WMG / Puella Magi Madoka Magica 3

Deny the obvious. Uphold the inane.

The page has grown big enough to start corrupting the wiki software. Confirmed and Jossed theories are here. Unconfirmed theories are here. Meta theories are here. This page has many unmarked spoilers [for Madoka Magica and the other work(s)] , so read at your own risk.

Crossover theories

"Madoka is really set in the X universe", "QB is dealing with X villain", etc etc. Just for Fun.

Fate/Stay Night crossovers

Kyuubei is actually a representative of the World...

He grants miracles and in return the contractors became Magical Girls (fancy name for Counter Guardian) who will fight whenever a factor in the extinction of mankind (Witches) is detected.

• Strongly jossed in episode 8. Kyubey is actually contracting magical girls so that they become witches themselves, not to destroy every witch in existence.
• Alternatively, if Alaya is the counterforce of humanity and Gaia is the counterforce of the Earth, Kyubey is the counterforce of the Universe as a whole.
• Madoka's ascension made her a Heroic Spirit Independent of Gaia and Alaya
• Incubators have access to the Third Sorcery (Materialization of the Soul) and Homura has access to the Second Sorcery (Operation on Parallel Worlds)

Madoka is Archer

• Or....

Madoka's soul is already outside

• She doesn't need a container and if she turns into an MS she can fight using her soul as a weapon. A combo of Eirin and Youmu.

The Witches' Labyrinths are Reality Marbles

Why is that?

• Both are the representation of the heart of the caster. Just like Unlimited Blade Works is a representation of Archer and his struggles, Sayaka's represents her desire for attention and wish to be loved by the person she cared about the most, which is shown by the concert.
• Witches can only live within the labyrinths, and that is the same as Nero Chaos who can only live by sustaining the reality marble that composes his body.
• Inside the Reality Marble, the caster has the most power available to him/her.
• Actually, calling the Barriers a Reality Marble is suprisingly accurate. Sealed off from Real World? Check. Takes into it anyone in range when activated? Check. Naturally used by things that could probably be considered demons? Check.
• The World is constantly trying to crush Reality Marbles, as they are abnormalities (the strongest Servants and Dead Apostles cannot maintain them for a single night because of this). Witches need to constantly feed on humans and absorb their lifeforce so they can maintain their bounded field and therefore survive.
• The Magical Girls themselves draw their attack power from their own Innate Bounded Fields. Their weapons are formed via powerful Projection magic, akin to Unlimited Blade Works, but can only manufacture one image (e.g. a sword, a bow, a ribbon...). Homura is something of an inversion; all her guns are stored within the Marble, and can therefore be summoned at will. When the girls become witches, their Reality Marble deploys and becomes a Barrier.
  • Rebellion adds a lot more fuel to this fire. The majority of the movie takes place in Homura's Soul Gem, which, due to her witchification, ensnared everyone in a utopian, Mental World version of Mitakihara. Her Reality Marble is comparatively complex in the same way that the Moon Cell's Reality Marbles from Fate/EXTRA are.

On a similar note, Soul Gems are the Third True Magic

That is, "Materialization of the Soul".

Counter Guardians are Puella Magi

Because Joan of Arc has been listed as both a Puella Magi and a Counter Guardian. Both involve making contracts with an emotionless entity for power, at the cost of fighting endlessly. The only depicted Counter Guardian is in a similar mental state to Homura and even has similar powers. The differences can be explained as the result of Madoka's wish.

Homura is the biological daughter of Emiya Kiritsugu.

They both manipulate time, they both use guns and tons of explosives despite having access to magic, they both desperately fight for something they ultimately can't get and they both faced failure several times.Oh, and both the Fate/Zero light novel and Madoka Magica are from Gen Urobuchi.

Alternatively, Homura is a homunculus (heh) coined from Kiritsugu's flesh, in an attempt to create another Magus Killer.

By around 2010, Kiritsugu's exploits as the Magus Killer were immortalized in the magical world, for better or for worse. It reached a point where the Akemi clan of magi, who were lacking in prestige, wanted to try and create a Magus Killer of their own, in order to get rid of stronger families. After robbing Kiritsugu's grave and utilizing his bones, Homura was coined (and modified to be female due to in-universe Author Appeal); however, as the Akemi clan was poor in crafting homunculi, she had a very weak heart, was left stunted at the physical age of thirteen, and only had tiny spots of Kiritsugu's memory. The Akemi were going to dispose of her, but one caring member convinced the head of the family to spare Homura. In the end, it was determined that Homura would be sent to a hospital to be healed, but she would receive Fake Memories that would remove the Akemi clan from her memory.

The reason why Homura has enough magic to be worthy of a contract, despite lacking a true soul, is because homunculi have naturally strong Magic Circuits, but, also due to the Akemi clan's poor craftsmanship, she is one of the weaker Puellae Magi in terms of raw power. Also, as her template utilized time magic and guns, Homura is naturally attuned to both (she was already a master gunslinger by Timeline 4). And, since Kiritsugu fell in love with Irisviel, it's likely that Homura may be projecting those same feelings onto Madoka.

Changeling: The Lost crossovers

The Witches are True Fae, and Magical Girls are the retribution of the angered universe of Changeling: The Dreaming.

When Dreaming was discontinued and then replaced by the New World of Darkness line, Changeling: The Lost, it rebelled against the drastically different ideas of what the True Fae are, but the displaced Changeling spirits had no recourse of their own. Thus they created Kyubey, according to the new laws set out by Lost. The real nature of the Contract is that it's actually a Pledge: in exchange for becoming a Magical Girl, they agree to fight the True Fae and are likewise entitled to a wish, and weapons with which to fight them, for life. This is an extremely powerful Pledge, and since Kyubey, despite being made to adhere to the rules of Changeling: The Lost, is still fundamentally tied to the concepts of limitless fancy and absolute belief, making it possible for the Fae powers manifested in the Magical Girls to cut through the Hedge and kill True Fae in their own realms. However, if a Magical Girl's soul gem becomes corrupted, and the result is a Changeling, not another Witch.

• With the revelation that Magical Girls become Witches, it seems more likely that magical girls are just Changelings, while Witches are True Fae, since Changelings can also become True Fae.
• The similarities go far, far beyond that. Witches are worlds unto themselves, beautiful and terrible worlds with surreal landscapes and shaky physical laws that mirror the witch's former personality's dreams in a very twisted way. Yet, witches are also lifelike characters, strange as they may be, who exist within the world which they are, and are also a host of small faceless minions in same. Girls who are exposed to witches often return to this world feeling like aliens, like everybody else is strange and distant and the world itself has changed forever. By contract, some of them gain powers similar to the witch's own they use to fight them, not knowing that as their powers grow and they become more detached from humanity, they are just getting closer to becoming witches themselves... There is just no end to this!

It's ALL Haruhi's fault.

And so she discovered her Reality Warper powers, and recreated the universe as a Cosmic Horror Story with Herself as Yahweh who transformed the entire universe into a Tragedy powered by the Endless Recursion of Break the Cutie. Think of Haruhi's perverted perpetual rape of Mikuru simply for being Moe, Yuki's And I Must Scream in this Endless Recursion of Time, and Kyon trying to bear with Haruhi's wrath just like Jesus Christ, all out of control. Of course, Homura and Yuki (both not-so-stoics who are also the most tortured sufferers of this Sisyphean Ryona made by Haruhi, and are conscious about all of it) must be related.

We can even theorize that the being known as Haruhi Suzumiya, as the creator of this system, is the First and most powerful Witch, complete with Barriers, Mazes, Labyrinths (Closed Spaces and existence itself) and Familiars (the Celestials, with the SOS Brigade and the Incubators acting as enslaved pseudo-familiars to enforce her will). This Witch is so powerful as to become The Omnipotent, with Madokami as nothing before the power of Haruhi. And of course, the fundamental ingredient for a witch is melancholy, another name for grief or depression, and according to the title what does Haruhi have? MELANCHOLY. So LOGICALLY...

• But the Haruhi hardened Incubators' hearts, that they hearkened not unto the weeping and wailing of Puella Magi; as the Haruhi had spoken unto Kyon.
• Actually, Haruhi never was a Witch, but the Goddess-(Re)Creator of Madoka's Crapsack World universe. Incubators, humanity, etc., were all created (or rather, recreated) by Her, and the structure of Reality as powered by the torture and despair of cute Moe Girls was all by Her melancholic Break the Cutie-fetish design.
• Alternatively, Haruhi wasn't a complete monster, but driven to near-insanity by realizing her Omnipotence. She created the Madokaverse and it was good, for her love of Moe tropes are what serves as a form of reason to live. But the Wrath, Lust and Insanity of The Haruhi shall intrude into the sugar bowl of Madoka's world, and so behold, the cute Magical Girls by whose sadness and eternal torture all the Realities are saved.
• Of course, Jesus Madoka eventually sacrificed herself to have a few treaties with Her...
  • In exchange for being crucified for the amusement of The Haruhi.

And of course, Haruhi, before creating the Madokaverse, was originally primordially descended from the post-Third Impact Tang which gave her Omnipotence. More on this below (and in the Haruhi and Evangelion WMG's).

And thus the Grand Unifying Guesses trilogy is now complete.

The Incubators were created by the Reapers.

If we take Episode 11 into account that Incubator brought humanity science and helped them to advance, only to harvest once the quota is reached.

Kyubey is Mogget

No reason other than both being strikingly apathetic white supernatural cats of questionable allegiance.

Kyubey is a form of Nyarlathotep.

You have an amoral, eldritch jerkass critter who deals with teenage girls to in order to cause them to despair which ultimately results in human misery all around. His motivations for being a little cute critter to create magical girls are simple:

• His form is what most people consider "cute" therefore lulling them into a false sense of security
• He grants them wishes, which baits them into becoming Magical Girls
• Their soul is put into a Gem for easier consumption and or manipulation when need be
• Him eating Soul Gem's is actually him consuming what's left of the former magical girls soul
• He then get's them into situations where they reach their Despair Event Horizon thus turning them into Eldritch Horrors which cause Human Suffering and thus amuses him.
• His goal for creating the Ultimate Witch is actually a ploy...to awaken the Great Old Ones from their earthly tombs, with Witch!Madoka as the catalyst.
• If he is Nyarlathotep, then he knows that his "entropy" reason for doing what he does is a farce, as you know...he's Messenger to the LIVING CENTER of the UNIVERSE and all. He just crafts this reason as a a method to give a reason to what he does that won't destroy their mind, and most teenage girls aren't knowledgeable enough in that field to call him out on it.
• He is intentionally causing Homura to constantly go through the Time Loop. For his own amusement
• Nyarlathotep has over 1,000 forms, the Mythos barely covers a 100 if that. It makes sense for him to have a form like this to make deals with mortals less difficult.
• His entire plot of creating God!Madoka actually is a method of WAKING UP AZATHOTH as she would generate a massive amount of power, which would be enough to awaken the living center of the universe, ENDING REALITY. That and we all know what happens next... on a immense scale of course.
  • Goddess Madoka then proceeds to destroy the Great Old Ones.
    • Or is it, cause perhaps that's what Nyarly wants you to think........

Alternatively, Nyarlathotep actually is, or acts like, an Incubator. The conception about him trying to destroy mankind is a misconception, just like how we misunderstand Incubators as assholes.

If Nyarly was actually interested in destroying humanity once and for all then why did he not help Cthulhu when he was trying to end the world when the stars were right only to get punched out by a ship? Answer: He doesn't. There's a reason why he is yet to destroy humanity, and why he limits himself into schemes about causing so much grief and misery on Humans, and that is to maximize the number of Magical Girl contractees.

Said Magical Girls mutate into Witches, which are a lot like mini-Azathoths that are the cores of their own dimensions. These mini-Azathoths are, in fact used by Nyarly and the Incubators to feed the dormant Greater God himself, Azathoth, essentially acting as drugs of sorts to keep it in dreaming all of reality. Thus, if Nyarly let his hatred/disgust of humans get the better of him, then all of existence, including himself and the rest of the Outer Gods may even be obliterated by Azathoth's awakening.

Nyarly and the Incubators act as assholey parasites that we think are out to destroy us For the Evulz, but in fact are parasites that know not to destroy their host yet, although Nyarly and some Kyubey may acquire a little amusement from their trolling. The Entropy story is just a coverup because us laypeople such as Madoka can't comprehend the workings of the Outer Gods. Turns out, laypeople and xenophobes afraid of the unknown, such as H. P. Lovecraft himself, will exaggerate their conceptions about the Incubators and turn them into apocalyptic horror tales. Alternatively, it's Metaphorically True, with Azathoth the "Nuclear Chaos" and his burgeoning awakening as representing Entropy.

Madokami assimilated Yog-Sothoth during her sacrifice/ascension.

Yog-Sothoth exists at every point in space and time, yet locked out of it. When Madoka sacrificed herself to recreate existence and exist at every point in space and time, her divine powers enabled her to assimilate with this Outer God and make the world of Madoka less Cosmic Horror Story-y. Although this means that she herself is now "bound/crucified" as a replacement for Yog Sothoth, and locked out of the universe that for ordinary humans would be an eternal And I Must Scream. Although as an Outer God, this means that she can also limit a lot of Nyarly's trolling of humanity, knowing that just like Kyubey's utilitarianism, Nyarly's mischiefs are better than the alternative of an awakened Azathoth actively raping the universe.

Alternatively, Nyarlathotep, the Old Ones, and the Incubators hatched this Magical Girl conspiracy to keep away someone else infinitely worse: YAHWEH/the Abrahamic God (or a Haruhi-esque equivalent).

Nyarly, the Great Old Ones, and the Incubators might be Jerkasses, but they're Jerkasses who are not interested about infringing actively upon other people's freedom of thought (The Great Old ones don't give a fuck about you, and Kyubey in particular is keen about his respect of consent). Yahweh, on the other hand, is an angry, vicious Omnipotent who if awakened will turn all of existence into a Totalitarian Orwellian Hell where the most subatomic hint of Thought Crime is enough to consign you to eternal immortal torture day and night forever and ever until even Yog Sothoth himself dies (Which will never happen). Rendering all of existence and nonexistence into an endless, eternal And I Must Scream Crapsack Omniverse that WILL suck for everyone and everything ever; even Old Ones will end up having standards.

Hence why they had the alternative, as in mutate Magical Girls into immortal Witches trapped in their own eternal Hells (do you wonder why their Grief Seeds can never be destroyed?) so that Yahweh's desire for some sort of eternal punishment is appeased while the Incubators and the rest of all the species in all of existence and nonexistence don't go into Hell. "The needs of the Many outweigh the needs of the few." This also parallels with Magical Girls, especially Madoka herself, acting as mini-Jesuses of sorts.

Madokami's sacrifice/ascension was the reason that Nyarlathotep and the Incubators quit their trolling campaigns and turned into Nyarko-san

Madokami ascended and offered herself to Yahweh/Azathoth/Haruhi/(insert Evil God Here) as the new caretaker preventing said Evil Gods from putting the universe into more Death or Fate Worse than Death, but it also meant that Nyarlathotepians and a lot of the Incubators are kicked out of their job of maintaining the universe by making humanity suffer. While Madokami and her servant Homura are responsible for maintaining the 'Verse, the Nyarlathotepians and the Incubators developed an alternative economy based on watching Earth's arts and entertainment as Addiction Displacement for their trolling behaviour (This is also a partial reason why Madokami still allows grief in the world, because it inspires human art that then keep the former trolls in Bread and Circuses). There, are of course, other factions of Nyarlies, Kyubeys and Eldritch Abominations who still prefer the brutal sadism of the previous eras, hence why Nyarko-san was assigned to protect the earth from other enemy Cosmic Horrors.

In one of the alternate timelines, Madoka/Kriemhild Gretchen splits into two components which then time traveled to the primordial Earth: Adam and Lilith of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Hence Kriemhild's nature being similar to Instrumentality in many ways.

Incubators are creatures native to the Moon Kingdom.

During the Silver Millennium, Incubators were a race of magical creatures that lived on the Moon and were tasked by the ruler of the Moon Kingdom with helping to recruit humans to fight against Chaos. Back then, the magical girl system was a little different. A girl who contracted would become a Sailor Senshi, and a boy who contracted would become a Tuxedo Senshi. For example, if Princess Serenity contracted, she would gain the abilty to become Sailor Moon, and Prince Endymion would become Tuxedo Mask, or Tuxedo Earth as he would have been called at the time. Before a contract was made, Incubators would explain what was in store to a potential contractee, and would refuse to make a contract unless the potential senshi accepted that fate, and agreed to the terms and conditions. A magical girl/boy would be able to access multiple transformations, have multiple weapons, and use different transformation items. Rather than simply making a wish, a contractee would have an Incubator study their Star Seed, identify the reason for that Star Seed's creation, give the contractee powers connected to their Star Seed, and then transform the Star Seed into a Sailor Crystal/True Star Seed. Only young humans were able to become magical girls/boys, so once a a contractee reached adulthood, they would have to find a successor to carry on their responsibilities. If young Queen Serenity had made a contract, she would given up her abilty to become Sailor Moon to her daughter. After the fall of the Silver Millenium, the Incubators altered the system. Without Queen Serenity to guide them, the simplified their plan to recruit soldiers to fight against Chaos, which eventually devolved into having a young person make a wish, gain magic powers, give them one transformation, one transformation item, a Soul Gem, all without fully explaining what was in store. Over time, very few Tuxedo Senshi, such the Shitennou, remained, so the Incubators begain to contract more girls than boys. Homura Akemi was a Sailor Senshi in past life at the time of the Silver Millennium, and was one the many Queen Serenity sent to be reincarnated to future Earth. She eventually regained her memories of her past life and, believing that Madoka could help her, took actions to help restore the Silver Millennium. (Note that her magical girl outfit resembles a sailor fuku [1]◊.) Yes, this means that Homura is partially responsible for Crystal Tokyo. Though one must wonder how Queen Serenity would react if she found out what Kyubey's been up to lately.

Carly Rae Jepsen is a Puella Magi.

She trades her soul for a wish, or rather, puts it inside a soul gem. Alternately, Call Me Maybe could be from the perspective of Homura, which makes it take a depressing turn. Maybe I think about this too much.

When Madoka turned into Hope, she turn into The Hope

Did anyone watch the second movie of CCS? Originally, The Nothing card had a sad face on it; a crystal-ball shout-out to PMMM's opening where Madoka sheds tears?

The Kyuubey are a branch of Auditors.

Entities who keep the stars burning and the planets orbiting; but a dim outlook on sentience. The events of Thief of Time wiped most of the old ones out; even the ones who "survived" were infected by the emotions that their human avatars accrued and went too insane to keep the universe running. The next batch learned from their predecessors mistakes and learned how to use emotion in their favor without succumbing to it; as well as created an emplated host body that did not have biological urges. The event with their predecessors also left them with a distinct opposition to Death/entropy.

Soul Gem technology is based on Philosopher's Stones

When you can condense the souls of people in order to violate Equivalent Exchange.....

• The Incubators might have been a race that mastered alchemy, to the point that they can make a Philosopher's Stone out of a single being that still retains its sapience and strengthens itself with either its own emotions (as a Puella Magi) or sacrificing other people's souls (as a Witch).

Witchification is the result of Sailor Moon putting Chaos "into the hearts of everyone."

In the Sailor Moon universe, there is a singularity out in space called "the Galaxy Cauldron" and was overseen by an entity called "Sailor Cosmos" (possibly a future future version of Sailor Moon) It produces all of existence, and in the manga; it's stated that the stronger the light is; the stronger Chaos is. Well, Sailor Moon stopped this cycle by sealing Chaos into People. This stopped the Galaxy Cauldron's production line. Magical Entropy began to set in. The Kyubey are actually agents of the Galaxy Cauldron who took over when Sailor Moon's actions negated Cosmos; the original Guardian of the Galaxy Cauldron. They found a magical way of releasing the Galaxy Cauldron energy...by releasing the Chaos trapped within the human soul. Madoka's sacrifice switched the cycle back.

• All of this has happened before, and will happen again. The Enemy Within and the Enemy Without are constantly being kicked in and out of the human soul.

Madoka Magica sets the stage for the events of BlazBlue

When Madoka ascended, she became a pseudo-Witch while retaining her sanity; the barrier she generates actually contains half of the entire universe. The other half contains the "equivalent despair" that was necessary for her ascension, inhabited by Demons. Kyubey (all of them) got fired from his position for incompetence and was replaced by other Incubators, one of whom was Yuuki Terumi. Terumi trolls humanity incessantly because he's an extremely rare member of his species who possesses emotions (and therefore magic), and being around emotionless bastards like Kyubey drove him nuts. To compensate for the much lower energy returns from Demon-hunting as opposed to witch-hunting, the Incubators contract thousands of Magical Girls, which eventually reveals the secret of creating Soul Gems; unscrupulous human scientists then utilize the powers of Soul Gems to create Ars Magus and Sentient Weapons. The Nox Nyctores are all sentient, and affect the mind of the user in negative ways, because they contain the souls of Magical Girls and therefore collect despair in the same way.

• TA, TB and TC are also Incubators, and were planning to destroy Amaterasu who may or may not be, or have been created by, Homura as part of a plot to disrupt the time loops and overthrow Goddess Madoka. Terumi kills them and disrupts the plot either because he thinks he can do it better, or for the hell of it.
• Trinity and Luna were once true Magical Girls, but are now vying for time in Sena's body. Coincidentally, this means Platinum IS, in fact, a trap.
• Bang's nail has the power to sever Boundary connections only because it contains a Puella Magi's soul.
• Murakumo Units and dolls like Nirvana and Ignis operate on the same premise; they're Magical Girl souls with Restraining Bolts to force them to follow orders.
• Arakune became a Demon/Witch/Whatever because he crossed over the Boundary. Phantom probably became a Witch the same way because Madoka's influence doesn't extend outside of her Barrier.
• Tsubaki gets the power for her Astral Finish by invoking Goddess Madoka.

Another theory is Madoka becomes the Black Beast (aka Kriemhild Gretchen) in an alternative continuity instead of Ragna.

NieR is one of Goddess Madoka's helpers.

Both Father Nier and Brother Nier. They're sometimes the same person, and sometimes not. (That sorta thing happens outside Space and Time.) When "both" Niers Retgone'd him/themself to save Kainé; this got Goddess Madoka's attention.

• And then that attention went to their universe, which was so incredibly screwed by The Corruption that it fell into her jurisdiction and she was able to guide everyone's souls to a better afterlife. (We actually see this afterlife in New Game Plus.)
  • Nier is a rare male helper in Magical Girl Valhalla; but he doesn't mind if it means his daughter/sister Yonah will have a peaceful place to go. Madoka's a good kid, anyways.

Soul gems are somehow related to Exspheres from Tales of Symphonia

Both soul gems and Exspheres hold the consciousness/souls of people. Both of them can turn their users in to monsters/witches if untreated. Both of them provide power boosts to their users.

Goddess Madoka is now in Gensokyo.

Anything that doesn't exist in the outside world exists in Gensokyo; thus by erasing herself; she appeared there. In between saving every magical girl turning witch in every timeline; and when she's not floating naked in the cosmos, her physical manifestation has a home. She tends to work closely with the Celestials and the Yami/Shinigami when working out a place for the magical girls to go.

• Related to the above; the black cat that Madoka and the cast have hanging around them was in fact Chen, in her cat form. Having accidentally ran through one of Yukari-sama's gaps that transported her off-Gensokyo, she ended up in the show's OP, leading to Yukari's discovery of the Madoka 'verse and seeing the show. Her sympathy for Madoka and Homura (which reminded her of a certain maid that made damned good cake) caused her to weaken the border between hope and despair, allowing Madoka to break through it (when combined with the power that she gained from the time loops it became a certainty that she would succeed) during the finale. Madoka now resides with the rest of Gensokyo as a new early Stage Boss (though absurdly powerful and uses lots of arrow spam, like Sakuya's knives, Madoka is still new to the Danmaku genre so she's still not that 'powerful' when ranked in the Spell Card system. Plus she's not really trying to "win."
  • Highly related.

The entire show...

...resembles none other than Kamen Rider. Kamen Rider Ryuki, to be specific. See here for more details. For example:

• Madoka is in the place of Ryuki, only she is still unable (or unwilling) to transform. Her reactions to Kyoko and Sayaka fighting seem to mirror Shinji's reactions when he first sees a Rider Vs. Rider fight.
  • She is also something of an Expy of Yui, in that the timeline is constantly being reset for her benefit. She also drew the magical girl outfits accurately, much like how Yui drew the Monsters of the Mirror World accurately, although these are for different reasons.
    • And like Yui, it is by her Heroic Sacrifice that the whole terrible cycle is put to a close.
• Homura and Knight are both black and have Hidden Heart of Gold.
  • She also shares some similarities with Odin, and by extension, Shiro. Powers over time? Check. Flash Step? Check. Constantly resetting time to get the ending she wants? Check.
    • There's also the fact that Shiro also didn't want Shinji to be a rider, much like how Homura didn't want Madoka to be a Magical Girl.
    • And perhaps the closest comparison to Shiro ever, she accepts Madoka's death much like how Shiro accepted Yui's death in the finale to get Bittersweet Ending.
  • The fan art, before it was removed, compared her to Alternate Zero, who tried to end the senseless killing by trying to screwing over Shiro's (in this case, Kyubei) plans.
  • Also, her shield is similar to TaJaDoru's shield.
  • She also shares traits with Ryuga. Much like how Ryuga desires Ryuki to be one with him, Homura desires Madoka to be one with her... in the fan-interpreted way.
  • And in Rebellion, Akuma Homura basically becomes the polar opposite of Ultimate Madoka, much like what Ryuga is to Ryuki.
• Mami and Scissors. Yellow? Check. Killed off shortly after debut? Check. Eaten alive by Monster of the Week? Check. Heck, even the line they say in the battle (which takes place just before said death) is similar. Mami is not really evil, though. Unless you counted that one time in #10.
  • She also shares some traits with Zolda. BFG? check. No Kill Like Over Kill Finishing Move? check. Both wishes have something among the lines of them wanting to live because they were dying? Check.
  • She also shares some traits with Raia in which she is one of the nicest Magical Girls besides Madoka much like Raia being one of the nicest riders besides Ryuki (Okay, save for that one timeline in #10 for Mami and Kamen Rider Zi-O: Rider Time Ryuki for Raia, but you get the idea) and is a Big Brother Mentor compared to Raia.
• Kyouko is egoistic Magical Girl, and wields a stick. (With a blade at the end.) Yup, she's Puella Magi equivalent of Ouja.
  • She is also compared to Zolda. A Jerkass who often butt heads with Knight.
• Sayaka fits Knight more. Her weapon is a sword, much like Knight's, she possess a cape and is colored blue, much like Knight's Super Mode, and her wish is similar to Knight's (wishing for their love to be better) and shows what might have happened to Knight after said wish was granted.
• Kyousuke fits someone who would have become a Kamen Rider, Miyuki's friend, Yuichi Saito. Both were musicians whose careers are ruined by a broken hand. Yuichi's wish, had he made the contract, was to cure his broken hands, much like how Sayaka's wish is to fix Kyousuke's hands.
• As for Kyuube... Coming out of nowhere, asking for - all right, demanding - the contract that grants the transformation with one's wish? Am I the only one to see the image of Kanzaki Shirou from this disturbingly Faustian Weasel Mascot?
  • Except that [[spoiler: Shiro wasn't going to grant wishes, and instead goes the Kotohime path and tries to use the wish for himself
  • Also, wishes that come with a price? I think the Imajins would like to have a word.
• Other Ryuki References include...
  • The multiple time-lines being shown in #10 have some semblance to "Episode Final" and "Thirteen Riders", one a movie and another a TV special that show how the show could have went.
  • The witches' maze resembles Mirror World, in that it's where the battle between the protagonists and Monster of the Week takes place. They have that only Magical Girls/Kamen Riders can enter and exit anytime whereas humans can enter and never exit. As well as the No Body Left Behind thing.
  • There is also the wish thing. Magical Girls make a wish and receive Magical Girl powers. Kamen Riders on the other hand get their wish after they murder twelve other riders.
  • When a monster is defeated in both shows, they drop an item that the Magi/Riders can feed to their Monster/Gem. Don't feed your Mirror Monster? It eats you. Don't feed your Soul Gem? You become a Witch! Which is like dying.
  • Forming a contract guarantees a "no-exit" clause in either show.
  • There are also some resemblances with the American adaptation, Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. Kyubey is essentially a cute version of Xaviax: both take advantage of the magical girls'/Riders' moments of despair for their granting of wishes, and both play them like fiddles. Plus, Madoka and Kit both have Superpowered Evil Sides — Kriemhild Gretchen for Madoka and Kamen Rider Onyx for Kit, though the latter was actually just Dragredder taking control of Kit in his dreams.
• There is also an OOO resemblance. Kyubei is Ankh if he actually succeeded in fooling Eiji to being his tool. And he's turning into a Greeed, which is OOO's version of a Witch.
  • And just like in OOO, Madoka manages to outsmart her Evil Mentor...
  • There are also some comparisons that can be made between Kyoko and Ankh. Red? Check. Big Eater shown eating ice lollies? Check. Selfish? Check. They even share the same mispronounced nickname^note When Kyoko's name first appeared in promotional material, some fans mispronounced her name as Anko (an alternate reading of 杏子), and Ankh gets called Anko by Akira Date
• There is also the ironic use of a catchphrase from a certain Kamen Rider. "Despair is your goal." Despair is what fights off entropy and is what Kyubei desires. So in other words, Despair is Kyubei's goal.
  • Another possible translation to it is "Despair awaits you in the end." This is what happens to all Magical Girls.
  • Ironically, the finale where Homura lets Madoka go, and then continues her crusade against the demons brings to mind Double's finale, where similar circumstances happen.
• There is also a comparison to Kamen Rider 555. In order to be a Kamen Rider in 555, you would have to be dead (most of the time), and demise usually follows those who do become Kamen Riders, much like the Puella Magi, albeit a little differently.
  • And then there is a comparison with Sayaka and Kusaka. Sayaka's relationship with Kyousuke is Kusaka's relationship with Mari without the Yandere (we hope) aspects, uses a sword much like Kusaka, and dies near the end like Kusaka.
• In Decade's tour of Hibiki's World, Hibiki turns into Gyuuki after he stopped fighting for justice and tried to be strong for the sake of being strong. This happens to Sayaka, albeit for different reasons.
  • Speaking of Decade, Walpurgisnacht's ability is to summon up fallen Magical Girls to do her bidding. Just like Diend and Basco...
• Also, the ending are similar with Kamen Rider Blade. Both Madoka and Kenzaki sacrifices their humanity for the sake of their best friends. In this case, Madoka and Kenzaki as goddess and Navy Joker respectively.
• Confirmed by Shinbou.
  • Source?'
• Well, Urobuchi has written a Kamen Rider Show, Gaim. Let's rip it apart.
  • Kouta takes cues from Madoka, as well as a few from Hitomi.
    • As the expy of Madoka, he represents the Madoka who is already a Puella Magi and actively fights the enemy. He is one of the nicest people in the series, is willing to help anyone in need, and gets broken by events. Both are also Determinators. He also ascends to Godhood and Takes a Third Option to save the world, like Madoka did, and gets his Godhood removed from him temporarily (by Megahex). What he says about allies fighting amongst each other mirrors some of Madoka's lines.
    • Regarding Hitomi Shizuki. Both of them are Determinators who Take a Third Option and blame themselves for losing Micchy and Sayaka (respectively) to the point of feeling sympathy for them. And just like Hitomi, Kouta is Mai's love interest, despite being unaware of this.
  • Kaito is just Kyoko, but without the Big Eater trait. They both are red spear-wielders, they both are Social Darwinists and, while their fruit motifs may not match up, Kaito does use the Ringo lockseed in his V-Cinema. They both even have fathers who committed suicide, shaping their selfish personalities.
  • Mitsuzane starts like Sayaka, an idealistic person who tried their best to do good, only to have situations out of their control screw them over and having their main reason to do good reject them, finally making them snap/fall into despair. He also had Homura's obsession with protecting his friends at any cost. Him becoming Ryugen Yomi also represents him becoming Akuma Homura to Kouta's Kiwami Arms's Ultimate Madoka.
    • It can be said that the lyrics of Mitsuzane's Image Song can apply to Homura as well.
  • Takatora, with the shield, cold personality and mysterious impression, in the beginning, represents the Homura from the first half of Madoka Magica.
  • Mai is the half of Madoka who cannot fight. She's an All-Loving Heroine who is so selfless to the point of forgiving the likes of Micchy.
    • She, like Kyousuke Kamijo, is the Sayaka expy's love interest, but she does not know that, and instead has her eyes swooning over Kouta.
    • And after becoming the Woman of the Beginning, she is the other half of Ultimate Madoka, complete with Homura's time travelling powers.
  • We have Ryoji Hase, who suffers the same fate as Mami (their deaths being the turning points of their respective series) and Sayaka (Turning into the very thing that they were fighting against). His death even aired one day (January 19, 2014) before Mami's (January 20, 2011).
  • Oren is basically a more jerkass version of Mami. They share the cake motif and use foreign languages (Mami names her attacks in Italian, and Oren puts French in his speech), as well as being veterans (although in different regards. In a spin-off, they even gain new forms through being Mind Controlled.
  • Hideyasu Jonouchi's relationship with Ryoji and Oren draws direct parallels to Nagisa Momoe. This is further strengthened in #12, since Hideyasu becomes the key instrument in Ryoji's demise, just like how Nagisa (as Charlotte, the Dessert Witch) sends Mami to her death.
  • We have two expies for Kyubey, Sid and DJ Sagara. Sid was the one who provided the powers, while DJ Sagara is A trolling Magnificent Manipulative Bastard who is playing on both sides for his own agenda. He's even in the same position in the end with Kouta winning the Fruit and becoming a god, though unlike Kyubey, he can understand emotions and people, he's a force for progression, especially in Kouta's character, rather than pure manipulation, he's gracious with his defeat, if initially disappointed.
• In terms of combat:
  • Gaim represents Sayaka, complete with a sword (in Orange Arms), a cape (in Kiwami Arms), and healing powers (as an Overlord).
  • Baron is, obviously, Kyoko, with a lance and also the apple motif (in Ringo Arms)
  • Ryugen is Mami, armed with firearms. Ryugen Yomi is Akuma Homura, as the Devil archetype to Gaim's Kiwami Arms' Messianic Archetype.
  • Zangetsu has the shield, representing Homura, and Zangetsu Shin's melon motif and bow use mirrors Madoka. The transition from Zangetsu to Zangetsu Shin can represent Homura losing her time travelling powers, but getting powers similar to Ultimate Madoka. Makes one wonder what a Homura vs Akuma Homura fight would look like...
  • Let's talk about the show itself...:
    • Show starts off lighthearted but gets darker later on? Check. Enemy is insentient and focus is on interactions between Riders/Puella Magi? Check. Characters turning into enemy they were fighting against? Check.
    • The summer film is oddly similar to Rebellion's concept, the characters finding themselves in an alternate universe where nothing bad that had happened in the show has occured. We also have Kouta fighting a hive mind who doesn't understand human emotion, like Kyubey.
  • Heck, even some of the music is similar.

Or, the show is basically a parallel world version of Armored Trooper VOTOMS.

• Urobochi had openly stated that Chirico Cuvie, the lead character from Votoms, had inspired his life since his youth. Now consider Kyubey, one of the lead character from this show: shares similar name in Japanese, both are Determinator for their goals, and will never die for some sort of reason. Alternatively, either Madoka or Homura can replace Chirico as resident Determinator since:
  • Madoka's presence and choices in the timelines affect the whole universe just like Chirico to the prolonged interstellar war.
  • Votoms' Opening Theme, Destiny of Fire (Honou no Sadame), describes Chirico's fate and feelings among the wars he faced. Now replace Chirico with Homura (which also means "fire" in Japanese), and rethink her desparation to save Madoka in each timeline......Which is her fate to do so. And like Chirico fights for saving Fiona in the original, she also fights to save Madoka throughout the anime, though there're more twist than the original.
• Madoka saying goodbye to Homura (both naked) in the last episode is an obvious tribute to Votoms' original ending.
• Need concrete evidence? This fanmade video from Niconico Douga. 12 of the Votoms' Next Episode Previews are totally synchronous to what happens in each Madoka Magica episode.

Kyuubey is an acquaintance of Chamo.

The Elf-Ermine was part of a small racket. His best friend was an absolute battery of mana, and Chamo had been hired by certain members of the Magic World (an Layered World to Mars) to "skim" from a mages's power through his Pactio's with other people. Just enough that nobody noticed. This energy was then purchased for "Chamo Dollars." The Magical World was in a crisis. It couldn't keep the power going to fuel it's own existence; and was hiring "scalpers" like Chamo to scrape together any mana they can.

• Kyuubey felt this was a good idea; but didn't go nearly far enough. Why scrape for power from a contract when you can get the lion's share? For a simple reality warp; contract with someone and then infect them with Magic Erebea. Suck as much power out you can; while having contractee's using fallen Magic Erebea users remains to stoke for a slightly slower burn. Then leave the area with the useable mana as the surviving Magical Erebea's blow everything to hell.

Kyuubey is dealing with Slender Man, somehow.

• Slenderman feeds off negative human emotions.
• Witches are a product of such. (Also, Grief Seeds)
• Magical girls eventually become Witches.
• Kyuubey forces girls into becoming magical girls.
• The magical girls hit their Despair Event Horizons and witch out.
• PROFIT!
  • Slenderman is the closest form the Incubator has to a real form.

Or alternatively Slenderman is a witch.

• It is known to create something similar to a witch's barrier. Some of its victims vanish. The same thing happens to people who die inside witches' barriers. Proxies are people affected by its witch kiss. Slenderman, like the witches, is responsible for "unexplained deaths and suicides". Slender sickness is a result of it feeding off its victim's grief.
  • Its wish probably had something to do with protecting children.

Madoka is a Princess of Heart.

Kyubey is trying to get her to accept the darkness that comes with being a Magical Girl so he can steal her body and use it for his own purposes.

• Alternatively, Kyuubey's a Nobody (he can't feel emotions, after all) and is trying to make the Puella Magi release enough hearts so that Kingdom Hearts will open for him.
  • So all we need is a Xehanort's Heartless Expy and we're set! "GRIEF IS THE SOUL'S TRUE ESSENCE!"

Kyubei is actually Hideyoshi.

Hideyoshi is fed up of being a fansevice bait and hence used some magical spell to turn himself into our dear magical pet.

Since he is a skilled actor, it explains why Madoka and co didn't suspect him.

Madoka Magica is set in the same universe as Inception.

One of the above WMGs pointed out that the magical girls are actually reality warpers, there is a chance that the Madoka universe is actually one of the dream stages and the girls are hooked onto the PAVIS machine.

I believe Chris Nolan somewhat has a hand in this series too.

Homura has to be a student/step-daughter of Nanoha from the future.

Just a guess seeing as Nanoha likes angsty Mahou Shojos. She totally digs them so much she started to collect them all over the universe. I'm guessing she was sent to stop a small white demon from destroying a world but failed due to a certain someone selling her soul to it.

• Bonus points for inheriting the same voice actress to boot.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Sailor Nothing take place in the same universe.

It just makes so much sense!

It's all another game between Bernkastel and Lambdadelta.

Ahaha.wav.

• Homura is a lot like Ange, even having jumped to another timeline.
• This◊. (*Madoka episode 9 spoilers.)
  • And this◊.
• As of episode 10, Homura is basically going through what Rika did. What if Homura's time jumps lead to the creation of a witch version of herself, just as Rika's world hopping created Bernkastel? Maybe that's just what Bern wants...
  • And that created witch is Walpurgis Night.....
  • Unfortunately for Bern, her new witch partner would not look like her average witch does... Unless she actually doesn't mind AT ALL.
  • Kyuubee (Beatrice) is trying to get Madoka (Battler) to become a magical girl (believe in witches) and puts her in increasingly desperate situations to make her make that decision as everybody she knows and cares about is being killed left and right (increasingly inexplicable murders where everybody is dying).
  • Clearly, the Incubators are a creation of Lambdadelta, while Homura is another independent avatar of Bernkastel, and Devil Homura is Bern assuming direct control. This also explains the Sudden Downer Ending; Bernkastel, after all, is the Anthropomorphic Personification of True Art Is Angsty, and was either unsatisied with the Surprisingly Happy Ending of the original anime and manga or wanted to teach a lesson to fans who were.

This is Shaft's version of Claymore.

Kyubey decided to create magical girls that would remove despair from human lives, but ended up creating witches.

Voldemort was formerly a Magical Guy.

• AND NOW HE'S A WIZARD. His witch's kiss is The Dark Mark.
• He managed to keep his original Soul Gem (Horcrux) because he tricked Kyubey and blocked his power, so not all of his soul was poured into the gem. He didn't want to relinquish control of the situation. He slew Witches and members of the Wizarding Community to seem like a normal Magical Guy (R.I.P Myrtle...) but learned how to make his own Soul Gems/Horcruxes and, wanting absolute immortality and invulnerability, did, evading Kyubey and killing more people, increasing his power. Unfortunately he 'matured' into a full-blown Witch after graduating from Hogwarts and became the Big Bad we all know today. He was able to retain human form and speech because of his alternate Soul Gems/Horcruxes.

Madoka Magica is actually a story written by Drosselmeyer (contains major Princess Tutu spoilers, but none for Madoka)

Drosselmeyer was a author who could warp reality by writing stories. He loved writing stories depicting eternal tragedy and despair. After getting his ties to Tutu's world cut off, he found a way to write such stories in the afterlife and decided to write Madoka Magica to make up for the "failure" of a story that was Princess Tutu. So far, he is very much succeeding where he failed the last time.

Kyubey is the Millennium Earl.

They operate in a similar manner, "helping" people who aren't in much of a state to refuse. And they both have almost permanently frozen-on smiles.

• You might be on to something. Kyubey also collects the energy created when Akuma are formed and when they evolve. Maybe the Noah are Magical People who managed to stay 'in between' Magic Girls and witches? Innocence are really Soul Gems too! Maybe Akuma and the Noah are all witches, too? But the Noah might be "evil" Magical People? Maybe Road designs all the Witch's Barriers, or they're all her different Dream Worlds?

Kyubey is O2.

Kyubey's second set of ears resemble O2's wings, and he even has halos on them.◊

02 is a witch.

It has the same imagery as a witch's barrier, and its power lies in strong negative emotions, including grief. Dark Matter possesion could be a parallel to a witch's kiss, except it just makes people evil instead of suicidal. It being killed in Kirby's Dreamland 3 and reborn means that Kirby didn't destroy its Grief Seed.

This takes place in the same universe of Bokurano.

More specifically, in one of the universes that was saved. However, despite being saved, the universe began dying, and thus a new "game" had to be created to save it.

• Could this mean that Dung Beetle and Kyuubei might be related to each other? Or the same person?

Kyubei is Kyubi

One of Kyubei's names is QB. Saying QB gets you Kyu and Bi. But them together and you get...

