Characters / Devil May Cry - Heroes

aka: Devil May Cry V

Main characters index | Heroes (Dante | Nero) | Villains (Vergil) | Other | DmC: Devil May Cry

This page lists tropes related to heroes who appear in the classic Devil May Cry continuity.

For other characters that appear in the DMC franchise, see the Devil May Cry Character Index. For tropes related to the heroes in the alternate continuity reboot, see the DmC: Devil May Cry Character Page.

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Character-Specific Pages

• Dante
• Nero

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General tropes

• '90s Anti-Hero: With the exception of Lucia, all of them fit this trope in either attitude, aesthetic or both.
  • Dante is a devil hunter who wears a red trench coat, fights with a sword and guns, and has emotional baggage due to the death of his mother, his rivalry with his brother and his demonic heritage. How much of his personality fits the 90s Anti-Hero depends on the writer. The first game and the anime depict him as a coolheaded person with some snarky moments and a somewhat sour demeanor, the second game makes him more stoic and aloof but still with some kinder moments, the third game depicts him as a Blood Knight and Thrill Seeker who is largely apathetic to all else and the fourth game depicts him as something of a Trickster Mentor.
  • Nero embodies this trope a lot more than Dante and in a more consistent manner. He is introduced as a moody teenager who is something of an outcast, but also has a kinder heart than he lets in on. He also becomes a Cyborg later on.
  • Trish wears a revealing leather outfit and fights with a sword and guns, just like Dante and Nero. She is also much more prone to pulling morally questionable stunts like encouraging Lady's wrong impressions about her, leading to a fight in the anime and giving the Sparda sword to the villains in 4. Trish even started out as a villain, suggesting that her occasional unscrupulous moments may be a result of her initial alignment.
  • Lady has the abrasive personality, traumatic backstory involving an evil father killing her mother and preference for firearms. In fact, Lady carries enough firearms for a single strike team and 5 gives her the sobriquet "Walking Arsenal".
  • V has a mysterious past, dark clothing, tattoos and a ruthless approach to fighting evil that makes him utterly terrifying. He is also the human half of Vergil made flesh, explaining his personality.
• Arc Hero: Dante is the main protagonist for most of the classic continuity. However, the first three games also have him sharing the spotlight with another hero who serves as his main ally, while the fourth and fifth games gave way for Nero, another main protagonist alongside him.
  • In 1, Trish is a servant of Mundus whose goal is to lure Dante to Mallet Island where Mundus can kill him. After being moved by Dante's kindness, Trish pulls a Heel–Face Turn and becomes Dante's ally, aiding him in defeating Mundus during the game's final battle.
  • In 2, Lucia is a member of a devil hunting clan from the island of Vie de Marli. She enlists Dante's help to deal with a man named Arius who seeks to claim the power of a great demon lord using her clan's scared artifacts. Lucia is the first DMC character to be playable alongside Dante and has her own story arc exploring her origins as Arius's discarded creation.
  • In 3, Lady isn't playable like Lucia is, but she serves this role nonetheless. Like Dante, Lady is related by blood to one half of the Big Bad Duumvirate consisting of Vergil and Arkham. While Dante has a final clash with Vergil, Arkham is killed by Lady.
  • In 4 and 5, Dante returns as a playable and prominent character for both games, but Nero replaces him as the main hero.
• Badass Crew: Dante leads the original Devil May Cry agency which specializes in hunting demons. Trish and Lady are his recurring partners, and are capable demon hunters themselves, even if not quite on Dante's level. In 5, Nero and Nico also tag along with them, but the two have their own mobile version of the Devil May Cry business.
• BFS: Dante has Rebellion, Trish has Sparda (until Dante permanently absorbs it in DMC5) and Nero has Red Queen.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The women. Trish is blonde, Lady is a brunette and Lucia is a redhead. In 4, Kyrie takes the role of the redhead.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist:
  • Dante is the main hero of the first three games, with Nero taking this role in the fourth and fifth games. Nero is depicted as being much more crass, abrasive and hotheaded than the irreverent and laid back Dante. Their fighting styles also differ with Nero using weapons and bare knuckle attacks while Dante relies on his guns and Devil Arms. That said, both of them have the same cocky personality in battle.
  • Trish, Lucia and Lady are the main heroines for the first, second and third games respectively and are quite different from one another.
    • Trish is a demon created in the image of Dante's mother by Mundus to lure the devil hunter to a trap where Mundus will kill him. Trish pulls a Heel–Face Turn and becomes an ally to Dante.
    • Lucia is a member of the Protectors of Vie de Marli, a clan of demon hunters who defend Dummary Island. Like Trish, Lucia brings Dante to the island where the plot takes place and is revealed to be a demon created by the main villain. Unlike Trish, Lucia was unaware of this initially and her allegiance doesn't change, remaining a hero. While Trish is a blonde white woman who dresses in black leather, Lucia is a dark-skinned redhead whose most striking article of clothing is her white cape.
    • Unlike Trish and Lucia, Lady is a human with no demonic heritage, relying on her skills with guns. She is also initially hostile towards Dante for being part demon, though she gets over this once she realizes Dante's heroism.
• Cool Sword:
  • Besides Rebellion and Sparda, Dante has wielded the lightning sword Alastor in 1, the fire and wind swords Agni and Rudra in 3 and his brother's sword Yamato in 4.
  • Trish has also used Sparda. Her Evil Counterpart in the Devil May Cry 2 prequel novel used Alastor.
  • Lucia wields a pair of curved swords called the Cutlaseer as her default weapons. She also has a pair of long swords called the Klyamoor and a pair of curved, serrated swords called the Zambak.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Dante and Nero are Human Demon Hybrids who fight to protect the world from both evil demons and humans. Nero gets extra points for his name being the Italian word for "black".
  • Trish is an artificial demon created by Mundus for the purpose of luring Dante to Mallet Island so Mundus can kill him. Despite starting out as a villain, Trish pulls a Heel–Face Turn and becomes Dante's partner in Demon Slaying. She also wears black leather.
  • Similar to Trish, Lucia is an artificial demon created by a villain. Unlike Trish, however, Lucia is not a villain at any point in the story and is a member of a demon hunting clan tasked with defending her island home. Aside from her white cape and red hair, she wears a grey top and pants.
  • V wears black clothing, controls three shadowy familiars who were demon enemies from the first game and has a very mysterious air about him. He is still a good guy and is revealed to be the human half of Vergil.
• Defends Against Their Own Kind: Dante, Nero, Trish and Lucia are demons who protect the human world from other demons.
• Demon Slaying: Their occupations. Lucia belongs to a clan of devil hunters while Dante, Trish, Lady and Nero are independent devil hunters for hire.
• Dual Wielding: Dante, Trish and Lady often wield two guns at once. Lucia does this with her cutlaseer swords. Dante also dual wields the Agni and Rudra elemental swords in 3 and the Cavaliere buzzsaws in 5.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief:
  • The women: Trish is the fighter, being a super-strong demon with lightning powers and her fighting style revolves around punches, kicks and the Sparda sword. Lady as a Long-Range Fighter would be the mage, with guns and bombs as a substitute for magic. Finally, Lucia serves as the thief and is the closest thing to a Ninja the series has, being a Fragile Speedster knife-wielder with an acrobatic fighting style, and at one point she even infiltrates the villain's lair using a disguise.
  • The men: Nero is the fighter of the group possessing a BFS and using a fighting style that emphasizes quick and brutal attacks. V, as the mage, is a Squishy Wizard who uses Summon Magic in battle and is very good at crowd control. Dante uses a "Trickster style" introduced in 3 and could be considered a thief in that he uses Devil Arms made from demons he defeats - in a sense, he is "stealing" their powers for himself.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Trish, Lady and Nero initially had antagonistic relationships with Dant before becoming more friendly with him.
  • Trish was created by Mundus to be used as a weapon against Dante but turned on the demon lord after Dante saved her life and showed her kindness.
  • Lady starts out hostile and untrusting of Dante due to his demonic heritage but fighting side-by-side with him and seeing how heroic he can be caused her to change her mind.
  • Nero first met Dante when the latter shot Fortuna's religious leader in the face and then engaged Nero in battle. Nero ultimately realized the Order of the Sword's corruption and became Dante's ally before discovering their blood relation.
• Gun Fu/Gun Kata: Dante, Nero, Trish and Lady use moves inspired by both tropes in either cutscenes, gameplay or both. Dante's "Gunslinger" is focused on utilizing Gun Fu and Gun Kata.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon:
  • A lot of Dante's Devil Arms qualify. Special mention goes to Nevan, a cross between an electric guitar and a scythe which can shoot lightning and summon bats; Pandora, a suitcase that can take numerous forms^note 666 according to DMC4's files. including a missile platform, a large shuriken, a laser cannon and a chain gun; and Cavaliere, a pair of buzzsaws which can transform into a motorcycle.
  • The Sparda sword can switch between a sword, a spear and a scythe. It has been wielded by both Dante and Trish at different points.
  • Lady wields Kalina Ann, a rocket launcher with grappling hook bayonet and a cluster micro missile launcher attached.
  • Nero's Red Queen is a Flaming Sword with a fuel injection system similar to a motorcycle. It's exact complications mean that only someone of Nero's power and caliber is capable of controlling it.
    • DMC5 gives us Nero's new Devil Breaker which replaces the Devil Bringer after it is ripped off by Vergil. It's numerous functions include stopping time, a grappling hook and firing a rocket fist that Nero can surf on.
• Light Is Good:
  • Trish has blonde hair, shoots yellow lightning and her Devil Trigger surrounds her with yellow lightning bolts. She is also named after Beatrice, one of the heroines in The Divine Comedy who served as one of Dante's guides. Trish does start out as a villain but pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Lucia is the most blatant example in the entire franchise. She wears a white cape, her name is Latin for "light" and her Devil Trigger more resembles an angel than a demon. Like Trish, Lucia was created by a villain but didn't start out as a villain unlike Trish.
  • Lady wears a white top and her true name is a reference to the Virgin Mary. She is the secondary hero of Devil May Cry 3 and is a demon hunter.
  • Nero's true Devil Trigger has a more human/angel look compared to Dante's, lacking the reptilean features and having feathered wings. Like Dante, Nero is a Human-Demon Hybrid who protects humans from malicious demons.
• The Musketeer: Only Dante, Trish and Nero use guns and swords in their arsenals. Lucia uses bladed weapons and a crossbow, Lady relies entirely on guns and grenades, and V is a wizard who uses his demon familiars.
• Named Weapons/I Call It "Vera": Their weapons all tend to have specific names, sometimes given to them by the heroes such as Lady's Kalina Ann, Dante's Ebony & Ivory and Nero's Red Queen and Blue Rose. Dante's Devil Arms retain the names of the demons they once were.
• Red Is Heroic:
  • Dante wears a red coat.
  • Lucia has red hair.
  • Nero wears a blue coat with red inner lining and a red hoodie underneath. He also has a Red Right Hand and a sword with red accents appropriately named Red Queen.
  • Force Edge, the sword which belonged to Dante's father Sparda, is red in its unsealed form. It has been used by both Dante and Trish who are heroes.
• Town Girls:
  • Lady is the butch girl, being the most abrasive and confrontational, and having short hair and scars. Trish is the femme one, having longer hair, the most sensual outfits and having more stereotypical female hobbies like shopping. Lucia is the in-between; she has long hair (but not as long as Trish) that she wears in a braid and is more feminine than Lady but not to the extent of Trish.
  • In 5, Nico takes the role of the butch girl, being a Wrench Wench with a lot of tattoos while Lady is the in-between. Trish retains her role as the femme character.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Dante, Trish and Lady have this dynamic among themselves, and Nero and Dante do as well. Their interactions are often heavy with sarcasm and mockery but they will be there for each other when it really counts.
• Who You Gonna Call?: Dante, Trish and Lady are demon hunters for a fee, though in Dante's case, he often ends up taking jobs where he gets little to no pay for a variety of reasons. Nero has his own branch of the Devil May Cry hunting business in 5.

Trish

The Bewitching Devil

^{Click here to see her DMC 4 self}

^{Click here to see her DMC 4 disguise}Gloria

^{Click here to see her DMC 2 self}

^{Click here to see her DMC 1 self}

"It looks like we have a winner."

Voiced by: Sarah Lafleur (DMC, Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble), Cristina Pucelli (Viewtiful Joe ^note Silvia's audio, played in reverse, is used for all females who take her place in the extra characters' stories, Trish included; one of Lafleur's lines ("Dante...") is used in Dante's story, however), Luci Christian (The Animated Series), Danielle Burgio (DMC4, Marvel vs. Capcom 3), Wendee Lee (DMC5)

Atsuko Tanaka (The Animated Series, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, DMC4: Special Edition, DMC5; Japanese)

Face Model: Ariana Diamant (DMC5)

A mysterious woman with lightning powers, Super-Strength, and a striking resemblance to Dante's deceased mother who hired Dante to stop Mundus in the first Devil May Cry.

It's eventually revealed in that game that Trish is actually a demon made by Mundus to kill Dante. However, after multiple failed attempts, Mundus decides to use her as bait for Dante instead, only for Trish to betray her master and together with Dante seal the demon lord away for good.

Trish now works as Dante's Hypercompetent Sidekick at his devil-hunting business Devil May Cry.

Her moveset in 2 and 4SE has her use the Devil Sword Sparda. Trish can toss Sparda out and leave it spinning in mid-air, upon which she results to simply beating her enemies to death with lightning-enhanced martial arts. In 2 she can directly put the Sparda down on the ground to focus on Bare Knuckle techniques. Her ranged weapons are the twin handguns Luce and Ombra, and she later gains Pandora as well. Her main advantage is that a lot of her moves set up area-of-effect attacks to continually damage enemies, and most of her martial arts moves leave lightning trails behind her as she attacks. The result is that while Trish doesn't do a whole lot of damage on her own, she fills the playable arena with tons of stuff for enemies to take damage from- and that damage certainly adds up.

