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Headscratchers / Devil May Cry

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Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Entries with their own pages:

The franchise in general:

How does the in-universe society react to the Devil May Cry shop?
Dante runs a demon-hunting business but most ordinary humans don't seem to care nor take it seriously. Only a few (e.g. Arkham, Morrison and Lady) do visit the Devil May Cry shop and acknowledge what it is for. Is it really an Unusually Uninteresting Sight for the Muggles? Or does Dante cast something in the shop so that it doesn't look suspicious to the public? No one bats an eye when some dude has demon swords hanging on his walls, Dante doesn't get arrested because of them. But then 5 shows Dante having a Broke Episode when the water supply is cut off, and the epilogue also had the shop's electricity cut off as Morrison, Trish and Lady leave it... So the game suggests that the establishments are aware of the shop enough to monitor Dante's bills.
  • Why would anyone care or make a big deal about it? Demons are a known factor in this universe, even if they're a rare problem.

Which Sword Where Now?
In DMC1 and 3, it's indicated that Force Edge was Sparda's Real sword, and Yamato was just one that he used while tooling around the human world. DMC3 then goes on to make the Force Edge the key that seals the Demon World off, but then comes DMC4 and now Yamato is the Cosmic Keystone. Huh?
  • He used the Force Edge to seal off one Demon World, while the Yamato sealed off a completely different one.
  • The Force Edge was used to seal the Temen-ni-gru, the primary demon gate, while the Yamato was just in general used to seal up the others due to its power over space.
  • But that's a silly retcon. Yamato never had a 'power over space' in the first or third game, it had the 'power to divide and wipe out the darkness'. Opening the Hell Gates with it kind of ruins the point.
  • Not really. Yamato did kinda divide and wipe out the darkness when Sparda sealed the Fortuna Hell Gate. It was just used to unseal it, as well, as it was used for the reverse.
  • If we roll with Rebellion and Yamato being keepsakes Sparda left Dante and Vergil, then it's safe to say they have some fraction of daddy's power. Which means Rebellion is going to be a MacGuffin soon.
  • It's possible that Sparda might've sealed Temen-ni-gru before the Hell Gate at Fortuna, hence why Yamato became so important. After all, Sparda didn't lose Yamato afterwards, and he even gave it to Vergil as a keepsake. Besides, it's not like anyone could easily pry the Force Edge off of Dante.

