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1%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are commented out.
2
3[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ffvi_city.png]]
4[[caption-width-right:1000:''Magitek has been reborn. And the end of the world is near.'']]
5
6->''The ancient War of the Magi... When its flames at last receded, only the charred husk of a world remained. Even the power of magic was lost. In the thousand years that followed, iron, gunpowder, and steam engines took the place of magic, and life slowly returned to the barren land. Yet there now stands one who would reawaken the magic of ages past, and use its dread power as a means by which to conquer all the world. Could anyone truly be foolish enough to repeat that mistake?''
7-->-- '''{{Opening narration}}''', Platform/GameBoyAdvance version
8
9''Final Fantasy VI'', the sixth game in the [[RunningGag bomb-droppingly popular]] ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series, is the third and final [[MediaNotes/The16bitEraOfConsoleVideoGames 16-bit]] entry, released in 1994 for the Platform/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem. The game was originally marketed outside Japan as ''Final Fantasy III'' because only two other games in the franchise (''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'') had been given international releases at the time.
10
11A thousand years ago, a great conflict called the "War of the Magi" brought the world to the brink of ruin. When the flames of war faded, humanity was almost extinct and magic was believed to be lost. Over the next millennium humanity rebuilt and rediscovered technologies and innovations like gunpowder, steam power, and ironworking. Civilization was entering a {{steampunk}} era of industrial revolution.
12
13Now, however, the stirrings of war are brewing again. The [[TheEmpire Gestahlian Empire]] in the south seems to have rediscovered the mythological power of "magic" and is building weapons [[{{Magitek}} combining magic and machinery]] with which to [[TakeOverTheWorld force the world under the rule]] of Emperor Gestahl. [[LaResistance The Returners]], an underground resistance movement, are fighting against the rising tide but it is a losing battle as the Empire conquers the south and begins to push into the north.
14
15Against this background [[MysteriousWaif a young woman]] named Terra Branford comes to the attention of the Returners; she has no memories, but seems to be a former soldier of the Empire, and is able to naturally cast magic. The Returners convince her to aid them in discovering the secrets of the Empire's power and fight back against them, but the battle between the two factions will spiral out of control in ways none of them could predict.
16
17----
18
19With fourteen playable characters, ''Final Fantasy VI'' boasts one of the largest rosters of any RPG of its era. To this day, it still holds the record among the main series ''Final Fantasy'' games for most playable characters, and provides nearly all of them with character arcs and {{sidequest}}s. Most fall into broad categories that were introduced in earlier games, ranging from the simple [[VideoGameStealing Thief]] (Locke) and [[BareFistedMonk Monk]] (Sabin) to the more-exotic [[DanceBattler Dancer]] (Mog), [[PowerCopying Blue Mage]] (Strago), and [[DittoFighter Mime]] (Gogo). Setzer is a [[TheGambler Gambler]], which was a first for the series.
20
21Magic is treated in a different way from other installments. Only two characters can learn magic by leveling up normally; one is part-Esper and the other a Magitek Knight. The others must equip Magicite, which is [[ImDyingPleaseTakeMyMacGuffin the crystallized remains of an Esper]]. Magicite comes with a handful of spells that you learn though experience, though naturally some take longer than others. Equipping it also alters your stats when you level-up, which makes things a bit more strategic. Lastly, Magicite doubles as SummonMagic and has a variety of effects in battle, be they offensive or defensive.
22
23The game has been ported twice under the original title: the first came as one-half of ''Final Fantasy Anthology'', a CompilationRerelease on the Platform/PlayStation. It added a number of CGI cutscenes, replaced all censored sprites with their uncensored originals, made some minor script changes to improve accuracy, included bonuses like a [[MonsterCompendium bestiary]] and an art gallery, added a run ability which doesn't require the SprintShoes, fixed some well-known bugs and glitches, and changed the battle transitions for the world map and dungeons. Unfortunately, it [[PortingDisaster suffered from slowdown and sound emulation issues]], at the least its original release. Its Greatest Hits edition, while still somewhat slow, is a major performance upgrade over the original release.
24
25The other port, released on the Platform/GameBoyAdvance, is [[UpdatedRerelease patched up even further]]: It includes [[BonusDungeon a couple new quests]], new gear, new {{superboss}}es, and four new Espers. It features a new translation which fixed some things (''e.g.'' Ultima Buster's [[MeaninglessMeaningfulWords famously cryptic]] pre-battle speech on the meaning of life) while retaining many of Ted Woolsey's [[AudienceColoringAdaptation now-iconic]] original lines and [[DubNameChange name changes]]. The GBA port also uncensored certain elements...while confusingly censoring others that had been ''un''censored in previous versions. On a technical note, the GBA port fixed numerous bugs (while introducing some brand-new ones) and featured a brighter color palette and remixed music--the last of which [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks remains a source of contention]].
26
27Square Enix re-released the SNES version on the MediaNotes/VirtualConsole in Japan, Europe and North America, and the [=PlayStation=] port on the [=PlayStation=] Store. A divisive version of the game was released for mobile devices and Platform/{{Steam}}, but was delisted in 2021. The original version is also one of the twenty-one games included in the SNES Classic Edition, alongside other Square-developed games ''VideoGame/SecretOfMana'' and ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG''. A remastered version in the ''Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster'' series was released on PC and mobile devices in February 2022. This version was brought to the Platform/NintendoSwitch and Platform/PlayStation4 in April 2023, with extra quality of life additions and boosters, and an optional remastered soundtrack.
28
29More notoriously, ''Final Fantasy VI'' also holds the distinction of being the last mainline title to be released on a Creator/{{Nintendo}} console for twenty-five years. After ''VI'' was released, development on ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' initially commenced for the Platform/Nintendo64, but Nintendo's refusal to use [=CDs=] as opposed to cartridges (which had a lower capacity for storage than the CD-ROM format) led to an acrimonious breakup between Nintendo and Square in which the latter ended up developing ''VII'' for the Platform/PlayStation, which then marked the beginning of a long partnership between Sony and Square and resulted in ''VII'' becoming '''the''' KillerApp for the [=PlayStation=]. Further mainline installments as well as major spinoffs like ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' and ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'' remained exclusive to the [=PlayStation=] and Platform/PlayStation2, but it wasn't until the colossal failure of ''Anime/FinalFantasyTheSpiritsWithin'' that Square went back to salvage its relationship with Nintendo - who by chance, were also looking for any third-party partners they could get to support the Platform/NintendoGameCube. This led to the ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'' games as a Nintendo-exclusive subseries, as well as other exclusive ''Final Fantasy'' releases like ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'' and ports of the first six games barring ''III'' on the Platform/GameBoyAdvance, remakes of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' plus ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyThe4HeroesOfLight'' on the Platform/NintendoDS, and ''VideoGame/TheatrhythmFinalFantasy'' on the Platform/Nintendo3DS. That being said, mainline installments past ''VI'' eluded Nintendo platforms until 2018 and 2019, when ''VII'', ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII VIII Remastered]]'', ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX IX]]'', ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX X]]/[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2 X-2]] HD'', ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII XII: The Zodiac Age]]'', and ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV XV: Pocket Edition HD]]'' all made their way to the Platform/NintendoSwitch, finally bringing the post-''VI'' installments to a Nintendo platform after so many years.
30
31----
32!!''Final Fantasy VI'' contains examples of the following tropes:
33
34[[foldercontrol]]
35
36[[folder:A - C]]
37* TenMinuteRetirement: One Year Retirement: Almost all of the party after the WorldSundering. Some were more actively trying to strengthen themselves or get the group back together, others were more passive.
38* ActionBomb: The usual ability of enemy bombs is Self-Destruct, an explosive attack that deals massive damage at the price of killing the user. Strago can get it as a Lore and Gau can do this when he imitates a Bomb.
39* ActionPrologue: Biggs and Wedge escort one of the main characters, only shown as [[MyNameIsQuestionMarks ??????]], to attack the city of Narshe. When you complete that, you're still in danger and have to escape the city.
40* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Setzer finds himself amused when [[spoiler:Celes hustles him via the use of Edgar's two-headed coin.]]
41* AerithAndBob: The royal twins of Figaro, Edgar and Sabin. In the Japanese version, Sabin is named Mash. This is just a nickname, however, and his real name is Macías, which is a real Spanish name.
42* AfterlifeExpress: And the Phantom Train really doesn't care for its living passengers. At least you can strongarm your way off.
43--> "N.o...e.s.c.a.p.e...!"
44* AfterTheEnd: The World of Ruin.
45* AIRoulette: Damned Coliseum AI. Especially with Sabin and Strago and their sacrificial moves. You can avoid it by using Shadow or Setzer, whose specials won't be used, but if you've been training a character with Espers then each spell is another option your character could randomly choose. Gogo and Umaro can forgo this, because Umaro always attacks and Gogo's action menu can be customized.
46* AllNaturalGemPolish: Magicite stones are shaped like [[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda rupees]], reflecting the crystal theme of the series. In ''Dissidia'', the magicite Terra finds is slightly more abstract.
47* AllPartOfTheShow: The first visit to the Opera House sees Locke and company fall on stage during what's supposed to be the final battle. Locke engages in some BadBadActing, and the Impressario decides to just go with it.
48* AllTheWorldsAreAStage: Kefka's Tower is mostly a collection of ruins, but there are elements of the destroyed Imperial capitol of Vector and the Magitek Factory, and some rooms are exactly like they were when the player first visited them.
49* AllSwordsAretheSame: Averted. There are several categories of swords that can be equipped by different characters. Cyan and Shadow have katanas and ninja swords exclusive to them (and Gogo), while Terra, Locke, Edgar, and Celes can use most swords, Locke is unable to use sabres and cutlasses, but can use a variety of daggers and shortswords unavailable to the other three.
50* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: Kefka tries to do this twice; first with Figaro Castle and then with Narshe. The first time, Edgar tunnels the castle under the sands to avoid Kefka. The second time, the party makes a stand at Narshe to stop him.
51* TheAlliance: The Returners have long been secretly backed by Figaro; later, Narshe joins the alliance as well.
52* AlternateWorldMap: The World of Ruin, which occurs after the world is nearly destroyed, submerges (thankfully mostly uninhabited) sections of land in the ocean and raises the previously submerged Serpent Trench above the water.
53* AlwaysCheckBehindTheChair: There are Elixirs in ''almost every'' grandfather clock, and in the game's only alarm clock.
54* AlwaysClose:
55** Played with at the end of the World of Balance. [[spoiler:If you jump to the airship before Shadow arrives, he's KilledOffForReal. However, you have to wait until there's only five seconds left on the clock for Shadow to show up. Once he does though, it takes way more than five seconds before you all jump back down.]]
56** Averted at the Opera House. You've got five minutes to reach Ultros, and the end result is the same, no matter how much time was left on the clock.
57* AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield: The final battle goes from from Twisted Demonic Darkness to Heavenly Light.
58* AndManGrewProud: The War of the Magi, which set the stage of a world where magic has since been forgotten.
59* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: When you are given a choice between three scenarios.
60* AntiClimax: [[spoiler:The Warring Triad are supposed to be the source of all magic. The party is forced to fight them in order to reach Kefka, and the party members express confusion when they discover that they are not [[LoadBearingBoss load-bearing bosses]] and killing them has had no effect on magic. It turns out Kefka drained enough of their power to be able to sustain magic on his own.]]
61* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
62** On two occasions in the World of Ruin, a rejoining party member will join immediately before a boss battle. At this time they will automatically equip themselves with whatever optimal equipment you have on-hand for them, to avoid the difficulty of fighting the boss battle with an unequipped character.
63** On the mobile and Steam versions (including the Pixel Remaster), you can turn on auto-battle. When on, battles are sped up, and characters will keep repeating the last action you had them do. If you enter a boss battle with auto-battle enabled, the feature silently gets turned off at the start of the fight so that you don't accidentally screw yourself over.
64** In the mobile and Steam versions, if you attempt to equip a Magicite on a character that already has it, the game will ask if you want to unequip the Magicite instead. Useful if you accidentally equip a Magicite on Shadow before he leaves the party in the World of Balance.
65** You retain any experience gained even if you die, even though all other progress since your last save point is lost. This isn't that great to deliberately rely upon as you would gain experience without the corresponding stat bonus from an Esper, but it can reduce the risk of saving your characters in [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable a point where they will be unable to ever get past the next hurdle because they're underleveled]]. If you somehow manage to find your way to these fights while too low a level, you should be able to get enough experience to eventually power through the challenge.
66** From the [=PS1=] version onward, there's a dedicated run button that lets you move as fast as if you had Sprint Shoes. However, you run even faster while wearing the shoes.
67** Enemies in the Cultists' Tower will always drop Ethers so that you have a way to restore your MP due to the magic only rule enforced in battles. Magic Urns will also revive your KO'd party members and use various Potions, Ethers, and even Elixirs on your party so that you have a way to heal and recover if you don't have the resources to do so yourself.
68** The Pixel Remaster version adds a few more quality-of-life features.
69*** The game now shows the sequence of buttons that must be pressed in order to active a Blitz command for Sabin. You can also get a do-over if you mess up any of the buttons before the last button in the sequence. However, enemies can still attack you while you're inputting the commands for the sake of game balance.
70*** Cyan's Bushido abilities are now freely chosen from a menu in the Pixel Remaster. In addition, after selecting which one you want, the Bushido now charges all on its own while you're free to input other commands, reducing the headache of using the ability.
71*** The Pixel Remaster version adds healing buckets next to save points that are right before boss fights so that the player isn't screwed if they reached that point without any healing supplies or magic. If you find one of these buckets at a save point, [[SuspiciousVideoGameGenerosity expect to make use of it]].
