Headscratchers / Virtue's Last Reward

Spoilers for this game and its predecessor are unmarked. Spoilers for Zero Time Dilemma are marked.

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• Some votes change depending on your vote - this is made a big deal out of with Phi and is part of how she and Sigma realize that they're both jumping around in time. They're affecting each other from multiple timelines, so they each incorrectly anticipate based on actions in other realities. Fine, that makes sense. But Alice (and, iirc, Tenmyouji) do the same thing at least once. In Alice's case, Sigma comments on how weird it was and talks about all the causality stuff. But why did her vote change? Not just her vote but the justification she uses for it seems completely out of keeping with the Alice who in every other timeline votes Ally in Round 1 (and gets betrayed for it). I was expecting this to lead to a reveal that other characters, not just Sigma and Phi, were also jumping around in time and that this is why they were all being jerks and betraying you at random, because they all had mixed-up information from other betrayals... but instead this was never dealt with. So what was going on? Tenmyouji and Clover at least had Esper powers so it wouldn't be hard to believe they were getting a little bit of timeline bleedover, but Alice isn't supposed to.
  • It's the Schrodinger's Cat theme. Observations in the present can change the past, or rather let you know which alternate timeline you're on.
  • To be a little more specific, Alice and Tenmyouji never change their votes, it's Sigma who's changing what timeline he's in by what he's voting. There's a timeline where Alice/Tenmyouji vote ally, and one where they vote betray. Depending on what vote Sigma puts in, determines what timeline he gets dumped into - The one where they've vote ally, or the one where they voted betray.
  • As it turns out, and by the way, Zero Time Dilemma spoilers: Junpei did his fair share of SHIFTing around the Dcom test site in the events that lead up to VLR's timeline with a few other SHIFTers, which in turn strengthened his ability to SHIFT. Even though he has no memory of the events that took place there, his ability to SHIFT is still usable, meaning he's in the exact same position as Phi/Sigma's Ally/Betray in this game. As for Alice, it's explained in VLR that she was working with participants from both 999's Nonary Game and the game that took place 9 years before. As it's explained in 999, Espers strengthen theirs and others powers when in big enough numbers, basically boosting the potential to tap into the morphogenetic field. So Alice working with the Esper participants would certainly develop her own SHIFT ability, however small it might be.
• A central plot point of Virtue's Last Reward is the lunar eclipse on December 31, 2028. However, a gold file in-game specifically states that the eclipse can only be seen in the Eastern Hemisphere - no part of the eclipse is visible in the United States. Not least Nevada, where the test site is located. While the gold files are indeed non-canon to the plot of the game, it can be quite immersion-breaking should an astute player notice.
  • When it comes to the events of Virtue's Last Reward, this is actually supposed to act as a clue that what you see in the endings where you actually leave the facility isn't the Nevada desert. Although to be specific, the game never once claims that you're in the Nevada desert at any time. Such a thing is just relatively easy for 999 players to assume when they see the vast desert outside the facility. In Dio's ending, Sigma specifically questions "which desert is this?" but no one ever claims they're in Nevada, at least to my memory. Outside of that, the eclipse isn't actually used for anything. I don't recall it even being mentioned in ZTD outside the occasional reference to the fact it's a thing that's gonna happen. With the radio transmission from control, if I recall correctly when the operator starts rambling to the subjects about the moon, he says "I wish you guys could see it— Oh wait, you're supposed to be on Mars, aren't ya'?" From that, it's pretty obvious that he was wishing they could see it from where they are in Nevada. Control was probably somewhere in the Eastern hemisphere, although I admit that does sound kind of a strange set up.
    • Actually, in Zero Time Dilemma, you see the eclipse. The camera pans up to a red moon at the end of Circle of Fate (1).
    • Yes, but given that the the moon in that scene is also unrealistically massive/looks far too close to the Earth, it's sorta a moot point, since it's clearly going for artistic license for the sake of dramatic flair anyway.
    • That doesn't exactly disprove OP's point. If it's artistic licence then it's immersion breaking artistic licence.
    • OP's point was that the red moon shouldn't be visible from within game, which it isn't. The "red moon" in VLR isn't the moon at all, and therefore if anything, the detail OP points out actually ADDS to the game, rather then breaking its immersion. And the only time the red moon ever actually is shown in game is in a scene that involves a slow dramatic pan up to an insanely large moon, which indicates it's artistically spliced together, and not meant to be a literal pan up shot. There is not immersion breaking for anyone who isn't ludicrously nitpicky.
• Okay, so the White doors were matched up with the bombs that Dio set up in Sigma's, Phi's, and Alice's endings. Well, it was revealed that the cast were infected with Radical-6 which slows down their brains to a degree of root-6. It makes sense that the doors would seem like it in the perspective of the people within it as Dr. Klim would set them up like that, but why would the bombs be like that too? Shouldn't they explode in their time limit real-time rather than Radical-6 time?
  • The only times the bombs are actually planted are in the routes where Akane was not murdered (the routes following the Cyan Chromatic Door), where Akane herself placed Dio in the AB Room and then put on the K suit. It is strongly implied that Akane slowed down the timers to compensate for the Radical-6. Note that the bombs do not have a clock face timer.
  • Not only implied, but actually confirmed by Word of God on its Q&A.
• Just after the Security Room puzzle, Sigma experiences a moment where Phi appears sped-up to him. If they're all slowed-down by Radical-6 already, how can he be doubly-slowed? (Phi couldn't have temporarily recovered either as she was messing with the hourglasses at the time and would've noticed something was wrong.)
  • It's the same reason that Quark and Alice experience the same thing during their freakout(s) in the Infirmary. Odds are, Radical-6 symptoms can become much more severe in some persons than others.
    • But if that's the case, why did Sigma and Quark both experience excessive slowdown without any symptoms of suicide? Sure, Quark becomes suicidal shortly after, but Sigma is perfectly fine after it.
    • Actually, this is feasible, since we learn in Zero Time Dilemma that Radical-6 only has a mortality rate of 75%. It's possible that Sigma (in this timeline at least) got lucky, whereas Quark and Alice less so.
• How in the world did Sigma not notice himself getting a robotic eye, a deeper voice, and longer hair during the entire duration of the Nonary Game? Even if he was feeling "out of it", those new characteristics are pretty hard to miss.
  • The voice is something he just got used to. The hair isn't much difference either (and probably isn't that long to show off the different hair color). The eye, on the other hand, is pretty unlikely to have not been noticed though. Zero Sr. probably should have invested in a replacement that completely fits in the socket rather than the one he wore.
  • His voice could be passed off as him thinking he was ill; people's voices do change a lot when they fall ill, and that he was just talking deeper than usual due to it. Either that or he just flat out didn't notice. It'd be harder than you'd think to notice sudden changes in your own voice, because you don't really pay attention to that sort of thing, or if you did, your perspective of it would be skewed anyway since we all hear our own voices differently than others hear them. As for the eye, Sigma does note on a number of occasions about how his vision seems to be wavering, or that he's finding it difficult to focus his sight. It's possible that, since it's a far ways into the future from our present, that stuff like robotic eyes are near perfect and the user can't tell the difference between wearing one and having a real eye. If this is the case, the only difference Sigma would feel is the occasional inability to completely see, which we do see him experiencing occasionally. Although Sigma, and us when we first see it most likely, just passes it off as his stress and emotions over the situation he's in.
