On the stage select screen, Blast Man's selection occupies the same slot that Quick Man occupied in the past. Unlike Quick Man, he doesn't have a spike feature protruding out of the portrait to indicate his higher difficulty, but he does have a psychotic expression for the same effect. Funny enough, it's Tundra Man who has head spikes protruding out of his portrait in the bottom right, so it seems the developers remembered this concept and brought it back.
The revelation that Wily originally conceived the Double Gear system to create "true heroes" out of robots. Wily's initial goal really was to "build heroes" even though it wasn't until his last creation that he succeeded—albeit accidentally.
Notice the colors of the respective Gears. The Power Gear is red (Zero), and the Speed Gear is blue (X).
The colors of the Double Gear system also make for a perhaps unintentional Call-Forward to X's armor sets in Mega Man X8. X's base armor, the Neutral Armor, has a very muted color palette for the armor itself, consisting mainly of various shades of gray and brown. The Icarus Armor Parts, which mainly focus on improving X's offensive capabilities, are red. The Hermes Armor Parts, which specialize in defense and mobility, are colored blue. That game's incarnation of the Ultimate Armor, generally a combination of abilities from both armors and then some, is predominantly purple (X's body included). Essentially, the armors can be seen as the logical extensions of Wily's invention (Hermes Armor = Speed Gear, Icarus Armor = Power Gear, Ultimate Armor = Double Gear), only tailored to Light's specifications and ideology. Wily may have disregarded Light's words about how "their gears could mesh together," but who's to say this event didn't influence Light's armor schematics for his own greatest creation going forward?
The Double Gear could've been an inspiration for X himself. X specifically has the ability to endlessly evolve the more he fights. In his own games, his base moveset constantly, but subtly, adjusts itself between games. Almost as he's constantly overclocking himself. If Mega Man with the Double Gear is the culmination of Light and Wily's ideals, X is that ideal perfected.
Or rather, that's what Dr. Light intended, which strikes at the tragedy between him and Dr. Wily. Dr. Wily didn't disagree that Dr. Light's dream was impossible. If anything, he and Light were working toward the same goal. What drove them apart was Wily saw a need in achieving that goal that Light, in his Wide-Eyed Idealism, refused to acknowledge. A robot that can think and behave like a human can also commit crimes and start wars like a human. Dr. Light's proposed utopia couldn't exist unless there was something put in place to police these robots and maintain order. It wasn't until years later, after countless conflicts proving Wily correct, that Dr. Light realized his mistake. X was Dr. Light's attempt to rectify the issue himself. Instead of giving future humans the robot hero they needed, though, Dr. Light gave them the tools through X to bring about the exact scenario Dr. Wily tried to warn him about years ago. It would be Dr. Wily's own magnum opus, Zero, that ultimately personifies the Double Gear ideal and brings peace to the world so Dr. Light's dream of robots and humans coexisting can be realized in the Mega Man ZX series.
The reality is more complicated than 'Wily was right and Light was not'. X was always an optimist who saw the good in people and was willing to work with them, while Zero was the cynic who was grounded in the horrors of war - both had reason to distrust Axl at first, and Zero was antagonistic towards the Giga City Resistance, though there were reasons in both cases. Also, while improper replication of X gave way to the rise of Sigma and the many Mavericks, it was ultimately Wily's Zero Virus that ruined what self-imposed moral restraints they had as well. Neither one was right by themselves - Light and X wanted to help others become better but were blinded by optimism and naivete, while Wily and Zero were rightfully grounded but likewise held back by their own cynicism. But X learned to keep his feet on the ground from Zero, to the point where the latter rightfully called out Copy X for being too childish to understand what made X the hero he was. And Zero, in turn, learned from X how to set the example needed to inspire morale and fight for causes beyond himself - to "trust the people [X] trusts", as he himself put it. Long story short, while Thomas and Albert's gears could never mesh together, it was their successors X and Zero that did, and that was what made the future seen in the ZX games a reality.
Speaking of the Gears, while the gameplay mechanics seem to not mesh up with the story presentation that they are dangerous and place great strain on robot systems, it does mesh up if one thinks along the lines of causality. Dr. Light rebuilt the prototype unit that Dr. Wily left behind, which is why Mega Man is able to use it, but that's not to say that just the Double Gear has improved; robot construction and and data architecture have also improved, which places "momentary use" of the system within relatively safe (if not immensely heat-generating) parameters, like with everyone using the system in-game. Dr. Wily both developed and greatly improved upon the system using his own technological expertise, which is why he is able to use the "last-resort" mode indefinitely; he knows best how the system works, meaning that he can advance its development more readily that Light himself. The only robot seen struggling under its use is Auto, who is clearly being overworked and pushed beyond "momentary use". Need we say it?
