WARNING: Spoilers Off applies to Headscratchers pages. All spoilers will be unmarked!
- How come the time piece Mustache Girl accidentally dropped was able to rewind time a little when broken, but in both of the DLCs, there contains a broken time piece that Hat Kid has to collect the shards for? Why didn't they rewind time and then repair themselves like that one time piece from Mafia Boss battle did?
- Whether the time piece's time controlling powers activate is based on whether they're inside a compatible machine like the time ship and/or broken open by a living being. If not then they just break like a normal object and need to be reassembled to regain their full power.
- Why is Hat Kid shown leaving the planet in her spaceship at Chapter 5, yet she's back and collecting time pieces on that very planet for Chapter 6 and 7?
- Even still, when DID chapters 6 and 7 take place? Arctic cruise must have taken place after the events of the main story, since all the main characters recognise hat kid, but where does nyakuza metro fit into all of this?
- Maybe she couldn't get home without all the Time Pieces, so she decided to come back to get the ones she missed.
- Even still, when DID chapters 6 and 7 take place? Arctic cruise must have taken place after the events of the main story, since all the main characters recognise hat kid, but where does nyakuza metro fit into all of this?
- How did the falling time pieces at the beginning of the story turn up underground in the Metro? Did someone find them on the surface and somehow put them in random locations around the Metro or something?
- Time pieces are a Slippery MacGuffin?
- Speaking of the DLC, in the intro cutscene, we see that hat kid has a total of 40 time pieces. However, the two DLC's bring the total up to 56. So, the question is: where did those extra time pieces come from? Were they on the planet before hat kid arrived? Do time pieces replicate through osmosis?
- In the Nyakuza Metro finale, why didn't the Empress just immediately attack and murder Hat Kid when she's standing three feet away from her after stealing the time pieces? If she had just done that instead of calling up a manhunt, she would've saved money as well as avoided the risk of embarrassment and the cops investigating her again if she hid Hat Kid's corpse well.
- Again, Hat Kid was, up until that point, the Empress' most trusted and favorite underling, and she was caught red-handed stealing back the Time Pieces. Sure, the Empress could very well have killed Hat Kid on the spot, but she decided to make a spectacle of it all, possibly as a warning to anyone else who crosses her, to put true terror into Hat Kid, and to show how hurt the Empress was from Hat Kid's betrayal.
- Isn't Queen Vanessa's manor kind of...modest? Sure, her domain was kind of small back then, but then, why did a small village have a queen living in a big but not grandiose house?
- I think a bigger question is why (or how) her manor has modern necessities, like a working fridge, shower, and plumbing? From what it appeared from the Subcon storybook pages, before her fall to madness, she seemed to live in a medieval-like life as a princess. Sure, you could chalk it up to the planet being odd (what with talking birds and other animal people being very commonplace), but how would everything in her house still be running without proper maintenance (since she freezes anyone who enters her manor)? Though no specific time-frame is given between Vanessa's fall to madness and now, it could be assumed a long time had passed. Maybe her magic keeps everything in a state of permanence, maybe? As to your question, perhaps Vanessa (or her parents) were more of the humble variety of royalty, and opted to have only just a slightly larger house. Could also add to the fear factor.
- Considering that Queen Vanessa seems to be from a long forgotton past and lives in Subcon forest, there's a very good chance that along with the other spiritual inhabitants, she too, is a ghost/spirit. If she were indeed a ghost, then this would make her manor a Haunted House and would also explain her powers. Everything in said mansion could easily be an illusion, which would actually explain the changing painting of Hat Kid amongst other things.
- I think a bigger question is why (or how) her manor has modern necessities, like a working fridge, shower, and plumbing? From what it appeared from the Subcon storybook pages, before her fall to madness, she seemed to live in a medieval-like life as a princess. Sure, you could chalk it up to the planet being odd (what with talking birds and other animal people being very commonplace), but how would everything in her house still be running without proper maintenance (since she freezes anyone who enters her manor)? Though no specific time-frame is given between Vanessa's fall to madness and now, it could be assumed a long time had passed. Maybe her magic keeps everything in a state of permanence, maybe? As to your question, perhaps Vanessa (or her parents) were more of the humble variety of royalty, and opted to have only just a slightly larger house. Could also add to the fear factor.
- Another question regarding Vanessa: why does she not follow Hat Kid into the attic? Especially when the third floor was in the game, where the door to the attic was heavily chained. Surely, it being breached would be a great concern to her. Is it that having her in the room and escaping with the Time Piece while she's there could feel too triumphant, while leaving her to her business in the Manor below is more unsatisfying and scary?
- For gameplay reasons, the writers likely didn't want to add a Cruel Twist Ending and wanted a breather section. For possible watsonian explanations there could be a numerous amount, but the reasons are all common in real life: "The attic is scary/brings back bad memories/not worth the trouble of going up there" are just a few. For whatever reason she could be adverse to going up in the attic. Considering that she was the one who possibly placed the time piece in the treasure chest, it might have something to do with that.
- Just how powerful is a Time Piece? One Time Piece? We've seen before the effects one could do when Mustache Girl accidentally drops it after the Mafia Boss' defeat, rewinding time for only a couple of seconds. We've also seen what happens when multitudes of Time Pieces are used in rapid succession (Mustache Girl rewrites history and installs her own twisted justice system). But when the Conductor/DJ Grooves get their hands on the last Time Piece, they believe just one could allow them to reclaim everything they believe belong to them. So again I ask: how powerful is one Time Piece? Can it only rewind time for a couple of seconds, or can it go further? Does it have to be broken purposely for the full effect to work?
- It's pretty understandable that Hat Kid does a Pain-Powered Leap when she is hit by fire or falls in either lava or acid... but how exactly does it work when she falls into the crowd in "The Big Parade"?
- In terms of gameplay, it's a way to deliver the player back to safe ground without forcing them to take gradual damage until they die. In universe, it's possible that the crowd is supposed to be tossing Hat Kid into the air and they're being too rough with her.
- How does Hat Kid have toys of the game's cast before she meets them?
- There have been theories floating around about how Hat Kid had dreamt-up her adventures, with her dolls acting as characters in her adventures. Either that, or chalk it up to Gameplay and Story Segregation.
- Considering that she has mini-time machines, it's possible that she time-travelled into the future and saw everyone there.
- In one of the notes in the Manor, Vanessa apologizes for cutting and styling her prince's hair to match hers...but wouldn't her own hair need to be short for that to make sense? You can't cut someone's hair longer, but Vanessa is consistently portrayed to have long, feminine hair. Perhaps this is just an episode where she had short hair, but it jars with her visual depictions.
- It's probably that she just meant to cut his hair to match her own in color and style, not necessarily in length.
- In 'The forgotten children', the snatcher puts the children's spirits into fabric dolls, the question is, where did he get them? Did he make them himself? If he did, how long did it take him? It's implied that it wasn't long after queen Vanessa froze them all to death. There are tons of subconites hanging around Subcon Forest, so where and how do you get that many bodies?
- How exactly did the Arctic Cruise staff break a Time Piece? It's established pretty early on that breaking one will cause time to rewind, so how exactly does one turn up broken? Was it just a fluke, or were the Arctic Cruise staff so incompetent that they somehow managed to cause the Time Piece to fail?
