Devil May Cry/Headscratchers

Which Sword Where Now?

In DMC 1 and 3 it's indicated that Force Edge was Sparda's Real sword, and Yamato was just one that he used while tooling around the human world. DMC 3 then goes on to make the Force Edge the key that seals the Demon World off, but then comes DMC 4 and now Yamato is the Cosmic Keystone. Huh?

• He used the Force Edge to seal off one Demon World, while the Yamato sealed off a completely different one.
• The Force Edge was used to seal the Temen-ni-gru, the primary demon gate, while the Yamato was just in general used to seal up the others due to its power over space.
• But that's a silly retcon. Yamato never had a 'power over space' in the first or third game, it had the 'power to divide and wipe out the darkness'. Opening the Hell Gates with it kind of ruins the point.
• Not really. Yamato did kinda divide and wipe out the darkness when Sparda sealed the Fortuna Hell Gate. It was just used to unseal it, as well, as it was used for the reverse.

Money? What money?

The Devil May Cry 3 manga shows Dante going on a mission to retrieve Alice, with a four million dollar reward for her rescue. Later on, the money gets wired to Enzo. With four million dollars, why is Dante somehow in debt not even a decade later?

• The manga isn't canon to the games?
  • Well, Capcom sanctioned the manga, and it's holding its status as (unfinished) canon. I wish it wasn't.
• Ask Mike Tyson, I guess.
• His Destructive Savior tendencies coming back to bite him in the rear? Let's face it, with the amount of collateral damage he leaves in his wake, it's a wonder four million dollars lasted that long.
• The anime explains that he owes massive debts to the human governments for property damage, has his own debts with Lady, and...come on, this is Dante we're talking about. He's probably not very conservative with his cash when he does actually have it.
• Still... four million. What could he possibly owe Lady for other than her bike, which she neglected and left who-knows-where anyway? This debt has suddenly come up from literally nowhere along with his Destructive Savior tendencies. The first game had a demonically infested castle that no one inhabited, and it exploded. He should owe nothing for that. The third game has a tower that destroyed the town so he shouldn't owe anything for that either. But then this anime shows up and he owes everyone and their dead mother, and especially Morrison, money. How does he manage to run a business under so much debt, then? Why hasn't he been evicted? What does he spend the money on and why isn't it shown?
  • It's probably for ammunition, rockets are expensive and he probably has to order bullets by the truckload. And a man's got to have his nightly delivery pizza.
    • He actually replenishes ammo with his Demonic Powers. Or so I read this somewhere.
    • Devil May Cry 2, Weapon File — Handguns: "Dante’s hand-made twin pistols. They fire bullets with magic power." He never needs to reload at any point, anywhere. Buying ammunition is not necessary.
  • How expensive do you think that bridge was in the anime he wrecked? Or the designer-label clothes Lady and Trish stuck him with? Or the church they destroyed? Or the multi-story hotel? The building repairs for his shop, buying all those red coats, buying the jukebox, electric bills, heating, plumbing, all those musical instruments he has, the billiard table, feeding both himself and Patty, fixing the tv, traviling expenses when Morison doesn't pay, and losing to Lady, Morrison, Trish, and Patty to gambling (which is probably where most of his debts to Lady originate from).
  • He was already in debt and owing money to everyone including the pizza man the first ten minutes of episode one. The question is where the money went in between the manga and the animated series, and you're bringing up stuff that happened in the actual anime: he only met Patty in episode 1, destroyed the bridge in 2, got stuck with designer clothes in episode 4, and from the chronology, he only changed coats once between the third game and the first. He was complaining about having no money before any of that happened (excluding the coat). Reading comprehension obviously isn't your strong suit.
  • There's no need to get nasty; if you want to turn this into a match of insults, take it elsewhere. As for the damage: those weren't the first times Dante was involved in such cataclysmic incidents of destruction, given the implications from the episodes. Dante almost always causes huge amounts of destruction in any mission he's given, in each game or episode. He probably doesn't have to pay for the destruction on Fortunato or Mundas' castle, but he may have been stuck with building repairs at the end of DMC 3, and has likely caused much more damage throughout his lifetime. It's also implied that a lot of Dante's cases give him huge sums of money (The Mafia battle in the anime) but he never has any, so there's likely a lot of spending he does off-screen, either to pay his debts, gamble it away, or pay off official authorities to avoid getting in trouble (his fights do sometimes tend to be high-profile, after all).

