u/Jargontine_

I'm on my second watch of HunterxHunter and i keep coming back to the same question. After the Auction heist in Yorknew City, was it really necessary for the Phantom Troupe to use their own identities as gallery fakes to throw people off? I get the point of misleading everyone into thinking they're dead. But i feel using their own bodies as gallery fakes does more harm than good.

1. They are much easier to identify now: From now on (in theory), the Phantom Troupe will have to be extra careful with revealing themselves in public. The group have gained a worldwide notoriety, and their identities will stay in peoples minds for a long time. If someone (even a normal person) were to see a member in public again, they are certainly at risk of being recognise
2. The Troupes integrity is now on the line in a way it wasn't before: Sure, they're from Meteor City (no registered identities, no families, nothing to lose in the conventional sense) .But the moment they faked their deaths, the lie itself became something that could be exposed. Even after the Mafia officially declared them KIA, there will always be people (Hunters, rival thieves) who suspect the whole thing was a cover up. The Black Whale arc actually confirms this: we see a group of young guys openly saying they want to meet the Phantom Troupe and get their autographs. The legend is very much alive in the public imagination, which means people are still looking.
3. The higher ups in meteor city know they are alive: Chrollo has interacted with them directly, and given how tight-knit the city is and what the Troupe represents to that community, it's almost certain that knowledge of their survival circulates there. And plenty of Meteor City natives work outside the city, which creates channels for that information to leak
4. Chrollo is floor master #1 : He even had a very public battle with Hisoka, his face is out there for the world to see. What I find interesting is that no one has tied this Floor Master to the Phantom Troupe leader, or to the "corpse" back in Yorknew. The disguise has held so far, but the fact that it has to hold at all is the problem, one sharp eyed observer is all it takes.

I want to be clear, I know HunterxHunter isn't the kind of series that rewards picking apart every logical inconsistency, and that's not really what I'm trying to do here. It's more that, on rewatch, I find it genuinely interesting that Togashi chose to close out the Yorknew Heist with this specificdecision