The Antichrist

aka: Antichrist

"Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son." — 1 John 2:22

Anti-Christ: Condemn them, Mother, for they know exactly what they do!
Stan: Uh, I'm-I'm sorry, what does that mean?
Anti-Christ: You know, it's the opposite of, 'Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.' Hello? I'm the Anti-Christ! I'm the opposite of Jesus in every way!"

—American Dad!, "Rapture's Delight"

The Antichrist is a Messianic Archetype, but aligned with the forces of evil of his 'Verse. His purpose is to bring about The End of the World as We Know It so that evil can inherit the Earth by force. They may be employed by the Satanic Archetype or The Anti-God of the setting.

This is a guy so far up the Sorting Algorithm of Evil that there's not likely to be a Deus ex Machina capable of stopping him (or her), so the heroes likely have to race to stop him from either being released, being born, coming of age, or demonically possessing someone. Often, the consideration is that the vessel and the messiah are different entities, and killing the bad also kills the innocent. If they do catch him before he starts putting his storyboards to film, they still have to kill an innocent.

If the writer likes irony, the Antichrist will take after Dad and rebel against his Dad, ditching the whole "destroy the Earth" shtick to become an Anti-Anti-Christ.

Expect a lot of 666 motifs, as that is the number attributed to the Beast of the Book of Revelation in The Bible. This trope is an integral part of Religious Horror, particularly of the Christian variety. If the Antichrist is unaware of or resistant to their fate as the Destroyer of All, they are the Apocalypse Maiden. Chances are that the Antichrist will pose as an Übermensch, and will almost certainly be a Dark Messiah. If a monster or animalistic creature heralds the apocalypse, rather than a human, then they're a Beast of the Apocalypse instead.

Note that while an actual description of the Antichrist in Christianity is not very well defined, it doesn't follow this trope very much. Mostly, the Antichrist is a False Prophet who is attempting to undermine the faith of Christians and slowly pervert their teaching. While he appears before the beast of the sea, he is more like the chief of propaganda and does not direct or even participate in the end of the world. In fact, Jesus Christ himself defines Antichrist as anyone who believes that Christ is incorrect, with "anti-" being used in the same way as "anti-Semite." The man of sin or lawlessness described by Paul in a chapter entitled "Antichrist", is where this trope comes from, along with the Book of Revelation, which refers to the "Beast" and false prophet. Thus, the idea that the "anti-Christ" is a biblical Supervillain of sorts is Newer Than They Think.

See also Anti-Anti-Christ, which is a (progressively less) rare heroic version of this type of character.

For the movie, see Antichrist. As for the book by Friedrich Nietzsche... erm, give us some more time to get back to you on that.

