While I've been more tolerant of the character changes in Castlevania Judgment than many others, there were always a few aspects that stuck out to me. For instance, Eric Lecarde. Considering he was portrayed as a close friend of John Morris in Castlevania: Bloodlines, it was odd that he, being born into a family meant to work alongside them, would become so bitter about them and their whip. Even if he was a rebellious teenager. And then I thought of something. Bloodlines, and Portrait of Ruin after it, tied their Dracula-resurrection plots to the military struggles of the time. Something could have happened between the previous Dracula battle in 1897 and Eric's involvement in Judgment, estimated to take place in 1907, that would cause the Spanish-born Eric to resent the American-born Morris family. Like, say, the Spanish-American War and its aftermath? —Falcon Pain
From the same game, and somewhere between Fridge Brilliance and a Stealth Pun, Cornell is looking for a cure to his lycanthropy. When he asks Sypha, who is still in full-on Van Helsing Hate Crimes mode in this game, she tells him that no known solution exists. "Death is your only salvation." So what does Cornell do for the remainder of his storyline? He seeks salvation from Death. —Falcon Pain again
As another person who actually liked the game, I was always puzzled why the developers didn't include insanely popular new character Soma on the roster. Then I realized there was an in-story justification for this - during his mirror match, Aeon mentions having copies of an individual in the time rift is dangerous. Having Soma present would have meant two Draculas. —Kazmahu
In Symphony of the Night, the music for the Alchemy Laboratory area is called "Dance of Gold". A common practice among alchemists was the search of a chemical formula capable of transmutating base metals into gold. —Caiahpasthesympathist
I always wondered how sealing Dracula's castle away would have killed him for good, the center of chaos reasoning was kind of "eh", then it hit me; The center of chaos is the crimson stone from Lament Of Innocence, the stone that gave Dracula his power originally, the way the core "shatters" like a gem breaking seems to give credibility to this.
I was wondering the other day about why the Whip's Memory in Portrait of Ruin showed Richter Belmont in his Rondo of Blood attire, besides sprite recycling. Then I thought of something: between his two game appearances, Rondo of Blood was the only one where he was actually fighting Dracula and his hordes of darkness. He was brainwashed to lead Dracula's castle in Symphony of the Night, so that would not reflect well on the Vampire Killer.
In Symphony of the Night, in the PSP version, when you look up the Frozen Half enemy in the enemy encyclopaedia, there's a note saying they're transsexual. At first, you might think that that's a weird thing to work into designing an enemy...then you think about the genre the Castlevania games take their inspiration from, and you realise that you are fighting sweet transvestites from transsexual Transylvania.
The reason why the Belmonts weren't around in the 1800's? Because Resurrection was canceled.
Have you ever questioned why the Holy Water subweapon created a trail of fire whenever you threw it on the ground? I did, and never really understood why until it just randomly hit me. Most if not all the battles take place in Castlevania, which is for all purposes an extension of Dracula himself. Holy Water in other media tends to cause evil creatures to burn on contact. Castlevania itself is an evil entity, which is why the flames arise.
This piece of brilliance came to me when I looked at this [1]◊ picture depicting just about all the playable characters in Castlevania games (except for some really obscure unlockable characters). At first I thought "This is cool, but why is Leon holding Sara? She was never playable." Then I remembered that in Lament of Innocence Sara bound her soul to the Whip of Alchemy, turning it into the Vampire Killer. So, in effect, she has been kind of playable in almost every game in the series! And, of course, Leon holds her just as every other Belmont to wield the whip has. Kudos to the artist for a nice bit of symbolism there.
Why does Julius have abilities like double-jump the ablity to walk underwater in the Chronicles Of Sorrow games? Because he already went through Dracula's Castle and still has the items/relics which gave him those skills!
Fans were concerned when Sypha seemed to have been Dummied Out of the Pachislot game in favor of Angela. Then a possible explanation hit me: Sypha stayed behind because she was pregnant.
Two bits at the price of one from Mirror Of Fate: The game's acts are in Anachronic Order, with Simon first, then Alucard and finally Trevor as playable characters, but the three share the EXP accumulated. This at first glance causes some Fridge Logic and allegations of Gameplay and Story Segregation, as by the end Trevor is far more experienced than his future self Alucard. Nothing of the sort, it is actually perfectly explainable: Vampire\Trevor has awakened from 30 years of slumber, he is far from being in perfect shape, both physically and emotionally, with new unsettling powers to get used to; at the end of his act he has recovered a mere fraction of his old strength. Still, there seems to be one last discrete discrepancy: Trevor, at his prime, could not defeat Dracula, yet the far weaker Alucard succeeded. This is actually easier to explain: Alucard does not defeat Dracula alone, he is the player character alright, but he's fighting in tandem with Simon, and the combined experience of the two by that point easily surpasses the lone Trevor's.
