Kingdom Hearts
Terms and lore
The glass pillars. The place Sora dreamed of the night before the storm: pillars of glass standing in a dark with nothing else in it, each one wide enough to be a floor, with a picture worked into the glass of sleeping women and the people keeping watch over them. A voice with no body told him what to do there. He was to take one of three things from a pedestal, a sword, a shield and a staff, and to give one up. At the last pillar his own shadow stood up, enormous, with a hole through its middle in the shape of a heart.
The paopu fruit. The star-shaped fruit that grows on the crooked tree on the small island. Riku's version of the legend: "If two people share one, their destinies become intertwined." The whole of it runs that two people who share one remain a part of each other's lives forever. Riku and Sora race each other for the right to share one with Kairi. Before the storm, Sora scratched a drawing into the cave wall of himself holding one out to her. At the end, she added her half.
Thalassa shells. Shells sailors once wore to ensure a safe voyage. Kairi threaded them into a star-shaped charm, "a charm to help us find each other if we ever get separated," and in the waterway under Traverse Town she gave it to Sora as her lucky charm and told him to bring it back to her.
The door in the cave. A wooden door standing in the rock at the back of the cave on the play island, taller than a child, with no handle and no keyhole. It never opened for Sora or Riku. The hooded figure who came to see it called it the door to this world. On the night of the storm it opened behind Kairi, and the world was lost through it.
The Heartless. "Those without hearts," in Leon's words. The darkness in people's hearts attracts them, and there is darkness in every heart. They come up out of the ground and out of walls, and they come in many shapes, from small black creatures with round yellow eyes to armoured knights and giants. The armoured ones carry a sign on their chests: a heart with a cross driven through it. When a heart is taken, the person it belonged to becomes one of them. Sora saw it happen to a stranger in Traverse Town, and later it happened to him.
The Keyblade. A key as long as his arm, silver in the blade and teeth with a gold guard, that came into Sora's hand on the night his island fell. "The Keyblade chooses its master," Yuffie told him, and the Heartless fear it, which is why they never stop coming after whoever holds it. It is the only thing that can lock a world's Keyhole. It can also leave one hand for another. At Hollow Bastion it went to Riku, and then came back to Sora when Sora had nothing but a wooden sword and his friends. A cloaked figure gave Riku the rule for it: "The heart that is strong and true shall win the Keyblade."
Keyholes and the heart of a world. Every world among the stars has a Keyhole, and each one leads to the heart of that world. Every star in the sky is a world, and the stars have been going out one by one. Once Sora locks a world's Keyhole, the Heartless cannot get into its heart any more. Aerith's charge to him: "Please lock the Keyholes. You're the only one who can."
The worlds and their walls. Each star in the sky is a world, and the worlds were meant to stand apart. The walls between them were failing because worlds were being eaten. Donald laid down the law for travelling between them: don't meddle, and never tell anybody in any world that other worlds exist. Once the worlds are restored, Aerith told Sora, they will be separate again.
Gummi ships. The ships that fly between worlds, built from gummi blocks. A ship needs a navigation gummi to reach a new world, which is why Sora needed Cid's spare, stored in the secret waterway nine years earlier, to reach Hollow Bastion.
Traverse Town. Where people whose worlds were eaten end up, with no memory of how they arrived. It has three districts, numbered rather than named, and it is always night there. Leon, Yuffie, Aerith and Cid have lived there for nine years.
Hollow Bastion. The world Leon, Yuffie, Aerith and Cid came from as children. It fell nine years ago. Its castle stands over an abyss, with water running upward in columns and rock hanging in the air. It was once, in Leon's words, "so peaceful." Maleficent is there. Kairi says she used to live there.
Ansem's report. The research of Ansem, once the ruler of Hollow Bastion, who dedicated his life to studying the Heartless and has been missing for nine years. Its pages were scattered across worlds he never lived in, and Aerith read them aloud as Sora found them. They begin: "Darkness sleeps in every heart, no matter how pure." He experimented on the darkness in people's hearts, and the hearts did not hold: "How fragile our hearts are!" Creatures appeared under his castle, and he named them: "Those who lack hearts. I will call them the Heartless." He found things fallen from the sky that belonged to no world he knew, built a machine that made Heartless of its own ("a step toward creating a heart from nothing"), and was told a legend about a key by a king from another world. Following a Heartless, he found and opened a door far beneath his castle, and what came through it was "the heart of the world." The last page: "I will cast it off and plunge into the depths of darkness."
