This is the story of the Joestar family and their endless conflicts with the supernatural. The series spans well over 100 years (and volumes).In the late 1800s, rich kidJonathan Joestar is introduced to a newly orphaned youth named Dio Brando. Jonathan's wealthy father takes the boy in and raises him as his own. However, Dio is secretly scheming to take Jonathan's place as the favored son and heir to the Joestar family fortune. He torments Jonathan throughout their childhood in an attempt to break him. When Jonathan's resolve seems insurmountable, Dio takes a new approach: building up a bond between them over many years while poisoning Jonathan's father. Things become complicated when Jonathan learns of these plans and Dio becomes a vampire. After a fiery battle, Jonathan is informed that Dio is still alive and plans to take over the world. He sets out on an adventure to destroy his undying foe for good.That's just the first of eight parts to the immense saga of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.The series eventually evolved into a multi-generational epic, following the adventures of Jonathan's descendants from the 19th century to the present day. Each part of the saga chronicles the adventures of another descendant of the Joestar bloodline, which spreads all over the world and gets pretty darn confusing. They all have three things in common: A star shaped birthmark, a destiny to fight evil, and the nickname JoJo.The series is (currently) broken down to these eight parts:
Phantom Blood (originally Jonathan Joestar: His Youth)note Manga volumes 1-5, TV anime episodes 1-9
In 1880s Britain, Jonathan Joestar, the son of an English nobleman, finds his life turned upside-down when street urchin Dio Brando becomes his adoptive brother. When Dio turns himself into a vampire using a mysterious stone mask of Aztec origin, Jonathan must learn the ways of the Ripple, a mystical martial art, in order to stop Dio before he can take over the world. This arc was adapted into a beat-'em-up PS2 game and a film, both titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood.
Battle Tendency (originally Joseph Joestar: His Proud Lineage)note Manga volumes 5-12, TV anime episodes 10-26
Set in 1938, Joseph Joestar is the rough-and-tumble but extremely clever grandson of Jonathan, and lives in New York City. When word gets out that Jonathan's best friend and Joseph's adoptive great uncle, Robert E. O. Speedwagon, has been murdered, Joseph sets out to avenge him. Upon learning of the "Pillar Men", a race of supreme beings and the original creators of the stone masks of the Aztecs, Joseph heads to Italy in order to train for his fateful encounter with the help of Caesar Zeppeli and their mysterious mentor, Lisa Lisa.
Stardust Crusaders (originally Jotaro Kujo: Heritage for the Future)note Manga volumes 12-28
Set in 1989, an aging Joseph comes to visit his Japanese grandson Jotaro Kujo after the reappearance of Dio Brando causes the Joestar line to develop mysterious powers known as "Stands". Upon discovering that Jotaro's mother and Joseph's daughter, Holly, is slowly dying due to the awakening of her Stand, Jotaro, Joseph, and several other stand users must travel around the world to track down Dio and put an end to him and his dark power. This arc has been adapted to a three-part CD drama, an SNES RPG, and two OVAs, all titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and an arcade fighting game titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future.
Diamond is not Crash (commonly corrected to Diamond Is Unbreakable; originally Josuke Higashikata)note Manga volumes 29-47
Set in 1999, Jotaro travels to the Japanese town of Morioh to track down Joseph's illegitimate son, Josuke Higashikata. At the same time, a mysterious arrow that can grant Stands to its targets makes its rounds around town, creating more and more enemies for the two and their friends. Upon discovering the earthbound ghost of a murder victim, the group must track down a mysterious Stand-using serial killer terrorizing the town.
Vento Aureo (Italian for "Golden Wind"; originally Giorno Giovanna: Golden Heritage)note Manga volumes 47-63
Set in 2001 Italy, Giorno Giovanna is the son of Dio sired after his resurrection. Giorno seeks to take over the mafia and make it beneficial to the community rather than detrimental, but first has to deal with the current boss's intention to make it so no one knows his true identity, not even his teenage daughter who Giorno and his fellow Stand-using mobsters are ordered to protect by the boss himself. This arc was adapted into a beat-'em-up PS2 game titled Le Bizzarre Avventure di GioGio: Vento Aureo.
Stone Ocean (originally Jolyne Cujoh: Stone Ocean)note Manga volumes 1-17—beginning with this part, each new part restarts the numbering at 1
Set in 2011, while living in Florida, Jotaro's daughter, Jolyne Cujohnote Jotaro's surname changed after moving to America, is framed for murder by a crazed disciple of Dio and sent to prison. While there, Jotaro is able to unlock her Stand but is rendered catatonic when another one of Dio's disciples manages to steal his soul. Jolyne must team up with several Stand-using inmates in order to rescue her father and stop Dio's disciples from remaking the world in Dio's image.
Steel Ball Runnote Manga volumes 1-24
Set in 1890 in an Alternate Universe, the Steel Ball Run is the first North American transcontinental horse race on record, with a first prize of $50 million. Johnny Joestar, a paraplegic and former prodigy jockey, enters the race to learn the secret of competitor Gyro Zeppeli's mysterious weaponized steel balls, not realizing that he will be plunged into multiple conspiracies involving the king of Naples, the mummified corpse of Jesus, and the President of the United States. This arc has been adapted to an internet-based radio drama titled Steel Ball Run.
JoJolionnote Currently in serialization; 3 volumes currently compiled
Set in 2012 in the same Alternate Universe as Steel Ball Run, after the town of Morioh has been affected by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, strange structures called "Wall Eyes" appear throughout the town. Near one of these Wall Eyes, a young woman named Yasuho Hirose discovers an amnesiac young Stand-User who, after discovering he is not named "Yoshikage Kira", she decides to name "Josuke" and he is later adopted by the Higashikata family. Together, the newly named Josuke Higashikata and Yasuho attempt to find out who "Josuke" really is.
Created in 1987 by the mangaka Hirohiko Araki, the series is famous for its original and unique art style, intricate plot, and creative battles. It also features a huge number of allusions to Western rock music, including characters named Dio, Speedwagon, and Zeppeli, just to name a few. Although JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has not been able to receive recognition like other imported manga and anime, it is still very well received by fans all over. And with the insane kind of plots that involve sapient plankton, turtles that are bigger on the inside, and Rock, Paper, Scissors death matches, is it any wonder?Western audiences are likely more familiar with the memes the series has produced because of the series' general theme (read: badassery), as well as the CapcomFighting Game and OVA adaptations of Stardust Crusaders.To commemorate the manga's 25th anniversary in 2012, an HD port of the above fighting game was released, an anime adaptation written by Yasuko Kobayashi and covering parts 1 and 2 debuted (and it's also been confirmed that part 3 will be covered in the future), and a new fighting game called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle is in development. Namco Bandai has also filed a trademark for "All-Star Battle" in the United States.There is a Character Sheet for each of the parts, so post character tropes there.
Abusive Parents: Dio's father was an abusive alcoholic who treated his wife and son like crap.
He treats his flings as one night stands, leaving his various offspring fatherless to grow up seriously screwy. Must be that vicious cycle thing.
A few of the main characters in Part 5 had neglectful or abusive parents.
Adaptation Distillation: The 4-6 chapters-per-episode pace of the TV anime adaptation necessitates this for the most part, focusing on the high points while cutting, altering, or only alluding to other scenes (for example, Danny's death in the Phantom Blood arc).
Adaptation Expansion: On the occasions the anime has time to slow down the pace it fleshes out various scenes which were only briefly mentioned or resolved quickly in the manga, such as Caesar's battle with Wamuu, Lisa Lisa's backstory, and the entire Battle Tendency epilogue.
Alas, Poor Villain: Enya from Part 3 may have been a horrible, sadistic bitch with the worst judge of character when it comes to her son, but she was still one of Dio's most loyal henchman which made Dio deciding that she had outlived her usefulness and killing her to protect the secret of his Stand (even though she refused to disclose it even as she was dying) surprisingly tragic.
Alliterative Name: Jonathan Joestar, Joseph Joestar, Giorno Giovanna, Johnny Joestar.
Jotaro Kujo and Jolyne Cujoh only work in the Japanese order.*
Kujo Jotaro, Cujoh Jolyne
Alternate Character Reading: Several attack names, especially back in the Ripple era, are written in kanji and given an English reading. This applies to a few Stand names as well, but generally only to ones with names that are simple to translate to Japanese.
Alternate Continuity: Steel Ball Run began as a new series unrelated to the JoJo universe, later it was made part of the long running series; still it somewhat fits as an alternate continuity, as Steel Ball Run (Part 7) is presented as a different take on Phantom Blood (Part 1). The same thing with JoJoLion (Part 8) which is presented as an another take on Diamond is not Crash (Part 4), and confirmed to be set in the same universe SBR (Part 7) took place.
Moreover, Jojolion confirms Johnny Joestar married Rina Higashikata, who gave birth to George Joestar, who married Elisabeth, who had a son Joseph, who married Suzie Q, who had a daughter Holly, who married a Japanese man, who had a son named Yoshikage Kira. Wait a second.
Alternate History: Excusing the fact that the Steel Ball Run never happened, a chart in volume 12 of Steel Ball Run claims that it's called the United States of Valentine. Naples has also remained a city state as of 1890, deciding against joining the unified Italy. Sometime after the race, a revolution occurs, the monarchy is ousted, and Naples is absorbed into a republic.
The very end of episode 21 of of the TV anime has Joseph take off his jacket and display his impeccable arms and torso in suddenly fluid animation for...some reason.
Episode 22 (i.e. the Joseph/Wamuu chariot race battle) has a few moments of very impressive animation put into it, including some clever use of CG. On the other hand, other parts of it are plagued with possibly the worst cases of Off Model seen in the series so far. Here are examplesof both◊.
Anime Hair: Played straight with a lot of characters, with the most famous example being Polnareff.
And anime beards, and in one cover Jotaro got anime chest hair shaped like flames.
Anti-Hero: Stroheim may be a Nazi officer who wastes countless lives experimenting on Santana (including having roughly a dozen Mexican prisoners executed for their blood), but he's ultimately doing it to find a way to defeat the Pillar Men and prevent them from threatening the world. He's also willing to aid Joseph when it becomes clear that the Ripple is a significant weapon against the Pillar Men, and heroically sacrifices himself with a grenade to prevent Santana from escaping. Although he survived thanks to NAZI SCIENCE!
Anti-Villain: Bruford, Wamuu, most of La Squadra di Esecuzione, Diego Brando (at least the original), "Sandman" and Ringo Roadagain.
