Manga / JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

aka: Stardust Crusaders

Parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
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Spoilers for all parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure preceding this one, namely Battle Tendency will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

"Look, no one ever said Jotaro Kujo was a nice guy."

"This world is full of Stands that surpass even your wildest imaginings! Those loyal to DIO will follow you at every turn!"

— Gray Fly

Stardust Crusaders (スターダストクルセイダース) is Part 3 of the long-running manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It is preceded by Battle Tendency and followed by Diamond is Unbreakable.

In 1983, three fishermen pull a large chest out from the middle of the ocean believing they have struck the jackpot. Strangely, the chest is locked from the inside, but they manage to get it open. Sometime later, their boat is discovered, drifting with no one on board and no signs of struggle, with all that remains being the opened chest marked with the name "DIO"...

Set in 1988-89 (1989 was the same year this part began publishing, running until 1992), Stardust Crusaders stars Jotaro Kujo, a self-proclaimed delinquent who thinks he is possessed by an evil spirit. In fear of accidentally hurting others more than he needs to, he turns himself in to the police. When Jotaro's mother, Holly, realizes that she can see this "spirit", too, she calls in her father, Joseph Joestar, to resolve the situation. With the help of Egyptian fortune teller Muhammad Avdol, the Older and Wiser Joseph manages to prove to Jotaro that what he has is a mysterious power known as a Stand, which has been awoken in the Joestar family as a result of the resurrection of Dio Brando, now known only as "DIO" (written in Latin letters for good measure), who is sending his Stand-using assassins after Jotaro and Joseph to prevent them from stopping his rise to power.

After fighting classmate Noriaki Kakyoin, who was put under DIO's thrall, the group discovers that Holly has formed her own Stand and it is slowly killing her due to her kind nature. Jotaro, Joseph, Avdol, Kakyoin, and later Frenchman Jean-Pierre Polnareff and the Stand-using dog Iggy, must head to Egypt to kill DIO once and for all to save Holly's life along with those of all the Joestar descendants who are similarly being overwhelmed by their Stands all over the world, while battling DIO's many Stand-using minions along the way.

This arc has been adapted to a three-part CD drama, a Super Famicom RPG, two OVAs published from 1993-1994 and 2000-2002 (all titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure), an arcade Fighting Game by Capcom titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future, and an action-adventure game titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven. In 2014, it received a 48-episode anime adaptation like Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency. The English dub of the anime premiered in 2017 on Toonami. A semi-canon successor manga, Crazy Diamond's Demonic Heartbreak, had its first part released in 2021, focusing on the lives of those affected by DIO as Hol Horse heads to Morioh and meets Josuke Higashikata.

Beware of massive spoilers for later parts.

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There are tropes about this series!? OOOH MYYY GOOOOODDD!!!

