Chrono Trigger/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why does Magus die every time he tries to defeat Lavos alone? He manages to do it while significantly drained in the endgame, why can't he do it with 6666 HP and the most powerful Dark spell known to man?
    • I think the point is, he doesn't have a chance without companions
    • Because he doesn't have Megalixirs.
    • Actually implied and outright stated in Chrono Cross that Lavos was to strong when they first meet, and by the time Chrono and friends take him down he is in a weakened state so that even at 300 HP Magus could insta-kill the alien.
  • The game states that the Gates are caused/powered by Lavos. How, then, is there a gate that can take you back to the Mystic Mountains of 65M BC...days/weeks before Lavos even arrived on the planet?
    • Because it's left ambiguous if the gates are made by Lavos or The Entity to give people the ability to fight Lavos. That gate suggests the latter.
      • Make no mistake that gate was opened by itself, assuming the second gate in the future links to Medina village.
        • I thought the Entity created the gates? Something about it reliving the key moments in its life.
          • Right. During the sidequest where Robo restores the forest, he explicitly advances the theory that the Planet opened up the gates. Immediately afterward, Lucca discovers a hidden Gate that lets her save her mother. Lavos, doing that? He doesn't care enough.
            • And the planet does? Lucca's personal sidequest to save her mother's legs has no bearing on its survival one way or the other. Additionally, the ominous red color of Lucca's personal Gate signifies that it's different from the other Gates we've seen, as does the fact that it appears out of nowhere and ceases to exist once the attempt to save Lara's legs is made. This Gate is an anomaly, and is not indicative of the behaviour or purpose of any other Gate. Ultimately, there just isn't enough information to 100% confirm where the Gates came from and what their purpose is; it's just ambiguous enough.
      • Honestly, the fact that gate magically appeared, right after the discussion about the gates, and there being some sort of benevolent entity controlling them, which leads to a specific point in time that directly impacts Lucca's life seems to point to the obvious answer. If not, then what are the odds that a gate would appear before a brooding Lucca, at that specific time and place, and take her back to a specific time and place she was thinking about? The signs are pointing towards 'yes, entity' more than 'no, random, are you high?'.
  • Concerning time paradoxes, when they go to the past, Marle disappears because her being mistaken for the queen prevents her from being born in the first place. I have a few issues with this. First, how did they originally save Marle? I guess if anyone did it, it would be Frog's doing, and he's still looking for her even after you get there and they say they've called the search off. But more importantly, why did Marle disappear if the Queen hadn't even died yet? Shouldn't she disappear WHEN the queen dies? And if Marle never existed as a result of her going into the past, then she would never have existed to have the pendant that results in Chrono and friends going into the past in the first place, so shouldn't they disappear too since they couldn't have possibly been able to cause a time warp without the presence of Marle and her pendant in the future?
    • The only answer I can think of is that The Entity pulled Marle into the Darkness Beyond Time for a short while in order to motivate Crono into saving Queen Leene. The reason he did this is actually kind of simple. In saving Leene, Crono beat Yakra. Beating Yakra angered Yakra's family. Eventually, Yakra VIII was born into Crono's time, and decided to take revenge. Yakra VIII impersonated the Chancellor in Marle's time, who then tried to execute Crono. This led to Crono's escape, their flight from the castle, their uses of the Gate to 2300 A.D., and their discovery of the Day Of Lavos recording, which led to them saving the world. For The Entity, pulling one person into the DBT for a few hours was a simple thing, especially if it meant leading the heroes down the path to defeating Lavos.
    • Perhaps even if Frog was the one that saved the Queen, he'd have had help, like people who searched for her and gave him clues, perhaps even helped him rescue her. As soon as the 'queen' was found, Frog would lose that exatra help and be unable to recue the true queen.
    • It's a stable time loop. If Marle didn't disappear, the Queen would die. If the Queen dies, Marle would never be born, and thus would never have gone back in time to be mistaken for the Queen and prevent the Queen from being saved - which means that the Queen would get saved and result in Marle being born after all...The paradox involved creates a stable time loop instead. It is also possible that Frog originally did track the Queen to the cathedral, but was unable to progress from there. Only Crono's insistence on poking everything that wasn't nailed down opened the secret door to the lair.
    • Here's how I took it: without Marle's appearance in the Middle Ages, Frog would have found Leene and rescued her from Yakra's Cathedrale. However, the pulling back of troops and the big deal being made about Leene's rescue when Marle was mistook for her delayed Frog. Despite the fact that he was searching for her when we first meet him, his first instinct upon hearing that she's been rescued would have been to go see for himself. Because of this, even though he pegged her for an imposter and began his search again, he would not have arrived in time to save Leene; she would be dead by the time he confronted Yakra. Intervention by Crono and Lucca flipped this back the other way, because instead of a slow infiltration by a lone soldier, Frog had backup that allowed him to fight his way to Yakra faster.
  • So, the trial. I get that this is supposed to be ludicrous in general and mostly exists to set up Marle and her father falling out and the jump into 2300 ultimately. However, two things just bug me...First, why didn't anybody seem to consider calling in Marle herself as a witness? You'd think she would be one of the most knowledgeable people as to whether or not Crono kidnapped her. Second...what about Lucca? One of Yakra's motivations was to kill the people who killed his ancestor, and Lucca was right there alongside Crono, helping to kill the original Yakra. She was also the most obvious choice for princess-abductor since she built the thing that made Marle disappear in the first place. So why didn't she get arrested, too? It's not like it'd be hard to find where she lives, and they had three days to go arrest her instead of sitting back and letting her plan Crono's rescue. This might not bother me so much if the chancellor didn't SPECIFICALLY mention Marle vanishing at Lucca's show.
    • Simple, the trial was fixed. If they called Marle up to the stand, the case would be over right there and then. As for Lucca, well, maybe Crono was best remembered as the person who killed Yakra. Lucca and Frog were just lost to history (like many faceless soldiers of war).
    • The spiky-haired kid was easier to remember than the girl with goggles, or possibly was the only one who went down in the Yakra-generation family history as a person that wasn't described like a mystic.
    • Also, I guess they could've made up some excuse about Stockholm Syndrome for why Marle couldn't be a witness.
    • They caught and tried Crono because he was the one that just waltzed into the castle right into the Chancellor's arms. Presumably when Lucca heard the news that Crono was arrested she went into hiding for a few days planning the jailbreak, just in case the guards started looking for her, too.
  • Frog speaks in Medieval English. I am fine with that in and of itself. What bugs me is that he is the only person in the Medieval era who does so.
    • Worse than that, he does it wrong.
    • He doesn't even do it all the time. In his flashbacks, he speaks normally, and he also speaks normally at several other points in the game, such as when you enter Lavos's shell. I think it's an affection.
      • Yeah, it's just something Frog does (IIRC, he even does it when he's turned back from a frog into his original form).
    • It's a translation choice. In the original Japanese, he speaks much more rudely and not in an archaic language at all.
    • Actually, this whole little tidbit was lampshaded in the flash series Chrono Trigger Unglued, in which (the now-able to talk) Crono points it out.
    • Glenn's speech has been changed for the DS port.
      • D:
      • Waitwaitwait. Clarify. PLEASE. Do you mean Frog's speech has been changed (I saw a re-translated line that kicked out all the little niggling Thees and Thys), or do you mean that Glenn has been given an infusion of the Cyan drugs as well?
        • Clarification: Frog has dropped the thee's and thou's. He talks just like the rest of the people in the Middle Ages... who all talk more formally than they used to, but still relatively normally. Not a 'thee' to be seen. They make up for it with a wee bit of Purple Prose.
        • The old English accent was added for the original US script. The DS port has a new script and they apparently chose not to use it.
    • Guys, do you realize how much of a missed opportunity this was for the DS port? Look at it this way—we know that Frog spoke a lot rougher in the Japanese version of the game, but spoke modern Japanese aside from that. While it's good to get rid of Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, they could have also made everyone speak proper Shakespearean English in 600 AD. Now, factor in Get Thee to a Nunnery, and you would have had a perfect way to convey Frog's rough nature ...
    • I find that there's a Hypocritical Fandom here. Apparently nobody found it odd that everyone in 600 AD spoke like they did in 1000 AD...but Frog not speaking Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe? They Changed It, Now It Sucks! You should have changed it. BRB - complaining at Square-Enix for changing a game from the Japanese script.

...Especially since he first saves you from fake nuns in Manoria Cathedral.

    • In the original SNES game, it might have been a conscious and symbolic choice for Glenn to alter his speech as his body changed. Once he obtained his original body and had his revenge against Magus, he could revert to his normal, pre-frog speech patterns.
  • How about the massive chronological paradoxes involved? Humans from the future affect human domination over dinosaurs, the player personally creates the sword used in the first half of the game in the second half. Time is a total mess by the end of the game, and I get a headache even thinking about it. Freaking time travel.
    • Even if the party didn't defeat Azala, Lavos hitting the world and starting an Ice Age would wipe out the Reptites anyway.
    • Those examples you mention aren't paradoxes, they're time loops. In both cases, the consequences of the time travel result ultimately in the travel being able to happen. Now, there are *other* paradoxes in Chrono Trigger, notably the whole "killing Lavos and preventing him from destroying the future" deal...
    • ...Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey...
      • Go to the Chrono Compendium. They've thought about this A LOT.
        • More concisely, those examples aren't paradoxes because, in happening, they cause themselves to have happened in the first place. A temporal paradox happens when something happens which, in happening, prevents itself from happening.
          • Just to clarify, the two basic rules are that stuff that time travels remains immune to the effects of its time travel, and any temporal duplicates vanish at the exact same point in time that the original time-traveled.
            • Immune? At the beginning, Princess Nadia's existing caused her to not exist. And then her non-existence indirectly caused her to re-exist. Except Crono was only there to re-exist her because she existed in the first place, which she didn't. And she managed to change her clothes while not existing...I think I need some aspirin.
              • Perhaps Nadia never put on the Queen-clothes in the first place?
              • The best explanation that I can think of for that is that it was an intervention by "the Entity". See, Marle vanishing led to Chrono saving Leene, which he did by beating Yakra. Then Yakra VIII or whatever replaces Marle's chancellor in 1000 A.D. and tries to kill Chrono, which leads to the group escaping into the Gate in the woods, which sends them to 2300, which leads to them discovering the Day of Lavos transmission, which leads to them saving the world. Pretty convoluted, but the Entity is God, after all. He's probably more than capable of pulling one small human into the Darkness Beyond Time for a little while.
                • The Entity is the planet, period. Why are there still debates over this?
                  • Because there's no compelling reason to believe that from either Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross.
                    • The hell there isn't. Go back to Chrono Trigger, run through the sidequest where Robo restores the forest. He outright STATES this.
                    • True, you know, except for the opening cut scene to the re-release of Chrono Trigger being called "Our Planet's Dream" and one of the chapters in Chrono Cross being called "For All the Dreamers: Our Planet's Dream is Not Over Yet." :P
                • In addition to the Entity being the Planet, it's also stated that the Gates are memories, not conscious intervention. The Planet is flashing on key moments of its life before it dies. Of course, this raises further questions about certain Gates (Both in the Present and Lucca's Red Gate, particularly), but it makes it unlikely the Planet pulled anyone into the Darkness Beyond Time of its own volition.
