- Undertaker and Kane were the most sinister...
- [yells] - Oh, my God!
- Really evil,
menacing characters in WWE.
- There was no way to put a title
on what it was that we did in the ring.
It was total destruction.
[cheers and applause]
- In the history of sports entertainment,
there has never been a more menacing bond in evil
than the Brothers of Destruction.
- It's storytelling, it's mythology,
it's Shakespearean, brother against brother.
- The Undertaker, Kane. [sinister laughter]
Together, they forged a bond in mayhem and carnage.
- I was terrified beyond belief.
It was such a work of genius.
[foreboding music]
* *
[cheers and applause]
- By 1990, the WWE universe bore witness to all types
of fearsome villains, raging beasts...
- Oh, this is a gruesome fight.
- To cowardly cheaters... - That's why they call him
the dirtiest player in the game.
- Even enemies of the state.
- [speaking language]
- But no one had ever faced the ultimate fear in the ring,
death itself.
- We were looking for a surprise
for a Survivor Series in 1990,
and I knew that the best evil character
is someone that the audience genuinely fears.
[ominous music]
And I said, "Okay, if this guy was just pure evil,"
I thought, "What's the last thing
you're gonna see before you're put into the ground?"
So I pitched Vince The Undertaker.
Pure, unadulterated evil.
- Who could possibly take on the challenge
to bring death incarnate to life?
- From Houston, Texas, weighing 321 pounds,
Mean Mark! [crowd boos]
- I was working for WCW, and I'd been there a year.
- Mean Mark walks the top rope.
Leaps across the ring!
- I had a contract coming due, and they looked at me,
and they went, "To be quite honest with you,
"we don't feel like anyone's ever
going to pay money to see you wrestle."
Hmm.
- Oh!
- It let me know where my ceiling was there.
- He was a character that I'd seen from the days
that he first broke into the wrestling business.
I thought he was really good, especially good for a big man.
I knew that he could play this character.
[phone rings]
- I got a phone call one day.
"Hello?"
It was Vince.
"Uh, is this The Undertaker?"
I'm like, Undertaker? What the--Undertaker?
"Yes, sir, this is The Undertaker."
No clue what that meant, what it was.
- The Undertaker was a descriptor
that told you what he did.
The Undertaker buried souls.
[somber music]
- I meet with Vince,
and he shows me the storyboards.
The original character is based
on the old Western-style undertaker
with the long coat, the hat.
Two guys have a gun fight, whoever loses,
the undertaker comes out, measures them,
and makes the pine box.
This guy's the reaper of wayward souls,
an evil being.
I was on board.
And Vince goes, "Aha, great.
Uh, can you be up here tomorrow?"
[thunder crashes]
- 1980s slasher films
help provide the inspiration to the man
who would embody The Undertaker.
- I'm drawing on "Friday the 13th,"
Jason Voorhees...
[ominous music]
"Halloween," Michael Myers.
Freddy Kruger. - Ah!
- [screams] Help me, please!
- I'm not so much trying to emulate what they did
but trying to take concepts from what they did
and make them my own.
- From Death Valley, I give you The Undertaker.
- The Undertaker is now revealed!
- The Undertaker made his debut
at the 1990 Survivor Series before a stunned WWE universe.
- Holy cow, look at the size of that ham hock.
- Every step that I take, every time I turn my head,
it's all planned.
All of those things were calculated to make
this character as ominous as I possibly could.
- Holy cow!
Look at the look on the face.
- Nasty, nasty look.
- Yes. [bell tolls]
- Look out, he towers over everyone.
Well, the Hitman didn't have any bones
about getting in there.
- He shared--ooh. - One, two--
- What a power move by The Undertaker.
- One, two...
- We knew it was going to take time
for people to go, "Oh, my God."
- Look at this. Whoa.
He just got nailed with a tombstone.
- It didn't take nearly as long as we thought it would.
They feared The Undertaker.
- How many times you been in the arena when a man
has walked to the ring and seen an audience
just frozen and fixed on one person?
- Not very often.
- The Undertaker's ominous presence
mesmerized the WWE universe.
- Oh, my goodness.
- People were just freaked out about the eye roll.
It looks demonic.
The eye roll just happened.
It just happened in the course of a match,
and I was on my way to the back after the match was over,
and people were coming up to me like, "What was that?
That was the freakiest thing that I've seen."
[rasping]
And then the choke slam.
That would get a huge reaction
just because people understood
that this is the beginning of the end.
- Oh, inverted piledriver that he calls the tombstone.
- RIP, pal. [bell rings]
- My son, Hughie--he loved WWE,
but he wouldn't go to the shows.
And I said, "Why won't you go to the shows?"
And he said, "I'm scared of The Undertaker."
- Lock your doors.
He's loose in the World Wrestling Entertainment.
- He was one of the great characters
of the past 30 years.
- There's The Undertaker.
- It was such a stark contrast to everybody else.
I remember thinking he was some kind of evil cowboy.
I was immediately drawn to this character and this person.
- The Undertaker was one of the best villains
because of what he didn't have to say.
He didn't have to talk much.
It was like watching a foreign flick where you
had to read the subtitles, but you so interested in the movie,
there's no way you were going to turn away.
- I remember trying to leave arenas.
The rest of the wrestlers,
people would just completely surround,
and then I would come out.
It would almost be like the sea parting.
I mean, people were scared.
They were still not sure
where that character started and stopped.
I'm thinking, "This is pretty cool that
I have this effect on people."
- Mark Calloway made the demon that is The Deadman
feel authentic.
Now it was time to get him a voice.
- Bill Moody--he came in to talk about coming to work here.
And the question was asked,
"What do you--you know, what are you doing now?"
He says, "well, I'm a licensed mortician."
Please.
- Led towards the ring by Paul Bearer:
The Undertaker!
- Paul Bearer-- he had all of this insight
into embalming,
the funeral process.
It gives us a whole nother layer of legitimacy.
- Not a casket. - They're burying him.
- Paul Bearer was the one that had to at least
be the one that could control The Undertaker.
- What is in that urn?
- You're the guy that's supposed to find that out.
- Paul Bearer would have that urn,
and it almost felt like The Undertaker
got his power from that urn.
- He draws some power from that urn.
- The power of the urn. - Keeps going back to it.
- Are you trying to say, Brain,
that he's something other than human?
- You got it. He is a monster.
- There was just something about Undertaker
being that primal fear of death and the unknown.
That's scary.
- When The Undertaker faced Hulk Hogan,
it was a big moment because Hulk Hogan,
at the time, he was completely unstoppable.
- Hulk Hogan always says he's never in that ring alone.
The Hulkamaniacs all over the world
are in there with him.
Well, he's gonna need all of 'em
to beat The Undertaker.
- And Hulk Hogan, he was all that is good in the world.
These two are really polar opposites.
- The Undertaker made me cry
'cause he was beating up Hulk Hogan at that time.
I mean, The Undertaker came in, and that was spooky as hell.
- It was just a nail-biting experience
watching this ultimate hero
go against this creature of darkness.
- Now our savior, Hulk Hogan,
has been defeated by The Undertaker.
Where do we go from here?
- The dark days of the WWE have begun.
- The Undertaker's reign of terror went on for years.
Void of emotion, impervious to pain,
the phenom was seemingly invincible.
- Everyone hits their signature move on The Undertaker,
and it doesn't affect him.
- I don't think you can hurt The Undertaker.
He's not human.
[cheers and applause]
- Of course it doesn't affect this guy.
He's The Undertaker.
He's something else altogether.
- The Undertaker was almost invulnerable.
Invulnerable in the line of work
where everything ends up in a fight.
- No one could put Undertaker in jeopardy,
so now what do we do?
- First man that gets to the ring is the winner.
- SummerSlam 1996, a shocking turn of events...
- Whoa, whoa!
- Foreshadowed a stunning revelation.
- Nothing moves past The Undertaker.
- No!
- I can't believe what we are seeing.
How can The Undertaker
possibly understand what has happened here?
- Paul Bearer cracks me over the head
with the urn, turns on me.
I mean, people were-- they were livid.
- Mankind with Paul Bearer and in possession of the urn.
- Paul Bearer's despicable act of treachery
set off a cataclysmic course of events.
- Paul Bearer and his henchmen--
they're all burying The Undertaker alive.
Oh, my--unbelievable! Wait!
He's alive!
- Even Paul Bearer's betrayal could not stop the phenom.
It seems as if The Undertaker was impervious
to all physical and emotional threats.
It was time to write a new chapter
in The Undertaker's story.
- We needed something new.
We needed something different, and we needed a story.
What if The Undertaker had a brother?
What if Undertaker thought that his brother was dead?
Oh, my God, what if it was like a horrible fire,
and Undertaker's mom, dad,
everybody perished in the fire?
Oh, my God, what if it was Paul Bearer
that actually ran the funeral home?
Everyone died, but Paul saved Undertaker's little brother?
- He's alive! - Burned beyond recognition,
and it was this horrible thing.
Could we actually do that?
- A very worthy nemesis for The Undertaker
would arise from the ashes of his past.
His very own brother.
It was a backstory of biblical proportions.
- Cain and Abel-- they were brothers.
In a biblical sense, you can't find
anything more evil than Cain.
Cain was the first man that ever committed murder.
Cain murdered his brother Abel.
That's evil.
So I picked the name Kane.
[cheers and applause]
- You have to wonder what Paul Bearer is about to say.
- It starts off with Paul Bearer
talking about how he has
a secret from The Undertaker's past.
- The Undertaker's father was a mortician of excellence.
Now, I was the apprentice at the funeral home,
and there were two little kids there.
One kid was a little red-headed punk
whom you probably know is The Undertaker.
[ominous music]
And then there was this sweet little kid
named Kane.
The Undertaker was little Kane's hero.
One particular afternoon,
I was leaving to go to school,
and what do I see?
I see fire trucks.
Someone burned down the funeral home.
I looked over to the bushes.
Who did I see in the bushes but The Undertaker?
You killed your family, Undertaker.
- It was this horrible thing.
Everyone died, but Paul saved Undertaker's little brother,
and he was burned beyond recognition.
* *
So the story was for Paul Bearer
to bring back the brother of The Undertaker
that he didn't even know was still alive,
Kane.
- Kane is alive, Undertaker!
- And Taker's like, "Who's alive?"
Kane.
And he's coming for you.
- The Undertaker has been told
that his brother is alive.
- Kane gave so many more layers to Undertaker,
and the darker I could go,
the more that I could push that envelope,
the better it was for my character.
I'll kill you right now! You tell them the truth!
- I'll tell them the truth!
- Tell them the truth!
- The revelation that The Undertaker
had a brother was intriguing.
It actually magnified the mystique of the Deadman.
Was Paul Bearer simply playing mind games?
If Kane was coming, then what was he waiting for?
It turns out, he was simply waiting
for the perfect moment to strike.
The first ever Hell in a Cell match.
Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker
would be locked inside this diabolical structure.
It was constructed to guarantee carnage
and ensure that no one could escape or enter.
- Michaels, and Michaels alone,
must deal with The Undertaker.
- This is truly Hell in a Cell for Shawn Michaels.
- Michaels, underneath. Michaels--oh, my.
This is not gonna be pretty.
- Shawn Michaels and I--
we have this extremely physical match.
- This is just a matter of time now
before the most arrogant superstar in WWE history
is out of commission for good.
- I've got Shawn Michaels bleeding.
- Oh, a choke slam off the top!
- All I have to do is pin him.
- It's all over.
* *
- Now will come the--
[audience exclaiming]
What's this?
Oh, my God.
Wait a minute. It's Paul Bearer.
* *
- Boom, there's Paul Bearer, and then here comes
this mountain of a man behind Paul Bearer,
and he's in this black-and-red suit with a mask.
And everyone knows instantly that's got to be Kane.
- It's got to be-- that's got to be Kane.
That's got to be Kane.
[cheers and applause]
- Oh, my God, he just
ripped the door off its hinges.
- The Undertaker looking at him.
Look into the eyes,
his damaged younger brother.
- I just couldn't believe it that I'm staring face to face
with my little brother who I thought
was dead for all these years.
- Oh, my...
[cheers and applause]
The Undertaker... - Tombstone.
- He picks me up and uses my own move on me.
- Driven down to the mat!
- This is shocking.
* *
- It was a huge deal when Kane debuted.
Could this entity be the one to defeat The Undertaker?
Has Undertaker finally met his match?
