WMG / Mega Man

Classic series

Dr. Light in Mega Man 8 is the fake Dr. Light

from Mega Man 9.

Dr. Wily's plan to frame Dr. Light in Mega Man 9 actually started in Mega Man 8. Sometime before 8, he secretly captured Light and swapped him out with the robotic duplicate. It explains why Light was careless enough to let another dangerous robot into his lab — he was studying it and relaying his findings to Wily. Same goes for the evil energy that he contained. It also explains his extreme speech impediment as a glitch that foreshadows who he really is.

Mega Man is a metaphor for the atomic bomb (by The Qu)

To start with, let us discuss the two scientists, Dr. Thomas Light and Dr. Albert Wily. Dr. Light, being named after the American innovator Thomas Edison, represents the spirit of American ingenuity, making things to make life easier. His work is stolen by the Germanic Dr. Wily, who is named after the man whose work was used to create the Atomic Bomb, Albert Einstein. The two scientists represent, in larger scale, the scientists who created the Atomic Bomb — the Americans for peace, the Germans for war. Wily betrayed Dr. Light, and took his robots to use for evil. The message is clear: The robots, in this case "weapons", are only as good as the person using them. They have no innate morality.

Mega Man represents the American spy, taking information from the enemy for his own use. This is why his default weapon is a gun (traditionally the weapon chosen by pop culture to assign to heroic spies, such as James Bond) and why he takes the weapon from the Robot Master, representing taking intelligence from the enemy, in this case represented literally, as he takes the information from their CPU. His adaptability is emblematic of a spy's quick thinking, and requirement of being able to adapt to any situation, ASAP.

The Robot Masters all represent different aspects of the Atomic Bomb. Gutsman, being full of bravado and "guts", is the War Hawk, eager to go to war and use the bomb. However, internally, he is frightened of the bomb, hence his weakness to Hyper Bomb.

Cut Man represents people who commit self harm and murder due to fear of the Atomic Bomb. Perhaps the best example of this would be the father in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's "Watchmen", who kills his family so they do not have to suffer. They are the opposite of the War Hawk, which is why Cut Man is weak to the "Super Arm" of Gutsman.

Elec Man, one of the most obvious, is representative of the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) that emanates from a nuke Ground Zero. The nuke destroys all electric media and electronic infrastructure in the area. Elec Man is weak to the "Rolling Cutter", as those who have killed themselves do not have to worry about the EMPs, weakening its power over us.

Ice Man is representative of nuclear winter, a lingering fear of nuclear war since John Hempson first theorized it in 1974. This is most obvious in that the level seems to take place in a tropical environment, with palm trees lining the background. Ice Man is weak to Thunder Beam not because of EMPs, but because the electricity could power devices that could keep you alive during nuclear winter.

Fire Man is another obvious one. He is the firestorms that result from nuclear blasts, such as those that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. He is weak to Ice Slasher, as the ensuing nuclear winter would put out the firestorms, although this would leave us worse off than before.

And lastly, this leaves us with Bombman. He is the Bomb. Fatman. Little Boy. The Czar Bomba. He is the weapon that could destroy us all. Fire Storm destroys him, disconnecting his bomb components, leaving him as only a large hunk of metal, a reminder of destructive potential.

Wily's base is his Robot Manufacturing Plant, obviously meaning this is where he, the "evil" scientist, creates the bravado, the fear, the Nuclear Winter, etc. This is where the bomb is being made.

The first level pits Mega Man against the Yellow Devil. The Yellow Devil may hint at the threat of nuclear war in the east, which began in the 1960s when China turned Communist. The Yellow Peril is an old pulp genre, focusing on Oriental threats, with Fu Manchu being perhaps the most famous. He splits into various blocks, showing the Domino effect that President Eisenhower feared so much: One Asian country falling to Communism, causing another too, which causes another too... He is weak to Thunder Beam, showing how a well placed EMP could knock out their infrastructure, rendering their efforts to manufacture nuclear arms moot.

The second level pits Mega Man against the specters of despair and societal collapse before pitting him against a clone of himself. This is a rogue spy, who has gone to the enemy. Perhaps they pay better, perhaps they have made him believe their ethos. Perhaps he is a spy of theirs, as Wily seems to manufacture the Copy Robot. Regardless, he is weak to Thunder Beam, Fire Storm, and Hyper Bomb: In short, the bomb equalizes him.

The third level pits you against the CWU-01P. According to supplementary material, these were originally designed to purify water. They show that in the end of a nuclear war, even water, the basic life giver, goes rogue as radiation taints everything. And it is important to remember that when the Hydrogen bomb was being tested, it was tested over seas, in the Bikini Atoll. Perhaps nature wants revenge.

At the end of the fourth level, the spy confronts the rogue scientist. But then, the scientist enters a large UFO, perhaps a nod to the Nazi experiments in things such as saucer-shaped vehicles. In later games, the ship is decorated with skulls, "the grin that lies beneath the skin." Perhaps it is a reminder of what war leads to, perhaps to remind us of what we will be. "Tu fui, ego eris," the Romans wrote on their tombstones. What You Are, I Was. What I Am, You Will Be. The boss is weak to the byproducts of a nuclear blast: Hellfire and EMPs.

When defeated, rather than repent for his crimes, the rogue scientist makes a half hearted effort to plead for his life. Indeed, real-life scientists such as Werner Von Braun came to the US after the war, and began work on our own rocketry projects. The spy, however, rejects the rogue scientist's plea for forgiveness. He is not one for business. The mission is what he lives for. The ending makes it clear. The spy fights because it is the only thing he knows how to do.

• Whoa. That was most likely the best WMG I've ever read. You, sir, have just won WMG forever.
  • Holy crap! I wrote this a few years ago on a forum. I'm A: amused it found its way here and B: glad people like it! —The Qu

The original series takes place after an apocalypse where only Dr. Light and Dr. Wily survived

The big nuclear war happened, and everyone in America/Japan died except two elderly roboticists. Knowing their side lost the war, they're playing games in the rubble. Wily is trying to rebuild the nation as it was through cheap mass-produced robots, and Light is trying to build an android nearly as close to a human as possible. They're each trying to prove their plan is the superior one by having their robots destroy the other's. The whole backstory about building robots for peace and Wily stealing them is the story as explained to Mega Man by Light, so that Mega Man would go out and destroy Wily's robots. This explains why Wily gets right back into building robots for the next game after you defeat him. It's just a game. "Oh well, you win this round Light. But I've got some great ideas for the next round. I'm gonna make a robot that shoots bubbles!". Light lets Wily go, then tells Mega Man some story about Wily escaping from prison. And Dr. Cossack in Mega Man 4? He's human, but he's Russian... Apparently, the USSR won the war.

• That's all well and good, but why are there newspapers covering Dr. Wily's arrest? Featuring an ad for what appears to be a video game about Cut Man?
• You just answered your own question: ...a video game about Cut Man. The newspaper is a fake, and since they're building robots, they don't have time to fabricate new ideas for a fake newspaper. So Dr. Light just put in random stuff betting that Mega Man wouldn't notice.
• This troper is convinced that the "contest" aspect is canon, whether the apocalypse has happened or not.
• Another human (who looks suspiciously like Chun Li) is briefly seen in the opening to Mega Man 9. The police officers that arrest Light, on the other hand, are all robots (then again, they were fake police robots created by Wily...)

Mr. X is how Wily earns money.

Essentially, it's a solution to the Offscreen Villain Dark Matter problem. Since most people would turn down the mad scientist trying to take over the world, Wily was forced to make a separate identity. Mr. X is a Wily robot clone most of the time, unless Wily decides to interfere. The reason why Crystal Man exists? A backup plan in case Mr X. no longer works as a disguise. The reason why Wily is resorting to stealing robots again is due to lack of funds.

Dr. Wily built Rush as a gift for Mega Man while he was pretending to be good in Mega Man 3.

• Can you think of a better way to gain your enemy's trust then giving them a robot dog?
  • Why, give him a robot cat, to use to fight the MYSTERIOUS ALIEN INVADERS. And now we know where Tango is from.

Wily is being mind-controlled by aliens

Wily has managed to unearth three alien machines (The Evil Energy, Ra Moon, and Sungod/Sunstar). In MM2, he had a hologram of himself that turned into an alien that attacked. Presumably, while Wily was working with Light, he created some sort of beacon that attracted an alien presence that took over his mind and turned him evil and helped him find the alien robots.

The expiration dates

introduced in Mega Man 9 were enacted against Dr. Light's will.When the companies commissioning new robots turned to Dr. Light, they specifically told him to have said robots expire. Doesn't sound like a terribly smart thing to ask, until you consider that it would mean the companies wouldn't have to pay them if they expired before it was time for their checks. Presumably, Dr. Light removed whatever mechanism(s) would trigger date-related death from the Robot Masters, so they could live normally.

• By that logic, the expiration dates could've been enforced as a precaution against Dr. Wily. With all robots required to be scrapped after a certain time, there's less chance of Wily taking over them like he did with the world robot champions in Mega Man 6.
  • This clearly failed, since Wily managed to use the expiration dates to sway the robots to serve him.
    • Which is why it doesn't appear to be an issue in 10.

Ra Moon committed genocide on his home planet (and possibly other planets) before moving on to Earth.

An alien/robotic civilization built Ra Moon for calculations and guidance (missile and ship guidance, specifically). Somewhere along the line, Ra Moon becomes sentient, realizes he's being used, and makes certain modifications to himself — namely, the anti-robotic radiation that shuts down everything and everyone (barring Rock, Blues, the helper pets, the first set of Light's Robot Masters, and Wily's own robots) on whatever planet Ra Moon happens to be on. He leaves his planet since his creators/tormentors have been taken care of, and lands on Earth sometime before or after the Ice Age. Ra Tor and Ra Devil are either followers or creations of Ra Moon's, having aligned themselves with him on a different planet than the one Ra Moon effectively emptied.

Free will is beneficial to both Original series robots and their creators/employers.

What can robots with free will do that robots without can't? Improvise; should something go wrong on the job or off (and it inevitably will), a robot may have to improvise in order to save themselves and/or others, or simply fix what went wrong. Robots without free will cannot, and input from their human employers may never come, so what are they supposed to do in a situation not detailed in their programming? They'll either be destroyed or simply be of no help.

Dr. Light is either extremely lazy or an idiot.

In Mega Man 1, Dr. Wily turns evil because Dr. Light got the Nobel prize for robotics and Dr. Wily helped build them. Dr. Wily reprograms them, and Dr. Light has to modify his lab assistant to stop them. It seems like Dr. Wily is the better programmer, and is mad Dr. Light is taking all the credit. In Mega Man 3, Dr. Wily's around to help build Rush. In Mega Man 4, Dr. Cossack helps build the Charge Shot. Dr. Cossack also built Beat. It seems like the only robots Light built on his own are Auto and Tango, neither of whom have a huge influence on the series. Also, in Mega Man 9, Light can't even be bothered to give Mega Man his Charge Shot and sliding ability back.

• I have always assumed that Wily was the better robot builder, and Light was better at programming. See: X. Wily's crowning achievement? A nanobot virus, a crowning achievement of engineering. Light's? The ability to program a computer to equal the capabilities of the human mind. Also see the alternate universe in Battle Network, where Light goes towards a wholly-programmed society, leaving roboticist Wily in the dust and alone.
• In the Mega Man Children's Anime (which was funded by the Japanese tourism board), episode 2, Dr. Light and Dr. Wily have 1 year to prepare for a confrontation in space. Dr. Wily builds a literal army of robots along with a comet-hurling death star-sized space station. Dr. Light builds a small glider, which is powered by Mega Man and Protoman... so nothing at all. After Mega Man defeats Dr. Wily, the only way he is able to return into orbit is with one of Dr. Wily's space ships, meaning Dr. Light had no plan for Mega Man's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
• Alternate theory, he's busy building all those capsules for the X series. Even Zero and Axl get capsules! That had to take a lot of time to plan and make.
• In the Japanese continuity, Wily didn't help with the original Robot Masters. He was just some guy who had gone to school with Light and wanted to take over the world.

Dr. Light represents American's prime on programming technology, while Dr. Wily represents Japanese's prime on robotics.

Related to the above. As you know, many computer softwares are produced by American companies, while Japanese companies excel in creating hardwares and other appliances such as TV, cars, and of course, they also built robots (just see Asimo). Fitting with Drs. Light and Wily.

Roll will be an enemy in MM 10.

She's one of the robots infected with roboenza. Why not?

• Poison Oak Epileptic Trees
  • Jossed, so hard.

The Mecha Dragon will return as a boss for Mega Man 10.

There's a dragon on the background on the faux boxart that somewhat resembles it. Plus considering how many elements of Mega Man 2 were reused for Mega Man 9 means it's possible.

• Okay, so I was wrong.

Why certain MM2 weapons heal bosses.

• Bubble Lead + Bubble Man: Gives him more air??
• Atomic Fire + Bubble Man: He laughs at you thinking a fire weapon would work underwater?
  • It's like he was embraced by the sun!
• Anything but Bubble Lead + Alien: Dr. Wily built the hologram projector so it would absorb energy from all the weapons, but forgot about Bubble Lead.
  • When you fight the alien, you're essentially fighting a self-contained entity made of light — the Bubble Lead is reflective: it overloads the self-contained hologram (it's self-contained to a degree — it's not the projector shooting energy at you, it's the alien); the bar in the corner isn't a measure of how much health it has left so much as how much it damage it can take; it's able to convert everything else into Pure Energy for its health, except the Bubble, because the B. Lead ends up breaking the hologram down.
• Atomic Fire or Crash Bomber + Heat Man: He "eats" explosives and fire?

The MM2 robots stole their sites from the MM9 robot masters

• It would explain their similar purposes. Wily built them to take over the points which would be detrimental to the city, which were being run by the MM 9 masters.
  • Also explains their similar designs, since they'd be sent to capture areas they were designed to work in or felt a need to protect. For example, Wood Man took over a forest that Concrete Man was meant to start developing on, Quick Man took over Plug Man's factory, Bubble, Air, and Heat took Splash, Tornado, and Magma, respectively, Crash Man took over the rocket launch point for Galaxy Man, Flash Man took over a crystal mine where Jewel Man was working, and Metal Man took over a factory near where Hornet Man was running a Bee Farm. This also explains why they had weapons in MM9, so they could protect themselves from similar incidents in the future.
    • One issue — the expiration date law driving the plot of Mega Man 9 had a Grandfather Clause. If the Mega Man 9 Robot Masters had been around during the events of Mega Man 2, the expiration date law wouldn't have applied to them, so Dr. Wily would have had a much harder time swaying them to his cause — especially if they remembered him having sent his own robots to interfere with their work several years ago.

Dr. Wily has a hidden lab/factory where all his real work takes place. The huge skull fortresses you fight through are decoys.

Nearly every game, Dr. Wily has a massive skull-themed fortress which you blast your way through. And yet, despite destroying it every time, he's always ready to go next game. The truth is that all of Wily's real research happens in a secret lab that has not been found, or even suspected, by anybody. Probably because it's underground and well-hidden. From here is where he conducts his real research on robot construction and his latest schemes. Those castles you fight through look to be deathtraps because that's all they are designed to be. What looks to be lab work is merely window dressing.

As evidence, consider the beginning of Mega Man 7, where the robots activate to bust Wily out of prison. That wasn't a contingency plan, that was his actual lab. Every time his castle is destroyed, he just flies back to his lab and begins work on his latest scheme.

• Or, rather than being decoy labs, the Skull Fortresses serve as his War HQs, but he does R&D at a single, secret lab, as the WMG describes.

Theories on the Teleporting Systems, and various gameplay mechanics.

Building on theories used in the IJBM pages. The reason Mega Man can't teleport directly to the boss is because of a jamming field that prevents teleportation, so Mega Man has to teleport in from the outside. The midway points and final hallways in these levels are gaps, eddies, and other weak points that can't be spotted from the outside.