Anyone Can Die: Including the main heroes. Hell, not only does Jonathan get killed by Dio, he loses his body to him as well. And in Part 6, everyone except for Emporio dies, including the main character, Jolyne
The entire Zeppeli-bloodline seems to have a habit of dying, but not without teaching the Joestar of the current arc a last lesson or making them more powerful.
Arbitrary Skepticism: Mista is a Stand user who hangs out with a bunch of other Stand users, yet he still wonders how a Bigger on the Inside Stand-using turtle could have electricity inside it.
Kakyoin also doesn't believe in a 'world in the mirror' when Polnareff believes that that's where the Hanged Man attacks from. Polnareff even invokes this trope, saying that if Stands could exist, so could a world in the mirror (though he turns out to be wrong...in this specific case, since a stand who actually can access a "mirror world" shows up in part 5).
Asskicking Pose: These are everywhere. Pretty much every chapter has at least one. One reason for the manga's Memetic Mutation is how ridiculously over-the-top and challenging to reproduce some of them are. Here's one of the easiest-to-perform examples,◊ as rendered by the anime. Keep in mind, Caesar on the right is angry because his best friend died.
Attractive Bent Gender: Hilariously parodied in Part 2, as the big, muscular Joseph tries to sneak into a Nazi lab by dressing as a woman.
Author Appeal: Hirohiko Araki is a huge fan of western music, specially old-school rock, as the myriad of references scattered about the series will tell you. There's not even a point in listing them here, there's just way too many.
However, there is The Beatles song "Get Back" which tells the story of a man named Jojo.
Of special note is Pink Floyd, who Araki must really like to reference with so many stands in Parts 4 and 8.
Author Avatar: Rohan Kishibe from Part 4. He despises Josuke, despite Araki stating that Josuke is his favorite character. Though apparently, Araki dislikes when fans are intimidated by him due to his similarities with the (actually frightening) Rohan Kishibe. Apparently, the real Araki is terribly laid-back, and wishes to be seen as someone who strangers can relax around. Yet it's kind of hard to relax around someone who the fans think is an immortal vampire that ages backwards.
Awesome, but Impractical: In the fighting games, Dio's death from above via steamroller. Anyone can see it coming a mile away, it's blockable, Dio can be punished as he jumps up to perform it, and the damage really isn't worth it. But who can resist creating one of the most badass and infamous moments of the entire series?
The Time Stop attacks in the game can be a pain too, since you're immobile for about 3 seconds before executing them. However, enjoy your 66-hit combo if you pull it off.
In-series, several stands aren't particularly useful. For example, Notorious BIG only works if the user is dead, Ebony Devil requires you to get serious injury to hate the enemy enough, and Purple Haze has a tendency to destroy any living organism within several meters of it. Even Araki couldn't get more than one use out of the latter.
Back for the Dead: After seemingly dying in the second leg of the race in part 7, Mountain Tim returns to save Miss Lucy Steel from certain death... only to get killed later in the chapter.
Badass Bookworm: Believe it or not, Jotaro Kujo, who has a Ph.D in Marine Biology. There's also Gyro, who's an expert medic.
Badass Normal: Hayato from Part 4, who has no Stand ability but helps Josuke and Co. bring down Kira once and for all through sheer bravery and cunning.
And Emporio, who in Part 6 defeats the Big Bad (who can control time and destroy the universe) on his own, despite having only a one-location, non-combat stand (although he does gain Weather Report's stand during the fight, he needed to confront and outwit Pucci in order to do so).
Gyro in part 7 also counts, having currently given up his Stand ability and relying solely on his naturally developed skills involving the Spin. Pretty much everyone else out there has Stands.
Jotaro in Part 3 after Alessi de-aged him into a seven-year-old child, which also cut off his Stand powers since he didn't have Star Platinum back then. Any normal child would have ran in terror of an axe-wielding maniac. Kid Jotaro, however, beat the crap out of Alessi with Rapid Fire Fisticuffs to the face.
This is actually lampshaded in the series. Since a Stand reflects the user's soul and true self it often leads to malicious people having deadlier or disturbing abilities.
Bad Powers, Good People: Fugo's Stand power is so lethal and disgusting that even his friends are creeped out by it. However he's still one of the good guys, sort of.
Bathtub Scene - With Lisa Lisa in part 2: Battle Tendency.
Battle Aura - The Ripple, and to a certain degree the Stands.
Or in the case of old man Joseph, literally by using both - channelling hamon through his stand wrapped around his body like a vampire-killing live wire.
Battle of Wits: Many, but special mentions goes to the fight with Daniel D'Arby, an expert gambler and cheater. Jotaro challenged him in a game of poker, which is D'Arby's game of expertise. He also had EVERYONE in the bar working for him so that no matter who was picked to shuffle and deal, he'd be given winning cards to ensure his victory. However, Jotaro gets him to sweat after doing numerous feats with Star Platinum to make objects appear out of nowhere to give him the impression he was using Star Platinum to switch out his cards. Jotaro then raises his bet by offering his mother's soul, but then makes D'Arby offer the equivalent, which is information on Dio's Stand ability. D'Arby, who managed to con Polnareff and even Joseph before him, began to crack and eventually folds. He had four of a kind with Kings. What did Jotaro have? Nothing, even a pair would've beaten it. He won on a BLUFF.
And in part 7, it would appear to have been revealed that Jesus was a Stand user.
Berserk Button: Say something bad about Josuke's hairdo and see how long you end up in a hospital.
Be Careful What You Wish For: In part 1 during Dio's attack on a town a mother pleads with him to take her and not harm her infant child. He promises and turns her into a Vampire Only for the newly turned mother to BITE INTO HER CHILD right after he does it.
Big Bad: Dio, spanning several generations. Even after he's gone, many of the villains who follow him have connections to him somehow. The Pillar Men are ultimately responsible for Dio's status as the Big Bad, though, since they created the Stone Mask.
Also the Big Bad of part 5, Diavolo, is also responsible for all of the insanity that is Stands from part 3 to part 6, as he had the stand arrows which he sold three of and one was bought by Enya, which was then used to give Dio The World. So he also helped in establishing Dio's status as the Big Bad (or at least helped in making sure he kept it).
Big Damn Heroes: This◊, taking place as Dio is about to annihilate Polnareff with his mysterious Stand power, both JoJos and Kakyoin burst in through the wall to back him up.
Polnareff returns the favour during Jotaro's climactic fight against Dio, although he almost dies for his effort.
Also, Stroheim showing up to bail out Joseph and Lisa Lisa (with NAZI SCIENCE!!!) after the hordes of vampire Mooks decide not to let them fight Kars anymore.
Stephen Steel gets his moment to shine in Steel Ball Run. After Johnny's final battle with the second Diego Brando, he's suffering from the effects of his own Infinite Rotation bullet and unable to mount his horse to create a counter-rotation. Stephen comes riding up in the nick of time, pulling Johnny up onto his own horse.
Bilingual Bonus: If an Italian man says to you "my balls are spinning" it is shorthand for I've had it with this shit. And Gyro is both a valid Italian name (for 1850) and means revolution, as in one spin.
Oyecomova is Spanish for "Hey, what's up" (besides being a reference to the Santana song).
Araki has a fondness for Italian. Part 5 takes place in Italy. But it seems he learned Italian from the back of pasta boxes
Bittersweet Ending: The end of Part 6. Even though Emporio defeats Enrico Pucci and the other heroes seem to have copies in the new universe, none of them have any memories of their previous life and they are, for the most part, complete strangers to each other. Only Emporio remembers their adventure.
On the other hand, the "new" Jolyne, Annasui, Hermes and Weather Report seem to have happier lives than the previous ones. At least, none of them are in jail or are implied to have ever been, so Hermes' sister was probably never murdered by Sports Max, Weather Report never had to suffer like he did because of Pucci's scheme, Annasui seemed more balanced, and Jolyne seemed to have a happier relationship with her father. And, much like "gravity" attracted Dio's sons to Pucci, gravity still attracted them to each other even in the new universe.
The end of Part 1. Dio is defeated, the world is safe, Jonathan marries his sweetheart... until Dio's disembodied head attacks them during their honeymoon trip and kills him, and turns almost everyone on the ship into zombies. The only survivors are freshly widowed Erina and infant Lisa Lisa, whose mother was killed by a axe-wielding zombie.
"Blind Idiot" Translation: The notorious DUWANG scanlations of Diamond is not Crash and Vento Aureo.
Taken a step farther with DUWANG Fansubs, made for the new anime. Every line is either translated badly, has terrible grammar, or is saying something entirely different from the dialogue. Goes the extra mile by having the videos only be in 240p resolution and have large, obtrusive sub fonts, to mimic the poor quality of Part 4's Raw scans. Of course, this time it's being done on purpose.
Blob Monster: Yellow Temperance and Notorious B.I.G
Blue Bishōnen Ghetto: Parts 4, 5, and 7 have casts that are 90% composed of attractive young men.
Body Horror: Seeing the effects of many of the Stands will make you cringe.
Not to mention some of the things clever vampires like Dio can pull off once they get used to their new physiology. And just about everything involving the Pillar Men.
The mother goat produced by Bohemian Rhapsody is a case of fridge horror logic. It's just bad to see until you notice that she has breasts for eyes.
The stand the Empress takes the form of a wart that grows and consumes its host.
The effects of eating food enhanced by Pearl Jam can be truly horrific, but turn out to be a subversion as the visible effect is simply the customer's body rejecting some ailment in the most direct way possible. They end up feeling better than before afterward.
My arm just exploded and the flesh became snails! Snails are growing out of me! I'M BECOMING A SNAIIIIIIIL!!!!
And then snail-eating beetles arrive...
My eye just turned into a flower!
One Stand has the ability to manipulate the iron in a person's blood stream. The user, a deadly assassin, uses it to create sharp objects inside his targets. In one memorable scene, a young boy's cheek is shredded by a mess of needles that have formed within his blood.
Part 5 also gives us a fishing rod whose hook crawls under your skin and towards your vital organs and a flesh-eating mold Stand.
Bold Inflation: Araki likes to "emphasize" certain words that are "important" by both "bolding" them and putting "quotation marks" around them, written in "Japanese" with the 「corner brackets」.
In the end of Part 2 (which may as well be the prologue to Part 3 due to an extensive Time Skip), Joseph is in an airport, listening to music in a cassette. At the end of Part 3 we see a similar scene, but it is revealed that he's listening to The Beatles' "Get Back".
