Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • If animals can get powers of the dead too, then why don't we ever see the ghosts of any tiny animals such as insects? There must have been some that died within the radiation.
  • The most important plot hole in the game: How did Yomiel's substitute mechanical form in the submarine get those Cool Shades? After all, his original body who-knows-how-far away still seems to be wearing them when you get there.
    • Rule of Cool. Say what you want about Yomiel, but you can't deny that the guy's got style.
      • They looked more like they were drawn on, rather than actual shades.
  • So much is made about Cabanela having a "spotless" record but you find out that one of the first things he did as a detective was screw up an interrogation and leave his friggin' gun in the room with a suspected spy/traitor. The game makes a big deal out of the perfect record being necessary for him to climb the ladder of the police force so how does he get a pass on that?
    • During one of the game's "could he be a villain?" sequences, someone accuses him of trying to silence everyone who knows about that. The other witness to this, Jowd, was eventually locked up, after all.
    • If this was early in his career, he might have been given a pass on it, especially if his performance since then was exemplary.
  • When and how does Yomiel's fiancee die? If I recall, she was never shown on screen. Did she die before or after the park incident, and how did she die?
    • If I remember correctly the fiancee dies after hearing the news of Yomiel's "death". Afterwards she writes a note saying, "Yomiel, I'm coming for you". Seeing as she thought he was dead, we can only guess she committed suicide to follow him to death. At least, before the 10 year change.
  • What exactly did Lynne do with Missile's corpse, after picking it up from the park? She never stopped at home afterwards, so we can assume she's still carrying it around with her when they are in the submarine. So... why?!
    • Umm... I'm pretty sure she wasn't carrying it around with her. For all we know, she could have put the body under some rocks to give him a burial. Or to keep it safe for a potential Ghost Trick by Sissel.
  • Okay, so at the end, we discover the circumstances under which Missile discovers Sissel's Ghosting and Tricking powers for objects, but when does he discover that Sissel can possess corpses and rewind to four minutes before someone's death? It couldn't have happened in the period shown, since it was so brief, but we're led to believe that that was the only time they encountered one another. That time around, anyway.
    • Well, Missile has that power too. That's how he saved Kamila. Perhaps he assumed Sissel had the same thing? He didn't know then that powers change over time and so, the next time they met, perhaps he was just banking on the hope that he would have the power. Not to mention that Yomiel mentions the powers stem from some sort of 'Manipulation' and 'Time.' Yomiel, with the fragment, is the only one who seems to have regeneration abilities rather than time travel. Maybe having the fragment is the deciding factor. Though that would mean that Sissel might not have the power of time travel anymore.
    • Isn't it more likely that original Missile watched Sissel that night in the original time line?
  • Lynne remembers being saved by Sissel when he altered the driver's fate not to hit the restaurant, once the clock goes over her own death's time, right? Why doesn't anyone other than Yomiel remember Sissel's doings after the 10 year gap closes, then?
    • Umm... you weren't paying attention to the ending, were you? Yomiel stated that Sissel, Missle, Jowd and himself would be the only ones to remember after the future is changed. The reason that no one else remembers is that, because of they prevented Yomiel from getting killed by the Temsik fragment, thus changing the flow of time ten years on, everyone but those four forgot. Even if they previously had a core, they would not remember because the future was changed so radically, the circumstances around the various deaths would never occur and thus no need for a Ghost Trick and a resulting core.
      • Makes sense, I guess... I did pay attention to the ending, but I admit I was already more than just a bit confused at how everything happened.
  • Just what was that machine attached to the head of the fat prisoner? He puts it on himself, so I suppose it's nothing bad, but...
    • The guy's head is unnaturally large. Maybe it's supposed to help him? Or perhaps measure his brain wave activity. (Shrugs).
    • Give that he was in prison for committing a crime because he was mind controlled, it's possible that the machine was meant to monitor him, in the event that he was mind controlled again. If that's the case, it would explain why he voluntarily put it on (it would only protect him from further Mind Rape) and it was being tested if the manipulation worked better while he was asleep.
  • In the ending, why don't the two blue assassins show up with alternate futures? Even minor characters like the chef, who had nothing to do with the case at all, get one.
