Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The third game in the Professor Layton Widget Series.

The first trilogy concludes with Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (Last Time Travel in Japan, Lost Future in PAL regions). One week ago, a demonstration of a time machine went horribly wrong, causing its inventor and the Prime Minister to disappear without a trace. Now the Professor has received a letter postmarked ten years in the future, as that era's Luke asks him for help to undo the chaos that Future London has fallen into.

Please place examples that apply to the series as a whole on the main Professor Layton page.

Tropes used in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future include:
  • Abhorrent Admirer: Belle, for "Fluke". The young one, I mean.
  • Abnormal Ammo: The slot machine gun that Professor Layton and Future Luke create uses coins as ammo.
  • Are You Sure You Can Drive This Thing?: Layton is actually asked this twice, the first time by Bill Hawks while the Laytonmobile was still normal. The second time was by Luke when the Laytonmobile turned into a plane.
  • Behind the Black: Hazel has a habit of cowering behind the opaque part of the DS.
  • Beneath the Earth: The "future" London.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Future Luke/Clive is considerably more gentlemanly than Luke, but secretly harbors a desire for wide-scale vengeance. On a lesser scale, Becky's politeness towards guests depends on whether her grandmother is listening at the moment.
  • Blatant Lies: Most of what Clive said as Future Luke.
  • But for Me It Was Tuesday: Partial example. Layton distinctly remembers a small boy who lost both his parents on the day of the time machine's explosion, but doesn't realize Clive was that boy. It is a partial example because it wasn't just another Tuesday for him, as that was the day he had lost Claire.
  • But Now I Must Go: Claire, back to the time of her death.
  • Captain Obvious: Layton says, "There's something going very wrong," when the time machine had just exploded.
    • Then there's this exchange:

Luke: This ladder should lead us down into the research facility.
Don Paolo: Ah yes, Captain Obvious to the rescue once again.

  • Chekhov's Gun: The pocketwatch which Layton gives Claire in a flashback comes in handy ten years later, to disable the mobile fortress.
  • Continuity Nod: Quite a few of them, mostly to Curious Village:
    • Luke notes that Don Paolo had once tried to run them over with a Ferris wheel.
    • When you tap the Towering Pagoda which is in the distance in the area just before its entrance, Flora will say "That tower is even taller than the one in St. Mystere!"
    • When you have to escape the Pagoda, tapping the curtain will cause Flora to say, "Why don't we just make a glider and fly away?"
    • In the sticker book metapuzzle, several stickers are of Curious Village characters.
    • Luke still has Don Paolo's mask of Chelmey. It can be seen hanging over the lid of his suitcase when he's packing up during the credits.
    • There's one to Diabolical Box as well: Examining the underground railway entrance in Chinatown (without tapping the Shoe icon first) will have Luke say "The railway is useful, but it's no Molentary Express..."
    • And one to both games simultaneously: if you tap the manhole cover outside one of the subway stations, Luke remarks, "Remember the last time we went into the sewer?"
    • One of the pictures during the credits is of Layton and Paul frantically running away from the mobile fortress controlled by Clive to destroy London ...in the exact positioning as the picture in Curious Village's credits of Layton and Luke running away from the Ferris wheel sent by Paul to destroy them.
  • Conveniently Empty Buildings: Even with Clive's destructive rampage through London with a giant mobile fortress, there's no reference of any deaths whatsoever.
  • Cool Car: The Laytonmobile goes Up to Eleven in this game.
  • Cute and Psycho: Puzzlette might count - she's breezy and ditzy and speaks in an incredibly Moe-Moe girl-idol voice when she's not MURDERING SAPIENT INSECTS WITH A FLYSWATTER.
    • The chick even has a punching bag and a spiked flyswatter.
  • Darker and Edgier: Considerably so in comparison to the rest of the games in the series. For one, it's the only game in the series where people actually die.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Future Luke, as seen in this conversation:

Shmarton: You're one of the fellows behind the incident at the casino, aren't you?
Future Luke: Let's say I am. What would you do about it?
Shmarton: I'd get my boss Shmelmey to give you a knuckle sandwich...if only he hadn't gone off to the bathroom!
Future Luke: Well, lucky for us, he's not here. We'll just be going now.
Shmarton: If you run off, I'll make sure my boss squishes you like a bug when he finds you!
Future Luke: Duly noted.

