Lavos, Mutants, and Evolution

[maggiekarp]

So like did Lavos make the mutants in 2300AD and the Black Omen or were they deformed by his energy, like radiation or chemically?

[Manly Man]

Honestly, I imagine it would have to do with an adaptation to the environment. Yes, while they have one leg, they're also just about perfectly balanced with their symmetrical bodies, and are able to place themselves in heaps of garbage to escape the harsh winds. Whether or not their other traits were formed by this I don't know. Perhaps they're used to feeding on the blood of those giant rats.

As for the ones on the Black Omen, I'm very certain that Lavos's energy had a hand in their forms. Like the mutants you see in the junkyards, they've got a body akin to an hourglass, which would suggest some kind of relation. However, with the magical energy radiated and tapped into by the Black Omen from Lavos, it would only serve to empower, and in effect twist them, ever further from their roots.

So, for all we know, those regular mutants could be what happened from certain humans being exposed to the environment with a few other catalysts, perhaps radiation or volatile chemicals, for about three hundred years, and then when the Black Omen came into existence, Queen Zeal plucked a few of them and mutated them even more with experiments using Lavos's magic.

That means you're killing really tripped out people when you fight them.

You monster. 

[utunnels]

I always imagine the ruined future as a result caused by a nuclear war/disaster.
And it is quite likely Lavos's attack destroyed many domes which have nuclear power facilities, if there's any in Chronoverse.

[Mr Bekkler]

Maybe they're just the people who were outside the domes when Lavos Day happened?

[Dreamer Kinsurk]

I tend to consider the mutants and other such things aside robots in 2300AD to be the remnants of Mystics after Lavos' little apocalypse, the ones exposed to the harsh environment of that era simply changed over time. Of course, it's perfectly possible they're humans who had less fortunate circumstances affecting their genes. I don't suppose its ever knowable.

[Satoh]

That means you're killing really tripped out people when you fight them.

You monster. 

All of Chrono Trigger's plot points involve killing things, most of them sentient.

Personally, I always imagined that, in the 1999AD era, humans were doing scientific research in genetics and such (much as we do in the modern era) and that Site/Lab 16 and 32 were exactly that, Laboratories. Once the containment was destroyed thanks to Lavos, the effects of the genetic modifications, the chemicals, power sources, test subjects be they human or animal, were all essentially let loose. With nothing to control them, they likely began to mutate farther and farther from their original form.

I think the robots were likely sentries and maintenance units, which over time (301 years is a while) degraded and malfunctioned until they were all hostile or at the very least, dangerously erratic.

I also think that civilization didn't stop immediately in 1999, but rather, some of the robots were assembled in order to combat the growing threat of mutants, while others were already there.