How The Fiend Was Created | Explained | PartsFUNknown - video Dailymotion

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How The Fiend Was Created | Explained | PartsFUNknown  Special thanks to Kyle Scarborough for talking to us for this video! Follow him on Twitter here: @ScarboroughTWTC  SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/  The Fiend is one of the most interesting characters in wrestling right now, a creature lifted straight from a horror movie and supplanted into a wrestling ring... but also... a children's TV show... Oddly it still makes sense. In the debut episode of our new series 'Explained', Laurie takes us through the origins of The Fiend character and how Bray Wyatt and his collaborators designed the entire gimmick.  #partsfunknown #wrestling #wrestlingdocumentary

Transcript

00:00 Bray Wyatt.

00:11 A man who claimed to have the whole world in his hands.

00:14 A man with a great grasp on his character and how to bring them to life, but a man for

00:19 whom true superstardom always seemed to slip through his fingers.

00:25 Because while he said he always had fireflies to light the way they were actually just blinking

00:30 out a morse code distress signal.

00:32 Like SOS turn back now there are career crushing defeats ahead against The Undertaker and Randy

00:36 Orton and John Cena.

00:38 And John Cena.

00:39 And John Cena.

00:42 And John Cena.

00:43 So for a man who taught one of the best games in the business his regular failure to deliver

00:48 made this cult leader look like a right cult.

00:54 Well that all turned around after an eight month hiatus as Bray Wyatt returned to screens

00:59 asking 'won't you be my neighbour' and 'I've got a dark little secret to show

01:03 you'.

01:04 Doesn't exactly sound very PG does it?

01:06 But you know, Randy Orton's out there murdering people with chairs on a week to week basis.

01:10 Riddle me that.

01:11 And thankfully Bray's dark secret was just that he loves horror themed cosplay and lo

01:16 the fiend was born.

01:18 But how?

01:19 What did Papa Bray and Mama collaborators do in a darkened room to birth this hideous

01:24 nightmare creature?

01:25 Well kids, it's time I told you about the birds and the fireflies.

01:30 I'm Laurie Hailing from partsFUNknown and this is the Fiend Explained.

01:41 To truly get to grips with who Bray Wyatt, the new face of fun and the Fiend really are

01:51 we need to rewind all the way back to the beginning.

01:53 Because Bray joined the WWE system as a member of developmental feeder promotion Florida

01:58 Championship Wrestling in 2009, teaming with real life sibling Bo Dallas as the Rotundo

02:04 Brothers Tank and Duke.

02:06 This was using a twist on their real life surname Rotunda and two names that would be

02:11 great to give a dog, Tank and Duke.

02:14 Honey, we should get a dog and call it Tank.

02:18 Or Duke.

02:19 What about Dank?

02:20 Dank's a great name for a dog.

02:25 And then when WWE debuted their weird reality show version of NXT, Bray debuted their under

02:30 the ring name Husky Harris.

02:32 Which if you look it up means big and strong Harris, but most people read as Fat Harris.

02:39 Fat Harris.

02:40 I won't bore you with all the details of the myth of Husky Harris, but it went something

02:44 like this.

02:45 Kicked off NXT, appear on Raw, Pestage on Cena, whipped by a whips, oh my god Cody,

02:50 though derivative, new Nexus, head kicked off by Orton, serial murderer.

02:55 But the decapitation of Husky Harris was probably for the best as it allowed Bray to go away,

03:00 get his head screwed on and come back with a really interesting, really well thought

03:05 out new character, Axel Mulligan.

03:08 Yeah, I mean after that, after that, Bray Wyatt, it was after that.

03:13 But then again Axel Mulligan, who was a sort of teen slasher style hockey mask wearing

03:18 creepo laid a lot of the groundwork for Bray's characters taking a more horror movie style

03:23 bent.

03:24 So after that return to FCW and a brief spell as Axel Mulligan, Bray was then repackaged

03:29 one more time to… yeah, it's Bray Wyatt now.

