The Weekly WTF: Voldo of ‘Soul Calibur’ is Still the Ultimate Creeptastic

Fighting games do love their eccentric characters. We've seen skinny-ass Indian yoga dudes with extendable limbs, midget dinosaurs that attack with ass-gas and a boxing kangaroo. We've seen chest-tacular ladies jiggling around combat arenas wearing what appears to be dental floss, undead pirates with shit beards and hunchbacked old scientists.

Odd is not the word. What in the name of balls is closer, but that's six words.

Anywho, one freakish man-thing tops them all, and that is Soul Calibur's Voldo. Hold on to your asses, we're going to meet him.

This peculiar pugilist has appeared in every installment of the series, bar Wii spinoff Soulcalibur Legends (which doesn't count, because it sucked donkey balls). 1995‘s Soul Edge introduced us to this unhappy bastard, and the tale of how he became a Gollum-esque little slice of insanity.

His master, fancy-ass Italian rich dude Vercci, had him sealed in his underground tomb after its construction. Voldo was charged with horribly murderising the builders, so nobody would know of its whereabouts. Apparently, though, not everybody likes being trapped underground with a load of festering dead guys (who the hell knew?), and the servant became blind and utterly batcrap crazy.

Upon his escape, our demented hero seems to have become some kind of creepy contortionist. His fighting style is probably the strangest the genre has ever seen, a mix of Kalaripayattu (an actual Indian martial art and an effin' ridiculous word) and twisty, snake-y grapples. Add those twin blades he likes to wield to the mix, and you've got an unpredictable and intimidating opponent.

And, let's not forget, a big ol' pervy one. Voldo is dressed in what can only be described as a S&M-y, gimp-y getup, the kind of thing you'll see in shop windows in the seedier parts of town (well, y'know, we imagine). We're not sure who told him that this was appropriate fighting attire, but he is blind after all. Didn't ma ever tell them not to be asses to the blind man?

Voldo remains the only guy we've ever seen contort himself into a ball and crash like a rolling man-donut into his opponents' faces. For that, and for fighting like real men do: with tambourines (his joke weapon in Soul Calibur 2), we salute him. And now, we leave you with the kind of crazy crap that Voldo inspires: