WMG / Fullmetal Alchemist

Note: This page is for theories about the manga and the anime Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. See Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) for the first anime adaptation. New WMGs at the bottom, please.

Ling Yao and Lan Fan are expies of Lau and Ran Mao from Black Butler

Similar names, the Token Asians of the show, Ling/Lau never opening their eyes, Lan Fan/Ran Mao being body guards for their retrospective lords/masters? Not to mention, they're both pretty much canon. Because really, who else could you pair them up with, without it being Crack-ish? Seems suspicious...

Ed is now a Philosophers Stone

Think about it, when he turned himself into a stone first to heal himself after being impaled by an I-beam in a mineshaft that Kimblee blew up and then to force his way into Pride's Stone, that isn't something that can just be undone as soon as he isn't paying attention to holding it up anymore. And on top of that Pride's stone wasn't empty yet. So given that Pride was Brought Down to Normal, all the energy had to go somewhere because energy can't be created or destroyed, only transformed, and there wasn't an explosion or shock wave to show that the energy of Pride's stone was released. So all that energy now is within the Philosophers Stone that now is Ed's soul. This has the bonus of him not dying young after using his life to heal himself. Also the Father of the homunculie after being beaten down and diminished and crying out for a stone went straight for Ed. When Greed was right there. And Father wasn't just looking for a soul either because Al and Mei were closer.

• How did I not spot that?

Rose is bisexual, and it's Winry, not Ed, who she really likes.

Additionally, that dead boyfriend of hers? The original Japanese version of the manga apparently used a gender-neutral word for "lover" and never went into more detail about that lover's gender.

• INCOMING SHIP!!! Not that there's anything wrong with that!
• Also, we're going to get a scene at the end of the manga in which it looks like Rose is going to confess to Ed, but she instead pours her heart out to Winry. It would be a brilliant twist because of certain expectations built up by the anime and Ship-to-Ship Combat.
  • Sadly Jossed, but there are a couple of scenes late in the manga that could be interpreted as Les Yay if you squint. So, they could still be used as fuel for this guess.
• I can almost believe this WMG, and I endorse it anyway because it's frickin hawt.
• How many girls named Kain have you heard of?
  • Cindy McKain.
    • Please explain this one.
  • Plus the OP said "bi" not "lesbian". Maybe she liked Kain (a boy) and then got interested in Winry (a girl)...
• Maybe she likes Ed AND Winry?
• The part about the word in the manga is true: 恋人 (koibito) is gender-neutral. And the manga never mentions a name or any other definition either. The only other word they use (as far as I noticed) was あの人 "anohito" but that's gender-neutral too. (On the other hand, it's fairly usual in Japan. There's nothing particularly strange about the gender-neutral wording unlike in English where you kind of start to suspect something if people are avoiding gendered words. Koibito is just a common word for lover of both genders and gendered pronouns (or personal pronouns in general), while they technically exist, are rarely used and tend to sound a bit weird even. So it's not really evidence for this theory... but then again it isn't evidence against it either. And personally I rather like it, so.)

Shou Tucker was more involved with the Military's experiments then he let on

He did mention that he was supposed to be "the authority on Chimeras" and had already been a State Alchemist for two years, despite what an apparent hack he is. Since the Central guys are really no better than Tucker himself, they may have realized that Tucker's Furry Wife was still marginally better than their previous Chimera experiments. Even if Tucker wasn't directly involved, he still served as a "creative consultant", and eventually the perfected process led to a fresh batch of Beast Men. Tucker's next work came out so poorly because he was rushing to meet demands, and was initially reluctant to use his daughter and dog.

Edward Elric is Duo Maxwell's ancestor

Think about it. They both have similar appearances such as the braid. They work for a shady organization. They've suffered Parental Abandonment. A lot of people close to them ends up dying.

If this was true, that would mean the Elric brothers actually went into the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing universe instead of ours. In the Fullmetal Alchemist universe, technology's slowed down while alchemy and prosthetic limbs become more advanced. While the other universe specialized in machines not unlike ours. However, there's a chance it could've went to the other extreme with giant robots, space colonies, and all that. Also, geniuses such as the Elric brothers may have influenced the design for Humongous Mecha. Really, what else would they do?

• You've got a point there. And Scott McNeil did voice both Duo and Hohenheim.
  • Yes, but if we use Mr. McNeil as evidence, then we must also conclude that they are the reincarnations of Rattrap and Dinobot. My money is on Ed being the reincarnation of Rattrap, and Duo Dinobot.
    • Given the tangibility of transformer souls, and the villainous nature of the Gate, which consumes souls (and this theory equates human souls with Transformer sparks), this means that...

Alternatively, The Gate is the Borderworld Xen

It's the space between dimensions that connect different worlds. Only reachable by extreme measures, and REAL bad things tend to happen when they do.

• So...Hohenhiem is Freeman?
  • That doesn't work, because Freeman never says a word to the point where they lampshade it. Hohenheim has a couple of lines of dialogue.
    • Because he gave up his voice to get through the Gate. It all makes sense now...
    • It seems more likely that considering that the gate takes what you value most Freeman would have lost his giant sexy brain, or his clobberin' arm. UNLESS. He had... the best voice. The best voice.
    • Because he is Freeman when he lost his sexy voice they gave it to some other Freeman who the Truth thought needed a sexy voice. Morgan Freeman.

Armstrong is really Mr. Clean.

After leaving the military, Armstrong decided to sell cleaning products. He harnessed his sparkles to make whites whiter and walls cleaner.

How did he make it from to the 50's and 60's looking exactly like he did during WWI? Easy, he's a time lord.

• "This catchy jingle has been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!"

Al uses magnetism to move the suit of armor.

The soul is an "electromagnetic pattern", as described by Professor Milton Glass & thus is able to create magnetic forces capable of manipulating metal. This is why blood seals are only ever used on iron & not other chemicals present in blood. If it were not used on a metallic object, the subject would be unable to move. This may also explain how Al sees without eyes. He is actually "seeing" the effect things around him have on Earth's magnetic field or something like that.

• Al is one of the Fair Folk from Lords and Ladies, so he sees through magnetism.
• Ohh, that's actually a good theory! Makes more sense than him... idk, using up his soul to move it. Or it moving just without any energy. (Unless, I guess, it was just normal alchemic energy from the tectonic plates, actually. Huh. Never thought of that.)

Olivia Armstrong is deathly afraid of her sister Katherine.

You know, the one who could lift pianos and rejected Havoc. No reason, just Rule of Funny.

• "Since childhood, Katherine has loved to play the piano. And lift the piano. And drop it on Olivia."
  • This troper and her girlfriend have incorporated this bit into their personal fanon, it's just too awesome.
  • Seconded.
  • Thirded. Excuse me while I go die of laughter now.
  • Fourthed. Can't… stop… laughing…
  • Fifthed! That's just too hilarious!!!
  • Sixthed so very very much
  • Seventhed! this is too funny
  • "KATHERINE! That piano has been passed down through the Armstrong line for generations! STOP DROPPING IT ON OLIVIA!"
    • Maybe the youngest sibling dropping the piano on their older sibling/s was also passed down through the Armstrong line? No reason, other than it'd be hilarious.
  • Maybe the reason she had her family go on a long vacation to Xing before the climax wasn't for their safety, but because she was terrified at the prospect of having to spend an extended stay in the same house as her sister, and this was the quickest way to get her out of the country...

The Armstrong family are all vampires, of the same sort as those in the Twilight series.

Major Armstrong's claim that he uses techniques "passed down the Armstrong line for generations" is a lie. He's merely an immortal who continuously uses the same techniques despite changing identities to keep people from being suspicious of his true nature, and merely claims that they've been passed down to him in case anyone notices the fact that his techniques are the same as his supposed "ancestors". This also explains why the Armstrongs all sparkle: Twilight vampires all sparkle in the sunlight.

• I hate you. I really do. How dare you?
  • Gotta admit, though, it's hilarious.
  • And becomes even more hilarious if you read the first chapter of Shanghai Youma Kikai (another manga by Hiromu Arakawa). There's literally a sparkling vampire there, and he seems to be related to the Armstrong family somehow...
• Ah, but Twilight vampires are supposedly all stunningly beautiful. Have you seen his sisters? Not Katherine and Olivia, they have that "hormonal about face" (never quite fully got that phrase), but like Strongine. She looks like transvestite!Alex. So does his other sister, Amue.
  • Havoc's hormones did an about face when he saw Catherine. :)
• Alternatively the Twilight vampires are distant relatives of the Armstrong family-as in at least Carslie Cullen's era. The Armstrong family may have been awesome for generations, but that doesn't mean they've been awesome for every generation.

The world where Amestris/Ishval/Xing is might be Europe's (and perhaps Northern China's) Soul Society, but with different rules

To think about that, both have portals where the souls seems like to be exchanged, and crossing this portal is forbidden to untrained specialists (the trained ones were the ones that managed to use a pure Philosopher's Stone, it seems). Their Zanpakutou equivalent are the Transmutation Circles, and those who acquired the equivalent of Bankai had to pay a high price to do so. The Homunculi are like Arrancars, eating incomplete Philosopher's Stones just like Hollows eat souls, to ease their pain and become more human-like. Ishvalans might have lived in the region equivalent to the 80th from the Japanese/Korean/Southern Chinese (and just maybe Australian) Soul Society, Zaraki, due to the extremely harsh conditions the place presented. The equivalent Shinigamis are presented as Federal Alchemists, and the rules set there are really strict, to avoid unnecessary Hollows to invade the real world. There's even a conspiracy in the roots of the Federal Institute, just like the Japanese Shinigami Academy!

• And the black goop creatures in the gate (in the anime and movie. at least) are equivalent to the Cleaners in Bleach. The different areas could even be immigrants, sent to the same afterlife in areas more corresponding to the culture they lived in. It doesn't really explain the Earthian/Amestrian alts.

The Armstrong family uses alchemy to create perfect offspring.

The Armstrongs are already known to be masters at twisting chemical components to their own ends. Since the base elements of a human being are amino acids, it is entirely possible that, while their children are in the womb, Armstrongs twist the acids, rearranging key DNA strands to create either a brilliant female commander, a muscle-bound romantic, or an improbably busty teenager. This new troper is surprised nobody has picked up on this.

• So, they are the ones that know the TRUE human transmutation?
  • I'm not sure it would count as human transmutation. This seems more like creative arrangement. Remember when Ed (in the anime at least) turns his hair green?
    • He was just using a way to make the pigments cover his hair without waiting half an hour, like we normally do.
    • Even then, with human transmutation, doesn't the alchemist need to find a way to combine all the different materials cohesively? In the case of an embryo or fetus, all the chemicals and pieces are there, so wouldn't it just be a simple matter of rearranging the DNA?
• "These genetic engineering techniques have been passed down the Armstrong line for generations!"
• Then wait a second, what about the two sisters who look like Alex?
• Maybe they thought that they would be male, so they made them manly, but they turned out to be female?

Havoc will betray Mustang to the military for a permanent girlfriend.

Otherwise he will die alone. This way he gets a girlfriend, and Mustang will be in jail or dead and will stop ruining his relationships. Happy ending for all!

• This troper says Havoc will meet Becky and cute sparkly love will ensue.
• Still hope he and Sheska get together. They are pretty much meant for each other, as the pretty nerdy girl that gets unnoticed, and the guy that can't get a girlfriend because no girl really notices his qualities. They'll notice each other and make a geeky couple.
  • Are you sure you're thinking of Havoc and not Fury? Because Fury seems more the type of guy who'd go for the geeky type like Sheska. And this troper agrees that Becky and Havoc would make a cute couple (even if I dislike the woman for some reason.)
  • Double date Omake!
  • Besides, we all know Havoc's all about the busom.

Speaking of Sheska...

She will eventually discover that her reading abilities are practically inhuman, and discover she can redirect such abilities to Alchemy, thus, becoming the Paper Alchemist!

Envy has been everyone at one point or another.

Envy was Maes Hughes. Envy was Winry during the movie. Therefore, I have a theory. Envy has been everyone in the manga, anime, and every alternate reality at least once. The scary part comes when you realize he was Maes Hughes' daughter, which technically means...Attack of the Killer Cute!

• Picture your favourite scene of your OTP. One of them was Envy.

The Truth is a Trinitarian god.

Okay here's the spill. The truth states that he is God and that he is also the person with whom he is currently talking. The eye-shaped entity within the gate is called the Eye of God. My theory is that the FMA equivalent of God is a Trinitarian deity consisting of the Truth, the individual (or rather, every individual), and the Eye of God. It is shown that people transmute using their connection to the gate, so it's not too much of a long shot to suggest that all life forms capable of alchemy are connected to and make up a part of God. Also, this kinda validates what Ed said about alchemists being gods.

The gold toothed doctor is Father's secret lover.

Because let's face it, if Father wanted a family, he'd know of the typical two parent unit. Gold Tooth, meanwhile, seems to be the most loyal of Father's human cronies, and raised one of his kids.(Bradley) And they're both omnicidal, misanthropic bastards who use their "children" as weapons. If Father needed a partner to complete his "family" he'd probably seek someone with as much love for humanity as himself.

Just like their counterparts in the first anime, the manga homunculi can't use alchemy either, and that was deliberate on Father's part

I apologize if this was actually stated directly, but I don't remembering it being. Father basically created alchemy, and you would think that since his "children" are formed from him, they would naturally have skills in it. But noticeably, they don't. While you can be successful in Amestris without knowing alchemy, Wrath Bradley (does that even need to be spoilered?) doesn't use alchemy, and nor does Pride Selim Bradley, even though he is Father's favorite and mimics him in all other ways. I also noticed with Greed that he wants the Philosopher's Stone for immortality, but never thinks about doing alchemy with it, in which case would certainly be a Physical God like Father.

My guess, is that if the homunculi did use alchemy, they would have nearly god-like powers (witness what Father Cornello could do with a much smaller stone than the ones making up their bodies), but it would drain them in the process. Father certainly doesn't want any of them equaling him in power, and practically, they would be in real Villain Sue territory if they had alchemic powers. Finally, from another angle, since alchemy was thought-up to manipulate humans, it's not likely that the homonculi would be that interested in it anyway, given their view of humanity.-Edit- this actually seems to be confirmed in the fight between Greed and Pride. Greed is currently possessing Ling] and can only benefit from Ling's Detect Evil powers by turning off his control

• I don't think that uses alchemy. If it did, then either Ling, Lanfan or Fu would have learned at least enough Alchahestery that they could heal themselves or to have it as another combat option. Now I'm wondering why they didn't bring anyone with them who knew it to keep their heir alive, other than not bringing in too many Alchahestery users into the story.
  • It kind of uses Alkahestry. May describes Alkahestry as controlling/manipulating the world's Chi in order to transmute, while Ling and his bodyguards say that the way they fought Pride was by reading his Chi. I think they know just enough of the basics of Alkahestry to know about Chi and how to detect it, but not enough to be able to draw circles and transmute with it — it's a read-only property for them.

• Now that Pride ate Kimblee will he be able to use alchemy?
• Pride has the ability to learn alchemy by eating alchemists. In that regard, I think the nature of their sin determines whether they can learn it. Since Pride is Father's "greatest achievement" it's only natural that he would be able to gain the same abilities. Someone like Wrath, on the other hand, would be better suited for cutting/punching/stabbing/anything that causes immense pain and immediate restitution.
• In the first anime, it's implied to some degree that the homunculi's powers are a type of alchemy (Anime!Sloth turns into water, Anime!Wrath can transmute his limbs into certain material, like rocks, and it's implied that Anime!Pride can manipulate wind to some degree with his sword, disabling Roy's flame alchemy).
  • In the first anime Anime!Pride's ability is explained as the 'Ultimate Eye' which is able to see all, that extends to the air around him, and by disrupting it when Roy attempts Alchemy, it disperses the dense oxygen rendering fire alchemy useless.
  • Anime!Wrath is the exception to the rule. He can use alchemy because he had Ed's arm and leg.

The philosopher's stone doesn't break the laws of equivalent exchange

It merely allows for transmutations on a deeper level. Ordinary transmutation can't change one element into another. By rearranging the atom, a user of the stone can change one element into another, including all those lovely gases in our atmosphere. Another thing it might be doing is making use of the idea that energy is matter and vice-versa, and converting energy (from the souls it contains) into matter. There's no rule breaking going on, just a deeper level of physics and chemistry.

