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| “ | mission.The_Dark_Lord = destroy(The_Chosen_One); | „ |
| ~ The Dark Lord's only purpose before he went rogue. |
| “ | he somehow figured out how to get my stick figure on his side so they teamed up and... destroyed my computer |
„ |
| ~ The Animator to a friend of his, talking about the Dark Lord's fall to villainy. |
The Dark Lord is the main antagonist of the Animator vs. Animation franchise.
He is a stick figure created by the Animator on October 2nd, 2011, with the intent of destroying the Chosen One, but ended up joining the latter in causing relentless destruction across the Internet. However, the Dark Lord's ruthlessness increased to the point that he created an army of computer viruses to destroy every computer possible, horrifying even the Chosen One and motivating him to stop his younger brother, becoming one of the Stick Gang's strongest and vilest opponents.
He is the evil counterpart, younger brother and former best friend-turned-second archenemy of the Chosen One.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
In General[]
- Although he does technically have a Freudian Excuse of the Animator not caring about him and remaining apathetic when he was seemingly about to die, nothing implies he is motivated by it, with him trying to spread worldwide destruction simply because he could. Him sending out the first ViraBot to the Animator doesn't prove anything, and it seems to be more like a spite move rather than him being genuinely affected by what happened to him.
- What's worse is that while it could be argued that the Dark Lord was hurt by the Animator leaving him for dead, he didn't have it nearly as bad as the Chosen One, who was enslaved for four years and likely tortured during that time period, and yet he still managed to let go of his hatred against the Animator and even team up with him, along with the Second Coming and the Fighting Stick Figures to stop the Dark Lord.
- Despite being best friends with the Chosen One for seven years and his own brother due to being created by the same person, he had no problem with killing him when he tried to stop him, subverting his only redeeming quality. It’s also shown that he was a toxic friend, as he guilt-tripped his brother to let him destroy the house he built.
- He has absolutely no motive for his actions other than sheer sadism, as it was shown multiple times that he is proud of his atrocities, such as high-fiving to Chosen One just after the destruction of Newgrounds.
- He is the most heinous character, as he is one of the only omnicidal maniacs in the entire series, with no one else comparing to his scope of destruction and influence. While King Orange and Purple are also cataclysmic due to trying to destroy the world of Minecraft, they were only targeting one game while the Dark Lord was after the entire Internet.
- Despite being an artificial intelligence, he is shown to have complete moral agency as he was specifically programmed to be a hero and broke his one line of code to become a villain. And while it’s shown that stick figures’ names have some influence on them, this appears to extend only to their powers, since victim after his rename didn’t change much in terms of personality, and The Chosen One started off as evil and never became an actual chosen one in the narrative idea of the term.
- It's also notable that several Minecraft mobs who are coded to be hostile (ex: Endie, Skellington, Spider, and The Warden) were all able to put this aside in favor of helping the stick gang and doing good within a short timeframe. Meanwhile, The Dark Lord had seven years to change himself and find a life outside of destroying but never did.
- Although he had some comedic moments during Animator vs. Animation 3, they don't detract from his heinousness and one of them even shows his power. Besides, he practically lacks any comedic moments after becoming villainous, and the very few moments that are genuinely funny don't detract from his heinousness.
- The Dark Lord's sheer seriousness makes him able to be Pure Evil even in the comedic and often ridiculous work that is Animator vs. Animation, as his actions are treated dead seriously and his scenes are the darkest in the whole franchise.
Season 1[]
- He destroyed the Animator's computer after teaming up with the Chosen One, and although their creator deserved it, it ultimately killed several completely innocent, fully sapient programs in the process. It's known at least 3 programs (Clippy, My Computer and Yahoo! Messenger) were still alive by the time the Dark Lord and the Chosen One teamed up, but it's possible at least 6 more were still alive by the time that happened (Orbit, Windows Movie Maker, Google Chrome, iTunes, Internet Explorer and Skype), assuming they weren't killed by the Chosen One earlier and simply knocked out. The case is further exacerbated when considering the possibility of many more programs that were sentient but were not seen during the destruction.
Between Seasons 1 and 2[]
- Upon destroying Alan's PC, he and the Chosen One went on a rampage across the Internet for two years, terrorizing websites such as Yahoo!, StickPage and Newgrounds, as well as video games such as Angry Birds, which eventually makes the Chosen One develop second thoughts about their atrocities while the Dark Lord sadistically continues without any reluctance. Once the Dark Lord started killing other stick figures, even the Chosen One became horrified.
