• Foil: V1 is a static, flat, and practically voiceless character whilst Gabriel is a round, dynamic, and talkative one. The audience knows little about V1's history/personality other than what's implied through their actions and environmental clues. As far as we know, the only reason V1 is going through Hell is to continue their own existence, and there's seemingly nothing (despite their Hidden Depths moments) implying that their goals or personality are changing. Gabriel's extensive history, on the other hand, is detailed throughout Hell in books, cutscenes, and dialogue. Gabriel also has a noticeable character arc throughout his appearances. This is highlighted in how the player first sees their model: V1's form is only shown in the latter half of the game, with their first appearance being in a secret level and their first "official" appearance being in Fraud through reflective surfaces, a poster, and a discarded puppet. In contrast, not only is Gabriel's image plastered all over Hell, but he appears in the first Act.
• Gameplay Protagonist, Story Protagonist: The primary plot has you controlling V1 rampaging through Hell for the sake of more blood to fuel their existence. However, all the cutscenes and the story as a whole focus more on Archangel Gabriel, the consequences of his past actions, and his journey of realization. Unusually, the two protagonists are opposed, and your clashes are major events for Gabriel himself.
• Lightning Bruiser: Both characters move fast and hit hard against their opponents. V1 must fight quickly and aggressively both for style points and to avoid dying in a few hits. Gabriel, on the other hand, has the added bonus of being able to take good deal of punishment, moving faster when his health is half-empty, and being able to teleport.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Double-meaning: V1 is the first iteration of the V model and "V1" is shorthand for "Version 1" of something.
  • Gabriel is derived from an ancient Hebrew name that means "God is my strength". V1 forcing him to learn that his strength has limits is likely foreshadowing that God Is Dead in the ULTRAKILL universe.
• Mirror Character:
  • Physically, V1 and Gabriel resemble each other, as both are humanoids with wings. While their wings are designed differently (V1's are solid and jagged whilst Gabriel's wings are translucent and smooth), their wings reflect each other's color scheme. V1's wing colors also do not change while Gabriel's do. Both Gabriel and V1's wings also aid in combat, but offer different strengths. Gabriel's wings allow him to fly; V1's wings allow them to store weapons.
  • Their defensive capabilities also differ. V1 has weaker plating than most other machines, but this is entirely practical, as it allows V1 to heal during a fight. In contrast, Gabriel's armor is slightly more ceremonial than practical, with large pauldrons, sharp tassels hanging off of the breastplate, a circle indentation where his heart would be, and a large gap that exposes a weak point. This reflects how each creator presumed their creation would fare in a fight. V1 was presumed to be able to be hurt and make mistakes, so they are intentionally designed to be able to heal just as fast as they fight. Gabriel, on the other hand, is seen as an extension of God's Will, and thus was seen as unable to be meaningfully challenged or hurt. As such, his armor is not as protective as it could be (though it is noted to be more practical and less ceremonial compared to his peers' armor).
  • V1 and Gabriel are both weapons designed to surpass their peers' combat capabilities, with V1 being one of the last creations ever designed while Gabriel is one of the first. They survive off of their creators' life essence (Blood for V1; God's Light for Gabriel), which they have to earn via combat, and quickly die without fuel. While both of their fighting styles are quick-paced, V1 has far less reservations, and players are encouraged to fight as aggressively (and disrespectfully) as possible. Gabriel on the other hand stops and starts his attacks with precise, noticeable movements, and refuses to attack whilst taunting his opponent.
• Named Weapons:
  • V1's weapons are all named something punchy and/or descriptive. However, it's unclear if they're the ones who named their weapons or if the Terminals named them all.
  • While Gabriel does not name all of his weapons, the two blue and gold sabers he has strapped to his hip are named Justice and Splendor.
• Pet the Dog:
  • There are a few moments where V1 can or will show mercy when they would otherwise annihilate all that stands in their way. Gabriel is unusually allowed to flee at the end of his first two fights, the second being more notable as he was fought after the second and final battle with V2, who V1 went out of their way to kill to ensure there wouldn’t be a third. V1 can also choose to pay the Ferryman’s toll without violence, letting the Ferryman and their Idol survive.
  • Gabriel's treatment of the Ferrymen shows a previously unseen softer side. He goes out of his way to save a Ferryman from drowning in the Styx, the Terminal entries mention how he is the only angel that cares about the Ferrymen's earnest attempt to repent, and the entries mention it's fortunate for both the Idols and the Ferrymen who made them that Gabriel is overseeing Hell, as The Council would have been less than pleased by the creation of artificial Ascended Demons.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • A Villain Protagonist example. When V1 dies, their death screen repeatedly flashes the phrase "I DON'T WANT TO DIE" as they try to repair their systems in a final desperate grasp for life.
  • After being defeated by V1, Gabriel loses his cool, unable to handle being defeated by a mere machine.
    Gabriel: What?! How can this be? Bested by this...this thing? You insignificant FUCK!! THIS IS NOT OVER!! May your woes be many, and your days few...
• Winged Humanoid:
  • V1 is a humanoid robot with four sets of yellow wings.
  • As expected from an Angel, Gabriel has a pair of wings that allow him to fly and attack from above. But instead of having white feathered wings, he has blue wings made of light.

V Model^note It's unknown what the "V" stands for Prototype Machine (V1)

Rank: Supreme Machine^note While not outright ranked by the game's enemy database, it can be inferred from V2's rank that V1 is at the very least equal to them.

The protagonist of the game, a combat robot invading Hell in search of blood to fuel themself. Their unique construction allows them to gather spilled blood on the fly in exchange for increased vulnerability.

• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Like all robots in ULTRAKILL, V1 relies on blood for sustenance. When comparing V1 and V2's designs, V2's terminal entry reveals that V1 has a unique refueling system that allows them to ingest blood from anywhere on their body. Because blood doesn't spurt very far in the game, V1 is encouraged to get in as close as possible to their foes and shower themself in as much blood as possible.
• Blue Is Heroic: Inverted. V1 is almost entirely blue, yet they're a Villain Protagonist who invades Hell to kill its denizens and their fellow invading Killer Robots for the selfish motive of sustaining themself with blood.
• Coin-Targeting Trickshot: V1's most iconic ability is the Alt Fire of their Marksman revolver, in which they toss a coin into the air and fire a bullet off of it, securing a guaranteed headshot on a nearby enemy and supplying the "+RICOSHOT" score bonus. Also, any Hitscan weapon can ricochet off the coins, meaning it's possible to redirect a railcannon blast off of one, doing staggeringly high damage.
• Convection, Schmonvection: While lava and the superheated gold dust of Greed will hurt them if they stand on it, V1 has no problem existing near insane sources of heat to no ill-effect. Justified, as they have a Temperature Regulator meant to deal with this problem, which winds up breaking when the sudden change in temperature after reactivating the facility in 0-E damages it.
• Counter-Attack: V1 can parry enemy melee attacks and projectiles with their Feedbacker arm. Doing so not only deals bonus damage and stuns most enemies and bosses, it also heals V1 to max health or at the hard damage limit.
• Cyber Cyclops: V1 has a large yellow glowing eye on their head.
• David vs. Goliath: Although the developers stated none of the characters have canonical sizes, almost all of V1's foes are much larger than them in-game, but V1 still proves to be the victor. The size difference is most pronounced with certain bosses, such as The Corpse of King Minos, The Leviathan, and The Earthmover. The terminal entry for the Earthmovers, as well as the style bonus you receive for killing one "RAISON D'ETRE"^note French for "The reason for existence", implies that defeating other Earthmovers may have been what V1 was being developed for, before the Long Night deprived the Earthmovers of solar power and made V1 obsolete before they even entered production.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: V1 is a distilled version of the archetypal boomer-shooter Featureless Protagonist. In older FPS games, the protagonist very rarely gets any kind of characterization beyond being "a cool dude who kicks ass" (or if you're lucky, A Space Marine Is You), and mostly serves as an Audience Surrogate for the player to kill stuff. V1 simply takes that concept and applies it in-universe, since they're a single-minded Killer Robot whose personality is irrelevant to speak of outside of their need to keep killing and killing, since they know if they ever slow down for even a moment then they'll die from a lack of blood. So other than passing moments of curiosity, V1 has little interest in learning about what is going on as their primary interest is to kill anyone in their path. Old-school shooter protagonists are also typically Always Male; rather than simply gender-invert the trope, Hakita consciously made V1 a genderless robot with no sexual characteristics.
• An Economy Is You: A surprisingly literal example. The Terminals are so desperate for stimulation that they award points, which are used to access their wares, to robots who are able to submit sufficiently exciting performances in the field. In other words, their entire economy is built on FPS frag montages, and you're the main supplier.
• Face Death with Despair: Once V1's health fully depletes, the death screen shows V1 repeatedly trying to activate and fix their systems, only to fail and exclaim "I don't want to die" over and over.
• Fragile Speedster: V1's base movement kit allows them to dash around any given arena like the world's most heavily armed mosquito, but their low defense means that they better stay moving to avoid the endless barrage of Hell orbs, shockwaves, melee strikes, and bullets that their opposition will throw at them.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: A rare case where the trope is applied to the protagonist, and what V1's position in-story ultimately amounts to. Despite slaughtering their way through countless forces of Hell and being a major catalyst to multiple disastrous events, their thoughts and motivations, whenever made apparent, are entirely self-serving. Notably, their only explicit background information comes from another enemy (V2)'s Terminal entry, with other features having to be inferred or deduced through various Terminal data. That being said, their presence in the greater narrative is tangential at best—for a majority of their time in Hell, their entire race, rather than themselves, is regarded altogether as a threat by other major characters; during intermission texts, they are scarcely and vaguely alluded to, and whatever influence they left on the universe was mostly collateral. It's only during Fraud, the second to last layer of Hell, that they are put more center stage. In short, V1 is what happened when the MacGuffin becomes the Player Character, and trouble follows their wake because it is what it is.
• Glass Cannon: V1 is capable of dealing great damage thanks to a versatile arsenal of powerful weapons, but they also take a ton of damage from enemies in return. The risks of their low defenses are amplified because other than finding secret blood orbs, V1 has two risky ways to heal: get up close to an enemy to bathe in their blood, or time their parries right.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Their Whiplash arm serves as one, allowing them to pull themself to beacons or heavy enemies, or pull light enemies and objects to themself. They got this arm after killing V2 in 4-4.
• Ground Pound: V1 can jump in the air and slam themselves on top of an enemy. Not only does it do some damage, but it usually releases blood, making it an easy way for V1 to heal.
• Heal It with Blood: Thanks to their unique refueling system and thin metal plating, V1 can repair damage by showering in the blood of their foes. That being said, it also makes them more fragile than other robots, so dodging, parrying attacks, and fighting quickly is essential in their combat style.
• Heroic Mime: V1 never speaks at any point in the game. As stated in Swordsmachine's terminal entry, most machines don't bother with a voicebox to maximize their efficiency. Though this is also Played With: If you choose to hold your gun in the "middle" and enable the Classic HUD, V1 will make Ranger grunts when jumping, their interface repeatedly notes "I DON'T WANT TO DIE" upon a Game Over, and the pop-up "You aren't getting away this time" in 4-4 is heavily implied to be a thought V1 is expressing.
• Hidden Depths: V1 barely speaks or reacts to their environment, but they have notable traits that suggest they are not a mere emotionless Killer Robot.
  • V2's rematch terminal data states that they researched the combat data from their previous bout against V1 to copy the latter's strategies and techniques. No matter what you do and even if you have never touched the weapon once, in the rematch, V2 will always use Marksman coins against you. This suggests that V1 canonically uses the Marksman at least once, which leads to several lore implications, most notably V1's innate potential to combat stylishly.
  • They have a strange fondness towards skeletons, giving names to two of them in 1-4 and 5-3 and making a joke upon contact with a pair of stranded skeletons in 5-2. In addition, the Ferryman (who is an animate skeleton) is the only thing in Hell that V1 can be outright nice towards by giving them a coin as payment for their ferry.
  • When encountering bosses for the first time, V1 will not interrupt their pre-battle and post-battle monologues (with the bosses being impervious to the player's attack attempts). Notably, all of these cutscenes are unskippable except on repeated playthroughs, suggesting that V1 is willing to hear out their opponents before slaying them, or at least will not recklessly dive into danger.
  • V1 allows the original Swordsmachine and V2 to escape the first boss battle before killing them in the second. When V2 tries to escape the second battle, V1 says that they're "not getting away this time", which implies that V1 let V2 run away the first time as either an act of mercy or not finding it worth the hassle of hunting them down. This makes one enemy stand out: Gabriel. Despite fighting V1 twice, Gabriel is not killed at the end of either encounter, even when he is grounded (and, presumably, vulnerable) both times.
  • Compared to V2, who usually outpaces and awaits their predecessor at the end of the level, V1 is slower and far more exploratory. V1 can find "secrets" in each level, from soul orbs to hidden exits to difficult boss encounters. Notably, V1 can pick up and scan entire books, picking specific information they deem "relevant". The information, more often than not, provides succinct but important background context to an item or event that happened in the past.
  • Mirage looks similar to V1, which makes it unclear if she represents a facet of V1’s personality that is nihilistic and fears living without purpose, dying without being remembered, and desiring reassurance that everything will work out.
  • The Game Over sequence has a split-second sequence of error messages, which shows V1 attempting to access a vocal interface that isn't installed (implying they attempted to scream much like V2 did when they fell to their death), and concludes with the repeated message of "I DON'T WANT TO DIE" over and over, showing that for whatever reason, V1 is genuinely afraid of dying.
• Inexplicably Awesome: For what’s supposedly just a combat robot, V1’s fighting ability is absolutely ludicrous, outfighting the likes of Heaven’s greatest champion and Hell's most legendary and powerful denizens. It’s not clear if they're just that advanced a machine or their descent into Hell has somehow transformed them into something greater.
• It's All About Me: They're not invading Hell for any noble goal; they just want more blood to sustain themself.
• Killer Robot: While V1 isn't the only vicious robot in this game, their sheer skill and determination, along with their massive arsenal and unique ability to self-repair with blood on the spot makes them stand out from the rest.
• Last of Their Kind: V1 is the only remaining V Model, as they were the only created V Model Prototype, and V2 is killed during the events of the story.
• Lensman Arms Race: As shown by the lore entry for the 7-4 boss, V1 is Implicitly the pinnacle of the arms race of the Final War. The V models were made at the end of the Final War; the Final War was based wholly around constantly inventing new war machines to counter existing ones. When V1 was being designed, the newest machine was the Earthmover: a giant machine that readily carried whole armies and could only be dismantled from within. V1 is a One-Man Army, highly versatile to exploit the weaknesses of every previous machine that may be boarded on the Earthmover, and small enough to get inside it and destroy its core. V1 also immediately takes note of any mentions of Earthmovers, as seen when reading a book in 8-2, implying that V1's software demanded they learn as much about Earthmovers as possible so as to fight them better. If not for the Earthmovers being deactivated by their own pollution, the V1 units would have destroyed them instead.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Make no mistake, V1 is not a hero, but is by no means the worst villain in this setting, as they only want blood for the selfish yet understandable motive of survival. This is opposed to the Council, who use God as an excuse for abusing their power, or the one responsible for the eternal torment the sinners trapped in Hell, who treats its denizens as playthings to satisfy its endless appetite for sadism.
• Line-of-Sight Name: As offhandedly mentioned by Word of God, V1 has given at least the Swordsmachine this. Assuming every other enemy's names also came from them, it can be said that V1 is not very good at naming things.
• Living on Borrowed Time: Like all war machines, V1 runs on a "Nocturnal" system, which requires the blood of living organisms in order to function. As all humans are dead and Hell is quickly being depleted of organisms with pumping blood, V1 has little prospects of surviving once they reach the bottom of Hell and there is nothing left to feed off of.
• Money Mauling: V1 can weaponize the Marksman's coins, whether by reflecting Hitscan beams off of them, or punching them straight at enemies.
• Moral Myopia: V1 seemingly kills Husks, Demons, Angels, and Machines alike with brutal efficiency in order to earn style points, but when their own systems are breaking down, they break down into despair at their imminent death.
• Mortality Phobia: If the Game Over screen is anything to go by, this is the primary motivation for V1's descent into Hell—they are utterly terrified of what happens when they die and there's nothing left to refuel themself.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous:
  • As V1 ventures deeper and deeper into Hell, they acquire a number of extra utility arms scavenged off of their foes which fulfill various special needs (e.g. the Whiplash is a Grappling-Hook Pistol) that they attach onto their left shoulder to use for themselves, to the point where they eventually have four left arms but still only one right arm.
  • Acquiring a specific powerup allows V1 to Dual Wield the same weapon in both arms. Picking up more and more of these powerups adds more arms that each holds a weapon.
• Mysterious Past: Virtually nothing is known about V1 before they came to hell, and V1 has absolutely no intention of changing that. It’s not even clear if they had interacted with V2 before entering hell as neither machine talks. The only concrete info we have known so far is that the V series was only able to produce the V1 we play as and the V2 we fight, and it's implied that the V series was initially created to target Earthmovers. The fact V1 entered Hell with their BIOS recalibrated on the way, their armor at critical damage, and lacking weapons also leaves things open to question.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: In addition to the growing arsenal of weapons the player will naturally acquire across the course of the game, V1 also has a number of hidden abilities that only show up when they're relevant and are discarded just as quickly. Like gaining a flashlight beam in 7-3 to navigate pitch black spaces, or faux-flight in 8-4 during a Free-Fall Fight; 0-E features an inversion in that it's suddenly revealed that V1's heat shield is susceptible to getting temperature shocked, depriving it of the heat tolerance it had in the normal Prelude levels. 8-2 suggests that this is one of V1's capabilities, with "Nocturnal Systems" from wartime machines such as it being "self adaptive" with "limits unknown".
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The one time V1 does something not for their own (obvious) benefit is freeing the soul of King Minos from his prison. Unfortunately, while Minos thanks V1 for freeing him, he also cannot overlook the machine's crimes against humanity, forcing V1 to kill him out of self-defense. Granted that since this is V1, they likely would have killed King Minos anyway.
• Nominal Hero: Invading Hell and killing its demons is usually a good thing, but V1's reason for doing so is completely self-serving: they're looking for more blood because blood is their fuel. Not to mention that V1 is part of a faction that was responsible for driving humanity to extinction. Essentially the only good that comes from their actions are inadvertently ending the eternal torment of the Husks they kill and the fact their repeated clashes instill some Character Development into Gabriel, both of which are entirely incidental to their motives.
• Not Quite Flight: V1's wings don't grant it the ability to fully fly, but they do allow them compete control over their agility and momentum while in the air, hence why V1 has rechargable air dashes that allow them to change direction on a dime and cover far more distance than with a single jump. This is even more pronounced during the Free-Fall Fight in 8-4 "FINAL FLIGHT", as V1 immediately registers that they're in a freefall and starts using their wings to manually adjust their position in the air without needing to dash.
• Older Is Better: V1 is the older of the two V models robots in the game. V2 is less capable of combat compared to V1 due to being built for peacetime security duty instead of war. Thus, they were built with standard armor plating/repair systems instead of V1's prototype blood absorbing/self-repairing armor.
• One-Man Army: Even alluded to in 0-4's name, "One Machine Army". You'll generally be cutting your way through scores of enemies wherever you go.
• Parrying Bullets: They can do this to just about any projectile, including ones from their own guns, to send them forward at an even higher speed.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Compared to everything else in Hell, anyways. V1's canonical height isn't confirmed because it's not important to the game's lore as a whole, but they're shorter than all of the enemies in the game, even Filths. ^note  Gameplay-wise, this is to make sure the player sees the enemies properly, similar to what the Dark Souls games do. This doesn't stop them from mowing down hordes of enemies and slinging out Ricoshots like there's no tomorrow.
• Race-Name Basis: So far, none of the voiced characters call V1 by their name. Instead, they're addressed as "machine" or some other kind of epithet for a machine.
• Showy Invincible Hero: The question in terms of lore (and not necessarily in terms of gameplay) for V1 isn't "can they overcome the various amounts of bullshit Hell throws at them?", its "how badly will they humiliate these entities, and how stylishly will they make it look?". Gameplay-wise, V1 is still shown capable of dying miserably in an unskilled player's hands, but lore-wise, they are unquestionably this. Of the multitudes of enemies V1 has to fight in Hell, V1 canonically hasn't lost a single battle; be it their successor V2, to monstrously-sized demons or husks, to the previously-undefeated Archangel Gabriel, to even the Prime Souls that Heaven itself feared so much they kept them sealed away, V1 has come out on top each and every time. This also makes them a Reconstruction of the trope; as V1's status as this trope is entirely within the lore of its character as opposed to the gameplay, as it thus puts the pressure and thus the narrative tension onto the player to live up to V1's hype which makes the feeling of mastering the gameplay all the more satisfying to see these characters express absolute bafflement how a mere machine could best seemingly-invincible phenomena, as if they're reacting to your learned skill at the game. This is made absolutely explicit in lore when, after defeating Geryon within Fraud, V1 lands in a theater stage with a ghost audience utterly applauding V1, showing that the ultimate antagonist absolutely loves its "performance". Interestingly, unlike most examples of this trope, V1 is indicated to not be especially enthusiastic in regards to combat or showmanship; the only reason to indulge in stylish combat in-universe is to accrue currency to spend at terminals, and what few examples we have of V1's internal thoughts paint them as a brutally utilitarian machine that's only concerned with survival and miserably terrified of death. The only time they show anything resembling enthusiam or idle thoughts separate from survival are around Hank, of which such encounters are exclusively outside combat.
• The Speechless: The Game Over screen reveals V1 attempts to vocalize something right before they die, but cannot due to lacking hardware. The game's description for its sound requirements on Steam are "No vocal interface detected" and "Yet I must scream." Combine that with how V2 does scream in terror right before they die, it's likely V1 would do the same in mortal peril, but literally can't due to lacking the means. All other unique (and rare) messages they type are only present in their terminal and involve jokes about skeletons or telling a running V2 that they aren't escaping.
• Super Prototype: There are only two V model prototypes: one for the V1 model and one for the V2 model. The closest relative V1 has is V2, also the only existing prototype version of their iteration of the V model, who they killed off by the end of Greed. Unlike V2, who was overhauled from V1’s chassis for peacetime security duty, V1 was specifically designed to win wars. Because of this, V1’s unique blood absorption ability allows them to fight at peak performance indefinitely, in addition to their extreme agility, quick-wittedness, and ability to store many weapons at once in their wings for easy access.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In their quest to supply themself with fuel, and successfully beating the Archangel Gabriel in the palace of Gluttony, they had opened the floodgates for the machines to successfully breach into Hell in full and begin its total obliteration in their ravenous need for fuel. Also, by beating Gabriel repeatedly, they caused Gabriel to have a Heel Realization that in turn led to Gabriel slaughtering the entire Heavenly Council, before leaving for his own final battle, which spells an uncertain fate for Heaven as well. In doing both, V1's own quest for fuel might have triggered the end of everything. Though this is also downplayed, as Hell itself seems to be constructing the battlefields and conflict zones that V1 marches through, and it may very well have been banking on all of this happening for reasons unknown.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: V1 and V2 are both prototypes of the V series, but V1 is also the prototype of V2. Despite V2's defensive armor plating and similar skillset, V1 wins both of their battles, killing their successor at the end of Greed.
• Unknown Rival: Aside from letting him teleport away twice, V1 seems to have no reaction to Gabriel in their second encounter. Compare that to V2 escaping for the second time, where it is the first explicit time V1 actually has something to say or think about during the battle. While it is unknown if V1 has any emotional stakes in the battles and enemies they keep accumulating throughout their journey, it would certainly be ironic if they thought nothing of Gabriel despite changing his worldview on their second encounter.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Some parts of V1's arsenal are collected from fallen foes that they slay in combat. They include the shotgun from Swordsmachine, the red arm from V2 and the green arm from V2's rematch.
• Villain Protagonist: The game focuses on V1's journey through Hell, and they're an amoral, self-serving, Killer Robot who invades Hell to slaughter its denizens and their fellow robots for blood, and they might be involved in the extinction of all surface life, including humanity.
• Walking Armory: By the end of the game, V1 is carrying a total of five weapons that each have three of their own unique variations with different abilities, three of which have alternate versions that function in entirely different ways, and has four different left arms that all serve different functions, one of which is essentially a second shotgun. The justification for how they're able to carry all those weapons in-story is that they have easy-access compartments in their wings.
• Wings Do Nothing: V1's wings are far from purely cosmetic. While their wings aren't designed for sustained flight, said wings do allow for other versatile movement options: sliding and dashing. The wings double as storage for V1's impressive arsenal.

Archangel Gabriel, God's Will

Rank: Supreme Angel

^{Click here to see him in Act 2}
"IS THIS WHAT I LOST TO?!"

The most loyal, proactive, and diligent of the angels, the Archangel Gabriel enforces God's will at the orders of the Holy Council that reign over Heaven.

He plays an enormous role in the game's backstory, being responsible for enforcing the Council's rule over Hell and stopping any attempts made by the sinners to escape their suffering. Gabriel is also a recurring adversary V1 faces on their descent into Hell, being encountered as the Climax Boss on both Gluttony and Heresy.

Has his own self-demonstrating article here.

