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The Shinigami King is the only one and true death deity
He has many names. Anubis, Eshu, Ogbunabali, Mictlantecuhtli, Muut, Supay, Yin Changsheng, Yama, The Grim Reaper, are but a few, and countless other names well-known, obscure, and forgotten over time. He is the only true deathless death god, he writes the rules that binds all the characters. Whereas the other Shinigami we see were not gods, they were all once human. Despite their power, they can still die. The King of the death is essentially outsourcing a considerable amount of his work for humanity onto humanity. All you have to do to be under his employ (or subcontract, hey it's your choice) is pick up one of his Death Notes, and write someone's name in it.

Mu was a last minute edit
When Soichiro died, he still owned the Death Note and saw that Light didn't own a Death Note of his own (In that time, Misa was the owner and Light used a piece of paper to kept his memories about being Kira) So, Light's dad died peacefuly and Ryuuk, a Death God, made a remark about how he could go to the afterlife peacefully. Keep in mind, he explicitely said go to the afterlife. Should just oblivion and nothingness await, it wouldn't matter at all if he died peacefully of full of regrets. So maybe the Death Note Users could initially have been coiceived as potential shinigami, but as everybody figured this, the authors decided to make the last minute decision.

Kiras and Death Note users throughout history is the reason that the Full-Name Ultimatum exists.

The Death Note is a petition form to the Shinigami King, who is supreme God
All the rules of the Death Note are the king's made up rules. It all seems like rules SOMEONE made up to make the whole Death Note 'game' interesting. A game with no rules is not interesting. A game where Death Notes have official 'owners' is.

The King of the Shinigami is...

There are other kinds of "notes"
First proposed humorously by Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw on his personal site. He speculates that there might be notes for other types of gods besides shinigami. He specifically mentions the Love Note, War Note, Rabbit Note, and Piss Pants Note.

The Death Note is really a mind-control device.
That would explain why Light can manipulate people into doing his wishes before dying. However, Ryuk and the sinigami wrote the instructions so the mind-control devices would remain Death Notes, in case if a Light-like sociopath took control of the world's leaders. (those leaders don't hide their faces, you know)

The real reason behind the ending of Death Note is ....... THE YAOI NOTE.
At the end Mikami possessed a death note and a yaoi note. However he mixed the two up, writing the members of the SPK and the Task Force's names down in the Yaoi note and writing his and Light's name in the Death Note. The Death Note in Mikami's saftey deposit box was also a fake to trick Near, he carried the real Death Note and Yaoi Note around with him all the time.
  • You made me think. What if really, the Death Note IS the Yaoi Note?! Think about it. Ryuk was carrying the real Death Note all the time, and while Light was writing all those names in his book, Ryuk could just look over his shoulder and write those names into the real Death Note, making it seem like Light was doing all those killings. However, in reality, the book that Ryuk gave Light is the Yaoi Note, which has the powers to make Light a magnetic to all yaoi pairings! You had Matsuda, whose admiration for Light is veeerrrry dubious; Mikami who worships Kira in more ways than we suspect; and who can forget L? This says it all. Also, this power extends to us viewers, so that we have no choice but to find yaoi in EVERY context, and search for subtext that is not even there to prove that Light and L are cannon dammit! Yes, the Yaoi Note should be feared.

The Death Note doesn't even work.

Regarding to the theory above, who is to say that Ryuk didn't drop a fake notebook? Think about it. Ryuk, who is incredibly bored, drops an ordinary notebook, gives a high school student a pep talk, and he thinkks he's a God that has the power to kill anyone... When he doesn't have anything at all. Talk about Dramatic Irony!

