#kh speculation

1) the eyes

Notably, on a first glance he looked like he had brown eyes, but its actually central hecterochromia. The centre is gold/brown but the rest of his iris is grey. And guess who has grey eyes?

(His eyes might be a kinda grey-purple colour but that could be down to stylisation but also note, Eraqus does have grey eyes although more blue toned than Brain's) BUT- thinking back to the central hecterochromia, we dont know what happened to Brain during KHML, so maybe something occurred for this to happen?

2) The flow of his hairstyle

The flow of his hairstyle is very similar, if not the same to Brain’s (I did also refer to who is possibly Luxu at the end of UX to get a better look at Brain’s hair, also ignore how messily I threw the images into the canvas)

You may be thinking, hey doesn't KH4 have more wavy hair compared to Brain? Which yes, true, but this is something else that could be drawn down to either stylisation or maybe just Brain's hairstyle has slightly changed over time as its been grown + cut.

3) Facial features

They're eyebrows, noses and mouths look exactly the same plus its funny how we see this guy of all people with a breif smile when we've seen Brain on 2 occasions with the same smile.

The Leaked List + a few notes from me:

The Final World

Quadratum

The Mysterious Tower

Underworld

Moana

The Princess and the Frog (lit. Princess and the Magic Kiss in Japanese, プリンセスと魔法のキス)—this world has possibly been scrapped during development based on the information the leaker provided, and I am inclined to believe them because it has the character 仮 written after it, which can mean “temporary” or “provisional”

RW_01 (Game Central Station)—likely Wreck-it-Ralph

RW_02 (Niceland)—likely Wreck-it-Ralph

RW_03 (Cybug Sector)—likely Wreck-it-Ralph

RW_04 (Candy Kingdom)—likely Wreck-it-Ralph

Zootopia

Metroville—likely The Incredibles

Brave (lit. Merida in Japanese, メリダ)—this world has possibly been scrapped during development based on the information the leaker provided, and I am inclined to believe them because it has the character 仮 written after it, which can mean “temporary” or “provisional”

Inside World—likely Inside Out

Land of the Dead—likely Coco

WALL-E (ウォーリー in Japanese)—this world has possibly been scrapped during development based on the information the leaker provided, and I am inclined to believe them because it has the character 仮 written after it, which can mean “temporary” or “provisional”

Galaxy World—likely Star Wars

Scala Ad Caelum (sic)

Radiant Garden

Destiny Island (sic)

WF

Image source from Imgur, since I think the post has already been deleted on 4chan.

Why I think it’s real:

The movie titles that are in Japanese use the official Japanese titles or portions of the Japanese titles instead of a clumsily translated English to Japanese title that someone who's faking it or is using a machine translation might come up with. “The Princess and the Frog” is “The Princess and the Magic Kiss” in Japanese, which exactly matches the movie title in Japanese, “Brave” is “Merida,” which is the first part of the movie title in Japanese, etc. In other words, I think a Japanese-speaking human wrote this or portions of it at the very least

Japanese doesn't mark plurals the way English does. There are a few suffixes you can add to specific nouns (like -tachi), but Japanese does not require plurals on most nouns referring to more than one thing the way English does. Destiny Islands doesn't have a plural in this list, as it's just listed as “Destiny Island.” This is exactly how the Japanese title of the world would be translated directly into English, as it’s just デスティニーアイランド (and I think someone working on the Japanese version of the game wrote this list)

Slightly awkward names in English for a couple of the new worlds, like “Inside World” and “Galaxy World.” I can almost guarantee those are the Japanese titles of the worlds directly translated into English, and there's a good chance that someone working on the English translation team might “pretty them up” to make them sound more natural in English (possibilities could include The World Inside, Galaxy’s Edge, who knows. Then again, 闇の世界 in KH3 was just “Dark World” in English as well instead of the “realm of darkness” like it had been translated in earlier games, so these titles might stay the same in English)

This is getting into speculation more on my end, but the possibly scrapped worlds being left in Japanese makes sense if they were cut early on or even before a certain point in the development process. Why do translation work on something you're not including in the game anymore?

Now, the worlds listed in Japanese do throw a wrench in my hunch this is real a bit, because of the “variation of the movie titles” naming scheme instead of unique world names created for KH specifically. Until you remember they were probably scrapped, and my guess is they were scrapped before they were given an in-universe name for the world, like how Coco is going to be called Land of the Dead, The Incredibles is Metroville, Zootopia is Zootopia because it's already the name of a location anyway, etc. The only exception to this is Moana, I got nothing there lol. Maybe they just hadn't named that world yet in-game when this list was leaked

There are a couple of inconsistencies I could be really anal about, like Underworld not having a “the” before it and “Ad” been capitalized in “Scala ad Caelum,” but “Underworld” is probably an exact translation of the Japanese title for the area (冥界, meikai, which means hades, realm of the dead) without the article included, and the capitalization of “ad” is probably just a simple oversight that only someone as anal about capitalization as me would notice (a quick Google search turned up professional video game publications also capitalizing it, so it's not like native English speakers always nail this either)

The order of the worlds makes logical sense. The tutorial will probably be in The Final World, then we play as Sora in Quadratum. The Mysterious Tower and the Underworld will probably be cutscene worlds where we see other KH characters and Donald, Goofy, and Hades in the Underworld for sure. Then Sora’s first visit to another world besides Quadratum is Moana. Wreck-it-Ralph, if I had to guess, is a world you access from a book or arcade in Quadratum and return to four times during the story, much like the Hundred Acre Woods had multiple visits during KH2 etc. The rest of the worlds might also follow the order in the list, making the Star Wars world the final Disney world you visit, which, it's Star Wars, they're going to make it a big deal lol. It being the final Disney world makes perfect sense. All the worlds listed after that are KH-original worlds ending with Destiny Islands (I hope this means Sora gets to come home in KH4), and then the mysterious “WF,” which I think will be a world that appears in the secret ending (unless it's the actual final world of the game)

Not counting the scrapped worlds or the Underworld, which is likely only a cutscene world, this gives us seven Disney worlds, which is in line with the number we had in DDD (six) and KH3 (eight) if I'm doing my math correctly

So yeah, I think this list is very likely real. If it is not, I still had a grand old time speculating and theorizing. Absolutely worth it.

Thoughts? Speculation? Comments?

Edit to add: I found the 4chan post where this was originally leaked after all. Here are screenshots: