History Headscratchers / FinalFantasyI

** I might be talking about TimeTravellerImmunity here, but by that explanation, the time loop is isolated to Garland, especially if he is defeated, but reanimated by his other future fiend reincarnated self. The heroes are ejected from this so-called time loop by that very interference as they can't be everyhwere for as long as the fiends and Chaos can.

** A garland also frequently comes in [[https://images.esellerpro.com/2448/I/135/268/XMAYYR356A.jpg the shape of a circle]] - which could very well represent the time loop he had created and maintained.

** Totally. Their initial, original existence set them up to break it using there own, haha. Citing TimeTravellerImmunity (even if they are heralded as heroes) the set up a point in time by defeating Chaos before they travel back and defeat past Chaos too. Assuming the defeat in the past undoes all that history, they could, in theory, be slung back to the point after which they defeated Chaos in the present and slightly before or after they travelled back in time. Depending.

** The ''Memory of Heroes'' novel offers another explanation: Despite relighting the Crystals, it didn't quite get rid of the darkness threatening the land (to use FF3 logic: the world was likely too skewed towards darkness) and the fiends sending the energy/Garland back messed with the flow of time itself.

* I'm in the mood to really bait a troper with something that has horribly bugged me since Day 1 (and Final Fantasy ONE pun intended): A Garland is generally a nice flower thing to wear or decorate with, so why ith is it the name of one of the most tenacious villains of Final Fantasy? Give me a break! Tbf, I hail from days where the official greatest villain name (besides Vegeta or Frieza or Hildegarn or Majin Buu or . . . .) is [[https://suikoden.fandom.com/wiki/Luca_Blight LucaBlight]].

** Technically this is, what I think of as [[VillainyDiscretionShot player discretion retcon]]. Well, retcon for others after playing mounds of rpgs. Anyway even when I first played FF 1 I assumed Chaos to be an elite evil power, not quite attuned to your [[CompleteMonster "average" physical destruction]], whatever the scale. Also, learning that Chaos was actually infused into Garland and doing its best with it's host, it probably had to bide it's time for [[VillainExitStageLeft a perfect one-shot]].

** Technically this is, what I think of as [[VillainyDiscretionShot player discretion retcon]]. Well, retcon for others after playing mounds of rpgs. Anyway even when I first played FF 1 I assumed Chaos to be an elite evil power, not quite attuned to your [[complete monster "average" physical destruction]], whatever the scale. Also, learning that Chaos was actually infused into Garland and doing its best with it's host, it probably had to bide it's time for [[VillainExitStageLeft a perfect one-shot]].

** Technically this is, what I think of as [[VillainyDiscretion player discretion retcon]]. Well, retcon for others after playing mounds of rpgs. Anyway even when I first played FF 1 I assumed Chaos to be an elite evil power, not quite attuned to your "average" physical destruction, whatever the scale. Also, learning that Chaos was actually infused into Garland and doing its best with it's host, it probably had to bide it's time for [[VillainExitStageLeft a perfect one-shot]].

* I'm in the mood to really bait a troper with something that has horribly bugged me since Day 1 (and Final Fantasy ONE pun intended): A Garland is generally a nice flower thing to wear or decorate with, so why ith is it the name of one of the most tenacious villains of Final Fantasy? Give me a break! Tbf, I hail from days where the official greatest villain name (besides Vegeta or Frieza or Hildegarn or Majin Buu or . . . .) is LucaBlight.

** They ''won'', that's what happened. Not being flip there--that's really what it comes down to: maybe they used a different strategy, maybe they let the White Mage have the Masamune, or maybe they just got the one critical hit they needed to win the day... whatever it comes down to, the result is that this one time, they won the battle. In essence, its the exact opposite of EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce -- in this case it was ''Good'' that only had to win once.

