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This is a list of Wild Mass Guesses which are still possibly true. Just for Fun and silly guesses go on the silly page. If a WMG is Jossed, please move it to the jossed page, if it is Confirmed, please move it to the confirmed page.

Sora thinks Riku was possessed the entire time
The reason Sora was so forgiving was because he thought Ansem was responsible for everything. The island, trying to kill him, all of it. One day, Sora will find out Riku did all that under his own power.

A non-squicky way to resolve Roxas/Xion.
If Roxas is indeed an amnesiatic Ven, and Xion is an Opposite-Sex Clone of Sora. The two aren't genetically related, and any word to the contrary comes from people who don't know what they're talking about. Admitedly, the Replica program is itself a bit squicky, but there's nothing too bad about pairing up Ventus and Xion.
  • DDD all but states that Roxas and Ven are completely different hearts.

Every memory-related inconsistency is Namine's fault.
That's right. Every single instance of character's forgetting something important is backlash from Namine reconstructing Sora's memories between Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II. Her memory reconstruction had long-reaching, unforeseen effects. Donald and Goofy not recognizing Yen Sid's Tower? Namine did it. Ariel forgetting that Ursula was evil? That was Namine too. Mickey not thinking to mention Terra, Aqua, and Ven until after Coded? You guessed it, Namine. And so on and so forth.
  • Technically correct, but it's more complicated. When Sora locked the Final Keyhole at the end of the first game, the walls separating the worlds should have come up; and made everyone forget each other; including events that lead to their meeting. This is a very complex tapestry of "Chains of Memory" with the Keyblade and its User being the primary thread. But...things didn't go as planned. The Keyblade user who sealed the Final Keyhole was incomplete (the Roxas split), and the world walls couldn't fully go up because of the connection between them and they were in different worlds. And then the Chain of Memories in that Keyblade user himself were ripped apart and put back together again. This created a sympathetic effect on the world walls, allowing some access and restoring memories sporadically. Before the walls restored themselves, Sora unlocked the world walls in KH 2 (but didn't touch the Keyholes to the hearts of worlds). Coded put Sora's memories together, thus stabilizing everyone elses.

Vanitas wasn't supposed to take over Ven's body.
Xehanort said the χ-Blade would soon belong to him, not Vanitas. Creating a keyblade wielder who is both inherently uncontrollable and stronger than himself would be way out of character for Xehanort. Maybe he thought that after Ven and Vanitas merged, they would produce only the χ-Blade, and not someone who could wield it. This would explain Vanitas' Dragon with an Agenda traits; he was in on this technicality while Xehanort wasn't. Not once after getting the χ-Blade does he mention "Xehanort" or "my Master." He was doing it for himself all along; he was just clever enough to wait until after getting the Infinity Plus One Sword and killing the heroes before backstabbing Xehanort.
  • Alternately, Xehanort did take this possibility into account, which is why he tried to possess Terra at first instead of Ven/Vanitas. If Vanitas stayed loyal, then no harm, no foul. If Vanitas turned traitor, on the other hand, Xehanort would be fighting him in Terra's body instead of his own, old, frail one. If Terranort won that fight, then Xehanort could just take the X-Blade for himself or repeat the possession process on Vanitas. And if Vanitas proved too strong for even Terranort to handle, then at least he gave it his best shot, right?

Sora lost all of his memories from before KHI.
When Sora became a heartless, he forgot everything from before the beginning of KHI. All of his memories went into not Roxas (created from Sora's own heart), but Namine (created from Kairi's heart), as Roxas and Xion know nothing, while Namine knows enough of Sora's memories to manipulate a former memory of his into something his heart recognizes—it would be much easier to do this if Sora had no memory there. This would explain:
  • The awkwardness when he hugs Kairi, but the emotionality when he finds Riku (he's met Riku a lot more than he's met Kairi, and when he did see Kairi, it was when she was near-comatose
  • Roxas's lack of any memory, while all other nobodies have memories
  • Namine's ability to manipulate Sora (and Repliku) completely, while she could not manipulate Riku very well: Sora and Repliku have no memories of their own, while Riku has his own memories to rely on
  • Sora's not going back to Destiny Islands at the end of the first game: it's not home to him because he has no memories; Riku (and Kairi, to some extent) is "home"
  • Sora not recognizing Roxas as a near-copy of Ventus.
    • I'm sorry, do you remember somebody you met a single time at four years old?
      • I don't think Sora even met Ventus face to face at all. The closest they came was when Sora's heart merged with Ven's at the beginning of Birth By Sleep.

The Heartless Machinery inscription will come up again.
It's noteworthy that it mentioned two keys to Kingdom Hearts. This is likely a reference to the two Kingdom Keys. If the Kingdom Keys are the two halves of the X-blade, this will be important later.

The Realm of Darkness has a giftshop at the entrance
Because somehow, almost anyone who enters it ends up with an Organization coat.

They're businessmen, they provide goods and synthesis materials for whoever is willing to pay. Need I remind everyone of the Organization XIII-affiliated Moogles that some here on this site claim to be the true mastermind behind everything? Heck, if you can synthesize the Ultima Weapon by handing over the Keyblade and a select few items, who's to say that the Moogles (or better yet, their ancestors) weren't responsible for the original Keyblades (i.e. providing humans with the opportunity to open Kingdom Hearts, thus triggering the Keyblade War, or at the very least having the creation of said weapons being able to be traced back to them).
  • They're alchemists working on creating a Philosopher's Stone. A philosopher's stone shows the path to the root of reality, where the physical and spiritual meet and one can change either. A true master alchemist has such a knowledge of the "path" to this root (In this multiverse, it's called "Kingdom Hearts") they can create a Philosopher's Stone with very few materials. However, there is a "brute force" method that takes a lot of Human Resources using Life Energy to carve a path. This usually requires large amounts of death, but the moogles found a shortcut in that all sides of the Keyblade War are willing to provide them with Anatomy of the Soul leftover parts that Heartless/Nobodies/Unversed didn't "digest"; thus keeping their own hands relatively clean. The Ultima Weapon extension to a keyblade is essentially a lesser Philosopher's Stone. These stones are temporary, so it's no big deal to use a stone they created to take a look into a part of the heart of reality, record their findings, and then hand it over to whoever is providing them supplies.
    • Master Xehanort is essentially doing something similar, except on a much bigger scale and more directly. This is why the Ultima Weapon resembles the χ-blade.

The supposed raining Sora's in the 3d trailer is symbolic for Sora, Roxas, Xion, Ven, Vanitas, and Data Sora, and probably ten other Sora or Roxas lookalikes.
There are simply too many of that boy running around.

The Evil Queen from Snow White isn't dead
Her death wasn't shown onscreen, we're just told that the dwarves avenged Snow White. But the rule of thumb is—if you don't see the body destroyed or in some way clearly deceased onscreen, they're still alive. Presumably she'll show up looking to get rid of the Princesses of Heart for their purity and beauty.
  • This may be practically canon, judging by the first game. In Sora's Awakening sequences, the platforms at each station show one of several Princesses of Heart, as well as major related characters. The ones who are asleep are either the Princesses who were abducted (Snow, Cinderella, Aurora, who were taken during Birth by Sleep or during the 10-year interim; or Belle, who was taken sometime during the first game) or those who were still at their respective world when the Heartless destroyed it (the Beast's servants). There are also silhouettes of characters who were alive or whose presence was unknown (the three fairies from Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, the other three Princesses). Notice that the Beast, the seven dwarves, and the Queen (in her old hag form) are depicted as awake, and the Beast was the sole survivor of his world's destruction. Pull two and two together, and it's likely that the aforementioned characters somehow survived throughout that period, although this is made somewhat moot, as Sora's victory at the end of KH restored the worlds taken by the Heartless. Thus, the Queen may very well be back at Enchanted Dominion.
    • Per the alternate scene (if you seal Deep Jungle before Wonderland), Snow White was captured during the first game.

Every sufficiently-powerful nobody has a One-Winged Angel form like Marluxia and Xemnas
And just like how the generic nobodies are named after Final Fantasy classes, the unique forms are based off FF summons (Lich/Hades and Bahamut, in Marluxia and Xemnas' case). Compare Xemnas' armored dragon form to The Undying from FFXII, which was definitely modelled after Bahamut. Notice the similarities?
  • Marluxia's final form reminds me more of Zalera, even though he's not exactly classic. I could definately see Axel with a demonic Ifrit-inspired mode. Maybe they could have all come together to form a Knights of the Round-like form?

The Keyblade Riku hands to Kairi is Aqua's Keyblade.
  • Destiny's Embrace (Kairi's Keyblade) is one of Aqua's exclusive weapons, obtained after Kairi touches Aqua's Keyblade. Apprentice Xehanort knows about Aqua's armour and Keyblade, and possibly helped the others build the Chamber of Repose to put them in. Now, and this is a bit of a stretch, if Riku has access to "Ansem's" memories, he would know about the Chamber and be able to access it. Riku would probably have to be compelled by someone (maybe even DiZ) to retrieve Aqua's Keyblade, in hopes that Riku could use it. Not long after grabbing it, the Soul Eater turned into the Way to Dawn and he no longer needed Aqua's Keyblade, so he passed it on to Kairi, whose influence made it appear as Destiny's Embrace, rather than Rainfell or Stormfall.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy and Mickey will be a rotating party of 6 in Kingdom Hearts III.
And as a Mythology Gag to the Final Fantasy series, leaked experience is out, too. It would also give the players a nice laugh, since anyone who read the manual before playing the first Kingdom Hearts would have expected this to occur in the first game (sans Mickey).

Sora has been every single type of creature in the entire series.
  • Normal living being: DUH.
  • Princess (Prince?) of Light: had the heart of Kairi within him for almost all of KH. Also, Ventus' is still within him.
  • Heartless: briefly in KH. Has an Anti Form in KH2.
  • Nobody: Roxas is his.
  • Replica: Xion is his.
  • Data Copy: the main character in KH Coded is Data Sora.
  • Unversed: Vanitas has the appearance of Sora.
  • Sentiment: This is the craziest of the bunch. If we consider a Sentiment as a heart which still lives and uses his Keyblade and armour to fight, then Sora, who has Ventus' heart and is fighting Xehanort, could count as his Sentiment. He hasn't the armour because he doesn't know how to use it, and he still has a body anyway.
    • Alternatively, Sora himself could be considered to function as his own Sentiment during the end parts of I and the duration of CoM. He has no real "body" as that was running around at the time as Roxas, but he still retains his heart and sentience.
    • Or, Namine is the Sentiment. Note that unlike normal nobodies, Namine has no flesh. What is a sentiment? It's a manifestation of the soul in physical form, seperated from its body and heart. That pretty acurately describes what Namine is.

The Oathkeeper is a manifestation of Sora's resolve.
This is why there are times Sora can't use it, even though he had the Oathkeeper charm the whole time. This also explains why Roxas can use it, without ever explaining when he acquired Namine's Oathkeeper charm.

The Unversed are still out there.
Their presence in the final chapter isn't Gameplay and Story Segregation, defeating Vanitas just stopped him from making anymore. Most have been defeated since, but that only means the survivors are the strongest of them.

Vanitas is also the darkness in Sora's heart.
That's why they look alike. Like Ven, Vanitas couldn't survive with an incomplete heart, and Sora's darkness merged with him, giving him his unmasked appearance.

The digital Sora that's still in the simulated Twilight Town will become important.
I'm not sure how, but the series has already proven that it's not against using look-alike characters, and Sora was conveniently blocked from entering the simulated chamber, which seems to imply that the digital Sora remained even when the real one awoke.
  • Except that there is no digital Sora in Twilight Town, at least that we know of.

Xemnas and Saix, Ven and Aqua
Now that we all know from Birth by Sleep about Xehanort's origin, it's interesting to look at Xemnas and Saix in a new manner. It's been said Xemnas, being Terra's body, was more influenced by him, hence the search for his 'friends.' When you consider how he still was so influenced subconsciously, his choice of Saix for second in command makes sense. Blue hair? Holds his weapon in reverse grip? He's like Aqua and Ven rolled into one.

Sora was always meant for the Kingdom Key
Note that around the beginning of the game, a new heart that's obviously Sora's lends part of itself to Ventus. Then all of a sudden he makes a keyblade with part of its guard resembling the Kingdom Key's.
  • I was under the impression that Ventus had that keyblade beforehand, and just summoned it.
    • Xehanort's reaction of saying "a keyblade" rather than "his keyblade" would suggest Ventus never had the Wayward Wind before, regardless of the cutscenes say
      • I'm pretty sure Ven's original Keyblade was the Lost Memory.

Cloud was a keyblade wielder
Compare his KH1 outfit with the ones worn by Terra, Ventus, and Aqua. They all four wear bits of armor and have capes as part of their costume. His wing is can easily be a shotlock command unique to him.
  • Except that Cloud already had that piece of armor on his shoulder back in Final Fantasy VII.
    • One of those things sticking out of that pad could be the button to call out the rest of the armor
    • I dunno... I think this is a bit reaching. It's just supposed to be a stylized version of his FFVII look with some aspects of Vincent's design thrown in. If he was a Keyblade wielder, why wouldn't he use it (or his armor) barring some sort of amnesia?

Body-hopping isn't a new thing for Xehanort
He first sees Terra as a strong young man with a large supply of Darkness inside him, and from there on in, starts scheming to use Terra as his new vessel. And then think about this: what if this isn't the first time it's happened? What if the body he used before was also stolen from some poor person who got his heart and soul booted out so Xehanort could occupy it instead, so he could grow old in it unrestricted by time? And what if it happened with the body before that, and the body before that, and the body before that...?

Sora is the human incarnation of Kingdom Heart's light.
He wasn't even born yet when he was already starting to save people from having their heart break apart at the cost of his own safety. Plus pretty much everything unusual he has done or that has happened to him in his life pointing towards him being unusually strong and filled by light, despite not being "Princess-pure". And even that small speck of darkness could actually be just a "pollution" caused by Vanitas. No way he is just a normal human being! He is actually "The true light, which sleeps within the darkness", which has somehow materialized as a single heart within a newborn on Destiny Island, which is why his tutorial stage is called "Awakening" and why the voice says that he'll one day "Open the door". Sora needs to awaken to his true purpose, in order to finally return the worlds to their original state. This would, of course, make him a Jesus-figure for this Universe in several ways and brings unfortunate implications about his eventual fate...
  • What unfortunate implications? "Christ raised from the dead, dies no more, for death no longer has power over him." There's no reason to expect Sora to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to fit the Messianic Archetype because he's already performed one. What we should expect is a climactic final battle to destroy evil.
    • Except that this first Heroic Sacrifice was only for Kairi's good and nobody else's, and she was also the one to undo it. The real "climax of his existence" would surely be even more impactful (even though his Sacrifice for Kairi still had a pretty huge impact on the main cast. At very least.) and be for all worlds, not just his closest friends.
      • No, it wasn't just for Kairi's sake. It was also to render the final keyhole into a condition where it would be possible to lock.

Pete is a potential Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
Pete is the closest thing to an Evil Counterpart that Mickey has in the series. He's possibly got the same potential for Darkness that Mickey has with Light, with the only problem being that Pete's too stupid to do anything other than being a utter douchebag. Whatever spark he has is too small and insignificant for villains like Xehanort and all his incarnations to find useful, but Maleficent, as a Toon herself and self-proclaimed Master of Darkness knows how to actually nurture it. Why else would she make an otherwise pathetic nincompoop as The Dragon?

In the final battle of the final Kingdom Hearts game, Sora will lead an army of Keyblade wielders in an epic final clash against the forces of darkness/Heartless/whatever
This WMG is Exactly What It Says on the Tin
The above WMG is true, but Sora will handle the enemies singlehandedly anyway.
Because it's Kingdom Hearts Armeggeddon.

Xehanort's Guardian is Terra's Heartless form, and the fact that it does as Xehanort's asks is a nod to Terra having his heart overtaken by Xehanort's.
In the Final Episode, Terranort stabs himself with his Keyblade in an attempt to remove Terra from his heart. Immediately, the Guardian appears and falls into darkness, dragging Xehanort with him.
  • So this means, We killed Terra... *counts* 5 freaking times?! (Counting the Lingering Sentiment?!) NOOOOOOOO!
  • Except for that when Aqua (somehow) joins Terra in his Battle in the Center of the Mind during the final battle with Terranort, both Terra and Xehanort's Guardian are both present. Master Xehanort, on the other hand, is conspicuously absent. If anything, it's more likely that the Guardian is Master Xehanort, or at least represents his overshadowing of Terra's heart.
  • It's possible that the Guardian isn't necessarily Terra himself, but rather the darkness in his heart given sentience by Xehanort, much as Vanitas was with Ventus. A further hint at a potential connection to Terra comes in Dream Drop Distance, when in the cutscene following both Ansem battles, Riku echoes the words he told Terra in Birth By Sleep right after the Guardian appears to reach for his keyblade.

Nomura lied and at least one of the people caught up in the whole Xehanort mess will end up without a body in the end.
My guess is that Sora's (already heavily worn out) body will be damaged or destroyed during the Final Battle in KH3 (In other words: He'll be on the verge to dying) and either it's him who's lost or Ventus/Roxas gives up his /their chance for a seperate existence and allows Sora to take Ventus' sleeping body. Why? Because an "And all was well" ending without any consequences would be just unfitting for a series like this.

Being "Perma-D-Linked" to Ventus heavily influenced Sora's physical development.
Sora and Roxas still looking incredibly simmilar, despite Roxas being a copy of Ventus in terms of looks is not a case of Only Six Faces. Rather, Baby Sora's body adjusted to the D-Link his heart had made at (or prior to?) the moment of it's birth and developed into pretty much an identical twin of Ventus in everything but hair over the years. (And let's just assume that all of Sora's ancestry had brown hair and that DNA overruled Heart-based imprint in this case.) Aqua even commented on how Sora is "A spitting image of Ventus".

Max and PJ will appear in Kingdom Hearts III
Max will be a knight in training, and PJ will be a lackey of Maleficent's, trying to follow his father's footsteps. However, he'll pull a Heel–Face Turn after realizing he's not as bad as his father. Pete will at first disowns his son, but when he sees PJ in danger, he'll pull a semi-Heroic Sacrifice (I say "semi" because I don't think Disney would ever kill-off one of their classic characters).

Kingdom Hearts III will have a Bittersweet Ending
The Downside:
  • Xehanort use a Keyblade simmilar to the one Sora used to free Kairi's heart, and turns Riku into a Heartless/Nobody.
  • He then uses Riku's Heartless as the One-Winged Angel of the game.
  • Upon finding out Sora holds Ven's heart, he recreates Vanitas.
  • After using some Deus ex machina, he causes a second Keyblade war.
  • Sora defeats Xehanort using a Kamikazi-esque move. His fate remains ambiguous.
  • If Xehanort still holds Terra's body, his defeat will result in the death of Terra.
  • Vanitas runs loose without his former master's control, setting him up as the new Big Bad.

The Upside:

  • Xehanort is finally defeated.
  • Kairi begins her own journey to fight in the Keyblade War, with the hopes to find Sora. This may lead to her getting A Day in the Limelight sequel/spin-off.

Xemnas was the unity of Terra's body and Xehanort's mind.
A Nobody is stated to be made of a "left behind" body and mind/soul. However, where was Terra's mind/soul when we last saw it? Within the Lingering Sentiment. What I am trying to imply with this? Well, this means that Terra was such a huge Love Freak that even his BODY still strove for reuniting with his friends (Think about his "talk" with Aqua's discarded armor and his desperate search for the room containing Ven's sleeping body.), even though the mind controlling this body was following different goals entirely.

Reason why Ariel isn't a Princess of Hearts.
Beyond the obvious fact that Maleficent would have needed world's biggest Goldfish Glass in order to contain her, Ariel's world is based on the story "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen. Now, while the topic is never touched upon in the Disney Version, the original fairytale explicitely states that mermaids have no soul (they still have a heart though) and thus cease to exist, akin to the Nobodies, when they die. That's why a mermaid can't be a Princess of Hearts, at least not one useable for the purpose Maleficent intended them for: The other Princesses of Heart all had their hearts removed, in order to forge a Keyblade of Hearts (as mentioned in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep) from them. Their bodies stayed unharmed though, because their souls remained in them and kept them "stable". This wouldn't have worked for Ariel, seeing how she lacks this soul. If anything was to happen to her heart, her body would just go "poof" and her heart would probably just straight return to Kingdom Hearts, which would render all the hard work capturing her wasted. In extension, this also means that no mermaid or merman can leave behind a Nobody upon loosing their heart, strong will or not.

Riku is somehow related by blood to Master Xehanort
This theory is so obvious that its strange no one has suggested it yet. Both Riku and Master Xehanort have silvery-white hair, and came from Destiny Island, both had a strong desire to leave their world, and a tendancy to get a little too close to darkness. Master Xehanort as a young man also bears a fairly close resemblance to teenage Riku, and there's that scene in BBS where Terra is looking at kid Riku and sees a vision of Young Xehanort that overlaps with teenage Riku. It might also explain why Xehanort's heartless possessed Riku's body so easily, and could also add another layer of meaning to the comments in Chain of Memories about how Riku "smells like the superior".
  • Somebody did suggest it- going one step further and suggesting that Riku was a direct descendant of Master Xehanort.

At the end of things, it will be Terra, not Sora, who strikes the final blow and kills Xehanort once and for all
Again, Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • And it would be the most satisfying moment in the history of cutscenes. EVER.

The Etherial Blade used by Xemnas and Mysterious Figure is the Nobody equivalent to a keyblade.
The Keyblade is a weapon connected to its user's heart, and as such can only be used by those with strong hearts that it judges worthy. Nobodies, however, do not have hearts, and the nobody of a keyblade master, Xemnas, seems to be able to manifest a blade of energy, but cannot give it a form beyond that. This could be indicative of a Nobody trying to use the one thing it does contain, a soul, to imitate what it once did with its heart. Roxas is an exception, since Ven's heart gives him access to one keyblade and Xion's gives him access to a second; if he was a normal nobody, he wouldn't have true emotions and would probably wield an etherial blade of his own. If this turns out to be true, it indicates Mysterious Figure might be the nobody of a Keyblade master, probably Eraqus or Eraqus and Xehanort's teacher, whose exact fate was never disclosed in the Xehanort reports.
  • This makes a lot of sense and also clears up the issue with Roxas being able to wield a keyblade. It, however, does NOT get the issue with The Lingering Sentiment and Xion being able to wield keyblades, despite both lacking a heart and being only made of Willpower/Soul and Memories respectively out of the way.
    • Xion's case is actually justified; Replicas have been directly stated to have hearts, unlike Nobodies. The Lingering Sentiment does present a thorny complication on this matter, but it might be explained by Ends of the Earth becoming a "dead key" like the others in the Keyblade Graveyard after the Grand Theft Me, and therefore able to be picked up and used rather than having to be summoned and synchronized with the heart. It should be noted that Lingering Sentiment lacks the capacity to dismiss its keyblade like Terra could, and Ends Of The Earth lost its keychain in the way all "dead keys" we've seen so far have.
      • Alright, I am absolutely convinced of this WMG now. Especially since this is one more piece of evidence for the very good "Roxas ended up WITH Ven's heart, not just connected to it" theory.
  • So, what are the weapons used by the other members of Organization XIII? Lesser manifestations of this same idea?
    • That actually makes a lot of sense. Remember, a lot of the research into Hearts and Darkness they did must have been driven by Braig, since Braig was the only one who knew the whole story—and, if you'll recall, Braig's driving motivation was to obtain his own Keyblade, and as such he was probably at least trying to guide the heart-and-darkness research towards Keyblades and keyblade analogs. The Nobody weapons—and possibly, by extension, the transformation into Nobodies in the first place—must have been a part or product of his research towards that end.

During the inevitable clash with Xehanort in an upcoming game, Forze del Male will make a glorious return
Exactly What It... oh, you know by now.

Master Xehanort has a nobody
Notice how in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep he keeps talking after losing his heart.

In the Kingdom Hearts universe, Hawaii is part of the Destiny Islands.
In the ending of Birth By Sleep, we see Stitch traveling towards a ball of light that looks suspiciously similar to how Destiny Islands appears on the world map.
  • Except that this kind of "Light Ball" already appeared in Kingdom Hearts, where all unidentified worlds looked like that.

Sora and Riku will be able to use Command Styles after completing their Mark of Mastery exams.
Sora will have:
  • Critical Impact, Spell Weaver, OR a defense-based style (depending on which of the inevitable objects the player picks at the begining)
  • Firestorm, Diamond Dust, and Thunder Bolt
  • Cyclone, because Sora=Sky.
  • Sky Climber, same reasoning as Cyclone.
  • Perhaps a void-based style to represent Vanitas that becomes Wingblade if and when Vanitas is booted from his body.
Whereas Riku will have:As of Dream Drop Distance, Riku's Link Styles include Ghost Drive, Blade Charge, and a renamed Dark Impulse (now called Darkest Fears, but functionally similar). Sora gets a different mechanic, though.

Aqua is currently getting a game for herself.
]]No, I'm serious here. Someone saw the BbS Final Mix's new Secret Trailer? It focuses heavily on Aqua, and the time she spent in the Dark Realm all by herself.

Think about it: The authors did NOT expect Aqua to be popular. Which might perhaps explain why Aqua has little Character Development throughout the game. Now, however, they are aware of how popular she is, and they are taking advantage of it.

They are gonna make a game that focuses on Aqua during her time in the Dark Realm. "Birth By Sleep, Volume 2" might even be its ittle. Probably droping more hints around of something yet to come.

But hey, Aqua fans? Rejoice!!

  • Except she's not the only character with a keyblade that's ever been in the Realm of Darkness. Nomura said after Kingdom Hearts II that Mickey's time in that realm was one of the stories he wanted to tell next. This game was planned long before her popularity took off.
  • Unfortunately Jossed for now. Nomura apparently wanted to make a game centered around Aqua and Mickey's time in the Realm of Darkness, but Executive Meddling plus the possibility that fans wouldn't have been receptive to yet another spinoff title have forced him to focus on Kingdom Hearts III. We'll see if any elements from BBS Volume 2 get incorporated into KH3 or if the game gets made afterwards as an appendix.

  • CONFIRMED. She got 0.2, a short story turned into a game. But hey, it counts!