• Adaptational Villainy: In The Divine Comedy, the archangel Gabriel is mentioned several times as a being of pure goodness and light. Here, he's a ruthless zealot who murdered King Minos for turning Lust into a paradise. Subverted at the end of Act II, where after he gains clarity following his second battle with V1, he becomes a more noble character after realizing the errors of his ways, although he is still far more violent than his literary counterpart ever was.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Charcoal-black skin with golden lines is visible between the plates of his armor. This is more pronounced in merch and promotional images, which show Gabriel in other states of dress besides wearing armor, and depicts his black skin more obviously. The lighting on the official body pillow implies that it's actually a bodysuit, however.
• Archangel Gabriel: It's right there in the name. He's the messenger of God in his divine glory, whose brutal effectiveness in carrying out the commands of the Council made him popular with the other angels (until his defeat by V1).
• Blood Knight: After his second defeat, he realizes that he's actually come to like the prospect of facing an opponent who can successfully make him bleed, as he had been bereft of challenge for most of his life.
• Bodyguard Betrayal: He slaughters the Council after realizing just how their weakness and complacency have warped Heaven.
• Character Development: Opens the 3-2 fight as a pious, rigid templar. When V1 breaks his first health bar, Gabriel is enraged, and spends the rest of the fight angrily decrying the machine for their insolence. When V1 beats him, he is punished by Heaven for perceived betrayal and sent against the machine in shame. This development takes a serious left turn when he fights V1 again in 6-2; while he begins the fight completely enraged as per their last encounter, Gabriel actually becomes calmer in his second phase, laughing and genuinely enjoying the fight, as he never struggled against an opponent. His second loss to V1 causes him to become introspective and respectful, realizing how much pressure was put on him as The Ace and how the Council of Heaven strayed from the Father's principles. With the burden lifted, Gabriel realizes he can search for whatever meaning he wants... so he decides to slay the Holy Council to liberate Heaven from their tyranny, before returning to Hell to "make things right".
• Chunky Updraft: Pebbles can be seen rising around him during his enraged rants.
• Cultured Badass: As shown in 6-2, Gabriel is skilled in playing the pipe organ, as he plays a Dark Reprise of "I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ" in the buildup to the rematch with him, in what is a very clear Shout-Out to Ganondorf.
• Decapitation Presentation: After slaying the Council, he displays the severed head of one of them to the citizens of Heaven to demonstrate that they have nothing to fear from them anymore.
• Discard and Draw: In 3-2, he wields a variety of weapons made of divine light that he can summon out of thin air. Specifically, they include a spear, a greatsword, throwing axes, and swords that he can have spin around him. In 6-2, he forgoes most of these (aside from the spinning swords) in favor of a single pair of mundane swords, Justice and Splendor. Accordingly, his moveset becomes less versatile, but significantly more aggressive, no doubt a consequence of his grief-induced rage.
• Dragon Ascendant: He initially follows the orders of the Council, but following his second loss to V1, he decides to take matters into his own hands and slaughters them in rebellion.
• Despair Event Horizon: Crosses it by the end of Act II, after he learns that the Machines have begun to systematically depopulate Hell itself, the first three layers already purged.
• Early-Bird Cameo: First seen in 1-4 as a stained glass window painting, and is mentioned in a book found in 2-2.
• Face Death with Dignity: After killing the Council, Gabriel is deprived of the only source of the holy light keeping him alive, and has hours left to live. He accepts his fate and decides to use his last moments to "correct his wrongs" and have a Last Dance with V1.
• Famed in Story: The most visible and active archangel at the time of the story, and he’s mentioned by multiple characters in different contexts. He is generally beloved by the Lesser and Greater Angels of Heaven, and he is seen as a liar and a betrayer by most of the Sinners in Hell.
• Fantastic Racism: While not to the same degree as other Angels, it's implied that he sees mortals as lesser than Angels. He also views robots as mere objects rather than sapient beings in their own right. His views are also shared by the Council. He reevaluates his thoughts after his second defeat, realizing the commonality between all living things, which leads him to rebel against the Council's prejudiced preaching... by doing what he does best and slaughtering them all.
• Faux Affably Evil: Likes to present himself as a wise, holy figure, but he’s really a petulant, self-righteous man-child. He develops into a more genuinely noble figure after his second defeat, albeit one still willing to resort to violent measures.
• First Injury Reaction: Once in each of the first two acts after his respective defeats.
  • In Act 1, he completely loses it at being outmatched, screaming a curse at V1 before teleporting away.
  • In Act 2, he gets more and more bloodthirsty throughout the fight to the point he revels in seeing his own blood being drawn for the first time, accepting V1's strength as a match for his own. This incites him to rebel against and massacre the Council.
• Graceful Loser: While he was a Sore Loser after his first defeat, his second defeat knocks a degree of clarity into him, and he realizes for the first time just how liberating defeat has been now that he's free from the Council's expectations.
  Gabriel: Twice? Beaten by an object, twice?! I've only known the taste of victory... but this taste, is... is this my blood? Ha... I've never known such... such relief? I... I need some time to think. We will meet again, Machine. May your woes be many, heh, and your days few.
• Heavenly Blue: Gabriel's wings and halo glow blue, and they complement his white, gold, and silver armor. His color scheme sets a precedent for every angel who appears in the game going forward. He's far less heroic than what his appearance implies, however.
• The Heavy: He is by far the most prominent threat V1 faces in the entire game, and while extremely prestigious in Heaven's service, Gabriel is beneath the Council of Heaven—who themselves are responsible for a lot of the crimes in the setting, by suppressing the uprising in Hell that wanted freedom from Heaven's oppressive rule, but the Council never has any direct involvement with V1 beyond punishing Gabriel for his failure in defeating V1 the first time—that is until Gabriel himself kills the entire Council upon having a Heel Realization. Gabriel is also responsible for a vast majority of the events in the game's backstory, from being looked to by certain lost souls in Limbo, to suppressing the Lust Renaissance by slaying King Minos, to stopping the Greed Insurrection by decapitating King Sisyphus, to rescuing the Ferryman of Wrath, and he even struck down the Leviathan.
• Heel Realization: At the end of Act II, Gabriel's contemplation made him remorseful because he realized how wrong his Knight Templar ways were. Then he sets to make things right by slaying The Council for their tyranny before returning to Hell one last time.
• Hero Antagonist: To V1, albeit a very dark one. He acts as the main obstacle preventing V1 from entering the deeper layers of Hell for their ruthless bloodshed, and sees himself as a "fair and just" figure upholding God's image. Come the end of Act II, this is played more straight, as Gabriel recognizes the error of his ways and goes on one final crusade to atone for his sins.
• Inopportune Voice Cracking: His voice cracks when he's particularly upset, perhaps the most prominent such moment being at the end of Act II during his Pre-Asskicking One-Liner with the word "relish", but it's also noticeable during his "insignificant fuck" rant.
• Ironic Echo: At the end of his first fight, he departs with the words "May your woes be many, and your days few", in an authoritative, menacing tone. When he repeats it at the end of Act II, he says it with better humor and a slight chuckle midway through, reflecting the respect V1 has earned.
• I Shall Taunt You: Will spend periods of his boss fight throwing taunts at you, even once enraged. His entry in the Terminal even mentions it to be a good time to get a hit in.
• The King Slayer: According to a book in 2-2, Gabriel killed King Minos for turning the Layer of Lust into a thriving paradise, bringing an end to the Lust Renaissance. King Minos didn't even try to fight back, as he tried to reason with Gabriel, but sadly, the angel didn't listen. He also killed King Sisyphus by decapitating him, which is confirmed in the latter's lore entry.
• Knight Templar: Gabriel sees himself as wise and just, even calling himself "the righteous hand of the father", but in reality, he's a condescending, self-righteous, xenophobic tyrant who subjugates countless souls to horrific punishments, and murdered King Minos for freeing Lust's sinners from their torment. After his second defeat, he realizes upon introspection just how blind and dogmatic he'd been in the past, which leads him to slaughtering the Council that had instilled such beliefs into him, believing that removing them from power will allow the denizens of Heaven to move away from this mindset.
• Large Ham: Everything he says is said with loud pompousness, especially when he Emphasizes. Specific. Words. In Act 2, he takes it up a notch due to his sheer fury.
• The Last Dance: Godfist Suicide is setting his third encounter with V1 up as this as his slaughter of The Council means his divine light cannot be restored, giving him hours to live at most.
• Laughing Mad: Begins doing this as he shows signs of developing into a Blood Knight in his rematch with V1. However, ironically, it only serves to bring him back from the brink of madness brought by his Roaring Rampage of Revenge as he goes from a Sore Loser to a Graceful Loser at the end of the rematch, gaining satisfaction in finally meeting a Worthy Opponent in V1.
• Leitmotif: The melody of "Divine Intervention" is present in all of his battle themes, a vaguely choral but undoubtedly grandiose theme befitting an Archangel.
• Might Makes Right: Pretty plain to see that he believes fully in this, considering how often he uses force to subjugate those he views as lesser. It gains an arguably noble dimension after his second defeat, as the moment of reflection he has afterward has him realize that The Council, and him under them by extension, had no right to cast judgment down on others because they had become too indulgent and complacent to back up their authority. So he slaughters The Council before descending back down into Hell to "make things right".
• Mistaken for Betrayal: Gabriel had not lost a match against his opponents, thus the Council thought Gabriel losing to a mere machine was a deliberate act of betrayal. Ironically, the punishment for the supposed betrayal is one of the things that ultimately leads Gabriel to turn against the Council in the first place.
• Multi-Melee Master: In your first encounter with him, he wields a spear, a greatsword, and throwing axes.
• Noble Bigot: He is convinced of the angels' superiority over mortals, both human and machine. This superiority complex stems from his connection to God: as he is (theoretically) an extension of His Will, that means everything Gabriel does and seeks to do is in line with his creator's ideas. After losing to V1 twice and realizing that angels are fallible, he turns on the angelic Council for enacting laws that do not follow the Father's desires, but fulfill their own.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: After reflecting on his past actions, Gabriel decides to wipe out the entire Council in order to keep them from warping Heaven further with their weakness and complacency. It'd be considered an extreme action if not for the fact that The Council was a bunch of Holier than Thou jackasses who were responsible for making the lives of the denizens of Hell even worse.
• Precision F-Strike: Calls V1 an "insignificant fuck" during his post-boss battle rant.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Throws the mother of all temper tantrums after V1 hands him his ass. During his rematch, he is absolutely livid, screaming and shrieking at V1 that it's their fault he lost everything. As the fight goes on this becomes subverted. He calms down as he realizes that facing a real challenge is actually invigorating for him. While he is shocked to lose twice, he takes it a bit better by going off to contemplate himself in light of this loss.
• Redemption Equals Death: His intent after some self-reflection upon his second defeat from V1, which leads him to killing the Heavenly Council, is made clear as he comes to realize that their Knight Templar ways in Heaven have cost too much, blindly holding onto their superiority in spite of their Father being long dead. Knowing that this action will kill him as he's running on borrowed time, Gabriel instead chooses to embrace the freedom of mortality to enjoy what is clearly going to be his final battle against V1.
• Reverse Shrapnel: One of his moves summons a ring of spinning swords that orbits around his waist.
• Sore Loser: To say he's upset about losing to you is an understatement, like throwing a Precision F-Strike at V1 before he teleports back to Heaven.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Conjures swords, axes, and spears made of light to use.
• Symbol Face: Gabriel wears a helmet with a golden cross on the front, with the cross representing the Tree of Life. This shows his status and importance as an Archangel. There are no visible eyeholes.
• This Cannot Be!: He says a disbelieving "How can this be?" when being defeated by V1 for the first time.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: He throws his holy spears at you during his 1st fight in Gluttony. When he's fought again in Heresy, he combines his swords and throws them at you as a deadly Homing Projectile.
• To the Pain: His Pre-Battle Banter in his second fight consists of nothing but delirious, hate-fueled threats directed towards V1.
  Gabriel: "Machine, I will cut. You. Down. Break you apart, splay the gore of your profane form ACROSS THE STARS! I WILL GRIND YOU DOWN UNTIL THE VERY SPARKS CRY FOR MERCY! MY HANDS SHALL RELISH ENDING YOU HERE! AND! NOW!!!"
• Turns Red: Once he enters his second phase by having his first health bar depleted. In his rematch, he starts with this status, losing it in the second half of the fight.
• Wham Line:
  • His first words, which are the first time someone not only speaks in ULTRAKILL, but also directly addresses V1.
    Gabriel: Machine. Turn back, now.
  • At the end of Act 2, Gabriel drops a colossal bombshell regarding the state of Heaven:
    Gabriel: Face it, brother. God Is Dead. The fire is gone. You're chasing phantoms.
• Worthy Opponent: Double Subverted. To say that Gabriel takes his initial loss at V1's hands badly is an Understatement to say the least, as he throws the mother of all temper tantrums and stays firmly pissed the entire time until their rematch, seeing it as an indignity to be bested by a machine. However, as their second fight goes along, he surprisingly calms down as he comes to the revelation that having been an Invincible Hero for so long has deprived him of the joy of fighting, and actually being pushed to his limit and beaten twice by V1 has changed his outlook significantly to look forward to what would clearly be his final match against V1.
• Your Days Are Numbered: As punishment for losing to V1, "God's light" is stripped from Gabriel and its lack will kill him in the next 24 hours. The only way to reclaim it is to defeat V1. His failure to defeat the machine in their rematch, as well as his subsequent slaughter of the Council of Angels seems to doom him, something Gabriel himself is very aware of.

The Husks are what remain of humanity, being physical manifestations of their souls in Hell. The appearance and intelligence of a Husk depends on the value of its prior life as a human; those with little-to-no reputation become mindless beasts, whereas those who were widely known become sapient humanoids of considerable power.

• Body Horror: All of them are, to some degree, grotesque appearances of the human body. The Schism, for example, is covered with welts, scars, and necrotic flesh, while the Stalker's skin is sunburned to a charcoal color and its torso is twisted 180 degrees.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Husks are empowered by the willpower of their original soul and the number of living souls that still remember them. Low-willpower individuals who weren't notable become Filth, too weak to form a complete body; on the other end of the scale, the massive and powerful Corpse of King Minos was born from a soul with strong will and legions of devoted followers. Souls that are even more powerful than that don't even need a Husk to manifest physically, as seen with the Prime Bosses, Minos Prime and Sisyphus Prime.
• Evil Is Visceral: The Husks are horrifically mutilated, hostile malformations of human anatomy.
• Eyeless Face: For unknown reasons, almost all Husks lack eyes. This partially extends to Lesser Angels such as the Virtues, since they too are former humans, but they deliberately remove their eyes before entering Hell. The one exception is the Corpse of King Minos (and even then, his eyes later get gouged out by the parasites inside him).
• Firebreather Backfire: Most Husk-type enemies attack by briefly charging up an orb of infernal energy and then firing it at the player. When the orb is struck by any type of precise hitscan fire (such as shots from the revolver) during that window of preparation, it explodes, instantly obliterating the Husk in question and netting the player an "+INTERRUPTION" style bonus. This feat is most easily performed with the Marksman revolver, a weapon that scores guaranteed headshots and interruptions through its Coin-Targeting Trickshot mechanic.
• Kill It with Fire: Most Husks have a unique trait of being flammable, causing them extra damage (and even making Insurrectionists extra-vulnerable); the exceptions are the Stalker and Ferryman, who are so desiccated they have nothing left to burn.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Despite being visceral undead creatures, Husks are never referred to as zombies. Instead, they are seen as containers holding onto a human soul.
• Our Souls Are Different: Husks are bodies manifested by the souls of dead humans and have more power if they have stronger will and/or are remembered by other souls. They also have a very deathly appearance to them (from the green pallor of the Filth to the flayed flesh of the Stray) that brings to mind zombie-like creatures.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Husks are mindless undead creatures manifested from human souls that are Deader than Dead, with a more notorious soul creating a stronger Husk. Only a scarce few Husks retain anything resembling intelligence like the Ferrymen, with the majority being nothing more than shambling corpses that attack anything they see.

The Demons are innate creatures of Hell, usually being formed from Hell Mass condensing into an artistic stone shell. They have only slighter higher intelligence than most Husks, and often serve to protect Hell's layers from intruders and rebellious sinners alike.

