WMG / Sword Art Online Abridged

Opening Music

One of the seasons will use Amaranthe's "Digital World" as its opening sequence music.

"When everything surrounding you is digital..."

If and when they adapt GGO's arc...

Rosalia will be part of Kirito's nightmare.

Or remembering that some people, like Rosalia, deserved it, will be what helps him recover.

Sugou will be played by PurpleEyesWTF.

• Jossed. Sugou is voiced by KaiserNeko.

Kirito will watch Dungeonmaster...

...And surprise Kayaba with a reference to the movie when they meet again, causing Kayaba to freak out.I just can't see SWE passing on such a juicy a callback to an earlier episode.

• alternatively, Kirito really has seen Dungeon Master. He just feigned ignorance as one last middle finger to Kayaba.

There WILL be a reference to Seto Kaiba because his name is similar to Kayaba and LittleKuriboh will have a guest appearance.

The ending of the Aincrad Arc is going to be a Tear Jerker

We all know how it ended from the source material, and we know how Abridged!Kirito deals with death of people he actually grows to like. That brings up the question... How broken will he be when Kayaba kills Asuna right in front of him?And then there's the Fairy Dance arc if they decide to adapt it. Kayaba might end up getting off lucky compared to his colleague...

• Confirmed. The Aincrad arc ending was so goddamn sad.

Kirito will utterly lose it when Asuna gets killed

• An alternate scenario, since Asuna seems to be a morality chain for Kirito, once Kayaba kills her, Kirito goes on to make Kayaba and relapse into his own god complex as he tortures the main villain.

ALO's first arc will be skipped in an abridged manner akin to Garlic Jr.

If only to skirt around some serious issues that they couldn't make funny, much like Berserk Abridged.

• Jossed. Going by Episode 12, they're going full steam ahead with at least some aspects of the original ALO arc.

The circus music will be a Brick Joke

No points for guessing which battle it'll be featured in.

• Not "Stardust Crusaders"?

If they do Gun Gale Online, the servers will be flooded with foul-mouthed, trash-talking pre-teen COD fanboys.

Otherwise it'll have those few reasonable players who've spent more than 3 hours in game.

• Maybe a funny reference to be made is that everyone tries and fails to 360 no-scope.

Eugene will be played by AntfishTAS

It was confirmed that he had a part in the abridged series in episode 36 of Team Four Star's podcast.

• Jossed, Antfish plays Godfree.

Asuna will be called out on her momemnts of being not so different.

Considering how much she's managed to get away with (ie burning down Lisbeth's home and place of business) and how, like Kirito, displays much sociopathy and a bastard attitude, someone's bound to not let her actions slide. Bonus points if its Lisbeth.

• She got her heart kicked in the dick in Episode 10 so that's something...

The hat Kirito found in Episode 3 will save his life.

Kirito mistook the hat as an item used to resurrect dead players, and was understandably pissed as a result. What he didn't know was that it does resurrect players but only if the person in question happens to wear it. Kirito will probably have it equipped when Kuradeel betrays him or when Kayaba kills him during their climatic duel.

• Unfortunately, he gave it to Ballsdeep69

Or Kirito and Asuna get ready to fight, and the scene immediately cuts to Aincrad crumbling, Kirito asks what happened, and Kayaba claims he had a change of heart, with the help of The Legendary FUCK, and the last clip is Ballsdeep69 logging out while wearing the hat.

• Jossed. The hat hasn't made an appearance since Episode 3. Could possibly still make an appearance in season 2 though.
• Actually confirmed! Although unfortunately, it's probably not going to save him...

Yui will be an Enfant Terrible

And Kirito will love the hell out of her for that.

• Alternatively Yui will be so bad that she creeps Kirito and Asuna out
  • Particularly, they get creeped out by her insistence of calling them mommy and daddy
  • Jossed. Yui is as little-girly as ever albeit coming off as more Literal-Minded and Innocently Insensitive.
  • But also confirmed in how she faked her "death" and once she knew who suguha was legit removed her face to protect her daddy

Suguha will be worse than Kirito

To the point where Kirito (mixed with a little of the Character Development and Took a Level in Kindness he underwent) is the one being horrified and flabbergasted by her snark-filled apathy.

• As a bonus, she'll be like that as a coping mechanism for Kirito being in a functional coma for two years.
• Alternatively, she's been like this since they were kids. She and Kirito would go on devastating Snark-to-Snark Combat up until the SAO incident.
  • Confirmed. Suguha is just as much of a smartass as Kirito and he's helplessly at her mercy.

Kirito, Asuna and Kayaba's final confrontation

Kayaba dies happy knowing that someone finally understood a reference he made.

• Partially confirmed: Yes, he's happy Kirito got his references, but in the end he's not only still alive, and is forced into hiding, due to , y'know, BEING THE MOST WANTED MAN ON THE PLANET! Fuckin' Bethesda...

Kirito will begin Episode 10 with damage indicators all over his body.

Kind of. The only indicator is on his eyes.

Kayaba's Actual Motivation

Once Kirito and Asuna reach the top floor and face off against Kayaba, Kayaba does the traditional spiel about wanting to create a world he can control, only for Kirito to stop him and call him out. Then Kayaba reveals his true motive: to force the players, who he considers the worst of the worst, to learn to work together and become better people. He will then point to Kirito as a success story, congratulating him and pushing Kirito over the edge.

