For the WMGs regarding the Card Game, please see here.
For the WMGs regarding the 2016 movie, see here.
The Card Game was intentionally made dangerous because of Pegasus
The card game was made dangerous, dealing with dark magic and the like, because of Pegasus wishing to use the power of the Duel Monster's 'Spirit World' to revive his wife, Cynthia. With the powers of the Millennium Eye, Pegasus had purposefully linked the Spirit World to this card game, causing every card produced to be directly linked to that specific spirit. With the power of the Eye, Pegasus succeeded in recreating the Shadow Games of the ancient world into modern times by utilizing the one thing everyone loves; a good game. And now, with the link to the Spirit World re-established into the contemporary era because of Pegasus and the Millennium Eye, Duel Monsters, the so-called 'children's card game played by adults' is now much more understandably horrific than your previous self believed. Duel Monsters is actually just a game of Calvin Ball.
Think about it. Very few of the rules are consistent between duels. In episode 5, the Harpies had an advantage against all units on the ground, but in the next episodes, it isn't that way. This is lampshaded in the Abridged Series, when yugi says to Joey, "In this episode, flying units have an advantage against land ones."In the Trope Namer for Calvin Ball, Calvin and Hobbes, Calvinball is a game where the players call their opponents out on the effects that their actions have supposedly just had. In Duel Monsters, the effects of the cards must be determined by the things the people who played them say. This is how extremely experienced players can still be caught by surprise.
- At least this is how it could have worked in the Duelist Kingdom storyline, where certain monsters have unbelievably broken effects (like Bandit Keith's machines being immune to all monsters that use magic attacks) which are apparently not actually explained on the cards (count how many times players are surprised by the effects of face-up monsters). It's not unreasonable to think they're all just making it up as they go. Later on, however, while the show does still occasionally fudge the rules for the sake of drama, it also adheres more closely to the rules of the the actual card game.
Joey and Mai are somehow closely related.
Mai likes purple so much that she wears purple novelty contact lenses. Consider the Hot Bloodedness, the charm, the lightly wavy blonde hair, the purple outfit Joey sported in Season Zero, ect. It shouldn't be called Polarshipping; it's like they're each others' distaff/spear counterparts. Between Yu-Gi-Oh! Season Zero and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, Seto, perhaps while his mind was broken after Yami Yugi broke it in the first episode of Duel Monsters, gave money to Joey.
If you've seen/read both Season Zero and Duel Monsters and pay close attention, you'll notice that in Season Zero Joey worked multiple jobs to pay off his alcoholic dad's gambling debts, and in Duel Monsters he has the free time for spending weeks playing card games on islands/blimps/etc., hang out with Yugi after school often lounging around, and otherwise wasting his youth away, no sign that Joey's poor, as abused, or working.- You bring up a valid point regarding Jounouchi's economic status (although he's not rich either or else he'd be able to afford his sister's operation without the Duelist Kingdom prize money). But I kind of doubt Kaiba would just suddenly give Jounouchi any sort of present, let alone a ton of money. Broken mind or not, that just seems too OOC for Kaiba (besides the 'broken mind' was more like a full-blown coma that lasted for several months in the manga, I doubt Kaiba would be giving anything to ''anyone' in that state). SOMEthing must have happened to at least put Jounouchi into a stable economic position, a position where he's also able to afford maintaining a deck for a trading card game which is supposed to be a bit pricey if you go by some real life TCGs. The real question is, if it wasn't Kaiba then what could have caused it?
- Maybe Mokuba gave Jounouchi money.
- Or maybe Jounouchi started gambling and won money that way.
- Or maybe (Japanese only) Yuugi sold his shares of Industrial Illusions and is quietly supporting Jounouchi without the latter's knowledge.
- Or maybe his mother actually decided to take some financial responsibility for her first born son and is helping him pay the bills/his dad's debt.
- Or perhaps, his father died of Alcohol Poisoning some time between Season 0 and Duelist's Kingdom and Jonouchi's just really good at handling it?
- Or maybe Jounouchi got fed up with his father and asked Yuugi if he could stay with him (to which Yuugi accepted), therefore leaving his dad to deal with his own debts?
Yami Yugi inspired Kaiba to create holographic Duel monsters.
In the tenth chapter of the original manga, when Seto Kaiba introduced the card game to Yami Yugi. It's all Seto Kaiba's fault the series got overtaken by card games! Srsly, get or google the first graphic novel and be prepared to hate that spoiled brat half as much as I do!, Yami Yugi punished him for losing their duel by making Kaiba go into a dream state where the monsters turned and attacked Kaiba, it was the first instance of real monsters, and the green-haired brat was completely taken by surprise. Next we knownote , Seto Kaiba is selling holographic field-thingsnote and a bit later duel disks. Duel Monsters may have been his game, but according to the manga Yami Yugi was first to show the concept of bringing the monsters "alive."- In the english version of the manga, when Kaiba first shows off his holographic dueling system by using it against Yugi's grandpa, Kaiba actually says (or thinks, can't recall which and I don't have the manga in front of me right this moment) "I've recreated my duel with Yugi using virtual reality! My money can buy powers just like his!"
- But that brings up a bigger question. In the english manga, when Kaiba is explaining to Yugi's grandpa how his holograms work, a very tiny speech bubblenote adds that the holograms are processed using a microchip in the cards. So how did Pegasus know enough of the future to realize he'd need to put microchips in all the Duel Monsters' cards?? I thought the Millennium Eye was supposed to read minds/see into the heart of someone else and the Millennium Tauk was supposed to see through time, not vice virsa.
- Pegasus did meet Isis, but he met her when he needed to seal the power of the Egyptian God cards he couldn't control. Which was not until after he'd started making his card game. So it doesn't seem likely that she could have given him a heads-up about the whole microchips and holograms thing....
- Maybe Pegasus was just Crazy-Prepared. He is supposed to be a painter after all, perhaps his inner artistic genius decided that his card game needed microchips in case of some future development.
- Or maybe the chips were originally just RFID chips designed to prevent counterfeiting. Kaiba figured out how to use the programmed information for another purpose. This would explain why Malik is so proud of his Ghouls being able to make fake cards that can fool the Duel Disks; it's not as trivial as it would initially seem.
Atem suffered from cabin fever.
Wordof God pretty much establishes that when Yugi first managed to get Atem's spirit out of that puzzle, Atem was a total psycho. Some people say because he's all darkness separated from his "light" half. Personally? I say who WOULDN'T have gone stark raving mad if they found themselves in the same situation? Just think about it for a moment: Atem seals himself inside an enchanted metal puzzle after stripping himself of memories of his own identity. Wordof God said he was aware of time passing as he was stuck inside the puzzle. He spends approximately the next 3000 years inside the puzzle waiting for someone to take it out of a dark tomb in the middle of a desert. Atem spends all this time supposedly in isolation, and he couldn't even DO anything. It's not like he could take a walk around the tomb if he got bored or play solitaire or a video game or anything. If 3000 years isn't enough to cause someone to go stir-crazy then I don't know what is. All this seems to point to Atem having one of the worst cases of cabin fever in human history.- Seconded: And I Must Scream - Effect
- It gets worse- there's no real implication in the manga that when he did that in the past, he expected to be freed. The puzzle was heavily guarded and near impossible to solve, and the inscription 'The one who solves me will gain power and knowledge of darkness'- is ambiguous at best.
Priest Seto, as Pharaoh, founded or inspired the founding of the Tombkeepers.
We know from Millennium World that Atem sacrificed himself at the end of the battle, so it's likely he didn't plan his sacrifice or what the aftermath would be. Given that Priest Seto, newly ascended to Pharaoh, never got to defeat Atem in a battle and did respect him as a friend, it seems unlikely that he would give up on Atem being free some day. He possibly used Siamun's nearly completed tomb for Atem as the resting place for the Puzzle and set up a test with the hopes someone could solve the Puzzle that none of the rest of them could (I doubt competitive Seto wouldn't have at least tried to solve the Puzzle before setting it to one side). He may then have wanted someone to guard the secrets within, thus the founding of the Tombkeepers, and the messed up traditions involved with it simply developed over time. Pharaoh Atem was a feared Worlds Greatest Warrior before his death, and his Court were his heavy-hitting All Stars.
In Millennium World I always thought it was odd how little Egypt's relationship with other countries was mentioned, even if they were preoccupied. But given that he can summon the Gods and his duel with Seto shows his Invincible Hero status is still in effect, this may have been the case in the past. Bakura certainly shows more interest in fighting him than the other priests, and though he didn't know exactly what ka Atem had he did know the legend that the Pharaoh 'wasn't mortal', so it's possible the Pharaoh is known for having great power especially during the time of the items. Given that Atem is young, he might have had problems being taken seriously as a politician, except for his Egyptian Gods. And having that power might have kept him alive, since I doubt the wealthy of the country would have been too happy that their young king seemed to favour the commoners. Egypt were already a great military power at the time, considering this was fairly early on in the kingdom's history.
The best duelists are those who have or who in a past life had a Millennium item.
It will always be this way, with the incarnations of Yugi and co being the best. Reasons include: The Millenium items channel power into the honest owner's cards. Those who own Millennium items and/or have increased connections to said power are most worthy of having better duel monsters serve who they're faithful to, a.k.a. royalty a.k.a. the mill item wielding duelist. Willingness on the monsters parts have been shown to correlate with likelihood of winning duels.- This theory explains how the heart of the cards come through for Yugi, a former pharaoh in a past life, over other characters who also believe in the heart of the cards
- I think a modification might be "has a connection to the supernatural at the level of the soul". Past lives that had magical power are usually the best way to have such a connection, and Millennium Items are the most common way for it to develop, but being a reincarnation of the Supreme King of all Duel Monsters or being the can for 1/5 of a dragon god work just as well, the former due to continuation of old loyalties combined with present trust working just as well as a human kingship like Atem's, and the latter because of the combination of trust and monsters being loyal to the human as the dragon's proxy.
- Equally possible is that it was the other way around: since duel monsters is a modern revival of ancient sorcery, there's carryover between the original magic and the modern game, and since reincarnations retain some of the skills from the past lives (see Kaiba's ability to read ancient Egyptian), though apparently not the ability to actually use their magical skills, they end up being very good duelists. Because only the most elite of the pharaoh's warriors and magicians were given Millennium Items, since they were so powerful and limited in number. In modern times gaining a Millennium Item is as simple as taking them by force through a duel, so they naturally gravitate towards powerful duelists. Some of the others with supernatural powers may play by the "be great to get magic" rule too: 5D's Signers are always so skilled because they are also chosen by the Crimson Dragon - a sentient being who can freely give and take away their powers - for being skilled duelists (note how the male twin developed Signer powers after proving himself, and Crow spontaneously developed them midbattle). Jaiden is the odd man out, but he was born with the power of the Supreme King, even if he didn't initially realize it, and the more conscious ability to see spirits, which is common among skilled duelists as well, but that seems to be a proximity thing - Chaz developed the ability to see duel spirits as he improved himself morally and as a duelist, so it may be that a skilled duelist gains supernatural powers rather than supernatural powers making a skilled duelist for him as well. Jaiden's just weird.
Tristan duels himself in his pervy trenchcoats
during (some of) the duels and/or otherwise when nobody's paying him attention.This explains why he mellowed (and started wearing the trenchcoats) after Toei Animation's Season Zero. Tristan isn't as much a card-game nerd as his peers, yet there he is watching his friends throw cards at each other during his spare time every day, out of his obligation to always be there when his support is needed.This is kinda stupid, but I still wanted to share.This
memetic clip of Honda(Tristan)'s daydreaming was foreshadowing Miho's fate. Yo-yos are the only evil that wasn't defeated and Honda is pretty sharp when it comes to minor details and those he loves so he possibly unconsciously saw it coming.- Honda became the quiet guy we better know as a result of his heart having been broken from Miho's tragic death by the yo-yo.
- Officially jossed by GX of all things. She was briefly seen on Trueman's list, along with several other opponents Atem defeated during the first series.
During Marik's tombkeeper's initiation, which was traumatic enough to complete the separation of Marik and his hatred, Marik's father didn't just carve magical hieroglyphics into Marik's back while everybody watched; Marik's father also raped Marik
after carving the hieroglyphics,though the rape was off-camera due to Marik being blinded by the similar pain in his back so we don't witness it. (Rape and inbreeding wouldn't be unheard of in an ancient underground cult like those tombkeepers, don't ya think?) Marik (and us viewers) don't see (and thus KNOW that) Marik was raped, though Marik was still effected and made to wonder what events took place specifically. This is where Yami no Marik got his powerful fetish for raping the minds of random people and killing them.- Look, enough with the rape already. Sheesh. Is having hyeroglyphs carved into your back with a burning knife not horrifying/evil enough for you, you need to include rape just to spice it up? (As a sidenote, from a legal standpoint, the former is regarded as slightly more serious than the later, just to put things into perspective.)
Yugi is the author avatar for Takahashi.
They both seem to be pacifistic/abhor violence (there's at least one author's note where Kaz is lamenting a war beginning across the globe from him) and both love games. Since Dark Yugi is meant to be like a child's daydream of becoming strong, it makes sense Yugi is the one we are supposed to relate to. Kaz was also picked on by his teacher and classmates so it explains the unconscious need to punish strawmen bullies in his work. It also explains why Yugi is never called out for being a pacifist but allowing Dark Yugi and Jonouchi to hurt people on his behalf - it's a revenge fantasy with no culpability on the author's part. Further morals being skewed in his favour - that kindness is the greatest power even though Yugi banished Yami Bakura to the shadow realm - make sense under this explanation, as it's protagonist centred morality for the author.Part of the rules of Duel Monsters in this universe is that no one has to shuffle before a game.
As discussed in The Magic Poker Equation, everyone seems to come up with the exact monster or spell they need that allows them to win the match when they need it. Furthermore, every character seems to rely on one special monster. (Yugi always seems to draw Dark Magician; Seto always seems to draw Blue Eyes White Dragon; etc.) There are only two ways this is possible, and one (a small deck) is visibly false. Therefore, there can be nothing in the rules that says you can't stack your deck, and so everyone does.- There are a couple of shuffling incidents in the anime. Before Yugi duels Pegasus, Yugi makes a point of shuffling Pegasus's deck. Pegasus chooses not to shuffle Yugi's, though. And one of Yugi's opponents in the Battle City arc pulls a stacked deck cheat, which Yugi anticipates and foils.
- If the WMG is true, then the stacked deck isn't a cheat — it's a strategy.
- By the time of 5Ds, this becomes a moot point. The Duel Disks clearly have an auto-shuffling system. Depending on how those work, that could mean the decks are stacked whether the players know it or not.
- If you don't need to shuffle, then Mai's perfume covered cards are kind of pointless.
Duel Monsters are made of People!
The Memory World arc showed that each person has a Duel Monster within them they can summon; it's called a ka. Not surprisingly, ka is the Egyptian term for the personality or heart of a person, one half to a person's "soul"; the other half is their life energy, or ba. Also, in a duel, one can use their ba (life energy) to strengthen their ka Duel Monster (and other Duel Monsters they summon), and these creatures literally live inside a person. To gain strong monsters for the coming war, Akhenaden and the other priests are shown ripping people's ka from their bodies and sealing them in tablets. Thus, the Shadow Realm's English meaning of death is apt; when a person dies in the YGO universe, their soul becomes the Duel Monster their ka represents. It also explains why no one refuses to duel, even if dueling means ludicrously high stakes, and why dueling is such an obsession in the universe: their soul's nature as a Duel Monster compels them to duel, no matter what.- It certainly holds with the true identity of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. But does this theory allow for still-living people to secretly be duel monsters? Yugi does seem to have an affinity for Kuriboh...
- GX revealed that Duel Spirits are extradimensional aliens. It would appear that Egypt was the first Earthly civilization to have contact with there creatures, thus inspiring their concept of ka and ba. Cool, huh?
- Ba and Ka aren't ideas; they're truths, as shown by the Ancient Egypt arc and the transition from Mahado to Dark Magician. As such, it must be concluded that the other dimensions seen in GX, rather than being simple parallel universes inhabited by monstrous beings, are the afterlife, one possibly worse than Soul Society.
- Hmm, that Ka thing sounds a lot like Summoning a Persona.
- Whoever made this post really needs to look up the mechanics of the Egyptians view on the soul.