All the recent celebrity deaths result from someone using the death note.
Michael Jackson died of a heart attack; most likely from the user was trying to make him do something that he couldn't do. Billy Mays was next... also of a heart attack! And then there's this.
  • So what was the impossible thing MJ was supposed to do? Become a victim of black-on-black crime?
    • "Murdered by a Cute Beatle." Though it's starting to look like that entry read, "MJ: dies of anesthetic overdose."
      • Recent news says that MJ's death is a homicide. The police are just catching on.
  • Note the unusual airplane-related circumstances around the latter's death... a more successful experiment?
  • A lot of the recent deaths have been centered around California - and, more specifically, Los Angeles. As well, at least two have been killed by heart attacks (Billy Mays and MJ). And Los Angeles is significant because that's where Another Note took place. As well, there's been a trend of a celebrity dying every 1-3 days now. Gentlemen (and ladies), we may be onto something.
    • Steve McNair died today, as predicted.
  • Exactly as planned...tomorrow another famous person shall die. Justice is Kira! Another has died.
    • I was given this Deathnote by a man who looked suspiciously like Light, so that makes sense. My shinigami says hi
    • This just in: Ted Kennedy has died. Kira strikes again!
    • Two days later, DJ AM is dead!! OMG Kira's at it again!
    • Kira's on a Hollywood Rampage! Patrick Swayze dead at 57!
    • Oral Roberts is dead too, as of 12/14/09!
      • Kira only kills criminals, and this matches up.
    Michael Jackson: suspected of being a pedophile.
    Ted Kennedy: politician, and there's that Chappaquiddick incident.
    Heath Ledger: did too good an impression of being evil in The Dark Knight.
    Billy Mays: Damn, he's loud.
    DJ AM: you saw how he died, right?
    Patrick Swayze: Corrupting millions of teenage girls with his Dirty Dancing?
  • This... More evidence! "Shame on you, Raito-kun"
  • Alternately, Zac Effron is the new Kira, who kills not for justice, but to slowly and steadily cleanse Hollywood of anyone and anything competing with him and his teeny-bopper revolution. That fiend!
  • In another few days, another shall die, the name written in my note book.
  • Brittany Murphy has died at age 32 after suffering a heart attack in her Los Angeles home. Make of that what you will.
  • Now J.D. Salinger is dead! Am I the only one whose getting the felling that Kira is a Moral Guardian?
  • Hey, it's just all apart of Kira's plan. He wanted to cleanse the world of evil by killing current criminals to stop them from corrupting others to have them repeat the cycle. In his mind, it's hollywood that's making evil look cool so people want to go over to the Dark Side. How many times have you seen the All Girls Want Bad Boys and Draco in Leather Pants tropes put into effect, and even been abused by fandumb? It's all cause of hollywood, so Kira is solving it by eliminating celebrities.
  • Andrew Koenig has died from suicide, and Corey Haim has died of a drug overdose. Celebrity Kira has apparently just discovered that he can control people with the note. And so his vendetta against The '80s continues...
  • Ronnie James Dio - stomach cancer. Wow, I know, all the others, but HIM?
  • And now Brittany Murphy's husband has also died of a heart attack from "natural causes". At age 39. Clearly he got too close to uncovering the truth.
  • Kira strikes again. Probably cause of his assault record.
  • The Golden Girls, except for Betty White, have all passed away now. http://www.popeater.com/2010/06/03/rue-mcclanahan-dead What does Kira have against old women? It's understandable for Bea Arthur (the abortion controversy on Maude), but the other two? Seriously?
  • Kira is a high school student in Massachusetts. Here's my proof: http://intimateviolencedeathnews.blogspot.com/2010/06/fitchburg-ma-fitchburg-teacher-dies.html
  • Randy and Evi Quaid, currently facing trial over vandalism charges, recently fled to Canada to escape a "celebrity death list" conspiracy that's already claimed Heath Ledger and David Carradine, and they fear may be after them now. Celebrity Kira's reputation continues to spread...
  • And I don't belive no one mentioned it, Leslie Neilson died a month or so ago. DAMN YOU CELEBRITY KIRA! SPARE THE COMEDIANS! TAKE STEPHENIE MEYER INSTEAD!
    • Wait, Bin Laden is dead? GOD BLESS YOU CELEBRITY KIR- Oh wait? Shot in a military operation, that's either a good cover or not related to Celebrity Kira.
      • *Death Note reads* "Osama bin Laden Headshot"
      • Isn't it a bit strange that the pictures of bin Laden's death haven't been released? Maybe the truth is they found him dead when they got there, and they can't let the truth get out about the real cause of death...
  • Kira strikes again to Amy Winehouse.
  • Kira strikes again, this time to Steve Jobs.
  • Kira strikes yet again, except now it's Whitney Houston. The cause of death as of this posting is 'unknown'. He's getting better at this.
  • Not exactly a celebrity death, but the Las Vegas incident as well. The guy had no kind of criminal record or anything else that would indicate he could pull this off...and it happened anyway.
  • Kira...how could you!? Stan Lee, Stephen Hillenburg, and the GOOD President Bush all in one month!? Earlier, he had gotten to Carrie Fisher, Alan Young, and June Foray, amongst others.
  • Kira you monster! Cameron Boyce was going to be a mega star, he finally finished filming Descendants 3 and he was set to leave Disney Channel so he could finally be in better projects. Fans wanted to see him in better projects ever sense the first Descendants movie! Yes the other two Descendants movies sucked. But you shouldn’t have taken it out on him!
  • As if 2020 hasn’t sucked enough you had to take Naya Rivera away from us, she was the best part of Glee. The only thing she did wrong was say some bi-phobic dialogue, none of which are her opinions on bi people she was forced to say all of it because of the writers. She like most people on the show, under 40 is an ally for all LGBT+ people.

A person's natural lifespan is the upper limit to when that person will die (barring suicidal shinigami).
In Another Note, Mello says that Beyond Birthday had an easier time with the physical aspect of killing his victims than most murderers because they were fated to die then anyway. This implies that most murderers kill people whose natural lifespan indicates that they should still be alive. Furthermore, this also explains how Misa was able to commit suicide even though she no longer owned a Death Note and had the lifespan of two Shinigami.
  • This must be true for the series to make sense. Otherwise, what happens if someone accepts the Shinigami eye deal in order to kill someone who was about to kill them?
    • The Death Note can screw with life spans all it wants. Obviously, if you make the eye deal, you're planning on getting the Death Note. The closest things to this situation in the story were the Naomi Misora incident and Higuchi trying to kill Matsuda; in both cases, they had enough time before their death sentences to act.
  • Jossed. Misa's lifespan was mentioned to be almost up on the day she was to be killed; it was extended when Jealous killed the man that was going to kill Misa.
  • You can also interpret the line this way. Most murders are killing without realizing they are participating in a kind of fate in the Death Note universe. Beyond Birthday is free of this. He was like Vriska in [[Homestuck]] in that he was killing people that were going to die soon anyways and wanted to be the one who did it. Or more simply, replace the victims with horses. Average murders see a horse and have no idea if it is ill or going to live for years. They could be robbing years of life. Birthday knows the horse is lame and that the vet is on the way already to put it out of its misery. Why feel so bad over a few minutes or hours?

The Shinigami's World is Earth.
The distant future of Earth, or the Earth of another universe... a 'used-up' Earth no longer able to support life. The Shinigami are former humans who have extended their lifespans beyond all reason by the power of Death Notes. Who better to understand the futility of striving?
  • That would sort of fit with Rem's remark about Shinigami "evolving/degenerating" so much that they do not need food.

Shinigami have no idea whether humans have souls or what happens to them after death.
They're just predators of human lifespan who don't even understand half the things their Death Notes can do. It's clear that they have little consensus on the nature of minor things with other shinigami, and sometimes Ryuk just makes stuff up because it's funny. Ultimately, they don't care what happens to their lunch after they eat it.

