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"No! There's been too much destruction! It was a mistake for me to compete. And it would be a mistake to let Twisted Metal continue! ...I want to remove violence from the world!"
—Axel, Twisted Metal: Head-On

Axel is a character from the Twisted Metal series. He drives an unusual "vehicle" throughout the series, a mechanical waist harness (sometimes depicted as a standing platform), connected to a pair of large tractor tires mounted with a pair of machine guns and missile launchers. Like Sweet Tooth, the vehicle Axel drives is named after him. Unlike Sweet Tooth, he has only the name he shares with his vehicle.

Twisted Metal 2[]

A prisoner in his own vehicle, Axel has roamed the world looking for an escape. A noble man pushed to the brink, Axel will destroy anyone who prevents his quest for freedom. But true freedom means confronting the man who placed him in the machine.

Vehicle: Axel

Driver: Axel

Info: Male

Age: 35

Born: Louisiana

"For 20 years, I've been stuck in this hellish contraption, hiding and waiting for the day when I would be brave enough to fight back. If I win, I'm confronting the man who did this to me. I promise you, I won't be a freak forever."

Vehicle Type: Big Double Wheel Contraption

Handling: Intermediate

Armor: 3/5

Special Weapon: 3/5

  • Supernova Shockwave: Axel's Special Weapon is an expanding
    Twisted Metal 2 - Axel
    Supernova Shockwave that originates from the platform his legs are locked into. Striking with the force of nuclear explosion, the weapon does more damage the closer a victim is to Axel. This weapon is also effective when Axel is in the air. When using this weapon, Axel yells out "Axel power!"

Speed: 2/5

License Plate: REV 13:10 (The Book of Revelation, chapter 13, verse 10 in the Holy Bible)

Voice actor: Peter J. Macon

Wish: To get revenge on the person who put him in the contraption.

Ending:

Twisted_Metal_2_-_Axel's_Ending

Twisted Metal 2 - Axel's Ending

Axel_Ending_(JPN)_-_Twisted_Metal_EX

Axel Ending (JPN) - Twisted Metal EX

Twisted Metal III[]

Axeltm3

When Axel was a boy, his father strapped two giant wheels to his son's arms and legs. For twenty years, Axel has lived a tormented life filled with daily retread and challenging trips to the bathroom. He's back to win Twisted Metal and become one with his machine forever.

Vehicle: Axel

Driver: Axel

Info: Male

Age: 38

Born: New Orleans, Louisiana

"Many years ago, my father forced me into this terrible machine. When I finally freed myself, I was permanently disfigured. My torment was not over. I'm climbing back into my machine one last time. When I win I'll finally be free!"
Clubkidaxeltm3

Vehicle Type: Axel

Handling: Sluggish

Armor: 3/5

Special Weapon: 3/5

  • Shockwave: A ring of powerful energy that radiates out and electrocutes any victim nearby.

Speed: 2/5

Wish: To become one with his machine.

Info and Ending:

Twisted_Metal_III_-_Axel's_Info
Twisted_Metal_III_-_Axel's_Ending

Twisted Metal III - Axel's Ending

Twisted Metal 4[]

Tm4axel

Axel returns in Twisted Metal 4 as Super Axel, a metallic-armored version with a spike on the outer side of each tire. He is the boss of Amazonia 3000 B.C. He can be unlocked by completing Tournament mode or inputting ↑ → ↓ ↑ L1 at the Password screen. The identity of it's driver is most likely Axel once again.

Vehicle[]

Type: Super Axel

Handling: ??

Armor: ??

Speed: ??

Special Weapon: ??

  • Supernova: Sends a shockwave that knocks away close-by vehicles and set them on fire.

Ending[]

Twisted_Metal_4_-_Custom_Car's_Boss'_Ending

Twisted Metal 4 - Custom Car's Boss' Ending

Note: This ending is shared with all other boss vehicles of the game as well as custom vehicles.

Twisted Metal: Black[]

AxelBlack

Axel's wife was murdered when he wasn't even looking. One moment he was the happiest man in the world, only to have his optimism brutally stabbed, strangled, and stomped under the feet of a great evil. Crippled by depression going nowhere, Axel can only hope to win this wild contest and kill his wife's killer once and for all.

Driver[]

Name: Axel

Blackfield Asylum Patient Profile:

SEVERE DEPRESSION

Info: Male

Age: 38

Disorder: Obsessed with revenge fantasies, violent.

Screen Shot 2021-04-25 at 11.25

Treatment: Note to staff: DO NOT attempt to treat, lost cause.

Wish: Avenge the death of his wife.

