Rudol von Stroheim

Major Rudolf von Stroheim (ルドル・フォン・シュトロハイム Rudoru fon Shutorohaimu) is a character from Part II: Battle Tendency. Stroheim is, at first, an antagonist, but later proves to be an effective ally.

Synopsis
When we are first introduced to Stroheim, he is a callous, cruel, demanding Nazi officer who has the foolish idea to experimenting with the Stone Mask in order to further the increase the power of the Nazi army.

He takes an injured Robert Edward O Speedwagon to the Nazi base in Mexico and interrogates him about the Pillar Men. It at this moment that we see that Stroheim has captured one of them, which he dubs "Santana."

Stroheim eventually sacrifices himself in an attempt to stop Santana's rampage and is assumed to have died until he reappears to stop Cars.

Resurrection


Thanks to Nazi science, Stroheim was revived with cybernetic parts (including a machine gun on his chest and a monocle that presumably serves as a Terminator/Robocop-esque radar system) and had attempted to fight Cars near the end of Battle Tendency, only to be cut in pieces and for Cars to escape.

Stroheim appears again when Cars falls into the spikes from Joseph's attack, making full use of his ultraviolet light again to defeat Cars. However, he and his soldiers are soundly defeated once again when Cars reveals his ultimate form. He then follows Joseph to the volcano and witnesses its eruption due to Cars' ripple colliding with the Red Stone of Asia. Stroheim returns to the rest of the group and reports Joseph's supposed death.

After the battle with Cars, Stroheim never meets Joseph again and is said to have died on the Russian front during WWII.

Trivia

 * It is likely that Guile from the Street Fighter series is based on Stroheim. Specifically, their hair and physiques are quite alike, although Guile is an all-American soldier and Stroheim is a jingoistic Nazi officer. M. Bison from the same series may also have been based on him.
 * His one of the many character to receive a Steel Ball Run counterpart, this one already been a cyborg from the beginning.
 * His given name translates to Rudol, without f or ph, in alphabetic languagues. This is probably an error on the author's part due to his unfamiliarity with German as such a given name is very uncommon.