Kingdom Hearts II/Fridge

Demyx's Let's Get Dangerous wasn't just because Sora, Donald, and Goofy brought up the whole lack of a heart thing. It's because of the perceived hypocrisy that Roxas was telling him that.
- On that note, I was puzzled ever since playing Kingdom Hearts II about why the Organization members kept refering to Sora as Roxas. Then, after playing Days and learning Xion's true nature and that she merges with Roxas, it seems clear that Sora's appearance in KH 2 varies depending on who is looking at him. Thus, the Organization members are calling him, "Roxas," because when they look at him, they see Roxas.
- Alternate explanation: They somehow sense Roxas buried inside Sora. (They seem to recognize him as both Sora and Roxas at times.)
- To add to the alternate explanation above, it's been stated in-game that Nobodies give off a similar presence as their original being. Mickey states in-game that he'd seen Xemnas and Xehanort before, and that it "kinda felt like being around the same person. Additionally, in 358/2 Days the Magic Carpet in Agrabah seems to recognize Roxas (according to Genie, Carpet thinks he is a friend), but neither Carpet nor Genie can explain why. It's actually because Carpet recognizes Roxas as Sora, but because this was during the period in time where Sora's memories were being put back together, their memories of him were faint at best!
- Alternately, they're just fucking with him.
  - Possible, just look at the scene where Demyx reads out from the cue card!

Demyx:If the subject fails to respond, use aggression to liberate his true disposition...Right.

Along with many other people, I cringed at Seifer's terrible use of Net Speak out loud during the prologue of Kingdom Hearts II. Then, once it's revealed that he's actually a digital copy of Seifer inside a computer-generated Twilight Town it becomes a brilliant bit of Foreshadowing. He talks like someone on a computer because he IS in a computer. - Seren Y Gogledd
- There's also the fact that it's a computer programmed by an old man who has spent his entire life doing scientific research and has spent a decade in the Realm of Nothingness, meaning this guy has no idea how young people really act.
At first I wondered why the Dusks were grabbing the falling hearts near the end of Kingdom Hearts II and being just as bad as the the Heartless, when it hit me. Organization XIII was keeping hearts that might have been rightfully the Dusks', and they couldn't get them back until know. This Fridge Brilliance shows why the Organization was evil: they were keeping hearts that belonged to other people for their own selfish purposes. - Redtutel
- In Kingdom Hearts 2, this editor was bothered by Stitch appearing out of nowhere to screw with the heroes and participate in the 1000 Heartless fight with no explanation. Then I remembered that Stitch did the exact same thing in all the ads for his film, and it became a good Mythology Gag.
  - And then Birth By Sleep came out and replaced this with another one; Stitch actually came to Sora's aid because of the events of the prequel: He recognizes Sora as Ventus.
- Well, it's either that, or he got tossed into the game because Japan loves Stitch similarly to Tingle, similarly to Chernabog.
- Stitch actually calls out Sora's name when you summon him. It's a bit hard to hear it with Stitch's "frog-stuck-in-throat" voice, though.
This troper realized that Axel's exclamation of "Two?!" to Roxas's pulling out two Keyblades wasn't because he had only fought him with one before. It's because he only had one the whole time Axel knew him! Throughout all of KHDays, Roxas only used one Keyblade, until Xion died. The cutscene afterwards, he pulls out two Kingdom Keys, his original one and Xion's, before transforming both into Oblivion and Oathkeeper. Roxas fought Riku and won, then lost, and was put into Digital Twilight Town, where KH2 starts.
- Then Birth by Sleep implies that that wasn't Xion's keyblade, but actually Ventus'. As he was harbouring his heart, the experience of losing someone dear to him made Ventus' heart respond due to a similar experience of losing his friends Aqua and Terra (They're not dead but whatever), awakening his keyblade. The keyblade cannot be Xion's as it is a fake made by Sora's memories of using the Keyblade
I always thought that Axel's whole obsession with Roxas was a bit overly laden with the Ho Yay; I mean, he goes crazy because he doesn't remember him. It seemed a bit crazy for a so called friendship, but then I played 358/2 Days and it hit me. Axel's obsessed with Roxas, not just because he's his friend, but because Axel's feelings for Roxas aren't just from one friendship, it's because he was actually good friends with Xion also, but when she disappeared, one of the two friends in the whole world disappeared from their memories, but not from existence. The events still happen, but neither of them remember them anymore, so instead of Roxas being one of his friends who left, Axel remembers only Roxas for all those good times. Twice the memories and feelings in one friendship, just to have him walk away, must've unhinged him. Not to mention that both made him feel like he had a heart, something he hadn't felt and couldn't possibly comprehend.