• Although its use is not recommended, simply because changing an atom structure means consuming a lot of energy to do so, and liberating a bit less than that after the process. It'd be way too dangerous to risk a mini black hole, or a mini nuke from doing so.
• Ordinary transmutation clearly can change elements, otherwise it wouldn't be illegal for alchemists to create gold — something we know Ed can do. It's probably a lot simpler even for normal alchemy to work with existing elements, but they have talked about turning metals into other metals and so forth.
  • I thought Ed made iron pyrite and Yoki didn't know how to recognize it? Maybe I misunderstood that scene.
• This isn't much of a guess; the Philosopher's Stone is literally the energy of life itself. Equivalent Exchange still happens, its just you are exchanging life for the desired effect. Life is very powerful stuff.
• Actually, if you understand quantum physics, energy waves and matter are the same thing, just behaving in different ways. A philosopher's stone would simply be condensing the matter and energy of people into a small stone; neither bodies nor consciousnesses were left after Xerxes, so both are in the stone. Envy even says, they're just being stored for later use. It's like charging a battery; the energy is still there, it's just in a container for now. The laws haven't been broken by philosopher's stones, but it has nothing to do with "deeper physics" or anything like that.
• The energy in a Philosopher's Stone is essentially currency for alchemy. Rather than using the normal barter system to exchange two pigs for a donkey, you can use a philosopher's stone to buy whatever you want. Sure, you can use it to change lead into gold, but it's just as easy to go "Presto! Now I have a mountain of gold!" Human souls are worth quite a lot, which is why human transmutation always fails when you're trying to make a human from scratch. Al gave up his entire body to obtain a soul for their "mother," and even then it was his own soul that was going to be used. So, you can trade one for pretty much anything else.
• Since the energy for alchemy actually has a source (geothermal energy), this implies that the law of conservation of energy holds. In the real world, we concluded that mass is just a very dense form of energy by watching matter turn into energy. However, in FMA, we can't be sure this is true. However, we do know that souls can turn into mass. So, perhaps souls and matter are different forms of the same, fundamental substance, as we can see that we can turn souls into matter. This leads to the question: can we turn matter into souls?
  • There doesn't seem to be a clear answer to this. Attempts to create new souls don't really come up, it's mostly trying to bring dead souls back, and even in the case where Ed gave his arm to transmute his brother's soul, Al wasn't actually dead, which is why he only had to give up an arm and not his entire body like Al did when they tried to bring back their definitely-deceased mother. One might argue that the creation of a homunculus would suggest that this is at least theoretically possible, but the counter-argument to this is that homunculi don't really have souls of their own - the only possible exception being Wrath, but this falls apart when you remember that even he doesn't know if the soul he has is his original or not (and in that case, it wasn't "created" at all). The short answer seems to be a distinct and resounding "who knows?", but I don't feel like the idea of "creating" a soul was ever explored thoroughly, at least not thoroughly enough to glean an argument one way or the other.
  • That, or a 'soul' is simply the electrical energy inherent in the brain of a sentient lifeform, since the only tried-and-tested way of making new souls is to make new people. Thus, the reason people can't bring dead souls back is a) they're trying to collect something fully formed rather than recreate something; b) even if they did try to remake the soul, they're trying to make something that doesn't exist, like a transmutation aiming to make elemental water would always fail - water isn't an element and a 'soul' is just a pattern of electrons; c) even if you did just try to make the brain of the person exactly how it was, you cannot know enough about that brain without having done the most in-depth MRI scan possible at the instant of death or being a deity-level being whose job it is to know literally everything about literally everything. Thus, the closest humans can come to playing with souls is either creating new ones, as humans do, or moving the energy keeping a 'soul' in someone's body to the centre of a transmutation circle - resulting in a braindead person and a Philosopher's Stone.

Admittedly this hypothesis doesn't explain inter-soul conflict or how a soul can retain its form long for five minutes, let alone five centuries, but it fits close enough to the rest of it that someone else can figure that out.

Parts of the Royal/Imperial Family of Xing, including Ling, is descended from Hohenheim.

It's been mentioned that he looks like a cross between Edward and Ling in the past, and since he spent at least a few hundred years wandering around Xing and inventing Xingese alchemy, it makes sense that he would have had other kids there as long as Trisha came later enough that he'd moved on. Considering his descendants would likely be skilled in alchemy as the Elric brothers, it would make sense that they would be of a post ranking high enough to be eligible to marry into the imperial family.

• I endorse this, if only because Ed's reaction would be hilarious.
• Though it'd likely be so far back that they barely count as related by this point. It'd definitely still be funny, though.
• If that's true, then the sequence of events that led to Ling becoming the second Greed was the most fucked up impromptu family reunion ever put to screen.

Riza and Mustang are simply too fucked up to think anything about romance.

Okay, this might be unsettling for all you Royai shippers, but think about it; Roy and Riza never show anything but platonic care for each other. The reason is simple; their job in Ishval. It's highly probable that in Ishval war, they had been pushed too far, to the point that they can no longer feel any feels about romance, love, and anything else about it without feeling sick. Same can be said about Knox.

• There also could be too much traumatic history between them both. If Riza truly felt bad about giving away her father's secrets and wanted the tattoo destroyed, she could have just gotten another tattooist to make it illegible or even do the burns herself. But she didn't; she asked Roy, the Flame Alchemist, to burn her skin so there'd never be another Flame Alchemist. The sheer amount of guilt and blame being laid in that action is huge. Later on, she tells him that if he breaks her trust again, she'd utterly destroy herself to ruin her father's notes for good. There's no real point to destroying the notes at this point; it was something said to shame Roy and make him feel accountable for her death. Like a lot of other characters in the manga, there's a real undercurrent of guilt, shame, and blame in Roy and Riza, which could be a real stumbling block for any real relationship.
  • -_- Why didn't she ask a tattooist? Oh, I dunno, maybe because the secrets to flambaeing entire cities are on her back? It's supposed to be kept a secret for a reason- flame alchemy is beyond dangerous in the wrong hands, and Roy's the only one in the know, and obviously the only one Riza trusts enough to be on the know- heck, just think about that fact. Riza trusted Roy, and he actually was a trustworthy person but look at how that turned out- of course she wouldn't dare trust anyone else. That's why she didn't get a stranger to do it. And why didn't she burn herself? Because Riza's intention was not only to stop another flame alchemist being born, but to keep an eye on the current one to stop him from doing something so horrible ever again. Think about it, she doesn't know anything about burning people or which parts of the array to burn to make illegible, and when she asked Roy to burn her back, she meant the entire array, while he only certain parts when he did it to cause her as little pain as possible. The reason Riza asked Roy to burn it was that if Riza burned her back herself, at best she'd end up severely injuring herself, at worst she'd die- and Riza couldn't afford to die/be injured not because she didn't want to get hurt, but because she was the only one with enough leverage to stop Mustang from doing another Ishval. Yes, she enrolled into his team so she could serve under him and help him become Fuhrer, but I believe another big reason of hers was to keep an eye on Mustang and stop him from going on a wide-mass killing spree again (because as much as the guy regrets it, that's what it was). And yeah, Ishval screw them over, they'd be inhuman if it hadn't- but the thing is, they share that pain. No one could possibly understand how guilty Roy feels about burning so many people- no one but Riza, who suffers the guilt of letting him burn so many people and shoot a good few hundred herself. In a way, when it comes to burning all those people, Riza understands Roy's guilt better than Maes does. That's what gets me about those two- they understand each other like no one else does, because they've shared so much. And while they could never be Sickeningly Sweethearts like Hughes is with Gracia, could never have Babies Ever After, (may possibly marry if they make it to their late thirties), could never even be so much as a sweet couple because God knows the pairing of Roy Ai is practically built on ansgt, but that bond between those two is most definitely not platonic. You do not love someone platonically when you tell them in so many words that you can't live without them. And, yes, that goes on Roy's side too, since I read the RAWS and was untainted by how the scanlators sometimes made things so 'Western-like' they changed the meanings entirely. Chapter freakin' 95 people.
    Roy: If you're going to shoot, then shoot. But what will you do after shooting and killing me?
    Riza: "..I have no intention to live a comfortable life alone. When this battle is over, I will erase my body from this world, and with it the flame alchemy that drives men mad."
    Roy: * blasts one last snap of flame in frustration* "...That's troubling. I can't lose you."
    • I think you're somewhat missing my point. They're both smart people, they could have found a way to destroy the tattoo themselves if they really wanted to. But the act of the Flame Alchemist burning the secret keeper of his alchemy so no one else could misuse it is a powerful, almost damning act, one that cannot be easily explained away by just practicality at the time. I also disagree that Riza is the only person who understand Roy's pain - many other characters are haunted by what they did in Ishbal, like Armstrong using his own alchemy to kill others or the doctor who dissected Roy's burnt corpses. Hell, Riza likes guns because she didn't have to see her enemy die up close, while Roy knows that his lips get greasy from human fat (the manga even emphasizes his personal knowledge of burning people to the point of scariness). Their specific shared pain is the betrayal of their ideal to use the flame alchemy to help the country, a betrayal that wounds them both in different ways. But you're right, they do understand each other very very well. What I disagree with is that it's impossible for them to be platonic. In regards to chapter 95, I fail to see how threatening to shoot someone who is about to betray you again and then saying you're going to destroy yourself for good because of the madness you unleashed is saying 'I can't live without you' and is supposed to be romantic. Killing yourself because your love is dead (because you killed them) is disturbing and messed-up, so I really don't understand why Royai fans used that very dark and disturbing exchange as 'proof' that their pairing is canon.
    • I disagree. 1) You say it was a damning act, and in part it was, but what all that burning was about was for Riza to, emotionally and physically, be free from her father's bonds and for Roy to somehow make up his betrayal of her trust to her. That's how Arakawa portrayed it. I really doubt anything other than Roy burning her could have been done, but if you think of something let me know. But my point in that is- that is how Arakawa planned it and wanted it. You need to keep in mind that FMA's characters aren't people, they're just ink and paper of a writer's imagination. 2) I agree with you on the point that others know Roy's pain of Ishval but again I have to disagree, since what I'm referring to is the number of people killed. For a poor example- the atom bomb. Roy's the bomb, Riza's the scientist. You can't tell me that just because the inventors of the atom bomb weren't out killing Hiroshima's residents they didn't feel a horrible guilt engulfing them. I mean it to this affect. It's the guilt that's being shared there- I don't really understand what you mean by betrayal. How was there a betrayal there? Roy didn't willingly commit genocide. Riza knew that. There could be form of diluted betrayal there, but they obviously still trust each other with their backs; if there was really a sense of betrayal, there'd need to be hatred there, or at least dislike, but there isn't. For me, that's the whole point about Mustang and Hawkeye's relationship- logically speaking, if as you said, it was betrayal that kept those two bound to each other, there should be hate, dislike, weariness, but in the series they've both shown an immense attachment to each other. Riza cries and gives up when she thinks Roy is dead. Roy panics when he thinks Riza's in danger. Roy gave up on dying when Riza would die too. And, I must point out that in ch. 101, until Riza gave Roy that signal about the chimeras being above he still could not make a choice between saving her or committing human transmutation. 3) You see, this is my point when I say it's not platonic: their relationship is built on the angst they've caused each other, however they trust each other with their lives and care about each other's safety. In ch. 95, Roy was the one being just as 'damning' as you portrayed Hawkeye in the burning-the-tattoo scene, if not more. He was telling Riza to kill him. He'd seen Riza cry when she'd thought he was dead, he'd even commented on it a scant chapter or so before, but nonetheless he was so overwhelmed with hatred that he didn't care if he caused her pain (thus his apology and distraught look later on, when he told her to lower her gun). This just proves that yes, they are two screwed up people. I never denied this. But I don't believe it's platonic at all, simply because Roy stopped his Moral Event Horizon when he knew that he would be damning Riza as well as himself. He cared about her more than himself- and, now that we come to it, since he was planning on dying and throwing all his plans down the drain, he cares about Riza more than he cares about his goal, but my main point is that he cares about her more than ending his pain and just dying- and isn't caring about someone more than yourself the basics of love? 3.5) Riza saying she'd kill herself is simply because if Roy had forced her to shoot him like she'd promised, she would be too overcome with the pain of it all to carry on; because even if it had been Scar to pull the trigger and not Hawkeye, she would still have been the one who had exposed him to Flame Alchemy and made him capable of Ishval. She was still the one who made Roy into a murderer, and made him capable of crossing the line. The guilt of making her most important person die would have been too much for her— and yes, there'd be no other option and she would have to pull the trigger, because in the pair's Ishval-influenced-mindset she owed him to keep her promise, just like he had owed her to burn her back; it's the guilt behind it all that's making them hurt each other in the end, though it's technically for their own good; Riza didn't want to be bound to her father's alchemy, and Roy didn't want to turn into 'an animal in human skin', no matter how painful and fatal the solutions may have been. Another reason for Riza's possible suicide: Roy and Riza living and working together to change the country is their redemption for Ishval- it's the only way they can look themselves in the mirror. I think that in ch. 95 all that pain of Ishval and Hughes' death just came rushing to the surface, and the self-loathing within the pair of them manifested into a desire to just die and be done with it. But the reason that tipped the scales, the reason that Roy didn't let Riza shoot him, was not his goal at the end. At the end it was an unwillingness to cause Riza pain again. Despite Scar and Ed's words' affecting him, up until Riza told him she'd die too, Roy was willing to die. - and now I've rambled on again, so I don't really know if you got my point, but here it is: Roy and Riza care about each other more than themselves. I'm not saying it's nice, I'm not even saying it's healthy- however, I don't believe that you can care that much about a person on a platonic level. Not to mention Arakawa herself has dropped little hints various times over the series: when Grumman asked Roy to marry his granddaughter, his reponse was "You're thinking to far ahead" exactly, as well as Roy going into a rage over Barry the Chopper's groping, him calling her "RIZA!" when he was a student, Mustang labelling Riza as his Queen, Chris knowing 'Elizabeth', the gold-tooth scientist calling Hawkeye Roy's 'precious woman' (yes, literally, I read RAWS), Bradley calling her his 'important person', Ed telling Roy not to worry Hawkeye..etc. Taking all this evidence into account, I cannot help but conclude that there is definitely something there. It's not nice, not pretty, as I mentioned before not even healthy because of Ishval's influence, but to call the relations between Hawkeye and Mustang as platonic doesn't do justice to the emotion there. 'Love' doesn't have to have to be romance or nice, or even happy to be there. Of course, I'm not saying I can convince you otherwise, I'm just giving my side of the argument. In conclusion, my personal opinion is that Hawkeye and Mustang are willing to spend their lives together. They don't need marriage, and aren't capable of it either (as I said, the only way/time I can see it happening is when they're really old). But they do think of each other as their most important person, and they do put each other, admittance or not, above everyone/everything else. That's all I'm trying to say.
    • Okay, I'm gonna keep this as concise as possible because it's very difficult to have a dicussion in this format. I also apologise for the lateness, real life has been nailing my ass. Point 1) I think we might just have to disagree on this, especially when you state what Arakawa planned and wanted. Neither of us are Arakawa, and neither of us can talk on her behalf. I just can't get over Riza asking Roy to burn her, considering the symbolism involved and the frequent references on how burning people has given Roy a sinister edge. Maybe it's just me. Point 2) Thing is, Roy did willingly commit genocide. As Riza says, the homonculi started it but they carried it out. Kimblee's scene in the flashback is all about making Roy and Riza take responsibility for what they've done instead of thinking that they 'had' to. So Riza trusted Roy with her back so he could carry out his dream, and he burned people to death instead. But betrayal doesn't have to equal hate or dislike - a good relationship can see the deep pits in the road but still continue onward. It wouldn't be the first time an anime showed two people hurting each other (intentionally or not) but still keeping a strong bond without ill-will. Point 3) Actually, you make a really good point here. Most Roy/Riza shippers talk about how romantic and sweet their bond is, when I've never really seen it. You pointing out that it could be a dark, almost damning sort of love is actually really interesting. I disagree that it has to be love, but I certainly agree it can be a dark sort of love. Point 4) Again, I really have to agree with the majority of what you're saying. Again, I think I've been tainted by too many other Roy/Riza shippers who say that Riza would kill herself because she couldn't live without Roy (who usually say they love Riza for being a strong female character, go fig). I think, really, the only fundamental thing we are disagreeing about is this: can two people be fiercely devoted to each other and care about each more than themselves without it necessarily being love? I personally think they can; I've always been a fan of two people being complete kindred spirits without any romantic love between them. But like I said above, you've managed to frame this in a way where I can see where you're coming from. If there is love there, it's not the type of love they'd act on with marriage or wild sex, but some sort of silent bond that doesn't need to be spoken

about (again, like you said, unless they're older). So, I can we can come to some happy 'agree to disagree' here. :)

• The ending doesn't state this, but neither does it have anything to the opposite effect. We may never know.
  • Didn't Hiromu Arakawa state in one of the art books that the only reason they aren't married - at least by the end - is because of the anti-fraternization law? On another note, I think that both of them are definitely very, very sad people, but the bond between them is really very strong, romantic or not. As for Riza not being strong, I think that she's strong in that she's confident in who she is, but in the end both she and Roy are just too messed up to have a normal life.
  • Gah! So… many… words! Mercy!
    • Dear God, hold your fire! We're only civilians!