• Possibly foreshadowed: Episode 10 has a small non-humorous moment where Heathcliff mutters under his breath how he envied Kirito and Asuna's young love for each other.
• Jossed: He stayed awake for three weeks trying to meet a deadline, fucked up badly enough to kill people in real life, then trapped everyone in the game as the ultimate example of I Meant to Do That

How Kirito will figure out Heathcliff's true identity

After the fight with the Skull Reaper, Heathcliff will likely give a speech ripped from another classic movie, and Kirito will make the connection between him and Kayaba. After all, Kirito has displayed his own knowledge of film triva, most notably when insulting Kuradeel and also referring to Asuna as (Philip) Marlowe in response to her interrogation Yui.

• Confirmed. Kirito works it out when Heathcliff references TRON.

Heathcliff will be revealed to not be Kayaba

After the fight The Skull Reaper Kirito will attempt to attack Heathcliff using the same reasoning as the official material. Only for Heathcliff to die and Kyaba to reveal himself shortly afterwards.

• And it will be Mr. Fluffles.
• Jossed

Silica was playing someone else's character

That would explain why she utterly terrified Kirito in The Stinger when she is demonstrably ignorant on how the game works.

SAO is at least partially Keita's fault.

If he'd finished the tutorial like he was supposed to, the tutorial NPC would not have been "nowhere to be seen", which is one of the things that set Kayaba off in the first place.

• Kinda confirmed, in episode 11 Kayaba mentions the missing tutorial NPC being one of the contributing factors in the disaster that evolved from his caffeine induced glitch.

Fluffles will make at least make cameos in later seasons.

Reki will be mentioned again

Kayaba mentions that in his sleep deprived state that he called Reki, the janitor, the Face of God. This is obviously a reference to creator of SAO Reki Kawahara in the vein of Stan Lee's cameos in various Marvel movies, as mentioned on the Fridge page. So to continue that trend, Reki will be mentioned in some capacity in future seasons in some manner.

Kayaba's coming back in Alfheim will also be due to a glitch and he'll be just as surprised as Kirito.

In canon, Alfheim is similar to Aincrad under the hood, so it wouldn't be surprising if the Alfheim devs didn't fix all of the bugs in the original game.

Kirito's Backstory is going to play a major role at some point

Our "Crown Prince of Douchebag", at-least in original canon, actually had a few backstory details revealed in the second Arc. The most notable aspect of his backstory was the reason he even got into online gaming in the first place: His parents died when he was young and he was adopted by his Aunt and Uncle. He was raised under the belief that his aunt and Uncle were his parents, while his Cousin Suguha was actually his sister. He later learned that they weren't actually his parents, and his sister was his cousin when he was only ten which lead him to distance himself from others (Most notably his Suguha and the rest of his family) and become a more hardcore gamer.I can see these details being a more important point in the abridged Fairy Dance Arc than what it was in the original series given how the abridged series has been so far.

• Kind of jossed. Judging by episode 12, he seems to a gamer mainly because of Suguha's relentless bullying.

Kirito will once again emulate Cartmen at the end of the ALO arc.

Who he's directing it at should be fairly obvious.

The 'glitch' that caused people to die was an intentional design programmed in by Sugou

Sugou was always depicted as being jealous of Kayaba, and Kayaba admitted to being more than a little delusional during the final weeks before SAO's launch. Perhaps during his delusionary state, he didn't notice that Sugou accessed his workstation (perhaps when he was getting himself more caffeine?) and programmed the little 'death glitch' in, then when he found out, automatically assumed it was his own fault and we get the first season.

Come season two and Kayaba's 'comrade' has bought the rights to his game and released a game with similar programming. So he tries his hand to hack it, right about when Kirito and Asuna are in trouble, records what Sugou says to clear his own name and gives Kirito access to his cheat codes, which leads right to the end of season 2. Come GGO, Kayaba is a free man, and Sugou is on Death Row.

• Kayaba might not be completely off the hook because he tried to take the players hostage.
• Alternatively, Kayaba isn't a completely free man but he does get a lessened sentence due to a combination of aforementioned sleep deprivation and evidence of Sugou's involvement. It might also lead to a point about how Kayaba's fuck-up with SAO lead to some investigations into work conditions for game developers and making steps to improve them (It's no secret game developers don't exactly have the best work conditions at times, and SAO's "Glitch" would definitely lead to an investigation if not changes to work conditions to ensure that something as disastrous as the SAO incident doesn't happen again).
• Kayaba did a lot long after he couldn't blame on sleep deprivation. Including recklessly endangering everyone by holding them hostage in a death game, and murdering someone who mildly sassed him.

Beta Testers are held under suspicion because Kirito's advice got hundreds killed.

2000 people died in the first couple of months and none of the people at the meeting had read the manual. However, they were the lucky ones. While some like Diabel might read the manual and realize the advice is absolutely terrible, the average SAO Abridged player is barely more qualified to play than a mentally disabled monkey, and less so than an average house cat. They would probably read it and obey because they lack the imagination to go against the grain, which in turn got lots of people killed. Granted, it's not the only source of player self-destruction, as the tutorial NPC went missing, and there are plenty of ways to get yourself killed even without reading the terrible advice.

If Pina shows up in later arcs, it's because Kayaba used his GM privileges to revive it.

It would be jarring if Silica joins Kirito's party in later seasons considering what happened to Pina in the abridged series. Perhaps Silica's rampage was causing so much destruction that Kayaba had to revive Pina and convince her it was all a bad dream. Either that, or the Pina that shows up in later seasons is a different pet rather than an import from SAO.

• Alternatively, the new Pina is a Replacement Goldfish. Possibly given to her while in the midst of her rampage.

Yui will become a toxic influence to Kirito in the ALO arc.