- Kane's debut made shockwaves throughout the WWE universe.
The Undertaker,
the unstoppable reaper of souls,
was now the hunted.
- At Hell in a Cell, The Undertaker
was manhandled for the first time.
The next night, Paul Bearer gleefully introduced us
to his new instrument of evil.
- Let me present to you
The Undertaker's little brother,
Kane. [cheers and applause]
- The entire world was watching it.
That was actually the most important night
in the history of the Kane
because that was the story of why Kane was there.
- We are gonna walk through the World Wrestling Entertainment,
take each wrestler, one by one,
and destroy them
until we reach you, Undertaker.
Welcome to your worst nightmare.
[dramatic music]
- It just really captured people's imaginations
that there could be someone out there just as strong,
just as powerful,
just as deranged as The Undertaker.
* *
- For Kane, the fire was representative
of his genesis, of his beginning,
when the family funeral parlor caught on fire.
That's what drove the character,
is that pent-up rage and the anger
and the explosiveness.
[crowd screams]
- Y'all, fire and brimstone. It's Kane.
- The key in taking ownership of a wild character
is to, in some crazy way, believe you are that character.
- Kane comes down. - Oh, no!
- Oh, the steel! A choke slam on the steel!
- Glenn Jacobs really inhabited that character,
brought subtleties and nuances to it.
* *
- I was just watching my dog one day.
This was her curious look, and then this was her hungry look.
Ended up being, like, the most creepy thing ever.
- Putting the mask on definitely allows you
to tap into something extremely pure.
It's not playing a role, it's playing a person
that I already am, but I keep in check
because of civility.
- Masks, they're scary for two reasons.
They're scary for what's actually on the mask,
but I think they're more scary
because they hide the person's identity.
When someone is doing something terrible to you
and they're in a mask,
you're somewhat scared by the mask.
You're much more scared by the fact
that you don't know who that person is.
- You don't know what you're getting
with the unpredictable, psychological monster.
I have a fascination with psychological thrillers
like Hannibal Lecter, "The Silence of the Lambs."
- Let me help you now,
and I will trust you when it is all over.
- Kane was a psychological monster.
- The scariest character ever created is Michael Myers.
Michael Myers is very simple
and might have a little supernatural power,
we don't know, but he's very, very ordinary,
and he's very deliberate.
- Kane and Undertaker, more than anybody else at that time,
it wasn't about one-liners,
it wasn't about championship titles,
it was about the art of storytelling.
- As I looked into his eyes,
I didn't see the love of a long-lost brother,
but the hatred of a man whose mind has been poisoned.
You'd see The Undertaker come somewhat out of character.
The Undertaker can't show the normal emotions that
any other person would be able to show
until it became family.
I will never fight Kane.
Normally, Undertaker would fight anybody,
and now he doesn't want to fight his brother.
- Undertaker, you will live in hell
until you step up and face your brother.
- For months after Kane's debut,
he destroyed everyone on the roster.
- One man, two men--it doesn't make any difference.
Kane cannot be stopped. [cheers and applause]
- Undertaker, all this carnage
at the hands of your brother, Kane, is your fault.
- Kane unleashed a lifetime
of repressed anger on anyone and everyone.
- Undertaker, you must face your little brother.
- Kane keeps goading Undertaker into fighting him,
and Undertaker won't do it.
- Again, The Undertaker is steadfast
in the thought that he will
never, ever fight his brother, Kane.
[cheers and applause]
What a hell-acious situation.
- Six men are pounding The Undertaker into oblivion.
- Kane coming to his brother's aid.
He is clearing the ring.
- It appeared Kane saved his brother,
but Kane was enraged with vicious intent.
[cheers and applause]
- Kane has saved The Undertaker.
Oh, what? No!
- What? - No!
- A choke slam into the casket.
The Undertaker is in that casket.
- What is he-- what is he doing?
- The devil's favorite demon attempted to send his brother
straight into the fires of hell.
- My God, the casket's on fire!
The Undertaker is in the casket!
- And you think, "That's it.
"Kane's beaten The Undertaker.
How could he ever come back from this?"
- Oh, oh, oh, watch it.
- What?
- Kane, I shall never rest in peace.
[cheers and applause] He's given me no other choice.
