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Fridge Brilliance
- The original Japan Team members - Kyo, Benimaru, and Daimon - are the personified homages to a Japanese phrase of giving birth to fire. The quote translates to "lighting strikes the earth which sparks the flame" Benimaru is the lightning due to his power to control electricity, Goro is earth due to his ability to cause seismic waves due to his incredible strength, and Kyo is fire due to his Kusanagi heritage's ability to control flames.
- Ash Crimson is pretty much The King of Scrappies. He's a Jerkass Smug Snake who has gotten away with some pretty controversial stuff in his saga (namely, stealing the powers of Chizuru and Iori) simply because SNK likes him too much. If you've played The King of Fighters XI, you've probably noticed that there's a common motif with a few of the team themes, such as "Jack,"
"Queen," and "King"; they're all high level playing cards (in fact, Ace is the only one missing from the bunch). "Joker" is the theme of the "Hero" Team. Given that there's a literal card-wielding Cool Old Guy on the team, you might think that this theme had Oswald in mind. However, this was subtle foreshadowing at its finest. The Joker is used in a variety of roles when it comes to card games. It can either be the most powerful card to play or the weakest. It can even be used as a placeholder for missing cards. Ash Crimson only appears to be a frail, unassuming weakling, but he's a bastard of both the manipulative and magnificent varieties. He is literally the personification of the Joker, a true Wild Card. Not only did he run the masses with an expy of Gambit and a fight-craving Badass Normal in order to progress far enough through the tournament, but he set it up with such finesse so that after he turned his former allies against one another (when they had outlived their usefulness) by preying on their personal ambitions (thus eliminating any potential threats by having Shen Woo and Oswald duke it out to the death as Ash slips away), he could then steal Iori's powers (as Orochi Iori) immediately after Iori had been worn down in a fight with Kyo and Shingo. That's Obfuscating Stupidity so brilliant that you might wonder whether or not Ash is The Chessmaster.- Going back even further, one of Ash's win quotes in 2003 was "Don't play your trump card till the end... the very end!" In hindsight, SNK was pretty much telling us, "Keep your eye on this guy. Something's gonna happen."
- In XIII, Ash's a single entry character. Quite odd, given that he's The Hero of the saga. You'd think that it's because he'll become the True Final Boss at the end as Evil Ash, and that's right - but it's deeper than that: he's prone to manipulate his teammates to his own ends. So him being a single entry is a subtle Gameplay and Story Integration - He can make team with any character in the roster, but he'll end up leaving them in the end.
- Additionally, this all seems to tie in with the revelation that Ash really is on the heroes' side. He functions as a Guile Hero because of the very probable mindset that if more people (including sister figure Elizabeth, presented here as a rival to Ash) knew about his true intentions, his plans to stop Saiki and Those from the Past would be less likely to actually succeed. (Especially Elizabeth, as she is the person he is actually doing most of this for, and the only one who comes from his past and therefore with the highest level of knowledge about his personality.) The Jerkass facade he dons is a calculated farce used to further his goals and ensure that the number of other fighters thrown into the crossfire is a bare minimum. Perhaps you could say he didn't want anyone to call his bluff.
- There are three people that are able to sense that Ash's intentions aren't as malevolent as they seem. One of them is King, who refers to Ash's behavior as "a cry for help" among other things. Why would she sense such stuff, considering that she's not a psychic (unlike Athena) and has relatively limited experience (unlike Chin)? Easy: she's a bartender, and bartenders are typically used to listen to the problems of people who are drowning their sorrows. This means she can catch body language signals that others cannot, whether the person she's speaking to is toasted or not; then, it's not surprising that she can see that Ash's plans and mindset are more complex than he lets other see, even when she obviously doesn't know what he wants (and never will, now that he's gone forever... until KOF XV, anyway).
- Yuri's Neomax, the Haoh Raiouken, seems lackluster compared to flashier Neomaxes, save for the mushroom cloud at the end. Unlike fellow Kyokugen practitioners Ryo and Robert, she was only taught the very basics of Kyokugenryu, aptly named the Raiou principle. In a way, her Neomax serves as a Take That! to her father and brother, showing that she can throw away Raioukens like atomic bombs.
- Also, when you examine Yuri and Ryo's relationship, some interesting conclusions can be deduced/speculated. Ryo is the dutiful son, the one trained from childhood by his father Takuma to become the heir of Kyokugenryu, alongside his natural talent; Yuri is a late-bloomer, who only started when she was a teenager and mastered the basics within a year. While they love each other dearly, they also intensely clash: Ryo objected to her being trained (though he doesn't object to other Action Girls being around, like King or Mai), Yuri decided to keep training and then add her own variations to the style. Ryo's current objections to have her around don't only come from her being a girl (though that does play a part), but because he sees Yuri's additions to the Kyokugenryu roster as an insult to the Kyokugenryu style itself... and also as a part of their interactions outside the ring. Ryo had to work very hard for his martial arts skills and to make the Kyokugenryu style widely known ever since he was a young boy, adding an It's Personal layer to what seems to be a mere "Stay in the Kitchen"-like Sibling Rivalry, even when it's not very fair to Yuri herself.