        • The Entity is definitely the planet. And the planet is the closest thing that would qualify as a god in-universe (aside from Lavos/Time Devourer, of course).
              • Leene was never in any real danger. Frog would have defeated Yakra on his own and saved her, the Entity just pulled Marle out of the timeline to get Crono and Lucca to meet Frog and strengthen their ranks against Lavos.
                • And because it led to Yakra's ancestor attacking Chrono, which led to them ending up in 2300 A.D.
                • What are you on about? Everyone thought Leene was fine because of Marle, so Frog wouldn't have done anything.
    • Furthermore, it's not clear that humans from the future really and significantly freaked over earlier timelines. The dinosaurs were already predicting/summoning Lavos down on their own heads, and that's what screwed them over, not humans beating Azalia up a couple times. Chrono and co were essential for the creation of the Masamune and rescuing the "Queen" in the final timeline, but there's no indication that the original timeline-less timeline operated that way; without the Prophet, Zeal might not have been able to prevent one of the Wise Men from getting in place, and Leena wouldn't have distracted the royal knighthood.
    • Actually, aren't all the consequences of mucking around in time and space one of the major themes in Chrono Cross? I mean, besides Humans Are the Real Monsters.
    • This troper always assumed a lot of those things were done by others.
      • Masamune? Considering Melchoir's knowledge, it is plausible that he was the one who plunged it into the machine under the guise of a "tune up" or something and, being more knowledgeable, actually damaged it enough to prevent Black Omen from rising in the first place.
      • Considering the Mystic Village still worships Magus originally, you can assume he died along with Ozzie, Slash and Flea in the Middle Ages summoning of Lavos. So, no Prophet in Zeal who might have simply knocked off the original person who created Masamune before we arrive there.
      • It's pretty obvious that Magus remembers the Gurus being there the first time, so Melchoir COULD'VE slammed the knife right into the Mammoth Machine before Magus mucked up the timeline.
    • The Leene example, as said above, demonstrated she would have been rescued anyways.
    • Summoned or just bad/good timing on the Reptite's end, Lavos was already en route.
    • This troper sees it as thus: Anything that happened before 1000 AD was meant to happen, seeing as it still happened in the end. The ONLY paradox that happens but ends up going away is Robo, seeing as his future changes when you defeat Lavos. Other than that, I don't see any real paradoxes in the time line.
      • Well, there is the Ayla paradox.
      • What paradox? Ayla is sent back to her time (65000000 BC) at the end of the game...
        • Predestination doesn't work in Chrono Trigger. Taking Ayla from her time and going to the future should have resulted in ending up in a future without Ayla's influence on the timeline. As another example, Lavos isn't defeated until you actually defeat him, even though you're going to defeat him.
      • Ayla only joins the party in their time-traveling after she's done everything that needs to be done in her time. There's nothing left for her to do except serve as the sixty-five-million-year predecessor to the Guardia line, which itself is iffy.
        • Wasn't it that one guy who liked Ayla and stole the Gate Key who was Marle's ancestor anyway, rather than Ayla herself?
      • As Ayla is returned to her own time at the end of the game, it prevents any and all paradoxes from ever forming. In fact, the only paradox that would occur was if she was killed - and that requires the whole party to be killed off in a fight, which, again, results in a game over.
        • We know that the timeline is pretty damn resilient. That Robo, Atropos, and Doan still exist in the future despite everything changing is a fairly solid demonstration that time in Chrono Trigger is largely static, taking the course of least resistance when presented with alterations. If a COMPLETELY different future still contains the same people, there's no reason to assume that removing Ayla from Prehistory would cause any significant change; Kino just sires his bloodline with someone else, and history moves on without her.
  • Why don't the guards confiscate Crono's weapons when they throw him into prison after the trial?
    • He hid them in Hammerspace.
    • Also, by the time New Game Plus rolls around, the man's a freaking One Man Army capable of punching out Cthulu. He's probably playing down his kick-assedness by that point (if you assume New Game Plus to be Crono et all being stuck in a time loop now that they've paradox'ed themselves out of existence—hey, maybe that's how Guardia gets taken over by freaking Porre in Crono Cross!).
    • Porre was led by Dalton, who came from Zeal, which had all sorts of magical thingamabobs. I think this was confirmed in the DS version.
  • How does Ayla transmute her fists into bronze and iron and stuff? This has always puzzled me.
    • Figure of speech, maybe? The Discovery Channel had a guy, far east martial artist, claiming his fists were as strong as steel because he spent time every day punching a mounted car hood.
    • I assumed she merely wore bronze or iron gloves.
    • Maybe it's just a metaphor.
      • Or it is an example of hyperbole.
  • Not so much with regular Lavos, but the Dream Devourer really bugs me. You know, the guy who can eat time and space. This would make him far more threatening than regular Lavos. My question is, why doesn't Spekkio, the freaking GOD of War and the guy who teachs Crono and co. the magic that is partially used to kill Lavos, go out there and kick his butt back to the stone age? Spekkio gets stronger based on the strength of his opponent, so fighting the Dream Devourer would make him a literal god and make the fight all the easier. Spekkio also can't be hit by physical attacks, and no matter how much he seems to get hit with magic, he is never truly beaten or even hurt. One would think Spekkio would eventually do something to kill Lavos/the Dream Devourer once it starts threatening all of time and space.
    • The Dream Devourer is an incarnation of the Time Devourer of Chrono Cross—even if you take the latter game as Fanon Discontinuity, the Dream Devourer doesn't make sense independent of it. The Time Devourer can't be truly beaten by force, as it will merely sidestep into another timeline where this didn't happen; the only way to truly defeat it is to activate the Chrono Cross, which peacefully undoes the Fusion Dance that created it, nullifying its existence without violence. And the alterations to the timeline that will lead to the creation of the Chrono Cross haven't happened yet.
      • Not to mention Spekkio is no longer a God of War, but a Master of War. He even admits he could learn a things or two from Magus.
      • Spekkio might just be stuck at the End of Time, unable to interact with anything that doesn't pass by the End of Time.
  • Why does the weapon Lucca uses to save you from prison if you don't escape just disappear? No, contrary to what some FAQ writers say, you don't get it—check her equipment.
    • She says it's disposable. Maybe that's what she did afterward: get rid of it.
  • How did Marle get the pendant in the first place? And if Doan is her descendant, does he (or one of his ancestors in 1999 AD) have it? Does Queen Leene or King Guardia XXI (in 600 AD) have it?
    • It's passed down through the royal family, yes, and yes.
    • So how does Leene and/or Guardia XXI get it? We last see it with Schala, and if this is the same familial line that passes from Ayla and Kino through Zeal, Schala and Janus, which of those three have children to pass it down to? Zeal presumably dies before she can pop out any more kids, Janus/Magus is unlikely to have gone back to 12,000 BC and had kids to rule, and Schala ends up merged with the Time Devourer/sending a clone of herself, complete WITH PENDANT, to 1000 AD for Lucca to raise. How does that even work, or is there a scene I've forgotten?
      • The pendants originated in Zeal as incomplete Time Eggs made by one of the Gurus. Schala's pendant and Magus' pendants are two different pendants (though possibly of the same design). Queen Zeal, Schala and Magus are not part of the Guardia line. The Earthbound Elder was a member of the Gaurdia line in 12,000 BC. After Schala used her pendant's power to save everyone from the disaster with the Mammon Machine (irrespective of the specific details of the event in the various time streams), the depowered pendant got warped out along with everyone else, after which it came into the possession of the Earthbound Elder and got passed down to his descendents. The pendant in Crono Cross was recreated at the same time Schala cloned herself, because she knew that Kid would eventually need the power of the partial Time Egg.
    • Magus carries around a copy of the pendant as well. It is possible that there were multiple pendants, and one was picked up in 10,000 BC by some Earthbound elder after Zeal went kaboomy and passed down through the generations. Or, for that matter, Kino could have gotten the pendant from Marle as a souvenir, and it was passed down from there.
  • What is Dreamstone supposed to be? What are its physical properties?
    • I would assume it is a fragment of Lavos, as that would make the most sense. It fell from the sky in an age when Lavos was in orbit above the planet, and it interacts with Lavos' energy there.
      • No, Dreamstone existed before Lavos crash-landed (Ayla gives the party some after the banquet in 65,000,000BC). His arrival and the Frozen Flame's influence probably caused it to become much more abundant.
        • Except it didn't? I seem to recall that the point of going to the prehistoric era to begin with was because that was the only place to find the Dreamstone, and it doesn't appear in any era thereafter except for what Melchior somehow got hold of to make the Grandleon.
        • Note I didn't say it was only there after he crash-landed. I said he was above the planet at the time. Which he apparently was, as, not long after that, Azala sees him in the sky and he falls out of it. Funny thing is that it's not impossible that bits of him broke off and landed before his main body did; given the obvious durability of Dreamstone, it would hardly be impossible for it to survive such a fall.
          • The physics wouldn't work. If a piece of Lavos broke off while he was still in space, even if it had the correct trajectory to hit the earth, it would not fall before he did.
    • Another possibility is that Dreamstone is a native resource of the planet and is somehow related to the power of the Planet/Entity, and NOT related to Lavos at all, and Lavos' fall in 65,000,000 BC actually destroys most of it.
      • This is supported by the retranslation, which clarifies that Azala was not summoning Lavos to Earth, but lamenting the inevitability of his arrival. Taking away the ambiguous possibility that Lavos was orbitting the planet before Azala brought him to the surface, it's unlikely that the Dreamstone is related to him at all
  • Why does the trader in prehistoric times have usable weaponry for Robo?
    • I always figured, since Robo attacks by just punching everything, that all of his weapons were some form of glove or gauntlet and not necessarily robotic attachments.
    • I think a bigger question is, how does he have guns?
      • My guess? They're actually selling her chunks of stone, metal, and other stuff that they throw at prey. Lucca, being the genius she is, modified the stuff into potent ammo for her gun.
      • This troper was of the belief that Lucca merely changes ammo for her gun when a new one is purchased (so it's not so much a Wondershot gun, as it's a Wondershot clip), and Robo recieves some kind of slab of metal/stone in the rough shape of a fist.
      • Another possibility is that it's all Reptite technology scavenged or stolen by the humans, which Lucca modifies as needed for her and Robo to use. Crono's sword might also be some sort of Reptite blade, since Ayla's people did not seem to have knowledge of sword-making.
      • Their technology is not our technology. The first working aircraft was created in the Ice Age. The year 1000 AD featured the invention of a working matter-teleporter, and the reconfiguring of such into a handheld time machine. Lucca was also working on trying to build prototype androids, and she was far enough along that she could not only repair an actual android, but reprogram him as well. By the year 1999, humanity was living in domed cities, with technology that had abolished the biological need for sleep. Now, with all this in mind, it's not so unreasonable that the Ioka Village had fashioned, according to the item description, weapons that focused light through a ruby and, later, a piece of Dreamstone, the power source for which would soon cease to exist.
