Headscratchers / Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time

• Is there a version of Paradox and/or his future in the manga's timeline, in which Pegasus dies immediately after Duelist Kingdom? If there is, it raises doubt as to whether Paradox's plan would've even worked. If there isn't, then... well, you can think through the implications yourself.
  • Probably not. Zero Reverse is never stated to have occurred in the 5D's manga, meaning Z-ONE and his friends never had any reason to go back in time to prevent it.
    • If its any consolation, he, along with Yugi and Jaden, make a cameo appearance in the final chapter when the Ultimate God shows Yusei examples of the kind of wishes it could grant, each one being a reference to the anime.
• How does Paradox know who Yusei, Judai and Yugi are? How did he know that these people are important in the history of Duel Monsters?
  • He probably just did the research. The same way we nowadays know people like William Shakespeare were important to playwriting, or that Babe Ruth was important to baseball.
• I know this is a Time Travel story, so this may be a moot point, but, Time-Travel Tense Trouble aside, since 5D's hasn't ended yet, at what point in the 5D's timeline would this take place?
  • Considering that Yusei has the Dragon Head birthmark at this point, it takes place during Season 3 (or if you count the Fortune Cup and Dark Signer arcs as one, Season 2). Yusei also mentions Bruno, which means the movie's events occurred after Episode 80. The blue pendant from the Crash Town arc also makes an appearance, which means the movie may have taken place after the Crash Town arc (Episode 92).
  • It also takes place before Leo receives his Signer mark.
  • It's been confirmed to take place right before Crashtown.
• Killing Pegasus when Paradox did so would not end up in Duel Monsters getting destroyed. At most, it would prevent Rainbow Dragon from being created, which would result in Judai still being stuck in the other dimension in Season 3 of GX, thus preventing him from protecting the world from Darkness.
  • Maybe he assumed that without Pegasus, Industrial Illusions would collapse and Duel Monsters cards and paraphernalia would stop being manufactured- that, in essence, Industrial Illusions had No Ontological Inertia? If he was the last man on Earth, its not like anybody would have been around to give him an economics and business management course explaining how that wouldn't happen.
    • One problem with that. Pegasus isn't the only proprietor when it comes to Duel Monsters. It is just as likely that even with his death, (the fact that an entire company doesn't just immediately fall on its ass with the death of one man notwithstanding) Duel Monsters would still thrive under Kaiba Corp and other smaller lesser-known companies. If he knew enough to realize that Pegasus was the creator of the godawful game that supposedly turned his world into a wasteland, he had to have had the common sense to do away with the man in a time period before he created the card game. Or better yet, he could've even taken himself all the way back to Ancient Egypt and destroyed the whole concept of the game where it started. If that seems like overkill, let's remember that this is a guy that blames destruction of the world on card games. And then guess what? If the man had gone all the way back to the roots of the game, all the drama from then on wouldn't have happened, whether or not any or all of the three protagonists who kicked his ass would even be born/exist would be questionable, and he would have succeeded in his supposed mission. Even if it affects his whole existence, he'd still do it to achieve his goals, as he has clearly shown no problem with fucking up reality to meet his ends.

