Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance
With the reveal of his fusion support cards give another reason why Yusaku might not have used said method in the first season: he only got a search monster for Cynet Fusion because of Storm Access. Without it being searchable it would risk being a dead draw he couldn't bring to his hand with a combo. Season 2 likely warranted a deck renovation that had him decide to make use of it despite the risk. The question of if the extra deck limit applies to the anime game is one that has never been answered, but Ritual Summoning also has the benefit of using cards in the hand (or graveyard in Soulburner's case) instead of the field. The summoning also doesn't interfere with the extra deck zone or link arrows that their decks revolve around. It is commonly said that Yu-Gi-Oh! protagonists win by pulling aces out of nowhere. Yusaku's skill takes that literally and had him quite literally create the winning card at a moment's notice.
 * During the Knights of Hanoi attack on the Cyberse, they imprisoned all of the AIs except for Ignis. Each of the AIs has a distinct look and color, red, yellow, orange, blue, green, and purple (Ignis). At first this seems to be an easy way to tell them apart... until you remember that Monsters in the Duel Monsters game (with the exception of the Egyptian God Cards) are one of six attributes, with each attribute associated with a color: DARK (purple), EARTH (orange), FIRE (red), LIGHT (yellow), WATER (blue), and WIND (green). Ignis' comment on how the other AIs don't like him suddenly makes a little more sense.
 * Duels during data storms being restricted to Speed Duels could be because the systems can't handle Master Duels when it's currently being flooded with an influx of data, making Speed Duels all the system can handle.
 * After an entire season of "but you'll still take battle damage" in Arc-V, one might think it odd that the Knight of Hanoi brought up the fact that Cracking Dragon cannot be destroyed by battle just before he was about to lose, as that effect will not change the outcome of the duel. A major purpose of Cracking Dragon however is its use as a weapon of terror outside of duels, as it deletes anything it comes into contact with. By destroying it by battle, Yusaku has put it out of commission, if only temporarily.
 * Yusaku's Duel Disk uses physical cards unlike the latest duel Disks, which use digital cards. If Yusaku were to ever have his account deleted, he wouldn't actually lose any of his cards since they're physical objects rather than digital objects. Just one more benefit of using outdated tech for a hacker like Yusaku.
 * His deck isn't the only thing that's old fashioned, he uses cards that share a type instead of an archetype for his deck, just like how most decks and villains of the day were made before Archetypes got card specific support.
 * His physical cards might also be how the Knights of Hanoi haven't managed to 'destroy' them like the rest of their type. In real life digital properties are much easier to remove from circulation (like a licensed game whose rights have expired), while their physical versions are still available and buyable (if without the online features).
 * It's also shown that Yusaku carries around a fake deck as the most notable thing about Playmaker is that he uses an out of date duel disk. Thus, it would not be surprising if he coded his fake cards to be different in the real world than it is in Link Vrains, especially with cards as common as the ones shown.'
 * Go Onizuka's dueling style truly is last generation dueling.
 * The bright colors ans simple shapes of the Orphanage he looks after also resemble the style of Arc-V more than anything shown in Vrains so far.
 * The fact that Yusaku's school focuses on computers explains why he's there despite it being a fancy school and him having little money. Considering his skills as a hacker, it's fairly likely Yusaku got in on scholarship, and a school that focuses on computing would be more likely to give full scholarships to students based on computing skills than an ordinary prep school.
 * In episode 6, Aoi mentions that she's had false friends who only get close to her to try to get a job at SOL tech. SOL Tech is a technology-based company, so it makes sense for students whose specialties are in technology to want a job there specifically. It also explains why Aoi is there- nepotism is very common in Japanese businesses, but in turn it reflects very badly upon the entire family if one of them is unfit for their job.
 * It can be deduced that each character's avatars in Link Vrains are indicitive of each of their personalities.
 * Yusaku's Playmaker avatar is a very simply two colored spiked hair with a cyber suit. Not only does it help show his simplicity, but the design itself is not hard to recreate as shown when Playmaker had to reveal himself to the public against the Knights of Hanoi and there were dozens of Playmaker clones running around in Link Vrains. Thus, as a hacker, if he needed to change accounts, it would not be hard to make an identical avatar.
 * Go Onzuki's avatar is a point for point recreation of his real life self. As a wrestling style celebrity, he needs to be known on and off the Vrains, especially considering the orphanages he visits.
 * Aoi's Blue Angel avatar is a pop idol, similar to an internet celebrity. It is also shown that Blue Angel's personality is more outgoing as opposed to Aoi's more subdued personality in real life and Blue Angel can be seen as Aoi's real self.
