Trivia / The Undertaker

• Corpsing: Undertaker's ability to avoid this while Paul Bearer was around was impressive, but Paul Bearer himself corpses in this interview (watch as soon as The Undertaker begins his speech). No puns intended here of course.
• Creator Backlash: Never, ever bring up his "Mean Mark" Callous gimmick in front of him.
• Dye Hard: He is a redhead and performed as one early in his career, but eventually dyed it black and kept it that way ever since. You could see his hair shift a bit back towards red during his BikerTaker days when he had short hair and didn't have to do the Deadman jet-black dye job.
  • And as redheads grey quicker and more evenly than other hair colors, seeing the Deadman with his signature black hair and OOC with greying red hair came as bit of a shock.
• Fan Community Nicknames: Creatures of the Night.
• Fountain of Expies: Popularized the Light Flicker Teleport, the Chokeslam, the tombstone, the no sell sit-up and various supernatural monster gimmicks. Did not start most of them but definitely caused a trend. Also inspired the use of mixed martial arts equipment (particularly his pair of MMA Gloves in his more recent runs), even for wrestlers who have no background in the sport or relating gimmick.
• Friendship on the Set: Taker is good friends with Booker T, having taken him under his wing after the latter's move from WCW. He always felt Booker was talented and enjoyed watching him become a big star.
• Real-Life Relative: His real life cousin, Brian Lee, played the fake Undertaker that Ted Dibiase tried to pass off as the real deal in one early 1990s storyline.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: In recent years, periods of time when Undertaker's not on TV are due to nagging injuries catching up with him. You can catch instances of this in the late '90s if you're watching for it, with many of his matches made short with an emphasis on grappling to avoid aggravating the injuries that eventually sent him off for the sabbatical before his big return and the reveal of the "American Badass" gimmick.
  • Also, the retool to BikerTaker was in part inspired by the fact that Mark Calaway is an avid biker in real life.
    • It would have been a last hurrah for Undertaker before retirement due to those injuries, but he persevered anyways.
    • And he brought back BikerTaker in 2023, three years after retiring, intending to choose his successor...
  • The "Sara" tattoo on his neck was often edited out of promotional photos (and the video games, since 2008) before he eventually had it removed, due to divorcing his second wife, Sara, in 2007.
  • The Hell's Gate is a mixed-martial-arts grapple called the Gogoplata; 'Taker is a huge MMA fan, and was also legitimately trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
  • The "vegetative state" storyline was a direct result of an injury suffered while wrestling Rey Mysterio. Undertaker had his orbital socket broken by one of Rey's knee braces.
    • Further, Kane's win in the Buried Alive match was due to Undertaker having an arm injury. And it was originally going to happen at Survivor Series.
• Reclusive Artist: Prior to his retirement in 2020, Undertaker rarely did any interviews or public appearances and avoided social media for the most part (the few times anything about him popped up on social media, it usually came from his wife Michelle McCool), likely to preserve the mystique of his character. He joined social media in the late 2010s and became much more open after retiring.
• Romance on the Set: Undertaker married Michelle McCool in 2010.
• What Could Have Been: Too many to count, as much as the man's career itself. See them here.

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