Castlevania/Headscratchers


 * In Aria Of Sorrow, Soma Cruz is the childhood friend of Mina Hakuba who lived in a Japanese shrine all her life...and a foreign exchange student. Is this one of those "born in Japan but grew up somewhere else" deals? Oh, Japan.
 * Interesting point to consider. Solar eclipses run in series, about every 18.5 years. The solar eclipse taking place in the game is a real eclipse, running a series that also took place in 1999, crossing Transylvania (which in game took Dracula's Castle with it), and the recent one crossing the United States at the end of 2017, about the time that Soma Cruz would be born. Implying that this series of eclipses was used to take Dracula's Castle from the world, and bring it back two eclipses later, and Soma Cruz was born during and within the area of the central eclipse, in the United States.
 * I'm not sure if you should blame Japan. I've heard it said that the whole "foreign exchange student" bit is purely an invention of the localization.
 * Which is weird, because he still talks in Japanese, even in the localization.
 * His name is Kurusu Soma in the original with kanji, suggesting that he is indeed native.
 * Mmm, it's been awhile since I checked, but aren't the furigana there katakana? Which would imply he's foreign and they gave him the kanji to match the sounds, which sometimes happens. Either way he probably grew up in Japan. Maybe his parents moved there when he was a kid or something. (And yes, the 'exchange student' thing was made up for the American version.)
 * No, the furigana for Soma Kurusu's name are in hiragana.
 * I suspect he's either full Japanese or a Japanese/Spanish But Not Too Foreign guy—I prefer the latter, as it makes his Meaningful Name less forced.
 * Which does explain some of his facial features in Aria (if you ignore some of the sameness in Ayami Kojima's art), he does have Asiatic eyes, but otherwise western features.
 * Why can't some of these characters settle on a hair color? Dracula and Alucard can be partially explained, but what about the others? Simon has been portrayed as brunette, blond, and black-haired in various games, and now official art suggests that he has always been a fiery redhead. Eric Lecarde's hair switches from blond to deep green in-game, and this doesn't explain
 * Simon can be explained by the fact that, for years, no one really cared what his hair colour was. Eric's blonde-to-green is probably due to sprite colour limitations on the Genesis, though I've got nothing on
 * The can probably be explained because they're  The flashback New Game+ is kind of hard to explain one way or another, so you can assume a whole bunch of things to explain the hair.
 * Eric isn't one, though. Eh well, amazing technicolour hair is par for the course, and he still has it better than Simon.
 * Isn't it a little unnerving just how easy, relatively speaking, it is to kill Death? Leon explained exactly why he could do so, but still. And aren't they a little too eager to do so? Juste repeatedly comments on how he "got away", and Jonathan effectively picks a fight with him. Twice. Don't these people know what happens when Death Takes a Holiday?
 * I thought the thing was that Death was just there on account of being Dracula's drinking buddy. The Belmonts kick his ass and he goes back to work instead of hanging out in Drac's castle and protecting his pal.
 * Death in the Castlevania verse appears to be a touch more malicious than normal. He also appears quite different from the traditional version of the Grim Reaper in that he doesn't seem integral to the process of souls passing on - just things dying. He also seems to have relatively limited powers, otherwise he would just command the hero in question to drop dead. Furthermore, while Death is defeated with impressive regularity, all those who do so are inevitably heroic individuals of great spiritual power and stature.
 * Actually, I think Death being integral to the process of souls passing on but not things actually dying would explain why he can't just command whoever he is fighting to drop dead.
 * I think Death is just a Demon in Castlevania's mythos. He's just adopted the appearance of the Grim Reaper.
 * Leon states death is divine, so he probably is the anthropomorphic personification of death. On the other hand, when you kill GHOSTS, their souls pop out, which is good evidence for a "Souls are immortal" universe. So my guess is simple, When Death "Dies", that's exactly what happens, his body is destroyed and he makes himself a new one later.
 * My theory is that since Dracula is the only person Death can't take the soul of, he feels obliged to help him out from time to time.
 * I think Death isn't really there. He just makes a shell that takes his appearance and place in Castlevania, and uses it like a puppet, which would explain why you can 'kill' him, and maybe why he just doesn't make the hero drop dead. As for why he doesn't go down there personally, maybe he just can't.
 * If it helps, in the original, Death is referred to as "shinigami", a pretty generic title of "Death God", and one that doesn't preclude there being multiples. If this is the case, Death could just be a particular shinigami who has sworn allegiance to Dracula, rather than representing the will of the concept of Death itself.
 * This death, being clearly an agent of the Devil, through which Mathias make his deal with him, is therefore the Angel of Death Azrael as depicted in demonology (instead of traditional angelology and theology), making him a demon of death.
 * What is this "Castle War" I keep on hearing the fanboys talking about in regard to the 1999 battle between Julius Belmont and Dracula? Every time someone "corrects" me when I say it doesn't exist, I hear the same thing: it was a huge battle with soldiers and the world's government pitching in and whatnot, yet the only hint that such a thing took place that I could find in-game are the mentions that two of the soldier enemies in Aria of Sorrow were part of the "Castle Wars", that's it. Hammer's reaction to being in the castle rules out any military or government involvement, as it's logical to assume that, had the military helped the Belmonts and Belnades fight off Dracula during that time, they would've briefed the soldiers they sent to investigate the return of Drac's keep in the sky about it before shipping them off. It's possible, though highly unlikely to me, that the church would have an organized military themselves.
 * Considering the location of Dracula's castle, it is possible that a military strike upon it could have been entirely European in origin. Hammer, being an American soldier, would not have been involved. However, this would not explain why Hammer would be sent to investigate this shrine without a briefing. Also, if American troops were not deployed, it would be kinda insulting to the fact that the clan responsible for winning the other Dracula battles in the 20th century, the Morrises, were Americans.
 * I've also heard the claim that the church covered it up. I have no idea if this is canon or not.
 * The Army Fatigues armor item mentions a "Demon Castle War" in its description, which is likely where the fandom name for this comes from, but it doesn't go into any more detail than the Zombie Soldier and Officer descriptions, so we're back at square one.
 * Hammer's reaction is no evidence either way. The game takes place in 2035 and Dracula was killed in 1999; unless Hammer has been in active service for 36 years (which, combined with the 18 years of age he would have to be in order to enter the military, would make him at least 56 at the time of Aria of Sorrow), he wasn't part of the supposed strike on the castle.
 * Why did they feel the need to make Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow take place in Japan, of all places? It's friggin' Dracula! Based off Vlad the Impaler, who reigned in Wallachia, which is located in modern day Romania? And yet somehow Dracula's castle decides to beam up a dude hanging out in a temple on the other side of the planet. It's blatantly ethnocentric, and it would have made a lot more sense and been a lot more unique and interesting for Soma to have been actually a person living near where Dracula lived, instead of being predictably Japanese.
 * The Japanese had no presence in the storyline until 1999, and when they did, it was because the usual heroes sent for the Hakubas in order to seal the castle. (It's pretty much the Japanese equivalent of how an American family became vital to the storyline after Quincey Morris managed to defeat Dracula in 1897.) As a result, Japan is the location of the seal, and thus the central locale of Aria. The easiest way for Alucard to guard it was to pose as a Japanese agent. As for Soma, it probably helps Dracula to be reborn close to his castle. Yet this does absolutely nothing to explain Yoko.
 * Yoko's last name is Belnades. If that sounds familiar to anyone, it's because it's the surname of Sypha Belnades, one of the heroes from the third Castlevania game, and chronologically the first fight with Drac. Yoko is a descendant of one of the original slayers of Dracula, and an inheritor of her ancestor's witchcraft, and her lineage probably has something to do with her getting involved in all this vampire business.
 * That is common knowledge among fans. I was referring to how Yoko is a Japanese name.