Voice actor: J.S. Gilbert

Fueled by pain and anger, Axel builds the two-wheeled death machine for penance. He straps himself between the giant wheels to punish himself for the death of his wife. His guilt is eased each time his bare feet are shredded along the ground. Axel's Special Attack lets loose an electrified ring to damage nearby opponents.

Vehicle[]

Name: Axel

Vehicle Type: Axel

Control: 6/10

Speed: 5/10

Armor: 5/10

Special Weapon: 6/10

  • Shockwave: Axel shoots out a blue ring of energy that blows the opponent up into the air.
  • Encasement Rage: Axel's secondary Special Attack can be used by quickly pressing ↑ ↑ ↑. It allows Axel to use his machine's giant wheels to his advantage, used by ramming into an opponent.

-Radar Elements-

Name on Radar: "Axel"

Vehicle Blip Color: Magenta

  • How to Unlock: Select the Freeway as the second level in Story mode. Drive to the construction site and you'll see a yellow crane. Use the hill to aim yourself at the yellow box and shoot at it until its destroyed. Upon doing so, the crane will then operate and lower the crate down to the corner and turning the lights on around it. Destroy the crate to unlock Axel.

Story[]

 	Axel_-_Twisted_Metal_Black 	 			  

Axel is looking for the person who killed his wife. He feels responsible for her death and feels revenge is the only sense of closure he will get. So he enters a contest hosted by Calypso who said that he will reveal the killer.


2780093

Dialogue[]

  1. "Someone killed my wife. She was my life. Calypso says if I win, he'll reveal the killer to me. What husband would refuse?"
  2. "We were at the park. I looked down at my paper...when I looked back up, she was gone. My wife...gone."
  3. "3 months later, her body was shipped to us...in pieces. It took 8 months to get it all back...my dear wife..."
  4. "Minion won last year's contest. But I'm not afraid. If I can find a way past his force field, I know I can beat him."
  5. "I made this vehicle with my own hands. It's my penance, my punishment for letting my wife die. I will not fail her."
  6. "This battleground is small and full of enemies. I must keep moving if I want to survive this."
  7. "This is the last battleground in the contest. If I win I'll discover the truth. I'll face my wife's killer..."
  8. "The law won't stand in my way. Where was the law when my wife went missing? To me, they're as guilty as the killer."

Ending[]

Axel won the contest and went to Calypso and demanded to know who killed his wife. It turns out that it was Sweet Tooth who killed his wife. Axel then began blaming himself for his wife's death, until Sweet Tooth said that she didn't die easy and that she begged for him as he killed her. Axel then shot Sweet Tooth, killing him. Although Sweet Tooth was dead, so was his wife. He then drove off, deciding to stay in his vehicle with his powers. Stating "The clown is dead, but so is my wife, I WILL NEVER BE FREE!"

Twisted Metal: Small Brawl[]

Twisted Metal - Small Brawl - Axel bio
Twisted Metal - Small Brawl - Axel carsel

Unveiled in a deleted ending, Axel is the kid in the wheelchair that Calypso kicks down the hill in the intro cutscene of TM:SB. His wish at the end was to walk again. He is unlocked on the level Playground Peril by shooting the middle swing and collecting the icon.

Axel is usually known for having average stats in all categories. In TM:SB, Axel is noted for having moderate armor and somewhat low acceleration and top speed. However, he has absolutely exceptional turning.

Driver[]

Name: Axel

Vehicle[]

Name: Axel

Armor: 6/10

Acceleration: 4/10

Top Speed: 4/10

Handling: 10/10

Special Weapon: Axel first fires a single missile, and when it hits or if he is hit by an enemy, he spins wildly, while firing additional missiles at the targeted enemy.

Deleted Ending:

Twisted Metal: Head-On[]

Axel in the vehicle selection screen in Head-On.

Name: Axel

Vehicle: Axel

Age: 38

Height: 6'3

Weight: 280 (An extra 60 is contributed by his arm and leg augmentations)

Handling: 5/10

Armor: 6/10

Special Weapon: 6/10

  • Crowd Controller: Unleashes an electrical surge around himself, knocking back and damaging nearby opponents.

Speed: 4/10

Voice actor: Scott MacDonald

It’s been over 10 years ever since Axel's father incarcerated him inside a two wheeled machine. Finally going against his father, Axel in defiance tore his arms free from the contraption only to find later that he was incapable of living without it. He came across Dr. Zemu, who created cybernetic limbs for his arms and feet that would allow him to be able to pilot his vehicle once again. However, there was one thing Axel had to do in return. Should he win the Twisted Metal Tournament, Axel must turn his wish over to the Dr. Zemu.