- Firstly, the soul was believed to be made up of five parts:
- The Ba, which is the personality.
- The Ka, which is life force (Takashi is a good writer storywise, but a solid understanding of your subject matter is key).
- The Ib, which is the heart (and what is weighed in the afterlife).
- The Ren, which is the name and the part of the soul that Atem used as the key to defeating Zorc.
- And lastly, there is the Sheut, which is a person's shadow and is far more likely to be what the monsters were.
- So therefore a Duel Monster is likely to be a person's Sheut, summoned forth in the form of a monster to do battle using Shadow Magic with the Ka serving as sort of a Mana Meter. In addition, the ancient Egyptians believed that two or more people could share a single soul, even when alive. (I'm not quite sure how that is supposed to work, but I'm not an ancient Egyptian.) I'm not sure about Yugi's religious beliefs, but it's entirely possible that he believes in reincarnation (thus being why neither he nor Atem see the idea that they're sharing a body as particulary odd later in ther series).
- Firstly, the soul was believed to be made up of five parts:
Yu-Gi-Oh takes place in the Stargate-verse several years after the end of the series.
It thus follows that:- The Millennium Items are Goa'uld technology. It makes sense. They're mysterious artifacts which seem to have magical or godlike properties. The eye appearing on them looks an awful lot like Ra's symbol; perhaps he built them to further the illusion of godliness.
- Yami Yugi, Yami Marik and Yami Bakura are all symbiotes. They can take over their hosts' bodies at will, they speak in different voices when in control, they're smart, etcetera. The difference is that Yami Marik and Yami Bakura are both Goa'uld, whereas Yami Yugi is a Tok'ra.
- KaibaCorp's hologram technology is alien in origin. He bought it from the rogue NID. He has money, after all. He can screw the rules.
- This theory goes well with the above allusions to an ancient alien civilization that came to Egypt in the past. So the Millennium Items are some kind of stasis jars for the symbiotes, as well as powerful items. The Eye builds on mind-reading technology, of course. But what are the monsters themselves? Some kind of Ancient technology we've never heard of before?
- The monsters could be documentation of various aliens encountered by the Goa'uld; the card stats reflect facts about these creatures.
- That could also explain why The Winged Dragon of Ra has the "of Ra" part of its name: Ra owned the dragon, as opposed to the dragon itself being Ra.
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon was Kisara's daemon.
An animal spirit representing her soul, separation from which will cause her death. After that happened, she gave it to her lover, thus... The Blue-Eyes White Dragon (and by extension, Kisara herself) is Kaiba's daemon.
Hence his obsession with owning them all and their empathy.- Clearly, she gave her life via daemon transplant to save his when he lost his original daemon. (Hey, it can happen — watch The Golden Compass!)
- If he wanted her empathy, then he wouldn't be using the Blue Eyes to ruthlessly dominate his opponents, beatdown-style, knowing that no one else would have that relatively easy level of power at hand, often taunting them, especially when they have weak cards. Kisara should be spinning in her grave.
- What do you expect? Especially before his "soulsplosion," Kaiba's an asshole. He does get better over the course of the series.
Kisara is Dovahkiin.
SOT QO NOS!!! note
Kisara is a Nord from between Nim's Fourth Era and the Ninth Era, Giving an explanation to her white hair and skin. She was a Dragonborn who was tasked by either the Future Greybeards or remnants of the Blades to Hunt down an cult who had possesion of Elder Scroll (Dragon) and wanted to Summon Alduin. Kisara Dons an White Dragon Scale Armor and Weapons that has been enhanced with Her Thuum, and she seeks the cult, and Interrupts one of their Rituals, only for the cult leader to ensnare her with a trap using the Dragon Scroll. The cultists plan to send Kisara into dimensions unknown in the same manner that Alduin was sent forward into time to ensure she does not interfere with Alduin,s revival. Kisara is banished and is hurdled into the Yu-Gi-Oh! Metaverse, specifically to Ancient Egpyt around the first Millennium B.C.E.
Kaiba had Pegasus create the Kaibaman card as a way for him to be with Kisara.
After being hinted in the Doma Arc, it's confirmed in GX that the spirits of real Duel Monsters all exist in a parallel world. The Blue-Eyes White Dragon's spirit would have to be Kisara. Now that Kaiba's created a card version of himself, its spirit will exist in the same world.- Kaibaman is an avatar.
Rex Raptor is L.
They're both called Ryuzaki. End of story. The world of Yu-Gi-Oh! is actually a rational universe, and it only appears insane because we're viewing it from our universe
Each one is marked by an obsession and complete domination by something - for them, card games, for us, the internet. Which is more likely to dominate the globe, card games or Lolcats?- Considering that, before the DOMA arc, we only saw Yugi and his friends, and it wasn't until after then that the whole world became obsessed with a children's card game, which not coincidentally is after the Leviathan appeared in public and started devouring people's souls, this actually makes a lot of sense!
Rex Raptor is an alternate L.
In a universe without Duel Monsters cards, Ryuzaki became a famous pop star once he finished puberty and lost the Dub Voice. Death Note takes place years after Yu-Gi-Oh, and so L took his name from the now well-known singer Ryuzaki.- Seto Kaiba looks too much like Light Yagami not to be him...
- Not just looks. If Kaiba could lie or keep a straight face, then he and Light would be exactly the same person. There is evidence in the first volume of the Death Note manga. Seriously.
Joey is related to Wheeler in Captain Planet.
He has the same name and accent, and his favorite card is fire-themed. They were separated at birth... in America! Joey's dad is Wheeler.
That would mean that Wheeler grew up to be a dirt-poor, dangerous, alcoholic asshole who lives in a hovel in the slums and beats his son. Yaaaaay.- Time frame sort of fits. He knocked up Linka when they were teens.
- Well, Jounochis father grew up to be a violent alcoholic. Joeys father might actually be Wheeler from Captain Planet who leads a normal life and loves his son (even though he still got divorced)
- This means that there's an alternate universe where Captain Planet was a Darker and Edgier anime.
Joey is Wheeler.
Fire Ring Planeteer Wheeler's first name is actually Joseph. He's from Brooklyn.Joey Wheeler: Godfather of Games, has a Brooklyn accent.Planeteer Wheler turned in his ring, dyed his hair, and moved to Japan.The Shadow Realm is a Fate Worse than Death
Think about it. In the original, people just died. In the dub, their memories, minds, and even their souls are sent to this unseen dimension which may be filled with various tormenting images or visions without end. It's "Go directly to hell; do not pass Go, do not collect 200 cards."The Shadow Realm is Silent Hill
See above. The cards are a focusing method allowing people to concentrate and weaponise their emotions, desires and fears and bend them to their will. With defences down, a person's survival comes down to the emotions of their victorious opponent, killing them or stripping them of their soul, fitting the hints at what befalls people who can't escape Silent Hill. The transport is always initiated by the spreading of a creepy, vision obscuring fog.Both games are made by Konami.
The cases of completely ignoring the game's rules is an example of the town's typical abandoning logic just to torment its victims.
Yugi is on the autism spectrum.
Yugi is described as shy, used to have a tough time making friends besides Anzu (Téa), and is very passionate about games. Some of these traits can be associated with Asperger Syndrome.Yugi and Solomon Muto are the same person - that is, Yugi is his own grandfather.
Consider the following: Yugi is abnormally short. Grandpa is abnormally short. Yugi has an eccentric hairstyle, composed of a small bit of styled fringe in the front and a bunch of spikes in the back. Grandpa has an eccentric hairstyle, composed of a small bit of similarly-styled fringe in the front and a bunch of spikes in the back (held down by his bandana). Yugi has purple eyes, an odd color. Grandpa has purple eyes, an odd color. Yugi is a gaming expert who has almost never lost a duel. Grandpa is a gaming expert who has almost never lost a duel. Yugi learns a lot about the Millennium Puzzle and Egyptian myths through his interaction with Yami. Grandpa knows a lot about the Puzzle and Egyptian myths before the story so he can Infodump. With all of this information, combined with the bizarre sorts of mystical things that happen in Yu-Gi-Oh!, it isn't hard to imagine a Stable Time Loop causing Yugi to go back in time, call himself Solomon (perhaps to hide his real identity), and become his own grandfather.Kazuki Takahashi wrote this manga because he's psychotic
Think about it. In the original run (vol. 1 - 7), people are constantly being killed without Yami, Honda, Jonouchi or the nine-year-olds who worship Kaiba batting an eye. The Duelist Kingdom arc was written while Takahashi was on medication and intensive therapy; hence, the focus on a much less violent subject. His occasional outbursts of medication failure are shown with the Player Killer of Darkness (aka Panik) and Bakura pulling out Pegasus' millenium eye and licking. During the Battle City arc, he stopped taking his medication. Thus Marik. Unfortunately for the rest of us, he began self-medicating during the Millenium World arc (the occasional outbursts of violence, but less than the original).- Ha, interesting theory. Although ironically, the only time he was heavily medicated was during the Millenium World arc, hence Zorc's rather...unconventional design.
A challenge to duel in the presence of a millenium item is automatically turned into a Compulsion spell.
Think about it: One theory is that if you forgo a duel, including the Shadow Games pre-Duel Monsters, then you automatically get sent to the Shadow Realm. Why would people, sometimes not Too Dumb to Live or too proud to back down, accept a challenge from someone who looks like a high school kid with funny hair (or a middle school kid, in most of the first series)?If they knew they would be sent to the Shadow Realm for refusing, they would be a heck of a lot more scared.
On the few occasions that they know the risks ahead of time and have nothing to win (nitroglyceryn hockey springs to mind, although he was an idiot), they still accept the challenge. In the earlier episodes, such as when Yugi is playing the "take what money you can stab off your hand" game, it is shown that the items can enhance or even alter people's actions during a Shadow Duel; why not before?
Yugi is crazy!
Yugi snapped and developed a - Shutter Island, anyone? While the ending was horribly predictable, the one significant difference is that everybody played along. Here we go.
- I love the "And later Seto builds a school for people with similar delusions". Duel Academy Island IS Shutter Island!
Joey is the most skilled duelist on the show by far.
Based on the The Magic Poker Equation. Joey is, and in his world is known to be, one of the luckiest duelists in the world, perhaps luckier than even Kaiba and Yugi - who seem to manipulate fate to get the desired cards. The magic poker equation is: luck = skill * importance. Joey's latter value, importance, is nowhere near as high as Yugi's. While Joey's life is threatened more than once, the fate of the entire world has never rested on his shoulders. So, seeing that Yugi's duels' importance > Joey's duels' importance (their personal importance is also Yugi > Joey for obvious reasons), since Yugi's luck ≈< Joey's luck, then Joey's skill > Yugi's skill.That ignores that Yugi's (and possibly Kaiba's) luck is a result of l=sid (luck = skill * importance * desire). Both Yugi and Kaiba have high values of desire. If desire isn't in Joey's equation, that requires him to be even more skillful for Joey's luck >= Yugi's luck.
- This all ignores one important, oft-overlooked factor: Joey has a lot of useless draws/hands. Ergo, the Magic Poker Equation still holds.
- It's obvious! Joey's a probabilopath!
- I thought this theory was pretty much confirmed... oh, you know, the time he ALMOST BEAT MARIK?
- Technically, he did beat Marik. Joey outplayed him, but was unable to declare the winning attack and lost consciousness due to Marik's magic. The match should've been postponed until he regained consciousness, if not outright given to him, but Joey wasn't as strong of soul as Yugi and Kaiba probably paid the ref to give Marik the win if at all possible.
- I thought this theory was pretty much confirmed... oh, you know, the time he ALMOST BEAT MARIK?
Yami Bakura is the best duelist.
In his first duel with Yugi, he didn't topdeck and he almost won; he lost because his own duel monster was normal Bakura, who betrayed him. Then he would've won his next, but Yugi went all Egyptian God on him; then...you get the point. Bakura is better than Joey is better than Marik is better than Kaiba is better than Yugi is better than a dead fish.- You could also say that Yami Bakura lucked out by already having Dark Necrofear, Dark Sanctuary, and Ouija/Destiny Board cards ready for his big strategy beforehand. And besides, Yugi is the best duelist on the show.
- First duel, though, in episode 13. He didn't even play a monster with more than 1k attack points. And it's implied that Dark Sanctuary is automatic when Dark Necrofear dies. As for Yugi being the best, it's implied he lost a duel to Joey. So Joey > Yugi.
- Nothing is implied, other than Joey getting his Red Eyes back. Yugi could have just decided to give it back for a great duel, and Joey decided to finally accept it.
- Yugi is the best duelist because the plot requires it.
- I disagree; his Ceremonial Duel was far and away the best display of dueling prowess of any duelist in any of the series.
- One other thing, Yami Bakura came close to winning during the Millennium Arc only because of the most broken mill strategy on the planet.
In a realistic universe, Yugi wouldn't be the master of cardgames.
He would be a good player, but not the best. He could never beat Kaiba at chess because you can't win a game of chess by coincidentally having a good piece. If one of the players knows about strategies, then you're smashed.- That's probably why we never saw them play chess, but only the watered down version, Capsule Monsters, against Mokuba. Yugi would have lost. Unless it would have been some kind of shadow game in which the other chess pieces' spirits protect the king, but that would have been too ridiculous, even for Yu-Gi-Oh.
Also, Yugi wins mostly because he believes in the heart of the cards. In the first volumes of the manga, the reasons for his winning were credible. Intuition, logical thinking, etc. But it's hard to stay logical once ancient Egyptian pharaohs enter the picture.
- Ahem. I could counter these two by saying that Kaiba himself wouldn't be able to rely on an arsenal of beatdown pieces, which make many of his duels somewhat one-sided. (And which is the chief reason, pure Seto/Kisara-shippers be damned, that he relies on the Blue Eyes White Dragon.) And if you're talking strategy, it takes a lot more to rely on weaker cards, which he did in his ceremonial duel, on top of actually thinking several steps ahead in his moves. Not to mention that "heart of the cards is mostly 4Kids' doing.
- I agree with most of your points, but Kaiba is incredibly proficient at strategy games. He beat one of the best chess players in the world at age 10 (12 in the Dub). It turned out to be one of the worst things that ever happened to him, but still...
- Kaiba didn't actually win that game against Gozaburo, at least not in the original manga. He cheated. That being said, Kaiba is said to have the best score on all the arcade machines in the manga, so presumably he too is good at a variety of games (it just happens a lot offscreen).
- I agree with most of your points, but Kaiba is incredibly proficient at strategy games. He beat one of the best chess players in the world at age 10 (12 in the Dub). It turned out to be one of the worst things that ever happened to him, but still...
Also, Yami Bakura would have won.
- During Battle City, where he topdecks Osiris/Slifer, I'll give you, but during the Millennium Arc, Yami Bakura relied on the most broken mill deck in the history of the game, and one that shouldn't even exist. And Yugi still proved his ability to think ahead by having just the right monster removed from play until the next turn, ready to deliver the final blow.
- Furthermore, Yugi still would have won in Battle City because Bakura first topdecks Jowgen the Spiritualist, a card that's completely out of place in his deck and there's no reason he would have.
In addition, Mai would be a great duelist. She couldn't beat Marik because she couldn't read the text? That's definitely a plot device. If they had been playing on the table, the way we do in Real Life, then she definitely would have won.
- Yes, but remember in Real Life you can't use Harpie Lady Sisters as the only tribute for Ra or use Amazoness Chainmaster to take a card directly from your foe's deck.
- The problem with this theory is that Yugi is basically good at every game (this isn't shown as much in the anime, but it's made more obvious in the manga) Yugi probably would beat Kaiba at chess, he beat Duke Devlin at Dungeon Dice Monsters (a game which Duke had invented, Yugi had never played before and that Yugi didn't even get to read the rules for. Yugi hadn't even played the capsule monsters chess game before (I think) and he beat Mokuba, who was supposed to be a master at the game.
In addition to this a lot of the ways that Yugi won in the manga at Duel Monsters were also due to logic thinking (Which was the way that Duelist Kingdom rules worked, and even in Battle City, he knew how to beat String's Slifer strategy by decking him out). A lot of the ways Yugi wins are actually more down to him seeing through the opponents strategy, the heart of the cards stuff is there more for dramatic reasons. If the anime was more realistic, Yugi would win every duel in about 4 turns with no difficulty.
