Inuyasha/WMG

Inuyasha

Tessaiga and Tenseiga are both Zanpakuto

Think about it. They both have names, they both have strange powers, and they're both empathic weapons with minds of their own. In fact, Tenseiga's Meido Zangetsuha is very similar in appearance to Ichigo Kurosaki's Getsuga Tensho, which is fired from his blade, Zangetsu. Furthermore, at one point Inuyasha has to battle the Tessaiga to gain one of its abilities, which is very similar to how Ichigo had to battle Zangetsu to achieve Bankai. Lastly, Tessaiga's Wind Scar and Ichigo's Getsuga Tensho are both attacks in the form of a massive wave of energy fired from the blade.

Tessaiga will become a weapon for the Spiral Races.

After all, it can now pierce the earth, go through the heavens, and cut forward into tomorrow.

Inuyasha was pregnant with Kouga's pup and gave birth to Momiji Inubashiri.

Seriously, think about it, during Kagome's absence of more than three years, there is plenty of time for that to occur, and extrapolating, Gensokyo is essentially a piece of the feudal era (not to mention a land of lores), it is possible that Kouga and his tribe lives there now. More, Momiji's Tengu qualification seems more like a Job Title, and plus, take a look at the family resemblance.

Shippo's parents were bigots against half-demons.

Shippo is treated as being quite young. However, he is shown as being rude, uppity and down right snobbish when it comes to Inuyasha. Children usually learn such behavior from their parents. Perhaps his parents taught him that, even if it doesn’t seem like it, all half-demons are naturally inferior to full-demons such as himself and deserve to be treated as the second-rate creatures they are. It might be that this bigotry was exclusively for half-demons, as Shippo seems to have no problem with humans or demons, but seems disgusted by half-demon Inuyasha. This explains his apparent hatred for Inuyasha might explain his constant need to amplify Inuyasha'a flaws, constantly get him in trouble with Kagome, and insulting and making fun of him. It can all be summarized this little gem from his opening episode.

Shippo (dismissively): Don’t make me laugh! You wouldn’t be able to taken them on! You’re just a half-demon, aren’t you? I can smell the human in you! Just a half-demon, you should stay out of demon affairs!

• Shippo doesn't hate Inuyasha, and he never seems disgusted by him or derisive of hanyou in general (Jinenji and Shiori come to mind; Shippo never indicates a problem with either of them). It's more accurate to say that Shippo acts the way he does toward Inuyasha because they're both immature and thus set one another off, and as a trickster type, Shippo enjoys being able to push Inuyasha's buttons. He doesn't do it as much to the others because they're not jerks to him like Inuyasha is.

Koga does not really love Kagome

First, let me point out that wolves are always very affectionate with their mates. However, Koga is possessive, forceful and doesn't even seem at all concerned with Kagome's happiness. All Koga ever dose is treat Kagome like some prize to be won. Always calling her 'his woman', like she was his property, and talking to her like some sort of faceless object instead of a person. And it also seems that Koga never really loved Kagome, just her abilities and the power that they offered. He doesn't love Kagome, but he certainly loves the idea of having all the Jewel Shards from himself.

• This troper isn't a expert on wolf biology, but even without the "wolves are always very affectionate with their mates" thing, the rest of above mentioned still holds water.

The Inu no Taisho is actually God

He seems to know everything about the future, even preparing for the regrowth of Sesshomaru's arm, his love of humans and Inuyasha's need for the Tetsusaiga. Plus, he's really hot, I'd like to worship him.

Rin is the reincarnation of Kikyo.

Although Kagome is the reincarnation of Kikyo, she's a time-traveller, and the Shikon that was in her and got broken up has travelled through time inside her. There's no reason that Kikyo can't be reincarnated in Inuyasha's time; the Shikon could still exist inside her, intact. (You'd have the Shikon existing in two places at the same time because the one from Kagome came from the future.)

The idea of it being Rin specifically stems from the statement in at least one episode (Jaken Falls Ill) that she looks like Kagome.

