Headscratchers / Kingdom Hearts III

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• The finale sequence in Keyblade Graveyard. In the first round, the whole team gets annihilated by the heartless tornado. However, Sora comes back again after completing the afterlife tasks. Does that mean Sora is now on a new alternate timeline?
  • It could very well be that Sora's heart time-traveled back several moments to before the ambush by Terranort, having forgotten the previous party wipeout. The narrative reason for this was so that Kairi would temporarily release Namine into the Last World, who would then contact the Lingering Will and alert him to Xehanort's presence to change time.
  • This seems to be the case and Chirithy outright tells Sora he changed the "course of history" by doing so.
• The previous game established that Xehanort lived on Destiny Islands well into his late teens. So how come the trailer revolves around him and Eraqus as kids in the Land of Departure? Did he grow up as a Keyblade apprentice or trapped on the islands?
  • He started off trapped in the islands, but managed to escape by unknown means (later revealed in 3D as his future self, Ansem SoD intervening with the normal timeline) and ended up in the Land of Departure (later on Castle Oblivion), where he trained with Eraqus.
  • That doesn't explain why he looks like a teenager on the Islands and a child on the Land of Departure, when these events should chronologically be the other way around.
  • I don't know about 'looking like a child'; both he and Eraqus seemed to be teenager height in the trailer, going by the lengths of their arms/legs. Perhaps the style of the animation simply makes them look younger?
  • Xehanort looked older in the islands because of his character model, it was made from the model of Saix.
  • Xehanort wasn't a kid in the trailer. Why would you think that? He's clearly a teen or a young adult at the youngest.
  • Note that no official materials refer to the kids playing chess as Xehanort or Eraqus. They are only referred as the Boy in Black and Boy in White. The chess players might not be Xehanort and Eraqus. They could be someone else, or something else.
    • As a guess, they're more or less the personifications of "Light" and "Dark", but taking on the forms of Xehanort and Eraqus (or perhaps it's the other way around, and Xehanort and Eraqus are the incarnations of "Light" and "Dark", made in their image)
• Why is Xemnas saying the only way to revive Roxas is for Sora to use darkness? I mean, can't he just free another heart, be restored by Kairi's pure light, and bam, there's your Roxas? I get that they might be trying to trick him into falling into darkness, but it doesn't make any sense. So can he take that option? Or is it no longer that simple?
  • Roxas' birth was because of Sora stabbing himself with the Keyblade of People's Hearts to restore Kairi in the first game and nearly slipping into Darkness as a result. The risk is just too great, especially with the inevitable clash looming over them. And if the D23 trailer is any indication, the Nobodies are back, so if Sora slew some random Dusk and Heartless, they would just merge and form a complete being again (it's how Master Xehanort came back in the first place, hell he planned for that to happen as a contingency).
  • Roxas also only exists as he did because of the unique circumstances of his birth that involve Sora and Ventus. Baring that the whole reason why Sora needed to merge back with Roxas was that it halved his strength in the long run.
  • This also seems to be typical villain rhetoric, and Xemnas is trying to demoralize or manipulate Sora.
• Considering that Rapunzel and Eugene attended Elsa's Coronation, with the implication that it happened three years after the events of Tangled, how will Square-Enix handle the chronological ramifications? For that matter, if they are genuinely separate worlds, what does that mean for Donald and Goofy's admonishments of Sora about the World Order?
  • I think their appearance in Frozen was a just an easter egg and not them actually existing in the same continuity as Frozen.
  • Yep, that was an easter egg. Pixar uses them all the time, so Disney probably thought to do the same and just reuse their character models for a group shot of people. If we're really bringing in theories and/or easter eggs, Elsa and Anna's parents are theorized to be Tarzan's parents by some people, so how would they deal with that?
  • Regardless of the movie's potential connections to each other, the game worlds are set in an alternate continuity from the movie worlds anyway. Just because there's a "crossover" in one doesn't mean it's in the other.
• In The Caribbean, why does Sora wear a ship's high officer's garb complete with captain's hat? Wouldn't a more appropriate dress for his age be as a powder monkey, enlisted crewman, or possibly a midshipman?
  • Better question. Why wouldn't he?
  • Most of the time, clothes &/or physical transformations in the series aren't necessarily voluntary, or of their choosing. He probably got put in those clothes when they arrived in the world, then didn't wanna change them because he likes them. Also, he's technically the leader of their group of 3, so it makes sense.
  • Also, from a certain angle, he IS a captain. He captains the Gummi Ship, after all.
    • He is also the captain of his own ship, which is called the Leviathan.
• What exactly was Xehanort's reason for killing Kairi? Just to get Sora mad enough to fight him for the final source of power he needed for Kingdom Hearts or something else entirely.
  • May be wrong, but it was my understanding that Xehanort killing Kairi acted as the final clash of light and dark that made the 13th key and allowed the X-blade to form. Otherwise, Xehanort would have had to fight Sora just to create the X-blade.
  • Re:MIND reveals that Xehanort did it as an "insurance", in case the whole "clash between light and dark to forge the χ-blade" goes south. Xehanort knows that he can't afford to lose Kairi (who's also part of the new Princesses) should Endgame Plan A fails, so he had her crystallized and fragmented; after all, he does know how to bring her back if he has to rely on the Princesses to open Kingdom Hearts. Perhaps Sora's single clash with Xehanort right after the deed is the one that created the final key to forge the χ-blade.
