Fate/strange Fake Explained: The Mixed World That Should Not Exist in the Nasuverse

Mayta
4 days ago
4 min read

Fate/strange Fake: A World That Should Not Exist

Among all Fate spin-offs, Fate/strange Fake occupies a singular and deliberately unstable position within the Nasuverse. It is not merely a parallel timeline or a divergent branch of Proper Human History, but a hybrid anomaly—a world where rules that are normally mutually exclusive coexist simultaneously.

In simple terms:

Fate/strange Fake is a “mixed world” where the laws of Fate-type universes and Tsukihime-type universes overlap.

This alone makes it an exception to one of the most fundamental structural rules of the Nasuverse.

1. The Core Rule It Breaks: Fate Worlds vs Tsukihime Worlds

Normally, the Nasuverse divides its settings into two incompatible categories:

Fate Worlds

The Human Order (Alaya) is dominant
Heroic Spirits can be summoned as Servants
The system of Holy Grail Wars is possible
Dead Apostles (vampires) are rare, fragmented, or politically insignificant
The organization known as the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors does not fully exist

Tsukihime Worlds

The Human Order is weaker
Servant summoning is effectively impossible
Dead Apostles and True Ancestors dominate the supernatural hierarchy
The 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors are active and extremely powerful
The Age of Mystery persists more strongly

Under normal circumstances, these two worlds cannot overlap.If Servants exist freely, the Dead Apostle Ancestors cannot dominate.If Dead Apostles rule openly, Servant summoning becomes “laughable.”

Fate/strange Fake violates this rule completely.

2. Snowfield: A Fault Line in Reality

The setting of Fate/strange Fake—Snowfield, Nevada—is not a coincidence.

Snowfield exists atop a severe spiritual distortion, described as a malformed leyline structure combined with an improperly replicated Holy Grail system. The Holy Grail War taking place there is:

Not sanctioned by the Mage’s Association
Not approved by the Church
Not a true copy of the Fuyuki system

Instead, it is a flawed imitation, assembled by American magi using incomplete knowledge stolen after previous Grail conflicts.

This “fake” system fails to correctly filter:

what counts as a Heroic Spirit
what counts as a Servant class
what entities are allowed to manifest

As a result, Snowfield becomes a reality breach where incompatible metaphysical laws coexist.

3. The “True” and “False” Servant System

One of the most visible signs of Snowfield’s instability is the split between:

True Servants
False Servants

This distinction does not exist in any proper Holy Grail War.

False Servants

Imperfect spiritual constructs
Incomplete legends or artificial imitations
Created by the defective Grail system
Examples include False Archer and False Berserker

True Servants

Fully legitimate Heroic Spirits
Drawn correctly from the Throne of Heroes
Examples include Enkidu (True Lancer) and Gilgamesh (True Archer)

The coexistence of both indicates that the Grail is partially connected to the Throne, but lacks proper control—similar to a corrupted API pulling data without validation.

4. Dead Apostle Ancestors in a Servant World

The most shocking anomaly in Fate/strange Fake is the presence of high-level Dead Apostles operating openly in a world where Servants exist.

Notably:

Flat Escardos, a Dead Apostle capable of reality-level mental interference, participates directly
The Watcher class emerges—an embodiment of surveillance and paranoia rather than a hero
Pale Rider, representing plague and extinction, manifests as a Servant-adjacent entity

In any normal Fate world, the Counter Force would suppress such beings.In any Tsukihime world, Servants would never be summonable.

Snowfield permits both, implying that the Counter Force itself is malfunctioning or delayed.

5. Pale Rider: A Conceptual Horror, Not a Hero

Pale Rider exemplifies strange Fake’s thematic intent.

Rather than being:

a historical hero
a mythic champion
or a human legend

Pale Rider is the concept of pestilence itself, similar to:

famine
death
extinction events

This is not a Servant in the traditional sense.It is a phenomenon given form—something closer to a Beast-class threat, yet not officially categorized as such.

Its presence confirms that Snowfield’s Grail War is no longer about heroism—it is about systemic collapse.

6. Gilgamesh and Enkidu: A Myth Repeating Across Worlds

The reunion of Gilgamesh and Enkidu is another indicator that strange Fake operates at a higher metaphysical level.

Their relationship:

predates human civilization
transcends individual timelines
exists as a narrative constant across the multiverse

That they are drawn into Snowfield suggests the world is attracting mythic keystones, not merely combatants.

7. Authorial Intent: “Fake” as a Metaphysical Statement

Narita Ryohgo, with Nasu’s approval, designed Fate/strange Fake to explore a single question:

What happens when the rules that preserve the Nasuverse stop working?

The word “Fake” does not only describe the Grail War—it describes the world itself.

A fake Grail
Fake Servants
A fake system of control
A reality running on incompatible rules

This is why Nasu has referred to strange Fake as:

a pseudepigraph
a borderline world
a setting that “should not exist”

8. Why Fate/strange Fake Matters

Unlike other spin-offs, Fate/strange Fake is not a “what if.”

It is a stress test of the entire Nasuverse cosmology.

It demonstrates:

why Fate and Tsukihime are usually separated
what happens when the Counter Force fails
how fragile Proper Human History truly is

In many ways, Fate/strange Fake is the logical precursor to the themes later explored in Fate/Grand Order’s Lostbelts—worlds that survive only because the universe has not yet noticed they are wrong.

Summary: What Makes Fate/strange Fake Unique

It breaks the Fate/Tsukihime divide
It features both Servants and Dead Apostle-level threats
It introduces True vs False Servants
It manifests conceptual horrors rather than heroes
It portrays a Counter Force failure
It explores collapse, not victory

Fate/strange Fake is not a Holy Grail War.It is what happens when the idea of a Holy Grail War decays.