The first antagonist of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is a duelist named Seto Kaiba. He is a teenage millionaire who runs a massive entertainment company when he isn't attending high school.
Yugi Muto manages to defeat him in the first episode of the show by drawing all five pieces of Exodia. This causes Kaiba to rethink his evil ways and become more of a rival to the main cast than a straight up villain. Kaiba is one of the greatest duelists in the world, who seeks only to keep his brother Mokuba safe, and to finally defeat Yugi Muto in a fair duel.
Seto Kaiba quickly became one of the most popular characters in all of Yu-Gi-Oh!. The fans loved his maniacal obsession with card games and dragons, as well as his ruthless nature, which was occasionally broken by genuine moments of affection for his family. The fans could either love Kaiba or hate him, but they all had to respect him.
We are here today to look at the history of one of the greatest Yu-Gi-Oh! characters of all time. From his real life inspiration to the question of his ultimate fate, here are the 15 Things You Didn't Know About Seto Kaiba.
15. He's Based On A Real Person
When Seto Kaiba first appeared in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, he wasn't planned to be a recurring antagonist. Manga artist Kazuki Takahashi had planned on Kaiba being a one-off villain with limited scenes, which would include the card game that he and Yugi played.
Takahashi was soon inundated with fan letters asking for more information about Kaiba and the card game, however, which resulted in both of them taking over the story of his manga.
Seto Kaiba was inspired by a person that Kazuki Takahashi met in real life as a youth. One day, he went to a game store in order to learn more about a card game that he was interested in. Takahashi asked one of the patrons to teach him how to play the game.
The person told him to come back when he had collected ten thousand cards. Takahashi was pissed off, but he became inspired and decided to turn the jerk into a character when he finally had a published manga.
14. The Official Enemy Controller Meme
When Kaiba duels Yugi in the semifinals of the Battle City Tournament, he uses a spell card called Enemy Controller. This card allows you to either change the battle position of one of your opponent's monsters or take control of it until the end of the turn.
The card is pretty straight forward, but the anime decided to make it more complicated. Whenever someone uses Enemy Controller, they have to shout out button commands, as if they are trying to tell someone how to perform a cheat code.
Kaiba yelling button commands became a meme in Japan, where people would remix his words to the beats of songs. The funny thing is: the meme actually became canon. There is a popular series of Yu-Gi-Oh! arcade games, called Duel Terminal. These introduced an Enemy Controller minigame, where you have to press the buttons in time with Kaiba's commands, with many of his phrases being the same as the ones used in the meme videos.
13. He Was Basically The Villain From Saw
When Seto Kaiba first dueled Yugi in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime and manga, it ended with the Pharaoh using his powers to punish him. In the manga, this meant that Kaiba was banished to the realm of monsters, where he would experience death at their hands.
He finally awoke from this illusion and decided to get revenge. Did he challenge Yugi to another duel? No, he created a theme park and staffed it with hitmen, serial killers, and professional torturers.
Kaiba was determined to make Yugi suffer the same experience he did, so he created the Death-T theme park. This was a death trap that was made with the express purpose of making Yugi and his friends suffer. One floor was a laser tag game, where being shot would hit you with real electricity, while another involved Joey being changed into a pillar in a room with a man wielding a chainsaw.
The Death-T arc ended with a duel between Yugi and Kaiba. This was the point when Yugi summoned Exodia in the manga.
12. The Ghost Of Him Was Totally Different In The Manga
When Yugi was competing in the Duelist Kingdom tournament, he battled against a player who claimed to be Kaiba's dark side given flesh. Yugi had banished Kaiba's evil nature at the end of their first duel.
The so-called ghost version of Kaiba claimed that Pegasus used his powers to give him a solid form. This was an invention of the English dub, as he was presented as a skilled impersonator in the original version of the episode.
Ghost Kaiba was created for the anime. He replaced a character from the manga called the Ventriloquist of the Dead. This was a duelist who played with a puppet of Kaiba, which he claimed carried his discarded soul.
Yugi won the duel, as the Blue-Eyes White Dragons refused to serve the false Kaiba. The dual concluded with Yugi performing a Penalty Game on the Ventriloquist of the Dead, which made him think that he was being attacked by a puppet version of himself.
11. He Should Have Defeated Yugi In Pyramid Of Light
Kaiba wants nothing more than to defeat Yugi Muto in a fair duel. He lost their first match due to the fact that Yugi drew the five pieces of Exodia. Kaiba would win their next match, but only because he threatened to kill himself if Yugi didn't give in. Yugi would win their next match in the semifinals of the Battle City Tournament, however.
Seto Kaiba should have technically won their match in the Pyramid of Light movie, but the writers screwed up. During their duel, Kaiba summons the Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon, which gains 300 ATK points for every Dragon-type monster in the graveyard.
