Even though Duel Links is a hub for strong duelists, several of them are still traumatized by the events of their respective stories.
Duel Monsters World/Dark Side of Dimensions World
- Yugi's lines when you beat him are pretty upsetting, especially if you're Yami Yugi.
- Dueling Kaiba and winning as Pegasus brings back bad memories of Duelist Kingdom. (This matchup became particularly common when Kaiba's Beatdown and Pegasus' Mind Scan were easily the two most used Skills in PVP)Kaiba: (pre-duel) You've tried to destroy everything I care about! And for that, I will never forgive you!
Kaiba: [loses] Mokuba... Forgive me.
Pegasus: Poor Kaiba boy. You let everyone down. I will spare you the agony of carrying on in this world... by imprisoning your soul within a card!
Kaiba, post-loss: No... This can’t be the end... - Dueling or defeating Ishizu or Odion as Yami Marik will make you feel horrible for winning, as they blame themselves over not being able to save Marik.
- Arkana's unlock speech is rather sad. While he is free from the Shadow Realm, all he remembers is a deep pain before choosing to ignore it and hide his pain behind his mask.
- Bakura in Dark Side of Dimensions is trying to repent for everything his evil half has done. While most of the cast knows it wasn't his fault, characters like Aigami aren't so easy to forgive.
GX World
- The Supreme King event, being based off one of the darkest points of GX, has several shades of this, particularly in some of the characters' horrified reactions upon seeing the Supreme King has returned. Several of them have rather depressing lose quotes if they lose to him. Jaden in particular is in pure shocked disbelief, and the poor guy ends up in a Heroic BSoD if he loses to him. It's worse when the Supreme King is faced as the boss of the D.D. Castle event, as Jaden has a Persona 4-esque Freak Out, as if he were rejecting his own Shadow.
- Several of the characters' dialogue should they lose to the Supreme King. Jesse swears to get his friend back by any means necessary, just as Jaden did for him before he succumbed to the Supreme King's influence. Aster is disheartened that his old rival has become this consumed by the darkness of his own heart. All of Jaden's friends are in saddened disbelief of how far he's fallen, refusing to believe he's the same person altogether. Even Crowler, of all people, is disappointed in his student for his cruel and vicious Dueling style.
- Throughout his event, Jim recalls the time when he dueled against the Supreme King to save Jaden and lost, eventually admitting that he still never fully got over it even after coming to Duel Links. Then Jim reveals that this failure hit him hard enough that he left Duel Academy and gave up dueling completely, afraid that he wouldn’t be able to save his friends if they were ever in trouble again. Fortunately, the spirit of Fossil Dragon Skullgios convinces him to not be so hard on himself and to keep fighting, with Jim managing to regain his confidence.
- Whenever you look between Jaden's Tag Duel scenes between his Season 1-3 & Season 4 counterparts, you remember just how much he has changed from a cheery Duel-enjoying student to a more mature and hardened Duelist and it feels sadder that Season 4 Jaden admits that he has nearly forgotten how to Duel for fun after focusing on world-saving after he finishes the GX Cup.
5D's World
- When defeating Dark Signer Kalin with Yusei, Yusei calls out Kalin's name with concern. In Japanese, Yusei yells Kiryu's name in an emotional breakdown.
- Speaking of Dark Signers, Dark Signer Carly's event is played out similar to her battle against Jack, and then ending to her event plays out the same way, with Carly fading into the netherworld. This doesn't end here. Dueling her at the tag event still has her meekly hoping that Jack will save her from being a Dark Signer, and she even has more than a few quotes begging for her freedom.
- As if this poor girl wasn't tortured enough, pit her against her Dark Signer self, the normal Carly commenting on how she used to be a Dark Signer while not being able to recall anything during then.
- And more or so worse, Dark Signer Carly losing to Jack in Japanese has her begging to Jack "no more", implying she wants Jack to put her out of her misery instead of simply wanting him to free her from the Earthbound Immortals.
- When Yusei defeats Antinomy, he either says a line that he will perfect Accel Synchro, or yell out his name in a similar way when he dies after their final duel.Yusei: Bruno... BRUNOOO!!!
