Fridge / Judgment

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For the entries in the mainline Yakuza series, see here

Fridge Brilliance

Judgment

• Hashiki made sure the brightest scientists got either fired or moved away from the center as part of his sabotage. That left Shono, who is unremarkable, and Kido, who is more administrative and is dealing with a sex scandal, as the only authority on AD-9. No one was able to question the drug's effect on humans or perfect it at the center because of this.
• Kuroiwa being on the dead yakuza case helped him covering potential tracks, since he ruled out the deaths as eye injuries instead of asking for a blood analysis or looking into whether the eyes were removed post-mortem or not.
• Shono's luck with Okubo disposing of the body is even greater after the reveal: Waku's eyes turned blue, but they were naturally gone before the cops recovered the body in the mountain Okubo dumped him in. As for why Okubo didn't notice the blue eyes, Shono had most likely closed them before hiding the body in Okubo's truck.
• Hamura going to a sauna for an alibi works as an indirect way to explain he doesn't sport a tattoo, as public saunas in Japan usually ban people wearing tattoos. It serves to show he is a money-first type of yakuza with no real ideals.
• The track that plays during the fight with Shin Amon is called "The Last Assassin XIV: Symphony Of The Judgment". "XIV" is "14" in Roman numerals. The very first game in the Yakuza series was released in Japan in 2005, while Judgment was released in 2019 - which means the series has been going on for fourteen years.
  • Additionally, if you count the number of Yakuza games that have been released (not counting spinoff games or Yakuza 0), a total of thirteen Amon battles have been fought before this fight: Once each in Yakuza, Yakuza 2, Yakuza 3, and Yakuza 6, four times in Yakuza 4 and five in Yakuza 5 (including the dance battle with Noa Amon). This makes the current fight against Shin Amon the fourteenth.
  • There have also been a total of thirteen games released over the course of the entire series (including spinoffs and Yakuza 0), making this the fourteenth game.
  • Finally, the title of the track also makes a Call-Back to the very first Amon fight - the substory associated with that fight (both in Yakuza and its remake, Kiwami) is called "The Last Assassin".
• After Sugiura is recruited, he only puts his Jester mask back on when interacting with the Kyorei Family and Kajihira. Initially, you think it's so they don't recognize him as a former disgraced Kajihira Group employee which would likely cause them to target him. Once his true identity is revealed, you realize it's because they would have no idea who he was and thus "Sugiura's" cover would be blown.
• Since Yagami's fighting styles are color-coded like with Kiryu's and Majima's styles in 0 and Kiwami, and the Blue styles (Brawler for Kiryu and Thug for Majima, respectively) are the "canon" fighting styles for these characters, then it stands to reason that the Crane style is Yagami's canon (or at the very least default since it's used in the tutorial both in this game and Lost Judgment) fighting style as well.
  • It also helps in this case that the dominant color scheme of his Iconic Outfit (black leather jacket, white T-shirt, and blue skinny jeans) also partially mirror those of a crane — the black and white being the crane's feathers and the blue representing the sky and the water.
• For a major antagonist, Hamura has surprisingly few health bars — this serves to compound the narrative that he's effectively been forced into his role, being initially opposed to murder but taking the plunge for the money it would make the Matsugane Family. (It also helps to explain why he usually kicks back and lets his underlings do all the punching.)

Lost Judgment

• Sugiura sure seems to be the most riled up when he sees the footage of Mitsuru being bullied. Judging from him mentioning that he and Tsukumo are "on the same wavelength" (if you remember that he was also Emi's socially withdrawn younger brother), it's very likely that he was a bullying victim himself, not unlike Koda or Toshiro.
  • Then there's the fact that he's one of the three voices that you hear when Matsun's group is getting called out for their treatment of Koda, as well as his reaction to seeing Koda being treated so horribly by her peers, only making this more plausible.
• Amusingly, RK's Leitmotif when they're fought as part of the story is called "1811". It should go without saying, but… 18 = R and 11 = K. It's even the code for one of their safes in their HQ in Kamurocho.
• Akutsu's theme, "K.O.G", has a voice sample in it that says, "Hands in the air". While it might obviously refer to the usual "put your hands up" that you'd hear in most other EDM songs, it also carries a morbidly funny connotation as Akutsu is shot dead by RK mooks disguised as policemen. Now what do most policemen usually say whenever they hold a suspect at gunpoint again?
• Most of the RK themes, such as the aforementioned "K.O.G", are the typical hard rock/techno beats that many Yakuza and Judgment bosses have. Soma's theme, "Viper", is a creepy violin-based theme that sounds more at home as a Slasher villain's theme, which sets him out from his street thug underlings. This is one of the first hints that Soma is something much worse than the regular RK members.
• On the topic of nods to the mainline Yakuza series, considering how Ichiban planned on climbing out of Rock Bottom on his own, it likely stands to reason that Zhao probably moved on peacefully with his life as a meager restaurant owner that's still affiliated with the Yokohama Liumang given his cameo in the very same restaurant where he, Ichiban, Seong-Hui, and Hoshino (not to be confused with Issei Hoshino) met in two years prior. Granted, it's likely that, much like Kiryu, Zhao could still be involved with the Liumang in some capacity despite no longer being their leader; especially with Mabuchi out of the picture (given that Tesso still refers to him as a leader of the Liumang, this is very likely).
• Considering how the Boxing style is arguably the most overpowered of Yagami's fighting styles, it can't be that surprising since Boxers have a better chance in an actual street fight than, well... whatever Yagami uses to fight, as awesome as it is.
  • Crossing into Fridge Humor and, well, Crossing the Line Twice, the fact that Yagami can use this fighting style against the Bullies is especially funny since it'd be like watching a teenage punk go up against even Little Mac!
• Yagami's distaste of vigilantism despite being close to one himself is much more personal given that his parents were murdered by one. The relative of one of Yagami's father's client's victims was angry due to an acquittal verdict and took it out on the lawyer's family. The events of the first game also made Yagami really intolerant of Necessarily Evil mentality.
• Kaito's two primary fighting styles in The Kaito Files, Bruiser and Tank are based almost entirely off of Kiryu's Brawler and Tank styles he used in the 80s. One of Kaito's EX actions is a one-for-one recreation of one of Kiryu's heat actions, and is specifically referred to as a technique Kaito heard was used by the fourth chairman in his youth, it stands to reason that Kaito based his fighting style entirely off of stories he heard about Kiryu.

