| “ | Vlad: My vultures were supposed to bring the big idiot to me, but you'll do! Danny Phantom, right? Danny: You... you know me? Vlad: Of course I know you! You're the ghost boy who uses his powers for good. How quaint. Aren't you going to try to shove me into your ridiculous thermos? |
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| ~ Danny meeting Vlad in his ghost form for the first time. |
Vlad Masters, also known as Vlad Plasmius, is the main antagonist of Danny Phantom and Danny’s arch-nemesis.
He’s a billionaire industrialist, who is the C.E.O. of VladCo., and a human/ghost hybrid like Danny. He became one 20 years prior to the series following an accident with a college experiment he worked on with Jack and Maddie that left him hospitalized for years. This event left him bitter, and he vows to destroy Jack for marrying and "stealing" Maddie from him.
He was voiced by the late Martin Mull.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
- He developed a hatred towards Jack after he accidentally gave him ghost powers and married his love interest, Maddie, even going as far as frequently trying to humiliate, and even kill him. It should also be noted that Jack still viewed him as a friend and was even willing to vote for him when he ran for mayor (although he was oblivious to his hatred).
- This is pretty ironic considering that part of the reason he became rich was because he used his ghost powers to commit robberies.
- He has an unhealthy obsession with Maddie, despite being aware that she's a happily married woman with a family, even going as far as making holograms of her that occasionally compliments him and even naming his cat after her.
- In an alternate present timeline, where he is married to Maddie, he was shown to be controlling as he forbids her from continuing her ghost research. He also lies to her stating that Jack blames her for the accident that turned him into a ghost and never wants to see her again. This shows that he never truly cared for Jack nor even Maddie to begin with.
- Also in that timeline, while it was left ambiguous whether or not he actually killed Alt!Jack, he showed no remorse for his attempt at murder.
- Alt!Maddie admits that her marriage with Alt!Vlad was never a happy one, due to his toxic controlling nature. Vlad pridefully admits that he's controlling, right before coldly reminding her that he's her husband, implying he cared more about having her than loving her (thus making his obsession over Maddie even more unhealthy).
- Tries multiple times to manipulate Danny into betraying his father and becoming his adopted son/successor.
- Even though he has some implied affinity towards Danny (mostly due to them both being half-ghosts), he still has zero qualms beating Danny into a bloody pulp, as best shown in their very first fight when Vlad beat Danny to the point of unconsciousness, showing no regards to the boy's well-being until he learns of Danny's hybrid status. Even after that, he's always beating Danny up in a fight whenever Danny refuses.
- Vlad's also remarked in "Kindred Spirits" that if his cloning experiment with Danny was successful, the original Danny would be "obsolete" to him, heavily implying that he was going to murder him once he served his purpose (which also implies that he never actually cared about Danny as a person, but rather as an ideal son he wanted to shape into his own image).
- Secretly uses Valerie Gray as a pawn to his plans, even giving her ghost-hunting equipment to cause more problems with Danny. It's eventually revealed that the true purpose of Valerie's weapons was to spy on Danny so Vlad can study and collect Danny's DNA samples for his secret cloning project.
- Tricks Maddie and Danny into attending a mother/son science convention in Florida (when they were actually being taken to the Colorado Rockies where Vlad's private mountain chalet was), with the intent of trying to convince them both to live with him and abandon Jack. When they left, he immediately tried getting them back by having mutated ghost animals chase them.
- Later in the episode, he temporarily takes away Danny’s powers, leaving him to deal with the mutated ghost animals, all defenseless. Danny was only lucky to be saved by his mother, Maddie, who is a ninth-degree black belt.
- He even sent his mutant ghost animals to kill Jack and Jazz in Amity Park.
- Vlad even reveals in the episode that he's hunted animals down solely to perform gruesome experiments on their spirits, turning them into his minions, and also hangs their pelts in his walls as trophies.
- He plans on obtaining the Skeleton Key so he can get the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage so he can get ultimate power, even hiring ghost hunters to distract Danny so he can steal the Fentons’ ghost portal. This makes him responsible for reviving Pariah Dark.
- After he helps Danny defeat Pariah Dark, he takes advantage of the situation by telling Maddie that he saved Danny (who passed out because of the Ecto-Skeleton he used to help defeat the aforementioned king) merely to win back her good graces.
