Lord Betrayus

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"'We interrupt this program to bring you an important message from the Netherrealm. Boo! Hahaha! Scared you, didn't I?' - Betrayus's first words"

Lord Betrayus "Sneakerous" Spheros (also simply known as Betrayus), better known as Lord Betrayus, is the main antagonist of the video game Pac Man and the Ghostly Adventures and its sequel, as well as plays a role as the main antagonist of the animated TV series, mh:terribletvshows:Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures.

He is an utterly vengeful and power-hungry arch-nemesis of Pac-Man who used to be a Pac-Worlder and citizen, but due to his plan of starting a war and nearly wiping out a ton of Pac-People during his time, he became stripped of his body and was sent to the Netherworld as a form of punishment, being banished from Pac-World for committing genocide and familicide, he is also well known for being responsible for the deaths of Pac-Man's parents and the entire race of the "Yellow Ones" before The Pacinator and Apex were introduced.

As a ghost, he now seeks to get his body back by seeking to obtain the repository Stratos keeps in his dormitory in order to rule Pac-World with an iron fist, he often sends his ghostly people to do his bidding while he remains on his throne, endlessly plotting revenge every time his plans are typically foiled.

Why He Intentionally Did Not Scare Us

 * 1) For starters, even though he is cocky, cunning, malicious, ruthless, deceptive, and villainous, he can be pretty empty-headed, dorky, and ignorant at times. Where Lord Betrayus was once depicted as a purely evil type of villain that was a somewhat strict but competent warlord who was cruel enough to commit genocide towards Pac-World when he was alive and once inspired genuine fear and loyalty in his troops, as well as inflicting successful attacks on the Resistance for the time. But nowadays, he is simply way too goofy, infantile, and clownish to be taken seriously in any way as the main antagonist.
 * 2) * Because of this, he doesn't seem to pose any real threat as a ghostly overlord despite his many attempts at making himself look fearsome (albeit them being either useful or useless), even more so than Dr. Robotnik from Sonic Boom, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic X, and Sonic Underground. All in a rather annoying and underwhelming way since he seems to be often viewed and depicted as a minor annoyance deserving to be poked fun at by anyone for being a jerkish nuisance, rather than being actually threatening.
 * 3) ** Like many old-fashioned ineffectual villains of fiction, he generally tends to rely on his typically ineffective minions to do the dirty work of defeating Pac-Man for him since Betrayus is way too incompetent (or lazy) to do it himself as a ghostly scoundrel.
 * 4) * There were times when a lot of his dialogue is more of a joke than the writer intended, as it would sometimes sound like a child who is trying way too hard to sound powerful and/or glorious, especially since Betrayus acts like he's the most threatening villain or behaves like an underappreciated edge-lord, sometimes all at once.
 * 5) * All of his failures and moments of embarrassment typically have him look unfortunate and awkward in an extremely predictable way.
 * 6) Not only is he a generic and incredibly lame supervillain that rips off Mezmeron from the 1982 Pac-Man TV series and Vlad Plasmius from Danny Phantom, but he is a complete and utter manbaby as well; having the maturity and mentality of a deluded teenager with little to no maturity whatsoever.
 * 7) * A prime example of his childishness is when he was continually whining about how he lost to Spheria at a pac-pong tournament years ago as shown in the episode "Pac-Pong Fever" and was constantly saying how she cheated even when Betrayus himself lost fair and square, which was something he never got over and held a grudge on for years, which is pretty pitiful of him.
 * 8) * When his mom was seen spending time with his brother, Stratos, he complains and nags about it to the point of setting Butt-ler, on fire and flying around in circles. Especially when he stupidly asks his mom whose fault it was that Betrayus doesn't have his body back, to which Butt-ler and Dr. Buttocks respond with Betrayus causing his own demise.
 * 9) * For the fact that he cannot sleep without his stuffed toy bunny and sucks on his thumb like an actual baby. Not only does it make him kinda cringe-worthy for a typically ineffectual villain, but it makes him look painfully hypocritical when he tells Butt-ler that he doesn't need a teddy bear as an "overlord of evil".