72*** Previously, timed events like the Esper defense in Narshe or the race to Ultros in the Opera House never stopped moving, even while you were in menus. This made healing your characters after a fight into a huge pain. In the Pixel Remaster, the enemies and the timers are frozen while you're in out-of-battle menus so you aren't unduly pressured.
73*** Like the other Pixel Remasters, the game now auto-saves regularly and there's also an option to quick save on the fly. This comes in handy if you can't make it to a save point and for SaveScumming.
74*** One of the most frustrating restrictions on Espers and equipment was that you couldn't swap anything if the character wasn't in your party. If you really needed a piece of equipment or an Esper to teach a spell for a certain situation, you were out of luck. You could talk to some [=NPCs=] on the airships to remove equipment and Espers that weren't in your active party, but it was small comfort when you couldn't use that option when you really needed it. The Pixel Remaster version removed this restriction; you can now swap equipment and Espers with anyone at any time, even if they're not in the active party. (You can still talk to the aforementioned [=NPCs=] to remove equipment and Espers from everyone, but being able to swap anything at any time makes it largely irrelevant.)
75** Quality-of-life adjustments added to the Switch and [=PS4=] versions of the Pixel Remaster:
76*** Deathgaze is no longer invisible on the world map, instead appearing as a floating sphere of darkness. He still moves to a random location after fleeing from battle, but finding the exact spot is much easier.
77*** Random encounters can be disabled, which makes back tracking much easier. There’s also an option to boost the amount of XP and gil earned after battles, which cuts down on grinding. Conversely, there's also an option to reduce XP and money, making the game harder if you desire.
78* AnvilOnHead: During the Opera, Ultros tries to drop a [[FourIsDeath four-ton]] weight on Celes.
79* ApocalypseHow: Planetary Societal Collapse, with a risk of Total Extinction if left unchecked. At the beginning of the World of Ruin, Cid says that the world itself is slowly dying, as if plants and animals have lost the will to live, and while ''most'' of the towns still exist, a few have been wiped out and the surviving towns are much less populous. Then the party pisses Kefka off even more, and he decides to screw it and go for [[ApocalypseHow/{{ClassZ}} annihilating the universe]].
80* ApocalypseWow: The creation of the World of Ruin, which also includes an apocalypse montage. [[spoiler:Kefka gains the power of the Warring Triad, and tears the world asunder for the sheer sake of destruction. This includes splitting several continents apart and killing untold numbers of people.]]
81* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: This is the first ''Final Fantasy'' that allows the player to form a party from whatever characters are available, instead of having the plot shuffle them around. It becomes most noticeable on the Floating Continent, where you're only allowed to bring three characters instead of the usual four, with no explanation. It's so that you have room for Shadow and, later, Celes (if you didn't bring her to begin with) but it's still a little jarring.
82* AristocratsAreEvil: The nameless blueblood who lives in the mansion in South Figaro gave the Empire vital information in exchange for money, allowing them to take over the city. Speaking to him later as Locke during the city's occupation reveals that he regrets his decision. Much later on in Jidoor, the citizens actually went so far as to remove the entire lower class from their city, likely by force, and they find the world's near destruction as being nothing more than a concept to make art about.
83* ArmorOfInvincibility:
84** The Paladin's Shield, which gives large bonuses to Defense, Evade, and Magic Block. It also blocks or absorbs every element in the game, and teaches Ultima to whomever has it equipped. However, ''obtaining it'' involves uncursing it from the Cursed Shield by fighting 256 times with it equipped. It’s defensively the worst shield in the game, and inflicts every negative status ailment on the wearer. Have fun.[[note]]Good thing there are pathetically weak enemies with single digit HP and pathetic attacks that make this task easy, and a ribbon accessory will prevent most of the status effects.[[/note]]
85** The Snow Scarf has a defense rating of 128, and comes with a resistance to Fire and absorbs Ice. For a point of comparison, the Behemoth Suit has the second-highest armor rating aside from the Reed Cloak (see below under Imp Equipment) and has a defense rating of only ''96''. Unfortunately it's exclusive to Mog, Gau and Umaro. Gau and Mog are somewhat tricky to use, and Umaro is very inflexible.
86** The Minerva Bustier, Behemoth Suit, Red Jacket, Cat-Ear Hood, and as always the Genji equipment, have excellent defensive benefits and also give nice boosts to basic stats. The Red Jacket also comes with an immunity to Fire, and the Minerva Bustier resists ''all'' of the elements, while being outright immune to Fire, Ice, Lightning and Wind. The only caveat is that the Minerva Buster only fits Terra and Celes.
87** The Imp Equipment set will max out all defenses, but only for characters with the imp status. making it an AwesomeButImpractical set of gear.
88* ArmorPiercingAttack: Several attacks and spells ignore defense, including Edgar's drill, and the Ultima spell.
89* TheArtifact:
90** Subverted with the Sprint Shoes. Later ports give you the ability to run without them, but you can still equip them and become even ''speedier''. [[AwesomeButImpractical Almost impractically so.]]
91** The Pixel Remaster's console ports allow you to turn off enemy encounters at any time, which makes Molulu's Charm useless.
92** The console ports make the equipment-removing [=NPC=]s unnecessary, as you can access every party member’s equipment and Espers at any time.
93* ArtifactMook: The Veldt contains nearly every enemy you've previously encountered. This includes soldiers, elite soldiers, and enemies mentioned in the story to be extinct. Some bosses also appear in the Veldt, such as the Behemoth King and the Holy Dragon. This area mostly exists to allow Gau to learn to mimic the monsters, but can also be used to learn a few of Strago’s blue magic spells.
94* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: An average city arbitrarily exiles their lower-class citizens....just because, leaving only the middle and upper classes. The city seems to do just fine despite the lack of a working class. Meanwhile, those lower-class citizens end up creating their own town and every one of them tries to lie and/or attack you, because apparently people in the lower class are all just immoral criminals.
95* ArtShift: The Opera scene in the Pixel Remaster has 2D characters in a 3D environment, similar to '' VideoGame/PaperMario'' and '' VideoGame/OctopathTraveler''.
96* ArtworkAndGameGraphicsSegregation: Terra's official artwork has her with blonde hair, but her sprite has green hair.
97* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: Character names freely mix names and vocabulary from English, French, German, Italian and Latin. For example, "Setzer" is a German surname, while his last name, "Gabbiani", is Italian. And then there are names like "Relm Arrowny" which are completely made-up.
98* AtTheOperaTonight: The famous opera sequence, where Celes performs and the others watch before an inevitable boss fight. It's a ploy to get their hands on an airship. If you take Sabin, he will even ask why everyone is singing.
99* {{Auction}}: You can participate in the auctions held at Jidoor's Auction House to get Magicite and relics, although there are also a couple of items that you will never be able to purchase.
100* AudienceMurmurs: When the Opera gets derailed with the unforeseen entry of Ultros, Locke, and the party, the music stops and the audience falls into hushed whispers.
101* AutobotsRockOut: Most of the "Dancing Mad" remixes, both official and by fans, use the guitars through out the track and usually add an additional guitar solo segment in the (relatively) peaceful part of the 4th Movement.
102* AwakeningTheSleepingGiant: When the party tries to open the Sealed Gate.
103* AwesomeButImpractical:
104** Meltdown, Quake and the Crusader esper do massive damage, but hit your own characters as well. Quake can be avoided if the target is under the Float status, and Meltdown deals fire damage, which is relatively easy to block or absorb. Crusader, however, not only hits the hardest of them all, but is also non-elemental and ignores magic defense, so it's pretty much guaranteed to subject the player to a TotalPartyKill, barring Reraise.
105** Tornado drops ''everyone'''s HP to critical. As such, it can never kill you by itself, merely making it easy for enemies to finish you off, and by the time you get it, enemies for the most part become immune to it.
106** Magicite Shard is a consumable item that summons a random esper for free (except Odin/Raiden and the GBA exclusives). Awesome when it summons a high-powered esper like Bahamut, Alexander, Tritoch or Midgardsormr (or when it summons Palidor for a free full-party Jump attack that doesn't even waste anyone's turn when they land). Not so awesome when it summons chumps like Shoat or Ragnarok against bosses, early-game espers or [[TotalPartyKill Crusader]].
107** Cyan's Swordtech/Bushido moves. The first attack, Dispatch/Fang, is likely the only one a player will use, as charging up for his other attacks takes a very long time and prevents entering any other actions for the rest of the party while doing so. In the mobile/[=iOS=]/PC version the player can pick a technique and Cyan will charge it up on his own time while the rest of the battle proceeds, but the damage of the techniques seldom justify the charge time. Averted if Cyan casts the Quick spell. Since the ATB stops during the two turns the spell grants, Cyan will be free to use any Bushido attack twice without harming the pace of the battle. A Cyan with Quick can actually turn out to be a GameBreaker this way.
108** Sabin's Spiraler Blitz is a full party HP/MP/status recovery (including from things like Doom), but it not just kills Sabin, but drains his MP to 0 and removes him from combat outright, so you cannot bring him back for the rest of the fight. And he just [[ArtificialStupidity loooves]] to use it in the Colliseum.
109** [[invoked]]The Ultima spell can easily hit the damage cap of 9999, but costs 80 MP, which is 8% of the maximum MP a character can have. There are items that reduce the cost of spells[[note]]The Economizer, in particular, which reduces all spell costs to 1 MP[[/note]], but generally, there are more efficient ways to deal lots of damage. Learning it is a pain as well, with the easiest method (taking the Ragnarok esper over the sword) locking the player out of obtaining the best sword in the game, while the other two involve turning the Cursed Shield into the Paladin Shield or maxing out Terra's level. On the other hand, absorbing magic from enemies is so easy (the Rasp and Osmose spells in this game verge on being a GameBreaker) that some players may not care.
110** Hiring Shadow for the trip from Kohlingen to Zozo is arguably more trouble than it's worth, given that you have to keep a slot open for him in the party, you have to pay him 3000 GP to get him to join, and he immediately ditches you if you go back to Narshe to switch party members. Shadow also seems to have a much higher chance of leaving than he did when he was traveling with Sabin and Cyan for free, forcing you to complete the Zozo dungeon with a three-person party, hike all the way back to Narshe to replace him, [[TakeAThirdOption or]] [[SaveScumming reload a save from before he left]].
111** While the Step Mine Lore's damage increases proportionally to the number of steps you've taken, its MP cost also increases with your playing time. Which means that it's possible to spend over 100 MP for a single-target attack -- more than any spell in the game, including the multi-targeting Meteor or Ultima. Averted when Gau uses it as a Rage, since it won't consume any MP.
112** The Genji Glove is a downplayed example: it’s handy shortly after you obtain it, but later on you’ll be using magic for the most part, and dual-wielding will force you to forgo the late-game shields, costing significant defense.
113** Reraise[=/=]Life 3 is neat in theory but doesn’t see much practical use outside of the [=MagiMaster=] fight; by the time you learn it your characters are already probably walking death merchants and functionally invincible, and instant death attacks aren’t common enough to justify keeping it on.
114** The Raise[=/=]Life spell costs a whopping 30 MP and only heals as much as a Phoenix Down, which are cheap and plentiful in this game.
115* BackFromTheBrink: The second half of the game is helping people of the World of Ruin get back on their feet.
116* BadassBoast:
117** [=AtmaWeapon=] gives this:
118---> '''III Atma Weapon:''' My name is Atma... I am pure energy... and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!\
119'''VI Ultima Weapon:''' My name is Ultima... I am power both ancient and unrivaled... I do not bleed, for I am but strength given form... Feeble creatures of flesh... Your time is nigh.
120** Also, DummiedOut from the game but still impressive is Czar Dragon's quote.
121--->'''Czar Dragon:''' Mwa, ha ha... humans and their desires! I'm free at last! I bring you destruction... I bring you terror... I am Czar... Prepare yourselves!
122*** In the GBA version, where he was reinstated as a {{superboss}}:
123---->'''Kaiser Dragon:''' Humans and your insatiable greed... Your lust for power leads always to a lust for blood... This place is a sanctuary for wayward souls... What business have you filthy creatures here? You slaughter my brethren, and befoul their rest with the profanity of your continued existence... You should not have come here. In the name of all dragonkind, I shall grant you the death you desire. I am the dealer of destruction... I am the font from which fear springs... I am Kaiser... And your time is at end.
124** Sabin also gives us the line, "You think a minor thing like {{the end of the world|AsWeKnowIt}} was gonna do me in?"
125* BadBadActing: Locke is apparently quite the terrible actor, since the Impressario comments on his awful acting after Locke and the rest of the party interrupt the climax of the opera. Thanks to technical limitations, it's an InformedAbility, since a player can't actually hear Locke speaking. However, Locke refers to the main character of the opera by the name of her actress (Celes) instead of the name of her character (Maria), which is a very rookie mistake.
126* BadGuyBar: The South Figaro Inn notably features the cut-throat assassin Shadow and his attack dog, Interceptor, along with several rough looking [=NPCs=] who wear eye-patches and bandannas, the sprite used to portray drunkards, thieves, prisoners, and even ninjas.
127* TheBadGuyWins: This is one of the most well known examples where the villain actually succeeds in his goal; in this case, destroying the majority of the world. The entire second half of the game is dedicated to trying to undo it... and it comes at the cost of [[spoiler:magic and Espers vanishing from the world forever, so even in death, Kefka managed to royally screw the planet over in another manner]].
128* BagOfSharing: Taking into the account the timescale during the three scenario segments, this particular bag can transfer items across both space AND time.
