WARNING: Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies to Fridge pages. All spoilers will be unmarked.
- While the Emblem Heartless are themed after their worlds (with monkey heartless in Deep Jungle, pirate heartless in Neverland, etc), they never do quite seem to fit in with the native peoples and beings in the world. The Heartless, just like Sora, Donald, and Goofy, are not supposed to be there and no matter how they appear, the fact that they are not meant to be in the world of light is constantly evident.
- Kairi was inside of Sora for most of Kingdom Hearts. Sora was D-Linking Kairi!
- Which is why Sora has some Magic he lacks in other games during the first, like Gravity-based moves! Brilliant!
- There's a plot hole in this. In Chain of Memories, which takes place where KH1 leaves off, Sora can use all the same magic that he could in the first game, plus more. So really, it was just due to his original fighting style that he could use magic such as in the first game.
- Even more Fridge Brilliance. In Chain of Memories thanks to the card system Sora wasn't learning many new skills or techniques or whatever, he was using the power of his memories in the form of cards. As such, he had access to any powers he's used before, even the ones he'd otherwise be unable to use.
- I used to be annoyed by the scene in Traverse Town where Sora gets depressed about Kairi, and Donald and Goofy have to remind him to believe, right before we see a flashback to Kairi's childhood at the Radiant Gardens. Didn't Sora JUST finish talking about how he still believes that he'll find Kairi, and he's in a good mood because of it in Neverland? But then I remembered, Sora's still a hormonal teenage boy. Words are words, but he's still hurting inside.
- One thing I noticed is that Sora is comparatively much more melancholy in KH1 than he is throughout the rest of the series, where he seems to be almost be eternally optimistic. Why? It's because in KH1 he's an inexperienced youth thrown into an unfamiliar environment and keeps finding himself in very strange and dangerous situations. In the next games Sora is much more experienced, confident, and used to dealing with odd things. As such doesn't let the crap he has to go through get him down anymore.
- Something about the surreal intro to the first Kingdom Hearts always just kind of bothered me. When it cuts to Sora falling from the sky — given I was eight when I first saw that and thus didn't know the pun in Sora's name, but when I learned it I was like, "Oh. Sora, sky. Cute." Then, years later, waiting for 358D, I was thinking about this and realized something. Sora, Kairi, and Riku were all taken from their namesakes. Kairi washed up from the ocean, Riku left Destiny Islands (the earth), and to echo this, Sora fell from the sky — further symbolic of everything they once knew falling out of place.
- Also acts as foreshadowing, because within Kingdom Hearts, people can fall into a different world as a shooting star. Sora falls from the sky but isn't a shooting star because he is able to travel from world to world, not actually landing in any of them.
- Another thing is that the relationships between the three (Sora, Kairi, and Riku) reflects the meaning of their names. So Sora is the sky, Riku the earth, Kairi the horizon bridging OR separating the two. Thus, she inadvertedly seperates them (through their different ideas of how to "save" her) and later deliberately reunites them (in the World That Never Was.)
- I was furious for years after playing the original Kingdom Hearts due to one hanging plot thread that was never explained throughout the games; in the jungle level, when Jane shows you a bunch of slides, Slide 6 shows an unknown castle, which Sora says 'feels familiar', and as far as I could see was never explained. Come to realize, years later, that this was due to Kairi's heart being within Sora, as the castle was actually Hollow Bastion, Kairi's homeworld, and it was her recognizing it and projecting onto Sora. Subtle foreshadowing, game. Good job.
- I actually caught that one when I played it in 2002 - I assumed when I reached Hollow Bastion, that it was the castle projected in slide 6.
- That voice schooling you in the prologue... was that Ventus?
- I really hate to knock good and logical Fridge Brilliance, but...Word of God says it was King Mickey. (at least from my sources).
- Wouldn't be the first Retcon made by Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Considering the voice in Ventus' heart claiming to be "a brand new heart" was a newborn Sora, I really think the logical conclusion is that Ventus is the one now subconciously guiding Sora.
- Keeping in mind, however, that the things Nomura reveals in interviews tend not to be retconned afterward.
- There are several examples of interviews pre-games and post-games that hype up the story by setting up the mysteries through facts in Nomura's interviews which, later revealed in the games, are total and blatant lies. There are examples, but the most blatant one is from pre-KH:COM. Nomura states in a pre-game interview with Famitsu to quell fan-theories that "Kairi and Namine are most definitely not related." When questioned about this by the very same interviewer in the magazine's pre-KH2 write-up, Nomura flat-out states: "Oh. Well, to keep the mystery for fans' enjoyment, some deception is necessary. Im sorry, but that is to say I lied."
- While the above troper has a point, "Ventus = Awakening voice" is flat-out Jossed in Kingdom Hearts coded, where Data-Sora does not distinguish from the Awakening voice inside the Journal's data of Sora's dream as a different voice from Mickey communicating from the outside world.
- Word of God claims it's Mickey - this is actually one of the things that was Lost in Translation. In Japanese, the way the voice in the prologue speaks more or less confirms it's Mickey due to how Mickey talks in Japanese. This however does not translate in English.
- Fridge Brilliance: Huh, seems weird that Big Ben is off by 5 minutes on one side only. Why is that? Well, when Peter took the Darlings to Neverland, they landed on one side of Big Ben and knocked the time off by 5 minutes. Wendy's just having Sora fix hers and Peter's own mistake!
