most forms of cheating are useless against him.
• No-Sell: He shrugs off Fefnir's, Leviathan's, and Harpuia's attacks in cutscenes.
• Not Quite Dead: Even though Zero seemingly kills Omega at the end of Zero 3, he somehow manages to return in area N during ZX where Vent/Aile kill him for good. Word of God implies that his return is also canon since Flamole sensed his presence in the area above N.
• Older Is Better: Zig-zagged. Considering it's Zero's original body, which is over three centuries old at the point in the series by the time Zero manages to take it down, it's clear Dr. Wily knew what he was doing when he built him. Omega is able to shake off the Four Guardians with ease and was basically a walking apocalypse before the joint efforts of X and Zero managed to seal him away. Ultimately he only ends up being defeated because Zero knows his body and moves better than Omega does. However, Weil did say that he upgraded Omega and tuned him up to make him stronger and draw out his full potential, so if anything, Omega is technically like a mishmash of ancient super-advanced Wily tech and newer technology that dates back from the Maverick Wars era at least.
• One-Letter Name: One Greek letter name (Ω).
• One-Winged Angel: His second form is a gigantic 3-headed figure, and in battle, we can only see his head and upper body. For reference◊.
• Palette Swap: Upon absorbing the Dark Elf.
• The Paragon: According to the Official Complete Works, Dr. Weil's Project Elpis is described as a project to design a perfect Reploid ruler using the power of the Mother Elf to control all the Reploids in the world, avoiding them becoming Mavericks. The Reploid was Omega.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The chaos and destruction in the Elf Wars was mainly his doing, with the rest coming from the Dark Elf and Baby Elves' influences.
• Pillar of Light: When Omega Zero is released and awakened, a pillar of light appears, mimicking Zero's resurrection from the first game. Then, in the last boss fight, he can use this as an attack, and also to protect himself. In ZX, this move can heal him.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: Omega's final form provides a rare subversion: like Zero, he has a hit priority system that lets his combos ignore Mercy Invincibility.
• Powered Armor: The body most people assume is his is revealed to be a suit of powered armor for his true self.
• Power Glows: As Omega Zero, he glows white.
• Power Palms: He has an opening in his hands that could fire rings of energy. In his Omega Zero form, he also has knuckles similar to the Z-Knuckle of the fourth game (instead of a Z, he has a Ω), which is presumably used to focus his power (especially when he does the Ground Pound attacks).
• Promoted to Playable: Initially as the Biometal OX in Mega Man ZX, then properly as part of the playable cast in X DiVE.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: His Bishōnen Line is red and black, and he's often called the God of Destruction. Courtesy of being Zero's original body, natch.
• Red Baron: Known as the God of Destruction.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: As Omega Zero, he has red eyes.
• Reflecting Laser: One of his primary attacks in his first form.
• Robotic Psychopath: As a robot programmed solely to wreak chaos, this is inevitable.
• Say My Name: Before you fight his first form in the Final Boss fight, he shouts Zero's name.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • If by "can" you mean "space".
  • He himself is a "can", as the container for the Dark Elf. In an inversion, the Dark Elf's nature makes Omega the more evil one, instead of the other way around.
• Secret A.I. Moves: As Omega Zero, as his abilities mimics X-era Zero (including the buster-buster-Sword Beam attack that you can't use even in the X series), Zero can't do some of his attacks, such as the Ground Punch ones and his EX Skill. Of course, he doesn't have access to the Recoil Rod, Shield Boomerang, some of Zero's exclusive EX skills, the Cyber Elves, and some modification chips aside from the double jump and absorber.
• Shoryuken: One of his attacks as Omega Zero.
• Shoulders of Doom: Fusion Omega's shoulders are monstrous versions of X's and Zero's heads. Yeah.
• Shout-Out:
  • Omega's finisher, the Ranbu, is based on the Shun Goku Satsu. It could also be a reference to Zero Final from the Xtreme duology.
  • Omega's second form has different-colored arms with heads for shoulders, and a white middle body. You know, there's some other guy named Omega who has the same appearance. ^note I mean, Omegamon. You probably won't get the catch easily, because Omegamon's name overseas is Omnimon.
  • The Ranbu could also be a reference to the Hyper Slash Combo (fan nickname), which could be performed in X4-X6 by rapidly performing two hits, dashing, and repeating the sequence pretty much endlessly.
• SNK Boss: In M.U.G.E.N renditions, at least. He comes much closer to this officially as ZX's Super Boss. While the patterns to avoid his attacks aren't any different, they dialed up his speed and he fires off attacks at random, including his Desperation Attack and self-healing ability.
• The Speechless: And every time he does speak, he only growls and rambles. The exceptions are after his powered armor has broken down, the first being his quotes above and the second involving his confusion when the Dark Elf reverts back into the Mother Elf. In his Event appearance in DiVE, this trope no longer applies.
• Super Boss: His Omega Zero form returns for a hidden rematch in Mega Man ZX. He's had lots of time to improve.
• Super Robot: He fills all the criteria for being one, even more so after transforming into an even greater humongous mecha.
• Sword and Gun: His weapons in his Bishōnen Line.
• Sword Beam: In his Bishōnen Line, he can fire these after firing his buster two times. He can also fire smaller ones in midair that covers most of the screen.
• Sword Plant: One of his attacks in his first form.
• Undying Loyalty: Despite being far more powerful than his creator Dr. Weil, he remains completely subservient to him.
• Voices Are Mental: Despite being in possession of Zero's original body, he doesn't share the same voice as Zero, instead having a much deeper voice. Justified, as being a Reploid, Weil likely outfitted him with a new vocal program in addition to his new mental programming.
• Wave-Motion Gun: In his second form, fired from his Arm Cannon.
• Walking Spoiler: His true form.
• Warm-Up Boss: In the intro stage. Quite ironically, his first form at the end of the game fights almost identically; he just has an extra attack in the form of actually using his BFS, more health, faster attack moves in general, and a gold Palette Swap.
• World's Strongest Man: So stupidly powerful that not even Zero is on the same level as him. He couldn't even be destroyed after the final battle of the Elf Wars, just jettisoned into space. On his own, he defeated Leviathan and Fefnir working together while taking hits from Zero and Harpuia. When fused with the Dark Elf, it takes the combined efforts of Zero and the remaining Four Guardians just to knock down his final form, and even then he'd have shrugged it off if the Dark Elf hadn't been turned back into the Mother Elf. Omega inhabits Zero's body after it was upgraded to draw out its full power — in other words, Omega is the Awakened Zero of X5's bad ending made into canon reality.