 * 10) * If Pac-Man chooses to eat him or defeat him for his nefarious deeds, he holds his grudges and acts like he didn't deserve it, depending on the episode.
 * 11) In addition to being a complete man-child, he's also an extremely arrogant narcissist who will do anything to get what he wants, even when it makes him look annoying and idiotic towards anyone.
 * 12) * He often blames others for whatever misfortune happens to him despite it usually being Betrayus himself who caused it.
 * 13) * He regularly commands someone to come up with a plan and takes credit for said plan. However, if the plan goes awry, he forces all blame upon the plan's originator, who likely had no choice in the first place to concoct it. He even takes all the credit for the bright ideas his minions make, taking absolutely no consideration for their efforts.
 * 14) ** Sometimes he attempts to take the credit for what inventions Dr. Buttocks come up with and Betrayus would selfishly use those ideas for his schemes, which causes him to screw up and cause problems for others because of not knowing how to use those inventions properly, his lack of skill would better show this because of his endless cowardice and narcissism.
 * 15) Sloppy Backstory/Motives: On top of being more of a joke villain than the main antagonist, even though he was once a genocidal warlord, his motives as a villain are all over the place and make very little sense. To the point where it doesn't make much sense why such an embittered manchild like Betrayus would want to become a hegemonic warlord when he grew up outside of jealousy, after all, the only thing we know about his past was him wanting to be great at Pac-Pong, not being cared enough by his family, and becoming a warlord who wanted to outshine his brother and gain control of Pac-World, yet there was no explained reason for wanting to commit genocide (a very heavy topic to be placed in a kids show!). Making it very hard to understand how he goes from being petty about winning at ping pong like a sore-loser and being emotionally scarred by his family's mistreatment of Betrayus wanting to show how impressive he is as a person growing up, to starting a war and committing genocidal acts toward Yellow-colored people without any reason or motive to do so.
 * 16) * As a ghost, his underhanded schemes tend to be very nonsensical and ill-judged, even by Pac-Man standards. The fact that he still orders his ghostly minions to antagonize Pac-World, even though he and the ghosts are always defeated by Pac-Man as they leave for the Nether Realm to only then come back later to Pac-World when they all already know that they're already going to get eaten by Pac-Man in general, so why should Betrayus care so much about getting the Repository if he's already dead, has fire powers he could've already used to attack Pac-Man as he attempted inflicting onto Skeebo one time, having little to nobody doing a good job at helping him, already rules the Pac-World embodiment of hell that is the Neither World, and was proven to be just as powerless as any other ghost???
 * 17) He is also very cowardly and pusillanimous, letting others do the dirty work on his behalf. As well as being very petulant, irresponsible, and aggravated, he tends to throw tantrums whenever things do not go his way because of how immature he is.
 * 18) * He throws fits when he isn't acknowledged in various schemes, and then passes the blame onto others when he fails.
 * 19) Character Derailment: He suffers from both; Flanderization and Character derailment, the latter moreso.
 * 20) * Where he went from being a decent villain with his moments of comedic relief and seriousness in the very first episode, after the first episode, however, he has later slowly become more of an overly childish & hammy, pathetic, bossy, mostly condescending and unthreatening, downright idiotic, delusional, and whiny bungler who never succeeds at anything and doesn't ever learn from his mistakes despite being deceptive and easily outclassed by Pac-Man. This gets to the point that his Flanderization starts to wear thin fast when he becomes even more unlikeable and mean-spirited than ever before.
 * 21) When it comes to how he is written, the worst part about his Flanderization is that he feels more or less like a very clichéd, lackluster, and mediocre modern-day embodiment of Dr. Ivo Robotnik from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, King K. Rool from the Donkey Kong Country TV series, and King Koopa from both The Super Mario Bros Super Show & The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3; three examples of video-game related villains that were depicted as entertainingly hammy & incompetent villains, and they were genuinely hilarious & enjoyable with their cartoonishly evil personalities 20 to 24 years before Betrayus.
 * 22) * In fact, when you think about it, several aspects of Lord Betrayus's personality traits, behavior, and situations are almost identical to AoStH's Dr. Robotnik's traits and situations as well! Several examples of these include:
 * 23) ** Being a very over-the-top villain with a hammy dialect, he also opposes the protagonists for his selfish benefit of conquering the world where their archenemy consistently lives.