Re: The points about rules, Takahashi invents the cards, and he invents the rule sand the rulings on the cards, so he can do whatever he wants.
This WMG seems to be referring to Yami Yugi, not Yugi? But arguably Yami Yugi would still be a very strong player if it was realistic - the Strings duel and Battle City finals against Kaiba come to mind as great examples of his skill and ability to read people's strategies, and these were duels from the periods when the rules of the game were much more consistent within the manga/anime.
Yu Gi Oh: The Abridged Series is the actual show; the "real" show is just a bad fanfic!
This would explain a great number of things, including why tropers routinely cite The Abridged Series instead of the "real" show in the example listings.- Alternatively, Takahashi is a time traveler, and came back from the future to create the original series solely to give LittleKuriboh the material to make his beloved web series, creating a Stable Time Loop.
Duke rigged his machine to get continuous summons in Dungeon Dice Monsters
How else would he be able to do that, when Yugi had trouble getting a single one at first? And this would make Duke's accusations towards Yugi completely hypocritical.Atem allowed Mana to use him as a dress-up doll
There are probably other reasons why he's wearing enough gold accessories to destabilize a small country's economy, but none that are cuter.- He's a pharaoh. We may not know how pharaohs dressed day-to-day, but have you ever seen the stuff Tut was buried with? The gilding on Tut's coffin? Its practically the uniform of the job.
- Then again, Tut also had a girl of a similar age he was close to. Coincidence? Yes. Or is it?
- I've just been doing a little bit of reading on their culture and it seems Ancient Egyptians all but invented bling, so it doesn't strike me as unusual. What I want to know is how he gets the ones on his legs to have such a tight fit without cutting off the circulation.
- Seconded. Gold was almost 'pluck it off the streets' kind of common in Egypt.
Gearfried The Iron Knight is based off an EVA.
Human souls inside a suit of armor that are more fearsome when their armor falls off. Haven't heard that one before.
A lot of people are going to be in for a big surprise when they get to the afterlife.
We have undeniable proof that the Egyptian afterlife is real. We haven't seen any other indisputable afterlifes. Occam's razor says that the Egyptian afterlife is the only true one, while all the other ones are fictitious.Most people have probably neglected getting their funeral items and burial rituals prepped...
If the Egyptian Afterlife is the only real one, then we also have the Ba Charge issue: that is, Egyptians mummified their corpses on the premise that the conscious-spirit ka would survive only so long as the animal-energy-spirit ba could recharge it through the body. Destroying a mummy killed the soul of the dead person in the Land of Sunset. Because Atem's tomb collapsed, he might have spent about a day in the afterlife before going out like a candle. Go, Yugi.
- Atem's body was destroyed when he sealed Zorc, so there probably isn't anything in the tomb anyway. He needed the Ceremonial Battle to free his spirit.
- That would be a very thinly populated afterlife.
- Atem could rely on Yugi's body for charge. But if he comes back and visits Yugi every night the way his religion stipulates, then it makes the ending kind of a joke and wrecks the bildungsroman. And it puts a weird spin on GX, which is already weird.
- In either case, Yugi needs to locate a good embalmer.
- Y'all forget one thing - in the Yu-Gi-Oh! version of the Egyptian afterlife, people can fuse their ba with their ka to gain immortality at the cost of humanity (see- Dark Magician/Mahad, Dark Magician Girl/Mana, BEWD/Kisara). Presumably, when bodies are destroyed, the ba leaves to to join with the ka, monsterifying the person. "Yami" probably simply had a short human afterlife.
- Does that mean he turned into a Yamask?
- Dan Green apparently voiced Yamask (according to Bulbapedia). Make of that what you will.
- Does that mean he turned into a Yamask?
The alternate dimensions in GX are populated by monsters formed by people who weren't mummified.
Now, those afterlives are crowded... There are three Mariks.
There's the Marik we see for most of the Battle City arc, who has the nasally voice; there's the Marik who has the stretchy face and popped-out veins; and there's the one who talks like "Namu" and only appeared after Battle City was over. Basic Marik and Namu-voice Marik have almost the same memories, but Namu-voice Marik didn't get to choose to do stuff; he only had the memories of having done the evil stuff, if that makes sense. He still feels guilty for his body and part of his soul (the Basic Marik part, since we don't know whether Dark Marik shares in the Marik soul) doing the evil stuff; but since he didn't do it himself, but only remembers doing it from a first-person perspective, he gets let off the hook. So he's less a Karma Houdini than he might appear at first glance.Namu-Voice-Marik did seem to have a completely different personality from Basic Marik, even more different than Basic Marik is from Dark Marik; but he didn't seem "fake" or flat like "Namu" did.
Marik (and Yami Marik, for that matter) is incompetent.
The only times we see or hear about Marik dueling, he duels like an idiot:- Yami Marik mentions that Isis / Ishizu could beat him / Normal!Marik with ease. Not that Isis is a bad duelist, but it doesn't do much to suggest that Marik is a competent duelist if he consistently stood no chance against his own sister.
- When he was ten. A lot has changed since then.
- Which brings up another point: how the hell did they get trading cards underground with no contact from the outside world? And that's ignoring the fact that the card game would've not been created yet or just started six years before the events of the series.
- When he was ten. A lot has changed since then.
- When dueling through Jounouchi, Marik wanted Jounouchi to take Red Eyes from Yugi via Exchange. It would've stopped Yugi from using it, but Marik wouldn't have been able to summon Red Eyes because he didn't have the sacrifices for it.
- His objective was to take the card so a) Yugi couldn't summon it and b) couldn't use it to get through to Joey. It makes sense from that perspective.
- Yami Marik comes two seconds away from losing to freaking Jounouchi. He would've lost had Jounouchi stayed conscious for long enough to attack with Gearfried.
- I have to disagree, when he duelled Jounouchi he only intended to killed his spirit but not to actually win the duel, which is why he was shocked only when Jounouchi almost summonned Gearfried but not when he got no monster on his field after using Ra's effect.
- Even before this, Mai would've beaten Yami Marik with his own god card if it wasn't for that ancient Egyptian chant rule. To put that duel in perspective, Yami Marik has the powers of the shadow realm, an ancient Egyptian lineage, his Millennium Rod, and his god card. Mai's only superpower is of the most-common variety. Muggles Do It Better indeed!
- Marik's entire deck theme revolves around recycling Monster Reborn to revive Ra over and over again... for one turn. And at a cost of 1000LP each go-around. Ra may have a lot of crazy hidden powers, but Marik can actually read the Egyptian card text. He should know full well how Ra works by the time he starts dueling in Battle City.
- Marik tries to summon Ra with Jam Breeding Machine tokens on at least two separate occasions (once against Mai, once against Yugi). This is actually a terrible way to summon Ra. Had he succeeded, Ra would've towered implacably over his opponent with the unstoppable burning fury of... 1500ATK.
- At the same time, he outdueled Yugi for most of their match, before Yugi pulled that "send every single card in your deck to the graveyard" card. It's not that Marik's bad at the game, it's that he expects Ra's power and the shadowgame to do the work for him, draining away his opponent's life force. He knows that won't work against Yami so he doesn't try.
Even outside a duel, he's still stupid.
- "This door is a bitch!"
- The most jarring example of all is the alliance Normal!Marik makes with Yami Bakura. Yami Yugi may have the excuse of not remembering who / what Yami Bakura actually is, but Marik is a tomb-keeper. His entire life's training is about knowing this kind of stuff. Who did he think the evil spirit of the Millennium Ring was, given that said spirit had an odd fixation with collecting all seven Millennium Items and destroying the Pharaoh?
Duel Monsters had Forbidden / Limited lists from the start.
The one time we see any duelist use Raigeki is the anchor duel between Yugi and Possessed!Jounouchi. That duel was, for all intents and purposes, off the record books. None of Marik's other minions use broken stuff like that (barring the first Rare Hunter's triple-Exodia set) because those duels are all official.- Yugi uses Dark Hole in the first virtual world arc. Granted, that story arc probably ran a "traditional" format, either by Kaiba's design or from the Big Five messing up the program.
- Another duel in which a player uses broken stuff was the first Yami Bakura vs Yami Yugi duel, where Bakura used two Morphing Jars, cards that have been limited in real life since the day of their release. In a situation like this, Bakura probably wouldn't be worried about how "official" his duel was, so long as he won. It's possible that Man-Eater Bug could have also been forbidden, given that...
- This also explains why the Egyptian God Cards are considered extremely broken. All things considered, the rules for the God Cards in real life aren't all that good. In fact, because they can be killed by a single Man-Eater Bug (see above), it is quite likely that a lot of freebie monster-destroying card effects like Man-Eater Bug and Dark Hole are simply forbidden, if not outright unprinted (or just extremely rare, like Rebecca's Tribute to the Doomed). With cards like that forbidden, taking on a God Card proves far more daunting as you'll have to overpower it to beat it for certain.
- Not so much that as most plot-important monsters are immune to magic, trap, and monster effects. In the show, Man-Eater Bug would not be able to destroy a God Card, unlike in real life.
- If the wiki is correct, the Battle City rules includes a forbidden list that includes all cards that can destroy monsters, as well as most cards that inflict burn damage. Together, this forces players to win by battling with their monsters. That Jonouchi used both when he was mind controlled by Marik was considered a big deal.
- Battle City also had a limited list alongside a forbidden list. During the final battle between Marik and Yugi, Kaiba mentions that a duelist is only allowed one copy of Monster Reborn to a deck. This restriction is why Marik's deck revolved around retrieving Monster Reborn, instead of just loading his deck with three copies. There would probably be other examples of limited cards, but none of them were as relevant to the plot as Monster Reborn considering how important that card is to Marik's strategy.
Noa's Virtual World is a Year Inside, Hour Outside scenario.
Note that this Filler arc was 24 episodes long, which takes 12 hours to watch altogether. It started at the crack of dawn when Noa decided to abduct Kaiba's blimp, and ended when it was still daylight outside, which could have not been more than a few hours. Not to mention that Yami Marik showed restraint rather than deciding to kill Rishid and Isis on the spot, until he started smashing Noa's guard-bots.- In the Japanese version of the show, this is outright stated to be the case.
The Duel Monsters cards are magical artifacts.
Albeit, modern magical artifacts that nobody knows are magical. Depending on the card, you have greater or lesser quantities of 'magic' within the card. Reacting with the items is what allows people to abuse The Magic Poker Equation, enough cards together (that is, two decks' worth) forms a magical compulsion spell on dueling, and all the super-rare and powerful cards are indestructible. This troper can't exactly remember the scene from season one where Weevil/Insector Haga tossed Yugi's Exodia cards into the ocean but he believes that Joey/Jou managed to fish two out and brought them back not even so much as waterlogged. This nicely solves the Fridge Logic of why things like the God Cards and the Cyberdark Deck were never destroyed - the magic always made them come out of it unscathed. Once Pegasus printed those cards, all efforts to do away with them were doomed to failure.- Interestingly, this may have some merit; the upcoming Crossover move has the villain, Paradox, going back in time to kill Pegasus before he makes Duel Monsters, supposedly to prevent the game from causing The End of the World as We Know It. If he is to be believed, apparently the Millennium Magic that empowers the cards would've remained dormant and harmless, had the game not been made and brought the magic to the fore in the form of a very accessible medium.
- Jossed. Paradox doesn't go back in time to kill Pegasus before he invents Duel Monsters, since Yugi and his Grandpa are there for a Duel-Cup (the banner over the stage reads "Duel-Cup" in katakana), so Duel Monsters must've been out already. And as we learn in 5D's, the world was destroyed by Synchro Monsters, due to their apparent ability to manipulate organic energy (don't ask) and excessive use of Synchro Summoning caused Momentum to go too fast, causing Zero Reverse, wiping out humanity. So Paradox simply invented Time Travel, went back in time, stole some cards, while riding a motor-cycle, wearing an evil mask and laughing like a maniac, then killed Pegasus to prevent him from inventing Synchro Monsters, (and for some reason went 20 minutes back in time after accomplishing his objective, giving the protagonists a chance to stop him. He didn't want to destroy Duel Monsters, just Synchro Monsters (which Konami seems to be doing too, since they're banning most good Synchro's).
There will one day be a fusion between Blue Eyes White Dragon and Red Eyes Black Dragon
Because they are totally asking for it: similar yet opposite names, exact opposite attribute, and near-identical support (Kaibaman vs. REB Chick, BEUD vs. REBMD, BESD vs. REDD, etc.) Also because a fusion between the two would likely be very powerful.- Alternately, it would cancel out the power of each dragon, like a 1-Hit KO version of the Arrow of Light+Polymerization+Zombie monster technique.
- Purple Eyes Gray Dragon?
- This Troper is still waiting for Red Eyes Black Magician...
- BESD is firmly established as being Kisara, but REBD was never given a human identity; for all we know it's from one of the other eleven dimensions filled with Duel Monsters, one of the ones not inhabited by monsterized human souls.
- This rabid puppyshipper (Kaiba/Jou, for those not in the know) can testify that this is HUGELY popular among this subset of the fandom, to the point where they're almost a Beta Couple. REBD is nearly always given an OC soul and personality. When done right (which it often is), it is freaking adorable. Long story short, if this WMG is confirmed, puppyshippers everywhere will either Squee to death or pull an I Knew It!.
- Rejoice! It is now confirmed Blue Eyes and Red Eyes can officially fuse together as of Bonds of Time. The catch, however, is neither Kaiba nor Jou initiated the monster. It was created through Paradox's masquerading Red Eyes and Blue Eyes.
- Sorry, they don't fuse. Paradox does summon the Sin/Malefic forms of both (he even has both of them in play at the same time, as I recall), but he never fuses them or anything like that.
- Rejoice! It is now confirmed Blue Eyes and Red Eyes can officially fuse together as of Bonds of Time. The catch, however, is neither Kaiba nor Jou initiated the monster. It was created through Paradox's masquerading Red Eyes and Blue Eyes.
- I submit to you this: Light and Darkness Dragon
Anzu is the reincarnated form of Mana
My logic may be off here, but... they do look kinda alike, and Anzu has always had a few subtle hints connecting her to the Dark Magician Girl, so why not?- Meh. Show me Anzu on a trampoline and I'll consider it.
- If I find a visual of Anzu on a trampoline, I, and any other person interested, would be much too... distracted to share it.
- It's possible that Mana/DMG's spirit somehow has memories from the Millennium World arc, in which case she remembers both Téa and little Yugi, and either thinks they make a good couple, or that Téa and Yami will make a good couple until Yami joins the afterlife and becomes a monster spirit (according to one of the other theories on this page). That, or you're right, and DMG senses herself in Téa. It appears that by the later episodes, Dark Magician Girl's card has gained the power to summon Mana's spirit, instead of just an image of her, so...
Ryou Bakura is the most evil person on the show
Think about it- Yami Bakura did all kinds of stuff. He stole, he killed, he licked blood? and where was Ryou in all of this? He was just here. From watching Marik and Yugi, we can see that just because another spirit (or split personality?) took over your body, it doesn't make your own spirit disappear. Which means Ryou must have been there to witness it all and did nothing. Furthermore, he even took credit (for example, in Battle City he claimed he won all the locator cards and got the duel disk). I wouldn't be surprised if he hid behind his innocent face and waited for the right moment to strike! Only he didn't get a chance?- No. His conscious is suppressed by Yami Bakura 90% of the time. He isn't the slightest bit aware of what goes on. 5% of the time Yami Bakura poses as him. the other 5% he stands in the background.
- ...Or that's what he wants you to think.
- Still no. It's clear that he could easily be unaware of what his dark side is doing with his body, Yugi didn't have a clue that the pharaoh was even around until they met face to face. He even stated that he blacked out with no recollections later on. Hosts are only aware if their alternates let them be aware. The pharaoh and Yugi were equal partners, which is much different, and Marik's case is a little different. Plus Yami Marik is kind of a dick anyway, so he'd let Marik see exactly what he's doing with his body.
- I kinda agree. While he is unconscious for most of the time, he DOES know that the ring is evil. Have you read the manga, disagreeing troper? The thing stabs him in the chest. And he makes Yami Bakura heavily injure his own hand. And yet he still carries the ring around for most of the time. Even after repeatedly causing harm.
- However, I do have a different theory on it. I don't think that he's evil, I think that Yami Bakura managed to convince him that he does everything for a greater good.
