Headscratchers / Steins;Gate 0

• So...where exactly does Okabe go and/or end up after he departs 2025 in the True Ending?
  • After delivering the video messages that set things in motion to reach Steins;gate, he tracks down Mayuri and Suzu who are stranded in the past with an out of power time machine. The plan is to give them a spare battery to send everyone back safely.
  • It makes more sense after watching the movie where Okabe has to be rescued from his own subconscious disbelief of Steins;Gate (real) outcome. Alternate timelines exist as long as people have a subconscious belief they are real. The only people who believe it are the ones who originated in it. The universe will attempt to correct for this if things fall out of alignment. The ‘bad’ timeline persists because Mayuri and Suzu are at the convergence point for humanity’s history (of belief), rather than in their proper times. Even the act of jumping will force the correction, merging them with their Steins;Gate ‘good’ timeline counterparts. This is why Okabe ‘dies,’ because as soon as he and the two girls leave that timeline, their ‘bad’ timeline stops existing altogether. We still see Suzu making jumps in the ‘good’ timeline, because whenever things go to hell, it appears she’s always the one to rides the time machine to fix what happened. Suzu can also still report that Okabe ‘died,’ because she was the child native of her timeline that witnessed the Okabe from yet another timeline, rescuing the girls who originated from even more timelines. When he makes that rescue happen, it terminates his timeline, as well as the two non-native girls. However, child Suzu’s timeline persists until she’s the adult Suzu getting rescued by Okabe. Its kind of like a rubber band effect. It can’t return to its proper size until everything keeping it stretched out is removed.
  • I think the simplest answer can be that Okabe first drop off Mayuri at either 2011 or 2025 (I'm not really sure if Mayuri can be dropped off at 2011 at that timeline but it's the best choice) and then Okabe together with Suzuha goes to 2036 right after Suzuha goes to the past. That way the prophecy that Okabe dies between 2025 and 2036 still comes true and it will resolve all potential paradox with Suzuha.
• So, in the Steins Gate Worldline, Kurisu and Maho still go to work everyday with a guy who wants to look into brainwashing and AI soldiers right?
  • Yep.
  • He may not be evil in the Steins Gate Worldline, since the two main routes in the game have different antagonists.
  • Moreover, Leskinen only becomes as evil as he did because his future self gave him a lot of information via brainwashing Kagari. Without time travel, while he may still have sketchy connections to Stratfor and such, he might never push the boundaries as far as he did without the proof of his future actions that Kagari provided.
• So, if it's possible for the Amadeus system to receive Kurisu's memories from other worldlines, what would happen in a worldline where Kurisu is alive and the Amadeus system is active, who gets the Reading Steiner?
• As I understand it, Reading Steiner means Okabe is aware of world line changes with the Okabe from the original world line effectively overwriting the Okabe from the new one. Does this mean that the beta Okabe who initiates the world line change in the Promised Rinascimento by sending the D-Rine will at some point, presumably in the year after the original's true ending, replace the Steins;gate world line Okabe? This feeds into a WMG of mine about Okabe becoming a Big Good and living his Mad Scientist dream of fighting SERN and the Committee with all the information he gathered on his way back to keep the world on the golden path between alpha dystopia and beta world war.
  • Close. The Promised Rinascimento Okabe sent his D-Rine to the "phone on" route, so that's the Okabe he'd end up overwriting. Which means he's actually the Okabe we see in the true ending's 2025 scene. Of course, that Okabe then sends a video d-mail to the Steins Gate Okabe, which means he'll overwrite that one in 2025. It's actually kind of tragic, because he'll lose all his presumably good memories of the intervening years, and have them replaced by memories of living in a hell on Earth. It might be good for the world in general though, because the beta Okabe would probably be much more proactive at opposing the Committee than the Steins;Gate one would be.
• I'm confused by the Maho ending. In it, Maho and Amadeus!Kurisu successfully trick Reyes into thinking she's got administrative access, and then Maho escapes with Moeka. So far so good. But then, Maho decides to go back to rescue Kurisu. Why? Without the proper codes Reyes has no control over Amadeus at all, so how was Kurisu in danger? It seems like if Maho wanted to protect Kurisu, the best thing she could do would be to protect the password, which meant getting as far away from Reyes as possible.
  • Most likely because she feared Reyes would eventually "crack" Amadeus' protections and gain access. Plus, Maho did have a deep personal connection to Amadeus!Kurisu, and it probably didn't sit right with her just living her in Reyes' clutches.
• It's revealed late in the "turn off the cell phone" route that Okabe isn't dead in 2025, but rather in a state where his brain is dead because of all the torture he underwent. He then time leaps all the way back to back January 31st, which raises two questions. First, how did he manage to time leap through the period he was tortured during? The time leap machine was explicitly stated to only be able to go back 48 hours at a time, despite 2036's advancements. Daru also maintained it, so he would've upgraded it if he or Maho had the knowledge to do so, and there's no reason for Okabe to somehow know how to upgrade something that required Kurisu's knowledge. Second, how had he managed to build it so fast in the period between January 31st and when he was captured? He was the only one who knew how to make it work without needing to experiment, and even then it still took nearly two whole days in Mayuri's end. While WWIII was going on then, Daru had also constructed the PhoneWave that didn't exist in the route Okabe is in.
  • Pretty sure he could jump two weeks at a time. That could probably give him enough of a window to skirt around his capture and "death" in 2025.
  • The anime elaborated on this. He was restored in 2036 from a 2011 backup, by which time Maho had found a way to timeleap 2 weeks at a time, but regarding his death, he still had to use his future knowledge to trick his pursuers and reach the time leap machine quickly enough to pass this obstacle.