Are these plotholes?

Awesome game! And like you noted, not without some flaws, but still fun.

I think you're right with #1, that Marle was displaced within time, sort of like the Guru of Time.

Regarding Azala's revenge, well, clearly Azala was patient! (I never understood that either actually). I just kind of wrote it off that he was hoping it would happen much sooner than it actually did.

About Magus, I am sure he could have warned Schala; but his goal was to stop Lavos entirely. He needed to wait until the Queen woke up Lavos.

About Frog, didn't they tell him about Time Travel when he first met Crono and Lucca and they were saving the Queen? Even if a line of dialogue wasn't tossed in, it's not unreasonable to assume that they told him outside of the script. They were travelling together.

About the Black Omen, I just sort of assumed that she was waiting for Lavos to reach full power. I know that doesn't make too much sense because she already did summon him, and you can fight in the Black Omen whenever.

About Melchior, perhaps he didn't want to disrupt the fabric of time and let fate decide when Crono and him would meet up.

As a final note, I haven't played Chrono Cross.

Yeah... so they really don't have much to do with one another. Sure there are references, but not like you'd hope. Stick with the original!

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So I have played both Chrono Trigger and FF6 at length and have given both games a lot of thought and despite liking FF6 just a tad more I would say that CT's story is so grand and great that after literally 20 years of thinking about it I still ponder the game's story and these sorts of issues...

Anyways, I will respond to these each in point:

1. When Marle is "killed" as a result of the first journey back, she describes it as being in a lonely void. If that is, in fact, death and is therefore where all the heroes (and villains for that matter) are headed, that's a really depressing thought.

I feel, though, that she was wrong. She wasn't dead, but in fact was displaced in time and would up at the End of Time, just not on the platform with the guru (which would explain the void nature of what she describes)

Like you said this is more of an observation and not a plot hole but I believe you are completely correct in your interpretation of what's actually happening there.

2. Azala's "revenge" is to summon Lavos. First, setting aside the fact that Lavos seems to be on his way to the planet, anyway, it strikes me as an odd sort of revenge. It takes Lavos well over 65,000,000 years to actually wreck the world. Isn't that a long time for Azala to get all gloaty about? Why would that be revenge against Ayla. Azala can't even know that Ayla's descendants will be alive then.

Azala's fight seems to be against humanity as much as it is against Ayla. One could argue Lavos was already on it's way but I think the game leads you to believe it is summoned by Azala and brought to the Earth (it crashes right where it was summoned). In the eyes of Azala it doesn't matter Ayla won't live to see the end of humanity all that matters is that the Reptites sworn enemy, humans, will eventually see their demise by the hands of the red star. Azala knows the repties are doomed at that point anyways and does not believe any of them will get to see their demise so the length it takes is irrelevant. With his last days he insures it will eventually happen and it allows him to die in peace when Ayla arrives believing that even though he will die eventually humans will lose too...

3. Magus' character's motivation is Schala. It's revealed that everything he does is motivated by Schala's fate (he is summoning Lavos to destroy the monster for its role in Schala's "demise"). He (Magus) ignores this purpose for decades to fight a war between Mystics and Humans. He also makes no attempt to avert the threat or save anybody when he is the Prophet in Zeal. His purpose in life is to avenge Schala and he doesn't stop her from participating in the whole Ocean Palace/ Black Omen plan? Why not?

This is a long answer but it's a complicated point...

"He (Magus) ignores this purpose for decades to fight a war between Mystics and Humans."

So on this first point I would say that because we don't fully see Magus' story line playing out in these years that it's difficult to say one way or another what his motives were. However, I would argue that Magus eventually would have figured out that Lavos fed off of division and destruction (In Magus' time (10000BC) as a child there were two different classes of people (magic and non-magic) and as Magus grew older in 600 AD he may have come to realize that that division between his people who could use magic and could not was actually created by Lavos itself (this is confirmed later by Schala when you are in 10000BC and she says the folks who can use magic are posssesed by Lavos)).

What i'm getting at here is Magus started to war to summon Lavos. He was purposefully trying to create division knowing it would summon Lavos which it eventually does at the worst possible time for Magus.

"He also makes no attempt to avert the threat or save anybody when he is the Prophet in Zeal."

This isn't exactly true depending on how you look at it because when he discovers Chrono and the gang in 10000BC he tries to send them back to their time and has Schala freeze the time seal. Older Magus may understand that as a Child he witnessed Chrono sacrifice himself with Lumainaire to save everyone when Lavos appears and resists the Phophet's attack - this "event" is what causes everyone, including Magus, to be warped to different points in time and results in Schala's death - it's this event Magus is trying to stop.