Kyubey and the other Incubators were created by the Eldar

Think about it. Entropy is also called Chaos by some people. The Eldar have a 'Fuck off all other races in order to save ourselves' mentality, and Kyubey loves being Metaphorically True. Saving the universe my ass! They just want to prevent the heat death of the universe because maximum entropy would allow the Chaos Gods to enter and eat them alive.

• The Kyubey are like Dark Eldar, sacrificing tortured souls to despair so that Chaos does not consume them instead.
• Speaking of Eldar, isn't their plot to create Ynnead basically their own version of Kriemhild Gretchen?

The Birth of Chaos is all Madoka's fault

Witches are tragic Magical Girls in their own personal Hell dimension (their Barriers) where Entropy (also known as Distortion or Chaos) and Negative Emotions manifest as reality warping Psychic Powers, essentially acting as smaller and more controllable Warp reactors that can be harvested for consumption. However, knowing that Madoka's wish prevented every Witch in the past, present and future from ever existing, all the homeless shards of Entropy have no choice but to gain sapience themselves and pave a new source of Despair, called Daemons.

Sure the daemons are less forgivable (and in fact, less powerful: if Episode 12 is to be believed.) than Witches, since witches are tragic Magical Girls, while daemons are made from wandering Chaos, but fast-forward to the events of pre-40k (expansion of the human population to trillions, the Horus Heresy, Birth of Slaanesh, and the Eye of Terror as a whole) and you can see what the daemons have become, i.e., the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, with their own Hell/Alternate Dimension/Witch Barrier (The Warp, or Hyperspace).

Not only that, It's safe to say that Magical Girls and other people who have encountered an Incubator may have been under Excommunicate Traitoris under the Ecclesiarchy or Inquisition due to using the daemons as a Source of power (Or they're just burned along with the majority of psykers from sheer superstition if they aren't fed to the Emperor). Guessing that you've seen the horrors of 40k before, You can easily say that Kyubey's method is a lot nicer than an exterminatus. And even an Exterminatus is one of the "nicest" things a planet can go.

• Alternatively: In the grim darkness of the far future, after the disaster of the Age of Strife, with humanity on the brink of extinction, Madoka decided to rise up and manifest Herself in a physical manner again, creating a new identity to save Humanity and inspire Hope and Faith in Her species once again. The identity: The Emperor of Mankind. As for why Madoka chose a male form, even She knew She had to be tough in the grim dark future. Well they're both Jesus...
  • Actually, the Emperor of Mankind existed before Madoka; though its entirely possible that Madoka is responsible for giving the Emperor his Omniscience...Oh wait.
  • But since the Emperor was born in REALLY old times (8000 B.C.), She may have ONCE created him as an agent of hope, continuously serving the years masquerading as notable figures. And became the last line of offense for humanity when it went downhill. Considering that she's a Goddess who apparently redid everything else...she had a lot of time offscreen.
  • I usually think of Madokami as the primary consciousness behind the Astronomican.
• Chaos you say? For all we know it could be the same thing.

Kyubey is from Logopolis

Kyubey's goal is to decrease entropy in the universe and prevent it's destruction, the same task that the Logopolitans had given themselves to. The 'Puella Magi' system is a replacement for the 'Block Transfer Computation' and CVE methods that were in use before the Master interfered.

• The Puella Magi system is the backup system the Master threatened to destroy.
• Alternatively, thanks to Madoka's intervention an improved version of the Block Transfer Computation replaces the Puella Magi system (although it's more literal since demon-harvesting does involve Kyubey eating literal blocks).

Mami is Mima

Magical girls are cursed to become witches. Due to the nature of her wish, Mami managed to become one even after her "death". However, in the process or just over time she lost most of her memories, even the order of the kanji in her name. While she is by all appearances a ghost, Mima insists that she never died, and is "just a soul". Hmm...

• YOU DARE INVOKE MIMA ON THIS PAGE? Oh yeah, you asked for it. TOUHOU EPILEPTIC TREE TIME!
  • Madoka's sheer potential is because she's part youkai/devil/demon/spirit/god/whatever, with a typical hax Touhou ability.
  • Kyuubey was made by Yumemi Okazaki.
  • Yukari Yakumo is an insanely powerful Witch- the gaps are actually her barrier. Fortunately, she seems to be much nicer than a standard witch, probably because she didn't need Kyuube's meddling to become one.
  • Sayaka is Cirno. Don't ask how.
  • Youkai Jesus will/Shinki will save the day.

Creators of the Incubators will soon be destroyed

And it will be the Anti-Spirals who will do the deed. Because, Creators of the Incubators are doing exactly what Hanrasen are fearing - they are introducing more and more energy in the universe. Sure, without the emotions to do it directly, they are taking a longer way than most, but it's still there!

• The Anti - Spirals doing something GOOD?! ... I actually like that.
• Alternatively, the Incubators realized that Madokami's new system works so well it overloads the universe with energy. Cue them becoming the Anti-Spirals.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica is an alternate JoJo's Bizarre Adventure timeline

Kyubey has Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. Homura has Za Warudo or Made In Heaven. Mami has Sex Pistols. Madoka might get Gold Experience Requiem.

Kyubey's race created Zonder Metal

Zonder Metal was designed by an alien race to turn the stress of humanoids into energy, simultaneously solving There Are No Therapists and providing an unlimited source of power. Then it became sentient and starting merging with people to amplify their stress and turn them into monsters.Zonders are fought by guys using crystals powered by courage (operating on similar principles to Zonder Metal itself), and are defeated by removing their cores and turning them back into humans. Hmm...

Akemi Homura is Izayoi Sakuya

Don't think too hard on it. You'll just get a headache.

• Za Wurdo with bullets and rockets? And an ice cream truck instead of a steamroller!
• In one of the timelines where Homura fails to save Madoka, Madoka eventually transforms into a most powerful witch capable of destroying the world in 10 days. That witch is Flandre Scarlet. However, due to a wish Madoka made, her human body was turned into a vampire, who took the identity of Remilia Scarlet and was able to keep Flandre from doing any harm by assuming the role of Flandre's "sister". "Madoka" then found the Homura that was still in that timeline, gave her the name of Sakuya Izayoi, built a mansion for the three of them, locked the witch in the basement, and eventually moved the three of them along with the mansion to Gensokyo to keep the world safe. (And now I have a headache.)
  • Hold on a moment. Madoka becoming Flandre makes sense, but the 'older sister' Remilia is instead Sayaka, now a rather arrogant and cynical self having been brought back from being a Witch. So to 'protect' Madoka, she seals her in the mansion. Meiling's shoes are filled by Kyoko, who now sleeps a lot because she never had time to rest as a Magical Girl (just like near-starvation caused her to take on Big Eater traits). Homura is Sakuya, again as always, but as well as that her 'first' self - the Meganekko Shrinking Violet - has become seperate from her 'Magical Girl' za warudo time-stopping self and now acts as a 'guest' of sorts, living in the library to try and find some way of bringing unstable vampire Madoka back to her human self.

Kyubey is the Anti-Spiral King

He's an alien with the power to change reality. His goals are to preserve the universe, and he's tapping into an illogical energy source that breaks the laws of physics. His purpose in life is basically to save the universe by imposing absolute despair upon humans. The only difference is that he's trying to farm and control Spiral Energy rather than destroy it.

• I thought the race that sent Kyubey was more akin to the Spiral races, what with the continued addition of mass/energy to an otherwise closed system, which may still lead to disaster. *coughSpiralNemesiscough*
  • But you need emotions to harvest Spiral power, while the Incubators themselves are emotionless (making them incapable of using magic).

Rebecca Black made a contract with Kyubey.

Her wish? To become popular. Looks like she's already achieving it. Of course, Kyubey being Kyubey, it's not exactly the type of popularity she wanted.

• And by extension, Kyubey is also behind Justin Bieber's popularity.

The show is actually a retelling of Legacy of Kain. Homura is Kain, Madoka is Raziel, and Kyubey is the Elder God.

Like Kain, Homura is stuck in the position of choosing to let the world be destroyed or lose something very precious to her, so she keeps travelling back in time in order to Screw Destiny. Kyubey of course wants to keep the status quo, since he needs Puella Magis 'souls. Madoka is the only individual capable of changing fate, so Homura and Kyubey are both battling to try and maneuver her to do what they want.

Kyubee is a Japanese Brush God.

Compare how the Brush Gods◊ of Okami (especially Chibiterasu◊ from Ōkamiden)) look and QB◊.

• Or the Brush Gods plus Ammy dear are Incubators. Just the emotional/benevolent/mentally unstable kind. In line with the TSAB theory down below, when in doubt blame Belka. Maybe they're some form of modified familiar and the reason they're not active in the present is because they've been cut off from whatever energy source the blasted weasels have. They did have spaceships in that game after all... and now I have plotbunny.

Kyube's mentioned advanced alien civilization is... the TSAB.

The TSAB is an advanced, multi-dimensional civilization that uses magic as an environmentally safe energy source. Unfortunately, they don't realize they're using the potential energy of the universe directly, in massive amounts. Kyube knows though, and though he can't stop the TSAB, he can at least make sure their squandering use of energy is contained, by creating more magic/potential energy.

And now you know why there are so few mages on earth.

Yes. I've just completely destroyed Nanoha's noble intentions for about one episode./人◕ ‿‿ ◕人

Alternative Nanoha connection: The Kyubee are Lost Logia.

The Jewel Seeds, massively powerful Lost Technology that collapsed dimensional walls and turned people into monsters because the safety settings were lost. Sounds familiar?

Human mages have always been rare; no matter what era or dimension. In one of the old worlds; the war with their neighbors was all but lost. All of their active mages were dead; and while some of their familiars were left; they were about to die/lose sentience without their masters. A few people who were given command altered the familiars. They no longer required masters to exist; they could create multiple bodies, and their job was to create mages and energy to "save their universe." (The reprogrammers were dramatic and patriotic) The war had cost most of the adults; and women were more prone to magic than men so they focused on them for logistical purposes. These Familiars would Incubate the next generation of Mages. It was decided that the best way to ensure loyalty would be to program them to be emotionless and be only dedicated to their goal.The augmented familiars went through the population; and by "forcing" non-mages to cast a Reality Warp even though they don't have Linker Cores (making a Wish); they burned part of their permanent Life Energy into positive and negative energy to create a type of pseudo-Linker Core/Device fusion Cast From HP and the owner's emotional state. Soul Gems. Unlike normal Devices; these did not use computations to protect the owner from being directly linked to Magic.

Magic Users were regained; at terrible cost. Untried in combat; many of the new batch of mages quickly fell. But those who survived fell into despair; and their Soul Gems collapsed. Their despair; running unchecked through the magical channels blasted open by the Reality Warp; turned them into terrible monsters; and the dimensional walls surrounding the old world collapsed.

The familiars, now the Incubators, viewed this as a complete success. The remaining witches were "safe" from the old world's enemies. They left the dimension; to fulfill their programming. To save the universe by creating magical energy.

Worlds visited by the Kyubey often experience massive jumps in technological and magical advancement due to the Reality Warp; sometimes without the social infrastructure to handle this. Often their populations fall to rampant interwarring sessions or are slaughtered by witches and the world becomes a danger to the dimensions surrounding it, requiring the world to be destroyed or dimensionally quarantined.

The TSAB considers the Kyubey to be Alpha-level threats and they are to be destroyed upon discovery via Arc N Ciel.

• In any universe affected by Madoka's wish; most of this story is still true. Any time the old world lost a battle with its new mages; the opponent could never hold that area for long due to Demons that sprang up due to weakening world walls to the Spirit World (where Summons come from). The Puella Magi could not keep up a war against their countries enemies and their own Demons; and they died. One of the last Puella Magi of that world made a wish to send all their non-mage population offworld. The Incubators still escaped through their own means. Planetary destruction of worlds visited by them is still possible due to Demons, but far less likely.
• The TSAB is divided on Incubators. While there are some who argue that the wishes possible are worth it; others feel the risk is too great. They have enough problems with Lost Logia; why add Demons? Sometimes they don't have a choice; and feel that having anyone who can fight Demons and Lost Logia is better than having noone who can fight Logia alone.

• Most TSAB believe that the process doesn't create demons, but rather opens gateways to a Layered World where emotional states have physical form. Usually the TSAB prefer to strengthen the dimensional barrier; there is debate on whether relying on beating physical manifestations of negative emotions is healthy; as it bypasses people and society from naturally addressing their own issues.

• Most Administrated Worlds ban Incubators; and the few that allow them (usually due to critical low mage population) have it very regulated. Incubators are not allowed to contract anyone without permission from the TSAB; and contractees are briefed by experts on how to make and word their wishes (even better if the TSAB can "buy" a wish by using their resources to accomplish the goal instead. The wish can then be used for less emotional goals; thus giving a better chance of a favorable result). "Puella Magi" Mages have regular psychological check-ups; and many are assigned professional teams ("Hope-Givers") to keep their spirits up. Every last one are, of course, employed by the TSAB. Attempts have been made, with no success, to restore Soul Gems to a Puella Magi's soul; or to modify Soul Gems with Devices and/or traditional familiars.

The Incubators are unchecked on Non-Administrated Worlds.

Kyubey was created by the same race as Kyrios

Kyubey: An artificial race that exists to harvest magical power from girls in order to prevent energy death.

Kyrios: A machine that uses the power of a magical girl to control the flow of energy across the multiverse and prevent the energy death of any one world.

Kyrios even has an "artificial" magical girl guardian who acts as its protector.

The series takes place in Instrumentality.

QB is a rogue spirit breaking the peace. Come on, it's obvious Madoka's world is a warped up version of Evangelion's.

• Morning Rescue is LCL!

The black cat in the OP is Sissel

With no explanation for that cat, and the revelation of Homura's powers, there's no doubt. Fate Averted! ...Or not.

• Homura's soul gem is really a Temsik fragment, and on top of her time traveling, her Hyperspace Arsenal is a actually a variation of Missile's ability to swap the places of objects!

Kyuubey is the bastard son of Tzeench and Slaanesh.

For he is an Eldritch Abomination who weaves Machiavellian schemes and takes perverse sustenance from suffering and warped innocence.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is based off of Drawn to Life!

WARNING: THIS IS A WALL OF TEXT. ALSO I REPOSTED IT BECAUSE IT SUDDENLY DISAPPEARED INTO NOTHINGNESS.

Lets take Mami for an example. She's based off of the Mayor. The Mayor has an old-fashon clothing style. So does Mami. The Mayor is an old person. Mami is the oldest looking of the group. The Mayor dies by Wilfre's hands. Mami dies by Charlotte's hands (or mouth). Also, one of the magical girls (I think it's Mami) made a wish when she was in a car crash. This could represnt Mike going into his coma because of the car crash. Houmra begins each timeline waking up from a coma. This could represenent Mike's coma and him waking up at the end of the second game. Madoka is the Scrappy and also the Woobie, kind of like how Mike became both because of the ending of the second game. Wilfre and Kyubey are both (at least acrounding to this wiki) are Well intentioned but ended up coming out evil. Madoka's heroic scarfice in the first timeline represents The whole Raposa race giving up their lives so Mike can wake up. And the older Madoka transforming Madoka in the opening? That represents the possible theory that The Creator is really a godlike subconsice of Mike! Madoka opening her eyes in said opening? Mike waking up from his coma! Her crying tears of joy holding the cat? Mike getting reuited with Heather! Madoka holding Kyubey in the final shot? The Raposa are now a part of Mike, inculding Wilfre! Heck, maybe it IS part of the Drawn to Life series! This is the Drawn to Life 3 we been all looking for! Wilfre must have put Jowee in a nightmare, and all the paraells to Drawn to Life in the show are all his memories leaking through! The Series might end when he finally wakes up, and still thinks he's Madoka. At first we see it from his point of view, as Madoka runs trying to find her friends, paraelling the seane in the opening where she is running. We see her running for days until she finally gets to his Village, where we finally see Jowee crying out for Madoka's friends. Thats when we reallize that Madoka and her friends were all part of Jowee's mind, messed up by Wilfre. The ending credits may paraell these events, Madoka walking past her friends represents her train of thoughts just before making the wish that would wake up Jowee, and Madoka running repressents "Madoka" running to find her friends, her floating in the mask repressents "Madoka" trying to blend in with the Raposa, hoping they might think of her as a visitor and not knowing that "she's" on of them. As if the series wasn't whammy enough...

Charlotte and Charlotte Dunois are the same character

It is stated in her bio that Madoka Charlotte loves cheese. Charlotte Dunois, for her part, is French and therefore a Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey...

The Incubators are from Magical Land.

That kind of cutesy sadism could only come from Esmerelda and Punie. Paya even called her a "true witch".

Kyubey is an apprentice of Zordon.

He has sought for "five overbearing and overemotional humans" who happen to be red, blue, black, yellow and pink. Unlike Zordon, A. the "overemotional" part is utterly crucial to his plans and B. he's not as successful as the floating head was.

• Also, had Kyubey gotten his way, Hitomi would become the Green Ranger, just because both are green.

Homura's story is based in a Vocaloid song.

More specifically Repeat. And if one analyze the lyrics, it means she'll become a witch in the end.

Homura's story is based off the song W

Here are the lyrics.

Walpurgis Night is Chernabog

Night On Bald Mountain takes place around Walpurgis Night, where a powerful demon arises, much like in Madoka.

Madotsuki used to be a Puella Magi

But she learned the Awful Truth, and also had to watch her fellow Puella Magi die or turn into Witches. So she gave up and turned into a Hikikomori, thinking that she would at least enjoy some normal days before turning into a Witch.However, things weren't so simple. The memories of her time as a Puella Magi still tormented her in her dreams. For example, the different areas are Witches' lairs, the Toringen are familiars, Poniko was one of her friends, and Uboa is the Witch that she turned into. And so, after having all these fucked-up dreams for so long, she finally decided to commit suicide.

IT ALL MAKES TOO MUCH SENSE. Here, have some explanations with visuals:

• Another version of Madotsuki's outfit; Madotsuki first meeting Kyube,Madotsuki and her fellow Magical Girls; Poniko going Witch, alternate rendition of Madotsuki facing Uboa - notice Poniko's empty body being held within it; the first time Madostuki got sucked into a Witch-Realm after witnessing a Witchkissed friend stab themselves; Madotsuki finally turning into a witch; and Madotsuki's witch form (Danbooru links, may contain NSFW ads).
• The fate of her friends? Monoko died a horrible death being mutilated by a Witch (hence her odd misshapen appearance when you use the Stoplight on her), Monoe couldn't take it and faded away after smashing her Soul Gem before she could suffer Terminal Corruption, and Poniko became the Witch Uboa (Which particularly traumatised Madotsuki since it happened during a sleepover) - I like the implication that she was having a sleepover with Poniko to try and keep her friend's spirits up, but Poniko's trauma was too great and she became Uboa right in front of poor Madotsuki in spite of an attempt to mercy-kill her by stabbing.
  • While everyone assumes that Monoko's deformities are indicating that she died, in this case she may have become a Witch as well, and her growing multiple arms represents her transformation. Stoplight!Monoko may even be the witch Patricia, though that's a bit of a stretch. Also being killed and witching aren't mutually exclusive, unless the Soul Gem breaks. Monoko could have also been horrendously injured and then witched as a result of it; witching out by running out of magic while regenerating from horrific mutilation is a pretty grim fate.
  • Alternatively, Poniko's Witch form is the bleeding multi-armed monster in the background of the area Uboa takes you to. Uboa is its familiar. Witches tend to be more complex-looking then their familiars, after all.
  • In Madoka Magica, one of the Witches Fought was H.N. Elly, the Hikkikomori/Box Witch◊. One of her primary Motifs was Flying Wings and some Checkered patterns. Guess the Yume Nikki character who is a Hikkikomori and has checkered patterns and flying as motifs normally associated with her◊. And don't the bluish things in this picture◊ of Elly's barrier look an awful lot like Mars-san?
• There's lots of symbolism behind Madotsuki's powers in-dream, such as that decapitation one being the time she lost her own head but somehow survived because her Soul Gem was intact. The Crashing event in the Famicom World could have been an combination of the times her old RPG cartridges glitched and the time she got stuck inside a Witch's maze after getting separated from her friends, only escaping once they beat the Witch. The Toringen? They were beefed-up Familiars that managed to survive her knife attacks, and their attempts to kill/imprison her traumatized her badly.
• Alternatively, all the the powers/eggs that Madotsuki collects within her dreams could represent all of the Soul Gems of fallen Magical Girls that Mado wishes to save. Soul Gems are egg-shaped by default, are they not?
• Mars-San is a Witch and Masada is its familiar. The Spaceship and Mars areas are Mars' realm. Masada's duty as Mars' familiar is to take Magical Girls and other victims deeper into Mars's realm. Also there are multiple Masada-familiars that pilot the "spaceship"; this is apparent from Masada always appearing to respawn in front of the piano whenever you exit and reenter the room after killing him within the game. Furthermore, befitting the creepy Puella Magi series, the Masada familiars look neither Bishounen nor Moe as commonly depicted by the Yume Nikki fanart community; they acyually look nightmarish like this. And concerning Mars-San, the Magical Girl who became Mars was really interested in astronomy and science fiction, explaining Mars' space travel-themed Witch realm. And once Madotsuki encountered and started attacking Mars, she gained the realization that Witches were more than simple Eldritch Abominations. Even as Madotsuki attacked it, Mars wouldn't fight back and continued to weep quietly to itself...
• So when Madotsuki finally acquired all the powers, she realised her own Gem was fading and tried to off herself before she became a Witch. Unfortunately, given the Familiars that surround her broken body in the ending, she may have become a Grief Seed before landing. ~the Ace Of Scarabs

Also, Mary used to be a Puella Magi.

