I am an avid fan of the Kingdom Hearts franchise. At first, the base concept sold me, as I could never imagine how Final Fantasy would mesh with Disney. The first time I ever saw the game was on a demo disk that came with Final Fantasy X. I’ve fallen in love with the bizarre concepts introduced with each new entry ever since. The latest entry, Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory added a musical spin-off that, in classic Tetsuya Nomura-style, is canon to the ever-growing story of the franchise. What started with a young kid named Sora trying to save his friends from ever-lurking darkness has turned into quite the convoluted chaos. We git introduced to beings known as Nobodys, who are the bodies whose hearts turned into Heartless. Our Keyblade-wielding heroes can jump into dreams, back through time, and who knows what else nowadays. Yet, the latest revelation has given me a feeling that this may have been set-up in 2005.
Keep in mind, if you haven’t played Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory yet, you will get spoiled for the major revelation in that game. Only continue at your own risk.
The ending of Melody of Memory gave us an essential bit of information on what happened to Sora after he vanished. He now exists in a world beyond the light, darkness, and everything in-between. At first, they describe it as a fictional world known only as Unreality, or Quadratum. The name is Latin for Square, which connects to the new character revealed in Kingdom Hearts 3 Re:Mind named Yozora. His name translates to Night Sky in Japanese, which is the same in Latin for Noctis, who was originally the protagonist of Nomura‘s Final Fantasy Versus XIII. We briefly visit this location in the secret boss against Yozora, which looks like a replication of real-life Shibuya. We get introduced to it in the base game for the third entry, as Yozora was a video game character for our heroes. It fits with the fictional world description. It is a world beyond that of light, darkness, and everything in-between. In a way, it is fiction, as it never existed. There was a location we visited a long-time ago that actually might be connected to it.
Now, playing around with that thought, I came to realize we visited a location that technically did not exist. It became the home base for the first incarnation of Organization XIII but was never really fleshed out. It only held the name The World that Never Was, where one could find the Dark City. We never really get a backstory on why this place was the hiding spot for the Nobodys in Kingdom Hearts 2, but it made for a memorable trip. I think many still remember Memory’s Skyscraper, where Sora and Roxas had their final confrontation in that game. It probably was chosen by Xemnas, who was the Nobody of our main protagonist, Xehanort. Going into detail on that character’s history will take quite a lot of time. The reason I bring this up connects to the post-credit sequence of Melody of Memory. Keyblade Master Yen Sid pointed out that the ancient masters could travel between realities, which means that Xehanort was aware Quadrantum existed.
So, how does it all connect? I believe that The World That Never Was is a remnant pulled from Unreality through the Realm of Darkness. That caused it to turn into the Dark City. A newer character known only as Master of Masters, or MOM, shaped the moon above Quadrantum in a post-credit sequence, which fans know means he is after the True Kingdom Hearts. He may have passed on this knowledge to Xehanort at one point in history, as we briefly see them interact as master and student. This connection would also explain the mystery surrounding the Organization XIII member Luxord. So far, he is the one character who is still shrouded in mystery. Well, that was until the good ending from the Yozora fight. Robin Atkin Downes, who voices Luxord, reappears when Yozora awakes from his battle with Sora in Quadrantum. As such, we can only assume he may have been brought with the city when it turned into The World That Never Was. It’s just a theory, but if it turns out to be correct, I might repeat Luxord’s words from Re:Mind:
Impressive, is it not?
