Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance:
- There are eight partner monsters but you can only field up to six Digimon at a time. Thus, two are guaranteed to die outside of a New Game Plus.
- The party likes to believe that Haru and Miyuki were just innocent tag-along kids who can't defend themselves, although Haru seems to be very annoyed by the idea. That's because Haru (the boy) is actually Renamon, who has been running around alongside Miyuki for thousands of years in the alternate world and has her Mega form on default, implying that small-scale monster attacks no longer faze him because he fended them all off.
- It makes sense that Haru found all the useful items he gives you at the first half of the game when you consider he is also a Kemonogami like Agumon. He likely dug them up or looted them off-screen.
- When you're fighting Ebonwumon in Part 10 of the Truthful Route, his Mugen is a single target attack as opposed to the player or Mugen Recollection variant's full area-of-effect. He's likely still suffering from being worn out by Renamon's Kenzoku when you decide to fight him.
- Despite he killed at least Baihumon offscreen and likely also got Ebonwumon and Azulongmon, the Master seems to be actually easier than some encounters before him. There's still one place he never gets to no matter what — the abandoned school where Zhuqiaomon resides.
- Minoru is the child chosen to wield Zhuqiaomon's power once you defeat him. There's one thing in common among them, and that's they survive every route in the game.
- Puppetmon is very weak to water in this game. In Digimon Adventure, MetalGarurumon is the one who killed Puppetmon with a single point-blank Freezing Breath, which is a water attack here.
- How does Piedmon's Trump Sword attack always hit the target as if it were a back flank regardless of alignment? The swords are teleported right behind the enemy.
- Before his death (or rescue in Truthful route), Ryo often feels like he's not part of the group. He once again reiterated to Takuma even if only as Renamon's illusion. This makes sense in the context of the story, but when you examine the kids again and compare them to the Digimon Adventure cast:
- Takuma is clearly a parallel to Taichi, as the resident gogglehead and eventually the leader of the group.
- Despite their opposite personalities, Minoru is the counterpart to Koushirou/Izzy, who often act as the leader's confidant.
- Aoi is Sora, the caring Team Mom girl of the group.
- Shuuji is Joe's parallel, the oldest, glasses-wearing guy in the group with a strong sense of responsibility.
- Saki is Mimi, the girly, expressive girl of the group.
- Kaito and Miu are Yamato/Matt and Takeru/T.K., the sibling duo with a brash, protective older sibling.
- Miyuki is Hikari, the Sixth Ranger little girl with the ability to communicate to a higher being.
- This leaves Ryo as the only one without a clear Adventure counterpart. No wonder he feels left out. He's an original character among a gang of Expies.
- Alternately, his counterpart is Ryo Akiyama, a game-only Adventure protagonist... who despite being canonical enough to be in Digimon Tamers is NEVER mentioned in Adventure or Zero Two. So, he's 'there' but not acknowledged.
- Ryo's Kunemon evolves into BanchoStingmon in the Truthful route. This could be just dissed as a unique choice for a partner Ultimate evolution (since BanchoStingmon is one of the more under-represented Digimon in the series), but BanchoStingmon is also a Free-type monster — neither Moral, nor Wrathful, nor Harmonious. Ryo never comes out alive out of the Truthful Route, since all of the three routes represent an attribute while BanchoStingmon has no attributes at all.
- Shuuji's Lopmon evolves into Cherubimon. On top of being a part of said monster's canon evolution line, Cherubimon is the second greatest of the Three Angels rather than the greatest (Seraphimon). Once his sanity is restored, Shuuji gives up trying to become a leader, which is the root source of his distrust against anyone that isn't him, and is content being the professor's assistant, making the choice more meaningful than just Lopmon's canonical evolution.
- Miu's Syakomon being chosen as Azulongmon's wielder might not make much sense since the former is a clam but the latter is a massive, serpentine dragon, but there is a legend of a dragon creature known as the Shen
, a type of monster that starts out as a clam, but metamorphoses into a mirage-inducing dragon. It can also symbolize her desire of breaking out from her shell of being completely dependent on Kaito's protection being fulfilled. - Agumon's final evolutions on each route have the attribute represented by their routes. WarGreymon and Omegamon are Vaccine/Moral, Machinedramon is Virus/Wrathful and Dinorexmon is Data/Harmonious. What's the Truthful/"Free" evolution of Agumon? Fanglongmon, whose attribute is the unique "Free" attribute UNKNOWN/NO DATA.