  • To add onto this, one could question why Sigma never notices his hands and arms being different, given the hands of a 67 year old man should logically be different from one at least 40 years younger. He should be able to see them just fine. But the answer comes pretty easily, as they're synthetic. He may have had the cybernetics modeled after his arms back when he was in his prime, perhaps even planning on requiring this for the deception. In whichever case, his hands would look about the same, so he wouldn't notice. And if anyone else took notice, they might just assume that Sigma is a man who just took good care of his hands and arms.
• What exactly is Luna doing when she's "dead" in Clover's ending? As a robot, she shouldn't be influenced by Radical-6 and would have no reason to kill herself. The only thought I can come up with is that Lagomorph took over, and have her act as a "human" by going along with the death. Though, she would be contributing a pile of white blood to the mix of everyone's red blood underneath her then...unless she didn't cut anything that bled.
  • Odds are that it's an order that Akane gave to her: "If the most/all of the players in the timeline you are in begin to succumb to Radical-6, you are to shut down immediately and not help them". To Akane, it doesn't matter if the players (including Sigma) all die, Sigma got the information he needed to gain the password in K's ending.
  • Which explains everything except the pool of red blood under her. I'm guessing she was altered, or she did something to make it look like, when she killed herself, that she was bleeding red.
    • More likely Luna was the last to "die", moved one of the bodies and shut down on top of their bloodpools to make it look like hers.
    • If you look carefully, you can see the slash wound on everyone, either on their neck or their wrists, but Luna's neck and wrists are all visible and clearly unwounded.
• When you "ally" against Dio with the Axelavir, why doesn't Sigma think to use the Neostigmine if he discovered it was a cure for Tubocurarine in another route?
  • Phi mentions that it's not a guarantee that they will have access to all of the memories from alternate routes. Not to mention that they didn't have the Neostigmine in that route, as the Treatment Center was never opened, or the urgency of the situation at hand.
  • This is even more obvious if you've done Luna's ending and therefore, out-of-universe, know that the bracelets can actually be removed trivially at any time using that trick with the tinfoil. Clearly Sigma never remembers this in any other timeline, but in that case in particular he could have easily saved himself from the second injection if he did. It would also allow everyone to escape through the number nine door in any timeline where it's opened, which makes it seem odd that Luna was allowed to say it.
• If Sigma gets the bomb code from his future self, where did his future self get the code? It's mentioned elsewhere that if his past experience is his only source for the bomb code, it creates a paradox because there is no original source for getting that information, e.g. from Dio.
  • They are separate worlds, an alternate timeline. If you use the analogy of the biker gang from the Another Time section, you can consider that opening a new path does not destroy what happened in the original event, but creates a different reality where all the bikers survive. Now you have two realities, one where most of them are dead, and another where they survive. Use of information from one reality to another requires specialized skill (i.e. Sigma's abilities), but is, according to the game's concepts on time, possible.
  • It's a little less complex than that. Someone mentioned that the password to that bomb decodes as name significant to Akane. So she probably changed the password on the bomb and the password was agreed upon before hand. Plus, this is also evidence that Akane probably tampered with the bombs' timers so that they would work in Radical 6 time. All of this was pretty much confirmed via Word of God.
  • Or it could alternatively be that as revealed in ZTD, Akane and Brother were working together on this so the passwords are significant to Akane because Brother made them so and sent what the passwords would be in advance. It would certainly explain how Akane, the last person to be an expert in bomb defusal/tampering would be able to so easily get past its passwords and change the timer. Since Sigma did all this to prevent VLR's events he wasn't in on it, but it's not out of the question that Akane could've spun a story about how one of her future visions made her see what one of the passwords would be so he could record it. Even if she had changed the password, she would still have needed the original to do so.
• During Quark's route, Dio threatens to smash the Axelavir if Sigma tries to tell anyone he's blackmailing him... and then proceeds to leave Sigma and Clover's side for large amounts of time. Even worse, he goes into an AB Room (which is soundproofed) before Sigma and Clover do. So what exactly is stopping Sigma from pulling one or more of the others aside while Dio can't see/hear him, telling them what's going on, and then jumping Dio the moment he stepped out of the AB Room?
  • Simple. If he's immediately cornered, he still has an opportunity to smash the Axelavir. And even if the others were let on, Dio still has his awareness. If he noticed somebody else acting unusually, he wouldn't hesitate in destroying it. And the others would most likely react desperately, especially Tenmyouji.
  • Even simpler: Dio is an idiot. He falls for really simple "hey look over there" tricks from Phi and Tenmyouji, he takes Sigma's bait after only one or two attempts at denying anything, and he'll give out bomb codes just for a laugh. It seems perfectly believable that he would act this stupidly.
• Why is it that, in the flashbacks in K's route, Dr. Klim isn't wearing the same robotic suit Kyle is supposed to wear in order not to let his muscles atrophy?
  • Maybe it's more important for K to do so because he's growing up on the moon, while Dr. Klim has been full-grown for a long time. We don't really know how moonbase environments work, so who knows, it could make a difference. Note that Akane doesn't wear a suit either. It's also possible that this was just a ruse to some degree, because Dr. Klim knew K would have to wear a full-body disguise during the Nonary Game.
    • It is indeed because K was born on the moon and would have otherwise had undeveloped bones. Akane & Dr. Klim had fully developed before they went to the lab.
• Why did the Axelavir cure the Radical-6 infection in Quark and Alice, but they remain sick enough to experience time differently along with everyone else until the big reveal?
  • This is handwaved: apparently "some symptoms remain" after Axelavir is administered. Pretty convenient!
    • When one recovers from a major illness, their immune system & body take time to recover. Same thing.
• If everyone is already suffering from Radical-6, thereby perceiving time more slowly than it is actually occurring, then how does it seem to happen to some people again during the story? Specifically, in Alice's route, once she's been cured, she comments on everything seeming to be on fast-forward, while the same thing happens to Sigma himself in Luna's route. If everyone and everything had already been slowed down so as not to alert anyone who didn't already know that they were on the moon and suffering from Radical-6, how did the facade break like that?
  • Radical-6 was injected into everyone so they wouldn't know they were on the moon. Radical-6 speeds the world up, so that you perceive it at √6 of it's normal rate. This just so happens to be roughly the same amount of difference in gravity between the Earth and the moon. In other words, as demonstrated in game, if you were to drop an object on the moon and it takes 2.45 seconds to fall to the ground, if you did the same thing on Earth, where the gravity is roughly √6 of that on the moon, it'd only take 1 second. The same thing occurs for people walking, talking, ect. If no one was affected with Radical-6, everything would appear to be slowed down, although time itself would be going at the same rate. The affects of Radical-6 balanced it out perfectly, so it appeared that everything was going at a normal speed. Therefore everyone processed time as being experienced like on Earth. This is what managed to break through on occasion. The fact they were experiencing everything in fast forward but not noticing due to the affects of being on the moon balancing it out. No one was "healed" or "got it again", just at times, maybe because the infection got worse or due to some other reason, some people began to notice the fact they were actually unwittingly perceiving everything in fast forward.
