Fanon / Bleach

• The fandom splits the Arrancar Arc into five arcs: the "Arrancar Invasion Arc", "Hueco Mundo Arc", "Turn Back the Pendulum Arc", "Fake Karakura Town Arc" and "Deicide Arc", even organising its TV Tropes entries accordingly. This is despite Word of God calling it a single, long Arrancar Arc in interviews. The manga itself backs up the interviews; the beginning of the Arrancar Arc (Chapter 182) is given a rare subtitle, called "Trigger for a New Concerto" to kick it off, and Volume 48 confirms at the end of Chapter 423 that the Arrancar Arc has ended and that the next volume will kick off a new arc, the Lost Agent Arc. The Arrancar Arc is therefore a single continuous arc spanning Chapters 182-423 (Volumes 21-48) and not five separate arcs as the fandom tends to think.
• There is a wide-spread belief that Ukitake's eyes are green in the manga and that his eyes being brown in the anime is a case of Adaptation Dye-Job. In fact, the anime is right. His eyes are brown in the manga, as shown in Chapter 116 and at least two supplemental databooks. The reason fans think his eyes are green in the manga is because of a special colour picture in Chapter 335 which had a "green on white" theme. Kubo changed Ukitake's eyes to green for that picture to match the theme and fans have believed his eyes are green ever since.
• A lot of the fandom is convinced that Byakuya's power is pink when released with the exception of his final technique which is white. In fact, this belief stems from the anime where Byakuya's power in shikai and bankai are coloured pink with the exception of his final bankai technique. In the manga, however, his power is white in all forms, as revealed in the color chapters of his fight with Ichigo (which also reveals Ichigo's reiatsu is, in fact, yellow in the manga).
• It is almost universally accepted that Ichigo's father Isshin is or was a member of the shinigami Royal Guard. The manga eventually reveals he was the Tenth Division captain and introduces the five Royal Guard members. That should have killed this belief, but the theory continues to exist that he could have been the Tenth Division captain and now is secretly Royal Guard.
• There's a wide-spread view that the manga has proven that Orihime is a Fullbringer because Fullbring is activated on a physical object with a mystical light and Orihime's powers also activate via a physical object with a mystical light. Not only are many different kinds of powers activated with a light of some kind, including certain non-Fullbring human powers, but the manga doesn't make any conscious attempt to connect Orihime's abilities to Fullbring. This is in contrast to Chad who has been explicitly associated with Fullbring by the manga. Ironically, this interpretation would later go on to be stated to be true in Bleach: Cannot Fear Your Own World, where it is stated her powers are a Fullbring, just slightly different.
• The Hogyoku is often believed to be able to make any wish come true. Aizen explicitly states, however, that the Hougyoku is only capable of affecting desires that are possible to achieve without it.
• Large parts of the fandom believe Aizen is immortal because he has the Hougyoku inside him. However, the manga doesn't actually claim that. The person who knows the most, Urahara, says Aizen is "almost impossible" to kill but never claims he's completely impossible to kill. It's the panicky, judgmental Central 46 who interpret Aizen's state as "immortal". However, Urahara's words suggest that interpretation is inaccurate, something a large part of the fandom tend to ignore. The final arc in particular makes it clear that Aizen is actually killable, but that it is so hard to do, even for beings more powerful than him, that nobody tries to outright kill him, and he is able to regenerate enough that people focus on disabling him instead.
• Arrancars' holes are... sensitive around the edges, at least according to fans.
• There's a persistent belief within the fandom that a person loses their memories when they move on to the afterlife, reinforced by the first movie which claims the same thing. However, the canon does not support this belief. When Ichigo's group first arrives in Soul Society, they meet Shibata whose soul they saved when he was trapped in the cockatiel. He completely remembers everything that happened while he was alive, and while he was being protected by Sado. Shibata's adopted brother has been in Soul Society much longer and remembers exactly when and where he died (1947). Hisana and Rukia died together in the World of the Living and Hisana never, ever forgot they were sisters. Renji once comments that the driving goal of all people who die and come to Soul Society is to search through Soul Society to try and find the blood relatives they had in life. When Mayuri talks about all the dead quincies he experimented on, it's clear they all have memories from when they were alive and their beliefs remain intact; certainly Souken's memories never faded after his death, as Mayuri uses them to taunt Uryuu. Ginjo, Tsukishima and Giriko showing up later in the Blood War Arc to help Ichigo is another example of this, since they are virtually unchanged from their Human World depictions back when they were alive.
• Bleach's infamous Ship Wars has led to a significant portion of the fandom treating the canonical epilogue as a Bad Ending for the series. Though nothing in the series says this outright, the interpretation is usually justified by indicating how each of the leads ends up in a place that is directly opposed to their character arc; Ichigo seems to just be content settling down with no indication of having powers, Orihime becoming entirely dependent on Ichigo as his wife, Chad becoming a boxer (thus using his fists for something other than protection), and Uryu not even participating in the finale and becoming like the father he had a troubled relationship with. There's also a weird emphasis that both Ichigo and Rukia (and implicitly their spouses, Orihime and Renji) have trouble keeping track of their children, bordering on Parental Neglect, though in the original material, this is clearly meant to be no worse than a Hilariously Abusive Childhood. This interpretation is even encouraged in a lot of the post-epilogue content, including Rukia making a joke that Ichigo and Orihime are estranged, which he neither confirms nor denies.
• Due to being one of the only alive characters at the end of the series to never reveal his Bankai, a number of fans believe that either Aizen never unlocked Bankai due to how frankly overpowered Kyoka Suigetsu is for a mere Shikai, and instead pretended to have unlocked it in order to meet the requirement for a Captain position, or that Kyoka Suigetsu is actually Aizen's Bankai, and he doesn't use his Shikai because it isn't strong enough to be of value, instead lying about it being a Shikai in order to have an edge during combat. Neither have been supported by the series, but since Aizen's Bankai never once comes up, nothing in the series ever outright confirms or denies this either.
• During the final arc, none of the Captains with Hollow Masks ever use them, and they aren't ever acknowledged to have them or why they do not use them. Some fans interpret this as them being told they could never use their masks if they want to be Captains again (Mashiro being the closest to an exception, only doing it upon Kensei's orders and in a training environment), given that at least another former Captain, Love, doesn't rejoin Soul Society, and does use his mask when he briefly joins the battle.
• Due to how the petals that appeared when Toshiro used his bankai were originally implied to be a timer for how long he could use it only to later be stated to be for how long he can remain in his normal form, some fans headcanon that the change was due to Toshiro having not yet mastered bankai, making the petals a timer for the bankai, but after training in the timeskip, gained mastery over it, and so the petals changed to a limit on his normal form. This isn't outright confirmed, though ironically Kubo himself would go on to semi confirm this to be true after the series ended, clarifying that the petals would have hurt him before he mastered his bankai, making the petals a time limit still, just not the way fans thought.