After realizing that she was loved after all. Yui would not take kindly to having her mother kidnapped and would actively manipulate Kirito into acting like his old self in order to more efficiently track Asuna down and more brutally kill Sudou.

• Alternatively, she may start displaying Evil AI tendencies, in part due to learned behavior from watching Kirito. Naturally, Kirito being Kirito, he might actively encourage this.

Fluffles was the first to find and weaponize the charisma hat.

Since it seemed to be a monster drop, it's possible Fluffles was lucky enough to acclaim it and then used it to order other players to do his bidding, which would justify how he rose up in the ranks of the mafia so quickly, and how he became a member of the Knights of the Blood Oath despite his criminal record. It's also possible Keita got the hat from him; he's already confirmed to have been somewhat associated with his guild, and this would explain why his guild are called "The Moonlit Black Cats", and also why Keita couldn't use the hat to weasel his way out of his deal with them.

The identity of Abridged Death Gun

Seeing as how Kirito's "advice" got everyone in Laughing Coffin killed or arrested, as Kuradeel so gladly pointed out in Aincrad Episode 9, and that canon Death Gun was revealed to be a member of aforementioned guild, Col to brain cells suggest that the Abridged incarnation of Death Gun is a Laughing Coffin fanboy, much like Kuradeel was... alternately, Abridged Death Gun could be a poser who took the name because he thought it was kewl.

• It could be Red eyed Xa Xa like in canon. Remember that he was among the arrested and the Laughing coffin murders were blamed on Kayaba. Kirito could have shown them mercy to thank them for the slaves he got and simply forgot the names since he's made so many enemies that outside of Rosalia, Fluffles, Kayaba, and Gary the names and faces just blur together.
  • or Kirito doesn't remember Xaxa at all in Laughing Coffin:
  Kirito: Long time no see er... Jonny Black!
  Xaxa: That's not me.
  Kirito: Okay, so were the Jesus-psycho?
  Xaxa: No it's me! Red eyed Xaxa. You know the guy with the red eye mask.
  Kirito: Hate to break it to you zazzy, but having red eyes alone isn't enough to be a memorable killer.
  Xaxa: *aims gun* I'm going to enjoy this so much more than I should.

Alternatively, it could be revealed that Death Gun uses a TTS Software, and he is actually Don Fluffles.

Grimlock had the Capgras Delusion.

In case you don't know, the Capgras Delusion is where you (falsely) believe that someone in your life was replaced with a perfect replica. And what did Grimlock say to "justify" killing his wife?

So you see, boy, I didn't kill Griselda, I killed the thing that took her place.

Sugou's motivation in ALF arc.

Sugou will meet Kirito not to brag about keeping Asuna hostage and eventually marrying her, but to blackmail Kirito into playing/completing Alfeim Online and give it a glowing review by using her as leverage. Seeing is how he was jealous of Kayaba, he would want to upstage him by creating a safe/better game. And what better way to insure that then stealing and refining data from the game and getting a great review from one of the survivors to promote it? Thus he holds Asuna hostage and insinuates that he could easily "pull the plug" on her or do something worse if Kirito doesn't comply with his demands. Not wanting to lose her but not having any power to fight back against Sugou, Kirito has no choice but to agree.

• Jossed, at least for now. Sugou seems to be still as much of a creep as the original is, and still wants to force-marry her

Kirito's character development in ALF arc and where it may lead.

Related to above, Kirito's character has received development within SAO- he can no longer bring himself to hate humanity and has learned to have faith in those around him, even opening his heart to Asuna. Once he returns to the real world, he'll be in a struggle to keep that mentality or revert back to his old self- he may no longer be in SAO but he had spent two years there. It would either be hard to break habits or he'll revert to whatever his personality in the real world would be with brief bouts of his "real self". Coming into contact with Sugou, a man of power that has the life of someone he had opened his cynical heart to and the ability to possibly ruin his own if he so wishes, could send him spiraling back into his old mindset he used to have or make, or he could try to fight his old instincts because he knows he can't go back to the way he was.

This Kirito is a weeaboo

Based off the beta tester Youtube video in Episode 1, Kirito (represented by Yamato SFX) is white, yet from Episode 11 his name is still Kazuto Kirigaya and he still lives in Japan, where he moved to achieve his dream of becoming Japanese.

• It probably wasn't Kirito in the beta video, since the person Yamato SFX was playing was a random guy and not the actual beta tester. Additionally, Episode 12 shows that he's still related to Suguha in Abridged. It'd be a bit weird if he referred to a random Japanese girl as his sister...

ALF will be an EA game.

Given that in the canon story, ALF was intentionally unwinnable. It would be easy to add to that flaw with other negative game design mechanics. Lootboxes, Pay-to-win, Etc...

EA is just the easiest target for these kinds of jokes.

• Jossed. As said by the Character Creation voice, the fact that ALO is sponsored by uPlay means that Ubisoft is behind the game.

GGO will be an EA game.

MMORPGs aren't the only games that are monetized. FPS games are also heavily subjected to predatory monetization (ranging from loot boxes to pay-to-win and so on), and that market is more EA's flavor (see Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront II (2017). After XeXeeD gives his infamous "AGI builds are dead! STR builds are the new meta!" speech, several "pro gamers" will be scrambling for character resets, which are the most likely candidates to be monetized in this kind of game.

Kirito's "girly voice" will cause problems for him in GGO.

Especially considering the M9000 avatar he was "lucky" enough to spawn with.

When Kirito makes his character for Alfheim...

He'll pick a spriggan. Why? Because spriggans dress in black and employ stealth, theatricality and deception - including making opposing players afraid and throwing out clouds of concealing smoke. Kirito's going to pick a spriggan because he desperately wants to be Batman.