While it seems ridiculously common nowadays for people to be accused of being this, such accusations are always baseless (and usually pretty dumb), so No Real Life Examples, Please!. Though we're going to add one person, purely for historicity's sake, because he was definitely the first one who was bestowed with this title: Emperor Nero. For centuries he was seen as the embodiment of everything Christians despised, especially since he persecuted them before Christianity became Rome's state religion. There is even a theory the "Beast" in the Book of Revelation was a veiled reference to him, with "666" representing his name in Hebrew (where every letter has a number too). In this particular example one can immediately see why labeling people as Antichrists just boils down to picking one celebrity you hate, as if he is so ultimately evil that nobody else will ever come round and top him.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Punie from Magical Witch Punie-chan. This becomes increasingly obvious as the series progresses. Her mom was basically this for Magical Land, and she succeeded.
• Lucy from Elfen Lied is a near-literal example because not only is she superpowered but has horns and her name is the female version of Lucifer, a demon, and wants to wipe out the human race and replace it all with her species.
• Yuji Sakai from Shakugan no Shana after merging with the Snake of the Festival, but subverts it because his motive is to Save the World by means of creating a duplicate world where the Denizens can live without consuming humans to survive so he can live with Shana in peace.
• Mistress 9 in Sailor Moon. Luckily, it's an extremely idealistic show. The outer Senshi also confuse her for Sailor Saturn (whose body she's using) and attempt to prevent her from awakening as a result. Saturn is actually a beneficial version of the Apocalypse Maiden.
• Griffith from Berserk is more of a Dark Messiah as he plays the saviour part to perfection, but still counts as he is an arch-demonic manifestation of god's will who has come back to the physical plane so that he can become a king in the material world as well, and is prophesied to bring about an Age of Darkness which, following the Millennium Falcon arc, he fulfilled.
• In Chainsaw Man, Makima the Control Devil is a Dark Messiah and the first of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. She's a Devil born into the world with human form and supernatural charisma whom the government attempted to mold into a perfect servant, but instead aims to create a World of Silence—and isn't too concerned with causing The End of the World as We Know It if she fails. She seeks the complete subjugation of humanity, posing as a savior to the lost and disfranchised of the world, such as Denji while in truth leading them to ruin. To drive the point home, she has artwork of Lucifer falling◊ from Paradise Lost in her house and the anime adaptation has her depicted as the Virgin Mary in the third ending.
• Millions Knives from Trigun probably counts. He wants to wipe out the human race and replace it all with his "plant" kin.
• Creed Diskenth from Black Cat uses nanomachines to become immortal and, as he says it, a "God". His goal? To wipe out all the humans who don't have superpowers and create a society where he and Train Heartnet can rule the "worthy". Too bad Train wants nothing to do with this goal.
• Johan Liebert from Monster is compared with the Antichrist. Repeatedly. And appears to enjoy the comparison. One character, a drunk, even once sees him as a giant multi-headed dragon monster, much like the Biblical Dragon of Revelation.
• Aion of Chrono Crusade anime.
• In Beelzebub, the Delinquent main character, Oga Tatsumi, is forced to raise baby Be'el, the Son of Satan, into a powerful demon lord whose destiny is to destroy the world. A side effect of the bond they now share is that the more Oga fights, the more demonic he becomes. Incredibly enough, this is (mostly) Played for Laughs.
• Rave Master's Lucia, who was primed by the universe itself to destroy the world.
• Played With JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's Dio Brando, starts off as this in Phantom Blood, especially with his atrocities at 14 and his demonic Legions of Hell. In Stardust Crusaders, he's more of a Dark Messiah in his followers' eyes, but it's very obvious he's still an Antichrist.
  • The trope is revisited again in Vento Aureo, but is played much more straight with the antagonist Diavolo, whose origin is so enigmatic that fans wonder if he's even human at all and instead an evil spirit possessing a mortal vessel. Not helping is that he was born out of nowhere and literally named "devil".
• Sir Isaac Ray Peram Westcott from Date A Live. He has a great obsession to use the Spirits's Inverse Form to rewrite the laws of reality according to his own image. He says he would do the world upside down, in the process of his plan, he could kill billions and make the world descends into pure chaos.
• The One-Eyed Owl from Tokyo Ghoul is considered one by many powerful organizations, and has gleefully embraced this trope. A naturally-born Half-Human Hybrid, the Owl has been hunted since birth as a threat to the order of the world and responded to this by gathering the largest and most dangerous Ghoul organization ever seen — leading them under the guise of the "One-Eyed King". The Owl is a master manipulator, gleefully leading people towards temptation or ruin with clever words and half-truths. For bonus, the Owl even discusses the story of the Tree of Knowledge while offering an apple, tempting them to give into their hatred and resentment while promising to become their new God.
• Fate/Zero: Downplayed and implied for the purpose of a Mind Screw with Kiritsugu Emiya, The Chosen One for Angra Maniyu. The clues are:
  • The number of rib-powdered Origin Rounds: 66 (one 6 short of the Number of the Beast). It isn't six-hundred-and-sixty-six because such a large number tarnishes Kiritsugu's reputed skill, the significance of each bullet, and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief on account of their creation from two of his ribs.
  • The removal of two of his ribs: historically, post-mortem, Jesus was stabbed between the ribs to certify his death; mythologically, the blood and water that poured from the subsequent wound was caught by the Holy Grail. Those two ribs are likely the two removed from Kiritsugu via Natalia. This means it is completely impossible for such a ritual as the aforementioned one to be performed on Kiritsugu, specifically disqualifying him as a candidate for The Messiah while simultaneously distinguishing him as a unique individual on the planet.
  • A Self-Made Orphan, on account of his murdering his father. This act violates the Fourth and Fifth Commandments, the ones about honoring one's father and mother, and the prohibition against murder. Secondarily yet more importantly, the murdering of the parent has been the most prominent and distinguishing desire of the characters portrayed as the Antichrist in cinema.
  • His Arch-Enemy: the most pragmatic Catholic Priest alive during the Fourth Grail War is his most dangerous, personal opponent. The Catholic Church, like the noted trait mentioned above, is the typical nemesis of the Antichrist.
  • His Command Seal symbol: while it is meant to look like a sword, it can also be viewed as an upside-down cross. This would seem to be coincidental until Kirei confronts Emiya: literally a moment before their climactic fight, Kotomine kisses his necklace-bound crucifix; immediately following that shot is a view of Kiritsugu's Command Seals as an upside-down cross, as the hand beneath them grips his Thompson Contender.
  • The error of his wish: Kiritsugu needs the Grail simply because he knows, better than anyone, the impossibility of the realization of his desire by practical means. Simply, he absolutely cannot produce a miracle, and this understanding is the singular reason for his pursuit of the Grail, including every decision made since murdering his father. Yet, it is the necessity of an understanding of the method by which to produce a miracle that Kiritsugu needs to make his initial, six-year-old-boy's wish a reality. This specific lack of understanding - particularly because it is what ultimately denies him his desire - is the polar opposite trait of the purported Messiah that Jesus claimed to be.
• Lord Embryo from Cross Ange. While he's pretty close to a God (despite him denying the claim, thinking that 'Creator' is more apt), he is actually more close to an Anti Christ figure seen in The Book of Revelation. He granted a substance that gives pleasure to mankind, which in turn made them worship him unquestionably but also very decadent and full of sins, with them too lazy to wash it off, the Mana. They worshipped him like a God when there is another benevolent deity (Aura, though to be fair, she is a deity of another race). By the end of it, he decided that he's done with the world, and then initiated The End of the World as We Know It, without any care of these worshippers. When he is defeated, those who were subservient to him were left in the ruined world whereas those who oppose him were whisked away to a better world.
• Of all people in Black Clover, it's the benevolent Wizard King of Clover Kingdom, or more accurately, his dominant split personality Lucius Zogratis who turns out to be this. People in Clover Kingdom worshipped him like a God because of all the efforts he did to the Kingdom, not knowing that he's actually a megalomaniac waiting to unleash a Holy War to remake humanity into angelic humans devoid of suffering and inequality until it's too late. Even worse, his real name, Lucius is the birth name of the Roman Emperor Nero and just like the emperor and the Bibilical Antichrist, he was once backstabbed by a close associate through impalement by sword but mysteriously came back to life, causing wonder and awe amongst those who saw it.
• Friend, the Big Bad of 20th Century Boys, is repeatedly compared to the Antichrist, being a False Prophet disguising himself as a messiah of sorts and using it to try and seize control of the planet, while also turning them against the real Messianic Archetype. For added bonus, one of the biggest forces of good opposed to him is the actual Catholic Church.