• Does Paradox not realize that killing Pegasus would mean Duel Monsters wouldn't become a worldwide phenomenon, so he wouldn't have to go back and kill Pegasus, which in the end would result in the obvious?
  • Technically speaking this could be applied to anybody who goes back in time to do something specific. Its best not to think about it, but if you have to, you can generally assume some technobable answer such as jumping over the ripple effect, branching timelines, alternate universes, or otherwise ensuring that the person from a now-dead future still came back in time, even if they have no future to return to. See: The cast of Chrono Trigger barring that one time early on, Future Trunks in Dragon Ball Z, the entirety of the Back to the Future series of movies, Marvel Comics, DC Comics concept of Hypertime.
  • We know that Paradox's future was presumably destroyed by Duel Monsters, therefore for the Grandfather Paradox to occur Duel Monsters needs to cease existing. First of all, it depends on how a time paradox is handled in the story. It could result in a person merely disappearing, history changing or reality getting destroyed. I generally assumed that the paradox would occur only if Pegasus was killed before Duel Monsters got created (I didn't think of the possibility of halting the game's production for this scenario, see above). Now, that situation would obviously result in a Grandfather Paradox providing that Paradox stayed in the same universe during his time travel and the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle doesn't apply to the timeline. (Which states that the probability of a paradox-creating event existing is zero.) Moreover, the Timeline Protection Hypothesis should not apply, either, which means the natural continuity timeline doesn't exist to prevent the time traveler from creating a time paradox. (Eg. The timeline makes up for the inconsistency by having someone else create Duel Monsters.) If the timeline is split into branches or Paradox actually travels into a parallel universe, then one of the timelines will be unharmed and the changes will only take place in that specific parallel universe/branch. If a paradox doesn't result in reality getting destroyed, then history would still change big time - The Paraoh would not be able to reach the Afterlife because there would be no "shield and sword" to fight with, therefore Bakura and/or Marik could just kill him. Judai's and Yusei's periods would be also heavily altered, Judai would not be able to reunite with Yubel and never become the person he was supposed to be. Yusei's parents worked at MIDS, which is Kaiba Corp's division, which started working on Duel Boxes (and eventually, Solid Vision) only after Yugi beat Kaiba at Duel Monsters for the first time. Therefore, Yusei may have not even be born in the 5D's period. Even though Duel Monsters doesn't exist to reflect humans' hearts, they'd eventually destroy each other either way. Or just the mere act of time travel would cause changes to the timeline (Butterfly of Doom), which is what seems to be going on with the movie with reality slowly falling apart.
  • This is the essence of the Temporal Paradox — yes, "changing the past" makes no sense because it would erase the conditions that caused you go to the past, and it applies to every use of the Temporal Paradox in Time Travel plots as long as they have existed. It really does require the MST3K Mantra to enjoy such Time Travel stories — but since it's not like we really have Time Travel, we can't complain that "Time Travel does not work that way!" anyway.
  • It could just create a stable time loop. After all, that's exactly how the main series ends anyway. You know with ZONE going back in time and changeing it. Then said changes made it so Yusei would prevent the his apocalyptic future and prevent him from becoming a Yusei clone.
  • Maybe killing Pegasus and ending the production of Duel Monsters would erase him from the timeline because his timeline never happened, which would be worth it to Paradox as it would prevent his horrible timeline from occurring. In other words, sacrificing himself to keep the future from ever going awry.
  • It's a distinct possibility that he's too insane to notice or care. The others have crossed the Despair Event Horizon, causing them to Go Mad from the Revelation, so why wouldn't Paradox? This also explains why he's screwing up and destroying the timeline instead of saving it- he's too crazy to devise a plan that makes any sense and the result is a scatter-shot plan that ends up doing more harm than good. There's also no reason to believe he isn't a Ridiculously Human Robot, either.
  • Keep in mind that Paradox's options are: a)let the world remain ruined or b)risk the timeline and try and save the world. He really has nothing to lose, so its worth the risk.

• How exactly does Jaden know what Paradox is planning to do?
  • Remember during his duel with Darkness at the end of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX? Darkness showed a vision of the future that showed a ruined world with the entire planet barren and destroyed, with ruined buildings. Its likely that paradox came from this future, and its a future that Paradox wants to prevent from happening and supposedly, Yiliaster from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds wants to prevent from happening by having their God, Z-One, prevent from happening as well.

