King Crimson

"It is only the results that remain in this world! All the actions you take in a world where time is erased are meaningless!"

- Diavolo, Chapter 520

King Crimson (キング・クリムゾン), sometimes shortened to K Crimson (Ｋ・クリムゾン), is the Stand of Diavolo (and partially of his alter ego, Doppio), featured in Vento Aureo.

It has a sub-Stand ability, Epitaph (エピタフ (墓碑銘)), which was primarily introduced by Vinegar Doppio, Diavolo's split personality.

Appearance
King Crimson is a humanoid Stand of a height and build similar to Diavolo's, but tends to look much bigger and taller. Its body is covered by a raised diagonal grid; save for its face, neck, shoulder guards, elbows, hands, abdomen, crotch, knees, and feet/footwear.

Its eyes comprise sharp orifices of a steep inward slant; from which emerge small, round eyes without sclera, with pronounced eye sockets that have the same fragmented pupils that Diavolo himself has. Its crown is flat and from its forehead emerges a raised level that bears a smaller, oval face of the same expression. In earlier depictions, there were two raised levels. It constantly bares its teeth through a small mouth.

The aforementioned second face on King Crimson's forehead is named Epitaph, and is sometimes duplicated in the same position on Doppio's forehead when he is given some of King Crimson's power by Diavolo, the only difference between is that the two raised levels don't appear. Epitaph presents itself as a bump on the forehead featuring eyes and a mouth constantly grinding its teeth, often mimicking King Crimson's current mood and mouth movements.

Its design is inspired by the character George/Kuato, from the 1990 science fiction film , a mutated human with a smaller twin brother conjoined in his belly.

Befitting its name, King Crimson is depicted in all media featuring it as being primarily red, with the shade of red varying from work to work. It is depicted in all media as having lime green eyes. Its primary face and the grid on its body is either white or yellow, and its metallic body parts are usually portrayed as white or silvery. King Crimson's knuckles, ankle decorations, lower back, and the soles of its feet vary in color throughout its many appearances, being depicted as white, silver, gold, or emerald (with the aforementioned areas occasionally varying in color in a single depiction).

Personality
King Crimson embodies Diavolo's personality in its entirety, as he frequently speaks through his stand. Aside from that, its face frequently possesses an angry or irritated expression, though on rare occasions, it also shows a maniacal grin when certain events fall in Diavolo's favor, such as when he gets his hands on the Arrow. It also appears to hiss like a snake whenever summoned.

Abilities
"Once anyone witnesses King Crimson... As of that moment... they no longer exist in this world."

King Crimson is one of the more impressive Stands featured in the series. Both physically strong and possessing the ability to erase time and predict the future, King Crimson is described as invincible against all other Stands whose powers do not affect time.

King Crimson is a wildly powerful Stand able to punch through people's bodies or cleave them in a chop with significant ease. Unlike other melee-based Stand Users, Diavolo generally uses it to perform single attacks that are almost always fatal rather than painful barrages. Examples include completely obliterating a fortune teller's upper body in a single punch and throwing a pair of scissors with such strength that they completely severed Risotto Nero's right foot, among multiple other occasions where it effortlessly severed and rived body parts (especially limbs). It also managed to destroy a large wall with a single punch. Its speed is incredibly impressive with Polnareff noting that avoiding its attacks even with the added prediction factor of the blood count method is based on luck, adding on the fact that he has only avoided his attacks a single time. Its feats of strength and speed are comparable to Star Platinum and The World.

Much like other Close-Range Stands, its weaknesses are poor effective range (about 2–3 meters ) and permanence, making it difficult for its User to hide their identity against multiple foes.

Time Erasure
King Crimson's signature ability is to erase a given frame of time; it starts from the instant the ability is activated and can be made to last up to 10 seconds.

During this period of erased time, only Diavolo remains fully conscious and is the only one who can re-adjust his actions. Other people will be unable to experience anything that happens and will continue to act as they would have. After the effect of the ability ends, all people other than Diavolo will retain no memories of anything that happened during the erased period.

After the allotted time frame, people will suddenly find themselves in the aftermath of the situation they were supposed to be in as the action could already be completed. For example, when Pannacotta Fugo asked Giorno Giovanna for the water bottle that they brought, the bottle was suddenly in Fugo's hand without Giorno ever actually handing it to him. There is, however, one instance where a person was able to see their double before finding themselves in their future position.

Simply put, the Time Erasure ability removes the cause but the effect remains, as if you were to fast forward a program but still know what happened in that allotted time.

In the manga, Diavolo sees the erased time as a void filled with juxtapositions of what would have happened during this period in a fashion akin to, allowing him to think out the next best action (for instance, when Bruno Bucciarati tried to punch Diavolo during the erased time, Diavolo saw Bucciarati's superimposed positions during his punch). The anime adaptation has Diavolo visualize a ghostly red image of his foe's next move instead.

