Orochimaru personality type: INTJ

As a boy, Orochimaru found the shed skin of a white snake near his parents’ grave. Hiruzen Sarutobi, his teacher and the Third Hokage, told him white snakes are a sign of rebirth, and Orochimaru never stopped chasing that. Everything he does, from the experiments to the body swapping, is an attempt to cheat loss itself.

That is why I type him as an enneagram 5 with a 4 wing. Fives cope with a frightening world by gathering knowledge and guarding their resources, and Orochimaru wants to master every technique that exists. Since one lifetime is not long enough, he invents a way to move into a new body every few years. The 4 wing adds the creepy flair of a misunderstood artist of the forbidden.

In MBTI he is an INTJ. Introverted intuition gives him one long vision: immortality and complete knowledge. Extraverted thinking turns the vision into systems. He builds hidden labs, recruits followers like Kabuto, invents curse marks, and plans the invasion of the Leaf during the Chunin Exams, disguised as the Kazekage after killing the real one. It is horrifying, and it is very well organized.

Introverted feeling is mostly buried, but it shows in his private scale of values. He prizes talent above all and sorts people into interesting or boring, never good or bad. Extraverted sensing, his weakest function, explains how he treats his own body as disposable. The Third Hokage seals away his arms during the invasion, and instead of slowing down, he simply hunts for the next host.

Lots of fans type him as INTP, since he loves knowledge for its own sake and treats experiments like play. That case is strong. Still, Orochimaru does more than explore ideas. He runs long, multi-year plans that bend the world around one goal, from the curse mark on Sasuke to the Leaf invasion.

Surprisingly, he does change. After Itachi seals him away and Sasuke later brings him back, he decides he is curious to see what Sasuke will choose, and he summons the first four Hokage so Sasuke can ask his questions.

Orochimaru then turns up on the battlefield with Karin and Suigetsu to help put Tsunade back together, his old teammate, of all people. He is still Orochimaru, but he has found out that watching the future can be as interesting as controlling it.