Fanon / Mega Man

There's a truckload of old theories concerning the Mega Man series and its spin-offs.

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Classic Timeline Fanon (Classic, X, Zero, ZX, and Legends)

• Fans like to believe that E-Tanks are Mega Man's favorite drink. This is largely due to the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, despite the fact that they are not in the same continuity, and that in Super Adventure Rockman, Mega Man uses E-Tanks by inserting his Arm Cannon into them.
• Fan works are more susceptible to the idea of female Robot Masters (or Robot Mistresses, if you will), who are barely seen in-universe. (The only canonical RMs of that nature are Light bots Roll and Splash Woman, plus Plum from the Battle & Chase spin-off racer.) This actually seeped into other, non-official continuities, as the manga for Mega Man 6 had its incarnation of Centaur Man revealed to be a woman with long, flowing hair and the Archie comic introduced Tempo/Quake Woman, an OC creation of a former colleague of Light's named Dr. Lalinde, as well as her sister Vesper Woman (who is based, in-universe and out, on Honey Woman, the original design for Hornet Man). Meanwhile, Mega Man: Fully Charged featured two original female Robot Masters named Hypno Woman and Blasto Woman respectively.
• The DWN Robot Masters living in Wily's fortress in-between/during the games. Probably canon for the TV series, but that's not the same continuity.
• One idea that comes up often is that there is a leader among each group of Robot Masters. While this has happened in some of the manga/comics, the games are ambiguous about it at best. ^note The only two exceptions to date, technically speaking, are that Mega Man V establishes Terra as the leader of the Stardroids and The Wily Wars designates Buster Rod G as the leader of the Genesis Unit, though he's The Alleged Boss. The ones that fans tend to favor are Elec Man, Quick Man, Shadow Man, Pharaoh Man, Star Man, Knight Man, Freeze Man, Sword Man, Tornado Man, Blade Man, and Fuse Man. Outside of the (Roman) numbered titles, you'll sometimes see fans position Ballade as the leader of the Mega Man Killers, but few seem to bother with figuring out who's The Dragon to their respective Big Bad among the King Numbers or the Dimensions.
• Blues, Proto Man's Japanese name, is often treated by fans as his civilian name, like Rock is for Mega Man. (Officially he has none, and only goes by Proto Man or Blues, depending on the language.)
• An oft-overlooked piece of fanon is the assertion that Wily is German (or of German descent), owing to Wily being based on Albert Einstein and Scott McNeil giving him a German accent in the Ruby-Spears cartoon (and Puzzle Fighter). As such, it is very rare to see fan works that don't model his speech patterns after McNeil's performance even though there's no canonical statement on Wily's ethnicity and he's been given an American accent in every game with English-language voiceovers (Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4, Mega Man Powered Up, Mega Man 11) as well as the Upon a Star OVA (where McNeil also reprised his role from the cartoon). This idea may hold true for the Battle Network continuity, as Dr. Regal, revealed to be Lord Wily's son in the fifth game, hails from Nation Z, which is described as an "infamous military state" and therefore believed to be the series' Fantasy Counterpart Culture to (Nazi) Germany, but Battle Network is an Alternate Timeline with a few cases of Adaptational Nationality, most notably Dr. Light going from American to Japanese (or rather, Electopian).
• One of the biggest problems is that early Mega Man (not Rockman) stuff was prone to embellishment, so much that it could be considered its own continuity. That in itself isn't too bad — this happened a lot in the NES era — but many fans aren't too happy with it. If they don't dismiss it all as mistranslations, they claim it's compatible with the original canon material, despite not perfectly overlapping at all, and then embellish further in order to explain certain points or cover plot hole (absolutely not helped by some people considering fan translations of dubious quality or fanfiction as canon, nor by assuming that everything the Japanese fans said was true; that's where those last names came from). While it's not as bad today as it was in the early days of the community, there's still people who think/insist that Doctor Light and Wily being partners is true for all regions, or that Mega Man knows that Proto Man is his brother in the Japanese continuity.
• Zero killing most/the whole cast of the original series in an event commonly referred to as the "Cataclysm." This was popularized by Bob and George but has been Jossed by sourcebooks and direct Word of God.
• Fan works tend to portray X, Zero, and other humanoid Reploids with the ability to remove their helmets to reveal heads of hair. They've never actually done this in the games, but Mega Man and Proto Man both have multiple times, so it makes enough sense to fans. This was Jossed for X and Zero specifically (concept art depicts them with nothing but metal plates underneath the helmets) but the idea persists nevertheless.
• One dealt with the last names of most of the X series characters (Signas Lancaster, Marty Gisbon, Iris Thorne, etc.). The best was "Zero Omega."