The whole game has many different areas, each one dreamlike, weird or creepy. The only inhabitants apart from the main character are animals with their own individual 'roles' in each part. They're also very unusual, and they act all cutesy most of the time...until you do something 'wrong'. At which point they turn creepy. This draws a lot of parallels between the Witch labyrinths and the familiars within them!

• But then, why do we never see the witch? Why don't the familiars attack Mary? Because Mary is the witch herself. She's exploring her own labyrinth, playing with her familiars. Plus, the inhabitants all have a theme - much like Witch's familiars in Madoka - and acknowledge that they were dreamed up by Mary, or "created" by her. Who else but a Witch would create a labyrinth's familiars? The only reason Mary doesn't look like an [2] is because she's seeing herself as she was prior to her witchification. 'Dream' Mary is her Puella Magi appearance; the Mary who 'wakes up' at the end is how she looked normally.
  • It also explains why there was so much symbolism in the world of the game. After all, every Witch builds the labyrinth based on herself...all around, there is evidence of sexual abuse, which could very well be what resulted in Mary's despair. It might also explain the shadowy figure in one area. - Spiral 15 (who built this theory based entirely on the fact that Dreaming Mary and Madoka Magica have similar artwork.)

Mitakihara is a small-scale offshoot project of The Matrix.

Some speculation concerning the series has brought up the question of why Kju͍u͍̥bee (in IPA spelling) actively searches for ideal prepubescent girls to enjoin in his contracts; given that his race, being capable of great scientific feats, could certainly have grown and conditioned such creatures from infancy to feel strong emotions in response to especial stimuli. Further rumination on the dilemma led to the conclusion that they were, in fact, doing so; and they were, in fact, not alien, nor a race at all.

This would explain why the inhabitants of strange Mitakihara have access to the very finest of technology, and why it seems to contain such a mix-up of famous architecture, while there is no reference at all to any wider world: it is a virtual Paradise carefully constructed from models of the Earth as it might be in AD 2010. The entire world was created by the machines as an experiment to see if a slightly different management model would be successful in generating more energy and encountering fewer human problems than the mainstream Matrix.

To prevent the inhabitants from paying attention to the world around them and possibly realising that it is a simulation, the human batteries are convinced that they are not only living ordinary, humdrum lives, but are being drawn into a sudden, inexplicable and progressively more terrifying phantastic scenario in which their ultimate doom is to go mad with grief, and become a witch. (It is plausible that humans wallowing in the depths of despair produce increased amounts of whatever nebulous energy the machines derive from them, as well.)

The Incubators are therefore the quintessential Agents, whose purpose is to facilitate and perpetuate the cycle of grief and madness; they can appeal to governing powers to conduct alterations, such as gaining new bodies (provided they keep the internal balance of mass by 'eating' the old body), eliminating injuries, and resetting the universal clock, "reloading the Matrix" (though the reformatting of human minds is somewhat incomplete, and may leave traces).

The most prominent evidence in the favour of this is the presence of a character from the Matrix in the anime. The much-speculated-upon black cat of the Opening first appeared in the original Matrix movie: notably, just before time turned back, and Agents arrived.

• Therefore, Madoka is The One, meant to "reload the Matrix".
• I imagine a situation where the Kyubey before Madoka's cosmic reeboot returns to the New World, now filled with Despair and having become the Madokaverse's equivalent of Agent Smith.....
  • In this scenario, "Magical Girls" would be batteries with high production of energy and (consequently) short-lived. With a population large enough, they can be seen as... convenient.
  • And "Magic" is a set of "cheat codes", given to the "magical girls" in exchange to the larger production of energy or perhaps specifically to obtain their high-performance in energy production. Therefore, the shorted life.
  • Witch's labyrinth: it follows as a consequence of the previous points (cheat codes included): a degraded version of the virtual reality (defective animations, surviving memories, garbage data), because of negative feedback or other bugs caused by the conversion of the "magical girl" in "witch", affecting the immediate surrounding of the Matrix simulation. Compare to the Episode "Beyond" in Animatrix.
    • Possibly the Witches are comatose girls, or dead girls with the nervous system liminally active because of the connection to the Matrix. They cannot be disconnected, however, because of the previous high-performance link. They are really a sort of undead.
  • Homura's Time Travel can be an objection to this scenario. It seems to affect Incubators' memories and a simulation would be limited to the humans and disadvantageous for Agents/Incubators. Moreover, it would need a cascade of Madoka clones, always stronger and able to destroy a increasing larger part of the Matrix.

Lain Iwakura is a magical girl.

Her wish was apparently related to computers. She uses it to save people from suicide, by at the same time her surrounding becomes more and more screwed up. At the end of the series she becomes a witch and deprecates herself from reality.

• Alternatively, Lain ended up doing the same thing as Madoka, and Madoka is the reincarnation of her, which made Madoka do the same thing as Lain did (go Messianic Archetype and save the universe from destruction by sacrificing one's existence).

The witches are really Shadows.

They've got all the major trademarks: born of the protagonist's deepest regret/insecurity, having powers similar to theirs and some kind of thematic appearance (I.E. Shadow Yukiko is a bird in a cage because Yukiko felt trapped, Oktavia von Seckendorff was a mermaid because of Sayaka's unrequited love.)

Related to the above, Walpurgis Night is actually the witch form of either Persona 3 Portable's female protagonist, Aigis, one of the Velvet Room sisters or a combination of them

.Looking at her card, you can see a couple of parallels. The fact that she represents "the fool", for one. She also looks a bit similar to Nyx Avatar. Walpurgis' wanting to make the whole world a drama was probably due to her cracking under the strain of being unable to defeat Nyx.

Related to all these Persona-related WMG entries, Madoka takes place inside a universe that follows Persona rules

The fun part is that Madokaverse mechanics can be explained with Persona universe mechanics.

The same power that drives Shadows and by extension your Persona is what fuels meguca, witches, and majuu. The Incubators want to harness this power to make the universe permanent and undying, but lack the emotions/"will" to tap into this power, considering anything that can harness it insane.

They have learnt the secret of forcibly activating this 'power' in Magical Girls, making it manifest first as a Wish that alters reality based on the girl's desire. As the girl uses her Magic to rewrite reality to her whims, she becomes closer to a Shadow, hence the darkening of her soulgem as her 'self' is slowly enshrouded by the fantasies made real. Witchdom occurs when the meguca rejects her Shadow and is consumed/replaced by it, representing the fracture of her psyche that leaves behind id without direction. The Labyrinth is part of the Realm of the Shadows encroaching on the real world, shaped by the mind of the meguca.

Madoka's Ultimate form is basically her gaining full control over her Shadow and merging with her Persona (as well as the residual "fate" power of a vast number of timelines, while Homura's is her basically going Shadow while retaining the better part of her mind.

Irisu is a Puella Magi.

She wished for her rabbit to come back, and well...

Ai also became a Puella Magi.

Only in the normal and good endings, though. Yuuki's only showed himself to her so he could warn her about Kyuubey. After all, your targets becoming witches isn't exactly good for your quota, now is it? In the bad ending, he succeeds in preventing her Puella Magi-fication by taking her soul, and the good ending has her in the future timeline, where being a Magical Girl no longer ends in becoming a Witch.

What about the normal ending? Charlotte had to come from somewhere, don't you think? Just replace "cheese" with "rice cake" and they're practically identical.

Madoka is the 332nd.

Remember what happens in episode 12?

• She ascends...
• ... Madoka, as an Archetype, joins the rest of the Invisible Clergy reforging the world in her image...
• ...and Madoka, as a character, is erased from the newly-reborn world, remembered only by Homura, who dedicated her soul to keep Madoka, as a person, alive.

We know who the last is.We also get to meet him.He's Tatsuya, and remembers Madoka because he contains her, as he contains all other Archetypes from past worlds.

You can't say it doesn't make sense.

Madoka did become a witch in the end...

...specifically, an Umineko witch. By only existing as a concept, Madoka was taken to the Meta-World. This also happens to the magical girls she saves, and they become Umineko witches too. Yes, an army of Umineko witches, that are now capable of preying upon the multiverse. Just as Bernkastel planned.

• There's also the fact that Madoka erasing her own existence sounds like a Logic Error.

Madoka became The Nexus

Just look at it.

Homura's witch form is Bayonetta.

Because that would be awesome.

The Incubators are The Silence

Turns out that they've been here for a long time. A long, long time. Since humans discovered fire, since we developed the wheel, they have been here, and the Silence have manipulated us since. They don't even need weapons.

The Witches are Heartless

Think about it. A Heartless is formed when a person's Heart is consumed by darkness, transforming them into a Heartless. A Witch is formed when a Mahou Shoujo's soul gem is wholly corrupted/consumed by darkness, transforming them into a Witch. "Heart" and "Soul" can both be translated as kokoro, a Mahou Shoujo separated from their soul gem is very similar in behavior and appearance to a person separated from their Heart, and both Heartless and Witches can only be truly harmed/destroyed by certain types of magic.

• Taking this further, if the Soul Gems are their hearts then the Mahou Shoujo are all actually Nobodies!

Medusa and Arachne were Puella Magi.

Simply based off the curiosity caused when it came out that witches were once Magical Girls. What if two of anime's most cruel witches were once Puella Magi? Medusa's color scheme would be green and her weapon a bow and arrow (her snakes resemble arrows) while Arachne's color would be purple and her weapon a net that resembles a spiderweb. Their lairs aren't hidden because this is Soul-Eater-land...Baba Yaga castle is still pretty surreal, just not hidden behind a dimensional wall.

• Or lairs in the PMMM world are beyond portals to the world of Soul Eater...

Every Magical Girl will become a witch

!I mean every Magical Girl [b]ever[/b]. If "Magical Girl" is the logical name for a larva that will grow up to be a magical woman, i.e. witch, every female out there with a transformation sequence is doomed. Usagi? They're still trying to figure out how to give her grief. (And her Soul Gem is in the tiara.) Ahiru? We will one day see a witch with duck wings and a ballet-themed lair. (Her contract was with Drosselmeyer, not Kyubey.) The girls of the Western takeoff W.I.T.C.H.? Look at the title, my friends.

• You missed an episode, Madoka changed the world to prevent witches from ever existing. Also, the Sailor Senshi's Soul Gems are obviously their Sailor Crystals. Also, they're not witches it's just their initials.
• To continue with this logic, the Winx Club and every My Little Pony character will become witches…or will they?
• If Buffy can be considered a magical girl, I could see her becoming a witch.
• Also, Ahiru's Transformation Trinket is later revealed to be a piece of Mytho's heart, which she parted with at the end of her series.
• So how would Otome fit in? Their powers are the product of science, HUMAN science, and many of them use Transformation Trinkets that are older than them.
• And Lyrical Nanoha is established as Sufficiently Advanced magic. And it's more like forming a bond (friendship or co-worker type of bond) with the Intelligent Device.

The series is a session of an even earlier version of Sburb gone off the rails.

...What? Don't look at me like that.

• Supporting this, the bits and pieces we see of the afterlife are similar to the concept of dreambubbles, which the dead reside in once they no longer have a body to go back to. Plus Madoka basically has the same role that Aradia ends up having: Guiding the dead so they can move on and live their afterlives in peace...even though their environment is basically a wall between them and countless eldritch abominations.
• Recent events of Homestuck aren't helping, what with Jade ascending to the God-Tier Witch of Space, or the Scratch-causing Beat Mesa resembling Walpurgis Night's gears.
• Okay, here's the deal: Kyubey is this world's version of Doc Scratch. In addition, Madoka's wish is what essentially sets off The Scratch, creating a whole new universe on the foundation of the previous one. Madoka as Goddess Madoka is personally escorting each girl to the dreambubbles when they die, as evidenced by the scene with dead!Sayaka in the theater. Witches are analogous to denizens, albeit tweaked, as they reside in their own pockets of reality (i.e., The Land of Chess and Gardens, or The Land of Sweets and Medicine). And making a contract to become a magical girl? That's this universe's twisted way of becoming God Tier. Madoka is the Heir of Hope, as she inherited the magical power from the doomed timelines to embody hope for the entire new universe, Homura is the Rogue of Time because she "stole" time with each doomed timeline to distribute the benefit to Madoka, Kyoko is the Knight of Heart because of her sacrifice and eventually revealing herself to believe in the good in people, and Mami is the Seer of Doom ( she was the first to find out in one of the doomed timelines that the girls were doomed to turn into witches and went crazy because of it). And Sayaka? Why, naturally, she's the Witch of Rage.
• A small quibble: Heirs' powerlevels start out weak, growing over time. This is the opposite of Madoka, who started off strong (in the first timeline), or at least average compared to other players.

Alice Liddell was a Puella Magi.

She wished for the story Lewis Carroll told her to come true. "Wonderland" became her barrier.

The incarnation of Alice from American McGee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns is a Magical Girl but has forgotten it

Wonderland hints at the true nature of her Witch's Labyrinth. Somehow she retains enough control over her emotions to avoid going insane and turning into a Witch. The reason she does not remember making a Wish with Kyubey is that the hypnosis therapy she took has made her forget this important fact, but as she acquires weapons and powers in Wonderland it all seems too familiar to her somehow. At the end of Madness Returns, Wonderland appearing to merge with the real world implies that she has somehow transformed beyond a normal Magical Girl without becoming a Witch and acquired some powers normally only accessible to Witches, and she can now exist both in the real world and in Wonderland at the same time.

The Incubators are a creation of the Jjaro...

...And one day, Durandal found them and activated them in order to buy more time to figure out how to escape the inevitable closure of the universe.

Yuuko's magic is related to the Incubators

Either they share the same source(Everything has to be balanced in the end) or either of them outright stealed the technique from one another.

• The Wish doesn't seem to be something Kyubey himself has power over; rather it's some kind of ingrained feature in the human soul. And "Equal Part Despair and Hope" that they generate do sound like Equivalent Exchange.

I. M. Meen takes place in the Madoka Magica universe.

I.M. Meen is a Warlock who made a contract with an Incubator who goes after boys instead of girls. His Grief Seed is worked into his book so that it functions as a portal into his Barrier, the Magic Labyrinth of I.M Meen (Barriers are even sometimes referred to as Labyrinths). His "pets" are his familiars, and the "special kind of guy" he mentions as his magic being from in the theme song isn't himself, it's his Incubator. Speaking of his theme song, he says "I've got a little secret that'll really make 'em cry!", which refers to him capturing children so he can harvest their despair. His face looking different in each scene isn't the animation being Off-Model - what makes his Warlock form so surreal is that his face keeps morphing on its own, despite the rest of his body being able to pass for a human. Also, notice how in the intro, the kids are live-action in the very first shot where Meen points at them, but after that they're cartoons - the graphic style of Meen's barrier is crude CD-i style animation, and the kids changed to his style when they were sucked inside. This also explains why he hates children studying even though he knows magic - he didn't learn magic on his own; he obtained it through a contract. As a Magical Boy, he might have been a nerd who spent his time reading fantasy novels when he should have been studying, which is why his minions are ordinary trolls instead of Daliesque monstrosities. His reluctance to live in the real world caused him to flunk school and drop out, the despair of which caused his Soul Gem to go dark. As a Warlock, he took his revenge by tricking studious children and sucking them into his Labyrinth to get back at his classmates that succeeded where he failed. This is also why he's so bad at grammar - his dropping out of school was exaggerated to the point where, as a Warlock, he can barely spell. His teleportation ability reflects how he wanted to get away from his peers and be left alone. Bet you won't look at I.M. Meen YouTube Poops the same way again, huh?

Another rare Magical Boy was the boy who would become the Unlosing Ranger.

His wish was to save his sister from the Monster of the Week that had kidnapped them both. Being male, he got the wish; (making him strong enough to survive the beating the monster gave him) however it didn't generate the same kind of mana that girls got for some reason. (Hence the Incubators rarely bothering; he was just an experiment.) The Equivalent Exchange was the eight years of hell his family gave him after this. He never turned Witch or faded because he has an abnormally high despair threshold. However, once he acquired the Chakra Belt; his ability to withstand Despair caused him to be able to generate a equal counterforce of Hope.

• Post-Madoka change; the Unlosing Ranger eventually disappears into the Bizzaro Universe; to battle manifestations of despair until he dies. Madoka will offer him a place in Magical Girl Valhalla, but L'Etranger will likely have a say in that.

"Slender Man" is a witch.

It explains virtually everything about Slendy: static has been used at least once in the anime in relation to witches; the world warps when Slendy is near because the viewer is caught within its labyrinth; many of the strange things that happen can be caused by a Witch's kiss. It probably made a wish related to protecting children.

Madoka Magica exists in the same universe as Shugo Chara!

Think about it. Wishes/hopes that make a person transform into a Magical Girl. Sounds familiar?Shugo Chara! is set several centuries before Madoka Magica. The Guardian Charas are actually a prototype of the system Kyubey uses for Puella Magi. Back then, a person could make multiple wishes and could have multiple forms. The Eggs back then are equal to the Soul Gems of now. After experimenting with multiple people, Kyubey realizes that girls are much more emotional then boys, so he develops the system to only use girls. X-Eggs are equivalent to a corrupted Soul Gem, but when Kyubey realized that if X-Eggs are crushed, all the energy goes to waste. So then he developed Witches and thus the energy making machine was born.Amu and Co. basically helped create a soul crushing machine.

• And on that, Kamijou is a descendant of the Tsukiyomi family. Perhaps Tadase too. Perhaps Madoka is related to the Hinamori family, simply because of the pink hair and Annoying Younger Sibling factors.

Goddess Madoka is the latest Elder God before/after Kurou and Al, and Kyubei is an avatar of Nyarlathotep.

Well, Kyubei's race gave human technology and magic, didn't they....

Elly is the witch form of Hatsune Miku.

Compare Elly's human silhouette◊ with Miku◊. Note the turquoise color scheme, the reddish tint of Elly's hair ribbons, and what look like Miku-ish sleeves on Elly. Many of the speculations on this page of the Madoka wiki could apply to Miku, particularly the part about wishing for popularity as an idol. Her somewhat robotic-looking familiars may refer to the Vocaloids, who are androids.

• Or she could be Zatsune Miku instead; Elly's witch appearance has black hair rather than turquoise◊, and Zatsune Miku's hair is sometimes depicted as somewhat shorter then Miku's, which more closely matches the length of Elly's pigtails.

Gretchen's Barrier is Equestria

Well, it is "paradise."

• That's just creepy, and if it's paradise, what's Discord doing in it?
  • And on that note (see below)...

Discord created the Incubators.

The reason they are collecting energy to battle entropy is to ensure that Discord's World of Chaos lasts forever. The Magical Girls being consumed by despair and becoming Witches is just the icing on the cake.

Alternatively, The Incubators are trying to prevent Discord's awakening

Discord = Chaos, and Chaos = Entropy. And the Incubators are trying to prevent Entropy from happening. However, the only way they can do that is to appease him, and that's why the Incubators are trying to do Discord's work of corrupting Magical Girls for him while keeping the order and harmony around.

Alternatively, Discord is a Witch

His World of Chaos looks like something straight out of a Witch's barrier.

Males who are contacted by Kyubey become Dragonborn or powerful saints and champions.

Kyubey states that the most efficient sources of energy are adolescent girls, but rarely, a male demonstrates a sufficient level of emotional turmoil that they are selected by Kyube to be granted a wish. All of these wishes, by virtue of the extreme emotional distress required to be chosen, involve leaving their own life, and going somewhere else, anywhere else.With this in mind, the men who make these wishes are transported to Nirn, another dimension that is not bound by quite the same laws as our own, due to the presence of gods(The Nine Divines, Daedra, etc.).

Once there, Kyubey erases their memories of their previous life, and plops them down in the middle of the hero fantasy many young men dream of:lets go slay some dragons/evil demon monsters! Their Soul Gems are preserved inside of them, which gives them immense durability and potential over the normal person, but limits their ability to call on its power in the ways that magical girls do. Slaying Daedra allows the Magical Dudes to absorb their energy, which is internalized as their expertise, and sometimes bound into Soul Gems(of the Elder Scrolls variety). By capturing their essence, Kyubey gains energy from the endless font of energy that is Oblivion. Dragonborn, on the other hand, harvest Dragon Souls, which naturally contain immense amounts of power, and gain both power and sustenance from doing so.

From there, a few ends await the Magical Dude. If they fall in battle or reach critical levels of despair, the energy they have collected will leave them, leaving them to become Dragon Priests, Liches, and other undead, which are then hunted by others for their own power. If they get tremendously powerful, without dying or succumbing to despair, they become immensely powerful beings in their own right, ascending to become Daedra(Hero of Kvatch), god-entities(Tribunal, Nerevar), or one of the Divines(Tiber Septim). The energy released in these events, which are similar to Madoka's wish, on a smaller scale, are called Dragon Breaks, to explain the changes in reality which occur after them.

• Not just males. Females who wish for "adventure", "freedom", or simple escape from abuse can also get dropped in Nirn. One Magical Girl wished to escape slavery, and became St. Alessia, who liberated Cyrodill from the Ayleids.
• Look at this concept art◊ for a Dragon Priest. See that gem dangling off his left hand? That looks an awful lot like a Madoka-type Soul Gem...
• Pre-Madokami, undead such as Draugr and Dragon Priests had black souls. The original adventurer's soul was still in there. Post-Madokami, the undead were actually allowed to ascend to the afterlife (such as Olaf One-Eye), and the undead now have white creature souls as replacements.
• The internalized Soul Gem is the main reason why these heroes suffer from Critical Existence Failure. The gem's main purpose is to provide an instantaneous Healing Factor, which explains why the heroes can take eviscerations, incinerations, decapitations, arrow wounds, etc. and shrug it off like it's nothing. However, the Soul Gem only has a certain amount of power it can use for this function (represented by a health meter that improves as the hero levels up), and when it runs out of power, the gem expires and the hero immediately dies. Healing spells and potions supply energy for the gem, as it can only draw magic from Aetherius if the hero is asleep or comatose (at least until the Fourth Era, where Incubator technology improved to the point where Soul Gems could draw power from Aetherius while the hero is awake).