BBS: Volume 2 either A.Revolves around Time travel or B.Fills in some of the holes in the series timeline.

The teaser shows events from various parts of the timeline.(Riku watching Kairi on the Neverland clocktower,Roxas acquainting himself with Xion, Kairi and the Twilight town kids at the mansion) which makes it difficult to properly place in the timeline.

While it's possible the game jumps between time periods (b) it's also possible there could be time travel,the main two points being Ventus disappearing from the chamber after a corrupted flash and the fact that the Mysterious Figure has a noticeable time motif.As is custom for the series, Bonus bosses like him are incorporated into a new game some point after they're introduced.Temporal displacement perhaps?

Birth by Sleep: Volume 2 (or whatever the title ends up being called) will show Mickey getting the Kingdom Key D and Riku getting
It shows Mickey in the Realm of Darkness, so that one's a given. As for Riku, it's possible that he met Aqua during his time in the Realm of Darkness, and that might be what allowed him to summon Destiny's Embrace.
  • Confirmed, except for Riku meeting Aqua: at the end she saves him at a distance from a heartless ambush, but Riku wasn't even aware that that was her until Mickey tells him in the present.

When Yen Sid said that the Xehanort that Sora, Riku, and Mickey will inevitably face may not be "a single one of him"
, he's referring to Master Xehanort's Nobody. There's already a WMG on this page suggesting that Master Xehanort has a Nobody, since when he unlocks his heart it looks very similar visually (if not identical) to when Sora unlocked his heart and created Roxas. I believe that the Xehanort who comes back will be Master Xehanort's hear in Terra's body, but he'll also be assisted by Master Xehanort's Nobody. Heck, if Master Xehanort DOES have a Nobody, he could have been the one giving Braig instructions, leading to the mass production of the Heartless AND the creation of Organization XIII!
  • As far as we've been able to see, though, the only way for a Nobody to be created is if a Heartless was created, and while there are exceptions to this (namely Naminé) it doesn't appear that Master Xehanort ever actually became one, seeing as how his heart was intact when it entered Terra. Though there is always his name "No Heart" to make you wonder....
    • Maybe a Namine-esque being was created?
    • Was it ever actually stated specifically that a Heartless needed to be created for a Nobody to be formed? Given that (like you said) Namine is a Nobody without a corresponding Heartless, I assumed that a Nobody was created when the body of a person with a strong will had its heart (and any other hearts within) removed from it, Heartless or no Heartless. Kairi probably didn't gain a Nobody when her heart entered Sora's body either because her heart hadn't been unlocked like Master Xehanort's had been, or because she transferred her heart to Sora's in such an unusual way (her body passed through his and then disappeared, rather than her heart floating from her body before entering Sora's).
    • It was indicated here.

The alpha heartless known as "Red Eyes"

Vanitas will return and attempt to merge with Kairi
  • Because who needs Ven when you have a being of pure light that probably isn't strong enough to fight back just hanging around?
    • Vanitas couldn't merge with Kairi. The only reason he could merge with Ven is because they are part of the same person.
    • Well, that's not entirely true. Aqua was noted to be so pure-hearted that she could have been used to create the X-Blade should Ventus have been too weak/unsuitable for the task. Not to mention that she's been stuck in the World of Darkness for over a decade without a Black Cloak and still is no worse for the wear. Vanitas even cryptically alluded to this with the line "Always good to have a backup."
    • Ventus had to be close to Vanitas' equal, though. That was the whole reason for Vanitas' I Need You Stronger gig. The only way Vanitas would merge with Kairi is if she... oh...

Vanitas will return and join forces with Maleficent & Pete
The three of them will be the Psycho Rangers to Sora/Donald/Goofy.

Chernabog will be the final boss in the final game
  • He was intended to be the Big Bad of KH 1.
  • Now, I'm aware he was destroyed, but my theory is that he's just resting. I mean, he's the freaken devil! Remember how in Fantasia, he was weak by the light, and had to retreat? It's kind of like that.
  • Instead of fighting alone, he'd summon his demon army like in Night on Bald Mountain.
  • Alternatively, a revived MX will summon Chernabog to his aid... because why not?
  • Or... Chernabog in this continuity will be revealed to be a type of Unversed, summoned by Vanitas, whose dark shadow still lingers inside Sora, waiting for a chance to claw his way free and takeover.
  • Maybe all of the friends Sora has made along his journey donate their light to him to defeat Chernabog (or maybe Chernabog's Heartless?) while Ave Maria plays.
  • Chernabog will be revealed to be the alpha heartless, the one that rules over all others. The similarities are a bit uncanny.

The voice talking to Sora in KH 1 is Ventus
  • If you finish Birth By Sleep, it'll make sense.
    • How many times do people have to hear that it's Mickey to accept it? What does Ventus know about a Door to the Light? Mickey, however, knows all about it.
      • I'm calling out Retcon. And about Ventus and the Door of Light, well, it wouldn't be far-fetched to think that Vanitas knew about it, and neither that Ventus absorved his memories after defeating him.
      • It IS Mickey, that has been confirmed. Besides, Ventus does not talk like the voice in Sora's awakening does AND is also sleeping.

The beach mentioned in the Simulated Twilight Town is actually the Destiny Islands.
Because this would avert What Happened to the Mouse?.
  • I think that's probably true, mostly because of the scene with Roxas, Axel and Xion on the beach at Destiny Islands during Days.

Sora's true power is not the strength of his heart
It's actually his ability to bond with others. This is how he can be destined to "Connect all Hearts"
  • Birth By Sleep shows that not only can Sora's heart reach out and heal Ventus' heart, but it can also keep the heart safe by absorbing it.
  • Kingdom Hearts 1 shows that Sora's heart has bonded with Kairi's, and as such provides a vessal for her heart when her body is at risk.
  • Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories show that Sora's heart's bonds can be used against him, but in order to be manipulated a connection must exist.
  • Kingdom Hearts 2 has a couple of things to note. Namine states that she has power over "The memories of Sora, and those close to him". How is this possible? Well, I think that Sora's heart forms such strong connections that Namine can use those to get into the hearts of others and influence them, to a limited degree. 2 also has the Drive system, wherein Sora takes his friend's powers into himself in order to greatly improve his own.
    • It's both, really. In this universe not much of a stretch to call the ability to bond with others the ultimate strength of heart.

The reason Marluxia and the others at Castle Oblivion wanted to overthrow Xemnas
Was because they were forced into becoming Nobodies rather than giving into the darkness. They had no intention of doing anything evil. Take Vexen for example. In Birth By Sleep, his Somebody, Even was actually a pretty humble person.
  • I don't know about Vexen. It was him, Lexaeus, and Zexion (the loyalists) vs. Marluxia and Larxene (the defectors), with Axel paying the role of Wild Card. Vexen was merely feigning allegiance to the two to earn their trust. Besides, the part in the original game when you travel to The End of the World and use the corridors of darkness to briefly revisit all the worlds shows a laboratory in Hollow Bastion with these human-shaped pods and some cryptic inscription about the heart, implying that the original six used these machines to manually rip out their own hearts.
    • To clarify, in Castle Oblivion, it was the loyalists vs the defectors, with Axel as a Pscyho Supporter to both sides so he could elimiate the traitors as well as Vexen & Zexion to ensure Saix's rise to becoming Xemnas' right hand man (since at that time, Saix & Axel were still "friends" and wanted to overthrow the Organization themselves at one point). Also, we see how (at least one of) the apprentices lose their hearts in 3D: Apprentice Xehanort manifests Master Xehanort's Keyblade and uses it to remove Braig's heart.

Isa and Lea tried to break into the castle again.
Only this time, Ansem wasn't around anymore. In fact, that may have been their motivation- nobody has seen the king in a while, so let's investigate to see what's really going on. Of course, by now, Xehanort and the other apprentices are well into their research, so instead of throwing them out like they did in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, this time, they keep them prisoner and use them for experiments. Naturally, whatever the apprentices did to them resulted in them losing their hearts, but their desire for revenge was strong enough to make them into human-form nobodies, which is why they wanted to take over the Organization.

The next installment will involve an Assimilation Plot
With KH 2, it was shown with Riku that Dark Is Not Evil, so wouldn't it make sense to have some part dealing with Light Is Not Good (not in the sense of Roxas)? I mean, where the Big Bad wants to use Light to his own evil doings. I think one way to do this is to make the Big Bad use an Assimilation Plot, like turning every things into Tang Light.

If we ever get a world based on The Incredibles...
Donald and Goofy will gain alternate outfits based on Paperinik and Super Goof. Paperinik already had a PS2 game about him back when the first Kingdom Hearts was released, so...
  • And then, aside from the coolness factor of having freaking PK in your party, Sora would get a sentai / tokusatsu costume? Yes please.

The Organization made at least one Mickey Replica.
They had to have procured some data about Mickey just through the normal course of their operations, and they wanted to have backups in case the Sora clones went haywire (in the sense of being useless, not rebelious, since Axel never bothered to report the risk of that happening based on the Riku Replica).

The Theme Naming has a greater significance.
According to Master Xehanort's journals, opening Kingdom Hearts will create a new world. Now look at the meanings behind all the names. Sora, Kairi, Riku...sky, sea, land. Ventus, Aqua, Terra...wind, water, earth. Roxas, Xion, Axel...an anagram of sky (twilight?), tide, and the force the earth turns on. Naminé, the waves. What do you get when all of these things come together? You make the world.
  • The Earth turns on an axis. I'd say it's more about Lea, which means meadow.

Mickey will be the main character of Birth By Sleep: Volume 2
Well, it would be boring to play a game where Aqua wanders the realm of darkness for 48 hours. He's the only avalible Keyblade master up until Sora.
  • 48 hours? She spent there for over 10 years, and the "trailer" showed her encountering the worlds that were suck by the darkness. I believe there's quite a story to tell there.
    • I think he was referring to how long the game would be. Personally, I would like them both to be playable. Perhaps they could have multiple storylines, like in the first Birth by Sleep: Aqua's time in the Dark World, Mickey's story during the first game, and Riku's story during the first game.

Sora has Keyblade Wielder Armor like TVA, he just doesn't know how to activate it yet.
I noticed this while looking at a poster of KH2 Sora in my room. There's a little Metal Armguard on his left shoulder (right side looking at it) just like TVA. That's probably his Armor, but he doesn't know to hit it to activate it.

The wielders of the "dead keys" in the Keyblade Graveyard...
Were erased in some way that left neither a heartless, nor a nobody. Or at the very least, none that could wield keyblades. When Terra was posessed by Xehanort, He left no nobody or heartless, since both his heart and body were still together, whereas his, whatever controls the actions of a whole person (I'll just call it a soul), soul was thrown out, leading to the Lingering Sentiment. Look closely at Ends Of the Earth while the sentiment is using it, and compare it to the "dead keys". None of them have keychains, while every "living" keyblade we've seen in the series has one. It has been stated that if you kill a heartless, then it's nobody, the person will return. The Kingdom Key remained "alive" (still had it's keychain), whilst, for all intents and purposes, waiting for this to happen. Ergo, the dead keys aren't waiting for this, as their wielders died in a more permanent manner. A manner which couldn't be reversed by this process. A manner which left nothing behind but their empty keyblades.

The Lingering Sentiment isn't unique
It's something all armors can do. Consider this: the Sentiment can't D-Link and you can't D-Link in the mirage arena, even with balloon letters. Why? because the Wayfinders are being carried by the real bodies.

Scrooge McDuck is a Keyblade wielder
Its all but stated that he can travel between worlds, given that he's from Disney Castle (as proven by relation to Donald and the Triplets) but lives on Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion. The timeline places this travel as occuring before Birth By Sleep at its first occurance. However, before Ansem: Seeker Of Darkness unleashed the heartless upon the worlds, the only way to travel safely between worlds was by keyblade glider or Portal of Darkness, the latter of which is too evil to work for a lawful neutral person like him. Ergo, Scrooge must be a keyblade wielder, presumably of a master-apprentice chain far enough removed from Eraqus, Xehanort, and Yen Sid that he was blistfully unaware of the goings on until it was too late for him to be involved.
  • Given that the triplets eventually change worlds as well to move in with him by Kingdom Hearts II, and probably earlier given that they were in Traverse Town when Disney Castle hadn't fallen, it must be concluded that they are his apprentices.
  • All that just to sell ice cream? It must be Serious Business
    • Scrooge is, at heart, an entrepreneur. He may have figured that since he was travelling the worlds anyway, he might as well figure out how to profit off of it.
  • The original poster forgets that the Beast broke through the walls dividing the world through sheer force of will. Surely Scrooge's greed could let him do the same thing.
    • Two things. One, the walls were down from Heartless attack at the time Beast did that, making it much, much easier; Scrooge traveled before any of the Heartless ever invaded and before the walls went down. Second, Beast had a specific target to warp to, namely Belle. Scrooge would have had no such target other than "money and markets". If he were to warp directly to the largest source of money and markets, he'd have ended up in Agrabah (home to the Cave of Wonders and a very wealthy kingdom where his more advanced technological knowledge could make him a living god), not Radiant Garden, obviously selected for factors besides money and markets, like comfort of living and ease of hiding, which aren't emotionally strong enough to have been anchors.
    • Also, its implied by the existence of portals of darkness that Beast, at the time a creature of raw fury not yet tempered by love, an Anti-Hero close to the Villain side of the scale at the time, opened up a portal of darkness to where Belle was. While Scrooge is greedy, that greeed is fully tempered by a sense of justice and need to make his fortune square, with no cheating- a positive desire strong enough to make it implausible that he could ever open up a portal of darkness. Flintheart Glomgold, yes, but never Scrooge.

Sora's homeworld is NOT Destiny Islands
It is actually Kingdom Hearts. It would explain Sora's powers of the heart, repairing Ven's heart and letting other hearts merge with his

Radiant Garden is the gate into the Final Fantasy World
The home of Final Fantasy characters, the location where Cloud and Sepheroph supposedly returned to their world? I think so!

Sora's will wield a new keyblade created from his friends' hearts.
Will bring new meaning to 'My friends are my power', that's for sure…So, during the final battle(s); all of Sora's friends lose their heart; but more like how Kairi was in KH1. So Sora is fighting Master Xehanort and his Keyblade breaks. He remembers what he said about his freinds being his power and how at that moment he felt it to be untrue. Then his friends' hearts, as well as those he will save from their Birth By Sleep come to him and create this Keyblade. Sora defeats (read: weakens) Xehanort and the hearts return to his friends.

Sora's "true" Nobody.
Okay, we know that (at least) two Nobodies were created when Sora unlocked his heart. Presumably, one from his heart, and one from Kairi's heart. But as of Birth By Sleep, we know Ventus's heart was part of Sora's heart. And Roxas looks just like Ventus, and not at all like Sora. So, here's my thinking on this; Roxas is Ven's Nobody, Namine is Kairi's nobody, and Sora his own Nobody that is currently undiscovered.
  • Further explanation from a different author (spoilers ahead, natch): At the end of I, two hearts went flying out of Sora. One of them was Ventus', which had been lodged there for several years. Now, Sora's heart had taken a lot of beatings from Darkness over the years, and his heart and Ven's had started to take a partnership to protect Sora. Without its partner for backup, Sora's somewhat weakened heart sputtered out briefly, creating a Heartless. In the meantime, Ventus' heart goes off on its own, to find its body. It eventually did find it in Castle Oblivion, where Ventus' body sits. However, when the heart tried to re-enter its body, a combination of fatigue and the Dark contaminants in the room/Ven's body forced it to die as well — but permanently. Thus came the process of Nobody creation. Since Sora had no Nobody, and Ventus' heart was now so 'infused' with Sora's energy that it had begun to lose its own identity, Roxas was recognized as Sora's Nobody and named appropriately. This is an explanation for the scene in one of the trailers, where Ventus' body is shown collapsed in Castle Oblivion and is gone after a flash of light; that was time passing, in which Roxas woke up and left the castle.
    • The part about Ven's heart dying appears to have been jossed by Dream Drop Distance. In one of the videos you can unlock after beating the game, :Ven's body is shown smiling in the Chamber. He probably wouldn't be doing this if his heart was dead and his body was gone.

Terra is a foil for Sora, and foreshadowing
A lot of the trouble Terra goes through is him trusting strangers he's just met and taking what people say at face value. Traits that Sora shares. Terra is meant to show the potential for danger Sora's method of word hopping has, a cationarly tale about not questioning things. This is helped by how similar the two are personality wise, both a bit of a Idiot Hero who is a sweety to watch out for and has shades of Knight Templar going on.

This will also foreshadow Sora running into these issues himself in the future, on a much grander scale. The Light Is Not Good part of Dark Is Not Evil that the plot has touched on and Sora's Knight Templar issue are all going to train wreak with this, with him being a boss faced in a future game. Sora will befriend someone who points him in a very wrong direction and it will be up to the others to hit him upside the head for the mid to late game Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment caused by it.

Vanitas will be rebuilt.
No, no one will go digging around inside of Ventus or Sora to find Vanitas' remains and reincarnate them. But what's stopping them — particularly the returning Xehanort who's been heavily suggested in certain material — from creating a new 'Vanitas', from the cloth of a different human? The new Vanitas might even gain the memories and powers of the old one, if they met up with Sora or Roxas somehow...

Kingdom Hearts 3 will involve destroying the Heartless of several members of Organization XIII

At the very least, destroying Lea's. Re:Coded revealed that destroying a person's Heartless and Nobody reassembles them into their once complete being, and since Axel is on Sora's list of people to save, he'll have to find and destroy Lea's (possibly incredibly powerful) Heartless to recreate him. The same may go for several other members, though exactly who is up for debate. Ansem's apprentices are on the fence, as Birth by Sleep showed their original selves to be fairly decent people (with the exception of Braig), but it's also known that they were willing to betray their benevolent leader, though it might have been the darkness they were experimenting on corrupting them or something. Isa didn't seem so bad, but Saïx definitely was, and we know nothing of Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia, and Larxene's original selves to formulate enough of an opinion on them. Seeing as how many of Sora's foes have been Easily Forgiven by him, though, it's really up for debate.

  • For that to work, the Heartless needs to be destroyed before the Nobody. So, for Lea to be saved, his Heartless needs to already have been destroyed.
    • At least partially Jossed. It's not stated that eliminating a Heartless & it's Nobody in that order will restore the original. Furthermore, Most of the Organization have already been reconstituted. Lea, Evan, Dilan, Ienzo, Aeleus, Isa, Braig, and... Xemnas, have all returned.

Killing a living human with a keyblade destroys their heart.
At the very start of the game, when Destiny Islands is overrun, Sora's wooden sword couldn't touch the heartless. Makes sense, they're made solely of the darkness in a person's heart, physical things shouldn't touch them. The keyblade can touch the heartless. That means you aren't hitting physical matter, you're hitting a disembodied heart, which probably wouldn't be nice on a person. Also, this would explain differences in Sora's personality after stabbing himself with the keyblade. After he did that, we are essentially watching Ventus, but with only Sora's memories to go on for how to act. Because it is Sora's body, perhaps even Sora's soul, it makes sense that the memories stick with one of those two. Roxas is really Ven's nobody, but he had what remained of Sora's heart, giving him the ability to use the keyblade while "Sora" wasn't. Think about it, we know Ven had a personlity very like Sora, but more serious than Sora, which would explain why "Sora" was able to be so much more serious than usual when hunting down the organisation. It's almost like Xemnas, , except that "Sora" can actually feel. When presented with a situation Sora's memories didn't give him a procedure for, "Sora" went with his feelings more, making him take it more seriously.
  • Except keyblades don't destroy hearts; they just reap them.
  • And normal shields and staves work just fine against Heartless.

The main villain/Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts III will be Xehanort.
I know this has been touched on before on these pages, but I wanted to make it its own entry. Firstly, Nomura stated that if both the Heartless and the Nobody of the same person are destroyed, that person is restored. Xehanort's Heartless (Ansem, Seeker of Darkness) was destroyed in Kingdom Hearts and his Nobody (Xemnas) was destroyed in Kingdom Hearts II. This means that Xehanort is alive again. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep pretty much confirmed that Xehanort wasn't exactly a very nice guy even before he became a Heartless, and now the guy is back... This will most likely cause some moral difficulties for Sora as this will be the first time he's ever fought a villain that's actually human (Disney villains notwithstanding), rather than a Heartless or a Nobody.
  • This isn't a WMG; this is canon. Nomura already stated that III will be the Grand Finale of the "Xehanort Saga" (apparently, the series will go on after this climax) and The Stinger to re:Coded has Yen Sid telling Mickey that Master Xehanort has most likely returned to life by this time, which is why he has Sora and Riku undertake the Mark of Mastery exam (as to be detailed in 3D).

Zidane WILL appear in a future game.
I know he's been listed as a possible candidate for a future appearance, but I strongly believe he WILL be in a future game. He fits the Kingdom Hearts theme so well (playful, outgoing personality which is not unlike Sora's), and now that Dissidia has given him an English voice actor there's no excuse not to include him. And besides, we already got one Final Fantasy IX character in the form of Vivi, so why not another one? The main characters of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X are all present, which means that there's a gap that can be filled by Final Fantasy IX.
  • Given that Nomura has now (re)drawn characters from every title for Dissidia and Dissidia 012, anyone is fair game for a cameo. Here's hoping for GILGAMESH.

In KHIII, Yen Sid will come out of retirement.
The series has made it blatantly obvious that Xehanort wants the power of Kingdom Hearts, and seeing just how powerful he already was in BBS, this would be a bad thing. So far, we have not seen Yen Sid do anything that he could not do as simply an incredibly powerful wizard, so there must be a reason that BBS established him as a retired Keyblade Master. My theory is that in KHIII, Xehanort will come disturbingly close to attaining the power of Kingdom Hearts that Yen Sid will return to the action and, possibly at the cost of his own life, so thoroughly eviscerate Xehanort that even with Kingdom Hearts, the scumbag will only be somewhat more powerful than he was at the end of BBS, thus allowing Sora and Co. a chance at victory.

The third game will have Sora, Riku, and Kairi splitting up to do this whole "saving" thing.
Dream Drop Distance will, as mentioned in another WMG above, have Sora and Riku completing the Mark of Mastery while Kairi receives training from Mickey or Yen Sid or some such. The third game will start with Kairi as your first playable character, and the introduction will have her completing her own Mark of Mastery. Yen Sid will then have the trio split up to go after one member of the Birth by Sleep trio each. Kairi's story will canonically take place first, and will have her finding a way to get Aqua (and presumably Ansem the Wise) out of the world of darkness, probably using Princess of Hearts magic powers. Aqua will mentor Kairi and become a permanent party member. Her final boss will either be Terranort, restored by the destruction of both his Heartless and his Nobody. He will, however, escape before Kairi and Aqua can deal a finishing blow (likely because Aqua will be understandably reluctant to destroy her friend's body). Sora, meanwhile, is setting out to find Ventus in Castle Oblivion. He'll eventually find a way to restore Ven's heart and wake him up, but Vanitas will awaken as a result. Sora and Ven will then team up to fight Vanitas for a final boss. Riku's story will canonically end last, and will focus on him tracking Terranort with the intent of forcing Xehanort's mind out and allowing Terra to take control. His penultimate boss fight will be against Terranort, and after defeating him, he'll use some newly-discovered method of forcing Master Xehanort out of the body. Riku and the now-restored Terra will then team up to fight Xehanort, who will vanish (but isn't yet dead). The final story will then open up, and feature all of the heroes banding together to track down Xehanort and Vanitas to take them down for good. Kairi, Ventus, and Aqua will form one party and destroy Vanitas (ending with a Holy Hand Grenade Combination Attack), while Terra, Riku, and Sora team up against Xehanort. Mickey may or may not get his own story, with Donald and Goofy as party members, wherein he travels the worlds helping Sora, Riku, and Kairi in their respective tasks, while dealing with a separate threat, such as Maleficent, who was last seen charging into battle in the Castle That Never Was, and may have been spending some time building her power again.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will have the following:
  • The Tri-State Area as a new world
  • Lightning and the gang are new characters
  • The Game will support 3d TV's
  • Will have Multiplayer support online and offline
  • The return of the Gummy ship sections
  • ONE GRAND FINALE to end the Organization XIII story
    • And that's just the minor ones.

Isa was manipulated by apprentice Xehanort:
  • We all know that Saix has gold eyes (which equals darkness) and is a jackass to even his supposed best friend. Which means that a case similar to Braig/Xigbar occured when Isa went through something that caused his x-scar and opened his heart to darkness...which he eventually fell to. We also know that apprentice Xehanort was conducting horrific experiments on people's hearts to see their reactions to darkness.

  • Isa may have gone through a more stable experiment on his heart that caused him to gain gold eyes and may have even been Xehanort's little lackey before Radiant Garden's fall. Otherwise, why did Saix become so willingly obediant to Xemnas and give up on his and Axel's plan to backstab him?

  • After all, we know and/or can guess that everything a nobody possesses emerges from a trait of their original selves (duel wielding Roxas=Sora+Ventus; Xigbar's evilness, guns and scars=Braig's evilness, guns, and scars from getting pwned by Terra; Axel's motto and chakrams=Lea's motto and frisbees). Therefore, would be safe to assume that everything about Saix's demeanor emerged from Isa's last year as a person? (evilness=possible indoctrinization or darkness experiment, beserker mode=latent anger, loyalty to Xemnas=Xehanort manipulation, scar=incident related to a battle?)

The final battle will involve Sora, Riku, and Mickey fighting 3 forms of Master Xehanort
1 being Master Xehanort, 1 being his armor the "No Heart", and the third being his nobody named "Another"

KHIII will not have an "All is right" ending.

  • Instead, during the last major fight one of a couple things will/could happen.

a) Sora, as a way to save/free Ven, Namine, Roxas, and Xion, will give up his life. This leads to a whole new set of games where we now search for Sora/find a way to revive him. That, or it's unreversable.

b) Ven and/or Terra will die in the final fight. After 10-11 years, Terra and Xehanort are just to melded together to split up. The only way to do get rid of MX, is to kill both him AND Terra. The person to do this? Either Sora or Ven. If it's Ven, the last fight will be too much, and he'll die/disapear as well. There is no way to reverse it. Everyone honors their memories.

c) Mickey will sacrifice himself to save the group from darkness, avenge his fallen friend, and atone for his first great failure.

