Kingdom Hearts II/Headscratchers

"Riku (as Ansem): Poor thing. DiZ: It's the fate of a Nobody."
 * Why did no one else in Hollow Bastion, including people who supposedly lived there their entire lives, like Cid, not know who Ansem was from the beginning?
 * Because they never saw Xehanort's Heartless in the first game. All they heard was that "Ansem" was the one behind everything, so they assumed it was the real Ansem.
 * What is with Sora's personality change anyway? He's spent sleeping for a year, obviously grown up and all that, but he's become somewhat more childish. Replaying through Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 1, I can see a sort of jarring contrast between the two. In Kingdom Hearts he is a naïve but optimistic and light-hearted teenager who is nothing more determined then seeking out his friends. He seems a lot more straightforward and no-nonsense in his tone and dialogue, calling out Riku on his methods for one thing, and doesn't hesitate to show himself a bit tough and not someone to argue with (eg. Arguing with Donald over some issues early on in the game). Chain of Memories is another particular example, as he suddenly takes on this more dark and forceful personality when he starts to realize his goals. Of course, one could say that Chain of Memories doesn't count because of the fact . But either way, Sora's sudden extreme optimism and childish behavior in most if not all situations bugs this realist troper somewhat. He just seems unrealistic in the way he acts within the Kingdom Hearts universe anyway.
 * Ah, this. The current theory most people agree on right now is that for the last part of KH 1, all of KH:CoM, and for the majority of KH 2, Sora is essentially a kind of reverse Heartless, in other words a heart that has formed a body around itself, and as such acts on pure emotion all the time. Why? Well, remember when Sora killed himself in KH 1 to free Kairi? Doing that caused Roxas to be born and Sora to be turned into a Shadow. Kairi later uses her princess of heart powers to give Sora a new body, but Roxas didn't come back. And, well, look at Roxas. What is the main thing he does throughout our time playing as him? Think. So yeah, apparently Roxas took all of Sora's critical thinking skills with him, causing Sora to act on spur of the moment things and act really out of character (telling Kairi, a girl he couldn't even look at earlier in the game, that she'd be in his way, falling for the Castle Oblivion plan hook, line, and sinker, etc.)
 * But Roxas and Sora remerge at the beginning of 2, right at the end of the prologue. They had to merge for Sora to wake up. So him being a "reverse-Heartless" in 2 (though I agree he was for KH:CoM and the last bit of 1) doesn't work.
 * Actually, I always assumed that Roxas was still sort of separate until the Battle in the Center of the Mind he had with Sora and had been remerging very slowly before that. Who says that they were totally together the second the Prologue ended? As far as I know, they were the first nobody and somebody to reunite, and Roxas was probably fighting it the entire time. Somewhat tragic in hindsight.
 * While mentally Roxas might have been fighting it, if the "Sora is a Heartless" theory is true, it would only have lasted for the end of the first game, and through Chain, because at the beginning of II, he and Roxas DID re-join physically.
 * Sora wasn't ever a Heartless, as said above, he was a sort of "reverse Heartless"; that's not the same.
 * Still, even if they were physically joined, they weren't mentally joined. That didn't happen until the end.
 * See, I get that, and that probably meant that they weren't at full power, but physically, Sora was a complete person, with a heart, a body, and soul, meaning he's not a heartless or a nobody.
 * They may have rejoined physically, but it wasn't a complete fusion; that's essentially why Anti-Form even exists. Failing that, if Roxas really does hold most/all of Sora's reasoning, it only makes sense that Sora would only get that back after Roxas allows himself to be fully absorbed into Sora, personality and all.
 * I always just assumed Naminé mucked up a bit putting Sora's head back together and he ended up losing a few (dozen) IQ points. Memories are tricky things, after all.
 * Well, just LOOK at the game. About half of the cast dies (well... sort of), Roxas is rather depressing, and the plot is dark and gloomy. Perphaps the creator made Sora happy and cheerful so the kiddies playing this won't get depressed. Remember, little ten-year-old kids play this, too, and Mickey Mouse isn't as cheerful as he was on House of Mouse.
 * Why is it that when you fight Barbossa, Jack dying results in a game over? Especially after Jack has stolen the Aztec Treasure that prevents him from dying.
 * The same reason that Barbossa doesn't have Infinite HP.
 * Where did the pink portal Kairi took to get to Twilight Town come from? After she gets away from Destiny Islands, she finds this pink portal and it's never explained!
 * I'm pretty sure it was.
 * Then why pink?
 * I thought it was black and purple like all the other Portals and it was not ; I think the cutscene explains it all.
 * In Atlantica, after Ariel makes the deal with Ursula to become human, Flounder and Sebastian say that they'll watch over Ariel while the Power Trio tries to find Ursula. Couldn't Sora, Donald, and Goofy have just changed back into their land-going forms and watched over Ariel that way? They could surely have done a much better job than Flounder (stuck in the water) and Sebastian (not stuck in the water, but confined by his duties to Triton) could have done. We could've had actual gameplay that way by having SDG fight off Heartless to protect Ariel and Eric. Yeah, Ursula is a threat and all, but Ariel only has three days before this contract expires. They should have focused on getting her to succeed in kissing Eric, and then gone on to deal with Ursula.
 * Somehow, I don't think a 15 year old, a brain-damaged dog, and a jerkass magical duck are the best candidates for convincing people to kiss each other.
 * The magic (Sora's clothes or Donald's) probably doesn't allow them to change to their default "land forms".
 * What happens if a person whose name already has an X in it becomes a Nobody?
 * Maybe their name would have two X's.
 * Well, Xehanort anagramed an alias instead.
 * Turning to a Nobody doesn't magically change your real name. The Organization members anagramed theirs for the Rule of Cool and added the "X" because of the X-Blade.
 * Why was Sora such a douche towards Demyx the whole time? He clearly didn't want to fight him, but Sora just kept goading him until he finally snapped, and now we're supposed to believe Demmy's the bad guy?
 * What was Demyx doing at the time? Oh, right, sabotage, subterfuge, and otherwise ruining and taking the lives of others in an attempt to gather more hearts for the artificial Kingdom Hearts. Plus, he may have been reluctant, but if you'll notice, his complaints were about having to provide physical effort to accomplish what amounts to large-scale murder, not any problems with the murder in and of itself. Sora wasn't goading him until he snapped, he was trying to get Demyx to drop the charade and get on with the inevitable fight already, so Sora can put him out of his -- and, more importantly, everyone else's -- misery.
 * Wait, what? I thought Demyx's mission was to find Sora to "liberate his true disposition", . I don't recall him being anywhere near a place where he could kill other people or otherwise wreak havoc. He could have summoned Heartless or something, but that explanation doesn't convince me -- I would accept it if there were even some kind of reference to him murdering/hurting others, but I saw or heard no such thing. But again, saying he did or didn't do anything harmful to the innocents is just speculation. I don't think there's any definite conclusion here...
 * Whatever, he's still a member of the Organization XIII, a terrorist organization that spend their days killing and destroying whatever that is in the way, even innocent kids or entire worlds. I think that gives Sora enough reason to treat them as they are: murderous psychos with no regard for human life. If you met a terrorist or a murderer with a wimpy attitude IRL, would you be like: "Hey lets be buds ok"?
 * I always imagined that when Xemnas found the Nobodies, he convinced them that their only choice was to join his group in order to become true human beings again/get their hearts back, because that WAS their motive. In which case, it would be completely understandable for a seemingly less-offensive person like Demyx to be in an organization that "kills innocent children and kicks puppies" (which I'm not denying that some of them do) -- not because he wants to join in the violence and bloodshed, but because he wants his heart back (his ability to ignore/tolerate that the syndicate he joined DOES in fact do those things does point to some bad character. But that doesn't necessarily make him as bad as some of the others). Of course, that's speculation and personal opinion. There's no evidence that he beat up any kids or destroyed any worlds, and there's no evidence that says he didn't, either. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm tired of people insisting that 'the Organization is THIS WAY, screw everyone else's interpretation, they're evil (or sympathetic)' when there is compelling evidence that supports both sides. But, concerning the question above, I admit that Sora probably had enough evidence/exposure to think that everyone in the Organization was evil and malicious, and thought that Demyx was no different. It's just sad in hindsight for those of us who want to think Demyx was one of the less offensive members.
 * 358/2 Days pretty much confirmed that, due to Demyx's laziness and lack of work ethic, he gets mostly stuck doing recons (if not always). Doesn't do anything. Which makes Sora's one-sightedness even more damning.
 * Let's try and remember that Demyx, while not shown doing anything too "evil", probably had nothing against it. He's just too lazy. Oh, and it doesn't really matter that Sora was a douche towards Demyx, I mean, it's not like he could be offended.
 * To counter this point, there is specific evidence from Roxas's first encounter with him that he doesn't like violence ("Why couldn't they have sent me to do something un-violent?"). Therefore, there was most likely no arbitrary or willing violent evil on his part.
 * Demyx's story is the classic after school special. He's a decent-ish guy that just happened to fall in with a bad crowd, make some bad decisions, and end up in the fantasy equivalent of a police shootout. Sora was douchey and one-sided in his views; Demyx associated with terrorists. You can't completely demonize either of them.
 * Demyx is a Nobody. He didn't fall in with a bad crowd or make bad decisions any more than any of the other members. At some point as a human, he became a Nobody. That Nobody willingly works for Organization XIII (which isn't really a terrorist organization) and shows no problems with the Organization's tactics. Sora was fully justified in claiming that Demyx doesn't have a heart because, as the other Nobodies admit, they do not have hearts.
 * Technically, they are terrorists, even if they don't identify as such; they have shown that they will turn people into heartless if they want a stronger heart for Xemnas's plot, like Xaldin tried to do to Beast. And let's not forget that Luxord was terrorizing Port Royal and keeping the entire pirate crew undead and invincible, allowing them to pillage and do other terrible pirate things to Port Royal. But more on the subject of Sora's assholeness, I was under the impression that Demyx was the one sending all the Heartless to attack Hollow Bastion and Radiant Garden to get Sora's attention, and you also seem to forget that he stole the Olympus stone earlier and caused mayhem in the Underworld and Olympus Coliseum. If that doesn't convince you, Sora is still in a wonky state of mind which he won't get better from until Roxas finally accepts his fate and fully merges with Sora at The World That Never Was. I saw this as Sora treating Demyx like he treated every other villain, and he is a villain; he has no heart like the rest of the Organization XIII and incapable of feeling. Maybe his whole self is nicer, like Axel and Saïx's were. Hell, the only org member to act like he did in the Org was Xigbar, but even then he seemed the type to steal candy from babies.
 * Wait, what? Since when has Sora been in a wonky state of mind due to Roxas' merging/not fully merging with him?
 * Notice that the above examples of "terrorism" don't involve Demyx. You could say that Demyx was the one sending Heartless everywhere to kill people in Hollow Bastion, but I also remember Saix specifically stating that the Heartless listen to the strongest person around at the time; ie., Saix and Xemnas himself were both around at the time and it's easy to believe they're much more powerful than Demyx. Besides, that sounds like the kind of task they would take on themselves rather than leave it to someone as seemingly unreliable as Demyx if that whole mission was a strategic move by the whole Organization. (Again, Xemnas himself was there. Obviously that particular mission had some importance.) As for the Olympus stone, yes, Demyx did that, but that was because he was ordered to. He was also ordered to attack Sora. Did he want to? He certainly didn't sound eager about it. Overall, he was portrayed as lazy and overall inoffensive, not wanting to hurt anybody, but he did it because it was his job. Think about it; if you were special and "incomplete" like the Nobodies, and you didn't have anywhere to go but this syndicate that promises you a normal and peaceful life later if you help them out, you would want to join. (Plus, it seemed like once you joined the Organization, you couldn't get back out unless you wanted to fight your way out, like in the case of Roxas and Axel. So, hypothetically, even if he DID want to leave, he was selfish enough to stay in the Organization to save his own skin.) Just because other people in the group go around screwing up peoples' lives and like doing it doesn't mean that you have to like doing it too. Now: most people wouldn't be able to ignore the fact that people in their group commit terrorism, even if they're not doing it themselves. Demyx can. Why? Because while wanting to be inoffensive, lay low, and not hurt anybody, he's selfish. He DOES show some bad character. But I think all Demyx was ultimately guilty of was selfishness (he seems to have the philosophy that if it's not his problem, why should he care?) and laziness. And sure, the ultimate argument to this would be, 'THEY SAID THEY DON'T HAVE HEARTS, IT'S ALL AN ACT!' Which, sure, that might be the case. That IS a valid argument. But you can say that to anyone. If there was a Nobody who skipped around in the daisies and pet bunnies, etc. it could still be said that "it's all an act, because they state in the game that they don't really have hearts". That's what makes this topic an unending discussion. It depends on everyone's different views and speculation on the matter. Some of us think there's enough ambiguity to say that some of the people in the Organization are really sympathetic, and some of us want to think that they're all horrible monsters that have no hearts. Literally.
 * When selfishness comes at the cost of millions or billions of others, it ceases to be any excuse. Regardless of whatever some may say, the entire Organization was a group of enemy combatants who were, I cannot stress this enough, not humans. They literally did not have hearts and were quite content to steal them from others in an amoral fashion. Sora killing them was completely necessary, not some form of racism. Trash talking an enemy based on completely accurate information is hardly an offense. My main issue with all this sympathy for the Organization comes from the question: "Would they be so sympathetic if they weren't pretty?"
 * They have a sympathetic motive. They used to be human. They look like humans. I think there's a trope for this. It all depends on your interpretation. As for being pretty, that also depends on the person. I'm certain there would be less people who sympathized with them if they weren't attractive men in leather tights, but there would still be people who sympathized with them just because the lines are fuzzy enough to make them sympathetic. Both sides of the fanbase just need to accept that there are two totally different interpretations for these characters and practice some tolerance.
 * I would like to point out that one man's terrorism is another man's liberation.
 * If the Nobodies in the Virtual Twilight Town at the beginning were trying to steal Roxas and were confused by both Roxas and photos of Roxas being digital data, why would they take the word "photo"? Wouldn't they have taken the word "Roxas"?
 * If we assume that all photos in Virtual Twilight Town have Roxas in them, and that removing an object makes it so that said object doesn't exist in the sim in any capacity, then it makes a little sense that the word would disappear as well. What I'm saying is, if there are no photos in the sim, the word serves no purpose, so it's no longer used.
 * But Roxas was suspect because the only pictures missing were the ones with him in.
 * I'm saying, what if there were only photos of Roxas in the town? If all the photos of Roxas were gone, then photos wouldn't exist in Twilight Town, so why would there need to be a word for it?
 * I (the second responding troper, not the original poster) don't see why they would have suspected Roxas if all of the pictures were missing. I don't recall the exact phrasing, but I was under the impression that pictures with Roxas, plus the word "photos", were the only things missing. That part of the intro didn't make much sense anyway.
 * For the same reason they make plans to go to the beach when there is not actually a beach. These are simulations copied from real people - they would come with knowledge and assumptions from their real world that don't apply in the sim, but they wouldn't necessarily notice the discrepancy until it was pointed out. So, if the only things simulated were things that were relevant to Roxas, or things that Roxas might be reasonably expected to encounter, there might indeed only actually be photos of Roxas in the town. But the inhabitants wouldn't actually realize that the only photos they had were photos of Roxas.
 * I (a different troper) have always thought that the photo incident shows something very interesting about Nobodies: They could not tell the difference between Roxas and images of him. Not because the Dusks were idiots, but rather because Roxas, lacking even a simulated heart like Hayner and the rest had, is metaphysically nothing more than a moving photo.
 * It was mentioned in the manga that the Nobodies couldn't tell the difference between Roxas and a picture of Roxas, so that could be true.
 * It was mentioned in the game. It's canon that the Dusks couldn't tell the difference between Roxas and images of him, unless we are to assume that Ansem doesn't know what he's talking about.
 * They can't tell the difference IN THE SIM. Ansem specifically states in the game that "Both [the photos, and Roxas] are nothing but data to them." They do seem to clue in eventually, when Roxas confronts the Dusk at the mansion and it tells him that it has come for him, (The Dusk talks? Time for another JBM!) but they can't tell the difference between Roxas and the photos of Roxas while both are encoded as data, perhaps because they don't quite know what to look for.
 * Kairi's heartless body is lying around empty for at least half of the first game. Supposedly, Naminé was "born" the moment that Kairi's heart left her body. Empty bodies become Nobodies. As a Nobody, Naminé should be Kairi's empty body, yet Kairi's empty body is accounted for and distinctly inanimate. So, where the heck did Naminé come from? Did Kairi have a second body laying around that no one knew about? Was a new body created for Naminé out of thin air, completely separate from Kairi's original body? Why not a whole new heart while the universe was at it?
 * The universe makes the same contradiction with Sora. When he becomes a Heartless, his body disappears. When Kairi helps him find his way back, his body returns. According to the next two games, becoming a Heartless tossed his body clear into some other world where it became a Nobody. For some reason, it's apparently easier to Ass Pull a new body out of thin air than to reverse the process by dragging the body back from wherever it just went -- which should be just as possible as the initial and unexplained tossing of empty bodies into other worlds.
 * Well, as bodies and souls by themselves do not exist, and the Inbetween, which is where Nobodies are created, is the place of non-existence, so it makes sense that bodies go there.
