Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure / Tropes E to F

Tropes for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Tropes A to B (Adaptation Dye-Job) | Tropes C to D (Dub Name Change) | Tropes E To F (Evolving Credits | Famous Last Words) | Tropes G to K (Hate Sink | Heart Is An Awesome Power | Hoist By His Own Petard | Jerkass) | Tropes L to O (Logical Weakness | Nice Guy) | Tropes P to T (Shout-Out | Story-Breaker Power) | Tropes U to Z

E

• Ear Ache: Some of the many injuries sustained in the manga.
• 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.
  • A young Holly can be seen among the close friends and family at Erina's deathbed in the anime epilogue for Battle Tendency.
  • The Stand-granting Arrow's silhouette appears in the first Stardust Crusaders ED.
  • We get a literal example in Polnareff's first encounter with DIO in Stardust Crusaders. In the manga, DIO carries a parrot on his shoulder, while the anime adaptation changes it to Pet Shop, who'd only be introduced later in the arc.
  • In the first episode of Diamond is Unbreakable, random bystanders to the convenience store hostage situation were changed to Toshikazu Hazamada, Keicho and Okuyasu Nijimura,◊ Yukako Yamagishi, and Rohan Kishibe. Josuke and Koichi won't meet any of them until later on.
    • The cold open of the whole Diamond is Unbreakable anime is a woman cooking breakfast, only to later zoom out and reveal that the woman's hand is actually severed just below the elbow and still bleeding out. It will be another 17 episodes before the plot involving Yoshikage Kira as a serial killer who keeps his victims' hands as trophies is even mentioned.
  • The Diamond is Unbreakable episode with Surface (Show Off) shows an issue of Shonen Jump with Pink Dark Boy on the cover in Hazamada's locker, foreshadowing Hazamada and Koichi meeting its creator, Rohan Kishibe, later on. There's also a brief shot of Yukako again, smiling lovingly at Koichi. Her crush on him forms the next plotline.
  • Another from the Part 4 anime: In episode 13, when Akira Otoishi drains all of the electrical power in Morioh, Yoshikage Kira can be seen from the back, waiting to cross the street◊. Episode 1 begins (and episode 13 ends) with shots of Kira picking up his "girlfriends".
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The series is most famous for the Stands' odd superpowers leading to unusual, creative fights. However, Stardust Crusaders, the part that introduces Stands, features fairly typical, battle-oriented abilities like fire manipulation or super-strength. As Stardust Crusaders wears on, abilities become more unique, but it wasn't until Diamond Is Unbreakable where everyone had really weird, really specific powers that required creative use. More importantly, Stands didn't exist at all in the first two parts, where combat was based on a rather one-size-fits-all martial art named Hamon.
  • Characters have always had Musical Theme Naming, but that wasn't the case for Stands until Diamond is Unbreakable. In Stardust Crusaders, they're named after tarot cards and Egyptian deities.^note The one exception to this is Vanilla Ice's Stand, Cream, which wasn't given a name until a few years after Stardust Crusaders ended. Their names also tended to have some degree of relevance to the character's personality or their Stand's abilities, which was dropped for the most part when they started being named after music references. Similarly, while character names always had the musical theme, they at least tried to modify their names from their inspiration, e.g. Zeppeli's name invoking Led Zeppelin without him actually being called "Led Zeppelin", or the Pillar Men having slightly-misspelled names of the bands they took their names from. Later parts just straight-up use the names of bands and songs like "Vanilla Ice" or "Funny Valentine", forcing translations to step in for copyright purposes.
  • The dubs of the 2012 adaptations of Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency utilized the correct European accents for the characters. This was dropped in Stardust Crusaders, because the actors had a much easier time using their native American accents, especially since by that point they were for the most part no longer voicing characters who actually would be speaking English.
  • Jonathan stands out in stark contrast to later Joestars as a straightforward All-Loving Hero with a just-as-straightforward fighting style focused on physical strength enhanced by Hamon. Later JoJos are Anti-Heroes with rebellious attitudes and mean streaks, and tend to have less orthodox ways of taking out threats - even Joseph, the only other Joestar to use Hamon, uses it in far more creative ways than Jonathan did. Dio Brando likewise stands out among later villains, as he's revealed both as a character and as the Big Bad right from the start, whereas later parts reveal their villains much later, with Part 4 and on usually having even finding who the villain is as a major plot point.
  • Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency are period pieces, published in the early 1980s but taking place in respectively the 1880s and 1939. Stardust Crusaders onward would go for 20 Minutes into the Future settings instead, save for Steel Ball Run, a Continuity Reboot that went back to the 1890s.
  • Stands were originally stated to come from breath control, likely as a way to ease readers into the idea by introducing it as a new form of Hamon, which was quickly dropped. Similarly is the idea that they require a certain level of "fighting spirit", which was used as the excuse for why Holly's was killing her, but which was also dropped even faster with several later characters having Stands despite being weak-willed cowards and even babies, leaving little more than the implication that the unnatural manifestation has something to do with it.
  • Early Stands tend to display a wide variety of abilities and attacks, often with distinct names to be called when using them, as well as cases of New Powers as the Plot Demands, including Star Platinum being able to inhale large quantities of air or extend its fingers at high speeds to damage enemies, or Kakyoin and Polnareff shrinking their Stands down to microscopic size to take out a similarly-sized Stand inside Joseph's brain. Later Stands, in turn, have a single ability without any specific name and concrete limitations established from the start, requiring more creative uses of that one ability, and no ability to change size outside of that being a specific part of their Stand's power.
  • The first three Parts gave characters a detailed, buff look more reminiscent of Fist of the North Star, which continued partway through Part 4 before the series' most major Art Shift took place, giving characters a slimmer bishonen look.
  • Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency are noticeably shorter in length compared to later Parts: their mangas came out to respectively 44 and 69 chapters, and the anime adaptation managed to fit both into a single season of 26 episodes, the first 9 for Part 1 and the other 17 for Part 2. Parts 3 through 6 ran for an average of 150 chapters each, and each got dedicated seasons for themselves, Stardust Crusaders running for 48 episodes and Diamond is Unbreakable on each getting 38 or 39.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: It took six parts, 150 years, multiple generations, many many deaths, and the resetting of the universe, but the Joestar family finally got rid of Dio's influence.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Koichi gets along with some of his old opponents, such as Tamami, Hazamada and Yukako.
  • That Speedwagon was originally a violent criminal, more than happy to murder Jonathan in the process of robbing him, is never brought up afterwards.
• Eldritch Location: Features more prominently in Steel Ball Run and JoJolion. In the former, "The Devil's Claw" is a roving, nightmarish region of the Arizona Desert that traps people until they either die or leave as Stand users, and in the latter, the town of Morioh has "Shake Down Road" and the "Wall Eyes", both with unusual properties.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Hol Horse is forced to team up with Jotaro's party when Enya comes gunning for him.
  • And before that, Joseph teaming up with Stroheim and his associates to defeat the Pillar Men.
• 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).
• Establishing Character Moment: Each JoJo gets one:
  • Jonathan jumps to help a young lady being bullied by kids taller and stronger than him because it's what a gentleman does.
  • Joseph asks two Dirty Cops to let a victimized black kid go, even if said kid stole his wallet, and when provoked, violently beats the cops.
  • Jotaro is introduced in a jail cell, telling his mother to shut up, while explaining he purposefully locked himself away because he doesn't want anyone to get hurt by the "evil spirit" haunting him.
  • Josuke is first seen being bullied but calmly tolerating the thugs, but beats one of them when he insults his hair.
  • Giorno tries to steal Koichi's luggage, but when Koichi uses his Stand, Giorno calmly reverses the situation by using his own Stand and gets away.
  • Jolyne is introduced in a cell complaining that someone saw her masturbate.
  • Johnny witness Gyro Zeppeli's duel and without a care, touches the Steel Balls.
  • "Josuke" wakes up and asks Yasuho who he is, then fiercely retaliates against Joshu, who pushed Yasuho aside and attempted to smash in Josuke's head with a rock.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Jotaro may be a violent delinquent, but his whole quest in Part 3 is one to save his mother from DIO's power.