 * Revolver's avatar doesn't have visible pupils. Given how he dislikes the nature of lying that he believes the Vrains causes and how eyes are often windows of truth, his eyes are lacking as to represent this.
 * Ema's Ghost Girl avatar is very similar to Playmaker's in which it's a simple design only swiching her lavender hair for grey and giving her a mask, obvious choices being a hacker and a mercenary. It also highlights her more playful nature playing up her more mysterious aspects making her somewhat of a tease as well.
 * Lonely Brave/Brave Max is a bulky, over-designed, armor-like suit with a large B in the chestplate and includes a helmet with a visor and a hover board on his back. This shows his obvious desire to become a hero of VRAINS much like Playmaker. The hover board is there for speed duels, but his inexperience shows in this regard as every other duelist will just spawn one when they need it.
 * Akira's avatar is similar as Go Onizuka in that it's a point for point recreation of his real life self. Considering he was a high ranking official of SOL Tech who sometimes must log into Link VRAINS, it is likely that his avatar is exactly the same as his real life self so that his colleagues and workers can recognize him while he is in Link VRAINS. This symbolizes just how much focus he puts on his work, to the point where he neglect Aoi at times.
 * Soulburner's more outgoing personality is shown through his outfit which has a flame motif on both his design and his color scheme. This also contrasts Playmaker's avatar, while Playmaker's outfit is subdued expressing his more introverted personality, Soulburner's is expressive and bright.
 * The cards Playmaker draws from the Data Storm tend to have symbolic meanings during the duels he gets them.
 * Decode Talker: to "Decode" is to reveal. Playmaker used Decode Talker to reveal Cracking Dragon's weakness, as well as revealed Playmaker's Skill.
 * Link Bumper: Playmaker admitted to enjoying his duel with Go, and the "bumping" is his desire to not let the duel end too soon.
 * Encode Talker: To encode is to place within. Blue Angel's duel disk had a virus inside it, causing her freak out. Encode Talker being LIGHT could be a reference to purifications.
 * Firewall Dragon: firewalls defend against viruses. The Knights of Hanoi are trying to destroy a virtual reality, like how viruses destroy computer data.
 * Xcode Talker: Not exactly sure on this one....
 * Vector Square Archfiend: Vector Square looks far more demonic and evil despite (presumably) being a cyberse. Yusaku is attempting to gather information from ten years ago, and this card could possibly mean that information isn't pleasant.
 * Fittingly for a man whose deck is based around triangles and the number 3, it takes three episodes for Playmaker to defeat Akira.
 * Playstyle-wise, Yusaku does not rely too much on his supposed ace monster Firewall Dragon as opposed to other protagonists. It makes sense as he has no real connection to the card itself and the monster itself is not important plot-wise, Dark Magician is implied to be Mahad, Neos was a monster Judai created, Stardust Dragon is one of the Signer Dragons, Utopia is a Number Card, and Odd-Eyes is a Dimension Dragon. Firewall Dragon was simply a monster that Yusaku simply pulled out of the Data Storm, and like his deck, is just another weapon for his revenge.
 * Why does Baira have a Giant Germ card in her deck despite the overall mummy/virus theme? Well what spreads viruses but germs? Plus the famous Virus card, Crush Card Virus, requires a 1000 or weaker dark monster to spread it, and that is what Giant Germ is quite good at.
 * Faust using an insect type deck to seal off Playmaker's Link Summoning is reminiscent of computer bugs that can crash computer program(s), which Playmaker's Cyberse deck comprises of.
 * Kitamura's incompetence is put into a hilarious and telling light when he faced off against Spectre when his offer of alliance was declined. Spectre uses a stall deck based on replenishing his life points after attacks and effect damage. So Kitamura managed to lose that quickly.....to a stall deck.
 * Compared to the other duelists, Yusaku uses a lot fewer duplicates of his cards in his deck, with only Bitron running multiple copies. Given the statements about Cyberse being nearly extinct, Yusaku likely doesn't have enough of them to run multiple copies like GO, Blue Angel, and Revolver can, among everyone else including Naoki Shima.
 * Revolver's use of Mirror Force makes a lot more sense when you recall that with Link Monsters being so commonly used, it would be particularly effective against them since they can't exist in Defense Position at all, and are always vulnerable to it.
 * Revolver's use of Mirror Force makes a lot more sense when you recall that with Link Monsters being so commonly used, it would be particularly effective against them since they can't exist in Defense Position at all, and are always vulnerable to it.