    • Even Flora gets a bit of this, when they're making their way through the tower in Chinatown.

Flora: Nothing livens up a den of iniquity like a potted plant.

  • Disc One Final Dungeon: The Towering Pagoda is built up as the other Layton's hideout for much of the game, but there are quite a few loose ends left over when you're done.
  • Doing In the Wizard: Toyed with, as the "time machine" used to travel between Present London and Future London turns out to be simply an elevator. But then you get to the very end, and discover that the original time machine built 10 years ago did work, temporarily launching Claire into the present time.
  • Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Subject 3.
  • Downer Ending: The ending for the game's storyline is quite a downer, with the Professor finding out that he's been with Claire all along, only to have her pulled away from him as he begs her and sobs for her to stay. The one for the first trilogy is more bittersweet, with Luke gone overseas, but with the promise of more adventure in the future. Blatantly.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Poor, poor Beasly. Or not. One of the credit images shows him flying away from Puzzlette's swatter, injured in a comical way.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: While we don't get to see it, underneath Future London is a facility building a huge, city-destroying mecha. Considering that "Future London" is a fake built under the real London, we have a Humongous Mecha built in an Elaborate Underground Base under a Beneath the Earth city under a major metropolis.
  • Enemy Mine: Don Paolo joins forces with Layton because he wants to get to the bottom of what's going on... and for other, personal reasons.
  • The Family for the Whole Family: They're even called "The Family."
  • Fauxtastic Voyage: The game uses one with Faked Rip Van Winkle elements in the form of faux time-travel as the antagonist's Batman Gambit.
  • Flashback to Catchphrase: We see in this game where Layton got his top hat.
    • We also learn why he decided to become gentlemanly, and who inspired his catchphrase "That's what a gentleman does!"
  • Foreshadowing: Hey look, it's Pavel! Oh, you're looking for giant underground caverns that some scientists believe can be found all across the globe? Well, good luck with that, thanks for the puzzle, and tell Ryoga I said "hi." Come The Reveal...
    • Also, another puzzle giver talks about how he went digging deep into the earth, and wound up in "future London". Luke assumes he just wandered into a wormhole, but the reveal makes everything make more sense.
    • Not to mention the statue of the boy and the author. *sniff*
    • Two steps outside the clock shop you can see that it extends into the sky.
  • Frictionless Banana Peels: A recurring puzzle in this game. It differs from the Frictionless Ice puzzle in that it is often possible (and necessary) to avoid slipping by finding a route around the peels.
  • Fridge Logic: An in-universe example: Why didn't the future Dr. Schrader react when the Luke who came to visit him was still a Cute Shotaro Boy instead of a young adult? Answer: that wasn't Dr. Schrader, and he wasn't from the future. And so the web begins to unravel.
    • Dean Delmona's hair is graying, but Layton knows he's bald and wears a toupee.
  • Future Me Scares Me: And how! Played pointedly straight with Future Layton, and later Future Luke.
  • Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: It's implied in a flashback that Layton hit Clive whilst restraining him, to stop him from going back for his parents, after the explosion that killed both Claire and Clive's parents.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: At one point in the Towering Pagoda, Layton is forced to put on a strange pair of goggles in order to see the puzzle that will unlock the next door. Their real purpose is to scan his memories of a specific day so Dr. Allen can program that data into his time machine...except 'Layton' was really Don Paolo in disguise, so Allen couldn't have gotten the information off him in the first place.
  • Got Me Doing It: DING!
  • Hair-Raising Hare: Subject 3. Years of being experimented on have left him misanthropic and cranky enough to give even Shadow the Hedgehog a run for his money.