    • Well, there was a WMG that Jeego and Tengo are actually robots, like Sith's assistant. Maybe they were only built for that deal (though I think they mentioned something about former hits, so that might not be it). Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.
    • Sith has a conversation with his servant about Jeego's eyesight if you press the speech bubble during the Sith's introduction scene. He mentions that Jeego's vision is degrading a bit every year, and he is considering about sending Jeego coal in his next pay envelope (his servant suggests him to send him glasses). Also, Tengo eats donuts once in a while before you avert Missile's fate. He also talks to himself about how Jeego is "losing his touch". So the two hitmen might actually be human.
      • Two humans who have NO FUTURE
        • They probably lived happily ever after in the blue people country. Since in the final timeline Yomiel didn't make his contract with Sith, Jengo and Teego won't go to the dump and try to kill Lynne and end up flattened.
          • That's pretty likely, considering when we see Beauty and Dandy trying to crack the Chicken Kitchen's safe, there's no indication it has any connection to Commander Sith at all. The dialogue doesn't indicate a third party involved, so they may have just been acting on their own. So Jengo and Teego wouldn't necessarily have a reason to be in the city at all.
  • Just how did Lynne and Jowd board the submarine by the end of the game? I mean, did the submarine wait above water level for them to sneak in, or they swam there undetected, and opened the hatch from outside without flooding it or anyone noticing?
    • Not 100% sure on this, but because Cabanela gave them the radio tracker watch to trace the bullet he shot Yomiel with, they were able to follow him. And I think either Lynne or Jowd say outright that they stowed away on Yomiel's boat when Yomiel went to rendezvous with the sub.
    • I don't remember anything being said about stowing away on Yomiel's boat, but I think it's mentioned in the dialogue that Lynne and Jowd boarded the submarine when it surfaced.
    • Having just played the game again, it is explicitly said by Lynne that she and Jowd tracked Yomiel to his boat and then stowed away on it, so, yeah.
    • They managed it because Jowd is just that awesome.
  • Is it never explained how Beauty can sense the presence of ghosts? If not, that seems ripe for a sequel. Or maybe Yomiel told her.
    • She just says that her sixth sense is naturally strong. Sith apparently tries to cover for any possibility, so he likely hired her to keep an eye on Yomiel's spirit.
  • In the first chapter of the game, you possess Ray's lamp so that he can lean over so you can reach Lynne the first time. Yet, by the end of the game, you can play as both yourself and Missile, and the two of you simply cannot possess the same object at the same time.
    • I'd like to think that Sissel just didn't want to occupy the same core as a dog during the gameplay segments at the end, but he had no problem possessing Ray's lamp in the beginning because he didn't know that Ray was Missile.
    • Considering the location of the lamp's core that Sissel uses (the bulb), it might have had another one that Ray's presence cloaked.
  • The superintendent built a replica of the Rube Goldberg Device to figure out how it could have malfunctioned the way it did. Did he really have to load the gun?
    • Of course he did! FOR SCIENCE!
    • Loading the gun is one thing but why was it still operational at all? It would have been at least ten years since it was built, and Pigeon Man says outright that it's been years since he was there last. Locked door or no, who leaves an active "murder machine" to gather dust? Especially one triggered by flicking a lightswitch!
      • Actually, it's only been five years at most.
      • A not exactly stable ex-ME, that's who. Who decides to go and run a junkyard just so they'll have more time to investigate an X-File? And remember, the door to the basement stairs was locked. It was, by conventional wisdom, impossible for someone to get down there without using the stairs, unless someone just happened to be small enough to make it down the dumbwaiter.
  • Does Sissel lose all memory of things he learns while repeating his "four minutes before" trips? I can justify repeated dialogue as Gameplay and Story Segregation, but what about in chapter 10? If he follows the immediate phone call, he learns that Beauty faked the minister's daughter's screams for help to convince him she was kidnapped. Yet even if he hears that, once he actually saves the man's life, he still believes it might be true. And if he does forget, how does that work with Ray remembering his first failed attempt to get Sissel's help?
    • Missile didn't know what a kidnapping was. I thought that Sissel didn't really understand it either, being a cat and all.