Axel is an unlockable vehicle in Head-On, where he is obtained after completing the Shooting Gallery minigame in Russia.

Twisted Metal: Lost[]

AxelLost

Vehicle: Axel

Driver: Axel

Axel is still aching over the murder of his wife. Feeling her death was his fault, he chooses to stay strapped to the wheels, his feet dragging against hot asphalt, ripped apart, bleeding, and causing him tremendous pain. One day he hopes he will have done his penance and the spirit of his wife will forgive him.

Twisted Metal (2012)[]

AxelTM

Vehicle Type: Axel

Speed: 2/5 (80/130 mph)

Armor: 3/5 (170 pts.)

Special Weapon: 3/5

  • Spiked War Wheel (60-100 pts.)
  • Crowd Control (20 pts.)

Overall: 8/15

License Plate: ?

Axel's new primary special, "Spiked War Wheel", is similar to the secret special in Twisted Metal: Black, conjoining both wheels into one with protruding spikes. The special will hide the player in a spinning wheel of death, which can be steered into opponents for significant damage. The secondary special is the classic shockwave that can knock back enemies caught in the blast radius.

Axel also has a unique trait of being able to jump higher than any other vehicle in the game. This perk comes with a price, however: Axel has fairly low armor and slow special regeneration.

Twisted Metal TV Series[]

Main article: Axel (TV Series)
TMSeriesAxelCameo

Axel appears as a cameo in Season 1 of the TV series by Peacock, as one of the candidates for the tournament that is being set up by Calypso in Episode 10: SHNGRLA.

Trivia[]

General[]

  • In Twisted Metal 2 and III, when damaged enough, his arm will be missing.
  • Axel's name is most likely a reference to the fact that he is essentially a part of the axle between the two giant wheels.
  • Despite being imprisoned in the machine for over twenty years, Axel hasn't suffered from muscle atrophy. In fact, he's pretty well built; this may be because, theoretically, it should take extreme strength to control his vehicle.
  • In Twisted Metal 2's cutscenes and illustrations, a large cable is attached to the back of Axel's head leading onto the base platform of his vehicle, this presumably aids him in controlling his vehicle, but the cable itself does not appear on his actual player model. The cable is entirely absent for his appearances in other games other than Twisted Metal: Black, where the cable instead leads up into a weapons system suspended over his head.
  • Axel's design from TM:B and TM:SB are similar; they both don't have a platform connecting the wheels and attaching his feet.
  • Axel has appeared in all games except Twisted Metal (1995), although Axel was originally conceived as concept art in it.
  • The appearance of Axel in TMIII suffers from many continuity errors. His ending in TM2 shows that Axel confronted his father, tore his arms out of the machine and walked off with only half of his arms left. In TMIII, he is in the machine, but his arms appear to be completely fine in his ending, and his bio states that he climbs back into his machine. This doesn't make sense, because he only has half of his arms, with the other halves still in his machine. His arms would need to be stitched back together in order for him to use it again, but there are no stitch marks. Even if the previous game's ending was taken into account, he wouldn't be able to use the machine again anyways because he had walked away from it, leaving it near his father's house. Because of these reasons, it remains unknown how his arms appear to be fully intact, and how or why he uses the machine again in TMIII. This is likely due to the change of developers, with 989 studios wanting to include a popular character regardless of past games.

Twisted Metal 2[]

  • Axel is technically the first vehicle in the Twisted Metal series and the only vehicle in the game to have two specials. As with a cheat code, Axel can cause severe damage to a vehicle simply by ramming them, somewhat similar to Hammerhead, except Axel does not go on top nor any special sound effect is heard.
  • Axel's license plate, REV 13:10, refers to the passage Revelation 13:10 in the Holy Bible, which reads, "He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; He that killeth with the sword must be killed with a sword. Here is the patience and the faith of saints." (King James Version, Cambridge Ed.)
  • In Twisted Metal 2, whenever he uses his special, he says "Axel Power!" He is one of two TM2 characters who speak when activating the special (the other being Grasshopper).
  • His bio states that he is from Louisiana. However, in his ending after confronting his father, Calypso narrates that he disappeared into the Kansas fields. It's possible that he and his family moved from Louisiana to Kansas at a young age.
  • while Outlaw is the canon ending for Twisted Metal 2 in 2005, Axel could have won the contest and got his wish as the Twisted Metal Contest happens Yearly, and since Twisted Metal Head On is the next canon game in the series, and it takes place three years after Twisted Metal 2 that means there were three other contest that happened between that time, the other two characters who likely won the contest and got their wish are Amanda who ends up dying, and Marcus Kane who wanted to "wake up" in Twisted Metal 2.
  • Axel makes a brief cameo in the Twisted Metal 2 comic.

