Cyrille Le Paradox

"The deal?! The deal is you Coopers! You destroyed my father and you almost got me! But not quite. And when I rebuilt myself, I swore I would erase the Cooper name from history completely! And so today, my revenge will be complete!"

- Cyrille Le Paradox to a captured Sly Cooper and Carmelita Fox

Cyrille Le Paradox is a former collector of rare items who worked in the trafficking of priceless stolen treasures, while also owning a museum to cover up his crimes. He planned on creating a false royal ancestry by time traveling to the past in order to become of worth in the present. He also tried to ruin the Cooper Clan by stealing their canes, thus rewriting Cooper history, but ultimately failed.

He is the main antagonist of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time and is voiced by.

Background
Le Paradox came from a long line of master thieves, the Le Paradox clan, similar to Sly Cooper, though his family is nowhere near as infamous as Sly's. Years prior, Conner Cooper's theft of the world's biggest diamond had made him a legendary thief. It turned out that Le Paradox's father had planned to steal it first and frame Conner Cooper, but Conner was quick enough to get it first, and Le Paradox's father got himself caught instead and earned a life sentence behind bars.

Without a mentor in the family business, Le Paradox eventually got himself arrested after a string of failed jobs. Ironically, it was in prison that he got his criminal education. He got his fellow inmates to do his dirty work when he could never do, manipulating the ones he could convince and bribing the ones he couldn't. After his release, he used these new skills coupled with his prison contacts to form his own syndicate. After this, he started masterminding heists worldwide while maintaining the appearance of a law-biding citizen, becoming an art collector, while actually working in the illegal, black-market trafficking of priceless stolen treasures.

Once he rebuilt himself, Le Paradox swore that he would erase the Coopers from history all on account of his father's death-ending misfortune. He planned on doing this by stealing their canes, the signature weapon of the Cooper Clan. However, he actually hired several other criminals to steal the canes for him, rather than doing it himself. He provided his henchmen with modern-day security systems and other devices so they could effectively keep watch over the time period they were sent to.

Hiring Penelope
Along with four others, Le Paradox also recruited Penelope in his plan to destroy the Cooper line. Like Le Paradox, Penelope had a dislike for Sly which sprouted from her believing that Bentley's full potential was being blocked by Sly's morals. After she willingly joined, Le Paradox had her create a time machine based on the plans of the one that she had built with Bentley; however, Le Paradox's had one major difference: an item from the time that the user wished to travel to was not needed and the year could just be inputted in. He sent her to Medieval England and entrusted her with watching over that time period as well as stealing Sir Galleth Cooper's cane for him.

Cover blown
One night, Le Paradox met with two of his henchmen, Toothpick and Miss Decibel, and ordered both of them to keep the canes of "Tennessee Kid" Cooper and Salim al-Kupar (respectively) safe once they had stolen them. After he took them to their respective time periods, Le Paradox returned to his museum to unload some stolen treasures to display in his museum. While he was doing so, Inspector Carmelita Fox appeared. Le Paradox had his rat troopers restrain Carmelita and he sent her to Toothpick's time period, Cotton Mouth Bluff in the year 1884 AD. With Carmelita taken care of, Le Paradox had seemingly maintained his cover.

Stealing the canes
Le Paradox's first stop was to a village in Feudal Japan, the era of Rioichi Cooper. It was unknown who exactly framed Rioichi by poisoning the local Shogun's sushi, though both Le Paradox and El Jefe, a dictator who specialized in "collecting" countries, were involved. However, Rioichi's cane was hidden under a rug in his Sushi Shop, leaving Le Paradox without his prize. With this, he stayed in Feudal Japan, giving El Jefe technological devices to find it and allowing him to attempt a take over of Japan. He docked his zeppelin in the local palace, which also acted as El Jefe's base. Later, when Rioichi was freed by Sly and his gang, Le Paradox's rat troopers stole Rioichi's cane after Sly defeated El Jefe in a duel. With his prize in hand and realizing he was being tailed by the other set of time travelers, he set out for his next target.

In Cotton Mouth Bluff, Toothpick was successful in stealing "Tennessee" Kid Cooper's cane, but before Le Paradox could come pick it up, Tennessee had retrieved it. Rather than go to the time period himself, Le Paradox sent several of his rat troopers instead. While Tennessee raided Toothpick's train, the troopers were able to snatch the cane and take it to Le Paradox.

