Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time/Headscratchers

• I know this is a Time Travel story, so this may be a moot point, but, Time Travel Tense Trouble aside, since 5 D's hasn't ended yet, at what point in the 5 D's timeline would this take place?
  • Considering that Yusei has the Dragon Head birthmark at this point, it takes place during Season 3 (or if you count the Fortune Cup and Dark Signer arcs as one, Season 2). Yusei also mentions Bruno, which means the movie's events occurred after Episode 80. The blue pendant from the Crash Town arc also makes an appearance, which means the movie may have taken place after the Crash Town arc (Episode 92).
  • It also takes place before Leo receives his Signer mark.
  • It's been confirmed to take place right before Crashtown.

• Killing Pegasus when Paradox did so would not end up in Duel Monsters getting destroyed. At most, it would prevent Rainbow Dragon from being created, which would result in Judai still being stuck in the other dimension in Season 3 of GX, thus preventing him from protecting the world from Darkness.
  • Maybe he assumed that without Pegasus, Industrial Illusions would collapse and Duel Monsters cards and paraphernalia would stop being manufactured- that, in essence, Industrial Illusions had No Ontological Inertia? If he was the last man on Earth, its not like anybody would have been around to give him an economics and business management course explaining how that wouldn't happen.
    • One problem with that. Pegasus isn't the only proprietor when it comes to Duel Monsters. It is just as likely that even with his death, (the fact that an entire company doesn't just immediately fall on its ass with the death of one man notwithstanding) Duel Monsters would still thrive under KaibaCorp and other smaller lesser-known companies. If he knew enough to realize that Pegasus was the creator of the godawful game that supposedly turned his world into a wasteland, he had to have had the common sense to do away with the man in a time period before he created the card game. Or better yet, he could've even taken himself all the way back to Ancient Egypt and destroyed the whole concept of the game where it started. If that seems like overkill, let's remember that this is a guy that blames destruction of the world on card games. And then guess what? If the man had gone all the way back to the roots of the game, all the drama from then on wouldn't have happened, whether or not any or all of the three protagonists who kicked his ass would even be born/exist would be questionable, and he would have succeeded in his supposed mission. Even if it affects his whole existence, he'd still do it to achieve his goals, as he has clearly shown no problem with fucking up reality to meet his ends.

• Does Paradox not realize that killing Pegasus would mean Duel Monsters wouldn't become a worldwide phenomenon, so he wouldn't have to go back and kill Pegasus, which in the end would result in the obvious?
  • Technically speaking this could be applied to anybody who goes back in time to do something specific. Its best not to think about it, but if you have to, you can generally assume some technobable answer such as jumping over the ripple effect, branching timelines, alternate universes, or otherwise ensuring that the person from a now-dead future still came back in time, even if they have no future to return to. See: The cast of Chrono Trigger barring that one time early on, Future Trunks in Dragonball Z, the entirety of the Back to The Future series of movies, Marvel Comics, DC Comics concept of Hypertime.
  • We know that Paradox's future was presumably destroyed by Duel Monsters, therefore for the Grandfather Paradox to occur Duel Monsters needs to cease existing. First of all, it depends on how a time paradox is handled in the story. It could result in a person merely disappearing, history changing or reality getting destroyed. I generally assumed that the paradox would occur only if Pegasus was killed before Duel Monsters got created (I didn't think of the possibility of halting the game's production for this scenario, see above). Now, that situation would obviously result in a Grandfather Paradox providing that Paradox stayed in the same universe during his time travel and the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle doesn't apply to the timeline. (Which states that the probability of a paradox-creating event existing is zero.) Moreover, the Timeline Protection Hypothesis should not apply, either, which means the natural continuity timeline doesn't exist to prevent the time traveler from creating a time paradox. (Eg. The timeline makes up for the inconsistency by having someone else create Duel Monsters.) If the timeline is split into branches or Paradox actually travels into a parallel universe, then one of the timelines will be unharmed and the changes will only take place in that specific parallel universe/branch. If a paradox doesn't result in reality getting destroyed, then history would still change big time - The Paraoh would not be able to reach the Afterlife because there would be no "shield and sword" to fight with, therefore Bakura and/or Marik could just kill him. Judai's and Yusei's periods would be also heavily altered, Judai would not be able to reunite with Yubel and never become the person he was supposed to be. Yusei's parents worked at MIDS, which is Kaiba Corp's division, which started working on Duel Boxes (and eventually, Solid Vision) only after Yugi beat Kaiba at Duel Monsters for the first time. Therefore, Yusei may have not even be born in the 5D's period. Even though Duel Monsters doesn't exist to reflect humans' hearts, they'd eventually destroy each other either way. Or just the mere act of time travel would cause changes to the timeline (Butterfly of Doom), which is what seems to be going on with the movie with reality slowly falling apart.
  • This is the essence of the Temporal Paradox -- yes, "changing the past" makes no sense because it would erase the conditions that caused you go to the past, and it applies to every use of the Temporal Paradox in Time Travel plots as long as they have existed. It really does require the MST3K Mantra to enjoy such Time Travel stories -- but since it's not like we really have Time Travel, we can't complain that "Time Travel does not work that way!" anyway.
  • It could just create a Stable Time Loop. After all, that's exactly how the main series ends anyway. You know with ZONE going back in time and changeing it. Then said changes made it so Yusei would prevent the his apocalyptic future and prevent him from becoming a Yusei clone.
  • Maybe killing Pegasus and ending the production of Duel Monsters would erase him from the timeline because his timeline never happened, which would be worth it to Paradox as it would prevent his horrible timeline from occurring. In other words, sacrificing himself to keep the future from ever going awry.
  • It's a distinct possibility that he's too insane to notice or care. The others have crossed the Despair Event Horizon, causing them to Go Mad from the Revelation, so why wouldn't Paradox? This also explains why he's screwing up and destroying the timeline instead of saving it- he's too crazy to devise a plan that makes any sense and the result is a scatter-shot plan that ends up doing more harm than good. There's also no reason to believe he isn't a Ridiculously Human Robot, either.