• In Dream Drop Distance, Xemnas explicitly listed "weakness of will" and "weakness of trust" as two disqualifications for potential vessels. Yet Xehanort completely contradicts that by recruiting Marluxia and Larxene (The Starscreams of the first Organization) and possibly even Aqua (not only Eraqus's successor and #1 devotee, but also someone whose Light-related Heroic Willpower was a key point in both Birth by Sleep and A Fragmentary Passage)?
  • That could've been true at the time. After all, despite being similar, Nobodies and Somebodies don't have the exact same personalities - Marluxia and Larxene could've been disqualified from the get-go, or gradually built up unworthy traits due to their acting without hearts (not knowing they were making replacements). This time around, perhaps that's changed. Or alternatively, they're not official Xehanort vessels, but just vessels to serve a purpose (such as Larxene turning Elsa to the darkness) and little more - no one said that Xehanort had to stop at 13 possessions. 13 may become vessels for himself/his ultimate desired clash, but who's to say he can't possess others with his heart until that time... to control, to mislead, to corrupt? You name it, really. Even possessing Aqua, as noted in Fridge Brilliance, could just be a means to find Ven's body in Castle Oblivion rather than make her Xehanort.
    • Something to be said about Aqua's case, she had been worn down for 12 long twisted years by a constant barrage of pure darkness with nothing but her heart's light and her master's Keyblade to protect her, and at the end of Blank Points, which takes place after everything that happened in Birth by Sleep and 0.2, and she get's told of Sora's adventures, she starts crying. She's vulnerable. She lets her guard down. Xehanort might've attacked her the second after the image faded out, especially if Ansem the Wise were one of his vessels, too.
  • Aqua turned out not to be one of the vessels anyway so that's a moot point, and Xehanort explains that he's keeping Marluxia and Larxene around because they were keyblade wielders in the past (they're in Kingdom Hearts chi/X/whatever it's called).
• Where did the thirteenth key for the X-blade come from? There wasn't any darkness released from Xion, and the first time we see her eyes, they're her normal blue. Did Terranort count twice, even though the Guardians got a do-over, or did the Heartless summoned by Dark Riku count as one, given that they came from a dark aura shaped like Xehanort.
  • The final clash between light and darkness came from Sora rushing up and attacking Xehanort after he killed Kairi. If this refers to the total keys created, it's simply that the requirement to create a key was specifically a clash, not necessarily either side's victory or defeat, nor the release of darkness from a vessel. Xion was one of the Darknesses, as proven in Scala ad Caelum. The twelve versions of Xehanort awaiting Sora there each have one weapon identical to the Darkness they're supposed to represent, and one of them has Xion's Kingdom Key. As for her eyes... well, we only ever see them after she's snapped out of it, so it's difficult to tell if they were ever gold to begin with.
• Why does Eugene use a frying pan? Rapunzel was the one who weaponised the frying pan in the movie. Is it just so Rapunzel could instead use her hair to whip people with?
  • Eugene also uses the frying pan in the film. In particular he fights Maximus with it. One of his in battle voice clips is even "I have got to get me one of these" in reference to the scene.
• What exactly is the power of waking? It's at first portrayed as the power to awaken sleeping hearts (revive the dead, that kind of thing), but it also opens portals through time and space? Is it just an alternate form of time travel that lets you pull people's entire body and heart back from the past? Is it just the light form of Xehanort's time travel powers? How does Kairi have her body back at the end? Did it get pulled from the past? Is her body a replica now? Or did Sora retcon her death?
  • Young Xehanort implies that the power is mostly used to just awaken/dive into hearts of both people and worlds, but it is also more than that. Sora used the power to save the heroes' hearts from the Lich, and then send his heart back in time several minutes to retry the Terranort encounter. Sora was only able to keep his body in Last World because of Kairi's love, so it's implied that he did the same for her. So theoretically, when he used the Power of Waking to bring her back from the Last World back home, he overstrained his powers so much, he lost his place in the universe. If the epilogue is to be believed, someone, possibly the Master of Masters or Joshua was able to use his powers to coax Sora's heart and soul to the Reaper's Game in Shibuya to try to win his life again.
• So 2 established that it's possible to spring people out of the Realm of Darkness if your bond with them is strong enough; this is how Sora & Riku were able to get back home after beating Xemnas, since they have a strong bond with Kairi as represented by her letter reaching them. Could Mickey have done this to rescue Aqua? Of all the main players at the time he's one of the few who still remembers exactly who she is, he's fought alongside her before, and he clearly cares deeply about her seeing how he's willing to go back in there to save her. For that matter, could Terra (even under the control of Xehanort) have done it, possibly to recruit her as another vessel? He was even closer to her than Mickey was.
  • Kairi was a special case since she was a (New) Princess of Heart and had a strong tie to both people based on years of friendship; unfortunately, Mickey wasn't able to develop that strong of a connection for Aqua. To answer the question about Terra being able to do so: most likely, but Xehanort could not, no matter what body he had.
• Furthermore, if Aqua fully gave into Darkness and became a vessel for Xehanort, couldn't she have just used the Corridor of Darkness to leave of her own accord? Or is using the Corridor not a skill all Darkness users have?