The numbers displayed by shinigami eyes are meaningless
The rules of the Death Note establish that it can alter the lifespan of a person whose name is written in the note and that such changes aren't shown by the shinigami eyes. So if someone dies before their visible lifespan reaches 0, or doesn't die when it reaches 0, it may safely be assumed that someone used a Death Note to affect that person's lifespan. This, combined with shinigami lacking visible lifespans, makes it impossible to test the accuracy of the numbers. It is thus safe to assume they have no meaning.
  • Well, any meaning they had is lost now, 'cause Tsugumi Ohba forgot.
  • The big hole in your theory is that it's impossible to make someone live longer with the Death Note.
    • This isn't strictly true; Gelus extended Misa's life beyond its destined end (and sacrificed himself in the process) by using his death note to kill her murderer, the agent of her death. Rem also protected Misa by the same means: using the notebook to eliminate the human who threatened her.
      • Rem specifically states that when Gelus saved Misa's life, his lifespan was added to her own. This means that even though her lifespan had come to its natural end, Gelus' unnatural actions caused her to gain a new lifespan, which was equal to his own (which he didn't need anymore).
      "By manipulating the death of a human that has influence over another human's life, that human's original life span can sometimes be lengthened. If a god of death intentionally does the above manipulation to effectively lengthen a human's life span, the god of death will die, but even if a human does the same, the human will not die."
  • The number is not necessarily some sort of countdown. Even the creator said it was based on a "complex mathematical formula" which he "forgot." There is no reason for the number to get LOWER as a person approaches their death. There is no reason to assume it ever changes at ALL. Maybe it's a date as represented by the Shinigami calendar. It could be something like DAY / 12 x MONTH x YEAR + HOUR / MINUTE x 44.
  • Maybe it's an obscure branch of Death God math? Since people can't see the Death Gods without the Note, maybe the Death Gods are higher-dimensional beings? (Let's say fourth.) That would explain the general bizarreness of their appearances and outlooks; people's minds can only comprehend the first three dimensions. There's a whole new Ryuk out there! Since the Death Gods would be able to grasp fourth-dimensional mathematics, they could have invented something even more powerful than calculus to figure out when people are gonna drop?
  • The number represents how long the person would live naturally if left alone by the Shinigami.
    • Which still means the numbers are meaningless. Light killed off many murderers, many would have killed again. They couldn't, their future victims lived, thus changing the future.
      • Not necessarily. It's possible, probable even that when you die is when you die. If you were supposed to be murdered and can't you'll die of a heart attack.
      • I thought this was why the "can't kill for love" or whatever rule existed. The numbers are accurate barring interference from a Death Note. Any individual death may change other numbers. So a Shinigami is going to alter the numbers like crazy as they feed. There are just specific rules against abusing their life span changing powers intentionally.
Writing a dead person's name in a Death Note makes him or her Deader than Dead
The rules of the Death Note state that a shinigami who brings a Death Note to the human world is obligated to confirm the death of the first human owner and to write that human's name in his or her Death Note. Since it's possible for the owner to die a natural death before his or her name is written in the Death Note, we must conclude that there is a reason for writing his or her name other then killing him or her - such as ensuring he or she stays dead.
  • This is why Ryuk killed Light when he was mortally wounded.
    • But Light wasn't yet dead when Ryuk wrote his name.
    • Pretty sure Ryuk was just doing it for the Lulz.

Humans can be killed before the end of their lifespan without a Death Note
One of the rules of the Death Note states that it's forbidden for a shinigami to kill someone without using a Death Note. If a person killed by a shinigami was destined to die then regardless of the shinigami's actions, there would be no way to justify this punishment.
  • Isn't a human being's lifespan their natural lifespan, with the death caused by an accident, disease, or other act of god, and not being murdered or harmed with the Death Note?
    • Another Note is vague on this point. On the one hand, Mello says that B knew the day his father would be murdered because of his shinigami eyes. On the other hand, Mello also says that the reason B had such an easy time killing his victims compared to other murderers was because they were going to die anyway.
    • Considering the fact that Gelus saved Misa from her predetermined death by killing her murderer, a human's lifespan takes into account murder as well. So, the Death Note would seem to be the only thing that can interrupt a lifespan since that's what it was intended to do.
  • Isn't it obvious? Shinigami can interact directly with the physical world (Ryuk confirms this at one point by mentioning that if he ate an apple, it would disappear visibly even though he is invisible), so the rule deals with them deciding, for whatever reason, to do things like "making someone compact".

The reason Ryuk calls the Shinigami world boring and rotten is human science and population
At the beginning of the series, Ryuk calls the Shinigami world rotten. He also thinks that it is extremely boring. The reason: human overpopulation and weapons technology are fundamentally making his job as a Shinigami worthless. The shinigami are a failsafe to keep the global population down so that we don't end up killing the planet. With all of our scientific advances, our population is growing much faster than it's going down; the Shinigami clearly aren't keeping up on getting rid of the excess people. Modern weapons make the Shinigami's job boring. With the advent of the nuclear bomb, the human race can kill millions of people (and possibly the planet) with a few orders and a handful of people. With all of this unnatural death - that is, humans trying to do what Shinigami do - it's messing up the (super)natural order of things.

The Death Note is merely a novelty item that is not magic at all.
All the deaths happened by chance.
  • The odds of this happening are about of one against 60 million for each death, assuming a mortality rate of 0.878% per year equal for everyone (criminals have a higher mortality rate, though) and a precision of one minute (it's closer to one second). The total number of deaths is unknown, so we can't get the chance of the whole story happening.
    • The theory is true nonetheless. You simply cannot argue with chance here. If you propose a causal connection between the book and the deaths, then you have to present a theory of the exact nature of this connection that would not only have to be able to be tested empirically, but would also have to be better than any theory of those deaths that does not propose such a connection. But the thing is: You cannot. All of the deaths are already completely determined by natural causes, and there is no visible connection between those deaths.
    • How Unscientific!. You don't just throw away several years of data on an assumption that a trillions-to-one chance happened. The Death Note clearly just operates using undiscovered, but still scientifically testable, mechanisms. Attribute it to Sufficiently Advanced Aliens if you want.
  • Alternately, the Death Note has no inherent power, but Light is psychic. He's not causing all of those deaths, merely predicting them.
  • ...Or Light and the other Kiras had THE POWER all along and the notebook is merely a Magic Feather.
  • The multiverse theory states that there is are infinite number of universes with infinite number of rules. In that case, there would be two 'identical' universes, one where the Deathnote causes the deaths, and the other where the exact same events happen, but by random chance.
  • Alternatively still, the Death-notes themselves give their users urges to write in them right before the person in question is killed, either to bring about the death of victims the note itself has targeted, or merely to present the illusion of having power.

The Shinigami Realm is a Weird Trade Union.
Sure, Death Note Rule #36 is the most notorious for being Internet Rule #34 deterrent; but the others regarding Shinigami conduct reveal much further insight into what is essentially the local monopoly on supernatural causes of death:
  • Death Notes are issued on a one-to-one basis (barring bribes, as seen in the Extra Chapter). Killing a human without using a Death Note is considered an Extreme-level crime whose punishment is concluded with the death of the offending Shinigami.
  • Strict timetables are set for the possession of human Death Note users and recovery of Death Notes that have been relinquished from the human realm. But there is no timeline for the retrieval of a Death Note owned by a killed Shinigami - while the rules recommend returning it to the Shinigami King, the common practice is "Finders, Keepers."