• How exactly does Jaden know what Paradox is planning to do?
  • Remember during his duel with Darkness at the end of Yu-Gi-Oh GX? Darkness showed a vision of the future that showed a ruined world with the entire planet barren and destroyed, with ruined buildings. Its likely that paradox came from this future, and its a future that Paradox wants to prevent from happening and supposedly, Yiliaster from Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds wants to prevent from happening by having their God, Z-One, prevent from happening as well.

• When does Yugi's timeline take place? In the shot of Pegasus flying to the event during the duel, you can see that he has the Millenium Eye. Yet Bakura took it after Duelist Kingdom, which was before the Duel Disk Yugi was using was even made.
  • Given that they're using Battle City rules, and Yugi is familiar with them, it seems likely that it's the Millenium Eye which is out of place. I'm guessing probably after the Doma arc, since there's no hints that Pegasus had been MIA prior to this announcement. This does raise a new question... Why is Yugi so excited about seeing Pegasus? And for that matter, where's Joey and the rest of Yugi's friends?
  • It's also interesting to note that Yugi and Yami are still fused together...
    • How was Atem/Yami in either of the Duels that took place after the series (this one and the end of GX)? The original series ended with him leaving for good.
    • Yami never appeared in GX's present timeline. That was Yugi as an adult. Yami only appeared when they traveled in time.
  • Didn't Bakura give Pegasus a fake Millennium Eye to replace the real one with?
  • That would have been surprisingly considerate. Well, in the manga he's dead, and if we take the first Yugioh movie as an indication, the sight of Pegasus' covered side of his face isn't very pretty. Maybe he replaced it later on?
  • I think it takes place just before the "Wakeing the Dragons" arc. But I'm not sure.
  • Also Black/Dark Magician and Black/Dark Magician Girl talk in the movie....uhhhh...correct me if I'm wrong but they couldn't DO that before until the end of the series or something...right? So when the actual hell does this movie take place?! I know Time Travel can get pretty screwed up...but this really takes the cake.
    • And probably ate it too!
      • ^I see what you did there.
  • For that matter, why is it that in neither of these situations, Yugi at some point recognizes Jaden? Either the temporal fuck-up created by Paradox or the event where Yugi himself sends Jaden into his own past...one of them had to occur first. Yugi would have to recognize Jaden in one or the other. Perhaps Paradox's whole reality-disturbing mania messed with the one event, allowing Yugi to forget Jaden and Yusei, which would make sense if the time at which their whole duel took place rolls around after this event. But then, there's a problem with that as well. When Jaden gets taken to the past at the end of GX, he's just graduated and is off to see the world/go on adventures/whatever. He's in Venice at the time the movie takes place, presumably indicating he's there after having left school (really, what the hell else is he doing in Venice??) and gone off... Which means, in the case of him going back to Yugi's time, whether or not Yugi recognizes him, he would still know him and remember the event of their duel. Perhaps I missed something while watching, but I don't think Jaden ever recalls this event during the movie (even just as an aside to Yusei in the case of not wanting to give Yugi spoilers...). He acts like it's really the first time he's meeting Yugi, and only seems to recognize him as a result of his fame and not because of actually having interacted with him personally.
    • And just in case, this troper IS aware that no Season 4 of GX dub meant Jaden never got to face off with Yugi in that context. Still, this point should exist in the movie as it is an adaptation of the original source material... (unless 4kids seriously screwed us here).