• In Luna's route, we learn that Zero Jr. was ordered to move the AB Room. This seems simple enough, it's treated as a little strange but we're quite sure it was Zero Sr who made the order. Only later on we find out Sigma is Zero. So did he make some off-hand remark that Zero Jr mistook for an order? Or was it just because of the exact variables that had to occur for the plan to succeed?
  • It's the latter. In order to completely replicate the Nonary Game as Sigma had experienced it 45 years previous, Zero Jr. was ordered to move the AB Room in the event of the murder of Akane. However, in the routes where the murder didn't happen, the AB Room never moved.
• Sigma's true face is revealed when he bends down to look into the water in the B. Garden. Okay. So why didn't he notice during the puzzle in that room, where you're pretty much guaranteed to do the same as part of it? Or even just catch a glimpse of himself while waking over the bridges?
  • This is operating under the assumption that Sigma ever had a reason to look into the water, save for the Lion motif in the pond... during the day. The only time he looks at the water directly, it is dark in order to find the stars. It's reasonable there was no reason to go close enough that a reflection could be seen in the daytime anyway.
  • It's dark when the stars turn on, yeah, but they seemed to give off their own light. And for something that shocking, you'd think even a little would be enough for him to notice.
    • For a reflection to be cast on a transparent surface, such as glass or, in this case, water, a light source is required on the same side of the surface as the object being reflected. Since the light from the stars is coming from under the water, it is on the opposite side of the water's surface as the object in question, Sigma specifically, and therefore, no reflection is cast.
• In K's route, who destroyed Dio's bracelet? The characters hypothesize it was Dio's killer...who is later revealed to be K, who would have no reason to do so. Did Dio somehow break it as he was dying?
  • Word of God has it that K did indeed break it, in order to see who you would save: him or Phi. Also, the bracelet is seen intact when Dio's body is discovered, so it's impossible he destroyed it posthumously.
• VLR does a pretty good job of covering its tracks and keeping everything in order, but there was one small Plot Hole I noticed: Assuming she was telling the truth about it being a pre-recorded message, how did hologram!Akane know that the players would refer to Lagomorph as Zero Jr., when he introduced himself as Zero III? Granted, it's implied she can also jump through time like Sigma and Phi, but I doubt she would do so for such a small detail.
  • Actually, it's the other way around. In at least six routes, including Phi's, K is the one who comes up with the Zero Sr./Jr. designations. And remember who was in K's armor in that route? Akane didn't make the recording to fit the name, she came up with the name to match the recording, and also to match the histories Sigma experienced.
  • Alternative answer: she's Akane Kurashiki, she's done this exact thing before.
• Why was the entire Nonary Game important? Even Alice and Clover say it was important, and they don't get the satisfaction of revenge like Akane and Sigma do, but it's multiple timeline time travel, not "past gets overwritten" time travel. No one benefits from the whole thing.
  • While what you say is true, this isn't a plot hole. The game makes it quite clear that many people, including Clover, Alice and Tenmyouji think the entire thing was a very pointless and rather selfish affair, that gave no benefits to anyone from their timeline apart from Sigma and Phi. If the game never addressed this point, and acted like the entire plan was without any side-effects, then I'd agree that would be a problem, but as the game stood, it was put quite clearly in game as a negative trait of Akane's character and her plan rather than as an actual plot hole. So there's really no problem here in terms of plot.
  • I always assumed it was something like the following:
    • Timeline 1: Sigma does not have his time powers in 2028, and doesn't know anything about Free the Soul's plan. Outbreak happens, but Sigma survives.
    • Sigma trains his time powers over the next few decades and realises he could use them to prevent outbreak.
    • Timeline 2: Sigma travels back to 2028, but since he developed his powers significantly after the outbreak, he is straining them to the limit to act that far back in his past. He is therefore unable to loop consistently enough and ends up losing both his arms.
    • Sigma survives the outbreak and comes up with the Nonary Game plan.
    • Events of Virtue's Last Reward. Sigma, now Zero Sr, forces a younger version of himself, the player character, into his body to play the Nonary Game. Over the course of the game young Sigma develops his powers.
    • Once game is finished, young Sigma returns to his own time.
    • Timeline 3: Sigma has now mastered his powers in 2028 so he is able to use them properly when trying to stop the outbreak c.f. possible 3rd game in the series.
• Sigma not noticing that he's actually in an old man's body is consistent with the fact that most of the mirrors and water you discover in the various rooms are mentioned to be broken or dirty, thus he couldn't see his reflection. Though the above example of the pond in the garden could be justified by saying he probably didn't have reason to look in the pond directly/for long enough to notice, but... The puzzle in the Crew Quarters includes a sheet of aluminum foil that's said to be really reflective. So reflective that it's part of solving the puzzle. How did Sigma notice its super reflective properties without catching so much as a glimpse of his face?
  • Go get a sheet of aluminum foil and look into the shiny side. Just because it's reflective doesn't mean the reflection is the slightest bit coherent. Most reflective surfaces you'll get an outline or a shadow at best, or a smudgy blur. If he did catch enough of a look for something wrong to be obvious, he could easily just dismiss it as a trick of the light.
• What was the significance of the spotlights in the Rec Room being fake?
  • They make shadows of the puzzle solution, with the attacking knight wielding an ax, even if you haven't switched the weapons. It's a hint, since the fake shadow would presumably be showing what a real shadow would look like if everything was set up correctly.
• Interestingly, it appears that Free the Soul and Akane have switched clothes in this game, with Free the Soul members wearing the gas mask and hood and Akane wearing the robes (as seen in 999). I have deduced that it's probably symbolic foreshadowing for the next game, in which (I'm assuming) the Zero of the new Nonary Game will be a member of Free the Soul, but are there any other reasons for the switch, or maybe hints that I'm forgetting?
  • When were FTS members wearing Zero outfits?
  • This is all explained in Zero Time Dilemma.
• I always assumed Luna and K's endings acted out pretty similarly, at least in regards as to what happened to Tenmyouji and Clover. Until last night when I went back to play it just for fun. In K's ending, the group specifically splits up into pairs. K and Sigma go to the Infirmary first, then the Treatment Center, then the Floor B warehouse where Phi implies she and Dio had been waiting awhile. They then proceed to go to the Rec Room, reveal Dio as a murderer and bring him straight to the Treatment Center. Dio had no opportunity to do away with Tenmyouji and Clover. The only possibility is if, as soon as you left the Infirmary, Dio split up from Phi and murders the two of them (which, if it happens the same way as in Luna's ending, involves going to the Crew Quarters too before having a time consuming confrontation in the Infirmary) and get back to the Floor B Warehouse with enough time to spare for him to have seemingly been waiting for Sigma and K with Phi for awhile. Which seems incredibly unlikely given the fact that Phi never mentions she and Dio split up for any reason. Clover and Tenmyouji would have to agree to split up for some reason too. Any way I look at it, Dio seems innocent of their deaths in K's ending, meaning Clover and Tenmyouji just fell into a plot hole.
