Analysis:killer7 as an Alternate Timeline

When observing killer7 and the rest of the Kill the Past body of work, it becomes clear that killer7 is definitely connected; Elbow and their operative Edo Macalister certainly exist in killer7, while Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes explicitly links the stories together in one of its opening cutscenes. Once these links and others are understood, it's very easy to form theories or ideas on how other, less explicit points might relate.

However, any attempt to understand killer7 and other Kill the Past works as taking place on a linear timeline quickly fails. The world of killer7 goes through major changes to the status quo in the backstory, events of the game itself, and the world's future; changes which are not reflected in any way in other Kill the Past games. This is because killer7 is an alternate timeline to the rest of Kill the Past. This is stated out-of-universe by Suda himself, but also has ramifications in-universe, as Hand in killer7 suggests that history has been deliberately set off its natural course.

This article is an attempt to go over why we understand killer7 as an alternate timeline, due to the large number of people who still try and fit them together despite it being demonstrably impossible.