Kirito: Don Fluffles. You son of a bitch. How are you still alive? I saw you going over the cliff. No one could have survived that fall!
Don Fluffles: *meow*
Kirito: You sly bastard. I would have never thought of that.
Heathcliff: I-I’m sorry. Can he actually speak cat, or is he just messing with us?
Asuna: Knowing him, it may very well be both.
Don Fluffles: *meow*
Kirito: You sly bastard. I would have never thought of that.
Heathcliff: I-I’m sorry. Can he actually speak cat, or is he just messing with us?
Asuna: Knowing him, it may very well be both.
Adaptational Jerkass is not the only treatment the characters in Sword Art Online get in its abridged series. Some are far more layered, or they're just like trolling everyone.
- Due to how much of a massive Troll Kirito is in this version, sometimes it's unclear how genuine some of his claims are.
- In Episode 3, was his Heel–Face Door-Slam after talking with Sachi just an act to get a rise out of her for thinking she could change him, or was he genuine in his apology and only backpedaled because old habits die hard? To his credit, he did seem to be trying to act kinder around her after their discussion.
- In Episode 5, did he not take advantage of a sleeping Asuna (instead drawing cat whiskers on her face) because even he has standards? Or did he not do it because he genuinely did not think of it? When Asuna wakes up and demands to know what Kirito did to her, his reply sounds vaguely innocent-like.Asuna: Is that all?
Kirito: Um, yeah? You were asleep, what else would I have done? - Discussed in Episode 9 when Heathcliff questions if his backstory with Fluffles is real or if he's just trolling everyone.Asuna: Knowing him, it may very well be both.
- While Asuna was implied to have always been somewhat troubled, it's unclear if she was always wearing her Mask of Sanity while trapped in SAO or if she started the game as a relatively normal person whose terrible life conditions wile trapped in the death game for two years (which evidently took a toll on many other players' sanity) simply accelerated her mental decline. It's worth noting that outside of her Innocent Bigot streak, she doesn't really do anything morally deplorable until Episode 7 (596 days into the game). The fact that she seems to have completely lost her marbles by the time we reach ALfheim supports this.
- In Episode 17, Word of God is that it's up to the viewer to decide whether her constant targeting of her jailer Shoji during her escape attempts were due to knowing about how much of an asshole he is to his co-workers, or simply being annoyed by his grating voice and wanting to shut him up.
- Regarding Yui; just how devoid of empathy is she? The revelation that she was lying about the system wanting to delete her might imply that her Dark and Troubled Past at Kayaba's hands was a fallacy to "humanize herself" as well, meaning she could've helped all the mentally challenged players in the game (such as Jeffrey, Kuradeel, The King of Ashes and many others) but chose not to until encountering Asuna and Kirito.
- Is Klein really the Only Sane Man of the series, or is he wearing a Mask of Sanity like Asuna? His inappropriate joke regarding Kirito's friends dying again implies he's got a dark sense of humor somewhere in his subconscious, like Kirito.
- Tiffany: Was he a G.I.R.L. who got his real identity exposed by Kayaba but chose to run with it? Was he using his wife's account to play the game? or does he simply like going by "Tiffany"? For what's worth, Kirito still uses the nickname when talking to him IRL, but that might be because he's Kirito.
- Is Fluffles really The Don or just a common housecat and all players are projecting their charged desires unto him? For all the talk surrounding him, he's never shown actually doing anything beyond meowing, purring, and standing around, and the one time when Kirito talks about his history with him, he may as well have been messing with the council. The Straight Man Heathcliff clearly can't understand the cat, and the only ones who apparently can (outside of possibly Kirito as mentoned before) are mafia enforcers, and the King of Ashes, the formers we know little of, and the latter was already an Ax-Crazy maniac.
- Here, the reasoning for Keita's suicide in Episode 3 isn't made clear: Was he grief-stricken by his friends dying due to his own cowardice and carelessness? Did he prefer to die rather than allow Fluffles' mafia to capture and torture him? Or did he find out about the disastrous consequences of his handling of NPCs and jumped out of remorse or to avoid facing scrutiny?
- Briefly discussed In-Universe with Schmitt. Would he really have gone on to crucify children and scalp innocent people had the "ghosts" told him to or was he just bluffing due to being terrified for his life? He's clearly not stable by the time he's introduced, but is still loyal to his friends. The fact that his canon guild (which he likely still belongs to here given they share the same armor) was adapted into The Mafia in this series also muddies the waters.Kains: Seriously, Schmitt? How many people would you have killed if we’d asked you to?
Schmitt: That’s not important.
Kains: I disagree! - Nobuyuki Sugou is enough of a Card-Carrying Villain to create an entire Machiavellian scheme just to brainwash Asuna, but is this only because he lusts after her, or also to stick it to his Bad Boss Shouzou (Asuna's father)? Though he did make a deal with him to marry her, Shouzou most likely has no idea of his plan to use the charisma hat to make everyone do as he pleases, which considering how Sugou acts like an Extreme Doormat around Shouzou, might imply there's some resentment for his position involved.
- Asuna's father Shouzou is undeniably a greedy asshole, but does his resentment of his daughter stem from her sociopathic behavior, or is his poor parenting the reason for said behavior? Episode 10 implies Asuna follows the Anti-Advice of her mother, whom Shouzou divorced, but that's all we know about her background.
- Likewise, are Kirito and Suguha's parents' negligence one of the reasons behind their Jerkass tendencies (as they turned a blind eye to their children being abused), or is their negligence a response to their behavior? Or is it a combination of both? Kirito's mother at least seems to care about his well being to an extent, though he clearly harbors some resentment for the both of them.
- Are the RECT Progress workers that work for Sugou content with working on mind-control tech while turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by their boss, or have they been threatened into working on ALfheim, or do they have No Sympathy for Asuna in particular because she's batshit insane or because she's the daughter of Shouzou? None of the workers shown seem to have any desire to be there, with Sugou's pastry chef being driven to tears at his demands, and the game box's artist even calling ALO "the biggest soul-sucking shitshow of [his] career". To add to this, Kyle (one of the brain technicians) seems to be a relatively nice and even moral person from what we see of him, making his career choice all the more bizarre.
- Shoji is clearly an idiotic bully, but is his bullying of the disabled Trisha completely motivated by ableism or do they have a conflict beyond that? She's petty enough to turn Kyle into a slug as well just for being Shoji's friend, and Kyle tells him at one point that he didn't want any part in their "beef".
