cchanged

The only direct reference of how much time has passed in series that I remember is in file 599, page 8, when Jodie said that Akai's girlfriend was killed several months ago. Even then, it was very vague (how many months is several months anyway...). Akemi's death probably happened relatively close to Conan's shrinking day. Conan's shrinking, Akemi's death-->several months--> Shuichi's fake death.

I really can't imagine Akai would be so ruthless as to rat out Scotch to deflect suspicions from himself and gain promotion and trust in the BO. I think the circumstances might be similar to what Kir had to do to Akai, except in Scotch's case no one was there to save him. Scotch might have been found out already, and Akai was entangled in some sort of trouble that made the BO suspicious of his loyalty. So maybe Akai was ordered to kill Scotch. (I think this scenario may be unlikely though because Scotch's real name, as Vermouth said, was never found out. This was most likely intentional.) Another possible scenario is that Amuro was forced to kill Scotch to spare him of the torture he probably would have had to endure so that more intelligence and his real name wouldn't have been leaked. And Akai might have been involved in this as the person who accidentally leaked the info that Scotch is actually a secret police (hey Akai was probably gathering intelligence about each BO member he knows of)

I don't think Conan is as popular in the Western countries as in the Eastern and I can see that it might be due to a lot of codes and references not comprehensible to people who don't know Asian culture or languages as well. Some of codes can only be understood by people who are familiar with the Japanese language, not other east Asian languages. I can only understand codes that are relevant to kanji since I know Chinese. Anyways, Conan is popular enough in Japan (more as in an everyday show that everyone has heard of but doesn't have extensive knowledge of it). It has a very large fan base in China (almost every single recurring chara has a tieba created for him/her on baidu *rolls eyes). Many of their online video streamers also play Conan, and I think one or two actually bought the rights to stream it in China. The manga has at least two groups regularly translating it; they also translate interviews and many other relevant stuff. Conan is also fairly popular in Taiwan (Conan movie every year and it always sits in the top tens, maybe top fives?, for the first few weeks).

If I remember correctly, the EYE served as a hint to Kazuha and her friends that the reason why the police cannot find the murderer is because of the special tiles with the crazy diamond optical illusion. Remember the case had two culprits, the last culprit was hoping for someone to solve the murder but no one did it in time so she took the matters to her own hands and revenged. It could have a double meaning, but honestly I think it is unlikely that Sakurako is Rum for the same reasons the posters above have said. She's so young and seems to have known Naeko for a long time. And housemaid is a sad disguise for rum T_T And Rum, being a strong distilled liquor, will most likely be a male. On a side note, the case is also where Koumei reappeared as a recurring chara (he got transferred back to Nagano HQ). I doubt he's Rum because he's known Yamato and Yui for so long. He doesn't seem evil either...