Kingdom Hearts/WMG/Open Two

=== This is a list of Wild Mass Guesses which are still possibly true. Just for Fun and silly guesses go on the silly page. If a WMG is Jossed, please move it to the jossed page, if it is Confirmed, please move it to the confirmed page. ===

One of the New World in Kingdom Hearts III (or Birth by Sleep Volume 2) will be Shibuya.
And Sore and the Gang will reunited Neku and his friend along the way, Stopping the Heartless from taking the world again.

Crono will appear in a future installment.
A future game will have time travel as a plot device, and Crono and the Epoch will play an important role in this.

Xehanort's big comeback plan is a second "χ-blade" War.
His plan, as speculated by Yensid, is to create an army of Heartless and convince other worlds to join his cause so as to trigger a war against the heroes of Light. The heroes will begin a campaign to gather all of the worlds they can to their cause, leading up to an epic climactic war between Xehanort's army (whose army's generals may be Final Fantasy villains) and Sora's army, consisting of the Final Fantasy heroes, the Keyblade Masters, and all of his Disney friends. Of course, Xehanort's ultimate plan is to trick them into inadvertently sacrificing themselves to the re-creation of the χ-blade.

The Drive Forms of Kingdom Hearts II will be replaced with Keyblade Armor
After Sora and Riku complete their Mark of Mastery examinations at the end of 3D, they'll be given Keyblade Armor as signs of their mastership, which will be implemented into the gameplay in Kingdom Hearts III.

The reason Xehanort created his Nobody, Xemnas, and his Heartless, "Ansem", was to be rid of Terra's heart.
In an Ansem Report, it's stated that Xehanort, under the guise of Ansem, allowed himself to be consumed by the darkness to grow more powerful. This is after he's recollected his memories of his being Master Xehanort in Terra's body, so it wouldn't make sense to do such a thing in pursuit of power, as he'd undeniably be more powerful full rather than separated into two beings. The only explanation I can gather for this action was that he did it in a gamble to excise Terra's heart. When Heartless-Ansem was created, both Xehanort's heart and Terra's were lost. However, with both Heartless-Ansem and Xemnas destroyed, Xehanort will consequently be revived. And if all goes according to his plan, without Terra, whose light would prevent him from truly accessing pure darkness.

Tetsuya Nomura wishes he never put Final Fantasy characters in Kingdom Hearts
Hence, he keeps downplaying them in recent games (they're entirely absent in 358/2 Days). They have effectively become The Artifact.
 * It's quite possible, considering how much focus the Disney element of the series gets (and the amount of leverage Disney has on this collaboration), that Nomura simply doesn't want the FF side of things to overshadow Disney and the OC side, so he limits the amount of characters from FF. There's also the fact that Nomura has qualms using characters he didn't design (such as Setzer and Vivi in II). This only gives us characters from VII (and its Compilation), VIII, X, X-2, XIII, Versus XIII, Type-0, and (presumably) XIII-2, a good portion of whom have already been introduced. The fact that he redesigned several of the characters Amano drew for Dissidia Final Fantasy somewhat mitigates this, but it could still be a factor.
 * A more likely explanation is that there just isn't a place for them in recent games. 358/2 Days was told from the perspective of Organization XIII, and having any interaction with Final Fantasy characters would cause some plot holes in Kingdom Hearts II. According to one interview, Cloud and Squall were planned to appear in Birth by Sleep, but they were cut to keep Radiant Garden from becoming too complicated (it was already the midpoint of every character's arc, and had more than enough cameos as is). Re:coded even features Cloud as a Guest Star Party Member.

Kingdom Hearts: Hollow Bastion
An 11-year-old Squall takes the role of the main character, with Yuffie, Aerith, Merlin, and possibly Cid as party members. There are no Gummi Ships involved, and it all takes place in Radiant Garden as it's being destroyed by the Heartless. Cloud and Mickey are recurring characters, and in the Downer Ending, Cid and the gang flee Radiant Garden to Traverse Town.
 * Alternately, this is only the prologue of the game, and after it ends, the gang travels to different worlds, defeating Heartless, and showing how Squall went from a little kid to a powerful warrior.

All of the main characters have a continual disguise to help them blend in
Most of the time we, as players, see through this disguise, the exceptions being the worlds their forms Change in. (Eg: Pride Rock, Halloween Town, etc.) Even then, we aren't seeing the full effect. This is the reason that the characters (especially in the more realistic worlds like Port Royal) don't comment on the fact that there is an anthropomorphic duck and dog following Sora around. However if you're seen by another non-resident this results in Glamour Failure specifically for them, which is one of the reasons that characters that know each other still obviously recognize each other. Also, knowledge of their off-world status affects the effectiveness the disguise.

This was probably created by the worlds themselves as a defense mechanism for its inhabitants, excluding the few times it's actually mentioned in canon.
 * I think that nobody cares. In Twilight Town, not only do they have Nobodies, they have Vivi. In Port Royal, you would expect this, but they're too busy fighting undead skeleton pirates to care.

If Sherwood Forest appears in the next game...
Related to below. If Sherwood Forest is featured in an upcoming game, Sora will arrive in the midst of Prince John or meet him first, and witness Robin Hood stealing from him. He'll see a royal monarch and a rogue trying to rob him, and come to the logical conclusion. He will initially ally himself with Prince John (but most likely dislike him) and eventually meet Robin Hood personally and find out who the real villain is. Cue apologies, Robin Hood is added to the party, and Prince John is overthrown.

Worlds appearing in the next Kingdom Hearts game(s)
Any new world you think will be in the next Kingdom Hearts game. Some external properties Disney has to the right to:
 * Atlantis (Atlantis the Lost Empire)
 * Andy's Room (Toy Story), with the main cast shrunk down (ala Castle of Dreams) and with Woody or Buzz as party members.
 * Alternatively, Sunnyside Daycare, if only for the chance to defeat Lotso.
 * Narnia (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)
 * Sherwood Forest (Robin Hood)
 * Notre Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) - Confirmed, but worth mentioning.
 * A world based on The Jungle Book.
 * A world based on A Bug's Life, with the main cast shrunk down and possibly in the form of bugs.
 * A world based on Treasure Planet.
 * Without a doubt, Solar Sailing needs to be a minigame.
 * A world based on Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth, tying up the storyline from KHII.
 * Except for that Nomura stated that KH!Cloud hails from Radiant Garden.
 * A world based on Monsters Inc., possibly with the cast re-imagined as monsters.
 * Alright, I'm calling it; either Sully or Randall was Sora's monster when he was a kid. Or maybe Sully was Sora's and Randall was Riku's...
 * A world based on The Great Mouse Detective, with the main cast shrunk down and possibly in the form of mice.
 * It would most definitely include a clock-based level, if not the entire world.
 * A world based on Chicken Little.
 * A world based on Finding Nemo, with gameplay identical to Atlantica in the first game.
 * A world based on Fantasia, primarily Fantasia 2000 so that you get to fight the Firebird from "Firebird Suite" and befriend that poor forest sprite as a summon.
 * Partially confirmed in KH 3 D, but no word yet on the Firebird or anythin from Fantasia 2000.
 * Britain (The Sword in The Stone); in a move similar to The Hundred Acre Woods, Sora takes the place of Arthur, battles Madame Mim with the help of Merlin, and gains friggin' Excalibur as a Keyblade.
 * But wouldn't Sora have to become King? It'd be a funny joke considering the Pride Lands in KHII, but...
 * Alternately, Sora and "Wart" meet up and become friends, but Sora won't learn Wart's real name until he pulls Excalibur out. "Wait, Arthur as in King Arthur?!"
 * Bonus points if Sora gets inducted as an honorary Knight of the Round Table. It's a step down from King, sure, but Sora's nearly a Canon Sue as it is.
 * The Excalibur-as-keychain idea can still be implemented this way... as Excalibur II.
 * And if there's a Bonus Boss for that world? One guess.
 * Prydain (The Black Cauldron)
 * A world based on The Incredibles, with the party as superheroes (respectively turning Donald into Papernik/Cold Shadow and Goofy into Super Goof).
 * A world based on Pocahontas
 * New Orleans/Louisiana (The Princess and The Frog)
 * A world based on Tangled.
 * A world based on The Rescuers. Alternatively, Australia (The Rescuers Down Under). Whether or not Sora should replace Cody is debatable.
 * A world based on The Three Caballeros, in a manner similar to Timeless River (in terms of pull on the plot, not aesthetics).
 * A world based on The Emperors New Groove.
 * Sleepy Hollow (The Story of Ichabod Crane)
 * Muppet Studios (The Muppets). Sora and his companions will most likely not turn into Muppets due to the presence of humans in the world. First visit could follow the movie's plot, second visit could be themed around a Stylistic Suck re-enactment of previous games' events on The Muppet Show by Sora, Donald, Goofy and the Muppets, with the villains interfering and adding some much-needed seriousness and plot development to avoid having a filler level.
 * Toontown (Who Framed Roger Rabbit). Donald and Goofy, of course, are Toons. Sora's status as one would be left ambiguous or he'd just be a human.
 * Disney owns the English dub of Transformers Robots in Disguise, so Tokyo could appear. Takara has made transformers based on Mickey and Donald, and I could imagine Sora taking a form based on G1 Hot Rod. Imagine a Matrix of Leadership-based Keyblade or a Limit that lets you combine with that world's party member (Like optimus/Fire Convoy, for example)!
 * If they ever did any sort of Transformers world, they'd probably get the rights from Paramount to base it on the movieverse, and Sora and his companions most likely wouldn't change form. This seems slightly more plausible than it would have a few years ago (mostly because of Disney's deal with Paramount concerning the Marvel Cinematic Universe), but is still pretty implausible.
 * If Rick Riordan would allow it, Disney is the publisher of Percy Jackson & The Olympians. Riptide could be an acquirable Keyblade, and they would have to find a way to reconcile it with Olympus Coliseum.
 * Or The Kane Chronices, as it wouldn't interfere with OC.
 * A Marvel Comics-based world, with various heroes as party members.
 * Actually plausible. See the WMG way down below.
 * Even if it is technically a dead franchise. Disney owns Miramax, which produced the first three Bionicle movies, and Lego churns out several Disney themes, so I wouldn't put a Bionicle world past the realm of possibility.

Kind of inconsequential, but...
The "lookout point beyond the dock" (where Tidus is during the first day of the first game) was less than a year ago. That's why there's rope left over from when it was built.

The most powerful weapon in KH is one's will
How do Beast and Riku jump worlds in KH1? They will themselves to. Xemnas is the most powerful entity, and yet he lacks a heart, but he, as well as the other nobodies, has the will to find a true existence. The reason Keyblades are so strong in and of themselves is because they are a direct weapon of one's willpower incarnate, and have will themselves. The stronger characters and Keyblade wielders have intense willpower, and the X-Blade wielder was defeated in a battle of wills against Ven, who weilds just a Keyblade in that fight.

Sora's adventure is shattering his mind.
People complain that KH2 Sora doesn't feel like the regular Sora at all and is just a stereotype of a 90s teenager. This was an intentional ploy by the writers to show how Sora's journey has left him so shattered that he's forced to develop alternate personalities to handle the various turmoils in his life. That's why he can go from "Let's star in a musical~" to "RAWR KILL THE ORGANIZATION" at the drop of a hat.

Proof that Sora would have some trauma:

1. His world was destroyed in front of his eyes.

2. Forced to kill monsters from "the black lagoon" without any experienced adults helping him (consistently). Seriously, why'd Leon and Co. let those three go alone? They had no way of knowing whether they'd get help from others on different worlds.

3. Being forced to kill humans/humanoid people. (Shan-Yu, Organization XIII, Ansem, etc.)

4. Suicide by Keyblade.

5. Literally being mind-****ed by Namine.

6. Having more people come out of him than Octomom. (Roxas, Xion, Namine, etc.)

7. Having to (possibly) assimilate some of Ven's traits as a child might've led to a suppression of his own personality. (This one is more speculation than the others.)

On a similar note, Sora will have a Heroic Blue Screen of Death soon, and Anti Form will not just be a Drive Form.
Just bear with me on this one. The Sora we know is cheerful, cute, and at times a little dim. However, he has shades of showing he's not as happy as he seems. It's been said that Anti-Form is a result of all the negative impact his journey has had on him. The thought alone is a little terrifying that Anti-Form consumes him entirely with darkness, takes away his ability to wield his Keyblade and leaves an animal-like creature incapable of even walking on two feet. He has no weapons, this form will just rip you apart with his hands. How much rage and anger do you have to feel to claw someone to death? Or in the game's case, fade into nothingness. If Vanitas is with Sora, he's bound to exploit that side of him and knowing Sora, he'll want to stop before he hurts anyone. And if he does, especially if it's Kairi or Riku, he could possibly reach the Despair Event Horizon depending on how badly he injured them.

Not to mention Sora doesn't exactly deal with his emotions. Donald and Goofy just tell him "no sad faces" and leave it at that whereas Riku is allowed to be as moody as the hell he wants. When it comes down to it, Sora gives a lot of himself and it's almost like he's not allowed to angst. If the Anti-Form doesn't get to him, all of the turmoil will.

The Cornerstone of Darkness exists, and Mickey is trying to combine both Cornerstones
This theory is mostly fed by my desire to have a World somewhat based on Epic Mickey, but think about it; Since Light cannot exist without darkness and viceversa, Disney Castle has the Cornerstone of Light, while the Cartoon Wasteland (Which will be renamed the "Disney Wasteland") holds the Cornerstone of Darkness. Epic Mickey has already happened, and Mickey knows his big half-brother is the king of the Darkness of his own world, which is somehow separated, and decided to figure out a way to combine both. Oh, and, since Minnie and Mickey can conjure Holy-like spells, Oswald will shoot Ultima-like Spells.
 * I would think he would have Meteor-like spells.

Sora's going to unite the hearts of all worlds and take away the pain of everyone...
With an Assimilation Plot. More specifically, by absorbing the hearts and memories of everyone into himself. He's already done it to a few people already to help them... What happens if he ends up having to do that to everyone to save them?

Demyx is the true leader of Organization XIII
And his true element isn't water. It's actually dance. He does control the Dancer Nobodies after all, and his weapon is a musical instrument. His power over dance allows him to control things by playing his music. His power is SO strong, in fact, that he can control almost anyone, even Xemnas, making him the leader of Organization XIII, and the strongest character in all of the Kingdom Hearts series.

Don't believe me? Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ Wf Jn 8 dwa U.

As you can see, Demyx is not only able to control Xemnas, but also replicate him. At first glance, this may seem unlikely. However, in his two battles in Kingdom Hearts, Demyx creates water from out of nowhere. This means that Demyx either had water with him already, possibly in a bottle or something, and is able to replicate objects and substances that are simple enough for him (which would mean that Xemnas is simple to him, think about it), or he is able to create matter from nothing. Either way, this means that Demyx has god-like powers.

At this point you may be asking "If Demyx is so insanely powerful, how did Sora defeat him?" The answer: He did not defeat him. Demyx faked his death. He is still alive, and his plot to become even more powerful is still in progress. My hypothesis is that Demyx is creating an unstoppable army of dancing slaves to destroy Sora. The origin of this ultimate army of destruction and mad dancing skills is emerging from an unexpected, but powerful source. The source: The Walt Disney Company itself.

Think about it. Disney has a long history of music and dancing. The fact that the majority of the worlds visited by Org. XIII are Disney worlds is not coincidence. Demyx, being the leader, works mainly on reconnaissance missions. This is so that he can explore Disney worlds, find suitable people to be part of his army, and control them with his sitar. The Disney characters, being used to randomly breaking out into song and dance, do not even suspect that they are now Demyx's puppets. Now let's factor in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrxkmp 64 Ei E. If my hypothesis is correct, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Minnie, Daisy, and even Pluto are now controlled by Demyx. Even worse is that Sora will be unable to attack Demyx's army, as the majority of them are either his friends or innocent. Mickey, being a Keyblade wielder, will be able to destroy Heartless and create Kingdom Hearts for Demyx, making Sora useless.

The only question that remains is "Why?" "Why would Demyx go through all of this?" "Couldn't he just destroy Sora himself?" The most likely answer to this is "Yes he could, but he's too lazy and would rather have other people to fight and destroy Sora for him. Duh."
 * There's no way a slacker like Demyx could control water in addition to his true element. No, the real wielder of dance is the black cloaked moogle in 385/2 Days. The reason Demyx acts so lazy and incompetent (he has to reread his orders mid-mission in his first appearance) is because he is resisting the moogle's manipulation of him through the power of dance. Those who doubt the moogle's powers and skill would do well to remember that s/he is the only member of the Organization that isn't killed or absorbed by the end of KH2.
 * But Demyx's sitar controls water, not him. So it makes sense that he controls the element of dance. Which can only lead me to one conclusion, from the WMG below:
 * Demyx's sitar controls water? Do Axel's chakrams control fire? Do Xaldin's spears control wind? Does every Organization member have another element?

Sora's true element is that of surprise.

 * Best. Ever.

Apprentice Xehanort's becoming a Heartless/Nobody was a Plan by
to gain freedom
 * Xehanort's Heartless (the one we fought in KH1) is essentially . Xemnas, however, If, perhaps the whole idea of becoming a heartless in the first place was.
 * Xehanort's Heartless possessing Riku may have been another part of the plan. convinces Xehanort's Heartless into trying to possess the one person who could possibly defeat him from the inside;  Riku. When Riku defeated Xehanort's Heartless in Chain of Memories, XH taunted Riku by saying that part of him still lingers. What Xehanort's Heartless didn't count on was that the part of him still in Riku . When Riku was forced to call on Xehanort's Heartless when fighting Roxas, he inadvertently called on  instead, who was all too happy to lend him Xehanort's power with no strings attached. And after Ansem's KH-encoding machine blew up,  gets freed from Riku, allowing it to reunite with
 * Long story short, when the next game comes around,
 * That last part, at least, has been Jossed: Previews for Kingdom Hearts 3D cut between Sora fighting XH and Riku fighting Xemnas -- a Xemnas who looks like classic black coated Xemnas, as opposed to.

Reconnecting everyone will involve asking for help from the Disney Characters.

 * Think about it; with the series' inherent Massive Multiplayer Crossover nature, there is a solution, either magical or technological for everything. Plus they owe Sora. Also, Dr. Facilier will be responsible for the post Kingdom Hearts I heartless problem with his friends on the other side.

Namine planned everything in Kingdom Hearts II in order to get Roxas to merge with Sora and then allow herself to merge with Kairi.

 * Even as everybody else puts their own agenda to work, and we know EVERYBODY has an agenda that they generally don't like talking about, everything still fits into Namine's plan. Namine just wanted to fix Sora's memories, merge Roxas with Sora, and then when she's done, go find Kairi and merge with her. Why? Because Namine is one of the few characters who knows exactly what's going on with everybody else's agenda, and she knows full well what a miserable existence being a Nobody is. She just wants to fix what she's done wrong and then return to where she belongs. Now the catch -- the bit with Roxas doesn't actually have to do with restoring Sora so much as it does with taking care of her brother before she can be complete. After all, Roxas has no memories of his past, and he certainly doesn't know what's in his own best interests, so even though they're twins, Namine assumes a big sister role, making sure that Roxas is safe before she can rest.

== The story that Kairi's grandmother told her in the Hollow Bastion library isn't a legend -- Kairi's grandmother is one of the children who rebuilt the worlds from that glimmer of light in their hearts. == We don't know anything about how long ago the events of that story happened, but we do know that this is a series that does not let plot points go. Perhaps we'll eventually get a gaiden game detailing how the worlds were separated starring Kairi's grandmother as a child. It makes about as much sense as a lot of the other stuff here.

Kingdom Hearts III might include:
Aqua and Ansem will return or be rescued from the Realm of Darkness, with the help of Sora, Riku, and/or King Mickey. Aqua and Ansem will join Sora and company in the fight against Xehanort, who's been reborn in Terra's body but with all of his lost memories. Xehanort once again is trying to gain the power from Kingdom Hearts, but before that he will go after Riku, who still holds Xehanort's heartless powers, and will try to create another X-Blade. The way he'll try to accomplish this is by waking Ven (either capturing Sora and getting Ven's soul out or by putting another soul in Ven's empty body) and also going after Kairi. Since Xehanort has 'regained' his Keyblade mastery and powers, Aqua will train Sora in the ways of the Keyblade, and he will become a Keyblade Master to have a chance at defeating Xehanort, once and for all.

There will be thirteen games in the Kingdom Hearts series.
Come on. With all the importance on the number thirteen? That's probably how many games they've planned to make all along. Meaning we are now at the halfway point, since six have been done (not counting remakes).
 * This is asking for a Franchise Zombie.
 * It's only a franchize zombie if the story is complete without them. As each new game adds to the intrigue, it doesn't appear that that's the case, for now at least.
 * I've got a guess how it will go. Kingdom Hearts 3, two games with silly names, Kingdom Hearts 4, two more games with silly names, and Kingdom Hearts 5 will be the Grand Finale.
 * Very unlikely, since currently there are plans for nine games in the Xehanort saga, and another 4 after that for the next saga is kinda disappointing.
 * Well, as long as they make no more side games after Dream Drop Distance...
 * It's stupid to handwave side games like that, especially since Chain of Memories, a side game, was vital to the overall plot.

Proof of Existence isn't a graveyard for Nobodies; it's just the portals to their bedrooms.

 * Right, because Luxord sleeps on a deck and Saix is just that stoic that he sleeps on the floor with no furniture.
 * It's possible that the rooms change their structure dependent on the wills of the owner (think Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter's tea party). Nothing's official, but such an idea doesn't seem so farfetched given the nature of The World that Never Was.

Organization XIII members kept calling Sora "Roxas" during Kingdom Hearts II because when they looked at him, they saw Roxas.
It fits with the conversation with the nobodies that occured after the first battle with Armored Xemnas.
 * Alternatively, this was an aftereffect of his absorption of . The strongest memory relating to Sora, Orgy. XIII members have all have to do with Roxas. Most people still see him as Sora becuase they are either absorbing his own impression of himself or only ever were contacted by Sora directly. This expalins the cryptic "Wouldn't you like to know?" provided by Xigbar as he still has vague memories of "poppet."
 * It might also have to do with the fact that Sora and Roxas didn't "harmonize" until the end of the game. Due to the illusory nature of the Xion component, everyone saw whichever side, Nobody or Heart, they were personally closer to, or the Heart side if they were neutral, since that one was in control. When Sora and Roxas came to terms and unlocked Final Form, they fused fully, and presumably the dual image effect collapsed.
 * Except for Kairi, which leads to:

When Sora and Kairi finally get married, Roxas and Namine will go to sleep during their intimate periods to avoid being squicked out.
Because nobody wants to be having sex while seeing their twin.
 * Alternatively, Roxas and Naminé will have their OWN intimate periods! Well, it's farfetched, but whatever.

The two hooded organization members in the drawing of Roxas and Axel in Namine's room were Xion and Riku.
This was from when Axel and Roxas saw them in Twilight Town.
 * This is one of the many indications that Xion was pre-planned. There is also a seashell being washed away by the tides in the Kingdom Hearts II opening, which makes far more sense after 358Over2Days. As noted above, Sora seems to shift appearences depending on who's looking at him after absobing Roxas, which also makes sense when you consider Xion's nature. Also she explains why Axel was surprised by Roxas's Dual-Wielding and in the scene you mentioned Roxas focuses on this picture specifically maybe because it's the only way he can see his friends.
 * Nomura himself said that Xion was planed since kh2 was in development.

is the Darkside from Sora's Awakening.
It came from his shadow did it not?
 * It wouldn't explain why he was so absurdly weak, unless was playing his "I Need You Stronger" shtick again, buying his time and regaining his strength until the time was ripe to.
 * Given what happened to him, Vanitas is likely very weak. Sora is extremely light-aligned at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts, which is likely keeping his heart well in check.
 * It could also be an extension of the yin-yang relation Ventus and Vanitas shared in Birth. Seeing as

Nobodies not appearing in Kingdom Hearts II.
They don't appear because their masters were killed in Chain of Memories And I have no idea what to say that Zexion's minions are, any help?
 * Reaper -- commanded by Marluxia, wields scythes.
 * Vanguard/Knight/Paladin -- commanded by Lexaeus, wields a shield and a giant sword
 * Ninja -- commanded by Larxene, wields kunai knives
 * Dopplegangers/Mimes -- commanded by Vexen, shapeshift into a copy of their enemies
 * The Scholar job class from Final Fantasy III, maybe?
 * Personally, I think that Mimes/Dopplegangers would be more fitting of Zexion's minions and Scholar would be more fitting for Vexen.
 * Blue Mage could also apply to Zexion. Lexaeus probably wouldn't completely fit as a Paladin (especially due to his lack of healing abilities or ability to cover his allies). The aforementioned Knight and Vanguard, or even Gladiator and Warrior could work. Reaper isn't actually a job class in Final Fantasy, but since Assassin is already taken, it'll have to do.
 * I've always used Seers as Zexion's LN. If not for the fact that the original class wielded books, too, but they have the most adorable costumes. Lookit those little hoodies, folks. All joking aside, they're quite powerful and seem fitting of our mastermind, here.
 * Also, what about Alchemists for Vexen? Cliche, yes, but effective...
 * Vexen could be a Mage like Donald. There's a nice symmetry to the Knight boss dropping a weapon for the Mage and the Mage boss dropping a weapon for the Knight.

All replicas are doomed to go Axe Crazy because the Replica Project is an abomination.
They're just fine until they fully mature, then they naturally want to kill the person they are a clone of before turning on their creators. What's really creepy is that Days implies there are more replicas out there.
 * Right... So, Xion wasn't a completely tragic person whose only reason for turning evil was that she was forced into it? By her creator?
 * No, that's exactly my point -- she was a completely tragic character who only turned evil because she was forced to by her creator, because all replicas are cursed to become Axe Crazy. Just look at the Riku Replica. Since Vexen's work violates the natural order (even more than creating nobodies and artificial heartless), the result is that when these creations mature, they first develop real emotions, and then they devolve into insanity, seeking to supplant the one they were a clone of, and then destroy their creators as punishment for creating them. Xion outright loves Roxas, but she loses control to her clone programming once enough memories have been poured into her; that's the tragedy.
 * But Xion was quite insistent that her death was her own choice in her final scene with Roxas. She never wanted to kill Roxas.
 * She was just too scared to end her existence without some there.

