All For One is the narrative engine of My Hero Academia’s darkest turns. He is not just a villain, but the story’s embodiment of evil and villainy. Representing the ultimate corruption of power, his abilities stem from stealing, hoarding, and compounding quirks, which he uses in combinations that defy logical expectations.
As an antagonist of his stature, All For One’s overwhelming presence is not because of outright strength but the precision of his adaptability, given that he is a walking archive of quirks. As such, this guide breaks down the most essential skills in the creation of his legend: what each quirk does, their different battle applications, and overall significance to My Hero Academia’s story.
While some of these quirks are brute force, others are subtle control tools that bend scenes to his advantage. Together, they reveal how All For One functions less as a single threat and more as a shifting arsenal.
1
All For One
The foundation of All For One’s legacy of evil, and the root from which everything else flows, the quirk lets him steal quirks from others, store them, and redistribute or install them at will, through bodily contact. On a tactical level, the ability is a game-changer, which allows him to neutralise heroes by taking away the very things that make them.
Redistribution enables him to empower his followers/pawns or combine his acquired abilities to disastrous effects. Narratively, the quirk’s consequences are even larger; it makes him less of a single combatant and more of an institution, and that scale makes him more than terrifying.
Storywise, his use of it drives major plot beats that force occasional narrative deviation but also justify long-term plans that pay off across arcs. Without the quirk, All For One would be just a strong villain. With it, however, he becomes the architect of the story’s systemic chaos.
2
Life Force
Given by Dr Kyudai Garaki, Life Force is the quiet cornerstone of All For One’s menace. It doubles its users’ life force, causing a much slower ageing process, which explains how he can plan across generations and withstand confrontations that would cripple lesser adversaries.
In itself, the quirk is not invincible, as it comes at the cost of sacrificing physical mobility. However, its weakness does not apply to All For One due to his other quirks. In terms of storytelling impact, Life Force fundamentally alters the way heroes must approach All For One.
A single victory / one-time battle isn’t enough. All For One’s extended time horizon means he can recuperate, rebuild, and execute strategies that play out over years.
3
Forced Quirk Activation
Forced Quirk Activation is a domination quirk that turns an opponent’s strength into a vulnerability by activating a person’s quirk against their will. By doing this, All For One can weaponise allies against each other, disable coordinated defences, or create tactical chaos. All with a single quirk.
Regardless of whether the target is conscious or not, it’s a ruthless ability because it doesn’t just harm the body; it assaults agency, making the target’s physical and mental state irrelevant to the operation of the quirk’s command. However, the quirk has an operational condition; All For One must know how the target’s quirk works before he can use Forced Quirk Activation.
4
Infrared
Like the name suggests, Infrared grants All For One the ability to detect heat signatures and movement, essentially giving him thermal vision. Mechanically, the quirk functions as an advanced sensory enhancement, turning his perception into a kind of radar that constantly tracks potential threats.
Additionally, the quirk allows him to sense the emotional state of those around him. When paired with offensive abilities such as Air Cannon or Warping, it enables All For One to react instantly and counter opponents before they even emerge into view.
However, the quirk’s limited range is an exploitable weakness when dealing with opponents that specialise in long-range combat. Despite its weakness, however, the quirk’s combat value lies in how it turns every encounter into a calculated hunt, allowing All For One to dominate close-quarters combat with acute awareness.
5
Warping
Similar to Kurogiri’s Warp Gate, All For One’s Warping allows him to produce a black ooze-like liquid that acts as a warping portal. In battle, the quirk’s tactical flexibility is immense, including the repositioning of allies among others. Offensively, Warping enables coordinated surprise strikes and denies approaching vectors.
Defensively, it can protect its target from harm or fold the battlefield into configurations favourable to All For One’s stacked quirks. Combined with sensory quirks like Search, Warping lets him both find and place threats with frightening accuracy, instantly disorienting his opponents.
Yet, the quirk is not without limit. Unlike Warp Gate, which uses coordinates, the user is limited to moving targets either to their current location or away from it. Additionally, the quirk is only effective when the target and user are sufficiently acquainted and the user is unable to activate it on themselves.
6
Search
Formerly belonging to the hero, Ragdoll, Search is a tracking and sensing quirk. It grants its user an extended perceptual reach, including long-range detection, target locking, and situational awareness.
Search also permanently stores its target’s information after use, specifically downloading the target’s Quirk Factor and DNA data. For a strategist like All For One who coordinates multi-front operations, Search proved to be an indispensable weapon in his arsenal against the Pro Heroes.
The quirk has a fatal flaw. It makes its user susceptible to deception if used excessively, as seen at the start of the Final War arc against the Heroes.
7
Kinetic Booster
Kinetic Booster amplifies the force behind the motion of a punch, a thrown object, or even environmental impacts. As a force multiplier, it turns routine movements into armour-piercing assaults when combined with speed or mass quirks.
All For One uses it to turn environmental objects into lethal weapons. It does this to overload static defences and to escalate engagements without changing choreography. The quirk forces opponents to rethink what constitutes danger.
Even a falling sign or a thrown pipe can become a battlefield-ending vector. It’s a deceptively simple tool that, in the hands of a strategist like All For One, becomes both a practical and symbolic demonstration of his power to convert the ordinary into lethal precision.
8
Hypertrophy
Hypertrophy accelerates tissue growth and mass increase. On the surface, it’s crude to bulk up and smash. But All For One treats it like a flexible tool. He can graft mass to limbs for shock, create temporary biological armour where metal is not possible, or reinforce bone to amplify piercing strikes.
Paired with Power Stock or Kinetic Booster, hypertrophy can produce temporary giants or fortified grafts on demand. The quirk’s actual value lies in its adaptability.
It allows him to reconfigure his body mid-battle rather than relying on fixed equipment. It also forces opponents to account for bodies that can change composition and resilience during an engagement, which complicates conventional defensive planning.
9
Antigen Swap
Antigen Swap manipulates biological markers, swapping antigens or altering immune responses. That makes the quirk a surgical tool for healing, sabotage, or identity masking. All For One utilises it to create conditions where medical aid backfires, to facilitate grafting and quirk transfers, or to conceal agents beneath false biological signatures.
For All For One, the quirk was nothing more than a means of masking his identity, allowing his oppressive rule from the shadows. It’s a quirk that moves the fight into the body, turning health and identity into manipulable elements rather than givens, which fits All For One’s method of controlling systems from the inside.
10
Spearlike Bones
Spearlike Bones projects cone-shaped spears made of bone from the user, offering a versatile blend of surprise and penetration. It previously belonged to All For One’s mother. Unlike conventional blades, spearlike bones can erupt from multiple angles, creating dispersed threats that are difficult to intercept.
For All For One, the quirk is useful both in close quarters. Even instant stabbing appendages, and as a ranged barrage when launched. It forces opponents to defend across planes rather than simply block frontal strikes.
Narratively, Spearlike Bones emphasises his bio-weapon approach. He can weaponise his body without external tools, turning the human form into a factory of sudden, lethal hazards.
