Diego Brando

Diego "Dio" Brando is a racer in the Steel Ball Run race and serves as an antagonist of Part VII: Steel Ball Run. He is the alternate universe counterpart of Dio Brando, the most featured antagonist in the previous series.

Personality
Diego is very similar to his namesake in both looks and personality. However, Diego is a famous professional jockey from England participating in the Steel Ball Run race across North America. Although his mother raised him with much love, he had a very hard life growing up in poor conditions they were forced to live in, resulting in his cold-heartedness – it is said that he will virtually do anything to win. At the age of 20, Diego married a rich 83 year-old woman who died six months later, enabling Diego to inherit her wealth. This led to speculations that he murdered her.

Synopsis
After he loses the first stage of the Steel Ball Run to Gyro Zeppeli, he becomes irritated and considers Gyro his personal enemy from that point onwards. Later in the series, after losing another round to Gyro, he joins Funny Valentine, the president of the United States, who is searching for the body parts of "The Saint", which are said to grant great powers. By doing so, Diego hopes to find a way of defeating Gyro. During the 8th round, Diego turned against Valentine, but was quickly defeated by his stand, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and had his corpse's eye taken away from him.

History
Diego's parents were financially weak and attempted to dispose of him as a baby – however, his mother felt guilty and risked her own life to save him from drowning, upon which his alcoholic father left them both. His mother changed her surname to "Brando" and became employed by a farm, but she and Diego lived in poverty in the stables. Five years later, the man that had arranged her employment demanded sexual favors from her, and upon her refusal, sabotaged their means to get food. Another year later his young mother died of the tetanus infection, which Diego (at the time 6 years old) believes to be a result from the humiliation they had to suffer. The boy grew up resenting everyone who abandoned them and swore to himself to get revenge against the man who had harassed his mother.

No matter how hard the times he and his mother fell on, she refused to discard of what little dignity they had left – she taught him that eating out of shoes due to lack of proper dishes was unacceptable. Partly from her example, Diego developed a strong sense of pride.

Scary Monster
At a later point of the race, Diego meets Gyro and Johnny again in a small village in the mountains. He appears to be friendly, but just as the two heroes think he won't harm them, he suddenly transforms into a Deinonychus and attacks them. It turns out that the meeting was a trap set up by the bounty hunter Dr. Ferdinand. Ferdinand's stand power can turn living beings into dinosaurs. He uses this ability to create dinosaur "bodyguards" in his hunt of the Corpse Parts. Even Diego was turned into one of his soldiers when he was attacked by him earlier. Gyro manages to defeat Dr. Ferdinand by fusing with one of the Turbo eyes that Ferdinand possessed and receiving the stand ability "Scan". Even though Ferdinand was killed and all his dinosaur minions turned back into humans, Diego escaped with the second Turbo Eye, making him able to keep the transformation power and turn into a Raptor when he wants, even though he initially can't control it very well.



The World
In the latest chapters of Steel Ball Run, Funny Valentine summoned a Diego from an alternative dimension. This Diego used the ability of The World to stop time as the original had done. The "new" Diego appeared to be more sadist than the original, trying to kill Johnny with very violent ways as throwing knives or trying to burn Johnny alive with matches.

Raptor form
Under the influence of Dr. Ferdinand's stand Scary Monsters, Diego turns into a big Deinonychus with stripes spelling out the name "Dio" all over his body. His hair turns into spikes that end in round, ball-shaped tips on the back of his head. Traces of his checkered shirt are still visible on his chest. After being under the influence of the stand for a while, Diego is able to turn into a more human-shaped form while still retaining sharp teeth, claws, dinosaur legs and a tail, with a deranged, mad expression on his face.In this form, Diego also possesses the ability to view things in high speed, enabling him to dodge attacks and predict the other horses actions.

Trivia

 * He has been good with horses since he was a child, even untameable ones let themselves be handled by him.
 * As a 5-year old boy, he resembles Giorno Giovanna.
 * Some resemblances to the Dio of previous JJBA parts include:
 * A fondness towards his mother (likely the only person he truly respects) and an alcoholic father.
 * A rise to fame with a cold-hearted attitude, in both stories he had no scruples in his actions to reach the top.
 * Marriage to a woman of considerable age who fell in love with him – most likely a reference to Enya Geil (OVA), who died like the unnamed woman by his hand.
 * A physical ascension to a superhuman form (the original Dio became a vampire; Diego became a human capable of shapeshifting into a dinosaur).
 * Diego's horse, Silver Bullet, might be reference to Dio, as silver bullets are used in myths to kill vampires, werewolf and such.