 * Incidentally, there is no evidence that Dawn of Sorrow takes place in Japan. There's the returning cast, but that's it. It does not take place in Dracula's castle, and the antagonists have names that appear to be German, Italian and Russian in origin.
 * Not to mention that the design of the outdoor sections is very European. Also, the castle wasn't sealed in Japan, it was sealed behind/inside a solar eclipse. The eclipse next appeared in Japan.
 * Circa Lament of Innocence, Dracula in Castlevania isn't actually Dracula and so all bets are more or less off. Most likely, Igarashi decanonised Castlevania 64 because Malus explicitly gives his full name as Dracula Vlad Tepes rather than.
 * There's plenty of time after Lament for him to impersonate, possess, or otherwise somehow become Vlad. Hell, a fairly easy Epileptic Tree for that would be that the inexperienced Drac got himself fully sealed once before, and Vlad was his first reincarnation.
 * Vlad Teped the Drakul was at one point held prisoner in Turkey, and when he returned, he was all violent and torture-y. I always assumed that in the Castlania-verse, Vlad died in the Turkish prison, and Mathias Cronqvist the Vampire, desiring a home base and in Turkey at the time, decided to assume his name and throne. Hence the whole violence-when-he-got-home thing. Mathias must have liked being Vlad so much, he decided to keep the name Dracula, despite only pretending to be the Son of the Dragon.
 * Also, CV64 has been officially re-instated into canon. In addition, Symphony of the Night refers to Dracula as Count Vlad Tepes Dracula, and that game is also canon, so it's clear that Igarashi isn't trying to retcon Dracula from ever being called Vlad Tepes.
 * It's also worth noting that Soma wasn't the ONLY reincarnation of Dracula - Graham, Dmitri, and Dario all got significant portions of Dracula as well, and it's implied that there are others.
 * It should be pointed out that there's actually going to be a solar eclipse in Tokyo in 2035. Granted, all it probably took was IGA googling "future solar eclipses in Japan."
 * Are there any female fans of this series who aren't in it for the yaoi?
 * That's not really a good way to make them come out.
 * Yes.
 * I'm in it for the gameplay, the yaoi is just a bonus.
 * What they said. Also, Tera/Iris, please. Someone? Anyone?
 * Wait, there's yaoi in the series somewhere? I'm way too much of a yuri/shoujo-ai fangirl, apparently. Or... is this more Crack Pairing Yaoi?
 * It's the Crack Pairing kind. Essentially, every game from Symphony of the Night to Aria of Sorrow has contained a Bishounen main character who has a strong rivalry or friendship with another one. See Alucard and Richter, Cornell and Ortega, Nathan and Hugh, Juste and Maxim, Leon and Mathias (and potentially Walter and Joachim, either with each other or mix-and-match with the above), Hector and Isaac...
 * Are there any male fans of this series who actually play the games instead of whine about them on certain forums?
 * Me, though I tend to whine to my few friends who like games....
 * Why wasn't Hammer a playable character in Dawn of Sorrow? Yoko, Julius, and Alucard were all present and resembled their counterparts from Castlevania 3 (Sypha, Trevor, and Alucard again respectively), so why wasn't Hammer playable, throwing knives and axes and climbing on walls like our favorite pirate Grant?
 * What were Grant's main advantages over Trevor, considering that Trevor could also throw axes and knives? And his jump was higher and easier to control. Modern protagonists can bend their jumps, and Julius has a triple jump. He can climb walls and ceilings? Since when did those kinds of obstacles appear in a Metroidvania? Sadly, thanks to modern design decisions, the Danasty acrobat style is largely redundant, and Grant was a weak combatant. All in all, Hammer would only be there for the fanservice. (Although, now that I think about it, he could have been successful and truer to his backstory if he played like Albus does.)
 * But Albus is broken, and if that were so, Albus would play like Hammer.
 * They actually found unused text buried in the game that indicated that Hammer may have been intended as a playable character at some point early in development. There's no sound clips or animation, so they probably dumped the idea early on. Unless said 'Text' is also some troll's attempt at a joke (can't believe everything you read on the internet),
 * I think it would have been fun. They could make him more like how Grant was in the original Japanese version, where he threw knives as his default attack (and you could have guns instead of knives, of course), and if you took away some of Julius' air superiority (some, not all, of course), you could put in Grant before you meet Alucard so you have to use wall-climbing to reach later areas of the castle before Alucard's bat form makes jumping redundant in any case. It would have just completed the connection to CV3 they were making. Oh well.
 * Well, hacking into Harmony of Despair's sound files reveals that, besides Richter and Simon being possible DLC, Hammer might be making the cut in a future DLC release. We can only hope he gets through this time, because that would be awesome!
 * The name of the next game's protagonist bugs me. Shanoa? It makes her sound like a singer.
 * Shanoa is a punk rocker? Probably not, despite the tattoos. But seriously, I can also think of singers named Julia, Maria, Charlotte and Yoko. (That last one is debatable...)
 * M-m-m-myyyy Shanoa!
 * How come there are Medusa Heads in installments where Medusa herself isn't present?
 * Maybe the reason why she isn't present is that she's recovering from being decapitated.
 * Even in "Real Life", it was by being decapitated that she gave birth in the first place...
 * Always regarded as a fan-theory, Portrait of Ruin finally proved that Medusa Heads are actually generated en masse by Medusa, shedding them like dandruff. After all, that'd be a lot of headless Medusa Bodies otherwise. (Hey, there's an idea for a future enemy...)
 * The real problem is that the proper plural would be "gorgon heads". There was only one Medusa. The manual to the first game seems to acknowledge this change, though, at least by implication, calling the boss the *Queen* Medusa.
 * Why, if Dracula is supposed to be the "Dark Lord" with dominion over all demons, monsters, spirits, and other evil creatures under the sun, have minions with a holy Attribute? Wouldn't that be akin to, say... Superman building a Justice League with roughly a fifth of its members having Kryptonite-based powers? Similarly, why does Castlevania have a chapel in the first place? If Dracula has officially renounced God and started a war with Him and His creations, then such a place of worship (with the spirits of actually good parishioners and priests trapped in its confessional) would be useless to him.
 * I chalk it up to holy/light not being "good". Monsters can use something like holy power, but it's not the real deal. Alternatively, he could do it for the same reason he hides instant healing slabs of beef in his masonry, he gets bored.
 * Except that in Christian mythology (and let's not kid ourselves, the Dracula myth is based largely on this), holy/light really IS good. The ultimate good, in fact. A more likely explanation is that the Konami developers, being Japanese, viewed the Dracula myth through the prism of their own cultural upbringing. Shintoism and Buddhism are the two dominant religions in Japan, and both of them embrace the Light Is Not Good / Dark Is Not Evil tropes. The Castlevania developers were brought up surrounded by those religious tropes, so they put them in the game. And now that it's become an established part of the franchise, they can't get rid of it.
 * About the chapel, Drac's followers need a place where they can worship the Dark Lord. As simple as that.
 * Not really, since at least one enemy in the Chapel is described as an angel. And not a fallen one, either.
 * I'm certain the Amalaric Sniper (of Goth) has been described as fallen (in Portrait, to give one example), unless you are thinking of another angel.
 * Was there a Chapel in Portrait, though? I know PoR is something of a contentious issue among fans anyway, but I believe the original idea of the Amalaric Sniper was it was after Alucard because he was a vampire, not necessarily because the Snipers served Dracula.
 * The chapel with the snipers is at the back of 13th Street. The game itself is completely canon; the only possible Fanon Discontinuity is that some Castlevania fans don't like the anime style and easy difficulty.
 * Amalaric Sniper did appear in the Sorrow games, though, and it's doubtful that they would attack Soma prior to him "awakening".
 * I've assumed that while some angels can fall far and become demons, other holy beings can be lured by Dracula's power and work for him while still keeping their 'holy' natures.