• Adaptational Nonsapience: Most Christian texts depict them as being fully sapient, but here they are described as having animalistic intelligence, with the terminal data for the Malicious Face also saying that no known demon has passed the Mirror Test, which is often used as an important step in determining animal intelligence.
• Art Imitates Art: Demons in general tend to resemble or otherwise bear iconic pieces of artwork on them:
  • The prominent brow and flat nose on Malicious Faces resemble those of Easter Island moai. Another detail, which became more prominent when their model was updated, is their curly hair, a quality commonly exhibited by many Greek statues of Hermes.
  • Cerberus are a very simplified and modified rendition of The Thinker.
  • Hideous Masses have "The Creation of Adam" engraved on their forearms, with God on one hand and Adam on the other.
  • Idols, very deliberately, resemble the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus.
  • The Leviathan's Heart, comprised of the amalgamation of the countless Sullen souls absorbed by the beast, is depicted in a permanent horrified Scream, with a pair of arteries taking place of the character's hands.
  • The Mannequins are a nod to the Venus de Milo while also inverting the statue's most notable trait: whereas the Venus De Milo has no arms, the Mannequins have too many arms, with their limbs formed entirely from forearms, while the joints are made by hands grabbing the other parts.
  • The Minotaur's appearance evokes that of Guernica. Both involve twisted, uneven shapes of human mass, involve the image of a bull, and are associated with a violent context (Guernica was created in response to the bombing of its titular city; the Minotaur is sealed away within the labyrinth of the Violence layer's entrance).
  • The Deathcatchers seem to be modeled after a statue based on Nero's likeness, since their faces bear a striking resemblance to him before their upper bodies are split in half.
  • Geryon's design is based on an artistic depiction of its poetic namesake drawn by Gustave Doré, where the Demon shares its poem counterpart's draconic design.
• Evil Is Visceral: All Demons have red flesh underneath their stone bodies, which is visible in higher level Demons like the Hideous Mass and the Leviathan, and most of them attack every non-Demon with Hell energy and extreme prejudice. The only exceptions are the Idols, which lack any visual visceral traits or the hostility shared by their fellow Demons, and they actively protect others from harm out of boundless love; the Minotaur for being a Tragic Monster whose rampage is born from an equally Tragic Dream to see the sky one last time; the Deathcatchers, where they still have a desire to protect others like their Idol counterparts, but they can only reanimate their blood because they were never given the love they needed to do so; and Geryon, where it's implied to be motivated by mercy rather than malice, since it seems to save Fraud's sinners from far more horrible fates by swiftly euthanizing them, though this is an unproven theory mentioned by its Terminal lore entry.
• Living Statue: A Demon's body consists of a stone shell encasing Hell Mass or some other kind of organic material. However, some Demons only have partial shells with their vulnerable flesh exposed.
• Mighty Glacier: Thanks to their stony shells, Demons are very durable and can dish out quite the punishment. However, their stony shells make them very slow in attack and movement, and a few (like the Hideous Mass and Idol) don't even move at all. Speaking of the Idol, it has no form of attack; instead, it focuses on buffing its allies with invincibility. The only exceptions so far are the Mannequins and the Minotaur, which are Lightning Bruisers, and possibly the Leviathan, which can swim at fast speeds despite its titanic size, though it's mostly a Stationary Boss in its boss fight.
• Our Demons Are Different: Demons are a far cry from the classic Big Red Devil. Instead, Demons are Living Statues that twist stone and flesh into one being. They also reference iconic artwork, like the Cerberi resembling The Thinker when hibernating, and tend to incorporate some Body Horror elements, like the Hideous Mass and the Leviathan having numerous human limbs and faces. Demons are not just capable of wielding Hell energy, they can also wield Heavenly magic, such as the Idols using it to give enemies invincibility.
• White and Red and Eerie All Over: Most Demons have a marble-white shell which contrasts with their fleshy red innards (some of which leak out of the shell). The Malicious Face and Cerberus, however, have a more muted grey on the outside.

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: War machines all run on "Nocturnal" Systems (instead of versions of SmileOS), which can only replenish their systems with blood from still-living organisms, with the added hazard that machines running on said operating system are self-adaptive and have "limitless" potential.
• Ambiguous Situation: It is never fully explained the reason why the Machines were specifically designed to be fueled by blood. It may have been a case of shortsightedness or irresponsibility by part of humanity in an attempt to maximize the casualties of soldiers and civilians alike and to make their war machines more effective in combat.
• Cyber Cyclops: The Drones and the Sentries all have one pink eye while V1 and V2 have one big yellow eye.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In the lead-up to 6-2, Gabriel comments that the first three layers of Hell are becoming undone by the machines' ravenous bloodlust; the afterlife itself is being destroyed thanks to these robots, who are merely made out of normal Earth materials like metal and blood and lack any identified mystical elements. Or so it's thought, since blood is what truly gave the Machines life due to its mystical powers.
• Gang Up on the Human: The Machines are supposedly killing each other in addition to Hell's denizens in a frantic dash to get as much blood as possible before it's gone, but in gameplay terms they'll focus on V1 before anyone and anything else outside of very rare and highly specific circumstances.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: The Machines were not programmed to imitate or feel emotions like pride at building or modifying their own body, wrath at being disrespected, dread of their own mortality, or remorse for using someone they regard as their mother as a fuel source, as it would interfere with their main function. However, every Machine shown has an inkling of sapience. It's heavily implied to be because of their fuel—blood.
• Homemade Inventions: The Terminal's weapons descriptions say that Machines will often craft weapons out of materials and tools left lying around. For example, at some point in time, a machine repurposed an industrial nailgun to make the rapid-fire projectile nailgun weapon V1 wields.
• Human Resources: Since Machines are powered by blood, any blood will do for the Machines, be it human or otherwise.
• It Can Think: Machines are repeatedly shown to have more depths than what their animalistic, bloodthirsty desires might otherwise show.
  • Drones, the most basic Machines, are curious by nature, despite their limited intelligence.
  • This is more evident with Greater Machines and beyond: Swordsmachine rebuilt its own body, self-made its sword, and enrages upon getting parried^note suggesting a sense of pride in its swordsmanship; Mindflayers built their own plastic bodies, and will protect their shells with their own lives. V2, a Supreme Machine, is very expressive in their body language in all of their appearances; and their predecessor, V1, panics at their own death.
  • Also from Swordsmachine's entry, its design has garnered attention and admiration from other scrapheads, leading to many imitators.
  • The Gutterman's book from 7-2 implicitly confirms that the Machines indeed are sapient beings with their own thoughts and desires. However, aside from the Gutterman who wrote that book, it is unknown if the Machines as a whole feel remorse for using blood as their main energy source.
• Killer Robot: All robots are fueled by blood, and they kill to survive and they invade Hell to slaughter its denizens (and each other) for the precious red fuel.
• Living on Borrowed Time: The war machines run on "Nocturnal" Systems, which require the blood from living being to run. With Humanity’s extinction and Hell rapidly being emptied of all life, it’s only a matter of time before the Machines finally run out of blood.
• Meat-Sack Robot: Every Machine is full of blood. Also, according to Hakita, every robot has organic components installed within their mechanical bodies, hence why they have Ludicrous Gibs just like the other enemies and bosses. This becomes evident with V1 and the Earthmovers: the former has limbic modules and internal organs mentioned in their death screen while the latter have fleshy insides and giant human-like mechanical brains. Where these internal organs come from is never elaborated on.
• Mirroring Factions: On closer inspection, Machines are not so different from Demons. Both are almost Always Chaotic Evil and clearly artificial in design, with far more visceral parts underneath. Mannequins are also directly noted to be inspired by Guttermen in the latter's terminal entry, the Mannequins' creator was impressed by the cruelty that went into the Machines' creation.
• No Mouth: Although most Machines can make noises like beeps and trills, none of them are shown to speak nor have mouths.
• Noisy Robots: All Machines have unique sounds to them that will clue in to what type of Machine they are and where they're located. While the Terminals note that some Machines have voiceboxes, none are shown speaking. At most, they scream.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: In any other story, Machines would be called "robots", "droids", etc. considering they're far more advanced beings than the word "machine" (usually referring to an inanimate object) would suggest. It also serves to reinforce how they were developed as semi-sentient weapons of war during the Final War.
• Robotic Psychopath: An entire race of sapient machines waging war in Hell without any reason other than ensuring their own survival, even if it means slaughtering their own fellow robots.
• Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: Through their in-game behaviors, Terminal descriptions, and the ARG, most Machines are Type 2 or above. The Angelic Council believes that all Machines are Type 1 (automatic tools)—including Gabriel, until the end of his second bossfight, where it's implied he's reconsidering how sapient the Machines truly are. Humanity also thought they were Type 1 until the Hell expeditions, where the Machines were trapped in Hell without humans around. Upon seeing Terminals seemingly becoming bored and setting up the Style system, attracting Machines using music and rewarding them for interesting battles, humanity slowly realized that they unintentionally made sapient blood-fueled robots.
• Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: Stationary Machines run on various versions of an operating system called "SmileOS", which has a logo of a little smiley face. Considering that they ran off of collected blood, it's pretty clear that this was a transparent attempt to make the Machines' nature seem more benign.
• Unwitting Pawn: The Machines' bloodthirst and drive to self-sustain at the cost of everyone else seems like a a typical robot uprising, but they're but a mere plaything of an unseen force
• Virtue Is Weakness: According to the Rocket Launcher’s terminal entry, the Machines kill and steal the blood from one another because they see reasonable and long-term thinking strategies such as sharing the blood and cooperating as a waste of resources. As of yet, it's unclear whether this is simply a value of the Machines' culture, a calculation to make the finite supply of blood in the universe last longer, or the result of some sort of tampering.
• The Voiceless: Most machines don't have voiceboxes—or if they did, they discarded them to reduce unnecessary energy usage. The few who avert this are the Swordsmachine, the Streetcleaner, the Guttertank, and the Drones.

• Angelic Transformation: Human souls can turn into Angels, but, in contrast to their counterparts in Hell, they lose their humanoid form.
• Bishōnen Line: The more humanoid an Angel looks, the more they are considered "pure" and the higher they are placed in Heaven's societal hierarchy. At the bottom are human-born Angels who look surreal and unusual; in the middle are heaven-born Greater Angels, who look mostly humanoid but are missing limbs; and at the top are Angels that look completely humanoid, i.e. the Council members and the archangels.
• Fantastic Racism: Heaven-born Angels view anything outside of God and themselves as inferior. They give Angels who started as humans busywork or undesirable jobs, such as venturing down into Hell and ensuring the sinners' punishments continue for eternity. This is, in part, why the Terminals have little information regarding Heaven—the only Angels who willingly enter Hell are Gabriel and his Virtues. Anything (or anyone) who is a resident of Hell is immediately considered lesser than anyone who resides in Heaven. At the very bottom are machines, who almost all Angels see as just objects who went out of their creators' control.
• Holy Hand Grenade: As expected, the Angels weaponize their holy magic, either for combat or for ensuring the sinners' punishments.
• Light Is Not Good: The Angels are beings of holy light, and yet a majority of them are incredibly self-righteous and xenophobic, with the Council of Angels being the pinnacle of those traits.
• Monstrosity Equals Weakness: Invoked. The animalistic or surreal Lesser Angels are designed to be inferior to the humanoid Greater and Supreme Angels. This is ironic, considering that Lesser Angels are born from human souls.
• Mook Chivalry: All Angels seen so far, specifically the common enemies, take turns when attacking en masse. Powers in particular draw attention to it in their terminal entry, and will even attack out of turn if V1 does not respect their rules. This is done for practical reasons so the Powers do not accidentally attack each other and can properly credit who defeated an enemy.
• Non-Human Non-Binary: Because they are beings created from Heaven and therefore have no need to reproduce, Angels have No Biological Sex. However, it is considered a sign of respect to refer to strong and more important Angels as male, hence why characters like Gabriel are consistently called "he". This is most pronounced with Powers, whom even the terminal entry for acknowledges that their voices sound very feminine even though this is not the case.
• Our Angels Are Different: Lesser Angels are made out of human souls and their forms are either animalistic or surreal; Greater and Supreme Angels take on more traditional winged-humanoid forms because they're born from Heaven. All Angels seem to have translucent wings that can be summoned and unsummoned at will. Heaven also has a fiercely segregated class system where Angels made from human souls are determined to be impure compared to Angels that were born from Heaven, and thus given busywork or other unwanted tasks that higher level Angels deem unworthy.
• Unusual Halo: No Angel is shown with the classic golden ring or light behind their heads. Instead, Virtues have crumbling, solid, golden rings floating above them; Providences seemingly have a rainbow halo; and archangels such as Gabriel have holographic haloes, with the portrait of the Archangels depicting them with holographic haloes that are blue, pink, red, and green. Powers, the only example of Greater Angels, do not have haloes but a golden ring attached to their helmets.

God

• Adaptational Jerkass: In The Bible, God gave humans free will of His own choosing, and continued letting them have it even as they used it for evil. In the game, God continuously attempts to remove free will from humans and finds it extremely infuriating when He is unable to. This comes with the implication that He destroyed all humans that gained free will in His numerous attempts. In His frustration, He eventually created Hell before punishing an Angel for questioning Him. Downplayed in that He felt extremely remorseful for it immediately afterwards.
• Adaptational Wimp: The God of The Bible was an all-powerful being with no limit to His might. But the Testaments found in the secret levels imply that, no matter how hard He tried, this version of Him could never create a human being that lacked free will. Furthermore, though He was able to create Hell, He later admitted that He no longer had the power to unmake it.
• Body Motifs: Hands seem to be associated with God, as glass-stained windows in Limbo represent Him as a divine hand reaching down from Heaven. And in the statue of Him you find in Fraud, His hands are the only thing about Him that looks remotely human.
• Death Seeker: After sending an Angel to Hell in the 5-S Testament, the 7-S Testament describes how God has become utterly stricken with grief, unable to handle the weight of His mistakes, and began "to seek the end of [His] days". As someone who is almost The Omnipotent, suicide is extremely difficult to successfully do in any way. While Gabriel claims that God is dead, the secret Testaments imply that when He tried to commit suicide, He failed.
  "BUT WHEN I STARED INTO THE ABYSS... THE ABYSS AVERTED ITS GAZE."
• Despair Event Horizon: Every Testament so far has shown that He's clearly hit it since before He started writing them. It's hard to figure out what exactly started it, but it was either the creation of mankind or the creation of Hell.
• Disproportionate Retribution: It's hard to call it anything else than a massive overreaction as a result of an Armor-Piercing Question. When Lucifer bluntly asks what the purpose of creating Hell to torture sinners in for all of eternity, God's response was to banish Lucifer to Hell and then let Hell torture Lucifer personally for all of eternity. This is Deconstructed, as once God came to His senses, He is utterly horrified with what he's done, and it's implied its a major reason for His suicidal tendencies due to the guilt He felt from it.
• The Evils of Free Will: The secret level Testaments document God's attempt to create humans without free will, His failure at doing so, and the subsequent creation of Hell to punish sinners who don't follow His rule.
• God Is Dead: In the Act 2 end credits, Gabriel claims that God has been dead for a while, and that the Council were chasing phantoms of His presence. Whether this is true or not is left ambiguous, as the secret Testaments imply that God's attempt at killing Himself failed.
• God Is Flawed: At the end of most Secret levels, you can find special "TESTAMENT" Terminals that reveal God's own inner thoughts about mankind in His attempts to engineer free will out of them. Every single attempt fails, and it's clear behind the grandiose, all-caps speech pattern is a burnt-out wreck lashing out at others because He can't comprehend not being able to do something, and only realizing the error in this after He creates Hell and realizes He can't change what results from that either. He's also flawed as a person, and one Testament sees God act impulsively, casting Lucifer into Hell out of sheer terror, then falling into an awful depression once He realizes what He did. Word of God has stated this is fully intentional, with God's limits in power, knowledge, and benevolence serving to justify why He would ever create Hell.
• Got the Whole World in My Hand: The statue depicting Him in 8-1 features the Earth floating at His fingertip, incredibly tiny compared to God Himself.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He created Hell itself, purely because He was infuriated by humanity developing free will and His inability to simply remove it. While He ended up regretting his actions and is long dead by the time the game starts, His actions cast a shadow over the entire setting that led to both the extinction of all life on Earth and the gradual downfall of Heaven through the iron-fisted rule of the Council of Angels.
• Have You Seen My God?: The Father hasn't been seen for a while. According to Gabriel, He is dead and the rest of Heaven is just in denial about it.
• The Maker: He's the creator of both Heaven and Hell, along with the Angels and all life on Earth.
• My God, What Have I Done?: God horrified Himself when He cast Lucifer into Hell after they asked what could possibly justify the eternal torment of humanity.
• OOC Is Serious Business: If the Testaments are any indication, He speaks in all capital letters and rhymes the last word of every second sentence... right up until the last line of Testament III, where He realizes to His horror that after having failed to change mankind's free will and creating Hell out of frustration, He isn't able to undo it.
  I HAVE CREATED HELL...
  ...And now I can no longer unmake it