 * Speed Duels in the New LINK VRAINS are specifically designed not to be as dangerous as before with many safety measures in case a duelist gets knocked off and the data storm itself is a lot more steady with more freedom. SOL Technologies definitely wants to popularize Speed Duels to sell more product and obviously couldn't due to the dangers of the sport. With the three month down time, this allowed them to implement these safety features to help improve these previous issues.
 * It's also possible that New LINK VRAINS encourages Speed Dueling and buying D-Boards, because in the New LINK VRAINS there are many floating islands instead of a city like in the old LINK VRAINS and one of the ways to get to the other islands is by flying there on a D-Board without needing to worry about the earlier dangers.
 * With the reveal of Shootingcode Talker, there now exists a way to Extra Link using the Talkers (Starting from Encode to Transcode to Powercode, then Excode, then Shootingcode to fill the second Extra Zone). The only one that doesn't fit into this set up: Decode Talker, the Dark Code Talker. And the Dark Ignis, as well as the human whose mind was used to make him (Yusaku) are not particularly group players.
 * Decode Talker also only has effects that benefit itself and require sacrificing your other monsters; it's the most selfish of the 6. The second most selfish? Powercode Talker, which also has a diagonal arrow, and an effect that requires sacrificing your own monsters, but it also has side arrows (so you can co-link with it, in the right configuration) and an effect that benefits everything. It's also the FIRE code talker, which s why Soulburner gets along with Playmaker as much as he does.
 * Yusaku's using Ritual Summoning in the aftermath of the Season 1 final could possibly be as a result of being Extra Linked and wanting a different way of summoning strong monsters should he be Extra Linked again.
 * Related to the above point, Yusaku's point about 'not recognizing Bowman's Cyberse monsters' suggests that he is familiar with most if not all the Cyberse. It suggests that Yusaku had Cyberse Magician and Cynet Ritual before they appeared. It's possible Yusaku has a large pool of Cyberse Monsters and Cyberse support cards in reserve and uses them to alter his deck as needed. His increased amount of LP manipulating cards were likely added into his deck in larger amounts following gaining Storm Access, while it is possible the lack of such cards in his first Season 2 duel could be due to not having Ai and thus Storm Access (and not having time to switch his deck with those cards), and that in later duels he'll reincorporate them now that Ai is back.
 * Note that the second duel Yusaku did in fact have a card that lowered his LP.
 * Also the background of Ritual Monsters are blue, the same color as the background of Link Monster, though Link monsters have the Hexagonal design on the background along with the blue.
 * Monster Reincarnation being in Soulburner's deck is a reference to his 'Reincarnation Link Summons'. In addition, the card works well with Salamangreat Mia's effect, as being returned to the hand would trigger the card and special summon itself.
 * The card that he discarded to use Monster Reincarnation, was Cybersal Cyclone. A card Playmaker used before, in the duel against Faust, the duel where he obtained the FIRE Code Talker, Powercode Talker. It's also the duel in which Ai's deceits were hinted at, with Soulburner coming in as a best friend character in the second series a la Dennis, Shingetsu, Bruno, and Johann, even if the latter was just possessed.
 * Ai tends to refer to monsters as being more alive, referring to them as 'scary', 'friend of the scary dragon', 'mommy', etc. A mere comedy trope, or a reference to how Cyberse world is filled with living, breathing Cyberse monsters like Linkuriboh. While it isn't entirely clear if the Cyberse monsters there are duel spirits or artificial lifeforms, Ai is used to them being just as alive as him.
 * Go's personality shift in the second season is a pretty stark contrast with how outgoing and charitable in the first season, and after having lost several times while having, in his own view, a secondary spotlight to Playmaker, his reasons also seem fairly petty. However, given that he's based on a wrestler, it could be seen as him being unsatisfied with the idea that he's become a jobber, being sidelined and used to promote a newcomer.
 * His new persona of a bounty hunter also brings to mind a certain wrestling group that also had three people.
 * Ghost Girl isn't terrified of Blood Shepherd because of how ruthless he is, but because he used her true name to call her, and not only that, but also seemed fairly close. Meaning that they probably know each other, but she doesn't have any idea on who he is. Considering how important secrecy and trust are in her field, her reaction is understable. Akira, however, is a pubblic figure who doesn't try to conceal his virtual avatar, doesn't have the same issue, and that's why he's not as scared of him.
