Warning: Spoilers Off applies to all Moments pages, so Unmarked spoilers ahead!
This squirrel's truly gone nuts.
Just because Dio is out of the picture for now, it doesn't mean that Battle Tendency doesn't have any more horrors that will make you scream "OHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
- After Joseph blows up Straizo with about a half-dozen grenades, we're treated to this really awesome scene of Straizo's pieces Pulling Themselves Together. It includes things like his arm's flesh flaying itself and using the shredded pieces to move and intestines, toes, and eyeballs (with the optic nerve still attached) sliding across the floor to join back to the main body (you can clearly see Straizo's femur, spine, and ribs sticking out of the bloody flesh). It's a gruesome enough sight that Smokey clasps his hands and asks God to save him.
- How about the fact that Straizo tried to kill his own adopted grandson to prevent what Jonathan did to Dio?
- Stroheim himself dipped into this before his Heel–Face Turn, but two of the things he does stand out:
- The first happens when he conscripts some of the local women to shave him, and one of them accidentally slips and cuts his cheek. Stroheim tells her to lick it off, and then puts the sharp edge of the straight razor under her tongue so that if she moves she'll cut herself on the blade, taunting her and laughing as he does so. Fortunately, she doesn't get cut, but geez...
- The second, far more horrifying event, happens when the Nazis plan to feed the Pillar Man blood, and have captured a bunch of the locals to use as food. Before this can be carried out, Stroheim offers a trade: one person will die and the others will live. When one boy steps forward, Stroheim congratulates him for his courageous spirit... and then immediately has everyone BUT the boy executed. Even worse: the Nazis actually did this in real life. We later find out that he had a good reason for it, but even so...
- Santana, in order to exit a room completely devoid of any "normal" exits, opts to completely fold and crush his body to fit inside a few-inches-wide ventilation shaft. Made even more disturbing in the 2012 anime adaptation, where the viewer is "treated" to the full, very-well-done animation of Santana's body crushing, contorting, and folding like origami, complete with squishing, cracking, and popping sounds coming from his body. You may now commence with the shuddering.
- After the above, Santana turns a Nazi officer into an obese yellow man-blob by going into his body through his eyes. Said Nazi officer is still alive and aware of what's happened for several seconds before transforming, and outright begs for help before Santana takes him over.
- One of the creepiest things about Santana and his ability to merge with humans? As both Stroheim and this random soldier can attest, it doesn’t hurt: it feels pleasant.
- And throughout all of the above, Santana has this emotionless facial expression, and it's utterly creepy. Then he is introduced to sunlight, and loses his stoicism completely, becoming even more terrifying in the process.
- Santana's attack in general. It plays like an anime adaptation of the SCP Foundation!
- Wamuu's introduction involves him assimilating a row of Nazi soldiers in a very Cell-like fashion, drinking them until they're reduced to deflated blobs of skin.
- Mark's death. All it takes is Wamuu accidentally bumping into him without even noticing, and the right half his body isn't there anymore. And it doesn't even kill him. All he can do is beg Caesar for a Mercy Kill before the pain becomes unbearable. Not only is this a horrifically gruesome death, with lots of blood spurting out from what's left of Mark's body, it also sets up the Pillar Men as terrifying foes who are so far above humans that we may as well be mere vermin by comparison.
- The way Esidisi would have killed Joseph — had Joestar not had a plan in advance to beat him with — by having his prehensile veins enter his body, and violently pumping his lava-like blood through it, boiling him alive from the inside out. Just try picturing that.
- When Joseph manages to defeat Esidisi the first time, beams of light start erupting from his body and his face rips apart. When his horn erupts from his skull — tearing more of his face open — he looks like a demonic skull-unicorn ready to impale Joseph, and when the horn is destroyed he has an appearance like a human Jack-o'-Lantern with light blazing from his mouth, nose hole, eye sockets, upper head, and a dozen points in his body where his veins had come from. The process of finally exploding takes several seconds and he screams in absolute pain the entire time.
