About

Aqua Got Norted is a catchphrase within the Kingdom Hearts fandom after a trailer for the upcoming Kingdom Hearts III showed that the character Aqua, a major player in the side game Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, appears to have been possessed by the villainous Xehanort.

Origin

On June 10th, 2018, Square Enix released a trailer for the upcoming Kingdom Hearts III during Microsoft's press conference at E3 2018. One of the major clips from the trailer showed the character Aqua with yellow eyes, suggesting that she'd been possessed by Xehanort (shown below). Part of Xehanort's plan in the series is to split his soul into multiple different people, similar to what Voldemort did in the Harry Potter series with horcruxes.^[1] In the Kingdom Hearts fandom, characters infected with Xehanort are referred to as being "norted."

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Spread

After the trailer was revealed, Kingdom Hearts fans strongly reacted to the Aqua scene wherein she is shown to possibly be "norted." A thread in /r/KingdomHearts about the moment gained 720 points.^[2] Many people on Twitter had strong reactions as well. User HMKilla's reaction gained over 40 retweets and 360 likes (shown below, left). User @limbclinic tweeted their reaction gaining 3 retweets and 17 likes (shown below, right).

The term was given much wider exposure following a video by ProZD which compared hardcore Kingdom Hearts fans strongly reacting to Aqua getting "norted" to casual Kingdom Hearts fans who were more likely to simply enjoy the new worlds the trailer showcased. The video gained over 310,000 views in one day (shown below).

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The spread of the prase led to a thread on /r/OutOfTheLoop^[1] inquiring about its use.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References