JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is a franchise that wears its influences on its sleeve.
Most know JoJo for its homages to a wide amount of music artists and designers, but what’s
not normally taken notice of is the enormous horror influence that the series has.
I thought that since the franchise has so many things it pulls from, I might as well
dedicate a video to all those franchises.
It’s Halloween time, and this will probably give you a lot to look up after.
Kicking it off with Phantom Blood.
The first monster we encounter was one of the most terrifying monsters we have in the
normal world, a man with a beard.
I’m just kidding, it’s a bad father.
I’m double kidding…
Not really.
Vampires.
Vampirism has an enormous influence over JoJo to the point of where you should actually
consider reading Bram Stroker’s Dracula to see the subtle connections between the
two.
Then after that you play Castlevania to put the cherry on top.
I have a video that goes over Vampirism itself in JoJo and how deep it goes with a character
like Dio for those that want to look more into it, but basically the attributes to charisma,
mystery, and evil is deeply ingrained into specifically Dio.
Vampires are essentially the main monster of JoJo until Part 3 is over because while
we won’t have outright vampires as time goes on, we’ll have things with vampire
attributes or is a vampire in some way shape or form.
Stand users become the main enemy we see Post 3 and including 3.
Next are Zombies.
The thing about JoJo zombies is that they don’t really follow the same conventional
way they go about being created.
You’d expect some sort of Necronomicon Deadite, Simon Belmont on an unlucky night, lighting
bolt in a graveyard type of stuff.
All you really have to do is get your blood sucked out by a vampire and then boom, you’re
a zombie.
Or, there’s an alternate case where you’re resurrected by someone of a certain power,
and those types of zombies are a lot more human than zombie because they’re aware
and able to understand everything that’s going on.
Those zombies are ones like Tarkus and Bruford.
Next are Chimeras, specifically Chimera zombies because Dio’s forte isn’t in alive things.
Dio experimented with fusing a bunch of things together, creating these extremely odd chimeras.
I know that there’s actual human and dog fusions in folktales and most likely in franchises
before JoJo, but dog and human and it was made in the 80’s?
Take that Shou Tucker, you’re on the wrong side of history, for more reasons than one.
Now, we’re in Battle Tendency with the introduction to a new type of beings called Pillar Men.
Which when trying to make connections, they’re not really just one type of thing.
They eat people like vampires, but at the same time not like vampires because they can
absorb people into their body at a cellular level, and that’s how they can eat.
They can manipulate their bodies to the point where they can do things like fit into an
extremely small air vent in comparison to their body, plus their bodies are unreasonably
durable.
And they also have their own little battle modes, at least when we’re talking about
our main 3 Pillar Men.
Questionably 4, because the thing they had going was like an Earth, Wind, Fire type of
deal with Kars being the extra and him being Light.
Onto to Stardust Crusaders!
Here we have Stands.
A visual manifestation of fighting spirit, life juice, a person’s psyche, you get the
point.
The thing is… there’s a lot of horror references with them, at least in Stardust
Crusaders.
So, will be going over each one with a reference that Araki calls out himself.
It’s stated that the inspiration for Strength came from the tale of Mary Celeste, since
it is a ghost ship.
The tale of the Mary Celeste goes down to be this mysterious story of a ghost ship found
with none of the members of the ship on it with the last log being 10 days before it
was found.
It actually has a fairly interesting story that I suggest people look into if interested.
I think my favorite part of the history of it is that it’s named was actually changed
to Mary Celeste, when it was originally called Amazon, but the name was changed because of
all the problems that had happened before with things like sudden illnesses of the members
and the original captain dying.
Forever, the orangutan stand user of Strength has it’s influence from the movie Link;
where a chimpanzee goes against its owners when they try to euthanize him.
And you might be thinking, “Wait, but you just said Forever was an orangutan”.
Well, he is, and so is the chimpanzee in Link.
They had an orangutan, playing a chimpanzee.
I love the 80’s!
Next is Ebony Devil.
The idea of the stand is most likely from a collective of movies, but primarily Child’s
Play.
I can definitely see the influence of Child’s Play.
With an ability like hatred amplification I’d say it makes sense.
If you’ve seen the lengths Chucky goes in the franchise, it’s just sheer motivation
of hatred.
On Yellow Temperance.
As
simple as it is, the stand is supposed to be a slime.
I had the idea that The Blob was a possible direct influence since The Blob is number
12 on his top 20.
The Blob being the film where an alien blob crashes onto earth and goes around eating
people and grows after doing so.
So, in that merit, I don’t think it would be that far off.
Next is Hanged Man.
As to what it is, it’s a mummy.
A mummy in the reflection world.
Mummy in the mirror.
Not sure what it could be though.
I don’t have many ideas on movies with some sort of mirror world in it that’d be something
Araki would pull from.
Now we have empress which is meant to be what it is really.
A human-faced tumor.
I’m not exactly sure what this could be connecting to either.
I know that King Crimson is also the same case, but that directly pulls from Total Recall
from what Araki had said.
If you do have an idea of what it could be, or anything that doesn’t have a movie reference,
feel free to try to make some connections.
Though double check release dates of chapters and the movies before doing so.
I wouldn’t want someone saying that Hanged Man is an Oculus reference or something.
Next is Wheel of Fortune.
Araki states that the influence could’ve been pulled from either Duel or Christine.
I can see it, especially since the Wheel of Fortune fight was extremely Duel, while the
idea of the car being somewhat sentient or the fact it’s a stand is most likely pulled
from Christine.
Next, Death 13, I love this stand design.
It has both elements of a standard reaper of death and a jester of sorts, which I’d
say both are pretty scary, but what we’re here for lies in its ability.
It’s believed amongst many fans that this is a potential call to Nightmare of Elm Street,
and with Araki’s strong involvement in horror, I wouldn’t put it past him.
Though he hasn’t directly stated it though, which means that the connections is more so
a hypothesis more than anything.
Next is Love Deluxe, but this is more so on the Yukako arc itself rather than the stand.
The arc was meant to hold similarities to Misery, there’s a lot of Stephen King
here.
Now for direct movie references that Araki has gone on record of what his stands draw
influence from, there’s a gap between Love Deluxe in Part 4 to our next stand Limp Bizkit,
in Part 6.
Araki had liked the effects on the movie Hollow Man, so that’s how we got this stand.
Now that we’ve finished stands, I should go on to mention this; Araki has made a lot
more stand connections before, but they weren’t necessarily horror movie references.
You’ll get subtle references like Coco Jumbo being Gamera or Red Hot Chili Pepper also
being a dinosaur and Frieza at the same time, but yeah.
There’s also the last of what we have that connects over to horror stuff, or well…
Horrific things in general.
We have serial Killers like Angelo, Yoshikage Kira, and potentially a lot of the people
in the Green Dolphin Street Prison.
I don’t have statistics on what the people could’ve done there, but it doesn’t matter
on fiction or non-fiction cause it’s Florida, that place is always going to crazy.
We also have the duo of Cioccolata and Secco, and I feel like there’s a reference there,
but I can’t put my finger on it.
I felt a connection to Silence of the Lambs, but they aren’t really going to the extent
that Lecter would, only thing you have is medical background.
Along with other things that exist in the real world, we have Cult Leader Kenzo.
We’ve seen in a recent movie and Earthbound about how scary those can be.
And to close it out, we have a…
Hmm…
Stray Cat.
A… stand cat chimera hybrid type of thing?
It’s a cat and it’s stand bound to a plant.
Why is Stray Cat here?
Because cats are terrifying creatures.
Only thing scarier than cats
is commitment.