• Why does Paradox play Duel Monsters? You'd think that if he blames it for destroying the future, he wouldn't bother picking up the game and would skip to traveling back in time and killing Pegasus before he could even come up with the idea for the game using conventional means.
  • Remember, this is Yu-Gi-Oh!. Duels Decide Everything.
  • More reasonable answer is He came from the same group of survivors that have their future destroyed by Synchro monster, which explains(though does not explain why Paradox use Synchro monster in the first place). Also said group is a mess of Fridge Logic considering they use the same card that caused the Bad Future as their signature card
    • He seems to want to really mess with the protagonists by showing them all of the horrors that Duel Monsters can create. The Malefic/Sin monsters were explained in a guidebook as experiments done on their original forms, so Paradox is basically a rogue mad scientist who broke free from the rest (Aporia, Zone, Ect) to carry out revenge on his own, straying from the original plan. It was this kind of reckless planning to cause him to make so many foolish oversights, most likely.
      • Maybe he figured useing Monsters to destroy all monster was poetic justice? Just a theory.
  • You also have to remember that Paradox was originally just going to kill Pegasus and he only dueled because he had to. He dueled Yusei to get his Stardust and dueled the three protagonists because they got in his way. Since this is Yu-Gi-Oh! and as seen above Duels Decide Everything if he couldn't duel it would take about 3 minutes for one of the protagonists to take him down.
    • When it comes to dueling who ever is in your way, I always figured that it's an inevitability in he Yu-Gi-Oh world because one of two things would happen; You could either duel, or you could battle it out with your monsters which would inevitably become a duel anyways (one person would summon, the other would block, someone would flip a trap, ect.)

• How did Jaden know that Stardust Dragon returned to the field after it used it's effect? No one ever told him.
  • He read the card, possibly.

• How the hell did Paradox not die in his Bad Future? I mean, presumably his world was blown to hell and just about everybody else died. But let's put that aside and assume he somehow found a way to live through that, the air looked like it could barely be called breathable. Does he own a private oxygen tank just in case some explosion turns the atmosphere into poison?

• Why did Paradox try to use those dragons to kill Pegasus and a bunch of other people when he could get a gun and shoot Pegasus from the rooftop? Or better yet, travel back further and smother him with a pillow?

• Something that the Abridged Movie brought to my attention. Why was Jaden/Juudai in Venice???...why was Paradox there too? To attack Juudai?
  • I'm thinking Paradox went there because Jaden/Juudai was there. As for why Jaden/Juudai was there... He... wanted to take a vacation... by himself... in a foreign country... because he wanted a change of scenery? I dunno.
  • I just recently rewatched the dub version of the movie (don't know if it's the same in the sub, but I am positive it probably is) But Jaden says to Yusei that some of his friends' card went missing and he followed Paradox...which then makes me wonder, why the hell did Paradox not just jump through time after stealing all those cards, and instead ran to Venice? WTF?
  • This troper assumed it was because Jaden, originally, at the real end of GX, went off to explore the world after graduating Duel Academy. Venice just happened to be where he was visiting at the time, and Paradox pinpointed his location there.

• Can someone explain why Jaden knew Elemental Hero NEOS was able to fuse with Junk Gardna? Since Junk Gardna is Yusei's card, as in from the future.....soooo...
  • Neos Knight needs Neos and ANY Warrior Type monster, the summon chant was just Jaden showing off.

• I've got a Jaden related question that's been buggin me forever, where the HELL IS WINGED KURIBOH! I know the little guy isn't universally love'd but still... All I see are Neos and Yubel!? What gives?
  • Presumably because the two that were shown were much more iconic and you can only fit so much into one movie. After all, the Egyptian Gods didn't exactly make an appearance either (though they would've completely curbstomped Paradox if they had, so that was probably for the sake of drama).