Mercy Kill: Prior to the events of the game, he killed his children in order to spare them the horrors of the 20th century.
He also shares the motive and loose methodology - causing one atrocity in order to prevent a worse one - of Watchmen's Adrian Veidt, whose former superhero name was.
Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair. Eventually, with his insanity, fell into the lines of the poem of the same name.
Oswald Mandus is a play on Ozymandias, referencing his obsession with making his factory the "great work of the industrial age".
Madden Into Misanthropy: He received a vision of the atrocities of the 20th century and went so nuts that he funneled a considerable amount of his wealth into making a massive underground machine designed solely for the systematic slaughtering of human beings, who he saw as no better than pigs.
In a more subtle example, Mandus writes in a journal entry that he believes the "split in his soul" that led to the birth of the Engineer in fact existed long before he found the Orb, caused by the love and hatred he felt for his sons at their birth.
Love Makes You Evil: Mandus murdered his own children to spare them an even more grisly death at the Battle of the Somme years later.
He himself erased them, hoping to remake himself into a person that could set right the evil that he unleashed.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: The last few months of his life are missing.
In fairness to him, there are some hints to imply he may have been mostly manipulated by the Engineer into doing so.
Hypocrite: He holds vehement disdain over the industrialization of the 20th century, yet he practices in Industrialized Evil himself.
However it was his visions of the far more horrifying atrocities humans would commit in the 20th century all over the world that caused him to snap and create a machine to "make pigs of them all"
Humans Are Bastards: His rants are often littered with misanthropy, and he has utter contempt both for the "filthy and brainless" lower class and the rich and "enlightened" upper class who happily allow the suffering of those "beneath" them to continue.
Heroic Sacrifice: Doubles into Heroic Suicide, as he knew he would die when he goes back to destroy the Machine, but does it anyway.
Even though Mandus doesn't speak a lot, he still talks in the present unlike Daniel.
Heel Realization: When he realizes the Machine's intentions to stop the horrors of the 20th century.
Go Mad from the Revelation: Mandus seeing the future drove him nuts enough to murder thousands to try and stop it, including his own children.
Even the recording and playback devices, though not an original concept, are his own design.
Gadgeteer Genius: Implied as part of his success as an industrialist.
Determinator: To an almost comical extent, initially born out of his fierce love for his sons, and then by a sense of personal responsibility.
Badass Boast: When endeavoring to destroy the Engineer, he refers to himself as an 'Angel of Vengeance'.
Combined with Mandus' extreme Papa Wolf tendencies and sheer determination, he is indeed quite badass.
Badass Beard: According to the Frictional Games, this picture ◊ of a Victorian gentleman is an approximation of what Mandus looks like.
The Atoner: To an even greater extent than Daniel from the previous game.
Aristocrats Are Evil: Though far, far less so than Alexander.
After he gets amnesia, though, he regrets everything he did and sets out to fight the real villain, The Engineer.
Anti-Hero: Mandus killed his sons, sent orphans to clean pipes that'll burn them alive if they stick around too long, fed the surviving orphan cleaners to the pigs, created a Mad God from his soul who murdered thousands, and performed horrifying experiments on humans and animals.
The main character, Oswald Mandus, cannot remember the last few months of his life, and is driven to rediscover what happened to him, what went on during his trip to Mexico, and how he is connected to the Industrialized Evil around him.
Amnesiac Hero: In keeping with the series' Meaningful Name.
Unable to find his sons and haunted by their voices, Mandus decides to explore the strange complex under his house in hopes of finding them. Upon the beginning of the game, Mandus awakens from a fever that has unknowingly lasted for several months, after returning from a "disastrous" expedition to explore Aztec ruins in Mexico. "But we can save them, we can set them free, we can replace a rotten old world, with a clean new one."Ī wealthy industrialist and butcher who is implied to be the great grand-nephew of Daniel, the protagonist of The Dark Descent.