Steel Ball Run's second chapter ends with Johnny talking about how he started to walk - not physically but in the child to adult sense. The last chapter has him talking more about how it was a story of revival, in many senses.
More than that. First thing Gyro does on screen is to tell one random mook to pick up his gun if he wants to fight him. And in the end the same thing happens with Johnny and Valentine. Johnny learns the first spin by mounting his horse and in the end has to climb his horse to cancel a spin.
Volume 3 has Gyro doing a bow to the crowd, the cover of volume 22 has Johnny doing the same bow.
Boring Invincible Hero: Gyro is an aversion. In the first chapters of SBR, he appears like one; trained since he was seven on the powerful spin technique, looking and appearing generally badass, and coming out on top in the first stage of the race, without a scratch. Then, due to interference from the upper brass, Gyro is knocked down from first place to twenty first and things get worse from there, as Gyro trails behind his own disciple, in terms of points (mostly due to sheer bad luck), suffers some of the nastiest injuries in the series, and in the end, dies.
Fugo from Part 5 was actually written out for this reason; his stand was too powerful to design decent fights around.
Bowdlerization: The TV broadcast of the anime is leaving most blood untouched, but it is censoring exposed flesh with an odd pulsating orange-red.
Wheel of Fortune: (after apparently burning Jotaro to death) I won! I ended Part 3 early!
Jotaro: Ha... Then who's going to replace me as the main character?
Bullet Catch: Jotaro demonstrates his stand back when he believes it to be an evil spirit by having it catch a bullet when Jotaro tries to shoot himslef in the head .
Butt Monkey: Jonathan. The poor bugger can't catch a break.
Lets not forget Polnareff.
Also Narancia, who is almost always the first person subjected to the newest enemy's stand, especially if the effects are particularly embarrassing to him. In the rare instances where the entire team is affected, he will always get the worst of it.
The Casanova: Dio. He's got five sons, all from different mothers. There's also Hol Horse, who charms women so that he can use them easily.
Call Back: Jojolion has several in the first two chapters. The punk from the first chapter is called Joshuu Higashikata. Our hero's hat was made by a company called SBR, and apparently, our hero is half of Yoshikage Kira.
Part 3 also has a Call Back during the Empress fight. Before Joseph finishes off Empress for good, he predicts that she will say "don't do this!", referencing his old trick of predicting his enemy's statement before they say it back in Part 2.
At the start of Part 5, when Giorno is talking about how he hates having to repeat himself, he rants that it's "useless, useless, useless," or in the original Japanese, "muda, muda, muda."
In Part 7 Gyro says one ofter the other "Muda, Muda" and "Yare yare daze".
In the very last volumes of Steel Ball Run, Johnny's evolved Stand resorts to the classic Rapid Fire Fisticuffs and ORAORA battlecry the Kujos are known for. Part 7's lack of melee Stands makes this especially notable.
In Part 7, the last battle between Johny and new Diego Brando is a call back to the final battle of Part 3. Just like in Part 3, it happens on the bridge, and just like then, Diego damages his leg to defeat his opponent. Except this time he succeds.
The ending of Steel Ball Run mirrors the last arc of Phantom Blood, but with a more upbeat ending. Johnny leaves America for Europe and is implied to meet his future wife on the cruise; a coffin is brought in with the ship's cargo, but inside it is Gyro's body, prepped for burial in Italy as opposed to Dio and Wang Chan, out to kill Jonathan.
Call Forward: The OP of 2012 anime of Part 2 has a REALLY subtle references to Part 3. at 11 second mark, you can see a Thorn on the right, also known as Hermit Purple.
The 2012 anime of Parts 1 and 2 subtly shows off both Jonathan and Joseph's Joestar birthmarks, though no attention is called to them since they are not yet a plot device at this point. In the original manga, the family birthmark does not even appear once until Part 3, where it first becomes significant.
Calling Your Attacks: Common in the earlier arcs, but once the Stands were introduced, this mostly disappeared — characters usually just call out their Stand's name rather than a specific attack name.
Camp: Pretty much everything, even and especially the later arcs.
Catch Phrase: Tons, from Dio's "Toki yo, tomare! (Time, stop!)" (which is parodied as often as his "Wryyyyyy") to the generation-spanning catchphrase of Jotaro's, "yare yare daze" (Gimme a break!) (And his daughter's "yare yare dawa"). Joseph is fond of making random English exclamations when things go south for him (OH. MY. GOOOOOOOODD!), and of informing you that, depending on the way you answer his questions, he "may have to kick your ass."
Also, Joseph enjoys predicting what people are going to say out loud by saying "Your next words will be x."
He tends to shout "OH NO!" in his younger years.
Josuke would like you to know that he thinks this is "Great!"
Censor Shadow: The broadcast anime does this to a lot of the heavier gore. The DVD releases remove this for the most part.
Character Title: The six original parts were published under these with a subtitle, with the exception of part 4, which was simply Josuke Higashikata.
Chekhov's Gun: Jotaro's Star Platinum had been mainly used to beat the crap out of anyone with his diamond-hard fists and also to freeze time. In the beginning, it was used to make things appear out of nowhere, and eventually his jail cell was filled with a lot of stuff, ranging from books, clothes, radios, RC cars, and weights. Jotaro used this ability again to throw off Daniel D'Arby in order to win a rigged poker game against him.
Chick Magnet: Could almost be considered a bloodline trait amongst the Joestars, considering that Joseph was still a player when he was well into his golden years. Polnareff, Kakyoin, and several other sidekicks are also good with the ladies.
Weather Report is better than all of them in terms of getting chicks. In terms of keeping them, however... not so much. Kinda hard to score when all the ladies around you are snails.
Church Militant: In Part 7, Hot Pants is hinted to be a nun sent by the Vatican to retrieve the Corpse parts.
Cleavage Window: If there's a male equivalent to this trope, then Giorno and Bruno's outfits both qualify for it.
Compressed Adaptation: There was a OVA based off the third series made, but it started near the last third of the story (when the party runs into D'Arby) then went into Iggy's introduction before jumping to the final battle with Dio.
Another set of OVAs were later made that started from the beginning of the third series, ending back to where the old OVA's starts.
So far, each episode of the new anime has adapted five or six chapters of the manga each. It's rather understandable, considering that this series kinda long.
Continuity Reboot: Steel Ball Run is set in an alternate universe in the time period of Part 1 created by Stairway to Heaven speeding up time to the point where the universe ended. Pucci/Dio was killed before it was completed (which would have let him create his own perfect universe) which led to a new universe where things fated to happen occurred.
Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Whether coincidental or an intentional design choice, each protagonist of each part tends to have an opposing temperament to their predecessor.
It's such a prominent feature in this series, that even the enemies are opposite of each other, Dio is a Narcissist megalomaniac casanova with various Kick the Dog moments, notably literally kicking a dog as his Establishing Character Moment and later incinerating it alive and is never seen without a Smug Smiler. He also is favorable to humans that are nice to him, though he will dispose of them once they serve no use callously. Kars is a stoic super vampire with a single minded goal of achieving perfection as the Ultimate Life Form, but notably cares more about wildlife than humans, and no need for sex, he also cared more about his colleagues than Dio did. Kira on the other hand, has significantly humbler ambitions than his predecessors, preferring to live a life without distractions and fixing his socks and an obsession with women's hands, Diavolo is a apathetic man with no love to anyone, but himself not even his own split personality's death brings any emotion response and is obsessed with killing his own daughter, and has an even more extreme paranoia of being discovered by others. Enrico has Undying Loyalty to Dio, with some questionable undertones for a priestmanipulative"evil that didn't know he was evil" and Funny Valentine is a well intentioned patriot who's reasons for his actions is love for his country and to honor the memory of his father, doing bad thing to attain eternal happiness and prosperity for his country.
Cool Sword/Evil Weapon: The Stand, Anubis, which is bound to an Egyptiankatana. Anubis' ability is to remember attacks and countering the same attack if used the second time. Anubis can also selectively phase through objects. Anubis, however, can possess the wielder if the user draws the sword from its sheath.
Covered with Scars: Joseph Joestar after his training and Funny Valentine has the most patriotic scars ever, shaped as the American flag.
Cultural Cross Reference: With character names like Robert E.O. (or REO) Speedwagon, Tom Petty and Dire Straits, it's obvious that Hirohiko Araki LOVES 1980s rock. The 70s also get several references, and as he started to run out of 80s names to use, 90s-music-based names started to become more prominent.
Dangerously Genre Savvy: Dio in Part 3. He doesn't take chances when it comes to the Joestars.
Ditto for Straizo in Part 2. The Pillar Men in Part 2 act exceptionally genre savvy, but make plenty of genre-blind blunders due to sheer suicidal overconfidence and ego.
Kira in Part 4, who is so savvy that it's paranoia at times.
Dead All Along: Bruno Buccellati in Part 5, after his first meeting with Diavolo. In a bit of a twist, it's noticed by several characters that he doesn't have a pulse or temperature, and this is used to stop a Stand User once.
Gets really crazy in Part 4: at least 6 of the people Josuke and Koichi fight wind up as friends.
Also happens once in Part 5: Giorno defeats Bruno but spares his life, and when Bruno wants to know why, Giorno basically answers "Because I'd rather be friends with you."
Deus ex Machina: Due to the fact that Araki really likes to see the villains get what they were after, they generally become too powerful to beat normally and become defeated through this.
Part 2: Everything that happens in the Kars fight after he becomes immortal is essentially this, and it works perfectly
Part 3: Jotaro's time-freeze resistance evolving into the ability to stop time himself, though the D'Arby fight hinted at it.
Part 6: Emporio getting Heavy Weather's disk pushed into him, and it being compatible to boot.
Part 7: Lucy showing up with Diego's head.
Determinator/Clap Your Hands If You Believe: All the JoJos are able to win because they either believe they can or they have too much to lose to fail (or, according to Jotaro, "Because [they] pissed him off").
Does This Remind You of Anything?: Yes. Yes it does. Constantly. Especially in Part II, which features JoJo and Caesar climbing a tall, cylindrical tower that gushes oil out the top, as well as vampire who doesn't just use his boiling hot blood as a weapon, he "pours his boiling blood into all the openings he drilled in [Joseph's] body with those blood stiiiiiings", and much, much more. A bunch of attacks are based on bodily fluids, too, because supersonic aqueous humor is somewhat more plausible than eye beams.