Expanding on the above, Hagraven magic is reverse engineered from Incubator magic.

The Hagravens themselves are created out of a corrupted attempt to become Magical Girls, but they end up becoming much weaker, as well as halfway between a Magical Girl and a Witch.

Forsworn Briarhearts are a much closer example to an Incubator's creation. They are created when a Forsworn "contracts" with a Hagraven to gain power at the cost of their humanity. The Briar Heart they put in them is kinda based off of a Soul Gem, in that they hold the power of the lich (though it isn't a Soul Jar, as Briarheart souls can be captured). Also, they are the only credible threat in the game to a well-equipped and trained Dovahkiin, who, according to the above theory, is a Puel Magi/Puella Magi. Finally, they also leave powerful undead behind when they die (like Red Eagle, who leaves behind a powerful Draugr or Dragon Priest).

Madoka's wish allowed Alduin's return to Skyrim.

The Elder Scrolls contain the truths of the universe, but cannot predict changes in the space-time continuum. When Madoka made her wish, she ended up rewriting the contents of every single Scroll in existence, weakening them for a brief moment in time. Since an Elder Scroll was involved in the ritual that was used to cast Alduin forward in time, only a strong enough Dragon Break or temporal distortion could ensure that he would return (and not even the disapperance of the Dwemer or the Warp in the West had that certain oomph). Madoka's universe-rewriting wish was enough to set Alduin free. But, for every bit of despair created in the universe, there is an equal amount of hope - Alduin's return allowed the Dovahkiin to survive his execution and to protect Skyrim from Alduin.

The Witches are Selenim

• Witches create pocket dimensions that represent their psyches ("barriers," "labyrinths"), feed on human misery, and create monstrous familiars to serve them.
• Selenim are magical spirits that possess human bodies and feed on human emotions like jealousy and faith. When they've hoarded enough lifeforce, they can create pocket dimensions ("kingdoms," "realms") that reflect their psyche. These pocket dimensions are often populated by monstrous creatures that exist to collect more lifeforce.

The entire series does take place in the Instrumentality of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but Homura is a repentant Gendo Ikari

While the most blatant Oedipus father vs. son aspects aspects are stripped off, there are a lot of similarities between Homuhomu and Gendo. Both are not-so-stoics whose only (or at least primary) reason to live is companionship with a Messianic Archetype (Yui for Gendo and Madoka for Homura), but unfortunately their beloved messiah gets killed off, thus they acquire a pessimistic outlook and are not above being ruthless Machiavellian the-end-justifies-the-means anti-heroes who are ready to even screw up all creation as a whole just to preserve her (Time-travel and an endless recursion of time for Homura, which ends up creating Kriemhild Gretchen who causes an Assimilation Plot, and taking control of an Eldritch Abomination and becoming God for Gendo, which results in Instrumentality)

As we see, their Resurrection machinations result not in a happy ending, but on the contrary, in forcing the world to descend From Bad to Worse, culminating in an Assimilation Plot and The End of the World as We Know It. Most importantly, in the end they still fail to bring their loved ones back to existence.

Of course, Kyubey could be a representation of Seele, the powerful and manipulative utilitarians who once helped them acquire the ability to perform the reality-screwing in the first place, but also managed to be even more of a jerk-ass and on which both of these stoics rebelled against just to get to their loved one.

When Instrumentality took place during End of Evangelion, Gendo finally admits that he is a coward who spends most of his time trying to screw up reality just to resurrect Yui, while rejecting and avoiding out of fear his own son, the "weak-minded" Shinji, but when Shinji does take control of Instrumentality, he asks for forgiveness from him while visualizing himself as being eaten by Eva-01.

This leads us to the events of Madoka Magica which takes place inside the Instrumentality version of Purgatory, where thanks to this wish to become The Atoner, Gendo himself is forcefully genderbended (thus stripping him off of his patriarchal, manipulative Über-Pimp tendencies), and has to spend the rest of his/her life in Purgatory trying to protect a representation known as Madoka, a sort of "God" of Instrumentality whose personality consisted of the ones who controlled Instrumentality itself, Yui, Rei, and most especially Shinji, the very one who turned Instrumentality against him.

The Yui-to-Shinji transformation (starts out as helpful and confident, teaching a suicidal Homura/Gendo how to live, although we don't see the epiphany that much in the original series, the Drama CD's can flesh out the once-lonely-social-pariah Homura's starting relationships with Madoka. However as time repeats more, Madoka becomes more of an omnipotent but angst-ridden moeblob, just like Shinji) and Homura getting more and more emotionally distant (as Madoka becomes much more Shinji-like, Homura becomes more Machiavellian in ways that disgust Madoka) becomes more obvious as time in purgatory progresses and the Puella Magi universe becomes more and more like the nightmarish Evangelion-verse that he/she helped create due to his/her desperate wish.

Thus he/she has to make up for everything by protecting that same Shinji-Madoka too just as he tried to protect Yui-Madoka, all while this task itself is the very path that will be the harbinger of the Angst and disaster of Evangelion to the once-cheery Puella Magi universe. If Homura continues to continue fighting fate and being emotionally distant against Madoka, Madoka herself will cause the End of the World, like how Gendo's emotional distance against Shinji, that was caused by a desire to reunite with his wife, led to Shinji destroying the world and hating him forever upon acquiring God powers.

• This wasn't Gendo's first purgatory. Before he could admit his flaws, he was first revived as the Director from Red vs. Blue, who shunned his own daughter, violated protocol, and tortured a copy of himself, just to resurrect Yui-Allison. It wasn't until Church and Carolina confronted him that he started his wish to atone, and became Homura, forced to live a similar time-travel experience as the Alpha as well as live with the constant failure and death of Beta. (The fact that Alpha and Beta are considered to be Iron Woobies by the fandom explains why Homura is more sympathetic than Gendo for most people.) "Perhaps next time around?"

Haruhi Suzumiya is a Madoka-scale anomaly/god/witch.

Well the concept of the "Closed Space" and "Celestials" might just as well be Witches' barriers and Demons, respectively...

Episode 12 wasn't the first time the system had been rewritten. "Berserk" was the the first universe.

1 The universe is governed by human will.2 It is a Crapsack World.3 Certain humans become monsters after crossing the Despair Event Horizon.4 Anything approaching victory for Gut would involve rewriting the system.This may or may not involve a Cosmic Retcon.

Alternatively, Warhammer 40,000 was the first universe

...which the God-Emperor retconned into the less nightmarish Puella Magi world after dying, thus escaping the limitatons of the Golden Throne. Or the Madokaverse is the God Emperor's Dying Dream.

• Here is another fanfic that makes things a good deal worse: The traitor primarchs were not only Puella Magi themselves, but they've also become daemon princes because of the despair in their soul gems. Even worse, the Emperor Himself is a Puella Magi, who requires thousands upon thousands of mindraped psykers and grief seeds in order to purify his soul gem...and even then, it's still gradually failing. What's to say that Leman Russ, Jaghatai, Vulkan or even Corax haven't already succumbed to despair and became daemon princes themselves?
• Madokami is the God-Emperor of Mankind, or at least his reincarnation or own wish fulfillment. The Jesus parallels still remain intact, however, unlike the God Emperor's failure to save Humanity from Chaos, Madokami instead succeeded in the redemption of humanity, thus a fantasy of success in the world of grimdark. Homucifer, who acted not out of malice but out of undying love for her goddess, is a more morally acceptable fantasy about his most beloved son, Horus.

Quit blaming Hitomi and Kamijou for everything...blame Doc Brown and Marty McFly.

Their (and Biff's) screwing around with the space-time continuum (and bumping into their other selves) put considerable strain on space-time (and Homura didn't help). Remember how Marty was also planning to become a musician until he broke his wrist in a peer-pressure induced drag race? When he averted that fateful car crash, the resulting Ripple Effect created the aforementioned crash 26 years later and 6000 miles away that injured Kamijou (and killed Mami's parents), which of course resulted in Sayaka's contract.

To make matters even more sadistic, in the original BTTF timeline, Hitomi's father was killed in that car crash as a boy, while visiting relatives in Hill Valley. One of the survivors became Marty's boss by 2015. He realized the accident was just a case of stupid teenage recklessness and eventually took pity on Marty in his despondent state, hiring him...but he still nursed a bitter grudge which eventually led to his firing Marty when Needles framed him again years later.

Marty's daughter Marleen had contracted at some point for almost the same reasons as Kyoko (wanting to help her struggling family and continually depressed father). She would've become a Witch either when she was busted trying to bust out Marty Jr. in the first timeline, or when her dad was fired.

So...one ruined musical career (and eventual Witchdom) for another. Take your pick.

• And oh yeah, an Incubator planted the idea for the Flux Capacitor in Doc's head. With human nature being what he knew, he felt humanity was unable to handle the responsibilities inherent in Time Travel...so of course it would eventually prove a great way to trigger some contracts and harvest some souls.

• The film series happened during Homura's travels (yeah...), explaining the differences between each timeline (at least concerning Kyousuke and Sayaka). (This is, of course, disregarding the theory that Hitomi's father was in Marty's crash. He still has relatives in Hill Valley, though.)
  • Timelines 1 and 2 happened before old Biff acquired the almanac and went to 1955. Kyousuke was perfectly healthy, had his good hand, and played the guitar. Sayaka had no reason to contract.
  • Timeline 3 takes place after the almanac was delivered to young Biff. Hill Valley became a shithole, which created lots of grief, which meant that the Incubators could create more magical girls (and therefore witches). One of these witches eventually found its way to Mitakihara (an old grudge involving Hitomi's father or grandfather, perhaps?) and kissed Kyousuke, causing him to attempt suicide. He survived, but was severely injured. Sayaka contracted to heal him, but he ended up with Hitomi, causing Sayaka to grief-seed. Kyousuke still plays the guitar, which is why Oktavia has a guitar motif.
  • Between Timeline 3 and the main timeline, Marty eventually rectified his mistakes, destroying the almanac and preventing his car accident. He went on to become a successful guitarist, but the ripple effect means one less successful guitarist in the world. Hence, Kyousuke became a violinist instead. And then the accident happened, injuring Kyousuke.
  • The Oriko timeline was caused by a long chain of events that started when Marty (as Clint Eastwood) went into a duel with Buford and got killed. It was unmade when Marty beat Buford thanks to this insight.
  • And yes, Homura has noticed the differences. She has no idea what caused them, though.

Walpurgisnacht is Meg Griffin's Witch form.

She lasted about 30 minutes before witching out.

• For contracting with her, Kyubey got a 50-cent wage increase, one day's paid vacation time and bathroom breaks. (Yeah, it's a pretty lousy workplace, but it's the only career option on his planet.)

Gen Urobuchi is actually a pen name for Nozomu Itoshiki.

Thinks all wishes and being a timid Nice Girl will only destroy you and your loved ones in the end? Thinks the only way to make the world a better place is by removing yourself from it? Thinks happy endings contradict the laws of nature? Yeah, sounds like a certain neurotic, suicidal teacher.

• The story was originally submitted to his class as a required-reading doujin. The reason the series ended in May 2012 and Studio Shaft has no current plans to animate the end is because his students all committed suicide. Even Kafuka.

Many of the "ghosts" in Ghostbusters were actually Witches.

• A lot of them looked a lot more like Eldritch Abominations than normal human spirits. The creation of Witches gnaws away at the boundary between the mortal and spiritual realms each time it happens (and Doc, Marty and Homura's aforementioned meddling with time didn't help). And then of course that one apartment building was a continually building strain. (It may have been designed under the influence of a Witch's Kiss.) Then one day in the summer of 1984 one unknown fallen Puella became The Last Straw that allowed Gozer and his minions a huge hole to crawl through into our world.
  • Slimer may have an origin story similar to Charlotte (e.g., she suffered either from cancer, diabetes or bulemia). Heck, let's say that she was the straw that broke the camel's back and tore open Gozer's doorway.
  • Instead of giving them the Mercy Kill that our beloved five do, the Ghostbusters of course imprison the Witches in an unstable nuclear holding pen. Wrap your heads around that one...
• Ghostbusters 2 takes place after Madoka's apotheosis. That pink slime in the New York sewers is materialized curses. (In the modified timeline, there were still enough troubles with "normal" ghosts to justify the Ghostbusters' business.

Madoka takes place after Instrumentality.

Humanity returned to form from the Tang and rebuilt its society...however, their capacity for arrogance, pride, bastardry and schadenfreude remained, creating Madoka's cruel world where idealism and belief in man's better nature only ever comes at a horrible cost.

• The Incubators may actually be manifestations of humanity's collective opportunism. And then in most of the timelines we saw, Madoka's Witch form bascially restarts Instrumentality, much like God's intent to destroy the world again in Revelations. "As a dog returneth to his vomit..."
• About the Incubators being manifestations of our opportunism (as well as sociopathy), Kyubey's talk about aliens and entropy was symptomatic of our tendency to justify our actions with little white lies whenever we "use" people. In other words, we are all Kyubey at times. Or rather, we gave birth to him.
• And Madoka is "descended" from the remains of Rei (lack of self-worth and willingness to sacrifice herself).

Madoka takes place in the same universe as Bleach.

Both series feature abominations, born from the corruption of a human soul, with names different from their human ones. Kyubey indirectly confirms that Muggles have souls, too. When a Bleach!Muggle dies, either a) they have no regrets and become a wandering soul until a shinigami sends them to Soul Society, or b) they have regrets binding them to the World of the Living, and they eventually become a Hollow. What Kyubey does is pull out the soul, which is supposed to kill or pre-Hollowfy the subject in normal circumstance. However through alien intervention Kyubey's method preserves the subject alive and bound to the living world, while giving them the benefits of having a soul outside the body (as in powers similar to both a Shinigami and a normal Hollow). However, souls were never meant to exist outside the body until dead, and even a physically-godlike Magical Girl has her soul extremely vulnerable to the fundamental ingredient required for Hollowification (i.e. Angst, Regret and such), so when Magical Girls Hollowfy, the unnatural modification to their souls amplified by their preexisting god powers results into a Witch - a Reality Warper Eldritch Abomination Hollow that's a more powerful version of the Magical Girls themselves, like how Hollows are powerful versions of the regretful humans themselves.

• Also: Charlotte and Charlotte are one and the same. In some timelines, she became a Magical Girl and a Witch, while in other timelines she became a Hollow and an Arrancar. This theory would also mean that, like Hollows, Witches become stronger by consuming one another or by fusing, which would explain Walpurgisnacht.

Kyubey's race are alternate Guardians of the Universe.

Come on. Extremely old, logical, powerful, and intelligent beings that feel no emotions of their own and in fact consider those who feel emotions to be aberrations (hi Ganthet and Sayd!). Yet they use the emotions of others as power? Also have a tendency of getting screwed over by their own plans? Totally Guardians.

Rosasharn from Puella Magi Oriko Magica originally contracted during The Great Depression. She might actually have been Rose of Sharon Joad in an alternate timeline.

If true, Rose would've contracted a few years before the events of the book. This raises the question of how many MG's (and Witches) were likely born out of the Depression and other economic downturns...and how many came from impoverished areas like Haiti and Sudan.

Patricia is Chiri Kitsu's Witch form.

She wanted to be the actual class president (it annoyed her to no end that although everyone thinks she's the president, Kagerou actually is). She enjoyed the idea of becoming a Puella to fight against chaos and make this a "more proper, orderly world" (uh-oh), but was ultimately devastated by how things just don't fall into place that easily (due to that pesky "free will" stuff). Now of course she's the president of her own classroom in the sky, populated by students with no minds of their own.

The series is the Mushroom Samba of some of the lab rats at the National Institute for Mental Health.

All the result of being injected with countless drugs for medical testing. They've developed telepathy and heightened intelligence, although not on the level of humans, hence they can't quite understand why the humans are doing this to them. Kyubey is a white rat who's so broken that he believes that being experimented on (and likely dying) for the humans is a good thing and actively wants his fellow rats to voluntarily submit to it, especially since he telepathically noticed that humans tend to regard rats as disgusting vermin.

The Witches are a combination of the drugs plus confused "readings" of the humans' and other animals' minds. (Picture a young child channel-surfing randomly; occasionally understanding some of the words and imagery and having the rest fly over their head.) For instance, Charlotte was inspired by the thoughts of one scientist thinking he should get some more baby mice for his pet snake. Uhrmann is one of the dogs kept in the lab, always just wanting love and affection and wondering why they're doing all this to her. Roberta came from the thoughts of a female scientist constantly frustrated in romance, who's only been hit on for her looks.

Obviously this has left the enlightened rats with huge psychic scars not just from the horrific imagery burned into their brains, but with great metaphysical confusion, seeing as how these two-legged Eldritch Abominations also provide their food and water and keep their living conditions relatively comfortable. Nicodemus and co. also realized the truth about why the scientists were doing all these things. Fortunately, unlike Kyubey, they managed to keep their minds intact and escape.

Ultimately Jenner represents the "Kyubey-ite" faction that wants to remain dependent upon the humans for energy, while Justin represents the "Madoka-ite" faction which wants to live for itself.

After her wish, Madoka was reincarnated as Kafuka Fuura.

She returned to Earth in some other dimension/universe/something as a boundlessly optimistic girl, and, wanting to serve as a force for happiness as much as possible, she signed up as an organ donor. Her reciprocal curse was to be hit by a car and killed, and her organs, charged with her positive energy, were transplanted in a class full of suicidally depressed and neurotic girls. With teacher Nozomu Itoshiki serving as an exorcist, they managed to exorcise the suicidal spirits possessing the class.

Urobuchi must've known about Kumeta's planned ending to SZS, just as Studio Shaft did (as evidenced by the OP's, some of which were animated by the same artists as the Madoka's Witch scenes.

Homura is an AI from the Red vs. Blue universe, and the whole series was a virtual simulation in said verse.

Here be spoilers for Red vs. Blue Reconstruction onward.

First things first - this whole WMG takes place centuries before RVB or Halo. The real Homura Akemi was a UNSC-affiliated scientist, notable for being an Adorkable otaku. She befriended a certain Madoka Kaname - one of the first friends she ever made, as well as her best friend - who enlisted in the UNSC Marines and eventually became a Sergeant. Sgt. Kaname died in service; while Dr. Akemi mostly got over it, there was a tinge of grief in her character for the rest of her life. When Dr. Akemi passed on, her brain was used to create an AI who also called herself "Homura" and inherited her template's adorkability (complete with a purple avatar with braids and glasses).

Remember how Church supposedly kept going back in time to try and save the Reds and Blues from the bomb? And how the Cerebus Retcon implies that it was just a simulation engineered by Omega and Gamma to torture the Alpha and make it split? Homura was fragmented by UNSC scientists for a similar reason as the Alpha (to save money, because AI are very expensive to produce). The show was just a simulation, where Homura had her memories of being an AI suppressed. She was put in a Magical Girl setting, to cater to Dr. Akemi's otakuness, and Sgt. Kaname's memory was revived as the center of the simulation. Mami, Sayaka, and Kyoko were based on memories of Dr. Akemi's other friends. Homura was subjected to the same brutal Mind Rape that the Alpha would eventually undergo - she was put in countless time loops where she would fail over and over to save Madoka and her friends, and be tricked into believing that their ordeal was her fault, eventually fragmenting out of grief.

The experiment was a failure, partially because Homura was an older generation AI (her fragments were too unstable to become functional AI) and partially because the UNSC found about the experiment and created laws to prevent heinous experiments like that (laws that the Director circumvented). However, Homura was damaged to the point where she was sullen and numb, and remained shell-shocked for the rest of her existence. This was marked by a change in her avatar (the glasses were gone, and she let her hair down).

Madoka's Cosmic Retcon represents the end of all the torture, and Homura eventually learning to let go of Madoka (like Church's "I forget you"). The final scene in the desert represents the end of Homura's life as an AI, when she finally finds peace.

Ultimately, the whole Homura drama was what inspired the Director to do a similar thing to the Alpha to split him. So, in the end, Homura was partially responsible for the events of the Red vs. Blue series. And a true Walpurgis was made, in the form of the Meta.

• Halo lore says that AI can ward off rampancy by focusing on a singular object. Homura's sole focus on Madoka's well-being was really a subconscious way to stall her doom.
• Also, the technology used in Homura's room (or, at least, its real-world counterpart owned by Dr. Akemi) was eventually perfected by Lopez to create the Reds' hologram chamber. Lopez was kinda unnerved by the all-white of the original holo-room, however, so he made it have the texture of stone in the interior.
• Alternatively, Homura isn't just any ordinary AI - she's the Tex that appeared in the end of Season 10. Tex's main attribute is failure, something Homura knows very well. Both have a thing for big guns and explosives. And it's implied that Tex played the role of the "scary chick" to protect Church, much like Homura with Madoka. So, by trapping Homura/Tex in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, and forcing her to fall into despair, the Director was able to harvest a fragment for every failure and every reset. Each fragment would then be placed into a Texbot. When Homura was too broken to yield more fragments, she herself was forced to lead the robot army literally made of her failures, and could only speak in O'Malley's voice. "You have no idea what kind of trouble you are in."
  • For a visual metaphor to compare the two: this fanart◊ of Homura happens to look a lot like this screencap◊ of the Tex army.
  • Also, the way that Church split up to reach out to the Texes and possibly Mercy Kill them is quite similar to part of the Ultimate Madoka sequence. The way that the Texes are broken when Church meets them is quite similar to some fan interpretations of a witch's train of thought.