• Serges from Mega Man X2 and Isoc from Mega Man X6 are both incarnations of/vessels for a still living Dr. Wily, with Wily's survival usually chalked up to him somehow becoming one with the Maverick Virus and living on through it. While never explicitly confirmed outside of Wily's involvement in the plot of X5 as Sigma's unseen collaborator (with Wily having come back to life in the process), the games heavily imply this on several different occasions ^{(including...)}X2 (Japanese version only): Serges mistakenly refers to X as "Rock" and later calls him "the robotic memento of Light" — both comments made in an era where few would be aware of the events from 20XX; X4: Zero's story opens with him having a nightmare where Wily appears to him, ordering Zero to destroy his nemesis (presumably X); X6: Isoc, who is voiced by Takeshi Aono (who previously voiced Wily in Mega Man 8 and X4), is a Reploid scientist with a fixation on Zero and knowledge of his inner workings — with the latter implying he may have been responsible for Zero's Unexplained Recovery — and when Isoc's lifeless body is discovered late in X's story, Alia comments that it's similar to the Erasure Incident, thereby suggesting his CPU left his body altogether and the question of "Serges = Wily" was given a Shrug of God by Keiji Inafune, causing many fans to run with the idea.
• In light of the debates over the original English localization for Mega Man X5 renaming the Maverick bosses to have names based on the members of Guns N' Roses, only for Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 to throw them out in favor of ones closer to the original Japanese, some fans decided to Take a Third Option and treat the GNR names as nicknames.
• A popular theory which emerged following Mega Man X8 is that Lumine eventually pulls a Grand Theft Me on Axl, necessitating his destruction at the hands of X and Zero, thereby explaining in part why Axl is never brought up in any of the Zero games. Axl's ending, where it's shown that Lumine's Last Breath Bullet embedded something in Axl's cracked Power Crystal, and one of the game's unlockables being a "White Axl" armor in Lumine's specific color scheme are held up as evidence for this line of thought. (Of course, this is strictly speaking from an in-universe perspective. That Z1 released before Axl's debut in Mega Man X7 likely accounts for some of this, and Zero's status as an Amnesiac Hero in the Zero games coupled with X's occasional withholding of sensitive information probably gave the writers enough narrative justification to avoid mentioning Axl entirely.)
• According to fans, Mega Man Zero occurs in 22XX, a century after the events of Mega Man X. (By proxy, this places Mega Man ZX circa 24XX.) Though taken to be true by many, this claim is actually a slight corruption of canon, where Zero takes place a century after the Elf Wars, an event that in turn follows the X series, which has been Left Hanging with X8. (Word of God also states that Zero's ending from X6 is the last event in that series' timeline, with some of the "22XX" misconception coming from the fact that Zero is scheduled to be in stasis for 102 years as a Reploid scientist studies his body in an effort to remove Zero's viral programming.) The Zero games themselves never offer an exact chronological reference point, and while non-canon^note in the sense of being set in what is likely an Alternate Continuity, that is, Command Mission itself takes place in 22XX, with no signs present in-game of a bloody conflict initiated by a madman with a god complex that almost claimed all sentient life on Earth. (Though some fans have theorized that Command Mission could take place in early 22XX, so as to not overlap with the Zero series or X8. The biggest roadblock in regards to this particular theory is Axl's ultimate fate, as mentioned above, due to how Axl appears no worse for the wear in Command Mission — which can be taken in one of several different ways.)
• While it's never been revealed who built the Four Guardians, some fans think of them as X's children, possibly with Alia being their mother (as she's a popular shipping choice for X in the fandom, especially after X6). Canonically, the Guardians can actually be thought of as X's biological children, as they were all created from his DNA data, making him a Truly Single Parent in a sense.
• Thanks to the "Vile's Incident" story included with the Remastered Tracks Rockman Zero: Physis soundtrack featuring an image of X and the Four Guardians watching the fall of Ragnarok during the finale of Zero 4, it is widely believed that the Four Guardians became cyber-elves much like X before them and reside in Cyberspace with him despite this drawing being confirmed as nothing more than an Easter Egg on the part of Zero series illustrator Toru Nakayama. It helps that this scenario doesn't really conflict with the Zero series timeline and other official statements/materials^{More details}Phantom appears in Cyberspace as an Optional Boss in Z3 after dying in the first game, the Official Complete Works artbook states the surviving three Guardians perished in Z3 shielding Zero from Omega's explosion, X no longer has enough energy to maintain a physical presence by the end of Z3 and retires to Cyberspace, etc. and also meshes with the idea that the Biometals in ZX are Soul Jars for most of the characters they're modeled after, something that is only implied but generally accepted as fact.
