Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective/Headscratchers


 * The most important plot hole in the game: How did get those Cool Shades? After all,  still seems to be wearing them when you get there.
 * Rule of Cool. Say what you want about, but you can't deny that the guy's got style.
 * They looked more like they were drawn on, rather than actual shades.
 * So much is made about Cabanela having a "spotless" record but  The game makes a big deal out of the perfect record being necessary for him to climb the ladder of the police force so how does he get a pass on that?
 * During one of the game's "could he be a villain?" sequences, someone accuses him of trying to silence everyone who knows about that.
 * If this was early in his career, he might have been given a pass on it, especially if his performance since then was exemplary.
 * When and how does die? If I recall, she was never shown on screen. Did she die before or after the park incident, and how did she die?
 * If I remember correctly the
 * What exactly did Lynne do with, after picking it up from the park? She never stopped at home afterwards, so we can assume she's still carrying it around with her when they are . So... why?!
 * Umm... I'm pretty sure she wasn't carrying it around with her. For all we know, she could have put the body under some rocks to give him a burial. Or to keep it safe for a potential Ghost Trick by Sissel.
 * Okay, so at the end, we discover the circumstances under which, but when does he ? It couldn't have happened in the period shown, since it was so brief, but we're led to believe that that was the only time they encountered one another.
 * Well, has that power too. That's how he saved Kamila. Perhaps he assumed Sissel had the same thing? He didn't know then that powers change over time and so, the next time they met, perhaps he was just banking on the hope that he would have the power. Not to mention that  mentions the powers stem from some sort of 'Manipulation' and 'Time.'
 * Isn't it more likely that  Missile watched Sissel that night in the original time line?
 * Lynne remembers
 * Umm... you weren't paying attention to the ending, were you? Yomiel stated that Sissel, Missle, Jowd and himself would be the only ones to remember after . The reason that no one else remembers is that, because of.
 * Makes sense, I guess... I did pay attention to the ending, but I admit I was already more than just a bit confused at how everything happened.
 * Just what was that machine attached to the head of the fat prisoner? He puts it on himself, so I suppose it's nothing bad, but...
 * The guy's head is unnaturally large. Maybe it's supposed to help him? Or perhaps measure his brain wave activity. (Shrugs).
 * Give that he was in prison for
 * In the ending, why don't ? Even minor characters like the chef, who had nothing to do with the case at all, get one.
 * Well, there was a WMG that  Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.
 * Sith has a conversation with his servant about Jeego's eyesight if you press the speech bubble during the Sith's introduction scene. He mentions that Jeego's vision is degrading a bit every year, and he is considering about sending Jeego coal in his next pay envelope (his servant suggests him to send him glasses). Also, Tengo eats donuts once in a while before you avert Missile's fate. He also talks to himself about how Jeego is "losing his touch". So the two hitmen might actually be human.
 * Two humans who have NO FUTURE
 * They probably lived happily ever after in the blue people country. Since in the final timeline Yomiel didn't make his contract with Sith, Jengo and Teego won't go to the dump and try to kill Lynne and end up flattened.
 * That's pretty likely, considering when we see So Jengo and Teego wouldn't necessarily have a reason to be in the city at all.
 * Just how did Lynne and Jowd
 * Not 100% sure on this, but
 * I don't remember anything being said about, but I think it's mentioned in the dialogue that Lynne and Jowd when it surfaced.
 * Having just played the game again,
 * They managed it because Jowd is just that awesome.
 * Is it never explained how Beauty can ? If not, that seems ripe for a sequel. Or maybe told her.
 * She just says that her . Sith apparently tries to cover for any possibility, so he likely hired her to keep an eye on
 * In the first chapter of the game, you possess Ray's lamp so that he can lean over so you can reach Lynne the first time. Yet, by the end of the game,.
 * I'd like to think that Sissel just didn't want to during the gameplay segments at the end, but he had no problem possessing Ray's lamp in the beginning because.
 * Considering the location of the lamp's core that Sissel uses (the bulb), it might have had another one that Ray's presence cloaked.
 * The superintendent built a replica of the Rube Goldberg Device . Did he really have to load the gun?
 * Of course he did! FOR SCIENCE!
 * Loading the gun is one thing but why was it still operational at all? It would have been at least  since it was built, and Pigeon Man says outright that it's been years since he was there last. Locked door or no, who leaves an active   to gather dust? Especially one
 * Does Sissel lose all memory of things he learns while repeating his "four minutes before" trips? I can justify repeated dialogue as Gameplay and Story Segregation, but what about in chapter 10? If he follows the immediate phone call, he learns that . Yet even if he hears that, once he actually saves the man's life, he still believes it might be true. And if he does forget, how does that work with ?
 * Missile didn't know what a kidnapping was. I thought that Sissel didn't really understand it either,
 * The repeated dialogue is in case the player hasn't played the game in a while, and wants a reference. It's Rule of Fun.
 * He might be concerned that
 * Um... Why exactly doesn't want anyone to know about him? I get that he'd get in trouble for  or whatever, but really, a  should really just tell someone. He'd get famous.
 * The same thing would happen as does in the game: . If he got famous, everyone would be after his secret, which would turn out horribly considering the dangerous powers involved and.
 * Okay, then how about just gets up and acts like it was a medical mistake. Don't a decent number of people get accidentally buried alive each year? It's not a solid story, but it'd be enough to not totally f**k up his life. Probably get the medical inspector sent to a looney bin though.
 * Even if he tried to play the medical mistake card, the police would still want to conduct an investigation and inevitably he'd be subjected to another medical examination. The word of one medical inspector might be dismissed, but if multiple doctors examined him and found the same results? He'd be a lab rat in no time.
 * What criteria does an object (not a living person) have to meet before gaining a core? I mean, you could possess a drop of water in one case; why couldn't you possess the ocean? ... That would be awesome.
 * The core of an object tends to be in it's centre. Good luck tricking 2 miles deep.
 * Well, yeah, but then what criteria does an object have to meet to become an object? If you took it further, either A) the only objects you'd be able to possess would be celestial bodies, or B) every atom on Earth should be able to be possessed. I know it's for gameplay, but...
 * Quick question: When Sissel does his 4 minutes trick, he starts wherever the body had died at.
 * This also goes for the van driver. Why do you start at the park, rather than the restaurant?
 * ...wait a minute. While it doesn't make logical sense, those two instances have something in common: . Maybe that changes the rules?
 * The van driver is justified in that he died with his body hanging out of the van. Rewinding time moves the van, thus taking you to that area. The other thing doesn't make sense to me, what with  Slightly different than body stuck in windshield.
 * That's because Even though  that doesn't change the location of his death.
 * That doesn't work. Ray specifically says at the beginning that  That logic does work with van dude because
 * No, no, it does work. You see,
 * That also doesn't work. Again,
 * But it's possible that . In most cases, the corpses wasn't really moved around after death, so maybe Ray got it wrong or simply could've picked a better phrasing.
 * Actually, you go back to where the corpse lies. Jowd's body was moved from the location of death to the table in the next room. You appear in the past at the table. Same thing goes for every other death, except the two involved with a trick within a trick. I'm inclined to believe that the change in location has something to do with the double trick. Though the cop could be explained that his body was touching the van so it acted as a frame of reference, if he landed in the restaurant it may have started there. This doesn't explain the other one though. Maybe because of the nature of the body  It could also be that these two deaths had crossed particularly long distances since the 4 minutes before death moment. Maybe, its a feature of the powers of the dead that you are close enough to the living body to see the person involved. For example, another common point is you generally find that the dead person has more or less been in the area they die in for the entire duration of the 4 minutes, with the only real oddballs being the cop and  . In fact, now that I mention it... there are actually a lot of unique things about those two cases that stand out: They were both encountered within a trick, their corpses were both really far away from the location they were at four minutes prior to death, and their deaths were the direct causes of deaths that you were trying to prevent in the context of the first trick in the double tricks. Maybe all these oddities add up somehow...
 * Lynne does seem to have died while or after falling - when you go to her four-minutes before, the replay doesn't end right after she's shot as with most deaths, but instead when she's falling. Jowd, too, could have died on the operating table, especially considering some of the other guys in the room with him during the explosion lived.
 * Wouldn't a  and definately a   be just as deadly as a bullet if moving at bullet speed?
 * The  probably big enough and thin enough to not do that much harm. The  was somewhat addressed though, since it
 * It doesn't matter how big and thin it is if it strikes you at the pistol muzzle velocity of 800 ft/s (almost 550 mph). A better idea would be if the swapping ability conserves momentum, such that replacing the bullet with an object of greater mass has an inversely proportional effect on its velocity.
 * For what it's worth, a knit cap isn't only big and thin, but it's also flexible and has a lot of give. The split second of velocity the hat lost while it inverted itself on Cabalena's nose was probably enough to keep it from being fatal (and to be fair, it DOES knock him out, which is no mean feat for a knit cap). Compare it to the hard hat, which DOES kill him, despite being the same size and thickness. As for the potato...I got nuthin'.