• And, in a Take That! towards the anime, Kirito will be surprised at how lucky it is that his character turned out the way he wanted considering the randomization method of character creation is garbage.
• Jossed. Kirito picked Spriggan blindly after being tortured by the Name Guy.
  Kirito: Default! For the love of all that is holy, default!! [...] Yes! I don't care! Just let me save my wife!

Silica's ability to terrify Kirito was because the huge quest chain to get the flower massively levelled her

The quest was for high-level characters. Kirito was able to do them with ease because he's that OP, but Silica herself was able to leech XP off of Kirito's kills. It allowed Silica to become a force to be reckoned with, but because she's still an utter newbie with a limited understanding of the game, she was legitimately scared of Rosalia and her goons, not realizing she had long since surpassed them.

Episodes are Written More Than One At A Time

There are simply too many payoffs and subtle jokes for it not to be the case. Asuna is made into a racist, and later Yui references Foreigner. Episode 10 makes a joke about "The Power of Love" which is a song from Back to the Future, the very movie Kayaba chooses in Episode 11. The whole series has a general outline all ready to go, and the only thing stopping it as actual production. (Voice Recording, Editing, Additional Scenes, Etc.)

The reason Suguha is a bully to Kirito

If the setting here is the same as the series, in which Kirito's parents died and he went to live with his aunt and uncle, he became the favored child over Suguha for a time and she resented him for this and did everything she could to either one-up him or make his life miserable.

• Weirdly confirmed. Her bitterness was because he was their grandfather's favorite, who only wanted to teach him kendo and put her through hell to get her to quit. She perservered in spite of it in the goes Kirito would come back, but when he didn't, all she was left with were a bunch of emotional scars, a loathing of all things girly, and an endless pit of resentment.

Kirito and Suguha swapped backstories from canon

In her role-playing setting in Episode 13, "Leafa" is a Street Urchin adopted by the queen and raised to be a princess. This could be a clever piece of Foreshadowing hinting that Suguha was adopted into Kirigaya family instead of Kirito as in canon, and her issues with him stems from an Inferiority Superiority Complex born from this fact — plus negligent or outright stupid parents (it wouldn't be a first for the series) — that compels her to put him down in order to make herself feel better.
Furthermore, the reason why Suguha role-plays as the Damsel in Distress is because she knows the way she treats her brother is wrong, but she just can't stop herself. So, instead of looking for actual help, she tries to teach herself to turn her bitch-switch off by LARPing as a hapless Neutral Female, which not only is going too much in the opposite direction, but it's also a complete waste of time if her Bad "Bad Acting" is any indication.

Leafa and Kirito

Suguha will not have any incestuous feelings towards her brother-cousin but will develop an attraction towards his Alfheim avatar in a moment of huge Hypocritical Humor and Loves My Alter Ego. Once The Reveal is unveiled, Kirito will immediately start making fun of Suguha for accidentally falling in love with her brother, only for Mood Whiplash to set in as Suguha tearfully vents all of her problems onto him and reveal some deep-rooted Hidden Depths that surprises even Kirito. After they reconcile and the story arc is done, Suguha still being attracted to her brother will become a Running Gag that grosses out the other characters.

• It's possible Suguha will quickly get over her crush once she realizes his identity, but the rest of the cast will never let her live it down.
  • Alternatively, the abridged series might skip the whole incest issue altogether. Suguha might be portrayed as a neglected little sister who just wants attention from her self-absorbed brother. That's why she makes fun of him in this series, because she thinks that's the only way she can get him to respond to her. Once he goes into Alfheim, she gets mad because he just got out of the SAO deathtrap and is already going back into another game. So she gets in on it too, makes an unrecognizable persona, and tries to act like a nice friend and somehow get him to drop video games altogether. Unfortunately, her voice is a dead giveaway. But not knowing why she's doing all this, but thinking that he might need her help, he thinks that she'll quit the game if she realizes the jig is up, and decides not to suspect anything.
  • Which will eventually result in Suguha chewing out Kirito from running away from reality-at which point he shuts her down with "YES, BECAUSE REALITY INCLUDES YOU, YOU SELF-CENTERED MUSSELS-FOR-BRAINS HAG!" Cue Suguha having a Heel Realization and breaking down and attempting to be nicer (emphasis on "attemping").
  • More or less jossed, at least personality-wise. Suguha is a horrible person who bullies Kirito relentlessly, and in turn he plays videogames to escape her. If anything she'll use Kirito playing Alfhiem as more ammo to tease him, rather than chew him out for it.
  • Jossed entirely in episode 14. When she figures out he's the Spriggan she's been playing with, the thought of the one idle comment she made towards him is enough to leave her Screaming at Squick.

Suguha is a Closet Geek and her bullying Kirito is her way of lashing out

For whatever reason, Suguha feels shame for enjoying a "nerdy" hobby like playing an MMO. She picks on Kirito partly as a way of covering up her secret and partly out of resentment for how he can openly enjoy such things. Needless to say, Kirito is going to have a field day when he finds out she plays Alfheim.

• This wmg gets more support with the reveal that Leafa is an Avid (if incompetent) Role Player.

Kirito is going to kill Sugou instead of calling the police.

We've already seen that Kirito is a bit of an asshole. And, like above, after Sugou admits to putting in the "glitch," nobody cares and Kirito gets off scot-free.

Kirito: God your pathetic! I'll let the police deal with you. I don't want your stinking blood on my hands.

Sugou: Really?

Kirito: No!

Sugou: Wait! NO NO NO! AAAAH! *Dead*

— LATER

Suguha: So what did you do today?

