Fridge Brilliance
- Why would Todoroki side against Izuku when he has no particular attachment to Bakugou? Aizawa explains that while he wasn't the most recent Kingpin to win, Endeavor is the winning Kingpin holding the record. This fact is later confirmed by Todoroki explaining to Midoriya that Endeavor ordered him to succeed as a member of the villain team. And Todoroki has no intention in obeying his father.
- The fact that the most recent winning Kingpin also had a powerful Fire Quirk like Endeavor and went on to work for his agency probably reinforced his decision.
- In Chapter 7, it's briefly noted that Bakugou and his squad leaders had to explore their own agency to find the "operations center." A subtle detail, but one with massive ramifications: that they didn't know the layout of their own headquarters until the end of the first day means they went into the game and played the entire first day with no attempt to familiarize themselves with their own work areas and implicitly, used little to none of the resources they were provided in their Agency. Further, five chapters earlier (at the beginning of that first day), we witness Aizawa telling the Hero Team that the test area chosen that they are about to enter is Training Ground F, which, as Aizawa says, neither Year 1 Hero Class has had a reason to go to before. But that wording is important, because that same chapter's Once an Episode jump cut to Izuku's preparations the week prior shows Izuku asking about the location and easily getting the answer, proving that all the teams had to do was ask further details about the test to learn the game's location and, implicitly, gain the ability to study its layout. In Chapter 7's own jump cut, it's noted that Izuku arranged a tour of the test grounds as part of his preparations. Subtly, this highlights yet another way that Bakugou's Hero Team failed to take initiative and was seriously underprepared, because it implies no one on their team bothered to ask or, if they did, no one did anything with that information—so they went in blind.
- Midoriya pretty much controlled his fight with Bakugou. Which makes sense. Bakugou is perhaps the easiest opponent for him if he has prep time. He has been analyzing Quirks all his life – and the first Quirk he dissected after his mother's? Would be Bakugou's Quirk, naturally. And he's continued to analyze it over the years. He probably knows Bakugou's Quirk better than anyone, possibly even Bakugou himself.
- This may tie into how Izuku planned out what the heroes would do so well: Bakugou is in charge and will make sure the mission is completed his way. With the opinions of his teammates as an afterthought at best.
- This would also explain why the Villains were caught by surprise when the heroes attacked: Todoroki had taken control of the Hero Team. And Midoriya didn't have him as well-analyzed as Bakugou.
- Why is the "Kill The Snitch" objective an Aizawa-bot? Because as part of the assignment, Izuku needed to submit a written plan of the villain's operations to Aizawa, making him the perfect form for the snitchbot.
- Nedzu notes that while Bakugou did well as a strike-team leader, he wasn't doing so well as a tactician. Bakugou tends to take the lead when in practical exercise and refuses to submit to others, so he has some experience in leading something like a strike team. But he's never needed tactics beyond the level of such a role, so he lacks in the ability of long-term tactics. Whereas Izuku has not only been analyzing Quirks for as long as he can remember and developing theories for their use, he may have used long-term tactics before UA, to minimize violent encounters with his bullies.
- Uraraka later points out that Izuku had an obvious advantage and the Heroes a crippling vulnerability—Izuku had grown up with Bakugou and knew him and his thought processes very well, since they'd known each other for so long. The thing is, this should have been at least a little bit of a two way street, because Bakugou also grew up with Izuku. And it kind of was. There are moments in the game when Bakugou's gut tells him things are more than they seem. However, Bakugou's spent his whole life beating the idea into Izuku and himself that Izuku's natural non-Quirk talents are worthless and useless. Bakugou's obsession with reinforcing that Izuku is beneath him sabotaged what could have been a two-way advantage, because Bakugou very deliberately never recognized nor valued Izuku's pre-UA skills, making Bakugou unable to correctly estimate Izuku's threat level or predict his behavior, while Izuku reads him easier than a book.
- Besides his sadistic desire to physically beat Izuku, there is a logical reason behind Bakugou and the rest of the Hero Team assuming combat training would be the sole key to defeating the Villain Team. The Villain Team is seriously disadvantaged and has to work very hard to be anywhere near equal footing with the Hero Team. Most other Villain Teams would have gone into the exercise with one or (likely) more of the following disadvantages: questionable base setups, inadequate setup time, significantly less manpower, limited to nonexistent access to extra resources such as adequate transportation, critical tools, weapons, computers, the city's cameras. If the two teams went in with the same amount of effort towards preparation and no lucky breaks in the form of Mei and Momo, the Hero Team would crush the Villain Team flat. The Hero Team has likely rarely ever had to do more than beat the Villains in combat, because the Villains probably had few other ways of posing a credible threat to the Hero Teams' victories.