- I always thought it was because of the horrible terms he and Roxas parted ways on. Roxas left thinking that Axel had betrayed him and kept secrets from him and used him just like everyone else (which, in a sense, he did), and no matter how much he tried to ignore it, Axel couldn't stand that. For someone who hadn't felt a shred of emotion in over ten years, the guilt probably drove him crazy. In that sense, maybe his Heroic Sacrifice wasn't so heroic after all, but we'll see. I'm betting on some serious redemption for this guy; he had to have been included in the BBS ending for a reason.
- Axel's relationship with Sora/Roxas takes on another dimension in Birth By Sleep. In Radiant Garden, Lea explained he wanted to live in as many people's memories as he could and unilaterally proclaimed himself and Ventus friends. The Secret Ending, where Namine, Axel and Xion are shown reinforces Namine's assertion in KH 2 that their hearts will remember even if they don't recognize each other -- even if they cease to exist (like Xion). When Ventus's heart returned to Sora, his connection with Lea carried over as well. Thus, when Axel met Roxas looking like Ventus did 10 years ago, and carrying Ventus' connection to Axel as he was before becoming a Nobody, the memory of his heart began to return. --LKM
  - Holy sh--! Gives an entirely new meaning to

"Let's meet again, in the next life."
"Yeah. I'll be waiting."

The fight with Xaladin is a HUGE Final fantasy throwback (more than the other organization members* if you notice a few points about it. Xaladin favors a wind shield that makes it extremely difficult to attack him, he also controls the dragoon heartless. In FF 4, the wind elemental fiend liked to wrap her self up in a hair/tornado shield that made her invulnerable and could only be broken by a dragoon's Leap skill. So how do you fight Xaladin? Your reaction command is the Blue magic skill "Learn" to copy his dragoon attacks to break his wind shield.
So this troper has noticed, all the complaints about Riku leaping off the Altar Of Naught (I could be wrong about the name -You're not. nightelf37-) at the end of this game and boarding a flying motorcycle. But I've realized something. In KH1 "Ansem" (who had been using Riku's body, albeit remolding it) had connected himself and his guardian to the World of Chaos. Before I go on, it was a theory for quite some time that The World That Never Was was End of the World's nobody. Now people tend to think that it was simply an artificial world. Despite this, it's possible that Riku's "flying motorcycle" was the nobody of World of Chaos! He could sense it coming for him and Sora due to his connection to Xehanort's Heartless.
Usually we don't get jack of explanation about how Sora gets new Keyblades on every world he visits, neither on I or II. The first Keyblade Sora earns (Besides his trademark Kingdom Key) on II is the Star Seeker, obtained on Yen Sid's tower. It would remain just another unexplained Keyblade until Birth By Sleep came out. The Kingdom Key D wasn't King Mickey's first Keyblade, that was the Star Seeker, which Yen Sid gave him in the first place. So it's not hard to conclude that same Star Seeker is the one Sora obtains on II. It's a variation of Take Up My Sword. -- Oliveira
- Considering the Keyblades are actually just Keychains changing the form of the main blade, Sora probably just finds Keychains lying around. Kairi even gives him a Keychain (her good luck charm) at one point, and it's possible to use it as a Keyblade.
- It's more likely that the Key chains are just manifestations of Sora's memories of each world.
  - ...Chain of Memories?
A major complaint about the later KH games (namely COM and KH 2) is that Sora seems slightly out of character in them - namely, that he is less compassionate, swatting down Organization members right and left. However, considering Birth By Sleep, Ven's heart, which had been inside Sora, was inside Roxas at that point. So, Sora really WAS less compassionate, at least in COM, than he was in KH1, because he literally had only half as much heart to be compassionate with.
- That could have something to do with it, although I happen to think that it's just Character Development in action. If you consider his state of mind at the end of KH1 - which, thanks to Naminé's actions, would continue to be his state of mind at the beginning of KH 2 - it's understandable that he's losing patience. All he really wants is his friends back, and though he's willing to save the world along the way, Kairi and Riku are his first priority (with Naminé supplanting Kairi for the duration of KH:CoM). If some guys in black coats are between him and his friends, then he's going to plow them down.
  - I like that mention of "losing patience", actually. If Sora's been running around looking for his friends unsuccessfully for a year or more, it's understandable for him to be a little more aggressive in his search. Anti Form is canon proof that events are starting to take their toll on his psyche.
It might just be me, but I was recently playing Kingdom Hearts II and was bugged about Xemnas using all of the former Organization members' weapons. But then it hit me, his power is Nothingness, just like what the Organization members become when they die.
- It gets even better. Why didn't Xemnas use any of the weapons of the Organization who died in Chain of Memories? Because, according to the ending of RE coded and Dream Drop Distance, those members are already back as their orginal selves.
