Why do the gates (and the Epoch by extension) only travel to years, and not specific months, or minutes? Because if you account for the Earth's rotation and orbit around the sun, the exit gate wouldn't otherwise be there. However, roughly once a year, the gate's positions would synch up. Consequentially, this means that time appears to pass at the same rate in all time periods because you are always traveling to the same longitude, latitude, and elevation - not the same spatial coordinates.
Therefore, the fact that the entity went out of its way to make a gate with very specific coordinates quite possibly a quarter of the way around the Solar System, just so Lucca could travel from a forest in 1000 AD to her house in 990 means it had to have been genuinely grateful.
The cat that kills off Ozzie, it was random and you have no idea why it was there... but in the good ending your cat(s) go through a gate that directly leads to the middle ages... Your pet cat killed off a super magical war criminal nonchalantly.
Also, another cat drops into a pit in the Tyrano Fortress, and another is hanging out in the sewers in the ruined future. You've been running across cats in odd places and times throughout your adventure, and this very well could be why. Heck, the last cat you get looks identical to Alfador, Janus' cat from 12,000 B.C., and since it's never stated just how Janus got that cat, maybe it IS him?
Considering how Another Eden, the Spiritual Successor of the Chrono series headed by the lead writer also has an abundance of cats being deeply related to time travel, that might be some sort of in-joke or signature of Kato's... Heck, his name even sounds like how a person with a Japanese accent would say "cat".
Why does Ozzie survive his first "boss battle" with the group that ends with him falling supposedly to his doom, but the second time he doesn't? It's because he had his nigh impenetrable shield around himself to break the fall during the first fight, but he is caught by surprise and falls to his death before he has a chance to put the shield up in the second fight.
It uses the same sound effect, which, if intentional, is a bit of Fridge Horror as well.
The Masamune is actually the Ruby Knife, a weapon created by Melchior to destroy the Mammon Machine in 12,000 BC. The reason it is so effective against Magus is because, as royalty from the 12,000 BC magic kingdom fueled by that power, his magic must have likewise originally come from the Mammon Machine. The Ruby Knife was also made of Dreamstone, the same stuff used to create the Mammon Machine. The Mammon Machine siphons magic from Lavos, so it wouldn't be surprising that the Masamune can also siphon energy.
For the most part, the progression of technology throughout the timeline of Chrono Trigger seems to match up with our own, save for the fantastical magical civilization that was an outlier unto itself...until you consider the "present" is 1000 AD, with civilization still operating on middle-age governmental structure, except there's modern appliances, weaponry and robotics. Come to the fateful 1999, when there is proper skyscraper skylines of a present-day setting, they're in futuristic domed cities. What makes this fridge brilliance is what you learn later down the line that explains the Schizo Tech emergence: Lavos has been influencing and accelerating the rate of evolution of life on the planet for its own ends of cultivating the Earth's genetic information at the highest quality. That wouldn't affect the purely subjective notion of societal structure, but it would absolutely affect how fast we'd advance technologically!
Crono never ever died! He was just taken from the party so that the party in the future, both literally and storytelling-wise, could have him. All that got destroyed was a clone. You're not rewriting history by making a clone take the hit for Crono, you're keeping him alive, but letting your past selves believe he died!Maybe... If you believe it to be a Stable Time Loop.
If you watch the Crono-demolition scene carefully, there's a moment when his body flickers, as if he had changed position slightly in an instant... or been replaced by a clone.
Marle and Lucca travel in the Epoch to save Crono.
This basically means that, as far Crono is concerned you stopped him from making that last hit, and the reason 'he' shredded away like he does was because it's actually a doll, not him.
Crono and his friends are the exact kind of creatures Lavos was trying to cultivate and harvest; they're capable of punching out the universe's version of Cthulhu. Ayla serves as a testament to why humans were chosen for genetic modification.
Over the course of the game, the Masamune is revealed to be as powerful as one's belief and confidence is, right? Not just on a symbolic level, either: its power is shown to be directly proportional to the faith one wields it with. In that sense, the Masamune draws energy directly from the wielder. This makes perfect sense once you realize how the Masamune was created. I mean, it's only logical to assume that a weapon created from a power-siphoning machine would be a power-siphoner itself.
It also has Melchior's will and dreams sealed inside of it, so it makes sense that strong willed beings that believe in their own dreams would strengthen the blade.
How did Marle end up with her pendant? The pendant that originally belonged to Schala? Simple: Schala gave the pendant to her little brother, Janus/Magus, who in the original timeline wound up in 600 A.D. The Kingdom of Guardia was at war with Magus, and won. The Guardia royal family came into possession of the pendant because it was part of the spoils, and it was passed down the family line.