The Shinigami of Death Note and the Reapers of The World Ends with You are part of the same organisation
Think about it. They both consume human lifespans to survive, both abide by strict sets of rules, and both have a habit in meddling in human affairs. The Shinigami affect the RG and send people on murderous rampages with the Death Note; the Reapers affect the UG and run the Reaper's Game.

Humans who use Death Notes become Shinigami when they die.
This gels nicely with Ryuk's comment that a human who uses the Death Note can neither go to Heaven nor to Hell. It also explains why shinigami only know bits and pieces of what a Death Note can do — all they know is what they figured out while they were alive.
  • In the manga, it says that all humans go to nothingness, not just the Death Note users.
    • There is a theory that Shinigami aren't really reapers but predators which kill humans without knowledge of their after-death fate. Given that I assume that Ryuk is some sort of... atheist.
    • That does weaken the theory somewhat...still, is there any evidence that shinigami aren't what becomes of humans who use Death Notes?
    • Ryuk isn't the most trustworthy source for information. He's deceived Light in the past; there's no reason to think he wasn't deceiving him then.
    • Possibly, there are two nothingnesses: Purgatory for normal humans, and the Shinigami Realm for Death Note owners.
      • I don't think you understand the concept of "nothingness".
      • I actually figured that Mu was actually a place called "Nothingness", because the first letter is capitalized just as any place name is. If it were simply "nothingness" as in Cessation of Existence, there would be no need to capitalize it.
    • Maybe you only become a Shinigami if you have used the Deathnote and have the right kind of personality for it. If Light did indeed become a Shinigami, then it would be due to his past experience with it and the fact he has no qualms with using it. Raye Penbar, on the other hand, wouldn't become a Shinigami because he didn't know what he was doing. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would willfully use the Deathnote.
    • Maybe only humans that use Death Notes to try to become God become Shinigami? Shinigami die by falling in love with a human, right? So if they were only humans that had used a Death Note, perhaps by accident, like Raye Penber or Light in the pilot, this wouldn't make sense.
    • Or maybe when a deathnote-user dies and becomes a shinigami, they forget about everything 'except' the deathnote, sort of the opposite of when they discard a deathnote.
    • Only Death Note owners become shinigami, not just Death Note users. Therefore, since Raye Penber never owned a Death Note, he's not a shinigami.
  • The Shinigami not knowing about the Death Note is put down as a "too cool for school" attitude. They can get a rulebook any time they want; they're just too lazy.
  • Before Rem and Gelus' deaths, there had always been 13 shinigami. Afterwards, there were only 11. When Light starts using the Death Note, he is put in the running for becoming a new shinigami. After he loses his memories, he's still the next choice until Higuchi (the business man?) starts using the Death Note. When Light regains his memories, he kills Higuchi and, in theory, beats him in the 'game.' Light could have become Gelus' replacement because of that or because he had a higher body count. Misa is supposed to have commited suicide around the end of the series, after Light's death. She would have become Rem's replacement (the replacement female shinigami). If she didn't, Mikami could have, since he also had a higher body count than both her and Hiuchi. He could have been Rem's replacement, since he wasn't as used by Light as Misa was.
    • Then, you could think that the 'nothingness' that humans go to IS the Shinigami Realm, as in, the Shinigami Realm IS nothingness. That would explain the barren look. Or, as someone else said, there could be two nothingnesses: Purgatory and the Shinigami Realm. Evryone who didn't manage to beat the 'game' or other 'competition' to become new shinigami could have gone to Purgatory instead, save for Mello, who probably never used his notebook.
      • In the manga, Ryuk specifically states that you go to mu when he says you go to nothingness. Mu is not Purgatory. Mu is an eastern concept for which the closest description I could give for it is "null". It means less than zero. Less than gone. Less than nonexistant. Going to mu means you become null; you simply cease to be.
      • I figured that Mu was a place called Nothingness, since the first letter is capitalized like a place name in the Death Note rule card in the middle of an episode. Not sure if it's in all lowercase in the manga though.
  • Also, that shinigami that spoke with Ryuk in that one special episode mentioned earlier also threw Ryuk an apple in the same way Light used to, and wears some kind of weird tie and suit getup, which could have been some kind of skewed version of what Light wore in life. There's a picture somewhere on a Death Note wiki.
  • The clothing thing would also make sense, since the other shinigami have human characteristics to their attire. One wears an Indian chief's headdress (the book can be dropped for anyone to pick up and use in any time period); another is covered in gold and wears a crown like a rich and greedy king might have. But, that also brings into question that fat slug-looking one that likes bananas from the extra Death note chapter and the other shinigami that's covered in eyes, though they could have been a fat or gluttinous woman and a voyeur.
    • Rem was a pharaoh, or some other high-ranking egyptian, who used the note to gain power.
    • Maybe Rem was Hatesphut?
  • This being true, Ryuk is actually Light from the future after he becomes a shinigami. He gave the Death Note to his former human self, establishing a stable time loop. Think about it. They're both sadistic, manipulative liars. That's why Ryuk is constantly amused and having a good time. He knows how it turns out.
    • Ryuk likes being amused. Light likes to take control of things and reach his goals for himself. It is still possible for his personality to become twisted in such way after experiencing eternal boredom, but this could apply to every character then.

Alternately, Shinigami are humans that owned a notebook, and were killed by other Shinigami.
We all know about the unnamed Shinigami, believed to be Light. So why aren't the other owners Shinigami? Because they weren't killed by one. Misa killed herself, Higuchi was killed by Light, Mikami was implied to have been killed by Near, Takada was killed by Mikami, and other owners like Snyder and Soichiro were killed by Mello. Light was the only owner to have a Shinigami kill him.
  • It's said that there aren't that many Shinigami left. (12 left.) they have to come from somewhere. Ryuk says a Shinigami dropping his note is an uncommon experience, then so is the creation of Shinigami.