  • Actually, when you meet up with Phi and Dio in the Floor B warehouse, Phi's specific line when Dio says "you're late" is "You're one to talk. How much earlier did you get back? I'd be surprised if you even searched at all.", which implies that the two of them did indeed split up. It'd make sense if they did as well, since Phi was less than happy about having to pair up with him. Considering the length of time it would have taken K & Sigma to go from the Infirmary, to the GAULEM Bay, then to the Treatment Center, then back to Warehouse B, it's hardly a stretch to imagine this series of events occurring: Sigma & K leave the Infirmary - Clover enters - Dio enters - Tenmyouji enters and tries to stop Dio - Dio murders the two - Dio then makes his way to Warehouse B - Phi arrives soon after and Dio puts on an act of having been there for a while - Sigma & K turn up a while after.
  • For it to work, everyone except Sigma and K must have decided to split up almost immediately despite everyone agreeing it's best to search in pairs. Clover must have then decided to go to the Crew Quarters despite knowing Dio and Phi should be there. Tenmyouji would only logically go to the Pantry next since that's where he's meant to be searching (and he would have run into Sigma/K if he went to the Treatment Center and Phi if we went to the Rec Room). Then, instead of going back to Warehouse B like instructed Tenmyouji would have to decide to go to the Infirmary for no conceivable reason (though, trying to justify it, I suppose maybe he wanted to see Akane's body). After incapacitating Dio and returning to Floor B Warehouse, they have fifty minutes until the white doors open. That means looking at the results, deciding to split up, searching, going to the rec room, going to the Treatment Center and then back to Warehouse B took about forty minutes. Considering they spent about 10 minutes talking before searching in Luna's route, the potential search time is twenty minutes at best. For Dio to kill the two of them, he must have done it much earlier than in Luna's ending, in the same location (since you go everywhere but the Infirmary after Sigma and K search it), with a completely different motivation (since Luna is already killed) all within an extremely tiny time frame that requires every character other than Sigma and K to go back on an agreement they just made. You're right, Phi does seem to imply she and Dio split up to some degree (though the way it's proposed is still clunky since her accusation means she'd have to know how long Dio was waiting for her before she arrived) but the setup still requires a pretty massive suspension of disbelief to reconcile. It might be easier to just assume they succumbed to Radical-6 and killed themselves in this scenario (which would also provide a good explanation for why they ended up in the Infirmary. It's where the scalpels are).
• Another thing that slightly bothers me, purely from a narrative standpoint, why have Dio, Phi and Clover go through the Treatment Center? If they went through the GAULEM Bay, then Luna could have opened the door to the Treatment Center, K would have got his key from Dio and Sigma would have got the cure from the unlocked Treatment Center. In which case, there would have been no randomly opened extra room for no explained reason.
  • It's because they needed to establish that Dio stole the Neostigmine which would be used to save someone from the Tubocurarine. If they didn't go through the Treatment Center, then Sigma would be at a standstill on how to save K and/or Phi, and thus not be able to get K's password. As for who might've opened the GAULEM Bay in that timeline, it was probably Luna, when she placed Quark in the Treatment Pod. She also had to open the safe and take everything out except for the key. Then she presumably went and "killed" herself next to Alice with the injection gun since she had no more role to play in that timeline.
• The reason in-universe why Rhizome-9 is blown sky high after the bombs go off is the bomb set next to the control room. So why does Rhizome-9 still explode spectacularly after Bomb #2 has been disarmed and other bombs go off?
  • As discussed in game, the bombs have an explosive power of 45 billion joules, which is the equivalent to one ton of TNT. As Dio says, that's enough explosive power to level a 10 story building. Two of those bombs would almost definitely destroy the entire facility as shown in game. An annihilation reactor, as discussed by Clover and Phi, has explosive power that's equivalent to 10,000 times the power of the Little Boy bomb used by the USA on Hiroshima. That kind of explosion wouldn't just blow up the facility, it would pretty much annihilate every single survivor who's held up on the moon. And that's the best case scenario. The explosion we see when deactivating the bombs fail is the antimatter bombs themselves detonating. The detonation of the reactor most likely occurs after that.
  • Plus, considering the moon's lower gravity and lack of atmosphere, an explosion would likely carry further than an equivalent force on Earth.
• Some of the puzzle rooms would only work with specific requirements being met. For example, in the PEC room, Clover stormed out of the PEC chamber before the decompression. If she hadn't have done that, all three of them would have been stuck in there without any way of finding out how to unlock the door. There's also the Lounge. In-universe wise, it'd be possible for Sigma, Phi and Luna to make enough mistakes when trying to work out to mix the drinks, to basically render the password impossible to get due to running out of the contents of one of the bottles. I wonder what exactly would have happened if something like that did happen?
  • Zero III was likely ordered to close the PEC door if at least one person were searching either side.
  • As for the Lounge and other rooms, it's likely that Zero III was ordered to give the password in the event any puzzle was rendered unsolvable. For example, K and Dio enter the Director's Office in the Luna end route, and the puzzle in there requires a female face to be scanned. Since neither can solve that puzzle, it's likely Zero allowed them to bypass the puzzle or gave them the escape password outright. Luna was also probably told the passwords to each safe, so she could step in if all the alcohol was lost in the Lounge, for example. Akane would have known the puzzle solutions too.
  • It's also equally likely that no failsafe was programmed, and any team who could not progress would eventually be penalised.
• Why does nobody ever try to open the big door on the Floor B warehouse after escaping through the Number 9 Door? It can be unlocked from the outside after the game ends, and it would ensure that everyone escapes. So why does nobody ever try it outside of the True Ending?
  • Because, of the participants that escape:
    • Dio has no reason to help anyone in the facility once he escapes - besides, opening that door for them would delay his mission. Plus, what difference does it make whether some imperfect "humans" die inside Rhizome-9 or elsewhere?.
    • Clover, Phi and K escape with the intention of finding help, and THEN returning to rescue those left.
    • Quark, in Luna's bad endings, has no reason to return to the facility - Tenmyouji is dead, and Quark wouldn't care if anyone was still in the facility.
    • Luna, betrayed by Sigma and Phi, has no reason to help them escape with her and Quark.
    • Sigma goes through the Red Door with Alice and Clover, and thus never sees the Floor B door. It therefore wouldn't cross his mind that such a door would exist.
    • If the other participants escape without Sigma in Sigma's bad ending, the group would be highly unlikely to want to open the door for him - even if Luna and Akane insisted.
  • Plus, even if the Floor B door is unlocked along with the other doors, there's no way to open it from the inside without the help of Zero III, who was likely ordered not to.
• When Sigma learns in a timeline that K's identity is Kyle Klim, his son/clone, he jumps to another timeline. So in the Phi ending, he and Phi learns that, in that timeline, the identity of K is instead Akane. I wonder, why in these 2 timelines the words the clone and Akane say are the same before the timelines diverge? It's strange that 2 different characters say identical things.
