Easily the most memorable (and according to George Lucas himself, the most profitable) character in the franchise, Darth Vader is pretty much the face of Star Wars. His breathing, his mask, his voice, the fact that he's a giant, muscled android man with questionable parenting skills, everything about him is memorable. Fans and scholars have poured over every bit of Star Wars media, both canon and not, to analyze this character. There's something about his mystique that pulls everyone in. If h💜e can choke people with his mind, why does he manually strangle tha꧟t one rebel soldier? What purpose does a cape serve in space (this question also points at you, Lando?) With all of these questions, it feels like we have just scratched the surface of that shiny black helmet.
Well, I'm here to help you dig a little deeper into the crispy, war criminal underneath. I'm here to let you know that, despite being a huge Star Wars and Vader fan, you haven't seen anything yet. You see, with a still running comic book series, ꦇbehind the scenes drama with directors or actors, as well as countless tie-in shows, Darth Vader has more to know about him than ever before. So while a lot of you may have had some passing knowledge about some of the stuff on this list, I'll bet my last Galactic Credit that at least one of these facts about Darth Vader flew totally under your radar. Facts these small may have come with a cloaking device.
26 Noꦚw I Need To Scrub M꧑y Eyes And Brain
During the research I was doing for this article (I tried working off memory but 25 facts is a lot, you guys) I came across some really gross and weird facts about Darth Vader that I neither knew, nor ever wanted to know. The fact that he eats bitter paste is something I could have died not knowing and been fine with. Another tasty little morsel of trivia that I came across was that Vader's original recipe skin regularly dies while inside the suit, due to not healing properly. This results in Vader needing to be regularly scrubbed down like the underside of a boat, in order to get off all of the necrotic flesh. So yeah, every time you see Vader in the movies, he's more than likely a walking metal man filled with rotten meat. Who knew that Star Wars was a horror franchise? Thanks for reading that!
25 Fℱamily Ties 🍌
When we are thrust into the action of The Empire Strikes Back the film treats it as though Darth Vad💖er is fully aware of Luke Skywalker's presence. While this usually got explained away as some sort of connection to The Force, the recent run of comic books takes it a step further to fully flesh out how this happened.
Some time between the events of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back Darth Vader hires everyone's favorite bounty hunter Boba Fett to track down the pilot responsible for the destruction of the Death Star. Remember, Vader even sensed during the trench run that Luke was incredibly sensitive to the force. So after a skirmish between Boba and Luke, Fett returns to Vader with only the last name🌳. And with that single word, Vader became fully aware that he had been lied to all this time. Things really started heating up from there.
24 ꧋ He Can Hear Your Lack Of Faith ꦺ
This was easily the most bizarre bit of trivia I came across about the Dark Lord of the Sith because I don't know wh💟o thought to include it, or even what kind of nerd would research it (wait, am I that nerd now?) So we've covered how the Darth Vader's suit has all sort of fun little gizmos to keep him at the top of his game, but apparently being super strong and able to kill people with your mind isn't enough. No, apparently the helmet that Darth wears also allows him to hear up to a range of 40kHz, which is about double the normal range humans can hear. His helmet also allows him to see infrared and ultraviolet, meaning that there is never a scenario in which he cannot see. All this for someone who can already sense everything around him via The Force, which seems a little like overkill at this point.
23 You Were Wrong About Me 💝
One of my favorite scenes, despite it not being the most well received episode of the franchise, was when Luke removes Vader's helmet in Return of the Jedi. Un🌞derneath all that brawn and durasteel was a sad, broken old man, the kind of guy who looks like he needs your bus seat, And all he wants is to look on his son with his organic eyes one time before he dies. It's touching, and it shows that Vader always wanted more than to be a vilඣlainous man in a suit.
So as you can probably guess, David Prowse wasn't in on this scene either. Apparently, he had every intention of being there under the helmet, but🐲 when filming actually started with Sebastian Shaw being the actor behind the visage, Prowse was busy elsewhere. He wouldn't have even been made aware until filming wrapped unless a crew member ha🔯d told him that they were filming a Vader scene without him at another location.
22 No R♌es🧜t For The Wicked
Even though Vader does get some escape from his restrictive mask inside the meditation chamber, it isn't a sustainable solution. The pressurization doesn't last forever, and if exposed for too long, Vader will literally die from fallin💫g apart. It makes sense, he survived through injuries whi🅰ch would kill most people, so if you are going to walk away from that kind of thing, there is going to be consequences.