Mother, Father,
the Devil himself stands before me
in the form of my own flesh and blood.
He's given me no other choice.
I have to fight.
- After trying to set his brother on fire
in some sort of evil poetic justice,
Kane left The Undertaker with only one choice.
[bell tolls]
- There he is. - Kane.
- On top of the time clock.
- I will deliver you to the fiery pits
of eternal damnation, little brother.
It's crazy because you have the two biggest guys
in the company, and finally, I'm gonna fight him.
People are just out of their minds crazy.
I felt your wrath.
Now you're gonna feel mine.
Rest in peace!
- These brothers in destruction
were on a collision course.
The anticipation of two titans
finally battling one another had reached a fever pitch.
- Now, I'm behind The Undertaker.
So here's a guy that I feared all this time,
and now I'm completely emotionally invested
in The Undertaker, and can The Undertaker beat Kane?
- Whoa.
[cheers and applause]
- Hellfire and brimstone personified.
[dramatic music]
* *
Straight out of the mouth of hell
comes The Undertaker's brother, Kane.
- Even Kane himself got caught up in the moment.
- For me, personally, that excitement kind of
turned to dread when I actually saw The Undertaker come out.
* *
- This is all a mind game. This is all psychology
in the sense that the impending peril
is on its way to the ring.
Everything was geared to make Kane feel like,
okay, this is the end of the line.
I've now come face to face with The Undertaker.
- There he is,
the prince of darkness.
- I mean, this was The Undertaker,
and he was mad.
He's mad at me.
- What a hell-acious matchup this is going to be.
- All the talk was over. All the vignettes were over.
The story-building didn't matter.
All of that is put aside
because you have them face to face in the ring.
[cheers and applause]
[bell rings]
- Undertaker struck his brother with the right hand,
and he strikes him again.
- With everything that's on his mind,
with everything he's had to face,
facing his own fears
at WrestleMania XIV, could he overcome Kane?
- And a hook-served clothesline by Kane.
[dramatic music]
* *
- Some of the things that they did physically in the ring
was unbelievably impressive for two men of that size
to take those kinds of risks.
- The Undertaker went airborne.
Yo! - What a leg drop.
Clothesline. Tombstone, slam him.
Kane has been drilled.
- Damn you! - Do something, Paul Bearer.
- Damn you, Deadman! - Oh, no.
No, the-- - Nobody's ever done this.
- He kicked out of the tombstone.
This is crazy. So Undertaker picks him up,
hits him with another one.
- Can he do it twice?
Yeah, okay.
- And you think, oh, well, that's it.
- Kane kicked out.
- Nope, he kicks out again.
- It's everything Undertaker has to beat Kane.
He has to tombstone him three times.
- Yes, he got him, and will this be enough?
The Undertaker has won this match.
[cheers and applause]
- Seeing Undertaker beat Kane, it was the ultimate triumph.
- The Undertaker has defeated Kane,
and Paul Bearer has got a steel chair.
- But the exclamation point had to come from Kane
because this story couldn't end.
- Uh-oh. [bell rings]
Come on. [groans]
Kane, now-- [bell rings]
- No way. - Has The Undertaker out,
the steel chair in the ring...
a tombstone on the chair. - Man.
- So even though Undertaker won the match,
he was the one that got left lying.
[cheers and applause]
And ultimately, Kane lived to fight another day.
- We have witnessed a war, ladies and gentlemen,
that is far, far from over.
- The war between the two brothers
continued to escalate.
- No!
- I think everything had to get more and more extreme
just due to the story itself.
I mean, you have to keep raising the bar
to keep upping the level of the intensity of the feud.
* *
Our whole storyline revolves around fire
and our ability with using the supernatural.
- It was actually challenging figuring out how
to have a match that would live up to the level
of violence that people had thought of.
[cheers and applause]
- Which ends up leading to one of the craziest matches
ever designed, which was the Inferno Match.
- Oh, my gosh. - This is amazing.
- The only way to win is to light your brother on fire.
I remember hearing the initial pitch
and looking at him like, "You got to be kidding me."
[dramatic music]
[bell rings]
- Ladies and gentlemen, it is now time
for the first-ever Inferno Match.
The ring will be surrounded by fire,
and the match will continue
until one of the contestants is set on fire.
