Characters / Miraculous Ladybug: Paris' Champions

(aka: Miraculous Ladybug Marinette Dupain Cheng)

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The two heroes who protect Paris from danger.

• 10-Minute Retirement: They've both had their moments of nearly giving up their Miraculouses entirely.
  • Marinette:
    • After failing to capture Stoneheart's akuma and thus endangering all of Paris in the "Origins" episode, Marinette decides to give up being Ladybug and instead hand her Miraculous over to Alya. Seeing Alya in danger quickly convinces her to change her mind.
    • In "Heartfixer", she once again attempts to give up the Ladybug Miraculous to Alya after her experience of getting akumatized by Chrysalis into the titular antagonist, but is talked into not being so hard on herself.
  • Adrien:
    • Miraculous World: New York - United HeroeZ sees him renounce Plagg in New York over his own disappointment in accidentally using his Cataclysm on Uncanny Valley and failing to live up to his promise to stay and protect Paris to Ladybug. Adrien's plane back to Paris doesn't even touch down before Uncanny Valley brings him the Cat Miraculous to put back on to stop Miraclonizer.
    • Again in "Kuro Neko", when he believes Ladybug doesn't need him anymore now that she has the rest of the team. After a stint as Cat Walker (It Makes Sense in Context), he comes to accept that Ladybug might not need him for every situation, but she is always going to respect him as her primary ally.
• All-Loving Hero: Downplayed. Both Marinette and Adrien are genuinely kind-hearted individuals who care about protecting their friends, families, and Paris. However, they are still flawed individuals who show a normal amount of anger, pettiness, or immaturity in some of their actions.
• Anchored Ship: While they do have crushes on each other, they'll never be able to get together until 1. their identity issues are resolved and 2. Hawk Moth is removed from the equation.
• Animal Motifs: Played for Laughs and downplayed. During their separate Imagine Spots, they both want to adopt a hamster.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Primarily of the animal alias variety, though they occasionally display some of the abilities of their respective animals (Ladybug climbing on walls, Cat Noir having feline-like senses, etc).
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: They are the most experienced Miraculous wielders and have saved all of their future teammates from Hawk Moth at some point, so even permanent wielders like Bunnyx usually follow their lead.
• Attention-Deficit Disciple: Ladybug is the clear leader of Paris superheroes. This huge responsibility turns her hero persona into someone strait-laced and reliable. Cat Noir, by contrast, is as goofy and flirty as they come. This means that she sometimes has a hard time getting him to focus on defeating the Akumatized villain at hand instead of, you know, pestering her for a date. He's otherwise a good hero.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Ladybug and Cat Noir almost always fight together, side-by-side against whatever evil force is present.
• Badass Adorable: Both are pretty dorky and cute teens who are the beloved superheroes of their home.
• Badass Minds Think Alike: Barring unusual fear or self-doubt, they coordinate perfectly with only minimal communication—if any at all. Of course, they are heavily implied to be soulmates.
• Battle Couple: Zigzagged. They are not a couple, but have romantic feelings for one another and protect Paris from Hawk Moth. However, the duo are in love with the other's different identity: Marinette AKA Ladybug is in love with Adrien, while Cat Noir AKA Adrien is in love with Ladybug.
  • As of now they are a couple, they just don’t know the battle part of it due to not knowing the other’s secret identity.
• Betty and Veronica: As with many other Love Triangle variants, the Love Square features several different variants on this trope, depending on how you choose to divvy up the characters:
  • If you treat Adrien as the "Archie", you get a straight(-ish) example. Marinette is the "Betty": friendly, girly, wears sensible clothes, and part of Adrien's civilian life. Ladybug is the "Veronica": Reserved, an Action Girl of the highest order, wears a skintight bodysuit and belongs to Cat Noir's superhero life. Cat definitely favors Ladybug.
  • If you treat Marinette as the "Archie", you get a somewhat more complicated version of the trope. Adrien has some "Betty" traits (Marinette loves him for his kindness, he wears sensible clothes, and he's part of her civilian life), and some "Veronica" traits (a literal model and very reserved and aloof in his interactions with her). Cat Noir, contrariwise, is part of Ladybug's superhero life and wears a leather catsuit ("Veronica"), but is friendly and devoted to Ladybug ("Betty").
  • As of season two, both Marinette and Adrien are in a proper version of this trope: Marinette is the sweetheart "Betty" to Kagami's ice queen "Veronica" for Adrien's "Archie", while Adrien is the popular and reserved "Veronica" to Luka's calm and patient "Betty" for Marinette's "Archie".
• Birds of a Feather:
  • Despite being Foils of each other and a downplayed version of Opposites Attract, they have a lot in common: both of them are only children with a Friendless Background, enjoy and great at video games, are insecure individuals and being Miraculous holders gives them each a much needed confidence boost (as well as other obvious additions), fans of Jagged Stone (with a shared dislike of XY), are flawed but usually nice individuals with a jealous, possessive streak for one another. They each have some connection to fashion (Marinette is a budding fashion designer, Adrien is a fashion model for his father's fashion line). Both also are pretty popular with the opposite sex as well, and have a knack for leadership (this one is more emphasized with Marinette/Ladybug).
  • Adrien also has this with both his alternative love interest, Kagami, since both have similar backgrounds with strict controlling parents and very few friends, and with his childhood friend, Chloé, for the problems with an absent/missed mom.
  • Occurs with Marinette and Luka, who is as sensible and creative as her, and both have some sort of artistic interest (fashion and design to Marinette, music to Luka).
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Marinette is the Brunette/Bluenette to Adrien's and Chloé's Blond and Alya's Redhead.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Zigzagged. Both are encouraging towards one another when the other is feeling forlorn, but usually Marinette is a sweet and compassionate person (Gentle Girl) and Adrien has a boatload of parental issues with his time as Cat Noir being a way to actually be himself (Brooding Boy). However, due to the duo's complicated relationship, which has them being close but at the same time not being close to one another, leads to neither one having open and proper conversations.
• Brought Down to Badass: They've occasionally been forced to face Hawk Moth's minions without their Miraculous, but they always prove to be resourceful enough to get by without them.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: Inverted and downplayed. Marinette and Adrien only show their perverted side towards one another, but it's very subtle.
• The Cape: Downplayed. Adrien and Marinette are kind, helpful, and morally upright people — the reason both of them became The Chosen One. After they've gained their Miraculouses, both try to be good, but neither is perfect and they make mistakes.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Ladybug and Cat Noir are fond of snarking at the Villain of the Week, and the latter even throws some puns at them.
• Celeb Crush: Subverted twice. Marinette/Ladybug has a crush on the teen model and idol of Paris Adrien Agreste and Adrien/Cat Noir has a crush on teen superhero and idol of Paris Ladybug. However, neither of their crushes are due to the fame of the other, but rather due to other non-physical attributes such as kindness and goodness (Marinette to Adrien) or confidence and competence in the face of danger (Cat Noir to Ladybug). As shown in "Origins part 1", Marinette didn't even know who "Adrien Agreste" was when he showed up in school for the first time, despite being an aspirant fashion designer. Lots of others around them probably see it as a standard Celeb Crush though. Adrien's father explicitely does so and is consequently very dismissive of the idea of Adrien and Marinette dating.
• Character Shilling: Both have this in different tones.
  • Marinette, even if somewhat prone to panicking and bumbling, is very loved by her family and friends and they're always praising her good qualities. As Ladybug, it's unnecessary to say that almost the whole city idolizes her.
  • Adrien is his dad's prized model and the face of many products and marketing in Paris. Ask his tons and tons of devoted fans. As Cat Noir, he's appreciated as one of Paris' greatest heroes, like Ladybug.
• Chevalier vs. Rogue: Ladybug's insistence on doing things the 'rogue' way—manipulating enemies, fighting with traps, keeping a lot of secrets—causes friction with her more straightforward teammate Cat Noir.
• The Chosen One: After putting the two through a Secret Test of Character at different times, Master Fu decided that they were the right holders of the Ladybug (Marinette) and Cat (Adrien) Miraculouses.
• Deadpan Snarker: Both have shown to have cutting sarcasm from time to time
• Dogged Nice Girl, Dogged Nice Guy: Both are Zigzagged. For Marinette, she is smitten with Adrien but he only sees her as a good friend. On the other hand, Cat Noir (Adrien) is in love with Ladybug (Marinette), but she assumes his flirting isn't serious and while occasionally annoyed by his antics, she does care for him. In other words, their feelings for one another are returned...kind of.
• Entitled to Have You: Downplayed. Neither go to any extreme lengths like murder to keep the other all to themselves, but they have done some morally questionable things out of jealousy.
  • Marinette — While she is apparently willing to let Adrien date other people the reason she falls into this trope is her overactive imagination making her think that Kagami would take Adrien to Japan (i. e. away from her), and thus spends the entire episode helping Chloé humiliate Kagami.
  • Adrien — As Cat Noir, he respects Ladybug's wishes to keep their identities a secret from each other and doesn't do anything forceful; he's also a downplayed Crazy Jealous Guy plus Marinette (who is also a downplayed Clingy Jealous Girl) has done some wrong actions out of jealousy just like Adrien.
    • Adrien lies about their relationship status in "Copycat" resulting in the titular villain.
    • Second, in "Glaciator", he sets up a romantic date with Ladybug to confess his feelings, despite her and Plagg noting that she said she had other plans. And obviously, she doesn't show up. When the titular Akuma shows, Cat Noir begins to act bitter and uncooperative with her, at one point accusing her indirectly of playing with his feelings. In the end, he apologizes for overreacting and accepts her feelings for another boy.
    • However, in "Frozer", he tries again to woo Ladybug despite knowing about her feelings for someone else and when they show up to deal with the akuma he acts coldly toward her.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Both of them are All Loving Heroes that makes friends with just about everyone, but even they have limits.
  • Hawk Moth/Shadow Moth/Monarch obviously gets no love from either of them, and in their rare face-to-face encounters they make clear their feelings about the man for terrorizing Paris. This also applies to his civilian form, Gabriel Agreste. After treating him as an idol for most of the series, Marinette comes around to recognize what a horrible, cruel person he really is and calls him out for the despicable way he treats his son; even after he dies making the wish using the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses, she doesn't bother to hide her disdain when talking about Gabriel and decries him as a selfish monster. Adrien's relationship with his father is a little more complicated: while he resents him for his Control Freak behavior and eventually snaps at him when he becomes even more cruel and controlling, he does still care about Gabriel and mourns his supposed heroic "sacrifice" to stop Monarch, eventually coming around to buy the lie that his dad was a hero so that he can have some positive memories about the man.
  • Both come around on hating Chloé Bourgeois, for different reasons. Marinette already had a negative relationship with Chloé as her childhood bully responsible for some of the worst years of her life, and gave up on trying to find anything good about her when she betrayed the Miraculers to Hawk Moth out of resentment for Ladybug denying her the chance to become Queen Bee again. Adrien was initially more amicable with Chloé since she was one of his only friends growing up, but seeing her stubborn refusal to change her ways along with learning just how badly she screwed up Marinette with her bullying caused him to cut all ties with her.
  • Then there's Lila Rossi, who proved herself repeatedly to be a toxic, attention-seeking sociopath entirely incapable of self-reflection; Marinette developing and immediate aversion to her because of her lying and subsequently threatening to destroy her life in "Chameleon" if she didn't stay in her late, while Adrien (who was only lukewarm on her to begin with) coming to outright despise her in "Oni-Chan" when she manipulates him into abandoning Ladybug so that she'll get killed fighting the titular villain. In "Revelation", they both agree that Lila is Beyond Redemption and that they should have acted quicker to stop her before her lies infected their entire school. And while they don't know it's her yet, she gets even less love from them as Chrysalis, with Marinette even declaring that she's an even worse villain than Hawk Moth upin learning that whatever she plans to wish for with the Miraculous will destroy the universe.
  • Bob Roth is a more comedic example, since he's such an obnoxious, entitled Jerkass that they can't stand being around him, and only reluctantly try to save him from supervillains that his cruelty spawned into existence. And even when they do save him, they aren't always nice about it, and they outright abandon him to suffer well-deserved karma more than once.
• Establishing Character Moment: Chronologically, the protagonists' responses to receiving the Call to Adventure say a lot about the heroes they eventually become. Marinette is cautious and self-effacing- she asks a lot of questions about Tikki, and later insists that she's too cowardly to be a good Miraculous-bearer. Adrien doesn't even let Plagg finish explaining before he accepts the call, clearly relishing the chance to break free of his overbearing father.
• Experienced Protagonist: By the start of the series, both Ladybug and Cat Noir are competent heroes who know how to use their powers to defeat their enemies.
• Fate Drives Us Together: It is an ongoing meta-joke of the series that Marinette and Adrien somehow always end up finding each other—usually just in time to comfort the other or spark some much-needed character development. (Fate is terribly efficient in this setting.) Fu attributes it to their being soulmates.
• The Fettered: Depending on character interpretation either played straight or downplayed. As Ladybug and Cat Noir, they stand for responsibility and justice, and protect Paris against Hawk Moth and his Villain of the Week.
• Foil: Despite the two being Birds of a Feather, they have a number of differences that serve to contrast them.
  • Personality—Marinette has a bold, expressive personality as either a civilian or superhero while Adrien often has trouble verbalizing his feelings unless he's Cat Noir.
  • Families—Marinette is from a loving middle-class family while Adrien is from a wealthy broken one.
  • Reaction to getting their Miraculous—Neurotic, insecure Marinette refuses the call, while sheltered, lonely Adrien jumps at it.
  • Relationship with Chloé—Marinette has an antagonistic relationship with Chloé especially since the latter bullied her four years prior. On the other hand, Chloé was Adrien's Only Friend. Their relationship with Chloé also highlights the difference the two had in meeting their future best friend—for Marinette, Alya stood up to Chloé's bullying of Marinette, which became the primary reason for Marinette befriending her; Nino was initially skeptical on if Adrien was a good person due to his ties with someone as bratty and mean as Chloé.
  • Interest in fashion—Marinette is a budding fashion designer while Adrien has been a model for his father's fashion line. But while Marinette genuinely enjoys it, Adrien doesn't particularly like modeling and only does it to make his father happy.
  • Crushes on each other—Both are deeply in love with one another (bordering on stalkerish levels), and fell in love with one another for non-physical reasons, but they both can behave quite unhealthily possessive of one another. Marinette is in love with Adrien and acts quite shy and insecure around him, and whenever she suspects a girl may like him, she abuses her powers to stop said girl from getting close to him, but "Riposte" shows she's growing out of this; Adrien is in love with Ladybug and is flirty with her as Cat Noir but is shy when in his civilian form and his way of stopping another guy from pursuing her is to outright lie about their relationship status.
  • Designs—They are a Hair-Contrast Duo who sport a downplayed Red/Green Contrast in their superpowered forms, and subtle inverted color schemes◊ in their civilian outfits.
  • Fame—Marinette is Paris' greatest hero in her superhero persona and a regular person in civilian life, while Adrien is famous in civilian life and hangs in the background as a hero.
  • Powers and equipment—Ladybug uses a yo-yo, an unconventional weapon which requires creative application and quick-thinking; similarly, her Lucky Charm generates seemingly useless items that she is capable of MacGyvering into weapons capable of beating any akumatized villain, and can afterwards be used to enact a World-Healing Wave that repairs damage. Cat Noir uses a staff which allows him to engage villains directly in close-quarters combat, and his Cataclysm can instantly destroy anything he touches.
• Force and Finesse: Their individual weapons and powers favor this approach, Cat Noir's staff and Cataclysm allowing for blunt force and mowing through any defense, while Ladybug's yoyo and Lucky Charm requires plenty of dexterity and creativity to use respectively.
• Good Luck Charm: In "The Gamer", Marinette gave Adrien a personal good luck charm she uses while playing video games. Later on in "La Befana", it's revealed that he always keeps it with him; and for Marinette's birthday, Adrien gives her a good luck charm he made.
  • Marinette later makes another one for Kagami.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Downplayed and deconstructed. The protagonists are quite possessive of each other despite not actually being in a relationship. For the former, they don't go to crazy lengths to keep their crushes to themselves, but for the latter, the way they handle someone else being enamored with their love interest (Cat Noir - smug and deliberate lying, Ladybug — harsh, inappropriate call-out) led to someone being akumatized and a lesson being learned in the end about not doing something like lying or yelling at the "rival" simply to keep them away from your love interest.
• Guile Hero: More than anything, the use of Lucky Charm and Cataclysm necessitates quick thinking and creative improvising. This is because while Lucky Charm creates an item that can always be used to solve whatever problem you're faced with (not to mention be used as a catalyst for a World-Healing Wave) and Cataclysm can destroy anything, each can only be used once per transformation and their use starts a countdown timer until the current transformation ends. So you pretty much have to think quickly and improvise creatively to get the most out of them.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Marinette is the brunette and Adrien is the blond.
• Handshake Substitute: Ladybug and Cat Noir often do a fist bump to celebrate having vanquished the Villain of the Week.
• Hidden Buxom: Marinette is portrayed with modest chest in her civil form, while having bigger breasts in Ladybug identity.
• Hopeless Suitor: Marinette is in love with Adrien, but he only sees her as a good friend. However, Cat Noir AKA Adrien has a crush on Ladybug AKA Marinette but she doesn't care for his flirting.
• Interspecies Romance: Downplayed: Marinette, a human girl, is dating Adrien, a Sentimonster made to look human—though Word of God confirms that for all intents and purposes, sentimonsters like Adrien are as human as anyone else (and of course, Adrien is completely unaware that this is the case, while it’s implied that Marinette does know about it and is trying to keep it from him).
• Karmic Jackpot: Like their mentor, they're constantly, quietly assessing the people around them for heroic potential. If you are worthy of a Miraculous, they will know and they will get in touch with you.
• Kid Hero: Technically teen heroes, but both are around 13-15 and are a crime fighting duo.
• Legacy Character: They're the latest in a long line of people who have used the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses. Previous Ladybugs include Joan of Arc and Hippolyta.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Even before character development, Ladybug and Cat Noir were bluntly honest to each other in a way only completely trusting partners can be.
  Marinette: [It] feels like we've known each other forever!
• Loves My Alter Ego: Inverted for both.
  • Marinette is head over heels in love with Adrien, becoming a flustered mess whenever he’s around. And while she does find Cat Noir's flirting annoying, she still cares about him.
  • The opposite for Adrien—he considers Marinette a good friend, but is oblivious to her romantic feelings for him. Ladybug is the only girl to hold his heart.
  • Seems to be gradually shifting in season 2; Ladybug has pretty blatantly flirted back with Cat Noir on occasion, and Adrien has demonstrated that he's attracted to Marinette as well as Ladybug. And they still have no clue that this love square involves only two people.
• Made of Indestructium: The duo's main weapons.
  • Ladybug's yo-yo string is unbreakable. Among other things, she's used it to stop cars. The only exception is when villains like Simon Says use a Power Nullifier to negate its magic properties, changing it into a useless normal yo-yo.
  • Like Ladybug's yo-yo, nothing can break Cat Noir's staff. In "Mayura", he can even wield it while he's got Cataclysm activated (although it may be specifically immune to Cataclysm, like how Hawk Moth can't akumatize himself). Weredad, however, was able to break it into pieces by punching it.
• Magical Girl Warrior: Marinette and Adrien use their powers to fight crime. The latter is quite a rare male example, in addition to being a Cat Boy.
• Mana Meter:
  • Ladybug and Cat Noir have indicators on their Miraculouses (spots and a cat's paw, respectively), that show how much time they have left before they change back into their civilian forms. Using Lucky Charm and Cataclysm greatly wears their Kwamis out, so it better count.
  • Hawk Moth implies in "Mayura" that, with more practice, they can hold their transformations after using their abilities.
• The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Season 3 ends with them dating Luka and Kagami. By the second episode of Season 4, both relationships have imploded due primarily (Marinette/Luka) or partially (Adrien/Kagami) to the stress of their double lives.
• Master of the Mixed Message: The two of them have horrible trouble communicating their feelings; Marinette is constantly done in by her clumsiness and tendency to panic at the mere sight of Adrien, while Adrien tends to be overly affectionate towards her even when he sees her as just a friend.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: In "Syren", Master Fu cooks up some potions for Tikki and Plagg to drink that beef up their powers. For example, the introductory potion gives them fins and allows them to fight underwater, while the potion used in "Frozer" gives them ice skates and added insulation against the cold.
• Not So Above It All: While both are genuinely sweet, heroic individuals, both have had a Moment of Weakness that made them petty and immature.
• Oblivious to Love: The duo are only concerned with each other... sorta. Besides that complicated situation, neither one takes into account other admirers that are romantically interested in them.
• Official Couple: As Marinette and Adrien from Season 5 onwards.
• One-Man Army: Or "One Woman Army". Either way, both heroes can take on either four akumatized villains and a controlled Cat Noir (Ladybug) or an entire force of Brainwashed and Crazy people (Cat Noir).
• Only Sane Man: Are the only members of their class aware of Lila's lies.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Both Marinette and Adrien smile during their transformations into Ladybug and Cat Noir, respectively. So, when either one is not smiling during the transformation it means they are genuinely distressed and/or saddened about something.
• Opposites Attract: Downplayed. In a literal sense—Ladybug, a symbol for good luck; Cat Noir, a symbol for bad luck. But other than that, they have a lot of similarities with each other.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: In the greatest of ironies, this becomes the case for Ladybug and Cat Noir... after they've started dating as Adrien and Marinette. Since they're no longer vying for each other's affections anymore—and are unaware that they're already a couple—they're simply two friends that share a somewhat flirtatious rapport while remaining incredibly comfortable around each other.
• Red/Green Contrast: Ladybug and Cat Noir are both partnered heroes that share this color scheme. Ladybug's outfit is predominantly red, tempered with black spots. In-contrast, Cat Noir's design is predominantly black, tempered with various accents of green (mainly his green eyes and the paw-print symbol on his ring when active).
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Zigzagged. In their civilian life, Marinette is more energetic and emotional while Adrien is quiet and reserved. However, in their superhero life, Ladybug is more controlled and perceptive (at times) while Cat Noir is more Hot-Blooded and full of energy.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: For the first five seasons, they can only use their powers once per transformation, and have to reset it to use their powers more than that, which Hawk Moth factored into his plans on a few occasions. They overcome this limitation in the final episodes of season 5.
• Relationship Upgrade: They undergo a massive one in Season 5, with Adrien finally recognizing his feelings for Marinette and deciding to pursue a relationship with her. Despite Marinette's initial attempts to keep him at an arm's length (blaming her crush on him for causing her to lose the Miraculouses to Monarch), she eventually relents and gets together with him.
• Romantic Rain: Marinette's epic crush on Adrien is born when he lends her an umbrella in the rain.
• Rude Hero, Nice Sidekick: They have that dynamic sometimes, mostly in season one. Ladybug can come out as excessively strict to the point of sounding like a jerk, while Cat Noir, being more laidback, can act more considerate and even more level headed than her. In "Antibug", Ladybug's dislike of Chloé caused her to ignore good advice, which Cat Noir points out. In season 3's "Gamer 2.0", the overly stressed Ladybug isn't at her best, while Cat Noir and Gamer are enjoying the game.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Zigzagged. It all depends on which identity they are at the moment—Marinette and Cat Noir are a bundle of energy, but become more serious as Ladybug or Adrien, respectively.
• Second Super-Identity:
  • In "Reflekdoll", when temporarily removing their Miraculous, being transformed into Reflekta copies makes Tikki and Plagg trying to find their owners difficult. This results in a Miraculous swap where Marinette becomes Lady Noire and Adrien becomes Mister Bug. Played with as both Marinette and Adrien are aware that the other is Ladybug and Cat Noir.
  • In "Desperada", both Ladybug and Adrien let their feelings for each other get in the way of rational thought when Ladybug offers Adrien the Snake Miraculous and Adrien accepts, becoming Aspik in a failed attempt to woo Ladybug.
  • In "Kwamibuster", Marinette wears the Mouse Miraculous as Multimouse. In addition to the Mouse, Multimouse's clones wear and activate the Ladybug, Cat and Fox Miraculous as Multibug, Multinoir and Multifox.
  • More than any other holders seen thus far, they've been prone to adopting new personas by unifying themselves with extra Miraculous. Ladybug has become Dragon Bug, Pegabug, Lady Bee, Viperbug, Bunnybug, etc; while Cat Noir has become Snake Noir and Rabbit Noir.
  • In "The Chained Titans", in a stunt to make their relationship stronger, Nino (unware of that they're Ladybug and Cat Noir) turns over the Fox and Turtle Miraculouses to them so they can act as a super-powered couple; leading them to take the identities of Renardette and Trionyx. It doesn't last very long, and they go back to being Ladybug and Cat Noir once the titular akumatized villains show up.
• Secret Identity: They keep their identities a secret from each other, mostly at Ladybug's insistence. What makes it really infuriating is that they both go to the same school and are somewhat close in every guise—Marinette has a crush on Adrien, who considers her a friend, but he's in love with Ladybug, who's dismissive of Cat Noir's flirting, though still valuing him as a friend and partner. It's primarily the fuel for a Two-Person Love Square that really wants you to smack your head against the wall.
• Selective Obliviousness: Both of them have gotten enough hints that it shouldn't be that hard to figure out the other's identity, yet neither even considers the truth. Partially justified in later seasons as it's revealed all the Miraculous costumes incorporate a Glamour specifically designed so the people familiar with the civilian identity of Miraculous holders won't be able to recognize them in their heroic persona. This still doesn't rule out deduction or severe blunder, as seen in "Cat Blanc".
• Single-Target Sexuality:
  • In the first season, Marinette and Adrien only have eyes for Adrien AKA Cat Noir and Ladybug AKA Marinette, respectively. But both are currently unaware that they are crushing on the same person.
  • Zigzagged in season two, where Adrien and Marinette show some attraction to Kagami and Luka respectively. They get together at the end of season 3, but break up at the beginning of season 4 and go back to their initial targets.
• Shadow Archetype: They both receive some in the form of the series' main villains.
  • Gabriel and Adrien both went through the pain of losing Émilie, but unlike his son, Gabriel never learned to move on and make new connections; became obsessed with his own grief to the point of neglecting all those around him, shutting himself off from the world and eventually lashing out as Hawk Moth in an effort to restore what he had lost, no matter what effect it had on everyone else. And like Marinette, Gabriel is a fashion designer who, as later revealed, also came from a middle-class background with family in the food service industry, but rather than use his talents to help others embrace their true selves as Marinette does, his ideas for fashion are corporate and exploitative, and as a result of this he's lost his creativity as an artist.
  • Nathalie is, like Marinette, an incredibly intelligent planner that, like Cat Noir, follows Gabriel loyally out of an unrequited crush. In her case, her love for Gabriel has reduced her individuality so that her entire life revolves around the Agrestes and led her to abandon her morals so that she can help in anyway she can. Her loyalty ends up blinding her to the fact that Gabriel is definitely not the man she thinks of him as. and once she finally recognizes that he's gone too far she turns against him and starts undergoing a slow Heel–Face Turn.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: The two are in love with each other in a roundabout way, but cannot be together due to issues regarding their secret identities and Hawk Moth's presence holding them back.
  • It's played even straighter in the 5th season, where Adrien's father is openly against the possibility of Adrien and Marinette dating. He sees her as just another fangirl fascinated by fame and limelights, who happened to have the dumb luck of being in the same class than his son. Gabriel goes to great lengths to prevent them from hooking up.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: As superheroes, Ladybug is more serious and mature while Cat Noir makes silly jokes and is playfully cocky.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: They both envision a (2D cutout) future with their beloved that involves, among other things, a pet hamster.
• Swapped Roles: The two are forced to switch their respective Miraculous pieces in "Reflekdoll", resulting in Mister Bug and Lady Noir fighting Reflekta and the titular sentimonster.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: As seen in Frozer, both Marinette and Adrien have a tendency to daydream of their love confessions being met with instant reciprocation which is followed immediately by a Happily Ever After. Adrien takes it a step further by his belief that Ladybug will one day love Cat Noir back, even when she clearly doesn't show interest.
• Triple Shifter: They have to juggle superhero work, schoolwork and various family obligations. This often cuts into time with their friends and their sleeping habits.
  • Adrien is a greater offender than Marinette, since despite finally getting to go to ordinary school, he must continue to follow his yet already packed agenda: Chinese lessons, fencing, modeling, advertising photoshoots and spots, cat-walking, etc. One has to wonder how he manages to do all these things plus school plus super-heroing without illegal substances or time trick. To be fair, this is actually what destroys his romance with Kagami, given he has very little time left to spend with her, in addition to his unsure feelings.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: It's actually a "Two Person Love Square". Marinette is in love with Adrien, who considers her an acquaintance. When she transforms into Ladybug, she rejects the romantic advances of Cat Noir. Of course, behind Cat Noir's mask hides none other than Adrien himself, who has no idea that his beloved Ladybug is actually Marinette in disguise! It gets better and even more complicated since Marinette and Cat Noir and Adrien and Ladybug have their own interactions.
• Unequal Pairing: Adrien's shitty childhood means he'll always be a bit more emotionally dependent on Marinette than she is on him.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: As if the Two Person Love Square wasn't frustrating enough, the roughly first quarter of season 5 inverts it with Marinette giving up on Adrien because of her trauma over losing the Miraculous to Monarch (a fault she attributes to her inability to focus whenever Adrien is involved) only to fall for Cat Noir after he stops flirting with Ladybug. In the meantime, Cat Noir finally has gotten into his skull how much his flirting annoys Ladybug given she said multiple times she already loves somebody else. So he decides to respect her feelings and gives up. He soon begins to look at Marinette in a different way, sorts off his feelings for her, and finally tries to get closer to her, much to her embarrassment. This new structure thankfully doesn't last as it is smashed in "Elation", courtesy of an unwitting André the glacier, paving the way for a proper relationship between the two heroes civilian selves.
• Weak, but Skilled: Some of the akuma they face beat both of them in raw power, and they make up for it by being Guile Heroes.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng / Ladybug^{Other aliases}Aquabug / Ladyice / Lady Noire / Multimouse / Multifox / Multibug / Multinoir / Dragon Bug / Cosmobug / Lady Bee / Pegabug / Pennybug / Ladyfly / Bug Noire / Cosmobugnoire / Chronobug / Aqua Dragonbug / Viperbug / Bunnybug / Bunnynette / Renardette