Comic Books

• The "Son of Man" storyline in Hellblazer has a demon that John used in a faux-resurrection (then promptly got the fuck away from, as the corpse's father was one of the most dangerous mobsters in London) plot to bring about the birth of a messiah for Hell (because, as he reasons, Heaven is so popular on Earth because they proved it).
  • Another involved a journalist coming across the mummified, aborted (but still alive) fetus of the antichrist in its crib. Said crib has a hole in it through which the fetus can attach itself via its umbilical cord and corrupt the holder ("pissed in my soul"), the journalist having taken it from an insane serial killer and having started to kill people under its influence. ... Except that after the journalist dies of a heart attack, Constantine picks up... a flat cardboard box with a hole cut out taped over the man's nipple, containing a dead rat.
• Hellboy in both continuities and Nuada in Hellboy II. Luckily, Hellboy is fervently opposed to bringing about the apocalypse, but then again, he's just one dead love interest away from the necessary Super-Power Meltdown...
• Johnny the Homicidal Maniac - Squee has this in the form of Pepito, who announces within his class that he is the Antichrist and goes so far as to use his powers. Nobody gives a flying fook.
  • Plus, he consider Squee to be his friend, and saves his life at least once. This does nothing to help Squee's neuroses, of course.
• Turns out, Green Lantern's old Harmless Villain Black Hand is a Not-So-Harmless Villain. Blackest Night reveals he is the destined leader of the Zombie Apocalypse.
• Marvel Comics' Son Of Satan, Daimon Hellstrom, AKA Damien Hellstorm... yeah, you can imagine. He's an extremely conflicted individual and he's got some serious daddy issues. And you wouldn't believe what a bitch his sister is, don't get this guy started. All in all, a force for good in spite of his heritage, but he's still painfully aware that if he doesn't remain constantly vigilant, he will raise the infernal horde and bring ruin to the earth. Nice guy, though.
• The Antichrist, also known as the Moonchild, is the main threat in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's Century arc. In Century: 2009, he finally appears in a monstrous form that's covered with eyes and spurting magical power from every orifice. He's also Harry Potter, from the franchise of the same name. Turns out all the exploits were arranged, to hide what Hogwarts was preparing him for. He is extremely pissed off about this and goes on a shooting through the entire school.
  • And while the League puts up a good fight, the Antichrist is ultimately defeated by Mary Poppins, who is strongly implied to be God in this context.
• Black Moon Chronicles: Hints are dropped early in the series that Wismerhill's Disappeared Dad might be The Devil himself. It's a Red Herring; Lucifer's son is actually Haazheel Thorn. Wis dad is actually Pazuzu, a demon prince disguised as an elf.
• In the Italian comedic comic book Rat-Man, the main protagonist is eventually revealed to be the vessel through which his world's equivalent of the devil will unleash the Apocalypse.
• Ghostopolis has Vaugner, the charismatic and sinister leader who promised the ghost world unity under his rule and also serves as the Big Bad of the story.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this MonsterVerse fanfiction, Monster X is the Anti-Anti-Christ; a half-human Artificial Hybrid created by Ghidorah which Ghidorah wants to drive down a Start of Darkness but is firmly on the side of humanity and the heroic Titans. The Zmeyevich are implied to be a straighter example of this trope: they are quite literally Ghidorah's hybrid offspring, and once they're born, there's nothing to suggest they'll be inclined to side with Team Good like Monster X did.
• In Shadowchasers: Torment, Lareth the Beautiful is referred to as a Dark Messiah, but he fits this Trope better, only not to Satan, but to the Cult of Tharizdun. At least, he's supposed to be such. Whether he is or not, the three leaders of the cult don't truly believe it and plan to double-cross him; Tharizdun himself, however, is more appreciative to Lareth's loyalty.
• Sonic the Hedgehog himself and Shadow the Hedgehog are both revealed to be this in Sonic X: Dark Chaos, as they was literally created by Maledict to be "Ultimate" creatures who would defeat the Angels and cement his rule. Neither of them accept it.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes the Movie: Misery Loves Company: Beezy's long-lost brother Belphy is meant to be one (in contrast to Beezy's status as an Anti Anti Christ), having been born under a curse placed by his ancestor Lucius Heinous I to become a vessel for Lucius' return so that he could escape Miseryville and start the apocalypse on Earth.
• Kage: According to the prophecy of Kandrakar's first Oracle N'Ghala, Jade (or the Queen of the Shadowkhan) will spread darkness across all the Known Worlds. And Yua shares with Ari another prophecy (which she heard from her late Shadowkhan friend Kage) regarding a being whose description Jade matches bringing about the downfall of Kandrakar:
  "From another realm, another place; comes a dark child of a long forgotten race; from thrive to trial she will reach her throne; the light of the sky will be darkened by her will alone."
  • In the Recursive Fanfiction Shadows over Meridian, we learn of a third prophecy — the long-banned cult from Meridian that Tyrian is a member of worships a goddess from the Shadow Realm who is foretold to one day rise and cover all worlds in darkness. Jade is annoyed when she hears this and realizes she matches the criteria.
• What It Takes: Damien Darhk has always had shades of this (its right there in his name), but his turning the Star City council against Laurel has definite 'false prophet' vibes to it. This is in addition to him initially styling himself as the city's savior, as he did in canon.

Film

• Damien Thorn from The Omen is perhaps the biggest Trope Codifier of Devil spawn in fiction. Such an innocent name. This movie invented the idea that Damien was an evil name — it's a saint's name, after all.
• Holocaust 2000 (which was inspired by The Omen): Robert starts to believe that he may have spawned the Antichrist after noticing several symbols showing up in different places and dreaming about the end of the world. Since he had just hooked up with a younger woman who quickly became pregnant, he's convinced that he needs to abort their child to save mankind. In fact, his older son Angel is the actual Antichrist.
• Although it might've been made only to pre-empt the Left Behind movie, the movie The Omega Code offers a rare, somewhat sympathetic portrayal of the Antichrist. A rich philanthropist who's trying to exploit Biblical prophecy in a bid to rule the world, he actually does believe that he's doing what's best for the world, and intends to stop following the prophecies before things can go sour. Unfortunately, since the Biblical exegesis of Left Behind's Tim LaHaye says that the Antichrist suffers a fatal head wound and is resurrected as a soulless avatar of evil, he loses all say in the matter after getting shot in the head.
  
  The plot-hole filled prequel/sequel Omega Code 2 Megiddo shows that the Antichrist has been possessed by Satan since he was born. Any sympathy created in the first film's portrayal was probably accidental; we were supposed to think he was pure evil all along.
• Lead character Kirstie's son in The Calling (2000) turns out to be the son of the devil and the anti-christ, complete with resurrection and crucifixion.
• Simon Magus in the Sci-Fi Channel film Soulkeeper is described this way.
• This is the nickname for the jeep in The Gods Must Be Crazy. It really was that bad. Ay ay ay ay ay.
• Franco Maccalusso in the Apocalypse film series.
• Palpatine from Star Wars is basically the Antichrist of that setting (especially if you take the expanded universe into account). He's an incredibly powerful Sith Lord (even Yoda was no match for him) who, through years of plotting and manipulation, managed to exterminate the Jedi and set himself up as the ruler of the galaxy. In the expanded universe he even manages to come back to life multiple times using clone bodies, becoming more insane with each resurrection. Finally he is defeated for good when a Jedi master heroically sacrifices himself and, along with the spirits of other departed Jedi, drags Palpatine's spirit into the netherworld of the force (the Star Wars universe equivalent of Hell). It's even more obvious in the novel Darth Plagueis. In the prologue, Palpatine admires the constellations that dot Coruscant's eastern sky just before the sun rises, i.e. the morning stars. If that's not Revelation-y enough for you, he refers to the Dark Side in his thoughts as the "beast" that will bring about the "end times".
• The Evil Plan of the cult in Rosemary's Baby is to spawn an Anti-Christ, and the ending suggests that they not only succeed, they convince Rosemary herself to accept the role as its mother. The original novel subverts it, however, where Rosemary's true intent at the end is to raise him to become an Anti-Anti-Christ.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: Director Bryan Singer invokes this when he describes Apocalypse.
  "[Apocalypse is] kind of the opposite of Christ, actually. Christ would have come years after him, by the way."
• In Six: The Mark Unleashed, he is simply referred to as The Leader, and his Mark of the Beast is called The Holy Implant.
• In Santa's Slay, it turns out that Santa Claus is the son on Satan, and the only reason he delivers presents to people is because he lost a curling match with an angel. But once the bet is up 1000 years later, Santa resumes his old tradition of killing people on Christmas.
• In End of Days, Satan is freed from Hell and takes human form on New Year's Eve, 1999. His goal is to rape and impregnate a young woman named Christine York, whose child will then become the Antichrist.
• In The Day of the Beast, the main character wants to find and stop the Antichrist, which according to him will be born on a Twisted Christmas.
• In The Devil's Advocate, it comes up a bit abruptly at the end that Al Pacino's Devil, "John Milton", wants the protagonist to give him a child, specified as a "son" who will "sit at the head of all tables" going forward — Kevin finishes the thought, "an Antichrist". ("Whatever.") Shooting most of a gun at the Devil having failed to resolve it, Kevin turns doing his half-sister down and takes himself out of the picture; that is, he shoots himself with the last bullet. Milton takes this turn poorly.

