History Headscratchers / FinalFantasyIX

** The theatrical duel between Zidane and Blank mentions that only 100 nobles were in the theater seats, so it's not unlikely that the Pluto Knights ''did'' have an account of everyone who had tickets. The rest of the audience were watching from the roofs of nearby buildings. [[FridgeBrilliance Tickets to the play were probably really rare and highly sought after, and con artists made a fortune selling fake tickets. Vivi was just one of their victims. The panther guy working the ticket booth even says that he's already seen a lot of fakes before he met Vivi.]]

** The fact that they're two children not sitting in the seats. The play is a very exclusive event, and nobles wouldn't be sitting on the ground. The knights would notice that the seats are all full, so why are these two sitting around? They could have asked to see tickets as well.

* How did the Pluto Knights know that Vivi and Puck snuck in? Surely they didnt have an account of every single person that came in and out to see the play.

** It's pointed out later in the conversation with Trance Kuja that the assimilation of Gaia by Terra is still going to happen despite the destruction of the planet of Terra itself. If Kuja isn't stopped he'll destroy the crystal and everything would be lost. So it's in Garland's interest to help Zidane and the party defeat him.

* Mikoto says something as Kuja dies that even though he was awful, he did give her and the other Genomes hope that they could reject their 'programming' and live as independent people. Perhaps Garland wanted to reject that programming somewhat as well - seeing as how Kuja destroyed the very world Garland was trying to save, mostly as a direct result of his own actions. Kuja did have to be stopped, Zidane and the protagonists were the only ones who were able to do it, and Garland helped as best he could to make amends.
* It's pointed out later in the conversation with Trance Kuja that the assimilation of Gaia by Terra is still going to happen despite the destruction of the planet of Terra itself. If Kuja isn't stopped he'll destroy the crystal and everything would be lost. So it's in Garland's interest to help Zidane and the party defeat him.

** It was Garnet's birthday at that point. They were likely hired to prepare the feast especially well.

* Are there eating utensils in the castle? Did Garnet Til Alexandros ever look at her bodyguard's weapon of choice? If so, how can she be confused upon seeing a knife? Her astonishment..well..astonishes this troper. It was really the exact scene when we are supposed to believe that Garnet has never heard of, let alone seen, any sort of blade that I ceased to even try and care about the plot of the game.
** I take it you've never seen an actual dagger. The shape is significanly different. She knew it was a blade, but it was neither the knife she uses to eat with or the swords used by the royal guard.
*** This still requires her to have no deductive skills whatsoever. "This is a blade that has been used, constantly and repeatedly, as a weapon by Zidane. It seems to be a large knife." is normal. Adding "What is this strange device which I have never seen before?! It is absolutely unlike anything I've ever witnessed! I wouldn't be this astonished if I was shown a functional radio!" is not normal.
*** Here, let me check the game script posted on Gamefaqs...let's see, here's the line:
--->'''Garnet''':Zidane... What is this called?
*** Hey, what do you know? She's not staring in awe at a "strange device," and she clearly knows it's his weapon. She's just asking what ''this particular weapon'' is called, and considering many of the weapons ''do'' have actual names in the series (Save the Queen, for example), it's an entirely valid question.\\
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Yes, right after, Zidane starts going off on a schpiel detailing all the different types of blades, but that's just him being over eager talking to the girl he's got the hots for. It's manifestly ''not'' a result of Garnet not having any idea what a knife is.\\
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So, can we '''please''' cut this crap out?
*** Having watched that scene again... it really does look like she has no idea what she's looking at when she's holding it. Zidane tells her it's called a dagger and all blades of that length are called daggers, then she names herself Dagger. If she'd been asking for the name of the dagger, wouldn't she have asked that specifically, especially after Zidane started telling her the basics of what a dagger is? And if she deduced it had no name (nevermind that if she knows weapons have names, shouldn't she know those names are things like Save the Queen or Mage Masher and so on?), shouldn't she have looked elsewhere for one? It couldn't be that she was too polite to clarify the question, because she interrupts Zidane mid-sentence while he's explaining. Since a huge part of that scene is to emphasize how naive Garnet is about the real world, I really think the complaint is valid.
*** She was asking the name of the TYPE of weapon. Lets say she's seen a knife and she's seen a sword, she's a sheltered princess who probably doesn't know the nitty gritty of "oh this is a broadsword, this is a shamshir.." Imagine if someone asked the average american to name the different kinds of rapier! The scene always made sense to me and Garnet rebuffs Zidane's attempts to actually educate her about pointy things since at that point she was still a fish out of water and didn't think it was important, only wanting to know the name of ''this particular knife'' for inspiration's sake.
*** That doesn't make much sense. If she's educated enough to know that there are different types of knife, why doesn't she know what any of them are? Why does she ask "What is this called?" and not "What is ''this knife'' called?", or upon interrupting Zidane, saying, "No, I want to know what its name is." the way any normal person would? The way it's phrased, it's ambiguous. At that point in the journey (when she's naive and used to ignoring important things) it's more in-character for her to want to blow off Zidane's mansplaining because she's bored by it and is only interested in giving herself a cool new commoner name.
*** Oh for God's sake, this is just ridiculous semantics. She said, "What is this called?" because ''that's what she said.'' Are you really going to microanalyze every single freaking word she says just so you can gripe about it?
*** The question she asks is perfectly valid. She asks "What is this called?". She's not asking what it is, she's well aware of what it is, she wants to know the name for that specific type of blade. It's like if someone introduces me to a dog whose breed I don't recognize. I would ask "What is he/she?". The answer I'm looking for is not "a dog." and the person I was asking would 99% of the time be aware of that.
*** You're proving the point, here. The answer you're looking for is not "a dog", but if that was the answer you ''did'' get, would you just blindly accept that "dog" was the name of the breed? Because that's exactly what Garnet does in that scene. She asks what this object she's holding is called, and when Zidane tells her that it's a dagger, she takes it at face value and makes it her new name. That's not something anyone in their right mind would do ''unless'' they were so completely ignorant that they didn't know the difference.
** Good grief, you are making so much bigger a deal out of this than it is. She wasn't writing a dissertation on blades. She asked what one blade was called just for the sake of creating a pseudonym. She wasn't asking for encyclopedic knowledge. She picked up an object, asked what it's called, got an answer, and she moved on. At this point you're just dragging it out to gripe and whine.
*** The only person whining here is you, but that's beside the point. The line is poorly-written, and I'm obviously not the only person who took it to mean that Garnet was completely ignorant of what a knife is because I'm not the only person who's ever edited this page, although you seem to think I am. It's a fantasy setting, daggers are very common weapons, she doesn't interrupt Zidane when he starts giving an educational speech, and Garnet's primary character trait at that point is that she's sheltered and ignorant. The fact that she has to ''ask'' what a dagger is makes her sound like an idiot, because it's something that ''should'' be common knowledge. That scene is one of her earliest character-building moments and made a terrible first impression on a ''lot'' of players, and getting pissy over it isn't helping your argument. You already laid out exactly why it looks bad, but you're attacking me for pointing it out, and that's not making you or your point look any better.

