Fridge / The Protomen

• In Act 1 Megaman is missing his iconic Power Copying ability, or so it seems. During all of Act 1 the only named robot he defeats is Protoman, after which he adopts the same view point and forsakes mankind just like Protoman did. Copying his views, not his powers.
• Why does the Heartbeat Soundtrack start as the same time as the synths in Act II? Because it's when Joe's born!
• In the games, the Sniper Joe robot was based on Protoman. The Sniper robot explains how Light got materials to make Protoman in Act I.
• In "Funeral For a Son", why were the people whispering of Protoman? Because he was alive, working for Wily, and oppressing them!
  • Also: He fought the darkness, the darkness won.
• Why did Light build Protoman to fight rather than building some sort of armour for himself or another human? Act II explains that he builds robots to 'take the death away' from jobs.
  • He DID use another human at first. It didn't end well. It parallels his and Wily's initial goal to replace human miners with robot ones.
• Remember Light and Wily's argument back in The Good Doctor? Most people assume that it was Wily who ultimately won the argument, as the entire first album shows. But that's not true, when you think about it enough. Light was right: there was still one man courageous enough to stand up against Wily's oppression.
  • Terrifyingly, Wily was also right: it means nothing time and time again.
  • The infamous 'we will be/BUILD heroes' line. Both Doctors do what they believe will make them heroic in their own eyes- but Wily is the one who takes the more personal role by becoming a hero in the public eye, while Light builds his heroes.
• Protoman claimed humanity would never be willing to stand for itself. However, the prequel album presented Joe - a human who died trying to fight against Wily. This means that Light never told Protoman anything about Joe.
  • He also never told his sons about Emily, as she's never mentioned in Act I.
• Act II starts 30 years prior to the events of Act I. Assuming this means 30 years before Protoman was completed, it means that Breaking Out onward takes place 18 years after the first part of the album. This means that the oldest that Joe could've been was 18, or, more realistically, 16 or 17.
• Notwithstanding the fact that Joe was probably a little too hot-blooded for his own good, it certainly seems strange that he accidentally blows himself up. But the liner notes make the detonation source ambiguous. It's entirely possible that Wily, being the Crazy-Prepared man that he is, set his own explosives on the tower years before, waiting for the day when someone would try to shut them down, so that he could set off the explosion himself to institute martial law, and also take care of a potential rebel/hero.
  • Proven true in the music video, as when Joe enters, not only do robot guards merely stare at him, but he walks right into a trapped room utterly filled with explosives.
• How the World Fell Under Darkness represents the slow transition over time of Wily's rise to and cementing of power, along with a generation of people growing up to know nothing else....and the old criminal elements of the city removed along with the homeless and 'undesirables'. Combine Wily's prep work and probably purges following his full take over, no wonder there was no one left to stand besides Protoman: Wily had a few decades to root out anyone willful enough to fight, likely including non-cooperative law enforcement. Any remaining criminals know damn better to keep their heads down.
• The entirety of The Fall strikes with terrible Fridge Horror power: The song is uplifting and hopeful, and Joe ultimately succeeds in his mission according to the story. However the lyrics explain the truth of the matter: climb to the top of the world, and you will see that when you fall, you fall from a height no man has ever known. But you still fall, and you're still dead.
• In Will of One, Megaman says that if he stays in Dr. Light's lab, he'll never know the truth. He was right about that. Light told him that Protoman died heroically, but the truth is that his brother's alive, fighting for Wily. Had Megaman never left the lab, he'd never know the truth.
• In the games, Protoman's name made sense, since he was always intended to be a prototype. But why does he have the same name in this story, despite being designed as a perfect machine? There are a couple possibilities.
  • From an in-universe standpoint, he was created to carry out one mission, and that was to overthrow Wily. In other words, he was made to follow a protocol.
  • From a symbolic standpoint, while Protoman wasn't the first to (supposedly) die fighting Wily, he was the first whose death inspired others (or at least Megaman) to take up the same cause. This makes him a protomartyr.
  • While The Protomen as in-universe characters is dubiously canon, the Light up the Night music video depicts them and their rebellious fans as active during the second half of Act II. In this version of events, it's possible that Protoman is named after The Protomen rather than vice versa.
• "They watched them beat him, they watched them break him, they watched his last defence deployed." Protoman's last defence isn't a last stand before he's destroyed: his last defence is him surrendering to Wily's robots, perhaps after witnessing the wailing crowd do nothing to help him.

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