On a recent edition of his “Six Feet Under” podcast, The Undertaker discussed the origin of his Ministry of Darkness gimmick, recruiting underused talent in his faction, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how the Ministry of Darkness began: “I felt like the character needed to evolve. And I wanted the character to be on the show, but I’m also starting to want to preserve — when you’ve been on TV for so long, there’s always a chance of burnout, and washout, and losing interest. So I wanted to take the character even darker than where he’d already been but in a different, more sinister kind of way. And I wanted to use lots of imagery and symbolism and just really push the envelope to what was going to make people feel uncomfortable. That was my goal. Evolve the character and continue to evolve the character. There were guys out there that I knew, like, they were just floating there in the mix. And they were just having matches; they didn’t have any storylines going along. And I was like, ‘Shoot, man, let me take them into the Ministry, bring them into the Ministry, and change their names.’ And then, hopefully, it might give them a different kind of rub down the line.”
On seeing talent who needed a spark: “Sometimes you just need a little bit of a spark and something good will happen. And that was pretty much everybody, minus Mabel. I didn’t want to run that risk again. But to be honest, I mean he was a huge man and a very ominous figure… I think for Ron and John, it gave them a little bit of a boost. Obviously, the APA, or they went from the Acolytes to the Acolyte Protection Agency, APA. And obviously, John went on to his big singles run. But you know, all guys pretty much that I got along with, and were on board to do whatever. We pushed the uncomfortable envelope quite a bit. You know, when I start putting people up on my symbol, and the symbolism that was — the suggestion I was making there. We started getting heat from a lot of religious people and complaints and blasphemy and everything else. That’s when we knew we had it. We had something special here because people are uncomfortable by seeing this. And it was just really cool all the way up until it became the Corporate Ministry.”
On wanting to make people uncomfortable with the gimmick: “Yeah, absolutely. That was the whole inten. Because it went from burying people in their rotting souls and all that into more of an almost occult kind of type deal and really pushing the buttons.”
