Charles Montgomery Plantagenet Schicklgruber Burns, also known as Monty Burns, Montgomery Burns, C.M. Burns and Mr. Burns, is the overall main antagonist of The Simpsons and a supporting antagonist in The Simpsons Movie.
Burn is known for being the owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Burns is Springfield's richest, oldest, and most powerful citizen. His net worth has been stated to be in the billions and in one instance was pegged at exactly one billion, eight hundred million, thirty-seven thousand and twenty-two bucks.
He had, on three occasions, lost his entire fortune, and at another time slipped to nine hundred and ninety-six million bucks, leading to his expulsion from Billionaire Camp. Burns is very elderly and physically frail but employs relentless and ruthless tactics to get whatever he wants.
The Burns family has deep roots in the United States. Where Burns was born is unspecified, although he has been said to have been born in Pangea. Burns' date of birth is arguable. He is believed to have been born on September 15, 1890, although he himself says he was born in 1881. As a child, Burns lived happily in a northern state with his natural parents, Clifford and Daphne Burns, as one of 11 children, one being the comedian George Burns, and his teddy bear, "Bobo". As a child, Burns was so cheery and amiable that his parents called him "Happy", despite one of his family names being "Schicklgruber". Burns used to have a penchant for reading comics as a child, but his father didn't like this. Clifford burned down the company that made the comics to teach his son a lesson. This may have been part of why Burns left so eagerly; to escape his father's cruelty.
At a young age he left his family to live with a twisted and heartless billionaire, who owned an "atom mill" in Springfield, where laborers split atoms by hitting anvils with sledgehammers. Burns lived a life of privilege and would amuse himself by injuring hapless immigrant laborers; it appears that Wainwright was directly responsible for turning Charles Montgomery from a pleasant child into a cold-hearted man, much like himself. He later attended Yale University.
For a time Burns lived in Paris, where he met and fell in love with his cousin Lyla. At one point, he proposed, but she rejected him because of his evil ways, and they didn't speak for decades.
In 1939, at Burns' 25-year college reunion, he became romantically involved with the daughter of an old flame. She would later bear his child, Larry Burns, who was given up for adoption and would later enter Mr. Burns' life briefly.
Burns served in the Flying Hellfish during World War II, holding the rank of private after being demoted for his involvement in a romantic scandal and attempting to block a probe from J. Edgar. Burns is proud of the fact that he manufactured shells for the Nazis, seeing himself as being superior to Oskar Schindler because "my shells worked, dammit!"
A member of Springfield's Flying Hellfish battalion, he saw action in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, serving under Sergeant Abraham Simpson. He was later transferred to the South Pacific with part of his squad. During the closing years of the war, when his platoon was clearing out a German-occupied castle, Mr. Burns came across several valuable portraits. Since they couldn't decide on who they should go to, they decided to enter into a tontine, which Mr. Burns was removed from decades after the war, after being dishonorably discharged when he tried to kill Abe. The paintings were later handed back to a German whose relatives owned them.
At the end of World War II he was personally hired by President Harry S. Truman to transport a specially-printed trillion-dollar bill to Europe as the United States' contribution to the reconstruction of the continent. As the United States' richest citizen, Burns was thought to be also the most trustworthy. Burns absconded with the bill and kept it in his possession for many years until it was lost to Fidel Castro.
Burns spent time as a biochemist and bio-terrorist before purchasing the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. During the 1960s, Burns operated a biological weapons laboratory until it was destroyed by peace activists - including Homer's mother, Mona Simpson.
In the 1970s, Burns bought the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. When he arrived in Springfield this time, he seemed to have changed and promised cheap electricity for all. He came into town riding an elephant and a young Moe Szyslak asked to touch the elephant, which Mr. Burns allowed him to do. Burns currently owns the plant, although he has parted with it several times, including when he sold it to German investors, when the bank foreclosed on it and put Lenny in charge, when he lost all of his money in a bet with Colonel O'Hara, and when Homer and Bart staged a hostile takeover of it. In each of these instances, Burns regained ownership of the nuclear plant.
After allowing his assistant to sacrifice himself to stop a potential nuclear meltdown, he secretly raised his son Waylon Smithers, Jr. as his own. He is unaware that Smithers is gay and has had a crush on him for years. Their relationship has had its rough spots, as Smithers was one of the prime suspects in the shooting of Mr. Burns in 1995. Mr. Burns has grown to be the oldest man in Springfield.
in the Legacy of Chris Thorndyke, he is considered the overarching antagonist of The Simpsons and they didn't even know it, usually making deals with the more shady underworld and usually if someone didn't keep their end of the bargan, well, you know what happens, he will "release the hounds", which when the barking comes those unlucky would run away out the door to survive, and even uses the mechsuit from of all things from The Simpsons arcade game, for some reason.
And he is reprised by Harry Shearer in the English dub and Mitsuru Ogata in the Japanese dub.