Death Note/Headscratchers/Rules of the Death Note: Difference between revisions

*** No, because John Smith isn't even Kyon's real name.

*** It could be, theoretically. Kyon's name is never explicitly stated, and WMG has some theories about how that could be his real name.

**** That's because Haruhi and Kyon are little kids compared to Light and L, they see the world differently. Haruhi could have made Shinigami and Death Notes ''always'' exist!

*** Also, it wouldn't stop existing. Haruhi didn't ''create'' the world; she simply ''changed'' it. I believe that's either really obvious or specified in canon (obvious because several characters point out how it isn't possible for her to have created it, and something Yuki said made me think she'd definitely changed it in some way, but Yuki didn't know if it'd all been rewritten or not.)

*** Strange, never really noticed that one. I suppose you can use a layman's term since the Death Note seems to operate so long as it can understand the writer's intent. I supposed you could cause a person to die years later with this method. Anyone see any way around this?

**** I would also assume that the disease would progress as rapidly as possible, since the death note seems not to waste any time. For example, Light kills Aiber with liver cancer in the anime and the progression is at LEAST faster than the 2-year timeskip.

** Given that I think the official name for "heart attack" is something like "cardiac arrest" and "heart attack" works, I'm guessing the layman's name is fine.

*** You never have to write out "heart attack." You can just write "Old Miss - dies in 23 days" and a heart attack is already on its way.

** Chosen at random, or by random means, is still chosen.

** [[Rouge Angles of Satin|"Rouge shinigami"]]? That makes the red/blue symbolism make so much more sense.

* If I wrote a cause of death that is possible but extremely unlikely would it work? Say I wrote "Bob Smith: head explodes", would it be the same as if I wrote "Bob Smith: brain is infected with methane producing bacteria and while he is standing in a hot place the methane ignites causing his head to explode"?

** No. The bacteria thing is a "detail" of death. If it is not physically possible for Bob's head to just explode in the next 6 minutes 40 seconds, Bob will have a heart attack. As stated above, the Note is not very creative.

** Well, it's almost impossible to commit suicide by that method, so it'd probably default to a heart attack.

*** If the victim had the means and state of mind, It could trigger the victim to set off a massive [[Xanatos Gambit]] ending in the stated consequences.

** Alternately, the fell powers of the Death Note would keep the victim alive just long enough to live out all the details (you'd be surprised what you can live through) before ultimately falling victim to the stated cause.

*** How does one commit suicide from within a shark?

** Explicitly left vague in canon.

* When controlling the actions of someone prior to their death, it has to be something the person would reasonably think or be able to do. So, when one of the criminals Light controls is made to write "Love I've never known/And dessert is always apples? This is no life, I'm better off dead." does that mean there's a prison that only serves apples or something?

** The criminal was physically able to write those words, so the Note forced him to do it. You don't need to understand or have an existing reason to do something that the Note will compel you to do, it only needs to be reasonably physically possible.

*** Not so. One of Light's early tests was to get a criminal to write "I know L suspects the Japanese police," which failed because he couldn't write about something he wouldn't think.

**** Really? What if the first owner relinquishes ownership?

***** Rule LXIV

2. Even in the situations 2, 3, and 4 above, gods of death are obliged to confirm the death of the first owner and write down that humans name in his/her Death Note even when he/she is in the world of gods of death. }}

***** To paraphrase, in order to go home back to the shinigami world, the shinigami has to write the name of the first owner in their Death Note, regardless of whether the Note itself has been destroyed, relinquished, or otherwise is no longer in the first owner's possession. Nothing about the Death Note is fair.

** Well, in the movie, writing {{spoiler|"Shiori is taken hostage and shot by the hostage taker" in conjunction with "Naomi takes the girlfriend of the person she suspects of being Kira hostage" is enough to make Naomi shoot Shiori, so possibly.}}

** Not exactly. Light wrote that {{spoiler|"Naomi shoots the escaping hostage to stop her from running" in conjunction with "Shiori dies taking a bullet for her boyfriend", which is what kills her.}}

** What about accidents? Remember Light's very second murder? The one, coincidentally enough, mentioned right below this line?

*** You could even write "X is murdered" or "X is stabbed to death by a stranger". The problem isn't having the victim be killed by someone, it's specifying who would do the killing (since that would mean you'd have to write down their names which would result in heart attacks). No idea if using pseudonyms like "the first Kira" etc would work.

** It's left ambiguous. You can interpret "nothingness" as you like. Though Light's constant ''"I don't want to fade away"'' cries make it ''very'' likely it's the former.

*** Mu is an eastern concept that essentially means less than nothing. Less than zero. An empty void is still more substantial than mu.