Folklore

• Merlin, King Arthur's advisor, was sired as part of a plan to create an Antichrist; his mother was seduced by a demon and conceived a child. But the plan was foiled when she confessed to a church elder who was very forgiving; the child was baptized minutes after being born, severing his ties to Satan. Still, his infernal heritage played at least some part of Merlin becoming a great wizard.

Literature

• This is the job description of the Child of Dark in the Belgariad and Malloreon by David Eddings. It starts the first series in the body of Torak, God of Darkness, as it has since the beginning of the backstory. When Torak ends up on the wrong end of Iron-Grip's Sword, it changes hosts and picks up Zandramas for the second series before finally settling on Garion's son, Geran.
• In Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, we have Adam Young, a young boy born in suspiciously similar circumstances to Damien Thorn (hybrid son of Satan meant to be swapped with a politician's child), but one of the Satanic nuns makes an oopsie and Adam is actually given to a perfectly average British family, with the intended parents getting a different baby. Because Adam grew up away from Heaven and Hell's influence, he grows up perfectly human. When Armageddon is scheduled to start upon his eleventh birthday, Adam is exposed to the full extent of his Reality Warper powers, and, upon seeing how much humans have screwed up the planet he almost starts the Apocalypse to start it over from scratch... before he comes to his senses, and calls off Armageddon despite the insistence of Metatron and Beelzebub.
• Wilbur Whateley from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft. He's a Half-Human Hybrid Humanoid Abomination, the son of the Eldritch Abomination Yog-Soggoth, and was bred by his mad cultist grandfather to help usher in the return of the Great Old Ones.
• In Left Behind, Nicolae Carpathia was conceived by Satan and born from a human woman he made a deal with. Soon after The Rapture, Nicolae is revealed to be the Antichrist described in the Book of Revelations.
• Christopher Goodman in the Christ Clone Trilogy novels. He eventually proclaimed that he's the Second Coming, and also the long-awaited messiah of many other faiths, setting up a global religion centered on himself which incorporates many different beliefs, while persecuting Christians who reject it. His goal is to mislead the most people he can so they'll go to Hell with him in the end.
• Inverted by The Inquisitor Cycle, taking place in an Alternate Timeline where Jesus Became Their Own Antithesis and changed the course of Christianity forever as a ruthless God-Emperor. Instead of dying for mankind's sins on the cross, He instead went into an Unstoppable Rage from His betrayal and broke free. He nearly exterminated the Jews for their role in it before conquering the Roman Empire, then proceeded to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and left Saint Peter in charge of The Empire. In the present day, Christianity is much bleaker than its real-world equivalent as the teachings of mercy and forgiveness have been replaced with violence and terror. In one of the books the trope is Played Straight as it's implied that Jesus did die on the cross but Satan possessed His corpse and did all of this, but this underwent a soft retcon with later books ignoring this plot point.
• Randall Flagg in The Stand. Not so much in The Dark Tower.
  • He winds up replaced by Roland's half-son, Mordred Deschain. While he's built up as a super-powerful half-God that will destroy Roland and bring about the end of the multiverse for three and a half books, when he finally arrives, he is shown to a be a pitiful, hateful child who can barely survive in the wilderness and winds up being weakened enough by food poisoning for Roland (and Oy!) to bring him down. Regardless, he does get points for killing and eating Flagg when the old and arrogant (key word: ARROGANT) wizard decides to try and use him to further his own ends.
• Iscarius Alchemy, a resurrected Judas Iscariot in Matthew Dickens' Magnus.
• The original human, Theo, in The War of the Flowers, plays this role.
• In James Herbert's Sepulchre, Sumerian incarnate deity Bel-Marduk's veneration of corruption and mission of destruction directly contrasts the later ministry of Jesus.
• In Sergey Lukyanenko's Seekers of the Sky, several characters wonder if Marcus really is the second coming of the Redeemer or the Tempter, who is to come before the Redeemer and lead the world astray. However, one of the characters is a bishop who points out that the Church does not officially recognize the existence of the Tempter, as he is only mentioned in a non-canonical gospel. Privately, however, even the head of the Church is wondering the same thing. Of course, said bishop's nickname is the Lightbringer.
• In The Wheel of Time, Ishamael/Moridin plays this role, as he is the Dark One's anointed champion and also the Evil Counterpart to the series Messianic Archetype, Rand al'Thor, the "Dragon Reborn". It's heavily implied that his soul is reincarnated throughout history to serve as the Antichrist whenever Rand is reborn, when he's not still alive from the last cycle, anyway. They also mirror each other's thought processes, with Rand becoming an All-Loving Hero / Anti-Nihilist, and Ishamael an Omnicidal Maniac / Straw Nihilist, from extremely similar realizations about the meaning of life and the implications of reincarnation. They're both even resurrected in the same body at different times for similar reasons.
• In The Adversary Cycle, Rasalom is actually much worse than this, but religious people often mistake him for it. Also, in Reborn, a group of religious people think Jim is the Antichrist after learning that he's a clone.
• In Nick Perumov's Keeper of the Swords series, this character is known as the Destroyer (the local Crystal Dragon Jesus is known as the Saviour). Then it gets interesting. First, the main character, Fess, and two of the series' villains, are assessed as potential Destroyer candidates. Then it becomes obvious that the Saviour is pretty nasty but the Destroyer is the real saviour ( and it's Fess after all.)
• Sanjay of Christian Nation is viewed as this according to the interpretations of certain evangelical Christians suggesting that the Antichrist must be gay.^note The Scripture reference is Daniel 11:37, which in the King James Version reads "Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all." However, he doesn't live up to the trope and is ultimately killed after the Civil War.
• American President Joshua Kayim is revealed to be this early on in the first book of the Last Days Trilogy.
• From Darth Bane, Darth Bane. Bane extensively researches the Sith'ari prophecy that is the Sith's equivalent to The Chosen One. Since he believes the Force is there for him to command, instead of vice versa, he discounts the prophecy, but if the Sith'ari does exist it's probably Bane himself. This was later confirmed by the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. His successor Darth Sidious acted as a Satanic Archetype for the setting, but his success was the result of Bane's work.
• Various novels by Kim Newman, but especially The Quorum and Life's Lottery, feature the monstrous media magnate Derek Leech, who is a combined No Celebrities Were Harmed of Richard Branson (in the 1970s) and Rupert Murdoch (from the 1980s to date) and is also literally The Antichrist and a Humanoid Abomination. He is also the Greater-Scope Villain of the Diogenes Club sequence.
• In The Servants Of Twilight by Dean Koontz, an extremist Christian cult believes that a young boy is the Antichrist. The book never confirms one way or the other whether he actually is.