129* {{Baku}}: When a character wakes up from Sleep status on his or her own, a small baku comes by to "eat" their dreams away.
130* BanditMook: Harvester enemies in Zozo will steal from your coffers if you try to Steal from ''them'', and later on, there's the money-stealing '''bears''' on Mt. Zozo!
131* BarrierChangeBoss: Number 024 in the Magitek Research Facility and the Magic Master on the top of Cultists' Tower. Also, Kaiser Dragon, the {{superboss}} in the GBA remake.
132* BearsAreBadNews:
133** Bears that steal lots of money. And then ''[[MetalSlime try to run away!]]''
134** And Vargas has bodyguard bears!
135* BeautifulSingingVoice: In the Opera House, Celes successfully pulls off a plot to board Setzer's airship by pretending to be an opera star and allowing herself to be kidnapped. In the course of doing this, she actually performs "Aria de Mezzo Caraterre" -- ''a song written for a world-famous opera singer'' -- and does so without embarrasing herself.
136* BeefGate: The difficult monsters and bosses in Kefka's Tower can be fought as soon as you get the second airship.
137* {{BFS}}:
138** The Atma Weapon grows longer based on your hitpoints. By the end of the game, in the right hands it is easily 20-30 feet long.
139** Runner up is the Scimitar, which is about 10 feet long.
140* TheBigBadShuffle: Early in the game the primary villain is [[StrawNihilist Kefka]], as he's the Imperial officer who most directly causes trouble for the party and is a ClimaxBoss fought during the Siege of Narshe. After that focus turns to investigating the espers and going on the offensive against the Empire, and Kefka is given less focus in favor of the Empire as a whole, which would make [[TheEmperor Emperor Gestahl]], ruler of TheEmpire, the Big Bad. He keeps this status while he tricks and betrays the party, raises the Floating Continent, and seems set to seize the Warring Triad. Then Kefka [[TheStarscream turns on him]], kills Gestahl, and takes power for himself. While Kefka remains the BigBad for the rest of the game, he's an OrcusOnHisThrone who never acts against the party directly; the main conflicts in the World of Ruin are more inner demons the party members have to overcome and random monsters prowling the world that get in their way.
141* BigBoosHaunt: The Phantom Train in the World of Balance is inhabited by a bunch of ghosts, since it's meant to take departed souls to the afterlife. Not all of the ghosts onboard are malevolent, as some will become a GuestStarPartyMember, and one will even serve you food.
142* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Kefka is defeated in the final battle and dies, but his death means the end of magic forever AND the deaths of every single surviving Esper (if there even are any surviving Espers by that point), and this is all after Kefka ruled the world for a year while destroying cities left and right with a magic laser beam. Not to mention that, even in the best of circumstances, Shadow is left inside Kefka's tower as it collapses and is never seen again. However, it is clearly shown that the world is [[EarnYourHappyEnding recovering]], and Terra lives, thus making it more "sweet" than "bitter".]]
143* BlackAndGrayMorality: The Returners let Terra choose to join them willingly and show a genuine interest in protecting her, but in the end they also exploit her power and connection to the Espers just like the Empire. Banon even states to her face, on more than one occasion, that she's their trump card, and that he's pinning their hopes on her.
144* BlatantLies:
145** This is the [[PlanetOfHats Hat]] of everyone in Zozo (except the merchant). Perhaps most notably exhibited by Dadaluma, who says, "Good day, gentle folks. Can I be of service? I hate fighting, so I'd better let you pass" right before attacking the party.
146** Also Gestahl at the banquet, when he claims that all he really wants is peace, amongst other things. The Returners don't buy his act for a minute.
147* BlindIdiotTranslation: A rare case for the SNES/[=PS1=] version. The item "Lich Ring" was translated as "Relic Ring" and its description is not true. It doesn't turn the body cold, but it instead makes the wielder undead. Later translations fix this and states what it actually does.
148* BlockingStopsAllDamage: This is one of the dodge animations in the game: the character is attacked but pulls out their shield, and remains uninjured. There's also a parry animation, and Shadow has a specific animation that averts this: he's injured, but not as much as he would be otherwise (he also has Interceptor counter for massive damage).
149* BlowYouAway: Several enemies can permanently blow the party members away from battle, with Typhon being the most infamous example.
150* BonusDungeon: The Cultists' Tower. The GBA remake adds two additional ones, the Dragons' Den and the Soul Shrine. Technically, everything after getting the ''Falcon'' is optional, too.
151* BookEnds: A musical example. [[spoiler:The opening riff which sounds similar to "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is played again just before the final boss fight.]]
152* BorderPatrol: The Guardians. They're incredibly hard enemies, and are meant to be such a BeefGate that a player can't pass. [[spoiler:You do end up fighting one in Kefka's Tower, where it nearly has as much HP as the final boss.]]
153* BoringButPractical:
154** Edgar's Auto Crossbow. He starts out with it, and it'll end most random encounters in one round up until you hit Zozo, at which point it's still effective, just not as much.
155** The Earrings Relic boosts magic damage by 25%. It so happens that aside from magic, most characters use magic power to enhance their secondary skills (Phantom Rush, Dance, Lore, Slots). Bound to be one of your most used relics up until the last third of the game when you can hit the damage cap without them.
156** The Osmose spell, which steals MP, isn't flashy, and it's usually easier to just kill an enemy rather than nerf its spellcasting first. But the ability to refill a character's MP more or less at will means being able to throw around powerful lategame nukes like level 3 elemental spells, Meteor, and Ultima with wild abandon.
157* BossAlteringConsequence: The Phantom Train can die in one hit by using a Phoenix Down, due to [[ReviveKillsZombie being an undead boss.]]
158* BossBonanza:
159** In Kefka's Tower. There’s Ultima Buster, Inferno, two of the Eight Dragons, Guardian, the Warring Triad, then the Final Boss (which itself is an amalgamation of '''even more''' bosses!).
160** There are even some earlier during the climactic parts of the World of Balance (specifically the [[StormingTheCastle Magitek Research Facility]] and [[DiscOneFinalDungeon Floating Continent]]). During your first visit to Vector, you fight Ifrit/Shiva, Number 024, Number 128 (with two limbs), and the Imperial Palace Cranes nearly back-to-back. During the Floating Continent, you fight five tough waves of Imperial Air soldiers, then [[DualBoss Ultros and Chupon]], then the Imperial Air Base. After that you deal with the [=AtmaWeapon=], who's the ClimaxBoss of the game.
161* BossInMookClothing: The invisible Intangir on the Triangle Island of the World of Balance, which is invisible, absorbs every element, and has more HP than any other enemy at that point in the game. In the World of Ruin, there’s the infamous Brachosaur, which is usually considered stronger than any boss in the game. He can sneeze away your characters and use Meteor and Ultima. If only one character is left alive or not sneezed away, you get the interesting sight of a monster [[NoKillLikeOverkill hitting you by 9999]] if he uses Ultima.
162* BossRemix: "Dancing Mad", which mainly uses Kefka's {{Leitmotif}}, but it also has parts taken from the opening theme, "Catastrophe" (that plays when you confront Gestahl and Kefka on the FloatingContinent), and "The Fierce Battle (Fight to the Death)".
163* {{Bowdlerise}}:
164** As was standard for Nintendo of America at the time, all references to religion and alcohol were censored out of the English SNES version. Pubs were changed to [[FrothyMugsOfWater cafes]], "Holy" was changed to "Pearl", and some scantily-clad female sprites were covered up. The [=PS1=] English release kept the Woolsey script and censored dialogue, but did not retain the visual censorship, thus restoring the pubs and the nudity. The EnhancedRemake for the GBA and mobile/PC release had a new, uncensored script but kept some of the censored sprites.
165** Both the English and Japanese ''Advance'' releases also censored the scene where guards beat a chained-up Celes in order to snag the CERO All and [=E10+=] rating--''not'' because of a real-life murder as many believed. While the mobile release undid most of the visual censorship (and was rated T for Teen), it still censored the Celes pummeling scene.
166** One of the dumbest (and admittedly kind of hilarious) examples comes from the opening to the World of Ruin. In the original script, Cid tells Celes that there used to be other people on this deserted island but that, in their despair, they flung themselves off the cliffs to the north and, should Cid die at the end of this sequence, Celes attempts suicide in this very same way. In the original translation, however, when Celes approaches the cliff, she apparently instead remembers Cid saying that when the other people on the island "were feeling down they'd take a leap of faith from the cliffs up north... perked 'em right up!" Not only is this line never spoken prior to this scene (everyone else died from boredom according to Cid), there are zero edits made to the suicide jump itself. Celes flings herself over the edge of the cliff with tears in her eyes to the accompaniment of sad music. It has no context with that clumsily-inserted line.
167** Every re-release of the game after 2000 in all regions gives the Goddess more clothing than in the original Japanese SNES release, though still less than what she's wearing in the US SNES release.
168** The original SNES translation had a bit of "censorship" that was the result of a bad translation: the enemy Hill Gigas was misread by the translator as "Hell Gigas", and since the word "Hell" was not allowed, its name was changed to [=HadesGigas=].
169* BraggingRightsReward:
170** The Crusader Magicite. You obtain it by defeating the Eight Dragons, six of which are all-around the World of Ruin and the last two are deep in Kefka's Tower just before a PointOfNoReturn, so by the time you acquire it you're about to face the last few bosses. Even then, the spells it teaches are Meteor and Meltdown; you probably got the Ragnarok Magicite or the Paladin's Shield which teach Ultima, which is basically Meteor but better, and Meltdown hits all enemies and allies and is only useful for niche strategies involving elemental equipment to absorb the damage to heal yourself. Finally, Crusader's summon attack infamously hits both enemies and the party and will likely kill you, so you'll never use it except for the novelty of doing so.
171** In the GBA version, all characters have an ultimate weapon obtainable in the Dragons' Den, and defeating Kaiser Dragon rewards the Diabolos Magicite. But if you can get this far, your party is so powerful you don't need those weapons, and Diabolos' spells aren't particularly useful and Diabolos itself is only helpful for squeezing a few more stat boosts out of characters if you're obsessed with min-maxing them to perfection.
172* BreakingTheFellowship: By the breaking of the airship they are currently on.
173* BreakingTheFourthWall: During the opera sequence the Impresario tells the player what they must do, while Locke ends up doing this to the [[ShowWithinAShow in-universe opera]] to save it. Relm, meanwhile, waves to the player at the start of each battle if she is in the party.
174** Ultros' taunt of "Don't tease the octopus, kids!" could be read as one as well.
175* ButThouMust: Played with when Terra is given the choice to join the Returners or not. She accompanies the Returners on the trip to Narshe either way, but if she refuses three times then it ends up being she has to for terms of plot, the Empire is headed to their base and she needs an escape as much as they do. The Empire still comes even if she agrees to join, so one way or the other an alliance is inevitable[[note]]The only difference is in the reward you get. Accepting gets you the Gauntlet relic, while refusing three times gets you a Genji Glove.[[/note]].
176* ByWallThatIsHoley: Used to dodge the descending ceiling inside the Zone Eater.
177* CanonName: During the credits. In Final Fantasy tradition, the canon names are present at every naming screen, but the credits come complete with canon ''last'' names!
178* CapturedSuperEntity: The Espers held by the Empire. Ramuh will ask the party to free them. Terra herself might be counted as one.
179* CelebrityResemblance: Celes resembles the opera singer Maria. Because of this, she becomes a drop-in replacement for her, as part of a plan to obtain an airship. Setzer notices the difference only after bringing Celes aboard.
180* CensorSteam: Chadarnook's goddess mode has a strategically-placed steam or smoke effect covering her naughty bits. She has a lot less censor steam in the Japanese original, [=PS1=], mobile and PC versions than she does in the SNES and GBA versions.
181* CentralTheme: Loss and how to deal with it, and also happiness, and meaning in life, are where you find it. No matter how much is taken from you, how much you lose, or whether it will ultimately last, you should never give up living and finding things to love and live for.
182* CerebusRollercoaster: It was the grittiest entry in the series up to that point (and probably the first which moved players to tears). Like all ''Final Fantasy'' games, however, it does have its moments of silliness.
183* ChainOfDeals: The Coliseum, in a roundabout way. You bet a junk item to win something a bit better, bet it for something better, and so on until you get some of the best stuff in the game. For instance: bet an Elixir to win a Rename Card, which bets for Miracle Shoes, which bets for a Tintinabulum, which bets for a Growth Egg. Not listed: the chains that let you trade your way up to Elixirs, and an another one that trades up to the Rename Card.
184* ChallengeRun: The Switch and [=PS4=] versions of ''Pixel Remaster'' allow you to customize how much experience and AP is earned, including halving or disabling it entirely for increased difficulty.
185* CharacterAsHimself: The ending sequence, assuming you kept their default names.
186* CharacterInTheLogo: The logo has Terra in Magitek Armor.
187* [[ChasteHero Chaste Heroine]]: Terra starts off without any concept of love and wants to know WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove. This gets PlayedForLaughs when she's brought to Figaro Castle, as the guards of castle and Edgar are surprised she doesn't react negatively when Edgar hits on her.
188* ChekhovsGunman: Celes and General Leo appear in Terra's flashback not 30 minutes into the game. Additionally, Kefka is seen briefly in the opening cutscene.
189* ChestMonster:
190** As is typical of the ''FF'' series at this point, some chests have monsters inside of them. This time, however, there's a strong chance the monsters are the only things in a booby-trapped chest. You'll find a lot of them in the collapsing house in The World of Ruin, which also has a tight time limit for extra annoyance. Fortunately, most chest monsters will instead drop a unique treasure (an inversion of previous games, which give you the treasure first, and *then* throw you into a battle).