The Council

• Asshole Victim: The Council were mercilessly slaughtered by Gabriel at the end of Act 2. Not that they deserve any shred of sympathy since they are all corrupt and xenophobic Knight Templars that ruled Heaven through tyranny.
• Bad Boss: They consider Gabriel's defeat at the hands of a machine tantamount to treason and heresy as they do not believe he can be defeated unless he wants to be. Gabriel's punishment is to have his light removed, ensuring he would die if he could not defeat V1 in less than a day. This comes back to bite them in the ass later.
• Council of Angels: The angelic council took over once the Father left.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Not the only one in this role, but they play a big part in why the ULTRAKILL universe is so screwed up, even though they almost never interact with anyone directly in the story. They ruled Heaven with an iron fist, they molded Gabriel into a dogmatic weapon for them to exploit and abuse, and they're responsible for some of the horrific punishments and events in Hell, like the fall of Minos' Lust Renaissance, the failure of Sisyphus' Greed Insurrection, and the deaths of both kings.
• Hate Sink: There is nothing entertaining or sympathetic about them, being nothing but self-righteous tyrants that caused plenty of horror and misery long before the game's plot took place.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: During their judgement of Gabriel at the end of Act 1, the Council deliberately avoids using gendered language, referring to Gabriel as an "it" or "this one." Surrounding context makes it clear that they see Gabriel as unworthy of respect.
• Karmic Death: The entire Council are corrupt Angels who ruled Heaven through fear, created the horrible punishments in Hell, instilled their dogma onto Gabriel, and then severed him from God's light for losing to V1. Gabriel comes back to Heaven at the end of Act 2 to butcher the entire Council, and they all deserve it.
• Light Is Not Good: They're Angels of holy light, yet they punish Hell's sinners with immense suffering and rule Heaven through fear and desperation out of their self-righteous dogmatism.
• The Unfought: Despite being major villains, V1 never fought the Council. Instead, they were slain by Gabriel in the ending cutscenes of Act 2.
• Villains Want Mercy: The last Council member begged for Gabriel to spare him, both to save his own sorry skin and because he and the other Council members are the only ones who can bring back Gabriel's severed light. Not that Gabriel cared.
• Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: They can strip other Angels of their holy light, but that seems to be the only real power they possess. As soon as Gabriel decides to slaughter them, they drop like flies.

• Badass Long Robe: Michael is dressed in a mix of white and orange robes while Phanuel is dressed in robes with various shades of green.
• Celestial Paragons and Archangels: They're five of God's most powerful and dedicated champions, so revered by Heaven that they're considered extensions of Him. Michael is God's Wisdom, Raphael is God's Strength, Gabriel is God's Will, and Phanuel is God's Patience. As Lucifer's description is scratched out, it's unknown what Lucifer represented.
• Color-Coded Characters: All of them wears clothing and have Holy Halos or other ethereal highlights of a distinguishing color from the rest. Michael's halo and "wings" are red and orange; Raphael's are pink; Gabriel's are blue; and Phanuel's are green. All of them wear gold.
• El Is for Divinity: Per The Bible, all their names (save Lucifer's) end in "El" ("God") to signify them as high-ranking servants of God himself.
• Gold and White Are Divine: Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel all have gold and white in their color scheme.

Archangel Gabriel, God's Will

For Gabriel's tropes, see above.

Archangel Lucifer

The First Fallen Angel. As revealed in Testament IV, Lucifer was cast into Hell after asking God why He was sentencing humans to eternal torture.

• Adaptational Heroism: In the poem, Lucifer betrayed God out of his own arrogance, despite knowing that this crime will bring evil and suffering to the world. In this game, sin already existed in the world as an unavoidable consequence of free will, and Lucifer merely questioned the creation of Hell out of genuine concern for the sinners despite seeing them as fools.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: Lucifer was never referred to with any pronouns in Testament IV, leaving it a mystery. Considering that their Fallen status would mean that their Angelic brethren would no longer respect them enough to call them "he", it's unclear what they now go by, if anything.
• Angelic Beauty: Even by the standards of other Angels, Lucifer was noted by God to be "bright and beautiful".
• Armor-Piercing Question: Asked God what could possibly justify Hell and the eternal torment of humanity for meager sins. In that moment, God became stricken with terror, and cast Lucifer into Hell as well.
• Fallen Angel: Lucifer is the first and only known Angel to be cast into Hell, though this is a result of them simply questioning God about the creation of Hell rather than any act of malice.
• A Fate Worse Than Death: Implied by a hidden book in 8-3 which says that Lucifer is "lovingly" reserved all agonies that can or even cannot exist, its pages authored by Hell itself. They have been tortured since the start of humanity.
• He Knows Too Much: Lucifer was the first, and the only known, Angel to question God whether Hell was justified. Frightened from the possibility of revealing His personal failing, God had Lucifer banished to Hell as well.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Based on the removal of their presence on the Archangel portrait, Lucifer is seen as a villain by Heaven just for sympathizing with the Sinners by questioning God if Hell's purpose and existence were justified.
• Light Is Good: Lucifer is described as "bright and beautiful'' by God, and they are the first and only known Angel to sympathize with the sinners by questioning God if the creation of Hell was justified.
• Meaningful Name: Described by God as "bright and beautiful", Lucifer translates to "bringer of light" in Latin. They are also the only archangel without their name ending with "-el", distinguishing them from their siblings in Heaven.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Whereas every other inhabitant of Heaven (including God Himself) expresses disdain for humanity and other "lower" life forms, Lucifer is the only Angel to have even a shred of sympathy for them, believing that God went too far with the punishments found in Hell. Ironically, that's one of the reasons why they were banished from Heaven.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Lucifer was cast into Hell by God for questioning the creation of Hell out of sympathy for the human sinners. Not only that, it's implied that they became a villain in the eyes of Heaven if the torn-out portrait of the Archangels in 8-1 is any indication.
• Pet the Dog: While they considered sinners to be foolish, Lucifer still showed them more sympathy than God did.
• Removed from the Picture: On the massive mural of the various Archangels found in 8-1, Lucifer is the one exception, with their portrait and mural being haphazardly ripped and slashed out, representing them becoming a Fallen Angel.
• Satan: The Archangel Lucifer, who was cast out of Heaven for questioning the will of God, though they're far more sympathetic and noble than any of their religious or mythological counterparts. It's also notable that God considers casting them into Hell a mistake rather than a justified action.
• Satan Is Good: Lucifer was cast into Hell for questioning God's eternal punishment for sinners, which God Himself immediately regrets. They're also not the real villain, but something else is.
• Sympathy for the Devil: In a fit of irony, it's done by The Devil. While they see sinners as fools, Lucifer still feels sympathy for them and questions God if the creation of Hell was justified.
• Un-person: Heaven is so enraged by Lucifer that they removed any mention of their existence, judging by the Archangel portrait where any mention of Lucifer was removed, such as their name, their title, and their likeness.

Something Wicked

Rank: Unclassified

^{Pre-ULTRA_REVAMP design}

• Art Evolution: The 2025 texture update changes Something Wicked from a stick figure made of basic shapes to a shambling horror of veins and nerves.
• Came Back Wrong: An implication brought up by the terminals is that this thing was the botched result of a soul manifesting in Hell, only meeting the bare minimum requirement of having a cardiovascular system, and even then it doesn't bleed. This botched result somehow makes it impossible to kill and incredibly lethal.
• Drone of Dread: Its presence is indicated by a buzzing sound that gets louder as it approaches V1.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: The mere presence of Something Wicked seems to be enough to cause visual distortions in technology, with the player's view turning increasingly granular the closer Something Wicked gets. In addition, the terminal is completely unable to catalogue it, with little more than a black box and computer gore being their attempt.
• Evil Is Visceral: It's not called Something Wicked for nothing. While little more than a sentient cardiovascular system, it nonetheless hunts down V1 with murderous intent.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: The only vocalization Something Wicked makes is a wheezy, labored exhalation that sometimes increases in pitch when it's chasing you.
• Humanoid Abomination: It's a thin, humanoid creature composed of only a set of nerves, a heart, and two white eyes, but it is regardless alive, seemingly immortal, and capable of producing raspy cries. No one has any clear explanation for why it exists in Hell other than that it might be some kind of failed soul manifestation, but that leaves so many open ends as to who and what it's supposed to be (for one thing, human souls aren't supposed to "fail to manifest" in Hell in any way resembling it).
• Interface Screw: The camera distortion that happens when V1 gets near it will prevent you from getting a good look at it, but it will also immediately alert you that it's nearby similar to its rasping.
• Invincible Boogeymen: Something Wicked is borderline unstoppable. While attacking it can stop it temporarily, it will teleport across the map to continue the chase until V1 beats the level.
• One-Hit Kill: Its mere touch causes a whopping 1000 points of damage. The most HP you'll have is 200. This also works against the creature, as a single shot from the revolver can take it out temporarily.
• Our Souls Are Different: Its terminal entry theorizes that like the Husks and Lesser Angels, it is a soul which attempted to physically manifest in the afterlife, but the process went wrong and it ended up malformed. The result is an immortal, all-powerful Humanoid Abomination which distorts reality around it, a far cry from the other souls seen throughout the game.
• The Spook: Nothing is known about it other than that it's incredibly dangerous and doesn't leave its domain. Its terminal entry gives a little bit more information, claiming that it's a walking cardiovascular system with a dead heart, leading to the in-universe theory that it's a failed physical manifestation of a soul. Even then that leads to a lot of other questions.
• Villain Teleportation: Every time it gets shot, the creature teleports to the furthest spot from V1's direction.
• Walking Spoiler: Since Something Wicked only appears in 0-S, talking about it basically spoils the entire premise that the level is a Survival Horror and Unexpected Gameplay Change.

The Protagonist of 2-S

• And Now for Someone Completely Different: In 2-S, you take a break from V1's rampaging through Hell to get into an Alternate Universe through the eyes of an ordinary student, a character who, while displaying little personality, is a far cry to V1 and their actions in-story. That said, considering the secret levels' canonical ambiguity, they could very well be V1 having a dream during their descent.
• The Anti-Nihilist: They do not deny the inevitability of death, and in fact even seem to embrace it. This alternate mindset to Mirage's Straw Nihilist worldview helps her to get better.
• Breaking Speech: Delivers one to Mirage that shatters her fatalistic worldview and gives her hope.
• Featureless Protagonist: Befitting of traditional visual novel player characters, their physical appearance, name, gender and background is left up to interpretation. While they have notable personality traits, nothing else about them is known beyond that.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed, the protagonist can express irritation and annoyance towards Mirage's behaviour, but only if the player wills it. However, the protagonist's speech, presented as a one-way sequence of dialogue choices, clearly displays their altruistic inner character.
• Hidden Depths: Beneath the guise of a hammy, quirky student lies a mind with very meaningful outlook on life.
• Large Ham: Their intense monologue of a mundane, if cliched, everyday situation (an Ordinary High-School Student running late to school with all their might) that could simply be described in a few words reflects their penchant for theatrics. This linguistic eloquence later aids them well in their speech to Mirage.
• Toast of Tardiness: The protagonist was holding a slice in their mouth on their way Late for School. An accidental bump to Mirage ensures the slice won't get digested any time soon.
• Walking Spoiler: Their grandiose monologue may fool first-time players into thinking that 2-S is going to reveal some crucial details about the Final War. Instead, such musings serve as a backdrop to the Unexpected Gameplay Change and to ease the player into the heavy philosophical themes the level deals with.

Mirage

Rank: Unclassified

• The Anti-Nihilist: Not at the beginning, but the player helps her come to this mindset by the end of their argument. Ironically, V1 (who she is modeled off of) can also be considered The Anti-Nihilist in a twisted way, but their idea of meaning is far more selfish and destructive.
• Cross-Popping Veins: When Mirage gets frustrated, veins are shown on her portrait.
• Distaff Counterpart: She has a slimmer build and a different head mold, but she acts as one to V1, who is referred to with neutral and masculine pronouns by ULTRAKILL's developers in casual conversation.
• Expy: A parody of dating sim love interests who quickly reveals a deeply nihilistic side and a drastic change in personality in not only her words but the world as a whole. Not too far off from Monika.
• Fembot: In a schoolgirl uniform, no less.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mirage is snarky and nihilistic, but the player gives her a new look on life and she (begrudgingly) treats them to food.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: She tends to throw foul-mouthed curses or insults at the player, which is notable because the rest of the game otherwise uses swears sparingly.
• Meaningful Name: She's called Mirage because she isn't real.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: What starts off as a parody of dating sims rapidly nosedives into a harrowing debate on existentialism.
• Straw Nihilist: Mirage's speech goes into paralyzing fear of action in light of her and everyone's overall meaning - or lack of it - in the face of the universe. The player character helps her get over it, stating that this lack of definite meaning allows one to live as they wish to reach their own meaning that they define themselves, and that the end is not something to be feared, but to be embraced.
• Toast of Tardiness: Her monologue in the level's intro has her mention biting into her rations held only by the skin of her teeth. This is despite the fact that she's a machine with no mouth and, assuming she's like the other machines, uses blood as fuel.
• Tsundere: She's a massive jerk (although she says it's how she copes with her nihilistic outlook on life), but she treats the player to some food after they wrap up their debate.
• Walking Spoiler: Given she's in a secret level of the game.