 * 24) ** As the main antagonist; he is given a character design that could make him seem like a potentially intimidating villain to Pac-Man, given the right balance of dark humor and threatening moments to balance out these traits, but his characterization is too buffoonish, pitiable, and juvenile to be an intimidating villain, except Robotnik had much more formidable moments in comparison to Betrayus falling from grace.
 * 25) ** Having some level of cleverness to see trivial events as potential opportunities to further their single-minded goals with hegemony since they're always underhanded and zealous with succeeding at their goals, like how Betrayus pursues ruling Pac-World by getting the repository in order to defeat Pac-Man like how Robotnik seeks to conquer Mobius by obtaining any form of power to defeat Sonic.
 * 26) ** Being a tyrannical jerk that always acts like a puerile, vengeful, narcissistic, fussy & petty psychopath who happens to be very inefficient, unwary, and aimless a lot of the time.
 * 27) ** Prone to behaving in a completely neurotic, high-strung, and excitable fashion whenever he's being humiliated, excited about his plans working, or being looked down upon.
 * 28) ** Generally depicted as the show's object of ridicule for how unfortunate, dramatic, and overreactive he generally is. Especially when he is supposedly the hot-headed and hare-brained comic foil to Pac-Man, Stratos, and even his ghostly minions.
 * 29) ** They both had a love interest who both wanted nothing to do with them, where Betrayus's jealousy over Sir Cumference being in a love affair with Sperphia is vaguely similar to Robotnik having a personal rivalry with Lucas when they were both in love with Lucidina.
 * 30) *** Not to mention that they both also had a "yandere" love interest (the talented voice actress, Kathleen Barr, voiced both characters no-less!) who both males were too insecure to say no to the women's overwhelmingly love-struck behavior and both females wanted to help get rid of the males' archnemeses in exchange for a relationship. The witch, Madame Ghoulasha, displays smitten infatuation towards Betrayus even though Betrayus doesn't feel the same way, as Ghoulasha also tries to help Betrayus get rid of Pac-Man in exchange to get married is similar to Katella displaying how smitten she is towards Robotnik and was willing to help Robotnik so she could make Robotnik proud to be his future wife in the episode "Zoobotnik".
 * 31) **** Both villains had to find a way to escape the overwhelming infatuation, where they were both forced into a marriage because the women helped their male partners overpower their enemies. The setups and endings do differ though, as Sonic pretended to be a victim of Katella's convoluted trap and arranges a fake wedding as a way to practically help Robotnik escape from Katella even when it then resulted in Robotnik being abused by his mom different from Betrayus turning down Madame Ghoulasha, the latter revoking the curse she inflicted onto Pac-Man and Betrayus tricking her to fall in love with Dr. Buttocks.
 * 32) ** They both had mothers who treated them unfairly and cruelly, to the point where they were practically raised to become villains of some sort and have emotional conflicts towards them. Betrayus's mom is crueler towards Betrayus's feelings in comparison to Robotnik's abusive mom raising her son to be evil and always lies by mentally and physically abusing him.
 * 33) *** Not to mention BOTH of their moms betraying them and talking down to them in ways that would emotionally affect them in a negative light, except in the episode "Sonic is Running"; Robotnik betrayed his mom in response to his mom not voting for him due to her underestimation of him whereas Betrayus ended up wailing and crying as a baby naturally would, as he flew back to his lair like a child running away in tears.
 * 34) ** Having a superiority complex over his loyal but long-suffering and ill-starred minions despite Betrayus himself being just as imperfect as them, if not a whole lot more than they are. To the point of acting very sarcastic, stubborn, and condescending towards them, even when he's truly misunderstanding something he needed to know.
 * 35) *** Not to mention abusing his underlings emotionally or physically in a sadistic and mean-spirited manner, except that it makes Betrayus look loathsome than redeemable.
 * 36) ** They both come up with sophisticated yet silly-sounding insults and retorts toward those he disapproves of in a shamelessly blunt and rude manner.