- The Raid Duel event for Paradox goes out of its way to flesh out Paradox's characterization, which was not shown well in the movie he originated from and only vaguely hinted at in 5Ds proper. Like Aporia, Antinomy, and Z-one, he is shown to be very desperate in order to change the future, which has resulted in him resorting to more and more extreme methods in order to ensure a better world. After so many failed attempts, it's easy to see how broken they had become by that point. And despite all of this, Paradox remains a researcher and scientist to the end, acknowledging that there could in fact be other ways should he be defeated.
- And again in the same event, Pegasus mentions his late wife, Cecelia/Cyndia, who if you remember, was Pegasus' motivation for holding the Duelist Kingdom tournament in the manga and anime.
- There's a brief moment should Primo challenge Paradox during his Raid Duel event. Primo is suddenly hit with a series of flashbacks that make him remember that Paradox was the one who created him, with the help of Aporia, Z-one, and Antinomy. As both Emperors of Iliaster refuse to back down, it's reaffirmed that while not merged into Aporia, Primo is solely driven by Aporia's despair of losing the one he loved. It's a rare moment of vulnerability for the Iliaster Emperor.
- Finally, there's the end of the event. The Stinger drops an important lore detail: Duel Links is beginning to overlap various realities with one another, resulting in characters gaining memories of other realities where they existed. Both little Yugi and Yami Yugi confirm that, as DM and DSOD worlds are based on the manga, they did not recognize Jaden and Yusei... at least, at first. However during their duel with Paradox, something happened that gave them memories of the anime timeline from which GX and 5Ds are follow-ups to. Not only this, but Yami Yugi suddenly begins to feel as if "someone" or "something" has been manipulating events from behind the scenes, as if he and several others are being railroaded towards an unknown goal. If the theories behind this is correct, in addition to dialogues from other events such as DSOD Bakura, it has some serious ramifications, especially for Kaiba and his mad search to get his rematch with Pharaoh Atem.
- Z-one's Raid Duel interactions, especially against the characters he never met or chronologically no longer exist.
- Team 5Ds may have sat on the sidelines while Yusei faced him, but they still remember and understand how Z-one came to be what he is now, and implore him to entrust them with hope for the future. Z-one, however, has no recollection of having been defeated, and so must be defeated again.
- He has interactions with the Dark Signers, and they all call him out on just how much he screwed with and interfered in their fates, turning them into the revenants they are now, doubly so since they no longer exist and are merely "echoes of the past". Z-one is clearly unsettled and tries to dismiss them as lost ghosts, but he can't deny the truth - he created all of them, and now their madness is an eternal reminder of the lives he ruined to ensure his own future would be changed. Dark Signer Kalin actually thanks Z-one for creating him, as he's excited by the prospect of the Meklords causing as much destruction as possible. Dark Signer Carly is also in line with the bad future Z-one comes from, as long as she and Jack get to reign in it. Dark Signer Rex is the only one of them who isn't fighting for the goal of destruction. Instead, he wants payback for the hell that Z-one put him, his brother, and Dr. Fudo through.
- The other Iliaster emperors all break the news to Z-one about them being defeated as well as what Duel Links actually is, and he doesn't react to it well at all. Antinomy, Aporia, and Paradox all try to convince him to believe in Team 5Ds due to them having already been defeated, but Z-one won't have any of it. Paradox even tells him of the multiverse theory that came about when he faced Pegasus, and Z-one is just as shocked as Paradox was but still refuses to relent. By far the most tragic of the interactions is against Primo, who is not supposed to exist at that point in time. Primo encountering Z-one leaves him completely shocked, unable to say much of anything and more or less rendering him exactly what he is: a malfunctioning machine. It's an even worse breakdown than when he faced Paradox.
- Many fans of 5Ds wished that Kalin would have participated in the events of the final arc, and with this event they get an interaction between him and Z-one that ties things together nicely. It's revealed that Kalin witnessed the entirety of Yusei's duel against Z-one from Crash Town, and he recognizes that Z-one is suffering from the same depression he once went through. Determined to help Yusei any way he can, he effectively offers Z-one a therapy session through dueling.
- There's a shocking, horrifying, and extremely tragic undertone to be found with the previous revelation from Paradox's event that multiverse theory is canon to the franchise - everything Z-one, Aporia, Antinomy, and Paradox did was All for Nothing. All the sacrifices they made, all the lives they ruined by causing Zero Reverse and messing with the timeline, all the people they erased and events they changed... none of it mattered, because their world is merely one possible, linear timeline. One that was always doomed from the beginning to end inevitably in total destruction. Nothing they did, tried to do, or could have done would have changed a thing. They would simply have ended up destroying another timeline out of pure despair, while their own timeline continues on its intended course of being wiped out by the Meklord Emperors. Z-one may talk big about despair, but this realization proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that deep down, he is just a sad, withered old man trying to cling to the faintest sliver of hope he can that he could rewrite history and undo all the horrors he and his comrades were forced to experience.