 * In regards to the chapel, back when I first played Symphony, I just took it in stride - Vlad Tepes was a religious man, so even after becoming the Dark Lord, it didn't seem too off - trappings from his former life. Now that he's Matthias, though, it's a bit weirder...maybe he's doing it to mock God? After all, having a church just so that all your demons can tramp through it all the time sounds like a good way to try and tweak the big guy.
 * I can see that. I also kind of wonder if Lisa didn't have a part in the one in Symphony. She was fairly religious, wasn't she? Maybe Dracula had it built as a sanctuary for her.
 * I had a WMG about that...I assume Chaos controls how Castlevania manifests, and Dracula really has little control over the details. Hence why the castle has elements that don't fit or even help the heros. It is a "Creature of Chaos" after all.
 * Here's a bit of real-life Catholic theology: Satan was once one of the greatest of angels, if not the greatest. Even after his failed rebellion against God, during which he and his followers were cast out of Heaven, they did not lose any of the glory which God imparted to them as His creation. As such, Satan still maintains the full glory of his angelic nature, even though he now stands opposed to God (ironically, given that he has separated himself from God, that he retains the glory given to him by God means that Satan suffers as much as everyone else in Hell, if not more). So yeah, it's possible for Dracula to have minions who have a holy 'essence' without a similar morality/ethic/mindset. After all, it has been said that the Devil will appear as an angel of light if it serves his ends...
 * Power of Dominance. Only probable reason he has angels working for him is that he killed them and now they're his slaves.
 * It's amazing how unnecessarily elaborate fan wanks can get when the real solution is both simple and perfectly obvious. The labels like "dark", "holy", and "hit" are not literal descriptions that are built on the world's mythology but, instead, just convenient ways to divide up the differing effects that certain attacks have on certain enemies. If you have both fallen angels and possessed vampire hunters in the same game then, unless you want to value semantics over reasonableness of design, you're going to be stuck having to call them both "holy" due to the slight overlap, for want of a better word, just like the highly ambiguous word "dark" can be equally useful to create a smaller number of categories of attack power in a castle where every enemy can in some sense or other be called "dark". In short, all "holy" means is that the enemy has something about their origin, nature, or attacks that is associated with holy things in some way.
 * Or alternately it pleases Dracula to have a "sarcastic" chapel, a place filled with evil that looks like a place for servants of God to rest. It's the ultimate mockery of God. As to how he managed to fill it with creatures that are holy-elemental, he knows his son is out there and wants him destroyed. Setting a trap that will stop other vampires from coming after him would be high priority enough that he would devote a lot of time and effort to finding a way.
 * Why in the world does Dracula's castle have a room in it that Juste can decorate in Harmony of Dissonance? And why would he want to decorate it? Doesn't he know that Drac's castle crumbles into nothingness after its lord is defeated? It's not like he can set up shop there after he's done whipping some vampire ass.
 * So ? Then why   Shouldn't they.
 * I assume that I guess that after
 * That doesn't make as much sense, as  In fact,   It's possible that the events of Order of Ecclesia   but I doubt that
 * Why by the storyline are the Belmont males uber, but playing as anyone else makes the game much easier? I mean, Richter is slow as hell and can hardly jump for crap (particularly stupid as, in AOS, Julius Belmont is 60 years old, but MUCH faster and more agile than Ricther was during his prime!). If you have to play as an ordinary Belmont, the game is going to be much harder than, say, playing as a little girl who can cast spells, or a high school student who can use monster's souls. Which makes no ****ing sense whatsoever. Also, the Vampire Killer is supposed be a powerful legendary weapon, the best for defeating Dracula, but most of the mid-game weapons in Aria of Sorrow dramatically outclass it. The Alucard sword makes it look like a piece of crap. What gives? It's always been a pet peeve of mine how old school platform characters seem really sluggish and unathetlic.
 * Short Answer, Gameplay and Story Segregation. Soma gets a free pass due to the whole Power of Dominance/Being Dracula thing, but you do have a point everywhere else.
 * An alternative answer is the fact that individuals like Soma, Shanoa, etc. etc. are either highly powerful individuals, or highly TRAINED individuals, with the additional factor that their abilities aren't something endlessly reborn monsters led by an immortal vampire are used to. Dracula knows how to, if not beat a whip user, at least stand up to one a hell of a lot better than he knows how to stand up to someone chucking fireballs or swinging a massive sword, and, in turn, the games are harder when you're a Belmont.
 * At least "Dracula's Curse" had Trevor be (in most situations, at least) the most balanced, useful and tough fighter of the four playable characters despite all the others having their own individual advantages.
 * The 'Nintendo 64' games with the enemies that respawn simply because you re-enter a room bugged me. In the first one, the hero send out a young boy into the woods to escape the manor. The skeleton filled woods. At least in the remake, a plot coupon protects the boy. And the ending to the remake when  also bugged me. Last but not least, the 'carry the unstable explosives through the gears' thing. One pixel off and you are wormfood.
 * Judgment - is - well...WHY? The FIGHTAN GAEMS!!!!11 plot reads like poor fanfiction, Carmilla is suddenly Elisabeth Bathory in a thong, Sypha's a stereotypical ice queen, Grant's design is a near-lift from that of Faust VIII, Maria's an airhead Pettanko, Trevor's an insecure ego-case, and Simon is Light Yagami. Was IGA drunk when he greenlighted it? It wouldn't irritate me so much if it were done WELL. However, it's not. The Zelda team's graphics run CIRCLES around Judgment's - plastic Uncanny Valley Maria, shudder.
 * Baz Luhrmann attacked Simon's jacket. GLOWING CROSS GET.
 * Isaac's tattoo artist attacked him too.
 * The only cool design is Aeon.
 * No love for the Werewolf Knight Cornell?
 * Death is freakish, but not bad either.
 * He's just missing his cloak. That's the problem.
 * He had a history of losing his cloak upon reaching One-Winged Angel status in early Metroidvanias. While most of these second forms were bizarre bone-scythe things, in Castlevania: The Arcade, he appears to simply ditch the cloak for his second fight.
 * Alucardroth. Death to Obata, please. If one - just one more - Sephiroth design clone shows up anywhere - I will go completely bat-shit. Daddum tish.
 * His cape is the only render in cinema that isn't poor.
 * Dracula looks like Gankutsuou-via-Mirror Mask - which would be cool if it were intentional.
 * Dracula is wearing a dress.
 * Okay, let's give this a try. Most of the design decisions can be traced to a single goal. IGA wanted to sell the series to people who should have been buying it and weren't: the Japanese. These decisions were not tailored to appeal to Americans. We already bought Order of Ecclesia.
 * It is an Excuse Plot; it's hard to come up with a rational reason for these people to be in the same game. This overlaps with IGA's maddening decision to make these games have plot at all. (You might recall that in the early days, they managed to make five games out of "Simon kills Dracula and his monsters".)
 * Carmilla would have run into the same design problem as Death: unless you're going for particularly bizarre design, being a mask or riding around on a skull doesn't work. Thus, they had to take liberties with her character, and they jumped on the whole female vampire stereotype. (This does not excuse their massive rewrite for Cornell, who did have plot.)
 * Most of the characters were introduced in games prior to Symphony of the Night, back in the days when they didn't have personalities. That doesn't fly as well today, so they had to come up with individual characterizations for everyone. And yes, that includes deliberate personality flaws. (Incidentally, Simon's the insecure one, not Trevor.)
 * As of Castlevania Chronicles, Simon had long red hair. As of Symphony of the Night, Alucard was a White-Haired Pretty Boy. Get an anime artist to draw them and odds are that they will resemble anime characters with similar designs. Obata didn't say "let's redesign Simon so he looks exactly like Light". He was given a character with a very similar hairstyle, and the result was a similar look.