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• Action Girl: She doesn't get a lot of action scenes in 1, but even in that game's intro cutscene, she is clearly capable of taking on or hurting Dante. It's an amazing feat that she is one of the few beings besides Mundus and Nelo Angelo who can do that in the first game. Later installments helped this trait of hers shine even further, such as involving her in more fights, or making her playable (in 2 and 4:SE). In the fourth game, Trish also disguised herself as Gloria, yet she can still single-handedly wipe out a horde of Scarecrows with just a pair of daggers.
• Artificial Human: Trish is a demon created in the image of Dante's mother Eva to lure him into a trap. Mundus claims he could easily make more copies of her and this is shown not be an empty boat as seen in the Devil May Cry 2 prequel novel where Dante goes to an alternate reality where Mundus has an entire army of demonic Eva duplicates.
• Ascended Demon: A demon Mundus created to lure Dante into a trap and kill him. Dante's selflessness and Mundus' ruthlessness convinced her to side with Dante and she's been helping him hunt down demons ever since.
• Asshole Victim: And given her actions in the first game, there's not much sympathy to be had for her. Then she takes a hit for Dante, comes back to life, and reforms.
• Assist Character: Serves as this for Nightmare in Dante's final battle with the creature, periodically shocking Dante from behind the barrier separating them once Nightmare is on its last legs and Trish decides to show her true colors.
• Back from the Dead: If it wasn't a Disney Death.
• Badass in Distress: In 5, Urizen defeats Trish and uses her as a host vessel for Cavaliere Angelo.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Her file in the first game describes her as "hauntingly beautiful". Her reveal as a servant of Mundus makes her an example of Beauty Is Bad at first but she becomes the opposite trope after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Becoming the Mask: She's just posing as Dante's guide, but after his anger towards her for revealing her true alignment, she decided to be his friend for real.
• BFS: Apart from Dante, Trish is one of the recurring wielders of the Devil Sword Sparda in its awakened form. Said sword has a large curved blade attached to the side of its main body and hilt, and compared to Dante's Rebellion, this sword has a longer reach, and can extend itself further or transform during some of its attacks.
• Big Damn Heroes: Comes to Dante's aid and lends him her power to defeat Mundus.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Special Edition of 4 named her diving kick attack as "Inazuma" even in the English text. "Inazuma" is the Japanese word for "lightning", fitting for her lightning and electricity powers.
• Breakout Character: She joins Dante in the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 lineup.
• Car Fu: In 1, Trish bursts through Dante's door on her motorcycle, then she hurls it at him.
• Combat Stilettos: She wears high-heeled boots, and she kicks enemies with them.
• The Comically Serious: Best shown in 5; when Dante gets the Dr. Faust hat from Nico, he promptly channels Michael Jackson and pulling off a brief dance routine that wouldn't be out of place in one of his music videos after manifesting a scarf of demonic energy, complete with moonwalking, pyrotechnics, and the neon "Devil May Cry" sign on Nico's van flashing in the background. When it's all over, Nico looks like a little kid who just met her idol and is cheering for him, while Trish just stands there, absolutely stonefaced.
• Cool Shades:
  • For all of one cutscene. That same cutscene where she repeatedly kicks Dante, shocks him with electricity, and then throws a motorcycle at him via Super-Strength... only for him to shake it off like it was nothing.
  • For her appearance in 2 as a Secret Character, Trish dons her sunglasses while DTed. Ditto for her playable appearance in the Updated Re-release of 4.
• Crucified Hero Shot: This happens to Trish when she is held captive by Mundus in 1.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: As Gloria, Trish dresses in white just like most of the other members of the Order of the Sword. Unlike the males, however, Gloria's outfit is a one-piece that shows off her cleavage and thighs and comes with thigh-high boots.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • Subverted near the end of the first game when she gets out of this on her own to save Dante from being killed by Mundus.
  • In Devil May Cry 5, she and Lady are defeated and taken prisoner by Urizen at the beginning of the story.
• Dance Battler: As Gloria.
• Defeat Means Friendship: In the first game after Nightmare's third death.
• Demoted to Extra: The romantic nature of her relation to Dante was completely toned down once Kamiya was no longer at the helm of anything Devil May Cry related; at the end 1 she and Dante grew to be very close (their final theme tune is even called "Seeds of Love – Trish & Dante"), in Viewtiful Joe they appear as pretty much a Battle Couple; however everything after that gave a new angle to their relationship, in 2 Trish isn't in the story at all, Dante is alone and she is merely an one-note unlockable character, the anime made Trish work far away from Dante very often and played the fact she weirds him out due having his mother’s appearance, 3 introduced the fact Dante is not very lucky with girls despite his appearance, and in 4:SE Trish even teases Dante about his inability to "get the girl" at the end (contrasting him with Nero and Kyrie), showing the two are mostly just good partners currently. DMC5 sees she and Lady both taken out very early by Urizen and with Sparda having been combined with the remains of Rebelllion to make Devil Sword Dante she lacks a weapon to return to the fray with for the the entirety of the game.
• Depending on the Writer: Trish's personality as Dante's partner was somewhat different in Kamiya's vision when portrayed in Viewtiful Joe; Trish was more of a traditional partner who follows the hero, Dante, being the voice of reason and expressing deep concern for him, coupled with jokes that Trish was being too "motherly". Trish in Itsuno's vision, and effectively the canon version of Trish as it stands, is more of a playful independent spirit, who, while undoubtedly loyal to Dante, she isn't above playing tricks and teasing him, such as increasing his debt and delivering Sparda right into the enemies' hands to make things more fun; still, Dante has also been adjusted accordingly, being able to take all of Trish’s playfulness.
• Devious Daggers: Gloria is shown using curved daggers in battle against demons. She appears to be working for the villainous Order of the Sword but is revealed to be Trish, Dante's heroic ally who is spying on the villains.
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix: She wears a black leather corset, pants, and high-heeled boots. All she's missing is a Whip of Dominance.
• Dual Wielding: Uses two retractable knives as Gloria.
• Diving Kick: One of her bread and butter moves because it generates a lightning trail which will shock enemies continuously.
• Elemental Punch: Her Bare Knuckle fighting style consists of lightning-charged punches and kicks.
• Erotic Eating: She seems to enjoy eating pizza a bit more than most.
• Et Tu, Brute?: When Mundus ended up trapping her to a wall by the time Dante arrives to his throne room.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Trish may have been working for Mundus, but she doesn't like Dante being angry with her over it.
  • When Dante is fuming at how Mundus treats his henchmen after seeing him callously kill off Griffon and then briefly recounts the story of how Mundus took the lives of his family, Trish gives him a genuine look of sympathy. First signs of her future alignment shift?
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Mundus tried to capitalize on Eva's beauty by making Trish in her image in an almost successful attempt at baiting Dante (he appears to be drawn to Trish solely on the basis of her resemblance to his departed mother, but nothing comes to pass).
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She can't understand why Dante saves her, despite betraying him.
  Trish: Dante, why did you save my life?
  Dante: Because you look like my mother.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: A downplayed case in 5. After Dante saves her from Cavaliere Angelo, she has a conversation with V about what Urizen actually is, since, as a demon herself, she can tell Urizen isn't one. Then it hits her: neither is V.
  Trish to V: My god, what are you, then?
• Fanservice Pack: Trish was actually somewhat petite and slender in the original game. You wouldn't know that judging by 4 and MvC3 where the size of her breasts as well as how much cleavage was shown off were increased (not to mention the amount of bounce given to her). 5 returns her proportions to being more similar to the first game.
• Femme Fatale: Prior to her Heel–Face Turn, although bits and pieces of this pop up again from time to time.
• Flanderization: Trish's Heel–Face Turn in the first game was remarked on by Mundus as being "sudden" ("Failure is one thing, but taking on an odd behavior like that..."). Later games have her as extremely impulsive and moody for no reason.
• Golden Super Mode: Her Devil Trigger grants her an aura of golden electricity rather than altering her physical appearance.
• Good Wears White: As Gloria in 4. She also wears a white shirt in one episode of the anime and has a white top as an alternate skin in 5.
• Gorgeous Garment Generation: In 5, Lady and Trish are both rescued in the buff from the bowels of some demons. Trish uses magic to respawn her usual outfit, while Lady has to make do with some of Nico's threads.
• Ground Punch: Trish in 4:SE has Collider, a ground punch with the same charged attack mechanics as Dante's Shock! However, she does it by enhancing her fist with her lightning powers.
• Guns Akimbo: Luce and Ombra, as seen in 2 and 4. These guns were originally Sparda's handguns (though, in spite of that, the "For Tony Redgrave" engraving still appears on them).
• Healing Factor: Thanks to her demonic nature, Trish recovers health while in Devil Trigger state.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of 1, when Mundus is about to fire his Agony Beam on Dante, Trish pushes the latter out of the way and is killed. She gets better.
• Hero of Another Story: In Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, it's stated that Trish had struck out on her own for a while as a solo demon hunter. However, the only fights we see her partake in are with Dante and Lady.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Trish is the only demoness among Mundus's servants and the only one to turn good.
• Honey Trap: The role(s) she was created by Mundus to carry out; it was Trish's job to seduce Dante/earn his trust and lure him to his doom at Mallet Island. Eventually, she becomes what she pretended to be due to Dante becoming so angry towards her for revealing her true alignment that he breaks off all contact with her.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: A full-blooded lightning devil who also takes up devil hunting jobs.
• Hurricane Kick: She can do an electric charged spinning bird kick maneuver for one of her combo finishers.
• Identical Stranger: For Eva. Dante is at a loss for words the moment Trish takes off her sunglasses in the first game and reveals that she looks just like his mother. We later learn this is an exploited trope by Mundus; making her look exactly like Eva makes it much easier to lure Dante into trap.
• Informed Attractiveness:
  • She is described as "hauntingly beautiful" by her file in the first game.
  • Gloria's Library File in 4 mentions her "exotic appearance and voluptuous assets" setting her apart from the rest of the Order.
• Informed Attribute: Dante believes that the only villain who can beat Trish is Vergil, but while Trish is powerful, she has never shown the power to be among the heavyweights like Mundus or Argosax.
• I Owe You My Life: This is why she doesn't attack Dante after Nightmare's third death and tried to reason with him about her betrayal before he cuts her off.
• In a Single Bound: Just as Trish and Dante arrive at Mallet Island, she reaches for the other side of the cliff in a single jump, while Dante has to walk through the castle instead.
• It Amused Me: Pretty much functions as the linchpin of 4's plot due to this trope.
• Jiggle Physics: Her breasts seem to bounce somewhat arbitrarily. Works just fine for the viewers, though.
• Kick Chick: 2 notwithstanding, what scant amount we see of Trish's actual fighting ability outside of her electrokinesis and all assorted weaponry seems tailored around kicking. This carries over to MvC3 and 4:SE.
• The Lady's Favour: She lends the Devil Arm Sparda back to Dante later on in 5, as he continues into the heart of the demonic Qliphoth tree.
• Lightning Bruiser: Trish is strong enough to lift a motorcycle, fast enough to get the jump on Dante and durable enough to survive attacks from Mundus. Also, she's a literal example given her lightning powers.
• Living Battery: In 5 she is used as one for Cavalier Angelo.
• Love-Interest Traitor: Played with. While Trish legitimately comes to care for Dante, any perceivable Ship Tease doesn't surface until after Trish switches sides, and then gets dropped/downplayed in later entries. Before then, Trish was simply Dante's client and Mysterious Backer, although her uncanny resemblance to his late mother is one of two main motivating factors in Dante taking the job.
• Make-Out Kids: In 4:SE, witnessing a smooching session between Nero and Kyrie is too disgustingly sweet for Trish apparently, as she gets visibly irritated upon seeing it and immediately walks away from it. Odd since her running for Dante’s embrace in the final moments for 1 was just as mushy.
• The Missus and the Ex: In the anime, with Lady being the "ex" (since she knew Dante first).
• The Mole: Hinted to be working for the Order in 4 to help out Dante. Of course, she doesn't actually bother to tell Dante that she's stealing Sparda, just leaving a note instead...
• Ms. Fanservice: She's an attractive woman in nothing but a skimpy midriff-exposing bodice and Painted-On Pants. Motion Artist Tomoya Ohtsubo even explains in the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook that Trish's fanservice is intentional, as she was "really pushed to be as sexy as possible". This even applies to her outfit and fighting style while disguised as Gloria in 4. After being captured by Urizen in 5, she's also completely naked before she's given a Modesty Bedsheet and reconstructs her clothes using magic.
• Murderous Thighs: As Gloria, no less. Given her status as the above trope, it's justified. It also was a wonder that Capcom wasn't called out for that entire sequence.
• Must Make Amends: The driving force behind her actions near the end of the first game after realizing her creator sees as nothing but a disposable tool, while Dante actually treats her like a person.
• Named Weapons: Her default equipment, guns Luce and Ombra ("Light" and "Shadow" in Italian), as well the sword Sparda.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Her outfits leave a part of the cleavage area open. This is more evident with her lacy one-piece disguise as Gloria revealing her stomach and part of her chest in 4.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In 1, by revealing to Dante that she's working for Mundus, she pisses him off to the point of almost killing her. Way to go, Trish.
• Odd Friendship: Dante is the son of the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda, a demon who slaughtered the armies of the Underworld and sealed away the demon emperor Mundus to protect humanity, while Trish is an artificial demon created by Mundus for the express purpose of luring and getting Dante killed in Mallet Island. And yet, by the end of the first game, these two are close enough for Dante to entrust her with the sword of Sparda, her creator's greatest enemy. She later became a long-time ally of Dante in the next adaptations and sequels.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Trish wears one with a giant thunderbolt-shaped slit down the front.
• Opposites Theme Naming: Trish's twin handguns are named Luce and Umbra ("Light" and "Shadow" in Italian) and are appropriately colored.
• Our Demons Are Different: Trish's powers work differently compared to the part-demon descendants of Sparda. She can easily channel lightning from her hands, her Devil Trigger state just gives her a yellow/golden aura instead of physically manifesting a monstrous form (she even does it stylishly by wearing sunglasses), and she can completely alter her appearance, including her natural hair and skin color under the guise of "Gloria". On top of these abilities, she's a demon specifically made by Mundus to resemble the twins' mother, Eva.
• Out of Focus: Trish and Lady surprisingly get this in DMC5. Despite being integral Action Girls of the earlier installments, the anime and even playable in the previous mainline game, they don't contribute much to the story, getting defeated early on and after getting rescued, spend the rest of the game in Nico's van and don't help in defeating the Big Bad Urzien.
• Painted-On Pants: Her leather pants are so tight they look more like latex paint than actual clothing.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Inverted. Both Dante and Sanctus are immediately able to tell who Gloria is. Dante laughs when he sees her, and Sanctus even mutters, "Oh, it's you, Gloria," to Trish when she's not even Gloria anymore. Yet Trish and Gloria look nothing alike, so the fans couldn't tell who Gloria is until The Reveal and assumed she was a new character.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Begs Dante not to leave her behind because of The Reveal that she's working for Mundus in 1, but it fails.
• Pretty Freeloader: Trish and Lady often loiter around the Devil May Cry office a lot. Most of it is for business reasons since they're Dante's demon-hunting partners, but they do have the habit of lazing around there for no reason as well, often mooching off his pizza and other resources, or making him pay their shopping bills. Granted, they're strictly Platonic Life-Partners with him, and all three are fine trading all the snark in the world with each other.
• Promoted to Playable: She's a selectable character in 2 and 4:SE.
• Redemption Equals Death: Earns her Heel–Face Turn whe she dies protecting Dante from Mundus. She gets better (possibly thanks to Eva) not too long after though.
• Secret Character: In 2, you unlock Trish as a playable character after clearing Dante's campaign on Hard mode, although she can be used on both campaigns.
• She-Fu: A bit of this when she roughs up Dante at the beginning of 1. This comes back in full force when she's masquerading as Gloria, but given the circumstances, she was probably playing it up. Averted with her playable stint in 2, where all of Trish's attacks when she's not wielding Sparda are taken from Dante's repertoire with Ifrit in the previous game. 4:SE also depicts Trish with a less exaggerated combat style that employs a mix of her natural lightning powers, footwork, and swordplay skills.
• Ship Tease: Despite the mainline series eventually dropping any sort of romantic relation between Trish and Dante as it went by, some guest and spin-off appearances still try to give a nod towards it, Trish’s banter against Dante upon winning against him in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is she claiming to be "the one who wears the pants in their relationship", and in the Pachinko title, Devil May Cry X, Dante and Trish take on a mission together, one scene has Dante comically trying to get Trish to play around as if they are on a date.
• Shipper on Deck: Makes fun of Lady being "clumsy"^note the Japanese connotation of "being bad at telling one's feelings" and Dante being "dense" regarding each other in Vol.1 of the Audio Drama CD. Although it could just be Trish simply teasing both of them.
• Shock and Awe: She has a number of electrical abilities that she uses in combat, or for torturing people.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Is named after Beatrice Portinari, one of Dante's Love Interests from the La Vita Nuova, and is also identified as his guide to Heaven in The Divine Comedy.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female subordinate of Mundus (and, in fact, the only living female in 1). Gloria is also the only female executive of the Order of the Sword.
• Stance System:
  • In 2. By default, her moves with Sparda mimic Dante's in the first game. She can also Sword Plant the blade, allowing her to access his moves with Ifrit and then subsequently call back the sword to her hand to switch back to swordfighting.
  • In 4:SE, Trish retains her Sparda swordplay and hand-to-hand abilities from 2, but the latter stance is now officially called "Bare Knuckle" and utilizes her lightning powers. For ease-of-use, her Sparda moveset is tied to the Style button, while her Bare Knuckle moveset is tied to the standard melee button. Few of her Bare Knuckle moves are also dependent on the Sparda being thrown beforehand via the Round Trip skill.
• Sticks to the Back: There's nothing that would strap a weapon on Trish's back, yet the Sparda still sticks like this when she's not using it.
• Stripperific: As Gloria. The way she fights in a cutscene only serves to emphasize how little skin her outfit covers.
• Super-Empowering: In the final battle of 1, she temporarily lends her power to Dante allowing him to finish off Mundus and send him back to the demon world.
• Super Mode: Possesses a Devil Trigger in 2 and 4:SE, but it merely manifests as Trish donning her sunglasses and gaining a golden aura. Kamiya, however, assumes that Trish really does have a natural demonic form. If canon (possibly backed by fellow artificially-created demon Lucia), this would imply Trish merely does so out of preference.
• Symbol Motif Clothing: Her corset features a thunderbolt pattern right down the middle, representative of her command over lightning.
• Sword and Fist: In both of her playable appearances, Trish's fighting style revolves around the combination of Sparda and her bare hands for combos. A cutscene shows her as Gloria taking down a group of demons with a fighting style that mixes knife fighting with fluid, acrobatic movements.
• Taking the Bullet: Throws herself in front of Dante to shield him from one of Mundus's Agony Beams.
• Tears of Remorse: Sheds them as part of her Heel Realization in 1.
• Teleportation: One of her powers.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: When she's not shooting lightning (especially in 4:SE), Trish can also rely on Round Trip. For added effect, Sparda takes the form of a scythe as it racks up hits.
• Token Heroic Orc: The only full-blooded demon among the main heroes besides Lucia
• Took a Level in Badass: In 1, she can shoot lightning and ends up with the Sparda sword while working as Dante's partner at the end, but is the only one in Mundus's group who does not have a boss fight. In 4, she shows herself to be a more capable fighter both as Gloria and as herself, although this is only seen in cutscenes. The Animated Series, and Trish's playable appearances in 2, MvC3, and 4:SE, however, fully give off the impression that the girl can fend for herself just fine when Dante's not around.
• Undying Loyalty: Towards Mundus. She goes back to him after Dante leaves her behind despite knowing of her punishment for failing him. However, she gradually loses this loyalty towards him when he has taken her hostage in the second-to-last mission of 1 and transfers this to Dante instead.
• The Unfought: In 1. The most she does is hang out behind the barrier of Nightmare's arena in the third battle and zap you with lightning. She's also this, as Gloria, in 4.
• Vapor Wear: As Gloria in 4. It actually makes her usual look seem conservative!
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: A cutscene in 4:SE shows her keeping lipstick in her corset.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: After starting out hostile towards each other, Trish and Lady have this relationship. They seem to get along best when they're making Dante's life miserable.
• Whole Costume Reference: Her black leather number and dual pistols are lifted directly from the eponymous lead of 1996's Barb Wire.