Live-Action TV

• Angel: The Shanshu Prophecy was not explicit on which side Angel would be fighting on during the end times. At the start of Angel, the idea of Angel willingly cooperating with the Senior Partners seems unthinkable. By the end of Season Four, Angel has darkened enough and his circumstances have gotten hazy to the point where he does join them. According to the comics, the jury's still out on whether the Shanshu prophecy spells doom for mankind in general. Wesley's father, Roger Wyndam-Pryce (or at least a close facsimile thereof) warned that Angel is "more dangerous than you realize."
• Christina Nickson in Point Pleasant, a rare female example.
• In Salem, John, the child of Mary and John is the vessel for Satan's return.
• From Supernatural: Sam was called this by Gordon early in the series. At the time, Gordon was written off as a fanatical murderer, but the Strawman Has a Point. The literal Antichrist In-Universe is one-time character Jesse Turner, who becomes the Anti-Anti-Christ more effectively than Sam did.
  • Lilith also checks a lot of the boxes: she's the first demon created by Lucifer (and thus, his firstborn child) and is a Dark Messiah to the demons, seeking to release Lucifer from hell and start the Apocalypse so demons can Kill All Humans and Take Over the World. The demons even refer to her as their Messiah, just as they see Lucifer as their God, and she succeeds in releasing Lucifer by sacrificing herself, in true Messianic fashion.
• Midnight Mass: Father Paul Hill/Monsignor John Pruitt is a metaphorical example of this. From acting as a spokesman for a divine being, leading a flock, performing healing miracles, Paul shares many similarities with Jesus Christ. It's just that all his work is destructive and selfish and almost brings about The End of the World as We Know It. The most blatant parallel is when Paul compares his crisis of faith and dementia in Damascus to when Jesus walked through the desert and was tempted by Satan while ignoring the most important part of that story, Jesus rejected Satan and accepted his coming death while Paul was made immortal and considered it a blessing from God.
• In Only Fools and Horses, Rodney suspects that Del Boy's son, Damien, is this, reading sinister undertones into everything he does. There is, of course, no indication that he's anything but an ordinary child.
• American Horror Story: Murder House has Michael, who is the product of The Sociopath ghost Tate raping the human Vivien. His birth is so brutal it kills Vivien and his twin brother. At three-years-old he murders his nanny.
  • He returns as the Big Bad in American Horror Story: Apocalypse, now an adult and ready to bring about the end of the world, aided by a secret society of influential Satanists.
• On the new Doctor Who, The Master fulfills this archetype in "The End of Time," being resurrected on Christmas Eve to herald the end of the world.
• Stargate SG-1: Adria was created by the Ori, who impregnated Vala Mal Doran via supernatural means, and when she was born she grew to adulthood in a matter of days, gaining the knowledge and power of the Ori, and was named the "Orici". The Ori deliberately created her this way to get around their treaty with the Ancients. The Ori couldn't exert their power outside of their own galaxy without the Ancients interfering, but if a child was born in another galaxy and inherited the power of the Ori, then she would technically be a native of that galaxy, and thus the Ancients couldn't do anything to stop her. She was only defeated when the Ascended Ancient Morgan Le Fey sacrificed herself to engage her in an eternal battle on the higher dimensional planes.
• Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Sabrina herself is revealed to have been sired by Satan, and manipulated by him and Lilith into performing acts that are perverted inversions of Jesus' miracles, in order to fulfill a prophecy that will unleash the hordes of Hell on Earth and kickstart the Apocalypse.
• Good Omens (2019): The Adam in the series is mostly the same as his literature counterpart, with this video hammering home his roots in The Omen and Rosemary's Baby.
• Kamen Rider Outsiders: Zein is an artificial intelligence version of the Antichrist. Zein poses as a Benevolent A.I. that zealously seeks to bring out the good in people opposed by villains, former and current, such as Gai Amatsu and Kuroto Dan. However, it has a rather perverse sense of justice given how it inflicts ungodly brutality on villains such as Tenjuro Banno. Underneath its benevolent pretenses, Zein plays the role of a Dark Messiah all too well and doesn't hesitate to drop the act in front of its followers that it manipulated to furthering its cause by possessing its host Yuto Sakurai and plans to use a Deadly Game to trick humanity into setting up their own self-destruction.

Music

• This trope is the central theme of Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar, surprisingly. Interestingly, the protagonist of the album doesn't actually start out as the titular Antichrist: he evolves from The Worm to The Little Horn, and finally to the titular Antichrist, also known as The Distintegrator, by becoming progressively more disaffected with the state of society.
• "Damien" by Iced Earth, inspired by The Omen.
• Johnny Rotten claimed to be one in The Sex Pistols' song "Anarchy In The U.K.", heard on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.
• Russian rock band Aria has a song called "Antichrist", sung from POV of one.

Newspaper Comics

• In a Dilbert strip, it comes out to a pun when the Pointy-Haired Boss tells his employees ominously that when he eats a sandwich, he always removes the "useless edges" of the bread first, and he thinks that tells you what kind of manager he is. He doesn't especially like it when Asok hazards the answer, "You're the anti-crust?"

Professional Wrestling

• Subverted by Julius Smokes, The Devil's Son...in-law.
• In TNA, Jeff Hardy has referred to himself as this since his Face Heel Reveal as part of Immortal... which lasted about five months thanks to his most infamous screw-up to date and resulted in a Redemption Quest upon his return after another five months.
• I am without regret, I am devoid of shame, I am the antichrist, let em know the name! I'm the violence, on the backstreets. The spawn of, all your bad dreams. A product, of your weakness. When your god's gone, you can believe this: I'm Kevin Steen, and fuck Ring of Honor!