Tropes # to C

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Part of what seals DIO's defeat was Jotaro discovering that Star Platinum can stop time.
• Abhorrent Admirer: At least, that's how Joseph reacts to the old woman who gets a crush on him during the Mariah sequence. She quickly switches gears, though, when Joseph and Avdol are trying to get themselves unstuck from each other...
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Twice over, courtesy of the brothers D'Arby.
  • First is elder brother Daniel J. D'Arby, whose Stand allows him to claim the souls of whoever he beats in games of chance — a power that claims Polnareff and Joseph's souls, and is all the more deadly for the fact that D'Arby is a shameless cheater. When Jotaro takes him on in a game of poker, it seems that D'Arby will claim his soul at first, since everyone at the cafe they were playing were in on his cheating and dealing winning hands to D'Arby. After losing his first hand, Jotaro opts to not even bother looking at his second hand and plays some killer mind games on D'Arby — in addition to using Star Platinum to stealthily get him a drink and a smoke (leading D'Arby to think he's switching their cards out), he proceeds to raise not only Kakyoin and Avdol's souls, but also his own mother's soul! The only way D'Arby could call this raise was by revealing the secret of DIO's Stand, which would mean doom for D'Arby. In the end, D'Arby ends up passing out, folding to Jotaro and relinquishing Polnareff and Joseph's souls as a result of the mother of all bluffs — Jotaro's hand, in the end, proved to be complete and utter garbage.
  • Next is Telence T. D'Arby, who makes bets over video games and whose Stand can also claim the souls of his defeated foes. Just like Daniel, he also cheats, this time by using his Stand to read his opponents' mind and anticipate their actions. Jotaro has to cheat in order to beat him, with Joseph stealthily using Hermit Purple to operate Jotaro's controller, so Telence's Stand would not be reading the mind of the person who was really playing against him.
• Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Polnareff futilely tries to barricade a door with a cabinet, forgetting that Vanilla Ice can disintregate anything Cream touches.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Anubis can cut through even giant stone pillars in its first battle against Polnareff.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Iggy fights Pet Shop in one, hoping that the restrained space would disadvantage the bird. When Pet Shop transforms the water in the sewers into ice, Iggy realize how wrong he was.
• Accidental Truth: Rubber Soul rolling a cherry on his tongue in his Kakyoin disguise was meant to be an intimidation tactic to throw Jotaro even more off-guard than he already was. However, what nobody anticipated, not even Rubber Soul himself, is that Kakyoin actually does lick cherries the way that Rubber Soul did, much to Jotaro's disgust.
• The Ace: Jotaro, from the moment he learns how to control his Stand, is one of the most skilled and clever Stand users in the world, complete with one of the strongest Stands in existence. This continues into his appearances in later parts, by which point he's built up a reputation to match.
• Actor Allusion: In the English dub, Jotaro Kujo is voiced by Matthew Mercer, who also voiced Z.W.E.I., an outlandishly dressed warrior who fights using a humanoid wolf familiar that functions almost identically to a Stand (and wouldn't look out of place in JJBA himself). Mercer also voiced the gunslinger Cassidy (formerly named McCree) in Overwatch, so of course the dub rewrote Jotaro's Western reference in the final episode to include Cassidy's memetic phrase "it's high noon."
  • In Japanese, the same also goes for Muhammed Avdol, who is voiced by Kenta Miyake and also voices Z.W.E.I.. Avdol's Stand even happens to be animal-themed (though it has a bird's head instead of a wolf's).
  • In the dub version of the Geb fight, when Joseph assumes that the Stand disguised itself as water to sneak up on Kakyoin, Avdol (voiced by Chris Tergliafera) replies with "No, that's wrong!"
  • The English voice actor for Old Joseph is Richard Epcar, who does an amazing rendition of Joseph's "OH MY GOD!" But it turns out he did the same line for another character the previous season; the brass knuckle gangster that Joseph humiliated in his youth.
  • In Japanese, DIO, whose Stand is named after the Arcana tarot card "The World", is voiced by Takehito Koyasu, who also voices Takuma Saiou in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, who also happens to use The World during his battle with Yuki.
• Adaptation Expansion: The anime gives Kakyoin some more backstory in the form of flashbacks, during the arcs of D'Arby the Player and DIO's World. The latter actually was in the manga, but only in the form of text, whereas the anime adds images (including a shot of Kakyoin's mother, who has the same curly bangs as her son).
  • The Sun episode adds a couple extra scenes to make the two-chapter arc fill up an entire episode.
• Adaptational Badass: In the OVA, Polnareff ambushes DIO and skewers his head. Contrary to the manga, it works wonders and distracts DIO long enough for Star Platinum to connect a punch.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: Hol Horse reports to DIO that there are only three of the Egyptian God Stand users left undefeated, and Mariah and Alessi have just fallen. In the manga, this is all well and good, but the anime moves this scene from just before to after D'Arby the Gambler, when that number has gone up by one (only Pet Shop and the other D'Arby brother are left). In fairness, Hol Horse may not have known about D'Arby's defeat at the time, or the scene may have been a flashback to before it happened.
• Adapted Out: The OVAs infamously cut out around 21 characters from the plot, which were mostly DIO's acolytes, such as Gray Fly, "Captain Tennile", Devo the Cursed, and Pet Shop, among others.
• Advertised Extra: DIO. Despite being one of the most famous characters of this part, he's very much an Orcus on His Throne, and doesn't take action until the very end of the story.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Enya may have been a horrible, sadistic bitch and the worst possible judge of character when it comes to her son, but she was still one of DIO's most loyal henchmen, 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.
• Anyone Can Die: One of the most brutal parts in this regard! A good number of DIO's henchmen are killed after their battles, many background characters including animals and Senator Wilson Phillips are killed by DIO and his henchmen, and of course the big ones Avdol who gets it twice, Iggy, Kakyoin, and DIO himself who is finally Killed Off for Real.
• "Arabian Nights" Days: Stardust Crusaders is featured briefly in Arabia.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: When Kakyoin tells the others the baby they're carrying is a Stand user, and that it's responsible for the words "Baby Stand" carved in his arm, they assume Kakyoin's gone crazy from the stress and carved up his own arm. Even though, by this point, they'd encountered an oranguatan Stand user, and another Stand user who could hide her body inside the body of a much smaller woman. Kakyoin's claims weren't that far fetched by comparison.
• Armor Is Useless: Silver Chariot's armor may as well be an Informed Ability because a simple barber's razor can cut through it.
  • Averted for once when Star Platinum fights Anubis well its shoulder pads manage to protect it from the blade.
• The Artifact:
  • Joseph uses Hamon a few times, but it's mostly for The Worf Effect.
  • This is the last part to have characters consistently having a named attack they call out, with Kakyoin's Emerald Splash and Avdol's Red Bind being the two most notable. It crops up every now and then (like Kira's Killer Queen Bites the Dust in Part 4 and Ghiaccio's White Album Gently Weeps in Part 5), but it's far less frequent.
• Artistic License – Biology: The camels the Crusaders ride tower over even the 6'5" Joseph, even though camels in real life are roughly the same height as him.
• Axe Before Entering: Alessi breaks down a door behind which a 4-year-old Polnareff is hiding, the scene is pretty much lifted from The Shining.
• Back from the Dead: DIO kills Joseph and drains his blood during the final battle, but he's able to be revived by Jotaro and an emergency blood transfusion, and then by all indication survives to the end of the original series' timeline.
• Back for the Finale: Kakyoin is out of commission from right around the start of Egypt, coming back just as the group is ready to move in on DIO's mansion.
• Badass Crew: The Joestar Group definitely counts, with all of them being skilled fighters and all (well, most) being extremely smart strategists. Joseph counts as The Leader of the group, while Avdol is his second-in-command and co-navigator. Jotaro is the group's muscle with additional hints of being The Strategist, and Kakyoin is the more cultured and knowledgeable member on many of their locations. Polnareff quickly falls into the role of Plucky Comic Relief, while Iggy joins the latest out of the group.
• Bad Boss: In spite of how many he's hired, DIO doesn't care about most of his henchmen and as seen with Enya's death even some of his most loyal ones are disposable. Inverted with Vanilla Ice, Telence T. D'Arby^note Supplementary materials reveal that DIO thought highly of him, Pet Shop and to a lesser extent Hol Horse, who DIO had a lot of trust in even going as far as turning Vanilla Ice into a vampire and sparing Hol Horse after he attempts to kill him. And much later, Enrico Pucci tops them all off.
• Bait-and-Switch: Episode 43 ends with a cliffhanger of Polnareff seemingly swallowed up by Vanilla Ice's Cream with his earring dropping to the ground. In the next episode, it's revealed that Iggy used the last of his strength to save Polnareff at the last moment.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Alessi's introduction involves a four year old boy accidentally getting mud on his pants. He speaks kindly to the boy, asking is he's alright, and where his parents are. As soon as he's sure the kid's parents aren't around he changes his tune, starts screaming in the kid's face and hits him, sending the kid running away crying. This establishes him as a Dirty Coward who targets children. And we see later that he has the power to transform adults into children.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Jotaro vs Anubis, during which Star Platinum blocks the blade of the sentient sword Anubis and breaks it. However, it manages to possess Polnareff, rendering this technique useless as Anubis can now use Silver Chariot's extreme speed.
• Baseball Episode: Telence T. D'Arby challenges Jotaro to a baseball video game, resulting in teams of Star Platinum and Atum respectively playing baseball against each other.
• Battle Butler: Roses, Suzi Q's chauffeur, can send a man flying with a high kick.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Inverted with Forever. He's shown as having a sexual drive towards human women, and it's shown in an aptly appalling light.
• Big "OMG!": This series marks the start of Joseph Joestar liberally using this as a catchphrase, beforehand, the more 'constant' one was just "OH NO!"
• Black Comedy: While the situation in question is otherwise completely serious (save for a dub-only pun later said scene), some of the cat's remains who DIO kills with a simple kick during the final battle end up in some pretty awkward spots, such as on someone's fork or in someone else's mouth.
• Black Dude Dies First: Avdol, who dies first twice in a row during Stardust Crusaders (the first time, he was faking his death).
• Bluff the Imposter: Jotaro accuses "Captain Tennille" of being an enemy, stating that all Stand users have a red nose when they smell smoke, every Stand user present instinctively check their nose, including "Captain Tennille" who is indeed an imposter.
• Bold Inflation: DIO's name is written in all caps.
• Bond One-Liner: Jotaro taunts DIO one last time after killing him.
  Jotaro: There's a single reason why you've lost, DIO. A single, good reason. You pissed me off.
• Booked Full of Mooks: Everyone in or near the bar where the Joestar Group encounters Daniel J. D'Arby is under D'Arby's employ, either to help rig games in his favor, or on the off-chance somebody is able to catch him cheating.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Humans on which DIO's spores are planted will become evil, even if they weren't before. Explicitly, Kakyoin and Polnareff had these, and Enya had one as a precautionary measure so she could be killed in the event she's captured and pressed to reveal DIO's Stand, but other than that the only known flesh bud recipient is only shown in Part 4, where it's said DIO put flesh buds into all of the minions he distrusted (i.e. everyone, according to Dan of Steel).
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • During the confrontation with Z.Z. and his Stand Wheel of Fortune.
  Z.Z.: (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?
  • In the English dub, Joseph Joestar sneaks one in at the end of the battle against Daniel D'Arby, during which both he and Polnareff lose their souls.
  Polnareff: Ugh..! I feel like death warmed over!
  Joseph: Well, I guess we can't be the heroes of every episode.
• Breather Episode: The Oingo Boingo brothers' arc is outright comedic after the intense battle with N'Doul just before, whereas otherwise, the Egyptian God-themed Stand users are among the most threatening in the Part. Boingo gets a second shot at this partnered with Hol Horse just before Pet Shop.
• Brick Joke: Early in the story, when Joseph first uses Hermit Purple on a camera at a cafe, a waiter comes by asking about the commotion with Avdol dismissing him. Later on, when Joseph uses the move at another cafe in Egypt, another waiter stops by and asks the same question with Avdol telling him to move along.
• Bullet Catch: Jotaro demonstrates his Stand back when he believes it to be an evil spirit by using it to steal a cop's revolver and trying to shoot himself in the head with it, with it catching the bullet easily despite firing from less than 3 inches away.
• Building Swing: Joseph and Kakyoin do this with their Stands.
• Butt-Monkey: Polnareff is one of the protagonists who most frequently ends up being ambushed or finds himself in trouble, though Joseph has his moments.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • This part is practically centered around this trope in that DIO returns after his hiatus during Battle Tendency.
  • Avdol returns after supposedly dying in India since he was able to fake his death and was hiding on a remote island.
  • Kakyoin after being sent to the hospital makes a full recovery (though with reduced eyesight) after Iggy's fight with Pet Shop.
• Cable-Car Action Sequence: Jotaro briefly fights Rubber Soul aboard a gondola.
• Call-Back:
  • When trying to get Jotaro to get out of his cell, Joseph gets pissed off at some cops and calls them "pigs" when they try to intervene; he still hasn't gotten over those douchebag cops from the '30s.
  • Joseph demonstrates Hermit Purple to Jotaro by destroying a 30,000 yen Polaroid instant camera. When DIO uses it later, he simply taps the camera. Joseph still hasn't learned to use finesse, just like in Battle Tendency when learning Hamon control.
  • When the vendor offers some hot cola to the group, Joseph comments it's supposed to be served cold, like how he was first served cola in Battle Tendency.
  • When Joseph is about to bring the passenger plane to a water landing, he remarks that this is the third time he's crash-landed a plane, much to Jotaro's dismay. The first time was in a flashback in Battle Tendency, when he'd first displayed his Hamon ability while saving himself, Speedwagon and the pilot from hijackers, crashing the plane in the process. The second time was during the climax of Battle Tendency, when he tried to kill Kars by using his plane to knock him into the volcano.
  • Joseph's squirming when removing Polnareff's flesh bud is the same as in Battle Tendency when similarly grossed out.
  • When Nena attaches her Stand Empress to Joseph, he attempts to retaliate by using the Hamon and his famous "your next line is" trick from Battle Tendency.
• Call-Forward: The anime adds a few.
  • While Joseph is running around infected by Empress, one of the billboards in the background has the Morioh Town logo on it.
  • While waiting in the hospital, Jotaro is seen reading a magazine on marine biology.
  • In the anime, the Stand Arrow makes an appearance in a flashback and in the background of DIO's mansion. The Stand Arrow would play a larger role in the next two parts, but that particular Stand Arrow happens to be the one that Polnareff was in possession of in Golden Wind.
• Calling Your Shots: When Jotaro plays a baseball video game with Telence T. D'Arby, both do that, Telence uses the classic variant by announcing a home run while Jotaro announces how and where his team will throw the ball. Subverted in that every throw ends up being different, which throws D'Arby off guard since his partial mind reading can only indicate that Jotaro is sincere about the throws. Turns out Joseph was playing in Jotaro's stead.
• Came Back Wrong: When Judgement is pretending to be a Genie in a Bottle, he grants Polnareff's wishes to resurrect Polnareff's sister and Avdol, but they come back as flesh-eating monsters and Zombie Avdol doesn't have his Stand, either. Subverted, though, because it's not the real people. Judgement can't actually grant wishes like that, his power is to create objects and creatures out of dirt.
• Captain Ersatz: F-Mega is meant to be a very blatant pastiche of F-Zero, with the race cars in the game functioning identically to F-Zero machines like the Blue Falcon and the Golden Fox.
• Carnival of Killers: DIO sends his minions from all over the world to kill the Joestar Group before they get to him.
• Cassandra Truth: Occurs in the battle with Death Thirteen when Kakyoin tries to tell the others that something's off with Mannish Boy, but he doesn't get through since his only clue was written on his own body in blood.
• Casting Gag:
  • Although the two actors aren't actually related in real life, Polnareff and his little sister Sherry are voiced by actors who share the same last name (that's also spelt with the same kanji), being Fuminori Komatsu and Yuka Komatsu respectively.
  • Both of Daniel J. D'Arby's voice actors voiced Raoh and Souther in Fist of the North Star. Due to Utsumi's passing in the time between the OVA and the anime, Ginga was cast as D'Arby in the anime.
  • Avdol's voice in the English dub is Chris Tergliafera. In real life, Tergliafera owns a pet Boston Terrier named Charlie, whereas Avdol is the one who rounded up Iggy for the Speedwagon Foundation, with Iggy also being a Boston Terrier.
  • In the English dub, ZZ's voice actor is also the voice of the series' narrator, which fits with ZZ being one of the few characters to break the fourth wall. Though, this is also subverted in that said fourth wall break isn't present in the dub.
  • Daniel J. D'Arby happens to share the exact same voice actors, both Japanese and English, as Liquid Snake from Metal Gear.
• Chained to a Bed: A possessed doll ties Polnareff under a bed to sadistically torture him before the kill.
• Chekhov's Gun: Jotaro's Star Platinum is mainly used to beat the crap out of anyone with his diamond-hard fists. 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. Even though Star Platinum is a short-ranged Stand. Jotaro used this ability again to throw off Daniel J. D'Arby in order to win a rigged poker game against him. This also foreshadows Star Platinum's ultimate ability to stop time.
• Chekhov's Skill: Star Platinum is able to stop Jotaro's heartbeat to prevent him being caught while hiding from DIO, and revive him after. Jotaro would later use this to revive Joseph, along with a transfusion of his blood back from DIO.
• Chromosome Casting: Downplayed, as while there are a few female characters, they are relegated mostly to the background, and the majority of the cast is mostly male.
• Cobweb of Disuse: DIO's library is filled with cobwebs despite the fact that he actually uses it.
• Coincidental Dodge: At one point, Polnareff sneezes on Jotaro due to the villain sticking his fingers in Polnareff's nose. Naturally, Jotaro backs out in disgust and coincidentally avoids a bullet meant for him.
• Compressed Adaptation: The OVA. At first, it exclusively adapted the Egypt-centric second half of the series before later giving the same treatment to the first third or so of Part 3. In the process, it cut out almost every single Villain of the Week, leaving only the most plot significant ones (Kakyoin, Polnareff, Hol Horse and J Geil, Enya, N'doul, Daniel J. D'arby, Vanilla Ice, and oddly enough, Forever, who gets to share his episode with Polnareff's debut). Enya is made into the last opponent faced before the Joestar Group arrives in Egypt, which also has the effect of emphasizing her significance in the first half of the story.
• Colour-Coded Timestop: This is how the series represents DIO's Stand ability activating. In the 1993 OVA, the scenery turns to negative colors for a moment. In the 2015 anime, the scenery turns to greyscale after a brief negative-color flash.
• Colourful Theme Naming: With the exception of The Fool, all of the protagonists' Stands have a color and a tarot card associated with them. Some of the first few enemy Stands are also color themed: Tower of Grey, Dark Blue Moon, Ebony Devil, and Yellow Temperance.
• Conspicuous Gloves:
  • After Polnareff is saved from the flesh bud in his head, he asks Joseph about whether or not he has two right hands because he'd noted that Joseph never once took off his gloves. Joseph reveals that he just has a prosthetic hand from his adventures. He also reveals the antagonist he's looking for here.
  • When the team enter a hotel, they find the manager as a little old lady who bandaged her left hand because of a burn. It's really a cover-up and the covered hand is also a right hand, revealing her as also the mother of the man Polnareff was looking for and killed before this incident.
• Convenient Cranny: Subverted. Transformed into a little child, Polnareff is being cornered by into a small room with no exit as Alessi smashes the door with an axe. There are several hiding places, yes, but too obvious to be safe so Polnareff engineers his own hiding spot using an aquarium, a mirror to hide his body and a balloon to hide his head. Thanks to this Polnareff can surprise Alessi and hit him with Silver Chariot's sword.
• Cool Boat: Avdol bought one submarine under the guise of a rich Arab to cross the Red Sea.
• Cool Old Guy: Joseph doesn't fight nearly as often as he did in Battle Tendency, but in each and every one of his rare chances to fight he proves that he's still got it. He and Hermit Purple are Weak, but Skilled exemplified.
• Cringe Comedy: What results when Joseph and Avdol are both affected by Bastet's magnetism. Both are literally attracted to each other and are stuck in compromising positions in public.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Polnareff is an expert at giving these, be it slicing your Stand to pieces and thus making your body look like it's been thrown into a wood chipper, or impaling you head first onto a spiked fence.
  • Once Empress attempts to infect Joseph, Joseph manages to restrain Empress' body with hardened coal tar, wrapped his Stand, Hermit Purple, around its body and a heightened rod near a building, creating something of a noose. Then, he proceeds to leap upward and gravity does its thing as the descending force causes Hermit Purple to shred Empress into a bloody mess. It wasn't quite immediate either, as we're first treated to Empress being mercilessly tighten like no tomorrow by Hermit Purple, as its razor sharp thorns finish the job.
  • Enya Geil gets eaten alive from the inside-out by one of DIO's flesh buds.
  • Iggy is brutally kicked to death by Vanilla Ice. There's also his death in the OVA, where he's cut in half by Cream.
  • DIO is blown up by Jotaro punching his Stand, The World, in the same area where DIO's leg broke, leaving only half his body remaining.
• Cycle of Revenge: Polnareff starts out driven to avenge his little sister, who was murdered by J. Geil. After he does, J. Geil's mother Enya becomes so fraught with grief that she swears revenge on Polnareff.

