Best of "Wild Mass Guess" [MegaMan]

Because, judging from Mega Man X's story, (most of) the original cast will die at some point (but not because Zero killed them; that theory is Jossed). Having them die is a horrific thing, especially considering the cheerful tone of the series (and this is somewhat supported by the Word Of God). So the writers try to avoid that point as much as they can, preventing any (obvious) relation between the Classic and X series. Just think of it like the Elf Wars event (between X and Zero series), it is an utterly horrific story that could only be told, but never shown.

The big nuclear war happened, and everyone in America/Japan died except two elderly roboticists. Knowing their side lost the war, they're playing games in the rubble. Wily is trying to rebuild the nation as it was through cheap mass-produced robots, and Light is trying to build an android nearly as close to a human as possible. They're each trying to prove their plan is the superior one by having their robots destroy the other's. The whole backstory about building robots for peace and Wily stealing them is the story as explained to Mega Man by Light, so that Mega Man would go out and destroy Wily's robots. This explains why Wily gets right back into building robots for the next game after you defeat him. It's just a game. "Oh well, you win this round Light. But I've got some great ideas for the next round. I'm gonna make a robot that shoots bubbles!". Light lets Wily go, then tells Mega Man some story about Wily escaping from prison. And Dr. Cossack in Mega Man 4? He's human, but he's Russian... Apparently, the USSR won the war.

After the Civil War fiasco in the Marvel Universe, Tony Stark realized what a tool he'd been and decided to try and start over in a different universe, under a new identity. He put away the Ironman suit and took on the alias of Thomas Light, and uses the Ironman technology to focus on building robots instead of weapons. Evidence includes:

* Marvel VS Capcom. Travel between these universes is canon, so it wouldn't take much effort for Stark to find a new place to live.
* Protoman's color scheme matches Ironman's. Dr. Light might have done that on purpose for nostalgia reasons.
* In the X series, not only is Dr. Light able to build X an "Ironman" suit of sorts... he's able to build it in POD. WITH A BUNCH OF SCRA- I mean, with practically nothing to work with.
* As he got steadily older, Dr. Stark had to give up the Ironman mantle. Taking a pseudonym was due to all the world either wanting either his attention or his death, due to his techno-hero legacy; "Thomas" is a name beginning with T that is very similar to Tony, and cold laboratory "light" is regularly "stark". The Ironman name itself became the basis for the Man artificial intelligence series, the next logical step in the JARVIS concept: machines that could not only process commands by voice and physical interaction, but walk and interact with their environments. Protoman was the logical title for the original generalized model, Mega Man the generalized refinement, and many of the others receiving their names specifically to make it easy to remember their niche capabilities. His inventions, though, again fell into the hands of international terrorism (especially via the machinations of one of his own truly talented former colleagues), which forced him to reevaluate the role of scientists and engineers on the cutting edge of technology for a second time. His ultimate decision was that so long as people like him only made tools (which includes weapons), there could never be any guarantees against their dark uses; the only way to make a tool ineffective in the cause of evil was to give the tool choice in the matter. Thus, work began on a truly New, and potentially horrifying, stage in the history of humanity: X, a biped-frame-based artificial intelligence with the ability to not only act, but act on its own: the ability to think, feel and make its own decisions. This work had to be in secret, of course, because humanity was not yet ready for the implications of the creation of the kind of artificial species their kind had feared the development of (and for good reason) for ages already. Thus, the Capsule, designed to test X exclusively by Light's own personally programmed sentience and personality algorithms, to ensure that "he" would not wind up unleashing the very threat that Light sought to create him to prevent. And it would've gone off without a hitch, if ] Wily hadn't somehow got wind of the project, and begun work on his own vision of the future, in turn. And finally, the clincher: Light's Sean Connery beard is the fully matured stage of Stark's Generation X goatee.

All Robot Masters of a given series have to be weak against another in the same series. In this case, the series is DRN-001 through DRN-008. The reason Elec Man can kill you dead in three hits isn't because he's such a badass... It's because you're weak against him. Once Elec Man was eliminated, Mega Man got rid of his one weakness, taking it for himself, and becoming a far more fearsome opponent in the process. As the only Robot Master without a weakness, Wily found Mega Man continually harder to defeat than the first time. To complete the chain, the Mega Buster is strong against Roll, and Roll is strong against Ice Man. The Thunder Beam is only Ice Man's SECONDARY weakness. What this means regarding Ice Man's supposed infatuation with Roll in the manga is up for debate. Additionally, Protoman isn't a part of the chain, as he was the first Robot Master ever created (DRN-000).

