Marionette Master



This guy doesn't fight via his own power; he has an army of Perverse Puppets--that he controls via strings, magic, or advanced technology--to do it for him. Particularly sadistic ones can also make People Puppets.

A Sub-Trope of The Beast Master. Compare Puppeteer Parasite. See also Marionette Motion.

May or may-not overlap with Robot Master

Anime and Manga

 * Kankuro from Naruto is a rare (eventually) heroic example. Ditto Chiyo; Sasori not so much. Typically they all use puppets full of hidden weaponry, including poison.
 * Gein from Rurouni Kenshin hides inside his puppet and basically uses it like a Steampunk Giant Robot.
 * Leonof the Puppetmaster from Trigun.
 * Walter from Hellsing upgrades to using his Razor Floss to making People Puppets.
 * Evangeline from Mahou Sensei Negima makes the list as well, fighting alongside her Perverse Puppet Chachazero when her powers aren't sealed. Though as a powerful Japanese Vampire mage, this is mainly a secondary ability.
 * She is also shown to have quite a few puppet servants and was implied to once have had an army of such puppets.
 * Makubex & co in Get Backers.
 * Castor in 07Ghost
 * The Hollow Numb Chandelier in Bleach has this as her main power, using the virus to make People Puppets out of Orihime's friends.
 * Ditto one of the Bounts, Mabashi, who takes over Rukia's body; Orihime restores Rukia's sanity by hugging and then activating her powers.
 * Also, the Arrancar Zommari.
 * Doflamingo of One Piece is of the People Puppets variety, though he also seems to have the strings themselves as part of his personal arsenal.
 * Friagne, the first villain in Shakugan no Shana, controls hordes of exploding dolls (possibly constructed from torches). His goal is to turn Marianne, the Rinne doll he loves, into an independent existence.
 * Corona of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Vi Vid is revealed in flashbacks to have doll manipulation as her main talent. After Vivio praised her for it, she trained and refined this skill to the point where she can now manipulate giant Golems in battle.
 * Pandora Hearts - Zwei, or rather her Chain Doldum, is one of those. Poor Gil.
 * One of Yura of the Hair's abilities in Inuyasha. She would use threads of hair to manipulate the bodies of unconscious people from Kaede's village, then force them to attack Inuyasha and the group.
 * Genso from Genzo is a puppet master of amazing skills, and combines this with being Crazy Prepared. Other "puppet masters" in the series are his teacher and father-in-law Seibei and his half-brother Koshiro, who's even more skilled than him.
 * Faust of Saber Marionette J.

Comic Books

 * Teen Titans foe the Puppeteer.
 * Superman villain the Toyman usually uses an army of toys to do his fighting for him.
 * Wanted has The Doll-Master.
 * Toybox from Top Ten.
 * The now obscure General Jumbo and his Pocket Army, appearing in The Beano between 1953 to 1974, was another heroic example. Unusually, the forces at his command extended to full air and artillery support as well as a variety of vehicles for several thousand Small Soldiers-style infantry bots, and a lot of the weapons involved were explicitly capable of inflicting lethal harm.

Film

 * Andre Toulon in the Puppet Master series as well as anybody else that the puppets obey.
 * William Stryker was this in the X-Men Origins movie.
 * The Other Mother aka Beldam in Coraline. Her dolls are not primarily made for fighting, however if her victim comes to realise the trap it has fallen into and attempts to fight back, they can become rather deadly.

Live Action Television

 * Two recent Tokusatsu series have given this the same twist: Kamen Rider Decade and Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger have the titular heroes, who can assume the forms of their predecessors. Each series also has an antagonistic character who uses the same Transformation Trinket but produces "dupes" of the hero in question rather than changing his own form - respectively, Kamen Rider Diend and Basco ta Jolokia.

Music

 * The members of 2PM take turns being this in their music video for "Heartbeat".
 * Another k-pop example: Zelo is a Marionette Master in the music video for B.A.P's first single, "Warrior", using his fellow members as People Puppets. At the end, they break out of his control and shoot him as part of the dance. It's just as cool as it sounds.

Video Games

 * Marionnette Owl from Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.
 * Screaming Mantis in Metal Gear Solid 4 prefers zombie People Puppets.
 * Screaming Mantis even controls them with literal puppets.
 * While Lulu from Final Fantasy X primarily uses magic in battle, she can also attack enemies with magically animated toys.
 * Geppeto in Shadow Hearts.
 * Touhou - Alice Margatroid's main specialty is her Doll Army, two of her most notable dolls being Shanghai and Hourai. She also has them help her do chores all over the house, even when she's not in the same room as them.
 * Puppet Ganon from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
 * Lieselotte's sister Elfriede of Arcana Heart has the power to control puppets and used this to possess a Perverse Puppet to remain with Lieselotte when she died.
 * Final Fantasy XI Puppetmasters, natch.
 * Carl Clover from Blaz Blue is never seen without a giant marionette called Nirvana (which contains the soul of his sister Ada), which can be controlled by the player as he fights. Early on in Noel's Story Mode, an important question comes up:
 * His father, Relius, is also a puppeteer,
 * The World Ends With You's Shiki Misaki has her stuffed pig cat, Mr. Mew.
 * While she is capable of fighting by herself, (and is quite good at it) Luca from Final Fantasy IV the After Years fights alongside her mechanical dolls, Calca and Brina.
 * Ogre Battle has a Doll Mage/Doll Master class.
 * Cornet from Rhapsody a Musical Adventure
 * Jov Leonov from Psi Ops the Mindgate Conspiracy who has the power of mind control and a Meat Puppet army.
 * Mishaela in Shining Force.
 * This is one of the powers of Gig from Soul Nomad and The World Eaters. A spell called Dominion causes a small doll in the form of the person used on to appear. From there, the user can summon that person whenever needed and control them in battle.

Real Life

 * The US army began using Reaper drones - and thus had pilots controlling Reaper drones, hence the trope - in Iraq in 2008.

Web Comic

 * Homestuck: Dave's Bro may or may not have been this with his favourite puppet, Lil' Cal. On one hand, he was capable of flashstepping so fast that he could have been making it look like Lil' Cal was moving of his own accord, and initially that's what appears to be happening. On the other hand, there's plenty of evidence and testimony throughout the story that Lil' Cal actually is alive and capable of autonomous movement. We simply can't know for certain, and that makes it all the more terrifying a thought...
 * Confirmed. He has the PUPPETKIND abstratus
 * All over the place in Erfworld. Dollomancy, Croakamancy, and  are all this trope through and through. Even the setting, where soldiers telepathically know their leader's wishes to some extent, counts.