 * Kairi's heart hid itself within Sora instead of becoming a Heartless (Apparently, because it had no darkness within it, it could do that), so when Sora released it and his and becomes a Heartless, both Naminé and Roxas are created from Sora's body. This doesn't clear everything up, but I guess it's better than nothing.
 * It clears nothing up because it doesn't explain why that makes anything any different. And I was given to understand that Naminé was "older" than Roxas.
 * Essentially, since Kairi's heart hid in Sora instead of becoming a Heartless, her body never became a Nobody. The connection was never severed, just stretched, as seen when in Captain Hook's ship when her fingers twitch when Sora is nearby. When Sora stabs himself, he severs the connection between his body, his heart, and Kairi's heart, creating both Roxas and Naminé at the same moment. Later, when he stops being a Heartless, he does NOT get his body back. He's merely a human-form Heartless like Ansem. Not until the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II does he get his body back and become 'whole'.
 * Of course, this doesn't explain why Naminé merges with Kairi instead of Sora, but the entire Nobody thing seems rather random in an attempt to create a new enemy after KH1.
 * Because Naminé was made with Kairi's heart.
 * My guess is that Sora got a new fake body because Kairi used her Princess of Heart powers to restore him, which is why in order for Naminé to restore him later, Roxas has to merge with him, since technically Sora was nothing but a heart. It's sort of like how a Heartless is apparently made out of darkness, Sora's body would be like a heartless, but made from light. I think some Organization members mention how Sora is a strange case. Though, it's far more likely that the concept of Nobodies wasn't fully established when KH1's plot was written, so it's more likely that this is just an oversight.
 * While it's explained in Yen Sid's tower that the Nobodies are the empty shells of those with strong wills that become Heartless, in the same cutscene he refers to them not only as 'empty shells' but as 'spirits'. Using the idea that these are the spiritual forms of the body, rather than the body itself, we still come up with a Nobody for not only Sora, but Kairi as well. The hearts were restored, the bodies were restored, but perhaps the ethereal substance that really becomes the Nobody wasn't restored, and went on to become Roxas and Naminé?
 * I think, that Naminé is not really a "Nobody", but kind of a shadow-being, made of Kairi's heart and Sora's body. Remember: Her name (Or at least the "Nami" in Naminé) means "sea wave" in Japanese. What does it need to create a wave? Wind and water. "Sora" means sky (that's were the wind comes from) and "Kai(ri)" means ocean (here we have the water). This means, Naminé is kind of a "wave", that was created when the "wind" (Sora) moved the "water's" (Kairi's) heart. Also, Ansem the wise said, she was unstable. Waves are gone as fast as they came, and so is Naminé: Once she even came NEAR Kairi (her ocean), she started to fade. (Roxas was not shown to fade, when he came near the shell Sora was sleeping in) So, Naminé is neither Kairi's, nor Sora's empty shell, she was just a "wave", that happened, when TWO hearts left ONE body at the same time (which is not usual to happen). At least, I think so.
 * Quite possibly it was just an oversight on the part of Square's writers. However, I theorize that yes, Sora is made out of the same stuff as Heartless, leaving his Body and Soul unaccounted for. But Roxas looks only vaguely like Sora... And he looks -exactly- like Ven. Similarly, Naminé looks like Kairi only in that she has the same basic body build. Her hair color and length, her face, etc. are all completely different. I am going to guess that Square realized their goof only after Chain of Memories and the secret trailer were released, and instead of scrapping the current plotline for Kingdom Hearts II, they just decided to Retcon it in a different game. I'm guessing that Birth by Sleep will reveal a lot about Roxas. Aqua doesn't look a bit like Naminé, though, so the jury's still out on her. Clearly, however, Kairi's -Body- was busy being inert who knows where when her Heart left to go to Sora. Possibly, Roxas inherited Sora's Soul but not his Body (the second game's Secret Ansem Reports state that a being has three parts; Body, Soul, and Heart), and Naminé similarly inherited Kairi's Soul. It is also theorized that Roxas and Naminé may have parts of Sora's and Kairi's Hearts, as Naminé can rewrite Sora's memories, which are contained in the Heart, and she is also blatantly capable of loneliness and guilt, emotions that are impossible for a true Nobody. Roxas is probably similar. This still doesn't explain 1) How Roxas got Ven's Body or 2) Where the heck Naminé's Body came from, but I'm hoping Birth by Sleep and 358/2 Days will Retcon this.
 * Roxas looks exactly like Sora. Only his hair is different.
 * Hold on a second? Where is it stated that Aqua's heart resided in Kairi?
 * Well, since Roxas looks like Ven and not Sora, and, we can probably assume, despite no explicit answer being stated, that Roxas is not a Nobody at all, having essentially "hijacked" the force that creates Nobodies into making a new Body for Ven's Heart to go into. Essentially, Roxas is the reincarnation of Ven, lacking only his memories.
 * It's not an oversight. I read, either in one of the Secret Ansem's Reports, or in a Word of God, that Naminé doesn't have a body. However, Nobodies are made out of bodies AND souls. Therefore, her soul, whatever that technically is in the Kingdom Hearts universe, became her Nobody. Roxas, however, isn't as clearly explained.
 * I'm quite confused on Naminé, but here's what my theory is on Roxas. DiZ needed to rejoin Roxas with Sora to make Sora whole. Therefore, Sora up to then has existed similarly to the Heartless: a manifestation of the emotions of the heart. Only then, the emotion in control is light, brought out of Sora's heart by Kairi's pure heart, making Sora an Anti-Heartless. For all we know, the Heartless that Sora was may still be locked away in Sora's heart, and may be the thing behind the Anti-Form in KHII. Also, Kairi may have existed like that until the end of KHII.
 * Only one thing I can say to make things a little more clearer is that in the Secret Ansem Reports, both Naminé and Roxas are said to be "different" from other Nobodies. One such difference is that they clearly had hearts and could feel emotions. DiZ finally realized this, which is why he apologized to them.
 * I think it just comes down to Sora and Kairi being a special set of cases because their hearts are so full of light that instead of their Nobodies being leftovers from out of body heart experiences, they were strong enough to create actual doppelgangers as independent entities. For anyone who has read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman -- the metaphor would be starfish. When a regular animal gets cut in half, they have to be put back together before they're complete again. Sora is even so full of light that it seemed he was able to become the opposite of a Heartless (Heartful? Pure-Heart) -- a being made of nothing but a heart made of light. Because Kairi and Sora are so full of light, they're like Starfish -- they got cut in half and became four independent entities instead of four incomplete entities. This explains why Sora gets such a huge power boost after re-merging with Roxas. Roxas grew in strength and as his own dependent person, plus Xion was mixed in as well. It was less like finishing the transformation back into a complete entity and more of a Fusion Dance.
 * Holy crap, if he's an "Anti-Heartless", that totally explains that Shadow form!
 * When Kairi lost her heart, her soul became Naminé, a half Nobody. When Sora gave up his heart, his body became Roxas, his soul divided between Roxas and reanimating Kairi. When Kairi restored Sora, her heart made a shell of light to give Sora's heart form and her half of Sora's soul split to revive Sora.
 * I figured out why Naminé merges with Kairi instead of Sora despite being made from his body... it's so that part of Sora's body can go into Kairi. Those Square guys are really dirty-minded!
 * My theory is that When Kairi lost her heart, both her heart and soul went into Sora which is why her body didn't become a Nobody; there was no soul to animate the body. So when Sora stabbed himself, it sent out both heart and soul. The heart reunited with Kairi the soul became Namine, which would explain why she is so different from the other Nobodies, she was only after half a Nobody to begin with.
 * This is a canon IJBM, with the Secret Ansem Reports saying that Naminé's existence makes absolutely no sense.
 * Did Axel recover his heart before death, at least in a metaphorical sense?
 * I was always confused about the concept to begin with. Mickey more or less comes out and says, "They don't have feelings, it's just that they act like they do. And some of them think they do. But they really don't." Which... okay? Doesn't quite explain Axel's self-sacrifice or Naminé's entire existence or Roxas's entire dreamscape, but whatever, Mickey.
 * Wasn't it Yen Sid who said that?
 * Didn't Nomura say that Axel gained back his heart, which is why he was able to sacrifice himself? Accordingly after he sacrificed himself he became "whole" again, which would mean that sometime between Kingdom Hearts, Chain of Memories, and KHII, Axel's Heartless was killed. So there might be a chance we might see him again in KHIII. Which also explains why he was willing to help out Sora and Naminé in KHII.
 * Obviously they really don't, either that or Demyx has split personalities. He needed only to be reminded that he is, in fact, incapable of fear in order to get over it.
 * As far as Org. 13, most of them also stated that they lacked emotions, but nearly all of them act with pretty clear emotions. Granted, they may have had some kind of acting training to the point where they 'pretended' to have emotions instinctively, but something like that would be to the point where you wouldn't be able to tell they were lacking.
 * Doesn't anyone listen to the dialogue? They say they fake emotions.
 * I actually like that they left that ambiguous. You come out with one of 2 vastly different scenarios: 1) the characters are flat-out wrong, and even doing a little bit of dehumanizing of their enemies so that they can take them down, a psychological process that was completely unnecessary with the Heartless. Or, alternatively, 2) the "faked feelings" plot element actually IS true. With 2, there are obviously some exceptions. Naminé, Roxas, Axel suddenly "feeling like he has a heart" whenever the latter or Sora is around, and possibly even certain emotions don't apply to the transformation. After all, I think Xemnas made it pretty clear that he was filled with rage & envy towards Ansem. Either way you look at it, the Organization is emotionally interesting, and the mysterious element of it just adds to the fun.
 * Hopefully, the Nintendo DS game that stars the Organization makes the whole thing clearer... without Badass Decay...
 * Yeah. I don't know about you people, but in my experience, people generally don't reflexively act out an emotion they don't feel. If I'm not feeling happy, I'm not smiling unless I mean to. If I'm not sad, I don't cry. If I don't feel affection or hate for someone, I'm probably going to ignore them. If the human-like Nobodies truly had no feelings, they should've been acting like Spock and Rei Ayanami at their MOST expressive -- when your reasoning is left with only logic, why would you logically decide to act illogically all of the time? The only reason to act out an emotion you don't feel is for the purpose of lying -- like say, fooling someone into believing they're normal humans -- and only a few members of the Organization would have bothered with such subtlety. They shouldn't even be acting out emotions from some desire to appear human, as they shouldn't be able to feel insecure enough to warrant that kind of self-deception. The Nobodies might as well be normal humans -- this and the way that Sora and Kairi casually break the rules by having bodies despite having Nobodies, leads me to despise the very concept of Nobodies and wish that the idea had never occurred to the creative team.
 * The Organization Nobodies can remember their previous lives, and are apparently desperate to reclaim the feelings they can no longer feel... My guess? Nobodies can feel certain emotions. Things like despair and depression and other emotions commonly associated with emptiness, emotions which, in the metaphysics of Kingdom Hearts, may be caused by a lack of the ability to feel other emotions. The Organization is clearly willing to hurt and kill the innocent in order to create Kingdom Hearts and use it to restore their Hearts, so their desperation must be great enough to overcome any morality they would've learned in their previous lives (this may have simply been a matter of time, though, no longer having the empathy to reinforce those morals). As for Roxas and Naminé, some theorize that they may have incomplete Hearts as a result of their incredibly strange creation (two Hearts being released from the same person, one of them returning to its original Body, which, by the way, looks nothing like that Heart's Nobody, and the other Nobody, Roxas, happens to look exactly like Sora's precursor Ven, and not much like Sora himself). As for Axel, he said that being near Sora (and Roxas) made him feel like he had a Heart, and clearly this prolonged exposure to Roxas had some kind of permanent effect. He continued to feel that Roxas was his friend and thus worth kidnapping Kairi over even after he hadn't been in contact with either Sora or Roxas for some time.
 * If I recall, they're faking it or learning it. Remember when Roxas showed up, he was practically called a "zombie". If they have memories, they can remember what emotion to associate with what.
 * It's worth noting that Naminé is 'special'. This would account for her clear emotions, she was not created in the same way as the others. Roxas might possibly have been a product of being close to Sora (He seemed pretty cold in the flashbacks). Personally, I think the Nobodies were all Sociopaths, as defined here. http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~mcafee/Bin/sb.html This doesn't seem to describe Axel, but then he's an anomaly.
 * Or, alternatively, the Organization members were sociopathic because Xemnas took great care to instill that in them. Why else would he make a point to find humanoid Nobodies immediately after they were born, & personally attend to their greeting?
 * Nothing ever suggested that Axel was an anomaly or that the Organization was sociopathic rather than merely villainous. Also, while sociopaths have limited emotional range, they still feel real emotions. Which is impossible without hearts. So, if Nobodies have hearts, what the heck are they? Besides an extremely bad idea.
 * The way I understand Nobodies' emotions is this -- Nobodies are animated by the imprint left behind by a person's heart, hence a strong heart is required to even have a Nobody. A stronger heart leaves more of an imprint, and the human-shaped Nobodies had very strong hearts. Nobodies' emotions come from this imprint -- their emotions aren't necessarily forced, but the emotions they do have are only a shadow of the ones they would have if they had hearts.
 * We're told many times that hearts are responsible for the emotional/supernatural bonds between people, so the sociopathic rather than emotionless interpretation of Nobodies makes sense. It would appear that people have two independent copies of their mind and memories, one in the heart and one in the physical brain, which is where the Nobodies get their emotions from.
 * I'm pretty sure it was that they don't get their emotions from there, they just remember what it was like to have emotions, which might be why they flawlessly imitate it. It might have some sort of hollow feeling that people wouldn't be able to understand from hearing their voices.
 * Besides, we've got no idea how people without emotions would actually work. Spock had emotions, he just didn't show them. Everybody has emotions, they just don't come out at times, so making someone without emotions would be incredibly difficult. The writers realized this, and did what anyone would do. Guess. Besides, you really want to be fighting a bunch of monotone enemies with no expression or defining characteristics?
 * Actually, there are people who lack emotions. They are fully capable of reasoning like ordinary people, except that they have absolutely no way of drawing priorities, having no reason to prefer any outcome over another. For a truly emotionless person, goals or missions become meaningless.
 * The conclusion I've drawn (and, admittedly, it's a rather meta one), is that we, as humans, are incapable of really comprehending the idea of an emotionless human. Therefore, creating emotionless characters for this game is going to end in failure. Look at any interaction with any member of the Organization; they aren't emotionless, not by anyone's standards. Canon says they react that way because they remember what it's like to have emotions, but that has no bearing on whether or not they actually express them. Ultimately, all this is the writers' fault, for failing to create accurate characterizations. But you can't blame them, because emotionless characters are boring.
 * My theory is that the nobodies have an incomplete set of emotions; in my opinion, they have the emotions that their original selves were defined by. Axel was defined by loyalty and a quick temper, Luxord from nihilism and a desire to be excited, etc.
 * Actually, if you keep telling yourself that you'll be positive, then you will be positive subconsciously. This may be why they "think" they have emotions. There are some books on the subject, I've heard.
 * Because pretending your enemy has no feelings makes it easier to slaughter them and not feel bad yourself...
 * Considering that it's a Disney game, this is unlikely... BUT they COULD get it in under the radar by not explicitly stating it. I tend to agree with this position.
 * Unlikely?
 * I might get chewed out by some people for this, but I agree with the idea that they were dehumanizing the Nobodies in order to make it easier to kill them. 1) It makes it easier to pass through a Disney game. It's one thing to kill monsters in a video game (eg. Heartless), but to kill human-looking characters is going to be morally frowned upon -- UNLESS they're not really human, right? And so it's to make them seem more like monsters. 2) In Chain of Memories, I think it was explicitly stated a few times that memories are contained in the heart. Going completely by this, if that's the only place memories are stored in the Kingdom Hearts universe, Nobodies HAVE to have hearts. Because they have memories. Only a few are exceptions, . This also explains why most of them show gratuitous amounts of emotion even when they're supposedly "incapable of feeling". I think they were created differently and otherwise exist differently than normal people, but the "they don't have hearts" thing really came off as nonsense to me. They're different, and they are admittedly dangerous, so by telling Sora -- the little kid hero -- that they're really monsters even if they don't look like it, they avoid making him feel any remorse in killing them, thus making things easier on them.
 * I might get chewed out by some people for this, but I agree with the idea that they were dehumanizing the Nobodies in order to make it easier to kill them. 1) It makes it easier to pass through a Disney game. It's one thing to kill monsters in a video game (eg. Heartless), but to kill human-looking characters is going to be morally frowned upon -- UNLESS they're not really human, right? And so it's to make them seem more like monsters. 2) In Chain of Memories, I think it was explicitly stated a few times that memories are contained in the heart. Going completely by this, if that's the only place memories are stored in the Kingdom Hearts universe, Nobodies HAVE to have hearts. Because they have memories. Only a few are exceptions, . This also explains why most of them show gratuitous amounts of emotion even when they're supposedly "incapable of feeling". I think they were created differently and otherwise exist differently than normal people, but the "they don't have hearts" thing really came off as nonsense to me. They're different, and they are admittedly dangerous, so by telling Sora -- the little kid hero -- that they're really monsters even if they don't look like it, they avoid making him feel any remorse in killing them, thus making things easier on them.