    • The repeated dialogue is in case the player hasn't played the game in a while, and wants a reference. It's Rule of Fun.
    • He might be concerned that they'd have successfully kidnapped her by that point. And either way, he needed to prove to the minister that his daughter was safe -- his word wouldn't count for anything.
  • Um... Why exactly doesn't Yomiel want anyone to know about him? I get that he'd get in trouble for the hostage situation or whatever, but really, a desperately lonely immortal should really just tell someone. He'd get famous.
    • The same thing would happen as does in the game: powerful people would exploit him for the power of the Temsik meteor. If he got famous, everyone would be after his secret, which would turn out horribly considering the dangerous powers involved and how miserable Yomiel's "life" became because of it.
      • Okay, then how about Yomiel just gets up and acts like it was a medical mistake. Don't a decent number of people get accidentally buried alive each year? It's not a solid story, but it'd be enough to not totally f**k up his life. Probably get the medical inspector sent to a looney bin though.
        • Even if he tried to play the medical mistake card, the police would still want to conduct an investigation and inevitably he'd be subjected to another medical examination. The word of one medical inspector might be dismissed, but if multiple doctors examined him and found the same results? He'd be a lab rat in no time.
  • What criteria does an object (not a living person) have to meet before gaining a core? I mean, you could possess a drop of water in one case; why couldn't you possess the ocean? ... That would be awesome.
    • The core of an object tends to be in it's centre. Good luck tricking 2 miles deep.
    • Well, yeah, but then what criteria does an object have to meet to become an object? If you took it further, either A) the only objects you'd be able to possess would be celestial bodies, or B) every atom on Earth should be able to be possessed. I know it's for gameplay, but...
      • It's stated by Yomiel and future!Missile that powers change over time. I guess this means Sissel's powers had limits at first, so he could only manipulate certain objects, like Yomiel who couldn't immediatly possess people but could later on.
  • Quick question: When Sissel does his 4 minutes trick, he starts wherever the body had died at. How do they go from the sub in the middle of the ocean to Temsik Park if Yomiel's body is in the sub? Shouldn't they have started in the middle of the ocean?
    • This also goes for the van driver. Why do you start at the park, rather than the restaurant?
      • ...wait a minute. While it doesn't make logical sense, those two instances have something in common: a four-minute trick within a four-minute trick. Maybe that changes the rules?
        • The van driver is justified in that he died with his body hanging out of the van. Rewinding time moves the van, thus taking you to that area. The other thing doesn't make sense to me, what with Yomiel's body being IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN IN A SUB. Slightly different than body stuck in windshield.
        • That's because Yomiel died at the park. Even though his corpse was moving around, that doesn't change the location of his death.
        • That doesn't work. Ray specifically says at the beginning that Wherever the corpse is will be where he starts at, because the corpse was the gateway into the past. That logic does work with van dude because he died IN the van, and his corpse was still lodged in the van.
        • No, no, it does work. You see,Yomiel originally died in the park. His body since then has been nothing but a shell. Even then in the submarine, he didn't die there, his spirit simply wasn't in the body, and the fragment removed, stopping it's endless regeneration cycle. Going back ten years proves this, because Yomiel was frozen between life and death, but four minutes before he acually died placed him in the park. This action shows that his death was considered to be when he was hit with the fragment, not when it was removed from him.
        • That also doesn't work. Again, Ray comes out and says that wherever the CORPSE is when Sissel goes back is where he goes to. See Lynne: She died up on top, but she fell down to the ground. Which is why Sissel started down there. It doesn't matter where the person died at, what matters is where the corpse is in present time.
        • But it's possible that the gunshot didn't immediately kill Lynne. She could've been just barely still alive during the fall. In most cases, the corpses wasn't really moved around after death, so maybe Ray got it wrong or simply could've picked a better phrasing.