- During their Internet rampage, he and the Chosen One discover a Minecraft Beta world, where they start to wreak havoc by destroying the environment and killing various mobs. While the Chosen One develops second thoughts about the world and starts to become curious about discovering, the Dark Lord continues to attack the Overworld and afterwards the Nether shortly after discovering it, sadistically slaughtering numerous ghasts and zombie pigmen, stealing the latters' golden swords and returning to the Overworld once he is done.
- The effect of their rampage is effectively shown when they raided Newgrounds, in which they destroyed the website while murdering countless figures, including Victim's wife Mitsi in front of Agent's eyes. This case devastatingly traumatized Victim and Agent, causing them both to become cruel villains in their hunt for vengeance and fuel them against both the Chosen One and the Animator.
- What's worse is that Mitsi is technically his sister-in-law, though to be honest, the Dark Lord had no idea who she was at that point.
- They also forced many other figures to evacuate to the Outernet during the Newgrounds rampage, with notable ones being Purple and his family.
- The destruction of Newgrounds alone was so gruesome it became known as The Disintegration, with it causing thousands of stick figures to become traumatized via either barely surviving the massacre, having to watch their loved ones disappear before their eyes, and/or losing them in the massacre. What's worse is that even though the Chosen One was just an enabler who wasn't comfortable with any of it, he became the feared and hated "Angel of Death" while the Dark Lord remained unknown to the public. And that was just one website, where they rampaged across at least three more, possibly more than that.
- While the narrative paints the Chosen One as Mitsi's killer, some pieces of evidence imply it was actually the Dark Lord, such as the fact that his fireballs explode on impact while TCO's don't, and the former suspiciously knowing not only about Mitsi but also exactly how she died.
Season 2[]
- He was responsible for the creation of the ViraBots, an invasive species of sentient and murderous malware, with the intention of destroying websites and computers around the world while slaughtering their innocent citizens.
- Noticeably, that's when the Chosen One realized the Dark Lord has gone too far and should be stopped.
- The Dark Lord presents the ViraBots' powers by pulling one of their spikes and stabbing a globe with it, making it corrode into nothingness. One could take it as symbolism of the Dark Lord trying to destroy every computer in the entire world, if not the world itself, with his creations.
- Had he succeeded, the Dark Lord would have the blood(?) of countless programs on his hands, given that most of them are sapient. This would also include stick figures, as it's confirmed that the Animator is not the only one who creates them, and the Chosen One's imagine spot implies the Dark Lord will actually be directing stick figures specifically.
- This doesn't count as Fridge Horror, as we have seen how one ViraBot (which was sent to the Animator's computer) was capable of erasing and destroying items (including the cursor) and apps simply by the touch of spikes or a bite, warping the computer's reality via access to systems, even proving to be a challenge to the Chosen One as it manages to go toe-to-toe with him.
- While he planned to infect computers by spreading them on popular Internet websites, his hatred towards the Animator made him send one to his new computer personally by using a cannon. That also proves how far the Dark Lord has gone into villainy. The Chosen One was made by the Animator simply because he was looking for a challenge (implying he was created just to die in a battle) and then enslaved for four years, but ultimately decided to redeem himself and save the Animator. Meanwhile, the Dark Lord gained his revenge seven years ago by destroying his first computer and chose to go even farther by destroying his second computer, despite the fact that the Animator did not even hurt him as he did with the Chosen One. Also, by the time the Dark Lord tried to destroy the second computer, the Animator had already redeemed himself and became friends with five stick figures, although it's possible he wasn't aware of this.
- Although he is proud and excited about the ViraBots' powers, he can be considered praising himself, as he invented the virus. Besides, he doesn't have anything against sending them to fight to the death and is apathetic when many of them do.
- Although he did accept the Second Coming's challenge to a fight, it was clear that he didn't want to give him even the smallest chance by creating a spike using his wristband. It's worth pointing out he could also be considered his brother due to both being created by the Animator, although to be fair the Dark Lord most likely had no idea they were related and vice versa.
- He killed the Fighting Stick Figures in cold blood, even kicking Red's body while he was dying.
- When the Second Coming was still alive and even had the fighting spirit despite being stabbed twice, the Dark Lord threw him into the air and slashed him multiple times, showing his brutal and sadistic persona.