Oh wait... Maybe it's because the moon is always there, but you just can't see it? Although, you don't even SEE if any of the worlds have moons. But then, wouldn't he be in Beserk Mode all the time? GAH. "Cid: Where? In cold storage?"
 * The dehumanization of Nobodies is even more apparent in the manga, where DiZ goes so far as to call Roxas "it." The real question is whether or not it's a coincidence that the names of the two characters who are most associated with this thinking are DiZ and Yen Sid.
 * Personally, I just imagine the Nobodies as P-zombies. They act exactly like they have feelings and consciousness like an ordinary person, but they don't. It's all illusory.
 * Hm? I've always thought that Mickey and the knowledgeable thinks that they have no emotion but that they actually do... I've never thought it could be any other way... I think I'll stay with my view of the thing. It makes the Organization sad and great anti-villains. Granted though, I am an actor-in-training and it is quite possible to pretend emotion even if you feel nothing at all. Still, I stick to my version.
 * However, even the smartest, most morally straight characters can be wrong. They made that a point with Ansem, & it was actually expressed several other times in the Disney worlds: Simba's self-doubt, Beast's distrust of his friends, Hercules refusing to stop pleasing the crowd & therefore leading to the deaths of everyone in the Coliseum (off-screen but implied), etc.
 * Besides: 1. DiZ ; 2. King Mickey was in Castle Oblivion -- at the least, Riku told him what happened; and 3. the OXIII were probably active before KH:CoM. It doesn't seem too unlikely to me that DiZ, King Mickey, and Yen Sid had plenty to base their "OXIII = evil"-theory on.
 * My view is that the Nobodies have residual emotions left over from their human selves but can't fully experience new emotions. For instance -- they remember feeling love because they experienced it, so they can simulate it to a degree, but they can't create new emotions. It'd be like cutting off your supply of food -- you'd be able to live off of body fat for a while, but eventually you'd run out. This fits in with the higher-ranking Organization Members being more cruel and less empathetic -- they've been separated from their bodies longer, while the newer members like Roxas, Axel, and the like are still able to draw on their remembered emotions.
 * I think that they can actually feel emotions; it's just that they can't fully feel them, and when they experience a real emotion, it's a big deal to them. Example: In Chain of Memories, after he sets Naminé free, Axel sort of does a take, puts his hand where his heart should be, and muses to himself "Wait -- I'm enjoying this! You guys really are something else." He's got no reason to "fake" the emotion to himself.
 * I think Xemnas was trying to create Kingdom Hearts for a different reason than the one he told the Organization. 'Kingdom Hearts will give you your hearts' I think was more or less akin to suicide bombers believing they will have paradise when they die. I think that they could have gotten their hearts back by believing in the Key (Sora/Roxas.) Axel is the one Nobody to side with Sora/Roxas unconditionally, even calling the latter his best friend and firmly believing in him. If any Nobody was reunited with his heart in the end, it was Axel.
 * Were all of the "human" Nobodies in Organization XIII? (This isn't counting the Mooks you regularly fight.) If so, why? If not, did any make it out of the second game in one piece?
 * Nomura states that
 * Weird. The dialogue in Final Mix made it sound like an Organization member that got killed turned into a Dusk. Oh, on this subject, I think Xemnas, having power over Nothing, can tell when a Nobody forms & then seeks them out. This is supported in Final Mix, when he heads straight to Twilight Town to find Roxas. At least one human Nobody wasn't in the organization (Naminé), but she was obviously still forced to help out.
 * The dialogue implies that being "dusked" or turned into a lesser Nobody is a punishment handed out to certain members, although in really serious cases, they're completely destroyed.
 * However, between Sora, Riku, and Axel, every member of the Organization was killed in Nobody form except for Roxas, who remerged with Sora (then de-merged with him when Axel died for some reason, only to remerge with him 'again' later on).
 * Roxas only remerged with Sora once; remember the Sora he saw in that stasis pod was in the data world (and was most likely a hologram/data copy of Sora), yet Sora had awakened in the real world (meaning he hadn't actually met Sora until their mind battle, but he knew who Sora was).
 * First of all, I think the heart leaves behind the imprint of emotions and memories, so they can remember what it was like. As for why they bother faking emotions, I think it has to do with their nature. Light makes positive emotions, Dark is negative emotions, and Void makes feelings of emptiness. Nobodies don't exist, so they are Void elemental. The Void makes them feel insecure and empty, so they act like they have other emotions to appease their emptiness.
 * A question regarding the Little Mermaid aspect of Kingdom Hearts, why does nobody remember that Ursula was evil in Kingdom Hearts 2? She had already stolen the Trident in the first game. Or why didn't anyone wonder why she wasn't dead? Everyone acts as if Sora visited, but didn't do anything there.
 * Maybe they still had some aftereffects from the whole memory mess-up that affected the entire cast?
 * Except this doesn't happen to the other worlds and characters Sora revisits, EG Agrabah and Halloween Town.
 * True, but they all do say that they forgot he even existed until just recently. Maybe some side effects were still hanging around Atlantica for some reason.
 * Based on this troper's view of Ursula, it could be just as likely that she convinced people that she had either turned a new leaf, or at least wasn't going to be a threat ever again. She is shown in the source film to be pretty good at convincing people against their better judgment, after all.
 * "But you'll find that nowadays, I've mended all my ways; repented, seen the light, and made a switch."
 * Honestly, Ursula never made sense. She pulls the same stuff a few times in the series, and her back story was that she was expelled from Atlantica for trying to kill Triton, or something. Honestly, I'm of the opinion that Ariel is just stupid. So, to recap: Not Kingdom Heart's fault. It's very in-character for Ariel.
 * Fish have bad memory. Fish-people would probably have bad memory too.
 * This troper thinks it makes sense. If you count the TV series as canon, Ursula had been causing problems for Atlantica far before Ariel even knew Eric. Also, in the original movie, Sebastian states that Ursula is a 'witch'. Ariel was fully aware that Ursula was bad news, but went to see her regardless.
 * This troper's theory is that Naminé only restored the memories of Sora himself, not the memories of how things happened before the big, world-healing Reset Button at the end of the first game. So, just like the characters in Chain of Memories, Ariel knows Sora, but she doesn't remember that Atlantica was once under siege by Ursula and her army of Heartless. Likewise, Aladdin knows Sora, but he doesn't remember anything that happened with Jafar. The only thing the native Disney characters seem to remember is "hey, it's Sora, he's cool".
 * Actually, both Aladdin and Jasmine remember who Jafar and Iago are and why they're bad news.
 * Because their story takes place between the first and second Aladdin movie. And just to make this point clearer: if Mulan's world was consumed by the Heartless in the first game (and it was, because Mushu was a summon in that game), why does she act like she's seeing them for the first time in Kingdom Hearts 2? Why don't Timon and Pumbaa remember the Heartless, or the Pride Lands being destroyed? It's not just Ariel. Nobody in the Disney worlds seems to remember any specific details about the first game apart from having befriended Sora. In cases like Ariel, they're even clueless about who it was they fought the last time. Maybe it's a clumsy attempt to shoehorn the Disney stories into the game without changing them too much, but since the only reason anyone remembers Sora is because Naminé spent a year making it so, selective memory loss is a perfectly good WMG to explain it.
 * Naminé can only affect Sora's memories and those aligned with him. How could she affect everyone on a world that Sora has never set foot on, like the Land of Dragons? I think this is just a plot hole. Jafar and Iago get locked in a lamp in Kingdom Hearts. Iago escapes from the lamp shortly after the beginning of 2. Abu recognizes the lamp. There's no doubt that they remember the events of the original game.
 * Jafar got trapped in a lamp at the end of the first movie. Iago escapes the lamp shortly after the start of the second movie. Abu recognizes the lamp, in the second movie. There's no doubt that they remember the first movie, plus Sora, Donald, and Goofy. The whole Kingdom Hearts 2 Agrabah level is just retelling the plot of Returnof Jafar. And my theory isn't that Naminé erased all their memories of everything during KH:CoM. It's that Naminé's restoration between the games is the only reason the Disney movie characters remember him. When all the worlds got restored at the end of the first game, their memories must've gotten reset-buttoned as well (otherwise, everyone would've already known about the Heartless in KH2). Restoring the worlds might've erased some of their memories, and Naminé accidentally helped put them back together while trying to undo the damage she did. But the end result still left some holes when it came to other events that didn't involve Sora, like Ursula and the Heartless.
 * The movies aren't canon to the games unless the games specifically say so. It would make no sense for the original Aladdin move to be canon since, again, Jafar gets turned into a genie and trapped in the lamp at the end of the first game (in a scene very similar to the movie). And the events of the first game aren't otherwise that close to the first movie.
 * Who's talking about "canon"? I'm talking about memories. The Disney worlds, post-Kingdom Hearts 1, do not clearly remember the Heartless invasion. That half the characters aren't utterly shell shocked from having experienced their own deaths is proof enough of that: if we need something more direct, there's the Land of Dragons and Pride Lands as proof that the worlds consumed by the Heartless don't remember being consumed by the Heartless. So why can't the same be true of all the Disney worlds? The Reset Button WAS pushed for the worlds that were destroyed, there's no denying that. If the Reset Button was actually pushed all around, and Naminé's year-long work in Twilight Town redrew Sora and company back into their memories, then that explains why they remember the trio, but nothing specific to the first Kingdom Hearts. At best, they might remember most of their adventures from the first game, but still have gaps big enough for Ursula to go right back to being a sea witch that Ariel's never met.
 * I think that maybe Naminé underplayed the potential of her powers. While she can only directly affect Sora and people related to him, she explicitly describes memories as "links in a chain, connecting us to one another." (Might not be an exact quote). Now, she was not exactly gentle with Sora's head in Castle Oblivion, being under an incredible amount of pressure to try to remake the poor kid in exactly the image the Organization would find useful. It took her an entire year to come even close to fixing Sora alone, and she couldn't put his brain back together completely even in that time-frame. Now we start getting into the realm of WMG, but if the above quote from Naminé is accurate, it's entirely possible that, just by screwing around with Sora, Donald, and Goofy with such abandon, she inadvertently caused significant amounts of damage 'down the chain' three or even four links away. For Example 1) Sora himself is in Castle Oblivion, when Naminé puts him through the Mind Screw. 2) Simba was with Sora through most of his adventure in KH1, as a summon, so his memories go all wonky too. 3) Timon, Pumba, Nala, and Rafiki are all connected to Simba, so their memories are affected by Naminé's secondary effects on Simba 4) Scar is connected to Nala, so he knows that things are really really bad, and he might even remember something about the Heartless invasion, but it's fuzzy. 5) The Hyenas are pretty far down the 'Chain', but by this point the interaction with them is minimal and the Heartless invasion isn't really a topic of discussion. This works for the other worlds as well, for the most part, since the people most likely to bring things up are already closest to Sora, and thus are more likely to have their memories changed. When Naminé was doing her re-building job, she was focused on SDG and was being much more careful, so this 'chain' effect would be drastically toned down. Hence, people in the middle of the chain are apt to have their memories still badly scrambled because Naminé didn't bother to put them back together, or might not have been aware of the extent of her changes.
 * The Land of Dragons and a lot of the other Heartless worlds probably got eaten so fast there was no way for people to realize what was going on. They ceased to exist until Kingdom Hearts' light was opened at the end of the first game.
 * One wonders if the worlds the Heartless had already destroyed prior to Kingdom Hearts were just the ones with their Keyholes in really, really obvious places. I wouldn't be surprised to find the keyhole for a few of these worlds just sitting around in plain sight, unnoticed by passerby but really easy targets for the heartless. This could explain why no one remembers the Heartless in, say, the Pride Lands or The Land of Dragons. I dunno about you, but I can just picture the Pride Lands keyhole just sitting on the top of Pride Rock, and the Heartless taking over in less than 15 minutes without anyone even noticing.
 * Here's my answer; when the worlds got repaired, everyone lost all their memories of what happened between the worlds being connected, and the end of the first game. In the year that Sora was out of commission, the events of the first movie/whatever for each world played out without the interference of the Heartless, Riku, or Sora. (Scar went ahead with his plans for the Pridelands, Jafar goes for the Lamp, etc.) And during that year, Naminé slowly repaired Sora's memory, and caused people he'd met to remember that he exists
 * If that is true, Why in "Aladdin" does jafar suddenly lose his geneie form, and why in The Lion King is Scar defeated and killed, and just comes back? and don't you dare say that A Wizard Did It.
 * You never have to visit Atlantica in the first game, so the events might not have transpired already (Of course that doesn't explain why Atlantica is in COM; alternatively, you could just call Discontinuity on Atlantica in KH2, as you never visit that and it doesn't even play in traditional format, so it might just be non-canon).
 * So, at the end of Kingdom Hearts II, whatever happened to Maleficent and Pete? They just sort of drop out of the story.
 * You know there's a Kingdom Hearts III coming, right? Anyhoo, I think the implication was that the Balance Between Good and Evil was being restored by them taking over the Organization's castle. Cosmically, creatures like Maleficent have to exist, that's how she resurrected herself just by having the Three Good Fairies think about her.
 * My understanding is that KHIII is going to be a prequel that doesn't involve any of the characters from the first two. (Which, if you ask me, is a pretty stupid move, since what drew people to the franchise in the first place was the Massive Multiplayer Crossover of Disney animation and Final Fantasy, of all things. But that's a whole 'nother topic.)
 * The first offical look at the prequel. Notice Sora, Organization XIII and King Mickey in the screenshots. Also, Sora seems to have aged backwards....
 * Well, that's a relief. Shows how much attention I've been paying to the press releases.
 * Sigh. There is no Kingdom Hearts III. There have been three new Kingdom Hearts games announced, but none of them are given that name. 358/2 Days is a DS game about Roxas's experiences in Organisation XIII. Coded is a mobile phone game about Sora trying to recover his lost memories. Birth By Sleep is a PSP prequel game that was alluded to in the secret movie of Kingdom Hearts II. It's about the Keyblade War, and stars three new characters called Terra (playable), Ven, and Aqua. It's expected that they'll be linked to Riku, Sora, and Kairi respectively, considering the thematic naming.
 * Not to mention 3D: Dream Drop Distance.
 * Yes there is, just not until after they've done all the side stories.
 * KH is the new FF7 in therms of spinoff milking, it would seem.
 * How do you know that they didn't actually write it like this and purposely kept open ends from the start? We're not in their studios, most of us probably haven't an idea what they actually fully intend to do, or what they were really thinking of. Heck, I bet most of us don't even know who some of the staff is.
 * At least this series is worth exploring. Final Fantasy VII wrapped everything up in its first games. The spin offs exist simply to add plots that were never there.
 * This is rather true. The only "Spinoff" I felt was rather justified and wasn't sort of taking a small loose plot thread and adding it on... because keep in mind several things... we get all this thought about who Sephiroth was to Cloud/Zack, and there's this whole Zack mystery and the game adds on it and expands it, especially the plot about how Hojo had had several failed experiments. Meanwhile in Kingdom Hearts, I notice they purposely keep a lot of open plot threads that can potentially be filled.
 * Good news. A recent article on the future of Nintendo Power magazine mentions that an upcoming game for the Wii will be "a game fit for a king that we really put our hearts into"...
 * Wait, a numbered Kingdom Hearts game on a nonportable Nintendo system? You're making that up. It's too good to be true.
 * Coded, by the way, is about a 'virtual' Sora of some kind. And yes, there will be a Kingdom Hearts III, it just hasn't started development yet.
 * It was basically that; upon reviewing Jimminy's Journal, Mickey noticed some kind of discrepancy, & created a virtual version of it to investigate it. It's a puzzle game, as well as a total Ass Pull.
 * But it's been implied that there will actually be something of importance in there.
 * I always thought that was a Bolivian Army Ending kind of thing...
 * Why does Hades descibe Auron as 'the mother of all bad guys'?
 * He's messing with Pete. Besides, Auron is under his control, so combined with Auron's toughness, he kind of IS.
 * "He's messing with Pete" sounds accurate enough to me. Hades, in Kingdom Hearts II, really is not a very motivated villain -- he simply did not act as dangerously and more actively focused on the Underdome after losing once. Besides, it's funny, and this is PRECISELY what led him to tolerate Sora in both games (because Sora has proven able to beat up Hercules).
 * "He's messing with Pete" is a very good take on it. I present another one: There's no clear-cut definition on what is or is not a "sin." Auron, so it could be seen as that he was paying for his crimes, afterall. Yeah, that's unfair. Theological concepts concerning good & evil usually are. Maybe it's even a little bit of both, I don't know.
 * The first few shots of Auron looked suspiciously similar to Sephiroth, who originally appeared in the original Kingdom Hearts as a bonus boss on that same world. Why they would do such a bait and switch is a mystery to me, but that's what it looks like to me.
 * I personally suspected it was a slight mistranslation -- he meant to say Auron was the mother of all badasses.
 * So Hades is Getting Crap Past the Censors and you know they would never let him say, "Mother of all badasses." on a E+ 10 rated game by Disney.
 * Meanwhile, what's Auron doing in Hades's pit anyway? The only guess I can make is that he essentially put himself there out of guilt and remorse for failing his friends, since for all practical character purposes he's the same Auron as in Final Fantasy X. Still, that's pure guesswork.