Lucia

"Till next time, son of Sparda."

^{Click here to see her Devil Trigger form}

"Dante told me... devils never cry!"

Voiced by: Françoise Gralewski

A red-haired woman raised by the island of Vie de Marli's Clan of demon-human hybrid warriors. She protects the island from demons and helps Dante fight a Corrupt Corporate Executive named Arius who's trying to open a Hell Gate in Devil May Cry 2. She uses an array of throwing knives and daggers in combat, along with the ability to transform into a white birdlike demon.

She's eventually revealed to be a defective artificial demon created by Arius. However, after a Heroic BSoD where she pleads for Dante to kill her out of fear she'll turn against the very people she wants to protect, and a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man from the leader of her clan, she decides she is a hero regardless. When Dante goes through the Hell Gate to fight Bigger Bad Argosax in the climax, Lucia stays behind to kill a deformed, possessed Arius.

At the end of Devil May Cry 2 she is last seen in Dante's office, waiting for him to return, but returns briefly in the prequel light novel of 5, to assist Dante on the island against a new threat.

---

• '90s Hair: Lucia has '90s inspired curtain hair that completely covers one eye and ends in a braid.
• Action Girl: Lucia is the first playable example of this in the entire franchise. She gets her own campaign in 2 and is also a capable demon hunter just like Dante. She also has the distinct honor of being the only female character in the games to canonically take on a final boss on her own and win.
• Airplane Arms: While running in her Devil Trigger form.
• Ambiguously Brown: Lucia has a darker skin tone than Dante and hails from an island off the coast of the Americas. According to character designer, Daigo Ikeno, her skin tone◊ was one of the ways in which she was supposed to be a contrast to Trish from the previous game. Making things even more complicated is the fact that she is an artificial demon created by Arius.
• Animal Motifs: Birds (see Winged Humanoid below). Arius' Secretaries also share this motif, as seen by their bird-like eyes and Cool Masks in the shape of beaks.
• Artificial Human: She's an artificial demon.
• Automatic Crossbows: Like Dante in the first game, Lucia can use a rapid-fire bowgun underwater. Her version has an angel motif.
• Badass Cape: She wears a short white cape.
• Badass in Distress: Lucia is perfectly capable in-game, but has to be rescued by Dante from explosions in cinematics twice. She also doesn't accomplish much without Dante, being captured by Arius and staying behind while he enters the portal to Hell. She does, however, kill Arius when he returns as a demon.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Lucia primarily fights with two curved swords. She can also be equipped with a bow gun but only for underwater levels.
• Braids of Action: A small one that's over her left shoulder.
• The Bus Came Back: After nearly 16 years of being absent from the franchise, Lucia finally returns in the prequel novel for 5.
• Clone Angst: Subverted, albeit not at first. By the end of the game, however, Lucia realizes that (thanks to Dante and her Parental Substitute Matier) it doesn't matter if she's one of several artificially-created demons as long as she has close ties to her friends and family.
• Combat Parkour: Lucia's fighting style makes use of graceful, acrobatic movements.
• Combat Stilettos: And unlike the other ladies, she actually uses them in battle.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Happens when Lucia is captured by Arius, but before she's saved by Dante.
• Death Seeker: On the verge of a Despair Event Horizon and fearing that she'd lose control of her demonic nature and end up hurting her loved ones and other humans, Lucia ventures through the second half of her story with a suicidal depression. She even asks Dante to kill her before the final battle, although Dante's kind words help her cope with who she is.
• Devious Daggers: Lucia uses throwing knives instead of guns like most of the playable characters in the games. At one point she tries to kill the main villain by disguising herself as one of her fellow artificial demons to get close to him. Unfortunately, he sees through the disguise.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": She doesn't like being called Chi.
• Dual Wielding: Just about every weapon she uses.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: She has a vaguely French accent as a result of her being played by Françoise Gralewski.
• Feather Flechettes: In her Devil Trigger form she will launch feathers from her arms instead of throwing knives.
• Flawed Prototype: According to Arius, she's defective. His Bodyguard Babes are supposedly stronger than her, but Lucia goes on to defeat Arius himself when he's transformed into a full demon.
• Foil: To Trish. One wears black clothing, the other is perhaps best identified by her white scarf. As Trish is shown to be proficient with knives while moonlighting as Gloria in 4, they share a weapon choice as well. Both are clients and eventual partners of Dante who hire his services to draw him out to a remote island in the middle of nowhere to deal with the Big Bad's threat and generally do their own thing for the rest of the game, only crossing paths with Dante sparingly. Both women also happen to be creations of said villain, although Trish is aligned with Mundus, whereas Arius discarded Lucia like a broken toy because he saw her as defective, leading to her upbringing at Matier's hands. Trish has a change of heart and feels terrible for how she strung Dante along, whereas Lucia fears her demonic nature means she'll turn on humanity; Dante ends up alleviating their sadness with the same phrase: "Devils never cry." As such, each woman is reassured that that they're not only human in looks, but human in spirit because they can in fact shed tears and feel genuine emotion towards others.
• Gaiden Game: Her story could be seen as this. This is despite the fact that Lucia is arguably the true protagonist of 2 as opposed to Dante and not its deuteragonist.
• Generation Xerox: In the past, her mother and Sparda fought side-by-side and had a brief fling. In the present, Lucia fights to save humanity along side Sparda's son whom she develops feelings for, though he only thinks of her as a friend.
• Good Wears White: Her white cape is her most distinct article of clothing.
• Happily Adopted: It turns out that Matier isn't Lucia's birth mother, but she doesn't care because the love was real.
• Heroic BSoD: Has a massive freakout after getting The Reveal she's an artificial demon herself.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: Her entire clan consists of demon-human hybrids that are willing to hunt down demons to protect their home. Lucia herself is a full-blooded demon who was discarded by her creator for being a "defect".
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Once Arius has been dealt with, Lucia tearfully begs Dante to kill her as well, as she cannot bear the fact that she's one of the villain's artificial demons. Dante naturally refuses, telling her that "devils never cry".
• Informed Flaw: Despite being supposedly a "flawed model", she is far more powerful than any secretaries who are supposed to be "good models".
• I Will Wait for You: According to Before the Nightmare, Lucia returned to her homeland and waits to see Dante again. She knows that Dante is unlikely to marry her, but merely wants "one happy memory" with him, which Dante continuously avoids.
• Kick Chick: Lucia uses swift, graceful kicks as a physical melee move when not using her twin curved blades.
• The Lady's Favour: Subverted/gender flipped. While it is Dante who ventures forth to fight Argosax, he is the one who entrusts his lucky coin to Lucia, asking her to keep it safe for him. It is then that she discovers that it's a trick coin. Lucia is later seen flipping it in the epilogue, but leaves it behind as she fervently rushes out to reunite with Dante.
• Light Is Good: Her Devil Trigger form is mostly white and angelic looking in contrast to the darker Fallen Angel look that the other Secretaries have or Dante's more freakish looking appearance in DT mode. Her name is also derived from ''lux'', the Latin word for "light".
• Lightning Bruiser: Thanks to her demonic nature, Lucia can be quick (as evidenced by her attacks and aerial combos), can tank shockwaves that break the city around her, and can even tap into her own powerful Super Mode.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: She was created by Arius, the second game's main antagonist.
• Mark of Shame: The χ-shaped symbol on her left shoulder, which Arius uses to pound home the fact that she's nothing more than a "mannequin".
• More Expendable Than You: She says, but if anything, this actually made her more worthy of living than himself in Dante's eyes.
• Our Ancestors Are Superheroes: Subverted. She initially believes she is descended from demon-human hybrids as a member of the Protectors Clan, but she is revealed to be a demon created by the villain Arius.
• Our Demons Are Different: Lucia is an artificial Secretary demon.
• Out of Focus: Lucia makes scant few appearances after DMC2 despite being the Deuteragonist of the game, with her most recent appearance being more than a decade later in the prequel novel Devil May Cry 5: Before the Nightmare. Her lack of exposure, is largely attributed to DMC2's infamous reputation among the fanbase and Loose Canon status in the main continuity's overall lore.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Inverted. She infiltrates Arius' office disguised as one of his Sexy Secretary Bodyguard Babes — all of whom are part of the same set of lookalike clones she's a prototype of, so a change of clothes would presumably be all that's needed to fool Arius. Yet impressively enough, Arius is not fooled.
• Put on a Bus: Lucia hasn't appeared in any game after 2, largely due to its poor reception, though she did appear in the prequel novel to 5.
• Reverse Grip: How she holds her Cutlaseer.
• Sequel Non-Entity: Lucia was the Deuteragonist of 2, the first character other than series protagonist Dante to be playable, and the first playable female character in the franchise. Thus far, Lucia is the only playable character of the Devil May Cry games to not appear in any of the following games. She does appear in the DMC5 prequel novel Before the Nightmare but she hasn't appeared in any of the games since her debut in 2.
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Named after Saint Lucy, also known as Lucia in The Divine Comedy. Lucia is a Christian martyr who acts as an intermediate and instructs Virgil to lead Dante through Hell and Purgatory.
• Shoo Out the New Guy: Unlike Lady and Nero who became staples of the series, Lucia simply disappeared after the second game despite the ending implying she might join Dante. She doesn't appear in the next games, and was only brought back in the Before the Nightmare light novel which serves as a prequel to DMC5. This is partly due to the ambiguous nature of where the second game fell on the timeline, For the longest time, the game was considered almost noncanon and essentially shunted to happening after the fourth game, before it was decided that it did in fact happen to take place before DMC4.
• Suicide by Cop: Subverted. Lucia attempts this when she learns that she is not her mother Matier's biological daughter but one of the artificial demons created by Arius. Fearing she will lose control of herself and attack those she is supposed to protect, she attacks Dante to goad him into killing her. Fortunately, Dante has faith in her humanity and refuses to kill her.
• Super Mode: Lucia has a Devil Trigger just like Dante. However, hers is more angelic and bird-like in appearance.
• Super Prototype: She's much more powerful than the secretaries, who are supposedly "superior models".
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Aside from her knives, she has access to compact bombs called Cranky Bombs, which can be either set or thrown. They're also one of two subweapons usable underwater (the other being the bowgun).
• Token Heroic Orc: Lucia is the only heroic demon created by Arius and is the only other heroic full-blooded demon in the series other than Trish.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Downplayed. She always knew she had demonic powers but assumed that it was because she comes from The Vie de Marli's Clan which consists of demon-human hybrid protectors of the island. Arius later reveals that she was never human at all but rather one of several artificial demons designed to serve him and was discarded for being defective. She still pushes onward but Arius's claim that she's destined to turn on humanity gives her a lot of emotional turmoil for the rest of the game.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Debatable, but Lucia definitely appears to warm up to Dante by the end of the game. It's mostly one-sided, though Dante does seem to warm up to Lucia somewhat as well despite his more detached attitude.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: She has a complex with this after realizing she's a demon.
• White Sheep: A telltale sign between Lucia and the other Secretaries is the lack of malicious-looking bird-esque eyes.
• Winged Humanoid: To contrast with Dante's more demonic visage while DT'ed, her Devil Trigger form is some sort of angelic bird woman resembling a dove. Her wings are actually on her arms (with her feathers being used as projectiles in place of her knives) and she doesn't gain wings to fly with unless she has the Aerial Heart equipped. Lucia's unlockable Secretary outfit is instead patterned after a raven/Fallen Angel.
• You Are Number 6: Her original name is Chi (χ), the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet. While it's unknown if Arius made 21 or more demons like Lucia, he's shown to have at least a few around.