In addition, Diavolo and King Crimson become "intangible" during time erasure, allowing attacks to pass through them, as the moment that the attack would have hit was erased. However, this also means Diavolo himself is unable to attack while King Crimson's time erasure is active. As a result, he often relies on the ability to avoid attacks and move into advantageous positions, such as an enemy's blind spot, then by using King Crimson's great destructive power, Diavolo launches attacks that are timed to make contact the moment the ability ends. He may also use said intangibility for a brief period of time in order to cause an attack to pass through him and hit a different target. However, Diavolo is also able to splatter his own blood onto an enemy's projection in anticipation of blinding them, as the blood is part of his body, the only thing he can interact with while the ability is active.

Furthermore, actions that Diavolo would have carried out during the skipped time still happen, despite Diavolo not performing them. For instance, in the case where Time Skip is first used against Trish, it's implied that Diavolo used Epitaph to see that he (or King Crimson) were fated to enter the elevator, separate Trish from her hand, and carry her out. Rather than doing that and risking fighting Bucciarati and Trish head-on, Diavolo skipped time so that Trish would come to him without any risk of harm or exposure to himself. It is unknown what force moves objects to the places Diavolo/King Crimson were fated to put them in but didn't due to Skipped Time, but it can be assumed that Fate itself (a concept described as being similar to that of gravity in the series) moves them.

Epitaph
Epitaph is a sub-Stand that acts as a complement to King Crimson's primary ability of time erasure. Epitaph gives Diavolo/Doppio the ability to see into and "forecast" up to ten seconds into the future. The future vision is usually represented as an image on the inside of their bangs, however it seems to be able to be projected anywhere, as seen in Diavolo's fight with Bucciarati.

The image produced includes the general area surrounding Doppio/Diavolo with him/them as the main focus, allowing either of them to see what is going to happen to them, as well as around them. Diavolo and Doppio often use the forecasting ability of Epitaph to predict any incoming threat, making sneak attacks ineffective against them.

However, the visions are incomplete and only show the final result without the events leading up to it, and can thus be subject to interpretation. In one instance, Doppio could see himself on the ground with a severed human foot flying by; he initially thought that the foot was his own, but he was mistaken.

The predictions that Epitaph shows the user are 100% fated to occur, only capable of being changed by Stand abilities that affect Fate, like Requiem Stands and King Crimson's main ability. This last one is what is primarily used to mitigate any problems that are shown in the prediction. While the predictions seen by Epitaph are unavoidable, they still effectively warn Diavolo and Doppio against incoming danger, allowing them to steer events to alleviate the damage, such as when Doppio realized a pair of scissors would form inside his throat, he easily tore them out in order to save himself. King Crimson itself can prevent the predictions from being completed if it erases the right timeframe when the prediction would have come true. Likewise, a Stand that affects Fate, like Gold Experience Requiem which can return King Crimson's power to the "zero" state, can simply make the vision false as it steers Fate to its advantage.

Trivia

 * Due to poor translations of Part 5 early in its life, and an overall complex ability in comparison to many other Stands, King Crimson has been the butt of many jokes in the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure community referring to its seemingly confusing set of abilities. The phrase "It Just Works" was popularized in the community with King Crimson, and has been used to refer to other abilities in the series since, such as that of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.

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Trivia

 * Much like DIO's "Time is frozen"/"And time resumes", Diavolo has his own phrases to go along with King Crimson's abilities: "Time has been erased" (Jikan wa futtobashita / 時間は吹っ飛ばした. ) for when he activates the ability and "Time returns its progression" (Toki wo saishido shiro / 時を再始動しろ. ) for when he deactivates it.
 * All the JoJo video games that include Diavolo as a playable or in-game character have different interpretations of the power:
 * In Vento Aureo (PS2), the time erase was shown to slow down the opponent's actions while Diavolo still moves at normal speed for the duration of the obliterated time, a mechanism similar to Made in Heaven's time acceleration abilities.
 * In All Star Battle, it acts similar to The World - through a number of abilities, Diavolo creates an erased time space (a special ability simply referred to as "Erasing Time") in which he is free to move about and the opponent is unable to take action. After a certain amount of time has passed, or as soon as Diavolo initiates an attack or ability, the spell is broken. King Crimson also acts as his dash and Epitaph can be activated to allow Diavolo automatic Stylish Dodging without depleting his Guard Gauge.
 * In Eyes of Heaven, Diavolo becomes invincible as well as invisible to his opponents within the erased time, causing him to gradually lose stamina. Other characters can still move and act normally but are otherwise ignorant to Diavolo's location. Furthermore, the Epitaph ability Diavolo had in All Star Battle allowing him to dodge instantly after getting attacked returns in the form of a skill (assigned to the Square button).
 * The anime adaptation portrays King Crimson's time-skip ability with a glitched effect, as if the animation itself has corrupted and skipped forward.
 * Concept art featured in the JOJOVELLER "History" booklet includes an early design of King Crimson, which lacks Epitaph (but still has the bump on its forehead where Epitaph would normally be) and has a facial structure appearing to be based off of a human skull, as well as what appears to be a hood (possibly inspired by the classical figure of Death).