Another possibility that could be considered Fridge Horror: It's stated that Marle is Ayla's descendant, and that the Zeal family is also Ayla's descendants. In order for this family to have that connection, someone from the Zeal family must have survived the fall of Zeal. But since Queen Zeal, Schala, and Janus' fates are all accounted for, there's only one real possibility: Schala had a kid at some point before Crono and co arrived, and that kid survived the fall of Zeal.
That... doesn't work. Not only is Marle not stated to descend from the Zeal family in your supposition, but Ayla lived 65'000'000 years ago. There probably isn't a human on the planet that's not descended from Ayla.
Besides which, the pendant and the amulet are seperate objects. At no point Janus ever had Schala's pendant. The Amulet is the metal object seen hanging from Magus's hip in official artwork.
It's actually rather simple. Schala lost the pendant when she was thrown into the Darkness Beyond Time, which survived the Ocean Palace's destruction, eventually washing up on land sometime in the several millennia between 12,000 BC and the Kingdom Of Guardia and picked up by someone, either one of Guardia line's descendants or some random person and it gets passed around until it ends up in the Guardia line's hands, and eventually ends up in Marle's possession.
Dinosaurs are weak to lightning. This makes no sense in the English version beyond giving them a type weakness, but a more accurate translation of the element from the original Japanese is Heavenly. So we have billion year old creatures being defeated by a religious concept. Someone at Square trying to make a subtle statement maybe?
Most likely a case of Nintendo's well known strict censorship policies.
More likely than that would be that the heavens, in the form of a meteor, are most likely responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs in real life, or Lavos, a virtual meteor, in-game.
If you visit Crono's house after the Black Omen rises from the ocean, Crono's mom will comment on "how beautiful it looks today." For everyone who lived after 12,000 BC, the black omen has basically been sitting there doing nothing, so why would anyone in other eras believe it was ominous? It would be like saying the Great Pyramid (and in this case, it's even older than that) was actually a doomsday machine controlled by an immortal being, after all these years.
In the animated opening of the game, we are shown a photo of the entire cast except Magus (to hide the fact he will become a playable character). So since all the other characters are in the photo, who took it? While it's possible it was Crono's mom, or Taban or Lara, a hilarious and heartwarming possibility is that it was Magus. On the one hand, it shows he really does care about them; on the other hand, just try and imagine his expression and tone as he is pressed into service and asks them to say cheese or some such!
Or perhaps being the Jerkass he is Magus simply decides he's not going to participate in such an "infantile" exercise and refuses to get his picture taken.
Another possibility is that he chose to operate the camera specifically to avoid being in the picture. Otherwise, one can totally picture Ayla literally dragging him by the ear. (And maybe there are shades of "He really does care" in his motivation as well.
Even with Nintendo's censorship policies, a lot of explicitly religious themes still shine through. Leaving aside Ted Woolsey's brilliant naming of the Three Gurus after the (traditional) Three Wise Men, there's the ominously-named Mammon Machine, and the way that Zeal's architecture is practically littered with graven images that smack of fertility idols and demonic pagan deities. Anyone who knows a bit of Christian theology, an archaic term or two from the King James Bible, and some of the popular mythology about lost prehistoric kingdoms such as Atlantis should pretty easily be able to guess there's something seriously wrong with the Kingdom of Zeal even before learning its people are getting their power from Lavos, the evil time-warping planet-consuming Eldritch Abomination whose name is all too reminiscent of a Fire and Brimstone Hell. Zeal is a hard-core heathen empire; and as such, its doom is practically a Foregone Conclusion.
Prior to Crono and co.'s intervention in Zeal, the Ocean Palace was never lifted into the sky to become the Black Omen. On the surface, this seems somewhat odd considering that their intervention really did nothing to change anything in that era; Lavos was still summoned, Zeal was still destroyed, and the various members of Zeal nobility were still cast out on the winds of time. So why the sudden appearance of the Black Omen? Answer: because the battle in the Ocean Palace was the first time (chronologically) that Lavos encountered Crono and the party. While the pre-modified timeline presumably had Lavos simply destroying and/or consuming the Queen and wiping out the Ocean Palace along with the rest of Zeal, Crono and his partymates actually put up a fight in the altered timeline. By that point in the game, the player is strong enough to defeat a weakened Lavos (like the one you eventually fight in 1999 AD) and Lavos likely sensed that power. It's even possible that, when it killed Crono it absorbed his memories and discovered that it was being targeted by this group of powerful humans. Regardless, instead of abandoning the Ocean Palace and killing the Queen, Lavos changes its mind and chooses to keep the latter alive and allow her to use the Black Omen and the Mammon Machine to harness more of the planet's energy. Why? Because it senses trouble. In the battle in the Ocean Palace, Lavos was able to get a measure for the type of strength Crono and his companions wield... and it is afraid.
