Hunter X Hunter/WMG

The "official" religion of Meteor City is Satanism
Almost all first-generation citizens of Meteor City are people who have been literally thrown away and left to die by someone from the outside world. They're unwanted by anyone except as anonymous (and disposable) black ops. It's no small stretch of the imagination that they might decide that the God that's all-powerful and loves the world that threw them away doesn't want them, either. Literally every single person living in Meteor City who didn't run away there themselves has an entirely valid reason to be a bitter misotheist.

It's also easy to posit that the general view on outsiders (soon-to-be-ex-outsiders nonwithstanding) is probably something along the lines of "They didn't care if we died; why should we care if they do?". . . which possibly gives the Ryodan members from Meteor City the mother of all Freudian Excuses.

Most of the Ryodan's profits go to making Meteor City more livable.
Those occasional acts of philanthropy Hisoka spoke of? All in the name of helping the Ryodan's home town.

As they've reiterated themselves many a time, "[They]'re theives. [They] steal." The Ryodan lifestyle, by all appearances, seems to be that they steal everything they need in their day-to-day lives. Except for things like services that can't really be "stolen", they don't actually need money for anything, because they don't buy anything. So where does that money go? The creed of Meteor City dictates that they never give anything back to the outside world, and also supreme cooperation and kinship. Most of that money probably goes into getting fresh food and vital medicine for the less fortunate back home.

Disclaimer: Not intending to Draco in Leather Pants the Ryodan here, or to try to justify their (incredibly heinous) crimes. This is just my headcanon.

The Kuruta clan was so reclusive because they were afraid.
The world of Hx H is very nasty just under the shiny surface, and it would be surprising if human trafficking wasn't an active and highly lucrative market, even if it's underground. A pair of their eyes preserved in jars are worth billions. Think how much a pair still in a living, emotive head would be. The reason there aren't more, enslaved Kuruta around that weren't there during the massacre is probably because of how many generations they'd been in hiding, and how difficult it potentially is to subjugate someone who has access to Emperor Time (breaking them emotionally would risk them becoming too numb to activate the Scarlet Eyes anymore).

The Scarlet Eyes have always been seen as a commodity; Kuroro was just the first person to realise that slaughtering the Kuruta the eyes are attached to is a lot less of a hassle.

The reason overusing the Scarlet Eyes causes Kurapika to pass out is because their "fire" is fueled by burning nen.
There was just nothing left to burn.

Ging's target is Alluka.
He knows of her existence, which is why he's so sure Gon will live. We know Ging became a hunter because there's something he wants, and Alluka can grant anything he wishes for. Perhaps the true reason he wanted to choose the election's format is because it will inevitably result in candidates desperate for votes as the elections proceed; if he were to then leak the nature of Alluka's ability, perhaps after Gon has been healed, he could take advantage of the subsequent chaos to seize Alluka for himself. This would neatly bring the two storylines together and reveal much more about Ging's nature and motivations. Since this would make Killua hate Ging and perhaps want his head, his relationship with Gon could take an interesting stormy turn.

Biscuit is Gon's mother.
The main, concealed reason she participated in Greed Island and helped Gon and Killua was to see how her son was doing. Remember, Greed Island is over a decade old and Biscuit is in her late 50s; if she really wanted that gem so badly, wouldn't she have gone after it sooner? That she waited until Gon entered the game, and then proceeded to help him and his friend, is pretty suspicious! She acted like she wasn't familiar with Ging, but she's a natural liar and for whatever reason decided to conceal her relation to him and Gon. Of course if I'm right this raises some questions about Ging's sexual preferences...