Craft

One person can't change the world. Heroes are a thing of the past...

Voiced by Kenta Miyake

With the death of Omega, Craft steps up as the new general of Weil's army. He only joined so that he can protect Neige, and sees heroes as "a thing of the past". He personally leads "Operation Ragnarok", with the 8 Einherjar Warriors under his command. Their plan is to obliterate all life outside Neo Arcadia in order to discourage the escaping citizens.

---

• All-Encompassing Mantle: In his first appearance.
• Anti-Villain: He's actually reluctant to work under Weil, but he had no other choice and viewed it as the only way for any sort of civilization to survive. He was also once a hero.
• Bastard Understudy: Not inherently evil, however; he only turned against Weil out of love for Neige.
• BFG: Which is nearly as large as he is, with a Wave-Motion Gun and a big bayonet that can be launched.
• Character Development: He first believes that one person can't change the world, and heroes are a thing of the past. But after the encounter in Neige's prison where she appeals to his once-held honors, he starts believing in it again, culminating in him trying to change the world and stop Weil by firing the Ragnarok directly at him.
• Confusion Fu: Fights with a very unorthodox attack pattern that can be hard to react to. It rather places his "commando"-like motif into perspective.
• The Dragon: A new one for Weil, as Omega and anyone else who could qualify for the position is currently dead.
• Dragon-in-Chief: As the field leader of Operation Ragnarok, he gets more exposure and gives more direct threat than Weil himself until the endgame.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He has a side mission of protecting Neige from Weil's atrocity, so he tries to kidnap her. Upgrades to full-on The Starscream when he takes control of Ragnarok and fires it at Neo Arcadia to kill Weil.
• Evil Is Bigger: Noticeably towers over every other human or humanoid Reploid in Zero 4 and across the Zero series itself is really only matched by Tretista Kelverian's humanoid form for size.
• For the Greater Good: He claims that his attack on Area Zero is for this, i.e for the betterment of humanity as a whole. Neige calls him out on it, though he doubles down on the statement by stating that as long as Area Zero exists, people will defy Weil for the chance to reach it who in turn will kill more of them to keep the others in line.
• Gratuitous English: Craft mixes English in with his Japanese when firing his Homing Missile. "Ōru ōbā" is a Japanese approximation of the English "all over", but "da" (だ) is a Japanese word for "is".

Craft: Ōru ōbā da! (オールオーバーだ, It's all over!)