191** There's also the paintings in Owzer's mansion. In the World of Balance, they are innocuous, but in the World of Ruin, examining the flower painting in the first floor, which your characters state every time that they "look alive", will lead you to discover they ARE alive (and not in a good way). A second painting of a "lovely lady" also has a hidden monster in it, but that one must be fought to continue in the mansion.
192* CleaningUpRomanticLooseEnds: Late in the game, [[spoiler:Locke finally finds the legendary Phoenix magicite, which he hopes can revive the long-deceased (but otherwise preserved) Rachel, his former girlfriend. Unfortunately, the magicite is so weak that it shatters on use, only providing enough power to revive Rachel for a moment. Just before she dies again, she tells Locke to stop torturing himself for what happened to her and to love Celes as much as he loved her. Oh, and her power fixes the Phoenix magicite so you can use it during gameplay]].
193* ClimaxBoss: Atma Weapon is the last boss fought in the World of Balance part of the game, and is fought right before the PointOfNoReturn.
194** Also, the fight against Kefka at Narshe is the climax of the first arc of the storyline, bringing together all of the various characters for the first time.
195* CognizantLimbs: Several bosses like Number 128, Air Force, Engine Room tentacle monsters and others.
196* LesCollaborateurs: The reason South Figaro falls to the Empire.
197* ColourCodedElements: The spells. White for healing, black for attacking, and grey for status changing/effect.
198* CombatTentacles: The Engine Room tentacle monsters and, of course, Ultros.
199* {{Conscription}}: The Gestahlian Empire forcibly conscripts men from the cities it subjugates. For example, the conquered city of Tzen is populated by women, children, and elderly men because all of the men of military age were forcibly drafted. In another city, the main characters meet an injured young man who defected from the imperial forces after the siege of Doma.
200* ContractualBossImmunity: Infamous for unintentionally averting this thanks to the Vanish/Doom bug and Banish. There are also a small number of other (apparently unintentional) exceptions, such as Gau's Rafflesia / Nightshade rage, whose 'Entice' ability acts like the charm but doesn't respect immunity and doesn't wear off when the enemy is hit.
201* ContrivedCoincidence: So, Celes happens to look exactly like the renowned opera singer Maria, who was stalked by the man named Setzer who, in turn, owns the world's only (active) airship, which the party needs to get to the South Continent? And, more importantly, she happens to have a world-class operatic soprano with no formal training![[note]]The last bit is toned down in the Pixel Remaster: at least in some versions, Celes performs her part decently, but very far from "world-class soprano" level.[[/note]]
202* ConvectionSchmonvection: In the cave that leads to the Sealed Gate. Falling into the lava will only bring the party to the beginning of the cave. Later, in the Phoenix Cave, you'll cross lakes of lava by hopping over tiny stepping stones. Towards the end of that same dungeon, a button that cools/drains the lava is all that's needed to immediately render it safe to walk across.
203* CoolAirship: Two of them: The Blackjack, and later the Falcon. The former belonged to Setzer, and the latter belonged to a lover of Setzer's named Daryl. [[spoiler:After losing the Blackjack during the apocalypse, you have to go find the Falcon in order to search for the rest of your party.]]
204* CoolCrown: The Royal Crown is a Headgear that gives a respectably high amount of defenses and gives stat bonuses across the board. Fittingly, the item can only be worn by Edgar or Sabin, the kings of Castle Figaro.
205* CosmeticAward:
206** In the GBA version, The Master's Crown, "a ceremonial crown awarded for overcoming the challenges of the Soul Shrine". It doesn't do anything but prove you beat it.
207** In the discontinued iOS/Steam version, the [[MonsterCompendium bestiary]] will give the picture of each normal monster in it a frame and medal for [[MassMonsterSlaughterSidequest every ten of them you slay, up to gold at 30]]. Bosses get a gold frame automatically. There are also a vanishing few monsters that get a gold frame after three are slain, but that number doesn't include most monsters from PreexistingEncounters, which can otherwise only be fought on the Veldt. There's no other reward for slaying so many monsters. The frames and medals don't appear on the monsters' actual pages, only on the monster list itself.
208* CosmicKeystone: The sealed statues of the Warring Triad are all that remains of three goddesses whose powers shake the world just by existing. When they called a truce, they transformed themselves to stone in such a way that their magic canceled each other's magic out in a stable equilibrium. When Kefka discovers them and starts mucking about with them, just shifting their placement slightly is enough to rearrange continents.
209* CostumePorn: Somewhat evident in-game, but most evident in the Creator/YoshitakaAmano art. Kefka's design in particular features a rainbow of colors, feathers, stripes, polka dots, and a general chaotic appearance. But since he's a MonsterClown, it works.
210* CoverDrop: When the logo is blood red on the cover and flaming in-game, complete with ominous thunderclouds spewing lightning, you know it's not gonna end well...
211* CowardlyBoss:
212** Deathgaze, who will run away after a few turns, which means you'll have to find him all over again.
213** Kefka, who is engaged in battle no less than three times in the World of Balance -- the Imperial Camp near Doma, the decisive battle in Narshe, and just outside the Sealed Gate. He runs away from the first two fights, and is swept away by the escaping Espers in the third.
214* CrapsackWorld: The World of Ruin. The distant past of the setting counts as well. Even in the World of Balance, it isn't that much nicer, what with the constant threat of the Empire invading other towns.
215* CreditsMedley: It uses the {{leitmotif}} of each character, regardless of whether you recruited them or not, along with "Final Fantasy", the series main theme.
216* CreepyMortician: The undertaker in Kohlingen. Locke is busy trying to explain the tragedy of his past with Rachel and even put on the minor-key of his {{Leitmotif}}, meanwhile the undertaker is literally bouncing around the room and cackling with glee about how perfectly Rachel has been preserved. He comes off as TheMadHatter--while the game never explains his behavior it gives the impression that he's been made dotty by exposure to his embalming chemicals.
217* CrescentMoonIsland: Crescent Island is the location of the village of Thamasa, the home of the only humans in the world (aside from Terra) to be born with the ability to use magic, as they are descendants of the Magi. The villagers keep their magic a secret from outsiders due to fear of persecution.
218* CrutchCharacter: Cyan and Edgar, but mostly for his Tools skill. Sabin also warrants a mention, especially as soon as he gets the Rising Phoenix Blitz during the first part of the game. To some extent, this may be considered a bit of a [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] in that Edgar and Sabin have all of the tropes of a Crutch Character (overpowered compared to your starting characters, get them early on to help out) EXCEPT for the part where they're supposed to leave the story once your other characters have gotten a chance to get more powerful and shine. While Edgar's Tools will start waning in power compared to the other main characters (although still quite useful), Sabin's martial arts only stop outclassing everyone else at the endgame when characters can spam Ultima spells or use the Offering, and BOTH characters are available for about 90% of the game! You will have access to both within an hour of starting the game, an hour of starting the World of Ruin, and only lose access to them when the game forces you to take only Terra and Locke to find the Espers (about an hour of time).
219* CurbStompBattle: The out of control Espers do this to the Empire, then later Kefka returns the favour.
220* {{Cutscene}}: Pretty much started the "long Final Fantasy cutscene" trend.
221* CutsceneIncompetence: Basically, any time after the Narshe Battle Sequence, if the party runs into Kefka, they're gonna get their asses beat. {{Justified|Trope}} when you encounter Gestahl on the Floating Continent. The first thing he does to you is use the very source of magic in the world to paralyze you.
222* CuttingTheKnot: A lot of boss fights can be made a lot easier if you use unorthodox tactics, especially status ailments.
223** Atma Weapon gets stronger and stronger attacks as he weakens, and has a lot of HP too. Or you can avoid both problems by using Rasp and Osmose to drain his MP instead, which will also kill him and keeps him stuck in his simplest attack pattern.
224** The boss Wrexsoul can be [[PuzzleBoss rather complicated]] to defeat. You're ''supposed'' to kill your own party members until he emerges from hiding, and then attack him. Or, you know, you could just cast Banish, that works just as well (if you don't mind not getting the Item Drop). That the Soul Savers are vulnerable to Banish and this was not changed in re-releases suggests it may have been intended.[[note]]Banish delays an enemy's "final attack" script that normally executes when they die. The [=SoulSavers=] are scripted to endlessly respawn when they die, but if you kill both of them with Banish, that script is delayed a turn. Thus. before they get a chance to come back, the game reads that all enemies have been defeated, and therefore, you win![[/note]]
225** As usual in ''Final Fantasy'', ReviveKillsZombie. The otherwise-challenging boss Phantom Train happens to be undead, so you can throw a Phoenix Down at it and end the fight in one round.
226** Sure, you can do as the game suggests and deploy your Runic ability on Tunnel Armor...[[GuideDangIt or]] you can pick up the Thunder Rod found in that same cave and OneHitKill it.
227** Number [=024=] in the Magitek Research Facility uses Barrier Change to absorb every element but one, then uses spells of the opposite element. He's clearly meant as a test of your brand-new magic skills and how you understand elemental affinities. However, he's vulnerable to Imp, which disables his ability to use magic or Barrier Change.
228** Magic Master in the Cultists' Tower uses the same strategy, but he's vulnerable to Berserk, which again stops him from using magic. He still hits pretty hard, but this is simply remedied by Vanishing all of the party members. Also, since he plays by the same rules, just draining his magic to 0 will make him just drop dead, and this even skips his TakingYouWithMe Ultima spell which will otherwise hurt a hell of a lot and may end your game, too. Alternatively, one can use [[AutoRevive Life3]]/Reraise on each party member before striking the final blow, to survive the Ultima.
229** The Samurai Soul enemy uses a variety of nasty attacks. Or you can just cast Confuse on him, causing him to use his OneHitKO attack on himself.
230* {{Cyborg}}: Sergeants and Belzecues in the Magitek Factory. In addition to [[PowersAsPrograms utilizing programs to attack]] the party in battle, they are weak to Water and Lightning elemental attacks, just like machines, and they have high defense. They are also stated to have been infused with Magitek, though it's not exactly clear why simple dobermans get the same kind of cybernetic enchantments/replacements and battle programs as the high ranked and heavily armed officers of the Empire.
231[[/folder]]
232
233[[folder:D - F]]
234* DamnYouMuscleMemory: Selecting multiple targets with a spell is done with the shoulder buttons, rather than the left and right arrows on the D-Pad as is usual for the series. Also, the SNES version uses the then-standard rightmost-face-button-to-select, lowest-face-button-to-cancel control scheme, while most ports use the opposite (as became the standard from the [=PS1=] onward) with no option to remap the buttons.
235* DarkerAndEdgier: ''Final Fantasy VI'' was by far the darkest game in the franchise at the time of its release, and is still a contender for the title today. The storyline is rife with tales of personal loss, the central antagonist has multiple counts of genocide on his hands, and halfway through the game you face TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. ''VI''[='=]s atmosphere is almost uniformly bleak even prior to becoming a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Virtually everyone aside from the more upbeat main characters is afraid of the impending war and the Empire is regularly shown to still be in the process of conquering the world through invasion and slaughter. ''After'' the apocalypse, most of the party has edged against the DespairEventHorizon and must be swayed back into fighting. This is in stark contrast with its predecessor ''Final Fantasy V'', which is so lighthearted that it often teeters on the edge of being an AffectionateParody. This even extends to the numerous bosses that the party faces in the game, which often border on horror genres up to and including: Frankenstein's Monster, Ghost Trains, genetic experiments, possessed paintings, and demons.
236* DarkestAfrica: The Veldt with Mobliz at its edge is the in-universe equivalent of this. It's a large open plain with tribal music playing over it, including a BackgroundMusicOverride for the battles, it's characterized as a place for hunting, and it's where you meet WildChild Gau, who lives off the land.
237* DarkestHour: Upon waking up in the World of Ruin, Celes finds out she's alone on a tiny island with Cid, the world has been ripped apart, plants and animals are dying off, and for all Cid knows no one else is alive out there. Then, depending on the player's actions, [[spoiler:Cid dies. Celes falls over the DespairEventHorizon hard here and is DrivenToSuicide]].
238* DarkReprise:
239** "Epitaph", a tearjerking variation of Setzer's Theme.
240** "Metamorphosis" contains a suspenseful and fast-paced variation of "Terra", appropriately used for instances filled with danger.
241** The beginning of "Dancing Mad"'s 1st Movement is a DarkReprise of "Catastrophe"--''itself'' a dark reprise of the "[[BookEnds Opening Theme]]"
242** "Forever Rachel" is a minor-key variant of Locke's Theme.
243* ADayInTheLimelight: Many quests in the World of Ruin.
244* DeadCharacterWalking: Has a couple of bugs that allow you to walk around with an all-dead (Or all-zombie) party. Of course, it's Game Over if you enter a fight, but hey.
245* DeadPersonConversation: Cyan's family during his nightmare, and before that, in the Ghost Train Station.
246* DeathByChildbirth: The mothers of Gau, Relm, Edgar, and Sabin.
247* DeathMountain: Mt. Kolts, the Esper gathering site, and Mt. Zozo.
248* DefeatByModesty: A rare male variant. [[ImpossibleThief How does Locke steal someone's whole outfit in one go anyway?]]
249* DegradedBoss:
250** Besides the usual boss-turned-mook routine, some early bosses will appear on the Veldt as regular enemies, including one of the eight dragons.