- Fridge Brilliance: Certain Keyblades in the game are meant to represent certain characters. Oathkeeper represents Kairi, Oblivion represents Riku, etc. Now think back aaaaaaall the way back to the tutorial. What's the last thing your Voice with an Internet Connection tells you? "Your heart is the most powerful weapon of all." Which is the Keyblade that represents Sora? Ultima Weapon.
- KH 1's Oblivion Keyblade always seemed disappointingly underpowered, being weaker than Divine Rose, which you'll probably get earlier and which lacks Oblivion's MP debuff. Oblivion, much like Oathkeeper, represents one of Sora's bonds, particularly with Riku. The reason Oblivion is so weak is due to Sora's and Riku's bond being broken when Riku gets taken over by Ansem.
- At a first glance, Sora should not be able to win his fights against the forces of DARKNESS with rudimentary sword skills that he picked up from sparring on Destiny Islands with Riku. Then we find out from BxS that he has had Ven's heart inside of him since he was four. He's drawing on the powers of a being who not only became skilled enough to utterly dominate his dark half (Vanitas) in their final battle, but one whose heart is pure light. Sora's Master Swordsman qualities come from his status as a Empowered Badass Normal, which would explain why he initially fared so poorly in CoM; he had to rely on the abilities he honed without Ven's help. - X2X
- This would explain some of the abilities he learns. Sonic Blade, Strike Raid and Ars Arcanum are all skills learned by Ven. This includes Mega Flare and Holy in KH:COM
- Would make sense if it wasn't for Word of God saying that Sora didn't inherit anything from Ven's heart. Meaning, Sora's power was his own.
- Yes but Sora's ability to wield two Keyblades comes from having a second Keyblade wielder's heart in him.
- This troper seriously just realized after reading this page why the Kingdom Key is called that. It's the key to Kingdom Hearts! — Black Humor
- It's also a biblical reference to the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Kingdom Key and Kingdom Key D also have the same colour schemes as the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven in some illustrations. Trivia-man, AWAY!
- Neither are true, actually. The X-Blade, on the other hand, qualifies for both. It is a biblical reference (just look at the keychain) and is actually the key to Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Key isn't however.
- Says you. As it is, there has been nothing released refuting the claim that the Kingdom Keys are not what the X-blade became when it shattered.
- Jossed in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], the X-Blade shattered into 20 pieces, the 7 pieces of light becoming the pure hearts of The Princesses of Heart, its unknown what happened to the 13 pieces of Darkness
- I thought the 13 parts of darkness were the true Organization XIII.
- Actually, it's unclear what happened to any of the pieces of the original X-Blade. The 7 lights and 13 darknesses are Xehanort's plan to create a new X-Blade, not put the pieces of the original back together. It's still entirely possible for the two Kingdom Keys to be/contain some remnants of the original X-Blade.
- Take a quick look at the X-Blade's hilt. What keyblade appears twice to make the handle? Sora's version of the Kingdom Key.
- This theory contains a little wild mass guessing, but grin and bear. The Kingdom keys were completely non-existent in BBS, right? What if, after the X-blade was destroyed, it broke in two? Being that Ventus had a heart of pure light, it stands to reason the Kingdom Key of the light realm is the half made from his heart. The opposite applies for Vanitas. So on the Destiny Islands, when the Keyblade chose Sora over Riku, it wasn't just that his heart was stronger, the key was returning to its original owner.
- But Ventus was originally going to have the Kingdom Key-D as a usable weapon. How does that work?
- In earlier versions he was going to use it. But not in the final version. Why? Because they decided that according to the plot, it didn't exist yet.
- In earlier versions, Radiant Garden was also Hollow Bastion (or at least, the part of it Terra and Ven are shown in was underwater in BBS times). Wouldn't be the first thing they removed for chronological reasons.
- Come Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], where its revealed that the X-Blade shattered into 7 lights and 13 darknesses, The former becoming the pure Hearts of the Princesses of Heart.
- Yes, but that doesn't mean that the OP theory is incorrect. It could easily be that the X-Blade that appeared in Birth By Sleep was incomplete and this keyblade split into 2 when it shattered. The light half, the Kingdom Key, ended up in the Realm of Light and eventually into Sora's possession, while the dark half ended up in the Realm of Darkness and was eventually found by Mickey. If that's the case it's actually rather brilliant, since Xehanort's plot if successful will mean both of those keyblades will come together again to become part of the true X-Blade.
- At End of the World, Xehanort's Heartless describes the Destiny Islands to the heart seeking freedom as "a prison surrounded by water". You may think he's only talking about Riku, but it takes on a double meaning if you've played or watched Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, where you find out that the original Master Xehanort was a native of Destiny Islands, who like Riku also wanted to visit other worlds. It's quite interesting to see the similarities between the two.
- It Just Bugged Me how the anime-styled Sora & co. looked so out-of-place among all the classic Disney characters. Then I realized it's because he is out of place.
- Except his shoes, because while he's an outsider, he isn't completely alien to them.
- Actually, it fits in better than you know. The "anime style" is based on the granddaddy of modern manga, Astro Boy. The art style for Astro Boy was inspired by comics starring Scrooge McDuck, a Disney character. The Disney art style is why the anime art style exists. That said, at least in Kingdom Hearts one, it is a bit strange, but this doesn't really seem to be the case in any of the other games, meaning that it's really just an issue of graphics quality instead of art style. Of course, the whole thing is still YMMV.