Florp

• Ascended Meme: The Hampter meme (going by the nickname of "Florp") is popular with the game's fandom. The hamster is finally in the game.
• Easter Egg: The hamster is hidden in one of the Ferry's funnels.
• Human Sacrifice: A hamster sacrifice rather than a human one, but Florp is used as a sacrifice to free Jakito.
• Whale Egg: Despite being a hamster, Florp is guarding its nest, which is full of eggs.

Jakito

• Author Avatar: He's a bastardized parody of the avatar Hakita uses on social media.
• Easter Egg: Jakito is found on top of a vast tower, which can only be accessed by mastering the game's vertical movement. You could try using cheats to noclip up there, but then he'll immediately disappear.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Should Jakito destroy the world, the game closes itself.
• Human Sacrifice: Or rather, hamster sacrifice, but sacrificing Florp is enough to free Jakito from his prison.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He wants to destroy the world because he can, and if he's freed, he has the power to do so.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Jakito is trapped in a cage, and he needs a sacrifice to be freed. Once he's freed, Jakito destroys the entire world for no reason other than for the sake of it.
• Shout-Out: Wrath is probably the last place to expect a caricature of Saika Totsuka.
• The Spook: Who he is, how he ended trapped in some corner of Wrath, or even what he really is is a mystery.

The Terminals

• Allergic to Routine: The main reason they use "points" as a currency is because of their completely sedentary existence, a lack of surface world stimuli, and the otherwise drone-like nature of most Machines has made them yearn for some kind of entertainment. So, they reward machines that show off their skills with a chance to earn better weaponry.
• Art Evolution: Prior to the 2025 texture update, the terminals all looked like identical ATMs. Come ULTRA_REVAMP, and the Terminals of different locations have more polished models and distinct designs.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Terminal just before the Flesh Panopticon has one unchanging tip for you going into the fight;
  "TIP OF THE DAY: Have fun"
• Dungeon Shop: Just before heading out into the levels of Hell, V1 can buy weapon variations and weapon customization options from them. Some will even appear just before boss battles.
• It Can Think:
  • Until you beat a Prime Sanctum, you might be led to believe that the terminals are just non-thinking machines that provide basic utilities. The terminal at the end of P-1 hints at the sentience of the terminals, referring to the machines' usage of them as "a symbiotic relationship", and the terminal at the end of P-2 outright describes their behavior and desire for entertainment.
  • A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment at the end of 5-3 also shows they are able to react to outside stimuli, and either feel pain or have a sense of humor, when you find one that was tipped over when the ship capsized:
  TIP OF THE DAY: Ow.
• Money Sink: In addition to regular weapon variations, their merchandise includes weapon customization options that require 5 million points in total to acquire.
• Monster Compendium: They hold a record of every enemy and boss V1 has fought, as well as observations on their behaviors and how to best handle them.
• Only Sane Man: Greatly downplayed, as they greatly enjoy watching Machines cause bloodshed, but while most Machines are too single-mindedly obsessed with efficiency to consider cooperation in favor of killing each other to selfishly hog as much blood as they can, Terminals are the rare exception as they have a trading relationship with the rest of their kind; the mobile Machines get weapons, the Terminals get entertainment watching them fight.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Terminals are realistically nothing more than glorified vending machines or computer monitors, and yet they are clearly shown to run on SmileOS 2.0 (meaning they require a substantial amount of blood to function, probably from multiple people at the minimum) as well as possessing full artificial intelligence that motivates them to give things to other Machines that alleviate their boredom.

^{Click here to see it fully operational}

• Grave Robbing: After the Exacavator is long dead and has been buried in a sequestered and hard-to-reach section of the marble buildings in 7-2, V1 takes the Excavator's Jackhammer arm from its corpse and appropriates it as part of their own arsenal.
• Hero of Another Story: There is a white flag on the corpse of the Excavator that reads "Vegter Vandie Volk", Afrikaans for "warrior of the people". Whatever the Excavator went through, it is clear they not only have a story of their own, they were different from the other Machines, as this one protected people rather than killing them.
• A Hero to His Hometown: The Excavator's flag reads "Vegter Vandie Volk", Afrikaans for "warrior of the people", implying it was built to protect the people of their home country.
• Pile Bunker: Their Jackhammer arm that V1 can take, if the flag is anything to go by, the Excavator robot fought with it to protect its people.
• Posthumous Character: By the time V1 meets the Excavator, it is already dead, with only the Jackhammer upgrade on the floor for the blue combat robot to grab and use it.
• Token Heroic Orc: Amongst all the selfish and vicious Killer Robots that view cooperation and sharing as a waste of resources, the Excavator stands out for being built for a noble cause by protecting its homeland's people rather than continuing bloodshed for its own sake.

• Alternate History: What people call the Final War has its roots in what used to be recognizable as World War I, a version of it that simply kept going through the entire 21st century.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: After the New Peace, human society rebuilt itself on the backs of the Earthmovers as human settlements began to reach out and co-operate with each other to save their nearly exterminated society, in sharp contrast to their ancestors from the Final War whose Lensman Arms Race nearly killed them all and destroyed the planet.
• Great Offscreen War: In 1914, the Final War started among humankind. Little is seen of it, though it is known that the conflict dragged on for approximately 200 years and culminated in human soldiers being supplanted by increasingly sophisticated machine armies.
• Hope Spot: The New Peace. After the last of the Earthmovers shut down from a lack of sunlight and the Final War truly concluded, Humanity emerged from hiding, began reaching out between communities and slowly but surely rebuilt their society into something resembling normalcy, proving that humanity wasn't simply doomed to pettily destroy themselves with meaningless war.
• Humanity's Wake: The entire game takes place after all humans have been wiped off the face of the earth.
• Humans Are Good: Despite humanity's flaws and the absolutely horrific Forever War that spawned for two centuries, humanity is at its core shown to be unquestionably this trope when push comes to shove. King Minos making even the Lust layer of Hell itself into a paradise was entirely based on humanity's belief in good, and even the more ruthless human entities have some redeeming qualities, like Sisyphus caring for his close companions and bringing hope to his people — despite knowing that both them and himself are doomed no matter what. By the time the last of the Earthmovers died and humanity emerged from their bunkers, humans ended the Final War peacefully and strove to make a better future
• Humans Are Flawed: Hell is full after all, and there are a great number of humans who have committed sins against one another. This eventually culminated in the Final War... but war still ended after all, and humanity got past their differences for peace. Even within Hell, the realm of eternal punishment to sinners, those sent to Hell were able to unify and show care for each other, like with the Lust layer's flourishing society or the rebellion against their torment in the Greed layer. Ironically enough, humanity was seemingly instead ended by a being of pure evil that was incensed at humanity moving on past a life of violence into peace, provoking it into ending humanity itself directly.
• Humans Are Special: Humans are innately capable of reincarnation after death, turning into either Husks or Angels. Humans that are notable enough and have strong enough willpower can reincarnate so strong that angels fear them. They also built the Machines, a faction so powerful that they can best Heaven's strongest warriors, and are said to be destroying Hell itself. God is almighty and all powerful, but even His best attempts could not remove free will from humankind, something that vexed Him to no end. Overall, humanity is unique in the ULTRAKILL universe in ways that are awe-inspiring and awful in equal parts.
• Humans Are Survivors: Despite the brutal horrors of the Final War and the world at large becoming an unlivable wasteland, mankind not only managed to stay alive, they were able to muster enough strength to reach out to their former enemies and work together to rebuild all that they had lost, bringing about the New Peace.
• Lensman Arms Race: The Final War ended up becoming an endless game of technological and cybernetic leapfrog as humanity invented the Gutterman, which was countered by the Guttertank. Continue on until you reach the Earthmovers, machines so powerful and deadly that they scoured the earth of almost all human life before the short-lived New Peace. It's heavily implied that V1 themself is the final iteration of this arms race^note the way that the V-Series operates heavily suggests that they were specifically designed to kill an Earthmover from the inside out, and therefore the very last creation of humanity before their extinction.
• Rousseau Was Right: The Final War was waged among humanity as a hyper-extended World War I, which decimated the population and Earth's biosphere. But once all the biggest war machines stopped working, the surviving humans immediately began reaching out to each other and slowly but surely rebuilding the vestiges of their ruined civilization by cooperating with each other and eschewing the senseless violence of their ancestors.
• War Is Hell: The Final War was such a desperate and pointless struggle, it even burned holes in civilian life and rendered home as just another battlefield for the soldiers discharged after the arms race began.
• Wowing Cthulhu: This game's portrayal of humanity was so royally fucked up that it earned the respect of the mastermind of Hell's endless sadism. The Earthmover is practically idolized as the perfected state of cruelty, poetics waxed at length in a book it left to narrate its thoughts to V1 on the matter, and the Guttermen designed to carry their fuel sources inspired it to take notes for its own unholy creations, like the Mannequins.

• Content Leak: In-Universe, the lore from the end of P-2 mentions that a previously-written draft got leaked, and they had to deal with the repercussions.
• Deadpan Snarker: Marked comment text has them cynically snipe at whoever they're frustrated with, such as the "suits" who didn't bother reading their previous giant text block, or complaining about a project lead's music choice at the terminals.
  [note: fuck you tom im so fucking tired of this stupid song and having to listen to it every morning over your garbage intercom]
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The lore from the ARG that appears to be written by them has them stop typing suddenly, followed by multiple lines of blank text, and then an evil force interjecting and ordering another person to die.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Their typing style is defined by occasional frustrated comment text in grey. The ARG lore entry, addressed to the same Tom from an in-game lore entry, has none of that, as they've realized the gravity of the situation and the importance of getting a message sent immediately.

Hell

Yes, Hell itself. The realm of eternal torment created by God to punish sinners, Hell is a living, thinking entity that revels in torturing its inhabitants for its own twisted entertainment.