The princesses of heart. Seven maidens of the purest heart. Gathered together, Maleficent told Riku, they open a door to the heart of all worlds. Jasmine was one of them. Kairi was the seventh, and the Keyhole at Hollow Bastion could not be completed while she slept. Leon's reading of it is that Riku's Keyblade was born of the captive princesses' hearts.
The Keyblade that unlocks hearts. Red and black, its teeth shaped like a heart with a break through it, made from the hearts of the six princesses Maleficent had gathered. Riku drove it into Maleficent and turned her into darkness. Sora turned it on himself to free Kairi's heart, which was resting inside him. It released her heart and the other six, completed the Keyhole, and unlocked his own heart, and he became a Heartless until Kairi held him.
Kingdom Hearts. The heart of all worlds, at the bottom of the endless abyss, behind a tall white door. The man who called himself Ansem believed it was darkness and asked it for the power of darkness. Sora said the opposite: "Kingdom Hearts is light!" When the door opened, light came out, and behind it the Heartless stood in the dark as far as the light reached. The door had to be closed from both sides, with a key on each.
The wreckage of the worlds. Every world the Heartless had eaten, fused into one mass, with preserved fragments of lost places inside it. Defeating what waited there put the worlds back.
The door to the light. What the king promised through the last of the gap: "There will always be a door to the light." Sora, Donald and Goofy went looking for it on a road across a green field.
Characters and where they stand
Sora. Fourteen, cheerful, stubborn, and quick to jump into anything, including other people's trials. He helped with the raft because Riku was building it. The Keyblade chose him on the night his island fell, and for months he followed it from world to world looking for his friends. He lost it to Riku and won it back holding a wooden sword. He gave up his own heart to free Kairi's, and came back when she held him. He closed the door to darkness from the outside, with Riku and the king still on the other side, and promised Kairi he would come back to her. He is on a road with Donald and Goofy, chasing a dog with the king's seal on his letter, looking for Riku and King Mickey.
Riku. Sora's best friend and rival, older, sure of himself, and restless on an island that felt like a prison. He wanted out more than anyone and was the first to step through the door. Maleficent found him first. Believing Sora had replaced him, he took her offer, gathered princesses for her, and carried Kairi's sleeping body from world to world. He took the Keyblade from Sora, lost it back, and then opened himself to darkness, and the man who called himself Ansem wore his body. At the door to Kingdom Hearts he was himself again, pulling the door shut from the dark side. His last words through the gap: "Take care of her." He is on the other side of that door, with the king.
Kairi. Warm, direct, and braver than she first lets on. She remembers little of before the islands, only that she used to live in Hollow Bastion, and the island is her real home. On the night of the storm her heart went into Sora and her body lay asleep for months. She was the seventh princess of heart. When Sora became a Heartless she knew him anyway and held him until he was himself. She is back on the islands, alone, and has promised him she is always with him.
Donald Duck. Hot-tempered, loud, and fiercely loyal once he has decided to be. The king's letter sent him and Goofy to find the key. He came looking for the key, not the boy, and at Hollow Bastion he followed the key to Riku before turning back for Sora. He is on the road with Sora and Goofy.
Goofy. Easygoing, kind, and wiser than he sounds. He was the first to break from the king's orders for Sora's sake: "I'm not gonna betray Sora, either, 'cause he's become one of my best buddies." He is on the road with Sora and Donald.
Jiminy Cricket. A cricket whose world disappeared, who rode along on Donald's hat and wrote the whole journey down in his journal.
King Mickey. The king Donald and Goofy serve. He left his castle without saying goodbye because the stars were going out, and his letter sent them to find the one with the key. In the dark he found Riku's heart and told him the door would have to be closed from both sides, with two keys and two hearts; he has "the other Keyblade, the one that belongs to this world." At the end he was on the dark side of the door to Kingdom Hearts, holding back the Heartless with a golden key, and he locked the door with Sora from his side of it.
Leon. Serious and guarded, and the first to explain the Keyblade to Sora, after fighting him for it. He is also called Squall. He came to Traverse Town from Hollow Bastion as a child. At the end he returned to his childhood home to see what was left of it.