- It's also reflected by the fact that the only moves that Yuri has consistently kept throughout all of her appearances in the series are the Ko-Ou Ken, Hyakuretsu Binta, Kuuga (her version of the Kyokugenryu Kohou), and Hien Houou Kyaku. While it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the Art of Fighting team's moves to be shuffled around every other game, it often does for Yuri, seeing as those moves in particular represent her basic grasp of the fundamentals, while everything else represents her tendency to try and make the Kyokugenryu style her own, often with middling results (at best).
- For XIV, the "villains' team" and why Chang and Choi (two reformed criminals) of all people would join. Then the Villains Team trailer shows just what kind of person Xanadu is.
- The meanings behind the name of Warspite, a historical Royal Navy battleship in WW2. Apparently, it can either mean "despising wars" (a more modern interpretation) or "a symbol of hate/spite towards one's enemies" (an older interpretation). This could explain Iori's apparent hate of violence, despite his otherwise overly violent persona and style. Iori's hatred of violence makes him act like a hateful person towards their enemies so he could scare them or at least make them surrender. Alternatively, Iori's hatred of violence fuels a hatred towards his enemies who makes him fight in the first place, so he tries to violently finish his foes quickly, so he won't be violent for long.
- In the Another World Team's ending, it might look like Nakoruru has been taking a little level in either cheerfulness or ditziness, whereas Love Heart's concern about getting back to their world made her the Only Sane Woman. However, according to Nakoruru's earlier words, she knows that while Verse was beaten, this does not mean the end, there will be an after-effect which will happen in the current world and will cause a mess, and it can strike at any time, in a day or year (sure enough...). So her idea of 'vacation' just meant a softer way to say 'we're staying in this world to be ready if the after-effect will ruin the multiverse again'. And Love kind of missed the point, while Mui Mui caught on quick, but only because she's also an excitable girl in the beginning.
- Plus Nakoruru is now in a new world, one that she barely understands and is a novelty to her. Who's to say she can't experience it now that she has a chance, before Verse or any other upcoming villain comes up and fucks up everything?
- Despite getting unmasked as Tizoc by Clark in The King of Fighters: A New Beginning, King of Dinosaurs returns to his current gimmick by the final volume. Why? He still hasn't gotten his grudge match against Nelson yet.
- A subtle one, but Kyo (as in, Kusanagi Kyo; 京) is a homophone to kyo (or kyou; 今日), meaning "today". SNK's motto? "The future is now."
Fridge Horror
- Exactly how many people were injured - or worse, killed - when Verse destroyed the arena at the end of KOF XIV? Even worse is that, unlike prior tournaments (namely KOF '96), Antonov actually DID face consequences even though he had no control of what transpired beyond hosting the tournament, to begin with. Keep in mind, this guy was practically swimming in money - he had his own airport, had enough money to buy an entire rainforest, and more than enough to pay the Official Invitation team double than what they were promised initially. All of that gone by the events of XV. Reality sure is a cruel mistress, isn't it?
- On the topic of Inferred Holocausts, just how much was South Town affected by the Zero Cannon's blast during the events of 2000? Because it sure seemed like they rebounded pretty well despite, you know... being nuked into oblivion with a fucking Kill Sat. Even crazier is the fact that, if 2001 was any indication, the KOF tournament was still more popular than ever despite NESTS now openly hosting the tournament. Yikes.
- Considering how much of an utterly loathsome human being Rugal is, plus the rather creepy manner he treats one of his maids in the Shingyouji manga, it's more than likely that Adel and Rose were not conceived consensually; probably through Rugal abusing his Marital Rape License.
- AKIRA references aside, one has to wonder how Krohnen replaced the fleshy abomination from his old SDM into a mechanical claw for the new version in XV. Especially given the disposition that he and Angel left in as well as the fact that, unlike K' or Kula, clearly hasn't had the time to maintain his glove (if you look closely at his render as well as during actual gameplay, its paint is chipping and looking like it's seen better days).
- For that matter, how much experimentation did he go through during his time in NESTS to even have such an ability? If Nameless' backstory is to be believed, whatever NESTS did with their Kyo clones isn't at all pretty.
- On the subject of NESTS' experimentation, how many youths met the same fate as Isolde, tortured to death for the sake of mere scientific results?