 * It was roasted, and thus soft.
 * There's a couple physics things that may help to explain.
 * A bullet is small and when it hits the impact has a higher pressure since pressure is inversely proportional to surface area. This is why it is easier to pop a balloon with a needle than say your finger.
 * Also it is possible that when objects are switched velocity is not conserved, but the kinetic energy is instead. An object with more mass moving a slower speed and an object with less mass moving at faster speed might have the same energy. So switching a sweet potato with double the mass of a bullet with a bullet moving at typical bullet speed might result in the sweet potato moving at half bullet speed (which has equivalent kinetic energy).
 * The equation for Kinetic energy is KE = (0.5)mv^2. Now say, KE of the bullet prior to switch equals KE of the potato after the switch. Let's say the bullet is moving 1 bullet speed (or BS) and has a mass of 1 bullet (or bu). The potato has a mass of 2 bu. So: (0.5)*1 bu*(1 BS)^2 = (0.5)*2 bu*v^2 -> 1 bu * 1 BS^2 = 2 bu*v^2 -> (1/2)BS^2 = v^2 -> SQRT(1/2) BS = v -> So basically, considering the bullet is half the mass of the potato and that Kinetic Energy is conserved, then the potato will slow down to about 70% of the speed of the bullet. Granted, the potato is probably more than twice the mass of the bullet resulting in even more slow down. After that count in air resistance and other physic crap and you might be able to survive an impact from a roasted potato flying at an equivalent of a bullet's kinetic energy, granted you probably will not be a happy camper none-the-less. I'd like to think the Kinetic Energy thing applies because it follows the Energy Cannot be created model of the Universe and gives the most plausibility to something as odd as this.
 * For that matter, how the hell did
 * Note how when Cabanela is hit, he doubles over backwards in a ridiculous way so that his head and the helmet end up sort of under his body. The exact object that hit him is therefore obscured from Yomiel's point of view.
 * I'm assuming he went straight for the phone and left. Even if the "present version" of the death had him look down (Did it? Haven't gone through that sequence for a while), the slight fate changes might tweak his movements a little.
 * So only  will remember   at the end of the game. But Missile was only two years old when Sissel met him. Does this mean  ? Because that would be weird even for a dog.
 * But for what, exactly? He was proven innocent of the conspiracy in which he was implicated, and even though he  Why on earth would this result in such a punishment? And couldn't Jowd have stopped it?
 * Escaping interrogation would have shat all over his case for, so it's possible that he was never able to clear his name . Even if he was found not-guilty of that, he still would have been charged with theft , hostage-taking , threatening a police officer, resisting arrest... doesn't change that. All of it could easily add up to 10 years, especially given that he would have been tried in an Ace Attorney Kangaroo Court.
 * Turnabout Meteorite! Apollo Justice manages to get only ten years instead of lifetime!
 * Commander Sith's plan to trap Yomiel's soul doesn't make much sense. He explicitly has the power to possess "small creatures". The moment a fish or crab got near the wrecked sub, he'd have a vehicle he could use to escape.
 * Depends on exactly what the depth was. If they got the sub as far down as the abyssopelagic zone (4000 meters - 6000 meters), the amount of sea life at that depth would be minimal. Most of the sea life would be tiny invertebrates which might not be too easy to possess or get the hang of controlling. And if Sith managed to dump the sub in a trench, the pickings would be even slimmer.
 * Either he would give up immediately, or he would check every 5 seconds or so if something is near enough to be possessed, and eventually give up anyway.
 * Why would he give up? He's trapped in a submarine at the bottom of an ocean, with nothing to do but try to find a way out.
 * Complete isolation. He would go even more insane. Or maybe he could think this was a punishment for all the horrible things he did, including
 * In the first timeline, Yomiel is with Tengo when Kamila and Missile are killed. Why isn't he present in the apartment during the second timeline?
 * Because he wasn't able to retrieve his body: he had left it behind to help frame Lynne. But in the first timeline Lynne was assassinated immediately afterwards so he abandoned that plan.
 * Then wouldn't Yomiel know that Sith was backstabbing him by interfering with his revenge plans?
 * No. Sith was merely disagreeing with his methods, not his goal. The impression I get is that For him, it was worth killing for, and he wouldn't abandon it just because he doesn't get his revenge the way he wants.
