Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
- Musubi Osaka tried to admit feelings to another villager, and he said that being involved with twins was something that he couldn't do.
- Possibly Jossed in the case of Ryokan Kurosawa, who married after his ritual. It is possible that he simply moved on after his twin's death, though.
- The person Itsuki loved most, even more than the Kurosawa twins and Chitose, was his brother Mutsuki. In fact, the ritual failed because he loved his brother too much.
- Not quite. IIRC, part of the ritual is that each twin must have some kind of hidden resentment towards the other. The reason Itsuki and Mutsuki failed was because Itsuki absolutely could not hate anything about his brother (which sort of translates into "loved him too much.")
- There was never anything in the game that mentioned hidden resentment having a part in the ritual. The reason the Tachibana's ritual failed really was because Itsuki loved Mutsuki too much.
- Not quite. IIRC, part of the ritual is that each twin must have some kind of hidden resentment towards the other. The reason Itsuki and Mutsuki failed was because Itsuki absolutely could not hate anything about his brother (which sort of translates into "loved him too much.")
- Sae deliberately fell down a cliff so Yae would come back and be together. Years later, Mayu did the same.
- I'm calling Jossed for the Kiryu twins, simply because I don't want to think about it
- This could tie into the Japanese folklore belief about twins being reincarnated lovers. Take that as you will.
Now remember early in the game when Mio finds a crying woman at the village entrance? When Mio touched the spirit's shoulder, she accidentally absorbed it and became possessed on a minor level. For the rest of the game, Yae's spirit whispers into Mio's ear, so to speak, only taking stronger control at the last minute in order to complete the ritual. (If you'd like, contrast Yae's torn half-soul with the vengeful, Darkness-ridden spirit of Sae, which we find is perfectly capable of full-on possession.)
Mio's semi-possession is also why Sae is so intent on strangling Mio; she can sense that part of her long-lost twin is in that body. It also explains the seemingly-miraculous appearance of Yae in the Promise Ending.
It would also explain why literally every character in the village refers to Mio as Yae. The ghosts SEE Yaes soul inside Mio and think she has returned.
Since Mio takes out all of her repressed rage at Mayu for being so damn dependent on her and getting lost every five seconds.
- Similarly, the "Frozen Butterfly" ending could be seen as Mayu venting her own rage on Mio for being so overly protective of her.
- Check the Frozen Butterflies ending in Deep Crimson Butterfly. By all appearances, Mayu strangled Mio, and what was probably Mio's butterfly landed on her corpse. That could indicate that it doesn't matter which twin dies, as long as one of them does. My guess is that the 'older twin strangles the younger twin' custom was decreed by the earliest practicioners of the ritual to leave it to chance and avoid interhouse fighting on which twin would live and which would die...and effectively take the choice out of their hands by decreeing that the elder HAS to die and the younger HAS to live.
- Or alternately since Mayu always considered herself the elder and Mio the younger, the abyss bought it, regardless that Mio would have been considered the 'elder' by custom.
- They find an abandoned village where there's written text about a ritual sealing off the Hellish Abyss. They believe that the seal breaking is the reason why they're seeing all these ghosts. So they believe that they have to perform the Crimson Butterfly Ritual, which leads to Mio strangling her sister, and restore balance.
In the previous two games, to obtain the Good ending you merely need to complete the game on a harder mode without any other changes to the gameplay experience. But the third installment is different, and requires that Kei perform a side-quest in a New Game Plus. Unlike in any other game, getting the good ending requires that Kei dig further into the history of the manor, and learn more about Kaname. While doing so, he discovers the other half of the earring set — the one Rei discovers that allows her to confront and finally defeat Reika. So instead of simply killing him, Reika does exactly what Kirie did in the first game — she keeps the splitting image of her lover with her, trapping him inside the Manor of Sleep.
And therein lies the heart of this theory. The good ending comes from getting the entire story, from fully investigating the manor and reuniting the two halves of the earring set. It is unlike any of the other games, where a good ending can be obtained simply through playing on a different difficulty setting.
- Confirmed by Word of God.
- They seem to insist on an American film release, maybe they want to release it overseas.
- Confirmed. Fatal Frame V is available in the western market, though some countries only have it as a digital purchase.
- Or some variation thereof. Rui's design is deliberately gender-ambiguous, as it's based off a male character in a series of mysteries, who in one adaptation was played by a woman. The WMG goes beyond Rui's appearance, however. Rui doesn't seem to know how to respond when Shiragiku asks "Big brother?... Big sister?", and gets somewhat prickly when Ren's somewhat awkward attempts at compliments come across as particularly gendered (like when he says they look "like a model" after taking their picture).
- There’s a possibility that Rui may be genderfluid, and even the develops thought it was a good theory, but nevertheless it was not confirmed. However the Wiki uses she/her pronouns for Rui (at least on the FANDOM page; the Zero Wiki website has since been closed), so maybe Rui could just be a tomboy.
- Zero Wiki's up again and turns out it also uses she/her pronouns for Rui.
- No wonder the Matchmaker thought he was him. He's a descendant of Asou, was affected by traumas that happened to Asou, and even has a striking resemblance to Asou, so it would make sense in a way.
- Yuuri's Ending: The Good Ending, as this is the ending that actually shows the Curse being lifted and the mountain being purified.
- Ren's Ending: Ren chooses Shiragiku, and opts to stay with her. This ending is the only one of the four options that ends differently, with him ending up back in front of the shrine instead of merely standing in the Marriage House alone.
- Miu's Ending: This is the most difficult to settle on, as there aren't any obvious clues which ending stands out more. However, Miu's Good ending is likely the true one since there is absolutely no indications of Miku already being dead throughout the game. She doesn't behave anything like the other characters from the series that were Dead All Along (Itsuki, Kirishima), and no one else seems to find anything odd about her.