* Does the 780 day rule include those who haven't been born yet? If so what would happen if a pregnant woman's name was written at a time where even with the 23 day buffer she couldn't be killed without also killing the baby?

** Do you know, I think you may have found a genuine loophole there.

** My guess? The Death Note doesn't consider fetuses to be people. So the woman would die and the baby would die with her. You can generalize the question by asking, "What if there was a situation where if one person had a heart attack, somebody else was guaranteed to die?" I guess this could happen if you hooked up an EKG to a bomb or something.

*** However, one of the rules states that you can use a death note to make someone die of a long-acting disease by writing the disease as a cause of death, and the death note causes the disease to start at the specified time of death. (For example, if you wrote "Alexei Karloff - cancer, December 7th at 12:07pm", Mr Karloff would develop cancer at the specified time, but not die of it until years later). Most likely, if you wrote the name of a pregnant woman, the death note would cause her to develop some sort of complication resulting in death during childbirth.

*** If you want to get really grisly, then there has been cases of legally dead women completing a pregnancy and a living baby being extracted from them.

** Furthermore, as noted above, ''...if it manipulates a persons actions prior to death, it must be possible for the person to perform those actions, either physically or mentally."'' If the target didn't actually know (i.e. have a conscious mental awareness of) L's name himself, he probably wouldn't be able to write it.

*** But the targets in the prison didn't know the Shinigami eat apples message, yet spelled it out correctly. Clearly it just has to be possible. My personal favorite phrasing of this is "stabs self in artery, which causes the blood to coincidentally write out a full and complete proof of Fermat's last theorem. Or, if you want to be more plausible, "a sudden brain tumor gives unparalleled abilities as a mathematical savant, driving them to write a full and complete proof of X, and, when finished, commit suicide."

**** Oh, please, that's a ridiculous assertiGTGHASRGH

**** ''Sakujo''

** ...actually, I kinda read that wrong. That's Misa explaining how much of the face she needs to see, to see the person's name. But, I would assume that it corresponds to your question as well. It wouldn't really make sense to be able to see enough of a face to see a name, but not enough of the face to kill the person. So, my guess is the two things are connected.

** [[Canon|Canonically]]:

** Imagining the old face probably would work: The point of imagining the face of the victim is that the notebook must be able to determine who you intend to kill. There's no reason why the note wouldn't be able to do that from you imagining the old face, within reason.

* Is it possible to determine big events with a death note as long as the event is non-lethal and you sacrifice an unimportant person for it? For example, let's say Alice writes two weeks before a presidential election about Bob, a known supporter of party X. "Suicide. Becomes heavily emotionally invested with the presidential bid of the candidate of party X. Falls into depression as he watches on the television the presidential candidate of party X concede his failure and the presidential candidate of party Y make his victory speech. Becomes even more depressed seeing various newspapers analyze the reasons why the majority of the people voted Y this time. Dies on [date five days after the election.]"

*** What if the split personality has a supernatural cause and is accompanied by a change in appearance such as [[D.N.Angel|Daisuke and Dark]]?

**** It's still effectively a death (or permanent trapped-in-your-body) sentence. You could shift to duck it, but as soon as the target shifted back in...

* If one were to look at Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfe­schlegelstein­hausenberger­dorffvoraltern­waren­gewissenhaft­schaferswessen­schafewaren­wohlgepflege­und­sorgfaltigkeit­beschutzen­von­angreifen­durch­ihrraubgierigfeinde­welche­voraltern­zwolftausend­jahres­vorandieerscheinen­wander­ersteer­dem­enschderraumschiff­gebrauchlicht­als­sein­ursprung­von­kraftgestart­sein­lange­fahrt­hinzwischen­sternartigraum­auf­der­suchenach­diestern­welche­gehabt­bewohnbar­planeten­kreise­drehen­sich­und­wohin­der­neurasse­von­verstandigmen­schlichkeit­konnte­fortplanzen­und­sicher­freuen­anlebens­langlich­freude­und­ruhe­mit­nicht­ein­furcht­vor­angreifen­von­anderer­intelligent­geschopfs­von­hinzwischen­sternartigraum Senior ([[wikipedia:Wolfe%2B585, Senior|yes, actual person]]) with the death god eyes, how would it fit in the field of vision?

** I'd guess it would just be very, very small so it could fit. Doesn't explain how you'd be able to read it, though.

*** According to the live-action spinoff movie, you can't die before the Death Note's schedule.

**** Two rules are at work here. One is the 12 minute rule, which states that anyone with less then 12 minutes left cannot be affected. The other rule states that the death note cannot lengthen the persons lifespan beyond their original. The person getting shot was the originally destined death, and the death note was powerless to lengthen the victim's life. But if the person had more than 12 minutes left, and the lifespan was shortened already, perhaps it would avert the currently fated death.