03:40 The character drew inspiration from the likes of Robert De Niro's portrayal of Max Cady

03:44 in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear, charismatic cult leaders with the power of persuasion

03:53 like Charles Manson and Dads in Holiday Mode.

04:00 The Wyatt character actually cut very closely to one WWE had seen before, Waylon Mercy.

04:07 Mercy was the short-lived alter ego of one dangerous Dan Spivey during WWF in the mid-90s,

04:12 who started to make his presence felt during a series of soft spoken vignettes that slowly

04:17 started to turn more and more sinister as time went on.

04:39 Mercy was always a gentleman on the mic, but actually a vicious animal when he was in the

04:43 ring, though the character never properly got to take off as Spivey was forced to retire

04:47 due to injuries.

04:48 However, like many cult leaders before him, the legacy of Waylon Mercy remained and still

04:53 held sway within WWE.

04:54 In fact, Dan Spivey was even drafted in by WWE to work with Bray on his refreshed character.

05:00 And what a character.

05:01 The leader of the Wyatt Family was unlike any other character in WWE at the time.

05:06 He was a heel who wanted to be adored, enraptured followers with his silver tongue and ultimately

05:12 truly believed that he was their salvation.

05:15 That is until he got on the main roster where he went from cult leader to legit magic man

05:20 who could disappearate and conjure illusions of maggots, or at least ask a projectionist

05:25 really nicely, and cross-dress as his own sister.

05:28 And that's the thing, once Wyatt was rebranded as Gandalf the Bray there was no going back,

05:33 he was always tried out for silly gimmick matches and dumb storylines and overriding

05:38 good vs evil confrontations which you would have to expect he would lose.

05:43 Because Jason doesn't slide off the hockey mask and walk off into the sunset on the morning

05:47 of Saturday the 14th, does he?

05:49 He's defeated by whichever virgin is left alive.

05:54 Which is why a rebrand was so necessary, because Wyatt's gimmick by that point was basically

06:00 that he spoke in spooky non sequiturs and general divination drivel that never actually

06:05 came to pass.

06:06 He was less the eater of worlds and more the eater of humble pie.

06:11 The cult leader character came to a close after a semi-face run with Matt Hardy as the

06:15 deleters of worlds.

06:16 After they failed to recapture the tag team titles from Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel in July

06:21 2018, Hardy had to take time out for an injury and Wyatt went away to scheme up his next

06:27 new direction.

06:28 It's a process that took nearly eight months until Bray Wyatt finally reappeared on screens

06:34 in the Firefly Funhouse vignette, but it was kept secret from a lot of the roster.

06:40 Including former Wyatt family member and one of Bray's close personal friends Braun Strowman

06:44 who told Sam Roberts on the Not Sam Wrestling podcast that even he didn't know what Bray

06:49 was cooking up during his time away.

06:52 He got in a pretty weird place for a while with what was going on character wise and

06:56 he literally went into the drawing board and started from scratch.

06:59 We went for a while without even talking because he went so deep into his character.

07:04 He shut himself out from the world.

07:06 I remember watching the first episode of Firefly Funhouse and thinking what the hell is this?

07:12 Bray?

07:13 What are you doing?

07:14 It's clearly a demented Pee Wee's Playhouse, that much is obvious.

07:18 Get a grip Strowman.

07:24 So yeah, admittedly the whole thing is a bit of a mindf*ck for WWE fans because you couldn't

07:27 quite see how cardigan comfort Bray Wyatt, pal of puppets, would translate into an in-ring

07:32 performance.

07:33 I guess that's where the little secret comes in because it wouldn't actually be Mr Rogers

07:37 doing the wrestling, except in that one match with The Miz.

07:40 Ha, Miz got wrecked by a nerd.

07:43 It's actually going to be The Fiend doing all the fighting for the rest of it.