• It's commonly believed by fans that Doctor Ciel fully converted her body into a machine after Zero 4, becoming the first Humanoid later seen in the ZX series. Evidence to back up this claim is the fact that Ciel was mentioned in ZX to have disappeared a few years prior to the game's events despite the series taking place over 200 years after Zero 4, beyond any lifespan of a regular human, and the Sage Trinity in ZX Advent are revealed to be former humans who converted into Humanoids hundreds of years ago. Some fans even go further and suggest that Ciel was also the first person to Megamerge with Biometals, as seen with fan projects such as Mega Man ZX Genesis and ProjectRCL ZET REQUIEM. ^{However... (Spoilers!)}The fact that Ciel does not appear as one of the "Chosen Ones" shown in the cipher unlocked after the battle with Aeolus in ZXA (which features all living and deceased Mega Men from both games except for Grey/Ashe, Prometheus, Pandora, and Master Albert) does call this idea into question, as this omission would suggest Ciel was not a past survivor of a Maverick raid deemed worthy by Albert and therefore did not have his DNA — the true key to Megamerging according to said cipher — infused in her body. Though authorial bias could be in play here and there certainly could be more survivors of Maverick attacks possessing Albert's blood (various details about the "Game of Destiny" central to the ZX series hint that Chosen Ones were being scouted out and pitted against one another before ZX proper), every known character capable of using a Biometal, even those not intended to take part in the Game of Destiny by Albert, indeed shares this trait — including Grey and Ashe by dint of being a backup body for Albert (DAN-003) and Albert's direct descendant respectively. The only possible outliers are Prometheus and Pandora, fellow creations of Albert (DAN-001 and DAN-002) who were each fused with a fragment of Model W but not expressly indicated to be Biomatches for Model W and never refer to themselves or are otherwise identified as "Mega Man Model W" (unlike Serpent and Albert).
• According to Master Albert in Mega Man ZX Advent, the "A" in Model A stands for Albert, not Axl, as it was designed as part of Master Albert's backup plans for his Game of Destiny. Fans typically reject this claim, finding the various characteristics shared between and Axl and Model A (including color scheme, the use of firearms, A-Trans, and a rather childish and immature personality) too strong to be a mere coincidence and thereby believe Model A is "Model Axl" in spirit, if not in name. The fact that Axl is at the center of many a Wild Mass Guess following Mega Man X8 and goes completely unmentioned throughout the Zero series tends to be used in conjunction with this idea.
• Given the cliffhanger ending of ZX Advent, where Master Thomas wants to reset the world, combined with how the world was flooded and humanity replaced with Carbons in Mega Man Legends (set millennia later), fans ended up drawing the conclusion that Thomas's actions somehow led to the flood.
• Though not as widespread as some other examples, one part of the fandom believes that Legends is indeed a Distant Sequel to the rest of the Classic timeline, albeit one that branches off only from the bad ending of Mega Man X5. This is because said ending heavily implies X was responsible for the creation of Elysium (something that likely could not happen due to the events of the Zero series unless a Retcon was involved) as well as the fact that the state of the world by the time of Legends is rather bleak, retroactively undermining hopeful events like the period of peaceful human-robot coexistence between Zero 4 and ZX.

Alternate Timeline Fanon (Battle Network and Star Force)

• In the Battle Network series, the premise of MegaMan.EXE and Lan Hikari's link has been debated in fanfiction due to its vagueness of detail in the games. Many fan works will include the link as having the two be able to communicate telepathically or control each other's bodies.
• Not unlike Pokémon, Adaptation Displacement sometimes causes aspects of the anime and manga continuities to bleed into game canon among the Battle Network fandom. This is especially prevalent in shipping matters, such as fans taking the Ship Tease between Laika and Princess Pride in the anime to be canon despite the fact that they most likely never even crossed paths in the games. ^note Both do appear in the fifth game, but in separate versions.
• Speaking of Princess Pride, a number of Battle Network fans believe that her NetNavi, KnightMan.EXE, is female underneath the armor (not unlike the aforementioned Manga!Centaur Man) despite being referred to with male pronouns by Pride and having male voice actors in the anime. There may be some conflation with the anime's continuity involved here (this reveal most commonly appears in Lan/Pride fan works thanks to NT Warrior teasing the pair) and the closest thing to a legitimate "female KnightMan" is the Cross Fusion between Pride and KnightMan in the anime (as all NetNavi-Operator mergers go by the Navi's name but possess the NetOp's body even if they're the opposite gender).