Trivia / Ministry of Darkness

• Creator Backlash: Undertaker's ultimate opinion of the gimmick when interviewed on his This is My Yard DVD was that, while he enjoyed the Ministry of Darkness and was happy that it brought lesser known wrestlers like Edge, Christian and Bradshaw into the spotlight, he regarded the angle of its merger with The Corporation into the "Corporate Ministry" as a low point in his career because his character was a part of something "not derived from The Undertaker".
• What Could Have Been:
  • Mick Foley was supposedly intended to have been the original Higher Power, but backed out at the last minute, leading to the nonsensical Ass Pull. It was Mick Foley himself who declined, feeling he was too injured to do a feud with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin justice. Not to mention he was massively over as a goofy yet badass face and didn't even have a reason to feud with Austin and had been a major enemy of The Undertaker for years, so it didn't make sense that the WWF thought he would have been a choice for the role.
    • It could've been devised that Foley, as Mankind, would act as the Higher Power as revenge against Vince McMahon for screwing him out of the WWF Championship at Survivor Series 1998...except, when the Ministry formed, Mankind was already the WWF Champion. Plus, kidnapping the boss's daughter is the kind of act not even Cactus Jack would scheme.
  • Also rumored, Jake "The Snake" Roberts. This was briefly considered, but declined — Roberts wasn't even in WWE at the time, nor would they have hired him due to his personal problems (later that year he had his infamous "You wanna play 21?" incident). Jake was actually WhatCulture Wrestling's pick for the role when they theorised "How WWE should have booked the Higher Power", suggesting that they should have preceded the arc with a concerted effort to help Jake get over his issues, partly because it was a nice thing to do and partly to help set up this story.
  • One definite rumor making the rounds at the time was that it would be Stephanie McMahon. There's no evidence this was ever more than an internet rumor, though.
  • Perhaps the earliest logical option for the Higher Power was being prepared sometime before the Ministry even became a full-on stable—namely Don Callis, who worked as the Jackyl in 1997-98. The Jackyl was a cult-leader dressed in all black with charismatic brainwashing prowess, Cthulhu Mythos-inspired occult symbolism, and revolutionary ambitions to become the leader of the World Wrestling Federation. Furthermore, he was the one who first put Faarooq and Bradshaw together as the Acolytes. Unfortunately, WWF officials felt he was getting himself over at the expense of the talent he was working with (completely ignoring how they themselves set him up to do exactly that, and the fact this was no longer the case with the Acolytes), so they axed him and scrambled to come up with a Plan B.
  • Yet another possibility for the Higher Power was Christopher Daniels (who was in the WWF from 1998-2001, initially as a jobber and later as part of Los Conquistadores), who was suggested for the role but shot down by Vince. Daniels would later call back to this in All Elite Wrestling when he was feuding with the Dark Order, where he came out to interfere in a Dark Order beatdown dressed in a hooded robe similar to the one Vince wore as the Higher Power, pretending to be the Dark Order's supposed secret leader "The Exalted One", who he was claiming didn't really exist.