Parts Unknown

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    Wrestlecrap shows us what happens when other shows get in on the Parts Unknown game

    "Where is Dudleyville, J.R.?" -- Jerry Lawler
    "I think it's out there past Parts Unknown." -- Jim Ross

    Name: Vanessa
    Mode of combat: Boxing
    Birthday: January 9
    Height: 182cm
    Weight: 67kg
    Blood type: Type B
    Hobby: Saving Money, catalogue shopping
    Personal Treasure: Her wedding ring
    Favorite food: Beer
    Dislikes: Indecisive People, Ghosts
    Forte in sports: All of 'em

    Birthplace: Unknown
    —King of Fighters' Vanessa. We know everything about her....except her birthplace, naturally...

    The standard Professional Wrestling ring introduction consists of four parts: hometown, height, weight, and name. However, there are some characters where one might not want to give a hometown; after all, if you have a quasi-mystical, Made of Iron, Badass loner, it would probably rob him of some of his mystique if he was from Joisey. The solution? Announce him as being "from Parts Unknown".

    Parts Unknown, simply put, is wrestling-speak for "we don't know where the hell this guy's from." However, it's taken on a life of its own in wrestling fandom, where it's become popular to depict Parts Unknown as a real place that's home to some very unreal personalities. Possibly as a result of this, most wrestling promoters have changed from using Parts Unknown to using more descriptive, though equally non-specific, hometowns.

    This trope is also often used in video games, specifically beat 'em ups, including Street Fighter, King of Fighters, the Soul Series, Tekken and Darkstalkers. This is probably due to the fact that nationality can often lead to pre-conceived ideas about how a character should behave and look. Parts Unknown avoids this situation, especially with regards to certain characters who are NOT designed with any specific cultural/nationality tropes in mind, meaning that it is regularly applied to overtly mysterious, more fantastical characters. It's also regularly applied final bosses, like Street Fighter's M.Bison, who has a design that clearly evokes a Nazi general, but actually labelling him as being German could be seen to have Unfortunate Implications - far better to avoid mention of his native place altogether.

    As an aside, when used too liberally amongst a series' characters, this trope arguably becomes unrealistic - afterall, most people (especially in a modern setting) do have a nationality and are aware of where they were born.

    Examples of Parts Unknown include:

    Video Games

    • The Soul Series employs this a fair bit, which is quite odd considering the (heightened) real world setting and detailed bios provided for most characters. Examples include Algol, Edgemaster and Zasalamel - although arguably these three represent characters from very ancient civilizations, with mysterious pasts, so are trickier to categorize.
      • It's odder when this trope is applied to characters like Tira and ZWEI, who were both born within the same time-frame as their series contemporaries, although ZWEI's design and fighting-style (using a summoned were-wolf) is arguably a shift into more of a fantasy-type character, perhaps explaining the need for this trope.
      • Viola takes the cake - her official bio is especially whimsical, listing her birthplace as "a place of roses and lilies" and her blood type as "twisted strings of red and blue," which is in stark contrast to the more factual bios of the rest of the cast.
    • The Street Fighter series uses trope less often, as it heavily relies on National Stereotypes when designing characters. The trope is usually restricted to boss characters - Gill, Seth and M.Bison (Vega) are good examples.
      • Other non-boss examples include the bizarre, enigmatic Q of Third Strike fame, and platinum blonde Kid From the Future Ingrid. Both characters probably justify use of this trope, with each having a character shtick heavily revolving around a sense of other-wordly mystery.
    • The Darkstalkers series has a handful of examples, although most characters avoid this trope as they are (for the most part) shout outs to global legendary creatures. Examples that play the trope straight include Donovan, who has a Buddhist priest vibe but who's birthplace is simply listed as "unknown" and B.B.Hood, who's bio at least narrows her birthplace down to somewhere in "Northern Europe".
    • Tekken 6 introduces us to Zafina, an exotic beauty who used to be listed as being "Indian" on the official English language Tekken site - however, she's now listed as of "unknown" origin. Perhaps this was required due to her overall look being a cultural mish-mash; with an Indian fighting style, make-up and skin colouring, elements of American Indian costume design and a storyline that hints at ancient Egyptian origins.
    • King of Fighters is KING of this trope, and a large chunk of the characters in the series have "unknown" listed against their birthplaces. 26 out of the 90 (non-powered/cloned) total characters have "unknown" listed under birthplace on the official site. This is most likely because the series contains a blend of fairly conventional, global warriors (Mai, Terry, Billy, Robert etc), who are all assigned a nationality, alongside a large selection of far more "colourful" fighters (Ash, Foxy, Kula, Botan, Magaki, Saiki, etc) who's off-the-wall designs require the use of this trope.
      • It's arguable that the series takes this trope a little far, with seemingly quite "normal" looking characters also having "unknown" listed against their birthplaces, despite the rest of their bios containing precise, thorough information (favourite food, hobbies etc). Examples include Vanessa, Heidern and Whip who don't follow the "overtly mysterious" pattern at all.