  • Where do the Mystics/fiends/Mazoku come from? There's no sign of them or anything that could conceivably evolve into them in 65,000,000 BC, but, suddenly, they're there in 19,000 BC, and keep appearing from then on.
    • Aside from the possibility they were engineered by the Kingdom of Zeal, there was a period of 65 million years that something could have popped up.
      • What bugs me more is that humans didn't change at all over those 65 million years. It took nearly that long to build up civilization to the point seen with the Kingdom of Zeal in 19,000 BC? Are we to just assume that society rose and collapsed an untold number of times during that interval?
    • Gentlemen, I believe you two just answered each others' questions.
    • Mystics might just be leftover dinosaurs. That would certainly explain Ozzie's tail.
    • Creatures considered to be Mystics (Kilwala, Nu) have existed since 65,000,000 BC. Check the Mystic Mountains.
  • Why is the fact that Ayla and Kino are the ancestors of the Guardia royal line treated as dramatic revelation? There's 65 million years in between. Given breeding patterns and probability, isn't there a chance so high it is almost 100% that those two are the ancestors of ALL of humanity, if they have any descendants?
    • The real question is: how did removing Ayla from the time stream by having her join not royally mess with the Guardia Line, since their oldest ancestor is now missing from time?
      • Ayla was replaced in the time stream at the end of the game, so everyone's fine.
        • Time travel doesn't work like that in Chrono Trigger, actually. Things don't happen to future times until the time travelers go to the past, change the relevant stuff, and go back to the future. For example: the desert in A.D. 1000 is a desert until you go back in time and make it into a forest; it's not a forest at the start of the game, simply because you're going to change it into one. Similarly, the Guardia Line isn't going to persist because Ayla is going to go back to her own time.
        • The very few humans existing in 65000000 BC would be the ancestors of all of present day's humanity, including Crono, Marle, and Lucca. Therefore, if Ayla was removed, and this messed with the time-stream, then it's very likely that the protagonists wouldn't exist to remove Ayla - even if they did exist, many of the other present-day humans would vanish, definitely including the royal line, thus preventing the party from going to 2300 AD, and thus they never reach the End of Time, and therefore they never go to 65000000 BC, so Ayla wouldn't be removed anyway. Basically, Ayla has effect when removed because you get a paradox otherwise.
        • Yes, but it does take an unspecified amount of time for real time temporal retconning to happen (i.e. Nadia didn't disappear until after Chrono showed up at the castle). 65 million years of retconning would take 162500 times as long as 400 years. And every time you return to 65 million BC with her, the counter would reset.
    • Paradoxes aren't possible in the Chrono universe. Intoducing Time Traveler's Immunity and Time Bastard. For those of you who don't want to read a lengthy article from people who have been playing and replaying this game over and over and thinking about it too much for 13 years, I'll break it down.
      Time Traveller's Immunity: A time Traveler is immune to the effects of changes due to their actions and to future time travel.
      Time Bastard: When the past is changed, the version of that person in the new timeline disappears at the moment he time traveled in the old timeline, leaving only the version of that person with the greatest build up time traveler's immunity.
      The best way to explain the Ayla Paradox? She isn't the biological ancestor of the royal family. She may, in a sense, be the spiritual ancestor. They may imply she is in the dialogue but, come on, there' no way they could possibly track their geneology over 65 million years.
    • Alternatively, you could just believe that she is already the mother of the ancestors. Yep, just an Action Hot Shounen Mom. She is clearly older than everyone else except maybe Magus, and the characters where designed by Akira Toriyama, the one who created Bulma's mom.
      • But she states that if she had a baby, she wouldn't be chief. As she's chief when you first meet her, she hasn't had kids yet.
      • Remember that the first time you meet, Ayla remains in 65000000 BC after you complete your mission. It's only on a later visit, possibly quite a while later, that she's actually removed from the timestream properly. Perhaps there's enough time to ensure the survival of the species between those two visits. Meaning Ayla and Kino had sex.
    • Throwing another theory out there real quick, just because one of the original ancestors was removed from the time stream doesn't mean that there wasn't a new ancestor to step in. The resolution of the game is conveniently low enough for the subtle changes in appearance that would result from a different-person-but-same-tribe ancestor to be simply not visible. When Ayla returned, the original bloodline was restored...to little effect. Which, I suppose, just reinforces the idea that Ayla/Kino as the penultimate ancestors is really not that great a revelation to begin with.
      • Pretty sure the changes wouldn't be subtle. The difference between the later generations from either timeline would be like the differences between progressively more distant cousins. Over 65 million years, that's going to crop up quite a bit.
      • So, if you throw those two ideas together, the very layout of the world would therefore change by removing Ayla, wouldn't it? Maybe Time Bastard is just really efficient and makes a separate Ayla for everytime you leave, bastarding her away everytime you bring her back? Like you said, there are (almost) no Paradoxes in Chrono Trigger. Considering TTI and Time Bastard only make sense if they exist (that is the theories were developed to fill in the flaws in Chrono Trigger's time travel mechanics), there must be some force trying to keep it going correctly. Or, and I just know I'm going to regret this, she has an identical twin who got driven off for some reason and comes back later. I know, no evidence etc.
    • Maybe because the Time Key Lucca made locked Chrono, Lucca and Merle in as stable points in time. In other words, the Time Key worked by taking care of all the paradoxes. Remember, Lucca didn't make it until after Marle went back in time the first time.
    • The "Ayla Paradox" does not only apply to Ayla. If you recall, Lucca sent Kino into the timestream for the victory celebration in 1000 Guardian Year, making him subject to whatever laws of time Ayla were subject to, just at a different point in the timestream. Hence, if you think that Ayla traversing through time is a problem, Kino traversing through time would make a real mess.
    • Given that they both travel through time, could it be reasonable to posit that they would never have reproduced, regardless of any time travel? For example, if Ayla was barren and had to adopt a child, then that child would ultimately become the ancestor of the Guardian line.
    • Or maybe Ayla going to the future wasn't definitive enough? Suppose the Marle example, there was a time paradox because the timeline most certainly would cease to exist if the queen died, but with Ayla, maybe the fact that there was still a possibility for her to go back and play caveman with Kino, and this possibility was enough to keep the timeline stable. In Marle's case, the possibility just wouldn't happen, it was already set in stone the queen would die if you didn't interfere, due to the knights giving up, due to Marle showing up. Of course, if Marle didn't exist and couldn't show up, then the knigh- oh forget this, I need a drink.
    • There's also the issue of the "Frog Ending". Despite having a different ancestor, Marle was virtually identical to her original self, save her tongue. It's possible that the Universe/Entity keeps things as close to the base as possible. Similar to what happens with a Time Beetle in Doctor Who.
      • Don't the villagers comment a lot about her wearing a disguise? Also, shouldn't TTI have protected her from the change in ancestry anyway?
  • So, on first arrival at Guardia Castle in 600AD, the only thing preventing Crono from being imprisoned (or gutted) by the guards is Leene's intervention, but Lucca was able to barge right past several guards, into the throne room, and towards the stairwell that leads to the queen's private chambers and nobody bats an eyelash. How?
    • With Science.
      • And guns.
    • The guards weren't trying to kill him, they were just harassing him. Presumably, after Leene told them off, they loosened up and let Lucca through.
    • She might have passed as a new hand maiden, or as a girlfriend of one of the soldiers in the infirmary.
  • Robo can be poisoned. What.
    • That seems to happen to a lot of RPG robots. How the hell does that work out in Phantasy Star?
      • Androids are immune to poison in PSIV, as well as having other non-biological characteristics that are refreshingly exempted from Gameplay and Story Segregation. I think cyborgs in PSIII were poisonable, but PSIII was considerably lacking in polish by comparison. Accuracy wasn't the only thing PSIV did better than CT, either - the combo attacks were far more impressive too, but, of course, that's just my opinion.
    • He can also be healed by spells and by drinking potions. DRINKING POTIONS. WHAT.
    • This is a well-established Acceptable Break From Reality in RPGs, both western and Japanese. It's not even touched in the story, so it's not even worth arguing.
    • His system is semi-biological?
    • Maybe the poison also happens to be corrosive?
      • And the potions are Electrolitic Fluids
  • It's been years since I last played the SNES version, but...was Azala's gender ever discussed in that version of the game?
    • I can't remember. But the reptilian male voice I always imagined in my head hit a major record scratch when Nizbel 2 suddenly identified hi- Urgh! her as female five minutes before her final appearance in the plot.
      • Just because she's female doesn't mean she can't have the voice you imagined. She isn't human after all, and she doesn't have breasts (as you would realistically expect a reptilian female not to).
    • No. Azala's gender is never revealed in the original SNES version.
    • Azala's gender is Fridge Brilliance. In theropod dinosaurs (presumably what Azala is), females are larger than and dominant over males.
  • So, Chrono gets Luminaire, the "Ultimate Holy Magic", Lucca gets Flare, the "Ultimate Flame Magic", and Magus gets Dark Matter, the "Ultimate Dark Magic". How come nobody gets any "Ultimate Water Magic"? Both of the water users only take their attack spell to level 2 and then focus on healing. What gives?
    • There is an ultimate ice magic used by some enemies in the game, I forget what it's called. Why Frog and Marle don't get it, I don't know.
    • Marle is a healer and stops learning attacks at all after a certain point (which is why she's considered a very low tier character) and Frog learns frog squash instead, probably due to Rule of Funny.
      • Haste is low tier?
      • Yes. As bad as haste the spell may be Haste Helms have that effect on the character permanently and don't make you waste time casting haste. Also, Marle only has single character heals, making Frog or Robo much more effective party healers than her by the time you get haste helms. And since haste, the only thing keeping her useful, is reproduced by equipment she becomes completely useless.
        • You mean helms that become useless (defense-wise) practically immediately? And prevent you from using the very best helmets? Granted, she could still stand to gain better healing and ice techs.
        • No, I mean the helmets with such an overpowered ability that the fact that they have 10 less defence than the helmet with the highest defence means nothing because you'll cut things down before it becomes a problem. Its ability makes it better than any other helmet in the game. Not counting the ozzie pants (because who wants to use em) there are only 4 helms with higher defence in the game, and none of them have an ability that's as useful in every single situation.
    • I always thought the dual tech "glacier" was the game's ice 3 spell.
    • If there is an Ultimate Ice Magic, I'd like to see which enemy uses it. It kinda makes the Nu Guardian in the Bonus Dungeon in the DS release incomplete. He retaliates against all magic with the ultimate version of that spell type: Dark yields Darkmatter, Light yields Luminaire, Fire yields Flare, and Ice gets...Ice II as a response...
      • Queen Zeal's Hexagon Mist is the Ultimate Water Magic.
      • Which was renamed Starburst. Thanks for the info. *sigh* I understand why they didn't give Frog or Marle that spell; there needs to be some variety in the magics, and Arise is a pretty sweet spell in its own right. It just feels incomplete without it. Ah well.
      • Doesn't Marle's clone in the DS remake have Icefall, another ultimate ice spell? Granted, Lucca's and Crono's clones also had ultimate spells that couldn't be learned normally, but it's still something.
