Alternate World Diego Brando

Physically this Diego is a near-perfect mirror of his root-world counterpart. His frame stays short and lean, topped by pale hair, darker brows, and striking, sharply drawn eyes. For the race he dresses like any competing jockey: a riding helmet fitted with the pinned letters D, I, and O rising from a small ribbon at the front, a turtleneck cut with a crosshatched grid, forearm-length gloves, loose wide-legged breeches, and tall dark boots.

This version outstrips even the original in sheer cruelty, wanting nothing beyond the Corpse's power for himself. He treats bystanders as disposable, hiding behind his own fans as living shields and then jeering at Johnny Joestar for the deaths those shields cause, feeling no guilt of his own. Across the closing leg of the race he tries to finish Johnny through gruesomely inventive means, flinging blades within frozen time as DIO once did or setting matches to burn him alive.

He is also a predator. Even while gushing blood from a grievous wound he pins Lucy down, throttling and groping the teenage girl while promising to degrade her further once his leg has mended.

After the root-world Diego rebelled against Funny Valentine during the eighth stage and fell to the president's own Stand, Valentine reached across realities for a replacement. He found a parallel Diego who rode in a near-identical version of the transcontinental race, confided his entire scheme, and entrusted him with the Saint's Corpse to guard should Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli overcome him. Because the relic exists only in this world, the newcomer was never forced to carry Scary Monsters and instead kept his genuine Stand, the timestopping THE WORLD, almost a twin of the one DIO once bore. Valentine smuggled him into the base reality and faced Johnny alone, buying his agent time by dangling a resurrected Gyro as bait.

Once Johnny cut Valentine down, he found the Corpse missing again and chased the thief straight to Diego. Forewarned about Tusk and the Golden Spin, Diego shielded himself with adoring fans and unleashed a twin strike in stopped time, a gunshot paired with a blow to Johnny's back that knocked him from his horse. Yet Johnny had banked enough spin to send Tusk Act 4 crawling up Diego's leg. Recalling Valentine's counsel, Diego severed his own leg and hurled it at Johnny, turning the Golden Spin back on its owner before riding off and leaving him to bleed. He claimed victory and sealed the Corpse inside the Holy Trinity's hidden chamber, but Lucy Steel arrived and exposed the head of the original Diego; when the two heads from separate dimensions touched, they annihilated one another and killed him.