Yuffie. "The great ninja Yuffie," by her own introduction: loud, energetic and friendly. She fled Hollow Bastion with the others and returned there with them at the end.
Aerith. Gentle and perceptive. She read Ansem's report aloud as Sora brought the pages back, and noticed something in it she could not explain: "It's almost as if someone is holding the darkness back." She warned Sora that restoring the worlds would separate them again, and told him their hearts would bring them together.
Cid. Gruff, impatient, and generous underneath it. He fits out Sora's gummi ship, installed the navigation gummi that got them to Hollow Bastion, and flew the others there in his own ship at the end.
Maleficent. Proud, patient and utterly sure of herself, calling herself the mistress of all evil. She led a council of villains, used the Heartless to open worlds, gathered the princesses of heart, and took Riku under her wing. In the chapel at Hollow Bastion, beaten, she was offered help by Riku, who drove the Keyblade of heart into her; she welcomed the darkness, became a dragon, and was destroyed. Riku called her just another puppet. What is left is a scorch on the chapel floor with her cloak in it.
Ansem, the seeker of darkness. Unhurried and certain, and convinced that darkness is the heart's true essence. He wore Riku's body, and named himself to Sora in the great hall at the top of Hollow Bastion, beside the unfinished Keyhole. He knew Kairi's heart was resting in Sora. At the door to Kingdom Hearts he asked for the power of darkness, and the light that came out went through him: "Light. But. Why."
Jafar. A sorcerer on Maleficent's council, impatient and scornful. He failed to bring her either the princess or the Keyhole of the desert city. Maleficent afterwards called him beyond help, consumed by his own hatred.
The Beast. A castaway from a fallen world who followed the princess taken from his castle all the way to Hollow Bastion through sheer force of will, and kept getting up. He found her there.
The captain. A pirate with a hook on Maleficent's council, who flew Riku between worlds in his galleon. He was never told what the princesses were for.
The hooded figure in the cave. Unhurried, in a brown hooded robe. He came to see the door to this world, said it had been connected to the darkness, and was gone without explaining anything.
The cloaked figure in the castle. It found Riku alone in a corridor after he lost the Keyblade, told him his heart could grow stronger in the darkness, and asked him to let his heart become darkness itself. Riku said yes.
Questions
Where is the place of glass pillars from Sora's dream, and whose voice spoke to him there?
Who was the hooded figure in the cave?
Who was the cloaked figure who told Riku to open his heart to darkness?
Is the Ansem who called himself the seeker of darkness the same Ansem who ruled Hollow Bastion and wrote the report?
Where is Ansem, the ruler of Hollow Bastion, and why did he disappear?
Who was holding the darkness back, as Aerith suspected?
How did Kairi come from Hollow Bastion to the islands, and why did her heart go to Sora?
How did King Mickey come to be on the dark side of the door to Kingdom Hearts, and where did his golden key come from?
Will Riku and the king find a way out of the darkness?
Where is the door to the light?
Where is the dog with the king's seal going, and what does the letter say?
Will Sora keep his promise to come back to Kairi?
Fun facts
An elevator pitch. Square and Disney shared office space in Japan, and the partnership began with a chance meeting in an elevator, where producer Shinji Hashimoto pitched the idea. Tetsuya Nomura overheard Hashimoto and Hironobu Sakaguchi discussing it and asked to direct.
The first Keyblade was a chainsaw. At an early pitch meeting, Nomura interrupted Disney's presentation to show his own design document, in which Sora carried a chainsaw.
Sky, land and sea. Sora's name is Japanese for sky. Riku's comes from the word for land, and Kairi's from the word for sea.
Maleficent was going to be the end. Nomura first planned a much simpler story that ended when Maleficent was defeated. Ansem did not exist yet. He was added after Sakaguchi insisted the game needed more of an edge to make an impact.
Borrowed faces. Leon, Yuffie, Aerith and Cid come from the Final Fantasy series. Nomura could not think of Disney characters to guide Sora in Traverse Town, and felt new characters would not stand out next to Disney's. Yuffie's role was first planned for Rikku from Final Fantasy X, and Aerith's for Aya Brea from Parasite Eve.