Hello everyone, Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite video game series and just recently started playing through 358/2 Days again. After playing Birth By Sleep, I started to wonder why all the characters who have met Ventus have never looked at Roxas and said "Hmm... I don't remember him falling into the darkness." Especially characters like Xemnas and Xigbar. Xemnas and Xigbar were heavily involved with Ventus when they were still people (somebodies?), especially Xemnas when he was Xehanort. He fractured Ventus' heart and tried to destroy him to forge the X-Blade. Why didn't Xemnas recognize the appearance of Roxas? Was it the amnesia he had after taking over Terra? Wouldn't he had regained his memory as a Nobody? Xigbar eventually saw Xion as Ventus and called it a "blast from the past", yet he doesn't say a single thing about Roxas looking and sounding exactly like Ventus. Is it possible that all of these Nobodies saw Roxas as Sora instead of Ventus? Just like how Roxas eventually saw Xion as Sora? Even Axel and Saix don't seem to notice it and they both met Ven.
The two-fold simple answer:
1. Roxas cannot be recognized as Ventus because he
is not Ventus.
2. Everyone who met Ventus did so over a decade ago and thus doesn't remember. Xigbar is an exception.
The elongated, detailed answer:
Xemnas wasn't heavily involved with Ventus ever. The fracturing of Ven's heart and the whole plans involving Ven in Birth by Sleep were carried out by Master Xehanort, the full, original Xehanort.
Xemnas was a Nobody created from the amnesiac Terra-Xehanort/Apprenticenort, which was in itself a conglomerate mess of Xehanort's, Terra's and Eraqus' hearts.
While we know that Xemnas had some memories of both Terra and Master Xehanort, we do not know how much of both memory sets he
actually had.
The ability to see someone else when looking at her is exclusive to Xion because she's a memory-based replica. Roxas looks always the same to everyone.
Xigbar does state something about Roxas' similarity to Ventus in terms of appearance, yet he doesn't do so verbally but in the secret reports of 358/2 Days:
Day 117: Him and Roxas said:
Roxas is maturing at an impressive rate. His face, the way he handles the Keyblade, it's all exactly the same. The worlds seem so divided and alone, but there's always that steady thread there to connect them. And we Nobodies can never escape the things we did as humans. So it goes.
Ventus and Roxas also do sound different, as Ven's voice has a certain higher pitch than Roxas'.
Saix and Axel only met Ventus for around 15 minutes ten years ago, do you remember everyone you met only briefly a decade ago?