The Little Girl
The Little Girl is a prominent character in Katana Zero. The Little Girl bonds with the protagonist, Zero, over the course of the game and develops a parental-like relationship with him.
Information
The girl's real name, family, and past are unknown.
She has two toys that may or may not be significant to the plot.
One is named Leviathan, the other is Behemoth.
Appearance
She has a fair complexion. She wears her black hair in two buns held by pink bands. She wears a white undershirt and a red dress with suspenders. She also wears white socks and red shoes. During Halloween in-game, she visits Zero dressed in a bathrobe, obviously meant to be dressed up as him, and will ask for candy.
Personality
The Little Girl is generally very jovial and carefree. When she first meets Zero, she is oddly friendly to him and insists that he let her into his apartment to search for her lost Toy.
She behaves much in the way anyone might expect a little girl to behave. She is at times very candid about her approval or disapproval of things, slightly naïve about the larger world, and prone to not knowing everything really going on in New Mecca.
History
The Little Girl is first seen in the hallway of Zero's apartment, running past him and tripping, she talks with him before returning to her apartment.
In-between missions, The Little Girl becomes increasingly close with Zero, as she comes inside to look for her lost toy, Leviathan, can watch a movie with him (determinant), and watches the skyline of the Third District with him. She is seen outside Zeros apartment after he returns from the Al Qasim Mission, though Zero can’t comprehend what she’s saying, due to being heavily intoxicated at that point. She appears the morning after, claiming that she was asking for help the night before but thought Zero was mad at her. Zero later solidifies his bond with her while looking out at a view she wanted to show Zero, as he declares he is taking her somewhere away from the drugs and violence of New Mecca.
After Zero's return home after his final encounter with his psychiatrist, he discovers his house has been ransacked, and The Little Girl kidnapped. The post credits scene show that she has been kidnapped by The Masked Men.
Trivia
- In a pre-alpha gameplay trailer, the little girl is named "Elizabeth", and tells Zero that she recently moved to the Third District with her family because her mother's medicine is cheaper in the district.
- The most popular piece of speculation surrounding The Little Girl is that she isn't a real person. The theory states that she is merely a psychological manifestation of Zero's morality, his last semblance of innocence. Evidence for this theory is as follows.
- The only one to acknowledge her is Zero. No other character in the game besides the Masked Men even reference her, and the Masked Men's validity is also questionable as well.
- It should be noted that the Masked Men do have an effect outside of Zero's mind, namely in their appearance in the end of the Chinatown mission, in which they appear in front of a police squad and kill them all telepathically.
- However, some theories claim that this too was a hallucination, and then Zero managed to kill the police squad without the help of the Masked Men, and simply retrofitted the Masked Men into the memory.
- Her father is only ever referenced, never seen.
- During the break-in scene, the landlady says that the man never had a daughter, and that he was just a junkie who got wrapped up in a drug deal gone bad. The cops in that scene also comment that there are no children in the Third District.
- Her comment on the noisy neighbors contradicts the fact that their music is barely audible at the end of the hall, where she claims to live in.
- It should be noted that the Masked Men do have an effect outside of Zero's mind, namely in their appearance in the end of the Chinatown mission, in which they appear in front of a police squad and kill them all telepathically.
- Her lost Leviathan toy is found under Zero's couch, when the flashback at the end of the game suggests that Leviathan belonged to Zero and he had merely forgotten about it.
- In the first dream sequence, the child is playing catch with a silhouetted figure that resembles the girl. It is later revealed that the child was playing by himself.
- When talking to Zero, Comedy comments on the girl by saying "I didn't know you had a conscience".
- When Zero is drunk he encounters the little girl in the hallway and she asks him for help (it is implied that her father was killed later that night) but he is too drunk to understand or help her. The snippets of her dialogue sound like a mash up of children crying for help instead of a coherent dialogue. This underlines the possibility that the girl is a representation of Zero's conscience and his regret and shame related to the child killings that he was part of during the war.
- It should be noted that there's a lot of evidence against this however since The Masked Men who appear to be physical entities (as seen during Chinatown) can be seen with the little girl at the end of the game - being from an omniscient point of view, it would be unreasonable for her to be a hallucination since these scenes are not from Zero's POV.
- The little girl also seems to do multiple actions throughout the game. It would be strange to say that Zero somehow forgot taking the cassette or cleaning his own room and replaced those memories with the little girl doing those. She also interacts with multiple objects such as bringing Zero the Behemoth, taking food during Halloween, and cooking a meal for Zero.
- The only one to acknowledge her is Zero. No other character in the game besides the Masked Men even reference her, and the Masked Men's validity is also questionable as well.