  • 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 his father's death. Most likely not the reason behind this, but this fact in particular makes you wonder if it even matters.
• Every Episode Ending: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's trademark leftward "To be continued" arrow concludes every chapter and episode of the series. This tradition started in the manga at the end of the Death 13 arc in Stardust Crusaders.
• Evil Gloating: Evil characters like to gloat when they are in a position of power.
  • DIO describes being fully synchronized to Jonathan's body and regaining his full strength as "the greatest high" and sees that he almost feels like singing.
  • Kars fully enjoys describing the sun and his position as the strongest being on Earth after using the Stone Mask on himself.
  • Kira gloats about how he has luck on his side, saying his full name in public. Then Josuke surprises him...
  • More down-to-earth than most, but Pucci, after killing everyone but Emporio and cornering him in Green Dolphin Street Prison, still takes the time to expose his motivation and how his plan works to the helpless Emporio.
  • Valentine confidently dares Johnny to use his last Steel Ball and nails, knowing that he cannot use the Super Spin without a horse.
• Evil Is Hammy: Evil characters are way hammier in general than the heroes.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Quite a few villains fit into this trope.
  • Dio Brando is probably the best known example. Nearly every single piece of media he's in consistently depicts him as having a deep, smooth voice (which is rather fitting given his physique and personality). His voice actors include Takehito Koyasu, Isshin Chiba, and Norio Wakamoto in Japanese, and Patrick Seitz in English.
  • Wamuu and Santana in Battle Tendency.
  • Captain Tennille, Daniel J. D'Arby, and Vanilla Ice in Stardust Crusaders.
  • Diavolo, Polpo, Prosciutto, and Risotto Nero in Golden Wind.
• Evolving Credits: The 2012 anime does this so often that it needed its own page.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Most of the time Averted because the narration is explaining the power or the Stand users are smart enough not to do that, but exception exists, like Polnareff's chivalry being such that he feels the need to clear up any misunderstanding or Steely Dan who needs to make clear why the Lovers' power make it so Jotaro cannot hit him without killing Joseph.
• 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.
  • JoJolion is full of this. "Josuke" not only is named after his Diamond Is Unbreakable counterpart, but also looks like him sans the pompadour. He befriends an Expy of Koichi and is initially mistaken for Kira. He is adopted into a family where two members look a lot like Giorno's fellow gang members from Vento Aureo.
  • Jotaro Kujo was expressly based off Clint Eastwood.
  • Jonathan (and to a lesser extent, Joseph and Jotaro) are based off of Kenshiro.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Any villain who pisses off a Joestar will inevitably bear the brunt of one once the Joestar in question discovers their weakness or outsmarts them. Jotaro and Giorno in particular are arguably the kings of this trope for the punishments they inflicted on Steely Dan and Cioccolata respectively:
  • Steely Dan spends his episodes/chapters humiliating Jotaro in various insulting ways, who can't fight back because his Stand, the Lovers, will return any damage inflicted on him to Joesph because Dan sent it into his brain. Once Kakyoin manages to catch Lovers with Hierophant Green, Steely Dan futilely begs Jotaro for mercy before the latter has Star Platinum tenderize him for 20 seconds straight.
  • Cioccolata is a unbelievably depraved Mad Doctor who loves using his profession to torture others, drive the elderly to suicide, and observe the moment when people lose all hope. After a long and grueling battle, in which Cioccolata uses his Stand Green Day to indiscriminately infect and kill almost all of Rome before trying to take an incapacitated Mista as a last-ditch hostage, Giorno has Gold Experience unleash a relentless storm of punches on him that lasts for no less than 30 seconds.
• Eye Catch: Starting in Stardust Crusaders, the David Production anime lists the stats of a Stand relevant to the episode, shows said Stand posing, and includes the Stand's name and the name of their user (unless the latter has yet to be discovered); Diamond is Unbreakable also gives a silhouette of their user. The format isn't entirely concrete though, for example, the eyecatches have previously included explanations for the stat-less Epitaph, the anatomy of Stray Cat, and the hierarchy of Passione.