        • Actually, you go back to where the corpse lies. Jowd's body was moved from the location of death to the table in the next room. You appear in the past at the table. Same thing goes for every other death, except the two involved with a trick within a trick. I'm inclined to believe that the change in location has something to do with the double trick. Though the cop could be explained that his body was touching the van so it acted as a frame of reference, if he landed in the restaurant it may have started there. This doesn't explain the other one though. Maybe because of the nature of the body constantly be returned to the point just before death and the body was technically in the park at the time of death, maybe the park was still somehow a frame of reference. It could also be that these two deaths had crossed particularly long distances since the 4 minutes before death moment. Maybe, its a feature of the powers of the dead that you are close enough to the living body to see the person involved. For example, another common point is you generally find that the dead person has more or less been in the area they die in for the entire duration of the 4 minutes, with the only real oddballs being the cop and Yomiel. In fact, now that I mention it... there are actually a lot of unique things about those two cases that stand out: They were both encountered within a trick, their corpses were both really far away from the location they were at four minutes prior to death, and their deaths were the direct causes of deaths that you were trying to prevent in the context of the first trick in the double tricks. Maybe all these oddities add up somehow...
        • Lynne does seem to have died while or after falling - when you go to her four-minutes before, the replay doesn't end right after she's shot as with most deaths, but instead when she's falling. Jowd, too, could have died on the operating table, especially considering some of the other guys in the room with him during the explosion lived.
  • Wouldn't a knit cap and definately a sweet potato be just as deadly as a bullet if moving at bullet speed?
    • The knit cap's probably big enough and thin enough to not do that much harm. The sweet potato was somewhat addressed though, since it flung Yomiel back into the lamppost.
      • It doesn't matter how big and thin it is if it strikes you at the pistol muzzle velocity of 800 ft/s (almost 550 mph). A better idea would be if the swapping ability conserves momentum, such that replacing the bullet with an object of greater mass has an inversely proportional effect on its velocity.
        • For what it's worth, a knit cap isn't only big and thin, but it's also flexible and has a lot of give. The split second of velocity the hat lost while it inverted itself on Cabalena's nose was probably enough to keep it from being fatal (and to be fair, it DOES knock him out, which is no mean feat for a knit cap). Compare it to the hard hat, which DOES kill him, despite being the same size and thickness. As for the potato...I got nuthin'.
      • It was roasted, and thus soft.
      • There's a couple physics things that may help to explain.
        • A bullet is small and when it hits the impact has a higher pressure since pressure is inversely proportional to surface area. This is why it is easier to pop a balloon with a needle than say your finger.
        • Also it is possible that when objects are switched velocity is not conserved, but the kinetic energy is instead. An object with more mass moving a slower speed and an object with less mass moving at faster speed might have the same energy. So switching a sweet potato with double the mass of a bullet with a bullet moving at typical bullet speed might result in the sweet potato moving at half bullet speed (which has equivalent kinetic energy).
        • The equation for Kinetic energy is KE = (0.5)mv^2. Now say, KE of the bullet prior to switch equals KE of the potato after the switch. Let's say the bullet is moving 1 bullet speed (or BS) and has a mass of 1 bullet (or bu). The potato has a mass of 2 bu. So: (0.5)*1 bu*(1 BS)^2 = (0.5)*2 bu*v^2 -> 1 bu * 1 BS^2 = 2 bu*v^2 -> (1/2)BS^2 = v^2 -> SQRT(1/2) BS = v -> So basically, considering the bullet is half the mass of the potato and that Kinetic Energy is conserved, then the potato will slow down to about 70% of the speed of the bullet. Granted, the potato is probably more than twice the mass of the bullet resulting in even more slow down. After that count in air resistance and other physic crap and you might be able to survive an impact from a roasted potato flying at an equivalent of a bullet's kinetic energy, granted you probably will not be a happy camper none-the-less. I'd like to think the Kinetic Energy thing applies because it follows the Energy Cannot be created model of the Universe and gives the most plausibility to something as odd as this.
    • For that matter, how the hell did Yomiel not notice that Cabanela got smacked in the face with a hat instead of, you know, shot?
      • Note how when Cabanela is hit, he doubles over backwards in a ridiculous way so that his head and the helmet end up sort of under his body. The exact object that hit him is therefore obscured from Yomiel's point of view.
      • I'm assuming he went straight for the phone and left. Even if the "present version" of the death had him look down (Did it? Haven't gone through that sequence for a while), the slight fate changes might tweak his movements a little.
