This article contains a brief discussion of suicide.
After Yugi, himself,Yu-Gi-Oh!’s most iconic character is undoubtedly Yugi’s rival, Seto Kaiba. Between his major plot relevance and incredible ego and charisma, especially in the English dub, Kaiba is easy to get attached to, even when he’s being a callous jerk, and that’s as true now as it was when he first appeared almost 30 years ago.
There’s no denying that Kaiba is a great character, but unfortunately,Kaiba is hardly a good person. While Kaiba has worked with Yugi and his friends more often than not, he’s also put them and the world, as a whole, through some pretty harrowing situations and shown little remorse for it all, and his power and authority usually gives him little reason to do so.Kaiba, despite ostensibly being on Yugi’s side, will always be one ofYu-Gi-Oh!’s biggest villains at worst and an anti-hero at best, and there are plenty of moments that prove why.
10Kaiba Threatened To Kill Himself If Yugi Beat Him
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode 24 & Chapters 105-106
In Yugi and Kaiba’s duel at Duelist Kingdom, while Kaiba backed Yugi into a corner with hisCrush Card Virus and Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, Yugi turned things around with a powerful combo that completely crippled Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon and all but won him the duel. With no other options left, Kaiba pulled out one last desperate play to win: threatening to kill himself if Yugi beat him.
Not only was it cowardly and downright disgusting of Kaiba to use the threat of suicide to get one over on Yugi, but after Yugi threw the match,Kaiba had the nerve to insult Yugi for not having the resolve to kill him if it meant he could win. The only saving grace was that Kaiba was desperate to save Mokuba, but it’s still horrible, and it illustrates just how petty and obsessive Kaiba can be.
9Kaiba Nearly Let Joey Drown In Battle City
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Chapter 199
At the end of the Battle City preliminaries, Yugi was forced to duel a brainwashed Joey in a death match where one or both of them would be dragged into the ocean by an anchor they were both chained to. Joey, after breaking free of Marik’s control, freed Yugi, but in his haste to do so, he forgot the key to his own chains, and he was quickly on the verge of drowning.
In the anime, Serenity saved Joey after finally getting the courage to remove her blindfold, but conversely,theYu-Gi-Oh!manga had Kaiba save Joey from drowning, but only after purposefully waiting until he was about to die. Granted, Kaiba did save Joey’s life and acknowledged his skill as a duelist, but that doesn’t make it any less terrible a thing for him to have done.
8Kaiba Made Light Of Joey’s Death In Battle City
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Episodes 128-129 & Chapters 248-251
In the Battle City finals, Joey faced off against Yami Marik in a Shadow Game where the damage dealt to their monsters would be transferred to their minds. The duel escalated to where Marik summoned The Winged Dragon of Ra and dealt unfathomable mental damage with its God Phoenix form, and while Joey initially seemed to have survived the attack, he ultimately succumbed to the damage and died, albeit temporarily.
Joey’s death in Battle City was nothing but a tragedy, but Kaiba didn’t care at all. Not only did he thank Joey for letting him see Ra’s final ability, but when it came time for his duel with Yugi,Kaiba callously remarked about “Joey’s coffin being heavy” if Yugi’s friends couldn’t join him. Kaiba has always shown little empathy for the majority of the cast, and his complete indifference to Joey’s death is the biggest example of such.
7Kaiba Sent Yugi’s Grandpa To The Hospital Over A Trading Card
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode 1 & Chapters 27-28
In the very first episode of the anime, Kaiba, insulted by Solomon Muto’s refusal to give him his Blue-Eyes White Dragon, forced him into a duel using KaibaCorp’s new holographic duel stadiums. The stress of the duel put Solomon in the hospital, and to add insult to injury, Kaiba tore up his Blue-Eyes to ensure he was the only one who could have a copy.
Kaiba hospitalizing Solomon was terrible, and it was even worse in the manga. Not only did Kaiba force Solomon to duel him by threatening to kill Yugi, but while the anime made it unclear why Solomon had a heart attack,theYu-Gi-Oh!manga had Kaiba deliberately try to kill Solomon with holographic imagery meant to copy Yami Yugi’s Penalty Game until Yugi agreed to participate in Death-T. The anime cut out most of Kaiba’s villainy from the manga, and it’s easy to see why.
6Kaiba Tried To Kill Mokuba For Losing To Yugi
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Chapter 36
In the penultimate challenge of Death-T, Mokuba challenged Yugi to a rematch in Capsule Monster Chess, which Yugi ultimately won. Kaiba, of course, never had faith that Mokuba would win, and when he lost, he punished him with the same onslaught of horrific imagery he showed Solomon Muto, fully intent on killing him for his failure, and he would have done so if Yugi hadn’t saved him.
