Characters that only appear in Yu-Gi-Oh! video games.
ALL spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware major spoilers.
Repeat! ALL spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware major spoilers
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Heishin
In other games, Heishin tends to be the initial main villain before being usurped by a more powerful threat. He appears in Forbidden Memories, Dark Duel Stories, Duelists of the Roses, and The Falsebound Kingdom.
- Big Bad: In several video games, though he's never the final boss.
- Canon Foreigner: He was created just for the games, though Aknadin from the manga/anime may be based on him in some respects.
- Disc-One Final Boss: In every appearance, he's usurped by either DarkNite or another, more powerful villain.
- Evil Old Folks: He's usually described as old, nasty, and feeble.
- Evil Overlord: When in power over Egypt. His counterpart in The Falsebound Kingdom is one as well, but over a medievalesque fantasy RPG world instead of Ancient Egypt.
- Evil Sorcerer: The High Priest and one of the most powerful magic users in Egypt.
- Expy: He's basically Priest Seto, having the same Millennium Item and the same backstory of Atem's High Priest who overthrows him. In Forbidden Memories, the only time they appear together, Seto is The Dragon to him. He also bears a resemblance to Aknadin, the treacherous priest with powers of darkness, though Heishin predates him.
- Faux Affably Evil: Always polite and personable even as he tells you he's going to destroy you and take over the world.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: In Forbidden Memories, you're required to lose your first duel with him to continue the plot. If you do win, he'll just keep dueling you until he does.
- I Have Many Names: Alternately called Heishin, Haysheen, or Slysheen.
- Magic Staff: Wields the Millennium Rod and its powers of darkness.
- Orcus on His Throne: His Duelists of the Roses incarnation leaves the actual warring to Seto and his men, and is entirely unaware that the player is his enemy, challenging them to a friendly duel to pass the time.
- In Forbidden Memories, while Heishin was very proactive in the beginning of the game conquering Egypt, gathering the Millennium Items, and overthrowing the Pharaoh, he becomes this once you return to the past, leaving the Prince alone to beat all the high mages and recollect the Millennium items at his leisure.
- The Starscream: The Pharaoh's high priest who tried to take the throne.
- SNK Boss: Gate Guardian, Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, Meteor Black Dragon... and for those who haven't played the older video games, in those days these cards were standard tribute monsters. And in Forbidden Memories, they didn't need tributes either. Hope you have a Raigeki or three. Not to mention he was able to see your facedown cards too. This only applies to his Forbidden Memories appearance however, he is a much weaker foe in all his other appearances.
- Villain Decay: In his first appearance in Forbidden Memories, Heishin is the Big Bad and is a legitimate, menacing threat. There he defeats Atem at the start of the game, conquers Egypt, and nearly succeeds in his plan for world domination even after being defeated by Atem in their rematch, only being foiled at the end when DarkNite refuses to obey after being summoned and turns on him. After this, he gets less and less threatening as the games go on, from being the Big Bad of Forbidden Memories, to being just one of the opponents during the Egypt stage of in Dark Duel Stories (where his deck is quite a bit weaker than the other Egypt stage opponents), and then to an Unwitting Pawn who's incompetent in battle in Duelists Of The Roses and The Falsebound Kingdom, to ultimately not being canonized in the series proper and so no longer appearing in the games after The Falsebound Kingdom as a result.
Ancient Egyptians
Several Ancient Egyptian characters who only appear in the Forbidden Memories and Falsebound Kingdom video games.
Jono and Teana
Ancient Egyptian versions of Joey and Tea. They only appear in Forbidden Memories. Jono fails to defeat Seto at the start of the game, while Teana cheers you on and is later taken hostage.- Damsel in Distress: Seto holds Teana captive late in the game. Depending on when you rescue her, you face either Seto 2 or go to the endgame.
- Expy: They are ancient Joey and Tea, which is even more blatant in the Japanese version where Teana's name is "Anzu" like her modern self.
