Naruto was an anime series that created many beloved characters, but few are as fawned over as Sasuke Uchiha.
The young Uchiha is a powerful orphan who wants to take revenge on the one who slayed his family before his eyes. This plan motivates his every waking moment and drives Sasuke to become the complex and troubled man he is today.
Though Sasuke switched sides partway through the first Naruto series, fans continued to adore him and begged to learn more and more about his life.
After all, who doesn’t love a grieving child turned child soldier turned criminal leader turned good guy secret agent ninja? Oh, and of course, he manages to get married and have a kid too, so clearly, his life has had a lot of twists and turns along the way.
With such a long, rich amount of backstory behind him, fans are bound to simplify some things or have their own interpretations.
While fans are integral to the success of entertainment, sometimes they get things turned around. With 700 episodes of Naruto and 74 episodes of Boruto already, it’s a lot to keep track.
Sasuke’s life is complicated enough, we’re trying to get things as right as possible.
Here are the 20 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Sasuke.
20. Sasuke’s Terrible Actions Being Justified
Sasuke did a lot of terrible things once he left Konoha. He hurt people, ended lives, and organized attacks. The Uchiha heir even actively worked towards destroying his closest friends, Sakura and Naruto.
Fans often cite Orichimaru’s manipulation or Sasuke’s tragic past and pain for his actions. As a member of the cursed Uchiha clan, some acknowledge how terrible his actions were but justify them with his pain.
Though he was a truly tortured young man, however, no tragic backstory ever justifies the things that he did.
There’s a definitive point when a broken boy lashing out just turns into a villain.
Even worse, the show encourages this narrative with Naruto and others accepting Sasuke back into Konoha despite his unforgivable crimes.
Only the man himself seems to understand how unjustified and terrible he’d truly been.
19. His Capabilities As A Husband
For a long time, the doomed relationship between Sasuke and Sakura seemed just that: doomed. However, in an awkward twist, Sasuke expresses affection towards her before leaving Konoha to atone.
In between Naruto and its sequel show, Boruto, the pair got married and even had a daughter, Sarada.
Despite this development, Sasuke would hardly get a husband-of-the-year award. He continues to go on far away missions, protecting Konoha from the outskirts and desperately trying to compensate for all the horror he caused.
While a dedicated ninja, he barely spends any time with his wife and doesn’t send her letters while away.
Even when they are together, he delights and rebuffs her affections.
Argue his intentions all you want, he’s an objectively distant and inattentive husband.
18. His Mental Stability In Boruto
By Boruto, Sasuke is the ninja equivalent of a special agent, going around and taking missions outside of Konoha that protect the lands. Everyone just accepts him as this unemotional warrior for good.
However, Sasuke truly hasn’t worked through the mental breakage that pained him throughout his youth.
Other than weakly deciding not to decompose after fighting Naruto, Sasuke has just thrown all his turmoil into his redemption.
Meanwhile, his head is likely teeming with unresolved anguish for his clan, his brother, the fact he remains disfigured to ensure the world’s safety, fighting the darkness that lies in him.
The Uchiha heir is hardly okay - he just bottles these issues up and separates himself from society.
It’s fairly likely that Sasuke is not mentally stable at all, he’s just holding his mind together by strings.
17. His Fate As a Broken Man
The Uchiha clan was planning for war. Itachi, the eldest son of their leader, knew this action would destroy the Land of Fire and leave it immeasurably vulnerable. He slayed every Uchiha in the village, except for himself and his little brother, Sasuke.
Itachi let his brother see him so that he’d hate him and desperately want revenge, no matter the cost.
The massacre cursed the young Uchiha to a live of misery, but it didn’t have to be that way.
Itachi could have easily said that he saved himself and Sasuke and started a new life elsewhere, determining to end the cycle of hatred with them.
Sasuke could have been happy with his brother, even though losing the clan would still be devastating.
Instead, Itachi did what he did and it made Sasuke into a vengeful monster.