 * Robes resemble dresses when they are sufficiently formal.
 * The usual remains true. Go in looking for flaws, and you will find them. And honestly, the game has no shortage of them.
 * The worst part is, I think a Castlevania fighting game is a good idea, and I like powerstone-style gameplay all right, but the unrecognizable characters and sloppy gameplay make me want to cry. I halfway want IGA to do a Judgement 2 so he can attempt an Author's Saving Throw and put the Judgement series on the right track. (Honestly, I don't mind the story. Fighting games can have nice stories, but thats not the point.)
 * I think it would've been better if it stuck to a formula like Super Smash Bros.. Even the Subspace Emissary could fit... Go through a couple of stages beating up monsters and when you finally reach Dracula's Castle, it switches to a Metroidvania.
 * I didn't notice Judgment in Game Stop for the longest time despite it being there, because everytime I passed by it, I thought it was some Death Note title. I only recently figured out it was the long-maligned Judgment and took a look at the back...and couldn't recognize even ONE of the characters in the small portrait bubbles. And I've been playing the series since the '80s, so I should be able to recognize at least half, if not all of the characters, anime-stylization or not (fan-hate aside, when looking at Dawn of Sorrow's art, you could tell that Soma was Soma, Hammer was Hammer, etc.)
 * Dawn of Sorrow is actually one of the major exceptions in the series. Compare Alucard's appearances in Dracula's Curse, Symphony of the Night, Legends, and Aria of Sorrow. Compare Simon's appearances in Castlevania, Simon's Quest, Super Castlevania IV, Haunted Castle, and the X68000 game (especially notice that not even its remake kept him looking the same), and none of them even come close to the boxart! Judgment may have taken great liberties with the designs, but it's foolish to think this is anything different for the series, let alone a sign that something is wrong.
 * Related to Judgement, I just got hit in the face by some Fridge Logic. The Time Reaper is from "Ten thousand years hence," But ten thousand years from whose perspective? Aeon is a timeless being, and everyone else is from anywhere from the 1400s to the late 1800s. I know The Reaper probably wasn't being specific, but it bothered me.
 * As far as we can tell, it was sent back to change the timeline in its boss's favor. This is typically done by going back to a point and doing things that will make things turn out differently. It could easily have come from approximately ten thousand years after the change point.
 * The Alucard Spear is meant to be used alongside the Vampire Killer, right? So why does Wind give it to Jonathan to use, thus forcing him to settle for one or the other? Sure, there's the obvious answer: the Lecardes are unavailable. But you'd think he'd suggest passing it on to one of them after Charlotte saves them.
 * And on that note, since he has no problem wielding it and it isn't going to kill him over time, why not put away the whip, use that spear and save himself some trouble later? (In canon, not gameplay.)
 * He's already been using the Vampire Killer for a while. It's probable too late for switching weapons to save him.
 * Doesn't the Vampire Killer need to be activated in order for life to be drained?
 * Why is it that, aside from boss characters, we hardly ever fight vampires as common enemies?
 * You're the dark lord. You have a bordering-on-irrational grudge against humanity. You can steal men's souls. You've got what seems to be the entire population of hell on your side. And you have a tendency to be killed soon after you are revived. How often would you think about giving people eternal undeath? And even the few times that you do, why would they be weak enough to serve as average enemies? (Castlevania 64 is an exception, but that was most likely de Rais's doing, not Drac's.)
 * If he's willing to let the gardener of his hedge maze be unkillable....
 * Two other theories tossed around: The power of the Crimson Stone (I think), which grants Dracula the power of a vampire, gets more powerful the more vampire souls are in it. Thus, aside from a few noteworthy individuals, Dracula tends to destroy any vampires he meets or makes to power himself up. Secondly, early Castlevania instruction books stated that even when Dracula is gone, the Belmonts keep themselves busy hunting down other vampires, so they probably keep the vampire population in check.
 * Why doesn't Death show a interest in Soma? Soma is the reincarnation of his boss.
 * This one gets a lot of Fan Wank. Theories I've seen include: Death won't acknowledge him unless he achieves full power. He's testing him. Dracula's power has returned to a chaotic form, and Death obeys it, making him chaotic as well. But most likely, the game simply wants Soma to be able to summon the iconic small sickles without going into the ramifications of claiming the soul of an intelligent character who has had dialogue. After all, when Soma absorbs Dmitri's soul, it's supposed to be jarring.
 * I've always thought that Death never considered Soma the real Dracula, just the vessel of his soul. He fights Soma in an attempt to take his soul; being Death, he probably knows some way of restoring Dracula's soul to its "proper" evil self.
 * That may not be too far off. Death probably (not necessarily) knows who Soma is, but even if he does (and it's possible he doesn't), he must be disappointed in his old drinking buddy for losing his way and may figure it's time to give him another shot at reincarnating himself successfully.
 * I think that the writers were trying to go a "lighter", more shonen-anime type feel with these games. They were so big into this that they forgot to include some of the more important details.
 * I think Death lost his mind when Dracula kicked the bucket, becoming another mindless monster that haunts the castle.
 * So Gilles de Rais was the servant (the fake Dracula you fought) that the real Dracula (Malus) spoke of. So what was the point of Drac's appearance in Cornell's story? He said that he accomplished his purpose when he was defeated, which I assume was getting Cornell's beast form.
 * The battle against the giant enemy crab in the lighthouse in Order of Ecclesia makes me wonder: why would the builders put platforms and stone barriers in an elevator shaft with a working elevator?
 * Obviously as a backup in case the elevator stopped working. That or the masonry and everything just wore down - considering that they aren't actual stairs or anything, it isn't a stretch that the lighthouse was in fairly severe disrepair from having a GIANT EVIL CRAB in it. You could even hazard that said giant crab damaged things in just such a way on purpose, to make killing intruders easier, though that borders on WMG territory.
 * So, if Soma is, why does he
 * Has Dracula ever stood in front of a mirror to even know whether he has a reflection anyways? Either way, it's probably just a case of Our Vampires Are Different.
 * Soma isn't a vampire... yet. Keep in mind that Dracula, being the ultimate evil, had a lot of powers aside from just being the No. 1 Vampire. Soma is the reincarnation of his spirit and has his Power of Dominance, but that doesn't mean he's actually a vampire. It's questionable if he even turns into one if he does accept the powers of darkness.
 * The idea of vampires not casting a reflection comes from the belief that the mirror reflects a person's soul (which is also why breaking them is considered bad luck), and thus vampires, considered soulless is many mythologies, would not have a reflection. Since it's been established that vampires in the CV universe do have souls, this is basically a non-issue.
 * Soma isn't a vampire, he's a human being who's a reincarnated former vampire.
 * I've been playing some Portrait of Ruin lately and was playing through the boss rush with Richter and Maria, and does it strike anyone else as profoundly messed up that they sent a 12 year old girl armed only with birds and cats to fight against the forces of Dracula (which inclues Werewolves, Frankensteins monsters, dragons, giants, undead dinosaurs and a giant balls of human corpses). Am I the only one who imagines Maria may have needed some therapy after all that crap (or even a stay at an asylum, if I may be so bold).
 * Well, I'm not sure if PoR's Boss Rush has any sort of storyline to legitimize her being there, but in Rondo of Blood/Dracula X Chronicles, she wasn't sent; when you rescue her as Richter, she basically tells you "I'm going to help you save Annette, and if you disagree, expect a seiryu up your ass! :D". So when it comes down to it, any therapy she ends up needing is kind of her fault in the first place.
 * Okay, maybe I just don't know the whole story, but how can there be a separate Belnades clan if Trevor and Sypha married? Carrie Fernandez and Yoko Belnades are "descendants of Sypha Belnades," yet apparently they're not called Belmonts. How does that come about?