* I didn't see this listed,so I'll ask it:why is Quina in the kitchen of Alexandria Castle at the start of the game (the Qu listed as "head chef")?

** Presumably because the process was what the Terrans had been doing for centuries. Assimilate over weaker planets. We don't know too much about these people aside from that they're willing to leech off an entire planet's life force to save their own. But we can assume what Garland was preparing for was a process that had been done many times and worked for them - so why mess with success? I think it takes time or more resources to create powerful Genomes to be angels of death like Kuja and Zidane (and Mikoto was a planned replacement if the two of them failed). Or perhaps Garland thought it would be a better idea to have one super powerful weapon that could wipe out the opposition and if he's stopped then it's no hassle because there are replacements. As opposed to potentially risking Terran souls.

* Here's what I don't get... Garland could make Genomes, presumably on a mass level. So why didn't he just manufacture an army, slap in all those Terran souls, and send them to the surface to just refound Terran civilization via old-fashioned colonization? They wouldn't even need to invade -- there's an entire uninhabited continent just waiting for someone to set up shop. So why bother doing all this mucking about with crystal merging and soul cycles instead?

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** I am going to replay FF9, but not for a while, so this is my quick guess: Garland's whole motivation is [[spoiler:assimilating Gaia]], so everything he has done is with this in mind, including the creation of the dolls Zidane and Kuja (in this case, the bigger question is [[spoiler: why did Garland give them free reign before they were completed and/or completely loyal?]]). This gives me the impression Garland is either

*** C: Garland has gone EXTRA crazy and has seemingly determined there is something to be gained within the Memoria crystal, probably some way to tap into endless energy so as to avoid the mess of assimilating planets as might be seen from the existence of the crystal guardians and the result of [[spoiler: Kuja destroying the crystal]]. Maybe he sees his [[spoiler: creations of life, Zidane and Kuja]] as on par with what the crystal can do and is trying to impress it, or needs more information and seeks a final use from Zidane by "helpfully" instructing him.

* There's something I want to know: Why did Garland help Zidane and the party in Memoria? It's obviously irrelevant to his mission to revive his creators, and earlier he suggested that his free will is limited.

** Going off the above, maybe it allows them to communicate in secret better? They just put on a show every year but this time the show is a cover for them kidnapping Garnet - so for safety they don't want Zidane and Blank having to remember different character names to be called by in case of emergency, or that's something extra Baku has to remember in addition to all the dialogue. So to cut a ramble short, Zidane and Blank are playing minor characters with [[TheDanza the same names]] so that Baku can call for them or address them in the event of an emergency.

*** I was talking about Baku declaring Steiner as 'Prince Schneider' when he came out of the trapdoor. There's no other female roles in the story. Of course 'Prince Schneider' might have been an offscreen character the whole time, much like Romeo's first crush Rosaline in the original RomeoAndJuliet.

*** Maybe Garland added it in during a regular medical exam of some after designing Zidane? Or programmed it into the prototype Genome in case something goes wrong, [[CaptainObvious like it did]]. The line about Garland only intending for Kuja to live until Zidane came into his real power suggests Garland adding it in after the fact, though.

* Why the heck does fanon so often agree that Vivi is some kind of Mist-ghost beneath his costume? Sure, he may superficially resemble TheHeartless, but in the Final Fantasy series at large, Black Mages have physical bodies within their shadow. Sure, Vivi is created out of Mist, but both Zidane and Kuja are constructs, too. And finally, Vivi eats, sleeps, urinates, and is poisoned (twice!) all in the course of the story - which certainly implies he's nothing more than a normal boy within the shadow. We even know Black Mages leave a physical body upon death, which is more than similar constructs in the Final Fantasy universe do!

** There's a common fan theory that Baku took in Blank, Marcus and the others in off the street as young children, as he did Zidane, and ended up naming them after characters in Lord Avon's plays. Take note that while Marcus plays Marcus during the first performance of 'I Want to be Your Canary' it's [[spoiler: Zidane who plays Marcus the next time around.]] Only Zidane, Blank and Marcus are named in the play; Cinna isn't mentioned and Ruby plays the role of Princess Corneila.

** Tantulus actually is both a theater group AND a bunch of thieves. It kinda makes since that they might be actually named after characters in a famous play.