I believe that it was Magus' belief that by freezing the time portal with Schala that Chrono and his gang would be locked out of 10000BC and that "the event" he witnessed as a child would not happen thus giving him, Magus/Prophet, the sole chance to defeat Lavos after his sister raises him without anyone interfering. Magus' flaw is believing he's powerful enough to stop Lavos by himself.

It's my interpretation that Magus' plan was to get rid of Chrono and his gang (he starts immediately by telling the Queen they are coming) because he believes if he gets rid of them then he and he alone, as the prophet, can defeat Lavos. He knows from his time as a child that if Chrono is there that the event is all but guaranteed to play out the same way it did before. Magus believes the entire time that he is saving Zeal and his sister Schala but what he does not realize is that the actions he takes as the prophet were unchanged and by locking out Chrono it leads him and the gang to 2300 AD where they obtain the wings of time.

Magus is trying to save Zeal. He wages the war in 600 AD as a way to summon Lavos in the hopes his time traveling abilities send Magus back to 10000BC where he can save Schala. When Lavos finally does awaken it just so happens to be when Magus is fighting Chrono and Frog. Magus would likely believe at that point that first and foremost in order for history not to repeat that Chrono and his gang must be banished because A) they have not seen what he's seen and thus have no idea how to help him and B) he knows them being there increases the liklihood of everything happening the same way again which is precisely what he's trying to avoid.

Because Magus is so focused on saving his Sister he is never able to understand that the actions he takes as the prophet, trying to save Zeal, are actually what causes Zeal and his Sister to die. It is only after the 10000BC world is flooded/destroyed by the collapse of the sky civilization that Magus, standing at the North Cape, finally realizes the actions he took trying to save Zeal are in fact what cause Zeal and his Sister to be destroyed.

Magus is truly the most tragic figure in the entire game because of this...

This is also why, imo, shortly after Chrono's death when Frog and the Gang find Magus on the North Cape - watching the world sink before him as he comes to the aforementioned tragic revelation - Magus wants the Frog to finally fight him, and kill him, because he cannot live knowing that his entire life's work of summoning Lavos to save his sister is actually what causes his sister to die.

Consider the conversation he has with the Frog at this moment...


Magus: Unimaginable is the power of Lavos. Anyone who dares to oppose it... meets certain doom. At this rate, you too, will meet a hideous fate. Just like that poor fool, Crono!

Frog: You dare to insult him?

Magus: He's history! Play with fire and you get burned.

Is he actually talking about Crono or himself?

You as the player have the choice to put him out of his misery in that moment or allow him to redeem himself by letting you know how to bring Chrono back from the dead (knowledge I imagine he had by researching it for Schala's sake.) and allowing him to join you in your fight to finally kill Lavos once and for all.

4. Frog isn't surprised by Time Travel. After the fight with Magus and everybody gets sucked into Prehistoric times, Frog's only comment is, "We lost him." Everybody else in the party knows what happened, but Frog is curiously accepting of Time Travel (including Robo, if you go to see Frog with Robo). Did I miss a line of dialogue where Frog learns about Time Travel?

Not really a plot hole but sadly the memory offered by SNES cartridges probably didn't allow them to include another scene with him getting an explanation. I like to think it's explained to him by Chrono and the gang when they are at his house/hut and give him the fully repaired Masumune - I mean how else could they have pulled that off without explaining to him where they came from and where they'd been? When we see Frog's flashbacks as Glenn, as he considers helping Chrono defeat Magus, I like to think Chrono and Lucca are explaining everything to him while we the viewer watch the flashback with Cyrus. When they travel through time after fighting Magus he has already accepted the people he's with have the ability to do such a thing and as such he is not surprised.

With Robo... we can easily explain it by saying he's a robot and perhaps time travel wouldn't be all that fascinating to it.


5. Lucca goes from total ignorance to what happened with the teleporter to being capable of manufacturing a totally reliable Gate Key in, what? A year? A week? Though the game never specifies how long she spends working on it, it seems like that should take long enough that her appearance should change. After all, though she has the teleporter, it's only a time-travelling machine when combined with the red rock of the pendant. Of course, Lucca has no way of knowing that because Crono takes the pendant with him. Without one half of the puzzle pieces, how does Lucca put it together so quickly?

This is a good point but I like to think it took her a long time in her own time and we just never see it on screen.

