I mentioned in my last chapter thread that I had something planned revolving around MHA's villain, Tomura Shigaraki - and here it is. I'm going to outline the evidence that shows Horikoshi planned all of Shigaraki's backstory and his attainment of AFO from the very start

Let's start with hands, shall we? Shigaraki has 12 hands on his original villain costume - 5 pairs plus 2 left hands on his head. We later find that 7 belong to his family, 4 are from some punks he killed, and 1 was a gift from All For One - Nana's, though Shiggy doesn't know

So what evidence do we have to show that before the reveal? Well, we can start with the 2 groups the hands fall into - the ones from his family (excluding Nana) hold him back, seen most strikingly in chapter 270, and the rest mimic reassuring or familial actions

The ones under his arms could be seen as holding him up, the ones on his shoulders are reminiscent of a proud parent, and the one on the back of his head might remind him of a reassuring head pat

So in this way there's a distinction drawn between the hands of his family and the other 5. As a side note, I've mentioned elsewhere that Nana can only reach Shigaraki's head in the above panel because she has Float, which suggests that was always going to be her Quirk

From his first appearance we've know the hand on his face was his father's, and both from what he says and because the hand on the back of his head is also a left hand it's clear that's the only one.

However we've hit a dead end here so let's move on to Shigaraki's Quirk, Decay

As it turns out, MHA isn't the first time Hori's used this power. It's also the ability of Tenko, from the oneshot of the same name, though the activation conditions are slightly different. The characters have a number of similarities, and Horikoshi has confirmed Shigaraki is

based on Tenko. In particular (spoilers for the Oneshot)

Tenko also unintentionally kills his own mother and hates his father. So it's clear that Horikoshi had this backstory in mind as he was writing Shigaraki's character, and had decided that Shigaraki's father was dead

So from this it's safe to assume he also intended for Shigaraki to have killed both his mother and his father from the start.

Now I'd like to introduce another of Horikoshi's previous works - Oumagadoki Zoo, his first serialisation in Weekly Shonen Jump

The main character, Shiina has a few similarities with Shigaraki too - minor spoilers for the series.

Both are very similar visually, something I mentioned last chapter, but their initial personalities are also alike. Shiina stopped aging mentally when he was a child,

which matches Shigaraki being a man-child at USJ. This might also have come from him being based off of Tenko, who was also a child. Their names - Shiina and Shigaraki/Shimura - start with the same sound too, and Shiggy's worry about being punished was the actual cause of

Shiina's curse.

But why am I bringing Shiina up too? Well, these 3 - Shiina, Tenko and Tomura - share one last similarity. They all know a black haired woman/girl called Hana. Hana Aoi and Hana Shimura even share the same Kanji (I was unable to check Hana from Tenko)

And the first 2 Hanas are the deuteragonists for their respective works - Hana Aoi is even the point of view character. So when Horikoshi was drawing from these works to create Shigaraki, there was a clear expectation for a Hana to be there, by Shigaraki's side

And in a very morbid way, she was. That's not all - did something about seeing "Hana Shimura" written down like that seem familiar? Cause it's 1 letter different from the siblings' grandmother, Nana Shimura. As you may know, Nana's name is harmonious with the number 7

Any guesses as to what number the "Ha" in Hana references? 8, of course. So I'd like to suggest that both Nana's Quirk and her name come directly from Shigaraki's creation.

Here's how I think it played out - Hori decided to use Tenko's power for Tomura, and likely his name

at the same time. He drew from design elements and parts of Tenko's backstory, and mixed in a little of Shiina too. When fleshing out Tomura's backstory, he decided to include the character of Hana as Tomura's sister. When he came to write the 7th holder of One For All

and needed a name to give them which calls back to the number 7, he went for Nana, and realised the similarity between it and Hana. So he made Nana part of the Shimura family. So contrary to the chronology of MHA, Hana as a character is the predecessor to Nana

In summary - Hana is tied to Shigaraki by Horikoshi's previous works, so it's likely he always had her in mind. Looking at the similarities between Shigaraki and Tenko, and the way Shiggy' hands are laid out, we can suggest his backstory was planned from the start,

and rolling in Nana's Quirk, it's probable that the All For One vestige dream and therefore Shigaraki's rise to the top (though perhaps not the specific obstacles he faced along the way) was also intended from his first appearance