Richard Knottley

First appearance: S5E6 — American Amphibian — King Man Frog Bofus v Richard Knottley · watch it on YouTube

Richard Knottley, known online as Dick Twist “on account of my dance moves,” is a former Peloton instructor, a conspiracy podcaster and a would-be presidential candidate. He wears a tinfoil hat against Wi-Fi radiation and a mustache that refuses to stay on his face. Above all, he is certain that the government is run by chinchillas in human skin. He has been killed in the arena again and again and has never won a Deathmatch. Each time he comes back a little stranger, held together by bike parts and stubbornness. Somewhere along the way the conspiracy crank became one of the most oddly lovable champions in The Void.

Story

American Amphibian

Richard first arrived during the Season of Fate, when the Arbiter ruled as the Lord of Fate and protesters outside The Dread Fortress were waving signs about the imprisoned Grandmaster. Thea had more or less kidnapped him and King Bofus, a British frog king, and kept them in the locker room. She produced them when pink dust flew out of her butt and left a purple glittery portal “out from this fart.” Richard’s first question was “Who are you people and where is my horse?” He introduced himself as an ex-Peloton instructor, banned from a couple of counties, from Denny’s and from Zumba (“The IHOP saw me coming”). Thea then bent over and let out a thunderous fart that opened a portal big enough for a whale to swim through, and they fought atop the dilapidated Crimson Keep.

The fight was pure chaos. Richard opened with a sponsor plug for his webinar-podcast, then threw a half-eaten Snickers and launched Thea at the frog king like a javelin. Bofus answered with wave after wave of tiny frogs flung from under his mask, aimed at “any orifice.” Richard kept spare mustaches for combat, and goblins rushed out with a tiny curtain so he could change one in privacy. He caught Bofus’s frog splash one-handed (“It’s a new Richard Knottley, baby”), came back from a break with a full fake beard, and tore Bofus’s crown off, only to find it was yellow fabric sewn to the mask. His signature Dick Twist dance-off ended in humiliation. Bofus won it by “gently undulating” and doing nothing at all.

When The Box of Chaos arrived, Richard was offered a blue pill and learned it was a suppository. He threw it back: “I only take red pills.” In its place he got a blue ring that had once belonged to the Lord of Fate, and he wrapped a mustache around it “to solidify that it is mine.” He revealed that he had driven to the arena on his Peloton, threw the bike at Bofus (who caught it), and won it back by climbing onto Thea’s shoulders despite his fear of heights. He had been pedaling quietly all along to build a charge. At the end he unleashed it as a lightning strike that blasted both champions. Richard died of a coronary, Bofus died of exhaustion, and there was no winner. His prepared “live man switch” recording then played. It revealed, among other things, that the Earth is flat “but so is every other planet. It’s called pancake space,” and it closed with an offer of anti-tuna juice for $37.99.

Patriotic Punch Up

Revived and still “traumatized from the frogs,” Richard pedaled back into the Dread Fortress to launch a presidential run on the Peloton party. His platform was to dismantle the chinchilla government on day one and to stop the lunar moths eating the ozone layer. Big Peloton, he hinted, “may have” a super PAC behind his campaign. His opponent was Bob the Barbarian, a jorts-clad Florida man, and they fought on the lava field before the Fortress’s giant skull. Richard threw lightning from his Peloton and “bolts of Wi-Fi” through his foil hat. He also pulled out a frog he had kept crammed up his ass for weeks, “a gift from God King Bofidis,” and lobbed it like a grenade. Bob ate it with a knife and fork.

Then Richard played his trump card. A live video showed Bob’s adopted son Robbie locked in a padded room with a remnant of The Hunger, set to eat the boy if Richard died. It enraged Bob without rattling him. Richard won a Dick Twist dance-off this time, with moves including “the crop circle clarification” and “the chinchilla cha-cha.” At the Box of Chaos he gave up his mustache, got the blue pill again and refused it again (“I would never be blue-pilled”), and walked away with a rusty child’s spoon. It wasn’t enough. Bob stacked everything he had into a Denim Gator on a natural 20, and Richard Knottley died with a defiant last speech. The live feed played on as he fell, and the Hunger ate Robbie. Richard’s ghost rose and tried to fly off to heaven, but Thea caught it in a ghost net, and mages set about sewing it back into his body.