• When does Yugi's timeline take place? In the shot of Pegasus flying to the event during the duel, you can see that he has the Millenium Eye. Yet Bakura took it after Duelist Kingdom, which was before the Duel Disk Yugi was using was even made.
  • Given that they're using Battle City rules, and Yugi is familiar with them, it seems likely that it's the Millenium Eye which is out of place. I'm guessing probably after the Doma arc, since there's no hints that Pegasus had been MIA prior to this announcement. This does raise a new question... Why is Yugi so excited about seeing Pegasus? And for that matter, where's Joey and the rest of Yugi's friends?
  • It's also interesting to note that Yugi and Yami are still fused together...
    • How was Atem/Yami in either of the Duels that took place after the series (this one and the end of GX)? The original series ended with him leaving for good.
    • Yami never appeared in GX's present timeline. That was Yugi as an adult. Yami only appeared when they traveled in time.
  • Didn't Bakura give Pegasus a fake Millennium Eye to replace the real one with?
  • That would have been surprisingly considerate. Well, in the manga he's dead, and if we take the first Yugioh movie as an indication, the sight of Pegasus' covered side of his face isn't very pretty. Maybe he replaced it later on?
  • I think it takes place just before the "Wakeing the Dragons" arc. But I'm not sure.
  • Also Black/Dark Magician and Black/Dark Magician Girl talk in the movie....uhhhh...correct me if I'm wrong but they couldn't DO that before until the end of the series or something...right? So when the actual hell does this movie take place?! I know Time Travel can get pretty screwed up...but this really takes the cake.
  • For that matter, why is it that in neither of these situations, Yugi at some point recognizes Jaden? Either the temporal fuck-up created by Paradox or the event where Yugi himself sends Jaden into his own past...one of them had to occur first. Yugi would have to recognize Jaden in one or the other. Perhaps Paradox's whole reality-disturbing mania messed with the one event, allowing Yugi to forget Jaden and Yusei, which would make sense if the time at which their whole duel took place rolls around after this event. But then, there's a problem with that as well. When Jaden gets taken to the past at the end of GX, he's just graduated and is off to see the world/go on adventures/whatever. He's in Venice at the time the movie takes place, presumably indicating he's there after having left school (really, what the hell else is he doing in Venice??) and gone off... Which means, in the case of him going back to Yugi's time, whether or not Yugi recognizes him, he would still know him and remember the event of their duel. Perhaps I missed something while watching, but I don't think Jaden ever recalls this event during the movie (even just as an aside to Yusei in the case of not wanting to give Yugi spoilers...). He acts like it's really the first time he's meeting Yugi, and only seems to recognize him as a result of his fame and not because of actually having interacted with him personally.
    • And just in case, this troper IS aware that no Season 4 of GX dub meant Jaden never got to face off with Yugi in that context. Still, this point should exist in the movie as it is an adaptation of the original source material... (unless 4kids seriously screwed us here).
    • Did you expect anything less from 4kids?
    • Season 4 isn't even necessary with Jaden acting as if seeing him for the first time. Remember who gave Jaden the Winged Kuriboh in GX S1E1?

• Why does Paradox play Duel Monsters? You'd think that if he blames it for destroying the future, he wouldn't bother picking up the game and would skip to traveling back in time and killing Pegasus before he could even come up with the idea for the game using conventional means.
  • Remember, this is Yu-Gi-Oh!. Duels Decide Everything.
  • More reasonable answer is He came from the same group of survivors that have their future destroyed by Synchro monster, which explains(though does not explain why Paradox use Synchro monster in the first place). Also said group is a mess of Fridge Logic considering they use the same card that caused the Bad Future as their signature card.
    • He seems to want to really mess with the protagonists by showing them all of the horrors that Duel Monsters can create. The Malefic/Sin monsters were explained in a guidebook as experiments done on their original forms, so Paradox is basically a rogue mad scientist who broke free from the rest (Aporia, Zone, Ect) to carry out revenge on his own, straying from the original plan. It was this kind of reckless planning to cause him to make so many foolish oversights, most likely.
    • Maybe he figured useing Monsters to destroy all monster was poetic justice? Just a theory.
  • You also have to remember that Paradox was originally just going to kill Pegasus and he only dueled because he had to. He dueled Yusei to get his Stardust and dueled the three protagonists because they got in his way. Since this is Yu-Gi-Oh! and as seen above Duels Decide Everything if he couldn't duel it would take about 3 minutes for one of the protagonists to take him down.
    • When it comes to dueling who ever is in your way, I always figured that it's an inevitability in he Yu-Gi-Oh world because one of two things would happen; You could either duel, or you could battle it out with your monsters which would inevitably become a duel anyways (one person would summon, the other would block, someone would flip a trap, ect.)

• How did Jaden know that Stardust Dragon returned to the field after it used it's effect? No one ever told him.
  • He read the card, possibly.
  • It's also possible that Yusei may have told him while waiting for Paradox to show up.

• How the hell did Paradox not die in his Bad Future? I mean, presumably his world was blown to hell and just about everybody else died. But let's put that aside and assume he somehow found a way to live through that, the air looked like it could barely be called breathable. Does he own a private oxygen tank just in case some explosion turns the atmosphere into poison?
  • The Paradox we see in the movie is a robotic copy built by Z-one after the original passed away due to old age. I imagine that with it being a robot, it would be able to survive conditions the original could not.

• Why did Paradox try to use those dragons to kill Pegasus and a bunch of other people when he could get a gun and shoot Pegasus from the rooftop? Or better yet, travel back further and smother him with a pillow?
  • Every entry in the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise has people more and more reliant on Duels Decide Everything so maybe other assasination methods are never even heard of in the future, or maybe he figured since even police started using duels for arrests and that card games destroyed the world then it's the most efficient way.