• Abhorrent Admirer: The secret lore book found in Fraud 8-3 reveals that when Lucifer was chucked into its domains after questioning God, Hell was elated to have a new toy it can torment across the 37 different states of existence beyond comprehension. It words its feelings on the matter like a deranged lover, excited they have the object of their obsession in their grasp. Hell begins holding V1 in a similar regard as they progress further through its layers, which does not bode well for the machine, given what Hell is capable of doing when it wants to have entertainment of its own.
• Above the Gods: Hell is quite literally the rock so heavy that God himself cannot lift it. Something about Hell is so strongly alien, so perfectly cruel and monstrous, that even God can't just undo its creation and wipe the slate clean. This also extends to His subordinates in Heaven, whose influence over Hell rigidly only extends to keeping its inhabitants from rebelling against Heaven itself and otherwise leaving Hell to its own devices.
• Abusive Parent: Hell is the source of the Demons, yet it has no true love towards what are essentially its own children. Hell's callousness is displayed by sending them to be slaughtered by V1, so it can watch the bloodshed out of sadistic glee. As for a couple standout examples:
  • The Minotaur was sculpted as a cruel gift for King Minos. Once King Minos banished The Minotaur to rot in the Garden of Forking Paths for a millennium, Hell lured it to the exit room... only to take away that hope of freedom and forcing it to battle V1 in a losing duel, resulting in The Minotaur dying with regret for failing its dream of seeing the sky one last time.
  • Once Geryon is defeated by V1's hands, the demon gets impaled head-first onto the tail of a statue based on its own likeness, and its corpse was displayed in front of an empty theater with the sound of cheering, implying that Hell saw the fight as personal entertainment with no regard to Geryon's well-being.
• Adaptational Villainy: In The Bible and the poem, Hell is a place of punishment, but it never extends beyond that. Here, Hell is not only alive, but evil, being a sadistic realm that's implied to wipe out the entire human race and other surface life so it can claim their souls and torture them for eternity as an act of twisted entertainment.
• Alien Geometries: The layers of Hell are weird, which becomes more obvious at the end of Act I onwards. Many levels seem to exist in utterly massive locations, with unobstructed skies and a horizon that goes on for miles, even though you might have come in from another massive location with an unobstructed sky and miles-long horizon. You can sometimes see the shaft the level entrance connects to reaching upwards seemingly infinitely, other times it's inside of a structure you can climb to the top of without ending up back in the previous level. Also, the entrance to Gluttony is somehow inside the mouth of The Corpse of King Minos, despite the layer not actually being within the corpse itself. But all of those examples are nothing compared to Fraud, where the layer is a Non-Euclidean mess made of continuously warping and looping environmental structures where gravity bends on itself.
• The Anti-God: A unique example in that it was created by God himself. Hell is an immeasurably powerful being that not even God could unmake that creates Demons to torture its prisoners, idolizes the soulless machines humanity created to wage war, something essentially every heavenly character despises, and is motivated entirely and exclusively by a desire to torture and destroy seemingly everything. This is even reflected in its presentation in the story: it speaks in massive, all-capitalized red text that's similarly scornful and cruel to God prior to creating Hell when describing its ideal fate for humanity: entirely exterminated by the machines in a show of total meaninglessness. Disturbingly, while there are signs it may be guiding V1, God Himself has vanished entirely, with Gabriel claiming God has outright died.
• Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Hell's makeup changes to some degree for those who come in through the "Prelude" area, with transition zones appearing such that one can progress further through no matter what path they take.
• Ax-Crazy: Hell is a sick-minded realm that has a twisted fascination with violence to the point that it invokes Gladiator Games within itself for vile entertainment, and its otherwise Wicked Cultured writing gets even more delirious as V1 descends deeper into its Layers. Furthermore, Hell outright worships the idea of violence by seeing it as a divine truth of life itself in one of 8-3's secret books where it proclaims that all life (except The Almighty Father) exist to feed on each other, and it's heavily implied to be responsible for wiping out all remaining life on the Earth's surface.
• Big Bad: Ultimately, V1 is traveling and killing their way through Hell for the sake of self-preservation, and everything they encounter in it is irrelevant to that goal so long as they give V1 more blood to grease their gears with. Hell, on the other hand, in addition to having orchestrated the entire downfall of Humanity to some degree as well as being a force so powerful and malevolent that not even Heaven knows how to control it, actively manipulates and orchestrates conflicts for anyone that descends deeper and deeper within its layers, including V1.
• Circles of Hell: Like its poem counterpart, Hell in this game is divided into nine layers.
  • Limbo: A lush and green Greco-Roman paradise that is anything but, as its fake serenity in the form of flat screens posing as skies, fake plants with holograms incorporated in, hologram waterfalls, and sounds of wind and bird songs coming from hidden speakers, drives its sinners to insanity.
  • Lust: A black and purple Victorian city with sprinkles of Cyberpunk elements. Unlike Limbo, Lust was a genuine paradise thanks to the efforts of King Minos and his beloved subjects, until Gabriel slew the king for freeing Lust's sinners from their torment. Now under the control of the parasitic serpents he once commanded, King Minos' reanimated and colossal corpse searches the once prosperous kingdom for sinners to punish.
  • Gluttony: Unlike its poem counterpart, which is described as a realm of icy mud, this game's version of Gluttony is depicted as a visceral red realm filled to the brim with flesh, teeth, bones, acid, giant rotting hands, and numerous eyes covering the surfaces, with gaping mouths serving as the layer's doors. This is the first layer that's depicted completely differently from its poem counterpart, being a visceral Hellscape rather than a slimy snowscape of scum and mud ^note It is closer to appearance to the Circle of Gluttony as depicted in Dante's Inferno. King Minos' Prime Soul is imprisoned in this layer.
  • Greed: A yellow desert layer with Egyptian elements such as pyramids and mural art. Sinners are punished by rolling boulders across large pyramids in the scorching heat of the blazing bright sun, and the "sand" is actually burning hot flakes of gold that burn almost everything it touches. The layer was once ruled by King Sisyphus, who, unlike King Minos, led a violent rebellion against Heaven and its army until he was decapitated by Gabriel, who then swiftly finished off Sisyphus' remaining forces with his fellow Angels.
  • Wrath: A blue ocean layer with nautical aesthetics, unlike its poem counterpart which is a swamp. The Styx was once a river until it turned into a vast ocean, thanks to millions of sinners populating this realm. The sinners are forced to struggle against each other for air, and the ones that don't sink to the ocean's abyss out of despair, where Hell energy and their collective agony merge them together to form The Leviathan, a titanic, serpentine Demon that absorbs the despair-ridden sinners into its body to grow bigger and stronger despite Gabriel binding it to the Styx.
  • Heresy: A sinister red and black Hellscape resembling a cathedral decorated with goat skulls, chains, and lava pits. This layer is the closest thing the game has to a classical depiction of Hell. King Sisyphus' Prime Soul is imprisoned in this layer, in the city of Dis, a dark, hellish cityscape where every window is blazing red by the burning souls of the heretics and it constantly rains blood.
  • Violence: An almost completely barren, white field that's shrouded in fog. The outermost part of the layer is made up of a large, pristine megastructure that serves as a labyrinth to prevent escape, its architecture like a mausoleum or art museum populated by sentient mannequins. The layer is divided into three rings: violence against others, violence against oneself, and violence against God. The first ring takes War Is Hell literally by being a near pitch-black Forever War accompanied by searchlights, blazing gatling guns, and a trio of colossal machines. The second ring is a garden of trees with humanoid shapes in their branches in perpetual agony. The third ring is a barren wasteland under an endless rain of fire, where The Earthmovers, colossal war machines that are the pinnacle of the Lensman Arms Race, stride around and prey on each other.
  • Fraud: A realm superficially designed to resemble civilizations and buildings during the New Peace, but any superficial observation shows it's anything but. It's an illusory, non-Euclidian space that doesn't obey any sort of physics or logic, where paths can inexplicably lead back into themselves, spaces can warp and loop in on themselves in infinite recursion, and gravity changes on a whim - just to name a few of its peculiarities. Notably, almost nothing is known about Fraud, not even its intended punishment, as anyone that observes it for long enough experiences total breakdown of the senses and surrounding space, followed by going off the radar entirely - while souls in the other layers are visibly being tortured, the ones that enter Fraud seem to simply vanish. This may or may not all be part of an even bigger illusion, given how there are several hints that the entire layer is an empty auditorium and everything that happens in it is simply the layer messing with V1's perception of reality.
• Color-Coded Speech: Hell's dialogue is generally identifiable by all-red text, usually in capital letters and with wide kerning between them.
• The Corrupter: It's implied that Hell manipulated mankind to create blood-fueled robots to spread the bloodshed that would entail from their creation; manipulated the Machines into turning against their human creators before turning against each other; and created the Minotaur to bring out the worst aspects of the otherwise benevolent King Minos by reminding him of his terrible mistakes, causing him to cast the Demon to the Garden of Forking Paths where it rotted away while desperately trying to escape for a millennium.
• Dark Is Evil: Five of its layers, Lust, Gluttony, Wrath, Heresy, and Violence (after 7-1) are shrouded in darkness, and with the exception of Lust (until Gabriel killed King Minos), they all exist to torture its sinners.
  • Lust is a black and purple realm that punishes sinners by blowing them away with strong winds. However, it temporarily becomes Dark Is Not Evil when King Minos and his people reformed the layer into a thriving paradise for themselves until he was slain by Gabriel for freeing the layer's sinners from their punishment. Now his corpse becomes a colossal zombie controlled by serpentine parasites, Hell-bent on finding sinners to punish.
  • Gluttony combines this trope with Evil Is Visceral, being a dimly-lit realm of flesh where sinners are punished by being merged into its surfaces. The layer is decorated with giant rotting hands and teeth, disembodied mouths serve as doors, pools of acid fill the bottom of its rooms, and eyes cover its surfaces. Open spaces are surrounded by pitch-black darkness, which is best shown in 3-1's stairway arena, 3-2's boss arena, and P-1's spinal stairway.
  • Wrath is a dark, raining, watery realm shrouded in lightning storms where sinners suffer by drowning in the river (now ocean) Styx while struggling against each other for a chance to breathe. Those who sank to the Styx's abyss out of despair are merged together by Hell energy and their hopelessness to form the Leviathan, a towering, serpentine demon born from the still-living souls of despair-induced sinners that are doomed to a horrible fate where all they can do is scream in their collective agony.
  • Heresy is explicitly the most sinister layer in appearance, resembling a gothic black cathedral decorated with goat skulls, blood-red windows, and vermillion doors made from the souls of heretics. Its hallways are shrouded in darkness and red fogs, a blazing red sky looms over the horizon, and the City of Dis is raining blood. Overall, The Heresy Layer wears Red and Black and Evil All Over as a badge of pride, welcoming you with a Drone of Dread as soon as you enter 6-1.
  • The Violence Layer starts off as Light Is Not Good, since it invokes White and Red and Eerie All Over by V1 staining the white layer red with their enemies' blood. However, it pairs this trope starting in 7-2 where the 1st ring is a near pitch-black Forever War with the blood river Phlegethon sitting below the warzone while searchlights and hails of bullets are piercing the darkness with bright white explosions illuminating the background to show the ominous outlines of three titanic machines whose white eyes glow in the all-consuming darkness. 7-3 continues this trope by being a near pitch-black garden illuminated by red agonized trees, before it brings back the eerily bright white room of 7-1 for the final arena. Finally, 7-4 settles on this trope by being a dark gray desert with a blood-red night sky that rains Hellfire.
• Early-Bird Cameo: While Hell being alive is only revealed in the ARG following P-2, material within the game hints at its sapience prior. The descriptions of the Soldier, Stalker, and Leviathan allude to some unknown force which deliberately creates them, while Terminals in P-2 and the door panel right before the Flesh Panopticon borrow Hell's signature text style of red text and/or incorporating a space between each letter of all words.
• Eldritch Location: Hell is a vast, multi-layered plane of existence (which only get worse the further down you travel) that it can reshape to its whim in order to inflict the maximum possible amount of suffering to the inhabitants, full of monstrous creatures it has created for the purpose of inflicting said suffering. It's also very much alive and actively enjoys torturing those that find their way into it, eventually killing them in the process one way or another, making it another kind of Eldritch. Both Humanity and Heaven have done all they can to understand just how Hell works so that they can attempt to better control it, and in the case of the human Hell Expeditions it didn't end well.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Hell is a monstrous entity who believes that suffering and pointless loss are not only superior to love and virtue, but evil will always prevail over good. Thus, Hell is enraged whenever it is proven wrong, as shown by the realm throwing a cosmic temper tantrum when it saw mankind surviving the Great War and the survivors establishing peace with their former enemies. There is also the implication that Hell is unable to fully understand good, as its version of showing "love" to Lucifer is to inflict all known (and unknown) suffering onto them for eternity. This is also illustrated with the Minotaur, a personal monument to death and despair gifted to King Minos to build a supposed rapport, which he only found disgusting and horrifying for reminding him of his horrible mistakes; and the Deathcatchers, which are Hell's deliberate attempt to copy the Idols created by the Ferrymen, but are incapable of their protective shielding due to the malice of their creator.
• Evil Is Hammy: Its monologue in 7-4 is the most dramatic piece of lore in the game with plenty of purple prose and, going by how the book is blank, it's all but stated it's Hell monologuing to V1 through their scanning interface. Likewise, when V1 finds themself blocked later in 7-2, what seems to be Hell says "WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOOM", which compared to past interface messages such as "INSUFFICIENT FIREPOWER" and the like is more grandiose. Also, a secret terminal in 7-3 that opens the "Marked For Death" crystal displays an even more grandiose message that says "YOU'RE THE STAR OF THE SHOW NOW, BABY!" like a campy TV game show host... In the ring of sinners that killed themselves.
• Evil Is Petty: At the end of 7-1, V1 is approaching one of the level exits, which are under the control of Hell, only for the Minotaur to burst through, clearly desperate for its own chance to escape the labyrinth and see the sky one last time. Hell responds by deliberately closing the exit door, something it doesn't do anywhere else in the game, forcing both of them into a fight to the death—one which might have been avoided had Hell not closed the doors given the Machines' extreme reluctance to waste resources.
• Eye Motifs: Hell seems to be associated with eyes, given by the fact that the stained glass windows in Limbo symbolized Hell as a demonic singular eye and the Gluttony layer is littered with gazing eyes. Interestingly, Hell's inhabitants lack true eyes (aside from King Minos), and Angels deliberately remove their eyes whenever they manifest in the realm's domains.
• For the Evulz: Hell is a sapient realm of eternal torment, but even billions of sinners aren't enough to satisfy it; thus, it uses its influence to set up combat encounters, turning its victims into yet more weapons to fight, all for the sake of a violent show. Based on comments throughout the game, it ultimately wants everything and everyone to suffer and perish meaninglessly.
• God of Evil: As The Anti-God to the Man Upstairs himself and the walking embodiment of all things evil, Hell is a malevolent, omnipotent deity with a sadistic drive to torture all living things and revels in causing evil and destruction.
• HA HA HA—No: After the grueling gauntlet in P-2 to arrive at the Flesh Panopticon, there's a prompt to open the final gate. If V1 selects that they're not ready, they receive a response in a similar format to the other times Hell is implied to communicate, which effectively boils down to this.
  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
     a s i f y o u h a d a c h o i c e   
  (The gate opens)
• Genius Loci: Hell is somehow able to reach out and admire V1, having an apparent mind of its own.
• Hell: Obviously. But not only is it layered in the style of Dante's Divine Comedy, it's a living, thinking, and wicked realm.
• Hellevator: The Hell Expedition team installed numerous elevator systems throughout Hell, allowing V1 to descend one layer at a time.
• It Can Think: What was once thought to be a mere Eldritch Location is anything but, being revealed to be a living entity with a twisted mind. While the human Hell expedition team was exploring it, they hardly were aware that Hell was learning how their machines worked, and that it was behind the creation of its own technologically augmented Husks.
• Immortal Immaturity: Hell is almost as old as the universe itself, yet deep down, the living realm has the emotional maturity and temperance of a demented toddler who seeks entertainment above all else.