 * 37) ** They both tend to make tons of ill-judged and hasty decisions to plans they think are brilliant and flawless, to the point where they always tend to backfire on themselves more than succeed since their plans always backfire due to their egotism, procrastination, and lack of keen premeditation. Betrayus is a lot worse due to how he screws up at his underhanded plans even more than Robotnik does prior to Betrayus's idiocy and childishness.
 * 38) ** They are both shown to have a comedic personal vendetta towards those who hinder his progress (especially when Pac-Man is often praised for winning over him all the time and his brother Stratos is living the good life as the city's president; to the point of growing a certain level of antagonistic hatred towards them for their status and respect).
 * 39) ** Even though they're villains and are in the works of children's entertainment, they were both subjected to some moments of over-exaggerated slapstick that treat them like incompetent comic reliefs when they sometimes didn't deserve the verbal/physical abuse they get from other characters or shouldn't be receiving it as a comic relief should.
 * 40) * Also, some of his personality traits share vast similarities to King K. Rool from the Donkey Kong Country cartoon. Some examples of these include:
 * 41) ** He always acts cunning, underhanded, conniving, and self-important with his plans that either have the potential to fail or work, but in the end, he's just a consistent failure who happens to be very immature and a little dumb.
 * 42) ** He constantly belittles his underlings, snaps at them, and insults almost all of the ghosts for their ineptitude in defeating Pac-Man and getting what Betrayus wants in a shamelessly rude manner despite Betrayus also being a bungler who relies on others to succeed so Betrayus can achieve his plans.
 * 43) ** He is usually given once too many comedic and exaggerated moments that make him too silly to be taken seriously, especially since he's also an over-the-top villain with a hammy dialect.
 * 44) ** Although he is ill-fated and prone to failing at everything, there are some very minor exceptions when some of his plans and actions do work, which isn't saying much due to his sheer ineptitude with being a true threat overall.
 * 45) Much like The Storm King from My Little Pony: The Movie, while he can be amusing and/or sympathetic sometimes, Lord Betrayus is an extremely campy and weak comedic villain that takes the idea of a "comedic villain" to a pitifully piss-poor extent that it becomes more irritating & humorless than funny, as he lacks the charm of a comedic villain (for the most part). Aside from being a villain with delusions of grandeur, his traits that include his childish silliness, constant shortcomings, & petty motives/actions are pretty much his sole characteristics, and nothing much else other than that.
 * 46) His levels of flamboyance, overconfidence, bossiness, pettiness, incompetence, immaturity, arrogance, jerkishness, overreaction, hamminess, buffoonery, and occasional sarcasm are generally taken to the point of being stale and irritating.
 * 47) His voice is passable at best and extremely grating at worst. The worst offenders of this are his whining, his nasally/effeminate voice cracks, and his moments of crying, whimpering, wailing, or squealing.
 * 48) * In fact, Christopher Corey Smith did a mediocre job voicing him, where his voice first started off sounding very harsh and annoying in the first Ghostly Adventures game, the worst offender being his yelling. However, this does improve in the second Ghostly Adventures game.
 * 49) While his ghost design and his Pac-Worlder design as an adult are both appealing and cool-looking, his design in his younger years before he became a warlord looks too cheesy.
 * 50) That aside, in the show he can sometimes make some very weird/awkward-looking facial expressions in an over-the-top manner because of the way he's animated (especially his spiky teeth and mouth shape that can look a little off-putting in motion), which can make him look ugly and strange-looking at times.
 * 51) Misleading name: Despite his very name being Lord Betrayus, he doesn't nor is he even capable of actually betraying anybody that trusted him throughout the animated series despite how mean-spirited he is. Sure he is a self-centered, manipulative, and egotistical sociopath who wants nothing but to get the repository in order to rule Pac-World after being banished and is often mean to characters that are loyal to him such as his servant, Butt-ler. Yet he never shows any real signs of betrayal like genuinely helping out his enemies as a form of treason/treachery, being traitorous/disloyal to his minions, or double-crossing his allies outside of being selfish or competitive.
