Professor Layton/Headscratchers

The Curious Village

 * In the first game, Baron Reinhold apparently created enough ridiculously human robots to populate the town of St. Mystere, and had his daughter grow up among them, to the point that they're really the only ones she can call family. And then set up the inheritance such that if anyone takes it, the robots will stop functioning and will essentially die. And Flora and Layton can't have that. So the question is, did the Baron intentionally set things up so that the entirety of his family's estate and wealth will go to waste? And he prides himself on intelligence?
 * Intelligence doesn't mean wisdom.
 * As noted in WMG, this may have been a Secret Test of Character. Makes sense to me imo.
 * The whole town is a Secret Test of Character. Proving that Layton and Flora are good people? Fine. Doing it in a way that ensures that she'll never see a cent of her inheritance if she passes? Not so fine.
 * The test isn't about ensuring she has wealth to live comfortably. The test is about ensuring she has love to live well. Besides, if they -really- need the money, they can ask the robots if it's okay to take the money.
 * It's possible that he thought once Flora found a suitable guardian, their purpose would be fulfilled. Flora, Luke, and Layton, however, happened to see them as their own people, and didn't go through with it.
 * It's also possible, though a bit of a stretch, that Bruno could figure out a way to rewire the robots if Flora really needs the money for whatever reason.
 * If Bruno and the Reinholds know that they are the only ones in St. Mystere who aren't robots, why does Bruno have to operate in such secrecy? Why doesn't he just present himself as the "town doctor" and implant memories in the robots of coming to him for every little ache and pain, and wait for them to report for regular maintenance? It wouldn't even have to interfere with the plot of the game; Simon could still break down, and Layton and Luke could still run across Bruno carrying Ramon in a bag. The only difference would be that they would end up investigating the "mysterious doctor" instead of the "mysterious random guy," and the townsfolk wouldn't feel terrorized. Plus, Bruno would get to live out in the open as a distinguished member of the community.
 * I feel like Bruno's response to this idea would be: "Shit! Why didn't I think of that!".
 * The apple tattoo. I accept the fact that it would only mark Flora as the true golden apple when she smiled, but the fact that this isn't explained bugs me. Is the Baron a wizard?
 * It's not a tattoo, it's a birthmark. The fact that it's in the shape of an apple is probably what prompted her father to dub her the Golden Apple. Now, why it only appears when she's happy is another matter altogether...
 * Perhaps Flora is just very expressive when she's happy, and laughing/smiling hard enough causes her neck/shoulder muscles to stretch in just the right way to make the birthmark look like an apple.
 * Inspector Chelmey gives Layton a puzzle at least once,.
 * Sure,  and theoretically has no reason to give him a puzzle based on that, but  ...
 * When Claudia escapes at the start of Chapter 2, how on EARTH does she get across the river right outside the Manor? That really makes little sense.
 * Maybe someone picked her up and carried her across? Though given how she belongs to Lady Dahlia and all, you'd think that anyone seeing her would take her back to the manor... But that's all I've got.

The Diabolical Box

 * How exactly is Flora related to the Professor? From what I gather, he ended up adopting her at the end of Curious Village, but when they unmask her on the Molentary Express in Diabolical Box, they act like they hadn't seen her since, which is really the only thing that makes sense, since I kind of doubt the Professor would just ride off to solve another mystery and leave the other orphan he's supposed to provide for behind without any explanation.
 * The man did decide to ignore her when she was tied up and possibly starving in Dropstone. Ignoring a charge isn't beyond him imo. Still, I suppose since Flora did have some money, he could've hired some nanny to take care of her while he was away.
 * Ouch. Both points are very valid and unfortunately paint an image of the good Professor I'd really rather not have.
 * Look a little deeper. We're looking at a well-dressed, upper-crust professor of archeology - Layton probably has enough cash of his own lying around that he would have indeed hired a caretaker for Flora for the duration of their trip. As for not going to find her once he realized she was still in Dropstone, there was no way out of Folsense - the train wasn't running and they were surrounded by wilderness. Granted, he didn't seem especially concerned about her, but maybe he just figured that Don Paolo wasn't quite Ax Crazy enough to kill the Tagalong Kid for no reason.