- "Wait a minute, we're legitimately
"going to light the ring ropes on fire
and are going to have a match inside it?"
"Yeah, should be great." "Okay."
- Look at this. Oh, my gosh.
- This is amazing.
- This is really awesome.
It's also dangerous.
- Whoa.
- So... [chuckles]
I kind of had to gather myself for the match.
- And here we go. - Look at this!
- And look at the-- - What is he doing?
- Every time they hit in the ring, fire's coming up.
As a fan, watching this,
every time you feel like they've done
everything they could do, they up the ante.
- The Undertaker, choke slam.
The Undertaker, oh, my God.
- I ended up diving over the top
and knocking Kane into the ring post,
which set his arm on fire.
And then he ran out of the arena.
Chalk one up for the good guys that night.
* *
- They always seem to go to another level of evil
each and every time they face.
- As their rivalry continued to unfold,
so too did a new revelation in the family saga.
- The beauty of the Kane/Undertaker story
was that there were so many chapters in it.
- I am Kane's father.
- You tell one chapter for a while,
and then there would be the next one.
And after a while, it became really clear.
Is there anyone that could stop them
if they were together?
- I love this.
Kane apparently is extending his hand as some sort of
bond or friendship to his older brother,
and Undertaker is returning it.
What a--oh, what a moment.
- The anger born out of that fire so many years ago
had the brothers on a path of destruction.
Instead of directing their hatred toward each other,
the brothers became bonded by their past.
- Listen to me, son. I'm your dad.
Do one last thing for me, if you never do anything else.
Destroy him!
- Whoa.
Paul Bearer wants Kane to turn on The Undertaker again.
- Destroy, please, for Daddy.
- For Daddy?
[screams] - And The Undertaker--
Kane has just turned his back to allow The Undertaker
to pummel Paul Bearer. - No, look at this.
- It was okay to see Undertaker and Kane fight,
but what they really wanted to see was
what Undertaker and Kane could do together.
- Having two big badasses
like Kane and Undertaker together,
the imagination runs wild as to who and/or what can stop them.
- Oh, look at this. - Here comes Mankind.
- There was always the underlying element:
I still love him. He's my brother.
I think everyone who has siblings can identify.
There's certain times within the course of your life
that you have a falling out with a sibling
and you make up.
- No one makes better partners than bitter rivals.
They eventually have to get together.
[cheers and applause]
- We come together as The Brothers of Destruction.
* *
- They harness their anger to form
an indestructible partnership of evil,
The Brothers of Destruction.
- These guys are busting each other's heads for years,
and now they're together?
Now what's the rest of this company gonna do?
- And there they come. - Look at that.
- What an auspicious occasion.
History in the making, right here tonight.
- These brothers, Kane and The Undertaker--
I mean, they're literally just kicking ass, they are.
There's two huge monsters right there,
shoulder to shoulder,
brother to brother, The Undertaker and Kane.
They're together again.
- Family's family, and family always comes back together.
This was the time that the brothers could come back
together in team and be indestructible.
- I guarantee you, everybody
in the World Wrestling Entertainment
better take a look at this and be afraid.
Be very, very afraid.
- There were people that were legitimately
intimidated to be in the ring with us.
- Scorpio...
- Regardless of what the outcome was supposed to be.
We were just ultra-dominant.
The crazy thing was, the more evil that we got,
the more it just made people love us.
- No one can overcome these two,
these two demons.
- This made for a prototypical killer tag team.
- Is there anyone that can stand up
to the Brothers of Destruction?
- Assaulting Mankind with a sledgehammer.
- [screams] No, no.
- The Brothers of Destruction
were a mythological duo that dominated WWE.
But in the late '90s,
mythology was giving way to reality.
- Through some 50 years, the World Wrestling Entertainment,
has been an entertainment mainstay.
One of the reasons for that longevity,
is, as the times have changed, so have we.
- So as the '90s came to an end,
there was a shift in pro wrestling.
The Attitude Era came.
Attitude Era was based in reality,
and people wanted to see things that
were more reality-based and real.
And we saw that happen with Undertaker and Kane.
- As times evolved, so, too, did the brothers,
each in their own way,
but always staying true to their origins.