 * In Greek mythology, everyone went to Hades. There were different places in Hades that you could go to, depending on if you were good or bad or brave or cowardly or whatever, but Hades was the big afterworld. Presumably, being the god of the dead, Hades himself just snapped up Auron's soul and decided that he was going to be his bitch. Or, alternatively, Auron put himself there in one of the more user-friendly beliefs about the afterlife: you go where you think you deserve to go.
 * I'm sorry, but I have to say it: Hades is not the god of death! That title belongs to Thanatos. Hades is god of the underworld, which means everything beneath the Earth's surface -- including all of the ores and precious stones found there. Honestly, the only reason he's associated with death is because the Greeks decided to put their afterlife underground.
 * The Greek Hades, sure, but the Disney one, the one that's appearing here? C'mon, we've already seen that there's some differences between Disney's version and the myths, what's one more?
 * He didn't say "god of death", he said "god of the dead". And that title's totally correct.
 * It's very vaguely implied (by way of his memories, which Hades kept locked away) that this Auron is the one that . When he recovers his memories and vanishes as a cloud of pyreflies during the credits, it's assumed that he returned to Spira to fulfill Jecht's wishes.
 * That also explains why Auron looks fifteen years younger in KH2 than he does in FFX (making the age manipulation make sense for once, Seifer and Leon).
 * Oogie Boogie in Kingdom Hearts II. Why couldn't they have just brought back the Slot Machine arena with some new tricks for him? The Slot Machine arena was iconic in the original film, and Square already has a BLATANT source to BS in a new set of slots to mix it up (Final Fantasy VII Cait Sith Limit Break anyone?).
 * I thought it was a pretty fun fight.
 * Yeah! and besides, did you not notice that Oogies Lair crumbled to dust in the first game, revealing the Keyhole He had to fight with something new because he only has that sissy backhand for a melee attack.
 * Honestly, most of the KHII Disney worlds were poorly thought-out. I guess they just really wanted us to see how good a golfer Sora is? Also, Setzer. We've already got Setzer! Let him use his Slot ability: he had it first.
 * So you wanted a rehash of the same battle for a third time? Can't be the only one that thinks that's a bad idea. Besides, Square already brought the Slot Machine arena again for Oogie's battle in Chains of Memories. As for Setzer, let's remember that Nomura was forced to include him in the game despite him declaring several times that he dislikes to work with characters he didn't design. That explains why the suave gambler only appeared in a unremarkable role in the intro. Nomura got the last laugh, but again, it's his series after all.
 * Kind of irrelevant, but I thought Nomura did design Setzer?
 * That's right. It's Vivi Nomura had qualms using.
 * I thought Amano designed Setzer since he came from Final Fantasy VI...?
 * Amano did all the art for Final Fantasy VI; doesn't mean he did the all the actual designing. Nomura assisted with Setzer and Shadow at the very least.
 * When you fight that giant Heartless in the second visit to the Pride Lands, where do Donald and Goofy go? What was the point of just having Sora and Simba fight alone?
 * Honestly, they disappear at random several times in that game. The Thousand Heartless Challenge & the fight with Sephiroth are 2 good examples.
 * In the Battle Of 1000 Heartless, Donald and Goofy split off from Sora to go deal with their own group of Heartless. Offscreen battles are awesome. For the Groundshaker, well, I guess they wanted Simba to prove himself? Obviously Sora had to be there or else it would have just been a cutscene, unless they let the player temporarily control Simba...
 * It's a Heartless. The only way to properly slay it is with the Keyblade. And also, Sora is better in dealing with Heartless than Simba.
 * In Kingdom Hearts II, near the end Riku randomly produces a Keyblade for Kairi out of nowhere, but it is theorized to have come from his ass.
 * Nah. Riku and Number XIII of the Organization had demonstrated much earler that a person capable of manifesting their Keyblade in two separate forms is capable of loaning one to someone else, as seen when XIII tossed Riku the Oblivion to use against the Neo-Shadow Heartless in the World That Never Was. Riku probably did the same thing for Kairi. It also explains why "her" Keyblade apparently disappears and she doesn't join the boys in sealing the final keyhole -- the form that Riku handed her had already returned to him, leaving her with nothing.
 * Ooh, nice spoiler dodge. But what Final Keyhole? Something that bothered me was that they never sealed a Keyhole in The World That Never Was. Partially justified, because Xemnas seemed to have DESTROYED it, but that's a pretty lame justification. Was the Keyhole Xemnas himself? I mean, they DID fire the exact same type of beam through his stomach.
 * Yeah... do you remember Monstro and the End of the World. Sora didn't seal a keyhole there because one is a whale, and the other isn't so much a world as a heartless of worlds? There is no keyhole in The World That Never Was because 1) It's the nobody of worlds, and 2) Keyholes are used in KHII to open Gummi pathways, and there's no pathway left to open.
 * He's also been adventuring solo for nearly a year while Sora was asleep, so he could have picked it up somewhere. But yeah, I like the theory above too.
 * I believe in the novelization it's said that Kairi can have a Keyblade, but until this point she hasn't known how. All Riku did was access this potential himself.
 * But wasn't the novelization non-canon? Though, thing does make sense. I was also thinking that he might of got it from Ansem
 * Also, the three main keyblades in BBS haven't been confirmed to be related to Darkness, Twilight, or Light. Yet.
 * This Troper believes that XIII's dual Keyblades were actually his own and, with Riku picking up the latter during the battle against him. Sora's dual Keyblades in Drive Form were his own and, if Birth by Sleep is anything to go by, Mickey's original Keyblade -- which is why it takes the form of the Star Seeker originally. Therefore, Kairi's Keyblade did in fact come from Riku's ass.
 * Well,, so it's been explained HOW she was able to use it. As for where it came from, . So Riku could have gotten the second Keyblade because This troper's beliefs anyway.
 * If Sora, upon "reuniting" with his Nobody, became whole again, then why does he occasionally summon "Super Heartless" form (the rare Heartless-colored, combo-exploiting ultra-form) instead of the form you chose? Moreover, if Sora and Roxas reunited, why do they later end up fighting each other?
 * Because Anti Form (the Heartless form) only appears if you take enough damage in your other forms, so it's a "you stare into the abyss" type thing. Roxas and Sora fighting was because Roxas just saw his best friend die and wanted to prove to himself Sora was a worthy Somebody.
 * I always thought that Roxas was fighting for control over Sora's body. He must have had plenty of time to stew or think about whatever happened while he was in the Organization (he had to have remembered SOMETHING new by this point), but seeing his best friend die was what made him snap. Yeah, he didn't trust the guy last he saw him and 358/2 Days pretty much explains this, but since he can't remember, Axel was the closest thing to a friend he's had. And since Axel died trying to help out Sora (and indirectly, Roxas) and basically save him from the Organization's antics, Roxas wanted to take them down himself -- it's been shown exactly how vengeful of a person he can be. His "You make a good other" while having that somewhat pleased look on his face could be the above, satisfied that he has a worthy Somebody, or it's an act of defeat and he gives off one of those bittersweet surrenders by knowing he can't control himself anymore.
 * Sora and Roxas don't ACTUALLY reunite until just before the final battle ("Look sharp!"). The end of the Prologue is Roxas regaining his true self, not him reuniting with Sora.
 * Actually, Anti-Form (in terms of gameplay at least) has a chance of triggering when you use one of the other forms except Final Form (it's at most a 25% chance), so perhaps it's a side effect of the forms themselves? Or perhaps they're tapping into Sora's Heartless?
 * Interestingly enough, in Limit Form (Final Mix), Sora also has no chance of going into Anti-Form. Perhaps it's from absorbing the darkness in his friends' hearts? Final Form could be immune because I always saw it as an expression of Roxas's powers, as well. But, maybe I'm just asspulling.
 * As noted elsewhere, Sora is actually a human form Heartless. Though he retains his form and sanity due to Kairi's power (and his own innate goodness), it's possible that the Drive Forms destabilize his body to the point where it reverts to its natural Heartless form. This is probably why he had to reunite with Roxas. Going further with this idea, I'll theorize that Roxas was actively resisting the union, and that's why they had that fight after Axel died (I'd agree with the pissed off explanation). After that fight, Roxas finally accepts the union, and Final Form is a sign that Sora is finally whole (You can only achieve it after the fight between them).
 * That actually makes a great deal of sense. Here's hoping it doesn't get Jossed.
 * Actually, Sora's will is perfectly intact when he goes Heartless. RE:CoM even states that, other than Xehanort, Sora is the only person to turn into a Heartless without becoming feral/losing his free will. Plus, we have full control over Heartless Sora during KH1 in Hollow Bastion.
 * Just to clear up a few misconceptions here, 1) turning into Anti Form (the name of the heartless form) is decided by a number of hidden points you gain or lose every time you use a form. Valor, Wisdom, and Master all increase this point value, making the Anti form more likely to appear. Final decreases the number of Anti points, making it less likely to happen. 2) The Anti Form does not come from Sora being incomplete. It comes from darkness that still inhabits Sora's heart. Yes, Sora has darkness in his heart. Only the Princesses of Heart do not. It's not a result of turning into a Heartless, as noted above. It's just the darkness that exists in everybody's heart overpowering him as a result of him overusing the imperfect Drive Forms.
 * When Sora and Roxas split, a new body is created out of Kairi's love for him. What happens to it when he reunites with Roxas -- shouldn't he now have a spare Heartless and Soulless body lying around now?
 * The two bodies fuse together into one. Roxas doesn't replace his old body.
 * See above, I think Sora is actually a Heartless (Albeit an unusual one).
 * A huge deal is made about Roxas reuniting with Sora so that the latter can regain his full power. But after Sora recovered from being a Heartless in the first game, he suffered no ill effects and no power loss. In fact, he continued to grow in strength until the end and only lost all of his power after reuniting with Roxas. Why the need for them to reunite?
 * As mentioned before, it's to assume that Sora's "new" body was either unstable, or still part that of a Heartless. Also, you may notice some changes in Sora's behaviour between his time as a Heartless and his reunion with Roxas: He's even more emotion-driven than before, isn't really thinking before talking, but just saying everything that comes to his mind, right when it does ("You would be in my way, Kairi, sorry!" -- Remember, he`s talking like that to KAIRI. Is that the same Sora, that went red, when Riku was even SHOWING him a Paopu-fruit, while mentioning Kairi?) Also, he seems to be far more naïve, just falling for the "come into our castle and find a girl, you don't even know!!"-trick in "Chain Of Memories". This all makes me think, that Sora was completely reduced to his emotions at this time, only "following his heart" -- in a good and a bad way. On the other hand, you have Roxas. He seems to embody EVERYTHING Sora ISN'T while this time: He's often shown thinking about various things, doesn't really say everything that comes to his mind, and seems to trust only Axel first, and later he only trusts the "twilight-gang" (As I call the three). The two really needed to be combined again, or Sora may have stayed an unstable, naive boy forever.
 * I thought of it as, if nothing else, a way for the Drive Forms to be used. It unlocks something within him, and a lot allow him to use two Keyblades. Hmm... who does that sound like?
 * I always took it as meaning that without Roxas's power being reintegrated with Sora's, Sora would lose the potential to have the level of power over light that Roxas does (As seen in the battle with Roxas in Final Mix+. Sora's light powers are seen in the explosion finisher). I get this from the fact that I seem to remember Word of God somewhere stating that Sora can do anything Roxas is seen to do, he just doesn't know how.
 * If Ansem in KH1 was in fact Xehanort's Heartless, and Sora at the time was a human-form Heartless, then why wasn't Sora wiped out like Xehanort's Heartless was... Was it because Xehanort's Heartless stupidly stood right in front of the Mind Screw door, as light poured out of it? Because that's all I can figure out.
 * Sora wasn't really a human-form Heartless; that's just the closest approximation to what he was that has a name. Heartless "bodies" are created from the darkness itself, and Sora doesn't have enough darkness in him to sustain a human form -- that's why he turned into a Shadow despite willingly giving himself over to the darkness. Kairi purifies him of even that darkness, but he's still a disembodied heart like a Heartless - with the difference that his false "body" was created through either Kairi's light or the willpower of Sora's heart. In any case, since Sora's body wasn't made of darkness, he wouldn't be adversely affected by the light of Kingdom Hearts.
 * He's less like a Heartless and more like a heart that can project a physical form but has no true form.
 * Near the end of the game, just before, Xemnas has a brief confrontation with the heroes. This includes Riku, who, at the time had taken the form of Xehanort's Heartless from using his power. Now, assuming that the goal of Organization XIII is to get their hearts back, you'd think that Xemnas would at least recognize that his heart is less than ten feet away from him.
 * Xehanort's heartless is indeed inside Riku, but VERY VERY weak. Why would Xemnas want a weak, weak, weak heart, if he could get a trillion strong ones? Also, it is strongly suggested that Xemnas never wanted to become human again, he wanted to become a kind of "god of nothingness". And in his opinion, a god needs lots and lots of anger -- which you best get from stolen hearts!
 * Utterly random thing I noticed. Naminé was created when her heart and Sora's heart both left Sora's body, yet Kairi's heart existed without a body twice. In the scenes depicting Destiny Island's destruction, a distraught Kairi is shown embracing Sora, and then vanishing. Since she didn't fall though a corridor of darkness when she vanished, I'm going to make a desperate attempt to make sense of this thing, and say that the Kairi in that scene was Kairi's heart using the same fake body trick that she apparently uses on Sora to restore his heart, and that her real body was already floating off in darkness somewhere until the villains find it. Since the laws governing the creation of Nobodies are vague enough anyway, it's not unlikely that since she had undergone the process required to create a Heartless (with her heart creating a fake body as opposed to a Heartless), then it's highly possible she has a second nobody floating around somewhere. Although, it sort of sounds like something someone's really bad Mary Sue OC would use. "Lol my name is Xakiri, and Sephroth is my adoptive dad and Axel is my bishie and I can wield 4 keyblades with my mind and have sparkly wings and..." Ugh. No.
 * They didn't say that Naminé came from the second time, did they?
 * The process of becoming a Heartless is more than just making a fake body. When one becomes a Heartless, the body is "cast off", but it was impossible for Kairi to ever become a Heartless because she had no Darkness in her heart. So, without a body being cast off, it never became a Nobody. This is why Nami was only created when Sora casted off his body.
 * You have to keep in mind that Kingdom Hearts was originally a single game with no sequels planned, which can be seen through early trailers when he seals Destiny Island's keyhole (or at least that's what I'm assuming), and plus Nomura has planned these games terribly plot-wise so just imagine that scene went slightly differently than that, like Kairi being consumed by a dark portal or something. Also Naminé was born at the same time as Roxas but she was literally born from nothing unlike Roxas who got Sora's body, that's why they call her special in COM because she is specialer than the other Nobodies.
 * Additionally, when Sora, Donald, and Goofy are paralyzed by indecision because, why doesn't Donald or Goofy just fight the Heartless? They don't have Keyblades...
 * In normal gameplay, though, Donald and Goofy do release hearts from the Heartless they defeat, which also raises the question of how this happens without a Keyblade. One suggestion I've read is that their weapons are functionally similar by virtue of following Sora.
 * Because they don't fight without Sora's permission. Simple as that.
 * Always possible. Slight derail: I remember always wondering why Data Drain didn't do much to your party, until I found out through Word of God that the Twilight Bracelet had protected Kite and his party. Just like this scenario, of course, it had its holes. The big one being that, in both instances, the effect remains even when they lose their big, glowey items of power. Then again, "Your heart is the strongest weapon of all." Meh.
 * Kite? Where is this coming from?
 * Yeah that "Slight Derail" is pretty long.
 * Actually, in one of the bonus scenes from Final Mix, Xemnas says that their plans could work without the Keyblade Master, it would just be a bit slower. This might refer to Mickey and Riku, but seems more to be taken that they can use hearts released from Heartless destroyed by other means than a Keyblade, it's just less quality or something.
 * The main thing seems to be that the Keyblade just does so much more damage to the Heartless. There's also the possibility that, when slain with an ordinary weapon, the Heartless simply re-form off-screen, in another world, or something. It would explain how the same freakin' Heartless keep pouring in.
 * That's actually confirmed in Days, by Vexen, I believe. A Keyblade is the only thing that can permanently kill a Heartless, sending the heart to Kingdom Hearts. Any other weapon and the heart released simply gets re-darkness'd and comes back as a Heartless all over again.
 * Though it also should be noted that your security clearance is next to nil. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they were glossing over details. Besides, it's Marluxia who confirmed that fact and not Vexen.
 * If I recall, in the first game it was said that only the Keyblade can destroy heartless. In Kingdom Hearts II, a good deal of his Final Fantasy friends help him defeat a bunch of Heartless at one point. (I think. It's been a while since I've played.) Also, Donald and Goofy can defeat any Heartless without any problem. How is this? Also does this also apply to nobodies?
 * Actually, in Kingdom Hearts 1, Donald conks Shadow-Sora on the head without actually cleaving through, as happens in gameplay. This may either be the lack of a strong force of light nearby (I.E. Normal Sora, the keyblade) or because the Heartless was Sora's, I'm not sure which.
 * Donald didn't really go full force when he hit Shadow Sora, he bonked Sora in the way you'd bonk an annoying brother.
 * It's not the only thing that can destroy them, but the most effective to do so. Also, it's not the blade, but the power of light resting within, that is so deadly for the Heartless. By believing in the ones, who fight with him, Sora does "share" this power with them. Their hearts are connected after all, aren't they?
