Cain (The Binding of Isaac)

• Cain
• Tainted Cain

“	Dear diary, today I died. I was killed by this thing in some basement. I leave all that I own to my cat Guppy. Goodbye cruel world.	„
	~ Cain's Last Will

Summary

Cain is a playable character in The Binding of Isaac, present since the original version of the game. He somewhat fits the "rogue" archetype, being relatively frail and unable to shoot at long range if fast and strong, but is able to gather consumables for himself easily with his Paper Clip trinket which lets him lockpick locked chests, and with his Lucky Foot item that increases his chances at winning luck-based machines, obtaining consumables and other positive effects.

Introduced in The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, the Tainted version of Cain is a much more extreme version of Cain's playstyle: Completely unable to collect items, he is forced to craft them out of consumables, which however also means he can customize his build much more than any other character in the game.

Powers and Stats

Tier: Varies from 9-A to at least 8-B | Varies from 9-A to at least 8-B

Key: Cain | Tainted Cain

Name: Cain

Origin: The Binding of Isaac

Gender: Male

Age: Likely 5

Classification: Human, child

Powers and Abilities:

• Base
• With Optional Equipment

• Cain
• Tainted Cain

Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Water Manipulation (Cain's primary method of fighting is shooting their tears. Even without any items to upgrade them, they can fire almost three per second with several meters of range), Weapon Mastery (Capable of using tears, swords, and knives efficiently), Non-Physical Interaction (Can attack and destroy Dark Balls, which appear to be made of smoke, as well as Portals), Immortality (Type 2; Is capable of surviving dozens of impalements and injuries from items without being affected, such as Continuum, which completely hollows out their head, and Akeldama, which makes their innards trail on the floor behind them), Supernatural Willpower (Can withstand the aforementioned injuries as well as many more and fight while bearing them with no issue), Explosion Manipulation (Has access to bombs), Damage Reduction Negation (Bombs ignore damage scaling), minor Fusionism (Can replace any body parts with alternatives they find, as seen with Lucky Foot or Guppy's Eye, Small Size (Type 0, roughly 90 cm tall), Damage Reduction and Immortality (Type 8) with Soul Hearts (Soul Hearts absorb damage for Cain, and are able to keep him alive even when he would otherwise be dead as seen with ???, as well as other undead characters, who are unable to hold any other kind of heart), Energy Projection (When a Black Heart is destroyed, an instantaneous AOE attack will hit every enemy in the room), Supernatural Luck and Probability Manipulation (Lucky Foot increases their odds at gambling and makes all the pills they consume beneficial), Resistance to Disease Manipulation and Fragrance Manipulation (Can expose himself to incredibly unsanitary and filthy conditions without any ill effect)

Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Water Manipulation, Weapon Mastery, Non-Physical Interaction, Immortality (Type 2), Supernatural Willpower, Explosion Manipulation, Damage Reduction Negation), minor Fusionism, Small Size (Type 0), Damage Reduction and Immortality (Type 8) with Soul Hearts, Transmutation (Any item Tainted Cain attempts to pick up will instead be converted into a bunch of consumables), Construction (Bag of Crafting allows Tainted Cain to craft items out of consumables he finds or creates), Resistance to Disease Manipulation and Fragrance Manipulation