The reason why Mustang got really batshit against Envy about killing Hughes: Hughes is the only reason why Mustang is not become fully cynical.

• See above theories. Despite being in Ishval war, Hughes grows up quite fine; he had loving families, cute baby girl, and practically everything else Roy can't imagine to have without feeling sick or disgusted. So, Hughes is living testament that, yes, you can be fucked up beyond any reason, but you can still genuinely capable to love and care for others.

Another reason why Mustang got really batshit against Envy about killing Hughes: Mustang likes Hughes

Lust's Meaningful Name represents not only her sexy appearance, but her bloodlust

Think about it. She slices apart Barry without even bothering to extensively question him. She can't wait to send Riza to her 'precious Colonel.' She impulsively decides to kill both Mustang (a potential sacrifice) and Alphonse (a CONFIRMED sacrifice) on the same night. Wrath's actions on the scene show that she's not exactly following orders from Father. Seems once she starts the violence, she can't stop. The smug look on her face when she attacks Mustang shows just how much she enjoys killing. She's every bit as sadistic as Envy, just in a more physical, less mindgame-ish way.

• That really seems good enough to be canon. While Lust is certainly skilled at making others attracted to her, she certainly doesn't reciprocate, viewing humans pretty much as worms. On the other hand, I never really thought of her as impulsive- I think of Wrath and Lust as generally more calm and low key about their efforts to torment humans, whereas Envy can be Stupid Evil on occasion.
• Of course, Homunculi have no reproductive capability. Imagine if you were the immortal incarnation of lust, and you had no genitals. You would be the most sexually repressed being in the history of ever.
• As far as I can tell, homunculi can have sex. On his most... well known list of wants, Greed mentions both women and sex. He also has a woman on each arm in his first appearance, and that would make no sense if he couldn't at least hypothetically have sex. And if he gave it to one of his children it doesn't make sense for him to not give it to all of them. Lust would actually be the most likely to be able to have sex because she actively seduces people. All it means that they can't have kids. People who are infertile in real life aren't infertile because they don't have genitals. They're infertile because of genetics or sperm or hormone production or ovoulation problems. Father could have just made it so none of his children produced any hormones so none of them could reproduce.
• She could've killed sacrifices because she didn't want Father's plan to succeed. A way I've heard lust defined on this very site is "like greed but more manipulative." Logically, if this was the case she would share the desire to have friends. So, she, keeping in with the nature of her sin, pretends that she's loyal to Father and waits for an opportunity to screw up the plan. On Father's orders, she follows potential sacrifices to the fifth lab, alone, where she tries to murder them. The sacrifices manage to kill her, but even though she's angry at them for ending her life, she knows that it will inconvenience Father anyways, and makes her last words as nice as she can through her anger.

Father is this universe's equivalent of Satan

I'm basing this in part on speculation I read on another board. Pretty much, it seems like Father's goal is to open the Gate and storm the dimension where Truth-sama lives. They noted on that site how Pride's outline is identical to that of Truth-sama except that it's black rather than white and covered in eyes and mouths; and similarly, Father created Gluttony in an attempt to make a new Gate. So, my theory is that rather than being created in a flask, what Hohenheim's master actually did was more like demon-summoning and that Father was either previously kicked out of that dimension or else was separated from it by that ceremony. The way I see it, Truth-sama is a borderline evil god, but Father is much worse and the idea of Pride and Gluttony's appearance is that they are a dark reflection of the Truth just as demons are often presented as a warped version of angels.

• This doesn't fit. The author herself stated that Christianity doesn't exist in this timeline; to impose a Judeo-Christian view on it is the reader's action, not something that was actually in the story itself. There also hasn't been any suggestion of the supernatural even existing, and all ties to the Gate and the Truth have been through alchemy, which is science in FMA. The creation of Homunculus was not shown, so we can't assume anything about the process other than that it required human blood (which is a part of the human body, making it human transmutation).
• FMA actually challenges what the concept of "God" actually is by including all the religious references to Ishbal (a god that has abandoned its people, or may not even exist), Father Cornello's cult, the seeming lack of a majority religion in Amestris, and the complete blank that The Truth is. The gate does have the Kabbalistic tree on it, which has the 10 names of god, but in Kabbalah, those names are meditated upon in order to achieve understanding of what God is, not to mention that Ed and Izumi both called what was beyond the gate "The Truth". It's a really interesting narrative to follow since the author certainly included all of these mentions of religion for a reason.
  • But yeah, Father still doesn't represent any sort of Satan figure.
    • Really? A powerful agent from beyond the mortal plane, dragged down/cast out, whose goal is to return to that plane and overthrow an entity it refers to as God and claim total power and dominion over existance for itself, is not a Satan analogy? I'd say the recent events pretty firmly conclude that, as far as being an analogy, Father fits the Satan analog better then the God one, fit like a glove in fact. The heavy use of Judeo-Christian symbolism, which is littered all over FMA, the use of Hermetic magic itself, based on christian and jewish philosophy acts as evidence of a Judeo-Christian mythscape, if not the existance of the actual religion of 'Christianity' itself.
    • Philosopher's Stone. The Devil's Research. Case. Point.
• Think about it: What other extremely powerful being is also known as Father? Thus, it is quite possible that he is actually God in his reckless teenage years prior to the invention of Christianity.
  • Can't see him really going over benevolent and forgiving, though.
• It's kind-of, but not really confirmed. Father is one of the living shadow creatures that live inside the Gate. The Truth knows him and returned him to the Gate.
  • So, I guess "the devil of the gate" works?
• Father had a god complex. He used many of the trappings of the Judeo-Christian god, and of 'Father-Lord-type' gods in general, to build his image. Mainly for his own benefit, but I'm sure it had an impact on the people in his conspiracy and on the children themselves. One of Father's roles may be as Satan analogue (although even then God Is Pretty Much A Sadistic Creep), but in Father's mind, at least, Greed #1 was Lucifer—he who betrayed his father and ran off to build his own little kingdom because he wanted everything.
  • Extra points for hanging Greed up on a cross and then destroying him, so that he could return to the greater whole of his Father. He gets to analogue the Morningstar and a Messianic Archetype!
  • But Father knew he didn't have ultimate power, and that was his goal. Not that I know what other goal you can have, when you're immortal and have absolute power over the material world, and ruling countries is easy.

The homunculi are generally opposites of their respective sins, not representations thereof / are the opposite of what you would expect

This is a philosophical speculation. First, there is the factor that while Pride and Wrath are respectively the oldest and youngest created homunculi (until the second Greed), in appearance, Pride looks the youngest and Wrath the oldest. Sloth isn't the slowest, but instead turns out to be a lightening bruiser. Lust is certainly "womanly", but not only is she not a succubus, given that she loathes humans, and her signature weapon is a phallic symbol. Envy partially fits, as you'd think that he would want to be human, given his vice, but is instead the most cruel and sadistic towards humans (on the other hand, he actually does this because he envies humans, so maybe played straight).

Finally, there's an interesting thing with Wrath and Greed having the "wrong" powers fitted to their personality. You would expect that Wrath would be The Brute and so Greed's indestructible body would be a perfect weapon. However, Wrath is instead cruel in a calculating way, so he has a very intellectual power, whereas the relatively pacifistic Greed uses his armor as a shield and rarely uses it offensively.

• Actually, it makes sense for Greed to have a defensive power. When your greedy, you may want even more then you already have, but you don't want to give anything up either. Thus, you shield it - of course, in this case, Greed shields... his most important possession, his Philosopher's Stone.
• Wait... what about Gluttony? Dude loves eating. He has super eating powers and is always hungry. That seems pretty representative of his sin.
• I think you might be looking at this the wrong way. Wrath isn't the same thing as anger, it's more like an all encompassing, cold fury. the wrath of war, rather than the anger of a drunk. Lust might not be a succubus, but she is a text book temptress. Lust isn't just sex as well, it's desire. Their powers might be deliberately opposite for some of them, for an ironic twist, but their personalities match fairly well with their names.
• Maybe I should have stuck with saying that the powers are the opposites. Like you could say that Gluttony being a "black hole" on the inside is the opposite of his seeming enormous weight.
• Well, gluttony the sin is usually filed under "waste", not "eat lots of food", like how Wrath isn't so much "angry drunk" as Hitler, so the WMG still checks out.
  • Gluttony doesn't need to eat, and he probably doesn't even taste anything properly (what with the way he eats, what he eats, that tattoo on his tongue, etc.). He just sticks stuff in his mouth or the dissolution cannon, where it's dumped into a giant Garbage Bin of Infinite Holding. Not that it really changes anything.

If Mustang had found out that Envy started the Ishvalan War

• there wouldn't have been time for anyone to step in and stop the Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Not that Riza probably would've tried had she known that.

May's clan is evil

Yes, May is as innocent as they come, but she's also a bit delusional and not the best judge of character. She decided Scar and Yoki were wonderful people way before they did anything remotely redeemable. In Chapter 57, Lan Fan almost gets into a fight with May, claiming it's her duty to wipe out evil. Maybe this goes beyond clan rivalry and the Chang clan is genuinely villainous, perhaps composed of bandits and criminals. The real reason they're dying off is they've all got bounties on their heads for their heinous crimes. I mean, what kind of clan lets a small girl journey across a treacherous desert by herself as part of a probably fruitless quest for immortality?

• I don't know about them specifically, but there's definite evidence that the Xingese court might be a Deadly and Decadent one. Once they have learned how a philosopher's stone is made, one of the Xingese characters (I believe May herself) notes their discomfort at going back to Xing with this information, because they know the response would be "Great, now let's just round up a few thousand peasants and get the show on the road."

Father is an idiot.

This is part Just Bugs Me, but the above statement explains everything. His big, centuries-long plan, worked out to the last detail, relies for its final phase on complete dumb luck. He requires five alchemists who've been to the Gate and survived. How many are there in Amestris today, the day of the eclipse that's necessary for his circle to work? FOUR. If Hohenheim hadn't come west and fallen in love, if Trisha hadn't caught the plague, there would be two. EPIC FAIL. Father and his goons spent years on the Fuhrer Candidate program, decades more to maneuver Bradley up the ladder to where he could believably assume command. Why haven't they been farming slavishly loyal alchemists all this time who'd be willing to throw their lives (and, before that, body parts) away at their master's command? The only excuse is that the man is a moron. It doesn't help that his selection process for loyal minions inevitably surrounds him with people who are both incompetent and corrupt, as no officer who isn't both in spades would think that the plan was (a) a good idea and (b) everything Father claimed it was (raise your hand, anyone who believes that Father intends the high command to survive, let alone be given an invincible army).

• It seems an alchemist has to be of a particular moral fiber to be a worthy candidate. Kimbley was considered inappropriate since he lacked the steel to go through with the exchange. Like you said, his subordinates are morons, they're the only ones willing to follow Father (with the exception of Kimblee) he can't help it if the only people willing to help him are stupid, since anyone with a lick of common sense or sanity would be deead set against him. He's had to work with the tools he's been given.
• While I think Father can be clever, his real undoing is his utter contempt for humans. He considers humans to be insects. When was the last time you successfully manipulated an insect into helping you accomplish a complicated plan? In fact, maybe the reason why the most recent hommunculi were created from humans is that Father realized he actually needed an associate who understood how humans thought. Not that this was really successful either.
• And (original guesser here) the fact that they can force people to open the Gate against their wills is a strong (though by no means conclusive!) counterargument. Oh well. :)
  • On the other hand, Ed notices that forcing Mustang though the Gate put a huge strain on Pride, so it's not really the most efficient option available. Father probably still preferred waiting for people to do it on their own, but you're right about him having the backup plan if necessary. Now, whether or not putting off that option until the last minute makes him an idiot or not is up for debate.
• You forgot about Marcoh. He was also considered a "potential sacrifice", and they did their best to keep him confined to the capital to make sure he'd be available for the ritual, but he escaped and isn't close enough. So they actually had at least one spare.
• But one has to wonder why Father didn't just get a whole bunch of loyal/malleable people to convince/force open the gate that he could keep under watch and control.
• If the sacrifices weren't ready for this eclipse, he could just prepare for the next one. One of the benefits of immortality is that you're never in a hurry.
• I'm guessing Father had spares, but the ones the story deals with were the best he had to work it. It's quite coincidental though, that they all knew (or come to know) each other. Also keep in mind that once he did whatever transmutation it was he did, all the sacrifices were summoned into his chamber. If he had one less sacrifice, he could always make one for his purposes, but there was no point in doing this until the eclipse. Also; eclipses don't happen often - the next one might have been a millennium away - so I'm guessing Father did have some sort of backup. He was arrogant, but not stupid.
• He did do something to create sacrifices. It's called the state alchemist program. I'm pretty sure they say this at one point in the manga, don't remember when though. True, it would have been better for him to do what he did with the fuhrer candidate thing, but maybe he didn't think of that at the time, and thought the state alchemist program would be enough.
• This is brought up in episode 49 of Brotherhood. How convincing it is depends on the viewer's Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
  Alphonse: It's not that hard to surprise you when you think so little of us humans. You think you've got us all figured out, but you don't know a thing about us. You're too arrogant to see that things might not go your way, like your plan to use us. It was too sloppy to actually work.
  Pride: And how's that?
  Alphonse: Well, the plan needed us, right? As your sacrifices? The whole thing hinged on us doing what you wanted. But what if we simply decided to run away to a different country? That's all it would have taken and your entire plan falls apart.
  Pride: True. And there are some humans selfish enough that would have done exactly what you said. But then, not all. Just look at Wrath's wife. [...] There are a handful of humans like Wrath's wife. They're willing to give up their own lives in order to protect the things they care about. And one step up from them we have you and your brother, chosen to be sacrifices for the infinite strength of your spirit. You never would have fled and abandoned this country. And that, you even went as far to bring the fight to us. So explain to me again, how are our plans so sloppy?

The boys would have succeeded in bringing their mother back if they had stuck to the actual recipe for a human body WITHOUT trickling their blood in it or at least a very different result would have occurred

Think about it. Their blood tainted the make-up of a human body.

• This Troper disagrees with your theory. While the brother's formula for a human being was correct, the actual human transmutation itself wouldn't have worked anyways. The inclusion of blood was for Trisha's soul, which would have made a being in the shape of a human actually be Trisha. If they had tried to simply create a being that looked like a human (such as the cyclops soldiers that Central was creating) they most likely would have succeeded because it wasn't "Human Transmutation" per se. Also, it's stated in Chapter 44 that beings that have no tie to life cannot be brought back from the dead, whereas people who are still among the living can still be transmuted, such as Al's soul.
  • Probably jossed- it ultimately seems to be implied that you can bring people back by sacrificing your alchemical knowledge, but otherwise, Truth will just do something nasty to you and you won't succeed in bringing them back.
    • And that was a special case as well, because Ed and Al's gates were connected. As Roy notes, nobody else could have retrieved a toll that way, because they'd have no way to get back.
    • And AND Al wasn't actually dead. He was taken. There's a significant difference; his body and soul were intact and together, they were just at his Gateway instead of in the world. It's the same reason Ed was able to get his soul out of the Gate as far back as the beginning of the story; because Al was not dead, just gone.

Gluttony is a TARDIS.

He is bigger on the inside than he is on the outside.

• And that would make Lust a Time Lord.

Mrs. Bradley is secretly the most powerful woman on the planet.

She's the wife of the Fuhrer is in a family with two of the most powerful homunculi. She's essentially this universe's conterpart to Chi-Chi.

Elvis didn't die, he went to Amestris.

Rule of Cool. Also explains Mei's overly sideburned fantasies of Al.

• EPIC, sir.

Everyone has their own personal Door and Truth

Something like what the first anime showed, I'll admit. When Ed transmutes himself to get out of Gluttony's stomach, he goes to the Door of Truth...only to find a second door with Al's body sitting in front of it. Ed then gets dragged away through the Door he came in. When Al ends up in front of the Door (only one door this time from what I could tell), there's no Truth around - just Al's oddly self-aware body. Al also ends up leaving through the Door in front of his body - his own Door, not the same one Ed used.