Tropes D to G

• Dangerously Close Shave: Polnareff almost gets his throat sliced by a possessed barber, due to Anubis.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Downplayed in the case of the OVA series. While it's not actually darker than the manga, most of the comedic moments and sillier enemies are Adapted Out. This leaves the OVA with a more consistently serious tone.
  • The Egypt arc is the darkest half of this part, considering that four members of the team get killed off by the end (though one gets better).
• A Day in the Limelight: With him being brought down to a deuteragonist, Joseph doesn't get nearly as much screen time as he does in Part 2, but he gets two dedicated arcs all to himself. The first being Empress, where he battles and defeats the Stand by his lonesome, and the second being Bastet, where he endures the first half by himself and the last half accompanied by Avdol.
• Defeating the Cheating Opponent: D'Arby challenges the Joestar Group to a series of high-stakes gambles and clearly cheats every time, reducing the heroes' morale and composure so that he can steal their souls. This changes when he plays a game of poker against Jotaro. Realizing D'arby doesn't know how Jotaro's abilities work, Jotaro bluffs his way through the game. By the end, Jotaro raises the bet all the way up to his own mother's soul, daring D'arby to call the hand. D'arby suffers a Villainous Breakdown and faints from pure shock before he can call it, giving the heroes the win. As is revealed after the heroes win, Jotaro's cards were lousy; he was just so good at bluffing that it didn't matter.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Kakyoin and Polnareff, who fought the protagonists due to DIO's mind-controlling flesh buds being implanted on them, join the group once they are cured; the former for atonement, and the latter to find his sister's killer (though he later decides to stick with them, no strings attached).
• Deranged Animation: The third and fourth endings, collectively named "Akuyaku◇Concerto", are grotesque and unhinged, being drawn in the style of Thoth, the comic book Stand.
• Derivative Differentiation: This Part was the point where the focus on Fist of the North Star-style martial arts was phased out in favor of battles with psychic powers, in the form of Stands, which would become a franchise staple. Likewise, the Battle Tendency way of handling combat, about how to outwit your opponent rather than simply hitting harder, becomes the norm with Stands stats-wise weak but devastating if used well (Lovers, Osiris).
• Deuteragonist: Jean-Pierre Polnareff, the second-last member of the Joestar Group to be introduced, winds up being the only one to rival Jotaro in terms of amount of fights, and due to his more emotive, flawed nature, arguably gets even more Character Development. Not everyone is joking when they comment that he seems more like the main character of Part 3 at times.
• Dinner Order Flub: When stopping in Hong Kong, Joseph claims that he's been there enough times to be able to order from the menus. Yet, when the food arrives, it's not quite what he expected. A downplayed example, as it turned out that the mistakenly ordered food was still quite delicious — the trope is in play to poke fun at Joseph's ignorance on foreign matters.
• Dirty Coward: Quite a lot of the enemy Stand users are this. Steely Dan and Rubber Soul in particular revel in sadistic pleasure when they think they're winning, only to grovel pathetically when they're losing. Hol Horse refuses to fight unless he has an ally beside him, and hides behind women, using Nena (who he doesn't realize is also one of DIO's assassins, and thinks is just another bystander) to cover his retreat from the Joestars after his first defeat. Alessi is absolutely terrified of adults and so gleefully picks on children, and uses his Stand's powers to transform adult enemies into children.
• Disgusting Public Toilet: More due to culture clash than outright dirtiness, but the idea is here. Polnareff is shocked to experience a toilet where pigs can stick out their head out of the toilet bowl in India, and when Joseph sees that wind toilets involve the poop rolling away and disintegrating due to the wind and the dryness of the air, as well as wipe oneself with sand, he prefers to wait for the hotel.
• Distressed Dude: Every single team member has to be dramatically rescued (even Jotaro) at least once, but Polnareff takes the cake. Even during his personal quest to avenge his murdered sister, he has to be saved by Avdol and later Kakyoin, repeatedly. Tragically, Iggy and Avdol both sacrifice their lives to save Polnareff during the confrontation with Vanilla Ice, leaving him wracked with guilt and grief.
  • Joseph has to be rescued several times, most notably when Steely Dan inserts his Stand into Joseph's brain, effectively taking both himself and Jotaro hostage. Fortunately, Kakyoin comes up with a brilliant, if outlandish, plan to remove Lovers.
  • Kakyoin himself has to be rescued by Polnareff and Jotaro respectively after N'Doul catches him off guard with a stealth attack and D'Arby cheats during their video game competition.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The way that Kakyoin’s manipulated into serving DIO is strongly reminiscent of sexual assault.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Holly- um, we mean Seiko Kujo, insists on being called this despite her birth name being Holly, to Joseph's dismay. In a bit of Bilingual Bonus, both names mean the same thing, as she points out.
• Driving Question: Arguably the main question is what DIO's Stand does in the latter half of Stardust Crusaders. The heroes know absolutely nothing about DIO's Stand except for the fact that it absolutely terrifies his minions; and even asking about it is enough to elicit panic and fear in DIO's less loyal subjects. It's kept hidden for good reason, too, since it causes DIO to have an insurmountable advantage over the Joestar Group during the final battle. It's the ability to stop time. Played with, as Kakyoin figures it out almost instantly when he confronts DIO one-on-one, but doesn't survive seeing it in person, forcing him to pass on the message to Joseph.
• Driving Up a Wall: One of the enemy Stand users is the "Wheel of Fortune", which manifests as a monstrous car that can shapeshift and attack at the user's will. At the bottom of a canyon, Wheel of Fortune suddenly sprouts long spikes along its tires to climb the vertical wall and continue to attack the heroes.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: DIO begins the fight with the surviving Crusaders with a somewhat calm, Faux Affably Evil demeanor with only occassional Large Ham tendencies. But after he drains Joseph's blood, cementing his control over Jonathan's body, he drops all pretense and revels in his newfound strength, calling it "the greatest high".
• Dub Name Change: The Crunchyroll subtitles and the Viz Media manga translation had to change a few of the music references to avoid legal issues, though some changes like Enya to Enyaba and ZZ to Zii Zii come from Romanization. Individual examples can be found on the character sheet.
• Dungeon Bypass: Invoked when Joseph instructs Avdol to burn down DIO's mansion if he's not back after a certain amount of time. Later, part of the group surprises DIO by entering the mansion by smashing an outer wall.
• Dwindling Party: During the assault on DIO's mansion. Vanilla Ice kills Avdol and Iggy, then DIO kills Kakyoin and Joseph and injures Polnareff to the point where he can't fight anymore, leaving Jotaro to face DIO alone. Thankfully Joseph comes Back from the Dead once DIO is killed.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The anime adds a literal one for Pet Shop who appears as DIO's falcon on his shoulder in the first half.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Jotaro was more of an abrasive Jerkass in the first few chapters, often rudely insulting people. Once the journey to Egypt started, his characterization aligned more with The Stoic.
  • In earlier chapters, Jotaro's hat was much smaller and rounder, akin to a real life gakuran cap. Eventually the cap would be drawn to be taller, angular, and seemingly fuse with his hair, giving it the iconic look most people know.
  • DIO is shown using a crystal ball to display images in order to sway Polnareff to his side, an ability he doesn't display later on.
  • Kakyoin's first appearance had him painting, but since then, there was no other mention of him being an artist.
  • Holly Kujo's inability to control her Stand (and the ensuing cancer-like damage it does to her, which drives the plot) doesn't really match how Stands are established to work later on. While it's possible to Hand Wave this as her just getting really unlucky with her Stand, the in-universe reason is because her gentle soul left her unable to control it — which clashes jarringly with later Stands, even in this part, being given to kids, babies, pets, inanimate objects, and so on - the only one of which who is similarly affected being a very young Josuke during a flashback in Part 4, giving the implication that the unnatural manifestation has something to do with it. Also, the fact that killing DIO somehow frees her of it doesn't really mesh with how Stand awakening works at any other point in the series.
  • Stands have Tarot Motifs until all of the Major Arcana are used up and then it switches to Egyptian Mythology. Kenny G's Tenore Sax and Vanilla Ice's Cream are the first Stands in the whole franchise to get Musical Theme Naming which becomes the series' standard moving forward. Stand names also usually have some minor significance to the Stand's ability, the user's personality, or their role among the villains, along with a minor plot point where the protagonists are caught off-guard when they start running out of tarot-named enemy Stands only to start fighting ones named after gods of Egypt; later Stands are named whatever Araki felt like, almost always songs or band names. Early tarot-themed Stands also had a color theme to go along with it, e.g. Magician's Red and Hermit Purple, before the idea was dropped relatively early on, with only the initial three protagonists and six villains (including the Heel–Face Turned Kakyoin and Polnareff) having Stands with a color in their name - even Sixth Ranger Iggy's Stand is simply The Fool rather than being given a color to match the rest of the group.
  • Early on, it's mentioned that restrained breathing makes manifesting a Stand difficult, suggesting that they were merely an extension of Hamon. This is dropped later on, as several characters are shown with damaged breathing or heart processes that can use their Stands just fine (such as Jotaro stopping and starting his own heart with his Stand).
  • Early in the part, it's implied that some Stand users' existences are somewhat well-known. For example, Gray Fly and Devo are said to have been hired as assassins, and Avdol knows of some enemies' abilities in advance. In later parts, the mere existence of Stands is only known to other Stand users, and those people tend to keep their abilities a secret (in Golden Wind, the members of Passione prefer to keep their Stand abilities a secret even from their teammates until they have no choice).
  • Stands in this part are downright tame compared to later ones, many of them displaying basic elemental manipulation, regular abilities taken beyond human limits, and other rather straightforward abilities like shrinking down to microscopic size and mind reading, to the point that Hermit Purple's ability to take spirit photographs of far-away things, which requires Joseph to smash a 30,000-yen camera to do so, is almost a joke in comparison, even though it ended up perfectly in-line with the oddly-specific abilities displayed by several later Stands. Star Platinum especially got hit with this, as Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs went from being its sole trademark in Part 3 to being something every successive Joestar's Stand can do. Part 3's Stands also frequently display multiple abilities, often with distinctive names, and New Powers as the Plot Demands. Later Stands usually have one not-specifically-named ability with concrete limitations established early on that are only overcome through the user's creativity or powering up through unnatural means, which became the end goal of two of the next three primary villains.
  • Anime adaptation-wise, the OVAs produced by Studio A.P.P.P feels less like JoJo and more like Fist of the North Star with nearly every character having an Adaptation Personality Change (except Jotaro who stayed the same). This includes Joseph and DIO themselves, both are prone to hamminess and and No Indoor Voice.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Avdol, Iggy, Kakyoin, and Joseph all die heroically in the final battle with Vanilla Ice and DIO, but they're all avenged when Jotaro kills DIO forever and brings Joseph Back from the Dead. Holly is saved, and Polnareff has avenged his sister and can return to his normal life.
