Undertaker

About Undertaker

Undertaker is the giggling funeral director of Black Butler, a coffin maker and information broker who has served the Phantomhive family for generations and charges for secrets in laughter rather than money. Behind the jokes sits one of the series' biggest mysteries: a retired, legendary Grim Reaper whose experiments with the dead turn him into a central figure in the story's darkest arcs.

Appearance

Undertaker is a tall, thin figure swamped by long silver grey hair that falls over his eyes and usually hides them completely, which makes his rare visible moments unsettling. His face, neck and hands carry noticeable scars, his nails are long and black, and he dresses in black mourning clothes with a top hat and a chain of silver lockets he is never seen without. He is often half inside a coffin, asleep in his own shop or bent double laughing, none of which makes him look any less like something out of a ghost story.

Personality

Undertaker treats death as the world's best joke and himself as its happiest audience, dissolving into helpless laughter at funerals, murders and his own threats. He hides behind the act expertly: nobody can tell what he knows, wants or is planning, and he enjoys being underestimated by humans and reapers alike. When the mask slips, in rare serious moments, he is knowledgeable, sentimental about the Phantomhives in a way he will not explain, and utterly ruthless about his experiments. The comedy and the menace are both real, in proportions he chooses.

Background & Story

To most of London, Undertaker is simply the eccentric funeral director whose shop supplies coffins and information in equal measure, as long as visitors pay his price, which is never money: he charges a good laugh. The Phantomhives have used him for generations. He knew Ciel's father Vincent and claims ties to the family going back to Ciel's grandmother's time, and his knowledge of the underworld makes him the Watchdog's most useful and least trustworthy contact. Book of the Atlantic pulls back the curtain: Undertaker is a retired Grim Reaper, a legend of the Dispatch whose skill younger reapers still talk about, who walked away from the job and its rules. Worse, he has been experimenting on the dead, editing Cinematic Records to create Bizarre Dolls, corpses that move and hunger without a soul inside. His experiments drive the Atlantic disaster and much of the manga's later story, turning the giggling coffin maker into one of the series' central threats, and one of the few beings Sebastian treats with real caution.

Powers & Abilities

• Legendary reaper: Undertaker was one of the Dispatch's finest collectors. With his Death Scythe drawn he fights Sebastian and active reapers at once, and his skill is treated as historic.
• Bizarre Dolls: By stitching false continuations onto a corpse's Cinematic Record, he creates moving dead that obey his purposes. Perfecting them is his life's work after retirement.
• Information network: Every corpse in London passes through hands like his. Undertaker hears everything, knows everyone's secrets and sells them for laughter.

Key Relationships

• Ciel Phantomhive: The latest Phantomhive to buy his secrets. Undertaker teases the young earl like family and meddles in his life more than any broker should.
• Sebastian Michaelis: One of the few who can pay his price in laughter. Demon and reaper circle each other with respect, jokes and open distrust.
• Grell Sutcliff: A former colleague who admires him as a legend of the Dispatch. Undertaker treats Grell's worship as another good joke.
• Vincent Phantomhive: Ciel's father was a regular customer and something like a friend. Undertaker's loyalty to the family seems to start with Vincent's generation, or earlier.

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