  • Giving into Darkness does not equal becoming a vessel for Xehanort. Aqua was only recently blasted with enough darkness that it and her despair turned her into Anti-Aqua. She might have been able to call upon a Corridor, but the point is moot anyways, given that she just had just developed her darkness just as Mickey and Riku were trying to save her. Any actions she could or would have done afterwards with her dark powers is irrelevant given we only see them in action very briefly before she's purified and rescued.
• The whole "Keyblade War" thing. If the point is for Xehanort to create the X-blade in order to return Kingdom Hearts and reality itself to all darkness, and he can't do that without the X-blade, why are the protagonists even willing to show up to the fight? All they have to do is just stay home instead of all going to the Keyblade Graveyard at the same time, and Xehanort's plan could never be completed. Or for that matter, why doesn't Xehanort just find other vessels for Light and not get the protagonists involved? Marluxia is even scouting Rapunzel for that exact reason, why not just create the X-blade using Guardians of Light that aren't the only credible threat to the organization?
  • Both Dream Drop Distance and this game literally explains this: if none of the Keybladers would fight, they'd use the Princesses of Heart, as seven pure lights. And when it was revealed that the powers they had were passed onto new hosts, like Elsa, Ana, and Rapunzel as some of the New Seven Hearts, Marluxia and Larxene were there to confirm their statuses, while also reminding Sora (and the audience), THIS is why the good guys have to fight, because Xehanort could get 7 others ready.
    • But.. they don't do that, though. The Organization could just get the new seven lights, and Sora and company drive them out of the relevant worlds because that's what they think the Organization is gonna do, but the Organization doesn't gather up any of the new Lights and the protagonists go to the Keyblade Graveyard anyway. Xehanort could get others, but when he has the chance, he doesn't. Larxene even tells Sora not to interfere with Anna and Elsa and then doesn't really do anything about them herself, so Xehanort clearly didn't want to use the alternative seven lights. Not to mention messing with Arendelle is a seriously bad idea, Elsa is leagues more powerful than any of the Organization, she doesn't even get a power downgrade like most of the other Disney characters in previous games did. Sending any of them to pick her up as a new Light would not have ended well for any of them.
    • He didn't want to use the alternative seven lights, no, but he could have. Openly spying on them and making the good guys aware that he knew their locations was a threat, to ensure that the good guys would instead meet them in battle rather than risk unpleasantries. And Elsa's power isn't all that, I struggle to imagine her a match for the top tier big bads, and she's not actually a fighter or trained in combat. She almost got taken out by a thug with a crossbow in the movie. That's not even counting the possibility of targeting Anna, her kingdom, or destroying her entire world to force her compliance. Going to the keyblade graveyard takes the battle away from innocents, the only ones at risk in this scenario are trained fighters who know what they're getting into.
    • Leaving aside the "who would win in a fight, the ice witch or the guys in hoodies who are literally too afraid of her to try it" stuff, you're restating my point, here. The heroes ensure that the other Lights can't be used, but they still go to the Keyblade Graveyard even though that's literally giving the villains what they want. Taking the fight away from innocent bystanders still means they're giving Xehanort the fight. If they'd just said "no", what was Xehanort gonna do about it? He's already targeted the other worlds and Sora and company already cleaned them up, so apart from just going there to kill him (which Sora could have just done by himself and negated the risk of re-creating the X-blade, because that's what he ends up doing anyway), sending all seven lights to the Graveyard was just making sure they risked losing. Hell, if they just let any one of the Guardians stay home (like Axel or Kairi, who were literal keyblade novices) it would have been fine.
    • The Organization has people who can control lightning, time, and various darknesses, so let's just drop the "Elsa vs Organization" debate. If there aren't enough people to fight for the light, like if Axel and Kairi's training took too long, Xehanort could theoretically fill the gap with Anna and Rapunzel, just as an example. It's 7 lights vs 13 darknesses, not "a full set of 7 Keybladers or a full set of 7 Princesses", so Xehanort could mix and match if needed. Also, until he regained the power of waking, Sora was not strong enough to face the Organization due to losing his powers in DDD, and could not drive off the members if they were actually serious at the time. You are also getting hung up on the "fight" part of the situation: the Organization could take all 7 of the New Hearts and just destroy them and that would satisfy the "light-dark clash" needed for the X-blade to be created. So, opposed to letting 7 people getting slaughtered and Xehanort getting what he wants regardless, the heroes chose to fight and try to A: save Terra from their ranks and B: stop Xehanort from claiming Kingdom Hearts even if he gets the key to open it. The moment that Xehanort got all of his darknesses, the confrontation was inevitable.
    • "The heroes ensure that the other lights can't be used" How, exactly, do they do that? Honestly, I was wondering about that, too, but it apparently doesn't have to be a true fight to count. So, yeah, they make sure the other lights aren't used by going to the Graveyard and fighting. Had they gone and not fought, the Organization would've just been killed and it would've counted as a clash of light and darkness. Had they not gone at all, the Organization would have attacked the princesses, using them for their seven lights. Had they tried to protect the princesses, they'd have had to fight, again creating the clash between lights and darknesses. And it doesn't even matter whether Elsa would've won a fight or not; after all, Sora's team won a bunch of fights, but there was still the light/darkness clash. Sure, Xehanort would've lost a vessel or two, but only after they'd have fulfilled their purpose. The best bet of avoiding all of this would've been to make Xehanort be a darkness or two short, e.g. by getting Larxene and Marluxia to betray him again. But that idea falls apart because Xehanort has a bunch of back-ups, because he literally took over parts of his darknesses, and because the only one who could've known about Larxene or Marluxia being up for some betrayal was Lea, who was not really reachable until the end.