Twisted Metal 4[]

  • There could have been a possibility of Axel having an info screen, as his TMIII info screen can be found in the game's files under the name "AXEL.TIM[0]."
  • Axel's metallic appearance could be based on his wish from TMIII.

Twisted Metal: Black[]

  • Axel is the only unlockable character other than Minion who does not require the player to destroy a grounded control panel to unlock.
  • Needles Kane's appearance in Axel's ending doesn't make sense. Sweet Tooth was a contestant, therefore for Axel to win, he should've already killed Sweet Tooth. However, it is possible that Calypso revived him so Axel could find out who killed his wife.
  • Unlike other games, Axel is suspended in the air from his vehicle as opposed to standing on a platform. Due to this, his bare feet constantly come into contact with the ground during combat, which according to his bio, is a form of masochistic relief for him.
  • Axel, along with Charlie Kane's son, are the only Unlockable characters to be Blackfield Asylum patients.
  • Axel could represent Needles' assumption about how society in general views him, or Marcus's endless guilt on not stopping his evil alter ego.
    • Axel may also represent Needles' selfishness, as instead of using his wish to resurrect his wife he instead used it to attempt to ease his own pain and get revenge.
  • Axel's storyline was originally supposed to be avenging his dead son in the Beta, but was changed to being his wife, most likely to avoid controversy.

Twisted Metal: Small Brawl[]

  • Axel was supposed to be a character that was unlocked from the start with a proper bio and ending, but had to be changed to a secret character around two months before the game's release[1] due to Sony demanding the Small Brawl team to remove his ending as they considered it problematic, because of the line "You said you could make me walk!"[2]. In the ending, which was found in the samples section from the Argonaut CG Films website,[3] Axel is in a wheelchair and asks Calypso to make him legs. Calypso does build him a pair of robotic legs, but Calypso has a remote that is able to control them, making him walk into garden rakes, hurting him. Axel's driver can still be seen in the game's introduction cutscene being kicked down a road by Calypso, and with the other kids at the playground.
  • When saving a game in Tournament or Cooperative modes, Axel's name is misspelled as "Axle".
  • According to David Goodrich, Axel's special was originally similar to the shockwave of previous games, but functions differently; The player would fire the skill shot and get off the attack as is, but if it misses, about twenty to thirty missiles would be fired off in a ring around Axel. However, during development, the programmers couldn't add in that many missiles, as it overloaded the game with particles and other things, so it had to be cut down to eight to ten missiles, which could not achieve the ring effect, so that functionality was scrapped. Additionally, the missiles were modified and re-textured from the ones used by Warthog.
  • Axel was based on a foosball table player.[4]

Twisted Metal: Head-On[]

Twisted Metal (2012)[]

  • The character Axel is absent, but his vehicle appears as a playable vehicle and is used by any driver instead.

Quotes[]

Twisted Metal 2[]

  • "Father! Please! Release me!"
  • "No, father! I've learned my lesson! Let me show you what I've learned!"
  • "I am a free man! And you are no longer my father!"


Twisted Metal III[]

  • "AAAAAAHHH! Let me out of heeeeeereeee!!"


Twisted Metal: Black[]

  • "I had won the contest. I went to Calypso and demanded my prize. I wanted to know who killed my wife... and I wanted revenge."
  • "It was him! That freak in the ice cream truck! He was ALWAYS around the neighborhood! I had not been more careful. I should have sensed something was wrong."
  • "It was MY fault! Maybe I'M the one to blame for my wife's death!"
  • "But then, he spoke to me."
  • "The clown is dead. But so is my wife. I will never be free."


Twisted Metal: Small Brawl[]

  • "Pay up, Calypso! You said you could make me walk!" (unused ending)
  • "Whoa..." (unused ending)
  • "So, how do I make 'em go?" (unused ending)


Twisted Metal: Head-On[]

  • "Dr. Zemu?"
  • "Yes. He was the man who gave me these. I tore my arms free of this contraption, and he gave me new ones. He let me drive again."
  • "I promised him... my victory wish."
  • "I..can't do it."
  • "No! There's been too much destruction! It was a mistake for me to compete. And it would be a mistake to let Twisted Metal continue! (Zemu: WHAT?!) I want to remove violence from the world!"
  • "I'm sorry. But I... wish... for peace...AAAGGGHHH!!"
  • "No!"
  • "Let me out of this thing!"

Gallery[]

Twisted Metal 2[]

Twisted Metal III[]

Twisted Metal: Black[]

Twisted Metal: Small Brawl[]

Twisted Metal: Head-On[]

Twisted Metal (2012)[]

References[]


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