Dio Brando of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is one of the most iconic anime/manga villains of all time, which is why it might surprise fans to learn that his inspiration came directly from the American FBI.
Dio is the villain of JJBA Part 1, also known as Phantom Blood, who later returns in Part 3, Stardust Crusaders. Dio is presented as an irredeemable villain from the start. His villainy is so over-the-top as to be almost comical, if it weren’t for the brutality that often comes along with Dio’s cruelty. While Dio has significantly more depth by the time Stardust Crusaders began serializing he’d already cemented his reputation as one of manga’s most evil villains.
Dio’s Inspiration Was FBI Profiling
According to a small segment at the end of the “Jojonium” edition of the third volume of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure manga, Araki actually started out wanting to draw Dio and the story surrounding him. He designed Jonathan as a “symbol of justice” and Dio to be his equal and opposite – a villain so evil he could go toe-to-toe with a beacon of hope. To achieve that, he ended up looking into a concept that was popular in the 1980s, known as criminal profiling. While controversial today, the idea was fairly new at the time, and was used to develop a “profile” of a killer or other criminal based on attributes of the crime. While generally specialized to each case, it also built an image of a generic “criminal”, some hypothetical person who bears many of the traits common to murderers and other violent criminals.
One feature Araki found particularly interesting was the organized murderer’s tendency to manipulate and influence their victims. Through techniques like intimidation and charm, the hypothetical killer gains control of a situation, imparting their victim with too much fear to act rationally. Both of these tactics are common to Dio, with his charm winning him legions of followers, while his intimidation skills made preying on others easy. Other traits, like mistreating animals, also made an appearance, giving Dio every negative trait a person could have. It certainly succeeded in making Dio someone the audience couldn’t wait to see brought down. It’s interesting to note that while Dio was inspired by serial killers and their psychology, Araki would go on to feature a serial killer as the villain for JJBA Part 4, drawing on many of these same ideas to create Yoshikage Kira.
It’s perhaps no surprise that Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure‘s biggest villain was inspired by the traits of real-life killers, but not every creator is willing to delve into such potentially disturbing topics for research. Dio is certainly a better villain for it, however, and it succeeded in making him a threat worthy of standing against a “symbol of justice”.