...who is referred to by his model number. Thus, X is the tenth incarnation of Mega Man. After every game, once Wily was defeated, Light deactivated Mega Man and dissassembled him, possibly restoring him to the original Rock body and possibly not. He did this to prevent anyone from trying to steal his killer robot or coerce him into letting them use it. This explains why Mega Man loses all weapons and abilities each game; they were thrown out when the old body was destroyed. Clearly, inbetween nine and ten something happened to the original Mega Man's programming (likely Bass managed to steal or destroy it), which is why X is a distinct personality from him and has no memory of Light or W Ily, and Light took the opportunity, along with a long lapse between crises, to start from scratch, producing a completely new body and AI. When he realized Wily really wasn't coming back, he just kept improving X, body and mind, until he died. Protoman had the good sense to stay out of Light's reach and thus was never dissassembled. For this theory to work, one must consider as cannon that Bass performed all the action in & Bass, that the Game Boy games didn't happen, and that the Power Battles games, if they even happened at all, involved the other three playable characters only.

I mean, come on! They both aspire to take over the world, both have a blue teenager/kid as a nemesis, tried to bring a red guy to their side, have a wide assortment of machines, and have failed at the same plan over and over, but Wily suffers the least Villain Decay, whereas Eggman is having reputation problems because of Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic 2006, but, he's getting better as of Chronicles and Unleashed, but even though Wily is more relient in the fake surrender strategy, but at least he built an ultimate weapon that could have destroyed the world and probably planned the Gambit guessed earlier, whereas Eggman... Eh, never mind.

Einstein's "wily" was keeping him from creating the theory of relativity, so he decided to cut it off. Years later after being abandoned, Einstein's "wily" grew his own body and under the alias of Dr. Wily, started plotting his revenge at the world for Einstein cutting him off. They both have the same first name and have poofy hair.

Not much to explain, other than that this is a response not only to the Wily/Eggman parallel above (and attempts at conflating the identities of the various stars of each series), but to some Mega Man fans' beliefs that the X series characters didn't truly change in appearance in the transition to the Zero series; they merely look different to us because of the new art style. So isn't it obvious that three characters covered in blue, with big eyes, hands, and feet and possibly spiky hair in back, are probably just one character rendered in different ways?

There are only optical sensors, he's wearing the visor because his eyes got damaged, revealing a metallic skeleton rather than an eye, the mouth and forehead are undamaged, but his eyes are damaged, in fact, in artwork for Rock Man 3: Complete Works, Proto man is in the background, and through his visor, where his eye would be is glowing, so his optical sensors manifest as glowing.

This goes hand in hand with no cataclysm theory. It also explains Zero's none maverick personality as a caring, if jerky, protector. The Maverick virus and Zero were created in an effort to stop X in case the 30 years of Ethical Programming failed. The W Progrma was a fail safe to revert Zero's personality to it's non-safe one once it determined that X wasn't evil. However Dr. Wily and Dr. Light did not predict that the X's design would be replicated so quickly and it activated against Sigma who was the only one that lasted long enough to activating. The Maverick Virus itself was also designed to help stop X (as seen in X5 where X is damaged by the virus) and the W progam was simply purging the virus. As Mega Man Zero shows...this was not a bad idea.

The reason the characters can copy weapons is obvious, they use their Spiral Energy to integrate their weapons into their bodies, like Gurren Lagann did with that airship, the only characters that use drills, are Crashman (who changed them into a type of bomb), and Drillman, who doesn't realize his Spiral Energy potential. It can also be assumed that the Biometals also run on Spiral Energy, allowing themselves to change forms and create new powers for themselves, Elysium is also obviously the Anti-Spiral Homeworld, just not stopping their evolution in a futile attempt to stop Spiral Energy.

Nearly every game, Dr. Wily has a massive skull-themed fortress which you blast your way through. And yet, despite destroying it every time, he's always ready to go next game. The truth is that all of Wily's real research happens in a secret lab that has not been found, or even suspected, by anybody. Probably because it's underground and well-hidden. From here is where he conducts his real research on robot construction and his latest scheems. Those castles you fight through look to be deathtraps because that's all they are designed to be. What looks to be lab work is merely window dressing.

As evidence, consider the beginning of Mega Man 7, where the robots activate to bust Wily out of prison. That wasn't a contingency plan, that was his actual lab. Every time his castle is destroyed, he just flies back to his lab and begins work on his latest scheme.

Prior to Dr. Wily's Face Heel Turn in Mega Man 1, Dr. Wily had a vision of (or went to the future and saw) Dr. Light's final creation, X, being misused and copied, spawning the Maverick Wars which eventually caused the destruction seen in the Zero series and the destruction of the human race as seen in Legends. This drove Wily insane. In an attempt to steer Dr. Light away from robotics, Wily turned against him and reprogrammed the original six to show how they could be misued and perhaps prevent Dr. Light from creating X. Dr. Wily tried and failed repeatedly to stop Light, losing a little more precious sanity each time, eventually taking the final leap and creating the Maverick Virus to show Dr. Light just how bad things were going to get if he continued. Far in the future, someone goes back in time to show Young(er) Wily the future to create a Stable Time Loop.