This is to justifie, or allow...

Part of the Org. XIII being revived, along with the ones from above.

I get the feeling Ansem wasn't JUST talking about Ven/Aqua/Terra/Axel/Roxas/Namine/Xion when he spoke about freeing/helping those crippled beings, or however he said it. He seems to still mourn for the fall of his proteges. And since it appears that killing a person's Heartless and Nobody will allow them to be reborn, it's not exactly IMPOSSIBLE. Perhaps part of the journey in KHIII will be tracking down the missing hearts of the first six or what not. It seems that Axel is on his way to revivel, with or without Sora anyhow.

Terranort manipulated Ienzo the same way Xehanort manipulated Terra.
Ienzo looked too close to Ansem and too suspicous of Terranort and Briag to just turn on adoptive father. My guess is that Terranort(or maybe Briag, follow his pre-orders) didn't just turn Ienzo againts Ansem, but perhaps he told him he knew how to bring Ienzo's parents back. This may be little Zexion we're talking about, but he doesn't look any older then 10, and more likely then not, his parents death REALLY left a mark on him. Getting them back would be any kid's dream. No matter how smart he is, he's just a child, and a damaged one at that. No telling WHAT goes on in his head. I doubt he really ment to hurt anyone. Who's to say the reason he, Vexen, and Lexaeus were in low chairs wasn't because they DIDN'T want to turn on Ansem or that they had second thoughts?

But it does somewhat paralle Eraqus and Terra. Father figure who does bad things but means good, only to realize it too late. Son who was manipulated into believing the bad was good, to help make things better. Yeah. Could be just me though.

Kairi is going to be an extremely powerful character once she actually starts fighting
At least from an in-story perspective. It makes sense, being that she is both a Keyblade wielder, and a Princess of Heart. It took a hell of a convoluted situation for her to get a Nobody, and she can't have a Heartless at all. That must mean a lot in terms of power. She'll basically be a master of kicking the crap out of the darkness, due to the whole Heart of Pure Light thing. And if I am wrong, may I be bricked into oblivion.

After Kingdom Hearts 3, the new series will have Sora as the antagonist
If theories about light based antagonists in future games are true, then it's possible that Sora will be the villain. He's pretty much light aligned and fights the darkness, it's possible in the future these ideals of light prevailing over darkness will get to him, and he'll become a Knight Templar/Jerkass using light-based minions to "cleanse evil ones" if they don't meet his standards of good. Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but bear with me here.

Birth by Sleep: Volume Two will have three playable characters, all Keyblade wielders, to mirror the first Birth by Sleep
Multiple stories was one of the main points of Birth by Sleep, so it would make sense for them to use three in the "sequel". And I think I have the three characters pegged.
  • #1: Aqua. She features heavily in the Secret Episode, and it's clear that there's more of her story to be told yet. Plus, she's the only Keyblade wielder to specialize so heavily in magic.
  • #2: Riku. Nomura said following Kingdom Hearts II that there were four stories he wanted to cover before moving on to Kingdom Hearts III... two of those stories, namely Xehanort's memories and Roxas's time in the Organization, have already been addressed, in Birth by Sleep and 358/2 Days respectively. Another one of those stories, the period of Riku's absence (presumably between Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II) was featured to an extent in Days as well, enough so that Riku's absence really doesn't merit its own game... but it feels like there's just enough loose ends to fill up a spot in Volume Two. Additionally, Riku could serve as a parallel for Terra given his use of dark powers (he doesn't fit the strong-yet-slow mold of course, but hey, nobody said they had to be perfect parallels).
  • #3: Mickey. The final story Nomura wanted to cover was the period of King Mickey's absence. This was apparently supposed to be in coded, but got cut out for whatever reason. By including Mickey in Volume Two, we'll get to see exactly what Mickey's been up to the whole time. He'd also be a good parallel for Ventus, armed with fast attacks and light powers.

Each of Sora's Drive Forms (with the semi-exception of Limit Form) actually represents one of the identities currently inside him.
  • Valor Form represents Xion, with the term "Valor" representing Xion's bravery in sacrificing her own independent existence for Sora and Roxas's sake. Additionally, Sora can use two Keyblades in Valor Form because he is calling on Xion's Keyblade. I'm still trying to find an explanation for Sora's loss of magic while using Valor Form, though. Maybe it's a representation of her incomplete existence as a Replica and status as Ret-Gone... her true abilities have been forgotten, and Valor Form's unbalanced skillset symbolizes this?
  • Wisdom Form represents the Magic Mirror (hear me out on this one). According to the Reports in Birth by Sleep, the Evil Queen managed to somehow temporarily turn the Magic Mirror into an Unversed. As we later find out, all Unversed come from Vanitas, and when they are defeated they are absorbed back into him. When the Magic Mirror was defeated, a copy of its Unversed self was absorbed by Vanitas, who later rejoined with Ventus and then with Sora. The term "Wisdom" represents the Mirror's reputation as all-knowing, and since it's a Magic Mirror, calling on its power augments Sora's magic in turn. Unlike the other drives, Wisdom Form doesn't gain a second Keyblade because the mirror doesn't have one.
  • Master Form represents Ventus. In Birth by Sleep, Ventus seemed to be roughly on the same level with Terra and Aqua, both of whom are equivalent to Keyblade Masters (Aqua actually was named Master, and Nomura confirmed that Terra was on the level of a Master), explaining the name "Master" Form. Additionally, Ventus had balanced stats in both strength and magic, and so Sora has both powered up in Master Form, as well as gaining Ventus's Keyblade.
  • Final Form represents Roxas. This is probably the most obvious one, given that Sora only gains access to it after Roxas allows himself to join completely with Sora. The term "Final" represents that this is the last form (natch), and therefore the final power boost Sora will get from the numerous others inside his heart.
  • Anti Form represents Vanitas. This one is also pretty obvious, given Anti Form's dark nature and Vanitas's status as a being of pure darkness. Sora doesn't gain a second Keyblade in this form even though Vanitas could use one because Vanitas's darkness weakens his heart instead of strengthening it, to the point where he can no longer use even his own Keyblade.
  • Limit Form is a possible subversion. It doesn't represent any of Sora's other personas, but Sora himself, since it gives him access to some of his old abilities, and is gained after Sora's attention is directed to Kairi and her abduction (as Xion's existence shows, Sora's most important memories are of Kairi).

Olympus Coliseum is somehow involved with the origins of the X-blade.
I am practically kicking myself for not thinking of this sooner. It didn't come to me until I was playing re:coded and realized that, when you leveled up Olympia, it gained Greek letters after its name. I thought "oh, that's cute,since Hercules was set in ancient Greece"... and then remembered that the X-blade also comes from a Greek letter. Perhaps Zeus and the others created it way back when?

How/why everyone will be/deserves to be saved by Sora
In alphabetical order, because it's easier:
  • Ansem: No-brainer. All Sora has to do is find a way into the Realm of Darkness, which he's already done at least twice.
  • Aqua: Exactly the same as Ansem.
  • Axel: Most likely, Axel's Heartless was destroyed already, so he will probably return as Lea.
    • Confirmed by the Jump Festa trailer. He still looks like Axel, though.
  • Eraqus: Although not specifically seen in Blank Points, I count Eraqus because his heart is inside Terra's, who also needs to be saved. Most likely, once Terra has been saved, they will simply have to unlock Eraqus's heart from Terra's.
  • Namine: While Namine is Kairi's Nobody, she was made when Kairi's heart left Sora's body, and therefore she does not technically belong with either of them. I'm not quite sure how she'll be saved, unless it involves making Kairi's heart leave Sora's body again...
  • Roxas: One of the most difficult, if not the most difficult. I truly don't see how they could possibly bring Roxas back without a total Ass Pull. First of all, according to Ansem in KHII he holds half of Sora's power, so they'd have to figure out how to get him out of Sora without weakening him. Second, Nomura pretty much confirmed Roxas had Ven's heart, and since he looked exactly like Ven that would imply that he is in fact an amnesiac Ven. Then again... maybe that's how they'll get around it, by saying that Roxas was Ven.
  • Terra: At first, I didn't understand why Yen Sid decided to test Sora and Riku for the Mark of Mastery. Then I realized that Keyblade Masters are the only ones who have been shown to unlock hearts without using a Keyblade of Heart. Yen Sid's planning to have Sora become a Keyblade Master so he can unlock Terra's heart from Xehanort.
  • Ventus: Since Ven's heart is inside Sora, most likely he's just going to have to extract it once it's done healing itself. He'll probably need to save Aqua first, though, given that she's the only one who can find the Chamber of Waking.
  • Xion: Difficult, and will probably require Namine's help, but not as hard to puzzle out as Roxas. Xion is literally made of memories, right? And Namine can manipulate the memories of Sora and those connected to him. Now, I know she said she couldn't save Xion before, but I think that was because back then, she was made out of Sora's most important memory, and it was crucial she merge with him so he could wake up. Everyone's memories of Xion may be missing, but given that they didn't instantly forget her after she disappeared I believe that the memories are not actually gone, but just locked away. And Namine will be able to use that to recreate Xion, not by using Sora's memories but by using everyone else's hidden memories of her.
    • She could have deconstructed Xion's memories and separated out Sora's so he could wake up without erasing Xion- if she had been given the time necessary for such a herculean task. She did tell Ansem that she was capable of it, but estimated that it would take years to accomplish- time they didn't have, not with Organization XIII having access to Roxas and likely additional Keyblade-wielding Replicas who would continue to construct Kingdom Hearts and/or track down Xion. Without the time constraint, however, it's just a matter of waiting long enough.
  • Riku Replica (new addition by OP): Having never beaten Chain of Memories, I never gave much thought to Riku Replica's fate. But having seen what appears to be him in the 3D trailer, I realized that he has just as much of a right to exist as Xion. And then the Fridge Brilliance kicked in as to why he wasn't seen in Blank Points... he's not going to be saved by Sora, he'll be saved by Riku! No idea how, but I can totally see it happening.

The Firebird from Fantasia 2000 will be the Second-To-Last Boss of 'Kingdom Hearts III
But will have little to no influence on the story, much like Chernabog in Kingdom Hearts I. The Firebird's battle theme is a variation of "The Firebird Suite".
  • Alternately, you visit a world based on Fantasia/Fantasia 2000/Fantasia 2006/Fantasia World, and face the Firebird in an epic, Shadow of the Colossus-esque battle. Afterward, the sprite from The Firebird Suite will accompany Sora as a summon, in a role similar to Tinker Bell and Bambi in the first game.

Sora Will Have His Body Stolen By Xehanort
I am very sure this will happen, possibly as early as Kingdom Hearts 3D. Sora manages to save Terra from Xehanort, causing Master Xehanort to return. MX decides he still needs a new vessel, and this time he doesn't want to lose his memories (of course). Using his keyblade, he extacts the light from his heart and kills it. Then he extracts Sora's darkness and recreates Vanitas. Afterwards, Sora and Master Xehanort will fight. Sora wins, but Master Xehanort's heart goes into him and overtakes him. Soraort gets the X-blade and gives some long-winded speech about how when he tried to sieze power in the worlds, Sora always rose up to stop him, but now Sora has given him a new vessel and the X-blade. Then the game would take advantage of the switches between Sora and Riku and have two boss battles at once: Riku and Kairi versus Soranort, and Sora versus Xehanort inside his heart. Riku and Kairi then go into Sora's heart to help him fight Xehanort. Sora temporarily regains control and stabs himself with a keyblade to release Riku and Kairi from his heart (thus recreating Roxas and Namine). Then Soranort flies up towards Kingdom Hearts. Everyone (Sora had already saved the others) is together and they say that Sora has saved them, so now it is their turn to save him. Cue end credits.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit will show up in some form next game
He's Micky's estranged brother with a dark side to him. He'd be perfect to team up with Riku for whatever purpose. He'd probably been passed over as ruler of Disney Castle and he wants revenge, or at lease closure.

There will be more than one X-blade in Kingdom Hearts III
Since the only qualification for creating an X-blade seem to be two equal hearts of light and darkness intersecting, that seems to allow for the possibility of more than one X-blade. The X-blades may be used to interfere with the other X-blade in regards to opening Kingdom Hearts. Ironic how there could be more than one most powerful Keyblade, but only one weaker Keyblade of People's Hearts.

If Aqua escapes the Realm of Darkness
She will take Kairi on as her student.

The entire point of having Neku in the series is to shoehorn a Roxas Expy in since they couldn't logically have Roxas or Ventus in 3D.
By extension, Jesse Mc Cartney will voice Neku in the English version even though he didn't in The World Ends with You.

Ventus is Sora's brother, and Sora was a Replacement Goldfish
Vanitas was extracted from Ven four years before Birth By Sleep. Sora was probably still in the womb at the time. Ventus either ran away from home or was kidnapped by Xehanort. His parents, losing hope, decided to have another child. This would explain Vanitas' resemblance towards Sora.
  • Unlikely. Vanitas resembles Sora because the latter merged his heart with Ven's. Plus, whether or not the novel is canon is debatable, but it suggests that Ven was an orphan who didn't even know what his parents looked like and that Vanitas was faceless until Ven's heart merged with Sora's.

The final part of Kingdom Hearts will have the heroic group splitting into four teams, all after a different target.
  • Team One: Sora, Riku, and Kairi go after Master Xehanort. Sora is the controllable one, of course.
  • Team Two: Terra, Aqua, and Ventus go after Braig and/or Vanitas. Terra is controllable.
  • Team Three: Mickey, Donald, and Goofy go after some form of Xehanort's Heartless (possibly a Replica). Mickey is controllable.
  • Team Four: Roxas, Lea, and Xion go after Xemnas (again, possible a Replica). Roxas is controllable.

If/when Xion is separated from Sora, she'll lose the ability to use the Keyblade.
If this troper's got it right, the only reason she could use it in the first place was because of Sora's memories within her. So since separating her from Sora would probably involve picking out only her memories and recreating her without using Sora's memories, there goes her Kingdom Key. Granted, she'd still probably be an adept swords-woman, and maybe she could earn the right to wield a Keyblade herself one day.

Red Eyes\Hunter of the Dark is Braig's Heartless.
It seemed a bit odd having the final boss of the Secret Episode be a random powerful Heartless. Having the Hunter be Braig's Heartless makes sense from a storyline perspective given his role as a recurring antagonist in Birth by Sleep, as well as his role in the game's secret ending(s). The fighting styles of Braig and the Hunter also have several similarities - notably, it can use various forms of teleportation and dark projectiles, and most strikingly, has an attack in which the player's point of view is shifted to its eyes as it aims - Braig/Xigbar is the only other boss in the entire series which this occurs in. It also makes more sense for Braig to have such a powerful Heartless, as he was imbued with dark powers by Xehanort long before he became a Nobody; this is significant as Xehanort is one of the two people who have ever left a human Heartless. Although Xehanort's influence and his own darkness weren't enough to give him a human Heartless, it birthed the immensely powerful Hunter of the Dark. Depending on where exactly the Red Eyes battle falls on the the timeline, this could mean that Aqua destroyed it before Xigbar's death, leading to the possibility of Braig returning in a future KH game.

We will see Shiki Misaki's Real-Self.

In Kingdom Hearts 3, Sora will become a Composite Character.
]]Of himself, Roxas, Xion, Ventus and Vanitas. Think about it right now Sora has three possibly all four of these people inside him by the end they will fuse together to make a super Keyblader with them to combat Xehanort.

Vanitas is at least partially responsible for some worlds being asleep.
All those Unversed probably did a lot of damage, and Vanitas might have been able to do something to those worlds even as he was bound up in Ven's heart.

Terra and Eraqus's hearts are both with Riku now, not Xehanort.
While Xehanort's heartless and the flesh he'd used to become a nobody were both destroyed, Terra's heart is sealed within the heartless, his flesh was hijacked, and his soul is very likely bound inside the Lingering Sentiment to give it life; as such, Terra's heart, body, and soul weren't able to unite and reform him while Xehanort's were. With nowhere else to go, Terra's heart (and Eraqus's within it) are both still bound to Riku until circumstances can allow Terra to be made whole, either by laying the Lingering Sentiment to rest and releasing Terra's heart or through Kairi's power to restore completeness to a being from nothing (although that might not work on people who aren't Sora and even if it DOES we all remember how much confusion using that power caused last time...)

Sephiroth and Cloud are the two halves of Zack in this continuity.
Either as a Heartless/Nobody pair or more likely Terra-Xehanort repeating the experiment of Master Xehanort extracting Vanitas from Ventus. It's reasonable to assume Zack hails from Radiant Garden, and was at the Olympus Colosseum in order to get stronger and prove himself as a hero, so when he returned home, he might have been captured by Xehanort or one of the apprentices and used for experiments. This would explain how Sephiroth could be Cloud's Enemy Without.
  • But then how do you explain Tifa? After all, II arguably implies that, for Cloud, she's the light to Sephiroth's darkness.
    • Cloud's a Nobody who's trying to regain their Heart. Sephiroth and Tifa are the Darkness and Light which were split in two - possibly in a similar way to Ventus and Vanitas - and had bodies created for themselves like when Sora was revived in the first game.

The Final Battle of KH3 shall be as follows

At the final world that serves as Xehanort's stronghold, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Roxas, Axel, Xion, Ven, Aqua and Terra shall team up to penetrate his lair. Sora, Riku and Kairi make up the main party, and as the player presses into the fort they encounter an assortment of Heartless, Nobodies and Unversed. When they come to a barrier, control switches to Mickey, Goofy and Donald, who must explore a side-path and battle an incarnation of "Ansem" to open the path. A second barrier is encountered, and Roxas, Axel and Xion explore a path and fight Xemnas. A third barrier switches control to Ven, Terra and Aqua, and they fight Master Xehanort.

In the final battle, Sora, Riku and Kairi face Xehanort himself in a multi-stage battle that mirrors his various incarnations in different regards. When Xehanort is defeated, he collapses and begins to fade into darkness, when he heart rises from his body and slams into Sora. Sora awakens in the Dive to the Heart, and discovers that there are two platforms — his, and Xehanort's. Xehanort declares his intent to conquer Sora's heart and take his body as his own, and the Battle in the Center of the Mind begins as the two Keyblade Masters clash for the last time. The battle ends with Sora shattering Xehanort's station, symbolically destroying his heart and ending the threat for good.

  • The troper who originally made this predicition would add that with what Dream Drop Distance has shown, particularly Kairi is going to train with Yen Sid and multiple incarnations of Xehanort have been revived, this scenario seems more plausible than ever.

Heartless are hearts in Purgatory
Warning: Massive amounts of Bullshit follows. Viewer discretion is advised.

So first, a link To Kairi's Grandma's story.

Anyway, back in the begininning, things were awesome in the Kingdom Hearts universe. There were Keyblades, and Light, and everyone had access to Kingdom Hearts, and everything was bitchin' and everyone lived together in peace and love and happiness on the same world.

Then one day, a group of people, lets call them "Assholes", had an idea. They wanted Kingdom Hearts all for themselves, and started to fight over it, hoping to create the legendary X-Blade that would allow them to access it. The entire world was swept into the battle, known as "The Keyblade War", and as the darkness grew, the entire world was destroyed and everyone died.

The End.

Except little bits of light remained, the Seven Purest hearts in the whole world. These seven hearts managed to bring everything back from the brink.

But not completely.

The worlds were seperate, and could not interact with each other.

The Keyblade had all but disappeared, and only a handful of Masters and apprentices remained.

And Kingdom Hearts itself was in the Realm of Darkness, surrounded on all sides.

Kingdom Hearts is where all hearts wind up, but now, no heart could reach it.

Kingdom Hearts is light, but now darkness is in every heart, only seven still pure enough to join with it.

When a person dies, their heart goes to Kingdom Hearts, but can't reach it. As the heart goes into the Realm of Darkness, the darkness within it and around it takes shape, forming a shadowy creature called a Heartless. Heartless wait around Kingdom Hearts, at once wanting hearts, but also being bombarded with Kingdom Heart's painful light. Thats why Shadows melt into the floor, for protection from the light they are constantly being blasted with in their natural habitat. When a heartless is destroyed, the heart is freed and can rejoin with either it's body, or Kingdom Hearts itself. Which is fine, if you're The Messaiah and only have enough darkness to make a Shadow. For you, your heart will be purified quickly, and be able to rejoin with Kingdom Hearts in no time at all. But if you are a horrible, wretched monster, your heart will be dragged down by the darkness, and your heartless will be big, bloated and powerful, and Kingdom Hearts will take forever to deplete your HP and purify you.

Of course, if you're one of the seven pure hearts of light, things will be easiest for you, as your heart will pass right through the darkness without stopping and be able to be with Kingdom Hearts immediately.

The Realm of Darkness is Purgatory for hearts, where they can be purified of their darkness after they die, but before they rejoin all the other hearts.

Just when Ventus' body is found, Sora will lose his body to Vanitas or Xehanort.

Sora's last act while still posessing his free will would be to try to eject Ventus' heart from his body, so he can return and wake up. Ventus, however, in an act of gratitude, will turn it around, making it so that Sora takes over Ventus body, awakening it and leaving Ventus trapped with the evil that now controls Sora's body. Venra immediately goes to destroy the bodyhopper, aware that he might possibly be forced to destroy his own, mortal body on the way and fully intending to return Ventus' body to its rightful owner when he's done; effectively rendering himself dead for all purposes. Wouldn't be the first time Sora accepted suicide for the good of others.

Pete was locked up by Minnie AND Mickey, at separate times.

A small amount of possible Fridge Brilliance here. In KHII, Pete was in that dimension prison, and Mickey was said to have put him him there. In Birth by Sleep, ten years earlier, Minnie put him in there to cool down for a bit.

Just consider... in that dimension, there's nothing to do, no food or water, NOTHING essentially. If Pete was REALLY in there for 10 years, before Maleficent broke him out, wouldn't he have gone mad, and/or seriously changed his personality from his time in there? Hell, any one of us would have done one or the other (or both) if we'd been locked in there for 10 years.

So, just think, Minne put in there to 'cool down for a bit'. A BIT. There's no way that translates to 10 years, and it's quite possible Mickey put him in there again for something else bad he did. It's not that much of a stretch if you think about it this way, but I could still be wrong.

  • We actually see Maleficent bust Pete out of the prison dimension DURING Birth By Sleep. I don't think he was in there for ten MINUTES by the time the old hag got him out. Also, in KHII, the japanese for who banished Pete was actually gender-neutral. The translators, assuming Mickey did it, made it "His Majesty" instead of "Her Majesty". They were wrong.

Xion was designed to kill Roxas because Xemnas couldn't bear seeing Ven's face.

If you think about it at first, Xion being designed in a way that will inevitably either cause her to kill Roxas or, if all fails, be killed by him herself, makes little sense at first if you think about it. Wouldn't two keyblade wielders be more productive than one? The hammer hits when you realize that Xemnas was basically Xehanorts' will and mind stuck in Terra's body. Chances are the Terra part of him rebelled violently at times due to Roxas' mere presence. It was distracting him, keeping him from focusing on his goals, awakening "foolish" ways of thinking and maybe even *gasp* memories of emotion within No.1 of the Organization, so he had to get rid of it. However, due to afformentioned rebelling he couldn't touch Roxas himself. It may have caused him a short-circuit or worse. Likewise, even if he wanted Roxas gone, he still needed his power and keyblade for his plans. So he had Xion created to absorb and slowly eat away on him.

Evidence for this are the fact that Xemnas apparently had quite a few of Terra's memories - making at least one throwaway line that shows that he recognizes Roxas as, at very least, a Ven-lookalike, not to mention his Companion Cube, Aqua's Armor- and the observation that, if you sum up, Xemnas really obviously was keeping his distance from Roxas throughout all of 358/2 for the most part.

Xion and her fate where thus yet another unfortunate sideeffect of Terra's eternal struggle against Xehanort's possession.

50% of Xemnas actions were subconcious behaviour orchestrated by Terra in a desperate attempt to find and reunite with his friends.
As mentioned above, Terra's memories would often meedle with Xemnas' motives and cause him to temporarily lose sight of his goals, made even worse by the presence of a Ven-lookalike (Who, according to Kingdom Hearts Ultimania also serves as vessel for Ven's heart, to top it off.), so it's not that far fetched to assume that all the things that don't make sense in context with Xehanort's motives were the result of Xemnas following urges from Terra's memories within him. He also personally came down to Twilight Town to pick up Roxas upon birth and name him. Why did he look so satisfied, however, upon saying "A New You"? Possibly he believed simply by giving the boy a different name, he could cut his associations between him and Ventus, an attempt that ultimately fails when Roxas developes a personality a lot more reminiscent of Ventus' than of Sora's. Xehanort's and Terra's motive were in constant war within Xemnas and Roxas unwittingly made it even worse, cause Xemnas to end up following actions to two different ends which conflicted.

Coming to visit Roxas when he's fallen unconsious? Most likely Terra's doing. Talking to Aqua's discarded armor? Clearly Terra. Searching the Chamber of Waking? Terra, trying to find Ventus. Showing disdain upon being called "Xehanort" by Sora? Terra. Asking Roxas if he remembers his "true name" (Note that, interestingly, he said "True name" not "Old name")? Terra, hoping that Roxas would reply "Ventus", rather than "Sora". He didn't, unfortunately. (Maybe getting the correct answer would have caused a strong enough reaction to overthrow Xehanort's motives for good, though, this is just speculation.)

Finally... Xemnas, trying to rip out Sora's Heart during the final boss fight against him, asking if he "Could spare a heart". Remember, the Rip-Out Move is one of the most time consuming ones Xemnas has, it leaves him fairly vunerable to Riku's attacks and only takes out Sora, as opposed to him&Riku. Why would Xemnas do that? Did he want Sora's Heart? It makes more sense if you remember that the heart that Xemnas is trying to extract could just as well be... Ventus'. That move is an attempt of Xemnas to channel Terra's despair and stubborn desire to regain his friends and misguide it in a way that will ultimately benefit the MX' ideals: "Here... Here's your friend. Come and get him. You just need to crack that shell open and destroy it. Come, we will work together and free him from that shell..." Sounds like something MX would do to trick Terra, doesn't it?

The opening theme for "Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]" will be a remix of "Traveling" by Utada Hikaru.