16. The Logistics of His Chosen Gear
Once Sasuke leaves Konoha and starts dressing himself, his wardrobe is hardly boring. However, between the v-necks, giant ropes, ponchos, and capes, his gear is not the most functional.
His v-necks are a bit dangerous, though, as they leave the human heart a little exposed to errant knife wounds. Though powerful, he’s not immune to being stabbed through the chest.
Conversely, the Orochimaru giant rope belt is huge and a more problematic, terrible holster for the sword he carries.
When older, Sasuke doesn’t leave himself more exposed, as he has too much extra fabric.
Like Sakura’s long hair became a hindrance in battle, his capes or ponchos can be pulled, thrown, used as a visual block to be in his way during battle.
Though Naruto nearly always looks absurd in his orange jumpsuits, at least they never get in his way.
15. His Role in Itachi’s Passing
Many fans simplify the Itachi arc when mentioning it. Sasuke ended his brother’s life after chasing him for years. However, the situation is more nuanced than that.
Though he was chasing him, Itachi was losing his life to an incurable illness. He would have fallen without Sasuke’s assistance.
Even further, he held onto his life only long enough for his younger brother to take it, quenching his vengeance. That’s not quite how neatly it worked, though, and Sasuke was even more messed up than before.
Things get even more complicated, though, when considering Itachi always planned for Sasuke to end him.
In theory, then, by leaving his little brother alive, Itachi was his technically the executor of own undoing.
14. His Relationship With Orochimaru
From the beginning, Orochimaru very deliberately was using Sasuke for power. He wanted a new, strong body to grow into, and an Uchiha orphan with angst issues was a perfect target.
Their relationship is easily defined by its manipulation and power struggle, on both ends.
However, an aspect that most people ignore is the fact it never would have taken much effort to corrupt Sasuke.
Unfortunately, he was a young man with only one drive: to end the life of his older brother. Anyone promising impressive power could have likely swayed him.
Though eventually they combated for control, Sasuke always was vulnerable to corruption as a genin.
Orochimaru, while cunning, didn’t have to work very hard to convince Sasuke. The manipulation only got very insidious once the young Uchiha had already joined him.
13. Love Letting Him Survive The Uchiha Massacre
Itachi spared Sasuke’s life because he was his brother and he loved him. Also, he wanted him to be able to get revenge on the person who took his clan from him. '
His love was what saved the little Uchiha… or did it?
While Itachi did love Sasuke dearly, his decision to spare him tainted the rest of his life with extra layers of anger and darkness. Selfishly, the older brother also just wanted his little brother to live.
However noble, it led the Uchiha heir to cause much more pain than if he had passed on with the rest of their family.
Love didn’t save Sasuke from the massacre. It was a heartbreaking cocktail of selfishness and hope.
After all, Itachi only hoped Sasuke could grow stronger than all of them and move beyond the Uchiha clan’s flaws.
12. His Emotional Capabilities
A lot of fans talk about Sasuke’s stunted emotions and cite them as reasons why he avoids Konoha, avoids his marriage, avoids his daughter, etc. Understandably, he’s fairly emotionally broken after all of the terrible things that have happened to him.
However, fans miss the mark when describing him like this. Sasuke isn’t emotionally stunted. He’s adept in hatred, anger, and vengeance.
The issue is that he’s clueless when it comes to positive emotions like love, affection, happiness, etc.
Though he’s a more balanced person now, he still struggles with these innately human emotions. Losing all you ever loved can do that to a person, and so can the influence of a mad scientist or the Curse of Hatred.
Unfortunately, Sasuke understands emotions very well. He just knows that he’d never fit in with most people.
11. His Shortcomings As A Father
Sarada nearly had an identity crisis because of her father’s incessant absence.
Eventually, with some help from both her parents, she comes to terms with who she is. Sasuke does his best to show his care for her, but it doesn’t make up for the years of neglect.
