Vampire

Undead predators that recur across the opening chapters of the series, vampires trace their existence to the Pillar Men, who refined acupuncture methods through the Stone Mask to produce them. The creatures were meant to serve as nourishment for their makers and as living experiments into human potential, a pursuit that eventually steered the Pillar Men toward the Red Stone of Aja. A person becomes one either by donning the Stone Mask while blood touches it or by receiving a vampire's blood into a corpse. In the philosophy of the Ripple taught by Will Anthonio Zeppeli, every living thing carries the sun's energy, and a vampire is a being whose natural flow of that energy has been twisted and reversed, which is precisely why the Ripple can undo them.

Vampires announce themselves with a cry of "WRY" and back it with overwhelming physical gifts: crushing strength, blinding speed likened to a cheetah, agility enough to cling to ceilings, and eternal youth that spares them age and sickness. They feed by driving their fingers into a victim and drawing blood directly through them, and fresh blood both strengthens and heals; a starved vampire will lash out at anyone to satisfy the craving. Their command over their own flesh deepens with consumption, letting skilled ones reshape their bodies in lethal ways, and the most gifted invent techniques of their own.

DIO, the pinnacle of the breed, developed feats such as the pressurized eye-beams of the Space Ripper Stingy Eyes, a freezing method that neutralizes the Ripple, the grafting of body parts through Fusion, mind-controlling Flesh Buds, and the creation of subservient zombies. Vampires regenerate from grievous wounds and can even direct severed limbs, yet enough damage to the head still kills them, and sunlight or the Ripple remains fatal. Those who learned the Ripple as humans, like Straizo, may keep using it after turning, though doing so amounts to slow suicide, and a vampire with strong enough spirit can also manifest a Stand.

The best-known vampire is Dio Brando, who embraces the transformation in Phantom Blood and remains its defining example through his return as DIO in Stardust Crusaders. Others include the Ripple master Straizo, who chose the change late in life, the spike-covered Wired Beck, the deceptive Nukesaku, and Vanilla Ice, the last vampire DIO ever created. Once Jotaro Kujo destroys DIO, no further vampires appear in the story, which may well mark the end of the entire kind.