Ursula can release a memory-erasing toxin in her ink.
This is why Ariel can't remember her in Kingdom Hearts II. Triton and Sora can remember her, however, because they have either an immunity to the toxin (Triton, who has known her for a long time or cast it with his own powers) or because they are protected by a higher power (Sora's fancy new clothes, and was 'poison' as a status ailment removed in KHII again)? In any case, this draws parallels between her and Sin.
 * Or there's a chance Namine messed up reconstructing Ariel's memory after Co M.

Riku is a direct descendant of
Between and Riku's many parallels to what we see of Xehanort's fighting style, it's very likely.
 * When Terra met the five-year-old Riku on Destiny Islands, he declared Riku his successor.
 * And that is what we call Irony.
 * I don't think fighting styles parallel is evidence because we are shown Riku's fighting style when he was in possession by Ansem, which Ansem is the heartless of Xehanort who is actually *points your spoiler*
 * There's a few scenes in KHII where, from behind, Riku looks like a younger Xemnas...

The Heartless don't get stronger after you rescue Kairi; rather, Sora has gotten weaker.
Inflating the Heartless' stats is simply a gameplay mechanic to achieve the effect of what's really going on: Sora has lost half his strength to the newly-formed Roxas. Since the game's programming doesn't allow it to cut Sora's HP, Strength, and Defense in half, it instead nearly doubles the HP, Strength, and Defense of the Heartless.
 * But that doesn't explain why Donald and Goofy both have an equally hard time fighting the new Heartless...

Vanitas Will Become Sora's Super-Powered Evil Side in KHIII
Because the Loss of Identity plot that will result from Sora learning just how many separate entities compose him is just too much for Square to pass up. Plus, having a mechanic by which Sora gives into his rage long enough for Vanitas to possess him is awesome.
 * It could also set up what could possibly be the most epic Battle in The Center of The Mind in KH history... ever. Especially if the individual facets that now make up Sora briefly return to help him subdue Vanitas.

The Big Heart-shaped Moon Kingdom Hearts Xehanort conjures in the sky in Birth By Sleep is made up of hearts of those who were in the Keyblade War
Kingdom Hearts 2's Moon was made by captive hearts released from slain heartless, so I thought in a Keyblade War, you would be releasing hearts when stabbing people with the keyblade.

The secret boss mentioned for the American release will be Omega Weapon
Because kicking Omega Weapon's ass would be totally awesome.

Keyblade forms are based on Memory and Personality
We've seen through the series the keyblade, mostly Sora's but in 358/2 Days all the other keyblade users, and some not, have their weapon of choice change apparently based upon the keychain attached to it, or the gear used. Or when neither is present.

While it seems the item attached gives the keyblade its new powers, a alternative is that it's the memories these items evoke that does so. Whenever Sora attaches a keychain to his blade, he remembers the world he went to and recieved it from, and this transforms it.

The base form of all keyblades, on the other hand, is probally based on the user's own personal mindset and emotions, which is why Sora, Roxas, and Xion all have the same Kingdom Key, Mickey has the Kingdom Key D, and Riku has the Way to Dawn, all 3 being confirmed as "Base" forms in the KHII Extra Ending.

This is further exemplified in the ending of 358/2 Days, and the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. When Roxas summons two keyblades for the first time, at first their both Kingdom Keys, but then drawing on the memories he might have absorbed from Xion, he transformed them into keyblades from Sora's past. Arguments twords Sora not having the Oblivion when Roxas was created can be handwaved by Roxas being "Zombie-like" during the period after his formation, during this gap is presumably when Sora gained the Oblivion, and when Xion was created. After all Roxas didn't have complete memories of Sora until absorbing her anyway.

Later in KHII, he lost most of his memories until the second boss battle with Axel, where he really does remember, and it is only THEN that he is able to re-use his Oathkeeper/Oblivion combo. Without his memories, the best he can do is the Kingdom Key, which is part of his core personality. There's also other keyblade wielders, such as Master Eraquis, whose keyblades seem evocative of their own personality.

This helps explain as well why there can be multiple Oathkeepers, despite only one charm made by Kairi, to the point that in the KHII cutscene Roxas can pin your keyblade with one of his, his being the oathkeeper and it being possible at that point for YOUR keyblade to be the oathkeeper as well. Though it doesn't explain why you can visibly see that both Oathkeepers have keychains on them...

It's possible this even extends to non-keyblade weapons such as the ones other members of Organization XIII uses, though this is a stretch. It would also explain why Riku's Way To Dawn always appears like that; its based upon his core personality, which is where the Soul Eater came from, hense the similar appearance. Could also explain why Roxas can even still use the keyblade to begin with without a heart; even though it empowers and amplifies the power of a heart, it is drawn from memories, which is why we can see Complete Beings, as well as a Nobody using it, but never a heartless.
 * But there are two Oathkeeper charms- the original, and a duplicate made by Namine in Castle Oblivion.

Paopu fruit doesn't do anything.
It's just a metaphor. The true love togetherness cosmic magic legend is just a rumor passed around by bored teenagers trapped on an island. They occur as a recurring motif simply as a symbol of other, more important themes that Kingdom Hearts revolves around.

Minion level nobodies were once Dusks and Creepers that were transformed and promoted by the Organization as a reward for good work.
I figure if nobodies can be transformed into Dusks as a punishment, they can be transformed into more powerful minions as a reward. How else do you explain them having powers similar to, but vastly weaker than, the Organization member that commands them?

Braig / Xigbar was manipulating Terranort / Xemnas
The latter had no memory of any evil plans, and, once he lost his heart, was, technically speaking, all Terra, no Xehanort. Why did he continue making very Xehanort-like plans the entire time after memory loss? Because The Dragon was whispering what to do into his ear.

Something will happen to Aerith
Be it death with resurrection, death without resurrection, death but becomes a ghost, kidnapping, etc.

The next spinoff Kingdom Hearts game will detail Mickey's time in the dark realm.
In the "Another Report" that came with KH2 Final Mix+, Nomura states that there are four untold stories he'd like to present. These being Xehanort's Past(Birth By Sleep) Roxas' time in the organization(Days), Riku's absence, and The King's absence. Condiering Riku's absence after Castle Oblivion is presented largely in Days, it seems that Mickey's absence during Kingdom Hearts 1 is the only one of those left untold. So it seems it's very likely that one of the mentioned two new spinoff games releasing before KH3 will chronicle the adventure Mickey had in his search for the Kingdom Key D in the dark realm.
 * Except that the story of Mickey's absence was referring to his time during the events in KH1 which is already presented in coded. Since Days is largely focused on Roxas' time in the Organization, I doubt covers Riku's story as well.
 * except it was cut out of coded

The creation of a Nobody's name is not decided by your true name, but by what name you are most commonly known.
For most people, these two names are one and the same. But the question remains: why would Xehanort's Nobody's name be an anagram of Ansem (with the symbolic X)? Simple; Xehanort changed his name to Ansem before he split himself up into Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (the Heartless) and Xemnas (the aforementioned Nobody). This fact suggests also means that the reason Saïx confirmed that Axel's Other was not named "Lea," but because of some unmentioned incident that led to an embarrassing nickname, everyone started calling him "Lea."

Vanitas will form a Psycho Rangers with Maleficent and Pete.
Vanitas is of course the Evil Counterpart to Sora, while Maleficent's magic makes her the rival to Donald and Pete's forcefield counters Goofy's shield. They'll even have world specific party members just like Sora's party by teaming with the local Big Bad. Considering the Villain Decay Maleficent's been getting and Square's obvious bias towards their own characters, playing sidekick to a Original Generation villain is pretty much her best bet to ever accomplish anything ever again.

The events of Final Fantasy VII already happened but it was Tifa who died, not Aerith
The Tifa and Sephiroth that haunt Cloud are his own memories of failing to prevent Tifa's death.

The is a defense program made by Kingdom Hearts.
Its pretty damn convenient for  to suddenly rise up and attack things, especially since such a thing SHOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE. There was no intention from  to make   sentient and fight back against him and everyone else was too far away to do anything complex like that. But Kingdom Hearts was just above them and it knew what  wanted to do to/with it, so it cobbled   back together, gave it kickass powers and let it loose on. This theory is supplemented by the sudden and inexplicable boundary field that sealed  in with  ; this too was made by Kingdom Hearts in order to prevent   from getting to it.

Roxas makes Nobodies feel as an inherent power of what he is.
Apart from the whole mess with Kairi, Kairi's heart, and Namine,  that is, a Nobody close to his heart, i.e., Axel. need have nothing to do with this until we find out more about Replicas (personally, I think Replicas are more than capable of feeling emotion far beyond the synthesized emotion that Nobodies can use to work themselves into a frenzy, tizzy, etc.).
 * Xion doesn't need to be explained actually  This does expalin Axel though.

The majority of Orginization XIII (minus Xemnas at least) sees what they're doing as a victimless crime that will ultimately fix up everything they broke.
They assume all the people whose hearts are stolen by the heartless they release will turn into Nobodies themselves. It might suck for the majority of them who's will is weak enough that they end up as low-level ones like Dusks, but if they can put up with feeling incomplete for years all the new jerks can handle it for a few months until Kingdom Hearts is complete. They think Kingdom Hearts will give all of the Nobodies new hearts. Then everyone who was dehearted due to their plan can toddle happily back to their own world once Sora's cleared it out.

Because they're detached from their own emotions they're completely baffled by how anyone could get upset about what they're doing when as far as they can see it's no harm no foul.

During the final battle against Xemnas Riku unknowingly did a rite of succession with Sora.
As Sora and Riku finish off Xemnas both Sora and Riku take hold of Way to the Dawn in a scene that screams "This is important". And as we saw with Aqua and Kairi, touching a Master level Keyblade users blade while they are in battle can unknowingly cause a Keyblade rite of succession whether the Master wants to or not. Sora was able to become a Keyblade user without the rite due to being right next to Riku as he gave into Darkness seconds before Riku was to recieve his Keyblade and by having Ventus's heart in him which allowed him to use it and also allowed him to dual wield with Ventus's keyblade. This allowed Sora to be special compared to the all the other Keyblade users and create conflict over who the Kingdom Key truely belonged to. But eventually Sora is going to have to give Ventus his heart back. However by getting the rite with Riku this will 1. Allow Sora to keep using a Keyblade after Ventus's heart is put back in his body. 2. Possibly allow Sora to be chosen by his own personal keyblade, since KK is really Riku's allowing Sora to continue to Dual Wield after losing Ventus's heart and keyblade. and 3. Since Sora is going into the Dark Realm at some future point he could be chosen by a Dark Realm keyblade which will cause him to have a Keyblade from both Realms. This could also possibly allow Sora use of the X Blade as well.

The Replica program was a failure because the Organization couldn't figure out how to keep the Replicas from falling in love.
Lacking hearts, the Organization members were utterly incapable of understanding the emotions that the Replicas experienced. Consequently, it never occurred to them that these emotions could become a problem for their agenda. Every time a Replica falls in love with one of the other characters, the Organization loses control over it, and they couldn't understand what was wrong, much less come up with a work-around.

Riku was wrong. The Kingdom Key was always intended for Sora.
In the latest Ultimania it was pointed out that Riku could take the Kingdom Key because he had had the ability to use Keyblades given to him by Terra. Not that he could take it because it originally belonged to him. So what if that stuff about it supposed to be his was a lie told to have him attempt to take the Keyblade and that scene where it looked like the KK had arrived too late to go to Riku was just a Red Herring? There's no set time between you getting a rite of sucession and being chosen after all, since Kairi recieved the rite before even Riku did yet didn't get a Keyblade until long after Sora and Riku already had on (and Kairi still hasn't officially been chosen, it was given to her) and Mickey had been using his Mentor's for years before he was chosen by the Kingdom Key D. Therefore all that stuff about the KK being Riku and going to Sora instead was a lie by Maleficent. KK chose Sora from the get go mistaking him having Ven's heart for him having a rite of sucession, and Riku could only take it because he tried to when Sora was doubting himself and Riku had the stronger heart. The Keyblade that was supposed to go to Riku had always been Way to the Dawn, which he did get later on. So there was no Keyblade mix up, everyone got the Keyblades they were supposed to when they were supposed to and anything said or shown otherwise was just Red Herring camera tricks and lies said to make the friends turn on each other.

Riku couldn't see Namine or Roxas in the cutscene after the first battle with armored Xemnas.
There is no logical reason why Riku should be able to see Namine or Roxas if Mickey, Donald and Goofy couldn't see them. Therefore, the most logical conclusion is that he couldn't see or hear them, and he only deduced what was going on by hearing what Sora and Kairi said (like how one might deduce to whom and about what someone is speaking on the phone). Sora and Kairi could see each other's nobodies because of the intimate connection they had to their creation.

Twilight Town is A Premature
Twilight Town is the world perfectly in between The Realm of Darkness and The Realm of Light. However worlds have hearts. Logically the realms would have hearts. Alternately the Keyblades are the hearts of worlds and realms, explaining their appearance. "Sealing" a keyhole actually releases the world's heart. The Kingdom Key (from here on called the Kingdom Key L) and the Kingdom Key D first "meet" at The End Of The World. However, the first time Sora is guaranteed to have the Kingdom Key L equiped is at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II when King Mickey shows up in Twilight Town. The X-Blade is made up of The Kingdom Keys L and D, plus an unknown weapon resembling the Ultima Weapon. The three split because Vanitas was defeated by Ventus, the premature X-Blade could not become complete, so logically Kingdom hearts was incomplete as well. This allowed the Heartless to be created, because the darkness was draining from Kingdom Hearts, which should have been perfect Twilight. Because Ven's heart was pure light, it became the first heartful, the light from a heart. However Vanitas became a heartless. Ven and Vanitas's hearts turned into the Kingdom Keys L and D, while the rest turned into the Ultima Weapon, a perfect balance with no heart and thus a "nobody". The Keyblade of people's hearts needed all Heartfuls to unlock Kingdom hearts. No conclusion.

Ellone is Kairi's mother.
Nobody seems to have a theory about Kairi's mother, so here's one. The flashback to the Castle Library in Kingdom Hearts I seemed similar to something Ellone would do.

Nobodies have feelings, but do not have a conscience.
I think everyone is pretty much in agreement about the fact that Nobodies can feel. They get hurt, get angry, pine for what they want. However, they have no conscience - they can't "follow their hearts" because they don't have hearts to follow. This is why they have no problem with doing whatever they feel is necessary to get what they want. They are incapable of feeling guilty.

Pinnochio was an artificially created Nobody
Nobodies are bodies without hearts, and Riku explicitely mentions that Pinnochio originally had no heart. This raises two interesting points, firstly, either Geppetto or the Blue Fairy (the latter I seem to recall having no mention) can make Nobodies out of inanimate objects, secondly, a Nobody may in fact be able to develop a heart of their own. They may just need something acting as a moral compass for them to build around. Pinnochio had Jiminy as an acting conscience, and it may be said that That Axel had Roxas, who in turn had Sora, as did Namine.
 * Well, the Blue Fairy actually gave him life

Surviving Replicas from the Replica Program will be enemies in Kingdom Hearts III.
We know that Replicas have serious cases of Cloning Blues, and we know from Days that there are many Replicas we haven't seen yet. If the manga is to be believed, Vexen made 44 Replicas of himself (btw, I wonder if Replicas of Nobodies have hearts). If they're anything like the Riku Replica, they're bound to go Axe Crazy, so they'll wind up as enemies.

Kairi is a Badass Bookworm.
That is all.

The Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts III will be...
Search your heart, you know that would be intense!

At almost any other point in time, Riku jumping into the Darkness at the beginning of KH1 would have been a good thing.
We know by now that neither the Light nor the Dark is automatically good or bad and that there are Keyblades that hail from both realms. Riku's statement "I'm not afraid of the Dark(ness?)!" shows that he would actually be a good candidate to wield from this realm. Many people would naturally be afraid of the Dark because it is so different from the Light which they are more familiar with. Someone who could understand Darkness and not be afraid of it would be a good person to wield a Keyblade from that realm. However by the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 1, previous events have caused a serious corruption in the Darkness leading to some decidedly not fun times for Riku.

Eraqus is the
After  him, he. Keyblade masters are established as being able to release a person's heart. Without a vessel,. This also spawned a nobody, possibly a

Future summons will include:

 * Secret agent Perry the Platypus
 * Iago (or Iago)
 * Rufus
 * a chocobo
 * Pluto (when playing as Mickey)
 * Angel (in a Distaff Counterpart or B-Side Character game)
 * Adult Bambi
 * Flower
 * Multiple Army Men or Little Green Men
 * Frienemies from the Other Side
 * Pete's Dragon, Elliot
 * Goliath
 * Darkwing Duck Imagine, "I am the terror, that flaps in the night. I am the Shadow, that fights for the Light. I am DARKWING DUCK!" as a summon cutscene.

Sora's apparent Hero Decay actually is his growth as a person.
Okaaaay. This goes back to the original KH. Sora starts out knowing squat about darkness. His first encounters with the Heartless was in a dream, and later, during the destruction of the islands. Going back to BBS, Sora only inherited Ven's heart, but not his Keyblade. Probably the only reason he was given one because he was the only viable target left. When Sora lands on Traverse Town, he wasn't very keen on saving the world or killing Heartless; he just wanted to get his friends back. So, initially, he travels the world, all the while just looking for his friends. The Heartless (and by extension, the rest of the antagonists), to him, were a secondary concern. At that time, the only reasons he killed Heartless was a combination of his fighting pride and the fact that Heartless tends to beat up people into pulp and then turn them into Heartless.

The first catalyst for his growth: his first visit to Hollow Bastion. Riku reveals that, no, Sora wasn't supposed to have the Keyblade, and proceeds to take it away from him. Donals and Goofy are forced to leave because their instructions were to protect the keybearer, and Sora was no longer one. But Sora, seeing Beast's determination, decides he's not going abandon his friends. So he charges on. (He knew that his wooden sword was useless, so he let Beast do the heavy hitting.)

He finally meets the (now possessed) Riku, who tells him: a) he need 7 princess to open Kingdom Hearts. b) Kairi is one of said princesses. c) Kairi's heart had hidden itself in Sora's before she was kidnapped. Problem: Sora needs to seal the keyhole, but it is incomplete. Solution? Complete the Keyhole so he can finish the job. So he take the Dark Keyblade and stabs himself with it. It works. Unfortunately, the Dark Keyblade also releases his heart, turning him into a Heartless. Whoops.

But! Sora retains some of his sentience and actively seeks out Kairi, who turns his back into normal (mostly, anyway). They flee to Traverse Town to catch their breath. After some talking, Sora comes to realize, deep down, that he actually loved Kairi but had glossed it over (somewhat) as a platonic relationship. Kairi confirms her feelings for Sora by giving him her lucky charm, which is heavily implied to be the Keychain of his Oathkeeper Keyblade.

Sora goes back to seal the Keyhole, finds out that "Ansem" (Xehanot's Heartless, actually) was the real bad guy, and goes to the end of the world to stop "Ansem". After Ansem's defeat, Sora seals the door to Kingdom Hearts and saves the multiverse. So now he can go home, right? Wrong. Riku and the King's still stuck on the other side of the door. So he bids Kairi a sad farewell and goes off to find Riku.

So Kingdom Hearts 1 lays out a potential Chekhov's firing squad. Sora's a nice, naive guy molded into a fighter and just coming in touch with his more human side (his capability to genuinely love rather then being good for the sake of being good and realizing the existence of his darkness). Let's move on.

KH:Co M. Character wise, nothing really happened. But we begin to see cracks in his Lawful Good persona. First: "Traverse Town". The very fact that he managed to train himself using only his memories could possibly mean that he is cleverer than he thinks he is (at least, subconsciously). Then: "Wonderland". We see the level of deceit that Sora is potentially capable of. Remember that Alice is not real, she is a figment of Sora's imagination . It's quite possible that Sora was aware of this and asked Namine to restore his old memories (and, by definition, his old personality).

KHII. The fun starts here. It seems that Sora is back to his old KHI self. Then you realize: 1. His clothes no longer fit him. 2. His voice has broken. Sora goes to Yen Sid's tower to get new clothes. After some argument, the 3 faries decided on a common design. His clothes are now black. Black is the colour in the absence of all other colour. To further nail in that something serious is going to happen, one of his mirrors give Sora the vision of losing himself to the darkness. All this is even handwaved as a Rule Of Cool. So Sora sets out to save the world again....huh? Did he just get more hard-headed? How come his naivety got turned up to eleven? (Case in point: when he got arrested by the MCP, he was messing around with the computer. After the dataspace is unlocked, he bangs the computer because the data of the OXIII is corrupt.) And then the kicker, which hits you in the middle of the game. Say there's a boss you need to fight. You select Valor Form... Wait a minute, did you just turn into a heartless?

From here, the Chekhov's firing squad begins firing not just normal bullets, but anvils. Why do party members disappear during Drive? Because they're part of the costume. Insert a rather nice psychology gem: trust is about leaving your heart vulnerable so you can be seen as trustworthy. So when the cat's away, the mice will play - occasionally, Sora's darkness will hijack the suit and turn him into his Anti-Form.... and he can't change back willingly until it's exhausted.

So what? Remember, in his base form, Sora's clothing is black - the lack of all colour. Egro, a blank slate. Which explains why his clothes changes colour in Drive. Going by the conjecture that Sora never got his old body back (it became Roxas), it would logically follow that, Anti-Form is his heartless form. But wait! Why do your party members still disappear? Why are the Heartless still trying to kill you? Most importantly, why are you controlling Anti-Form instead of the AI? Apparently, the description for Anti-Form is: "the closest Sora came to becoming a Heartless again." It said closest. Sora did not turn into a Heartless by Driving, but rather something representing his heartless (his darkness. Likely answer, after absorbing his party's essence, his doubt manifests itself as a self-defence mechanism, hijacks the suit and turns him anti. Summons reset the Anti counter because they fill his heart with light and thus forces the doubt into the corner. This is probably why Sora cannot turn Anti in a heartless boss fight: he's too used to fighting them to have any serious doubts. This is also probably why fighting the OXII gives a very high chance of triggering Anti: fear. The fact that his Nobody used to work with them probably makes this even more plausible (he betrayed them, after all).

The last anvil? Remember, Sora just went through puberty. Having to deal with sudden hormone changes is bad enough. Now imagine having to go through 1 year's worth of puberty in 1 day because you were in a coma. It depends on the viewer, but Sora could be considered quite rational. (His naivety, then, would be a matter of his choice.) So what happens when you suddenly come across a year's worth of repressed emotion - something so chaotic and irrational that having to accept it means - gasp - being a well-rounded person? No thanks, I like my rational mind better. I'll just sweep it under the carpet.

This point would then turn Yen Sid into some kind of Eccentric Mentor. (If he wasn't already one, that was.) He knew of Sora's internal struggle and put two subtle hints about his duality: the mirrors and colour of his clothes. So he was telling Sora he wasn't fighting for the Light because the Light chose him, but because he chose the Light. Sora finally understands sometime after he meets (and fights) Roxas: Driving anytime after the scene with randomly give you the Final Form, which is white, which is the combination of all colours. And yet, his clothing has stripes of black, which probably means he finally accepted his darkness and decided to do good with it. The very fact that you cannot go into Anti-Form this way is further proof of this. The ending almost outright states that when Sora accepted to live in the Dark if it meant world peace, the bottle appeared to yank him back home. Possibly meaning the Light opened up the way to his home because he accepted the Darkness.


 * By bringing the WMG to its logical conclusion, we get...
 * One flaw in the logic: you can turn into Anti-Form while fighting Heartless bosses. There are three conditions that would prevent you from potentially going into Anti-Form when attempting to transform into Valor, Wisdom or Master Form: if you have an unconcious ally (disables Master Form, so it only works with Valor and Wisdom), if you have a non-Party ally fighting alongside you, or if your Anti Points counter is below 5 (it increases by 1 each time you successfully transform unless you have an unconcious ally, decreases by 4 every time you go Anti-Form, decreases by 10 for using Final Form and resets to 0 every time you obtain a new form).
 * See the below WMG possible explanation: Yed Sid designed that suit (and the Anti trigger) to be that weird. Quite possibly, the reason why Anti-Form is so hard to pin down is because darkness is inherently chaotic and operate on a different set of rules of Light. A rough approximation of how Anti-Form would work would be like this: Darkness, like Light, has a finite limit. So it waxes when the Light is low, and wane otherwise. Of course, Sora has a higher capacity for Light: under normal circumstances, it can barely mainfest itself. Then again, we are never really told what Light really is. Is it order? Law? Trusting your friends? Doing what is right? Or any combination or all of the above? For Sora, at least, its friendship and order. Doing what you need to do for the greater good and yet ganering their respect as friends feels... well, good. So that's his Light, and anyone with blatant disregard for people, world peace and the law of psychics are shoehorned into Dark. Definetly not something you want to turn into. When he becomes a Heartless, the boundaries break, because he now has darkness in his heart. Since all the chaos was responsible for the game's first event, he concludes (not entirely wrongly, mind) that chaos was not something he wanted to embrace. Too bad his body had different ideas. So Yen Sid had to slowly acclimatize Sora to the Darkness - in his case, the chaotic realm of emotional reasoning. Not that Sora was incapable of that, it was just that, most of the time, he probably gave himself a logical explanation for his action (Heartless are bad and kill people). So Yen Sid was trying to tell Sora: no, there is no logical explanation for emotion. Which would explain the confusing mechanics of Anti-Form.
 * Final Form is a big ball o' light. How does it counteract the effects of Valor and Wisdom form, and especially Master form, under the premise of your guess addendum?
 * My guess: Valor Form + Wisdom Form + Master Form + Anti Form = Final From. Which may explain Limit Form in the FM+ : it's a manifestation of his emotions wanting to revert to a simpler form of existence.

Kingdom Hearts 2 (and their subsequent games) is a delibrate Take That against the polarisation of humankind into absolutes.
Naturally, this doesn't come out in the first games, because the very concept of a Sqaure/Disney crossover was thought to be impossible to pull off. So, Noruma opted for the simpler, Disney style Light/Dark struggle. Unfortunely, his boss felt that the game would flop without elements from Final Fantasy. So he added Ansem and jazz about sliding down the slope in order to gain control of the multiverse. Basically, the last 10% of the game - relegate the original Big Bad into the pawn and insert the possible destruction of the entire fricking concept of existence.