When I played Kingdom Hearts II, it always bugged me a little bit how much of an Idiot Hero Sora was, just driving forward in the plot without barely even considering what Organization XIII was planning. The main reason for this was because of Roxas - during his seven days, as he tried to figure out what was happening around him, he struck me as smarter than Sora, which didn't make sense, considering he was his Nobody. Then I played 358/2 Days, expecting Roxas to stumble over a big secret of the Organization. Instead, he stumbles around in the dark, completely unaware of his and Xion's status as pawns in Xemnas' plans. He doesn't even try to solve the mystery, he's content just to do his work and eat ice cream with his friends. At that point I realized, not only is his thought process exactly like Sora's, he's a kid that never learned to have the drive and initiative that Sora and Xion have in spades. Bravo, Nomura. - Arc Varanus
In response to Xemnas in perhaps THE WORST Nightmare Fuel in the series: Yes, he CAN spare a heart.
- Holy...! Chain of Brilliance! Xemnas went out of his way to extract Sora's heart because the part of him still influenced by Terra had finally found his "friend" he had been searching for for years: Ven, whose heart was inside of Sora's!
  - Alternatively, it could be that the part of him still influenced by Xehanort had finally found his old Apprentice/X-Blade materials. It could be either one, really. Or both.
Okay, so apparently in the Birth by Sleep Ultimania, Nomura said that Xemnas may have been able to use the Keyblade, and that it's possible that he was intentionally choosing not to use one in Kingdom Hearts II. At first, that made absolutely no sense to me, since if Xemnas could use a Keyblade, then Roxas and Xion wouldn't have been so important to his goal of completing Kingdom Hearts. But then I thought back to all the things Xemnas said about the power of Nothingness ("Nothingness is eternal!", "Embrace Nothing!" and so forth), and it all came to me! Xemnas obviously believes that Nothingness is the superior force in the universe. But according to Xehanort's Report there are three types of Keyblade (X-blade aside); Keyblades of Light, Keyblades of Darkness, and Keyblades of Heart. None of these seem to represent Nothingness. So, Xemnas chose not to use the Keyblade, instead wielding Ethereal Blades, which better exemplify the power of Nothing. There's also a reason why he never used it even for heart collection... he never needed to! Xemnas definitely seems like the kind of person not to get his hands dirty unless he absolutely has to (notice how he's the only character other than Saïx who never accompanies you on a mission in Days?), and for a long time he had other people to complete Kingdom Hearts for him. For Kingdom Hearts I, he had Sora to collect hearts, and between Kingdom Hearts I and II, he had Roxas and Xion to pull heart collection duty. Even when Roxas and Xion left, Xemnas still didn't need to use the Keyblade himself, because six days later Sora woke up and started killing the Heartless again. This, of course, makes Xemnas even more of a Bad Ass than he was before, because it means that he is (if I'm not mistaken), the only character so far who actually REJECTED the Keyblade!
- Well, before Roxas joined, there was a nine year period where no one was collecting hearts (Marluxia even says that Roxas is the first member of the Org. to actually collect hearts.) You'd wonder, if he had a Keyblade of his own, why he didn't just collect the hearts and get it over with, but the thing is, Xemnas is very patient, and has apparently spent his time making lots of plans. I mean, consider how well Organized the Organization is for (most) of Days, and the fact that Xemnas has managed to build a castle, city, replicas, and an army of Nobodies with eleven-going-on-twelve Higher ranking ones directly obeying him. And there's a second Fridge Brilliance for Xemnas not going on Heart collection, and it's that he doesn't want to risk being destroyed. When a Heartless and a Nobody are destroyed in that order, the original self is reborn, but it's not known what happens the other way around, and it's doubtful that Xemnas would risk that, so he's basically been waiting nine years for someone to off his Heartless. And finally, it seemed odd to me how Xemnas's weapons were almost more ridiculous than the rest of the Organization, Frickin' Laser Beams coming out of the hands, but now I get that his real weapon was the Keyblade and the Ethereal Blades were a manifestation of his powers.
- If a Heartless and a Nobody being destroyed in that order causes the original self to be reborn, doesn't that mean Xemnas got what he was after?
- There's no particular consequence in killing the Heartless and the Nobody in order. If the Heartless is destroyed, the heart remains in stasis until its Nobody is destroyed. If the Nobody is destroyed, it will be consumed by darkness waiting for its heart to be liberated by the keyblade.
Remember the room where the fairies gave Sora a new outfit? Remember those pieces of cloth that you can observe? Compare what they say to what your Drive Forms emphasize. Foreshadowing maybe?
- In the Final Mix, there was another one added for Limit form (I believe it is called that, DQ me though), so yes, it's confirmed.
Minor brilliance dealing with the Digital Twilight Town Namek-long Prologue: When none of the characters can say "photo"/"photograph," it's not that the Dusks/Assassins could steal words so much as they stole the part of DTT's data containing the word. Lesser Nobodies are incredibly stupid about what they need to do, but amazingly skilled at trying to get it.
