Animation
Azula
Avatar: The Last Airbender · 2005
A fourteen-year-old prodigy who was raised as a weapon
Threat index 84
Fallen Hero · Video games
Sephiroth
The moment video games proved they could break your heart
Attribute scores
Power96
Intellect88
Menace92
Fear factor82
Cultural impact96
Charisma92
Editorial estimates on a 0–100 scale, calibrated against every other character in the index. Not official canon.
Who they are
Sephiroth was the war hero everyone admired until he read a laboratory file and concluded he was not human. The act that follows, in a small church town roughly a third of the way through the game, is the most famous story moment in the medium's history and it is delivered almost without warning. He spends the rest of the game as a memory, a hallucination and a silhouette walking into fire.
Defining traits
Seven-foot masamune bladeCellular manipulation of others' mindsMeteor-summoning magicAbsolute physical superiorityOrigin as a genuine hero
What makes them dangerous
He can reach into your mind from another continent and make you do things you will not remember.
And what undoes them
He is not, in the end, the thing he thinks he is, and the truth of his origin undermines everything.
Things you might not know
- The famous flashback shot of him walking away from a burning village is a single held image that fans have recreated endlessly.
- His boss theme is one of the first video game compositions to feature a full choral arrangement.
- The 1997 game sold in numbers that helped establish the role-playing genre in Western markets.
Why number 2 in Video Games
The medium's most famous story moment belongs to him, delivered a third of the way into the game with no warning at all.
Why number 6 in Most Powerful
Summons a meteor at his own planet and manipulates people's minds across continents. He is also the physically strongest character in his story by a wide margin.
Why number 7 in Most Tragic
A war hero who read a file about his own origin and could not survive the answer. The villain is created in a single afternoon in a library.
Why number 16 in Most Iconic
Video games' most quoted silhouette. The image of him walking through fire has been recreated so often it functions as visual shorthand for betrayal.
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