Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-1018594-20150729000741/@comment-1018594-20150906073007

So basically, what you're saying is that Itachi > Orochimaru, but Orochimaru > Jiraiya. So, logically, Itachi > Orochimaru > Jiraiya.

But here's the thing: those events happened years before the start of the series. In Part I, Itachi himself says that the best him and Kisame could do against Jiraiya would end in a stalemate. So it's clear that Jiraiya > Orochimaru. But does that now mean Jiraiya > Itachi > Orochimaru? Orochimaru's full power was never shown, so we'll never know if he truly was stronger than the other two. The entire thing is inconclusive.

I'd say that we base events on chronological order. The last mention/proof of Jiraiya's power was Pain saying that the only reason he won was because he didn't know about the Six Paths of Pain. Since that was the latest mention, that's the one we'll use to measure Jiraiya's full power. Obviously, Nagato being invincible is hyperbole, so that statement would be thrown out and his actual feats would be used to calculate his full power.

Similarly, Naruto, at his Fourth Shinobi World War level, was said to have surpassed all previous Hokage. That sounds like a little bit of a stretch, considering he gets even stronger as the series progresses. So we'd analyze everything he's done and compare it what we know the (at the time, five) previous Hokage could do and see if that statement holds up.

Does all of this make sense?