Star Wars: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Darth Vader's Suit

8. The Empire's Budget Limitations Hampered The Suit

Darth Vader Pose Star Wars
Lucasfilm

After Anakin was left feeling a bit crispy on Mustafar, he was rescued by Emperor Palpatine, who had him fitted with the suit in order to save his life.

But the droids responsible for this fitting didn't do a perfect job. They used a lesser alloy during Vader's leg prosthesis, some of the suit's linkages were faulty, and on the whole, the process was quite outdated, having been used to create the many-limbed General Grievous years earlier.

As a result, Vader was required to undergo regular maintenance of his suit, something that required his long-term reliance on Imperial medical staff.

And - quite weirdly - it was actually thought that the Empire was undergoing budgetary problems, which were to blame for those aforementioned suit limitations. Those Death Stars are expensive!

Additionally - according to the Legends novel Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader - Vader himself also speculated that Palpatine may have deliberately ensured the armour was restrictive, in order to stop his new apprentice rebelling against him.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.