To hide away from the Time War ala The Master, Dr. Light disguised himself as a human and sealed his memory away to wait out the destruction. Young Albert Wily was instructed to wait for the Time War to end and then open Dr. Light's fobwatch to restore his memory and Time Lord identity. However, Albert Wily was greedy and petty, and decided to use his knowledge of alien technology gained from travel to make a name for himself in the time where they landed, leaving Dr. Light trapped in a human body and left to grow old and die like any other man.

The free will of the robots is shown by the choices they make. However, the choices they make are inspired by their programming. They cannot make a decision that goes against how they were programmed. Like, Mega Man was programmed to be kind and compassionate, so he made the choice to be converted into a fighting robot so he can protect people. He made that choice on his own, but he could not have made a decision to help Wily take over the world because it would violate his programming. Bass was programmed to be evil, which would explain why he would betray his creator. If he didn't have a free will (even a limited one like he probably does), Bass would have had to obeyed Wily's every command and stayed with him. Proto Man, however, probably did have more of a free will than any others, as he chose to escape the lab and live on his own, and I highly doubt he was programmed to be rebellious. When X was built, Light decided to get rid of programming so X could develop his own personality, but he put him in the chamber to do ethics drills for thirty years.

The "morality test" X was forced to do was actually showing him footage of all the heinous things Dr. Wily did and how much of a lousy suck-up he was about same. Then, X could kill Wily and Dr. Light could say he took every possible precaution against it.

Despite years of failure,working on Zero and nearing death, Dr Wily is still doing his schemes with Robot Masters that stand no chance against the Blue Bomber. This is all intentional, though-each of Wily's failures contributes to getting Zero to be perfect. Bass was originally Wily's masterpiece, however Bass's arrogance became his undoing. So Wily decided to get make his next creation without said arrogance,which is why King was initially a Well-Intentioned Extremist. When that failed, Wily began working on Zero.

Zero was designed to have the best qualities of Wily's robots-it had the raw power of Bass supplemented with the invaluble AI of King. Mega Man 9 was the result of learning that Light had his own masterpiece. Through stealing Light's more advanced robots,he could get into the mind of Dr Light and have a better understanding on what the flaws of his creations were. All for countering anything his foe could make. Mega Man 10 was the designing of an advanced form of computer virus, to make the Maverick Virus

Wily knows he's going to die soon,even if he succeeds. Zero is his attempt at extending his legacy beyond death. With Zero, he can counter anything Dr Light makes. With the advanced AI, he can exist in some form after death. With both, Wily can end Dr Light's legacy and reshape civilization to his desire. That is why he persists.

If Dr. Light was creating robots who would serve as domestic assistants, why would they look and act like children, rather than experienced adults? Simple: he's always wanted kids of his own. He once had a wife (ehhhhh, let's call her "Rosemary", for remembrance), but she died, presumably while pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl.

After Mega Man had defeated so many times, while still retaining a child-like personality, Dr. Light was getting bored of this same, same old story. So, he destroyed Mega Man and rebuilt him into a new, older-looking form, while keeping his personality intact. Then he rewired Mega Man, giving him free will in order to make him go through that rebellious-teenager phase. Having never had children of his own it wasn't later until he realized that a superpowered robot going through the rebellious-teenager phase could be more dangerous than he expected, at which point he started X's ethical testing. He saw no other options aside from ending the project, which he didn't want to do, as he'd grown attached to Mega Man.

There is no wife in the picture because he simply didn't have one. His relationship with Dr. Wily was a little closer than just friends, which is why Dr. Wily reacted so harshly when he perceived Dr. Light as betraying him. This is also why Dr. Light took stopping Wily into his own hands - he knows what Mega Man will and won't do, while he doesn't want to risk hurting Wily because deep down, he still cares a little bit. This, of course, means that the battle for the original six robot masters (and later on, Protoman) was the most destructive divorce and custody battle in history.

This is pretty much canon already. When Rock (who, like Roll, has the mentality of a child) volunteers to fight Dr. Wily, Dr. Light reprograms him...without changing his mentality to that of an adult. In other words, Mega Man's basically a child soldier. Oh, and did I mention he could very well be on a suicide mission. I mean, sure, he always wins (how would he be able to fight for everlasting peace if he didn't?), but how can Dr. Light guarantee that he will?

It would explain the rampant cancellations far better than "They're malicious". It would also explain why Mega Man has appeared in more Japanese series than US ones lately.

That plot point in Megaman 9 where robots have a life cycle? It jumped the fourth wall.