Danmaku, Martial Arts (With Suplex!), Immortality (Varies among Type 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8. If Cain picks up Isaac's Heart, they will become invincible, but reliant on the heart's survival to live. Berserk! allows Cain to survive wounds that would normally be lethal, although they will die once the berserk effect runs out), Resurrection (Can come back from the dead with various items), Regeneration (Mid. Capable of regrowing or reattaching his head after it is destroyed or removed by items such as The Intruder or Decap Attack), Statistics Amplification (Many if not most of Cain's items permanently increase his statistics. Some items as well as many cards can also temporarily increase his stats, such as the XI - Strength card which increases his power and health for the room, or Red Stew, which gives him a huge but slowly fading attack boost), Statistics Reduction (Capable of reducing the speed of the opponent with various items as well as halve their defenses for one minute with XI - Strength?. Some items also reduce Cain's own statistics such as Soy Milk, which greatly lowers his damage in favor of more tears), Empowerment (Gets significantly stronger and faster when certain conditions are fullfilled and he holds items such as Crown of Light or Whore of Babilon), Berserk Mode (With items such as Bloody Lust, Blind Rage and Berserk), Reactive Power Level (With items such as Bloody Lust and Cancer, Cain can activate various effects upon being hurt), BFR (Can summon Mom's hands to drag enemies away with Emergency Contact), Animal Manipulation (Can control various critter familiar as well as friendly flies, locusts and spiders that attack the enemy), Summoning (Can summon various beings, such as flies, spiders, familiars with various items, Mom with things such as Emergency Contact or The High Priestess and Delirium with Delirious), Clairvoyance (Cain can obtain a map of the floor by seeing the future with Crystal Ball, as stated by its item description), Void Manipulation, Power Absorption and Absorption (Can absorb items into Void, allowing for the use of any active item's effects repeatedly while consuming passive items and turning them into stats), Supernatural Luck and Probability Manipulation (Lucky Foot increases their odds at gambling and makes all the pills they consume beneficial and various trinkets or items such as Glyph of Balance alter the room drops), possibly minor Fate Manipulation (Sacred Orb has similar effects, causing bad items to spawn less often, but its description, "destined to greatness", implies it to be a fate-manipulating ability), Duplication (Can duplicate his familiars with the Box of Friends, duplicate items with Diplopia or Crooked Penny and even duplicate enemies with Meat Cleaver, while making them smaller, weaker and slower), Creation (Can create coins with Wooden Nickel or items with Flip), Teleportation (Can teleport to other rooms with various items and cards, or teleport around mid-combat with Stitches), Forcefield Creation (Can create a temporary forcefield around himself with Book of Shadows or surround himself with a one-hit, regenerating holy shield with Holy Mantle), Blood Manipulation (Is capable of firing blood tears with various items, as well as leave a trail of harmful blood wherever he walks with items such as Anemic, fire a beam of blood with Brimstone or give life to a small army of Blood Clots with Sumptorium), Fragrance Manipulation (Bean items each have a unique fart effect), Energy Projection (Can fire energy beams with various items such as Shoop Da Whoop!), Acrobatics (Can perform quick sequences of horizontal jumps with How to Jump, and use them to avoid enemy attacks among other things), Flight (First four types. Can simulate flight with How to Jump, fly briefly with trinkets such as Azazel's Stump, hover naturally with items such as Spirit of the Night or Trascendence, as well as sprout wings with items such as Lord of the Pit), Healing (Can restore his health with items such as Yum Heart or Book of Revelations), Homing Attack (Cain's tears home into enemies with items such as Spoon Bender), Animal Manipulation (Has control over flies and spiders, even enemy ones with items such as Skatole and can make them even stronger with items such as Hive Mind), Holy Manipulation (Can wield holy powers with items such as Holy Water), Unholy Manipulation (Various Devil Room items are marked as "evil", which causes effects such as receiving a power-up from Black Feather or causing Alabaster Box to give lessened results, even completely changing them when used with Book of Belial), Vibration Manipulation (Can cause a huge shockwave with Mama Mega), Construction (Bag of Crafting allows Cain to craft items out of consumables he finds), likely minor Chaos Manipulation (Chaos! causes all items to be randomized and no longer follow the typical pools they should normally be assigned to), Gravity Manipulation (With Anti-Gravity), Reality Warping and Data Manipulation (Dataminer warps and distorts rooms around Cain. TMTRAINER completely warps Cain’s future equipment giving it randomized and glitched effects), Reality Warping (Can “reroll“ floors or entire runs with Forget Me Now or R Key while keeping his current state unchanged), Petrification (Can turn enemies into gold with his tears and touch and can petrify enemies with Mom's Contact), Status Effect Inducement (Using various items, he's capable of inflicting a variety of status effects onto the opponent), Time Manipulation (Can completely stop time with Pause, turn it back with Glowing Hour Glass and slow down time passively with Stop Watch or on use with The Hourglass), Intangible Attacks (His tears can phase through walls and obstacles with items such as Ouija Board), Disease Manipulation (Can poison enemies with The Common Cold and cause a contagious outbreak with Contagion), Invulnerability (Can become temporarily invincible with items such as Unicorn Stump), Ice Manipulation (Can freeze enemies with items such as Uranus), Darkness Manipulation (Can summon shadow entities with items such as My Shadow and attack with shadows with items such as Maw Of The Void), Pseudo-Black Hole Creation (Can create Black Holes), Size Manipulation (Can shrink his opponents with God's Flesh), Camouflage and limited Invisibility (Is capable of blending into the background making it so enemies can't detect him with Camo Undies), Transformation (Can transform into a variety of transformations via picking up different items or transform into a different character with Clicker), Soul Manipulation and Life Manipulation (Can turn red hearts into soul hearts and vice versa with Guppy’s Paw and the Converter), Poison Manipulation (Toxic Shock passively poisons every enemy in the room, and his tears and body receive similar propertiest with items like Scorpio or Serpent's Kiss. Can shoot instantly lethal injections such as Euthanasia), Enhanced Explosion Manipulation (Can fire bombs, missiles, and explosive tears with various items such as Mama Mega or Ipecac), Magnetism Manipulation (Passively attracts items