251** Subverted by the Guardian, a hulking tanklike Magitek mech that makes smaller machines look like toys. It's completely invulnerable in the World of Balance, and functions as a BorderPatrol plot barrier rather than something you're meant to fight. Kefka salvages it in the World of Ruin and sets it to guard his Tower. You can fight and destroy it at that point, but it's still very dangerous.
252* {{Demihuman}}: Some Espers are like this, but not all. The backstory states that Espers are former humans transformed by the Warring Triad for purposes of war.
253* DependingOnTheWriter: The GBA and SNES English releases have different translations. Both were done well, but they end up portraying some characters in distinctly different ways.
254** The SNES version is rife with mistranslations that were later fixed with the GBA version. Setzer is probably the character that changed the most. In the SNES translation, Setzer is a happy-go-lucky thrill seeker who JumpedAtTheCall. In the GBA version, he's almost the exact opposite: he's willing to take crazy risks because he's a world-weary nihilist who [[DeathSeeker simply doesn't care whether he lives or dies]], which is why he's always ''gambling'' with his life.
255*** Notably, his appearance in VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII seems like a {{Flanderization}} of the first version.
256** Edgar also undergoes changes, most notably in his first interactions with Relm. Originally dismissive of the young child artist, the GBA version has him saying "Hope you're still around in eight years". You see his flirting on the whole as a sign of [[TheCharmer genuine promiscuity]], a [[BunnyEarsLawyer personality quirk]], or a form of [[ObfuscatingStupidity obfuscation]].
257*** According to a non-canon doujinshi written by Soraya Saga (the Figaro character designer), he's got a FreudianExcuse -- his mom died when they were kids so he's drawn to seek female companionship where and however he can.
258*** And if you think about it, "hope you're still around in eight years" is a pretty bleak thing to say considering [[PlayerPunch what happened just before he said it]]. The statement carries the implication that she's likely to ''die'' before she reaches adulthood.
259*** Edgar doesn't say quite the same thing in the original Japanese version, what he says there is something like "That's just criminal......Don't even think of it." It's worth noting that this line was supposed to come out as a ''joke''.
260** Gestahl's final lines are pointedly different between the GBA and original Japanese and SNES versions as well. His GBA and Japanese lines give an EvenEvilHasStandards vibe, but his SNES line shows that he's selfish to the last:
261--->'''Gestahl/Gastra:''' ガストラ「恐怖が世界をおおうぞ… (Terror will engulf the world...)\
262'''Gestahl (SNES):''' There'll be no-one to worship us...\
263'''Gestahl (GBA):''' The world is about to learn...the true meaning of fear...
264** In the Japanese version Kefka was a [[TheFool laughing idiot]], while in the English version Ted Woolsey made him deeply hateful and cruel while keeping his sense of humor, which made him even darker than if it had been removed. This change was so beloved in comparison to the original that it impacted his future portrayals globally.
265** Atma/Ultima Buster. Not necessarily the boss itself, but the meaning of its infamous MindScrew pre-battle speech ranges from it believing that the only point to existence [[BloodKnight is to fight]] (hence why it immediately begins attacks after its finished), believing that it [[TheWorldIsNotReady is above humans and that the player characters are unworthy to know]], believing that there [[TheAntiNihilist is no meaning but it choosing to fight the party anyway]] ([[DespairEventHorizon or that there's no meaning to anything period]]), or just being a {{Troll}}.
266--->'''SNES:''' I'm Atma... ... Left here since the birth... Forgotten in the river of time... I've had eternity to... Ponder the meaning of things... And now I have an answer...\
267'''GBA:''' I am the one known as Ultima... Forged an eternity ago and left here... Forgotten in the mists of time... Long have I pondered what I should do... Long, long have I pondered... But now it seems I have an answer...
268* DescendingCeiling: Inside of Zone Eater, there's one room where a rocky ceiling comes crashing down at regular intervals. Failing to dodge it correctly results in an instant game over.
269* DesperationAttack: Each character has a unique LimitBreak that has a chance to show up when they use the Fight command at low HP. But the chances of activating the Limit Break are extremely low -- each one only has a 1-in-16 chance to show up, and they can't appear in the first 25 seconds of combat.
270* DevelopersForesight:
271** Every playable character has the same range of movement and expression sprites. On the one hand, this is so, with certain scenes where the party leader makes these animations, every character has a sprite to use for them. However, even temporary playable characters, like General Leo, Banon, and Locke's merchant disguise, have the same animations, so if you hack or glitch them into the party, they still work. Even Esper Terra and the Imp, which are normally impossible to have as party leaders, have a full range of animations they never use, just in case. However, the developers didn't have ''full'' foresight. Temporary playable characters lack Chocobo-riding sprites, so riding one with them as party leader makes them glitch up.[[note]]They furthermore overlooked a Chocobo Stable on the world map south of Figaro Castle, so a determined player can head there in Banon's scenario, rent a Chocobo, and behold his lack of a riding sprite with no glitches or hacks required. Whoops. The Pixel Remaster corrects this oversight, though.[[/note]]
272** You know how party members not in the party loiter around the airship deck? If you somehow hack or glitch Umaro or Gogo into your party in the World of Balance, they still have places assigned in the Blackjack for them to appear when they're not in the party. The same goes for Shadow who normally isn't ever seen on the airship in the World of Balance.
273** Many scenes dynamically choose who will speak at any given point based on who's in your party, prioritizing more plot-central characters. A lot of these lines are "generic" and can be spoken by anyone; however, if you bring [[RaisedByWolves Gau]] as your only party member to certain scenes (such as meeting Ramuh), the generic dialog will be replaced by his HulkSpeak.
274** When you order food aboard the Phantom Train, the scene plays differently depending on who the party leader is, including the Ghosts that join as guests.
275** If you try to bring Shadow to Narshe, where you would have the option of changing your party, he leaves. He also leaves if you hire him before going to the opera house, in case you thought to try and get him to come to Vector. (However, their foresight on this has limits; if you manage to end up with Shadow as the only person in your party - due to hiring him with Gau and leaving Gau in the Veldt, say - this will lead to a GameBreakingBug.)
276** When Locke heads into the South Figaro secret basements, he acts differently based on his current outfit. As a merchant or in his normal clothes he hides from the Imperial leaving Celes' room, but as a soldier he pretends to be standing on guard and salutes as they pass. Celes in turn reacts differently to him depending on his outfit.
277** When it's time to head to the Sealed Gate, you need Terra in the party and a party without her won't pass the Imperial Base. However, if you make a party with ''only'' Terra in it, she still turns back, as there's a brief scripted battle at the end of the area that the party members other than her participate in.
278** Some small scenes are very obscure and require the player to go out of their way to see them, but the developers expected you might. After Sabin joins the party shortly before reaching the Returner hideout, if you go all the way back through Mt. Kolts to South Figaro and talk to Duncan's wife, Sabin will have a brief scene where they talk about Duncan. If you return to the ''Blackjack'' after the imperial banquet, you can view a cutscene of Setzer and Cid repairing the airship that foreshadows the character revelations about Setzer that come in the World of Ruin. If you play through the World of Balance without ever talking to Shadow, the scene where you meet General Leo in Albrook is different to accomodate Shadow's introduction and naming.
279** In addition to the song that "Maria" sings vocally in any localized language in the ''Pixel Remaster'', there is a set of three "error lyrics" that she can sing in StylisticSuck, each with a shocked reaction, if you choose the wrong lyric.
280** When facing Humbaba in the World of Ruin, once he's attacked after being weakened below a certain HP threshold, he's scripted to counter with Humbaba Breath to remove two characters from battle, and then when the battle with him starts over Terra rejoins the party. If you manage to kill him outright or Vanish/Doom him before he does this, however, he's still scripted to use Humbaba Breath once upon dying, ensuring that there will be at least one empty spot in the party for Terra to enter in the second round.
281** In the second half of the game, most of the playable characters are reduced to OptionalPartyMember status and need to be re-recruited. Not recruiting them before the final dungeon changes what happens during their respective scenes in the character medley portion of the ending scenes. For most of them, the character's portait is shown while the camera pans over a related area (such as inside the Zone Eater for Gogo). But there are a few notable exceptions:
282*** Edgar's scene, which is normally shared with Sabin. If the latter is absent, [[spoiler:the falling beam will miss Edgar, and the party will move it out of the way together]]. Edgar will then remark, "Where's Sabin when you need him...?"
283*** Celes' scene, which she normally shares with Locke. [[spoiler:Setzer saves her instead and remarks how her life "is hanging by a bandanna!" (the one she found on a seagull) She notes out loud that it's her good luck charm, and wants Locke to look after her again.]]
284* DialogueTree: The dinner party. It all leads to the same place, but different choices give you rewards based on your etiquette during the dinner.
285* DifficultButAwesome: Gau, Relm, and Mog are among the most hideously-underrated and overlooked characters in the series, even though all three of them can be utterly devastating when raised properly, and they all have access to some of the game's best armor and weapons. Especially in the SNES version.
286** Using such equipment, Gau and Mog can easily max out their defense, and Relm has the highest magic stat in the game. Yes, even more than the [[StoryandGameplaySegregation half-esper Terra]]!
287** This is especially true of Gau. For those who are too lazy to build his list of Rages, he'll be very weak compared to everyone else, but if you take some time to get some of the better Rages, Gau becomes an extremely powerful character with a Rage for every situation, giving him access to very powerful magic that doesn't cost a single mp and various immunities and automatic statuses, with the only downside being that he becomes uncontrollable once a Rage is chosen and can't change it. And then there's Wind God Gau. Give him a Merit Award and an Offering and Cyan's Tempest weapon and use Stray Cat, and you have a 50% chance to deal four incredibly massive hits that damage everything on screen, making Gau by far the strongest character.
288* DinosaursAreDragons: People refer to the Dinosaur Forest enemies as dragons. Also, the designs for dinosaurs are used as {{Palette Swap}}s for actual dragons. They also have some incredible attacks, like Meteor and/or Ultima.
289* DiscOneFinalBoss: The recurring boss character in ''Final Fantasy'', Atma Weapon (Ultima in the newer versions), shows up for the very first time to block your path to Kefka and Gestahl on the Floating Continent. It's oddly-erudite, has six limbs, is covered in some kind of metallic tubing, and exhales blue smoke. According to an [=NPC=] scholar who specializes in ancient weapons, a number of Ultima Weapons were manufactured during the War of the Magi. One is the sword you find in the Cave to the Sealed Gate; the other is a living weapon bred for destruction. You find another one minding its business in Kefka's Tower, and an optional Omega Weapon (named after the superboss in ''VIII'') waits in the GBA's Dragon's Den.
290* DiscOneFinalDungeon: The Floating Continent. Even before that, the game attempts a (brief) Disc One ''Ending Sequence'', complete with [[EverybodyLaughsEnding everyone laughing]] and Locke waving to the camera. [[OhCrap And then]] [[FromBadToWorse Kefka shows up]]...
291* DiscOneNuke: ''VI'' hands players many ways to break the game's difficulty over their knee early on. This is partially to help carry you to the point you get Magicite and can start teaching the party magic, at which point most (but not all) of these tactics start to fall victim to PowerCreep.
292** Edgar and Sabin, just Edgar and Sabin. Edgar's Tools include area-of-effect damage and another Confuses all enemies, and shortly before you get your Magicite he can get the Drill and Chainsaw, which deal massive damage to a single target and the Chainsaw can randomly deal a OneHitKO. Sabin starts off with Raging Fist, a powerful single-target attack that ignores defense and cannot be blocked, and is very easy to input commands for. And around the time you get Magicite he'll pick up Rising Phoenix, which is almost as good as a Fira spell on all enemies.
293** Gau's Rage, while a total GuideDangIt, shatters game balance -- he can use powerful magic like Fira, Thundara, Bio, Cura, or even the '''Death''' spell. And he can get the Rages that have these abilities as soon as he joins the party. Even without magic, the Stray Cat Rage's special attack Cat Scratch is a Level 6 physical attack that deals massive damage comparable to what Sabin and Edgar can do with Raging Fist and Drill, and can carry Gau's weight through most of the World of Balance. The Aspiran/Aspik rage teaches Gigavolt, which is basically Thundaga/Bolt 3, which isn't able to be learned until part-way through the World of Ruin. It's as strong as Fira or Blizzara ''if they are hitting a weakness''. It can be learned before going to the southern continent, around halfway through the first half.
294** In South Figaro, if you know where to look, you can find two excellent Relics on the first visit: the Gigas Glove which boosts all physical damage (including from special attacks) by 25%, and the Hermes Sandals which cast Haste on the wearer. Put them on Edgar with his Auto-Crossbow and he can solo-run Mt. Kolts.
295* DiscretionShot: When Doma is poisoned, Cyan can explore the rest of the castle, where he can find the last of the living soldiers near the barracks door staring at the wall saying "... We are finished". Entering the barracks makes Cyan stop just before entering the room, staying there for the few seconds, close the door, barely move back and say "... Here too."
296* DisposableSuperheroMaker: How the Empire was making its Magitek knights before it became obsolete with the discovery of magicite (of course, you destroying the Magitek Research facility didn't help either).
297* DistantReactionShot: When the World of Balance ends, a distant shot of the planet is shown as explosions split a continent in half.
298* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Terra's second flashback, where she remembers Emperor Gestahl speaking to a crowd of soldiers clad in all brown about being the "chosen ones" meant to rule the world, while everyone sticks up their right hand in salute... For extra measure, the three generals behind him (Kefka, Leo and Celes) are all blonde.
