WMG/Sluggy Freelance. Blatant spoilers unmarked.
- It's King Farahn. Their link allows him to basically rewrite her as he sees fit.
- Except she did die. Current Zoe is a replacement, made from a vegetable body and snapshot of her mind from before the incident.
- Actually, Something Positive's Aubrey mentioned in one of the flashback storylines that she used to own a lop-eared bunny that her mother made her give to a pet shop because it liked sharp things. And in the very next panel, she's wondering where her switchblade is. . . .
- Non-canon. Bun-bun was deposited in the pet shop by Uncle Time after his future self gave him a concussion and they both fell into the oceans unmoving in timeless space. Before that, and being a pirate captain for a while, he was a barkeep. That is the earliest point we know about him.
- Maybe the killer rabbit was his mother.
- Except that Sasha and Kusari were both in the same place when Kusari was introduced, so unless Kusari can teleport and assume a disguise at the same time, Sasha isn't Kusari.
- If the WMG below is correct, Dragons will casually be revealed to have powerful magic. Someone will casually mention some body duplication trick in passing. This will make this WMG suddenly very relevant.
- We know that her "sister", Oasis, is an artificial intelligence controlling a clone body. Kusari might be capable of fielding more than one body at a time.
- Confirmed as well.
- Pete is careful about drawing people with distinctive figures. It may take a bit of a keen (artist's?) eye to see, but even under the outfit and mask, Kusari is the same shape as Oasis and not anyone else. That makes the question of who can be under the mask more complicated. The same affects any "person X is actually person Y" speculations, at least barring differently-aged versions.
- Upgrade the above to "the same shape as Kusari and no-one else, except probably the demigods Rana and Dunuloa," which just goes a long way towards confirming an earlier guess that Oasis and Kusari are the Sun Twin and Moon Twin (ie. Rana and Dunuloa) or somehow related to them. Previously the Moon Twin had only been mentioned, and the Sun Twin only inferred from that, but someone noticed that Oasis and Kusari look like twins that would fit under a sun and moon theme.
- Confirmed 2017-09-25.
Chapter 50: Phoenix Rising was also another great big hint from nearly three years ago.
This just proves the next WMG entry.
- There's at least one of her deaths that didn't directly involve fire: When Torg holds her hand in the hospital as she dies, she's back to life a few panels later, with no mention or evidence of fire.
- Aren't dead Jane Does cremated to save the state the burial costs?
Somewhat related to this WMG, Pete plans everything so far in advance because if he tried to pack in all of the awesomeness he's got planned over any less of a timeframe, the Moment of Awesome after Moment of Awesome would wear us down until nothing seemed awesome or special any longer.
- Somewhat related: Sasha's last appearance before showing up recently was seven years ago.
- Much shorter by time, but still a number of arcs—Chapter 39 ends with a pair of hints for the future, foreshadowing events more than two years and nine arcs later.
- It actually is implied.
- "When you start out with wussy mortals, you get wussy demons." This statement makes it entirely possible that every Dimension of Pain demon (except for the Demon King) is a mortal turned into a demon by the Calimar spear, since every other demon seen in the strip so far lacks a physical form and needs a mortal host to interact with the world around them, except for the Demon King, and even he was ethereal in nature.
- K'Z'K doesn't need a mortal host except situationally. His real bug-centaur body is what we see after he's freed from his mortal host (Gwynn).
- A recent chapter features a rather incompetent worker in Nofun Labs called Reik, who accidentally turns all of his colleagues into horrible mutants, with a squid on a stick. If it's not painfully clear enough, they end up screaming "PAIN!!!" We may have witnessed Reak Prime's birth here.
...or we just don't trust Pete to not turn it around five or ten years down the road.
- Even Zoe somehow survived the explosion that forced out the necklace, the robots that shot them probably did the trick. They're dead, Jim.
- There is, however, a difference between being dead and staying dead.
- This is a comic that made a big deal about the importance of being recurring characters, questionable circumstances of death, and not seeing the body. There's reason for a lack of trusting that what is on the panel in a discretion shot is exactly what you thought (Hello Oasis and Pyrokinesis!)
- Confirmed.
- Written by guest artist Tom Batiuk.
- Not exactly next anniversary. When the 'Aylee' chapter started, Pete explicitly stated that Sluggy will end in no less than five years. That still leaves at least two more anniversaries to go.
- Half jossed, half confirmed.
- Pretty much Jossed. Storyline ended with no indication of this.
- The [same number of alts] thing is kinda confusing, but given what's been revealed recently, it seems highly probable that at least a Riff is His Masterness.
- Jossed, it's Schlock.
- The problem is, Vampire Hunters don't care about a vampire's intellect.