 * Why is portrayed as sympathetic?
 * To avoid waxing philosophical about how impossible it is to assign merit based on apparent morality, I'll just say that moral or immoral actions do not imply a moral or immoral character, and is just as (un)deserving of sympathy as the rest of the cast is. By comparison, you could say the reverse for, who was portrayed pretty unsympathetically for much of the game but was later revealed to have good intentions.
 * It's also possible to feel sympathy for a person without condoning their actions, and after  he probably wasn't that mentally stable anyway.
 * It's pretty much stated that.
 * Because he wasn't able to retrieve his body: he had left it behind to help frame Lynne. But in the first timeline Lynne was assassinated immediately afterwards so he abandoned that plan.
 * Then wouldn't Yomiel know that Sith was backstabbing him by interfering with his revenge plans?
 * No. Sith was merely disagreeing with his methods, not his goal. The impression I get is that For him, it was worth killing for, and he wouldn't abandon it just because he doesn't get his revenge the way he wants.
 * Why is portrayed as sympathetic?
 * To avoid waxing philosophical about how impossible it is to assign merit based on apparent morality, I'll just say that moral or immoral actions do not imply a moral or immoral character, and is just as (un)deserving of sympathy as the rest of the cast is. By comparison, you could say the reverse for, who was portrayed pretty unsympathetically for much of the game but was later revealed to have good intentions.
 * It's also possible to feel sympathy for a person without condoning their actions, and after  he probably wasn't that mentally stable anyway.
 * It's pretty much stated that.


 * (continued)

Instead, Yomiel reminds them of his own power, and promptly throws his own body into the path of the Mino to save her, believing that he would die with no chance of being brought back. He would be crushed to death, his fiancee would commit suicide again... and he did it anyway. Personally, while I don't think that any of that excuses him -- Yomiel himself said it best, that nothing he could do would be enough to excuse him -- I think that what he did after going back to the past, along with willingly spending ten years in jail to pay for the crimes that he still did commit in the changed timeline, and the fact that they earned a happy ending and no one but the four of them would ever remember all of that suffering, it's conceivably enough to forgive him. Not forgive his actions, but to forgive Yomiel himself.]] Or at least put the past where it belongs and move on. I'd also like to point out that while he did
 * (continued) He wasn't a Death Seeker; he had simply accepted that death would be his fate. He was relieved that it had changed. Except... [[spoiler:Lynne was about to be crushed by the massive Mino, with no conceivable way to save her. Jowd, Sissel, and Missile were panicking, because there was nothing they could do. By virtue of simply not doing a damn thing, Yomiel could easily have forced Sissel to go with the plan that Yomiel had suggested: Let Lynne die, then just go back and change her past, psychological scars be damned.
 * So in
 * After all
 * So why does
 * Ghosts can change their appearance at will, as proven when.
 * Ghosts take on whatever appearance they associate with their "self".
 * Why can't you control clothes and accessories? You control a shirt in the Chicken Kitchen's kitchen, and are able to scrunch and stretch it to get across the wire, and then there's the time you can control the guard's bulletproof vests, but you can never control clothes that anyone is wearing.
 * You can't exert enough physical force to overcome any significant resistance. You can only move the shirt because it's lightweight. You only hitch a ride on the bulletproof vests, you can't unbuckle them or use them to push the guards around.
 * Why, exactly, do the switches work (in the way the game shows them to) after being switched around in their sockets (twice)? I realize that Missile's power is to completely replace things that look the same from the same angle (the source of another Headscratchers entirely, but I digress...) but that doesn't explain why moving the same switch between two different sockets affect the same torpedo bay. If, for example, the two switches control readying, then loading and firing respectively, then why weren't both torpedos launched with the rat puzzle?
 * I don't think they do. Didn't one control readying, and the other moving into the tube and firing? Missile was moving the switch itself, not its connections. Imagine you could replace the switch by your front door with the one in the hall closet. If it is a plot hole, Imma chalk it up to Rule of Fun.
 * Soon after Sissel saves Lynne, they come across a black cat, who meows at them and leaves.
 * If you saw a cat meow at you, would you look for a bullet wound?
 * It should have been bloody, considering mere minutes had passed.
 * Nope, the wound would have healed right up, thanks to the temsik fragment.
 * It didn't get the fragment until the end of the game. It was merely exposed to radiation, which was never stated to have that quality. At this point, my best theory is that this story takes place in a world where Bloodless Carnage is a fact of life and goes unquestioned, but that contradicts the visible blood in Ace Attorney.
