“Why Does Mega Man Shoot Lemons?” And Other Odd Google Inquiries

A little while back, I happened to come across an article on Game Informer titled “Why Does Mario Grind Luigi’s Shoes? And Other Strange Google Inquiry Results.” In this piece, Kyle Hilliard makes note of a handy feature provided by Google: when you begin typing, it brings up the list of results most frequently searched for that match what you’ve typed.

The results, as you might imagine from that title alone, can be utterly fascinating.

This led to a string of search queries for “Why does” followed by a popular video game character’s name. “Why does Mario wear gloves?” “Why Donkey Kong have a tie?” “Why does Crash Bandicoot play a didgeridoo?” And so forth.

Through it all, though, I noticed a glaring omission: no characters from Mega Man! Come on, you have Sony’s defunct pseudo-mascot, but not the Blue Bomber?

Well, that’s an easy enough problem to solve — and I get my own full article out of it, to boot! So with Tabby’s help, I’ve compiled a small list of “Why does…?” questions exclusively featuring Mega Man characters! Mind, most of these are Classic, as the further you get from that, the fewer results there are.

“Why does Mega Man shoot lemons?”

Oh dear, we’re off to a bit of a fascinating start, aren’t we? Do people really think this enough to search for it that much?

The short answer, of course, is that he doesn’t: he fires bullets of compressed solar energy. Why does he explode? Because his reactor went critical from too much damage.

Why does Capcom hate Mega Man (now)? I’m not entirely convinced that they do. At the very least, not in as unilateral a fashion as the question implies. We know Capcom USA still loves the guy, and Japan? I get the feeling they just aren’t sure enough of where to go from here.

But that’s a whole topic for another day. Let’s move on…

“Hate” is such a strong word, isn’t it? I don’t think that we’ve ever really seen a true sign that Proto Man hates Dr. Light so much as he doesn’t trust him — at least, not with something as delicate as maintaining his personality and free will.

Naturally, I have to say I love how Ian Flynn handled the whole matter in the Archie comic, going from feeling distrust to betrayal to unworthiness, but through it all, I don’t think Proto Man has ever hated Dr. Light — he just wants to know that his creator will love him for who he is.

So above, we got some interesting results from Google’s suggested one-word “Megaman.” Here, I broke it up into its normal two-word nomenclature, and besides some of the same as before, we got an interesting one here — which overlaps with my attempt to search for something for Mega Man Zero, so they’re lumped together here.

Why does Mega Man have to kill Zero? Simple: he doesn’t. As far as we know, the two have never met. Perhaps the people typing this in meant X?

Why does Zero look different in Mega Man Zero? Advancement in technology. Or artistic interpretation. Or maybe both. The answer seems to vary every time it comes up, and depending on who you ask.

Personally, I like to think that Zero is a closet fashionista and keeps up with all the latest trends, even when he’s dead or in stasis.

Internet, your English teacher is very disappoint. Er, disappointed.

I think by now, this one’s pretty much a given, though in fairness, I’m not one-hundred percent certain that Capcom — not its licensees, not its outsourced developers — has ever explicitly said “Wily created Zero.” They’ve basically said everything but that particular statement in the same way they’ll casually say “Light created X.” It’s like the only two dots left in the drawing.

Unless I’m mistaken there (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but please cite a verifiable source. I already did some searching to be sure), then it’s almost as though they left that tiniest of windows open in case they wanted to pull some sort of Shyamalanian twist.

Edit: Whoops! As Round Cat and Hypershell pointed out in the comments below, Inafune did actually utter the phrase “Dr. Wily created Zero” during a Capcom Unity Q&A from S-Kill’s blog all the way back in 2008! Plus, one of the artists notes that Zero is a “Wily Number” in the Mega Man Xtreme portion of the Mega Man & Mega Man X Official Complete Works, wherein Middy and Techno’s designs are discussed! So while it’s a rare occurrence, it has indeed been stated by the creators!

Here’s where things start to break down a little bit. When you’ve got names that lean on the more generic side, such as “X” or “Zero,” you’re probably not going to find as favorable results.

In truth, I’m not even sure if the one about Zero wearing a scarf is a reference to our Zero — I know that back when my wife saw Zero for the very first time, she thought he had a scarf. Fair enough assessment, I suppose, given that Proto Man had one as well. But once she got a better look, she realized it was his hair, leaving me to wonder if anyone else has or still thinks he just has a really long scarf.

Finally, what could be more generic a term to look for than “Zero”? How about “Bass”?

And I think we’re done here.