- The Worf Effect: Jono loses to Seto in a duel, and it falls to the prince to get payback.
Villagers 1, 2, and 3
Three villagers who the player can duel in Forbidden Memories. Villagers 1 and 2 appear in The Falsebound Kingdom, but Villager 3 does not.- Ascended Extra: Villagers 1 and 2 were given names and minor plot importance in the Falsebound Kingdom. Villager 1 was named Jusell and Villager 2 was named Malairuka.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Villager 2 doesn't even get a name in Forbidden Memories, but he will likely serve you your first loss due to having powerful cards and fusions for that point in the game. If you're really unlucky, he can fuse a Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Villager 3 doesn't reappear in The Falsebound Kingdom.
The Mages
Heishin's lackeys in Forbidden Memories, the Mages guard the Millennium Items and various shrines. In The Falsebound Kingdom, many of them serve as his lieutenants, while the Labyrinth Mage is on Kaiba's team.- Adaptational Heroism: The Labyrinth Mage was a villain in Forbidden Memories, but a hero in The Falsebound Kingdom.
- Ascended Extra: Martis was just a generic mage in Forbidden Memories, but became a major NPC in Kaiba's campaign in The Falsebound Kingdom.
- Composite Character: The Labyrinth Mage is a mix of both Paradox Brothers and uses many of their signature cards.
- Hate Sink: Martis/Marthis in The Falsebound Kingdom is a backstabbing toady who takes pleasure in hurting people and is responsible for Kaiba becoming a fugitive. Taking revenge on him is quite satisfying.
- I Have Many Names: Like Heishin, their names vary between games.
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: Atenza the Mountain Mage has a headdress so huge it's a wonder he doesn't fall over.
- Meaningful Name: Anubisius the Forest Mage is named after Anubis, while the elite Mages Sebek and Neku are named for the Egyptian gods Sobek and Nekhbet, respectively.
- Money Spider: In Forbidden Memories, the Low Meadow Mage is famous for having the best card drops in the game.
- Noble Demon: Secmeton the Sea Mage accepts losing gracefully, complimenting your skill.
- SNK Boss: Kepura the Meadow Mage is as difficult as what you'll face in the Forbidden Memories endgame, using Gate Guardian powered up by the meadow you duel him on. With an attack over 4000, it'll take just two direct attacks from it to be defeated. He'll also often use equip spells to make Gate Guardian even more powerful.
- Token Good Teammate: While evil in Forbidden Memories, the Labyrinth Mage is on your side in The Falsebound Kingdom. He also appears on Kaiba's team in Duelists of the Roses, albeit as an opponent.
Fizdis
A servant girl in Forbidden Memories, she's kidnapped when Seto and his men attack the palace. She appears in The Falsebound Kingdom as one of Yugi's marshals.- Ascended Extra: Fizdis only had 2 lines in Forbidden Memories, and wasn't named, but became a playable, named character in The Falsebound Kingdom.
- Bit Character: She mainly exists to add more muscle to Yugi's forces.
- Damsel in Distress: In Forbidden Memories, Seto and his men kidnap her as they raid the palace.
- Player Punch: Invoked in The Falsebound Kingdom. If you fail to stop Yami Bakura from reaching Jakhud, he burns it down, and you get a special cutscene of Fizdis crying out for her parents.
DarkNite/Nitemare
DarkNite is an ancient evil spirit that brings disaster and misfortune wherever he goes. It's implied that the various DarkNites encountered through the games are the same being unleashed and re-sealed each time, with the exception of Duelists of the Roses where the incarnation that appears is the normal DarkNite's brother. Thematically, they play the same role in each incarnation. He has an alternate form called Nitemare, his true form, which is even stronger. He appears in Forbidden Memories, Dark Duel Stories, Duelists of the Roses, and The Falsebound Kingdom.