- In the "past", we saw the Corp using 'REA 1's and they have captured Oasis.
- In 4U City, Riff has come up against 'REA 6's and Oasis Here
- This would require that Riff somehow makes it back in time, gets married, but never tells anybody about the future that he knows about. (This isn't necessarily a stopper; it's not hard to [tech] up a good reason why he couldn't tell, or perhaps in the end he likes the outcome and just doesn't want to screw with it.)
- Now that Schlock is researching a giant DFA, constructing a fortress-city based around Schlock's lab, and having one of his subordinates research "happy-juice", this is definitely a possibility.
- Confirmed pretty certainly to be a close alternative-dimension future.
She was originally going to have died instantly. But so many people complained about her death and/or wanted he to be brought back that Abrams changed his plans and gave them what they wanted. While making it so horrible that it suddenly seems like a quick death would have been far better.
- As close to being Jossed as possible, with the whole story wrapping up neatly to a completely different effect.
In what I have come to deem the Aeris Effect, (Or 'Aerith Effect') an author or writer makes a character so likeable that readers/players/viewers will instantly cling to him/her. And then, just when the dramatic timing is right, they kill the character off for emotional value. This is so common that I know it already has its own trope, under another name.
When Abrams does drama, he goes all out, as shown with Zoe's fate. Therefore, it's possible that he may kill off another of the main cast. Torg is safe, as he has Plot Armor thanks to the prophecy, and I doubt he'd kill off Riff. Bun-Bun and Kiki are unlikely to be used to this effect as well. However, Sam and Sasha are well-liked enough to the point that their deaths would have a HUGE effect on the fanbase. Sasha in particular is in danger, as she has been getting more and more attention and characterization in the strips that she appears in lately. Also in danger of this treatment is the newly introduced Izzy.
- As of this strip, it seems I'm either psychic or savvy. I doubt Sasha will die from that injury, though. Still, close enough.
- Turned out to be just another injury someone recovered from. Sasha's had it worse before.
- Then who is the Demon King, Bun-bun?
- Maybe after another Holidaycide, perhaps he killed the Groundhog's Shadow instead of binding it to him.
- Not likely, seeing how much more dramatically different he is from his minions. But considering the later spec, it's entirely possible he's originally from the Dimension of Pain, just like the Goddess and the green skinned natives he conquered, and the first generation of demons that became his minions, were outsiders who were zapped there by 4U city's (or an alternate 4U city's) DFA cannon, along with the squid-on-stick.
- Maybe after another Holidaycide, perhaps he killed the Groundhog's Shadow instead of binding it to him.
- Now they're calling themselves the "Dim-sum Henchmen of Pang", so yeah.
- If you're running with this, tie it all together with 4U city being an alternate reality, the no-fun mutants being the wasteland monsters, and the dimension of pain is where they're being blasted to. The early lab mutants clearly resemble many Do P residents. We've seen characters travel in time through timeless space. If the DFA sends characters through there, that could explain how characters we see now, could also be in the past. It all seems to fit together.
- Anyone remember this one?
- Also this one.
- Consider: he's pretty powerless himself, but quite effective through his network of underlings. He's also been recently revealed to have secretly amassed huge quantities of data on his minions, and is good enough with computers to where Bestseid is afraid to even let him near one. And he looks similar enough to pass...
Doesn't this look an awful lot like Chen? It would also explain Operation Ferret Butt and how Bun Bun met General Mayhem who is associated with Killum.
K'Z'K stole people's souls, leaving them in comas. In 4U City, citizens are drugged to the gills and spend most of their time just lying there. Maybe it's just me, but there might be something there...
- As an addendum, let me speculate that His Masterness' real name will be Kenny Kizke.
- Jossed.
- If they'd left things alone...
- Rammer would still be alive, ready to plant the seed of the revolution.
- Zoe and Riff wouldn't have "died" in the MK 19 explosion, removing from play the only man alive that could stop Schlock before things go too far.
- Jossed - see Schlock's speech in the 4/25/11 update. Happened in a suspiciously similar way, too...
- Torg, Sam, Bun-Bun, and Sasha wouldn't have linked up with the Minion Master. Without them, the missions against all the tech-groups wouldn't have happened, and the Nofun random-mutagen-squid wouldn't have turned the entire research staff into "demons".
- Hereti-Corp wouldn't have been able to acquire the groups weakened by the MM missions and start the research that has the two timelines converging.
- Alternately, Riff gets zapped by an REA 6's DFA gun and it sends him back to the prime universe. Discovering that his home is well on the path to Government Drug Enforcement, he uses what he learned about 4U City to derail the upcoming disaster.