• The thing about individual Truths is connected to how Truth takes the payment and adds it to its own body. Ed's Truth only has his arm and leg, which it's visibly still wearing years later. Al's Truth took Al's entire body, which is why Al's body is acting all self-aware while Truth is nowhere to be found. The biggest tip-off is that Al and Ed's Truths, when seen, are always the same height as they are. And Mustang's Truth, though only seen in one panel thus far, is noticeably taller than either of the Truths seen before.
• Izumi's Truth was a female silhouette.
• Also, this information will be a major plot point, probably in regards to what Father wants to do with the Door.
  • Seems to have some support in chapter 104, where Father opens doors in each of the sacrifices before opening a door in the planet itself. Whether it's the same Truth behind all of them still remains to be seen.
• ...then could Father perhaps be Hohenheim's Truth?
• Also notable is the fact that, if you look closely, the door that each alchemist sees has a different diagram on it.
• Semi-Confirmed by Word of God. Arakawa said the Truth was somewhat a 'hollow' version of oneself (as a sort of 'internal God', or conscience), a sort of 'negative' of that alchemist, which completed itself with the tolls taken by the alchemist upon seeing the Truth. This seems to fit with what's been stated here.
• Confirmed in Chapter 108. Ed talks to his Truth and actually transmutes his own Gate as Equivalent Exchange for resurrecting Al. However, all the Truths seem to have a collective consciousness while taking the forms of their counterparts, since the Truth appears to Father as a sphere, like Father's "dust bunny" form
• I like this because it might be this show trying to convey the message that everyone has their own subjective meaning of life, or truth.

Greedling will take to wearing Cool Shades

On a lighter note, I came across this recently◊, which was a shot from the original anime wherein one state alchemist looks exactly like Ling, but with Greed's sunglasses. Given that for instance Basque Gran looks the same in both the anime and the manga, I doubt it was a coincidence that Arakawa chose to draw that guy. There's also the cool factor that with the shades, Ling (and the above image) looks like a John Woo character.

• Immediately after reading that, this troper got a mental vision of the Corinthian from The Sandman. Awesome, yes. Likely to give me flashbacks of the most disturbing non-hentai comic I've ever read? Also yes.

May is older than she looks.

Everyone's been assuming she's just a young child, but I can't find her age stated anywhere. The truth is, she's actually about the same age Al is, or at most a year or two younger. It would explain why she's as good an Alchemist as she is. And it would be funny.

• Probably one or two years younger - if the boys are 14/15/16 through the series then this might account for her looking quite childish still. In the frame where they're all together (and adults) in the end credits for Brotherhood, she looks younger than the boys but not by much. (Or maybe I'm over-thinking things).
• She could always just be a late bloomer, which is quite possible and would explain this well if it's true. Also, since Ling is Younger Than He Looks, it would be hilariously fitting for the other Xingese noble we see to be the exact opposite.

Philosopher's Stones are based on Spiral Power

It bypasses the Real Life physics of Equivalent Exchange. Need to say more?

• They harness the Spiral Energy of the souls contained within them. Using more hot blooded people will produce a better stone, which is why Kimbley needed a stone to recover from the same injury that Ed just used his own soul for.

Father's plan is to propose to the Truth!

Once he makes the cyrcle, he will reach the Thruth's domain and demand its/her hand in marriage, to which Truth-sama, flattered, will agree. At the wedding, Pride will play the piano, having been taught so in his Selim disguise, and King Bradley will stipulate their legal union, as he's the governor. Ed, Al, Izumi and Roy will have served their positions as wedding witnesses, as they all have known the Truth.

The honeymoon will be at Xing, as Father has a Xingese bodyguard (Greed/Ling). And, nine months later, Truth-sama and Father will have a child: Van Hoheneim (who they'll say he looks like Father in his adolescence)

THE END.

• That has to be the most insane yet awesome fan theory ever! And after they marry, they shall cause chaos and destruction all over the world!
• Of course, Amestris' destruction was the wedding gift.
• ...I Need a Freaking Drink after reading that, because I'm obviously not drunk enough to fully comprehend this Crack Pairing.

Father's ultimate plan is Instrumentality

Ch. 104 spoilers aside, I'm surprised this hadn't shown up yet...

• Come to think of it, I think that the description of his plan would definitely qualify it as a form of Instrumentality. It's implied he wants to kill off all humans and then create "children" loyal to him- so it would be an Assimilation Plot since everyone would think the same way as Father.
  • Also, that's what the higher-ups of the military were going for in supporting Father, especially in chapter 90-something when that dude was going on about the world needing to "be reborn anew/all is one and one is all." Maybe it was Father's idea to begin with, he straight out told them he wanted to assimilate everybody within himself and they were crazy enough to get on board with it. If that's not where he intends to go, then it's one hell of a Shout-Out to EVA.

The homunculus is the first member of the Godhand from Berserk

Think about it: during an eclipse, it sacrifices a huge number of people with the help of a magic stone to have an encounter with God and attain a perfect human form. The events of the end of the manga are going to knock the world back to the stone age; Berserk takes place after civilization catches back up to the middle ages.

Seriously, though, I swear Arakawa was channeling Miura in chapter 104. Only without the rape, thank God.

• Regarding the rape, I was going to think Arakawa would make men the victims, but she doesn't seem like an Yaoi Fangirl It quite makes sense, specially considering her very first manga Stray Dog was clearly Miura inspired. I also had a WMG moment when reading this, as I've always considered Truth-sama and The Idea of Evil the same anyway, and Pride's and Envy's true forms as well as Father's kinda resemble a bit apostles, and the homunculus could very well be "fake apostles", as in Rosine's elves and Mozgus and his angels; it makes sense since Father can turn people into homunculus much like the apostles can make false-apostles.

Also, Lust could be Slan manifesting herself in the physical world. I don't know if I should feel disturbed or not, specially after the troll intestine incident...

• I actually had the comparison in mind way back when Ling became the second Greed- very similar to Griffith- insanely ambitious guy is badly wounded and so makes a Deal with the Devil, although thankfully, he didn't go off the rails to nearly the extent that Griffith did.

• Also note the sacrifices(except for Mustang) are like a backwards version of Apostle sacrifices-instead of causing the death of loved ones for the Gate, its the death of loved ones that lead you to open the gate, primarily willingly.

God isn't Truth, but instead is The King of the Cosmos

In the next chapter he will be quite angry with Father wanting to join with him so he'll just roll him up and get what's coming to him.

Olivia Armstrong and Major Miles are married.

He does say he has an Amestrian wife...

• Please, oh please, oh please!
  • But Olivia has said more than once she's not married, so no!
    • When has she said she's not married? This troper can only remember her saying that she's too old to have children (to Lt. General Raven, and it was to make herself appear softer than she was). Besides, supposing they are married, I could well believe Olivia would like to keep that secret so that Miles wouldn't become her weak point (say, Drachmans kidnapping him). I really wouldn't be surprised if this theory was true, because Miles specially mentions his wife's Amestrian ethnicity and Olivia emphasises rather heavily that she's native Amestrian. If they aren't married, it's quite a Red Herring. And finally - Briggs is a rather isolated place, so I would believe that soldiers' spouses and families, if they have any (remember, they're hinted to be a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits), live in the fort.
    • Indeed, Olivia never said that she wasn't married, though other characters think so, such as her own brother. I can't remember if this scene was in the manga, but it certainly was in the anime: Alex said something along the lines of, "That's why you're not married!" But I totally love this theory; it's what converted me to shipping Miles/Olivia. And, because Olivia appears to be an ice queen (for practical reasons, as well as for the sake of her image, I guess), it would make sense for her to keep her marriage a secret (if she were actually married). Oh, and by the way, Olivia didn't say that she was too old to have kids, just that most other women her age would usually have a kid or two by now.
• Holy crap. You, sir or madam, have converted me to your theory! I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

The god of Liore is based on Hohenheim or Father.

As I've been watching Brotherhood, there seemed to be an emphasis on Liore that I missed when reading the manga the first time. Since Liore worships a sun god and the statues show him as bearded, it makes sense he's based on one of them- either Hohenheim, given his blond hair and gold eyes or Father on account of his Light Is Not Good appearance. And it makes sense that the people there would have a longstanding belief of alchemy = miracle if they'd seen it before.

• Considering that Letoism was a plot of Father's, I wouldn't actually be surprised if Leto were based off Father, what with his A God Am I plans and view of humans.

Roy and Izumi have Xingian ancestry.

Not too off-the-wall, especially as WMGs go. Courtesy of LiveJournal's moriapolonius, "I always thought that Roy and Izumi were drawn as if they had Xingian blood. Black hair, narrow uptilted eyes, smaller size." Also note their black irises. Consult This Very Wiki's FMA character sheet for reference images.

• Plausible theory. I would like to add that Kimblee looks like he could have some Xingian blood in him as well.
• Very plausible. I'd add Lieutenant Ross to the list as well.

Father caused the Elric brothers' mother's death.

• Poison or whatever, doesn't matter. He had one of his lackies, probably Envy, kill her to set off Hohehiem's offspring and get them to attempt transmutation. Despite his reactions to Al and Ed when they meet in the manga, he actually did know Ho Ho had kids; he just didn't know what they looked like.

The Fullmetal Alchemist Universe is really an alternate future of the Dragonlance Universe.

Okay, so let's say that the FMA universe is really an alternate timeline that split off from the Dragonlance universe during the early Fifth Age. The continent that Amestris is on is simply one of the other continents on Krynn, and the lack of races other than Humans can be explained by saying that some event caused them all to flee through planar portals long ago, OR there have only ever been Humans on the continent Amestris is on and since there never has been much contact between the continents in Dragonlance that there are in fact races like Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes on the other continents. Now, the FMA universe is an alternate timeline from the early Fifth Age because there is only one moon, not three, and there are no gods around. Alchemy is just another form of Primal Sorcery and Mysticism. The Truth is an entity who managed to hijack the Gate of Souls (Krynn has a Gate of Souls that all souls pass though after they die, where they go not even the gods know) and use it for its own purposes.

I bet no one but me gets this...

Hohenheim has worn Al's armor body into battle.

I know him saying "my old antique armor!" in the manga hints at it having been found as a collectible or restored by him, but he's one of the only characters in the series tall enough to wear it (even if he would have to use the under-chin or neck visor as a viewport, unlike Armstrong and possibly Sig Curtis). If it was a war that involved much death by alchemy, others wearing the armor may have (in the first anime continuity) been flung through the Gate and influenced the design of the armor used by the German military on the Shamballah project (that doesn't really matter, though, what with the body-switching). It would be a bad idea for the man with golden eyes and hair to be walking around a battlefield, getting stabbed and not bleeding, and I feel that Technical Pacifist or not, Hohenheim would put himself up as a literal foot soldier for something that he truly thinks of as a just cause (and may have been much less paxible a few centuries ago).

• Wouldn't he have avoided fighting, knowing that it was most likely Father's plotting causing it?
  • Who said he would have been fighting in any Amestrian conflicts? He was a non-native Xingese for hundreds of years, and there are at least six countries canonically named in Fullmetal Alchemist (five if Liore's just a subdivision of Amestris, as I always thought it was) with geography to spare. He could have gone the long way around Amestris and participated in some Franco-Iberian scuffles a few hundred years ago, for example.

Armstrong sparkles because flecks of glitter constantly float around him.

"These novelty Xingese Bishie Sparkles have been passed down the Armstrong family line of generations!" They're powered by the correspondence of the human's Hot Bloodedness to the dragon whose life flows through the earth. Olivier just doesn't hold with sparkles. The Armstrong Family passing the novelty Bishie Sparkles down their family line for generations may explain both how Catherine can power them without drama and how she can lift a piano with one hand despite her mostly slender body. She will show up at the last minute after a lesson from Mei Ling and singlehandedly solve every alchemy-related problem that exists within the series, at the cost of the Bishie Sparkles ever being passed down to future generations of her family line (this guess could be the fastest example of Cerebus Syndrome and Plot Tumor ever, neh?).

• Uhh... *brain explodes*
  • But seriously, life-alchemy powered floating glitter would explain it perfectly, and be completely plausible.
• Armstrong can also transmute his uniform reversibly into sparkle, which explains how he can go from clothed to shirtless-and-sparkling in a split second.

If Envy hadn't been killed

, Father's "transaction" would have had a much different outcome.Father originally had a completely different plan that involved summoning "God", perhaps wanting to increase his knowledge for knowledge's sake (to ease the sorrow of immortal boredom or or some other lament) and not caring about who he killed in the process. When he re-absorbed Greed, he may have changed the plan to absorb and keep every human soul in Amestris, but that was likely part of the original plan since he kept it after making the new Greed. However, that he had an extra homunculus-attribute in him at the time, this means that the attributes have a sort of compartment soul, a glue that keeps them separate, and this may have returned to Father when Envy was destroyed. With Sloth and Envy driving him, as well as Wrath, and thus Gluttony in him, he decides to screw the time and effort it would take to follow the original plan and gain what he wants by eating God, which gives him both God's power and a release for the hatred of The Truth that he was able to feel now that he was once again in possession of of thousands of extra years of Wrath.

Father is The Man in Black.

Or alt-universe equivalent. A freaky, black, amorphous, shadow-y true form, an ancient evil, can sometimes take on the appearances of other people, has a complicated plan that involves killing vast numbers of people, frequently manipulates and uses people to further his own goals? Oh yeah. Jacob once compared the Man in Black to the wine in a flask, which kept the evil in... just like what Father was in his earliest days. Whether The Island is actually (yet another) giant transmutation circle has yet to be determined.

• Also, pride somehow trapped in/under central, much in the way MIB was trapped on the island.

Riza's father attempted Human Transmutation

We see him cough up blood when he dies, and the only other person in the series who also coughs blood does so because she tried it. He was obviously a talented alchemist, having taught Roy and developed the flame alchemy theory. Plus, wouldn't it make sense if up until a few years ago, there was another fully-ready sacrifice waiting in the wings for them to use? Hell, they might have discovered Roy from keeping an eye on Hawkeye-sensei.

• I actually use this in my fanon as almost-cannon. It makes perfect sense: Not only does he die by coughing up blood for some mysterious reason (Izumi anyone?), and his a master alchemist, he also claims that alchemists are beings that must "search for the Truth for as long as they live, (...) which is why I am a man who died long ago." Sounds like he's implying that he's seen the Truth to me. Not to mention that Riza says that her mother died years before her father... It's all too convienient to be a coincidence.

It's possible to make a chimera capable of human language (not just speech, but conversation) without using a human as one of the components

.By using a gorilla/chimpanzee, a (or some) corvids, and maybe a dolphin and/or parrot/mynah bird. You would have to teach it how to talk, but it would still be capable of passing an auditory Turing Test after a couple of years. The problem is that Shou needed wanted immediate results, so he gave up any time he made something that couldn't spout out Amestrian as soon as it was "born".

• There doesn't appear to be a major water body in FMA's setting, so dolphins might be hard to find. However, provided they have corvids and parrots, it might work.

Fullmetal Alchemist is entirely real - and is taking place in modern day France as we speak.

This◊ is a picture of the path of the Large Hadron Collider. Look familiar?

• Then what's the smaller circle to the bottom left?
• Oh fu--
  • Well, it's just France.
    • If you strike them down, they will become more assholish than you can possibly imagine.
• You just give Dan Brown something to write.
• GENIUS.
• In all seriousness, there is actually significant truth to this, as particle accelerators can be used to transmute metals. It's just really expensive.
  • Equivalent exchange...
• The inscribed pentagons do not exist, but more than one person thought of Fullmetal Alchemist when news of the Large Hadron Collider arose and it happened to be a giant, underground circle.

Mustang is actually a closeted gay man.

His womanizer persona is a red herring - he overexaggerates his interest in women and the vast number of dates he goes on to dispel any doubts about his sexuality, since being found out in the early 1900s is a court-martial offense. In canon, the only "date" we see him on 1, 2 is with one of the women who works for his aunt, and the "date" part is a cover for the exchange of intel she has collected for him. It's completely likely the rest of the dates he brags about are along the same lines. Being Madame Christmas' foster son, he likely grew up with these women like older sisters. They'd probably be happy to help him hold his cover (also, if they're already providing him with dangerous government secrets, what's one fake date between friends?). His flirting with Riza (or "Elizabeth") over the phone is also just coded information about the mission at hand.Not to mention his relationship with Hughes: the only time he cries in both canons is at Hughes' funeral, and he nearly loses his mind trying to get revenge for Hughes' murder.

The one-eyed zombies weren't just soldiers.

They were also subjects. Father wanted to lord it over a kingdom of mindless drones once he obtained his godhood, wiped out all Amestrians and, presumably, set his eyes on enslaving the rest of the world (or feeding it to his horrible invincible dolls). They were injected with philosopher's stone elixir that had been diluted over time to remove the original personalities attached to the soul-juice, and simply reprogrammed to obey only "father," which the top military brass and the mad scientists under Father's employ bone-headedly assumed meant that the zombies would respond to their own commands as well.

King Bradley is not a Time Lord.

He literally grows old and die. End of story.

• Well, that's just no fun.

The Gold toothed alchemist doctor is Silver Steiner.

He didn't die. He faked his death so he could go work with Father.

• But even being Gold Steiner's younger brother, he'd need to be at least ten years older than he is now.
  • So he's the real Time Lord here?

Selim will grow up and try to follow in Ed's footsteps by being an awesome hero and/or alchemist.

Because that would just be awesome, given the later events in the series. He grows up to become what he pretended to idolize.