    • Basically, to sum it all up... Xehanort already has a Xanatos Gambit in place with instigating a second Keyblade War, and there's nothing the heroes can do to stop the X-Blade from being forged, so, as already mentioned, they might as well stop the Organization from slaughtering innocent people and save Terra (especially since Sora's goal is to save everyone). Regardless of what the heroes do, they are only slightly delaying the inevitable, so the best way to handle it would be to take the straightforward approach and hope they can just stop Xehanort even with his all-encompassing plan in action, since there wouldn't be anyone else caught in the crossfire.
• They could have went there with just six lights. That would have screwed up all of Xehanort's plans. Or, a much better idea, actually use some damn strategy and agree that a retreat would be initiated as soon as one or two of the seekers of darkness were killed. This could have been worked in really easily with the enemy's counter move (splitting everyone up using the labyrinth sand then kidnapping Kairi to force a final confrontation) already existing in the current plot. A single line "We don't want to let Xehanort have his way, so as soon as we rescue Terra, we bail" would have made the good guys seem phenomenally less stupid. It's not that theres no way around making the X-Blade, it's that they make absolutely no attempt to even consider avoiding doing exactly what Xehanort wants.
• Why did Sora-Donald-Goofy leave Mike and Sulley out of "the know" on alternate worlds, even to the end? The cutscene with Vanitas showed Monsters Inc. has the doors for other worlds, so it seems as though they're "aware" already.
  • It wasn't explicitly stated where those doors led to, only implied that they led to Corona/Arendelle/etc.
    • In addition, they're probably under the impression that all the human worlds are the same, since they've previously been too terrified of them to actually investigate, so it's probably for the best that they don't know they've tapped into multiple worlds when they think it's just the one.
• Why didn't everyone gang up on Terranort? True, with his first attack it might've just been an inability to react in time, but in the sequence where he's using darkness to hold Sora off, he's just... standing there. Pretty much anyone else could've taken a shot at him, or for that matter Mickey could've just frozen him in place.
  • The Watsonian answer is that everyone was too shocked. The Doylist answer was that they wanted to give Donald a Big Moment and needed the heroes in suitable disarray to set up The Final World/Sora overusing the Power of Waking to bring everyone back so there's a plausible reason for him to disappear at the end.
• On the flip side, why did Xehanort thing it was a good idea to let one of his vessels confront everyone alone? If they had all ganged up on him they could've very well beaten him easily, even before the Heartless were summoned, which not only would've put him out one vessel but also could possibly have earned the good guys another Keyblade wielder since Terra might've been saved. It seems pretty reckless.
  • Xehanort wins when he loses. Whenever one of his subordinates loses Xehanort gets another piece of the x-blade.
    • Then why doesn't he just have all of his vessels commit Suicide by Keyblader then? Letting them get systematically picked off one by one, earning him the pieces of the x-blade in a much quicker manner?
    • It's very much suggested it has to be a suitably epic clash, with burning emotions, big speeches and latin chanting. There's also the fact that he doesn't particularly want them to lose, he simply has set up events so it doesn't matter if they do.
• How did Axel get his keyblade back to seal Kingdom Hearts? Mickey and Riku needed to get new ones when theirs were broken in the realm of darkness.
  • Although Xemnas's dialogue implied he destroyed it, it looked to me like a typical de-materializing like when a keyblade gets knocked out of it's wielder's hands.
• What exactly counts as a "clash of light and darkness" that can help forge the x-blade? For most of the Organization it's straightforward enough; they die and Xehanort gets a piece of it for each death. But Terra and Xion survive, so why do theirs also count? Especially in Xion's case; the person who "beats" her ultimately isn't even any of the Seven Lights, it's Xemnas instead. Furthermore, if the battles they fought do count even though they live, why didn't the earlier conflict with, say, Vanitas count? For that matter, why didn't any previous battle between the Lights and Darknesses count? For instance, Sora and Riku killing Xemnas the first time, could that count?
  • Specifically, a singular conflict where 13 dark users and 7 light wielders fight. By the time Sora cleaned house at the end of II, most of the Organization were destroyed and some time had passed by then. The Vanitas battle also didn't result in the destruction of either party, so that's most likely why it didn't count.
• Wasn't letting the Demon Storm kill all of the Keyblade wielders kinda counter-intuitive to Xehanort's plan? Unless falling to regular Heartless also counts as a point towards forging the x-blade, letting them all die then and there would've been a major setback for him - unless he knew Sora would be able to bring them back.
  • Even if the Demon Storm counts toward the x-blade he'd still be 6 pieces short. The math and logic of Xehanort's plan doesn't really seem to add up.
  • Also, why does Xehanort even need the 13 Darknesses if he was just going to let all of the good guys get killed by a swarm of Heartless?
  • The simplest explanation is that, if Xehanort had to choose between his Darknesses going against the Seven Guardians or the Seven Princesses, the Seven Princesses would be the safer, simpler option. Eliminating the Seven Guardians, especially Sora, in one fell swoop would exponentially increase the chances of his plan succeeding. He probably figured it was worth a shot.
    • Then why would he let Kairi die if he still needs her?