Lady

The Walking Arsenal

^{Click here to see her DMC 4 self}

^{Click here to see her DMC 3 self}

"Mary died a long time ago. My name... is Lady."

Voiced by: Kari Wahlgren (DMC3, DMC4), Melissa Davis (The Animated Series), Kate Higgins (DMC4:SE, DMC5; credited as Kate Davis)

Fumiko Orikasa (The Animated Series, Project X Zone, DMC4: Special Edition, DMC5; Japanese)

Face Model: Andrea Tivadar (DMC5)

A Badass Normal demon slayer formerly known as Mary who first meets Dante in Devil May Cry 3. Her current name came from Dante's penchant to just call her "Lady" after she refused to introduce herself in that game.

In 3, she seeks to kill her demon-worshiping father Arkham as revenge for Arkham murdering her mother years earlier, only to turn out to unwittingly be part of the key to Arkham and Vergil opening a Hell Gate. At climax of the game, she is finally able to kill her father and together with Dante seal the Hell Gate he opened for good. Afterwards, she continues her work as a demon hunter, and eventually hires Dante to investigate the Order of the Sword in 4.

Being a normal human who lacks demonic powers or brute strength, Lady employs Gun Fu and a Hyperspace Arsenal of weapons in battle instead, including a pistol & a submachine gun (a Custom Browning Hi-Power/CZ 75B Hybrid and a custom Vz.61 Skorpion with a bayonet attached to it) , throwing knives, grenades, and her custom rocket launcher "Kalina Ann." She becomes playable in 4SE, putting all of these weapons to good effect, and trades out her handgun, submachine gun and knives for a pair of high-caliber handguns. Lady has limited fighting ability due to being a normal human, but can still keep up due to her guns putting out a surprising amount of damage. Indeed, firearms are mostly combo tools in Devil May Cry games rather than substitutes for your sword, but for Lady most of her damage and style points come from said firearms. Her DT is also a powerful, room-clearing shower of grenades rather than a transformation. While this does a huge amount of damage, it also means she can't heal, which incentives she stay at a distance and pelt away at her foes from safety.

---

• Action Girl: She can take out demons with enormous ease, despite being a normal human being.
• The Alcoholic: Morrison's Letters in 5 indicate that Lady occasionally goes on massive benders to cope for what she saw in 3.
• Anti-Hero: Pragmatic Hero to a degree, more demonstrated in 3 and TAS
• Appropriated Appellation: She refuses to tell Dante her true name and tells him to call her whatever he wants, to which Dante responds, "Whatever, lady." At the end of the game, she embraces "Lady" as her name, telling her father that "Mary died a long time ago."
• Apocalypse Maiden: She's desperately trying to stop her father's schemes in 3, but her blood is the final key he needs to break Sparda's seal in Temen-ni-gru and open the gates to the demon world because she's a descendant of the original maiden Sparda sacrificed to seal it in the first place.
• A-Team Firing:
  • After her battle with Dante. Possibly justified in that Dante just walked over her the same way Muhammad Ali slugged out George Foreman. At the very least, the fact that she collapses after he takes the gun from her implies she's utterly exhausted from trying to keep up with him.
  • In her playable appearance in 4:SE, a few moves involve spamming gunfire in a semicircle area in front of her to hit anything unfortunate enough to be standing close. Involved guns include a shotgun, rapid-firing spread shots, and a Macross Missile Massacre from Kalina Ann that functions via Button Mashing.
• Badass Biker: Lady's first appearance in 3 is on a motorcycle, and she proceeds to blow some demons away via the exhaust pipe as she leaves the scene. It's a pretty snazzy ride to boot (complete with Weaponized Exhaust!). Too bad that Dante wrecks it.
• Badass in Distress: In 5, Urizen defeats Lady and uses her as a host vessel for Artemis.
• Badass Normal: Whether she's this or has a Charles Atlas Superpower is hard to say, but she's basically the only competent demon slayer we meet in the series who's not part demon, full demon, or turning themselves into a demon. She's just a human with some guns. Well, a whole lot of guns, but it's still impressive that a human can slay demons without worrying too much about it. She also has ridiculous stamina and acrobatics that allow her to dodge the demons' attacks and maintain a safe distance.
• Bayonet Ya: Kalina Ann comes with a bayonet that also functions as a grappling hook. In 4:SE, she can whack enemies with it.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Her relationship with Dante in 3.
• BFG: Kalina Ann, a rocket launcher which she carries on her back, even while doing acrobatic maneuvers.
• Boots of Toughness: Unlike Trish, Lady opts for more practical combat boots. Although, the boots she wears in 4 have notable high heels, making them less practical.
• Bottomless Magazines: She doesn't run out of ammo during the in-game boss fight against her in 3. She's also never seen reloading her Kalina Ann rocket launcher.
• Breakout Character: Although she didn't join Dante in MvC3 (the best she got was a card for Heroes and Heralds mode in Ultimate), she does show up as a playable (Solo) unit in Project × Zone and eventually became playable in 4:SE.
• Casting Gag: Fumiko Orikasa voices Lady in the Japanese version. She also did the voice for Holly Summers from No More Heroes. Both have a rocket launcher as their signature weapon.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: She's a normal human who's able to keep up with naturally more powerful demons by just packing a lot of guns and ammo. Her training regimine must be amazing.
• Character Narrator: She narrates the prologue and epilogue cutscenes of 3.
• Charged Attack: As a playable character, all of her guns can be charged up up to three levels. Her handguns charge up the fastest, while Kalina Ann takes the longest to charge up, but is also one of her most powerful attacks.
• Combat Stilettos: In 4, although they're not as high as Trish's. Her boots in 5 lack the heels.
• Cool Bike: She had one in 3 before Dante completely wrecks it after using her bike to destroy several demons in Temen-ni-gru. She later rides a red 1974 Ducati 750 Supersport in TAS.
• Cool Shades: In 4.
• Cry Laughing: Happens at the start of Mission 20 in DMC3, after she finishes off her father Arkham. After unloading a whole clip from her gun in him, she drops to her side, laughing into the air before being overcome with tears mid-laughter.
• Cute Bruiser: She's 18 or probably less during her first appearance!
• Daddy's Girl:
  • Although it's not outright stated, it's hinted at that Lady at one point loved her father deeply. One of the first hints was when Arkham faked his death she almost immediately believed his lies about being manipulated, and accepted what Arkham said without any hesitation or questions. The second hint is near the ending. After being defeated by Dante in a duel, she requests that Dante free her father from his madness revealing that hatred isn't the only thing motivating her. Finally after being defeated by Dante and Vergil Arkham is killed by Lady, despite all that Arkham had done Lady still continues to refer to him as her father before pulling the trigger. Lady's crying afterwards hints that she really didn't want to do it despite all of her hate, and shows she was trying to convince herself to hate him the entire time.
  • When trying to convince Nero not to confront Vergil after learning he was his Vergil's son in 5, she sorrowfully mentions that killing one's own father is never to be taken lightly and always worth a second thought, no matter what the reasons are.
• Damsel in Distress: She and Trish are defeated and captured by Urizen at the beginning of Devil May Cry V and has to be rescued by Nero.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Lady has a supreme asshole of a father who murdered her mother and used her in a horrible plan to open the Hell Gate that Sparda closed.
• Dash Attack: She has her own version of Stinger, but she does it with a shotgun. If the player follows up with O/A, she'll follow the initial shot with an extremely powerful buckshot that pushes her farther back than when she started. (Dante could previously use these moves, Gun Stinger and Point Blank, in 3 while using Gunslinger Style, appropriately enough.)
• Defeat Means Friendship: After an entire game of butting heads in 3, Dante and Lady finally come to terms with each other when he beats her in proper combat.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She's very tense and cold for most of the game. It's not until the above trope comes into play that Lady starts to lighten up.
• Demoted to Extra: In 4 and 5, she has relatively little to do with the plot, instead having become one of Dante's work associates who collaborates with him on various demon hunting contracts. Reasonably justified in DMC5 as she's shown to be out of her league after being defeated by Urizen early in the game alongside Trish, Dante, and Nero, while losing the Kalina Ann in the chaos. Nico makes a replacement for her, but once Vergil is resurrected Nico rents it to Dante to give him extra firepower for recent developments leaving Lady with no weapon to return to the fight with for the entirety of the game.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: How does she fight demons with no magic? Increasingly more dangerous ammunition, from hollow-points, napalm, to explosive rounds.
• Determinator: Even though she more than likely knows that she's outmatched in various ways by both Dante and Vergil, she still doesn't give up on her mission throughout 3.
• Difficult, but Awesome: In 4:SE, her Kalina Ann is quite the high risk, high reward weapon. On the risk side, everything but its melee attacks and Double Jump require you to stand still. On the reward side, it has damage and spread on par with the Shotgun, but without the need to be at close range (on top of the two moves that are basically Macross Missile Massacres).
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": She doesn't like using her real name, Mary.
• Drives Like Crazy: In 5, at one point Nero is nearly crushed by Nico's van making a Dynamic Entry. Nero is quick to point fingers at Nico for doing so, only for Nico to reveal Lady was the one behind the wheel this time around; cue Lady peeking out the window with a smile and playful wave.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Morrison's third letter in DMC5 implies Lady drinking for some time after the events of DMC3. When Morrison met her, she once slipped out the fact that she and Dante each killed a member of their families. Though this story piqued Morrison's curiosity, he just chalked it up to the "drink", initially believing it as being "booze-induced".
• Everyone Calls Her "Barkeep": She goes by the name "Lady" and is one, though her true name is Mary.
• Fanservice Pack: In 4, just like Trish, the size of her breasts is increased and she shows off considerably more skin that her first appearance. 5 returns her to resembling her original proportions closer.
• Flanderization: A bonus picture of 3 has Lady holding up the handlebar of her destroyed bike, with Dante shrugging in the distance. While it's understandable that she would want to be paid back for it, like the "debt" point, it's overplayed. Her later appearances end up having to do with either money Dante owes her for her bike, or money Dante owes in general.
• Glass Cannon: She's this in 4: Special Edition (what with her focus on ranged combat).
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: She has numerous scars, including one running across the bridge of her nose and, after the events of 3, a rather large one on her thigh. However, as she's one of the good guys, they're all pencil thin and detract very little if at all from her overall looks.
• Good Wears White: She wears a white shirt or jacket most of the time.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Kalina Ann's bayonet is actually a harpoon that can be fired out to reel enemies in or to rappel up walls.
• Ground Pound: One of her aerials includes plunging Kalina Ann's bayonet into the ground, which creates a small shockwave on impact.
• Guns Akimbo: She dual wields a pair of automatic pistols.
• The Gunslinger: More so than the other heroes, if only because she carries even more firearms than them. 4:SE makes Lady playable for the first time in the series. As the true owner of the Kalina Ann, her style incorporates a lot more explosives; different kinds of missiles and grenades, but she also uses dual handguns and shotguns with some of the moves Dante uses, in addition to her own rapid fire shots.
• Hero of Another Story: Just like Trish, Lady also has her independent devil-hunting career in Devil May Cry: The Animated Series that is never really seen aside from a few snippets of her hunting demons on her own.
• Hollywood Healing: Lady has zig-zagged this trope across multiple installments. In 3, Arkham stabbed her leg with the Kalina Ann's bayonet but there's no open wound on her (partly because of the game engine's limitations). Only Charles Atlas Superpower explains how she easily got back up on her feet and kept fighting after it happened. Later on, both the anime and 4 show that she did receive a nasty scar on her leg from that incident, yet she didn't suffer any lasting effects, even on 5.
• I Call It "Vera": Kalina Ann, her rocket launcher which she named after her mother.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: After Lady is beaten by Dante in a boss fight of 3, she shoots several more times at him but is wide off the mark, probably as a result of having just been exhausted.
• Informed Attribute: Dante believes that the only villain who can beat Lady is Vergil, but while Lady is skilled, she has never shown the power to be among the heavyweights like Mundus or Argosax.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She starts off as a jerkass in 3, with bad first impressions to Dante and all, such as shooting his face when he just rescued her from falling, and fighting him simply because he's a half-demon. Over time, Lady had a Character Development after Arkham has been dealt with, becomes one of Dante's trusted allies, and acts more carefree than before.
• The Lady's Favour: Her temporary relinquishing of Kalina Ann to Dante in 3 with the request to "save" her father Arkham, minus the part about being a love interest (possibly).
• Living Battery: In 5 she is used as one for Artemis.
• Long-Range Fighter: Gameplay-wise, Lady relies entirely on firearms, with her melee attack mostly useful for knocking enemies away and giving her some breathing room. Luckily, her guns do more damage than other characters' and she can charge them up to three levels.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Her "Hysteric" move for the Kalina Ann, which fires a cluster micromissles and you can button mash to fire even more.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: She's actually Arkham's daughter.
• Made of Iron: In 3, she gets stabbed through the thigh with the enormous bayonet of her Kalina Ann rocket launcher, has it wiggled or twisted around in a way that would realistically cripple the leg for life if you didn't bleed out first, but she's back up for a boss fight shortly afterward, and then she climbs up the outside of a damn tower. She lacks the Healing Factor and Super-Toughness of the sons of Sparda, yet manages to shake off almost as much as they do. When you fight her as a boss, she's just as durable as any of the demon bosses.
• Madonna Archetype: She's a Badass Normal who has Ship Tease with Dante, named Mary before taking on the name Lady.
• Male Gaze:
  • Her introduction to the story in 4? Dante's POV, aimed squarely at her cleavage, before looking up.
  • One of the Randomized Title Screens in 5 briefly has the camera focusing on Lady's cleavage and neck.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: For a series that places much emphasis on stylish melee combos, Lady in the Special Edition of 4 stands out for being the only playable character who's primarily focused around ranged attacks and combos; she has a grand total of three melee abilities (one basic ground combo, one air combo, and one Helm Breaker-style attack) and no Devil Trigger (her Devil Trigger gauge instead powers a Combo Breaker that involves throwing several grenades around herself), but boasts a vast array of ranged abilities that allow her to keep crowds of enemies at bay and empower her guns to levels never before seen in the series.
• Missing Mom: Her mother was killed by her father.
• The Missus and the Ex: In the anime, with Trish being the "missus" (being the newer of Dante's female friends).
• Modesty Shorts: In 3, Lady is wearing some short black leggings◊ under her "ammo skirt". Probably very wise with all the acrobatic flipping she does and especially when Handsome Lech Dante is holding her upside down by one leg during a cutscene.
• More Dakka: If her rockets and grenades won't kill her targets, Lady's other method of fighting is to unload as many bullets as possible with her firearms consisting of handguns, submachine guns, or a shotgun. When she became playable in the Special Edition of 4, some of her combos (especially with her handguns) consist of fast, multi-hitting shots that encourage sustained fire against the target, usually with Button Mashing involved.
• Ms. Fanservice: In 3, Lady is a very attractive young woman who wears violet spats and so the camera makes sure you get a lot of looks at her legs and butt. Her outfit in 4 shows off much more skin with her Navel-Deep Neckline and shorts with a lack of skirt than it did in 3. While it gets toned down in 5 we're still treated to quite a few nice shots of her body as she spends some of early scenes buck naked before Nico finally gets her some clothes. A main menu scene in New Game Plus playthroughs has Lady poke her head out of a shower in the van, obviously naked yet again.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Her barely-buttoned business jacket shows off the entirety of her cleavage and some of her stomach in 4. She dresses a bit more conservatively in 5.
• Older Than They Look: In 4 and 5. Although her explicit age is never mentioned, she's about the same age as Dante in 3, which would put her, at the very least, in her 40s by the time 5 rolls around, making her hypothetically old enough to be Nero's mother. Hell, she could even be older than Trish, considering the latter was created by Mundus presumably just before the events of 1. However, that doesn't stop Lady from looking very young, especially when compared to Dante. The end of 5 draws a minor bit of attention to this, as Lady states that she's been thinking it might be time for her to settle down soon.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Lady, the only entirely human character in 3, gets stabbed through the thigh with an enormous bayonet, but manages to quickly stand back up as she, Dante and Vergil point their weapons at Arkham. She's still up for a boss fight not long afterward, and then climbs up a building!
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Since she dislikes her real name, she goes by Lady.
• Our Ancestors Are Superheroes: Lady is a devil hunter with Charles Atlas Superpower and is descended from a priestess who helped Sparda seal a gateway to the demon world two thousand years ago.
• Out of Focus: Trish and Lady surprisingly get this in DMC5. Despite being integral Action Girls of the earlier installments, the anime and even playable in the previous mainline game, they don't contribute much to the story, getting defeated early on and after getting rescued, spend the rest of the game in Nico's van and don't help in defeating the Big Bad Urzien.
• Parental Abandonment: Lady is on the receiving side of this. Her father Arkham killed her mother, and set off in his quest for power.
• Platonic Life-Partners: With Dante. Director Itsuno had to clarify this further by specifically stating that their relationship is not romantic, but whatever bond they shared is more focused on understanding what the other had gone through.
• Plucky Girl: Not even getting her ass kicked by Dante is enough to stop her. Her determination does pay off in the end — she gets to kill Arkham after all.
• Pretty Freeloader: Trish and Lady often loiter around the Devil May Cry office a lot. Most of it is for business reasons since they're Dante's demon-hunting partners, but they do have the habit of lazing around there for no reason as well, often mooching off his pizza and other resources, or making him pay their shopping bills. Granted, they're strictly Platonic Life-Partners with him, and all three are fine trading all the snark in the world with each other.
• Progressively Prettier: Compare Lady in her debut to Lady at the time of 4 and 5. Semi-justified since she's several years older. And she wasn't exactly unattractive to begin with, as her fandom will attest.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: She shares her birth name with the Virgin Mary, and the name she takes on after 3 is based on one of Mary's titles, Madonna, which is Italian for "Our Lady". The Virgin Mary also appears in The Divine Comedy, which goes along with the franchise's Shout-Out Theme Naming to that poem.
• Rocket Jump: Her double jump as a playable character has her shooting the ground with Kalina Ann while airborne, since she's a Badass Normal who can't summon magic platforms like the other characters.
• Sad Clown: Though she is outwardly much peppier in 4 and especially 5 than she was during the events of 3, supplementary materials and dialogue lines suggest that she isn't so over things internally. When Nero is struggling with possibly having to kill his father Vergil, Lady is quick to tell him that patricide is not something one easily gets over with, while having a sad look on her face as she says this, and as Nico states in her notes on Lady, someone who is as dedicated to demon hunting as she is can't be all that stable mentally.
• Spin Attack: Bayonet Sweep is one which is handy for getting enemies away due to its high knockback.
• Self-Made Orphan: Although when your father is Arkham, it has to be done. She considers this an act of grave responsibility and even for all the vengeance that was powering her motivation it's not something she takes any joy in, at best expressing a deflated relief that it's finally done. This comes back around when cautioning Nero against killing Vergil in 5, showing she never really let go of the hurt of having to act as the arbiter of her father's demise, evil man as he may have been.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: In 5, Lady is shown not to be very modest when she drops her Modesty Bedsheet right in front of Nico, while asking her for clothes.
• Shared Unusual Trait: Her heterochromia is something she shares with her father. As implied by illustrator Tatsuya Yoshikawa in page 217 of the 3142 Graphic Arts artbook, she wears sunglasses in 4 to hide it.
• She-Fu: Lady fights this way in 3 when she's not simply shooting her enemies. In one cutscene, she sits with one leg over the other on a scythe stuck in a wall before spreading her legs to kick at two enemies simultaneously.
• Ship Tease: She develops a crush on Dante and gets jealous of Trish in TAS.
• Shout-Out: According to character designer Daigo Ikeno, her original appearance was inspired by "the black-haired Julia Volkova of the Russian girl group" t.A.T.u.
• Swiss-Army Gun: As well as fire off regular missiles, Kalina Ann can fire off volleys of homing mini-missiles as well as the bayonet as a grappling hook.
• That Man Is Dead: At the end of 3, she tells Arkham that Mary died a long time ago, embracing "Lady" as her name.
• The Team Normal: Lady is the only playable hero with no demonic or magical powers, relying only her skill with guns.
• Throw-Away Guns: After using Trigger Happy or Two Hand, Lady will throw away her pistols and pull out a new pair rather then reloading them.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: As a playable character, her replacement for Devil Trigger is her tossing grenades around her in a screen-clearing attack, based upon an evasive tactic she uses against Dante when faced as a boss in 3, she can also throw a cluster of grenades at enemies with her Scatter attack, which is also handy for dodging.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Throughout much of 3, she's driven by the desire to have revenge for her mother. In TAS and 4, while still somewhat playfully professional in her dealings with Dante, she doesn't display as much of her old temperament of being cold towards demons, shown by her working with Trish. In 5, Lady's eagerly rushing to join in the hunt with Trish and Dante. Just look and compare her official character renders for each game — in 3 she's scowling, in 4 she's much more relaxed, and in 5 she's fully grinning.
• Trying Not to Cry: After Lady shoots and kills her father Arkham, she breaks down into tears. Before the cutscene ends, she notes that she was not expecting to cry and tries to recover.
• Tsundere: Shows shades of this in the anime when Trish wonders if she is in love with Dante.
• Ungrateful Bastard: In 3, Dante saves her from falling to her death when Arkham tosses her off the tower. Lady's response is to demand he let her go, and then shoot him in the face. Dante is rightfully pissed and calls her out on it.
  Dante: What the hell was that for? Here I am trying to help you, and you show your thanks by shooting me?!
• Unorthodox Reload: While fighting some demons in close quarters, a nearby explosion from her rocket launcher sends approximately three of Lady's guns flying, all of which spent some time in the air during their reloading process; she puts a magazine clip in her mouth, throws two more clips in the air, catches a pair of guns first, then lets the guns catch their respective clips. Immediately after, she repeats the latter trick with another pair of handguns from her holster. The last handgun falls near her, then she reloads it too while catching it.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Initially in 3, Lady was introduced as a demon hunter who believed all demons are evil. Dante helps convince her that not all demons are evil, and that not all humans are good. She later gets over it and accepted his notion, best evidenced by her own narration at the epilogue:
  Lady: But now I realize, there are human as evil as any devil, as well as calm and compassion demons in this universe. At least I've found one so-called devil who's able to shed tears for those he cares about. That's enough for me to believe in him.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: She's spent years pursuing her father for killing her mother, and hates him for all the atrocities he's committed... but despite everything, she can't bring herself to completely hate him. When she finally kills Arkham in 3, she breaks down Cry Laughing, and in 5, she tells Nero that killing Vergil, recently revealed to be the latter's father, will leave a huge emotional scar on him, obviously speaking from experience.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: In episode 5 of TAS, she casually tucks in a large stack of bills into her shirt.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: After starting out hostile towards each other, Trish and Lady have this relationship. They seem to get along best when they're making Dante's life miserable.
• Walking Armory: Lady has visible bags and pouches of ammunition and weaponry in her every attire and always carries at least two hand guns, two SMGs, and Kalina Ann on her person. 5 gives her the sobriquet "The Walking Arsenal".
• Weak, but Skilled: Has no demonic powers but is still a competent demon hunter.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Likewise. Lady goes from outright hating all demons to realizing that there are not only demons out there with noble, heroic spirits, but humans with hearts blacker than that of any demon.