- Affably Evil: While his goal is to shroud the world in darkness and rule it, DarkNite tends to speak quite informally. In Dark Duel Stories he even gives the player a free password if they manage to beat him.
- Beard of Evil: Just look at his picture and be in awe.
- Canon Foreigner: As with Heishin, there is no basis for his existence in the manga or anime, but he appears in several video games. In this case, he was probably created to avoid spoilers, as the Battle City arc hadn't begun when Forbidden Memories debuted in Japan.
- Casting a Shadow: While his deck varies, it usually consists of Dark monsters, like Koumori Dragon, Skull Knight, Dark Elf, Castle of Dark Illusions, etc.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: Zig-zagged in Forbidden Memories. Nitemare uses powerful Monster cards but no spells or traps. As long as you can get something stronger than him, you're good. On the other hand, he can play up to three Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragons, and if you can't find a way around those, you're toast.
- Deal with the Devil: The games usually involve the Big Bad making a pact for power with him.
- Expy: He was Zorc before Zorc debuted. Forbidden Memories is particularly blatant in this, saying he's the creator of the Shadow Games and was sealed using the Millennium Items, and can be released by bringing them together again.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Duelists of the Roses incarnation, Manawyddan fab Llyr, is DarkNite's brother who is furious that DarkNite was sealed away.
- Fair-Play Villain: In Forbidden Memories he acknowledges the player's pact with him and agrees to leave if they can defeat him in a duel. The trope is actually Double Subverted in that he gets furious when he loses as Darknite and demands a rematch as Nitemare, but when he loses a second time as Nitemare he does concede defeat (although he's VERY unhappy about it).
- Final Boss: Every time he appears.
- Greater-Scope Villain: In the video games he appears in.
- The Man Behind the Man: Always is manipulating the villain or their goal is to release him.
- One-Winged Angel: His true form is Nitemare, who is more powerful and more heavily armored. In The Falsebound Kingdom, he summons a maxed level Egyptian God in this form.
- Physical God: Implied by his Japanese name, Card Majin, which means Card God. The games translate this as Card Guardian.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Is always sealed away and must be released.
- SNK Boss: While his exact dueling style varies, he always uses very powerful monsters like Meteor B. Dragon, Gate Guardian, and runs three each of cards like Raigeki, Change of Heart, Megamorph, and Swords of Revealing Lightnote . In The Falsebound Kingdom, he commands a God Card with much higher stats than you could hope to achieve on a standard playthrough.
- Spikes of Villainy: His armor is very spikey, and gets spikier as Nightmare.
- Villainous Breakdown: He throws a temper tantrum when defeated as DarkNite, and challenges the player as Nitemare because he can't stand losing.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Whoever was responsible for releasing him is not going to last much longer. Only averted in Duelists of the Roses because it's the player who unseals him, and promptly sends him back.
Player Character(s)
A set of initially nameless player characters who exist as avatars for the players and basically do everything cool themselves. Most games refer to them as male. They appear in The Duelists of the Roses, 7 Trials to Glory, The Sacred Cards, Reshef of Destruction, Nightmare Troubadour, GX Spirit Caller, and the 5Ds World Championship series.
- Escapist Character: Invoked, as you're best friends with the main cast and get to save the world instead of them.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: Reshef's main character cameos in Destiny Board Traveler, and a very similar-looking boy appears as an NPC in 7 Trials to Glory.
Reshef the Dark Being
Reshef the Dark Being is an Ancient Egyptian Sealed Evil in a Can. He appeared initially in Reshef of Destruction before becoming a TCG card and appearing at the end of Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters. Using Sol Chevalsky as a puppet, he plans to destroy and/or conquer the world.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: His main gimmick in the game and the TCG is to brainwash others into working for him.
- Evil Counterpart: To Horakhty, as they share a summoning condition. Though, Reshef actually came first.