• In that case, wouldn't that make Rin a priestess, and more importantly, wouldn't Kagome be able to see the jewel in Rin?
  • It certainly could make her one; perhaps when she's 16 she'll start showing some priestess qualities. You'd need to do some handwaving to explain why Kagome can't detect it; she might not be able to detect it if it never came out, or she might only be able to detect the other one because of its connection to her.
    • She is adopted by Kaede-baba at the end of the manga, thus, not only becoming a priestess, but one of Kagome's ancestors. Destiny can be funny sometimes.
      • It's never stated that she is Kagome's ancestor. And being adopted by a priestess doesn't mean she would become a priestess. Those are myths that come from the fans. In fact, has is ever been confirmed that she will survive to adulthood and have children? Many people die young at that time. She may die without children, her children can die without children...
      • Technically, she was only living under Kaede's custody as practice for living in a village for whatever she chooses, with frequent visits from a coldly doting Sesshoumaru... Does this mean KaedeXSesshoumaru is a valid ship? I mean, he's still robbing the cradle, but she was a loli when Inu Yasha was macking on her big sister...
  • She didn't seem to be able to detect the jewel when it was inside her own body, either; maybe when it's within a person that way she can't sense it. (Granted, it could be explained as her having a spiritual awakening and development afterwards but still)
    • Yet she detects it when it's inside Kikyo. And does the last volume make it clear that the Jewel actively seeks to spread its power, even crosses TIME and space to do so? If it was in Rin's body, would it have to wait until Kagome's time and then use a time-travelling device to come back? And remember that the Jewel itself attracts demons.
      • The jewel also explicitly suppressed most of Kagome's spiritual power even after it was ripped out and shattered, and was implied to have even prevented her from remembering its story before being ripped out of her, so Rin's inability to sense it doesn't really mean anything.
  • Or possibly Kagome can only sense the jewel from her own life.
    • Or maybe the jewel attaches to the soul, but doesn't always physically manifest.
  • One of the jewel shards collected came from the present, implying that there's a spare jewel shard she's not sensing. Just thought I'd point that out.
  • In any case, its unlikely because one of the main driving forces behind the series was that Inu Yasha and Kikyou's love transcends time and space (the desire to see Inu Yasha again being the wish that the Shikon no Tama used to reincarnate Kikyou and therefore reconstitute itself despite Kikyou's conscious decision to destroy the jewel with herself) and Rin and Inu Yasha don't really seem to have much regard for one another except through the transitive property of Sesshoumaru. And let's not even get into what her relationship to Naraku would be like... Besides, a low level youkai like Mistress Centipede (who may have had the jewel inside her for awhile before she was killed and sent to the future via the well) was able to sense it in Kagome. Unless Inu Yasha-verse reincarnation doesn't need to be along a linear timeline, then Naraku would probably have noticed it in her a long time ago.
• Kikyo's resurrection seems to support this theory. Urusue couldn't fully resurrect her because her soul had already been reincarnated. We're led to believe she's talking about Kagome, but this makes no sense as Kagome wouldn't be born for another five hundred years, so Kikyo's soul should still be wherever dead souls go before they get reincarnated. The only logical explanation is that Kikyo was reincarnated, possibly as Rin, and that Kagome is actually a reincarnation of Kikyo's reincarnation.
  • The reincarnation theory seems plausible, though not the "jewel hidden inside" part. Ultimately, this was never addressed.
    • The jewel became part of Kikyo's soul and it took the jewel five centuries and some reincarnations to be able to be again, well, a jewel?

Kikyo has not been reincarnated yet at all

Again, Kagome is her reincarnation--but Kagome has travelled through time. It's entirely possible that Kikyo died and wasn't reincarnated at all in her own time. When she was restored as an undead priestess she started out without much of a soul but eventually got her soul back--the series has been awfully inconsistent on whether Kikyo has a soul and especially later on and at her death, the idea that she is just a puppet animated by hatred and that she doesn't have a soul because it has already been reincarnated doesn't at all match what we see.

Rin is actually Kagome's mother.

Either through her travels with or by Sesshomaru's abilities or contacts, Rin's aging was slowed to demon levels. This explains why Kagome's mother doesn't fret too much about her daughter going back in time to fight horrific man-eating monsters. It is because she knows what will happen/happened already. Rin just took the long way through history; changing identities, altering her looks, and adopting normal people who age (like Kagome's grandfather) to maintain her cover.