  • So only Jowd, Missile, Yomiel, and Sissel will remember the old timeline at the end of the game. But Missile was only two years old when Sissel met him. Does this mean he's actually going to be born with the memories of the old timeline? Because that would be weird even for a dog.
  • In the new timeline at the end of the game, Yomiel has been in prison for TEN YEARS... But for what, exactly? He was proven innocent of the conspiracy in which he was implicated, and even though he broke out of prison and took a hostage, he then saved her life immediately after. Why on earth would this result in such a punishment? And couldn't Jowd have stopped it?
    • Escaping interrogation would have shat all over his case for not being a spy, so it's possible that he was never able to clear his name in the new timeline, even though he had been cleared in the game's timeline. Even if he was found not-guilty of that, he still would have been charged with theft (of a weapon), hostage-taking ( a child), threatening a police officer, resisting arrest... saving Lynne doesn't change that. All of it could easily add up to 10 years, especially given that he would have been tried in an Ace Attorney Kangaroo Court.
      • Turnabout Meteorite! Apollo Justice manages to get Yomiel only ten years instead of lifetime!
        • Maybe he felt he still had to repent for everything he did in the original timeline?
    • Escaping custody by means of a weapon and hostage is Serious Business.
    • How bout this: He fled police interrogation, took a hostage, and --this is the big thing-- they probably think that he shot Jowd in the leg. He was holding a gun and suddenly something flies into his pursuer's leg and he starts bleeding. It's not a stretch to get that much jailtime, especially when one considers he was probably in court a few years.
  • Commander Sith's plan to trap Yomiel's soul doesn't make much sense. He explicitly has the power to possess "small creatures". The moment a fish or crab got near the wrecked sub, he'd have a vehicle he could use to escape.
    • Depends on exactly what the depth was. If they got the sub as far down as the abyssopelagic zone (4000 meters - 6000 meters), the amount of sea life at that depth would be minimal. Most of the sea life would be tiny invertebrates which might not be too easy to possess or get the hang of controlling. And if Sith managed to dump the sub in a trench, the pickings would be even slimmer.
    • Either he would give up immediately, or he would check every 5 seconds or so if something is near enough to be possessed, and eventually give up anyway.
      • Why would he give up? He's trapped in a submarine at the bottom of an ocean, with nothing to do but try to find a way out.
        • Complete isolation. He would go even more insane. Or maybe he could think this was a punishment for all the horrible things he did, including killing a girl and - accidentally - his own friend.
  • In the first timeline, Yomiel is with Tengo when Kamila and Missile are killed. Why isn't he present in the apartment during the second timeline?
    • Because he wasn't able to retrieve his body: he had left it behind to help frame Lynne. But in the first timeline Lynne was assassinated immediately afterwards so he abandoned that plan.
      • Then wouldn't Yomiel know that Sith was backstabbing him by interfering with his revenge plans?
        • No. Sith was merely disagreeing with his methods, not his goal. The impression I get is that Yomiel's main reason for going along with Sith was so that he would give him a new life to live. For him, it was worth killing for, and he wouldn't abandon it just because he doesn't get his revenge the way he wants.
  • Why is Yomiel portrayed as sympathetic? Sure he is given a tragic backstory and has had a pretty shitty life. Sure he expresses regret for taking Lynne hostage and yes he loves his cat, but lest we forget some of the sympathetic things he did: he murders a 5 year old girl's mother in front of her and makes her think she did it, he possesses a 10 year old girl and tries to make her kill her own father, he actually succeeds in cold-bloodedly killing her in her own apartment as we see in the alternate timeline. And this is just what he does to Kamila! What's more, he shows no remorse until he's been stabbed in the back. But because he's not had a nice life, the entire last hour of the game is dedicated to making him a sympathetic character, and even the last image of the game is a Tear Jerker image of him drawing a picture of his precious cat. The actions I mentioned are Moral Event Horizon by most people's standards, no matter how crap your life has been. I'm getting Deja Vu to a similar glossing-over-of-a-villain's-faults in the last case of Trials and Tribulations.