6. At several points the three-person party system makes absolutely no sense (outside of a gameplay perspective). For instance, when everybody goes off to fight Magus, you approach Frog with three people and then one person stays behind while the other three go off to assault the lair of deadliest sorcerer in the world, who's armies have been ravaging the countryside and keeping Guardia's army at bay - for years (if not decades, based on the Frog, Cyrus flashbacks). Same problem when you go off to the Tyrano lair.

Pretty much every RPG has this issue, including the Mass Effect trilogy. The place it really makes 0 sense is against Lavos - I guess half of them just sit at the end of time? Not really a plot hole just another memory/settings issue. These games then and even today are not meant to be played beyond a certain set of characters.

7. Zeal's Mammon Machine doors which close off areas of the future Domes are constructed 14,300 years after magic-fused technology has died out. How are they there when Humans can't use magic after the Dark Ages?

I like to think Zeal creates an army of robots during this time and gives them the ability to do it. She had centuries of time and Lavos' possession so it's not unrealistic to think she did it herself.

8. Guardia's court system is...broken. While I understand that some of the point of those scenes is the pervasive corruption at the heart of it (ie: Yakra and his descendants), the non-corrupt officials (Pierre, for instance) is somewhere between stupid and incompetant. During the Rainbow Shell incident, the witness who is paid off to lie says that he bought the Rainbow Shell, but his word is taken as truth without having to prove where the shell is. Nobody cross-examines him. Furthermore, The Chancellor repeatedly makes judge-like pronouncements without anybody calling him out on it. He seems to act as the judge and prosecutor. Even if the system is corrupt, it's aggravating that nobody is even pretending that it's not.

In the middle ages, like say during the Spanish inquisition, it's likely the justice system was just as bad. In the past people were Guilty until they proved themselves innocent and that's kind of the situation the King found himself in.

The entire thing is just a way for Marle and her Father to have a sappy moment and love each other again... probably a better way to have done it but it's not as far fetched as we might think and also not a plot hole.

10. When the Black Omen hovers throughout the ages, what is Zeal doing? Why does she just sit there for millennia without trying to conquer anything or without anybody else exploring it or attacking it?

As you discover later, after fighting her, she is completely possessed by Lavos. Her actions are not her own...

11. Melchior doesn't recognise Crono even though they met in Zeal (before Melchior was thrown forward in time).

I think Melchior purposefully doesn't admit he recognizes him as a way not to have to explain himself to Chrono and others and as a Guru of Zeal he probably doesn't believe it's wise to do it. Later when he's asked why his name is on the Masamune he doesn't exactly tell them probably for the same reason.

12. Why does Schala help Zeal build the Ocean Palace? She is obviously aware of the dire nature of the (potential) consequences, but Zeal doesn't threaten her in any way to make her do it. Does she? I don't recall any dialogue where Zeal says, "Do this, or else I'll slaughter the Earthbound Ones/ hurt Janus!" Zeal needs Schala to work on the Ocean Palace, but Zeal doesn't have anything Schala wants to bribe/ threaten her with. Either there's a crucial scene explaining this that I missed (or was left out) or else Schala caves really easily.

Zeal was still her mother and treated as a God in her time. I also think it's safe to say those scenes are missing but implied because of how horrible Zeal became. Zeal was a power hungry zealot (it's in the name) she worshiped power and believed Lavos was her path to it - technically she was right but it's easy to believe she threatened Schala regularly.

Schala herself also admits she believes she could be under Lavos' control without realizing it since she believes people in 10000BC who could use magic were likely under Lavos's influence already.


9. This also has to do with the Rainbow Shell trial. Time travel changes the past sometimes, but not always. Sometimes changing the past results in, say, Marle disappearing or the Black Omen remaining hovering over the earth. In the latter example, everybody just accepts that it's there. It's like a terrain feature. They treat it like something everybody takes for granted (ie: "The Black Omen sparkles in the sun... in dialogue") The problem, though, is that this isn't consistently how changing the past works. During the Rainbow Shell trial, the King doesn't know why the Chancellor is looking for the shell because the main characters changed the past and so the shell is in the treasury. But, then, shouldn't the King (and Marle, for that matter) just know exactly where it is? It's not like Yakra stole it and framed the King. Nope, the shell is just sitting in the treasury where it's "always been". The "Grandfather Paradox" stuff doesn't bug me. It just bugs me that, in the game, Time Travel (and its consequences) don't consistently operate the same way.