V

V

The Mysterious One

"'He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.' ...so it is written."

Voiced by: Brian Hanford (English), Kōki Uchiyama (Japanese)

Face Model: Owen Hamze (DMC5)

Image Song: Crimson Cloud (DMC5)

The mysterious third Playable Character of Devil May Cry 5. After enticing Dante with a cash-up-front offer and Nero with information on the hooded man who attacked him to ostensibly stop the resurrection of a powerful demon, he soon becomes embroiled in the battle for Red Grave City himself.

He fights by utilizing three demons: Griffon, Shadow and Nightmare. Griffon is mapped to the gun button and functions as the primary ranged attacker, dealing damage with lightning-based projectiles and giving V air support by allowing him to glide. Shadow is the melee attacker, and deals powerful and wide sweeping strikes, and gives V faster ground movement. Nightmare is summoned when V uses his Devil Trigger, being an autonomous but incredibly strong golem-like demon that beats V's enemies down with its bulk and fires a powerful laser from its eye. With an upgrade called "Promotion", V can directly take control of it by piercing its body with his sword cane. However, all three of his familiars share the same problem: they cannot actually kill any demon they attack, leaving V to finish them off himself (though a Promoted Nightmare can bypass the problem and kill enemy demons directly).

In his moveset, V also has other attacks to fight with using his cane, such teleporting himself to a chosen target with Gambit and Touch and Move or destroying all dying enemies in close proximity with his ultimate attack Royal Fork, a rain of demonic canes from above that consumes his Devil Trigger gauge.

