A lot of people were probably scratching their head when they looked through the Character Battle V bracket for the first time and saw this lowly 8-seeder up against big bad Zelda, but upon closer examination of the contest's banner, their memories were sparked.

This is Carmen Sandiego! The person who sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina. She ransacked Pakistan and pick-pocketed Perth.

Anyone who was a child through the late 80's and early 90's and doesn't know who this double-dealing diva is should be ashamed of themselves.

She made her debut in the educational, geography based Apple II game "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" in 1985. Her main role was that of a particularly intelligent villain who stole precious artifacts and landmarks. The players had to track down Carmen and her band of hilarious criminals bearing punny names such as: Patty Larceny, Tip Dover, Hardley Worthit and Stu Pidname. The name of this organization is V.I.L.E which stands for The Villains International League of Evil. Their main goal is to cause enough ruckus to take attention away from Carmen and her thieving ways.

Accompanied by her super-intelligent cat Carmine, Carmen is constantly stealing valuable artifacts, and even some landmarks. As a child, she was orphaned, and brought in by the detective agency ACME due to her high level of intelligence. After awhile, she became bored of catching "unworthy" criminals, and decided to turn to crime herself.

She is a very honourable criminal though, never endangering innocent civilians, and often treats her criminal capers as some sort of game. She is probably best known for her red trench coat and fedora (her hat).

After the original "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" (which was critically acclaimed by parents and teachers for it's ability to make learning fun), several more PC titles followed including "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego", "Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego", the history based "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego" and "Where in America's Past is Carmen Sandiego", and the english/math/spelling based "Junior Detective" games. There is also a current gen (X-Box/PS2/GCN) game that was released on all 3 consoles based in the "Where in the World" universe called "Carmen Sandiego: The Secret of the Stolen Drums"

Aside from her 20-year video game career, she also had 3 fairly popular TV shows in the 1990s. The first was "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego", a kid's gameshow which tested geography skills and featured the popular theme song sung by the group "Rockapella". This show aired from 1991 to 1996. The second show was "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego", another kids game show that tested history and aired from 1996 to 1998. Finally, the cartoon series "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego" which followed a pair of teenage detectives Zack and Ivy in their efforts to apprehend the mischievous mistress.

She was first re-brought to the board's attention during the 2k5-2k6 offseason where ertyu drew several pictures of everyone's favourite fedora wearing female. Someone mentioned that it would be neat to get her into the next character battle (at the time it was believed that the spring 2006 contest would be a female bracket). After the Best.Series.Ever contest ended, and nominations went up for the fifth Character Battle, Carmen's oppurtunity came when it was announced that the bracket would be split between 32 male characters and 32 female characters. Black Turtle suddenly remembered the ertyu art and started a nomination drive for Carmen that had 65 (?) people sign.

The sky's the limit for Carmen in these battles. Given a good draw, she has the potential to do some damage. Unfortunately, her contest debut was as an 8-seed going up against Princess Zelda in the first round, but given enough nominations and a weak enough opponent, she could steal away many bracket points.

"A wise man once said: 'I am defeated and know it only when I meet a human being from whom I am unable to learn.... anything.'"-Carmen Sandiego