        • Icefall was just the Alabaster Shade's name for Ice II, one of the Shade's copies of the spells Marle has under a different name. Just like how the Steel Shade had Thunderfall (Lightning II) and Scintillation (Luminaire), and the Crimson Shade had Shadow Fire (Fire II) and Explosion (Flare). Unlike Steel and Crimson, Alabaster Shade's only special "ultimate" spell was Recuperate/Restores HP (Cure II).
  • The Sun Stone. Somehow, it sits in a place where the sun always shines for 65 million years, yet isn't charged up to any useful extent until 2300 AD. Granted, this was for the sake of Padding out a side quest by making you mess with the timeline in the Middle Ages to change the Present. But from a (psuedo-magical-) physics standpoint, it's a tough pill to swallow: the idea that 1300 years out of 65,002,300 years decide the difference between "useless" and "useful." If you don't want to do the math, I've done it for you: that's less than two thousandths of a percent of the total time. "Realistically", you should've been able to pick up the Sun Stone in 12,000 BC. Even the 14,300 years between then and 2300 AD only add up to two hundredths of a percent of the 65,002,300-year total time. Here's a fun little graph [dead link] to illustrate the ludicrous math involved.
    • I think my fanwanking skills are up to this challenge. The significant change in the world prior to picking up the fully charged Sun Stone in 2300 AD is obviously the rise of Lavos and the destruction of the world. I suggest that the Sun Stone absorbed energy from Lavos's planet-frying rain of lasers, pushing it the rest of the way.
    • The Sun Stone requires to be fully energised, 100%, in order to do anything. If Lavos was necessary to charge it, why can you complete the quest and also defeat Lavos in the past?
      • Same way Robo exists after you kill Lavos and Lucca still remembers a mother without legs. You time-travel with it, therefore it has Ripple Effect Proof Existence.
      • Robo can easily exist after you kill Lavos - robots weren't specifically created because of the apocalypse, and Robo could have existed in the good future. The characters do have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, but this is possibly a feature of Marle's pendant (and therefore also the Time Key, which was designed to mirror the pendant's functions).
        • It's more just a feature of temporal mechanics as they exist in this game's universe. Robo exists because he time traveled, due to Time Traveller's Immunity; which is also why the party still has the Epoch. Whichever version of Robo was created in the Good Future vanishes from time at the exact same time that Robo first entered the Promethe Dome gate with the party. Which is kind of creepy, now that I think about it...
        • It's too bad for him that he's not from the original timetine. Time Bastard might be creepy in a sense, but it acts impartially, and since the person is sent to the Darkness Beyond Time, at least they don't suffer.
          • Explain how that doesn't protect Marle the first time?
    • What bothers me about the Sun Stone is that it required 65,002,300 years to charge up...but in 12,000BC it's already a known artifact, and people are aware of it needing millions of years to recharge. Did they find it (or produce it) out of nowhere, fully charged, in the heyday of the Magic Kingdom, and then use SCIENCE! to determine how long it would take for it to recharge?
      • Or did they use the power of Lavos, via the Mammon Machine, to charge it the first time and...Wait, did I just posit proof of the 'Lavos rain o' death charges Sunstone' theory? Regular old sunlight takes forever and a half, but the power of Lavos...Wow. Circular fanwanking. Ok, that sounded worse than I intended.
      • Well, maybe it just needs a huge amount of energy. The Sun is the biggest provider of energy, although Lavos having a fit in 1999 AD counts as a few million years of sunlight? Also, the Sun Stone might have recharged since the very beginning of time when it's found and used by Zeal.
    • The problem with this question is that it assumes that the Sun Stone could only have begun its existence at 65,000,000 BC. While that is the farthest back the game allows you to go, it is not necessarily the beginning of time. There could be an addtional 100,000,000 years before that point where the Sun Stone could be sitting around somewhere gathering energy until someone in Zeal stumbles upon it and starts making shit out of it.
  • Why doesn't Crono's mom care when he has strange guests come into his room and sleep with him? 2 girls in his bed? That's fine. A robot and a Frog? Kinkerific! 3 girls coming and sleeping in his bed when he's not there and possibly videotaping themselves for him? I'm just pulling that out of my ass for fun! But, the point is, he is a young teen and his mom seems to not care about him having strange people she's never met stay overnight in his bed.
    • This is the woman who responded to Crono's saving the entire span of history with "that's nice dear, but I wish you'd spend more time around the house". She is clearly not mentally stable.
      • Touche.
    • Two girls: Double Standard. I can't explain Magus (too old), Frog (furry, even if he doesn't have fur), or Robo (robosexual) so easily.
    • She's not surprised because Crono is just doing the sort of things she used to do when she was his age. Crono's mom was clearly a perverse sexual deviant in her youth. You wonder why Crono's dad is never around? He's not dead, she just doesn't know who he is among her myriad of conquests.
      • One would think that guys with spiky red hair would stand out in her memory, even in their universe.
      • There is the possibility that he was bald at the time...Someone needs to write this fan fiction already.
      • Oh, really? How come when you introduce her to Ayla, she berates her for not dressing the way that a proper young lady should? I cast my vote for the not mentally stable theory.
      • She could be both.
  • When Dalton visits the Earthbound village to abduct Schala, how come everyone buy into his threats to kill her, when he needs her alive to power the Mammon machine?
    • Everyone knows Dalton is so stupid that he might actually do such a thing.
  • Why is Magus allowed into the 600AD Guardia Castle after joining the party? That doesn't necessarily absolve him of his crimes in that era now, does it? If i recall correctly, he can even walk up to the King of Guardia without so much as a single guard being alerted,
    • It may be that no one knows what Magus looks like. Cyrus didn't survive their meeting, and Frog may simply never have told anyone, which is easy to believe based on the fact that none of the castle NPCs seem to know what happened to Cyrus.
      • Ah, but when you bring the Rainbow Shell to the castle in 600AD, Queen Leene automatically addresses the lead member of your party. "I ask for the sake of Magus..."
        • This editor assumes that since Magus joins you in the time period before he became their enemy, he never became the leader of the Mystics. Note that if you visit the place his statue was after his joining, it's Ozzie instead.
          • IIRC, the statue actually changes after you defeat Magus in 600 AD.
          • That raises more questions about the time travel logic than it answers about the guards/royalty overlooking Magus.
    • The answer here is simple. They've been fighting Magus' armies, not Magus himself. Nobody's ever seen Magus or even knows his name. In the DS version, nobody on the Guardian side of things ever uses the name Magus; they simply call him "The Fiendlord". When you bring him to the castle later in the game, the party probably just gives them his name, knowing that it doesn't mean anything to them.
  • How the hell do the people in 2300AD survive for over 300 years with no food whatsoever?
    • The inns-in-a-booth, whatever they're called. Apparently, staying in one fixes you up completely, including a dose of nutrition, which will keep you alive nicely, albeit with an empty stomach.
      • They're called Enertrons. At least, in the DS version.
        • They're also called Enertrons in the SNES version.
        • Word of God states the above is true—they are nanite powered devices that rejuvenates and repairs the body, injects artificial nutrients to stave off death (but you'd be left in a very weakened state), and keep a person alive with minor modifications to their philology to repair and heal you. They do have water however so they stay alive using the Enertrons (thus they can not fight as it is indicated they are to weak) and sipping water slowly.
  • Why do you need a Chrono Trigger? You already have the Epoch, which is a time machine!
    • The Epoch is tied to the gates. It can only go to places the gates can go, and since time passes at the same rate on each end of the gate (i.e. if you were to enter the Millennial Fair gate in 1001, you would go to 601), you are required to have a form of time travel not tied to the gates to pull stuff like this off.
      • But the Gate in 12000 BC was disabled - if the Epoch used the Gates, it wouldn't be able to visit 12000 BC unless you found another Gate or managed to open that one again. The Epoch possibly time-warps by traveling faster than light - it's time-transition involves going really fast, after all. Additionally, all forms of transport to 1999 AD lead directly to the Day of Lavos. That exact day. The Gates are usually otherwise relative, but absolute time-travel does exist. Also, there is no Gate actually leading to the End of Time - they all lead to other eras, but accidentally send you there.
      • The gate in 12000 BC was just blocked from use. It still existed. Epoch doesn't use the gates per se, but is tied into the gate system such that it can only go to times where there are gates. The day of Lavos is a special case because the only gate going to 1999 goes to that exact day (the only two ways to get there are by gate and Epoch), and it only goes to that exact day so the party can stop Lavos (the Entity is one convienent SOB). Also, absolute time travel is possible (Balthazar had a time machine that was free to travel to any time, gate or no, in chrono cross), but Epoch was tied to the gates. Oh, and technically all gates lead to the end of time.
      • If Balthasar has a time machine which can travel to any time, why did he only give the party the severely-limited Epoch? Also, no Gates lead to the End of Time. The End of Time was first reached by accident, and the party presumably got Gaspar to redirect them whenever they're in a portal.
        • Because the Epoch was built by the Bathazar that was sent to the bad future. He had limited knowldege of time travel and, presumably, didn't know you could build a machine not tied into the gate system. The Balthazar who was sent to the good future (after Lavos was defeated) had the resources of Chronopolis at his command and was able to build one not tied to the gates. In fact, after Lavos' defeat, the gates don't work any more anyway, so he wouldn't be able to make one like the Epoch (the only thing that doesn't work here is they are able to use the Epoch after the gates closed. Maybe it had an imprint of the gate system on it? Either way, I assume it doesn't continue working for long since a dismantled Epoch can be found in the Dead sea in Chrono Cross). And what I meant before was that you can access the End of Time through any gate, so it is a part of the gate system and the Epoch can redirect there.
          • The Gates should still work after the defeat of Lavos - they're created by Lavos, but should be self-sustaining once created (unless this is a case of No Ontological Inertia). Remember that everyone got sent through the Gates at the end. Also, in This Troper's opinion, all time travel goes through some sort of vortex. The Gates are locked pathways through the vortex which are only "wide" enough to take three people through at a time. When four goes through, they fall out of the pathway and drift through the vortex to the "point of least resistance" - the End of Time. They then tell Gaspar to pull them from all the pathways to the End of Time, which is why they end up there for every Gate afterwards. The Epoch, however, is an actual vehicle. If it's using the Gate system, it should be able to easily leave a pathway while in the vortex and go somewhen else - perhaps simply by taking a fourth person on the Epoch. (Also, if the Epoch runs on Gates, why can't it go to Lana's accident? There's a Gate going there.)
            • No, no, no. The Gates were not created by Lavos - the Entity created them so that the party can stomp on him.
            • The Red Gate is...different. The regular gates seem to send you a certain amount of time from the End of Time, rather than to an absolute point in time, causing a San Dimas Time effect. But there do exist special cases, like the Bucket Gate and the Red Gate, that send you to specific points in time.
            • As the previous poster stated, the Red Gate is different and not connected to the Gate system that the Epoch is tied into. And while the Gates do stay open for a while after Lavos' defeat, it is shown in the ending that they don't continue to stay open. Crono's mom falls into one and it closes so they can't go after her through the Gate, so they have to take the Epoch. Also, the Gates were created by the Entity to be used by the party to defeat Lavos, so while they exist due to Lavos, he doesn't create them. (Although he CAN create time gates like the one that pulled Chronopolis into the past, he didn't create the ones in Chrono Trigger.)