• Enemy Rising Behind: After being skewered multiple times, Vanilla Ice, who is a vampire, rises behind Polnareff but the latter isn't fooled.
• Episode of the Dead: The "Justice" arc has the Joestar Group exploring a town overrun by living corpses being controlled by Enya the Hag's Stand, Justice. When Justice is defeated, the town is revealed to be a graveyard cloaked within an illusion created by the Stand's power.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: DIO is ready to accept men and women from any nationality, the elderly and babies, people with disabilities, and even falcons or orangutans, so long as they pledge absolute loyalty to him.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: In the OVA, Senator Wilson's car instantly bursts into a spectacular mushroom cloud explosion after crashing into a train. While the car was badly damaged at this point, it's still unrealistic for the impact to cause such a huge explosion.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Iggy senses Geb coming before it attacks, and also spends a lot of time barking and snarling at Anubis when everyone else thinks it's just a fancy sword.
• Evil Laugh: DIO lets out a deep laugh when he crushes Jotaro under a steamroller.
• Excuse Plot: invokedStardust Crusaders has a paper-thin plot which only serves to give an excuse for Jotaro and co. to travel around the world to kick ass. Word of God indicates that this part was designed to give the impression of a board game.
• Extra-Long Episode:
  • The episodes of the 2015 anime of Stardust Crusaders has long episodes, up to 29 minutes long.
  • A good amount of the Joestar Group's adversaries are fought over multiple episodes, with only Vanilla Ice and DIO himself getting their battles played out over the course of a trilogy.
• The Faceless: 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 Capcom fighting game, Araki had to redesign her from scratch.
• Fake Arm Disarm: Joseph's mechanical hand is the most targeted part of his body.
• Faking the Dead: Avdol faked his death at Hol Horse and J. Geil's hands, returning in time for the Egypt arc.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Kakyoin and Polnareff shrink their Stands to microscopic size so they can enter Joseph's brain and fight Lovers in there. A lot of the battle is shown through the Stands' POV, complete with the characters talking through them.
• Fastball Special: Jotaro uses Star Platinum to throw Iggy at N'Doul. N'Doul 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.
• Fiction 500: Joseph. Not only does he still have the Joestar family wealth, he also built the largest real estate company in New York City and was willed all the resources of the Speedwagon Foundation, a multinational corp of elite scientists and peacekeepers.
• Fictional Video Game: F-Mega and Oh! That's A Baseball!. The anime of Diamond Is Unbreakable gives a Continuity Nod to the previous season by including a snippet of Oh! That's A Baseball! '99.
• Fighting Your Friend: Polnareff is possessed by Anubis and Jotaro now has to fight the combination of Silver Chariot and Anubis.
• Flanderization: Joseph's Gratuitous English. Beforehand, he limited himself with "OH NO!", and he only said it a few times (4, if you look at the anime version). Here, you can see him spamming "OH NO!" and "OH MY GOD!" like no tomorrow.
• Flatline Plotline: At one point in the final battle, Jotaro had Star Platinum grasp and restrain his heart so it actually stopped beating, to make DIO think he was dead. Though DIO seems to fall for the bluff, he decides to call it and Make Sure He's Dead by stabbing him. A timely intervention by Polnareff buys Star Platinum time to revive Jotaro and get him back in the game.
• Flechette Storm: DIO's attempt to finish Jotaro is stopping time and tossing a barrage of knives at once.
• Foreshadowing:
  • DIO mentions to Hol Horse that the left side of his body feels weak from being grafted onto Jonathan. During the final fight of the series, DIO suffers three debilitating injuries on his left side. The first is his left leg being sliced off when he crashed into glass, the second is Jotaro's absolutely brutal punch to the left side of his skull, the and the third is the blow that ends up killing him during his and Jotaro’s final clash.
  • When Hol Horse rushes to get into position to fire his bullets into the pipe before noon, a glance up at the clock shows that the time is closer to 11:55 than to noon, foreshadowing that Hol Horse's watch is fast.
  • There are several hints in the anime's "Emperor and Hanged Man" arc that Avdol is Not Quite Dead.
    • There is no clear bullet wound that suggests that the shot to his head was fatal, as there is only a blood stain.
    • The bullet is never shown making contact with his head.
    • Hol Horse says that the bullet he fired at the truck Kakyoin and Polnareff got away in would be weak, since its momentum would be lost after traveling so far. The bullet that hits Avdol traveled so far, it turned around and came back. Suggesting that the force would not have been enough to kill him.
    • Joseph claims that Avdol was buried, yet we never see his grave when we normally would have.
    • When Avdol gets shot, his eyes are open. However, his eyes are closed in the next shot. Normally, a person would’ve died with their eyes open if they had been fatally shot in the head.
  • When The World makes its first appearance (During Polnareff's confrontation with DIO after killing Vanilla Ice), what looks like a clock can be seen on one of its fists, foreshadowing the Stand's ability.
• Forgot About His Powers: DIO never uses any of the vampire powers he had in Part 1. While you could chalk up his inability to freeze people on grafting his head on Jonathan's body, his eye lasers would've come in real handy in his fight with Jotaro.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: In episode 47, DIO uses the World to time stop the opening credits.
• Franchise Codifier: After the Fist of the North Star-inspired direction of Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency, the introduction of Stands in Stardust Crusaders truly established the JoJo series' hallmarks, gearing the action more towards carefully-balanced dramedy stories (following the mostly serious Phantom Blood and the mostly comedic Battle Tendency) that revolves on the Villain of the Week format with unique battles instead of conventional power scaling, a template that all later parts would follow.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the OVA, when DIO pulls his Flechette Storm trick, you might be able to spot a single fish within all the knives◊.
• Friendless Background: Kakyoin grew without friends because no one could see his Stand, and thus, understand his condition.
• Friendly Tickle Torture: Polnareff does this to Mannish Boy to get him to eat his baby food. What Polnareff doesn't know is that 1.) Mannish Boy is actually evil, and can erase memories, and 2.) Kakyoin laced his baby food with the poop in his diaper as punishment for nearly killing them.
  • Joseph Joestar is on the receiving end of this from his daughter Holly earlier in Part 3, where she tickles him in the middle of the Tokyo-Narita Airport as an affectionate form of punishment for not visiting sooner.
• Garrulous Growth: Nena's Stand, Empress, takes the form of a parasite that infests a host. It starts off as a scab, but soon starts growing larger, gaining teeth, then a face and arms, allowing it to talk and manipulate objects, before finally appearing almost human-like, with a full torso.
• Gasoline Dousing: Jotaro attempts to kill DIO by having his Stand, Star Platinum, punch a hole through a car's gas tank, collecting the fuel in a bucket, splashing him with it, then taking out his lighter. However, DIO manages to escape by stopping time and clinging to a nearby moving car.
• Gate Guardian: Pet Shop functions as a feathered guard dog for DIO's mansion, and even gets the moniker "Guardian of Hell".
• Genie in a Bottle: Judgement passes as one, and even can grant you three wishes. However it is malevolent and makes objects out of clay that turn against the wisher.
• Genius Loci: Sort of. The cast boards a giant freighter and comes under attack by a mysterious Stand user, but are unable to locate the Stand, until they realize that the Stand, Strength, is the freighter itself.
• Genre Blind: Invoked. Most Stand users are extremely cautious about when and where they use their powers, because figuring out a Stand's mechanics is usually a precondition for defeating it. Multiple villains mock the Joestar Group for using their Stands so brazenly, giving up a key advantage early in their journey.
• The Ghost: Jotaro's father, Sadao Kujo, is never seen. Somewhat justified as it's stated that he's a musician who's always on tour.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: People often sport these for some reason.
• Gilligan Cut: The Joestar Group reaches India. Joseph says is his first time, but that India gives the impression of "beggars, thieves, curry-eating, disease-ridden people". Avdol assures that all this stories are lies. Cuts to a crowd of beggars surrounding the group, Kakyoin's wallet is stolen, and a man is shown fallen on the street, sick. Avdol apparently is oblivious to all of this.
• Global Currency: In the scene where Joseph haggles doner kebabs from a Pakistani street vendor, later revealed to be an agent of DIO named Steely Dan, the prices are listed in Japanese yen. However, the actual Pakistani currency is rupees.
• Grand Finale: Was originally meant to be this for the franchise as a whole and is this as far as the "DIO saga" is concerned but Stone Ocean would take the official role of this for the original continuity later.
• Grand Staircase Entrance: DIO's reveal in the final arc happens in a staircase at which top he poses and greets Polnareff.
• Gratuitous English: A whole lot of it.
  • A running gag is Joseph Joestar yelling "OH NO!", "OH MY GOD!" or "HOLY SHIT!" as hammily as possible.
  • The English voiceover for the F-Mega and Oh! That's a Baseball! games Telence T. D'Arby plays against Jotaro and Kakyokin, respectively.
    "OH! THATS A BASHEBOR!"
    "JAGURS!"
    "RED DRAGUNS!"
    "SERECT UR KUR."
  • Judgement's "HAIL 2 U" every time he grants a wish. Avdol replies with his own version — "HELL 2 U!"
  • This video compiles a lot of it into one package.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Even though Enya is only a minor villain in this part, she has had a major influence over the events in the franchise. While it was Diavolo that gave her the Stand Arrows, she was the one who gave them to Okuyasu's father, Yoshihiro Kira, and Pucci. There's also the fact that DIO would not have "The World" had she not received the Stand Arrows.
  • While DIO may have been defeated and permanently killed at the end of this part, his actions will continue to create chaos in the future.
    • It is because of DIO and Enya that the Stand Arrows found their ways into Morioh Town by giving them to the Nijimura family father and Yoshihiro Kira. In the case of the former, DIO's death lead to Keicho's exploits in using the Stand Arrow to find a Stand that could save his father. As for the latter, this lead to Yoshikage Kira awakening to Killer Queen and Bites the Dust eventually. In short, the events of Part 4 would have not happened without DIO's influence.
    • The only reason Josuke found himself in the Joestar family's never ending battle against evil is that DIO awakening to a Stand and taking control of Jonathan's body lead to him awakening to a Stand.
    • Inverted in Part 5. Without DIO's sleeping around, Giorno would've never been born and the Bucciarati gang would've likely been wiped out at the hands of the rogue Passione members. However, thanks to King Crimson and without Gold Experience Requiem, their boss would've kept his hands on Passione, meaning Italy would still be flooded with drugs and controlled by an amoral mob. If anything, Giorno is the one good thing DIO ever made.
    • After DIO's defeat, Polnareff took the Stand Arrow from his mansion. This then lead Polnareff to go to Italy and track down Diavolo after finding out about the Stand Arrow in Passione's possession.
    • Pucci's role as an antagonist in Stone Ocean is entirely on DIO. His Stand was given to him by DIO, and Pucci was the one who was assigned to continue DIO's bidding even after DIO's death. There's also the fact that the events of Stone Ocean occurred as the results of the actions of one of DIO's henchmen that the protagonists did not encounter on the way to Egypt.
• Groin Attack: During Polnareff's fight with Devo, his Stand, Ebony Devil, threatens to bite his balls off. However, in the end, this ends up inverted: when Polnareff gets the upper hand, he slices up everything but Ebony Devil's balls. Indeed, when we see his body, it's been severely messed up due to Synchronization between Stand and user, but his crotch doesn't have any blood on it (in the censored version of the anime, it's one of the few areas of his corpse that isn't covered in Censor Shadow).