 * If you look closely, hearts will be released only by Keyblades and the closest allies of the Keyblade wielders. Everyone else can destroy Heartless, but I think those Heartless just "re-spawn" in another location because they still keep their captive hearts.
 * Heartless are not something that just dies and never comes back like you, or a Nobody. If you punch one to death, then it can and will come back another time, sometimes in another form. But it also depends on the light within the person who destroys the Heartless, this probably effects what I call the "Destruction rate" of the heartless. Depending on the strength of the heart of who destroys them, it varies; but if it's a Keyblade, 100% chance it'll be destroyed and sent to kingdom hearts. Organization XIII have said that they don't necessarily need the keyblade to create Kingdom hearts... but it just takes much much longer. So naturally... you'd want a Keyblader to take out a bunch of Heartless, because otherwise you're destroying Heartless for years and years non-stop... Why take years when you can have a Keyblader do it for you in months?
 * Word of God implies that Xenmas could have done the Keyblading duties himself. He just preferred to manipulate others into doing it for him, since he had a lot of scheming to do.
 * Kairi is the Princess of Heart for Hollow Bastion. We also find out in Kingdom Hearts II that Ansem the Wise was the ruler of Hollow Bastion. Does this mean that Ansem is Kairi's father? If so, who on earth is/was Kairi living with on Destiny Islands? If I remember correctly, it is said that she is the mayor's daughter.
 * Simple, the invasion happened when she was very young, and when she miraculously landed on Destiny Islands, she was adopted by the mayor.
 * Alright, thank you. Still I ask, is Ansem the Wise Kairi's father?
 * There's no real evidence either way; no one ever said the Princesses of Heart had to be actual princesses -- case in point, Alice.
 * Wouldn't it make more sense, though, if Ansem The Wise was Kairi's grandfather? I mean, come on, the dude's pretty old.
 * If I remember correctly, it was stated that Xehanort chose her because she had "properties akin to a Princess of Heart" and chucked her out into gummispace to see if they could go to other worlds. Kairi landed -- sans memories -- on Destiny Islands and was adopted.
 * But Kairi actually lived in the Castle (remember the grandmother cutscene from KH1). Also I think Disney Alice is of nobility, so in a sense she is a princess.
 * Which brings up another question -- if Ansem the Wise is Kairi's grandfather/father, then is Kairi's grandmother from the first one Ansem's wife/mother? I really hope this doesn't get completely ignored.
 * I'll add that Ansem sucks as a father, whether or not he actually is Kairi's (grand)father. We know he's the one who initiated the darkness experiments, and he couldn't even convince Ienzo to stop them. After this incident, his only focus is revenge. This might explain why he would refer to Kairi as "a girl who lived in Radient Garden," if she were his own flesh and blood. In light of the things he's done, he doesn't consider himself worthy to be called her father/grandfather as the case may be. Not the least of his sins is that he is downright abusive toward Naminé.
 * Knowing Ansem’s views on Nobodies, it could easily explain his treatment of Naminé if Kairi was his daughter/granddaughter, and likely regardless of his opinion of himself as a worthy parent/grandparent.
 * I know that opening the old Sealed Evil in a Can of "Nobodies and Hearts!" is possibly a sign of holding an Idiot Ball, but I found something else. Chain Of Memories establishes that all your memories are stored in your heart; manipulating these memories via the hearts is possible (Naminé). However, all the Nobodies from Organization XIII (expect for Roxas, but he's special) remember their former lives. To do that, you need a heart to have your memories in. When the Memories in Sora's heart are altered, his brain doesn't have a say, he forgets and acts confused. Also, the Repliku is unable to even live without the memories in his heart (why they don't make artificial hearts for themselves if Vexen could do it for a replica is another question). So the Nobodies must have something heartish to store their memories in; a carbon copy at the least (as their original heart has to go to the darkness to become a heartless, etc. etc.). Please tell me that I missed something that was All There in the Manual.
 * Nobodies can access memories through some connection with their Heartless. This is why Roxas didn't know anything about Sora; he was a Heartless for too brief a time.
 * Where was it stated that the Organization XIII Nobodies could remember their human lives? It didn't seem to me that they "remembered" anything that Xemnas hadn't necessarily told them, that might have been written down in one of those secret notebooks you keep finding, or even completely made up half or more of it. (And if Xemnas could remember his past, it's been both implied that his heartless, and probably Nobody are unusual, and may have already been a Nobody before he became Xemnas.)
 * "True, we don't have hearts. However, we remember what it was like. That makes us special."
 * As somebody turns into a Heartless, they quickly lose all their memories. This sucks away their identity. If the person was strong enough to yield a Nobody, then the memories end up inside that Nobody, in the hollow where its heart used to be. Sora and Xehanort were rare and unique cases in that they held onto their dearest memories when Heartless; this much is stated in the Secret Ansem's Reports in II. The Riku Replica dies not from the removal of its memories, but from severe bodily trauma due to several cases of butt-whoopin' from Sora and Riku -- what sends him into his coma is the breaking of his heart. Naminé probably either fractured his memories or showed him the truth, causing him to mentally blue-screen.
 * If Scar and Clayton turned into Heartless, where are their Nobodies?
 * Okay, cool, one I can answer! Clayton never turned into a heartless. He just got crushed to death by one. Pleasant, I know. As for Scar, well, even though he turned into a Heartless, not all Heartless result in Nobodies.
 * If I recall correctly, Nobodies only come to be from those with strong enough wills after they lose their hearts. Scar and Clayton are abject cowards, when you get right down to it. "Why, er, no, I wasn't just planning to betray you horribly. Really. Don't hit me."
 * Recognizable Nobodies come from those with strong enough wills -- the rest form Dusks and the specialized orders of Nobodies under the different XIII members. Chances are, Clayton and Scar were two random Dusks that Sora killed during Kingdom Hearts II.
 * No, all Nobodies require strong wills. The unusually strong get human Nobodies. Silly, but it's Nomura, what do you expect? (Again, Clayton was never a Heartless.)
 * Scar was probably a Creeper, but still.
 * Clayton seemed to be possessed by the Heartless, rather than fully changed (Maleficent said afterward that his heart was "attuned" to the darkness, but he wasn't strong enough to control it). That matches with the Ansem Reports of the first experiments: some of Ansem's first test subjects at first seemed catatonic, and only later turned into Heartless. Scar really should have had a Nobody, if his heart was strong enough to create a Heartless that retained his appearance and personality. Keeping his identity might've just been Rule of Cool for the Heartless Scar boss fight, or it could be leaving the door open for a Nobody of Scar to return later. This troper was very disappointed that what seemed like a natural plot twist for the second chapter of the Pride Lands, that Scar's "ghosts" were a power that his newly arisen Nobody was using, ended up not really being explained at all.
 * The Groundshaker is actually the true form of Scar's Heartless. Scar was splitting it and keeping the pieces in his lion form to torment Simba, and when that failed, he gathered all the pieces together and reformed the Groundshaker. Notice that the stronger a person's heart is, the more powerful and monstrous the Heartless created from it is. The Heartless bosses are all created from some VERY powerful hearts.
 * The fight against Scar was actually against Scar's Nobody - just because it has an aura of darkness around it doesn't make it a Heartless. Scar's Heartless was the Groundshaker, as said before. As for Clayton, well, it's possible that the Clayton you were fighting was his Nobody and his Heartless was the Stealth Sneak. Tarzan says (not in so many words, but he heavily implies it anyway) that Clayton isn't Clayton because he doesn't have his heart. If he has no heart, that would make him a Nobody.
 * If that were true, wouldn't both Clayton and Scar just come back? and can a heartless (Stealth Sneak) kill its Nobody (Clayton)?
 * Why is Saïx, the most "Nobody-like" of the Organization, a Berserker? It doesn't make sense for someone who doesn't even pretend to have feelings to be so full of rage.
 * He only goes crazy in the moonlight, remember?
 * And he does ask Xemnas at one point if he can "end this charade".
 * Berserkers are insane and bloodthirsty, not angry. It's also a play on the old folklore that staring at the Moon makes you a lunatic. (And frankly, Xemnas is the most emotionless of the bunch.)
 * Saïx is supposed to only go berserk in moonlight, right? But the moon in The World That Never Was isn't a moon.
 * It may have not been a real moon, but apparently it was good enough. Heck, it might have been better since Kingdom Hearts is one big power source.
 * Okay then. But what about in Days, where his Limit Attack is going into Beserker mode.
 * Saïx is supposed to only go berserk in moonlight, right? But the moon in The World That Never Was isn't a moon.
 * It may have not been a real moon, but apparently it was good enough. Heck, it might have been better since Kingdom Hearts is one big power source.
 * Okay then. But what about in Days, where his Limit Attack is going into Beserker mode.
 * Actually during the day (usually the afternoon) if you look you can see the moon a little bit in the form of a small white semicircle in the sky. but I suppose it does not explian why he can go berserk in places like Wonderlands Bizzare room...
 * It's sort of implied that he can go Berserk whenever he wants. The moon gives him power, but he doesn't NEED it in order to go Berserk.
 * In the Battle of 1000 Heartless, why did they use Emblem Heartless if the whole point of the battle was to get Sora to de-Heartless-ify as many natural Heartless as possible, given that only real Heartless can have Nobodies, and not Manufactured ones?
 * 1.) The point of the battle was not to create Nobodies, but to capture escaping hearts. 2) Even though the first of them were created synthetically, the Emblem Heartless create new Emblem Heartless, instead of Purebloods, when they consume a heart. So: Lose your heart to the darkness/a normal Heartless = become normal Heartless. Lose your heart to a Emblem Heartless = become Emblem Heartless.
 * I thought about that once, but then I realized then there would be tons of boss-type Emblem Heartless running around. Unless, of course, when an Emblem Heartless is made, it could be different kinds of Emblem Heartless, but somehow that answer doesn't seem satisfactory to me.
 * I'm pretty sure that the type of Heartless created (aside from the pureblood/emblem split) is dependent on the strength of the heart. The Emblem bosses would still turn most people into Soldiers or bells, because most people have average-to-weak hearts.
 * Was it ever stated that Emblem heartless =\= Nobody? I thought the only criteria for Nobodies were having a strong will.
 * Relating to the fandom, it bugs the heck out of me that fanfic writers insist on making Org XIII members "just misunderstood." They were evil, people. EVIL. Let's see: The original six, in life, performed dangerous experiments on living hearts and created the emblems. As Nobodies, they tried to turn innocent people into Heartless in order to collect hearts and harvest useful Nobodies. Remember Port Royal? Beast's Castle? Yeah. Their goals might be sympathetic, but their methods were villainous to the core.
 * This. I'm also annoyed by how fangirls go "ZOMG Yen Sid/Mickey/Donald and Goofy were manipulating and lying to poor Sora in KH2 to heartlessly kill the Org XIII rather than listeeen!" First, and I admit this is a theory, Sora had already met some of them in KH:CoM. Even if he doesn't remember them, it still could've made him subcounsiously go OXIII = bad without reflecting why. Second, it's friggin Yen Sid, the mentor of King Mickey and a man worthy of respect who seems to know what he's talking about. Thirdly, we have what you already pointed out, namely what they did in those worlds -- it's not too unlikely to assume Yen Sid and the others have seen similar things in the past. Fourthly, Sora's first personal impression of them isn't a good one. Why? Because in Hollow Bastion, they send in Nobodies to attack the city (and before that, he fought Xemnas in KH:FM). Last, Sora never gets a chance to "listen to the other side" because OXIII didn't bother with telling him anything! In most of the game, they have plenty of opportunity to "give their side of the story". What do they do? Manipulate people, mock him, refer to him as Roxas, lets a Heartless/Nobody attack him and/or the town, or personally attack him. Don't get me wrong, I greatly sympathize with some of them, but I can't blame Sora for going into defensive-ready-to-attack mode whenever he sees them.
 * The bit about referring to him as Roxas may not be their fault, seeing as it's a distinct possibility that they actually see Roxas when they look at him. Whether this is because they're nobodies or because of or if this theory has merit isn't clear.
 * If you saw a group of people who skulk around in black longcoats appearing out of darkness itself and commanding the Heartless alongside some utterly bizarre, boneless white creatures to attack random people who announce, in no uncertain terms, that they want to manipulate you to their own ends, it wouldn't take much of an intuitive leap to correctly guess "bad guys".
 * Aaaaactually, Nomura himself said in the Nintendo Power July 2009 issue that the Organization as a whole was meant to be a big Your Mileage May Vary, stating "They arn't portrayed simply as the "Bad Guys", nor can they be clearly defined as good or evil. Whether they are considered relatable beings or villains is up to the player." and "The Organization XIII members are at a completely different place in terms of standpoint and objective when compared to the main character of the Kingdom Hearts series, Sora. They aren't exactly friends or enemies when it comes to the Disney characters, but they keep a distance from them and tend to look at them from an objective point of view."
 * Considering that Nobodies lack hearts and probably a sense of good or evil (Naminé herself notes that she can't tell if they're bad or not), it's hard to define them as evil. It makes more sense to say that from Sora's point of view (and most reasoning people) Organization XIII is doing bad things.
 * Riku and Sora are best friends. Axel and Roxas are best friends. Sora = Roxas. We know this. But tell me, how does Riku = Axel? Seriously. there's a very slim chance that Axel could be Riku's nobody. First, it's never stated that he lost his heart. Hell, he was working for the darkness. Fat chance Malificent would let that happen if she needs him. Two, it's suggested that Nobodies take on traits of their Somebodies, save for minor details. [I.E. Roxas is a blonde, his hair is spikier.] Axel and Riku look NOTHING alike. Also, age difference. Axel looks in his, what, 20's? Riku is about sixteen or seventeen at the end of the game. The green of their eyes is totally different, stuff like that. The only relation I see is who their best friends are.
 * Well the fandom can get some parts wrong all the time.
 * The whole "best friends" thing has no relation to who they were as Sombodies... Axel and Roxas didn't become friends for any special reason. You're looking too far into this. Also, 358/2 Days reveals that his original name was anyway.
 * Heck, Birth By Sleep actually introduces Axel's original person, putting the pointless idea to rest.
 * How long will it take until Kefka is put in Kingdom Hearts?... (Remembers Setzer's appearance in KH2) ...actually, nevermind.
 * I would like to see Celes or Tina (or was it Terra) to be in the Game too.
 * VI was pre-doofy anime Final Fantasy, so it doesn't hold a lot of interest for the main audience.
 * Considering that VI vies with VII among fans as the "best" Final Fantasy more than any other set of games, I'd say this isn't true. At least half the Final Fantasy Broken Base would love to see more characters from Final Fantasy VI.
 * Oh, and Rydia!!... Of course, they had to de-sexbomb her first. Otherwise there's no way someone like her would go in a platform-game without lifting the rating up to 16 and above....
 * They could always use her younger self.
 * De-sexbomb her? The new Kairi isn't exactly subtle, not to mention Tifa "McBreasterson" Lockheart. They'd probably use her younger self anyway though.
 * Considering that Kefka is an Omnicidal Manical Monster Clown Nietzsche Wannable, I doubt he'd be appropriate Kingdom Hearts material. I mean, Sephiroth was changed from mass-murdering Super Soldier to Cloud's dark half, so if Kefka does get in, there'd be so many changes made to him that he'd retain little of what made him such a good character in the first place. Not that I don't want to see him in, though...
 * Or he'd friggin' UPSTAGE XEHANORT. Not happening until after KHIII, people!
 * What about Kuja, or even Zidane? I mean, they come (more or less) from a world that's made of LionsAndTigersAndHumansOhMy, so it's more believable for them to not blink an eye at the Disney characters running around.
 * I always thought Nomura only wanted to use characters he designed, with Vivi being the only exception. (Which, for all we know, wasn't his idea to put in). Ever wonder why, out of all the Final Fantasy VI cast, Setzer was the only one who made the cut to be redesigned? Yeah... 'cause Nomura originally designed him. (Of course, he appears much younger in this version.) And do you honestly think Shadow would really be appropriate?
 * Why is it always "Sora! Donald! Goofy!" Instead of any AND's or commas put in? Seriously, I dare you to find a time when their names aren't divided by ! in dialogue.
 * Challenge met in The Land of Dragons, after you beat Shan-Yu.
 * And before that in the same game, when you go to Hollow Bastion the first time and meet up with Leon: "Sora, Donald, Goofy. We were hoping the three of you might give us a hand around here."
 * Oh, and in Beast's Castle, when Sora introduces the group to Cogsworth and the rest when they rescue them from the dungeon.
 * And in Port Royal, said by Elizabeth.
 * And in Hollow Bastion, by King Mickey in Ansem's study.
 * And by Auron in the Underdrome (he's too stoic to use exclamation points).
 * And by Meg in Olympus Coliseum.
 * And Jack in Halloween Town...
 * Do I need to go on?
 * Am I the only one bothered by the big "twist" in KHII that the guy we were calling Ansem wasn't really Ansem? I thought the idea of this wise, revered figure turning out to be an evil madman made for a great twist, especially for a half-Disney game. Then KHII comes along and it revokes Ansem's misdeeds, turning him back into this nice guy who was a just, kind ruler who only became a jerk after he was betrayed. I liked the way the Final Fantasy characters talk about him like a savior, only for him to be revealed as the man responsible for everything.