    Wrestling

    • Parts Unknown's most famous resident would have to be former WWF wrestler The Ultimate Warrior.
    • WCW took things one step further with the Man of Question (later Hugh Morrus), who was announced at least once as "from Parts Unknown, height unknown, weight unknown." Geez, guys, can't anybody get him up on a scale?
      • And then there was the infamous "WCW Special Forces", whence hailed The Patriots: Todd Champion and Chip the Firebreaker.
      • And the less infamous but no less absurd "Web City", the hometown of Arachnaman, WCW's Captain Ersatz for Spider-Man (one of many masked wrestlers portrayed by Brad Armstrong).
    • Former WWE wrestler The Boogeyman is announced as from "The Bottomless Pit".
    • Hack Myers was famously introduced throughout his career as from "The Last House on the Left".
      • So is ROH wrestler Sami Callahan.
    • WWE wrestler The Undertaker is something of a subversion, as he's always been announced from "Death Valley". While there is an actual town called Death Valley in California, the conspicuous lack of a state has always led fans to believe that this was just a Parts Unknown-style descriptive hometown. At one pre-Wrestlemania XXV press conference, 'Taker dropped all pretense, asking the crowd "What's up, hometown?" and noting that Death Valley was "just off of loop 610". However, recently, WWE has aired vignettes featuring The Undertaker which seem to take place in California's Mojave Desert, which would seem to back up the idea that Taker calls the real town of Death Valley home.
      • He wasn't always announced as being from "Death Valley". During his "American Bad-Ass" biker gimmick, he was announced as being from Houston.
      • His brother Kane, however, is generally known to be a Parts Unknown resident.
    • Spoofed in the Futurama episode "Raging Bender", where a wrestling robot dubbed the Clearcutter is described as being "from, and made of, Parts Unknown".
    • Deuce and Domino are from "The Other Side Of The Tracks".
    • Ring of Honor's Delirious is from "The Edge Of Sanity"
      • In the same vein, short-lived WWF wrestler Damien Demento was from "The Outer Recesses of Your Mind"
    • Sid Vicious (the wrestler, not the musician) was from "Wherever He Damn Well Pleases"
    • In the women's pro wrestling organisation SHIMMER, Amazing Kong had a regular hometown (Tokyo, Japan)... but her weight was announced as "Weighing None Of Your Damn Business".
    • Short-lived WCW wrestler Blackblood (Billy Jack Haynes under a mask) had "A Little Town in France" as his hometown. Short-lived because he sucked, and also because Jim Ross couldn't resist mocking that line ("A little town in... What is it, Smallville?").
      • Wrestlecrap's induction of the 1991 Great American Bash (which was so awful it made the audience "WANT FLAIR!") notes this as being the worst hometown in the history of wrestling, sentences after saying exactly the same thing about Yellow Dog's hometown, "the Kennel Club." It's hard to say which is actually more embarrassing.
    • Blitzkrieg was introduced as being from "The Cosmos".
    • In Homestar Runner, The Announcer delivers this a few times; he said that Strong Mad and Strong Bad were from Parts Unknown in "Marshamallow's Last Stand", and just Strong Bad in the e-mail "Lady... ing"
      • Later, in "Strongest Man in the world", Mr. Bland is said to hail from "The middle of the road," and Señor Havin' A Little Trouble is just said to be "from foreign lands".
      • And, in the e-mail "Yes, wrestling" Strong Bad's in-ring persona Il Cartographer is said to be from "the age of exploration".
    • Once spoofed in an old Drabble comic strip. The father, a masked wrestler, was pulled over for a traffic stop and was in full costume. He even had a kayfabe driver's licence, with his address listed as yes, Parts Unknown.
    • TNA wrestler Black Reign (Dustin Rhodes) is introduced as being from "the deepest darkest corner of his mind", as he has a Split Personality gimmick. This is also a partial reference to a lesser known wrestler from the WWE called Damian Demento who was billed as being from "The outer Reaches of Your Mind."
      • Also in TNA, after the breakup of Team Canada in 2006 caused him to become incredibly paranoid, Eric Young was billed as coming from "an undisclosed location".
      • His Superhero gimmick Super Eric comes from Metropolis. I wonder if he is a neighbour of Chris Hero. The Skyscrapers Tag Team was billed from there in 1989-1990.