• • Is it possible that Kagome's grandfalther is in fact from her father's side.

Kagome is really unconscious/in a coma/dead and the entire show is either a dream or the afterlife

While looking for Buuyo, her cat, she fell down the well, bumped her head, and is either experiencing a dream, a coma, or death. This troper cites the hentai doujin Alice in Sexland (which, as the name implies, takes its inspiration from Lewis Carroll's works, as does Inuyasha) as inspiration, where it is revealed that this is exactly what happens to the protagonist, specifically the "she's dead and this is the afterlife" variant.

• Nope, the last chapter Jossed that theory too.
  • Not necessarily. The last chapter could simply be a continuation of said illusion, especially considering that she eventually decides to stay in the past (oddly paralleling Alice in Sexland, no less)
• That would make a great fanfic, someone should get on that!
  • Someone already is. It's called Was It A Dream

The Sacred Well is in fact a Stargate capable of time travel and all demons are Ancients

This explains the absence of demons in the present era, as they are for the most part extinct in the modern era.

The Sacred Well is in fact a Stargate capable of time travel and all demons are Goa'ould and genetic experiments

Nuraku's status as a former human seems to fit really well with being possessed by a snake - right down to the injuries that he wouldn't have otherwise survived. Sufficiently advanced cloning might account for the creepy children walking around. And doesn't Kikyo's resurrection fit really well with cloning as well? Being "A creature of bones and graveyard soil" sounds like a very poetic way of explaining that you are someone's corpse's clone. And very aware of your deceased status. And, if you assume that the story has had five hundred years or so to mutate, science theoretically could account for a lot of the other strange things in the series. Oh, and Kagome is a pre-Ascended.

Inuyasha is a Future Imperfect retelling of the events of Samurai Jack

• Naraku is really Aku, and Samurai Jack was split into two different characters, Inuyasha and Kagome. Tessaiga is clearly Samurai Jack's sword, Sesshoumaru is the Scottsman and Miroku and Sango any one of the others befriended by Jack. Kikyo could be a loved one taken from Jack by Aku. This happened because, as Jack went back into the past and defeated Aku, naturally all records of his adventures in the future were erased since they never actually happened. However, the legend of Jack's future adventures persisted nonetheless, perpetuated by the only remaining living witness to them - Jack himself. Jack was only able to recount these tales in terms he and his fellow feudal-era Japanese were able to understand - the powerful robots of Aku's armies therefore were transformed into demons, and so on. With time, and as these stories spread through oral tradition from one speaker to the next, the story further became distorted - Jack's adventures were transplanted from the future to the past to create a world listener and speaker alike would be better able to relate to and describe, the hero was split into two to not only preserve a hero with an exotic time traveling aspect, but to add a damsel in distress for the hero; the hero was further transformed into a half-demon to make his exploits seemingly more credible, etc. The villain more or less stayed the same, a deceitful shape-shifter able to spawn demonic (rather than mechanical) minions, but over time his name was changed from Aku to Naraku. Eventually time caught up to the old "fairy tale" and so the tale was continuously adapted so that the "future" the damsel time traveler came from was always the present.
  • Nyarlathotep+Aku=Nyaraku. A bit of storytelling mutation, and you get Naraku, the freaky-tentacled demon-dude.

Inuyasha's time is not Kagome's history, but an alternate dimension in slower time.

This is why in Kagome's past, the demons and giant bugs and monsters were all considered pure mythology: because they were. They never existed in the human world, and Inuyasha's world just happens to be roughly coincidal with our time, 500 years ago. Anything that hinged on being transported from the past to the present was, because of the linkage of events in Inuyasha's world and out history, left there by what would seem to be a complete coincidence. This is why Kagome doesn't just look for a journal (in a place she hadn't been, say, in a metal box under some random tree or shrine) of where all the shards are in the present, find all the shards, and leave their locations in a journal in the exact place she'd first looked. She couldn't do that, because the information wouldn't have existed in her own past. This is also why the characters tended to shy away from time travel references, and if Kikyo's soul (and the Shikon Jewel) could be reincarnated across a dimension, this does not eliminate the possibility that Rin is one of Kikyo's reincarnations, though not necessarily the one directly succeeding Priestess Kikyo.