- Renamon gains all of her evolution stages when you unlock her, but Gabumon doesn't, despite they join at around the same window as literal 11th Hour Rangers. While Renamon has been fighting alongside Miyuki for at least 6,000 years in the other world's viewpoint, Gabumon is separated from Haru, or rather the young professor for around the same amount of time, and is thus stuck as Garurumon until their bonds return.
- At the start of each playthrough, Agumon is always the first monster you'll encounter. In routes where Gabumon reunites with the professor, he's the tenth and final partner and unlocks MetalGarurumon as soon as he joins. Furthermore, MetalGarurumon is only available in Free Battles during the first section of the Truthful Route's Chapter 13, making it the last recruitable monster encountered. The story begins with The Hero Agumon, and ends with his lancer counterpart Gabumon.
Fridge Horror:
- As soon as Takuma and co. enters the other world, the first thing they see is a bed of Spider Lilies. The Spider Lily, also known as the Lycoris flower, is often associated with death in East Asia. It's a form of visual storytelling that foreshadows that someone is going to die or the place is the land of the dead, and is an ominous sign that their adventure in the other world is not fun and games, and someone will not get out to the other side and tell the tale. The latter interpretation that a field of spider lilies = someone entering the land of the dead might also reinforce Ryo's delusional beliefs that the place he and several others entered might be the afterlife.
- There's no way for Takuma and co. to reasonably explain to Ryo and Shuuji's family about how they died, assuming they have any left. If Takuma told Shuuji's father and brother that the Kayama family's elder brother went insane in his school trip and got eaten by a monster he was projecting his delusional mental state on, nobody would really believe it. Worse is Aoi's case in the Wrathful Route, because telling them their daughter became an insane monster who wants to absorb every human being in the world and thus had to be put down would be even more outlandish than just telling them she died in another world.
- Considering partner Kemonogami are reflections of their fated humans, if Renamon was always connected to Miyuki all along and she's willing to resort to cooperating with the Master to get her body back and potentially driving Aoi or Kaito into the deep end, one only wonders if she was just that desperate in breaking out from the Master's grasp by all means necessary that it started reflecting on her Kemonogami too.
- Children aren't the only thing the Kenzoku take as sacrifices for the Master — they also take other Kemonogami, aside that unlike the human victims who were trapped half-aware within the Master, we don't know where his monster victims end up at. Unless...any Kemonogami who were taken by the Kenzoku turn into one themselves?
- We're told that Plutomon is a dark biomerge between Aoi and Labramon when they're in their heights of despair. But Plutomon is also one of Labramon's canonical evolution forms that it naturally evolves to like Anubismon, and unlike other Dark Evolutions, the Aoi-Plutomon is far from being the rampaging monsters past Dark Evolutions are. The only other Dark Evolution who possesses this level of intelligence is the GulusGammamon from Digimon Ghost Game which is later revealed to be not even a Dark Evolution but a different Digimon from Hiro's Gammamon, meaning that something else must have had happened. Furthermore, the corresponding Free evolution line for Labramon is Gabumon's who doesn't have Anubismon in it, but it has all of Plutomon's other pre-evolutions which Labramon evolves into. So, what if Aoi didn't actually Dark Evolve into Plutomon, but she was carrying all the burdens all along and that's what happens when she didn't grow past acting as the overworked mother hen of her class unlike when her Labramon evolves into Anubismon?
- There's no wonder the guy who painted the murals investigated at the start of the game would be consumed by the fog. He's painting a mural about the Master's sister right in front of him! And the Master deathly hates his sister under the premise that she sacrificed and rejected her. Small wonder he would target him with the fog just right after he finished it.
- In the Truthful Route, we find out Miyuki's song can actually undo Dark Evolution merges like what happened to Haruchika and Fanglongmon, which means theoretically if the party manages to evict the Master out of Miyuki at any point in the Wrathful Route, she could use her song to undo Aoi's Dark Biomerge into Plutomon and try restoring her back to sanity. Unfortunately, Miyuki just happened to be absorbed by the Master before she could be saved, meaning the survivors pretty much relinquished their only chance of saving their friend from a certain death without even knowing it.