07:46 A new character means a new look and new gear and who better to help conjure this creature

07:51 from hell than special effects supremo Tom Savini.

07:54 A long time collaborator with George A Romero, Savini is renowned for doing the visual effects

07:59 for the likes of Day of the Dead, Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead and Texas Chainsaw

08:04 Massacre 2.

08:08 He also happens to be a long time wrestling fan.

08:11 His company, Savini Studios, has been called upon by WWE to produce gear, props and backdrops

08:16 many times over the years.

08:18 Including Triple H's melting skull metaphor, Kalisto's WrestleMania 33 getup and the

08:24 Bludgeon Brothers mallets and mask.

08:26 So considering his natural affinity for horror, it's no wonder that Bray turned to Tom and

08:31 co to help bring his character to life.

08:33 Because Savini Studios produced The Fiend's mask, the lantern, the puppets, the sets for

08:38 Firefly Funhouse and Project Supervisor Jason Baker even directed all of the vignettes.

08:45 While Baker may have been given the lead on the project in true Bray Wyatt fashion, he

08:49 was actually the one in control and everyone else was just a follower.

08:53 It's kind of like life imitating art, but if life was about art imitating other art

08:58 that then back references other art from a couple of years ago and then back references

09:02 even further back other art that the other person was doing and my head really hurts.

09:07 Anyway, here's how Jason Baker explained it himself to GameSpot.

09:11 "It's all Bray's brainchild.

09:13 He had these ideas and we did some concept art, but it wasn't really hitting home with

09:16 Bray.

09:17 So he got a really, really good sketch artist named Carl Scarborough out of St. Louis, some

09:22 concept art for him.

09:24 These sketches were awesome and we took those and brought them to life."

09:32 Carl Scarborough is a sketch artist and tattooist who found himself a member of the Wyatt social

09:37 media family after some light-hearted Twitter banter.

10:01 So that initial chat about a tattoo that never actually came to fruition would bear a different

10:05 sort of fruit for Carl because it meant he was top of the list, cherry-picked by Bray

10:10 Wyatt to help bring the theme to life.

10:13 And it sounded like a hell of an info dump to get all that stuff out of Bray's brain.

10:17 "When he came at me it was a mile a minute.

10:21 I wasn't processing fast enough the information he was throwing at me.

10:25 So I started going off with photos, random imagery, things that were part of his inspiration.

10:30 I like this, I like that, this is kind of what I mean here, this helps me illustrate

10:34 what I'm talking about.

10:35 So the first descriptors of the mask, we see that pretty prevalent.

10:37 He says, 'hey are you familiar with the Joker?'

10:41 We all can see the resemblance of that.

10:42 Greg Capullo's massive fan outfit, his 52-stretched one of them Joker cut outs had his face cut

10:47 out.

10:48 He goes, 'we know that look.'

10:49 And I said, 'yeah?'

10:50 And we kind of started with that as a base template and we threw some other concepts

10:53 and ideas in there."

10:54 The 'Joker' Carl is referring to is Greg Capullo's depiction of the Clown Prince

10:58 of Crime from his run on Batman alongside Scott Snyder, perhaps most notably the death

11:04 of the family storyline.

11:06 This version of Joker cuts off his own face in order to be reborn wearing the skin stretched

11:12 across like a mask as he tries once again to best Batman.

11:17 Snyder's story paints the Joker as a monster, an almost supernatural force and a necessary

11:23 part of the Batman legend.

11:25 And I feel like there are so many parallels with Bray's new character, because the Fiend's

11:30 mask is literally Bray's rebirth as a new gimmick, the character is a monster out for

11:35 revenge against all those who have wronged him in the past.

11:39 And is a corrupting influence on the weird Firefly Funhouse version of Bray too.

11:45 Just like the Joker manipulates everyone around him.

11:47 Long story short, it's a really complex wrestling character.