            • As a side note about the Epoch leaving the paths: it might be a vehicle, but it's on a track. It can't divert to 1980 AD from a Gate going from 1000 AD to 2300 AD any more than a train going from LA to Las Vegas can divert and end up in Seattle.
            • The Epoch may be on a track, but it can also fly, unlike most trains. Getting to 1980 AD from the 1000-2300 AD Gate, as in your example, should be as simple as leaving the set track (by taking a fourth person), then activating the flight systems and flying to 1980 AD. To avoid the requirement of a Chrono Trigger, simply use the 65,000,000-12,000 BC Gate, take four people, and fly to about four hours before you visited the Ocean Palace (or, preferably, fly to the Ocean Palace and park the Epoch behind the Mammon Machine). When your other selves arrive, slip in and steal Crono. Then take off in the Epoch again. Easy.
            • Metaphorgotten, much? The train thing is a figure of speech. The fact that it's got wings and a rocket engine has nothing to do with its time-travel capabilities.
            • Exactly. After all, Magus can fly. He can't just enter a gate and fly to 1980.
            • It just occurred to me that I could have avoided this whole argument about the Epoch's time travel abilities if I had just pointed out that the Chrono Trigger can freeze time and the Epoch can't. Oh well, live and learn.
            • Why do you need to freeze time? Why not just move Crono out of the way? You wouldn't need a clone either, in this case.
            • So your plan is to go to when Lavos is unleashing the the most devastating attack in the entire game, including when you're fighting him, one that can oneshot Chrono who is a walking god, and try to push him out of the way without getting killed yourself? That doesn't seem too smart.
            • Crono's a walking god now? In any case, yes, pushing him out of the way is absurd. That's why pulling was invented. You don't even need to go near - there's also a reason why ropes were invented. Lasso Crono immediately before Lavos launches the ultra-beam of doom, and yank him out of the way. Easy. Oh, and also - how do you know Magus can't just fly to 1980? He's never tried.
            • You can walk through the game easily just fighting with Chrono and not doing anything with anyone else. I've done it. So, yes, he is a walking god. As if Lavos can't re-aim at him. Either way, it's moot because, as we have seen, time travel doesn't work that way in Chrono Trigger. And no offense, but the idea that something that can fly is magically not bound to the rules of time travel that everything else is is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life. You can put wings on a train, but if it's secured to the track, it ain't taking off. If Magus could go to any time he felt like, we wouldn't see him dicking around in 12000 BC in the ending. He knew most of the gates were closing. He would have went to the end of time, looked through time for Schala, and flew to where she was.
            • Firstly, you've misread something somewhere: being able to fly does not render you exempt from the "rules of time travel" in any way. These rules you refer to merely restrict Gates, causing them to function as a "time-track" between two relative fixed-times. Flight does not immediately disable the time-track functionality of a Gate, much as train-wings do not allow track-secured trains to fly. If, however, you had a winged train, and then removed it from the track, it could fly, right? Taking four people on a Gate's track will remove them from the track. Since the Epoch apparently utilises the Gate system, taking four people on the Epoch will free it from the Gate-tracks and allow it to fly to whenever it wants to go to. Secondly, if Lavos can "re-aim" at Crono after the use of a rope, why didn't Lavos fire the ultra-beam of plot-death at everyone else present immediately after erasing Crono? Thirdly, we don't know if Magus can go to any time or not - he never actually leaves the Gate-tracks of time, due to only traveling alone or with the restricted-to-three-people party who are specifically avoiding leaving said tracks. So, free time-travel cannot be tested for Magus.
              • Point by point. Firstly, no I haven't. I said "Magus can fly and he can't go wherever he wants to" and the response was "how do you know? he hasn't tried". Taking four people into a Gates-track does not "remove them from the track". If we're talking about this in terms of trains, it flicks the switch to put you on another track that goes to the End of Time. That's the conservation of time theorem. Since the Epoch uses the Gate system, taking an extra passenger will just make it impossible to travel to any point other than the End of Time. Secondly, probably because Lavos is one of the most epically stupid villains in video game history, he has nearly infinite control of time, but doesn't kill Chrono when he's a kid or Gate the party to the Earkness Beyond Time. Not thinking is something Lavos is guilty of, in this game and the next. Alternatively, it's because a shot capable of disintegrating Crono drained him too badly to do it again. Helps explain why he's so much easier to kill during any encounter except that one. He would see you push Crono and adjust his aim so it hit Crono anyway. Thirdly, that point is a way to counter the idea that flying lets you go to any time you want. Magus can fly and he obviously can't.
                • Firstly, you did miss the other segments of my argument - for Magus to fly through time, he'd need to leave the Gate-tracks after entering a Gate, and not merely possess the ability to fly. Secondly, if Lavos could aim the direction of the plot-death-beam, he'd just sweep it back and forth over everybody, whether he's stupid or not. The beam is locked in a certain direction, and removing Crono as the beam fires would result in the beam missing everyone as it fires at where Crono was. Because, as you point out, Lavos is stupid, he won't realise that Crono's going to move until it's too late. Lavos can't fire a second beam, at Crono or otherwise, because, as you suggested, he's drained after firing just one. Thirdly, of course Magus can't fly to any time he wants - he's on the Gate-tracks, after all. There's no way he's tried to fly through a Gate while carrying three entities of differing temporal origins, because that's ridiculous. The Epoch, however, is fully capable of flying while carrying four entities of differing temporal origins, although Ayla might need to sit on Robo's lap.
                • As for Lavos, as I've said, the point is moot anyway because you can't go back and stop this the way you are suggesting. You are overlooking the fact that getting "derailed" as it were doesn't free you to go anywhere. Just off the "track" in all directions is the Darkness Beyond Time. There has never been any established way to actually achieve "derailment" other than using a Chrono Trigger to make a one time gate, or, in Schala's case, Lavos using his infinate mastery of time to send her there. (See how stupid he is that he sends her there and not Crono. What a moron. I know it's moot, but isn't it a little weird to say that not using the plot death beam on everyone could be not caused by stupidity in light of this piece of brilliance? :P). But even getting to the DBT is not a good idea because there's no escape other than going back through the gate the Chrono Trigger makes. And, as I said, loading 4 people into the Epoch wouldn't free it to go anywhere. It would make it impossible to go anywhere except the end of time, as the conservation of time theorum states, you will be pulled to the end of time if you try to use the Gate system with 4 or more people.
                • None of ANY of this takes a paradox into account. The whole point of using the clone of Crono is to make it look like Crono is dead to everyone present.
                • OBJECTION! The prosecution is attempting to apply the trope, "Tricked-Out Time", to the plans of the party. However, this is impossible. Consider the actions of the party upon utilising the Chrono Trigger - they arrive, clone in inventory, immediately before Crono is vaporised. They place the clone in Crono's place, sure, but they do not take the real Crono back with them. The real Crono is merely shoved off to the side, making room for the clone. All those present should have seen Crono, off to the side of the plotdeath-beam, as well as the clone being vaporised at that moment. As to how Crono arrived on the mountain, the defense points out that the party definitely headed to the mountain - this is fixed, due to Time Traveler's Immunity. If Crono had not been hit by the beam, he'd have come with the rest of the party, correct? Therefore, Crono actually walked up the mountain with everyone else. The flashy lighting and stuff is due simply to artistic license.
                • They arrive, clone in hand, to a place that's frozen in time, place the Chrono clone in it's path, then run off through the Gate they arrived through with the original Crono. It was stated in the dialogue that the area was frozen in time, and if Chrono survived, they wouldn't have had any reason to climb Death Peak. So if Chrono survived from that point on, he'd just live long enough to see Time Bastard wipe his party when they next time travel. If he hadn't died, they would never have had any reason to go there, so even though the party we saw still would, his party would be wiped out by Time Bastard and he'd have no clue what is going on. He wouldn't have climbed Death Peak on his own and wouldn't be at the top when they came from the portal if it worked the way you suggest.
                • Regardless of your argument, the fact remains that the party did not take the original Crono through the Trigger-gate - as I stated, they simply pushed him aside and placed the clone. The remainder of my explanation is merely an attempt to justify the party still going to Death Peak, despite Crono's survival - Time Traveler's Immunity means they still go to Death Peak, but Crono comes with them.
                • No. Crono's party would all die when Time Bastard got them and Chrono would be standing there, scratching his head. He wouldn't have a party to travel with. In either case, we never see any of the party member's actually step through a Gate to go back to Death Peak, and Marle's dialogue afterward wouldn't make sense if Crono had traveled with them.
                • Paradox doesn't exist in the Chrono series (except one possible mistake near the beginning of Chrono Trigger). The reason they don't save Chrono like the other poster suggested is that they can't, plain and simple.
                • ...So wait, how is it that a wing and propulsion system designed to move you around in an atmosphere suddenly equal the ability to traverse time at one's will (assuming you've 'jumped the tracks')? I'm not really seeing where the logic is.
                    • I always thought Lavos was suppose to be the blind, idiot god, because Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?. That was kind of his thing. He was a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere that only did what it needed to survive. Concepts like killing Chrono as a child wouldn't come to it because it didn't really need to. It's a giant bug, of course it's stupid. I think that's what they where going for. It's not trying to kill everyone out of any sense of malice, it's doing it to live, which is what Chrono Cross focused on. Also, traveling through air does not equal traveling through the fourth dimension. Those are completely different methods of transportation.
                    • I never meant to imply that Lavos should be smart, just that he is an idiot. I don't think admitting he's an idiot in any way depreciates enjoyment of this awesome game.
                    • It's AAALLLLLLLL very simple. They couldn't just go back and save Chrono because that would create a time paradox. Say, Frog, Marle, and Robo were your party at Death Peak, and Chrono, Frog, and Ayla were your party at Chrono's death. If they simply went back in time and shoved Chrono out of the way, they have the problem of Schala now having to teleport Chrono, two Frogs, Ayla, Marle, and Robo out of the Ocean Palace. Not to mention the fact that they have a spare Frog, Marle, and Robo now. The whole thing is just one giant mess. The purpose of the Chrono Trigger was to completely avoid all of this. Now, they go to a point RIGHT BEFORE Chrono dies, where time is frozen. There, they swap Chrono with the dummy. Their work done, the Chrono Trigger brings the party, with Crono, back to Death Peak. Hence Chrono's confusion. He was about to be vaporized, now he's sitting on some mountain in the future. Chrono never died. Everyone just THOUGHT he did.
    • The "derailment" argument is on the right track but uses the wrong frame of reference. A brief primer on the development of the Epoch is here, in order:
  1. The Epoch, as created by Belthassar, only had the ability to traverse in one dimension: Time (T-Axis).
  2. When upgraded by Dalton, it then gains the ability to move in Spatially (The X, Y, and Z-Axes). This upgrade is limited, however, to motion in the lower Troposhpere. However, it is not this limitation that is of concern to us here.