Kirito: I killed someone!

Suguha: That's nice.

Alicia will not be the leader of the Cat Sith. Instead, it will be...

Don Fluffles.

• Given the way she fawned over Kirito, that would be... weird.
  • An actual cat catfishing Kirito.
• So then what if Cait Sith is the Mob of Alfheim.
  • Jossed. The Cait Sith leader is Princess Hime, real name Denise, and she's roleplaying as a stereotypical catgirl.

Death Gun will be voiced by Lanipator

Kayaba/Heathcliff is voiced by Takahata101 and Suguo is voiced by KaiserNeko. Therefore the third main antagonist will be voiced by the third remaining founder of Team Four Star.

Silica is The King Of Ashes

Granted, the voice made it sound like it was a guy, but since when has that stopped anything? And who would hate Kirito more than the one who he cost her pet?...yeah, this is stupid.

The reason for the King of Ashes' betrayal

According to the Freeze-Frame Bonus, the King of Ashes wanted a calendar featuring Asuna in various states of undress. Kirito learned about it and explained to the King that it wasn't going to happen.

Suguha bullies Kirito to cover up her attraction to him

Assuming they keep that part of her character intact, Suguha is so belittling and rude towards Kirito because she is still very attracted to him. This frustrates her to no end and the only way she can think to not clue him in on it is to make sure he thinks that she just loves to make his life miserable.

• Jossed. She finds the very idea of being attracted to Kirito extremely squicky.

Suguha will become nicer to Kazuto once she realizes that he and Kirito are the same person

In general, her putting him down seems to revolve around her thinking that he's a whiny loser. However, once in Alfheim, Kazuto (as Kirito) will amaze her and be seen by her as one of the most awesome people alive. Once the reveal occurs, she'll realize that she was wrong and even potentially admit that Kirito is a much stronger person than she is (for having survived SAO and the lengths he went to to save Asuna). Touched, Kirito will ask if they can start over, and their relationship becomes much more amicable, though she'll still good-naturedly snark about the differences between "Kazuto" and "Kirito."

• Jossed. As shown in Episode 15, once she realizes who he is (which she does much earlier than canon), she immediately assumes he lied about rescuing Asuna and is there just to screw with her and resolves to return the favor. This might still happen after she finds out he was being sincere in his intentions, though.
  • Later confirmed in Episode 17 where she ends up visiting Asuna at the hospital with her brother and realizes that he truly does have a GF that he loves and it helps her to realize what a bitch she's been all this time.

Eugene will be the King of Ashes

It would help connect the summit to the bigger story, would make Kirito and Eugene's duel a little more dramatic, and...well, look at this image of Eugene [1]◊

• Nope. Eugene was originally played by Bryan before his ex Becky hijacked the character.

Kirito will have to disguise himself when he enters ALO

Considering his voice and appearance is pretty well know given he's the "big hero" that Sugou's read in the papers, Kirito will have to go undercover in order not to draw attention to himself. Luckily, ALO allows someone to customize their avatar so Kirito will use a different voice and a different screenname. Following that, Suguha does the same with Leafa to change her voice and neither Kazuto or Suguha will realize that they're playing with each other until Kazuto reveals why he's playing ALO. At that point, Suguha would declare that she knew that her stupid brother was lying about having a wife and Kazuto realizes that Leafa is Suguha and confronts her. Suguha realizes that the badass guy she fell for is her own brother and begins to freak out. This leads to them confronting each other in reality and inside ALO and begin to mend their relationship.

• Jossed to Helheim. Kirito goes default on his avatar after being forced to use the username "xVx_K1R1T0_xVx_KillMe" courtesy of several hours of name rejections.

Kirito's GGO avatar will be the result of Kayaba or Yui screwing with the system to troll him.

It just fits too perfectly.

The Fairy Dance arc will be full of rape jokes.

This is basically the arc where Asuna gets raped after all.

• Jossed so far, Asuna is very much able to defeat most of the enemies. the best guess is just they didn't really want to do rape jokes for this arc
• Later played with in Episode 17 where instead of being molested by the slugs, she ends up threatening to eat one guy's dog, and he claims to have molested her, which his buddy objects to.

Versace/Sugou took the Kirito username in ALO.

It makes so much sense.

• Jossed. The username "Kirito" was instead taken by Brian and Becky's friend Ted, being known in-character as Kirito Prime, with the rest of the Spriggans being an entire playerbase of Kirito imitators, hence why the actual Kirito had to spend hours finding a username.
  • No rape jokes, but there are plenty of cannibalism jokes...

The series will give Sugou some more detailed motivation for his actions

During his final confrontation with Kirito, Sugou could say that he's done everything he's done because the years of pent-up rage at his status as a Beleaguered Assistant to Asuna's father made him want to control as many things and people as possible. But even Kirito will say that's not a good excuse.

"Eugene" will actually be Heathcliff/Kayaba

Since we know from Kirito's twitter Kayaba is still playing games after freeing everyone, and from the Freeze-Frame Bonus in the scene where Yui scans the data in episode 13 it can be seen that Heathcliff was one of the accounts transferred into ALO from SAO, there seems to be foreshadowing that Kayaba will show up in ALO as a player rather than just the weird system ghost from the final battle of the arc. Eugene seems to fit the bill, having mostly the same body type and similar armor as Heathcliff, being regarded as the "strongest player" in the game just like Heathcliff, and most notably possibly serving as another rematch with Kayaba for Kirito, albeit one that Kirito actually wins this time around.

