"Fear...It is about fear, human. In a time before the rays of your sun ever touched the dirt of your planet, there were beings that stepped upon your universe as easily as you would step upon a road. And during that time when the Outer Gods walked among the inner realities, I experienced that which none of my kind had ever felt before: fear." - The King of Worms
The King of Worms is an outer god similar to The Entity.
Backstory
A being closely related to The Entity, The King Of Worms is the youngest and weakest of its 'family', and unlike it's relatives who do not understand the concept of fear, The King Of Worms not only understands it but has been overtaken by it.
Afraid of almost everything, It never acts directly preferring to act indirectly through 'Clockwork Soldiers' who never question it and never fear. The King of Worms has been so consumed by fear that its face has morphed into a personification of fear itself.
It originally sought out to restore its face to normal, however, after a long time of contemplation, it decided it wanted to master the power of fear in order to gain control over the other Outer Gods.
Recent events
In the Ghost of the Machine Arc, Nimue is having serious malfunctions, resulting in a direct change of personality. During some of her glitches, she mentions of the King of Worms. Because of this, it was widely speculated that the King of Worms was the one behind the glitches. However, it was later revealed that this was not the case whenLord Vyce is revealed to be the one responsible in Spider Man: Crossfire.
At the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey #1, Harvey Finevoice returns from a concert tour, only to be knocked out by the King of Worms. At the end, a Cybermat can be seen going off afterwards. It is assumed that the Cybermat was turned into a Clockwork Soldier.
In the stinger for Athena #2 a Cybermat under the influence of the King of Worms finds Linkara's Zeo Morpher lying on the floor and destroys it before skittering away.
Not long afterwards in the stinger for Superman: For the Animals #1 aboard Comicron-1, When Linkara and Linksano leave the room after a discussion concerning new Cybermats and Linkara's new magic wand, one of the new Cybermat’s eyes start to glow while the whispers of the King murmurs things like “obey the king of worms” and “you are a clockwork soldier…”
in the Stinger for Speed Steer #1 Once again aboard Comicron-1 Ninja-Style Dancer helps Linksano test out the new “freeze dart”, which freezes targets on impact. That done, Ninja-Style Dancer is about to leave for a gig when suddenly Linksano is stunned by a Cybermat and Ninja turns around to see the Cybermat atop the scientist. He then threw a smoke bomb to the ground and escaped.
In the Stinger to The Adventures of Jell-O Man and Wobbly #1 Linkara and Pollo break into Lord Vyce's hideout only to discover the conquerer had already fled long before they had arrived. Nimue hacks into Vyce's computer and while most of the files had been erased a few were still there one was a file Vyce had looked at recently: A poem about the King of Worms.
The King of Worms wears a crown of terror In the Court of Worms there is none fairer We are all equal beneath the surface layer Our souls are screaming and begging in prayer
Linkara tells Pollo to download everything left on the computers and have Nimue bring up Vyce’s files on fighting the Entity again. Linkara figures since Vyce is worried about the King then they probably should as well.
Unknown to them they were being watched by a hidden Cybermat under the King's influence.
In the stinger to Marvel Super Special #17: Xanadu, Allen, Linkara's government liaison, comes into Linkara's apartment looking for Linkara, who is two days behind on his report. He finds Pollo trying to access Lord Vyce's data logs about the Entity and other creatures like it.
Allen offers to assist, and he cracks the encryption, finding a legend about the King. It tells a story about how the King's face was so twisted by fear that he dare not show it to anyone. In its quest to fix its face, the King of Worms found a world that had never known any pain or horror, a place that did not know fear. The King of Worms knew it had to understand fear if it was to face it again, so it placed a nightmare in the mind of every living being on this world. The nightmare drove everyone mad and they turned on each other, killing themselves and each other. Eventually there was only one inhabitant left in the world The King of Worms restored sanity to this being, who was then filled with grief and sorrow. “The King made his first throne upon this world, built upon the crushed soul of the last sane being of a world that had gone mad.”