As mentioned above, the upgraded Epoch can move throughout time in the overworld. However, the events in question happened in the Enclosed, Undersea Palace. The bolded word is key. Sure, the Epoch can travel through time and air, but the one time where it is seen breaking through something solid, it can't fly again afterwards. Note that it may be possible to use the original Epoch's function of Zero-Point Time Travel to breach the Mammon Chamber, yet to do so would require:

  1. Refitting the Epoch for underwater travel.
  2. Actually locating the exact place the battle took place in all 3 dimensions (I'm assuming they have time down pat).
  3. If the battle site is deeper than the current ocean floor, weaponry that could "carve" an Epoch-sized hole to the site.

And that all assumes that:

  1. The Mammon Chamber is large enough for the Epoch to begin with.
  2. The area where the Epoch lands isn't already displaced by Lavos.
    • So, for everyone up there sprouting about the Conservation of Time Theorem that Gaspar goes on about when you first meet him at the End of Time...why didn't Chrono, Frog, the third party member, and Magus all get blasted THERE instead of to the Age of Magic when the gate opened in Magus's keep? Chrono from 1,000 AD, Frog from 600 AD, the third party member either being from 1,000 AD (Marle/Lucca) or 2,300 AD (Robo), and Magus from 12,000 BC. Very, very differing temporal origins, those.
      • Because the party took a different gate than Magus did. The party got sent to the 65 million BC gate and Magus to the 12000 BC gate.
    • I think everyone is woefully overcomplicating this. As was stated briefly above, the Time Egg does more than travel through time. It travels to a very specific point in time, and then freezes time, and THEN, most importantly, immediately slingshots back to where it started. At no point in this journey is time allowed to move. This is important because of the giant Eldritch Abomination in the room that will vaporize you the moment you try to push, pull or otherwise move Crono out of the way if time is not frozen. Whether there is or is not another way to reach that point in time is irrelevant; even if there is, it would be suicide for the party to willingly throw themselves into the blast, and on the offchance they actually managed to succeed without getting caught in it, Lavos has already demonstrated he can TPK them without much effort. What's to stop him from just doing it again?
  • So, Dalton can shoot giant fireballs, right? Why doesn't he do that when you fight him?
    • He's too busy being a moron.
  • Why is Marle using a fire spell on the cover of the DS instruction booklet?
    • Concept art?
    • If I remember correctly, it was the same on the original SNES instruction booklet, with Marle being Fire and Lucca being Ice for their Antipode/Sword Slice attack against an unseen in-game enemy.
    • Some pre-release pictures show Crono having "orbs" of fire, water, light, and shadow rather than having a single affinity. Some people speculate that a character could "charge" a particular set of elements and use that type of magic. It was dropped for some reason.
    • This is simple. She isn't using a fire spell on Crono's sword. She, Crono and Frog are using the Triple Tech Arc Impulse. That's why Frog is kneeling on the ground; Crono just leapfrogged off of him. The energy on Crono's sword in that move alternates between blue and orange; it just happens to be orange at that instant. Now, why Frog is there for that particular enemy (Heckran), why Crono is in that particular place (Death Peak, judging by the snow), and why Marle has six fingers? I have no clue.
    • Oh wait, the Dimensional Vortex has an enemy that looks like the Hekran in a new snowy area. So, justified. Though using Arc Impulse on him is a hilariously bad idea (it's an ice technique, and the mosnter is a snowbeast...)
    • Who says Marle doesn't have six fingers? I don't recall any character ever saying "Hi Nadia, how are you doing? Glad to see you still have five fingers on each hand!" ;)
  • Where would the gate in 2300 AD have led if Robo didn't join? All other regular gates (non-standard gates include the 1999 gate and the red gate) come in pairs.
    • The Proto Dome is almost exactly over Medina when time-jumping with the Epoch. While most Gates are near their counterparts, some do drift...But Pillars opposite to each other are [supposedly] linked, meaning Medina's Gate goes to 65,000,000 B.C. and Proto would have to go the Day of Lavos (which would make for a really short, but hilarious game). Gaspar must have isolated that Pillar in bucket for the Player's protection.
  • Chrono Trigger seems to have adopted a time-travel equation in which time travel is always relative. For instance, if you returned to 1000 AD from 600 AD, on July 6, and spent a night at the inn, then traveled back to 600 AD, it would be July 7. Otherwise, your party would be traveling back to the exact same day in 600 AD, every single time. While it makes sense not to have your achievements undone every time, it leads one to believe that every time period exists parallel to each other, and since the gates were created before Crono or the party were even born, the fact that they arrived on certain days, say, to fight Magus's armies, is equated to pure luck. Over-analyzation, much?
    • Presumably, the gates (except for the "Day of Lavos" one) move through time, just like the player. You don't travel to the 600 AD time period itself, per se, you travel to the gate that happens to exist in 600 AD at the moment, and you end up at whichever specific time the 600 AD gate happens to be sitting in at the moment.
  • Why can a few kids with no "special" or "unique" physical fighting styles, and limited, newly acquired magical powers, single-handedly fight Ozzie's armies on the bridge, while scores of highly-trained, heavily-armored knights get one-shotted? On that note, it appears that Ozzie has almost broken through the barriers on the bridge and was on the brink of winning. Since 1000 AD has not been effected in any negative way, one has to assume that the humans DID win on that day, whether Crono and company were present or not, despite how badly the knights seemed to have been losing.
    • Limited or not, those magical powers are just about the only thing that actually hurts the troops Ozzie deploys to the bridge. That's an advantage they have that the knights do not.
    • I have a theory of my own that seems to make sense (to me at least) when taken into account in certain games. It's my "Normal vs Super" theory: normal humans/creatures/etc. have a very low HP count and attack/magic power, which is obviously evident with creatures at the very start of the game. This would also be true for the soldiers, in a sense. Though they would most likely have a higher-than-normal HP count and whatnot, it would still be only 40 or 50 or so. Crono and gang have the stats that they do through exposure to the elements (super monsters, magic, time travel) that alter them and have them gain more experience in a different way. Or you could just chalk it up to being the Chosen Ones, since that works too. And like the person above said, they have magic, the soldiers don't; my explanation's pretty much for everything else.
    • Also, the reason Ozzie's near-victory doesn't affect 1000 AD is because the Fiends lost the war anyway historically, so, obviously, the party is not required to do anything to ensure that. Presumably, without the party to get in his way, Magus succeeds in summoning Lavos and gets beaten, just as we saw in the Ocean Palace. Lavos levels Magus' castle (If I recall correctly, it's on a small island), but doesn't bother staying around long enough to do much more than that.
      • In that case, why does the act of Magus getting gated away from Lavos, instead of merely being killed, result in Medina's Magus statue being replaced by Ozzie's?
        • That's fairly obvious. Assuming Magus summons Lavos and Lavos lays waste to his Castle, Ozzie dies there too, since he'd probably be nearby if he wasn't busy tending to intruders (you, obviously). When you meet him later in the game at his Fort, he accuses Magus of betraying the Mystics. Maybe he spread the word to all who would listen after the events at Magus' Castle that Magus was using the Mystics all along (technically absolutely true), resulting in Magus getting 0% Approval Rating by the Mystics in that timeline?
  • Why is Lucca's reprogramming of Robo never brought up after the fact? The other R-series treat him as a freak and anomaly because of this reprogramming, and Robo goes into angst because of this. I'm just wondering why Lucca never brings this up.
    • Because she doesn't reprogram him, only fix him. It either was already reprogrammed or it's hard drive was harmed before they met, thus removing Mother Brain's previous reprogramming
    • But she does reprogram him, or at least fix it so that he won't attack them. To wit:

Lucca: Hmm... I think I can fix it.
Marle: What!? Fix it? What if it attacks us like the other ones?
Lucca: I'll make sure it won't. Robots don't attack of their own free will, you know. They only do it because humans make them that way.

    • That suggests some amount of tinkering to remove any "Kill All Humans" programming.
    • I kinda figured the Kill All Humans programming put into Robo and the rest of the R-Series was the product of Mother Brain. Atropus goes back to being friendly after her control is removed, so all Lucca really did was restore Robo's original programming.
  • Why didn't the Chrono Crew bring food from the earlier years to feed the starving people from the future? The jerky the crew got from the chef was able to feed the front lines.
    • There's a good possibility they thought 'why bother?', since the entire premise of their adventures is to stop that future from existing in the first place, not to try and rebuild an already-destroyed world. They initially sought to find food for the people before they knew what had actually happened to the future. Still, it would've been a nice gesture to bring food, anyway.
    • It'd be a hollow gesture, at best. These people are starving, alive only because of the Entertron (which will eventually break down). Any food they bring would last a good five seconds and only end up reminding these poor people, some of whom have never actually eaten, that there is nothing left for them. Besides that, food is only the most obvious of their concerns: physically and emotionally, the future village is beyond repair. Crono and Co. know full well that the planet simply cannot sustain human life any longer. The only way to save these people is to preventing Lavos from emerging in the first place.
  • Why does no one seems to care about the fact that Crono & Co randomly decide they're going to save the world? Yes, this is kinda common in RPGs, but Chrono Trigger takes this to a whole new level. Lucca's teleport malfunction and they have to go save Marle. Ok. Then, when they do it, they are sent to the future instead of the present. It's still okay since this is justified. And then...they discover that the world went kaboom. Now is the part that bugs me. First, it would be destroyed more than 900 years after their deaths, so...not their problem. Second and much more importantly, what makes they think they can do that? They're just 3 random teenagers with no actual battle experience whatsoever, trying to beat a gigantic larva...thing. I'd say that's obviously a bit out of their league (not to mention, it's never explained why or how they know how to fight. We can assume that Marle and Crono had some kind of training with bows / swords, but why would they do that is completely unknown. For Fun?). It wouldn't be so bad if, later, we discovered that they were the Chosen Ones and the reason for that, like we do in Chrono Cross, which would be as random as Trigger if not. But...no, simply no.
    • With the ability to travel through time, the ability to change the future by affecting the past, and knowledge of horrible, horrible events, Comes Great Responsibility. They know about the Gates and have a way to use them, so Marle's conscience won't allow her to just do nothing, the knowledge would haunt her for the rest of her life if she didn't at least try. And she knows that the future can be changed, it happened to her, after all.
    • So, what you're saying is that, because it's not their problem, they should just....ignore it? When they know about a serious problem and have some capacity to stop it? That they should just ignore The End of the World as We Know It and let millions of people be slaughtered and allow the destruction of the future and all of humanity because it's only going to happen centuries down the line? No. No. No. Fuck that noise. They can stop it. They know when it's going to happen, they know that they can traverse time to work against it, and they know that if they do nothing, it's going to happen regardless. They may not be able to stop Lavos, but if they do nothing, then Lavos wins anyway. As the quote goes, all evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing. They have the chance to work against Lavos and prevent the apocalypse. The only correct, right, and moral thing to do is to stop it.
        • I actually sort of agree with the first guy. I mean, I know that in 5 billion years the sun is going to expand to engulf the Earth and destroy all life on it. I'm not doing anything to stop it. The time scale is different, but the principle is the same.
      • It's funny how much of what you just said can be applied to real life. No wait, not funny... Depressing.
          • RE:[1] Er, no, it's not. It's not the same thing at all. You can't stop the sun from expanding to engulf the earth, it's inevitable. You also don't have the ability to travel through time. Even if you did, you still wouldn't have the capacity to do anything about it. It's a non-issue. Stopping Lavos, on the other hand, is entirely possible.
      • Except, as far as they know Lavos' awakening is inevitable. They're going around time on the off chance that they can stop something in the future (that is to all appearances just as inevitable as the sun's expansion) from happening in an era that is so far removed from them that they have no stake in it. And lastly, if I did have the ability to travel in time to witness the sun's expansion, I still wouldn't care do do anything to stop it, because the ability to travel to 5 billion years in the future doesn't change the fact that it's something that I have no stake in at all because it will happen far after my death. In the same way when you ask someone what they would do with a time machine, they'd usually change something within living memory. Very few people's response would be "Go back in time and give antibiotics out during the black plague." People on a whole only care about events in the near past or soon to come future. Time travel wouldn't change that. So I still agree with the first guy. It is completely unrealistic to expect that the average person would be on board with running around through time to save people in an era far removed from the time they live when they could just go back to their lives and never have any danger about it. That said it would be a pretty crappy game if they just gave up and went home.
      • On that note, they knew they were severely outclassed by Lavos at the beginning, so they, using their new-found knowledge of time travel, were actually looking for an alternative method of getting rid of Lavos to avoid a direct confrontation. They originally tried stopping Magus from creating it, until they realised that Magus was only summoning Lavos. So, they were eventually forced into a direct confrontation since they had no other options, but by then, they had managed to become powerful enough and gained enough allies for that option to become viable.
      • The way that Crono and friends avoid the Somebody Else's Problem trope is one of the main reasons that Chrono Trigger is among my favorite games. The party comes off as real heroes because they aren't trying to get revenge on someone for destroying their Doomed Hometown, nor are they even trying to stop The Empire from taking over or anything like that. They find a problem that literally has no effect on them (in Robo's case, destroying Lavos might even be actively harmful to his existence) and they decide that they need to fix it anyway. The message of Chrono Trigger is thus a bit more interesting than most of its contemporaries; rather than being thrust into a heroic role by their circumstances, they choose to do something heroic (and in Crono's case, temporarily die for that cause) just because they have the means (time travel).
    • Beyond that, Crono's party had to do what they did. Nobody who knew about Lavos lived during his emergence. The only reason they knew about Lavos' power is because they saw a message someone made after the fact. Even if some other random time-traveller hit 2300, they'd have no real way of surviving, let along stopping, the Day of Lavos. With their combination of knowledge, magic, and time-traveling ability, Crono's group was the one force capable of stopping Lavos from destroying the world.
    • Uh, pardon? No battle experience? So, fighting a horde of man-eating monsters, a spine-showering aberration, a battle-tank that spews fire, shoots LASERS, and was more or less made for assault, in addition to the super machines and monstrously strong freaks in the future doesn't count as "actual battle experience"? Sorry, that just doesn't make sense.
  • When Lucca's mom was being dragged toward the machine that crippled her because her skirt got caught in the conveyer belt, why didn't she just take her skirt off? It seems to this troper that saving your life takes priority over modesty, but maybe she just really liked that skirt.
    • Maybe the clothes were resistent enough so they didn't rip easily or the scissors and knifes were out of reach. Anyway, both Lara and Lucca were panicking that moment.
    • What is she, a trollop?! No sir! Either her little girl is going to become a sudden genius or she's losing her feet. She's not about to expose her legs for her toes.
    • Maybe it was a dress, so she couldn't take the skirt off.
    • This Troper wears skirts, and can attest to the fact that some skirts are hard to quickly remove - and outright impossible to remove if something is stretching the material the wrong way (kilts, to name one type of "skirts", are often held together by buckles - you need to pull at the cloth to undo the buckle). And with some types of cloth being impossible to tear by hand, you are in deep trouble if your skirt gets stuck and you don't have a knife or scissors at hand.
    • In real life, people get their clothing tangled in heavy machinery and are pulled in, with resulting gruesome limb and life destroying injuries, all the time. This is the main reason people working professionally with heavy machinery are not allowed to wear loose clothing near the equipment at any time for any reason. It also tends to happen very quickly, much too fast to react. The 'slow drag' is very much a movie and video game trope, which, in video games, is partly justified in order to give the player a chance to react to and do something about it.
  • "Good morning Crono" is used in the advertising for the remake, but the new translation doesn't include the line. It's just odd to not include it in the first place ("Knock you all down" was kept in Dawn of Souls!), but when they use it in ads...
  • Okay, I get that you can only bring three people at a time through a gate. But why didn't they just use a ferrying system? Something along the lines of: the party travels to designated spot, the person with the gate key returns to the End of Time alone, they pick up two more people, rinse and repeat. That would have surely made their lives easier.
    • Perhaps the travellers need to be in the presence of the gate key when outside their own time period or the end of time. Perhaps if Ayla, for example, was left in 2300AD while Chrono took the key back to get the others, she would lose her time traveller's immunity, and time would rewrite itself around her disappearance. Just a thought.
    • That...makes a disturbing amount of sense. Lucca could have had time to make time keys, or at least some form of time-traveller-immunity-dispensing items after Lavos has been defeated, so she could bring Marle's ancestors/decendant to 1000 AD for the party, but was unable to do it on the fly while they were trying to whack Lavos.
      • It also explains why Marle was erased. She didn't have her pendant or gate key and the universe was trying to rewrite itself based on the changes made, taking her with it.
  • You know, Crono was forgiven rather easily for his jailbreak and alleged crimes after the trial. Granted, he was fleeing for his life from an unjust execution, but he slaughtered boatloads of guards, destroyed the secret weapon, and walked on the Chancellor's back. You'd think those guards' families would raise a stink about this, but they all seem to have been forgotten easily enough. Crono and Lucca's parents didn't even seem upset by their children's criminal status.
    • You know that the Chancellor was really a descendant of the Yakra you fought in the beginning of the game looking for revenge for his ancestor, right? Talking to some of the soldiers in the palace after Yakra XIII is defeated reveals that the armored guards the "Chancellor" hired were also monsters in disguise.
  • Okay, why in the WORLD don't they use the Epoch laser after they down the Blackbird with it? They know what button activates it, and it is powerful enough to CUT THE WING IN HALF EASILY. So they have a weapon that was added to the Epoch, and they NEVER USE IT AGAIN. You're telling me that they chose to FLY STRAIGHT AT LAVOS instead of USING A DEATH-RAY? Also, why not use it on any other enemy they come across? Did it just never occur to them or something? I would be SHOCKED if it wasn't strong enough to at least damage the black omen.
    • Alright, but implement this in the game how? In-game triple tech? Maybe that's what the omega beam, or whatever Lucca/Magus/Robo's triple tech is called, really is. Cut scene? Doesn't solve the underlying problem; you still end up with "Why didn't they use it here, here, here, and here" if you use it a finite number of times less than the number of times it would take to become boring and overused. MAYBE you could push a button on the world map, have the Epoch fire at the only thing floating at the same height (the Black Omen), and then have a cutscene where the weapon breaks as an Easter egg, but then, is it really worth the effort? No, the only solution here is a minigame. Don't get me wrong, it would be fun to take a break from your RPG and play galaga for a few minutes, the Golden Saucer was my favorite part of FF 7, but I think that's just asking for too much.
    • Because they would have fought back? Strong as the laser was, I don't see it punching through Lavos, let alone killing it, and once they get their shot, destruction rains from the heavens. As for the Black Omen - what makes you think it didn't have anti-air weaponry?
    • It might have been a one-shot only thing. The first blast utterly drains the battery and only gives the Epoch enough juice to fly from then on?
  • The whole BC/AD thing. Perhaps a bit of Translation Convention, but given that the Guardian Line existed for 33 generations in year 1000, I would think that Year Zero would be expressed as The First Year Guardian Reign (GY - Guardian Year).
    • Gamers are morons?
    • Do we know what religion, if any, Guardia follows? Possibly, they had their own Jesus Christ.
    • I Fan Wanked a bit and thought up what they could stand for: Before Crown and Aeon Dynastic.
  • So, Gaspar is capable of helping the players create an absolutely perfect Stable Time Loop to save Crono (see below). Okay...if he's so knowledgeable about time, then why doesn't he nudge the party into taking steps to make sure they don't cause a major paradox by defeating Lavos before he destroys the world, thereby preventing the heroes from finding out about everything in the first place and apparently creating the Dream/Time Devourerer?
    • ...Because if they defeat Lavos after it destroys the world, it's kind of a moot point by then? If your goal is to save the cheer- sorry, prevent the world from being destroyed, it seems kind of counter-intuitive to let the world be destroyed before you save it. Also, the only way Crono and crew find out they need to save the world is by finding it in ruins in the first place. None of the Gurus seem to recognise the band of heroes until well after they've romped through time, so there's no getting around the initial paradox.
  • So, if human beings no longer have magic, how do techs work? I mean, you can make a case for Lucca having built a flamethrower, and the sword techs being special moves, but please, explain the healing.
    • 1- Explain the enertron, potions (which they were able to manufacture all the way back in 65 million BC), and Guardia's miraculous hp/mp restoring chef. 2- They had magic, it was just dormant. Spekkio drew out latent power, he didn't (and couldn't) simply give it away. 3- The distinction between "tech" and "magic" seems somewhat intentionally blurry in the first place. Maybe techs aren't magic per se, by their definition, but for most practical purposes they are magic by our conception of it, just a lower-level sort of proto-magic.
  • Okay, so this isn't exactly a gaping plot hole, but it sort of bugs me: Crono, Lucca, and Frog hand Yakra a defeat in the Middle Ages. In the present day, his descendant plots revenge. My question: how exactly does he connect present-day Crono to the one who defeated his ancestor? Nobody knows who Crono, Lucca, or Frog are in the Middle Ages, so there's no family line to watch. If he had a physical description and/or a name to go on, his singling out of Crono as the one who humiliated his ancestor makes sense, if you assume he somehow knew about the time travel—but why would he? Now, if he had focused his ire on the Guardia line, he might go after Crono just for his association with Nadia, but it really seems that he's gunning for Crono in particular right from the start. Does this strike anyone else as somewhat odd?
    • Because Sir Crono is the one who defeated the monsters on the bridge during Ozzie's attack, saved the Queen with the aid of Sir Frog, and, together, they defeated the evil Fiendlord. Who the heck else is so famous, and has such awesome, spikey red hair? Otherwise, it's just a case of 'your ancestor kicked my ancestor's ass, so I'm-a revenge on your ass' type dealie.
      • But the only thing they had done at that point in the timeline was rescue Queen Leene. The characters only encounter repercussions for changes they've already made, not changes they will yet make (CT is admirably consistent about this). The trial was a direct result of Yakra's defeat and the real 600 A.D. chancellor setting up a criminal justice system, which gave present-day Yakra a motive and opportunity for revenge, but not much of an explanation for knowing who to go after in the first place. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think the only way it makes sense is if he wasn't after Crono specifically the first time around, he was off on some power trip and/or setting up the stage for his later scheme against the king, making the fact that Crono killed his ancestor just an ironic coincidence—he didn't know Crono from Fritz. He WOULD have figured it out by the time the second trial rolled around, of course.