299* DrivenToSuicide: The survivors of the world's near destruction who ended up on Solitary Island. Over the course of a year, they all lost their will to live and threw themselves off a cliff into the rocks below. If Cid dies, Celes herself follows in their footsteps, though she doesn't succeed.
300* DualWielding: The Genji Glove relic enables it. Combine it with Master Scroll and Two {{Infinity Plus One Sword}}s for the most powerful weapon combo.
301* DualBoss: Ultros and Typhon, of course. They proved so popular to get an appearance in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'' for a [[DownloadableContent DLC battle]], and then again in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''.
302* DubNameChange: A lot. See that page for the examples.
303* DumpStat: Stamina can be raised with espers, but its only functions are to increase resistance to instant death and to increase how many hit points are recovered by Regen... or ''lost with Poison''. A lesser case can be made for Strength, since LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards is largely in effect in this game, plus any value of strength over 128 becomes useless thanks to the damage calculation. In the versions before the GBA one, Evasion was bugged and had no purpose, with Magic Evasion covering it. Even Speed gets in on the act, despite having very limited options to increase it. Speed increases the rate at which the ATB gauge fills, which sounds nice in theory to be able to go more often than slower characters, but since the gauges fill up when even when other characters (friendly or hostile) are taking their actions, your slower characters will still be ready to go the next time you're finished inputting the commands for your higher speed characters. Speed will thus only be important when there are few characters in the battle and/or they're all doing actions with quick animations to actually allow down time between character turns.
304* DungeonTown: This game, next to ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'', contains some of the most prominent examples of this trope. You begin the game stepping on Narshe guards with your PoweredArmor in the city streets, which culminates with a trip through Narshe's mines. Later on, you are forced to infiltrate an occupied South Figaro as Locke, having to solve some logic puzzles in order to get from the east side of town to the west. Once you pick up Celes, the under works of the town become a traditional combat-oriented dungeon. Sometime afterwards, you have to go to the dangerous and run-down Zozo and deal with armed homeless men and magical prostitutes before dealing with a gang-leader named Dadaluma. And after that, there's Vector, [[MookBouncer where guards will be eager to boot you out of the upper part of town]]. In the World of Ruin, Narshe is all but abandoned, and monsters swarm the streets, and Owzer's House is invaded by a haunted painting...or two.
305* EarnYourHappyEnding: Probably one of the kings of this trope, as ''the world ends halfway through the game.'' Or at least, it nearly ends. Yet by the time the credits roll, most of the main cast has resolved their core conflicts and can move on with their lives.
306* EarthquakesCauseFissures: The Quake spell makes holes instead of fissures. Played straight when the world nearly ends.
307* EarthShatteringPoster: Halfway through the game, you get a nice space-view of the world getting nuked all over... including a fear-inducing image of a continent ''getting split in half''.
308* EldritchAbomination: The three tiers at Kefka's Tower, which is pretty much a huge demon with CognizantLimbs, a tiger head, four clones of Kefka, an engine, a woman, [[PietaPlagiarism a reclining Kefka clone, and the angelic bust of a woman resembling the Virgin Mary]], all stuck to the very top of Kefka's Tower. The reason of why they exist at all is not given. The Warring Triad counts as well. [[RuleOfSymbolism General fan consensus is that they exist as a parallel to]] ''Literature/TheDivineComedy''.
309* ElementalPowers: Like most of its siblings in the series, this game, too, features elemental powers.
310* EmptyLevels: It is advised not to grind too much until you get the best status-giving Espers[[note]]though that's only if you're min-maxing or trying to optimize your characters. The game is very winnable with a bare minimum of grinding, waiting until you have the best Espers just makes it easier[[/note]].
311* EndOfAnAge: This game was the final game in the series that was released on the Super NES, and the last one made for a Nintendo console before the jump to the [=PlayStation=].
312* EnemySummoner: Satellites, among others.
313* EnergyBeings: Various monsters, such as the monsters of the FloatingContinent, including Atma Weapon, which specifically describes itself as "pure energy". In an example of GameplayAndStoryIntegration, if you force these monsters to run out of [[{{Mana}} Magic Points]], they will die. This gimmick is necessary to beat one of the reborn Eight Dragons in the Dragons' Den.
314* EncounterRepellant: The Charm Bangle relic cuts the number of random encounters in half, and the Moogle Charm (which can only be equipped by Mog) eliminates them entirely.
315* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: Halfway through the game, it ''actually happens''. Not that the world ''actually ends,'' but it comes close.
316* EnormousEngine: The engine powering Figaro Castle -- while it's small compared to the castle, the characters are dwarfed in comparison (and they even have a boss battle on top of it).
317* EnsembleCast: According to director [[https://www.gameinformer.com/2019/04/02/the-best-of-an-era-looking-back-on-final-fantasy-vi-after-25-years Yoshinori Kitase]], "Everyone is the main character" was the guiding ethos of the game's development. While Terra is usually considered the main character, she's more the character you control at the start of the game. While her powers and origins are a focus for the first half of the game, there's a fair stretch of time where she leaves the party, and in the World of Ruin re-recruiting her is optional.[[note]]She still returns to guide the party out of Kefka's tower after defeating the FinalBoss regardless whether she has been re-recruited or not, however.[[/note]] Beyond that, a lot of the first half of the game also focuses on Locke, the second half sees Celes as the first character controlled, and from that point only Edgar and Setzer have to be recruited to finish the game, while Edgar and Sabin are very important characters for the first quarter of the game, with Sabin getting his own scenario. All in all, while some characters get more screentime than others, not one of them can really be considered the central hero.
318* EnterSolutionHere: Daryl's Tomb has an empty gravestone, and you can enter its solution once you check four tombstone room. If entered in the right order, reads "The World is Square" backwards. In the Japanese version, it's a different phrase "Rest in peace, my friend". This will lead to the Growth Egg item.
319* EpicFail: When the house bursts into flames in Thamasa and the fire's too strong to put out, one of the villagers says, "Maybe it's [[DisasterDominoes because of all the Flame Rods kept in the house]]."
320* EpicRocking: "Dancing Mad", a classically-styled piece with four distinct movements, each with their own theme and variation on different {{Leitmotif}}s from throughout the game. The full song stretches to about seventeen minutes long (compare to "[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII One-Winged Angel]]", which reaches less than half of that). The end theme (variously translated as "Reviving Green", "Balance Is Restored", or just "Ending Theme") is even longer, surpassing twenty-one minutes in length with ease. At the time it was, and maybe it still is, the longest track in the series.
321-->'''Nobuo Uematsu:''' Well, usually when you make a song it's two to three minutes in length, you have the introduction, the main part and the ending. But... for 'Dancing Mad' I didn't really put a stop on it, so I kept on working on it, working on it, working on it and that really let the song... you know... I got to play around with it for something like fourteen minutes, and it's really one of my favorites.
322* EscapeBattleTechnique: The game has the item variant.
323* EscortMission: Averting the usual headaches of escorting an NPC, Banon is by and far the best healer in the game and, in fact, one of the best healers in almost any RPG. His free full party heal is powerful enough that it's completely possible to simply weigh or tape down the button to select an action and walk away from the console for a day or two and become max level (the sequence where you escort Banon is a series of fights, it's possible to get into an infinite loop of said fights). You can eventually reach max level, which can overcome any unobtained stat gain for not using Espers.
324* EternalEngine: The Magitek Factory and its remains in Kefka's Tower. Figaro Castle also counts, particularly its massive basement which holds the engines themselves.
325* EvenEvilHasStandards: Celes, general of the Empire and responsible for conquering the town of Maranda (and probably South Figaro's occupation), started her HeelFaceTurn when she found out Kefka was planning to poison the people of Doma.
326* EverybodyLaughsEnding: Subverted. First, Celes and Locke get embarrassed over a comment from Relm. Relm and Strago start laughing. Then Terra starts laughing, Celes and Locke start laughing, and soon everyone on the screen is sharing a good laugh... and then ''Kefka'' starts laughing and walks into the scene.
327* EverybodysDeadDave: At the start of the game's second act, this is assumed by Cid, since as far as he can see, all that's left of the world is the tiny island the player is on. If Cid ends up dying, too, Celes tries to commit suicide out of the despair of this fact. She is quite shocked when after surviving, she sees a bird bandaged with a bandana that is strikingly similar to one worn by a certain thi--er, [[RunningGag treasure hunter]] -- meaning that, somewhere, people live.
328* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: A man in Jidoor says these exact words about "Impresario" of the Opera House.
329* TheEmpire: The evil expansionist Ghestalian Empire is one of the clearest video game examples you'll ever find.
330* EvilIsNotAToy: [[spoiler:Subverted with Kefka harassing the power of the Goddesses, mostly because he's so insane that he doesn't really care what the side-effects are. Played straight from Gestahl's perspective.]]
331* EvilTowerOfOminousness: The magic-only Cultists' Tower and, of course, Kefka's Tower.
332* EvilVersusOblivion: The reason Emperor Gestahl and Kefka turn on each other.
333* ExactTimeToFailure: The fall of the FloatingContinent and the collapse of the Tzen mansion, among others. Ultros arguably does a bit of LampshadeHanging when he tries to drop a 4-ton weight onto the opera scene:
334-->'''Ultros:''' This is heavier than I thought! It'll take me 5 minutes to drop it!
335* ExpressDelivery: [[spoiler:Although Katarin is with child in the World of Ruin, she won't give birth until you destroy Kefka and complete the game.]]
336* {{Expy}}: Moe, Curly, and Larry are expies of [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV the Magus Sisters]] by being a trio boss fight and sharing similar attack strategies. One uses black magic, one uses status debuffs, and the last one uses status buffs and has the ability to revive his allies.
337* FacelessGoons: Almost every human enemy in the game has their face covered or otherwise obscured in some way, and as a result [[http://www.videogamesprites.net/FinalFantasy6/Enemies/Harvester.gif some of them]] [[http://www.videogamesprites.net/FinalFantasy6/Enemies/Repo%20Man.gif barely even look]] [[http://www.videogamesprites.net/FinalFantasy6/Enemies/Rider.gif like humans]].
338* FairyBattle: The urns in the Cultists' Tower would use items on you instead of attacking.
339* FantasticFirearms: The Gestahlian Empire uses MiniMecha equipped with a magitek cannon that fires beams of [[FireIceLightning elemental force]]. Terra's also conjures missiles, sprays of DeadlyGas, and can warp the enemy into deep space.
340* FantasyCounterpartCulture: The look and feel of Renaissance Italy is sprinkled through much of the game, and most so in South Figaro.
341* FastballSpecial: One of Umaro's offensive tactics is to ''throw party members at opponents.'' [[RuleOfCool Never mind that this should also hurt the character he throws, yet it doesn't.]]
342* FightWoosh: Pixellation in dungeons, zooming when on the world map, and more flashy in GBA version. In the [=PlayStation=] port, the effect is a strange side-to-side split of alternating lines that [[LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading feels like it takes forever]].
343* FishingMinigame: Cruelly, doing poorly results in Cid dying.
344* FloatingContinent: The TropeNamer is a continent that Kefka and Gestahl raise to the air. It features passages that the player creates, an epic fight against [=AtmaWeapon=] and the Statues that are the source of magic.
345* FlunkyBoss: Lots of them, including ThatOneBoss Wrexsoul.
346* FlyingSeafoodSpecial: The Veldt in general. Lots of weird stuff there... yeah.
347* FollowThePlottedLine: Sabin's scenario feels like this, except nobody bothered to tell him that the direct pathway to Nikeah is blocked by the landslide.
348* ForDoomTheBellTolls: Heard in the opening theme when the opening narration talks about the destructive War of the Magi. This trope later reappears in the first world map music in the World of Ruin and "Dancing Mad," the final boss theme, and is also present in TheEmpire's theme. The first three also overlap with OminousPipeOrgan (TheEmpire's theme opts for brass instruments instead).
349* ForbiddenFruit: Banon tells a Pandora's Box-like story to Terra. Otherwise, there is no clear example of this trope, unless the magic itself/Warring Triad statues count.
350* ForcedLevelGrinding: Surprisingly [[AvertedTrope averted]]. As long as you are mainly playing the same characters for most of the content (probably Celes, Sabin, and Edgar), not fleeing from battles, generally doing all of the quests and getting all of the chests, there should be enough content in the game to get the main characters into the low to middle 40s, and through LeakedExperience everyone else into the mid-30s, which is enough to get all the way through Kefka. It will be more challenging (which brings this easy game more into a moderate difficulty), and you will almost certainly need to have at least one character learn Life 3/Rerise, but it's perfectly doable. Of course, with the Esper system encouraging you to learn all of these neat spells, most players will end up with characters more than high enough to make the endgame pretty easy.
351* ForcedTransformation:
352** The "Imp" spell turns the target into an imp (or back again). A couple monsters and even a few bosses can be Imped: the gang leader at the top of Zozo, #024 (the freakshow at the end of the Magitek Research Facility), and the still-alive Behemoth King in the Veldt Cave (but Mute it first so it can't cast Imp on itself and reverse the status). Hill Gigas and Tonberry are two examples of clever Imp casting; Hill Gigas will never use Magnitude 8. While all of these examples will still inflict critical hits across the board, the loss of painful counter-attacks more than makes up for it.
353** If Ragnarok is kept in magicite form, summoning it in battle will have it attempt to perform this on an enemy, potentially turning that foe into an item.
354* {{Foreshadowing}}:
355** When the opening narration says "Yet there now stands one who would reawaken the magic of ages past, and use its dread power as a means by which to conquer all the world," watch the bottom right corner of the screen--you'll catch a brief glimpse of Kefka.