• Jossed. Eugene is actually a woman named Becky, who hijacked the character after a bad breakup with Brian, the original player. (Incidentally, he did the same thing, hijacking her former character Sakuya.) This is why the Sylphs and the Salamanders hate each other; according to Leafa, most of the game's lore is built around that breakup.

Sugou didn't really trap Asuna

She was trapped because the menu was moved to the left hand, and Sugou didn't tell her how to access the menu.

Kirito will drop an Atomic F-Bomb so intense it bypasses the in-game profanity filter.

Kirito’s rage goes Beyond the Impossible.

• Alternatively, when Kayaba shows up, he'll deactivate the filter as a favor to Kirito.

Charisma boosting does not actually affect anything.

Sugou's plan is based around boosting charisma to the point of being able to brainwash people, but the only shown examples are of Kirito going along with the Moonlit Black Cats' leader. When Sugou tries to pull such on Kirito, it will turn out he was never affected and that he just went along with it as an excuse to maintain his badass loner persona despite being part of a guild. This will result in Sugou being curb-stomped by the unaffected Kirito.

Suguha's confrontation with Kirito in the real world, after discovering he's playing Alfheim will play out differently then in canon.

In this universe, when Suguha confronting him about playing Aelfheim will play out VERY differently then in canon. Upon finding out that his sister was Leifa all along will lead to Kirito mercilessly mocking his sister (once he's done laughing his ass off) for being a roleplayer as well as utterly demolish any sort of fear Kirito once had of her.

The World Tree is a math tree.

It's a kids game. Of course the ultimate challenge would be a test of everything you've learned in Alfheim Online. The reason why nobody has beaten the game though is because it's a complex algebraic proof. Yui will solve it and Freeze Frame Bonus will reveal the answer was 4.

What Death Gun says to Kirito in GGO to make him have PTSD

The original continuity has him asking Kirito if he's the real deal not only cause he's in a female body but cause he's using a sword in a gun oriented game, or if he's just some fanboy using the name. It also doesn't help that Death Gun flashes their Laughing Coffin tattoo.

Abridged Death Gun would probably learn how Gary is one of his big triggers and says "We must protect my family," just when Kirito thought he had put enough time, distance (and alcohol) between SAO.

Asuna will get Sugou's screams on her Spotify

And when she and Kirito go to the SAO school, they listen to his screams together via earbuds. Other students think they're being a cute couple listening to tranquil music on a nice day... cut to Asuna and Kirito smiling as Sugou's screams of terror and pain blare out.

Prince Cazmer is Kayaba in disguise

For one, his voice sounds very similar to Heathcliff's own voice, and for two Prince Cazmer is the only person outside of Heathcliff / Kayaba to understand Kirito's references.

Yui is secretly hacking the world of ALO to give Kirito Admin privileges.

This is mostly based off of the fact that the world has been getting progressively glitchier and glitchier as Episode 15 progresses, and one piece of dialogue that Yui says, stating that she's been hacking a few other things, alongside Suguha's Amu Sphere.

All of the spriggan players are just ineffective copycats of Kirito.

Considering how similar the default spriggan avatar looks to Kirito himself, how funny would it be if every spriggan was trying to be like "The Black Swordsman," but only ended up playing against the skills the spriggan race is actually good at because they only want to run headlong into battle screaming "I AM THE BLACK SWORDSMAN" while swinging a pair of swords around. This could not only explain why everyone in the game looks down on them (actual gamers because they aren't doing what their race is actually built for, roleplayers because they're all trying to play as the exact same edgy loner archetype), but also why there were so many variations of Kirito's name already taken.

• Confirmed, sort of - Pretty much all of the Spriggans idolized Kirito and had some variation of his username. Unfortunately, when their leader Kirito Prime (otherwise known as Ted) tried to de-escalate the breakup that wound up causing ALO's race war, he got kicked from the game and the entire Spriggan playerbase was slaughtered.

Death Gun wont be a muderer at all

hes just an edgy roleplayer who someone is trying to frame for murder by poisoning the people he shoots, and will freak the fuck out as soon as he find out some of the people who he killed died in real life

Shion will be the exact opposite of her canon self

instead of being afraid of guns and doing GGO as a form of exposure therapy she will be a complete gun nut that just really enjoys the thrill of shooting people, the reason she freaks out when guns are brought up in real life will not be fear but the fact shes getting a raging murder boner at the thought and need to sneak off and calm down before she does or says something that will get the cops called on her

• I think one good idea for doing this that I thought of is that Shion is a hardcore twitch streamer and basically an MLG bro... even possibly a joke of she hates Kirito because she ALMOST won gamer of the year at the game awards but lost to him and thus will kill Kirito as soon as she finds out so he has to desperately pretend he is ANYONE else.

  • So, in other words Kirito is Emu/M and Shion is Nico?

Sugou's plan wouldn't actually work

The stat boosts that can be gained while playing SAO and ALO and their effects only apply in-game, and his attempts to turn Asuna into his Stepford wife would fail spectacularly the moment the NerveGear comes off. Kirito or Asuna will lampshade how stupid he is to think otherwise on the brink of his defeat just to twist the knife a little more.

• Alternatively his plan will be blindsided by a heavy dose of reality. Charisma, after all, only makes a person more persuasive, and no matter how persuasive someone is it's not going to make it so they can override another persons free will.

Ordinal Scale will receive an episode or two

Given what we've seen of Something Witty thus far, it doesn't make sense for them to leave Ordinal Scale out of the series, despite it being a movie and interquel. It feels far more likely that Ordinal Scale will be treated like just another part of the anime.