  • You have to look at it from a fourth dimensional perspective. The idea is that they're both Akane and Kyle at the same time. Both of those possibilities exist inside that suit of armour before Sigma makes his first choice. The reason they say the same thing is because the events are only happening once. There are not separate versions of the opening timeline, it's the one branch the splits off. It's those splits that effect's who K is. The idea is essentially that they say the same thing because while they're saying it, they're both Kyle and Akane at the same time. On another level, it would also be weird if, after having his choice, the opening events are randomly altered in everyone's heads depending on what's been chosen. They've seen it, so it's what was said.
    • If you want a less complex explanation... I guess you could just say that Akane was purposefully saying the exact same things she knew Kyle would have said, given she's an esper and all.
    • Not to mention that Akane knows what's going to happen anyway. She could even have a teleprompter in there.
  • And what about the key attached to Sigma's ankle? Are you telling me that if Sigma does all the things to get to the true ending, he always has the key to his ankle and that if he makes other choices, like going to the yellow door before AB Game 1, he doesn't get the key? The key cannot at the same time exist and not exist for Schröedinger's Cat.
    • Yes, it can. In the timelines that Akane dies, the key is likely still on her body. There's every chance it could have been found after the KURASHIKI card in Quark's ending, but Alice succumbing to Radical-6 conveniently interrupted. Failing that, it's also possible Dio looted it as part of his contingency plan, but left the card once he learned the username and password. Plus, it's likely Sigma would never notice the key in the first place, since the gravity of the moon would make it lighter and less intrusive.
• I did have a difficult time accepting that Tenmyouji's full name is Junpei Tenmyouji. Tenmyouji sounds a bit unusual for a Japanese surname; you would think Clover and Alice would have pressed him about it. Hell, there could have been a scenario where they would ask him about a guy named "Junpei" and he could have easily lied by telling them he's his grandson.
  • Tenmyouji is Japanese and, since the rest of the cast (except Akane, who knew anyway) aren't Japanese, they almost certainly wouldn't be familiar with Japanese family names. Alice and Clover have no reason to trust Tenmyouji (or anyone else) isn't Zero, so they wouldn't ask (or even expect him to know) about the events of 999 without Tenmyouji raising the subject, which he wouldn't. Then, consider the matter of his name from Tenmyouji's own perspective:
    • Quark is his grandson, and never refers to him as anything other than "Grandpa". Quark would never violate Tenmyouji's trust by betraying such a personal secret, and was probably told by Tenmyouji not to say anything while Sigma and Phi were solving the Elevator puzzle.
    • Clover and Alice would not recognise him due to his age, and don't know his surname. Zero ordered Tenmyouji to keep quiet about the fate of the world on the threat of his and Quark's life, and revealing his name to them would endanger Quark's life.
    • Luna bears an uncanny resemblance to Diana, one of the Dcom participants. Tenmyouji has no way to tell whether or not she is actually Diana, a relative, or someone unrelated.
    • Phi, to Tenmyouji, has come straight from the Dcom test site and, like Clover and Alice, wouldn't recognise his surname.
    • Sigma is Zero, and ordered Tenmyouji directly not to give anything away that could compromise the AB Project. From Tenmyouji's perspective, Sigma already knows who he is, as the two met 45 years prior at the Dcom site.
    • Except Tenmyouji couldn't remember much if anything from the Dcom test site after being hit with a large dose of the memory-wiping drug. It's certainly likely if anything that he doesn't know Zero Sr.'s identity and had he met him in person, it would've likely been done disguised.
    • Dio is unfamiliar to Tenmyouji, and as such doesn't need to know his name.
    • K, even if he isn't Akane, has amnesia. Since Tenmyouji has no way to know who K is or if his amnesia is genuine, then the safest bet for him is to use his surname.
  • Finally, let's not forget that Junpei Tenmyouji joined a detective agency after the events of 999, frequently risking his life on missions and also building notoriety with Free the Soul. That, coupled with his Japanese heritage and nearly a half-century of living in the post-apocalypse has probably influenced how often Tenmyouji has needed to use his first name in the first place.
  • As the OP, I want to point out that this was listed under Fridge Logic because I originally intended it to be an observation than an actual question. My point was with an unusual surname like Tenmyouji, the writers could have lampshaded it somehow.
• Why are some people put in treatment pods and others were called directly from Earth, i.e. Quark and Tenmyouji?
  • I'm assuming you're asking "Why are some characters put in the treatment pods while others were brought from Earth". In which case, it's because the plan requires the AB Game to be exactly how Sigma remembers it, which means it requires Tenmyouji to be an old man, but Clover and Alice to be young, so Sigma put them in the treatment pods to freeze them. It's also possible that Clover and Alice don't survive the Radical-6 outbreak - just look at how often Alice succumbs to the disease in the Nonary Game.
• An unused vote in the AB game defaults to "Ally". Why does nobody ever even suggest people voluntarily staying out of the AB rooms to help maximize trust in the votes? Yes, the additional rules state that, at least starting with the second AB game, one in every voting pair needs to cast a vote and some participants would understandably oppose it, but it is still a valid strategy and it's weird nobody brings it up as a possibility.
  • This actually is suggested by Phi in Tenmyouji's ending, Tenmyouji in Clover's ending and several other times. Predictably, it was immediately shot down, since the cast (sans Luna) can't stop betraying each other.
• Why does Dio never attempt to sow chaos into the group? Considering his goal, this should be the first thing he plans to do once he plants the bombs, but he never does anything of the sort. It's not like there aren't any chances, either. He could say that no, the Radical-6 newspaper isn't fake and proceed to explain everything that's really been going on (or even lie to make it seem worse than it is), but he just denies its existence and plays along with everyone else. Instead, his attempts to disrupt the game amount to...betraying everyone in the AB Game.
  • The preponderance of evidence seems to indicate that Dio is a complete idiot, but doing so would blow his cover. Dio doesn't know how many people were brought to the facility after the apocalypse or even who Zero is. Dio snuck into the facility, and that information would immediately give away his identity.
• Why doesn't Sigma ever read the files he finds in the safe? Why doesn't he ever share them? The other characters react to him inputting that password, and some even acknowledge that there are files in there, but nobody ever reads them. Considering some of them mention plot points well before you could reasonably reach them, it would give the cast a lot of knowledge about future events.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation. The gold file are a bonus for the players, and don't exist in universe, as it apparent by the way a number of them are directly written from an out of universe perspective and refer to the game itself.
    • But in that case, why have them react at all? Or if they do react, just have them wonder why the safe is empty to imply that only Sigma can see them. It would hardly be the strangest thing in the game.
    • A magical fourth wall breaking golden file that only Sigma can see, that exists for no reason in-universe, definitely would be the "strangest" thing in the game by far. In-universe, there are no file passwords and there is nothing else in the safe. It's a gameplay gimmick. The characters just talk about it so it doesn't seem out of place.
• Why does everyone not do anything to a character that isn't Sigma when they have enough BP to open the number 9 door? While it would be very hard to stop K, and they do admittedly occasionally put in a token effort with Dio, everyone seems content to merely yell at the person to stop...unless they're Sigma, and even if Sigma openly has no intention of leaving, as seen in Phi's bad ending where they knock him out as a "precaution". They even refuse to help Sigma keep Dio in during Quark's ending, despite the former having a death grip on the latter's leg. While it was part of Sigma's plan, having someone at least do more than gawk would be nice.
