Kuromysteries: Undertaker’s Scars

(created by into–the–abyss and me; look here for our complete list of Kuromysteries)

We know by now that Undertaker is a shinigami who has quit his “job”. So he’s not human and wounds should heal easily on him. However, he has visible scars on his face, around his left pinky finger and around his neck (at least, that’s where we can see them; he has probably more on his body hidden by his clothes as seen in the Book of Murder Side Story (scan by smirking-raven)).

So where do these scars come from and why are they permanent on Undertaker? Here are some possibilities:

1) Fight with other supernatural being:

Undertaker worked as a shinigami and it’s quite possible that he encountered a demon and fought him. We don’t know what kind of wounds a demon can inflict on a shinigami. We’ve only seen Sebastian fighting Grell or Ronald and neither of them seemed to be affected permanently by him. But on the other hand it could be different if a demon fights in his true form.

Undertaker could have also fought another shinigami and those scars could be the consequence of a cut from a death scythe. A death scythe can seriously harm even supernatural creatures as we’ve seen with Sebastian during the Campania arc. But Sebastian doesn’t have any scars from the cuts he has received from Grell’s or Undertaker’s death scythe.

2) The scars are burnings:

The scars look quite similar to the ring around Ciel’s and Sebastian’s contract seal.

Assuming that the seal was burned into Ciel’s eye and Sebastian’s hand the ring could be a burning and due to the similarity Undertaker’s scars could also be burnings. That would lead to the question what has burned him so badly to leave permanent scars.

Perhaps Undertaker was branded when he left the shinigami realm as a way to show he was no longer a shinigami.

3) They are a result of him quitting his work as a shinigami:

In the anime there’s a picture of Undertaker from the time when he was still a working shinigami. He didn’t have the scars back then.

Of course that does not necessarily mean that it’s the same in the manga but if we assume that Undertaker didn’t have his scars back then he must have gotten his scars after quitting or maybe because of it. In chapter 61 he said that he had gone through quite some trouble in order to keep his death scythe. Maybe this “trouble” involved a fight where he has gotten his scars.

Another idea is that by quitting his work he might have lost some abilities he had before like the ability to heal his own wounds and maybe that’s why the injuries he has gotten after quitting were permanent and left scars. But I think that’s rather unlikely. Undertaker still has abilities of a shinigami (e.g. suddenly disappearing, seeing cinematic records,…). Therefore, his healing skills most likely are the same as they were before.

4) It’s common for shinigami:

Maybe every shinigami slowly gets scars from reaping humans’ souls especially when the human fights death. Undertaker has been working as a shinigami for a very long time so the scars could have spread so much that they’ve become visible on his face.

That reminds me of the second musical where Alan suffered from the “Thorns of Death”. In the musical a shinigami can be infected by those “Thorns” if the soul of a person destined to die is vengeful and fights against death. Undertaker’s scars look like they could have been caused by thorns. Also, his death scythe has these thorns. Could this be a hint?

5) Undertaker is the result of experiments:

We’ve seen facial scars on Undertaker’s experiments, the Bizarre Dolls.  Could it be that Undertaker himself is a Bizarre Doll?  Or could he have used himself as an experiment in the early days of his work towards creating the Bizarre Dolls?

The black “memory chain” illustrating the Cinematic Records also bears a passing resemblance to Undertaker’s scars.  It could be a subtle hint that the two notions are connected.

However, it must be noted that Undertaker’s scars and the scars on the Bizarre Dolls are, in fact, different in appearance:

Agares’s scar looks more like stitching, whereas Undertaker’s scar is different.  It could be that Undertaker’s scars only have a passing resemblance to the Bizarre Dolls’s scars.

6) Undertaker’s suicide:

In chapter 105 we’ve learnt about the origin of shinigami: They are former humans who committed suicide. So Undertaker, too, has been human at some point. Maybe his scars are a result of the way he killed himself or they could have been inflicted to him when he was human.
However, none of the other shinigami that we know seem to have any visible wounds. Since they all killed themselves there should be scars on them, too. So it’s very likely that the wounds heal or disappear when they start their life as shinigami. That would mean that Undertaker’s scars were inflicted when he was already a shinigami.

Food for Thought:

• The placement of Undertaker’s scars could indeed be symbolic.  There is one on his left pinky finger which resembles a ring.  Given the importance that Ciel’s ring has played in the series, could this scar have an important meaning?
  
• Undertaker’s death scythe is wrapped in a crown of thorns.  Could the thorns on his own death scythe have been what caused Undertaker’s scars?

Edit:

After all the speculations about his scars we thought of another possibility:

Undertaker’s scars might not be scars at all. He disguised his true nature in the past and the image he represented (creepy old human) turned out to be wrong. Maybe he painted those scars on his skin (or they are tattoos) to give a false impression, too. But for what reason would he do that? For self punishment, to mar his beauty…?
Or he paints those scars on his skin to confuse everyone and he’s having a blast laughing at those who speculate about the mysterious origin of his scars.^^