  • Apparently, Master Xehanort could use their hearts directly to forge the x-blade. The Lich Heartless was specifically created to take their hearts after the Demon Storm tore them apart, and Xemnas later mentioned to Xion that they only needed Axel's heart, not his soul. And if the Demon Storm actually killed a few guardians before snatching their hearts, well, he knows the location of six spares.
  • The Demon Storm was, to paraphrase Terranort, designed to beat them down before facing the 13. Presumably Xehanort had no intention of killing them all and was as surprised as this troper was when all the heroes stood there and allowed themselves to be killed.
• So if Xehanort is capable of reviving fallen people to act as his vessels, even if they're Nobodies and have therefore already died before, could he have just gotten one vessel to revive and sacrifice over and over again? Or at least, fewer than thirteen? It might be said that the 13 Darknesses all have to be different people for it to work but, that would mean it'd be a bad idea to make all of them versions of himself with his own heart, because that might hurt his chances. Not to mention that one of the vessels actually is just younger version of himself, so evidently there's no rule against using different versions of the same person anyway.
  • It's not quite as easy as you make it sound. The people he brings back have to be known to him, close to him (both physically and emotionally) and be both open to being possessed by the darkness (which required plenty of effort with regards to Riku and Terra) and open to working with him. All those he brings back to life were from Organisation 13, and frankly most of them were already returning to life anyway. He could well have simply broken them again.
    • But why does it have to be 13 different people if he can just use himself multiple times? Why not just incrementally recruit versions of himself at different ages? Sure he could probably still bring along Ansem SOD, Xemnas, and Terranort since they'd be available regardless, but why bother with the rest?
• So where exactly did Xion come from? I get she was given a Replica body, but when did her heart leave Sora? It's all but stated she was the third heart inside of him.
  • The strongest possibility would be when Sora was made to sleep by Marluxia during the Rapunzel story. He was out for hours, so maybe...?
    • Yeah, but how would Xehanort (Pick one) even know to use Xion at all when the whole tragedy of her death in the first place was that everyone forgot about her?
    • Just because she is erased from people's memories, and even then has a presence due to Sora holding her heart, does not mean she was erased from the timestream. So if a time traveller was to go through the time stream and nort people it not unlikely that he wouldn't hear about Xion in the one year she was around and being outside of time would not be effected by everyone forgetting her. Its first grade Spongebob, we learned about this in Co M and KH 2 where Sora was forgetten by everyone but everything he did was still in place.
    • It could also be that she was still mentioned in Vexen's notes on the Replicas. IIRC, it's how Xion found out she was a Replica herself and, since the Real Organisation XIII was using Replicas as vessels for their other members' hearts, they may have discovered those notes and decided she could be an extra Darkness.
  • My assumption is that Xion's time in Sora's heart allowed her to grow as her own person, canceling her nature as a walking memory reflection and allowing her existence to be slowly remembered again. Xemnas or Master Xehanort must have remembered Xion and had a replica of her made and then "norted" it. The final key is Roxas calling her name through Sora and then the replica absorbed Xion's original heart and memories, which is why she has that crying meltdown. I agree that it's explained and executed horribly but that makes the most sense.
  • There is upcoming DLC that plans on explaining how Xion returned and joined the Real Organization.
  • The Replica program was set up before Vexen died. He's the only one able to make them. So presumably all of this was planned since before chain of memories. Likely by Young Xehanort. Ie a replica for Xion (who is herself a replica) was already made and prepared prior to her being reabsorbed into Sora.
  • Final answer as of the Re:Mind DLC: Xion's death erased all memory of her, but didn't alter the records of her that Vexen made. From those, they were able to figure out that No. i existed, grabbed her heart during the point in time right after she joined the Organization and placed it into one of the high-tier Replicas. During the fight, at the moment Sora said Xion's name (which was actually Roxas speaking through Sora), her present heart left Sora's body and entered the Replica body he was fighting. This forced out the time-traveling Xion heart, which then went back to her proper place in time. As part of this process, all memories related to Xion, which were trapped inside Roxas's heart, were released. And thanks to the chain of memories, the turmoil that time-travelling!Xion was going through likely resonated with/transferred to present!Xion, essentially making it so that it happened to both of them. In case anyone was worried that this explanation invalidates the first half of the fight.
• Can someone elaborate on Terra's consciousness/heart/what-have-you being the guardian heartless of Terranort? Why now? Shouldn't the guardian have been working to stop Terranort/Ansem at every possibility including the previous games?
  • It's likely that as a heartless, he was reduced to being akin to a mindless slave this whole time. Until that is Aqua and Ven were in trouble right in front of him. It's obvious that he's struggling to rebel when he finally does, so he obviously needed that spark to motivate him.
  • I assumed that the disappearance of the Lingering Will might have had something to do with it. The Lingering Will contained Terra’s mind in it, so once it was presumably defeated off-screen, it could’ve transferred into the Guardian and gave it the push necessary to overcome Xehanort’s control.
  • The Ultimania says that it's not his heartless. Instead, Terra's heart had been rapidly hopping between Terranort and the guardian the entire time he was possessed.
• This is probably more of a nitpick dealing with KH 2, but it crystallizes here. So, when Ienzo and Ansem the Wise reunite, Ienzo said he was worried that Ansem had gone mad and abandoned them. Why did Ienzo/Zexion (and by extension the rest of Ansem's Apprentices) never question why Xehanort's Nobody based his name around Ansem's rather than his own?