• No, there's at least one case where one of the shards survived into the present day as part of a Noh Mask. The demons exist in the past but not the present because the present is a time of human social order in Japan while the past is a time of chaos that spawns and attracts demons. Once the warfare ends, the demons who aren't hunted down, will eventually dematerialise or become quiescent.
  • It's possible the Noh Mask was sent through a rip through the dimension barrier as well.
• This theory solves the time-travel headaches this show can cause. Unless You Already Changed the Past is in effect, Kagome's world should change every time she goes through the well. Sure the changes would likely be too small for her to notice at first, but they would build up over several trips to the past. But if You Already Changed the Past is in effect, all drama is lost because they already won, proven because the future isn't ruined/ruled by Naraku. The alternate dimension theory takes care of that and explains why they never tried to take advantage of time travel (like having Hosekni make that portal gem in 100 years and hiding it away for Kagome to find 400 years later and bringing it back to the past), because it wouldn't work in that situation. The Noh mask is just a fluke, likely caused by a wizard.

Kagome is her own great-great-great-etc-grandmother.

Since we haven't seen any 1/4th demons we can assume any demonic traits in her family diminish over time.

• Actually, it's Rin.

The shard for the Mask of Flesh still exists in the past.

And there will be a movie for it.

Kagome will put the shard from her time into the mask herself.

And then try to hide it, so it won't be found until it's supposed to be found.

Kagome is stuck in a time loop and will never be able to rest in peace.

Kagome decided to stay in the past. Which means in 500 years, she'll be born again, go back to the past and face the same adventures, stay in the past again, and in 500 years...

• Time doesn't work like that. Kagome can only be born once, so after she goes to live in the past, the Kagome in the present will be gone from the present forever and when the Kagome in the past dies, Kagome will be gone forever. So basically, Kagome died 430 years or so before she was born...Does that make sense?
  • If it doesn't, just go watch Primer until it does! :)

Kagome is really a Time Lord.

Everyone ready for this? Sesshomaru is... Santa Claus!

In the final chapter, we see him flying in a gift for Rin, hmmm. Jaken and his brethren are elves and A-un is the first reindeer. The red suit? A robe of the fire-rat. What's more, Sesshomaru can fly, has white hair, an extra long lifespan, and super-speed. The Polar Express brings us the final peace of the puzzle: Santa is wielding a rather familiar looking whip...

• ...will you have my first-born child?

Inuyasha eventually finds a way to rid himself of the subjugation beads and replaces them with fakes

Think about it: anytime Kagome is back in her own time and the others are busy with other matters, Inuyasha could have been out making inquiries as to a means of breaking the spell and then sometime later in the series, when no one was the wiser, replaced them with fakes. Just imagine the look on Kagome's face when she suddenly realizes her "sit boy" command no longer works...