Death Note owners immediately cease to be human.
It's possible that owning a Death Note transforms you into a Shinigami inhabiting a human body. This would explain Light's Shinigami-like appearances later in the series. When you die, you leave the body as a Shinigami living off the additional lifespan you garnered from lives taken by the Death Note.
  • Death Note users become "proto-Shinigami"; this explains Light's flashing red eyes and his ability to run a marathon after being shot five times.
    • Shinigami eyes cannot see the lifespans of Death Note owners because they "become hunters instead of prey."
    • Also there's this when discussing the eye deal:
    Ryuk: Don't worry Light, you're already a worthy Shinigami...
  • Both the manga's "several years later" one-shot and anime's "director's cut" special show the shinigami and their world a while after the events of the series. Light does not appear, and the shinigami openly discuss him in the past tense. There might be mention of something like this is an interview with the author, too, and it was rejected there as well.
    • Unless you assume that IS Light talking to Ryuk and feeling nostalgic. It's a common framing device.
      • The way Ryuk said "Light" in the end strongly suggests that Ryuk was talking to a Shinigami Light the whole time. This also explains why that shinigami cared about Ryuk's adventure — he could be Light with a fractured memory wanting to know the truth.
      • This troper has seen Ryuk's final lines in Relight translated a couple of different interesting ways:
"No Light, you weren’t God back then. You were something else... You were just already... {dead / gone}..."
  • The biggest proof against this is Raye Penber. He used the Death Note, too; if humans who use Death Notes become Shinigami, then you'd think he would have just killed Light, especially since Light went after Naomi Misora.
    • He only used a page of the Death Note. Just like with the memories, one must possess the entire note for it to count. As it stands, Raye only wrote the names in.
    • It's logical to assume getting killed when you are human (or a Shinigami-inhabited human) ends the ownership of the Death Note you were using then, thus robbing Raye of his Death Note related memories, including those of Light killing him. Also, killing Light might be Shinigami-suicide, since it would have been done with the intention of saving the lives of thousands. Raye may not be willing to embrace what we could know in his Shinigami state to be oblivion.
      • Another possibility — the lifespan was given to Light, not Raye; thus, Raye didn't become a Shinigami
    • "Only a god of death that has passed on their Death Note to a human is able to kill the owner of the Death Note.", rule from How to Use: XXXIV. So the only shinigami that could've killed Light was Ryuk, even if Raye became shinigami (I don't think he did though, I think only owners of Death Note that were killed by "their" shinigami become shinigami), he couldn't kill Light.

The more bug-like shinigami, as mentioned in How to Read (such as the slug-one and Sidoh and possibly Gelus) are the original Shinigami, or at least pre-human; the more human ones (Ryuk and the unnamed shinigami and possibly Rem and Gelus) used to be human.

Shinigami pass on to Purgatory when they "die"
In conjuction with the theory above, when Shinigami use the Death Note in order to save a human life, they redeem their souls, leaving the Shinigami Realm (which is Hell) and finally passing on to Purgatory (and then to Heaven, or the "human" afterlife). Shinigami are formed by usually corrupt and greedy people who have owned and used a Death Note in the past for their own gain (e.g., Light); it usually takes centuries before any ever redeem themselves, if it happens at all, but showing that they come to care for a being other than themselves returns their humanity, reducing them to a form indistinguishable from dust or ashes as they pass on. As per their wishes, the human they have saved receives their remaining life span and lives on while they die so that they won't continue saving them. This is why many don't know how a Shinigami dies, let alone how to kill one: it is rare for it to happen, or for any Shinigami to see it when it does. Rem just happened to be at the right place at the right time when she observed it.

After some period of time, used Death Note pages are erased, repaired, and returned to the note
This is why all of the Death Notes remain the same size.
  • Alternatively, the pages are biodegradable (which makes sense, since they're already combustible) whenever they're outside the binding of the Death Note. Removed pages grow back up to the amount the Death Note was originally bound with.
The Death Note can do the impossible.
One of the rules says, if the written cause of death is impossible, then the victim will die of a heart attack. Taken at face value, this means that the victim will die of a heart attack even if it is impossible for that to occur.
  • Since a Death Note can cause circulatory failure in humans without hearts (not necessarily The Heartless, but you get the idea) or with artificial hearts, it can make the impossible possible, and is thus Mwu La Flaaga. Or Kamina.

The "fake" Death Notes one can buy online are real.
However, due to the 6 Death Note rule, they aren't functional — yet.

Tom Anderson and/or Mark Zuckerberg own a Deathnote
  • And now they`re encouraging everyone to disseminate their names and faces in public...

Death Notes have an opposite number, the Life Notes
They cause instantaneous pregnancies.
  • The last remaining one was destroyed after the conception of Christ, however, once the Bible Black finished beta testing.
    • All but a single piece, where Shmi Skywalker's name has been written.
  • So, writing a man's name...
    • ...will get you this.
    • Maybe he will just impregnate the next woman he has sex with - no matter which contraceptive they will use

All Death Note users (and humans, for that matter) go to Mu when they die.
Sadly, Ark took the last Enbu Pike, so they're on their own.

The Shinigami eyes...
Are really Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. While Shiki had been trained as an assassin at birth, he identified death as 'lines'-something he can cut that is, make happen. To anyone else, however, they simply identify death as an 'event', mostly beyond their control, meaning they can only see a timer counting down until the persons predestined death, and a name to distinguish that death from any other death.Since the people who gain the eyes aren't the sort to comprehend the 'death' of an inanimate object, they don't get the lifespans of inanimate objects. And since they don't see death in anything but the living, they don't get the splitting migraines Shiki suffers from.
  • I would rather say that Shinigami eyes and Eyes of Death Perception are counterparts, since one provides time and the other the cause of death. Assumieng they answer respectively questins "When" and "How" we can wonder wheather there are kinds of mystic eyes that provide answer to questions "Where" and "Why" a person would die.

There really is an afterlife
It is just called MU, or nothingness. Naming it that was just one of Ryuk many jokes. And it is not like this series does not already have weird naming conventions.
  • Even worse, it turns out "MU" actually stands for the Marvel Universe (A fate some would argue is even worse than an existence of nonexistence). And with so much disaster and no Death Note in existence there, any Death Note user is screwed.
  • This troper thought that, from the capitalization, the above troper meant MU. Which this troper originally read as "Tales of Nothingness." It has no support whatsoever, though.
  • Since when it mentions in the rules that they go to Mu (Nothingness), and the first letter is capitalized rather than not if it were just a word, I had assumed that Mu was simply a place called Nothingness, rather than a Cessation of Existence.