And of course, the fact that both Joseph in Part 2 and Gyro in Steel Ball Run have used a pair of balls to fight. One piece of official artwork even shows Gyro licking one of his balls.
"I must know the secret of the steel balls!"
Just look at the covers for Part 7. They remind of many things.
Downer Ending: Part 1, where Jonathan dies to save his wife and unborn child, taking Dio down to the bottom of the sea with him. It's a nasty way to go, for one of the more unambiguously heroic characters in the series.
The Dragon: Vanilla Ice (yes, that's his real name) to Dio, Pucci to Dio, Wamuu to Kars, Kira's father to Kira.
Part 5 has a subversion. Doppio Vinegar appears to be the most trusted subordinate of Diavolo, to the point that Diavolo has entrusted him with the power to use his stand, King Crimson. In reality, Doppio is Diavolo's split personality. The two are actually one in the same.
Dual Wielding: Anubis, being an Evil Sword, does this when possessing Polnareff, using Silver Chariot's rapier as well.
Dubstep: Used in scenes with the Pillar Men in the 2012 anime.
The Dulcinea Effect: The boys of Part 5 go to great lengths to protect Trish, even though (as Fugo points out) they only met her a few days ago and barely know anything about her.
Dull Surprise: An unfortunate side effect of the series' Art Evolution. The shift towards realism in art style and proportions has resulted in faces that are much less expressive as well.
Early-Bird Cameo: The Joestar family star birthmark, which was introduced to the manga in Stardust Crusaders via Retcon, is present on both Jonathan and Joseph in the TV anime.
Early Installment Weirdness: The stands in Stardust Crusaders had, for the most part, fairly typical, battle-oriented abilities like fire manipulation or super-strength. It wasn't until Diamond is not Crash where everyone had really weird, really specific powers that required creative use.
More importantly, stands didn't exist at all until Stardust Crusaders, the third part. In the first two parts, combat was based on the Ripple.
Enhanced on DVD: Bowdlerization is removed, off-model art is fixed, and frame-combining is removed. Here and here are full comparisons of changes in the first six episodes (mouse over to see the home video version).
Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Jotaro may be a violent delinquent, but his whole quest in Series 3 is one to save his mother from Dio's power. Not to mention one of the big reasons Dio hated his dad was because he treated his wife like crap.
Joseph, who despite his aggressively violent and playful nature loves and respects his Grandmother that raised him very much, as well as "Uncle" Speedwagon.
For Dio, true to a fault since he was responsible for father Dario's death. Most likely not the reason behind this, but this fact in particular makes you wonder if it even matters.
Everything's Better with Spinning: literally. Gyro Zeppeli's ability with his metal spheres involves causing them to spin, then endowing this spin to other objects, enabling him to cut through stone, alter someone's muscular system, and even harden skin enough that bullets bounce off. Wekapipo uses a variant for his Wrecking Ball
Evolving Credits: The ending credits. The animation is a slow pan over a carved Aztec mural as blood flows through its cracks, with the characters relevant to the current arc appearing in the foreground, although they're removed upon death. As the story moves to the next arc, the camera continues panning where the end of the previous arc's version of the ending left off; each update also sees the foreground characters change.
Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Generally averted; half of defeating an enemy Stand is figuring out what it does. Amusingly (and somewhat realistically), the less important a villain is, the more likely they are to give away what their Stand does. (Steely Dan is an exception; he was using his Stand's power as a deterrent.)
Expy: Kars' physical appearance, arm blades, and desire to be the perfect life form make him a villainous twist on Araki's single other successful series, Baoh.
Leaky-eye-Luka is an expy of historical gangster Lucky Luciano.
Also, Wish is a Boys Love flavored manga centering two characters who, rumors say, are shojo-style Expies of Jotaro and Kakyoin. CLAMP are known JoJo fans, so...
Speaking of Street Fighter, Juri Han, who was introduced in SSF 4, bears a striking resemblance to Jolyne Cujoh.
Stroheim surely inspired Guile's design, and Polnareff certainly inspired Benimaru's
Even now, Benimaru is still referred as Polnareff by SNK.
Sakuya Izayoi has Dio's knife-throwing and Time Stands Still abilities (with the same name), and works for a vampire who near-directly quotes one of Dio's lines (see Shout Out).
Part 8 is full of this. Josuke not only is named after his Part 4 counterpart, but also looks like him sans the pompadour. He befriends an expy of Koichi from Part 4. He is initially mistaken for Kira, the main villain of Part 4. He is adopted into a family where two members look a lot like Giorno's fellow gang members from Part 5.
Eye Scream: This is prevalent in literally every part of the series. Just to list a couple of examples:
The first time Jonathan and Dio fight, Dio sticks his thumb in JoJo's eye.
In Part 4, one of Shigechi's Harvests punched a hole in Okuyasu's eye, then tore out a handful of the ocular tissue.
In Stardust Crusaders (a.k.a., the JoJo manga released in the U.S.), it happens quite early on in the series...
School Nurse: Does this look like a pen to you?!
One of Dio's special surprise attacks in Part One is to shoot vitreous humor (aka eye goop) from his eyes at the speed of a bullet. And whenever it happens, the reader is given a close-up as his eyes split open.
Later in Phantom Blood, Dire takes Dio's eye out with a rose.
In part 2, Santana enters a soldier's body through the eyes.
In part 7 Johnny's eyes are set on fire twice.
From time to time, a couple of mooks hit with Gyro's steel ball end up shooting themselves in the eye.
The Faceless: In Part 3, Dio's face is not shown until the final battles begin... even though he's clearly identified as Dio. (The fighting game calls this version "Shadow Dio".) Midler, meanwhile, is never clearly seen at all. When she appeared in the fighting game, Araki had to design her from scratch.
Faking the Dead: How does Jotaro do it against Dio? By having Star Platinum grab and stop his heart. He is saved when Polnareff distracts Dio, allowing Star to massage Jotaro's heart and revive him.
Fastball Special: Jotaro weaponizes Iggy in this fashion against N'Dour. N'Dour is able to pull back his Stand in time to defend himself, but not without losing track of Jotaro's location until it's too late.
Fatal Family Photo: Happens to a random German soldier in Part 2. His locket with his fiancée's photo in it even falls significantly to the floor as he dies.
Fate Worse Than Death: Kars in Part 2, Yoshikage Kira in Part 4, Diavolo in Part 5, and Magenta Magenta in Part 7.
Although Kira's fate going by Deadman's Questions arguably isn't that bad compared to Kars and Diavolo's fates.
Anubis' ultimate fate in Part 3. After its battle with Polnareff, it's broken and left at the bottom of a river to rust.
Female Gaze: Although made with an adolescent male audience in mind, Part 2 is rather infamous for this. The main cast cast is composed predominantly of handsome and very muscular men in skintight, Stripperiffic clothing who engage in battles chock full of phallic or homoerotic innuendo and highly sensual poses that show off their bodies, with many panels drawing attention to their prominent buttocks and muscles. Many of the other parts would also qualify to an extent as well.
Joesph and Caesar's Training from Hell in Part 2 starts with Lisa Lisa immediately throwing them into a deep pit, where the only way out is to climb a pillar covered in oil. If they can't do it, then they'll die.
Several Stands over the course of the series are awakened by near-death experiences.
Also in Steel Ball Run, Diego does this to Hot Pants, although he was actually trying to suffocate her after she tried to suffocate him. Even so, it gets the same sound effect as the Dio/Erina kiss.
Foreign Language Theme: The Anime uses Roundabout by Yes as its ending theme, which would qualify as this trope to the Japanese audience.
Four is Death: A number of times, ranging from Pucci's four subordinates the heroes fight in the maximum security wing of the prison in part 6 to Mista's fear of the number in part 4. Most notable, however, is the fact part one is forty-four chapters long, and in the last one, Johnathan dies.
Oddly enough, in the fourth arc only two good guys die.
Part four is predominately about hunting down an elusive serial killer, who has been murdering girls for 15 year. So yeah this still applies.
D 4 C.
Gag Sub: In homage to the gloriously terrible English translation of Part 4, one fansub group released 'DUWANG' subs for the 2012 anime, riffing on the show's over-the-top nature with a generous helping of Stylistic Suck. They soon became immensely popular.
Generation Xerox: Averted for the most part, as most members of the Joestar/Kujo family look distinctive enough on their own (although Joseph does bear a striking resemblance to his Grandfather, but only for Part 2). Avdol does look identical to his father though, which is still an aversion, because it's actually Avdol himself in disguise.
Genius Bruiser: Joseph is no weakling, but his real strength his wit and intelligence he uses against his enemies.
Weather Report from the Stone Ocean storyline is also notable. His abilities to manipulate weather are relatively limited in range, but he demonstrates remarkably precise control and clever applications of this power, as well as revealing a deep breadth of knowledge. All while looking like a humanoid version of Appa.
And Jotaro, who is well read, and eventually becomes a Marine Biologist!
Genius Loci: Sort of. One mini-arc of Part 3 has the cast boarding a giant freighter and coming under attack by a mysterious Stand User, but are unable to locate the Stand, until they realize that the Stand is the freighter itself.
A God Am I: In Part 2, Kars pulls this at the very end.
Part 2 says in the start that The pillar men where worshiped as gods.
Enrico Pucci from Part 6 as well. He doesn't believe he IS God but he believes that God chose him to create Heaven on Earth and control destiny.
Good Thing You Can Heal: Tends to be used by Araki as an excuse to really beat up on his protagonists, but there's no denying it comes in handy. Josuke's Crazy Diamond is the purest example of this, as its ability is to restore damaged things to their original state (unless he's mad, in which case the results can end up quite distorted). Less directly, Giornio's Gold Experience can turn inanimate objects into living tissue to replace damaged flesh, and Foo Fighters can do the same with plankton for a quick patch job. Since this isn't the intended purpose for those stands, however, the full healing process can take much longer and be more uncomfortable than Crazy Diamond's work.
In part 7 Gyro has a Zombie Horse(healing string) seemingly just to let Araki mutilate him even more.
Gorn: With so many gruesome deaths and graphic maiming (enough to easily compete with the likes of Gantz and Berserk,) it's hard to believe that for the longest time this was a shonen series.
Gratuitous English: ZA WARUDO!, one of the biggest examples. Joseph's catchphrase OH MY GOD! is written in English in the manga whenever he uses it. The Darby family also have a habit of saying GOOD when they confirm an agreement.
"HAIL 2 U!", quickly parodied when Avdol returns from the dead and says it back to the villain as "HELL 2 U!"