An alternative interpretation is that, in the original timeline, Schala used her energy to transport herself and Queen Zeal away from Lavos (whereas, in the altered timeline, she uses it on the two surviving party members). Without Queen Zeal, Lavos simply looked on the Ocean Palace as a frivolous human construct and wiped it out with the rest of Zeal, whereas once the Queen was able to commune with Lavos directly, the Ocean Palace's value became much more apparent.
Lavos pulls a fast one on the party with his final form. The "alien-thing" hovering between the two bits is actually a Red Herring, and will be resurrected by the real Lavos - one of the bits - if you kill him. This is Lavos being anticipating your tactics. Well... what do you expect from a being that has absorbed the genetic memory of the planet?
Not necessarily. Note the location of the heart in the human body. Compare it to where the Life Bit is in Lavos's body. Notice any similarities?
If so, it leads to another Fridge Brilliance, by making Lavos Wrong Genre Savvy. Lavos is assuming that Crono and company will attack the most obvious threat instead of the actual target and thus designed its own strategy around that, but what it doesn't know is the group has been fighting against countless enemies that use very similar strategies, so it ultimately ends up backfiring. In yet another possible brilliance, maybe the Entity has been deliberately pitting Crono and Co against enemies that use such strategies specifically so they can anticipate Lavos' tactic and counter it.
Why is Crono's ultimate (DS) sword made of dreams? Look at the two main definitions of 'dream'. One, the dream you have while you're asleep, is a creation of the mind. Two, your dream, your ambition, is your goal and your deepest desire. In addition, it's obtained from the Dream Devourer. The Dreamseeker is literally his determination to kill Lavos and save the world given physical form. No wonder it's so powerful.
The relative capabilities of items created in various eras; 1000 AD < 600 AD < 2300 AD < 65,000,000 BC < 12,000 BC. The Present is in peacetime, the Middle Ages is at war, the Future is post-apocalyptic (where a lot of knowledge was lost and whatever items and working technology remained is very suboptimal due to planned obsolescence and 300 years of regression), Prehistory has a prevalence of Dreamstone and humans are physically and mentally hardened by their constant battles with wild animals and the Reptites, and Antiquity is ruled by Advanced Ancient Humans and in fact the single most advanced era Crono and the gang visit.
The Entity knew that Lucca's interest in science would have developed regardless of the outcome of her mother's accident, otherwise it wouldn't have allowed her through the Gate back to that moment in the first place.
The first encounter with Janus/Magus is sort of off-putting and can be brushed off as "Meh, that was weird but whatever" the first time you play the game... but... considering Can't Drop the Hero is in full force at this point, and what he says... There's only one person about whom he could have been speaking, and he was right.
Janus/Magus: "One among you... will shortly perish..."
Why Frog spares Magus:
Once Magus is in the party, Frog completely drops his quest for vengeance and (after initial disbelief at his sincerity) even seems to consider Magus a friend. This seems a little like a loose end to the game. Why would Frog, a noble knight, break his vow to avenge Cyrus? Simple: He never did. As far as Frog is concerned, He killed Magus, and rescued Janus in the process. This is reflected in how the rest of the party treats Magus like a shy friend, and the fact that deep down, Frog is actually quite compassionate: he never even had the nerve to harm another until he met Magus.
In addition, in the flashbacks to his past, Glenn has always been shown to be afraid of fighting, despite Cyrus claiming he's the stronger of the two. Glenn mentions this is because he does not like hurting others, especially those weaker than him. Having just witnessed Magus lose everything near and dear to him a second time, as well as having his power siphoned from Lavos, Frog must have realized that if he killed Magus here, he would truly lose the last part of him that is still Glenn; his morals and compassion.
Pay very close attention to how exactly Magus kills Cyrus. He doesn't simply murder the guy, but rather slashes out when Cyrus rushes him. In other words, Magus acted in self defense.
Azala knew about Lavos:
Her words after her defeat imply that the ice age is a direct result of her defeat. She displays telekinetic abilities in battle, so it's not a stretch that Azala had been in psychic contact with Lavos and was aware that it was deciding which of the two terran races it was going to use for its harvests. Azala was hunting the humans because her race's survival depended on it.