  • Discounting K (as it would be difficult for anyone else to stop him), the other characters could run under the door before it fully opened. The [<9] participants would struggle to run through the door, drag someone else back into the warehouse in the alloted time. Plus, if the number 9 door closed with no-one on the other side, who would escape to find help?
    • It's stated with some characters that they wait for the door to fully open instead of ducking under it as it opens (Dio, however, does duck under it when he feels threatened). While most characters that choose to betray go near the number 9 door if that betrayal would get them 9 BP as opposed to standing with everyone else and waiting to see the scoreboard, a simple glance at the door from a more logical-focused character like Alice, Tenmyouji, Dio, or K (assuming the latter two aren't the ones trying to escape and the former isn't suffering from effects from Radical-6) would also work for preventing that.
  • From what I can remember at least, during most occasions when Sigma gets 9 BP, there's some sort of additional weight behind everyone's insistence to stop him from leaving. In Phi's bad ending, Sigma was the only one who betrayed that round so everyone was pretty much united against the one "traitor". The only other time I can recall Sigma getting to 9 BP and then getting restrained from escaping is in Clover's bad ending, where he takes advantage of a sick, unconscious kid who couldn't vote and was going to default to ally. It's sort of obvious in that situation that everyone wouldn't exactly be willing to just let him go.
    • But in Phi's good ending, she does the exact same thing Sigma does in her bad ending, except Phi actively tries to leave. Sigma stops her by standing in front of her and having a discussion, but none of the characters in the room (which, if memory serves, includes the physically capable K) do anything but watch. Phi betrayed Sigma, except shows that she has complete intent to leave, and nobody seems to care.
    • First off, to their credit, they actually do attempt to stop Phi from getting to the door; the attempt failed however because Phi has the "ability" to jump high through the freakin' air. Second, it's pretty much guaranteed over and pointless if there's only one person (or two/three cooperating together) capable of opening the number 9 door and that person has their hand on the lever ready to pull down at a moment's notice. In Phi's bad ending, Sigma never even gets close to the number 9 door before he is restrained, and in Clover's bad ending, he's restrained anyway because Clover also happens to have 9 BP, plus they figure, "better that she leaves than this disgusting traitor." The only reason Phi isn't restrained afterwards is because she was in a guaranteed position to win the game and trap all of them, and was persuaded otherwise not to.
  • Another thing to remember is that most of the people who dash for the door are young, healthy, physically strong, and athletic. It makes sense that the heavily-armored K, the athletic Phi, the highly-trained Dio, Alice, or Clover, and so on would have a better chance of dashing out. Whereas while we're lead to believe he's a healthy young man, Sigma's body is in reality one of the weaker ones present - he has no special training and is actually an old man, making him easy for the others to subdue. On top of this, Sigma never actually dashes for the door - he always insists he will stay, giving the others more of a chance to subdue him.
    • Not true. Clover observes that Sigma could easily overpower her if he wanted to, suggesting that even as an old man, he's relatively fit. Seeing just how buff he is in ZTD, it's not unreasonable to think that even past his prime, he's far from weak—especially since his arms are robotic and are therefore not subject to the weakening that the rest of his body would have undergone.
• In the leftmost path (where Sigma and Phi team up with Luna), when Sigma and Phi go into the AB Room, Phi demands that they vote betray. If Sigma votes ally, Phi is upset and says something akin to "maybe this time, it'll be different" but doesn't explain what she means. Obviously, this is a reference to her ability to jump to various timelines and having seen other AB game results before, but in this particular context, this means one of two things. Either 1: Phi believes Luna will vote betray based off of information gained from other timelines, even though she never votes betray in any timeline under any circumstance against any opponent that we see, and it's highly unlikely Phi saw any timeline that Sigma didn't. Or 2: Phi believes Luna will vote ally and wants to use that to get on the fast track to 9 BP, even though if she has seen other timelines, she should know that voting betray in one round makes it very hard to get any more points in future rounds. Also, this seems to contradict her "maybe this time it'll be different" line. The only other option I can think of is that Phi has seen Tenmyouji and/or Alice vote betray when the Sigma/Phi team vote ally in round one and just assumes Luna will do the same.
  • It's either the latter (seen Tenmyouji/Alice betray and assumes Luna will do the same) or perhaps Luna somehow did betray them in another timeline. Remember, all the timelines that we see in VLR only constitute part of all possible timelines that could occur. As unlikely as it is to Luna's character, she is still capable of choosing "betray" in some unseen timelines. Heck, she doesn't even have to be the one making the vote; Luna is hooked up to the same quantum computer as Zero Jr. and it's known that Luna's access to her body can be cut off, so who's to say Zero III couldn't take over and make her choose betray? Of course, since she has to remain undercover, she wouldn't be able to explain her "motive" for betraying and Phi would assume she's intent on betraying them.
  • Another possibility is that Phi is referring to the fact that the far-left timeline is actually one of the most blatantly catastrophic for most people, excluding after-the-game-ends deaths that Phi probably doesn't stick around to learn about - almost everyone dies in that route. It's possible that Phi saw that branch, didn't see the alternative, and is objecting to the fact that you're headed towards an ending where almost everyone gets murdered. This would also mean that she wants to vote 'betray' there because she's like a player who has just seen how bad the 'ally' branch ends up and is hoping the alternative is better.
• Why exactly did Dio draw attention to the IG replicator just after escaping from the laboratory? I guess that, from an out of universe perspective, it's to ensure that Sigma & the player did actually get a chance to examine it since it wasn't a requirement to examine it during the escape. But why was Dio interested in drawing attention to it in the first place?
  • Maybe he was trying to make himself seem more natural to more easily swipe the Axelavir. Just straight out asking about getting a closer look at the medicine would've been too suspicious.
    • Not to mention that he seemed legitimately curious about the thing when asking about it.
  • It's possible he legitimately did not know what it was. He's neither a doctor nor a scientist.
• Why is Phi the only character who can jump really high? I can get Sigma, Tenmyouji, and Quark not being able to jump high, maybe, for age-related reasons, and K has that heavy suit of armor, but the others should be as capable of jumping high as Phi. Do they just never try at any point during the game to jump?
  • The latter's probably it; just because they were capable of jumping high like Phi could, doesn't necessarily mean it could've crossed their mind. They still believe that they are in Earth's gravity (sans Tenmyouji and possibly Quark who probably doesn't know much about the Moon's gravity) so they have no logical reason to believe they can jump that high. As for Phi, it seems like (ZTD spoilers) she's capable of jumping like that regardless of either gravity she's in; we see her jump kick Delta right in the face from halfway across the room. It seems that she is confident enough in her athletic abilities as to not have much qualms about doing such feats in the first place.
  • K actually makes a leap out of his AB room during his intro, landing a good distance away while carrying Clover. Most of the other characters knew they were on the moon and probably escaped the same way. It's questionable how Alice, a solo player who thought she was on Earth, managed to get out though. Perhaps another character helped pull her out.
