IIRC everyone - including Kirito - got official pardons for actions taken within the game. Even if they’d brought members of Laughing Coffin to trial, the fact that “it’s just a game” gives them plausible deniability. A conviction would have been extremely difficult.
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
5 points (100.0% liked)
Sword Art Online
63 readers
1 users here now
The official community to discuss the Sword Art Online series, as well as the other series (Accel World, The Isolator, Demons' Crest) written by Reki Kawahara.
1 Submissions must relate to Kawahara's series All submissions must relate to Reki Kawahara's series (Sword Art Online, Accel World, The Isolator).
2 Tag all spoilers Any major events that take place in the anime are considered anime spoilers, anything with significance to the plot of the series must be properly tagged/flaired. All unanimated light novel and web novel content are considered spoilers and must be tagged appropriately.
3 Common courtesy Be most excellent to your fellow lemmings! Bigotry of any form is not allowed.
4 No low-effort content or questions Low-effort content includes but is not limited to: Most memes, continuous fanart posts, questions easily answered with searching, wiki or sidebar search, lazy reposts, random screenshots, generative AI, & LN illustrations. Image posts are limited to ONE image/album per user per week, except news images. Media must be sourced accordingly.
Read the sidebar before asking a question. Use common sense; it's your responsibility to contact a mod if you're not sure about a submission.
5 No spam Do not spam or self-promote here.
6 Discussions will be posted by mods Official anime and light novel discussions will be posted by moderators.
7 No overly NSFW content Please, no overly NSFW content. This includes comments.
8 Do not incite/continue drama Do not make posts to intentionally incite or continue drama.
9 No links to unlicensed content aggregation sites Do not request or post sources linking to unlicensed content aggregation sites. This includes illegal streaming websites, manga and novel aggregators, etc.
10 Stay Cool Similar to Rule 3, try to avoid losing your cool or instigating drama.
founded 3 months ago
MODERATORS
It's largely established that the government has effectively no visibility into anything that happened within SAO, and all SAO players were given pardons for actions that happened in the game in part to save face but also in part because "it's just a game" might be actually become a valid legal defense, plus there's no evidence to base decisions on.
All SAO players who were of school age were sent to a special remedial school to try to get them back up to speed, which included regular psychological evaluations, which theoretically should help many of the laughing coffin members learn to handle things in a more healthy manner, but obviously it's established that some are just criminally insane. I don't think they ever really cleared up what happened to adult SAO players upon being released so that's an obvious opportunity for more laughing coffin players to pose a threat in future media