From part 4, Koichi's Stand, Echoes (Act 3) is capable of speaking, but mostly quoting John McLane and saying stuff like this: "OK! Master Let's kill da ho! Beeetch!"
As mentioned above, the title of Part 4, Diamond is not Crash. It's more frequently referred to by the less Engrishy Diamond is Unbreakable.
Gratuitous German: The soundtrack releases to the TV anime's adaptation of Battle Tendency are titled Musik ("music") and Leicht Verwendbar ("lightnote They picked the wrong translation of "light", as "leicht" is the adjective for "not heavy" or "easy" rather than the noun "Licht" meaning a source of illumination user").
Gratuitous Italian: Everything in Part 5: Vento Aureo, as it is set in Italy
Some fansubs groups of the first season of the anime also add a bit of Italian when either of the Zeppelis are involved.
Groundhog Day Loop: Kira's final Stand ability, Bite the Dust, is a version of this.
Guile Hero: All the protagonists. Almost every battle is decided through trickery and clever tactics rather than power.
The Gunslinger: Guido Mista, Hol Horse, Magenta Magenta and Foo Fighters.
Lots of people in part 7 end up using revolvers, especially if their Stand is not really that useful for directly attacking an enemy, like Ringo's or Mountain Tim's.
Hair Color Dissonance: Pretty much every character is victim to this, since Araki is partial to using wacky coloring on volume covers and other official art. For example, Yasuho from JoJolion is probablyrose-haired but has also appeared with her hair colored purple and green.
Heart Is An Awesome Power: Pretty much everyone, constantly. Taking seemingly-useless powers and making them awesome is a regular feature.
Honest Axe: Sugar Mountain, the guardian of The Saint's ears. If you throw something in the spring, she'll ask what it is that you lost among a selection of choices. Answer honestly and you get it all. Gyro and Johnny find out very quickly that there's a catch even to that. You have to "use up" whatever you got before sundown of that day, or else you'll be assimilated by a "tree". Only so many people can be assimilated at any point in time, and Sugar Mountain deliberately strung Gyro and Johnny along simply because she'll get her parents back if they get assimilated.
Hot Shounen Mom: Josuke's mother, Tomoko; Joseph's mother, Lisa Lisa; Jotaro's Mother, Holly.
Hyper Awareness: Joseph is uncannily sharp about noticing thing right away about his enemies.
Hypocritical Humor: Mikitaka( who claims to be an alien) has something to say about Spuer Fly: "Boy, there are some weird people to live in a tower".
I Just Want to Be Normal: Kira from Part 4's primary motivation, although "I Just Want To Be A Serial Killer In Peace" is probably more accurate. The lengths he goes to for this goal are impressive and include a completely orthodox career as a salesman and deliberately getting second place in all manners of contests as a child, including B's and A-'s in school.
Idiot Ball: Happens all the time, unfortunately. For example, the whole damn Part 3 team (but especially Kakyoin) was collectively holding the ball when they were being attacked by Death 13. Even counting the fact that it attacks them in their dreams Freddy Krueger-style and they don't remember a thing when they wake up, Kakyoin acts completely hysterical when he finds out, to the point of convincing the others that he's losing his mind, while the others are unreasonably skeptical of the idea that the baby they're carrying around might be a Stand user (an orangutan turned out to be a Stand user earlier, why not a baby?) and that the Stand attacks them in their dreams when both Kakyoin and Polnareff remember having horrible nightmares (just not what happened during them) that day.
I Lied: A rare heroic example in Part 5. After shooting Cioccolata in the head, Giorno suspects that he's still alive and says that he won't attack so long as Cioccolata doesn't move. When Cioccolata springs back into action and tries taking Giorno's friends hostage, Giorno reveals that he'd already planted what was essentially a time bomb in Cioccolata's head. Now dying for real, Cioccolata complains that Giorno broke his previous word. Giorno's response: "You should know better than that."
Another heroic example in Part 3. When Avdol was killed by Hol Horse and J. Geil, Joesph and Jotaro said that they buried him off-screen. When he turns up alive again, they reveal that they lied about that, knowing that he survived, but pretending that he died so that he could recover in secret.
Improbable Age: Several examples, particularly Abbacchio's police work.
Improbable Weapon User: Zeppeli and WINE. His grandson uses soap bubbles. And his Alternate Timeline version uses Steel Balls.
Inelegant Blubbering: Polnareff sheds some very un-manly tears after Avdol's (apparent) death.
Esidisi's sudden crying fit, which was unexpected enough to rather unnerve his opponent, and looked pretty silly.
I Never Told You My Name: Enya Gail, one of Dio's most loyal followers, pretends to be an innkeeper in order to lure Jotaro and company in to be killed by the effect of her Stand, Justice. However, she inadvertently gives herself away by addressing Jotaro by his correct name, when in fact he had registered to the inn under a false name.
Infant Immortality: Gruesomely subverted in part one; one Dio's finest instances of dog buggering.
Informed Ability: Kakyoin's Stand, Hierophant Green, is supposed to both love enclosed spaces to a fault, and have a passion for ripping things apart. It never really demonstrates these qualities, as HG is used mostly as a long-range Stand, and its ability is firing gemstones at the enemy.
Intellectual Animal: Developing a Stand in an animal brings its level of intelligence to near-human levels. Iggy, Pet Shop, and Stray Cat being the primary examples.
Foo Fighters is an even more extreme example: it's a mass of plankton formed into its own Stand, though later it conceals itself by taking over a dead girl's body to walk around in. It's less squicky than it sounds. Her main reason for allying with Jolyne is that she's absolutely in love with experiencing things like sights, smells, tastes and sensations, and having actual memories.
Irony: The Red Stone of Aja, the key to Kars' ascendance to godhood, was also the key to his ultimate defeat.
Ironic Hell: Kars wants to become utterly immortal in every sense of the word. So Joseph uses a volcano to shoot him into space, where he can't die or change his trajectory and spends the rest of eternity curled into a ball until he goes insane and stops thinking.
This is quite likely the biggest lapse into Rule Of Cool (or Artistic License - Physics) for the series. Volcanoes cannot generate such force in the first place, and well really, Joseph's body seemed to have a mind of its own.
Kiai: Dio Brando's "Wryyyyyy!" The most famous version is from the popular flash-movie with it.
In the first two parts everybody, even oneshot characters, had their own.
Kick the Dog: Dio, many times, and sometimes literally. In Part 3 he forces a rich guy (senator) to drive him around Cairo, after killing the guy's driver, regardless of who gets in the way.
Dio: Too slow. Drive on the sidewalk.
senator: But, but there are people there!
Dio: So? Do it.
Hell, Dio's first act upon meeting Jonathan is to kick Danny when he comes over to him.
The running joke is that Araki has some hatred of dogs, since he has a bad habit of violently killing them in the series.
Stardust Crusaders: A dog is dissolved by Yellow Temperance, another dog's head splits open in Death 13's dreamworld, Pet Shop kills two dogs for accidentally wandering around Dio's citadel and eats their eyes out in front of their owner, and Iggy is forced to tears his leg off to survive his battle with Pet Shop and is later torn to shreds by Negative Space Wedgie. The prevalence of dead dogs is practically lampshaded when Jotaro sees a impaled dog, and just thinks "Move on, nothing to see here!"
Diamond is not Crash: Angelo bites off a dog's face.
Stone Ocean: Pucci's stand kills a dog during the final battle.
Steel Ball Run: Magenta Magenta shoots a wolf pup.
Killer Rabbit: After Kars achieves his goal of godhood, the first thing he does is turn his hand into a squirrel, much to the confusion of everyone present. Said squirrel through plows a hole through Stronheim's stomach and rips off another soldier's face.
Last Episode Theme Reprise: The last episode of the anime uses the first theme song, "Sono Chi no Sadame (JoJo)", as Kars is finally defeated.
Laughing Mad: During The Sun arc of Stardust Crusaders, the heroes are trying to figure out the enemy stand when everyone including Jotato but not Joseph starts laughing out loud. Joseph wonders if everyone has gone crazy, but it turns out they had realized how the enemy was hiding and felt it was that much hilarious.
Legacy Character: Each of the protagonists are in some way, shape, or form, related to the Joestar Family, and have a Jo, or in Giorno's case Gio, in their first and last name, making them all the titular JoJo.
Local Reference: Every volume starting with the third one has some reference to Japan or Japanese characters.
A Love to Dismember: A big part of why Kira kills is his fixation on female hands, starting with an erotic fascination with the Mona Lisa's hands. Unfortunately, that love stops at the wrist...
Like a God to Me: Enrico Pucci, as he puts it, loves Dio as he loves God.
Pucci is Italian-American, and in Italian "Dio" means "God". For this reason they mostly call him Diego in Italy.
Long Runner: One of the longest-running manga series in Japan. 104 volumes and still going! (Although it doesn't share the joy of extensive numbering as other manga long runners, the volume account is constantly reset as of Part 5 with 63 Volumes, now each new part begins with Volume 1).
Lost Him in a Card Game: With souls. D'arby's brother Terrence does it with video games. And a running theme.
Further weaponized by the Stand Marilyn Manson in Part 6, which will forcefully take away your stake on a lost bet, and it sees your organs sold on the black market as perfectly legitimate collateral if you can't pay in cash.
MacGuffin Delivery Service: Due to manipulating Axl R.O., Funny Valentine was able to arrange for all but two of the Corpse parts to come together and are now in his possession.
Macho Camp: The series' character design has often been described as "a Glam Rock version of Fist of the North Star". It starts to become really blatant with the Pillar Men, then runs off and never looks back. Later in the series, however, it seems to downplay the "macho" part, and up the camp.
Magical Native American: Devo the Cursed. Of course, that's nothing more than what he wants the world at large to believe. It's not mysticism or sorcery he uses, just his Stand's mechanism for gaining strength. He might end up vulnerable if someone found out how he actually accomplishes all his kills...
Sandman plays with this. His running style is one of the things that got him thrown out of his village; it's based on Western running techniques but modified and practiced to perfection so he can run for indefinite periods of time without ever tiring. His Stand, however, is pretty darn Magical.
Make Sure He's Dead: Dio isn't quite satisfied with sticking Jotaro through with knives and dropping him from over a dozen stories high, so he grabs a policeman's gun and shoots him. Afterward he puts his ear to the ground to listen for Jotaro's heartbeat from a safe distance. Despite hearing nothing, he then decides to behead him with a street sign just to be sure. He fails, as Jotaro used his Stand both to catch the bullet just after it pierced his skin and to temporarily stop his heartbeat.
