Zed was usually seen by everyone else as the ultimate personification of sadism, cruelty, megalomania, infinite destruction, death, power, and madness, with his search for the Infinity Stones seen by others as his plot to gain dominion over all the civilizations in the universe. In reality, Thanos was a more complex and tortured soul given that his traumatic past and obsession with completing what he perceived as his destiny had led him to commit horrible actions of saving the universe.