'Aunt' Mito is Gon's Mom.
When we get peeks into Gign's childhood, there's a few things to it that seem just a little 'off.' Mito seems to care for Ging A LOT, and appears to have had that kind of nervous crush attitude around him in flashbacks. What little interactions we see between them give off this sense of a very deep sense of connection between the two, with an odd sort of attempted distance that seems to imply romantic feelings one or both of them is afraid to pursue. She gets VERY distant and evasive when the subject of Gon's mother is brought up, and in general it feels like there's something she and her mother just aren't telling us.
 * Considering that they were the only kids on the island it isn't odd that they would be really close. Also it's pretty much hinted that Mito has never left the island. And Ging brought infant Gon back years later, long after since becoming a hunter.
 * It wasn't 'just' that they were close, there were just a lot of odd subtleties to their interactions that seemed to indicate some sort of possible forbidden love, or the makings of one in the future. And as for Ging bringing Gon back, we only have Mito's word on that, she could easily have lied about it.

The leader of the Kurata clan was responsible for creating Meteor city; the Spider exterminated them for revenge as well as for treasure.
The history of the Kurata clan hasn't been explored in series. We learn that they were reclusive, but not why. It's possible, considering the great power their eyes confer them, that they were previously part of the ruling class of a country. If they were opposed by another group of people with similar power, perhaps the ancestors of the Spider, it's not unfeasible they would try to destroy this group and isolate all who supported them. They and the international mafia are the Spider's only revealed targets so far. Considering the vast legitimate auctions that coincided with the mafia community's, isn't it a bit odd the Spider only targeted criminals? Perhaps they have a modus operandi of only targeting those they consider evil. It would make for a dramatic and fascinating plot development and would help explain why so many members of this band of vicious killers come across as pretty normal and even empathetic.

Gon's father, Ging Freecs, is actually Yuusuke Urameshi from Yu Yu Hakusho
Yuusuke stumbled through a dimensional timespace vortex post-YYH, got de-aged, lost his memory, wound up on Whale Island in the Hunter x Hunterverse (which is arguably an alternate Earth with fudged-around geography, if you look at its world map sideways), got adopted by Mito's parents, and renamed Ging. He then proceeded to be too awesome to make a manga about (especially since Togashi-sensei had already done so once before), and so Togashi-sensei defaulted to making a manga about Yuusuke's sprog, Gon. This was probably a good idea.
 * Look at Ging's face in Reiza's expository flashback after the dodgeball game on Greed Island. That's Yuusuke's face; he's just got different hair.
 * Didn't it say somewhere that Gon, while definitely of the Reinforcement nen, was aligned a little bit off-center in the Emission direction? Yuusuke's signature move was the Spirit Gun/Reigan, which would translate to being Emission-type in HxH, but that was a technique that Koenma taught him, and both Yuusuke and his Youkai ancestor Raizen seem to be much more naturally suited for brawling than point-and-shoot. Nen-types tend to run in families, and Yuusuke would most probably fall between the Reinforcement and Emission types, more towards Reinforcement than Emission, if someone were to plot him on the nen alignment chart.
 * As an extension of this, Gon's biological mother is probably Reinforcement type, too, which would slant Gon's nen alignment much more strongly towards Reinforcement, and also would probably be something Yuusuke would find attractive in a woman, considering how much of a "battle junkie" he is. They could beat each other up all day. ~w~
 * This explains why Gon is so insanely prodigous; he's got the blood of a Youkai battle god running through his veins.
 * This also explains why Yuusuke/Ging was so 100% confident that sending Gon to Greed Island was a good idea, and why he told Reiza to go all-out, even though he'd presumably never seen Gon since leaving the baby boy at Mito's place. He knew that there was no way Gon could ever turn out weak. This assumes that Yuusuke started to get his memories back at some point, which might have been the reason he decided to wander in the first place.
 * Gon inherited his uncanny knack for coming up with serendipitous, out-of-the-box solutions from his father.
 * An alternative theory is that because they're written by the same author, there were some unintentional similarities in abilities and character designs.
 * Well, yes, but that's not nearly as fun an epileptic tree, now, is it? ;P
 * An alternate alternate theory is that Ging is this world's Star System equivalent of Yusuke. Which would make Gon's mother (most likely) the Star System equivalent of Keiko.