• 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 Diamond Is Unbreakable, one of Shigekiyo's Harvests punched a hole in Okuyasu's eye, then tore out a handful of the ocular tissue.
  • In Stardust Crusaders, an unlucky sap gets this treatment courtesy of Hierophant Green.
    School Nurse: Does this look like a pen to you?!
  • One of Dio's special surprise attacks in Phantom Blood 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.
    • The anime makes it less obvious that it's blood and bodily fluids, the dub and the Netflix subtitles change it to just regular Eye Beams.
  • Later in Phantom Blood, Dire takes Dio's eye out with a rose.
  • In Battle Tendency, Santana enters a soldier's body through the eyes.
  • In Diamond is Unbreakable, this is the first effect of Tonio's food made with Pearl Jam, as Okuyasu's eyes start melting. They quickly turn back to normal, plus not being tired from lack of sleep.
  • In Steel Ball Run, Johnny's eyes are set on fire twice. He also gets stabbed in the eye by cactus spines in an earlier chapter. Really, it's a miracle that the man doesn't go blind.
  • From time to time, a couple of mooks hit with Gyro's steel ball end up shooting themselves in the eye.
  • In Steel Ball Run, a soldier even lampshades this, as he has his eye headbutted, cut with glass, hit with a door, and impaled on a doorknob, and then he says "Why always my goddamn eye!?" just as another soldier shoots him, you guessed it, in the goddamn eye!
  • In JoJolion, Joshu's eyes turn into voids when Josuke first uses Soft & Wet and Yasuho's eye when a cellphone-paper-frog-thing made by Tsurugi leaps at her. Later on, Josuke gets an eyeful of chestnut courtesy of Yagiyama's stand... and doesn't even blink.

F

• Face Death with Dignity: Jonathan gets a mortal wound, but uses the last of his strength to help Erina and a baby, telling her goodbye as he expires. In Stone Ocean, Jolyne faces Pucci one last time despite having no chance of winning, coldly inviting her enemy to fight.
• Face–Heel Turn: Straizo in Battle Tendency who became a vampire after fighting them in Part 1.
  • Bruford and Tarkus were hailed as honorable knights during the Middle-Age, but brought back as zombies, they now serve Dio.
• The Faceless: In Stardust Crusaders, 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. Diavolo's face also remains unseen for the majority of Vento Aureo.
• Faking the Dead: How does Jotaro do it against DIO? By having Star Platinum grab and stop his heart. DIO doesn't listen to Jotaro's heartbeat long enough and Star Platinum pumps his heart just in time to revive him.
  • It almost didn't work, too. DIO was prepared to behead Jotaro just to be sure, but Polnareff interrupted him, enabling Star Platinum to revive Jotaro.
• Familial Foe: The various parts chronicle the exploits of individual descendants of the Joestar family and their battles with the incarnations of their family nemesis Dio Brando.
• The Family That Slays Together: The Kira family, with Yoshihiro the father and his serial-killer of a son Yoshikage. Likewise, the Boom Boom Family participates to the race together to kill other competitors. J. Geil and his mother Enya are also complete monsters.
• Family Theme Naming: The Higashikatas in JoJolion have four different levels of this.
  • First, the firstborn males eventually change their name to Norisuke, after the first Norisuke from Steel Ball Run.
  • Secondly, the men in the family (except for Norisuke I and Tsurugi) have their names (birth names in the case of the Norisukes) start with Jo (to be more specific, the 常 kanji): There's Joshu and Jobin, Norisuke II was born as Johei, Norisuke III was born as Joshou, and Norisuke IV was born as Josuke (常 being a different kanji from the 仗 used by the Part 4 protagonist and the 定 used by the Part 8 protagonist).
  • Thirdly, the women use Playing Card Motifs, Hato (heart), Daiya (Diamond), Mitsuba (Japanese for three leaves, which describes clovers, the french name for the club suit), Kaato (Card) and Tsurugi (Japanese for sword, the equivalent suit to spades in latin (Spanish/Italian) cards and the esoteric tarot). Though it turns out that Tsurugi is a boy.