Money? What money?
The Devil May Cry 3 manga shows Dante going on a mission to retrieve Alice, with a four million dollar reward for her rescue. Later on, the money gets wired to Enzo. With four million dollars, why is Dante somehow in debt not even a decade later?
  • The manga isn't canon to the games?
  • Ask Mike Tyson, I guess.
  • His Destructive Savior tendencies coming back to bite him in the rear? Let's face it, with the amount of collateral damage he leaves in his wake, it's a wonder four million dollars lasted that long.
  • The anime explains that he owes massive debts to the human governments for property damage, has his own debts with Lady, and...come on, this is Dante we're talking about. He's probably not very conservative with his cash when he does actually have it.
  • Still... four million. What could he possibly owe Lady for other than her bike, which she neglected and left who-knows-where anyway? This debt has suddenly come up from literally nowhere along with his Destructive Savior tendencies. The first game had a demonically infested castle that no one inhabited, and it exploded. He should owe nothing for that. The third game has a tower that destroyed the town so he shouldn't owe anything for that either. But then this anime shows up and he owes everyone and their dead mother, and especially Morrison, money. How does he manage to run a business under so much debt, then? Why hasn't he been evicted? What does he spend the money on and why isn't it shown?
    • It's probably for ammunition, rockets are expensive and he probably has to order bullets by the truckload. And a man's got to have his nightly delivery pizza.
      • He actually replenishes ammo with his Demonic Powers. Or so I read this somewhere.
      • Devil May Cry 2, Weapon File — Handguns: "Dante's hand-made twin pistols. They fire bullets with magic power." He never needs to reload at any point, anywhere. Buying ammunition is not necessary.
    • How expensive do you think that bridge was in the anime he wrecked? Or the designer-label clothes Lady and Trish stuck him with? Or the church they destroyed? Or the multi-story hotel? The building repairs for his shop, buying all those red coats, buying the jukebox, electric bills, heating, plumbing, all those musical instruments he has, the billiard table, feeding both himself and Patty, fixing the tv, traviling expenses when Morison doesn't pay, and losing to Lady, Morrison, Trish, and Patty to gambling (which is probably where most of his debts to Lady originate from).
    • He was already in debt and owing money to everyone including the pizza man the first ten minutes of episode one. The question is where the money went in between the manga and the animated series, and you're bringing up stuff that happened in the actual anime: he only met Patty in episode 1, destroyed the bridge in 2, got stuck with designer clothes in episode 4, and from the chronology, he only changed coats once between the third game and the first. He was complaining about having no money before any of that happened (excluding the coat). Reading comprehension obviously isn't your strong suit.
    • There's no need to get nasty; if you want to turn this into a match of insults, take it elsewhere. As for the damage: those weren't the first times Dante was involved in such cataclysmic incidents of destruction, given the implications from the episodes. Dante almost always causes huge amounts of destruction in any mission he's given, in each game or episode. He probably doesn't have to pay for the destruction on Fortunato or Mundas' castle, but he may have been stuck with building repairs at the end of DMC 3, and has likely caused much more damage throughout his lifetime. It's also implied that a lot of Dante's cases give him huge sums of money (The Mafia battle in the anime) but he never has any, so there's likely a lot of spending he does off-screen, either to pay his debts, gamble it away, or pay off official authorities to avoid getting in trouble (his fights do sometimes tend to be high-profile, after all).
  • For what its worth, I've always held a theory that Dante for some reason prefers to give the impression of being poor or in debt, but actually has a hidden store of money which is why he never gets evicted or anything. One possible reason he might do this on purpose is to maintain his connections. For example, Lady or Morrison might simply break all contact with him if he didn't owe them money, but intentionally keeping himself indebted ensures that they'll keep coming back to him, possibly with jobs. This theory has a few problems I'll admit, but I think it explains the basic situation.
  • Actually, its really that Dante doesn't care about the money payout so long as the job is demon purification/slaying. Problem is, is that while what he does is for the good of the common people, it won't go over well with a bill collector.

What's this "password" for?

In the first and fourth games, we see Dante or Trish checking if the people calling have "the password" and hang up if they don't. When people call a demon-hunting business, for what other reason than demon hunting missions should they call? What are the people who "don't have the password" expecting? And where are they supposed to get this password anyway?

  • In the anime, Morrison comes to Dante every once in a while with jobs, but Dante only ever takes the jobs that interest him (usually involving devils or the like.) Presumably, the public face of Devil May Cry is that it's just a general private-eye agency or something.

Characters' stated ages

Are there any of it? I've never heard Capcom saying something about their ages, yet many people talked about it to death (in particular, regarding how Vergil can be Nero's dad, according to Capcom - despite being "too young"). I think if they have no stated ages, then we can pass off Vergil being Nero's dad. And on that matter, how quick could a half (or a quarter) demon can grow, anyway?