356** When you first visit South Figaro, if you visit the rich man's house, he panics and yells at you if you speak to him, since he's busy writing an important letter. And one of his kids claims her father had dinner with General Leo. [[spoiler:She was telling the truth, and her father had a right to be nervous about you peaking on him -- he sells out the town to the Empire and helps them with their invasion.]]
357** Ultros mentions that his plan to crash the opera will be "TONS of fun".
358* FreeFallFight: When riding the waterfall, and later when fighting the Air Force.
359* FromTheMouthsOfBabes:
360** Locke & co. get some plot-relevant foreshadowing and some pretty clever hints from the rich man's young daughter in South Figaro.
361** It's also how Relm [[spoiler:shakes Strago out of his brainwashing]]. ''"And as foul mouthed as ever."''
362* FrothyMugsOfWater: The Pubs/Bars were changed to Cafes in the SNES version, and in the PS version people still refer to them as cafes but the graphic of the signs has been reverted to say Pub.
363* FullyClothedNudity: When Locke is sneaking around South Figaro, he mugs merchants and soldiers for their clothing, leaving the hapless victims in what the game calls their "B.Day (birthday) Suits", but which is actually shown to be a pair of boxer shorts.
364* FunnyOctopus: The [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain antagonistic but incompetent]] Ultros/[[InconsistentSpelling Orthros]] is a large purple octopus prone to lame puns and pathetically easy {{Boss Battle}}s.
365[[/folder]]
366
367[[folder:G - I]]
368* GameBreakingBug:
369** The U.S. SNES release has an incredible number of bugs in it. Relm's Sketch ability missing on the wrong monsters can lead to unpleasant side-effects, the worst of which being deletion of save games. However, it can also fill your inventory with zillions of copies of the game's best equipment. Also, killing Doom Gaze with Vanish/X-Zone prevents the boss from dropping the Bahamut magicite because the drop is triggered by a counterattack script and X-Zone and similar abilities prevent counterattacks from being triggered. (Note that it is not {{Permanently Missable|Content}}, since this also causes the game to fail to mark Doom Gaze as defeated, meaning he'll continue to reappear until you beat him the proper way.)
370** There is also a bug where, in the World of Ruin, the player can ''re-shift'' the world back to the World of Balance. This is done by abusing a script during the Opera House event where the player doesn't get a game over if they die, they're merely teleported outside. Thus if the player leaves one of the unique rat enemies in the rafters alive until the World of Ruin, then fights them and loses, the script puts them back outside in the World of Balance. Though it does simplify the saving-the-world idea, the player is without an airship and several critical locations no longer exist, including the final dungeon, so the game is pretty much unplayable from then on.
371** There's an obscure, but extremely dangerous bug where if the player gets a Game Over 52 consecutive times on the World Map, it will interfere with the game's coding.
372** Usually if the game code directs the player character or an NPC to walk along a scripted path, they're also given the temporary ability to pass through any wandering [=NPCs=] that might get in their way, as the script will not return control to the player until the character reaches their "mark". However, there are a few places where the "pass-through" ability is not granted, and unlucky RNG path-selection for the [=NPCs=] can cause them to block the moving character's path and trap them both, leaving the script unable to exit and the player unable to regain control.
373* GameplayAndStoryIntegration:
374** Before he joins the party in the burning house in Thamasa, Strago and the rest of Thamasa's residents are seen attempting to extinguish the fire using magic. As it happens, Aqua Rake/Aqua Breath is one of Strago's starting Lores.
375** Terra is [[HopelessBossFight unable to damage Humbaba at all]] when he first appears, because she hasn't experienced combat for an entire year.
376** When Terra comes to help you in the rematch with Humbaba, she invokes CutscenePowerToTheMax to transform into her Esper form for a prolonged period of time, and in the subsequent battle her Trance gauge is removed and won't deplete.
377** Most of the chests in the Phoenix Cave are empty, because a certain thief/treasure hunter got to them first. The ones that aren’t mainly require manipulating the environment with both parties.
378** Shadow has a chance of randomly leaving the party after a battle the first few times he's recruited, but if he is still with Sabin and Cyan at the time of the Phantom Train he will never leave no matter how many random battles the party fights in, as there's nowhere for him to go at the moment.
379** When Celes wakes up in the World of Ruin, Cid mentions that plants and animals are dying. If you leave his house and fight the monsters on the island, they die very quickly regardless of whether or not you attack them.
380** During the climax of the World of Balance, an injured Interceptor comes to Thamasa to get the party to help him find Shadow, and stays behind there to recover. When the group gets to the Floating Continent and finds Shadow there, he won't have Interceptor to help him in battle as he did before. Similarly, [[spoiler:if Shadow dies, Interceptor becomes Relm's guardian in battle, as she is Shadow's daughter and Interceptor likes her as a result.]]
381* GameplayAndStorySegregation:
382** [[spoiler:General Leo]] and Rachel's deaths are yet another example of this in the series. Though the latter leads to a sly bit of GameplayAndStoryIntegration. [[spoiler:A Phoenix Down won't revive her, but a Phoenix ''Magicite'', on the other hand...]]
383** Magic is said to have weakened in the world after the War of the Magi, and no normal human can use it without a Magitek infusion. Doesn't really explain all the special attacks and abilities characters can use that deal magic damage, like Shadow's Skeans, some of Edgar's Tools, and Sabin's Blitzes. While it is feasible that perhaps monsters can still use magic and humans may have minor latent magical abilities (since supernatural things ''do'' still exist), that doesn't explain how Gau can somehow gain the ability to use magic by mimicing the behavior of monsters with his Rages, yet once he comes out of it he suddenly forgets.
384** The enemy encounters in the secret passages of South Figaro never change, so even though the town has been vacated by the occupying Imperials, troopers and their attack dogs can be encountered in the basements.
385** Throughout the game there's a lot of "canned dialogue" for a lot of cutscenes, as the developers likely didn't care or didn't have room to include specific dialogue for every possible character that might be present. There's nothing incongruous about ''most'' of the characters saying the lines, but it can sometimes cause {{Out Of Character Moment}}s when your party leader is ill-suited to act this way, like Shadow laughing at Cyan's embarrassment over his flowers, or Gau getting over his YouNoTakeCandle speech patterns. Things get particularly nonsensical in the World of Ruin if you recruit Gogo and Umaro early and make a party of just them when recruiting other characters -- as just one instance of oddity, Cyan will be relieved that two strangers he's never met survived a disaster they weren't present for, and Gogo and/or Umaro will chat with him like old friends.
386** When Locke steals a Merchant's clothes as a disguise, the game switches out of battle mode and the merchant's Sprite is still clothed.
387** When Terra uses magic for the first time in front of Edgar and Locke, they both freak out over the sight of magic. But if Terra uses any magic before Edgar joins the party, Locke won't even bat an eye.
388** Celes uses Warp[=/=]Teleport to transport Kefka and his cronies out of the Magitek Research Facility; however, this is before you obtain any Espers that teach it, and Celes - unlike Terra - will never learn it on her own.
389** During the ending sequence, ''everyone'' you've rallied participates in the tower escape sequence, even when they were hanging out safely in the comfort of the Falcon. For Terra, it makes sense as even if you didn't recruit her, she'll come in her esper form to guide you out. For everyone else, they can be left out. This means characters like Celes, Edgar, and Setzer (who will be rallied no matter what) will be present in most of the cutscenes despite not participating in the tower siege and ''Shadow'' [[spoiler:facing his fate in the crumbling tower]] despite the fact that it's possible that he was hanging out in the Falcon.
390* GatelessGhetto: Vector. The city looks different from the other towns on the world map, and the PSX cutscenes and game art show that it's a massive industrial town with many interesting looking buildings and machines, but when exploring the actual town, there's only six little buildings, a bunch of metal supports, a few boxes, and a railroad to the Magitek Factory, [[NoOSHACompliance all surrounded by an unnecessary bottomless pit]]. The Imperial Palace, however, which is actually rather large, shows a dreary and polluted skyline full of factories and fires.
391* TheGayNineties: Reflected in household technology.
392* GenderRestrictedGear: Gear is generally restricted along rough "class" lines--light armor wearers cannot equip heavy armor, etc.--regardless of gender, but the Minerva armor, one of the best sets in the game, can only be equipped by female heavy armor users.
393* GenreShift: The first half of the game (the World of Balance) is almost entirely linear and narrative-based (aside from a few optional sub-quests). The second half (the World of Ruin) is more open-ended and free-roaming, allowing the player's party to access [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Kefka's Tower]] as soon as they get the Airship ([[LevelGrinding which isn't a good idea]]).
394* GetBackHereBoss: Deathgaze loves to run away after casting some powerful spells, potentially leaving your party in serious trouble.
395* TheGhost: Maria, the opera singer Celes was substituting for, does not actually appear.
396* GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere: Some of the bosses are just there for no particular reason, with Ultros being the most hilariously notable.
397* GladiatorSubquest: The Dragon's Neck Coliseum.
398* GogglesDoNothing: Quite literally, in the SNES and PS versions of the game. The Evade stat was useless due to a glitch, so the Blind status ailment didn't impact the characters in any way (except Strago, who wouldn't learn Lores when Blinded. For everybody else it just made them look like they're wearing CoolShades), so the Goggles that prevented blindness... you get the idea.
399* GogglesDoSomethingUnusual: They will protect from blindness, which is actually useful if it's the newer (or fan-patched) version of the game.
400* TheGoodChancellor: The Chancellor of Figaro.
401* GoldfishPoopGang: Ultros and Typhon. Kefka is a subversion; he runs from all your fights until [[WhamEpisode the attack on Thamasa]].
402* GoryDiscretionShot
403** When Doma Castle is poisoned, the last surviving guard can be found at a door. Speaking to him prompts the reply: "We were too late..." Stepping into the next door prompts Cyan to stop, step back, close the door, look away, and mutter, "..Here too."
404** During [[spoiler:the world's near destruction]], a landmass splits open. Several [[{{Mooks}} Imperial Soldiers]] fall in.''[[NightmareFuel Then the two pieces slam back into each other.]]''
405* GottaCatchThemAll: Gau's Rages, Strago's Lores, Mog's Dances, Edgar's Tools, Cyan's Bushido, Sabin's Blitzes, Magicites, and your own party members in the World of Ruin. There's a lot to catch. The fact that some of them (such as one of Strago's Lores, one of Mog's Dances, and some Magicites) are PermanentlyMissableContent if you don't do stuff right can be painful. The Advance version added a Bestiary, which adds in the challenge of killing at least one of every creature.
406* GreenRocks: Magicite, literally. They have a bit of red in them, too.
407* TheGrimReaper: Every time someone casts a Death spell.
408* GrimUpNorth: Subverted. Once all misunderstandings are cleared, Narshe becomes the closest thing to an HQ that the heroes have. Played straight in the World of Ruin.
409* GuestStarPartyMember: Biggs, Wedge, Banon, Leo, the ghosts on the Phantom Train, and the ten moogles. Even today, this game has the most guest stars in the entire series.
410* GuideDangIt:
411** The game never tells you that the Jump command from the Dragoon Boots is more powerful when the Jumper is wielding a spear. Knowing this makes Edgar and Mog much stronger post-Apocalypse. This may be a case of ContinuityNod.
412** Gau's Rages. Knowing how to use them makes the difference between Gau being a barely useful character and him being a DiscOneNuke.
413** Other than the brief mention of their existence in the tutorial house and that you need to be at low HP to trigger them, the requirements to perform Desperation Attacks consist entirely of this: the chance to perform one is only 1/16 when you select Attack at 1/8 HP or less, you can't perform one for the first 25.6 seconds of the battle and you can't perform one if you're under Confuse, Image, Vanish or Zombie status.
414** During the mine cart escape from Vector, you can potentially fight two breeds of Magna Roaders. However, the smaller red breed's appearance is entirely dependant on your party makeup and whether they are afflicted with Imp or Clear, something you'd have no forewarning about and ''never'' done elsewhere in the game. In the original version, missing them would also screw Gau out of a Rage, but the GBA version added the red Magna Roaders to the Soul Shrine, preventing a complete lockout.
415** If you don't save Shadow on the Floating Continent, he can't be recruited as a party member for the rest of the game. There's no indication about what you have to do ''unless'' you decline to leave once you get to the exit, which you'd have no reason to do since you're under a strict time limit that will cause an instant game over if time runs out. And this is after a WhamEpisode and defeating a ClimaxBoss, along with having to fend off enemies on the way to the exit, so you'd naturally be in a hurry and wouldn't want to wait. The only way to know how to save Shadow is to either look it up or somehow decline to leave the first time, which will give you a hint as to what must needs be done.
416** Celes can actually save Cid at the beginning of the World of Ruin; you just have to catch a bunch of the fastest fish. First-time players won't know there's any difference between the fish, though, and so they're virtually guaranteed to see Cid die and Celes attempt suicide.
417* HappilyFailedSuicide: Depending on how things play out, Celes may attempt suicide, but fail... happily, because from where she lies, she sees evidence that one or more of the others may have survived, which gives her the will to live.
418* HappyFunBall: This is a point in the series where the ImprobableWeaponUser trope starts to show, and there is also a Superball item that damages enemies.
419* HarmlessFreezing: The frozen Esper in Narshe. Once unfrozen, it gives up its life willingly after noticing that the world is in [[ColdSleepColdFuture the same ruined state]] it was in when it was frozen. One of the status effects averts this: a frozen character cannot act, and is instantly killed by any physical attack (that no boss is immune to if Gau uses it via Rage)
420* HeadsIWinTailsYouLose: Occurs at the Imperial Observation Post east of Vector. It's initially full of soldiers that will fight you when approached. Even if you win, you'll still be thrown out. Something similar occurs in the northern part of Vector itself.