Ghosts are real, Kirito really did went to the "afterlife" and Aincrad have less casuality thanks to it

Griselda's ghost being real and "tangible" (in the sense that it is drawn by the game engine) has been quite the Big-Lipped Alligator Moment... but think about it. In this continuity, Kayaba have no (level-headed) reason to kill people. Perhaps, after he rested from announcing his "death game" he realized, with relatively saner mind, what has he done, and so tried to fix it, but most likely fixing the bug outright needs the server to be restarted. So he made a workaround and bodge it so that everyone on death's door gets teleported to a safe h(e)aven outside of the game's bounds and turned into normally-invisible ghosts, so that it doesn't trigger the NerveGear's "kill switch".

Suguha hating Kirito has something to do with him quitting kendo

I noticed that Suguha talks about Kirito she seems to place focus on him being a “Quitter.” She also implied that she is mad at him for something he didn’t do in the latest episode (Episode 16). So I think that the reason Suguha hates Kirito either has to do with why he quit kendo or the fact that he quit kendo.

• Probable, considering the context, or that she feels that Kirito focusing on gaming so much is him essentially doing nothing with his life and giving up on life, which would probably keep her from disclosing her Closet Geek tendencies to him.
• CONFIRMED! She was left alone with their sexist grandfather who put her through hell in the hopes of getting her to quit, but she stayed on fruitlessly hoping he'd come back.

Sugou purposely made ALO a really poorly targeted and advertised game to keep people from interfering with his research.

ALO’s premise is absurd and stated by multiple characters to not have a well defined target audience. It’s back cover is also comedically bad. Sugou clearly has ulterior motives with the game than making money he clearly doesn’t want people to know what he’s doing. It just makes sense that he was hoping nobody would actually play the game.

• Bonus points if some of the horrible things like the math tree and hall of histories were added later after it became a role play server and became popular. He still wants to scare off as many people as possible (especially after they managed to snap a picture).
• Bonus bonus points if he complains at some point about the role players and how they ruined his plans.

Kayaba's gonna be playing a major role in the ending of the ALFheim arc.

Given that ALO's code was likely lifted wholesale from SAO with minor alterations, it's likely that he's retained his Game Master status from the previous game due to Sugou never bothering to patch it out, hence why Yui detects that he's migrated his account to ALO. Because of this, he's able to effectively spy on and record everything that Sugou and his goons are doing. This leads to the end of the ALFheim arc as follows:

• First, he's counting on Sugou/Oberon locking himself and Kirito in an independent space, and may or may not be responsible for that. Kayaba will then promptly isolate this space from the entirety of the rest of the game. This means that Sugou will be too focused on Kirito to notice whatever's happening outside, giving Kayaba ample time to copy everything that Sugou's been working on and put it on the net for the entire world to see without Sugou being any the wiser. This will, at the very least, result in a reduced sentence for Kayaba, or full vindication if the "Sugou is responsible for the bug" theory is correct.
• Second, just as insurance to make sure that Sugou stays in the isolated space, he promotes Kirito to Game-Master status, which is above that of Admin, both preventing Sugou from banning Kirito, and giving him control over things like the pain inhibitor function. Said function also allows Kirito to fight on even footing with Sugou.
• Finally, it'll be revealed that Kayaba has also been studying the code of the game extensively. Why? To develop a FullDive development package - the World Seed. Kayaba, being a nerd and gamer himself, likely understands the value of indie and third-party developers, and given that both the NerveGear and the AmuSphere's Killer Apps are effectively tainted IPs thanks to being permanently Overshadowed by Controversy, he's basically throwing the doors wide open to everyone that wants to develop something for FullDive technology. This also means that developers won't have to deal with the buggy and unstable Cardinal System engine when developing a game.

GGO is going to be published by Activision-Blizzard.

The reason being that Activision is the publisher of the Call of Duty series. When Kirito, or maybe Kayaba, basically decides to throw the World Seed up on Github, Activision smells money in the VRMMO market and starts Zaskar developing something based off of their cash cow franchise, the result being GGO. The whole "real-money conversion system" could easily be read as a way for Activision to shove as many microtransactions into the game as possible.

Ymir will be formed by Becky and Brian's friendgroup.

• Part of the ALO arc will be getting Becky(Eugene) and Brian(Sakuya) to finally resolve their conflict so that their group can finally be friends again and stop splitting the game down the middle. After they get that resolved, the group may come to a realization that despite the game's shortcomings as well as the amount of shit they put the game through, ALO is still fun as hell. So what happens? Simple - they found Ymir and manage to buy the IP from RECT pretty cheaply thanks to RECT wanting to wash its hands of the whole debacle.
• It's also mentioned that Ymir brought a whole slew of improvements to the game as well. What will these improvements be?
  • First - strip out the edutainment and replace it with better content; for example, the Math Tree may become an enemy akin to the Whomping Willow, while the Hall of History is reworked into things covering the game's lore. This friend group managed to create lore for a roleplay universe and are committed to it when in-character, so figuring out the specifics of the world itself may not be as hard as you think. Plus, if Travis is any indication, their friend group has its own share of super-nerds.
  • Second - crap-tons of bugfixes. Given that ALO was built on the bones of SAO, there's gonna be a lot to deal with, even more so when they bring Aincrad into the game. Somewhere along the way they shut off the profanity filter.
  • Third, new content. Aincrad might be the first of several free expansions to the base game, and it stands to reason that it might have more thanks to it being in the hands of people that don't treat it as a personal laboratory.

Shoji is hated by a large chunk of the company.