Credo's Weakness

He is supposedly the best swordsman in the Order; who taught Nero everything he knows. So why is it the one fight they have in human form shows him being about as weak as a kitten? Even when he turns into Angelo Credo he still isn't all that hard; when he should be slaughtering Nero and being well matched with Dante. Seriously, he's by far my favorite character in the series; and it just drives me nuts at how pathetic he is. (When playing through the game I always switch to DMD just to fight him and it still isn't good enough)

• Got a point there. Considering what's said about him, you'd expect Credo to be as good with the sword as Lady with guns, yet he never shows that much ability. Sad things, since Credo was a fairly likable character in this trooper's oppinion.
  • I'm guessing this weakening was because of two factors: As a human, he has human strength. While Lady gets a bit of a pass because her arm strength doesn't affect how hard her bullets hit, the same's not true for how hard Credo can swing a sword. The other reason is that the Credo fight is hard enough as it stands (beat it on Hell or Hell if you want to do it for the challenge), so making it much harder would have turned Credo into That One Boss, even moreso than he is now.
    • Credo's strength wouldn't have had anything to do with his sword abilities in demon form. Credo's sword had the exact same fuel-injection system as the Red Queen(all Order knights have that kind of sword. Nero's is unique in that it can actually build up the amounts of fuel in it to unleash in a single blast) so that would compensate for his human-level strength.
• Most likely, he didn't put as much effort into powering up his demon form as the others did. Actually, Agnus was in charge of giving people their devil transfromations, so he doubtlessly tricked himself out to the best of his ability, and if I remember correctly, Sanctus was just an old guy in a bubble without Sparda. Also, Agnus had to summon other monsters to put up a decent fight, so Credo seems to be the toughest of Order on pure combat ability. What really annoyed me was that he died like a bitch. Couldn't the one redeemable member of the Order of the Sword survive? Or at least get an impressive death scene?
  • You do have a point in that Credo is the only member of the Order who at least tries melee attacks, since Sanctus and Agnus seem content to mostly just throw fireballs/Cutlasses and occasionaly make half hearted swipes with Sparda/a Gladius

Nero's Transformation

Yeah, this is more general curiosity than something that bugs me, but something I'd kinda like to know nonetheless:

• How much of Nero's arm is taken up by the Devil Bringer?
  • Acording to the art book, it seems like it goes up to his shoulder.
• Is the "demonization" going to spread throughout his body? (the cutscene where he unlocks his Devil Trigger for the first time seems to imply that it will, or at least, that he thinks it will)
  • That's up to interpretation. If his arm turned like that after getting bitten by a demon, Nero has a reason to suspect it might spread. Hence his line: "And if I become a demon... so be it!"
  • Alternately, if the general thought is that his arm got possessed after the demon attack and the result ends up being the Devil Bringer, then seeing as how the voice inside it clamors for more power, presumably, it may spread to his body if he feeds it more demonic energy. The concept art depicts Nero in a full-form Devil Trigger rather than a specter, so that juuuust might happen in an upcoming game if the idea is kept.

About DMC 3

• The Seven Sins appeared in the human world before the tower was raised, and they can do so given that they have a medium to appear as (in their case, sand). They spawn everywhere without the Temen-ni-Gru-- in fact, they were what bound the tower in the first place. Being unsealed a year before in the manga allowed them to go around wreaking havoc. For an in-game example, they show up in Mission 1 while the tower is raised after Mission 2. If this is the case, why and how does Lady get away with saying that she and Dante "destroyed the remaining devils and that was it" after rendering the tower inert? They should still be spawning since they are never resealed.
  • They were likely there purely under Arkham/Vergil's orders. With both of them defeated, the Sins retreat, and Dante and Lady are able to kill any remaining stragglers.
• If sealing the tower required such a complex ritual in the first place, and unsealing it took so much time, what happens to it after the demon world is closed at the end of the game? Does it just... stand there?
• The Seven Sins resurfaced in the present time, in what's assumed to be Modern America. Is there any reason why they suddenly know Japanese when Vergil offers them the chance to rename themselves?
  • Translation Convention at work?
    • But then how will they explain actual Japanese if this is Like Reality Unless Noted?
  • This Troper thought that the Sins were living in Japan until the Tower summoned them. Or were serious Japanaphiles.