Both Block Man and Impact Man are made by the same manufacturer, Nakaume Heavy Machinery, and despite what players may think, they're not weak to each other, which makes sense. If you were to manufacture a pair of robots who works together, you wouldn't want one having the advantage over the other.
The bosses, except for Dr. Wily, have only half of the Double Gear system. A stripped gear system if you will.
The Gallery entry for the Yellow Devil states that Wily wanted to outfit it with a Power Gear, but he couldn't, because of budget issues. Think back to his castle in 10, which was equipped with an absurdly longorbital elevator that leads to a massive space station. He has built other large castles in the past, but nothing quite like that. No wonder funds were an issue.
Torch Man might initially look out of place in a forest, but real life forest rangers set controlled fires with a Start X to Stop X purpose.
Due to what could be chalked up as a translation error, Fuse Man's pet is an eel (unagi) in Japanese, but a rabbit (usagi) internationally. Both actually make sense - the first refers to his Shock and Awe powers, and the second refers to his lightning fast reflexes and speed.
The entire weakness cycle is one of the most sensible and logical amongst all the games.
Block Man's weakness to the Chain Blast is quite obvious since explosives are used in brick wall demolition.
Fuse Man's weakness to the Bounce Ball makes sense since rubber is a bad conductor of electricity.
Blast Man's weakness to the Blazing Torch is due to carrying lots of explosives on himself. Explosives that heat can prematurely detonate.
Acid Man's weakness to the Block Dropper makes more sense when you realize that acid-proof bricks are a thing in real life.
Tundra Man's weakness to the Scramble Thunder is due to physics. Cold temperatures can make certain materials into superconductors which conduct electricity with zero resistance.
Torch Man's weakness to the Tundra Storm is twofold, since flames are quite vulnerable to cold temperature which extinguishes it, and strong winds which blow it out.
Impact Man's weakness to the Acid Barrier is sensible since many construction machines in real life aren't too corrosion resistant and require regular applications of protective coatings to resist it.
Bounce Man's weakness to the Pile Driver is also due to physics. Balls bounce off flat surfaces since pressure is applied over a wider area, but against a pointed object, the high pressure over a small area can impale the ball instead. That, and inflatable balls pop quite easily against sharp objects.
The Double Gear seems to have a biological counterpart in hysterical strength. Considering Wily's motives were to make any robot able to become a hero, it makes sense that he would look to a common act of heroism for inspiration. Double Gear even shares a flaw with hysterical strength - Double Gear "puts incredible strain on a robot's systems", while hysterical strength can result in torn muscles.
When Dr. Wily builds Robot Masters using the Double Gear system, Dr. Light digs out the old prototype to counter it. Perhaps due to not having the time rather than improve upon it to solve the overheating issue, Light sends Mega Man in with an unmodified version while Wily has fixed the issues with it by the time Mega Man battles him. Dr. Wily went insane and became the Big Bad of the Classic series because he simply could not stand constantly being second place to Dr. Light. It might be only a matter of time before Light fixes the flaws himself, but the Double Gear prototype is the first time in his life Dr. Wily created something that was far beyond even any of Dr. Light's designs and that, for now at least, Dr. Light couldn't do better.
Say what you will about the Gear Fortress, but between the Robot Masters and Gear Fortress bosses, there are exactly eleven bosses in the game that use one or both gears - quite fitting given the game's numerical designation.
Dr. Light realizes that spurning Dr. Wily's Double Gear research is his friend's Start of Darkness. Conversely, Dr. Wily could've resumed his Double Gear research once he was an independent researcher. The fighting could've been avoided had the doctors just swallowed their pride and admitted they were wrong in the intervening years, but they were both too stubborn.note Zero being discovered by the Maverick Hunters started a chain of events spanning centuries that, by the time of the Mega Man Legends series, rendered humanity extinct and the planet flooded. However, Mega Man X4 revealed that Sigma screwing around in a fight with a berserk Zero is what caused that in the first place.
starts off with a riff similar to the one