  • Fourthly, all of the Higashikatas' Stands so far have "King" in their names: King Nothing (Norisuke IV), California King Bed (Daiya), Nut King Call (Joshu), Walking Heart (Hato), Paper Moon King (Tsurugi), Speed King (Jobin), Awaking III Leaves (Mitsuba), and Space Trucking (Kaato).
  • Stands of the Main JoJos from Stardust Crusaders to Stone Ocean had an earthly theme with them (Star Platinum, Crazy Diamond, Gold Experience and Stone Free).
• Fanservice: The manga indulges in this after its shift to seinen.
• Fantastic Fighting Style: Two of them: in the first and second part is Hamon, an ancient martial in which the practitioners harness The Power of the Sun by breathing; the seventh features the Spin, which is based on throwing a spinning sphere.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: A milder example than most, but combining the parts and spinoffs, we still get vampires, super vampires, zombies, two magic martial arts, cyborgs, genuine diviners and fortune tellers, schizophrenic shapeshifters, psychic powers, ghosts, alien viruses, cryptozoology is sometimes true with the flying rods and electricity eating insects and The Mothman, parallel universes, yokai, millennial curses, tenth-dimensional black hole men, Jesus, there is a Heaven, and Fate dictates everything, and sometimes not.
• Fatal Flaw: Dio's overconfidence and tendency to underestimate his opponents is the source of his shortcomings. In Stone Ocean, Pucci points out that Jotaro's attachment for his daughter is this.
• Fat Bastard: Polpo is a mob lieutenant, and is so fat he can pass off as a couch. Tamaki Damo is also a less fat example, but compensate by being a first class bastard, using Cold-Blooded Torture liberally and humiliating his victims.
• Fate Worse than Death: Araki likes to dole out several karmic non-deaths throughout the series' run.
  • Kars succeeds in his plans of becoming the Ultimate Being, a creature with all of the abilities of every living thing on Earth and enhancing his own Pillar Man abilities to make him functionally immortal through instantaneous evolution. His hubris in trying to kill Joseph with his own Hamon-empowered strike backfires by setting off a volcanic explosion that ultimately sends Kars outside of Earth's atmosphere. His new powers backfire by slowly turning his body to stone to avoid suffocating in the vacuum of space. Unable to return to the Earth, Kars floats around in the endless void until he just stops thinking.
  • Anubis, a sentient Stand possessing a sword, is destroyed in battle with Jotaro Kujo, leaving it just a blunt broken blade on a hilt. After trying to get revenge with what little destructive power it has left by possessing a small child and then a cow, it is inadvertantly thrown into the Nile where it falls on the riverbed, where it cannot even influence the nearby fish or crabs to pick it up. It is doomed to slowly rust away for the rest of time, until it is so corroded that the Stand simply is destroyed as well.
  • Angelo, a serial killer more prolific and horrific than Kira (and who ranks as a mere starter villain because he lacks Kira's cunning, impulse control, and supporters), ends up with his body mangled together with a boulder. The new rock-with-a-face continues to make noise long afterward, demonstrating that the monster within is by some unearthly means still alive.
  • Yoshikage Kira dies and his spirit gets taken to Reimi's hidden alley. He relives his last moments fighting the heroes before he is tricked by Reimi and Arnold into turning around, thereby exposing him to the malicious entity that also lives in the alley. As his spirit and Killer Queen are torn apart by the otherworldly hands, Reimi remarks that wherever he is being taken is probably going to be far from the peaceful and quiet life that he sought out during his time as a serial killer.
    • Whatever does happen to him, however, doesn't keep him from returning as a ghost with no memories or Stand powers in Deadman's Questions.
  • Diavolo's death at the hands of Giorno Giovanna's newly powered up Gold Experience Requiem activates its power to revert anything back to a zero point, effectively trapping Diavolo in a "Groundhog Day" Loop of dying before being brought back to the point right before his death for the rest of eternity. However, each time he will die a different way. The only certanties are that he will die and it will be painful. After readers are treated to just a few of his deaths such as being stabbed and slowly bleeding out or being awake during his own autopsy, Diavolo is ultimately so traumatized from his experiences that he is last seen cowering in fear of a little girl believing she will be the cause of his next death.