Mu Is A Larger Realm in Which Both Heaven and Hell Exist
  • At first, it looks like these two rules of the Death Note contradict each other:
    • Users of the Death Note can go to neither heaven nor hell
    • All humans eventually die, and where they go is Mu - nothingness.
  • This discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that Heaven and Hell are WITHIN Mu, thus making both true - to illustrate, think of Mu as a continent. On that continent, there could be different regions, and thus, "countries" residing in those regions. Heaven and Hell are those "countries" - however, there is more to Mu than just these two regions. In between these "countries" is Purgatory, and a fourth region is possibly the Shinigami realm - Death Note users would end up in the massive areas between those regions or "countries" - purgatory. What these areas are like is a different matter, but the human soul does not seize to exist - rather, there is always a place for it to go, whether it's heaven, hell, to become a Shinigami, or just purgatory in between.

Humans will be the next shinigami.
In How To Read, it's mentioned that the designs of the shinigami were based on insects. Since there are only 13 shinigami (plus The boss), and at least two shinigami died in the space of a year, there will eventually be no shinigami left. The remaining shinigami will either be bored like Ryuk or infatuated with humans like Gelus, only the Ryuk-like shinigami will make a mistake and get themselves kiled. As Ryuk is the only one to successfully (sort of) pull of a "get more Death Notes" plot, he will replace the god-being once the other ten shinigami bite the dust, and any humans that have or have used death notes and survived, or have received the shinigamis' remaining life spans (see: Misa Will Live For Hundreds of Years above) will replace the shinigami, and frow to be more like the beings that replace humans, as the original shinigami may have grown from insects.

Only as many death notes may be used in the human world as there are shinigami.
Six shinigami died, possibly including Gelus, but Ryuk either didn't know or didn't bother to update the rules after Rem died.

The 23-day rule applies even when the cause of death is a disease.
The reason the rules state that it doesn't apply is due to a misunderstanding about how the 23-day rule works. Rather then having 23-days to kill the victim, the Death Note has 23-days to cause the victim's death. For instance, if the cause of death was a disease that the victim couldn't possibly contract in 23-days he or she would die of a heart attack.

Everyone who dies is reincarnated as a cow.
Mu is just a misspelling of "Moo".
  • No, it's the German spelling.

It is possible to kill Shinigami by mundane means
The rules of the Death Note say that shinigami cannot be killed via a stab to the heart with a knife or a gun shot to the head. Note that it doesn't say what would happen if you say shot the in the heart, stabbed them in the head, or nuked them, or well you get the idea. However, due to their ability to become incorporeal, hitting them would be quite difficult.
  • They can't be killed by human means, but seems like natural causes like starvation and stuff do affect them; it might not kill them, but causes plenty of pain and suffering.

Shinigami has No Biological Sex.
The whole male/female thing is just due to their social behavior and body shape, not due to a presence of sexes. That's why they can't have sex with humans. As for being the receiving side in anal sex... Let's just say it's not compatible, okay? I don't really like to think about that. Neither should you.

The shinigami each correspond to a major character.
Ryuk is L/Ryuzaki; He does all this because he's bored with his power over humans (which "he" doesn;t matter). Mello is Rem, full of rage and emotion to the point he/she/it can't do their job correctly, and hates with a passion Ryuk/L. Gelus is Misa; obsessed with another character to the point of self-destruction (especially if you consider the "after the series" information from How To Read). Near and Sidou are mostly but not entirely paralell: both dull and uninteractive, and want to get rid of their primary opposition (Ryuk for Sidou, Kira for Near), but Near is presumably very smart compared to the others, whereas Sidou is... not. Light, of course, is the Unnamed Shinigami.

The Shinigami King is the unnamed shinigami.
He could have taken on a form reminiscent of Light to mess with Ryuk, something (Ryuk or the Death Note power) pushed Light gently towards similarities to the Shinigami King, or it was just coincidence.

The Death Notes have a kind of influence on their user to ensure they are used as much as possible.
Think about it. Light, mid-Memory Gambit, was much less evil-seeming than he was even in his first couple of days in possession of a Death Note. Nobody corrupts that fast naturally, it just doesn't work. Not to that degree. And then there's Misa, who's much more crafty and overall intelligent when in possession of a note and trying to get to Light than at any other point, even immediately after she surrenders it to Light - as The Ditz, she wouldn't have used it at all, therefore the note made her smarter to encourage use. The notes are meant to be used, and will be. No matter what. (And before you accuse me of crafting Light some leather pants, the only pants I'm interested in are L's. Er... That Came Out Wrong...

Only people who have shinigami eyes when they die become shinigami.
Because by the time they die they already have a shinigami body part (metaphorically speaking). So by that logic, B, Higuchi, Soichiro, Mikami, and the unnamed kid from the three years later affair become shinigami.
  • In the movieverse, that means only Takada became a shinigami. And maybe B. It's never outright stated whether the LABB case happened in movieverse or not.
    • It's mentioned early on in the L movie
      • And the L movie's canon?
      • Only for the movieverse

The Death Notes are a type of zanpakutou
Think about it. Their wielders are shinigami, and they have special powers. They're just like Ichigo's and Kenpachi's zanpakutou: always released on shikai, which takes on the form of a notebook. They were probably developed by Mayuri as a way of sending pluses to Soul Society without having to bother hunting them down and doing that release ceremony. But something went wrong, and they became able to drain the reiatsu of living humans to their wielders, which then turned evil and went on to live in hueco mundo. Thus, all the Kiras are in fact shinigami, who'll turn into hollows when dead, since their hearts are already lost. One can only wonder how would the death note's Bankai look like.
  • Eyebeams that kill people and drain their life
    • That's kind of a step down from killing any one in the world just by writing their name down in a notebook.

Humans don't actually have anything written above their heads.
The Shinigami eyes actually link the user to an Omniscient Database equipped with Facial Recognition Software. However, that database only contains records of living persons. Thus explaining why a person's name and lifespan can only be seen in a photograph if he/she is still alive.