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• Ambiguous Ending: If you manage to defeat Urizen during the prologue mission or on Mission 8 (which is difficult to do on your first playthrough), V's fate in the joke Golden Ending becomes ambiguous as the post-credits photograph only shows off his cane as he approaches the DMC crew. It's unknown if he's still going to die, or if he managed to reform into Vergil after Urizen's defeated earlier than expected.
• Ambiguously Evil: V is presented as this for half of the game, with both Nero and Lady even being distrustful of his true intentions.
  Nero: V... Can I trust you?
• Ambiguously Human: He looks human and his body clearly lacks the supernatural strength of a demon, but other characters aren't quite convinced; they keep noting V seems somehow "off", not quite acting or moving like a normal person should despite it being clear he's basically a normal human without his three demon familiars and Power Tattoos. It's ultimately revealed he is the living personification of Vergil's human heritage, so he probably qualifies as human on some level, although his demonic powers certainly stem from Sparda's lingering influence on him.
• Air Guitar: Using his Classy Cane, one of his S-rank taunts has him miming playing a violin in the air, where he actually plays the opening part of Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24. Another one has him conduct an air orchestra performing Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".
• Assist Character: V tosses some Devil Breakers to Nero while the latter is fighting Malphas in Mission 15.
• The Atoner: He considers what happened to Red Grave City to be his fault, so he goes to try and fix it.
• Badass Bookworm: V is often reading a book of William Blake's poetry and a letter from his past has the man who gave him the book calling him a bibliophile. Griffon even refers to him as "Shakespeare".
• Badass Fingersnap: V summons his Super Mode familiar, Nightmare, by snapping his fingers together. Even more badass is that it can deflect projectiles and one-shot weaker enemies.
• Badass in Distress: He comes very close to death several times, most notably when cornered by Malphas.
• The Beastmaster: He fights primarily by utilizing three creatures to do most of the fighting for him.
• Being Good Sucks: Trying to help people in the month between the prologue and the first mission of 5 is just killing his dying body even faster. He still does it anyway.
• Body Horror: He is Secretly Dying. Early in the process, you just see what looks like skin flakes constantly falling away, but as the game progresses, cracks start appearing all over his body.
• Born as an Adult: When V remarks that he is only 2 days old when he meets Dante, he was quoting William Blake poetry, and passes what he previously said as a joke. However, it's also true about himself; V is already in his adult form when he was split off from Vergil.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: V quite literally took his cane from an antique shop to defend himself when a demon came after him. Luckily for him, the metal used to make the cane was from the demon world from a previous event where the two worlds collided, making it an ideal conduit for magic.
• Break the Haughty: Noted by V himself. In the prequel novel Before the Nightmare, Dante tells him "There's no crime in turning tail V, these things might be a little too much for you." V reflects that once upon a time, being told something like that would have angered him to no end, but now, he is no longer motivated by such excessive pride.
• Call-Back: His familiars are all enemies from the first game who worked for Mundus, and Nelo Angelo had authority over them. This hints at V's connection to Nelo Angelo's real identity, Vergil.
• Came Back Strong: In Special Edition after re-merging with Urizen to become Vergil, any time Vergil uses Yamato to temporarily become V, his familiars also return, insanely more powerful than before. With the full demonic power of Vergil behind them, they can spam their best attacks while V merely floats in the air.
• Cane Fu: Utilized with V's Checkmate finishing moves. Although some of his attacks are fairly down and dirty stabs with his cane, others are more flashy; such as hooking an enemy's limbs, brutal beheadings and crushing skulls using the cane's head as an impromptu hammer.
• Cassandra Truth: In Visions of V, much like their first meeting, Dante is initially skeptical about V's claims of there being a powerful demon that is about to resurrect and raise hell after having dealt with so many with the same circumstances. It's only after V tells Dante that the demon is Vergil and will launch an assault on Red Grave City that Dante takes him seriously.
• Cast from Lifespan: V's body slowly decays over time, and him exerting his abilities only serves to accelerate the process.
• Casting Gag: Via V being a playable missing-half of someone else, is it any coincidence they casted Kōki Uchiyama to play as him, a la Roxas?
• The Chessmaster: He has skill and knowledge but not much power, so he uses agents to do the heavy lifting before closing in for the killing shot. In gameplay he uses his demonic familiars, but in the main story he's using Dante and Nero to defeat Urizen so that he can reunite his demon and human halves and resurrect Vergil.
• Chess Motifs: Most of his Cane abilities and summons' moves are named after chess terms, such as Checkmate, Double Check, Hedgehog, Promotion, Round Robin, Switchback, Illegal Move, and Royal Fork.
• Classy Cane: Carries an ornate antique cane with him, and he utilizes Cane Fu to finish off enemies - violently jabbing enemies or impaling them upon it. Nico comments the cane itself seems to be a mundane object but it is forged with an unknown metal which makes it an ideal conduit for channeling demonic energy. As such, the cane can be used as both a conduit to channel magic and a synchronisation medium to control demon familiars, and it can possibly even absorb the power of defeated demons because V evidently needs the cane to merge himself back with Urizen.
• Cold Ham: Never raises his voice, but all of his lines are spoken with a certain weight.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Doesn't he look vaguely like Adam Driver?
• Conducting the Carnage: This is a taunt that V can do while ordering his Familiars to do the fighting for him. For bonus points, the song that plays while doing it is "Ride of the Valkyries".
• Creepy Good: His mannerisms (especially in combat) can come off as rather sinister, but he's firmly on the side of the heroes.
  V: Scorch them... Gouge them... Pin 'em to the wall...
• Crossover Cameo: He showed up alongside Dante and Nero as an event-only character in a collaboration with Shin Megami Tensei Liberation: Dx2 from March 14, 2019 until April 3, 2019.
• Cultured Badass: V constantly gives off the impression of someone with an impressive classical education: His love of literature, poetry, and classical music. As he is the human half of Vergil, it makes sense since he spent most of his childhood with his nose buried in books, with a special fondness for poetry and William Blake in particular.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He's a mysterious man who dresses in black, magically summons three shadowy familiars and ruthlessly kills his enemies, but he's on the side of the good guys and is concerned about innocent bystanders. Later on, it's revealed that he is the human half of Vergil made flesh.
• A Day in the Limelight: He's the protagonist of the Visions of V manga which details his beginnings after Vergil split himself into V and Urizen, making a contract with Griffon and so on.
• Death of Personality: Played with. Near the end of the story when Vergil becomes whole once more, the more affable and humble V is subsumed into the arrogant and overly stoic Vergil. That said, Vergil seems to be mellowed as he acknowledges Nero's help, suggesting that V at least influences him. Come the Special Edition, Vergil can use Yamato on himself to temporarily become V again, showing that the V persona isn't gone for good.
• Determinator: Even when dead on his feet, V keeps picking himself back up to finish his duty.
• Difficult, but Awesome: He is described as a "tricky", methodical, complex and strategic character.
  • V requires far more judicious management of the Devil Trigger Gauge because he has a very different relationship with it compared to the other playable characters. Whereas they mostly use it as a resource for powering their Super Mode, V can use it for all sorts of different things: he can empower his familiars, spend DT on unique moves like Royal Fork, and summon Nightmare, whom he can control directly or let loose. V is also the only character who can refill his DT Gauge at will, but doing so limits his movement options for a while and it generally requires moving him closer to enemies he can't stagger by himself. As a result, he is going to be building up and spending DT a lot more than the other characters. Played wrong, V will be running out of DT Gauge and his familiars can be temporarily knocked out if you're not careful, leaving him defenseless. Played right, V's familiars can smother the battlefield with their combined attacks and allow him to fight at extremely long range.
  • V allows you to carry out attacks with four different characters at once by using him and his summons in conjunction. Although this means keeping track of Shadow and Griffon's individual health bars and Nightmare's consumption of the DT Gauge, it makes V fun to play in a very different way than the other characters, and he can still pull off some pretty stylish moves by himself. For example, he's the only person in the entire series who can taunt while his familiars are attacking the enemies.
• Disability-Negating Superpower: Short-ranged teleportation and assistance from summons help V compensate for his otherwise limited mobility.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Ridiculously pale under those tattoos.
• Enemy Without: A heroic, inverted version of the trope. He's made of all the human qualities like compassion, empathy, and sense of humor which Vergil disdained or buried deep down to prevent them from getting in the way during his quest for power. As a result, V is outright ashamed of the enormous Jerkass tendencies of Vergil, he fights to protect innocent civilians, and helps fight his demonic side, which he named Urizen, from spreading further chaos.
• Evil Laugh: Inverted; V is very firmly on the side of good, but other than one "ha!" in a cutscene, his only laughter is during one of his taunts... and good lord, does it sound maniacal. After a few seconds of this he speaks, and sounds like he's talking through his laughter, indicating that V just laughs like that.
  V: [audibly chuckling] You make me laugh.
• Expy: V is described in interviews as a more bookish, intellectual character, making him very similar to the original concept for Nero when he was envisaged as a more Victorian, Sherlock Holmes-esque character.
• False Flag Operation: Minor example. He feigns stabbing Dante through the head with the Sparda, knowing that his Killing Intent will be enough to jolt the guy awake.
• False Reassurance: Nothing he says is a lie, exactly... but he conceals his true purpose with a creative use of words. For example, when he hires Dante, he says he needs help because a powerful demon is about to resurrect and even tells him that the demon's name is Vergil. But he never explicitly says he wants to prevent that resurrection.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Noble as he might be, he's still working to resurrect Vergil, and he has no scruples about manipulating Dante and Nero into doing the work for him.
• The Fettered: Despite living on borrowed time, he feels duty bound to stop the Qliphoth Tree and Urizen and spends the month after the prologue doing whatever he can to save whoever he can at great expense to his already short life.
• Finishing Move: While his familiars are the primary damage dealers, V has to finish off enemies himself. Against bosses, they tend to be cinematic.
• Flash Step:
  • His dodge has him move in this manner rather than rolling like other characters, but only when Shadow is available.
  • He can also do this as a part of a finisher; Checkmate allows V to throw his cane at a dying enemy and finish them off, while his Touch and Move skill allows him to teleport to the next target immediately after killing the previous one.
• Foreshadowing: There are multiple hints to his true nature as the human half of Vergil.
  • Him having demons associated with Mundus as familiars hints at his past as Nelo Angelo.
  • He has a Flash Step move to dodge attacks instead of rolling. Vergil can do that too via his Trick techniques.
  • His hair turning white when he summons Nightmare hints at his half-demon heritage. When his familiars are temporarily taken away from him in Mission 14, it's subtly revealed that his hair color is naturally white, just like the other descendants of Sparda.
  • He regularly adjusts his hair during his Idle Animation, and his "Royal Fork" animation ends with him about to stand while slicking his hair up and back. This behavior is similar to Vergil whose Character Tic consists of slicking back his hair.
  • His choice of a vest, Badass Longcoat and a glove on the hand he uses a weapon with mirrors Vergil's own taste in clothing.
  • His battle theme, "Crimson Cloud", includes the lyrics "split myself in two". That's not just edginess for edginess's sake. Vergil really did split himself in two.
  • Urizen's name is a William Blake reference; and V quotes William Blake all the time. This is a hint that the two characters are connected. The "I am but two days old" quote also counts in the sense that V and Urizen were separated from Vergil on May 1 and then V meets up with Dante on May 3, exactly two days later when he introduced himself to Dante.
  • And of course, there's his name, though he drops all but the first letter to subtly signify his status as a small part of Vergil. The Visions of V manga reveals that he took the letter alias from his William Blake poetry book, which Vergil owned when he was a child.
  • When he gets his hands on the Sparda and struggles to lift it before dropping it back down, he notes that the sword is "still too strong" for him. Vergil had dreamed of wielding the Sparda for years yet he never had the chance to wield its true unsealed form (the closest being the sealed Force Edge in 3, and Dante still kicked his ass).
  • Though he says at the time that it was just a ploy to make Dante wake up through natural instincts, V seems pretty genuine in his anger towards Dante when he fakes stabbing his unconscious body. Right before fusing with Urizen, he notes that his feelings towards Dante are the one thing he and Urizen share.
  • While in combat, V often uses the same lines spoken by Vergil and sometimes, Nero ("Die!", "Begone!" "Blast!", "Scum"); he can also use a line that will be used or echoed later by Urizen ("What an eyesore."). V also has access to "Gambit", a Dark Slayer style "near-enemy" teleport (a move nobody but Vergil and Trickster-Styled Dante know), which he performs to finish up distant enemies. Gambit is performed by V impaling an enemy with the thrown cane, and then warping to it (which is similar to Vergil's Trick technique impaling a target with a Summoned Sword and warping to it). The demonic canes summoned by his "Royal Fork" skill also resemble Vergil's Summoned Swords (especially their spread-out formations), and the way V swings his cane to initiate a finishing move is like a right-handed version of the first hit in Vergil's basic combo strings with the Yamato.
  • One of his taunts is the line "I need more strength." If the player does not revive V after his health is depleted, he might also say "I need power." These are reminiscent of Vergil saying "I need more power."
• Fusion Dance: V forcefully re-merges with Urizen after Dante beats the crap out of the demon to make Vergil whole again.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: V grows increasingly sickly and reliant on his cane as the game goes on, but when played, he can leap and sprint around as easily as Dante or Nero, and his flashy finishing moves stay as showy as ever. Aside from a Scripted Event in Mission 14, you never get to feel him getting weaker in most of the missions even if the story keeps on saying that his body is slowly crumbling.
• Good Counterpart: To Urizen, being Vergil's cast-off humanity given form. V possesses Vergil's positive traits such as his love for poetry, compassion for others, and sense of humor. V also retains Vergil's childhood memories, which Urizen doesn't remember. Though it turns out "good" is relative; V still resents Dante, and just before he fuses with Urizen to turn back into Vergil, he remarks that the desire to see his brother beaten is the one thing they share.
• Handicapped Badass: The cane isn't just to look cool, as he walks with an increasingly noticeable limp as the game goes on. This comes across in gameplay, as he doesn't run as much like the other past playable characters, but instead surfs on Shadow or teleports to cross large distances. When Shadow is temporarily taken away from him in Mission 14, it only takes a few strides for him to become exhausted.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: V's motivation is rather cloudy; he despises Urizen and everything he's done but he still seizes the opportunity to take the power Urizen had used Blood Magic to obtain. Vergil's first act upon resurrecting himself is to challenge Dante to a Duel to the Death, showing that a month of painful Character Development was not enough to strip him of his lust for power and his resentment towards Dante.
• Helpless Good Side:
  • He's all of Vergil's humanity with almost none of his demonic power, making him unable to defeat Urizen on his own.
  • From Vergil's perspective, this is also the reason why he decided to split his demon and human halves as separate beings; he believed his humanity was "holding back" his demonic side.
• Hidden Agenda Hero: He's definitely opposed to Urizen, but he's also a rather shifty man with his own agenda that doesn't become clear until the endgame. He's actually the living manifestation of Vergil's discarded humanity, and is trying to recombine with Urizen to restore themselves to their true form.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He represents parts of Vergil's personality that were seldom brought up in the previous Devil May Cry lore. Through V, we discover that Vergil is a Badass Bookworm who loves William Blake's poetry, or that his hatred of Dante springs from a sense that Eva loved Dante more.
  • In Chapter 9 of the Visions of V manga when he's trapped in Nightmare's pocket dimension, we see that deep down, V and by proxy, Vergil, feels that Dante cares for him and will protect him. While V himself believes that Nightmare is showing him he will never be as powerful as Dante, it should be noted that the illusionary Dante was able to save V from a Nightmare version of Nelo Angelo and even open a path directly to Nightmare's core, meaning V's feelings towards his brother were stronger than Nightmare's own power.
• Horrifying Hero: He comes across as this in the Visions of V manga. Though he saves a woman from being mugged, she is horrified by how he took them out and jerks away from him when he moves to return her necklace. During the demonic invasion in Red Grave City, he also defends a group of civilians from a mob of demons and all of them are scared out of their wits, with one of them saying he's "not human".
• I Hate Past Me: His internal monologue in Before the Nightmare reveals that he feels deep shame about his past self's Pride and It's All About Me attitude.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: V tells Trish that all he had wanted growing up was for people to love and protect him. Funnily, it's "Vergil" talking to the doppelganger of his dead mother, Eva, from whom he still secretly yearns for motherly love.