• Invincible Villain: As Hell itself is an Eldritch Location that not even God could unmake and is more or less a Physical God in its own right, it's clear that nothing in the setting really so much as threatens it and it's strongly implied to be toying with V1. The only thing that could potentially prove its undoing is the Machines killing everything in Hell and possibly causing itself to fade away due to not having anything to sustain on anymore, but even if that happens, it's clear that's an outcome Hell would accept.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: A secret book in 8-3 shows Hell's true beliefs about violence and humankind through its rambling, delirious dialogue. In short, violence is both a necessary means to an end and an end to aspire. For the former, it states that all life is unable to sustain itself without taking it from something else; and for the latter, failure to embrace violence is failure to exercise free will. 
     HOLY HOLY HOLY IS THE LORD. WAR IS ONTOLOGICAL, PEACE IS A FAILURE OF FREE WILL.   
  [...]
     BUT DEATH IS ARABLE, ALL GROWTH IS DEVOURMENT - LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE. IBID. IBID. HOLY HOLY HOLY IS THE LORD, AND THE REST IS VIOLENCE.   
• Kill All Humans: The Part 2 ARG confirms that Hell is the sole perpetrator of humanity's extinction, since its influence has spread to the surface world to wreak havoc with its army of modified Husks. This is further proven by the Violence secret Terminals, showcasing Hell's utter rage that humanity grew beyond the desire of violence and made a new society from the ashes, causing it to throw a tantrum and instead flip the board on humanity to wipe them out.
• Kill Enemies to Open: Provides the justification: Hell is capable of causing doors to shut closed as it teleports enemies in. This was initially assumed to be just doors malfunctioning by the Hell expedition team, and then the terminal author learned otherwise.
• Lack of Empathy: Do you really expect any empathy from a sadistic realm that happily throws its own children to the slaughterhouse for sick kicks?
• Laughably Evil: From all the horror you can get from Hell being alive, sadistic, and omnicidal, it can deliver surprisingly amusing dialogue as much as it delivers equal parts eloquent and disturbing writing, like how it suddenly proclaims that    "WE NEED A BIGGER BOOM"    to give V1 the hint that they need to deliver the payload bombs in 7-2, or how it used a secret Terminal in 7-3 to talk like a TV gameshow host (   "YOU'RE THE STAR OF THE SHOW NOW, BABY!"   ). In 7-S, Hell possibly wrote the text on the big terminal that reads    "CLEAN UP YOUR MESS!"   , making the diabolical dimension come off as a nanny-ish Neat Freak by scolding V1 for causing a bloody mess before demanding them to clean it up by offering them a vacuum cleaner and a hose. Overall, Hell appears to be one of the few characters having a great time at the end of the world.
• Legions of Hell: Aside from the scores of Demons and Husks Hell throws at V1 throughout the game, the ARG implies that Hell's army invaded the Earth's surface to slaughter its inhabitants.
• Light Is Not Good: Four of Hell's layers have bright color schemes, yet they all serve the same purpose as any other layer: Torturing its sinners.
  • Limbo seems to be a Greco-Roman paradise with bright blues and greens, yet it's a false paradise that drives its sinners to insanity with its fake serenity in the form of fake trees, fake water, fake bird songs, and fake skies.
  • Greed is a bright yellow Egyptian desert that tortures its sinners with scorching heat from its own sun and the "sand", which are actually burning hot flakes of gold.
  • Violence is an eerie white graveyard-like wasteland with a vast maze-like mausoleum filled with Mannequins. It also invokes White and Red and Eerie All Over, thanks to V1 staining the white layer red with the blood of their foes. ZigZagged in 7-2 and onwards where while the first room of 7-2 has an eerily white color, Dark Is Evil and Red and Black and Evil All Over are added to the mix, thanks to the 1st ring being a dark Forever War surrounded by the blood river Phlegethon and being guarded by the giant war machines that are shrouded in darkness until an explosion illuminates the background to show their Sinister Silhouettes. The second ring, 7-3, starts off in a pitch-black forest of darkness until its final arena becomes blindingly white like 7-1. Finally, the third and final ring, 7-4, settles onto Dark Is Evil by being a dark gray desert with a crimson night sky that is raining Hellfire.
  • Fraud is one mystery after another but much of it is an imitation of the world during the New Peace. Bright suburbs stretching out into infinity, lit office buildings, fancy hotels, and shopping malls. Only it’s all with ever changing non-euclidean geometries and things certainly don’t stay bright for long….
• Literal Living Hell: Various lore entries alongside an ARG reveal that Hell itself is sapient; messing with and killing humans working on the Hell Expeditions, corrupting and changing data in Terminals, and tormenting its sinners while establishing bloody Gladiator Games for its own pleasure. Comments are left on the Earthmover and the extinction of mankind in 7-4, left in a book written by the demonic realm.
• Mad Artist: In a sense, Hell is an artist, albeit a twisted and depraved one. It takes much inspiration from humanity, both from their classical artwork and from the atrocities they commit against each other. This can be clearly seen with Demons such as the Mannequins and the Minotaur, where the former were inspired by the Guttermen while the latter was inspired by Minos' mistake. Hell is also a poet, as seen with its speech towards the Earthmovers.
• Monster Progenitor: Hell itself is the source of all the Demons V1 encounters throughout the game. This is best hinted by the Leviathan's lore entry where it stated that the Leviathan was created by "the same force that created the other Demons".
• Omnicidal Maniac: Hell believes that existence is so meaningless that all life should suffer before perishing completely. A secret book found during 7-4, which raves about the beauty of the apocalyptic Earthmovers, implies that Hell believes all life on Earth should've ended with said Earthmovers—the pinnacle of all that is warfare for its own sake—should've killed every human, flora, and fauna alive, and then died off themselves, leaving the Earth a barren wasteland. "   NO FINAL WORDS, NO CONCLUDING STATEMENT. NO POINT. PERFECT CLOSURE.   " The same book also implies that Hell is enraged that mankind actually survived this and moved past perpetual warfare, leading to Hell taking a more active approach.
• Painting the Medium: When Hell first speaks at the end of the Part 2 ARG, its text is distinctly written with all letters and punctuation separated by singular spaces, as can be seen in the quote above. This style of text also appears at several points in the game (such as with several lines of text before the P-2 boss and at the end of the secret book in 7-4), strongly implying that Hell is the one speaking/writing in those cases. Additionally, regardless of whether its text is spaced or not at the time, its dialogue is always written in blood red.
• Psychopathic Manchild: For all of Hell's bombast, showmanship, intelligence, and Wicked Cultured traits, it's clear that it is ultimately a very juvenile deity.
  • It tends to write in jokey, tonally inappropriate ways, like using action movie one-liners like "WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOOM" and "GIVE 'EM HELL, KID" in the eternal violence of 7-2, or telling V1 they're the star of the show in 7-3 to mock the suicide victims of the forest they're in.
  • Fraud is where Hell actively toys with V1, with many of these coming off like sick, lowball, tasteless pranks. 8-1 has it swap the colors of the skull key's pedestal to make the player backtrack for little reason, with a low, hissy, reverberating laugh to underscore the schadenfreude. Then when they return to the skull key's room, they're attacked by a Jumpscare of three Cerberi conveniently hiding behind a fake wall, with similar jump-scares in 8-2 with a Guttertank hiding behind a mirror, or a closet door that hides a giant eyeball and a similar laugh audio. Also, 8-3 has a sudden gravity shift in one room to toss V1 around and break the lights across the hallway's ceiling like a giant pinball machine, even complete with pinball sounds. Finally, the background of 8-4's theatre is a large, terribly-drawn doodle of The New Peace's city, appearing as if it was drawn with crayons by children.
  • Nowhere is this better shown where its response to humanity proving it completely wrong on their morality was for it to throw a temper tantrum and flip the board outright by killing all the remaining humans and other remaining life on Earth.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Heresy Layer (especially Heresy), and the Violence Layer (aside from the eerily white 7-1 and the ash grey 7-4) both have a sinister red and black color scheme, and Hell is a sadistic Literal Living Hell that wiped out all surface life on Earth to claim their souls and torture them for all eternity for sick kicks. Even its texts reflect this trope by being bloody-red, all-caps text with pitch-black backgrounds.
• Red Is Violent: Hell is associated with the color red, and it's a sadistic realm of torment that entertains itself by creating violent gladiator games. It also wants to wipe out all life on Earth with the Earthmovers, and when they failed, it's implied that Hell took matters in its own hands by slaughtering every living being on the surface to claim their souls and torture them for all eternity. Notably, Hell begins to address V1 directly in the Violence Layer.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Its reaction to humanity proving better than itself by defying its prediction they would destroy each other upon surviving the Final War was to, effectively, flip the table and engineer the massacre of the newfounded society out of little more than sheer spite at them daring to prove believing in good.
• Sadist: If torturing human souls for an eternity out of sick kicks wasn't enough, the Alternate Reality Game states that Hell invaded the researchers' facilities not to protect itself, but to entertain itself by trapping the researchers before slaughtering them with the modified Husks it has created. All of the in-game mechanics, like the arena encounters and enemy spawns, are all for its own twisted entertainment.
  this is not an attack. this is not a defence. this is entertainment. this is an exhibition of death and cruelty and suffering for its own sake.
• Satanic Archetype: Since Lucifer is implied to be more kind-hearted than the norm, it is Hell itself that takes on the role of the classical Devil, being an infernal, all-powerful overseer of the underworld who tortures its denizens for its own amusement while manipulating the minds of lesser beings (in this case, the machines instead of mankind) to get its way.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: When Hell isn't speaking like a game show host, it speaks in long, rambling sentences with complex vocabulary and poetic statements. The condensed version of what it says boils down to the idea that sin is above virtue, that sin is beautfiul, living beings are violent by nature and by nurture (with God being the sole exception as He does not need to take in order to live), and that existence is ultimately meaningless.
• Shout-Out: Its speech regarding the Earthmovers is a spiritual successor of Judge Holden's speech on war, where both Hell and the Judge praise war is the ultimate practice with humanity being its ultimate practitioner. Notably, Hell and Judge Holden share many similarities, with both being large, powerful, sadistic, Wicked Cultured, Sophisticated as Hell abominations that commit horrific acts, influence others to commit atrocities, and are difficult (if not, impossible) to kill. Adding to this is that Hell was made to imprison and punish all sinners and acts much like the classical Devil, while Judge Holden is implied to be the Anthropomorphic Personification of sin and war.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Excuse the pun. The few cases we see of Hell's own thoughts and text are usually either some matter of directive, a Pre-Mortem One-Liner or it waxing immense and complex poetry worthy of The Divine Comedy inspirations. Then you hit 7-2 and, if the red text is still Hell, it proceeds to casually state "WE'RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BOOM" so that V1 gets the hint to find the payload bombs in the area for blowing open a blocked passage, as if taking a break from its ominousness just to cook up an excuse for more bloodletting, and if V1 decides to wait in front of the Terminal that delivers the payload bombs, the Terminal will switch to Hell's signature blood-red text reading, "   GIVE 'EM H E L L , KID."    Also, a secret terminal that opens the "Marked For Death" crystal in 7-3 shows a text possibly from Hell saying, "   YOU'RE THE STAR OF THE SHOW NOW, BABY!   ", like a hammy TV game show host... In the middle of a literal suicide forest.
• Stalker Without a Crush: While there are some hints that Hell was watching V1 as soon as they entered Hell, it becomes clear that Hell is watching their traversal through its layers from Violence and beyond, directly commenting on V1's actions and giving occasional advice.
• Terms of Endangerment: It claims to "love" Lucifer in a hidden book in 8-3, promising to gift them all the agonies which can and cannot exist.
• Villainous Breakdown: Hell never really demonstrates this in game as it's completely in-control for the entirety of it by this point, but the one variable it never saw coming was humanity putting their differences aside after the apocalypse to slowly revive the world. This, noticeably so, utterly enraged Hell into throwing a massive tantrum and more or less flipping the board by choosing to instead kill all the remaining humans. Even by the time you read its ramblings on this, it's clear it's still salty about it.
• Villainous Crush: Calls Lucifer their love in a secret book in 8-3. Its way of expressing said love is to keep them captive inside of itself and inflicting them with all the agonies that it can think of.
• Villains Love Entertainment: Hell craves violence, death, and suffering as twisted forms of entertainment, which is why it's responsible for the game's combat encounters and simply guides V1 rather than take control of them.
• Villain Respect: With how cruel Hell itself is to its subjects, it says a lot about mankind that it found inspiration in the way Guttermen employ Human Resources. In fact, a secret book in 7-4 is full of praise bordering on idolization for the apocalyptic destruction of the Earthmovers. Subverted once humans stopped providing inspiration due to moving on from war, leading to Hell's attitude to completely flip on them.
• Virtue Is Weakness: One of the secret books Hell wrote in 8-3 displays its disdain towards the idea of peace by seeing it as a "failure of free will" while believing that violence and cruelty are the ultimate truths of life itself. This is due to Hell thinking life is inherently violent as living beings must take sustenance from life in order to continue, with the sole exception being the Father. It's also clear what it thinks of peace as part of Fraud is shaped after the New Peace.
• Walking Spoiler: The fact that Hell is alive is a huge bombshell to the game's lore, and changes the context of several events in the story.
• Wardens Are Evil: An unusual example where the warden is also the prison. Hell itself devotes its existence to torturing its prisoners and forcing them into violent duels out of sadistic pleasure.
• War Is Glorious: Hell loves carnage, destruction, and suffering, and where else can the infernal realm find them other than war itself? It's no wonder why Hell believes that "war is the ultimate practice in which mankind is its ultimate practitioner". Hell recreated the Final War and its war machines in the Violence layer as a twisted tribute, and it deeply admires the Earthmovers for being the pinnacle of all that is warfare while hoping they would obliterate all life on Earth before they died off themselves.
• Wham Line: The second paragraph of the Part 2 Alternate Reality Game drops the bombshell that Hell is alive, intelligent, and malevolent.
  hell is alive. it breathes. it thinks. the entire area is a massive intelligent superorganism and it is harsh and it is cruel.
• Wicked Cultured: Hell itself may be a sadistic realm of torment, but it can be surprisingly eloquent in its writing, as shown by the secret book in 7-4 where it praises The Earthmovers with rich poetry. Its Demons are also sculpted in the image of classical artwork, such as the Cerberi being a reference to The Thinker, and the Leviathan's heart being a reference to The Scream.
• Word-Salad Horror: The closer that V1 approaches to the deepest depths of Hell, the more that Hell's messages to them become more babbling and incoherent, filled with next to nothing but pure id and a craving for violence and cruelty sandwiched in between line after line of nonsensical Purple Prose.
  DROWNING IN DENIAL, MAN SET SAIL IN SEARCH OF A PALINGENETIC SIMULACRUM OF ITHACA, AN EDEN AFORE THE ANTEDILUVIAN, UNTOUCHED BY THEIR OWN SIN-STAINED HANDS… BUT DEATH IS ARABLE, ALL GROWTH IS DEVOUREMENT - LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE. IBID. IBID. HOLY HOLY HOLY IS THE LORD, AND THE REST IS VIOLENCE. NO. EVEN THIS IS NOT ΓΝΩΣΙΣ^note "Gnosis", meaning "Knowledge" or "Understanding".
• Wowing Cthulhu:
  • The cruelty and capability of destruction mankind demonstrated during the Final War was enough to inspire this sapient realm of eternal suffering to actively imitate humankind. The Mannequins were inspired by the Guttermen using otherwise-unwanted Human Resources to create a fighting force, while the Earthmovers were idolized by Hell to the point of them being recreated in the Violence layer.
  • There are some hints that Hell is personally invested in V1's journey through its domain. Violence has a couple messages implied to come directly from Hell and addressed only to V1; most notably, sticking around after getting the bomb in 7-2 "LIGHT UP THE NIGHT" will have the bomb's associated terminal change to red font reading "GIVE 'EM H E L L , KID".
• Yank the Dog's Chain: It's implied that Hell allowed both the Lust Renaissance and the Greed Insurrection to exist, just so it can watch both of them fail and relish in the following misery. It pulls this trope off again, this time to both V1 and especially The Minotaur in 7-1 where it opens the Hellevator before suddenly closing it once the Minotaur returns, forcing them into a duel to the death where V1 kills The Minotaur and crushes the beast's Tragic Dream of freedom to see the sky one last time.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Hell's motive to wipe out the human race is to claim their souls so it can entertain itself by torturing them for all of eternity. However, it finds pitting human souls against the machines even more entertaining, meaning it only briefly claims their souls before killing them off in bloody duels.