- Moreso than normal for Sluggy. I'm just guessing here, but it feels like all the timelines/dimensions are drawing closer together. What if all the surviving Riffs end up in the same timeline and set their intellects to repairing the damages that have been done? After all, Prime!Riff did time-travel, portals, DFA, etc. What could three of them (or more!) do?
- There may be Antagonist in Mourning stuff going on, or, perhaps...
- Oasis, the mind without her own body, will end up fixing Blank!Zoe, the body without her own mind.
- Jossed. Zoe is fixed, Oasis is in HC custody.
- Jossed. Riff used time travel to get a snapshot of non-blank Zoe.
- And Oasis and Kusari both have them. And they are programmable, which is why Dr. Steve was able to directly control Oasis in the way he did - he merely gave an order to the nanites to change her 'default' orientation. And the secret of making the nanites died with him, so the reason none of the Hereti-Corp higher-ups have injected themselves with nanites is that they don't want to be vulnerable to programming commands. Kusari's command protocols are known, so she's still under the control of Hereti-Corp, but Oasis' command structure was lost. They could probably figure it out if they had her captured and could study her for long enough. Oasis' pyrokinetics is her own personal mutation, nothing to do with the nanites.
- We've seen the birth of the demons in the prime world thanks to the Squid-On-A-Stick, with at least one plausible carryover character (Reik/Reakk). And for the Dimension of Sham-Pain, as they say, when you start with a wussy human, you get a wussy demon.
- Potentially [[Jossed]] by Torg's sword activating on its own in the Do P because it's a supernatural plane (think I saw that somewhere). But I suppose it could be Hand Waved by saying that the innocence of that whole plane has already been spilled.
- No, that was in a weird spirit realm, not in the Dimension of Pain.
- Not that either, it has never happened.
- And just to take the concept too far, the Goddess of Good is Gwynn's future, while the Demon King is K'z'k.
- Potentially [[Jossed]] by Torg's sword activating on its own in the Do P because it's a supernatural plane (think I saw that somewhere). But I suppose it could be Hand Waved by saying that the innocence of that whole plane has already been spilled.
- Riff manages to convince Herti-corp's surviving leaders that time is degrading and the world is doomed.
- Bun-bun knows about Teknocon one, but can't afford to get thrown out of time again becaus he'd be a serial offender.
- In a combination of stable time loop and batman gambit, Bun-bun throws Frog-mech out of time to be sir John, betting on the possibility that Calix will find Teknocon and try to attack Jacobson.
- Frog tries to use the situation to his advantage... but Bun-bun has a few recorded messages for his former crew!
- Except that 4U Riff knows about Timeless Space, stated that it was a shield to prevent the universe from falling apart, DFA abuse nearly destroyed it, and he recalibrated the Judgement Chutes to send people there.
- <OP; I'm aware that 4U Riff learned of Timeless Space; it still works; the broken world in Oceans Unmoving arc is what is left of the world after DFA abuses and with Judgement Chutes sending people to Timeless Space...we also know that sometimes the DFA will send people to different timelines (War of the Bug Squishers) and apparently it is possible to use the DFA and maybe one other item or similar; to move through time and space...presumably using Timeless Space
- Why would people tossed out of time end up in a different dimension's Timeless Space? And the War of the Bug Squishers involved a time machine, not the DFA. (It's also not a different timeline but the "current" past.)
- And during the final battle the concentration of portals will draw the attention of one or both factions in the Oceans Unmoving and they'll be able to escape to the real world.
- that makes some sense..
- comic for 7/4/13 shows Krig, God of Joy..... and his symbol JUST happens to be the Easter Egg.
- Could be the Krig's power winds up divided; one part going to Bun-bun for Easter, the rest cementing him into the KR In Gle, Santa Claus. He has the beard for it, too.
- The time god wouldn't even need to change to become Father Time, just be referred to by a slightly different name. We know both are overseeing a web of fate, too.
- Pretty much confirmed at the end of Mohkadun - Dunuloa became Basphomy and her sense of vengeance against men went so far she was stripped of her ability to keep running the holiday. "Krig Gaul" is Santa Claus and is for some as yet unknown reason still feuding with Bun-Bun enough to throw him out of time the first time. Khronos is Father Time, and now we know how Uncle Time became part of Timeless Space.
- the box is in fact the book of E-ville's predecessor-the diamond symbol on Symachus, God of Justice, is going to be very very very important pretty soon for Gwynn.
- Confirmed when Pete announced that Mohkadun is the prelude to the final storyline. Now, given his propensity for dragging out storylines, there is a good chance he might not get the end done by the time 2017 rolls around...
- Just a descendant.
- It makes even more sense when you consider that Kusari's signature weapons are mini-scythes, and scythes are the weapon used by every other patron of Halloween. Basphomy only had the hammer so she could kill the Pumpkin King, after all. Also, it would make sense for Kusari to have a power, just like Oasis does, and so Basphomy's fear power would fit.