The Girl Who Can Fix Everything

Akumatized forms: Princess Justice (incomplete), Unmasker (incomplete), Panic (incomplete), Heartfixer (Marinette)

Kamikotized form: Ladybiquity (Ladybug)

^Ladybug

^Aquabug

^Ladyice

^{Lady Noire}

^Multimouse

^Multifox

^Multibug

^Multinoir

^{Dragon Bug}

^Cosmobug

^{Lady Bee}
"Tikki, Pollen, unify!"

^Pegabug

^Pennybug

^Ladyfly

^{Bug Noire}

^{Cosmo Bug Noire}

^Chronobug

^{Marinette Dupain-Cheng (second saga)}

^{Ladybug (second saga)}

^{Cosmobug (second saga)}

^{Aquabug (second saga)}

^{Aqua Dragonbug}

^{Dragon Bug (second saga)}

^Viperbug

^Bunnybug

^Bunnynette

^{Ladybug (adult)}

^Grannybug

^Renardette

Voiced by: Anouck Hautbois (FR), Cristina Valenzuela (EN), ^{Foreign VAs} 여 민정/Yeo Min Jeong (KOR), Aya Hamza/آية حمزة (ARA), Guiomar Alburquerque and Laura Pastor (SP, Season 1 and 2, respectively), Jessica Ángeles (MEX), Sapir Darmon/ספיר דרמון (HEB), Adrienn Pekár (HUN), Marta Dobecka (P), Carla Garcia (EP), Jessica Vieira (BP), Anna Isbäck (SW), Valeria Stoianu (ROM), Letizia Scifoni (ITA), Damla Babacan (TUR), Darya Frolova/Дарья Фролова (RUS), Rozita Erbanová and Anežka Saicová (CZE; Season 1 and Christmas Special/Season 2, respectively), Nadežhda Panayotova/Надежда Панайотова (BUL), Lydia Morgenstern (GER), Charlotte Hellebostad (NOR), Karin Nanami (JP), Marija Stokić (SER), Zrinka Antičević (CRO), Suela Xhonuzi (ALB), Lis Kurniasih (IND), Hanna Sobolyeva/Ганна Соболєва and Yuliya Perenchuk/Юлія Перенчук (UKR, voice-over and dubbing, respectively)

The protagonist, a teenage girl and aspiring fashion designer who lives with her parents over a successful Parisian bakery. At school, Marinette is friendly, if self-effacing (especially around her crush, Adrien) but has a knack for leadership, and is well-liked by most of her classmates and peers. When danger threatens Paris, Marinette rushes to the rescue, using her magic earrings to transform into Ladybug!

As Ladybug, she's much more confident and assured. She's a clever and skilled fighter but is still working out some ethical knots, like where lies the line between personal and superhero life.

She's Master Fu's student and closest aid in the fight against Hawk Moth, tending to go to him for advice when necessary and, if needed, being the one to grant a Miraculous to another person to temporarily help with the current problem at hand.

