Notes

a super long time ago in ancient times a bunch of people screwed up and somehow five of those people had the power to boot people forward in time / through dimensions and so they booted an indeterminate amount of people into the far future (and also start a war in their present time that happens to wipe out nearly the entire word wtf)
then about like 10+ years back three kids try to pass the exam for keyblade mastery except one kid turns out to be one of the kids from way back when booted into the far future and some shit happens with his heart which melds with a kid (sora) and then he's out of the game i guess.

then another one of the trio ends up falling to darkness because one of the keyblade instructors of that time was super corrupt, possesses the kid, and manipulates him to kill the other master

then to save the two and keep them in stable condition, the last person in the trio basically dumps herself in the disney equivalent of hell to keep her friends in the (somewhat) waking and living world
at the same time in another place there's some dude. doing human experiments. yknow, on another person from the extremely far past who happens to be amnesiac and he's like "DUDE WHAT THE FUCK" but he does his human experiments so loud that other kids hear it and get concerned and try to prison break the poor human subject. except a freak accident happens and also the evil master mentioned before has time travel powers so he goes backwards in time and turns everyone into corrupted versions of themselves and casts the dumbass researcher into hell
so let's tally up here because this is literally not even main game material yet
- - - - - -
from the super duper far past: 6 faction leaders and an indeterminate amount of regular citizens, also some mysterious master of masters dude and his dipshit apprentice

from the kind of far past: 2 masters (1 evil and 1 good guy who died), 3 apprentices (one who turns out to be a citizen from the super duper far past), 2 dumbass kids, the researcher, the evil master but time travel, some random castle guards, mickey mouse and co, the experiment subject (who is from the super duper far past)
ok i'm going to go onwards with this train wreck
- - - - - -
we can now enter main game material! yay!
welcome to kh 1 aka not chronologically the first but the first game released because fuck you
we get our lovely iconic trio, sora, riku, and kairi
it's in present day!! welcome to the present era