Some of the "official" Death Note rules are actually lies made up by Ryuk
Ryuk wrote down the instructions to begin with, and is perfectly capable of writing down false ones as he showed Light. Taking into account that he's not bound by human morals or commitments, it's possible that he made up fake rules to add to his entertainment or cover up what he didn't know. The next three WMGs take this into account.
  • This is not that far-fetched, since Ryuk DID write fake rules into his notebook, when Light asked him to to fool L. Rem said, that the Shinigami King didn't declare it forbidden..

Death Notes can control people well beyond 23 days before their deaths
In fact, they can influence peoples' lives for years, as long as it ends in their deaths. Ryuk, however, didn't think it would be fun to watch anyone's death drag on for years, and claimed that there was a time limit.
  • Ryuk probably didn't even know that there was a time limit until Light and/or the Yotsuba group figured it out. Early on when Light is testing to see what he can do with the Note, Ryuk admits internally to not knowing about some of the things that Light discovers.

Erasing a name in the Death Note CAN bring someone back to life
...provided not enough time has passed since death and the body is still functional. Of course, doing so would mean forfeiting the user's life. Ryuk never saw the point of this, and couldn't imagine a Shinigami ever trying this, so he simply wrote in the instructions that doing so is impossible.
  • You need a special eraser to do it.
Killing people with a Death Note can extend the user's lifespan, even if he is human.
Ryuk simply decided not to write it down so that the human wouldn't act like a Shinigami, killing only once every twenty years or so for insurance. Better as many deaths as possible. Because of this, Light could have lived for hundreds of thousands of years - and all of it went to Ryuk after writing down Light's name. Lucky Shinigami never has to work again!

The Death Notes hone in on humans with similar personalities to that of the Shinigami they are attached to.
Let's see you got Ryuk and Light- manipulative liars who don't tolerate boredom well (and bonus points: having the exact same inner monologue at the start of the series! Both believe in "This world is Rotten"), Rem and Misa both have their tragic love, and Sidoh the wimpy Shinigami ends up with Snyder the wimpy mafioso.

Alternatively, the bond with the Shinigami has a subtle influence on the owner's personality.
Light is much more playful when he is attached to Ryuk and more prone to slashy moments when attached to Rem. And in Season 2 after being attached to Ryuk for a few years Misa is even more hyperactive than before and is often complaining about how bored she is.

There really is a Shinigami Wing Deal.
But the trade is for something so horrible that no sane user would ever consider it.

Death Notes regenerate.
It is impossible to permanently destroy them.

Those with shinigami eyes have one of two choices: insanity or suicide.
While it may be handy to have when one has a Death Note, shinigami eyes-and knowing the names and lifespans of everyone one meets-have to take a toll on a person's mental state after a long time, causing them to either lose their minds completely, or killing themselves to make it all stop. Third Option: Blinding oneself Oedipus style. Pretty much all the examples of Death Note-B, Higuchi, Takada (live action only), and Mikami- went insane. (The kid from the one-shot killed himself, but for unrelated reasons, and Soichiro didn't live long enough to get any option.)
  • Wasn't there a rule somewhere that said those who traded for the eyes had them "forever" unless you forfeit ownership of the notebook? So if you attempted option 3 wouldn't they just grow back?
    • That's if they decide to forfeit, but consider this: B never had that option. He was born with shinigami eyes. Now, maybe he's just a one in a million baby, but if there are others out there like him, born with shinigami eyes, it's more likely that they'd do one of the above.

Contact with a shinigami erases morals.
This is why Light screamed when he first saw Ryuk; it wasn't shock, it was the pain of having part of his mind/soul/whatever-you-want-to-call-it ripped away. This is also why Misa's reaction to Rem telling her that she and Light were Kira was so amoral even before she regained her memories; simply being able to see Rem did the same to her. When someone loses the Death Note, they aren't being possessed by the shinigami, and they're no longer influenced by them. The shinigami themselves probably don't even know about this, except for possibly the King. This is why shinigami have to stay around the people who are holding their Death Notes. And who knows what the long-term exposure might have ended up doing to the task force?
  • Maybe that's part of why the Kira investigation stalled for five years.
Only Death Note users who are killed by shinigami can become one
If we're to accept that the unnamed shinigami is Light, then we gotta ask what made him so special out of all the kiras? The answer is all of them, except Misa, were killed by Light and not one of them were killed by a shinigami. Hell, Light or Near probably killed her too.

The Death Note could be used as a part of a perpetual motion machine.
The Death Note never runs out of pages. Burning those pages portions at a time could be used to create a fire that would create more energy than what was put into it.

Death Note Shinigami are actually Hollows.

When people die they go to the Pokémon world.
MU is just a misspelling of Mew. When you die you go to the world where Mew lives.

The Death Note really was just a prank.
But when Kurou Otaharada coincidentally died when he tested it out Light was driven insane because he believed he killed someone. The rest of the series is his hallucination with the exception of L who he knows as another inmate (friend / rival / more-than-a-friend) at The Home for the Mentally Disturbed and who Light has incorporated into his delusional narrative.

Mu was actually closer to a proper afterlife once upon a time.
However, the Shinigami stopped giving a crap about their jobs at some point and let the realm fall into disarray. As a result, the afterlife became The Nothing After Death.

Unwritten, unspoken law of the Death Note: If, while writing someone's name, the Death Note user slashes their pen dramatically in the air in a certain direction, the person will, if at all possible, fall in that direction when they die.
This just has to be a rule. Possible reason for it: because the Shinigami like their dramatic montages almost as much as they like their gambling and apples.

Gelus is actually Envy.
Gelus is pronounced like Jealous which is a synonym for Envy. Though after spending a few eons in despair in the Shinigami realm it has mellowed him out a bit. Too bad Redemption Equals Death.

Rule XXXIV of the Death Note is somehow the same as Rule 34.

The Unnamed Shinigami is Kira, a personification of Light's alter ego.
Consequently, Shinigami are created after a Death Note is used by humans. Possibly only after a large amount of deaths have occurred, but since the Shinigami apparently entice humans into using the Note, it always happens when a Note enters the Human World.

The Unnamed Shinigami is actually Kira, having been formed bit by bit each time someone was killed by Sidou's Note. Since a majority of the people killed were by Light, Kira looks like him more than anybody else. Or, possibly, Kira is completely Light's personality, but obviously doesn't remember anything about being human, which is the reason that Shinigami don't know their origins. But he knew enough to seek out Ryuk to at least learn something of his history.