• Does that mark on his forehead look familiar to you? That's how powerful he will become!
• One problem... Selim can't grow up, because he's a Homonculus. While he looks like he's younger physically then he was before and will probably continue growing until he reaches the physical age he once had, there's not much he can do afterwards.
  • Selim had the ability to alter his own age, which let him believably masquerade as normal children for years at a time; we hear about this from Roy's mom, but he never has cause to use it on camera. Also, if he's down to one soul, he's probably the equivalent of Wrath and will age even if he retains some of his powers.
  • Didn't Ed release most, if not all, of Pride's souls when he defeated him, though? If so, then he might age a tad slower than normal, but he probably still could.
• It's fairly easy to imagine Ed and Selim teaming up later in life, with Selim being a total fanboy and Ed feeling uncomfortable about it.
  • Holy crap, that would be uncomfortable! Imagine Ed being all "Stop admiring me! I kinda killed you / destroyed your memories once... (Also you used to be a bloodthirsty monster which is creepy.)" in his head all the time.

The picture at the end of Roy and Riza is their wedding.

Because the Elrics all got romantic resolutions, why shouldn't they?

• Oh please, I hope you're right! They really deserve some closure to their relationship.
• Added to my personal canon. I mean, come on... we needed to hear more about what happened to them...
• A wedding in military uniforms, with their serious expressions looking like they're planning a battle? That's... actually pretty in-character.
  • Holy crap.
• Of course it's not their wedding, idiots... it's their honeymoon XD. And may I be the first one to point out we can't see either of their hands and whether they may or may not be adorned with matching rings? And that, in the Japanese raw, when Grumman asked Roy to marry his granddaughter (a.k.a Riza Hawkeye), Roy exactly said "You're thinking too far ahead, General." Now, there needs to be something going on behind the scenes for getting married to be too far ahead, right? Also, when we see Riza's tattoo for the first time in the manga, she has a cup on her sink for her toothbrush and toothpaste. There is another cup on the side of her sink, as well as something that may or may not look like cologne- and may I also add that it seems Roy knows her home-number by heart? Just cuz it's interesting... Oh Lord, this isn't healthy. XD
  • I don't think it was ever said that Grumman was Riza's grandfather.
  • I believe Arakawa mentioned at one point that Riza was Grumman's granddaughter.
    • It was stated in one of the guidebooks. Furthermore, the the military vehicle that Hawkeye gets her name from is a reconnaissance plane called the Grumman E-2 Hawkeye.
• I am totally on board with this theory. YAY.
• Sounding more and more canon than fanon with each passing line.
• A recent artbook came out featuring Mustang and Hawkeye at a wedding and surrounded by Havoc, Maria Ross, Fuery and all the rest of Mustang's "favourite" officers. Mustang was the groom, Riza the bride. It seems to be effectively canon now, and Arakawa did say that the only thing stopping them was their military careers.
  • WHAT BOOK WAS THIS?! Seriously, I want to see it.
  • I literally almost cried, good Sir/Madam/(insert appropriate honorific here). Please please PLEASE deliver.
  • As for the military careers getting in the way, that can easily be remedied. Being the granddaughter of the most powerful man in the military has to have some perks, yeah? And he's obviously already on board with the idea.
• In that case, maybe Havoc or Ed or someone draw Roy's moustache on with marker pen during the stag party...

Al felt so guilty about lying to Mei about what he looked like that he is now trying to look as attractive as possible to make it up to her.

Seriously, he keeps his hair 'short, crisp and golden', he's clearly been working out, he is indeed taller than Ed now and unlike Ed, who dresses a bit sloppily, he wears clothes so elegant and well-tailored they belong in a Shojo manga.

• How could he decide to become taller than Ed?
• He drank A LOT of milk. He even orders some at the restaurant in the last chapter/episode.
• Cultural note: The influx of easily attainable beef and milk had noticeable effects on Japanese childrens' growth rates. Perhaps a reference to this?

Homunculi are the Lie equivalent of Truths.

A Truth is a white being with no face and the shape of the person they reflect. A homunculus is a black being with a face and no shape. They both have their containers, the homunculi the flasks (for varying definitions of flask) and the Truths the gates. The original homunculi (and the homunculi in the original anime) were imitations of humans (the former humans in general, the latter specific humans), and the Truths gain the bits and parts of the people they reflect as they take them for trying to do human transmutation. Plus, the English pun in the word homunculie.

The Gold-Toothed Alchemist was a former sacrifice candidate.

He saw a very tiny part of the Truth and it took his tooth in exchange. The amount seen wasn't enough for Father to use as a straight sacrifice, so his slightly-enhanced alchemy was used in the Fuhrer Candidate project. It later allowed Selim to force open the Gate for Mustang by using his connection like a crowbar.

Truth-sama is a Droste Image of its visitor.

The plane of the Gate is nothing else than a total perspective vortex created by certain transmutations. This means that the alchemist is seeing everything, including himself seeing everything, including himself seeing everything, ad infinitum. While most of the universe gets translated into a white void, the alchemist's own contour stands out, with another white void inside it.

Lust was a double agent secretly working against Father.

She always seemed all too willing to kill sacrifice candidates. Was she trying to sabotage Father's plan?Well, sex isn't the only aspect of lust. There's also Blood Lust. Could even be she didn't want to sabotage but usurp, as a Lust for Power, but didn't realise fully how to do it. Mangalust does after all, seem a tad more primal.

Roy gets his sight back and still gets to do circle-free transmutation.

You need to go through a Gate to get back to the real world, and your Gate is your ability to do clap transmutation. Ed only got out because of his access to Al's gate. If Roy tried that trade, he'd be trapped. But trading the philosopher's stone back to Truth should allow Roy to recover his sight and still use his own Gate. Some guys have all the luck...

• Alternatively, he gets a eye doctor who knows Alchemy to fix his eyes with the Stone instead of calling upon God to do it. It's a Philosopher's Stone: you could make a new body easily, much less fixing some eyes! It also means that fewer souls are used up for him, so he can respect them.
• While it's impossible to restore body parts taken by Truth with normal medical alchemy (Hohenheim mentions that he can't give Izumi back her organs), if the alchemist used human transmutation like Ed did to get out of Gluttony, and then used a Philosopher's Stone to pay the toll, it would theoretically allow them to get their body parts back without sacrificing their Gate. So if Izumi had used Hohenheim herself to do a human transmutation and then used some of the soul-energy inside him to pay the toll to get there, get her body parts back, and then return, she would have retained her clap-transmutation while also regaining her lost organs. It's implied that this may have been what Mustang did at the end of Brotherhood, which would make him one of the two most powerful living alchemists (alongside Alphonse, who has a body and clap-transmutation without any lost parts).

Truth isn't evil, just really really frustrated and disillusioned.

Spoilers for 108, so I am censoring the shit out of this. Most people assumed that Truth was such a spiteful bastard because God Is Evil. But imagine his contact with humanity throughout the ages - he's holding the vast knowledge of the entire universe, but he only meets desperate or arrogant people, so ambitious for power that they're blind to what they already have, just to gain knowledge because they're convinced that it'll solve all their problems. After seeing so many of these people, Truth becomes so embittered he starts to visciously teach them that it won't. But then he finally meets a boy who actually learned from his first attempt at transmutation; that while his life isn't perfect, he already has what he needs, and he'd rather gain things through his own hard work than just vying for an easy answer. And that's why Truth finally smiles at him and gives him his blessing - he's finally met a human who got it.

• Elaborating on that, since the State Alchemy program is basically a front so as to find sacrifice candidates for Father, and Amestrian alchemy is used for largely military purposes, it seems quite likely that a large number of skilled alchemists are war criminals. Also, since their being powerful alchemists makes them a benefit to Father, who is Truth's enemy, it makes some sense for Truth to incapacitate anyone who comes to his realm, whether they are a good person or not.

Armstrong is the alternate universe version of Theodore Roosevelt.

• EPIC, Sir.
• I don't think Teddy cried quite that much.
  • Alternate universe versions of people can be like that. In trade, Armstrong never beat asthma to death, ate its flesh, and ran 100 miles on the energy it gave him.

The old man talking at the end of each episode is Father

If you listen to what the old man says at the end of each episode, it supports this. The old man's wisdom was one of my favorite parts of watching each episode, so this struck me hard. He starts off with good advice and powerful insights on the human condition. It hints at the next episode while reflecting on what you just saw at times. Later on however (near the climax), his advice gets shorter and shorter, plus his words start becoming bitter and negative. In Episode 61, after Father loses all the souls he absorbed he just restated Equivalent Exchange, which applies to his inability to contain God without the souls and the events of the next episode in relation to Father.

The last Ishbalan that Roy killed at the end of the Ishbal Civil War was Miles' grandfather or father.

No particular reason, just Rule of Drama mostly.

• Minor correction: if he was related to Miles, he'd have to be either Miles's grandfather or one of his grandfather's relatives. I think Miles commented that his father was of a non-Ishvalan ethnicity, which would imply that the Ishval blood came from his mother's side. Other than that, though, this would make for a nice dash of added drama.

A large part of Father's motivations can be blamed on Hohenheim's master.

It seems that a part of his goals was acquiring information, like when he talks about how the world "is a system with knowledge of a vast universe far beyond blah blah blah blah" and when he says "I wanted perfect understanding of God! I wanted to know everything in this world!". This is a result of what he was originally created/summoned for. His original function seemed to be something like a living computer database, where he would provide information on any subject he was asked about. He even knew about things that Hohenheim's master did not (specifically, how to become immortal), which shows that he was probably suppose to find or devise ways of getting information on his own, not simply remember things he was told. So, even after he kills everyone in Xerxes and gets a body of his own, he still (perhaps subconsciously) pursues his original purpose of acquiring information, which leads to all the events in the series.

Arakawa will write a new series that is about Amestris time skipped about ten-years

While the manga definitely ends with most loose ends tide up quite nicely, there's just enough left open to make this troper wonder if there isn't a sequal series somewhere in the future. The time skip would allow for characters to be in completely new situation/the introduction of new characters. The focus wouldn't be on Ed and Al, but someone else. Selim, perhaps?

• Or, probably, they somehow need to recover Ed's Gate of Truth and reassemble the ol gang, because there's a new danger?

Truth taking Roy's sight was totally fair and justifiable

The rule is that Truth is cruel but fair, right? And Roy's primary thought while being forced to look into his Gate was probably something along the lines of 'I don't want to see this!' So the Truth took his sight so he wouldn't have to see it. Hey, it's the thought that counts right?

• It would explain why all Roy lost was his sight: Truth has never shied from taking limbs and organs before, so it would've made more sense for it to take Roy's actual eyes instead.

The "God" inside the Gate is related to the Shadow Queen.

The Shadow Queen's shadowy hands reach up from the ground and drag her poor victims down into the ground, siphoning their life force to replenish her own HP. Self-explanatory.

• Considering her shadowy motif, she's probably a homunculus.

Selim is now completely mortal.

When Ed defeated him, he released most of the souls that went into the creation of his internal Philosopher's Stone. Ed only left enough energy in him for him to age normally since we see that he grew up much like a regular child would at the end of the manga. He still has his homunculus abilities just waiting to be tapped when he's old enough, but said abilities are not as strong as before since he doesn't have a Stone to draw power from any more. he'll just have to supplement it with alchemy (perhaps he also retains the ability from his assimilation of that gold-toothed doctor, perhaps from some of the residual energy Ed left in him) should he chose to become an alchemist when he grows up.

Addendum to the above theory — Kimblee's still floating around in the residual energy Ed left with Selim.

When Selim's become a State Alchemist he will trigger his old homuculus shadow abilities. The manifestation of said abilities will coincide with him hearing Kimblee whisper to him, haunt his dreams, and show him what he once was. Selim will be horrified and will continuously try to fight Kimblee as his personal Enemy Within. This will be the difficulty he'll have to overcome to gain, in Arakawa's words, a "fullmetal heart." ^note  You know this is a fanfic just waiting to happen.

• Better yet: Kimblee will take a page from Truth's book and instead of being the kid's enemy, will become a Breaking Speech style Spirit Advisor to Selim once the latter grows up. Anyone could see Kimblee doing that; it fits his weird sense of humour. Antagonizing and mocking him one moment, and saying something that turns out to be helpful the next.

The reborn Selim Bradley at the end of the manga actually goes by the name Selim Bradley II.

As a cover story, they just claimed that Bradley managed to impregnate (some Real Life pregnancy over 50 cases have happened to women who thought they were barren) his wife just before he died. This was helped by the true form of Selim actually growing at the rate of the fetus, and for the time of her "pregnancy" Mrs. Bradley was kept out of the public eye — officially for her privacy, but really to allow her to nuture the infant Selim before his officially announced "birth" without people wondering why her pregnancy isn't showing.

Sloth was the smartest homonculus.

His mind was shaped in accordance with his superior strength, resistance and velocity. This explains how he was able to dig a perfect circle around an entire country, or the way he learnt from the harms caused to him in order to become immune to them. Sloth also easily dodged obstacles while running at full speed.
However, Sloth's initial and incredibly profound reflection on his own existence left him bored and depressed for the rest of his life. With every thought now being a pain, his only desires were to forget and sleep. That's why he seemed to be so slow of body and mind.

• So Sloth was the strongest, fastest and smartest? That...actually makes perfect sense.
  • That would make a lot of sense- not just because of the canonical irony that he's the fastest homonculus, but also because Greed, Envy, and Father all seemed to have considerable self-loathing deep down, so if Sloth was intelligent, he probably would have the same despair as them.
• Another reason why he was so lazy is because he was intelligent enough to not only realise Father would abandon him when he get what he wants, but saw him only as a tool to get what he wants and how insignificant he is to both him and people. Due to being Father's sloth he didn't have the will to rebel against his dad, so instead opted for inconviencing him as much as possible.

Jude from the Blind Alchemist gaiden died at some point during the series.

Why else was he never mentioned as a possible sacrifice, especially after Ed and Al's visit? He probably discovered the truth about Rosalie shortly after the visit and died of heartbreak.

• Alternatively, he died because the transmutation finally broke down. Something was keeping that body moving and it was stated later that you can't bring the dead back to life. It's possible that Jude put some of his own soul in the body by accident and it took a while for the body to reject it, killing them both.

Alchemy is separate from Truth, which acts as a bureaucrat.

Truth says that it exists to prevent alchemists from becoming too conceited. I think this means that it has a say in each and every transmutation. If someone wants to fix a radio, it does nothing. But if human transmutation is attempted, it steps in and forces the alchemist to gain part of the Truth and sacrifice something in exchange. There is no necessity for this. Resurrecting a human should only result in either a body (materials but no soul) or a perfect resurrection with energy equivalent to the soul being used up. So why does this happen? Truth steps in and does it to make alchemists humble, giving them the knowledge to know that it isn't a smart thing and the pain to remember the lesson by. This also works in reverse: Truth can give a transmutation his blessing and aid it if it chooses. That's why it tells Edward that he's made the right choice and that he can take everything he wants when he trades his alchemy for Al and shows his wisdom. It personally decided that what Edward was doing was fine by it and enhanced the transmutation with its power the same way a Philosopher's Stone would. If anyone else had tried that trick for selfish purposes, the exchange may have failed or been insufficient.

Selim Bradley grows up and falls in love with Elicia Hughes, a beautiful and talented investigative reporter

Elicia's cheery, in your face nature and investigative skills (inherited from her father) lead her to become a journalist. As for her romance with Selim? Rule of Drama, Crack Pairing, and the fact that the Selim Bradley fanfic that is being gradually written via these WMGs needed a love interest.

• Huh, I was actually thinking of something similar for the Continuation Fic idea I am developing, although more along the lines of a one-sided crush on an older girl. Strange Minds Think Alike in action, eh?
• No no no, better idea: Elicia uses her cute charm and investigation skills and Selim uses his intelligence and power - together, they fight crime. This fic must exist.
  • And for their first case, a madman in a suit of armour is running around killing young women, and stitching them together to be a giant femsuit OVER the armour. Gee, I wonder who this could be.

The rumored Brotherhood movie will be about Ed and Al's travels to the West and East (respectively).

Brotherhood give us the names of other countries and a decently detailed map, two seperate journeys to follow, and a clean slate as to the events that happen. Both Elrics should have some pretty fantastic sotries from their travels, right? It's like a movie is begging to be made.

Bradley's Final Battle was an attempt at Together in Death with his wife

Think about it; Bradley's spent the entire series saying flat out that the only person he loves is his wife. He's also been the only homunculus to come close to showing doubts about the plan, even if it's only in a twitch of his eye at various points. The way I see it is, Bradley doesn't like the plan, but is far too programmed by Father to try and avert it or do anything but help it to it's conclusion, which of course entails the death of everyone in Amestris, including Mrs. Bradley. So what does he do? He helps the plan through to the end, and then decides it's time to die. Being a Blood Knight though (and the living incarnation of Wrath) he can't simply off himself, so instead he throws himself into one last battle against Scar, one of the most badass people in series, and one of the few with a legitimate chance of killing him. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that this must play at least some part in Bradley's motivation, even if only at the subconcious level. Humanises him a bit too.

