Ruthless Jack Jack... on Jan 10, 2015 wrote:

As we know, there is much mystery behind the origins of Old Scratch and Dead Mike, who are -- in my opinion -- the two main undead characters / companions. In this post, I will explore out-of-game game context and give some input (that being theories, ideas, questions, and such). So, here it goes (I don't mind if you skip the research part, though I would highly recommend for you to read it):

RESEARCH:

First, let's examine Old Scratch:
It does not take much research to find out a plethora of information about this character (or just at least his name). "Old Scratch" is actually one many nicknames of the devil. Also, the Old Norse translation of his name comes out to be "skratte", which means wizard or goblin (a possible connection to Grizzleheim?).
If you dig a little deeper, you will find that "Old Scratch" is also one of the nicknames of Nicolas Scratch. The character first appeared in the 185th installment of in the Fantastic Four comic series. The Marvel involvement doesn't stop there. Upon further researching the character, I came about also researching NPCs that were vital to Old Scratch's promotions. By doing this I found that Dark Crawler (from his second promotion) is also the name of another Marvel villain (but from the Hulk series). Like the Pirate101 NPC, he hails from a different dimension.

Now for Dead Mike:
There is very minimal relevant information that I managed to find about this character -- actually none . The closest thing that I found was the name of one of the lead characters from CB4, which I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with him (I do not recommend watching CB4, as it is rated R).

THEORY:
We know that both Wizard101 and Pirate101 are somehow connected. Mike does not know how was resurrected and assuming that Scratch also does not know how he -- that being himself -- was resurrected (though some would beg to differ, saying that Old Scratch's undead life was granted by Dark Crawler or another source), magical disruptions from the Wizard101 universe / dimension could have caused them to come to life.

Overall thoughts / suggestions and questions:

I really like both characters and believe that Dead Mike is underrated.

I, personally, would like to see more enemy NPCs that look like their later promotions (I know about the undead bokor that can appear during the Captain Blood fight in Miranda) and if an enemy NPC that looked like S.M. Arson (Mike's Crown Shop counterpart) was thrown into the mix (like what was done with the Red Claw gang and Mann the bounty hunter's side quest with Merciless Meagan Quinn / Lucy Sterling / Sarah Steele).

There is one question that is presently on my mind about Old Scratch: how did he come to become the leader of an undead horde?

Closing Remarks:

Well, thank you for reading. Congratulations! You finally made it to the end! Please feel free to post your amazing theories! As always, I would love to see what you think.

- Jack