Fridge Horror

Judgment

• Of all the places Shono picked for his secret lab, it ended up being an abandoned love hotel. Makes sense when you consider that it's the least likely place for anyone to go poking around in, but that also speaks volumes of the kind of person that Shono really is. Especially since he did stab Emi to death in the name of AD-9.
  • For that matter, how did this Love Hotel become an abandoned wreck in the first place? And for how long? It feels like Shangri-La all over again, only worse.
• In Chapter 9, Hattori said Alzheimer's disease was caused by the build-up of amyloid beta proteins in the brain, and that when AD-9 was injected into dementia-ridden test mice, the drug had eaten away at those excess proteins and restored their brains to normal. However, with the revelation that one of the drug's lethal side effects was a powerful headache in the victims, it's likely that the drug's toxins were devouring the victims' brains completely.
  • For that matter, Kido also says the drug's toxins caused a dark-blue pigmentation in the victims' eyes, which necessitated their removal. It's also possible that the pigmentation was a result of not only the toxins caused by a mix of multiple medicines, but also from the eye trauma caused by the severe headache. No wonder Kido said it was a gruesome death.

Lost Judgment

• Fucking Public Security. If someone like Akutsu or even Tesso are terrified of these guys, then it stands to reason why Soma was able to get away with murdering Sawa in cold blood without consequence. If he can do that, then what other things have they done in their own twisted version of order?
  • There's also the fact that they've got eyes and ears everywhere and that once they have their eyes on you, there's no escape. Now why does that sound familiar?
  • RK has been given full immunity from the police, be it blatant extortion the Yakuza can't get away with, to outright going through a police barricade to put a bullet in the eyes of Kuwana. As Bando said, he had many people backing him and Public Security; some of whom might be Mafuyu and Takano's superiors. Sure, they are able to have most cooperate but mostly so they can pin it all on Bando and the main party involved so there are still a lot of high placed individuals ready to back a criminal gang into ruling the streets as long as someone can push them to do it. It was not even a shock for Watanabe to be told to look the other way, and after the events of the first game and Like a Dragon, the police might be used to it.
• "First comes the pain, then the fear. You have to start with the pain. Fear won't work if you haven't given them a reason." Seems rather apt that someone with this belief in mind has a battle aura that straight up looks like fire. Since getting burnt is, obviously, very painful and Soma enjoys his work a bit too much.
  • It's also a dark representation of the fact that Soma can and will kill anyone who dare crosses his path in his (or rather, Bando's) twisted version of keeping order, including innocent people like Sawa, Koda, or Akane.
• On the opposite side, if Yagami wasn't involved in the case, how long did Koda have before she went the same way as Toshiro? And by extension, how long would Matsui, Sakaki, and Akane have before Kuwana came for them? And if Mikoshiba and Kawai suffered brutally at the hands of Kuwana and his minions alongside the grieving parents of the bullies' victims (as Ehara and Reiko can attest), then there's no telling how Koda's parents would take action against these three, especially since they're much younger than Kawai or Mikoshiba.
• In the epilogue, an anonymous tip to the police reveals the locations of the five other bodies of the bullies that Kuwana had murdered during his five year long Roaring Rampage of Revenge. While Kawai may have been the one dead for the longest, he at least had the "luxury" of being kept in a freezer (preventing his body from decaying) for his five years. We're never told about the state of the bodies of the other victims, meaning that it's most likely that they were either buried, or left out in the open to rot like Mikoshiba, but much worse.