Skeletor

For the first twenty years of the property, Skeletor had no family and no settled origin, only sketches that never added up to a history.

The 1982 Mattel mini-comics describe him as a demon from another dimension, thrown into Eternia during the Great Wars, with no family, no history and no connection to anyone. The 1983 Filmation series kept the vacuum intact: a malevolent sorcerer with a purple cowl and a bare yellow skull, motivated entirely by wanting into Castle Grayskull.

The closest Filmation ever came to a history was the 1985 film He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword, which made Skeletor a minion Hordak had trained and then left behind on Eternia when the Horde was driven off.

Keldor was first floated in a 1987 mini-comic, right as the original toyline was ending, and then dropped.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Teela's Triumph (1984), 2:50 to 4:29, 1 minute 39 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

The 2002 Mike Young Productions series dramatized Keldor's fall on screen and made it stick in the popular memory. There, Keldor is a sorcerer, defeated in battle and struck in the face with a vial of his own acid, and Hordak saves his life by binding a demon to the exposed skull. The series set up a blood tie between Keldor and King Randor but was canceled before it could say so on screen; its creators later confirmed the half-brother link, and the Netflix shows made it explicit.

Mattel's Masters of the Universe Classics cardback tells a different story with the same name in it: "REAL NAME: Keldor. Mortally wounded in battle with his half-brother Captain Randor, Keldor turned to his dark-arts master Hordak to save his life."

What the card does next is the part that gets blended away. Hordak does not bind a generic demon to an exposed skull. He merges Keldor with a specific named being, Demo-Man, from a specific place, Despondos, and that merger is what turns him into Skeletor, Overlord of Evil. There is no acid anywhere on the card and no facial injury at all. The 2002 series: acid to the face, a demon bound to a skull. The Classics cardback: a mortal battle wound, a merger with Demo-Man.

The Classics line then gave Demo-Man his own figure and his own card, which turns Skeletor's origin into an act of betrayal on Hordak's part: "REAL NAME: Uqquz Zekul-Mshqx. Realizing his pupil Keldor had no intention of releasing him from Despondos, Hordak merged him with an extra-dimensional being called Demo-Man." By that card's account the merger saved Keldor's life but drove him temporarily insane, and convinced him to open a portal to Despondos and lead what he took to be his own people into Eternia. The merged being was defeated by Oo-Larr, the Jungle He-Man, and Hordak stayed trapped.

The Classics line released Keldor as his own figure. His card fills in the years the Skeletor card skips, opening on the exile: "Banished from the royal palace, in part due to distrust for the rare blue-skinned Gar race, Prince Keldor became an outcast." The rest of that card has him traveling Eternia in search of knowledge and guidance until he discovers the ancient Spirit of Hordak, learns the dark arts from him, and concludes that uniting Eternia means taking command of it himself. That single clause about the Gar reframes the whole thing: Keldor is not exiled for a crime, but in part for being visibly of a distrusted race, and his turn toward Hordak follows the exile rather than causing it.

Mattel's King Randor cards fill in the other side. Randor is King Miro's second-born son. His older brother is banished. Randor becomes Captain of the Guard, fights Keldor's rebellion of "outcasts and escaped convicts", mortally wounds him in single combat, and has a mystic wall raised to bind Keldor's warriors to the Dark Hemisphere. The Council of Elders then sets aside Eternian law to crown a second son.

Skeletor got five Classics cards: the base figure, Battle Armor, Dragon Blaster, New Adventures, and a Toothless version packed with Mo-Larr. The REAL NAME field is not consistent across them. The base card says "Keldor." Battle Armor and New Adventures say "Keldor of the House of Miro." Dragon Blaster says "Keldor of the House Miro," missing the second "of."

The variant cards add real lore. Battle Armor says the original armor was made so Skeletor could get through the Mystic Wall "in order to kidnap Adora and secretly clone the Sorceress of Grayskull," which is the origin of Teela, told from the villain's side; it also says Oo-Larr destroyed that armor in three strikes of his battle axe. Dragon Blaster has Skeletor actually ruling Eternia after Randor's banishment, then being overthrown by his own former master Hordak, who returns from Despondos with Evil-Lyn's help. The New Adventures card has him mending his body with "a techno virus from Preternia" and leaving the planet for a bigger prize.