  • Five out of the nine players would know that they were on the moon, and taking into account the nature of K's Schrodinger's Cat situation, technically four if K is Kyle. Not to mention, K's jumping could be attributed by the players out of the loop to the suit he's wearing. Going further, Tenmyouji and Quark have no idea if the inside of Rhizome-9 has artificial gravity similar to Earth's, since they've never been there before and from their perspective it feels almost the same. In fact, the only person who would have no reason not to jump if he were bothered would be Dio, since everyone else either doesn't know or is keeping mum about it.
• If Dio knows that the point of the AB project is to change the future by jumping into different past timelines, why would he give Phi and Sigma any of the bomb passwords, even if an explosion has already happened? Shouldn't he know that it's not "too late" because they can just take that knowledge to a different timeline and use it to thwart him there? I get that Dio has shown himself not to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but wouldn't Brother have briefed him on all this and given him specific instructions to not do that?
  • When does Dio know that? IIRC, this information was only brought up by Akane Kurashiki shortly before and after the AB game was finished. All Dio should know is that the AB Project was going to undo Free the Soul's efforts if it was completed, not how it was going to do that. As for Brother not briefing him on the point of the AB Project, (ZTD spoilers) it's implied that Brother deliberately sabotaged Dio from the get-go and was working in cahoots with Akane to make the project succeed.
• In the yellow door-ally with Tenmyouji-blue door-ally with Tenmyouji path, which features Alice committing suicide and Clover threatening to murder everyone in the game if they can't prove that none of them killed Alice: how is the information given to Clover by that point in THAT timeline not sufficient to get her to calm down, but a random page in a random journal she's never seen before, being translated by someone she clearly doesn't trust, good enough for her to calm down? By that point in that timeline path, Clover already knows about Radical-6, knows that an outbreak of it actually happened in real life, personally saw Quark try to kill himself (with the very same scalpel that Alice uses no less), knows that Quark was infected with Radical-6, and even heard Luna theorize Radical-6 caused sufferers to want to commit suicide. Despite all this knowledge, she (somewhat understandably) freaks out when finding Alice's body and blames everyone else. Maybe she forgot about the Quark subplot she was just involved in, maybe she forgot all about Radical-6, she's clearly unstable after losing her superior officer...fine. But then, Sigma (who she doesn't trust and just threatened to kill) pulls out a journal she's never seen before, gives it to Phi (who she doesn't trust and just threatened to kill), has her open to a specific page and tells her to translate it. Phi, who has a vested interest in saying whatever she needs to say to get Clover to calm down, has nobody who can double-check her translation, and who Clover already believes is in on murdering Alice with everyone else, reads off a few paragraphs of a journal detailing a plague that causes suicide, and she's good? The information the players already had at that point in that timeline had already covered pretty much everything detailed in the journal.
  • You could argue that Sigma pulling out a random journal and sprouting off knowledge in such abrasive confidence is what snapped Clover out of her unstable state. Sure, they have circumstantial knowledge that can easily be used to determine that Alice probably killed herself, but vague talk about possibilities wouldn't help Clover to calm down. Sigma asserts Alice's suicide as fact and even wipes out convenient proof to back it up. In the moment I doubt Clover cared about how suspicious it was on Sigma's part, she just wanted someone to tell her the truth. Not just tell her to calm down and think about possibilities.
• In the Tenmyouji end, Quark writes a letter to Sigma describing the nature of his relationship with Tenmyouji, seemingly in an attempt to show what a good man he is. Why did he write the letter, and why did he give it to Sigma?
  • He claims he wrote it during one of the puzzle rooms, I believe, so he wrote it before he could possibly have known that Tenmyouji was going to betray Sigma so they could escape the building. Unless Tenmyouji had planned the betrayal out well beforehand and had told Quark about it for some reason, which also doesn't make sense, as everything indicates that Tenmyouji decides to betray Sigma after finding out he's Zero. He doesn't find out Sigma is Zero until the hologram comes up in the Director's Office, which is after the last puzzle room and just before the AB round, meaning it's after Quark wrote the letter. Also, even if Tenmyouji had planned to betray him beforehand, why tell Quark? Quark could have just told the story to Sigma directly, at that point, he has no reason to believe they're going to be separated.
  • Even if you accept that Quark has the letter, why does he bother giving it to Sigma? He and Tenmyouji just found out he's Zero. They're betraying him as a screw you to him as much as anything else (everyone knows they can now play the AB game over and over with the last set of card keys, so they shouldn't be concerned about getting out first). Why does Quark care if Sigma thinks Tenmyouji is a bastard or not? They think he's the guy who trapped them in the Nonary Game and are purposefully screwing him over as revenge, why was it important for Quark to let Sigma know how Tenmyouji is such a good guy? The action only makes sense if Quark believes that Sigma is just another victim of the game that Tenmyouji is screwing over for selfish reasons and genuinely wants him to know that he has a good heart.
  • Tenmyouji just found out who Zero is, but did Quark?
  • Considering the two of them wouldn't have been expecting Zero to suddenly appear as a hologram and announce his identity to them, it'd have been fairly unlikely that Quark wouldn't have been there to see it too. If you want a more likely explanation, you only need one thing: his childlike trust in a guy he likes. Even as an adult, you're never going to be able to fully flip gears on someone you've considered a genuinely nice guy at the drop of a hat, even if you learn something so damning against them. Add onto that the fact that Quark is still a kid, and so is more likely to grow a quick attachment to people he likes, on top of the situation, they're all in naturally making the group connect far more quickly then you'd normally expect anyway (several people call others they didn't know before the game their friends at points. Sigma especially says this a lot. That's not something most people would do after only knowing someone for just a few hours, under casual circumstances). It's not hard to imagine that Quark just still saw Sigma as the guy he's grown attached to, or at the very least, struggling to come to terms with accepting that he isn't.
  • Quark is a kid. He loves his Grandpa, he likes Sigma, and he doesn't have the mental capability to process two people he likes not liking each other. Especially someone thinking his loving Grandpa is mean and grumpy (and Sigma has every right to think so about Tenmyouji, at least in the beginning). This is why he wants to let Sigma know that Tenmyouji is really a kind and compassionate man, even if he doesn't show it. However Quark can't just tell Sigma - Tenmyouji would have shut him up immediately, either so that Quark didn't reveal the state of the Earth or just because people generally don't like it when someone exposes their side they don't willingly show. So the boy writes a letter to give it to Sigma without Tenmyouji's knowledge. He probably just didn't have a chance to give it to him before they were leaving.
• Maybe I'm missing something, but why exactly did Junpei feel the need to go by his surename "Tenmyouji"? Zero told him to keep quite, and used Quark as leverage, I get that, but what did calling himself "Tenmyouji" instead of "Junpei" actually accomplish? All not hiding his identity would do is reveal to Alice and Clover that he's possibly the same Junpei they know. However, 1) Junpei is an extraordinarily common Japanese name, and 2) their perspective Junpei shouldn't be an old man. It'd have been ridiculously easy for him to convince them that he's not that Junpei, if they question him about it. But still, even if they DID know who he was, why would it even matter in the least? It's not like it actually means anything other then "oh, Junpei got picked for another Nonary Game for some reason". It'd be pretty hypocritical for them to consider it suspicious enough to distrust him or assume there's something he's not telling them, considering that's the exact same situation that Clover herself is in.