Kuroro is the Antichrist.
Think about it. He's got that inverted cross motif going on, along with that tattoo/birthmark on his forehead, he's got 12 followers, his organization is made up of a total of 13 people, he has a positive opinion of Judas, his book has a Red Right Handprint on the cover, and he's an Expy of Sensui, whom we know Togashi-sensei piled tons of religious symbolism and numerology onto (special thanks goes to Sir Psycho Sexy for his essays on the subject, without which this Epileptic Tree might never have been grown).
 * We also have proof that demons exist in HxH canon ( is revealed to be one late in the  arc), and that HxH demons are described as being "endlessly selfless" above all other traits, which implies that they're the minions of a more powerful being.
 * We also also have evidence of there being a "Devil" of some kind in the HxHverse, who penned the sheet music for the Dark Sonata, which cursed  after having heard just one note/verse, and killed the man who played it.
 * Speaking of said Dark Sonata, it's worth noting that Senritsu was completely freaked out by the sound of Kuroro's heartbeat.

Shizuku suffers from mental retardation.
Now, before any of ya'll give a knee-jerk "WTFNO!" reaction, let this troper explain herself. This epileptic tree isn't supposing that Shizuku is an idiot, only that her mental/emotional age appears to be much lower than her physical one, which fits the medical definition of retardation. Behold my reasoning:
 * Okay, so, first, I'd like to say that this condition of hers is probably largely contributable to the fact that, if she grew up in Shooting Star City/Meteor City/whatever the hell you wish to call it, there's a good chance that she did not have access to a wide variety of safe-to-eat foods (since the whole place is, you know, a giant landfill), and various nutritional deficiencies are known to cause/contribute to cognitive impairment, especially if experienced in early life.
 * Shizuku is probably best known for her tendency to irretrievably forget things, and slightly less well-known for her (distinctly child-like) straightforwardness/earnestness/sinscerity/etc. in basically all she does. She has a tendency to take things at face-value, without noticing many of the subtleties, contingencies, and alternative courses of action that would -- and do -- occur and seem obvious to the other, more "adult" members of the team.
 * She also chose a very specific restriction for her vacuum cleaner: it can't suck up anything that she perceives to be alive, but it can do things like drain blood out of a person from an open wound, which strikes me as the kind of restriction a little kid who likes animals would use for that ability, and the kind of work-around a kid might come up with, to make something be not alive anymore.
 * Speaking of, let's look at Deme-chan, the vacuum cleaner in question:
 * It has a cutesy name and an assigned gender (female, by the way, but I'll continue to use "it" here for consistency's sake).
 * It has huge, googly eyes.
 * It has a goofy grin and a long, comically-lolling tongue.
 * It makes cute/funny nonsense noises when spoken to.
 * Overall, it looks and acts like it came out of some demented children's cartoon.
 * On top of all of this, Franklin seems to be acting as a caregiver/guardian for Shizuku, even though she's 19 and should, theoretically, be capable of taking care of herself at that age, without the need for a stand-in "parent".
 * There's also the fact that she seems to be the only person who doesn't appear to notice at all the Aura of Molestation that Hisoka radiates, which tends to make everyone around him want to keep at least two arms' length away. In most group shots of the Ryodan hanging out in the York Shin arc, Shizuku is usually drawn sitting next to Hisoka, completely unbothered, and giving the book she's reading her full attention, but no one else will sit anywhere near him.
 * About the Hisoka part, maybe she likes him, in a romantic sense; you know, 13 years olds can have such feeling, if that's her mental age.
 * Actually, my estimates would have put her somewhere at the lower end of the the 6-9 range, probably 7. Kids start getting much craftier after 8.
 * I had the idea kicking around that her Nen ability is removing her memories. Rather, the stuff Deme-chan sucks up, where does it go? The object is turned into a memory and placed in her brain. This pushes out other memories, and the more she uses her ability, the more memory loss she has.