Nomura has stated that the opening will be a song by Utada Hikaru, the "a" indicating that it won't be any of the previously used songs. Thing is, Hikki is currently on a hiatus, meaning it cannot be a new song either. Therefor I assume they are going to use one of her older songs. Traveling comes to mind because it has a simmilar beat to Hikari and Pasion and the lyrics, too, seem to fit all the things from previous games that are coming together in this installment.

Braig was The Corrupter when he was an apprentice of Ansem's, and will resume the role if he is returned to human form.
I surmise that while Xehanort returned to a semblance of the evil mastermind he once was thanks to Braig's manipulations, Braig was the one that helped his plans along, resulting in the corruption of the other future nobodies:
  • He won Dilan and Aeleus over to their side by bringing them in on his own plan to become a keyblade master; tempted by the power to traverse worlds and wield legendary weapons, Dilan and Aeleus's loyalty was weakened, even though Braig had no intention of ever making good on his promise to share power.
  • Even, he corrupted by playing on his resentment of seeming to be second best to Xehanort as an apprentice and shifting it to resenting Ansem for "holding them back" from knowledge of the darkness.
  • Braig turned Ienzo against Ansem by playing on the boy's fear of death, caused by the unfortunate demise of his parents; Ienzo turned on Ansem in the mistaken impression that gaining understanding and control over the darkness would enable him to evade age and death indefinitely, as Master Xehanort planned to.
  • Isa, Lea, and the others besides Sora were all children in Radient Gardens Braig and Xehanort figured nobody would miss, and so they were abducted and experimented on; Isa in particular was corrupted by exposure to the darkness before he turned into a Nobody, resulting in Saix being considerably more evil than his human counterpart.
  • Confirmed in Dream Drop Distance: Braig and a Xehanort attempt to corrupt Sora, of all people. They even succeed, although Riku saves him from the darkness. It also turns out that Braig is a Xehanort.

Mirage Arena is The Internet
Specifically, the part of the internet dedicated to playing multiplayer games. But not just that, either. Its also every LAN or one-system network that has ever hosted a multiplayer game, Co-op, Competitive, Meta or Massively. So this means that Halo's Blood Gulch, Azeroth (Every individual server), and every Mortal Kombat arena exist in the Mirage Arena. Not the official canon world of each series, but only the maps where multiplayer/ non-canon activities take place. For example, while the Star Wars galaxy does not exist in Mirage Arena, every map from Star Wars: Battlefront does. This would explain why the outside of the world looks like Space Paranoids, and why all of the teleporters have a "digital" effect.

The very last boss of the very last game will be Kairi.
Throughout the game, Kairi will be kidnapped and experimented on by whichever incarnation of Xehanort is the Big Bad at the moment (or one of his minions). Since she has no darkness in her heart, Xehanort and his underlings will somehow try to extract the light in her heart and use some kind of polarizing machine to use Kairi's light to get rid of all the light in the multiverse and plunge it into a world of eternal darkness. (Or something like that.)

This, of course, will turn Kairi into a mentally unstable, suffering wreck, and the game will go to great lengths to show her ordeals throughout the story. When Sora, Riku and their companions arrive to defeat Xehanort and rescue Kairi, they'll notice Kairi's heavily unstable state and get really worried. Of course, they'll get all angsty at Xehanort for turning her into a half-dead wreck of a human being by tampering with her heart too much. We'll get the usual multi-tiered epic final battle against Xehanort, and it'll look like Sora's finally won, Xehanort is finally dead, and the story is finished.

But Kairi isn't back to normal again! Sora tries everything to restore her, but to no avail. Mickey (or some other mentor) tells the gang that Xehanort's tampering with the light in Kairi's heart has turned her into a ticking time bomb that threatens to engulf the entire multiverse in light and eliminate all darkness, and that pure light is just as destructive as pure darkness; there must be balance. Mickey explains further that the only way to save the multiverse is to seal Kairi's heart. With no other alternative, Sora must fight his friend if he is to prevent everything from being consumed. Kairi, now completely possessed by the light, grows a pair of angel wings, draws her Destiny's Embrace Keyblade, and the fight begins.

Throughout the whole final battle (which would probably be a Breather Boss), Sora will be extremely hesitant and unenthusiastic in his attacking, and will be visibly crying throughout the whole battle, Same for Kairi, to some extent, but she'll feel that she has no choice but to eliminate all darkness in the worlds to undo all the harm that Xehanort has done. We'll probably get some soft, sad remix of Kairi's theme as the battle music.]]

At the end, Kairi, now close to dying, will regain her senses, and thank Sora for ending her suffering and saving the worlds. She'll then dissolve into thousands of particles of light and float away. Although this could end up being Narm.

Sorry if that seemed random, but hey, it's Kingdom Hearts.

  • This really does not warrant being in all spoiler tags, since it doesn't spoil any relevant plot details from Canon, so I removed them. They giant Spoiler Tag was more irritating than anything.

Sora was originally meant to be born as a Princess of Hearts.

This is a completly serious guess, hear me out. So, Sora has always been known for representing "Light" in the KH Plot, despite not being completly pure himself, right? Well, what if this is a misconception? What if Sora actually is pure light and the darkness making up his Heartless Form and Anti Form actually solely stems from Vanitas, who was absorbed into him alongside Ven?

Let's go back, to the beginning of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Ventus is dying, dumped on Destiny Island's beach and his heart about to break into shards. Suddenly, a toneless voice. We can't hear the voice yet. There's no telling if it's male or female. Maybe it's neither. The voice turns out to be a heart of a human who is about to be born. (Originally, it was explicitely a yet unborn heart, but the "abortion" debate caused Nomura to rephrase the skript.) The yet nameless heart saves Ventus by connecting their hearts to each other. This fills the void in Ventus' heart up... With nothing but light.Isn't that strange? Should there have been some darkness as well, had this been a regular heart? How was the heart even able to travel so far as to reach Ven's heart.Let's move on. Only after the bond has been made, we hear the other heart's voice for the first time. It's... Sora's voice. Speaking in unison with Ventus.

Now, it's not a secret that later on, many people notice that Sora is neigh-identical to Ventus in everything but haircolor. So let's just assume that Sora's bond to Ventus had the same effect on him that it later had on Vanitas and caused him to grow up to look almost exactly like Ventus. We will just assume that both of Sora's parents were dark haired, explaining his brown hair. Must have overruled Ventus' blonde. Following me so far? Good.

Now, what if those effects were even greater than that? What if the bond to Ventus influenced just about everything about what Sora would become. His purity, his personality... "his" gender?

My point is, Sora clearly isn't a normal heart. The fact alone that he was able to save Ven indicates that he was exceptionally powerful even before his birth. Nomura has stated that his keyblade isn't Ven's either... And Bb S indicated that "natural" keyblade wielders are exceptionally rare. Another sign of him being special. He can heal other hearts and when Kairi was kidnapped from Radiant Garden, he (according to KH Ultimania) was the "light" that kept her from drowning and guided her to the shore. Later, he even became her vessel. Also, his bond with Kairi... this brings me to my next point.

This theory assumes that Sora was originally meant to be born as a girl and a Princess of Heart at that. It was Ven's bond to him which disqualified him by altering his/her predestined qualities too far. However, there always have to be seven Princesses of Hearts... Notice how Kairi is slightly younger than Sora. What if she was born in order to replace him?

This would explain their exceptionally strong bond. They're the same in a way, Kairi has taken his spot and in this sense, they have a connection just like Ven and Sora. It explains further why Xion's default form is Kairi, beyond Sora's love for her... maybe this is also what he would have looked like had Ventus never bonded to him? It would explain the dark hair. Naminé was born when their hearts were seperated, but even Ansem DW isn't sure how that happened. Personally, I doubt she actually is a Nobody. I am not sure what exactly she is either, but I am inclined to believe she is a mirror image of kind that was created when Sora's and Kairi's familiar hearts met.

Bottom Line: Sora was meant to be the "Original" Kairi. The current Kairi is his replacement. The existence of darkness in his heart is nothing but proof that Vanitas is winning in strength again. If he isn't stopped, he might end up consuming Sora.

The prologue of Kingdom Hearts III will have you playing as Kairi, holding the fort on Destiny Islands.

Throughout Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Kairi is left unprotected on Destiny Islands, and the story hints that Master Xehanort is after the Princesses of Heart to "cross their light with the thirteen darknesses" (see here). So, the prologue of KHIII will probably have you play as her on Destiny Islands as Master Xehanort (or one of his underlings, possibly Isa) and the Heartless/Nobodies/Unversed/enemies of the day invade and prepare to capture her to harvest her light. The prologue will end with a Hopeless Boss Fight against MX (or possibly Isa) and then switch to the main story with Sora and/or Riku with Donald and Goofy. Kairi's lack of Keyblade skills will be a good "excuse" for the playable character to be low-level and not have very many abilities.

Alternatively, it could be the previous Disney villains (including Pete) invading Destiny Islands a la KH3D opening, with Kairi having to fight them in succession and defeating them until just as she's about to fight Maleficent, MX or Isa appears, curb-stomps Maleficent, and initiates the aforementioned Hopeless Boss Fight.

  • Update from OP: Less likely. The secret ending to KH3D shows Kairi with Riku in Yen Sid's Tower, possibly to begin her Keyblade training. It's possible that we might get Kairi's Keyblade training as the next game's prologue, but it would be more of a surprise than the previous idea would have been if she stayed on Destiny Islands.

Roxas has got Ven's heart.
In the trailer to "birth by sleep", Ven asked Terra to "erase him".Terra actually tried to seal Ven within 6-year old Riku's body (knowing he would one day be a keyblade-wielder), but something went wrong and he ended up within 5-year old Sora instead. (Explaining the "You are not who I have chosen!!" that Terra says in KH2:Final Mix+ )When Sora's heart turned into a heartless, there was a "spare-heart" left, that his nobody got, wich gave him the EXACT SAME APPEARANCE as Ven. However, since it was actually "a sealed heart", he could not "use it" whenever he wanted and was still a nobody —- kind of. Sometimes, his (Ven's) emotions would break free and make him act like a normal teenager, much to the confusion of his "fellow-organization-members", but most of the time, he would just be like the others. This strange "feelings come — feelings go" was the actual reason, he left the Organization, because he wanted to know, if it had something to do with Sora. At least until he entered the fake twilight town, where he could feel fairly free. (For some reason, this troper hasn't found out yet) Axel felt that his new buddy had something, the others were missing, so he stuck as close to him as possible, hoping to getting this "something" too, later realizing, it must have been a heart.Since Roxas returned to Sora, Ven's heart did too, so we can expect Terra to show up once more, either having become insane and wanting to kill Sora, to free his friend, or as an ally, who comes out of nowhere and doesn't talk about his past. He would be over-protective for Sora, much to Riku's dismay, who would be thinking that this guy is up to something.
  • Confirmed. Sorta... Ven's heart went into Sora after Birth by Sleep, but it's unknown if their hearts merged like Terra and Master Xehanort's did or if it was akin to what Kairi's heart did in the first game.
    • Definitely confirmed. Nomura said something about Roxas getting Ven's heart when he was made, which is why Roxas resembles Ven.
    • Not confirmed. The closest thing Nomura said was that Roxas "may or may not" have had Ven's heart, but was not definite in his answer. Based on revelations in KH3D, it is starting to look like Roxas didn't get Ven's heart, and Ven's heart stayed with Sora during CoM.
    • It's all but confirmed that Roxas carried Ven's heart because the body Roxas "inhabits" during the year he's independent is actually Sora's body and that's what gives Roxas the second Keyblade eventually. However, Ventus' heart has no further influence on Roxas beyond the second Keyblade and affecting his appearance due to it being inactive and damaged. Over the course of his life Roxas developed his own sense of self and thus an own heart. All these claims that Roxas actually IS Ventus are bogus. They are two completely different and separate individuals who just happen to look very much alike due to the circumstances of Roxas' birth and origin.

The members of Organization XIII are all individuals with the makings of a keyblade wielder.
The primary stated requirement to wield the keyblade is an exceptionally strong heart. The members of Organization XIII were all defined by their exceptional willpower and the strength of their lost hearts. Xehanort also seemed to focus his attention on a keyblade wielder as his first host, considering first Ven and then turned his focus to Terra. Given that his purpose for Organization XIII was to gather a dozen extra hosts, it makes sense that he would focus on individuals with the makings of a wielder. He states he originally intended to use Riku, but turned his attention to Sora/Roxas in the end. Lea has gained the ability to wield a keyblade, most likely because of Ven, Roxas, or Xion. It stands to reason if three members can wield, perhaps others from that group have the same makings.
King Mickey will die in Kingdom Hearts III.
As much as I hate the idea, think about it. Sora basicly commits suicide in the first game, but returns later. They played with the idea in Kingdom Hearts II with Goofy. Not to mention Xion, Axel, and all of the other Organization 13 members who eventually will come back, but as their somebodies. The third game will be epic and to make it so, they are going to do something extreame. What else could make for an extreame moment in Kingdom Hearts history than King Mickey getting a dramatic death scene? It might happen.
  • It's unlikely Disney would allow Square to just kill off THE most famous Disney Character though.
Roxas is Vanitas.

This may at first sound like a redundant attempt to save the "Roxas is not a facette of Sora"-brand of theories, especially in the light of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], but let me explain. An interesting ammount of evidence can be found to support this theory.

Roxas, soon after his birth, slowly beginns to develope thought processes that would correspond to actual emotions, despite having no memories he could base such thought processes on. This is the basic premise that most of the afformentioned brand of theories were based on to begin with. Now, of course, Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] reveals that Nobodies develope hearts from their thoughts and connections to others over time, the speed varying from person to person, which makes Roxas case seem less strange. However, even in the light of this, Roxas' developement into a feeling being happens with a startling speed, especially compared to the other members of Organization XIII, who have been Nobodies for much longer, yet still seem very fake and hollow, even after having had more than 10 years of time to develope a newborn heart. In fact, Axel's growth of emotional capacity only seems to suddenly skyrocket once Roxas bonds with him, implying that it's Roxas' heart that speeds up his growth, rather than the other way around, which doesn't make sense, considering how young and underdeveloped Roxas' replacement-heart for Sora's should be by this point. A case in point could be made that Xion, as a Replica, might have possessed a much more developed heart to begin with and could have caused both their growths to accelerate, but this idea fails when you realize that she was just as hollow and awkward as Roxas himself in the beginning, albeit in a different way. Seeing how Roxas is the constant between Axel's and Xion's sudden growth, he must be the cause, which would mean his heart must either have had an incredible sudden growth spurt...Or he had a rather developed heart to beginn with and it only needed a "push" to awaken.

Now, the Kingdom Hearts Ultimania Book for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep hints that Ventus' heart might have remained within Roxas and that this might be the cause for him looking exactly like Ventus, but there's one crucial flaw in this: Both, Kingdom Hearts coded and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] strongly imply that Roxas is to be considered an existence seperate from Ventus. Likewise, Ventus' heart was supposed to be pure light, yet Roxas is capable of opening Corridors of Darkness and his personality, while resembling Ventus' a lot more than Sora's, is also lot more aggressive, moody and overall negative. He does a lot of things that a "Heart of Pure Light" would never do... Like senselessly destroying a computer, just to express his anger. This is something Ventus would have never done, no matter the circumstances. However, it's also made very clear that Roxas' heart is very different from Sora's, which is striking, especially compared to Axel/Lea, who apparently had his old heart and his new heart merge seamlessly upon being turned back to normal. The seamless merging-process failed with Sora, as Roxas clearly retains a seperate conciousness. The question is: Why? If he is neither Ventus, nor a natural recreation of Sora's heart, then what is his heart?

Nomura himself implying that Roxas might hold Ven's heart despite evidence to the contrary seems especially strange, as the Ultimania was likely released in a stage where the plot of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] had long been written already. So, while Nomura is known to occasionally retcon details, why would he outright lie at the fans? That's where this theory comes into play. What if he didn't lie? What if Roxas did hold on to Ventus' heart- but just not the half of it we assumed it to be?

Due Vanitas' physical appearance, which was caused by Ventus' initial bond to Sora, people often tend to forget that Vanitas is, in fact, not Sora's Evil Twin... He's Ventus'. It has been stated that Vanitas's "true" form is a faceless being simmilar to an heartless and Sora's appearance was only a sideeffect. Note, when Vanitas possesses Ventus, Ventus' hair and face don't change, unlike when Xehanort possesses Terra. Regardless of what he appeared to look like, Vanitas is basically just a disembodied shard of Ventus' heart. Which means that if his heart was to enter a vessel and shape it, it wouldn't end up looking like a black haired Sora. It'd look like Ventus. This would perfectly explain why Sora's body changed the way it did (even if the changes were comparably small), upon becoming Roxas.

Further, let's move on to the next exhibit: The Kingdom Hearts Novels. While generally not considered direct Canon, their content has a certain tendency to be eventually made into Canon. Knowing this, the details the Novels reveal on Vanitas' past are... interesting. They describe his initial personality as very, very simmilar to Ventus', except more aggressive, depressed and moody... Starting to sound like somebody else? The novels further explain that Vanitas only turned into the cruel psychopath he was out of despair, loneliness, and a spiral of selfharm and selfworth issues. Meaning that he, in fact, wasn't "evil" to the core, just "dark", which makes sense. This fits with this theory, since it means that if Vanitas was to start over as a blank, like Ventus did after having his heart shattered, he'd likely start with this very moody-Ventus personality again... Which applies to Roxas. Like Ventus, after the initial seperation, he started Zombie-like and amnesiac before his personality suddenly started to show. Remember, Ventus shattered Vanitas' heart in their Final Battle. It's not far-off to assume that this had a simmilar effect on him as Master Xehanort's initial seperation of them had no Ventus. Very well, let's move on.

In connection with the assumption that Vanitas wasn't evil to the core and deserves to be saved like everybody else connected to Sora... How come he does not show up in Data Naminé's list of people connected to Sora then, when he clearly *is*, through Ventus? The answer is simple: He *does* show up... As Roxas.

Next up, superficialities, aside from his looks: Roxas wields the Keyblade forehanded, rather than backhanded. While he does not employ Riku's battle stance, as Vanitas does, this still closer to him than it is to Ventus, who wields his keyblade backhanded. Of course, this could be a simple effect of his connection to Sora's memories. He is deriving his battle style from Sora's. Still, it's worth mentioning. Something simmilarly insignificant, yet worth mentioning: "Vanitas" means "Emptiness" and Nomura stated this meaning was chosen on purpose, possibly even before it was decided he'd look like Sora. Now, Vanitas, himself, while being called "empty" by Xehanort is clearly not. He has wishes, desires, emotions and a lot of other things that defy the concept of "empty". This bears a striking resemblance to how Nobodies are threated in KH2, especially Roxas, making it possible that the name was supposed to be a hint. Probably coincidentally, but also worth noticing: Both names end on "as".

Next up: Evidence in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] (Which I actually played, rather than just reading spoilers, you mind.) Needless to say, this section contains some spoilers, so read with caution.Vanitas appears in the game for all but 2 seconds, talking in unision with Young Master Xehanort. This brief scene is very possibly just a vision Sora has upon hearing YMX speak, though it makes you wonder how active Vanitas' conciousness is within him by that point. Flash forward to Sora's Mind Screw Royal in The World That Never Was: In his dream, Sora encounters Roxas... Who promptly states that things aren't well the way they are and infuses Sora with his memories. All at once, suddenly, with little explanation and not preparing him at all, playing directly into Xehanort's plans with it. Now... Why would Roxas do this? The "Roxas" Sora meets clearly is completly aware of what is going on and, unlike the other dream-people Sora meets, actually speaks to him for a while, implying he is doing the memory transfer conciously and willingly. However, all the memory transfer accomplishes at that point is to scare Sora so baddly that he goes into an Heroic BSoD and finally has his heart shattered by Xemnas, which benefits Team Xehanort greatly. So if Roxas was even one bit aware of what was going on he knew this was going to happen, and he still did this. Why? Being allied to Xehanort somehow (which is tragic) seems to be the only plausible explanation. Also, look at Roxas face when he transfers the memories. His expression looks surprisingly like Vanitas', when he held the X-Blade and challenged Ventus within their Dive Into Heart and is pretty much identical to Vanitas' expression in afformentioned One-Scene Wonder moment. Even more striking: If you take a close look at the timelines of Riku's and Sora's stories, you will notice that Roxas' disappearance from Sora's dream almost immediately coincides with Riku's battle against Anti Black Coat, a Nightmare-Type Dream Eater, who looks exactly like what Vanitas' "true" form has been described to look like, even featuring a simmilar battle style. A point could be made that for Sora only a few seconds pass between Roxas' disappearance and hearing Riku's post-battle pleas for him to wake up, but remember that Sora is dreaming. It was been outright stated that time doesn't flow normally within his dreams, so the entire battle against Anti Black Coat could easily have taken place in those "few seconds" between Roxas's disappearance and Riku's pleadings. Anti Black Coat being Vanitas is likely, due to all the simmilarities and Vanitas being pure darkness at the core (Though, should this theory be true, it is likely that Roxas' friendships with Axel, Xion and the virtual Twilight Gang gained him a bit of Light), so it would make sense that he'd manifest as a Dream Eater within Sora's dreamworld. After all, Riku, too, manifested as a Dream Eater, albeit as a Spirit-Type, rather than a Nightmare. It would make sense that Roxas, sensing Riku trying to interfere, "beamed out", in order to stall for time while Sora succumbs to his BSOD. Anti Black Coat being slain by Riku means nothing. He might simply have disintegrated to return to the depths of Sora's subconcious... Where Riku later finds Roxas, alongside Ven and Xion.

Summing this theory up, basically Roxas and Vanitas were the same entity all along and Vanitas basically failed twice at living a "complete" life, despite not even being a bad person and genuinely caring for someone the second time around, which would only add insult to the injury. Note how the Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Novels implied that part of Vanitas' issues came from the fact that he found himself unable to touch anything without destroying it by impuls... And now connect this with Roxas' experience of being forced to kill Xion, one of his two dearest friends. It would make his sudden rush of rage even more justified, given that this experience probably ripped open old wounds from his previous life's trauma, even if he didn't remember conciously.

The only thing that appears unclear in this case is Roxas' motivation for aiding the Xehanorts in Kingdomhearts 3 D Dream Drop Distance. Xemnas destroyed his second chance at a life. Why would he want to aid him? The only explanation I can find: He is desperate, realizing that being merged with Sora forever is not a good prospect for him after all, despite what Naminé had said. His dialouge before the Memory Transfer seems to support this. Perhaps he was led to believe that destroying Sora's heart might be his only chance to break free, unable to believe that Sora might be able to rescue him, Xion and Ventus, thus preforming a Face–Heel Turn in a desperate attempt to escape Sora's heart? (Possibly taking Xion along with him, seeing how he clearly had the memories of her, if not her name.)

Only time will show if this theory is true, but if it was it would be a genius move by Nomura to create a character that embodies "Dark Does Not Have To Be Evil": Making us sympatize with Roxas for 2 games and then spending an entire other game making us hate Vanitas, while leaving us unaware that the two of them are basically the same person would serve to create a character that perfectly shows one of the central points of the series: Evil does not equal Darkness. Evil is something that can be shaped within the Darkness.

Marvel will cross-over with the series.
Since Disney owns Marvel, Square Enix would just need to get in contact with Marvel through Disney. With regards to the actual crossover, I highly doubt the entire universe would be an ideal setting. Since this would be yet another third-party crossover out of the Square/Disney thing, the most ideal crossover would be a guest super hero appearing as a party member of sorts. While I would love to see Sora and the guys fight alongside Spider-Man or the Avengers against maybe Doctor Doom or Magneto, it just doesn't fit in. Maybe you can count in Ghost Rider or Thor or something.

On the other hand, Marvel would be able to create a comic crossing over the mainline 616 universe with the series. Hell, if they can pull off Marvel vs. DC, JLA/Avengers, Avengers Vs. Transformers and (I know this doesn't really fit in but it's close) Avengers Vs. X-Men, I am looking forward to a Marvel vs. Kingdom Hearts.

  • Oh god... just imagine Deadpool confronting a JRPG villain.

The seven protectors of light will expand to thirteen before confronting the Xehanorts in the Keyblade Graveyard
.The basic problem with the seven vs. thirteen scenario set up by the end of 3D is that, given how powerful the Xehanorts are, seven protectors isn't going to be enough. Besides, in the Ultimania Nomura implied that Terra, Ven, and Aqua would become part of the seven protectors. All well fine and good, but that means there's actually too many heroes for all of them to be part of the seven: Sora, Riku, Mickey, TVA, Lea, and Kairi (8). Then I realized... if you look at it a certain way, there are thirteen heroes in the Kingdom Hearts series so far! There's the eight mentioned above, plus Roxas, Xion, Donald, Goofy, and Namine. The only one who has not been shown to have any sort of fighting ability is Namine, but given that she's a Nobody made when the heart of one Keyblade wielder left the body of another, suggesting she has the potential as well. So, I think Kingdom Hearts III will revolve not only around protecting the princesses, but also rescuing the other good guys to bolster their numbers in preparation for the showdown with the Xehanorts.
  • It should be noted that Lea wasn't specifically confirmed either way, not to mention that Xehanort made a remark about one of the remaining three being on his side (much like how he planned on turning Sora into the thirteenth Xehanort), most likely alluding to Terra(nort). An alternate theory that seems to be spreading in some places is that with Kairi serving double-duty as both a princess and a protector, the protectors (if the configuration is indeed Sora, Riku, Kairi, Terra, Aqua, Ven, and Mickey) and princesses add up to 13 total, counterbalancing the thirteen hearts of darkness Xehanort is gathering. This, however, seems shot down by Master Xehanort speaking of how the χ-blade was broken into twenty pieces, seven light and thirteen darkness.
    • But that would mean Alice has to fight.
  • Actually, if you think about it, there are 7 protectors, and 7 princesses, with 1 being a member of both (Kairi). so, 6+1+6...

The world Spira will appear in Kingdom Hearts III.