towards him with Magneto and can drag things towards his tears with Strange Attractor or magnetize enemies with Lodestone), Sense Manipulation (Can blind enemies with Glaucoma), Extrasensory Perception and possibly minor Cosmic Awareness (With The Mind, which lets Cain know many kinds of information about the floor layout), Enhanced Senses (X-Ray Vision lets Cain see through walls and Spelunker Hat lets him know the contents of nearby rooms, while Guppy's Eye allows him to see the content of chests), Hair Manipulation (With Guppy's Hairball), Fire Manipulation (Can shoot flaming tears with Fire Mind as well as well as shoot flames with items such as Ghost Pepper), Death Manipulation (A Chaos Card will kill enemies no matter what, and can even kill normally invulnerable enemies. Plan C kills every enemy in the room, then Cain. It's even capable of killing enemies such as Delirium, who is immune to the Chaos Card), Electricity Manipulation (Capable of firing electric beams with items such as Technology and emit electricity with items such as Jacob's Ladder), Sound Manipulation (Can shot loudly enough to obliterate enemies with Larynx), Metal Manipulation and Paralysis Inducement (Can temporarily summon chains around the enemy with Anima Sola, which completely freezes them for a few seconds), Acid Manipulation (Can fire acidic tears capable of breaking down even solid rock with Sulfuric Acid), Empathic Manipulation (Can cause opponents to be charmed and friendly towards him with his tears through items such as Mom's Eyeshadow or passively with Venus, or permanently turn them into allies with Friendly Ball), Fear Manipulation (Can cause enemies to be scared and run away from him with his tears with items such as Dark Matter or passively with 2Spooky), Spatial Manipulation (Can warp his tears around the room he's in with Continuum or create new rooms in the walls of the dungeons with Red Key), Existence Erasure (Can erase any species of enemy from the run with Eraser), Life Manipulation (Can give birth to familiars with various items such as C-Section or Cambion Conception), Adhesive Manipulation (Items such as Explosivo cause tears to stick to the enemy), Earth Manipulation (Can creat rocky shockwaves with items such as Mega Bean or shoot rock tears with Terra), Telepathy (With Telepathy for Dummies), Intangibility, Invisibility, limited Paralysis Inducement, Non-Physical Interaction and Darkness Manipulation (Dark Arts allow Cain to briefly turn into a shadow and freeze the enemies he touches, for him to slash with ease. He can even hurt armored or intangible enemies with this item), Status Effect Inducement (Can cause enemies to become confused with items such as Iron Bar), Transmutation (Can "reroll" various things with various dice items, such as enemies with the D10 or items with the D6. Can turn enemies to gold with Midas' Touch or to poop with E. Coli), Telekinesis (Telekinesis allows Cain to stop enemy projectiles and send them back, and The Soul has a similar, weaker but passive effect. Can telekinetically control his tears with items such as the Ludovico Technique), Light Manipulation (Items such as Night Light and Censer emit a light aura that slows down enemies and enemy projectiles inside it. His tears are capable of summoning holy light and he can fire beams of it with Revelation), Power Mimicry (Famliar such as Succubus are capable of mimicking Cain's tears, can mimic the effects of consumables with items such as Placebo), Astral Projection (Astral Projection allows Cain to briefly enter such a state after being hit), Blessed (Eden's Blessing grants Cain a random item to use in a different run. Various Angel Room items are seemingly blessings from God, such as Celtic Cross, "Blessing of Protection"), Sealing (Can seal enemies in a Friendly Ball, and the souls of the enemies he kills are automatically sealed in the Urn of Souls), Portal Creation (Is capable of creating portals with items such as Ventricle Razor and Lil Portal), Limited Elasticity (Can cause enemies and attacks to bounce away with Belly Jelly), Attack Reflection (Can reflect and redirect attacks with items such as Divine Intervention or Circle of Protection. Psy Fly will automatically attack enemy shots and redirect them at the opponent), Information Analysis (Can analyze the opponent's health with Spider Mod), Aura (Various items emit auras that boost Cain's stats, such as Purity or Star of Betlehem), Bone Manipulation (Can fire bone tears with Compound Fracture or summon floating bones with items such as Book of the Dead), Damage Reduction (Can randomly block damage with items such as Belly Jelly, or half the damage attacks inflict with items such as The Wafer, though this doesn't work against weaker attacks), Necromancy (Can rise skeletons from the dead with Book of the Dead), Soul Manipulation (Can turn killed enemies in allied souls with items such as Hungry Soul, destroy those souls with Vade Retro or seal them within Urn of Souls and consume them for a flamethrower attack), Fungus Manipulation (Mucormycosis turns Cain's tears into spores that stick to enemies, poisoning them and multiplying), Size Manipulation and Small Size (At least Type 1, possibly smaller. Pluto makes Cain so small most shots fly over him, and he can potentially make himself much smaller with enough size down items or pills), Large Size (At least Type 0, possibly bigger. Mega Mush makes Cain grow to several meters of height, and he can potentially grow much bigger with enough size up items or pills), Organic Manipulation (With the many Poop-related items in the game, such as Montezuma's Revenge), Inorganic Physiology (Can become made of ice or stone with Uranus or Terra), Precognition and Dream Manipulation (Can see his future in his dreams with Dream Catcher), minor Instinctive Reaction (With Panic Button, Cain can activate his active item right as he's getting hit, which takes precedence over the hit itself), Resistance to Curse Manipulation, BFR, Perception Manipulation, Darkness Manipulation and Sense Manipulation (Black Candle cancels Cursed Eye's unwilling teleportation effect as well as floor curses, which include Curse of the Lost, which causes Cain to lose their way in the floor, Curse of the Maze which randomly teleports them around it, Curse of the Unknown which makes them unable to know how much health he has left, Curse of Darkness which covers the floor in darkness and Curse of the Blind which prevents them from recognizing items) and Explosion Manipulation (Items such as Host Hat prevent damage from explosions and Pyromaniac causes him to heal from them instead), Soul Manipulation and Life Manipulation (Soul of the Lost allows Cain to take Devil Room items for free while they would normally cost heart containers or soul hearts), Fear Manipulation, Poison Manipulation and possibly Fire Manipulation and Confusion Inducement (Evil Charm is meant to guard Cain against these ailments, although the latter two aren't actually present in the game), Enhanced Resistance to Disease Manipulation (Black Candle cancels the slight blindness effect of Glaucoma)