Biscuit is an in-universe Eldritch Abomination
Her "real" form was of an extremely muscular woman, and she said she was 50-something, but just a little girl becoming a muscular, middle-aged woman wouldn't impose that much fear as she did, to make the guys almost crap themselves in the pants, as it wouldn't be that abnormal in that part of HxH's universe. She could probably that world's version of Cthulhu, and could release an even more firghtening form. But unlike Lovecraft's Cthulhu, she's endearing with most kids, and disguises as a cute little girl. Perhaps she's over 1000 years as well, and the whole universe is The Plan of her to make kids rule, as they seem to make more sense than the adults in such place.
 * Or it could be her true form is 10+ ft tall and covered in muscles, and more than double the size of her opponent. Heck, even Ubogvin probably wasn't that big.

Kurapika is a really flat-chested girl
At least, "his" disguise as a girl was too much effective.
 * And his voice in the anime. That's not a guy's voice. Not even a guy with a female voice actor. That's a girl's voice and this troper will not be convinced otherwise.
 * Also the way he covers himself when he shares that room with Leorio. Then there's that Train scene on their way to the Zoledick mansion.
 * Or at the very least female-assigned. The cover for the 14th volume of the manga shows Kurapika-from-the-hips-up, naked, and looking nothing like the way Togashi-sensei usally draws guys. There's no definition to the chest, and very womanly hips. I, personally, think that "Kurapika" might have actually been the name of that black-haired person in that one flashback, and the Kurapika we know assumed the "real" Kurapika's identity after their clan was wiped out, possibly because she felt that he would be a better or more worthy avenger than herself. Alternately, she was always named Kurapika, and assumed the role of a male when she decided to become an avenging her kin. There could be several reasons for this, up to and including the possibility that only men were supposed to be fighters in their clan.

Killua's grandmother is a nekomimi, a bakeneko, or some combination of the two. By extension, Zeno Zaoldyeck is a furry.
Evidence:
 * Killua's grandmother was mentioned once in canon, but has never been shown, thus allowing WMG to occur.
 * Zeno has round pupils. His son, Silva, has slitted, catlike pupils. Therefore, Silva's catlike pupils probably came from his mother.
 * Killua will, in lighthearted scenes, sometimes spontaneously sprout cat ears on his head, a 3-shaped mouth, and his hands will turn into cat paws.
 * In the anime, at least, during the scene during the Hunter's Exam where they're, there's one of those bird-things that keeps tipping its beak into a glass of water, and Killua is shown watching it with an expression just like a cat watching birds from behind a window.
 * Killua and Illumi both have what are functionally retractable claws.
 * Don't Illumi's eyes remind you of those creepy cat clocks, except that they don't go back-and-forth all the time?

The Naruto World shares the same planet as Hunter x Hunter.

 * The similarities between Nen and Naruto Chakra might be enough, but the Hunters bear an uncanny similarity to ninja villages, if far more overt. The Zaoldyecks seem to be closer to Naruto-ninja, and very might well be immigrants. Naturally, we only see portions of both worlds, so it's entirely possible that the explored portions of the Hunter X Hunter world do not contain the Ninja part, and vice-versa. One of the more difficult points is that nen is more limited in many ways than chakra; people learn very few moves that use nen, as opposed to ninja. Of course, ninja are taught from a very young age to manipulate chakra, but I think the differences can be explained by the presence of immense creatures made entirely out of nen -- "radiant" nen (much like radiant body heat) could accumulate in their surroundings and affect the creatures that live there.
 * We're forgetting about Hanzo, who lives in a village that shares the theme naming with the Naruto world.
 * How is Nen more than superficially similar to Chakra? They're both Rule Magic systems of Ki Attacks, but the similarities end there. The rules -- the defining characteristic of any Rule Magic system -- are completely different for Chakra and Nen. And I'm not sure about the anime, but the manga of Hunter x Hunter does show a world map on at least one occasion.
 * Nen and Chakra in fact don't even work in a similar narrative way: Chakra relies on New Powers as the Plot Demands, with new types of chakras, jutsus or hereditary capacities/mutations being frequently introduced. Nen relies on Magic A Is Magic A, being initially presented with 4 principles and 6 schools, and every single nen ability or power introduced after that point is constructed out of these basic elements. Another problem about having Naruto and Hunter X Hunter be in the same universe is that, in the Narutoverse, guns do not apparently exist, whereas they do in the Hunterverse (and when ordinary guns won't do, Nen-powered guns using Abnormal Ammo are used).
 * It could be that Chakra-usage uses the same power source as Nen-usage, but uses less refined techniques to harness it. Or it could be that Naruto takes places before Netero trained in the mountains and setup his martial-art school. It would be the same difference as as D&D Ninja Wizards to Hunter Sorcerors. Applying the same energy in different ways.
 * Except that chakra is first shaped within the body, stored within chakra coils, and distributed around the body by a series of small tubes. Nen is generated inside the body at a constant rate, and then pumped out of it at a constant pressure, unless one uses ren to accelerate that. There is no indication that nen production is centralised in any way, and you can't do anything with nen until it's exited the body through your shouko. You can put nen back into the body and have it do things (e.g. healing, Kurapika's Judgement Chain), but it has to come out first.
 * TL;DR version: In order to use chakra, you first start with the energy inside you and bring it out. In order to use nen, you first start by keeping the energy outside of you from escaping into the air.