 * Judgment tries to justify it with its near-fetishistic use of the word "house", suggesting that not every Belmont begets the next one. This is an imperfect solution, considering the lack of multiple Belmonts per generation (aside from Order of Shadows, which no one played) and the argument that Sypha did beget the later Belnadeses. Not to mention just what causes the Schneiders and Morrises and whoever else to branch out.
 * Barring that, their offspring may have been designated Belnadeses. In Judgment, Sypha comes across as feminist, and Trevor implies that he may, in fact, be whipped. But not even that justifies Juste. Hmm... maybe the guys got to be Belmonts and the girls got to be Belnadeses?
 * Sonia Belmont. Then again, IGA took her out of canon because "GURLZ CANT BE BELMONTS LOL"
 * What does that have to do with anything? Sonia wasn't Trevor's daughter. (If anything, one should wonder why the star of Dracula's Curse wasn't Trevor Tepes.)
 * It would be utterly unrealistic to expect all the descendants of a person to share their last name. That would mean no branching out in the family tree whatsoever over the course of centuries and centuries—every child a male or an unmarried female for all that time.
 * How the hell does Dracula have a niece? It might have made sense before Lament of Innocence came along, but now, it's just impossible. Unless for whatever reason, had a brother who also ended up a vampire had a child around that time, but then, that'd make Elizabeth Bartley a dhampyr. So... how?
 * Adoption and/or Honorary Uncle.
 * Adoption would make Bartley his (adopted) daughter. The second... I don't think it'd work that way.
 * If his brother had a daughter, he'd only need to bite her, right?
 * Or she could've been brainwashed to think Dracula was her uncle when she became a vampire. After all, it happened to Stella and Loretta in Portrait of Ruin.
 * If Dracula's One-Winged Angel form is his 'true' form, as he loves to loudly announce, why is it always different? (Actually, I can think of a few answers, but I want to hear what others say.)
 * My theory is that his true form is infinitely morphic, and he is constantly trying to upgrade it. Alternately, his true form changes with every resurrection.
 * Has he ever ACTUALLY announced he was going to his true form when doing these metamorphoses? If it helps, his dialogue when going to the bat form thing in Rondo/SotN was "Grant me power!" in Moonspeak, and if there are any other instances where he says something about a true form in American localizations, I could probably check out if that was in the original text/voicing.
 * Strange. I can't seem to find it right now, but I know I've heard a sound file of Dracula screaming "Behold My True Form, And Despair!". But even without that, Dracula's second form is referred to in the monster cataloug as 'True Dracula' many times.
 * Dracula says "Behold my true form, and despair" in So TN in the last battle.
 * The PSP Dracula X Chronicles Drac calls his third form his true form. An odd case, since it's entirely optional, and his second form is a greater transformation. In his third form, he looks basically the same as his un-transformed self but with his cape becoming wings.
 * He's just trying to put the scare into you. He's a poseur. I haven't kept up but the only time I know of when Dracula said anything about his "true form" was at the end of Symphony, and there he was being completely full of shit as always: you can tell he's just making that thing out of his cape. I mean, he's sitting right there in the middle in the same form he was in before. As for the giant blue...thing he ordinarily turns into, in the same game he announces the transformation by shouting "GRANT ME POWEEEEER!" (It's a little garbled so I can understand if anyone missed that). So in other words, the blue thing is what happens when the Devil tries to bail his sorry ass out of trouble for him yet again.
 * If we are to apply Vampire: The Masquerade logic, since Dracula is canonically a Tzimisce, his transformations could be him using Vicissitude on himself.
 * If you look at SOTN's true form, the three heads slightly resemble Chaos' first form from Aria. It's possible that his true form is actually merged with Chaos somehow, which would naturally look different each time, although I am not sure if any other form besides the SOTN one counts as a "true form".
 * So, where WAS Death during Christopher Belmont's time? I know in reality, CV lore wasn't quite as nailed down back then, so Death wasn't as important to the overall story as he is now. Still, it'd be interesting to see them address the issue, since technically, those games are still canon.
 * The Adventure is the only game in the series in which Dracula is the final boss and he isn't destroyed. There might be a connection.
 * An amusing theory comes to mind after the Updated Rerelease. Death was apparently hanging out in the clock tower (he does that a lot nowadays) when Christopher stormed the castle. And since Chris apparently didn't head that way back in the monochrome era, our reaper missed the entire battle. Oops.
 * Reminds me of the story in Final Fight One for the GBA if you play as Alpha Cody. Supposedly, in a dream, he remarks when going through the Industrial sector (that wasn't in the original SNES games) that he didn't remember this area. He took a shortcut, he said, an interesting handwave for the lack of an entire level.
 * What happened to Dario in Dawn's third ending? He's straight up killed in the first one, killed by Julius in the Another Side, Another Story mode following the second ending, but the third? Pretty much completely forgotten about after the boss fight.
 * The easy answer is he just ran off, no longer interested in Celia or her crazy idea. Still, it doesn't answer a whole lot. Soma seemed to hint he lost his powers, but that doesn't make sense. Aguni was only recently bonded to his soul and it only enhanced his powers, it wasn't his source. By all accounts, he should still have fire abilities even after Aguni's defeat. Still, he's very much outclassed by Soma at this point, so it's likely that he said Screw This, I'm Outta Here and took off, possibly to be arrested later. Either way, Soma and the gang had to worry about Celia and didn't have time to chase some thug down.
 * Where's War, Famine and Pestilence been this whole time? Did Death say something to piss them off?
 * Unincarnated. They don't have to hang out with him until the end days, and Dracula owes them no favors.
 * Also, they have no major investment in the battles. It's generally a One-Man Army vs. Army thing, so it isn't really war. Food is generally plentiful, as the castle doesn't go on burning crusades against crops. No disease is particularly associated. On the other hand, when the Castle appears, it does kill a lot of people, and the Belmont Of The Era does massacre the inhabitants en masse, plus, Dracula managed to cheat Death out of his due for almost a millenia. Death has motivation and a stake in the matter, the others don't.
 * Although War might have been involved in The Castle War of 1999, seeing as how it is implied in a monster bio or two to have actually been a war. We don't really know much about the Battle of '99, so he could have been involved then.
 * What, no mention of Conquest? (Hey, wait a minute. Some apocalyptic theories interpret Conquest as the Antichrist. Conquest. Cronqvist. Interesting.)
 * That's "Corvinus", though. It seems that the original idea might have been for Lament to take place directly before Castlevania 3 with Matthias as Walter and the entirely useless Joachim as Vlad Tepes. Why they threw that out and decided to set the game four hundred years earlier is not clear, much like why they set it before the crusades had started when the crusades having started is a key plot point.
 * But in the final version of Lament, it was Cronqvist (regardless of how little sense it—or anything else in the plotline—made), so the Conquest link is still pretty cool.
 * Something's always bugged me about Soma: he's the reincarnation of Dracula. Okay, cool. He's also a seventeen-year-old high school student. Okay, cool. Aria of Sorrow takes place thirty-six years after Dracula was Killed Off for Real. Um...how did Dracula manage to delay his reincarnation for nineteen years? The best theory I've been able to come up with is that it took a while because his castle was actually sealed away in 1999, and so it was like he woke up the next morning with a huge hangover and needed something like half an hour (or 19 years) to actually pull himself out of bed. Is there a canon explanation, though?
 * Not that I know of. But, on the other hand, even when Dracula was killed in the past, only on rare occasions (CV2) did he come back immediately anyways. Most of the time, it took decades, if not a full century, for him to pop up. It's possible he could've come back immediately every time and just kept a low profile until he'd amassed enough power again, but if each time it took years to come back, then it wouldn't be out of place for it to happen again with Soma; in that case, the only difference here is that it's one of the few times we know exactly how long it took.
