Was Palpatine disguised as a human, and the lightning revealed his true form, or did the lightning mess him up like that
@InspectorCaracal @Gargron Do you mean that it changed him because it's *his* lightning that's hitting him?
@InspectorCaracal @Gargron That does fit in with the mysticism-style of the movies.
@Gargron Honestly though, I think what happened was that the original idea (ep.4-6) was that Dark Side itself slowly twisted Palpatine into how he looks, since Vader sans helmet has similar pallor but when doing the ep.1-3 they wanted the transformation on-screen.
And the rest is for fans to sort out.
@Gargron Palpatine is not one of the droids you're looking for.
@Gargron Asking the real questions here.
@Gargron The lightning scarred him because it was reflected back by Windu's lightsaber.
@Gargron It was the attempt on his life that left him scarred and deformed. You can check, that’s in the official Galactic Senate records!
@Gargron lightening revealed his true form. the dark side physically consumes/deforms you, which can sometimes get weird and ‘ugly people are bad, pretty people are good’ at times (including arguably with palps)
Tho some of thats been retconned/excised from cannon because Disney wanted to simplify things so this might not be true anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Gargron the lightning messed him up like that, he’s from Naboo, so he’d be the same species as Padme.
@Gargron th lightning messed him up
@Gargron That always bugged me as unnecessary. When we see him in Return of the Jedi, he's 20 years older anyway and probably using the Dark Side to prolong his life like the One Ring and Gollum.
But I guess Lucas wanted to go with the thematic revealing-his-true-face thing.
@Gargron Why do they talk about him?
@Gargron there’s a cutted scene where he gets an sms from the power company with the bill amount.
@gargron My headcanon is: He's really wrinkly because he's centuries old, and uses the dark side of the force to become immortal.
No prequels. He's just evil and powerful.
It's the evil makes you ugly trope at work.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilMakesYouUgly
Here's my favorite scene with Palpatine, from Clone Wars 5:16--The Lawless:
@Gargron It was about time someone asked that 
@Gargron another explanation is meth
@Gargron In the fantastic literature the lightning always makes the monster.
@Gargron the prequels aren’t real, so the point is moot.
@Gargron
I think the lightning messed him up and he took the sacrifice as a final step to bring Anakin to the dark side.
@Gargron The ⚡️ made him look beautiful in his own way.
@Gargron In my opinion, Palpatine wasn't in disguise. The lightning, aka hate, transformed his body but at the same time revealed his true nature.
@Gargron IIRC that it’s the anger/hatred revealing itself. The dark side basically. But someone else here might know for sure.
@Gargron lightning messed him up.
@Gargron I'm gonna go with accidental reflection damage, simply because if I were using Sith skulduggery to control the government, I'd probably use a more marketable visage to hide my true form.
@Gargron
I think it's like a "life force" thing. Basically: the lightning taps into the same energy reserves he uses to look young.
@Gargron i'd like to think that the first is correct.
@Gargron AFAICT, it's meant to be how the lightning messed him up, but then why didn't Luke change at all?