"Take one more step, and I'll rearrange your kneecaps!"

  • Hard on Soft Science: The Prime Minister is talked into participating in the time machine demonstration after Dr. Stahngun needles him over abandoning the hard sciences.
  • He Is All Grown Up: We get a glimpse of what Luke would look like when he's older. Later in the game we find out that he is not Luke but a boy named Clive who looks incredibly similar to Luke, which does not really make sense because Luke and Clive are not related.
  • Heel Face Turn: Don Paolo, although he claims it's only temporary.
  • Hopeless Suitor: Poor Rosetta (for Layton) and Belle (for Luke).
  • Humongous Mecha: The mobile fortress.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Layton disappears for a short period when the gang are heading for the Towering Pagoda, and Luke and Flora are naturally concerned. Flora remarks that Luke is "just lost without him," which is a nice bit of pot-kettle-black coming from Little Miss Separation Anxiety. Of course Luke calls her on it, but it's all quite good-natured.
  • Ice Queen: Bill Hawks' wife, who behaves as though attending the scientific event at the start of the game is somehow beneath her and the food isn't good enough.
  • I Have Your Daughter/AndYourLittleDogToo: Clive abducts Flora to ensure that Layton will chase him, although the specific motive for this act is never actually stated. He finally admits that he doesn't really know why, and guesses that something inside him made him want to be stopped.
  • "In Layman's Terms: a memory scanner."
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: "Paint me <adjective>" from Slate and "drone" from Beasly.
  • Inelegant Blubbering: On two occasions, from both Layton and Luke. Granted, they were at some of their lives' saddest moments.
  • Inferred Holocaust / No Endor Holocaust: A giant mecha bursts through an underground cavern and high above London, then proceeds to shoot at will on the city. Thousands presumably die. Then the same mecha falls through the hole it created and explodes in mid-air, completely incinerating the fake London underneath it, but apparently having no further effect on the city above, despite it actually being closer.
  • Interface Spoiler: Inverted: the game's interface helps to hide the biggest plot twists from the player by putting "solved" stamps on some of the mysteries even when the "solutions" found were in fact lies created by the villains. Once the truth is discovered, the "solved" stamp is replaced with a "The Whole Story" stamp.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: At one point, Layton and Luke find a statue of an author who became friends with an ill boy, and who wrote children's adventure books. Eventually the boy died of his illness. The "author" looks a great deal like Layton and given that Layton saved Clive, it may actually be Layton. Luke returns to that statue when he's troubled by the news of his father moving.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: In the casino, Layton, Luke and Future Luke are being shot at by SMG-toting members of The Family, yet no one gets shot despite the large amount of collateral damage. Justified in that the whole city is a Masquerade, The Family are its enforcers, and that Future Luke is not only a mole, but also their boss. He probably arranged the attack to throw any suspicion off of himself.
  • I Was Quite a Looker: Florence in Puzzle #46
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Don Paolo, again. He claims that the only reason he modified the Laytonmobile was so Layton could save Flora.
  • Karma Houdini: Bill freaking Hawks. Despite being the one responsible for the explosion ten years before the present and causing the deaths of probably dozens of people, including Clive's parents and his lab assistant Claire, he is never punished. In fact, he's actually rewarded for his actions, earning a fortune which he then uses to gain political favor and become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Even by the end of the game, we never see him get comeuppance; all that happens is that Chelmey makes a pointed comment about being blinded by ambition but it goes over Hawks' head.
    • It is heavily implied that Chelmey arrests Bill, judging by his comment "I still have work to do".
  • Light and Mirrors Puzzle: One is midway through the Towering Pagoda.
  • Lighthouse Point: The lighthouse in the middle of the Thames, instead of at the mouth of the river like a normal lighthouse. Actually the top of the moving fortress.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Very subtle, but; when you first meet Hazel he is terrified of Layton's hat, so he shies away and hides behind a wall. Naturally, this wall is the side of your DS.