Bear with me here, so, we've already had YRP and Tidus, Wakka and Auron appear, so why not have them appear in their own world? So, in 3D it is stated there are seven sleeping worlds, right? It, as far as my knowledge goes, says there are more. With that, it could be possible that Spira was sleeping, which is why Tidus and Wakka are on Destiny Islands, Auron's in the Underworld and YRP are in Radiant Garden. While sleeping, Yuna is on her pilgrimage, and, in the visit in III it would now be in it's X-2 state, and Sora/Riku/Kairi/whoever is thrown in the middle of Chapter 3, where YRP fights the aeons. Later, he comes back to help the girls fight Vegnagun, but not against Shuyin, as they wish to fight him themselves.

The "Seven Hearts of Light" needed to make the X-blade are going to be those connected to Sora
In 3D, Xehanort explains how the X-blade was split into 7 lights and 13 darknesses. In this attempt to re-create the X-blade and start up the Keyblade War, the 13 darknesses are the vessels possessed by Xehanort, Mickey assumed that the seven hearts are the keyblade wielders consisting of himself, Sora, Riku, Terra, Aqua, Ven, and one unknown, but there is another option. Sora's heart has been connected to six others, making seven. Sora, Kairi, Roxas, Namine, Xion, Ven, and Vanitas. Kairi's heart rested in Sora during the first game, as does Ven's heart. Roxas and Xion were created from Sora, and the secret report stated the same was true of Namine, who was a mix of Sora and Kairi, which was why she could specifically alter the memories of Sora and those who know him. Vanitus is connected to Sora through Ven, and was originally a faceless doll until Sora linked to Ven's heart and he gained Sora's features.
  • You are confusing something here. The "7 hearts of light" are the Princesses of Heart. The "7 protectors of light" are the keyblade wielders. They are not the same. The protectors of light are meant to guard the princesses, most likely not to become the X-Blade.

The original unified world as depicted in Kairi's Grandma's story is our very own Earth.

The current fragmented Realm of Light was rebuilt from the light of children's hearts. It stands to reason that instead of rebuilding a world fashioned on our old one. It was fashioned after what the children of our world knew of world or at least things with the most innocence or light came through. Thus, a realm based on Animation, Films and Video Games came into being.

The Worlds in Between are worlds made from the non-AniFilmGame fragments of our world that children can remember of it.

And the Realm of Darkness is made from the leftover fragments cast into darkness from the events that split up our world in the first place.

This explains why parts from our world is seen is various places, such as the middle of London. (It is either a fragment of the original London itself or most likely a recreation of London based on the Peter Pan film explaining why London is attached to Neverland and why Neverland's keyhole is not actually in Neverland but in London, the keyhole gravitated to the fragment closest to original world.)

The very end of Kingdom Hearts 3...
Will be set on the Destiny Islands, when everyone (Sora, Roxas, Xion, Riku, Kairi, Namine, Lea, and the trios of Ven, Terra and Aqua, and Mickey, Donald and Goofy) will be back together. This is when Sora's parents will finally appear in person, and are quite surprised to discover that due to Sora's actions, all of the former Nobodies/Replicas have their own bodies, and as a result, they now have THREE teenage children (Sora, Roxas and Xion) instead of just one. Likewise, Kairi's parents will be stunned when they find that instead of just one daughter, they now have twins. (Riku's parents will also be present, and somewhat relieved to learn that he didn't bring home any new siblings.)
  • Unless, of course, Riku brings back Repliku, in which case his parents will have to deal with having identical twins.

Princes of Heart Exist, but are excessively rare
. . . Had to do it.But seriously, In the game, it says that light and darkness is in equal balance. While girls are more common in terms of exsistance, boys are completly the opposite. So every once and a while, a male 'Prince' of Heart exists. As such, they are born in a Cain and Abel sort of lifestyle, leaving the purer sibling to die because they refuse to attack thier darker sibling.So what Xehanort was planning wasn't to make the X-Blade, but to prove the legend true. The babble about the X-Blade was all just a cover.

Mickey will become the 13th receptacle of Xehanort

Mickey will be the 13th receptacle. His shoes sport the X mark. Plus, he wields a keyblade from the realm of darkness (the only character in the whole serie to do so). Also, Master Xehanort during 3D's cutscene showed some respect to him, almost marking him as an equal. What better receptacle there is for Xehanort than his antithesis ?

Ellone will appear in KH3, and she'll have a Big Damn Heroes moment.
Having a time traveler on your side ought to even the odds against Xehanort.

Sora is the most important person in the universe
Keyblades are given to others with the Rite of Succession. In effect, a Keyblade wielder is chosen not by the Keyblade, but by another wielder; the Keyblade just allows or rejects the choice. Sora, however, is unique in that he wsn't chosen by any wielder. He was chosen by the Keyblade itself, and by extension, the Light. The Light knew that Xehanort would unravel reality if allowed to continue with his evil ways, so it sought out an individual with the power to stand against him. And the individual it found, that was Sora. The Light caused Riku's keyblade to leave him and go to Sora, even without the Rite. And when Riku called the Keyblade back to him (it was his, after all), it rejected him, and chose Sora as its wielder of its own accord. Not only did this give the Light its chosen hero, it lead to Riku balancing light and darkness within himself, at which point the Light chose to give him a new Keyblade. Sora is no mere Keyblade Wielder; he is the Chosen Hero of Keyblades, the one with the power to save the universe from Xehanort's evil, and Riku is the Guardian of the Light, with the power to keep the light even if the universe falls into darkness.
  • The problem with this theory is that keyblades can be from either light or darkness. Just as far as we know the kingdom key D, Vantas's keyblade, Void Gear, and maybe master xehanorts are the only darkness based keyblades we have seen.

Saix changed after joining the Organization.
Not just the way Axel thinks he did, though. Xemnas found out he was planning to betray them, and turned him into a Xehanoob ahead of schedule.

Demyx wasn't lazy.
He was actually trying to undermine the Organization from the inside because he knew he was regrowing a heart. Betraying the Organization would be suicidal because Xemnas and Saix would never let him live in peace after that, but he resolved never to render any real assistance toward building Kingdom Hearts. He was perfectly willing to laze about, until Roxas/Sora started killing off Organization members, at which point self-preservation took over.

Lea's keyblade
is named "Flurry of the Dancing Flames."Why not?

Zexion and Axel were already becoming part Xehanort

Since Isa and Braig's physical changes in appearance after becoming Nobodies were attributed to becoming part Xehanort, this could also explain why Zexion and Axel appear older than Ienzo and Lea. Their morphing into Xehanort caused them to grow older in appearance, even though Nobodies are confirmed not to age. This probably happened without their knowledge. Axel becoming more Xehanort-like could also account for Lea's sudden ability to manifest a Keyblade, even though he showed no hints of having the potential to when seen in Birth By Sleep.

  • And this explains why Ienzo looks about 20 after being reconstituted how, exactly?
  • Just because they returned to human form doesn't mean they would have lost whatever effect Xehanort had on their hearts. Lea looks about that age too when he's revived, and it doesn't seem like he could have been that old when he lost his heart.
  • Perhaps, but until the next game supports/rejects this theory, I'm calling Immortality Begins at Twenty.

Marluxia's real power is the cure element.
If you look at the cure series of spells they all use plant imagery. Now who has control over Flowers? What exactly this does for him I actually haven't figured out, aside from possibly explaining his insane HP total.

Kingdom Hearts and the X-Blade are the Garden of Eden and the Cherubic Blade that guarded it, literally.
Yen Sid explains on Kairi's grandmother's story; saying that in the beginning, the Light was everywhere but especially in Kingdom Hearts, and the X-Blade guarded it. Then people desired this power, and that broke it into pieces and hid it away.

Only one person can pass the Mark of Mastry exam at a time.
In Birth By Sleep, only Aqua passed and only Riku passed in 3D.
  • Eraqus specifically said that "Both of you may prevail, or neither." Yen Sid said that if both Sora and Riku unsealed the seven sleeping keyholes and made it back to his tower unharmed, he would make them both masters.

There will be one more game before KHIII
It will involve trying to save Terra, Aqua and Ventus. And judging by the secret ending, Kairi will be a playable character, as well as Sora and Riku. Sora will try to wake up Ventus, Riku will save Terra from Xehanort's influence, and Kairi will rescue Aqua from the Realm of Darkness. Which makes total sense, considering she rescued Sora and Riku from there at the end of KHII.
  • I'm fairly certain the secret message in 3D (let alone the plot of 3D itself) hints at the next game finally being the long-awaited KHIII. That being said, there's still the possibility/rumors of BBS Vol. 2 out there...

Maleficent is already one of the XIII Xehanorts
She just doesn't know it yet, as the relevant bits deep in her heart are dormant, having been left there when Master Xehanort told her about the Princesses of Heart back before Birth by Sleep.

There will be a giant mook fight outside of the Guardians of Light vs Seekers of Darkness fight.
On Team Yen Sid will be Spirit Dream Eaters that Sora recruited, possibly lesser Nobodies recruited by ex-Organization members with the knowledge that Xemnas conned them, slim possibility of Maleficents old mooks assuming they might be able to recruit her. On Xehanort's Team will be Heartless, Nightmare Dream Eaters, and Unversed churned out by Vanitas.

In KH3, we will revisit Wonderland.
The events will be based on Through the Looking Glass, and Alice will Take a Level in Badass.

How Xehanort was able to predict Sora's movements.
In 3D, when Sora has just entered The World that Never Was, and he and Young Xehanort are conversing about how Xehanort planned everything, Sora asks how Xehanort knew he would be in the Secret Place on Destiny Islands, and YX tells him that it was because of her: Kairi flies out of the Secret place and disappears just like in KH 1. Still, that makes very little sense on its own...

Until we learn about the Recusant's Sigil. Placing an X on something, from a piece of clothing to a name to a scar, allows Xehanort to track that thing. Before she ended up on the islands, Kairi was in the possession of Apprentice Xehanort, who 3D has also implied had his memories of being Master Xehanort all along. What am I getting at here?

Kairi has the Recusant's Sigil somewhere we can't see it. On the bottoms of her feet, perhaps... or under her clothes.

It's why she wasn't able to escape the Organization when they were looking for her in KH2. It's why Xehanort knew to look for keyblade wielders like Sora on Destiny Islands... It's why he likely knows Master Yen Sid is training her. And he's planned accordingly.

  • You might be on to something here. Xehanort captured Kairi during the fall of Hollow Bastion, but instead of keeping her, he threw her into the oceans of the worlds, and she landed on the Destiny Islands. Marking her with a Recusant's Sigil would accomplish two objectives: 1. Make it easy to retrieve her when he had captured the other six princesses, and 2. Track the keyblade wielders that he knows are on Destiny Islands.

Theory on a Marvel Crossover

There is going to be one world for Marvel and it's going to follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How it's going to go is simple.

Sora will visit the world several times throughout his journey and each time he'll do something different.

He'll first meet Tony Stark and work though his movie. Then he'll leave and continue his journey. Eventually, he'll go back and meet Bruce Banner while we work with his movie. Then he'll leave again and continue to fight the bad guys of other worlds. After that we'll go back and meet up with Iron Man for the sequel. Once again (I'm starting to see a theme here) he'll work on Thor's movie. After that Sora will see Steve Rogers waking up from his Timeskip. He'll leave once again and come back and this time will meet up with all of the heroes that were on this journey.

  • If the game allows you to play as Sora, Riku, and Kairi, they will encounter Nick Fury, who will task them to meet with the heroes.
    • Sora will recruit Tony Stark since they're both the fun loving heroes. Iron Monger will be a warm-up boss before fighting Whiplash.
    • Riku will recruit Bruce Banner since they both have that inner darkness thing going on with them.
    • Kairi will recruit Thor since they both have a form of mythology to their characters.

The new Organization XIII Will involve villains from the many different worlds of Kingdom Hearts III

Basic idea is simple. For this let's use New Orleans for an example. Sora will fight Dr. Facilier in the world and will meet up with Xehanort. We'll think that He's just there to mess with Sora's head. But in reality he just wants to get Facilier recruited onto New Organization XIII. He might even pull him out of whatever hell he was dragged into at the end of the movie.

Nomura will never explain any of the Kudzu Plot in either the games nor the Ultimania.

Because apparently, the Japanese have a fetish for unexplainable weird stuff, so Nomura's pandering to them, not giving any care about us more logical Westerners.

  • First off, Nomura already explained most of the Kudzu Plot in the Ultimania and the games. He just goes on to either make more Kudzu Plot or contradict previous explanations later. Secondly, since when has the west been in any way logical? Certainly not after Lost and Mass Effect 3.

During the final portions of KHI, Riku went on a journey through time.
3D has already established that, in order to time travel, one needs to cast away (at least, temporarily) their body. Now then, recall what happened to Riku in the first game: Xehanort's Heartless expelled Riku's heart from his own body after Riku's act of defiance in Hollow Bastion. Going off of this, Riku could've traveled back to the time of BBS and met Aqua or bore witness to Aqua unintentionally allowing Kairi to inherit Destiny's Embrace. Then, upon returning to his body at the end of the game, the memories left in his heart subconsciously spurred him on to go exploring in the Realm of Darkness sometime later. Riku managed to bump into Aqua and possibly save her (somehow, depending on where in the timeline this takes place); Aqua, in turn, granted him the keychain for Destiny's Embrace (or maybe, if Riku directly interacted with her, left it for him there... somehow), which is how he was able to give it to Kairi in II.

Nomura... you magnificent bastard, I played your game!

The first few worlds of Kingdom Hearts III will have you play as Kairi, before shifting to Sora

Similarly to Roxas' part of II, you play as someone other than Sora, but unlike Roxas' part of II, you have a little elbow room, in the form of two or three worlds, maybe based off of TV Shows.

After Kairi is done with The Mystery Shack, The Tri-State Area, and Saint Canard, we shift to Sora, flying through the woods with a Komory Bat (Riku's, probably) on his back and a couple more Dream Eaters by his side, when suddenly, a cackle is heard in the distance. 'The Encounter' starts playing, and leaping onto the scene... The Headless Horseman!

Mickey Mouse...
  • wields a Keyblade of Darkness
  • possesses an Organization XIII trenchcoat
  • was present during the Gathering of the Thirteen
  • is a vessel for Xehanort
    • To elaborate even further on this point and the idea that Mickey might die in the next game

    *Mickey has the dark keyblade
    *Everyone says that the brightest light had the deepest darkness.
    *Mickey feels incredible guilt over the fate worse than death bestowed on Terra, Ven, and Aqua.
    *It is implied throughout the games that Mickey feels weak for not being able to save anyone. Remember the original “Ansem?”
    *Xehanort still needs that 13th vessel.
    *Nomura admitted that with every game he makes up the story as he goes along just to give a shocking ending
So here’s my reasoning. Nomura wants a shocking ending? What would be more shocking than the death of Mickey stinkin’ Mouse?!?!? And here’s how it’s gonna go down. The whole series had made a point that the brightest light has the greatest darkness. Mickey, who has been seen as the purest character should have a deep darkness. He’s unleashed the potential darkness to enter the Realm of Darkness where we find him in the end of the first game. What is his darkness that was unleashed? His guilt over the deaths of his friends whom he blames himself for, and later the original Ansem whom it’s been confirmed Mickey viewed him like a father. Oh, and not to mention all the worlds that were brutally destroyed before he set out to find out what was going on. His guilt is the most noticeable in the latest game, KH3:DDD when Xehanort mentioned said deaths to a very angry Mickey. The minute it’s mentioned, Mickey looks downwards sadly and says,

“I couldn’t finda way to save ‘em….. but I wanted to believe that their sacrifice stopped you for good…” He pauses and his voice cracks as he asks the simple question that’s probably been plaguing his character the majority of the games.

“Why? How was I so blind?”

And now we get into speculation of the next game. I believe that his dark keyblade will finally come into play as a plot point. Since he’s been holding the darkness in for so long, only letting it come out a few times (Kingdom Hearts II anyone?) he would be the perfect vessel for Xehanort. I think the next game will have Xehanort mess with Mickey’s head to try to make him succumb to darkness. So how is he gonna do it? Kill Minnie. I know, I’m a terrible person for thinking this, but you remember Mickey’s reaction when he thought Goofy was dead?

No grieving. Just anger.

“They’ll pay for this." Now if Mickey reacted that way for just a friend and barely retain his darkness, imagine his reaction if Xehanort killed his own wife? To go even farther… Xehanort can control people with darkness inside their hearts to do whatever he wants against their will. What if Xehanort catches Mickey off guard and takes brief control then makes him kill his own wife? Now that would definably open up all the darkness Xehanort needs for his 13th vessel.

So all of this is conjecture, but if Nomura wants a shocking ending, he would make Mickey somehow the final boss. We find Mickey at the end of KH 1. It would be a ridiculous sense of irony if King Micanort was the final boss of KH3. And think about how it ties things together! We would have gone full circle in this ending. If Mickey is killed this way, it would be symbolic of Xehanort, the deepest darkness would go down with King Mickey, the brightest light.

Star Wars level
  • Now that Disney bought Star Wars, KHIII will feature a Star Wars themed level. Imagine a boss battle with Darth Vader...
    • And it will end with a Trench Run of the Death Star in a Gummi Ship.

Gilgamesh will be in KHIII

I mean after all, whoever the protagonist is he (she?) has a magic weapon noone else has, of COURSE Gil is going to challenge him for it.

He'll also make a comment about being 'late to the party'.

Data Sora, Data Riku, Data Roxas and Data Kairi will be in KHIII

In Kingdom Hearts coded not only does Data Roxas seem to be in pain, Data Riku mentions that Kairi and himself are or had at one time felt Hurt and since Sora's supposed to save everyone plus considering that Maleficent has interest in the Data worlds as well according to 3D maybe we'll see the Datascape and have Sora help Data Riku(then again Data Sora may have took that hurt away so Sora might not need to help him), Data Kairi(that is if it hasen't gotten it's Data equivilant of the heart) and Data Roxas(by dumping him into the Data Twilight Town since he wants to go there)

In the end, it won't be Sora, Terra, or any of the heroes who bring an end to Master Xehanort.

It'll be the darkness itself. Considering how use of darkness seems to eventually backfire on everyone (and Riku had to go through hell and back to be able to use darkness without consequence like he does now), why should Xehanort be immune to its corrupting effects? It'd make a nice Break the Haughty moment too, showing Xehanort in his final moments that despite his "destiny", he's really no better than any of the other villains we've seen get consumed by the darkness.

Kingdom Hearts III will feature Riku and Kairi getting their own companions, before reuniting to face the Xehanort for the last time.

Riku's companions will be King Mickey and either Lea or an Aqua rescued from the Realm of Darkness

Kairi's Companions will be Queen Minnie and either Mulan or Merida.

Agrabah, Beast's Castle, Castle of Dreams, Dwarf Woodlands, Enchanted Dominion, & Wonderland will reappear in Kingdom Hearts III.
These 6 worlds are home to a Princess of Heart each and I find it more likely that they'll be the seven lights instead if the keybearersnote . Agrabah and Castle of Dreams would probably be based on King of Thieves and A Twist In Time toowhy? .

  • One of the problems with adapting "A twist in time" is that Tremaine and her daughters were sort of burned to death in Birth by Sleep. Unless their world falling to darkness and coming back brought them Back from the Dead. Unless maybe when the pumpkin blew up, they got thrown into a Plot Hole and crawled out.

Kingdom Hearts III will end with the worlds restored to the original state as a single, united world
The world was shattered by the first keyblade war. It just seems thematically appropriate that the second war Xehanort's causing would cause them to be reunited.

Larxene and Marluxia were sent to Castle Oblivion because Xehanort knew they weren't of any use to him
Xehanort had wanted to gather thirteen appropriate vessels. However, Marluxia and Larxene were a little too strong and would have resisted his attempts to make them develop his heart, or put his heart into their vessels. He was afraid Marluxia might have actually turned against him and have been able to overthrow the Organization, thus throwing a wrench in his plans. Larxene meanwhile had no qualms about turning her knives on her fellow nobodies. So he sent them to Castle Oblivion to keep them away from his plans...while Luxord, Xigbar, and Xaldin went out to look for new potential vessels. As for Vexen, Lexaeus, and Zexion? They weren't suitable for one reason or another. (Vexen and Zexion probably would have caught on) Zexion in particular was ordered dead by Saïx because he was going to catch on and could have spilled the beans. Along with Xigbar and Saïx, Demyx, Luxord, Xaldin, and Axel were suitable hosts...and Xehanort attempted to transplant his heart into them. This can be shown when Demyx suddenly undergoes a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass moment...it was cause Xehanort started to control him. Sora unintentionally gives him a Mercy Kill. So Luxord and Demyx's somebodies might have to worry about having been a recusant... scary.

As darkness becomes light, light falls into darkness
Sora and Riku embark on the Mark of Mastery Exam, a journey both inside and outside to improve their skills and remedy the darkness inside them. The drop mechanic is a measure of immersion, how far they are within themselves. In each world they will journey from the obvious world to the internal world/memories/heart. In doing so they prove their mastery of the keyblade, while exorcising their own inner darkness. At first, this will be Riku, but as they fight the dark within him, Vanitas/All Hell will break loose within Sora. This may/will lead to battles of the past combined with battles of the present being fought at the same time. (Including just back to back Xemnas and Ansem and possibly a reprised Organization XIII). Riku and Sora will develop trust for each other/serious bromance. Oh, and inside Sora is where a lot of fun characters are kept, ie Roxas, Xion, Ven, and Vanitas, maybe even Axel (within Roxas' memories, another level of dream.) Also expect a journey to the Realm of Darkness for Aqua and the real Ansem. Finally, a race with Vanitas/Xehanort to save the princesses of the heart/Kairi. This allows a full cast revival as well as a setup for epic battles in Kingdom Hearts 3. There's going to be a lot of heads to get inside. Finally, you get to watch the game get inside your head. Some other speculated events: A battle between Sora and Riku for Kairi, Watch Roxas wipe the floor with the entire universe to help rescue Namine and Xion. In fact, I can safely say I'm not alone in hoping for badass from start to finish. Oh, and in conclusion, they pass the exam.
  • Judging by the boxart and the recent trailer, I think the tagline refers to Riku's venture into the light coming full circle, whereas Sora somehow falls to the lure of The Dark Side, most likely manipulated by Xehanort himself.

The meaning of "not the same Sora we know"
. . .Is alluding that Sora will not be acting as his plucky, cheerful, confident self, and will instead be very serious, irritated, impatient, and use strongarm tactics so he can get saving Terra, Aqua, and Ven over with and go back home with Kairi and Riku.
  • Or that this Sora is more serious, arrogant, and dismotivated.
    • A change in personality is possible, but I doubt he'll turn arrogant or ruthless. Considering his heart's supposed to have almost no darkness and all..
    • Then again, Darkness can grow. Antiform is evidence of some dark influence. And while Sora may have nearly the strongest Heart shown in the K Hverse, he was designed from the start to be nowhere near as natural a hero as Riku.
    • On that note, while he wasn't overly serious (which in itself could be a coping mechanism), Sora was fairly impatient and more willing to use violence in KH2.
    • I figured Anti Form was more of a stress thing than darkness. But if not, it's proven in the series that all that's bad about darkness is bad people using it. Since Sora's good, maybe it means the player can have him use dark powers for good?

We will get to see some of the Thirteen Darknesses.
And I don't mean some fragments of a jumped up Keyblade wielder, I mean the real, honest-to-god founts of pure darkness. The seven Lights exist as the Princesses, why wouldn't the Darknesses be around somewhere? Bonus points if they are Heartless-like creatures that team up with the heroes.

The alternate Monstro scenes were because Xehanort just wanted to mess with Sora.
He's taunting him by appearing as Riku, but he's fully in control.

Squall changed his name to Leon because he considers himself a failure as a SeeD.
What was SeeD founded to do? Fight sorceresses. What did Squall fail to do in the fall of Hollow Bastion? Defeat the Sorceress Malifacent.

Some worlds are much large than they are shown to be.
Destiny Islands consists of a single town on two very small islands. The fact that these islands have an electric grid (as shown by power lines in KHII, and that the residents posses some manufactured goods, would indicate that the islands are a single location on a much larger planet. The islands are not shown to have the factories/power plants necessary to Produce these things.

Twilight town, while seemingly large enough to be self sufficient, is shown to be part of some larger world(possibly the same one as Destiny Islands). This is indicated by the sprawling mountains and plains outside the town and an aqueduct/bridge connected to some unknown location. Places outside the town are also discussed.

Various Disney worlds, such as those of Mulan, Beauty and The Beast, Tarzan and the London segment of "Neverland" would indicate that they are located on some version of earth( or at the very least Eurasia). Some of these (Peter pan, Tarzan,101 Dalmatians) could be seen as a single industrial era earth, but other's (baring time travel) would need to separate.

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix will have:
  • The full implementation of KH 1's beta Bahamut summon.
  • All the Final Mix content.
    • With it the ability to switch enemy palettes.
  • Some Heartless from Days will appear. Most likely in Monstro
  • A revamp of the Gummi mission to bring it closer to II's version.
  • The World Terminus will have Boss Rematches.
  • The Dummied Out Crumbling Isand Area form End Of The World will replace Homecoming as a boss area while Destiny Islands will appear in the World Terminus.
    • You can revisit the Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden part of the Terminus. And maybe access the Cavern of Remembrance from there as well.

We will learn about Cloud and Leon's pasts in Kingdom Hearts III.
Since it didn't make it into Birth By Sleep, it'll happen in KH3, either as a flashback or as a time travel sequence.

KH3 is going to have a field day with transformations into other characters and body swapping
Let me see: Xion turned into Sora and went all ape-shit by wanting to become him, Riku assumed the apperance of Xehanort's Heartless because he really wanted to make Roxas his bitch in the final fight of 358/2 Days, Sora's got around 5 other Keyblade wielders inside of him, Xehanort jacked Terra's body... More than enough assurance that we will see someone turn into someone else or swap bodies with someone. And consideing his status as The Chosen One, Sora's going to have to do said transforming/swapping.

One possible swap would have to be Sora or Riku switching with Kairi. The idea behind this swap is that it would somehow make Kairi a better Keyblade warrior, only by having her best friend in the world inhabit her body and kill a few Heartless and Nobodies with it. I'd also see Sora managing to turn into Roxas/Ven, or Xion, since they're technically him. We also have the idea of Xehanort pulling off an Agent Smith move and jacking people's bodies and turning them into copies of himself to control. Or we can have any of the main trio turning into Ms. Most Badass Keyblade Warrior In Existance, Aqua and using some of her skills. Why? Because Aqua. Alternatively, we may end up seeing Kadaj, who as we all know, turns into.... Aerith. Exactly.