  • Zexion didn't care. Literally; early stage Nobody, not Heart means no emotions. He just wants to experiment, like Vexen. As for the time in between when Terranort banished Ansem/stole his name and when they became Nobodies, he still might have been more concerned with SCIENCE! Or too afraid to speak up. Or he was an evil teen and had a Heel–Face Turn as a result of the events of KHII and just growing up.
  • Well, Ienzo was more than just "worried" that Ansem had abandoned them - the other apprentices outright told him that. By the time they overthrew Ansem, the rest of the apprentices were already on Xehanort's side (keep in mind they were all involved in the experiments that Ansem had put an end to), so they wouldn't have questioned his choice to impersonate him. Ienzo was a fair bit younger than the other apprentices, and Ansem had taken him in as an orphan. Telling him he had been abandoned was how they finally got him to turn against his old master.
• Where are Honey Lemon's glasses? Her visor is corrective, but she doesn't have them here, even when she takes it off.
  • Maybe she's wearing contact lenses?
• Sora, Donald, and Goofy have fought and won against multiple Organization members as well as powerful monsters in all shapes and sizes, yet when they first encounter Marshmallow in Arendelle, they freak out and run away screaming. That makes no sense! Just what was stopping the trio from pulling out their weapons and beating the crap out of him like they've done before with much stronger enemies?
  • Could be that it's a case of Snowball not having any latent Darkness, so they withdraw, since they may not be able to fight him as effectively, and don't want to destroy an innocent.
• Why didn't Donald try to heal Eugene when he is dying in the tower?
  • Because Donald can barely remember to heal Sora or Goofy. More likely is that as Marluxia said, Rapunzels healing in on a different level then any of theirs.
    • Not to mention that cure doesn't bring people back from dying, exhaustion yes but not dying.
• How did Sora recognize Vanitas from the cathedral? He wasn't wearing the helmet at the time.
  • He was, though... Sora always sees Vanitas wearing his helmet until the latter is defeated in the Keyblade Graveyard. Sora recognizing him makes sense.
    • Vanitas wasn't wearing a helmet in Cite des Cloches. The headscratcher stands. Why did Sora recognize Vanitas with the helmet on in Monstropolis, then act surprised when he saw his face in the Keyblade Graveyard?
    • He probably didn't get a good enough look at Vanitas' face. Although, this is Sora we're talking about.
    • More likely he probably just recognized Vanitas's voice from that brief moment in the cathedral.
  • Watch Sora’s face in that scene, and listen. The voice that says “Vanitas!” doesn’t sound like Sora, or not just Sora; it sounds like Ven. Right after he says it, Sora’s hand moves toward his throat/mouth and he looks confused, like he didn’t give the mental order for his mouth to say that, let alone sound so angry. It’s not Sora that recognizes Vanitas: it’s Ventus from within Sora.
    • That's not the part of the cutscene in Monstropolis that the OP is referring to. The OP is referring to the moment where Sora calls Vanitas, "That guy from the Cathedral," which references this cutscene from Dream Drop Distance.
• For San Fransokyo: If I recall correctly, at the end of the movie, the original Baymax gave his healing chip to Hiro before his big sacrifice. All things considered, that should be Baymax’s true heart, right? So basically he gave his Heart to Hiro and Hiro basically just made a new body for said heart, right? So why is the combat chip so important then? They act as though that was Original Batmax’s heart when Baymax already gave away his heart. Why did they treat it like it was basically the same thing? Did I miss something along the way?
  • In a sense, both chips are a part of Baymax's "heart". The healing chip is the "light" of his heart (kindness, compassion, love and friendship, hopes and dreams, etc.). But the combat chip is also a part of his "heart". His "darkness". It's anger, hurt, sorrow, rage, and ill-intent. In other words, exactly the kind of thing the Organization would want. Pure, distilled darkness.
    • That is actually a pretty good explanation! Kudos to you! But now that leaves me with a new question. Was Hiro and his team aware of this? I feel like the game could have communicated that better…
• In San Fransokyo, who was GoGo referring to as the black coat? Callaghan?
  • I must need to go over the cutscenes or something. She wasn't talking about Dark Riku?
  • She said "The Black Coat? He's back?" She was either referring to Callaghan or someone else entirely. Question is: who?
  • Why? Isn't the implication just that Dark Riku was here earlier, just like the many other times in the series that an Org member has been there before Sora got there?
• Why is it that Mickey needed to get his Keyblade upgraded? The Kingdom Key D is from the Realm of Darkness, so it should've worked perfectly fine there.
  • It wasn't about functionality, they just realized they were out of their depth when Way to the Dawn broke. They just wanted stronger equipment. Sora's light realm Keyblade worked fine, it wasn't about which realm it was from.
• Why is Xion under the impression they need Axel alive in any way. They clearly don't judging by the fact Xehanort kills Kairi just fine.
  • Because the clash between Light and Darkness already occured 12 times by the time Kairi is killed. Xehanort just needed one more and decided to just have one of the Guardians clash with him to make the 13th. And as Xehanort said, Sora "required motivation" in order to get him to do it.
  • What? That's just explaining why Xehanort killed Kairi. It has nothing to do with why Xion thought Axel was needed alive. The fact that Xehanort killed Kairi (and all the other organization members who die) is proof you can have a clash that results in a death just fine. Xemnas even actively tries to kill Axel, and I think we can be reasonably sure Xemnas understands how this works better than Xion. So the question remains, why did she think Axel was necessary to keep alive? Did they just lie to her and she believed them? What did she hope to gain?