- I just realized a funny little thing about Kingdom Hearts. Because so much of the series comes from Disney Animated Canon, it is likely that the series's Global Currency, "Munny", is spelled like that instead of "Money" as a reference to Winnie the Pooh, and how Pooh would always spell "Honey" as "Hunny". -Enlong
- On the note of Winnie the Pooh, one of the mini-games upgrades your Stop spell. Why? Because the Swing mini-game is all about time-ing.
- When Sora dies, you see him fall over and a heart drifts up... Just like the Heartless (Which are made out of possessed hearts, oddly enough.) It wasn't until my second playthrough that I worked out why: It's not his heart that he's losing there. His heart dies when he does.
- There is a part at End of the World where Sora is in a large cavern. Lots of multicolored crystals stick out in odd places. It was when I noticed that all the chests in this room contain Gummi pieces that something finally clicked: the crystals in the room are Gummi pieces as well. In other words, Gummi pieces come from dead worlds. Meteor showers have Gummi pieces with them, pieces that originated from a once whole world. Captain Hook's chests had plenty of gummi pieces, because of his constant space travel. The reason travel is impossible when the worlds are restored is not only because the world's walls are put back up, but also because the gummi pieces and ships to get there are from parts of the walls too.
- Unfortunately it's explicitly stated Gummis are fragments of the barriers between worlds. Also your Gummi ship doesn't fall apart at the end of Kingdom Hearts, because it's seen again in Kingdom Hearts II. Or at least the Highwind model is.
- In one cutscene, Hades tells Maleficent "Who invited you to the party?" Now remember what happened to Maleficent in her movie?
- There are no puppy chests in Atlantica for obvious reasons.
- In a similar vein, you can't use summons in Atlantica either.
- During your second visit to Hollow Bastion, you find Belle in the library. Nice touch.
- This troper went to the library expecting her to be there, figuring the game developers wouldn't look over this particularly unique part of her character.
- After beating Riku in Hollow Bastion, you can't move on until you solve the puzzle and find the scattered pieces. Why is the puzzle there in the first place? Because the villains knew that Sora would be able to unlock any other lock with the Keyblade.
- The main characters spend days building a raft to escape Destiny Islands. I guess the three boats moored to the jetty weren't acceptable?
- BBS implies that they don't actually own the boats, and simply borrow from their parents, and they'd rather make themselves a boat than steal. That said, we're talking about one obsessive teenager who thought he could travel to another world by raft, and brought his two friends along for the ride, it's fair to say Riku's not quite right in the head.
- Isn't it implied in the games that space and the ocean are basically the same thing? Lets think for a minute; Kairi floated from Radiant Garden to the islands, Kairi's note in a bottle made it to the world of darkness by sea and you encounter both Captain Hook's ship and Monstro in the middle of a gummi ship section. I think Riku was perfectly reasonable in thinking you could make it to another world by raft.
- If you look, the boats are quite small, only suited for rowing themselves between islands, not for a long journey away from them. The raft, in addition to having a sail (so they wouldn't be paddling all frigging day) is much bigger. They could all be together on the same craft, and it would also hold more supplies than all three boats combined. Not that Kairi's list of "supplies" would even last a day, but let's assume they had been gathering stuff for far longer than two days...
- Ansem/Xehanort's Heartless wears clothing which is very similar to the clothing Master Xehanort wore in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Now, I'll be engaging in a bit of WMG here, but just smile and nod. The Xehanort from which Ansemnort came from was the result of MX possessing Terra, plus Laser-Guided Amnesia. What if, after Xehanort lost his heart, Terra's and MX's hearts split, Terra's becoming Xemnas, MX's becoming Ansemnort. It would explain why Ansemnort wears the clothing he does, and would also explain why Xemnas addresses Aqua's armor as "friend" in Final Mix+. Also, the hammy qualities of both. (Which is ironic, given Jason Dohring's performance as Terra.)
- If you think about it Sora and Mickey share a lot of similarities. Both star as main characters in their domain, they both are happy-go-lucky with moments of silliness and not to mention share the same outfit (red trousers, large yellow shoes and white gloves anyone?). Did I mention adventurous and curious?
- Mickey was intended to be the protagonist of the game at first, though there was an argument over Donald getting to be the protagonist. So they made Sora. It's a nice Mythology Gag too.
- This hit me in my second playthrough. It's shown at the end that Kairi's heart is within Sora, right? Remember the bit at the start of the game where she falls into him and disappears? You can probably put two and two together from here. Now that just blew this tropers mind.
- Fridge Logic leading into Fridge Brilliance, we see in Birth By Sleep that only a Keyblade wielder has the power to extract the hearts of the Princesses of Heart, leading into Fridge Logic about how Maleficent is able to capture their hearts in Kingdom Hearts. Then Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you remember the princesses were contained in the Sanctuary of Hollow Bastion—she didn't capture their hearts, which was why she kidnapped them physically and sealed them in sleep until she could. This also explains why she recruited Riku for no immediately obvious reason, as she knows from Birth By Sleep she needs a Keyblade wielder to get the hearts.
- This ascends to Fridge Horror; The Princesses of Heart in Birth by Sleep (albeit Kairi) all look exactly the same ten years later, in Kingdom Hearts. This implies that they were kidnapped immediately after Birth by Sleep by Maleficent and kept catatonic for ten years. Right after they all got their "happy endings", too. Cruel.
- Sabor is referred to as male here when in the source movie, she's female. All trivia aside, the journal was written by Jiminy. How is he going to know her gender? She just looks like a hungry, snarling animal to him.
- True, but I imagine Jiminy had a good look at Sabor's... parts when you fight him/her the last time.