• Abandoned Catchphrase: Early in the show, Marinette had a tendency to say "A [thing]? What am I supposed to do with this?" after she got whatever random junk her Lucky Charm decided to provide her in order to defeat the latest villain. She eventually drops this altogether in later seasons, as by then she's gotten used to the idea that she'll have to think outside the box to make this work.
• Action Girl: She is the main heroine of the setting and she has defeated countless villains across her career with nothing but her yo-yo, quick-thinking and acrobatic martial art moves.
• The Adjectival Superhero: "Miraculous Ladybug".
• Aesop Amnesia: Generally her lying and tricks result in akumatizations ("Befana", "Anansi", "Bakerix") but since it all turns out well in the end she never seems to learn. More prominently her attitude toward Kagami took a nosedive after "Frozer" and didn't get better until "Ikari Gozen".
• Affectionate Nickname: Cat Noir tends to refer to her as either "bugaboo" or "my lady". She doesn't like the first one much.
  • He uses "Buguinette" in the original French version, which doesn't carry any of the unpleasant associations of "bugaboo" (see Embarrassing Nickname below). It still comes off as quite ridiculous and dorky.
• Allegorical Character: She represents the positive side of fashion, making personalised outfits that bring people's best qualities to bear and allowing them to connect with one another. Further reflected by the creativity she displays when using her Lucky Charms as Ladybug.
• All Your Powers Combined:
  • In "Kwamibuster", she uses sixteen different Miraculouses at once ^note of the known nineteen, the only ones she doesn't use are the Moth, Peacock (both held by the villains), and Turtle (kept by Master Fu).. That being said, she only uses the powers of the Mouse, Fox, Cat, and Ladybug, and even then her various copies wield no more than two each. The point of equipping the vast majority of them was to have their Kwamis active as part of her plan to stop Kwamibuster.
  • After becoming the Guardian, Ladybug gains the ability to summon any of the Miraculouses to herself through her yo-yo. While she has loaned out the Miraculouses to their respective holders this way, circumstance or practicality has meant Ladybug has just as often used the Miraculouses herself. In terms of wearing and activating the Miraculouses, Marinette takes the cake having used the Ladybug, Cat, Mouse, Fox, Bee, Dragon, Horse, and Rabbit at various points.
• Animal Motif: Beetles, specifically ladybugs and scarabs. Scarabs are symbolic of creation and ladybugs of both regeneration and good luck, fitting with both the creation-based abilities of the Ladybug Miraculous and Marinette's talents as a novice fashion designer.
• Ascended Fangirl:
  • She's a big fan of Jagged Stone, and is predictably delighted when he commissions her to design the cover of his next album.
  • She's a big fan of Gabriel Agreste's fashion line and was able to impress him with her hat design.
• Asian and Nerdy: Downplayed. She's biracial, being Chinese on her mother's side. She's also a proficient gamer.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: While her "Lucky Charm" gives her the item to defeat the akumatized victim, Ladybug herself has to look around and figure out how to use whatever random piece of junk she was just given, in a sequence reminiscent of Action Man (2000) and its eponymous hero's AMP Factor ability. "Oblivio" shows that this isn't one of Ladybug's superpowers but rather an ability Marinette herself has. Which is most likely why she was chosen to be Ladybug in the first place.
• Back from the Dead: Not her herself, but according to Word of God, her Miraculous Ladybug power can restore anyone killed in a battle with an akuma back to life.
• Badly Battered Babysitter: At the beginning of "Stormy Weather", Marinette is having a hard time preventing little Manon from wreaking havoc on her home. This actually happens each time she has to babysit one or several of the 4 prominent kids of the show: Manon Chamack, Ella & Etta Césaire, and Chris/Noël Lahiffe. When she has to babysit all four at once, all out of kindness towards her besties Alya & Nino, she barely manages to keep her room from being "destroyed" and resorts to handling them to her grand-pa, indirectly leading to his Akumatization.
• Bat Deduction: Some of her more convoluted plans can veer into this, especially when they involve details that she logically couldn't have predicted.
• Beautiful Dreamer: According to Adrien, in "Startrain". He goes so far as to join her.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Ladybug's insistence that Cat Noir back down from flirting with her in the fourth season came back to bite her in season 5 when she falls in love with Cat Noir, who outright says in "Elation" that he only loves her as a friend now.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • "Origins" reveal that the reason she and Alya are best friends is because Alya stood up for Marinette when she was getting bullied by Chloé.
  • Marinette didn't like Adrien at first when she caught him cleaning up the chewing gum that Chloé had intended to put in her seat, assuming he was in on the prank. However, the next day, Adrien offers her his umbrella and explains what had happened. After seeing how kind he was, Marinette immediately falls for him, signified with stammering.
  • She starts to see Luka as a romantic option in "Captain Hardrock" because he apologized to her after making fun (in a non-malicious way) of her stuttering, gave her his Jagged Stone guitar pick, and complimented her bravery to Ladybug.
• Beneath Notice: Monarch at one point is led directly to her home by the Kwamis in search of Ladybug, but he has trouble believing someone like Marinette could be Ladybug and is pretty easily convinced she's just another temporary Miraculous holder. When he does finally learn the truth in the season 5 finale, he lightly chides himself for not putting it together. By contrast, Cerise having a personal beef against Marinette allows her to put together the clues hinting at Marinette's secret identity much quicker, to the point that several of her akumatized villains are either designed or at least created with the express purpose of confirming her suspicions.
• Beneath the Mask: Much more Downplayed than Cat Noir since Marinette's just more confident and assertive when she's become Ladybug. However, the "Sandboy" still makes her of two minds from on and off the Ladybug job since her nightmare as Marinette is Adrien declaring his love for Chloé while her nightmare as Ladybug is losing her powers.
• Berserk Button: Zigzagged. Despite having to lie herself to cover her double life as Ladybug, she states that she hates liars, especially those that lie to get close to Adrien. Cue Marinette, as Ladybug, calling Lila out big time in front of Adrien and resulting in Lila's akumatization.
  • Hurting Cat Noir, even if it is because he Takes The Bullet to protect her, will elicit a furious face from Ladybug and a boost in determination and focus on defeating the villain.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • She primarily serves as the Betty to Chloé's Veronica for Adrien's Archie. She ends up successful.
  • In Season 3, she's the Betty to Kagami's Veronica to Adrien's Archie. She's successful yet again.
  • On the other side of things, she's the Archie to Adrien's Betty and Luka's Veronica where Adrien eventually comes on top.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While Marinette is very sweet and considerate, she can be scary when pushed.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Marinette has to deal with her grandmother getting akumatized on her 14th birthday in "La Befana".
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Inverted since she's a hero. A couple of times early in Season 5, she has Monarch dead to rights, but wastes enough time gloating and explaining her heroic plan that he has enough time to figure out a way to escape.
• Braids of Action: As Lady Noire, she sports a floor-length braid. She has a similar braid as Bug Noire, plus two roughly waist length braids.
• Brainy Brunette: Zigzagged. Her hair is colored blue, but is described as black In-Universe. Either way, Marinette is still an intelligent girl who regularly saves the day with a single Lucky Charm item and MacGyvering a use with it.
• Break the Cutie: The finale of Season 3 and the first few episodes of Season 4 are one long Trauma Conga Line for Marinette.
  • In "Heart Hunter" and "Miracle Queen", she lets go of Adrien so he can be with Kagami, accidentally leads Hawk Moth and Mayura to Master Fu, and becomes the new Guardian when Fu passes the Miracle Box on to her, an act which erases his memories of the Miraculouses (and since his life since childhood has revolved around the Miraculouses, Fu forgets pretty much everything).
  • "Truth" sees her budding relationship with Luka crumble because of the strain of leading a double life and Marinette despairing that as long as Shadow Moth is around she has no agency over her life. "Gang of Secrets" likewise shows how her strained her relationship with her friends has become, and how Marinette spends most of her downtime alone, crying.
  • In "Furious Fu", she's so defeated by her inability to stop Hawk Moth that she considers giving the Miracle Box to Su-Han, knowing that doing so will erase her memories of the past year or so (i.e. of her ever being Ladybug, meeting Alya and Adrien, etc). Thankfully, Cat Noir snaps her out of it.
  • In "Strikeback", the S4 finale, she lost all the Miraculous to Shadow Moth due to being unable to realise that she entrusted the Dog Miraculous and info about her access to the Miracle Box to Félix disguised as Adrien until it was too late. With consequences as huge as that, she gives up pursuing Adrien for everyone's sake.
  • The end of Season 5 and the initial events after that shown in Miraculous World London show Marinette having totally shut down emotionally because of the burden she placed on herself at the last request of Gabriel/Monarch to never let anyone know of his evil acts, which included having her Destroy the Evidence and perform a Treacherous Cover Up by lying to the world, including her allies, that Gabriel died a hero, and having to keep that secret until she could recover the Butterfly Miraculous. The Season 6 opening shows her still fearful about that and what would happen if the truth ever does get revealed.
• Building Swing: She can do this by throwing her yo-yo and swinging, as a Spider-Man Send-Up should be able to.
• But Not Too Foreign: Verging on Mukokuseki, even if it's a Western show. Marinette is 1/4 French and 1/4 Italian via her father, and half-Chinese via her mother. If her last name wasn't said so often, you wouldn't be able to tell she's partially ethnically Chinese from her appearance, nor from her clothes, unless counting the flowers on her T-shirt which lightly evoke traditional chinese paintings, and that would be stretching things quite a bit, as she looks more like her Caucasian peers rather than her mother or other Chinese relatives. This is especially jarring because the show (mostly) gets ethnicities right and doesn't resort to Facial Profiling. She's also 100% culturally French, and an episode even highlights that she doesn't speak a word of Chinese. This gets fixed in Season 6, her facial features were redesigned to look more like her Asian mother and both her bedroom and outfits (like as Renardette) feature more Chinese elements.
• Butt-Monkey: Downplayed Trope. While most of the show's slapstick humor comes at her expense and the universe seems to actively cause her to be clumsy and to prevent her from confessing to Adrien in multiple ways ("Cat Blanc" being the most spectacular example), she usually accomplishes her other goals before the episode ends.
• Cannot Spit It Out: She goes into either a Gibberish of Love or Motor Mouth when around Adrien, only managing to say what she wants with help from Alya, but otherwise keeps her feelings hidden. She also paradoxically seems to prefer Adrien not knowing she loves him if the possibility he might have figured it on his own comes up. "Simpleman" has her admit to herself and Tikki that her Complexity Addiction while trying to romance Adrien is out of the fear of getting rejected if she actually tries to be straight with him… and then she tries to tell him she loves him plainly only to find she is unable again to say the words correctly. Part of why she is unable to tell him is because a year prior to the series she told Kim she liked him, he played a cruel prank on her on Chloé's advice after she had tormented Marinette for years. This led to her being a lot more guarded with her feelings.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin':
  • Many of her moments of weakness implode spectacularly in her face. For example, defending herself from one of Chloé's false accusations gets her labelled no better than her, while calling out Lila for her Celebrity Lie gets the latter akumatized.
  • Tikki and Master Fu more than once warn Marinette that she shouldn't use her Miraculous for personal gain. It always ends up in catastrophe, the most spectacular one being in "Cat Blanc".
  • It extends beyond the simple use of her own Miraculous. Even before being the new Guardian, choosing/calling a Miraculous holder to get a personal advantage always backfires big time. Cases in point:
    • In "Heart Hunter", instead of teaming up with Chloé (who rightfully points out she should be called as it's HER parents who got akumatized after all), Ladybug literaly abducts Kagami to drive her away from Adrien while the two were sharing a sweet moment. And she does it even after Fu expressed doubt about the Dragon being the right Miraculous for the task. This leads directly to Queen Bee's akumatization and treason. And indirectly to the revelation of the real identity of the others holders of Miraculouses (sans Adrien); Master Fu entrusting her with the Miracle Box, thus erasing his memories ; and Hawk Moth and Mayura getting their hands on a digital copy of the Book of the Guardian. Chloé ends up as the enemy of Ladybug, this time for good.
    • The two times she gave a Miraculous to Adrien (not Cat Noir) with little and questionable reasoning, it ends up as big failures. When she gives him the Snake Miraculous, "Aspik" accomplishes nothing as he is too distracted trying to woo Ladybug. When she gives the Dog Miraculous to "Adrien" (in fact his first cousin Félix), it causes a Near-Villain Victory: Shadow Moth seizes all of the Miraculous, save for Marinette's and Cat Noir's.
• Catchphrase: She has a few, not counting her transformation call.
  • She'll sometimes use "Bug out!" as a means of exiting.
  • In the first two episodes only, she'd mark breaking the akumatized object by saying "get out of here, you nasty bug".
  • When deakumatizing the akuma, she'll always say these phrases in the exact order:
    • "Tu as assez fait de mal comme ça, petit Akuma." / "No more evil doing for you, little Akuma."
    • "Je te libère du mal !" / Time to de-evilize!"
    • "J't'ai eu !" / "Gotcha!"
    • "Bye bye, petit papillon." / "Bye-bye, little butterfly."
  • She has a tendency to yell "THIS IS A DISASTER!!" ("C'est la CATA !", "cata" being "catastrophe" shortened) when in a state of panic.
• Character Development: Zig-zagged.
  • Retroactive, but the "Origins" episodes show that she had low confidence and would let Chloé do whatever she wanted. As the present timeline shows, she becomes a more assertive person.
  • When it comes to her crush on Adrien, Marinette can be skewed in her decision making as she will often abuse her powers just to keep other girls away from him. This catches up to her in "Volpina", as her jealousy of Lila lying about their "relationship" just to get close to Adrien, leads Marinette to transform as Ladybug just to reveal Lila's lies in an inappropriate manner which not only gets her called out by Adrien but also causes Lila's Akumatization. Fast-forward to "Riposte" as Adrien shows mild attraction to fellow fencing peer Kagami, and while Marinette is expectedly jealous of their interactions, she manages to control her jealousy in a more mature manner and thus becomes friends with her.
  • After every previous attempts at exposing Lila backfired, by the time of "Penalteam", Marinette kept her grievances with her to herself.
    • When the time came to expose Lila for her lies in "Confrontation", she did so by showing it to her friends and classmates rather than just telling them which, again, had previously always backfired.
  • Having spent the previous season keeping Cat Noir Locked Out of the Loop and at a distance treating him as just another member of her superhero team, in the season 5 premiere, she gives him the powerful Rabbit Miraculous instead of taking it herself, showing her trust in him as an equal.
  • In the season 4 finale, after her blind love for Adrien resulted in Shadow Moth getting most Miraculous, Marinette decides in "Multiplication" that she can't be in love with Adrien anymore as it puts things at risk. Then, a few episodes later in "Determination" , when he calls her to meet up with her to talk about his feelings for her, she initially tries to avoid it.
• Chef of Iron: A secret superhero who is noted to be an excellent baker.
• The Chooser of the One:
  • During certain missions, Ladybug's Lucky Charm doesn't provide her with a tool to defeat the villain but tells Ladybug this time she needs help at which point she goes to Master Fu who entrusts her with a Miraculous and allows her to choose a temporary wielder.
  • In "Backwarder", Master Fu reveals he intends for the Miracle Box to go to Marinette when he dies (which he thinks is imminent due to some mild indigestion) and she will become the next Guardian. In "Feast", he reiterates that he intends to train her to be the next Guardian, though he no longer believes his death is imminent. This eventually comes to pass in the season 3 finale, though Fu is merely robbed of his memory instead of killed.
• Clark Kenting: She wears a mask, and has hair and eyes a shade lighter, and that's about it. And, like Superman, she has a close friend that desperately wants to know Ladybug's identity, but never connects the dots until she tells her. It's later explained in the New York special that the transformation comes with a Perception Filter that helps mask any similarities those familiar with the person might notice.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Marinette struggles with her self-confidence, and it was even worse before she became a Miraculous holder.
• Class Princess: Marinette is beloved by almost everyone in her class for her willingness to help others and stand up to Chloé's tyranny.
• Class Representative: Became her class' representative in "Darkblade". She temporarily ends up losing this position to Lila and Chloé in "Revelation" before regaining what is rightfully hers.
• Clingy Costume: A positive example, since it protects her Secret Identity: if anyone attempts to unmask her by simply pulling, it seems to be super glued to her skin. The only way to get it to turn loose is to either remove her earrings or wait for the time limit to run out after she's used her Lucky Charm.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She doesn't mind Adrien hanging around girls...as long as the girls don't have an interest in him and give off bad vibes. She will however take brash actions if she sees anyone really push hard when it comes to getting close to Adrien, such as when she summoned a record through Lucky Charm to interrupt a slow dance song Chloé requested from The Bubbler's at Adrien's birthday party.
  • Subtle, but she becomes somewhat angry about Cat Noir supposedly changing his feelings to her instead of Ladybug, which is essentially Marinette getting jealous of herself.
  • However, in "Animaestro", Chloé uses their shared jealousy towards Kagami to convince Marinette to try keeping Kagami away from Adrien by publicly humiliating her. The only reason they're unsuccessful is because of external factors- Marinette only changed her mind after they had already failed. Somewhat downplayed in this case: Marinette had previously helped Adrien and Kagami go on a date together, and had not tried to interfere. Here, Chloé used Marinette's tendency to spiral against her and told Marinette that if Adrien dated Kagami, then he would move away to Japan and they would never see him again.
  • In "Oni-Chan", Marinette spies on, chases after, and attempts to see into Adrien's bedroom when he and Lila interact. Though in this case, she might have been equally worried about Lila's villainous tendencies, since Marinette had already seen Lila's true colors more than once, while Adrien was still making excuses for Lila's lies.
  • In "Ikari Gozen", it's Subverted. She's paired with Kagami in a treasure hunt race which goal is to find and meet Adrien. Acting on her jealousy and self-confidence issues (as for her Kagami is better than her at pretty much everything: "She's beautiful, smart, a great fencer[...]"), she first refuses to work with the latter. Then she goes for sabotaging their partnership in fear of Kagami taking the spotlight in Adrien's eyes, if Marinette and Kagami were ever to win. (Un)fortunately, Kagami is too smart and motivated to fall for Marinette's poor traps. It's only after Marinette discovers through Kagami's cell phone the latter's Friendless Background and use of an app to try and befriend her that Marinette has a My God, What Have I Done? moment. They don't win the game, but nevertheless become friends at the end of the episode.
• Clueless Dude Magnet: Marinette is completely unaware of how a few guys find her attractive, either as herself or as Ladybug. As revealed in "Copycat", she doesn't even seem to think Cat Noir actually has feelings for her.
• Color Motifs:
  • Pink — it's her main color scheme in her civilian attire and the color can represent femininity and love.
  • Red and black — her main color scheme as Ladybug, to match her animal-themed Miraculous. Both colors can represent power and leadership.
• Commitment Issues: She spent four seasons trying and failing to confess her feelings to Adrien, often coming up with absurdly complicated plans doomed to fail, getting Emotionally Tongue-Tied, or just bailing entirely when the opportunity presents itself. Even when the two of them start dating, she has a lot of difficulty being honest with him or finding something common ground, going so far as to bury herself into hero-work just to avoid it. "Derision" implies that this is because she tried confessing her feelings to Kim years back, only to suffer from a cruel prank for it.
• Complexity Addiction: Coupled with Zany Scheme. A recurring theme with Marinette is that she will always come with the most complicated explanations and plans to accomplish simple tasks. For instance, "Kwami Buster" takes the gold when Marinette comes up with an over-elaborate ruse to hide her secret identity from Cat Noir by getting "Marinette" and "Ladybug" to interact with each other. (To really hammer it in, it's immediately contrasted with Cat Noir's far simpler measure of making himself look like he doesn't know anything about their high school by blatantly misidentifying it as an elementary school.) It generally backfires on her when she isn't Ladybug, and will surely fail if her objective involves Adrien in some capacity.
• Consummate Professional: As Ladybug, she'd rather stay focused on the task at hand than flirt, joke, or indulge in celebrity fame while in costume.
• Control Freak: Marinette has a tendency to try to control all aspects of a situation, especially when stressed or afraid of uncertainty. This is revealed in the fifth season to be a defense mechanism caused by the incident caused by Chloé that pyschologically scarred her.
  • In "Glaciator 2", Marinette admits that when things are really important to her, she get so scared that it won't work out that she can't help trying to control every possible outcome.
  • In "Kuro Neko" this comes full force. Ladybug's constantly impatient and dismissive toward Cat Noir due to The Chains of Commanding being the Guardian of the Miraculous, yet she also won't let him share the burden and help her distribute or collect other Miraculouses.
  • Her tendency to do everything on her own and not allow anyone to help her with the Miraculouses ends up biting her back in the season 4 finale. Since if she had accepted Cat Noir's help, she would have saved at least some of the Miraculouses.
• Costume Evolution:
  • In season 4, she learns how to create anti-akuma charms. This comes with a change in costume, inverting her color scheme around her waist and gloves, adding a zipper down the front, and a slightly lower neckline. After the first instance, it's integrated with her Lucky Charm, allowing her to cover both bases at once.
  • In season 6, she has a new permanent costume similar to the one she gets in season 4, but with additional black stripes along the arms and sides, as well as dyeing the tips of her hair red.
• Covert Pervert: In "Simon Says", Marinette goes into a dream-like state when she thinks Adrien is in the shower.
• Crush Blush: Marinette turns red as a beetroot on a regular basis when it comes to Adrien.
• Crying Wolf: One reason nobody believes Marinette when she tells them that Lila is a bully is because Marinette is known to be irrationally jealous of her romantic rivals, of which Lila is one. Unfortunately, Marinette was telling the truth, and Lila is a hell of a lot more malicious than she is.
• Curtains Match the Window: Zigzagged. Marinette has blue hair and matching eyes. However, she's noted to have black hair by the other characters even though her hair is styled blue.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Marinette is shown to be very clumsy, specially around Adrien. As Ladybug, though, she becomes much more competent, though accidents (like bonking Cat Noir or herself with her yo-yo) sometimes happen.
• Daddy's Girl: Downplayed. Marinette has an equally close relationship with both her parents, but she has a slightly closer one with her father (i.e., taking her father to career day, etc.).
• Dance Battler: During fights, she is always moving; twirling around and never staying still for long.
• Didn't Think This Through: Despite the fact that outsmarting her opponents is Ladybug's whole thing, Marinette's plans tend to fall into this as she tends not to take the social ramifications of her plans into account. This is especially true in season four, where her holding Cat Noir at arm's length is steadily fraying their partnership.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Regardless of being in the right and justified, she publicly humiliated Lila by calling her out on her lies in front of Adrien as a result of acting on her jealousy, resulting in Lila becoming akumatized and receiving a minor What the Hell, Hero? from Adrien himself on her tactlessness.
• Does Not Like Spam: When her grandmother came to celebrate her 14th birthday, she brought Marinette's childhood favorite candy, Dolo Befana. However, Marinette now hates the candy.
• Doesn't Like Guns: When given a BFG as a Lucky Charm in "Malediktator", she tosses it away to opt for the laser instead, remarking she would never use one of those. She also expresses disdain for other excessively large weapons (the two BFS Swords from "Antibug" and "Sandboy").
• Domino Mask: Ladybug's costume sports one. It's actually bonded to her face, as Lady Wifi discovered, so unmasking her isn't as simple as one might think.
• Dork Knight: Downplayed. She's the protagonist to Adrien's deuteragonist, and a compassionate, genuinely nice Girly Bruiser, who likes fashion, and trumps people at video games left and right. And as Ladybug she stands for responsibility and justice alongside Cat Noir. Despite all that, she gets pretty flustered and even more clumsy than usual around her crush, Adrien, alternating between Cannot Spit It Out and a hilarious case of Motor Mouth.
• Dragons Up the Yin Yang: Her costume as Dragon Bug, when using the Dragon Miraculous alongside the Ladybug, is partly designed to resemble a taijitu.
• Dude Magnet: Either as Marinette or Ladybug, she has her admirers.
  • Adrien AKA Cat Noir only has eyes for Ladybug, therefore Marinette as well if he knew who Ladybug and wasn't staggeringly Oblivious to Love, which is more meaningful since he is surrounded by hordes of cute fangirls.
    • In season 5 Adrien falls out of love with Ladybug and in love with Marinette.
  • Nathaniel dreamt of saving her from an Akuma attack and all he wanted to do was go on a date with her as Evillustrator. It's implied at the end he gets over his crush on Marinette...only to possibly transfer it to Ladybug. He's later implied to have moved onto being with Marc.
  • Nino tried to confess his love to her in "Animan" but instead said Alya's name out of nervousness, and Marinette tries to get him and Alya together. This actually worked out.
  • Théo has an intense liking towards Ladybug and part of the reason he is akumatized into Copycat is because Cat Noir lied about them being a couple to keep Théo from pursuing her.
  • According to Word of God, Luka fell for her when they first met in "Captain Hardrock" and he actively flirts with her in "Frozer". They briefly start dating at the start of Season 4, but they quickly break up cause of Marinette's secrets (her identity as Ladybug and the Guardian of the Miraculous) that she keeps from him, however Luka remains in love with her even after they break up.
  • And not just guys: "Adoration" reveals that Zoé has a crush on her, and she confesses this to Marinette at the end.
  • In the "Miraculous World Tokyo", Kiss, one of the male characters from Stellar Force, also seems to take an interest in her.
• Eccentric Artist: She is either completely spaced out or completely fixated on one thing, to the exclusion of all else. There is no middle ground.
• Elegant Character, Elegant Weapon: As Ladybug she is the picture of a composed, resourcful, and professional superhero, always beating the odds against her with her wits and whatever random object her Lucky Charm gives her. Fittingly, her weapon is a yo-yo, which requires no small amount of dexterity to wield properly and has a large range of uses.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Cat Noir nicknames her "bugaboo", which annoys more than flatters her. A bugaboo is a fairy creature on par with a hobgoblin or bugbear, and in some cases an alternate name for the bogeyman.
  • In the original, French dub, he goes for the much more neutral and endearing "Buguinette". It still sounds both dorky and a tad too familiar, justifying Ladybug's annoyance. The "bugaboo" pun cannot be implemented in the French language, as none of the French words for these creatures is suited for a Ladybug pun ("hobgoblin" = lutin/gnome ; "bugbear" = épouvantail/croque-mitaine ; "bogeyman" = croque-mitaine).
• Embarrassing Pyjamas: Marinette more than once finds herself in her pyjamas out in the open, be it because she's late for school and forgets to change, or because Hawk Moth launched an attack early (or late) in the day and she has to immediately transform. When she notices, especially if Adrien is close, she's usually more than awkward. She'll mildly freak out and try to cover her chest and shoulders with her arms like if they were exposed... while her pyjamas actually shows nothing revealing at all: it's a pink pants with either a tank top or a short-sleeved T-shirt. Alya's attire is arguably more revealing for example, since she always wears a short to go sleeping.
  • In Protection, Marinette deliberately goes to see Adrien in his home in her pyjamas. This is a way to show how much progress she has made and her deep trust into Adrien. Though once he notices when she's in front of him, she has second thoughts. Adrien promptly goes to change into his own pyjamas so Marinette will be at ease.
• Embodiment of Virtue: Love, being a prominent All-Loving Hero and gleefully acts as a Shipper on Deck for any fledgling couples she sees. After some Character Development, even her Green-Eyed Monster tendencies don't stop her from supporting Adrien and Kagami, being saddened upon learning they broke up.
• Enemy Mine: In "Animaestro", she teams up with her archrival Chloé to sabotage what she thinks is a romantic moment between Adrien and Kagami.
• Environmental Symbolism: Her room is situated in her parents attic, so it has constant light streaming in and is painted in warm colours, not to mention filled with her self-made designs and plushies. All of which reflects her warm, All-Loving Hero demeanour, creativity, and artistic ability.
• Even the Girls Want Her:
  • In "Adoration", Zoé confesses that she's in love with her.
  • Kagami's bio◊ and her statement in "Protection" about loving both Adrien and Marinette and wishing that their love for each other wouldn't hurt her this much implies that her feelings for Marinette may also be more than platonic.
  • Before "The Battle of the Miraculous", Chloé used to be a big fan of her as Ladybug, cosplaying as her, wanting to take multiple selfies with her and generally acting like she has a celebrity crush on her.
• Expressive Hair: In Ladybug PV one strand of her hair would change with her mood, such as forming a love heart.
• Expressive Mask: Downplayed with her domino mask as Ladybug, which is clearly as flexible as the rest of her outfit and so molds to her face. The placement of the spots on the mask also fit very well to make them resemble eyebrows whenever Ladybug's expression changes.
• Fag Hag: She was the one who first introduced Marc to Nathaniel, and is one of the biggest supporters of their friendship and eventual relationship. In "The Ruler", as Nathaniel nearly blows up his relationship with Marc out of fear of his mother's disapproval, Marinette not only talks him out of doing things that he would not be able to undo, she also nearly picks a fight with his mother when the latter tries to drag Nathaniel out of school in front of his classmates.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: As Dragon Bug, her suit has a swirling asymmetrical design that invokes a taijitu; her right side has black spots on red like her regular Ladybug outfit, while on her left it's inverted to red on black.