• This troper actually always had a theory in how Inuyasha could remove the beads. Remember when they first were put on him? Kaede said its purpose is, and I quote "to subdue his demon". So considering Inuyasha is a HALF demon, and the beads only subdue his demon that should mean that his human side should be otherwise immune to it. After all, any time he's full human, we never see Kagome use the sit command, nor does she threaten to do so. It's possible, Kaede warned her off screen that the command beads have no magic over humans, so Kagome makes sure to avoid saying sit at all during the nights of the New Moon. I mean what would happen if she said "sit" and the command fails? Inuyasha would immediately realise that the beads have no powers during his human nights, and would test it by removing the beads and succeed! Ergo, no more cruel sit commands, and we have one happy hanyou bounding about and spamming Wind Scars in his joy. Or, to go with the above theory, Inuyasha will remove the beads off on his human night without anyone knowing, then put the fakes on he's been working on to freak Kagome out when the sit fails. And if you want him to be really deceitful (cause after all, demons are evil cunning little tricksters, and a half demon should not be an exception) he could go to some powerful demon that knew his father, via connection through Myouga or Toutousai, that specialises in imbuding items with demonic energy, or changing pure engery into evil energy, so that the Beads of Subjugation work in reverse. Rather than subduing demons, it subdues pure humans instead. So when he goes to Kagome, and finds that her sit no longer works on his fake necklace, he can always pretend to "comfort" her by giving her a gift. All she needs to do is close her eyes and wait for him to tell her to open them again. Ensue "SIT!" and watch the shock when after getting a face full of dirt, Kagome finds those beads around her neck instead! I'm pretty sure she'll learn to hate that word as much as Inuyasha did.
  • Seeing as he always gets an Oh Crap look after pissing off Kagome, I don't think that Inuyasha really even thinks of the beads except the very moment that its used against him. Most likely cause it only ever annoys him (excepting the one time before they got involved that he resisted multiple commands and dropped a boulder -- which he had been about to use to permanently trap her in the past -- on himself) she almost never uses it unless he does something that he'd eventually want to apologize for (and at least once she explicitly did it to keep him from starting a fight with Kouga, thereby making sure that Kouga would go away faster). Honestly, he'd probably prefer to take an enforced facefault and call it even and it probably helps that it is the only thing other than Tessaiga that we ever saw snap him immediately out of youkai mode before he could lose control totally. Also, good luck finding a non-Naraku youkai able to subvert a spell created by the soul of Kikyo.
    • I find wrong a few things with that.

1. The "she almost never uses it" line. Just looking on FF.net, fandom is practically split between thinking that Kagome doesn't sit Inuyasha enough, or being a cruel bitch for constantly sitting him even for things as small as disliking curry. I think YMMV would apply here, just to avoid any war starting up on the differing opinions of this.
2. The assumption that he'd "want to apologise" for some of the stuff. We are talking about the same half demon, right? Most of the time the beads are used is to stop Inuyasha from attacking Kouga, punching Shippou, and when Kagome has to vent because he went off to see Kikyou. I doubt Inuyasha WANTS to apologise for these acts. He's not the type of person who feels remorse that easily, unless he killed a few humans. Also, for being sat when he goes to see Kikyou, I don't really think Inuyasha is aware that he's doing any wrong with that, because he wouldn't purposely hurt Kagome if he knew how it effects her. If anything, Kagome's only using the beads when she thinks he's doing something wrong (and this is kind of the view the audience is seeing it from), but it doesn't at all reflect Inuyasha's own views on the situation.
3. The "he'd probably prefer to take an enforced facefault". Unless we're going on the assumption that he has some D/s or humiliation play fetishes, we don't actually know that he'd rather be forced to eat dirt than do what he wants when he's not showing any obvious signs of it. If anything, you mentioning that he gets annoyed would lean more that he doesn't like it. But if you have anything that shows he does prefer a facefault to call it even than say... punching Kouga in the mouth, please feel free to correct me.
4. Kagome never made the beads, and no one knows who did. Rumiko never stated where they came from, and only a filler in the anime named Kikyou as the one who made it, however Rumiko didn't comment on said theory.

• Other points aside, Inuyasha is not a trickster or a deceitful person; on the contrary, he's extremely straightforward and blunt and takes the most direct approach possible at all times. If the beads bothered him enough that he was set on having them removed, I can imagine that he'd ask around about ways to get them off, but I doubt he'd be able to hide it from Kagome and the rest of the group for very long even if he tried, and it almost certainly wouldn't occur to him to do something like replace them with fakes or reverse them onto Kagome. Nor do we have any indication that he'd ever want to reverse them onto Kagome.
  Keep in mind that the violence that goes around the Inu-tachi - Kagome to Inuyasha, Sango to Miroku, Inuyasha to Shippo - is Played for Laughs on the order of a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine. For better or for worse, it's intended as slapstick comedy rather than abuse, and none of the characters are ever dishing out more than their target can handle (save the one instance mentioned previously, and Inuyasha honestly did have that one coming). This is why we never see Inuyasha beating up on the humans of the party the way he does on Shippo (which he does at least as often, if not moreso, than Kagome "sit"s him, and usually on less provocation). If you find Unfortunate Implications in this kind of physical comedy, that's one thing, but singling Kagome out for it is patently unfair.