Noruma probably got inspired by the new direction and decided to roll with it for the rest of the games. Kids want a GBA game? Okay. Cue the Organisation, who only purposes seems to be "act evil" and "get beaten up by some kid in a key". Too much of an Ass Pull? Make their appearence significant by giving them lines that only make sense in context. For added fun, add a stage that makes absoultely no sense based on what you know so far... except you're told it's constructed from your other half of your memories. And then give just enough hints for the player to make some sense of why they're there (they want to posses you). Oh, and tell the hero he's gotta forget everything that happened in the game because they messed with his memory.

So now you got Checkhov's Gunmen standing left, right, centre, and hiding behind the trees. How oh how to fire those guns...?

Oh wait! Don't you have characters from that game? You know, the one that discussed stuff like the destruction of the enviroment, terrorists, genetic exprementation gone horribly wrong, and mental illness? And actually appeared in the previous games? Yeah.

Except, you know, this is a Disney game. So you gotta find something more subtle... or generic. Or both. Hmmm, I seem to remember Sora became a Heartless. And the Org complaining about being "nobodies". So... where did Sora's, or any of the other Heartless, original body go? Did it go off somewhere and form an independent entity called a Nobody? Sure, why not?

Right. We got the Light. We got the Dark. And out of the blue, we have Nobodies. So we have Light fighting Dark, with the victims becoming Nobodies, signifying the futility of conflict? Yawn. Okay, let's try this again. Nobodies are the remainder of the bodies whose hearts fell to the darkness. What would they want most? Their hearts back? Obviously. So they just whack Heartless? Too slow. Some of them just reappear anyway. Hmm, a new Nobody with a Keyblade? (Remember the Keyblade is the most effective weapon for dispatching Heartless.) Score! Go recruit him, and ask him to kill Heartless because he has to. Or something like that. New Nobody not the sharpest blade in the kitchen because he has no memories? Just ask Vexen to make a puppet that he can manipulate, and ultimately, become his replacement. A Keyblade is a Keyblade, after all. Not that poor cute Roxy is gonna mind, he's got no heart after all....

...wait, maybe I got that part wrong. So Roxas beats the bejesus out of Xion and throws your puppet subsitution plan out of the window. Worse, he ran away, because you told him nothing about the Keyblade. So fetch him back... wait. Your dispatch got royally owned too. Worse, he went back to Sora. Keyblade's still a Keyblade, right? So let Sora do the job for you. Not as if he'll stop even if he knew of the plan anyway! So the Org's a really bad bunch who have to die.... right? RIGHT?

Maybe. (But that's for another game.)

Sooooooo, back to the Light and Dark... thingy. So Light is Lawful Good and Dark is Chaotic Evil....? Yaaaaaawn. Too predictable. You already got the ball rolling with the Nobodies and what with Riku and his Dark Form, you might as well go the whole hog. You can't touch Kairi because she's a being of pure light. Which leaves us... with Sora.

Sora, Sora, Sora, Sora. So he's a big damn hero with a shade of Knight Templar, always ready to help his friends and smack the bad guys into obilvion. That, combined with a never say die attitude combined with a practically eternal smile, make him a perfect hero. Perhaps too perfect.

So Noruma strings up the 2 loose ends: requiring the plot to grow to keep it dynamic, and resolving the hanging thread that is Sora's Heartless. So he comes up with Dark is Not Evil, ran away with the idea, and shit became serious.

How to modify Sora's character so that the growth seems natural rather than out of the blue? Have him go through puberty. Then change the execution of the plot such that without changing Sora's base personality, his strengths actually become weaknesses.

And so we have: Yen Sid's first meeting with Sora. Why did he have to rebrief Sora and Co about the Heartless, the enemies they had been fighting in the previous games ad nasuem? The answer lies in this line (paraphrased): Should one of you, such as Donald, give in to the darkness, they will become a Heartless. He wasn't talking to Donald in particular. He was talking to all of them. Why tell Sora something he already knew? Because Yen Sid knew the Sora he was talking to was not the same Sora that Mickey had told him about. He knew that Sora was going to accept his darkness sooner or later, but (probably due to Mickey), also knew that just because he had experienced darkness didn't mean he could handle his own personal darkness - it was an entirely alien concept to him. He also probably thought that Sora would have never believed him anyway, being the Keybearer of Light and all.

So Yen Sid has to be a bit more subtle with his warning. When he introduced the Nobodies, he didn't just say they were incapable of feeling emotion, he says that Nobodies don't exist. So please tell me how a bunch of supposedly non-existent beings can threaten world peace. Meaning, Yen Sid knew of the logical inconsistency of his argument, and wanted to test his reaction. If Sora was aware of his darkness, he would have spotted the flaw easily, and Yen Sid would have very well let him know about the complicated facets of the Nobodies. But Sora swallows the information whole and never questions its logic, because the only thing that make sense to him was defeating the baddies. Conveniently, the baddies live in the realm of dark. For Sora, at least, Dark = Evil.

So Yed Sid took this as a sign the his darkness with too weak for him to even detect, much less embrace. The result being he purposely dehumanized the enemy in the hope that the resulting Moral Dissonance would be enough to wake his dark side due to the trigger of doubt. To that end, Yen Sid designed Sora's clothing to allow his darkness to grow so that he could, ultimately, learn to control it. He actually had a damn good reason to do so: if Sora did became an avatar of pure light (by suppressing his darkness to oblivion), he might have done some stupid things simply to get rid of evil.

When designing the clothes, Yen Sid noted then he gather his friends and drew power from them. To that end, he came up with the Drive Form. He drops a hint about the real purpose of his clothing (in the form of the mirrors): to explore all his facets of his power, including his darkness. To that end, the 3 fairies arguing about what colour Sora's clothing should be were actually arguing about what Sora's combat focus should be. When they finally not to use one single colour, they all use their magic.... to turn his clothes black. Sora doesn't even question the Fridge Logic behind this.

So, if the Drives are powered by Light, why is his darkness able to hijack the suit? Answer: Yen Sid designed it that way. The suit supposedly changes to it's owners requirement, so long he mastered that form first. (Which would explain why you can choose what form you change into, and when you can escape that form.) Except that's not entirely accurate: the suit changes according to whatever the owner thinks he needs. Low stress situations, this is not much of the problem: he's been fighting Heartless all day long.

It's under high stress situations that we see the brilliance in Yed Sid's idea. Initially, he is under the impression that Nobodies were just regular Mooks and OXIII simply a upgrade of the former. Then he actually meets them. Demyx, supposedly the most cowardly and a weak fighter, fights hard. The seed of doubt is planted in his heart, but he brushes it aside with his usual bravado.

Even without the OXIII, his travels become some kind of a vice that increases his stress. It's not so much on having to chase down the OXIII (which Sora dosen't take seriously at this point), it's the time he spends traveling. Sora's hormones finally get a chance to manifest themselves after being stuck in 1 year of statis - turning his determination into hard-headedness, letting his emotions get the better of his judgment, and, finally, realizing his capability for sexual and romantic (rather then asexual and platonic) love.

So, all this while, his secret darkness is growing in strength - but Sora actively and passively stunts its growth - justifying his hard headedness as doing what is necessary, reversing his outbusts very quickly (or putting his money were his mouth is), and squicking his relationship with Kairi into Do Not Want territory. (This may very well explain why Sora never explains his actions: Having to verbalize the thought would mean having to face it later. And face it: if Sora was truly aware of his depth of his relationship with Kairi, he wouldn't have acted in a way that implied that Sora was embarrassed of having * that* kind of relationship with Kairi even though Kairi was already his girlfriend.)

Now the finale (for KHII, at least): Meeting the rest of the Organisation. Sora probably knew about the existence of his darkness but dismissed it. So he storms the castle, guns Keyblade blazing. Then he gets to see how and why the OXIII deserves its reputation. Enter the last foreign emotion: fear. It was not that Sora never experienced fear, just not the "Oh crap I'm going to die now" fear. And the fact that Roxas felt this fear too probably didn't help.

So, back to the suit. It changes to whatever the owner feels is the most appropriate. Under high stress, however, weird shit happens. Having to concentrate on what Drive Form to use in this situation will likely make one fumble. So even though Sora shouts "Light!" to utilize his party members, deep down in his heart, he thinks that the Light might be insufficient for the job. So when Sora turns himself temporarily vulnerable in order to transform (something Yen Sid never bothered to explain), his heart thinks that he need to use the Darkness because it's most suited for the job, which promptly hijacks the suit and turns him Anti.

The limitations of Anti-Form might have to do with the very nature of Darkness and the fact that Sora is unfamiliar with its mechanics. Darkness is inherently chaotic, having seemingly no set paradigms for combat, inability to pull out of the form at will, and the inability to heal. Despite that, he is still considered Sora, which explain why you can still control him, and why everything else is still trying to kill you: your control of Anti-Form means your are a genuine threat to them.

He get better at the control of the Darkness, though - it possible that Final Form was realized by changing into Anti-Form by his own volition, and adding the powers of light: the suit is white, but not completely white.

So how does this link to the WMG? The Nobodies. Having no true emotions, what they feel is what they want to feel. OXIII could be seen as a sympathetic villian until you realize that they are not exactly bound by the no true emotion rule. There isn't any rule that explicitly states that a Nobody cannot become what he projects onto himself rather than what his memories dictate what he should be. They are not bound by any reprogramming rule (DiZ actually proved a Nobody could be reprogrammed), so they could, in theory, become the good guys if they really wanted to (a la Axel).

The anvil? The OXIII had a choice. A choice to actually use their powers to done good stuff - but, they mope around a technicality (dear OXIII, at least you remember what made you you and and remember what it felt like - a pretty good existence for a zombie), blow up stuff for something that they don't even know will work, and don't freaking care. Not to mention Xenmas's motivation was simply because he could. That my friends, is exactly why the OXIII are the big bads of KH2.
 * Nobodies were mentioned in Ansem's Report 13 in the first game.
 * But that was in the Final Mix, which possibly meant Nomura shoehorned that part in to generate the plot of COM and II. In fact, the secret ending was meant to test how well the audience would respond to a darker game (it was made by Disney, after all). So when it got critical acclaim, he expanded on the Nobody lore and made them important.
 * I think a better interpretation of Sora's thought about Kairi throughout KHII is that he understands the depth of his relationship with Kairi and he's terrified of it- or more acturately of what it would cause him to do. Sure, he may have been dreaming about marrying Kairi for years, but now he realizes that also means he wants to have sex with Kairi, and his hormones are telling him to do just that. He has to come to terms with this potentially corrupting aspect of his emotions before he can channel it to do good. Once he matures emotionally, he is able to realize that these feelings are natural and can be used for good, as long as he controls them and not the other way around.

Sora doesn't really love Kairi that way. It's just Noruma screwing with us.
Doubtless Normua likes to screw with people ever since CoM came out. (See above Light v Dark arugment. It could be argued that Light was absolute dominance (but in a good way) and Dark was free will, splitting the universe into many forms because the Hive Mind was too freaky... but that's for another WMG.) So it wouldn't be surprising if Noruma managed to take everything that has happened into canon and reinterpret it so hard that even Master Xenahort would be spinning in his grave screaming "WTF?".

So we start at the beginning. Kairi gets launched into deep space by Terranort and lands on Sora's home. Being the kid he was... naturally he'd want to get to know her. Kairi, basically a refugee, would have no one to trust expect a few naive kids (who actually saw her land) since the rest of the islands would have seen her as a foreign alien at best, or the sign of the apocalypse at worst. So, Sora and Riku are her emotional support for that critical part, and as a consequence end up as best of friends.

Riku might have been secretly wanted to bring Kairi back home, which started his whole "I want to explore the worlds" mentality. It's possible that he might have been her official partner if not for him obsessing over interdimentional travel and trying to kill his best friend so that so could protect Kairi even though he was already trying to do the same thing.

Annnnyway, backtracking a bit. It's possible that the papou fruit bear the same significance as Roxas's sea-salt ice cream - a unbreakable bond. But who said the bond had to be romantic? Riku. (At least, that was what he implies.) So Riku is egging Sora wanting to share the fruit with Kairi, either because he was he was teasing him, or he was secretly jealous. But the fruit was probably more symbolic "love" (i.e. mutual respect for friends) then functional. Meaning that Sora could have shared the damn fruit with Riku if he wanted to.

Kairi's out of the picture until Sora reaches Hollow Bastion. How would you react if you saw your best friend stab himself in the chest, smiling as he does so, getting to see him for what could be the last time before he evaporates into balls of light? At least, you'd be scared shitless.

So Kairi revives Sora with The Power Of Love? Maybe not. Maybe it's an ability inherent to all Princesses of Light. Maybe Sora's strong will meant he would have gotten better anyway. Or maybe Noruma pulled that plot point out of his ass.

Back to Traverse Town. Kairi gives Sora her lucky charm, which becomes the Keychain for his Oathkeeper. So, subtle form of Relationship Upgrade? How about maybe, just maybe, she's just trying to give confidence to the boy who has to defeat evil incarnate with just the help of a goofy person, a duck, and a oversized key?

And finally Ansem is evaporated by the Light and Sora saves the day. No wait, he's still gotta find Riku and Mickey. Of course you'd be upset that your friend has to leave again.

Fastfoward to KHII... and Sora doesn't even realise he has Oath Keeper until later in the game. That alone should mean something. Not to mention that he only mentions Kairi as a passing remark since she was safe. If he truly liked her that way, if would have at least be more concerned. Even Kairi's kidnap didn't do much (truth be told, he was already raring to go the OXIII's base and kick their asses), which meant that even though he had every intention of rescuing Kairi, he remained rather emotionally detached towards to whole affair. In all fairness, Xigbar was raining down bullets on his ass and calling him Roxas. A guy's gotta have priorities, after all.

So he finally meets with with Kairi and his reaction is something like "Long time no see." Then Kairi introduces him to Riku, which leads to that scene. (Explanation: Sora knew squat about what happened to Riku after he went poof into the Dark Realm.)

To sum up: Sora's just performing his duty as a friend. After all, he has to save the world doing so, so it would be reasonable to check back once a while to see if his friends are still alive. So, in short, Kairi's just Sora's friend who happened to be a girl.

So, that scene where Sora blushes on the mention of Kairi's name and him fantasizing dancing with Kairi? Blame Freud for that.


 * Which would mean KH would probably end in a semi Downer Ending. Sora shows Riku the Secret Ansem Report (that one that said Kairi was from Radiant Garden), so he returns Kairi home. Riku travels around the world as a keyblade master partly in regret that he destroyed his homeworld, and Sora, after freeing Ventus's heart and finally getting rid of Master Xehanort, hangs up his Keyblade, since, technically, he was never a Keyblade master. Even my computer crashed when I thought up of that idea.
 * Then explain why Kairi suggested ditching Riku and running away with Sora.
 * If the scene in question was the end of the original KH... that might have been pretty much the only choice she had left. She couldn't join Riku because he was already sealed inside the Realm of Darkness. She couldn't join Sora to find Riku because she didn't know how to fight at that time. Maybe she thought Sora could use a gummi ship to travel to said Realm of Darkness, so she would have not much motivation to leave Sora in pretty much the middle of nowhere... Or you could just blame Noruma.
 * No, the scene I was referring to is in the prolouge of Kingdom Hearts. Kairi suggests that they leave Riku behind and take off on the raft by themselves.
 * Two people will survive better at seas with the supplies they collected than three. That, and I'm pretty sure Kairi fancies Sora over Riku.
 * At the time I thought she said that because she saw something dark in Riku, and everything that's happened since then has only strengthened that feeling. Kairi always struck me as being thoughtful and intuitive, and those traits warned her that something was off about her friend's personality.

Riku will become stronger than Sora
Because he uses both Light and Darkness. His ability to dive head first into the darkness and not be turned into a heartless ( and it's been said that only a Princess of Heart has no darkness in their heart so he should have become one at some point) and the fact that he was the only one of the island trio who was purposefully chosen ( Kairi was an accident, and Sora is just a long ass complicated story) makes me think he may has the most potential, even more than Sora. He doesn't fear the darkness (he's said as much himself) so it can't use him the way it would others. But he still has enough light to wield that as well. After the final game, he will be the one to bring back the revitalize the keyblade masters, teaching them to wield both powers for maximum effectiveness. In other words: He's Luke Skywalker.


 * Sora's "long ass story" is just this, Riku's heart was too weak so no macguffin(for that time) for you. Also see above entry about Sora's apparent hero decay plus he is proved to be very capable of using both keyblades (Light and Dark) in his final drive form(oh yeah, the DRIVE forms, another power up...) and with Roxas we can see that Sora has plenty of darkness in his heart too(see the same above entry again, that fellow troper explained how Sora accepted the darkness in his heart as part of his character growth). Sorry, no matter how i squint my eyes i can't see Riku becoming stronger than Sora and i'm not using fangirl bias here.
 * The reason why Sora has a stronger heart is because . He isn't stronger in his own right.
 * Truthfully, this theory was just born out of me wanting to know why Riku was able to avoid being turned into a heartless, when most people who just look at the darkness the wrong way usually get changed. Him being stronger than some way than Sora, who did become a heartless (although there were extenuating circumstances) was one thought on the matter. Plus while Sora does accept the darkness in his heart, has he been able to use it in battle the way Riku does (outside of the berserker Anti-form)? Also, I keep thinking there was a reason Xehanort's heartless chose him beyond his being a Keyblade master (although I'm probably wrong on that).

Kairi will be left behind on the Destiny Islands during the next adventure because she will either be pregnant with or nursing Sora's baby.
I know Nomura said this was No Hugging, No Kissing, but let's be honest, we can't trust anything Nomura says about the plot. Now I know the idea of 15/16 year olds getting married and having kids is pushing the envelope considerably, but it's not absurd in a fantasy setting, and teen marriage has been used in the Final Fantasy series as a plot point before- Yuna was 17 during Final Fantasy X, and she gets married, it's a sham and unconsumated, but she gets married.
 * That sound you just heard would be the Moral Guardians crapping city sized bricks.
 * And Sora and Kairi are what, 17? 16? Biologically 15/16/17 at the beginning of KH3?
 * They are 15 in Kingdom Hearts II. It remains to be seen how much time will pass between the end of II and the start of III, but 16-17 is most likely.

Sora is a Kingdom Hearts in human form
Since Sion and Dominique are unable to have children, they did some magic ritual to transform the nearby kingdom hearts into a baby to have a kid

In Kingdom Hearts III...

 * Xehanort becomes a being of perfect darkness and goes to Destiny Islands to kidnap Kairi so he can absorb her and create the X-Blade.
 * And to save the worlds the remaining princesses merge with the princes mentioned below to create 6 X-Blades as wings for Sora's ultimate form and Sora makes two more X-Blades using the Oathkeeper and Oblivian along with his and Mickey's Kingdom Keys

Kingdom Hearts III will feature Princes of Darkness

 * Six male Disney characters on the Chaotic side of the alignment chart and possibly another OC or Neku. Finally settling that Dark Is Not Evil.
 * Among their numbers is Jack Sparrow, Prince Dastan, the Mad Hatter and Dave Stutler
 * Heck I think the other Jack would work as well as Prince Naveen.
 * Or maybe something else like seven dark hearts? Barnaby is Greed, Shere Khan is Pride, Ichabod Crane is gluttony, Creeper is Sloth, Frolo is Lust, (Come on, how could you not do that?) Gaston is wrath, and I forget who Envy would be.
 * Considering how Ariel was discounted from the Princess ostensibly for being a mermaid, we should probably restrict ourselves to humans. Sounds pretty cool, though.
 * Hey, how about Riku?
 * He clearly has Light in his heart otherwise he wouldn't be able to use Way to Dawn.

Final battle of Kingdom Hearts III
Sora versus. No items. Destiny Islands.

Bonus points if  consumed Kingdom Hearts and the battle is trying to deal enough damage to cause it explode out of him, leaving him trapped nowhere forever.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will end with showing the Keyblade Graveyard and in a flash of light lots, maybe even ALL, of the Keyblades then disappear

 * KH3 is the end of the Xehanort Saga according to Nomura so it would make for a Wham Ending and Sequel Hook.

There will be another prequil titled Kingdom Hearts: The Keyblade War.

 * It will tell us Xehanort's origins, as he mentions in Birth By Sleep that he's a veteran of that war. For the sake of having some other connection to the present, Kairi's grandmother will be revealed to have fought in that war, and it will be revealed as the source of the division between the worlds.
 * The protagonists will be a young Eraqus, Yen Sid, and a new guy named Xine.
 * Who is Xine?
 * Hint: Read the names backwards.
 * Jossed by the fact that Xehanort was never in the keyblade war and never said he was.
 * He told Terra, "I vowed to survive beyond the Keyblade War..." which proves he was alive to see it and strongly suggests he fought in it.
 * He was saying that because he was planning to start the keyblade war again, because he wasn't alive for the first one and wanted to see what it was like.
 * That and what he said was "I swore I would survive, to see what happens after the Keyblade War..." If he fought in the first one, he would already know what happened afterward, no?

The reason why Roxas isn't like the other Nobodies is that he isn't a Nobody at all.

 * It was explicitly stated in Port Royal that Sora and co. weren't from that world, so the rules didn't really apply to them. The Heartless, (and, by extension, the Nobodies,) were originally from Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion, and as Sora is from the Destiny Islands, when his heart is taken from him body the beings created as a result aren't a Heartless and a Nobody, but something else entirely.
 * Theory is most likely true but the details aren't; as your Nobody system differing depending on worlds makes it far more complicated then even Square Enix could probably stand.  That explains what that scene at the beach was about in Days.

Lea met Kairi at some point in Radiant Garden.

 * They are both shown to have been living in Radiant Garden around the same time. Heck, Lea was even the right age to have possibly babysat her at one time. Once he had lost his heart and Axel was created, he still had the memories from his past life, which is why he shows a soft spot towards Naminé and later Xion, both whom resemble Kairi.

Expect a few surprising choices for Final Fantasy guest characters in the next game.

 * While the two fanbases aren't 100% identical, a lot of Final Fantasy fans overlap with that of the Kingdom Hearts fanbase. With the release of Dissidia Final Fantasy (as well as the several remakes) having introduced a younger demographic of players to a slew of older, less recognizable characters (expect Dissidia's sequel, Dissidia 012/Dissidia Duodecim to most likely do the same), it wouldn't be a stretch to say that the door has been opened for some more varied cameos (remember, Setzer did make it into II, despite the Flanderization/Character Derailment brought upon his head). After all, there's but only so many Final Fantasy VII characters that you can cram into a series. I, for one, would love to see Gilgamesh pop out of nowhere and start stealing the show.
 * Seconded on the Gilgamesh thing.
 * Sorry to burst your bubbles...Nomura likely wouldn't agree with that considering he would much rather use his own characters. Hence why Setzer showed up. Vivi was who he had problems with using. But if he could be persuaded into allowing Vivi....
 * True but that was only for kingdom hearts 1 and 2, Now that he's drawn all of Amano's characters for Dissidia (he notably stated that Garland was like designing a brand-new character.)...
 * Well, now we've got Gilgamesh in Dissidia 012. Tough to tell whether this is good or bad for his odds of appearing in a Kingdom Hearts title - they dropped Laguna from Birth by Sleep because he was already in 012.

Leon is going to get to wield a Keyblade in the next game.

 * Squall Leon has held the status of Supporting Leader throughout the series, being the only character outside of the heroes in II to meet the members of Organization XIII. Chronologically speaking (in Real Life, not gamewise), Leon was the first person to touch a Keyblade (in I, while waiting for Sora to wake up), making it a technical Rite of Succession (much like Aqua and Kairi in BbS). Unlike Jack Sparrow, there's no reason to believe that Leon's heart is too weak to allow him to wield a Keyblade. Perhaps Sora will be brielfy incapacitated at some point. Leon will then step in, summon the Keyblade, and proceed to kick all kinds of ass.
 * Further, said keyblade will look like the Lion Heart and the battle's theme will be a remix of Don't Be Afraid from Final Fantasy VIII. And after somebody (probably Yuffie or Sora) calls him Leon again, he'll correct them: "It's Squall."
 * Enitrely possible. As Braig has told Terra in BBS when he "kidnapped" Xehanort, 'if I beat you, i'm the real keyslinger based off the information he picked up from Xehanort. And not a word of doubt from Terra when he said it.
 * Then there is this scene where Sora technically lost to Leon and this snippet where he picks up and sends the keyblade back to Sora by his will alone. If that's not double Keyblade successor rite, I don't know what is.
 * Orrr, that was the keyblade rejecting him, and returning to the hands of its rightful owner when someone else tries to wield it.
 * Even worse, take a look at Leon's deck while he's teaching Sora about battle in Re:Chain of Memories. Take note of the types of cards. Are they gunblades? Nope, all of them are Kingdom Keys...

Alternately, Leon already had a Keyblade, but lost it when Radiant Garden fell.
In KH1 he's pretty well-informed about the nature of the Keyblade and the Heartless, and takes the fall of Radiant Garden far more personally than anyone else, blaming himself and abandoning his name as a result. Even though he's no slouch as a fighter, however, he relegates himself to playing Supporting Leader to an inexperienced teenaged kid who has almost no idea what he's doing, eventually sending Sora to Hollow Bastion rather than staging an assault himself. Why? Because he already knows he can't do it himself. At some point prior to or during Radiant Garden's fall, Squall Leonhart received a Keyblade and fought Maleficent and the Heartless, but was defeated thanks to Xehanort's Heartless working against him behind the scenes. The Keyblade disappeared when he hit the Despair Event Horizon and he retreated to Traverse Town to become the Shell-Shocked Veteran that Sora got to know.

Mickey is trying to be Master Xehanort's good counterpart.
Mickey has a thing for redeeming dark characters, and certain elements of his character suggest he may also be trying to do the same for Master Xehanort's motives and ideas. Like Master Xehanort he states that the greatest light can arise from the darkness, like Master Xehanort he spends most of his time in the dark and can use the corridors of darkness, and like Master Xehanort he doesn't like to do too much himself but rather guide other people into carrying out his plans. He also seems to have actively sought out the other half of the X-Blade. Mickey might want to redeem his master's friend by showing that his ideas were fine, but that his methods were flawed.