- Perhaps proper Disney characters don't have genitalia and reproduce by some other method? This would mean both that Sabor would have no parts to look at, and Jiminy would have no parts of his own as reference.
- Um... I was more under the impression that Jiminy took a quick look at Sabor, then spent the rest of the fight hiding in Sora's hood, where he couldn't see anything.
- Fridge Brilliance: Sora looking for items in the first game is him rummaging in his pockets. And likewise, he's not as used to magic so he has to select it manually. When you shortcut a spell, he "Defaults" to those (Especially Cure) because he knows they're most important. And in the later games when he can do this with items, it's because he's learned he should keep them prepared ahead of time so he doesn't have to rummage through his pockets and get killed.
- Fridge Brilliance: Remember how after you rescue Kairi, all the Heartless get about 50% stronger? This bothered me, but then I played KHII, and realized: they weren't stronger, Sora was weaker. Half of his power went to Roxas, since a Nobody is said to hold half of the Somebody's power. As for why Donald, Goofy, and the world-specific heroes got de-powered, don't think too hard about it.
- Donald, Goofy, and the world-specific heroes was de-powered because Sora's Power Of Friendship was weaker.
- Perhaps, but the heartless are also getting stronger because they are being fueled the massive amounts of darkness from the Hollow Bastion Keyhole, and it isn't until the defeat of Ansemnort that they start to lose this power. Roxas is just coming into being at this point, he hasn't had the opportunity to have taken half of Sora's strength yet.
- The World Terminus takes you to rooms from previous worlds, but for Hollow Bastion it takes you to a strange laboratory where five capsules are connected to some mysterious machine. Odd at the time, but flash forward to Kingdom Hearts II (and even further to a brief flashback in 3D) and you realize this is probably the lab where Xehanort experimented on the other five apprentices.
- Unbelievable amounts of Fridge Brilliance: Do you remember the ladder that takes you up to the clock tower in Traverse Town? Why can't you use it before you fight the Guard Armor? It's not on the right side and Sora says its wobbly. But why can you use it after? Think about where Donald and Goofy are at the start of the Guard Armor fight. In a little nook that can only be reached by using the ladder! Donald and Goofy fix the ladder for you!
- Triton seemed awfully aggressive and unusually interested in getting Sora to leave the world, fast, claiming that its due to not wanting "interference" or the attracting power of the Keyblade, despite the interference of the Heartless and their presence before the Key was there by several weeks. Cue the revelations about the Keyblade War - Triton is a god, and an old one. Chances are he was there for the War and the Sundering, and when he sees somebody wielding a keyblade, he's seeing one of the people who literally destroyed the world with their war, which, as he probably experienced it, is probably a post-traumatic stress disorder trigger, or close to it. No wonder he wants that as far from his domain as possible as fast as possible!
- He even says outright that Key bearers bring nothing but destruction. He may have, at the very least, had an encounter with one of the darkness wielding keyblade wielders from the days of yore, if he didn't witness the destruction of worlds. Would also explain why he's very protective of Ariel and dismissive of her ideas of going to the outside world(s) (as he was in the movie).
- Tarzan tells Sora, "Friends in heart," in response to Sora asking where Riku and Kairi were. Well, with Riku, that's metaphorical, but with Kairi, it was literally true.
- Monstro is upside-down. That's why you can fall from the bowels into the mouth, and the stomach is above the throat.
- End of the World is where the remnants of worlds swallowed by darkness go. What does it look like? A black hole. Further, as you descend deeper, you find these remnants frozen, soon to be swallowed by the core itself, for even the remnant of Destiny Islands is fading from existence.
- Go back to the first Kingdom Hearts and defeat Ansem for the final time and listen to it closely. That's the sound that is normally made when a Heartless boss is killed. Foreshadowing much?
- All of Riku's jealousy at Sora makes much more sense after playing Birth By Sleep, Riku had undergone the Keyblade inheritance ceremony and Sora didn't, yet Sora was "running around worlds showing off his Keyblade." Riku knew very well he was supposed to be the one with the Keyblade. It also explains why Riku wants to try so hard to get off the island, he knows very well there are worlds out there and knows that he'll one day leave due to the keyblade, but that day can't come fast enough.
- A bit of Fridge Horror, but it's pretty clear that Kairi entered Sora's heart in the scene near the beginning where she fades into him. But what's with the half-closed eyes and the low muttering of his name? One look at a similar scene in Birth By Sleep may shed some light onto this: After Terra fights Eraqus, Xehanort kills him. Eraqus falls into Terra's arms and fades through him, making it seemed as if he died in Terra's arms. It's later revealed that Eraqus' heart is inside Terra's body, and probably did it the same way as Kairi, by fading through him, meaning he did it right before death. So how could Kairi have done the same thing? It's very possible that on the day of Destiny Island's destruction, she was about to die before Sora could enter the secret chamber. As for how she may have been dying, nothing is certain, but it may also explain why the door is locked until you meet with Riku.
- I interpreted it not as her DYING, but as her having been attacked by a Heartless when the door opened. However, as a Princess of Heart? She was able to hang on, and her body didn't fade. Or opening the door allowed Ansem to do something to her.