The Anime takes place in the past or AU of Fatal Frame

Watch Fire on the Mystic Island and you will know...

Kikyo is a Nobody.

She seems completely controlled by memories of her former life, she's basically half of Kagome, and she lacks a true body, instead subsisting on a body composed of human souls.

Naraku will be reincarnated Charlie the Unicorn

How long can he be a Karma Houdini?

Tenseiga's main purpose was to create Bakusaiga inside Sesshoumaru

It was given to him in lieu of Tessaiga, and is one of the two youtou we saw that was not actually forged by a smith but came from a youkai's body (the other being Abi's halberd, which came from Naraku), and unlike Naraku, Sesshoumaru doesn't have the inherent ability to shift his own body to anywhere near that degree on purpose. Combine that with the fact that we know that Tenseiga can repair itself (which Tessaiga can only do when taking back youki that was stolen from it) and that Sesshoumaru's getting Bakusaiga after giving up on his attachment to his father's momentos parallels how Tessaiga usually gains powers after Inu Yasha passes a test of character rather than just defeating another youkai/weapon, and it seems likely that Inu no Taisho gave Sesshoumaru the allegedly weaker sword to teach him kindness, let him perfect the Meidou Zangetsuha for his hanyou brother who can't survive the jyaki of Hell, and incubate a truly destructive weapon to give to his eldest son when said son has proven his worth and learned to stop relying on his father's strength.

The series takes place in the Rosario Plus Vampire universe

The reason that there are no sentient youkai in the future is because they're willingly undergoing a masquerade to prevent from being hunted down (the non-sentient ones are either kept in captivity, hunted to extinction, or never coalesced in the first place due to the relative lack of constant warfare and death in Japan in the last century or so -- with notable exceptions). It helps that their werewolves are speedsters in their universe as well (Kouga's new respect for humans + the massive decimation of his tribe by Naraku + extinction of the Japanese Wolf = mass crossbreeding with humans, other youkai and hanyou, forming a new breed). Inner-Moka is a long distant descendant of and genetic throwback to Inu Yasha and Kagome, having the former's hair and the latter's taste in high-school uniforms and pantyshot-proof miniskirt powers. Sesshoumaru and/or a 500 year old, Nine-Tailed Shippou are members of Youkai Academy's board, and in fact were the ones who suggested Moka and Tsukune's rosaries based on Inu Yasha's and Miroku's, respectively.

The series takes place in the Yu Yu Hakusho universe.

There are demons in the past but not in Kagome's present because sometime between the two, the barrier between the two worlds was constructed. The well is a time-portal that transports the user back in time rather than to the Makai. Shippo is distantly related to Yoko Kurama. Kikyo was a distant relative of Yusuke's ancestral father, explaining her impressive powers. Since Kagome is her reincarnation, when she and Inuyasha had kids, Kagome eventually passed this relation on to Yusuke Urameshi!

The series takes place in the Harry Potter universe.

The reasons the youkai are not seen in the present are roughly similar to that of why wizards aren't seen. Whenever something magic related goes wrong, such as the Noh Mask episode, there's somebody there to cover it up and/or fix it - think of it like Japan's version of the Ministry of Magic. Also, the well that connects the two eras works the same way as the Platform at Nine and Three Quarters.

The time traveling elements are the result of Executive Meddling.

While Inuyasha is practically driven by Fridge Logic, most of the time it can be Handwaved with contrived Magi Babble. The one thing that doesn't make sense at all is the whole issue with Kikyou being unable to being resurrected because her soul has already reincarnated, when it's plainly obvious that it has not *yet* done so.

The only way it could make sense is if Kagome was born at some point between Kikyou's death and Inuyasha's awakening. Oddly enough this period is "about 50 years", which is just too perfect for Kikyou to be reincarnated normally. Think about it, a reincarnation could be expected to skip a generation (about 30 years) and Kagome is about 16 years old, 30 + 16 = 46, which is pretty close.