11:51 I mean, whatever happened to just being a wrestler and, I don't know, a milkman?

11:56 It's simple, it's easy to understand, it's easily the best thing on No Role's

12:00 Bard.

12:01 Because Bray is now a wrestler, and a children's TV presenter, and a monster, and a metaphorical

12:07 interpretation of his entire career so far, and also to some extent the character he was

12:11 before that, and also to some extent the character he was before that, and also to some extent

12:15 the character he was before that, and also to some extent the character he was before

12:16 that, and also to some extent the character he was before that, and also to some extent

12:17 the character he was before that, and also to some extent the character he was before

12:18 that, and also to some extent the character he was before that, and also to some extent

12:19 the character he was before that, and also to some extent the character he was before

12:20 that, and also to some extent the character he was before that, and also to some extent

12:21 the character he was before that, and also to some extent the character he was before

12:22 that, and also to some extent the character he was before that, and also to some extent

12:23 the character he was before that, and also to some extent the character he was before

12:24 that.

12:25 It's easy to think wrestling fans like deep characters with complex lore and morally ambiguous

12:30 motivations.

12:31 You just think maybe it's a little too thinky and a little too dark for a PG audience, because

12:37 Kyle certainly seemed to think so when he designed one specific item for the character,

12:42 the lantern.

12:43 Dreamt up by Bray in Savini Studios and back referencing Bray's old entrance, The Fiend

12:48 debuted at SummerSlam 2019, marching to the ring with the severed head of the old Bray

12:53 Wyatt to light the way.

12:56 F***ing gross.

12:57 I really didn't think that the level of darkness or macabre imagery that we were putting into

13:02 this would ever come to be.

13:04 The lantern blew my mind because he explained to me the idea of essentially if I cut my

13:08 old face off and I stretched over a lantern and the bulb is the mount.

13:11 I designed it exactly as he described it.

13:14 It was produced almost exactly as I drew it.

13:18 A lot of folks have seen the illustration that I did of the lantern that I sent to him

13:22 and he sent to the designers.

13:24 Ultimately though, while Bray Wyatt may have had this huge range of influences and a whole

13:28 team of collaborators from Carl Scarborough, Savini Studios and Code Orange who helped

13:33 him remix his entrance music for The Fiend, everyone puts over Bray as the mastermind

13:39 behind this character.

13:40 He's someone who had a fully fleshed out idea and just needed that little bit of professional

13:45 oomph to take it out of his mind and put it into the ring.

13:49 Which is exactly what Jason Baker from Savini Studios told GameSpot.

13:53 The man is, what's the old saying, the razor's edge between genius and insanity.

13:59 And that man walks that razor's edge constantly.

14:02 Very very smart.

14:04 Smarter than a lot of people give him credit for.

14:06 Great to collaborate with.

14:07 You think you're going to throw an idea at him.

14:09 He comes back with eight.

14:10 It's been an absolute pleasure and an honour to get to collaborate with this gentleman.

14:16 With someone who just puts such a thought process into his craft.

14:20 And I think thought is definitely the operative word here because it seems like this reinvention

14:25 of the character has been on Bray's mind for quite some time.

14:30 No pigment in his skin.

14:32 Thin yellow hairs run high.

14:33 His eyes are yellow like a cat.

14:40 There are other men in the world.

14:41 Well thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this, the first in our Explained series on

14:45 Bray Wyatt and The Fiend.

14:47 Next week for part two we're going to be diving into the lore of the character and

14:51 all of the easter eggs and vignettes that hark back to old Bray Wyatt that have been

14:55 scattered throughout Firefly Funhouse.

14:58 So subscribe to the channel so you don't miss that and why not check out no roles but

15:02 our wrestling RPG series which I think might just be the perfect thing to binge watch while

15:08 we're all stuck inside for the foreseeable future.

15:13 Anyway see you next time on partsFUNknown.

How The Fiend Was Created | Explained | PartsFUNknown

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