- Also, Ryou had definitely an "outsider" position among the group. This was especially harsh in the last story arc of the manga, where everybody gathers around to enter the pharaoh's memories, but Ryou was excluded. Yami Bakura was the only person Bakura had, almost literally, since his family was who knows where. (Fanon (or season 0?) states that they all died in a car crash, which makes Ryou's writing his sister Amane a letter really creepy.) It was also shown at various points that Yami Bakura kind of cared about him, and wanted him to be on his side. Even if it was for selfish reasons, it's possible that Ryou reacted to it. I don't think that it would be wrong to assume that they had some kind of twisted friendship or even relationship (minus the blood and BDSM stuff from the fanfiction).
- No. His conscious is suppressed by Yami Bakura 90% of the time. He isn't the slightest bit aware of what goes on. 5% of the time Yami Bakura poses as him. the other 5% he stands in the background.
- That brings ups a rather interesting point in the manga, where in the Museum the spirit explains that his host built the table top game they are using, not himself, Ryou Bakura. I'm not agreeing he's evil, this could have easily been the spirit messing with Ryou's head, making him believe it was his idea to build the table for his Monster World game or for the Museum (if this is in fact the museum Ryou's father works for, since he's a curator). Or, after regaining his memories, he tricked Bakura into believing he was the victim (his village being destroyed and his people sacrificed in the name of the Pharaoh) and Ryou believed he was the real good guy trying to avenge his family. So much like the audience's point of view, we believed the Spirit was Thief King who wanted revenge, the only difference was we saw the big reveal - the Spirit of the Ring was never the Thief King, but the Big Bad using him as a puppet to revive himself. So somewhere during the manga, Ryou could have been helping the Spirit as an ally, or I'm just talking nonsense ;p
- In the beginning of the Millennium World arc, Bakura takes back the ring from Rex and Weevil after they mistakenly stole it from Yugi. Now, if the evil spirit is contained in the ring, how is he controlling Ryou to take it back? Further more, by this point he at least vaguely realizes that whatever is in that ring likes to possess and use him to be a Big Bad and therefore he should probably stay out of contact with it. This troper seriously doesn't believe Ryou is as much of an Innocent Bystander as he'd like the people around him to think.
- Yami Bakura has been shown to be capable of putting a fraction of his soul in Yugi's puzzle. It's certainly possible that he left a fragment or more of his soul in Bakura's body.
- At the beginning of that episode, there's a scene where Ryou is trying to escape Bakura's spirit (or something) by hiding in a church. Bakura then says that the two of them still have a mission to complete. And (quoted from the 4kids version) Bakura says "Does the term 'millennium items' sound familliar? You promised to help me obtain all seven." Ryou knew what Bakura was planning all along and had promised to help. If Bakura had forced Ryou to promise to help, then don't you think Ryou would have mentioned something about Bakura's plan to Yugi by now? Yugi had the Millennium Ring, so Bakura couldn't have controlled Ryou in order to stop him from telling Yugi without someone noticing. After Bakura mentions Ryou's promise, he takes control of Ryou. It's not the kind of thing he could do in front of Yugi without Yugi noticing. Going back to the "Bakura and Ryou have some kind of twisted friendship" theory mentioned above, I'd like to suggest that maybe Ryou had Stockholm syndrome for a while, and that's why he promised to help Bakura.
- Why is he hiding in a church? Answer: he's possessed by a demon and he's hoping that the church will provide him sanctuary, or that there will be someone there who can exorcise it. The demon, however, manages to break his will by reminding him of the promise he was tricked into making that got him possessed in the first place. It doesn't matter what the evil spirit told him he was going to use the Millennium Items for, or even why Ryou agreed to it; all that matters was that he gave his consent to the evil spirit to use his body, and that consent, once given, cannot be revoked by force of will alone.
- Another possibility is that he was somewhat resentful of his situation in the beginning (though this entire conversation is presuming we're ignoring the original series, where he explicitly tells Bakura to get out of him upon finding out what the ring is and what it does), but quickly realized what Bakura was actually willing to do, and got cold feet. By Season Five, he's definitely regretting his 'choice', considering he was obviously terrified out of his wits during the scene at the beginning of episode 199. Also, you're basing that 'promise' on the dub; in the original, Bakura merely says that Ryou has a 'duty', possibly implying that he considers it Ryou's duty to serve Bakura's interests as his host/hikari/whatever. Also, after Ryou wakes up in episode 220 in the original, after Bakura ditched him to go into the Memory World, he says he was 'chasing something' (possibly a dazed memory of running away from Bakura, or could mean that he was chasing sanctuary), then blacked out. That particular line would support the most common interpretation of the two; that Bakura suppresses Ryou when he takes over.
- It's very likely that Bakura has Stockholm Syndrome. As of Dark Side of Dimensions, Bakura recieved the Ring as a very small child and the Spirit possessed him immediately. Even if he didn't start hearing the Spirit of the Ring until he met Yugi, look at the parallels in Season Zero. From as soon as Yugi finished the puzzle to the time Yami Yugi made contact with him, Yugi experienced blackouts that consistently correlated with people who hurt or bully him either dead or out-of-their-mind hallucinating from a Penalty Game. And Yami Yugi only did that for a relatively short time before revealing himself, and gets forgiven, to boot! Yami Bakura demonstrably does the same thing to a gym teacher who bullied Bakura, and if he started right away, too, that could be on the order of ten years of bullies going into comas. In Duelist Kingdom, he claims that he's changed his ways and just wants to help Bakura's friends to persuade him to put the Ring back on, and it's only after sweettalk fails that he resorting to threats. And even when he's actively going against Bakura's wishes by attacking his friends, Yami Bakura tries to gaslight him by claiming he's just granting Bakura's wish to have friends who will never leave him. (If you're keeping score, putting all his friends in comas did a very effective job of socially isolating Bakura up until he made a friend who could fight back.) This is a pattern of behaviour. Yami Bakura is a textbook emotional abuser, and doesn't resort to force with Bakura if lies and manipulation will do the trick.
Now think about how easy it would be for him to claim that he's been protecting Bakura all these years by getting rid of people who pose a threat to him. They're not around to speak up for themselves, so Yami Bakura can say whatever he wants about their intentions or the danger they posed. Given the apparent population of over-the-top bullies in canon, he might not even have to stretch the truth that much with some of them. When the only voice around is the one claiming to be doing everything for your sake, it gets a lot easier to believe that voice. Bakura built the Millennium World map because Yami Bakura had been grooming him all series to be a more compliant host. Yami Bakura doesn't need magic to make Bakura keep the Ring; the mundane psychology that keeps people from leaving abusive situations has already done the work for him.
Millenium Magic may still exist in a lesser form
- Judging by the amount of gold in furnace and the amount used to cast the artifacts, there should be a significant amount of waste metal containing bits of 99 souls lying somewhere in Egypt or other parts of the Sahara Desert. This waste alloy may lack the extra enchantments used to create the items but I think that the Shadow Games have a chance of a coming back should a greater magical force supplement the exist magic in the waste material.
- Off to write a fanfic using Duel Discs that have pieces of Millenium Magic-ified gold in them...
- In Season Zero, there was a boy named Haiyama-Kun. He's very meek and such. Yuugi even says he reminds him of himself before he completed the puzzle. However, near the end of the episode, you see that he had been manipulating another boy. During school he has black hair in a bowl-cut. When Honda arrives and sees him, he has a Bakura-esk smirk, as well as purple hair that sticks up. This is the only time you see him not acting shy or scared. I have a feeling that either somebody decided to make his glasses out of those scraps or that he has a small item made from there which contains a Yami.
Rex Raptor will grow up to be Chester A. Bum.
- They both have orange hats as well as long, scraggly brown hair, not to mention Rex's vest is the same color as Chester's coat.
- Well, there is a special from Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, wherein Rex and Weevil watch Silent Hill and comment on it in a MST3k-ish fashion. And considering a WMG that says that the abridged version is actually the canon...
The Shadow Games/Games of Darkness/whatever the fans are calling them this week were created by Sigereth in order to further the Reclamation.
- Sigereth, for those unfamiliar with Exalted, is a powerful demoness known by the sobriquet of "the Player of Games". As the title implies, her powers revolve around challenging people to games of chance and/or skill for ridiculously high stakes—think memories, skills, you body and soul...Sound familiar, anyone? Demons in Exalted are basically Sealed Evil in a Can—and the only way to break the seal for good is to corrupt the mortal realm until it's indistinguishable from the demonic one. Accordingly, Sigereth introduced the Shadow Games to the Yu-Gi-Oh world, knowing that the immense power inherent in them would be an enormous temptation to anyone who knew of their existence. The scary part is, her plan seems to be working—the Yu-Gi-Oh universe is getting steadily Darker and Edgier with each new installment, and this seems to coincide with how widespread Duel Monsters becomes among average people...
The Musician King is a rejected Guitar Hero character
He was originally going to be in Guitar Hero III as the best character, but The God of Rock replaced him. The King used his Iron Man time travel powers to find another game. He settled on Yu-Gi-Oh!, but he lost control of his powers and continued to go back, winding up in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime and trading card game. Because of his cheating, he ended up stuck as the fusion of Witch of the Black Forest and Lady of Faith. Atem only really cares about Yugi
The only person Atem ever actually cared about was Yugi, whom he cared about a lot. He only kept the others from getting hurt because their being hurt would hurt Yugi. When one of his "friends" is captured he gets serious and down to business reassuring Yugi it will be alright but when Yugi is captured he totally loses it and Yugi's the only one he really says goodbye to at the end. Also he was more interested in beating the bad guys to keep them from hurting Yugi than in saving the world. It always sounds a little off when he mentions the saving the world.- I'd buy that. Word of God has it that Yami was pretty evil to begin with (and the way he acts in Season Zero supports that idea) but Yugi just "rubbed off on him" somehow until he mellowed out enough to start being nicer, but it's very believable that Yugi's simply a Morality Pet of sorts and the only one who's really important to him... Though, then again, by that same logic, it was Yugi's relatonship with his friends, not specifically Yugi himself, which influenced Yami's change from Sociopathic Hero to a guy with only the occaisonal bout of What the Hell, Hero? syndrome. So... maybe they at least influenced him, I dunno.
- Really, it's just likely that he's much closer to Yugi: they do, after all, share a body and the term "Soul Mates" isn't too far off the mark. Few people admit to having "favourite" best friends, but I reckon a lot of people with anything approaching True Companions do.
- Saving the world was kind of a dub thing, to be fair. Sub/manga Yami more often mentions personal motivations for what he does - getting Grandpa back in DK, getting his memories back/stopping Marik's reign of insanity in BC. In addition, that he only says goodbye to Yugi may also be because he thinks it cuts the other way - that is, that the others only care about Yugi and not him (or not as much). In the manga Millennium World arc especially he always seems surprised and moved when the others do something to help him given that he's separated from Yugi at the time. That and there's several instances where he puts himself (and Yugi, by extension) in danger to help the others - for instance, taking Ra's attack for Joey and Mai - and his face when Kaiba asks if he can sacrifice Joey if he has to (the death duel on the dock) kind of suggests otherwise. However, I'd say it's pretty reasonable to suggest most of the group has someone else they consider their closest friend amongst the others - for Yugi I'd say it's Joey, Joey it's probably Yugi (though he has a kind of bro thing with Honda/Tristan), Anzu it's probably Yami or Yugi and Yami I'd say you could make a convincing argument that he feels closest to either Yugi, Joey or Anzu for different reasons (Tristan seems to fall under The Friends Who Never Hang with everyone except Joey, at least on a one to one basis).
Atem and Yugi are in fact two halves of the same whole.
- This was explored by LeDiz in her fanfiction, ''Akh''. In which she dealt with the concepts of the Egyptian Ka and Ba: which are two different parts that together with a bunch of other bits make up a human being?s mind and body... (I think that Ka was the soul while Ba was the physical essence, but I may have that backwards). The original Pharaoh from 3000 years ago was a whole being, made up of both a Ka and a Ba, but when he gave up his life to save the world, his spirit separated and was sealed within the Millennium puzzle ...Or at least a part of his spirit was. The problem being that you can?t seal a physical body into a piece of metal so Atem?s Ba (or Ka, whichever) was left outside while the other, spiritual half was sealed within the puzzle. The Ba of course died straight away without a soul to complete it. But the clencher here is that rather than vanishing altogether, it reincarnated again, and again, and again. The first time it was probably still too weak to survive ? the newborn Ka-less Ba's would?ve been cot deaths, or else died very young ? but eventually, after millenia worth of reincarnations gradually getting stronger and stronger, the Ba became strong enough to exist on its own. That Ba is Yugi.
- What this says about Atem (the Ka) going back to the afterlife without Yugi (the Ba) is anyone?s guess, though this troper would like to think it doesn?t matter since the whole story was about Yugi learning to be indepdent and that should still apply, whether he?s half a soul or not.
- Also by this logic, Yami Yugi is probably not really Pharaoh Atem, since Atem was a combination of Ka and Ba, and if Yami is only one of those two....
- What this says about Atem (the Ka) going back to the afterlife without Yugi (the Ba) is anyone?s guess, though this troper would like to think it doesn?t matter since the whole story was about Yugi learning to be indepdent and that should still apply, whether he?s half a soul or not.
- Alternately, rather than splitting into Ba and Ka, the split was the Light side of the soul and the Dark side, which is why Yami was so evil when he was first unleashed, and Yugi was so ridiculously nice and naive. Eventually the positive and negative emotions bled over into one another, enabling Yugi to be aggressive and better understanding of if people are trying to take advantage of him, and Yami became more gentle and kindhearted. That's why Yami could move on- Yugi had become whole due to the time with Yami, and so Yami could move on to the afterlife, as the split was more even rather than +/-. Presumably, when Yugi kicks it, the two will reunite before the next reincarnation.
Duel Monsters is just an ordinary game
That is, until Haruhi Suzumiya played it and fantasized about the game being played by Magical Egyptians. Duel Monsters wasn't started by the Egyptians, but are rather the manisfestations of magic shared by many different civilizations.
In 5D's the Immortal Earthbound cards are based on monsters from South America. Anyone could have made cards based on the Nazca Lines, but just like with the Egyptian God Cards, the Immortal Earthbounds must have their power from a higher magical source. Dartz from Atlantis, which existed before Egypt, also knew about Duel Monsters. And what about the kingdom that Yubel and The Supreme King lived in?- Egypt likely mastered Duel Monsters, at least based off Shadow Magic. The Doma Arc revealed there was an entire dimension of them, and would've been used by previous civilizations. The Egyptians merely manipulate Shadow Magic, and create monsters through this.
- I figured it was started by the Egyptians but when Pegasus created the card game he added some monsters that weren't from Egypt. Like toon monsters for instance, seriously doubt those were in Egypt.
Alternately, while it is based upon the Egyptian method of sealing magic, Pegasus enchanted the game so it absorbs all kinds of magic.
Same as above: Egyptian, Atlantean, Japanese (the spirit monsters), Mayan, Alien (The Light of Destruction and Neo-Spacians, via the inverse of Clarke's Third Law) and whatever the hell culture Yubel comes from are all part of the game. While it was based upon the way the Egyptians seal up magic while tapping into part of their power, Pegasus figured there may be more evil wizards out there, so he made it so the cards absorb and dampen magic. This gives people a fighting chance against them. Ra used to be able to destroy a whole city. Now he can put one person into a coma at a time. It may be weakening, though, judging by the devastation the Earthbound Gods make when they are summoned. That's also why, when Yugi starts playing Duel Monsters, he no longer challenges other people to other games like he used to: he can't. Duel Monsters is an antediluvian game played by Atlantis
Building upon the logic above, Duel Monsters or a form of it was played in Atlantis. When it collapsed the post-flood cultures that use pyramids and other Atlantis motifs, such as Egypt and South America, played the Atlantis game of Duel Monsters. How the Millennium Ring Came Back
So how did the Ring come back after Tristan threw it? No One Could Survive That!, right? Wrong. If you notice the Ring has five prongs that are strong enough to puncture one's chest, and Yami Bakura controls it. So its entirely possible that the Ring crawled to the castle using its prongs.- Facehugger Millenium-ring?
- Or perhaps it mind-controlled Honda into thinking he threw the Ring away, but instead put it back on Bakura's neck.