- Although him being blasted from the edge of the cliff all the way to the mountain and then blown into bits by the Second Coming is brutal, it doesn't make him slightly sympathetic but rather an outright well-deserved karma for the atrocities he committed.
- Even worse, he gets revived later on between Season 2 and Season 3, which makes him a Karma Houdini.
Between Season 2 and Season 3[]
- After he was resurrected by his ViraBots from his demise by the Second Coming, he found out via a poster shown by a ViraBot that the Chosen One is now wanted by Rocket Corp, and began stalking the organization for a while with the help of his ViraBots equipped with security cameras.
Season 3[]
- His actions unleashing the Second Coming's powers caused the Chosen One to assume he just naturally has them and can unleash them whenever he wants, thus setting the events of Season 3 into motion where he forcefully brought him to the Outernet to defeat the Mercenaries; on top of them only hunting after the Chosen One because Victim and Agent were traumatized by their Newgrounds massacre.
- After Victim/H4CK3R finished his battle with the Animator and was left sulking alone in the remains of ALANSPC, the Dark Lord introduced himself to him and proposed the two to team up with the promise of resurrecting Mitsi. During the conversation, H4CK3R was visibly uncomfortable around him, especially when TDL cruelly made a recreation of Mitsi's demise.
- This is especially cruel due to the implications he is Mitsi's real killer, which would mean he tricked H4CK3R into teaming up with the man who destroyed his life.
- While he acted in a friendly way at the beginning, it is clear that he is just happy at the fury H4CK3R unleashed against Alan, due to it satisfying his lust for destruction. According to the storyboards, he even complimented H4CK3R for reminding the Dark Lord of a younger him.
- This also means that even though he was not aware he caused his sister-in-law’s death during the Disintegration, he now is.
- As of now, there is no evidence he actually intends to keep his promise of resurrecting Mitsi, meaning it's not a redeeming factor.
Trivia[]
- In Season 1, the Dark Lord didn't seem to be Pure Evil, due to failing the Heinous Standards to the Chosen One and the Animator as well as having a genuine friendship with the former. It wasn't until Season 2 that he qualified as Pure Evil, as he proved to be worse than the Chosen One to the point of outheinousing him as well as having no problem trying to kill him. As the series was supposed to have ended with Animator vs. Animation 3, the Dark Lord would not have been PE if not for Alan Becker changing his mind.
- While the Dark Lord is currently Pure Evil, this might change in the future as of his recent return in Season 3.
- More specifically, while discussing the results of the 2025 popularity poll, Alan Becker and his friend DJ Welch heavily implied the Dark Lord only hates the Chosen One due to his programming influencing him; if this were to be confirmed in-series, it would prevent the Dark Lord from being PE due to it being a moral agency issue.
- The Dark Lord is very similar to King Orange, one of the series' Inconsistently Heinous characters, as both are the main antagonists of a major story arc that were originally good people, are planning an omnicide, and have an army of minions at their disposal (the ViraBots for the Dark Lord and both the Piglin Brutes and the Dark Mobs for King Orange). The difference is that King Orange was an Average Joe with a tragic past who managed to redeem himself and lived as a result, while the Dark Lord was an all-powerful being who lacked sympathetic qualities and stayed a villain.
- The fictional-fictional version of the Dark Lord seen in "King Orange vs. The Dark Lord" does not qualify for Pure Evil, as he only tries to kill one person. While it is possible he committed/wants to commit the same acts as his real counterpart, this was not confirmed and would be off-screen villainy.
- Noticeably, despite being Pure Evil in canon, there are many fans who don't see him as such. There is quite a vocal fanbase that portrays the Dark Lord in a sympathetic light, due to him being betrayed by the Animator and claiming that his friendship with the Chosen One was truly genuine, and their fight was born out of a misunderstanding. However, all of those claims rely on Alternative Character Interpretation, which is not relevant to one's Pure Evil status, meaning the Dark Lord still counts for the title.
External Links[]
- The Dark Lord on the Villains Wiki
- The Dark Lord on the Animator vs. Animation Wiki
- The Dark Lord on the Moral Ranking Wiki
- The Dark Lord on the Ultimate Evil Wiki
- The Dark Lord on the Antagonists Wiki
- The Dark Lord on the Conflicting Good Wiki
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