Ven's random unexplained shrinkage in Cinderella's world(and the accompanying shrunk Unversed) are a result of a Mini spell gone wrong.
Once Ven learned that spell and discovered how fun it was to stomp on the teeny tiny Unversed like Godzilla, he got a bit too enthusiastic and accidentally miniaturized himself along with a handful of Unversed. The shock of getting caught in the rebound of a miscast spell resulted in Ven losing consciousness and having no memory of the incident. The reason he woke up inside the trap in Cinderella's house...er, the Fairy Godmother took pity on him and intervened so the unconscious Ven would be discovered by Cinderella instead of being an easy meal for Lucifer?

Let's play "Guess which negative emotion each Unversed represents"!

 * Flood - Irritation, according to Word of God.
 * Scrapper - Nervousness. Scrappers are constantly glancing anxiously around at their surroundings, and they will often hunch over and wrap their arms around themselves, body language that can be interpreted as "hugging oneself" for comfort. Even when they're about to attack, they sometimes flinch and backpedal, losing their nerve.
 * Bruiser - Cruelty, of the pushing around anyone weaker than you because you're big and strong variety.
 * Red Hot Chili - Flame Bait
 * Blue Sea Salt - Inability to let go of the past.
 * Yellow Mustard - Annoyance.
 * Monotrucker - Distrust. Monotruckers were spawned by the dwarfs' reaction to the "diamond thief", hence the miner elements in their design(pickaxe, wheelbarrow, lantern), and the way they first appeared in the dwarfs' mine.
 * Thornbite - Love. The creepy, unhealthy, destructive kind.
 * Shoegazer - Cowardice. Shoegazers are shoes with worried-looking faces peeking out of them, and they tend to duck down inside their shoe to hide when things get rough.
 * Spiderchest - Deceitfulness, particularly lying in a deliberate attempt to hurt others. They're Chest Monsters.
 * Archraven - Greed/selfishness. Archravens fly high above the battle, keeping themselves out of harm's way, and are more concerned with snatching up shinies than helping other Unversed attack the protagonists.
 * Hareraiser - Fear. The name is a play on the phrase "hair-raising", which refers to fear, and Hareraisers' eyes are tilted in a way that makes them appear worried or frightened. They also tend to cringe and shiver, especially when they first appear.
 * Jellyshade - Loneliness. They attack in mobs because they can't bear to be seperated from each other.
 * Tank Toppler - Rage. After taking a certain amount of damage, they snap, go on a rampage, and eventually explode, destroying themselves and everything around them.
 * Vile Phial - Need for approval. They suck up to other Unversed by healing them.
 * Sonic Blaster - Assertiveness.
 * Triple Wrecker - Indecision. Not only does it change powersets, but each face has a different expression.
 * Wild Bruiser - Mindless agression.
 * Mandrake - Sadism. Mandrakes make their enemies suffer, slowly whittling their HP down with poison and long range attacks.
 * Buckle Bruiser - Stubbornness.
 * Chrono Twister - Arrogance/superiority? The official description says "Even Unversed need somebody to boss them around. The Chrono Twister is happy to do the job."
 * Axe Flapper - Detachment from sentimentality, for fear of getting hurt. Their eyes seem set in a sad expression, and rarely come near attackers, preferring to fire Aero blasts at them from a few feet away. And if it gets knocked down (metaphorically, someone shows sentimentality towards the person), it will get scared and spin around in an attempt to hit them away.
 * Prize Pod - Some small remnant of niceness left in Vanitas? It's hard to assign any negative emotion to a cheerful floating purple blob that hands out yummy treats with cutesy names instead of attacking. That would also explain their rarity.
 * I'm thinking gluttony. They have all those ice cream ingrediants for some reason, after all.
 * Blobmob - Panic. Panic causes nervous energy and a tendency to try to think in many directions at once. Blobmob's jiggliness means that they're constantly moving, and they split apart when attacked.
 * Glidewinder - Competitiveness, particularly the obsessive, violent kind. Glidewinders try to win races at any cost, even if it means attacking other racers.
 * Iron Imprisoner - Raw, untempered hatred. It's generally the most powerful unversed (with one notable exception) and hate could be considered the most powerful negative emotion.

Terra and Eraqus really aren't that stupid in trusting Xehanort
. No, it's not just them being Genre Blind. Xehanort is intentionally fooling with their minds to make them not realize he's anything but evil darkness. It's obvious to us that he's evil, but that's because he's not using the power of darkness to fool with us and make his eyes look blue or green - he can't affect OUR reality!

Jihl is going to show up
She's a Complete Monster, she'll probably play a villainous role.

In Kingdom Hearts III...
Sora'll be controlling Unversed.

Yep. Vanitas does something good for the 'verse after all...
 * Doubt it- it's not like he was able to seize control of the Samurai in The World That Never Was.
 * Maybe that was because Nobodies like the Samurai are't a part of him or Roxas. I was thinking that the fact that Vanitas is the source of Unversed would enable Sora to create and boss them around.
 * Alternatively, Sora is creating the Unversed but all control goes to Vanitas inside him.

The alternate forms Sora, Donald, and Goofy assume when they go to certain worlds are chosen by Donald, since he's the one casting the spells that cause the transformations.
This is why, in the Pride Lands, Sora took the form of a lion cub instead of an adolescent lion, even though the older lion form would have made more sense for Sora. Donald still sees Sora as a child, either because the fact that Sora went through puberty while sleeping for a year hasn't really sunk into his mind yet(understandable, after waking up and seeing that this cute kid has suddenly gained about a foot of height and a deeper voice), or because Sora's childishness makes it easy to forget his age.

Sora is Unskilled but Strong, while Terra, Ven, and Aqua(and possibly other keyblade users) are Weak but Skilled.
The huge variety of techniques available to the BBS protagonists isn't just the game developers veering away from the "Mash X until the enemy is dead" gameplay of the first two KH games - it reflects how much more the BBS protagonists know about using the keyblade. Sora was able to figure out a few neat tricks on the fly, but the main strategy he relies on is just running up to enemies and hitting them. Despite having no formal training and only knowing rudimentary magic and keyblade techniques, he defeats enemies simply because he can bulldoze his way through fights with massive amounts of raw power. ""You're not half the hero the others were.""

Sora is the X-Blade at this point, even more so.
The X-Blade was Ven and Vanitas clashing together, and he's both. He's the Light, the Darkness, the clash between the two, and the Nothing that is inbetween.
 * In KH3, he's going to turn into a Key Blade; wielded by flashes of the varies people he has been.

Hearts are actually the physical embodiment of people's souls.
The Japanese word used to describe the 'heart' in game is 'kokoro', which can be translated to 'heart', 'soul', or 'spirit'. When someone looses their heart, they go into a coma-like state, similar to people who have out of body experiences. This 'heart' isn't necessarily where emotion comes from, as animals have emotion but religiously have no soul. Thus Nobodies CAN feel emotion, even without a heart. It also explains the propaganda against Nobodies from Yen Sid, as the whole series is turning into some kind of weird religious metaphor, and heathens in Ye Olden Dayes were said to be evil and soulless.
 * I was under the impression that everything that exists in the KH-verse has a heart, though. I mean, even the worlds have hearts. Which would then lead to Nobodies not "existing" due to the technicality of them not having a heart.
 * Word of God says the starting concept of the series is "All life has a heart".

Origins of the Keyblade Masters.
I have a theory that many of them were initially guardians / potential guardians (a-la Slayers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) of the Princesses of Heart (which itself is a "Chicken or Egg" problem). They could manifest the power of their own Heart in the form of a special weapon (ex: the Dream Weapons and Riku's Soul Eater) to aid in the defending the Princesses. Some worlds started to have an increased imbalance of Light and Dark - possibly through Darkness-tainted Magic - and the Darkness began to be manifest in strange forms. Whether these are the predecessors of Unversed does not matter but the one weapon that could defeat the Darkness-Manifest and their masters were weapons manifested from the more Light-aspect of the guardians' Hearts. Over time, the attributes of the manifest-weapons were refined and Keyblades were forged. Of course, as the weapons are formed from Hearts and Hearts can change, they can be used by a Dark Keyblade Master.

Vanitas and Master Xehanort will also be born from sleep.
Word of God says that because of the... unique, circumstances of several characters fates, many of them are in a unique capacity to return. And a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment, where Sora realizes he's also brought back the components of the X-Blade and his worst enemy not just brought back to life, but made young again would be neat to see. (as well as a Talking to Himself moment between Sora and Vanitas,as well as Roxas and Ventus.)

Kairi would've gotten her keyblade much earlier (and without Riku's help) if it weren't for Namine's existence.
As long as Namine's around, Kairi is in an incomplete state just like Sora. She disappears just before Kairi gets her keyblade, and the next time we see her, she's transparent like Roxas was, implying that they had already merged before that. Sora could use the keyblade while incomplete because he already had it before he split,  but Kairi's keyblade wouldn't recognize her until she was whole again, even after she took the prerequisite levels in badass to be able to wield it.
 * Alternatively, Kairi's keyblade was "split" between her and Namine (Sora and Roxas could use it at the same time, and even dual wield, because ) but Kairi's was unsure which one was the "real" Kairi, and decided to not get involved.

Sora isn't chosen by his own keyblade until Hollow Bastion.
One of my favorite scenes in the first game is the confrontation between Sora and Riku, and seeing it again, I realize why Sora gets the keyblade (back). It's not because Riku uses darkness, (I don't know why people even think that from the context of the scene, Riku had already entered Dark Mode, and tried to kill Sora with Dark Firaga before he lost the keyblade so that can't be it.) so that can't be it.) But what they actually say, from Riku's What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway to Sora's Power of Friendship and Heart Is an Awesome Power... Y'know what I think I'll let those two do the talking, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvnTSI2NLtQ "Riku: "Your heart? What good will that weak little thing do for you?"

Sora: "Although my heart may be weak, it's not alone. It's grown with each new experience, and it's found a home with all the friends I made. I've become a part of their heart just as they've become a part of mine. And if they think of me now and then...If they don't forget me... then our hearts will be one. I don't need a weapon. My friends are my power.""

It's at this point that Sora Took a Level In Badass and he became a full-fledged keyblade master with his own heart.
 * Adding to the above, Hollow Bastion is when Sora becomes a True Hero.
 * It follows that until this point, he's simply borrowing Ventus'. Presumably Ventus had enough connection to Terra, Succession-wise, that Riku, as Terra's formal Successor, could take it by force from the unsucceeded Sora. Once Sora proved his True Heroism, that made him truly worthy of the blade rather than just the only one convenient with enough connection to use it, bringing him above Riku in its heirarchy of users.

Xehanort got back his memories before he became a heartless.
In the Secret Ansem Reports, it talks about how Ansem's first tests on darkness were psychological examinations of Xehanort's heart, so they could help him recover his memories. Later, in both series of Ansem Reports, It talks about how Xehanort finds a door in Ansem's castle and opens it and find's the heart of Radiant Garden. This door is presumably Radiant Garden's keyhole. And he opens it... how? both Xehanort's heartless, and his nobody seem to recall bits of their previous lives, Xehanort's heartless even being able to wield the keyblade of people's hearts, and Xemnas joining with kingdom hearts displaying remarkable keyblade-like abilities. It's possible that, sometime before he opened the door to Radiant Garden, he recovered some of his memories, mostly those related to keyblade wielding, and used them in his experiments from that point forward, Ultimately using his keyblade to unlock the darkness in his heart and become a heartless.

Aqua will become an "Obi-Wan" of sorts to Sora in Kingdom Hearts III
Because you know you want it.
 * Better yet, she'll become an Obi-Wan to Kairi and help her take a level in badass.
 * Furthermore, she will have a confrontation with Xehanort, and have a Heroic Sacrifice, giving Kairi something worth fighting for.
 * Oh, c'mon. Nobody dies in Kingdom Hearts. Every "death" thus far has been reversible. Not to mention Aqua's too badass to ever die.
 * Kingdom Hearts does have a concept of death: when a person's soul leaves his or her body, he or she dies. Barbossa suffered from what can be considered a surefire death, what with getting shot and all, and there have been multiple threats on the lives of other characters (Vanitas was actually going to stab Aqua to death, and the Evil Queen wanted Terra to literally cut out Snow White's organ/heart), so ruling out the death of someone just because it hasn't happened doesn't change anything.

The neoshadows surrounding Ventus in the flashback to Vanitas's creation are former keyblade wielders.
Where Xehanort succeeded with Ventus, he failed with many others. Instead of splitting into two beings, the others were consumed by the darkness and became Heartless.

In the event of "death", all hearts return to... Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts is the "deity", and source of all creation in the Kingdom Hearts Universe. All hearts come from it, and when someone dies, or a Heartless is defeated, the Heart is released, and returns to Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts contains both Light and Darkness, and the Heart is left to reside in the realm where it would be most comfortable. Even remaining in the living realm as a spirit if wanted.
 * Death and losing one's heart are two entirely different things. Each person is made up of three parts: the heart, which determines one's emotions and attributes one to light or darkness; the soul, which gives one life; and the body, which serves as a container for the previous two. When a person loses his or her heart, then that person loses his or her heart. A Heartless and Nobody are born, and no one dies. When a person loses his or her soul, that person is DEAD. Period. The body remains behind to rot, and the heart, well we don't know what happens, but it will probably fade to oblivion or something.

Nobodies

 * True names seem to matter. Xemnas asks Roxas if he remembers his True Name. This goes back to memories, of which Nobodies can be associated with (Chain of Memories, Namine has power over memories, Nobodies do not have memories at first). Nobodies like those of Organization XIII are not unique, there are more, and they can only be destroyed, truly destroyed, if, and only if they do NOT know their true name. This means that some of Organization XIII will return (Possibly Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia, and Larxene). These four are not truly "dead", because they all are taken into a vortex. They do not die like, say, Axel or Xigbar do, where they fade away without a Vortex involved.

Vanitas is responsible for the deaths of Ienzo’s parents, and, by extension, Ienzo’s descent into darkness.

 * Vanitas is a being of pure darkness, so senseless murder wouldn’t be beyond him. Because Vanitas tends to follow Master Xehanort around, it’s not hard to assume that he gets bored during one of MX and Braig’s initial meetings and leaves to find amusement. He ends up at Ienzo’s home and chooses to use the Unversed to torment Ienzo’s parents in front of their son, before outright killing them himself. He then leaves, causing Ienzo to suffer from PTSD. Later, Ienzo is found and taken in by Ansem the Wise and his apprentices. The events of Birth By Sleep happened fairly soon afterward, since it’s implied that Ienzo’s arrival at the castle was a fairly recent occurrence, especially by his quiet nature and apparent unwillingness to listen to Even’s orders about staying in the castle. When he encounters the Flood Unversed and is rescued by Ven, he acts unsurprised at their appearance, like he had seen them before. Once Ansem begins his experiments on the heart and darkness, Ienzo sees the opportunity to study the darkness so he can understand what it’s like, so that he can use that knowledge to find Vanitas and avenge his parents. This is what drives him to insist on continuing the experiments. Ultimately, however, his desire for vengeance is what causes his susceptibility to succumbing to darkness.
 * Also, Zexion’s signature weapon is called the Book of Retribution. Retribution is another word for vengeance, and the book could contain Ienzo’s notes on darkness. The book is Exactly What It Says On the Tin: Ienzo’s book of revenge.

The Mimic Master is the Unversed formed from Ienzo’s desire for vengeance.

 * Related to the above, the Mimic Master is an Unversed Vanitas created using Ienzo’s want for vengeance. It’s been established that Vanitas can use the negativity of others to create Unversed; negativity directed at him would likely let Vanitas make stronger Unversed. The Mimic Master’s fighting style foreshadows Zexion’s fighting style, since it is formed from Ienzo’s negativity.
 * Another explanation: It was made abundantly clear by Even that Ienzo's parents died in some way or another, and even past that. he seems to have a look on his face that suggests he's just a somber and negative person overall. He doesn't say a word over the course of his scenes. Now using some creative thinking, and the fact that Darkness seems to be a substance volatile enough to take influence from other Darkness, there are suddenly a lot of hints suggesting that the Mimic Master was formed as a physical basis of the kid's thoughts. First off, the thing's appearance. Yes, yes, it has a giant book, we know. But that isn't it. If you take a look at the Mimic Master's robe, it bears a striking resemblance to the uniforms worn by Aeleus and Dilan, two of the guards of Ansem's castle and two people who likely have interacted with Ienzo quite a lot - and probably who he holds close to his heart (and we all know what happens with Darkness and the heart). Furthermore, it is capable of collecting massive amounts of information on an enemy and turning that information against them; Ienzo is extremely attentive, and the mind-screwing he induced upon people as Zexion most certainly found its deepest roots in the back of Ienzo's mind. And finally, it flies around the arena and attacks with quite a physical attitude - it will spew fire magic at you (another connection to Zexion), it will rip the pages out of its apparent weapon and use them to protect itself, and it will whap you around the head with a book. It's obvious that Ienzo does a very good job of composing himself, but considering the sort of life he's been through, surely there must be pent-up berserker rage hiding somewhere...

Kingdom Hearts 3D will concern Replicas of Sora, Riku and an unidentified third party

 * It's pretty well-established that the 3D trailer is Mind Screw incarnate. But there are a few hints as to what it's actually about. Firstly, what's with all the Soras falling down out of the sky? That makes no sense at all, especially if we're to take Tetsuya Nomura's statement about this taking place right after Kingdom Hearts II (or was it after Coded?) at face value...because Sora and Riku aren't just in their KH1 attire, they're their Kingdom Hearts SELVES. And Traverse Town--what? Wasn't that destroyed? But if you put all these bizzare elements, something shines through.
 * Riku and Sora are the only characters
 * And then suddenly everything makes sense. Why is everything trippy? Because it's all a simulation. Perhaps a training simulation for Replicas based on the actual events of KH1? A Sora Replica and a Riku Replica must team up and trust one another if they're to escape the Big Bad's evil fake worlds--and he's probably Vexen, his Replica, or his original self--to escape and warn Our Heroes about the new threat. Or kill Vexen to death.
 * Also Kingdom Hearts 3D stands for 3 Duplicates. There is a third, as-of-yet unrevealed duplicate that's going to show up and be a playable character...and I bet it's
 * Or, of course, it could be RE: coded, just in 3d.
 * Y'mean, they're gonna release a remake of the same game, twice, for two different consoles, within the course of a year. C'mon they're not THAT stupid. (My theory? It's gonna be RE:358/2Days.)

The Mickey keychain on the Kingdom Key has nothing to do with Mickey
It's actually a symbol to represent a trinity, the fact that it looks like Mickey is a cooncidence. Think about it, it's made up of three circles. The fact that one is bigger than the other two means just it's a much more important part.

All the legends that referred to the Keyblade as if there was only one of them...
...were actually referring to the
 * Makes sense.

Kingdom Hearts III will be about the Second Keyblade War, and Kairi will use the knowledge she gained from her grandmother's story to serve as a guiding light during/after the war.
Based on Xehanort's accounts, Kairi's grandmother's story is about the Keyblade War and its aftermath. No doubt this will be important. If Kingdom Hearts III will be the conclusion of the Xehanort saga, it will also be the climax of his plot- a new Keyblade War.

The Keyblade Wielder Order was based on the Jedi.
Hey, they're a group of warriors with unique, cool swords and unusual, magical abilities, charged with keeping balance in the world, have a master-apprentice dynamic and must constantly beware the temptation of darkness...
 * And were almost totally forgotten about within ten years of one of them falling to said darkness.
 * This is begging for Xehanort to say, Riku I am your father.
 * Nah, Xehanort's more like Darth Sidius than Darth Vader.

Kingdom Hearts III will feature Sora & Co. as adults.
Sora and the gang all aged between I and II, so it's possible they will age during the gap between II and III as well. Since the gap between games is longer this time they will age a lot more than between I and II. I expect a five-seven year Time Skip between II and III which will place Sora in his early twenties with a level in badass to match.
 * Probably not, as much as we'd all like to see it. "Blank Points" (the secret ending that starts the whole "Reconnect. Kingdom Hearts" arc) takes place not too long after Sora & co. receive King Mickey's letter at the end of II (said letter containing the info the King discovered during coded).

Mickey was keeping what exactly he was training under Yen Sid for a secret from the rest of Disney Town
Which is why Donald and Goofy didn't know what a keyblade was. Why isn't clear, maybe they've been trying to keep Keyblades as secret as possible ever since the War.
 * Supported by the fact that Yen Sid taught Mickey magic, both in Fantasia and in Kingdom Hearts (remember those animated brooms in Disney Town? Yen Sid taught Mickey how to do that). So it's reasonable that as far as Donald and Goofy know, Mickey was learning some high level spells from Yen Sid, and he didn't tell them anything about the keyblade.
 * But at the end credits, Mickey hands over his Keyblade and Star Shard to Yen Sid right in front of Donald and Goofy and they saw along with Ven Mickey holding on to the Keyblade at the Badlands. Yen Sid also mentions the Keyblade Graveyard to Aqua in their presence. It's quite doubtful that Mickey wouldn't have told them the significance of the weapon, give the flourish he showed when Yen Sid handed it back.

In Kingdom Hearts III Xehanort will break Sora's keyblade.
It's obvious he will be back, and will be fed up with Sora's interference in his schemes. To take Sora out of the equation without killing him Xehanort will break the keyblade. This will force Sora to use other weapons and/or other people's keyblades until Sora can get his keyblade repaired.
 * So then... Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django?

If Kingdom Hearts III visits Port Royal that world's plot will go Off the Rails.
Half the plot of Dead Man's Chest is getting the key and the chest together, which won't be necesary when Jack could just have Sora open the chest with the keyblade. So either an original story will be written for Port Royal, or it will just cut straight to finding the chest and then move on to At World's End.
 * Or Davy gave it a lock that requirees two keyblade wielders to open, allowing Jack or Will to steal Davy's Keyblade to open it
 * Or, mate, Davy was wise to that old trick, and made a lock that only his Keyblade can open. After all, he's an ancient force of the sea. Why couldn't he have participated in the Keyblade War?
 * A keyblade shaped like the key from Dead Man's Chest? That would be pretty awesome.

The Rite of Succession requires more than just touching someone else's keyblade
Specifically, it requires both the current wielder and the one succeeding them to touch it at the same time for several seconds. This is why Leon and Captain Jack touched Sora's key and yet won't get their own- they both took it from his hands, but weren't touching it as the same time as him for more than a moment.
 * Hmm strange, I actually had taken that into account for a fanfiction.

Master Eraqus has a Nobody
Numerous comparisons have been made between what happened to Eraqus' heart going into Terra when Xehanort stabbed him, and Kairi's heart going into Sora in the Fall of Destiny Islands. When Sora lost his heart, a nobody formed not only for him, but for the secondary heart he was carrying--Namine. So, logically, when Terranort lost his amalgamated Terra-Xemnas heartcluster, a nobody should have formed for the secondary heart he was carrying, an Eraqus nobody.
 * Yes. This would be awesome (assuming that Eraqus' Nobody--whose name would be hilariously unpronounceable--is not cut from the same mold as Org. XIII). Squeenix, make it happen.
 * The best I can come up with for his nobody name is Quexars, which sounds like a brand of tile grout...
 * He very likely won't have relation to Organization XIII, which means we can likely expect a non-real-name-plus-X-anagram like Namine. Xine?
 * His Nobody would be Citan Uzuki
 * Maybe the Mysterious Figure in the Land of Departure is his Nobody, formed when his body disappeared.

Sora has ANOTHER Nobody
In KH, Sora holds Kairi's and Ven's heart. Kairi had Namine. However, I think Roxas was actually a nobody for Ven due to their blatant similarities. So Sora has one more nobody for himself he has not found yet. My only obscure evidence (assuming Storyline and Gameplay segregation is not applied) is Sora spontaneously activating anti-form implied hes still unstable after Roxas reunion. Tetsuya do leave uncanon hints like the Armor battle in Final Mix which become significant for BBS.

Xehanort's role as Big Bad will be usurped in Kingdom Hearts III.
By Xanatos. Xehanort will make the mistake of recruiting him into his organization of Disney villians and underestimate Xanatos's ability to play the trope named after him. If he succedds in overthrowing Xehanort then it will open up new soruce sof magic and new business oppportunities. If he fails, then the research he's collected in he meantime on "Darkness of the Heart" and "Heartless" and "Gumni Ship" ( in addition to his other technolgies and magical options) will allow him to cause an Enemy Civil War. If nothing else certain boy with a boy key will be a useful pawn to keep his world and family safe.

Donald and Goofy knew exactly what Mickey was talking about when he mentioned a "key to our survival".
The note was written in code to keep anyone else from understanding what was going on if they should happen upon it.
 * Donald, at least, probably understood the code and was acting as if he didn't know what he was looking for in order to not alert any of the many untrustworthy elements in a city like that. Goofy, on the other hand, being Goofy, probably forgot the relevant details at some point and genuinely didn't know.

What'd happen if Xion split and became her own person?

 * My guess is that Axel woudl become Lea again if his heart is freed...Roxas would probably become Ventus again...but what about Xion? Would she suddenly become a little Yuffie-like wielder? (I thought she looked more like Yuffie than Kairi - it's the black hair)

Xehanort is more powerful then he looks.
That's not Terra/Eraqus/Yen Sid overlooking his flaws to give him a chance - that was Xehanort doing it all along. And even then...

Xehanort lived in the Original World.
Ok, maybe not Master Xehanort, but his original heart. What leads to this conclusion is MX's strange behaviour. If you saw MX and Terra's initial interaction, you think he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist ... but later on, he's just evil. By looking at the two in conjuction, you either conclude that he was crazy or believed Utopia Justifies the Means. Thing was... he had a point.

If Xehanort could have plotted The End of the World As We Know It, it stands to show that he could have done it in the past.

Quite possibly, the Original World was called Kingdom Hearts, which was just a kingdom full of hearts of neither Light or Dark. As the population grew (or time passed), it because obvious they needed a leader.

Enter Xehanort Prime. By forging the first X-Blade, he created order. Consequently, chaos was born. Both were locked into the X-Blade because he was the only one who could handle the power. Naturally, everyone wanted one. Because the forging process was imprefect, they became "keys" to order and chaos: The Keyblades of Light and Dark. Neither side could best agree on how best to rule the Original World, so the Keyblade War was fought. It became a long war of attrition, in which no one really "died" because their hearts would just be recast into different bodies.