• Something that the Abridged Movie brought to my attention. Why was Jaden/Juudai in Venice???...why was Paradox there too? To attack Juudai?
  • I'm thinking Paradox went there because Jaden/Juudai was there. As for why Jaden/Juudai was there... He... wanted to take a vacation... by himself... in a foreign country... because he wanted a change of scenery? I dunno.
  • I just recently rewatched the dub version of the movie (don't know if it's the same in the sub, but I am positive it probably is) But Jaden says to Yusei that some of his friends' card went missing and he followed Paradox...which then makes me wonder, why the hell did Paradox not just jump through time after stealing all those cards, and instead ran to Venice? WTF?
  • This troper assumed it was because Jaden, originally, at the real end of GX, went off to explore the world after graduating Duel Academy. Venice just happened to be where he was visiting at the time, and Paradox pinpointed his location there.

• Can someone explain why Jaden knew Elemental Hero NEOS was able to fuse with Junk Gardna? Since Junk Gardna is Yusei's card, as in from the future.....soooo...
  • Neos Knight needs Neos and ANY Warrior Type monster, the summon chant was just Jaden showing off.
  • Also fusion in the enemy a lot of times comes off as something that can be done with any two monsters and bring a new card out of thin air.

• I've got a Jaden related question that's been buggin me forever, where the HELL IS WINGED KURIBOH! I know the little guy isn't universally love'd but still... All I see are Neos and Yubel!? What gives?
  • Presumably because the two that were shown were much more iconic and you can only fit so much into one movie. After all, the Egyptian Gods didn't exactly make an appearance either (though they would've completely curbstomped Paradox if they had, so that was probably for the sake of drama).
  • While it doesn't make an appearance, it is an explanation as to why Jaden has the Flute of Summoning Kuriboh in his deck.

• Why does Yami refer to Spell Cards? In his time, they're Magic Cards. I can see this on a meta level, but in-universe, it's a bit off-putting to see him say Spell Card. In fact, when Dmitri(Or however you spell it) from GX had delusions he was Yami, there was the touch of him using the original term, so why does the actual Yami not use the term within his own time?
  • Probably to avoid any potential controversy or confusion between Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic the Gathering, the latter of which usually have their cards, regardless of type, referred to as "Magic cards". This is likely why the terminology was changed between YGO DM and GX.
  • He may hear them calling them Spell Cards, and for clarity decide to use the up-to-date term. It's the same reason people in real life started calling them Spell Cards.

• A bit of a misplay during the main duel. At the beginning of Turn 7 (Paradox's turn, following Yugi's turn), Paradox controls Malefic Truth Dragon, Malefic World, and no other cards. Yusei controls Stardust Dragon and Stardust Mirage. Jaden controls Elemental Hero Neos Knight, Neos Spiral Force and Flute of Summoning Kuriboh. Yugi controls Dark Magician, Dark Magician Girl, Dark Spiral Force, and De-Fusion. Paradox uses Malefic Selector to get Malefic Red-Eyes and Malefic Blue-Eyes from his Deck, and Summons both. Malefic Red-Eyes attacks Dark Magician Girl. De-Fusion is activated, splitting Elemental Hero Neos Knight into Elemental Hero Neos and Junk Gardna. Junk Gardna's effect is used to switch Malefic Red-Eyes to Defense Position, stopping its attack. So far, so good. Paradox attacks Dark Magician with Malefic Blue-Eyes. Now, here's the misplay. Nothing is activated in response to this attack, Malefic Blue-Eyes destroys Dark Magician, and mayhem ensues. But... Jaden controls Elemental Hero Neos now. So, why didn't he use Neos Spiral Force on Dark Magician when Malefic Blue-Eyes attacked? It would have doubled Dark Magician's power, allowing Dark Magician to not only win the battle, but the resulting damage would have won the duel for our heroes. This could have been sidestepped if Neos Spiral Force (and by extension, Dark Spiral Force) could only be activated during the user's turn, but there's no indication that the cards have such a restriction.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! does this a LOT. It's mostly due to plot reasons or to make simple plays epic. It's not a tournament after all.