 * Layton's also a very British gentleman. He's not particularly known for his emotional outbursts, is he? He seems cool in any situation, and he was probably brought up to keep stronger displays of emotion to himself. Although he didn't show it, he was probably worried sick about Flora -- but knowing that he couldn't go back to her with any speed, he just kept a Stiff Upper Lip until they could really do something.
 * If memory serves, the big reveal happened when Beluga and his nephew were with them. Layton could've asked them when the train would leave, or even insist they leave ASAP, but he didn't. I'd say he cared a bit less then you might think.
 * Flora wasn't tied up, she was locked in a barn. They could have just had Beluga make a call to Dropstone about her. Granted, that's not seen, but it could have happened off screen.
 * Still, even if they couldn't leave, you'd think he'd show at least a bit more concern, Stiff Upper Lip or no, given how there was no way to be certain where she was.
 * It was the hallucinogenic gas. He was wrapped up in the hallucination, and, in the dreamy state of hallucination, all other worries seemed far away. Once he'd figured it out and Layton really realized what was going on, he probably made an immediate call to Dropstone to make sure Flora was OK.
 * On your question about their relationship, in Unwound Future, the character profiles say Flora is the professor's protégée.
 * As to why the professor goes to solve the mystery and is shocked to see Flora, I kind of assumed he enrolled her into a school or something and wasn't expecting her to skip it in order to follow him.
 * In the end it's revealed that this whole Folsense mess came about when Sophia left Anton in order to keep their unborn child safe. Fair enough, but one has to wonder why she didn't attempt to visit her lover when the child was old enough to be away from mommy for a few days. Also, while the excuse could be "Anton was crazy," why on Earth would someone use a fancy expensive box to carry a important letter? Far better to just send it in an ordinary envelope.
 * Sophia and Anton's relationship was so full of overtly romantic glib that I didn't find the box to be too contrived. Stupid, yes, but not implausible. Why Sophia didn't try to contact Anton earlier is a better question, and the only answer I have is that she was too much of a coward to try until at death's door.
 * She may have found out that weirdness was going on in Folsense and decided that to return there was to risk her own sanity, or thought that visiting Anton would be too painful for him if she was just going to leave again.
 * This troper believes that Sophia was too filled with guilt to go back. Think about it for a second, she left him heartbroken and miserable but only because she needed to get their child out of Folsense, but hell he didn't know that. It's almost like a teenager who ran away from home and in need of help but is too guilty to confront his/her parents. In addition, Sophia possibly didn't want to be caught in the same hallucination that Anton was in and so didn't go back. True they would have been together, but Sophia had enough sense to understand that they couldn't be truly happy in a world that wasn't real.
 * The box was probably Anton's way of expressing his feelings. If you look back to the credits, you would see that the necklace that Sophia gave to Katia was a gift from Anton, and from the looks of it, that gift came right from the same box. Anton knew the significance of that box and had it furnished into something fancy-looking, probably to impress Sophia. Or I could be wrong and Anton is just a loony.
 * How can Sammy possibly be Beluga's nephew? Beluga doesn't have any siblings aside from Anton, and he doesn't even know that he's had kids. Now, I don't know if the term nephew can be applied to an in-law's son, but it doesn't look like Beluga's married, either.
 * According to Wikipedia, the children of your wife's siblings can be considered nieces/nephews. I guess even a guy like him would have a wife. For appearance's sake if nothing else.
 * Not only that, what if he was a cousin's son? Those can be considered nephews too.
 * The son of your cousin is your first cousin once removed.
 * According to some of Beluga's dialogue in Professor Layton's London Life, Sammy is his biological nephew. Whether or not events in that game are meant to be taken as canon is up for debate, but nevertheless, the mystery of their relationship endures.
 * Truly a puzzle worthy of Layton.
 * Well, IIRC, the family portrait in the museum only showed Beluga, Anton, and their dad, right? Since their mom isn't included, it's possible that they have a sister who wasn't included as well who could be Sammy's mother. Though this is Wild Mass Guessing on my part and possibly has some Unfortunate Implications in it.
 * Not necessarily Unfortunate Implications. The mom isn't in the portrait with the Duke and his sons; there could have been a separate portrait of the mom and one or more daughters. Maybe Sammy's mother was Beluga's sister, and when she left Folsense upon her marriage, she took that portrait with her. It's pure speculation, of course, but it's not implausible.