Xehanort Prime knew they could not co-exist, despite his efforts, so he struck a deal: He would destroy the original X-Blade - giving up access the Kingdom Hearts - and split it into different areas of both Light and Dark so that everyone could have a slice of the pie. The old Keyblades were decommissioned, purposely placed in a crossroads as a war memorial, and the area renamed the Keyblade Graveyard. To prevent the Keyblade War from happening again anywhere else, he added one more condition: they had to give up their bodies and memories to become new poeple. The exhuasted combatants agreed.

And so the New World was made, with the new hearts literally becoming the children of the War. As the Old World crumbled, the hearts would merge and split, each with the potential of light and dark - except that Xehanort noticed some hearts flat out refused to merge with the other side. Fearing the worse, and with little time to spare, Xehanort Prime quickly imprinted critical memories of the War into his heart before he too was cast into the New World.

Xehanort Prime was reborn in Destiny Islands (as MX), possibly as one of its founders. Unfortuntely, the hasty imprintation of the memories meant that all context of the War was lost, and MX was left seeking without answers. Using a (new) Keyblade, he travelled the world in search of answers. It turned out that two other people (Yen Sid and Eraqus) had the same idea. After a lengthy discussion, Xehanort suggested they utilise an unused parcel of land to train Keyblade Masters, calling it Land Of Departure. On Xehanort's insistence, Yen Sid invented the Rite Of Sucession which meant that no one else could wield a Keyblade unless they dictacted it. Also, Xehanort installed a Keyhole in his seat and entrusted to Eraqus to use in case of an emergency. This Keyhole would wipe the memories of those who entered, meaning the secret of the Land Of Departure (and subsequently, the Rite Of Sucession) would be lost. Lastly, he ensured that none of them would remember that these were his inventions. He then "forgot" all these, giving the impression it was never his idea (or theirs) to begin with.

Towards BBS, problems surfaced. Eraqus went a little too far fighting the Dark. Yen Sid wanted to train a pupil called Mickey, but Eraqus flat out refused, because he was not "pure". Yen Sid secretly trained Mickey though, and when found out, ordered Xenahort to peform a Rite of Denial to Yen Sid as punishment. As their relationship threatend to fall apart, Xehanort had to secretly modify their memory so it would seem that Yen Sid had retired of his own violition, Mickey was his legitimate pupil, and Eraqus had approved all this.

The stress of the procedure broke him. He became conviced that Light and Dark would never reconcile unless the X-blade was reconstructed, merging everyone into one single entitiy- Kingdom Hearts. He became so obsessed that he became a machine programmed and overwritten by himself, forever wanting to construct Kingdom Hearts until it was completed - forgetting why the War was fought in the first place, dooming him into an infinite loop.

Manipulation became a means to an end for Xehanort - appearing apologetic to Eraqus to influence Terra, playing a dangerous game with Vanitas simply to obtain the X-Blade, and when that failed (possibly because it was a defective copy), imprinting his heart to Terra to counter any sabotage - which did happen. He was able to get back up to speed due to giving himself several other options - creating the Heartless and Nobodies, imprinting 2 more backups, 1 Heartless and one Nobody, knowing full well that a heart was vitually indistructable and a body easily regenrated...

Going even further with this theory: Xehanort was the "Sora" of the Original World
Hence all the parallels between them.

Xehanort has the same heart-binding power that Sora does.
Only unlike Sora, he's learned how to abuse that power to get others to do what he wants. Think about it, his force of presence is so strong that whether you like him or hate him, you just can't resist being affected by him. And Xehanort being who he is, he can manipulate you through that connection either way. It explains (and feel free to add more examples):
 * Why Eraqus went from outright attacking him when he first turned to darkness to forgiving-and-forgetting by the time of Terra and Aqua's exam.
 * Why Ven chose to follow him as an apprentice despite really not wanting to become a darkness-wielder.
 * Why Terra was willing to become Xehanort's apprentice and learn how to control the darkness from him, despite wanting to be rid of it just minutes before.
 * Why the original members of Organization XIII were so eager to betray Ansem the Wise despite being decent people before Xehanort showed up (Braig notwithstanding).
 * Why Riku was so easily swayed to darkness.

Oswald will be the dark Keyblade wielder and Big Bad. Will have epic duel with Mickey
Like the title said. It'll be more personal epic battle between brothers as King Oswald become corrupted with power and hunger for revenge against Mickey. He will held dual Keyblades, will be assisted by Phantom Blot, and leads the army of Nobodies. Oswald's quest for power is even more personal: He wishes to resurrect his beloved Ortensia, with the help of the Nobodies, and he blames Mickey for her death.
 * Angry maybe but teaming up with the Shadow blot!? The blot was a major reason why Owsald's life sucks in the first place. If Nomora does decide to add Epic Mickey it'll probally be simulair in vien to the Timeless river, and probally bring some of the emotional baggage to the Disny cast. On a side note it would be interesting if there where some rejected Square characters in the wasteland, maybe even have a chainsaw like weapon that is a Shout Out to the Keyblade original design.
 * Epic Mickey world would be as awesome as it is unlikely. If it did exist, Sora would have to turn into his original lion boy outfit for the duration.

The Kingdom Keys
This explains why they aren't available in Birth By Sleep, and why Mickey had to go into the Dark Realm to find his.

Namine can remember Xion.
Because of her power over memories, Namine remembers Xion even though no one else can. Whether or not Kairi has access to these memories depends on whether or not Namine sealed off her own memories on account of them being traumatic (would you want to remember a full year of abuse all of a sudden?) Evidence: Namine's sketch of Roxas and Axel still contains Xion even after all other memories of Xion have faded.

After the Xehanort Saga, the series will follow Sora's son.
As the title says, it will follow Sora's son or daughter (by Kairi, Riku, Namine, Xion, Aqua, Roxas or whoever you'd like). He or she will form a Five-Man Band with Max Goof, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Additional party members will include Melody, Kiara, and, once again, Peter Pan. An older Denzel will fight in Olympus Coliseum, and an older Marlene will live in Radiant Garden.

I don't know, it's just something that I'd like to see happen.

In the next game, Sora will perform an Advent Children like Omnislash
Just thinking, but I think it would be cool if he could replicate Cloud's Omnislash, every keychain he has transform into a keyblade and Sora slashes the Big Bad many times.
 * Sorta like this?

Valor form's lack of magic is from Sora confusing courage with recklessness
I mean seriously, what's more reckless than giving up an entire set of abilities to power up another set? Most people would keep a few remaining for emergencies. Thankfully he gains the wisdom to not completely give up abilities by the time he gains Wisdom form

Vanitas will take control of Sora at some point, and when he does, he'll attack Kairi.
Because not only is it the cruelest thing he could possibly do, it's also an opportunity for him to forge the X-blade again. He doesn't need Ventus; any pure heart will do just fine.
 * Of course, this would also bring Sora and Kairi together... And if the Power of Friendship defeated him the first time, than the Power of Love would be brutal.
 * Further, it will be split into two fights, one between Riku and Vanitas in the mid-game, and another between Kairi and Vanitas at the end. Better yet, the Riku/Vanitas fight will take place in the same room you fought Rikunort in KH1.

The "key to our survival" isn't just any keyblade, but rather the Kingdom Key in particular.
Mickey knew that it would take both Kingdom Keys to secure the safety of the universe. A normal keyblade wouldn't suffice- it had to be the Kingdom Key, and he needed to go retrieve the Realm of Darkness' Kingdom Key so they could seal the door from both sides.

The Bonus Boss fights in Birth By Sleep are fought in dreams.
However, they have no rest. They continue dreaming about combat, and whatever those bosses are take advantage of that fact. As the series has already established the efficacy of dreams and simulations for combat training, and also the danger that lurks within, it doesn't matter that it is All Just a Dream--the danger is very real.

Ariel is not a Princess of Heart because she is not a maiden of pure heart...
Because, as a mermaid, she does not have the same kind of heart that humans do. In the original story, she, but all that happens in the movie is Triton makes her human. There are no guarantees that this gave her a traditionally human being, and even if there were, in KH, she's still a mermaid. Therefore, her heart registers as impure--literally. She has "imperfections" from the point of view of a human heart.

The ending to Kingdom Hearts III...
Will involve Xehanort somehow destroying Sora's keyblade. In order to defeat him, all of his friends will perform Rite of Successions with him, even Xion, Roxas, and TVA. All of their keyblades will continue to be destroyed, until they're all gone. At this point, Sora will use the power of friendship to form the X-Blade, the perfect balance between light and darkness. This will summon Kingdom Hearts, which will only please Xehanort, giving him more power and putting him closer to his goal. Xehanort will use the power of nothing to nearly defeat Sora, and Sora will have to open the door to Kingdom Hearts. Sora will gain the power over everything, destroying Xehanort, and himself, in the process.

Zack
...but we'll see him again. I mean, come on, the Underworld is right there.
 * And then, Zack will have a touching reunion with Cloud during one of his bouts with Sephiroth, giving Cloud the resolve to finally vanquish the darkness in his heart. This will finally, finally end the Flanderization Cloud's experienced in this series, allowing him to lighten up and move on with his life without the need to angst about his past and hardships.
 * And he'll go on a date with Aqua. Because come ON.

Zack and Sephiroth are related some how, or are now the same person.
My theory is that, for his own inscrutable reasons Sephiroth used his powers to merge with Zack. It is my only explanation for

When Sora finally manages to
Methinks that

When they said Master Xehanort didn't return from nonexistence alone, they were referring to...

 * The rest of organization XIII (minus Roxas and Axel), or at least Braig, Dilan, Even, Aeleus, and Ienzo. We'll see just how dark they were with their hearts, that they created The Heartless.
 * Confirmed in Dream Drop Distance, with appearances by Lea, Ienzo, Aeleus, Braig, Even, Dilan, and Isa.
 * The above-theorized Nobody of Master Eraqus, following in the hopes of breaking his heart  somehow by joining the Bad Guys
 * Eraqus and Xehanort's heretofore-unnamed Master, who will turn out to have been the one to turn Xehanort to darkness in the first place.
 * Malificent, because where Darkness goes, she's never very far behind.
 * The Phantom Blot, just because.

The Lingering Sentiment will be instrumental in
The armor will separate into its component parts, equip itself onto Xehanort's body, and drive Xehanort's heart out. For added points, "Fate of the Unknown" will be playing, and once  returns to his original self, he will pull off his helmet just as the song ends, just like in the Final Mix + Secret Ending.

Poor Terra is split in three.
When The Lingering Sentiment is supposedly animated by Terra's "rage" - but we know that the soul is both the animating force and intelligence of a being (hence Nobodies consisting of both body and soul). Thus, I posit that When the Xehanort we all know and hate from the main series  lost his heart, he, of course, separated into Ansem Seeker of Darkness and Xemnas.
 * The one problem with this theory is that But there are ways around this: either
 * And none of that is even accounting for the fact that

A non-squicky way to resolve Roxas/Xion.
If  Admitedly, the Replica program is itself a bit squicky, but there's nothing too bad about pairing up Ventus and Xion.

Every memory-related inconsistency is Namine's fault.
That's right. Every single instance of character's forgetting something important is backlash from Namine reconstructing Sora's memories between Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II. Her memory reconstruction had long-reaching, unforseen effects. Donald and Goofy not recognizing Yen Sid's Tower? Namine did it. Ariel forgetting that Ursula was evil? That was Namine too. Mickey not thinking to mention Terra, Aqua, and Ven until after coded? You guessed it, Namine. And so on and so forth.

Vanitas wasn't supposed to
Xehanort said  would soon belong to him, not Vanitas. Maybe  This would explain Vanitas' Dragon With an Agenda traits; he was in on this technicality while Xehanort wasn't.

Sora lost all of his memories from before KHI.
When Sora became a heartless, he forgot everything from before the beginning of KHI. All of his memories went into not Roxas (created from Sora's own heart), but Namine (created from Kairi's heart), as Roxas  know nothing, while Namine knows enough of Sora's memories to manipulate a former memory of his into something his heart recognizes--it would be much easier to do this if Sora had no memory there. This would explain:
 * The awkwardness when he hugs Kairi, but the emotionality when he finds Riku (he's met Riku a lot more than he's met Kairi, and when he did see Kairi, it was when she was near-comatose
 * Roxas's lack of any memory, while all other nobodies have memories
 * Namine's ability to manipulate Sora (and Repliku) completely, while she could not manipulate Riku very well: Sora and Repliku have no memories of their own, while Riku has his own memories to rely on
 * Sora's not going back to Destiny Islands at the end of the first game: it's not home to him because he has no memories; Riku (and Kairi, to some extent) is "home"
 * Sora not recognizing Roxas as.
 * I'm sorry, do you remember somebody you met a single time at four years old?
 * I don't think Sora even met.

The Heartless Machinery enscription will come up again.
It's noteworthy that it mentioned two keys to Kingdom Hearts. This is likely a reference to the two Kingdom Keys.

The Realm of Darkness has a giftshop at the entrance
Because somehow, almost anyone who enters it ends up with an Organization coat.

Moogles, being True Neutral, have been the catalyst for the entire series through their apathy.
They're businessmen, they provide goods and synthesis materials for whoever is willing to pay. Need I remind everyone of the Organization XIII-affiliated Moogles that some here on this site claim to be the true mastermind behind everything? Heck, if you can synthesize the Ultima Weapon by handing over the Keyblade and a select few items, who's to say that the Moogles (or better yet, their ancestors) weren't responsible for the original Keyblades (i.e. providing Humans Are Bastards with the opportunity to open Kingdom Hearts, thus triggering the Keyblade War, or at the very least having the creation of said weapons being able to be traced back to them).

The "Sora" seen in Kingdom Hearts 3D is actually Xion.
KH3D supposedly takes place after KHII, yet Sora and Riku have reverted to their KH1 selves for some reason. "Sora" is Xion using his image (intentionally or no); she is either experiencing what she thinks are the events of KH1, or is dreaming--either way, the game will follow dream logic.

The supposed raining Sora's in the 3d trailer is symbolic for
There are simply too many of that boy running around.

The Evil Queen from Snow White isn't dead
Her death wasn't shown onscreen, we're just told that the dwarves avenged Snow White. But the rule of thumb is--if you don't see the body destroyed or in some way clearly deceased onscreen, they're still alive. Presumably she'll show up looking to get rid of the Princesses of Heart for their purity and beauty.
 * This may be practically canon, judging by the first game. In Sora's Awakening sequences, the platforms at each station show one of several Princesses of Heart, as well as major related characters. The ones who are asleep are either the Princesses who were abducted (Snow, Cinderella, Aurora, who were taken during Birth by Sleep or during the 10-year interim; or Belle, who was taken sometime during the first game) or those who were still at their respective world when the Heartless destroyed it (the Beast's servants). There are also silhouettes of characters who were alive or whose presence was unknown (the three fairies from Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, the other three Princesses). Notice that the Beast, the seven dwarves, and the Queen (in her old hag form) are depicted as awake, and the Beast was the sole survivor of his world's destruction. Pull two and two together, and it's likely that the aforementioned characters somehow survived throughout that period, although this is made somewhat moot, as Sora's victory at the end of KH restored the worlds taken by the Heartless. Thus, the Queen may very well be back at Enchanted Dominion.
 * Per the alternate scene (if you seal Deep Jungle before Wonderland), Snow White was captured during the first game.

Every sufficiently-powerful nobody has a One-Winged Angel form like Marluxia and Xemnas
And just like how the generic nobodies are named after Final Fantasy classes, the unique forms are based off FF summons (Lich/Hades and Bahamut, in Marluxia and Xemnas' case). Compare Xemnas' armored dragon form to, which was definitely modelled after Bahamut. Notice the similarities?
 * Marluxia's final form reminds me more of Zalera, even though he's not exactly classic. I could definately see Axel with a demonic Ifrit-inspired mode. Maybe they could have all come together to form a Knights of the Round-like form?

The Keyblade Riku hands to Kairi is Aqua's Keyblade.

 * Destiny's Embrace (Kairi's Keyblade) is one of Aqua's exclusive weapons, obtained after Kairi touches Aqua's Keyblade. Apprentice Xehanort knows about Aqua's armour and Keyblade, and possibly helped the others build the Chamber of Repose to put them in. Now, and this is a bit of a stretch, if Riku has access to "Ansem's" memories, he would know about the Chamber and be able to access it. Riku would probably have to be compelled by someone (maybe even DiZ) to retrieve Aqua's Keyblade, in hopes that Riku could use it. Not long after grabbing it, the Soul Eater turned into the Way to Dawn and he no longer needed Aqua's Keyblade, so he passed it on to Kairi, whose influence made it appear as Destiny's Embrace, rather than Rainfell or Stormfall.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy and Mickey will be a rotating party of 6 in Kingdom Hearts III.
And as a Mythology Gag to the Final Fantasy series, leaked experience is out, too. It would also give the players a nice laugh, since anyone who read the manual before playing the first Kingdom Hearts would have expected this to occur in the first game (sans Mickey).

Sora has been every single type of creature in the entire series.

 * Normal living being: DUH.
 * Princess (Prince?) of Light: had the heart of Kairi within him for almost all of KH.
 * Heartless: briefly in KH. Has an Anti Form in KH2.
 * Nobody: Roxas is his.
 * Replica:
 * Data Copy: the main character in KH Coded is Data Sora.
 * Unversed:
 * Sentiment:
 * Alternatively, Sora himself could be considered to function as his own Sentiment during the end parts of I and the duration of Co M. He has no real "body" as that was running around at the time as Roxas, but he still retains his heart and sentience.
 * Or, Namine is the Sentiment. Note that unlike normal nobodies, Namine has no flesh. What is a sentiment? It's a manifestation of the soul in physical form, seperated from its body and heart. That pretty acurately describes what Namine is.

The Oathkeeper is a manifestation of Sora's resolve.
This is why there are times Sora can't use it, even though he had the Oathkeeper charm the whole time. This also explains why Roxas can use it, without ever explaining when he acquired Namine's Oathkeeper charm.

The Unversed are still out there.
Their presence in the final chapter isn't Gameplay and Story Segregation, defeating Vanitas just stopped him from making anymore. Most have been defeated since, but that only means the survivors are the strongest of them.

Vanitas is also the darkness in Sora's heart.
That's why they look alike. Like Ven, Vanitas couldn't survive with an incomplete heart, and Sora's darkness merged with him, giving him his unmasked appearance.

The digital Sora that's still in the simulated Twilight Town will become important.
I'm not sure how, but the series has already proven that it's not against using look-alike characters, and Sora was conveniently blocked from entering the simulated chamber, which seems to imply that the digital Sora remained even when the real one awoke.
 * Except that there is no digital Sora in Twilight Town, at least that we know of.

Xemnas and Saix, Ven and Aqua
Now that we all know from Birth by Sleep about Xehanort's origin, it's interesting to look at Xemnas and Saix in a new manner.

Kingdom Hearts 3D actually takes place in a separate universe
The raining Soras is a metaphor for the differnt versions of Sora in the Multiverse, and and with that 3D will show Sora litarly connecting the   of the differnt versions of himself.

Kingdom Hearts III will be released in 2015.
13 is supposed to be an important number in this series, right? Well 2015 will be the 13th anniversary of the first game, so it's the important year to release an important game.

Sora was always meant for the Kingdom Key
Note that around the beginning of the game, a new heart that's obviously Sora's lends part of itself to Ventus. Then all of a sudden he makes a keyblade with part of its guard resembling the Kingdom Key's.
 * I was under the impression that Ventus had that keyblade beforehand, and just summoned it.
 * Xehanort's reaction of saying "a keyblade" rather than "his keyblade" would suggest Ventus never had the Wayward Wind before, regardless of the cutscenes say

Cloud was a keyblade wielder
Compare his KH1 outfit with the ones worn by Terra, Ventus, and Aqua. They all four wear bits of armor and have capes as part of their costume. His wing is can easily be a shotlock command unique to him.
 * Except that Cloud already had that piece of armor on his shoulder back in Final Fantasy VII.
 * One of those things sticking out of that pad could be the button to call out the rest of the armor

Body-hopping isn't a new thing for
He first sees Terra as a strong young man with a large supply of Darkness inside him, and from there on in, starts scheming to. And then think about this: what if this isn't the first time it's happened? What if the body he used before was also stolen from some poor person who got his heart and soul booted out so could occupy it instead, so he could grow old in it unrestricted by time? And what if it happened with the body before that, and the body before that, and the body before that...?

Sora is the human incarnation of Kingdom Heart's light.
He wasn't  he was already starting to save people from having their heart break apart at the cost of his own safety. Plus pretty much everything unusual he has done or that has happened to him in his life pointing towards him being unusually strong and filled by light, despite not being "Princess-pure". No way he is just a normal human being! He is actually "The true light, which sleeps within the darkness", which has somehow materialized as a single heart within a newborn on Destiny Island, which is why his tutorial stage is called "Awakening" and why the voice says that he'll one day "Open the door". Sora needs to awaken to his true purpose, in order to finally return the worlds to their original state. This would, of course, make him a Jesus-figure for this Universe in several ways and brings unfortunate implications about his eventual fate...
 * What unfortunate implications? "Christ raised from the dead, dies no more, for death no longer has power over him." There's no reason to expect Sora to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to fit the Messianic Archetype because he's already performed one. What we should expect is a climactic final battle to destroy evil.
 * Except that this first Heroic Sacrifice was only for Kairi's good and nobody else's, and she was also the one to undo it. The real "climax of his existence" would surely be even more impactful (even though his Sacrifice for Kairi still had a pretty huge impact on the main cast. At very least.) and be for all worlds, not just his closest friends.
 * No, it wasn't just for Kairi's sake. It was also to render the final keyhole into a condition where it would be possible to lock.

Pete is a potential Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
Pete is the closest thing to an Evil Counterpart that Mickey has in the series. He's possibly got the same potential for Darkness that Mickey has with Light, with the only problem being that Pete's too stupid to do anything other than being a utter douchebag. Whatever spark he has is too small and insignificant for villains like Xehanort and all his incarnations to find useful, but Maleficent, as a Toon herself and self-proclaimed Master of Darkness knows how to actually nurture it. Why else would she make an otherwise pathetic nincompoop as The Dragon?

In the final battle of the final Kingdom Hearts game, Sora will lead an army of Keyblade wielders in an epic final clash against the forces of darkness/Heartless/whatever
This WMG is Exactly What It Says On the Tin

The above WMG is true, but Sora will handle the enemies singlehandedly anyway.
Because it's Kingdom Hearts Armeggeddon.

Xehanort's Guardian is
In the Final Episode,
 * So this means,

Nomura lied and at least one of the people caught up in the whole Xehanort mess will end up without a body in the end.
My guess is that Sora's (already heavily worn out) body will be damaged or destroyed during the Final Battle in KH3 (In other words: He'll be on the verge to dying) and either it's him who's lost or Ventus/Roxas gives up his /their chance for a seperate existence and allows Sora to take Ventus' sleeping body. Why? Because an "And all was well" ending without any consequences would be just unfitting for a series like this.

Being "Perma-D-Linked" to Ventus heavily influenced Sora's physical development.
Sora and Roxas still looking incredibly simmilar, despite Roxas being a copy of Ventus in terms of looks is not a case of Only Six Faces. Rather, Baby Sora's body adjusted to the D-Link his heart had made at (or prior to?) the moment of it's birth and developed into pretty much an identical twin of Ventus in everything but hair over the years. (And let's just assume that all of Sora's ancestry had brown hair and that DNA overuled Heart-based imprint in this case.) Aqua even commented on how Sora is "A spitting image of Ventus".

Max and PJ will appear in Kingdom Hearts III
Max will be a knight in training, and PJ will be a lackey of Maleficent's, trying to follow his father's footsteps. However, he'll pull a Heel Face Turn after realizing he's not as bad as his father. Pete will at first disowns his son, but when he sees PJ in danger, he'll pull a semi-Heroic Sacrifice (I say "semi" because I don't think Disney would ever kill-off one of their classic characters). "Pete: You maybe a goody-two-shoes, but you're still my son."

Kingdom Hearts III will have a Bittersweet Ending
The Downside:
 * Xehanort use a Keyblade simmilar to the one Sora used to free Kairi's heart, and turns Riku into a Heartless/Nobody.
 * He then uses Riku's Heartless as the One-Winged Angel of the game.
 * Upon finding out Sora holds Ven's heart, he recreates Vanitas.
 * After using some Deus Ex Machina, he causes a second Keyblade war.
 * Sora defeats Xehanort using a Kamikazi-esque move. His fate remains ambiguous.
 * If Xehanort still holds Terra's body, his defeat will result in the death of Terra.
 * Vanitas runs loose without his former master's control, setting him up as the new Big Bad.

The Upside:
 * Xehanort is finally defeated.
 * Kairi begins her own journey to fight in the Keyblade War, with the hopes to find Sora. This may lead to her getting A Day in The Limelight sequel/spin-off.

Xemnas was the unity of
A Nobody is stated to be made of a "left behind" body and mind/soul. However, where was  mind/soul when we last saw it? Within the Lingering Sentiment. What I am trying to imply with this? Well, this means that  was such a huge Love Freak that even his BODY still strove for reuniting with his friends (Think about his "talk" with   and his desperate search for  ), even though the mind controlling this body was following different goals entirely.

Reason why Ariel isn't a Princess of Hearts.
Beyond the obvious fact that Maleficent would have needed world's biggest Goldfish Glass in order to contain her, Ariel's world is based on the story The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. Now, while the topic is never touched upon in the Disney Version, the original fairytale explicitely states that mermaids have no soul (they still have a heart though) and thus cease to exist, akin to the Nobodies, when they die. That's why a mermaid can't be a Princess of Hearts, at least not one useable for the purpose Maleficent intended them for: The other Princesses of Heart all had their hearts removed, in order to forge a Keyblade of Hearts (as mentioned in Birth By Sleep) from them. Their bodies stayed unharmed though, because their souls remained in them and kept them "stable". This wouldn't have worked for Ariel, seeing how she lacks this soul. If anything was to happen to her heart, her body would just go "poof" and her heart would probably just straight return to Kingdom Hearts, which would render all the hard work capturing her wasted. In extension, this also means that no mermaid or merman can leave behind a Nobody upon loosing their heart, strong will or not.

Riku is somehow related by blood to Master Xehanort
This theory is so obvious that its strange no one has suggested it yet. Both Riku and Master Xehanort have silvery-white hair, and came from Destiny Island, both had a strong desire to leave their world, and a tendancy to get a little too close to darkness. Master Xehanort as a young man also bears a fairly close resemblance to teenage Riku, and there's that scene in BBS where Terra is looking at kid Riku and sees a vision of Young Xehanort that overlaps with teenage Riku. It might also explain why Xehanort's heartless possessed Riku's body so easily, and could also add another layer of meaning to the comments in Chain of Memories about how Riku "smells like the superior".
 * Somebody did suggest it- going one step further and suggesting that Riku was a direct descendant of Master Xehanort.