 * It was mentioned that the cat
 * Well of course, a black coat would be more practical as it would hide the stains better than a white coat.
 * Early on, how do you follow telephone lines ? It looks like you can only follow the physical telephone lines; being able to travel along a telephone broadcast signal would be way beyond anything you're ever shown as capable of.
 * It appeared to be each time, in a manner that could plausibly allow for attaching of actual lines. It's inefficient, but you know what they say about that country's use of technology.
 * If you're paying attention, they mention "disconnecting the communications cable" when they . So yes, that is the correct explanation.
 * This one pertains to the ending. After, Mino is still poised to kill Lynee. So   My question is why he didn't just possess Lynee. It would have saved   a lot of pain.
 * There are several possible reasons. My personal theory, however, is that he wanted Jowd to know that he was the one to save her. He was probably feeling pretty self-sacrificial at the time too, and that was a route that could easily have resulted in his death -- something that he may have wanted. Also, it might have just not occurred to him to do so. He manipulates his own body a lot (And it seems easier for him to do so -- he manipulated his own corpse with ease during a period where he was otherwise unable to manipulate anything other than small objects and small creatures) so he might have done it simply because there was less chance of the possessee resisting him subconsciously or him just plain losing control.
 * He was probably afraid that she would resist his control and he would fail to save her. Remember that the last time he tried to possess Lynne, her consciousness resisted so strongly that he messed up
 * Why didn't Beauty and Dandy notice
 * Why is Kamila so calm
 * Maybe she was dealing with the situation by ignoring it?
 * Regarding the ending,
 * In the first chapter, how did Sissel's/ corpse get to the bottom floor of the junkyard? The assassin Jeego originally kicked his corpse down there after killing Lynne, but when Sissel changed her fate by killing Jeego, he also prevented the corpse from being knocked down. Yet when you return to the present, it's still been moved, but now without a cause. The game even lampshades this paradox, but it's never explained.
 * This is explained as soon as it is lampshaded. Sissel wonders why he still fell after  died, but then Cabanela plays the rest of the tape to show the black cat push him to the ground.
 * How does missile's ghost power make any sense? He can "swap two objects that have the same shape." Okay, but many of the objects you can switch only have the same shape from the point of view of the fourth wall. For example, switching a trap door and a garbage can lid. Those two things only look the same when viewed as a cross-section from their edge - to any of the characters in the actual game, they look absolutely nothing alike. Yet you can still swap them. Similarly, swapping a spinning tire and a basketball only works if you time it so the swap is performed when the tire is viewed from round side, and not the narrow tread. What's up with that?
 * In-universe, it doesn't make sense, but the recurring theme is obviously theater, so everything in the world revolves around what the audience is able to see, without using closeups. Ever. There are many parts where sissel could accomplish more if he could adjust his view. For example, when in The Chicken Kitchen, Sissel can't see inside a case because it is locked. Yet he sees through walls all the time. If I had a closeup perspective and had the same perspective inside the case, then
 * Which objects have cores for you to possess seems really arbitrary. Was any explanation ever given for why you can possess a police officer's nightstick, but not his badge, or his hat, or wallet, or etc? One puzzle requires you to possess a shirt on a clothesline, but you can never possess any clothing that anyone is wearing. Except for body armor being worn by prison guards. Huh? Is there any logic behind those cores in inanimate objects?
 * We're talking about the powers of the dead here. It doesn't have to make sense. (This actually explains almost everything on this page.)
 * It doesn't need to be the new present, if only because defining what the "present" is while time travel is involved is hard. They probably go back to the point when a major change happens, in much the same way that, as an example, making Kamila drop the headphones into the fish tank counts as a fate change, but making the doughnut cart roll across the room doesn't. The "major change" just has to be something bigger, like averting a death, or
 * An alternate explanation: they just go back to the moment when the person would have died if their fate had not been changed. Most of the time, it might as well be the present, but this time... nope.
 * Why didn't Sissel agree to
 * It doesn't need to be the new present, if only because defining what the "present" is while time travel is involved is hard. They probably go back to the point when a major change happens, in much the same way that, as an example, making Kamila drop the headphones into the fish tank counts as a fate change, but making the doughnut cart roll across the room doesn't. The "major change" just has to be something bigger, like averting a death, or
 * An alternate explanation: they just go back to the moment when the person would have died if their fate had not been changed. Most of the time, it might as well be the present, but this time... nope.
 * Why didn't Sissel agree to