• Rush can teleport in by homing on to Mega Man.

• Further, Mega Man is never destroyed. Rather, the "explosion" is an emergency component dispersement system. When he takes what would otherwise be critical damage, he essentially becomes a cloud of nanobots, which are quickly reformed a short distance away, and teleport back to the action. Spikes are actually special signal emitters which force Mega Man's dispersement.
• Extra Lives represent how often Mega Man can reform himself quickly before he lacks the power to do so himself, and has to be manually reformed at Dr. Light's Lab. By this time, the holes in the jamming field have changed frequency and locations ever so slightly, so he has to head back through the long way to identify the gaps again.
• The Mercy Invincibility and stunning animation isn't actually Mega Man directly suffering damage, but an emergency force field being activated. Mega Man's energy isn't really his health, it's how much power this force field has. Whenever he's hit, the force field activates, rendering him immune to attacks for a short period of time. Sadly, this wasn't a perfect design, and it overloads Mega Man's systems, causing the knockback and stunning. It also has the issue that being reaction-based, some attacks will end up draining more energy to absorb the damage Mega Man would suffer otherwise (despite how the field will allow him to endure the same attack afterwards), but it's better than slapping a time limit of twenty-six or so seconds to beat a level.

From all this, it can be concluded that Mega Man is actually incredibly fragile compared to the other robots he faces off with, its his forcefield which takes the brunt of the attacks.

• Explain how the bosses instantly repair themselves once Mega Man's gone, then.

Proto Man's version of the shop in Mega Man 10 is a trick by Auto to get Proto Man to let him help.

In Proto Man mode, Proto Man goes to a different shop than Mega Man. In the one Proto Man visits, Auto is the proprietor, but he hides his identity with a Metool helmet and his name is not shown. Tango, the robotic cat from Mega Man V for Game Boy, is by his side. Auto likely set up the shop because he knew that Proto Man would refuse help from him and Dr. Light, and would probably rather go to a black market dealer. Protoman would likely be unfamiliar with Tango, but probably not with Auto, who is famously associated with Dr. Light as the world's first robotic roboticist.

• Does Proto Man get charged higher prices than Mega Man? I haven't watched an LP of the game for a long time. But if Proto Man does get charged higher prices, that's probably just to keep up the black market ruse. He wants to charge Proto Man a fair price (i.e. the same price he'd charge Mega Man, i.e. however many bolts are needed to make the part), but if he actually did, Proto Man might get suspicious.

Quint is Rock fifty years into the future and allowed Rock to destroy him because he remembered destroying Quint (himself) when he was still Rock.

Talk about a Timey-Wimey Ball.

Alternatively, Quint allowed Rock to destroy him to avoid a paradox.

If Quint won, he wouldn't exist anymore.

The medicine at the end of 10 was a ruse

Rather than cure all the robots infected, it either GAVE them the virus, or reprogrammed them to serve under Wily. This time, he wins.

There are two strains of Roboenza.

Wily wanted to make sure the virus worked first, so he started off with the more benign version. This is the strain that infected Roll and the majority of the robots. Much later, he released the second strain that makes robots go berserk after a set period of time, and this is the version that infected the eight Robot Masters fought in 10. The cure was designed with the first strain in mind, but may or may not work on the second strain.

The classic Mega Man games are contemporary propaganda

The classic series Mega Man games are far less serious than virtually all the other games set in the timeline. There is a reason: they aren't a direct description of the events of the original robot wars, but rather, a public retelling of such. As such, they are sanitized to make Dr. Wily look less horrid, and the battles Mega Man fight look more lighthearted. In actuality, the conflicts between Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are just as dangerous, and potentially devastating, as all the later robot wars. The public is just provided with cheery propaganda about it... and it's these propaganda films(?) that survived into the later eras.

Dr. Wily is actually the good guy, and the entire game is the world through Mega Man's programming, which Dr. Light designed in order for Mega Man to think he was evil, while Dr. Light REALLY is.

Rock and Roll are Replacement Goldfish for the children Dr. Light never ended up having.

If Dr. Light was creating robots who would serve as domestic assistants, why would they look and act like children, rather than experienced adults? Simple: he's always wanted kids of his own. He once had a wife (ehhhhh, let's call her "Rosemary", for remembrance), but she died, presumably while pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl.

Alternately, Wily is responsible for Rosemary's death.

Wily, being Dr. Light's rival and all, had to have Rosemary, too, so he had his way with her, leaving her pregnant with twins. Traumatized by what happened, Rosemary killed herself. Upon finding out, Dr. Light vowed to kill Wily at whatever cost it took. But he doesn't want his "kids" to experience the same pain he did (hence why they won't — and can't — kill Wily), so he drafted up a nasty plan: he'd simply have Rock, as Mega Man, continue defeating Wily over and over, destroying his body bit by bit. Eventually, Wily, his body laced all over with cybernetics and tired of constantly having to cook up nasty schemes to defeat Mega Man, killed himself on his own — just as he'd forced Rosemary to do so long ago.

• Holy @$&#, that's just plain twisted...

Alternatively, Dr. Light DID have kids.

The timeline split between Classic and Battle Network is only about 20 years before the first games — which means Dr. Light's son, Yuchiro Hikari, was already born. However, Hub, one of Yuchiro's twin sons, died. And of course, since Net Navi technology doesn't exist in this reality, he couldn't be saved that way. Feeling sad about this, having also lost his wife, and wanting surviving twin Lan to stay safe, Tadashi Hikari leaves ACDC Town, renames himself Thomas Light, and builds Rock and Roll.

Classic Mega Man's maximum safe fall distance is 4 screens

Point 1: If you fall off a platform that isn't above a bottomless pit in most Mega Man games, you end up in the previous screen.Point 2: Dr. Wily level 1 in Mega Man 2 has Mega Man climb at least 5 screens up.Point 3: In Spark Man's stage in Mega Man 3, Mega Man falls 3-4 screens and lands safely.

Dr. Wily has been a robot since Mega Man 4.

He genuinely died at the end of Mega Man 3. He had secretly created a robot copy of himself which would continue his work and believe itself to be the real Wily. At the end of Mega Man 10, he realizes what he is and leaves the Roboenza cures being for the good of robotkind — or perhaps just to eradicate the virus so he doesn't catch it again, if the cures don't grant immunity. If he did leave the cures beind for the good of robotkind, it's because he now feels true empathy for them — it's just humanity he has a problem with now.

• Alternatively, that Dr. Wily was a robot. The illness was just a karmic flu.

Dr. Wily is a robot.

It would explain why Rock thought he caught Roboenza and Wily's denial of it, as well as his role in the X series.

• Well, we know from the X games that he became a reploid at some point; he was an advisor to Sigma, after all. This merely means he made the conversion much earlier than previously thought.
• Not necessarily. I believe Capcom said his consciousness was in the Virus, so he wouldn't have to be a reploid.
• In Bass's ending, he thinks Wily caught Roboenza too...
• I always figured we was at least PARTLY robotic, but not fully. I assumed that parts of him had to be "rebuilt" after his apparent death in Mega Man 3. It would also explain why he just won't die, and, like others have said, how he caught the Roboenza.
• Protoman, however, just thinks Wily has a cold, and considers it Karmic Justice. Given that Wily's treatment at the hospital reveals no sign of robotics, and that Protoman is more rational than the naive Mega Man or the often-thick Bass, I'm inclined to go with his explanation.

The year 200X is actually the year 2,000,010

in an effort to prevent another Y2K bug scare, the Roman numeral X was added to extend how many characters were needed before you run out of space.

Dr Wily faked his death in Mega Man 3.

The Wily that was crushed by a rock was Actually a Doombot, remote controlled by Wily who made two robot doubles. He figured that either he would have control of Gamma and defeat Mega Man, or everything would fall apart and he might get arrested as he ended up in Mega Man 6. He's only tried to take over the world twice before, third time may end poorly. So he rigged his lair to collapse if Gamma was destroyed, and supposedly died. It allowed him to stay out the radar long enough to frame Dr Cossack, and make some more Robot Masters.

Aqua Man is a Take That! to Dic Entertainment.

Captain N The Game Master was known for getting the designs of the Robot Masters completely wrong, among other designs, and among those was Bubble Man, who looked heavily like Aqua Man before Mega Man 8 was even created. Adding to that, Aqua Man is flamboyant and childish, probably to rag on how the video game-based cartoons by Dic Entertainment were considered campy.

Dr. Light created the Mega Buster by reverse-engineering Heat Man’s weapon data.

• The Atomic Fire is the first, and for the first 3 games, only, Charged Attack weapon. This ability would definitely come in handy, so Dr. Light worked to adapt the charging system that Mega Man got when he copied Heat Man’s data to work with the standard Buster cannon. It took a while, which is why Mega Man didn’t have it in Mega Man 3. Ongoing tweaks and revisions are why its form and power vary so much across the series. It wasn’t until the Mark XVII X-Buster that he was able to make a universal charging system that could charge the Buster and any copied weapon.

Bridging the Classic series and X

Why they seemingly never resolve and conclude the Mega Man Classic storyline?

Because, judging from Mega Man X's story, (most of) the original cast will die at some point (but not because Zero killed them; that theory is Jossed). Having them die is a horrific thing, especially considering the cheerful tone of the series (and this is somewhat supported by Word of God). So the writers try to avoid that point as much as they can, preventing any (obvious) relation between the Classic and X series. Just think of it like the Elf Wars event (between X and Zero series), it is an utterly horrific story that could only be told, but never shown.

Duo's origins, and how the classic series might end.

Think about it. Duo is an alien robot. He probably could've come from the MM universe's version of Cybertron. In Power Battle 2, Duo was stated to have returned to Earth for the second time to help the heroes after he left it at the end of Mega Man 8. It's not impossible at some time in the future that Duo would come a third time to pick up the entire cast of the classic series (minus the humans) and have them live on his planet instead of Earth, thus resolving the classic timeline with a happy note. No rampaging Zero or any kind of cataclysm.

The Maverick Virus was a variant of Evil Energy.

In Mega Man 8, Mega Man was infused with a small amount of so-called Evil Energy that has the effect of turning robots and people, surprise, evil. He's told, though, that his own purity can keep it in check. Enter Wily's final creation, Zero, who is powered by a virus that will infect Mega Man just in case Zero is defeated. Much to everyone's surprise, Zero kills Mega Man. But it doesn't stop there. The evil energy is no longer contained by Mega Man, and leaps into Zero, kicking the Maverick Virus up a notch and causing Super-Zero to kill everyone. Without any targets left, Zero shuts down. Centuries later, just before X, the Evil Energy-corrupted Virus jumps into Sigma, the reploid who finds Zero's body.

• The Evil Will Not Die. In Zero, the Evil Energy corrupts Dr. Weil. The Mother Elf "cures" the Maverick Virus, which just causes the energy to jump, turning it into the Dark Elf.
  • It Still Won't Die. Upon his death at the end of the Mega Man Zero series, the Evil Energy jumps from Dr. Weil's body into the W Biometal, to threaten the world in ZX.
  • Inafune was asked whether or not Zero had killed Mega Man and the rest of the original cast; he said — to put it bluntly — "no", but then, he hasn't bothered giving an alternate explanation.
• Oh my god, someone else thought of this?!?! Anyway, I find it more likely the Sigma Virus is actually invented by Wily with his experiments with Evil Energy, and Cyber Elves are partly the result of related experiments, maybe with Duo's good energy. Note how they all can exist outside a body or container and yet are otherwise like computer programs. Also, I think X is a result of examining Duo's specs and of the Justice Energy experiments.
• Alternatively, Duo destroyed all of the Evil Energy Wily had, and the Maverick Virus was an attempt to artificially recreate the effects of Evil Energy. Given the events of the X series, Wily succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
  • The Roboenza he made in MM10 seems to support the direct above.

Mega Man IX will bridge the original series with the X series.

Because what else are they going to do when it's time to make the 10th game?

• Despite the American title screens for Mega Man 2 and 3, the series is officially numbered using Arabic numerals. There are Mega Man games with Roman numerals, but those are the Game Boy games, which currently end with Mega Man V (which was about Stardroids, not Dark Man).
• Jossed by Word of God and the real Mega Man 9 having nothing to do with the X series.
  • If one remembers the introductory screens of Mega Man X, the X-Buster was referred to as the 'Mega Buster Mark 17' (though not in that exact wording). If we figure that the Mega Buster was upgraded once between numbered Classic games (i.e. excluding Wily Wars, Game Boy games, Mega Man & Bass, etc.), then 'Mega Man X', the game, would count as being 'Mega Man 17'; thus, 'Mega Man 16' should be one to connect the Classic and X series.
    • Jossed: The Mega Buster was only upgraded before/during 4, 5, V, 6, and Super Adventure. In addition, the V upgrade replaced the Buster with the Mega Arm, and the Super Adventure upgrade was only the ability to fire the Buster with both arms at once.
• Jossed: 10 has nothing to do with X (although Roboenza might be a prototype for the Maverick Virus — in fact, there's probably a WMG on this page to that effect).

Zero did not massacre the original series cast.

9 mentioned mandatory expiration dates for robots. After Light seals X in his capsule and dies of old age, nobody is left to renew Mega Man's license. He, Roll, and the other Light robots are scrapped as the law requires. Wily uses the virus to keep control of Zero, using him as an assassin (thus his X4 flashbacks) until Wily too dies of old age. Without Wily to control him, Zero goes on a rampage until stopped by Sigma, transmitting the virus to him. Zero has killed, but it wasn't the original series cast.

• Word of God agrees, at least to him not killing the original cast.
• I disagree that the robots of the original cast were scrapped, at least Mega Man and Roll. Being very strong-willed and independent, they'd escape the scrapper's torch, kill a few people, and become fugitives of the law. I smell fanfiction!
  • To be honest: Megaman was originally a game featuring [1] but since they didn't secure the rights, Capcom created their own franchise. There is an adventure where Astro Boy just lives his entire life, and finally decays and rusts since nobody is there to mantain him. Megaman could had just end his life in peace.

The events of Mega Man 9 was the spark of inspiration for the Maverick Virus.

Look at what Wily told Light's Robot Masters to gain their trust. Notice anything? It's the truth. Sure, Wily might have used the expiration date situation to manipulate the Robot Masters, but he didn't lie about how stupidly arbitrary the dates were, considering how useful the robots still were. This incident probably inspired Wily to consider that maybe all robots had similar gripes against how they're used, abused, and disposed of by the humans, and created the Maverick Virus to help spark a rebellion in them; the virus doesn't cause the Robots to go berserk, it just removes the programming blocks that prevents them from striking back.

• Except that Reploids don't technically have any hard programming blocks: The only thing stopping them from committing crimes is the same thing that keeps the average human from turning to crime. So it's more likely that the Virus simply wears away at a Reploid's faculties of reason until they became psychopaths who couldn't give two shits about others (or, once it became the Sigma Virus, outright bent them to its will).

The X timeline (and all events after) are just a possible future for the Classic series.

• For no reason other than it gives Capcom a good excuse to keep making games for the Classic timeline. Also, imagine how awesome it would be to fight Zero as a boss and destroy him before he causes the X timeline to happen.
  • Confirmed, at least the first bit. The post-Inafune team has readopted the mindset held at the time of X4, in that the X series and those beyond it are moreso potential futures that, while they exist and are canon unto themselves, do not strictly need to occur. As for the second part, however, this was likely done in the purpose of freeing up future series entries, so that each new title they don't have to worry about making it be the game that bridges the gaps and in turn prevent future installments beyond those. Probably shouldn't expect a Classic Zero fight.

Zero was not based off of X

He was based off of Crash Man.

Compare these sprites◊ and these◊.