After all, she hadn’t seen him in eleven years and she was only eleven at the time.
Love doesn’t make up for years of distance, non-exist letters, training a different kid, and making his daughter feel lost.
Though his emotional and mental damage encourages him to stay far away from Konoha, Sasuke could try a little harder to stop by and see Sarada often. It’s the least he could do in efforts to be a loving father, but he doesn’t.
10. His Heroism
At the end of the Naruto series, Sasuke joined forces with his old Team 7 friends to help stop the end of the world. For his actions, Naruto worked to expunge his record, turning him from one of the most wanted men on earth into a normal citizen.
However, this hardly made Sasuke a hero.
In the end, he still wanted to slay all the Kages once the threat was gone. Only his standstill with Naruto, losing his arm, and Naruto’s tiring persistence eventually stopped him.
Even in Boruto, the powerful Uchiha ninja does what he does not to save people, but to atone for his terrible sins.
Sasuke has never done anything with heroism as his only motivation. Though he has done and conitnues to do good things, he’s no hero.
9. The Rationale Behind His Decisions
Masashi Kishimoto, creator of Naruto, uses Sasuke’s tragic backstory to rationalize his behaviors. Because of this, so does Sasuke himself and many of his fans.
However, once a certain point was reached, the Uchiha heir stopped making any sense at all.
A quest for power to destroy his brother, Itachi, was relatively understandable. It’s what he based his entire life on.
It was after Itachi that things went really haywire. Without revenge, he didn’t know what else to live for.
In that time, he found something new to be vengeful about: Konoha’s treatment of Itachi.
Instead of focusing on Konoha alone, however, Sasuke goes on a rampage, trying to slay every land’s Kage. At that point, his rationale hardly makes sense.
Sure, he wanted to get back at the village that hurt Itachi, but not the rest of the world.
8. His Perceptive Intelligence
Throughout the series, Sasuke is described as a genius ninja, with tremendous innate power and fighting brilliance.
Despite this perception of his strength, when it comes to other humans, he’s hardly a genius.
He’s actually more of a gullible, overconfident, illogical man.
A big of example of this is the fact he was convinced to join Orochimaru. While revenge-driven, he knew Orochimaru would try to use him. Still, he went.
Similarly, he was easily goaded into vengefulness by his older brother, forcing him to see Itachi as the villain, when instead everything was warped and complex.
It’s far too easy to trick him into sticky situations or focused mindsets because of his emotional, bull-headed nature.
His overconfidence only expounds upon this stupidity by encouraging Sasuke to ignore his doubts. Sometimes he is apprehensive, but he assumes he can defeat anything and proceeds despite red flags.
7. His Reasonings For Staying in Konoha
After the Uchiha Massacre, Sasuke stays in Konoha despite the pain that it brings him.
The easy answer is that he was a young orphan with nowhere else to go. However, as the series later shows, once he was old enough to travel, he easily could have left Konoha and trained elsewhere.
After all, other cities also have ninja schools and with all Uchiha money falling to him, he could have easily paid for a one-way escort somewhere else.
It’s likely that Sasuke’s intentions in Konoha were a bit more complex. Staying in Konoha reminded him every day of his goal to defeat Itachi.
Also, there was likely something very satisfying for him to defeat Itachi learning from the same people he did instead of learning new techniques elsewhere.
Sasuke didn’t just want to beat Itachi; he wanted to dominate him.
6. His State As the Final Uchiha
Until his daughter Sarada is born, Sasuke is the final Uchiha heir. He wears this burden solemnly, knowing he wants his clan to thrive despite their shortcomings. He knows that he must pass on the genes to another generation to keep their talents alive.
However important it was to have Sarada, it’s fair to assume that he might not be the only Uchiha, though.
Various Uchiha clan-members have appeared out of the woodwork throughout the years. Granted, most have been resurrected, but the point stands.
There are others clans that have been scattered, whittled out, or dismembered, but have members who can be found around the land.