  • Loophole Abuse: Layton and Future Luke try to prove themselves to one another by, obviously, presenting puzzles. Luke starts by challenging Layton to find a spade in a set of four cards, and Layton does the same on his turn. But Layton's cards don't include a spade - he noticed that Luke never specified that all four cards were of different suits, and took advantage of that loophole to make his own puzzle Unwinnable by Design. It turns out to have been a Secret Test of Character; Luke was seeing if Layton would catch such a loophole.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Future Layton turns out to be Dimitri Allen aka Dr. Stahngun, who, in the end, was being manipulated by Clive aka Future Luke.
  • Manly Tears: Layton after losing Claire for the second time.
  • Masquerade: Future London is a fake created by Dr. Stahngun; he kidnapped scientists and made them believe they were 10 years into the future, then enlisted their help in finishing his time machine on the belief it was the only way to get back to their correct time.
  • Memento MacGuffin: As we learn in this game, Layton's hat is one.
  • Miniature Senior Citizens: Margaret is about as short as her granddaughter Becky, who doesn't look much older than young Luke.
  • Minion with an F In Evil: For someone nicknamed "Lockjaw", he sure can't seem to keep his mouth shut...
  • Mood Whiplash: Considering all the concentrated awesomeness that had occurred just before, few saw that ending coming.
  • My Name Is Not Durwood: Belle keeps calling Luke "Fluke," intended as a term of endearment.
  • My Future Self and Me: Luke and future Luke.
  • Not So Stoic: Layton's breakdown at the end of the game, after Claire leaves.
  • Papa Wolf: We finally see Layton become truly pissed off when Clive kidnaps Flora.
  • The Pollyanna: Flora.
  • Polly Wants a Microphone: The hint coin-finding pet in this game is a parrot. Sadly, the meta-puzzle where the parrot learns words and repeats them back was replaced in the English version.
  • Punny Name: Rosetta Stone, the archaeology student.
    • Also, Puzzlette, for well... obvious reasons. Her name in the Japanese version is Nazolene, "nazo" being a Japanese word for "puzzle".
  • Reality Ensues: First time we get to see Layton at the university he works at and pester a student to finish her homework.
  • Red Herring: YMMV, but partway through The Summation it really seems like Bill Hawks is going to be revealed as either the Big Bad or Man Behind the Man. And then Layton accuses Future Luke.
  • Reverse the Polarity: The war machine Clive uses is destroyed by switching some gears around to make one of them run backwards.
    • Although this is a much more realistic example of this trope, as swapping gears around inside highly complex machinery is sure to do SOME damage, at least.
  • Rule of Cool: After being cornered behind some slot machines by The Family, Professor Layton and Future Luke work together to find a way to escape. Their solution? To create a friggin' machine gun out of slot machine parts that had been shot loose just moments before. Did I mention that they managed to do this while under fire?
  • Save the Villain: Celeste/Claire saving Clive, feeling responsible for what happened to him. Also, in a sense, Layton and company saving Bill Hawks
  • Sequel Hook: At the very end of the game, Luke writes to Layton about a mysterious happening at his new home, which sounds like just the sort of mystery for Layton to solve. The game ends, not with "The End", but with "To Be Continued". Perhaps there will be something after the prequel trilogy is completed.
  • Similar Squad: There's a Family member named Layman, who is similarly dressed to Layton and gets several of his catchphrases wrong. Layton never comments on this. There are also Shmelmey and Shmarton (Barley and Chelton in the UK version), who are similar to Chelmey and Barton.
  • Snow Means Love/Snow Means Death: The ending: it starts snowing at the end of the game, even though the weather conditions and the foilage on the leaves would imply summertime. All while the woman Layton loves walks away into the past and towards her death.
  • Soft Glass: Averted. Clive locks Flora in a glass cell, which neither she nor Layton seem able to break. Good thing it had a puzzle lock...
  • Start of Darkness: Don Paolo's motivation against Layton (oh, hey!) is finally explained.
  • Stealth Insult: From Layton to Luke.