- During the Attitude Era with Stone Cold and The Rock
and Kurt Angle and all these guys
that could cut great promos.
- Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?
- I knew for me to be successful,
I needed to be this, or these guys
are gonna chew me up and spit me out.
- I remember him talking to me,
saying he wanted to have a more realistic edge.
I became more of a striker.
Quick, fast, repetitive strikes.
- The Undertaker is whooping ass.
Oh, my God, it's carnage.
- As great as Kane and The Undertaker are,
you are also confined to a certain degree
of what you can and cannot do.
- The Undertaker character became iconic
within a couple of years, but in the long run,
it was his ability to know when something
needed adjusting before
the WWE universe knew it needed adjusting.
- That's why I kind of changed to make the character
fresh again, but also give me a chance
to compete with those guys on the mic.
Let's let the pain and suffering begin.
[screams and cheers]
- No, oh, no. - Aerial choke slams to hell!
But changing the one thing
most closely associated with your persona
is the ultimate risk.
- I felt that I had gone as far as I could with the mask.
So I talked to Vince about it,
and Vince was very much on board.
He and I were the only people on board.
Everybody else thought it was a terrible idea.
- I didn't like the fact that Glenn was gonna
take the mask off because it's the theater of the mind.
When you talk about movies like "Psycho"
and "The Birds" from Alfred Hitchcock...
[birds cawing]
It's usually more scary
than the actual slash and gash gory stuff.
[screeching string music]
- [screams]
- When you see a couple of pantomime slashes,
but you don't really see it, so you have to imagine it.
- We've always speculated. - Here it comes.
Come on. Do it, Kane, do it.
- The reveal of the mask was incredible.
He pulls it off, and he's got that scraggle of hair.
Turns out the hair was part of the mask.
- What the hell is this?
What the hell is this?
- Is that a human?
- He was even more evil without the mask.
- Kane had never been burnt in the fire.
He thought he was, he thought he was deformed,
and he internalized all of that.
That was what was really scary.
[dramatic music]
The mask was a symptom of what was going on in Kane's mind.
Tonight, I will once again feast on fear and suffering.
- You can't play the same character from under a mask
that you do when the mask is gone.
Think about it. He shaved his head.
He changed his eyes.
It became more of a human tortured character.
- By God, our Father, and the Lord--
Jesus Christ!
- Jesus Christ is right! - Oh, no!
- It's Kane!
- Once he got rid of the mask,
it almost made him worse.
- You need to feel my pain. - Please, no, no.
- Kane, Kane, hold on a second, Kane.
- Hindsight being 20/20, I think it was
probably great for Glenn because it opened up
so many more opportunities for him to do different things.
- Oh!
My... [laughs]
Holy... [laughs]
- Get a jaw uproot by Kane, in stereo.
- Now that evil is reality,
and nothing is more evil than reality.
- From now on, I do what I want.
- Kane is, no doubt, a living, breathing monster.
- The biggest reason Kane and Undertaker
have endured as long as they have is,
the characters continue to change with the times.
You saw the evolution before your eyes.
You didn't see the exact same character
for the length of their time.
- Look at the agility here. He's walking a tight rope.
No one in the WWE does that.
- Old school--no. - Oh, connected.
- Kane and Undertaker have got to be
the greatest tag team in the history of wrestling.
- At the end of the day, what The Undertaker and Kane
both have in common is, they both gave
so much to the business.
- Oh, yes.
- They were both parts of such important moments
in our wrestling memory.
When they're standing in the ring as partners,
it's sort of a happy ending to their story,
but you also feel like you just
wanna stand up and applaud.
[cheers and applause]
You just appreciate it.
- Everything just seemed like it was magic.
I mean, it was just really gnarly storytelling.
- We all understand a sibling rivalry.
- It's a work of art. - The phenom, The Undertaker.
- The Undertaker and Kane were able to raise the bar...
- The demon, Kane. - Of what was possible.
- The Brothers of Destruction.
- People understood that,
they accepted it, and they loved it.
- I'm very proud of the story
that we were able to tell through the years.
Our body of work will stand against any tag team.
There was really no other way
to put a title on what it was we did in the ring.
Just utter destruction.
- It's mythology.
It's Shakespearean.
You can't kill what won't die.
- Rest in peace.