Religion

• The Bible actually isn't that straightforward on the matter of the Antichrist, and what it does say about him at times diverges from the popular image of the figure.
  • According to the second chapter of the First Epistle of John, "antichrist" refers to individuals who either (a) denies that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, or both (v. 22); or (b) abandons Christian teachings and becomes an apostate (v. 19). (Verse 18 says "even now many antichrists have come.") Other texts note that an antichrist (c) actively persecutes and attacks followers of Christ (John 15:20, 21); or (d) claims to be the Messiah (the Christ) but isn't Jesus (Matthew 24:24). Groups engaged in the actions described above can also be considered antichrists.
  • The charismatic world-ruler who is anointed by Satan to bring about the end of the world does appear in the Book of Revelation, but is never referred to as the Antichrist, only as the Beast (specifically, the First Beast or the Beast from the Sea, in contrast to the Second Beast or the Beast from the Land, aka the False Prophet). In fact, a key feature, of the Beast is that it does not use any name found in the Bible when it claims its divinity! Rather than being a prediction of some specific future ruler, however, many mainstream Christian scholars see the two Beasts as representing either one of the Roman emperors (probably Nero or Caligula) and the religious-political establishment that supported him, The Roman Empire itself, or tyranny in general. Furthermore, there are more than two Beasts with important parts to play in Revelation. The First Beast and Second Beast are just a set that appear together.
  • There is, however, a character in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Man of Lawlessness or Man of Sin, who fits the description rather well, proclaiming himself to be God. Evangelical Christians identify him, along with the Revelation Beast and another character referred to in the Book of Daniel, with John's Antichrist. (That is, "the" Antichrist of verse 18, who the other "many [lesser] antichrists" are compared to.)
  • The Book of Daniel has a figure referred to as "the Little Horn", because he at first seems innocent but is actually deadly. He is often said to be a future leader who will sweet-talk the entire planet into following him.
• Islamic traditions (not The Qur'an) has the Al-Masih Ad-Dajjal (literally "the deceiving messiah"), often shortened as just Dajjal ("deceiver"), who is believed to appear near the end times to gain followers by performing miracles. He will sway the entire world, except for Mecca and Medina, into his order, before Isa, the Messiah, will descend from the heavens to defeat him and lead the world into glory once more.
• Medieval Judaism has its own Antichrist in the figure of Armilus.

Tabletop Games

• In the Greyhawk campaign, Iuz the Old may be considered an anti-Christ, being the son of the demon lord Graz'zt and the mortal sorceress Iggwilv. The tyrannical ruler of the Empire of Iuz, he has had a long and bloody history in his attempts to conquer various territories of the Flanaess, which thus far, have all ended in failure.
• The Vistani of Ravenloft have their own equivalent of the Antichrist, known as the Dukkar. A Vistani-blooded male born with the Sight, the Dukkar is foretold to destroy the Vistani people while freeing the darklords from their domains: a feat that may or may not cause the Land of Mists to collapse entirely, unleashing its trapped evils upon the multiverse.
  • It's actually a bit more complicated than that: there have been at least two Dukkar already, each threatening the Land of Mists' status quo and the Vistani in his own way. The first wrote a series of Self Fulfilling Prophecies meant to sunder Ravenloft (which almost came to pass, and would have if not for the meddling of some Darklords who caused two of the prophecies to happen out of order... Just As Planned) and the second one is currently doing his damnedest to torture to death any and all Vistani he can lay his hands on, even if it means sending his mooks to hunt them across the borders of other domains—which means the south-central Core is currently a political powderkeg. And since "stability" in the Core tends to be based on all the Darklords (pretty much all of them sociopaths) not paying much attention to anything outside of their own affairs...
• Horus in Warhammer 40,000, who initiated the Horus Heresy which led to fully half of the Astartes Legions going insane and creating the current state of the galaxy. He also nearly killed the Emperor of Mankind, who has not recovered in 10,000 years.
  • The Horus Heresy series reveals that Lorgar fits the trope much better. He's touched by the powers of Chaos during his creation much more than his brothers, is raised on a world ruled by a church that worships Chaos, and is the first to fall to the Ruinous Powers. His Dragon Erebus is directly responsible for turning Horus into the monster he becomes. It's the sheer infamy of Horus's deeds that causes the Imperium to think of him as the Antichrist instead of Lorgar.
  • Horus's Dragon and possible clone son Abaddon the Despoiler has assumed Horus's mantle for most citizens of the Imperium. Really, only the Chaos Legions who knew him before he got famous think of him as anything less than the universe's Antichrist.
• Archaon in Warhammer Fantasy was destined from birth to become the Everchosen of Chaos who will finally bring about the End Times. Since he was raised as a devout follower of Sigmar before learning this he is understandably extremely unhappy about this fate and intends to ultimately subvert the will of the Chaos Gods. Unfortunately for everyone else his plan is to kill every living thing in the word to permanently rob the Chaos Gods of sustenance, destroying them in their moment of triumph.