Tropes H to P

• Hammy Villain, Serious Hero: Jotaro Kujo's almost comically serious disposition goes up against the flamboyant, loud, and Drunk on the Dark Side DIO in the part's climax. DIO's dialogue is full of shrieking maniacally and This Cannot Be!, while it's almost impossible to tell what emotions are running through Jotaro's head during the fight.
• A Handful for an Eye: At the very end of DIO and Jotaro's climactic fight, DIO splashes Jotaro's eyes with his blood, trying to kick his head off at the same time.
• Handshake Substitute: Polnareff and Kakyoin do a routine of high fives, fist bumps, and hand shakes in jubilation of Kakyoin understanding Polnareff's humorous hand signal while on a sinking submarine.
• Hassle-Free Hotwire: At one point Polnareff tries to hotwire a motorcycle, figuring it must work like in the movies. He fails but Jotaro then plays the trope straight by just kicking the motorcycle.
• Hat Damage: N'Doul manages to knock Jotaro's hat off his head, a feat no Stand user has manages before that, and Jotaro acknowledge N'Doul's talent for doing that. It also takes a knife hit that saves Jotaro's life in the final battle.
• He Didn't Make It: After Avdol and Iggy are killed trying to protect Polnareff from Vanilla Ice, Joseph asks Polnareff what happened to the two, with him saying that, "they didn't make it."
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: After being defeated two times, Boingo swears to be a braver and just man, but unwittingly hurts Iggy with the wooden box he was hiding in, gets attacked by him, and is thrown into the hospital, and it's stated the experience makes him somehow even more meek than he already was.
• Hell Hotel: Near the Pakistan border, the heroes stop by a hotel managed by Enya, who is DIO's confidante. She soon reveals that she's turned the whole city into zombies whom she controls to attack the group, starting with Polnareff. Oh and one wound is enough to have her control you.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: During the fight with Mariah, her Stand, Bastet, causes Joseph and Avdol to become magnetized and wind up stuck together in several risque positions, and later the magnetism the two to become stuck to Railroad Tracks of Doom.
• "Here's Johnny!" Homage: After seemingly cornering a de-aged Polnareff into a small room, Alessi starts breaking down the door and pokes his head through the hole.
  Alessi: Oh, Polnareff, here comes Alessi!
• Hero of Another Story: Polnareff is strongly implied to have been adventuring and cultivating his Stand techniques long before crossing paths with DIO, and explicitly continues to do so after parting ways with Jotaro. Less obviously, Avdol shows a very clear knowledge of the seedy underbelly of the Stand-using world, and was presumably known enough for DIO to seek him out before the story began.
• High-Dive Escape: When Jotaro and co. sniff an ambush in the room in which DIO supposedly sleeps, the all jump through the window to escape.
• Horsing Around: Joseph gets kicked, thrown off, and spit on by a grumpy camel while unsuccessfully attempting to ride it.
• How Do I Shot Web?: The reason Star Platinum's power seems to be so basic compared to other Stands is because Jotaro simply doesn't know how to access his actual ability, which is to stop time, because he's only obtained his Stand within a day or two of the beginning of Part 3.
• Iconic Sequel Character: The cast of Stardust Crusaders is more iconic than those of the two previous parts, thanks in part to the Capcom fighting arcades.
• Idiot Ball: DIO grabs it in the moments before his final defeat. After he blinds Jotaro with blood from his leg, he decides to kill him with a kick from The World instead of a punch. Because of The World having the same leg injury as DIO, Jotaro's Star Platinum shatters both of them with his counterattack to the leg.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: Nonverbal version. Hol Horse gets the idea of killing DIO while he's looking the other way, thereby freeing himself from servitude. Before he can fire, however, DIO casually moves behind Hol Horse using The World, going as far as commending Hol Horse's ambition and composure before leaving without another word. The implications are unmistakable, and Hol Horse submits again to DIO immediately.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: During the Sun arc, Joseph tells his companions that he knows all there is to know about camel riding. Except he can't even make the camel sit and ridicules himself. Finally he admits to Polnareff that his so-called 'experience' about camels comes from watching Lawrence of Arabia two or three times. He even slept through the latter watchings.
• I Lied: A heroic example: when Avdol was seemingly 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.
• Immediate Sequel: Battle Tendency ended with Joseph in an airport departing for Japan to visit Holly and Jotaro in the Distant Finale. His introduction in Stardust Crusaders has him meeting Holly at the airport after touching down.
• Impending Clash Shot: The penultimate cover, with the iconic shot of Jotaro and DIO about to clash. Invoked again in the final episode of the anime.
• Implausible Fencing Powers: Silver Chariot and anyone possessed by Anubis will have these thanks to their supernatural nature. Though in Anubis' case, it doesn't seem to increase their actual skill, it just makes them strong and fast enough that that doesn't matter.
• Injured Self-Drag: In Polnareff's battle against Vanilla Ice, part of his foot gets sliced off by Ice's Cream. Upon seeing Ice is circling the room to find him, Polnareff desperately tries to crawl out of the attack's path only to quickly realize he doesn't have the strength to escape.
• Inner Thoughts, Outsider Puzzlement: Very close to the end of the arc, DIO apparently kills and drains the blood of Joseph right in front of Jotaro. While DIO goes about gloating about the deed, Jotaro has a vision of Joseph's spirit leaving his body, complete with some last minute advice. DIO eventually notices and wonders why Jotaro is staring at nothing, as far as DIO can see.
• Insane Troll Logic: Alessi admits that his Would Hurt a Child tendencies are pretty messed up, but says that if you think you're off in the head it's usually a good sign that you're not (since you're at least sane enough to recognize it) and therefore insists that he's perfectly sane.
• Inspiration Nod: In interviews, Araki has stated that one of the main inspirations for the plot of Stardust Crusaders come from the Jules Verne book Around the World in Eighty Days, and this is acknowledged in chapter 124 by Joseph after surviving the plane crash caused by Tower of Gray.
  Joseph: But it's too far early to worry. A hundred years ago, someone wrote a book about going around the world in 80 days, and that was way back in the age of steam engines. Even without a plane, we can reach Egypt in well under 50 days!
• I Never Told You My Name: Enya Geil, 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, which he does so after he gets suspicious when she calls Joseph "Mr. Joestar" which she passes off as having heard Polnareff say his name.
• 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 after his brainwashing ends, as Hierophant Green is used mostly as a long-range Stand, and its signature ability — the Emerald Splash — is firing barrages of gemstones at the enemy.
• In Medias Res: The first OVA begins during the Egypt arc as opposed to Joseph's arrival in Japan. They went back to produce a pre-Egypt adaptation years later.
• Insult of Endearment: After defeating DIO, our three surviving heroes hugged each other with brotherly love at Cairo Airport as Polnareff leaves for Paris while Joseph and Jotaro fly back to Tokyo, resorting to this to fight back the tears welling in their eyes.
  Polnareff: Goodbye, you wrinkled old coot! You live a long life, you hear?! And you, his cheapskate grandson; don't you dare forget about me!
  Joseph: Let us meet again! That is if you don't already hate me by then, you stupid jackass!
  Jotaro: I can't ever forget a clown like you even if I tried, you bastard. Take care.
• Jackass Genie: Judgement is one, when he's pretending to be a Genie in a Bottle. He keeps trying to insist that answering questions counts as wishes. He also resurrects Polnareff's sister and Avdol, but as flesh-eating zombies that try to eat Polnareff. It's later revealed they're not the real people anyway, because Judgement isn't really a genie, he's a Stand that creates objects and creatures out of dirt.
• Knight of Cerebus: Pet Shop's appearance is when Stardust Crusaders becomes more serious with the remaining villains being about as dangerous as DIO himself, getting to see how bad Holly's condition has gotten, and the deaths of Avdol, Iggy, and Kakyoin. Before that, J. Geil is a much earlier example whose arc sees a core character killed off (temporarily), on top of still going down as one of the more depraved villains in the manga's history, but things return to their usual tone for awhile after he's defeated.
• Knight Templar Parent: Enya. She despises Jotaro and his friends, particularly Polnareff, who "mercilessly" killed her "sweet, innocent son". Said son is actually a serial murderer/rapist, who raped and killed Polnareff's little sister long ago.
• Laughing Mad: During the Sun arc, the heroes are trying to figure out the enemy Stand when everyone including Jotaro (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.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: Avdol's fight with Polnareff ends with the latter being lit on fire by Avdol and his Magician's Red. Avdol then gives Polnareff a dagger, telling him to use it to make his death less painful. This turns out to be a Secret Test of Character: Polnareff is Graceful Loser, accepting death at Avdol's hands while also refusing to throw the knife at him, which leads to Avdol sparing him.
• Lodged-Blade Recycling: During the final battle, Jotaro is stabbed with several knives by DIO. He uses one of them to prevent the latter from escaping by bursting the wheel of a car DIO hijacked.
• Loyalty Mission: Initially, Polnareff doesn't have any wish to stay for long with Jotaro and co. However, after Avdol and then Kakyoin fight alongside him to kill J. Geil, his sister's killer, Polnareff definitely joins the group to fight DIO in Egypt.
• Luxury Prison Suite: At the start of the arc, Jotaro is residing in a prison cell filled with items his "demon" procured for him, including a personal computer, beer, and Shonen Jump comics. By the time Joseph and Avdol arrive, it looks almost like a bedroom.
• Magical Camera: When Joseph Joestar smashes a camera with Hermit Purple, he can capture an image from anywhere he can envision. DIO can do it by tapping the camera, proving once again Joseph simply has no restraint.
• The Magic Poker Equation: Subverted during Jotaro and Daniel J. D'Arby's poker game. It is revealed that at the most critical hand, where Jotaro is risking the souls of his whole party and his mother's, he's been dealt a worthless hand because Daniel was cheating. However, Jotaro manages to make Daniel believe that he too is cheating at this critical hand through sheer bluff, and Daniel fold.
• 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.
• Mama Bear: A villainous example in Enya, who swears to avenge her son J. Geil and kill all the heroes when Polnareff kills him.
• Man Hug: The survivors (Jotaro, Joseph and Polnareff) do this at the end.
• Manly Tears: Unsurprisingly, Polnareff is responsible for the majority of them, but Kakyoin is surprisingly prone to getting misty eyed. Even Jotaro isn't above a Tearful Smile after he parts ways with the surviving members of the Joestar Group.
• Match Cut: Done in the anime ending with a clock hand, a directional arrow on a map, and various tarot cards.
• Mirthless Laughter: Subverted during the fight against The Sun. As the heroes, trapped in a desert cave, slowly succumb to heat exhaustion and dehydration, they start laughing hysterically one by one, except for Joseph, who believes them to have lost their minds due to the heat and the despair of the situation. Kakyoin then points out that the true reason for their laughter is that they've realized how to defeat this enemy.
• Missed Him by That Much: In the "Empress" arc, Joseph has his arm possessed by Empress and is frantically searching for Polnareff for help. However due to Nena constantly distracting him with her good looks, Polnareff never sees him and at one point the two are separated by a mere carpet.
• Mistaken Death Confirmation: After thinking he's killed Jotaro and worrying about him moving during stopped time, DIO puts his ear to the ground from a safe distance and Jotaro makes Star Platinum stop his heart for a few seconds to convince DIO. This gives Polnareff enough time to shove Silver Chariot's foil into DIO's head, which doesn't kill him, followed by Jotaro getting up and breaking it to DIO that he had faked his death.