 * Ansem's original story seemed to me to be less "evil madman who everyone thought was a just, kind ruler" and more "just, kind ruler who secretly suffered rapid Motive Decay while studying The Dark Side." The change just ditched the Star Wars morality -- DiZ still went from wise and just to self-serving and questionably-sane, he just had a better reason for doing so and continued to align himself with the heroes in spite of it (which is probably even stranger for a half-Disney character). Not to mention that he wasn't exactly nice even before being betrayed, though it's hard to tell how far he went, because he glosses over all his own wrongdoings in his reports.
 * Still, I'm with the OP -- what was the point of that Retcon? Suddenly, everything in the original Ansem Report is just pretentious babbling. It's not a functional Apocalyptic Log because Xehanort was (to all appearances) evil already, it's not really exposition because most of it comes out just as fast without the Report. It's not... much of anything. More to the point, how is it drama in general? As a twist, it should make us feel a new way about a character we already know, but does it? Last game's villain is just as villainous, DiZ is just as knowledgeable and mysterious... it's like they decided to make all the fandom references to Amsem The Seeker Of Darkness/Xehanort's Heartless needlessly awkward and complex just because they could.
 * In the Game Over screen for the first game, we see Sora on the ground with his heart floating slightly above him. In the second, however, the Game Over screen consists solely of Sora who appears to be floating slightly above the ground. Is this important, or am I overthinking things?
 * It's probably to remove some Nightmare Fuel. Interestingly, there's also the Nonstandard Game Over screen which shows Sora standing up, looking annoyed, which also bugs me -- if he's OK, why is it a game over?
 * Pay attention to when he gets them. If you pay attention, you may notce it's when -- actually, because -- you are able to lose even without losing all your hp. And I believe the reason there isn't the floating heart on 2 is because he is also fighting Nobodies, which don't take the opponent's heart when they are defeated. Which, of course, means...
 * I remember reading somewhere on this wiki that the heart in 1 might well have been Kairi's instead.
 * What the hell was the point of the wonders? AFAIK only a couple of them are actually explained, and a couple aren't, like the balls or the ghost train.
 * They make it more obvious that the world is digital, all of the wonders are either a) someone being stupid b) a glitch in the Digital Twilight Town or c) the doing of a Nobody.
 * Ultamately the wonders lead to the Mansion where Namine and DiZ's mechines are.
 * Why do Hayner, Pence, and Olette still have the crystals from the Trophy when Sora goes back to Twilight Town? They had them in the prologue because Roxas won, but in the real Twilight Town, Seifer won the Struggle.
 * Watch the scene again. Seifer gives the trophy to Sora, the tropy gets dropped, and the crystals roll away. Each of the trio plus Goofy pick up one of the four crystals. By coincidence, fate, or plot contrivance, they each end up with the same crystal their virtual counterparts had.
 * When Demyx summons his water creatures, why is there a time limit to beat them under?
 * This has been asked, maybe Sora has a heart attack?
 * You can see Demyx strumming his sitar while you fight them. This troper assumes that he spends the time powering up some unstoppable attack, which works if he gets enough time to do it. The Kingdom Hearts version of a Perish Trap, shall we say.
 * Except there doesn't seem to be any sort of attack being performed when the time expires and Sora gets Game Over.
 * Another possibility, suggested by the Nonstandard Game Over, is that Sora just gets so annoyed that he up and leaves.
 * Or maybe Demyx vanishes? Or makes him lose the challenge and then kidnaps him to The World That Never Was?
 * Because if you don't beat them all before time runs out, they grab Sora, hold him down, and Demyx initiates Rape Mode.
 * It takes place right before the 1000 Heartless battle; if you don't beat them quickly, the Heartless invade?
 * Maybe when time runs out, Demyx's health returns to full, so Sora has to start ALL OVER AGAIN. I saw this in a KH WMG Open.
 * I'm thinking it's a Time Skip; if Sora takes too long to fight off the clones, it ends up wearing on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on -- *gasp, pant* Basically, Demyx gets into a groove that lets him summon a huge freakin' army, which Sora fights offscreen for, like, 24 or so hours straight, and so we get to see him absolutely exhausted as Demyx casually strolls up to him. Cue Gory Discretion Shot and Game Over screen.
 * Its still pretty silly if you've killed 9 of them and your bashing the 10th one into the ground just as the time runs out (happened to me THREE TIMES). On that note, what kind of idiots does Squaresoft have playtesting there games? I mean who thought putting an instant death minigame into a boss fight was a good idea, then making players play that game multiple times?
 * Perhaps its just Rule of Cool; For Demyx at least.
 * Since there are Heartless in the Space Paranoids world, does that mean the computer programs have Hearts for them to steal? Or that the computer itself has a heart, similar to that of the heart of a world?
 * I think they were just ordered by one of the higher-ups (i.e. someone who can be strategical instead of just stealing any ol' heart in sight) to take over the computer because they could so easily replicate themselves out of control using it. Which would have worked, if our intrepid heroes hadn't stopped them. Or maybe the MPC itself thought they'd be useful and ordered them himself. After all, you don't have to have a heart to order the Heartless: Nobodies and Heartless Ansem both have bossed around their share of heartless flunkies.
 * Tron seemed to be developing some sort of emotion, and the MCP had enough emotion to act like a pompous douchebag. I'd say they have hearts.
 * When it comes down to it, either theory works. And even in the original movie, "Tron" played with the idea a lot of just how much the programs are really people.
 * Didn't Ansem the Wise find out the hard way that hearts don't digitize that well?
 * In that case it would be a heart becoming digital. The program hearts would be naturally occuring in the system, and so there would be no need for a conversion.
 * My theory is that the MCP created them based on Ansems notes, which could possibly explain why Sark could control them without succumbing to the darkness.
 * What happens when any one of the Keyblades slices a person? Like, if Sora accidentally had some "friendly fire" on the battle field and struck one of his allies? I know Riku's keyblade, while Ansem held it at least, unlocked hearts. *cue Maleficent dragon transformation* But is this always true, and is it true for the other Keyblades? I'm pretty surprised that the game has barely addressed this, or at least hand-waved it.
 * The Keyblade is still just that; a blade. The whole heart unlocking was just an effect of the one Ansem was holding, and it could only do that by stabbing them in the chest. Plus, there have been battles against humans in both cutscenes and game play where this effect never takes place. In short, with the exception of the one Ansem had, Keyblades are just magic swords when used against humans.
 * Yeah I remember, though I am not sure, That Riku (controlled by Ansem) said that that Keyblade had the "Unique" ability to unlock hearts. so that one was the only one so far with that ability
 * Actually, in Birth By Sleep,
 * It's probably not from the Keyblade, but are we forgetting that Sora stabbed himself to unlock his own heart? Or that Master Xehanort was able to unlock human hearts with his keyblade? (Namely his )
 * I hear a lot of people here discussing the elements of Light, Dark, and Twilight, but what about Dawn? Isn't that another alignment? For that matter, isn't Nothing it's own element, too? Chain of Memories's ending for Riku definitely seemed to treat Dawn like its own element. And KHII treated Nothing like it had its own kind of power, too. Or maybe that was Xemnas's crazy talk. But he does say that it is eternal, like Dark and Light.
 * Dawn is just Twilight... but on the east.
 * Isn't dawn just one kind of Twilight? Riku was specifying that his road leads to twilight-dawn, not twilight-nightfall (which is what DiZ had said). I'm pretty sure Nothingness counts, though.
 * Twilight is the all around name for it. Dawn is when the Night gives to Day or when dark goes to light and then Dusk is the Day giving to Night. Twilight is eithe the perfect centering of Light and Dark or day and night, however you want to put it. It was always Twilight; the reason Riku's COM story heavily used Dawn as a metaphor was because he was dark before and is now going to a brighter side. And yes, Nothing is an element in a slightly more complicated way, Light, Dark, and Twilight all are and Nothing isn't; it is the absence of all three, so you could say it is an alternative neutral.
 * OH Thats why the cannon fodder Nobodies are called Dusks!
 * Riku presumably meant that even though he was walking between light and dark, he wasn't going to use his powers in an evil way (twilight giving way to night), but in a good way (dawn giving rise to a new day). I count four alignments; Light, Dark, Twilight, and Nothingness.
 * Here's something more mundane than some others on the list, yet still pretty darn weird. Near the beginning of KH1, we see our group of Disney villains spying on Sora, in a dark room where you can't really see their faces... But Hades is in the room. Y'know, the dude with the hair made of FIRE!? How can his head be in shadow when his hair is made out of fire?
 * Maybe none of them are actually there, and they're, like, conferencing through magic or something? Only thing I can think of that makes sense.
 * Why does no one ever question the existance of an anthropmorphic duck and dog, especially in worlds where things like that don't exist.?
 * In every one of the worlds some sort of known magic exists ('cept Twilight Town anyway), presumably there's some sort of magic that changes someone's form. Though it still doesn't hurt anybody to ask.
 * It's still pretty iffy. Some of the worlds might be able to get away with it, but then we've got fairly realistic settings like Deep Jungle and the Land of Dragons. I think Jane might have given a throwaway reaction to Donald and Goofy being "missing links" or something, but Land of Dragons still blows this troper's mind for having Shang recruit Donald, Goofy, and Sora practically upon sight. What makes the whole thing even weirder is that half the time, their forms do change to be fit in better with that world's art style, so the idea was there.
 * Which makes this troper question why our heroes only transformed in four or five worlds when Sora, Donald, and Goofy clearly didn't fit into a majority of the worlds they visited.
 * Hey, the Land of Dragons is full of crazy creatures, from assorted guardian spirits to ancestor ghosts, to giant dragons flying around the land. Perhaps Shang thought Donald was some sort of magical creature or guardian, and thought he'd make a great asset to the war effort. Similarly, the world of Pirates of the Caribbean is full of magical elements, from skeletonizing curses to crazy Cthulhu-pirates. Jack's certainly seen weirder stuff than Donald running about.
 * How is Sora not cuckoo-nuts-crazy when he has at least two other independent entities living inside of him (and possibly a fourth if Anti-Form's nature is included)? Shouldn't this have some effect on his behavior? Do Roxas and Xion rent out his brain? Do they take over when he falls asleep? Does he have Multiple Personality Disorder or are Roxas and Xion doomed to just helplessly watch Sora as he lives out his life? Can Roxas and Xion "talk" to each other from inside Sora, seeing as how Naminé and Roxas seem to be able to contact each other subconsciously via Kairi and Sora? Can they temporarily pop outside of Sora ala Multiple Man or Tripplicate Girl? This was a pretty big undetailed thread BEFORE 358/2 Days came out, and shoving a girl/transexual/hermaphrodite/crossdresser into Sora's body, mind, and soul has made the issue WORSE, not better. How long will it be until Sora starts skateboarding, brooding, and eating salty ice-cream or he ends up trying on dresses in his sleep?
 * You forget that both Roxas and Xion are just parts of Sora that have essentailly just broken off, Roxas is basically Soras coniousness, while Xion is his memories. Them joining sora is like finishing an unfinished puzzle. Or, you know Sora could just be hiding it.
 * From where was it stated that Xion might be a crossdresser? That's as ridiculous an idea as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
 * So in other words, not ridiculous at all? His Noodliness will be delighted by your devotion. And possibly also by the idea of Xion being a crossdresser; we cannot presume to know His interests on the matter.
 * Naminé made it so Xion is forgotten by everyone. What happens if she manages to come out?
 * According to Word of God, we're not ever seeing Xion again. No need to worry about what would happen if she came out.
 * Except she's been confirmed for 3D, a scene from the long trailer . Either this Word of God never happened, or it's been retconned to hell.
 * Several things, actually...
 * Final Mix+ Shows him fighting his nobody, Roxas. This battle supposedly represented Roxas wanting to wrest control from Sora.
 * If anything, they just became his subconscious mind. Why do you think Sora said, "all three -- no wait, four of us." Xion was just his memories that leaked out and put back on, so it's easy to forget that.
 * Word of God also said that Kairi and Naminé are not related. And to be fair to Xion, Nomura also said after 358/2 that we won't be seeing Roxas or Naminé again.
 * Word of God never said any of that.
 * I find that extremely doubtful, as in KH2 Naminé gets absorbed back into Kairi with no real fuss and I seem to remember the journal specifically saying they were related.
 * I think that you CAN see that this has caused changes to Sora...a nd, coincidently, I just wrote a WMG about it. Just go and read it.
 * I think they just become part of him, like a new part of his heart (or an old piece returning). And no, Anti Form doesn't count; since, other than Xehanort, Sora is the only person to maintain his personality and free will after becoming a Heartless.
 * It got worse.
 * This troper thinks that explains things rather than makes things more confusing.
 * Sora seriously needs to talk to a therapist, or barring that, Echo and Alpha.
 * What I saw was that Xion was totally confirmed to no longer exist in any way. Sora's memories that composed her were reabsorbed into Sora and chained back into his heart correctly. I'll give you Roxas as maybe a separate person, but Ventus is murky. His heart was damaged by all the hullabaloo with Vanitas and so it let itself be absorbed by Sora's heart. Due to that, I think it'll take some doing to get Ventus's heart back up to unique person status.
 * Sora does not have independent entities in him, though might count, but besides his, the only time he ever housed anyone else was Kairi and that was only for a majority of KH1. Roxas and Xion are both a part of Sora and always were; they were never their own people, and despite what some fans would say, the same goes for Naminé to Kairi. It was a major plot point in KHII about how the nobodies aren't supposed to exist because they are a piece of other people, and it seems a majority of the fandom missed it.
 * When that "part of you that isn't supposed to exist" does begin to exist, and starts wandering around and thinking for itself, going so far as to angrily declare that "My heart belongs to me!", I think it's safe to say you've got an indepedent entity. What to do with it is an entirely different issue. Do we have a "What Measure Is A Split Personality" trope?
 * Based on some of his decisions in II, I'd have to say Sora isn't quite in his right mind.
 * It bugs me that Kingdom Hearts II and Re: Chain of Memories show a clip from Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix and 358/2 Days shows some clips from Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix+, even though both games weren't released outside of Japan. (I know 358/2 Days isn't released yet outside of Japan too, but I'm working on the assumption that it's going to be out eventually.)
 * It's the same with Final Fantasy. They release then update the release elsewhere and then update more and rerelease in the original country it was released in first; the only reason you don't hear that many complaints from FF fans is because FF has no ongoing story inbetween numbered games and so it doesn't really effect the plot, which is sadly not true for the KH games. The way I see it, they should do all the Final Mix updates and release it everywhere but with a different title in Japan or something, or just not add any new stuff for the release in other countries.
 * After Roxas beat and assimilated Xion, he gained the ability to dual wield keybaldes... does that mean Sora can, theoretically, wield three keyblades, since he has Roxas + Xion in him?
 * He has, in Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix; during the Roxas boss battle, if you pull off a reaction command correctly, you take Roxas's Keyblades. See it here, the exact moment starts at 1:32.
 * But Roxas was already part of Sora, Xion is an add-on.
 * but Xion was made from
 * but she isn't a missing piece like Roxas is.
 * Yes, she is. Xion was made from the memories that escaped from Sora, as Naminé said. She isn't anything "extra."
 * He gained the ability to wield two keyblade simply because Xion's "death" awoke the second Keyblade inside of him . The reason Roxas could wield the Keyblade was because Sora can (one keyblade per heart), so the reason why Sora can wield two is because when he absorbed Roxas . So, that's two, not three.
 * Why is Master Form yellow? Valor and Wisdom forms are red and blue, respectively, which makes sense; the Sleeping Beauty faeries each wanted Sora to wear their own color, so they compromised by making the different forms different colors (funny how Flora 'wins' by making the first form red). So, I expected the third form should be green, to round out the theme with Fauna's color. But instead it's yellow. Seems Fauna got the short end of the stick with Master form.
 * Primary colors.
 * Except that Red, Blue, and Green are the three primary colors.
 * Traditionally, RYB are the primary colors.
 * Correct. A primary color can't be made by mixing other colors, and green is a mixture of yellow and blue, so it's not a primary color.
 * Depends what medium you're dealing with; Red, Blue, and Green are the three primary colours in light, whereas Red, Blue, and Yellow are the more "traditional" primary colours when dealing with inks and other physical media.
 * Plus, in the original Sleeping Beauty, Fauna didn't care about clothing color -- it was only Merryweather and Flora who were arguing over blue and pink.
 * It's yellow because of the Law of Chromatic Superiority -- gold is better than red or blue, while not strictly "better" Master Form is the one with the widest buffs, so obviously it's going to be gold.
 * What did happen to Twilight Town? How come it just drops off of the Gummi Ship's radar for a while after you leave Hollow Bastion the first time?
 * The same reason half the multiverse is locked again after you finish with the invasion of Hollow Bastion. Namely, the game says you can't go there yet.
 * The same could go for Traverse Town, which isn't even mentioned or seen in the second game.
 * I thought it was because the Organization caught on and didn't want Sora to be wandering around Twilight Town when he could be getting hearts for them.
 * Why does the last song in Atlantica in II require you to have Thundaga? There's not a single lightning bolt in that entire piece.
 * Why aren't you blocked from using Thunder in Atlantica anyways? Don't you know what happens when electricity hits water? ZAP!!!
 * It's Magic. I don't need to explain it.