Holographic games have eliminated the need for fused-monster cards
If you're using a computerized holographic system, all you need are the material cards and polymerization or a card of the same effect. Thus, why everyone seems to have every possible fusion card readily available- the fusion results are programmed in, rather than cardboard like the rest. The Anime is Pandering to Kaiba's Fanbase
It would explain the increased amount of focus Kaiba gets, not to mention that two of the filler arc are focused around him. It would also explain Joey/Jounouchi's Badass Decay, as he is deliberately made to look even worse compared to Kaiba, such as him being made into the butt of a joke based on a card in Yugi's deck in one filler arc. It's almost like the writers have an ulterior motive as they make Kaiba look even more awesome while derailing his rival (besides Yugi) into a glorified Boring Failure Hero (Similar to what some fans believe Masashi Kishimoto is doing to Naruto in favor of Sasuke).- In fact, if you read the Millennium World arc, you will realize that Kaiba's the hero of the whole damn story.
- How? Assuming you're talking about Priest Seto, since Kaiba doesn't show up in the manga version of the arc, and barley contributes to defeating Zorc, how exactly is he the hero of the whole story? Supporting protagonist maybe, but he spends so much time standing around, talking to his father, and then needing to be saved from him. I'd really love to hear an explanation of this. Just out of curiosity. Oh, also, they said the anime is pandering, not the manga.
- Insane Mass Guessing: The anime is pandering to Your Shipping Of Choice. This troper is sad that it is not true, especially with this troper's shipping—it seems to be the Butt-Monkey of the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom.
- Further Insane Mass Guessing: LittleKuriboh is a fan of Seto/Joey. "Love to love ya, baby..."
Yugi's appearance does not change when Yami/Atem takes over his body.
Which would explain why no other character really seems to question his new body/voice. The character of Yami only appears different so viewers can tell the difference between the two, and to emphasise how Atem is wiser and more confident than Yugi.- Except that in the manga, people actually notice that there's a difference.
- This could be just because (as I think is remarked on toward the beginning of the manga) of the major difference in their expressions, posture, and voice—as a blindfolded Anzu said in the first volume, "Is that voice... Yugi!? No! They're similar, but too different! It's impossible! This voice is confident, not shy like Yugi's!" Remember, before he solved the puzzle, Yugi was a introvert whose only friends were the two guys who bullied him daily and a girl he spoke to every once in a while. Apparently he was so extremely shy that any display of confidence couldn't possibly be his doing.
- Given proof in the very beginning of the Millennium World manga: when the gang question whether Yugi will be going to the museum after school. It's Yugi in control, and his posture is greatly drawn out (slightly straight back, both arms on his desk, feet firmly planted on the ground.) When he says "Why don't you hear from (the other me) for yourselves?" and switches control, the very next scene is Atemu sitting in a very different position from Yugi (slouching in his seat, one arm cast over the backrest, legs crossed and extended).
Mai really is terrible at Duel Monsters.
It's well established the she's a skilled and respected duellist-while she's still cheating. After she stops she has about two onscreen victories. The only reason she got so far in the tournements was because all of the good players were picked off by Yugi and Joey in Duellist Kingdom and by Kaiba and Odion in Battle City.- The trope Worf Effect exists for a reason. Have you actually paid attention to any of her subsequent duels? She loses them for bigger overarching plot reasons, in spite of dueling extremely well. One's skill is not determined solely by the end result.
Yami/Atem doesn't really look like Yugi.
I mean, anime-hair is one thing, but the tri-coloured spikes *from birth* is kind of pushing it. So, since Atem's memory is shaky at best, his physical appearance is always a combination of vague recollection and Yugi's looks, which he more or less pilfered as the first available source of inspiration. Even when we see Atem in flashbacks, he looks like that largely because that's what he thinks he should like - the change of skin shades was him remembering more of himself, but not all of the details. Same with Bakura.- Of course, this doesn't really explain the hair on the ancient carvings.
- Who says it's hair? It could have been a fancy wig.
- Regardless of if it was a wig or natural, it should have still been subject to gravity. I could maybe accept a handwave of Yugi's style being because of hair gel (or someone replaced his hair gel with superglue for a prank, as a friend of mine once joked) but I don't think Atem would have had anything back in ancient Egypt that could give either natural hair or a wig that much hold....
- The Puzzle Did It.
- Maybe it's actually a headdress?
- Who says it's hair? It could have been a fancy wig.
- The only problem I have with that is the flashbacks of other characters who didn't have their memories wiped, only sealed, also have this effect. Most notable is when Isis/Ishizu shows Kaiba some "visions of the past" in the museum. The ancient priest Seto goes through about 3 different hats in various flashbacks (not in the same episode) and Atem's outfit is different in several flashbacks as well.note Not to mention that none of the flashbacks set in ancient EGYPT show the characters with tan skin. Aside from the Ishtars and Shadi, no glimpse of Egypt has the characters with darker skintones until the actual Memory World arc. And since Isis/Ishizu was using her Millennium Item to look directly into the past rather than having a flashback, I would assume her visions would be the most accurate. Instead they show a battle that never happened in the Memory World arc, complete with a character that seems to be an Egyptian version of Jounouchi/Joey that is never seen in Atem's actual memories! Personally I blame the series author. I think it's possible that he didn't have the characters' Egyptian appearances set in stone at the time he drew those scenes, and by the time the actual Memory World arc came around the character models had changed and he had scrapped the Egyptian Jounouchi/Joey.
- ...Actually, A Wizard Did It might be the most likely explanation. The Memory World game at the end of the series was implied to be rewriting history (Zorc was attempting to retcon his original loss), and it might have written in Yugi's hair as the Pharaoh's hair as a side effect! And the reason all the flashbacks are different is that the ripple effects of history shifting around were taking effect very slowly.
- In the Manga Yugi didn't start looking that much like Atem until he got the Millenium Puzzle which might mean that Atem must have had some influence on Yugi's hairstyle.
Honda is Arnold J. Rimmer in a previous life
- Though I have a hard time imagining what Honda could possibly have gone on to do that he'd deserve to come back as Rimmer.
Thief Bakura was an albino.
He used paint to keep from getting horriffic sunburns as a result of living in the desert.- It's possible to have occular-only albinism. That could be his natural skin color and his hair is just white.
The Shadow Realm is Limbo.
Or at least part of it. Why else do the priests go there instead of dying, yet we clearly see them "die". Whenever you exhaust your ka, you are unable to go to the Underworld so instead you wait it out in the Shadow Realm. As for Zorc, he was the Guardian of Limbo and wanted to bring the entire world into it, which would allow him to kill everyone there and trap them there. Atem was highly skilled in combat before he died.
And despite the memory wipe he still retained some of those skills. There's a saying about riding a bike. Once you learn how to do it, you never forget. Perhaps combat is similar. Physical combat requires being able to think on your feet and using strategy, and even without his memories Atem is certainly capable of both of those skills. Plus in the dub when giving Joey advice against Mai, he says that "She is just trying to divide and conquer, a strategy that's been used for centuries...believe me, I know." But there's also evidence for the physical combat as well. Dueling on a blimp with icy winds? He can take it. And in the Kaiba Corp tournament in season 5 when the computer traps them inside a building, he does some rather show off-y leaps onto and off of the dueling platform. And of course, who could overlook a nearly EIGHT FOOT HIGH vertical jump and a Link-esque tuck and roll he pulls off in Capsule Monsters? Also, in ancient times it was fairly common practice for royalty/high ranking officials to know self defense at the very least. In the Memory World arc there's a brief flashback of Priest Seto and Akhenaden sparring with swords, and Atem himself is shown briefly wielding a sword while on horseback in the anime, making short work of Bakura's henchmen that had dealt with some royal guards fairly easily.- Historically, Pharaohs were war chiefs as much as administrators and religious leaders. And in ancient times, the general led from the front. Atem having combat training makes perfect sense in that context. And it's pretty obvious that he was very fit. Combat training from a young age would explain that. (As would being very rich, and thus having access to good food, in the days before burgers.)
- Seconded. Part of the reason Takahashi was said to have chosen games as a medium was because he wanted to use a form of conflict that was non-contact - in other words, he gives the impression of someone that dislikes physical violence and depictions of it. Duels in all their forms are metaphors for people fighting with one another and themselves to overcome their limitations. If it weren't for this, Atem would probably be explicitly shown physical fighting - heck, his use of the Dark Magician and strategic moves rather than raw strength could be seen as a metaphor for the ways he would compensate for his small physical size, as opposed to the tall Seto who would be predisposed to focusing on overpowering his enemies.
Atem could potentially be brought back/revived for a future sequel
Humans shed dead skin, and they shed a LOT of it. We shed roughly 4 kilograms per year. Atem's shown to have had the Millennium Puzzle for several years before his death, and hygiene back in those days was almost certainly not as clean as today's standards, so it stands to reason that the little box the Puzzle's pieces were found in may contain some 'dust' that is actually made up of Atem's shed dead skin cells. If technology became advanced enough, and if that dust was still around, and IF those cells still had viable DNA...it would potentially be possible to bring Atem back by creating a clone. Although how that would deal with the whole issue of his spirit being in the afterlife, I have no idea since I'm not an expert on the Egyptian Afterlife and cloning. It might make for a very interesting plot if they ever made a sequel like this.- I'm pretty sure that after 3,000 years there wouldn't be any viable DNA left. On the other hand, the stuff Kaiba does with holograms probably isn't possible either, at least with today's technology.
- There have been a few Egyptian documentaries where they successfully get DNA from mummies such as ol' Tutankhamun with today's technology. The series never really gives much hint about the level of medical and genetic technology, but if it's on par with the hologram and computer tech...all they'd need to do is be able to clone stuff and find a DNA sample.
Marik was supposed to marry Ishizu
Think about it: Tombkeepers are not allowed to set foot on the surface, so how should they ever be able to meet a woman that can become their wife and give birth to a son, that will become the next tombkeeper?The only way to have children without breaking a thousand year old tradition would be marrying their own sister (or even mother?)Considering that Brother–Sister Incest was no taboo in ancient Egypt and often practiced in the royal family, it is definitely possible, that Mariks father planned to marry Marik/Malik of to Ishizu/Isis.- If that's true, then Marik/Malik and Ishizu/Isis shouldn't be as...normal as they are. 5000/3000 years of family inbreeding is NOT good for a gene pool. Although it might be possible that a recessive genetic disorder contributed to the psycho that is Yami Marik/Malik. It's also made more likely by the fact that in Ancient Egyptian tradition, lineage was inherited from the mother's blood, not the father's (at least when it came to royals). A man had to marry a princess to have a claim to the throne, which is why so many pharaohs ended up marrying their sisters/half-sisters. So this would probably also mean that Atem was married to his sister/half-sister back then too....
- They had possesion of a magical artifact. I wouldn't be surprised if the Millenium Items removed any genetic disorders.
- Another thing is that, in some ancient cultures, if a man wanted a woman to marry him, and she was unwilling, he would just rape her. This would allow him to "claim" her as his wife, since no one else would want her. Why the hell would Marik's mother have married a man like her husband, unless she was forced to?
- Ancient Egypt wasn't one of those cultures, and women actually had more rights than in most other cultures, including keeping their own pre-wedding property, entitlement to up to one third of the marital property, and divorce, so if Marik's father had tried to rape her their parents would have punished him. On the other hand, duty to the gods supercedes anything, so if the only way to continue the line of the Tombkeepers was to marry a jerkass she'd have to do it.
Duel Monsters was created to teach children about the value of friendship.
And the only person who understands this is Tea, thus explaining her obsession with The Power Of Friendship. Honda and Jounochi didn`t become Yugi`s friends out of their own free will
Remember that Heartwarming Moment in the very first chapter of the manga where Yuugi wished on the Puzzle for "friends who would never betray" him?And then Jounochi and later Honda, who bullied and mocked him before, become his friends. Sounds sweet, right?Only until you think about it for a while and realize that they must have been brainwashed by the Puzzle to make friends with Yugi. And to be absolutely loyal to him.Well, Jounochi did bring back the puzzle piece he stole before the puzzle was completed, but even then it could be strongly considered, that he was mindcontrolled by the piece, which used him as a tool to become reunited with the rest of the Puzzle.And even Anzu, who liked him before, didn`t seem to be a really close friend to him (at least not as close as later in the manga/series), so even she might have been brainwashed.The Fridge Horror goes even further. The complete quote is: "Friends who would never betray me and friends whom I would never betray" So maybe the puzzle even brainwashed Yugi himself to become absolutely loyal to his new "friends".This makes the whole "Friendship is the best thing in the world" message of Yu-Gi-Oh a bit icky.
Duel Monsters holograms are voice-activated.
Why else would they yell about every move they make?- TECHNICALLY, you're supposed to say what a card does every time you use it, in case your opponent isn't familiar with the card (it's sometimes hard to read an opponents card, since it's upside-down to you). The yelling is just Rule of Cool.
- The distance between duelists using Duel Disks or the Duel Arenas is enough that you'd have to yell just to be heard. Otherwise, yes, it's Rule of Cool.
After Zexal there will be another serie...with a girl as the main character
It's not the first time they try to attract the female public with that old trick...unless Yuma is a girl.- If they do another crossover movie, the other 4 main characters will lampshade this.
- Do they even NEED a girl as the main character to attract female fans? I doubt it. All my female friends who like this series enjoy it for one reason: THE MEN. Just look at Otogi/Duke, Bakura, and the Pharaoh himself. If they really want to get more female fans they need to either make new sexy characters (or bring back old sexy characters for that matter) and make sure that children's card games are not the main focus of the series. I'm not saying they should change it to a Romantic Plot Tumor, I'm thinking more...slice of life. Or more like the first seven volumes of the manga that Season 0 was based off of. The title, Yu-Gi-Oh!, translates as "King of Games" after all. Not "King of Card Games" or "King of Duel Monsters" or "King of One Specific Game and No Other". It's "King of Games". That's games plural, as in "more than one". Plus it was a little more identifiable with audiences, having a series where people actually got punished for bullying instead of getting away with it like they do in real life. Yet few people, if any, can identify with having to win a card game to save the world from ancient evil magic. (One of my friends loves to watch Season 0 and imagine that everyone who gets a penalty game is replaced with someone who used to bully her in real life.) Oh, and throw in a bunch of Shirtless Scenes or even some Walking Shirtless Scenes and you'll have the female fans hooked for sure.
- Even if it wasn't to attract more female fans (there's hardly a shortage of them in the fandom anyway), having a girl protagonist would be nice. Though, with the fandom, she'd probably be a Launcher of a Thousand Ships.
If there is a female protagonist, she'll still be called the King of Games like her predecessors.
Well, the franchise itself is named "King of Games", so you can't exactly change the title to "Queen" after so much use of it for its protagonists. Atem is one of Yugi's acenstors.
That hair has to be genetic. Atem/Yami Yugi is NOT the Nameless Pharaoh.
In this scene from the manga, Isis/Ishizu states that the Pharaoh depicted on the Tablet of Memories is from the 18th Dynasty. In order to actually be in the 18th Dynasty, his death would have had to take place at least 3277 or more years before Yugi was born. The one thing that Yami Yugi/Atem seems sure of, even without his memories, is that his soul is 3000 years old. If we assume that Atem/Yami Yugi's account of how long his soul has been around is accurate, that would place his reign well into the 21st Dynasty and not the 18th Dynasty. If both Ishizu/Isis and Yami Yugi/Atem are correct, then that means Yami Yugi is from the 21st Dynasty of ancient Egypt and therefore cannot be the Nameless Pharaoh from the 18th Dynasty. This could imply that when Yami Yugi regained "his" memories, he actually ended up with the memories of a completely different person and now believes that he was/is the Nameless Pharaoh, which is why he was able to successfully use Atem's name to destroy Zorc in the Memory World arc because Your Mind Makes It Real.- This is just splitting hairs. 277 years difference isn't that much when you are counting in millenia. The Pharaoh was probably just rounding or estimating (it's not like they were using the Julian Calendar back then anyway).
- True on the part of the calendar, but then this is wild mass guessing for a reason.