    • It was obvious by that point that even before Sora called her name, there were obviously twinges of her former self that seemed to invoke her to want to stop him. It just took Sora making that last connection to make it occur full force.
• Who the hell is Terranort in this game? The seekers of darkness, all previously deceased characters are in the game by one of two methods, either time travel, or a Nobody and a freed heart rejoining. It can't be time travel, because the rules of that state the people have to return to their original time with their memories erased. Which would mean Terra needs to recombine with Xehanort, get sent back and then eventually die as Xemnas/Ansem. I highly doubt that's an eventuality given the happily ever after. The other possibility is that it's the recombined form of Xemnas and Ansem...which on the surface makes perfect sense, but given the context of everyone else makes no sense. First off Master Xehanort is said to be the recombined form of Ansem and Xemnas...with absolutely no explanation as to why he's old when both of them are young. Secondly, if it's reforming Terranort, then it should be reforming the much more stable Apprentice Xehanort, who doesn't dress as Terra at all and self identifies as Ansem, granted we never hear Terranort refer to himself by name, but still, this is obviously meant to be the preAmnesia form of Terranort. The other possibility is that, somehow, Xehanort's heartless and nobody reforming somehow recreated both Terra and Master Xehanort. Which makes even less sense as there's only one physical body between the two of them and Xehanort would have no reason to use a reformed Terra as a vessel given how uncooperative he ended up being (which is actually a headscratcher no matter what lead Terranort to be here, there are way better choices than him).
  • Terra's possible rebellion doesn't matter to him, just like he didn't care about Marluxia and Larxene's attempted coup in the past. All that matters is that he be made to fight the seven as one of the thirteen, which is what indeed happened. And given how things turned out, it's apparent that Xehanort's original form wasn't gone forever (as seemingly assumed) but rather "put away" for a while. "For one to completely disappear, their heart and body must be returned to their original form."
  • Nomura stated in a spoiler interview afterwards that when Ansem So D and Xemnas were defeated, BOTH Terra and Master Xehanort were restored. But Terra still had his heart dominated by Xehanort, so he was still ultimately an empty shell. Then all Xehanort had to do was bring Terranort's Heart from the past to take over Terra's body again.
  • Well that's stupid, makes no sense and isn't hinted at in game at all. Did he decide to give Terra a hair cut and find his old clothes too? When did Terra return? We visibly see the moment of Master Xehanort's return in DDD, by all logic Terranort should have appeared on that throne alongside him.
  • Master Xehanort: Ansem and Xemnas originated from Terra, or rather his young form, and it too was restored. However, my heart has returned to me, while his is yet lost. I decided to fill this hollow vessel with my heart; indeed, the very same heart that previously resided in young Terra.
    • That wasn't his return. That was him coming to the past (which at that point was the present) from the future to that moment in order to try to turn Sora into his 13th vessel.
    • It's time travel, how can someone arrive late? What was he doing in the future when all his other incarnations had already gone to the then present, including Terra, if we're to assume all the other cloaks present were the 13 (despite none of them being short). No matter how you splice it the rules affecting him and the rules affecting Terra are arbitrary different.
    • You're assuming that Terra's actual empty body would've been among the twelve, when in fact NONE of them brought their real bodies along in that scene. If anything, it was the past self put in charge of Terra that was there. As for why the future-most Xehanort had a delayed arrival, he's a show-off with a flair for the dramatic.
    • He didn't arrive late, he arrived precisely when he chose to.
    • This is proven by Xehanort being a master of magic. After all, Gandalf said "A wizard is never late. He arrives precisely when he means to!" So by this logic, Xehanort is ever punctual and by KH logic, ever present (seriously he is everywhere at once)
    • Granted he's a wizard. Still though... why?
  • What has me curious is how come Master Xemnas old body was so well preserved. From what I gathered of his plan in BBS, it was him wanting a nice young body for ruling the new universe once he gets the Chi Blade, so I doubt he made contingency provisions for his old body to be cared for in case decades down the line his new hotness body got defeated multiple times and exorcised. That means that when Master Xemnas ditched his creepy old body, it didn't create a Nobody, yet was in fact perfectly preserved FOR YEARS without aging, without getting harmed in the aftermath of the epic fight in Birth by Sleep, and with no one feeding, cleaning and caring for it like the coma patient it was. I know he's supposed to be a super chess master, but as I recall the events of BBS were self-admitedly a miscalculation on his part that he's since been able to essentially re-engineer into a huge can't-fail plot thanks to time travel. Oh crap, I just realized... this means he probably sent his young self to find his wrinkled evil old body and hook him up to a life support on a stasis capsule or something. XD
  • This chart should help answer some questions, although it isn't perfect, as Xehanort's body wouldn't have been a Dusk as it lacked a soul - honestly, it probably should've been proper dead. But to hopefully cap off the question of Terranort's nature in this game: Terranort is Terra's present, actual body containing the time-traveling heart and soul of Xehanort - specifically, that of Xehanort when he was Terranort in the past (likely at the point where he was in Radiant Garden before Aqua showed up and fought him). It also contains Terra's present, actual heart, manifesting as the Guardian that saves Aqua and Ven. This makes Terranort unique among Real Organization XIII, as the rest are either actually there with no time-traveling involved (Master Xehanort, Xigbar, Saix, Luxord, Marluxia, Larxene, Vexen and Demyx) or are time-traveling hearts/souls inside Vexen's high-tier Replicas (Ansem SoD, Xemnas, Young Xehanort, Xion, Dark Riku, and Vanitas), while he is a time-traveling heart in a regular, non-Replica body that isn't his (so as to recreate the original composition of Terranort). Lingering Will was defeated by this Terranort (offscreen in base KH 3, finally shown in Re:Mind), which caused Terra's mind/soul (along with the time-traveling Re:Mind Sora) to enter Terranort's body. Later, Terra, with (original non-Re:Mind) Sora's help, was able to kick out Xehanort's time-traveling heart and soul, sending them back to their proper place in time, leaving Terra's body containing Terra's heart and Terra's mind/soul, with no time-traveling components.
