Mega Man X's Cataclysm Theory Actually Makes a Lot of Sense

gamerant.com:

Many believe Mega Man to be one of the great classic video game franchises of the 1990s. However, as time goes by, fans have begun to notice gaps in the franchise's lore. While Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force explicitly take place in alternate realities, the rest of the series is presented as a single contiguous timeline. This makes the clash in tone between the cheerful cyberpunk world of the classic Mega Man games and the grim post-apocalyptic earth of its sequel series Mega Man X stand out.

In Mega Man, things seem good for humanity despite mad scientist Dr. Wily periodically reprogramming industrial and war robots to go after his enemies. Meanwhile, Mega Man X takes place in a dark future where the environment has been devastated, most of humanity is dead, and the Maverick Virus is turning innocent robots into malicious killing machines. More importantly, the original cast is almost completely dead or missing, and what happened to them is never explained. The origin of the Maverick Virus is explored in the Mega Man X games, but the virus only becomes a problem after the series begins, so fans have spent a lot of time discussing what must have happened before that to put the world in such a dire state.

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The absence of the original Mega Man cast has never been explained by Capcom. However, the passage of 100 years and the decay of the world suggests that Mega Man's fight for everlasting peace ended poorly. Dr. Light does appear in the Mega Man X titles as an AI copy of himself, and he says some ominous things about X's potential to destroy the world. Furthermore, Zero — X's best friend and reluctant enemy, the greatest creation of Dr. Wily — is