- Fusion Dance: Kind of. In Reshef of Destruction, he's what shows up if you try fusing the Egyptian God Cards together, but he's not actually a fused form of them. Rather, the attempt is the condition for breaking his prison. Contrast this with what happens in the anime.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: He was sealed away in a stone tablet.
- SNK Boss: He has all three Egyptian God Cards, 40,000 LP, Swords of Revealing Light, Torrential Tribute, Change of Heart, and Raigeki, as well as very powerful monsters.
5D's Game-Only Characters
A lot of characters in the 5D's series of games who exist to give the player someone to fight.
- Alphabetical Theme Naming: Their names go through all of the letters of the alphabet.
- Canon Foreigner: None of them appear in the anime.
- Cosplay: Some of them cosplay Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl.
- Palette Swap: Many of them are palette swaps of canon characters.
- You Look Familiar: A couple palette swaps are reused, giving different characters with identical appearances.
Duel Links Standard Duelists
Duelists who appear in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links as opponents, sometimes getting more characterization in events.
- Badass Biker: Wild Dan, given that he's had experience with Speed Duels. Erika wants to be one, but is still in school and doesn't have her own Duel Runner yet.
- Bespectacled Cutie: Mia in the ZEXAL world is a tiny girl with round glasses, contributing to her looking a lot younger than she actually is (to the point where she's used to people messing up her age).
- Big Fun: Wild Dan is quite the cheerful fellow.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Mia sometimes declares "Get ready to feel the flow!" when talked to, at which point she apologizes and says it's something that her schoolmate says all the time. Amusingly, she'll even say this to Yuma, the person whose catchphrase she's borrowing.
- Brainwashed and Crazy:
- Yubel's event has Ethan, Logan, and Zachary as Duel Ghouls.
- Rio's event has Ruby, Mia, Oliver, and Theo dueling under Barian brainwashing and wielding Rank-Up-Magic Barian Force.
- Casanova Wannabe: Zachary acts like this around Alyssa while they're partnered for the Tag Duel Tournament.
- Cat Girl: Sunny in the VRAINS world is a cat girl cosplayer, often adding cat puns to her dialogue.
- Cosplay:
- Sunny wears an outfit based on Ghostrick Nekomusume
. - VRAINS world has a Knight of Hanoi as a Standard Duelist, who'll insist that he's a cosplayer when beaten.
- Sunny wears an outfit based on Ghostrick Nekomusume
- A Day in the Limelight: Events sometimes give them more characterization, with Bella getting plot importance in one of Bonz's events as well as Espa Roba's Duel Carnival.
- Fanservice: Noticeably ramped up in the GX World as the female Duel Academy students have more revealing outfits and defeat poses compared to their Domino High counterparts in the original world. Alyssa and Kylie are also noticeably curvier compared to the other female Duelists.
- Friendship Moment: Bella's lost card in Bonz's party event turned out to be Shining Friendship, and Bonz returning it to her helped everyone convince him to keep dueling.
- Genki Girl: Kylie of the GX world is full of energy and is always hyperactive and excited. Emmeline in the ARC-V world is much the same way.
- Gretzky Has the Ball: Wild Dan constantly uses terms for Turbo Duels when engaging in regular Duels, such as frequently mislabeling his Spell Cards as "Speed Spells". Even after Turbo Duel events started occurring, they're largely PvP events (meaning only Legendary Duelists get involved, so he still gets left out) that use mostly the same rules as other Duels.
- Hot-Blooded: Christine gets pretty heated up during Duels, only outmatched in the energetic department by Kylie.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Logan seems to be a case of this, becoming much more self conscious when he's losing but pretty confident when he's winning. His defeat quote is just a long sigh.
- Insufferable Genius: Andrew can be very smug about his calculations. Mickey can also be a bit arrogant about his skills.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Emma is a huge fan of Pegasus, and Logan and Zachary are fans of Bastion Misawa, though they forget his name. Erika and Chloe are also big fans of Jack Atlas. Mia is a huge fan of Quattro, even partnering with him in some Tag Duel events.