- A bit of WMG on my part but i think it may have to do Sora's innate ability to connect with hearts(and guide them through the darkness into the light atleast according to ventus in sora's dive to heart in BBS). Aqua cast a spell on kairi that causes her to seek safety by guiding her to the light of others.This initially led her to Destiny Islands when Radiant Garden fell not because it is the nearest world still in the realm of light but due to Sora's heart being the light that shone the brightest and connected with kairi's heart when it seeked the light in the darkness hence when the Destiny Islands fell as well Kairi's heart tried to do the same only that there is no other place to go to reach that light but inside of sora's heart so Kairi's heart dissociated from her body before riku found her body probably in traverse town.This may also be the reason why Ventus was able to seek help both times when vanitas was born and after the Events of BBS even when there are possibly princesses of pure heart that may be physically closer in either case.
- To this day I still don't understand how the Princesses of Heart ended up inside Sora, but upon replaying the game, I realize it may have been since the beginning, since his Dive to the Heart has stained glass pictures of the Princesses of Heart, and there are multiple towers, instead of just one with his picture on it.
- The Princesses of Heart were not in Sora, only Kairi was in him. The rest were in the Riku/Ansem's Keyblade.
- You know the motto that Sora, Donald and Goofy use in the game: "All for one, and one for all!". Well, those who've played KH3D would now realize that the latter two got the motto from their Musketeer days; not only that: Donald and Goofy were dubbed Royal Musketeers. It also makes a good foreshadow to the origin film, which was not released until 2004, two years after the original game was released.
- And don't forget that, as of KH3D, Sora is also a Royal Musketeer.
- For the majority of the game, Sora has three hearts, two of them of pure light. During the final Riku fight, Riku is being possessed by Xehanort's Heartless - So he is a composite of Riku, Terra, and Xehanort, fighting a composite of Sora, Ventus, and Kairi!
- This may borderline with WMG but whatever: Some may find it strange that the heartless did not attack the citizens of Halloween Town when you first arrive and only attack after Sora uses his keyblade and the heart starts being created. Consider this: the residents of Halloween Town are all zombies, ghosts, skeletons and various other undead and reanimated creations, NONE OF THEM HAVE HEARTS TO TAKE.
- Except a "Heart" does not seem to be the organ that keeps your blood pumping, but some spiritual...thing that stores emotion, memory, light, and darkness.
- Yep. In Kingdom Hearts II, Doctor Finkelstein says explicitly that Sally has a heart, in comparison with his newest experiment, which doesn't. Presumably, that means the other residents of Halloween Town have them, too.
- One thing that hit me during the final fight against Ansem/Xehanort's Heartless in light of some of the reveals further in the series is that during the segment of the fight at Destiny Islands, what we are seeing is not cause Sora is there, it is connected to Xehanort since he to hails from the islands. — matteste
- I was replaying Kingdom Hearts and I noticed something peculiar — the Shadows in Destiny Island die in 2 hits/ have less HP than the rest. Well, of course they do since they've only recently been turned into Heartless! I'll let you fill in the blanks.
- Captain Hook's Ship Is full of Heartless but does not have any actual pirates apart from Hook himself and Smee, Hook is shown with a crew in the film, You do the Math.
- SDG are in Wonderland during the trial of Alice for the attempted theft of the Queen's heart. However, only Sora is interested in defending Alice. Donald and Goofy refuse to because of their status as outsiders and it isn't until Sora actually steps in that they decide to help. In short, if Sora wasn't there, would Donald and Goofy have been perfectly willing to let a ten-year old's head get chopped off just to preserve the balance of the universe?note On the other hand, see farther down in this article.
- Sora first encounters the Heartless on the platform representing Cinderella, and fights three Shadows. He would later encounter three Darksides throughout the game. Cinderella's stepfamily have hearts devoid of light, and were later "overtaken by their darkness". Darksides are Pureblood Heartless, and Sora got turned into a Shadow, another Pureblood. This means that the Darksides are the Heartless of Lady Tremaine and her daughters... and one of them went Errol and destroyed Sora's world.
- And the fourth one encountered in the Realm of Darkness in the Final Episode is the Heartless of Lucifer.
- One reason Donald and Goofy switch sides back to Sora after Riku gets the keyblade and tries to kill Sora, despite King Mickey's orders to follow the Keybearer is friendship. However, even if they never stated it another one is that they know perfectly well King Mickey would NEVER want Goofy and Donald to stand by while an innocent person is being killed, friend or not, nor would he have wanted them to betray a friend like that.
- Also, by this point, Donald and Goofy only know Riku as a smug Jerkass who repeatedly sided himself with Obviously Evil people and villains, with his only excuse being that he's doing it for Kairi's sake (without regard to the fact Kairi would NEVER approve of the things he's doing). Keyblade or not, they both are aware Sora is a better company to be around anyway.
- This troper always thought it was odd that Jiminy's Journal mentions that Search Ghost Heartless can mainly be found in Atlantica, even though you would encounter them in Monstro before even reaching Atlantica. On a recent playthrough, though, I realized something: Based on where we encounter him, it makes sense that Monstro had just swum by Atlantica. He ate the Search Ghosts on his way through.
- I always found it weird how Sora and Riku wore such ridiculous, baggy outfits until I later realized - they're designed for water wear! Sora's is above-the-knees to prevent them from getting soaked in the water, while Riku's are overalls designed to be worn in water. This also says alot about their characters - Sora rejects Darkness, while Riku submerges himself in the stuff!
- Well, there’s also the fact that Sora and Riku are both Islanders and spend a lot of time around the beach...