* The simple answer is: It was the third console RPG ever, and it was an era of {{Excuse Plot}}s. It makes about as much sense as most of the NES era games.
* I just go with TimeyWimeyBall. Makes about as much sense as anything else. Though to clarify a few things:
** It may be TimeTravelTenseTrouble, as you fight the fiends all over again in the past. Of course, they respawn, which may be some more Time Travel muck-up.
** Did Garland/Chaos say he sent them to the present, or just to the future relevant to his time? It seemed to be that several of the fiends were around for years (Hundreds, or so) before the big Garland Get-Together. He may have sent them into the future, but a few hundred years before the events of the main game.
* Of course, none of this really solves anything. So TimeyWimeyBall it is. Or AWizardDidIt.
* If nothing else, I can explain the time repetition--it's ''not'' a StableTimeLoop, but rather the variety of time travel that gets bandied about a lot in VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII's crazy fan theories. That is to say, you don't ''travel'' through time, you ''undo'' time, like rewinding a VHS tape and taping over it. Garland went back into the past the first time he "died" (though apparently not on later runthroughs of the cycle, or a) the plot would never happen, and b) there'd be a zillion copies of him in the past.) Every single runthrough, you survive long enough to travel back to the past yourself, and although he defeats you, he has to live through those thousands of years all over again and take another crack at you in the hopes he can kill you before you can time-travel again. What's interesting is that before he time-traveled in the first place, he couldn't have been the leader of the fiends--so that means we have partial RubberBandHistory, with different sequences of events both leading to you and him existing and fighting each other. (Come to think of it, that's also why he couldn't just kill your parents before you were born--you were ''[[TheChosenOne fated]]'' to come into existence in some way.) As for the Fiends, maybe he sent them to the future that would have come about if he had won, and his losing erases that entire future with the fiends inside it (just like how ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' speculation insists Peter must have erased Kaitlyn (sic?))
* Here's how I understood it: Garland was originally from 20XX years in the past. Because of fear of death, he thought about this time loop plan and traveled to the present of the game, became part of the royal guard, kidnapped the princess and was defeated by the light warriors. Then he was sent back to 2000 years in the past by the fiends, turned into Chaos by the fiends, sent the fiends themselves to the present so they can send him back in the first place. He then kills the light warriors and after that rules as Chaos for as much time he desires (but is obviously still mortal or else he would not need a time loop) and sends himself back to the present as Garland, so he can start the time loop. He then becomes part of the royal guard, kidnaps the princess, gets beaten by the warriors... That would explain why killing Chaos stops the time loop. With Chaos dead, there would be no Garland in the present because Chaos is Garland and Garland came from the past.
* I don't know if this was only in the Dawn of Souls version onwards, but Garland did say something like "In 2000 years I shall know none of this, but I shall be reborn here again.". I see it like this:
** Garland arrives in the past
** The Four Fiends give him some of their combined power, turning him into Chaos.
** Chaos!Garland uses this power to send the Four Fiends to the present.
** The Light Warriors arrive from the present. Chaos!Garland kills them.
** Over the course of 2000 years, the power of Chaos keeps Garland alive, but it eventually runs out, or fades away slowly, rendering him human again. The passage of time also erodes his memory of the events, and he eventually lands a job in Cornelia as a Knight.
** Driven by inherited memories of the endless cycles, Garland turns rogue and kidnaps the princess.
** Garland is killed by the Light Warriors, but is revived and sent back in time by the Four Fiends.
** The Light Warriors slay the Four Fiends and then follow Garland back in time using the Crystals.
** After a number of cycles, by a fluke, the Light Warriors defeat Chaos and the cycle breaks.
*** The above theory doesn't make sense because it implies Garland was never born, but [[ParadoxPerson has always existed inside the time loop]]. If this were the case, then breaking the time loop would cause Garland to [[RetGone stop existing]], which doesn't happen according to the ending.
* The way I see it is, Garland in the present doesn't remember becoming Chaos simply because he ''didn't become'' Chaos yet. He was born a few decades before the present, grew up like any other human, became a Cornelian knight, and was blissfully unaware of the StableTimeLoop his older self perpetuated until he became a part of it. After sending the Fiends away, Chaos couldn't interfere with the world without risking breaking the time loop, which is why he was hidden for most of the game. It's possible he conquered the world in the future once the Light Warriors had traveled to the past, either via time travel or TheSlowPath.
* As described in the NES version, it makes absolutely no sense because Chaos created the fiends and the fiends sent Garland back in time. The flow chart of this is Garland is Born --> Garland is Defeated --> Entities That Don't Exist Yet Send Garland Back --> Garland Becomes Chaos --> Garland Creates Entities --> Garland Sends Entities Forward --> Entities Send Garland Back...and so on. There is no discernible origin, so really one can make all kinds of guesses. The simplest two are either that it was an error and the fiends predate Chaos, or that the temple always had time travel magic independent of the fiends and in subsequent loops said fiends simply reduced Garland's suffering.
** Chaos and the fiends bringing each other to existence without a discernible origin sounds like a classic [[TemporalParadox ontological paradox]] to me.