- He was the inspiration for Dracula
- He wasn't a vorpyr, strahkoi, or vrykolatkas. But rather something unique with the powers of all three types.
- So, we can tie almost every arc together. Mokhadun is the origin of Bun-Bun, Santa, Basphomy, Kzk, and the holidays, and Oasis and Kusari can pretty clearly be linked to the Sun and Moon twins, and sparked both Dr. Steve Hereti's and Orsintos Labs' research of the supernatural, leading to all of the advanced tech and weird stuff from both Hereti-Corp and the companies that copied it, including the Dimension of Pain Demons. During the Holiday Wars, Bun-Bun commanded a flight of vampires, meaning vampires are linked to Halloween, which was originally controlled by Basphomy, who thus created the vampires. This means that the only two unconnected stories are those of Dr. Crabtree and Rithuly (and Alyee's species, which is linked to Rithuly). Now, since the Dimension of Pain demons were actually mutants, this means other demons, such as the Mind Wedgier and Rithuly, could also have scientific origins. However, they are clearly not like the DOP demons, since Aylee's species can change form and evolve. The only other thing that can change form like that in Sluggy Freelance is Dr. Crabtree, who was able to shape change freely with the nanites. An interesting thing to note is that since Bun-Bun was not affected by Crabtree's nanites, this means that they could either not affect nonhumans(and were on a different setting than when they killed Tuffy) or could not affect sufficiently weird or supernatural things like a god of power. Either way, Aylee should be immune to them... but she wasn't. In fact, she went into a coocoon and adapted to defend better against nanites. The only way this would happen would be if she could be affected, meaning that she either is, at the core of it, human, or is close enough to be more mundane than Bun-Bun. Another connection between Aylee and Crabtree's nanites is that both were able to adapt to freezing cold. Thus, Aylee's form changes are brought about by nanites, which detected hostile nanites and defended(and adapted themselves toned immune to EMPs, which can be done, as demonstrated by Riff's one EMP shielded robot). This would mean that Rithuly is a version of Dr. Crabtree who won, further suggested by how Aylee's species' deity is female, just like the DOP is a universe where the Nofun mutants won. And nanite-based Rayths would still be able to work with souls, because the DOP mutants were also capable of building cages that could hold souls.
- Horribus is mean in general, but targets Reakk specifically, even having him listed as a worthless piece of *** in his phone.
- Reakk is humorously lazy and incompetent, and is the target of Horribus's ire.
- Psyk is given disproportionate influence and priveledge by Horribus, who he puts up with and humors far too much, as well as being the overlooked Only Sane Man.
- Ayle can mutate to adapt to whatever situation, so the best defense against pain-loving demons would be flowers. Also, we've been directly told it wasn't a real dragon by the book, which said that the first two steps would be guaranteed to work for a real dragon. However, an alien (or nanite ghoul) would not be a real dragon. Also, its appearance is completely different from everything else in the dimension, because it isn't caetoony; it looks like a very realistic dragon. The only other thing that looked like an actual dragon was Aylee's giant form. The comeback to this theory is that the dragon awoke just like the second one, but it would make sense for Aylee to be imprisoned just like two legitimate DOP mutants, because all of them would be just as annoying.
- The Dimension of Pain's Demon King of evil and pain had to come from somewhere. Horribus assumed he just came out of nowhere and took over the dimension. However, it later turns out the the "demons" are actually created by No-Fun's squid-on-a-stick mutation spear. It is never explained how these mutants eventually became super-natural demons as every other dimension's set of demons either hasn't hit their tipping point yet (or is obliterated before they get that far) or the mutants already possess their demonic strength and abilities. Inky himself possesses a passing resemblance to the Demon King and he seems like one of the more intelligent of the mutants. The Demon King is made out of black ooze that can morph into different shapes. Inky seems to be made of a similar substance. It is possible that this nobody mutant may be the dark horse winner for the demonic power lottery and assume the position of King. As "being promoted" leads to increased strength, intelligence, and makes the individual invincible except for making their heart their Achilles' heel, this can explain why Inky is not as strong or intelligent as the Demon King. Since Inky survived No-Fun's destruction in Sluggy Prime and he assumed the role of leader of the survivors, he is the perfect candidate to show us how the Demon King came to be by being the ascended individual to take that position.
- And this reason is Web of Fate being fucked up - first by Kozoaku, then by Uncle Time to counter former's intervention, then by Uncle Time again to cause the tangle that can kill Kozoaku for good. After all, what's better way to cause an apocalypse than by doing something stupid in the wrong place and wrong time? The effect persists even when they leave the Web, because their personalities have already developed in a specific way.