There are no other justifications in or out of the plot for this time skip. The closest thing is Miroku's back story. The cursing of his grandfather, his father's death and his growth into maturity also fit this timespan, but that could easily be reduced to under 20 years (replacing his father for his grandfather). Rather it seems as if Miroku's back story was adapted to theoretically original, feudal era Kagome.

The idea is that someone suggested using a girl from the modern era to make the manga more relateable. Of course it could be that Rumiko Takahashi herself came up with the idea, but the time traveling stuff really feels bolted on after the "core plot" was done.

• • Actually, it was suggested that the Shikon no Tama (which has powers over time and space) reincarnated Kikyo's soul (which also has powers over time and space, at least vis a vis the Bone Eater's Well) against her will due to a subconscious desire to see Inu Yasha again. It seems likely that those factors (combined with Kikyo's pre-existing desire to be a normal girl) combined and overrode her grieving attempt to take the Shikon no Tama into her soul and then never reincarnate again. Assuming that souls transmigrate in a temporally linear manner. In Miroku's religion, at least, time is an illusion of the "mortal" condition... but then again, in Buddhism there isn't exactly a "soul," either.

• • Also from an above WMG theory, it's possible that Kikyou's soul had been reincarnated in that time period, just we never come accross this character because they weren't important to the plot. Considering that the Shikon no Tama was sealing Kagome's powers while it was inside her, the same can be assumed for any other reincarnation of Kikyou's soul, so they wouldn't be especially different from other mortal women.
    • Kikyo's soul could have been reincarnated in Europe or South America at the time for all our heroes know. It's not like they ever left Japan.

• On the other hand, Takahashi did write Fire Tripper, which had the medieval Japan time travel element in it long before Inuyasha.

Kanna didn't tell Kagome how to defeat Naraku just because she didn't want to die.

She did it to avenge Kagura as well. Just before Kanna receives to the order to fight InuYasha, she's seen performing a memorial rite to her sister. Kagura also seemed to be in her thoughts while fighting though that she could have just have been thinking about death in general.

Shiori is a dhampyre.

Her father and his clan resemble vampires, and her mother is a human women. She will eventually grow to possess vampire powers.

Rin IS Kagome

Just to add even more Mind Screw to the series, and borrowing from some of the above theories: Rin is the reincarnation of Kikyo and that's the reason she couln't be resurrected: "Her reincarnation had been born already" as a common girl. After the end of the series, Rin will have an accident so severe her life will be in danger, and not finding the means to cure her in the past, Inuyasha and everyone else will work on a way to force the portal in the well to open. They are able to send her to the future, but earlier than what they expected, and Kagome's family will take care of her. The Trauma will make Rin to get amnesia, and the little she remembers about demons and whatnot will be threated as fantasies by her new family.

The cast are ancestors of the Ranma ½ cast

Only Six Faces and Takahashi's fascination with reusing character archetypes aside, the similarity in looks and personality can support such a WMG. This means Ranma (descended from Inuyasha directly) and Akane (descended from Kagome's brother) are distant cousins, but people in Japan tend to be more closely related than elsewhere anyway because of the geographical isolation.

Other ancestries:

• Miroku -> Happosai. That means Happosai was once vaguely handsome.
• Koga -> Ryouga.

Other demons can travel through the Bone-eater's Well

Kagome can only travel through the well if she has a Shikon jewel shard, but Inuyasha goes back and forth without needing a jewel. Shippo and Sota both try to go through, but fail, even though they have fragments of the jewel. This leads me to believe that the jewel isn't important to traveling through the well, but strong powers are. The jewel, combined with Kagome's own spiritual power, makes her strong enough to pass through, but when Inuyasha takes her jewel shards away, she can't travel through the well. Inuyasha, even though he's a half-demon, is the son of Inu-taisho, and is thus very strong. We see that in his fight scenes, when he's able to defeat powerful full-blooded demons. Shippo may be able to go through the well when he's older and his powers have had more time to develop, but when he tried, he was still too young. Mistress Centipede and (in the movie) Sounga were both able to travel through the well without jewel shards as well. Thus, if they tried, other powerful demons like Sesshomaru, Naraku, and Koga would be able to travel through the well easily, and humans with strong powers like Miroku could, too, if they had jewel shards.