 * The fact that KHII wasted so much time retconning in Xehanort and Ansem The Wise when they could have just said "Ansem had a mentor who was a good guy but disappeared when all the evil started, and now we're looking for him" alternately bugs me and puts me into a deep sleep during the particularly long cutscenes.
 * If some of the guesses about Master Xehanort and his knight in Birth By Sleep turn out to be true, then it was probably setting up Xehanort's habit of stealing his mentors' identities.
 * It wouldn't have had so much impact if DiZ was just "some other mentor" rather than the real Ansem.
 * It had impact? Other than hand hitting forehead? And "the real Ansem" versus some other guy doesn't matter that much when he's a new character no matter what name Nomura gives him.
 * It explains DiZ's spite and callous attitude towards the Nobodies, which he takes out on Roxas. See, when Xehanort betrayed Ansem, he stole everything from him. His life, his throne, even his name. DiZ had nothing left except his dark hatred over this betrayal, and for ten years he wandered the dark world where that anger only festered. If it was just 'some other mentor', we wouldn't have nearly the same impact or that deeper side of his character, the hatred and outrage he feels when his very name is usurped, a hatred he eventually overcomes due to Riku and Sora's selfless actions.
 * So why did they find English voice actors for all the other Organisation XIII members for Re: Chain of Memories but then not release Final Mix+? And then not even release Re: Chain of Memories here in Europe or in Australia? Are we really such a small part of their market?
 * Re:CoM = giant marketing ploy for Days. That's all it ever was.
 * There's a thousand and one answers to that, none of them pretty...
 * I personally feel like the writers missed out on what could have been an excellent backstory for Pete in Timeless River. When the Pete of old (A gruff but okay guy) complained about a "Little runt what stole my boat", my first thought certainly wasn't Future Pete. It was Mickey. Think about the multiple layers that are added to both Mickey and Pete's characters with this. A young Mickey, one that is still under Yen Sid and is a known mischief-maker, steals Pete's boat and crashes it. This ruins Pete's life (The "When I was first starting out.." scene of Pete's suggests that the Steamboat was his livelihood, and Clarabelle tells you point-blank that the boat is Pete's pride and joy), and it becomes Pete's Start of Darkness. Mickey regrets this for the rest of his life, and when he becomes king, attempts to turn a blind eye to Pete (Goofy says when you meet Pete that he's been causing trouble for AGES), and only when he cannot allow Pete to cause trouble anymore does he banish him to another world. Not arrest him and lock him up in a tiny cell, but banish him to a world that may or may not have been pleasant.
 * For all we know, that's before Mickey ever studied under Yen sid. Yen sid probably "tamed" him and made him grow up. :B
 * And Birth By Sleep clarifies the circumstances of Pete's banishment: He got pissed off for losing a popularity contest to Terra, Aqua and, Ven (who did minigames during their visit to Disney Town) and Minnie sicced the Fantasia brooms on him, dumping him in what appears to be the void between worlds for a time out. Maleficent at some point busts him out. Mickey, meanwhile, has nothing to do with any of this.
 * Hold up, in relation to the statement above me, why is pete antagonistic torwards Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, if Minnie was the one who banished Pete in the first place. As far as I'm concerned Mickey viewed Pete as a big bully. Whats more all three of these characters weren't even present when Ventus, Aqua, and Terra were around.
 * Association. They're all members of the Royal Court.
 * Why is Auron the world specific character in Hercules' world instead of Hercules?
 * Apart from needing to squeeze Ensemble Darkhorse Auron in somewhere, Hercules might have been considered too powerful a character to handle as a team member. His strength's so immense in the movie that it'd be hard to keep Hercules balanced as a character without nerfing him to oblivion. So the makers instead went with the Deus Exit Machina of having him stuck at the Coliseum.
 * Herc is always busy either fighting the Hydra or keeping monsters from invading the surface, or rebuilding the Coliseum. Am I the only one who has ever read the dialogue?
 * Except when he's in Emo Mode or barely able to stand from exhaustion.
 * Does anyone feel like featuring Disney worlds is becoming pointless? After the first installment, the Disney worlds feel like they are just fillers. In the first game, Disney stuff really did have some importance, like how important the Disney princesses are and sealing keyholes to protect the world from destruction. In KH:CoM, not much Disney elements were important to the story. Now in KH2, it seems to me like "Ohai, passing through".
 * It's already kind of hard because the Guest Star Party Member can't follow you out of the world. It's meddling.
 * There were no Final Fantasy cameos in Days, that right there proves that the Disney cameos are the more important of the two.
 * Unless you count the Organization's personal shop Moogle.
 * Kingdom Hearts was from the beginning conceived as a game series to play in Disney worlds. That's what it's about. If anything, one could argue that the original stuff is the filler and is just there to link the Disney stuff together. In any case, Birth By Sleep seems to be bringing the Disney stuff and the original stuff closer together again like it was in the first game.
 * If anything, they're going to tie the plots more to the "Exploration" and "Searching" theme. In the first Kingdom Hearts game, Sora sets out to find Kairi and Riku, while Donald and Goofy are trying to find the king. In Kingdom Hearts 2, he's still continuing to find Riku (Albeit getting a tad too desperate...) and Donald and Goofy are still trying to find the king. Meanwhile in Days, Roxas is just there under orders and doesn't really want to be there. (Which is why he's not so willing to look around and talk to people unless they talk first). Meanwhile in Birth By Sleep, they're all looking for Master Xehanort, and it's shown that they will definitely want to find the locals and interact with them. (The Wicked Queen is shown as telling Terra that if he kills Snow White, the Magic Mirror will show him where Master Xehanort is, to provide just one example).
 * Also, let it be noted: according to Nomura, Disney is the one that initiated Kingdom Hearts.
 * Don' forget Sora sealing the keyholes - those were important in places like Agraba and Atlantica.
 * Does anyone else wonder what happens to Yen Sid and the fairies after Maleficent's resurrection? If you go back they're all gone...
 * Sweet, sweet vengeance. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha...
 * I thought they went into hiding because Maleficent was back. Well, that combined with them being mysterious mentors, so they thought their purpose in this story is done and decided to leave so Sora can't come back to get help; they wanted him to learn on his own.
 * If Nobodies really are the bodies of people whose hearts have been lost, why is it that they look so physically different from the people they were? Merely the most jarring example (outside of the lesser nobodies who barely resemble humans at all) is Roxas, who (let's be honest) looks almost nothing like Sora, outside of eye color and... being male?
 * They mutate.
 * Nobodies don't have DNA, you MAROON!
 * Ansem (the real one) says in his reports that the Nobodies in Organization XIII keep their human forms, with "slight alterations". Hence why Roxas, Naminé, and Xemnas have different hairstyles and voices.
 * Nobodies aren't just risen bodies. They appear to be mostly spiritual and shaped by their willpower, explaining why only the strongest are capable of resembeling their original forms while the others can only manage a disturbing, fluid human shape.
 * I'm just wondering why the only female-looking Nobodies are all controlled by Demyx...
 * Well, we never got to see the Ninjas or whatever that Larxene controlled. Come KHII, Demyx was the most effeminate Organization member remaining.
 * From what this troper read in the Kingdom Hearts Wiki, Braig, Dilan, Even, Aeleus, Ienzo, Isa (arguably), and Lea look pretty much similar to their Nobodies. Why Roxas looks nothing like Sora is beause of
 * Is Stitch still bad or not? There's no doubt that Stitch is bad in BBS, because it's set soon after he's created. But what about in KH2? Stitch's behavior in the computer room seems to suggest he's bad, but his helping in the battle against the Heartless seems to suggest he's good. And his use of a ukulele in one of his attacks seems to suggest that he's already met Lilo.
 * Considering that they are in a city and it's still standing, Stitch must have been ignoring his programming and merely acting mischevious (as he's known to do). So I'd chalk him up to the "Good, but unpredictable" category.
 * Considering the time Birth by Sleep occurs in, he would have met Lilo years before KH2. So yes, he should be good in the present.
 * Nah, Stitch isn't really evil... just rather chaotic.
 * don't forget Stitch may yet appear in 3D, so the movie's story could be reenacted, adding to this discussion.
 * In the Pirates of the Caribbean world, it turns out that Sora and co can kill the immortal pirates. Why do none of them comment on this? Why aren't there at least a couple pirates who go "Oh my god, please release me from this suffering!"
 * Considering that they continue to throw themselves at the kid with ridiculous strength and magical powers who absorbed a dozen bullets without slowing down and shredded their allies like tissue paper, they may be taking a Suicide by Cop option.
 * Who says they die? The movie showed that the pirates could have their bodies broken up but were still alive because of the curse. Though this probably brings up the fact that, after they returned the last medallion, random bloody chunks must have appeared where-ever Sora and co. defeating pirates.
 * It's implied that our heroes, who aren't from the world, aren't bound by the laws of the world. Thus, they are able to kill the cursed pirates.
 * Exactly. Pete even says that "They have a kind of magic that doesn't belong in this world. No telling what it might do to ya!" Course, bad guys being bad guys, the pirates are so confident that they don't try to protect themselves, save Barbossa during the boss battle.
 * going back to an earlier discussion, why can't Cora hurt them when they have their flesh on, and only when they are skeletons. If anything it should be the other way around.
 * So who's The Dragon of Organization XIII? Number two (Xigbar) or Number Seven? (Saïx)
 * My guess is Saïx.
 * Saïx is Xemnas' second in command, but Xigbar is the actual number two Remember when Yen-Sid first told Sora, Donald, and Goofy about Organization XIII? The images he showed were of Xemnas, Xigbar, and Saïx. All three of them are pretty much the leading members.
 * I thought it was Xemnas, Saïx, and Luxord.
 * Saïx is Xemnas's #2; Xigbar is Master Xehanort's #2. The only reason Xigbar isn't #2 to Xemnas was because he lost his memories of Master Xehanort. Xigbar is probably still trying to carry out the plan even when Xemnas doesn't remember. Master Xehanort doesn't seem the type to not have a few back up plans.
 * Whatever happened to the Heartless counterparts of the other members of Organization XIII? Are Heartless versions of Axel and company still running around somewhere eating Hearts? Would they also be humanoid Heartless like "Ansem"?
 * Xehanort appeared to be the only guy who knew enough to keep his Heartless sapient, and even then he was left mostly powerless without a physical body to hijack. If any of the other XIII members could pull that trick, they'd be little more than ghosts without someone to possess. They're probably just some random, maybe boss-level heartless that Sora/Roxas/Riku killed at some point.
 * I guess that makes sense. That also explains why the Organization wants Sora and/or Roxas to kill as many Heartless as possible; it increases the chances of their own Hearts joining Kingdom Hearts.
 * Word of God says that they were just normal Heartless running around.
 * But they were strong people like Xeanort, so wouldn't their Heartlesses look even vaguely like their Nobodies?
 * Will people stop bitching about not getting Final Mixes? We got RE:COM, that's good enough. And it's not that hard to import a Japanese PlayStation 2.
 * 1. No, 2. No that's not good enough, 3. Not all of us can afford a Japanese PlayStation 2, not all of us are capable of ordering stuff online, and oh yeah, not all of us are capable of reading Japanese.
 * It does not even matter if is in japanese because of the english voice actors.
 * Europe didn't even get Re:CoM.
 * Hey, be glad they haven't announced a Final Mix version of 358/2 Days, space limitations and all.
 * Never! As said before, some of us can't read Japanese, and it wasn't really a problem with KH:FM since it added so little with all the recolors and all, but it just got downright ridiculous with KHIIFM+ by adding not only new keyblades but around 14+ bosses, another form, and more plot elements that show up later.
 * How come the party members Sora fuses with exist during cutscenes while Sora is still in said Drive Form? Do his party members go away when he is in a Drive Form? (Which makes sense with Anti Form but not the others.)
 * I think I found my own answer. Maybe Sora fuses with someone while in a form because he needs their power. He separates from them (even though he is still in a Drive Form) because he doesn't need their powers to talk (also so they can do their part in the story) or fight normally.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation.
 * ...did Riku's feet just shrink between games?
 * Nah, he just stopped listening to Sora's fashion tips.
 * Yeah no more stupid blue clown shoes for him. not that I don't like them.
 * I always thought it was because they got taller, so their feet just looked proportionally smaller. They just grew into them. You know, since Sora has obviously hit the other side of puberty by the time of the second game.
 * This probably bugs me because I'm a Nightmare fan, but am I the only one annoyed by the fact that in Kingdom Hearts 2, Jack forgot that it's a bad idea to take over Christmas despite the fact that HE GOT BLOWN UP BY THE MILITARY?! Seriously, one of the reasons this troper likes the Little Mermaid and TNBC levels in the first game is instead of recycling the plots from the movies, they came up with new stories. When they recycled the plots for the sequel, it would be okay if this was the first time Jack tried to take over Christmas, but nope, it's the second time around, making Jack look like a dumbass and this troper have bruises on her forehead.
 * This is an alternate continuity from the movies. Or was there a previous take-over of Christmas in the games too that I forgot about?
 * Jack Skellington LOVES Christmas. And maybe he wanted a chance to do it correctly this time and have Santa Claus forgive him (he was still pretty pissed at Jack in the game).
 * Jack has always been a little naïve. Go watch the movie again.
 * Wait. He tried to take over Christmas in KHII? I don't remember that. I do remember him being framed for attempting it again.
 * Yes, he's a little naïve, but he isn't a complete idiot. Actually, Jack taking over Christmas again wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't for the fact that last time, Jack got hit over the head quite literally with an anit-aircraft shell that doing so is a bad idea. You would think being blown up would prevent Aesop Amnesia. *shrugs* Maybe it bugs me so much because Jack for some reason rubs me the wrong way in KH2. Aw well.
 * Okay, here's the one that bugs ME the most: WHY DOES NOMURA LIE????? Does anyone, ANYONE else remember that official interview where he said "Nobodies don't age"? And then we get screenshots of experiment-era Ienzo, who appears to be EIGHT. Not to mention that Braig lost his grey streaks. I saw a ton of other citations of where Word of God LIED in regards to this series. So when Nomura says something like "When a heart and a Nobody are defeated, the original person comes back," I can't honestly believe him. Can somebody give me a reason to take what he says NOW seriously given what he's done before?
 * You do know there is a period of time between BBS and when they become Nobodies, right? If you don't want to take Nomura's word seriously, then go for it, but just know you'll probably be gobsmacked in the fandom for not believing him. Also, why wouldn't you believe him when he said they could come back, it's basically him saying "I could bring back any character I want". He's basically admitting to the ability to whore out his characters, instead of definitively saying they're gone forever.
 * Though he does seem to lie and you should only take his word second only to what is in the games, you seem to be completely ignoring the in game fact that BBS takes place ten years before KHI, so it gives plenty of time for them to age before actually discovering heartless.
 * Weird thing I just noticed. Nomura says that when a Heartless and Nobody are defeated by a Keyblade, they reform into the original person and that this happened to Ansem and Xemnas meaning Xehanort is back. He also stated that KH3 will be the final battle between Xehanort and Sora. This is all fine and dandy, but how is Xehanort back if his heart is inside Riku?
 * Riku rejected it and expelled it when he transformed Soul Eater into Way To The Dawn.
 * Actually, Riku already had Way to the Dawn when he got to The Castle That Never Was. Xehanort's Heartless was wiped from Riku's heart when Ansem the Wise's Kingdom Hearts Encoder exploded.
 * In Kingdom Hearts II Sora is 15, so why is it that Lion!Sora is a cub? Judging from Cub!Nala and Cub!Simba's behavior in The Lion King, I would guess that a cub would represent approximately a human eight-year-old. Even in the original movie, we get a glimpse at a "teenage" lion, so why couldn't they have made the Sora model older? It would have made the mane-hair more logical too. Fairly minor, I know, but it still bothers me.
 * Actually if you compare them, Lion Sora seems based on the teenage Simba we briefly see than the little cub version.
 * Donald did it.
 * In KHII, does Sora ever learn that he was asleep for an entire year?
 * Yes. When Yuffie asks where they've been, Goofy replies, "We were sleepin'," without anyone noting anything unusual.


 * It bugs the hell out of me when this happens, a character is out of comission for a long time, and when they wake up no one tells about how long they've been gone and they just shrug it off. What interesting things happened to certain worlds during Castle Oblivion, or the worlds that were not revisited in 538/2 Days? Explain game, EXPLAIN!
 * Am I the only one who can't get through the games on their own? This troper is good at adventure and role playing games. However she can't seem to play them without a guide. It's mostly the battles in KH2 and the levels in KH1.
 * You're not alone. I'm not much of a gamer and got into KH for the story. I had to look up where to get the stupid yellow coconuts on Destiny Islands and just kept the guide handy from there. Although I had an easier time with KH 2, I still have to look up strategies on certain bosses.
 * Excuse me if I don't know my Final Fantasy well enough, but Vivi was a doll in his origin games right? A black mage is basically a doll. Is he human in KH? I can see him being a perfectly human nine year old and the 'darkness' coming being a shade due to his hat but KH tends to stay true to the original in terms of appearances. But the world he comes from is a perfectly "normal" world that is no different from ours, so I can't see him being a b. mage.
