Big O questions

[Flying Grayson]

Okay, I watched this way back when during its toonami run, and watching it once more on AS. But I have a couple of questions.
1.) do they still have a sense of nationalities or ethnicites (I've said in many of my other posts that I can't spell so if their are problems with my spellings don't bash me about it.) like when they said Shwartzvault was German.

2.) Are memories hereditary? In Last nights episode the man who built the submarine said that he assembled it according to some of his old man's memories bouncing around in his head.

3.) Is the big memory loss effecting everyone, like Roger, or is it forgeting all memories and mass amnesia among those around fourty years ago.

[wrenchien]

Maybe he meant that his old man has brief glimpses of memory and that he used them in constructing his submarine.

[Mynd Hed]

1.) do they still have a sense of nationalities or ethnicites (I've said in many of my other posts that I can't spell so if their are problems with my spellings don't bash me about it.) like when they said Shwartzvault was German.

Well, obviously they realize that pre-Cataclysm there were different nations and cultures out there, however I wouldn't be surprised if there were some holes in that knowledge-- their knowledge of different religions especially seems to be pretty sketchy. I doubt that a person's ethnicity in the society of Paradigm City is as big a part of a person's identity as it often is in our society today. Also, in a later episode, a character will make mention of a widespread belief that no one outside of Paradigm City survived the Cataclysm forty years ago, meaning that most of the nationalities and ethnicities we are familiar with today are functionally extinct.

2.) Are memories hereditary? In Last nights episode the man who built the submarine said that he assembled it according to some of his old man's memories bouncing around in his head.

There are plenty of possible interpretations of that statement-- maybe his "old man" remembered some scientific knowledge that he wrote down in a journal or imparted verbally to him, which then set him to thinking about improved boat design. Or maybe he himself just randomly remembered how to build the submarine, and he just assumes that the memories belong to his father because it's the only way he can make sense of it. The Big O often uses the word "memory" very loosely, and it's often unclear whether they mean an actual memory in someone's head, data stored in computer memory, or memories stored in written records any given time they use the word. However, there is nothing else in the series to indicate that memories are hereditary, so I'd chalk that statement up to being that particular person's "pet theory" and not necessarily the way things actually are.

3.) Is the big memory loss effecting everyone, like Roger, or is it forgeting all memories and mass amnesia among those around fourty years ago.

Only those forty years old or older are personally affected by the amnesia. However, if you want to wax poetic, you could say that their entire society "has amnesia" because nobody, old or young, really knows the whole story behind Paradigm City and the cataclysm that caused everyone to lose their memories.