    • To avoid waxing philosophical about how impossible it is to assign merit based on apparent morality, I'll just say that moral or immoral actions do not imply a moral or immoral character, and Yomiel is just as (un)deserving of sympathy as the rest of the cast is. By comparison, you could say the reverse for Cabanela, who was portrayed pretty unsympathetically for much of the game but was later revealed to have good intentions.
    • It's also possible to feel sympathy for a person without condoning their actions, and after spending ten years as a ghost he probably wasn't that mentally stable anyway. Yomiel's tribute to Sissel wouldn't just have been for saving him from an undead fate, but for saving him from the monster he would later become.
    • It's pretty much stated that Yomiel had totally lost it. He'd careened over the Despair Event Horizon essentially from the moment he walked out of the morgue and discovered what had happened to him. Things went downhill from there, and it took five years of steadily growing despair and loneliness before he took action against those he'd decided were responsible for his pain. That doesn't mean anything he did was anywhere near the realm of okay. Once Lynne snaps him back to sanity and he has a Heel Face Turn, he himself says this straight out.

Jowd: We might not be able to change your fate of dying.
Yomiel: ...
Yomiel: I can accept that.
Jowd: ...!
Yomiel: What I did is inexcusable. No matter how the future might change, that fact will never go away. If my fate is to die here... [smiles] then I accept that.

    • (continued) Redemption Equals Death is averted when he's thrown back onto a spike, but is merely rendered unconscious. His response to this?

Sissel: [after seeing Yomiel impaled through the back on a spike] This fate is too painful to watch -- in every sense...
Yomiel: I don't think so. [grins] As long as I'm alive... that's good enough for me.

    • (continued) He wasn't a Death Seeker; he had simply accepted that death would be his fate. He was relieved that it had changed. Except... [[spoiler:Lynne was about to be crushed by the massive Mino, with no conceivable way to save her. Jowd, Sissel, and Missile were panicking, because there was nothing they could do. By virtue of simply not doing a damn thing, Yomiel could easily have forced Sissel to go with the plan that Yomiel had suggested: Let Lynne die, then just go back and change her past, psychological scars be damned.
      Instead, Yomiel reminds them of his own power, and promptly throws his own body into the path of the Mino to save her, believing that he would die with no chance of being brought back. He would be crushed to death, his fiancee would commit suicide again... and he did it anyway.
      Personally, while I don't think that any of that excuses him -- Yomiel himself said it best, that nothing he could do would be enough to excuse him -- I think that what he did after going back to the past, along with willingly spending ten years in jail to pay for the crimes that he still did commit in the changed timeline, and the fact that they earned a happy ending and no one but the four of them would ever remember all of that suffering, it's conceivably enough to forgive him. Not forgive his actions, but to forgive Yomiel himself.]] Or at least put the past where it belongs and move on.
      I'd also like to point out that while he did take Lynne hostage before he went nuts, he was clearly panicked and desperate at the time, and it's never made clear whether or not he actually would have harmed her. "Tried to point a gun at her", yes, but shot her? Probably not, considering even Yomiel-prime, without any knowledge (yet) of the averted future, says that he was glad that he'd saved her. Again, taking a child hostage is not okay. But there's still a huge difference between "taking hostage" and "killing".
  • So in the final timeline, Sissel appears to have been hit by a shard of the Temsik meteorite, but did he survive that, or has he gone into an undead state the same way Yomiel did?
    • Pretty much. He hasn't changed at all in ten years.
    • After all he is now a walking Schrödinger's Cat.
  • So why does Missile-prime look so much older than Missile despite being a ghost for ten years? You'd figure he'd remain looking the age he did when he died, right?
    • Ghosts can change their appearance at will, as proven when Lynne takes the form of Cabanela accidentally, and when Sissel abandons Yomiel's appearance to become a flame with glasses and then a cat. Missile-prime probably didn't actually age, he just wanted to look like a Cool Old Guy.
      • Ghosts take on whatever appearance they associate with their "self". Missile is a dog who waited 10 years and probably felt as old as he appeared. So he looked as old as he felt.
  • Why can't you control clothes and accessories? You control a shirt in the Chicken Kitchen's kitchen, and are able to scrunch and stretch it to get across the wire, and then there's the time you can control the guard's bulletproof vests, but you can never control clothes that anyone is wearing.