This is the biggest plot hole of the game. Either time is linear and all the things that happened in the past happened the way they did and as Einstein theorized, the past, present, and future are all set in stone and time is merely a powerful illusion or what was in fact happening throughout the game is our Gang was not traveling through time but from one universe to the next ala Bioshock infinity.

I really like to think it was all 1 linear timeline but the existence of 2300AD, the Black Omen, and other logical inconsistencies lead me to believe they were hoping between one universe to the next throughout the game because if they aren't then a lot of what happens doesn't make sense. On the other hand I don't think the game is as cool if you don't think of it as 1 universe. I think in a remake some of this could be cleaned up as they wouldn't be as restricted with memory and if someone really put some thought into it.

The problem is when you're dealing with time travel there's always a whole array of problems. You cannot point to a single movie/game that involves time travel and not find an issue somewhere.

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6. At several points the three-person party system makes absolutely no sense (outside of a gameplay perspective). For instance, when everybody goes off to fight Magus, you approach Frog with three people and then one person stays behind while the other three go off to assault the lair of deadliest sorcerer in the world, who's armies have been ravaging the countryside and keeping Guardia's army at bay - for years (if not decades, based on the Frog, Cyrus flashbacks). Same problem when you go off to the Tyrano lair.

The game was limited. Not a pothole.

7. Zeal's Mammon Machine doors which close off areas of the future Domes are constructed 14,300 years after magic-fused technology has died out. How are they there when Humans can't use magic after the Dark Ages?

Well.....cuz.... fair enough. Not a plot hole, but, never explained.

8. Guardia's court system is...broken. While I understand that some of the point of those scenes is the pervasive corruption at the heart of it (ie: Yakra and his descendants), the non-corrupt officials (Pierre, for instance) is somewhere between stupid and incompetant. During the Rainbow Shell incident, the witness who is paid off to lie says that he bought the Rainbow Shell, but his word is taken as truth without having to prove where the shell is. Nobody cross-examines him. Furthermore, The Chancellor repeatedly makes judge-like pronouncements without anybody calling him out on it. He seems to act as the judge and prosecutor. Even if the system is corrupt, it's aggravating that nobody is even pretending that it's not.

Okay, here I have to throw a penalty flag. It's a 16 bit game, it's limited. It was merely to show the chancellor was corrupt and setting the king up. It's not meant to be dissected.

9. This also has to do with the Rainbow Shell trial. Time travel changes the past sometimes, but not always. Sometimes changing the past results in, say, Marle disappearing or the Black Omen remaining hovering over the earth. In the latter example, everybody just accepts that it's there. It's like a terrain feature. They treat it like something everybody takes for granted (ie: "The Black Omen sparkles in the sun... in dialogue") The problem, though, is that this isn't consistently how changing the past works. During the Rainbow Shell trial, the King doesn't know why the Chancellor is looking for the shell because the main characters changed the past and so the shell is in the treasury. But, then, shouldn't the King (and Marle, for that matter) just know exactly where it is? It's not like Yakra stole it and framed the King. Nope, the shell is just sitting in the treasury where it's "always been". The "Grandfather Paradox" stuff doesn't bug me. It just bugs me that, in the game, Time Travel (and its consequences) don't consistently operate the same way.

Eh, after 400 years, it is not implausible an heirloom would get displaced/forgotten. A slight hole, but, only a slight one.

10. When the Black Omen hovers throughout the ages, what is Zeal doing? Why does she just sit there for millennia without trying to conquer anything or without anybody else exploring it or attacking it?

No one was technologically advanced enough to try.

11. Melchior doesn't recognise Crono even though they met in Zeal (before Melchior was thrown forward in time).

Well, he met him, briefly, in another time period. I can easily see where he might not have recognized him, after so many years, after displacement.

12. Why does Schala help Zeal build the Ocean Palace? She is obviously aware of the dire nature of the (potential) consequences, but Zeal doesn't threaten her in any way to make her do it. Does she? I don't recall any dialogue where Zeal says, "Do this, or else I'll slaughter the Earthbound Ones/ hurt Janus!" Zeal needs Schala to work on the Ocean Palace, but Zeal doesn't have anything Schala wants to bribe/ threaten her with. Either there's a crucial scene explaining this that I missed (or was left out) or else Schala caves really easily.

Well, why wouldn't she? It's heavily implied that the Queen succumbed to the power, and became Zealous, a fanatic, etc. Shala would have worked on it, initially, with the Guru's, blind to the dangers, and once they realized, too much was in motion. Also, never under estimate a childs obedience to their parent.

Say, do you hear that? It's the sound of the Reaper.....

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