      • One possibility - Dalton. If Dalton got sent to the present era a few years before 1000 A.D. he could have told present-day Yakkra about Crono and time travel, as part of his own bigger plans to get revenge on Crono and co. It makes the eventual overthrow of Guardia by a Dalton-lead Porre more believable if Dalton had actually had many years to prepare.
        • But it runs into the same "suffering repercussions for events they haven't yet played a role in" problem as before.
    • Short answer: he wasn't trying to exact vengeance on Crono, at least not at first. He was posing as the Chancellor to exact vengeance on the royal family; we seem him carrying this plot forward when the crew returns to the Castle later. No one knew who Crono, Lucca, or Frog were, but the surviving Mystics/Fiends from the Cathedrale would be able to relay their physical description and any other identifying information to the rest of the army. As vengeful as the Yakra line was, they could have made pictures or statues. Yakra XIII, hateful as he was, would have burned these images into his memory. So, cut to Marle's return, Yakra's going about his business as the chancellor, plotting his vengeance against the royal family, when HOLY SHIT, THAT GUY walks right in the door. He doesn't know how, he doesn't know why, but it doesn't matter because it's THAT GUY. He makes up a bullshit accusation to have him jailed, and when he's found innocent, whips up a bullshit excuse to have him briefly imprisoned, then tries to execute him anyway. He wasn't prepared for Crono; he's acting on kneejerk impulse here, and it shows in how poorly crafted the scheme actually is (the most blatant flaw being how he's going to explain to the king why he randomly executed a man who was found innocent).
    • Simpler explanation: Yakra XIII thinks that the Crono he meets in 1000 AD is the descendant of the Crono of 600 AD. The Yakra monsters pass on their name from father to son, so it's not hard for them to believe that Crono's family would do the same thing. The Yakra monsters also seem to have the same lifespan as humans (given that it's 13 generations for both races) so again, it's not hard for Yakra XIII to wrongly assume that there's a whole ancestral line of Cronos. Also note that if you go to the kitchen in 1000 AD and ask for the "Crono Special", you're told that it's named for a hero from the distant past. So apparently a lot of humans also think that there are two Cronos, and no one outside of Crono's own fellow heroes realize that both Cronos are in fact the same guy who's been travelling through time.
  • How is it that when Crono and company change something after going through a Gate, things STAY changed on future journeys through that Gate? Gates bring you to a SPECIFIC time. Therefore, when traveling through a Gate, wouldn't everything go back to the way they were the first time they entered the Gate?
    • Evidently, the Gates and the Epoch run on San Dimas Time. No, it doesn't really make much sense. The Chrono Compendium people put together an article you might prefer to the MST3K Mantra.
    • The Gates travel forwards in time, just like the player. You travel to wherever the gates happen to be at that particular moment.
  • So, we activate the Chrono Trigger. We go to freeze time with Lavos ready to kill Crono. Instead of placing the clone Crono, behead Lavos. Problem solved?
    • Time Egg, actually. We don't know much about it, which is why it's hard to say. Trying to kill Lavos in the Time Freeze would have been a very different act from rescuing Crono. As it was, they used Tricked-Out Time, and the event they changed would have appeared exactly the same once they departed and time "unfroze"—the Crono that is obliterated before his allies' horrified eyes is simply an identical doll rather than the original article. Had they killed Lavos, time would have unfroze with a very befuddled Schala and the others standing before an inexplicable Lavos corpse. That would affect their actions in the immediate aftermath and far beyond. That may well have been entirely antithetical to the Egg's purpose, even assuming it were possible to kill Lavos in such a fashion at all.
      • Well, it's not like killing Lavos on his Day wouldn't change the action of their past selves, being them in the future when looking at the recording of years in the past (still the past being their future). By preventing the day of Lavos, they prevented the actions their past selves took witnessing the Day Of Lavos footage.
        • They could otherwise freely change the past. But we don't know that the regular rules applied to the Time Egg—we rather have reason to believe they didn't. If it were possible to interact with the environment in the Time Freeze the same way they did everywhere else, why did they have to bother with the doll nonsense at all? Why not just grab Crono and run? But it was vital for them to get the doll, suggesting the "tricking out" part of the equation was absolutely necessary. They used this one-of-a-kind artifact to pull off a very unique feat, so speculating that they could have done something else with it by pointing to what they did elsewhere/when is on very shaky ground.
          • ....couldn't they behead Lavos and put an stuffed Lavos head in it's place, perhaps? That'd have Tricked-Out Time, I suppose.
            • Crono was set to be obliterated the moment they left the Time Freeze, and they replaced him with a doll. It was a trick that worked because the witnesses to the scene only had to mistake it for Crono in the one split second before it was destroyed.
    • Okay, new time travel rule: When invoking the Time Egg, objects can be moved, but not harmed. Problem solved?
  • You know, if the Chrono crew can transport enough jerky to feed the front lines, why can't they bring food to feed the starving post-apocalyptic world?
    • Carrying enough food to briefly feed a few dozen knights is far removed from bringing enough food to sustain a post-apocalyptic civilization. Not to mention that they don't need to feed the people in the future; they have the Enertron to sustain them, and are not growing food because growing food sucks. Crono and Co. have more pressing issues than playing food hauler.
    • There's also the issue of what happens to the timeline with all those tons of food vanishing.
  • How come Ayla is the only one who can fight on the Blackbird before you get your equipment back? Is everyone incapable of using magic without their weapons? And what about Robo? Did they disassemble him or something?
    • Robo's "weapon" is his arms, so, yes, they disassembled him. Or, at least, took his arms off. No idea about the magic, though.
      • Only using magic with weapons could make sense. Considering the earlier entry about tech magic being different (or at least lesser) than Zeal magic, the non-Zealians in the party had such a novice grasp on the concept compared to what the whole kingdom could do that they could only channel their magic through their conventional weaponry.
  • Taban, Lucca's father, builds increasingly fire-resistant armor and suits for her over the course of the game. According to Chrono Cross, it apparently never occurred to him to do the same for the house.
    • It might not be easy to build walls of a house out of whatever he used to make those armors.
  • Heavy stuff. Here's a lighter one for you. How did Kino get the other cavemen back from Tyran Castle without some Pterans to ride?
    • He didn't. He took the Pterans that Crono and Ayla conveniently left hanging out just outside the door, then returned to pick the crew up off the top of the castle just before Lavos impacted.
  • Who is it that Gaspar is saying you're supposed to help, fast? That's never touched on again.
    • Translation error.
    • This. He's actually telling you to talk to your party members for clues on where to go for the subquests.
    • I always thought it referred to Queen Zeal (although your party kills her in the Black Omen) or Lucca's mother Lara.
  • Why did all of the emergency shelters in the far future have food that could spoil? Surely there must be some nonperishable food they could use.
    • Those were probably the instantly-consumable stuff.
    • I thought the food storage was basically an expanded food locker (basically a freezer room) that broke down, spoiling the food inside. Since nonperishables don't need special conservation measures, they were probably kept on-hand, so they were the first to be used up.
    • On a long enough timeline, "non-perishable" food isn't.
  • So, by 1999 they have 2300 AD Technology, likely after Lucca helped kickstart a technological revolution. Wouldn't they have found Lavos before when they tried to find out what the world was made of?
    • If the game over is any indication, they do know what Lavos is but what do they do next?
  • Marle's pendant is Schala's pendant. Crono and Co. had to recharge Old!pendant to get into to the Ocean Palace. Why don't they give Old!pendant to Schala just before she uses the last of Young!pendant's power to teleport them out of there? She could then use Old!pendant's power to teleport herself out, stopping Prophet!timeline's Dream Devourer from existing. Better yet, why not switch pendants when resurrecting Crono?
    • When do they have the time to do any of this? They have to go though a whole series of hoops to pull off ressurecting Crono, adding Schala to the mix is adding in a wrinkle to the plan, a plan they can't risk changing, since the mastermind behing it is dead. You try asking a dead guy if it's safe to go outside of his plan to further warp the laws of space/time, after he's turned into a Nu, sleeping beyond the normal flow of time. I tried, all I got was 'Zzzz'.
  • Do people actually believe the whole Dalton-Porre thing? I thought that was a joke by the localization staff who was just making a shout out to the Chrono Compendium.
    • It's a reference to Chrono Cross. Depressing, I know. Have a Soda on me.
      • Pour it on my grave.
  • How the hell could Dalton pull off that stupid Porre plot when he explicitly told the heroes that he was going to do it? They would be expecting it when it happened, or would be able stop him before he ever got the plan off the ground!
  • Time Bastard bugs me. I see it thrown around a lot as though it were actually canon; in fact, I count eight instances prior of it on this page alone. The problem is, not only is it never suggested in the canon itself, it's actively refuted. Both the scene with the Time Egg and the Red Gate feature two instances of the same person at the same point in time, and in neither case is anyone overridden by the traveler. Magus also spends a significant portion of the Ice Age sharing reality with his past self without any override. Yet the theory persists that if one were to travel to a point in time at which they already existed, they would overwrite themselves. It's a very infectious bit of contradictory fanon.
    • The problem isn't the theory, it's your understanding of it. No one said the rule is that 2 of the same person can't exist in the same timeframe. It's that if someone time travels they build up immunity to time changes as a time traveller, so when there are two versions of them from the same point in their personal time line existing in all of time, the one with the most time traveller's immunity is the one who continues to exist. The best example is if Crono changes the past in a way that precludes his own eventual time travel, the version of him from the new reality that didn't time travel will cease to exist at the time when the version with Time traveller's immunity originally departed. In both your examples, versions of them from different points in their personal time line interacted with each other, which isn't something time bastard says shouldn't happen. The games don't use the terms, but the events actually presented in the games are in line with it (except, of course, for the queen leene is missing scenario, which was written before the rest of the game was, and was never changed later in production to be more consistent with it.) Even down to the point that in the original timeline, Janus was in the ocean palace during the disaster, which is how Magus ended up in 600 ad. But in the events of the game proper, Janus is kept away from the ocean palace, but disappears at the time he was destined to be swept away anyway, and Magus' memories do not change to reflect the new series of events.
  • Lucca: Made a teleporter, fixed a robot that was 1300 years more advanced than her, yet can't make prostetics or robotic walking legs for her mom?
    • Dammit, Jim, she's a roboticist and physicist, not a doctor! Prosthetics or replacements like that would require knowledge of human bone, nerve, and muscle, and how to hook machines up thereto.
    • True, true, thats why I also mentioned robotic walking legs, it'd have a seat and she can just just control it with levers and such, no connecting nerves or anything like a Mini-Mecha instead of being stuck in that room all day and be able to enjoy the festival. I know the accident is supposed to be character development for Lucca but still...
  1. ↑ "I know that in 5 billion years the sun is going to expand to engulf the Earth and destroy all life on it. I'm not doing anything to stop it. The time scale is different but the principle is the same."
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