Omega Weapon will be a boss in Kingdom Hearts III.
Perhaps in Olympus Colosseum.

The 7th light.
We know that there need to be seven warriors of light, and we know five of them for certain: Sora, Riku, Mickey Mouse, Lea, and Kairi. Aqua could be the sixth if they retrieve her from the dark realm, but that still leaves one more.

Possibilities:

Squall Leonheart: He is a veteran of the Hollow Bastion coup and the war between the denizens of Radiant Garden, Malificent and her Heartless army, and Organization XIII. He is well trained in the use of a gunblade, so transitioning to a keyblade would be relatively easy. Battling Xehanort could be part of his Redemption Quest that allows him to use his real name again.

Prince Phillip: He fought Malificent in her dragon form alongside Aqua. He's already trained with a sword, making his transition to wielding a keyblade relatively easy, just like Leon. He has the motivation to fight to protect Aurora.

Ventus: The entire point of Sora and Riku's Mark of Mastery exam was that they would learn how to awaken sleeping hearts. What other purpose can this have but to awaken Ventus? He is already a well-trained keyblade wielder.

Xion: Same principle as Ventus- awaken the sleeping heart of a keyblade wielder. Xion's existence would be stable without the Organization's influence, so this isn't a problem if they can figure out how to revive her.

Beast: A good ally in the past, but not likely due to his problems dealing with his own darkness. The fact that he fights without a weapon is also a liability.

Eraqus's Nobody: Also a longshot because of how vulnerable Nobodies are to darkness, but if his heart has had a chance to regenerate, he could be quite useful. A keyblade master is not to be lightly dismissed.

Future Marvel-based weapons
If they incorporate anything from Marvel into the games, here's the weapons they'd earn (feel free to add your own).
  • Keyblades:
    • One designed after the Hammer of Thor.
    • One designed after Deadpool's katanas.
  • Shields:
  • Staves:
    • The Staff of One- Aesthetically, otherwise Donald would only use the same spell once.
    • Loki's Scepter.
    • Any of Mockingbird's Battle Staves.
    • Gambit's staff

If you initially possess a remarkably strong heart, then losing said heart and becoming a Heartless is NOT a Fate Worse than Death
When a strong-hearted individual loses his/her heart to darkness and it produces a Heartless, a Nobody is also born/created. Thanks to two different reveals in Dream Drop Distance, Nobodies are able to (re?)grow hearts overtime when provided the emotional stimuli and opportunity to emote. Also, when a Nobody is 'killed' following the destruction of its relative Heartless, the original complete being is restored at the location his/her heart yielded to darkness and produced said Heartless while a Keyblade may be required to invoke the potential for the complete being to be restored, the Nobody should still be able to continue his/her misuse of darkness with or without a heart, considering the only drawback will be the repeated production of Heartless, (and thus hearts) and perhaps a disconnection from the original heart to the replacement. Keep in mind that Lea has proven that even Nobodies who are unlike Roxas or Namine are able to do both, AND retain their memories seemingly from both identities.

Maleficent's goal in 3D was to obtain Data-Sora's heart
We all know how useful a heart that can wield a keyblade would be to Maleficent. Perhaps if she succeeded, she would have transferred the heart to a leftover replica from Castle Oblivion. Thus, Maleficent's very own keyblade wielder.

Sora will defeat Xehanort by unlocking the light within his Heart.
In the first game, Sora was proven right in his assertion that in the Heart, "deep down, there's a light that never goes out" when Kingdom Hearts opened and the light defeated "Ansem So D". Even Xehanort has some light left in him. And thus, to come full circle, Sora will release the light trapped by Xehanort's darkness. He has become so corrupt, so dependent on darkness, however, that the process will obliterate him for good.

When Sora grows older and has a son, he will call him Axel.
In honor of him taking out an entire horde of Nobodies to help him, sacrificing himself to do so, and Lea saving him from a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Given that X is the recursant's sigil, and gives Xehanort the ability to track stuff, even if he's killed, I suspect Sora will be avoiding that letter and anything resembling it like the plague whenever possible, just in case.

Sora is already the Thirteenth Seeker of Darkness

As a precaution, Master Xehanort infused his heart within Vanitas, who has since been concealed in Sora's heart. If Riku ended up succumbing, Xehanort would simply have destroyed Sora and assimilated Vanitas. When Xehanort ended up attacking Sora in 3D, he was simply finishing the transformation, which Ven had been preventing. That's why he does not care he 'lost', since the XII Ith is already made.

Namine's personality would have been different if she had joined the Organization shortly after her creation
If the normal sequence of things Namine had been a prisoner of the Organization since her creation which would have influenced her to be shy so if Namine had joined Organization XIII after her creation her self-esteem would have gotten a bost due to being a part of the Organization instead of a prisoner of the Organization.Considering how much power Namine has it's possible that such a boost in self-esteem so soon after her creation would have made her more cold and arrogant and would have made her more willing to aid in Marluxia's plan.

Lea and Axel are able to speak to each other like Sora and Roxas.
Well, why not? We see Roxas and Sora conversing a number of times post-merge and it's not just something special for them, Naminé and Kairi talk in a scene near the end of KH 2.
  • Keep in mind though, Roxas and Namine are very unique existences due to the atypical nature of their formation and their Somebodies; they are significantly different from those somebodies. Axel and Lea, by contrast, are very similar people, basically identical outwardly. Even if "normal" healed Nobodies can talk to each other like Roxas/Sora and Namine/Kairi, would they bother to talk to a person that is almost exactly the same as their are? Would they even notice if the two minds look and act basically the same?

Larxene had a horrible life before she lost her heart
She openly embraced being a Nobody because she felt liberated. Before she lost her heart she was probably abused, beaten up, and as a result, had fantasized being sadistic, but had restrained herself because of her emotions. When she had no emotions (And subsequently was on the way to developing a new heart) she wasn't constrained by such anymore and decided to throw that behind.

The plot of Kingdom Hearts IV will revolve around Maleficent as Dragon Ascendant.
Kingdom Hearts III ends the Xehanort saga, which creates an opening for Maleficent to become the Big Bad.

Aqua was a Princess of Heart.
And that, not Eraqus being a Knight Templar is why Vanitas could not sense darkness in her heart. We know that the light of the seven Princesses are seven fragments of the X-blade, and we also know that Alice is younger than 10 in the first game. It follows, then, that there must always be seven Princesses, and that should one die or be swallowed by darkness, the light will transfer to a new one.

Roxas is going to be the 13th vessel.
Think about it. Xehanort still needs one and he even pointed out how Roxas was a perfect candidate...

Ansem the Wise is one of the 13 vessels
He has the orange eyes, the dark skin, and the pointy ears. Not sure how he ended up that way but I'd bet it happened during The Fall of Radiant Garden.
  • I think he is a failed, or nearly failed, vessel.. We can also pinpoint a very specific time as to when this happened, using just the events of KHII and Birth By Sleep. In Mickey's flashback to meeting Terranort in KHII, you can see Ansem the Wise has brown eyes and normal ears. Yet when we finally meet him, this is not the case. His skin is the same tone as it was in the flashback (he's only as tan as Xehanort when being DiZ), but his eyes are orange like Xemnas's and The Seeker of Darkness, and Ansem the Wise's ears are clearly pointed. It would seem yellow eyes, like those of Isa/Saix, Master Xehanort, and Braig/Xigbar are a different story. I think those with orange eyes are still fighting for control of their body, heart, mind, and soul. Those with yellow eyes are either willingly sharing their body or have had their true selves suppressed. What happened to Ansem the Wise happened very soon before the conversions of Braig, Dilan, Even, Aeleus, Ienzo, Isa and Axel and a very long time before the Fall of The Radiant Garden. It happened before this because a second before Terranort stabs Braig to get his heart, he specifically refers to himself as "Ansem". Braig's reaction to this as well as the delivery of the line show this is the first time he's done this. We also learn from this that Xemnas was not the first member of Organization XIII. We know this because of the events in Space Paranoids and Hollow Bastion, specifically what Tron and Mickey say about Ansem in KHII- which is that Terranort hung around for a time after stealing Ansem's identity. Tron says Ansem suddenly changed (this is supported in the manga for why Sark is the way he is), and Mickey says Terranort went around using Ansem's name and identity, and that the real Ansem disappeared before that. Ergo, we can very easily deduce that Ansem the Wise was supposed to be disposed of in some manner. Considering his strong heart and will, Terranort may have tried to possess him, and is not succeeding as well as he'd like. So he was banished to the Realm of Darkness in the hopes that Ansem's true personality would be extinguished and Xehanort could take over, making Ansem the Wise a vessel. If he succeeds or not is up in the air, but there are no coincidences in Kingdom Hearts.

If/when they do a Star Wars level, Sora will be in the trench run in episode IV and his number will be Red 13
It makes sense, after looking at it, there were only twelve X-Wing pilots. Not only would it make a great shout out to Final Fantasy VII's Red XII it would also continue the Arc Number.

At some point, Sora will say to Kairi...
"I'm never letting go of you, baby."

The seven lights...
...Aren't seven keyblade wielders, but rather, seven incarnations of Sora. (This theory is kinda similar to the "Sora is the Seven Lights" one above.) Just as Xehanort decided to become all thirteen darknesses himself, Sora will become the seven lights. The difference, however, will be that while Xehanort possessed others, taking lives to further his own ends, Sora will instead give up parts of himself so that the others inside his heart can live. So far, there are Sora, Roxas, Xion, and Data-Sora (who would likely inhabit a robotic body), and Ventus could be considered one after how long he's been bonded to Sora; this would implicitly make Vanitas one of the seven lights, possibly a Token Evil Teammate (and probably against his will, possibly leading to him betraying them after the X-Blade is formed). As to the other one, there are a few possibilities. Naminé would probaby count, considering how she was formed. Kairi might count, since her heart linked to Sora's in the first game, if only for a while. Ansem the Wise may also count, or at least the copy he left in Sora's heart. Perhaps Riku would count, due to the time he spent as a Dream Eater, inside Sora's dreams. And of course, it's possible that they'll introduce a new part of Sora in the next game; now that it's been confirmed that Vanitas still exists, perhaps there'll be an Unversed!Sora? ...Well, I guess you see where I'm going. The Seven Lights are different incarnations of Sora; while the other Keyblade Wielders will prove critical to the coming battle, they aren't going to be used to summon the X-Blade.

This may also have certain implications for Sora; perhaps it means he'll be unable to fight in the final battle, perhaps it means he'll be forced to fight Master Xehanort "alone" (as one or all of the aforementioned incarnations), perhaps he'll become a Living MacGuffin, or perhaps Xehanort will be able to use the X-Blade to make him a puppet. Or perhaps none of the above. That's assuming he doesn't Screw Destiny, of course.

Nobodies have alexithymia
Throughout the series, Nobodies repeatedly claim that they don't have emotions - that hearts are needed for emotions. Aside from the issue of why an emotionless being would be motivated to do anything, much less go to the extreme efforts that Organization 13 goes to, numerous scenes suggest that Nobodies are a bit more complex than this. {{Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days}} shows this most clearly with the bond between Roxas, Axel and Xion. While Roxas and Xion are clearly atypical, Axel is apparently a 'normal' Organization 13 member. And he outright admits that he, Roxas and Xion are friends, and he goes out of his way to help his friends.

So, if Nobodies do have emotions, why do they claim they don't? Why are they so determined to get hearts? Why do the other Nobodies have so much trouble explaining emotions to Roxas? Psychological research may have an answer.

According to Wikipedia, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia|Alexithymia]] is a psychological trait characterized by difficulty identifying and describing emotions in the self. Essentially, while people with alexithymia do feel emotions, they struggle in recognizing that they are feeling emotions, identifying what these emotions are, and/or describing their emotions to others. The four cardinal features of alexithymia are:

  • difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal
  • difficulty describing feelings to other people
  • a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style (denying the importance and value of emotions or internal experiences)
  • constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a scarcity of fantasies

So, do Nobodies have alexithymia? Well, let's look at the four cardinal features.

Difficulty identifying feelings - assuming Nobodies have emotions, their repeated claims that they do not could be a reflection of an inability to recognize when they are feeling emotions. Roxas, in 358/2 Days, is uncertain if he has emotions, largely because Axel and others keep telling him he doesn't have emotions. On the vacation day, Roxas was told vacation was a time for him to do whatever he wanted, but struggled because he had no clue what he wanted to do. Meanwhile, Axel decided to sleep and Xion trained, both activities that don't seem to take much self-reflection to decide upon.

Difficulty describing feelings - throughout 358/2 Days, Roxas keeps asking other Nobodies about various emotions and displays of emotion. Their answers are typically simplistic and confusing. Axel, for example, claims that friends are 'people who laugh together' and 'people who eat ice cream together'. [[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1128905?uid=3739472&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21103198604147|Qualitative research into children's friendships]] suggests that description of friendships based on common activities and enjoying time together is typical of grade 1-3 children, with older children emphasizing acceptance, loyalty and commitment. Given that Axel appears to be an adult, his concept of friendship seems to be well below what you'd normally expect.

Externally-oriented cognitive style and devaluation of internal experience - many of the other Nobodies openly derogate emotions, with Xaldin even describing the Beast's desire to protect Belle or the rose as a weakness. Saïx seems contemptuous of Axel and Roxas' concern for Xion's well-being. In general, many of the Nobodies encourage logical thinking, while any suggestion of emotion is met with disbelief if not disdain. However, the Organization's goal stands in contrast to this attitude - they are trying to regain hearts, which they believe will make them feel emotions again.

Poor fantasy life - this is hard to assess, because very little information is given about this area. None of the Nobodies show clear signs of a strong fantasy life, but they might simply not have talked about it. However, Wikipedia mentions a realistic dreams as an example of this, and whenever Roxas is shown to be dreaming, his dreams are replays of actual memories he's lost. He is never shown to have dreams of events that did not actually happen, much less any dreams with elements that are impossible (for the setting he lives in - hanging out with Goofy and fighting Heartless are realistic for that world). Contrast this with normal dreaming, which often involves bizarre, unrealistic events and situations.

The two more important features of alexithymia - difficulty identifying and describing emotions - are clearly typical traits of most, if not all, Nobodies. The other two cardinal traits are suggested to be present in at least some Nobodies. Although it's tough to say for sure, it certainly seems like many Nobodies do have alexithymia.

So, why do they want hearts? Well, alexithymia is negatively associated with life satisfaction - even apart from the link between alexithymia and depression and anxiety disorders. While Roxas and Xion, due to their memory loss, don't know any different, the rest of the Nobodies can remember when they had hearts, and therefore presumably realize that life is less enjoyable for them now. Alexithymics also struggle with forming emotional bonds with others, taking away one of the most important sources of happiness in many people's lives. Given this, it makes sense how desperate the Nobodies are to regain their hearts.

  • Jossed by 3DS. Nobodies have tiny remnants of hearts, that feel emotions but very weakly, and can regenerate into full hearts by living life; Xehanort simply lied to them and claimed they had none at all and no hope of regrowing one to trick them into not regrowing anything long enough to infect and possess all of them. They can identify their emotions just fine, its just that the emotions are weak and hard to notice and they've been tricked into not believing the tiny remnants they feel that drive them are real.

Demyx's and Larxene's former selves were not quite, maybe, lovers?
Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Their little comments about each other seem like a Belligerent Sexual Tension was going on between them, or maybe borderline The Masochism Tango. But since they are Nobodies, who supposedly can't feel (no, they can, and Demyx was right), they don't care about their relationship anymore and insult each other like there's no tomorrow.

If Kingdom Hearts III is going to feature their former selves (and Luxord's and Marluxia's too), expect them to have an Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other moment or two.

  • As a LarxenexDemyx shipper, I hope this is true.

As an alternate to the above, Demyx and Larxene's Others were brother and sister.
They're both fair-haired, though Larxene's is definitely more yellow blonde and Demyx leans towards ash blond, but more tellingly, they both have green-blue eyes, when most characters have either blue OR green eyes, not somewhere in the middle. Of course, some original characters do have eyes like this (such as Riku) so this isn't quite hard evidence, either. It's possible that the reason Larxene claimed not having a heart was better than having one is because she became a Nobody sometime after her little brother was essentially killed (Demyx does seem to be the physically youngest after Roxas, especially in the manga where he looks like he's barely older than Kairi). Larxene may have been a bit of a Big Sister Bully to her little brother, which could contribute to why she's such a jerkass- she remembers being this.

Keyblades represent past wielders not worlds.
Each Keyblade wielder has a unique Keyblade that the others can't use, (Sora has Kingdom Key, Riku has Way to the Dawn, Data Sora has Zero/One) each represents the wielder. The Keychains are the remains of past Keyblade wielders unique weapon. There are so many based on Axel/Lea because he has changed so much over his life that the original didn't apply to him any more.

Maleficent is not a complete being
She pretty much became a heartless when Rikunort stabbed her with his keyblade and unlocked her heart but we don't see a nobody of her. Now I like to think that Maleficent has enough willpower to AT LEAST spawn a powerful monster nobody if not a human-shaped one. And up to that point, there was only one exceptionally powerful nobody defeated at this point (discounting the Organization members), I'd be willing to believe that Maleficent was revived and reformed as an incomplete being. I'm also willing to believe that if this were the case, she could resist being sent to Kingdom Hearts with the rest of the hearts collected by the Organization. Alternatively...
Twilight Thorn is Maleficent's nobody
Continuing from above, Twilight Thorn is the only nobody powerful enough that was killed before her revival to be passed off as Maleficent's.
Kingdom Hearts 3D will still get a Final Mix release, after KH 2.5 comes out but before KHIII
Kingdom Hearts III looks like it will still be quite awhile before it comes out, so to tide fans over in the meantime, a Final Mix version of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] will be released, with extra material to tie into the upcoming Kingdom Hearts III (e.g. new cutscenes, boss battles, and possibly even a CGI movie). I estimate a release date of early-mid 2015.
  • As of late September 2014 this is starting to look likely, although still completely unconfirmed. If it does happen, my guess is that it will be released on the New 3DS.note 
  • Obviously I'm late on this one, but confirmed with the announcement of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, which will release in January 2017.

The χ-Blade causes permanent death
As in the death Nomura has yet to really factor into KH- the All Deaths Final kind. It's been shown that basically any fatal blow dealt by a a Keyblade results in a Heartless (and maybe Nobody depending on the heart's strength) but there's that Keyblade War to factor in... So many Heartless, right? Along with a ton of Nobodies, even if they may not be so much. Probably too many. Not to mention how the Keyblade Graveyard still has all those graves- why would you make a grave for a person who could still come back, presuming you kill their Heartless and Nobody? If Yen Sid was aware of this the Keybladers of old mostly likely would have, too. So the theory goes that SOMEONE in that Great Offscreen War got a hold of the χ-Blade and went on a killing spree and people found this out the hard way. If true this may come up during a Heroic Sacrifice moment in III.
  • Another thing to note is Xehanort explicitly saying that the "χ" in χ-Blade was a letter of endings.

Maleficent will get her wings back.
Allowing her to go One-Winged Angel.

There is a connection between the Foretellers and the Guardians of Light that were specifically chosen by and/or traditionally inherited the Keyblade
Just compare Anguis to Aqua, Unicornis to Riku, Vulpes to Kairi, Ursus to Terra, and Leopardis to Ven. Uncanny resemblance, right? Not only do the colors match up, but so do the body types. Who knows if the connection is blood relation through ancestry or straight out reincarnation, but Nomura doesn't typically do this kind of thing on accident...

(Just FYI, Sora, Roxas, and Lea are exempt from the list because 1] a lot of Sora's character revolves around him being a kid who isn't really supposed to be there and yet kicks ass anyways, 2] Roxas's Keyblade is technically more Sora or Ven's than his, 3] Lea just got his Keyblade and even then he had to really work for it, compare to the above five who got theirs with presumably little struggle when they inherited the power)

The Foretellers ARE the Guardians of Light in the above WMG
Through desperation, Aqua, Terra, Ventus, Riku, and Kairi travel back to the first Keyblade war to find aid for the upcoming battle against Xehanort, or to try and alter history somehow. Instead they just end up being the instigators of the first Keyblade War.

The Foretellers give away who six Guardians of Light are, based on their keyblade and animal
Outside of Sora and maybe Riku, maybe.
  • Anguis- The keyblade bears a striking resemblance to Aqua's Bright Crest and while the animal, a Snake can be associated with Cunning, like you'd expect from the Mage in her own trio, it can also be associated with rebirth with the whole shedding its skin ability. I'd say this represents either Riku or Lea but leading towards Lea due to his cunning as Axel.
  • Ursus- The keyblade resembles Terra's Dark Maw and had a stone like quality to it. The animal, a Bear, is treated as a major powerhouse in the animal world and commonly believe to be prone to fury just as Terra is the more physically oriented member of his trio and the one with the most anger.
  • Leopardos- The keyblade bears a mixed resemblance to different keyblades used by both Ven and Roxas which is fitting as a Leopard is associated with speed more than anything else
  • Vulpeus- The keyblade doesn't really resemble many older keyblades but the colour scheme is remarkably like the Destiny Embrace a Keyblade used by both Aqua and Kairi. The animal, a Fox, is treated as feminine and cunning fitting Aqua more so than Kairi but it could go either way.
  • Unicornis- The keyblade bears a heavy resemblance to Vanitas' keyblade, and the animal a Unicorn is associated with purity. Vanitas is pure darkness but its possible Kairi to fit in this category instead as the likelihood of Vanitas being one of the Guardians of Light is far too unlikely.

Maleficent will undergo a Heel–Face Turn after she goes Boss Heartless and her reborned form will be Jolie Maleficent

When Riku!Ansem used the Keyblade of Heart on Maleficent, a piece became the other Maleficient.
Fairies, and most spirit beings (like mermaids), have much fuzzier lines separating their heart, body, and soul. When Riku!Ansem used the Keyblade of Hearts on Maleficent, she was sundered; and cleaved into two parts. But a fairy's body is one with the trees, the river, the night sky. When they "die", they just reform another time, another place; usually with no memory of who they were. Maleficent had a backup plan in keeping copies of her memory in other fairies, to "reboot" herself. That part of her waited until it grew strong and came Back from the Dead. But there was another piece of her. In a mortal, it would have been a Nobody, but enough soul and heart was attached to her body essence to float in the void until settling in a world most similar to her own but didn't have a version of her and manifest. This Maleficent had no memories of her previous self; and though made of darkness; she would eventually be won to the Light through The Power of Love.

The next enemies will be souls with bodies and hearts of Light.
Heartless are hearts with no bodies and associated with darkness while Nobodies are bodies(and souls) with no heart(kinda) representing the in between and nothingness. Dream Eaters are darkness but they are also in between due to being Dark Is Evil and Dark Is Not Evil at the same time. So it's kinda time we had enemies that primarily represent the third aspect of being with association with Light, unless of course we get Memories given form as enemies but that already happened.
Kingdom Hearts is the sun seen in every world.
The worlds that noticeably lack a sun are Traverse Town (according to KH 2's reports is a benign version of the End of the World, made from different worlds), End of the World, The World that Never Was (though it's got the artificial Kingdom Hearts). And Twilight Town's sun is always setting because it's halfway between darkness and light. So it's within half the power of the Kingdom Hearts sun.

The Door to the Light
We don't know exactly how it functions, or what it is really, besides Riku telling Sora it was his heart. It pops up as more of a Deus ex machina that was somewhat foreshadowed at the end of KH1 and really used to get Sora and Riku their happy ending. But poor Aqua's outta luck and still stuck despite her incredibly strong light and apparently she can't summon the door. Way to be a dick Sora your heart is the only thing that can traverse the realm of light and dark.

But what if it is the heart? Anyone's heart? Specifically, what if it's the manifestation of a heart's will to return to its idea of home?

When Sora and Riku ended up in the RoD they were content to live out the rest of their lives there until Sora got Kairi's bottle. It's then that Sora's heart yearns for the Destiny Islands and his friends strong enough to summon the door. It remembers the Destiny Islands, and since it hadn't changed from its foray into the oblivion of darkness, it was waiting for him just as he left it. Thus the door opened.

Aqua's will to return is probably incredibly strong since she's been there so long and promised Ventus she'd come back soon with Terra, but she hasn't summoned the door. Why? Because she's wishing for a home that's changed so much in her absence it doesn't exist anymore. She wants to go back to Radiant Garden (ruined), to Olympus Colosseum to see Zack and Herc again (Zack's gone, Herc's grown), the princesses's worlds (destroyed in darkness and no confirmation if they've all returned safe and sound or if some are sleeping), maybe even to see the islands with those two little boys who are now cosmos-spanning heroes who've matured and changed immensely. The point is, the home Aqua's heart knows is not the home there is now, the two fall out of sync, and the door does not open.

Ansem's two times in the RoD can also be explained this way: the first time he wanted his perfect Radiant Garden back, but it was ruined by his apprentice, Xehanort, so it was revenge that fed his darkness for him to escape. The second he barely has any memory of his home in the RoL so he can't have enough will to summon the door.

The point is, you can only summon the Door to the Light if you have a strong desire for your home, but it has to match up with what your home is at that moment of time in the RoL.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is a show of the harm of Mary Sue authors cause
Think about it, the main Big Bad (Marluxia) represents the author's control over the Sue (Namine), who they use to twist canon (Sora's memories) into something thats bending to the authors will(Marluxia almost turning Sora into his keyblade slave).

Cinderella's stepsisters and stepmother survived the bomb, but were crippled in their feet.
The step-sisters had to have some toes amputated, the stepmother lingered for a while but eventually died. Thus keeping in synch with their original fairy tale fates.

The Akashic Records that the Heartless drop would drive anyone who reads them insane.
They are a hole into the reality of the world, yes. However, being part of the Heartless has corrupted them, and any insight given would be polluted. Goofy, however, is immune because he never reads them, he just hits people with them.