• That's brilliant. And it makes perfect sense.

Lust has a truly horrible singing voice.

Just for fun. But think about it; we never hear her sing, or even hum, in the manga or either anime. There must be a reason. And the reason is that she can't sing. Her voice cracks badly whenever she tries, possibly as a result of her overly large breasts putting undue strain on the muscles of her chest and throat. Greed, however, has a passable tenor.

• I bet Wrath has an excellent baritone, and Gluttony's voice clears up for a nice castrato part when he sings (I haven't heard Pride in Brotherhood). Sloth could sing the silences. He'd be perfect for it.
  • Pride does the Ominous Latin Chanting. He certainly has the voice for it.

Katherine Armstrong will somehow meet and fall in love with Shizuo Heiwajima.

Just a crack pairing I thought of. Katherine's ideal man is a big, strong man like her brother, and Shizuo fits the picture (well, minus the huge, muscled body, but he's tall and strong anyway). Think about all the fun they'll have: lifting and throwing pianos, road signs and more!

• And thus the once-proud nation of Amestris came to an end; in a flurry of passionate romance and large-scale property damage.
• BEST. PAIRING. EVER.
• Someone requested it in the FMA kinkmeme, let's hope an authoranon or an artanon fills it soon. (being the anon who seconded it, I insist that Izaya would probably get jealous)
  • Fridge Horror pairing: Katherine Armstrong meets Zangief. Or Gouki/Akuma. Whichever provides more horrific reactions on their wedding day. (Zangief with Armstrong as best man. Just think about what happens when the post-wedding party music plays. Bonus points if it's Pocket Fighter Zangief.)

The reason Olivier really hates Mustang is....

Because she supports Havoc/Hawkeye and wants him out of the way of her OTP. Think about it. She said she 'didn't want to lose Havoc and Hawkeye' specifically and that 'it would be better if Mustang disappeared.' How is this not fangirl thinking?!

• Alternatively, she wants him out of the way because she ships herself with Hawkeye. ;)

Because he didn't choose to perform human alchemy, the Truth went easier on Roy.

The Truth has to take and give something in return for every meeting. Usually the taken object is some sort of ironic body part. It doesn't make sense just to take his sight, instead of his eyes. If Roy's greatest desire was to see a better future for his country, he would have killed Envy outright as a threat or have chosen to die in order to kill him. Instead, Roy's greatest desire is to protect those who are close to his heart. The Truth, seeing that Roy had the humility not to play God by bringing back the dead or craving immortality, chose to take something that was much easier to live without.

When Hiromu Arakawa was planning the series in its initial stage, Roy was the main character.

His desire to change the world around him by becoming the ruler? I just realized how shonen-y that sounded, And that led to one of two possibilities:

One, He was meant to subvert the stereotype of a shonen protagonist questing for a way to change his world by having that character be both an adult, and a supporting character.Two, He was the protagonist in the original concept. It would have started with a much younger Roy entering the military, and progressed with him going up the ranks in the same way that a typical shonen protagonist becomes stronger as the series goes on.

Bradley would've been a villain, but not a Homonculus. Or maybe he would've been?

Some of the older characters were meant to be younger, and operate in a Five-Man Band:

The Hero: RoyThe Lancer: HughesThe Big Guy: Armstrong, of course.The Smart Guy: ...Riza, Maybe?The Heart: ...I dunno. Maybe an early version of Ed?

• I think Fuery might qualify as the chick, or possibly as another smart guy.
• When did Sciezka arrive? Definite Chick all-round.
• Ed and Al could've been the Tagalong kids.

Reviving the dead is possible if their body is still intact and there to begin with.

All you'd have to trade for would be the soul. You wouldn't have to create a body or anything - you just need to retrieve the soul, and all the soul cost for Ed was his arm.

• Eh, I don't think so. If that was true, then tons of people would be able to be brought back to life just because their body was still there. It's not a matter of equivalent exchange, it's the fact that they're dead.
  • Good point, but what if the alchemist trades his own life for the life of the deceased?
    • Doesn't work. One of the main aesops of the series is that lives are too priceless to fall under Equivalent Exchange. No matter what, there can never be another Trisha Elric, Nina Tucker, or whoever else.
    • Human beings aren't the complete and uniquely special snowflakes they think themselves. Not unless they're absolutely batshit crazy-on-a-whole-new-level-of-crazy in their respective field/category. It could be posited that completely exchangeable people existing in various times is the soul(s) being forcibly drawn back into earth. Nobody said it has to go to the ORIGINAL body. Yeah it gets into metaphysics a bit, but basically dragging back someone's soul is a Cold Reboot, all the traits, no memory, jammed into a fetus. Not a LOT of support for it, but it always felt like it made crazy amounts of sense even RL. Souls, all souls, animal, human, and whatnot, being reused and recycled, provided they have the intelligence to have personality traits and not mere species-reaction traits.
    • Human beings are the special snowflakes they think they are. Think about your own life and experiences. Name one person who has had the exact same experiences as you. Not just similar. Exact. Now extrapolate throughout all of history. There are 7 billion people and no one else is you. There have been countless more in history and no one else is you. That's why human lives are priceless, because there's literally nothing equivalent to exchange with.
    • I have to agree with the above. Yes, reconstructing a human body, even to look like Trisha Elric, as Ed and Al tried, is possible with Alchemy, and fairly easily at that; what couldn't be reconstructed was the memories, thoughts and feelings of Trisha Elric. The best they could manage would be to place every second of her life story in the brain of the homunculus. Even then, it wouldn't be real.
• Yes, if their body is intact enough - and in that case you wouldn't need alchemy, you'd just have to use whatever cocktail of drugs doctors use when someone flatlines during surgery.

The Narrator isn't Father, it's Truth.

The Truth mirrors the voice of anyone he sucks into the Gate. While he used Father's blob voice when punishing him, he now also has the ability to do the old man voice if he chooses. Truth is the most removed/omnipotent character, making him a perfect narrator. As for the instances where the narrator seems to have contempt for humans, while that seems like proof that it's Father, Truth himself isn't the nicest guy.

Marcoh never healed Roy's eyes.

Instead he used some alchemy to give Roy Daredevil-level super-senses, and bought dark contact lenses to cover up the white in his eyes.

The at least half of the plot could have been averted ...

If the omake with Father getting a lifetime subscription to a newspaper was true. Fridge Brilliance when you find out his intentions for the entire plot.

In the epilogue Roy did not grow a mustache

• Ed just drew on the picture of him.
  • I can believe it either way. Remember that omake where Roy talked about trying to grow a mustache to look more distinguished?

Hoenheim could not have physically gotten Trisha pregnant

Because Hoenheim has a large number of souls inside him, he is similar enough to the Homunculi that he is also infertile. Therefore, it would be impossible for him to have gotten Trisha pregnant in the normal manner. However, Hoenheim could have alchemically impregnated Trisha using the souls inside him as the cost of the transmutation.

• So what does that make Ed and Al?
• A What Could Have Been if the homunculi had actually had supportive, loving parent(s).

The Brotherhood movie will revolve around another attempt at a countrywide Transmutation

• Theory One: Father actually had the cunning to make similar plans in one of the adjacent countries (but decided to see through with Amestris first) in the off chance of his plan's failing. Of course, he never figured he'd be defeated as well. So whoever he left in charge of setting up the back-up country, will take over.
• Theory Two: Someone in the country west of Amestris learns of the plan and attempts to open the gate. Of course, they'll fail to use the entire country, but become a monstrous being that Ed (who no longer can use alchemy) must fight.
• Other possible plot points:
  • Al will travel to Xing and attempt to start a proper romance with May Chang. However, cultural adversity will arise and eventually result in either May being banished (but alright with now that her clan is safe) or Ling reforming the way his country looks on relationships between it's people, and outsiders alike.
  • Ed and Al will somehow cross paths despite being in two seperate places due to the main antagonist's plans.
  • Scar and Mustang will meet up again in Ishval and come to an understanding, their ability to forgive one another being the final nail in restoring peace with the Ishvalan people.
  • Selin II will become the second youngest alchemist, at an even earlier age than Ed. He will even play some part in the plot.
  • Ultimately, the film will end years later, much like OVA Kids (from the first anime series) and show an older Edward (who looks a bit like Hoenheim) reading the book he and Alphonse wrote together, while narrating how the world has changed thanks to his and Al's research. It will then hint that while history could repeat itself, the next generation will have the tools to avoid making the same mistakes.
  • It takes place before the end of the manga
  • Führer Grumman uses the remaining philosopher's stones to get Ed's alchemy back, since some threats require not only his badassery, but also his alchemy.

Sheska had befriended Maria Ross

When Maria Ross was apparently killed by Roy Mustang, Sheska became so upset - and possibly afraid of Mustang - that she resigned from the army. That's why we never heard of her again.

Mobuo Mobuta is the actual first homunculus

He just left the group before they became popular. He frequently turns up in the background of scenes. Before making Pride, Father created him, and Mobuta is immortal, but has no other powers. Like Greed, he turned out to be Dark Is Not Evil and left the group. In his case, he's True Neutral, and so rather than fighting against Father and the others, just decided to do his own thing and see what happened.

Lust is bisexual or a lesbian

Except for her last words to Roy Mustang, we never see Lust show any attraction to a male. And since she's the embodiment of Father/Homunculus's lust, and we're assuming Father's straight, wouldn't she have an attraction to women? Also, since she embodies lust in general, perhaps she has lust for both sexes.

• I'd lean more towards her being lustful for both sexes. Then again, she doesn't really lust, so much as cause lust in others.
• I think Father was asexual from the beginning. Even if he is human like in some aspects of his personality, I don't think a shadow blob thing would need to have any sort of sexual attraction.
  • I don't know. He (it?) really seemed like the sort of character who would be pervy if it (he?) got the chance. Like Bob from The Dresden Files, or... well, quite a few anime Sleep-Mode Size sidekicks that should logically be asexual. Even Crow from Mystery Science Theater 3000, who along with the other robots ended up making the most bawdy references since cute, non-human characters get away with more of that sort of thing.

Ling Yao has Split-Personality Disorder

He would have become Greedling whether Father made him a homunculus or not.

Ling plans on abolishing the concubine system

While it is most likely impossible to abolish the system during his lifetime, he lays out a long term, generational plan.

Ling ends up having a child (and thus heir) with Lan Fan before they are married, thus she would count as a concubine for the Yao clan in the eyes of the law. Then he would have the children with the other Xingese concubines as per protocol. Ling however would have no intention of naming anyone other than his son with Lan Fan his successor. While on paper every clan has the potential to win the throne, in actuality they have no chance at all. If a clan leader brings attention to this, Ling would accuse them of insulting the Emperor (or some other crime) and order their being ostracized (the other clans wouldn't call him out on this either believing Ling or not wanting to lose his favor and incur the Emperor's wrath). This would continue until the competition has been weeded out/pacified and it is safe to announce a hereditary rule.

Ling's title as emperor will be Emperor Ling Yao the Avaricious

Also, the Xingese Emperors would be given a posthumous name, similar to the Japanese Emperors.

Roy and Riza are a Duprass

Which is a word in Kurt Vonnegut's religion of Bokononism which essentially means, "two people working together to do God's will who have interconnected lives and always die within a week of each other."Think about it. Their lives have been constantly intertwined since they were young, every time something truly awful happens they are both present for it (or the cause of it), they are working together towards the goal of making Roy fuhrer, and they are rather adamant about not living if the other one dies. And at the end, they are shown in a picture together without any of the old team.

Pride's ourobouros tattoo is hidden under his hair

It would make a lot of sense to consider Selim an expy of Damien of The Omen, and for his distinguishing mark to be in the same location.

• This makes sense considering he is not marred in a visible place, thus he is better than the other homunculi, but he also cannot show off his attribute without removing his hair (a rank-implying feature in many cultures, where shorn hair is a mark of subservience or disease).

Ed was able to replenish the lifespan he lost when using his own body for transmutation.

While Ed did a Cast from Lifespan when healing himself, it's possible that this was compensated for in one or two ways. First, he might have gotten a boost from Pride's Philosopher's Stone when destroying him. Second, notice how Ed kept his automail leg even though you would think that would have been healed during the "exchange" he made when sacrificing his Gate/losing his powers. I figure that maybe Truth wanted to do something nice, and so in exchange for keeping Ed's leg, he restored his lifespan.

The Gold-Toothed Doctor knew that you could sacrifice your ability to perform alchemy when making a human transmutation

When he's trying to force Roy to transmute humans, he says something along the lines of "All that matters is that you come back after performing the transmutation." According to Roy, giving up your Gate under normal circumstances means that you'll be trapped in the Truth White void space. Considering that Goldtooth seemed to know more about human transmutation than most of the other characters, it's possible that he knew that little loophole, but didn't bother putting it to use, as it would completely defeat the purpose of Father's plan.

• It's more likely he was thinking of how so Alchemists don't come back from human transmutation in a survivable condition, or how some (like Al) don't come back at all.

Edward and Alphonse are reincarnated souls from Hohenheim's body.

Instead of making new souls, new bodies were created and given a new life. The souls were probably twins or close brothers that Hohenheim knew and liked. He regretted them becoming part of his Philosopher's Stone, and somehow this translated into them being reincarnated.

The main characters represent the Seven Heavenly Virtues

• Temperance - Edward
  Kindness - Alphonse
  Patience - Winry (?)
  Humility - Greed/Ling (?)
  Diligence - Scar
  Charity- Hohenheim
  Chastity - Roy
• Damn, that kind of makes sense!
• Really, I thought it was:

Temperance - Alex Armstrong
Kindness - May Chang
Patience - Roy Mustang
Humility - Alphonse
Diligence - Olivia Armstrong
Charity - Ling Yao
Chastity - Riza Hawkeye

• Ling Yao makes more sense as Diligence surviving a humunculus takeover and taking any chance he has to take back control is definitively diligence
  • Ling sometimes just lays around and Olivia never stops and never acts sloth like.

Greed? Humble? Not really. I think it's more like this.Temperance - ScarKindness - WinryHumility - LingDiligence - EdwardCharity - AlphonseChastity - Mira ArmstrongPatience - MustangWith Hoenheim representing all of these, he same way that Father represents all of the Seven Sins.

• I think its more Charity: Winry, Chastity: Hawkeye, Diligence: Scar, Humility: Lanfan, Kindness: Armstrong, Patience: Mei, ane Temperence: Mustang, with Ed and Al being all seven.

• As for Hohenheim's virtues:
  • Humility-Theoretically as powerful as Father himself and regarded as a holy figure in other cultures, yet wants to live a simple family life
  • Chastity-His dedication to Trisha despite immortality and presumably staying chaste for most of his immortal life(given the immortality, sleeping around would cause problems.
  • Charity-He's made his life miserable as part of his gambit to help people.
  • Kindness-Spending centuries bonding with all the thousands of souls fused into his being, making their And I Must Scream fate far more tolerable.
  • Diligence-Along with the aforementioned sorting of the souls in his Philosopher's Stone, there's the centuries he spent setting up the gambit to stop Father.
  • Temperance-Despite having the ability to regenerate wounds, Hohenheim prefers not letting himself get injured in fights to ensure as little souls get used up as possible.
  • Patience-Methinks everything he's gone through is a sign of patience.

Edward will be a loving and doting father, much like Maes Hughes

Sounds a little irrelevant, but I really think that he has it in him. Why? First of all, just look at how much he loves his little brother, to the point where he'd literally die for him. Second, and this one is a little more "meta-ish", but his voice actor is also Spirit from Soul Eater, and Tamaki^note To be fair, more of a Team Mom, but considers Haruhi like a "daughter" of sorts in Ouran High School Host Club. Not to mention his general Jerk with a Heart of Gold persona, and the way he really took to Nina and Elicia. Kind of stupid, probably very self-evident, but I still felt the need to mention.

• Oh My Gawd, YES.

Crafting the Philosopher's Stone out of a single soul.

The stone was created by gathering souls. Father's progeny was created when he fragmented his soul, each part then developing into its own self. If those two processes were applied in reverse order, an alchemist could become a Philosopher's Stone all by himself. The question lies in the cost of dividing a soul, as well as the alchemist's ability to use multiple Gates against each other.

How Buccaneer lost his arm:

One day many years ago, Buccaneer was exploring a ruins near Xerxes. At the time he was into wearing hats. He set off a trap and tried to escape. He did the Indy Hat Roll but he was too slow when reaching back for his hat. He later got his alligator chainsaw and the rest is history. Incidentally Kimblee eventually wondered into the ruins and found the hat for himself.