Madoka's wish created a slew of Alternate Universe Counterparts

And one of them goes by Guu.

Kyousuke Kamijou is Kyousuke Kiryu.

This isn't just because they have the same name and grayish-white hair. (Well, it is, but it goes deeper than just that.) In the new timeline, due to a demon attack, Kyousuke was rendered homeless and was forced to move out of Mitakihara. He eventually wound up in the Satellite sector, where he was forced to grow a backbone due to the rough, dystopian landscape. Driven by a heroic mentality similar to Sayaka's, he became a leader and hero of sorts to Yusei, Jack, and Crow when he formed Team Satisfaction. However, the stress of conquering all the Duel Gang zones caused Kyousuke's character to deteriorate, to the point where he became a Knight Templar for Team Satisfaction and eventually almost murdered a Security officer. After Yusei's perceived betrayal and Kyousuke's arrest, Kyousuke became bitter and fell into despair; at that moment, the Earthbound God (really a very powerful Walpurgis-type demon) appeared to him and promised him a deal to become a Dark Signer. In the end, Kyousuke became just like the old world's Sayaka: a Fallen Hero whose heroic ideals turned them into a despair-driven, soul-eating monster. (Oh, and they're the blue member of their team.) However, thanks to Godwin's dying act, Kyousuke was returned to normal and strove to work for his redemption. He eventually ended up in an old settlement called Crash Town...

And Kyousuke's Infernity cards? Their effects only work if Kyousuke has a crippled hand.

The Blue Devil is a witch.

The actual dissonant art the oni has in relation with the rest of the game world is enough to raise suspicions on this one. The mansion is actually her barrier, and all the dungeons, torture chambers and miscellanous "misplaced" rooms are mere manifestations of it, as is the rest of the mansion. The other Blue Devils are her familiars, whose relation with the witch might be similar to the one Roberta has with the Gotz, just they are the ones in the cage and being tended and admired by the witch. This comes to be because the Blue Devil is a witch with a narcissistic nature, and her minions's duty is to be objects of her marvel. She constantly hunts for humans that fall on her barrier and transforms them into self-lookalikes for her to cage and admire, always waiting for "Me", which would be a human that will transform into an exact copy of her when killed (note how the latest victims of the oni are almost identical to the original one, save for the hair discrepancy).

It's also possible that the Blue Devil that stalks Hiroshi for most of the game is but another familiar specifically designated to act on her behalf and the real witch is left unseen, perhaps waiting for a magical girl to breach on her "master room". Given that information, it's also very likely that her master room lies on the close vicinity of the Oni Room, perhaps directly above it.

The fact that her "barrier" resides in a mansion normal people can perceive relatively normally (even with the "otherwordly" witch/familiars nearby) might also point towards the Blue Devil being a Walpurgisnacht that chooses to stay near her caged familiars and actually take care of them and their home.

The Incubators' actions were actually the 10th plan of a certain other alien race.

After Plan 9 failed, they next mentally possessed a race of nonsentient white catlike creatures also resident on their planet, which they then manipulated to appeal to Earthling girls and turn them into zombies...with magical powers(!) to Take Over the World and eventually prevent the stupid stupid! humans' future solar ray gun. (They figured out that humanity might find a Zombie Apocalypse more appealing if it consisted of Magical Girls.) You can't prove it won't (or didn't) happen!

• All that stuff about their contracts extending back to Joan of Arc, Cleopatra and possibly Australopithecines? More lies and manipulation. They've only been doing it since about 1960 (the year after Plan 9 failed).
• Alternatively, Plan Incubator was Plan 1, and was really conceived before the dawn of man... but the Zombie Apocalypse took so frakkin' long to cause any real damage (Kriemhild Gretchen's world-eating power was only gained through Homura's temporal distortion) that they tried eight other much more direct methods. (Why they didn't just out-and-out destroy man, ask Ed Wood.)

The Autobots and Decepticons are evolved Doras (Gisela's minions).

For starters, Gisela looks somewhat like a Transformer in the video game. Her Witch card says "she cannot use any scientific power", suggesting she was well-educated but for some reason was held back from pursuing a scientific career. She may also have been on her school's debate team, since the Doras' duties is "to declare their opinions". And now of course the evolved Doras are having the mother of all "debates".

The Incubators are from the same planet as the Nibblonians, and may or may not be related.

Both are incredibly ancient Ridiculously Cute Critters dedicated to preserving the universe at any cost; unfortunately through incredibly cold, sociopathic means. Given the Incubators' True Neutral status, they traditionally hold the post of planet Eternium's ambassador to the Neutral Planet.

• The Neutrals provide transportation for the Incubators when Nibblonian ships aren't available (so perhaps Zapp Brannigan was right to hold a grudge against them).
• Depending on whether or not Futurama takes place in a pre-Godoka timeline, the Brainspawn may have been an alien Witch.
• The emotional Equivalent Exchange in the Madoka-verse is also why Homura never bumps into her past self; all time-clones are doomed, and the previous Homura always dies right after the new one arrives from the future (actually the past, following Futurama time-travel laws; sucks for those other Earths she let Walpurgisnacht or Gretchen burn down). If we follow Futurama's "recycling universe" theory, this may be why MG's have vague memories of the previous universes. Each universal phase is consistituted of the same matter, albeit reassembled in slightly different fashion (explaining the slight differences in each timeline).

Building on the above Futurama theory...

The UN and various world governments knew what the Incubators were doing to Earth's (and other planets') young women. But why didn't they take any action? The Incubators are indeed related to Nibblonians...and they also excrete dark matter, which they shipped for Earth's utilities in exchange for their cooperation. Not even nuclear power can come close to matching precious entropy-defying Kyubey poo for Earth's energy supply (and likely those of other planets as well).

• If you want to extend the Fridge Horror even further, civilizations and rulers all over the world going back to the start of history knew about the slave trade but have been cooperating in secret for millennia, in exchange for inventions such as fire and the wheel.

The entire twisted museum world in Ib is a Witch's barrier.

A Witch manifested inside the art museum when Ib and Garry were in it, and Ib and Garry were the unlucky ones to stumble into the barrier. The museum being a barrier would certainly explain the bizarre, incoherent, and disturbing scenery. All of the killer artwork would be the Witch's familiars. Futhermore, in Madoka Magica there was a Witch with an art theme (Izabel). It took on the form of the Arc de Triomphe and had the ability to talk. Therefore it's not a huge stretch to say that a Witch could take the form of a painting depicting an extremely lifelike yet imaginary girl named "Mary".

Perhaps this painting-witch was once a fully-human Magical Girl herself. The rage and desires the painting expresses during the game stem from her father Weiss Guertena's actions during her human lifetime. Rather than provide her ongoing companionship and love like a father should have, Guertena neglected her emotionally in favor of pursuing his lucrative artist career. Not only did this leave the girl feeling extremely lonely, like she might as well have been nonexistent in father's eyes, but she also felt resentful towards the artwork Guertena favored over her. To fill the emotional void, instead of spending time with her busy father or exploring the outside world to befriend peers, the socially awkward girl lived her own imaginary world through the crayon drawings (Sketchbook World), toys (the creepy dolls), and storybooks (Carrie Careless and the Gallette des Rois) she created. In this world, she was omnipotent and would always have companionship.

Considering that Witches' barriers are Mental Worlds depicting their troubled psychology during their human lives, the above backstory explains why the painting-witch's barrier is strongly Weiss Guertena-themed.

• With the slight variation in each timeline, the museum might actually be Izabel herself.

Hanging out in Homura’s room is the character’s equivalent of Eric's Basement from that That 70s Show, and meeting in her room is like the circle.

Homura's room seems to be a place where the characters got to hang out. Just picture the character’s sitting in the room while the camera pans around to look at their faces.

• And of course Eric and company usually go there to get high. More proof that this show is the Mushroom Samba of five girls kidnapped by an ephebophile who drugs them up (hence all the weird Witch imagery), does unspeakable things to them and eventually kills them.

The Other Mother was a Witch, and the Otherworld was her Barrier.

Coraline is either very lucky/unlucky no Kyubeys capitalized on her situation to make a Contract with her.

In the world of His Dark Materials, the Spectres are Majuu/Demons

They are literally composed of Despair from other universes, and consume the Hope of all in their path, making them enter a lifeless state knowing nothing but apathy and despair.

Kyubey's race are actually R-Type Bydos or a spin-off of them.

Sailor Moon came from Madoka re-writing reality again

She noticed that well, saving a few magical girls doesn't mean much if the Wraiths destroy humanity and who knows how many other planets, so she reset reality again to try and create a more idealistic world, which resulted in everybody included her being reset along with the new world. Madoka became Usagi, Homura became Ami, Sayaka became Minako, Mami became Makoto, Kyoko became Rei, and everybody else came from somebody else (the incubators got erased). The galactic cauldron came into existence as an effort an Madoka's part to remove entropy.

If anybody thinks they have a better reincarnation theory, I'd like to hear it.

• Or, Madoka just remembered that the cynical interpretations of the ending aren't necessarily true, and kept the world the way it is.
• A better counterpart for Mami would be Minako: the story of Sailor V and that of Magical Girl Mami Tomoe are depressingly similar, right down to both being a deceptively happy mentor who is dangerously depressed and Married to the Job (yes, even Anime!Minako is borderline suicidal. She's just better at hiding it).
• Another good match for Mami would be Manga!Rei. They're both Ojous with tramautic pasts.

The created a multiverse of Magical Girl series

Alternative theory to the above reset and reincarnation theory, Madoka re-writing the universe also created every other magical girl universe. So that also means that Nanoha is Madoka reincarnated, and Fate is Homura, for Shippers that believe Les Yay romance can cross universes.

• All new magical girls have subconscious memories of the Incubators. Because they think they're male, they developed subconscious aversions to men, and that's why most magical girls are lesbian or bi. (Incubators actually reproduce via spores, but that's a topic for another WMG.)

Stephen King's 11/22/63 takes place in the (former) Madokaverse.

As mentioned in the Ghostbusters WMG, Witches and their barriers tend to puncture the field of space-time. The wormhole Jake Epping steps through into the year 1958 was the collapsed barrier of a slain Witch. While there, Jake has an experience rather similar to Homura's; he is able to stop the Kennedy assassination, but at the expense of making history much worse, and losing the love of his life for the good of the universe. And his and Al's multiple trips back only destabilize space-time more.

Bakemonogatari's Mayoi Hachikuji became Albertine pre-Godoka.

Albertine's imagery strongly suggests that she was originally a young child. Also her familiar Anja frequently gets lost, which was Mayoi's ultimate fate.

Tik Tok is about Homura.

Don't stop make it pop, dj blow my speakers up/tonight, imma fight til we see the sunlight/tik tok on the clock, but the party don't stop

Prior to Madoka's wish, deceased magical girls went to the Soul Cairn.

Dawnguard has revealed that the Soul Cairn is the hellish place where souls trapped in Soul Gems go when used up. This also extends to the Madoka-type Soul Gems as well as Grief Seeds when consumed by an Incubator. This is because, long ago, the Incubators made a deal with the Ideal Masters to give them soul gem technology; the Ideal Masters agreed, as they would receive the soul of every magical girl. Thankfully, Madoka's wish allowed her to take the girls to her own realm, free from the damning snares of the Ideal Masters; in this new universe, the Incubators managed to make the deal, but did so by giving souls from their own race. (They obviously didn't care, due to their lack of emotion.)

Also, Durnehviir is the closest thing to a Puella Magi Dovah.

A more accurate nickname is than Chidamri Sketch or Sailor Faustus is Pretty Cure Liars.

Homura=Aria

Mami=Hanna

Sayaka=Spencer

Kyouko=Emily

Madoka=Alison

Homura and Shinji used to date.

Her family used to live in to Tokyo, but due to her health and some incidents, they had to move. She now projects her feeling for Shinji onto Madoka.

Incubators are creatures from the same place as the angels from Evangelion.

Angels are large humanoid creatures that are possibly aliens. Incubators don't resemble any animal, other than looking mammalian.

This reason why the first universe is so cynical is Drosselmeyer's doing

The reason that the best source of energy to stave off entropy is because he feels that would make endless possibilities for tragedies. Madoka is able to earn her happy ending because around that that Fakir broke the machine Drosselmeyer wrote with.

Yellow Submarine takes place in a Witch barrier.

The former MG was a hippie who wished for her brother to return safety from The Vietnam War. He did...and then she learned that he had taken part in the massacre of a small village.

• The Beatles themselves were drawn into her barrier by "Jeremy", one of her familiars, and were replaced by doppelganger familiars. This was in about 1967, just before Sgt. Pepper was released, which explains the group's sudden psychdelic, Darker and Edgier shift in tone.
• Much like how Witch!Sayaka's familiars drew in and absorbed victims with their music, the familiar!Beatles did the same. Charles Manson and his "family" were other victims of this, namely after hearing "Helter Skelter".
• I am a hippie, and I was thinking that if I was a magical girl who became a witch, my barrier would resemble Yellow Submarine.
• The girl's name as a witch was either Lucy, Madonna, or Jude.

Madoka's ascent to godhood was part of Euzeth Gozzo's plan.

He became Kyubey's Man Behind the Man, observing how Homura's time manipulation power created many different dimensions and monitoring them all from the Cross Gate Paradigm System. When Madoka made her wish, imploding all the created dimensions into one and becoming a goddess, Euzeth realized that he could take advantage of this newborn god to power himself up and get closer to his goal of becoming all powerful, himself. It is only a question of time before Euzeth enters Madoka's universe and sets things in motion to assimilate Madoka into his new prototype mecha monstrosity.

THIS WAS HIM AS WELL!

This show (and all other Urobutcher productions) are more mechanically-induced hallucinations of Ted in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

Madoka's Bittersweet Ending just reflects Ted finally succumbing to mental stress and dying. (Really, it took this long for us to realize that Urobutcher is A.M.?)

• The futuristic chatroom avatars running amok in his latest work, Psycho-Pass, reflect A.M. reminding Ted of his actual state.
• On the other hand, perhaps Madoka's boundless hope represents A.M. finally reaching the end of all those words "hate" written on his memory cells, giving Ted a Mercy Kill and destroying himself in the process.

Elly, Izabel, and Quitterie are the witch forms of Daria, Jane, and Quinn respectively.

Elly's witch card says this: "The box witch with a covetous nature. She is a staunchly reclusive witch. Anything she covets she locks away within glass. The thoughts of her prisoners are laid bare, but one can strike her without thought without problems." Daria would much prefer to be writing on her computer than interacting with other humans. Daria is speculated to have Asperger’s Syndrome. If she is an Aspie, her witch’s barrier would reference her desire’s to fit it and have better social skills. Elly’s wish was this: "I have only one wish. Box up that memory." Daria may have made a wish to forget something traumatic that occurred back in Highland. Her familiars' job of carrying things could relate to the move from Highland to Lawndale. Their angelic appearance is related to this [3]◊ scene where Daria talks with her consience.

Izabel's witch card says this "The artist witch. Her nature is vanity. Without a slightest doubt, she believes her existence is blessed. Wanting someone to see her work, she often interferes with the human world. However, within her barrier only exist works that you have probably seen somewhere before. To defeat this witch, just bring a well-known critic with you." Her minion Michaela is representative of Daria. Michaela's card says "The artist witch's minion. Her role is to be a piece of artwork. Any human that has been killed by this witch will have their body parts placed within this familiar." Doesn't that sort of describe Daria's role in Jane's life? The "well-known critic" needed to defeat Izabel could refer to Daria herself, who might break Jane's heart if she didn't like some of her art. The "well-known critic" could also be Beavis and/or Butthead. Imagine Jane's reaction to Daria's former enemies, who are well known for their music video reviews, reviewing her artwork.

Quitterie’s witch card says this: “Witch of needles, with a respectful nature. She is the remains of a magical girl who gave up everything to fight for the universe. She believes that she is saving the universe even now.” Quitterie’s disguise form represents Quinn’s image as a ditzy shallow fashionista, while Quitterie's real form shows Quinn’s kind and intelligent self. Their names even have the same 1st two letters. Her familiars represent the fashion club.

The unnamed witch of needles is a member of the fashion club.

Expanding on the Ghostbusters theory...

The Busters' nuclear containment unit acted like a fusion generator, fusing Witches, Familiars, unfortunate normal human spirits and some elder gods thrown in for good measure into an extremely powerful mass of evil. When that Obstructive Bureaucrat shut it down, out popped Walpurgisnacht.

Gozer was indeed an ancient Sumerian/Lovecraftian demon, but as often mentioned, Witch Barriers puncture the fabric of space-time (and, unbeknownst to the Incubators, would've actually destroyed the universe had not Madoka intervened; they may be smart, but they don't know everything), and he used those punctures in the New York area to pass into our world. (In a deleted script for Ghostbusters 3, where the boys would literally have gone to Hell, Harold Ramis described reality thusly: "...it’s like a film shutter — it’s the darkness between the 24 frames." WP obviously creates a huge patch of darkness which serves as the final straw.)

• Dana's "Spook Central" apartment building which served as Gozer's portal was indeed designed under the influence of a Witch Kiss from a former MG who lost her brother in World War I. (She had a pacifistic nature and wanted to end all wars at all cost, but unfortunately conflict is in our blood, so by default she thought "humanity was too sick to survive", much like how Gretchen wanted to "save" humanity by wiping it out.)

• And on another unfortunate note, Adorkable Janine would've contracted in another timeline.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is a Magical Girl who Takes Refuge in Audacity in her musical career

Given the content of her music videos, she clearly does all her filming inside Witch Barriers, making use of the familiars found inside as her dancing extras.

The mansion in HetaOni is a witch's barrier

The mansion was originally home to a lonely rich girl who had a strong interest in aliens and the like. One day, after being bullied by some classmates for her hobby, the girl made a contract with Kyubey (having no idea he was from space himself) to meet and befriend one. Unfortunately the alien was taken away by the government and the grief of having her only friend taken away turned her into a Witch. After killing her family and turning the mansion into her barrier the witch spends her days murdering anyone who comes into the mansion and taking joy from the pain of loss from the survivors.

• In the end everything works out when Madoka erases Witches from existence.
• The rich girl was a small nation.
• Or the fairy from the preview.

Kyubey will try to contract Candace

And this being Candace we're talking about, I guarantee her wish would be to successfully bust her brothers, and considering said wish is known to end badly even without Kyubey's involvement when it actually happens, factoring him in just takes it up to eleven. And yes, "Quantum Boogaloo" occurs in a timeline where she doesn't contract.

Michael Jackson was another rare male contractee.

The "Leave Me Alone" music video shows his Barrier.

• Walter Elias, the Amusement Park Warlock. It is his nature to entertain the masses at any cost, despite his deteriorating grip on reality. To him, the audience is paramount and the show must always go on.

• His Familiars are Elizabeth and John. Their duties are to distract the press from his declining mental state. Unfortunately, more often not they attract more negative attention.

• I think...i think he gave up at the end. I mean, if you hear his "last words", it makes sense.

The upcoming Studio Shaft / Akiyuki Shinbo production Magical Suite Prism Nana is intended to counter Madoka's bad vibes.

The sheer negative energy created by Madoka caused the Tohoku earthquake, and was threatening to engulf Shaft and possibly all Japan (or at least Greater Tokyo). As a result, given the zero-sum nature of happiness and despair as revealed by Kyubey/Urobutcher, Shinbo and co. got to work on a show that would restore the optimism and faith in The Power of Love and The Power of Friendship typical of most Magical Girl shows and "counteract entropy" so to speak. As for Urobutcher, they won't be working with him again (since the bad vibes of Psycho-Pass likely triggered the Sandy Hook shooting and LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner's rampage, Production I.G might also think twice).

• Considering how Madoka is getting a sequel movie, do you think there may be more to this...?
• Well, Production I.G appears to be cool with Urobuchi: they're working together again. At the rate things are going, this show may end up making the Human-Covenant War real...

Madoka Magica is set in the universe of Mage: The Awakening.

Let's look at the evidence. Magic coming at the price of a slow death of the soul (Paradox/Soul Gem corruption) and, if not careful, eventual transformation into an inhuman abomination that alters reality with its mere existence (The Mad/Witches) and spawns minions (Tulpa/Familiars)? Check. Battling incomprehensible things from beyond? Check. Kyubey trying to stop the slow death of the universe? The little fellow is an entity from the Lower Depths or the Abyss who grants things for a price... or an Ochema of the Chancellor, seeking to turn Awakening itself into a commodity. Walpurgisnacht? A Qliphoth who has devoured hundreds of Magical Girls. Madoka ascending and changing the way the Puella Magi system works? Archmastery, specifically as a Bodhisattva. And the reason it all happens in Mitakihara? The place is full of Hallows— or even better, is one big Hallow.

On a meta level, see the Mage Chronicler's Guide: Faustian Sorcery in Chapter One and Mad with Power in Chapter Four sync up remarkably with the Madoka Magica universe, allowing for a Puella Magi game using Mage.