  • Magent Magent's Stand 20th Century Boy makes him completely invulnerable but only works by also immobilizing him. During his fight with Wekapipo, Magent Magent is thrown into the Delaware River during which time he gets tied up by several metal cables. He activates 20th Century Boy, which even prevents him from drowning, but he is left tied up on the bottom of the river. As he waits for his rescue by Diego Brando, Diego never arrives, and ultimately Magent Magent stops waiting for his rescue and just stops thinking.^note This is thought by fans to be an intentional Call-Back to Kars's fate in Battle Tendency
• Female Gaze: Although made with an adolescent male audience in mind, Battle Tendency is rather infamous for this (in a series overflowing with pretty boys with rippling muscles in the first place...). The main 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.
  • In Part 4, episode 3, when Tomoko mistakes Jotaro for his grandfather, Joseph, her eyes linger for a moment each over Jotaro's face, chest, his junk, and his legs. Woman has priorities.
• Fighting Spirit: The Stands introduced in Stardust Crusaders.
• Fingore: Araki's next favourite target of cringe-inducing injuries after Eye Scream. Makes one wonder what kind of childhood the poor author had...
  • Esidisi and Johnny are notable for weaponizing this trait in their fights.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: In Phantom Blood, Jonathan's Hamon, which is basically The Power of the Sun, is opposed to Dio's vampiric powers, involving freezing the opponent among other techniques.
• First Kiss: Dio steals the one that would rightfully be Jonathan's.
• Flaw Exploitation: Joseph Joestar is a master of this. He exploited Straizo's smartness to repeatedly trick him, Wamuu's Blood Knight tendencies to spare him on the ground that he would make a great adversary given time to train or uses Kars' obsession with the Red Stone of Aja to protect himself. Other instances of this trope being:
  • Josuke and Okuyasu exploit Shigekiyo's greed to win against him.
  • Pucci repeatedly uses Sadistic Choices between catching him or saving a companion because he is confident the heroes love each other more than they hate Pucci. Jotaro's attachment for his daughter, making him do unreasonable choices, leads to Pucci killing the whole party.
• Fluffy the Terrible: We get a Hero Killer vampire with The Power of the Void, his name is Vanilla Ice. The President Evil who weaponizes Karma Houdini to overpowered levels is named Funny Valentine.
• Fly Or Die:
  • Joseph and Caesar's Training from Hell in Battle Tendency 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.
• Food Chain of Evil: Vampires prey on humans and Pillar Men prey on vampires.
• Food Porn: Tonio Trussardi's introductory arc in Part 4 is full of this. Also, the Higashikata Melon Parfait in Part 8 is described in great detail.
• Forceful Kiss: In Phantom Blood, when Dio steals Erina's First Kiss.
  • 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: In keeping with Araki's love of foreign music, the anime uses various non-Japanese Real Song Theme Tuneinvoked songs for the TV series end themes.
  • The first season (Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency) uses "Roundabout" by Yes. It returned at the end of Stone Ocean to send off the entire first continuity.
  • Stardust Crusaders uses "Walk Like an Egyptian" by The Bangles for the first half and "Last Train Home" by the Pat Metheny Group for the second half.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable uses "I Want You" by Savage Garden.
  • Vento Aureo uses "Freek'n You" by Jodeci for its first ED and "Modern Crusaders" by Enigma for its second.
  • Stone Ocean uses "Distant Dreamer" by Duffy.
• Foreshadowing: In Stardust Crusaders, Jotaro and the gang fight Oingo and Boingo, Stand user brothers. Boingo's Stand, Thoth, has the ability to predict the future with 100% accuracy via his comic book. At one point, his comic book predicts that Jotaro will die by having his face split open. Take a guess as to how Jotaro dies in Stone Ocean.
  • A silhouette that looks exactly like the Stand Arrow from Parts 4 and 5 shows up in the first Stardust Crusaders ED.
  • In the 7th episode opening sequence, we get a close-up on DIO's eye and see gears turning behind them, foreshadowing DIO's Stand power to stop time.