Ed is going to live for an unnaturally long time, like Hohenheim did.

When Ed drains Pride's Philosopher's Stone, all that energy has to go somewhere. He couldn't have destroyed it, due to the Law of Conservation of Energy, so this troper is fairly certain that he must have absorbed it. Since he can't do alchemy anymore, that energy will probably end up adding itself to his lifespan. Apparently this troper's mind can't just let a happy ending stay that way.

• When Ed heals his wound using his soul, he chops off part of his lifespan. Since Pride had used up a lot of his stone, maybe it makes up for exactly how much Ed used?
• Fiction and all I know, but I hate that stuff...seems a bit too 'clean.' Would rather have Ed still have maybe an extra 25-30 years leftover to be used elsewhere (or not)

The 2003 Anime and the Manga are connected.

Much like the 2003 anime is connected to the real world, it also shares a connection to the manga's universe.

• Like... what, exactly? Arakawa did help plan the 2003 anime, so this isn't completely out of the question.
• They mean that the first anime and the Mangahood continuities are alternate universes to each other, just as the 2003 anime and our world are alternate universes. And yeah, I agree, I've been running off this idea in my fanfiction for a while.
• Well in Mangahood there are technically 2 gates, the actual one and that of the person there and we never see the other sides. But in 2003 there's only one and it leads to our world. So what if there are three gates, one to our world, one to the 2003 world and one to Mangahood.

Scar has depression.

He seems to fit many of the symptoms, especially reckless behavior, negative thinking, and thoughts of death (he even seems to seek death at the series's beginning.)

• I'm thinking more along the lines of PTSD(which depression is a symptom of).
• The same seems to go for Roy and Riza as far as PTSD is concerned. Roy's mission to become Fuhrer seems to be something they've thrown themselves into wholeheartedly in order to avoid dealing with Ishbal. They both seem desperately unhappy and guilt-ridden, and have displayed suicidal tendencies at some point.

Truth is Really Yog-Sothoth. Or Nyarlathotep. Or Both

Seriously, it makes perfect sense. Yog-Sothoth is both the Key and the Gate between worlds, An undoubtedly knows forbidden knowledge man cannot comprehend. If the Dunwhich Horror is any indication, him dealing with mortals can be more easily be accomplished by attempting human transmutation, which is easier to preform then say what the Whateley's did. Meaning, Yog-Sothoth can get more deals done, get more souls, and has the off chance of bringing him into that universe and...doing whatever outer gods do. And the hundreds of eyes and tentacles "inside" the gate just makes the connection worse.

The Other Alternative is Nyarlathotep. Who is an affably evil, shape shifting, do it for the Evulz, eldritch abomination who also loves screwing with mankind. This would explain why the figure outside the gate is down right sadistic with it's deals, and why it does them so often, its for its own amusement. This would also mean every event in FMA was orchestrated by Him... which can lead to sheer amounts of horror when you try to fathom what him, an outer god, and one of the worst of Lovecraft's menagerie, could possibly achieve by this. Not only that, sans the Pimp suit, Truth bares some startling resemblance to Mr. Skin...

Or even worse. The Gate is Yog-Sothoth and The Truth entity is Nyarlathotep co-opting for a purpose I dare not try to guess...

• Fridge Horror and also Fridge Brilliance here. What if they are working together specifically to find someone like Ed, and their goal is to ADVANCE humanity positively? (For the purposes of say, perhaps, creating more ample destruction later. Like say, Edward accidentally discovering Alchemic Nuclear Reaction and then they bring in THEIR chosen avatar to complete the deal. And then take the reaction up to eleven by adding a Philosopher's Stone to the mix. Or MULTIPLE stones. By having sided with Ed over Father, they have someone who will give them what they need, but also not become competition (as Father may have with his pseudo-godhood). In other words, they want someone untainted by the sins Father represents so they won't go all cackling evilly mad once they discover ever more destructive alchemic techniques. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero Izumi couldn't work because her motherly instinct would have taken over at some point and said NO, THIS IS WRONG, but Ed is just way too much Classic Pulp Mad Scientist even in the midst of just how wrong alchemy can get, even with his own brother as example! (note how he fights homunculus, basically.)

Izumi and Kimblee are somewhere along the line related.

They have interesting facial similarities.

• Combined with a WMG above about them both possibly being (at least part) Xingese, I like to think that they share a relative via that side of their families.

Hohenheim has more decedents he doesn't know about.

The man was wandering the earth at least 400 years before he met Trisha, it's not a complete stretch to assume he had sex at least a couple of times before that.

• I assume they'd have to be just like Trisha, since Hohenheim would be aware of the problems immortality tends to cause with family-though that doesn't preclude the idea that he learned this from experience. Plus being a slave back in Xerxes probably didn't give him much information about sex, so he's probably rather awkward around the issue.

Hawkeye is related to Hungary.

• Both are scarily proficient in their weapon of choice, and just as scarily quick to use it (Hawkeye's gun, Hungary's frying pan.)
• Both are extremely loyal to a male direct superior (Mustang and Austria respectively).
• And look at the names: RIZA Hawkeye, eLIZAveta Hedervary.
  • Not to mention that /l/ and /r/ are basically the same sound in Japanese.
    • Not to mention that in the manga, Hawkeye's first name is sometimes spelled "Liza."
    • Also, Riza is a Hungarian version of Thereza.
• Furthermore, Hawkeye's seiyuu in the 2003 anime was Hungary's.

Given enough time and a little motivation Kimblee could have taken over Pride's body

Wrath was a Highlander sinareo: There Can Be Only OneGreedling was more of: Embrace the DarknessBut Kimblee in Pride would be: King of the Mountain

Everything was a story the Al and Ed made up as kids

Remember the second ending? Help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEMD8CdqFZQ

So at the end of the ending, we see kids Al and Ed have basically "drawn their future" (as top commentor Stratus Fluff said). But what if they DIDN'T. The story never happened and WON'T happen. They didn't draw their own future but actually drew a world to escape out. The true story is just about two boys losing their mother and coping with the sadness by inventing the whole "Full Metal Alchemist" story.

• That's… frighteningly depressing.
  • Interesting, too. I wouldn't mind reading a fic that explores this. From a creative standpoint, I really think a fanfic could go somewhere with this.
• LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING
  • And then after you realise that, as Ed finishes telling the story he pops a small pill left on a plate next to his toast. Ed himself turns and realises Al has stopped talking and is just a small metal knight toy. Then he goes back to studying for his ROTC exams.

Jean Havoc and Rebecca Catalina are foreshadowed as a couple in the story.

When Roy first assembles the five officers who will accompany him on his transfer to Central, Havoc says that he has a girl he's just started seeing, whom Roy tells him to dump. Later, as they're passing around the intel about the Promised Day, Rebecca comes to Central to see her old buddy Riza; as she's leaving, she adds, "Say hello to Second Lieutenant Havoc for me!" We also know that Havoc's the one who equips Rebecca's truck for the coup. I'm theorizing that the girl Havoc had just started seeing before moving to Central was Rebecca, and that they hook up again after the end of the story. Note that she's shown with him in the ending of Brotherhood and also appears to be in the final picture of him in the manga.

Central city is a double layer array.

There's the thing with the labs and the tunnels to open the Gate, and the surface level array which turns off alchemy. Because Central City as seen from above is clearly another array, but there are lines that just stop halfway, and the only other array we've seen like that was the anti-anti- alchemy one that Scars Brother came up with.

The missing ingredient required to bring a human back to life is

Milk.

Human transmutation is possible

You can not bring the dead back but you can make new life

• Isn't that canon? (When the cyclops army is first introduced, the central officer said that human transmutation is forbidden in order to stop people from making whole armies )

The truth took Roy's sight as a ploy to defeat father

Why would truth take Roy's sight when Roy didn't do human transmutation on purpose? Even as the Jerkass God it is, it wouldn't make a lot of sense....

Unless, you consider that truth did it on purpose as a way to cause Father's destruction. If you notice, once the homunculli learned that Roy lost his sight, they stopped taking him seriously and didn't really try to stop him anymore. But the truth knew of Hawkeye and that Roy + Hawkeye + circle-less transmutation would actually be stronger than original Roy and have enough power to distract Father and improve the odds on the good guys' favor. And of course, why else would the paradigmatic Jerk Ass God ever perform a punishment that is so easy to revert?

Edward Elric is Dr. Light's inspiration for the exact concept behind Proto Man, then Mega Man and Roll, and this later continued into Light and Wily's respective creation of X and Zero (the latter with a twist).

This is an alternate version of the Duo Maxwell theory above in that both imagine the world going to the other extreme, with robotics taking over in alchemy's stead. However this doesn't even have to be in the regular or alternate anime!verse, rather this shift could've easily taken place in the manga. Edward's adventures and shunning of his own alchemical powers, combined with the Amestrian state's turnover from military dictatorship to democracy and alchemists submitting themselves to war trials could've easily dissuaded things in the other direction, not necessarily out of an Ishvala-like zeal against alchemy as some sort of great evil, but a recognition that its power was dangerous to tap untrained causing a gradual dip in interest. Meanwhile, machine scientists on the other side oft he globe (bodies of water and places far beyond Amestris are implied to exist according to a map seen of the FMA-verse near the end of the series) began to get attention.

Skip forward by about a century or so, Dr. Thomas Light, a leader of the new technological age of robotics, was working on making Robot Masters, humanoid robots with advanced AI that could make decisions based on vague commands and directions. At some point, either during or before the construction process, he learned of the legend of the golden-haired boy with the red and black clothes whose resilient heart and adaptive use of his skills once helped save the world, and this became the base he wanted to follow for his first robot. Thus Proto Man/Blues was made with a variable system that allowed him to study any tool and do what it does, as well as red and gray armor along with a yellow cape to match the hair. However, this one had an incomplete design and an imbalanced energy core that would eventually give out and die, but he was so independent and lonely that he didn't trust Dr. Light to work on him and ran away, presumably getting killed. Deciding to create another robot, Dr. Light not only learned from his mistakes with Proto Man's core, but also figured that Proto Man left in part because of not having a peer, so he separated his concept into two robots this time - one, Rock, to be a lab assistant, with the same variable tool ability, but completely blue in design; the other, Roll, a female android built for housekeeping, continuing the Elric-inspired trope with mostly red attire and blonde hair (as well as blue eyes, inadvertently channeling Winry as well).

Proto Man would end up being encountered by Light's old friend-turned-jealous rival Dr. Wily, who extended his life by converting his core, and also reprogrammed him into a combat robot and turning his tool system into a weapon system. After Wily decided he could reprogram the other Robot Masters Light built after Rock in order to do his bidding and take over the city to demand his respect, Light knew something other than military force had to be applied to the situation so as not to hurt civilians. Out of his sense of right and wrong, Rock volunteered to be converted from a lab assistant into a fighting robot himself, becoming Mega Man.

Mega Man X was created decades later with the obvious intent by Dr. Light to build an updated Mega Man in terms of both power potential and independent thought, complete with Power Copying ability still intact, but kept sealed back because either the world wasn't ready at the time or his morality was being tested in simulations first. Either way, he was released, studied, and replicated into a new type of android line by an archaeologist named Cain years after both Light and Wily died. Zero, Dr. Wily's greatest creation, also released long after the elder scientists' deaths, shared much of the same color scheme as Proto Man and Roll, including blue eyes (X's are green). He possessed a Blues-like cool demeanor as well, although seeing how Wily's goal for his creation was to destroy all robots who stood against him (especially Mega Man and previous creation Bass), this likely wasn't by design.

In fact, my theory with Zero is that the dark energy source that gave him his power, as well as made him utterly Ax-Crazy before transferring from his body to Sigma's and eventually becoming The Virus responsible for the vast majority of Mavericks (Reploid criminals), was made of either remnants of energy from a Philosopher's Stone or dead souls/atoms Wily managed to harvest somehow combined with a standard advance-replicate of Fortenium, making him not only inadvertently inspired by Edward Elric but also indirectly inspired by and/or linked to Van Hohenheim.

Ed's immortal.

He gives up his Gate. Dead people are on the other side of the Gate. Thus, Ed cannot die.He will not be pleased.

• That's not how death works in the manga. The dead don't go beyond the gate, they form more of a life-stream.

Hoenheim and Pinako weren't just drinking buddies...

Neither of them ever told Ed, Al, or Winry the truth— Ed and Al are Winry's half-uncles. And since Ed and Winry got married...

When Father made Lust, he was thinking of Asami Sato.

COME ON! Hasn't this been written yet? Anyone?

• Actually, Word of God says that Asami is based on Lust.

Selene is Serenade.

To protect Milos, the Elrics and Eastern Command kept quiet about Julia Crichton opening the Gate of Truth to save her brother's life.

Before anyone states the obvious (Julia and the other Sacred Star of Milos characters hadn't been created during the manga or Brotherhood series run); logic like that is an excuse not to think. Now…

The storyline of the Sacred Star of Milos movie fits best in the middle of Brotherhood episode 21 (and manga chapters 45), with a bit of truth-stretching to say that Melvin Voyager's breakout put Ed's plan to draw Scar out on hold for a day or two and Winry did head back to Risembool before later returning to Central and then rejoining the Elrics. In any case, by this point the Elric brothers and Eastern Command had already seen plenty of suspicious stuff coming out of their own country's army, not the least of which being (in the short term) the struggle between selfishly-motivated Amestrian and Cretaan military occupations in Table City, or (in the long term) the murder of Maes Hughes. Even without being privy to the information about the Promised Day Human Sacrifice plot, they already had enough info to where they knew they couldn't trust the military not to go back after the now-independent city/nation of Milos if word got out that an alchemist living there was able to open the Gate. Thus, it's most likely that, intending to leave the people of Milos out of the general conflict, Roy and Riza left that detail out of their reports and the whole crew simply never mentioned it since.

Kimblee is actually a Lawful Neutral

...From a Certain Point of View. He's got his own set of ethics by which he lives, but they're based more on rules and regulations than right and wrong. That is to say, if your job/station in life that you chose is X and it requires Y, you must do Y regardless of moral or other details. That's why he commended the Rockbells for treating wounded civilians, but had no problem killing said civilians. Likewise, homunculi are (at least supposed to believe) they are better than humans, and seeing Pride try to "absorb" Ed out of desperation - which was not only going against his beliefs as a homunculus, but against his own nature - didn't sit well with him. So in short, instead of Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!, his beliefs are Screw What's Right! I'm Following the Rules!

After defeating Father, Ed is still employed by the government

He may no longer be an alchemist but as shown in the end he is still researching alchemy, he has to pay for his journey somehow.

• Possibly as a teacher, since he can't use alchemy anymore.

Roy Mustang is a chimera comprised of the re-incarnations of Kyouya Ootori and Takashi Morinozuka

Think about it - he has Kyouya's facial structure and Mori's hair. He is capable of extreme acts of loyalty (like when he cauterizes the wound Lust makes to save Havoc and Riza), which just screams Mori. However, he also tends to care more about himself than others at times (like keeping his job instead of protesting harder against the Fuhrer). Same VA, and he has a similar (albeit nearly nonexistent) sense of humor as Kyouya.

General Grumman set up Riza's parents with each other.

Just the way he casually asks Roy to marry Riza suggests he probably did the same with General Hawkeye and Riza's mother.

Lust is Father's anima, in the Jungian sense

Father only removed parts of his sins to make the Homonculi, not the entirety.

As mentioned in the Fridge Brilliance section, despite supposedly removing his sins, Father still acted as if he had them. It's likely that he didn't completely remove his sins, but rather removed the aspects of his sins that he saw as flawed or detrimental to his plans. To what extent likely relate to his sins. Despite his sins being a flaw to him, Father showed pride in his character traits

• He kept enough pride to motivate himself and likely justify his actions, but not enough to "lower" himself to humans.

• Patience is essential to any Ancient Conspiracy in the making, so Father couldn't afford to be easily angered. But would he allow those pitiful humans to interfere with his plans unpunished? No, he would come down on them hard. For a similar reason, he may have kept wrath in order to feel more comfortable with his callous disregard for human life.
• Father felt that, without any greed, he wouldn't be interested in achieving his goal of escaping God. Greed's avarice for companionship would be a huge detriment for Father's callous disregard for human life, so it had to go.
• Father saw no reason to hold onto any passions not related to his goals, but without a lust for power there'd be little joy in gaining his heart's desire. Lust inherited Father's lust for blood and sex, while Father kept his lust for power and achieving his goals.
• Father has too much sloth in him to change his personality on a fundamental level-he may not realise his own hypocrisy because he's too lazy to think about it. At the same time, he knows full well that if he just waits around doing nothing, nothing will be accomplished. Thus, Sloth was born
• Lacking respect for humanity, Father didn't think that lack of restraint aka gluttony was that much of detriment. Still, he wanted to be pragmatic, so got rid of the parts of gluttony he felt detrimental to his plans
• Finally, there's envy. Being envious of humanity he wanted to be like them, yet didn't want to admit it due to his pride. Because of that, Envy was extracted.