Echoes in Bofus’s fights

Richard lingered on in King Bofus’s later matches. Against Bone Daddy, his tinfoil-hatted ghost burst out from under Bofus’s mask to rant about the chinchilla government and fire cheese facts. By Bofus’s bout with Kyle Stoddard, the frog king had a Dick Twist tattoo that lit up and played the sound of a heart attack whenever he said the name. He mourned Richard as “my best friend slash enemy,” not knowing that the Lord of Fate had already resurrected him to fight again. Richard’s spirit appeared behind Bofus “Star Wars style” to pat his shoulder, and Bofus fired a frog-filled shotgun blast “For Richard Knottley.”

Chaos Royale

In the season finale, Richard had died so many times that he could only be revived by rebuilding him with Peloton parts, a Peloton core for a heart. He had renamed himself “Dick Okio… like Pinocchio” and gotten the name tattooed on himself “in case I forgot.” Chinchillas now lived inside him. He tried to talk his rivals into escaping together and charged through a door, but the Lord of Fate looped every exit back into the throne room: “You’re gonna fight to the death, and you’re gonna like it.” In the four-way melee Copycat boosted him and then stole his face. That left Tormiir unsure which Dick Twist to stab. Copycat later wiped out his bank account, which held negative $13, and sent an audit after him. By his own count it was his third trip to the arena and his third straight death. This time the Hunger consumed him.

Tip to Tip, Part 1

In the Season of the Trials, the Void’s true timeline had its own Richard Knottley, fleshy and mustached again, though he had nightmares of being controlled by chinchillas and of a frog creature that spat frogs. The Arbiter summoned him with Killy Yesman and Richard S. Skelman as a tryout squad, “Team B.” Their job was to rescue Thea from The Midnight Mausoleum in The Shadowlands. Richard declined Killy’s Double Sun Cola as “clearly government funded” and pulled out a mason jar of body-warm pickle juice from his back pocket instead. He shared his dream of a radio show, After Dark with Dick Twist, and offered Skelman a foil hat before deciding to “wear it for us both.”

In the graveyard Richard took off his holey slippers and shuffled across some astroturf to zap a zombie with friction lightning. The jolt blew his hat clean off. His finest hour came at a weeping angel statue. While the others insulted it, Richard complimented it: “You beautiful gargoyle.” No one had ever complimented the angel before. It cried pebble tears that unlocked the way down, and it turned out to speak in Richard’s own voice and share his theories. He fried its ankle monitor with pickle juice and promised to meet it at the third full moon of the year. Against Skelman’s lich grandfather, Richard had Killy produce a bottle the size of four magnums and fired “a unibeam of double sun shock.” Afterwards he voted Killy leader of the newly named Team 3D: “Three dicks trim the best bush.” When Killy was recalled for soda retraining, the Grandmaster declared that the leadership would be settled by a Deathmatch, dick to dick, tip to tip.

Tip to Tip, Part 2

Back in the mausoleum, the two Richards fought for leadership. Knottley opened with the Dick Twist on back-to-back natural 20s while Skelman’s joints popped loose. After that his body came apart one piece at a time. Thea tore his left arm off with a rocket pack, and its bones flew back across the arena to give him one bony arm. He had stolen a prototype “arc bike reactor” from a Peloton factory, and Thea dribbled it and slammed it into his chest. The blast melted his flesh into a Peloton-coated skeleton with the core for a heart. A Falcon Punch from Skelman reduced him to a pile of bones. After a pep talk from his opponent (“You can be anything you want to be”), he re-formed as a ghost, without his mustache and with his memory starting to slip.

