Darth Smallberries
Supposedly at one point George Lucas said that “Darth Vader” was a variation of “Dark Water”, and he went to high school with a bully named Gary Vader.
That sounds like a joke but I promise it’s not.
In fact, according to Michael Kaminski’s The Secret History of Star Wars , “Vader” was actually chosen for the character because it was the last name of a bully at Lucas’ school. Yes, the most dreaded name of all of Star Wars came from “Gary Vader”, which is, to be honest, even less scary than “Darth Wilson”.
At this point everything is apocrypha.
Also agree and love the “Star Wars No Number” which I will call it from now on.
So the documentary “George Lucas In Love” is more accurate than I expected!
“Write what you know!”*
*together: “mom? MOM!”
Don’t forget Darth Insanious and Darth Icky - Lucas’s two suggested names for the Star Wars:Force Unleashed protagonist.
I’d prefer to thanks.
Darth Vaid-AIR…
Plus, does Lucas even know Dutch? I mean, you can’t draw names from languages you don’t know. I guess it’s just barely possible that he’d go “I want a name that means ‘father’ in some random language”, and then go look it up, but in the pre-Internet days, that was unlikely unless it was a language you already had some exposure to.
The German is Vater so that seems more plausible to me (someone in the US knowing the German word as opposed to the Dutch word - and adapting it in a way that happens to be the Dutch spelling.)
I mean George Lucas says its from father. Without something that documents him saying something else, I’m gonna stick with that. Not that everyone is always a reliable narrator of their own creative process, but no amount of postulation from some rando online is more convincing IMO.
Given a choice between the writer himself and a random person on the internet… my jury’s out.
And George Lucas also said that he always intended for Greedo to shoot at Han first, but the technology didn’t exist at the time to make that happen. And also said that lightsabres changing colors in the middle of the movie and yellow boxes appearing around the TIE fighters was just a result of people not having their TVs adjusted correctly.
I wanted to use either of these as a stage name, so I bounced them off the wife.
“Darth Big-bootay?”
“That doesn’t work, you have no butt. Your back ends in legs.”
“Darth Smallberries?”
“Nope, you have giant balls. That doesn’t work, either.”
Honestly, she’s right about both. So my stage name is currently Darth No-Booty.
It would be almost like claiming that Greedo shot first.
I think that’s Gaslighting 101. Certain politicians excel at it.
It was originally Jeff Vader, as shown in this deleted scene.
That’s really helpful - thank you!
Me too. Probably later retconned to make us think it was an epithet.
In the latest Lego Star Wars game, they have Han shoot first (and miss, of course, because it’s Lego), then they have a minor shootout. Nice touch to have Han shoot first, I think.
kaylasmom used to call me “skinny butt.” She’s no longer with us, so you can use “Darth Skinnybutt” if you want it.