 * My guess is, just like Cloud and Sephiroth have been redefined to be the light and dark sides of a single being to fit into KH mythos better, KH Vivi is probably some form of benign Heartless (like the mushrooms), instead of a golem crafted from congealed stagnant souls. Maybe a golem made from congealed stagnant darkness, who had obtained a heart and therefore the will to choose light some point in the past? Or maybe he's just a kid that looks like Vivi. Nomura doesn't like using characters he didn't make, so we'll never know.
 * Considering Nomura didn't want to put him in the game in the first place, we may never know.
 * Why is it that Scrooge McDuck didn't get any voice-acting in the English games? I'm pretty sure Alan Young can still provide the character's voice.
 * He speaks in Birth By Sleep, I think. And he had no Japanese voice acting in KH2 as well.
 * He does speak in BBS. And he's still voiced by Alan Young (although he sounds like he's struggling to do it, the dude's like 95). As for why he wasn't until now: until BBS, KH games only had VAing for plot cutscenes, of which Scrooge had none in KH2. All of BBS is voiced.
 * I'm just going to drop a lot of niggles here: What is up with the Pride Lands? It's optional to complete, why are we even going there? In fact at one point, Sora asks if anyone has seen Riku or a guy with a black coat... news flash, Sora, he's right there at the World That Never Was. You've already reunited with him, you can see him whenever you want. And all the Organization XIII members are either dead, inside of Sora, or behind a giant door. Or at least this is how events can play out. And what's the deal with the end when you "open a new pathway?" You don't. Nothing happens. And the giant gap that Sora has to jump over to learn Dash... how the hell did Goofy, a turtle, get over that gap? Or Rafiki? How did they get back? The side they originally jumped from was clearly higher up. And Space Paranoids... what is the deal with the password? There is no way it is literally the names of all seven princesses of heart. How can you know which order they are in? To put in spaces? To put in commas? To capitalize properly? To spell correctly? This password works on the first try, and is a guess. That is not how passwords work! And Tron gets blasted with an energy ball by one of those guys that blasted a giant hole through the game grid wall. Would this not derezz him? And why aren't we getting derezzed at any given moment? The only reason given was "we don't have the password yet," but the moment Tron enters it he could have easily have been derezzed. Or at any time during the boss battle with him. And the new password was only to buy time? It was the whole reason for not de-rezzing Tron in the first place, how can that just "buy time?" Why isn't my suit getting zapped like in the intro at any point? Augh! Etc.!
 * Ooh! Ooh! I can answer two of these! We go to the Pridelands because... it makes this wonderful game last longer. It's sad when the adventure is over. And also, Lion King lovers need their nostalgia fix. Also, the passwords. In one of the Final Mix+ scenes, Xemnas is shown entering the Room of Sleep. To do so, he pulls up a screen on the computer that actually has SIX text boxes for passwords (the common theory is that the password is Xehanort-Braig-Dilan-Even-Aeleus-Ienzo). So the passwords would be entered in seven different text boxes, not all as one word/phrase. Remember, this is a fantasy world with fantasy technology!
 * You are supposed to go to the Pride Lands earlier. It may be an optional world, but it still has a place in the story. As for the not de-rezzing thing; Gameplay and Story Segregation. And if you look at the computer, there are seperate slots he types in the passwords at, and if any password could work on any of them, it's just the combination of them all.
 * Also, Tron's a computer program. Maybe he bruteforced all possible combinations of those passwords faster than you could follow. As for the de-rezzing thing, it's kinda like why you can survive getting repeatedly shot, stabbed, and lit on fire: because it's an RPG. If it bothers you unduly, try this simple challenge: restart your system whenever you take a hit. Realism (and the strong form of the quantum mechanical multiple worlds theory) restored!
 * Fridge Brilliance mixed with canon and some accidental foreshadowing. Both films and even the discredited sequel (Killer App for the Game Boy Advance) have established that Tron can take (and survive) obscene amounts of damage. (Good job, Alan!) Mix with Sora and company being Users (or close enough to it)...Nothing short of a pair of nukes is keeing him out of the fight.
 * As for how Goofy got across the gap, maybe Donald carried him over.
 * In the Pride Lands, why does Simba struggle with trying to get back up on Pride Rock and act like he will die if he falls? I can jump off Pride Rock and higher places easily. Sure, that happened in the movie, but when Sora's around, no fire or lighnting.
 * As I recall, that part happened at the very peak, right? Sora can't actually jump off from there; he has to go back down through the King's Den before he can start jumping down.
 * No, it happened at the tip of Pride Rock, not where the fight with Scar takes place.
 * Simple. Simba can't survive that fall, while Sora can.
 * Then how?
 * The Keyblade prevents falling damage.
 * So, Xion is, so that they could use her as a , right? So then, why didn't they just mass-produce a legion of Keyblade wielders to rack up hearts like it was nothing?
 * Because Xion can only use the Keyblade like she can because . Presumably, in order to mass produce, they'd need to spread those finite-in-quantity so thin that the Inverse Ninja Law would kick in hard.
 * True, I suppose. Plus, the Inverse Ninja Law would probably kick in even if they all had the full power of Xion.
 * Because Marluxia and Axel were able the halt the project by
 * Why does Xigbar act so curious about Xemnas's past when he and Zexion were talking in the FM+ cutscenes? Did Xigbar get whacked with the Amnesia Ball sometime between games? Or does he just enjoy trolling the rest of the Organization to make Xemnas and/or himself look more mysterious?
 * Yeah, definitely a troll. Just look at how he acted towards Roxas regarding Xion, who he was in on the Dark Secret of. Like the rest of the Organization, he goes through the motions of what gave him strong emotions back when he had a heart out of longing and habit, and he was enough of a douchebag that what gave him the strongest and easiest emotion, the thing that he would therefore imitate the most, is dicking around with people's expectations, curiosities, and desires. Ienzo/Zexion is at his core a scholar, one defined by curiosity. As such, the easiest way to fuck with him would naturally be to play off that curiosity and then giggle behind his back about how Xigbar knows the secret and Zexion doesn't, and maybe lead him on wild goose chases and false clues and ideas.
 * To further on Xigbar's dickishness, towards the end of Days, there are several scenes where Saïx, Xigbar, and Xemnas are in the meeting room and while Saïx is being serious, talking about heart collection progress and Roxas and Xion's development, Xigbar is just there, joking around, dropping hints all about the plan that Saïx so wants to know about, insinuating that he knows where Naminé went and overall being a douche. I'd say his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder almost makes Axel's look tame.
 * Its not really Chronic Backstabbing Disorder since his loyalty to Master Xehanort//Xemnas never changed over the twelve year period we've seen him; he's just The Dragon, and enough of a douchebag to be a really, really, really Bad Boss to the lower ranked members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad insofar as informing them of stuff and goading them on in unfortunate directions goes.
 * Well, the Organization is basically built on Chronic Backstabbing Disorder because its stated goal, getting hearts to all its members, is complete bull and only the top two know it. The difference between Xigbar and Xemnas in this regard, is that while Xemnas is content with letting the plans proceed, using a bizarre combination of a Xanatos Roulette and Xanatos Speed Chess, Xigbar basically screws with everyone whenever possible, openly telling everyone what the plans are, and how it's gonna screw them over, then laughing at them when they don't get it. I think on some level he likes being in on the joke, but he likes everyone else not being in on it more.
 * On second thought, why does Braig remember anything about Xehanort's past? If memories work both ways in the KH-verse (i.e. if you forget about someone, they forget about you, and vice versa), then all traces of Xehanort's past existence should have vanished as soon as , just like what happened to Sora post-KH:CoM . Yet Braig seems to remember  just fine. Does the two-way-amnesia effect only happen with Naminé's powers?
 * That does seem to be more the result of Naminé's powers than anything else.
 * To be fair,
 * Concerning the startup screen on II, who eats popsicles like that? Does anyone eat a popsicle without gripping the handle?
 * Maybe he was just pausing from eating it to think about stuff.
 * I do occasionally. He was probably deep in thought and sucking on a piece and it melted away in his mouth.
 * How come people can't see that Sora and Kairi are going to end up together, and that Naminé and Roxas are probably going to do the same? It was basically spelled out at the end of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. I understand people wanting to ship different characters, but save that for Fan Fiction. This is just like every other videogame/movie/comic/book where the hero ends up getting the girl.
 * First of all, Nomura doesn't like canon pairings, so Sora and Kairi probably won't end up together, despite the overwhelming evidence that they have romantic feelings toward each other. As such, other pairings will continue. As for Roxas and Naminé, their feelings toward each other are far more debatable. Sora and Kairi grew up together; Roxas and Naminé met once, briefly, in simulated Twilight Town, and then once again briefly in The World that Never Was. Then they smiled at each other in the ending. While you are completely entitled to shipping them together, you have to admit that there isn't a whole lot of evidence for them having romantic feelings toward each other, unless Roxas and Naminé have borrowed romantic feelings from Sora and Kairi (in which case Roxas would also project those borrowed feelings onto Xion).
 * Alright, I'll give you the Nomura thing, but there is a LOT of subtext for their relationship. Kairi is his light and all that. But Nomura never actually said that there wasn't going to be any pairings at all, so that excuse isn't exactly stable. He isn't the only member of the team that creates the games. Whether Roxas and Naminé are borrowing the emotions from Sora and Kairi or shouldn't have much bearing over the fact that if Sora and Kairi get together, they most likely will as well. And, come on, what about the whole "As long as Sora and Kairi are together, We can be together." thing Naminé says to Roxas. Scenes from KHII: FM+ and the manga and novels also show that Naminé watched over Roxas in the virtual Twilight Town along with Axel. I disagree with the Xion thing; She  is more of Sora than she is of Kairi. Roxas arguably could've felt something when he was with her, but it was more likely that he felt whole near her instead of love.
 * Y'all are forgetting this is not just Nomura, but Disney we're dealing with here...
 * And nearly every Disney movie/cartoon/game ends with a couple living "happily ever after".
 * And that's why all the couples do, unfailingly, live happily ever after... the Disney ones. Everyone else, entirely subjective. Honestly, can't you people be content with using your imaginations?
 * With the kind of pairings the KH fandom dreams up, imagination can be a BAD thing.... Also, Donald and Goofy compare Sora and Kairi to Disney couples several times, and Sora even imagines himself and Kairi in place of one.
 * So there you are. Ample evidence to suggest that Sora and Kairi are soul mates. And since there's no explicit romance, equal evidence that the two are nothing but old, dear friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. It works both ways and everyone wins.
 * That works.
 * So, why is Xemnas unable to use the Guardian?
 * I'd guess because it's the POWER OF DARKNESS or something. All Xemnas has is Nothingness.
 * The Guardian is a Heartless and Heartless fight Nobodies? Also, the fact that you killed it in the first game might slow it down a bit...
 * It bugs me that I'm like, the only person I've ever encountered who likes Kingdom Hearts II more than 1. 1 was great, don't get me wrong, but it didn't suck me in like II did. And I honestly don't know why everyone hates the story; it really isn't that bad. Hell, I even thought the battle system was a bit more fun. Let the flaming commence.
 * You're not the only one, although I never played it at all. Ever.
 * YMMV, naturally, but you're not alone. KHII is my favorite in the series.
 * (I'm the OP) It isn't actually my favorite (as Birth By Sleep takes the cake there), but it is the second.
 * I feel that Kingdom Hearts II didn't live up to its full potential. It was too short, and a lot of the worlds felt thrown in. Plus it didn't have the pure undiluted awesomeness that was Hollow Bastion in the first game, and ended up lacking much of the emotional resonance of the first game. They could've done some awesome things with the Organization, but they sort of ended up falling flat. If they had found a way to consolidate and combine elements of KH:CoM with Kingdom Hearts II with Days coming later, I think many more people would have come away feeling they had a much fuller, more complete, and much more awesome game. (For the record, I immensely enjoyed Kingdom Hearts II, especially on my first play through (especially for the air of mystery in the prologue) but it didn't hold up as well on subsequent playthroughs as the first game did. The first game had both mystery and emotion, but the second game only mystery, and when that's gone there's naught left but a good story, albeit one with lots of unfulfilled potential.)
 * How come the Organization didn't go to the Lion King World?
 * They probably did at an earlier point, found it to be full of savannah animals, and decided it wasn't doing anything for their plans.
 * Besides? What animals would they probably be? I hope it's not all lions.
 * Why the heeeeelll is Axel so popular? When I played the game, I expected him to have an enormous impact on the story and to be somewhat of the badarse judging from the amount of squee he seems to generate from fangirls. I was sorely disappointed. Not only did Axel's character only have relevance up to the end of the prologue (for chrissakes), all he did was appear at inconvenient moments and annoy me with his stupid catchphrase.
 * He's a Base Breaker. Whether you find him a sexy badass or completely annoying is a matter of YMMV. He is, however, very relevant... his defection from the Organization sets quite a few things in motion, and his is the thing that finally awakens Roxas.
 * Speaking for myself, back when we first got information about sequels to Kingdom Hearts, I remember Axel being one of the very first things revealed about Chain of Memories. A screenshot of him was shown, so aside from Roxas and Xenmas in Final Mix (which never came to America, mind you), he was the first indication of something greater than the Heartless, and carried a lot of excitement with him in the time up to KH:CoM's release. He was also pretty much the only member of the Organization in KH:CoM who wasn't totally evil (aside from Lexaeus, who was just boring), making him a very likable character. So for me at least, Axel wasn't just a character, but the embodiment of the future of the series, and he lived up to expectations.
 * Why does Twilight Town even exist? We first saw it as a reflection of the memories of the dark side of Sora's soul, okay. Next, we saw it as a computer simulation made to house Roxas. Strange, but fine. And then... there's also a real one. So does Sora have Reality Warper powers and created it with his twisted memories? is he secretly psychic, and had a premonition?
 * No, it always existed, and the computer simulation housing Roxas reflected it. The illusion reflecting the Dark Side of Sora's soul showed Twilight Town because, as 358/2 Days shows, at that point Roxas (i.e., the other part of Sora moving about at that point) had spent most of his out-of-castle time there, as well as already forming his mental association of "clocktower+ice cream sharing=friendship" which was the strongest psuedoemotion he had.
 * What was the point of the whole "Everyone forgot that Sora exists" thing? They remember him almost as soon as he sees them again or they're reminded of him, and the people physically closest to him didn't forget him at all. Neither did the Organization, for that matter. It played no role in the plot whatsoever. So really, aside from adding in a few lines of dialog, what was the point?
 * It wasn't just something they made up and dismissed for KHII; it was basically the whole plot of Chain of Memories.
 * How come Sora becomes a lion in the Pride Lands, but Simba didn't become a human when he was summoned in KH1?
 * Sora transforms in order to fit in where they are, so as to not raise suspicion. That wasn't necessary for Simba being summoned.
 * Is there a canon reason for why the other five princesses of Heart didn't have Nobodies like Sora and Kairi do? If I remember and understand the games correctly, they all had their hearts removed (to make Riku's heart-unlocking keyblade in KHI) and then put back, which ought to have created all new Nobodies... or are they all plotting to be the villainesses in KH3? ^_^
 * As I understand it, a Nobody is created when a Heartless is created, and you can only create a Heartless from a heart that has darkness in it. By definition, the Princesses of Heart have hearts of pure light. Ergo, no Heartless, and therefore no Nobody.
 * Hmm... but Kairi did create the nobody Namine, yet made no heartless. Was it a fluke given that her heart was inside Sora's (a guy with a normal darkness possessing heart) body?
 * As I understand it, yeah, that's pretty much exactly why that happened.
 * When Sora is trying to convince Simba to try and stand up to Scar's Ghost, how was the keybearer and his friends able to create a Scar Ghost anyway? And why did it sound like the trio instead of Scar?
 * Donald, perhaps?
 * Or maybe one was already there and SDG just decided to provide the voice for it. As for why it didn't talk, well, it's implied that Simba is just hearing Scar's voice in his head, and maybe (to him) Sora/Donald/Goofy's impression sounded so much like the original (I know it doesn't to us, but Willing Suspension of Disbelief) that it basically "replaced" his imagining of it. After all, the ghosts don't really ever attack, they just kind of... stand there.
 * A gameplay-related question: Why is summoning disabled when fighting Xigbar? There are no missing party members, and nowhere is it stated that summons are disabled before or during the battle.
 * That is probably because the area where you fight Xigbar changes so much, couple that with the fact the Xibar attacks almost constantly, and you can find that your partymembers can be easily knocked out. Not to mention that summoning takes some gamers a lot of time to actually summon anything. So my theory is that the developers left it out on purpose.
 * Why does Sora not have a Heartless? Like Ansem So D? You would think that with Roxas they would throw in a Heartless for Sora.
 * Sora was his Heartless.
 * So, when Sora sacrificed himself, he was his own Heartless? If so, then why did Ansem get his own Heartless "and" Nobody? Along with the other Organization Members?
 * When Sora sacrificed himself, he became a Heartless and a Nobody (the little scrub and Roxas). When Kairi hugs him, he isn't restored, so much as his Heartless grows to resemble Sora and nobody could tell the difference. So, just like everyone else, there was a Heartless (Sora from late KH to early KH 2) and a Nobody (Roxas). What's the problem?
 * Alright. So, Sora from late KH to early KH 2 is a Heartless? and Roxas is the nobody? And when they reunited, they reformed Sora? I'm just making sure i'm understanding this correctly.
 * Yeah, that's pretty much the size of it.