Yes. Everyone wondered about the lightsaber because it should have been unrecoverable after falling into a gas giant.
There is actual film footage of it and his hand falling out of Bespin right before he fell out. It was a big question mark back in TFA when that light saber showed up.
I can't find it now, but there was a thread here before TFA had even started shooting which had what was supposed to a leaked part of the script which had Luke's lightsaber and hand falling on Tatooine and this being the trigger for members of the cast trying to find Luke. Pretty much everybody here was all "WTF?" or "Fake news!" and later on, someone posted a claim that it indeed had been part of the original script, but because the idea had met with such mockery on the interwebs it had been abandoned. I also seem to recall that Snoke had been in possession of the lightsaber and dropped it on Tatooine (or Jakku or whatever damned desert planet) in hopes that somebody would flush Luke out so Snoke could have him killed.
Was that a Special Edition add-in? I'm wondering because the Thrawn trilogy has Thrawn requesting that the hand and lightsaber be sent from one of the Emperor's private storehouses, and Zahn was generally very careful about that sort of thing.
I dunno which version, but you can see what looks like his hand falling away at about the 8-second mark.
Seriously? Dude, if you're going to make that claim then you might as well just change your name to Pete Hoekstra. Regardless of which version the scene comes from, that's obviously meant to be Luke's fucking hand and lightsaber.
Why would they show just random debris? Luke looks down at it. Also, do you not know how film making works? Have you ever heard how nothing shown on screen is an accident?
The rumor was that the opening shot was Luke's hand and lightsaber are floating in space and landing on a desert planet. The reaction was WTF? How would it survive reentry?
Over 30 years no one ever questions that it's his hand and lightsaber in the film. No the books, while "canon" don't count because the books have all sorts of contradictions with the films and with each other. Until The Force Awakens and than the blind fanboys start making crap up. It would have made far more sense for the lightsaber in TFA to be his green one. After giving up on training Jedi and being a Jedi he could have just left it behind at the school for someone to find. And than in The Last Jedi he could still show up as a force projection and use the white lightsaber. He wants to restart the legend of hope than the white lightsaber is a symbol of that. But all that would require the people who write movies to actually think beyond just slapping scenes together and calling it a movie. They would have to understand Star Wars. They don't. It's the same with Star Trek, X-Men, Transformers, GI Joe, and other franchises. The current crop of people running these franchises do not understand the things they are working on. They make stupid decisions just for the hell of it.
Absolutely. TFA even has Kanata say that the story will be told some other time. But what makes it different from Snoke is that nothing in TLJ directly suggests they're reneging on that storyline.
He's introduced as someone hiding behind a hologram in his very first scene. That scene says: What is he hiding? And he is at the core of a complete reversal of Galactic history in all of the main aspects of the plot so far.
I would say that every open question raised in TFA is not going to be answered. That includes how Maz got her hands on Luke's Empire Strikes Back lightsaber.
And it raises the question of where the hell was this guy when Palpatine was around? Was this guy around? Or did he come after? The Force Awakens takes place 30 years after ROTJ. Did the Republic know this guy was in charge of the First Order? If he came after ROTJ why does he have a hard-on for killing Luke? Luke's actions put this guy in position to take over the First Order. He should send him a thank you card. Is Luke responsible for his ugly face? "Don't do it Snoke! I have the high ground!" How is this guy such a powerful force user? So many questions are raised by his appearance.
And you're full of shit, because I'm pretty sure I asked that question, because I was under the impression that Bespin was a gas giant.
I repeat, does anyone in the film say "gee, I wonder who Snoke is, it's really important!"? Find me the line. And once you do, find me the similar line about the Emperor in Return Of The Jedi *Starts stopwatch*
Since no-one made anything resembling that claim, I hope you have a really long-lasting stopwatch. You are going to be here a while.
To the overall story of the third trilogy. But again, don't worry, I'm sure there'll be a Snoke prequel novel.