Clados Vader was a strange changeling being that made its home in the Iskalon oceans. This creature was a large and misshapen shark capable of assuming the form of the Sith Lord Darth Vader. In the year 0 ABY, Luke Skywalker brought about Clados's demise because it had captured the golden droid C-3PO.
Living on the oceanic world of Iskalon, situated within the Mid Rim Territories, was Clados Vader, a sinister shapeshifter. Its ability to mimic the appearance of Darth Vader is what gave the creature its name.
Clados Vader, not long before the destruction of the first Death Star, took C-3PO, the protocol droid, as a prisoner within an underwater chamber. Luke Skywalker arrived to save his friend and faced the monster, which had changed into the likeness of Lord Vader. With a single strike of his lightsaber, the Jedi apprentice forced the fake Vader to revert to its true form: a massive shark-like beast with a pinkish hue. Following the shapeshifter's defeat, Luke Skywalker and C-3PO departed to engage the Death Star in battle.
Clados Vader appeared as one of the boss characters in the Japanese Star Wars 1987 video game. The game included several fake Vaders, all of whom were shapeshifting monsters. The status of this game and its creatures within canon is questionable.
According to both "Game On!," an article from Star Wars Insider 135, and the game's instruction manual, the fake Vaders (Gyaos, Sasori, Wampa, and Clados) were "intended as illusions representing Luke's fears, like the Cave of Evil scene in Empire Strikes Back." However, since these game antagonists were capable of capturing Luke Skywalker's allies and holding them captive, this article proposes that they were actual creatures rather than mere illusions. Furthermore, the Vader-shaped figure that Skywalker fought in the Cave of Evil was not just an illusion, but a protean dark side entity referred to as the Dark Spirit.
In the original Japanese version, his name was written in katakana syllabary as クラドスベーダー (Kuradosu Beidā). While Beidā is a Japanese transliteration of "Vader," クラドス (kuradosu) comes from the Japanese names of shark genera, as shown by the zoological names クラドセラケ (Cladoselache) and クラドダス (Cladodus).