• Fatal Flaw: Impulsiveness. Her tendency to do or say things on a whim, especially when Adrien is involved, has not only driven a wedge between her and her friends, but it has also led to a substantial number of akumatizations along with making an enemy out of Lila Rossi.
  • Her Complexity Addiction combined with her Control Freak tendencies especially in later seasons. When she's scared or gets panicked she'd rather control every aspect of a situation rather than let someone else handle it. This leads to overly complex plans that have a lot of moving parts and variables, which inevitably fall apart when an aspect she never thought about crops up (see above in Didn't Think This Through).
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Marinette is an adorable Girly Girl who is also a Supreme Chef when it comes to baking.
• The Fixer: Her job involves a little bit of everything, from lockpicking to combat to potion-brewing. What she can't accomplish herself, her vast amount of friends both magical and mundane can.
• Flower Motifs: Pink flowers with black leaves can be seen on her civilian t-shirt and in a number of her designs. She also used the codename "Lotus" during the events of "Gigantitan", the lotus flower being a symbol of rebirth, enlightenment and self-renewal which plays in her character development. It is also a symbol of purity and incorruptibility in Chinese literature, relating to the various times she dodged being akumatized.
• Flowers of Femininity: Marinette is stereotypically feminine and she wears clothes that have Flower Motifs. Some of her stuff (such as her bedroom, all her bags and notebooks) were also designed to have similar motifs.
• Freudian Excuse: In "Derision", it's revealed that Marinette had a crush on Kim, only for an attempt at confessing her feelings went horribly wrong after he thoughtlessly pulled a cruel prank on her at the public pool. This, combined with years of being isolated as Chloé's favorite punching bag, resulted in giving her massive self-esteem issues, Commitment Issues, and a whole host of other problems.
• Friendless Background: "Origins" and "Derision" imply she became this after her best friend Socqueline started high school, with Chloé's bullying making it hard to befriend her other peers. Thankfully, Alya's presence changed that.
• Fusion Dance: After learning how to combine the powers of multiple Miraculouses, Marinette makes frequent use of the skill. This is facilitated further when she becomes Guardian of the Miraculous, allowing her to summon the Miraculous to herself on demand. Fusions shown include:
  • Marinette, as Multimouse, has her various clones wield the both the Mouse and Cat, Ladybug and Fox Miraculous, becoming Multinoir, Multibug and Multifox.
  • Marinette wields both the Ladybug and Dragon Miraculous to become Dragon Bug against Miracle Queen.
  • She wields the Ladybug and Bee Miraculous to become LadyBee against Style Queen.
  • She wields the Ladybug and Horse Miraculous to become PegaBug against Sentibubbler and Shadow Moth.
  • She wields the Ladybug, Horse and Rabbit Miraculous to become PennyBug in "Strike Back".
  • As part of her plan to defeat the team up between Shadybug, Claw Noir, and Monarch, Marinette unifies her world's Ladybug Miraculous and the parallel Gabriel's Butterfly Miraculous in order to become Ladyfly.
  • After Plagg gives her Cat Noir's ring in order to even the playing field with Monarch, she unifies the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous to become Bug Noire for the events of both "Conformation" and "Re-Creation".
• Gamer Chick: Everyone (including Max) assumes Marinette's a newbie at the game focused on in "The Gamer", but she's able to beat both Max and Adrien at it (much to the former's chagrin) with ease due to spending plenty of time playing it with her parents.
• Genki Girl: Downplayed. While Marinette isn't super energetic like most examples on there, she can be pretty bubbly otherwise (except for when Adrien is there).
• Gibberish of Love: In earlier episodes, she's incapable of speaking a complete sentence in Adrien's presence. It's shown in the "Origins" arc to have only started right when she fell in love with him. While she does get better over time, and finds it possible to talk about some subjects to him normally, she'll still resort to gibberish occasionally (at least it's more likely to be in full sentences now.)
• Girlish Pigtails: Her default hairstyle, which she keeps as both Ladybug and when unified as Dragonbug.
• Girly Bruiser: Marinette is a hyperfeminine teenage girl who loves pink and is cutesy, bubbly, and romantic, designs and sews her own clothes from scratch (and even models them on occasion), a talented Sweet Baker, and is affectionate with her friends and family, not to mention absolutely smitten with Adrien Agreste (as well as Luka Couffaine for some time). She's also a strong fighter as the superhero Ladybug, and is the protector of Paris, who tends to pick up the slack of her male and more conventionally masculine partner Cat Noir often, even winning in fights against him when he is Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Her outfit includes mainly pink colors. She's open about her crush on Adrien (at least, only to those she can trust). Plus, she's an aspiring fashion designer. Marinette can also be as aggressive as she needs to be and is skilled at video games.
• Good Is Not Soft: When faced with the chance to end Gabriel forever, and the fate of the universe riding on her victory, Marinette has no problem attacking her true love’s own mother to gain the advantage.
• Green-Eyed Monster: She can become really jealous when other girls like Chloé, Lila or Kagami come close to Adrien and tends to make some rather poor choices. Thankfully, she's making progress on overcoming this.
• Hair Color Dissonance: In-universe, Ladybug's hair is described as "jet black", but her CGI model has blue hair. It actually does become properly black when she transforms into Lady Noire, but not as Ladybug or Multimouse.
  • Her season six design features properly black hair.
• Has a Type: Inverted. Most of the boys (and at least two of the girls) who develop feelings for Marinette are artists. Ironically, Adrien, whom she begins dating in S5, is not.
• The Heart: Just about everyone in Marinette's class feels comfortable with confiding in her and asking her for help. (A Freeze-Frame Bonus implies that she keeps tabs on everyone's schedule, not just Adrien's- presumably to plan group activities.) This is one reason why Adrien doubts that she likes him; everyone else can talk to Marinette freely, but she can't get away from him fast enough.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her "Lucky Charm" often gets the What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway? reaction from the Villain of the Week, but she quickly shows them that whatever item the "Lucky Charm" gives her is the key to her victory.
• Heroic Ambidexterity: Marinette has shown to be ambidextrous and is The Hero of the show.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • In "Heart Hunter", the combined stress of her unrequited feelings and the Miracle Box being stolen piles up on Marinette. She collapses in Luka's arms, sobbing about how she never feels like her true self anymore.
  • She gets another one after the climax of the finale of Season 4 where she loses all of the Miraculous to Shadow Moth, save for hers and Adrien's. She ends up sobbing in her hands. Not long after, Ladybug goes sulking at the Trocadéro with Dull Eyes of Unhappiness. It takes a comforting speech from Cat Noir and Parisians refusing to bow to Monarch, instead shouting her name in support for her to regain some morale.
• Heroic Seductress: A G-rated version. She is willing to use any feelings an akumatized villain might have for her as a distraction. Which is the only reason she got out of the Cat Blanc fight alive.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: "Perfection" has her trying to keep away from Kagami in the shame that she has failed to manifest Kagami's support of her into an actual romantic relationship with Adrien. By the end of the episode, Marinette realizes that she similarly fails to talk to Adrien due to not thinking of herself as good enough.
• Heroic Willpower: In "Derision" she manages to reject the Akuma before being fully akumatized after she figures out the cause of her distress around Adrien.
• Hero's Muse: Cat Noir sees her as one, if his poetry is any indication.
• Hero with a Unique Name: Unlike Adrien and their peers, Marinette's last name is a hyphenation between her father and mother's.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Once she has set on Marinette and Ladybug for her arch enemies, Lila does all she can to frame one, the other, or both at the same time:
  • In "Ladybug", Lila sends an anonymous message framing up Marinette for supposedly cheating on a test, then accuses her of stealing her necklace. Both the test's answers and the necklace are found in Marinette's locker. Lila finally pretends Marinette pushed her down the stairs. She gets expelled as a result. Marinette can only come back after Adrien more or less blackmailed Lila into retracting her accusations and confessing her lies. Marinette never finds the reason of Lila's 180° turn, while Lila gets away with it by invoking a medical condition making her a compulsive liar. She gets to stay at Collège Françoise Dupont.
  • Later in Season 5, Lila manages to make Kagami sufficiently doubt of the sincerity of Marinette's friendship twice, allowing Shadow Moth to akumatize her both times.
  • In "Adoration", then "Confrontation", Lila, allied with Chloé, engineers two schemes in order to once again Frame-Up Marinette. First, they use the Dog Miraculous to try and get her framed for theft. Ladybug quickly clears her name. Secondly, the much more vicious plan to sabotage Marinette's classroom comrades vows forms for high school. Both schemes fail.
  • In "Revelation", Lila even manages to make Monarch believe it's Marinette who thwarted his plan, while in fact it was all part of an elaborate scheme by Lila to get revenge against him.
  • People who spend too much time on social networks of the Alliance rings become easy prey of conspiracy theories hostile to Ladybug. Jalil, Alix's big brother, missing his sister, believes the malicious slander that Alix/Bunnyx is only a tool for Ladybug who doesn't care about her as a person.
  • The Season 5 finale has holders of the Alliance rings from all around the world being brainwashed into believing Ladybug and Cat Noir kidnapped Kagami and Adrien. They consequently begin to relentlessly chase the two heroes.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: She and Alya are as close as sisters, and tell each other practically everything. In the season 4 episode "Gang of Secrets", Alya is the first person that Marinette willingly reveals her identity to.
• Hidden Depths:
  • She turns out to be quite the skilled Gamer Chick.
  • As it turns out, the episode "Oblivio" shows that Marinette's "Lucky Vision" isn't a superpower at all. Marinette is just naturally clever and creative enough to MacGyver her way out of a dangerous situation with what anyone else would see as something completely useless.
  • While Marinette's interests include the obvious baking and art, "Climatiqueen" reveals during Adrien's Failure Montage that she is also interested in the more unconventional electromagnetism.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: A platonic example with her father — along with her mother, Tom dwarfs Marinette.
• Hypocrite:
  • In "Copycat", Marinette steals Adrien's phone and in "Reflekta" she steals Chloé's, but in "Volpina" she criticizes Lila for stealing his book. Before seeing Lila throw it away. She's also stolen a photographer's memory chip and Juleka's bike (both returned but they were still taken without permission).
  • More concerning is that she has repeatedly stated she hates liars, and yet has a habit of lying to avoid potential embarrassment. Particularly to Adrien.
  • Ladybug is adamantly defensive about her private life, even getting annoyed at Nadja Chamack when the reporter asks standard interview questions. However, Marinette has invaded Adrien's privacy many times (and attempted many more).
  • Marinette is often disgusted with Chloé's bullying nature but actually helps her to try and humiliate Kagami in front of Adrien in "Animaestro" after Chloé convinces her that Kagami would take Adrien away to Japan. She does realize what she did, but only when the plan fails. But then she proceeds to do it again in "Ikari Gozen" and although she once more stopped herself it puts her in a very questionable light as to whether she's really any better than Chloé when it comes to acting out in jealousy.
  • Marinette has criticized Chloé for abusing her rich status to get what she wants even though she's abused her powers as Ladybug multiple times to get what she wants. Namely interrupting Adrien and Chloé's slow dance in "The Bubbler", stealing Adrien's phone in "Copycat" and sneaking into Adrien's room to deliver a letter in "Cat Blanc."
  • Marinette expects the class to listen to her about Lila's lies, yet in "Santa Claws" she refuses to listen to Adrien when he says Santa isn't an akumatized villain.
  • She refuses to give Chloé a Miraculous after her brief stint as Queen Bee in season 2 because Hawk Moth knows her secret identity and it will put her and her loved ones in danger, and Hawk Moth did indeed exploit that fact a few times. However, Kagami likewise outed her secret identity in her debut as a superhero, yet Marinette picked her over Chloé against Heart Hunter. Throughout Season 4, she has no problem giving Miraculous to her allies (mainly Alya), even though nearly all of them had their secret identities outed at the end of the previous season.
  • Throughout the series Ladybug is 100% firm to not reveal her civilian identity to anyone (especially to Cat Noir), but in “Gang of Secrets”, after a emotional meltdown, she reveals herself to Alya, making her de facto superhero confidant. Probably justified because she doesn’t want to repeat the Bad Future that happened in “Cat Blanc”, and because, as Plagg stated in “Rocketear”, now that she’s the Guardian, she’s the one who makes rules, even those that would only benefit herself.
  • Marinette doesn't put up with lies and has repeatedly called out Lila for manipulating people by lying to them. However, in "Ephemeral" she is willing to do exactly what Lila does: get a secret out of Cat Noir by "telling him what he wants to hear".
• Iconic Outfit: Marinette's ladybug-patterned suit she wears as Ladybug.
• Imagine Spot: Played for laughs as her imagination tends to go to the extreme for either the best or the worst possible consequences, usually the latter due to worrying about trying to get Adrien to notice her. One positive scenario that came out of her excitable mind was an immediate Happily Ever After scene following a supposed successful fruit smoothie date, having already decided the names of her and Adrien's "future" three children.
• I'm Not Afraid of You: Shown in many episodes where she is outnumbered. In the Origin episodes when Hawk Moth projects his head as a menacing mass of akumatized butterflies she is the first to confidently and swiftly take on all the butterflies by unakumatizing them, and as a bonus makes a powerful speech to Hawk Moth that she isn't afraid.
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • Her main weapon is a Killer Yo-Yo.
  • Moreover, the entire nature of her "Lucky Charm" is that it grants her a random and seemingly useless item that would normally serve no purpose in combat, but is actually exactly what she needs to defeat the Villain of the Week.
  • As Multimouse, Marinette uses what appears to be a jump rope.
• Improperly Paranoid: She is quite prone at overthinking and overreacting to anything she thinks would be seen as weird by other people (especially Adrien) and a "Fawlty Towers" Plot tends to result as a cause of it.
• Improvisational Ingenuity: Lucky Charm almost never gives her anything that could obviously be used as a weapon, but Ladybug - actually Marinette; this is not a power granted by the Miraculous - displays enormous creativity in making the most of it with an improvised plan.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: As Multimouse, Marinette's creation of an army of duplicates is accompanied by her and the duplicates shrinking.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Of the heroic and idealistic variety.
• Innocently Insensitive: When it comes to her crush on Adrien, Marinette has a tendency to let it cloud her judgement to the point she hurts someone else's feelings.
  • This trait actually extends to other aspects of her life. While she never means any harm, her tendency to stress herself out over her own problems tends to hurt the people around her. Her secret keeping from Cat Noir is a prime example of this, but others include ”Crocoduel”, where she tries to ask Juleka to get her brother Luka away from his own birthday party because she wanted to avoid him (hurting both twins in the process) and in “Perfection”, when she ghosted Kagami because she was too embarrassed to face her about Adrien, which makes Kagami think Marinette hates her.
• Insecure Love Interest: Marinette is this towards Adrien, explaining why she is so shy in his presence and Cannot Spit It Out. Later, impressed by Kagami (because of her riches, ability in fencing, and bold attitude), Marinette feels the latter is more deserving of him. When she learns Kagami and Adrien had quickly broken up, Marinette vainly tries to reconcile Adrien with this "perfect girl". It takes Kagami, of all people, to assure to Marinette that she is the perfect match for Adrien.
• Invincible Hero: Ladybug wins every battle, even as Marinette. However, this is at least somewhat balanced out by the not-small amount of Near Villain Victories that she ends up having to fight through.
• Irony: "Origins" reveal that Marinette used to dislike Adrien due to a misunderstanding on her part. Now, she's completely smitten with him.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Being the Ladybug superhero takes quite a toll on her civilian life, from damaging her friendships to stressing her schoolwork to destroying her love life.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the season 3 finale, she flip-flops between leaving Kagami to be alone with Adrien and trying to separate them, using Miraculous duties as an excuse for the latter. Eventually her better nature wins out. Notably, she is the only one of Adrien's various suitors (Chloé, Kagami, Lila, and herself) to back off for the sake of his happiness. More specifically, she was the first until season 4. Kagami backs off in the fourth episode, partially for Marinette and Adrien's happiness, and also because Kagami is disappointed in Adrien after the events of "Lies".
• Jeanne d'Archétype: French teenager chosen by higher power to protect her native land. (This seems to be a theme with Tikki, because the actual Joan of Arc was also a bearer of the Ladybug Miraculous.) Also like Joan, she did so reluctantly.
  Joan: There will be no help [for the kingdom] if not from me. Although I would rather have remained spinning [wool] at my mother's side ... yet must I go and must I do this thing, for my Lord wills that I do so.
• Killer Yo-Yo: Ladybug's main weapon. Its string is magically as long as it needs to be.
• Lady of War: As Ladybug, Marinette is an Action Magical Girl Warrior whose fighting style uses is a mix of Combat Parkour and Dance Battler, wields a Killer Yo-Yo with enough dexterity to put Spider-Man's webs to shame, and is consistently able to keep her cool to win her battles through wit rather than brute strength.
• Lame Rhyme Dodge:
  • Marinette does this often because her feelings for Adrien tend to subconsciously surface when she talks to him, so she has to quickly correct herself to avoid embarassing moments.
  • It also happened once when they were discussing Kagami. Marinette calls her "Ice Queen" then pretends she actually suggested for Adrien to bring Kagami to the ice ring. He proceeds to just do that, fondly thanking Marinette.
• Late for School: More often than not. In the opening, she is seen running to school with a croissant in her mouth as a homage to the manga cliché. The episode "Migration" has Nino remark in confusion about how Marinette is running over to them when she's not late, causing Alya to quip "Creature of habit."
• The Leader: Of the duo, Marinette is the one making the decisions to down the akuma and she covers all four types. She uses her Awesomeness by Analysis skills to defeat the akumatized villain (Mastermind), is less Hot-Blooded and more mature than Cat Noir (Levelheaded), speaks out against Hawk Moth and his plans (Headstrong), and is quite popular either as a civilian or superhero (Charismatic).
• Lethal Joke Item: Her "Lucky Charm" always gives her a random item that is seemingly useless, but that after some quick thinking turns out to be the key to defeating the episode's Villain of the Week.
• Like Parent, Like Child: Marinette is just as brave, selfless, kind, funny, and skilled at gaming as her parents.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse:
  • In "Simon Says", Adrien comments that she has his mother's smile. It's her eyes in the English version, which he presumably meant metaphorically given that Ladybug's eyes are blue and Émilie's are green. Though "Wishmaker" shows a flashback in which Émilie's eyes are blue.
  • This is taken a step further in Season 5, when it's revealed that Gabriel also used to be a lower class aspiring designer in love with someone of higher social standing, whose parents didn't approve of their relationship. Gabriel's parents also owned a fry restaurant, not unlike Marinette's parents owning a bakery. Adrien himself even points this out when Gabriel tells him that he can't be with Marinette due to their "differences".
• Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: Downplayed. Marinette has a massive crush on Adrien, but finds his alter-ego Cat Noir's flirting to be obnoxious, although she still cares about him.
• Limited Wardrobe: Even more than the usual cartoon trope, her pajamas consist of an off-white t-shirt and pink pants just like her regular outfit. Her civilian outfits consist of a dark gray blazer, a white t-shirt with black stitching and a design below the collar (pink flowers and black leaves), pink pants, light pink ballet shoes with dark red soles adorn her feet, and her Miraculous earrings.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Cat Noir is this for her Ladybug persona. Despite all of their gentle "bickering" about his flirting habits towards her, whenever Ladybug is down and on the brink of losing hope, Cat Noir there to bring emotional support and a helpful hand, no matter what. It's to the point that if he loses hope ("Guiltrip") or gets sufficiently distraught by something he has done to give up being a superhero ("Miraculous World: New York"), Ladybug feels unable to and loses the will to carry on.
• Loved by All: Both in and out of her hero mask. As Ladybug, she is the city's savior who bravely defends the people against Hawk Moth and wins the Single-Target Sexuality of her partner. In her civilian life, she is the Class Princess who gets along with everyone and is always willing to help. She even wins the approval of the adults around her. The only two people who don't hold some sort of affection for her are Chloé and Lila.
• Love Epiphany: Marinette fell for Adrien after he revealed that he wasn't the one who put the gum on her seat and opened up about his lonely childhood and how he wanted to make friends. He then gave her his umbrella because of the oncoming thunderstorm.
• Love Makes You Dumb:
  • Downplayed. Marinette's infatuation with Adrien tends to make her even more careless than her usual clumsiness despite having good intentions. She has caused three akumatizations as a result of being blinded by her love.
  • Gets hit with this full force in "Desperada". First, she tries to get Adrien to become Jagged Stone's guitarist, even though everyone else can see that Luka is the better choice. Then after she picks Adrien to wield the Snake Miraculous, knowing that's she working with her crush leaves her distracted and unable to concentrate.
  • Gets hit with it again when she partners with Catwalker (who, unknown to her, is Adrien putting on a different persona than Cat Noir). She's so smitten with him that it screws up her "Lucky Vision" insight powers, needlessly adding him to her plans when in fact he's in the way; he even blinks distractingly when she looks at him rather than just being highlighted normally.
  • She says this about herself at the beginning of Season 5, stating it to be the main reason Félix had been able to double-cross her in the first place (as he had been passing himself off as Adrien). Alya reassures her that he would have fooled anyone this way, but Marinette insists it wouldn't have happened if she truly did know Adrien as well as she'd always claimed.
• Loving a Shadow:
  • Averted. While she tends to be blinded by her crush, seeing Adrien as Purity Personified, Marinette does care about his insecurities. As seen in Gamer when she reassures him and Malediktator when she listens to his point of view.
  • Discussed in "Ephemeral". After finding out that Adrien, her crush and the ideal boy in her eyes is also Cat Noir, her goofy and reliable partner, Marinette is seen wondering which one is the true Adrien and if she hasn't been in love with a public mask. After a talk with Luka, she spends some time observing him and Cat Noir to eventually realize that they are two halves of the same coin.
• MacGyvering:
  • Ladybug's Lucky Charm almost always provides her with some mundane object and she has to work out how to defeat a supervillain with it, often by making complex traps. The only exception is when it provides her with a replica of something in Master Fu's house, which is a sign that she needs to go recruit another hero for the job.
  • Even in her daily life, Marinette has created "magic" boxes to hide personal stuff like the Miracle Box. They are very effective. Just ask Sabrina.
• Made Out to Be a Jerkass: This happens whenever she tries to convince her class comrades or even friends that Lila Rossi is not the paragon of kindness and innocence she pretends to be but a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, prone to lies and manipulations. Neither will take her accusations seriously, believing Lila is a genuinely good person, or that her claims to have a lying mental disorder are true, while viewing Marinette acting simply out of impulsive jealousy towards a potential love rival. The only thing that keeps Marinette from ending in a All the Other Reindeer situation is her Class Princess statute, meaning almost everyone likes or loves her. In the end, she had to resort to an Engineered Public Confession to expose the magnitude of Lila's whole treachery and perfidy towards pretty much everyone, not only her.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase:
  • In Season 1, she almost always commented on her Lucky Charm with "A [thing]? What am I supposed to do with this?" She eventually stopped, having gotten used to the idea that she'd have to think outside the box.
  • When lending one of the other Miraculous, she says some variant of, "[Full name], here is the Miraculous of the [animal], which grants the power of [power]. You will use it for the greater good. Once the job is done, you will return the Miraculous to me. Can I trust you?"
• Magnetic Hero: Either in her superhero or civilian identity, she is well-liked by nearly everyone.
• Man of the City: The list of things she won't do to protect Paris is very, very short.
• Married to the Job: She was not the most punctual of people even before she got her Miraculous, but akuma-fighting and patrols cut into her reliability even more. In season 4, she learns the hard way that Guardian/Ladybug/civilian duties render her incapable of giving a boyfriend the time he deserves, and swears off dating entirely.
• The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: She and Luka start dating at the end of Season 3, but break up soon after because the strain of her constantly disappearing on him and then lying afterward becomes too much even for him.
• Master of All: After training with Fu, Marinette is familiar with the activation commands and powers of all the Miraculous she has access to.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Towards Adrien, due to her constantly running away from him whenever he gets too close due to her nervousness.
  • Marinette goes full blown with this trope in the third season, even more than Adrien. Constantly denying her attraction to him and having their mutual friends do the same. It gets to the point where he thinks she hates him rather than being head-over-heels.
  • Less obviously, Ladybug sometimes flirted back with Cat Noir because she didn't think it was serious, leading him to conclude that she was toying with him. More confusing is that she only started calling him "Kitty" after his feelings for her are revealed and she shut him down.
  • She ends up falling in love with Cat Noir in the fifth season, and isn't terribly subtle about it while in costume...but of course, Adrien's alter-ego still doesn't get it, ironically but somewhat understandably considering their previous agreement about their relationship. How she acts around Adrien despite her insistence that she's not in love with him anymore still rather brings the cliché "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" to mind...which a number of Shippers On Deck would corroborate.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Ladybug, who has good luck-based powers.
  • "Marinette" is the French version of Marieta, which is Catalan for "ladybug" and also doubles as a nod to her blue (marine) hair.
• Messianic Archetype: Starts the series as a humble bakers daughter with dreams of becoming a fashion designer and is frequently bullied by the mayors daughter. After becoming The Chosen One, she quickly rises to the occasion, becoming The Paragon to all of Paris, successor to Master Fu, and leader of the new team of superheroes that stand against Hawk Moth. Not to mention her adversary in Lila/Cerise, who is a prolific liar.
• Motor Mouth: Whenever she gets nervous (especially around Adrien), Marinette has a tendency to ramble at a fast pace.
• My Greatest Failure: Losing all of the Miraculous in the Miracle Box due to entrusting the Dog Miraculous to who she thought was Adrien in the Season 4 finale "Strikeback" broke her more than any previous mistake did.
• Mysterious Woman: A rare protagonist example. The cast have varying degrees of knowledge about who Marinette is and why she behaves the way she does, but nobody has the full story (not even the viewers; a significant part of her backstory is only revealed in Season 5)…though a lot of them think they do. The one character who could have provided some insight (Socqueline) doesn't attend Françoise Dupont anymore since she graduated to high school and is only introduced in Season 5. There's a lot of overlap between the secrets she keeps and the things Adrien needs to learn to be free.
• Mythical Motifs: Fairies, being a cute, exciteable nice girl with a fairy-like companion in Tikki, and spreads happiness and hope around. Bonus points for her Cosmobug power-up having fairy-like wings.
• Nervous Wreck: Downplayed, but spectacular in the specific field concerned. Marinette is usually reasonably cheerful and composed, but whenever it comes to her crush on Adrien, she overreacts big time, losing most of her composure, moving frantically while uttering Gibberish of Love in Motor Mouth mode and almost always having an Imagine Spot of things going unrealistically awry really unrealistically fast. This is usually Played for Laughs, but is revealed in season 5 episode "Derision" to actually be the result of a Trauma Button.
• Next Tier Power-Up:
  • After training under Master Fu to become a guardian, Marinette gains knowledge about fusion spells, recipes for the potions which grant more powers to the Miraculous. However, since he was only able to partially decode the Miraculous spellbook, it is likely her understanding is limited as well.
  • In Season 4, she gains a couple new powers. Thanks to becoming the Guardian, her yo-yo connects directly to the Miracle Box, allowing her to bring out other Miraculous on demand. Later on, she gains the ability to generate a protective charm after purifying an akuma, which protects the victim from being akumatized again so long as they have it on them. This also comes with a change in costume, which she integrates into her Lucky Charm after the first instance.
• Nice Girl: Marinette is very friendly and kind to her classmates and friends. She is perfectly satisfied to have Adrien think his neglectful father sent him a birthday gift when it was really from her if it makes him happy.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: She will unwillingly cause several akumatizations each season.
  • In "Volpina," Marinette's jealousy gets the better of her when she embarrasses Lila in front of Adrien. This causes Lila's akumatization and her grudge against Ladybug.
  • In the Christmas Episode, circumstantial evidence causes Ladybug to jump to conclusions, and she attacks Santa Claus under the assumption that he is a supervillain who kidnapped Adrien. The furious Santa falls prey to Hawk Moth as a result.
  • In Season 2 and 3 her track record gets much worse: she creates Befana by being insensitive toward her grandmother (granted, her own grandmother was also at fault for not being aware of how much her granddaughter has grown since she last met her), helps create Dark Owl by accidentally humiliating Mr. Damocles, indirectly creates Gigantitan by frustrating Adrien's chauffeur with her ridiculous plan, is indeirectly responsible for Marc turning into Reverser due to Poor Communication Kills and her own dad, Tom, becomes Weredad because of her "overacting" her reaction on Cat Noir's rejection.
  • In Season 5, she is once again accountable for an akumatization of Mr. Damoclès, though she was acting out of good intentions. In "Perfection", she's responsible for Kagami's Akumatization through Poor Communication Kills.