Yuugi suffers from a Napoleon Complex
That's why his hair is so crazy. He wears it all stuck up on purpose to make himself feel taller. Yuugi died right after Yami left to the afterlife
Taking it further from the 'Yami and Yuugi are actually two halves that make one soul' (Atem) theory, if Yuugi was truly being reincarnated over and over again waiting for his other half to show up, then the point of this is for them to remain together, not for Yuugi to 'move on' with his life, seeing how he's only half a soul. So regardless of how much he learned from Yami, Yuugi can't (literally) live without him (and the other way around too); so it seems logical that Yuugi as a half soul would want to follow his other half, even if it was to the afterlife, so that, finally together, they can reincarnate one last time as a whole soul (Atem's reincarnation) and live the life that was taken away from them. This can also be supported by the fact that seeing how 'history repeats itself' (the whole Kaiba and Yuugi rivalry thing), just like Atem died and Seto was crowned the next pharaoh, the same way Yuugi died mere hours after Yami's departure, and Kaiba was 'crowned' king of games by default. The very last scene of the series is actually Yuugi reminiscing his time on earth. GX doesn't count.- Personally, I don't agree with the 'two halves of one soul' theory, but I understand the reasoning behind it and your WMG. Yet there is one glaring problem I see and would like explained. Egyptian religious practices regarding the afterlife pretty much required the body to remain in tact for the Ba and the Ka to live on after death. It's a big part of why they wanted to preserve bodies through mummification. And yet in every continuity of the manga or anime that I have seen, when it shows the inside of Atem's tomb there is no sarcophagus or anything else to indicate a mummy was ever there. (Here's the scene where Yuugi's grandpa finds the Puzzle several thousand years after Atem's death. Do you see a mummy in that burial chamber?) So my problem with the theory is this: How could the Yuugi half of the soul have been reborn all those times without a body to keep the Ba and Ka 'alive'? I could maybe understand the Yami half surviving if his being trapped inside the Puzzle functioned as a type of magical stasis, but the Yuugi half had no such means to preserve itself. Thus shouldn't the Yuugi half of the soul have 'died'note for real before it even got the chance to reincarnate once?
- Unfortunately, Takahashi never bothered to get his facts right about Egyptian religion when doing the manga, so we'll never know what Yuugi actually is to Yami, seeing how he was only addressed as 'the destined vessel' during the series. But supposing that Takahashi knew what he was doing... what Solomon was looking for was the puzzle box, wasn't it? So the room that they're in when they find it could have been another chamber made solely to guard the puzzle, whereas the pharaoh's body was kept in another one.
- I was under the impression that Solomon didn't know exactly what was in the tomb other than some 'fantastic game' that no one had beaten. Also, I could have sworn that at some part during the manga, Solomon called the room with the puzzle in it the burial chamber, but I can't remember where I saw it since my copy of the English manga seems to be worded slightly differently than every single online scan.
- Unfortunately, Takahashi never bothered to get his facts right about Egyptian religion when doing the manga, so we'll never know what Yuugi actually is to Yami, seeing how he was only addressed as 'the destined vessel' during the series. But supposing that Takahashi knew what he was doing... what Solomon was looking for was the puzzle box, wasn't it? So the room that they're in when they find it could have been another chamber made solely to guard the puzzle, whereas the pharaoh's body was kept in another one.
Mana is Atem's half-sister.
She's the daughter of one of the previous pharoah's concubines. It explains why she's always at the palace, and also says something about the lack of any Spare to the Throne.- If that were true, she'd be Atem's wife as well. The ancient Egyptians believed that royal blood was passed down through the mother's side of the family, so a king usually had to marry a royal princess in order to maintain a legit legal claim over the throne. And yet there's no evidence that he's married at all. For example, in that scene where he wakes up in bed◊ (infamous among some friends of mine due to Atem being shirtless) it doesn't exactly look like he's leaving room for a second person who's just gotten up to use the bathroom or something.... Said friends and I think his dad was actually unable to have kids, and Atem's mom was an ancient goddess in mortal form who was able to literally godmod around the infertility thing. The goddess-mom idea is our explanation for why Atem seems so sexy, as well as why he appears to have no siblings.
- Add that to the few but noticeable moments the two get (chief among these: in the manga, Kaiba, not Serenity, saves Jou's life after his mind-controlled duel with Yugi in the Battle City storyline), the whole BEWD versus REBD thing, their Red Oni, Blue Oni relationship, all those nicknames (let's face it, "puppy" sounds more like a pet name than anything else, and even "mutt" is a bit...eh), and the similarities in their personalities, and it's a wonder this ship doesn't have more fans.
Atem is not in the Afterlife.
At the end of Atem's last scene, we see him walk towards the Afterlife, where all the other priests are. Mahado included. Now, who became the Dark Magician, again? Exactly, Mahado, who is still Duel Monster and not in the Afterlife. Where did Atem go is anyone's guess...- The people he sees in the afterlife makes that scene pretty confusing, seeing is half the people there either became duel monsters or got completely reincarnated. It's easier to think he's in the afterlife if you ignore that particular scene.
- This troper's pet theory is that Atem went to the Afterlife of the past. Since then, Mahado went back to being the Black Magician and all the other priests reincarnated...which means Atem reincarnated into Yugi.
Season 5 is a Stable Time Loop.
When Bakura went back in time, it wasn't altering history. Rather, it was pre-ordained. Theif!Bakura discovered how to use Zorc because Dark!Bakura set him up for it. This is the real reason why destiny needs Yami Yugi to go back in time: if he doesn't, it'll break the Stable Time Loop, no doubt causing a reality-destroying Temporal Paradox. Neither side is aware of this Stable Time Loop. This is also why all previous villains were doomed to fail. Shadi is an agent of the timeline, to make sure it stays on track. And, like season 5, his beginning is his end. The Millenium Items Power's are either Your Mind Makes It Real or Imagination-Based Superpower
Seriously, these things have tons of vaguely established powers, so it could fit either trope. For one things, the original powers of the items that were used 3000 years ago, to judge criminals and take their ka's aren't used in the present, but lots of other powers are, like Marik using the rod to mind-control people. Priest Seto sure doesn't seem to know that the rod can do that. Maybe it's because he didn't have a reason to mind control people, but Marik did, and Your Mind Makes It Real ? And then there's all the powers that get used only once, randomly, even when they'd be very useful at a later time, like Yugi's Puzzle's ability to 'put souls back into their original bodies' ? Where was that when the other Yamis kept showing up? And Bakura's ring's power to summon real duel monsters out of a duel and use their effects on people (the Man-Eater Bugs from season 1) ? That would have been useful later too (not to mention cool) but it only happens once.- Same troper again. I just started reading the manga, and Shadi's mind-control of Yoshimori and Anzu also fits here.
- Seeing how Takahashi made tons of inconsistencies during the series (in the card game and Egyptian history/culture for instance) I would say that the power of the Millennium Items are random at best, is because the the author did whatever he did for convenience sake, and later forgot about what he had written. (Indeed, the soul switching thing would have been very useful during Yami Marik's duel).
- Some of the things you mention don't happen in the manga at all. The puzzle was never used to swap Bakura and Yami Bakura, for example. They killed Yami Bakura in the shadow game, and then Bakura's avatar in the RPG was able to use healing magic to restore Bakura. Also I don't believe Yami Bakura ever summoned real duel monsters such as those Man-Eater Bugs (I could be mistaken, haven't read that part in a while). The powers of the items are a bit more consistent in the manga, so I think part of it can be blamed on Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole.
Cards in-universe are made of some sort of shape-memory plastic whose hardness can be varied by the users.
- Consider than in the course of the various series, they've been used as throwing weapons, been immersed in water/dropped in the dirt, been bent at sharp angles, yet still remain pristine. This has been a Headscratcher for me for a while, but having them be made of a plastic that returns to form makes it make sense.
Time Wizard has an incredibly diverse array of attacks.
- Joey never actually attacks anyone with Time Wizard in the series (understandable, since its ATK is a paltry 500), but I have a theory that the little fella has a different attack for every possible number that Magic/Trap/Monster effects can boost his ATK to (I know his powers, when shown, involve him aging the world around him, but bear with me here.)
- 500 or below: He just conks the opponent with his staff.
- Between 500 & 1000: Travels back to prehistory; comes back dressed in a leopard-skin loincloth, holding a giant club that he conks the opponent with.
- Between 1000 & 1500: Travels back to Medieval Japan; comes back dressed as a samurai, holding a katana that he cuts the opponent open with.
- Between 1500 & 2000: Travels back to the Age of Sail and comes back dressed as a pirate captain, complete with an entire fleet of pirate ships training its cannons on the opponent.
- Higher than 2000: Travels back to World War II and drops a nuke on the opponent.
Marik is a reincarnation of part of Priest Set's soul.
- One thing that confused this troper was how Marik wasn't a reincarnation of anyone, despite both his siblings and his father having had past lives. Marik's father is clearly Priest Akhenadem's reincarnation — they look identical, and they're both fairly evil — and Set was Akhenadem's son. Both boys use the Millennium Rod, and their facial features are quite similar. Also, in this universe, souls are made up of different sections. It's not too hard to imagine part of Set's soul coming back as Marik.
Rebecca's PhD thesis will be on Duel Monsters throughout the ages.
First, she's the granddaughter of an archeology professor, and she's in college by 13. From a background like that, graduate school is a no-brainer, especially since no one is going to hire a 16/17 year old for any serious work due to child labor laws. So, she decides to follow in her grandfather's footsteps and become an archeologist.Her first paper was on that whole Atlantis fiasco, which would have gotten her laughed out of any self-respecting academic institution but for the fact that she could produce corroborating evidence. After Zero Reverse, she went to South America to perform a detailed study on the Nazca Lines. By the time she publishes her thesis, people have already begun to take the prospect of Duel Monsters being ancient and supernatural seriously (they are, after all, attempting to harness their supernatural properties to power reactors), so she does pass her dissertation defense (cue PhD in dueling jokes.)
The reason Atem uses the Seal of Orichalcos against Rafael is that he was wearing the Orichalcos stone fragment around his neck at the time.
That explains not only why he used it, but also how Rafael knew he would use it. It has nothing to do with his character and everything to do with the fact that the stone was manipulating him. Bakura's parents are Milo and Kida
Just try and prove this one wrong!- Gladly. Milo wouldn't see a reason to leave the city or move to Japan.
- Plus, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is set in the year 1914. Whether Milo aged like normal while in Atlantis or whether he and Kida will stay young for centuries, it is logically impossible for them to have a teenaged son in the late '90s or early 2000s. Their hypothetical children would be either extremely old or else still basically infants due to the power of the crystals.
- Potentially they could have stayed young, had a kid some time in the 1980s-ish, and then their kid was for some reason taken away from them and didn't have a crystal or something like that and therefore aged normally.
- Plus, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is set in the year 1914. Whether Milo aged like normal while in Atlantis or whether he and Kida will stay young for centuries, it is logically impossible for them to have a teenaged son in the late '90s or early 2000s. Their hypothetical children would be either extremely old or else still basically infants due to the power of the crystals.
Monsters with over 2000 attack are extremely rare before and during Duellist Kingdom
In the real world card game, monsters with more than 2000 attack are pretty common. Throughout Duellist Kingdom however, we are treated to people acting as though Yugi's Summoned Skull and Dark Magician are all but unbeatable, Mai powering up her Harpies to 2450 is made out to be an enormous deal, and Joey's Red-Eyes (a pretty average 7 star) is used almost as effectively as Kaiba's Blue-Eyes when the heroes need a beatstick. Even Bandit Keith, the American champ, uses the Slot Machine (which at 2000/23000 is a pretty weak 7 star) as his trump card. The obvious conclusion is that Pegasus only manufactured a small number of cards with more than 2000 attack, and a tiny number with over 3000. That's why even the best duellists will only have one or two monsters with those kinds of stats, and the mere possession of a creature with over 3000 (Kaiba's Blue-Eyes, Weevil's Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, Yugi's Black Lustre Soldier) is a mark of status.- This was in fact the case when the card game first came out, youngster.
- They were never that rare. Starter decks inevitably contained at least one or two cards with over 2000 attack. In the show, on the other hand, especially in Duelist Kingdom, people are repeatedly shocked by the playing of cards like Red Eyes. Most people, it would seem, have never seen a monster with over 1500 attack, a theory that gains further credance when you consider some of the cards that both Yugi and Kaiba, a pair of excellent duelists use (Mammoth Graveyard, Celtic Guardian, Hitotsumi Giant) and which are treated as very good cards. It's also why you didn't have to sacrifice in order to summon powerful cards—the odds of you having a powerful monster were next to nil anyway. Perhaps stars back then indicated rarity or somesuch. Then Kaiba coopted the game and altered the rules for Battle City.
An idea on Atem's ability to control destiny
At first I thought it was some sort of limited reality warping power. Now I think it might be possible that his ability stems from Quantum Theory. The double-slit experiment demonstrates that we can alter reality just by looking at it. Taken to its logical extreme, it should be possible to change an event (such as a card draw) just by willing it. This would be "controlling" the outcome of the event and therefore "destiny" as well. Alternatively, he could be using magic to augment the effects of Quantum Theory rather than just using an extreme form of Quantum Theory. Mai and Cyndia/Cecilia were sisters
They look extremely similar and both have a connection with Duel Monsters. Basically, Mai only switched to Duel Monsters from other card games because her sister's boyfriend/fiancee/husband invented them. She doesn't say anything about it because she's too proud to let anyone think she's only good because of her connection to Pegasus, and he doesn't say anything about it because Mai asked him not too. As a corollary, if Pegasus finds out that Panik attacked Mai, what Yugi did to Panik will look like a walk in the park. Pegasus put microchips in the cards to limit counterfeiting.
If the ones that came out before the holographic and machine-dueling devices were planned didn't have chips, that should have come up during the tournament. Pegasus put chips into the cards that would tell readers at tournaments if they were real, and the non-matching ID codes in the chips or lack of chips altogether would have identified them as false. The counterfeiters in the Battle City tournament and later found a hole in the security, which let certain "null" ID codes in, and allowed them to tell the machine that their "blank" card had the same name, stats, and display as a real card. Pegasus put microchips in the cards because he expected the Internet and internet-based peripheral devices to have a massive boom in the late 1990s and after the turn of the century.
With as many cards as there already were and eventually would be, and how popular the game was expected to be, manageable codes would eventually run out or people getting codes online would be able to flood the online market with virtual rare cards. If they used ID chips, there would be a 1:1 ratio between real and virtual cards. It wasn't a perfect solution, but without requiring online validation of the cards during every trade to make sure someone didn't trade or sell the real and virtual copies to separate people, it was probably the best solution available. The Millennium Puzzle doesn't actually grant wishes.
Yugi only believes that it does due to a misinterpretation of the inscription on the box.Yugi's wish for friends couldn't have been granted by the Puzzle, since Jounouchi's first act as a friend was to give him the last piece, meaning that they were already friends before it was even solved. At one point, Yami even says that Yugi made those friends himself, and it wasn't only because of Yami. Yugi's second wish, to see Yami again, was the natural consequence of solving the Puzzle and therefore didn't need to be granted by it.
Insector and Dinosaur are stage names.
Haga and Ryuzaki aren't legally named Insector Haga and Dinosaur Ryuzaki- they're just using stage names that sound cool and complement their decks. Similar to the above, Pegasus' birth name is actually Maximillian J. Crawford
In the case of the 4kids Dub, either Pegasus' family changed their surname when they immigrated to America from somewhere else or Pegasus himself changed it in an attempt to distance himself from his family's connections in the hopes of making a name for himself on his own. In the case of the manga and original Japanese version, he legally changed his first name to "Pegasus" in order to be more memorable and have a flashier, catchier name. There is a Blue-Eyes Four-Headed Dragon.
At the start of the show it was stated that there were 4 Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards in the world. Kaiba then proceeds to destroy the one in Granpa's possession, leaving him as the sole owner of the remaining three BEWD cards, as well as their fusion card, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. Now, say he had taken the fourth card instead of destroying it. Do you think the show's creators would not have introduced a fusion between all four?All said and done, it's actually kind of scary that the 4-headed card will never get to be played.
But only 3 of the same card can be in your deck(Kaiba says this is why he tore up the fourth one, so it couldn't be took and become an enemy), so how would he get to fuse all 4 if he could only have 3? Maybe it could be a fusion of the Ultimate and Shining Dragon.
- Kaiba's Clone Dragon could be used to make a 4th Blue-Eyes.