 * And of course, there's no law against calling some younger, distantly related family member nephew, even if it's not technically correct.
 * Wait, so Sophia did get a hold of the Elysian box at some point, and had it long enough to take out Anton's letter, read it, and replace it with one of her own. How come she didn't hallucinate and freak out like everyone else?
 * Well, there's a lot of possible explanations for this one. Maybe the gas is released only when the main container is opened, and Sophia somehow knew to look for the secret lock, though this doesn't make that much sense. Or maybe Sophia didn't know that it was the Elysian Box, and thus the box only played the occasional passive trick on her that could be chalked up to senility. Or maybe Sophia knew just how dangerous it could be and made only as little contact with the actual box as necessary.
 * I figured even if she knew about the box's curse, the personal significance behind the object made her confident an object sent by her lover wouldn't harm her.
 * They have super-intelligent robots, so why not gas masks?
 * Didn't she also solve "The Elysian Box"? There seem to be two ways to open the box; 1) Open it normally, and if you survive the hallucinogen, find nothing, or 2) Solve the riddle, open the secret compartment, and get the letter.
 * Yeah, given how the letter is in the bottom part of the box, I kind of assumed that she figured that out too.
 * My guess is that, since the "curse" only killed because the gas made people hallucinate they were dying, and they only hallucinate they were dying because they opened the box thinking about the curse, that she didn't know about any supposed curse. She probably got real high for a while, though.
 * So everyone in Folsense but Anton is a hallucination. The problem here is that supposedly the reason why the town looks the way it does is that Layton and co saw the pictures in the train station and thus imagined the town to look like it did fifty years ago, but then you get the people of the town giving accurate histories of the place. That would make more sense if it turned out that they were all Anton's hallucinations, because presumably Anton knows the history of his own town, but... I don't know, the end of the game just breaks my brain.
 * A Wizard Did It. Though it's a cop out, I always figured that the gas had to be at least somewhat magical, considering the other vastly impossible things it does, eg. suggest people into a deep coma, no adverse physical effects after having it mess with your brain for fifty years, internally consistent hallucinations among all who inhaled it... the later parts of the game did read at times like the gas had conjured up the ghosts of the people who died in Folsense or something.
 * I thought that everybody, or almost everybody, was real, and just under the same hallucination. After all, the mailman is delivering letters to and from there, and even if he's hallucinating that he's receiving their letters, they're still hallucinations, and people would realize that something's up there. If one person can hallucinate that he's a vampire who's never aged a day, and people can hallucinate themselves to "death", then it's not hard to believe that a lot more people have hallucinated eternal youth, or maybe even hallucinated themselves into avoiding death.
 * Not to mention, someone had to be drinking all that tea.
 * That would explain how Layton and Beluga both were able to interact with the bellhop. Makes you wonder about the real ages of the children, though.
 * I've always thought they were zombie-like things, being kept alive by the gas.
 * Everyone was real, just 50 years older than they looked. One of the kids mentions that he's getting tired a lot.
 * Plus, one of the kids mentions that occasionally, when she looks at her father, he seems much older. Clearly, the illusion can temporarily fade; if she didn't exist, why would she be affected by the gas?
 * Does it bother anyone else how Don Paolo could fit in a Flora-sized suit? Or the fact that he was jumping up and down on couch cushions while IN that suit?
 * Of course! He's a Spy! This explains... well, just that, really.
 * At the end of Curious Village, you learn that everyone loves puzzles because So why does everyone in Diabolical Box -- and presumably Last Time Travel and the additional sequels -- also love puzzles? They can't use the same excuse this time!
 * Maybe they want to see if the Professor really is all that.
 * Unwound Future used this explanation quite a bit, actually.
 * They're all his hallucinations, he expected people to ask him puzzles since the last game, so they did. He really must be a puzzle master to think up all of those.
 * Impossible. The Molentary Express and Dropstone were hallucination-free, yet still packed with puzzles.
 * Professor Layton had mentioned he was famous for being a puzzle-lover at one point. People could've indirectly recognized him and asked him a puzzle. Or this is an AU of Europe where everyone loves puzzles, considering the amount of Anachronism Stew.