 * Playmaker and Soulburner’s usage of Ritual Summoning and not any other kind of summoning method makes sense considering that their decks focus on swarming the field with Link Monsters, and having Fusion, Synchro, etc would limit their options somewhat by reducing the number of Link Monsters in their Extra Decks. Ritual Monsters on the other hand is in the Main Deck, allowing for another way to summon powerful monsters in case they find themselves in a situation where they can’t Link Summon.
 * Usually, around the Season 2 arcs or around that time is when all of the counters to that series' summoning type or an alternative version of the summoning type occurs. One can say that Playmaker was Genre Savvy enough to include alternative summoning methods to go around these problems he might start seeing.
 * A point to Kogami's fears about the Ignis: their monster type, the Cyberse, was shown capable of not only mastering two additional summoning methods in Fusion and Ritual, but also create cards for them that support them fairly integrally (With Cyberse Witch and Clock Spartoi). As card games are how everything is settled in the Yu-Gi-Oh series, something that can create that is dangerous.
 * Why didn't Aoi change her deck like Go did in Season 2. It's because Aoi wants to grow herself as a person and her Trickstar deck changing will be a showcase of her change without throwing away her current self. Go on the other hand threw away his life and reputation as an entertainer in order to go forward and also threw away his Gouki deck, because that was the deck he used as an entertainer.
 * Aoi added Fusion summoning capabilities to her deck, allowing her to improve her burn strategy and also apply more offensive pressure. These steps would have helped in the battle with Spectre. Meanwhile Go's deck changed up as a response to the issues his duel with Revolver had him face, including an ace monster that cannot trigger Mirror Force and more options with defense than the Gouki's possessed.
 * It makes sense that Phoenix Gearfried is Takeru's Ace Monster in his old deck, beside the obvious fire-theme and that the phoenix represents rebirth which the backstory shows as Takeru's rebirth into Soulburner. It also is a Gemini Monster. Gemini Monsters are Monsters that need to be Gemini Summoned note in order to use their effects which is similar to his Reincarnation Link Summon and can be seen as a precursor of it.
 * Despair from the Dark is a Zombie type monster primarily used in the GX era previously. That is to say, it's a ghost from the past in more than just the character sense for Soulburner.

Fridge Horror
Also, the Ignis seem to be the opposite of how the people they were based on turned out: Ai was the slacker of the six, not developing much his part of Cyberse World, but also cares a lot about company (sacrificing himself for the other Ignis and treasuring his relationship with Yusaku), while Playmaker is a loner, but was the most proactive of the victims, being the one to hunt down the Knights of Aoi; and in the same way Flame has an ever bigger ego than Ai and looks down on others, while Soulburner looks up to numerous dueling. Not to mention that the Ignis seem to be really bad at dueling, while both Playmaker and Soulburner are both so far undefeated. If that's the pattern, Spectre's might being the sanest of the Ignis.
 * When Ai disconnected the Cyberse from the rest of the network, what happened to the other AIs that were trapped?
 * Yusaku no longer enjoys dueling and mostly uses it as a weapon to fight the Knights of Hanoi. He's exactly the kind of person who needs the help of the previous protagonist, Yuya, the most and yet, will never meet him outside of non-canon specials.
 * After Aoi's brainwashing in Episode 7, one must wonder if any of the other Knights Of Hanoi joined that way.
 * If Yusaku didn't know that Aoi is Blue Angel, how long would she have been unconscious on the rooftop with no medical care?
 * We aren't told exactly who Yusaku's opponent were. What if the six abducted children were made duel each other, starving the losers?
 * Who knows how long the Hanoi Project would have lasted if it had never been reported.
 * Dr. Kogami wasn't arrested, he was kidnapped by SOL tecnhology, despite the police rescuing the children and putting them under witness protection. It means that SOL technology has enough power and influence to work behind the police's back and pay them into looking the other way. It also means it's a good thing that Kogami's was a rogue experiment, or the experiment would likely have never been stopped.
 * The Ignis are all revealed to have been made from the mental data of the Lost Incident duelists. That means one of the Ignis are based on Specter.
 * It's possible that because this was pre 'dead mommy tree' Specter, the Ignis might not have been made at peak crazy.
 * Jin was attacked, because he is a victim of the Lost Incident. It was stated that the identities of the victims were strictly secure and coded, but the enemy still knew that Jin is a victim of it and stole his consciousness. This means that the new enemy probably knows about the identities of the all the victims including Yusaku and Takeru.
 * Someone can plant false memories in people at will. There's no way to be sure whose are the real ones.