Attack Potency: Varies from Small Building level (Even without any items, Cain can reliably kill Chapter 1 bosses, who can survive explosive attacks. Inherently somewhat stronger than other characters) to at least City Block level (Can fight bosses capable of withstanding Mama Mega by the mid-game, and can become much, much stronger than that thanks to the sheer amount of items and synergies available in the game, to the point of stomping even end-game bosses such as Delirium) | Varies from Small Building level to at least City Block level (Slightly weaker than Cain but equal to other characters such as Isaac)

Speed: Subsonic, up to Subsonic+ with items (Comparable to their rocket bombs. Faster than most characters by default) | Subsonic, higher with items

Lifting Strength: Unknown, up to Class M with items (Can suplex large enemies such as Mom) | Unknown, up to Class M with items

Striking Strength: Varies from Small Building level to at least City Block level | Varies from Small Building level to at least City Block level

Durability: Varies from Small Building level to at least City Block level | Varies from Small Building level to at least City Block level

Stamina: Superhuman. Capable of withstanding horrible punishment by items such as Akeldama or The Intruder and keep fighting.

Range: Several Meters with tears, up to at least Tens of Meters with items and with Mama Mega (Note that normal Cain's starting range is however tied for lowest out of any character)

Standard Equipment: Luck Foot, Paper Clip, one key | Bag of Crafting, one key

• Optional Equipment: A variety of items, trinkets and consumables

Intelligence: Unknown

Weaknesses: Relatively low range | Cannot normally pick up items and must craft them instead.

Notable Matchups

Victories:

Losses:

Inconclusive:

Discussions

Discussion threads involving Cain (The Binding of Isaac)