Unmarked spoilers ahead!
Not all the antagonists here can be sympathetic...
- The art for Steel Ball Run is beautifully detailed. That also makes the copious gore (remember that this is when Jojo transitioned from shounen to seinen) even more unnerving. Especially when a steel ball meets a (deserving, but still) face and all the chunks of skull and teeth come flying off, maybe with an eyeball as well.
- The whole process of fusing with the corpse parts of the Saint is pretty unnerving.
- Lucy actually had to carry the Saint's corpse in her womb. This creates a new Stand ability, but the process of the corpse parts fusing together inside of her cause the entire surface of her body to painfully turn into polygonal pieces of glass. All while the corpse absorbs her life energy, she's brought into a state of paralyzing exhaustion, and then, near-death.
- The first use of Gyro's steel balls literally twists a pickpocket's arm with the gun pointed at his head and then he kills himself by accident. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!
- The fellow with the cross-hatching on his face in the page picture is Oyecomova. A Western Terrorist (specifically, an anti-monarchist from the Kingdom of Naples), his Stand, Boku no Rhythm wo Kiitekure ("Listen to My Rhythm") lets him attach little clock-shaped pins to anything he touches. If the pins are so much as lightly jostled, they come flying off... and then whatever they were attached to explodes. The only way to keep them in place is to hold them down with physical pressure. Easy when they're attached to a tree; a tad harder when they're attached to cigarette smoke or the surface of a river.
- The Stand Scary Monsters very much earns its name. It transmutes things or people into dinosaurs. Depending on who, it can leave the user (in human form) with crackling skin, an ear-to-ear Glasgow Grin and primal behavior (such as cooing and swallowing rocks).
- In the chapter introducing the second user of Scary Monsters, Johnny and Gyro take shelter in a house. They notice flies getting through the window, they look outside only to find a surprise on the porch: the body of a dead animal. But it's not just any critter, it's an adult bear carved wide open.
- In one scene, the affected user, Diego Brando, attempts to hide the gaps on the sides of his mouth with bandages, but as soon he drinks coffee, it starts leaking from the sides.
- Same scene. Diego Brando swallows rocks whole at night in a corner outside while a terrified Johnny Joestar watches helplessly through the window. Diego suddenly stops and abruptly turns his head almost on 180 degrees, and then, silently looks at the reader right into the eyes.
- The final fate of Magenta Magenta. In a callback to Kars and Anubis' fates, he ends up trapped at the bottom of the Delaware River with his Stand still activated, waiting for Diego or anyone else to rescue him. But no one comes for him. Eventually, his mind shuts down altogether after waiting for so long.
- Mike O. would seriously give Pennywise a run for his money in terms of making balloons terrifying. See, his Stand, Tubular Bells, lets him make balloon animals from metal objects such as needles, nails, and tin shutters, which then go after the target whose scent they picked up, forcefully burrow into their body, and eviscerate them from the inside out. His arc is easily the goriest in all of Steel Ball Run, and possibly in all of Jojo period.
- Really, though, you should expect a Stand's powers to be dangerous when it's named after the theme song from one of the scariest horror films of all time.
- Ringo's backstory. His entire family was killed in one night while he was sleeping and the same killer tried to rape him and make him his "son".
- President Valentine very nearly raped Lucy, and the only thing that stopped him was Lucy having Hot Pants' spray handy.
- Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (D4C), Funny Valentine's Stand. It has the ability to travel to parallel worlds, and bring people back to and from them. If two alternate universe selves meet (except Funny Valentine himself), then they fuse together, collapse into Menger Sponges, and cease to exist. This happened to Wekapipo.
- Axl R.O.'s Stand, Civil War, in Steel Ball Run's Chapters 56 and 57, which attacks by manifesting the guilt and sacrifices made by the opponent and fusing with their bodies. Hot Pants and the body of her deceased younger brother, Johnny and 'Danny', etc.
- Not long after Diego's death, Funny Valentine uses D4C to summon an alternate version as backup in case he dies during his fight with Johnny and Gyro. What makes this Nightmare Fuel? Oh, just the fact that not only is this one closer to DIO in terms of personality, being an outright murderous sociopath that isn't above dirty tricks, but he has his same Stand. That's right, The World makes a comeback, even using the same Checkmate combo against Johnny. It's lucky Tusk Act 4 was, by that time, able to move in the stopped time, otherwise Dio may well have killed Johnny.