As we find out in part 3, all Joestars have a star-shaped birthmark on their back. They're JoJos with stars on their bodies.
Subverted by Jolyne's boyfriend. His name is Romeo, but he's the one who framed Jolyne for murder and even got her lawyer to lie to her in order to get her a longer prison sentence with no chance of appeal.
Secco, and Gyro count.
Every story part's subtitle has something to do with either the plot or the main character
Phantom Blood: Vampires, ghouls, blood in itself being a key factor.
Battle Tendency: Joseph's characteristic trend towards getting into fights, especially when he's in over his head. A more accurate translation of the Japanese title is "Tide of Battle", which is also accurate to Joseph's savvy during fights and his ability to read said tide of battle.
Stardust Crusaders: The whole plot is a crusade towards Cairo to save Holly's life.
Diamond Is Unbreakable: More than anything, this is true of Josuke's resolve. The final arc of the story is even named Crazy Diamond Is Unbreakable.
Venteo Aureo: Gold is an ever-present motif connected to Giorno.
Steel Ball Run: Aside from the obvious, Gyro's balls, there's the race.
JoJolion: Ambiguous so far as the story is still picking up steam, but Word Of God is that the "-lion" is a reference to the myth of Pygmalion (Josuke is an artificial human of sorts, being the fusion of two people) and Christian terminology like "evangelion".
Mixand Match Critters: Part 1 has vampire dogs with human heads, Kars and Part 7 has dinosaur horse and dinosaur fleas.
The Mob Boss Is Scarier: During the Stardust Crusaders, this it the main reason why the heroes have so little information on the Big Bad's stand. The most obvious example is Daniel J. D'Arby, who has a mental breakdown after being cornered to spill this information.
Moment Killer: When Jolyne and her Dolphin Prison crew take a breather after the Heavy Weather incident and Weather Report's death, Jolyne ends up falling asleep on Annasui's shoulder. Realizing that he probably won't get another chance, Annasui decides that he's going to properly confess his feelings when she wakes up and quietly slips a ring that he bought for her on her finger to surprise her. He is then immediately cockblocked by, as Hermes likes to call them, "fuckin'◊ alligators.◊"
A more tragic example is Jonathan's Honeymoon coming to a screeching halt when he realizes Dio is still alive and the boat is now doomed.
Mondegreen: Via Memetic Mutation, everybody "knows" Dio's phrase is "Toki wo tomare" (Time stands still). Only via reading the original manga (or setting your system's language to Japanese for the PSN/X360 version) you find out it's actually supposed to be "Toki yo tomare" (Oh time, stand still).
Or you know basic Japanese grammar. "wo" is the object marker, but since "tomaru" is an intransitive verb, it doesn't take an object (The transitive version of the verb would be "tomeru"). Therefore "Toki wo tomare" is already wrong from a grammatical perspective.
Mood Whiplash: Joseph is a master at this, causing a number of comedic moments like this during the otherwise-tense fight with Santana, as well as pretending to be Dio as a prank after he's resurrected in Part 3.
Mundane Utility: Because it takes a strong, fighting spirit to control one's Stand, the vast majority of Stand users throughout the series are psychos, delinquents, and/or heroes. Part 4, however, being more about (relatively) normal people tapping their Stand powers, introduces a chef who only uses his Stand to produce miraculously healthy food and a beautician who uses hers to alter the features of her customers.
Mythology Gag: Mixed in with Fridge Brilliance. Joseph Joestar's stand, Hermit Purple, allows him to use some unique methods of divination. It's basically an expansion of his ability to predict what his opponent will say next.
Joseph: This is the part where you say "No, anything but that!"
The Empress: No, anything but that!...HUH?!
...Or, that prediction ability was due to Hermit Purple being only mostly dormant back in 1939...
The new universe introduced in Steel Ball Run often has small references to the original universe:
Several unseen racers in the Steel Ball Run are named after characters from the original universe.
A little girl's compact in JoJolion resembles the Red Stone of Aja from Battle Tendency.
Never Smile at a Crocodile: Thanks to Sports Max's Stand, Jolyne, Hermes, and Foo Fighters end up having to deal with an invisible alligator zombie - an encounter which cemented their eternal hatred for alligators in general.
Hermes: They think they're so goddamned safe just 'cause they're a protected species. Scared the crap out of us back in prison.
Next Sunday A.D.: Stone Ocean ran from 2000 to 2003 but is set in 2011.
Nice Hat: Baron Zeppeli and, later, Joseph and Jotaro are practically identified by their headgear.
Gyro has one with holes to resemble a cyclist helmet.
Speedwagon likes sporting these. His first one even doubles as a bladed throwing weapon.
Nightmare Dreams: Mannish Boy's Stand, Death 13, whose power is this.
No Export for You: The manga aside from Part 3 for America, one SNES RPG, two beat 'em up games for the PS2 and the Phantom Blood movie for EVERYONE, even Japan!
No Sell: Gold Experience Requiem in a nutshell. All of Giornio's enemies aspects are brought to zero the moment they oppose him.
Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: The gambling Stands Osiris and Marilyn Manson avert this. If a target cheats, they admit that they lost in their heart of hearts, allowing the Stand to take effect whether anyone caught them cheating or not.
Not What It Looks Like: In Part 3 with Joseph and Avdol after they get magnetized to each other. When they try to separate by having Avdol slide himself down to Joseph's feet, but only makes it halfway before they drew a crowd.
In Part 5 with Giorno and Mista where Giorno uses Gold Experience to heal a critically wounded Mista, which was a very painful process. Narancia spotted them, but with Giorno's head blocking the view around Mista's midsection, not to mention how and what he was screaming that could definitely be taken the wrong way, Narancia gets the wrong idea.
The early parts of Part 1 (before Dio became a vampire) had quite a few panels where characters were in anatomically-questionable poses with near-Liefeldian proportions. Probably part of the reason why the author doesn't really like Part 1 very much. Part 2 also has its problems, but at least the poses don't look cripplingly painful.
The 2012 anime has several examples of oddly drawn facial expressions. However, examples from Phantom Blood aren't terrible, and most examples were fixed for home video. The later episodes of Battle Tendency, on the other hand, manage to have some of the best and worst moments in the series. Here are examplesof both◊.
Offhand Backhand: Polnareff with a rapier, when defeating Vanilla Ice.
Older Than They Look: The Vampires go without saying, being anywhere from over 100 to several thousand years old. Jotaro doesn't age physically after Part 3, depite the rest of the series spanning about 30 years in-world time. Also, Hirohiko Araki himself. Apparently, extrapolating from various comments, Stand Users age slower than normal people. He does not look 52 no matter how you slice it◊.
Plus, because he was sick as a child, Narancia looks and acts like the youngest of the group in Part 5, but he's always quick to point out that at 17, he's actually two years older than the main character.
Only Six Faces: A result of the series' Art Evolution. As the character designs became more outlandish, newer parts have come to be much more reliant on using costumes and hairstyles to distinguish between different characters, while the faces on the other hand are extremely similar to the point that it can be very difficult to tell the difference between males and females at times. In contrast, older parts featured much more simplistic clothing and focused much more on differences in facial features such as eye, nose, and head shapes to differentiate between the characters.
Here's◊ a drawing of all the protagonists through Steel Ball Run. The second guy from the left is supposed to be Jonathan◊ (wearing the iconic scarf of Joseph's, to complicate matters) and not Josuke◊, by the way.
First of all, you had a proud warrior race horned humanoids without a name who lived in South America. They reproduced sexually but infrequently, were immortal, and fed by absorbing other living creatures into their bodies. They could also contort and shapeshift their bodies to make weapons or move in agile ways. But they were temporarily turned to stone by sunlight. In order to conquer this weakness, one of them created the Stone Mask, which was supposed to alter their brain chemistry to allow them to live in sunlight. That didn't work, but if used on humans, it did turn them into:
Vampires, the run of the mill kind. Well, except for the fact that JoJo's vampires can shoot rock-smashing water pressure through their eyes, freeze things on touch, and suck blood with their fingers. They can only be killed by severe blunt trauma to the head (decapitation only leaves a living head that will usually re-attach itself to its body, but is fully capable of taking someone else's body if necessary) or direct sunlight, which disintegrates them. They are able to recover almost instantly from anything else up to and including almost being bisected and being blown to shreds by grenades. They feed on humans but were fed on by the above race. Always Chaotic Evil. Vampires can make humans vampires by giving them their blood (which Dio does to Vanilla Ice), and humans fed on by vampires become:
Zombies: fanged rotting undead corpses that feed on blood and flesh, still vulnerable to sunlight and somewhat weak. Always Chaotic Evil, ugly, and dumb as bricks.
All of the above are also fortunately vulnerable to both Hamon and (presumably) Stands.
Our Zombies Are Different: Sports Max's Limp Bizkit. Not only does it bring back the dead as zombies, they also become INVISIBLE.
Parental Abandonment: The main protagonist of each arc seems to be missing one or both of their parents. Although in some cases, like Giorno and Trish, this was probably for the best considering who their dads were.
Not exactly true... While in Arc 4, although he grew up without his father ( Joseph), he still has both parents and meets him within the series.
Parental Marriage Veto: Annasui probably shouldn't have asked Jotaro for permission to marry his daughter on the brink of the apocalypse.
Jotaro: Are you insane?
Pet the Dog: Kars, who is to vampires what vampires are to humans, slaughters a bunch of people driving past who were going to run over a puppy, making this both a dog-petting and a dog-kicking.
Pistol Whipping: Machine gun ran out of ammo, but the bad guy isn't dead yet? Joseph Joestar provides a simple solution◊.
The Power of the Sun: The Ripple uses energy from the sun's rays to vaporise objects, make objects more volatile and destroy vampires.
Prehensile Hair: Yukako, through her Stand, Love Deluxe. All vampires can do this.
Product Placement: In part 6 Jolyne get's attacked by a Pepsi and the word "pepsi" is passed around 8-9 times.
Joseph using a Coca-Cola bottle cap to smash a corrupt cop's finger in Part 2.
Psychic Powers: Stands, which can have pretty damn crazy abilities at times. It's not just humans who can have them either; Iggy, a dog, faces off against Dio's pet falcon Pet Shop. Other stand users include a rat (who can melt organic tissue), an orangutan (with telekinetic control over every single piece of a boat) and a cat that died and grew into a flower (who can use the air to fire "bullets"). Araki's insane.