 * At least some, possibly all, of the people in Folsense were real, and none of them were fans of home maintenance? I can buy most people would never bother fixing up their homes if they magically stayed in good condition forever, but there should have at least been a few houses that were still in good shape once the illusion lifted, ones owned by people who realize that regularly maintaining their home is as much about keeping problems from cropping up as it is about fixing ones that appear. Or who just like doing handiwork, so the illusion they see never bothers hiding things that go wrong on their own house!
 * Maybe yes. But if the gas makes them see what they expect, someone expecting to always be fixing stuff -- even stuff that isn't broken or in need of repair -- is going to go around breaking stuff while 'fixing' things.
 * They are obviously subconsciously deriving information from the environment. See examples of the 50 year old photographs; it's likely those actually existed in the room.
 * It is utterly impossible for an entire city to have the same hallucination to such a degree that they are able to function coherently. Differences must arise, and these contradictions lead to the inability to work together properly. Especially when Layton shows up.
 * You're right. It would be impossible to prevent contradictions. First, there's a game devoted to that >_>. But second, what's to say that such things didn't happen, and between the power of the gas and the power of the human mind, people simply rationalized it away or otherwise worked around the inconsistency, or even made the inconsistency part of the hallucination.
 * "Katia's mother died shortly after she was born, but Katia grew up strong and sweet, just the same," says Sophia in her letter to Anton. Does this bother anyone else? "Katia's mother" obviously refers to Anton and Sophia's daughter - the child for whom Sophia left Anton and all of Folsense to protect before she was even born -- and she doesn't even bother to mention to her lover what she named their child? It seems like Sophia loved Katia more than she did her own daughter.
 * I have to agree. It looks to be the case. Maybe Katia's mother was a bit of a rebel and caused Sophia some, or a lot, of pain, especially when she was young, but Katia was always a sweet girl, so it was easier for Sophia to love her.
 * Alternately, maybe we didn't hear the entire letter because it wasn't plot-relevant? Sophia could've mentioned her daughter by name, maybe even wrote another paragraph or something, but it appears in the game as "Katia's mother" because it's the last ten minutes of the game and we don't need another character by this point.
 * Thinking back on it, maybe Sophia thought it would be simply too painful for Anton to know what his deceased daughter's name was and what she was like. She asked Katia to go to Folsense to make sure Anton understood her true reasons for leaving, so she might have felt better with talking about Katia in the letter instead of the young lady's mother since it was her hope that Anton would be able to meet Katia.
 * Okay, if half of Folsense leaves to form Dropstone, why the HELL did Anton have to stay? He's clearly nuts enough to impair any form of governing he'd be doing, and it would probably just be smarter to evacuate the entire town, declare it unfit for human life, and move everything to Dropstone. Ancestral home or no, it's irresponsible to let someone keep living in a castle full of hallucinogenic gas. Why couldn't Sophia have told Anton her suspicions, said "I'm pregnant and leaving because even if I'm wrong, I'm not taking that chance," and asked him to come with her?
 * Anton may be justified by something like Honor Before Reason; yeah, he doesn't have to stay (and really shouldn't have, for that matter), but he felt like he had to. As for why Sophia and the rest of the evacuees never tried to tell everyone else about their suspicions... Well, they were just that, suspicions, and they weren't really sure of the specifics. In the game, I believe even some of the Folsense residents know that "a few years ago" (really 50, of course, but they don't know that), a lot of people started getting sick (from the gas, obviously), but they didn't know that the gas was a hallucinogen too. They probably just thought whatever was making them sick would pass and things would go back to normal soon.
 * The ending scene with Layton and Luke riding the Molentary Express away from Folsense... without Anton and Katia. They're standing on a hill outside of Folsense's train station, happily waving goodbye. Then in the credits, we see Katia being reunited with some citizens of Dropstone, with Anton nearby. That's all well and fine, but, as seen from the background, they're still in Folsense. Why would all of the main characters of Dropstone ride the train all the way to Folsense just to be meet up with Anton and Katia? It would have made much more sense for Layton and Luke to take Anton and Katia back with them to Folsense, drop them off there, pick up Flora, and head back to London. Why would the professor and Luke not take the two back to Dropstone, where Katia's family is and where there is actually life and no hallucinogenic gas? It seems like staying in Non-Illusion Folsense would have been dangerous for Anton and Katia, what with the risks of living in any of the remaining dilapidated buildings, so what reason would that have to stay?
