The World

"The World's true power, as its name suggests, is to reign supreme over the entire world!"

- DIO,

The World (ザ・ワールド（世界）) is the Stand of DIO, featured in the third part of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series, Stardust Crusaders. It grants its User the ability to stop time, while also boasting exceptional strength, speed and precision.

Appearance
The World bears the appearance of a tall, heavily muscular humanoid - bearing a strong resemblance to DIO himself in terms of build and clothing. It wears a headpiece covering its face to below the place of its nose, slanting at a steep angle from the base of its forehead to a peak situated above the rear of its head by about half its height, leaving the face of an inverted triangle visible to the front; somewhat similar to the.

It wears small twin on its back, connecting via short, twin-ridged cables to the rear of its mask; perhaps secured by thick, ridged or puffed straps running from the rear of its waist over both its shoulders to its front. The back of both its hands bears the shape of a simple clock face. Its chin, the base of its abdomen, its crotch and its knees are topped by heart shapes. It has armor plates on its shins, and its clogs bears curved, sharply-pointed toes, similar to those of DIO's.

In the colored manga, The World is completely yellow. In the anime, it is grey-skinned, has green heart motifs and has golden clothing. In the OVA, The World is grey-skinned, has bronze heart motifs and ivory clothing.

It is named for the Tarot card, the last card in the Major Arcana and symbolic of tectonic chance: the beginning of a new world order. Even before its actual appearance, its rumored power was enough to strike fear and instill loyalty in DIO's followers.

It's revealed in DIO's notebook that he intended to engrave 14 phrases on his Stand to remember them, although it's unknown if he actually does so before his death.

Personality
The World shows no particular personality, although it occasionally smiles as it pummels others, hinting that it may be a rather cruel entity that takes pleasure in causing pain. Its Stand cry is Muda Muda Muda! (無駄 無駄 無駄!), however, the cry itself seems to be communicated by DIO.

The World Itself doesn't make much attempts at speech. In the anime, The World makes grunting noises while fighting Star Platinum, and in the English dub, the grunting sounds are replaced with growling noises.

Abilities
The World is an exceptionally powerful Close-range Stand much like Star Platinum as noted by Noriaki Kakyoin and Jotaro Kujo, but boasting an effective manifestation range of approximately 10 meters. Despite requiring a close distance to inflict damage, its overwhelming physical might and near unstoppable control over time undeniably make it one of the most dangerous Stands in the entire series.

Extreme Physical Power: The World possesses phenomenal strength, senses, precision, and incredible speed, being able to easily punch Kakyoin right through his abdomen. DIO claims that The World is even stronger and faster than Star Platinum since it bested the latter in a clash of rapid punches between the two. However, it is unclear if this is an aspect of DIO's vampiric nature or simply having greater experience with his Stand. Its main offense is generally characterized by a flurry of speedy punches and the occasional kick.

Time Stop
The World's signature power is its ability to stop time, allowing only itself, DIO and anyone with the same power, to act within the duration of stopped time.

In the stopped time, DIO can move his own body freely along with any object he touches that he wishes to move, allowing him to strike his defenseless enemies, move to a superior position, and toy with his victims. All force applied by DIO during the time stop continues to exist after the time stop. This is seen when the objects that DIO throws can momentarily move during the stopped time before grinding to a halt. A flurry of thrown knives could fly for several meters before stopping near Jotaro.

Another unique feature of the time stop is how DIO can seemingly levitate in stopped time. Since no forces other than the time stopper's exist during a time stop, there is no force of gravity, allowing DIO to move freely in space as he wishes, with the assistance of his stand.

It is notable that DIO needs to consciously activate Time Stop, which means that surprise attacks can prevent him from stopping time.

Despite time not actively progressing, DIO quantifies the duration of The World's time stop using seconds.

Because of DIO's weakened state in Stardust Crusaders, this ability initially only works for up to 5 seconds in DIO's frame of reference before time flows again. However, thanks to DIO's immortality, the duration of stopped time increases as DIO becomes more accustomed to The World and the scar around his neck heals, reaching a maximum of nine seconds towards the end of Stardust Crusaders.

However, had he not died, the period during for which DIO could have stopped time would have continued to grow, seemingly indefinitely.

The World Ultimate
In the light novel JORGE JOESTAR, Kars learns how to understand Dio's The World during their battle and creates his own enhanced version, The World Ultimate (ザ・ワールド・アルティメット).

Dio uses his Beyond with the belief that he's the king of the world, and also awakens The World Ultimate.

The World Ultimate resembles The World with some minor differences. Its headpiece is much wider and the diving cylinders on its back are a lot larger. It also has a wheel on its shoulder. Kars's version of the Stand has a "K" on its chin instead of a heart.

As soon as Dio is about to use his new Stand, Kars quickly uses Whitesnake Ultimate to shatter the disc of Dio's Stand and it begins dissolving. However, Dio manages to keep The World Ultimate alive by tricking Kars into awakening Made in Heaven Ultimate Requiem and then escaping to another universe where he steals Diego Brando's body.

With the help of Funny Valentine, Kars gets eight parallel world versions of himself to use The World Ultimate to stop time in order to distract Dio. As long as time is stopped, the parallel world versions of Kars are able to be close to each other without turning into from D4C's ability.

The World Ultimate's full capabilities are not mentioned. Nonetheless, after Dio became an ultimate being, his regular The World was capable of stopping time for nearly an hour. Therefore, The World Ultimate should presumably be able to stop time for longer than an hour.

Eyes of Heaven
An alternate evolved form of the Stand named The World Over Heaven appears in Eyes of Heaven, wielded by Heaven Ascension DIO.

Trivia

 * The World's name and power and the stair scene with Polnareff are a possible reference to the song "Stargazer" by Ronnie James Dio (DIO's namesake), verse 3:
 * "All eyes see the figure of the wizard" "As he climbs to the top of the world" "No sound, as he falls instead of rising" "Time standing still, then there's blood on the sand"
 * The World's design may have been inspired by the large figure on the album cover of, also by Ronnie James Dio.
 * The World was the first Stand to be created and designed by Araki, specifically to contrast with Jotaro's Star Platinum from the very beginning.
 * The World's tarot card is the only card not to have "Lucky Land" written on it.
 * Coincidentally, the tarot card of The World was at one point referred to as "Time" in the deck.

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