 * 52) * As a matter of fact, he has shown to be betrayed by other characters like his favoristic mother who favors Stratos over him, the iconic Ghost Gang who often helps out Pac-Man a lot of the time (basically being disloyal to Betrayus behind his back), and some of Betrayus's minions constantly screw up at defeating Pac-Man in a traitorous manner after being eaten and belched out (Spector from the episode "The Spy Who Slimed Me", is a prime example of a ghost who tried gloating about his success and was caught on camera of him betraying Lord Betrayus himself before Spector inevitably got deceived and was sent to a dungeon to pay for being smug and insincere about his crimes). So Betrayus's very name is rather contradictory if anything.
 * 53) He is somewhat of a hypocrite on occasion because of how self-deluded and immature he generally is; these moments include:
 * 54) * Getting jealous over his brother, Stratos, and then asking Dr. Buttocks why are people cruel when Betrayus himself mistreats everyone around him.
 * 55) * In the episode "The Spy Who Slimed Me", he labels each and everyone in the Netherworld as a complete klutz (who also considers Dr. Buttocks as the most inept, pathetic, and worthless minions around) when Betrayus himself is completely inefficient and a screw-up when it comes to defeating Pac-Man and succeeding at his ambitions.
 * 56) * In the episode "Heebo-Skeebo", when Skeebo was tied up and then sent into one of Betrayus's dungeons for being a clumsy charlatan of a hero, Betrayus first called him a "buffoon", which is obvious hypocrisy considering that Betrayus literally is a buffoon, personality-wise.
 * 57) Despite being an extremely childish and insecure coward for such a hegemonic villain like him, he often demeans, abuses, and belittles the ghosts that continue to serve him in trivial yet unpleasant ways (all for little to no good reason), and it's not fun to see him mistreat his loyal minions like this, especially Butt-ler. He seems to not care that much if his ghostly people indulge in toxic behavior with each other (e.g Butt-ler and Dr. Buttocks fighting with each other), and he always make them do whatever he wants them to do, no matter how stupid or pointless it can be (e.g making Buttocks and Butt-ler carry him in a transparent sphere to announce him wanting to conquer a world of fish for whatever reason; which in response, Butt-ler expresses how greatly underwhelmed he is by the fact Betrayus thought it was a good plan, to begin with).
 * 58) * Also, due to his egomaniacal nature and how he mistreats his minions, he has a huge superiority complex with almost everyone unless they're on his side of the story with wanting to defeat Pac-Man, all in a rather immature way since he can act like a persistent, competitive yet selfish little kid who calls his rivals "losers" or his allies childishly demeaning insults, despite him being a sneaky scoundrel who wants his ghosts to help him succeed, making him very insufferable to put up with.
 * 59) In the PMATGA games, despite being able to commit villainous actions (especially in the second game), his boss fights are a joke since they're way too easy to be challenging; especially since it only takes 4 hits to defeat him in the first game despite it having some challenge to bounce the speedy projectiles back at him while dodging countless obstacles.
 * 60) * His final boss battle in the second game makes him seem like a total idiot since he could crush Pac-Man with the tennis paddle if he wanted to win over Pac-Man to get back the repository with his ghost army instead of making some pointlessly long tennis match with little to no challenge, especially since he increased in size because of the ray Dr. Buttocks used to make Betrayus giant.
 * 61) * It's even more surprising to know that even his ghostly minions seem like they do a better job at posing more of a threat to Pac-Man than Betrayus thinks he does.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) He does have moments here and there with being humorous or somewhat entertaining. Mainly because of how over-the-top and childishly eccentric he is.
 * 2) * He was a decent comic-relief antagonist in the very first episode "The Adventure Begins" who also had a somewhat sympathetic backstory for being banished and wanting his body back as his source of motivation for conquering Pac-World (especially since he was just a harmless man-child who became evil because of his childhood-related trauma disorders), too bad he was badly flanderized as the series progressed.
 * 3) * On the topic of sympathy, as mentioned at WH(I?)DtBB#6, there are times where his pathetic defeats and levels of humiliation can make viewers understand why he hates Pac-Man with a strong passion.