Le Paradox's next cane to pick up was that of Bob Cooper. This time around, there was no interference by the owner of the cane and Le Paradox was quickly able to get it from Grizz. When Grizz was running out of paint for his artwork, which was obtained by the pterodactyl eggs he had been stealing, he requested that Le Paradox supply him with some as a return favor for him getting the cane. Le Paradox refused to help his henchman in his personal problems, and continued on with his own plans.

Penelope was able to give Sir Galleth Cooper's cane to Le Paradox before her defeat by the Cooper Gang. He now had but one cane to collect: Salim al-Kupar's. Picking up the cane was not the only business he had in Arabia, however.

Changing the present
Upon hiring Miss Decibel, Le Paradox had also assigned her with kidnapping the remaining members of the Forty Thieves and using her hypnotic powers to force them to make forged documents. These papers would proclaim that he came from a royal bloodline, and once he brought them back to the present day, he would be untouchable. In Arabia, he met with Decibel to discuss what supplies were needed to keep the thieves at work. Due to Ms. Decibel's low supply of food for the thieves, Le Paradox agreed to give her some more, but warned that she had better get the documents to him quickly. Le Paradox stayed in the time period, docking his blimp in the city's lamp shop.

After the Cooper Gang freed the thieves and infiltrated the lamp shop, Le Paradox finally revealed himself with Carmelita as his hostage. He sent his rat troopers to drop down and steal Salim's cane, the final one that he needed. He made various snide remarks during the fight between Sly and Ms. Decibel. After the fight ended, Decibel frighteningly requested that Le Paradox let her in the blimp. He mockingly rejected her and explained that he did not share the same romantic feelings that Decibel had for him, saying that he was "not into big noses and that her music [stunk] even worse than [he did]". With the forged documents, the Coopers' canes and Carmelita in hand, Le Paradox took his blimp into the sky and time traveled back to present-day Paris.

Beaten by a Cooper
Back in the present-day, Le Paradox used the documents to proclaim his supposed royal bloodline, and came into control of Paris, going so far as to have a sculpture of his head mounted on the top of the Eiffel Tower. He stashed the Cooper canes in various rooms of his blimp. Anticipating that Sly would come to rescue Carmelita, Le Paradox placed her near the loading dock as a trap. Sure enough, Sly infiltrated the blimp and while he was trying to free Carmelita, Le Paradox trapped both of them within a glass container.

Bentley and Murray recruited the other ancestors so that they could reclaim their canes. After that was done, Le Paradox explained his motives to Sly and Carmelita and also showed them the "time tunnel", which he planned to throw them into. Before he could, Tennessee shot the container and set Sly and Carmelita free. Le Paradox was enraged at Tennessee, and accidentally caused the time tunnel to malfunction and tear a hole in space-time.

Sly then engaged Le Paradox in a duel on the deteriorating blimp. During the fight, Le Paradox declared his intent was to triumph over the Coopers as the best thief in the world, believing he proved himself superior to the Cooper Clan by robbing them of their canes. Sly called him an idiot for thinking this and informed him that his egotistic actions had actually cost him everything, that by traveling back in time to rob the Cooper Clan, he also blew his own cover as an art dealer and exposed his black market operation to INTERPOL. Moreover, that Le Paradox couldn't truly take credit for the thefts because he never actually stole any of the canes himself, he just paid other people to do the jobs for him. Le Paradox pondered on Sly's words and realized he was right before continuing the fight. Soon, after losing, Le Paradox slipped and begged Sly to help him up from falling off. After Sly helped him, he tricked the Cooper and grabbed his backpack. Le Paradox then made his escape using Sly's paraglider. Just as he was gliding down, he was hit by the wing of a passing airplane. Without the paraglider, Le Paradox fell down into the waters surrounding Paris. He survived the fall and kept himself from drowning by floating on a piece of his wrecked airship. He was later brought to land, arrested by authorities. Le Paradox had all of his assets seized, including his art collection and everything was donated to the city of Paris. According to Bentley, Le Paradox was placed in a special cell in solitary confinement. His cell was later modified to be completely odor-proof, with the guards wearing anti-odor suits and gas masks. He received a life sentence for his crimes.

Physical appearance
Le Paradox had a large head. His nose and mouth stuck out from his face on a muzzle, plus his legs were relatively short, with his torso being relatively long. In his youth, his hair and mustache were black, with his hair having one white streak in it, but in his current day and age, his hair and mustache were full-on white. He also had a tiny goatee on his muzzle, and had small ears, which were somewhat obscured by his hair. Finally, as a skunk, he had a large tail, pointed on the end, with a white, split-in-two stripe running down the length of it.