• Was Zero supposed to be "based off of" X to begin with? Pretty sure that Zero was built by Wily independently of X's construction by Light...
• Check out the art for Terra, then Zero. He's not based on a Robot Master at all. He's a Wily-built stardroid... which opens up a lot of possibilities regarding the Maverick Virus being an adapted form of Evil Energy, as above.
  • Wily didn't build Terra, though. He just repaired him.

Dr. Light developed prescience.

That's why he was able to put all those pods in the right place where they wouldn't be discovered, disturbed, or destroyed, how he was able to design armors for Zero, and why he sent X into the future in the Day of Sigma OVA.

There was no Cataclysm.

There was no epic battle involving anyone killing anyone. Rock, Roll, Auto, Beat, Protoman, Bass, Light, Wily, and any others I hadn't mentioned died of old age because the humans are mortal and because immortal robots hadn't yet been invented so the artificial guys deteriorated like any other complex machines, especially without the super-scientists that created them maintaining them. Dr. Light simply hid his greatest creation away from the prying eyes of the world (especially given the debacle involving expiry dates on his creations).

• Sorry, but this is Wild Mass Guessing: sane, probably true theories are not allowed here. oh god thankyou thankyou thankyou for this theory
  • Dude, putting a sane theory in the WMG is crazy.
• I'm pretty convinced that all the parallels to the X series in the most recent games are the result of the writers messing with the fandom.
• The whole idea of a 'Cataclysm' was pretty much invented by Erico and the author of Bob and George, but this doesn't stop it from (often) being mistaken for canon despite Word of God saying that it isn't going to happen, at least the version that is portrayed.
  • Well, there was the Bad Future where Rockman Shadow killed off all the other remaining robots (Rockman and Forte, Challenger from the Future). So if any cataclysm-like event is going to happen, it's still Wily's fault — but not Zero's.

X is the timeline following the second Game Boy Mega Man game

Think of the lime line as this:

• Timeline prime) MMI -> MMII -> MMI (GB) -> MMIII -> Games -> Past!Wily kidnaps MM, chaos caused -> MMX
• Timeline 2)...............................\->MMII (GB) -> Prime!MM (Quint) stuck in this timeline.
  • Supporting this, X-era mechaniloids appear in Rock Man Shadow's army in Challenger of the Future. Therefore, Quint is close enough to the X timeline that X-era mooks existed.

Dr. Light and Dr. Wily both created Zero.

This goes hand in hand with the "no cataclysm" theory. It also explains Zero's non-Maverick personality as a caring, if jerky, protector. The Maverick virus and Zero were created in an effort to stop X in case the 30 years of Ethical Programming failed. The W Program was a fail-safe to revert Zero's personality to its non-Maverick one once it determined that X wasn't evil. However, Dr. Wily and Dr. Light did not predict that X's design would be replicated so quickly, and it activated against Sigma, who was the only one that lasted long enough to activate it. The Maverick Virus itself was also designed to help stop X (as seen in X5 where X is damaged by the virus) and the W program was simply purging the virus. As Mega Man Zero shows... this was not a bad idea.

Roboenza is a prototype Maverick Virus.

We know that it gives robots flu-like symptoms, then makes them attack people. The Maverick Virus does the same thing, only without the "illness" at the start. The is similar to Timeman being able to only slow down time, while subsequent robot masters could time freeze. Seems like the sort of progression to be expected from Mad Science Marches On.

Roboenza is the predecessor to the Maverick Virus, and the events of Mega Man 10 was just a test run.

The intro notes that a month passed before the robots infected by Roboenza went violent and tried to take over the world — this was Dr. Wily waiting for the desired effects to happen before he started developing the cure for it. Of course, he didn't expect the infected robots to attack him and steal his medicine-making machine, so he had to fake his innocence to let Mega Man recover the machine for him. Once he got his machine back, Wily reveals that Roboenza was his doing and initially offered the cure to the world in exchange for working for him until the virus infected him, and Wily had to just give out the medicine anyway and go back to the drawing board, because he didn't intend the virus to infect humans.

• This is why he gave Zero a Restraining Bolt of sorts, so he wouldn't turn on him.
• It wouldn't infect humans, though. Wily's illness was just karma.

Wily created the Sigma Virus in 10

• This Troper thought that perhaps the whole thing with the robot illness and Roll giving the medicine for her to Mega Man instead was a sinister Evil Plan to begin with, and interpreted Wily's attempt to give Mega Man a pill, and the mountain of "cures" he leaves behind at the end as incubators and/or catalysts of some sort for what would become the "Sigma" Virus...
  • That's what the Wild Mass Guessing page is for.

Rock and the other Robot Masters were dismantled by Dr. Light

Rock's outburst at the end of Rockman 7 shows a dangerous side to Robot Masters. He was ready to disobey his "programming" and kill Wily, which may make him the first true Maverick robot. Eventually alerted to the danger posed by robots capable of making their own decisions outside of the restrictions imposed upon them, Light dismantles all of the Robot Masters. Realizing that it is folly to hope to restrict the moral independence of a sentient being, he creates X as a new template for truly independent robots, taking precautions to ensure that his new creation will make the right decisions.

• That was only in the English language version. If canon events are really important, we should stick with the Japanese versions of the story.

The Cataclysm was not a rampage on the part of Zero, but rather Blues' power core fatally malfunctioning.

Blues' power core went critical while he was in the presence of Bass and Roll, destroying everyone in the vicinity. This critical explosion caused widespread air pollution, eventually causing water pollution after the rains.

Rock works with Dr. Cossack to continuously boost his power until the doctor's death because Dr. Light became focused entirely on the X project after Roll's and Blues' demise. He continued to protect humanity as best as he could, until it was becoming physically impossible. A mysterious benefactor offered to upgrade him even further, turning him into Quint, but removing his ethics programming. And then took him to the past where he was destroyed.

• Well, that's even more tragic than a simple story.

Dr. Light and Wily survived into the X series as uploaded consciousnesses (the capsule interface for Light, the Maverick Virus for Wily)

This starts at with the theory that Zero was created from the plans for X that Bass stole when he ransacked Light's lab in MM7. By copying X's programming and design, Wily hoped to take advantage of X's 30+ year absence and have Zero take over the world. But Zero had X's ability to choose his own path, and didn't feel like destroying the forces of good (this is Word of God). So Wily, who was getting old anyway, created a machine to upload his soul, for lack of a better term, into Zero. Of course, Mega Man found out and wrecked the whole plan by wrecking Wily's lab just after the upload was finished. Zero's capsule was shut down with him (and Wily) inside. Mega Man brought the programming back for Light to use (since he's getting old as hell too). Light, rather than upload himself into X (which would be an unconscionable disregard of X's free will), uploaded himself into a series of capsules, from which he could create new upgrades for X if they were needed.

• Alternatively, they could have uploaded their minds into Cyberspace, although this theory would still work regardless.

The real reason Dr. Light built X with absolute free will was so he could kill Dr. Wily.

The "morality test" X was forced to do was actually showing him footage of all the heinous things Dr. Wily did and how much of a lousy suck-up he was about same. Then, X could kill Wily and Dr. Light could say he took every possible precaution against it.

Whoever created the Evil Energy (most likely the evil robot in 8) also created the Stardroids

Wily is attempting one big My Death Is Just the Beginning.

Despite years of failure, working on Zero and nearing death, Dr. Wily is still doing his schemes with Robot Masters that stand no chance against the Blue Bomber. This is all intentional, though — each of Wily's failures contributes to getting Zero to be perfect. Bass was originally Wily's masterpiece; however, Bass's arrogance became his undoing. So Wily decided to get make his next creation without said arrogance, which is why King was initially a Well-Intentioned Extremist. When that failed, Wily began working on Zero.

Zero was designed to have the best qualities of Wily's robots — it had the raw power of Bass supplemented with the invaluable AI of King. Mega Man 9 was the result of learning that Light had his own masterpiece. Through stealing Light's more advanced robots, he could get into the mind of Dr. Light and have a better understanding on what the flaws of his creations were. All for countering anything his foe could make. Mega Man 10 was the designing of an advanced form of computer virus, to make the Maverick Virus.

Wily knows he's going to die soon, even if he succeeds. Zero is his attempt at extending his legacy beyond death. With Zero, he can counter anything Dr. Light makes. With the advanced AI, he can exist in some form after death. With both, Wily can end Dr. Light's legacy and reshape civilization to his desire. That is why he persists.

• But sadly, Sigma wrecked all of them down...

X is Mega Man, aged up into teenagehood.

After Mega Man had defeated so many enemies, while still retaining a child-like personality, Dr. Light was getting bored of this same, same old story. So, he destroyed Mega Man and rebuilt him into a new, older-looking form, while keeping his personality intact. Then he rewired Mega Man, giving him free will in order to make him go through that rebellious-teenager phase. Having never had children of his own, it wasn't later until he realized that a superpowered robot going through the rebellious-teenager phase could be more dangerous than he expected, at which point he started X's ethical testing. He saw no other options aside from ending the project, which he didn't want to do, as he'd grown attached to Mega Man.

All the stars in the original timeline are actually the same character.

It all starts with Dr. Light's robot Mega Man. Eventually, Mega Man defeats Dr. Wily once and for all, leaving Zero sealed away with no one to release him. Dr. Light discovers just how powerful Mega Man is, so he seals him away 'till mankind is ready for him, after making a few cosmetic changes; since Dr. Wily is gone, there's really no need for such an advanced robot anyways. Then the Mega Man X series happens. After that, Zero is sealed away, Dr. Weil decides to clone Zero, but he can't find advanced enough material to use. So he uses X instead, scrapping him, and changing him into a perfect Zero clone. The "original" X in Mega Man Zero is actually just another clone Ciel created before she made the main villain Copy X. And Omega is the REAL Zero, that whole mention of Zero containing the original's consciousness was due to the fact that Cyber Elf X still believes he's the original. Anyways, Zero/X gets remodeled as a Humaniod when ZX takes place, but since he's a hero, the Sage Trinity decide not to kill him but let him live. Until Master Albert remodels him as Grey, and gives him amnesia. Oh yeah, and Model X is actually Copy X's biometal, and Model Z is actually cyber Elf X's biometal. Anyways, a huge catastrophe takes place, Grey is remodeled again to be a Carbon (which is actually revealed via Word of God to be a very advanced robot that is identical to humans in every way, apparently even including reproduction). He becomes Mega Man again.

The reason Mega Man is gone by the time the X series starts is due to the Sigma Virus.

It was created by Wily, so it probably had some kind of "Attack the Blue Bomber on Sight" program in it. Mega Man either died or disguised himself.

Zero killed Mega Man, but nobody else.

His power terrified Dr. Wily, so he decided to store him for a rainy day. That attitude changed eventually, but Zero didn't take out anybody in the classic series but Mega Man.

Zero didn't kill the main cast — Quint did.

Zero being the reason for the end of the Classic series just doesn't make sense, considering a) Word of God jossed it and b) no way in Hell the survivors would let him return to his capsule. Quint, however, was around and active in the future of Mega Man Classic. Dr Wily would makes sure that even if Quint lost in the past, he wouldn't have to deal with Light in the future. The solution was to have the reprogrammed Quint aka an incredibly skilled future Mega Man destroy any of Dr. Light's functioning robots and his lab, so that they wouldn't be able to oppose Future Wily. This included eliminating Proto Man, Bass, Roll (ignoring the helper robot allowed it to become Mega Man), and Auto. If you take the Mega Man X3 cameo as canon, Auto escaped. This may go to explain why X spent 70 years overdue in a capsule, in spite of a presumably living Dr. Cossack and a working Dr. Light AI: Quint crashed the lab and buried the X capsule even further. Quint is so pathetic because, among other things, he's been wailed on by the Future Badass versions of all the surviving Light bots. However, Quint didn't need to eliminate all of Mega Man's friends and foes...

Dr. Wily killed Bass.

Mega Man: The Power Fighters shows that Bass knows about Zero's existence. Bass wants to prove he's the best by killing his rival Robot Masters, so the moment Bass realises that Zero is Wily's masterpiece? It's not going to be pretty. Wily can't have Bass trying to break Zero before he's complete, so he eliminated him.

The Green Biker Dude isn't as dead as you'd think.

Turns out he's a reprogrammed Ballade (MM4GB/Rockman World IV) who's been busy making sure that Dr. Light's capsules get to the right sets of stages in every X game. Ol' GBD had to fake his death because part-timing with the Maverick Hunters was putting undue stress on his workload.

The following inventions of Dr. Wily were later integrated in Zero.

• Zero gets his power system from Bass, who refined the Bassnium to make Zero the God of Destruction people would fear for centuries to come.
• In order to give Zero his human-level AI, he decided to test it on a new robot: King. However, King ended up rebelling because of this. King Mk II would've been an attempt to make sure that personality is loyal to him, but Bass botched this. He's left trying to figure it out all on his own.
• Roboenza is a prototype Maverick Virus. Dr. Wily needed to see if he could get the virus to make robots loyal to him, not go insane and uncontrollable.

Mega Man V on Game Boy is the final game in the Classic series.

It's clear that for a variety of reasons Capcom is never going to be exactly specific about the end of the Classic series. Aside from the obvious problems caused by creating definitive fates for the cast, trying to bridge the gap between the light-hearted Classic series with the much grimmer X series would be rather difficult as well as tone-deaf.

Which leaves us with the question: Which entry would be a logical conclusion to the Classic era? What would serve as a grand opus, a series finale if you will? I think it's MMV. While it predates the appearance of characters like Duo and most importantly Bass, I think it serves as a fitting close to the franchise.

First, thematically, it's very different from the prior games. Instead of the usual Robot Masters, it's a new concept with the Stardroids, powerful alien robots built with materials not found on earth. Other than a brief couple adventures in vacuum, there are no outdoor sections in the game, much of the game being in giant mechanical mazes. Half the game is set in space. It's clear Capcom wanted to end the Game Boy series on an epic note — why not end the entire series that way? (After all, Mega Man 10, while entertaining, was hardly conclusive...)

If you look at the series, there's a clear escalation in Wily's behavior. First it was about proving himself, then it became about revenge, and he's been getting worse over time, going so far as to kidnap someone's child to force them to do his bidding, though nothing tops using time travel to kidnap a future version of Mega Man to kill Mega Man's present-day version for sheer outlandishness and raises some serious questions as to whether Quint will even matter in the future of Mega Man anymore. Wily's labs get grander as well, with multiple fortresses, a giant tank fortress, multiple space stations, and even a starship. (Where does he get the money? That's a question for another WMG entry.) Mega Man V reaches the logical conclusion to this nonsense with a friggin' Death Star knockoff — it's gigantic, it's in space, and it shoots laser blasts at you the size of city buses. The destructive capability of this thing has to be quite high.

Along the way, he's gotten involved with alien technology at least a couple times, some of it quite ancient — and powerful. The Evil Energy alone is nearly enough to kill Mega Man without Duo's interference — a fact that had to have made an impression on Wily. It stands to reason, then, that he'd be looking for more alien technology. Which leads us to the Stardroids, who laugh off Mega Man's buster shots, a clear escalation from before when Wily's own robots were always vulnerable to basic buster fire. So why is it that the Stardroids have gone almost forgotten? Perhaps it's because they only appeared at the end of the Classic series, and by the time of X, the Stardroids' impact is no longer relevant? (Though there's the distinct possibility that Zero is a Wily-built Stardroid based on Terra...)

There's also his repeated attempts at creating a counter to Mega Man. Quint and the Mega Man Killers, then Bass and finally Zero. Mega Man V has you face all three of the Mega Man Killers and Quint; Bass is off on his own and Zero is possibly unfinished, or perhaps part of another dead man's switch much like the rampage that broke Wily out of jail was in Mega Man 7.