Zexal World
Arc-V World
- Yuya's arrival into Duel Links goes from him being awed by the new world to suddenly becoming panicked and depressed over Zuzu disappearing again. It's clear he's still very traumatized from the events of ARC-V. He has to be snapped out of this state by Gong dueling him later on.
- The ARC-V characters all have pre-duel dialogue with the characters from past series who made a reappearance (Aster and Alexis for GX, Jack and Crow for 5Ds, and Kite for ZEXAL). Unfortunately, the versions seen in ARC-V are Alternate Universe counterparts, meaning the original series versions of those characters don't recognize them in return, and as such have no unique dialogue with them.
- Declan's event reiterates that these dimensions are not the same as the ones that the ARC-V characters know, with Yuya confirming that Jack and Kite don't recognize him and Gong being surprised at how different GX's Duel Academy is compared to the one from the Fusion Dimension. While everything seems fine, Declan decides to prepare for the worst case scenario, while Yuya prays that they don't have to engage in another war.
- Crossing over with NightmareFuel, that "worst case scenario"? A third coming of Zarc. And this time, not only would Zarc not have any of his dimensional incarnations to hold him back (since they, for the time being, all now reside within Yuya), but he would also return in his fully-corrupted, monstrous form. Everything the ARC-V cast fought and went through hell for would have been rendered All for Nothing, and just like with the Supreme King event all of their worst traumas would be brought back to the surface.
- Yuto has pre-duel dialogue with not only Aster and Alexis, but everyone from GX who was ever a student or a teacher (in Crowler's case) in any of the various Duel Academies, immediately reacting to their association with hostility. The very existence of the institutes is still a major Trauma Button for him, considering their ARC-V counterpart destroyed his version of Heartland. It gets even sadder with his post-match dialogue, as win or lose he's completely flustered by the more normal, non-brutal dueling style of GX's characters compared to the Fusion Dimension's Duel Academy. He's been so hardened and shell-shocked by the dimensional wars that he's unable to comprehend that a version of Duel Academy could exist that doesn't stand for mass genocide. Ironically, he has no dialogue against the one character in GX who is technically a Duel Academy student (albeit another version) and whose base motivations bear the most resemblance to that of the one from the Fusion Dimension - Supreme King Jaden. It even happens to Shay, who reacts with aggression to the other GX Duel Academy characters and after the duel, realizing that their styles aren't what his memories are accustomed to either.
- Yuto recalling his defeat against Yugo in his event release after his case of amnesia. After meeting Yuya and figuring that Yugo and Yuri might arrive in due time, it leads to Yuya being excited. However, Declan witnessed this conversation, knowing that if they are coming, that the "worst-case scenario" is for certain, the eventual arrival of Z-ARC.
- Moreover, when he loses against Yuya, it brings back the time before he merges with him.
Yuto: (soft smile) Always remember to keep the world entertained and smiling. - Some parts of Yugo's unlock event, continuing the Z-ARC plotline. It's revealed that while he was a part of Yuya's soul, his mind was connected to every other one of Z-ARC's counterparts. He's a lot calmer, empathetic, and self-aware since the events of Arc-V thanks to no longer being susceptible to Z-ARC's corrupting influence and living within Yuya for a good amount of time, but compared to his other counterparts it's shown that Yugo is also the most openly worried about Z-ARC returning. Unlike Yuya who already came to terms with his origins and Yuto who isn't really concerned with it at this point, Yugo acts a lot like Yuya did initially, refusing to accept he used to be Z-ARC and adamantly stating he has no intention of ever "becoming one" with his original self again.
- His interactions with Yuto also subtly imply that deep down, he's afraid that he and his counterparts, who he now considers his friends, might lose control of themselves and try to hurt each other again. Remember that Yugo grew up as an orphan with No Social Skills and whose Only Friend for most of his life was Rin. He already lost Rin once, and now he's scared he might lose the closest thing he's ever had to family.
