10 Most Paused Star Wars Moments

1. What Is Going On With Vader's Skull?! - Return Of The Jedi

Darth Vader Skull
Lucasfilm

If your first thought is what the f**k is going on with Darth Vader's skull here, you'd be absolutely correct in being completely and utterly baffled by this image.

For the story of Anakin Skywalker, his tale came to a close at the end of Return of the Jedi with the redemption of ridding the galaxy of the Emperor and by making peace with his son. To get to that point though, Vader had to take a few select shots of Palpatine's patented electric lightning to his form.

As the Emperor turns his most vengeful, chilling attention towards his protégé, the lightning blasts conjured up by this all-powerful Sith Lord give audiences an extremely brief glimpse of an electrocuted Darth Vader. More specifically, it gives audiences a glimpse at what Vader's skull looks like under the iconic black helmet he'd adorned since being rescued from the fiery pits of Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith.

You have to ask what exactly has happened to Anakin Skywalker's skull for it to take such a deformed shape. We'd come to see in the aforementioned Episode III how Anakin was missing limbs after his battle with Obi-Wan Kenobi, but his head, whilst badly scarred, was in tact and shaped normally.

What a pause of this Return of the Jedi scene shows, however, is that Anakin's skull had become shockingly misshapen in the years since the events of Revenge of the Sith.

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Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.