This would explain why she declared that the Black Tyranno would end the human race; she didn't mean that the Tyranno itself would kill off all humans, but rather that its display of power would gain Lavos's favour and have the Reptites being chosen to be uplifted. When the Black Tyranno fell against Ayla, Azala knew that Lavos has made up its mind, which is also why she refused to flee from it.
Alternatively Azala didn't know about Lavos specifically but took note of the party which Azala mentions has technology far beyond what the "apes" should be capable of and are notably more intelligent with refined combat skills compared to Ayla's tribe. Crono can admit they are from the future, but Azala won't believe him. But it's possible she thought about it after awhile, realized it did in fact make alot of sense that the more advanced humans who appeared and disappeared into thin air and easily trashed her Reptite warriors probably were future humans after all. Then realized that meant either something was going to happen soon to the Reptites to allow humanity to outpace them or they'd simply fail to exterminate humanity before it grew into a credible threat and either way meant she needed to take out the "apes" NOW before that happened.
The first time you fight Lavos in 12,000 BC, it is absurdly strong compared to future encounters. Schala weakened it by destroying it from the inside out when it tried to incorporate her, but even then, it was STILL able to destroy the world in 1999.
Sending Magus back to 12,000 BC was a Batman Gambit. Lavos knew that Magus would try to save Schala in the Ocean Palace, and would have succeeded if Crono's party hadn't intervened. Magus was almost indirectly responsible for the destruction of the world.
How did Lavos's name survive throughout time till 1999 A.D despite fading into obscurity after the fall of Zeal? Janus got launched forward in time, and the legend of Lavos survived through the Mystic's legend as Magus's final answer to the humans and their deliverer.
Magus is one of the strongest individual party members, with good stats across the board and access to powerful magic of all four elements, but he has no access to Dual Techs and only very few Triple Techs. Fitting for the Token Evil Teammate who only joined you to defeat a common enemy.
Magus' lack of dual techs and minimal Triple Techs makes sense for a man who has been a habitual loner since he was a child and obsessed with becoming powerful enough to defeat an Eldritch Abominationwith his own strength alone. Relying on others to accomplish the defeat of Lavos is a blow against his pride, something he doesn't get over until Lavos utterly wipes the floor with him. This still makes it difficult for him to combine his power with the others. Magus is also the last party member to join, at a point when the party has become powerful enough they don't need to combine their skills and magic power to defeat most enemies anymore, so they don't bother to come up with much for Magus.
On the border between Fridge Brilliance and Fridge Horror, each of the three Gurus of Zeal end up separated from his namesake: Melchior, Guru of Life, becomes a weaponsmith (i.e., he makes instruments of death); Gaspar, Guru of Time, is thrown outside of time itself into the End of Time; Belthasar, Guru of Reason, succumbs to insanity.
2300 A.D. is the most advanced age the party visits besides Zeal, and the party doesn't really get to see the time period when the Day of Lavos happens. We also see the doors that can only be opened with Schala's pendant during this period which are only seen at Zeal and no time period in between, with the mysterious boxes being the only sign of Zeal technology up until then. Taken together, it seems logical to believe that the people of 1999 A.D. had unearthed ruins of Zeal sometime in the centuries between the Present Era and began reverse engineering the technology to the furthest extent possible without possessing magic or access to Lavos.
Further brilliance, it's even possible that the reason Lavos woke up to destroy the world in 1999 A.D. instead of sleeping another 10 centuries or so and why the people of that time know about it is because the people of 1999 A.D. started experimenting on Lavos and its power just like Zeal had.
At least one of the doors seems to have been placed by Balthasar, to keep the Epoch safe. It's likely he also made the other, optional ones, in order to protect other powerful bits of treasure he found.
When you take the party to Death Peak and use the Time Egg, the party freaks out and thinks they failed when the egg shatters. However, when you think about it, it had to shatter. Anytime you have to use an egg, whether it be in real life or in a story, you have to break it open at some point. The only reason you don't see anything come out is because it is a time egg, and time is an invisible force, not a tangible object.
Ayla mentions her word for fire is "La" when she refers to Lavos. "La" is also part of her name. She is innately fire-elemental and that would be her magical element if she was able to use it.
When Crono and company fight Lavos in the Ocean Palace 12,000 BC its shell is stronger than it is when fighting it in 1999 AD, despite how lore on Lavos in game indicates that it should become stronger as it sleeps instead of weaker. However, in 12,000 BC Lavos isn't truly waking up to begin its spawn cycle, it's simply getting up for a bit to smash an annoying irritant and going back to sleep. In 1999 AD however Lavos is waking up and preparing to spawn, thus it is likely pushing some of its power over to beginning this process and as such is weaker than it otherwise would be.
