Headscratchers / Mega Man X4

• Just what exactly what Sigma trying to accomplish with trying to convince General to turn on the Hunters in the opening scene? Sigma claims that the Hunters are too eager to please the humans and hunt down reploids. Except Repliforce was created to help the Hunters, meaning that Repliforce are doing the exact same thing. It's such a ridiculous argument that Sigma really has no right to be surprised when General tells him to leave.
  • Sigma was trying to get the Repliforce and Hunters going at each others' throats so they'd destroy each other. Repliforce was the largest, most powerful and most successful Maverick-hunting group after the Hunters themselves, and Sigma knew he could kill two birds with one stone. As to his shocked reaction when told to leave by General, I chalk that up to the awful dubbing, but you can also tell his plan still worked by planting the seeds of doubt in General's mind.
  • Repliforce is, by that point, already under scrutiny for not being effective enough to justify maintaining such a large force. And General probably knows this. Thus, Sigma was expecting General to be a little more paranoid about being disposed of as a failed venture.
• Whose route was canon? X or Zero's? And if both are canon, then who did what (who beat Sigma for one example)?
  • Zero's route is considered canon, for the most part. His flashback in X5 shows Iris, and he says something to the effect of seeing her again after he passes away. There's a popular theory that X1, X2, and X3 are about X, and X4 and X5 are about Zero. Then X6, X7, and X8 are just strange.
    • It's easy - X6 is still about Zero, in a roundabout way. Then X7 and X8 are about Axl.
    • But X had the Force Armor in X5. That implies X had taken part in the events of X4.
    • Dialogue in X5 suggests that Zero killed Colonel and Iris, while X faced Double and the General. The main problem is the final battle, since based on X's ending, Zero was already on Earth after X defeated Sigma, but on the other hand Zero had his past as a Maverick revealed, and thus should also have faced Sigma.
    • Zero faced Sigma's first and second forms, allowing him to have his plot-important conversation with Sigma, while X faces Sigma's final forms deep in the core of Final Weapon, which allows him to witness General's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Both happened; it's the same way that, canonically, Chris, Jill, Barry, and Rebecca all made it out of the mansion in Resident Evil, even though in-game you could only get three of the four out.
  • Here's how the manga handled the story: X went to space to deal with Double and General, his spaceport fight with Colonel never happening. On earth, Iris was helping Zero deal with Cyber Peacock before collapsing. While she was recovering, Colonel attacked to rescue her. In the process, Zero killed Colonel, waking Iris up and leading to her boss fight, which was Zero's final fight of the story.