  • In "Reflekdoll", she (as Lady Noire) drives the titular sentimonster on an out-of-control rampage with a badly-placed Cataclysm. In her defense, sentimonsters were still a novelty by then, and neither her nor Cat Noir knew cataclysming one would have this effect.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Her attempts to stand up for Sabrina when Chloé treats her poorly just result in Sabrina acting creepy towards her, and when Marinette tries to let her down gently Sabrina accuses her of being worse than Chloé.
• Nom de Mom: Marinette uses both her French-Italian father's and Chinese mother's surnames as her own.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Chloé convinces her to help bully Kagami because they were both jealous of her.
  • Despite being a foil to both Chloé and Lila, Marinette herself has displayed a mean streak and can give a hard time especially to people who haven't earned her trust, like Adrien in the Origins episodes and Kagami in "Ikari Gozen". She can even be very harsh for petty reasons. As Ladybug, she occasionally criticizes Cat Noir, whether he deserves it or not.
  • For all the times she gives Cat Noir lectures about being hasty and not thinking, many of Marinette's problems are caused by her own hastiness.
• Oblivious to Love: Spends the first season and a half believing Cat Noir's flirting isn't serious. She's shocked in "Glaciator" to learn that he's in love with Ladybug "for real."
• Only I Can Kill Him: Justified. Ladybug is the only hero capable of purifying an akuma.
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • When Marinette's uncle is visiting and she's worried about making a good impression in "Kung Food", the usually speechless and shy Marinette is calm and sullen around Adrien.
  • Word of God has noted that Marinette is a hard person to akumatize because she's such an optimist, but came very close in "Zombizou" and "Chameleon" because someone (Chloé and Lila, respectively) made her significantly angry. "Elation" proves this is still in full effect by Season 5, as her anger at not being able to have a proper love life triggers another chance to Akumatize her. Simply put, Marinette can't be akumatized via despair or sadness, but anger will do the job.
  • Marinette makes no secret of her extreme dislike over Chloé in many episodes, rightfully so given their "shared" Backstory. So, when she decides to help Chloé to keep Kagami away from Adrien, after she manipulated Marinette into thinking Kagami would take him away, it shows just how desperate she is. Thankfully, she comes to her senses eventually.
  • Her Heroic BSoD in "Loveater" is preceded with the words, "I'm so tired, Luka!"
• Open the Iris: More than any other character in the show, her irises are particularly subject to varying in size whenever she's flustered (the fact that she's the character with the most extreme facial expressions helps). For instance, they will grow to saucer-like proportions when she's talking about Adrien, and reduce to pinhead size when she finds herself unexpectedly in front of him or embarrasses herself in front of the class. This is more frequent when she's in her Marinette persona, as Ladybug is usually more collected.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Was a fairly average middle school student before gaining powers, as seen in the Origins Episode.
• Palm on Cheek Pose: Marinette is quite prone to this, in two of the various flavours:
  • Most often: Excitement, when she's expecting some pleasant moments, has achieved something important for her (winning competition, earning some reward etc.), or has made some progress in her relationship with Adrien.
  • Embarassment: when she's mortified or depressed. The most notable examples happen in Musée Grévin, first when she almost kisses Adrien when she believed it was his wax statue, and second in "Determination" when Adrien reminds her of it in an attempt to know if she has romantic feelings for him (Adrien is just that clueless). Unfortunately, by that time, Marinette has vowed to be a Celibate Heroine, though she understands she now loves Cat Noir in the very same episode.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Marinette's disguise is basically a small mask over her eyes; the transformation doesn't even change her hairstyle! Even so, many people mistake other characters as Ladybug when dressed in the costume; this is most blatant when Lady WiFi reveals that Chloé dresses as Ladybug in private and thus believes that Chloé is the real thing. So far Jagged Stone seems to be the only person who notices that Chloé's hair is different. When Chloé showcases her Ladybug outfit, it even includes a replica wig that's, of course, identical to Marinette's hair. It's finally explained in the New York special: the miraculous creates a "quantum masking" effect which makes the wearers unrecognizable to human eyes.
• Parental Title Characterization: Marinette refers to her parents as "Maman" and "Papa" in the original French (in contrast to Adrien calling his father "Père", which just means "Father"), hinting at their close and loving relationship; in the English dub, she uses the equally affectionate "Mom" and "Dad".
• Passing the Torch: Season 6 reveals that she's chosen Alya to become the next Ladybug and Guardian when she retires from her duties.
• Patchwork Kids: Marinette has her father's head and eye shape, but has her mother's hair color and skin complexion.
• Personality Powers: Played straight. It's unsurprising that an energetic, physically expressive, and impulsive artist would be the one tasked with recreating the world after akuma battles. (Symbolically, her Miraculous is associated with the yang/assertiveness symbol, which denotes all those traits.)
• Pink Means Feminine: Wears pink pants and a pink-accented shirt in her everyday outfit, she also has a pink scooter and a large part of her room is pink. She is also quite the girly girl with an interest in fashion and huge crush on Adrien.
• Plucky Girl: She stays optimistic and determined no matter what predicament she's in.
• Polka Dot Positivity: When transformed into Ladybug, Marinette wears a red bodysuit covered in black spots, and as a civilian, some of her outfits (like her main one) have a polka-dot pattern. While a serious superhero, Marinette is also a very sweet, positive (though slightly panicky) teenage girl. As a superhero she's often the Hope Bringer against a villain that exploits people's despair and her standard of using whatever random object her powers conjure to win the day shows that a solution is always possible no matter how obscure.
  • If she ever breaks down, chances are big that the toll taken on her psychological health has become excruciating, like in Season 3's "Love Eater" and 4's "Gang of Secrets", or she has failed big time like at the end of Season 4's finale.
  • Given the amount of trauma Marinette had to endure before and after becoming Ladybug, this is probably the only way for her to stay psychologically functional, lest she would break down much more often. Shortly, this is as much her personality as an unconscious coping/defence mechanism.
• Poor Communication Kills: Beyond her Master of the Mixed Message problem, Marinette and Ladybug have it really hard when it comes to properly communicate in some situations, which ends up into catastrophic results.
  • Ladybug constantly postponed the talk she decided to have with Chloé to tell her she would never ever be allowed to become Queen Bee again (because the latter had immediately and idiotly revealed her civilian identity to everybody). And when she finally did it, she let Chloé auto-convince herself that she would still be called upon Godzilla Threshold events. Ladybug did nothing on the go nor later to debunk this belief of Chloé, which led partially to her akumatization as Miracle Queen.
  • Ladybug stubbornly refused to share various pieces of intel she had as the new Guardian with Cat Noir, which annoyed him to no end and led him to renounce his Miraculous, albeit temporarily.
  • Marinette tends to have difficulties to properly communicate with Kagami, at first because they were love rivals for Adrien, and later because Marinette's insecurities led her to avoid Kagami at all costs because she didn't want to disappoint her friend with her lack of progress with Adrien. Ironically and predictably, this only makes Kagami assuming the wrong idea about Marinette and getting akumatized.
• Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Yet another tipoff to the fact that she's got a huge crush on Adrien is that her wall is covered in photos of him. Doubles as something of a Stalker Shrine, since she's also got his schedule down somewhere.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow:
  • When using the Cat Miraculous as Lady Noire, Marinette's hair grows long enough to form a braid that trails all the way down to her legs, serving as the "tail" for the costume.
  • Her fusion forms with the Bee and Horse Miraculouses result in her gaining a single, longer ponytail, though nowhere near as long as Lady Noire's. For the Bee, it's puffy to keep with the Bee theme, while the Horse ponytail is straighter.
  • Her costume upgrade in season 4 makes her hair a teeny bit longer than normal.
  • Her costume as Bug Noire combines the long braid from her Lady Noire transformation and two additional, shorter braids that replace her pigtails.
  • Her kamikotized form in the Paris special causes her twintails to expand massively, reaching her knees, and her braid as Lady Noire grows even longer, touching the floor.
• The Power of Love: She manages to overcome an Akuma's influence before being fully transformed in "Elation" after Cat Noir kisses her.
• Pragmatic Hero: Marinette is acutely aware (except when blinded by jealousy) of how important her duty as Ladybug is. To uphold it, she will betray, pickpocket, and hurt people—as shown when, after they've all tried to grab it the normal way, she slams down on Cat Noir and the villain's hands to smash the akuma-hosting whistle.
• Promoted Fanboy: In-Universe. Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale are Marinette's favorite artists. She ends up designing the album cover for Jagged's new album and almost stars in Clara's new music video. Also, both of them have written songs about Ladybug, much to Marinette's glee.
• Promoted Without Prerequisites: At the end of season 3, Ladybug is hastily declared the new Guardian of the Miraculous, despite having almost no training for the role, so that the Paris Miracle Box and all of its contents will transfer immediately to her before Chloé can force the Kwamis to obey her. The appointment also conveniently wipes the mind of the past Guardian, Master Fu, so that Hawk Moth can't interrogate him to learn the identities of Ladybug and Cat Noir.
• Properly Paranoid: Her sticking to the rule about keeping identities secret hurts everyone involved - including herself - but given how often Miraculous bearers are brainwashed or extorted by akuma, it is entirely necessary. Hawk Moth himself is enough proof that bearers can deliberately become corrupt, given the right motivation.
• Prophetic Name:
  • Marinette is a seamstress (although she stitches clothes together, not nets). She also establishes a "net" of cooperating superheroes across the world.
  • "Marinette" can also mean "of the sea" in French. In the Bad Future that "Chat Blanc" depicts, her corpse is found in the apocalyptic sea that has drowned the world.
• Protagonist Title: Marinette's alias, "Ladybug", is part of the series' title.
• Punny Name: "Du pain" is French for "some bread" ^note doubles as "of bread", although it's irrelevant to the pun. "Cheng" is Chinese for "to make".
• Purple Is the New Black: Often illustrated with blue hair, described in-universe as having black hair.
• Random Effect Spell: Her "Lucky Charm" produces a seemingly random item that, when used correctly, can solve whatever problem she summoned it for. Marinette just has to figure out how to apply it. Once the day is saved, the item serves as the catalyst for her World-Healing Wave. This is played with in that Lucky Charm can produce a specific item, as other users of the Miraculous have demonstrated, but Marinette rarely uses it as such because getting what you want and getting what you need are two different things, as Adrien learns during his first stint as Mister Bug. Once Marinette gains full mastery of her powers, she is more willing to use it to produce specific items when needed, but still defaults to the random one to finish the villain off.
• Razor Floss: Her yo-yo string can cut through any material if sufficient force is applied. For example, when fighting Gigantitan, she attempted to corral him beneath the Eiffel Tower, only for Gigantitan for force the string through the supports.
• Reality Warper: Can create day-saving MacGuffins and invoke World-Healing Waves, though only in once-per-episode Limit Break form.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Chloé tries to get one last jab in at her by revealing Adrien's being moved to London, Marinette snaps and gives her a cold "The Reason You Suck" Speech that reminds Chloé she'll never have the power to hurt her or anyone else ever again, ending by calling her "utterly ridiculous" like how Chloé often did.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Inverted. As Ladybug, she wears a mostly red suit with black spots, but is the heroic protagonist.
  • Played straight with almost all of her Evil Counterpart (save the Ladybug sentimonster), who wear a majority of black & a small amount of red. Shadybug heralds her Evil Counterpart nature with, unlike Marinette, truly black hair when transformed, and, given her hair becomes blue like Marinette's when untransformed, a dyed lock of hair in her civilian self.
• Red Is Heroic: Her Magical Girl outfit. With a bit of Dark Is Not Evil, because her main colors are red and black, the most common villain colors, considering her ladybug theme.
• Refusal of the Call: After failing her first outing as Ladybug, Marinette is so distraught that she removes her earrings despite Tikki's horrified protests.
• Reset Button: Invoked; it's actually one of her powers. She "presses" it after defeating a villain by using her powers to undo all the damage they cause.
• Running Gag:
  • Her Imagine Spot future with Adrien where she gushes about they'll get married and have a house and have three kids, a dog, and a cat... nah, forget the cat—Oh! And a hamster named—
    • As of Season 2, someone always interrupts her before she can say what her and Adrien's future pet hamster will be named.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: As listed under Hypocrite above, maintains that they cannot reveal their identities under any circumstances, yet as Guardian and the mounting pressure that responsibility that gives her, she caves and makes an exception with Alya.
• Second Super-Identity: In "Kwamibuster", she briefly uses the Mouse Miraculous, becoming Multimouse.
• Secret Diary: She keeps one, which Chloé tries to steal precisely because it contains Marinette's deep dark secrets. Marinette's perfectly aware that this may happen, though, and rigged its case to clamp shut around anyone who tries to steal it; just ask Sabrina.
• Secret Secret-Keeper:
  • She knows the identities of all of the auxiliary Miraculous holders—having been the one who gave them their Miraculouses in most cases—and freely acknowledges it as Ladybug, but she has to play dumb about it in her civilian identity to avoid revealing her own secret identity.
  • As of "The Illustrhater", she (as Marinette) is noted to know that Alya and Nino are Rena Rouge and Carapace, even working with Adrien to help keep the two auxiliary heroes hidden so they can transform. Adrien and Nino are unaware of Marinette being Ladybug, however.
• Self-Duplication: As Multimouse, Marinette gains the ability to create clones of herself, but she and the clones shrink in proportion to how many of them she creates.
• Seven Heavenly Virtues:
  • Charity, she will give whatever she can to make other people happy, typically baked goods or clothing.
  • Diligence, maintaining high standards for her schoolwork, fashion designs, and superhero work. To the point of starting to crack under the pressure in Season 4.
  • Humility, while far from flawless, she never considers her status as a superhero as something that puts her above people, at most treating it as a demanding responsibility.
  • Kindness, being a Nice Girl and All-Loving Hero who gave even Chloé (her longtime bully) several chances to become a better person.
• She-Fu: Leaps around as part of her combat style.
• Shipper on Deck: In general she supports all romance unless someone's target is Adrien.
  • She is excited for her parents' 20th anniversary and helps them with dressing up.
  • Marinette went into instant Squee mode when Nino stated he was in love with Alya.^note Technically, he was in love with Marinette at the time, but said Alya because he didn't have the nerve to tell her. However, after talking to Alya in a locked cage, they realized they had a lot in common and became a couple.
  • She explicitly states that Ivan and Mylène were made for each other.
  • She's very supportive of helping Marc get together with Nathaniel (officially to create Ladybug comics together, but unofficially...)
  • In "Mr. Pigeon 72", she even sheds the "unless someone's target is Adrien" bit, spending the entire episode trying to get Kagami, her only serious rival, back together with him.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Chloé attempts to upset her by revealing Adrien is being enrolled at a school in London, Marinette quickly shuts her up by throwing it back in her face that she already knows, that she also knows Adrien loves her, and that Chloé no longer has any power to make the lives of others around her miserable before hanging up on Chloé.
• Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Zigzagged. Marinette actually has quite a bold personality around other people, but she's too shy to approach Adrien directly, and gets nervous when he does pay attention to her. She also has blue hair.
• Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Subverted. Marinette is established as having a huge crush on popular Teen Idol Adrien, but it soon becomes clear that it wasn't his fame that attracted her but his positive personality. In fact, his popularity initially turned her off, as it led her to associate him with local Alpha Bitch Chloé. She becomes smitten only after he clarifies the misunderstanding and makes a gentlemanly move.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man:
  • In the end what attracted her to Adrien wasn't his good looks, his fame or his money, but his kindness.
  • She shows a modicum of attraction to Luka, not because of his cool guitar playing, but because of how kind and attentive he is.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: Adrien is a model with a sweet personality, but Marinette doesn't really know him all that well (although she knows him better than either of them think). Despite this, she's frequently seen mooning over him, and in earlier episodes her crush would cause her to become basically catatonic in his presence. Not to mention her Stalker Shrine.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Marinette has saved Paris numerous times but can't muster up proper sentences in front of Adrien. This is lampshaded by Tikki.
• Speech-Impeded Love Interest: Played for both drama and cuteness, the latter more than the former. About her most important criteria for a boyfriend is someone who can be patient with her anxiety disorder; fortunately, she finds that person in Adrien. Unfortunately, Adrien talks more than enough for both of them.
• Spider-Man Send-Up: Marinette holds many similarities to Peter Parker, both in and out of costume. She struggles to balance her hero work with her personal life, only continuing it out of a sense of moral duty, with a blond crush (Adrien/Gwen), a blonde bully (Chloé/Flash), a high-class villain that is the head of the various villains in the series (Hawk Moth/Green Goblin) and a villain who happens to be the father of someone close to her (Gabriel Agreste, father of Adrien/Norman Osborn, father of Peter's friend Harry). As Ladybug, she is an Animal-Themed Superbeing named after an arthropod with blue and red being predominant in her color scheme, she has enhanced flexibility, transports herself via Building Swing, and possesses an enhanced sense of intuition when using the item her lucky-charm deposits. She also has a Love Interest themed after a black cat (Felicia Hardy a.k.a. Black Cat and Adrien Agreste a.k.a. Cat Noir).
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Ladybug does it by spinning her magic yoyo; however in this case it doesn't so much deflect than create an impenetrable shield that disintegrates what's thrown at it. She uses it once to protect herself and Cat Noir from a blown-away bus; this doesn't stop it, but they end up safely inside through a perfectly round hole on its side.
• Stalker Shrine: She has the wall above her desk and her laptop filled with Adrien's photos, not to mention a very detailed record of his daily activities. "Troublemaker" extended her photo collection to also being hidden under her bed and furniture cushioning. Played for Laughs, though. Especially when Adrien actually visits her and Marinette desperately rushes to hide all the photos.
• Stalker with a Crush: Marinette has a huge crush on Adrien and knows his entire daily schedule. Her worst moments include sniffing his pillow and persuading her parents to pay for an international flight. She grows out of this after she and Adrien become an Official Couple.
• Stealth Expert: Marinette is shown to be quite stealthy even without transforming, often sneaking by her peers unnoticed.
• Stock Shoujo Heroine: Downplayed. Marinette is a feminine aspiring fashion designer who is sweet, klutzy, self-effacing, and tongue-tied around her crush. But overall, she's a downplayed example, as her superhero alter-ego Ladybug is far more proactive and assertive than the usual example of this trope, and even in her everyday life she's very assertive around most people (being shy only when she's around her crush Adrien) and is always ready to stand up to Chloé more than the other classmates. However, her Origins Episode and her backstory show that she used be a Shrinking Violet bullied by Chloé in the past, so she probably gained more confidence after becoming Ladybug.
• The Strategist: A tactical prodigy who daily outwits superpowered enemies.
• String Theory: It's shown in "Mr. Pigeon 72" that she spent most of her summer holidays compiling a corkboard of akuma victims, a sign that the long hunt for Shadow Moth is cracking her nerves.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders:
  • She is normally completely heterosexual, and devoted to pursuing Adrien, but things get... unsteady where Kagami gets involved. In "Ikari Gozen", she admits that she finds Kagami cute and talented, and in "Heart Hunter", when she, Adrien, and Kagami are buying a couple's cone, André Glacier asks which combination of flavors she wants, she seriously considers getting a combination for just her and Kagami before asking if it's possible to get a triple cone.
  • In "Frightengale", she is incredibly vociferous in her praise of Clara Nightengale and gets extremely flustered when she actually gets to meet Clara in person, to the point that she even briefly ignores that she's in the same place as Adrien.
• Sweet Baker: Marinette and her family own a bakery, and they're all very kindhearted people, with her being the titular hero and the others all being notably kind as well.
• Sweet Tooth: The Zagtoon illustrations show that Marinette likes sweets.
• Tareme Eyes: In spite of her partial Chinese ancestry, Marinette, has big, round blue eyes which are meant to represent her Nice Girl personality. In contrast, her mother and Kagami have almond-shaped, Tsurime Eyes as part of that same ancestry, while Chloé and Lila are Tsurime-d, yet with a slightly different eyeshape, to emphasize their Jerkass status.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Marinette is a definite girly-girl, and is shown to be capable of bringing the clothes she designs to life.
• Thinking Tic: When thinking on what to do with her summoned tool, Ladybug scrunches up her face while looking around the area.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Or, better said, "Thinks Like a Shoujo Manga", given the Art Shift in her rather excessive daydreams.
• Threshold Guardian: To Adrien, who had been in school for barely a minute before she started a fight with him. His merciful, diplomatic response impressed her, after which she bent considerable effort towards integrating him with the class (the "guardian as future ally" subtype).
• Took a Level in Badass: The Origins Episode shows that Marinette lacked confidence and was afraid to stand up for herself. After accepting her role as Ladybug, she learns to be more assertive, and even gives Chloé a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Tough Love: In "Representation", Marinette is put through the emotional wringer by Kagami and Félix in order for her to prepare for the final fight with Monarch, as she needed to understand that Gabriel is past the point of reason and that not even appealing to his love for Adrien will stop him.
• Transformation Trinket: Ladybug's earrings - like all examples of a Miraculous, they transform the user into a superhero after stating a phrase (in English, it's "Tikki, spots on!") which also causes the kwami Tikki to be inside the earrings while transformed.
• Trauma Button:
  • Her experience with Cat Blanc has clearly has an effect on her, which forced her to experience firsthand exactly how bad things can get if her secret identity got out or if Cat Noir were to get akumatized. In several episodes afterwards, she suffers nightmares about Cat Blanc returning, and gets terrified at the thought of Cat Noir being a victim of an akuma once more. By Season 6, the thought of any of the Miraculers getting akumatized and forced to surrender their Miraculous becomes a massive sore spot for her.
  • Her losing nearly every Miraculous to Monarch at the end of the fourth season becomes this, along with My Greatest Failure. Merely mentioning it can send her into a spiral of depression and/or anxiety, and she frequently beats herself up over it and cites it as the reason why she can't and shouldn't pursue a relationship with Adrien ^noteShe mistook Félix for Adrien and subsequently gave him the Dog Miraculous, which he then used to swipe her yo-yo (and all the Miraculous inside) and turn it over to Monarch. even though he has started to show genuine romantic interest in her by now.
  • Going to the pool with a guy she likes turns out to be this in "Derision", to the point where she is hit hard by numerous panic attacks. It turned out Marinette had a crush on Kim, who (at Chloé's "suggestion") played a cruel prank involving spiders on her after she confessed to him. This incident also turns out to be the reason behind most of her odd behavior and stalkerish tendencies toward Adrien, as she vowed to learn everything she could about a boy first (including if he was Chloé's friend) before pursuing him to make sure she won't be victimized like that again.
• Tsundere: A mild example. She's usually very dere, especially as a civilian, but she often displays a tsuntsun streak toward Cat Noir when dealing with his humor, cockiness, or attempts to flirt with her. She has to get hit by a truth-telling ray before she'll admit to liking his jokes.
• Underhanded Hero: To protect Paris, Marinette has created an incredibly complex web of lies, connections, and safeguards, which she supplements with theft and paradox amnesia when necessary.
• Unluckily Lucky: Marinette literally has a magical power as Ladybug called "Lucky Charm" to give her just what she needs to defeat the villain (with a bit of lateral thinking and some other objects as well)...she also has to constantly lie to almost everyone she knows to keep the Paris and the Miracle Box safe (which turns out to make a romantic relationship near impossible for her to maintain), will soon have to deal with an akuma whenever she dares to exhibit poor character, and "Cat Blanc" implies the safety of the universe itself will be at risk if she gets romantically involved with Adrien while Hawk Moth is still at large. She'll always save the day, but the day won't be easy for her.
• Variable-Length Chain: Her yo-yo can go from short enough to serve as a shield when spun around to long enough to string someone up from the rafters of a building.
• Vehicle-Based Characterization: Gets a pink electric scooter with baskets from her family in Season 4, giving her a means of being independent and making deliveries for their bakery. This reflects her growing responsibilities and independence.
• Vocal Evolution: In the first few episodes, compared to her civilian identity's more higher-pitched tone, Ladybug's voice is slightly more deeper, not unlike Cristina Vee's natural speaking voice. Eventually, Ladybug's voice is pitched higher to match with Marinette's.
• Warrior Therapist: A tactic she uses to help akumas, especially Kagami's. In "Re-creation" she gives Monarch a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about his monstrous coping mechanisms and the lengths he's willing to go to get what he wants.
• Weapon-Based Characterisation: Her Killer Yo-Yo, which is is as long as it needs to be, allows for not-quite-web-slinging and a makeshift shield, reflecting her flexible thinking and reliance on guile over force to catch Akuma's.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In "The Bubbler", she uses her "Lucky Charm" to break up Adrien and Chloé during a slow dance instead of to stop the Villain of the Week. Tikki quickly calls her out on it, as now they have to wait for Tikki to recharge before Marinette can transform again, thus giving Bubbler extra time to cause mayhem.
  • As much as Chloé deserves it, Ladybug's "The Reason You Suck" Speech toward her in "Antibug" was a little unnecessary considering she was only trying to help and turned out to have been correct on the location of Vanisher's Akuma. Cat Noir even calls her out on it, and this results in Chloé becoming akumatized herself. She later apologizes to Chloé after de-evilizing her.
  • Similarly, while Lila was wrong to tell several Blatant Lies, Ladybug exposing her right in front of Adrien was still extremely harsh, as Adrien is quick to point out.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Downplayed - despite Marinette being a superhero with a bug motif, there is some indications she's easily scared by them. "Oblivio" has her initially terrified at the appearance of Plagg and Tikki after her transformation ends, due to the episode's Laser-Guided Amnesia (describing them as "giant" and "bug-mice"), and "Sentibubbler" has her scream and run away to Alya at the sight of a tarantula. This doesn't render her useless or anything, though. It's revealed in Derision that Marinette was bullied several times with bugs at minimum in the previous scholarly year. She found coackroaches at least once in her locker^note She is shown to be wary before completely opening her locker, which hints at some nasty "pranks" happening before., probably put there by Sabrina on Chloé's behalf^note Since it's hard to believe Chloé would come close to "disgusting cockroaches", even confined in a tiny box.. The worst happened a short while after, leading to real psychological scarring: Marinette opened a box full of spiders that Kim gave her at Chloé's suggestion.
• Women Are Wiser: Zigzagged. While Adrien is not an idiot, he does have a habit of making impulsive decisions as Cat Noir and is less socially skilled in some areas due to being homeschooled. However, Marinette as Ladybug, has proven to be the strategist of the two and is usually the one to get the job done even when her partner is brainwashed or occupied. But that doesn't mean she isn't prone to making foolish and/or irresponsible choices, and indeed Marinette as a civilian errs leading to Can't Get Away with Nuthin' a lot more than Adrien does out of costume.
• Workaholic: Marinette is seen extremely busy non-stop (including doing favors for others) in "Gamer 2.0".
• World-Healing Wave: Once she's pacified the Villain of the Week, she throws her Lucky Charm into the air to cast a spell to undo any damage related to the Akuma, even retroactively cleaning up damage caused long before she cast it. This ranges from simple damage to property to more complex or abstract damages like a Temporal Paradox. There are some limitations to it, however. The Lucky Charm has to be cast in relation to the villain responsible for the damage, whether tangentially or otherwise, and Ladybug must to some degree be aware of what she's fixing. In the New York special, Paris has to clean up the mess from a sentimonster attack (created as a distraction because Hawk Moth assumed the heroes were still in Paris) because Ladybug was occupied in New York by another villain and had no idea the sentimonster even existed, so her spell only affected the damage caused by the villain she knew about and directly engaged. It also can't directly counter the effects of other Miraculous users, hence why Ladybug almost always waits to defeat the villain before using it, or powers greater than itself, such as the invocation of a wish using Gimmi. Finally, it can only fix things that are broken in a relatively literal sense; for example, if her Secret Identity were to get out, her powers wouldn't undo that because learning a secret isn't "damage" that can be repaired.
• Yellow Is Cheerful: As Chronobug, her heroine outfit changes from red to yellow, and she still maintains her happy-go-lucky but serious personality as Ladybug.
• Youthful Freckles: Can be seen on a close-up of her CGI model. They emphasize her youthful, excitable nature.
• Zany Scheme: Marinette often plans complicated, crazy plans in order to romance Adrien. "Simpleman" has her admit to herself (and Tikki) that she does these crazy plans with regards to Adrien rather that simply telling him she has a crush on him out of the fear that she'll get rejected if she did. It's also revealed in Season 5 to be part of her defense mechanism after being traumized by cruel prank.