After Lavos devastates the world in 12,000 BC, the world and the humans in it eventually recover, picks themselves up, and the world is fine in a few thousand years. However, in 1999 AD Lavos devastates the world and a few centuries later in 2300 AD the humans are barely surviving rather than working to rebuild civilization again. There's a number of factors that give the differences:
The Lavos devastation actually benefited the "Earthbound Ones" by ending the perpetual Ice Age, while the 1999 AD devastation appears to have caused a perpetual Ice Age.
The 1999 AD humans were living in a highly advanced technological society as a whole as opposed to the Zeal society which were split up into the Zeal people and the Earthbound ones. The 1999 AD people were used to the machines doing all their work for them and thus there were few if anyone left alive that knew how to live off the land properly even despite a lack of much if any sunlight. The 12,000 Earthbound ones were used to scrapping by with whatever they could get and getting food, clothing and shelter even with a constant blizzard outside and the conditions had actually improved for them, so they could survive well enough after the devastation that they could even carry and teach some of the Zeal survivors.
The 1999 AD humans have to contend with homicidal robots, mutant creatures, and a genocidal supercomputer specifically out to eradicate them.
So, overall the 12,000 BC humans had it much easier than the 1999 AD humans did.
Given that Doan says he use to own a functional jetbike in his youth, it gives the implication that he was alive before the world was destroyed. This would either imply he's over 300 years old...or Lavos's assault on the earth only relatively recently ended. This could mean that Lavos's rampage only started in 1999 AD, and would last at least two whole centuries.
In Robo's sidequest, we find that Robo was originally meant to be an infiltrator, to work with humans, learn their strengths and weaknesses, and help further Mother Brain's plan to Destroy All Humans. But he has never shown any indication of being The Mole, and rejects the role when informed about it. How could he go against his programming like that? Well, when the party first finds him and decides to reactivate him, Lucca says robots only attack humans because they're programmed to, and she'll make sure that doesn't happen. Apparently she was far more successful than she ever expected!
Note that the one who says this, Atropos, is a crazy reprogrammed slave trying to talk Robo into siding with her and Mother Brain. She could easily just be lying.
Zeal is the first and only era in which Crono and company fail completely. With or without Golem's defeat they're captured by Queen Zeal, locked out of the Era by Schala, and fail to stop Lavos awakening and Crono is killed by it. Before you've either had magic at your disposal when they didn't(Prehistory), advanced technology and fighting techniques(Prehistory, Middle Ages), and healthy with combat experience(Ruined Future). In contrast, Zeal is experienced in magic even better than the kind Crono and party use, their tech surpasses yours in every way, and they have effective warriors. Crono and company are not an Outside-Context Problem for Zeal and thus they actually know how to deal with you.
Though the one thing that DOES potentially take the Zeal forces by surprise is Ayla's ability to fight without magic or armor or weapons, which isn't a problem when they actively fight the party because their own magic and weapons can match her but does allow for a potentially easy jailbreak when the party is captured because they're just stripped of their equipment and assumed helpless (and are if Ayla isn't in the party needing a more subtle escape) when Ayla can just bust out and start knocking heads. Zeal is familiar with weapons magic and technology far beyond the party, but that kind of prehistoric brutality is not something Zeal is aware of anymore.
It seems weird that the Fiendlord himself can freely walk around 600 A.D. and even visit Guardia's royal family without anyone recognizing him... Unless what Magus really looked like wasn't common knowledge in human society, which is not unthinkable in a time without any kind of mass media. They probably expected the Mystics' leader to be appropriately monstrous in appearance, rather than being a somewhat unusual but mostly normal-looking man.
Despite Cyrus being the most skilled knight of his time, and possessing the Masamune he and Glenn still lose to Magus rather badly, with Cyrus dying and the sword being smashed. But the Masamune alone is not enough to defeat Magus when the party fights him. It weakens his defense but doesn't do much damage on it's own. What does is COUNTER MAGIC, something that no human possessed in the Middle Age until Crono and co were granted it by Spekkio. Frog succeeded where Cyrus failed because of the water magic granted to him by Spekkio which he did not possess in their first battle. Had Magus not accidentally destroyed himself by calling Lavos, it's likely the Mystics would have won as nobody would have the magical power to fight him without time traveling interference.
In the final battle, Lavos time warps. This allows it to use its powerful attacks.
65 million BC: It uses the ultimate Physical attack to represent that magic wasn't really a thing yet.
12,000 BC: It slows you down (like what was intended to do here) and the centre part is more aggressive - because it almost woke up at this time.