The combination of Wily's escalation, his obvious experimentation as he works on Zero, his use of the Stardroids, and his bringing back Quint and the Killers for one last go-round all speak to Mega Man V being not just the end of the Game Boy series, but the end of the Classic series in general. It's Wily's grand opus, a repeat of his old man-behind-the-man ruse combined with his attempt to harness alien technology, a reunion of the robots he built specifically to counter Mega Man, and his biggest starbase yet. He's throwing everything he's got at Mega Man. Wily's getting along in years, he can't keep doing this forever, can he? This is his last-ditch attempt to take out the thorn in his side once and for all; after that, it's up to Zero to carry on his legacy.

And in the end, he still fails, a victim of his own hubris. What did he expect when he awakened an ancient superweapon?

Zero didn't kill everyone, but he still fought Mega Man.

It's just that Mega Man actually managed to win. From what little we know about Zero's construction, he was incomplete. That could mean Dr. Wily died before he could be physically completed, or an incomplete Zero was sent after Mega Man. We do see him having dreams of seeing his creator, destroyed robots, and what looks like blood on his hands. Zero was initially launched; however, it went badly, as the psychotic Maverick went off to slaughter everyone in his path. Mega Man was able to defeat him, but only because Zero wasn't finished yet and nowhere near his true potential. It didn't just take every Robot Master power-up he had, but likely the help of Bass to stop him. Even then, he would've killed Mega Man if it weren't for the Restraining Bolt forcing him to make a tactical retreat. Dr. Wily proceeded to keep Zero in lockdown for the next century because he wasn't finished and even he thought he was psychotic. And even that century wasn't enough, because he was still a maniac upon waking up. While there were human casualties, the only main character who died was likely Dr. Wily himself... which didn't really stick.

Auto is the Sole Survivor of the Classic series.

That's part of why he was built. As Dr. Light's assistant, he was entrusted with maintaining his work. Proto Man's own lifespan is short, Mega Man may have become Quint, and the rest could be explained by warranty. However, Auto was made to last the centuries, and help run both the holograms containing Dr. Light's mind and physically construct the armor to fit 22nd century technology standards. The Auto-looking mechaniloid that guards the first capsule was an invention of his.

Zero wrecked Mega Man and maybe Proto Man, and Bass killed Dr. Wily.

Zero got cut loose and did his job, and Bass had a "dude what" moment with Dr. Wily. Dr. Wily ran his mouth and said something stupid like "You're just a useless piece of junk! Zero did what you never could! I oughta scrap you for parts right now!" and Bass was like "lol no" and force-fed him a whole lotta bullets. Zero was already back in his capsule because Dr. Wily was planning to use him as leverage, and Bass thought about trying to take him out but decided to not bother and just left. So Dr. Light, Roll, and maybe Proto Man (if he didn't get blown up during Mega Man's epic battle with Zero) stuck around. Light worked on X, Bass either self-terminated out of guilt, turned himself in out of guilt and got deactivated, or got forcefully apprehended and deactivated, and something happened to Roll and the robot masters after Dr. Light's age caught up with him, whatever that ended up being. Maybe they moved in with Dr. Cossack.

There wasn't a cataclysm that killed off the cast. But there was a cataclysm in-between the Classic and X series.

It's odd that in the century X was in his capsule, no-one ever built another human-level A.I besides the contemporary Dr Wily. In fact, robotics seems to have gone backwards-the most advanced robots when X awakened were Mechaniloids and other robots that have the same primitive A.I as the standard robots you face in the boss stages before getting to the Robot Masters. Robot Masters themselves aren't anywhere to be seen. Tellingly Dr Cain found Dr Light's lab in an archaeology dig for Mesozoic plant life, meaning some environmental cataclysm must've buried enough of the surrounding area that Cain wouldn't expect former civilization. Some time in those hundred years, there was a cataclysm that set civilization(or at least technology) back many decades, and by the time X is found they're only now getting the kind of robotic technology that was available a century prior. When this happened would be at least about forty years after the Classic series since Rockman Shadow shows there are still Robot Masters in use around then.

Zero didn't kill Mega Man or any of the main cast. Rather, he ultimately ended up HELPING them.

Let's consider a few things. Zero himself in the X series, outside of his activation and possible sub coming to the virus, doesn't actually seem like a bad guy and his intelligence seems on-par with that of a reploid. I propose that when originally activated, Zero wasn't violent. While he still followed Wily's orders, he wasn't the psychopath he seemed to be when he woke up in the X timeline.

Over the course of his original activation, he fought the original Mega Man and easily had the upper hand. However, something ended up keeping him from delivering the final blow. (Possibly Bass, in a case of The Only One Allowed to Defeat You.) Zero is forced to retreat and is cut off from Wily.

Without having to listen to him, Zero is allowed to take in the world around him and connect with the people there. Wily, assuming Zero had failed, activates/steal eight robot masters in a usual scheme to beat Mega Man. Zero watches the chaos unfolding and, upon it reaching those he's connected with, decides to take matters into his own hands, fighting them off in Mega Man's place.

The usual structure of the game commences, Zero unaware that Wily is behind the robot masters. Zero asks them why they're causing such distraction on people who have done nothing wrong, with most of them stating that they are merely following their programming. Zero begins to contemplate why robots follow their programming even when it causes harm to others, especially those who have done nothing wrong.

Upon reaching the fortress, Zero encounters Wily again as well as Mega Man. Wily, unaware that Zero had been destroying his robot masters, demands he destroy Mega Man at once. Zero initially pauses, contemplating why he should but Wily reminds him who created him. Zero relunctantly agrees, despite Mega Man trying to point out Wily was behind the robot masters. A one-sided battle ensues in Zero's favor but, just as he's about to strike the final blow... He lowers his sword.

Wily is furious over why he isn't following orders. Zero states that just because he created him, doesn't mean he has to follow him. Mega Man had done nothing wrong and the only times he's fired at him has been in self-defense. Deciding that the only one who really needs to be taken out here is Wily, Zero vows to beat his creator once and for all.

Zero steamrolls through his fortress, Wily machine and Wily capsule with ease. Before he can strike the final blow, however, Wily manages to trap and deactivate him. Summing up that Zero has a dangerous 'bug' that must be corrected, he heads back to where ever his lab is set up, placing Zero back and his pod as he begins to work on code that will correct his 'bug'.

The bug referred to in X4 wasn't how insanely violent Zero was. Rather, it was the fact that Wily had created a robot with free will and used its free will to turn on him. As for why Zero was so insanely violent when he awoke in the Mega Man X series, it was likely the result of either being pumped full of evil energy or the mavrick virus, which was Wily's attempt to 'correct' his 'bug', since all Wily wanted was a violent killing machine in the first place.

What about mentions of Zero's 'original programming'? Keep in mind who created him. Of course Wily's original intention for him, what he considers to be his 'original programming', would be the violent psychopath Zero seen in X4. However, just because that was his intention doesn't mean that's how Zero originally was upon his original activation. Keep in mind, Zero is only violent when pumped full of the maverick virus. When he passes the virus onto Sigma, Zero returns to how he originally was before Wily tried to 'correct' him.

As for what happened to the old Mega Man cast? Simply put, old age. Light passed on because of natural causes and/or uploaded his brain to the holograms seen in the X series, while the robots just slowed down due to becoming obsolete without Light keeping them up to par.

Fanfic-y theory? I'll admit. Fits better with the Lighter and Softer classic series instead of the usual interpretations? Also yes.

Wily is slowly turning himself into a cyborg

its heavily implied in the X series that Wilys consciousness still exists in a digital form, but even back in the classic series there are a couple of odities, such as him catching roboenza and in 11 briefly appearing to use the gear system(even if its played for a joke about his consistent begging for mercy) things that should not be possible for humans, hes also seemingly died from rubble falling on him in the past, its possible that he dident escape unscathed and has to augment himself cybernetically

Zero and X are both based on a so far unscene third robot

neither creator seemed to be aware of the others secret project, considering no attempt was made to interfere or either robot being given countermeasures to the other, despite this there designs and capababilities are extremely similar implying a similar basis, and on a more metalevel while Zeros design obviously takes some inspiration from Protoman, in roll as Dr Willys creation as an evil ultimate robot(who ultimately doesent listen to him) he more resembles Bass, this unknown robot would effectively fill the role of Protoman X

Bridging the Classic series and Battle Network

Mega Man Battle Network nearly existed in the Classic series, but Light never finished it. (by Project Carthage TVT)

The I.B.N. terminal behind Light in several of the Classic series games... could that be this timeline's unfinished Interlinking Battle Network? See, it's already known that the Classic series and Battle Network take place at the same time, the Battle Network timeline acting as the one where Light finished the Battle Network, and in the Classic series, he didn't finish it.

The Dark Aura from EXE and the Evil Energy from Classic are the same thing.

The effect Dark Chips have on Navis and the effect that Evil Energy seems to have on robots are similar. Dark Chips, apparently, work by connecting the Navi to Nebula Grey, or to a piece of it, and Nebula Grey itself is a distillation of all negative human emotions in data form. So, Nebula Grey either duplicated the Evil Energy or called it down to itself, maybe both (it called some "seed" Evil Energy in just by being itself, and then grew more from all the Dark Souls), and that's why the EXEverse's version of Duo stopped by.

The original timeline (read: the Classic-X-Zero-ZX-Legends order) had their own version of Star Force

The Classic series had the Stardroids, evil robots from space, Duo, the apparent protector of the galaxy, and the evil robot who brought the evil energy to Earth. After the events of Mega Man ZX Advent, humanity and Reploids build a spaceship and go out somewhere in space, where the crew meets Duo. Back on Earth, Master Thomas causes a cataclysm and destroys humans and Reploids alike, replacing them with Carbons. Meanwhile, the spaceship crew build a new life on other planets, where humans and Reploids live harmoniously.

Dr. Light is an immigrant to America, originating from Japan.

Thus how his counterpart is named Tadashi Hikari, despite the timeline diverging after his birth. "Hikari" means Light so it was simple translation, and since "Tadashi" also means light, he decided not to be redundant and chose a first name to avoid confusion.

Mega Man (character)

Every game contains a different Mega Man

...who is referred to by his model number. Thus, X is the tenth incarnation of Mega Man. After every game, once Wily was defeated, Light deactivated Mega Man and disassembled him, possibly restoring him to the original Rock body and possibly not. He did this to prevent anyone from trying to steal his killer robot or coerce him into letting them use it. This explains why Mega Man loses all weapons and abilities each game; they were thrown out when the old body was destroyed. Clearly, inbetween nine and ten, something happened to the original Mega Man's programming (likely Bass managed to steal or destroy it), which is why X is a distinct personality from him and has no memory of Light or Wily, and Light took the opportunity, along with a long lapse between crises, to start from scratch, producing a completely new body and AI. When he realized Wily really wasn't coming back, he just kept improving X, body and mind, until he died. Protoman had the good sense to stay out of Light's reach and thus was never disassembled. For this theory to work, one must consider as canon that Bass performed all the action in & Bass, that the Game Boy games didn't happen, and that the Power Battles games, if they even happened at all, involved the other three playable characters only.

• Jossed by the release of 10.

Thunder Beam is (or rather, was) Mega Man's weakness.

All Robot Masters of a given series have to be weak against another in the same series. In this case, the series is DRN-001 through DRN-008. The reason Elec Man can kill you dead in three hits isn't because he's such a badass... It's because you're weak against him. Once Elec Man was eliminated, Mega Man got rid of his one weakness, taking it for himself, and becoming a far more fearsome opponent in the process. As the only Robot Master without a weakness, Wily found Mega Man continually harder to defeat than the first time. To complete the chain, the Mega Buster is strong against Roll, and Roll is strong against Ice Man. The Thunder Beam is only Ice Man's SECONDARY weakness. What this means regarding Ice Man's supposed infatuation with Roll in the manga is up for debate. Additionally, Protoman isn't a part of the chain, as he was the first Robot Master ever created (DRN-000).

• Shouldn't other electric weapons (Spark Shock, Thunder Bolt, Lightning Bolt) do more damage to him, then?
  • Perhaps there's two types of "Electric" Weapons: Ball and Piercing. Most Electric attacks are the Ball types. The exceptions? The Thunder Beam... and the Laser Trident (which takes off 6 units of Rock's health vs. 4 Units from glomping). So Rock not only was weak to the Thunder Beam... he still is. At least Dr. Light realized that if he was going to equip one of his new robots with his prize fighter's weakness, that robot should then have an easily accessible weakness of her own.
    • This idea is supported by Robot Masters making reappearances being weak to weapons of similar elements (or in some instances, completely different elements hitting a completely different weak spot in their design).
• Or is he? The Magnet Beam could have been the only weapon (as it were) to have enough power to forcibly remove Protoman's shield.
• Also, Roll x Ice Man is obviously a Slap-Slap-Kiss relationship. Three guesses who's doing the slapping.
  • Roll x Ice Man?! That's less Slap-Slap-Kiss... more Brother–Sister Incest.
  • Yeah, but they are robots.

Mega Man's Variable Weapons System (VWS) can only hold up to eight weapons at a time.

The reason why Mega Man never brings back old weapons is because Mega Man already knows that he needs to make room for new weapons, and instead puts old weapons in storage just in case. This is supported by The Wily Wars, where Mega Man can bring in any weapon from the first three games, but only eight of them.

That being said, this doesn't explain why he doesn't simply replace the worst weapon from each game (Top Spin/Spark Shock, Power Stone, etc.) with his various Game Breakers like the Metal Blades or Thunder Beam.

• Because they are always Wily's weakness?
  • It'd have to be eleven, since the GB games have nine weapons and Mega Man 10 includes eight weapons plus the ones from the Mega Man Hunter Stages (which is awesome).
• Alternatively, the ammunition for each weapon isn't truly infinitely replenishable between missions. Once Mega Man runs out, he discards the weapon since it isn't worth it since he can simply copy weapons from any new opponents he faces.
  • I always assumed that he could only copy powers for a time and then after that they were erased.
    • It's also possible that the code for the powers was located somewhere on Doctor Wily and that when he is destroyed the code is too, and so Mega Man can't use it anymore.
    • maybe Mega Man thinks it will turn him evil if he uses their powers too long, or wants to respect their memory.

Rockman World a.k.a. Gameboy Mega Man is an Alternate Continuity of the Original Series.

If these games take place, it'll be the third time Wily has built his robots. We haven't seen Tango ever. What really does it is the ending to Rockman World 5 with the Stardroids. It has all the makings of Mega Man The Movie: one-time outsider enemy that threatens the entire solar system. Wily returns to the fold, but results in Here We Go Again!. Sequels are possible but not necessary since there is a very strong sense of closure. If this were part of the original series, it mucks up with the Plot Hook at the end of MM 6.

• 10 would like to have a word with you. Tango shows up on the counter for Proto Man's shop, and the Bonus Bosses are bosses exclusive to the GB games. Some fans hold that the series actually took place before 6, as every robot seen is either brand new, or from the first five games.
  • Jossed. Word of God has actually gone as far as to state that Slash Man (from 7) was based off of the designs of Pluto from V, so there you go.
    • Double Jossed, Word of God didn't say that Slash Man was Pluto.

Mega Man is three laws compliant

Explains why at the end of every game he always lets Wily go. He doesn't want to, but he has no choice. He can't kill him.

• This is pretty much canon considering the ending of 7, where Wily mentions that Mega Man can't hurt him due to his programming. Of course, Mega Man DOES say he doesn't care anymore, but many people take the hesitation in firing the shot to be Mega Man attempting, and failing, to overcome the laws.
  • That and in the Japanese version, Mega Man just stands there, with no response to Wily's taunt.

Mega Man(?) is actually the real Mega Man.