Personality
On the outside and to the world, Le Paradox was a gentleman and upstanding figure to his peers. However, behind closed doors and underneath it all, he was a master manipulator who could talk and/or bribe many other criminals and mercenaries into doing the jobs he could never do, only to betray them when things went bad or when they simply wore out their usefulness to him. He was also known to outright disrespect his henchmen, shown when he called Ms. Decibel the "fat lady that sings."

Le Paradox also falsely accused the Cooper Clan for his family's constant failures (completely ignoring the fact that, since the Le Paradoxes were all skunks, they could be smelled before they were seen) and sought to eliminate them from history after his father's life sentence.

Despite all his advantages, Le Paradox had developed a terrible overconfidence and overweening narcissism. Before his defeat, Sly reminded him that he never really stole a single Cane from the ancestors and that with a time machine, he could have gone legit in the present time and secretly stole everything from the past. This way, no one would know what he was doing and he would have been the greatest thief in history, but by attacking the Cooper Clan, he blew his cover which eventually led to his downfall. Le Paradox appeared to consider those words and was seemingly angry that he didn't think it through.

His overall traits point Le Paradox to being a narcissistic sociopath as he refuses to recognize his own faults or mistakes, instead shifting the blame onto others, showing a complete lack of loyalty or gratitude, and his massive ego driving him to throw away everything he's worked for, for the sake of revenge. Ultimately, his vanity and arrogance led to his humiliating downfall.

Abilities
Le Paradox has been shown to be an adept manipulator, having been able to persuade El Jefe, Toothpick, Grizz, Penelope, and Ms. Decibel to join him, only to betray them all in the end. He has also been shown to be at least proficiently agile, being able to leap from the mechanical arms of his zeppelin's mobile control station with ease, and being able to perform a rail-slide similar to Sly. Additionally, he appeared to be a swordsman, although his skill level was quite low, not even being able to come close to beating Sly.

As a skunk, he secreted a natural odor from his tail. The smell was so bad that all his henchmen wore gas-masks to protect themselves from his stench. Also, the odor gave away his position at all times as the green gas not only littered his museum, but the Cooper Gang could smell him from outside his blimp.

Trivia

 * Cyrille's organization, unlike the Fiendish Five and the Klaww Gang, does not have a name.
 * Le Paradox is the only main antagonist in the entire series to not die at the end, as Clockwerk was killed by Sly, Clock-La was killed by Carmelita, and Dr. M died by refusing to leave the Cooper Vault when it collapsed.
 * And like them (sans Clock-La, who instead shared a passionate hatred for the Cooper Gang), Cyrille shared a passionate hatred for the Cooper Clan.
 * Le Paradox is the only villain whose guards are present in every episode in the game. However, they never appear in the hub worlds with the exception of the secret area in 40 Thieves.
 * Le Paradox is one of five villains in the series to own at least one blimp, the others being Raleigh, Arpeggio, The Contessa, and Penelope.
 * Le Paradox is named for the term "paradox," which are statements that are self-contradictory and often cited as the reason for the impossibility of time travel.
 * Le Paradox's odor is so strong that even his own lieutenants, such as Grizz, couldn't stand it. Penelope suggested she should really invent "super deodorant" for him.
 * Cyrille himself even compared his stench to Miss Decibel's music practice, stating that it "stinks worse" than him.
 * In cutscenes, Le Paradox's hair is mostly black with a white strand of hair in the middle (with the exception of the final cutscene), while in-game, his hair is completely white.
 * Le Paradox was loosely based on Pepe Le Pew of the Looney Tunes franchise.
 * Le Paradox is one of three villains that received known sentences in prison, the others being Octavio and Mz. Ruby.
 * Le Paradox is one of two known villains that received life sentences in prison, the other being Mz. Ruby.
 * Given his accent and how he styles his mustache, it can be inferred that Le Paradox is mostly of French descent.
 * This can also be determined because his full name is Cyrille Le Paradox, and le is a French article.
 * Having a time machine, he could of gone back to the past and prevent his father's imprisonment.
 * He is the most hated antagonist in the series, due to the fact that he didn't have much of a reason to hate Sly to the point of taking over the world.

Appearances

 * Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
 * P. "Prologue"
 * 1. "Turning Japanese"
 * 2. "Go West Young Raccoon" (cutscene)
 * 3. "Clan of the Cave Raccoon" (cutscene)
 * 4. "Of Mice and Mechs" (mentioned)
 * 5. "40 Thieves"
 * E. "Epilogue"