- Ansem-Riku establishes his Magnificent Bastard credentials with the situation Sora finds himself in when they fight over awakening Kairi. If Ansem-Riku defeats Sora and removes Kairi's heart, fine, Sora's dead or a heartless and he completes the Final Keyhole. If Sora wins, he deliberately leaves the Keyblade of Hearts behind while vanishing, because he knows that despite just fighting specifically to prevent Ansem-Riku from stealing Kairi's heart Sora's only option to seal the keyhole and get Kairi's heart out is to use it on himself, freeing her heart but turning himself into a heartless, completing the Final Keyhole anyway. Either way, Ansem-Riku completes the Final Keyhole and removes Sora as a threat, the only thing he couldn't possibly have predicted is Riku defying him and that Sora would turn back from becoming a heartless and proceed to wreck his plans anyway.
- Here's abit of Fridge Brilliance and Fridge Horror. One question that bugged this troper's mind is how Ansem-Riku managed to make the Keyblade of People's Hearts from the hearts of the Princesses. So by Kingdom Hearts DDD, we learn that the shards of light from the X-Blade became the Princesses of Hearts Hearts. In other words, Ansem-Riku was able to practically forge the Light half of the X-Blade! Only with Kairi's heart would it have been complete, and this explains the Ko PH's unusual ability to unlock things! The Fridge Horror kicks in when you realize that if Ansem-Riku managed to get Kairi's heart into that Keyblade, he would've been a giant step closer to fulfilling his desire of creating the X-Blade! Not only that, but with Sora out of the picture there's literally nobody stopping Xemnas from making the 13 Darknesses out of the Organization!
- That much can really be inferred by how Xehanort specifically says that Ansem So D was using Maleficent for that express reason while Xemnas focused on trying to gather the dark half of the X-Blade.
- Kairi's home world is subtly foreshadowed by the fact that she and Aerith have very similar blue belts.
- The recipie for Hi-Potion is simply to place a Potion on a hot stove. Therefore, normal Potions must be just Hi-Potion with a lot of water in them, and boiling out the filler makes it stronger.
- Likewise, Ether is made by freezing a Potion, which means one pours the active magical ingredient off of some impure ice.
- In Neverland, while traversing through Hook's ship, Sora is attacked by multiple doppelganger Heartless known as Shadow Sora - jet-black, no weapons, flies through the air, dances until it deems you worthy of receiving of an attack. When you defeat it, the experience point display reads Tech 150p. "Tech" points are normally rewarded when Sora parries an enemy strike. Then it hits you: Riku isn't just sending out clones of Sora; he's actively attacking him.
- In this game, Oogie Boogie's plan is to steal the artificial heart that Finklestein creates to help Jack control the Heartless so that he can gain that same power. Unfortunately, despite his plan succeeding, the heart ends up destroying him as it was a failure. And no wonder; the heart's solely made up of the only emotions that the residents of Halloween Town can understand, i.e. fear and surprise. Thus, the heart was incomplete, and likely would've been a catastrophic failure no matter what happened with it.
- When you reach Hollow Bastion, Riku takes your Keyblade and companions, leaving you humiliated with a toy sword. As you fight your way up to the castle, you're introduced to the new Darkball, Wizard, and Defender Heartless. Darkballs appear and bob like disembodied laughing faces, while Wizards and Defenders take after the trappings and combat styles of Donald and Goofy, respectively. The game is actively taunting you about your loss.
- There's also one other factor to consider. By this point, Riku has been given the ability to control the Heartless. Given said Heartless resemble Donald and Goofy's playstyle, it's very likely that Riku is rubbing his "victory" into Sora's face while trying to kill him.
- So THAT'S why the Wizard is squishy!
- Later games stated that a person can be "recompleted" if their heartless and nobody is defeated. The kicker? That concept was introduced as far back as this game. Remember the NPC in Traverse Town who got turned into a heartless, but mysteriously recovered afterwards?
- After the fight with the Ansem-posessed Riku, all the previously visited worlds have all the old Heartless you've likely outlevelled replaced with either far more powerful versions of themselves, or Heartless that until that point were only encountered in Hollow Bastion. This is also off-handedly mentioned in the game by some characters stating that the Heartless numbers have been getting out of control, why is that? Because Ansem regains a physical form right before this happens, and assumes direct control of ALL Heartless. Ansem himself being the most powerful Heartless in the game, it wouldn't be surprising if his ability to command and give power to them was far greater than that of Maleficent.
- Earlier in game, Maleficent and Jafar have a conversation on trying to control the darkness and how one can face danger if they delve too deeply, namely turning into a Heartless. Usually, becoming a heartless means becoming a mindless beast who wants to collect hearts, but because Ansem was able to keep his sapience through the transformation, he's basically a Heartless who can channel the darkness without limit and thus without consequence. Hence how he can make all the Heartless much stronger.
- This series has always been vague about the exact definition of "world". Some worlds are tiny places like Destiny Islands, while others cover quite a lot of ground, like Neverland being both Neverland and the city of London. I came to the conclusion that everything makes much more sense if the word "world" is replaced by "story". Worlds are stories, which is why their geographical limits depend entirely on the scope of the story. Even worlds that supposedly take place in a fully-realised planet only comprise that which is described in their stories. This is more evident in the case of the 100-Acre Wood, which is literally a story in a book, and all the other worlds may not be so different. No one can travel to other worlds because a fictional character can't just jump out of their story into another one.
- Under this logic (and a bit of WMG) the reason the Atlantica world only concerns, well, Atlantica and not the human world (as they explored in The Little Mermaid) is because it's actually an adaptation of the 1992 TV series, which both takes place almost entirely within Atlantica and before the events of the first movie, as does the world in Kingdom Hearts I.