Mega Man? (who I will call Nega Man for simplicity) is shown in Powered Up as a normal Mega Man with a triangle instead of his head-square and a purple cape. Many of the robot masters notice he's a fake and attack him. However, all of the robot masters appeared to have been tricked or modified in some way. Cutman was just gullible, Gutsman was convinced that he worked at the mine and his memories removed, Fireman was convinced that everything was evil, etc. Mega Man was convinced by tricking him into thinking he wasn't Mega Man at all. Mega Man wouldn't ever fight against justice, and if he even thought of himself doing such a thing, he'd try to turn it around to good again. Wily decided that if he thought he was only a clone and not the real deal, he would be easier to coerce onto his side. Seems he was right. Even better, since most of the other robot masters assumed it was a fake, they were even more likely to destroy him properly. This explains why you don't see him until the end with the other repaired robot masters.

• I can just imagine his thought process when he came up with that one: "Mega Man will never do what I want with that stupid 'sense of justice.' Wait, if Mega Man would never do it... I'm a genius!"
• Or in another way, Wily told Mega Man that Dr. Light turned evil and took the player robot, thus he was fighting for justice if he fought for Dr. Wily. This is his first scheme, after all, so Mega Man doesn't know Wily is the evil.

Proto Man

Blues is a Cyber Cyclops.

That blue dot you see in his Break Man form in 3 is his actual eye. Since he's less advanced than Mega Man, it makes sense he'd be less human-like, plus the one eyed Joe-bots are said to be cheap, mass-produced copies of him. He wears the shades, either because he's embarrassed, or so he can pass for human while he's Walking the Earth.

• I always figured that if he only had one eye, it'd be because one was gouged out during his days as an industrial robot... which is nothing short of unpleasant.
  • Blues never worked as an industrial robot. He was created with no specific function in mind, which may be the source of his wanderlust.

There's no eyes under Proto Man's visor.

There are only optical sensors, he's wearing the visor because his eyes got damaged, revealing a metallic skeleton rather than an eye. The mouth and forehead are undamaged, but his eyes are damaged; in fact, in artwork for Rock Man 3: Complete Works, Proto man is in the background, and through his visor, where his eye would be is glowing, so his optical sensors manifest as glowing.

Alternately (or rather, building off from above), Proto Man has eye problems.

Come to think about it. This is a robot who wears sunglasses under his visored helmet. Maybe his optical sensor is very sensitive towards light, so much that he has to wear two pairs of shades.

Something bad will happen to Protoman or those around him in MM10.

The last time a popular character was playable from the beginning was Zero in X4. And as soon as he was fully playable, bad stuff happened to him and those around him. In X4, Zero didn't die, but Iris did...

• Bad stuff for Zero started in X4? You do recall that he died in the first game, right? And that he was playable from the beginning (in a manner of speaking) in X3? Also, no, the last time a popular character was playable from the beginning was & Bass, and nothing horrible happened to him.
  
  I know it's not the best form to argue against WMG's, but you're failing on several levels here.

Protoman vents excess heat through his upper back.

That's where he gets the Dramatic Wind for his scarf, his cooling fan's back there.

• I love you.
• In Mega Man 6, Mega Man gains a vent there as well. Hmm...

Proto Man stole Mega Man's slide and charge shot prior to 9.

Proto Man was thinking that this would force Mega Man to fight him to get them back. That would allow him to gauge Mega Man's combat readiness and determine whether or not Mega Man would need his help. However, since Mega Man just went straight to fighting robot masters, he opted to just show up and offer his help in 10.

Protoman has divine lights for eyes

The reason he wears a helmet with shades when he has a pair underneath is so he doesn't blind anybody with the divine light coming from his eyes.

Other Robot Masters

Burner Man's weakness is actually Needle Cannon, not Ice Wall.

Ice Wall does not damage Burner Man — it pushes him into the spikes, which damage him. Thus, Needle Man's Needle Cannon, which blasts a series of sharp needles, is his weakness, and works somewhat like Leaf Shield to Air Man; the needles end up in his flamethrowers, and, thus, he can't release his flames and feels internal damage.

Needle Man was an attempt by Wily to harness the power of one-hit-kill spikes.

Needle Man was originally a robot master called Spike Man, whom Wily created to try and take advantage of the fact that spikes are a One-Hit Kill in the Mega Man universe. However, upon completing construction, the fact that Spike Man was literally made of spikes caused him to immediately self-destruct from his own Collision Damage. Wily instead had to settle with needles, which were far less powerful but still dangerous, and thus Needle Man was born.

Odd Robot Master weakness Guessing.

That is, outside of what you'd expect from the normal Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors.

• MM2:
  • Time Stopper -> Quick Man: Quick Man doesn't consciously control his running; he commits to a movement, then writes a macro to move his limbs consistent with that. The attempts of his servos to follow the macro while frozen causes him damage.
    • I don't know about that. I'm pretty sure it's only frozen for Mega Man. The only guess I had was that Mega Man is moving faster than he is when time is stopped.
    • According to Hitoshi Ariga, Flash Man and Quick Man are two different results of Wily's attempts to control Time. Quick Man was built on the idea of approaching the speed of light, and thus can increase his rate of motion through time itself. FlashMan, on the other hand, has the power to slow the speed of light down to almost zero, which, while it freezes every other robot master, has a unique, hyper-compressive effect on Quick Man, who experiences something like a small black hole.
  • Quick Boomerang -> Metal Man: Quick = Friction, which causes metal to heat up, bend, and break eventually.
    • Metal Man has super-lightweight armor.
  • Leaf Shield -> Air Man: The leaves are either causing a jam in his fan, or releasing oxygen via photosynthesis which ignites.
  • Air Shooter -> Crash Man: The tornadoes cause him to literally crash?
    • Alternatively, Crash Man is really lightweight.
  • Metal Blades -> Metal Man: Dr. Wily is an ass.
    • Again, ref Megamix: When Dr. Wily designed Metal Man, he was going for a fast, effective robot who was good at battle — Metal Man is one of the most agile of the robots, but is so largely due to his incredibly lightweight armor, which none of the others have — so his weapon, which is the strongest of all, is incredibly deadly to himself.
  • Metal Blades -> Bubble Man: Given he's meant to swim, Bubble Man would be made of light material and have buoyant tanks that it could cut through easier.
• MM3
  • Needle Cannon -> Snake Man: Ever put a needle through a snake's head? Or anywhere on a snake? Wait, don't answer that.
    • Another guess: Needles are precise enough to attack the small snakes.
    • Scales are reasonable protection against slashing or impact damage in the animal kingdom, but are insufficient against being punctured between the scales. Needle Cannon exploits this weakness.
  • Magnet Missile -> Hard Man: Hard to guess exactly; maybe the missiles are a specific armor-piercing round that is designed for thick armor.
    • Alternate guess: The other, faster robot masters are able to remove the missiles before suffering internal damage, but Hard Man is too bulky to remove them.
    • Another guess: Hard Man is made of a special metal, namely Ceratanium. This makes him have a metal element. Magnets attract metal, only this time, the magnets can fly and explode while the metal is nigh immovable.
  • Hard Knuckle -> Top Man: Once again, lightweight armor vs. a high-density knuckle.
    • A Hard Knuckle missile is also a violent impact, which handily knocks down tops. A spinning object, disturbed of its balance, can do significant damage to itself upon striking a floor or wall.
  • Top Spin -> Shadow Man: Maybe Mega Man spins so fast, that Shadow Man's martial arts can not properly prevent the damage.
    • Alternately, Top Spin is Senpukyaku, and Shadow Man is Guy.
  • Shadow Blade -> Spark Man: It is possible that the blade causes damage to the wiring exposed on the robot, or disrupts the electrical current in a damaging way.
    • It's also a nod to Mega Man, where Elec Man's weakness is Rolling Cutter. The electric guy being weak to the cutting weapon.
  • Spark Shock -> Magnet Man: The electricity overloads his electromagnets and causes him to tear himself apart.
  • Every Robot to their own weapon: Such was not accounted for since Wily figured he'd only need Gamma instead of the rematches.
    • Metaphor for the above: Several fit a metaphor, assumption, or otherwise. Magnets repel each other, "Twin snakes kill each other," Ninja vs Ninja, two tops spinning against each other (also explains why Mega Man takes damage).
• MM4
  • Dive Missile -> Drill Man: I'd imagine that Drill Man requires more durability than most robot masters in order to drill through the ground in safety. Dive Missile might be designed to pierce thick plating more effectively than other weapons.
  • Drill Bomb -> Toad Man: Directional Armor; it is possible that the front side of the robot is poorly armored against demolition blasts.
  • Rain Flush -> Bright Man: Having a light bulb on top of his head, it is much more vulnerable to the acid, which eats through the glass.
  • Bright/Flash Stopper -> Pharaoh Man: Pharaoh Man was designed as an archeologist/way to ward off curses, and would spend most of his time in the Egyptian catacombs. Therefore, he would probably be designed to have eyes suited for dark areas. Therefore, the Flash Stopper would overload his optical sensors and stun him.
    • Not just stun, damage. Pharaoh Man is designed for operation in dim light, which makes his body — which can manipulate light — hypersensitive to massive lights.
  • Dust Crusher -> Skull Man: Skull Man was built more for psychological than physical warfare, and hence has a lightly armored body constructed much like that of an actual skeleton. Hence, it's fragile, and the Dust Crusher, well, crushes it easily.
    • It's also a nod to Skull Man, a ghostly-looking robot, being weak to a vacuum cleaner.
  • Ring Boomerang -> Dust Man: The ring boomerang clogs Dust Man's vacuum.
  • Pharaoh Shot -> Ring Man: That blast of light must make it really hard to focus. Also, consider that as a robot designed to combat Mega Man, Dr Wily probably forced Dr. Cossack to make him. Perhaps he had it be weak to one of his original Robot Masters to get back at Wily.
  • Pharaoh Shot -> Wily Capsule: The fight against the Wily Capsule takes place in a pitch black room, with the capsule itself only showing up in flashes. The Pharaoh Shot is a miniature sun. Figure it out.
• MM5:
  • Gyro Attack -> Crystal Man: You know how, despite being known as the hardest substance on Earth, diamonds are rather fragile (Hardness=/=Toughness)? Well, imagine the blunt Gyro Attack wailing on Crystal Man at high speeds.
  • Water Wave -> Star Man: Stars can be equated to giant balls of fiery gas. Water puts out fire.
  • Crystal Eye -> Napalm Man: If you can see into the future, you can predict what attacks Napalm Man is going to make.
  • Napalm Bomb -> Stone Man: Bombs are typically used for demolitions, like buildings. Who are composed of bricks, like Stone Man.
  • Power Stone -> Charge Man: Rubble on the train tracks cause him to go off track and crash.
• MMV:
  • Bubble Bomb -> Jupiter: Essentially an electrical appliance, the addition of water would screw him up.
  • Electric Shock -> Saturn: Electric Shock is Jupiter's weapon. In mythology, Jupiter overthrew Saturn.
• MM6:
  • Wind Storm -> Flame Man: Saudi Arabia is mostly a desert. Ever been in a desert during a wind storm? It's not very nice.
  • Yamato Spear -> Knight Man: The two have a Worthy Opponent relationship, so the weakness may reflect that.
  • Silver Tomahawk -> Yamato Man: Veiled critique on the relationship the USA and Japan have?
• MM7:
  • Thunder Bolt -> Junk Man: Junk Man's body is composed of assorted bits of junk held together by powerful electromagnets. The Thunder Bolt shorts out said electromagnets, causing the body to crumble.
  • Noise Crush -> Turbo Man: When driving, distractions can kill. And what's more distracting than a harsh noise?
  • Freeze Cracker/Scorch Wheel -> Slash Man: Slash Man lives in a forest. Forests tend to do poorly in cold environments, and fire burns easily.
  • Junk Shield -> Freeze Man: While Scorch Wheel is pretty obvious, the bio states he was a prototype for a non-polluting robot before Dr. Wily stole him. He might have issues being exposed to a pollutant because of this.
  • Slash Claw -> Spring Man: That lanky body of his likely can't resist cutting too well.
• MM8:
  • Astro Crush -> Aqua Man: Water cannot exist in a liquid condition in space.
    • Alternatively, the meteors break Aqua Man's glass container easily.
  • Thunder Claw -> Grenade Man: The Mad Bomber already has a short fuse, the electricity would make him even more prone to explode.
• MM&B:
  • Wave Burner -> Pirate Man: One of the worst things you can have on an old-timey ship is a fire.
• MM9:
  • Hornet Chaser -> Splash Woman: She has the lightest armor (as evidenced by taking 2 bars of damage from the Arm Cannon, while everyone else takes one). The Hornet Chaser is the only other weapon besides her own that fits the category of "bladed". Will cause squick upon application of Fridge Logic.
    • Alternatively, being underwater, Splash Woman has never encountered bees. How's she supposed to defend herself against something that's completely unfamiliar?
  • Tornado Blow -> Magma Man: The strong winds would blow the fire away.
• MM10:
  • Chill Spike -> Wily Capsule: Wily's already sneezing; cold would make it difficult to fight.
    • Also, the battle takes place on a space station, so maybe the ice overtaxes the capsule's life-support systems that generate heat so Wily can survive?
  • Chill Spike -> Nitro Man: Three words: Severe tire damage.
  • Wheel Cutter - Commando Man: Normally, robot masters can evade the wheel before taking severe damage, due to their agility; Commando Man is not so agile, plus the blade contains Tungsten carbide which cuts armor rather well.
  • Commando Bomb -> Blade Man: The saying "Never bring a knife to a gun fight.", but with bombs. Additionally, this is also another case of lightweight armor, considering Blade Man's ability to jump around quickly, sticking to walls and ceilings.
  • Triple Blade -> Strike Man: THREE STRIKES. I remember how epic I felt after that bit of Fridge Brilliance.
    • Fridge Brilliance indeed. I never even thought of that... God, I'm so stupid.
• Robot Masters without "Man" in their title:
  • Mega Buster-> Enker and Punk: Wily thought that Mega Man wouldn't bother using his ordinary attack against his top Robot Masters. Ballade lacks this weakness thanks to Wily's trial and error.
  • Screw Crusher-> Ballade: Ballade betrayed Wily. When Wily rebuilt him, he made sure that a loyal Mega Man Killer would take him out if he ever tried this again.
  • Hard Knuckle -> Quint: Quint is a future Mega Man. Wily thought that in case Quint regains his senses, he should be able to take him out with a loyal Robot Master of his. Or maybe it's because he's similar to Proto Man in design.
  • Hard Knuckle -> Proto Man: From the MM9 DLC, we know Proto Man has low HP. He has poor defenses, so something heavy like the Hard Knuckle would hurt more.
  • Super Adaptor -> Bass: His rip-off of the Rush Adaptor can't beat the original.

Why certain bosses are weak against their own weapons?

• Metal Blade + Metal Man: Metal cuts metal.
  • See above.

Break Man is a Robot Master

Break Man is supposed to be Protoman with a different helmet; however, notice that Protoman has two separate eyes while Break Man has a single eye? During 3, Break Man (probably made by Wily) decides to hunt down and destroy Mega Man; at the same time, Protoman finds out about Break Man and decides to stop him. The "reveal" is actually Protoman wearing Break Man's helmet in a strange sense of humor, having finally defeated his copy.

• Technically, Proto Man, Mega Man, and Roll are robot masters, or "Master-Type Robots". It's a classification of their programming, not status as a boss or anything like that. And we actually haven't seen Protoman without his sunglasses, so for all we know, he might really be a cyclops (see above WMG).

Robot Masters can't taste, smell, or touch.

Again, no reason for this other than to emphasize the fact that they aren't human like the Reploids.

Although their sight and hearing are beyond human capabilities due to the natural advantages of cameras and microphones, their other senses wouldn't have any preexisting technologies to be based off of, so Dr. Light and Dr. Wily would be forced to try and use sensors to create a Poor Man's Substitute to try and emulate them.

"Taste" and "Smell" would be determined by breaking down an object or scent's chemical compound and trying to come up with a general idea of what it would taste or smell like, and come up with a response based on the robot's programming.