- Reduced to a brain with blood vessels, Esidisi possesses Suzi Q, resulting in some hexagon shaped eyes while blood bursts out of her profusely in preparation to blow himself up with the three Hamon users. It's worse when he starts flipping back and forth between Suzi's face and his own face; on the same body.
- The squirrel created by Kars eats through another squirrel, Stroheim, and several other Nazis. See the image above for your sake.
- Kars had caused genocide of his own race because they were against him and the creation of his Stone Mask. He only spared two kids and his right-hand man for his cause.
- Kars the Ultimate Life Form. Much like all the Pillar Men, he was a strong-enough foe before, but after being powered up by the Red Stone of Aja and the Stone Mask, he becomes an all-powerful amalgamation of the DNA from every creature that's ever lived or ever will live on Earth. Not only can he now use Hamon that burns as hot as the core of the Sunnote alongside Esidisi and Wamuu's powers, his general abilities are amplified to a ridiculous degree — with some serious Body Horror on the side whenever he partially-shapeshifts to use his animalistic abilities — and due to a combination of Complete Immortality and a healing factor leagues more powerful than any vampire or Pillar Man, he literally cannot die. It's telling when just the very sight of Kars standing triumphantly in direct sunlight is enough to elicit a Mass "Oh, Crap!" from all parties present.
- Kars' fate. After getting blasted into orbit by Joseph and the Hamon-boosted power of an active volcano, he attempts to get back to Earth using his air jets and wings, only for his body to freeze solid and eventually turn to stone due to his Adaptive Ability against the extremely cold vacuum; leaving him helplessly drifting through deep space for eternity as a creature caught half-way between organic and mineral. As his immortality renders him unable to die naturally, Kars is left begging for something out there to kill him; and eventually, his mind shuts down altogether from the isolation and sheer despair. Kars' descent into blind panic when he realises he can't escape nor control his own movement — and especially his agonized screaming right before he's fully petrified — sum up just how dire the whole situation is even for a being as powerful as himself. It's even worse in the manga, where Kars turns into this half-transformed monstrosity.
◊Kars: NO! AUUUGHH! NOOOO! (calms down) Don't panic... just find the Earth. (sprouts air jets) I'll use air to change my trajectory! Once I'm back on solid ground, I will tear that boy apart! (freezes over as he screams in pain) NO! It's not working! I'm freezing! The air is freezing around me! The moment it comes out of the jets, it turns to ice! (attempts to use his wings, which also immediately freeze) I... can't change my path! I CAN'T MOVE! NOOOOUUUAAAAARRRGGGH!Narrator: (flash-forward to Kars, now turned to stone) So ended Kars, last and greatest of the Pillar Men. His body turned hard as rock, and he floated through space for the rest of time, never to return. (Kars floats through the void of space) He wished for death, but there was nothing out there to kill him. The spark of thought within him went dim... and then, silent. - As divided as audiences are over the anime's English dub, what most people seem to unanimously agree on is how well-acted the scene where Joseph gets his arm cut off by Kars is, some even preferring it over the Japanese version. Ben Diskin's performance makes an already terrifying scene downright horrific, with screaming that sounds disturbingly realistic and, as some comment sections on YouTube have noted, make Joseph sound like he's being violently murdered. Listen to it here.
- Similarly, watching it dawn on Joseph how screwed he is is extremely unsettling. After spending nearly twenty episodes watching him tease, laugh and run circles around his enemies while pulling off increasingly complex plans to save the day and never losing his confidence and control no matter how bad the situation looks, it's very unnerving seeing him completely shut down as he lies on the ground, waiting for Kars to finish him off with a vacant look on his face. The only times where we ever see him reach this level of despair again are in Part 3 when he battles D'Arby the Elder and DIO; two other very nightmarish scenes, though perhaps for different reasons. In other words, losing hope in himself is enough to make Joseph lose his will to live.