- Related to the above, but then there's Zuzu's own concerns. Compared to Yuya and his counterparts, she's not able to communicate like they are and, while she can still feel the presences of the other bracelet girls, she has no idea how to talk to them. Following Yugo's arrival, it's clearly starting to take an emotional toll on her. Fortunately this gets alleviated once Celina arrives.
- Celina's unlock event has some surprisingly dour notes to it.
- When she arrives, she ends up in DM World and duels Weevil, who uses Parasite Paracide on her and triggers her trauma of being brainwashed by the Doctor's Fusion Parasite, leading her to mercilessly trounce him within the next turn. Not to mention, her memories post-brainwashing are a haze since she wasn't in control of herself and ended up being fused into Ray. And because she's been lied to her whole life her distrust has led her to ask the few people she does trust to fill in the blanks, rather than try to find the answers herself since she can't even trust her own memories anymore.
- Her interaction with Declan has her musing on the nature of her connection to Ray, noting that would technically make them brother and sister on some level. Declan thinks on it for a short while, only to coldly rebuff her theory. It's clear that Leo abandoning him and his mother to chase the ghost of Ray is still a major sore point for him.
- One bit of dialogue Celina has with Zuzu has her mention that when she came back, there was no one waiting for her. The scars of Leo isolating her and Yuri still linger.
- Celina is none too pleased to hear of Riley's sacrifice, and is even more shocked at what became of her. While Declan only hints at what happened, Yuya flat-out tells Celina about how Riley became Ray's vessel and sealed away Z-ARC inside herself after defeating him, resulting in her being reincarnated as an infant in the new Pendulum Dimension.
- Celina still has some backlash in being away from Fusion Dimension Duel Academy's teachings, as shown when she loses with Zuzu in a Tag Tournament, she tells her Pendulum counterpart to put more impact in her Fusion Summonings, which the latter quickly shoots back that the main point of their Duels is to have people enjoy Duels. The girl still has some instinct inside her even after all that has happened...
- While much of the cast are willing to forgive Dennis for his role as a Fusion Dimension mole, there are still several who very much aren't, for varying reasons. Yugo is still angry about Dennis's role in capturing Rin, as well as Dennis putting down his capabilities as an entertainer. Shay outright refuses to accept any sort of apology and also won't allow him to aid in Lulu or Rin's return. Zuzu and Celina are still wary of him too.
VRAINS World
- The VRAINS storyline properly begins with a heartbreaking reunion between Playmaker and Ai, who was last seen apparently irrevocably dead to the point that neither Yusaku or Varis could find any trace of him. Yusaku vows that his third task in the world will be to protect Ai at all costs, and despite their snark they both sincerely missed each other.
- As of the VRAINS world update, the original Duelist Kingdom event is no more. As if in response to Pegasus's realization that he's supposed to be dead, a narration for the new version of the event states that eventually, the original Duelist Kingdom lost its glory, resulting in it being slowly forgotten to time until it simply became an ordinary island that faded away into obscurity. Now, the event is run by Playmaker and Ai, the latter of whom has recreated it within the Cyberse World. Happily subverted as of May 9 2023 as the original Duelist Kingdom event returned along with a surprising new roaming character that will be eventually be unlockable - Yugi's Grandpa!
- Also, the one responsible for that narration? According to the Tour Guide, it's possibly Kolter/Kusanagi. Given the sheer amount of references made to past series in VRAINS, especially the first three (DM, GX, and 5Ds), this raises the possibility that it's a continuation of the anime timeline set in the very far future beyond 5Ds. As Pegasus stated, he may be gone, but others still carry on his legacy.
- The Gore feels heavy remorse for his actions during the second half of VRAINS. He abandoned everything he stood for just to get his shot at Playmaker and was left with nothing more than his regrets. He even shows heavy guilt for his hand of what SOL Technologies did to Earth, especially when they implanted Earth into him to boost his dueling prowess.
- Varis's event dialogues show that he is still very much dedicated to carrying out his dead father's will by any means necessary - the destruction of the Ignis. Even Soulburner, who Varis himself told to start living his own life, calls him out on having not been able to move on. It's heavily implied that Varis is going through an identity crisis. He does want to move forward, but he's still too shackled to the past by his lingering feelings of guilt due to his actions inadvertently resulting in his father's death and his desire to atone by fulfilling his father's last wishes. He believes fate has led him to Duel Links in order to finally come to a decision.