  • In the first OP for Part 3, five shooting stars are shown orbiting the Earth, representing the five main characters. Right near the end of the shot, a sixth shooting star can be seen approaching from off-screen, foreshadowing Iggy joining the group. Culminates in Part 3' second OP, when the main characters burst from the stars.
  • The second OP for Part 3 is so rife with this that it's actually kind of amazing. Several things are foreshadowed, namely:
    • DIO's true powers, and what they actually are very foreshadowed by a heavy "clock and gear" theme in the OP. Also, at the end when Jotaro smashes the glass with Star Platinum, you can clearly see DIO's timestop abilities at hand when the OP suddenly changes color and freezes, with DIO suddenly being behind Jotaro. Speaking of Jotaro, his timestop abilities are also foreshadowed, showing the same streaking eye effect that DIO had in earlier openings, referencing the fact that Jotaro eventually develops the ability to think during the timestops, and eventually do his own timestops. You can also see the arms of DIO's stand, The World. The foreshadowing comes full circle in episode 47, where we see DIO time stopping the opening credits.
    • The fact that the final enemy Stand users all use Egyptian-god named Stands is foreshadowed by a shot of the group climbing a staircase as a spotlight passes over them with the silhouette of an Egyptian god, like Bast, Set, etc. Each time it passes over, a new silhouette can be seen.
    • The hole in the wall that the group busts through to save Polnareff can be very clearly seen.
  • There is also an unbelievable amount of foreshadowing regarding the deaths of Iggy, Avdol, Joseph and Jotaro (before they get better). Specifically-
    • A shot shows Iggy, Polnareff and Avdol climbing a staircase, with a red line that comes up and covers Avdol's arm, representing Vanilla Ice and Cream violently erasing him from existence and leaving only his arms behind. Iggy is also shaded in red, foreshadowing his death, while Polnareff is light-blue, being the only survivor of the Vanilla Ice battle. Additionally, the steps move back by two, referencing how DIO would troll Polnareff by using his Stand, The World, to prevent him from going up the stairs.
    • The shot of Kakyoin surrounded by thin green wires is a reference to Emerald Splash's final evolution, becoming a large web-like structure that acts as a kind of tripwire-Emerald Splash-minefield. His shadow also looks like the pillar he stands on before he's punched into the water tower.
    • Joseph reaching out with a terrified look on his face ends with a white line slicing behind his head, mimicking how he was stabbed by DIO.
    • Jotaro is surrounded with a number of white lines that seem to be attempting to reach him mimics the famous time-stop knife throw scene. It gets even more intense when a number of the lines touch Jotaro, hitting him in the exact spots he's struck with the knives. Also not to mention the ever so subtle finger wiggle.
  • In the Part 4 anime: Jotaro saying "I hope nothing annoying happens" once he reaches Morioh, and "It's finally over", once Akira Otoishi is defeated. Not even close, Mr. Kujo.
• 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 Stone Ocean to Mista's fear of the number in Vento Aureo. Most notable, however, is the fact Phantom Blood is forty-four chapters long, and in the last one, Jonathan dies.
  • Oddly enough, in the fourth part, only two good guys die, but the trope still applies since the main villain is a mass murderer.
  • Main villain Funny Valentine of Steel Ball Run has a stand named Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, shortened to D4C. And in addition, Valentine kills four named characters.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: As soon as the Time Master villains of the series are introduced, David Productions tweaks their openings to showcase the villain's power.
  • In episode 47 of Stardust Crusaders, DIO uses the World to time-stop the opening credits.
  • In episode 36 of Diamond is Unbreakable, Kira rewinds the opening backward.
  • The second opening of Vento Aureo features a time skip scene but it is usually glossed until episode 34 when Diavolo is shown positioning himself just behind Giorno while reciting his own eulogy during the time erasure.
  • The final episode of Stone Ocean has the returning Jotaro activating a time stop, only for Made in Heaven to accelerate time back to the Phantom Blood OP which now goes from Johnathan to Jolyne, shows Pucchi during the Joestar Mansion segment of the OP, breaks apart and shows Jolyne vs Pucchi in the same way as Johnathan and DIO.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The 2012 anime adaptation has a few in the opening.