Pummel Duel: Kujo Jotaro versus Dio Brando, in the famous ending to Part 3.
Puzzle Boss: The very first big fight scene featured Johnathan and Speedwagon trying to figure out what could kill a seemingly-immortal vampire, and Part 2 had (among other things) an extended battle consisting of nothing but two men atop stone columns, thinking of no fewer than four different ways to outflank each other with telekinetic string. The introduction of Stands turned many fights into these, especially once some of the more esoteric Stand abilities were introduced.
Rapid Fire Fisticuffs: Star Platinum, The World, Crazy Diamond, Gold Experience, Sticky Fingers, and Stone Free.
Really 700 Years Old: Vampires and anyone with a Stand or the "Ripple" kung-fu teachings has a greatly extended lifespan. Jotaro actually seems to appear younger as the series progresses.
And the mangaka himself, Hirohiko Araki, actually looks younger now than he did when the series began in 1987.
Real Song Theme Tune: The 1971 song "Roundabout" by British band Yes was chosen to be used as the ending theme of the 2012 anime adaptation.
Red Herring: During Part 3, Joesph uses his Stand to try and get info from Dio, only to get a message that Kakyoin is a traitor. While they believe it at first, it eventually turns out that the Kakyoin in question was actually one of Dio's Stand users impersonating him.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Gyro and Johnny have this kind of relationship in Steel Ball Run. But it's more complicated than that; Gyro is the much more prideful and headstrong one, but he also is more worldly in some respects. In terms of understanding people and what they have in mind, however, Johnny is leagues beyond Gyro.
This isn't the first time a Joestar and Zeppeli have had this relationship either. See also the second series.
Red Right Hand: J. Geil and his mother Enya Geil in Part 3. Both have two right hands. Both are not nice people.
Red Shirt: Don't work for the Speedwagon Foundation if you're interested in any kind of life expectancy.
The stands Cheap Trick and Notorious B.I.G. were impossible to destroy because their users were dead
Retcon: In the anime, Joseph's birthmark can be seen in Part II. The concept of the Joestar birthmark was only introduced in Part III of manga.
Ret Gone: This was the fate of Jotaro and Jolyne — and, presumably, Weather, Hermes, Annasui, and Versace — when Pucci accelerates time and resets reality. This is because you only get to stick around if your spirit is still there. Dead = no spirit to exist for any time in the new universe = causality/history altering to compensate for that. However, when Pucci is killed, the reset effect snaps back, and all his victims are restored, albeit in slightly different forms. Probably because reality has to take into account the fact that Pucci has been hit with Ret Gone now.
Revive Kills Zombie: The Ripple was as bad as sun for vampires, but when Zeppeli first learned about it, it was used for medicinal purposes in normal humans. Also, the Ripple can make plants grow.
Ironically, as Joseph shows, it's just as effective on humans as it is vampires. With the exception that humans are only injured as opposed to being completely destroyed.
To clarify, depending on the intensity of the Ripple and the experience and animosity of the user, and everyone's own strenght, its effect on humans can vary from nothing to healing, controlling their bodies, causing internal damage, and melting flesh. For vampires, it causes partial or total destruction.
Rock-Paper-Scissors: The Stand Boyz II Men, which leads to an insanely epic game. Were you to remove the dialogue, you'd think an climactic battle was going on. Even with the text, it still was.
Running Gag: Joseph being unable to successfully land a plane and Polnareff's fear of foreign toilets.
Heck, whenever a Joestar gets into a flying vehicle, it's never a smooth trip. What with Josef, Jotaro and Giorno's airplanes, and Jolyne's helicopter...
The secret Joestar technique to run away.
Say My Name: "CAEEEEEESAAAAAR!" Yeah, Part-2-era Joseph likes doing this.
Scenery Porn: Carries over especially well in the anime.
Joseph: I can't believe you found a tailor in Pakistan to make you a new school uniform.
Seinfeldian Conversation: Despite being arguably the most battle-centric arc, it shows up a few times in Part 5. Whenever Buccellati's group stops to eat, Mista invariably leads them into an odd conversation, with such topics as how hardcore vegetarians are and how Narancia would be the tastiest of the group to eat.
In Steel Ball Run, for another example, Johnny suggests that he and Gyro take a moment to think about how they're going to cross the Mississippi River. Gyro then interrupts to share the totally awesome song about cheese he just came up with. Johnny is, naturally, incredibly amazed by his friend's talent.
Send in the Clones: Funny Valentine's Stand power makes him practically immortal, since when he dies a parallel version of himself is brought in to take his place and gets all his memories too.
The series goes through this, as it brings a whole new level of "over-the-top" with every succeeding part, no, chapter. Vampires can do stuff like shoot "Eye Beams" made of their vitreous humor? How about supervampires who can sprout Killer Rabbits from their skin? Dogs and birds with superpowers? Pfft! Try plankton! Jotaro has superspeed punches and can stop time? Well, Giorno can Retcon any action taken against him and make his opponent experience death...forever.
If the manga is bizarre, then the Jorge Joestar novel is completely insane and keeps getting crazier. There's more than one utterly impossible Villain Team Up. The entire landmass of Morioh sprouts legs and starts walking around. The holy corpse from Steel Ball Run was the original Dio's body, not Jesus's. There have actually been several universal reboots, not just the one between parts 6 and 7—and actually, they're limited to Earth, and in most of them, the basic plot of part 2 happens, so there are 36 different versions of Kars living on Mars together.
Serial Killer: Yoshikage Kira, the Big Bad of Part 4, whose Stand Killer Queen makes him that much harder to track down, since he can easily dispose of bodies without leaving a trace behind.
Sherlock Scan: Joseph does this to his enemies, along with predicting exactly what his foe is going to say next, which catches them completely off guard.
Shoot the Shaggy Dog: A lot of people's reaction to the ending of Part 6. It didn't just make THAT Chapter completely pointless, but it made every OTHER Chapter before it completely pointless too! Yes, even despite the fact the Big Bad ended up dying in the end anyway.
Simultaneous Arcs: The Jorge Joestar novel alternates between two plots: the lives and courtship of Jorge and Lisa Lisa, and a really, really weird story about...something. See Serial Escalation above to get an idea. The two plot threads eventually meet (somehow) with a Zombie Apocalypse at Jorge and Lisa Lisa's wedding.
Spam Attack: "ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORAAAAAAAA!" "MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDAAAAAAA!" Though, frankly, every humanoid Stand can do this to some extent.
Spell My Name with an S: Along with the usual problems, many characters aren't directly named after something despite fans generally preferring to spell it that way. For example, while he's named after Wham!, he's officially Wamuu, not Wham; while he's named after Dire Straits, it's Straizo, not Straits.
Spit Take: In part 3, when the heroes are drinking poisoned tea and it advances the plot.
The first opening of the TV anime summarizes Phantom Blood in its entirety while omitting major character deaths.
The opening for part two subtly alludes to Caesar's death and Joseph's eventual Stand. If you pay enough attention you can see Kars standing before the rising sun.
The Stinger : In the anime, during the credits for Battle Tendency and the first 26 episodes in general, we see Dio's Coffin being raised in 1983 and Jotaro Kujo sitting in his jail cell, setting up the beginning of Stardust Crusaders.
Symbolic Blood: When Joseph takes a bad hit during his fight with Esidisi, Lisa Lisa's glass of red wine cracks and leaks all over her tablecloth on another part of the island.
Synchronization: Any damage done to the Stand is inflicted upon its wielder, and vice-versa. Of course, since Stands as essentially a projection of the wielder's mind and personality, you technically ARE hitting them when you hit their Stand.
Taking You with Me: This is the specific purpose of a few Stands. Notorious B.I.G. in Part Five can only be activated upon its user's death, at which point it becomes an indestructible Body HorrorDeterminator. Stone Ocean has a more direct example in Highway to Hell. Its user has extreme suicidal tendencies, and whenever he attempts to kill himself, the exact same trauma will be experienced by the Stand's target.
Talk to the Fist: Jotaro interrupts Dio when he's about to use his Stand by socking him in the face so hard he's sent flying into a car.
Talking Is a Free Action: "You may not realize it yet, but you've just lost to Dio in this game of wits. Does this street look familiar to you, or, being the tourist that you are, do all streets look the same?" All said while flying backwards through the street at a ludicrous speed.
There's also Polnareff having almost an entire paragraph's worth of inner monologue as a bullet is flying at him.
Tangled Family Tree: All thanks to DioBrando and JosephJoestar. Jotaro Kujo is just about the only man to have four great-grand-uncles that are half his age - And all with two biological fathers, no less.
At the Beginning of part 4 Jotaro even lampshades how crazy it sounds to Josuke when he tells him that officially he is his Nephew even with the 12 year difference of age.
Tarot Motifs: At first the Stands in Part 3 were all named after the major arcana. The Stands were faithful to the card meaning except Ebony Devil (impure instinct) and Hanged Man (self-sacrifice) seem to be switched.
Musical Theme Naming: With the exception of those from Vento Aureo and Stone Ocean, nearly all characters in the series are some kind of reference to a band or song. This also applies to Stands from Diamond is not Crash onward.
In Stardust Crusaders, the first 22 stands introduced are all named after the major arcana of the tarot. Dio's nine Egyptian agents, meanwhile, have Stands named after Egyptian deities.
Edible Theme Naming: Many characters in Vento Aureo are named after Italian foods. Examples include Pannacotta Fugo, Abbacchio Leone, Risotto Nero, Melone, Cioccolata, Gelato, Sorbet, Prosciutto, Pesci, Formaggio, and Mario Zucchero.
Characters in Stone Ocean are named after various fashion designers or clothing brands.
All the women of the Higashikata family in JoJolion, including Mitsuba, who married into it, are named after the four playing card suits.
Third-Person Person: Dio in the English dub of the OVA. He takes it to new heights: he refers to himself in the first person, then the third person ("I, Dio").
This is probably a result of the difficulty involved in translating egotistical Japanese third-person business. Calling oneself 'kono -your name here-' is putting on the ritz; appending -sama to your name is just being a giant blowhard. Dio, it seems, does both, hence his translated pronoun quirk.
Time Master: All the Big Bads from parts three through six can manipulate the flow of time in some fashion.
Time Stands Still: Memorably, both Dio's The World (ZA WARUDO!) and Jotaro's Star Platinum have this ability, although Dio can only stop time for a few seconds at first. It's mentioned that if he hadn't been beaten, he eventually would've been able to stop time for as long as he wanted.