Kaiba claims that he has five dragons in the graveyard (three Blue-Eyes White Dragons, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, and Rare Metal Dragon). This brings Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon's ATK up to 4500, which attacks Yugi and leaves him with 200 life points.
The error lies in the fact that Kaiba also had a Paladin of White Dragon in the graveyard, which is also a Dragon-type monster. This means that Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon should have had an ATK of 4800, which would have defeated Yugi when it attacked during that turn.
10. There Is A Card That Is Based On Him
There have been a few rare instances where the characters from the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime appeared in the physical card game. The most significant of these were Yu-Jo Friendship (where you had to shake hands with the other player) and Unity (which combined all of the DEF points on your side of the field and gave them to one monster). These cards both included images of the anime cast.
The Kaibaman card is another such example of a card clearly being based off of an anime character. Kaibaman looks exactly how Kaiba envisions himself in his mind. In fact, the anime claims Kaiba designed the card himself.
Jaden Yuki battles a spirit version of Kaibaman in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Kaiba's original voice actor, Eric Stuart, performed the voice of the character. Kaibaman used an upgraded version of Seto Kaiba's deck and was the second person in all of GX who actually defeated Jaden Yuki in a fair duel.
9. The Blue-Eyes April Fools' Joke
It was only a matter of time before a Yu-Gi-Oh! smartphone game was released. Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links was released worldwide in January 2017. Duel Links is a simplified version of the actual card game.
The changes include only having 4000 life points (the card game gives you 8000) and only have three zones for monster cards and spell/trap cards (compared to the five you are given in the card game). Duel Links is still being updated, so it may resemble the actual card game at some point in the future. As it stands, they are still introducing basic features to the game through updates.
Seto Kaiba became the source of an April Fools' joke in Duel Links. There was a period of time where dueling Kaiba on April Fools' day would cause a special animation to play. If Kaiba manages to summon a Blue-Eyes White Dragon when you duel him, then it will be wearing a KaibaCorp construction helmet during its entrance animation.
8. The Finger Censorship
Yu-Gi-Oh! was picked up by 4Kids Entertainment, who were eager to perform a dub of the show. They might not have realized what they were getting themselves into, as Yu-Gi-Oh! has a lot of violence.
This ranges from guns, people physically striking each other, and deadly contraptions that are straight out of Saw. There is also a lot of magical violence, including the fact that the Pharoah straight up destroys people's minds.
Seto Kaiba was one of the first victims of 4Kids' heavy handed censorship practices. In the Japanese version of episode 8, Kaiba is confronted by two of Pegasus' goons, who pull guns out and point them at him.
The guns were edited out of the 4Kids dub and replaced with the goons just pointing their fingers at Kaiba in a threatening manner. This happened again in a later episode, where Bandit Keith pulled a gun out and pointed it at Pegasus' head. The gun was changed into a sternly pointed finger in the 4Kids dub.
7. Noah's Design Was Based On The Original Kaiba From The Anime
The Yu-Gi-Oh! anime was based on the manga series that was still being created at the time. This meant that the anime quickly caught up to the manga and was forced to create filler episodes in order to give the author time to write more of the story. In Yu-Gi-Oh!'s case, it allowed the anime staff to include more of the cards from the actual card game.
By far the most intrusive filler storyline in Yu-Gi-Oh! was the Virtual World arc. The Battle City tournament is interrupted and the characters are thrown into a virtual world, which is possessed by the spirit of Gozaburo Kaiba's biological son, who had his personality programmed into a computer before his death.
The design of Noah was based on Kaiba's design from the Toei series of Yu-Gi-Oh!, which is often referred to as "Season Zero" by the fans. Seto Kaiba had bright green hair in the Toei series and often wore white clothes. This design was reused for Noah and may be a shoutout to how the original series ended before its time.
6. We Don't Know Seto or Mokuba's Original Surname
One of the enduring mysteries of Yu-Gi-Oh! is that we never learned Seto and Mokuba's original surname. The name Kaiba comes from Gozaburo Kaiba, who adopted the two brothers from an orphanage.
He was impressed when Seto managed to beat him in a game of Chess, which prompted him to adopt the two boys. Seto and Mokuba then took on his surname and kept it after Gozaburo's death.
We never discovered what their original surname was. Seto should surely know, as he lived with his mother until Mokuba was born. It was simply never brought up within the story. The most likely reason that they kept Gozaburo's name after his death was in order to cement their position as heirs to his company, which was called KaibaCorp.
It certainly wasn't out of any love or respect for the man, as Gozaburo treated Seto harshly throughout his upbringing, in order to make him capable enough to run the company.