- Large Ham: Zachary from the GX world shouts every other line, win or lose.
- Mauve Shirt: They all have distinct appearances and personalities (and names in the international version), but are otherwise not particularly relevant to anything and serve mainly as someone for you to face. They don't even get distinct decks; the Standard Duelists instead have a set pool of decks that get assigned to them at random for each appearance.
- Mistaken for Servant: The Duel Column article for introducing Link Summoning has Vega mistaking Sunny for an advanced in-house AI, when she's actually not.
- Ms. Imagination: Madison is implied to be this, calling your Deck "uncreative" should she be winning. Despite this, she does seemingly want the Deck to be constructed well, calling you out if she wins for depending on Top-Decking (true depending on the situation).
- Mythology Gag: The Knight of Hanoi and Brave Battler will sometimes comment on having a bad hand when losing a Duel and the Knight will sometimes try to pretend he opened with a good hand, referencing the Duel between a Knight of Hanoi and Brave Battler in the VRAINS anime where they both managed to draw unplayable opening hands.
- Naïve Newcomer: Vega's voicelines suggest that she's new to Dueling.
- Named by the Adaptation: Aside from the ones based on established characters (Brave Battler from VRAINS; Saburamen, Yosh Imimi, and Sorako Noodle/Celestia Noodlina from SEVENS), all of the Standard Duelists were only referred to by generic labels in the original Japanese. The English translation gave them proper names (barring the Sector Security officer in 5D's, the Knight of Hanoi in VRAINS, and the Goha Soldier in SEVENS).
- Ojou: Chloe acts the part, due to her position as a Topsider.
- Older Than They Look: Mia wears the Heartland Academy's second-year uniform, making her the same age as Shark and one year older than Yuma, but is apparently often mistaken for being much younger than that (Ruby, who's a year below her, once mistakes her for a preschooler).
- School Uniforms are the New Black: Each world has at least one world-exclusive Standard Duelist (usually a few) who's always seen in their school uniform.
- Shrinking Violet: Bella is very quiet and shy during a Duel, and apologizes when she starts yelling upon victory. That said, she turns into the Straight Man whenever dealing with Espa Roba.
- Smug Snake: Zachary. His position as an Obelisk Blue student is something he will never shut up about in particular, rubbing it in at any given chance, even if he's Dueling another Obelisk Blue student or Crowler (his teacher).
- Sore Loser:
- Most of them are fine with losing - and they will lose a lot. Then there's Zachary, who throws a minor tantrum every time.
- Chloe can also be somewhat bratty when she loses, sometimes threatening to tell on you for daring to beat her. She still takes it marginally better than Zachary as her post-duel dialogue is a lot more composed than his, at most chastising herself.
- Straight Man: Bella is this to Espa Roba's Wise Guy during the Duel Carnival event.
- Token Evil Teammate: The Knight of Hanoi in the VRAINS world claims to be a cosplayer when he loses, but his other dialogue is more reflective of the real deal, especially him referring to Varis as "Master Varis." Fortunately, he's also never seen actually doing anything evil and is prone to being the butt of jokes like the rest.
- Unknown Rival:
- Andrew and Zachary act like typical shonen rivals, but are background characters and completely unknown to the main cast.
- Brave Battler actually has special dialogue for the VRAINS cast due to him canonically knowing them, but he's apparently so forgettable that they don't even acknowledge him.
- Villains Out Shopping: The Knight of Hanoi doesn't do anything more evil than bragging about the group's achievements. When beaten, he sometimes insists that he's just there to Duel for fun.
- Vocal Dissonance: Wild Dan is a gruff-looking biker that seems to be at least middle-aged, but his English voice sounds considerably more high-pitched and younger than you'd expect from someone of his appearance. Sam Black, who voiced him in English, states that he didn't see what the character looked like until after he turned in his performance.