    • You can't exert enough physical force to overcome any significant resistance. You can only move the shirt because it's lightweight. You only hitch a ride on the bulletproof vests, you can't unbuckle them or use them to push the guards around.
  • Why, exactly, do the switches work (in the way the game shows them to) after being switched around in their sockets (twice)? I realize that Missile's power is to completely replace things that look the same from the same angle (the source of another Headscratchers entirely, but I digress...) but that doesn't explain why moving the same switch between two different sockets affect the same torpedo bay. If, for example, the two switches control readying, then loading and firing respectively, then why weren't both torpedos launched with the rat puzzle?
    • I don't think they do. Didn't one control readying, and the other moving into the tube and firing? Missile was moving the switch itself, not its connections. Imagine you could replace the switch by your front door with the one in the hall closet. If it is a plot hole, Imma chalk it up to Rule of Fun.
  • Soon after Sissel saves Lynne, they come across a black cat, who meows at them and leaves. How did they not notice that the cat had been shot?
    • If you saw a cat meow at you, would you look for a bullet wound?
      • It should have been bloody, considering mere minutes had passed.
      • Nope, the wound would have healed right up, thanks to the temsik fragment.
      • It didn't get the fragment until the end of the game. It was merely exposed to radiation, which was never stated to have that quality. At this point, my best theory is that this story takes place in a world where Bloodless Carnage is a fact of life and goes unquestioned, but that contradicts the visible blood in Ace Attorney.
    • It was mentioned that the cat had been shot and killed some time before it had been possessed (there was enough time between it being shot and its possession that Yomiel was shot a second time (with Lynne holding back as long as she could) and Yomiel coordinating himself to possess the cat. It's possible that by the time said possession happened, the bleeding had just stopped because the blood was no longer circulating. If the bullet wound wasn't noticeable and the cat was clearly walking around fine, Sissel and Lynne would probably worry more about the tasks at hand than closely examining a stray cat. Either that, or the possession somehow miraculously healed the body.
    • Well of course, a black coat would be more practical as it would hide the stains better than a white coat.
  • Early on, how do you follow telephone lines into a submarine? It looks like you can only follow the physical telephone lines; being able to travel along a telephone broadcast signal would be way beyond anything you're ever shown as capable of.
    • It appeared to be stationed at an underwater dock each time, in a manner that could plausibly allow for attaching of actual lines. It's inefficient, but you know what they say about that country's use of technology.
      • If you're paying attention, they mention "disconnecting the communications cable" when they undock. So yes, that is the correct explanation.
  • This one pertains to the ending. After everyone goes back in time and keeps Yomiel from being killed by the fragment, Mino is still poised to kill Lynee. So Yomiel possesses his own body to throw Lynne out of the way, getting himself crushed under the rock. My question is why he didn't just possess Lynee. It would have saved himself a lot of pain.
    • There are several possible reasons. My personal theory, however, is that he wanted Jowd to know that he was the one to save her. He was probably feeling pretty self-sacrificial at the time too, and that was a route that could easily have resulted in his death -- something that he may have wanted. Also, it might have just not occurred to him to do so. He manipulates his own body a lot (And it seems easier for him to do so -- he manipulated his own corpse with ease during a period where he was otherwise unable to manipulate anything other than small objects and small creatures) so he might have done it simply because there was less chance of the possessee resisting him subconsciously or him just plain losing control.
      • He was probably afraid that she would resist his control and he would fail to save her. Remember that the last time he tried to possess Lynne, her consciousness resisted so strongly that he messed up and accidentally killed his beloved pet Sissel, kicking off the entire plot and eventually leading to the creation of an alternate timeline.
  • Why didn't Beauty and Dandy notice that they had kidnapped Kamila instead of Amelie? They had a recording of Amelie's voice, so they should have realized that something wasn't right when Kamila spoke.
  • Why is Kamila so calm when we first learn she was kidnapped? When Dandy approaches her to kidnap her in the park, she is frightened and tries to resist, but by the time they meet up with Beauty, Kamila is calmly reading a book, seemingly oblivious to her situation.
    • Maybe she was dealing with the situation by ignoring it?