At the end of things, it will be Terra, not Sora, who strikes the final blow and kills Xehanort once and for all
Again, Exactly What It Says On the Tin.
 * And it would be the most satisfying moment in the history of cutscenes. EVER.
 * Cutscene? That should be a boss fight.

The Etherial Blade used by Xemnas and Mysterious Figure is the Nobody equivalent to a keyblade.
The Keyblade is a weapon connected to its user's heart, and as such can only be used by those with strong hearts that it judges worthy. Nobodies, however, do not have hearts, and the nobody of a keyblade master, Xemnas, seems to be able to manifest a blade of energy, but cannot give it a form beyond that. This could be indicative of a Nobody trying to use the one thing it does contain, a soul, to imitate what it once did with its heart. Roxas is an exception, since Ven's heart gives him access to one keyblade and Xion's gives him access to a second; if he was a normal nobody, he wouldn't have true emotions and would probably wield an etherial blade of his own. If this turns out to be true, it indicates Mysterious Figure might be the nobody of a Keyblade master, probably Eraqus or Eraqus and Xehanort's teacher, whose exact fate was never disclosed in the Xehanort reports.
 * This makes a lot of sense and also clears up the issue with Roxas being able to wield a keyblade. It, however, does NOT get the issue with  being able to wield keyblades, despite both lacking a heart and being only made of   respectively out of the way.
 * Xion's case is actually justified;  The Lingering Sentiment does present a thorny complication on this matter, but it might be explained by
 * Alright, I am absolutely convinced of this WMG now. Especially since this is one more piece of evidence for the very good  theory.
 * So, what are the weapons used by the other members of Organization XIII? Lesser manifestations of this same idea?
 * That actually makes a lot of sense. Remember, a lot of the research into Hearts and Darkness they did must have been driven by Braig, since Braig was the only one who knew the whole story--and, if you'll recall, Braig's driving motivation was to obtain his own Keyblade, and as such he was probably at least trying to guide the heart-and-darkness research towards Keyblades and keyblade analogs. The Nobody weapons--and possibly, by extension, the transformation into Nobodies in the first place--must have been a part or product of his research towards that end.

During the inevitable clash with Xehanort in an upcoming game, Forze del Male will make a glorious return
Exactly What It... oh, you know by now.
 * Except that it will be a Medley of Guarndando nel buio, Darkness of the Unknown, Rage Awakened AND Forze del Male! With a serving of "Destati", of course.
 * Well, Forze Del Oscurita has two of them. Close enough?

Master Xehanort has
Notice how in Birth By Sleep

In the Kingdom Hearts universe, Hawaii is part of the Destiny Islands.
In the ending of Birth By Sleep, we see
 * Except that this kind of "Light Ball" already appeared in the first Kingdom Hearts game, where all unidentified worlds looked like that.

Sora and Riku will be able to use Command Styles
Sora will have: Whereas Riku will have:
 * Critical Impact, Spell Weaver, OR a defense-based style (depending on which of the inevitable objects the player picks at the begining)
 * Firestorm, Diamond Dust, and Thunder Bolt
 * Cyclone, because Sora=Sky.
 * Sky Climber, same reasoning as Cyclone.
 * Perhaps a void-based style to represent  that becomes Wingblade if and when
 * Fever Pitch, due to his Lightning Bruiser fighting style.
 * Firestorm, Diamond Dust, and Thunder Bolt
 * Rock Breaker, because Riku=Earth.
 * Dark Impulse, because of his past brushes with darkness.
 * Ghost Drive, because of his teleportation techniques.

Aqua is currently getting a game for herself.
]] No, I'm serious here. Someone saw the BbS Final Mix's new Secret Trailer? It focuses heavily on Aqua, and the time she spent in the Dark Realm all by herself.

Think about it: The authors did NOT expect Aqua to be popular. Which might perhaps explain why Aqua has little Character Development throughout the game. Now, however, they are aware of how popular she is, and they are taking advantage of it.

They are gonna make a game that focuses on Aqua during her time in the Dark Realm. "Birth By Sleep, Volume 2" might even be its ittle. Probably droping more hints around of something yet to come.

But hey, Aqua fans? Rejoice!!
 * Except she's not the only character with a keyblade that's ever been in the Realm of Darkness. Nomura said after Kingdom Hearts II that Mickey's time in that realm was one of the stories he wanted to tell next. This game was planned long before her popularity took off.

BBS: Volume 2 either A.Revolves around Time travel or B.Fills in some of the holes in the series timeline.
The teaser shows events from various parts of the timeline.(Riku watching Kairi on the Neverland clocktower,Roxas acquainting himself with Xion, Kairi and the Twilight town kids at the mansion) which makes it difficult to properly place in the timeline.

While it's possible the game jumps between time periods (b) it's also possible there could be time travel,the main two points being Ventus disappearing from the chamber after a corrupted flash and the fact that the Mysterious Figure has a noticeable time motif.As is custom for the series, Bonus bosses like him are incorporated into a new game some point after they're introduced.Temporal displacement perhaps?

Birth by Sleep: Volume 2 (or whatever the title ends up being called) will show Mickey getting the Kingdom Key D and Riku getting
It shows Mickey in the Realm of Darkness, so that one's a given. As for Riku, it's possible that he met Aqua during his time in the Realm of Darkness, and that might be what allowed him to summon Destiny's Embrace.

When Yen Sid said that, he's referring to Master Xehanort's Nobody.
There's already a WMG on this page suggesting that Master Xehanort has a Nobody, since  it looks very similar visually (if not identical) to when Sora unlocked his heart and created Roxas. I believe that the  will be Master Xehanort's hear in Terra's body, but he'll also be assisted by Master Xehanort's Nobody. Heck, if Master Xehanort DOES have a Nobody, he could have been the one giving Braig instructions, leading to the mass production of the Heartless AND the creation of Organization XIII!
 * As far as we've been able to see, though, the only way for a Nobody to be created is if a Heartless was created, and while there are exceptions to this (namely Naminé) it doesn't appear that Master Xehanort ever actually became one, seeing as how his heart was intact when it entered Terra. Though there is always his name "No Heart" to make you wonder....
 * Maybe a Namine-esque being was created?
 * Was it ever actually stated specifically that a Heartless needed to be created for a Nobody to be formed? Given that (like you said) Namine is a Nobody without a corresponding Heartless, I assumed that a Nobody was created when the body of a person with a strong will had its heart (and any other hearts within) removed from it, Heartless or no Heartless. Kairi probably didn't gain a Nobody when her heart entered Sora's body either because her heart hadn't been unlocked like Master Xehanort's had been, or because she transferred her heart to Sora's in such an unusual way (her body passed through his and then disappeared, rather than her heart floating from her body before entering Sora's).
 * It was indicated here.

The

 * is nothing more than a guardian to the gate into the true dark realm. The Invasion from the darkness that unleashed the heartless was not caused by Xehanort's machninery, but Aqua's entrance into the dark realm. She kills the guardian, which had kept the Heartless in.
 * Why would one heartless be preventing other heartless from entering the Realm of Light? More likely it served to keep interlopers from the Realm of Light from getting too far into the dark realm.

Vanitas will return and attempt to merge with Kairi

 * Because who needs Ven when you have a being of pure light that probably isn't strong enough to fight back just hanging around?
 * Vanitas couldn't merge with Kairi. The only reason he could
 * Well, that's not entirely true. Aqua was noted to be so pure-hearted that she could have been used . Not to mention that Vanitas even cryptically alluded to this with the line "Always good to have a backup."
 * had to be close to Vanitas' equal, though. That was the whole reason for Vanitas' I Need You Stronger gig. The only way Vanitas would merge with Kairi is if she... oh...

Vanitas will return and join forces with Maleficent & Pete
The three of them will be the Psycho Rangers to Sora/Donald/Goofy.

Frollo will hold Sora on trial in Dream Drop Distance

 * He witnesses Sora magically bringing out his Keyblade, as well as use a fire spell or something. This makes him believe he's using witchcraft.
 * The fact that Riku might also visit that world makes this even more likely. Frollo is not the kind of person who believes Dark Is Not Evil.
 * Unless he sees this is in plain view and he tries to recruit Sora to do "Holy" work

Chernabog will be the final boss in the final game

 * He was intended to be the Big Bad of KH 1.
 * Now, I'm aware he was destroyed, but my theory is that he's just resting. I mean, he's the freaken devil! Remember how in Fantasia, he was ? It's kind of like that.
 * Instead of fighting alone, he'd summon his demon army like in Night on Bald Mountain.
 * Alternatively,  will summon Chernabog to his aid... because why not?
 * Or...
 * Maybe all of the friends Sora has made along his journey donate their light to him to defeat Chernabog (or maybe Chernabog's Heartless?) while Ave Maria plays.
 * Chernabog will be revealed to be the alpha heartless, the one that rules over all others. The similarities are a bit uncanny.

The voice talking to Sora in KH 1 is Ventus

 * If you finish Birth By Sleep, it'll make sense.
 * How many times do people have to hear that it's Mickey to accept it? What does Ventus know about a Door to the Light? Mickey, however, knows all about it.
 * I'm calling out Retcon. And about Ventus and the Door of Light, well, it wouldn't be far-fetched to think that Vanitas knew about it, and neither that Ventus absorved his memories after defeating him.

The beach mentioned in the Simulated Twilight Town is actually the Destiny Islands.
Because this would avert What Happened to The Mouse?.
 * I think that's probably true, mostly because of the scene with Roxas, Axel and Xion on the beach at Destiny Islands during Days.

Sora's true power is not the strength of his heart
It's actually his ability to bond with others. This is how he can be destined to "Connect all Hearts"
 * Birth By Sleep shows that not only can Sora's heart reach out and heal Ventus' heart, but it can also keep the heart safe by absorbing it.
 * Kingdom Hearts 1 shows that Sora's heart has bonded with Kairi's, and as such provides a vessal for her heart when her body is at risk.
 * Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories show that Sora's heart's bonds can be used against him, but in order to be manipulated a connection must exist.
 * Kingdom Hearts 2 has a couple of things to note. Namine states that she has power over "The memories of Sora, and those close to him". How is this possible? Well, I think that Sora's heart forms such strong connections that Namine can use those to get into the hearts of others and influence them, to a limited degree. 2 also has the Drive system, wherein Sora takes his friend's powers into himself in order to greatly improve his own.
 * It's both, really. In this universe not much of a stretch to call the ability to bond with others the ultimate strength of heart.

The reason Marluxia and the others at Castle Oblivion wanted to overthrow Xemnas
Was because they were forced into becoming Nobodies rather than giving into the darkness. They had no intention of doing anything evil. Take Vexen for example. In Birth By Sleep, his Somebody, Even was actually a pretty humble person.
 * I don't know about Vexen. It was him, Lexaeus, and Zexion (the loyalists) vs. Marluxia and Larxene (the defectors), with Axel paying the role of Wild Card. Vexen was merely feigning allegiance to the two to earn their trust. Besides, the part in the original game when you travel to The End of the World and use the corridors of darkness to briefly revisit all the worlds shows a laboratory in Hollow Bastion with these human-shaped pods and some cryptic inscription about the heart, implying that the original six used these machines to manually rip out their own hearts.

Isa and Lea tried to break into the castle again.
Only this time, Ansem wasn't around anymore. In fact, that may have been their motivation- nobody has seen the king in a while, so let's investigate to see what's really going on. Of course, by now, Xehanort and the other apprentices are well into their research, so instead of throwing them out like they did in Birth By Sleep, this time, they keep them prisoner and use them for experiments. Naturally, whatever the apprentices did to them resulted in them losing their hearts, but their desire for revenge was strong enough to make them into human-form nobodies, which is why they wanted to take over the Organization.

The next installment will involve an Assimilation Plot
With KH 2, it was shown with Riku that Dark Is Not Evil, so wouldn't it make sense to have some part dealing with Light Is Not Good (not in the sense of Roxas)? I mean, where the Big Bad wants to use Light to his own evil doings. I think one way to do this is to make the Big Bad use an Assimilation Plot, like turning every things into Tang Light.

If we ever get a world based on The Incredibles...
Donald and Goofy will gain alternate outfits based on Paperinik and Super Goof. Paperinik already had a PS 2 game about him back when the first Kingdom Hearts was released, so...
 * And then, aside from the coolness factor of having freaking PK in your party, Sora would get a Sentai/Tokusatsu costume? Yes please.

The Organization made at least one Mickey Replica.
They had to have procured some data about Mickey just through the normal course of their operations, and they wanted to have backups in case the Sora clones went haywire (in the sense of being useless, not rebelious, since Axel never bothered to report the risk of that happening based on the Riku Replica).

The Theme Naming has a greater significance.
According to Master Xehanort's journals, opening Kingdom Hearts will create a new world. Now look at the meanings behind all the names. Sora, Kairi, Riku...sky, sea, land. Ventus, Aqua, Terra...wind, water, earth. Roxas, Xion, Axel...an anagram of sky (twilight?), tide, and the force the earth turns on. Naminé, the waves. What do you get when all of these things come together? You make the world.
 * The Earth turns on an axis. I'd say it's more about Lea, which means meadow.

Mickey will be the main character of Birth By Sleep: Volume 2
Well, it would be boring to play a game where Aqua. He's the only avalible Keyblade master up until Sora.
 * 48 hours?
 * I think he was referring to how long the game would be. Personally, I would like them both to be playable. Perhaps they could have multiple storylines, like in the first Birth by Sleep: Aqua's time in the Dark World, Mickey's story during the first game, and Riku's story during the first game.

Sora has Keyblade Wielder Armor like TVA, he just doesn't know how to activate it yet.
I noticed this while looking at a poster of KH2 Sora in my room. There's a little Metal Armguard on his left shoulder (right side looking at it) just like TVA. That's probably his Armor, but he doesn't know to hit it to activate it.

The wielders of the "dead keys" in the Keyblade Graveyard...
Were erased in some way that left neither a heartless, nor a nobody. Or at the very least, none that could wield keyblades. When Terra, He left no nobody or heartless, since both his heart and body were still together, whereas his, whatever controls the actions of a whole person (I'll just call it a soul), soul was thrown out, leading to the Lingering Sentiment. Look closely at Ends Of the Earth while the sentiment is using it, and compare it to the "dead keys". None of them have keychains, while every "living" keyblade we've seen in the series has one. It has been stated that if you kill a heartless, then it's nobody, the person will return. The Kingdom Key remained "alive" (still had it's keychain), whilst, for all intents and purposes, waiting for this to happen. Ergo, the dead keys aren't waiting for this, as their wielders died in a more permanent manner. A manner which couldn't be reversed by this process. A manner which left nothing behind but their empty keyblades.

The Lingering Sentiment isn't unique
It's something all armors can do. Consider this: the Sentiment can't D-Link and you can't D-Link in the mirage arena, even with balloon letters. Why? because the Wayfinders are being carried by the real bodies.

Scrooge McDuck is a Keyblade wielder
Its all but stated that he can travel between worlds, given that he's from Disney Castle (as proven by relation to Donald and the Triplets) but lives on Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion. The timeline places this travel as occuring before Birth By Sleep at its first occurance. However, before Ansem: Seeker Of Darkness unleashed the heartless upon the worlds, the only way to travel safely between worlds was by keyblade glider or Portal of Darkness, the latter of which is too evil to work for a lawful neutral person like him. Ergo, Scrooge must be a keyblade wielder, presumably of a master-apprentice chain far enough removed from Eraqus, Xehanort, and Yen Sid that he was blistfully unaware of the goings on until it was too late for him to be involved.
 * Given that the triplets eventually change worlds as well to move in with him by Kingdom Hearts II, and probably earlier given that they were in Traverse Town when Disney Castle hadn't fallen, it must be concluded that they are his apprentices.
 * All that just to sell ice cream? It must be Serious Business
 * Scrooge is, at heart, an entrepreneur. He may have figured that since he was travelling the worlds anyway, he might as well figure out how to profit off of it.
 * He wouldn't be the first, either. In Magic the Gathering there was an old-style Planeswalker who used his godlike power and near-omnipotence to smuggle cigars from one dimension to another.
 * The original poster forgets that the Beast broke through the walls dividing the world through sheer force of will. Surely Scrooge's greed could let him do the same thing.
 * Two things. One, the walls were down from Heartless attack at the time Beast did that, making it much, much easier; Scrooge traveled before any of the Heartless ever invaded and before the walls went down. Second, Beast had a specific target to warp to, namely Belle. Scrooge would have had no such target other than "money and markets". If he were to warp directly to the largest source of money and markets, he'd have ended up in Agrabah (home to the Cave of Wonders and a very wealthy kingdom where his more advanced technological knowledge could make him a living god), not Radiant Garden, obviously selected for factors besides money and markets, like comfort of living and ease of hiding, which aren't emotionally strong enough to have been anchors.
 * Also, its implied by the existence of portals of darkness that Beast, at the time a creature of raw fury not yet tempered by love, an Anti-Hero close to the Villain side of the scale at the time, opened up a portal of darkness to where Belle was. While Scrooge is greedy, that greeed is fully tempered by a sense of justice and need to make his fortune square, with no cheating- a positive desire strong enough to make it implausible that he could ever open up a portal of darkness. Flintheart Glomgold, yes, but never Scrooge.

Sora's homeworld is NOT Destiny Islands
It is actually Kingdom Hearts. It would explain Sora's powers of the heart, repairing Ven's heart and letting other hearts merge with his

Radiant Garden is the gate into the Final Fantasy World
The home of Final Fantasy characters, the location where Cloud and Sepheroph supposedly returned to their world? I think so!

Sora's will wield a new keyblade created from his friends' hearts.
Will bring new meaning to 'My friends are my power', that's for sure… So, during the final battle(s); all of Sora's friends lose their heart; but more like how Kairi was in KH1. So Sora is fighting Master Xehanort and his Keyblade breaks. He remembers what he said about his freinds being his power and how at that moment he felt it to be untrue. Then his friends' hearts, as well as those he will save from their Birth By Sleep come to him and create this Keyblade. Sora defeats (read: weakens) Xehanort and the hearts return to his friends.

Sora's "true" Nobody.
Okay, we know that (at least) two Nobodies were created when Sora unlocked his heart. Presumably, one from his heart, and one from Kairi's heart. But as of Birth By Sleep, we know heart was part of Sora's heart. And Roxas looks just like, and not at all like Sora. So, here's my thinking on this; Roxas is Nobody, Namine is Kairi's nobody, and Sora his own Nobody that is currently undiscovered.
 * Further explanation from a different author (spoilers ahead, natch): At the end of I, two hearts went flying out of Sora. One of them was Ventus', which had been lodged there for several years. Now, Sora's heart had taken a lot of beatings from Darkness over the years, and his heart and Ven's had started to take a partnership to protect Sora. Without its partner for backup, Sora's somewhat weakened heart sputtered out briefly, creating a Heartless. In the meantime, Ventus' heart goes off on its own, to find its body. It eventually did find it in Castle Oblivion, where Ventus' body sits. However, when the heart tried to re-enter its body, a combination of fatigue and the Dark contaminants in the room/Ven's body forced it to die as well -- but permanently. Thus came the process of Nobody creation. Since Sora had no Nobody, and Ventus' heart was now so 'infused' with Sora's energy that it had begun to lose its own identity, Roxas was recognized as Sora's Nobody and named appropriately. This is an explanation for the scene in one of the trailers, where Ventus' body is shown collapsed in Castle Oblivion and is gone after a flash of light; that was time passing, in which Roxas woke up and left the castle.

Terra is a foil for Sora, and foreshadowing
A lot of the trouble Terra goes through is him trusting strangers he's just met and taking what people say at face value. Traits that Sora shares. Terra is meant to show the potential for danger Sora's method of word hopping has, a cationarly tale about not questioning things. This is helped by how similar the two are personality wise, both a bit of a Idiot Hero who is a sweety to watch out for and has shades of Knight Templar going on.

This will also foreshadow Sora running into these issues himself in the future, on a much grander scale. The Light Is Not Good part of Dark is Not Evil that the plot has touched on and Sora's Knight Templar issue are all going to train wreak with this, with him being a boss faced in a future game. Sora will befriend someone who points him in a very wrong direction and it will be up to the others to hit him upside the head for the mid to late game Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment caused by it.

Vanitas will be rebuilt.
No, no one will go digging around inside of to find Vanitas' remains and reincarnate them. But what's stopping them -- particularly the returning who's been heavily suggested in certain material -- from creating a new 'Vanitas', from the cloth of a different human? The new Vanitas might even gain the memories and powers of the old one, if they met up with Sora or Roxas somehow...

Kingdom Hearts 3 will involve destroying the Heartless of several members of Organization XIII
At the very least, destroying Lea's. Re:Coded revealed that destroying a person's Heartless and Nobody reassembles them into their once complete being, and since Axel is on Sora's list of people to save, he'll have to find and destroy Lea's (possibly incredibly powerful) Heartless to recreate him. The same may go for several other members, though exactly who is up for debate. Ansem's apprentices are on the fence, as Birth by Sleep showed their original selves to be fairly decent people (with the exception of Braig), but it's also known that they were willing to betray their benevolent leader, though it might have been the darkness they were experimenting on corrupting them or something. Isa didn't seem so bad, but Saïx definitely was, and we know nothing of Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia, and Larxene's original selves to formulate enough of an opinion on them. Seeing as how many of Sora's foes have been Easily Forgiven by him, though, it's really up for debate.
 * For that to work, the Heartless needs to be destroyed before the Nobody. So, for Lea to be saved, his Heartless needs to already have been destroyed.

Killing a living human with a keyblade destroys their heart.
At the very start of the game, when Destiny Islands is overrun, Sora's wooden sword couldn't touch the heartless. Makes sense, they're made solely of the darkness in a person's heart, physical things shouldn't touch them. The keyblade can touch the heartless. That means you aren't hitting physical matter, you're hitting a disembodied heart, which probably wouldn't be nice on a person. Also, this would explain differences in Sora's personality after stabbing himself with the keyblade. After he did that, we are essentially watching, but with only Sora's memories to go on for how to act. Because it is Sora's body, perhaps even Sora's soul, it makes sense that the memories stick with one of those two. Roxas is really nobody, but he had what remained of Sora's heart, giving him the ability to use the keyblade while "Sora" wasn't.
 * Except keyblades don't destroy hearts; they just reap them.
 * And normal shields and staves work just fine against Heartless.

The main villain/BigBad of Kingdom Hearts III will be Xehanort.
I know this has been touched on before on these pages, but I wanted to make it its own entry. Firstly, Nomura stated that if both the Heartless and the Nobody of the same person are destroyed, that person is restored. Xehanort's Heartless (Ansem, Seeker of Darkness) was destroyed in Kingdom Hearts I and his Nobody (Xemnas) was destroyed in Kingdom Hearts II. This means that Xehanort is alive again. Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep pretty much confirmed that Xehanort wasn't exactly a very nice guy even before he became a Heartless, and now the guy is back... This will most likely cause some moral difficulties for Sora as this will be the first time he's ever fought a villain that's actually human (Disney villains notwithstanding), rather than a Heartless or a Nobody.
 * This isn't a WMG; this is canon. Nomura already stated that III will be the Grand Finale of the "Xehanort Saga" (apparently, the series will go on after this climax) and

Zidane WILL appear in a future game.
I know he's been listed as a possible candidate for a future appearance, but I strongly believe he WILL be in a future game. He fits the Kingdom Hearts theme so well (playful, outgoing personality which is not unlike Sora's), and now that Dissidia has given him an English voice actor there's no excuse not to include him. And besides, we already got one Final Fantasy IX character in the form of Vivi, so why not another one? The main characters of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X are all present, which means that there's a gap that can be filled by Final Fantasy IX.
 * Given that Nomura has now (re)drawn characters from every title for Dissidia and Dissidia 012, anyone is fair game for a cameo. Here's hoping for GILGAMESH.

In KHIII, Yen Sid will come out of retirement.
The series has made it blatantly obvious that Xehanort wants the power of Kingdom Hearts, and seeing just how powerful he already was in BBS, this would be a bad thing. So far, we have not seen Yen Sid do anything that he could not do as simply an incredibly powerful wizard, so there must be a reason that BBS established him as a retired Keyblade Master. My theory is that in KHIII, Xehanort will come disturbingly close to attaining the power of Kingdom Hearts that Yen Sid will return to the action and, possibly at the cost of his own life, so thoroughly eviscerate Xehanort that even with Kingdom Hearts, the scumbag will only be somewhat more powerful than he was at the end of BBS, thus allowing Sora and Co. a chance at victory.

The third game will have Sora, Riku, and Kairi splitting up to do this whole "saving" thing.
Dream Drop Distance will, as mentioned in another WMG above, have Sora and Riku completing the Mark of Mastery while Kairi receives training from Mickey or Yen Sid or some such. The third game will start with Kairi as your first playable character, and the introduction will have her completing her own Mark of Mastery. Yen Sid will then have the trio split up to go after one member of the Birth by Sleep trio each. Kairi's story will canonically take place first, and will have her finding a way to get Aqua (and presumably Ansem the Wise) out of the world of darkness, probably using Princess of Hearts magic powers. Aqua will mentor Kairi and become a permanent party member. Her final boss will either be Terranort, restored by the destruction of both his Heartless and his Nobody. He will, however, escape before Kairi and Aqua can deal a finishing blow (likely because Aqua will be understandably reluctant to destroy her friend's body). Sora, meanwhile, is setting out to find Ventus in Castle Oblivion. He'll eventually find a way to restore Ven's heart and wake him up, but Vanitas will awaken as a result. Sora and Ven will then team up to fight Vanitas for a final boss. Riku's story will canonically end last, and will focus on him tracking Terranort with the intent of forcing Xehanort's mind out and allowing Terra to take control. His penultimate boss fight will be against Terranort, and after defeating him, he'll use some newly-discovered method of forcing Master Xehanort out of the body. Riku and the now-restored Terra will then team up to fight Xehanort, who will vanish (but isn't yet dead). The final story will then open up, and feature all of the heroes banding together to track down Xehanort and Vanitas to take them down for good. Kairi, Ventus, and Aqua will form one party and destroy Vanitas (ending with a Holy Hand Grenade Combination Attack), while Terra, Riku, and Sora team up against Xehanort. Mickey may or may not get his own story, with Donald and Goofy as party members, wherein he travels the worlds helping Sora, Riku, and Kairi in their respective tasks, while dealing with a separate threat, such as Maleficent, who was last seen charging into battle in the Castle That Never Was, and may have been spending some time building her power again.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will have the following:

 * The Tri-State Area as a new world
 * Lightning and the gang are new characters
 * The Game will support 3d TV's
 * Will have Multiplayer support online and offline
 * The return of the Gummy ship sections
 * ONE GRAND FINALE to end the Organization XIII story
 * And that's just the minor ones.