Adrien Émile Gabriel Donatien Athanase Agreste / Cat Noir^{Other aliases}Aqua Noir / Icecat / Mister Bug / Aspik / Snake Noir / Astrocat / Cat Walker / Rabbit Noir / Tryonix

The Boy Who Can Destroy Anything

Akumatized forms: Cat Blanc (Cat Noir), Ephemeral (Adrien)

Kamikotized form: Celesticat (Cat Noir)

^{Cat Noir}

^{Aqua Noir}

^Icecat

^{Mister Bug}

^Aspik

^{Snake Noir}

^Astrocat

^{Cat Walker}

^{Rabbit Noir}

^{Adrien Agreste (second saga)}

^{Cat Noir (second saga)}

^{Astrocat (second saga)}

^{Aqua Noir (second saga)}

^{Cat Noir (baby)}

^Trionyx

Voiced by: Benjamin Bollen (FR), Bryce Papenbrook (EN) ^{Foreign VAs} Nam Doh-hyeong (KOR), Ziyad Sharif (ARA), Jesús Barreda (ES), Tomás González (MEX), Guy Zaydman/גיא זיידמן (HEB), Penke Bence (HUN), Maksymilian Bogumił (P), André Raimundo (EP), Fabricio Vila Verde (BP), Adam Portnoff (SW), Cristi Niculescu (ROM), Flavio Aquilone (ITA), Gökhan Özdemir/Türkçe (TUR), Alexander Shestopalov/Александр Шестопалов and Nikolay Bystrov; (RUS, season 1 and season 2 onwards respectively), Jakub Nemčok (CZE), Kamen Asenov/Камен Асенов (BUL), Maximilian Artajo (GER), Leo Meieran (NOR), Ryōta Ōsaka (J), Predrag Damnjanović (SER), Dino Škare (CRO), Oleksandr Solodkyi/Олександр Солодкий (UKR, voice-over and dubbing)

A classmate of Marinette's, a boy who lives with his wealthy, distant father. Even at school, he's a bit aloof, although considerate. Adrien really opens up to his best bud, Nino. Adrien works part-time as a model, and is a Teen Idol in his own right. But he really comes into his own when he takes out his magical ring that turns him into the superhero Cat Noir. Cat Noir is quick with an insult, quicker with a pun, and as confident as - well, as the cat that got the cream. Cat Noir makes no secret of his big ol' crush on Ladybug; unfortunately for all parties, Adrien doesn't notice Marinette's humongous crush on him.