Future Final Fantasy themed gear
similar to the Marvel one above this if for weapons based on Final Fantasy games
  • Keyblades:
    • Up to three Keyblades based off the XIII triogy, wither representing Etro and her brothers or just representing the games in general.
    • Brotherhood, bonus points if Tidus and Wakka are somehow involved in getting it.
    • A Keyblade called Seventh Dawn, based on XIV's version of the Curtana as well as referencing both the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and Kingdom Hearts' "7 lights" plot thread.
    • A Keyblade based on Odin's Zantetsuken
    • A Keyblade based on either the Treaty-Blade, Sword of Kings or Tornesol
  • Staves:
  • Shield
The worlds are stories and the World is a library.
No crossover with The Pagemaster intended (or maybe...)
  • Traverse Town is made of parts of worlds / discarded pages from book destroyed by the darkness.
  • Sora's interference is almost always making sure that the worlds he goes to run as close to the established canon as possible, while the Heartless, the Nobodies, and the Unversed are typically trying to derail the story.
  • Kingdom Hearts is the ultimate muse and Xehanort is trying to take it over so that he can control all the stories or rewrite his own.
  • Memories are easily edited by Namine, which would be a lot easier to do with a written or drawn medium than manipulating actual brains.

Terra and Xehanort are related
Young Xehanort, the younger version of the original Master Xehanort (as in the one NOT in Terra's body), looks incredibly similar to Terranort.

Drive Forms don't need to absorb Sora's companions to work
It's a matter of Gameplay and Story Segregation so that the Drives aren't incredibly game breaking. In cutscenes if a Drive Form is activated then the costume stays even if the previously absorbed party member is involved in the cutscene, so narrative wise it doesn't happen.

KHχ will "end" with you going back to the beginning
The time travel involved would work- as a Keyblade Wielder it's possible for you to abandon your body, and not to mention going back to the beginning of your quest obviously fits in, and not to mention it's only one jump back and then going forward as per the laws of time. It would be a cute way to get the idea of a New Game Plus justified, too.

But what would spur on such an action?

The Keyblade War of course. If you think about the setting being pre-War, that war is definitely on the horizon and inevitable. Right now it's just "friendly" competiton over Lux between the Foreteller's factions, but we know it'll escalate into a battle that will tear apart worlds and almost destroy the entire universe. But aren't the Foretellers, due to their Tome of Prophecy, trying to avoid this? They will probably send you back to see if you can try again and get a different outcome, but they sadly forget one lynchpin: events that are destined to happen cannot be changed. And so with your higher level and super powerful deck, you get sent back again, and again, and again, going through the same worlds with tougher battles as you try to stop the Keyblade War from happening and only getting involved in it time and time again.

The Kids in Chi create the "real" Keyblade warriors Keyblades accessories.
They were put to sleep to put into the Fortuneteller Books, and when they gather enough Lux; the pages they create are fashioned into accessories and wielded by their parents; who are fighting the real war; which is much bloodier and nastier (and the power of Light much harder to come by). As manipulative as this is, it is also the safest place to keep them.

Why KHχ hasn't been localized yet
Since story related events are still being released and have yet to be comepletely resolved, the devs are probably waiting for the story to be completely done so that the translations can be as accurate as possible without any accidental flubs (Ex. The retcon on who banished Pete brought up by differing scenes in KH 2 and Birth By Sleep).

The Heartless can manifest because Vanitas was defeated.
Xehanort only started working with them after Vanitas and his Unversed were beaten. But what is Vanitas? The dark half of Ven's Heart. ....where do Hearts go when they die? They go through Kingdom Hearts. BUT....Ventus is not dead, nor in the Realm of Darkness, so Ventus and Vanitus have a link between them; preventing Kingdom Hearts from closing; like a foot in the door. Aqua fought the red eyed broken Dark Heart that Vanitas became in the realm of Darkness....which cracked the walls further. His "generate Unversed" function began to create manifestations for other broken Hearts and they became this era's manifestaion of the Heartless.
  • We see Neoshadows in the flashback that shows Vanitas being created, so they already existed and were able to enter the realm of light before Ven's heart was shattered.

Hades escaped from the Well of Souls because of the Underdome.
Zeus didn't just seal it originally because it was distasteful, but that much destruction and death in Hades' name...it's just as good as prayer. That power enabled him to get out quickly.
  • The Paradox Cup gave the arena the same coloration as the River Styx; which is related to the Well of Souls. The Paradox Cup is in the Well of Souls, essentially. He sets up his lesser avatar (it wasn't his entire godly essence trapped in the Well) to host the Cup and manipulate the lost souls into Heartless or the forms of enemies Sora had already fought. At the very end of the Paradox Cup, Sora fights Hades again, and knocked him out of the Arena....well, he actually knocked his trapped essence out of the Well of Souls.
    • Restored Hades doesn't kill Sora because....why would he? This kid is useful!

The players of Kingdom Hearts χ aren't the ones who destroyed the χ-Blade and banished Kingdom Hearts.
It was the adults;...who followed the 6th Foreteller. The players are the children who kept the light alive and kept the worlds going.

It is the 6th Servant of the Foretellers Master who caused the downfall of the first Keyblade war. They also passed down the Keyblade that became Xehanort's.
Look at the handle of Xehanort's Keyblade. It appears to be a goat or ram, in the same style of the animals of the Foretellers. Chirity says that five of the six servants of the Master was given a book of prophecy...but nobody talks about the sixth.

The previous two owners of the Winnie The Pooh book were Christopher Robin and Darby.
When Sora finishes the the Hundred Acre wood, his picture is put on the cover walking with Pooh Bear and Piglet. When someone moves on, it waits for a new main character.

Whoever caused the Keyblade War will be the Greater-Scope Villain
After the fall of Xehanort, he or she will take over as the antagonist for Kingdom Hearts IV.

Braig killed Kairi's parents
Out of all of Ansem the Wise's apprentices, Braig is the only one with a clear lack of morals. He offed Kairi's parents so he could take over Radiant Garden. Ansem was chosen to rule until Kairi was old enough to take the throne herself, so Braig worked his way to get close enough to him and take him out next. When Kairi finds out about this, he will become her personal enemy.

Sora and co. will end up sharing a body.
For at least part of KHIII, Sora, Roxas, and Xion (and possibly Ventus, maybe even Vanitas if he starts to mellow out) will all become able to communicate with each other, and take turns as the "pilot" of Sora's shared body; there'll be a visual cue to which is in control at any given time (normal appearance for Sora, checkered robe & Ven hair for Roxas, Black Coat & hair for Xion, Ven hair and shoulder thingy for Ventus, and a Red and Black and Evil All Over outfit for Vanitas. Ansem the Wise's copy may also talk to them as a Spirit Advisor. Naminé may or may not be able to converse with them all and/or move between Kairi's and Sora's bodies, due to the way she was created.

Furthermore, each will have a separate combat style. Sora will use Flowmotion and whatever new abilities KHIII gives him, Roxas will prefer Synch Blade, Xion will use Sora's memories of his Drive Forms, Ventus will use Command Styles, and Vanitas will use a frenetic style by darkness. They may even be able to work together to power up, such as Ven and Vanitas giving Sora the χ-blade, Xion giving Roxas Oblivion for Synch Blade, Roxas combining with Xion for Final Form, Ventus gaining Synch Blade from Sora's heart (and possibly wielding the χ-blade via Sora & Ventus), and Sora & Ventus giving Vanitas the ability to use light in conjunction with darkness (and possibly going to Riku for help learning to balance the two). Sora, Ven, and Vanitas (and eventually Roxas) will be able to share Ven's Keyblade Armour, while Xion either uses her replica armour or gets to use Ven's, too.

Considering similarities to other playable characters, Sora will likely remain the "main" personality, and only be able to switch to the others for short periods of time. All 4/5 (and maybe copypasta Ansem) will eventually be separated, with Ven and Vanitus either becoming one or learning to work together and balance each other out.

Data-Sora becomes their Voice with an Internet Connection.

Namine and others see her pictures as incredibly realistic drawings because she either consciously or unconsciously puts her memory power into it.
We, the audience, are not affected by the glamour and see silly crayon stick figures. But everyone else sees art, possibly with different people seeing different art styles, the same way different people see Xion and Sora differently.

Young Xehanort was wrong about one aspect of Time Travel
You CAN change the past, but doing so requires the power of darkness, which Young Xehanort conveniently doesn't have yet. Consider Timeless River in KH2, which seemingly doesn't follow any of the rules YX laid out: Sora can appear in the past just fine despite not even being born at that point, didn't have to give up his body to do it (neither did Donald nor Goofy), and the whole plot of that world is to prevent Pete and Maleficent from changing the past by stealing/destroying the Cornerstone of Light before Disney Castle is built, something that Young Xehanort says wouldn't be possible, anyway. Note that before Sora and co. enter Timeless River, Merlin warns them that the nature of that world may tempt them to do something dark (i.e. change the past). The only instance where this comes even close to happening is where Sora nearly tells Captain Pete that his steamboat was stolen by his future self, which itself is not a very dark act (and might even have prevented Pete from turning evil in the first place), except that it involves changing past events. KH2 is also the point where Sora starts manifesting power over darkness, even if it's accidental through Anti Form.

How is this relevant to future events? If changing the past is possible after all, then Young Xehanort suddenly becomes a massive liability to Master Xehanort's plans. If he dies or turns good, then all of Master Xehanort's schemes fall apart before they even began. But since Xehanort has become so entwined with the series' history at this point, removing his influence from the timeline would have immesurable consequences, possibly requiring a total reset on the universe like what happened after the Keyblade War.

And how would such a cataclysm come about? Sora undergoes a Face–Heel Turn, like many of us already suspected, but instead of joining Xehanort, he destroys him (by destroying Young Xehanort) and takes over as the series' Big Bad (or is just barely stopped from becoming the Big Bad by the timely intervention of the other heroes).

Yellow and Orange eyes signify two different types of possession by Xehanort.
I already stated this theory up above under Ansem the Wise being one of Xehanort's vessels, but having paid closer attention in Days, I think my theory has even more ground. Orange eyes signify people who are still struggling to keep their heart and will over Xehnanort, those who refuse to have their hearts put to sleep within their bodies. Yellow eyes mean one of two things: either the true heart belonging to that body has been put to sleep, or the person is willingly sharing their body with Xehanort. What made me realise there is truth to this statement is paying attention in Days to one particular character's eye colour. As we all know, Saix has yellow eyes... except, he doesn't in Days- his eyes are clearly orange. And Saix acts differently with orange eyes over yellow ones. During Days he's somewhat reasonable and though a jerk, he's somewhat fair. Axel at least still respects him and wants to help him "rise to the top", which was something they planned to do from the start. In KHII, he speaks with absolutely zero emotion or inflection and his expression is oddly blank compared to how it was in Days. People who have Dull Eyes of Unhappiness have more expression on their faces than Saix does in KHII. Xemnas, we know, sometimes talks to Aqua's empty armour and Keyblade, referring to it as "friend"- these moments may imply Terra is still fighting for control, despite the fact that it would seem his heart is split between Xemnas and Ansem Seeker of Darkness (following the orange eye rule I laid out).

There is no method to the numbers of the Organization XIII members.
Birth By Sleep shows that they are not numbered in accordance with becoming a Nobody/joining up, as Braig and Xehanort followed after Ienzo and Even, and it's possible Xehanort actually came after Saix and Axel (though equally possible he predated them). They are not in rank, as Saix is painted as Xemnas's number two (along with Xigbar) as he is designated to hand out missions and speaks with Xemnas the most. They are not in order of suitability for possession, as Saix, the only other member possessed, sits at number VII, not III. Therefore, the question is why are they numbered that way? Or at least, why are the first eight numbered the way they are? There's nothing remarkable about IX through XII that we have seen yet. We can also dismiss power as being the cause of the order, as Roxas is exceptionally powerful, as is Marluxia (and indeed, if you pay attention to the unique way he dies, Demyx, whose elemental power activates as he's dying, something that oddly doesn't happen to anyone except Xemnas and Marluxia- Axel's is still going because he died by using it). So either there is no reason for the ranking, or there is one that I cannot fathom.
  • Xemnas explains this a little bit in III- I-VI are Ansem's apprentices. VII and VIII "joined thereafter" implying there is no real reason, or one he cares to share, for Saix and Axel, but then he explains IX-XII. Demyx, Luxord, Marluxia, and Larxene all ancient Keyblade Weilders, and were brought on to awaken the sleeping Keyblade legacy within them.

The reason why Xigbar see's Xion as Ven
Is that he has subconsciously known all along that Xion is uncontrollable and that she break from her role just like Ventus. Braig and by extension Xigbar are time travelers but when you go into the future you can't take the memories back to your present self. at some point probably shortly before Xion's creation he was called forward. from that point on whenever he saw Xion he would see the face of Ventus The puppet that cut it's own strings rather than be controlled.
  • Not quite. Xion just takes on the physical appearance of someone relating to Sora if the person looking at her knows someone who fits that role. Roxas sees a girl who looks similar to Kairi, Xemnas sees Sora himself, while Saix sees her with just her hood up. Xigbar sees her as Ven due to his heart being within Sora's.

Daybreak Town will become the Keyblade Graveyard.
This is actually a relatively common theory among fans. We know that the Keyblade Graveyard was not a barren wasteland before the Keyblade War, and Kingdom Hearts X takes place BEFORE the Keyblade War, whereby Daybreak Town serves as a hub for the keyblade wielders...
  • Jossed- Daybreak Town, while it does fall to ruin, is actually Scala ad Caelum.

Master Xehanort's Time Travel method was used earlier...by Sora
In Kingdom Hearts 1 Sora winds up projecting to a scene of a young Kairi and her Grandmother in Radiant Garden (then known only as Hollow Bastion), During a good half of the game, Sora was harboring both Ven and Kairi's hearts (and still harbors Ven's). How Young Xehanort's method works is to recap:
  • One must be able to Leave their Body. This throws a wrench in the works here considering Sora released His and Kairi's hearts after this scene, but Kairi's heart entered Sora's at the beginning, thanks to an enchantment from Aqua.
  • The past can't be changed: Sora appears as a ghost in that scene, floating and all, so its unlikely he is able to interact with the Younger Kairi or her grandma.
  • One can only travel back to a point where they are still alive. It's obvious that Sora and Kairi are of similar age, but if there is a spatial limit as well then it's almost rules that out.
  • The time traveler must return to their otigianl time and cannot remember anything about the timeframe they visited: The scene is a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. And the sequels haven't brought up that memory outside of maybe a flashback in Roxas' Dreams
Now going back to Young Xehanort, due to special circumstances other characters were brought to the Present (Isa and Braig for starters), but in this case the reverse is true, Kairi's heart didn't override Sora's, but the effect is the same. Whether subconsciously or not, Kairi and Sora time traveled back to that moment in time

Disney Castle and Disney Town are both named after Mickeys Master Yen Sid
After his Master decided to retire from being a Keyblade Master, Mickey decided to honer his old Masters Teachings by renaming his Castle and Town to Disney, which is Yen Sid backwards

Sora's failure in DDD was due to his lack of mastery over the power of his own unique heart.
[1] As it can be said said in this link, Sora's heart is unique, as in he has the ability to connect others and their memories. But that also meant that he connected to their pain as well, and we've all seen how easily pain can lead to darkness. Coupled with Sora's lack of control of his own inner darkness, when combined with the darkness-inducing pain of others' hearts, it became overwhelming to the point where it nearly consumed him for good. Xehanort was aware and took full advantage of this fact, despite meeting some resistance from Sora when he stared to take in the power of his friends and which is why he almost succeed in turning Sora into one of his vessels. I believe that Yen Sid knew this as well, and is why Sora needed to take the Mo M test: If Sora is to be a true Keyblade Master and stand any chance against Master Xehanort, he must first master his heart's power as well.

Master Xehanort's Keyblade wan't his to begin with.
The E3 2015 trailer had Master Xehanort's keyblade placed on the wall, in plain sight. Given that it's in such a prominent place, it likely belonged to Yen Sid's master, only to be stolen n by or passed down to Xehanort when he passed his Mark of Mastery exam.

The Master of Masters' future-gazing eye.
The trailer for Kingdom Hearts 2.8 mentions that the Master of Masters has a special eye that can see into the future. He used this power to write the Books of Prophecy which he gave to five of his six disciples, the Foretellers that appeared in Kingdom Hearts χ. All of the Foreteller's Keyblades as well as Master Xehanort's Keyblade feature the same blue eye symbol on their keychains. This symbol is likely meant to represent their Master's prophetic eye. It also adds further proof that Master Xehanort's Keyblade originally belonged to the sixth disciple that betrayed the others and brought about the Keyblade War.
  • All true except maybe the sixth Foreteller being the traitor.



Namine is an abuse victim.
The signs are clearly there, with her initially being passive and often scared when her abusers (Marluxia and Larxene) would be near. She seems to still suffer from this based on how sad she seems later on.



The reason Xigbar, Saix, and Sora/Roxas are valued in the Org is due to Terra's actions more than Xehanort.
Of course, you could say that some are needed as members in the new Org due to their potential as vessels, but I also see it in a way that Terra's trying to form again his lost family. We have the loyal blue haired 'friend', the older "mentor" guy with a face scarred by darkness, and the young boy who's a keyblade wielder. It's a little too coincidental...

Marluxia and Larxene knew about the true purpose of the Org.
Hence why they wanted to overtake it in the first place. No way they were getting norted as well.

The reason Larxene is so cruel as a Nobody...
Is because of her past as a person. Maybe in her life she wasn't so cruel, but she got often in shady deals and ended up often beaten and abused by others. Once she turned into a Nobody she let go of the pain and took "revenge" against her abuser in a small way by being sadistic. She's cruel to Namine because she reminds her of her original self in a way. Alternatively...
  • Seemingly jossed- Elrena was at worst standoffish as a Somebody, and was ultimtely rather selfless.



Larxene as a somebody was/is a Black Widow expy.
In that her character will be more neutral than outright evil but she'll still commit morally questionable actions. I could see Sora meeting her in future games as this spy whom's going around causing her own set of problems on the worlds, but wanting to repent for her actions as a Nobody she'll at times "help" the heroes...When it's convenient for her.

And admit it, she'd look cool in Widow's outfit.

  • Jossed. Elrena is met in X, and is a distant but good person. She also dresses in a cute teal leather jacket with matching boots, a black skirt, and a white blouse with a black tie, so no Widow costumes either.

The whole series is a massive Take That! at bad OC/crossover fan fiction.
Let's see: different popular media who have very little in common crossed together for no apparent reason? Check. Poorly thought up plot that gets contradicting and confusing the more it goes on? Check. Mary Sue-ish original characters as the protagonists? Check. More focus given to the Original Characters than to the canon characters as the story goes on? Check. Random Yaoi? Check. Cast Full of Pretty Boys? Check. Ridiculous weapons or swords used in a modern setting? Check. Characters getting Cliched amnesia? Check!

It's also safe to assume characters like Namine or Xion are also meant to be Take That! and deconstructions of typical Mary Sues found often in fanfics.

  • Even if this is not canon, this is my headcanon, thank you.

How To Bring Back Terra.
Step 1: Recreate Terranort, by destroying Xemnas and Ansem Seeker of Darkness. If Terranort has already been brought to the present by timetravel shenanigans, this step can be skipped.Step 2: Retrieve Terra's soul/will from the Lingering Sentiment. Not 100% sure how this would be achieved. It would also likely be painful given the temperament of the Lingering Sentiment.Step 3: Insert Terra's soul/will into Terranort. This might give Terra the strength boost he needs to 86 Xehanort's heart. Cue boss battle.

Time travel solved everything
It's understandable that Roxas looked like Ven since Sora had Ven's heart, but why would Vanitas look like Sora? This WMG proposed that Ventus is Roxas and Vanitas is Sora. It made sense if it was a time travel using a Stable Time Loop. It happened like this :

  • Sora travelled to the past, but somehow, Roxas was splitted from him. They both had their own body.
  • Master Xehanort completely defeated Sora and used his body as an experiment to create 'Vanitas'. Other WMG pointed out how Sora's probably no longer human at this point for all the things he'd gone through.
  • Roxas lost his memory, adopted the name 'Ventus' and trained along with Aqua and Terra.
  • 'Ventus' destroyed 'Vanitas'. Since the future!Sora was gone, Roxas could only return to reside inside past!Sora.

Xion's Keyblade wasn't a sham
Or rather, it wasn't by the end. It was when Riku told her it was, but at one point she lost access to it entirely, and had to spend time around Roxas (and even use his) to get it back. The general idea was that as Xion isn't 'real', as a Replica, neither was her Keyblade. But Coded presents some information that casts a different light on things. Data Sora is created with a Keyblade, similarly to Xion, as he's a data replica. And like Xion, his Keyblade wasn't real, which meant Maleficent could smash it without difficulty. However, due to his interactions with Mickey and the crew, he developed his own heart and earned a real Keyblade. The implication then is that Xion's burgeoning heart allowed her access to a real Keyblade after her connection broke with the 'sham', likely due to Roxas's influence.

Chernabog is not a heartless but a Prince of Heart
In-series, the Princesses of Heart are complete beings who, ever since they were born, have no Darkness in their hearts. Chernabog is a complete being who's heart is nothing but Darkness, explaining how he could live in a realm of pure Darkness and not become a Heartless.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance HD Final Mix from Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue will include new optional bosses: Luxu and/or The Master of Masters
Funnily enough, I came up with this idea in a dream of mine.
  • Jossed, full stop.

Kingdom Hearts destroyed Ansem not because it was Light, but because he was pure Darkness

The power of Kingdom Hearts can only be accessed with somebody with both Light and Darkness in their hearts; if, for example, Kairi or Ventus attempted to access it's power, it would be destroyed by the darkness of Kingdom Hearts instead. This is to ensure that the wielder of the Χ-blade can always access the power of Kingdom Hearts. Conversely, however; somebody without Light or Darkness within them whatsoever could also access its power, as it wouldn't be recognized by Kingdom Hearts enough to warrant destruction.

The Star Wars Galaxy already exists in the KH-verse; there's just no need to ever visit it due to the unique nature of the Galaxy.
Star Wars has always had a massive imbalance of Light and Dark all throughout the history of the franchise. Due to this perpetual imbalance and the war between Light and Dark Sides, it somehow survived the Keyblade War intact.The reason why nobody from either side visits it is because of the sheer amount of conflict in the galaxy. Also, the Jedi and Sith could seriously hinder the plans of whoever visits.(That, or it just recently appeared and nobody's discovered it yet because of how far away it is.)

If there is something from Marvel implemented, it'll be done so in a different way than most would expect.
Namely, there wouldn't be a world based off of Marvel. Instead, as you go through the game, you meet some odd people who are confused and amnesiac, trying to looking for their friends while simultaneously not remembering them.A designer in Traverse Town named Wanda, a metal-armed soldier named Bucky in Olympus Coliseum, a military commander named Carol Danvers in Radiant Garden, and many others scattered across the worlds, all knowing that they have something important to do, something that they're supposed to fight for, but they can't remember why. Even the villains have this same feeling, subconsciously knowing that they have to be fighting someone but not remembering why.And every time you meet one of them, a melancholy, outright depressing, instrumental version of "Fight as One" starts to play. However, when you start to reunite them, it gets stronger and less depressing. Eventually, the full song, lyrics and all, blazes as they're all united and their memories return, with them charging into battle against the Heartless in order to Avenge the destruction of their universe.
  • (Backstory-wise, the beings watching over the Marvel Multiverse saw the darkness coming for them as soon as they were folded into Disney's Multiverse, so they sacrificed a single universe to keep it from affecting the rest of the Multiverse. The AEMH Universe was the one unlucky enough to be axed, and it was ripped to shreds.)

What's in the box the Master of Masters gave Luxu.
It's the Mo M's body. The cloak he wore is just his spirit and mind, and his body is in the box. His spirit will use time travel as stated in 3D to get wherever his body is. This is also how he can use Xehanonrt's Keyblade to see the future.

The Master of Masters did alter the future but could only change one thing.
His choices where Stop the Keyblade War, which would bring about the end of light. Or save the Light and allow the Keyblade War to occur. He chose the latter as while both where tragic, the worlds where better off with the Light's continued existence. Had he chosen to prevent the War, the people he knew would have lived on but they would eventually be overrun by Darkness.It was a rigged game, that he calculated the loss and gains of each outcome, and bet his hopes on the Light.

Luxord will play a vital role in KH3
Despite being Nomura's favorite Org. XIII member, he's had far less screen time in the series so far than you'd expect a favorite to have. However, that may be because Nomura is planning something special regarding him.

The chess theory suggests that Luxord will be part of or allied with the Seekers of Darkness, as his supposed symbol - the dice - is a piece on Xehanort's side of the board. Now, his possible motivations for joining them are a complete mystery since we know NOTHING of his backstory. What we DO know, though, is that while he stayed with the Organization till his death, there is nothing so far that suggests that he was in it for anything more than regaining his heart. If he was recompleted, then the most likely outcome for him is to simply continue living a normal life. Thus, his alignment will have to be addressed one way or another; if he was forced to join, why was he important enough for the New Org. XIII to take him? If he joined of his own accord, why would he, the Gambler of Fate, be willing to become Xehanort's Soul Jar? The answer will no doubt be an interesting one, and there is potential for him to play a role like Xigbar/Braig's - a secondary but very real threat with his own enigmatic agenda to fulfill.

Also. Time powers. Nuff said.

Roxas is actually Ventus who unknowingly Body Snatched Sora's body
More specifically, Roxas is composed of: Sora's body and Ventus's heart. He could also have had Sora's memories, but it could have also been Namine tampering with Sora's memories and those leaking back to Roxas. Anyway, while Roxas does have Sora's face (since he is composed of Sora's body), he has a hairstyle and clothing style more like Ventus. But mostly, he does not act like Sora. He acts more like Ventus as he would after having been merged back with Vantius, mostly melancholy until he hits his Ragebreaking Point.

When Sora released the hearts within himself at the end of KH1 and turned himself into a heartless, His body was cast off to become a Nobody, but Ventus's heart was also released. Since it couldn't rejoin with his body (either its still too weak or just unreachable), it grabbed onto the next best thing: Sora's discarded body, which it then reshaped to better resemble Ventus's real body.

The Master of Masters is an Anti-Villain
While he acts suspiciously, the Master has good intentions, as evidenced by his interactions with Ava. However, he saw something in the future that disturbed him; maybe it's the Big Bad of the next saga, or something/someone worse. Realizing that he can't totally prevent it nor will being the hero be enough to protect the universe, he decides to become a necessary evil in order to delay the Big Bad's plans and pave the way for future generations of worthy Keyblade Wielders. He manipulates his apprentices into initiating the Keyblade War and disappears, so that the pathways between worlds are closed off and the Big Bad can't get to them immediately. But the stress of betraying his apprentices and nearly dooming the whole world has taken a toll on his sanity. His character arc will be a massive deconstruction of the phrase "May your heart be your guiding key", including The Evils of Free Will and how doing what your heart says is right may have consequences and may be in fact, the more difficult choice to make.

Vanitas will return as The Dragon in KHIII
Vanitas and his remnant are actually a heartless and nobody respectively, when the incomplete chi-blade was destroyed Vanitas was consumed by darkness and his heartless was destroyed in the resulting explosion, later on Aqua battled against his remnant and destroyed it allowing Vanitas's heartless and nobody to eventually reunite and become Vanitas's somebody again, when that does happen Vanitas will find Young Xehanort/Terranort and become a seeker of darkness acting as his dragon throughout part if not all of the game

Aqua will become the Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts IV.

Kingdom Hearts VII or XIII will be the final installemnt

Other "Darkness is a metaphor for (X)" speculation
  • Depression/Anxiety/Other Mental Illnesses: The way Aqua keeps facing herself and her negative self-talk in A Fragmentary Passage is very reminiscent of intrusive thoughts, a symptom of anxiety and bipolar disorder, in which your mind tries to convince you to do ego-dystonic things (things that are basically the polar opposite of your personality). So because Aqua is dead set on not falling into the darkness, part of her brain is telling her to do exactly the thing she fears the most.
    • Meanwhile, her behavior with Terra is very much like a person helping someone with an addiction or compulsion towards other destructive (or self-destructive) behavior- concerned and afraid that he might do something dangerous, but trying to believe in him.
  • Anger and Other "Flawed" Traits: Darkness is pretty explicitly associated with impulsiveness and anger, but the belief that darkness and light must co-exist is An Aesop about the fact that we all have these traits, and that we cannot overcome them without accepting them first.

The Black Box from the Master of Masters contains...
Nothing. It's empty and always has been. It exists just to have something for people to fight over.

Disney&Pixar Worlds that will exist in the next Kingdom Hearts game

This is under the assumption that it'll star our characters who didn't vanish. But... even if they're retellings, they aren't filler adventures, they end up giving the heroes something to go off of...

  • Return to Arendelle - The characters visit Arendelle again... but this time it's the events of Frozen II. (...come on, you know Disney would be strict.) Despite being somewhat of a retelling, ending with a boss fight of the Heartless of Elsa & Anna's grandfather (fused with the dam - a representation of it), it frees everyone from being trapped in space. Thus they end up wondering if this is what happened to Sora, and if there was something that could free him.
  • Motonui - since Te Ka is basically a heartless already. Another "direct adaptation", but this actually fits into the lore of Kingdom Hearts already since the goal is for Moana to restore the Heart of Te Fiti. This ends up giving the characters the idea that if they were to find Sora's wandering heart, he could possibly be restored this way, much like how he was back in Kingdom Hearts. Even is even told about this and contrasts it to Davy Jones in The Caribbean, since Davy Jones's heart was more of a literal thing (his organ) rather than the symbolic term used in Kingdom Hearts. (What makes you, you)
  • Four Kingdoms - a world required to be played after Motonui because our heroes, citing the events of Motonui, wonder if Mor'du can be restored in such a way since the bear form is basically Mor'du's heartless. Unfortunately, all it does is allow Mor'du to die as himself, so the heroes wonder if this is what might happen to Sora, but since Merida's mother was restored, if maybe it was the timing, that since Sora wasn't gone as long as Mor'du (and isn't selfish like Mor'du was), he could be restored.
  • The Land of the Dead - which takes place after Coco, but shows the characters viewing Day of the Dead and showing how people can still exist as long as you remember them... thus tying it into Chain of Memories in a way, and establishing that as long as Sora is remembered, he's not lost. Also Ernesto's heartless tries to make people get forgotten as revenge.

Demyx's recompleted self will come from the same world as Yozora and the possibly recompleted self of Luxord.
  • He appears to be a retroactive example of Prompto from Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, just like how Luxord is a retroactive example of Ignis. Since he's stated to have a Friendless Background, it's very likely no one noticed his disappearance when he lost his heart and became a Nobody. This is probably why he became the first of those connected to the ancient Keyblade War to join Organization XIII. Demyx will most likely play a small, but crucial role in helping the heroes get to Yozora's world.

The possible candidates for the last three members of the New Seven Hearts.
  • Moana Waialiki: Her journey to return the Heart of Te Fiti may serve as the ultimate test for her in becoming a Princess of Heart.
  • Tiana: Her love for Naveen and her Character Development will most likely fill her heart with light.
  • Merida: Her Coming of Age Story and Character Development (Becoming more mature and willing to admit her mistakes) will fill her heart with pure light.
  • Pocahontas: Very unlikely, considering that the Kingdom Hearts franchise will use 3D animated films for new worlds from now on, but the possibility still exists. Her desire to bring peace between her people and the settlers will make her a good candidate for a Princess of Heart.
  • Asha: Asha's attempt to free the wishes Magnifico hoarded will fill her heart with light, and Star's presence will also serve as a Secret Test of Character for the girl. She will also likely be the last new heart of pure light to be revealed.

Kairi met and befriended Subject X before the latter disappeared
  • Judging from the scenes in Melody of Memory's trailer, Kairi was also probably experimented on by Xehanort before she ended up on the Destiny Islands. It's during those experiments she met Subject X and befriended her, with the unidentified girl becoming a big sister figure to her in the short time they had before Subject X disappeared.

Luxord's Keyblade is a Card Key.
  • First of all, pun. Nothing has been stated in the story so far that would explicitly ban a Keyblade from being a card. Bonus points if the Wild Card that Luxord gave Sora turns out to be Luxord's Keyblade. Why he gave it to Sora, and how did he get it back while Marluxia, Demyx and Larxene didn't, I don't know.

Disney and Pixar worlds appearing in KH4 or whatever the hell they call the next game
  • Hawaii: A proper adaptation of the film, including the franchise's human characters for the first time in KH. The story of Stitch finding Ohana just feels right for KH feel-good heart stuff.
  • Game Central Station: Accessed in a similar way to Space Paranoids, via an arcade machine in Radiant Garden or wherever. The Heartless could resurrect the Cy-Bug King Candy, who's just begging to be made into a boss fight in a real video game.
  • Springfield: Hey, it's a total possibility now. It could probably include a ton of Lampshade Hanging and Self-Deprecation jokes about common KH tropes like the constant use of "light" and "darkness" or the overly-convoluted storyline. Sideshow Bob could lead a Heartless invasion in order to get revenge on Bart, who would be your party member along with Homer.
    • Or alternatively, a Simpsons world could be an adaptation of the arcade game with Maggie being kidnapped since it's believed she's one of the New Seven Hearts.
  • Tri-State Area: Doofenshmirtz accidentally summons the Heartless to Danville in yet another petty scheme. However, this world would be visisted twice during the story, a la KHII. Once with Sora, who teams up with Phineas and Ferb to defend the town and do whatever Sora is doing in the worlds in this game, and once with Riku, who teams up with Perry to stop the invasion at the source.
  • Zootopia: There are so many creative things they could do with this world design-wise, and the film's social commentary could lend itself well to something about the nature of the heart and how it connects people. It could also be a great world to introduce Ensemble Dark Horse Freya, another Funny Animal discriminated against for her species, to the franchise in.
  • A Galaxy Far Far Away: Could loosely follow A New Hope as Sora and co. visit Tatooine, get pulled aboard the Death Star, and take part in the trench run in the most epic Gummi mission ever.
  • Marvel Universe: A more action-focused take on the Hundred-Acre-Wood formula: collecting pages in a comic book across the worlds in order to take part in different missions where Sora teams up with a new Super Hero against an epic boss fight with an iconic villain:
    • Spider-Man vs Green Goblin
    • Captain America vs Red Skull
    • Iron Man vs the Mandarin
    • Fantastic Four vs Doctor Doom
    • Thor vs Loki
    • Hulk vs Abomination
    • X-Men vs Magneto
    • Wolverine vs Sabretooth
    • Avengers vs Ultron
    • Guardians of the Galaxy vs Galactus
    • Nova vs Abominus
    • Doctor Strange vs Dormammu
    • Captain Marvel vs Thanos
    • Daredevil vs Kingpin
    • Black Panther vs Klaw
    • Ghost Rider vs Blackheart
    • Deadpool vs Taskmaster
  • Gravity Falls: So much creative potential with this world. Dipper trying to understand the Heartless scientifically, Mabel shooting them with glitter cannons, epic, mind-bending Bill Cipher boss fight, the list goes on.
  • Ducktales (either the original or the reboot): Magica DeSpell teams up with Maleficent & Pete to search for the Black Box, which leads to a grand adventure across the worlds with Scrooge and the triplets by your side.
  • The Boiling Isles: Because whatever armies of enemies and weirdos who show up here will be, no one will bat an eye because everything on The Boiling Isles is weird and creepy enough as it is. Only Luz and Eda would notice something is wrong and will help Sora set things right.
  • Kumandra: The Drunn already look like Heartless, so people learning there is a difference between the two might actually surpise them. A Drunn/Heartless fusion shaped like a dragon is a must for a the final boss of the world.
  • The Grid: With the more modern, sci-fi look of KH4 and TRON Ares on the horizon, it'd be cool to see Sora and crew return to the TRON world.

What type of Heartless was each member of Organization XIII?
Xemnas's (Ansem, who still appeared human) and Roxas's (Sora as a Shadow) have been clearly shown, but what about the rest?

  • Xigbar (II) - Toy Soldier
  • Xaldin (III) - Storm Rider
  • Vexen (IV) - Blizzard Lord
  • Lexaeus (V) - Antlion
  • Zexion (VI) - a Bookmaster.
  • Saïx (VII) - Assault Rider
  • Axel (VIII) - the Trickmaster in Wonderland from KH 1.
  • Demyx (IX) - Turquoise March
  • Luxord (X) - Minute Bomb
  • Marluxia (XI) - Creeper Plant
  • Larxene (XII) - Yellow Opera

Axel will be voiced by Arnie Pantoja in English post-KHIII
Given that Pantoja is the new voice of Reno, Axel's inspiration, and the fact that Quinton Flynn is being accused of sexual harassment, the chips seem to line up perfectly.

Yen Sid's theory about Sora's whereabouts is backwards
In the ending to Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, Yen Sid points out that Sora is no longer within reality, and therefore he must be in the world of fiction. But in Kingdom Hearts III's secret ending, Sora is clearly in what appears to be Shibuya (although the Nameless Star calls it "Quadratum"). Sora's universe consists mostly of Disney movies. Shibuya/Quadratum is a place on Earth. Where are Disney movies made? Earth. And, of course, on Earth, Disney movies are fiction. Therefore, Yen Sid's theory is backwards: the Kingdom Hearts world is the world of Fiction, and Sora is actually trapped in the world of Reality.

Alternative to the above theory: "Unreality" goes both ways.
While Quadratum is considered a fictional world from the perspective of the Kingdom Hearts leads, the same is true from the opposite perspective: Kingdom Hearts (and by extension, the Disney canon) is just a story from the perspective of people from Quadratum. Yozora says he has heard of Sora before; the reason why Yozora is confused about Sora "using Sora's name" is because in his world, Sora is considered a work of fiction. However, it is semantically inaccurate to call either side "fictional" since they're each looking from opposite sides of a window while falsely believing it's a mirror; it would be more accurate to call either world "the opposite side of Reality."

In Quadratum, the story of Kingdom Hearts is told in a published copy of the Book of Prophecies.
The Book of Prophecies ends by claiming "the darkness will prevail and the light expire", but Sora averted that fate and the Master could have been aware of that through his Keyblade, which implies the Book's ending was intentionally misleading; however, Sora wasn't even aware of this prophecy when he averted it, so it wasn't meant to mislead him. The Master of Masters is shown in Quadratum in the "Yozora" secret ending, so it would be a simple matter to bring a copy of the Book with him — perhaps even publish it? If Sora's "failure" was widely accepted in Yozora's world, that would give new meaning to why Yozora thinks he must "save" Sora: because he's working off of falsified information and believes Sora still will fail, in an event Sora already averted.

There are more than two sides of reality.
Given the franchise's obsession with the numbers 3, 7, and 13, it seems fair that there's one, five, or eleven more hidden sides of reality that's neither real or fictional.

If Lightyear is represented in the franchise, it will be stationed in the world of unreality.
It's been confirmed that Lightyear was the movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toys in the first place, making it fiction even in the Toy Story world. And since Toy Story is in the world of reality, it makes sense for Lightyear to be in the world of fiction, much like the world of Verum Rex.

Luxord's Wild Card will be the key to his leaving Quadratum.
As it seems Luxord is originally from that world, it would make sense that his card would be key to leaving and returning to Sora's native realm.

The Firebird will be an endgame boss in Kingdom Hearts IV

In the first Kingdom Hearts, the first numbered entry in the Dark Seeker Saga, Chernabog was fought just before Ansem. So how about making the final villain of Fantasia's sequel pay tribute to that moment by being fought before the final boss in the first numbered entry in the second saga of the franchise?

There will be several side-games before Kingdom Hearts IV
While this may mean that we may need to wait a long time before IV's release, there's still a lot of plot points set up in III, Union χ and Melody of Memory that needs exploring. Quadratum and Verum Rex is the obvious pick, but we also have the matters of the New Seven Hearts, Subject X, the return of Lauriam and Elrena, Ventus' past as a Dandelion, and more.

What could happen is that the Kingdom Hearts teams could make games with the same quality as KHIII with different protagonists for each game (such as Yozora, Kairi, and the Clock Tower and Wayfinder trios, and maybe a few others as well) before it all culminates in KHIV, similar to a typical Phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

  • Jossed; KHIV will be the next game to come out of the franchise (not counting Missing Link. Guess those plot points will have to wait.

Sora will eventually be able to traverse fictional worlds outside of Quadratum in his quest to return to reality.
As Reallife can attest to, fiction and worlds centered around them have countless possibilities. One such Wolrd of Fiction Sora could run enter is the world of Super Smash Bros.. It would make sense since that world is often called the World of Imagination or the World of Trophies. With how massive it is, and how many worlds it crosses over with, Sora wouldn't be able to avoid traveling there at one point. The chance to meet up with Cloud again and fight Sephiroth is icing on the cake.
\\This is not getting into Tetsuya Nomura having worked out a way to canonize Sora's Smash inclusion as part of the Kingdom Hearts lore, and may even by why he came up with the "Worlds of Fiction" concept in the first place. This could also mean we'll be seeing Nintendo characters in a later Kingdom Hearts title.

Luxord's Somebody will play an important role in a future game
Between the number of ways Luxord is tied to the light with his name ("lux" meaning "light" and his name being said "luke-sword", with "Luke" meaning "light-bringer", Luxord's repeated disinterest in the Organization and its goals, the way he hands off a "wild card" to Sora, and Luxord's love of games and chance, especially his interest in poker which requires one to keep such a stagnent expression it has its own term, it seems that Luxord knows quite a great deal more than he seems to. He also seems rather due for a new role- quite the important one. As a figure who has walked darkness as a Nobody, and light as a Somebody, he is akin to both Riku and Aqua. Interestingly, because Luxord's name refers to light, this actually means he fits into the naming conventions seen with Sora and Ventus- the sky, the wind, and the light-giving sun itself. His name phonetically more or less meaning "light-giving sword" also alludes to keyblades.

Which Disney worlds are in the world of fiction
With a new side of reality to play with in the series, it would seem fun to see which worlds from Disney could appear in a world of unreality.

  • Lightyear - As mentioned above, Lightyear is a fictional property in the Toy Story world, similar to Verum Rex, so it's perfect for a fictional world.
  • Bolt - The main character is a dog that stars in a TV show where he has superpowers. A world where we team up with Bolt and fight Dr. Calico is another ideal choice for unreality.
  • TRON and Wreck-It Ralph: Both take place inside digital video game-type environments.

Luxord's Wild Card
Whatever was on that card changed how Sora viewed Luxord completely. It also makes Sora look sad, once Luxord explained what it was. Considering Luxord was something of a wild card in the Organization himself, could the card not be Luxord's either true name or his Somebody? A way to reach out?

Roxas is not Sora's Nobody, nor is he an amnesiatic Ventus. Roxas is, in fact, Ven's Nobody.
If true, it explains a lot. And there's proof! When Sora stabs himself with the Keyblade of Hearts, what happens is actually strange- Sora's own heart is never actually released. What Sora releases is two hearts of pure light- one is Kairi's, but the other can't be Sora's, because it is a heart of pure light. And we know that's what it is because it is entirely identical to the hearts of Kairi and the other six Princesses of Heart, yet looks nothing like a red-pink crystalline heart like the ones released when a Heartless is made or destroyed. So the other heart Sora released must be Ven's, as Ven's heart is pure light thanks to Xehanort ripping the darkness out of his heart. It is shown as a sphere of light every time it appears in BBS and in KHIII. Furthermore, by the time Sora enters Traverse Town, Kairi and Ventus are in nearly completely identical situations- both have hearts of pure light, both their hearts are sleeping within Sora, and both their bodies are comatose husks with no hearts, but because their hearts were not consumed by darkness and instead take refuge in someone else's, neither of their bodies turn into the empty husks that become Nobodies. With this in mind, this might explain why Roxas and Namine are such special Nobodies, even among the humanoid ones- both of them are Nobodies born of hearts of pure light out of a body that is not their own. Namine and Roxas are also the only Nobodies able to coexist with their Somebodies. While this may make sense for Namine, since she wasn't born from Kairi's body, this doesn't make sense with Roxas unless he is not Sora's Nobody.

Roxas actually being Ventus's Nobody might also explain the weirdness with Sora's Heartless (of which there are many oddities). Sora's Heartless, a Shadow, is an unusually passive and gentle Heartless, non-offensive and really only capable of bouncing around. Kairi is instantly able to recognise him. Sora's Heartless knows to go after his friends, and is aware enough that the very first person he goes to is not Kairi who he spent the whole game trying to save or Goofy, but the healer, Donald. He looks up at him, presumably for help. Sora actually says he wasn't yet consumed by the darkness when he heard Kairi's voice. Sora didn't become a Heartless the way other people do, after all, so he still had the light in his heart when you play as his adorable Heartless. Something else that actually points towards Sora not actually losing his heart is the fact he does become a Shadow. It's said time and again that powerful hearts make powerful Heartless. So why does Sora, whose heart is very, very strong, become a Shadow? Sora has been wanted repeatedly by the bad guys for his powerful Heartless. Yet when he becomes one it's one of the weakest and most common Heartless? This doesn't really make a lot of sense. This may be because Sora's heart went into a kind of shock thanks to the fact until right then, Sora had something like 266% of a heart, courtesy of Kairi and Ventus. this shock, as well as the fact he still had his light to a degree, may have been why Sora retained who he was. It also might explain why Kairi was able to restore him. Nobody knows where Sora's body went when it disappeared, but since he only produced a puny Shadow, it's likely Sora did not produce a Nobody at all, as only those with strong hearts produce Nobodies. With this in mind, it actually kind of makes sense Kairi's heart of light was able to restore Sora without destroying his Nobody or Heartless. There was no Nobody to destroy, so naturally the rules might be different, as they are for Nobodies who don't have Heartless. It may be that all a Heartless with no Nobody needs is to come in contact with light again to be restored. So again, Sora did not produce a Nobody of himself. He instead produced one of Kairi and one of Ventus. Unrelated, but I suggest this unusual reversion might be the real reason why Anti-Form exists. Sora's heart is super unstable.

Another thing worth taking into account is the fact that Namine... never encounters Ventus in Sora's heart. She never comments about finding things within Sora that she can't touch. She should see Ven, considering he is so intrinsically tied to Sora's heart, but she doesn't. This may mean Ven is not in Sora's heart at the time. Ven's heart does seem to actually be in his Dive to the Heart. This is tricky to explain, but when Sora finds his Power of Waking, he does not unlock a keyhole over his Station's heart. He instead unlocks a keyhole in the middle of the floor. Yet when he releases Ven's heart, he unlocks a keyhole over Station Ven's heart. This, to me, says Sora isn't unlocking his heart to free Ven's. Instead, it seems that Ven's heart took refuge in his own Station, since it had nowhere else to go on being released from Sora's heart. Sora unlocked the Power of Waking at his own station, and called forth Ven's Station to free Ven's heart. Notably, Sora's Station doesn't transform into Ven's. Sora is floating over a dark abyss that Ven's blooms from.

If Roxas is actually Ven's Nobody, and not Sora's, this would still tie Sora to Ventus even without Ven's heart still in Sora's. It would mean Sora still has part of Ven within him, explaining why Sora has intrusive thoughts and reactions that are actually those of Ventus, when Sora never had that kind of problem before. Roxas, being a Nobody born of pure light, is still tightly connected to his Somebody. Roxas has his connections to Sora mostly courtesy of Namine's tampering and the fact that he is born of Sora's body, just like Namine, but not of Sora's heart. Roxas does "return" to Sora, but this may be because he was born out of Sora. Notably, when Sora Awakens Ventus, Roxas doesn't disappear. He stays in Sora.

Roxas being a Nobody born of a heart of pure light would also explain why, unlike the other twelve in the Organization, he maintained his "good" personality, just as Namine did. Both of them also dress in whites and creams, and Roxas dresses a lot like Ventus (side note: Namine may be blonde because she was born of a heart of pure light. Ventus was already a blonde, though). Even as their reformed Somebodies, Lea and Isa lean towards dark colours.

Worlds that could appear in Kingdom Hearts 4 are...
  • Anastasia
  • Aladdin
  • Alien
  • Atlantis
  • Avengers
  • Bendy and the Ink Machine
  • Black Cauldron
  • Cuphead
  • Disney Land
  • Duck Tales
  • Emperor's New Groove
  • Epic Mickey
  • Fantastia
  • Ferngully
  • Haunted Mansion
  • Hercules
  • House of Mouse
  • Gargoyles
  • Gravity Falls
  • Great Mouse Detective
  • Lightyear
  • Lilo and Stitch
  • Nightmare Before Christmas
  • Phineas and Ferb
  • Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Pocahontas
  • Predator
  • Princess and Frog
  • Radiant Garden
  • Spies In Disguise
  • Star Wars
  • Sword and the Stone
  • Timeless River
  • Toy Story
  • Traverse Town
  • Treasure Planet
  • TRON
  • Turning Red
  • Twilight Town
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
  • Wreck-It Ralph
  • Zootopia

On the nature of Kingdom Hearts itself and why it is the ultimate prize
In Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, a digital copy of Ansem the Wise tells Riku that "The heart has always been quick to grow. Each exposure to light, to the natural world, to other people, shapes this most malleable part inside of us." This can be read as: a heart acquires EXPERIENCE.

In Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Axel, then still part of Organization XIII, exposits to Sora the following: "Our most precious memories lie so deep within our hearts that they're out of reach." His words are echoed by Xemnas, in Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance: "The memory and heart are tightly linked. Rub a few memories together, and you get a spark of emotion, a feeling." These sentences in conjunction can be read as: a heart contains MEMORIES.

Now, where do hearts go? In-universe text tell that the hearts go to Kingdom Hearts:

  • A mysterious text in Ansem's laboratory in The End of The World (Kingdom Hearts 1) says thus: "[Heartless] Seize all hearts and consummate the great heart. All hearts to be one, one heart to encompass all. Realize the destiny: the realm of Kingdom Hearts." (bold not in original)

  • Saïx's speech at Hollow Bastion during the turning point in Kingdom Hearts II: "Pitiful Heartless, mindlessly collecting hearts. And yet they know not the true power of what they hold. The rage of the Keyblade releases those hearts. They gather in darkness, masterless and free... until they weave together to make Kingdom Hearts." (bold added)

  • King Mickey explains the nature of the Kingdom Hearts that appears in the first game (Kingdom Hearts 0.2: A fragmentary passage): "Welp, it's not the Kingdom Hearts you know. Not exactly. But even though it's smaller, it's still the heart of many worlds." (added bolding)

Kingdom Hearts is an aglomeration of hearts, whether of people or of worlds, as Maleficent muses in Kingdom Hearts II: "The heart of all kingdoms, the heart of all that lives."

If an individual heart learns from EXPERIENCE and holds MEMORIES, then the longer-lived hearts contain the most experience and the most memories. This includes skills, secrets, and powers. If Kingdom Hearts exists since time immemorial, and Kingdom Hearts is, in itself, both ONE HEART and "the heart of ALL worlds", surely the combined hearts that comprise Kingdom Hearts are to be avidly sought after by many parties, as Maleficent puts it in the first game: "(...) a door will open to the heart of all worlds. Within lies untold wisdom." (bolding added)

Since Kingdom Hearts is the aglomeration of every heart in the universe, and one heart contains EXPERIENCE and MEMORY, the great heart certainly contains the EXPERIENCES and MEMORIES of every heart that ever lived and ever will be. That is what it makes Kingdom Hearts such a prize: whoever takes hold of it will surely become a god.

There will be multiple spinoff titles in between Kingdom Hearts IV and Kingdom Hearts V
Since we're immediately going into the fourth mainline Kingdom Hearts game, which is said to not focus on characters like the Sea Salt Trio and the BBS Trio, then the game will mostly likely not address the plot threads left behind in past games. To make up for this, the gap between IV and V could be the longest between numbered entries since the wait for III, in order to focus more on the other key characters. Roxas, Xion, Lea, and Isa could learn more about Subject X and her true identity in one game. Kairi could have a game that could allow her to train to be on Sora and Riku's level. Ventus, Aqua, and Terra could learn more about Ventus's past with the Dandelions. And, of course, Verum Rex could finally release, after IV was chosen over it to be made first.

The Lost Master Saga/Arc/whatever will end with Kingdom Hearts VII
The Dark Seeker Saga ended with Kingdom Hearts III, and 3 is a prominent Arc Number in the series. Perhaps it seems fair for the Lost Master Saga could end with the seventh mainline game in the series, just because of 7's similar prominence.

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