Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal)

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Sweet Tooth
Needles Kane in Twisted Metal: Head On
Game series	Twisted Metal
First game	Twisted Metal (1995)
Voiced by	J.S. Gilbert (Twisted Metal: Black)

Sweet Tooth, real name Needles Kane is a fictional character from the Twisted Metal video game series.^[1] Sweet Tooth is designed around the premise of a killer clown that drives a combat ice cream truck, and his face has been featured on the cover of every Twisted Metal game to date, making him the series mascot.^[2] While being in every title of the series he has not always been immediately available, requiring to be unlocked in some. He is the only character to drive more than one vehicle in any of the games, being the driver of Head-On's Dark Tooth, Tower Tooth, and as of Twisted Metal Lost, Gold Tooth.

Sweet Tooth has the most ties to any group of characters in the whole series: his father Charlie Kane (driver of Yellow Jacket in the first game)^[3] and Marcus Kane (split personality,^[4] Roadkill's driver). In Black, he has an unnamed brother that only appeared in Twisted Metal Black, who himself drove that game's Yellow Jacket vehicle.^[5] He is also directly responsible for the creation of that game's Axel, whose wife he killed,^[6] and Cage, who wishes to be a greater killer than Sweet Tooth.^[7]

The character has gone through several redesigns differing from game to game, similar to fellow character Calypso, and his personality has grown progressively darker along the way. Despite the changes some factors remained uniform, notably the perpetual flame on his head introduced in the second game. Starting with Twisted Metal Black, his design became a large, somewhat overweight bare chested clown with a flaming mask locked into a permanent maniacal smile. Head On expanded on this idea, changing the mask to face paint and the smile to his own.^[8]

Contents 1 Design and History 1.1 Marcus Kane 2 Twisted Metal: Black 3 Other appearances 4 References

[edit] Design and History

Sweet Tooth's original look featured him as a green haired, slim simple circus clown who had escaped from a mental institution.^[9] The design was expanded upon in the second game in response to changes to the truck's design, notably due to the clown head adorning the truck now featuring a personality of its own.^[10] The result gave Sweet Tooth the flaming head design seen on the character since. 989 Studios which handled the next two games put more emphasis on the clown design, redesigning his attire to that of a ringmaster in Twisted Metal 4; neither design was held in high regard by the developers, with David Jaffe stating his dislike of 3's look.^[11] As of Black and beyond, the design was modified heavily, giving him increased bulk and other features that would be called his "classic look" by Incog Inc.'s design team.^[2]

The ice cream truck was actually designed well before the driver himself, and Black's incarnation took six months and many concept sketches to finalize. Labeled early on "DEMONIC ICE CREAM TRUCK", attention to details such as the head adorning the vehicle and the contents of the back of the truck were focused on during development.^[12] Boss variants of the truck have also appeared regularly in the game's series starting with Dark Tooth in the second game (which was a re-textured version of the original Sweet Tooth vehicle). While the designs for the vehicles have progressed steadily, care has been emphasized to keep them rooted to the simple ice cream truck structure yet unique, something that has become harder and harder for the team as the games go on.^[13]

[edit] Marcus Kane

Another design element is the fact he is actually split-personality of fellow driver Marcus Kane, a fact only Sweet Tooth and Calypso are aware of. Marcus was initially introduced in Twisted Metal 2, as a 32-year old bearded homeless man from Alabama living in his car that disbelieved the world around him, breaking the fourth wall in the process.^[14] In Twisted Metal: Head-On, nightmares of past tournaments continue to plague him, though these nightmares are in fact his/Sweet Tooth's own memories, hidden from him by Calypso.^[4] In the game, Calypso implies that Marcus is responsible for the events of Twisted Metal, and calls him solely Needles.^[15] After learning the truth, he surrenders to his other personality, the result of his rational mind merging with Needles's insanity spawns the second Dark Tooth and subsequently Tower Tooth.^[8]

Marcus Kane appears in Twisted Metal Black, secretly driving Minion^[16] and wearing the skin from a decapitated bull as a mask, which apparently steemed from a discarded design for Mr. Grimm.^[17] In this game he speaks heavily in code to not be discovered, telling the player the world in the game is how Sweet Tooth actually sees reality, and that he misses the old, "colorful world". This concept has been reused in Twisted Metal: Lost story for Manslaughter, placing the Black world as a sort of parallel universe to a "more colorful world",^[18] supposedly referring to the main game's universe.

[edit] Twisted Metal: Black

In Twisted Metal: Black Sweet Tooth suffered a big make-over design-wise, giving him a more maniacal homicidal appearance. His personality also changed to a more dark-toned one, different from his insane clown killer personality of past games. His background was expanded upon, stating he was a wanted mass murderer that survived the electric chair, to later end at the Blackfield Asylum. It's revealed that the flames on his head were product of a curse imposed by Black character Preacher, the driver of Brimstone, before execution. He was cursed with the burden of the fires of Hell upon his head, which burns him endlessly and causes him pain.^[19] He wants nothing more than for it to be gone, and that's what Calypso offers him as a prize. However, in his ending Calypso reveals that, in order to break the curse, he'd have to renounce to his obsession for murdering innocents, to which Sweet Tooth responds by killing Calypso. Sweet Tooth has in the game an unnamed younger brother who drives Yellow Jacket alongside a dead zombified Charlie Kane. However, due to the surreal setting of Black and his apparent disconnection from the mainstream games, the game's plot is considered an alternative storyline. In Twisted Metal: Lost, it is said in the bio of Yellow Jacket that his brother and Charlie were attempting to kill Needles, then themselves, to "end the bloodline of generations of murderers and psychopaths."

[edit] Other appearances

Sweet Tooth returns as a car in the child-themed spin-off game Twisted Metal: Small Brawl, based on RC cars instead of real ones. In this game, Sweet Tooth is the youngest and most mischievous kid in the contest, and enters looking for some ice cream.^[20] His ending shows that Calypso offers him an ice cream from his familiar Ice Cream truck, but Sweet Tooth instead steals the truck to terrorize Calypso.

Sweet Tooth is also an unlockable character in War of the Monsters (2003) for the Playstation 2, a game in which Incognito used the TMB engine to make a movie monster fighting game. One of the characters, Agamo, has Sweet Tooth as the fourth skin. To unlock it, one must beat the story mode of Twisted Metal: Black with Sweet Tooth and have the save on the memory card. Sweet Tooth is represented by a tall mech with the signature flaming clown head, and often breaks out in his usual laughter throughout the game.

[edit] References

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