• Aesop Amnesia: After acting cold to Ladybug in "Glaciator" for seemingly playing with his feelings, he apologizes to her for his behavior, accepts her rejection, and is seemingly happy with their friendship. However, come "Frozer", he tries again with similar results.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • "Adrikins" from Chloé.
  • He's called "kitty" occasionally by Ladybug.
• Alliterative Name: Adrien Agreste.
• Always Save the Girl: If it's between himself and Ladybug, he will always sacrifice himself without hesitation. Especially in "Timebreaker," where he lets an Akumatized Alix tag him to save Ladybug (knowing it means he might disappear forever), and "Gamer 2.0" where the Akumatized Max forces Cat Noir and Ladybug to fight each other before they can fight him, and Cat Noir doesn't even hesitate to throw the match for her. Justified since Ladybug is the only one who can purify akumas and fix any damage caused during the fight, which would include his own sacrifice in most cases.
• Amazon Chaser:
  • As shown in the Origins Episode, Adrien's attraction to Ladybug is just as much her being a badass superheroine as it is her looks. He even lampshades it:
    Cat Noir: She's so stubborn! It's so irresistible!
  • While his actions tend to be mixed, there are hints he has an attraction to the strong-willed Marinette (who also happens to be the superheroine, Ladybug). The "Oblivio" episode sees both characters afflicted with amnesia while fighting its titular supervillain, and Adrien quickly goes to expressing admiration for Marinette's quick-thinking under pressure constantly as they go through the episode.
  • In the episode "Revelation" from season 5, Marinette, who is already his girlfriend at this point, stands up to an akumatized Lila by telling her that if she wants to talk, Marinette is perfectly willing to. Adrien's response to this is what you would expect.
    Adrien/Cat Noir: [dreamily] Wow... I love that girl...
  • Adrien starts to have a modicum of attraction to talented fencer, Kagami in season 2.
• Ambiguously Human: In several episodes it's implied that Adrien could be a sentimonster and his Amok is on Gabriel's wedding ring, as he was shown adjusting it when trying to get Adrien to obey him. Also in "Adoration", he's stopped from kissing Marinette by a distant order from Gabriel. Then it gets confirmed in "Representation".
• Angst Nuke: The Bad Future episode "Cat Blanc" shows that if Cat Noir was ever akumatized while concurrently being put under intense psychological torture, he could completely lose it and unleash a titanic Cataclysm, flattening Paris and engulfing whole France a minima (nothing rules out the eventuality of it being even worse), while projecting an energy blast powerful enough to scar and bisect the freaking Moon. Power of Destruction, indeed!
• Animal-Eared Headband: As Cat Noir, he wears two cat ear-shaped hairclips that sometimes move as though they were real cat ears. In "Mega Leech", a mini-Malediktator even somehow crawls into his brain via these cat ears.
• Animal Eyes: When he transforms into Cat Noir, his pupils become vertically slit like a cat's. His sclera (the whites of his eyes) also turn green, mimicking a cat's huge irises.
• Animal Motif: Cats in being good-natured and friendly while also snarky as Cat Noir, but has an unforgiving streak towards those who harm his loved ones.
• Apocalypse Maiden: A male example. As "Cat Blanc" shows, if Adrien is not extracted very carefully from his abusive situation, his Psychoactive Powers might destroy the world when the Awful Truth about his family comes to light.
• Artificial Human: As strongly hinted throughout the show and indicated by the Peacock scenery from his birth sequence from Félix's and Kagami's play in "Representation", Adrien was a baby created with the help of the Peacock Miraculous.
• Ascended Fanboy: invoked He's an anime fan who can actually transform into a hero.
• As Himself: In-universe. He's the voice of Cat Noir in the 2D animated movie, and nobody is aware that Paris' favorite superhero is being played by the man himself.
• Awful Truth: As shown in the alternate timelines of "Cat Blanc" and "Ephemeral," any time Adrien finds out the truth about his parents, he will always snap and the resulting emotional breakdown will make him become Akumatized by his father and lead to The End of the World as We Know It. In Season 6, Marinette is very aware of this and knows that she's hanging on a rope over a cliff that could be cut at ANY time by hiding the truth from him.
• Badass in Distress: Frequently requires rescuing by Ladybug due to being overpowered by the villain.
• Bad Powers, Good People: He's a bad luck-themed hero with the power to corrode things. This doesn't stop him from using it for good.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Deconstructed. Adrien's friendship with Chloé is because of her being his sole friend growing up. However, this leads to him not calling her out on bratty behavior, in fear that the only friendship he's ever had will end. However, when she falsely calls the fire department, allows everyone else at school to get punished for it while abusing her father's influence to pull a Karma Houdini, and shows no remorse over it, Adrien's patience with her is finally pushed too far and he threatens to renounce their friendship. And even that threat doesn't keep working as when he asks her to apologize in "Queen Banana", Chloé gets so mad that she breaks off their friendship.
  • The turning point from him seeing Marinette as "just a friend", to him starting to realize his feelings for her is Marinette being the only one of his friends who understands that going on a trip around the world with Lila is not what he wants at all and encourages him to talk to his father about it.
• Beneath the Mask: Adrien is the "superhero as true self" variant of this trope. As Cat Noir, he's an adventurous, wisecracking Casanova Wannabe. As Adrien, he's a lonely child at the mercy of a neglectful father who forces him to maintain a somber, perfect reputation. Activating his Miraculous' disguise gives Cat the freedom to act in ways that he never could otherwise (although many of Adrien's insecurities definitely carry over), made obvious in the "Sandboy" episode which shows Adrien's worst nightmare is a cage constantly barring him in more and more, while Cat Noir's nightmare is Ladybug hating him and trying to kill him.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • He serves as the Archie for Marinette's Betty and Chloé's Veronica. Thankfully he chooses Marinette.
  • In Season 3, he's the Archie to Marinette's Betty and Kagami's Veronica. At the end, he ends up with Marinette again.
  • On the other end, he's the Betty to Luka's Veronica to Marinette's Archie. He wins when she breaks up with Luka for him.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Adrien is a very sweet and cordial young man. But, even he has his limits. For example, he's not afraid to call out anyone, be it Chloé or Ladybug, for their questionable behavior. "Onichan" highlights best why you should never take advantage of his kindness. After Lila smugly worms her way through his private life and deliberately endangers his loved ones and heroic partner, Adrien is very upset with her and threatens to renounce her as a friend if she continues to hurt the people he loves.
  • Adrien is usually patient with Chloé, but even he has his limits with her bratty attitude. After she compromises the class' student film to make it her own power fantasy, she's furious that they would continue without her and dare to make her sister the lead actress. Adrien tells her that she needs to apologize for making the affair all about her again when it was never hers to begin with, reminding her about the promise to be nice unless she wanted to lose him as a friend. Unfortunately, she refuses to change and breaks off the friendship out of spite.
• Beware the Silly Ones: As Cat Noir, he is a wisecracking Pungeon Master who is usually the Butt-Monkey, but don't forget — he is the wielder of one of the two most powerful Miraculouses, and can corrode anything he touches to dust.
• Big Man on Campus: Adrien is a very popular and kind character in school, loved by almost everyone.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Adrien has to deal with the titular akumatized villain on his birthday in "The Bubbler".
• Blue Blood: He is a descendant of the British nobility as his mother was an aristocrat with a Lady title and rank before she renounced it.
• Body Horror:
  • In "Style Queen", when Adrien is turned into a golden statue by the titular Akuma, his body slowly crumbles into glitter dust.
  • In "Miraculer", after he is attacked by the titular Akuma as Cat Noir, it's implied that his ribs get slowly disintegrated by Miraculer's Cataclysm.
• Book Smart: Despite being often foolish (mostly as Cat Noir), he's very smart academically. The worst grade he has ever got is an A-, and he speaks several languages.
• Boring, but Practical: While his Cataclysm is most often used in creative ways to turn the battle, it's also very effective at breaking akumatized objects (like Ikari Gozen's enormous metal sword or Frozer's skates) that can't be broken in other ways.
• Born of Magic: He was a miracle baby created with the help of the Peacock Miraculous.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: When he takes up the Ladybug Miraculous as Mister Bug, he borrows Ladybug's usual purification phrases.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Cat is seemingly gunning for the "Most Times Brainwashed by Villains" world record believed to be currently held by one Samantha Simpson. It happens less frequently in the recent seasons.
  • In the episode "Dark Cupid", he turns bad after being hit by one of the Dark Cupid's arrows. He is cured by The Power of Love via a kiss from Ladybug.
  • In "The Puppeteer", the Puppeteer manages to take control of him through his puppet.
  • In "Princess Fragrance", he falls victim to the villain's mind-control perfume.
  • In "Despair Bear", Cat Noir is briefly mind-controlled when the titular akuma grabs onto his leg.
  • In "Zombizou", he is the second-to-last member of the cast to fall under Zombizou's sway.
  • In "Malediktator", the titular akuma made Cat Noir think and act as a literal cat. That backfires on him hard, though.
  • In "Cat Blanc", he's akumatized in a Bad Future scenario, destroyed Paris, the moon and many others, Ladybug and Hawk Moth included.
  • In "Mega Leech", he is briefly controlled by one of the miniature Malediktators.
  • In "Ephemeral", Adrien is akumatized for the second time.
• Break the Cutie: The entire series, but especially season four, is just one tragedy after another for Adrien's character.
  • In "Lies", having to sneak away in order to defend the city makes him lose not just his romantic relationship with Kagami but his friendship with her as well. At least for a while.
  • "Queen Banana" has Chloé break off their friendship as well, when he confronts her about her actions. Meaning that Adrien has lost his oldest and first friend.
  • In "Guiltrip", Cat Noir is so affected by the sentimonster's power that he almost Cataclysms himself!
  • Both "Optigami" and "Sentibubbler" have Cat Noir becoming aware of the growing rift between himself and Ladybug.
  • "Glaciator 2" has Adrien so distraught at the idea that his feelings upset Ladybug, that Shadow Moth actually senses his heartbreak.
  • "Hack-san" reveals that Ladybug told Scarabella her identity and kept it a secret from him.
  • In "Rocketear", Nino believes Alya is cheating on him with Cat Noir and insults him to Adrien's face. Even worse is Nino revealing that both he and Alya know each other's respective identities thanks to Ladybug. And that's all before an akumatized Nino beats up Cat Noir.
• Broken Ace: He's a popular model with a rich father, well-liked at school, speaks multiple languages, fences, plays basketball, and has tons of fangirls. As Cat Noir, he's loved by the people as a local superhero. However, this comes with a boatload of parental issues and a lonely upbringing.
• Broken Pedestal: At the beginning of the series Adrien was a Horrible Judge of Character who would constantly make excuses for Chloé and his dad. As the series progressed, after one too many Kick the Morality Pet moments from both of them he eventually started to see them as the awful people they really were. He also realises that school is not the idealized place he thought it was.
• But Not Too Foreign: His mother was British.
• Butt-Monkey: He tends to be the first one to get comically wounded, thrown around during fights, or subjected to Mind Control (ironically, more often as Cat Noir than as Adrien).
• Calling the Old Man Out: This is most explicitly shown in "Simon Says", where Adrien (as Cat Noir) calls out his father for not considering his own safety, his stubbornness, and thinking he's above everyone else. Later on, as Adrien, he snarks that there's a lot that Gabriel hasn't noticed about him, ring aside. This recurs in Cat Noir's last confrontation with Gabriel in "Representation": "I don't think I'd like having a father like you!"
• Cat Boy: As Cat Noir, this is the overall theme of his appearance; he magically gains cat-like eyes, but the cat ears and tail are just hair clips and a belt (though they still move as though they were real).
• The Champion: A Downplayed Trope. Cat Noir always places Ladybug's safety over his own, shielding her from harm even with his own body... This doesn't mean he won't question her decisions if he disagrees with her.
• Character Development: In the beginning, Adrien would only speak up sparingly against Chloé's mean actions because she was his Only Friend during the times he was homeschooled. Eventually, he stops making excuses for her and starts to actively reprimand her behavior. Incidentally, he starts to rebel against his father more often, albeit subtly.
• Character Tics: Puts his hand behind his head when around his crush, Ladybug.
• Chick Magnet: He has his fair share of admirers, more so in his civilian alter-ego, which is pretty expected since he is a famous model.
  • Marinette virtually has only eyes for Adrien, becoming easily jealous when another takes an interest in him. And she admits that if "Adrien" wasn't around, she would like Cat Noir.
  • Chloé can't stop flirting with him, even when he makes it clear he only likes her as a friend.
  • Lila was instantly smitten with Adrien and lied about being close with Ladybug and being from a family of superheroes just to get closer to him.
  • Not as strongly as the rest (which is the subject matter of "Rocketear") Astruc confirmed that Alya thinks Cat Noir is cute.
  • Both Aurore and Mireille are fans of his and go ga-ga whenever they see him personally or a poster picture of him.
  • Kagami also ends up falling in love with him.
  • In "Elation", an unnamed teenage girl asks Adrien (in his Cat Noir identity) if she can take a selfie with him, and kisses him on the cheek.
• Childhood Friend: Chloé was his only friend for years. This is why Adrien initially doesn't call Chloé out on her awfulness until learning that she masterminded a prank that traumatized Marinette, with her refusal to apologize for causing much of Marinette's psychological issues being the last straw for Adrien.
• Chivalrous Pervert: As Cat Noir he has no qualms constantly flirting with Ladybug, but always stops when she reminds him of the task at hand. Cat Noir adopts a similar persona with other ladies as well (if less love-declaring) which comes back to bite him in "Rocketear" when Nino gets fears that Cat Noir is not chivalrous and may be causing Alya to be unfaithful.
• Clark Kenting: Not as overt as Ladybug, given his transformation includes bright green sclerae... but apart from that, it's really just slightly lighter hair in a slightly different style with a Domino Mask. To his credit, he is much better at pulling off being a different person entirely than Marinette. Whereas Ladybug is often stuck trying to explain knowledge she can't possibly have, Cat Noir merely pretends not to know similar knowledge.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Despite the list of girls in the show under Chick Magnet having an interest in him, there's indications that Adrien doesn't seem to think very much of that and doesn't even notice his popularity with the opposite sex. Plagg jokes about all of his "girlfriends", and the "Rocketear" episode has him require Plagg accidentally convincing him that he may have been too charming as Cat Noir and caused Alya to fall in love with him when his track record should have made that fear a lot easier to consider.
• Color Character: Noir is French for black, so his name translates to “Cat Black”, and his costume is based on a black cat.
• Color Motifs:
  • Black — he wears a black costume and uses a black staff as Cat Noir, and wears a black t-shirt as Adrien. When he uses Cataclysm, his hand becomes charged with black energy and whatever he touches will usually disintegrate into a pile of black dust. Also, his name is Cat Noir (French for “black”) and the color can represent power and beauty.
  • Green — Hhs second primary color scheme (present in his transformation energy and the lights on his ring) due to his natural green eyes, which are more pronounced as Cat Noir. Also, Cat Noir’s staff has green lines and a green paw print on it. As Adrien, his t-shirt also has a green stripe on it. And as Astrocat, he has wings made of green energy and leaves a trail of sparkly green light when he flies.
• The Conscience: He is always there to interrupt Ladybug whenever she goes too far towards the vigilante/selfish/obsessive side of things. While he's not always completely in the right himself, his presence makes her a much better superhero.
• Cultured Badass: He can speak fluent Chinese, can play the piano, fencing is one of his hobbies, and he's a secret superhero.
• Cunning Linguist: Aside from his native French, he can speak fluent Mandarin, being able for example to have a deep conversation with Marinette's uncle, and likely also English. Also he can speak some Japanese, which he says he learned mostly by watching anime.
• Dance Battler: Like Ladybug, he doesn't stay still in combat. However, he is more prone to act more animalistic; Running on All Fours at times.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He wears dark clothing in civvie and alter ego forms, but is on Ladybug's side. He also has a set of powers that would normally lend themselves towards being a villain, but fights for good.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: In Season 5, Adrien starts dating Marinette. Gabriel being the Control Freak that he is, disapproves because he thinks she's "mediocre" compared to Kagami. He tries ordering him to break it off with her, and later akumatizes Kagami to ruin their date.
• Destructive Saviour:
  • Since his miraculous is imbued with the power of destruction, he is capable of causing mass devastation. Unlike most examples, this is often weaponized against the villains they are fighting because Ladybug's power of creation is capable of repairing whatever damage he causes.
  • In the New York special, it is implied that he possesses a lingering sense of guilt over this, afraid that he could cause genuine harm with it if he isn't careful, a nightmare that becomes a reality when he accidentally cataclysms fellow hero Uncanny Valley during a fight.
• Determinator: Best exemplified in "Desperada", where he (as Aspik) tries to save Ladybug's life 25,913 times (which, assuming he went close to the five-minute time limit each time, means he was in the loop for roughly 89 days) before giving up.
• Didn't Think This Through: As Cat Noir, he has a tendency to jump into action without a plan first. This rarely ends well for him.
• Disney Death: Happens to him twice.
  • In "Timebreaker", after protecting Ladybug from Timebreaker, he becomes one of her victims and gets his energy taken, causing him to fade away from existence. Luckily, after Timebreaker and Ladybug went back to the past, all of them including him are back.
  • In "Gamer 2.0", he performs a Heroic Suicide by voluntarily falling off the arena to allow Ladybug to continue, basically disappearing from existence until the Lucky Charm fixes everything.
• Distressed Dude: Has been captured and tied up a number of times in the first season.
• The Dog Bites Back: Downplayed, but mostly in some episodes focused on him, Adrien involuntarily have his time!
  • They can bicker sometimes and, as much as Ladybug keep a lot of secrets from him or be mean spirited (justified or not) to him, Cat Noir never actually enacted some payback. However, there occasions when Adrien manages to fool her, for a change. "Cat Walker" is a prime example, when Adrien gives up of his miraculous and Plagg hatches a plan to get his partner out of his depression by having him becoming a new cat themed hero named Cat Walker. Marinette never figured what happened!
  • "Representation" is a big one, when son and father unknowingly enter in a vicious fight! Despite Gabriel isn't aware of Cat Noir's identity, the hero gave his best against Nightormentor and lashed out about how bad he is as a father! This falls on deaf ears to Gabriel, of course.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Despite Ladybug's continued rejection he continues to hope that she'll "fall for [him] one day". Some episodes have him get distraught at his hopes still not panning out, and "Glaciator 2" has him try to stop this after realizing he's annoying Ladybug doing this, thinking that trying to be more himself with her might work better instead of constantly flirting.
• Dork Knight: He's a studious, kind-hearted, sweet Ace who genuinely cares about others and literally Jumped at the Call. He's also a dorky, punny cat-boy, who despite being polite and pretty friendly, started the series as a homeschooled kid who had difficulty relating to his peers. He got better after Character Development kicked in.
• Dual Wielding: His staff can split in two if needed.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Implied in "Syren" when Ladybug and Plagg didn't explain why they were keeping secrets from him. Also, some people, Ladybug frequently included, treat Cat as the number two and assistant of the duo. As Adrien, he's constantly humbled (physically and verbally) by Kagami on fencing, despite having the same level of ability.
• Elemental Motifs: Episodes ("Glaciator", "Syren", "Frozer", "Cat Blanc", the Christmas special) where Adrien has a Heroic BSoD are marked by flooded or icy backgrounds. At one point, his akumatized self expresses anger by plunging someone into an ocean, and said self's eyes turn from their natural green to blue.
• Embodiment of Virtue: As a Sentimonster, Adrien embodies his mother's love towards Gabriel and this reflects in his compassionate nature.
• Environmental Symbolism: His room is massive, split into two levels, and filled with all sorts of expensive items. The lower level containing his bed, desk and bathroom while the upper level holds his DVD's and books reflects the dissonance between his public and Cat Noir personalities, as well as his desire to be free rather than locked into an isolated environment by his father.
• Even the Guys Want Him: He has an obsessive fanboy, Wayhem, who constantly chases him.
• Expressive Accessory: The ears and tail of his Cat Noir costume are nothing but hair clips and a belt, but they sometimes move like an actual cat ears and tail, reflecting his mood.
• Expy: While Adrien's name and role makes one think of Marvel's Black Cat, Word of God says he was actually based on DC's Catwoman.
• Expy Coexistence: Adrien was made to replace the original concept character for Cat Noir, Félix, who was a more brooding and moodier boy. However, Félix ended up being introduced in Season 3 as Adrien's cousin.
• Extreme Doormat: Downplayed. His fear of loneliness is such that (before Character Development kicks in) he won't assert himself socially. In the case of his father, this trope is justified in more ways than one; on top of all the mundane manipulations common to abusive parents, Gabriel can restrain Adrien magically with his amok..
  • It's to the point that in the episode where the akumatized villain has the power to reveal people's childhood dreams, he first says he never had one, then that it was "(...) to be whatever my parents wanted me to be". It comes out as really sad and giving the impression Adrien doesn't have or couldn't express a personality of his own. The Reveal that he's an Artificial Human born thanks to the Peacock Miraculous magic later casts a new light upon this puzzling fact.
• Extremely Protective Child: In "Simon Says", when the titular akumatized villain goes after his father, Adrien drops his usual cavalier attitude as Cat Noir, fiercely attacks against the akuma's hypnotized cronies, and yells at his stubborn father to listen to someone else for once and get to safety.
• Fairy Tale Motifs:
  • Word of God has explicitly compared Adrien to Snow White, with his father as the Evil Queen, Nathalie as the Huntsman, and Marinette/Ladybug as his "Prince." The episode "Gabriel Agreste" has Nathaniel and Marc invoking a similar analogy (although their version is slightly less specific, and replaces Nathalie-as-Huntsman with Gorilla-as-dragon - ironic, given Nathalie's status as The Dragon).
  • He also has a lot in common with Disney's Rapunzel, with his blond hair, green eyes, and very restrictive (almost prison-like) home life with an overprotective yet absent parent whom he doesn't yet realize is the villain of his story.
  • "Style Queen Part 1" makes it more explicit; Style Queen turns Adrien to gold and lays him out on a coffin-like bed with a rose in his mouth for Ladybug to find, resembling the iconic image from Disney's Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.
  • To a lesser extent, when he's Cat Noir, his dynamic with Marinette is the opposite. Marinette is the princess and he is her knight (as he says in the French dub of Evillustrator). In Weredad, he tries his damnedest to save her from her thorned prison (though she ends up saving herself), and in Elation, he breaks her near akumatization with a kiss.
• False Flag Operation: In "Gorizilla", Adrien manages to pull a similar trick to Gabriel's plan in "The Collector", with Wayhem's help. Gabriel comes dangerously close to discovering that Adrien and Cat Noir are nearly one and the same, only to fail due to Adrien's quick thinking and his own morality. Likewise, Adrien trusts Ladybug enough to throw himself off the top of a skyscraper because she asked, trusting that she'll save him without him having to reveal his identity.
• Family Eye Resemblance: In the English dub, Ladybug notes that he has his mother's eyes.
• Fatal Flaw: One of his flaws is letting everyone do everything for him and never thinking for himself. His second flaw is always doing everything his father says, which his cousin, Félix, points out in "Risk".
• Flexing Those Non-Biceps: As Cat Noir, he tries to show off his non-existent musculature to Marinette and Lady Wifi. They are not impressed.
• Flower Motifs: Roses. He usually presents red roses to Ladybug as a symbol of his love.
  • He also offers one to Kagami when he begins to consider dating her.
  • He gives Marinette a pink rose when he rejects her as Cat Noir in "Weredad". In "Elation", having fallen for her, he gives a red rose, which she wears during their date.
• Forbidden Fruit: Although he is not the trope, his Cataclysm power evokes the imagery of the "untouchable beauty" and whoever he dates, his father intends to always be controlling him.
• Friendless Background: He states that before he started going to Marinette's school, he didn't have any friends (though he has known Chloé for a while).
• Fun Personified: Cat Noir comes across as this to Ladybug so successfully that she's surprised every time he "breaks character".
• Fusion Dance:
  • He wields the Cat and Snake Miraculous to become Snake Noir.
  • He wields the Cat and Rabbit Miraculous to become Rabbit Noir.
• Generation Xerox: Bearing a physical resemblance to his mother and aunt, Adrien takes after the former in wanting to persue his own romantic interests yet is obedient to a strict parent like the latter.
• Genre Savvy: He believes that a beautiful girl falling out of the sky and fighting supervillains alongside him is the universe's way of telling him she's his soulmate. He's not wrong.
• Get the Sensation: Adrien Perfume commercials promise any boy who buys it to smell as if they were as dreamy, and radiant as famous model Adrien Agreste.
• Gilded Cage: He felt this way about his life before he became Cat Noir, going so far as to run off so he could meet other kids.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil:
  • Downplayed. He believes strongly that most people can be reasoned with and met on diplomatic grounds. Sometimes this works, and the person is genuinely misguided (for example, Marinette). Other times, he overestimates people's willingness to change (Chloé and Lila, for example).
  • Averted with supervillains. The one time Hawk Moth tries to "reason" with the heroes he isn't having any of it, while Ladybug does briefly try to hear him out. Likewise, once he gets a good look at just how genuinely malicious Lila can be, he became much more hostile and untrusting to her.
• Great Escape: Exaggerated — he destroys an entire Prison Dimension to free all of the Victims of the Week in "Pixelator".
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He is blond and extremely kindhearted.
• Heart Is Where the Home Is: Adrien becomes enamored with Ladybug, a Parisian like him, the moment he sees her show her heroic nature despite her fears. Unfortunately for him, she likes another guy and, to try and forget her, he dates Kagami, a Japanese girl. They are both lonely rich kids unhappy with the way their parents control their lives, so there's an instant kinship. However, he can't ignore that he only feels admiration and a passing attraction toward Kagami. By contrast, he loves and cherishes every moment spent with Ladybug and ends up dating her, although in a roundabout manner.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: While Adrien is already attractive in both his civilian and Cat Noir outfits, his attractiveness becomes more dashing when he wears his black suit.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Cat Noir's outfit is essentially a leather catsuit (no pun intended).
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Zigzagged. Adrien takes fencing classes and is talented in it, but doesn't use a sword weapon in battle. However, he does incorporate his fencing skills into combat.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • In "Cat Blanc", after finding out that his mother is comatose and that Hawk Moth is his father all along, he becomes incredibly furious, hurt and devastated about these revelations, and gets akumatized as a consequence. As Cat Blanc, he manages to resist Hawk Moth's control for a moment, but unfortunately, the trauma becomes so great it overloads his Cataclysm, reducing Paris into a flooded wasteland and all the citizens (Ladybug and Hawk Moth included) are turned into lifeless statues. After that, he still remains in his akumatized self all alone in the ruins of Paris, suffering from severe mental instability because of his despair, pain and guilt for his actions. Fortunately, he gets better thanks to the past Ladybug.
  • In "Miraculous New York", Cat Noir accidentally uses Cataclysm on Uncanny Valley and kills her. Luckily, she gets better thanks to Ladybug's power, but he is still completely devastated and even temporarily gives up his Miraculous.
  Cat Noir: It's All My Fault. You were perfect as always. Knightowl was right to want to confiscate my Miraculous. I left Paris without telling you. I ruined everything! And if Uncanny Valley hadn't been a robot, I would've caused irreparable harm.
• Heroic Willpower: Defied, which is later Justified. Both times he gets Akumatized, in "Cat Blanc" and "Ephemeral", he tries to reject the Akuma, but each time his will gets overwritten by his father's influence and his Amok's control.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: He is Nino's best friend. They enjoy hanging out with each other, and they sit together in class. This is to the point that Nino actually goes to Adrien's father in hopes of getting him to allow Adrien a birthday party, and becoming visibly upset when he fails. Keep in mind that Nino is usually pretty laid back.
• Homeschooled Kids: He only began attending middle school at the start of the current school year, and initially has trouble making new friends because of his association with Chloé; not helped by the fact that other episodes (eg. "Reflekta") imply that the kids in that collège have known each other for years. And unlike the stereotypical example of being socially awkward, Adrien is pretty friendly, if a bit reserved. However, the Origins episodes reveal that he clearly didn't know how to act around kids his age and had difficulty understanding how classroom etiquette worked.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Adrien under his Cat Walker persona proves to be this to Ladybug. He comes up with the distractions, correctly deduces that Kuro Neko is a Sentimonster (negating the usefulness of his Cataclysm) and comes up with the solutions for the cloth Lucky Charm Ladybug makes.
  • In "Psychomedian", when Ladybug is under the influence of the akuma's powers. He incapacitates the enraged Ladybug when she attacks him, hauls her around, and recreates the Lucky Charm after she smashes it.
  • Again in "Dearest Family", Cat Noir ends up doing most of the work, primarily because Tikki is having her meltdown with the Galette, forcing him to take on four incredibly powerful and versatile Akumas, on his own. Yes it is mostly stalling for time until Ladybug can sort herself out, but he is able to evade and stall the family without assistance.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: Drops this line in "Reflekdoll" when he gets to purify an Akuma as Mister Bug.
• Iconic Outfit: Adrien's black catsuit he wears as Cat Noir.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: Adrien is ignorant of many secrets in the show, mainly Ladybug's and Hawk Moth's identities. Adrien's main and only secret is about his role as Cat Noir. Ironically, the fact Gabriel doesn't know that his son is secretly one of his big enemies it's the only thing keeping Adrien safe, even if he doesn't know that. Hawk Moth/Shadow Moth generally makes sure Adrien is out of physical danger when sending villains, which was beneficial to Adrien more than once, except when he's the villain's goal.
• I Just Want to Be Free: As Cat Noir, he is playful, emotionally expressive, and bold to a fault...because he's overcompensating for the stress of his normal life, in which he can't be any of those things.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: His loneliness is rooted in his mysterious Missing Mom, emotionally distant father, lack of friends during his childhood sans one, and being homeschooled for most of his life. Word of God also stated that the bell on Cat Noir's suit is a reference to a domestic kitten, conveying his inner desire for a loving home.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Adrien dreams of making friends at school, even though he doesn't get off to a good start with his classmates due to his friendship with Chloé.
• I Kiss Your Hand: Cat Noir does this when he first meets Ladybug, setting up his flirty gentleman persona. He later does the same for Marinette (not realizing they're the same person), Rena Rouge (not realizing she's his friend Alya), and Vesperia (not realizing she's Zoé). Still because of this gentleman persona, he often curtsies to Ladybug, and to Marinette in "Oblivio".
• Innate Night Vision: He gains night vision when he transforms into Cat Noir. Which makes sense, as most cats have better night vision than day vision, and are known for being able to see in the dark comparatively well relative to humans.
• Innocently Insensitive: In "Crocoduel", he blatantly flirts on Purple Tigress, not realizing that she is actually Juleka, who is A) a lesbian and B) in a relationship. She looks a bit uncomfortable, but more surprised than annoyed.
• Instant Flight: Just Add Spinning!: Cat Noir's staff can work like that to keep him in the air for a few seconds or ensure a safe landing.
• Ironic Name: Adrien's surname, Agreste, means "rustic," which in no way describes his wealthy lifestyle.
• Jumped at the Call: Is so eager to become a superhero that he transforms into Cat Noir for the first time before he had learned how his powers work.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: He's in the receiver part, actually hating when people keep hiding secrets from him, specially Ladybug and Gabriel.