For example, the Uzumaki clan is dismembered, but Naruto remains. Also, though he was thought to be one of the last, Karin and Nagato existed outside of Konoha.
Some sparse Uchiha members might also be scattered around.
5. Conquering the Curse of Hatred
The end of Naruto implies that Sasuke, unlike other Uchiha ninjas, conquered the Curse of Hatred. Instead of habitually lashing out, mistrusting others, and remaining emotionally adrift, he chose his friends.
However, the truth is that Sasuke will never conquer it. The Curse of Hatred is integral to the Uchiha legacy. He was willing to bleed out in a battle zone to let the curse end, after all. It must be tremendously terrible and an awful burden.
It’s far more likely that Sasuke will always feel that terrible, burning hatred within him.
All he can do about it is fight the urges to do vengeful things and do his best to protect the Konoha people he failed.
Though Sasuke is better off by Boruto, the Curse of Hatred never leaves him and likely never will.
4. His Current Capacity for Evil
By Boruto, Sasuke has worked very hard to move on from the man he once was. He habitually does long-term, in-depth missions to protect Konoha and assist Naruto. He works to protect instead of hurt.
Though he was once a demon, now the people see him as a hero.
This doesn’t mean he’s perfect, though. Fans sing Sasuke’s praises, but he will always have evil capabilities.
Now, he has a family and his friends guiding him. If Konoha was to fall, though, it’s likely Sasuke would fall down the same paths and become an unstoppable villain all over again.
Nowadays, he does have a capacity for good that he never showed before. That doesn’t take away his capacity for great evil, though.
3. His Strength As a Ninja
Undoubtedly, Sasuke’s powers as a ninja are nearly unmatched, with few opponents ever challenging him. Only Naruto manages to stop him in a bloody standstill, and even then, both shinobi lost an arm.
Fans debate who is stronger, and it goes back and forth endlessly. However, even before Naruto ended, there was a scary and clear answer: Sasuke was always stronger.
This is clear because despite his mental trauma, his violent obsession with vengeance, and his emotions swaying him, Sasuke still could go toe to toe with a fantastic ninja.
Refusing a prosthetic arm might have seemed excessive, but Sasuke still is insanely strong without it. Though helpful now, he’s a powerful weapon that could endanger everyone around him.
The Uchiha heir could end the world, but luckily he’d like to avoid that.
2. His Redeemability
Ever since Naruto ended, Sasuke has spent years trying to make up for the chaos, destruction, and pain that he caused.
While his intentions are noble, and his friends are gracious to forgive him so readily, both fans and the people of Konoha are a little too quick to redeem the Uchiha leader.
Moreover, Sasuke himself seems to know that and it only deepens his guilt.
During his time as a world-wide criminal, he was a criminal and assassin. He ruined more lives than he could ever fix.
However, because of his fan-favoritism, writers swept those terrible acts under the rug and gave him a redemption arc including Naruto turning him from the dark side.
Though he’s doing well now, it hardly redeems what Sasuke once did, and nothing ever really will. Hopeful fans or friends can’t change that.
1. His Friendship With Naruto
Many fans describe Naruto and Sasuke as best friends. Naruto certainly believes that, too, but for Sasuke it’s a little more complicated.
While Naruto is likely the person he’s closest to, it’s hard to discern if Sasuke is the best friend type.
The Uchiha heir is an inherently aloof, guarded, disconnected human. He’s likely never going to have normal relationships. This is evident with his wife and daughter, too.
Naruto may be the closest thing Sasuke has to a best friend, but because of his emotional trauma, he never will fit those traditional roles.
He’s still secretive and distant, which make it hard for him to be close to anyone.
Though they may not be best friends using each other as shoulders to cry on, Naruto helps Sasuke connect emotionally to a world he doesn’t fit in anymore.
Are there any other misconceptions about Sauske that every true Naruto fan should know? Let us know in the comments!