How Kurapika's quest for revenge will end...
Kurapika, as it is know, uses chains for attacks. The thing is, these chains are attached to his fingers, except his thumb index finger. For now, there are only 4 chains (in one hand), but it is entirely feasible that he will get more 4 chains, or 8 in total. I think that, in his final battle with Kuroro Lucifer (by then, the last spider), there will be a scene where Kurapika looks like a spider, with his arms outstretched and eight chains (metaphorical legs) fully extended. Even his outfit looks like a spider's main body!
 * Sounds like a He Who Fights Monsters moment.

Shaiapouf used to be at least partially Yaminade no Itsuki.
It's pretty complicated, and involves  being one of the components of the Ant King. But really, it'd be the ultimate in Togashi storyline Plans were it true. The whole theory (pictures included!)is here. (WARNING: SPOILERS for both Hunter X Hunter AND Yu Yu Hakusho)

Chrollo believes he inside a computer game

 * Where he's the PC, and everyone else is an NPC.
 * Or it could be just a case of Beware the Superman.
 * If the "Chrollo is Satan" WMG above is true, it's entirely possible that he can somehow reincarnate himself if killed.

Machi is half spider demon
Now, the her being part demon would only work if the "Kuroro is Satan/the Antichrist" part is true; it would explain why she doesn't seem to care about anything/anyone other than him.

The spider part is where it gets interesting.
 * First of all, and most obviously, she makes incredibly strong thread with her nen, which comes out of a very specific part of her body (her fingertips).
 * Second of all, her preferred method of killing is to set a trap with her thread and then wait for her victims to come to her. She hates unnecessary movements, and doesn't appear to get at all bored when on surveillance, which involves a lot of watching and waiting.
 * Third, her "intuition" is really more of an extremely versatile Spider Sense. Her speech bubbles even do little double-exclamation marks in the places where Spiderman would get his tingle SFX.

Machi isn't allowed to call coin flips, because she always gets them right.
I know that we've only seen her participate in one coin flip, but it would make sense, what with her "intuition".

Ging Freecss brought the Chimera Ant Queen where she was.
Chimera Ants are normally under the strictest quarantine, yet one not only broke loose, but washed up on shore of the country least prepared for such a threat. This couldn't have been accidental; someone must have taken the Chimera Ant Queen to Neo Green Life. I suspect Ging Freecss. He may be testing Gon the way he did with Greed Island or allowing him to become stronger, and he is also the only character seen thus far who can take on the King in his current state in case something goes wrong. Seeing the way Greed Island works, he seems to be either extremely confident in Gon or somewhat reckless, and considering the nature of Greed Island, he has little to no concern for human life. Unleashing the worst Chimera Ant outbreak ever would be perfectly in-character for Ging, as much as we know about him.

