Gozaburo Kaiba



Gozaburo Kaiba is the original leader of Kaiba Corp in the anime Yu-Gi-Oh, and is also Kaiba's stepfather. It is possible that, in Gozaburo's childhood, he was abused by his own father (or stepfather) in the exact same way he would treat Kaiba in the future. He serves as the Bigger Bad/true main antagonist and final boss of the Virtual World arc.

Past
His son, Noah, was nearly killed in a car accident, so he uploaded his mind into the virtual world to save him, and adopted Seto Kaiba and his brother Mokuba so Noah could enter Kaiba's body, but soon became more interested in teaching Kaiba and making him his new heir. They never go into detail about this, but it's implied that he mentally, emotionally and maybe even physically abused Seto during his time with him. There's a possibilty that he gave Noah and Mokuba similar, but less severe treament as well. He gave Kaiba a large amount of money and told him to pay him back in order to truly become a member of Kaiba Corp, with Lector of the Big Five as the only one allowed to help him. He was able to do this, and eventually with the help of Mokuba, took over Kaiba Corp. Gozaburo vanished without a trace after this, uploading his own mind into the virtual world. What happened to him depends on the matterial. In the original manga, he was so upset about Seto beating him that he committed suicide. However, the original dub of the anime has him commit suide and upload his mind like he did with Noah and the 4kids dub has him run away and upload his mind to the virtual world.

Revealing Himself
There, he and Noah attempted revenge on Kaiba, teaming up with the Big Five once they became trapped in the virtual world. The Big Five were defeated by Yugi and Joey and trapped by Noah, and Noah was defeated by Yugi. Gozaburo revealed to Kaiba that he was the one behind the whole thing, and all his true intentions. His plan is to digitize everyone's minds into the virtual world, then become the supreme ruler over everyone in the virtual world.

Dueling Seto
Gozaburo dueled Kaiba and, at first, he seemed invincible due to his even more powerful version of Exodia, Exodia Necross, who was invincible, until Kaiba removed the Exodia cards from the graveyard (where they needed to be for Exodia Necross to be invincible) and defeated Gozaburo. He transformed into a beast of flame and attacked Kaiba, but Noah, who had previously set the virtual world's fortress to self-destruct, held him in place, and he was deleted along with the virtual world. However, he survived long enough to reappear in the real world as a real beast of flame and attempted to take Kaiba with him by eating the blimp Kaiba and the others were escaping in, but the blimp escaped from Gozaburo's flaming jaws and he vanished for good as the flames died down to regular fire.