 * Ohh, good point. I was confused because Graham's (and Celia's, Dario's, and Dmitrii's) logic seemed sound in context ("I was born at the exact moment Dracula died last time, therefore I am Dracula"), but I never considered that they could be operating under poor assumptions and not actually taking history into account. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
 * Well, in retrospect, that bit throws a wrench in the works, because Soma, Graham, Dario, and Dmitrii without a doubt all had various powers from Dracula. Although we're not sure when those powers originally manifested for any of them, besides Soma. So it could be that something really is different with the resurrection process this time, but if that's the case, an easy explanation is just that the castle sealing was designed to screw his resurrection up in the first place anyway.
 * True, but Soma's power is clearly identified as Drac's supreme power from which all the others come, while Dimitrii's and Dario's look more like powers of high level monsters. Beside, they (along with Graham) only inherited some powers while Soma got Dracula's soul.
 * An alternate explanation is that Dario and the others did gain some of Drac's powers due to the sheer amount of dark magic that had to be bursting from the guy when he was finally permanently killed without his castle to contain it. Their powers are merely flukes brought on by sheer chance, while Soma received the soul when it was naturally re-incarnated two decades later.
 * Alternatively, This Troper suggests the following: upon his defeat in 1999, Dracula was reincarnated...except that this reincarnation died the year Soma was born, and thus was reincarnated again as Soma.
 * Where was Freddy Krueger during the ten or twelve years between his death at the hands of the angry mob and his first instances of stalking their kids in Dreamland? Training himself to manipulate dreams? Hanging out and knocking back a few beers with the dream demons? It's probably better not to know these things; they're quite unimportant, even if they may be a little intriguing. Dracula regularly spends upwards of a century out of commission (perhaps with his soul wandering helplessly like Voldemort's...?); he could do nineteen years standing on his head. (EDIT: Now that I think of it, Mr. P's Castlevania Realm has a Hand Wave for the "every century" thing saying that the longer Dracula waits the more powerful he is when he comes back (for instance, Simon's Quest was only a few years after CV1). perhaps how long it takes depends partly on how long it is before Drac gets confident and/or antsy enough to return.)
 * The fact that Castlevania is sexist. That bugs me. Actually, I don't really care about whether it's sexist or not, I just want Sonia Belmont to be canon.
 * How is it sexist if the main charater of the last game released is female? Iga said he removed Legends because it said Alucard was Trevor's father.
 * Certainly there are plenty of female characters throughout the series. None of them are Belmonts however, because no woman could ever be a true Belmont. (Then again, in Dracula X, Maria is way, way stronger than Richter, so there you go.)
 * Sorry. Mary Sue Belmont, She of the Green Vinyl Jumper, Traveling Huntress without a Past, Bishie-Banger, Spellslinger in a Time When Grinding Herbs was Witchcraft is no more by omission and commission.
 * Wasn't the Spellslinger thing explained eventually by Sypha having found a sanctuary with other witches? Granted, that was brought up in Judgment, which is largely not accepted as actual canon, but it makes sense. I don't think they ever marginalized how seriously the public at large took witchcraft (poor Lisa), so it's a bit more acceptable since it's balanced with the idea that if you wanted to hone your skills in magic, you had to have a serious degree of determination.
 * I can't see much point in having a female Belmont other than to 'shake things up', but it certainly wouldn't change anything beyond every female fan rallying behind her because she's female rather than interesting.
 * Worked like a charm among male fans with Sonia.
 * Isn't it a little cynical to say that all women will be behind a female Belmont without caring about her character? Granted, that's bound to happen more than once, but it's a little much to say "every female fan". I'm a female, and I honestly don't care much for Shanoa (or Sonia, really) despite them both being women.
 * I'm kind of curious where the mentality that a woman can't be a "True" Belmont came from. What do the Belmonts do? They get trained to murder the crap out of demons, using whip and holy power, and fight Dracula to the death. Just as there's no point in having a female Belmont, there's also no point in not having one. Sonia needed to be removed due to IGA's timeline, I get that. But his statement about why there aren't more female main characters was fairly sexist and Shanoa is an appeasement to the fans (an admittedly enjoyable one, but that's not the point). We've seen plenty of powerful women in the series but ruining the "Pure" (read: Male only) Belmont bloodline, obviously doing it a disservice. Amazing.
 * Yeah, this really bugs me too. I don't think it should be Sonia, but seeing a female Belmont would be nice (and realistic, since there's bound to be a girl in the family line somewhere that wasn't a Belnades). I don't see how it's so pointless/impossible for there to be balance in the offspring. It also bugs me that Shanoa was -such- an obvious appeasement. I sort of find it insulting.
 * Exactly where did the whole "the Vampire Killer will suck my life away" thing in Portrait of Ruin come from? I guess that I could see that maybe nobody who wasn't as superhuman as a Belmont could do well with its unlocked powers, but it still seems like little more than a bit of pointless angst for Johnathan (not that he wasn't already pretty good at that already). Why is such a holy weapon so dangerous?
 * Good Is Not Nice and/or Light Is Not Good. Might also have to do with the soul powering Vampire Killer not being able to connect as well with people who aren't direct descendants or something.
 * Maybe Miss Trantoul gets a bit upset when the in-laws start telling her what to do?
 * Hmm, a WMG just came to mind thinking about this. Namely that over the years, the whip was warded and upgraded from "hurting evil" to causing injuries or not working in the hands of any non-Belmont. At the time, they weren't expecting a Belmont to become corrupted, and thought that it was a safe bet.
 * Another WMG idea could be that Shaft somehow cursed the whip while controlling Richter in Symphony of the Night. After all, with the whip so close, why not add curses for future generations to succumb to? And the whole "not until 1999" was waiting for the curse to wear off, but it didn't quite dispel when Julius used it, causing his memory loss.
 * Assuming a 'pure' Belmont can handle the whip without concern, it might simply be because the 'impure' branch families don't have the same supposed power of the Belmonts, and so the power of the Vampire Killer has a kind of degenerative effect on the life force of those with 'insufficient power' to handle it. It would also serve to explain why a second family (the Lecardes) are needed to help unlock the full potential for a non-Belmont, who otherwise wouldn't have the spiritual power to handle the weapon.
 * What was up with all the re-incarnation talk in the Sorrow series? Every other game takes place with a (very loose) Christian mythology stating that Dracula's refusal to stay down was part of his rebellion against God Himself. Was the "reincarnation is natural" thing added as part of the attempt to appeal to Japanese gamers or just a mistake?
 * That, and the fact that very few Japanese actually know or understand Christianity (which seems appropriate since very few Westerners know or understand Japanese mythology). That's why you have tropes like Nuns Are Mikos and why we have a JBM page for people who mix up Makai and Hell. Japanese developers see things from a very Shinto/Buddhist perspective where stuff like reincarnation seems perfectly natural, then they throw a smattering of Judeo-Christian seasoning on top of it. That isn't necessarily bad, but it can be a little jarring to a Westerner when we see things like reincarnation, evil creatures wielding holy power, and other such cultural anachronisms.
 * Not possible. Japan has been using Judeo-Christian mythology, despite not understanding it, for decades (see Neon Genesis Evangelion). Check out the epically-pedantic explanation of Adam and Eve in MGS3 for a prime example, when the characters, for all intents and purposes, should know the story back to front.
 * Oddly, the earliest invocation of reincarnation in the series was arguably based on an American work. Specifically, the Coppola-directed Bram Stoker's Dracula, which introduced the Dracula/Mina love story (absent in the novel) and argued that she was the reincarnation of his previous love interest, Elizabetha.
 * Three words: Fantasy Kitchen Sink.
 * So, what is the Vampire Killer Whip? In the earliest games, it shifted between a leather whip and a morning star. No problems there, early continuity is always sketchy. It gets odd, though, when Lament of Innocence has the whip's origins as a leather alchemical whip, while most other games (HoD, AoS, DoS, PoR, etc.) show it consistently as a morning star. Will they ever answer how it changes, or if it changed, or what? For that matter, will they ever address why Simon had to buy whips in Simon's Quest?