The Scarlet Eyes are actually an entirely ordinary shade of red. Their supposed beauty is entirely supernatural in origin.
It's stated in canon that the colour of them is considered the most beautiful shade of red in the world, and this is treated as an objective fact, or at the very least a universal consensus. That in itself is bizarre; beauty is supposed to be something subjective, and eyes are a body part that humans are supposed to instinctively find disturbing by themselves (e.g., floating in jars, as they're usually sold). Severed heads (the other form of 'packaging' for them) have the same problem, and yet the appreciation for them isn't as fringe as you'd expect from that. Quite to the contrary, the Scarlet Eyes are considered one of the seven wonders of the world for their beauty. Even though the Hunterverse is a Crap Saccharine World, this is a huge departure from what would be expected, all things being mundane. Therefore, there must be something else about them that's strong enough to universally shift people's perception of them towards "Wow, that's gorgeous," even when a pair of normal eyes in the same context would evoke revulsion.

It's also stated elsewhere that they're the same colour as flames, but fire isn't really given any special significance re:beauty outside of that comparison, and if fire had the same visual appeal as the Scarlet Eyes, Kurapika's clan wouldn't have died. While it could be argued that looking at a fire isn't the same as looking at someone's eyes, that would be ignoring that, every time the beauty of the Scarlet Eyes comes up, it's always stated that it's the colour that's so attractive. Yet, there's no significant trade in other items of the same or similar colour, and the salamander charm Kurapika found in the filler ship test (which, admittedly, is of dubious canonical status) was a very similar colour to the Scarlet Eyes, but was not considered very valuable. If it was the colour itself that made the Scarlet Eyes so precious, so worth killing for, then any other object that same shade should evoke the same effect, but that's not what we see at all.

Therefore, I think the best conclusion is that there is something inherently preternatural about the Scarlet Eyes' beauty.

Why blimps are the dominant source of travel.

 * The giant flyers in this setting tend to mistake planes for their favored sources of prey. They don't make the same mistakes with blimps, so these are far safer in comparison.

Genetic and body modification technology is well understood and relatively easy to obtain.

 * Explains the circumstances behind some of the more "unusual" Hunters.

Chrollo is a Death Seeker

 * The powers he stole came with a curious side-effect. It forces him to experience the feelings of whoever he stole powers from. The feelings overload has caused him to be so numb, that he cannot experience joy or sadness or anger or love. Acquiring new powers imparts a small measure of satisfaction, which is why he persists in stealing new ones, but otherwise anything he feels is either very muted, or non-existent.
 * That why is he has the Spiders act like they do. He hopes that that somehow he'll piss off someone strong enough to put him down.
 * His relationship with the Spiders is that they used to be his friends, and any action he takes on their behalf is to honor the memories of what they once had.

In at least the first anime, Kurapika is a survivor of at least a sexual assault, and probably longer-term sexual abuse.
The scene on the Filler Ship Hotel where Leorio walks out of the bathroom naked after a shower and Kurapika flips out on him is probably meant to be Played for Laughs, but this troper finds it absolutely chilling. In Leorio's angry grumblings later, it's even spelled out that Kurapika was "assuming weird things" and thought that Leorio was planning to "attack" him.

Think about what it means, that Kurapika's automatic first interpretation of the situation of Leorio (who is his friend, and someone he trusts) walking into his bedroom naked as being a sign that 1) Leorio intends to rape him, and 2) he must defend himself by punching Leorio in the face until this is no longer true. That is an extreme enough reaction to the situation that it's probably a learned behavior, meaning that, at some point in Kurapika's life, a man walking into his room naked did mean that he was about to get raped.

It also puts Kurapika's apparent preference for sleeping either in a hammock or sitting up with his back to something solid (even when there was a perfectly good couch available, as in when they were waiting in that room for 50 hours) in a disturbing new light: When sleeping sitting up like that or sleeping in a hammock, it's very difficult for someone to climb on top of you without waking you up first.

The Hunter world is a distant future version of Yu Yu Hakusho's world.
Sometime after the end of YYH, a massive disaster occurred that merged the parallel planes of Human and Demon world into a single state of being. This completely rearranged the map, merged demons with humans and wildlife, and turned the world in to a much more wild and dangerous place where human and monsters lived side-by-side. Only the very strongest, like Yusuke, managed to survive and remain the way they'd always been.

