Viktors Disabilities, a Speculative Analysis
Ever since i first watched Arcane i have wanted to know (and i mean this in the nicest way possible,) what was wrong with Viktor. His disability was never explained beyond “he was born with a malformed leg”.
And so, i was left alone in the house with my thoughts today so i took it upon myself to figure it out, (and talk about his medical issues so i can ignore my own lmao) and i am releasing my thoughts upon yall!
(disclaimer: yes i am aware that this arcane is a fantasy world that is not our world and the disorders/illnesses and treatments will not be the same but the issues he has have to be based off of something (especially with how detailed this show is and how many references are made throughout.) this is not me trying to say that he definitively has any of these conditions, i’m just comparing them to conditions that exist today and suggesting what Viktors disabilities may have been based off of.)
(disclaimer pt 2.: i have not played League of Legends, i do not intend to play League of Legends, i have only watched Arcane and i am only talking about Arcane and Arcane lore and what i have been able to figure out from watching Arcane and spinning it around in my brain like it’s in a microwave.)
Now, i think i’ll just start from the beginning, and go in order of development.
1. Viktors Leg
According to the wiki (and about every other site that talks about Viktor) he is said to have been “born with a malformed leg”, and said pretty much nothing else. Now, when Viktor is an adult, his leg appears to be very not-malformed, so, let’s start at the flashback.
Now, even in the flashback Viktors leg looks normal. It’s pointing forward, and looks totally fine. But as the clip goes on, and he gets up and starts moving, the problem becomes apparent. Here’s a clip:
Yall have probably already noticed what i’m talking about with this clip, but i want to illustrate it more because the clip moves so fast:
As Vikto moves faster, his foot shifts inwards! It shifts inwards pretty severely (i mean, he full on trips on it), and the only time in this entire clip where it is doing so. And that is because the other times he is around someone else. I think he is purposefully pointing his foot forward and in turn walking on the wrong part of his foot (balance issues), and more than likely causing himself pain 1. to appear less ‘crippled’ and more “normal” to other people, and 2. because clearly, his foot is pointing inwards to a degree that is impairing his ability to walk.
Now to me, (and i’m not a doctor so if any actual doctors want to call me on incorrect information please do so!) this looks like Femoral Anteversion, or a twisting of the femur that points the knees inward (it’s typically found in both legs but it can happen with just one)
Now this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, ~10% of children are affected with Femoral Anteversion (or “pigeon toes”), and most of the time it resolves itself, unless it is super severe, at which point it requires surgery to fix it. Which, of course, Viktor did not have access to.
Now, his leg does appear to be normal as an adult, but the femoral anteversion thought is still plausible. There are 3 reasons i can think of for this one.
1. He got to Piltover and after a little bit Heimerdinger noticed how messed up his leg was and Viktor got the surgery to correct it as much as possible (it’s implied that Viktor was in Piltover for years, based on how he acts and the fact that he’s Heimerdingers assistant) (this thought doesn’t seem very plausible to me, i don’t remember seeing any surgery scars on his leg in the hexcore scene, but it is a possibility.)
2. He’s simply just still correcting his leg. The reason we wouldn’t see him mess up like we did in the flashback is that he’s about 24-25 in act one, and i’d say that 14-15 years is probably enough to get used to doing that sort of thing.
3. (Honestly this one seems to be the most plausible to me) His leg has (partially) corrected itself. Most children whose femoral anteversion fixed itself had normal gaits by age 8-10, but that’s an average age and those typically aren’t perfectly accurate to everyone (i have. very personal experience with that.) and it makes the most sense to me that his leg has mostly/partially corrected itself and he’s just also continuing to self-correct to avoid appearing any more disabled than he already does (he shows quite a bit of internalized ableism throughout the season, and his line about people not listening to him because he’s “just a poor cripple from the undercity” really drives it home for me, honestly.)
2. Viktors Deterioration
When we first truly see Viktor in act 1, he seems lively, and unless he’s actively walking, he’s not using his cane, not really (he hangs his cane on his arm to read a book with both hands (really great rep btw, we do in fact do that!), he leans it against a desk to pace in front of a chalkboard with Jayce, he puts it down somewhere to go help Jayce with the experiment, etc.).
I mean, look at his stance, he’s not really leaning on his cane for support, more likely he’s using it for balance, and as an assist to his bad leg, rather than an attempted replacement like we saw in the flashback.
But in act 2? Hoooo boy
Look at that, beyond just looking 10x sicker, look at his posture, his shoulders specifically. He is actively leaning on his crutch (because he needs a crutch now, the cane wasn’t enough), using it like a replacement. Now, over the course of the ~7 year time skip, Viktors condition has deteriorated enough that he 1. needs the braces 2. needs a crutch 3. can no longer even get up without his crutch, let alone take a single step!
i mean, even when he’s sitting down, he’s holding onto it, leaning on it. The way he uses his crutch, how skinny he’s gotten, how much more tired he seems, all of these things say some sort of newfound muscle weakness, but why?