• How did Vergil manage to avoid all of the Gatekeepers of the Temen-ni-Gru while Dante had to fight them?
  • Is that so hard to guess?
  • Cerberus, Agni and Rudra: Vergil was already at the top of the tower when it raised, so he didn't have to go through them.
  • Leviathan's Heart: He never got eaten by Leviathan. I don't think Leviathan was a Gate Keeper, though.
  • Nevan and Beowulf: Vergil took a more direct approach to the lowest part of the tower (where the seal was), probably thanks to Arkham, so he didn't have to pass by the rooms of those two.
  • Gergyon (or however that horse was called) lacks an explanation. Then again, we never saw where that bridge leads to, anyway.
  • Doppleganger: Like with Lady, Dante had gone first though there, so the path was open.

• There was an extended Mission 13 scene that featured Lady actually holding her own against Dante and Vergil before the plot twist was revealed. The scene was cut short because "Lady can't last that long against two half-demons". Cue what actually happens, then fast forward to Mission 16. Lady, after having her leg impaled, after climbing up the side of a really long tower, and still tired, initiates a boss fight with Dante.

• Mission 3: Why does Lady need to see the Temen-ni-Gru through binoculars? Not only is she situated in the alleyway that's just a few blocks away from it in the first place, that thing is SKY HIGH. It shouldn't take much effort to find a tower that dwarfs every other building in the vicinity.
  • This one I can answer. She was using binoculars to look at the top of the tower, where Arkham was at the moment. Her line next second? "I found him".
  • The line was "I found it". It, not him.
  • Fridge Logic I would say. Wouldn't you say "it" to your father after he killed your mother, possibly beat you up, and is doing everything in his power to be a demon (or at least, half-demon), and take over both the demon world and human world?
  • Lady repeatedly refers to Arkham as a 'he' (see the line below about "undo[ing] what he's done", and the following lines "He was obssessed with becoming a devil, so much he killed his own wife. For that he butchered innocent people too. He's the most vile kind of creature!" and "I'm driven by the inability to forgive him! My soul is screaming, demanding me to kill him!") If she was trying to distance herself from Arkham by referring to him as an 'it', she did it horribly as that's only said once.

• Just what kind of sacrifice was the Priestess involved in? Any time Arkham mentions her, she's referred to as the whole being, not just her blood ( "[...] in whose body flows the same blood as the sacrificed woman [...]" "Even Sparda had to sacrifice a woman so that he could become a legend!" etc. etc.) Assuming that the Priestess didn't just prick her finger and call it a day-- since that wouldn't be much of a sacrifice-- she either bled a lot, or bled to death. Which of the two would it be, and wouldn't the unsealing ritual require that much?

• 13th Avenue (and the area around the tower) is empty. All the humans are either dead or evacuated, so who was calling Dante's phone?
  • Well, the call did come just before Arkham. Maybe the sins were released shortly before his talk with Dante...
  • The Sins (or at least just the Prides) were released already in the manga. The manga takes place up to a year before the events of the game. Everyone was either dead or evacuated in the space between, sooner rather than later.

• "He's my father. Besides, who else can undo what he's done?" Uh, hello Lady, do you just happen to believe in No Ontological Inertia? Killing Arkham doesn't exactly undo the fact that he took the lives of innocent people unless there's a ritual involving trading off his soul for someone else's that's never been heard of.

What's this "password" for?

In the first and fourth games, we see Dante or Trish checking if the people calling have "the password" and hang up if they don't. When people call a demon-hunting business, for what other reason than demon hunting missions should they call? What are the people who "don't have the password" expecting? And where are they supposed to get this password anyway?

• In the anime, Morrison comes to Dante every once in a while with jobs, but Dante only ever takes the jobs that interest him (usually involving devils or the like.) Presumably, the public face of Devil May Cry is that it's just a general private-eye agency or something.

Characters' stated ages

Are there any of it? I've never heard Capcom saying something about their ages, yet many people talked about it to death (in particular, regarding how Vergil can be Nero's dad, according to Capcom - despite being "too young"). I think if they have no stated ages, then we can pass off Vergil being Nero's dad. And on that matter, how quick could a half (or a quarter) demon can grow, anyway?

• I've been wondering about this myself. It's implied that Sparda's been dead for a long time, and that he was practically ageless. Taken these into account, Dante and Vergil could be much older than they look.
• Judging from Trish's line in the first game about, "Mother and a Brother 20 years ago" I would put Dante's age in the first game bordering from 36-40, and Virgil has the same age. In 3, just judging by his appearance, I would put him and Virgil in their late teens, 18-19 is my guess. As for 4 and 2, There's not much to go by.

But, Virgil's definitely old enough to have a kid as old as Nero, who's probably 17, max. Just with Vergil's personality, him having a kid at all is the weird thing for me...