- Is indirectly responsible for Dark Danny's actions as his ghost-half merged with Danny's.
- Has Skulker steal various equipment to help him improve the Ecto-Skeleton.
- During the episode, he makes Jazz betray her brother, Danny (although Vlad was unaware that Jazz was just using him to get information from Skulker), and threatens to kill her with the nanobots he injected her with to ensure she doesn't betray him. When she does end up betraying Vlad, Danny was able to snatch the remote from Vlad before he could use it to kill her.
- When he becomes infected with lethal ecto-acne, he purposely infects Danny’s friends, Sam and Tucker, with the same deadly disease to blackmail him into helping him find a cure.
- He tries to create a perfect clone of Danny using his DNA he got from previous battles. One of the many clones he created was Danielle, whom he uses to help him capture Danny to get more DNA from him and complete his cloning experiment. He lies to Danielle that if she helps him, he'll stabilize her. However, she eventually betrays him after she realizes he planned on disposing of her, due to viewing her as a failed experiment instead of a sentient girl, and never intended to help stabilize her at all.
- In the episode “D-Stabilized”, he has Valerie kidnap her for him (convincing her that Danielle was evil) so he could melt and study her, which was shown to be a slow and painful process, and he sadistically enjoyed watching the girl cry in agony. It's only thanks to Danny that she was permanently stabilized at the last minute.
- These instances also showcase that Vlad is a total hypocrite. Despite wanting to be loved, he treats the only two people who've ever shown him any kind of love, Jack and Danielle, like dirt, due to holding a grudge against Jack and viewing Danielle as nothing but a disposable clone.
- While running for mayor, Vlad cheats by possessing everyone in Amity Park to vote for him unanimously.
- In his first days as mayor, it's alarmingly clear that his new laws are more to screw with Danny and his friends, not for the benefit of the town. He bans technology with the "Technus Act", mandates school uniforms, and proposes mandatory school roll calls before and after class and surveillance cameras all over town to ensure Danny never interferes with his plans. He even renames the Nasty Burger into "McMasters" where teenagers are not allowed for no other reason than to mess with Danny's life even more.
- He even tries to make Danny Phantom public ghost enemy #1 again, practically leaving the town defenseless without their "duly-deputized protector". When Vlad sends the Guys in White to deal with the rogue ghosts, Danny suspected that these "attacks" were all staged by Vlad, who's trying to convince Amity Park they don't need Danny Phantom.
- When Danny attempts to apologize and take responsibility for all the pranks he pulled on Vlad, the latter refuses to hear out nor acknowledge Danny's pleas and vows to continue making his and everyone's lives as miserable as possible purely out of pettiness. This forces Danny's hand at having to make Vlad look bad by tricking him into "shooting an innocent kid". In the end, Vlad was forced to remove all his "anti-ghost restrictions" and rebuild the Nasty Burger merely to save his own reputation.
- He even uses his advantage as mayor to illegally spy on the Fenton family (and practically everyone else in Amity Park) through tiny bug-like drones.
- He planned to use Vortex to help him control the weather in Amity Park to help his status as mayor, using the Spectral Barometer to keep him under control.
- Once Vortex breaks free, he decides to ask for Danny’s help and then cowardly leaves Danny alone to take care of him. After Danny absorbs some of Vortex's weather abilities, he does try his best to calm him down throughout the episode, but it was out of pragmatic reasons, as he didn’t want Danny to use them against him.
- This also makes him responsible for Vortex's crimes since he freed him from his prison and started causing chaos throughout the world once he broke free from Vlad's control. And Vortex was already being sentenced by the Observants for causing chaos prior to the episode, until Vlad sent him free.
- At the end of the episode, he betrays Danny by publicly blaming him.
- He is also indirectly responsible for unleashing Undergrowth, due to approving and administering new buildings while also tearing down some environmental plants.
- Steals the Infi-Map twice to try to take over the Ghost Zone and purposely mess up the timeline.
- In “Phantom Planet”, he hires a team of ghost hunters solely to replace and humiliate Danny in an attempt to get him to quit being a hero. After successfully doing so, he then forces all residents in Amity Park to pay the Masters Blasters large tips due to "government ghost funding" getting expensive (but it's implied he's also embezzling money from them purely out of greed).