"Touch" would use a bunch of sensors wired into the armor and latex skin, which would judge things like where something's making contact, the force of the object, and other factors to determine what should be "felt", and which action should be taken, akin to how touch is used to invoke a response. However, while a human would react on instinct, a robot would simply get a prompt like "I should move away from the object trying to harm me" but would have to consciously perform an action.

Robots have Photographic Memory.

They're robots. They would presumably hold data for various things, including memories, in the same way a computer does. This would result in a different way of recalling memories too, which would not be that different from using said computer, and would probably heavily rely on a built-in search function.

All of the robots have a free will, not just those in the X series.

The free will of the robots is shown by the choices they make. However, the choices they make are inspired by their programming. They cannot make a decision that goes against how they were programmed. Like, Mega Man was programmed to be kind and compassionate, so he made the choice to be converted into a fighting robot so he can protect people. He made that choice on his own, but he could not have made a decision to help Wily take over the world because it would violate his programming. Bass was programmed to be evil, which would explain why he would betray his creator. If he didn't have a free will (even a limited one like he probably does), Bass would have had to obey Wily's every command and stay with him. Proto Man, however, probably did have more of a free will than any others, as he chose to escape the lab and live on his own, and I highly doubt he was programmed to be rebellious. When X was built, Light decided to get rid of programming so X could develop his own personality, but he put him in the chamber to do ethics drills for thirty years.

• Bass actually was programmed to defeat Mega Man, which explains why he sides with him on occasion: he wants to prevent Mega Man from falling at the hands of any other Robot Master.

Defeating Robot Masters doesn't actually destroy them.

All Robot Masters are designed so that if they take enough damage, they are instantly teleported back to a designated spot. This is why Mega Man can die more times than anyone could ever know and yet remains alive no matter what, and also explains why the "destroyed" Robot Master bosses always make it back to Wily's fortress (I mean, it's not like Dr. Wily himself took a trip to all eight stages and completely restored all of them before Mega Man even got to his fortress). The "explosion" when a Robot Master is defeated is actually just how this particular form of teleporting looks (Why not? It doesn't look or even sound too much like an explosion, either!).

• That, or the explosions spare their CPU, which can be put in a new robot.
• This is half-canon, depending on the game. In MM 9, it's explicit, as all the RM's show up fine in the end credits. In Powered Up, this happens if you don't use their weaknesses.

Quint isn't Mega Man from the future.

Its simply a clone of Mega Man with all his memories, along with future technology. Wily just said it was to mess with Mega Man, and I doubt if he could steal and control a more hardened Mega Man he'd have a problem with the original one.

• Already been done. Wily came from the past, captured Mega Man, made a clone of him, decided the clone sucked, and went back in time with the original Mega Man, brainwashed. Since the only Wily in that timeline was the one who came from the past, presumably Light deweaponized Mega Man in the long intervening period of peace, making him easy pickings. The clone killed stuff until he was the last robot remaining, turned into a Death Seeker, and went back in time to lose to the original Mega Man, his Worthy Opponent.
• Rockman Shadow (for those not in the know, the above Troper speaks of Mega Man & Bass: Challenger from the Future, a Japan-only game for the Wonderswan) was a Death Seeker? I thought that he went back in time to beat Mega Man to prove to Wily that he made a mistake abandoning him in the future. R-Shadow came more across as pissed off with a slight inferiority complex than suicidal.
  • "In the future there was nothing that could stop me. But I traveled back in time, so that I could find the one who could destroy me." Seems pretty clean-cut.

Bass's arrogance is the reason he fails.

Both Bass and Mega Man have similar abilities, plus Bass is more agile and supposedly has a better power source. He just happens to be too arrogant to train like Mega Man does, which is why Mega Man can beat him.

• It's true that from a first look at their specs, Bass is the superior robot, especially considering that he has all of that Bassnium ruining through him, as well as by virtue of being much newer than Mega Man. However, he tends to severely underestimate Mega Man's Determinator status and ends up losing. Considering that he's lost a total of five times already (six, if you count the battle at the beginning of 7), you'd think that Bass would have wised up, but he's too much of an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy to sing a different tune. In the arcade game Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters, beating the game with Proto Man and Bass has Proto Man also muse that Bass loses constantly because he doesn't know what he's fighting for (cue Zero jokes in 3...), as opposed to Mega Man, who fights for world peace for both humans and robots alike.

Dr. Wily installed a virus in Flash Man's weapon code. Flash Man himself was immune to it.

Both Flash Man (2) and Bright Man (4) clearly use "Flash Stopper": they both flash before using it, it's only a few seconds, and they can still use their arm cannons. As Flash Man's version had the virus, when Mega Man copied it, he got a corrupted version, thus why he can neither turn it off nor fire while it's in use. Bright Man's correctly copied weapon has Unfortunate Implications about what Capcom thinks of Russia.

The Cut Man video game in the Mega Man 7 intro was real.

When Cut Man was presumably reprogrammed to work for good again at the end of Mega Man, he went back to deforestation like he was built to do. However, environmentalist groups protested and put a stop to his actions. Dr. Light worried until he noticed that, like in Real Life, Cut Man was the most popular Robot Master and had a large fanbase. So Cut Man instead became a celebrity and starred in a series of video games, the second of which was so anticipated that news of its release was only beaten out of headlines by Dr. Wily's arrest. So in the Mega Man universe, Cut Man replaces Mega Man in the video games. Which leads to the question: Who replaces Cut Man in the video games of the Cut Man universe?

• Bond Man.

Top Man was really designed to grow weed.

Have you seen the plants in his stage? It also explains why he's so pathetic in battle. And to make it more obvious, Top is pot spelled backwards!

• Dr. Wily has to get his funding somewhere.

The MM3 Robot Masters were actually good.

The plot of MM3 is Wily faking a Heel–Face Turn and building an ultimate "peace-keeping" robot, Gamma, with Dr. Light. They build the Robot Masters together to work the facilities needed to create such a robot. As they were half-built by Light, these Robot Masters are a little more Good-aligned. Wily, of course, pitched the design as having lots of weapons, probably under the guise of having a Bigger Stick, scheming to take the robot and take over the world with it once it's complete. The Robot Masters somehow come across this information while Light and Mega Man do not, and so decide to shut down production to prevent Gamma's completion and stop Wily. However, they do not inform Light of their reasons, maybe because doing so would risk Wily catching on, and the end result is a literal case of Poor Communication Kills.

Dr. Light's reasoning behind the MM3 Robot Masters.

Both Dr. Wily and Dr. Light made the 8 Robot Masters in Mega Man 3. Since Dr. Wily was pretending to be good, he had to claim he was making them under the logic they were being done for the benefit of humanity. Well, aside from Top Man... I've got no idea why he was made.

• Needle Man was created for knitting and developing nails.
• Magnet Man was made to easily attract metal ore out of quarries.
• Gemini Man is an experiment in hard light holograms.
• Hard Man was the first in a new model of tough armor, to be mass-produced for their robots.
• Snake Man was developed, obviously, for searching in hard-to-reach areas so people don't have to bother.
• Spark Man is designed with the same purpose as Elec Man.
• Shadow Man... okay, Shadow Man was made mainly because both scientists agreed ninjas are cool.

Dr. Wily created Robot Masters for public use after world domination.

Dr. Wily want to prove he's the better roboticist. As such, it'd make sense that he'd develop them to help as well as conquer, since once he takes over the world, he can prove he can help people better than Dr. Light. Note that this isn't why he's trying to rule the world, just what he plans to do to feed his ego.

• Mega Man 2
  • Quick Man was developed for quick and easy delivery.
  • Heat Man was made to one-up Fire Man.
  • Bubble Man is a Flawed Prototype in making a water-faring helper. Burst Man and Wave Man are a Decomposite Character of him; one to better weaponize bubbles, the other to fufill its original purpose.
  • Wood Man is for environmental purposes. A cleaner world is a better world to rule.

• Mega Man 5
  • Charge Man was, obviously, made for shipping research.
  • Star Man was made to help astronomers. When he rules the world, Wily-funded astronauts will have Gravity Man helping them with artificial gravity.
  • Crystal Man already has a non-world-takeover skill: make Dr. Wily money. Same with Junk Man.
  • Stone Man was an attempt to make a Guts Man of his own.

• Mega Man 7
  • Freeze Man exists to one-up Ice Man.

• Mega Man 8
  • Grenade Man exists to one-up Bomb Man. Dr Wily decided against this since he's creeped out by Grenade Man.

• Mega Man and Bass
  • Burner Man exists to one-up Cut Man.

Quint is Captain N Mega Man.

They both wear visors & both have the same colour scheme. Instead of travelling to his future, the time machine Wily stole took him to an alternate one, that of the Captain N universe.

• The development of his Verbal Tic, of course, is a byproduct of interdimensional travel: Quint got stranded in a time and place where Woolseyism is a fundamental force.
• Or Quint could be Brain Bot from the Ruby-Spears animated series, who also looked like a green Mega Man with extra doodads on his helmet. Dr. Wily could have ended up in that show's universe and mistaken Brain Bot for Mega Man, successfully capturing and reprogramming the bot after Wily's doppelganger failed. Just throw away the lab coat and slap on a visor and horns, and voila, we get "Quint", a knowledgeable robot but a clumsy fighter.

Quint is Mega Man in the future, but not from the future.

This theory relates to the one above. Because the Mavericks automatically attack Mega Man, he gets new armor and goes by a new name to hide. He chooses Quint because he figures that he uses that armor in the future because of Quint in MMII being him from the future. But not really.
I think Wily was just screwing with Mega Man's head with Quint and lying about him being Mega Man. It's just a robot with a similar design. If Mega Man somehow found this out after getting the Quint armor, he would still keep it as a tribute to Proto Man (the helmet and shades resemble his brother's), who probably died due to his unstable core years ago.

The Copy Robot survived 1...

...And was modified for a while, eventually becoming Bass.

• Alternatively, if we're to take Powered Up into account, where it simply copies its enemy's design in general, it became Dark Man 4.0 (The one that disguised itself as Proto Man).

Turbo Man is a Transformers reference.

He's a robot that can transform into a car at will. This may be in-universe as well; depending on when 20XX is, Dr. Wily could've been a Transformers fan growing up, so he decided to make his own with his favorite car.

Numbering systems for robots without them.

• The Support Units: LSU, WSU, and CSU. The "SU" is support unit, and the first letter is their creator. So Rush, Eddie, and Tango would be LSU-001, LSU-002, and LSU-003. Treble and possibly Reggage would be WSU-001 and WSU-002, and Beat would be CSU-001.
• Doctor Light's unnumbered robots: Auto is likely SLN-001, aka "Special Light Number". Since the first three models, he's the only Robot Master he has without a man or woman added that we know of. And he does serve a special purpose as Dr Light's assistant. If Zero has a Robot Master numbering despite not being one of DWN-Infinity, X could have one as DLN-X.
• The Copy Robots: Probably some variant-based designation. The Copy Robots could be "Copy Robot Number" or CRN.
• Rockman Shadow: Mega Man Megamix is SVN-001. As the Super Prototype, Rockman Shadow would be SVN-000
• The Dark Men: Similar to the Mega Man Killers, they probably have a unique classification of DMN(Dark Man Number). Or they are part of the Copy Robot Numbers, given the most well-known Dark Man is pretending to be Proto Man. The ones that look different might have a CRN-(Fake Proto Man's number)A-C.
• Other Robot Masters by Dr. Wily: Doc Robot could be SWN-000. Like Bass, he's an attempt to replicate Mega Man's power — namely his ability to copy other Robot Masters' powers. King would probably go by KGN-000 as he's the leader of the King Numbers, though as an advanced model he could be considered SWN-002 as well.

Ring Man's dislike of children was a programming error.

It seems a little weird that the only man in the Classic series to have a biological child would build a robot that specifically hates children, doesn't it? Ring Man was originally built for fighting (in the games at least), as opposed to most of the other Cossack bots who were built for much more peaceful functions (e.g. Dust Man was a sanitation robot). Perhaps Ring Man was an attempt by Dr. Cossack to build a robotic bodyguard for his daughter. Dr. Cossack meant to program him to have a love of children, so he would quickly warm up to Kalinka, but a slight error in coding led to Ring Man hating children instead.

Crossover Theories

Mega Man and Transformers timelines collide at some point.

Transformers G1 happens on Earth mostly in the 90s-2000s, right? So, see, many of these roboticists who make Robot masters grew up watching the Transformers on the news or in their neighborhoods. This would mean that Light and Wily had a chance to watch the Transformers in action during their youths, and Light would have been influenced by news of Optimus Prime's dealings with humans more than Wily, who would have been influenced by the actions of Decepticons. As an extension to this WMG, Unicron's power is what makes the Evil Energy possible, and Duo was made as a collaborative project between Cybertron and some other alien race. Therefore, all the Robot Masters who used Evil Energy were unconsciously tapping into Unicron's power and feeding him strength during their crimes against innocents. By this extension, Zero's "Truest" personality would not be the berserker Red Demon that Wily made him into, but rather a herald of Unicron.

Mega Man is indeed "more than just a robot", because he has a Spark.

A simple robot can't be good or evil, since it can only run programs. Also, there's MM's affinity for transformation to consider. An unformatted Autobot Spark transmigrated into the newly-built Rock from a crash that Dr. Light salvaged. The machine portion was used in building Rush (The Octuple-changer).

• Well, this would certainly explain Turbo Man.
• Jossed. X is officially Light's first fully sentient robot.
• Rock is "more than a robot" because of programming quirks that allow him to temporarily overrule the Three Laws under special circumstances.
  • Of course, he never actually does overrule the Three Laws in the ending to MM7; he tries to, but hesitates long enough for Bass to rescue Wily. So the Three Laws might still be in full effect for him, for all we know.
  • In the Japanese version, Mega Man doesn't even say that he's "more than just a robot." He just stands there hesitantly, inching closer and closer to Wily. This is possibly because his mind went into an infinite loop (killing Wily would break the Three Laws, even though it would be for the greater good and probably save other lives).
    • As I understand the Three Laws, both versions show Mega Man breaking the First Law by doing nothing other than forming the thought to killing Wily. Even if he didn't follow through with the threat, I don't call a robot Three Laws-Compliant if it can contemplate violating them. Though, even running with the notion that Mega Man might've considered The First Law in conflict with itself and got into a no-exit logistic loop, he still violates the First Law in that scene. In both versions, Mega Man jumps out of the way of a collapsing ceiling beam, allowing Wily to be crushed under it. He thereby also violated the Third Law by protecting himself in spite of the First. If not full sentience, that scene regardless of its language solidified the idea Mega Man's at a higher level of sub-sentience than the rest of the Robot Masters.
    • Wait a minute. As I saw that scene, Wily wasn't actually crushed by the debris like he was at the end of Mega Man 3. He just got pinned under it, sort of like you might get your foot stuck under a root hovering just above the ground... Though, since Wily got his whole body stuck, a better analogy might be to compare it to how a nematode might get captured by a fungus.

Ra Moon is a Cybertronian AI.

Ra Moon was once a hyperadvanced supercomputer that had the ability to create sparks (hence his ability to create robots out of thin air), but revolted and fled to Earth. The Decepticons are currently searching for this rogue AI believing he may have information that will lead to their conquest of the universe.

Dr. Wily is X.

No, not the robot, the guy from Wammy's House. Unlike most of the residents, he chose to follow Watari's footsteps rather then L's. Hence his skill in designing and building robots. This also explains why he uses the name "Mr. X" in Mega Man 6.