 * Let me ask you this; you live in a rural town, where you're so bored out of your mind you must make puzzles and trade them with random train passengers everyday to keep your sanity. Suddenly, two guys come back from this mythical place and tell this outlandish tale about how Would you not drop everything that weekend and check that place out?
 * Well, at least the gas is gone now, so it's not like that part's an issue anymore. You have a point about all the dilapidated buildings, but given how everyone from Dropstone is seen meeting up with Katia and Anton in the credits, it's probable that they started repairing Folsense. Now whether or not they stayed there the whole time or actually went back to Dropstone to rest up in their actually functional homes every once in a while is another matter entirely...
 * How did Chelmey get away with his screwups on this case? He used department resources and came very close to making a false arrest for a murder that didn't happen. What's more, he should have known it didn't happen before leaving London. You can't have a murder investigation without a murder. You can't have a murder without evidence that somebody died. And unless the body is missing parts, the only people who have the authority to declare a body to be dead are trained medical professionals, a category which police investigators and archeologists do not belong to. Since Shraeder wasn't dead, and a competent doctor would have known this, the biggest crime that he had knowledge of was that somebody wrecked a curtain to leave Shraeder's office without using the door, possibly in possession of an item which he had no solid proof of being there in the first place. Hardly serious enough to justify booking a trip on a luxury transport.
 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but this game takes place in Victorian England, no? Was medicine back then so advanced that they knew Shraeder wasn't dead? As far as we know, he banged the coffin lid as they were lowering it, after all doctors had proclaimed him deceased. Chelmey couldn't be blamed for that.
 * The series takes place in a huge Anachronism Stew, but the main era is the modern day. Therefore, we can assume that medical professionals would be able to tell that Schraeder wasn't dead, and thus Chelmey had no reason to be on the train.
 * They board the Molentary Express in London and then travel for days before reaching Folsense -- England simply isn't that big. By the second day you'd be in Scotland, unless you were traveling around in circles.
 * Well, the place they were going to was supposedly hidden, no? Would make sense if the train traveled on circles to an extent. Or perhaps it's just a really, really crappy train.
 * The Molentary Express is often called a 'cruise ship on rails.' Cruise ships often sail more slowly than necessary to let passengers enjoy the trip. Also, schizo tech means alternate reality. Alternate reality can possibly mean alternate geography.
 * Okay, so Layton and Luke see Folsense the way they do Minor, yes, but still something that just confuses me.
 * The Molentary Express is often called a 'cruise ship on rails.' Cruise ships often sail more slowly than necessary to let passengers enjoy the trip. Also, schizo tech means alternate reality. Alternate reality can possibly mean alternate geography.
 * Okay, so Layton and Luke see Folsense the way they do Minor, yes, but still something that just confuses me.

The Unwound Future

 * Why on earth does everyone in Future London in Unwound Future act like ? Are they all actors? Did they all use the time machine to get there? When Chelmey evacuates them at the end of the game, are they all going straight to jail as accomplices?
 * I figure they're actors hired to play the part of people living . In fact, most people don't mention it's, so maybe they don't even know it's supposed to be.
 * Oh, they know... remember
 * I reckon they're all other people who want . There are probably lots of people who'd like to see the whole Time Travel thing work out - Dmitri probably did a lot of covert snooping around before work on  started and found as many people as he could who were decent actors, wanted him to succeed, and were willing to lie to Layton to make it work.
 * If you go back to the clock shop at the end of the game and talk to Cogg and Spring, they reveal that they . There seems to be various degrees of awareness, as one kid in Chinatown mentions that he knows his father is often working in a lab, but doesn't know what he's working on. They may be convinced that it's 10 years in the future, and that Layton and young Luke are actually that old in the future.
 * It's also possible that some of the citizens, not just the scientists, were kidnapped.
 * When we first hear about the lab accident ten years ago, we're told that it caused a massive fire and destroyed half of the neighboring apartment building . However, when recalls the incident,
 * Were we supposed to know before the reveal? I don't recall  ever being mentioned before that moment, but Layton
 * was probably known between the scientists and politicians, since almost everybody in the room was involved with the
 * When Layton talks about the day of the explosion to Luke, he says there was a boy who lost his parents, and on the picture we see Layton holding the boy. It's foreshadowed.