• The Mob Boss Is Scarier: 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. They have a very good reason for this, because DIO's Stand is completely unstoppable, even to almost all other Stand users.
• Modesty Towel: After Alessi's defeat, Malèna turns back to her normal adult self, only wearing the towel that Polnareff wrapped her in to keep her safe when she was a fetus.
• Monster Mash: Many of the Tarot Card Stands are shout-outs to horror movies.
• Mood Whiplash: Episode 44 cuts from the end of the fight with Vanilla Ice and the deaths of Avdol, Iggy and Vanilla Ice to Suzi Q stopping at a soba stand in Japan on the way to visit Holly. Once Suzi Q's out of earshot, Roses and a man from the Speedwagon Foundation talk about how Holly is dying, unbeknownst to Suzi Q, and the possibility that she could be saved if DIO is defeated.
• More Diverse Sequel: The first two parts had almost exclusively white characters. Stardust Crusaders is about a Multinational Team, starring the half-Japanese Jotaro, his British grandfather Joseph, the Egyptian Avdol, the fully-Japanese Kakyoin, the French Polnareff, and Team Pet Iggy, an American dog. Minor characters are also very ethnically diverse, as the story sees the crew stopping at many countries during their trip from Japan to Egypt.
• Move in the Frozen Time: DIO's Stand power, The World, can stop time for everyone, but eventually Jotaro manages to move slightly during this. They exactly keep track of the number of seconds, so while DIO is able to move around nine or ten seconds, Jotaro only can do about two or three. It's more than enough to beat him though. Later in the fight, DIO gains a powerup which extends the duration of his time stop... not realising that by this point, Jotaro has figured out how to stop time himself. Jotaro activates his own time stop just as DIO's ends, tricking DIO into wasting his window of movement and leaving him helpless.
  • Originally, this is subverted. Shortly after Jotaro discovers that DIO's ability is to stop time, DIO activates it and moves in for the kill... but when he draws close, Jotaro twitches. Paranoid, DIO immediately backs off, only to realise that Jotaro faked the effect by planting a magnet on DIO which would tug at his metal cuffs. But when DIO approaches for a second time, Jotaro punches him in the face — he can only move for a brief window before he freezes again, and wanted to experience multiple time stops so he could get used to it.
• Multinational Team: A half Japanese, half British-American high school student (Jotaro), a British-American real estate tycoon (Joseph), a Japanese high school student (Kakyoin), an Egyptian fortune teller (Avdol), a French whatever the hell it was was Polnareff did before DIO came along, (Polnareff), and a Boston Terrier from New York (Iggy).
• Musical Theme Naming: All of DIO's henchmen have names that are music references with this part mostly having references to pop and R&B artists who were popular in the late 70's and throughout the 80's with a few of Araki's usual rock music references thrown in. Avdol and Polnareff's surnames and Iggy's name are also references as well as Vanilla Ice's Stand Cream, Senator Wilson Phillips, and Avdol's pet chickens.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Yellow Temperance is a Blob Monster immune to freezing and heat on top of blunt force. Jotaro deemed that its wielder was the weak point.
• Nightmare Dreams: Mannish Boy's Stand, Death Thirteen, whose power is this.
• Noble Bigot: Joseph has a dislike of all things Japanese. This is because his daughter Holly married a Japanese jazz musician and moved away to Japan to be with her husband. As a result he doesn't get to see his daughter or grandson much, and blames Japan for tearing his family apart. However, he loves his half-Japanese grandson, gets along well with Kakyoin, and is revealed to have had an affair with a Japanese woman in 1983, all of this suggesting that his racism is just bitterness about his family being away from him.
• Noble Demon: N'Doul is an evil Stand user willing to slaughter innocents if they get in his way, and openly admits that he spent his life prior to meeting DIO stealing and murdering. He's also willing to kill himself rather than be forced to betray his allies, but does give Jotaro a little information on himself saying it's "only fair, since you're the one who stopped me".
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Once Lovers is defeated and Steely Dan realizes he's completely screwed after all he put the Joestar Group (mainly Jotaro) through, Jotaro beats seven kinds of crap out of him. The beatdown goes on for a grand total of three pages (only Cioccolata in Golden Wind gets a worse pummeling, taking place across seven).
• No, I Am Behind You: When DIO tried to crush Jotaro under a road roller, he reappeared behind him and stopped time, leaving DIO at his mercy.
• Odd Name Out:
  • Vanilla Ice's Stand, Cream, is not based on Tarot Motifs nor an Egyptian God, but it is rather a music reference, and the only Stand to have a name as such in this part. Though, this would become the standard in later parts.
  • Kenny G's Stand, Tenore Sax, is one for the franchise as a whole. It is the only Stand in the series to not be named after a Tarot Card, Egyptian God, or be a reference to a song, artist, or album. It's instead named after a musical instrument.
  • Nukesaku is the only one of DIO's henchmen whose name isn't a music reference on top of being the only one without a Stand.
• Offhand Backhand: Vanilla Ice tries to sneak on Polnareff from behind, but Silver Chariot then skewers him with its rapier without even looking.
• One Cast Member per Cover: The JoJonium edition depicts Jotaro, Joseph, Hol Horse, Enyaba, Kakyoin, Avdol, Daniel J. D'Arby, Iggy, Polnareff, and DIO on each respective volume, featuring new art by Hirohiko Araki. The back covers, meanwhile, depict each character's Stand.
• Only in It for the Money: Gray Fly, Rubber Soul, Steely Dan and Hol Horse are only motivated by the fact that DIO promised them a ton of money for taking them out.
• Out of Focus:
  • Downplayed. Joseph was the main character of Part 2, and plays a major supporting role here. He doesn't fight nearly as often, but he's The Face and the clear leader of the Joestar Group.
  • Avdol and Kakyoin both get this pretty badly, starting as equally important members of the Joestar Group before being Put on a Bus, neither getting much to do after The Bus Came Back. At least Kakyoin got A Death in the Limelight.
• Paranoia Gambit: Jotaro pulls one on Daniel J. D'Arby during their game of poker. First Jotaro doesn't bother to look at his cards, claiming he's fine with them, D'Arby is only a little bit unfazed but then Jotaro keeps raising the stakes of the game while making random objects appearing in his hands, making D'Arby suspect that Star Platinum switched Jotaro's cards, an impossible feat according to D'Arby, but Jotaro successfully crushes any certainties. The final straw is Jotaro betting the soul of his mother against information about DIO's Stand power, and D'Arby folds, unable to handle the pressure. It's revealed Jotaro had nothing^note Eight of diamonds, six of spades, ten of hearts, ace of hearts and jack of clubs compared to D'Arby's four kings., and only planned to psyche D'Arby out through bluffing and sheer intimidation. He even tells Avdol that, if he had looked at his hand, he would have freaked out.
  Jotaro (Japanese): Even Star Platinum wouldn't have been able to cheat against someone like D'Arby. Good thing I scared him into folding... 'cause that hand was fucking worthless. Give me a break... knowing that would've scared the shit out of me.
  Jotaro (English Dub): Even with Star Platinum's incredible speed, he wouldn't have been able to swap cards in front of an expert gambler like D'Arby. It's a good thing my bluff and intimidation worked so well with such a worthless hand. Good grief... had I known it was this crappy, I would've freaked!
• Passing Judgment: Joseph Joestar and Muhammad Avdol become stuck together by Mariah's magnetic powers. Hilarity Ensues when their attempts to separate lead to them looking like they're dancing. Then Avdol's attempts to slide himself down to Joseph's legs makes it look like he's sucking the old man off. THEN when they finally become unstuck, Avdol's crotch gets stuck to Joseph's rear before the magnetism forces Avdol to vigorously dry hump Joseph. All the while, they draw in an increasingly large crowd of people, who just stare at the two in confusion. Eventually, an old lady who was smitten with Joseph walks in on the two during the worst of their curse, at which point she angrily starts whipping Joseph with her umbrella. At this point, Joseph is humiliated enough to start crying.
  Joseph: HELP ME!! OH MY GOD!!
• Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting: Rubber Soul's Stand, Yellow Temperance, allows him to perfectly mimic a person's appearance. However, he never bothers to truly act like the person he's impersonating, preferring to act like a vulgar parody of them instead. While disguised as Kakyoin, his Out-of-Character moments slowly draw suspicion from Jotaro until the latter finally punches him. Ironically, the one thing that blows his cover to Jotaro — the infamous "Rero Rero Rero" scene — actually turns out to be accurate to Kakyoin's personality.
• Person as Verb: In the English dub of the anime, in the scene where Joseph has a bad experience in an Egyptian bathroom, he decides to "pull a Polnareff" and wait to do his business until the group returns to the hotel.
• Pocket Protector: Jotaro survives a storm of knives thrown at him by DIO during a time stop because of his hat and several copies of Shonen Jump he had stuffed in his jacket (the fact his Stand was able to move for 1 second during the time stop and deflect half of the knives helped, but he still would have died were it not for the hat and magazines).
• Poke in the Third Eye: In one scene, Joseph uses Hermit Purple and a TV to observe DIO. He's surprised when DIO responds.
• Power Floats: Telence T. D'Arby is introduced levitating ominously towards the heroes. Then DIO and Jotaro start flying during the final battle, which isn't an established power for either of them, or anyone in the whole series other than Ultimate Kars.
• Precocious Crush: An the Tagalong Kid develops one of these for Jotaro.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Polnareff delivers an oddly cold one to Vanilla Ice.
  Polnareff: (in Tranquil Fury) Go to Hell.
• Production Foreshadowing: The first ED of the anime adaptation features an arrow creating a line which quickly changes course, briefly creating a number four, and the arrowhead itself is a dead ringer for the Stand Arrow that would be formally introduced in Diamond is Unbreakable.
• Prophecy Twist: Boingo's Stand, Thoth, can predict the future, however Prophetic Fallacy is in full play and the predictions are incomplete, leading to the villains be victims of Thoth.
• Properly Paranoid: The crew automatically assume that anything strange is the result of a Stand. They're almost always right. For example, right after arriving in Egypt Joseph, Jotaro, and Polnareff stop in a cafe. Joseph warns them that they are now in the heart of enemy territory and have to be cautious about what they eat or drink in case an enemy tries to poison them. Unknown to Joseph, their waiter is Oingo, an enemy Stand user who was plotting exactly that and gets stymied by Joseph demanding unopened bottles of cola, insisting they'll open the bottles themselves, and picking specific bottles at random.
• Pummel Duel: Jotaro and DIO begin their clash by comparing the strength of their respective Stands. The fistfight ultimately evolves into a Pummel Duel where The World prevails due to superior technique.
• Punch-Clock Villain: A heavily recurring trope in this part as many of the arc villains are mercenaries that DIO paid large sums of money to either to kill the protagonists or perform some other task for him. In fact when many villains are about to be beaten down, they'll often utter that they were just hired mercenaries.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Avdol gets this treatment after his supposed death at the hands of Hol Horse. It isn't until the Judgement arc where he returns unexpectedly. As it turns out, while he was badly injured, he was in good enough condition to fake his own death and was hiding on a remote island with everyone but Polnareff knowing of his whereabouts.
  • Kakyoin gets it at the beginning of the Egypt arc where he's heavily wounded by N'Doul. He's placed in the hospital immediately afterwards and doesn't return until after Iggy kills Pet Shop.
  • A more straight and permanent example would be Anne, the runaway girl who tagged along with the Joestar Group until they got to Pakistan and sent her home on a plane. She doesn't come back after that.