Exodia is unlimited in the show
The reason is because it's so rare that the banlist creators thought nobody could get more than one of any piece, so they didn't bother restricting it. Noah Kaiba is now a Net Navi
He said for Mokuba not to worry about him, and he displayed an ability to control the computer systems from inside. He uploaded his brain to the internet and now he challenges people to duels forever on Dueling Network. Yami Yugi/Atem lost to Zorc the first time and was traumatized by it.
Why would he need to seal himself, his memories, and the Big Bad away for 3/5000 years if he'd won? The answer is Atem didn't win at all: the whole sealing thing was to put Zorc's plans of destruction on hold until Atem was ready for a rematch. As for the trauma, while during the series Yami doesn't remember losing to Zorc, he has a very consistent reaction when in duels. If it isn't a duel just for fun and Yami starts losing, he panics. The biggest example is when he played the Orichalcos. Not only was it unnecessary - he had the cards in his hand to last at least one more turn - it ended up costing him the duel and Yugi's soul. Even if Yami had still lost, as long as the Orichalcos hadn't been played then nobody's soul would have been taken at all. Even in non-filler duels, Yami always seems to need Yugi and/or other people goading him to keep going once he thinks he's going to lose...otherwise he freezes up.- I don't recall if it was in the anime, manga, or both, but somewhere during the "rematch" with Zorc it is stated that Atem opted for the sealing method because he wasn't "strong enough" for a complete victory the first time around. It doesn't outright say that Atem lost, but it is vague....
- Makes sense with his persona - he's trained to be the leader who is single-mindedly righteous and able to protect everyone. Had he fought Zorc to the last instead of sealing himself, many more people would have died in addition to Egypt being ruined (this is pretty much what happened in Millennium World - a good deal of his guards were wiped out and the city was incredibly wrecked). By limiting the damage he goes against his own persona and training that he should be able to protect and win. Some form of deep rooted, subconscious PTSD may be kicking in every time he nears a loss - he died the last time he had to draw Zorc to a stalemate, so what must (Ra forbid) completely losing something be like? That's why he needs Yugi - who doesn't have to deal with these sort of stakes - to help him get back some proportion.
Diabound was the most powerful monster in its day.
It defeated Obelisk and Slifer, and the only reason it didn't defeat Ra is because its attack was deflected at the last minute and, for some reason, even duels between real monsters involve taking turns one at a time. But if that hadn't happened, Diabound would have defeated Ra. Also, it borrows the abilities of every monster it defeats, and it can go more or less invisible, and go through walls. All that put together, you have one ridiculously powerful ka! Which is why Pegasus never made it into a true card, exactly as it was supposed to be, and instead made Diabound Kernel- a real Diabound card would've been so overpowered, it would be banned before it was printed!- Diabound never beat Obelisk- in the first fight at the palace, Obelisk knocked Diabound down. Part of the reason it was able to beat Slifer is because Atem had to use Slifer to protect the people in the streets below, and took several hits as a result. Slifer was only beaten at that point because he attempted to use it as a decoy so the others could defeat Bakura's invisibility power. Most of Diabound's strength comes from its special abilities, stealing/copying other's powers, or growing as Bakura acquires the Millennium Items.
- Also, Diabound was also Worf'ed by Ra since it had nowhere to hide. Diabound could only compare to Ra since it had stolen Slifer's power.
Not only are there Egyptian God Cards...there are God Cards for every religion!
And like the Egyptian God Cards, there's a limit of 3 deities per religion. Some include Zeus the Lightning Bearer, Shiva the Destroyer, Buddha the Enlightened One, The Dragon of Yahweh...- Confirmed with the Aesir in 5DS.
That tombkeeper ritual causes the carrier to go crazy.
It's obviously excruciatingly painful, but both Malik and his father end up having a sadistic streak. So for 3/5000 years, the carrier of the memories has always had that dark side which in turn makes them less likely to hold back on their offspring. It makes it a cycle that is sure to perpetuate itself. One of the characters is a Time Lord.
Obligatory. I just don't know who.- Necrolancer?
- One of the few times this Dead Horse Meme actually works, since ZONE from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has a deck revolving around Timelords.
Noah is an evil version of Sealand
- He certainly dresses the part.
Ryou, in the manga at least, is the Reincarnation of the Thief King.
- There are few things that point to it being possible that he has (possibly subconscious) memories of what happened 3000 years ago:
- Ryou is specifically stated to have made the Memory World game and it includes NPCs that the Spirit of the Ring doesn't know about like the guardian of memories. If he had made the board simply based on the Spirit's instructions, it would make no sense for those gamepieces to exist. (Also, if the Spirit was going to guide Ryou every step of the way, one would think he wouldn't put emphasis on the fact that his host had made it and had done a very good job.)
- Ryou's Monster World scenario, which has no indication to have been made by the Spirit (and was made before the Spirit recovered his memories anyway), has Zorc as the final boss.
- It's made clear in the manga that the Spirit is Zorc, not the Thief King. So it's possible that the Thief King was reincarnated like Priest Seto.
- Unlike Akhenaden, the Thief King is never shown to have successfully made a pact with Zorc. This is why the Spirit's "partner" throughout Memory World is Akhenaden's mummy and no mention is made of what happened to the Thief King in the original timeline so it's safe to assume that he died in a way similar to what happened in Memory World.
- The Spirit specifically states that Ryou is his only possible host, which is why he refuses to risk Ryou's life in Battle City and chooses to take Osiris' attack. This would be fairly odd if Ryou had no link with what happened 3000 years ago. Especially since, unlike Yugi and Yami, his personality is a poor match for the Spirit.
Yami Bakura's soul may be Zorc, but his mind is Thief King Bakura's/Ryou.
It would go to explain why Yami Bakura both needed Bakura and seemed to associate himself with the Thief King, along with near-perfectly imitating Ryou. The seed that Zorc left in the Millennium Ring copied down the memories and information of its host(Thief King Bakura), or possibly simply took over and stole his intellect. He likely did the same with Ryou.Pegasus's "New Rules" for Duelist Kingdom were "Out-bullshit your opponent using logic based on the holograms."
This makes the "flying monsters [Harpie Lady] have an advantage against ground-bound units [Tiger Axe]" thing valid, as well as legitimizes the Catapult Turtle Flying Castle Gambit Kazuki Takahashi always knew he was onto a Cash-Cow Franchise.
He only turned the series towards being about Duel Monsters after it was found to be popular, becuase of this, it's possible that he always wanted to turn the series towards being about a certain game eventually, and the early, episodic manga's games were all basically pilots for the featured games to be focal points of the series, Takahashi was just looking for the most popular game, to feature the main arcs on, and 'most popular' here means the one which makes him the most money. The next series in the franchise will have card games underwater.
Well, there are already card games on motorcycles and card games in space, so why not? (The question of how paper cards would last underwater will be ignored for now because, c'mon, this is WMG.)- Presumably, they'd last the same way Yugi's Exodia cards did.
Kaiba ended all wars or at least changed them from traditional warfare
Ok, this is going to sound crazy, however Gouzboro was the CEO of a weapons manufacturing company. When Kaiba took over the company, he changed it into a gaming company. From this point on the entire world seems obsessed with the game Duel Monsters to a ridiculous degree. It only gets worse as the series progresses, allowing a prize of one million yen and any wish possible granted for winning a card game tournament. In GX major universities are set up to teach children how to play this card game, and later it becomes the most popular sport on the planet, and even determines the social status of the citizens. When Kaiba changed the weapons manufacturing company to a gaming company, he essential ended the production of weaponry in Japan. This would later influence other companies to do the same, or perhaps Kaiba corp had actually been in charge of producing all weapons of war on earth. Without any weapons, the world was looking for a new means of settling differences. With the overwhelming success of the game Duel Monsters created by Pegasus. It was decided that this game would be used to settle global affairs. This is why Pegasus and Kaiba seem to be so important in this work and why the world is so into this card game. Every world decision is dictated by it. Essentially, Kaiba and Pegasus control the entire world. When Yugi was declared king of games, he was actually being crowned the most powerful man alive. He could've been president or dictator, however he turned it down. In Yugioh GX, they are essentially teaching future world leaders and soldiers. This is why Chazz's brothers wanted him to be a champion. If they control Duel Monsters they control the world. Not as ridiculous sounding now.- This may not be so far off: in ARC-V, we see that the parallel universe equivalent of Duel Academy in the Fusion Dimension is essentially a military base and the staging point of the invasion of alternate Heartland.
The Wheelers/Jonouchi's divorced because of infidelity
When Serenity/Shizuka sent Joey the tape in the manga, she advised him not to tell their father. This is because Mrs. Wheeler had an affair, and when Mr. Wheeler found out, he became hostile towards Serenity. Weevil/Haga and Rex/Ryuzaki thought they were dreaming during most of the Doma arc
When they both wake up in a hospital after regaining their souls, it's implied that they think it was All Just a Dream. Pretty understandable, considering all that had happened. One fairly plausible interpretation of this would be that, after they lost their souls the first time that arc, they woke up in a truly confused state at all that had happened and both assumed that they had actually fallen asleep and were dreaming. As things became more and more surreal and fantastic, their belief that they were dreaming became more and more plausible to them. There are a few things supporting this:- It would explain why they seemed nearly fearless when biking off a cliff to catch a rope ladder hanging from a helicopter and why things, like Yugi losing his soul in front of them and it turning out that Yugi was a Pharaoh in his past life, didn't seem to phase these two mostly ordinary boys nearly as much as it should have. Nothing is too scary or surprising when you "know" you're dreaming.
- It would make Rex's suddenly villainous behavior a lot more believable as he'd been a mostly decent, if jerkish, guy before all this.
- It would also explain why Haga (a usually smart, if ass-holish, guy) seemed to catch an Idiot Ball in taunting Yami by telling him that he Yugi's soul was inside a card, then ripping it up afterwards. Everything looked to be going his way and so he assumed that there would be no repercussions for venting some anger on what he saw as a dream manifestation of the person who'd ruined his dueling career.
- When they both woke up in perfectly good condition, without Yugi or anyone else around to prove that everything had happened, they assumed that it had just been a dream and then went on their merry way without ever discussing the incident in detail later. As for why they still seemed so determined to defeat their rivals despite knowing they were just dreaming, well, if you found yourself caught in a lucid dream, what would you do? Whatever you want, probably. They chose to live out their fantasies, for just a fleeting bit of joy. Thus, their treating it more like a fun game when they joined the cult without seeming too somber about the whole thing. Just a fantasy.
- Which, in the original Japanese, becomes even more plausible. Haga had only hinted at some interest in Tea/Anzu back in Battle City, calling her a "cute lady" in a flirting manner. He was silently rejected when she was squicked out. Here, Haga seems a lot more open about it, telling her she looks horrible not long before saying that she shouldn't feel proud "just because she's cute." Why bother holding back from saying exactly what you feel when the girl is just a dream version of herself anyway?
Akhenaden was the one sealed in the Millenium Ring
He robbed the pharaoh Atem and his followers of their Millenium Items so he is a thief and the Manga itself states that he is Zork(though it seems they treat the Akhenaden memory that normally appears in the Memory World as seperate from Zork AKA the real Akhenaden who makes the memory of himself a servant and it seems the power he made deals with the first time was called The Darkness which is Japanese name of the villain of Yugioh GX: Nightshroud) and the spirit of the Millenium Ring is part of Zork and considering his cruelty to Bakura which may an attempt to continue the torment Akhenaden gave to the Thief King who's Bakura's past life(in the manga Atem calls him Bakura which caused everyone else to do that).]] Marik had a Villainous Crush on Anzu.
Just the way he used her body suggests this. The reason the Yugi/Yami/Anzu Love Triangle never got resolved was because Yugi loved Anzu, Anzu loved Yami, and Yami loved Yugi.
Basically, it was a serious case of All Love Is Unrequited. Alternatively, it was a side effect of Yami Yugi being planned just as Yugi's alter ego to begin with.
When things changed, Takahashi had a mess not easily resolved, so he gave a Maybe Ever After answer instead.
Exodia is God
More specifically: an incarnation of the Abrahamic deity YHWH, as understood by the Egyptians holding the Hebrews in bondage. The idea of an all-powerful mythic figure who effortlessly dominates all others (hence: Exodia's status as an Instant-Win monster) seems wrong for Egyptian paganism, but it fits perfectly with a monotheistic religion that believes in one God superior to all others. In the context of the game, Exodia is "the Forbidden One" because worship of YHWH was forbidden in the pharaoh's domain, but YHWH was still feared by the Egyptians who recognized the possibility of the Hebrews revolting against their masters. Even his name alludes to the Book of Exodus, which chronicles the Hebrews' liberation; when the player unites the five Exodia cards, Exodia breaks his chains and effortlessly slaughters all opposition, just as the Hebrews would eventually break their chains as YHWH razed the pharaoh's kingdom with plagues.- Actually, if anything, the combination of Egyptian religion and hints of monotheism suggest that Exodia might be intended to represent Aten, the sun disk worshipped by the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten, the worship of which was forbidden after Akhenaten's death.
Exodia is based off of the legend of Osiris.
There is a legend that says that, at one point, Osiris was cut up into 14 pieces, and, though immortal, he couldn't do anything until all of the pieces were reassembled. Likewise, putting together the 5 pieces of Exodia gives you the power equivalent to an Egyptian God.- Slifer is called Osiris in Japanese.
Pharaoh Atem used games as a means of negotiation.
In the manga he somehow knows how people can cheat at dice and card games. Presumably in the past he challenged people to high stakes games and when word spread about what a strong gamer he was, they started trying to cheat to win so he learnt various ways people try to cheat throughout his life.
In the new movie, Kaiba will show off the latest development in Duel monsters: Synchro Summoning.
If ever there was a time to them to show off Azure-Eyes Silver Dragon, it would be this.- Unlikely. The new movie takes place six months after the end of the original series, placing it nine years before GX. So unless an explanation can be found for why Kaiba kept Synchro Monsters a secret for ten years, this seems doubtful.
The new movie will show how Yugi got the Winged Kuriboh card.
It'd be a good opportunity to bridge the gap with GX. Horakhty actually arranged the events of the entire series.
Let's look at Millennium World - the Millennium Items were made using a spell inscribed in an ancient, mystical tome that was in a language that had to be decoded. What if the gods themselves were the ones to create the tome, in order to give humans a means to release them, and set up the ultimate test of humanity? Just like everything has balance in Egyptian mythology, so did the acts needed to settle the game between light and darkness - the strength to sacrifice everything about oneself (Yami), and the courage of unity, kindness and perseverance (Yugi) - have to apply the same logic? In combining the two, alongside allies, the darkness is defeated and Horakty's pawn wins against Zorc, and humans themselves get to teach the gods where ultimate power comes from - unity! Yami Bakura has brainwashed normal Bakura to want to keep and wear the Millennium Ring
(The following is based on really fussily specific examples from the manga.) By the end of the first arc where Bakura appears, he seems irrationally fond of the Ring but realizes he shouldn't wear it any more — he pulls it out of his backpack, everyone shouts at him, and he responds that it's fine as long as he doesn't actually wear it. However, he eventually starts wearing it all the time again. During the Battle City semifinals, when Yami Yugi duels Yami Bakura, Yami Yugi starts sternly lecturing at him (seeming to think of him as just regular Bakura) for wearing the Millennium Ring. However, after the end of the tournament, when Bakura asks Yami Yugi where the Ring is, Honda whispers to Yami Yugi not to tell him, and Yami Yugi gets a panicky look on his face and basically goes, "I haven't seen any Millennium Ring around here, no idea what you're talking about!" It should be trivially easy to convince a good-natured kid to stop getting himself possessed by a homicidal evil spirit, but everyone seems to just give up and resort to lying, without actually holding it against Bakura in any way that his behavior seems dumb and/or malicious. And then when he does find it, he looks very innocently pleased about it, like he's not even aware it's dangerous.This would probably make the most sense if they believed he just can't not try to hang onto the Ring. Maybe Yami Bakura or some inherent property of the Ring and/or Millennium Items generally makes him irrationally possessive of it. It's sort of like how hypnosis is sometimes said to work; for instance, if someone hypnotizes you to fall asleep when they say "goodnight", then you would theoretically do that whether or not you thought it was a good idea.