Those Wacky Nazis: Stroheim and his group. Keep in mind, they're good guys (at least temporarily) in Part 2, helping to defeat the Pillar Men for the sake of the world. GERMAN SCIENCE!!
Tongue Tied: The Talking Heads stand has this as its power. Crosses with Can Not Spit It Out as Narancia desperately tries to figure out a way to circumvent its ability and warn the others about a different enemy Stand.
Training from Hell: Sometimes you feel sorry for the main characters when you see how they're taught. In Series 2, Joseph Joestar had to climb up a tower with his bare hands, while said tower gushed oil (more like vegetable oil than crude oil) from the top, making it too slick for a normal person to even attempt climbing. Joseph Joestar does it with his fingertips, though it takes him 'four consecutive days'.
Translation Convention: Near-constant. English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, French, Hindi, Arabic, and others are all presented as Japanese—hardly surprising when, on the whole, very little of the series is actually set in Japan. Possibly lampshaded when Koichi speaks to Giorno in plain Japanese at one point, and Giorno responds by telling him his Italian isn't bad.
Chapter 2 of part 7 has a disclaimer that says that all U.S. customary units will be converted to metric and currency amounts will be inflated to modern standards. Also, Sandman can apparently write Japanese.
Translation Train Wreck: While the entire series so far has been fan-translated to English, quality translations for parts four and five are still in progress. The only available complete translations are beyond terrible, featuring untranslated text, sentences that don't begin with capital letters, and screwups like calling Morioh "Duwang" because that's the Chinese reading of the characters.
Truth in Television: Sandman. Yes, there were Indians who could run as fast as a horse. The beggar in Part 3 with a Mercedes is Rippedfromthe Headlines (of the time) as is Mista's back story.
Turn Out Like His Father: After George is killed and Lisa Lisa is sent on the run for taking down his killer, Erina decides that it would be best to tell Joseph that both of his parents are dead, lest he follow in their footsteps.
Someone to Remember Him By: Dio kills Jonathan, but not before Jonathan can father a son with his newly wedded wife, Erina
Unexpected Character: Nobody thought Midler would show up in the fighting game (see The Faceless for why). Young Joseph (called "JoJo") was also a bit of a surprise.
The Unfavorite: Johnny had this unfortunate problem in Steel Ball Run with his brother Nicholas. The fact that Johnny indirectly killed Nicholas by not killing a pet rat that would go on to startle his horse makes it all the more heart-wrenching.
Unorthodox Reload: Mista's hat bullets, though he reloads the normal way as well.
Unsettling Gender Reveal: A number of times in the series. Most blatant with Annasui in Stone Ocean, since he actually was a woman in his first appearance but was retconned into a man for his second. Then inverted in Steel Ball Run with Hot Pants, who we find out is a woman when Johnny treats her wounds.
Unsound Effect: The Stand Echoes has this as its power. Write kaboom, and something will explode. Put zoom on something, it will go fast.
In its first stage it actually just makes the sound continually blare inside your head if it's written on you, until you pass out or go insane...or shrink five feet. And in the third stage it gives Koichi Super Saiyan hair and the ability to put a gravity well on anything by saying "Freeze"; this can apply to anything from a person's hand to a car.
Sandman from part 7, real name Soundman, has something similar.
Utopia Justifies the Means: This is Enrico Pucci's motivation in part 6. His plan involves using the fusion of his Stand and a homonculus of Dio to accelerate time to the point where the cosmos undergoes both a Big Crunch and a Big Bang, and everything repeats as before, just without anyone who died during the acceleration. The utopia is supposed to come from the fact that those who got to live through the singularity will subconsciously remember everything that ever happened to them in the previous, identical cycle. This means that they will be imbued with a kind of fatalism, immensely dampening any shock, horror, agony, etc. that they would otherwise experience. Basically, Pucci's idea of "paradise" is "a world without surprises".
Viewers Are Geniuses: Araki likes to give in-depth explanations about the biology and physics behind certain abilities and stands, despite the fact that most of the readers won't understand it. Half of the physics in the series are complete bullshit anyway.
And then there's all of the religious symbolism and imagery that's been popping up in Steel Ball Run lately. Though having shifted demographics and being a seinen now, it's a lot more likely to be picked up on by readers.
In Steel Ball Run it is just turned to astronomical levels. The explanation of the first use of the Spin, put on top of criminals for execution is not true. The weight was put there so the dead could not be turned into vampires, as an old superstition. Best misleading ever. Just to understand the Spin is a whole problem in itself.
Villain Pedigree: Vampires are quickly replaced by Pillar Men, who are quickly replaced by Stand users.
Likely the reason the concept of stands was introduced in the first place was that the Big Bad of Battle Tendency was the paragon of the physical world, so Araki seemed to hit a dead-end there, and thus the series emerges into the psychic age. So possibly a subversion.
There was also the fact that he said he basically did everything interesting he could with the Ripple in Part 2, so he needed to move on to a new type of enemy that allowed his protagonists to defeat them differently.
Similarly, the change from the Ripple to Stands was out of necessity. At the time, both Dragonball and Yu Yu Hakusho were running in Shonen Jump, and while Jojo was more in the vein of Fist of the North Star (which already finished), it was still similar enough, and was behind both of them in popularity. Stands brought something fresh and new to the manga, and differentiated it from its peers.
The Virus: Dr. Ferdinand's Scary Monsters Stand, which turns its victims into dinosaurs.
We Need a Distraction: Speedwagon realizes early on that he can't fight vampires and zombies directly, so he serves as a distraction for others, even nicknaming himself "The Interfering Speedwagon".
Weaponized Teleportation: Several Stands (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, etc.) can teleport between or instantaneously travel through things like electrical currents or water. Oftentimes, they use this offensively by dragging their opponent along for the ride.
Played straight with Survivor, Cheap Trick, and Superfly, however. Dio himself derides the former as a useless Stand because it's always on, cannot select its targets, and is woefully restrictive in what it does. It makes people fight each other, and relays to them their opponents' weakest points. That's it. It can play off of aggression, but it won't make people fight if they don't have much animosity. Its user didn't even fight, and got quite a large bridge dropped on him, while the last two only exist to kill/completely screw over the users.
To clarify, Cheap Trick kills its user if someone sees his back and goes to the person who saw it. It also tries to get people to see the back of the current "user". Superfly "protects" its user by keeping him contained in its tower.
What Measure Is A Nonhuman: Averted with any non-human members of the protagonists' True Companions, and even their enemies are largely treated the same as their human foes. In Stone Ocean, Foo Fighters (a Stand composed of pond algae) is even given a Heel Face Turn and joins the core group.
Widget Series: Even before orangutans, dogs, swords, turtles, and plankton were allowed to be bestowed psychic powers, the series was just plain weird. What makes the series even weirder however, is that in most manga with sentient plankton, and glamorous Nazi-squirrel spawning vampire gods, it is at least lampshaded on how utterly bizarre these situations are. In this case, however, no one even bats an eye, and it's played 100% seriously.
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The average Stand makes you untouchable by non-Stand users; ordinary people can't even see your Stand, much less do anything about it. This allows you to do pretty much whatever you want whenever you want to whomever you want. This is hinted now and then to be a big reason why so many of the evil Stand users are so Ax Crazy.
World of Badass: By part 3, it's practically invoked as a law. Stand Users seem to be drawn together by fate. So if you're one, chances are your daily life will generally involve badasses.
World of Ham: Why talk when you can SHOUT!? Why stand when you can POSE!? Why walk when you can LEAP!?
Worthy Opponent: Subverted in Part 2. Kars tells Lisa Lisa that he will give her a fair fight to honor the memory of Wamuu and Esidisi... only to disguise a mook as himself during their "fight" and stab her while she was distracted. He then tells her that he wanted the Red Stone of Aja, which she had on her person, enough to not take the chances his dead companions had.
Wamuu, Kars' dragon, plays it completely straight just before, though. He even provides the page image.
Writing Around Trademarks: The English translation of the arcade game is loaded with this, as many of the bad guys have their names romanized differently to avoid copyright infringement (Devo becoming D'bo and Vanilla Ice becoming Iced, for instance).
Araki not letting it happen a second time is why the Vento Aureo game was not released stateside, despite Capcom's every intention to do so.
The anime primarily doesn't have to (or at least wouldn't in the US) do this because it's funded by Time-Warner, whose music label owns the right to the majority of artists referenced.
Written Sound Effect: Araki takes this trope very seriously. Very notable written sound effects are one of the notable traits of his style and he considers them an integral part of his artwork. As a result, they have shown up in all of the video games and the 2012 anime.
Example: Memetaa◊, the sound of a frog being punched
Written Roar: Like it needs to be said at this point?
WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!
Wrongly Accused: Well technically Lisa Lisadid kill that high-ranking British officer she's accused of murdering - It's just that she was the only one who knew he was secretly a bloodsucking undead monster.
Xanatos Roulette: The end of part 2. Technically it was all coincidence, but that didn't stop Joseph from taking credit for it and saying he planned it all along.
One example of her crazy love is when she discovers that the one she loves (Koichi) isn't exactly an upstanding individual. Of course, this was a plot set up by Koichi's friends in order to make her stop liking him. This fails, however, because it instead makes her kidnap him in order to make him the perfect man. Then it got worse....
Daiya Higashikata from Part 8 seems to be yandere as well, seeing as she steals her new brother Josuke's memories because she wanted to share his experiences and be with him forever.
Years Too Early: In part 2, while preparing a coup de grace against Kars, Joseph tells him that he may be thousands of years old, but he's still ten years too early to beat Joseph's wits.
You Can't Fight Fate: Surprisingly a case in this series. Pucci thought Stairway To Heaven would give him the power to Screw Destiny and control everyone else, but that's disproven when Emporio kills him. Boingo's Stand seemingly would enable him take advantage of it to defeat Jotaro and company, but due to a Prophecy Twist that tanked and he attributed it to Jotaro being favored by destiny.
There's a prequel chapter at the end of part five as well, which retroactively predicts Bucciarati's death.
Boingo was correct in saying that his stand is never wrong, no matter what the prediction is. It just never tells you the whole story.
Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The fan translation of the anime by gg gives the Dark Knights Tarukus and Bruford this.
Clarification: According to Bruno, sweat tastes sweeter when the person sweating is nervous, indicating they're hiding something. While he was correct in that instance, licking the person's face probably doesn't help them keep their cool.
.There is a Character Sheet for each of the parts, so post character tropes there.
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