- In the same episode, when the Disasteroid gets knocked towards Earth (thanks to Vlad’s satellite that exploded earlier), he uses this to hold the world for ransom while revealing his ghost self. He demands that they give him 500 billion dollars and complete control over the world, in exchange for saving everyone by turning the Disasteroid intangible.
- Even if he didn't intentionally cause the Disasteroid incident, he was still responsible for it as he attacked the satellite with ecto-blasts (in a vain attempt to kill Danny and his friends), which ultimately caused it to be knocked out of Saturn's orbit. Even after learning it was his fault, he was willing to let countless lives perish for his own benefit of gaining world supremacy.
- After funding and creating a weapon capable of destroying the Disasteroid and saving the Earth, Vlad's ego drives him to waste his own resources by purposely sending Jack and the Masters Blasters the wrong coordinates to blow up the wrong asteroid, and Maddie confirms that it was the Earth's one shot at survival. Afterwards, he uses the Disasteroid crisis as an opportunity for absolute power over the Earth by promising to turn it intangible if the world accepts him to be its sole ruler. Yet, due to his satellite's explosion, Vlad was left completely unaware that the Disasteroid was composed of Ecto-ranium, an anti-ghost element.
- As a bit of personal embarrassment, Vlad makes Jack fly him to the Disasteroid while verbally/psychologically abusing him. Jack tries to understand where Vlad's bitterness was coming from and apologizes for turning him into a half-ghost, but Vlad coldly denies his pleads and, to rub more salt into Jack's old wounds, reveals his plot to steal Maddie from him and force her to be his "queen". After Vlad's plan fails, he tries to convince Jack to let him back into the ship, yet never apologizes for the threats he made. Disillusioned, Jack abandons his former friend in space to protect himself and his family, especially his wife, from Vlad.
- In the novel, he goes to Clockwork in an attempt at getting another chance to fix his past mistakes. He attacks him after he refuses which makes him indirectly responsible for the novel's plot as this caused Dark Danny being freed from his prison.
- While the heinous standards of the show are high, he stands out enough as he was willing to let the Earth be destroyed by the Disasteroid if his demands were not met.
- It's also worth pointing out that the Disasteroid would've destroyed the Ghost Zone by extension (due to it and the Earth being flipsides) and Vlad was willing to let billions perish for the same exact reason. This also leads to Danny's ghost enemies teaming up with him to save both worlds.
- Additionally, within these heinous standards, Vlad has directly attempted to murder a total of six people in the series some of whom are under-age. He also is argaubly more personal to Danny than other villains of the show.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- There are times when he felt remorse for his actions.
- In “The Ultimate Enemy”, he felt remorse for his villainous ways and decided to help Danny by removing his time medallion from within him.
- In the series finale, “Phantom Planet”, after his attempt to make the Disasteroid intangible failed due to it being made mostly of Ecto-ranium, he felt remorse for holding the world for ransom and didn't return to Earth for fear of being hunted down.
- He has some honor as he accepts Danny’s deal of not revealing their secret to others, and never breaks it. Also, in "The Ultimate Enemy", he lets Danny live with him despite their past rivalry, and was even willing to remove Danny's ghost powers upon his request just to please him. He also helped Danny defeat Pariah Dark.
- He has many comedic moments where they don’t take him seriously at all.
- In the novel A Glitch in Time, after spending some time exiled from Earth, Vlad winds up going to Clockwork so he can fix his past mistakes (and he unintentionally releases Dark Danny from his imprisonment). Vlad returns to Earth to seek help from Danny, who is understandably reluctant to trust him due to his past heinous crimes, but later learn that Dark Danny really is back and destroying the timeline. Even after the end, he ends up back on Earth with a newly reincarnated Dark Danny as his new "son" and a chance to atone for his misdeeds.
Trivia[]
- He along with Chameleon, Verminious Snaptrap, Overlord Glee and Shirley are the only Butch Hartman villains to be IH.
External Links[]
- Vlad Plasmius on the Villains Wiki
- Vlad Plasmius on the Nickelodeon Wiki
- Vlad Plasmius on the Danny Phantom Wiki
- Vlad Plasmius on the Entertainingly Detestable Wiki
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 Inconsistently Heinous
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