Tropes R to Z

• Race Against the Clock: The driving force of the plot. Jotaro and company have a few weeks to track down and kill DIO, or else Jotaro's mother Holly will be killed due to her Stand negatively affecting her. Also in another sense since if they do not kill DIO in time, he will eventually master his Stand, The World (which is the ability to stop time), to the point of becoming unstoppable.
• Recursive Translation: When Gray Fly writes "MASSACRE" on the airplane wall in blood, the narrator explains what the English word means. This happens even in the English version, whose viewers probably know what the word means already.
• Red Herring: While in Singapore, Joseph 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 Right Hand: J. Geil and his mother Enya Geil. Both have two right hands. Both are not nice people.
• Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: Enya stabs Hol Horse and attacks him with her Stand as punishment for him abandoning her son to die back in India. Polnareff finds him shortly afterward, right before also getting attacked by Enya. Hol Horse begs Polnareff to save him from the crazy woman, but Polnareff reminds him that he's the one who shot Avdol and isn't getting a lick of sympathy.
• Retcon:
  • Forever, Rubber Soul, Arabia Fats, and Mannish Boy were all nameless characters in the initial serialization. However, the databook released by Araki in 2000 gave them official names and the JoJonium releases as well as the anime would refer to them as such. In the case of Forever, he is named after an album that was released after the serialization, by a band that was formed after the fact as well.
  • The very existence of the Joestar birthmark is this. In the manga neither Jonathan or Joseph had it at any point during parts 1 and 2 respectively, which is pretty jarring since the back of Joseph's neck is visible at various points on the battle against Kars, only a few chapters before part 3 started. The anime adaptations corrected this, as birthmarks are there but not put emphasis on.
• Revenge is Sweet: Polnareff is filled with glee when he finally catches up to J. Geil, the man who raped and murdered his sister, stabbing him repeatably though the body with his before throwing him in the air to be impaled on a spiky gate. While Polnareff does regret being too hasty in his desire for revenge causing the seeming death of Avdol, he has no regrets ending J. Geil's life.
• Revenge Myopia: Enya the Hag is hell-bent on avenging the death of her son, J. Geil... who was a serial killer and rapist.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • In the anime's version of the Arabia Fats fight, you can actually see the reflected rock that he was hiding behind in a few of the panning shots well before the main cast has figured out how and where he's hiding.
  • Another one from the anime: during the standoff at the end of the N'Doul fight, a strange sound effect accompanies Jotaro's initial punches. Specifically, the same sound effect that would later be used to indicate when Time Stands Still, implying that Jotaro was subconsciously using his time powers to win the standoff.
  • While it's debated if it was planned enough ahead of time to qualify as Foreshadowing, Jotaro's ability to stop time is at least much less surprising on a subsequent watch or read. The first thing Jotaro does to establish his Stand is fire a gun at himself at point blank range, which a later flashback shows is exactly what DIO requested be done to him to test his power to stop time. Another pattern becomes obvious on another viewing. Right near the beginning, it's shown that DIO has his own version of Hermit Purple, establishing that Stands with the same power are possible. During Kakyoin's flashback to how he received his flesh bud, the room is covered in vines and roses just like Holly's Stand, thematically continuing the idea of DIO and the Joestars sharing Stands. Then, of course, Jotaro himself points out this connection when he says that their Stands might be of the same type when first seeing the World.
• Rimshot: Throughout Stardust Crusaders, there are several moments when some characters, including The Narrator, would say "Ba-Dum-Tish" after a particularly bizarre moment.
• Road-Sign Reversal: During the Wheel of Fortune battle, ZZ flips a road sign to lead the Joestar Group away from Pakistan instead of toward Pakistan, causing them to get lost.
• Road Trip Plot: The Part as a whole is structured very similar to one of these. The characters spend most of the story traveling from Tokyo to Cairo, stopping at various points along the way, and as much time is devoted to exploring the cultural quirks of the different countries as is to the battles. Arakii revealed this is to avoid the Sorting Algorithm of Evil, as progress is marked by distance crossed, not strength of the enemy.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: The whole story is about Jotaro and his group setting out to kill DIO to save his mother, and boy, oh boy, do they fight so many people on their journey.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: If one determines Jotaro and Joseph setting out to kill DIO and his henchmen for his actions towards Jonathan and effects on the Joestar family, let alone the whole world, then this trope definitely qualifies.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Kakyoin and Joseph briefly fight DIO over the rooftops of Cairo, their rope-like Stands allowing greater mobility than DIO's.
• Rooting for the Empire: Deliberately invoked in the Oingo Boingo and Hol Horse & Boingo Episodes of the 2015 anime adaptation, wherein the directors make the bumbling trio trying to kill the Joestar Group so adorably incompetent that they are milked for all the sympathy from the audience that they are worth. In fact, even the soundtrack of said four episodes deliberately invokes the tongue in cheek slapstick-orchestra found in 1950's Chuck Jones Road Runner and Coyote shorts. You'd hate yourself for doing it, but you will be cheering all the way for the three lovable idiots to rub out the Joestar Group, knowing full well they won't succeed.
• Sadistic Choice: A rare heroic example occurs when the heroes face off against D'Arby. The gambler's already taken Polnareff and Joseph's souls and makes Jotaro bet his in a game of poker, and he's already lost half of it in the previous round. Jotaro then bluffs D'Arby by using Star Platinum's super speed to light a cigarette and get a glass of juice, making him think Jotaro could have swapped his hand for a better one. Then he not only bets the rest of his soul, he bets Avdol's, Kakyoin's (who's in the hospital at the moment), and his own mother's, all to force D'Arby into one of these; since he doesn't have enough soul chips to match Jotaro's bet, D'Arby has to wager the secret of DIO's stand to stay in the game. If he calls Jotaro's raise and loses, he'll have to tell them— which means DIO will kill him. But if he folds, they'll likely beat the information out of him anyway. The stakes of such a bet, the idea that Jotaro could both outmaneuver AND outcheat the self-proclaimed "greatest gambler in the world", and Jotaro's sheer level of confidence and faith in his own cards when he won't even look at his hand all frighten D'Arby to the point where he becomes a gibbering wreck who physically can't bring himself to call Jotaro's raise and passes out on his feet.
• Saved by the Coffin: DIO is revealed to have survived underwater by hiding in the same coffin that saved Erina and Lisa Lisa back in Part 1.
• Save the Villain: Also played straight. Jotaro saves Kakyoin and Polnareff from DIO's mind-controling flesh buds. They also attempt to save Enya from Steely Dan, though that's out of the hope that they can get her to tell them DIO's Stand power, and they fail to save her in the end.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Lampshaded:
  Joseph: I can't believe you found a tailor in Pakistan to make you a new school uniform.
  Jotaro: Made from sheep wool, too.
  • After they leave Hong Kong, Joseph asks Jotaro and Kakyoin why they're still wearing their school uniforms despite not being in Japan anymore. Kakyoin simply states that they're students, so they should look like students.
  • The anime adds another lampshade during the Yellow Temperance fight. When Anne calls Joseph and Avdol to warn them about the fake Kakyoin, the real Kakyoin walks into their hotel room, explaining he was sunbathing. When Joseph and Avdol question why he was sunbathing in his uniform, they conclude that the Kakyoin standing in front of them is in fact the real one.
• Screaming at Squick: Joseph cannot help but scream when Jotaro takes out a flesh bud from Polnareff's head.
• Screw the Money, This Is Personal!: After Steely Dan's last-ditch attempt to get the drop on Jotaro by taking a little girl hostage quickly gets foiled by Kakyoin, Jotaro makes it clear to Dan he's run out of patience with him, and he just wasted his last chance to receive any mercy at all. Steely Dan offers him the money DIO paid him to convince Jotaro to let him go, but the latter tells him outright that all the humiliation and abuse he put him through can't be repaid with money before having Star Platinum inflict a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that lasts 3 pages in the manga and 20 seconds in the anime.
• Secret Test of Character: The fight between Avdol and Polnareff ends with Polnareff being lit on fire by Avdol and his Magician's Red, and being given a dagger. He's then told to use it to make his death less painful. Polnareff's refusal to either kill himself or attack Avdol with the knife proves to Avdol that he's honorable enough to be worth saving, and he extinguishes the flames.
• Sex–Face Turn: Subverted. When Midler expresses some annoyance at having to kill Jotaro, Polnareff gets the idea of exploiting her Villainous Crush and goads Jotaro into flirting with her so she'll spare their lives. There's only one problem with this plan: Jotaro really sucks at romance, and nobody else ends up doing much better.
  Joseph: Baby, if I were thirty years younger-
  Midler: SHUT UP!
• Shadow of Impending Doom: During Jotaro's final battle with DIO. After DIO traps him in another time stop and disappears, Jotaro casually prepares himself to counter whatever DIO has in store, he then notices a shadow appear from above and sees DIO... with a steamroller in hand.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • The fight against Daniel J. D'Arby, to an extent. By the time Jotaro had beaten him, D'Arby's Villainous Breakdown was to the point that he couldn't give any meaningful information about DIO's location. The OVA attempts to remedy this by having D'Arby deliriously inform the group that DIO's in Cairo (which they know in the manga but not in the OVA).
  • A villainous example: Oingo, in an attempt to kill Jotaro as per his brother's prediction, places an orange inside of a bomb and attempts to place it inside the party's car. However, once Joseph and Polnareff appear, Oingo is forced to disguise himself as Jotaro to avoid getting caught. Since the prediction states that Jotaro would be blown up, and Oingo is now disguised as Jotaro, Oingo does all that he can to ensure that he doesn't get blown up. Eventually, Oingo manages to escape the car—but the orange bomb gets thrown out of the car and is stepped on by Oingo—who is still disguised as Jotaro—blowing him up.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Played with. While Jotaro survives, so do Polnareff and Joseph, the two goofiest characters of the party. They get to witness first-hand the death of their companions, so they don't have any reason to play around, but Joseph is still jovial enough to play a prank on his grandson seconds after coming Back from the Dead.
• Showing Off the New Body: DIO seems to be a little too happy with the body he hijacked from Jonathan.
• Sic 'Em: When Jotaro disposes of the last of the Egyptian Gods, we are treated to DIO sending Vanilla Ice who proves more effective at killing heroes than every other minion of his combined. As well as successfully killing Avdol where Hol Horse failed, he also kills Iggy. He's technically more successful at killing members of the Joestar Group than DIO is, as Joseph is brought back from his injuries with a combination of Speedwagon medical technology and a transfusion of DIO's blood.^note Though, technically, the blood — vampiric as it might be — is actually Jonathan's due to Part 3 DIO being the head of Part 1 Dio Brando grafted onto Jonathan Joestar's body. This could mitigate any possible artistic license on Araki's part, as familial blood — Jonathan and Joseph are grandfather and grandson — would have a higher chance of being compatible.
• Sliding Scale of Villain Effectiveness: With the large amount of antagonists in this part, DIO's henchmen range from incompetent nuisances that are no threat to the protagonists whatsoever to cunning intellectuals or powerhouses that either come close to winning their fights or even kill some of the protagonists. It all depends on how powerful or useful their Stand and physical capabilities are, as well as how smart and creative they can be with their Stands.
• Signature Headgear: Jotaro's hat is so iconic that it became essentially a symbol of the entire Jojo franchise. It actually shocks him when the hat gets knocked off at one point, since it fits him so well that it's recognized in-universe that the hat is nigh irremovable, almost as if it's glued to his head. It actually saves his life against DIO by still being able to fit on his head while hiding a magazine inside it, which lets it stop one of DIO's knives.
• Signature Move: Being the protagonists, most of the Joestar Group has at least one.
  • Jotaro: His punch rush^note ORAORAORAORA...!!, Star Finger^note Extending Star Platinum's index and middle fingers to act as a telescopic spear and freezing time; giving rise to his Stand's "evolution" into Star Platinum: The World.
  • Kakyoin: Emerald Splash^note A rapid-fire barrage of gemstones, plus its X-Metre modifications, where he extends portions of Hierophant Green's body to create a web of tripwires over a set radius. If broken, Hierophant instantly fires off a burst of Emerald Splash at the location. Of course, as DIO quickly figures out, Hierophant's reactions are rendered completely useless if the tripwires are all cut in unison during The World's period of frozen time.
  • Polnareff: He doesn't have a specific named attack like Kakyoin, but he can vastly increase the speed of Silver Chariot by commanding it to shed its armour. Other than that, his "flaming sword" team-up attack with Avdol and his ability to fire Chariot's blade like an arrow would likely count, despite the infrequency of its use.
  • Muhammad Avdol: The Crossfire Hurricane Special^note Itself one of Araki's numerous musical references; specifically to the first line of The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash": "I was born in a crossfire hurricane...", a powerful attack utilising ankh-shaped fireballs from his Stand, Magician's Red.
  • DIO: Like Jotaro, he has a punch rush^note MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA!!. However, his Stand's signature ability is to completely freeze time for ten seconds, during which he employs another of his signature attacks: hurling dozens of knives and watching them hurtle towards his helpless enemy once time resumes. And thanks to years of internet memes, dropping ROAD ROLLER onto Jotaro's head would likely count as one, too.
• Sinister Nudity: In the Judgement arc, the seemingly revived Sherry ends up becoming an example of this once her Body Horror as a flesh-eating zombie is revealed: she's completely naked aside from Barbie Doll Anatomy and some Godiva Hair.
• The Smart Guy: All the members of the Joestar Group are clever in their own way (even Polnareff), but Kakyoin is unquestionably the most strategic and analytical team member, even if his young age means he doesn't have as much real world experience as Joseph or Avdol. Unfortunately, this was probably why DIO killed him the instant the opportunity presented itself, as he knew Kakyoin was smart enough to figure out how his Stand works and think of a counterattack.
• Smoking Is Edgy: Jotaro is shown to be a habitual cigarette smoker despite being only aged 17, to contrast him with his straitlaced ancestor Jonathan (who preferred pipes instead) and his roguish but still relatively gentlemanly grandfather Joseph, as well as every subsequent protagonist who aren't shown smoking at all.