• Heel–Face Revolving Door: He used to be a honorable soldier, but when realizing how Weil has pretty much seized control and there's nothing he can do against it, he surrenders and takes Weil's side. He then turns against Weil in the climax - by firing a Kill Sat at Neo Arcadia, almost killing Weil but also destroying 20 million civilians and all of Neo Arcadia's property.
• Homing Projectile: He can fire a homing missile at Zero.
• Honor Before Reason: Inverted. According to Neige, Craft used to be a warrior that went by his own code, before being convinced that living under Dr. Weil's rule is better than being killed by Weil for defiance.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: He's considerably taller than Neige.
• Humans Are Bastards: Well, at least he believes the ones willing to live under Neo Arcadia's thumb for Dr. Weil and terminate Reploids for their own comfort are. It's why he has no issue taking them as collateral damage in firing Ragnarok at Neo Arcadia for his shot at killing Weil. Even when he's defeated, he demands to know why he should trust the humans who fear and misuse Reploids and seek to conquer the world, and how Zero can still fight for them.
• I Let You Win: Zero believes that Craft held himself back when they first fought. Turns out, he didn't...well, take his own word for it, anyway.
• Interspecies Romance: With Neige, at least in the past.
• Large and in Charge: Subverted as the leader of the Einherjar, as while he's one of the largest humanoid Reploids in the series he's still out-bulked by a majority of the Mutos Reploids under his command.
• Laser Sight: Before he fires his Wave-Motion Gun, he'll aim it at your head with one. When you dash, the laser sight goes past you, and so does the Wave-Motion Gun itself, but you have to time your dash in order to avoid it.
• Last Request: Upon his death, he, like X before him, requests Zero to watch over the world, and Neige, for him.
• Leitmotif: "Kraft".
• Love Makes You Crazy: After being talked out of working under Dr. Weil by Neige, he destroys Neo Arcadia using Ragnarok, claiming thousands of lives, trying to take down Dr. Weil. Dr. Weil even lampshades this by stating "Turned by the sweet words of a woman!" when he was betrayed.
• Macross Missile Massacre: His strongest move, fired from above, which has the possibility to hit the entire screen, with very few openings for dodging. The missiles can be destroyed with the Z-saber to make an opening, but not without difficulty.
• A Million Is a Statistic: He fired the Ragnarok at Neo Arcadia, trying to kill Dr. Weil. The attack, according to the manual, claimed 20,000,000 innocent lives. Yet the intended target ironically survives.
• Morality Pet: Neige. When Neige proclaims right to Craft and Weil's face that she'd rather die than live under Weil's tyranny, Craft attempts to kill Weil partly so that Neige doesn't have to die.
• Noble Top Enforcer: He only wanted to keep the world from turning into an even worse hellhole, even if he had to work under Weil. He also rekindles with his more noble self after Neige's words.
• Non-Standard Character Design: His design looks more archaic than the Reploids of the era, featuring a lot of bulky plates of armors more reminiscent of the X-series (think Sigma, Signas, or Colonel), as opposed to the current Reploids' generally more slender design with closer-to-human complexion.
• The Promise: He once made one for Neige to fight with honor and for humanity. When she pointed that out to him during the attack on Area Zero, he then goes to kidnap her, with him saying "I'm keeping my promise by doing this."
• Recoil Boost: He can lift himself into the air by firing his Wave-Motion Gun into the ground.
• Recursive Ammo: One of his attacks involves throwing a bomb that splits into 6 and scatters away.
• Robo Ship: A canon in-universe example with Neige.
• Spanner in the Works: Weil would have succeeded in destroying Area Zero with Ragnarok, but Craft turned on him use the weapon against him. It failed to kill Weil, but it saved Area Zero.
• Spell My Name With An S: "Kraft" in the Japanese version, which in German means "power" and "strength". In America, on the other hand, it is associated with a brand of cheese, so his name was changed to "Craft" to prevent confusion.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • With his heavy armor (and especially a helmet that's solid-red in the front), backwards-flung black hair, a blue Badass Cape, and a heavy-duty cannon for his weapon, Craft bears a striking resemblance to Colonel.EXE of Mega Man Battle Network (who debuted in December 2004, five months before Craft's first appearance in April 2005).
  • As a morally-conflicted military man with a weathered face, he also seems to have taken inspiration from Barrel, Colonel's operator from the same series.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: One of his moves is to lob 3 grenades upward.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: He can phase through Zero while doing this.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: At least when compared to the 4 main bosses (and 2 intro bosses, if you really want to count it) you have to beat before him. He has many nasty attacks, a quick dash, and 3 bars of health. Even in his second fight, where you've got most of the useful techniques, he still proves to be a real threat.
• Weak, but Skilled: Compared to the Four Guardians, Copy-X, Elpizo post-Dark Elf, or especially Omega, Craft has nowhere near as much inherent raw power at his disposal despite being a combat Reploid, relying more on his various tools like bombs, missiles and lasers from his BFG. He's still skilled enough that he can give Zero a hard time in both their fights.