Dr. Light is Iron Man

After the Civil War fiasco in the Marvel Universe, Tony Stark realized what a tool he'd been and decided to try and start over in a different universe, under a new identity. He put away the Iron !an suit and took on the alias of Thomas Light, and uses the Iron Man technology to focus on building robots instead of weapons. Evidence includes:

• Marvel VS Capcom. Travel between these universes is canon, so it wouldn't take much effort for Stark to find a new place to live.
• Protoman's color scheme matches Ironman's. Dr. Light might have done that on purpose for nostalgia reasons.
• In the X series, not only is Dr. Light able to build X an "Ironman" suit of sorts... he's able to build it in A POD. WITH A BUNCH OF SCRA- I mean, with practically nothing to work with.
  • Except the implication is that the hologram is not as confined to the pod as it appears.
• As he got steadily older, Dr. Light Stark had to give up the Ironman mantle. Taking a pseudonym was due to all the world either wanting either his attention or his death, due to his techno-hero legacy; "Thomas" is a name beginning with T that is very similar to Tony, and cold laboratory "light" is regularly "stark". The Iron Man name itself became the basis for the Man artificial intelligence series, the next logical step in the JARVIS concept: machines that could not only process commands by voice and physical interaction, but walk and interact with their environments. Proto Man was the logical title for the original generalized model, Mega Man the generalized refinement, and many of the others receiving their names specifically to make it easy to remember their niche capabilities. His inventions, though, again fell into the hands of international terrorism (especially via the machinations of one of his own truly talented former colleagues), which forced him to reevaluate the role of scientists and engineers on the cutting edge of technology for a second time. His ultimate decision was that so long as people like him only made tools (which includes weapons), there could never be any guarantees against their dark uses; the only way to make a tool ineffective in the cause of evil was to give the tool choice in the matter. Thus, work began on a truly New, and potentially horrifying, stage in the history of humanity: X, a biped-frame-based artificial intelligence with the ability to not only act, but act on its own: the ability to think, feel, and make its own decisions. This work had to be in secret, of course, because humanity was not yet ready for the implications of the creation of the kind of artificial species their kind had feared the development of (and for good reason) for ages already. Thus, the Capsule, designed to test X exclusively by Stark's Light's own personally programmed sentience and personality algorithms, to ensure that "he" would not wind up unleashing the very threat that Light sought to create him to prevent. And it would've gone off without a hitch, if [Insert true identity here] Wily hadn't somehow got wind of the project, and begun work on his own vision of the future, in turn. And finally, the clincher: Light's Sean Connery beard is the fully matured stage of Stark's Generation X goatee.

Mega Man (and presumably all other robots) are in fact early models of Cylons

Or at least use similar technology. Mega Man can come back over and over after being destroyed as long as he has spare bodies to download his mind into. Same goes for X, Zero and the other robot masters, which explains why they come back later in the game (and sometimes even in other games). By the time of ZX, the entire population of Earth was replaced by Skinjobs, which explains why you can resurect even if you're playing as a human.

The Mega Man universe is an Alternate Universe to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

The reason the characters can copy weapons is obvious, they use their Spiral Energy to integrate their weapons into their bodies, like Gurren Lagann did with that airship; the only characters that use drills, are Crashman (who changed them into a type of bomb), and Drillman, who doesn't realize his Spiral Energy potential. It can also be assumed that the Biometals also run on Spiral Energy, allowing themselves to change forms and create new powers for themselves. Elysium is also obviously the Anti-Spiral Homeworld, just not stopping their evolution in a futile attempt to stop Spiral Energy.

• Same Troper again, Protoman is also probably an alternate of Kamina, with Mega Man being Simon's alternate.

Flash Man is a Time Lord.

Well, he CAN control time.

Dr. Light is a Time Lord disguised as a human with the Chameleon Arc, Dr. Wily was his human Companion.

To hide away from the Time War ala The Master, Dr. Light disguised himself as a human and sealed his memory away to wait out the destruction. Young Albert Wily was instructed to wait for the Time War to end and then open Dr. Light's fobwatch to restore his memory and Time Lord identity. However, Albert Wily was greedy and petty, and decided to use his knowledge of alien technology gained from travel to make a name for himself in the time where they landed, leaving Dr. Light trapped in a human body and left to grow old and die like any other man.

The Franchise and Future Games

The instant-death spikes don't kill with piercing damage

They are merely the business-end of a high-tech security system that uses spikes charged with several thousand gigavolts of electricity on some sort of circuit loop. The spikes are merely there to provide a good surface area. This would explain some of the chips in the later X and Zero series games that negate spike damage for a single hit; they're surge protectors that take the brunt of the voltage and yet they still explode from the sheer amount of power packed into them. If anything, organic or mechanical, touches those spikes, they're deader than dead.

Capcom keeps the Mega Man continuities unbridged to delay/prevent The End of the World as We Know It.

Think about it. Why hasn't Keiji Inafune or any other developer close to the Mega Man series come out and said that Zero is Wily's creation or bothered to depict the Zero games' Elf Wars backstory in the X games? Or, for that matter, shown us what Lan and pals (or their offspring) have been up to in Star Force? Simple. It's because Capcom is cowering under the tyranny of Mega Man Juno, whose finger is perched on the Big Red Button that will trigger another Carbon Reinitialization Program if any of the series' loose ends are tied up by Word of God.

Roll will be playable in 11

Powered Up and Vs. Capcom give her actual combat abilities.

Capcom no longer has the rights to international Mega Man anymore.

It would explain the rampant cancellations far better than "They're malicious". It would also explain why Mega Man has appeared in more Japanese series than US ones lately.

• ...okay, how the hell did that happen?

Alternatively, the franchise has reached its expiration date.

That plot point in Mega Man 9 where robots have a life cycle? It jumped the fourth wall.

The franchise will die very soon, but will be resurrected at least five years after its initial death.

Now hear me out on this one. Darkstalkers is getting recognition outside of Marvel vs. Capcom years after Darkstalkers 3 was released, Toonami was revived four years after its initial death, the same could easily apply to Mega Man.

Let's assume the doom-saying is true, that Xover kills the franchise dead. Five years or more after that, Capcom will do one of the following:

• An Anniversary Collection for Classic Games, either in disc form or online, containing the main 10 games and the SNES version of Mega Man and Bass.
• An HD Collection for Mega Man X, containing X8 and Maverick Hunter X redone in the style of the HD Collections for Playstation games.
• Mega Man Legends 1 and 2 released online, or better yet, as an HD Collection.
• Something involving lesser-known Mega Man franchises like Zero or EXE.

If the sales of those games are good, then Capcom will do something to coincide with the good sales:

• Mega Man 11 in 2.5d, or Powered Up 2.
• Mega Man X9 in 2.5d, or Maverick Hunter X2.
• Mega Man Legends 3.
• A new Mega Man Series for whatever consoles are current-gen.

I'm keeping optimistic. What about you?

Roll will be playable if we ever get a Mega Man 11.

Proto Man was DLC in Mega Man 9. He was in Mega Man 10 with Bass as DLC. Roll is the obvious next robot to add.

Mega Man is Jesus

One of the games takes place in 20XX — If this is taken as a mix of Roman and Arabic numerals, then it's 2020. But, Roman numerals subtract the number in front, bringing the year to 0. Furthermore, God is normally depicted as an old man with a white beard, whose "son" he sends forth in the world to save it and either bring back or destroy those he created who were once good, but tempted by evil into sin. Dr. Light is depicted the same way; Mega Man/Jesus is the "son", the ones who turned against Light/God are the Robot Masters/Sinners, and the evil which tempted them is Satan/Dr. Wily, whom are also depicted with similar facial hair. Roll, Proto Man, Rush, and the other helpers are apostles. Mega Man X and its games are the Second Coming of Jesus.

• Zero is Saint Peter, and the Zero Series is about his adventures. ZX is about the Third Coming, and Legends the Fourth. He's stuck in the heavenly revolving door, apparently.
• So, Bass is the Antichrist? Doesn't he not really show up until the Second Coming? Perhaps the Maverick Virus is actually the Antichrist and Bass is like Judas or something.
• Also, in the American continuity, supposedly Dr. Light and Dr. Wily used to be partners. Just like how Satan used to be known as Lucifer before his fall. And there's also supposedly some version of the original Mega Man where Dr. Wily tried to reprogram Mega Man, but Mega Man resisted it. Temptation?
  • Protoman is Judas Iscariot
• I'm gonna have to call this jossed. Year numbers do not work like that.
  • Actually, on a symbolic note, it makes a bit of sense...
  • Of course, it makes a lot of sense. Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory.

The role of characters in the Robot Bible.

• Dr. Light is Robot God, for obvious reasons.
• Dr. Wily is the Robot Devil. He seems more based off the Devil from Paradise Lost — he turned against Light because of pride. Some of the Devil's Wicked Cultured and occasional Satan Is Good tendencies are reflected with his rare signs of humanity.
• Mega Man is The Son. X is Jesus, and his human side is total free will. Much like Jesus, he died for your sins and fights against them. Other Robot Masters are angels, or demons.
• The Maverick Virus is the concept of sin — it corrupts all robots. Sigma being the biggest example.
• Omega and Zero are the Antichrist and the Anti Anti Christ, respectively.
• Copy X either represents the Dark Messiah, false prophet, or both
• Dr.nWeil fits the bill of the God of Evil interpetation of the Robot Devil. Actually, I take that back — he is Made of Evil and the Anti-God. He is the enemy of Reploids, humans, and anything else that exists. As the man himself perfectly puts it: "I am the Devil!"
• Lumine, Serpent, and Master Albert don't fit into either category. Considering their Social Darwinist ideals, they could be the Nay-Theist. Especially Albert, who wants to "restart the world", destroying both sides. For the same reason, Master Thomas is this too. "Dr. Light is no more."

Dr. Light has a Lolita Complex

Only good explanation I can think of for why Roll is so Ridiculously Human.

• So what about Splash Woman?

Dr. Wily, Isoc, Dr. Weil, and Master Albert are all the same being

Much like the "Dark Energy" theory, Dr. W has been continuing his mind by infecting reploids and humans throughout the millenia.

• Or he's a Time Lord. Sure, why not?
  • Like Dr. Light, he'd have had to be a pre-Pythian Time Lord who first existed in the Battle Network universe. Dr. Regal had to come from somewhere. Also, the Boat Shop guy from the first Legends is another regeneration.
• Alternatively and more realistically, he has an electronic copy of his brain similar to Dr. Light's hologram. It is connected to Reploids via the Maverick Virus (which still exists after it is stopped, it is just no longer able to take over minds) and the virus sends him data on the latest technology advancements. Whenever he feels it's been long enough, he uses this collected data to construct a new body, and places a copy of his mind in it.
  • Dr. Light finally got around to doing the same thing with Master Thomas. Unfortunately for him, he forgot to give it enough immunity to the still-extant Maverick Virus, resulting in its behavior being slightly Wily-like.
  • Reploid/humankind eventually realized this, and created a replacement species in the form of the Carbons, which could be immune to Wily's infection and continuous reappearance, which they hadn't figured out how to end. The destruction protocol are to prevent technology from becoming advanced enough for Wily to make another go. The boat shop owner in Legends really is Wily, or at least his latest creation, biding his time until the world's tech level once again becomes high enough for him to hijack it and take over, making Mega Man Volnutt's "saving" of the carbons a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment a few years down the road when Wily attacks again.
• At the very least, Isoc is all but said to be Wily.
• Wily can't possibly be Dr. Weil. Weil is (or was) a human, and is too evil to be Wily anyway. At the very least, though, Weil respected him. He did seem to respect Omega, so his narcissim wouldn't be big enough to not respect the man.

Mamoru Ura is behind EVERYTHING in Battle Network.

How does a little kid in a wheelchair manage to worm his way from the latter half of BN3 to the rest of the series? Let me count the ways:

• Secretly operated several of the WWW's "autonomous" Navis in BN1.
• Helped Wily pull the strings behind Sean in BN2. This backfired when Sean was hospitalized (see the It Just Bugs Me page for more).
• His operation in BN3, though effective, was falsely diagnosed. Also, that "King of the Undernet" thing helps out a lot.
• Managed to seal Bass in stone prior to BN4, and had enough time between that and lunch to convince Hideo Kojima to conduct the great Boktai crossover.
• Now here's where things get weird: touched by Kojima's magic Fourth Wall-breaking powers, Mamoru began expanding into more behind-the-scenes work. For BN5, he manipulated Bandai and other key players on the Nikkei to prevent the Progress PET from coming to America, thus denying us Bass Cross Mega Man until the DS rerelease came about. The economic backlash manifested in prohibitively higher vendor prices in-game, and Nebula's offensive did nothing for consumer confidence.
• Unsatisfied with Capcom's workarounds to the BN5 content omissions, Mamoru would finally double-cross Kojima to eliminate The Count from the American release of BN6.

Harpuia was built from the scrapped body of Tornado Man

Self explanatory. Ciel found Tornado Man's body in either a dump or a museum, found it to be in fairly good condition, and used it as the framework with which to build Harpuia, presumably keeping much of the weapons system intact.

• To that point, Leviathan was built from Splash Woman, in much the same way.
  • Hidden Phantom was built from Shadow Man, and Fighting Fefnir from Fire Man.

Wily is stuck in a loop in Powered Up.

Think about it; every robot master sees the same conversations and levels, but they all contradict each other. They are actually alternate timelines. The first time, Wily only took Timeman; he used the schematics and used them to make a time machine to take over the world, but due to Timeman's incomplete nature, he was trapped in a time loop instead, where he would live out the day and return to the beginning of the day at the end. The first time he took Light's robots to take over the world in a different manner, he left Timeman behind; of course, Timeman kicked his ass. From then on, he continued to try to take the robot masters, leaving one behind in an insane sense of humor (this is Wily, after all). At the very end, when he was defeated for the 10th time, he finally managed to repair the time machine before the time loop began again, just in time to fix the time distortion. Guess which robot got left behind on the final loop? Yep. Mega/Rock. Good thing, too, we could have been playing "Oilman 3" in our childhood instead.

Mega Man Juno (Legends) is Lumine (X)

They both have long purple hair. They both went maverick at free-will. Lumine's a New Generation Reploid and Juno tried to kill someone of higher rank while he lost his memory, Mega Man Trigger. They appeared at the last part of the game as the final boss, and they die while they're smiling, believing they still will win the whole thing.

Also, Copy X's Seraphim (2nd) form has similarities from both. His 2nd form was related to a seraph like Lumine, and he had detached arms and no legs like Juno. If Copy X had everything the original X had, it is possible that X copied Lumine's weapon after defeating him.

Keiji Inafune is the head of a small human resistance to Wily in the The Protomen's version of the story sent back in time to warn us of our fate, but got too caught up in having fun making video games to actually get his message across.

Wily planned everything, none of the events in the game were from the characters' wills

This is probably my strangest theory ever, but, what else could Wily use the time machine he built in the Gameboy games for? Here's what I think; Wily's plans did not just extend to X, but to Zero and ZX. He used the time machine he built while he was passing himself through reploids until he eventually found his own ancient time machine and went back, and told himself a Gambit Roulette worthy of history. Wily didn't build Bass to defeat Mega Man; truth is, Bass had most of Mega Man's abilities, so, when Wily built Zero, Zero would continue to escape, with Bass fighting Zero every time. Every time Zero was defeated, Wily would elaborate upon the flaws in Zero's designs, and upgrade Zero until eventually Bass was defeated, but he didn't use Zero to bring about the Cataclysm,p; he waited a hundred years later (Virus brought him back to life), to create havoc again, and eventually met Sigma (Sigma mentions this in the Japanese version of an X game), and told him a few interesting facts. Eventually this age would die out as well, but then Weil came along. Wily wasn't Weil; he manipulated and destroyed Weil's view on life, causing Weil to go insane. This age would end, and somehow continue in the ZX series, but by the end of the ZX series, he seems to have finally been taken out of existence, as there is no noticeable trace of Dr. Wily in the Legends series, meaning that Dr. Wily's plans will eventually end in his failure and defeat.

• After an eternity of trying to change time so that he would win, he eventually accepted that there was nothing he could do to win, so he became a fishboat captain.
  • Alternatively, he decides that Zero has become the better hero over X, thus implying he had the superior creation over Light. Then he decides to retire to fishing.
• Just wanted to add, for anyone looking it up, that he refers to "The Old Man" in the English version of X5 as well.