      • After splitting from Robert Roode, Young was billed as coming from "Freedomland, USA". Now that he's dropped the Super Eric gimmick, he averts this trope: he's billed as being from Nashville.
    • Speaking of TNA Shark Boy (and Sharkgirl) comes from the Deep Blue Sea.
      • At one point Shark Boy was billed as being from The Mariana Trench, but that wasn't any fun.
      • Ten years earlier, The Shark (the late John Tenta) hailed from either Tsunami or the Great Barrier Reef.
    • Remember the TNA wrestler simply known as "X"? He came from "Parts Unknown, Place Unknown".
    • MsChif is from The Inferno
    • Lufisto is from Montreal...Japan
      • In the same vein, while Rob Van Dam and Sabu were tag-teaming in ECW, Van Dam was often announced as being from Battle Creek, India; when he wasn't, Sabu was announced from Bombay, Michigan.
      • In the most recent set of SHIMMER tapings, Ayako Hamada was announced as being from "Tokyo, Mexico".
      • "The Generic Luchador" El Generico is sometimes billed from Tijuana...Canada
    • ECW's Dudley clan all came from Dudleyville. Bubba Ray and D'Von Dudley kept it for part of their WWE careers, leading to the quote at the top of the page.
      • This was personalised for each member of the clan: Big Dick, for example, came from the "Twisted Steel section of Dudleyville".
    • Former ECW/WWE wrestler The Blue Meanie came from Pepperland.
    • While working for the Wrestling Society X promotion, Jimmy Jacobs was announced as being from "The Dark Side Of A Broken Heart".
    • The short lived tag team New Breed hailed from the year 2002, where robots are common and Dusty Rhodes is the U.S. President.
    • Most of the time if a wrestler is not from the United States, Japan, Mexico, or Canada, no city will be mentioned they will only be announced as being that country even if where they are from is made clear in other aspects of their gimmick some examples are
      • The Great Khali is announced as being from just India Despite the fact he is nicknamed the "Punjabi Giant" and this specialty is the Punjabi Prison, not very hard to figure out where in India he is from
      • This happened to WWE's Carlito who was billed as "From the caribbean" instead from San Juan, Puerto Rico to match his caribbean cool gimmick and refer to him as the son of a Puerto Rican legend. His brother on the other hand is announced as hailing from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
    • An indy fed in my area had a tag team whose gimmick was the New Kids on the Block. Hometown? Venice Beach, circa 1985.
    • In his early days in Mid-South/UWF, Sting was billed as being from "Every Man's Nightmare". And his manager, "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert, was from "Every Woman's Dream", and the current independent tag team the Heartbreak Express are billed from there as well.
    • CHIKARA's Ultra Mantis Black has been referred to by several people as "The Mayor Of Parts Unknown".
    • Smoky Mountain Wrestling once anounced Rick Davis as hailing from "P.O. Box 43" instead of an actual town.
    • Meng was announced (by Michael Buffer no less) at WCW Uncensored 96 as being from "Some Unknown Part of the Planet." However, at WCW Fall Brawl 95, Buffer announced Meng as a member of Royalty from the South Pacific.
    • The Headbangers were announced (on the WWF Warzone Playstation game, at least) as being "From their own Private Hell."
    • Leva Bates is from the Bates Motel.
    • Rachel Summerlyn and Jessica James are from the International House of Paincakes.
    • Nikki Roxx and Portuguese Princess Ariel have a total combined weight of Awesome.
    • Prior to his arrival in ECW in 1993, Tommy Dreamer wrestled in various independent leagues in the Northeast and was billed from Dreamland, USA. After coming to ECW, he relocated to Yonkers, NY, where he is still billed from to this day.
    • Kevin Nash was billed from The Emerald City as part of his Oz gimmick in 1991 WCW. As Steele of the Tag Team the Master Blasters he was billed from the Steel Mines.
    • Dolph Ziggler bills himself on his Twitter as being from Bikini Bottom, Transylvania.
    • Spoofed on Conan, when a Real Steel parody included a robot made from parts unknown, while hailing from Greenwich, Connecticut.
    • In Trailer Park Boys, Bubbles' wrestling persona, the Green Bastard, is from Parts Unknown.
    • Brodus Clay's newest Funkasarus gimmick has him billed from "Planet Funk."
    • Mankind was announced as being from the Boiler Room.
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