 * 4) As mentioned at WHIDtBB #1 and #14, there were moments here and there when he could be effective and come off as a threat despite being ridiculous and pathetic. These include occasions in episodes like "Heebo-Skeebo" when Skeebo was sent to one of Betrayus's dungeons, right after Betrayus attempted using a fire attack to burn Skeebo.
 * 5) * He, as mentioned before at WH(I?)DtBB #14, did commit some heinous actions that make him a little bit formidable if he isn't being too comedic. Examples of these include the second Ghostly Adventures game where he kidnapped Pac-Man's parents and needed to make Pac-Man bring the repository to him by tricking Pac-Man with a subtle lie with the help of Apex, which had the potential to succeed. This is where he actually betrays Pac-Man for once by an actual double-cross as a part of his plan (despite being deceived by Sir Cumference), which is a shocker since this was what makes his name somewhat meaningful compared to the last game and the animated series he starred in.
 * 6) Some of his quotes are either a little funny, pretty funny, or just interesting, such examples include:
 * 7) *  "I AM THE BEST! ME! ME! IS THAT CLEAR? MMEE!!!"
 * 8) *  "Pulverize the old hag!"
 * 9) *  "Oh, I see! My dear sweet mother is visiting her favorite son Stratos and not ME!! How can people be so cruel?" 
 * 10) *  "No-body is sneakier than ME!! So deal with them and leave Pac-World to me and MY ghosts!!! Also, my nose itches, and I can't scratch it, YEOW!!"
 * 11) *  "What are you free-loaders doing?! Is that my credit card? I'm not paying for those pizzas and-"
 * 12) *  "You?! Forget it!"
 * 13) *  "This! Isn't! The Reposit-torrryyyy!!!"
 * 14) *  "HOW, DARE YOU CALL ME A HOT-HEAD!!"
 * 15) While his voice is annoying and whiny, at least his voice actor, Samuel Vincent, did an okay job at voicing him (whenever Betrayus isn't yelling or whining with grating voice cracks). You can tell that he tried his best to have fun providing the voice for Betrayus by doing a Peter Zimmerman voice impression.
 * 16) His ghost design (and his Pac-Worlder design as an adult) are both very appealing and cool-looking designs that fit his portrayal as the main antagonist.
 * 17) All of his theme songs and leitmotifs, like Castle Crashers are extremely catchy and wonderful to listen to. It gives off a ghostly and haunted yet light-hearted and bouncy vibe.
 * 18) Since he is the villain of the show, it's clear that he was meant to be hated due to how mean and despicable he is. (But not all villains are supposed to be hated, they can also be likable, understandable for their motives, and sometimes very funny/entertaining for example: Doctor Doofenshmirtz, Thanos, Darth Vader, mh:greatcharacters:Eren Yeager, and Steppenwolf (Snyder Cut), etc.)
 * 19) He always receives comeuppance for his sinful deeds, usually by Pacster eating him and spewing out his eyeballs. So it can be argued that he isn't a Karma Houdini.

Videos
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Trivia

 * His name is a play on the two words "betray" and "us". Which is also a pun for a former CIA Director David Petraeus.
 * His mother often calls him "Tray-Tray" as a nickname of his.
 * He shares a lot of similarities with Klogg from The Neverhood (being hammy, sharp-fingered, having red and white colors, and having a brother on the side of good) and Lucius from Jimmy Two-Shoes (being the ruler of Hell-in-everything-but-name, has fire powers, and is very attached to a stuffed pink rabbit).
 * In addition to this, he is also similar to Lord Shen from mh:greatestmovies:Kung Fu Panda 2, as both characters are particularly associated with fire, have red/white/black colors, metal talons, and have supposed involvements in the genocide of the hero's entire race who may not have been entirely succeeded after all.
 * To quote this article on the series that discusses Betrayus's name, "If your mother named you something like Betrayus, could you honestly go through life and not feel obligated to live up to it?".
 * Despite every single flaw he has, there were and still are, plenty of fans out there who genuinely support and adore this character throughout. This is taken to the point where fans of the show (or people who dislike the show) both consider him to be the best character in the show, reasons for this include him being viewed as a cute, sympathetic, entertaining, and hilarious villain in the same manner as Dr. Eggman/Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog.
 * This is currently the longest page on this wiki among its other contenders.

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