[ParadoxDiamonds]

Late to the party, but this theory I came up with I thought should be shared, and I think the last segment of it makes the most sense

Spoiler for Anime/Manga:

Spoiler for Anime/Manga:

Akihiko Kayaba was the development director and Game Master of Sword Art Online. He acted a role as a character named Heathcliff, the leader of the Knights of the Blood Oath, SAO's most powerful guild. Near the end of the Aincrad Arc, Kirito explains that 'No one likes watching people play games', and that was how he knew Heathcliffs real identity. Fast forwarding to the end of the first season, at episode 25 (The end of the Fairy Dance Arc), Kazuto and Asuna were sat on a bench, with Kazuto explaining that Kayaba had commited suicide, but had uploaded his conscious into a server. The theory stands at

'Was Heathcliff REALLY Kayaba?'

The first piece of evidence that pops up is that in order for Kayaba to seem like a trapped player, he had to be logged into the game constantly, but in order to stay in a decent condition, he would've had to log out at at SOME point during the two years that the Aincrad Arc followed.

Going back to the first episode of Sword Art Online, in the square of the Town of Beginnings, where Kayaba explained why players had no log out button, he mentioned that the news had already got coverage of deaths from the people who had their NerveGear headsets removed by someone in the real world. By logic, authorities would've instantly tracked back the game to the head developer, which would've been Kayaba. To prevent himself from being caught and so he could watch the progress of his creation, he uploaded his conscious to the server to 'watch' his players play. My view is that he did this just as he faded away in the Town of Beginnings due to authorities being quick to backtrack his location.

As the NerveGear was built to correspond with the functions of Sword Art online (Killing the wearer of the Gear when they died in-game), Kayba would have had to have a prevention to this, if by some chance his 'Immortaility' were to fail for some reason. If he were to be inside the game at all times, he wouldn't have this issue. In a way, Kayaba was still alive, but after the game was beaten by Kirito, the servers were created to delete themselves when the game ended, which in this case would be along with Kayaba.

Going by this, that raises the question of 'How was Kayaba in the Fairy Dance Arc?'. And the simple answer to that is that Alfheim Online was created from the base code for Sword Art Online, stolen by Sugou Nobuyuki, meaning Kayaba's login for Heathcliff would have still existed because of the stored data (Similar to how Kirito still had ALL his items and skills from Sword Art Online in ALO.) and when Kirito used the 'Heathcliff' login to gain access to the administration commands, Kayaba's consciousness would have, in a way, been stored into the Heathcliff character, bringing back Kayaba into the game to give Kirito the World Seed.

All-in-all, this is meant to explain why I believe that Heathcliff was nothing more than Akihiko Kayaba's consciousness.