• In the ReMind scenario, is it possible that the whole thing is a Stable Time Loop? How else would the Lingering Will's disappearance be explained?
  • It seems like. The biggest rule for time-traveling as a heart is that, unlike using the power of waking to reset a world (which has its OWN consequences), one cannot change what's already been established. But from Sora's own perspective, it had never been established exactly why the Lingering Will up and vanished. His attempted interference then established the "why", though even then he could not change the fact that the Lingering Will was no more later. It's an interesting look at how "destiny" actually works, implying that all involved hearts have their own ways of deciding a sequence of events to the point that a single heart (Sora's) could outright create a loop.
• If the X-blade can be forged when two people of pure light and pure darkness clash with equal strength, then why wasn't it forged whenever Ventus and Vanitas fight in this game? Shouldn't it have been re-forged the minute the two clashed just like in Birth by Sleep?
  • Nothing says that every conflict between them will satisfy the criteria, and even if they did, Ventus isn't in the same place here that he was in Birth By Sleep. Even there, the two fight more than once without forming the χ-blade, not to mention the fact that Ventus has a complete heart here as a result of having already fought Vanitas in the past and merged with him, unlike before, where his heart was fractured. It's safe to assume that that's what makes the difference.
• Namine was originally created when Kairi's heart (a heart of pure light) exited Sora's body to rejoin her own. This created a Nobody of a person with a heart of pure light, which is ordinarily impossible. Ventus' heart, which is also made of pure light, exited Sora's body to rejoin his own. Shouldn't there now be a Namine equivalent of Ventus?
  • Not really, after BBS, Ventus absorbed Vanitas' half of his heart back into his own. While the ordeal of the game resulted in in "losing" his now complete heart which went to recuperate inside of Sora, it was nonetheless whole and would have had enough darkness to no longer create a Namine equivalent.
  • I thought the whole point (from an out-of-universe perspective) of Ventus having a heart of pure light was so that his heart could go inside Sora's as a child while his body would be comatose in Castle Oblivion and not disappear/turn into a Nobody (like Kairi in KH1). I thought that Vanitas was utterly and completely destroyed at the end of BBS along with all of his darkness, so shouldn't Ventus' heart still be pure light?
    • Ventus' situation is probably closer to Kairi after having her Heart removed in KH 1 and going comatose than what would normally create a Nobody. That said, Ventus never had a heart of pure light, Master Xehanort artificially split it into Light and Dark halves, and they reunite after beating Vanitas (as shown with Ventus' stained glass heart representation filling in).^note After re-reading a wiki entry on him, a good chunk of the Darkness in his heart was from one of the XIII Darknesses introduced in Union Cross. Which probably means he's carrying around less Darkness post BBS. Only Princesses of Heart have hearts of pure light, it's their thing, and why Even (pre Vexen) comments on how Ventus' heart of pure light is unnatural. The thing that happens in III is Master Xehanort is massively "cheating" by using time travel to bring forward incomplete and partial beings that should not be able to exist concurrently to fight for him. Hence why Master Xehanort, Xemnas, Ansem Seeker of Darkness, and Terranort could all be in the same place at once when normally only at most 2 ought to be able to exist at a time. More concretely to the question, the Vanitas we see in III is a pulled forward copy of the Vanitas from BBS, so Ventus could simultaneously have his re-completed and normal Heart back together while the dark half from before re-integrating existed outside causing trouble.
• So if Xehanort's plan was to forge the X-Blade with the seven lights and thirteen darknesses, why did he have Terranort kill all the lights the first time around before he could even get the X-Blade forged? And using the Princesses of Heart as a replacement is not a reliable Plan B as that would be too time-consuming to find and capture all the new incarnations of the group.
  • It is mentioned several times through out the keyblade graveyard that they do not need their body and souls, just their hearts. They don't need to be alive for the hearts to stick around long enough for the X-Blade to be formed.
• Okay, so I feel like an idiot… When we first see Riku and Mickey in the Realm of Darkness, after they’ve defeated the demon tower, they have a conversation during which Mickey says Aqua is like Sora. Riku’s reaction is a very shocked ”WHAAAT?!?”. Mickey clarifies that he means she’s strong like Sora, to which Riku breathes a huge sigh of relief. I’ve played the game several times and I still haven’t got the faintest idea why Riku reacts the way that he does. Can somebody explain it to me, please?
  • One explanation could be that Riku was picturing Aqua as a Keyblade Master with Sora's personality traits - he would be shocked that anyone like that could be a Keyblade Master given how Sora hadn't made the cut. Or that "one" Sora was already a handful. Or that anyone else could be mentally similar to Sora.