  • If they knew he was Junpei, they'd know Junpei is an old man, and it'd give away the whole "it's actually 45 years in the future" thing. I assume he just didn't want to risk it, even if it could've been easy to act like he was just a random old guy from Japan with the same name. It was easier for him to just go by his surname instead.
  • This was likely another condition set by Zero Sr. to prevent sensitive information from disrupting the project.
• Another point about Tenmyouji that confuses me: How did Clover and Alice not know that Junpei's surname is "Tenmyouji"? They say that after the events of 999 everyone was taken in for questioning by the SOIS, I'm pretty sure that Alice at the very least would've found out his full legal name.
  • It's not impossible for two completely different people to have the same last name, even one like Tenmyouji. Furthermore, it's a leap to conclusions for Clover and Alice to just assume that an old guy with a grandson who happens to have the same last name as Junpei is indeed Junpei; last they saw him, he was still in his 20s and they still believe it's been a few days since their kidnapping.
  • The thing is though, "Tenmyouji" isn't actually a proper Japanese name, it's basically gibberish as far as a name is concerned. The name itself translates directly to a string of characters meaning "Space-Sun-Moon-Earth", so his name basically has the meaning of a lunar eclipse. As it so happens, that really is Junpei's surname, for some reason, but Alice and Clover wouldn't just assume that this other guy is someone who happens to have the same surname. It wouldn't even register to most people who are up on typical Japanese names as a surname, or a name of any kind. So you'd suspect that when this guy introduces himself as "Tenmyouji", that Alice and Clover would've at the very least brought it up, and questioned him about it. Maybe they wouldn't jump straight to assuming he's the same person, but you'd suspect they'd have questioned if he was a relative, like Junpei's granddad, or something.
  • In Tenmyouji's route, Clover and Alice hide behind the partition of the infirmary talking about "connections", even mentioning that there's even a Zero. The most rational conclusion a 999 player would jump to at first is that they're talking about the previous Nonary game, which they are. But perhaps they're also talking about the fact of Tenmyouji's name being identical to Junpei's last name. So if anything, they would appear to have suspicion, but not enough to confront Tenmyouji about it.
• Why does nobody even mention the possibility of refusing to give your opponent the keycard to their AB room? Dio is happy to grab a vial in one timeline, but in any timeline, if you prevent your opponent from getting their AB keycard or take it away from them, they can't vote that round and are forced to default to 'Ally' - and the keycards are found in a safe, in a situation where one team always outnumbers the other, yet everyone always politely hands the second keycard to their opponent. Obviously there are risks and drawbacks to trying to keep it, but it seems odd that the possibility never even seems to occur to anyone.
  • Trying to keep the second keycard would be more trouble than it's worth. Voting betray in the AB game already makes the others distrust the betraying player enough, if someone were to take one of the keycards and refuse to hand it over, they'd pretty much be outing themselves as someone who's going to betray on the spot, and good luck if your opponent decides to tell everyone about the fact you've screwed them out of a vote: you'd have to find a way to avoid getting found by everyone before the AB Game starts just in case they decide to take the keycard from you by force, and in-game it's shown the AB Game can sometimes be an hour or two away at times. The risks would be too high, and it's possible the idea did occur to one of the players, they just realised shortly afterwards that it's a bit too risky.
    • It still seems pretty weird that no one seems to even think of the possibility of going about the AB game in a different way other than everyone voting. Obviously most of the characters probably wouldn't want to go about it in this way in the first place, but the fact that Sigma, or Luna even, does not think of suggesting some sort of alternative plan, like having only one team vote each time, so that they'd get a guaranteed "ally" from the other team, is pretty strange. Or hell, in a scenario where Sigma is promising someone he's going to vote "ally", why doesn't he, or the person he's playing against, suggest him handing their card over, so that he has no choice? For all the options that the characters have regarding the ability to not vote, it seems bizarre that it's not utilised more. Obviously from a gameplay POV it makes sense to have the player be able to vote each time, but from the POV of Sigma's character, handing his card over to ensure a promise of an ally vote seems like it'd be entirely in-character.
• Given that they're meant to be their actual names, why doesn't anyone ever bring up the bizarre happenstance that two of the participants (Sigma & Phi) have names that come from the Greek alphabet? Given they discuss connections to why they were kidnapped quite a lot, it feels like something someone would notice and bring up at some point. For that matter, the only participant with a name that could be considered "ordinary" is Alice. K withstanding, Sigma, Phi, Quark, Luna, Tenmyouji, Dio, and Clover are all really unusual names. It'd have made sense for someone to point that out, or at least bring up the connection between "Sigma" and "Phi".
• Why do the characters bother betraying each other? Obviously, this doesn't apply to Dio, because he's there explicitly to screw everyone over (and is a complete asshole), but everyone else seems to treat the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition as a zero sum game - that if they don't make headway and pull off a few successful betrayals, they'll be left in the dust. But the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition is not a zero sum game, and this is known to all the participants. There is no limit to BP, and therefore no limit to the number of people that can go through the number 9 door. There is no reason for anyone not named Dio to do anything but aim for everyone to get out together. But everyone not named Luna are hell-bent on getting 9 BP after just 2 rounds. Am I really meant to believe that all of these people are so callously self-serving that they would screw over everyone else just so that they can get out alone now instead of with everyone else maybe 3 hours later? Yes, most of them give the line that they are going to get help, but if you just play the AB Game a couple more times, you won't have to. I know I wouldn't want to leave that place and have to seek help completely alone, that'd be fucking terrifying! Probably the most inexplicable is Luna Game Over 1, where Tenmyouji is desperate to get Quark out, but not only is he ensuring that Quark, a currently unconscious prepubescent boy, will have to leave the facility alone, he also completely unnecessarily exits the number 9 door, to "be with him for as long as possible". Yes, Tenmyouji, congratulations, you have now ensured that this scared kid is going to wake up to the dead body of his only family, has to then leave him behind, escape the scary bunker and find help alone, and then be left to fend for himself. Instead of, you know, just staying near the 9 door so that when Quark wakes up he can reassure him and give him instructions through the door, then be reunited once he brings back help. Or better yet, don't open the fucking door and at least wait until the next round so that someone, anyone, can escape with Quark. Even when it doesn't include Dio, everyone makes a beeline for the 9 door the moment they get 9 BP no matter what, with Phi being the only one not to go through with it because everyone else just barely manages to talk her down. Yes, situations like Quark and Alice succumbing to Radical-6, murders stoking fear as to whether anyone can survive to the next round as well as other intrigue put a wrench into things, but they don't know that until they happen. I do not, in any way, find it credible that ANYONE other than Dio would even think of betraying in the first round. I think this is the reason why the VLR cast is generally seen as unlikable when compared to 999's, because so much of the game feels like people we're ostensibly supposed to like repeatedly bashing each other over the head with baseball bats so that they can get the last slice of pizza before another full pie is brought out.