  • Part 1 has Jonathan developing a Dark Will of Johnny Joestar from Steel Ball Run. And by the way, Johnny's full name was Jonathan Joestar...
  • Part 2 further develops this to a degree.
    • In the background of Joseph's silhouettes, you can find Hermit Purple.
    • The pictures of the main cast are shown for a split second. This includes a family photo of the Joestar family, Lisa Lisa, Straizo, Loggins and Messina, Stroheim, Smokey, a X-ray picture of Joseph with two rings in his body...
    • When Wamuu uses his signature technique, Holy Sandstorm (神砂嵐), the producer of the opening sequences, Kamikaze Douga (神風動画), becomes Kamiarashi Douga (神嵐動画) for a split second.
    • Plenty of Written Sound Effects that are almost invisible in normal speed. This doubles up as a Development Gag, when they play this on the creator's name.
  • The Stardust Crusaders first OP features a scene with five shooting stars in the sky; however, off to the far right, there's a sixth star, possibly hinting at Iggy joining the group in the second half of the story.
    • The second SC opening has The World flash by for a split second right before Star Platinum punches through the glass. This turns into Evolving Credits in episode 47, where DIO activates The World and walks past Jotaro while the music is paused...then starts up again when the two start going at it.
  • In the Justice arc, when Jotaro shows he wrote a fake first name ("Qtaro") in the guest book, you can see Kakyoin also signed a fake name, "Tenmei".
  • In episode 12 of the Diamond is Unbreakable anime, Yoshikage Kira can be seen briefly (from behind) as the effects of Red Hot Chili Pepper siphoning all the town's elecricity is shown.
• Freudian Excuse: Araki went on his way to avert it because he doesn't want villains to be too sympathetic. A few minor villains have them due to them being meant to be sympathetic, such as N’Doul.
  • Several characters have Freudian Excuses in Part 7. However, these are mostly morally questionable heroes or neutral characters.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Quite a few villains in JJBA debuted as nobodies, most notably Dio who lived in poverty during Victorian Britain.
• From Zero to Hero:
  • The series is ripe with these characters. Aside from all of the protagonists of the fifth and sixth parts going from petty criminals and thugs to heroes that take down Physical Gods, the series has Robert EO Speedwagon; a guy who starts out as a street thug, but after meeting Jonathan, he exploits his Rags to Riches status to support and aid the Joestar line for over a hundred years.
  • Initially being a little, kinda wimpy guy, Koichi Hirose from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable shows that after gaining his Stand, he actually has some backbone, and keeps getting more moments of badassery.
• Fusion Dance: In JoJolion, The Reveal has that the ground near Wall Eyes that Josuke Higashikata was found buried within somehow has the unique property of combining whatever is placed within it. Josuke is eventually revealed to be a fusion of two men, that part's Yoshikage Kira and another man called Josefumi Kujo, who is essentially an Expy of Part 4's Josuke.
• Functional Magic
  • Hamon is a form of Force Magic. Via special breathing techniques, users can harness their life force as a weapon against undead foes. While hamon is a very versatile form of magic (as best demonstrated by Joseph), its strength is limited to the user's body's ability to circulate oxygen: anything that prevents this, such as blood loss or suffocation, can reduce or even eliminate the effectiveness of hamon.
  • Stands are, predominantly, a combination of Theurgy and Summon Magic with some Rule Magic that determines that hard laws for their use, the three main rules being that a person may only have one Stand at a time (although Stands can change under certain conditions, like Echoes and Tusk), damage inflicted on Stands are also reflected on their user and vice versa (a Stand losing an arm would also cause its user's arm to be severed, automatic Stands and Stands bound to physical objects are exceptions to this), and Stands are Invisible to Normals unless bound/manifested through a physical object (like The Fool's sand body). Beyond these rules, the applications of Stands vary widely between two users, including (but not limited to) Hermit Purple's divination, Magician's Red's Elemental Powers over fire, and Gold Experience's transmutation. Many Stands also fall under Inherent Gift: most Stand users are born with their Stands, while those who aren't may be able to gain one via the Bow and Arrow.

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