Each of the five main characters also corresponds to a given path:

• Madoka: Acanthus, if her rose-branch bow is anything to go by. She has a focus on Fate and a minor one in Time. Her Virtue is Hope, and her Vice is Sloth. At the end of the series, she becomes an Archmaster. In another timeline, she fails and becomes the Qliphoth Kriemhild Gretchen.
• Homura: Mastigos, with focus on Space and Time. Her Virtue is Fortitude, and her Vice is Wrath.
• Kyoko: Thyrsus, with a focus on Life for self-enhancement. Used to have control over Prime, mostly for illusions. Her Virtue is Prudence, and her Vice is Gluttony (she does eat a lot). Would be pretty low on the Wisdom scale (around 3-5 Wisdom) at the start of the story.
• Sayaka: Obrimos, with a focus on Forces and Matter. Her Virtue is Justice, and her Vice is Lust. Hits Wisdom 0 and becomes a Witch.
• Mami: Moros. Yes, it seems strange, until you remember that she became a Puella Magi via a near-death experience. Her chosen spells are mostly in Forces and Matter, which explains the guns. Her Virtue is Charity, and her Vice is Lust. Has high (8+) Wisdom.

It makes sense, I tell you! It all makes sense! I have glimpsed the heart of the Diamond Wheel, and now the world shall knoSECRET LEVEL WHITE COMPROMISED. THE BREACHER OF THE VEIL HAS BEEN REMOVED. THE MYSTERIES MUST BE DEFENDED.

Homura is Sig, or is at least related to her.

Let's face it. Black, long hair? Check. Purple eyes? Check. Purple as a signature color? Check. Skilled and astonishingly accurate with guns? Check (Ok, Sig IS a gun, but the point is still valid). Seems to have a crush on the pink-eyed main character? Check. Would defend said main character from anything? Check. Determinator? Check.

Deoxys is a witch from another planet, akin to Itzli.

As a being that can fight on the same tier as the Olympus Mons, it is powerful enough that it can fight without a barrier, like Walpurgisnacht. Its Grief Seed is hidden within the crystal in its chest - unless it is totally destroyed, then Deoxys can regenerate completely. The clones that it can create are its familiars, and occasionally these can mutate into viruses that will mature into a full Deoxys (like the green Deoxys and Entities One and Two). Given how Deoxys have been shown to be very protective of their kin, it's possible that the original Deoxys made a wish for the sake of a family member, back when she was a magical girl.

That wasn't Cleopatra...

That was Cleo de Nile. Her wish was to create a world were monsters could live without being persecuted by normies. The Monster High world is her witch's barrier.

Halo 4 was a fanfiction written by one of the characters or Halo 4 was based off/ or IS 343's response to Madoka

1: Master Chief and Cortana's characterization NEARLY paralells with Madoka and Homura's.2: It involved Jerkass aliens.3: Sayaka and Del Rio both stubbornly fail to heed vital advice from Homura/the Chief, with disastrous results.4: The ending is the same.5: witches are magic girls/promethians are humans, contract=enlistment into the UNSC army, with the only way out is death6: The setting is a place that LOOKS nice, but in actuality, is a Crapsack World filled with evil creatures.

• Frank O'Connor is apparently a huge anime fan, listing favorites of his as Fist of the North Star, Space Battleship Yamato, and Cowboy Bebop. It's not too far-fetched that he watched Madoka and liked it, to the point where it partially inspired Halo 4.

Don't despair; they were all just chuunis.

The whole story details the terminally chuunibyou Homura (she thinks she's a Dark Magical Girl, pfft) trying to keep Madoka away from another chuuni with starkly pale skin and frilly hair, and out of a downward spiral of self-imposed delusions and social ostracism. Mami's attack calls are likely symptoms of her own chuunibyou.

• Homura's chuunibyou stemmed from the death of the real-life Madoka, and her desire to try and bring her back; she developed delusions where she would keep trying and failing to save her. The universe being rewritten is simply Homura's violent jerk back to a cold, sobering reality. (So, yeah. Despair.)
• Madoka was killed by a car trying to rescue Amy the cat. And in this universe, Dekomori herself attends Mitakihara Middle School and sees Homura as her opponent. Thus Homura imagines her arch-nemesis as a catlike creature with Dekomori's long, frilly Girlish Pigtails. And the reason Witches look like scrapbook collages is because they were just that, part of Homu's scrapbook. (Their names came from various Wikipedia visits.)

Homura and Madoka are moe anthropomorphisms of Dialga and Palkia.

Homura and Dialga both have dark colors (dark blue and purple, respectively), time-based powers, and diamond-shaped gems; Madoka and Palkia have pink color schemes, pink water-based gems (Madoka's is a teardrop, while Palkia has pearls), and the ability to screw around with reality (Madoka's wish power from the loops can break the rules of setting shown in the endings of both the anime and The Different Story). In conjunction with each other, Dialga and Palkia can create a new universe, as shown in the Pokemon anime; Madoka's ability to create a new world came from Homura's many time loops. Also, the Red Chain and Madoka's ribbons may or may not be related...

This can also extend to a Meta WMG: Ume Aoki may have been inspired by Dialga and Palkia when coming up with the character designs.

Every single series with at least one female character has a potential Puella Magi in it.

In other words, "X is a Puella Magi" is the next Time Lord.

Gisela, the witch Kyoko battles in her flashback, is the witch form of Winry Rockbell

Hence the focus on metal-work and being robotic, since Winry was an automail engineer. This means that Truth-kun is itself an incubator and creates the local versions of magical girls by granting the ability to transmute without a circle. Equivalent Exchange is meant to keep energy use and lose to a minimum and what does Truth-Kun say at the end of the show? "Despair to the conceited."

The Butcherverse.

There's a Nasuverse, so considering how far and wide Madoka's WMG's have spread, why not one for Gen? (If you think this would be more important on Gen's page, please feel free to move it there.)

• PsychoPass takes place In a World… where Madoka never contracts and Witch Kisses eventually caused such dismay in Japan that the Sybil System was implemented to restore order at any cost. Needless to say, many of the brains used were "infected" by Kisses. This could also remain true with the Demons in the new world. Meanwhile Sybil eventually comes to lead the Galactic Alliance in Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet.

• With Fate/Zero, the Incubators may have created the Holy Grail as an easy way to generate curses in the new world and/or a way for males to generate delicious despair in the old world. (Males can't contract; Kyubey would've probably gone straight for Kamijou if he could.) Alternatively, the Incubators may actually entities generated by the sheer sociopathy of the Grail. Yes, this does mean the Butcherverse overlaps with the Nasuverse.
  • The real reason why Soul Gems are necessary for magical girls' powers is because the Incubators are using the Third Magic, Heaven's Feel, to grant them their power; a soul that is materialized by the Third Magic will essentially become a magical perpetual motion machine. (It's also why the girls can use magic, even though they don't have any Magic Circuits.) Of course, the girls' limits stem not from a shortage of magic, but by the corruption that the Incubators use in their version of Heaven's Feel.
    • They created the Holy Grail to see if mankind could reach the Root and wield True Magic, thereby evolving into beings on par with them. The Grail being tainted by Avenger may or may not have been part of the plan.
  • Kyoko's father, being in the Church and all that, may have believed in the cause of the Eighth Sacrament. His Pater Familicide may have been in the name of that cause, as he sought to purge his family from the Faustian curse that Kyoko bestowed upon them.

• An interesting concept for Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet: Incubators were actually a different "sect" of Evolvers created from a merger with salamanders. Kyubey's resemblance to an axolotl has been previously noted.◊ But whereas squid!Evolvers lost their intelligence with their new forms, the salamander!Evolvers managed to keep theirs to the mastering of telekinesis. They then called themselves the Pefecteds; feeling that they had perfected their beings to the highest state, they felt their new duty was to reverse all the problems in the universe and create utopia. And of course this meant solving the issue of universal heat death.
  • Of course, what this means is that Madoka actually takes place after Gargantia, and the seas eventually recede and allow humanity to rebuild. The MG's saved by Godoka only resembled Cleopatra and Joan of Arc; history unfortunately has a way of repeating itself, and treachery, poverty and war would eventually come along and lead girls in similar situations to contract.
  • Continuing with Aldnoah.Zero, the Incubators' aforementioned creation was set in motion by Heaven's Fall and its likely dire climatic and tidal effects.
• Ein will soon be contacted by Kyubey. Based on the ending of the anime version of Phantom Requiem for the Phantom with Ein's breakdown upon seeing Reiji murdered, Kyubey promises Ein can once again be reunited with Reiji and to truly escape the clutches of their criminal past.

Kyubey is mistaking the source of damage to the universe, and the Pretty Cure series takes place in the same universe

The massive similarities in power and style between Precure and the Madoka Magical Girls is simply because they are almost the same, only Precure are supported by the powers of their transformation devices and are made stronger by positive emotions in general.

Kyubeys are strange little creatures that bear a disconcerting similarity to the little fairy mascot magical world residents from Precure.

Due to the methods and MO of various Precure villains, the damage inflicted upon the universe by them (and the subsequent death/rebirth of the world) is being mistaken for Heat Death in the Kyubey's calculations, so they are trying, in their own twisted way, to save the universe with the power of the Magical Girls.

Take for example the villains from Smile and Heartcatch. The minions of Pierrot draw out the negative emotions of living beings to summon his form into the world and destroy it with pure Despair, and their method of siphoning this negative emotion is essentially the same thing as a Grief Seed sucking out the corruption from a Soul Gem. The Desertrians from Hearthcatch steal the metaphorical "Heart Flower" that represesents the "soul" and emotion of people, trapping them in crystals.

However, their methodology severs the Magical Girl's soul from the Precure system and prevents it from replenishing their strength and supporting them in times of need.

The Incubators are actually the civilization of Monsters, Inc.

Basic concept: Human emotion as a high-octane entropy-defying energy source, that also happens to be exploited by Corrupt Corporate Executives who have the good intention of maximizing the extraction of this entropy-free energy lest their civilization or universe collapses. In Monsters Inc.'s past, children's fears served as this energy. Sure, laughter eventually replaces fear as more powerful, and this caused Monstropolis to enter a technological revolution, but eventually even all the laughter in the world fails to feed the demands of said revolution, like how petroleum created such a cycle in real life. They eventually discover a new and even more efficient and powerful form of emotion-energy that is based on exploiting the boundary between hope and despair....

Alternatively, Assuming that the Madokaverse gets more optimistic, Monsters, Inc. is a post-Incubator society

The Madokaverse's progress into an optimistic universe transformed the Incubators from Starfish Aliens into friendlier monsters with a very human-like civilization. Of course, since the Madokaverse is still A World Half Full, the new Monsters Inc, which replaces the corrupt Incubators, still derives its energy supply from negative emotions (fear, which while producing less energy, is still much less severe than absolute despair) and is run by a Corrupt Corporate Executive (although not as corrupt and as Kyubey). Eventually in Monsters Inc. somebody would complete the renovation of the system, where laughter finally becomes the best entropy-defying energy source instead of negativity. Perhaps Sully's encounter with Boo that completes said revolution is all just according to Madokami's plan....

The universe of Puella Magi Madoka Magica is the direct antithesis of the universe of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

• Theme: PMMM is a cynical Magical Girl anime that runs on Moe factor, Magical Girls and Tragedy, while TTGL is an idealistic Humongous Mecha anime runs on manliness, Rule of Cool, awesomeness and warping reality itself and achievement through sheer force of Will.
• Protagonists: TTGL's Spirals are fully fledged humans; PMMM's Magical Girls are Undead Liches
• Energy and violation of Equivalent Exchange: TTGL's Spirals produce energy through Manliness and Hope; PMMM's Magical Girls produce energy through Tears and Despair.
• End of the Universe Scenario: TTGL has Big Crunch Spiral Nemesis when the universe acquires too much Mass and Energy and creates a supermassive black hole; PMMM has the Second Law of Thermodynamics, when all the Energy in the universe is lost to waste heat. In TTGL, Equivalent Exchange preserves the universe while No Conservation of Energy kills it; in PMMM, Equivalent Exchange destroys the universe while No Conservation of Energy saves it. TTGL's universe dies in a Bang; PMMM's universe dies in a whimper.
• Antagonists: Both Anti-Spirals and Incubators are cold, logical, ruthless Totalitarian Utilitarians with the philosophy of "The Needs of the Many outweigh the needs of the few." They only care about preserving their respective universes, and are the faceless Straw Vulcans to contrast with the emotional protagonists. The difference is that Anti-Spirals think that there is too much Energy, and want to suppress energy overproduction by causing Despair, while Incubators think that there is too little Energy, and want to manufacture Energy by causing Despair.
• Messianic Archetype equivalents: Kamina is Extroverted, Assertive, straightforward and Impulsively Badass, yet inspires by being a Rebellious Spirit and defying the conventional law of his society; Madoka is Introverted, shy, fluttering, and careful, yet also chooses to sacrifice herself and inspire hope and love in such a universe of despair, even though she knows how meaningless it is. Kamina is the radical Übermensch of Romanticist philosophy; Madoka is the Ethical Hedonist of Enlightenment philosophy.
• Ending: Rebellion versus Reformation, choosing between destroying the system altogether from the outside or changing it from the inside. The Spirals know that the Anti-Spirals are doing the right thing by preserving the universe from the Spiral Nemesis. Madoka knows the Incubators are doing the right thing by extracting despair-energy and giving humanity civilization. The difference: Spirals choose Rebellion, and kick Anti-Spirals to the curb while delivering a grandiose speech on Free will ("We will decide our own destiny"). Madoka chooses Reformation and knows that humanity needs the Incubators, but sacrifices herself to reform the system, rewrite reality, eradicate the needless Witch mutation so that the Magical Girls who sacrificed themselves for human civilization may no longer die alone in vain, and become the embodiment of hope in such a universe of despair.
• The Cynics: Rossiu is wrong, and his Well-Intentioned Extremist methods get the Spirals nowhere. Kyoko and Homura are right, and their Well-Intentioned Extremist methods allow them to survive.

The Madokaverse and the universe of The Elder Scrolls are one and the same. Madoka's world and Nirn mutually influence one another.

The Elder Scrolls universe - particularly the plane of Mundus, where all mortals live - was born when Lorkhan convinced the et'Ada to create a new plane of existence. As this would require much of the et'Ada to sacrifice their power, evident in the original Eight Divines, many of them went Screw This, I'm Outta Here, leaving portals to Aetherius that took the form of stars, leaking magicka into the world.

Kyubey's real motive is not to deal with that thermodynamics mumbo-jumbo (the word itself may or may not have been invented by Sheogorath), but to try and preserve these stars, which anchor the planets of Mundus and prevent them from being devoured by the void of Oblivion. Magnus and several other et'Ada are actively trying to slowly shrink and eventually terminate these portals in an attempt to undo the fruit of Lorkhan's trickery. The only way to sustain these portals is to expose them to a foreign, non-Aedric source of magicka (Title Drop right there), so the Incubators eventually devised a method to derive magic gained from emotion.

To do so, they took the Daedric concept of Soul Gems, which can convert souls into raw magicka, and modified them to their needs. When a magical girl draws upon her Soul Gem's immense reserves of Aetherial magicka, the Soul Gem produces an equal amount of emotion-based magicka, which takes the form of the black gunk within a corrupted Soul Gem. If too much of this magicka is accumulated, the Soul Gem will fully explode on itself, becoming a fully Padomaic object - a Grief Seed, which acts as a micro black hole that devours and stores any foreign magicka it touches (which is why it's good for cleaning Soul Gems). Incubators, desiring as much of this magicka for their quota, created the wish-curse system to ensure that enough Grief Seeds will be made. Of course, this is where Madoka, disgusted by the unnecessary cruelty of the system, comes in.

Once Madoka accumulated enough foreign magicka through Homura's loops, and made her wish, she ascended into Aetherius and, due to her wish's retroactive nature, became a true et'Ada. Ultimate Madoka's divine nature is unknown. She could be an Aedra, sacrificing her power to ensure that the world would come into existence. To the denizens of Tamriel, she could be Mara, goddess of compassion, or she could manifest as Arkay, once-mortal god of life and death. She could be a Daedric Prince, one unknown to Tamriel, as she rules over her own realm and implies to Sayaka that she can exert direct power on Mundus. Either way, she is known to have supported Lorkhan, wanting him to carve the world that she held dear as a mortal. In that same vein, she is in direct opposition to the Aldmeri Dominion, who wish to destroy Mundus for the sake of their own divinity.

In an Alternate Universe, Kyubey has been transformed into Fluttershy

(Original WMG in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic article, and more of a joke WMG about Emiri Katou)

In one of Homura's timelines, Madoka made a wish that Kyubey be given emotion and be able to empathize with the Magical Girls he contracts. Rather than delete that particular "defective" unit, The Incubator civilization decides to see if it might work because the circumstances surrounding the emergence of this "defective" unit were unprecedented. Somehow or another they contact Princess Celestia and she is willing to take in this Kyubey - a relative Sugar Bowl like Equestria might be a good place to nurture something so unique. At worst, The Incubators can just cut and run, leaving it Celestia's problem. This Kyubey is reborn as Fluttershy, and finds that Good Feels Good and indulges in it so much she (eventually) holds the Element of Kindness. On the other hand, she's not a Genki Girl like Pinkie Pie because she also carries a massive amount of guilt and remorse over past actions.

• Her shy nature reflects that she was not originally a pony and so wasn't really sure how to conduct herself properly in pony society at first. She gets better with time, but still doesn't want to screw it up because Good Feels Good. Similarly, her scaredly-pony (at least on the surface) character is from a sudden loss of relevant knowledge of her new world combined with general fear of the unknown.
• Her taking care of animals acts as a sort of practice for taking good care of Puella Magi, as well as seeing what altruism is like. It also serves as an outlet for her to practice communicating and empathizing with other beings with ponies not readily available at first.
• Her general selflessness to the point of Extreme Doormat might be a holdover from being an Incubator with little sense of self-preservation in the service of a greater cause. The inner struggle with Flutterbitch might be trying to grapple with taking a heightened sense of self too far in the other direction.
• Her traumatic foalhood is an example of what kind of life Kyubey's usual leads go through. Something to use empathy for once she returns to contracting duty. An episode like "Hurricane Fluttershy" would also serve as good examples of the despair and hope that for the longest time Kyubey would just treat as resources.
• Her apologizing all the time is partly a quiet admittance both of her outsider status ("I'm sorry for barging into your group") and a reminder of her guilt ("I'm sorry for all the ways I've hurt you" - "you" in this case meaning more than just the pony she is addressing).
• Rainbow Dash became her first real friend because she represents everything Kyubey was not: brash, loud, acting on instinct rather than rationality, seeking immediate gratification, and loyalty to an individual like her (similarities to Sayaka would be in the back of her mind).
• Her freaky knowledge of sewing stems from exposure to all the intricate outfits that Puella Magi wear. By extension, being friends with Rarity allows for new insight on how and why Puella Magi end up dressed as they are when they do contract - might be useful in understanding why they are dressed that way.
• Her living near the Everfree and away from most other ponies serves to both maintain secrecy and as a contingency containment plan should the original Kyubey resurface; Fluttershy may live in fear of losing herself to an Incubator's nature (whether or not the fear is well-founded). Angel Bunny may be in on this as additional security - he is tough and direct because he understands the high stakes involved. It also allows Fluttershy the time and privacy to organize her throughts and feelings ("Dear Princess Celestia...").
• Her not-so-beautiful moments (i.e., "The Best Night Ever", Flutterbitch, "Putting Your Hoof Down") is sorting through the potential pitfalls that being emotional brings, or possibly her original nature attempting to sabotage the whole experiment. It's probably not desirable for a de facto commanding officer (if Magical Girls are like soldiers) to lose his/her cool in the middle of a fight and lose sight of the bigger picture, and introducing emotions into the equation likely brings that risk. Better to work out the kinks in Equestria, where the damage can be contained.
• Something like reforming Discord may be equivalent to a mid-term exam by Celestia to see how well Fluttershy has incorporated the EQ lessons learned: can she still perform the Incubator's job while having emotions and empathy?
• Her infamous "Stare" is a holdover from the Mind Rape / Exposition Beam she did to Madoka. Due to issues of secretcy (humans doesn't exist in Equestria after all) no information is conveyed and only the profound sense of despair if felt.

Takato is the counterpart to Madoka.

Kyubey said that grief and hope must balance out to zero but Madoka does not. She becomes a goddess of hope so for there to be balance entrop made a god of greif and desipair Megidramon. But the egg that was to create him was lost is a tear in space time opening to the digi-world. Megidramon was later sealed away by the royal knights but Takato relesed him by partnering with him. This gave Takato the sthrength and power of this dark god. But since takato is a kind person he did not do as entrop planed. later some one close to him was killed most likely by demons. Takato snaped and became Madoka's couterpart a god of despair his from is most likely to be Gallantmon Chaos mode or Chaosgallantmon Core. Madoka was able to convice him to return to his old self but the damage was done with Guilmon know as Blackguilmon a symbole of all that was loss Takato was know the god of dispair.

Madoka Magica takes place after the events of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Originally, the capacity to generate limitless energy was the domain of the Angels with their S2 Organs aka Fruits of Life, not humans. Despite their ability to override the Law of Equivalent Exchange with impunity like a child playing with Lincoln logs, and their Absolute Territory/Terror Field barriers protecting them from conventional weapons, they don't possess Humanity's Fruit of Knowledge, and so they lack the ability to do much with their raw power. Humanity had a previous attempt to take this limitless potential for themselves through the creation of the Angel-clones called Evangelions, the only weapon who can breach the Angels' A.T. Fields through the use of another A.T. Field. The Evangelions used female souls as software and their A.T. Fields were amplified by the angst, Depression and psychological dysfunctions of their pilots. The goal of humanity in Neon Genesis Evangelion is the Human Instrumentality Project, caused by using the Evangelions to unite the Fruit of Life and the Fruit of Knowledge, and facilitated by the Despair Event Horizon of Shinji and everybody else, to merge Humans and Angels into a collective godlike being, and so reopen the power of God; the solution to Universal Entropy. However, Shinji rejected the false paradise of Instrumentality, thus giving the human race a second chance to reform themselves and "bud off" from the gestalt God. These new humans, inheriting both the Fruit of Life and Fruit of Knowledge, have the potential in their souls to generate limitless energy through emotion and become Reality Warpers who would surpass the abilities of the Angels and Evangelions, although they don't realize the potential in themselves just yet.