The thing is, Vader noticed that he was able to stay out of his mask longer and longer in side the chamber the m𒁃ore he exposed himself to it. His end goal was to ultimately free himself from the suit, 💜if not only the mask at first. Darth Vader's plan (he actually had a few going at a time, unbeknownst to the Emperor) was to finally shed the restrictive shell that had kept him hindered for so long. Interesting knowledge, considering he shows none of this during any of the movies.
21 Psyche!
So protected was the secret of Luke Skywalker's secret parentage that George Lucas went to ins⛄ane length to throw people 🌸off the trail. What more lengths could a one go to, when only three people know the twist in the first place? You make an entirely fake script with a fake plot twist, that's what any sane director and writer would do.
So since David Prowse was going to be overdubbed by James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader anyways, what they had Prowse do was re꧋ad a fake line. That way everyone on set who heard the line could only leak false information. And it wasn't like the fake line wasn't a doozy of a mind-blower in itself. The line called for Darth Vader to reveal to Luke that none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi had killed Luke's father. That's an awesome twist, and I like to believཧe that there is an alternate universe out there that went in that direction instead.
20 ✱ 𒈔 And You All Blamed The Continuity
Admittedly, one of the stupidest additions 🌟of the prequels (and there are so, so many) was making C-3Po, the bumbling and stodgy droid of the original trilogy, a product of Anakin Skywalker's☂ tinkering. Not only does this serve to make the universe that much smaller, since the same circle of people keep knowing and creating each other, but it made a huge plot hole in the film. Why would Vader never recognize C-3Po during all his altercations with the rebels?
The answer is fairly simple: he did. In the new Vader comics, we see that Vader is fully aware that the droid was blasted to smithereens, and actually has a tender moment of sadness about how far he has fallen from when he was an innocent little boy. But in true Vader fashion, he squashes those feelings down so he can better focus on the task at hand, which is freezing a human being in carbonite before beating his son within an inch of his life.⛄ He's still Darth Vade𝕴r, after all.
19 Hate 💧Leads To Suffering 🔥
There ꦛis so much wacky nonsense going on with Vader's suit that I could write a whole article just on it alone. Between the fans and the 𒉰extended universe, there is a genuine science behind the mechanism which keeps Vader alive and powerful. Some of these facts are cute, but most of them are horrifying.
For example, the way the suit takes readings on Vader's biological data is with a series of sharp needles piercing his skin. The data is transmitted to the suit, which adjusts things like temperature and movement according to what his organic body needs. All of this sounds well and good for someonᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚe who lost most of the body in a fight, until you realize that the needles are causing constant pain, too. Fans debate over whether the needles being painful are a deliberate inclusion on the Emperor's part, to keep Vader in perpetual fury, or whether that is the only technology avail𓂃able at the time.
18 The Taste Of Defeat ๊
Anyone who was a huge Star Wars fan growing up had someone in their friends circle, or more likely an unfunny dad, who would ask the same old questions: "How does Darth Vader eat?" This is something I wouldn't normally devote more than a few seconds to, since films hardly show people eating , even if they aren't mostly made of evil alchemy and vengeance. Nobody asks what Captain Kirk eats, and that dud༺e is almost never shown consuming anything other than alien women.
Luckily, there's always a nerdy answer to an equally nerdy question. Vader is only able to eat concentrated food paste, since being burned and hacked up has left 💝his digestive track something of a mess. Unfortunately, the paste that is made available to him is almost inedible it tastes so bitter and bad (again, it is unclear if Palpatine has done this on purpose.) Therefore, Vader chooses to take what little nourishment he needs via injections, which can be woven straight into his suit and refuelled.
17 The Tragedy Of Darth Vader🍰
There's no denying that Darth Vader is something of a pitiable character. As Anakin, he was swept up in a scheme far bigger than himself, while also struggling with his complex and powerful emotions. There's also the fact that he was vastly more powerful than any of his teachers, who did nothing to alleviate his intense emotional strife. Then, he loses his limbs, fights his kids and gets the living heck zapped out of him. So his life has not been exactly a holiday in ♚the sun. But it gets worse.
See, Anakin has always hated tight spaces, and is fairly prone to claustrophobia. So when he is forced to stay inside a tight metal sarcophagus just to stay alive, it's pretty tortuous. His only reprieve is when he is either in a Bacta container, as we saw in Rogue One or his infamous meditation chamber, which is pressurized to bet💟t൲er keep his body from falling apart. No wonder he always seems so infuriated whenever a hapless General interrupts his alone time.