And the braces. Let’s start with the leg brace, since it’s right there. How it’s built around the actual leg and knee looks a whole lot like a much cooler unloader knee brace, or a knee brace that redistributes weight away from the weakened knee. I have to wear one of those when my knee gets really bad in the winter, when it starts buckling randomly and just.. not working. Which makes sense for the muscle atrophy/weakness theory i have, because that leg was already weak to begin with, and his knee would have been all kinds of fucked up if he did spend basically his whole life misaligning it like i’m thinking he did. (and to support that theory even further, the way that the brace goes over his foot as well reminds me of the braces some children wear to attempt to correct their ‘pigeon toes’ (which have been proven not to work, btw)
Now, the back brace. I’m gonna be honest, this part took me the longest, it truly confused me.
When you look at it, it just looks like a thoracic back brace, with some extra support on the hips (once again, pointing to muscle weakness)
But the thing that really confused me?
The screws in his back.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what procedure this was referencing (Percutaneous Pedicle Screw Fixation (i’m like really sure that the screws aren’t showing in the real life surgery but the fact that they are makes sense with Arcanes style)), and an even more embarrassing amount of time to realize that the golden screws in his brace weren’t connected to him. (i am. very tired.)
But essentially, a Percutaneous Pedicle Screw Fixation is a less invasive spinal fusion procedure. Now a spinal fusion can be done for many, many reasons, but only one really fit.
Support, because of muscle weakness.
Every single thing that got added on to Viktor could be explained by muscle weakness, but there’s never any explained reason why he was so weak all of a sudden. His terminal illness is cited as a reason but that didn’t really make sense to me, all of these procedures, all of these mobility aids made perfectly to his measurements would’ve had to have been caused by something with a much slower onset than the illness would have given him.
And after literal hours of scouring, i have a theory.
Post-Polio Syndrome.
The timeline makes sense, Viktor would have most likely gotten sick before the flashback, when he was a child (a lot of children who get Polio fight it off without even knowing they have it). Viktor is estimated to be about 32 in act 2, and the average time between the initial Polio infection and Post-Polio Syndrome onset is about 20-40 years (inconsistent numbers).
Now some of the symptoms we have no way of knowing if they affect Viktor or not, but the main ones that caught my eye were muscle atrophy, chronic fatigue, and, you guessed it, muscle weakness.
Given where Viktor lived as a child, and how heavily polluted it was (remember that Viktor was in the undercity over 10 years before we saw it in act 1 with Vi and Powders childhood), it’s not too far of a stretch to say that he could have contracted an illness very similar to Polio as a child, and only really be feeling the affects of it now.
3. The Illness
I have 2 main theories for Viktors illness, the first one seems to be the most popular among the fandom: Tuberculosis.
If you’re unaware, Tuberculosis (TB) is a sickness that mainly affects the lungs, with the main symptom being coughing up blood. Now this is a really good theory imo, it fits pretty well, with some of the other symptoms being muscle atrophy, fatigue, malaise (general feeling of discomfort/unease with no discernible reason), loss of appetite, and severe unintentional weight loss. all of this sounds like our guy, no?
TB can take weeks to be symptomatic, so we probably just caught Viktor at the worst time ever lol with this theory.
My other theory is actually one my friend suggested to me, and that theory is COPD.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a progressive disease that is basically a terrible combination of chronic bronchitis and asthma that can be caused by exposure to pollution (Viktor grew up in the Undercity before Cassandra’s vent system, i mean the river he was playing on had an oil slick on it, i think it’s safe to say he was exposed to some pretty severe pollution as a child.)
This theory makes a lot of sense to me, because it’s said in the show that his illness was probably caused by the air where he grew up, which this would have been, while TB would not. (not 15-20 years later, at least) COPD, once it reaches stage 4 is very severe, any flare up of symptoms could be life threatening at that stage, and the symptoms? Fatigue, shortness of breath, coughing, weight loss, and less frequently, coughing blood.
Anyway, i guess that concludes my analysis/comparison? I’m gonna repeat that i’m not definitively saying that ‘he has this condition and this is why!’, i’m just analyzing and speculating on what different parts of his disability is based on in real life. So, let’s just all be nice, yeah? (also PLEASE feel free to use this as a reference point for modern aus and stuff!!)
i do genuinely think that Viktors disease progression and his deterioration is one of the best examples of chronic illness that i have seen in media, in my experience (both with my own issues and what i’ve seen in other people) and Viktor himself is one of the BEST representations of what it’s like to be young and disabled and the internalized ableism that comes with it (if anyone wants to hear about that i will happily yap your ear off about it!
Anyway, for real this time. Yap session over.
[edit: if you like this you should look in the reblogs there’s a couple of really good in-depth deep dives from others that build on this!!]