** No, the Death Note has a 23 day window to work in.

* What happens if someone writes "gets crushed by a molecule of air" as a cause of death?

*** No. He used the Death Note to keep Penber from recognizing his voice, get Penber on the train, and to die after he stepped off. He didn't use the Note to have Penber write the other names; he simply intimidated Penber into it. Bob writes nothing and dies in 40 seconds.

* One of the Death Note rules states that in order to protect the lives of uninvolved mortals, the victim's manner of death or the consequences leading up to his death as stipulated in the note would not be fulfilled if they would inadvertently cause harm to another human being. In such case, said person would simply die of a heart attack. However, do you think it could be possible to create a murder suicide scenario by writing down '''two''' names? Example;

''Suicide'', today at 11.20 PM, throws himself off pier 34 of Minato Prefecture Harbour after repeatedly stabbing the naked man standing there. }}

** This was done in the movie. It works. Dunno about the anime/manga canon, though.

** Well if we're talking about the [[Magnificent Bastard]] Light using the Death Note, he has more than enough intelligence to rig the deaths of the people he write into his Death Note to make it seem like a perfect murder suicide scenario. So I'd say yes.

** You couldn't actually make one kill the other in the anime or manga, but if one only needed to make it look like a murder/suicide, it could be written:

{{supersecretspoiler|.....}}Although if you can use the name (I don't really recall if names were allowed in the descriptions of other peoples' deaths), you wouldn't have to use the identification detail. It would decrease the possibility of coincidence bringing up a different person with that name or that drawing in his shoe, though. I'm not really sure if that last thing would be possible, though. The reasoning is that Kaneda's death description would be no different from the guy who got run over when Light was testing the note, since it presumably takes the cause of death (gets run over/gets stabbed to death by someone with the picture in their shoe) with the most convenient source of said cause (person in a vehicle/person with said picture in their shoe, who is most likely Higurashi). Then Higurashi's death description would be an unrelated suicide that just happened to make him be wearing the picture in his shoe at that time. Since the Death Note is [[Literal Genie|not supposed to be very imaginative]], it's unlikely that it would be able to set up a "Lucky Hand-drawn Pictures Of This Dog To Be Worn In The Left Shoe" stand on the pier, or a less ridiculous but still manipulative coincidence, out of spite. }}

* If a sketch artist drew a criminal's face, and it was spot on and totally realistic, and they gave you his name, would that work for the Death Note? Apparently seeing people on the television and photographs work, would a pencil drawing also suffice? Speaking of television and photography, we know that when somebody with Shinigami eyes see somebody, they get the name. Do they see names on TV?

* If a Bob is fated to save Alice, but Bob's name is written on a death note and instructed to die before saving Alice, will that count as "leads to a death of more than the intended" and therefore dies by a heart attack? If so, does that mean Alice will die anyway because nobody could save her? Or the death or Bob will be cancelled? Or a third person, named Clay, will save Alice instead?

* There something I don't understand. I probably lost track, but as I remember: If you give up the ownership of your death-note, all death-note related memories will be erased. If you touch it again, you'll regain them, but only as long as you're touching it, unless you become it's owner again. That's why Light had to hold the Death-Note while writing Higuchi's name on the piece of paper. All clear. Then, we see Light giving up his ownership of the Deathnote and sending it to Task Force, while telling Misa he'd take her Death Note and thus remember everything. Does that mean that He was holding her Note during the whole time, until his father died?

* Can a past-Death Note user (who lost their memories) be forced to remember under the Death Note control? If Ryuk wrote Light's name in his book and put "he regains Death Note-related memories, confesses, and then dies", would Light's amnesia be broken or not, considering he didn't regain ownership of a Death Note again?

* One of the rules is you can't kill anyone under 2 years old, roughly.. Why would you need to kill anyone a 3 year old? Or most little kids for that matter? Also what happens if - like the rule book says the limit is - a 6 - 10 year old grabs hold of the book?

* Can two or more people own a Death Note at once? For example, what would happen if Ryuk got bored in another 10 years or so, dropped another notebook and wherever it landed, Alice and Bob reached for and touched it at the ''exact same time?'' Whose ownership would it fall to then?

** Maybe whoever wanted it more? It gets fuzzy. You can lose ownership of the notebook if you let go of it or hand it to someone else "with a strong desire to give it up."

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[[Category:Headscratchers]]

[[Category:Death Note]]