Professor Layton: And even in the future, you seem to need my help in solving [mysteries]. Your constancy can be quite a comfort in these uncertain times, my boy.
Luke: Er... Well, thank you... I think.

  • Strong Family Resemblance: Claire and Celeste could practically be twins. Subverted when it turns out Celeste is Claire.
  • Take Your Time: Contains a particularly Egregious example near the end of the game. The Big Bad has activated his gigantic, mobile fortress and is about to begin tearing London apart, and you want to go back and solve any puzzles you may have missed? No problem!
    • Even worse, at the very end, you install a watch with a stated time limit of ten minutes to stall a Self-Destruct Mechanism, yet you can STILL go back to leisurely mess around! Weirdest of all, there's a (telegraphed) Point of No Return right near that point, just like you'd expect -- but it's the puzzle immediately after the one where the time limit kicks in, so your final save is guaranteed to one where London is supposedly about to explode in ten minutes.
  • Teacher-Student Romance: A one-sided version: Rosetta, one of Layton's students, makes thinly-veiled references to how she's looking forward to their private sessions. Layton, for his part, seems to know what she's implying (he stutters a bit) but is clearly not interested. Leads to a Crowning Moment of Funny during the credits, which show Rosetta and Layton in their "private" session...with Luke and Flora. Layton and the kids are evidently having a great time; Rosetta, not so much.
  • This Cannot Be!: Clive, after his machine has been disabled.
  • Time Travel
  • Title Drop

Claire: We had so many plans for the future. Do you remember, Hershel? I'll miss you...and our unwound future.

    • Naturally, the dialogue in the Japanese version also had a Title Drop, but for its own title ("The Last Time Travel"), therefore being a bit different.

Claire: It looks like my time is up, at last. It was nice to see you again. It ended so suddenly. My... last time travel.

  • Tranquil Fury: Layton at the end, once he's worked out what's really going on here. He remains gentlemanly and reserved throughout, but loses the soft-spokenness in his voice and his beady little eyes suddenly become... unsettling.

Layton: This is... utter madness.

  • Traumatic Haircut: Well, sort of. As he watches Hershel and Claire getting all lovey-dovey from behind a tree, Paul's bald-but-long-on-the-sides hair stands straight up in shock, then gradually flattens out and hardens into Don Paolo's trademark horns.
  • Triang Relations: A variant of type 4, with both Dimitri Allen and Don Paolo filling in the role of A, Claire being B, and Layton as C.
    • To be more specific, Claire and Layton were in a loving relationship, while Don Paolo and Dimitri both were one-sidedly in love with Claire.
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Or ten years. We still don't know when that means. See the Schizo-Tech entry on the main Professor Layton page.
  • Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Dmitri opposed pushing forward the time travel experiment, as Hawks planned to do for his sponsors.
  • Unfitting Music: When Layton weeps for his dead love at the end of the game, a happy-sounding love song/ballad starts playing, which seems cruelly sarcastic considering the situation.
  • Universal Driver's License: Professor Layton is able to fly a plane, more specifically, the Laytonmobile transformed into a plane (or more specifically, an ornithopter) Strangely, he seems to have a much easier time flying his plane than driving it on the ground.

Luke: Uh, Professor, when did you learn how to fly a plane?
Professor Layton: A plane? This is an automobile!

Clive: This isn't happening. It can't end this way. IT WON'T END THIS WAY!

  • Wham! Line: "You've taken awfully good care of that hat I gave you."
  • Which Me??: Luke. Layton solves this by referring to them as "Big Luke" and "Little Luke".
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: Enjoy your final hug and kiss, Hershel, because that's all you're going to get before your love is inevitably sucked back to her own time to die.
  • Zany Scheme: Clive's. And how. Clive was somehow able to get the workers, funding,and support for his harebrained revenge scheme, despite only being about 20 years old.
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