Bohemian Rhapsody

Because it exists purely as a phenomenon, Bohemian Rhapsody has no form, no face, and no temperament to describe. What it produces, however, is vivid. The summoned figures behave with full personality, from cheerful dwarves to bloodthirsty livestock, and they even reference works beyond their own, chatting about the likes of The Terminator or Star Wars. Its reach spans the entire planet, which makes it one of the most far-reaching powers in the series and, on paper, nearly impossible to answer through ordinary combat.

The Stand lifts characters drawn in any image, be it a cartoon, a comic, a painting, or a rough sketch, and gives them flesh in the real world. Trouble begins when a person meets a figure they adore. Their soul is yanked into that character's part, inheriting its look and, worse, its destiny, because deep down people long to inhabit their favorite fantasies. Soul and body then split and act on their own; the divide is instant and the victim barely notices. Only other souls can see the separated spirit, and only that spirit can still call on the person's own Stand. Being swept into a joyful tale is survivable, but a story where the character dies turns lethal.

The conjured beings share the substance of their source, so a punched goat simply crumples into paper instead of taking real harm. Their scripts cannot be rewritten, and fleeing is pointless: walls unfold flat like paper to let them pass, and some can teleport outright. The only escape is to destroy the fictional character who dragged a victim in, which frees the trapped soul to rejoin its body. Slain figures never return to the pages they came from. The Stand feeds on the passion the original artist poured into a work, which is why its range has no limit.

A person might avoid the effect if they know nothing of a given story or character, yet with so many figures loose that shelter is thin, and even a buried, half-remembered recognition is enough to press an unwilling victim like Narciso Anasui into the role of the wolf from a fairy tale. Its one true weakness is fiction itself: a skilled hand can invent a brand new character whose only purpose is to hunt down and erase all the others, canceling the power. The United States, Japan, Italy, and France suffered the heaviest while it raged.

Ungalo, one of the sons of Dio, commands Bohemian Rhapsody, though the Stand acts on its own and needs no direct guidance to spread havoc. The threat was ultimately answered not by attacking Ungalo but by turning his own power against him, when Weather Report conceived a hero called Put Back and had Van Gogh's living portrait draw it, a character built solely to wipe out the rest.