• Keet: As Cat Noir, he has boundless energy and optimism, as well as a very fun-loving jokester personality.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Downplayed. The creators mention that the reason it's hard to akumatize Adrien is because he's used to disappointment.
• The Lancer: To Marinette/Ladybug. His sheltered upbringing by distant parents (primarily his father) contrasts Marinette's friendless, but relatively free childhood by loving and fair parents. As civilians, he's quiet and reserved unlike Marinette's energetic and friendly nature; as superheroes, their roles switch to a degree with Cat Noir having a cocky and playful demeanor to Ladybug's straightforward and professional attitude. Also, either as Adrien or Cat Noir, he's not afraid to call out Ladybug when she does something he doesn't agree with. As for their Miraculouses, they are owners of the two most powerful, but he tends to follow her lead in battle.
• Large Ham: As Cat Noir, he's a lot more flamboyant and chatty. He also makes the occasional cat pun.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Whenever a new Villain of the Week shows up, Cat Noir doesn't waste any time in jumping into battle, which usually backfires.
• Like Parent, Like Child:
  • According to Gabriel, Émilie was stubborn and headstrong when it came to other people's safety, similarly to Adrien.
  • Like his father, Adrien is a popular Paris citizen thanks to fashion (Gabriel being a designer, Adrien a model), but both tend to have a Sugar-and-Ice Personality (although, Adrien is more sugar while Gabriel leans more to ice). Both become more flamboyant, emotional, punny in their Miraculous alter-egos. On a darker note, both also have a selfish kind of love — Gabriel micromanaging his son's life to keep him from danger and endangering citizens to bring his wife back; Adrien, while nowhere near his father's level, initially has trouble accepting Ladybug's rejection. However, both Agrestes are strongly and fiercely dedicated to their beloved ones.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: It's worth noting that Adrien and Marinette's father are both nice guys who are a bit dorky yet can become aggressive when they're in protective mode, have green eyes and enjoy playing video games with her, though the show itself has not yet bothered to make that point of comparison.
• Limited Wardrobe: Like Marinette, he always wears the same outfit. It consists of a white button-down shirt with an upturned collar, a black shirt with five horizontal stripes around the chest which are colored (from top to bottom — yellow, olive green, bright green, dark green, and periwinkle), blue jeans, orange sneakers with white laces and a logo of a black butterfly in a circle on the sides, and his Miraculous ring.
• Little Bit Beastly: As Cat Noir, his eyes are shaped to resemble a cat's.
• Living Emotional Crutch:
  • Adrien is this to his father, and it's justified given that Adrien's mother (who is implied to be this to Gabriel as well) mysteriously disappeared and Gabriel is obviously afraid of something coming to harm his only child. This is also deconstructed given that Gabriel's way of keeping Adrien safe is to be a complete Control Freak over his son's life, and the situation was even worse in the Origins episodes.
  • Occasionally, Cat Noir is this to Ladybug. In moments where she's entering a Heroic BSoD, he encourages her to not give up. In her moments of self-doubt, Ladybug remembers Cat Noir is always there for her. This is highlighted in the New York special, when a sequence of bad events made him resign his powers. Marinette is unwilling to be Ladybug anymore if he isn't around.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Quite. A. LOT.
  • For much of the series, he's the only one of his friends who doesn't know Marinette has a crush on him, though that's as much on him for being oblivious as it is both her and everyone else not being willing to spell it out for him.
  • Obviously, he doesn't know about Gabriel's crusade as a super villain, or about Marinette being Ladybug. Even when Gabriel gives his life to save Nathalie, Marinette keeps his villain identity a secret so as to not break Adrien's heart.
  • Up until mid-season 2, he's kept in the dark by both Ladybug and Plagg about how much they know about the Miraculous, despite Marinette having plenty of time to train with Fu. Fu reveals himself to Adrien in "Syren" when the need to augment their powers arises. While is arguable how much Fu told Adrien about the situation, Marinette is the guardian's main apprentice and the one he has most confidence in.
  • When Ladybug becomes the new Guardian, Cat Noir is kept out of even more secrets. For instance, he had to deal with the fact that Scarabella was chosen as a temporary user of the Ladybug miraculous without any previous warning.
  • Finally, he doesn't know about his true origin as a human created by the Peacock Miraculous.
• Lonely Rich Kid: He's quite popular at school, but his home life is horrible: his father is extremely strict and distant, his mother is nowhere to be found (to be more exact, went missing according to Adrien's webisode), and Nathalie, his father's assistant and the person Adrien interacts the most with while he's at home, is also quite cold.
• Lovable Jock: He fences and plays basketball, but is a Nice Guy. Adding some nuance, Adrien astonishingly for an European boy interested in and good at sports, knows zero about football association. This in a country which won two The World Cups in the last 20 years. Subsequently, Adrien/Cat Noir is mostly useless in the 4th season episode "Penalteam", when he's not outright The Load.
• Love at First Sight: Didn't happen, but due to mask-related misunderstandings and Adrien's love of romantic clichés, he thinks it did. Astruc explicitly compares him to a Disney princess.
• Loved by All: Both in and out of his hero mask. As Cat Noir, he's a beloved hero who is well-liked by citizens, and even his partner Ladybug cares for him even though she doesn't return his romantic feelings. In his civilian life, he's a popular model and one of the most loved students at school. Unlike Marinette, he's liked even by Chloé and Lila, who both have a crush on him.
• Love Epiphany: Adrien fell for Ladybug while they were dealing with Stoneheart. They successfully defeated him, but Ladybug forgot to purify the akuma, causing more Stonehearts to appear. When she went to take care of the problem, Hawk Moth attempted to break her spirit, but she stayed strong, telling him point-blank she's not afraid of him and he will be defeated. And after she performed a spectacular display of saving Ivan and Mylène, he fell for her right then and there.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Adrien readily agreed to wield the Snake Miraculous for a chance to impress Ladybug, even though he already has a Miraculous and would be more useful as Cat Noir. Happens regularly as Cat Noir, since being busy wooing Ladybug makes Cat more vulnerable to attacks.
  • On a lighter example, when Marinette drops Kagami off at fencing class in season 5, he's so enthralled by Marinette that he apparently forgets she doesn't take that class with them.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: He was creeped out by most of Marinette's actions in the Grevin Museum, but when she almost kissed him, he found himself wanting to kiss back. It's probably a Type 2 example of the trope, given that the museum thing only happened because he was desperate to confirm whether she had positive feelings for him.
• Magnetic Hero: Much of his progress towards freedom has been made by turning enemies into friends. One reason Nathalie defects from Hawk Moth is that Adrien is so innocent she can't justify hurting him for any but the strongest of reasons.
• Major Injury Underreaction: While Miraculer hitting him with a Cataclysm does send him reeling, he doesn't seem all that fussed about it otherwise, brushing off Ladybug's concern with an almost-nonchalant "I just got Cataclysmed in the ribs." The way he phrases it makes it sound like he just skinned his knee. Downplayed in the sense that getting hit with it makes a struggle for him to even move properly.
• Make Them Rot: His Cataclysm technique causes whatever he touches to decay. Being a hero, this is used on non-living things only, although he does ponder what would happen while Brainwashed and Crazy in "Dark Cupid". "Cat Blanc" demonstrates what would happen if he successfully used it on a person, after getting akumatized in a Bad Future, and he ends up accidentally using it on Monarch in "Destruction", an encounter Monarch only survived in the moment because his suit slowed the attack from "instant death" to "slowly rotting over several months".
• Master of the Mixed Message: Plenty of Adrien's interactions with Marinette are firmly in Ship Tease territory, yet he has insisted that Marinette is Just Friends. Cat Noir actually inverts the trope by being overly-romantic towards Ladybug, but having such a jokey, over the top, and overly flirtatious personality means that Ladybug doesn't take his advancements seriously. When she finally does realize his sincerity, she gently but firmly turns him down due to her crush on Adrien (who is actually him), and he responds by going on a date with Kagami (after asking Marinette for advice, inadvertently setting her up for hope before breaking her heart) but shows more concern for Marinette during their double date. And then in the end he continues to pursue his feelings for Ladybug.
• Meaningful Look: He likes to gaze fondly at Marinette while she does something cute, despite his insistence that she's just a friend.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Chat Noir, which is French for black cat, has bad luck based powers. In-Universe, the name originated from the hero of a children’s book Émilie read to him when he was younger.
  • "Adrien" is the French form of the name Adrian, which can mean "the dark one".
• Modeling is Glamorous: As the only son of a famous fashion designer, he may have lived a glamorous life regardless, but his modeling career for said dad's company plasters his face all over Paris, connects him with celebrities, and gives him hordes of fans.
• Momma's Boy: Implied. Adrien mentioned his father was always stiff and cold even before his mother's disappearance, but any time Adrien is thinking about his mother, it's with fondness and love. This may mean that Adrien had a closer relationship with his mother than his father.
• Morality Pet: Adrien was this to some extent to Chloé until "Queen Banana". He was the only person who she was never — at least intentionally — mean to.
• More Expendable Than You: Since Ladybug is the only one that can purify akumas and fix all the associated damage, Adrien prioritizes her safety over his own.
• More Hero than Thou: Ladybug's life takes priority over his own. There is no doubt in Adrien's mind about this. Which is semi-justified, because she's the only one whose magic includes a Reset Button, but probably also stems from his own self-hatred.
• Mr. Fanservice: Adrien and Cat Noir are both very cute-looking, with the latter adding in a skin-tight leather catsuit. As a model, there are plenty of pictures of him looking cute. Taken up a notch in "Mr. Pigeon 72" where he's finally shown shirtless for the first time in the show.
• Mundane Solution: Is prone to this compared to Ladybug. In "Kwamibuster", both heroes end up with the threat of having their identities exposed to each other. Ladybug comes up with a convoluted plan using another Miraculous and illusions to make it appear as if she and Marinette are different people, but all Adrien has to do is play dumb.
• Neglected Skill Atrophy: At the outset of the show, Adrien is a piano prodigy and a fencing champion, but falls out of practice in both as the series wears on, with Kagami overtaking him in fencing. Lampshaded in that he was never particularly passionate about either pursuit, and eventually finds new hobbies like running.
• Nice Guy: Adrien is very friendly and helpful towards everyone, especially his friends.
• No Sense of Personal Space: He is always leaning into Ladybug's space as Cat Noir and regularly tries to kiss her - to which she usually pushes his face away with her finger. This seems to be his normal mode as Cat Noir - at one point, he worries that Alya has fallen in love with him as Cat Noir, so he goes over to her balcony to make sure she hasn't - while leaning uncomfortably close to her face and speaking in a flirtatious tone. It doesn't help matters that Nino is watching and, being unable to hear their conversation, becomes even more falsely convinced that Alya is cheating on him with Cat Noir.
  • As Adrien, he also often gets really close to Marinette's face (most notably in "Despair Bear", just to ask for a macaroon, and in "Troublemaker", when asking about the pictures of him in her room) and appears not to notice whenever he accidentally touches her hands, even before he catches feelings for her. The first time he interacts with Marinette as Cat Noir, he kisses her hand and later pulls her in by the waist when she comes up with a solution to them being trapped.
• No Social Skills: Downplayed. Adrien is aware of social etiquette, but as the Origin episodes showed, he didn't know how to act around other kids his age, since his Only Friend for most of his life was Chloé. As Cat, it becomes more noticeable as the newfound freedom tends to cause him say whatever he's thinking without taking into account how it's making others feel like with his flirting with Ladybug.
• Not Good with Rejection: Adrien has problems dealing with Ladybug rejecting his advances, becoming cold whenever she rebuffs him. The season three finale and "Miraculous New York" imply he overcomes this flaw.
• Not the Intended Use: His Cataclysm makes his right hand destroy the next thing it touches - because his right hand is also the hand where he wears his Miraculous ring, he's occasionally activated Cataclysm (or even threatened to) just to prevent his enemies from trying to take hold of his ring.
• Number Two: After Marinette starts recruiting new heroes to their team, Adrien becomes the group’s second-in-command.
• Oblivious to Love: Infamously, he misses every indication of Marinette's massive crush on him. In "Stormy Weather 2", it's hinted that Adrien is close to figuring it out, but is held back from fully believing it by his low self-esteem and his social cluelessness leading him to believe Marinette's constant denials.
• Official Couple: Enters in one with Marinette in season 5.
• One Head Taller: Adrien is a head taller than Marinette.
• One-Hit Kill: As Cat Noir, his Cataclysm can cause something to instantly rot and destroy. Subverted when Miraculer steals this power and uses it on him, it just causes immense pain all over his body, but otherwise he's left unharmed.
• OOC Is Serious Business:
  • He's normally a pretty chill Pungeon Master, but put his father in danger and he reboots into seek-and-destroy mode. Notable examples include "Simon Says", who targets his father after a snub, and "The Collector", who is his father.
  • He usually does his Handshake Substitute with Ladybug as Cat Noir after they defeat an Akuma, but whenever he doesn't do it, it's because he's genuinely worried about something else. Either the thought of Ladybug dead ("Animan"), because he doesn't agree with her attitude ("Antibug"), his father being deakumatized ("The Collector"), and when he realized how malicious Lila is as she keeps lying to the others and also manipulated Kagami as Oni-chan to kill Ladybug ("Oni-chan").
  • "Glaciator" shows that by interactions with both his crush's identities: While Marinette witnesses a Cat Noir more kind and heartbroken because his lady didn't appear to see the surprise he prepared, Ladybug is stunned by his initial bitter behavior for the same reason.
  • Frustrated by Ladybug's secrets in "Syren", Adrien threatens to throw away his ring if Plagg doesn't spill. Given how much he loves the freedom that being Cat Noir allows him, this shows a lot.
  • In "Frozer", he's bitter again after Ladybug's second rejection and tries to keep the things in a professional level. He even suggests the best way to deal with a villain whose powers they don't know entirely is wait and observe... that coming from the guy who's usually jumping into the action without a second thought. It's implied that the only reason he suggests this is because it goes directly against Ladybug's plan.
• Our Humans Are Different: He's a human who is also a product of the Peacock Miraculous’ abilities.
• Overly Long Name: "Cat Blanc" reveals that Adrien has at least five middle names. The only one we know is the fifth, Athanase^note translates to "immortal".
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Downplayed. Adrien's Cat Noir disguise gives him a likewise small mask, but also significantly changes his hairstyle and transforms his eyes into green cat ones, making it much harder for someone to guess his true identity. Lampshaded by Alya more than once, who points out that if you put Adrien in a black suit, mask, and cat ears, he looks kind of similar to Cat Noir. Marinette, who likes Adrien but not Cat Noir, denies the resemblance.
• Parental Title Characterization: In the French dub, he addresses his father using the formal form of "you", which is normally used for strangers, and in the English dub, he consistently uses "father" instead of the more informal "dad". This shows just how distant the two are.
• People Puppets: As a sentihuman, he can become one to anyone who holds one of the two wedding rings containing his Amok, as clearly portrayed in season 5 with his father, using his Amok to force his body to obey all of his commands.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: He has green hair as Catwalker.
• Power Gives You Wings: His space-mode give him a pair of neon-green bat wings.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Downplayed. As Cat Noir he has slightly longer hair than in his civilian form and as Catwalker he has a short ponytail.
• Pretty Boy: Adrien is very slender with fine facial features. He's even a model!
• Princess Classic: The foil to Luka’s Rebel Prince.
• Pungeon Master: In the English and French version, he's fond of injecting (mainly) cat puns in his dialogue as Cat Noir. Unfortunately, they're pretty terrible. This might be because he doesn't exactly have a lot of practice telling jokes, as his father and father's assistant are distant, and he has few friends. Besides which, he doesn't exactly have a very large span of time to practice, what with spending maybe 15 minutes as Cat Noir a day, and making maybe 5 puns during that time. Of course, he might be making the puns bad on purpose around the villains to rile them up too, which likely doesn't help.
• Put a Face on the Company: Gabriel Agreste's fashion company heavily relies on its main model Adrien to advertise everything from clothes to perfumes even though they do hire other models. It's Played for Drama because it leads to the labor exploitation of a minor who'd rather spend more time at school with his friends. Also, he's so famous in Paris that he's frequently accosted by fans when he's out.
• Race Fetish: The two girls he ends up dating are of Asian descent, though the narrative doesn't draw attention to this. It may be a downplayed case of Author Appeal. Averted with Ladybug though, thanks to the magic of the costume, and despite Ladybug having exactly the same hairdo and the same hair color as Marinette.
• Recorded Audio Alibi: Sometimes plays recordings of classical piano music to make it seem like he's practicing the piano, thus allowing him to sneak out as Cat Noir.
• Rejection Affection: Cat Noir continues to pursue Ladybug despite her repeatedly rejecting him because she's in love with another guy...who is his secret identity.
• Relative Button:
  • Hurting Ladybug in any way. In “Animan”, he’s ready to tear the akumatized villain to shreds when he thinks he killed her. In “Oni-Chan”, he furiously demands a civilian to teleport the titular villain to his location so she can protect Ladybug.
  • Taking advantage of/hurting his loved ones. Adrien is pretty lenient to people hurting him personally, so long as it doesn’t harm the people he cares about. As Lila finds out, between getting Nathalie and the Gorilla in trouble with his father, manipulating events to deliberately hurt Kagami, working with multiple villains to kill Ladybug, and framing Marinette to expel her from school out of spite, she pisses Adrien off to the point that he wants nothing to do with her, and threatens to leave their “friendship” for all of her remorseless tactics. He even gave Chloé every chance to redeem herself before he ends their friendship when he confronts her lack of remorse over a traumatizing prank orchestrated on Marinette a year prior.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • In "Lady Wifi", he makes several flirtatious remarks which (unbeknownst to him) are actually entirely true — if only because he's in a romance story.
    "Without this mask, you wouldn't be able to resist me."
    "You think we might know each other in real life?"
  • In "Dark Cupid", he assumed the unsigned letter he received came from Ladybug because a ladybug landed on it while he read it. It actually came from Marinette, who is course secretly Ladybug.
• Rule of Symbolism: According to Word of God, his bell signifies his desire to be loved, being a cat who's still lost from home.
• Running on All Fours: It's not uncommon to see Cat Noir doing this in battle or when he's traversing Paris.
• Save Scumming: As Aspik and Snake Noir, he possessed the ability to rewind time by up to five minutes after a specific point, keeping his memories of what he'd done the other times.
• Second Love: He's this to Marinette, as in "Derision" it's revealed that she used to be in love with Kim before she met him.
• Second Super-Identity:
  • In "Desperada", Adrien briefly wields the Snake Miraculous and becomes Aspik (hiding the fact that he's Cat Noir). He eventually gives up and suggests that Luka take his place.
  • In "Kuro Neko", Adrien gives up the Black Cat Miraculous out of feeling neglected... only for Plagg to bring it back to him and convince him to "replace" himself, becoming the polite and professional Cat Walker.
• Secret-Identity Identity: Supplementary material, as well as evidence in the show itself, indicates that Adrien views Cat Noir as his true self. That being said, the case is less severe than certain other examples of this trope; Cat Noir isn't so much a different person from Adrien Agreste, as he is Adrien with less of a verbal filter (manifesting in both positive and negative ways) and less need to live up to Gabriel's crushing expectations. The difference comes down more to Adrien's self-confidence issues than being Lost in Character.
• Secret-Keeper: While he's in on a few heroes secret identities, he has to play dumb depending on the form.
  • As Adrien:
    • He is the one who suggests Luka wield the Snake Miraculous and is aware of his identity as Viperion. It takes until "Ephemeral" for him to be able to acknowledge this as Cat Noir.
    • Nino also outs himself as Carapace and Alya as Rena Rouge to him in a jealous rage after mistakenly concluding that she's cheating on him with Cat Noir. This is currently limited solely to Adrien.
  • As Cat Noir:
    • As part of a plot to prevent herself from being outed as Ladybug, Cat Noir is aware of Marinette's identity as Multimouse.
    • Due to being present when they first received their repspective Miraculouses, he is aware of Max's identity as Pegasus and Rose's identity as Pigella.
    • Logically he should also be aware that Ryuko is Kagami (since Ryuko came out of the place where Kagami was trapped, and called the fight with Ikari Gozen to be "between a daughter and a mother").
• Sexy Cat Person: A cat-themed hero who is hot enough to be a male model and very flirtatious.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Adrien was born into a wealthy family, but due to his father's overprotectiveness, Adrien wasn't allowed to go to public school until recently.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Adrien was all for helping Nino get together with Marinette.
  • In "Félix", Adrien mistakenly believes that his father and Nathalie are romantically involved, and he's more than okay with it, since he already considers her part of the family.
• Ship Sinking: In a strange example, his ship with Ladybug technically sunk in "Elation", as he decides to give up on her to pursue a relationship with Marinette. (Not knowing that they are the same person).
  • Given the way his couple with Kagami ended, they were on bad terms for a while. She realizes she still has feelings for him after they reconcile, but at this point he has set for Marinette, so Kagami tries to help them hook up. The real sinking point for the ship is reached when their respective equally Abusive Parents reveal they have always planned for a so-called Perfectly Arranged Marriage between their children, and do unsavoury things to try and enforce it, from sequestration to spreading Fake News, etc.
• Signature Favorite Food: He seems to really love choquettes from Tom and Sabine's bakery. Marinette makes sure that he is well-supplied with them once they finally start dating.
• Signature Instrument: The piano, having practiced from a young age, even having one in his room. Luka remarks that his "inner song" sounds like a sad piano melody.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Zigzagged. He never seriously considered anyone who wasn't Ladybug until Kagami. But he start again to target Ladybug right after breaking-up with Kagami.
• Skewed Priorities: During "Dark Cupid", he's more focused on confessing to Ladybug than fighting the villain.
  • In "Oblivio", he can be seen during the fight with the titular akuma laying behind Ladybug, flirting and insisting they are a couple, instead of helping her fight the battle.
• Small Steps Hero: Adrien is the type of person who tries to do immediate good without thinking of future consequences.
  • Choosing to help Master Fu in "Origins Part 1" nearly costs him his chance to go to school.
  • Many times Cat Noir chose protecting the civilians instead of fighting the akuma, which resulted in him losing his weapon or getting captured. However considering what would have happened if he hadn't, this is a good thing.
• Something Only They Would Say: Inverted. Adrien is such a Nice Guy that a practically infallible way of telling someone is impersonating him is if he says something downright mean or dismissive about somebody, even if it's true or well-deserved.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Cat Noir's weapon of choice is a retractable staff, so of course he does a lot of spinning with it to deflect attacks coming from the Villain of the Week.
• Stating the Simple Solution: In contrast to Marinette's Complexity Addiction, Adrien will generally take simpler approaches, as himself or as Cat Noir. He's generally more thoughtful as himself, though. By simple logic, he's correctly deduced Marinette is Ladybug at least twice, before she came up with some zany scheme to mislead him.
• Stepford Smiler: Adrien is affable on the surface, but feels very restricted in his everyday life. Therefore when he's Cat Noir, he can freely do and say what he wants since his Dad can't hassle him.
• Strong Family Resemblance: According to pictures shown in "Simon Says," Adrien is the spitting image of his mother, which is proven when a picture of the two together is seen. The less noticeable traits he inherited from his father are skin complexion and eye shape. "Representation" revealing the reason for the resemblance.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Due to his strict upbringing, Adrien is obedient, serious, and slightly reserved. He's still a sweet person and shows a more relaxed side to those he's close to. His "sugar" side becomes more apparent as Cat Noir — becoming an energetic, cocky Casanova Wannabe with a habit of making terrible puns.
• Super-Senses: His cat ears enhance his hearing, enabling him to detect enemies from afar.
• Taking the Bullet: Has taken five Akuma curses meant for Ladybug: from Timebreaker, Dark Cupid, Reflekta (after he had already been hit), Zombizou, and Chameleon.
• Tareme Eyes: Much like Marinette, they represent his innocent and Nice Guy personality.
• Teen Idol: He's a popular model.
• Telescoping Staff: His primary weapon is a staff which can extend to seemingly any length.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: As Adrien, he has a less than warm domestic life, and as Cat Noir, he fails to woo the girl of his dreams AND he's a notorious butt-monkey. But some episodes give him a break, like having bonding time with his father and friends or managing to kiss Ladybug (even if he doesn't remember both times that happened). Add to that the fact he has at least two episodes per season that give more focus to him than to the title heroine.
• Time Loop Fatigue: He finds himself Save Scumming as Aspik constantly due to Ladybug repeatedly getting defeated by Desperada, forcing him to reset the timeline. By the time his rewinds reach the five digits, he decides to give up and let Ladybug choose someone else to wield the Snake Miraculous.
• Time Rewind Mechanic: As Aspik, he had the ability "Second Chance", allowing him to rewind time by up to five minutes to the point where he invoked the power, and keep his memories in the process.
• Too Dumb to Live: In "Emotion", after witnessing his cousin Félix (who's been missing for weeks after trading all the Miraculous from the Miracle Box to Shadow Moth) being powered up by a Miraculous and surrounded by a suspicious red light, what does he do? Walks straight to Félix no questions asked. Unsurprisingly, this gets him temporarily snapped out of reality.
• Touch of Death: His Cataclysm power would be this if used against a living target. Fortunately for the show's rating, he doesn't use his power in that way, at least while in his right mind.
• Tranquil Fury: In "Ladybug", he calmly talks with Lila about her getting Marinette expelled from school and he gives an ultimatum: make up a new lie to get Marinette back in school, or he cuts her off for good. Even him calling her a "friend" sounds more as a threat!
• Transformation Trinket: Cat Noir's ring.
• Trophy Child: To his father as he expects his son to be perfect and under his control.
• Troubled, but Cute: Downplayed. While Adrien is a Pretty Boy Chick Magnet with a genuine kind heart, he also a troubling relationship with his father, a Missing Mom (with the implication he was closer to her), self-esteem issues, and problems in regards to his relationship with Ladybug.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: He and his cousin Félix look almost exactly alike, aside from their hairstyles and outfits. Félix, simply by changing his clothes and hair, manages to look exactly like Adrien.
• Understanding Boyfriend: He doesn't blame Marinette for going nonverbal and even devises a system by which they can communicate when she does so.
• Undying Loyalty: He's sacrificed himself for Ladybug several times so she wouldn't get hit.
• Unintended Kinslayer: In "Destruction", he accidentally uses Cataclysm on Monarch, giving him a fatal wound that causes the latter's body to slowly disintegrate over the rest of the season. In the season finale, as Gabriel Agreste succumbs to his wound, he extracts a promise from Marinette Dupain-Cheng that she will never tell his son that he was Monarch, neither realizing the truth would hurt even more for Adrien because he would then know he was responsible for his father's death.
• Unreliable Narrator: Adrien explained in his personal webisode that he only modeled for his father to make him happy because he was a "changed man" since his mother's disappearance, implying their relationship wasn't always so cold and distant. However, in Season 6's "Werepapas", it's shown in flashbacks that their relationship was still emotionally distant even before her disappearance. It's possible, however, that Adrien was simply projecting a brief period of happiness over the whole of that time, and Gabriel's distance simply got worse after his mother's disappearance, paving way to the idea that Adrien became a model for his brand to get his father's attention.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • His decision to run away from home is the indirect cause of Santa Claus being akumatized during the Christmas Episode, as it leads Ladybug to assume the helpful Santa has kidnapped him.
  • In "Timetagger", a villain named "Monsieur Rat" is named as a member of Ladybug and Cat Noir's future Rogues Gallery. At the end of the episode, after defeating Mr. Pigeon for the umpteenth time, Cat suggests that Mr. Ramier find a different animal to obsess over so that he doesn't get akumatized so often. After he leaves, Ramier spots a rat and immediately grows attached to it. For added irony, Cat thinks that "Monsieur Rat" is an Atrocious Alias and is furious that his future self has to fight someone with such a dumb name, yet he's the one responsible for it.
• Uptown Guy: Downplayed. While Adrien may have been born into a significantly wealthier family, Marinette isn't poor whatsoever, just from a middle-class family.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Gender inverted. In "Derision", he beats up Dark Humor and even attempts to use a Cataclysm on him before being stopped by Ladybug after he found out that his civilian self is responsible for Marinette's trauma.
• Weapon-Based Characterisation: His staff can not only extend, it can split in two, go to sword length, and all kinds of other tricks, reflecting how Cat Noir has a lot more depth and smarts than his Plucky Comic Relief demeanour would indicate.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: In one of his webisodes, Adrien admits that he doesn't particularly enjoy modelling, but does it because he wants to make his father happy. In "Wishmaker", he admits he doesn't actually know what his own desires are, or if he even has any to begin with. This eats at him to the point that he deliberately lets himself get hit by Wishmaker so he can find out. He just turns back into Adrien and declares that his greatest desire is to be whatever his parents want him to be.
• We Need a Distraction: Given the nature of their duo, Cat Noir is usually the one who provides diversion and/or keeps the villain busy while Ladybug devises how to use her Lucky Charm and sets in motion The Plan to defeat the baddy of the week. There are some exceptions though:
  • Whenever Cat Noir gets incapacitated in one way or another.
  • When Ladybug gets the same problem, which is much rarer. For e.g. in "Psycomedian", she is hit by the Akumatized villain's Emotion Control power. Once she gets her Lucky Charm, she destroys it in a fit of rage and Cat Noir has to make a mundane copy of it while Ladybug fights the villain with Unstoppable Rage-enhanced energy.
  • More than once, Marinette & Adrien swapped their Miraculouses, be it accidentally or to gain a tactical advantage by reversing their roles.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In "The Bubbler", he decides to wait on stopping the titular villain so he can finally have a birthday party with his friends. But after seeing the dejected looks on his friends' faces from being forced to have fun by the Bubbler and seeing Ladybug come to stop the said villain, Adrien admonishes himself for being so foolish before transforming as Cat Noir.
  • In "Copycat", Plagg calls out Adrien for his jealousy of Théo for liking Ladybug, which Adrien acknowledges (at least to himself).
• White Sheep: As of season three, every member of the Agreste family aside from Adrien and possibly his mother has been malicious - Gabriel is secretly Hawk Moth, and Amélie and Félix are both jerkasses and thieves.
• The Worf Effect: Tends to get flung around, subjected to Mind Control, or otherwise incapacitated a lot due to his tendency to jump into battle without having a plan first. As Adrien, he's constantly defeated by Kagami on fencing, despite their moderately similar abilities, when he's depressed or distracted.
• World-Healing Wave: In Season 6, he develops a companion power to Ladybug's "Miraculous Ladybug" power in the form of "Miraculous Cat Noir". Instead of repairing physical objects that are broken, it removes intangible things which shouldn't be. In its first use, he uses it to remove the memory of the secrets Revelator revealed using his power, which Ladybug's own power couldn't fix because those aren't tangible things.
• You Were Trying Too Hard: Ladybug does feel some attraction to Cat Noir, but his dramatic protestations of love intimidate her. She feels more comfortable with the gentle, domestic shows of affection given by his alter ego.