  • Regarding the ending, how did Missile-prime manage to get back in time to ten years ago on the first iteration? He's explicitly stated to not have the ability to go through phone lines, and without Sissel going around throwing a wrench into people's plans, things should have gone very differently -- most of the other characters involved in the submarine raid would have been dead. He also couldn't have snuck in with Yomiel -- his only other connection to the sub -- since Yomiel has the ability to detect ghosts. So how did he end up in the submarine where Yomiel's body was discarded?
    • Remember that Yomiel can't see a ghost without actually looking for it; you're able to freely manipulate things when he's standing right next to you without him noticing, as long as it's not something big. Also, Missile can jump from core to core even if they're a good distance away, so finding a path isn't as hard for him as it is for Sissel. As long as he's able to get on the sub with Yomiel, he wouldn't have much of a problem getting to his body.
  • In the first chapter, how did Sissel's/ Yomiel's corpse get to the bottom floor of the junkyard? The assassin Jeego originally kicked his corpse down there after killing Lynne, but when Sissel changed her fate by killing Jeego, he also prevented the corpse from being knocked down. Yet when you return to the present, it's still been moved, but now without a cause. The game even lampshades this paradox, but it's never explained.
    • This is explained as soon as it is lampshaded. Sissel wonders why he still fell after Jeego died, but then Cabanela plays the rest of the tape to show the black cat push him to the ground. This makes sense when we realize that the cat is posessed, and Yomiel has reason to make his body fall to the ground.
  • How does missile's ghost power make any sense? He can "swap two objects that have the same shape." Okay, but many of the objects you can switch only have the same shape from the point of view of the fourth wall. For example, switching a trap door and a garbage can lid. Those two things only look the same when viewed as a cross-section from their edge - to any of the characters in the actual game, they look absolutely nothing alike. Yet you can still swap them. Similarly, swapping a spinning tire and a basketball only works if you time it so the swap is performed when the tire is viewed from round side, and not the narrow tread. What's up with that?
    • In-universe, it doesn't make sense, but the recurring theme is obviously theater, so everything in the world revolves around what the audience is able to see, without using closeups. Ever. There are many parts where sissel could accomplish more if he could adjust his view. For example, when saving Lynne in The Chicken Kitchen, Sissel can't see inside a case because it is locked. Yet he sees through walls all the time. If I had a closeup perspective and had the same perspective inside the case, then he could have found Kamila much sooner.
  • Which objects have cores for you to possess seems really arbitrary. Was any explanation ever given for why you can possess a police officer's nightstick, but not his badge, or his hat, or wallet, or etc? One puzzle requires you to possess a shirt on a clothesline, but you can never possess any clothing that anyone is wearing. Except for body armor being worn by prison guards. Huh? Is there any logic behind those cores in inanimate objects?
    • We're talking about the powers of the dead here. It doesn't have to make sense. (This actually explains almost everything on this page.)
  • Why is Sissel's name still Sissel after the ten years? The explanation given is that Jowd names him that, but as shown by every other example of time travel in the game, the characters that remember the adventure would immediately go back to the new present. Therefore, Jowd of the "Ten Years Ago" incident would not know that Sissel's name is Sissel, and the only way he could name him after Yomiel's Sissel would be to change his name after having him for ten years.
    • It doesn't need to be the new present, if only because defining what the "present" is while time travel is involved is hard. They probably go back to the point when a major change happens, in much the same way that, as an example, making Kamila drop the headphones into the fish tank counts as a fate change, but making the doughnut cart roll across the room doesn't. The "major change" just has to be something bigger, like averting a death, or changing who is hit by the Temsik meteor shard.
    • An alternate explanation: they just go back to the moment when the person would have died if their fate had not been changed. Most of the time, it might as well be the present, but this time... nope.
  • Why didn't Sissel agree to Let Lynne get crushed so they could retry the final mission? Since this was before her first death, her soul wouldn't be awake, and characters have been shown to not be aware of what happened to them if they were not a part of the Ghost Trick. Plus, she was unconscious at the time, she wouldn't remember betting crushed anyways and would probably chalk it up to being a really bad nightmare. Or they could just redo Yomiel's death and have Yomiel helping the entire time.
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