I first thought of this when Light said something about human history changing every few hundred, or thousand years, when a Death Note makes its way into the Human World and is used by humans. This made me think that possibly all of the horrors of human history, like the plague, wars and such, are all caused by Death Notes. Possibly, Ryuk is the newest Shinigami, not being used to the boredom like all of the other Shinigami. He's the youngest because he was created as a result of the most recent mass-death of humans, which ever event that was.

Years after the end of Death Note, many Shinigami were bribing the Shinigami King for more Death Notes, and dropping them into the human world. The Shinigami King eventually realized how gullible he was, and stepped down from the ranks; and made one of the humans who helped stop Kira and continued to battle Shinigami for years the new ruler.
Probably Matsuda.

The Shinigami have, to a certain extent, the power to see into the future.
How else would they detect how long someone's natural lifespan is? Simply scanning their biology won't get you a reliable method. The Shinigami are capable of looking into the near future of someone, seeing when they'd normally die.

The unwritten rule of Death Notes.
"Every human who uses a Death Note against another human being is fated to die painfully and completely alone when their own deaths are upon them." I personally can think of no worse a fate then dying alone. All of your allies dead or gone, all friends despise you, all your loved ones turned away in disgust and fear at the monster the Death Note makes you become. This is the true price of wielding the power of death.

Heart attacks do not occur naturally.
Every heart attack that has ever happened has been caused by a Death Note.
  • What about people who have had heart attacks and not died?
    • They happen to all have been immune to the notebook. Dun-dun-dun?

Giving Death Notes to humans are how Shinigami reproduce
When Ryuk explained to Light how Shinigami use Death Notes to increase their lifespans, he mentions that a human cannot increase their lifespan through this method. However, if the Death Note's sole purpose is to increase the lifespan of a Shinigami, then the lifespan taken by a human user of a Death Note has to go somewhere. In this case, it goes towards the lifespan of a completely new Shinigami - the one which the human user of the Death Note will become when their human lifespan runs out. Most likely, any time a Death Note is used to kill someone, the lifespan of the victim will go towards the Shinigami form of the current owner, regardless of who actually wrote down the name.note  This basically means that any human who owns a death note (and is therefore a candidate for becoming a Shinigami) has one following them around to act as a mentor or some sort of twisted parental figure.

Light became a Shinigami by killing Rem
It may be that one way more Shinigami are created is by a human causing a Shinigami to sacrifice themselves. Since Light manipulated Rem into saving Misa's life, it's possible that such a magnificent demonstration of behavior befitting a "God of Death" resulted in Light becoming one after he died. After all, anyone capable of killing a God of Death is deserving of the title themselves.

Shinigami become addicted to the first human food they eat in the Human World
Ryuk became addicted to apples. Sidoh became addicted to chocolate. Rem did not appear to be addicted to anything, but we also never see her eat anything in the series. It is possible that there's nothing special about apples or chocolate specifically, it's just whatever the first food the Shinigami eats happens to be.

The new Shinigami we see are the ones that used the Death Note.
We see six new Shinigami... and how many people used the Death Note had died?

Raye Penbar, Misa, Light, Higuchi, Soichiro and Mikami.

  • You forgot Takada, as well as that one flunkie of Mello's who wrote a name in it during the hostage exchange for Sayu.

Death Note heart attacks keep the heart permanently stopped.
Having a heart attack or the heart stopping isn't definitively fatal; human medical knowledge can save those who's heart have stopped or even make heart transplants. To ensure that heart attack kills them, the magic in the Death Note makes the organ immune to anything that'd get it to beat again. Similarly if you use other things that could theoretically cured it prevents the cure from working, like antidotes becoming inactive against Death Note poison.

The Death Note has one unwritten rule
What fate awaits any who kill in cold blood? They die horribly. Cold, alone, and in pain. The power of death is in no way malicious and was never meant to be used for malicious purposes. Therefore if somebody did use the Death Note for murder it would demand retribution for being misused. Light, Misa, Yotsuba, and Kiyomi all misused the Death Note for their own greedy ends over the course of the show and when the time was right and it was finally their turn to go it made sure they died in the worst way a person can die. Humiliated, alone, allies dead, the people they lied to fully against them, unable to do anything to help themselves. There would be no more perfect a revenge than witnessing the self-proclaimed mighty god ripped from his throne and the Notebook itself executed it flawlessly.

The King has a special copy of the Death Note, which allows him to kill other Shinigami.
This is where he gets his authority from, and how he keeps all his minions in line.

The Shinigami King is actually Thanatos, the Greek god of death.
Regular shinigami like Ryuk are simply monsters chosen to be his helpers, which is why they turn to dust when they die. Mu is referring to the Fields of Asphodel in the Greek Underworld - people who end up there are condemned to standing in a wheat field in Kansas for eternity. Or, Mu is referring to a specific type of fate in the Fields of Punishment, like becoming a shinigami.
  • Keeping in mind the Japanese roots of Death Note, the Shinigami King could also go by the name of Enma (AKA Yama, the Buddhist/Hindu god of death).
    • This could point even more to the thing that the PJO universe is implying.

Heaven and Hell both exist but neither are afterlives.
They are simply alternate worlds like the Shinigami World which living humans can enter by some hidden mean if they have never used a Death Note before.

If a human causes a shinigami's death, they will be reborn as a shinigami.
As far as we know they can't reproduce, so barring the Shinigami King creating them like a deity(or maybe with that to help keep the numbers up) the shinigami population is eventually doomed. To compensate, anyone who causes the death of a shinigami will replace them. Light had Rem end up killing herself as part of his larger plan to defeat L, so by proxy caused Rem's death and thus was reborn as the Unnamed Shinigami. This also means that Misa would be reborn as a shinigami after being Driven to Suicide, seeing as how Gelus got himself killed saving her.

The Shinigami King sustains himself on the lifespans of the subjects he executes.
In other words he is to his subjects what they are to humans, and what we have here is a food chain of lifespan-siphoning. In a pinch the King could probably end a human life directly, but unlike other Shinigami he'd only get a portion of the years lost. If for example someone who would've lived to 80 has a heart attack at 40, then a Normal Shinigami would get 40 years added on, but if it was the King who did it, then he'd only get 4.

A Death Note was the cause of the Final Destination Franchise
Some American dick got his hands on a Note, and used it to murder random innocents.

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