Fast-forward a few hundred years. Society's rebuilt itself around the new wildness of the world, with those who can stand up to monsters - the Hunters - taking a position of power in the world government. And on isolated Whale Island, Yusuke Urameshi's decendent is born...

At the end of the Chimera Ant arc, it will be revealed that
(I've been sitting on this one for a while, but I want to get it up here now, just in case I'm right, because this is probably going to be either Jossed or confirmed in a few chapters)
 * You know how they were in that, alone, and she was only wearing a nightgown when hit?
 * And you know how they mentioned way earlier that a can impregnate females of
 * And you know how it's been pretty obvious for a couple chapters that is probably not going to survive this arc, despite ?
 * And you know how those two have been having subtext almost since she was introduced?
 * And there's still time, by the looks of it.
 * Looks like this one is officially now, since the last we saw of them.

How the fight with the Chimera Ant King will end...

 * That'd be horribly anticlimactic, if you ask me. I'm hoping that does the job.
 * Oh come on, every important fight Yoshihiro Togashi has ever written played out that way until the end. He'll pull it off.

The manga is an attempt to create a reasonably realistic fantasy world
Almost everyone has freudian excuses and realistic phsyhology,the balance of power is based on hunters and assasins who are baddass enough to always get what they want,most of the laws of physics apply when nen is not involved(except some of the biology things,like how chimera ants are impossible to exist,and some charles atlas superpower details)and are even acting in accordance to physical laws when nen is involved(miniature sun anyone?)the nen is very well explained compared to every other fictional fuctional magic,to the point of being realistic and most of batles are won by compromise,rather than with a absolute victory for the heroes(Gon is not the strongest guy in the exam,they do not manage to completely beat the tournament arc,or to collectthe money needed to buy greed island themselves,nor did they manage to decimate the Spider,and the arcs that they did uncompromisingly win were the greed island,in which basically they did not manage to complete their objective of meeting Gin and the chimera ants arc which was a huge pile of grey and grey morality they did win only with massive sacrifices.)Many things end up with anticlimaxes ([[spoiler:Meruem's cause of death(not the death itself,which was a tear jercer mind you)and the scene when Gon finds Ging)as it is fit for real life,while climaxes do exist.

The Outside/Dark Continent will be shaped like Antarctica
That's the one and only real continent not shown on the HXH world map. Adding to this concept, Antarctica was shrouded in mystery for centuries similar to the Outside.

At least one known character is from the Outside/Dark Continent
It was said that other types of humans do indeed live there. The first guess that comes to mind is... Pariston. It was already foreshadowed that he's not someone from normal society, and now it's been revealed he's part of a team planning to go to the Outside.
 * Kurapika's clan could also be from the Outside. No other people in the series have eyes quite like Kurapika's people, and he showed a scary powerful Nen with his "Emperor Time", matching and exceeding a Genei Ryodan member even though he only had around six months to develop and perfect his Nen ability.

Pariston is going to use the Chimera Ants for the expedition to the Outside
Given the fact he was seen in Beyond Netero's group, it means he knew about him long before anyone else. The entire election could have just been away for him to get out of the Twelve Zodiacs, so he could join Beyond's expedition, taking the Chimera Ants with him as an army to conquer the Outside, due to being naturally proficient in using Nen.

The Hunter world is a distant past version of Yu Yu Hakusho's demon world.
The surviving Chimera Ants lived peacefully with the humans of the NGL, then eventually the rest of the world. Interbreeding produced children with interesting non-human features such as horns or scales. They also possessed a ridiculous amount of Nen which was later called Youki when the Spirit World branded the residents as "Youkai" or "demons." This also explains why some demons have a preferance for human meat, and why more powerful demons have longer lifespans (Nen practice could lengthen longetivity).

The "Other World" they refer to is the Human World. Oh, and Raizen was descended from Gon and Palm. Yuusuke's atavism made him look like his ancestor's ancestor, Gon Freecs.