Solution of the puzzle: "A Skyrim Giveaway. All ninjas assemble."

I decided to post the solution for this puzzle. I am not doing it in the same thread as the puzzle because I heard there is a weirdo who goes around and solves old puzzles and I wouldn’t want to spoil it for him (yes, I mean you chour). If you wish to discuss the solution then do so in the original thread.

Like I said in the hints you will first need to find the theme, nothing will make sense without it. The theme can be found in question 2 and if you google the entire question like I suggested, then you will find it is a quote from Kakashi, a character from Naruto, an anime about ninjas. The theme is Naruto.

If you followed my advice you would use google along with some key phrases and not waste your time (and possibly get confused even more) by digging in wikias. None of the answers contained obscure or hard to find pieces of information, the challenge was in understanding the meaning of the hints, which were quite sneaky.

1. The star of the show is Naruto. Look at him, he is a ninja yet he is not dressed in black. He is dressed in orange, a very strange choice for a ninja. The answer is orange.
2. This is the hardest part. Like I said in the hints there is something else here besides the theme. If you actually try to do as the question suggests, then you will find a hidden message: “ninjas don’t play fair”, that is the “underneath”. However the question suggested looking “underneath the underneath”, in other words understanding the meaning of this message. You are trying to solve a puzzle, playing fair would be finding the right answer, not playing fair (aka cheating) would be bruteforcing the answer. You will have to bruteforce this part.
3. If you google for sites or images using the question (Michael Jackson) and the theme (Naruto) you would get some references to Orochimaru. However this may not be very clear on its own. The hint obviously refers to Pokemon. If you look it up you will find that Jessie, of Team Rocket, obtained Wobbuffet by trading Lickitung. The hint mentions that he is a villain, that he had something “long” and that he is creepy. Orochimaru is a major villain of Naruto, he has a very long tongue, is very creepy and is often called Michael Jackson by fans of the show for too many reasons to list here. Googling with some of these terms should have given you the answer. The answer is Orochimaru.
4. Again this looks like a Pokemon reference. However if you google “Misty’s demon” along with “Naruto” you may get some references to Zabuza. Once again, this on its own may not be very clear. The hint will help you if you understand it. “There is a why too many.” > “There is a y too many”. If you remove the only “y” in the question you will get “Mist’s demon”. Googling that, even on its own, should be enough to get you to Zabuza who was one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. If you notice, in the question I say “was 1 of” which suggests the answer is a number in numeral form. The answer is 7.
5. The question refers to a lookalike who doesn’t belong here. I also wrote that the answer to the final question is not from the same theme as the rest. If you happen to watch/read Naruto then the answer should be obvious by this alone. If not then the hint provides plenty of information. First this lookalike surprisingly doesn’t have any belts and zippers. If you google “belts and zippers” LINK you will get Tetsuya Nomura, who, among other things, is the character designer of several Final Fantasy titles. This suggests that the lookalike is one of his characters yet he lacks belts and zippers. The second sentence mentions that the lookalike is a protagonist, which narrows down the possibilities a lot. So you are looking for one of his protagonists that lacks belts and zippers. On to the next sentence it is mentioned that the one he looks like is a co-protagonist “here” meaning he is a co-protagonist in Naruto, referring to Sasuke. Even if you knew nothing about FF or Naruto, if you got these then you shouldn’t have trouble finding the answer by googling “Sasuke”, “lookalike”, “Nomura” or “Final Fantasy”. The last two sentences refer to someone who is monitoring this thread. Now really, who could that be? The answer is Noctis.

The character you have to use and the case are not mentioned intentionally and not because I wanted you to bruteforce them as well. A good reason not to mention something is because it is not needed. When the character isn’t mentioned you obviously use the first and if the case is not needed then that means there is some other rule that determines it. orange is a noun, thus lower case, the second character has to be bruteforced and could be anything, Orochimaru and Noctis are names, thus upper case, 7 is suggested by the format of the question.

This leaves the giveway format. The answer is found here: “Now go and may the cross (+) watch over your dangerous journey, some bits of it will be very risky”. On a first look it may sound like something useless but since your answers don’t work what else is there left to examine? It mentions danger and risk. There is nothing risky about finding the five character code on Steamgifts and this means that Steamgifts is not where you need to input the code.
So where could you input a code and take a risk in doing so? There answer is URL shorteners. Several puzzles in the forums use these so it should be something that comes to mind. The “may the cross (+) watch over” may have looked suspicious. That too is a hint to use a shortener although you would only realize this if you knew a few things about them, namely that adding a”+” to the end of your shortened link will not take you to the linked site but instead show you a statistics page that also mentions where the shortened link takes you. This will help you avoid visiting any fishy sites, thus protecting/watching over you, and will also allow you to bruteforce faster. There are several shorteners so which one were you supposed to use? The answer is “some bits of it will be very risky” suggesting bitly.com one of the most common shorteners. Having solved the second question would help you realize what “risk” means and vice-versa - realizing you had to risk by using a shortener could help you in solving the second question.

Bruteforce the second character and you will find the solution is https://bitly.com/okO7N+ which takes you to an Indie Gala 2 - The Carebear Bundle. Hopefully the hardest part of the puzzle, “A ninja must always look underneath the underneath”, would have stuck with you. Following the ninja creed in that giveaway page would allow you to access the hidden, true reward for solving this puzzle Mini Ninjas.

The puzzle was definitely hard and was open for only 4 days so don't feel too bad if you failed. There were only 3 solvers and all of them contacted me for a little help. They all found the Mini Ninjas, (un)fortunately.