Funny Valentine

""Funny Valentine is the main antagonist of Part 7: Steel Ball Run.

Funny Valentine is the 23rd President of the United States and the true mastermind behind the Steel Ball Run race. He watches the competition from behind the curtains and hopes to gather the Saint's Corpse to use the holy relic to further the United States of America's interests.

Valentine is a Stand User, wielding his Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and its dimensional abilities to travel across parallel universes.

Early Life
When the President was a child, his father went to war, and never came back. One day, a soldier named Captain Valentine came to Funny's house and told him that his father was captured by the enemy. After resisting intense torture, he committed suicide in order not to betray his country. He retained a handkerchief (horrifically, behind his eye) which Captain Valentine then gave to Funny.

It is implied that Funny's mother remarried with Captain Valentine some time later.

While on an excavation in the Civil War, Valentine's company perished in a desert. Valentine himself, exhausted, fell onto the site of the Corpse's Heart. His life was saved due to the Corpse's power, and he inferred the existence of a complete Corpse.

At some point later, he was captured by the enemy and brutally whipped, leaving scars spanning his back (in a pattern resembling that of the flag of the United States).

Steel Ball Run
The Steel Ball Run race is a plot set up by Valentine and the down-on-his-luck promoter, Steven Steel, to scope through the United States to get the Saint Corpse Parts which were rumored to have life-changing power. As he hosted and monitored the event, he'd send out people of his choosing to make sure things didn't go haywire in the process while at the same time trying to find pieces of the corpse parts themselves. By obtaining the corpse, Valentine, being a patriot, wishes to use its power to bring a better future to America by merging his stand and the corpse's power to deflect all misfortunes befalling on his country to foreign countries.

During the race, Valentine employs many assassins to kill both Gyro Zeppeli and Johnny Joestar, even having some participate in the race to get close to the duo. The majority of his subordinates are Stand users, such as Blackmore, Mike O. and Diego Brando from Another Universe.

Valentine discovers a traitor in his ranks, which he first believed to be Mountain Tim, then his wife, Scarlet, before finding the real traitor: Lucy Steel (disguised as Scarlet).

Once learning that the Corpse parts were embedded within Lucy, he had her live with him, knowing that she was disguised as his wife, and in the hopes of taking the Corpse parts out of her when the time was right.

After seeing Lucy for what she truly is, he holds her until the Corpse's power is at its fullest. He hires D-I-S-C-O to stall Gyro so he can kill Johnny himself. Using Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, He sends both Diego Brando and Wekapipo (both have since defected from Valentine's employ) to alternate dimensions to shoot Johnny and eliminate the three at once. He fights Wekapipo and Diego with the odds in his favor, then Diego uses Scary Monsters to guide Johnny to safety and shoot Valentine. However, Valentine uses his Stand to replace his dying body.

He takes off in a train to protect Lucy from Diego and Hot Pants, while Ticket to Ride takes form. He makes several clones to fight off the two but is nearly killed by Diego. After fighting and killing Diego, Lucy's Stand takes form and powers up D4C. He quickly uses it to kill Hot Pants and prepares to fight Gyro and Johnny.

When Gyro and Johnny finally show up to confront the president, Valentine shows the full extent of his new ability. Valentine misdirects everything that was intended to kill him to another part of the world, killing someone else. However, Gyro tells Johnny that it is time for "Lesson 5", meaning the use of the Golden Spin. As Gyro prepares for the Golden Spin, Valentine shoots him non-lethally. However, with the effects of D4C -Love Train, the wound travels up his body towards a more lethal spot. Gyro then summons Ball Breaker and passes through the dimensional barrier, accelerating the age of half of Valentine's face. As the wound travels up Gyro's body, he shoots Ball Breaker a second time, seemingly killing Valentine. However, Valentine was turned into an old man due to the second attack and after recovering, he finally manages to kill Gyro.

After killing Gyro, Johnny relentlessly tries to do anything possible to even harm Valentine, but to no avail. Valentine then shoots Johnny's horse, Slow Dancer, to eliminate the chance of seeing the Golden Rectangle. In a last-ditch effort, Johnny uses one of Gyro's steel balls to heal his horse which kicks him into the air, activating Tusk ACT 4.

Death(s)
After being hit by Tusk ACT 4, he found himself subjected to the Spin, which drove him into a hole in the ground every time he jumped to another dimension. He attempted to bribe his way away from this by offering Johnny a brand new Gyro Zeppeli, whom he shot and killed prior, in return for Johnny ending the Spin. Johnny refuses, stating that even a Gyro from another dimension would not be the same Gyro as the one he had adventured with.

After an explanation of how he wanted to use the Corpse parts for his country, he mentions that Hot Pants died. However, he managed to take the spray from another dimension's Hot Pants and hands it over to Johnny so that he can heal Lucy. Johnny, though gradually trusting the president, tosses Valentine's empty pistol to his side and challenges him to pick it up, harboring a suspicion that Valentine had brought a pistol back with him from an alternate dimension to attack him with. The suspicion proved correct, and knowing that if he picked up the pistol it would merge with the one from the alternate dimension and reveal his intention to betray Johnny, he hesitated for a moment. After reaffirming his personal sense of justice, he draws his weapon and shoots Johnny, who in turn shoots back at him. The gunfight results in the final death of the president.

At the conclusion of Steel Ball Run, it is mentioned that despite Valentine's disappearance from the public eye at the end of the race, he attained approval ratings as high as 91%.

Appearance
Throughout the narrative, Valentine adopts two main appearances, differing greatly in build. He is originally introduced as an old, stout, overweight man, but around the time he takes the rib cage of the Saint, gains a more fit, muscular and handsome appearance. Araki attributes this to his naturally changing art style but also jokes that it is simply because Valentine "worked out."

After this, it is revealed that spanning his back, Valentine bears deep scars, in a pattern resembling that of the 21st-century flag of the United States.

He consistently wears long, light hair, curling at its ends into a number of thick, well-defined rings (perhaps as a reference to the white periwigs and hairstyles of the 18th century, as worn by several early United States Presidents).

He also normally dons a smooth, uniform outfit, including an overcoat closed to the end of his torso. Under which he wears frilled garments and a pair of gloves with a net pattern on the upper half.

Personality traits
Funny Valentine is a dignified but immoral patriot, militant in his will to accomplish what he thinks is best for the United States.

Valentine's foremost characteristic is his deep patriotism. Marked by the gruesome fate of his father, Valentine's goal is that the United States stands over the rest of the world. To do so, he seeks the blessing of the Saint Corpse Parts, becoming ecstatic when the Corpse blesses him. Moreover, the President shows a great degree of determination toward this goal. First acting through his subordinates, Valentine then takes a greater active part in seizing the Saint's Corpse, confronting his enemies personally if need be, and ultimately claiming that he has no problem putting his life on the line to fulfill his objectives. He also manages to regain his composure even facing the eternal torture that Tusk ACT4 has inflicted on him.[10] One of his expressed fears is to have someone petty or worse seizing the Corpse and taking away the happiness that should go into the United States.

Powers and Abilities
Valentine's Stand, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (D4C), enables him access at any time to any number of alternate worlds/universes/dimensions; where if desired he may swap bodies with his counterparts, granting him pseudo-immortality. This requires him to get caught between two objects (for example, a flag and the ground or a sofa and the wall). This limits D4C's ability but not by much since he has gotten caught between water and the bottom of the ocean as a method of using his ability before.

When Lucy develops Ticket to Ride, Valentine may utilize a protective wall of light emanating from her which deflects all misfortune, bolstering his defense further as he becomes effectively invincible. He names this complementary ability "D4C - Love Train".