• Soft Glass: Averted in the final battle, DIO is propelled through a glass window and gets his leg cut off.
• Soft Reboot: Despite its connections to Parts 1 and 2, Stardust Crusaders functions in this manner. While it does feature Joseph and DIO, with the occasional cameo from Suzi Q, its ties to the previous parts are far and few between. Plus, Hamon is barely used and gets replaced with a new power system of Stands, which, at the time, came out of left field.
• Soft Water: Jotaro and Rubber Soul don't seem to look like they're in pain after falling into the sea from a cable car. While Rubber Soul's Yellow Temperance may have protected him, Jotaro fell into the water first.
• So Last Season: Cheerfully lampshaded by DIO during his battle with Joseph.
  DIO: Ah, yes. Hamon energy, I believe! It was quite literally the death of me 100 years ago; but now that I wield the power of the Stand, that which once slew me is now less than insignificant before the might of The World!
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: On the one hand, DIO has hired henchmen like Hol Horse and the Oingo Boingo Brothers who are nothing more than hired mercenaries that he just handed Stand powers over to and are so incompetent to the point where the protagonists find them to be laughable. On the other, he is also working with extremely loyal allies such as the D'Arby Brothers, Pet Shop, and Vanilla Ice who not only possess powerful and terrifying Stand abilities but know how to handle themselves.
• Spit Take: Performed by Jotaro, Joseph, and Polnareff when Iggy starts causing trouble. Since it was poisoned tea courtesy of Oingo no less, this inadvertently saved their lives.
• Spoiler Opening: The second OP of the David Production anime, though one probably wouldn't be able to guess it on their first viewing.
  • In one of the shots, the group stands on a stairwell with determined expressions, looking towards the camera. Everyone on the left (and Jotaro, in the center) lives at the end of the part; everyone on the right dies.
  • In the next, Avdol and Iggy are chasing Polnareff up a flight of stairs, before a wide swathe of color pierces through the former two, referencing how Vanilla Ice kills them both by erasing them with his void ability. The followup shots are done in a similar style; Kakyoin is surrounded by lines that strike across the entirety of the screen (he's using the 20-Meter Emerald Splash) before the screen shatters during the transition (Kakyoin figures out the secret of The World), Joseph gets a single, sharp line pointed at his throat (DIO takes him out by throwing a knife there), and Jotaro is surrounded by the same kind of lines (DIO does that with knives during stopped time).
  • When Star Platinum starts attacking the camera, the glass lens fragments for a moment before shattering, the glass shards pausing in the air after they're broken as the singers say "end of the world". DIO's Stand, The World, stops time, and the first third of the climax is spent figuring out what it does.
  • Likewise, the first opening has a shot showing five shooting stars flying above the Earth, representing the titular "Stardust Crusaders" of the Joestar group. But if you look closely, you can notice a sixth comet on the right side, separated from the others — foreshadowing that a Sixth Ranger (Iggy) will join the group later on.
• Stab the Scorpion: Hol Horse read Boingo's comicbook which can predict the future, and is outraged that he'd have to kick a woman in the neck. He reluctantly does as the comic book predicts and in fact kills a dangerous scorpion hidden in the woman's scarf.
• The Stinger: The end of the first season of the anime shows Iggy in the back seat of a Speedwagon Foundation helicopter.
• Super Window Jump: Joseph and Avdol get out of the women's bathroom by jumping out of the bathroom's window, partially because Mariah did the same, partially because they want to get away from the embarrassing position of being thought of as peeping toms.
• Tagalong Kid: Anne, a little girl that the group first meet as a stowaway on their boat. She hangs around with them for the next several episodes, following them even though they insist she stay behind. They finally get rid of her in Pakistan, after the battle against ZZ, when they explain their mission to her and convince her to take a plane back to Hong Kong.
• Take It to the Bridge: Jotaro's climatic battle with DIO ends on a bridge.
• 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 Animal: Iggy is one animal whose voice we can hear, but he cannot truly talk to humans.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Often played straight. After Kakyoin traps DIO and launches Emerald Splash, DIO takes a few seconds, while the projectiles are in flight, to boast about how unbeatable his power is — note that this is before he stops time. Jotaro, for his part, can only stop time for 2 or 3 seconds at a time, but while doing so takes several seconds to trash talk DIO. Even more notable in the anime, where you can easily notice that Jotaro and DIO take far longer to talk during their time stops than they're supposed to have available.
• Tarot Motifs: A central trope in this part. The Stands for all of the protagonists, DIO, and the minor antagonists in the first part are named after Tarot Cards.
• Taught by Television: If Jotaro is anything to go by, Columbo is very educational.
• Team Pet: Iggy is this for the crew.
• Theme Music Power-Up: No matter how dire the situation, or how close to death Jotaro is, you know that if his theme kicks in, the bad guy's already lost.
• There Was a Door: DIO laments that Vanilla Ice could just as easily use a door than exit his room using his Stand.
• Time-Freeze Trolling Spree: DIO's first on-screen usage of his Stand's ability (though the time stop itself isn't shown) is to repeatedly place Polnareff at the bottom of a set of stairs that the latter was climbing up to confront him.
• Toilet Horror: Polnareff encounters this a few times; at one point he's chased into a bathroom by a horde of zombies, and he's later attacked by an axe-wielding assassin who de-ages him into a child and attempts to drown him in a bathtub. It's Played for Laughs with the toilet in the Indian restaurant, which seems perfectly normal until the pig living underneath sticks its head up through the toilet to say hello, at which point Polnareff starts screaming, begs the waiter not to leave him alone in there, and the toilet gets the standard "menacing" Unsound Effect usually applied to villains.
• Too Long; Didn't Dub: In the English dub of the OVA, Kakyoin addresses Joseph as "Joestar-san".
• The Tooth Hurts:
  • When Star Platinum "digs" its way out of the High Priestess's mouth, allowing the group to escape. As High Priestess was a Stand, this also obliterates its user's teeth. An impressive feat, considering the chompers were stated to be as hard as diamonds.
  • DIO pulls out Senator Wilson Phillips' front teeth the second he meets him.
• True Companions: Probably the most notable example out of any part from JoJo. It took a while to get to this point, as Kakyoin and Polnareff were the result of being Fire-Forged Friends, Jotaro and Polnareff initially only assisted the team out of Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, and Polnareff (Notice a pattern?) and Iggy started off as being enemies before growing into Vitriolic Best Buds, with Joseph and Avdol being the only ones on good terms with each other from the start. However, once Kakyoin returns from his eye surgery at the hospital, you can bet your ass that all six of these guys love each other. Just... look at them.◊
• Undead Child: Enya uses a zombified baby to bite Jotaro by surprise and try to take control of his body through his wounds.
• Undying Loyalty: While some of DIO's henchmen are simply hired mercenaries who DIO brought with money or brainwashed pawns, a good number of the arc villains are fanatically loyal to DIO. When Hol Horse tries to turn on him, realizing just how thoroughly outclassed he is instantly changes his tune from Punch-Clock Villain to terrified into loyalty for his final appearance.
• Unexplained Recovery: Unlike previous parts and later parts, Stardust Crusaders has a tendency of having the heroes be gravely injured in fights, only to inexplicably be better in the next chapter, despite the journey only being 50 days long. For example, Polnareff's introductory fight ends with him being lit on fire long enough to have a conversation with Avdol, yet he doesn't seem to have any burns on his body in later episodes. Previous parts averted this by having grievous bodily harm be infrequent and spaced out, while later parts would avert it by having characters with Stands that can heal.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Whoever uses the sword Stand Anubis gains access to an impressive array of powers such as Super-Speed and strength, and the weapon itself is an Absurdly Sharp Blade with selective Intangibility, but their actual skill with the weapon doesn't necessarily improve at all. When Polnareff is fighting the possessed farmboy Chaka, he remarks that Chaka's movements and stance are those of a "complete amateur" but is overpowered by the sword's sheer power and speed regardless.
• Uplifted Animal: It's apparent that animals granted with Stands also have their intelligence automatically upgraded to or near human levels, and while they can understand humans perfectly, they can't actually speak. Iggy's thoughts are the ones presented in internal monologue.
• Verbal Backspace: When Polnareff demands to know why his friends neglected to tell him that Avdol was actually alive, Kakyoin says that they needed to keep it a secret from their enemies, and they all agreed it would be a bad idea to tell Polnareff because he has such a big mouth. Kakyoin then backtracks and says what he meant to say was that it's not easy for Polnareff to lie on command.
• Villain Episode: Both times Boingo is the arc villain, be it partnered with Oingo or with Hol Horse, the arc is told entirely through their perspective, given that they're so ineffectual, the Joestar Group barely has an inkling that they're even being attacked. Iggy is the only member to even learn of Boingo's existence because of this.
• Villain of the Week: Very prevalent starting with this Part as the protagonists face off against one of DIO's many henchmen and ultimately DIO himself.
• Villain-Possessed Bystander: Anubis is an Empathic Weapon that possesses its wielders, including random townspeople, a child, and Polnareff, forcing them to attack the Joestar Group.
• Villain Respect:
  • DIO has learned to respect Jonathan's and by extension the Joestars' determination, and acknowledge that they are his greatest enemies. Likewise, he congratulates Hol Horse's ambition for having the balls to try to backstab him and Polnareff for avenging his sister and reaching Cairo without dying. The only Joestar he doesn't respect is Jotaro; instead he fears him.
  • N'Doul congratulates the Joestar Group for being quick to catch on how Geb works and being crafty enough to fool him by throwing Avdol's jewlery in the sand to mimic footsteps, but especially Jotaro.
• Visual Pun: Played for Drama. After Judgement seemingly brings Sherry and Avdol back from the dead as vengeful zombies, the two start eating Polnareff alive, symbolizing how his guilt for believing to have caused their deaths is literally eating away at him.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When Boingo pukes right into Hol Horse's lap, we see it in all it's sandbrown-liquid "glory".
• Wake-Up Call Boss: While the first half of the series did have a few dangerous opponents scattered about, the fight with N'Doul seeing Kakyoin and Avdol quickly taken out of commission, for most of the remaining story in the former's sake, and then Jotaro barely ekeing out a victory, was a clear sign of things to come. Aside from anything involving Boingo, the fights in Egypt would all go down as the most harrowing and difficult the Joestar Group would face from that point onwards.
• Walk into Mordor: Jotaro and co. are forced to travel by land across Asia and the Middle East to Egypt because they realize that fighting in a plane or a boat will prove even more dangerous if the vehicle is damaged up in the sky or in the middle of the sea.
• Weak, but Skilled: Everybody from Nena to DIO himself who fight Joseph decry Hermit Purple as a weak Stand unsuited for combat, but Joseph is just as smart as ever with its applications whenever he gets a chance to throw down, pretty much always doing something to throw his opponents for a loop.
• Weapon Tombstone: Jotaro makes a grave in the middle of the Sahara for N'Doul with his cane as a tombstone, one of the only enemies he has respect for. As Jotaro himself notes, not even the ocean was capable of knocking his hat off. And N'Doul was able to pull it off while being blind.
• Wishing for More Wishes: Judgement offers Avdol the same three wishes he offered to Polnareff. Avdol tells him it's no good and demands four wishes instead. Played with, as it's actually just a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner. His first three wishes are all to hurt Judgement and hear him scream in pain, fear, and regret, and his fourth wish is to not have to show Judgement's user, Cameo, any mercy.
• Wham Line:
  • A written variant Avdol reads carved into a pillar before being ambushed by Vanilla Ice:
    Avdol: "He who turns around after reading this will..." (Avdol moves his thumb that's blocking the last word) "...die."
  • Joseph after figuring why Kakyoin targeted the clock instead of DIO...
    Joseph: He destroyed the clock... he stopped the clock? Could it be?! The true power of DIO's The World is to stop time!
  • "Doesn't this street look familiar?!"^note DIO to Jotaro, revealing that during the past few minutes, DIO was trying to escape to Joseph and drain his blood in order to recover and finally assume control of Jonathan's body... and Jotaro just used Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs and unknowingly launched him the rest of the way there. Oh, Crap!, indeed.
• Wham Shot: In Kakyoin's final encounter with DIO, DIO manifests The World and uses its ability. At first, nothing seems to have happened... Then the next few panels of the manga show DIO making his way towards Kakyoin while everything, including the nearby collapsing building, is frozen in place. That's when first time readers finally realize: DIO's stand can stop time.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Defied. A majority of the assassins are very direct in dealing with the heroes, but of course there's Plot Armor.
  • A heroic defiance. When Kakyoin and Joseph first encounter DIO, the former takes every possible precaution in dealing with DIO by surrounding him with Emerald Splash tripwires for 20 meters and 360 degrees, attempting to pelt him to death right then and there. Unfortunately, DIO does the same, abuses his time stop ability to approach Kakyoin, and one-shots him.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: Polnareff encounters a wish-granting genie (that turns out to be an enemy stand). When it's revealed that the genie grants wishes by just making things out of dirt, he's disappointed when he realizes that the treasure hoard he jokingly used his first wish on turned out to be worthless.
• Would Hurt a Child: Alessi, the user of the Sethan Stand. Not only would he hurt a child, he prefers children, because he's a Dirty Coward who's too scared to fight adults. His Stand has the power to age-regress anyone it touches.
• X-Ray of Pain: During the final battle with DIO, Jotaro lures his opponent into Star Platinum's short range by Playing Possum. Knowing that his opponent is a vampire with a potent Healing Factor, he makes sure to put all his strength into destroying his brain, and an X-ray shot of DIO's skull shattering is used to illustrate this when the blow connects.
• You Have to Believe Me!: During the Death Thirteen arc, Kakyoin is sure that the baby they are carrying is a Stand user who tries to kill them in their dreams. Only the crew interprets his frantic accusations as him being overstressed.

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Good grief... (やれやれだぜ... Yare yare daze...)

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