600 AD: Demon Star. Oh gee, know what's in the background? Magus's keep. It's channeling Magus again.
1000 AD: It just tries to use random status ailments. And it looks like it is trying to perform
2300 AD: The ultimate magic. Wait, why would it use it here instead of in the age of magic? Well obviously it's using things from the age of technology... meaning it's using energy attacks. Which is basically what magic is - Using energy attacks.
Why is the Gate that takes Lucca back to the day of her mother's accident red instead of blue and appears somewhat unstable? It's the only point in the game where a party member could potentially interact with their past self, creating a Time Paradox if Lucca wasn't careful.
All of Magus's techs/spells he uses in your first boss battle against him are ones he will eventually re-learn after joining the party...except one: Geyser (or Hell Geyser in the re-translation). However, if you examine the animation for Geyser, it involves the blue flames in his Boss Room turning into some sort of skull-like spirits. Since the only place he has access to those flames are in his castle, it stands to reason that can't cast the spell anywhere else, no matter how much skill he otherwise regains.
Due to your stumbling around the time stream, Marle briefly vanishes from existence. When she returns after you Set Right What Once Went Wrong, she tells Crono that her absence was "awful" and she was "somewhere cold, dark... and lonely." In other words, she was aware even when Ret-Gone. Consider now all the additional alterations you make to history throughout the game, which you don't correct later, and how likely it is that you erased thousands or even millions of people from history (you made changes in the age of dinosaurs!) Millions doomed to an isolated limbo before they were even born...
The ending gotten if the party defeats Lavos before defeating Azala, although comedic in tone, may upgrade this to an entire intelligent species. It's the exact same Good Morning, Crono and Millenial Fair sequence from the beginning of the game, except everyone is now a Reptite. Essentially, if Lavos did not crash into the Earth, the Reptites would have won the war, and almost certainly slaughtered Ayla and her people, along with the rest of the human race.
Not an Inferred Holocaust — the holocaust was pretty much confirmed in Chrono Cross, almost the entirety of which is a Batman Gambit by the Reptites' gods to get Serge to return their people to power.
The Awful Truth as told by Lucca, Robo or Magus if they are brought along for the final battle. They mention that Lavos cultivates all of the lifeforms on the planet and then harvests their DNA, sending its offspring out into space to repeat the cycle. If that's the case, then Lavos may not have been the only one of its species to begin with. How many other planets have undergone or are currently undergoing the same fate, and what if this was the first time such a powerful entity was able to be stopped?
This only gets worse thanks to Chrono Cross; Lavos was brought back thanks to the power of Schala and time paradoxes to become the Time Devourer, and it's implied that it's fully sentient and aware of what Serge and friends are doing and pissed about it. Only a single one of these creatures nearly manages to end time itself by landing on Earth out of coincidence, through planning, some luck, and its own sheer power. And if there's a whole race of them out there...
Not really, the Time Devourer is and entirely unique entity created by a very very specific set of circumstances. First, a time traveller must defeat Lavos, thus preventing it from destroying the world because of events they witnessed in the future. Next, an intact being must be thrown into the Darkness Beyond Time for the now Retgoned Lavos can merge with, AND the result of that merger must create a being that can devour all of time and space. The chances of all these things occurring are incalculably low, and if any one of them doesn't happen there can be no Time Devourer.
According to the Chrono Cross Ultimania, the odds of another Time Devourer being made are even lower than described above. The intact person thrown into the Darkness Beyond Time can't just be any random person, they need to be an Arbiter, someone who has had their biology altered by direct, personal contact with the Frozen Flame. Schala was an Arbiter, thus why she was responsible for using the Mammon Machine. Even then, one Arbiter isn't enough. The Time Devourer wasn't going to achieve its final, reality-ending form until it absorbed a second Arbiter, in this case Serge. The odds of two separate Arbiters being thrown intact into the Darkness Beyond Time alongside a retgoned Lavos being are so astronomically low it's not even worth considering.
In the original timeline, the humans defeated the Reptites. However, one of the alternate endings has the Reptites emerging victorious. The change came about because Azala originally did not create the Black Tyranno, until she saw the stolen Gate Key, assumed the humans had advanced far beyond the Reptites, and quickly created the Black Tyranno as a countermeasure!
As is evidenced by the first half of the game, the Black Omen didn't exist until Crono et al meddled with the timeline. Why not? Because in the unmodified timeline, Crono and his gang weren't there. In the timeline that was modified by Crono's presence, after he's disintegrated by Lavos, Schala uses the last of her power to teleport his friends out of the Ocean Palace. In the unmodified timeline, who would she have chosen to save instead? Herself and Queen Zeal. This is a terrifying concept for two reasons. Firstly, it makes Crono and his friends indirectly responsible for everything that subsequently happened to Schala. Secondly, how many other things about the past have Crono and his friends changed simply by being there?
