Kaleesh Cyborg

General Grievous is one of Star Wars’ most distinctive character designs — a Kaleesh warrior whose organic body has been almost entirely replaced by mechanical components, leaving only his brain, eyes, heart, and lungs within a chassis built for combat. He’s the prequel trilogy’s most visually original villain, a creation that emerged from the 2003 Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro-series before being adapted for Revenge of the Sith, and the Black Series has covered two of his most significant visual configurations: the Tartakovsky animated original and the Jedi: Fallen Order battle-damaged variant.

Kaleesh and Grievous in Star Wars

The Kaleesh are a warrior species from Kalee — a proud people whose military culture produced some of the galaxy’s most formidable fighters in their own right. Grievous was a Kaleesh warrior and general before the series of events that led to his near-death and his cybernetic reconstruction. The specific circumstances of how he became what he appears in Revenge of the Sith are covered in expanded material: a shuttle crash, medical reconstruction by the Separatists, and a transformation that preserved his combat instincts while replacing almost everything else.

The designation “Kaleesh Cyborg” reflects the hybrid nature of what Grievous is — not a droid, not a human, but a Kaleesh consciousness housed in a mechanical body. This distinction matters to the character’s psychology. Grievous isn’t a programmed weapon. He’s a being who chose to be what he became, who has opinions, hatreds, and the specific psychology of someone who started as one thing and became something entirely different. His hatred of Jedi — he collects their lightsabers, which he wields simultaneously in the famous four-armed combat configuration — is personal rather than programmed.

His cough is one of the prequel trilogy’s more discussed details. In The Clone Wars micro-series he’s athletic, silent, terrifying. In Revenge of the Sith he’s visibly deteriorating — the cough a sign of the organic components that remain struggling within the mechanical chassis, or possibly the result of Mace Windu’s Force crush to his chest cavity in an earlier encounter. The contrast between his animated power and his film frailty is intentional: Revenge of the Sith wants him to feel like a declining threat rather than a triumphant one, which serves Obi-Wan’s victory over him on Utapau.

The Tartakovsky Clone Wars Figure

The 2003 Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro-series premiered before Revenge of the Sith and introduced General Grievous to the Star Wars audience. The Tartakovsky version is the character at his most physically formidable — slender, fast, capable of taking on multiple Jedi simultaneously, the unstoppable force whose introduction mid-series created immediate anticipation for the final film. The animation style gave him a distinctly angular, almost abstract visual presence that the Revenge of the Sith design subsequently made more organic and physical.

The 50th Anniversary Tartakovsky Clone Wars Grievous is the Black Series’ recognition of that original design — a figure produced specifically for collectors who know the micro-series and value the distinction between the two visual interpretations. The Tartakovsky aesthetic is noticeably different from the ROTS Grievous that most audiences know: leaner, more geometric, the pure animated expression of the character before live-action production design grounded it.

For collectors of the Expanded Universe Display, this figure is one of the most specific animation-era releases in the line — a figure that exists specifically to honour a pre-film version of the character and the creative work that brought him into being.

The Battle Damaged Figure

The Jedi: Fallen Order General Grievous (Battle Damaged) is the Gaming Greats release — Grievous as he appears in the story content of Fallen Order, where Cal Kestis encounters him. The battle-damaged configuration gives the figure specific visual interest: visible damage to the chassis, the specific wear of a military cyborg who has been through significant combat, an aesthetic that the standard clean Grievous figures don’t provide.

As a gaming tie-in release it sits in the Gaming Greats Display context, and it gives collectors who want a Grievous figure with specific battle context an alternative to the standard animated or film versions.

Grievous and the Lightsaber Collection

One of General Grievous’s most iconic characteristics — and the detail that makes him the prequel trilogy’s most distinctive villain from a collecting perspective — is his lightsaber collection. He wields stolen lightsabers from Jedi he has killed, sometimes two simultaneously, sometimes four in the spinning configuration that his Revenge of the Sith duel with Obi-Wan introduces. Every lightsaber he carries is a trophy.

The Black Series has also produced a General Grievous Force FX Elite Lightsaber — a separate product that represents his collected weapon rather than the character himself, and which connects the species entry to the broader Force FX programme. For collectors who want to represent Grievous’s combat style fully, the combination of figure and lightsaber creates a more complete display than either alone.

The Species Designation

The Kaleesh Cyborg designation is specific to how the Black Series categorises Grievous — acknowledging both his organic Kaleesh origin and his cybernetic current state. It’s a more precise classification than simply “alien” and more accurate than simply “droid,” and it reflects the character’s fundamental nature: a being who is neither fully organic nor fully mechanical, whose identity is built on that tension.

Both figures together give the character his two most visually significant animated and gaming appearances in the line, filling a gap that the Revenge of the Sith Galaxy Collection sub-line has not yet directly addressed with a mainline ROTS Grievous release.

All Kaleesh Cyborg Figures in the Black Series

Check off the figures you own with the Black Series Checklist.

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Part of Star Wars The Black Series | Species Index. Related: Clone Wars Battles | Gaming Greats Display | Expanded Universe Display | Species Index.