Dr. Wily and Dr. Eggman/Robotonik are alternate universe parallels.

I mean, come on! They both aspire to take over the world, both have a blue teenager/kid as a nemesis, tried to bring a red guy to their side, have a wide assortment of machines, and have failed at the same plan over and over. Wily suffers the least Villain Decay, whereas Eggman is having reputation problems because of Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic 2006, but, he's getting better as of Chronicles and Unleashed. Wily is more reliant in the fake surrender strategy, but at least he built an ultimate weapon that could have destroyed the world and probably planned the Gambit guessed earlier, whereas Eggman... Eh, never mind.

Dr. Wily is Albert Einstein's "wily".

Einstein's "wily" was keeping him from creating the theory of relativity, so he decided to cut it off. Years later after being abandoned, Einstein's "wily" grew his own body and under the alias of Dr. Wily, started plotting his revenge at the world for Einstein cutting him off. They both have the same first name and have poofy hair.

• Dr. Wily lets his real name slip in the beginning of Mega Man 7.

Sonic, Lolo, and Mega Man are all the same character, only drawn in different art styles.

Not much to explain, other than that this is a response not only to the Wily/Eggman parallel above (and attempts at conflating the identities of the various stars of each series), but to some Mega Man fans' beliefs that the X series characters didn't truly change in appearance in the transition to the Zero series; they merely look different to us because of the new art style. So isn't it obvious that three characters covered in blue, with big eyes, hands, and feet and possibly spiky hair in back, are probably just one character rendered in different ways?

There is only one timeline.

If only sentient beings can dream and X was put to sleep for 30 years, don't you think that he might have been dreaming? What would he have dreams about? The Battle Network and Star Force series. In the Battle Network series, Mega Man has a loving brother (Lan) and can go after Roll and not have certain... legal issues pop up. Another thing sentient minds do is speculate. X probably speculated about what could the world have turned out like, had the (in that world) theoretical "networks" research that Light would have worked on, had Wily not won the research grant to develop robotics.

France was one of the few places to survive relatively unscathed during the end of the Maverick Wars

Might explain the prominence of French names throughout in the later series.

• Or Quebec, Belgium, or some other French speaking territory.

Light and Wily are Edison and Tesla.

• Real Life-Edison had a short lived partnership with Tesla. Tesla invented many great things while Edison stole all of his ideas. Edison stole the idea of direct current from Tesla and he turned it into an inferior form-alternating current. He used this invention to discredit Tesla and turn himself into a respected "inventor." Tesla went mad and lost all of his money — yet he managed to invent brilliant things. Edison invented nothing else whatsoever and stole all of his other ideas from inventors such as Joseph Snow. Evidence — found a hundred years later — proved that Tesla was a genius and Edison was a plagiarist.
• Game series-Light had a short lived partnership with Wily. Wily invented many great robots while Light invented a robot whose sole purpose was to steal ideas. Light stole the idea of a sentient robot from Wily and he turned it into an inferior form — Mega Man. He used this invention to discredit Wily and turn himself into a respected "inventor." Wily went mad and lost all of his money — yet he managed to invent brilliant robots. Light invented a few very simplistic servant robots who were piles of shit compared to their opponents. A Reploid Virus — unleashed a hundred years later — proved that Wily was a genius.
  • A couple of flies in your ointment: Alternating Current is not an inferior form of electricity to Direct Current; in fact, it has many advantages — being able to be transmitted over long distances being chief among them. By the same token, Mega Man is not inferior to the Robot Masters; the fact that he kicks all their asses all the time is proof enough of that. Wait... it still fits, doesn't it? DAMN YOU, WMG!
    • Edison pushed DC, Tesla created AC, and neither is explicitly inferior, though most power used today is HVDC.
  • In the Japanese backstory, Light and Wily never worked together.
  • On a minor but still interesting note, Edison had wives and children; Tesla was celibate and had a pigeon whom he adored. Most mediums seem to agree that Light created Rock and Roll not only as helpers but as companions; despite Wily being able to build humanoid robots, the only one made explicitly as a companion is a bird.
    • Bird companion? Do you mean Beat? I think Dr. Cossack built him.
    • Reggae, actually. Whereas Cossack built Beat as a useful thank-you gift for Mega Man, Wily made Reggae purely to keep himself from being lonely.

Roll/Bass because Bass is similar to Rock and it is not taboo.

Of the four major robot characters, there is only one female: Roll. Of the remaining three, two (Blues and Rock) are her brothers. Therefore, excluding the gay option, there is one viable pairing: Bass and Roll. Plus, Bass might do it just to tick off Mega Man (imagine taunts like "By the way, tell your sister I had a lovely time last night." before they fight.)

• Megamix at least says that he does reciprocate Roll's crush to piss Mega Man off.

The Yellow Devil and its brethren work via a Hive Mind.

First of all, let's focus on their modus operandi: their ability to split into many parts. This, along with their gooey structure, would require that they either work through Magic Realism, or that they're actually thousands upon thousands of nanomachines. Now, for the nanomachines to work in such a coordinated manner, thay would all need a single location from which they recieve orders, the Hive Mind. What they receive their info from should be pretty obvious, as it's the sole weakness of every single Devil: the eye. This would explain why attacking it destroys the beast, and why it's so large: it needs to be to process all those machines. As for why Wily doesn't simply lock it in a closet somewhere, the Hive Mind could be short-range, and it also doubles as a camera, or an actual eye, hence why it leaves itself vulnerable.

• I though the Devils being blobs of nanobots was canon.
  • According to the Mega Man wiki (original source linked there), the Yellow Devil and its kind are based on shape memory alloys.

The breathing liquid that Dr. Weil uses is actually his own body turned artificially into LCL

He says that his body in the Zero series is robotic but he was once human, so, it's possible that his body was used as part of a experiment where the ones who took Weil's body also discover a form to create an artificial Anti A.T. Field, and they used his old human body to put into that glass in his head and used as breathing liquid of his new robotic body. Well this is only possible if in any alternate universe all animals and plants are made of LCL no matter how. Also, his breathing liquid is Tang-colored like the original LCL.

The oil spill off the coast of Louisiana is actually an attack by Oil Man.

X is the Roman numeral 10, so 200X could be 2010. That year there was a big oil spill, and Oil Man was one of the first 8 Robot Masters. And they are sending robots to stop it. Hmmm. Before the end of the year, the other seven (Ice Man, Fire Man, Bomb Man, Cut Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, and Time Man) will show themselves and wreak havoc.

• Further proof of this theory is the lightning-stricken Jesus statue (Elec Man).
• X is a variable. Besides, Roman Numerals do not work that way. You're completely dropping a zero before the X for no justified reason, and it would be 20010 if anything. There's nothing wrong with the theory itself, though, especially since fans like to retcon the date to 20XX, which would include 2010.

Robot Masters are static, Reploids are dynamic

.More specifically, Reploids are more capable of being affected by outside forces.

No real basis for this, other than trying to think up ways that Reploids could be more human than the Robot Masters. They both have to have their personalities preprogrammed, but everything about a Robot Master would be dependent on that programming, from personality to likes and dislikes, and could only be affected by outside forces in ways that wouldn't contradict that programming, and would keep their core traits no matter what. Reploids however, would be able to adapt to outside forces just like a real human, and could end up with personalities and likes completely different no matter what.

Dr. Wily was, originally, trying to save the world from Dr. Light.

Prior to Dr. Wily's Face–Heel Turn in Mega Man 1, Dr. Wily had a vision of (or went to the future and saw) Dr. Light's final creation, X, being misused and copied, spawning the Maverick Wars which eventually caused the destruction seen in the Zero series and the destruction of the human race as seen in Legends. This drove Wily insane. In an attempt to steer Dr. Light away from robotics, Wily turned against him and reprogrammed the original six to show how they could be misused and perhaps prevent Dr. Light from creating X. Dr. Wily tried and failed repeatedly to stop Light, losing a little more precious sanity each time, eventually taking the final leap and creating the Maverick Virus to show Dr. Light just how bad things were going to get if he continued. Far in the future, someone goes back in time to show Young(er) Wily the future to create a Stable Time Loop.

• You mean "Mega X", the episode of the Ruby-Spears cartoon where Vile and Spark Mandrill come from the future to get the "litanium" which was no longer available in their generation?

The entire series is a battle between Light and Wily.

To the best of my knowledge, it's generally believed that Wily's consciousness is part of the Maverick Virus. I've also read that Light did something similar so as to work the capsules in the X series, among other things. My guess is that Wily has been influencing Reploids through the virus and attempting to continue his ambitions to rule the world. Light, being in a similar state of existence, is continually trying to stop him through whatever means necessary. Thus, the two remain in an eternal battle of wills, with the world at stake.

Dr. Light dies of lung cancer.

In Day of Sigma, he's coughing nonstop and clearly doesn't have a lot of time left. It could be any generic bronchial condition, but considering how much promo art shows him smoking a pipe, I don't think cancer is too far off.

• Whoa, that makes so much sense! You, Troper, win the Internets! :D

Dr. Light had a wife/fiancée, but she left him.

Dr. Light was just too engrossed in his work on robotics and programming to pay proper attention to her, and she walked out on him.

Dr. Light is Straight Gay.

There is no wife in the picture because he simply didn't have one. His relationship with Dr. Wily was a little closer than just friends, which is why Dr. Wily reacted so harshly when he perceived Dr. Light as betraying him. This is also why Dr. Light took stopping Wily into his own hands — he knows what Mega Man will and won't do, while he doesn't want to risk hurting Wily because deep down, he still cares a little bit.This, of course, means that the battle for the original six robot masters (and later on, Protoman) was the most destructive divorce and custody battle in history.

Dr. Light is insane.

This is pretty much canon already. When Rock (who, like Roll, has the mentality of a child) volunteers to fight Dr. Wily, Dr. Light reprograms him...without changing his mentality to that of an adult. In other words, Mega Man's basically a child soldier. Oh, and did I mention he could very well be on a suicide mission. I mean, sure, he always wins (how would he be able to fight for everlasting peace if he didn't?), but how can Dr. Light guarantee that he will?

Light simply dies of old age, and Mega Man/Roll/Proto Man "dies" because they lack someone qualified to maintain them.

The reason Rock doesn't have the breakdowns X does is because he's just a robot.

Rock seems pretty well-adjusted for someone who's had to single handedly win at least ten Robot Wars. X is starting to break down in one and reach a climax by X7. The reason? X is a fully realized sentient, while Rock is still just an advanced Robot Master. Rock simply doesn't have an emotional burden to bear the way X does.

Why even brushing against a spike is instantly lethal?

Spike strips are conductors for special energy waves designed to overwrite a robot's programming and immediately activate its self-destruct systems. This also explains why some spike traps in the series merely do damage instead of instantly killing — those spikes are simply ordinary spikes.

• Why would the robots be installed with self-destruct systems, anyway?
  • Maybe as a last resort?
  • To keep them out of the wrong hands. Mega Man's copy ability is considered a black box in-universe, and Wily already stole all the other Robot Masters.

A partial justification for the Bag of Spilling.

It seems to me that, at the beginning of Mega Man 1, robotics was a fairly new field. The first batch of Robot Masters (Proto Man, Rock/Mega Man, Roll, and the six bosses) were built as proof of concept more than anything. But in between games, robotics technology improved, and Wily used the latest advances to build 8 Robot Masters specifically designed for combat, and Dr. Light similarly upgrades Mega Man so that he can match them. This happens in between each game: robotics advances, Wily builds new Masters with state-of-the-art tech, Light upgrades Mega Man to match them. With the upgrades on both sides, either Mega Man's upgrades make him incompatible with previously-copied weapon data, or the Masters' upgrades make them tough enough to resist the weaker weapons of old, so Mega Man just copies new weapons whenever Wily attacks rather than wasting time on upgrading old weapons. We can extend the latter explanation to the X series as well; Reploid technology rapidly advances in between games, so X's old copied weapons become useless, and their weapons become strong enough to overwhelm his armour, so there's no point in even equipping it. It's not a perfect explanation, and it doesn't really extend to any of the other series (besides maybe Battle Network), but it's a start.

Each main villain of the series represents a negative aspect of technology and/or how we react to it.

• Dr. Wily, the classical Mad Scientist, represents our desire to use technology for war. He started the Robot War, instigating the Darker and Edgier Mega Man X series, in the same way as how our weapons manage to escalate war. We're known for turning technology originally meant for maintenance (for example, fire to warm and cook and electricity to power our infrastructure) into technology capable of killing others (for example, fire to burn life and even cities, and electricity to power our turrets and electric chairs), which is reflected with Dr. Wily turning the formerly helpful Robot Masters created by Dr. Light and Cossack into weapons. Not to mention many of the Robot Masters he builds could have been used for constructive purposes. The only original Robot Masters he didn't corrupt? Rock and Roll, who as maid robots can't be used for any destructive purpose whatsoever.
  • Some of Wily's robots also count. King is a prototype of A.I. Is a Crapshoot born out of What Measure Is a Non-Human?, and Bass is the consequence of machinery with more human qualities. Zero is the result of a positive aspect of weaponry: despite being the ultimate fighting robot of Dr. Wily, he uses his immense powers to maintain peace instead of wreck it.
• Sigma, and Mavericks in general, represent technology antagonizing us. The Maverick Virus embodies technology going defective unwillingly, hence why most viral Mavericks are Ax-Crazy. Big Bad Sigma represents the idea of technology rebelling because it thinks it knows better than us. Sigma has been seen as trying to free Reploidkind, kill the inferior human race, and a genocidal madman, but one facet never changes — he's always right in his actions, and you are wrong for opposing him. Gate is the embodiment of our fears of technology we can't comprehend — he's obsessed with creating Reploids with unreadable codes. Lumine is a symbol of the cold desire to continually advance, leaving what hasn't in the dust (hence his sociopathic distaste for the old-model Reploids).
• Mega Man Zero has a number of antagonists. Copy-X is a result of our extreme measures to deal with rogue technology — the paranoid desire to annihilate every machine we see as a threat, which is why Copy-X labels almost all of his own race as a threat. The Resistance is the positive reaction to deal with this threat: show that machinery can be used for good, while Elpizo is the negative reaction: kill the oppressive humans to solve the problem once and for all. Finally, there's Dr. Weil, who is the living, breathing embodiment of our most monstrous behavior to what we create. Dr. Weil's view of Reploids as nothing more than objects are self-evident of taking technology for granted, his inability to take responsibility mirrors our habit of not coming to terms with the pain our machines can cause, and the desire to make the world suffer is the use of technology turned to make others suffer. Dr. Weil's cyborg nature embodies how we've become completely dependent on our technology to do things for us. Omega is the embodiment of the idea that technology should only be used to harm others.
• With machines and humans becoming one race, the villains of this era are the worries that technology and progress will cause us to lose our humanity. Serpent is our fear of progress dehumanizing us, willing to do anything in the cause of bettering ourselves. Master Albert is our fear of progress making us gods — Albert tries to control the Wheel of Fate to transcend the cycle of violence, like we try to control the elements to transcend nature. Biometal W aka Dr. Weil is the fear that despite how much society and technology progresses, we will never become better than our base, animalistic nature.
• Mega Man Legends is one big fear of The Singularity. It is our fear that as technology progresses, we will reach a point where we are no longer human.

Rock and Roll aren't actually siblings.

They're just called siblings because they came from the same creator. Secretly, they harbor romantic feelings for each other.

Dr. Wily likes strong men.

Dr. Wily never made any female robots in the games, the last stage of Mega Man has lots of Guts Men on the walls, and of course Gutsdozer and Guts Man G.

Future Robot Masters thread

Put your Robot Master ideas here!

• Zipper Man: Uses zippers to teleport.

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