Allen sarcastically remarks that the King sounds "Charming" based on that legend and took a crack at decrypting Vyce's files much to Pollo's surprise and delightm he manages to crack the files they hadn't been able to for the last three years that they had owned the ship. Pollo teleports up to Comicron-1 to give Linkara the good news leaving Allen alone.
Allen is about to leave the apartment when suddenly he is stunned by a Cybermat under the King's influence.
Sometime later in the stinger to Sonic Super Special #7 the Ninja Style Dancer finally returns to the apartment and tells Linkara through his note cards that the Cybermats cannot be trusted and they need to leave the apartment immediatly. Suddenly Ninja is shocked and knocked out by a Cybermat and Linkara activates the Emergency Shutdown which turns the Cybermat off.
Later, Linkara has Doctor Linksano examine the Cybermat but he claims that he can’t find anything wrong with it. Ninja-Style Dancer is still unconscious and Linksano doesn’t want to try waking him until he knows what the Cybermat did to him.
A Linkara orders Linksano to keep the Cybermats offline and take them all apart until he can find out what’s wrong with them and references the last time they couldn't "find anything wrong" with something Vyce almost took control of Comicron-One. Linkara leaves the room and the King's influence is heard. Linksano simply replies "I hear and obey".
In The Thing From Another World: Questionable Research, Linkara readies to enter the King of Worms dimension via portal that Dr. Linksano created, but Linksano and Harvey are revealed to be robot duplicates and turn on Linkara, Pollo and Nimue using the cybermats. In the Court of Worms, Linkara is revealed to be immune to the platinum masks used to control people for unknown reasons. He is then given 1 hour before his fears are made reality.
In Spider-Man: The Trial Of Peter Parker, Linkara is brought to the King, as the Eliza the Foam Lizard and every Pollo model arrive to rescue him. The King of Worms then reflects everyone's weapons at them and probes Linkara's memories, eventually dying, begging to live saying that he did not know. Linkara and the Pollo models (all three being controlled by Pollo simultaneously) kill him. Everyone controlled by a mask is then freed, but when Linksano conducts the autopsy, he returns astonished. Linksano found organs just like any other organism, some mystical, others ordinary. But he also that their weapons didn't kill the King of Worms. They didn't even singe it. In his best guess, Linksano says the King of Worms died from a fright induced heart attack, literally scared to death. While it's unknown at to what scared him, it is implied that it might have to do with the Entity (as the last image he saw was of 90s kid possibly possessed by the Entity) or from seeing Lewis Lovhaug from the other side of the Plot Hole (thus learning that he is ultimately not even real).
During The Sleepwalker arc, The Entity confirms that it had indeed killed The King of Worms for disturbing it's sleep.
Theory
Hints were given to identify who the Entity was before the reveal (MissingNo.), and hints are also given here. One theory is that the King Of Worms is Giygas from Earthbound/Mother 2 for the following reasons:
- The King Of Worms's face was turned into a personification of fear itself, which is one of the things Giygas personifies, both in-game and in the real world.
- Neither show their face among their servants. Giygas is kept sane in the Devil's Machine, and shows other people's face, such as Ninten.
- Both work through Clockwork Servants, either by corruption or possession. Pokey is corrupted into following Giygas, and the same goes for the Cybermats, Harvey, and Linksano.
- The King Of Worms hopes to restore its face, and Giygas is in the Devil's Machine to prevent himself from turning insane due to his own power, and possible restore himself.
- Quite possibly the most important point, both Giygas and MissingNo. (the Entity) are from video games made around the same time, mid 1990's, as well as developers working on the Earthbound/Mother series worked on the Pokemon series. In fact, Mewtwo is based on Guigue (Giygas's name in Mother/Earthbound Biginnings). This is important, because the Absent Grimoire described the Entity as having Cousins, thought not as powerful. This may be true, as the only glitch associated with Giygas is killing him with poison, which won't damage the game, as MissingNo. can do.
Gallery