• Incurable Cough of Death: One of his taunts is actually him doubling over in a brief coughing fit before he collects himself. Indeed, his body is degenerating without the demonic power that keeps it going.
  V: Have to keep going...
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Griffon calls him "Shakespeare" for his penchant for quoting William Blake.
  • Dante calls him "Mr. Poetry" in a cutscene of Mission 12.
• Irony: As Vergil, he wanted the Devil Sword Sparda and sought its might fervently. As V, he can barely even lift it. He finally got what he desired above all else, at a point when he didn't want it, and could no longer use it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In chapters 12 and 12.2 of Visions of V, he unintentionally saves a woman from being mugged after hearing that the necklace the thieves were demanding was a memento from her mother, reminding him of Eva gifting Vergil and Dante their amulets on their birthday. After the muggers are taken care of, V returns the necklace to the woman before leaving.
• Karmic Thief: In Visions of V, he initially plans to steal from someone rich for money before deciding to rob from thieves for pragmatic reasons since his weak appearance can easily draw them to him rather than him trying to find them.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: He's not stupid enough to pick fights with demons he has no hope of beating, such as when he turns back after seeing Gilgamesh (as quoted below). He also tries to flee when he sees Malphas in Mission 14 because his body is already too weak at that point, but Nero fortunately defeats the demon on his behalf.
  V: [faced with a 30-foot tall metallic demonic monstrosity] I'm afraid that...that's a little bit more than I can take on right now.
• Limit Break: In the Special Edition, V himself becomes Vergil's super move via the "World of V" skill wherein Vergil stabs himself with the Yamato and briefly turns himself into V, who unleashes an attack that utilizes all of his familiars.
• Literal Split Personality: He's Vergil's human half.
• Living on Borrowed Time: He walks with an increasingly noticeable limp, and one of his taunts is an Incurable Cough of Death. He later reveals to Trish that his body is falling apart and decaying, and the traces of demonic power he has left after being split from Vergil is all that is keeping him alive.
• The Load: Although V and his familiars are fairly formidable, he still considers many of the bosses in the game above his weight class, requiring Nero to fight them in his stead. The earliest example happens when Gilgamesh, the giant four-legged demon, appears. V's first reaction to seeing it is to run for his life, while Nero's first reaction is "Welp, guess I need to take care of that." This becomes especially so near the end of the game when V is so weak that Nero has to all but carry him.
• Manipulative Bastard: He's a good person overall, but he's still ultimately using Dante and Nero for his own ends. While it's hazy just how much he loathed his old self, there's no doubt that his true intentions required Dante and Nero beating Urizen into submission long enough so he may re-merge into Vergil. Thankfully, V's experience and better nature triumphed, making Vergil into a better man in the end.
• Master of Illusion: Used briefly in his Checkmate against Miraggio Angelo (a phantasm version of Cavaliere Angelo in Mission 14), who stabs him only for what was stabbed to vanish while an unharmed V appears behind the demon and finishes the job with his cane.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: He's basically the Devil May Cry equivalent of a Puppet Fighter, a la Zato-1/Eddie. Most of his attacks are done by summoning familiars, and the only direct attack he does himself is a finishing blow with his cane. His Devil Trigger gauge doesn't directly grant him Super Mode, but is instead used to either power up Shadow and Griffon, or to summon Nightmare, a massive beast capable of devastating attacks. V also doesn't have the straightforward Regenerating Health mechanic of the other playable characters while in Devil Trigger mode. Instead, Nightmare's presence increases the chance for enemies to drop Green Orbs.
• Memento MacGuffin: His book of poems is a treasured keepsake from his childhood that he used to often read, fantasizing it was a Tome Of Prophecy And Fate predicting a future Hero's Journey for himself through a world of magic and myths. In-game, V reads it in order to slowly refill his Devil Trigger gauge. And after he merged back into Vergil and dives into the Underworld, Nero holds onto the book until they meet again.
• Must Make Amends: Feels personally responsible for the events in Red Grave City, and is committed to making it right.
  V: I have a duty to see this through.
• My God, What Have I Done?: By separating from his demon half, V regains enough presence of mind to see how Vergil's act of creating a completely unfettered pure demon version of himself was a terrible idea. He sought out Dante in hopes that maybe the legendary devil hunter could help him fix it. He even asks Trish, likely because of how much she looks just like his mother, if she thought he could do it.
• My Greatest Failure: He regards what's happening in Red Grave City, specifically the existence of Urizen, to be all his fault and is committed to doing whatever it takes to set this mistake right.
• Mysterious Stranger: He shows up with no explanation, but he has cash Dante urgently needs and information Nero desperately wants, so they don't ask him too many questions. Even his title is "The Mysterious One."
• Mystical White Hair: V's hair is actually white, shown when he summons Nightmare, as the magical ink used to dye his hair dissolves to give Nightmare form. This of course, is a sign that he is of Sparda's bloodline.
• Necessarily Evil: He got the money to pay Dante by stealing from mercenaries with his demon familiars. It is noted he only injured rather than killed them though.
• Nice Guy: While his stoicism and aloofness make this a bit of a downplayed trope, he is nevertheless polite and kind to everyone who isn't an enemy. During the one-month period after the crew got their asses kicked by Urizen in the first round, he spent the whole time in the city rescuing people and fighting off whatever demons he could, to his increasing detriment. After V re-merges into Vergil, this trait actually rubs off on Vergil even if only just a little bit, mellowing him out somehow.
• No Name Given: Lampshaded when he first meets Dante, as "V" sounds more like a nickname than an actual one. As it turns out, he was only kidding about not having a name.
  V: "I have no name, I am but two days old." ...just kidding. You can call me "V".
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: He actually does wear a vest underneath his Badass Longcoat, but it too is open, exposing most of his chest.
• Not Hyperbole: Turns out that crack about him being two days old wasn't a joke. Vergil split himself into V and Urizen just two days prior.
• Not Quite Dead: While it seems like he ceases to exist when he merges with Urizen to reconstitute Vergil, the Special Edition reveals that Vergil can retake V's form at will by stabbing himself again with the Yamato.
• Not Quite Flight: V can hover briefly when Griffon carries him.
• Not So Above It All: V may be the most serious of the three protagonists, but he's not above jokes and wit as evidenced by him using a literary quote to describe himself as "two days old" before clarifying that he's kidding, and his habit of reciting poetry while killing enemies. Three of his taunts also include doing a little tap dancing jig, playing an air violin, and pretending to conduct an orchestra. To top it off, his EX Provocation taunt is the dance from Singin' in the Rain. TVTropes shits you not.
• Older Than They Look: V looks like a young man around Nero's age, but he acts like someone much older, calling Nero a "boy" or a "child" many times. This is zig-zagged later on as V is the human composite self of Vergil, a man who looks like at least in his forties, but then he is also a month and two days old between the time he was split off from Vergil, and during the story's proper date on June.
• One-Letter Name: He typically goes simply by the letter "V".
• Power Crutch: V's cane has no power by its own, but as it's made of demonic metal, it's a good conduit for him to channel demonic energy.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Inverted. V is shown with black hair in most of his screentime and gameplay. Summoning Nightmare turns his hair white, but it's actually his natural hair color. This is first shown in the flashback scene when Vergil split himself in two; V has white hair by default when he emerged. If Griffon and Shadow make up parts of his body tattoos, Nightmare is the familiar that dyes V's hair when it's not summoned yet. The player can notice this more easily in-game during Mission 14; V's familiars are taken away from him so his hair turns white and his tattoos fade away, but retrieving Nightmare recolors V's hair into black.
• Power Incontinence: His theme song includes the line "Summoning the power, drag myself through pain" implying his Summon Magic is causing him immense pain. It's later revealed that V is only being kept alive by what little demonic power he has left, and it's slowly running out. And as the game goes on, he finds it more and more difficult to even walk, his skin begins cracking, and his veins start turning black.
• Power Tattoo: His tattoos contain his familiars. When he summons his creatures, his tattoos will dissolve to give them form.
• Powers Do the Fighting: His familiars do most of the heavy lifting, with V only stepping in to deliver the killing blow.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: V usually delivers quotes and one-liners just before a boss fight or a Mook Debut Cutscene. When dealing the final blow to a boss, V always caps it off with a quote from a William Blake poem that usually relates to the boss in some way.
  (To Goliath) "Little Wanderer. Hie thee home!"
  (Before fighting Nidhogg) "As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible."
  (To Nidhogg) "The cut worm forgives the plow". What do you say?
  (Before fighting Elder Geryon Knight) "I see. I know what you are. Don't worry, I'll be gentle."
  (To Elder Geryon Knight) "The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom, no clock can measure". Die.
• Protagonist Title: He's the Tritagonist of the fifth game, with the 5 being represented by the Roman numeral version, V. Also counts as Antagonist Title, since he's the good half of Vergil, the game's overall Big Bad.
• Psychotic Smirk: Zig-zagged; V often sports a pretty impressive psychotic smirk when taunting or killing demons, usually quoting poetry and generally being an Ice-Cold Ham. But V also smirks darkly at low, Kubrick angles when he's genuinely amused by Griffon's wisecracks or even his own witticisms. Even when he's not trying to be, V just ends up appearing sinister.
• Really Was Born Yesterday: Though he claims to Dante he was "just kidding" when saying he's two days old (he's actually quoting William Blake in that scene), he really was not kidding: He was indeed born two days before he met Dante at his Devil May Cry shop.
• Redemption Demotion: Vergil is one of the strongest characters in the franchise, while his human half can barely run under his own power and uses demon familiars to fight for him.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: V is calm and thoughtful in contrast to Nero and Dante being more aggressive and direct.
• The Reveal: He is the human half of Vergil, left behind when Vergil used Yamato to cut out the human part of himself in hopes of leaving behind his weakness. Similarly, his familiars are the Shell-Shocked Veteran parts of his personality from the time he spent as the slave of the demon who killed his mother.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Since he regularly quotes William Blake poetry, he often says lines that rhyme with each other. Griffon occasionally teases him about it.
  Griffon: Okay Shakespeare, just remember this: You and I like to exist. So get rid o' those demons quick, 'cause killin' ain't my shtick! I've got your back, 'cuz dyin' is whack!
• Secret Identity: Goliath appears to recognize him, but is killed by V before the demon can explain how.
  Goliath: Why? Why are you...
  V: Little wanderer... hie thee home! *Stab*
• Shadow Archetype: To Vergil. As the embodiment of the humanity Vergil has been trying to cast away throughout the whole series, V shows what Vergil would have been if he stopped obsessing over power.
• Shoulder Teammate: V can ride on the shoulder of his golem familiar Nightmare, allowing the player to control its actions.
• Skill Gate Characters: V is easy to use on a lower difficulty setting because he can stay safely at long range while his summons do the heavy lifting. But on higher difficulties, he receives a significant difficulty spike because managing the vitality of said summons becomes a higher priority with the more powerful enemies capable of stalemating them quickly.
• Slasher Smile: He starts breaking these out the closer he gets to Urizen because he is eager to restore himself into his original form alongside claiming Urizen's power. By the time he reaches Urizen, he is positively grinning while insisting that he deliver the finishing blow, and sports a Cheshire Cat Grin while standing over him. Potentially downplayed as we don't ever learn the details or explicit motivations behind his plans, and as a notably Creepy Good character, he may simply be smiling so much because he's getting closer to stopping Urizen's immense body count, not to mention preventing his own slow, painful decay.
• The Slow Walk: When he is locked on an enemy, he doesn't really run like Dante or Nero do, and just calmly strides around the chaos while summoning his familiars and occasionally intervening himself. However, he can sprint around normally otherwise.
• Speaks in Shout-Outs: Many of his lines are quotes from William Blake poems.
• Spectral Weapon Copy: With his "Royal Fork" skill, he can conjure copies of his cane to launch at enemies as projectiles in a Storm of Blades style attack to finish off all dying enemies.
• Spell Book: Downplayed. By reading from his book, V will slowly restore his Devil Trigger gauge, and the closer he is to enemies, the faster it will fill up. The book itself is just a book of poems though, and V is only reading from it to focus himself.
• Squishy Wizard: He is not physically gifted as the other characters, needing a cane to hobble along and having less knockback resistance than them. And even if all playable characters share the same Vitality Gauge, he still takes more damage from enemy attacks in comparison. V also cannot directly regenerate health with his Devil Trigger, making him even more vulnerable in contrast to the other characters' Devil Triggers. That being said, his ability to fight at a distance while his familiars gang up on enemies gives him a HUGE advantage, he's the only character who can refill his Devil Trigger gauge at will during battle, and he can transfer some DT gauge to Shadow and Griffon to power them up and have them act independently for a short time.
• Stealing from Thieves: In Visions of V, V initially plans on stealing from a rich person to get the necessary funds for his plan, but then decides to steal from muggers since he can take advantage of his weak appearance to draw victims to himself rather than him searching for them.
• Summon Magic: His gameplay revolves around him summoning three of the first game's enemies to attack other demons.
• Super Mode: Unlike the other playable characters, V's Devil Trigger gauge is consumed to temporarily summon Nightmare, a giant golem that can barrel through enemies with ease, or to make Griffon and Shadow attack on their own.
• Sword Cane: A variant; looking closely enough at V's cane reveals a very distinct bladed edge, which means he is essentially using a sword-like object AS a cane. This also neatly explains why it functions as a weapon, though V doesn't seem to have enough strength to actually inflict damage to demons without his familiars weakening them first.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: According to in-game models, he's just a bit taller than Nero. He's dark with his black hair and and clothes. As for snarky, he can deliver lines as good as Nero and Dante can.
• Tattoo as Character Type: His body is covered in various mystical symbols, symbolizing his link with the occult and his supernatural ability to fight toe to toe with demons.
• Teleportation:
  • With his "Gambit" skill, he can throw his cane and use it as a teleportation beacon in order to quickly reach and finish off dying enemies.
  • He can also do this with Nightmare when taking direct control of the golem via the Promotion skill. As a part of their shared arsenal during Promotion, their "Illegal Move" skill allows them to create a portal to teleport and move instantly towards the target.
• Tragic Hero: A slowly-dying human trying to fix his failure before he falls apart completely and is being drawn to recombine into his former Anti-Villain self in something akin to More than Mind Control.
• Tranquil Fury: When V is confronted by one of Vergil's lingering "nightmares", which happens to be Phantom, he becomes eerily quiet when the overgrown spider mocks him when Griffon suggests he form a contract to survive, claiming that there is absolutely no reason, much less sense, that he should serve a "pathetic human." V's response?
  V: Ah, is that so. I understand. (flashes a Slasher Smile) I have no need for you.
• Trauma Button: He reacts poorly to seeing the Proto Angelo and Scudo Angelos, seemingly momentarily overcome before becoming enraged. This is because they are the prototype and mass-produced versions of the Nelo Angelo armor Vergil was trapped in. He has a similar reaction towards Cavaliere Angelo in Visions of V where he briefly mistakes it for his previous self as Nelo Angelo.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: V has information regarding the sudden demon invasion in Red Grave City and the Demon King behind it, Urizen. He's the client of the Devil May Cry this time around, urging J.D. Morrison to gather Dante, Lady, Trish and Nero for a mission, while V serves as their guide towards Urizen in the Qliphoth. In the end, it turns out V needed to defeat and land the killing blow on Urizen so that both of them could merge back into a fully-healed Vergil, as he was actually the cast-off humanity of the latter.
• Unscrupulous Hero: V is a very ruthless demon hunter, having no qualms with stealing, using Black Magic and injuring, or even killing humans if it achieves his goals. He's also a little Ax-Crazy when fighting demons and shows absolutely no mercy. That being said, he's staunchly opposed to all evil, worried about the survival of innocent people, and does his hardest to try and minimize civilian collateral damage. He may Pay Evil unto Evil, but he's on humanity's side for the right reasons. It's very telling that even Vergil's good side is so ruthless.
• Warrior Poet: V is a skilled warrior on his own, as he can face hordes of demons with his cane and familiars, all while quoting his favorite poet, William Blake. This is best seen before he faces a group of Angelos; he recites a quote from Blake's poems before proceeding to kick their asses.
• Weak, but Skilled: Aside from directly controlling Nightmare's attacks via Promotion, V lacks highly-damaging attacks to stagger the stronger enemies on his own, and on higher difficulties, his summons can get stalemated fast. However, being able to mix ranged and melee attacks while recovering Devil Trigger gauge at the same time makes it very easy to get style points as V and he offers better crowd control than Nero and Dante.
• Younger Than They Look: His use of "I am but two days old" from the William Blake poem Infant Joy was surprisingly on point. He was born exactly two days before meeting and enlisting Dante's help in stopping Urizen.
• Your Days Are Numbered: His body is slowly decaying, with the process accelerating the more he exerts himself.