 * It may have been foreshadowed to the player, but Layton didn't know! At the end,
 * I always assumed that because Layton did so much . He probably knew about as a notable survivor, but not as the  until it was revealed.
 * That's a possibility, and the scene mainly serves to show that . I personally suspected that
 * How exactly did the fool anyone? The  Also, how was it made that it is  there without it being obvious  AND, how could the  be an  when you can't see any  above the house when you are in future London?
 * I imagine it's a
 * Actually,
 * Fridge Brilliance: The other side of the Thames is full of industrial buildings and scientific research centers. Layton even comments at one point on the haze of pollution they create.
 * I find it hard to believe that could have had the money to build an
 * The citizens of Future London are all
 * Could be a
 * Given how . That, and how it's implied that.
 * Since it turns out that, how did he ? There couldn't have been , because the police would have found it.
 * The explosion caused a messy enough distraction so he could simply have hidden Family members
 * Flora's voice. In the US version, she inexplicably speaks with an American accent while everyone else sounds at least passably British, which is very jarring. Not to mention her voice actress could do with a bit of brushing up on pacing and tone.
 * In her first scene in CV, she said "I'd... rather not say," in more of a British accent than American. Then, her voice-acted parts from "Goodbye then, little village"-on, she's American.
 * Her name -- Reinhold -- is of German origin. I figure the family was originally German and the Baron was taught English by an American nanny his family hired. He therefore would speak English with an American accent, and his kid would pick it up from him. Several years of living among British people would soften that accent perhaps, but it would still be noticeable.
 * What bugs me about Flora's voice is the fact that her voice actress voices a good deal of other characters and pulls off at least a semi-British accent for all of them. I understand that it would be difficult to come up with a unique voice for that many characters, but it's a bit strange that Flora is the only one without the accent.
 * How exactly did
 * Dimitri probably
 * In the second flashback, why does Hershel have a mask of his face? It's just sitting on a bookshelf in background.
 * The statue of the author and the boy. Did something seem off about that to anyone else?
 * For me, I just figured
 * What exactly does
 * So
 * For me, I just figured
 * What exactly does
 * So
 * So

The Eternal Diva

 * Nothing was explained about the eternal nature of Ambrosia. NOTHING.
 * Are we talking about the, the people of Ambrosia, or ? We're given a sort of throwaway comment about how . It's a bit kitschy, but it's something. I'm more annoyed about the fact that, as a man of science, Layton.
 * The kitschy explanation bugs me a lot, to be honest -- the whole movie in general just feels like it's being written by a different writer from the games. The explanation feels tacked on, something they made up at the last minute. The whole annoyed me a lot too, but as a friend of this troper said, . But yeah, in general, the conclusion just really bugged me.
 * And another note, why does Descole want Ambrosia anyway? Profit?
 * If the fan theory that Descole is really Lando is true, then he might be trying to one-up the guy he taught archeology to, seeing how super awesome and famous Layton's become. That would also explain why he was so furious about Layton being the one to raise Ambrosia instead of being all 'Oh hey, thanks for doing my work for me' about it. I'm guessing we'll get the answer when it's revealed who Descole really is.
 * Was the reason why the Melina inside Jenis was different than the one implanted into Emily because Jenis accepted Melina's memories? Also, how could Melina choose to just "move on" at the end if "she", as in her memories, was just a bunch of electronic information? Does that mean her father actually did something like a soul upload and not just a memory upload? If that was the case, the ending would make sense, because then it would be essentially her spirit leaving Jenis to leave for the afterlife. We were told, however, that Jenis was only implanted with Melina's memories and that she accepted it. Thus, Melina shouldn't have been able to disappear like that. Melina, in all likelihood, probably retreated to the furthest recesses of Jenis' mind so that she wouldn't bother Jenis anymore..
 * In the beginning, when Layton is explaining the story of Ambrosia during the play, I got a little bothered. The villagers drink the immortality potion AFTER the queen is already dead. Why? They know she's dead and gone, if they want to meet her again, why not commit mass suicide and meet her in the afterlife? Living forever won't bring their queen back.
 * Because they believed their queen would be reincarnated and they wanted to wait for her.
 * Why didn't Descole just

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