Isa was manipulated by apprentice Xehanort:

 * We all know that Saix has gold eyes (which equals darkness) and is a jackass to even his supposed best friend. Which means that a case similar to Braig/Xigbar occured when Isa went through something that caused his x-scar and opened his heart to darkness...which he eventually fell to. We also know that apprentice Xehanort was conducting horrific experiments on people's hearts to see their reactions to darkness.


 * Isa may have gone through a more stable experiment on his heart that caused him to gain gold eyes and may have even been Xehanort's little lackey before Radiant Garden's fall. Otherwise, why did Saix become so willingly obediant to Xemnas and give up on his and Axel's plan to backstab him?


 * After all, we know and/or can guess that everything a nobody possesses emerges from a trait of their original selves (duel wielding Roxas=Sora+Ventus; Xigbar's evilness, guns and scars=Braig's evilness, guns, and scars from getting pwned by Terra; Axel's motto and chakrams=Lea's motto and frisbees). Therefore, would be safe to assume that everything about Saix's demeanor emerged from Isa's last year as a person? (evilness=possible indoctrinization or darkness experiment, beserker mode=latent anger, loyalty to Xemnas=Xehanort manipulation, scar=incident related to a battle?)

The final battle will involve Sora, Riku, and Mickey fighting 3 forms of Master Xehanort
1 being Master Xehanort, 1 being his armor the "No Heart", and the third being his nobody named "Another"

KHIII will not have an "All is right" ending.

 * Instead, during the last major fight one of a couple things will/could happen.

a) Sora, as a way to save/free Ven, Namine, Roxas, and Xion, will give up his life. This leads to a whole new set of games where we now search for Sora/find a way to revive him. That, or it's unreversable.

b) Ven and/or Terra will die in the final fight. After 10-11 years, Terra and Xehanort are just to melded together to split up. The only way to do get rid of MX, is to kill both him AND Terra. The person to do this? Either Sora or Ven. If it's Ven, the last fight will be too much, and he'll die/disapear as well. There is no way to reverse it. Everyone honors their memories.

c) Mickey will sacrifice himself to save the group from darkness, avenge his fallen friend, and atone for his first great failure.

This is to justifie, or allow...

Part of the Org. XIII being revived, along with the ones from above.
I get the feeling Ansem wasn't JUST talking about Ven/Aqua/Terra/Axel/Roxas/Namine/Xion when he spoke about freeing/helping those crippled beings, or however he said it. He seems to still mourn for the fall of his proteges. And since it appears that killing a person's Heartless and Nobody will allow them to be reborn, it's not exactly IMPOSSIBLE. Perhaps part of the journey in KHIII will be tracking down the missing hearts of the first six or what not. It seems that Axel is on his way to revivel, with or without Sora anyhow.

Terranort manipulated Ienzo the same way Xehanort manipulated Terra.
Ienzo looked too close to Ansem and too suspicous of Terranort and Briag to just turn on adoptive father. My guess is that Terranort(or maybe Briag, follow his pre-orders) didn't just turn Ienzo againts Ansem, but perhaps he told him he knew how to bring Ienzo's parents back. This may be little Zexion we're talking about, but he doesn't look any older then 10, and more likely then not, his parents death REALLY left a mark on him. Getting them back would be any kid's dream. No matter how smart he is, he's just a child, and a damaged one at that. No telling WHAT goes on in his head. I doubt he really ment to hurt anyone. Who's to say the reason he, Vexen, and Lexaeus were in low chairs wasn't because they DIDN'T want to turn on Ansem or that they had second thoughts?

But it does somewhat paralle Eraqus and Terra. Father figure who does bad things but means good, only to realize it too late. Son who was manipulated into believing the bad was good, to help make things better. Yeah. Could be just me though.

Kairi is going to be an extremely powerful character once she actually starts fighting
At least from an in-story perspective. It makes sense, being that she is both a Keyblade wielder, and a Princess of Heart. It took a hell of a convoluted situation for her to get a Nobody, and she can't have a Heartless at all. That must mean a lot in terms of power. She'll basically be a master of kicking the crap out of the darkness, due to the whole Heart of Pure Light thing. And if I am wrong, may I be bricked into oblivion.

After Kingdom Hearts 3, the new series will have Sora as the antagonist
If theories about light based antagonists in future games are true, then it's possible that Sora will be the villain. He's pretty much light aligned and fights the darkness, it's possible in the future these ideals of light prevailing over darkness will get to him, and he'll become a Knight Templar/Jerkass using light-based minions to "cleanse evil ones" if they don't meet his standards of good. Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but bear with me here.

Birth by Sleep: Volume Two will have three playable characters, all Keyblade wielders, to mirror the first Birth by Sleep
Multiple stories was one of the main points of Birth by Sleep, so it would make sense for them to use three in the "sequel". And I think I have the three characters pegged.
 * #1: Aqua. She features heavily in the Secret Episode, and it's clear that there's more of her story to be told yet. Plus, she's the only Keyblade wielder to specialize so heavily in magic.
 * #2: Riku. Nomura said following Kingdom Hearts II that there were four stories he wanted to cover before moving on to Kingdom Hearts III... two of those stories, namely Xehanort's memories and Roxas's time in the Organization, have already been addressed, in Birth by Sleep and 358/2 Days respectively. Another one of those stories, the period of Riku's absence (presumably between Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II) was featured to an extent in Days as well, enough so that Riku's absence really doesn't merit its own game... but it feels like there's just enough loose ends to fill up a spot in Volume Two. Additionally, Riku could serve as a parallel for Terra given his use of dark powers (he doesn't fit the strong-yet-slow mold of course, but hey, nobody said they had to be perfect parallels).
 * #3: Mickey. The final story Nomura wanted to cover was the period of King Mickey's absence. This was apparently supposed to be in coded, but got cut out for whatever reason. By including Mickey in Volume Two, we'll get to see exactly what Mickey's been up to the whole time. He'd also be a good parallel for Ventus, armed with fast attacks and light powers.

Each of Sora's Drive Forms (with the semi-exception of Limit Form) actually represents one of the identities currently inside him.

 * Valor Form represents Xion, with the term "Valor" representing Xion's bravery in sacrificing her own independent existence for Sora and Roxas's sake. Additionally, Sora can use two Keyblades in Valor Form because he is calling on Xion's Keyblade. I'm still trying to find an explanation for Sora's loss of magic while using Valor Form, though. Maybe it's a representation of her incomplete existence as a Replica and status as Ret Gone... her true abilities have been forgotten, and Valor Form's unbalanced skillset symbolizes this?
 * Wisdom Form represents the Magic Mirror (hear me out on this one). According to the Reports in Birth by Sleep, the Evil Queen managed to somehow temporarily turn the Magic Mirror into an Unversed. As we later find out, all Unversed come from Vanitas, and when they are defeated they are absorbed back into him. When the Magic Mirror was defeated, a copy of its Unversed self was absorbed by Vanitas, who later rejoined with Ventus and then with Sora. The term "Wisdom" represents the Mirror's reputation as all-knowing, and since it's a Magic Mirror, calling on its power augments Sora's magic in turn. Unlike the other drives, Wisdom Form doesn't gain a second Keyblade because the mirror doesn't have one.
 * Master Form represents Ventus. In Birth by Sleep, Ventus seemed to be roughly on the same level with Terra and Aqua, both of whom are equivalent to Keyblade Masters (Aqua actually was named Master, and Nomura confirmed that Terra was on the level of a Master), explaining the name "Master" Form. Additionally, Ventus had balanced stats in both strength and magic, and so Sora has both powered up in Master Form, as well as gaining Ventus's Keyblade.
 * Final Form represents Roxas. This is probably the most obvious one, given that Sora only gains access to it after Roxas allows himself to join completely with Sora. The term "Final" represents that this is the last form (natch), and therefore the final power boost Sora will get from the numerous others inside his heart.
 * Anti Form represents Vanitas. This one is also pretty obvious, given Anti Form's dark nature and Vanitas's status as a being of pure darkness. Sora doesn't gain a second Keyblade in this form even though Vanitas could use one because Vanitas's darkness weakens his heart instead of strengthening it, to the point where he can no longer use even his own Keyblade.
 * Limit Form is a possible subversion. It doesn't represent any of Sora's other personas, but Sora himself, since it gives him access to some of his old abilities, and is gained after Sora's attention is directed to Kairi and her abduction (as Xion's existence shows, Sora's most important memories are of Kairi).

Olympus Coliseum is somehow involved with the origins of the X-blade.
I am practically kicking myself for not thinking of this sooner. It didn't come to me until I was playing re:coded and realized that, when you leveled up Olympia, it gained Greek letters after its name. I thought "oh, that's cute,since Hercules was set in ancient Greece"... and then remembered that the X-blade also comes from a Greek letter. Perhaps Zeus and the others created it way back when?
 * Zeus called it the Blade of Olympus
 * Suddenly, the earlier trailers showing Master Xehanort confronting Ven at Olympus Coliseum make a lot more sense.

How/why everyone will be/deserves to be saved by Sora
In alphabetical order, because it's easier:
 * Ansem: No-brainer. All Sora has to do is find a way into the Realm of Darkness, which he's already done at least twice.
 * Aqua: Exactly the same as Ansem.
 * Axel: Most likely, Axel's Heartless was destroyed already, so he will probably return as Lea.
 * Eraqus: Although not specifically seen in Blank Points, I count Eraqus because his heart is inside Terra's, who also needs to be saved. Most likely, once Terra has been saved, they will simply have to unlock Eraqus's heart from Terra's.
 * Namine: While Namine is Kairi's Nobody, she was made when Kairi's heart left Sora's body, and therefore she does not technically belong with either of them. I'm not quite sure how she'll be saved, unless it involves making Kairi's heart leave Sora's body again...
 * Roxas: One of the most difficult, if not the most difficult. I truly don't see how they could possibly bring Roxas back without a total Ass Pull. First of all, according to Ansem in KHII he holds half of Sora's power, so they'd have to figure out how to get him out of Sora without weakening him. Second, Nomura pretty much confirmed Roxas had Ven's heart, and since he looked exactly like Ven that would imply that he is in fact an amnesiac Ven. Then again... maybe that's how they'll get around it, by saying that Roxas was Ven.
 * Terra: At first, I didn't understand why Yen Sid decided to test Sora and Riku for the Mark of Mastery. Then I realized that Keyblade Masters are the only ones who have been shown to unlock hearts without using a Keyblade of Heart. Yen Sid's planning to have Sora become a Keyblade Master so he can unlock Terra's heart from Xehanort.
 * Ventus: Since Ven's heart is inside Sora, most likely he's just going to have to extract it once it's done healing itself. He'll probably need to save Aqua first, though, given that she's the only one who can find the Chamber of Waking.
 * Xion: Difficult, and will probably require Namine's help, but not as hard to puzzle out as Roxas. Xion is literally made of memories, right? And Namine can manipulate the memories of Sora and those connected to him. Now, I know she said she couldn't save Xion before, but I think that was because back then, she was made out of Sora's most important memory, and it was crucial she merge with him so he could wake up. Everyone's memories of Xion may be missing, but given that they didn't instantly forget her after she disappeared I believe that the memories are not actually gone, but just locked away. And Namine will be able to use that to recreate Xion, not by using Sora's memories but by using everyone else's hidden memories of her.
 * She could have deconstructed Xion's memories and separated out Sora's so he could wake up without erasing Xion- if she had been given the time necessary for such a herculean task. She did tell Ansem that she was capable of it, but estimated that it would take years to accomplish- time they didn't have, not with Organization XIII having access to Roxas and likely additional Keyblade-wielding Replicas who would continue to construct Kingdom Hearts and/or track down Xion. Without the time constraint, however, it's just a matter of waiting long enough.
 * Riku Replica (new addition by OP): Having never beaten Chain of Memories, I never gave much thought to Riku Replica's fate. But, I realized that he has just as much of a right to exist as Xion. And then the Fridge Brilliance kicked in as to why he wasn't seen in Blank Points... he's not going to be saved by Sora, he'll be saved by Riku! No idea how, but I can totally see it happening.
 * Riku Replica (new addition by OP): Having never beaten Chain of Memories, I never gave much thought to Riku Replica's fate. But, I realized that he has just as much of a right to exist as Xion. And then the Fridge Brilliance kicked in as to why he wasn't seen in Blank Points... he's not going to be saved by Sora, he'll be saved by Riku! No idea how, but I can totally see it happening.

The Firebird from Fantasia 2000 will be the Second-To-Last Boss of 'Kingdom Hearts III
But will have little to no influence on the story, much like Chernabog in Kingdom Hearts I. The Firebird's battle theme is a variation of "The Firebird Suite".
 * Alternately, you visit a world based on Fantasia/Fantasia 2000/Fantasia 2006/Fantasia World, and face the Firebird in an epic, Shadow of the Colossus-esque battle. Afterward, the sprite from The Firebird Suite will accompany Sora as a summon, in a role similar to Tinker Bell and Bambi in the first game.

Sora Will Have His Body Stolen By Xehanort
I am very sure this will happen, possibly as early as Kingdom Hearts 3D. Sora manages to save Terra from Xehanort, causing Master Xehanort to return. MX decides he still needs a new vessel, and this time he doesn't want to lose his memories (of course). Using his keyblade, he extacts the light from his heart and kills it. Then he extracts Sora's darkness and recreates Vanitas. Afterwards, Sora and Master Xehanort will fight. Sora wins, but Master Xehanort's heart goes into him and overtakes him. Soraort gets the X-blade and gives some long-winded speech about how when he tried to sieze power in the worlds, Sora always rose up to stop him, but now Sora has given him a new vessel and the X-blade. Then the game would take advantage of the switches between Sora and Riku and have two boss battles at once: Riku and Kairi versus Soranort, and Sora versus Xehanort inside his heart. Riku and Kairi then go into Sora's heart to help him fight Xehanort. Sora temporarily regains control and stabs himself with a keyblade to release Riku and Kairi from his heart (thus recreating Roxas and Namine). Then Soranort flies up towards Kingdom Hearts. Everyone (Sora had already saved the others) is together and they say that Sora has saved them, so now it is their turn to save him. Cue end credits.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit will show up in some form next game
He's Micky's estranged brother with a dark side to him. He'd be perfect to team up with Riku for whatever purpose. He'd probably been passed over as ruler of Disney Castle and he wants revenge, or at lease closure.

There will be more than one X-blade in Kingdom Hearts III
Since the only qualification for creating an X-blade seem to be two equal hearts of light and darkness intersecting, that seems to allow for the possibility of more than one X-blade. The X-blades may be used to interfere with the other X-blade in regards to opening Kingdom Hearts. Ironic how there could be more than one most powerful Keyblade, but only one weaker Keyblade of People's Hearts.

If Aqua
She will take Kairi on as her student.

The entire point of having Neku in the series is to shoehorn a Roxas Expy in since they couldn't logically have Roxas or Ventus in 3D.
By extension, Jesse McCartney will voice Neku in the English version even though he didn't in The World Ends With You.

Ventus is Sora's brother, and Sora was a Replacement Goldfish
was extracted from Ven four years before Birth By Sleep. Sora was probably still in the womb at the time. Ventus either ran away from home or was kidnapped by Xehanort. His parents, losing hope, decided to have another child. This would explain.
 * Unlikely. . Plus, whether or not the novel is canon is debatable, but it suggests that

The final part of Kingdom Hearts will have the heroic group splitting into four teams, all after a different target.

 * Team One: Sora, Riku, and Kairi go after Master Xehanort. Sora is the controllable one, of course.
 * Team Two: Terra, Aqua, and Ventus go after Braig and/or Vanitas. Terra is controllable.
 * Team Three: Mickey, Donald, and Goofy go after some form of Xehanort's Heartless (possibly a Replica). Mickey is controllable.
 * Team Four: Roxas, Lea, and Xion go after Xemnas (again, possible a Replica). Roxas is controllable.

If/when Xion is separated from Sora, she'll lose the ability to use the Keyblade.
If this troper's got it right, the only reason she could use it in the first place was because of Sora's memories within her. So since separating her from Sora would probably involve picking out only her memories and recreating her without using Sora's memories, there goes her Kingdom Key. Granted, she'd still probably be an adept swords-woman, and maybe she could earn the right to wield a Keyblade herself one day.

Red Eyes\Hunter of the Dark is Braig's Heartless.
It seemed a bit odd having the final boss of the Secret Episode be a random powerful Heartless. Having the Hunter be Braig's Heartless makes sense from a storyline perspective given his role as a recurring antagonist in Birth by Sleep, as well as his role in the game's secret ending(s). The fighting styles of Braig and the Hunter also have several similarities - notably, it can use various forms of teleportation and dark projectiles, and most strikingly, has an attack in which the player's point of view is shifted to its eyes as it aims - Braig/Xigbar is the only other boss in the entire series which this occurs in. It also makes more sense for Braig to have such a powerful Heartless, as he was imbued with dark powers by Xehanort long before he became a Nobody; this is significant as Xehanort is one of the two people who have ever left a human Heartless. Although Xehanort's influence and his own darkness weren't enough to give him a human Heartless, it birthed the immensely powerful Hunter of the Dark. Depending on where exactly the Red Eyes battle falls on the the timeline, this could mean that Aqua destroyed it before Xigbar's death, leading to the possibility of Braig returning in a future KH game.

In Kingdom Hearts 3, Sora will become a Composite Character.
]] Of himself, Roxas, Xion, Ventus and Vanitas. Think about it right now Sora has three possibly all four of these people inside him by the end they will fuse together to make a super Keyblader with them to combat Xehanort.

Vanitas is at least partially responsible for some worlds being asleep.
All those Unversed probably did a lot of damage, and Vanitas might have been able to do something to those worlds even as he was bound up in Ven's heart.

Terra and Eraqus's hearts are both with Riku now, not Xehanort.
While Xehanort's heartless and the flesh he'd used to become a nobody were both destroyed, Terra's heart is sealed within the heartless, his flesh was hijacked, and his soul is very likely bound inside the Lingering Sentiment to give it life; as such, Terra's heart, body, and soul weren't able to unite and reform him while Xehanort's were. With nowhere else to go, Terra's heart (and Eraqus's within it) are both still bound to Riku until circumstances can allow Terra to be made whole, either by laying the Lingering Sentiment to rest and releasing Terra's heart or through Kairi's power to restore completeness to a being from nothing (although that might not work on people who aren't Sora and even if it DOES we all remember how much confusion using that power caused last time...)

Sephiroth and Cloud are the two halves of Zack in this continuity.
Either as a Heartless/Nobody pair or more likely Terra-Xehanort repeating the experiment of Master Xehanort extracting Vanitas from Ventus. It's reasonable to assume Zack hails from Radiant Garden, and was at the Olympus Colosseum in order to get stronger and prove himself as a hero, so when he returned home, he might have been captured by Xehanort or one of the apprentices and used for experiments. This would explain how Sephiroth could be Cloud's Enemy Without.

The Final Battle of KH 3 shall be as follows
At the final world that serves as Xehanort's stronghold, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Roxas, Axel, Xion, Ven, Aqua and Terra shall team up to penetrate his lair. Sora, Riku and Kairi make up the main party, and as the player presses into the fort they encounter an assortment of Heartless, Nobodies and Unversed. When they come to a barrier, control switches to Mickey, Goofy and Donald, who must explore a side-path and battle an incarnation of "Ansem" to open the path. A second barrier is encountered, and Roxas, Axel and Xion explore a path and fight Xemnas. A third barrier switches control to Ven, Terra and Aqua, and they fight Master Xehanort.

In the final battle, Sora, Riku and Kairi face Xehanort himself in a multi-stage battle that mirrors his various incarnations in different regards. When Xehanort is defeated, he collapses and begins to fade into darkness, when he heart rises from his body and slams into Sora. Sora awakens in the Dive to the Heart, and discovers that there are two platforms -- his, and Xehanort's. Xehanort declares his intent to conquer Sora's heart and take his body as his own, and the Battle in The Center of The Mind begins as the two Keyblade Masters clash for the last time. The battle ends with Sora shattering Xehanort's station, symbolically destroying his heart and ending the threat for good.


 * The troper who originally made this predicition would add that with what Dream Drop Distance has shown, particularly, this scenario seems more plausible than ever.

Heartless are hearts in Purgatory
Warning: Massive amounts of Bullshit follows. Viewer discretion is advised.

So first, a link To Kairi's Grandma's story.

Anyway, back in the begininning, things were awesome in the Kingdom Hearts universe. There were Keyblades, and Light, and everyone had access to Kingdom Hearts, and everything was bitchin' and everyone lived together in peace and love and happiness on the same world.

Then one day, a group of people, lets call them "Assholes", had an idea. They wanted Kingdom Hearts all for themselves, and started to fight over it, hoping to create the legendary X-Blade that would allow them to access it. The entire world was swept into the battle, known as "The Keyblade War", and as the darkness grew, the entire world was destroyed and everyone died.

The End.

Except little bits of light remained, the Seven Purest hearts in the whole world. These seven hearts managed to bring everything back from the brink.

But not completely.

The worlds were seperate, and could not interact with each other.

The Keyblade had all but disappeared, and only a handful of Masters and apprentices remained.

And Kingdom Hearts itself was in the Realm of Darkness, surrounded on all sides.

Kingdom Hearts is where all hearts wind up, but now, no heart could reach it.

Kingdom Hearts is light, but now darkness is in every heart, only seven still pure enough to join with it.

When a person dies, their heart goes to Kingdom Hearts, but can't reach it. As the heart goes into the Realm of Darkness, the darkness within it and around it takes shape, forming a shadowy creature called a Heartless. Heartless wait around Kingdom Hearts, at once wanting hearts, but also being bombarded with Kingdom Heart's painful light. Thats why Shadows melt into the floor, for protection from the light they are constantly being blasted with in their natural habitat. When a heartless is destroyed, the heart is freed and can rejoin with either it's body, or Kingdom Hearts itself. Which is fine, if you're The Messaiah and only have enough darkness to make a Shadow. For you, your heart will be purified quickly, and be able to rejoin with Kingdom Hearts in no time at all. But if you are a horrible, wretched monster, your heart will be dragged down by the darkness, and your heartless will be big, bloated and powerful, and Kingdom Hearts will take forever to deplete your HP and purify you.

Of course, if you're one of the seven pure hearts of light, things will be easiest for you, as your heart will pass right through the darkness without stopping and be able to be with Kingdom Hearts immediately.

The Realm of Darkness is Purgatory for hearts, where they can be purified of their darkness after they die, but before they rejoin all the other hearts.

Just when Ventus' body is found, Sora will lose his body to Vanitas or Xehanort.
Sora's last act while still posessing his free will would be to try to eject Ventus' heart from his body, so he can return and wake up. Ventus, however, in an act of gratitude, will turn it around, making it so that Sora takes over Ventus body, awakening it and leaving Ventus trapped with the evil that now controls Sora's body. Venra immediately goes to destroy the bodyhopper, aware that he might possibly be forced to destroy his own, mortal body on the way and fully intending to return Ventus' body to its rightful owner when he's done; effectively rendering himself dead for all purposes. Wouldn't be the first time Sora accepted suicide for the good of others.

Pete was locked up by Minnie AND Mickey, at separate times.
A small amount of possible Fridge Brilliance here. In KHII, Pete was in that dimension prison, and Mickey was said to have put him him there. In Birth by Sleep, ten years earlier, Minnie put him in there to cool down for a bit.

Just consider... in that dimension, there's nothing to do, no food or water, NOTHING essentially. If Pete was REALLY in there for 10 years, before Maleficent broke him out, wouldn't he have gone mad, and/or seriously changed his personality from his time in there? Hell, any one of us would have done one or the other (or both) if we'd been locked in there for 10 years.

So, just think, Minne put in there to 'cool down for a bit'. A BIT. There's no way that translates to 10 years, and it's quite possible Mickey put him in there again for something else bad he did. It's not that much of a stretch if you think about it this way, but I could still be wrong.
 * We actually see Maleficent bust Pete out of the prison dimension DURING Birth By Sleep. I don't think he was in there for ten MINUTES by the time the old hag got him out. Also, in KHII, the japanese for who banished Pete was actually gender-neutral. The translators, assuming Mickey did it, made it "His Majesty" instead of "Her Majesty". They were wrong.

Xion was designed to kill Roxas because Xemnas couldn't bear seeing Ven's face.
If you think about it at first, Xion being designed in a way that will inevitably either cause her to kill Roxas or, if all fails, be killed by him herself, makes little sense at first if you think about it. Wouldn't two keyblade wielders be more productive than one? The hammer hits when you realize that Xemnas was basically Xehanorts' will and mind stuck in Terra's body. Chances are the Terra part of him rebelled violently at times due to Roxas' mere presence. It was distracting him, keeping him from focusing on his goals, awakening "foolish" ways of thinking and maybe even *gasp* memories of emotion within No.1 of the Organization, so he had to get rid of it. However, due to afformentioned rebelling he couldn't touch Roxas himself. It may have caused him a short-circuit or worse. Likewise, even if he wanted Roxas gone, he still needed his power and keyblade for his plans. So he had Xion created to absorb and slowly eat away on him.

Evidence for this are the fact that Xemnas apparently had quite a few of Terra's memories - making at least one throwaway line that shows that he recognizes Roxas as, at very least, a Ven-lookalike, not to mention his Companion Cube, Aqua's Armor- and the observation that, if you sum up, Xemnas really obviously was keeping his distance from Roxas throughout all of 358/2 for the most part.

Xion and her fate where thus yet another unfortunate sideeffect of Terra's eternal struggle against Xehanort's possession.