Video Games

• In Elden Ring, the cult of the Frenzied Flame and the Three Fingers are awaiting the arrival of a 'Lord of Chaos', someone who will contain the essence of the Outer God and use it to melt the world into a primordial soup so that everything can be one again. YOU can potentially become said Lord by coming into contact with the Three Fingers (after being heavily warned to not do it), which leads to an outright Downer Ending that, unlike every other route, locks you out of the other endings unless you do a specific, obscure sidequest to become the Anti-Anti-Christ and purge the Flame from your body.
• At this point, Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII has finally morphed into the definitive video game icon of this. Being the Son of Jenova (a false alien God), being able to herald the Apocalypse (Meteor), and, finally, having armies of Devout Worshippers (the Reunion). Just for a kicker, he also comes back to life twice. The sequel film is even called Advent Children because Sephiroth does a Second Coming in it.
• The Demi-Fiend from Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne was created with the potential to become the Antichrist, and not following any of the Reasons allows you to fulfill this potential to varying degrees. In the True Demon ending, you fulfill this trope to the letter by destroying all of Creation and becoming The Dragon to Lucifer himself, before leading the Legions of Hell to take on God.
• Played with in Devil Survivor. The main character obtains the potential to become an antichrist and a demon king partway through the game. Depending on the ending you gun for, you may become it or choose to use that potential for other ends.
• Castlevania puts Dracula here. You spend every game stomping him before he reaches full strength.
• In Halo, this seems to be what the Covenant naturally see the Spartans as in general - Master Chief in particular. In a demonstration of how perspective is everything, to humanity the Master Chief is the Hope Bringer at the very least, and the Messianic Archetype at best.
• Gig from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, who was created from the dead soul of Vigilance by Drazil for the explicit purpose of killing everything in Haephnes, leaving Drazil as the only remaining world.
• In inFAMOUS, it turns out that the villain is actually the protagonist from a Bad Future, coming back in time to better prepare him for the actual world-ending villain, who is called, of course, "the Beast."
• Omega in Mega Man Zero, 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. Sprinkle a little extra Fridge Horror on there when the reveal is made that Omega is Zero's original body, meaning that Wily succeeded.
• Street Fighter III has Gill, in a surprisingly closer form to the Biblical version than most. He says that he wants to take mankind to a promised land where they'll be protected from The End of the World as We Know It, but considering how his oddly small cult engages in a lot of brainwashing, deception, genetic experimenting, forcing people's hand, and whatnot, and the fact that they're called The Illuminati of all things, well…
• Persona series:
  • Takaya plays this role in Persona 3. As the Evil Counterpart to the Player Character, he seeks to bring about The End of the World as We Know It. In doing so, he strives to prevent the heroes from destroying the Dark Hour, and is the founder of a cult to welcome the arrival of Nyx and the Fall of Humanity.
  • Adachi from Persona 4 is a bit of an Antichrist. He is a terrible person who hates the world and wants to end the age of man, masterminding the events of the game since the real mastermind didn't do anything other than give the means. Even gets the Shadows on his side towards the end of the game.
• Lucius has the antichrist as the protagonist. It's essentially a Video Game Adaptation of The Omen.
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword puts longtime series antagonist Ganondorf as this. As he is the incarnation of the hatred of Demon King Demise who was defeated long ago by the Goddess Hylia's champion (Link). Demise then cursed the blood of the goddess and spirit of the hero to be locked in eternal war with his own reincarnation. Even when he reincarnates as a decent person initially, the curse inevitably drives him to seek unlimited power, as shown in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker where he (ambiguously) started out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist or the original concept for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where he was initially just a normal guy (and a Metallica fan).
• Walter Sullivan in Silent Hill 4 appears to be this. He is committing serial murder as part of the 21 Sacraments to resurrect the cult's evil God and be reunited with his mother, burned the orphanage he was raised in in the process of killing one of his victims, rose from the dead after committing suicide, and you find his crucified original body in the secret room behind Henry's apartment.
• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has the Ultimate Despair (not to be confused with the Apocalypse Cult they started that shares their namesake), Junko Enoshima, aka The Mastermind, who already caused The End of the World as We Know It and is now using the School Life Of Mutual Killing to crush any last traces of hope in the world simply because she can. She manages to amass a following, which comes into relevance in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, but definitely doesn't project herself as any kind of savior.
• Julius in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. He was born as a result of the Loptous cult's long-term plotting to bring back their dark god by literally breeding a child with a strong enough Loptous lineage. By some accounts he started off as a normal kid until he was given the cult's Ancestral Weapon; then he became Loptous' murderous vessel.
• In Fire Emblem: Awakening your player character (the Avatar) was bred to be the vessel of Grima. A big plot point hinges on whether the Avatar decides to embrace their fate or Screw Destiny. In the timeline you are physically playing in, they fight fate and become the Anti-Anti-Christ. In the Future Past timeline, they embrace it and truly becomes the Antichrist.
• Baldur's Gate has the Bhaalspawn, children of the Forgotten Realms' god of murder Bhaal. It's a coin toss on whether they become an Omnicidal Maniac or an Anti Anti Christ, with a prominent example of the former being the Big Bad of the first game Sarevok and examples of the latter being the Player Character of I & II, their sister Imoen, and potentially the Player Character of Baldur's Gate III.
  • Baldur's Gate III has Lord Enver Gortash, who acts very much as a traditional example of this courtesy of his status as The Chosen One of the god of tyranny, Bane. According to his parents he was simply born evil, as despite having been born into poverty he was a spiteful, demanding Spoiled Brat from day one and only got worse after they sold him to a warlock who in reality was the devil Raphael. In the present day, he pulls a Tyrant Takes the Helm on the titular city and becomes a Dark Messiah seeking to save people from themselves. He solidifies his influence through Engineered Heroics, false flag operations, and Mind Control and turns the city into a nightmarish Police State he rules with an iron fist as the Apathetic Citizens are comforted by his deceit through the climate of fear he deliberately created.
• In the Genocide route of Undertale, the Fallen Child—that is, the child who was adopted by Toriel and Asgore—becomes this by possessing the Player Character through their player-directed violence; by the end of the game, the Fallen has taken over entirely and not only destroys the entire world, they murder the player and force you to sell your soul for a reset, which taints every future playthrough. How much they are this on other storylines is ambiguous; they were said to hate humanity and want revenge on a village, but in Genocide, the character says that your actions showed them the "true path" (i.e. destroy it all).
• In Bayonetta 2 there's Loptr, the evil half of the former Creator-God of Chaos, Aesir. He is literally the evil incarnate of the former god of humanity, and plans on taking back the power of free will bequeathed to humankind when he was whole so that he can become Aesir again. For an added bonus, he ascends into godhood on Christmas Day, the day celebrating the birth of Christ!
• In Crusader Kings II, with supernatural events on, one possibility is the Antichrist, or an equivalent for another religion, arising and wreaking havoc upon the world with powerful traits (including the ability to regenerate from the most brutal mutilation the medieval world can offer) and event armies. Of course, it's just another wrinkle for the brutal politics of the medieval world, and often less dangerous than Genghis Khan riding in from the east or the Aztecs getting their hands on Viking longboats.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: Fear of this is why Aloy was outcast as a baby. She was found deep in the Nora's Sacred Mountain, in front of the door leading to All-Mother... and right under the claw of the Metal Devil, frozen from where the All-Mother struck him down. High Matriarch Teersa believed that she was the daughter of the Goddess sent to save them, while High Matriarch Lansra believed that she was the daughter of the Metal Devil sent to destroy them. Making her outcast was a compromise: She would be raised by Rost, the most honorable outcast, where she would live safe but separate from the tribe, close enough to keep an eye on her but far enough not to do damage. The truth is that the AI that re-terraformed the Earth created a clone of its creator because it knew she would be able to open the genetic locks and fix everything that was going off the rails.
• In Diablo III, it's eventually revealed that your friend Leah is the daughter of the Diablo-possessed Prince Aidan and Adria the Witch, birthed in order to become the newest vessel for Diablo himself. Leah would probably have tried to become an Anti-Anti-Christ if given the chance, but unfortunately nobody sees Adria's betrayal coming until the metaphorical knife is in her back and it's far too late to save her.

Webcomics

• Spatch and Spatch II from Rice Boy are clear antichrists. The terms in their own world are false "fulfillers" — but they have the role. They manage to be pretty darn scary for simply drawn anthropomorphic frogs.
  • In part, the problem with the Spatches was that The One Electronic essentially created his own Antichrists; somewhere between Order of Tales (or maybe even Vattu, it's unclear) and Rice Boy, he, Golgo and Calabash were sent to search for the "fulfiller" (of a certain prophecy), and each time he thought he'd found the one, he'd groom them to be this messiah he's seeking; unfortunately, Spatch started leveraging it for his own benefit and became corrupted by the cushy gig messiahdom had become. Spatch II inherited the title and his dad's attitude.
  • Order of Tales has its own antichrist in reincarnated Rog actually, Gerráh impersonating Rog, the ancient warlord who drenched Overside in blood.
• Parodied in Sluggy Freelance: Apparently, Satan is intent on fathering someone who would become the Antichrist, but offspring from human mothers just don't seem to be good enough. So, albeit on a drunken dare, he fathers a litter of 18 (6+6+6) Satanic kittens. They don't qualify as the Antichrist either, though, so they just become killer slasher kittens of doom.
• In Homestuck, Guy Fieri is the third and final Antichrist.
• In Mystery Babylon, Kick Girl states that Adrian, the self-styled Lord of Light, is in fact the literal Antichrist.

