Dio Brando/Games

Shadow Dio
Even without an active Stand, he can deal a lot of damage with full offensive attacks. He also has a reversal move that helps this play style to be more effective, which can be used either for offense or defense.

Throw Knives, while not too fast for up-close attacks, can push enemies further back. The angle of the knives can be varied, and he can throw knives twice. The first knife throw has a large amount of hitstun and can be used to combo off of.

His eyebeam projectile can be charged to an incredibly powerful and un-blockable level.

His Stand attacks are good for surprises, and for juggling. Combined with his own attack, he deals a lot of damage in a short time, more so within The World, when he stops time.

His Super Combo, Punishment, deals heavy damage if it connects. However, it can't be incorporated into combos easily. His other Super Combo, called "Charisma", takes two levels of power, but the buds coming out of his hair are un-blockable and hone in on the enemy. The slow start-up animation of this move requires it to be a part of the combo, in order to be able to perform the move without being interrupted by the enemy's attacks.

Dio
In contrast to Jotaro, Dio is more effective with his Stand on. His Stand combos are effective at dealing a lot of damage to the enemy in a short time. As such, Dio specializes in quick disposal of an enemy.

His Blazing Strikes can be manipulated to hit low, where the enemy must guard low. This makes his attacks unpredictable, keeping opponents on their toes. His eyebeams, now with different commands, are now completely un-blockable, though the animation is notably slower.

His Road Roller, though weak in JoJo's Venture, now deals bigger damage in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. His Chi no Shoukan (Bloody Summoning) requires the enemy to be hit before he sucks their blood. The scene when he connects with the move is bloody, with a cutscreen of the enemy's face being punctured by Dio's fingers.

His main problem is that his super moves cannot be integrated into combos in such a way that they will chain together. However, his super moves have a degree of invincibility, which enables him to dominate in close-quarter battles, even though predictable. To be able to use him well, Dio players must have the reflexes to perform their super moves at the right moment.

His The World - Time Stop is deadly at 10 levels of power. He can deploy a lot of knives and perform Road Roller before the power gauge goes below level 1. If the enemy is big in size, the more the enemy will take damage from the knives. It is a gamble though to successfully perform The World against a human player, but the damage it inflicts is worth the effort.

Jump Super Stars/Jump Ultimate Stars
Dio appears as a playable character in both Jump Super Stars and its sequel Jump Ultimate Stars. In the former, he can only be unlocked after clearing the game once. He has three potential "battle panel" formations: a 4-block, a 5-block and a 6-block. All three have his characteristic "MudaMuda!" stream of punches as one special attack. His other special attack varies depending on the formation: With the 4-block, it's "The World, Circle of Knives", with the 5-block it's "The World, Road Roller" and with the 6-block, it's "The World, Time Stop". He also features in two "support panels" - the 2-block "Eye-Crushing Kick" and the 3-block "WRYAAAAA!" - and one "help panel" which renders the player's battle character immune from damage for a short period of time.

In terms of playing style, he is best for long-range attacks and uses a combination of punches and kicks. The World gives him a longer range than most characters, but at the cost of his speed. Dio is able to drains an opponent's health in close quarters (via sticking his fingers in their neck) and transfers it to himself. He can use "Space Ripper Stingy Eyes" as a regular attack, and has an aerial move which involves throwing knives.

Interestingly, he receives a power boost when his "battle panels" are placed beside those of Hao from Shaman King and/or Papillion from Busou Renkin in Super Stars. In Ultimate Stars, power boosts come from being beside panels for Giorno, Jonathan, Rohan, Gyro, Taizo from Taizo Mote King Saga and Frieza from Dragon Ball Z. He is also able to perform a special tag-team attack with Sasuke from Naruto called "Sharingan World", whereby Dio's homing daggers and Sasuke's shuriken slice through all enemies on the screen.

In popular culture

 * Zephyr, one of the bosses in the video game Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow as well as Portrait of Ruin, pays homage to Dio Brando. Besides a habit of bending over backwards, he has the ability to throw knives, as well as freeze time with a shout of Toki yo Tomare!!! ("Stop, O time!"). He also faces the protagonist in a clock tower, a reference to Dio Brando's fight with Joseph Joestar and Kakyoin in the first half of the Dio's World story arc.
 * Sakuya Izayoi from the Touhou Project series is likely to be a homage to Dio. She is not a vampire, but the servant of Remilia Scarlet, who is a vampire. Her main power is manipulation of time - usually demonstrated by stopping it completely. She attacks by throwing knives as well. Some of her spell cards involve stopping time and making many knives appear around the player, and one of these cards is even named Illusion World "The World". In the fighting game spin-offs, she has many time stopping special moves, one of which is called "Sakuya's World", which acts in the same way as Dio's time stop move in the JoJo fighting game.
 * The characters Robo-Ky and Justice (Guilty Gear) from the 2D fighter series Guilty Gear (series) both make references to Dio's 'The World'- Robo-Ky in the form of the "Muda" battlecry with a barrage of punches in an Overdrive attack, and Justice in the form of a "WRYYYYYYYYY"-like battlecry and pose in both her victory poses and her most powerful Overdrive attack, Gamma Ray.
 * Neo Dio a character from World Heroes, another 2D fighter game series, uses various lines from Dio incluiding Muda Muda Muda! and WRYYYY!. Also his visual design is based on the protagonist of the manga Baoh a previous manga from Araki.
 * In the online game, Erepublik, Dio Brando is God.
 * In the popular pixal avatar site Gaia online, there are obtainable item series known as the "RIO Star" series. These items show resemblances to Dio's outfit in Stardust Crusaders. There are also "Back/Tails" accessories that are called "K.O. Star (Za Warudo)" and "K.O. Star (Time Stop)" which is obviously a reference to Dio's stand, The World (Za Warudo).
 * Cheria Barnes from Tales of Graces has a fighting style based off of Part 3 DIO's abilities. She attacks using throwing knives as well as stopping Time. However her main focus is to heal the rest of the party, in the story this is done by touching the effected area, much like how Dio healed Pucci's disfigured foot.

WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
The war cry of "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" (ウリイイイイイイ, Uriiiiiii pronounced ree) is a shriek given off by the vampires throughout JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. While all vampires in the series are prone to doing so, this noise is most commonly associated with Dio Brando.

A resurgence of popular interest in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure occurred when "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" began making the rounds as an Internet phenomenon on Futaba Channel imageboards. Sparked by a Flash movie called "Mudah.swf" which features stick figures performing the signature attacks of five different characters from Parts 3 and 5 of the series (This was due to the fact that only series 3 and 5 had games at the time). Dio Brando's clip features his use of The World (often pronounced intentionally as "Za Wārudo", to mimic how Dio pronounces it in Japanese) to freeze time, throwing a barrage of knives, and finishing his dying opponent off by dropping a steamroller on him, atop which he leans back and exclaims "WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!". This proved hilariously random to those unfamiliar with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Another phrase popularized by the animation is "Muda!" (which translates to "useless" or "futile" in Japanese) which is Dio's (not to mention The World's) battle cry.

The recent English publication of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (which begins at the start of the third arc) uses the spelling "WREEEEEEEEEE!", which reinforces the proper pronunciation (at the cost of obscuring the connection to the Internet fad, however given the rather offensive nature of 4chan, where the meme was most popular, it is possible that it was a deliberate act of distancing itself from the fad and 4chan).

As Giorno, Dio's son, uses "WRYYYYYY!" during one of his fights, it is possible that the battle cry may be hereditary, since Giorno is not a vampire. Another instance which supports this idea is when Dio's Steel Ball Run counterpart Diego also uses the WRYYYYYY battle cry, during his battle against Valentine.

The World and Time Stop
As evidenced above, Dio's enunciation of his Stand and its power has also reached significant popularity, the full line in question being: "THE WORLD, Time, stop! (ザ・ワールド 時よ止まれ - ZA WARUDO Toki yo tomare). However it is a common misconception that the original Japanese of the line is "Toki wo Tomare" (時をよ止まれ) which is grammatically awkward as it would translate as "to stop time." The original line gives the impression that Dio is commanding time to stop.

The line is later followed by: "And now, time resumes." (そして,時は動き出す, Soshite, toki wa ugokidasu)

Major Battles

 * Dio vs Jonathan Joestar
 * Dio vs Noriaki Kakyoin
 * Dio vs Joseph Joestar
 * Dio vs Jotaro Kujo

Trivia

 * In Dio's first appearance of part 1, he can be seen holding a book titled Gorgeous Irene, a reference to Araki's earlier work of the same name.
 * Araki stated that Dio in part 1 is named for musician Ronnie James Dio, whereas Dio in part 3 is named for Ronnie James Dio's band DIO. Subsequently, in part 3 his name is almost always written "DIO", in English.
 * Araki also mentions Dio's name originally being based off the word "God" in Italian, strengthening his megalomaniac personality and his project to create a new world for him and his subordinates, as implied in Stone Ocean.
 * Dio has a birthmark on his ear that looks like three dots in a row.
 * In the OVA, Dio uses a oil tanker agains Jotaro instead of a steam roller like in the manga and the game.
 * The battle cry or WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY is a very popular fad on youtube.
 * In Heritage for the Future, when hit with Alessi's stand, he turns to Nukesaku, and as Shadow Dio, he turns to Wang Chan (who carries Dio's head in a glass jar).
 * Interestingly, "Dio" has the same spelling as "dio", meaning "god" in Italian. This pun may mirror Pucci's relationship to Dio, about which he stated that he "loves Dio as he loves God".
 * Dio's underwater slumber could possibly be a reference to the lyrics of Holy Diver. "Holy Diver, You been down too long in the midnight sea." 
 * There has been much debate on whether The World is truly Dio's Stand, or Jonathan Joestar's Stand, since Dio was in possession of Jonathan's body at the time he developed it.
 * In the Capcom fighting game, Dio is voiced by Isshin Chiba, who also voiced Jedah Dohma in "Vampire Savior", a previous Capcom game. Chiba is also commonly known as the voice of Jin Kazama in Namco's "Tekken" series.
 * In the Phantom Blood movie, Dio is voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa, who also voiced Soma Cruz, a main character from Castlevania, another vampire-related franchise. Soma is revealed to be a reincarnated Dracula, making him a vampire of sorts as well.