yknow riku is kind of a dumbass who gets manipulated by the evil master who time traveled into this time frame to tell him to open that totally shady door on the island and in doing so oops he accidentally throws his world into hell. kairi goes missing so naturally sora looks for her obsessively as he cruises through a bunch of disney worlds, but apparently riku just wants sora to pay attention to him so he's like "this is fucking bullshit and i'm jealous" and then maleficent takes advantage of this and makes riku do her dirty work, and turns him dark so he can set off the end of the world
so riku sets off the end of the world and sora decides to sacrifice himself for kairi's safe return which turns him into a corrupt demon thing, but also splits his hearts and those hearts form corrupt demon people (he's got like 3 at this point in him because of the guy from the past and some elaborate bullshit and also kairi's heart was in his heart all this time. what the fuck.)
welcome to the end of kh 1
our kh1 tally is: sora, riku, kairi, mickey and co, the fuck ton of people that were stored in and formed by sora's heart's fuckery
- - - - - -
ok so naturally you'd think kh2 would be next in this sequence but because square enix is incompetent it's not
next in line is chain of memories
so kairi at the end of kh1 saves little demon sora by.... hugging him..... i guess? but he gets a human vessel again so yay! off he goes. riku and mickey also decides to enter hell so the world can be safe and stable again, so they're kinda sealed off from the other side. since sora's a dumbass, he doesn't know this. also his memory's kind of been fucked up because the story's so fucked up even the protag's perception of it has been fucked up.
so uh here's where things get more complicated because right off the bat we're going to introduce an organization full of 13 pretty relevant members in addition to every single person we've met so far
and also some clones
we'll get to that
the good thing is, we're not going to meet ALL 13 members, only like... 6
anyways since sora's a dumbass he ends up in a castle where the evil organization convinces him kairi's an illusion and his real love interest is someone called namine, who happens to be a clone of kairi (except not a clone because she was a corrupt demon person formed when sora kinda sacrificed himself all the way back in 1)
but because the castle bash challenge isn't fun enough and sora isn't completely convinced, they also clone riku (iunno man), and so in addition to real riku who's currently sitting in hell, we also have fake and very thirsty clone riku
anyways they force namine to manipulate sora's memories, which fucks him up real good. and even though every villain in the castle dies and gets defeated and sora's okay, he gets put to sleep for 2 years because namine needs to fix his brain. goodnight sora!
that's the end of chain of memories
let's tally up the important people in play: sora, clone riku, namine, and like 6 organization 13 fuckers
we're like close to the halfway point now?
- - - - - -
we're still nowhere close to kh2 btw because there's another spinoff for us to trudge through
anyways at the SAME TIME as chain of memories, is kh 358/2 days
here, we're introduced to roxas, sora's corrupted demon self clone, and xion, a clone of roxas who is a clone, and axel, who is, thankfully, not a clone
they become friends and like to eat ice cream. that's literally 50% of the entire game
eventually though, xion finds out about this clonespiracy, and also about the fuckery going on with sora, and learns that she and roxas can't be awake and alive because they impede sora's full recovery so she basically convinces roxas to kill her and then everyone forgets everything about her because clone magic i guess
sometime in the span of these two games, mickey and riku are released from hell (i don't remember why), and they wander around and riku has a redemption arc because he realizes that ending the world only because his friend chose hoes before bros was kind of too drastic
so riku ends up responsible for putting sora's mind back together and dukes it out with roxas, ends up kidnapping him and incapacitating him, and axel loses his mind because he doesn't get to eat ice cream with friends anymore
oh also axel is one of the kids who tried to break out the experiment subject. him and his buddy turned into organization 13 members.
let's tally up again the important characters: roxas, xion, axel, all the 11 other fuckers in the organization (wait but it's only 13 you said! fuck you, xion is the ~invisible number~, nomura says), riku, namine
also the leader of organization 13 is the dude from WAY BACK BEFORE KH1 who was manipulated by the evil master and possessed by him. hi terra
- - - - - -
WELCOME TO KH2. WHICHEVER POOR FOOL DIDNT PLAY THE SPINOFFS WILL BE REALLY CONFUSED
incapacitated roxas is thrown into a data simulation (lol) where he's supposed to be until he dies when sora's memory reconstruction is completed but axel miraculously hacks in and tries to rescue him, except roxas remembers nothing about axel. cue melodrama. also roxas has a squad of friends.... fake digital friends?....
our man roxas has a massive identity crisis when he realizes he's going to die to facilitate the recovery of sora but he accepts his inevitable death and gives himself over
sora is back!! to party!! welcome back sora
kh2 mainly consists of everyone and their mom mistaking sora for roxas, which angers him a lot, and also of sora bashing in the faces of everyone in organization 13 systematically and one by one. also goofy dies at some point, but he didn't actually die
also kairi gets kidnapped by a really fucked up axel, who's angry that kairi's friend got a chance to be healed at the expense of axel's best friend. shit be fucked up like that
so sora goes looking for kairi again!
and also for riku. riku's been running away from sora because he currently has taken the guise of an extremely old, silver haired, mediterranean man, not by volition, but mainly because apparently selling your soul to darkness does that to you. poor riku.
anyways sora gets to the big castle where the organization headquarters are. fights a lotta shit. pummels things up. foils another plot that can potentially destroy the world. boom
also axel dies because he sacrificed himself for sora's safe escape because he realized his best friend roxas was in some fucked up way, deep inside sora('s heart)
so there's that
riku, sora, and kairi share a great reunion. thank goodness for riku, he's found a way to revert his unfortunate transformation, so he can take off the kinky blindfold he's been wearing for the entirety of two games, which magically kept him from reverting to the old man appearance.
but now the big bad's been revealed as the guy who made this organization in the first place and constantly wants to end the world. hi xehanort!
we're not going to bother to tally because at this point most of the cast has shown up
- - - - - -
hi and welcome to kingdom hearts:recoded!
for those of you who want to relive kh1, but fucked up, glitchy, and not quite kh1
turns out sora's memory reconstruction was kinda botched so he has to get it fixed!
a lot of bullshit ensues, but also, we get a few more clones. i don't really like kh recoded and it didn't really do much for the plot except for more minor complication of the main plot, so i think i'll save myself the convolution
- - - - - -
hi and welcome to kingdom hearts: dream drop distance!
sora and riku are finally pretty ok and complete, and they embark on a mastery exam to show that they're worthy of being called keyblade masters
everything's cool and all until we realize that neither of them is actually traveling worlds but in fact, sora's been put into a coma, kidnapped, and taken by the organization 13 and evil master villain, and riku's somehow just... ended up in sora's sleeping mind...
anyways riku has to put up with the dilemma of putting together sora's mind again and then we find out that all along, the evil master has been capable of time travel and he has about a billion clones of himself formed by branches formed by time travel. i can't really begin to wrap my head around the time travel so i've given up on elaboration.
essentially, if he doesn't have the 13 evil vessels he needs for his world destroying purposes, that's okay! he can just clone himself
but we find out that axel didn't actually die since he was a corrupted human being, he was purified when he died and turned back into a regular human being, who can wield a keyblade. he saves sora and riku and they chill outside and all
the dude who administers the exam tells them that they should train, but that riku gets to be qualified as a keyblade master since all sora did was sleep, mostly, while riku did the heavy work.
they gotta train to rescue everyone who got fucked up in the past (hint: a lot), and also foil the evil time traveling master's plan
- - - - - -
WELCOME TO KINGDOM HEARTS 3
it gets progressively more exhausting to summarize kh in a basic way, so for the sake of our sanities i'll just say that it's the conclusive battle between evil time traveling master, his leftover posse, and everyone that got screwed over. everything's cool until at the end sora decides to fucking vanish and throw the fandom into chaos. also the mobile game that features the super duper far past becomes super relevant as we realize that a seemingly minor character in the series has suddenly morphed into a major villain.
also there's a bh6 world. neat!