 * See the speech made in The Fifth Elephant about how an ancestral axe is still the same axe after getting parts removed. Presumably, over the years, Vampire Killer's had coverings added and removed, whip cores replaced, handles replaced, and whip sections replaced wholecloth. The magic still works anyway, because it's magic, and it is still the same whip, just with a new part. As for Simon buying whips, maybe he was buying whip sections to add on to the handle (presumably having damaged it in the last game), and the multiple choices were a matter of him not being able to decide what kind of Vampire Killer to leave to his kid(s).
 * Note that the Vampire Killer is an alchemy whip. We don't have much knowledge of how alchemy works in Castlevania. Here's another theory I've thought about - the whip can change forms magically through the wielder's power. This works with how Johnathan Morris wasn't able to use the whip's power initially, and the earlier games changed its form as power-ups, and also accomodates the flame whip. It's quite possible that Dracula's curse prevented Simon from being able to change the whip on his own.
 * Personally, I think that the Whip is bound to Castlevania/Dracula. As such, whenever Dracula and his castle appear again, the whip changes form along with it.
 * What's with the Game Over Screen in Symphony of the Night? It has a random demon-headed skeleton with a cross necklace in its ribcage with a quote that doesn't seem relevant to Alucard dying. What is it, a Non Sequitur Scene as the death screen?
 * I think it's supposed to depict what has become of the world now that you've failed and Dracula's forces have overwhelmed it. Don't ask me where the horned skeleton came from, though.
 * Very few of the game over screens in the Metroidvania games make sense, the main exceptions being Dawn of Sorrow (Death holding what is presumably Soma's soul), and Order of Eccelsia's three game over screens. All the others are more or less unnconnected.
 * You know how Alucard can occasionally turn into a large demonic-looking creature when petrified...?
 * In Dawn of Sorrow's Julius Mode, Alcurd has no reflection, but his breath shows up when outside.
 * He's a dhampire, not a vampire, so it makes sense he has only some of the symptoms.
 * In Dawn of Sorrow, you can get money in the form of coins by destroying lamps and chandeliers. Only, since it's in the present day, they're lightbulb powered. And the coins are worth between 1 and 100 dollars. Let me just reiterate that. You can find a coin... INSIDE of a lightbulb... worth 100 AMERICAN DOLLARS, in a JAPANESE reconstruction of an EUROPEAN Castle.
 * There's nothing mentioning that the castle in DoS is in Japan. The outdoor section, along with the names of Celia, Dmitrii, and Dario indicate it's probably European.
 * Promotional material put it in Europe, IIRC. Wasn't it Yen in the JP version? It could just counting the gold obtained in what it's worth in modern currency. As for why it's there, same reason candles have daggers, crosses, axes, pocket watchs and hearts in them. I think Word of God is that they are gifts from the traped souls you are freeing.
 * I'd say it makes less sense in the modern context. But the idea of light-bulbs being filled with fairy-fire is badass, so I accept it.
 * Considering the presence of items like "Satan's Ring" that seem to suggest that Satan does exist in the Castlevania verse (the description even says that Satan is said to have worn it), why the need for Dracula as the Dark Lord?
 * For that matter, who was the Dark Lord before Dracula came along?
 * I think those two questions answer each other rather nicely.
 * Now that you mention it, yeah. That would be neat to see in a future game. Dracula kicking the devil's ass.
 * Wasn't the previous Dark Lord Walter Bernhard from Lament of Innocence?
 * Walter was a powerful vampire before that game, but was not necessarily the dark lord. He did have influence over the night, but he certainly didn't work with souls in the way Drac does.
 * I'm pretty sure I've heard somewhere that the references to Satan in those items were added in the English translation and weren't in the original Japanese. Nonetheless, I like the idea that Satan is an entity behind Dracula that provides him with his power - he just can't manifest in the mortal world, so Dracula fulfils the role of Dark Lord in his place.
 * Another theory I've seen is that Death fills the Satan position. I know I've heard about him being called the "king of hell" in one of the games, but I can't find it on search.
 * I like to believe that Satan and Chaos, the being which Aria of Sorrow reveals is the source of all of Dracula's powers and the one who chooses which mortal inherits those powers and becomes the next Dark Lord, are in fact one and the same in the Castlevania world. Dracula made a deal with Chaos at some point after stealing Walter's soul and becoming a vampire, possibly with Death acting as their go-between, and this is how he acquired his Domination power and his ability to resurrect constantly.
 * Who else but Satan would Dracula have been talking to when he says "grant me power"? The implication is that Satan is the one granting Dracula his abilities but is either unable or unwilling to act directly.
 * Recent games have tried to explain away the whole "coming into Castlevania almost completely unarmed" thing, with some success. Portrait of Ruin is one such example, making a plot point out of how Jonathan brought the Vampire Killer and can't use it. But a question remains. What about Charlotte? She's supposed to be a skilled witch, yet she enters the castle wielding a magicless book and no spells at all. And there isn't a word of explanation.
 * I assumed that those two were following the old shonen anime adventure tradition of "making it up as we go". They were cocky enough to run straight to Castlevania wielding no weapons, armor, or supplies beyond the currently-next-to-useless Vampire Killer and simply hoped that Johnathan would figure out the trick to using it after they got to work. It was stupid, but their game does run off anime cliches only slightly less than the Sorrow series.
 * Why does Simon Belmont dress like... like he does? The first game takes place in 1691, yet he looks like a barbarian. Even when he was being redesigned, it was only to make him less clothed.
 * If the succubus from SotN didn't know that Alucard was the son of Dracula, how did she create that scenario with Alucard's mom?
 * Probably just a translation issue. In the PSP version's re-recorded dialogue, she says something like "You really are Lord Dracula's son", implying that she knew that already.
 * In-story, it could be that Dracula told the Succubus about that part of Alucard's past to screw with his mind, but left out the little detail that it was his wife they burned, only referring to Lisa as Alucard's mother.
 * I got the impression that, as an enemy who specializes in manipulating dreams, she was just summoning his worst memory as a nightmare, without really knowing the details herself.
 * This is a bit of a silly question, but in 2035 and 2036, did cellphones go obsolete? If Soma had a cell phone on him, reaching him would be easy! We don't have any evidence of the Sorrow games setting restricting the use of electronics (like Harry Potter and Hogwarts), and I'm sure Arikado would know how to use a cell phone.
 * Castles in remote snowy European villages might not get very good reception. Neither would the inside of a solar eclipse.
 * Were there other members of Order of Ecclesia besides Shanoa, Albus and Barlowe? I don't believe there were. That makes for a rather small group that's supposed to be fighting Dracula.
 * What, a single Belmont isn't too few?
 * Order of Ecclesia doesn't have any Belmonts.
 * You missed the point. And the joke. Lone Belmonts have never been criticized for being "too few" to take on Dracula.
 * Why doesn't Shanoa cut her hair so that she doesn't have to lift it up every time to activate her glyph? Excluding Rule of Sexy.
 * How is it that Albus gets a fully automatic flintlock pistol?
 * Well, according to an article on That Other Wiki, pistols were first around in the 15 century, and his pistol has been enhanced with glyphs, allowing him to have infinite ammo.
 * What kind of accent is Gabriel Belmost supposed to have?
 * Scottish. He's played by Robert Carlyle.
 * Speaking of accents, isn't Eric Lecarde supposed to be a Spaniard? I don't care how the canon characters say it; to me, that last name will always be pronounced "Le-car-day", not "Le-card".
 * His last name was intended to be Ricardo, but the translators got it wrong.
 * And his first name's Eric... Rick for short? "Bartley! You've got some 'splainin' to do!"
 * It's a corruption of "Alucard."
