So I guess there was a fan theory back when JoJo part 3 was funneling out that Dio didn’t have just one stand but the World was comprised of all previously shown stands but stronger seeing as how he was able to use Hermit Purple and just tap a camera as opposed to smashing it.

Obviously this wouldn’t come to pass and Araki’s first/second real foray into time oriented villains would go down (Kars technically counts as time based if you look at him as a fixed/removed point. He cannot be killed or slowed and is rendered fully removed by the end).

However, what cracks me up is blending what we got with what could have been and instead of Dio torturing a politician to make him drive, Dio steps into a beat up car, uses Wheel of Fortune to change it into a monster and after a quick pause says “I don’t know how to drive.”

The theory itself doesn’t really hold up if you look at the whole Major Arcana stands list. Some of those stands just don’t work for a final boss fight in concert with the other stands. We have no in-universe confirmation that Strength works on anything but boats.

Empress is a slow burn and a non-issue if you have a friend with quick and strong precision (and we had two of those). If Sun is an actual sun full of life energy and not just a giant ball of fire, Dio would kill himself using it.

And then you have stands that wouldn’t work for other reasons like Judgement. The group knows the trick to that one. Justice sounds like it’d work in perfect concert with Emperor but, again, the trick on how to beat it is known to the group.

And that’s kinda the issue of Dio just being a boss rush instead of what we got: the group already beat all the previous stands. What made every enemy stand so deadly was the element of surprise and manipulating whoever faced it into an environment where there’s a clear advantage

How the hell was Dio supposed to put the group into a tight but also open space with an open road that’s also a ship on the ocean full of corpses with holes in them that’s also full of mirrors and the Joestar group is asleep?

Mind you, I wasn’t even alive the year the first chapters came out so maybe this theory died four stands in. It’s still ridiculous to think about.