We all know that Magus failed to take out Lavos and likely died in the process in 600 AD. But precisely HOW bad did he fail? Compare the land masses between 600 AD and 1000 AD. Look for where Magus' castle was...
Following this, we know from the events of the game that Magus, Ozzie, Flea, and Slash were all in Magus' castle when Magus summoned Lavos in the original timeline, therefore all of them were killed by Lavos and likely a good portion of the Mystic army, thus quickly bringing an end to the war. However, in the altered timeline Crono and Co fight and defeat Magus and his generals, thus they flee from Magus' castle and survive instead. This is what causes the alterations to history in 1000 A.D., as Ozzie and Co are around to directly influence future Mystic society, while in the original timeline all they have is Magus as a messianic figure to base their hatred on. It's not Ozzie and Co's deaths that change Mystic society for the better, but the fact that humans make a complete joke of them basically in front of the rest of the Mystics that makes them look down on them which does. Bonus points if Magus happens to be in the party and thus soils his own image with Mystics to make them turn from the path to the centuries long hatred that he set them on.
The Enertrons. Imagine the sensation of starving to death. Now imagine that you have a way of getting nutrition indefinitely, but you still feel exactly like you're starving to death. Forever. It's no wonder the people in 2300 AD lost the will to live.
In the Geno Dome (sense a theme?), you see humans being systematically killed and processed into... things that sparkle. Now, what sparkly things are lying all around the place, that you've been nonchalantly using?
In the Lost Sanctum, one kind of enemy you can fight are called exiles. Exiles look like the normal, civilized, and anthropomorphic Reptites, so their minds work exactly the same way as humans. This means that the Reptites send members of their own kind to die in the wilderness.
Helped along slightly by the fact that being exiled is what kept them from being killed with the rest of their race.
The main ending mentions Robo's uncertain fate as he heads back to a version of 2300 in which the Day of Lavos never happened. This future's an unknown quantity, but it seems almost certain that he'll be 300 years obsolete, since he was built during or before 1999. (Though the "Save Crono's Mom" ending shows him hanging out with Atropos, so I guess obsolete robots are permitted to continue?)
Or maybe Robo has been retrofitted a number of times and is just as advanced as a new bot.
In Frog's ending Frog marries Queen Leene. What happened to King Guardia XXI? Whatever happened to him it's different than the original timeline. Leene hadn't had any children yet, as the ending shows all of her descendants are half frog. This means someone in the party went back and removed King Guardia XXI, presumably so that Frog could marry her.
Or, more likely, in the original timeline Leene married Glenn. IOW, Guardia XXI will die sometime after 600 A.D., and Leene will have a child with Glenn (possibly claiming it was conceived with the King before his death) to "carry" on the family line, and later married him. Alternatively to a cover-up, Glenn is crowned King as one of its greatest heroes, marries Leene, and takes up the official name Guardia XXII.
The cat at the fair runs away only when Crono has just talked to its owner. Have we done a good thing here...?
The cat seems content to hang out on a nearby counter once brought back to the little girl, so it seems fine?
In the Ocean Palace, there are human characters like Warriors, Monks, and Zealot Mages, but when going through the Black Omen, they are nowhere to be seen. The only apparently human character in there is Queen Zeal, everything else are either machines, mystics or mutants (and two Nu). In all likelihood, the humans in the Ocean Palace either died when Lavos awoke or were mutated beyond recognition.
On the topic of mutants, the player only sees mutants in 2 areas, the Black Omen, and various 2300 AD ruins, which even has two "Mutant" enemies that are seemingly the same despite massive differences in strength. This is likely the result of creatures being mutated by the presence of Lavos' power in the Black Omen, and by its awakening spreading its power over the entire Earth. Since Lavos is shown to force evolution in the life on a planet in order to strengthen them in order to improve itself better, this makes sense, even though in the latter case it doesn't need to do so anymore simply being exposed to its power for extended periods will do it.
When the Ocean Palace collapses, Schala tells the party she only has enough power left in her pendant to teleport them out, and not herself. However, an observant player will note that the Mammon Machine is still operational, and could easily charge her pendant just as it did with Marle's (or she could just, you know, borrow Marle's.) So why not just do that? Simple: This wasn't an act of sacrifice - it was an attempt at suicide. Both Radical Dreamers and later Chrono Cross confirm that she wanted nothing more than to die afterward, and this contributed towards her being absorbed into the Time Devourer in Chrono Cross.