 * There is influence from Dracula (Bram Stoker's novel), but is the novel being included in the Castlevania canon?
 * Yes, though according to CV, Quincey Morris had a son, when there's no indication that he did in the novel. The US manual for Bloodlines says that John Morris saw Quincey die after helping to kill Dracula, though this is probably not canon since John would have been a toddler at the time, and thus probably would not have been brought along. And, of course, the Morris family being related to the Belmonts is something the games made up.
 * It's worth asking who the mother is. Quincey was courting Lucy before her untimely death, after all.
 * Castlevania Bloodlines could certainly use a remake to help tie the two together better. Perhaps with flashbacks to key events in the novel?
 * In Julius Mode in Dawn of Sorrow, what was the point of traveling through The Abyss? You just end up in the throne room in The Pinnacle, which you already could have gone to anyway. The only reasonable thing I could think of is to shoehorn Aguni into the game, but that really wasn't necessary.
 * Do you mean Aguni or Abaddon?
 * I meant to say both (I forgot about Abaddon earlier). Still not necessary though.
 * Symphony of the Night. The inverted castle. As in, how exactly did it appear randomly out of the clouds? Why is there a second castle? Why is it upside down? Is this EVER explained ingame? At least Harmony of Dissonance's second castle is a reflection, and the two castles are sort of the extension of Maxim's will, so it gets a handwave. I know I'm asking for logic in a Castlevania game, but, you know, there is no plot justification for the inverted castle, especially the fact it's UPSIDE DOWN.
 * I always thought Shaft cast some kind of spell. Can't think of any other reason, though.
 * Considering that it appeared more or less the very instant Shaft was defeated, it was obviously him casting a spell, but I think we're supposed to assume he had it prepared in advance as some sort of last ditch diversion or means of buying time in case he failed. As for the backgrounds being upside-down along with the castle....
 * Okay, I understand that Death and Soma didn't recognize each other in Aria, but after Soma became aware that he was Dracula's reincarnation, he also got his old memories back (something that a villain mentions in Dawn). So why didn't Soma even bother to talk to Death in Dawn? I would have accepted Death saying something like "you're not my friend/master anymore" but I'm surprised that Soma didn't even tried to talk Death into backing down or letting him pass; they were best friends!
 * Death and Dracula were best friends. Soma may have the memories of Dracula, but he is still his own person. (At least, a big deal of the games is trying to maintain his own identity in the face of holding such power and memories.) Still, many people consider it a wasted opportunity that Death never says a word to Soma, despite how talkative and integral Death is in the plot of other Castlevania games. Read some theories as to why in another JBM on this page.
 * Who or what the hell is Saint Germaine?
 * A time traveler.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_of_St._Germain
 * This is killing me: what the hell does Dracula's ring do in Simon's Quest? Presumably, it has some kind of function since the other four parts do (eye: seeing hidden objects in breakable blocks; nail: whipping through breakable blocks so that you don't need the otherwise fairly useless holy water equipped; rib: shielding you from fireballs; heart: gaining passage to a new part of the map from the ferryman), but what is its function? Does it have some subtle effect on your stats or...what??
 * Aside from being needed to resurrect Dracula, it has no purpose. At least all the guides I've read have never suggested it does anything. Might be theories that it increases heart drop rates or something, but most people are pretty sure it doesn't do anything.
 * I just read at a wiki on the game that wearing the ring is what allows you to break through the enchanted wall in front of the castle ruins, where as the magic cross is what allows you to actually enter the ruins themselves. But can you get through if you wear the ring but don't have the other four parts?
 * Death appears and steals your equipment in SOTN, and doesn't appear again until the inverted castle, so, where is Death all this time? You'd expect to meet him somewhere along the course of the game, but where is he before the inverted castle? Also, why is the Alucard equipment scattered? Wouldn't Death have carried them around to stop Alucard from using them against him?
 * Perhaps Death was busy helping Shaft with Dracula's resurrection and had to spend all his time in the Inverted Castle. As for Alucard's equipment, he was too busy to carry them around and guard them along with whatever else he was doing, so he just scattered them around so they wouldn't all be in one place and easy to get at.
 * This then raises the question of why he handled Alucard's monogrammed necklace in the manner he did. It's been planted deep in Galamoth territory, and duplicates can be found in the possession of Galamoth's most loyal and ambiguous witches.
 * Not to mention that Galamoth is meant to be Dracula's enemy, according to Kid Dracula and the backstory to Judgment.
 * How, exactly, does the whole "collecting Dracula's body parts" thing work in SOTN? Apparently, Alucard has to do so to stop Shaft from summoning him? Despite them being key to his revival in prior games, and how he is only successfully summoned after Alucard gets them?
 * Something's been bothering me for a while now: Elisabetha has only been mentioned in Lament of Innocence, right? Then Lisa came along and Dracula's pretty much forgotten about his first wife. Is this truly the case? And if it is, then is it possible that he's forgotten about his past as Matthias Cronqvist?
 * The Dark Side Will Make You Forget. Dying as often as he does can't possibly be good for his memory either.
 * There's 400 years between Lo I and CV 3, dude. Drac got over his loss and fell in love again after a few centuries.
 * Given the reincarnation angle introduced in the Sorrow games, it's quite possible that Lisa was the reincarnation of Elisabetha.
 * How, if only the Vampire Killer, Dominus or Alucard can defeat Dracula, did Nathan Graves defeat Dracula with only the Hunter Whip?
 * And this is why Nathan got retconned.
 * At first. Circle of the Moon was put back in the timeline as a Gaiden Game. That wasn't the reason for it's removal anyway.
 * Per some Zelda WMG on similar issues: Dracula wasn't at full power because he never got the sacrifice, just some of it from the ritual in the full moon. Due to his only partial resurrection, he can be killed by more mundane weapons. Alternately, same way you can kill him with just subweapons.
 * So in Order of Ecclesia, Richter's not around for whatever reason and the Belmonts aren't supposed to use the Vampire Killer until Julius's battle with Dracula in 1999. That's all well and good, but where are Maria and Alucard? While one might possibly Hand Wave Alucard as having returned to his sleep sometime after Symphony, it's implied that Maria is able to convince him to stay (and it's confirmed in the Japan-only radio drama, though that might not be canon). Maria herself should still be active, since she was eighteen in 1797, when Symphony takes place, and Ecclesia is set in the early 1800s.
 * Considering that Dracula's Castle didn't actually rise until most of the way through the game, easy enough to say Maria was nowhere near it at the time. Indeed, if Shanoa fails, it could very well be Maria who heads out to see what's going on and deals with Dracula. Similarly, the Church is researching other methods of taking down Dracula. Even if Maria is still around, that doesn't mean you shouldn't bother working on other methods. Always good to have a contingency plan or eight, especially with Dracula.
 * Maria is most likely dead by the time of Order of Ecclesia's events. Alucard is traveling the world looking for a way to permanently destroy Dracula.
 * Most likely? There's no exact time period given for the game, it could be anywhere between 1797-1897, and most likely takes place around the early 1800's, as the first poster said. It's quite likely Maria is still alive.
 * Perhaps, but I don't think so. We know that the Wygol Villagers are all that is left of the Belmont Clan (not counting offshoots like the Morris family), so Richter is definitely dead. And if he is, I would say Maria is most likely too. And even if she wasn't, she would be like an old lady or something. But that's just what I think.
 * Most likely? There's no exact time period given for the game, it could be anywhere between 1797-1897, and most likely takes place around the early 1800's, as the first poster said. It's quite likely Maria is still alive.
 * Perhaps, but I don't think so. We know that the Wygol Villagers are all that is left of the Belmont Clan (not counting offshoots like the Morris family), so Richter is definitely dead. And if he is, I would say Maria is most likely too. And even if she wasn't, she would be like an old lady or something. But that's just what I think.