In episode 17, we learn more about Shoji, who is a giant slug monster because he keeps antagonizing Trisha the modeler. Thing is, in video game companies, especially large ones, modeling, rigging and programming are often separate departments, meaning in order to be turned into a slug monster, Trisha would have to model the creature, someone would have to rig and integrate it into the game engine, someone or someones would have to program the unique interactions of a slug monster as a player avatar, various people would likely have to be involved to lock Shoji and Kyle out of any alternatives, and it would require approval of whatever department heads to sign off on spending the resources to do all this. That would require a non-insignificant number of people involved. So likely, because Shoji keeps getting in Trisha's face, many people are willing to go the extra mile to fuck with him.

Kirito is going to kill Sugou in the real world hospital parking lot and the consequences will follow in SWE's version of GGO.

We all know how badly normal, bland Gary Stu Kirito utterly WALLOPED Sugou in both the game world and even IRL. So a Kirito with exactly zero moral restraint being forced with that choice, it's not hard to see him not only go even harder on him in the game world, but actually making the choice to kill him in the real world. However, as we all know, killing someone in a game, and killing them in reality are two very different things, and this choice will most likely haunt Kirito in subsequent arcs. This could also put a wedge between him and Asuna, who most likely would see no issue with it and is unable to understand why he feels so bad about killing a scumbag like that. And this is what leads Kirito into Gun Gale Online, since there he can kill from afar and doesn't have to be upfront about killing people like with the swords he's more accustomed to.

Kirito will end up in a relationship with Eugeo

during the Alicization Arc

• Now this troper has not seen anything from the Arc in question, but from what she has seen, Kirito ends up losing his memories in that world and becomes childhood friends with Eugeo, and the two have a lot of Ship Tease both in canon and fanon. So during that time, perhaps he realizes his bisexuality and he and Eugeo have a cute childhood friends-to-lovers romance. There would be a lot of work to do when he does get his memories back, particularly in trying to convince Asuna to NOT maim either of them, but it would lead to some fun moments and more development for the relationship if Kirito decides to dual-wield with his partners.

Kirito stopped going to kendo practice because of health problems

In episode 17 Kirito is going on a rant after getting killed telling himself he isn't the badass he pretends to be. One of the lines he throws out is 'you think you don't have asthmas?'. Assuming that he does indeed have asthma we can conclude that his mother pushed him to take up coding because the kendo practice was taking a toll on his health. The reason he fell in love with SAO to begin with might be precisely because the game allowed him to become a badass swordsman he always wanted to be without being held back by his physical condition.

• If this is the case, it also gives some depth to Suguha trying to make kendo look fun. To her, that was an attempt to get her brother excited for the sport again, but to him it might have seemed like she was taunting him with something that she could do and he couldn't. This animosity between the two is the result of miscommunication.

Sugou's plan only works on people with Nerve Gear on.

Sugou mentioned how increasing one's strength in game and even a child can wield the mightiest of weapons, or how you increase dexterity, and you can move with the grace of a world-class gymnast. Except, we clearly see that's not the case. Kirito suffered from severe muscular atrophy despite being one of the most powerful people in the game. So, Sugou's efforts to increase Charisma will also have similarly non-effect on a person's real-life Charisma. Except, that isn't actually needed. As shown with Kirito's tastebuds, Nerve Gear will rewire a target's brains accordingly. All Sugou needs to do is crank up his in-game charisma and people in the game could hear him recite the phone book and think it's the greatest poetry jam in history, even if anyone on the outside world watching it livestreamed would just think he's some creepy guy listing off people's phone numbers.

• This will even result in a villainous "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot moment when he realizes not only have they been wasting their time, but he could have brainwashed Asuna into being his obedient sex slave at any time.

Season 2's finale will be a Whole-Plot Reference to the finale from The Dungeonmaster

They both have the same basic plot; boy venturing into cyberspace to save his girlfriend from an evil villain. At one point, they will even play W.A.S.P.'s "Tormentor" just to drive it further.

Aincrad had ingame steroids.

Consumable items that would permanently boost stats or possibly provide experience bonuses. In other words, it would've made the game a whole lot easier. The tutorial NPC that was supposed to explain these was kidnapped by Keita, which meant a whole lot of players missed out on that aspect. "Remember, winners don't use drugs, except steroids, in which case, use lots of drugs."

Bethesda avoided backlash for Sword Art Online's catastrophic launch because Kayaba's ass-covering efforts

Near as anyone could tell, Kayaba was acting alone and for no reason beyond sadism. While Bethesda could probably face some issues for not properly vetting the guy, Kayaba only ever admitted his motivations in private to Kirito and Asuna, meaning the terrible work conditions that caused SAO to spiral as it did would never be properly investigated. Meanwhile, even if he did try to come out, at this point Bethesda would just spin it as him trying to make stuff up to spite them, since Kayaba could have let everyone go at any point but instead chose to keep everyone hostage for over two years, and the multiple murders/attempted murders he did while in the game would make things look even worse for him.

The reason Recon trusts Kirito to such a weird degree is because the nervgear he bought was Sachi's.

Jossed. It's mentioned that the family he bought it from had a son, not a daughter.

The Season Finale will take some footage from future arcs to feature the other Aincrad players coming to back Kirito up, instead of the racial armies.

The speech Kirito has while he's dead all but foreshadows that despite Aincrad itself being gone, everyone from it still made it out because of him. If they find out that he and/or Asuna needed help, they would have every reason to come help, especially since death isn't an issue for a suicide mission anymore. And several probably are way stronger than the game probably ever expected, thanks to their Aincrad levels carrying over. At the least, Tiffany would know the situation to an extent by having tipped off Kirito, and perhaps caught on from the social media posts about everything to know to gather the raid party for this. May or may not include a joke about how he's old because he still checks facebook.