• The Turbo Duel at the beginning of the movie has two different aspects that have me scratching my head.
  • First, if it's part of the plot that Paradox needs to steal Stardust Dragon, why not have him actually somehow get the physical card? The whole "capturing the hologram" thing makes no sense even by this franchise's standards, and Paradox clearly did get the physical cards for all of the other monsters he ends up bringing out in Malefic form.
  • Second, why does Yusei Synchro Summon Stardust Dragon at all? There's absolutely nothing stopping Yusei from simply attacking with Junk Synchron and Junk Warrior, and 1300 + 2300 is a lot more than 2500.
  • Well, about the first, there's no way Paradox could just ride over to Yusei and steal the card out of his hand, Yusei's too good for that, and Paradox may have been in a rush and "stealing the hologram" may have been his only choice at the time. Second, perhaps Paradox had a facedown and Yusei was afraid it could have been Mirror Force or something like that.
    • I'd accept the facedown card answer as an explanation... except that there's no indication that Paradox had anything on the field at all when Yusei Synchro Summoned Stardust Dragon. If he'd had a facedown, wouldn't we have seen a hologram of a facedown card? As for the "stealing the hologram" bit, my problem with it is that there's no reason it should have worked. The hologram was just that, a hologram.
    • Well now you've got me thinking. Here's what I think. If you'll notice in the episodes of the TV show (and trust me, I know I've watched 84% of all the episodes) when a card is set, the hologram of the card disappears, the opposing player knows it's there but it would just look kind of silly drawing a motorcycle riding around with 1-5 card backing around when you can focus on the details of the motorcycle. About the stealing the hologram thing, Stardust is not your average Duel Monsters card in the anime, it's a special card with the actual powers of an ancient dragon which fought against great evil sealed inside the card, the dragon chose to bond with Yusei, so perhaps Paradox didn't simply steal the hologram, he stole the dragon's actual soul bound within the card.
    • True, Stardust is a very special card in the anime continuity. But, if anything, shouldn't that make it harder for Paradox to pull that stunt? As for the facedown thing, I haven't really watched much of 5D's, especially lately, so I'll take your word for it on them usually not showing the facedowns during Turbo Duels. They always show them during Standing Duels, so I assumed they'd do the same with Turbo Duels. Still, the whole Turbo Duel thing seems like a victim of the movie's rushed pace; the way the movie does things, we see the duel start, then immediately Time Skip to the part where Paradox "steals" Stardust. It actually would have made more sense for Paradox to steal the physical card off-screen. Say, have Yusei wake up from his nightmare, and then during the following scene where he's talking with Jack and Crow, have him either find out or reveal that Stardust is missing.
    • Well, but if that happened Yusei would never learn of- oh, never mind Akiza and the twins probably would have come by anyway. But then the world wouldn't start to crum- oh, yes it would. Well the only thing I can figure the reason for Paradox stealing Stardust's soul is so that when the Pharaoh steals it back Paradox's card explodes, later on when Yusei uses Stardust to stop Malefic Truth Dragon, by the rules of the game, Stardust should have returned to Pardox, but it couldn't because the card exploded and Yusei had the real card. It's all plot convenience really (much as I like this movie). And if you want I can upload a screenshot showing the set card fading, I have all the season 1 episodes.
    • I like the movie, too, although I feel it had the potential to be a lot better, but that's neither here nor there. The plot convenience thing still doesn't work, unfortunately. By real-world game rules, it actually doesn't matter who Stardust belongs to during the main duel (which, according to how the game rules define it, was Paradox in this case); because Stardust Dragon was never Synchro Summoned during the main duel, it would have been unable to Special Summon itself from the Graveyard by its own effect. Even if not for that rule, Yusei's copy of Stardust (the authentic one) would be considered to be a different copy of the card than the one Paradox used, so the only way one could explain Stardust coming back to the heroes' side of the field would be if, in this continuity, the rule about having to be properly Summoned first doesn't apply and Stardust's effect summons it to the same side of the field as it was on when it activated, regardless of who it belongs to (in which case, again, it doesn't matter who the card is considered to belong to).

• It's several years late, but why did Paradox need to steal the dragons in the first place? It's clearly not for time travel reasons; his D-Wheel takes care of that perfectly well. And killing Pegasus could have been accomplished by any sufficiently powerful monster. All it accomplished was tipping off the protagonists that he was the culprit and that they should be looking for him.
  • To deepen the paradox, shake history up on multiple levels rather than just one. On top of having changed multiple points in spacetime with his thefts, killing Pegasus makes the thefts impossible to even happen.
  • Paradox's Malefic/Sin monsters require that he have the original counterparts to them in order to use them, and most of them are super ultra rare cards that would be next to impossible to obtain without stealing them. The most likely reason I can think of for why he would bother using those cards in particular is that he may have anticipated the possibility that he would meet resistance to his plan that he would need to battle against even if he didn't directly face the protagonists like he did, so he chose to commit the thefts to ensure his deck was prepared to handle that—unfortunately for him, like most YGO villains he was arrogant enough that it never occurred to him that his OP cards from the future wouldn't be powerful enough anyway.

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