50% of Xemnas actions were subconcious behaviour orchestrated by Terra in a desperate attempt to find and reunite with his friends.
As mentioned above, Terra's memories would often meedle with Xemnas' motives and cause him to temporarily lose sight of his goals, made even worse by the presence of a Ven-lookalike (Who, according to Kingdom Hearts Ultimania also serves as vessel for Ven's heart, to top it off.), so it's not that far fetched to assume that all the things that don't make sense in context with Xehanort's motives were the result of Xemnas following urges from Terra's memories within him. He also personally came down to Twilight Town to pick up Roxas upon birth and name him. Why did he look so satisfied, however, upon saying "A New You"? Possibly he believed simply by giving the boy a different name, he could cut his associations between him and Ventus, an attempt that ultimately fails when Roxas developes a personality a lot more reminiscent of Ventus' than of Sora's. Xehanort's and Terra's motive were in constant war within Xemnas and Roxas unwittingly made it even worse, cause Xemnas to end up following actions to two different ends which conflicted.

Coming to visit Roxas when he's fallen unconsious? Most likely Terra's doing. Talking to Aqua's discarded armor? Clearly Terra. Searching the Chamber of Waking? Terra, trying to find Ventus. Showing disdain upon being called "Xehanort" by Sora? Terra. Asking Roxas if he remembers his "true name" (Note that, interestingly, he said "True name" not "Old name")? Terra, hoping that Roxas would reply "Ventus", rather than "Sora". He didn't, unfortunately. (Maybe getting the correct answer would have caused a strong enough reaction to overthrow Xehanort's motives for good, though, this is just speculation.)

Finally... Xemnas, trying to rip out Sora's Heart during the final boss fight against him, asking if he "Could spare a heart". Remember, the Rip-Out Move is one of the most time consuming ones Xemnas has, it leaves him fairly vunerable to Riku's attacks and only takes out Sora, as opposed to him&Riku. Why would Xemnas do that? Did he want Sora's Heart? It makes more sense if you remember that the heart that Xemnas is trying to extract could just as well be... Ventus'. That move is an attempt of Xemnas to channel Terra's despair and stubborn desire to regain his friends and misguide it in a way that will ultimately benefit the MX' ideals: "Here... Here's your friend. Come and get him. You just need to crack that shell open and destroy it. Come, we will work together and free him from that shell..." Sounds like something MX would do to trick Terra, doesn't it?

The opening theme for "Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance" will be a remix of "Traveling" by Utada Hikaru.
Nomura has stated that the opening will be a song by Utada Hikaru, the "a" indicating that it won't be any of the previously used songs. Thing is, Hikki is currently on a hiatus, meaning it cannot be a new song either. Therefor I assume they are going to use one of her older songs. Traveling comes to mind because it has a simmilar beat to Hikari and Pasion and the lyrics, too, seem to fit all the things from previous games that are coming together in this installment.

Braig was The Corrupter when he was an apprentice of Ansem's, and will resume the role if he is returned to human form.
I surmise that while Xehanort returned to a semblance of the evil mastermind he once was thanks to Braig's manipulations, Braig was the one that helped his plans along, resulting in the corruption of the other future nobodies:
 * He won Dilan and Aeleus over to their side by bringing them in on his own plan to become a keyblade master; tempted by the power to traverse worlds and wield legendary weapons, Dilan and Aeleus's loyalty was weakened, even though Braig had no intention of ever making good on his promise to share power.
 * Even, he corrupted by playing on his resentment of seeming to be second best to Xehanort as an apprentice and shifting it to resenting Ansem for "holding them back" from knowledge of the darkness.
 * Braig turned Ienzo against Ansem by playing on the boy's fear of death, caused by the unfortunate demise of his parents; Ienzo turned on Ansem in the mistaken impression that gaining understanding and control over the darkness would enable him to evade age and death indefinitely, as Master Xehanort planned to.
 * Isa, Lea, and the others besides Sora were all children in Radient Gardens Braig and Xehanort figured nobody would miss, and so they were abducted and experimented on; Isa in particular was corrupted by exposure to the darkness before he turned into a Nobody, resulting in Saix being considerably more evil than his human counterpart.

Mirage Arena is The Internet
Specifically, the part of the internet dedicated to playing multiplayer games. But not just that, either. Its also every LAN or one-system network that has ever hosted a multiplayer game, Co-op, Competitive, Meta or Massively. So this means that Halo's Blood Gulch, Azeroth (Every individual server), and every Mortal Kombat arena exist in the Mirage Arena. Not the official canon world of each series, but only the maps where multiplayer/ non-canon activities take place. For example, while the Star Wars galaxy does not exist in Mirage Arena, every map from Star Wars Battlefront does. This would explain why the outside of the world looks like Space Paranoids, and why all of the teleporters have a "digital" effect.

The very last boss of the very last game will be Kairi.
Throughout the game, Kairi will be kidnapped and experimented on by whichever incarnation of Xehanort is the Big Bad at the moment (or one of his minions). Since she has no darkness in her heart, Xehanort and his underlings will somehow try to extract the light in her heart and use some kind of polarizing machine to use Kairi's light to get rid of all the light in the multiverse and plunge it into a world of eternal darkness. (Or something like that.)

This, of course, will turn Kairi into a mentally unstable, suffering wreck, and the game will go to great lengths to show her ordeals throughout the story. When Sora, Riku and their companions arrive to defeat Xehanort and rescue Kairi, they'll notice Kairi's heavily unstable state and get really worried. Of course, they'll get all angsty at Xehanort for turning her into a half-dead wreck of a human being by tampering with her heart too much. We'll get the usual multi-tiered epic final battle against Xehanort, and it'll look like Sora's finally won, Xehanort is finally dead, and the story is finished.

But Kairi isn't back to normal again! Sora tries everything to restore her, but to no avail. Mickey (or some other mentor) tells the gang that Xehanort's tampering with the light in Kairi's heart has turned her into a ticking time bomb that threatens to engulf the entire multiverse in light and eliminate all darkness, and that pure light is just as destructive as pure darkness; there must be balance. Mickey explains further that the only way to save the multiverse is to seal Kairi's heart. With no other alternative, Sora must fight his friend if he is to prevent everything from being consumed. Kairi, now completely possessed by the light, grows a pair of angel wings, draws her Destiny's Embrace Keyblade, and the fight begins.

Throughout the whole final battle (which would probably be a Breather Boss), Sora will be extremely hesitant and unenthusiastic in his attacking, and will be visibly crying throughout the whole battle, Same for Kairi, to some extent, but she'll feel that she has no choice but to eliminate all darkness in the worlds to undo all the harm that Xehanort has done. We'll probably get some soft, sad remix of Kairi's theme as the battle music.]]

At the end, Kairi, now close to dying, will regain her senses, and thank Sora for ending her suffering and saving the worlds. She'll then dissolve into thousands of particles of light and float away. Although this could end up being Narm.

Sorry if that seemed random, but hey, it's Kingdom Hearts.


 * This really does not warrant being in all spoiler tags, since it doesn't spoil any relevant plot details from Canon, so I removed them. They giant Spoiler Tag was more irritating than anything.

Sora was originally meant to be born as a Princess of Hearts.
This is a completly serious guess, hear me out. So, Sora has always been known for representing "Light" in the KH Plot, despite not being completly pure himself, right? Well, what if this is a misconception? What if Sora actually is pure light and the darkness making up his Heartless Form and Anti Form actually solely stems from Vanitas, who was absorbed into him alongside Ven?

Let's go back, to the beginning of Birth By Sleep. Ventus is dying, dumped on Destiny Island's beach and his heart about to break into shards. Suddenly, a toneless voice. We can't hear the voice yet. There's no telling if it's male or female. Maybe it's neither. The voice turns out to be a heart of a human who is about to be born. (Originally, it was explicitely a yet unborn heart, but the "abortion" debate caused Nomura to rephrase the skript.) The yet nameless heart saves Ventus by connecting their hearts to each other. This fills the void in Ventus' heart up... With nothing but light. Isn't that strange? Should there have been some darkness as well, had this been a regular heart? How was the heart even able to travel so far as to reach Ven's heart. Let's move on. Only after the bond has been made, we hear the other heart's voice for the first time. It's... Sora's voice. Speaking in unison with Ventus.

Now, it's not a secret that later on, many people notice that Sora is neigh-identical to Ventus in everything but haircolor. So let's just assume that Sora's bond to Ventus had the same effect on him that it later had on Vanitas and caused him to grow up to look almost exactly like Ventus. We will just assume that both of Sora's parents were dark haired, explaining his brown hair. Must have overruled Ventus' blonde. Following me so far? Good.

Now, what if those effects were even greater than that? What if the bond to Ventus influenced just about everything about what Sora would become. His purity, his personality... "his" gender?

My point is, Sora clearly isn't a normal heart. The fact alone that he was able to save Ven indicates that he was exceptionally powerful even before his birth. Nomura has stated that his keyblade isn't Ven's either... And Bb S indicated that "natural" keyblade wielders are exceptionally rare. Another sign of him being special. He can heal other hearts and when Kairi was kidnapped from Radiant Garden, he (according to KH Ultimania) was the "light" that kept her from drowning and guided her to the shore. Later, he even became her vessel. Also, his bond with Kairi... this brings me to my next point.

This theory assumes that Sora was originally meant to be born as a girl and a Princess of Heart at that. It was Ven's bond to him which disqualified him by altering his/her predestined qualities too far. However, there always have to be seven Princesses of Hearts... Notice how Kairi is slightly younger than Sora. What if she was born in order to replace him?

This would explain their exceptionally strong bond. They're the same in a way, Kairi has taken his spot and in this sense, they have a connection just like Ven and Sora. It explains further why Xion's default form is Kairi, beyond Sora's love for her... maybe this is also what he would have looked like had Ventus never bonded to him? It would explain the dark hair. Naminé was born when their hearts were seperated, but even Ansem DW isn't sure how that happened. Personally, I doubt she actually is a Nobody. I am not sure what exactly she is either, but I am inclined to believe she is a mirror image of kind that was created when Sora's and Kairi's familiar hearts met.

Bottom Line: Sora was meant to be the "Original" Kairi. The current Kairi is his replacement. The existence of darkness in his heart is nothing but proof that Vanitas is winning in strength again. If he isn't stopped, he might end up consuming Sora.

The prologue of Kingdom Hearts III will have you playing as Kairi, holding the fort on Destiny Islands.
Throughout Kingdom Hearts 3D, Kairi is left unprotected on Destiny Islands, and the story hints that. So, the prologue of KHIII will probably have you play as her on Destiny Islands as  and the Heartless/Nobodies/Unversed/enemies of the day invade and prepare to capture her to. The prologue will end with a Hopeless Boss Fight against  and then switch to the main story with Sora and/or Riku with Donald and Goofy. Kairi's lack of Keyblade skills will be a good "excuse" for the playable character to be low-level and not have very many abilities.

Alternatively, it could be the previous Disney villains (including Pete) invading Destiny Islands a la KH3D opening, with Kairi having to fight them in succession and defeating them until.


 * Update from OP:

Roxas has got Ven's heart.
In the trailer to "birth by sleep", Ven asked Terra to "erase him". Terra actually tried to seal Ven within 6-year old Riku's body (knowing he would one day be a keyblade-wielder), but something went wrong and he ended up within 5-year old Sora instead. (Explaining the "You are not who I have chosen!!" that Terra says in KH2:Final Mix+ ) When Sora's heart turned into a heartless, there was a "spare-heart" left, that his nobody got, wich gave him the EXACT SAME APPEARANCE as Ven. However, since it was actually "a sealed heart", he could not "use it" whenever he wanted and was still a nobody --- kind of. Sometimes, his (Ven's) emotions would break free and make him act like a normal teenager, much to the confusion of his "fellow-organization-members", but most of the time, he would just be like the others. This strange "feelings come -- feelings go" was the actual reason, he left the Organization, because he wanted to know, if it had something to do with Sora. At least until he entered the fake twilight town, where he could feel fairly free. (For some reason, this troper hasn't found out yet) Axel felt that his new buddy had something, the others were missing, so he stuck as close to him as possible, hoping to getting this "something" too, later realizing, it must have been a heart. Since Roxas returned to Sora, Ven's heart did too, so we can expect Terra to show up once more, either having become insane and wanting to kill Sora, to free his friend, or as an ally, who comes out of nowhere and doesn't talk about his past. He would be over-protective for Sora, much to Riku's dismay, who would be thinking that this guy is up to something.
 * Definitely confirmed. Nomura said something about Roxas getting Ven's heart when he was made, which is why Roxas resembles Ven.
 * Not confirmed. The closest thing Nomura said was that Roxas "may or may not" have had Ven's heart, but was not definite in his answer. Based on revelations in KH 3 D, it is starting to look like Roxas didn't get Ven's heart, and Ven's heart stayed with Sora during Co M.
 * Not confirmed. The closest thing Nomura said was that Roxas "may or may not" have had Ven's heart, but was not definite in his answer. Based on revelations in KH 3 D, it is starting to look like Roxas didn't get Ven's heart, and Ven's heart stayed with Sora during Co M.

The members of Organization XIII are all individuals with the makings of a keyblade wielder.
The primary stated requirement to wield the keyblade is an exceptionally strong heart. The members of Organization XIII were all defined by their exceptional willpower and the strength of their lost hearts. .

King Mickey will die in Kingdom Hearts III.
As much as I hate the idea, think about it. Sora basicly commits suicide in the first game, but returns later. They played with the idea in Kingdom Hearts II with Goofy. Not to mention Xion, Axel, and all of the other Organization 13 members who eventually will come back, but as their somebodies. The third game will be epic and to make it so, they are going to do something extreame. What else could make for an extreame moment in Kingdom Hearts history than King Mickey getting a dramatic death scene? It might happen.
 * It's unlikely Disney would allow Square to just kill off THE most famous Disney Character though.
 * Yes...but the fans said the same thing when it was leaked that Spock was going to die in Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan...

Roxas is Vanitas.
This may at first sound like a redundant attempt to save the "Roxas is not a facette of Sora"-brand of theories, especially in the light of Kingdom Hearts 3D, but let me explain. An interesting ammount of evidence can be found to support this theory.

Roxas, soon after his birth, slowly beginns to develope thought processes that would correspond to actual emotions, despite having no memories he could base such thought processes on. This is the basic premise that most of the afformentioned brand of theories were based on to begin with. Now, of course, Dream Drop Distance reveals that  However, even in the light of this, Roxas' developement into a feeling being happens with a startling speed, especially   In fact, Axel's growth of emotional capacity only seems to suddenly skyrocket once Roxas bonds with him, implying that it's Roxas' heart that speeds up his growth, rather than the other way around, which doesn't make sense, considering how young and underdeveloped Roxas' replacement-heart for Sora's should be by this point. A case in point could be made that Xion, as a Replica, might have possessed a much more developed heart to begin with and could have caused both their growths to accelerate, but this idea fails when you realize that she was just as hollow and awkward as Roxas himself in the beginning, albeit in a different way. Seeing how Roxas is the constant between Axel's and Xion's sudden growth, he must be the cause, which would mean his heart must either have had an incredible sudden growth spurt...Or he had a rather developed heart to beginn with and it only needed a "push" to awaken.

Now, the Kingdom Hearts Ultimania Book for Birth By Sleep hints that Ventus' heart might have remained within Roxas and that this might be the cause for him looking exactly like Ventus, but there's one crucial flaw in this: Both, Kingdom Hearts Re Coded and Dream Drop Distance strongly imply that Roxas is to be considered an existence seperate from Ventus. Likewise, Ventus' heart was supposed to be pure light, yet Roxas is capable of opening Corridors of Darkness and his personality, while resembling Ventus' a lot more than Sora's, is also lot more aggressive, moody and overall negative. He does a lot of things that a "Heart of Pure Light" would never do... Like senselessly destroying a computer, just to express his anger. This is something Ventus would have never done, no matter the circumstances. However, it's also made very clear that Roxas' heart is very different from Sora's,  The seamless merging-process failed with Sora, as Roxas clearly retains a seperate conciousness. The question is: Why? If he is neither Ventus, nor a natural recreation of Sora's heart, then what is his heart?

Nomura himself implying that Roxas might hold Ven's heart despite evidence to the contrary seems especially strange, as the Ultimania was likely released in a stage where the plot of Dream Drop Distance had long been written already. So, while Nomura is known to occasionally retcon details, why would he outright lie at the fans? That's where this theory comes into play. What if he didn't lie? What if Roxas did hold on to Ventus' heart- but just not the half of it we assumed it to be?

Due Vanitas' physical appearance, which was caused by Ventus' initial bond to Sora, people often tend to forget that Vanitas is, in fact, not Sora's Evil Twin... He's Ventus'. It has been stated that Vanitas's "true" form is a faceless being simmilar to an heartless and Sora's appearance was only a sideeffect. Note, when Vanitas possesses Ventus, Ventus' hair and face don't change, unlike when Xehanort possesses Terra. Regardless of what he appeared to look like, Vanitas is basically just a disembodied shard of Ventus' heart. Which means that if his heart was to enter a vessel and shape it, it wouldn't end up looking like a black haired Sora. It'd look like Ventus. This would perfectly explain why Sora's body changed the way it did (even if the changes were comparably small), upon becoming Roxas.

Further, let's move on to the next exhibit: The Kingdom Hearts Novels. While generally not considered direct Canon, their content has a certain tendency to be eventually made into Canon. Knowing this, the details the Novels reveal on Vanitas' past are... interesting. They describe his initial personality as very, very simmilar to Ventus', except more aggressive, depressed and moody... Starting to sound like somebody else? The novels further explain that Vanitas only turned into the cruel psychopath he was out of despair, loneliness, and a spiral of selfharm and selfworth issues. Meaning that he, in fact, wasn't "evil" to the core, just "dark", which makes sense. This fits with this theory, since it means that if Vanitas was to start over as a blank, like Ventus did after having his heart shattered, he'd likely start with this very moody-Ventus personality again... Which applies to Roxas. Like Ventus, after the initial seperation, he started Zombie-like and amnesiac before his personality suddenly started to show. Remember, Ventus shattered Vanitas' heart in their Final Battle. It's not far-off to assume that this had a simmilar effect on him as Master Xehanort's initial seperation of them had no Ventus. Very well, let's move on.

In connection with the assumption that Vanitas wasn't evil to the core and deserves to be saved like everybody else connected to Sora... How come he does not show up in Data Naminé's list of people connected to Sora then, when he clearly *is*, through Ventus? The answer is simple: He *does* show up... As Roxas.

Next up, superficialities, aside from his looks: Roxas wields the Keyblade forehanded, rather than backhanded. While he does not employ Riku's battle stance, as Vanitas does, this still closer to him than it is to Ventus, who wields his keyblade backhanded. Of course, this could be a simple effect of his connection to Sora's memories. He is deriving his battle style from Sora's. Still, it's worth mentioning. Something simmilarly insignificant, yet worth mentioning: "Vanitas" means "Emptiness" and Nomura stated this meaning was chosen on purpose, possibly even before it was decided he'd look like Sora. Now, Vanitas, himself, while being called "empty" by Xehanort is clearly not. He has wishes, desires, emotions and a lot of other things that defy the concept of "empty". This bears a striking resemblance to how Nobodies are threated in KH 2, especially Roxas, making it possible that the name was supposed to be a hint. Probably coincidentally, but also worth noticing: Both names end on "as".

Next up: Evidence in Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (Which I actually played, rather than just reading spoilers, you mind.) Needless to say, this section contains some spoilers, so read with caution. Vanitas appears in the game for all but 2 seconds, talking in unision with Young Master Xehanort. This brief scene is very possibly just a vision Sora has upon hearing YMX speak, though it makes you wonder how active Vanitas' conciousness is within him by that point. Flash foreward to Sora's Mind Screw Royal in The World That Never Was: In his dream, Sora encounters Roxas... Who promptly states that things aren't well the way they are and infuses Sora with his memories. All at once, suddenly, with little explanation and not preparing him at all, playing directly into Xehanort's plans with it. Now... Why would Roxas do this? The "Roxas" Sora meets clearly is completly aware of what is going on and, unlike the other dream-people Sora meets, actually speaks to him for a while, implying he is doing the memory transfer conciously and willingly. However, all the memory transfer accomplishes at that point is to scare Sora so baddly that he goes into an Heroic BSOD and finally has his heart shattered by Xemnas, which benefits Team Xehanort greatly. So if Roxas was even one bit aware of what was going on he knew this was going to happen, and he still did this. Why? Being allied to Xehanort somehow (which is tragic) seems to be the only plausible explanation. Also, look at Roxas face when he transfers the memories. His expression looks surprisingly like Vanitas', when he held the X-Blade and challenged Ventus within their Dive Into Heart and is pretty much identical to Vanitas' expression in afformentioned One-Scene Wonder moment. Even more striking: If you take a close look at the timelines of Riku's and Sora's stories, you will notice that Roxas' disappearance from Sora's dream almost immediately coincides with Riku's battle against Anti Black Coat, a Nightmare-Type Dream Eater, who looks exactly like what Vanitas' "true" form has been described to look like, even featuring a simmilar battle style. A point could be made that for Sora only a few seconds pass between Roxas' disappearance and hearing Riku's post-battle pleas for him to wake up, but remember that Sora is dreaming. It was been outright stated that time doesn't flow normally within his dreams, so the entire battle against Anti Black Coat could easily have taken place in those "few seconds" between Roxas's disappearance and Riku's pleadings. Anti Black Coat being Vanitas is likely, due to all the simmilarities and Vanitas being pure darkness at the core (Though, should this theory be true, it is likely that Roxas' friendships with Axel, Xion and the virtual Twilight Gang gained him a bit of Light), so it would make sense that he'd manifest as a Dream Eater within Sora's dreamworld. After all, Riku, too, manifested as a Dream Eater, albeit as a Spirit-Type, rather than a Nightmare. It would make sense that Roxas, sensing Riku trying to interfere, "beamed out", in order to stall for time while Sora succumbs to his BSOD. Anti Black Coat being slain by Riku means nothing. He might simply have disintegrated to return to the depths of Sora's subconcious... Where Riku later finds Roxas, alongside Ven and Xion.

Summing this theory up, basically Roxas and Vanitas were the same entity all along and Vanitas basically failed twice at living a "complete" life, despite not even being a bad person and genuinely caring for someone the second time around, which would only add insult to the injury. Note how the Birth By Sleep Novels implied that part of Vanitas' issues came from the fact that he found himself unable to touch anything without destroying it by impuls... And now connect this with Roxas' experience of being forced to kill Xion, one of his two dearest friends. It would make his sudden rush of rage even more justified, given that this experience probably ripped open old wounds from his previous life's trauma, even if he didn't remember conciously.

The only thing that appears unclear in this case is Roxas' motivation for aiding the Xehanorts in Dream Drop Distance. Xemnas destroyed his second chance at a life. Why would he want to aid him? The only explanation I can find: He is desperate, realizing that being merged with Sora forever is not a good prospect for him after all, despite what Naminé had said. His dialouge before the Memory Transfer seems to support this. Perhaps he was led to believe that destroying Sora's heart might be his only chance to break free, unable to believe that Sora might be able to rescue him, Xion and Ventus, thus preforming a Face Heel Turn in a desperate attempt to escape Sora's heart? (Possibly taking Xion along with him, seeing how he clearly had the memories of her, if not her name.)

Only time will show if this theory is true, but if it was it would be a genius move by Nomura to create a character that embodies "Dark Does Not Have To Be Evil": Making us sympatize with Roxas for 2 games and then spending an entire other game making us hate Vanitas, while leaving us unaware that the two of them are basically the same person would serve to create a character that perfectly shows one of the central points of the series: Evil does not equal Darkness. Evil is something that can be shaped within the Darkness.

Marvel will cross-over with the series.
Since Disney owns Marvel, Square Enix would just need to get in contact with Marvel through Disney. With regards to the actual crossover, I highly doubt the entire universe would be an ideal setting. Since this would be yet another third-party crossover out of the Square/Disney thing, the most ideal crossover would be a guest super hero appearing as a party member of sorts. While I would love to see Sora and the guys fight alongside Spider-Man or the Avengers against maybe Doctor Doom or Magneto, it just doesn't fit in. Maybe you can count in Ghost Rider or Thor or something.

On the other hand, Marvel would be able to create a comic crossing over the mainline 616 universe with the series. Hell, if they can pull off Marvel vs. DC, JLA/Avengers, Avengers Vs. Transformers and (I know this doesn't really fit in but it's close) Avengers Vs. X-Men, I am looking forward to a Marvel vs. Kingdom Hearts.

.

 * It should be noted that An alternate theory that seems to be spreading in some places is that

The world Spira will appear in Kingdom Hearts III.
Bear with me here, so, we've already had YRP and Tidus, Wakka and Auron appear, so why not have them appear in their own world? So, in 3D it is stated there are seven sleeping worlds, right? It, as far as my knowledge goes, says there are more. With that, it could be possible that Spira was sleeping, which is why Tidus and Wakka are on Destiny Islands, Auron's in the Underworld and YRP are in Radiant Garden. While sleeping, Yuna is on her pilgrimage, and, in the visit in III it would now be in it's X-2 state, and Sora/Riku/Kairi/whoever is thrown in the middle of Chapter 3, where YRP fights the aeons. Later, he comes back to help the girls fight Vegnagun, but not against Shuyin, as they wish to fight him themselves.

The "Seven Hearts of Light" needed to make the X-blade are going to be those connected to Sora
In 3D, Xehanort explains how the X-blade was split into 7 lights and 13 darknesses. In this attempt to re-create the X-blade and start up the Keyblade War, the 13 darknesses are the vessels possessed by Xehanort, Mickey assumed that the seven hearts are the keyblade wielders consisting of himself, Sora, Riku, Terra, Aqua, Ven, and one unknown, but there is another option. Sora's heart has been connected to six others, making seven. Sora, Kairi, Roxas, Namine, Xion, Ven, and Vanitas. Kairi's heart rested in Sora during the first game, as does Ven's heart. Roxas and Xion were created from Sora, and the secret report stated the same was true of Namine, who was a mix of Sora and Kairi, which was why she could specifically alter the memories of Sora and those who know him. Vanitus is connected to Sora through Ven, and was originally a faceless doll until Sora linked to Ven's heart and he gained Sora's features.
 * You are confusing something here. The "7 hearts of light" are the Princesses of Heart. The "7 protectors of light" are the keyblade wielders. They are not the same. The protectors of light are meant to guard the princesses, most likely not to become the X-Blade.