This of course ties in to the very nature of the game: a crossover between several Disney and Square stories. The threat of Ansem and the Heartless breaks the barriers between worlds because it's the premise for the crossover to happen. Given that Hollow Bastion is the "Final Fantasy world", Ansem meeting Mickey can be seen as an allegory for Disney and Square coming together to connect their worlds. Of course, Kingdom Hearts itself is a story, and all worlds/stories have a Heart. That's precisely what the "heart of all worlds" is: the heart of the game itself, of the story it created by weaving several other stories together.
- Alice is rather unfazed by possible execution during her trial, more concerned with how she'll eat without a head. This may either be a case of her being unaware of death or just dumb, but there may be some justification for this. An old Disney game, "Disney's Villains' Revenge" actually shows us what would happen to Alice, and likely anyone, when they're decapitated in Wonderland. They lose their heads...and both the headless body and disembodied head are perfectly fine, capable of speaking and the body can still move around, there isn't even any wound or anything. This being Wonderland, such a fate would make sense, hence Alice's lack of concern. Given Kingdom Hearts' tendency to go down different routes with Disney's stories, one could even assume Alice saw the results of these decapitations before Sora and co. arrived.
- Why aren't there any Heartless in the 100 Acre Wood (aside from fighting enemies not fitting with the franchise)? The keyhole isn't in the 100 Acre Wood. It's on the cover. It'd be pointless to invade when they only need to get their hands on the book.
- Speaking of the Queen, her trial isn't fair at all. It either forces you to fight her cards, or forces you to fight her cards while your allies are trapped. Wonderland's Keyblade, Lady Luck, can't be found until very late in the game. You couldn't win the trial because Lady Luck wasn't on your side.
- Putting aside the Genie and Tinkerbell, who join you after you finish their worlds, the Summons you can obtain are Simba, Mushu, Bambi, and Dumbo. What's the most common best friend character have in Disney films? A Loyal Animal Companion.
- Since players would probably kill themselves if they die when fighting the Rock Titan, after all the hardships and real-life physical stress they went through to reach him in the Hades Cup, he was made extremely easy.
- Could it be possible that Hades and Rock Titan had their positions in the Hades Cup switched during development so that players wouldn't feel as frustrated if they lost, especially if they were trying to obtain God Save The Queen by doing completing the Hades Cup solo?
- Speaking of Hades, ever wondered why despite being one of the first villains to appear, he's fought really late in game, even after Maleficent? And is one of the strongest ones of the hellfire club? Well, remember that unlike all the other Disney villains, Hades is an actual god.
- In Monstro, Pinocchio falls unconscious and is on the verge of losing his heart to the Heartless, but Jiminy rushes forward and is able to revive him when no one else can. It's explained that he's able to do this because he's Pinocchio's conscience; Jiminy's entry after beating the Parasite Cage but before finishing the world mentions that he can sense Pinocchio's heart "sleeping." Pinocchio listened to Jiminy's voice, which woke him up. What's another term for following your conscience's advice? Listening to your heart.
- It would seem strange that Ice Titan is the only Superboss in the game who outright counters use of Aero spells but unlike the others it makes perfect sense. The main gimmick of the fight in reflecting it's icicles to deal damage and Aeroga automatically reflects projectiles, naturally, it makes logical sense that Ice Titan is designed to counter a spell which would allow Sora to cheese the fight otherwise!
- Whenever Sora, Donald and Goofy run into a group of heartless, Donald and Goofy will automatically fight them with you and will show absolutely no mercy towards those heartless...and then, there’s the scene from Hollow Bastion where Sora gets turned into a heartless. When the group finds him, they don’t recognize him for obvious reasons. Here’s where the fridge horror kicks in: Normally, when Donald or Goofy spot a heartless, they usually destroy the heartless without a second thought. In this case, however, Donald instead just taps Sora’s heartless on the head and tells it to get lost. Could you imagine how horrifying it would’ve been if instead of letting that heartless off easy, Donald just decided to vaporize it instantly with one of his spells like he usually would with any other heartless? The series would’ve ended right then and there, because there wouldn’t have been a Sora for Kairi to restore, thus meaning that there wouldn’t have been anyone left to stop Ansem and close the door to darkness. Good thing Donald suddenly grabbed the Idiot Ball and decided to not instantly kill that heartless like he usually would with any other heartless, or else the universe would’ve been doomed. Bullet dodged, am I right?
- One problem with this: Only the Keyblade can destroy the Heartless for good. If they are defeated with other weapons, they eventually reform. So if Donald destroyed Sora's Heartless, it still would have reappeared. On the other hand, though, that may be even more horrifying: Kairi, Donald, and Goofy were trying to escape Hollow Bastion. If Donald did get rid of Sora's Heartless, they would probably be gone by the time it reformed. By then, Sora may have fully lost his sense of self, and he would just become another ordinary Heartless that wants to consume hearts. The real horror here is that it would still technically be possible for Kairi to bring Sora back, but because he would be a mindless creature of instinct, and because Kairi would probably not return to Hollow Bastion without the ability to seal the Keyhole, Sora would be lost as a Heartless forever, and if the Beast or someone else destroyed him, he would simply be reborn time and time again, forced to fight for the darkness.
- Riku's one desire in the game was to protect Kairi at all cost. Had Goofy not stepped in and protect Sora from Riku's attack, Riku would not only have killed Sora, but Kairi as well.
- Goofy and Donald choosing Sora's side over Riku's was very sweet and all, but just imagine if they chose to stand there and let Riku kill him. They would not only lose respect from their king, but given how often Kingdom Hearts villains are killed, Mickey will very likely be forced to do something about Riku...
