Orochimaru

The Sannin who chased immortality

Orochimaru is one of the Legendary Sannin, trained alongside Jiraiya and Tsunade under the Third Hokage. Brilliant beyond his peers and utterly without limits, he is consumed by a single obsession: to defeat death by mastering every jutsu in existence — a goal that requires a body that never wears out.

Betrayal of the Leaf

Orochimaru’s forbidden human experiments got him exiled from Konoha. He responds by pursuing immortality through a body-transfer technique that lets him hop into a new host every few years, and by coveting the Sharingan — which makes Sasuke Uchiha the vessel he wants above all others.

Sound and the cursed seal

He founds Otogakure, the Hidden Sound, and engineers the invasion that kills his old master the Third Hokage — who, dying, seals away Orochimaru’s arms with the Reaper Death Seal. It is Orochimaru who brands Sasuke with the cursed seal and lures him from the village, only to be turned on and seemingly destroyed by the very student he meant to possess.

The survivor

True to his nature, Orochimaru does not stay dead: fragments of him persist through his agent Kabuto and his own cellular tricks. He resurfaces during the Fourth Great Ninja War in an uneasy alliance, even reviving past Hokage, and survives into the next generation — his ambition mellowed but intact, now the parent of Mitsuki.