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Home Page > Mother > Mother_3 : A Hairy Mystery - The Red Blimp

Lucas and Claus's different hair: why?

Despite apparently being twins, Lucas and Claus have different hair colors. Many people, like me, are bothered by that apparent disregard for genetics. Although the official explanation is that Itoi wanted them to be easy to tell apart, fan curiosity necessitates a plausible, real-life explanation. Being that hair color and its genetics fascinates me, I have spent far more time on this question than is normal, and have ended up with four different hypotheses.

The first hypothesis is that Lucas and Claus are not actually identical twins, but fraternal twins that simply look very alike. This is definitely very possible in real life - although they would definitely have differences, it is not rare for fraternal twins to resemble each other to a degree that it is difficult for them to be told apart. As such, it would mean that Lucas and Claus have different DNA, making different hair colors possible.

The second explanation goes with the assumption that Lucas and Claus are identical twins, but without identical genes. It is possible, though extraordinarily rare, that one of the twin's genes may not function properly while the other twin's gene does, resulting in different phenotypes. It could be a spontaneous genetic mutation (very unlikely, as there are multiple genes involved in determing hair color and the odds that a blond gene would mutate to bright red or vice versa are very low) or it could be the result of environmental conditions in the womb or outside the womb, affecting Lucas and Claus' epigenetics.

It is also possible that Lucas and Claus have the same hair color, and one of them dies their hair. It would be more likely that Claus is blond and dies his hair red rather than Lucas being redheaded and dying his hair blond because it is easier for blond hair to dye than red hair (which is the hardest hair color to dye). If Lucas were a redhead, he would also have to bleach his hair for the effect to be permanent. In any case, this scenario is not plausible because when the Masked Man's helmet is removed at the end of the game, one can see no roots, and it is unlikely that the Pig Army would continue to dye Claus's hair. It is also not likely that the boys' parents would have dyed their hair at such a young age, as hair products can be dangrous. This theory is also much more convoluted than the previous ones, and Occam's razor favors such simple theories.

A very remote possibility is that one of them wears a wig. It cannot be seriously considered as there is no evidence to indicate this anywhere in game and it would also be very impractical for both Lucas and Claus, who were both constantly running around. It is, however, very amusing to imagine the Masked Man losing a wig when he takes off his mask.

It is worth noting that Lucas and Claus have different hair colors from than their parents do. Hinawa and Flint both have a brown color, and it is likely that a child of theirs would have brown hair. However, it is not impossible for two brown-haired parents to produce a red-haired and a blond child - the genetics of hair color are very complicated and can involve multiple recessive genes. One of the children in the game (Nana?) notes that none of the children in the village look like their parents, implying that the children were not biologically related to their assigned parents. If this is true, then obviously Hinawa and Flint's hair colors are irrelevant as their genes were not involved in the making of Lucas and Claus. In fact, one could run even further with this assumption and state that Lucas and Claus were not twins - perhaps they were brothers born very close to one another, or even just children that happened to look like one another.

This hypothesis is challenged by a quote in the game saying that one of the characters remembers introducing Flint to Hinawa and recalling how they quickly fell in love. There is another scene showing the children in a crib, implying that at least from a very young age they were being taken care of. As such, it could be that they really are Hinawa and Flint's biological children.

At the end of the day, this is an overly long musing about the hair colors of two fictional characters. Perhaps I am overthinking this, but I have always loved stupid theories like this.