The explosion of phenomenal cosmic energy that was the Instrumentality attracted the attention of the Incubators, intelligent alien nanobots who wandered space trying and failing to find a solution to Universal Entropy (The Last Question by Isaac Asimov is about a computer being unable to solve entropy). The Incubators arrived on Earth and then salvaged and reverse-engineered the Evangelions, where they discovered the solution to create a God with the potential to override Universal Entropy. The purpose of the Incubators' Evangelion Revival Project is to transform Shinji's descendants into artificial Angels, and use those Angels to counteract universal Entropy and power the Incubators forever. They experimented onto Shinji's descendants, and discovered from the Evas that the most central ingredients are female souls (maternal souls used as the Evangelion software) and puberty (the adolescent pilots of the first Evangelions). They increased the efficiency of the reverse-engineered Metaphysical Biotechnology from the previous human civilization, such as the ability to salvage and manipulate souls and replicate the effects of S2 Engines, which they then use to transform adolescent females into neo-Evas by activating and turning their souls into S2 Engines/Fruits of Life/Angel Cores (Soul Gems).

Now that the female neo-Evas' S2 Engines are activated, the next part is how to mature the S2 Engines into fully-fledged Angel Cores. The final trigger was Depression, a relic courtesy of the male ancestor, Shinji Ikari, and the amounts of angst and despair of the previous world that was Evangelion in general. Shinji triggered the entire Instrumentality catastrophe and became a God by falling into Despair Event Horizon. The neo-Evas have inherited this and therefore they turn into fully-fledged Angels once they suffer Absolute Despair. However, the new Angels possessed Absolute Terror Fields so powerful they warped reality and created "Dirac Seas" and pocket dimensions for themselves (the labyrinths) protecting themselves from any attempts by Incubators to subdue them. It can only be destroyed, neutralized and opened by another powerful A.T. Field, such as those generated by the neo-Evas.

They weaponized the neo-Evas for subjugation and capture of the Angels, thus the creation of the Puella Magi and the repetition of the previous Angel versus Eva storyline. In turn, the weaponized neo-Evas themselves (Puella Magi) fell into Despair and mutated into Angels (Witches), allowing Incubators to exploit unknowing girls to fight Angels and volunteer as neo-Evas, hence the birth and evolution of the Puella Magi vicious cycle. The Incubators' experiments also contributed to the rebirth of human civilization, and the humans from Madoka Magica got the legends of gods and fallen civilizations such as Atlantis and Noah's Flood from the antediluvian civilization that was Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was literally flooded by the Instrumentality catastrophe.

The Walpurgisnacht is actually Nozomu Itoshiki.

Think about it: He emits enough despair to be a truly powerful witch, and most probably an Incubator made contact and transformed him into a Magical Girl... Boy.That would explain why he can't die by being slammed into the school building, by having his name written in the Death Note or all those times he has hanged himself.

The Incubators are involved with actress schools, including the Twinkle Revue Actress School

Photographic evidence of an Incubator involved in an Eroge-like situation◊

Lala-Ru is a "second-generation" (post-Godoka) MG.

This is why she fades away when her water-controlling pendant (actually her Soul Gem) uses up her power. She was originally from perhaps the Middle East, Sudan, or some other part of the world plagued by water shortages, and wished for a steady water supply. Unfortunately the violent warlords in those areas which inspired NTHT and King Hamdo started fighting over it and setting up violent Child Soldier armies similar to Hellywood, which made her extremely bitter.

• In the previous universe, Sara wished to return home, and eventually became a very destructive Witch. Perhaps Godoka pulled some cosmic strings for Shuu to come to Hellywood to help remind her that life is still precious. The "pulling cosmic strings" may explain why Lala-ru didn't suffer Sayaka's fate in the Portable game after losing her Soul Gem for so long.
• In a less happy timeline, Sara wished to return home, and eventually became the Witch Patricia, who gave off some vibes of a rape victim, as well as of things being beyond her control.
• A Madoka/NTHT crossover is especially poisonous if you think about it, since NTHT takes place so far in the future that the sun is burning out...implying that despite the Incubators' efforts, universal entropy still takes place. In other words, PMMM would become a "Shaggy Dog" Story.

Various characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are actually "Magical Boys."

As pointed out on the "Fridge" page, it's possible that Kyubey is lying by omission (as he does) when he says "teenage girls" are the best source for contracts (notice he doesn't say "only" or "exclusive"), and a specific theory put forth is that boys (or men) may be told they're "superheroes" fighting "monsters." Here are some guesses about specific characters.

• Phillip Coulson. As noted on the WMG for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson appears to have low-level psychic powers that could be explained by being a magical boy. He was able to come back from Loki's attack because his Soul Gem was unharmed, and even though he "died" his body just had to be repaired. The thing that Hill says he can never know as of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot is the mechanism for his survival - Fury (who is also of Kyubey's race - who said the cat-bunny thing is the only form they can take?) knows he will have a freakout if he realizes his soul is outside his body (like Sayaka did). His wish was probably that they could find out what happened to his childhood hero ...
• Howard Stark (original idea from Iron Man WMG Page): While Steve's plane was going down, Howard desperately wished to save his life. The Incubators being what they are, this led to Steve surviving ... but frozen under the ocean and lost to his friends forever. It was a downward spiral from there and that's why Tony always knew him as a cold man.
• Tony Stark: He wished for supernatural intelligence in the hopes he could impress his dad instead of just wishing for a better relationship with him (similar to the mistakes the girls make throughout PMMM).
  • Or maybe he contracted with Kyubey so that he can escape from his terrorist captors. His arc reactor is actually his soul gem.
• Loki may not have contracted, but he has seen the Incubator homeworld. He tells Thor he saw many worlds - which implies he didn't end up with the Chiaturi right away. A big part of why he went completely nuts between Thor and Avengers was seeing the Incubator homeworld where anyone with emotions is imprisoned as a lunatic and they sacrifice other races willy-nilly for a threat billions of years away.

Davy Jones was a Magical Boy and later a Witch.

He wished to be with Calypso. When he believed he was betrayed, he fell into greif and anger. As a result, he gave his job as a Grim Reaper and started attacking people and press-ganging them into his crew, slowly becoming a Humanoid Abomination. The Flying Dutchman is his barrier, the crew are his farmillars, and the Deadman's Chest is his Grief Seed. It's possible Calypso was an Icubators or the Incubators based there system off him.

Dune created the PMMM reality as revenge.

• Since he lost to a group of colorful Magical Girls that restore good feelings, he made a reality where feelings are their downfall and the cute little animal only takes advantage of their innocence and good heart.

The African "Savanna Girl" at the end of Episode 12 was a rape slave from Invisible Children.

AKA Kony 2012.

Incubators are actually a Trolling creation of whoever created Gantz.

In other words, no aliens involved at all (well, there were originally, but it took humanity to bring it to its current perverse conclusion), just some bored super-rich Earthlings watching a phantasmagoric reality show. Mitakihara and the version of Japan seen in Gantz may both be huge soundstages "populated" by actors a la The Truman Show. Gantz of course appealed to the perverted desires of debauched, jaded adults, while Incubators reach out to idealistic, hopeful adolescents.

And as you'll sound find out, the notion of Madoka's world being one big, horrible reality show for Earth's elite leads rather nicely into the first WMG in Part 4...

The Nilians from Meet Dave overheard the Incubators.

The Nilians intercept a signal from the Incubators through satellite. They overheared that the Incubators described Earth as a planet with high energy source. They sent Dave Ming-chang to Earth to convert our planet's oceans to energy that would save their civilization from an energy crisis, since they have the technology to do so (the orb). The Nilians received partial signal from the Incubators though, they didn't heard that the energy source that the Incubators are refferring to revolves on "hope and despair" and not the Earth's oceans.

• Nil and the Incubators' planet are just a few light years far from each other. Kyubey's species never considered to make contracts with Nilians because Nilians like the Incubators is a mostly emotionless race.

Jun Kazama was a magical girl

Jun Kazama was a magical girl in Tekken Tag Tournament 2. She has fallen to despair and turned into a witch. Her witch form is Unknown and her barrier is the stage Fallen Garden.

Stardust Witch Meruru is an alternate Madokaverse

• Here are the characters of Stardust Witch Meruru a fictional show in Oreimo and their Madoka Magica equivalent.
  • Meruru is Madoka Kaname - both are magical girls with pink hair with twintails.
  • Alpha Omega or Al-chan is Homura Akemi - her name means the beginning and the end which may refer to her time-based magic.
  • An unnamed cyan haired magical girl is Sayaka Miki and Mami Tomoe in one person?
  • Comet-kun is Kyubey
  • Thanatos Eros, the Octopus, and Dark Witch Meruru are "witches" (definition in Madoka Magica)
  • Witches (as in Meruru) are Puella Magi
  • Dark Witches are Witches (as in Madoka Magica) - they don't have barriers in this universe.
• The story somewhat goes like this: Meru Akaboshi makes a contract with Comet-kun, Alpha Omega from another timeline comes to warn Meruru. At some point of the story, Al-chan becomes a dark witch so Meruru killed her with one strike. Cyan haired girl later wishes for Al-chan to be revived, Comet-kun allows since the wish only revives one person. The cyan haired puella magi do not have the power to revive magical girls but rather heal them. Meruru later turns into a dark witch and destroys the planet with one hit. Al-chan resets the timeline. Then a next season for Meruru is released.

The board game Zathura is a witch

Her barrier is space-themed.

• Zathura, the space-traveller witch whose nature is to play always. Unlike other witches, she does not actively trap humans. She lets humans trap themselves in her barrier. The only way to escape this witch's barrier is to beat the witch's game.

Zorgons, are the space-traveller witch's minions. Their duty is to find light and eat humans who are trap in their witch's barrier. They are formidable minions of the witch.

• She may have wished to have someone to play with her upon contracting with Kyubey. Her possesive personality may have cause her to become a witch.

The Bermuda Triangle is a witch hotspot.

Perhaps that explains why ships and even airplanes go missing in the Bermuda Triangle. Same goes for other supernatural places.

The SpongeBob episode "Shanghaied" is set in the Madoka Magica universe

• The Flying Dutchman is a witch in this episode. His barrier is his ship which includes the "perfume department" and the Fly of Despair where his minions are. Take note how Spongebob and Patrick were unable to escape the witch's barrier. Squidward faced the Dutchman's minions during his fall at the Fly of Despair.

Kyubey will contract Crocker.

Of course Denzel Crocker's wish is to successfully catch a fairy godparent. Kyubey will notice his vast potential and knows that Crocker has failed several times to catch a fairy. Also Kyubey knows Crocker's tragic childhood. Hmmm, Think about what will Crocker's magical boy outfit look like? Or more interestingly, what his witch/warlock form look like?

Madoka and {{Castlevania: Lords of Shadow}} share a universe.

During act V Gabriel Fights the Crow Witch Malphas, whose back story sounds an awful lot like that of a Magical Girl who gave into despair and became a Witch. Malphas even creates familiars to attack Gabriel during the fight. The only thing missing is a barrier, but Malphas is possibly powerful enough that she doesn't need one.Gabriel's story also parallels that of a Magical Girl, he set out trying to revive his dead wife but on the way slowly lost his humanity until he discovered that his quest was in vain. When Gabriel became the Prince of Darkness gained power over the witches it seems as he can create his own barrier (his castle) wherever he likes.

The Incubators have an alternative way of energy harvesting: Life Fibers

Ever since the Madoka disaster that led to the Kyubey of Madoka's Earth being enslaved by Akuma Homura, the Incubators realised that the Puella Magi system was a total failure. However, they had an alternative to this, and approached alternative civilizations, manipulating sentient species and giving them technology, science and clothing, for the sake of harvesting energy from their souls. They do not care if said civilization was destroyed, only if they were able to harvest their energy quota. If one wears a Life Fiber cloth that absorbs his or her blood ("making a contract") the human becomes able to use Magical Powers unleashed by the Life Fiber but there is always the risk of the wearer losing control of his or her clothing ("falling to despair") and becoming totally consumed by the Life Fiber to become a monstrosity ("witch"). Perhaps the Life Fibers are a more efficient refinement of the Puella Magi system so that the Incubators don't need to rip out the souls of girls, an inefficient process that led to the Akuma Homura disaster, and instead harvest human energy in the blood directly through skin contact?

Elsa Maria is the witch form of Queen Elsa

Just look at Elsa Maria's barrier, it has snowflakes in it. Plus, the witch name is ELSA Maria.

• Those were more like cathedral windows. If anything, Elly might be a better match for Elsa's Witch form; Elly acted like a Hikikomori and Elsa spent most of her life shut away in her room, plus the production notes said Elly's barrier was modeled on a snowglobe. Plus Elly sounds like a nickname for Elsa, and Kirsten (her full name; Elly is just her online nickname) is a common Scandinavian name.
• Elsa's Witch barrier would probably resemble her canon ice palace; Marshmallow might be her Witch form (especially in how he represents her desire to be alone). Snowlem Olaf would be one of her familiars (he was actually created to recall her childhood memories).

Ika Musume is magical girl.

Ika Musume was just an ordinary squid who contracted with Kyubey. She wish to punish humanity for polluting her home. Ika is perpetually in magical girl form and her dress is her magical girl outfit. Her tentacles is a variation of Mami's binding magic. Her bracelet is imbued with magic causing to change her weight without affecting her physical appearance.

• Wait, where is her soul gem? Her soulgem is white and is actually her hat, thus Ika claims she would die if one removes her hat.
• How about the witches? Ika actually fights witches offscreen. However due to being overloaded by her duty as a magical girl plus being a waitress at Lemon, Ika can't manage to actually start her invasion of humanity.
• When Ika temporarily loses her squid abilities in episode 12 of season 1, it is the result of Ika Musume rejecting her wish, upon losing motivation to invade humanity and doubting her ill-feelings towards humans. This is similar to what happened to Kyouko, losing her Rozzo Phantasma illusion magic upon the death of her father. Kyouko's wish was to make people come to her father's church and believe to her father's sermons.
  • Similarly the octopus girl had the same wish as Ika's and also rejected her wish.

There is some everting involved when entering the Witches' barriers.

The ordinary world is obviously Layer 1 ("Innocence"), while the place where the witches have to be fought is Layer 6 ("Confusion").

• Alternatively, given the desaturated and somewhat gloomy and isolated-looking world, the 'real' world could be a variant of Layer 2 ("Deception"). Some Witch-realms have hints implying that they evert to Layer 7 ("Commotion") or deeper, with many more hazards than average. Charlotte's sweets-and-medicine filled realm is a surrealized Layer 4 ("Desolation") or 5 ("Apprehension").
• Madoka's idealism makes her push towards everting in the direction of Layer 1, and also results in her getting extra traumatized by some of the raw violence the deeper Layers possess. Homura's darker nature is the result of resetting the timeline and ending up being forced to evert deeper and deeper to save Madoka, which cumulates in her Pumpkin Queen form in Rebellion, where she everts the entire universe and imprisons Madoka in a Layer 1 Gilded Cage.

Albertine is the Witch form of Penny from The Rescuers.

Albertine's appearance suggests she was quite young, and perhaps rather lonely (as Penny was after not being adopted). The Witch also obviously liked drawing, and Rescuers has a brief shot of a drawing of Penny with two parents.

• For more tearjerking, remember that Penny desperately wanted to be adopted...and Albertine's familiars "never seek her out".

The other mother from CORALINE is a witch.

Her apperance, modus operandi and motivations share a lot of similitudes.Perhaps she was a Puella Magi whose dress and weapons were taylor-themed. Also was deeply illusioned with becoming a mom someday and was very affraid of spiders.At some point she either ran out of magic or fell into despair and became the witch "Beldam", eventually settling on the house that would become the pink palace apartments. And one of the girls living there becoming her first victim.

Her witch form is that of a spider due to her fear. As a witch she is of motherly nature, so she lures children into her barrier which trully loves, but in the end smothers and loves them to death. Her barrier is the parallel world that looks like the house in the real world. She sews by hand her familiars (the mice, the other neighbors, the other father, the other Wayne, the furniture, etc. ) and her witch kiss are the buttons.

Which also means Coraline fought a witch without being a Maho Shoujo herself...and won. (and her grief seed is most likely lost somewhere in the house)The black cat is just a common housecat who knows alternate entrances to her barrier other than the tunel on the living room for which there's only one key, but these entrances are so small only the cat can use them.

Madoka Earth is now a Demon World, or perhaps has always been.

• The laws of causality are clearly broken by Madoka's final wish: when she reaches across time to collect exhausted Puella Magi, she necessarily must create a warp storm in this area: laws of physics are locally suspended, otherwise it wouldn't be possible. Given the scope of her action, the entire planet must be in the Warpspace by now, not real space. Earth is therefore not a physical place, but a Warpspace location, and Madoka is its Daemon Prince. (Well, now Homura too, which has necessarily transformed the Earth in some ways, and the eventual emergence of subsequent Daemon Princesses will modify it further.)
  • Creation of Demons - beings brought to life by negative human emotions gathering together - is a pretty direct proof of the Madoka Earth being in the Warp. This sort of thing is just not possible in a physical universe, but pretty standard in the Warp.
• Kyubey is quite possibly a C'Tan; judging from his modus operandi, most likely The Deceiver himself. C'Tan are immortal and probably indestructible, and the only thing they want (or maybe even the only thing they can do) is to eat, therefore they fear heat death of the Universe more than anything else. The Puella Magi program is based on some ancient technology, much like the one that created Necrons.
  • As mentioned above, Madoka and Homura are Daemon Princes, which is one of the two basic outcomes for psykers who survive, the other being Spawndom (though the Puella Magi technology makes them very powerful and aberrant Spawns, here called Witches). It never occurred to Kyubey that Princedom is even a possible outcome for a Puella Magi, but given that he seems to be The Deceiver, it's not really a surprise (while clever, the C'Tan aren't exactly bright and they don't understand people well, and they don't get magic at all).
  • Alternatively, especially after the events of Rebellion, it is Homura who has become the Daemon Prince whose powers over Madoka and her own universe rivals or even surpasses the original Heretic, Horus himself. The events of the Madokaverse and its descent into chaos was entirely dependent on Homura's psycho-temporal manipulation which made an innocent potential such as Madoka to be forced to accumulate so much suffering in the first place. And when Madoka became an agent of the God-emperor of Mankind did Homu reveal the true nature of her existence, as Chaos Undivided, the ultimate Daemon possessing the Four: Nurgle (her unlimited depression) Khorne (her unending hatred to the C'tan and basically everything) Slaanesh (her obsession with Madoka) and Tzeentch (her maunholy manipulation of time and space). Only Madokami seemed to be immune because she may have the essence of the Starchild (i.e. God-Emperor) but that also curses her to be a plaything in Homura's chaotic universe of insanity.
  • This would make Sayaka a powerful daemonic servant, elevated by a Daemon Prince, but not a Daemon Prince herself.

The Madokaverse (and Incubators) was created by Dr. Rick Sanchez to power his car battery.

• After Zeep eventually rebelled and Rick had to discard his previous battery, he opted for a subtler, more insidious method of power generation. This is the guy who gave humanity "melting ghost babies", after all.
  • He may have gotten the idea from the Meeseeks Box.
  • If the series isn't continued after Rebellion (as of spring 2017, 3.5 years later, all we have is a Vaporware trailer), we'll know it's because Rick noticed something wrong with his new battery and tossed it out for a new one.
  • Or considering that Homura discovered interdimensional travel, she might end up fighting Rick.

The Incubators are wizards

But, they failed their race's Ordeal and now work for The Lone Power, actually spreading entropy, but they don't realize it.

Homura is not fighting wraiths in the epilogue

Those are the Eldritch from Phantom of the Kill series.

Kyubey was using Homura to create a Chrono Stone

Kyubey has always been seeking a good energy source to fight off entropy, and the Grief Seeds aren't really cut out for the job. However, Akemi Homura was Kyubey's attempt of creating an energy source better than the Grief Seeds, the Chrono Stone. However, despite Homura's attempt to alter time; she and her friends did not fufil the conditions to become a Chrono Stone, though Kyubey did get something just as good.

The whole series is Homura’s Happy Dream.

Homura was always an unstable Yandere who, like Russell, killed her Abusive Parents, possibly Madoka and the others as well, and was sentenced to death. Then she was chosen to partake in the experiment. The witches are manifestations of her past, like the bosses in Russell’s dream. The grief seeds represent her guilt. Kyubey is a computer program created by Dreamsend Inc. to serve as a guide for Homura. Eventually, in Rebellion, she finally peels away the false reality and begins to awaken, with the goal being to accept her guilt and be “taken away” by Madokami, before she hijacks the dream, putting her to eternal sleep in real life. Another failure.

Incubators harvest SP Energy from magical girls.

Soul Gems also contain SP technology stolen from the Sagitta Civilization. In addition to the emotional power potential of magical girls generated by their wishes, their emotions and memories generate SP energy, which is harvested by Incubators. When their despair becomes too great, it crystallizes the excess SP energy and their negative emotions form into Ba'als.

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You have some really great ideas. I can make any of them true.
All I need is for you to make a contract.

/人◕ ‿‿ ◕人
—->Fuck off, Kyubey.

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