Ed and Al are alternate universe versions of the Winchesters

A dead mother, an absent father, sacrificing themselves for the other, etc. Izumi is Bobby.

Hughes is actually Isshin Kurosaki

How could no one else see this? First look at their pictures next to each other, square-ish jaw, black hair that spikes a bit upwards and their stubble even looks like it's drawn the same way. Both have extremely doting manners on their daughters and wives. They act silly but are really Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass.Perhaps when Hughes *sniff* died, his soul departed to the Soul Society where he became Isshin...

Riza Hawkeye is a Puella Magi

Her wish was to help Roy achieve his goals, or something along those lines. His swiftly rising through the ranks of the military at such a young age (it's made clear he's extremely young to be a full Colonel, and I'm pretty sure he was the youngest State Alchemist until Ed) is a part of the manifestation of Riza's wish. Her incredible sharpshooting skills are her magical girl power. The reason she'd kill herself if Roy died is because otherwise, she would immediately fall into despair and transform into a witch (which she knows about, having seen a previous Magical Girl turn into a witch, perhaps one fighting alongside her in Ishval). This is also why, even when she becomes the Führer's secretary and is spending lots of time in his mansion, she's still living in her own place - because she needs to be able to sneak out at night to kill witches. (You know this started out as a total joke but I think this is becoming my new Riza headcanon.)

Solf J. Kimblee's middle name is JACKSON.

Admit it, the first thing that came to mind after you saw him in that white suit was that this fellow was one Smooth Criminal. The only way his Dying Moment of Awesome could have been any better was if he'd Moonwalked off into oblivion.

• This clip runs off of this premise.

Lust was planning on double-crossing Father.

Lust betraying Father was mentioned above, but this is elaborating on it: consider that the lust Father felt/feels is primarily lust for the perfection of becoming the new God. Given how Lust is literally her father's lust, it would make sense if she also had her desire for power-her occasional attempts to risk killing sacrifices is a sign of this. Unlike Greed, Lust was waiting for Father's guard to be down(likely when Hohenheim attempted to tear through his "old Hohenheim" disguise) and take his place-considering his lust for power/perfection was probably Father's second greatest trait, she'd have to play the part of loyal Psycho for Hire until the right moment. Her plan would probably involve using Gluttony's stomach of infinite holding to trap Father in case she's unable to absorb his Philosopher's Stone. Envy would probably be fine joining her since it would let him mess with people all the same and Lust would convince him to hate Father for making him so envious. Sloth wouldn't care given the work would probably be the same(or less). At most, Lust would only have to worry about Pride and Wrath, and even Wrath could probably be persuaded to her side.

In the Fullmetal Alchemist universe, Isaac Newton (or an equivalent) is an important historical figure not referenced for storytelling purposes

In our universe, Newton formalized the law of Equivalent Exchange ("for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction", law of conservation of energy, and all that), but considered his works in physics and motion to be less important compared to his preferred endeavour: alchemy. In real life doing such will obviously result in failure, but when Alchemy is possible, it's obvious that he'll eventually succeed. Maybe it was Newton or an equivalent who removed the trappings of mysticism from Alchemy and made it a formal science that's more popular and useful than religion.

• Isaac Newton could even be Hohenheim himself.

The entire series and the Philosopher's Stone plots are all part of an experiment by the Incubators.

Their long-term goal is to subvert the Laws of Thermodynamics (Equivalent Exchange and Entropy) in order to save themselves and the universe from Heat Death. And the most efficient way to do that? Human souls. Soul Gems and Grief Seeds are basically more powerful and "rare" versions of Philosopher's Stones, powerful enough to not just violate Equivalent Exchange in a single alchemical reaction, but also to counteract Universal Entropy. The Incubators, after finding an alternate Earth that's quite different from Puella Magi Madoka Magica's Earth, perhaps gave the Fullmetal Alchemist humans the science of Alchemy (as with their role as Ancient Astronauts who give science and civilization to the species they enslave), invested some of their energy into the entire plot of the Philosopher's Stone and collaborated with Father in order to figure out how to mass produce the power of Soul Gems from ordinary people instead of being restricted into using the emotions and despair of Magical Girls, which create stronger Philosophers' Stones but cannot be industrialized in a systematic and efficient manner. For the Incubators, the experiment between using Philosopher's Stones and Soul Gems are an experiment to determine Quantity vs. Quality.

The dysfunctional Homunculus family is an alternate reality version of the Bluth family from Arrested Development

Wrath: Arguably most competent and recognized as such by his father, runs the country aka company, controlling of his siblings, and more reserved than his siblings, but is fierce and drastic when pushed too far, most reasonable, but still self-absorbed: Michael Bluth.Greed: By far the lamest, most deluded, and most self absorbed, an outcast, possibly has the worst relationship with his father out of the siblings: Gob Bluth.Gluttony: Childlike and naive about everything, most of all his family, clingy to Lust as a maternal figure: Buster Bluth.Lust: Lindsay Bluth.Envy: An actor: Tobias Funke (yeah, that one's a stretch).

(Haven't finished the Brotherhood series, so I don't know much about Pride or Sloth or this Father guy yet)

Ed became taller because he aged rapidly after he healed himself by Cast from Lifespan.

The manga doesn't give any explanation for Ed's sudden growth to the point he's noticeably taller than Winry. It was implied before that Ed was so short because his body was connected to Al's body, but it was only mentioned once and never confirmed. Actually, nobody even lampshades it, which is weird. Could it be because when he uses his own soul to heal himself, his lifespan got reduced by Rapid Aging? In other words it's not that Ed's suddenly grew up in a natural fashion, but rather than his body aged to roughly his early 20s.

Selim's essay was not the best one in the class.

Let's face it, even at Selim's age, there had to be someone who could put together a better essay than that awful, pandering, truncated piece of work. He just got the top mark because he's the freaking führer's son!

Lan Fan and Ling can be together

The Xing emperors were polygamous anyway....

Hohenheim Sacrificed his final soul to speed up Al's healing process

I've seen this floating around the interwebs before, just wanted to gather the evidence:

• Hohenheim claims he has one soul left after the fight with Father, but he dies shortly after anyway.
• When Hohenheim shakes Al's hand, he feels a "jolt of electricity". In the manga, May has already hugged him, so this isn't just the surprise of being able to feel things again.
• Arakawa originally thought she might have Hohenheim sacrifice himself to restore Al, then changed her mind because she thought it would hurt Al too much - was this her subtle way of still pulling it off without Al knowing?
• Al seems to have recovered from extreme muscle atrophy and likely some malnutrition (even with the bond with Ed, he's dangerously skinny) remarkably quickly, with no apparent lasting repercussions when we check in again after the Time Skip.

It's not "human sacrifice" but "human pillar"

The term "human sacrifice" referring to Ed and co. is confusing because they aren't actually sacrificed, rather it's everybody else who is. But as it turns out, the word they use 人柱 (hitobashira), while it means human sacrifice, literally translates to "human pillar". This might make more sense; they are symbolically the pillars that are needed to "hold up" Father's plan.

Izumi Curtis is related to Pinako Rockbell

Let's face it. Pinako's younger self looked a lot like Izumi Curtis. I think it is possible that Izumi is really Pinako's daughter or niece whom she never talks about.

It's possible to hijack your own inner Truth.

If one somehow recognizes the Truth as one's own inner self(only some one intelligent or someone stupid enough to take the "I am you" at face value like say... Bowser) they can simply merge with it using Alchemy seconds after meeting it and become extremely powerful. That's why Truth said: that Father failed to become powerful because he didn't believe in himself nor did he subconciously believe that he became superior to humans by removing his "7 desires" AKA the 7 Homunculus(hence the "Don't make me laugh!" line).

The next major breakthrough in alchemy requires tapdancing.

Purely for Roy Mustang's sake. He already snaps his fingers, he learned the clapping transmutation, so the next logical 'step' is tap.

Scar was a major problem for Father's plan.

The state alchemist program was meant to collect potential sacrifices for the plan. Scar went on a rampage killing many state alchemists. The reason Father had to rely on so many sacrifices that wanted to stop him is that Scar had already killed all the other candidates.

• This makes a lot of sense; it would definitely explain why there's such an oddly low number of potential sacrifices. I'd like to add that this is probably why Envy and Lust had seemed interested in Scar — because they realized he was a risk to their candidates.

Maes Hughes never had any gun training.

While Rule of Cool also applies, it's very improbable that someone who in military for many years in his life never using gun, But if you watches Maes Hughes, in every scene where he's fighting, he consistently using knives. He spat on Envy by using a knife. In Ishbal, where everyone using rifles he still brings them and never pick a rifle, or a handgun, for that matter, and still score impressive kills with them. It's very possible that he did pick guns at the beginning or the training, but for some reason or another, find knives to be more fit with him. Some possible reason:

• His bad eyesight. Every recruits on army is required to have good eyesight, since you can't use gun without them. He pick his knife skills when his eyesight is still good, so he already adapted with them.
• His skill at knives already shines during the beginning, and there's no one considering that he might need gun training, especially with war eating Red Shirts that need to be replaced quickly.

Mrs. Bradley is a Retired Badass.

Hence why she doesn't do any fighting anymore. She was a skilled fighter in her youth, but gave it up to raise Selim after Bradley became Fuhrer.

The Slicer Brothers were Conjoined Twins.

Hence why they're so good at fighting while merged together.

Ling Yao and May Chang are half brother and sister.

They're prince and princess of their respective clans, both in line for the throne that would likely only be allowed to go to the emperor's direct descendents. I gotta say, with 50 clans in Xing, that emperor sure gets around.

• Isn't that canon? It's stated that the emperor takes one concubine from each clan.

Father letting go of Pride is what made him fail to become "human"

Okay, this might be fairly confusing, but bear with me:As we see in the end, all the Homunculi (and Father) actually wanted was to be human, to have friends and families and to understand what it's like to be human (Who could better understand what being human is about than an actual human?). Though it's not explicitly stated for every one of them, it's safe to assume they all have similar desires. Now, Father acts according to the seven deadly vices even after he let go of them (He seeks power at all costs/Greed; views humans as "ants"/Pride; devours souls with no self-control/Gluttony; has a desire for a family like humans/Envy; prefers to let others do his bidding for him/Sloth; feels anger towards any opposition, principally Hohenheim/Wrath; and lusts after becoming a perfect being/Lust). It may be that by letting go of his vices, he didn't actually get rid of the "flaws" that come with them, but the ability to learn from them and therefore be "human". We get some evidence of that as he takes back Greed for a short time, during which he acts a lot more friendly towards others than before and after (by his standards, which doesn't say much, but it's still there. And Greed just wants to make friends). After all, being a good person is not about having no flaws, but rather about overcoming them (as is the moral of this story). This might also be the reason why the other Homunculi all die rather peacefully, or are at least redeemed by death, since they all learn something about being human before dying. Father doesn't learn, and for him death is horrible.Now, the first vice he let go of was Pride, which might actually have been the reason he became (even more) insane in the first place. If we assume that he lost his ability to learn from his vices by seperating them from himself, he had been fighting a battle he already lost from the very beginning. It all boils down to the way you interpret "pride": On one hand, it can mean arrogance, which Pride (and Father) display in spades. But on the other hand, it might run closer along the lines of "being proud of something": Pride/Father just wanted people to be proud of him, to admire him and to look up to him, but he also wanted to be able to be proud of himself. Seeing this is the lesson Father could have learned if he had embraced his pride instead of getting rid of it, which would have meant he would never have done any of the horrible things that happend after Xerxes. Probably this is even the reason why he got rid of his pride first: After thinking about the way humans (collectively) look up to/are proud of people who do good things while looking down on those who kill and do as they please without any regard for the well-being of others, he maybe just couldn't stand that killing all these people in Xerxes actually put him into a position in which most people would look down on him (if he was part of their society, that is - but that's what he ultimately wants.) So in the end, his (and everyone else's) problems started because he was unable to face actually learning from his flaws and mistakes, and in the end he pays the price - even though he could have really become a decent person if he had chosen to act in a way that would allow himself and others to be proud of/admire his actions. It even ties in with the last confrontation Pride has with Kimblee: When he tries to use Ed's body as a container, Kimblee tells him that he looks down on Pride for "giving up his pride as a Humunculus". Pride isn't proud of being a Homunculus/proud of himself, which is why he doesn't see any problem with using Ed's body. He basically has the same problem as Envy, violent overcompensation for actually wanting to live as a human. And on a positive note, Pride is the only Homunculus who doesn't die - and the only one who can really live as a human. So if Father had rather used his pride as a motivation to become a decent person than to act arrogant, he could have reached what he really longed for all this time: A "normal" life, friends and a family. (Sure, he still would've had to deal with the remose of what happened in Xerxes AND he would have lived for a really long time, but the same is true for Hohenheim and even he had a pretty good run and was able to die in peace).

Edward Elric is the Last Survivor of Amestris.

Father suceeded in his plan and left Ed just as he left Hoenheim ages ago. Ed's "triumph" is just a Hope Spot. In reality, there is no Reverse Transmutation Circle or it otherwise fails, the victims of Father's Transmutation Circle are all DEAD. Father is now and always God and Ed (should he survive) shoulders the same burden of survivor's guilt that his father bore long ago, wandering the wasteland that used to be Amestris . . . all alone.

Amestris is Afghanistan

In the alternate universe of FMA, Amestris is the geographic equivalency of Afghanistan. Cold and powerful Drachma to the north is Russia, Xing is clearly Chinese and the East Desert separating it from Amestris is the Gobi Desert. Creta is divided into many tribal areas, not unlike northern Pakistan and while it is not currently the case, in ancient times India was a major maritime trade hub due to its favorable geography, not unlike Aerugo. The recently conquered and largely pacifist Ishvalla may be either Tibet or Nepal. Prior to wars with British India and Czarist Russia during the Victorian era, Afghanistan was also a regional military power like Amestris.

Reborn!Selim did not lose his memories

He's just biding his time. After all, he's had centuries of experience in playing a helpless child. The injured bird he asked to 'fix' was probably just him trying to turn up the cute to deflect suspicion.

• When Envy was reduced to their original form, they didn't forget anything, so it's likely that Pride didn't either.
• An omake even shows reborn!Selim threatening to tell Mrs Bradley that Grumman was the one who Blew up King Bradley's train

Father failed because of a Homunculus he didn't create

The Seven Deadly Sins were not originally seven: there were two more, Acedia and Vainglory, which ended up being folded into Sloth and Pride. However, as we see, Father didn't get rid of his vanity when he expelled Pride. As the Truth says, his true sin was his boastfulness, a part of Vainglory. If he had expelled this sin, instead of the other seven, he might have realized the error of his ways.

Truth never take anyone's eyesight, it was lost from looking at the gate.

Because Mustang didn't commit human transmutation, Truth actually didn't (intentionally) take anything from him! Instead, Mustang lost his eyesight from staring into all the information contained behind the gate and trying to take it all in, in an example of These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. His eyes saw too much, and lost their eyesight from it — similar to how an Elder Scroll can make one go blind.

Lust has a One-Winged Angel form that’s a mass of genitals, breasts and parted legs.

We never see it because 1. She’s very vain and doesn’t like transforming into that 2. She was killed before she could unleash it, and 3. That wouldn’t be allowed in a shounen manga.

What's up with the 520 cenz promise?

When Ed threatened to repeatedly borrow money from Roy, I don't think he was just being a gadfly. This is right after Riza pretty strongly implies that Roy's suicidal, and later in the conversation Ed tells Roy not to worry her.The 520 cenz are a lifeline. One that's subtle enough Roy won't be too proud to take it, and irritating enough to suit their Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic. Ed's putting a minor thorn in Roy's side that he knows the Colonel won't be willing to leave unresolved, because for all their bickering they do care about each other.

The toll to pass through the gate isn't a punishment.

Or, at least, not in the sense of Truth deciding people have done something wrong and deserve to be mutilated. It's an alchemical backlash, just like what normally happens when a transmutation lacks the necessary components, only weirder because the human soul is weirder than ordinary matter (and that's why a Philosopher's Stone can pay the toll and avoid mutilation: the transmutation process needs a soul as part of the ingredients). People just assume it's some kind of divine punishment because, well, Truth *is* divine and humans have a distressing tendency to embrace the just world fallacy, but the only time Truth itself says anything to support the idea is when it's reflecting the wannabe god Father (and thus reflecting Father's own megalomania and cruelty) and mocking him in his own words. You can game the system with a Philosopher's Stone as Ed did to get himself, Ling, and Envy out of Gluttony's stomach and get away perfectly fine, after all.

The old lady who looks like Dante from the 2003 version is Dante

...But she's not evil. If anything she was a civilian alchemist who had retired.