[itachi-san314]

Originally Posted by james0246

And I don't, and I am unsure why you do. We literally just had an entire flashback about Obito and what led up to the Kyuubi attack. So, why would Kishimoto deliberately hide or not disclose the moment spiral zetsu and Obito became one?

there's no way to know that yet since it might tie into another flashback development we have yet to see, but what we do know is that we never saw spiral zetsu before this flashback. kishi will have to tell us what happened to him sooner or later and that would be the ideal time to see if they merge or not

Additionally, since we do see Obito with a different mask, I am unsure why chose that moment to believe they became one, why not later when he switches back to a spiral mask?

i only said it was between us seeing him with the zetsu armor and the minato fight. there's no way to guess when it would have been exactly. the pattern of the mask is weird, but it may also just be one of those things like his hair being randomly long and short in flashbacks

What has Tobi been shown to do that counts as "smart"? The only thing I could think of is the manipulation of Sasuke, but even that doesn't require much intelligence (he was simply telling a well concocted lie that he could have been working on for years).

i'm not saying he's brilliant, just a lot smarter than obito was which was pretty dumb. like Ero-Senn1n pointed out, the inclusion of itachi into his plans was not simple. and even though madara concocted the whole plan and provided black zetsu, i still feel like obito would have bungled it all if he wasn't smarter.

So what? Tobi acting like a fool could simply be acting. Why does it need to be more complicated?

it doesn't necessarily, but why would obito act that way if he didn't care about anything? it doesn't make sense to joke around if he's a nihilist like he claims to be. he would have just always acted cold and calculating like he did against minato. the other silly side of his personilty has got to be indicitive of something along the lines of this spiral zetsu theory

Originally Posted by Ero-Senn1n

If there's any room for a theory where Tobi is not simply Obito grown up then i would definitely go with Madara's will/personality/knowledge being added to Obito's mind, instead of the rather average mind of the different Zetsus (white,spiral,whatever). We know that Madara left his will in those black rods and black Zetsu, so there's a chance that Obito used those on himself to enhance his abilties

thats what i always wanted to be the case, but having now met spiral zetsu, i'm trying to predict where kishi is going with that character