Xemnas and Axel both suggest that spending time near Sora's heart caused Axel to feel emotions of his own. If that's true, then no wonder he was acting so strangely! Feeling emotions after several years of not being able to? I'd go a little crazy, too.
Now consider this, when Xemnas personally recruited Roxas into the Organization, you'd think he'd send other members to do the recruiting, as it has been known that he's not one to do his own dirty work, and even when Roxas refused at first, he just backed off. But if you think about it, he has a part of Terra, so his subconscious is actually seeking out Ventus himself! Also, when he said "A New You", it holds a double meaning since we now know that Roxas has Ventus's heart.
Mulan is The Load when she's posing as Ping. She doesn't Take Her Level In Badass until she stops pretending. IT'S SYMBOOOOLIC. As in, Mulan doesn't need to pretend to be a man, she's fine as an Action Girl.
When Hercules goes into his Heroic BSOD after the first visit to Olympus Coliseum, it seems like a big case of Wangst. However, it is hinted that the film |Hercules canonically took place before the events of Sora's visits there, as opposed to being in an Alternate Continuity. If this is the case, Hercules has fought the Hydra before, and really should have known better than to leave it in the Coliseum. This makes his guilt seem much more justified.
- Plus... well, he did just leave a bunch of innocent people at the mercy of a giant monster. If you could've stopped that, you might feel a bit bad about letting it happen too.
  - What innocent people? It was no one around at the Colosseum.
    - Maybe they just weren't rendered
The restoration percentages bothered me for a while. Namine has been restoring Sora's memories for nigh a year, so why does it seem like she just started? Days reveals the answer: it's Xion's fault. Xion had been absorbing Sora's memories, forcing them to reset after Roxas had merged with her and been secured. Of course, now that the memories are coherent, they can be repaired in a single week, rather than several months.
Someone had mentioned this to me before (not here), and I thought it made enough sense to belong in Fridge Brilliance. During the final fight, after Sora and Riku beat him the first, he gives his speech . He KNEW it was very possible that he'd lose the battle. Remember what he said at the beginning of the speech? "I will not allow it to end this way---not yet." NOT YET. He KNEW! Thanks to his studies with the Heartless and Nobodies, he knew that he could return completely if Sora destroyed his Nobody (since Sora already defeated his Heartless). Even if the fake Kingdom Hearts plan failed, he had a Plan B!
Now, there're people out there whose main complaint of this game was Maleficent's Villain Decay. For some of them, the moment when the decay hit the bottom was Maleficent's plan to turn Santa Claus into "Santa Heartless". Now, when you play the game the first time, you might think that at that moment, Maleficent is officially just a second-rate side villain since she decides to waste time turning Santa into a heartless when she should instead try to conquer the universe but if you really think about the whole grand design of her "campy" plan, you realizes that it might be one of her most sadistic and sick plans ever, because Santa Claus' whole job is to deliver Christmas presents to nice boys and girls at Christmas, and from what we can hint from his first scene with the list, he don't just move around in his own world but to other worlds as well, just like the heroes but with a sled instead of a Gummi Ship, and if he would turn into a heartless, he still would be able to travel around the worlds and so if he would become a heartless and then travel to all nice boys and girls during Christmas, they would not be greeted with presents as gifts for their "niceness" but with a Santa Heartless who would take their, and their family members, hearts and turn them into Heartless as well. So what Maleficent is doing is not of Villain Decay form but probably of Magnificent Bastard form since she plans to boost her Heartless horde by turning a beloved and popular figure into a monster and then let him loose on innocent, goodhearted people, specially children, around the universe, and they wouldn't see it coming, no less preparing any defenses for it, since Santa is the last person they would suspect being an heart consuming monster acting on orders of one of the most megalomaniacal people around.
- I had the same thought too, the first time I played the game.
As pointed out in the Monster subpage, Scar's Heartless Form is not that different from his normal form. The only way for a Heartless to correctly resemble their original incarnation is if they were completely evil. In other words: Scar has no good in his heart.
Doubles as Rule of Symbolism: Riku is a lost sheep. Sora travels the cosmos looking for a way to retrieve him, and when he does, carries him on his back to return home. Who among you would not leave the 99 sheep in the wilderness in order to retrieve the lost one?
We know how in Birth By Sleep King Mickey feels terrible for failing Terra, Aqua, and Ventus, right? He probably wouldn't want to repeat that, hence his reluctance to allow Sora in the Battle of 1000 Heartless.
In the Battle of 1000 Heartless, all the Heartless are a lot weaker than their normal version. While of course if they were all a full strength it would have been a LOT more difficult, if you remember that the army was made by the Organization it makes sense on another level. The org. WANTS Sora to defeat tons of heartless so they can get plenty of hearts, so of course they'll send easily expendable ones at him.