So, a possibility is that Yami Bakura has hypnotized him somehow so that whenever he doesn't have the Ring, he feels a strong need to go find it, without giving a second thought to what a terrible idea that always is. Maybe if Yami Bakura implants a command into his brain, it still works even when he's not wearing the Ring and Yami Bakura can't directly control him. This would be a super-useful self-preservation trick for Yami Bakura and certainly something he'd want to do if he could. Possibly Yami Bakura also tinkers with his host's memories from time to time, so he forgets that by any measure he should be sick to death of Yami Bakura's shenanigans by now. This would explain why despite the fact Bakura has no real incentive to hang on to the Ring, he keeps doing so anyway. So basically even when he seems to be in control, Yami Bakura can still limit his free will. Creepy.
Normal Marik's team would've been the Gravekeeper card set.
The TCG Gravekeeper cards still fit with the old classic mechanics. Generally, the main characters use cards that reflect their personality or something about their past. It's possible that originally, Marik's strategy used a Gravekeeper deck as both a nod to his past and a symbol of vengeance("behold Pharaoh, the wrath of the Tomb Keepers!") He may have even commissioned them to reflect his own family...that, or the ones in GX had their artwork changed from the original thanks to his Heel–Face Turn.Atem is literally a bastard
He doesn't resemble his dad, Akhenaden, at all. He does look almost exactly like Shimon, his dad's adviser/Yugi's grandpa's past incarnation, between the short stature and the spiky tricolor hair. Maybe his mom had an affair with Shimon, and Akhenaden chose to ignore it. Now, why you'd ignore the fact your kid looks nothing like you but does bear a suspiciously close resemblance to someone you know... maybe Akhenaden was having trouble begetting an heir, and decided to just accept Atem as his heir?- Or maybe Shimon is related to Atem? It probably wasn't uncommon to have family members populate the royal court, and Shimon does act more like family to Atem than we see with the other characters.
Atem's mother's death was linked to his birth.
Atem's mother appears in a single panel, holding him as a child. If we assume Atem was born around the time of the creation of the Millennium Items, it's possible that his mother died of complications from the birth shortly after. We certainly never see her again in any flashback in the manga, and the anime supports this even more - Shimon is holding Atem after his birth, and his father teaches him how to walk. Yugi or Yami might be victims of Disassociative Identity Disorder, or Multiple Personality Syndrome.
In Yugi's case, he initially doesn't remember what his other persona does, and said persona is wildly different than he is. Similarly, Atem may have had it before he died - the conflict between being the strong Pharaoh and a fallible human causes his soul to divide on death. The strong part is sealed, the more vulnerable but kinder part is reborn as Yugi. Yugi will become a Replacement Goldfish for Yami in the movie.
The art shows Yugi not wearing the Puzzle, suggesting it takes place after series' end. Yugi's eyes, while still round, have become slightly slanted at the edges when compared with original series artwork - they look more like Atem's. And given that Yugi is now significantly taller, and also has Dan Green for a voice actor, he could easily start acting more like his 'father' figure Atem. Beating Kaiba in the movie would be a good start.- Jossed. Yugi duels a bit but is going his own direction as a game designer, and doesn't defeat or form a rivalry with Kaiba.
Duel disks use psychic technology.
For starters, there seems to be no physical mechanism that slots the disk into place. The characters just hold their arms up and it moves, all on its own. The way the characters activate the disks is likely inconsistent too. In addition to this, sometimes the monsters move and act on their own- for instance, the Battle City duel between Kaiba and Yugi has Slifer laughing at Kaiba in the anime because he forgot about Slifer's second ability, and oftentimes Yugi and his Dark Magician/Dark Magician girl mirror one another in terms of pose/posture. This is because the disks are psychic - they pick up the moods and bond of the monsters to the wielders, and slot into place when needed. Kaiba is such a skeptic of magic in the English Dub because he wants to hide the true nature behind his tech - either for business reasons or he himself didn't put it there - much like the God Cards, the disks took on a life of their own.Unlike the real life game, starter decks don't come with a rule booklet.
Looking yugioh Gx's duel school where they apparently had class about seemingly rules that don't need an entire course to go over, and then move forward to Arc-5 where apparently most people don't generally know how to use fusions, syncro's and Xyz cards without some sort of class, and people freak out whenever somebody does a special summon like that makes me think nobody ever even read a rule book. I propose that after Kaiba corp started his duel academy he used his influence to have Pegusus stop providing rule booklets so he give people a reason to pay to duel academy. Result was people kind of had to learn the game through play and thus by the time arc 5 comes about people are confused on even the simplest mechanics, and are trusting that the duel disks will mediate the rules well enough to the point that a duel isn't called off when Yuya just make up a new never seen before game mechanic on the spot. In the series the Exodia limb cards are common, but the main exodia card is near non existent rare.
I always question how nobody could figure out how Exodia functioned within the anime, the only expanation I could come up with is that the main exodia card (the head) is really damn rare so few had ever read the text on it explaining how the effect works. The effect has to be on the card somewhere since otherwise in a duel without holograms you have no way of proving you are properly using exodia effect and people would probally call bullshit on you having an instant win just by having five specfic cards in your hand. The God cards have a unshown ability in the manga and anime that negates the effect of Exodia.
I always found it weird that they claimed in the show that Exodia was less powerful then the god cards when Exodia wins the entire game just by being summoned unlike the god cards. That the only way I can figured the god cards could be called more powerful. Making a duel monster's card that will function correctly is a lot harder then it sounds in this universe.
Think about while the toon cards were too powerful to see normal distribution they were still beatable, if Pegusus could just make any card he wanted it would make more sense to just have something like his cards had 10k attacks with piercing damage or just a card he can play that allows him to automatically win the duel with no cost. Another example of this in play would be way further in Arc Five when Reiji Akaba first used his own pendulum cards and they glitched out. The look on his face suggested despite printing the cards he really did not expect this to happen, and probably didn't not write on the card that disadvantage (in a more meta point a lot of pendulum cards I seen outside of Yuya's seem to specified you can only special summon monsters in the pendulum card's proper archetype). In general you can't just write text on a card and print it and expect it to work exactly as written some times, perhaps the card game is limited by what actually exist in the duel monster realm or something- Additionally, even when using supernatural powers to make a card on-the-fly, you have to make a balancing act between power and cost. Jack combined the power of the crimson dragon with it's evil counterpart, making a monster with the potential for a massive attack boost that at the same time was also hard to kill. In the process, he had to make it hard to summon, by making it require 2 tuners and his ace monster.
Mokuba is Transgender
...Or something of that sort. He was actually born a girl, but identifies himself as a boy, likely due to being in a position of power so people would take him seriously (Not that women in positions of power can't be taken seriously, mind you). Seto, being his brother, is totally cool with it, but still secretly sees him as his sister (which explains why Mokuba is a "princess" in the Virtual World).- Alternatively, Mokuba is trans girl, but isn't out (either out of fear or a desire to not cause media trouble for KaibaCorp) and the Virtual World Princess being a girl is Kaiba's way of being supportive
Shadi is a member of the tombkeeper clan
...which is probably kind of a no-brainer. But, specifically, he's probably closely related to the Ishtars, because he basically looks like Ishizu
◊, just with Empty Eyes and a turban. He's probably operating on behalf of the clan and that's why he's always up to his mysterious nudging-the-plot-along business. That also might somehow be why in Dark Side of Dimensions, he's seen taking care of a bunch of kids who are basically Suspiciously Similar Substitutes for the Ishtar kids? Somehow, maybe, I don't know, work with me here! Maybe it's somehow a thing that he particularly sympathizes with them. Odion is the best duelist in the show.
He totally was about to win against Joey before Marik idiotically made him try to play Ra. And Joey, as we know, was also seconds away from winning to Marik, and was implied to have beaten Yugi (getting his Red-Eyes back) at the very end of Battle City. Odion also won ALL the Locator Cards for both himself and Marik to enter the finals, and he did it honorably, without any of the cheating tactics his boss and various other villains are so fond of. Not really COMPLETELY conclusive evidence, but still, he's got to be better than people give him credit for, and it's a shame we didn't get to see him duel more. The original ancient Egyptian Shadow Game was created by, had its' creation influenced by, or was based on a creation of Nyalrathotep
First of all, there's the game's origin in ancient Egypt and focus on shadows, plus Nyalrathotep's strong association with both ancient Egypt and darkness, such as the best-known of his "thousand masks" being the Black Pharoh. Second, this would fit his Modeus Operadi of giving people power and watching what happens. It's possible that the Black Pharoh was the guise in which he introduced the game to the Egyptian people, and that at least some of the cards are based on/draw power from Old Ones/Outer Gods/what have you. Zorc, and, by extension, the Millenium Items, is either a Great Old One or another avatar similar to the Haunter in the Dark. All authentic Duel Monsters cards have RFID chips embedded in them
Not only does this account for how Duel Disks and Duel Arenas can read the cards, but it provides a neigh foolproof way for judges at tournaments to detect counterfeits. The Duel Monsters were War Machines created by Ancient Astronauts or Advanced Ancient Humans
Especially Egypt and/or Atlantis, who both used to be highly advanced civilized superpowers that dominated the world until after the discovery of Orichalcum from some ancient aliens where they competed for acquisition of the precious resource as a source of Energy. They abused Orichalcum to create wonders of technology, culminating in the use of artificial programs (the aforementioned Duel Monsters) as weapons capable of transmutation of the basic data that compose all matter, that which will seem as godlike or monstrous entities whose abilities can be perceived as Magic. Eventually, Egypt and Atlantis deployed these Weapons of Mass Destruction against each other, and though Egypt won, it was so utterly devastated that they decided to censor all knowledge of past ancient technologies, dialling back their advancements to the Bronze age so that they could survive and avoid the mistakes of the past abuse of using Duel Monsters for war. In the official tournament rules of Duel Monsters, using supernatural powers to gain an advantage, unlike mundane cheating, is explicitly allowed.
Hence all those fake psychic duelists. The 4kids dub of the Yugioh franchise takes place in an alternate universe where Post-WWII Japan was outright annexed by America instead of merely being occupied
Japan's annexation means that the officials don't have time to destroy their records, which means that Japanese citizens are mostly ostracized. As a result, Sugoroku Mutou legally changes his name to the more anglicized-sounding "Solomon Muto" in an attempt to be accepted by the American citizens. It isn't until the early 80's, when things have died down a bit, that giving children Japanese names again becomes more common (hence Yugi's, Mokuba's, Seto's, and Bakura's first names).Furthermore, during the Duelist Kingdom arc characters are seen traveling by boat from a Tokyo-looking city in a westward direction towards an island. In Yugioh GX, the characters (all of whom are speaking English and who have anglophone first names) are seen traveling westward by helicopter to a volcanic island in what is presumably the Pacific. In the DOMA arc, the characters travel to America (rather than traveling to a specific part of America) by plane.
Finally, the main characters are shown attending a school with traditional Japanese school uniforms. Given that the area of Domino City that the school is in doesn't seem to be impoverished and given that the school itself doesn't seem to be catholic, there's a possibility that this was merely a tradition carried over from the Japanese education system.
Furthermore, this applies to every 4Kids dub (except for those that take place in their own world like Pokemon or One Piece) as well as every other dubbed anime from that time in which the dubbers Americanized the character names and otherwise hid the fact that it was Japanese. (Megaman NT Warrior and the Nelvana Card Captors dub also come to mind.)
Oricalchos is Warpstone
...What? I don't see anyone else coming up with better theories for where it comes from. The Dark Magician's powers come from the Shadow Realm.
His Dark Magic attack causes the screen to briefly invert, which is the same effect that occurs when someone is sent to the Shadow Realm. Thief King Bakura has ocular albinism and Ryou Bakura has oculocutaenous albinism, but Ryou wears colored cotact lenses. Both have the vision problems inherent to the condition.
This neatly explains Thief King Bakura's purple eyes (blue is a structural color) and Ryou having different eye colors in every adaptation. (It does not explain the thief king's hair, but it doesn't need to. People can have natural green hair in this universe.) inherent to the condition.Furthermore, it explains why Ryou prefers to play Monster World with large text on his laptop, and only gets into Duel Monsters after the advent of hologram dueling makes everyone start reading the effects of their cards out loud.
The in-universe rules for Duel Monsters explicitly make lore exceptions, and Pegasus sells lore books the way Tabletop RPGs sell splat books.
That's why Duelist Kingdom had so much lore/roleplaying focus. It's also why everyone knows lore that isn't on the cards, like:- Their main monsters' attack names
- Summoned Skull has electricity attacks
- Iron Knight is made of metal and therefore can't be parasitized by a bug (that was Battle City, not Duelist Kingdom)
It's also why characters are frequently blindisded by the lore of theme decks they're not intimately familiar with.
A lot of the plot convenience in Season 4 was from Japanese writers underestimating the size of America
The abridged series mocks how everything is conveniently located; Professor Hawkins's house is close to where they dueled Mai, which is close to Death Valley. A common mistake for non-Americans is thinking the country is smaller than it really is. Rebecca is of partial Japanese descent.
Because it would otherwise be highly unlikely that a 12-year-old American child (worse in the dub, where she's 8) who never had any reason to go to Japan before would be completely fluent enough in the language to have complex conversations with native speakers. At best, Americans are only taught Spanish as a foreign language because of the Hispanic minority and southern border with Mexico, and even then, the education isn't very good at the primary school level. A more exotic language like Japanese wouldn't even be an option. True, Rebecca is a Child Prodigy, and there was a man in Real Life who learned a foreign language from scratch in seven days, but he had savant syndrome and Rebecca clearly has too good social skills to be likewise, despite being a Spoiled Brat. But if she has Japanese family, then she could conceivably have been learning it for years. Maybe Arthur married a Japanese woman or something? They could conceivably have met through Sugoroku... Kazuki Takahashi is really bad at card games.
The man might love games, but it’s clear that he has little idea what makes them actually work. For evidence, I cite the first ever duel between Yugi and Kaiba, which was going to be the only time Magic & Wizards would ever appear had it not inspired massive amounts of fan mail. The game resembles War—the least skillful card game in existence—much more than it does Magic: The Gathering which it was allegedly a Captain Ersatz of. Look at the plays: each player has only one monster out at a time, can only beat the opponent’s monster by summoning one with higher attack, and all but two of their cards are so weak that they are only played as fodder—even Kaiba, the national champion. Only two spells are in the entire duel, the first just turning a beatstick into a bigger beatstick and the second being a Deus ex Machina. Not a single monster has an effect, making every monster in the game an interchangeable generic beater and giving no reason for weak monsters to ever be in a deck. Effect monsters and trap cards aren’t until Duelist Kingdom, thus the early duels have no strategy whatsoever, just “whoever draws the strongest monster first wins”. Compare this to series based on preexisting card games, where all the characters have a clear strategy and understand things like card advantage, and it’s obvious Duel Monsters was an afterthought.Rishid is related to Malik and Isis's mother
In the anime version, Malik and Isis's mother has the same eye color
◊ as Rishid. Additionally, someone would have probably had to have prior knowledge of the tombkeeper clan to leave them a Doorstop Baby. If, for instance, Rishid's mother or father was a sibling of Malik and Isis's mother, it'd be consistent with the shared eye color and the fact whoever abandoned him probably knew about the wacky underground cult living there. Although, of course, leaving a baby with Papa Ishtar seems like about the worst thing you could possibly do to a child.The Freudian Excuses/Backstories for the Other Duelists
Since we all know what Mai's, Ishizu's and Ryota/Mako's backstories, it's possible that the other duelists in the 1998 anime, Haga/Weevil, Ryuzaki/Rex, Keith, Kozuka/Bonz, Esper/Espa Roba, have backstories too that never really got any attention and may explain why they're the way they are in terms of behavior.- Haga/Weevil came from an upper-middle class family where he was neglected constantly by his parents and bullied by other kids due to his nerdy exterior and bug obsession, resulting in him turning to Duel Monsters as a way to get away from all the drama.
- Ryuzaki/Rex had an Abusive Dad and a Missing Mom, which led him to play Duel Monsters as a coping mechanism.
- Keith had lost everything due to a tragedy in his life, explaining why he's a jerk to just about everyone.
- Kozuka/Bonz was bullied for his Horrifying Looks and took up playing Duel Monsters to get revenge on those who bullied him.
- and Esper/Espa lost his parents in an accident and took up playing Duel Monsters so he can get the awards to take care of his four younger brothers.