Web Original

• In Mandela Catalogue, the Antichrist already won. The setting takes place in an Alternate History where Satan masqueraded as Archangel Gabriel when he was sent to herald Jesus' birth, and replaced Him. He then managed to trick all of mankind into worshipping him instead, imprisoned Jesus, and took over the world while filling it with demonic Humanoid Abominations to torment mankind further.
• Sara Waite (aka Carmilla) of the Whateley Universe. The child of the demon lord Gothmog and a woman who is descended from the Deep Ones, she is prophesied to become The Kellith, which will wipe out humanity and replace it with her spawn. She's also one of the protagonists.
• The Onion's coverage of the royal baby in 2013 depicts Kate Middleton's child as a full out demon.
• In a Running Gag of their Let's Play of Star Fox Adventures, the hosts of Analog Control, under heavy amounts of Alternate Character Interpretation, have taken to the belief Kid Sidekick Prince Tricky is the son of "Dino-Satan". This mostly comes from his fire breathing, Offscreen Teleportation and the belief Fox and his team are (accidentally) the bad guys.
• This tumblr post is a bit subversion of the trope.
• Unbiased History, with a dose of Historical Villain Upgrade, depicts the Persian king Khosrow II as the Antichrist specifically created by the devil to wage war on Christendom.

Western Animation

• Marceline from Adventure Time could be said to be this, as her father is more or less the show's version of Satan. However, she, like Raven, falls firmly into Anti-Anti-Christ territory.
• The American Dad! episode "Rapture's Delight" depicts the Antichrist as a Large Ham akin to the Riddler from the 1960's Batman (1966) live-action series. He claims to be the opposite of Jesus in every way—most of which make him incompetent and unintimidating. When the Death Trap he places Stan, Francine, and Jesus in breaks down, he claims that it's because Jesus is carpenter, so the Antichrist is "not handy at all".
  Antichrist: Condemn them, Mother, for they know exactly what they do!
• Vlad Dracula Tepes from Castlevania (2017). The exact origins and purpose of Dracula's immense power and authority over vampirekind are unknown, but most vampires revere him and some were eagerly awaiting the day he would lead them into conquering the human world. However, though they get do get their wish, a select few express their disappointment that what finally motivated Dracula to wage war on humanity was the murder of a human wife, and that becoming a shell of the man he used to be has caused a nihilistic Dracula to campaign for mankind's extinction rather than its subjugation.
• Final Space: It's revealed in Season 3 that both the Lord Commander's and Ash's respective powers originally come from Invictus. The resurrected Lord Commander, who was already a megalomaniacal asshole before aligning with Invictus directly, is willingly serving Invictus within Final Space (albeit as part of a bargain rather than out of true loyalty). Ash herself is the Anti-Anti-Christ, until she makes a Face–Heel Turn and gets further corrupted, at which point she succeeds in freeing Invictus from its Leaking Can of Evil.
• Unalaq from The Legend of Korra acts as Vaatu's herald and seeks to blanket the whole world in darkness. He also can corrupt spirits and people.
• The titular character in Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil slightly subverts this as she is a girl. She also has an on again/off again relationship with her polar opposite, DJ Jesus.
• The Owl House: Instead of being the classic "Devil's Spawn", Emperor Belos fits the criteria in a biblical sense. He comes from another world (in this case, the Human World), posing himself as a False Prophet, manipulating and turning the peaceful people of the Boiling Isles into selfish, entitled jerkasses, and rules the Demon Realm by claiming to speak with a godlike entity (the Titan), so he could commit a mass genocide with the Day Of Unity’s plan, which even involves tricking everyone to wear the Mark of the Beast that marks them as damned in the form of Coven Sigils. In the finale, once he merges with the Titan’s still beating heart, his One-Winged Angel form is a draconic abomination (similar to Satan's form), while his true body is posed in a blasphemous parody of the crucified Jesus himself. This is a stark contrast with Luz, who with time improved many people of the Boiling Isles’s lives for the better, and finally is chosen by the lingering spirit of The Titan because of her kindness, more specifically towards their son, King, making her the true emissary of The Titan.
• Aku's daughters from the fifth season of Samurai Jack are seven of these, with a twist. He had zero idea he even had kids because they were conceived via their mother drinking Aku's essence he left to her cult when he was flattered by their worship of him and only learns and acts on this trope when he finds out Ashi is his daughter and performs a Villain Override.
• Bart Simpson in episode 20.13 of The Simpsons, "Gone Maggie Gone". The episode is a parody of The Da Vinci Code.
• A running joke through the first few seasons of Space Ghost Coast to Coast...
  Zorak: Space Ghost! I am the lone locust of the apocalypse. Think of me when you look to the night sky!
• Damien from South Park.
  • Cartman's "Critter Christmas" story involved a group of cute woodland animals who worship Satan attempting to give birth to the Antichrist on Christmas.
• Raven from Teen Titans (2003) is essentially the Antichrist, being the daughter of Trigon and serving as his portal to Earth. However, she's an Anti-Anti-Christ in that she's completely unwilling and is opposed to her father.
• The Transformers: Prime incarnation of Megatron has this going for him. He has necromancer-like abilities thanks to Dark Energon, made Cybertron unsuitable for life, caused mass murder on Cybertron, plans to do the same thing on Earth, and just when everyone thought he died when he was in a space bridge explosion, he recovered. He gets progressively worse as the series goes on; he proves just how much of a Manipulative Bastard he is with Orion Pax and Ratchet, tries to corrupt Jack in the collapsed mine, and outright offers his service to Unicron, the Satan of the franchise. In season two, when Optimus acquires the Star Saber, Megatron counters it by ripping off the limb of a dead Prime, grafts it to himself to wield a sword made of the blood of Unicron, giving a big middle finger to his creator, Primus, and the lineage of the Primes. Optimus is appropriately horrified by this.
  • He even thinks he's the Anti-Primus, as he believed that a vision of coming darkness and the destruction of Earth was All About Him.
• On Ugly Americans, Callie is the half-human daughter of the current Devil. She is currently taking part in his plan to cause the Apocalypse, and it's sometimes been hinted that she could have a larger role (she once had recurring dreams of the world ending if she slept with Twayne). She's not particularly enthused by this, though, and seems unsure if she wants to be this or the Anti-Anti-Christ.

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