- Maleficent's behavior around Riku heavily resembles the case of real life grown-ups leading children astray by feeding them lies and encouraging them to do bad stuff.
- In the Peter Pan movies, Captain Hook had an entire crew of pirates. In this game, a majority are taken up by Riku and the Heartless, with him and Smee the only actual pirates around. What do you think happened to his crew?
- Had Sora not defeated Ansem by the end, Riku would've remain a slave in his own body like Terra was in Birth By Sleep.
- Also, Final Mix adds a scene showing when Riku first ends up in the Realm of Darkness after Ansem kicks his heart out of his body. His first words are him telling Sora and Kairi he's sorry, followed by him saying that if he's now in the afterlife, he refuses to die until he gets to sees Sora and Kairi one last time. The horror comes in when you realize this is said by a fifteen-year-old. In a game with Mickey Mouse.
- Few places you visit seem very highly populated. Limitations of the game engine, or the result of attrition by Heartless attacks before Sora comes to save the day?
- In light of KH 3, where Terra was revealed to be the guardian the whole time, it gives off the horrifying implications that Terra was desperately trying to scream for help during the Ansem fight. Even worse, Ansem being destroyed didn't free Terra. Meaning he would be forced to serve under Xehanort for another set of years.
- Here's something terrifying to think about, seeing as the Mickey Mouse franchise is a big part of Kingdom Hearts, Goofy and Pete have sons. There's also an old cartoon called How To Have An Accident At Work, that shows Donald and Daisy have a son too. You have to wonder where these kids are, if they know the horrors their parents are facing, or if they're even okay. (Granted, if Max or the like was in danger, Goofy would surely bring it up) That being said, Max and PJ are best friends, so what would they think if they learned their fathers were literally fighting each other?
- Imagine how Sora must feel when abandoned by Donald and Goofy at Hollow Bastion. Sure, he does have Beast on his side, and the Save Point is just abit away. Riku left him alive, so Sora could just leave, right? Wrong. When you try to access the Gummi Ship, you find you can't. Possibly because Donald and Goofy took ownership of it from Sora. So to quote, Donald and Goofy left Sora alone without a viable weapon to defend himself with on a world that's basically teeming with powerful Heartless. Donald and Goofy didn't just leave Sora. They left him to die.
- In the final part of End of the World, when you re-enter Destiny Islands, the first thing you notice is how everything begins to disappear once you get closer to it. When you try to go into the cave where the world's heart is supposed to be, the cutscene trigger further demolishes the islands until it looks cracked at it's sides. However, the sea still seems to be intact, right? Even though the islands are floating dozens of feet over it. But consider this: the End of the World had three sections that were reminiscent of Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauties worlds right before the Final Rest, implying you're getting closer to the core of the End of the World. That "sea" below isn't a sea: It's the Realm of Darkness and Destiny Islands is just about to be swallowed by it.
- Bambi appeared as the first summon in the series, where it was explained that his world was one of the ones that was destroyed. He reappeared in Chain of Memories, then he and his unseen world never showed up again. Kingdom Hearts II shows that his homeworld was one of the ones restored... because his homeworld is Beast's Castle. His mother appears at the very beginning of Beauty and the Beast. It also explains why Sora doesn't run into him while he's there, and also why Gaston is conspicuously absent — at the time, Gaston was busy, and Bambi had his own problems to deal with.
- Wait... Are you implying Gaston killed Bambi's mother? That just made him worse than he already was! And Belle knows very well how much of a bastard Gaston is! This knowledge (that Gaston killed the mother of a friend of Sora's) would make Belle hate Gaston even more!
- You could argue that Gaston did that more because he's a hunter, though like the hunter in the original film, shooting a deer that's clearly with their child is insanely questionable. This does raise a question though, with the amount of animals Sora befriends in these games, how would he react if he actually saw a hunter?
- Well, Sora already met Clayton, and shortly after they met, the latter became a Heartless. So if Sora met Gaston, the latter would have became a Heartless as well.
- I guess you could say... No one orphans fawns like Gaston!
- On the subject of summons, one can only imagine how horrifying it must be to have your entire world crumble around you, and you wind up as a stone waiting to be found. Even forgetting that, the summons you find have their own issues, Simba already had a guilt complex the size of Pride Rock, so he's probably feeling even worse. Whether Mushu was with Mulan before their world fell apart is unknown, seeing as "KHII" plays out the film's story, but either way, he considers himself a guardian to the Fa Family, and as far as he knows in this game, the Fa's, living or dead, are all gone. Bambi and Dumbo are just kids, ones now stuck in strange worlds without the parents and friends they cherished, so it doesn't take a genius to imagine how that felt.
- It would be alarming to find even one lost puppy on a world that isn't its own, so just try to imagine how horrifying it must be to have 99 puppies, hidden away in chests for reasons unknown. What's worse, some of these puppies are either just within the reach of someone who can help, but are oblivious (You can find some Dalmations behind Merlin's house) or they're in the worst possible place for a puppy to be, like Hollow Bastion. And not every player is likely to find them all, so who knows how long they'll be stuck there...
- At least they can breathe and hope for a rescue. Ending up in Atlantica would have spelt doom for each one of them.
- On the topic of the Dalmations, some of them can be found in Halloween Town, where the regular ambience audio track contains a sound effect of lonely howling. Talk about heartwrenching, especially if you've returned there specifically to look for them.