Since the anime compressed the Death-T arc into just Yugi and Kaiba’s duel in the first episode, there was no time to show off just how evil Kaiba was, and sure enough,Kaiba not even hesitating to try and kill Mokuba for losing perfectly illustrates how horrible a person he used to be. It was a plot point that Kaiba had become so twisted that he forgot the love he had for Mokuba, but unfortunately, that doesn’t make his actions any less horrible.
5Kaiba Ruined Innocent Lives To Get His Blue-Eyes White Dragon Cards
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Chapter 27
In theYu-Gi-Oh!anime, there was never any explanation for how Kaiba got his three Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards in the first episode. Granted, the point was just to sell him as a powerful antagonist, but he just acted like Solomon’s Blue-Eyes was the first one he had ever seen, so finding out that he already had three made the entire ordeal notably odd.
TheYu-Gi-Oh!manga explained how Kaiba got his three Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards, and it’s nothing but horrifying. Each card was originally owned by someone else, andKaiba used his power to destroy the lives of the original owners of his Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards and force them to hand them over, with one person even committing suicide over it. The entire scene illustrated that Kaiba was even more deranged than he was in his first appearance, and the Death-T arc only escalated things from there.
4Kaiba Was Willing To Let Everyone Die When He Blew Up Alcatraz
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Episodes 142-143 & Chapters 277-288
After losing to Yugi in Battle City, Kaiba, feeling that Alcatraz had served its purpose, decided to blow it up as a symbolic means of moving on from his past and embracing his future. Kaiba never told anyone until after Yugi’s duel with Marik, however, and in the manga, he had already set the detonator before the duel, meaning it easily could have gone off while they were still dueling.
Kaiba’s complete willingness to let everyone be killed over his personal drama was bad on its own, but in the anime, the blimp’s engines were damaged beyond repair, meaning thatKaiba would have killed everyone when he blew up Alcatraz if Mokuba hadn’t called a helicopter to bring Joey to the hospital. It’s a rare case of the anime making Kaiba worse than he was in the manga, and his maniacal laughter in the aftermath only further sells that point.
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! Chapters 28-32
In theYu-Gi-Oh!manga, after sending Solomon to the hospital, Kaiba had Yugi and his friends go through Death-T, a giant theme park that was, in reality, a massive death trap. Each floor had a different obstacle for Yugi and his friends to overcome, and they were all meant to push Yugi to his limit before his final challenge of a rematch with Kaiba.
Not only was Death-T filled with multiple death traps that nearly killed Yugi and his friends, with Tristan almost getting killed if not for Mokuba saving him, but to make matters worse,Kaiba hired professional assassins and a psychotic serial killer based on Jason Voorhees to run each death trap, all of whom had every intention to kill Yugi and his friends. Overall, if there’s anything from the manga that illustrates how diabolical Kaiba is, it’s everything he put the cast through in the Death-T arc.
2Kaiba Slowly Made Duel Monsters A Horrifyingly Essential Part Of Life
As Shown Throughout The Majority Of Yu-Gi-Oh!
In the world ofYu-Gi-Oh!, not only is Duel Monsters the biggest sport in the world, but when KaibaCorp teamed up with Industrial Illusions to expand the game with Solid Vision technology, it blew up to the point that most of the culture and even the economy began to revolve around Duel Monsters, something the characters never so much as bat an eye at.
The way Kaiba slowly made the world revolve around Duel Monsters is frightening on its own, but it’s made even worse thanks to things like him using Duel Disks to spy on people all around the world and how, according to Diva in2016’sYu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, Kaiba’s made it so you need a deck to obtain citizenship.Kaiba has slowly used Duel Monsters to make himself something of a pseudo-dictator, and the world’s obliviousness to that makes it even worse.
1Kaiba Allowed His Company To Create A Dystopian Nightmare In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s
As Shown In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Season 1
While Kaiba doesn’t physically appear in2008’sYu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, his presence can still be felt in a major way. As Duel Monsters got bigger and bigger, KaibaCorp grew into a tyrannical megacorp and transformed Domino City into the dystopian New Domino City where the rich have all the power and the poor are segregated, jailed, and constantly monitored by their corrupt Sector Security.
While life in New Domino City vastly improves in season 2, it doesn’t change how horrific a place it was, all of which was done on purpose by Rex Goodwin, and even if Kaiba wasn’t directly responsible,KaibaCorp’s tyrannical rule inYu-Gi-Oh! 5D’sis the perfect embodiment of every terrible thing Kaiba has ever done inYu-Gi-Oh!Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’smight be in a separate continuity from theYu-Gi-Oh!manga, but it’s still the best showing ofwhy Kaiba is one ofYu-Gi-Oh!’s biggest villains, by far.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
Cast
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters follows Yûgi Muto, a frail youth targeted by bullies, who discovers his alter ego, Yami Yûgi, after completing the ancient Millennium Puzzle. This new persona, embodying the “King of Games,” emerges to challenge opponents through mystical “Shadow Games,” when Yûgi faces injustice.