  • I've been wondering about this myself. It's implied that Sparda's been dead for a long time, and that he was practically ageless. Taken these into account, Dante and Vergil could be much Older Than They Look.
  • Judging from Trish's line in the first game about, "Mother and a Brother 20 years ago" I would put Dante's age in the first game bordering from 36-40, and Vergil has the same age. In 3, just judging by his appearance, I would put him and Vergil in their late teens, 18-19 is my guess. As for 4 and 2, There's not much to go by.
  • But, Vergil's definitely old enough to have a kid as old as Nero, who's probably 17, max. Just with Vergil's personality, him having a kid at all is the weird thing for me...
    • Going with those numbers, Vergil would have either had an affair either in the demon world after DMC3 or the year prior to it, let's say it was not just an affair, it would put more weight on his shoulders and his quest for power, not only to avenge his mother but to protect the people he cared for.
    • In regards to the "lost a mother and brother to evil twenty years ago" quote from Trish to Dante, Dante and Vergil were barely older than eight when demons attacked their home. That would dictate Dante's age as approximately 28 in the first game. Dante is 19 in 3, as the prequel manga puts him at 18 and there's a year between it and DMC3; DMC1 transpires about a decade later and 4 not too long after that (a year at most), as Lady is said to be a full ten years older than her last appearance (i.e. DMC3). Although this puts a massive strain on "Vergil = Nero's father" (which is heavily alluded to in the arguably semi-canon novelization of 4 written by the game's scenario writer after he left Capcom, Deadly Fortune), as Vergil would have to have most likely been a young teenager (13-14 years of age) when he slept around with Nero's unnamed human mother, such occurrences aren't impossible in real life.
      • Vergil would be some where around 31 in DMC4 and Nero's around 19. That means that Vergil would have to slept around when he was 9.
  • I've looked into it and this is my conclusion.
  • With the Retcon to the timeline, putting 2 before 4, the previously stated ages probably don't matter anymore.
  • There are a few instances when we are given the number or the approximate range in a specific event, such as an interview with Hideaki Itsuno confirming Nero as a teenager during the events of 4, or Patty Lowell having her eighteenth birthday by the events of 5.
  • I think it's safe to say Trish's line about losing a mother and son to demons twenty years ago has been heavily retconnend. Dante obviously didn't lose a mother and brother to demons twenty years ago as we later see his brother walking around, safe in the human world after his mother died. If you still want to keep the line you could think of DMC 1 happening 20 years after DMC 3 with the event Trish referring to being losing Vergil (though I think that might make Nero too young to be Vergil's son). Or just ignore it completely as it's clearly been altered significantly.

Every demon and its mother having memory problems

Why is it that in almost every DMC media (including reboot, maybe excluding 2 seeing as there is just a thin as hell plot) no demon on earth or the underworld has heard of Dante, in the reboot and 3 it's understandable due to them being young and apparently quite new at the job, but take for example DMC1 Phantom has no clue that Dante is the Son of Sparda, despite most media showing that Sparda is like some amalgam of Dante and Virgil, and by DMC1, Dante has clearly been in business a while, but nope, still no demons seem to know of a red coated, silver hair cocky bastard with a huge sword cutting down demons left and right, up to including THEIR GOD.

  • Other than DMC1 being the first game, you can chalk it up to Phantom being an idiot, despite being powerful. Griffin figured out who Dante was and related to pretty easily. In DMC4, Berial knew who he was instantly while Echidna and Dagon didn't. It seems powerful egotistical demons like Dagon and Echidna tend to not know nor care who they're facing. As far as they knew, Dante was just some smart mouth normal human. Beowulf and Nevan only knew who Dante was due to the former had recognized Sparda's scent (though him not knowing about Vergil did him in), and the latter had previous encounter or possible fling with Sparda. If Nevan even knew about Vergil is ambiguous and never brought up, but odds are probably not. Vergil kept a lower profile compared to Dante ,so not as many demons knew about him. And it's makes sense most demons don't know about Vergil, because he is assumed, and later dies in the timeline. So most demons would not know about him, unless your name is Mundus. Dante's reputation certainly grows in the Animated series. It's takes place after 3 and 1, so defeating Mundus makes him a bigger name in the underworld, and most demons seem to know who he is throughout the episodes.

Does Trish age?

She's a pure demon unlike the descendants of Sparda who do age, and demons in the series in general are accepted to be long-lived, and she hasn't really changed in appearance at all outside of graphical or design shifts. She's more or less exactly the same in 5 as she was in the first game even though Dante is already a middle-aged man by then, so it seems like she's immortal?

  • Even if Trish's demon form were to age, her human form is just a shape she takes so it won't show any signs of aging unless she wants it to, just like she can generate any outfit she wants.
  • Not to mention Trish can also change her entire appearance if she wanted to; as shown in 4 when she disguised herself as Gloria.

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