As a ghost, Richard tossed Thea into the Box of Chaos as his sacrifice and had her pelt Skelman with her own poop. He also briefly possessed Skelman’s bones in order to clean the poop off them. Skelman sucked him up with a ghost vacuum, the Arbiter threw him out into the ether, and Skelman then sent the angel statue after him in his Bone Zone. Instead of fighting, Richard merged with the statue (“Statue, I say we become one”). From inside it he called down a storm of Peloton bikes that nearly finished Skelman. Then his own winning streak undid him. One natural 20 too many pushed him past his limit, and he faded away and “ascended” into the universe, leaving Skelman the victor. His voice lingered on the wind to offer an extended car warranty and to remind everyone that “taxation is theft.” The Grandmaster promised he would return “in his fleshy state next time around.”

Personality and Abilities

Richard insists he is six foot (by his own later admission, he is 5’10½) and calls himself “very clearly a hot dog.” His usual look is a tinfoil hat, sunglasses, a lopsided fake mustache he compares to Hercule Poirot’s, and sometimes American flag pants or reading glasses. His age is murky: he once claimed to be 87, and Thea guessed 98. His conspiracies cover the Chinchillian government, the vole and mole cabal, lunar moths, the Nintendo Switch, government camera birds, and Shakespeare the time traveler. He delivers all of them with total conviction, and he signs off with “Live dangerously.”

He fights with “Peloton powers”: lightning pedaled out of his bike, Wi-Fi bolts channeled through his hat, and later friction electricity from his feet and hands. His signature move is the Dick Twist, a dance-off he has both won and lost spectacularly. Death has only added to his arsenal: a bony arm, a Peloton core heart, ghostly possession and flight. Behind the bluster he has a soft streak. He tells a pale skeleton there is “something beautiful in there,” and his kindness to a lonely statue moved it to tears.

Relationships

• King Bofus: His frog-throwing first opponent. Richard hates him and was “still traumatized from the frogs,” but Bofus mourned him as “my best friend slash enemy.”
• Bob the Barbarian: Killed him in his presidential campaign opener, after Richard used Robbie as a hostage.
• Richard S. Skelman: His fellow dick, rescue partner and eventual opponent. They bonded deeply before Skelman won the leadership of Team D.
• Killy Yesman: The third dick of Team 3D. Richard voted him leader and saw him off to retraining.
• Thea: Kidnapped him, was thrown at people by him, netted his ghost, and later tore off his arm.
• The Arbiter: The man whose ass Richard swore he would “eat… like corn on the cob” and the man who keeps making him fight.
• Copycat: Boosted him in the Chaos Royale, stole his face, then drained his bank account.

Memorable Quotes

“Dick Twist is immortal, a state of mind more than a being, more than a man… I like to eat. I like to fight. I have children.” (Patriotic Punch Up)

• “My online name is Dick Twist. On account of my dance moves.” (American Amphibian)
• “I only take red pills… I’m not taking your sissy blue pill!” (American Amphibian)
• “Big Peloton may have a super pack to the Richard Knottley for president campaign.” (Patriotic Punch Up)
• “There may be two Richards here, but to me, there’s three dicks in this party.” (Tip to Tip, Part 1)
• “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral.” (Tip to Tip, Part 2)

Appearances

• S5E6 — American Amphibian — King Man Frog Bofus v Richard Knottley
• S5E9 — Patriotic Punch Up — Bob the Barbarian v Richard Knottley (Dick Twist)
• S5E10 — BoneBound Brawl — King Bofus v Bone Daddy (and Darcy)
• S5E14 — Froggy Style — Kyle Stoddard v King MAN FROG Bofus
• S5E16, Chaos Royal (Season 5 finale), the first Chaos Royale (four-way)
• S6 Ep4 — Tip to Tip - Part 1 (TTRPG One Shot)
• S6E5, Tip to Tip - Part 2 (Richard Knottley v Richard S. Skelman, the leadership Deathmatch)
• S7E10 — Thea’s Adventure (Thea’s Revenge, a one-shot)