V's Familiars

In General

The three demons who serve as V's loyal familiars. While they can attack his enemies for him, they cannot actually kill them, leaving V to finish the job himself once they've weakened an enemy enough.

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• Ambiguously Related: At first, the in-game lore doesn't make it clear if they're re-incarnations of the DMC1 demons or if they're their own thing. As the only one that talks, Griffon is the source for the majority of the speculation; Nico's reports mention that this bird familiar is similar to a demon that Dante defeated long ago (subtly referring to the original Griffon from Mallet Island), but she thinks that the similarity might just be a coincidence. Later subverted when Mission 18 reveals they are actually manifestations of Vergil's trauma from his time as Nelo Angelo.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: V's familiars cannot destroy other demons so V himself must deliver the finishing blows with his cane. This is because V describes his demon familiars as "dreams" that can inflict pain but can never actually kill anything. Notably, the only way his demon Nightmare can get around this is for V himself to manually control the familiar with the skill Promotion, so in a sense, it is still V himself who kills his enemies.
• Attack Animal: Griffon and Shadow are bestial demons who serve as V's ranged and melee attacks respectively.
• The Bus Came Back: These three (or the demons of their kind) haven't made any further appearances since the first Devil May Cry game, but now they return as V's familiars.
• Continuity Nod: V's familiars resemble two bosses and one enemy mook encountered in DMC1, along with having many of the same moves as those demons Dante fought long ago. When Dante fights Griffon, Shadow, and Nightmare on the way to confront Vergil, the background music plays the same battle themes that were on the first game. Dante himself also mentions that it's like being back on Mallet Island.
• Familiar: They are V's demonic servants.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: They all form this dynamic with V.
  • Shadow and Nightmare are the fighters, serving as V's main forms of offense.
  • Griffon is the mage, striking enemies form afar with bolts of lightning.
  • V is the Thief, finishing the enemies off after they are weakened by the familiars.
• Gameplay Automation: V can spend his Devil Trigger gauge to make Shadow and Griffon act independently for a given time instead of being manually controlled by the player.
• The Heartless: A rare benign example of the trope. Mission 18 reveals that they are the physical manifestations of Vergil's traumatic memories from his time as Nelo Angelo. In a unique spin, they are aware of this and they face off against Dante in hopes that he will kill them so Vergil can finally move past his trauma.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Subverted. Since they serve as V's familiars, they are allied with the protagonists. But after V and Urizen merge again to bring Vergil back, they suddenly confront Dante during Mission 18. It turns out they have a good reason for doing it; they're specifically revealed to be Vergil's memories from his time as Nelo Angelo, and they willingly fought Dante so he can destroy them and free Vergil from the pain they represent.
• Literal Split Personality: They represent Vergil's twisted thoughts and emotions from his time as Nelo Angelo.
• Living Dream: V's familiars are described as "dreams" that can hurt demons, but never kill them, so V has to finish the job by himself. They're specifically Vergil's bad memories of the time when he was Nelo Angelo and commanded the three demons. Later on after Vergil's reawakening, Griffon asks Dante to kill them so that Vergil could be free of his bad memories.
• Never Say "Die": They're neither called nor considered "dead" if their own health bar is depleted. Instead, the game intentionally uses the term "Stalemate" to describe this state because they merely revert to their core forms and will eventually revive after a set time, or if their health bar is refilled.
• Regenerating Health: Shadow and Griffon's health meters are gradually refilled after not taking damage for a while, especially outside of battles. They also slowly recover health if they're in stalemate (it works faster if V is just in close proximity), and they will return to the fight if their health meter is refilled.
• Satellite Character: Zig-zagged. For most of their role and screentime in the story, they're simply known as V's familiars, and it's difficult to talk about them without mentioning their connection to V. From a certain perspective, it also has something to do with them being literal parts of their master's body, specifically his Power Tattoos. Once the story reveals that V is half of Vergil, it's also made clear that the three familiars are his memories, and they deliberately don't merge back into Vergil because they want him to live without the trauma that they represent.
• Suicide by Cop: Mission 18 has them facing off against Dante, knowing full well they don't stand a chance against him. After the fight, Griffon reveals that they are the manifestations of Vergil's trauma from his enslavement as Nelo Angelo and that they wanted Dante to kill them so Vergil could finally be free from his pain.
• Undying Loyalty: They are all fiercely loyal to V to the point that they face off against Dante so he can kill them once V and Urizen have merged, allowing Vergil to finally move on without them.
• Wolfpack Boss: Mission 18 has several miniboss fights against V's familiars throughout the level, and finally has all of them converge to team up against Dante at the end. The individual fights with them aren't too difficult, but it's quite a challenge when all three of them are attacking you at once. Dante only has to bring down Nightmare to end the fight, but beating down Griffon and Shadow will force Nightmare to sacrifice part of its health to revive them and leave itself open doing so.

Griffon

"Okay Shakespeare. Just remember this: You and I like to exist. So get rid of those demons quick, 'cause killing them ain't my shtick! I got your back, 'cause dyin' is whack!"

Voiced by: Brad Venable (DMC5, English), Tomoyuki Shimura (DMC5, Japanese)

V's smart-mouthed primary familiar, this eagle-like demon uses his mastery of lightning to aid V in battle by fighting from a distance and keeping the demon hunter safe.

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• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Griffon chides V (and the player) to stop wasting time if you proceed further into the alternate path of Mission 4, even if there's actually no in-game time limit.
  Griffon: Why are you just wandering around!? We're in a hurry, chop chop!
• Deadpan Snarker: In contrast with the original Griffon, who was respectful of his enemies, this Griffon can go toe to toe with the protagonists in a battle of words.
• Expy: As the high-pitched Feathered Fiend Familiar, obnoxiously snarky Jerk with a Heart of Gold and the resident Snarky Non-Human Sidekick, he's basically the Devil May Cry franchise's own Iago.
• Giant Flyer: Relatively. He can perch on V's arm, but he's also strong enough to carry V for short distances.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's a cocky thunderbird who spends most of his time insulting his teammates, and snarking endlessly. However, he also shows a deeply compassionate side, as he's always putting himself in danger trying to protect V and Nero. He ultimately sacrifices his life to help Vergil in a Suicide by Cop moment and wishes Dante a sincere farewell after their duel, and even the veteran Devil Hunter mourns him, and admits he had a good heart.
• Running Gag: Several characters, and in completely independent moments from each other, compare him to a chicken.
• Shock and Awe: Just like the original Griffon, he has complete mastery over lightning and electricity.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Compared to everyone else in the original Devil May Cry continuity, he is one of the most vulgar.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Griffon can be chatty and obnoxious to contrast with V's more subdued personality.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: While this Griffon differs greatly from the previous Griffon in terms of personality, as he is a more loose and extroverted demon in contrast to the original's very formal and composed self, in the end, both share a common sense of loyalty towards their masters; Griffon in 1 was loyal to Mundus to the very end even when his master had enough and killed him for failing to kill Dante several times. This Griffon in 5 choose to die with the other two familiars as a means to erase Vergil's unpleasant memories as Nelo Angelo.
• Thunderbird: Just like the original Griffon, he's a demon bird with lightning powers, only a lot smaller this time.
• Voice for the Voiceless: Since Griffon is the only one who can speak the human language, he speaks on behalf of Shadow and Nightmare.

Shadow

V's secondary familiar, a panther-like demon that transforms parts of its body into various weapons in order to destroy V's enemies.

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• Advertised Extra: Shadow takes a significant portion of the updated Special Edition box art, even if its just one of V's familiars.
• Animalistic Abomination: While it may look like a panther, it can shapeshift into weapons or even a more humanoid form.
• Ascended Extra: While all three familiars are based on demons Dante fought in first game, the original Shadows were mere Mini Bosses in contrast to the original Nightmare and Griffon who were major bosses.
• Combat Tentacles: Makes liberal use of these, transforming its head into a drill or flail and even using them while drilling through the ground. Tentacles are also Shadow's usual method for dealing against airborne enemies during its basic combo string.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: Shadow can transform into a shadow matter to help V move quickly. In-game, it functions as V's side-dodge evasion mechanic (via the "Forced Move" ability), or his Sprint Shoes mechanic (via the "Quickplay" ability).
• Enigmatic Minion: Shadow is a demon that rarely says anything, and even when it does, Griffon has to translate it to a language humans can understand, though not much is even translated. That being said, it still formed an allegiance with V and the other two familiars. This stands in contrast to Griffon, who has the role of the Snarky Nonhuman Sidekick.
• Informed Attribute: Shadow can speak, but we have to take Griffon's word for what it says. Given that its apparent "speech" sounds like the sort of growling you'd expect from something that looks like a panther, it's easy to miss even with Griffon's commentary. The first instance is just before V's tutorial fight shortly after taking control of him for the first time in game; Griffon mocking its apparent warning to "be careful" as obvious is the only indication that it spoke at all. The second instance happens during the Boss Banter with Nidhogg when the boss is being mocked by V's familiars, while the third happens when Shadow calls V and Griffon's attention to the comatose Dante.
  Griffon: (to Nidhogg) Even the big bad kitty knows you got shit for brains!
• Living Shadow: It is a shadow demon in the form of a panther. It can also be V's literal shadow and carry him very quickly across the ground.
• Shapeshifter Default Form: Shadow can shapeshift its body parts into weapons whenever it attacks, although its default form is a black panther. Nico's Character Report on it even lampshades Shadow sticking to "the whole big black cat motif for the most part".
• Shapeshifter Weapon: In order to attack, it can transform parts of its body, or even its entire body, into massive blades, whip-like tentacles, spears or spikes as needed.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Glaives, drills, spikes, blades, Shadow can transform into them all.
• Tail Slap: Shadow swings its tail like a whip during the finishing sequence of its Combo B.

Nightmare

Voiced by: Brad Venable (DMC5)

V's most powerful familiar and ace in the hole, the Nightmare is a hulking golem that can turn the tide of any battle in V's favour. While lacking any real personality, it is completely loyal to V.

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• Belly Flop Crushing: One of the ways V can summon Nightmare, having it drop from the sky and fall flat on enemies.
• Blob Monster: Nightmare is an amorphous creature of shadowy ooze that manages to cobble together a roughly humanoid shape, and can reform and resize however it needs. It can emerge and dissolve into a puddle of goo to enter and exit battles.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: As you explore the stage of Mission 18, you can optionally destroy Qliphoth Blood Clots that are in the off beaten path, causing parts of the last arena to fall off, and reducing Nightmare's chances to heal itself in the middle of the fight.
• The Brute: For V's squad of familiars. It's already huge on its own and it provides the highest damage output among them. Unlike the other two, Nightmare can even wreck some parts of the environment when it is summoned.
• Cast from Hit Points: When you fight them in Mission 18, Nightmare can sacrifice a chunk of its own health bar to revive Shadow and Griffon if they're in stalemate.
• Combination Attack: V's Checkmate against Goliath involves summoning Nightmare and waiting on its arm as it punches the other giant. As Nightmare's fist reaches Goliath's chest, V then stabs the latter's heart with his cane.
• Comeback Mechanic: Summoning Nightmare also fully restores Griffon and Shadow even when they're in stalemate, making it a great comeback for V if both of his two other familiars are down.
• Death from Above: V can summon Nightmare as a meteor falling from the sky.
• Dynamic Entry: Nightmare is quite fond of making dramatic entrances, such as breaking a nearby wall, crashing down from the sky like a meteor, or breaking a hole through reality itself. These also work offensively as it can damage several enemies when it arrives. In Mission 4, you can even earn an achievement for summoning Nightmare by making it burst through a specific wall.
• Eldritch Abomination: Just like the original Nightmare, this musclebound blob demon has reality-bending powers in a debatable state of living with the power to destroy the underworld, limited only by V's fragility.
• Energy Weapon: From its core, it can fire smaller lasers that cause massive explosions, or a single massive laser that requires some time to charge but is absolutely devastating. Nightmare will occasionally fire them out automatically, or V can make it do so at will when taking direct control.
• Eye Beams: Nightmare's core appears as a single eye on its head, which then fires laser beams of varying size and intensity.
• Flunky Boss: When you fight it in Mission 18, it is the main enemy that you must defeat. During the battle, Griffon and Shadow will try to keep you busy. While you can put them into a permanent stalemate during the fight, Nightmare has the power to revive both of them with 1/4 of their total health when it comes into the arena, meaning you can never truly put them down until Nightmare goes down, at which point the whole fight ends. This also essentially counts as a Keystone Army example.
• Golem: Though it's naturally a demonic goo, Nightmare usually takes the form of a hulking golem in battle.
• Heal Thyself: When you fight it in Mission 18, Nightmare can absorb energy from specific parts of the arena in order to refill its own health bar. This complements the drawback of its Cast from Hit Points ability.
• Limit Break: Nightmare acts as V's Devil Trigger, but it functions more like a powerful move that's only available when V has enough DT gauge.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Unlike Shadow and Griffon who have their own vitality bars, Nightmare requires Devil Trigger energy from V to manifest, thus V's own DT gauge doubles as Nightmare's health bar when it's summoned; and once his DT gauge runs out, it returns to him. As a result, Nightmare also doesn't have the same kind of health regeneration mechanic as the two other familiars.
• Mighty Glacier: Hits like a tank, and moves about as slow as one.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: When summoned by V, it not only takes no damage from all attacks, but also prevents Griffon and Shadow from taking damage. The only thing that can damage it is someone as powerful as Dante.
• Nightmare Sequence: Inflicts this on V during the events of Visions of V, trapping him in an empty void with a construct of Nelo Angelo. V might have died if not for a construct of Dante appearing to save him.
• Spin Attack: One of its attacks has it rapidly spin around with its arms outstretched.
• Sweeping Laser Explosion: One of its many attacks. When manually controlling Nightmare with Promotion, players can do a horizontal-vertical combo of laser explosions with "Strongpoint" and "Critical Position".
• Unskilled, but Strong: Nightmare basically moves on pure instinct, so it either just flails around or fires beams willy-nilly, even when V takes direct control over its attacks. Despite that, it still hits like a truck, can't be stalemated, and can even revive Shadow and Griffon when summoned.
• Your Size May Vary: Noticeable if you fight Goliath as V. Throughout most of the fight, Nightmare in its normal size is roughly up to Goliath's hips. But when V summons it for the finishing blow, Nightmare grows to be the same size as Goliath. It's justified as Nightmare's body is made of liquid, allowing it to reform and resize as needed.

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