Try to think about the very advanced temporal aspects of Chrono Trigger: Numerous timelines are being created and destroyed throughout the story to prevent Lavos from emerging as the victor. Chrono Trigger is essentially 5D chess before 5D Chess even existed which means that you'd probably fry your brain in trying to make complete sense out of it.
During the first trip to Prehistory, the Reptites steal the Gate Key, preventing the party from using the gates. However, the player can still switch party members. Since the reserve members are hanging out at The End of Time, how are they getting to the party (or, more importantly, how are the current party members getting back to The End of Time)?
Gameplay mechanic. The no-more-than-three rule is violated multiple times over the course of the game.
Simple solution: All the members of the party are actively traveling around with the main party. This even gives an explanation why they're always shunted to the end of time whenever they use a gate to travel. They're abusing the rules of the universe to create a safe haven in case they get in trouble, or if they're going somewhere they don't know is safe.
In the beginning, Marle fades from existence briefly because her appearance means that nobody ever rescues Leene. However, If Marle never existed, Crono wouldn't have bumped into her at the Millennial Fair, and the pendant would not have been there to open the first Gate. Therefore, Crono wouldn't have been thrown back in time, so he also should have been subject to the same Temporal Paradox that Marle was. How does Crono resist fading when Marle disappears?
Three words: Delayed Ripple Effect. Marle didn't disappear as soon as she was mistaken for the queen, so Crono didn't either. Marle, being a direct descendant of Queen Leene, happened to disappear faster.
This also applies to Magus, since Janus isn't in the room with the Mammon Machine when the party interferes with the past.
After the party awakens from the Ocean Palace incident, they mention a black portal consumed Melchior. So it seems like those who were supposed to be thrown into time portals in the original Ocean Palace incident were taken by time portals in the altered one as well, despite not being at the Ocean Palace at all.
Why does the game use the terms "BC" and "AD" to refer to the year? To what or whom are they referring in Chrono Trigger world?
No idea what BC and AD stand for in universe, but the Japanese script uses "oukoku reki", or "Kingdom calendar," so likely the baseline is the foundation of the Kingdom of Guardia.
There is a cathedral in 600 AD in which monsters disguise themselves as nuns, so there's a possibility that Christianity/Catholicism exist in some form in the Chrono Trigger universe, albeit apparently it's not as big a deal as in the real world (and may have possibly even fallen into obscurity by 1000 AD). If not that, then some very similar equivalent.
Guardia is a matriarchy. When Lucca explains why Marle has disappeared to Crono a direct female line is shown. This means that leadership is passed from mother to daughter. Also, in Frog's ending, Queen Leene marries Frog. Their descendants become the royal family of Guardia, even though they don't have the blood of King Guardia XXI or anyone in his bloodline.
Except that it's stated that Leene married into the family, meaning that Guardia XXI inherited the throne.
The war with Magus hadn't ended, when you have to trigger Frog's ending, and the king does get gravely injured sometime between your first and second visits to 600AD. It's possible that in Frog's ending, Guardia XXI doesn't survive the injury (possibly not even the battle), and without a child, Leene inherits the throne -especially given that she seemed quite popular among the people. She then marries Frog, and the royal family continues that way. If the kingdom is matriarchal, Guardia XXI didn't have any sisters.
Well in a matriarchy, if there's no daughter to carry on the the throne, then a son must marry a woman, and the line starts again with her, presumably King Guardia simply had no sisters and had to go through this process.
Can the "Lucca explains paradoxes" scene really be taken as evidence that Guardia is a matriarchy? For one thing, it only shows three generations between Leene and Marle, when there are actually fourteen generations between them. Even then, it only shows that Guardia allows female succession, rather than that it's a matriarchy. And Frog's ending is an obvious gag ending, so it shouldn't be taken as evidence.
When meeting up with Robo’s “brothers”, they call him a defect and proceed to assault him and literally trash him. Fair enough; however, when talking with Atropos, she mentions that Robo was just on a mission to learn about humans to use that knowledge for their fight against humanity. Shouldn’t Robo’s “brothers” know that he was on a mission?
Truth in Television. In Real Life, often The Mole could face danger from his own side, who would be kept in the dark as to his loyalties, or would even have to kill members of his own side to maintain his cover.
Atropos only says this when she's been reprogrammed by Mother Brain and is trying to convince Robo to side with her, and as for the other R-Series, they're security bots so it makes sense that they would think that dealing with intruders is their entire reason to exist. It's easy to summise that Atropos is lying at that point given how she acts when she's briefly in her right mind.
Robo did change sides, though, and was actively helping the humans without any ill intent.