421* HeadsOrTails:
422** Edgar and Sabin flip a coin to determine who will be king of Figaro and who will have the freedom to live the life they want. [[spoiler:Edgar "lost", by using a TwoHeadedCoin, in order to keep the burden off his brother's shoulders.]] The SNES translation was somewhat inaccurate on this point:
423--->'''GBA Edgar:''' If it's heads, you win. Tails, I win. The winner chooses whichever path he wants... no regrets, no hard feelings.\
424'''SNES Edgar:''' If it's heads, you win. We'll choose whichever path we want, without any regrets.
425** Later, Celes borrows the same coin against [[TheGambler Setzer]]. He falls for it.
426--->'''Celes:''' Heads, you take us to the Empire's capital. Tails, I agree to marry you.
427** GracefulLoser: Setzer takes it very well when he finds out Celes duped him into helping them. He still agrees to go along with the party, so long as he gets to keep said coin for himself.
428*** If Edgar and Sabin are in the party when this scene occurs, Sabin will turn to Edgar after the reveal of the two-headed coin:
429---->'''Sabin:''' That coin... big brother, don't tell me-!
430* HeavenAbove: If you became a god, how would you let people know? If you were a magical, misanthropic MonsterClown, you might build a tower taller than any mountain, put yourself right at the top, and turns yourself into a winged creature surrounded by clouds and sunlight. This strategy tells visitors about your divinity without chit-chat, so when they fully ascend your ''[[Literature/TheDivineComedy Inferno]]''-esque ladder of writhing flesh and confront you, you can smite them without much monologuing.
431* HellIsThatNoise: Kefka's infamous laughter.
432* HelpfulMook: The Desert Hare, which heals you for attacking it, and the Magic Urn, which only use restorative items on your party for its entire AI script.
433* HeroesActVillainsHinder: After he takes over and nearly destroys the world, Kefka is no longer the active villain we saw in the first half of the game. Instead, he contents himself with making the world progressively worse in indirect ways. When people do try to make things better or gain the strength to challenge him, he just rains DeathFromAbove upon them until the survivors give up and surrender to despair.
434* HeroicBSOD: Happens to a few characters, but Cyan gets the lion's share, in several very emotional moments.
435* HeroicRematch: With Kefka in the World of Ruin.
436* HeroVsVillainDuet: ''Opera Draco and Maria'' sees Draco and Ralse trade musical lines, before Ralse declares "It is a duel!" and they begin dueling. In the Black Mages album "Darkness and Starlight", Uematsu added an ending following Draco's victory where Ralse yields and curses Draco [[IfYouEverDoAnythingToHurtHer should he ever let Maria go.]]
437* HiddenElfVillage: Thamasa, inhabited by the descendants of mages that were persecuted in the aftermath of the War of the Magi.
438* HighAltitudeBattle: The battle with the Imperial Air Force, and later, Deathgaze.
439* HighSpeedBattle: The fight with the Phantom Train, and on the mine cart while escaping the Magitek Factory.
440* HockeyMaskAndChainsaw: Edgar dons a [[Franchise/FridayThe13th very familiar-looking hockey mask]] when his Chainsaw tool inflicts Instant Death upon its target.
441* HoldTheLine: The [[BonusDungeon Dragons' Den]] version of the Red Dragon is impervious to all attacks, even ones that normally ignore all defenses. The only way to defeat is to survive its onslaught of attacks long enough until it eventually [[CastFromHitPoints uses up its own life force]], a task easier said than done even for a very high-level party as said onslaught includes a variety of very nasty abilities including repeated instant death claw attacks, Meltdown, Flare, and even Ultima.
442* HolyPipeOrgan: While most of "Dancing Mad" is straight-up OminousPipeOrgan, [[https://youtu.be/LwfTSlOd5T4 Part 3]] of the song uses this trope for SoundtrackDissonance as the heroes fight Rest and Lady, a pair of angelic beings summoned by the BigBad.
443* HonorAmongThieves: "[[BerserkButton I prefer the term treasure hunter!]]"
444* HopeSpringsEternal: The main theme of the game's second half. [[spoiler:The heroes failed and the resulting cataclysm destroys the world. One year later, the party is scattered, and the slowly dying planet is ruled by an insane God-King who smites anyone who so much as breaths funny. Despite all of that, people still have hope for a better tomorrow because it's one of the few things that keeps them going.]]
445* HopeSproutsEternal: It's very hard for plants to grow in the World of Ruin, so on the few spots that they ''can'', townspeople will get very mad if you step on them.
446* HPToOne: Several examples, most notably Kefka's (and certain {{superboss}}es') Fallen One/Heartless Angel.
447* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: The Espers lived in a lush and fertile world in peace and harmony with themselves and their surroundings despite the fact they can use their magic powers for destruction, while the humans drain the power of the Espers into delicious whiffs of magic purely for warfare and personal gain, going as far as to modify their own bodies with a sickening blend of their own technology and their magic extracts of the Espers. The two largest human cities in the game, Zozo and Vector, are portrayed as being dangerous, polluted places.
448* HumongousMecha: The Magitek armor, of course, [[MiniMecha gives up some giant robot action]], but Alexander, one of the Espers, is based off of the concept art of the Giant of Babil from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', and as such, he looks like a city on top of a giant destructive robot.
449* HypnoTrinket: Terra's slave crown.
450* ICallHimMisterHappy: In the GBA version, a bargirl in one of the towns refers to her "twins" as [[ThemeNaming Humpty and Dumpty]]. Much to Cyan's chagrin.
451* IWillWaitForYou: One of the central themes of the Dream Oath Opera.
452* ImADoctorNotAPlaceholder:
453-->'''Celes:''' I'm a general, not some opera floozy!
454* IdenticalStranger: Celes and Maria. Duncan is a palette swap of Banon's sprite.
455* ImplausibleDeniability:
456** The first guy you talk to in Zozo (right after the text box listing the city's name fades away). "Zozo? Never heard of it." Zozo's filled with liars, including the boss, so they all talk like cheerful suburbanites even though their town is a sh*thole. It even figures into a puzzle to obtain Edgar's Chainsaw: the correct answer to wind the clock and unlock the room is whatever the [=NPCs=] claim it ''isn't''.
457--->'''Merchant lying on the asphalt, implied to be falling-down drunk or recently-mugged''': Great people, here!
458** It's worth exploring Thamasa before heading straight to Strago's house. Everyone in the town can use magic. They just try to hide this fact from the outside world, but they do a terrible job of it once people actually come to the town. This is PlayedForLaughs, but due to the dystopian setting, they have very good reason to hide their magical abilities from the world, since they were once persecuted for it (they were blamed for the War of the Magi). Kefka later threatens to torch their "little hamlet" once he discovers they're harboring Espers.
459* ImprobableAccessoryEffect: Several, including the (presumably [[AWizardDidIt enchanted]]) StatusEffects-protecting Ribbon and magic-enhancing Earring and Gold Hairpin, the Cat Hood, which doubles your money (a reference to the Japanese [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneki_Neko Maneki Neko]], cat statues that supposedly bring good fortune), and the Experience Egg, which increases your earned experience by [[ShapedLikeItself being an egg]].
460* ImprobableWeaponUser: Not yet at the level of some later installments in the series, but still, Setzer fights with cards, darts, and dice, Relm uses a paintbrush, Mog dances to inflict status effects, and Umaro just ''[[FastballSpecial throws your other party members]]'' at the monsters.
461* InASingleBound: The Dragoon Boots relic allows for jumping attacks.
462* IncomingHam: All of whom enter EvilIsHammy as well.
463** "Phooey! Emperor Gesthal's stupid orders! Edgar, you pinhead! Why do you have to live in the middle of a stinking desert?!? These recon jobs are the pits! ...AHEM! There's SAND on my boots!" (the music and EvilLaugh only enhance Kefka's ham!)
464** "Uwee ee ee, Game Over! Don't tease the Octopus kids!"
465** "My name is Atma...... I am pure energy...and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, [[NeverSayDie GO]]!"
466** "I'm Atma...... Left here since birth... Forgotten in the river of time... I've had an eternity to...ponder the meaning of things... And now I have an answer..."
467* InconsistentSpelling:
468** Numerous examples due to a combination of official Japanese romanizations and two different English translations. Examples include Nalsh vs. Narche vs. Narshe, Lock vs. Locke, Mt. Coltz vs. Mt. Koltz vs. Mt. Kolts, Cefka vs. Kefka, Cayenne vs. Cyan, Bannan vs. Banon, Stragus vs. Strago, Orthros vs. Ultros, and Typhon vs. Chupon. A guard in Figaro Castle in the World of Ruin even {{lampshade|Hanging}}s this by mentioning how some of the members of the Cult of Kefka insist on spelling his name with a C instead of a K.
469** Celes's name may have been meant to be [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Ceres]]. Do we care? No, we don't.
470** Darill/Daryl is notable for being inconsistent even within the same version of the game: the SNES and PS versions use "Daryl" most of the time, but when you enter her tomb, the in-game message says "Darill's Tomb".
471* IndustrialGhetto: Vector looks like a city-sized factory complex.
472* InfallibleBabble: Inverted by the Zozo thieves, who are all pathological liars by nature.
473* InfinityMinusOneSword: Crusader is the ultimate Magicite which is unlocked by beating the Eight Dragons. We ''have'' to summon it to see what it does! Oh, it just wiped out your party along with the enemy. Well, that's one Esper who won't see the light of day again.
474* InfinityPlusOneSword:
475** All characters get one specifically for them in the Gameboy Advance remake. However, they're yet shamed by the Lightbringer/Illumina from the original release which is still present. +7 to all stats, +50% Evade and Magic Evade, max attack power, when attacking it consumes 20 MP to deal an instant critical hit, it's unblockable, ignores row, and randomly casts Holy when attacking. The Gameboy Advance remake made it effectively farmable, as it's obtained by betting the Ragnarok sword (formerly one of a kind) in the Coliseum, and the final boss has a Ragnarok to be stolen and can now be fought over and over.
476** For accessories, there's the Marvel Shoes, which cast Auto-Safe, Auto-Shell, Auto-Haste, and Auto-Regen. And even in the SNES version, they can be farmed by getting an Imp Lance from the Dinosaur Forest, then going through a ChainOfDeals in the Coliseum to get them. Any character with the Marvel Shoes suddenly becomes very, very hard to get rid of.
477* InformedAttribute: The major threat of the Gestahlian Empire is their usage of Magitek to imbue humans with magic and create machines with magical powers. While the latter comes up a lot, the former rarely does. In fact, throughout the game there is exactly ''one'' humanoid Imperial enemy that can use some sort of magic. While one could HandWave that they stopped imbuing magic into humans after Kefka's sanity snapped from the procedure, that Celes underwent the procedure too makes it apparent the Empire didn't stop at Kefka and there should be a lot more Imperials running around casting magic than just the two of them and Gestahl.
478* InnSecurity: A lot:
479** When Kefka sets Figaro Castle on fire.
480** Vector's Inn is free, but the innkeeper may steal some gil while you're asleep.
481** When sleeping in the Thamasa Inn, you are awakened by Strago in the middle of the night because his granddaughter, Relm, is trapped in a burning building.
482** During the second half of the game, sleeping in Doma when Cyan is in your party will take you to a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind.
483* InstantMessengerPigeon: Averted in places with Mail offices, played straight with everywhere else.
484* InterfaceSpoiler:
485** How can you tell Biggs and Wedge are [[GuestStarPartyMember guest star party members?]] Their sprites look identical to each other.
486** Y'know, the World of Ruin would have come as a much bigger surprise had the "esper" menu not been visibly half empty[[note]]the mobile port is far, far worse, with literally half the list of Espers replaced with ????? before the end of the World of Balance[[/note]]. Even worse in the original U.S. release, which included a map of the World of Ruin right in the box.
487** The same menu lists the commands Blitz, Bushido, Rage, Dance and Lore, so you know sooner or later someone with said skill will join up.
488** The map even gives away that the final boss is named Kefka. Why else would he have not one, but two towers named after him, one of which is the final destination of the game?
489** The manual of the Playstation version lists all the playable characters (except Gogo and Umaro) and explains their abilities.
490** It is made clear early on that magic was incredibly rare in the setting, implying that few aside Terra and Celes could hope to use it. But ''every'' character has a missing space for it in the command list. Inverted with Terra, who has the magic command but the slot where her unique ability should go is empty.
491** Early in the game, you control eleven Moogles to fight to protect Terra. Most of them are low level with no ability, and you can't change their equipment. But one of them, Mog, is at a much higher level, he has the ability Dance, and you can unequip him freely. Guess who joins the party later on?
492*** This one is especially subtle, to be fair, as it directly violates the rule below. Mog is already named, even though you're given the option to change it when he officially joins up.
493** If a character has a name before you meet them, they will not join your party. Thus you know when you meet General Leo that he will not be a permanent character. Same goes for Banon. It's averted with one of the {{Optional Party Member}}s, ([[spoiler:Umaro]]), whom you must fight as a boss before he will join you.
494** The manual for the [=PlayStation=] version contains the phrase "after world destruction", so guess that means the world gets destroyed at some point, right?
495** The Pixel Remaster's music player makes no attempt to hide [[spoiler: Terra's Esper form.]]
496* InterspeciesAdoption: In the World of Ruin, Terra adopts all the kids in Mobliz after the town was destroyed by Kefka's Light of Judgement. The kids don't know she's half-esper, which is a major source of inner conflict for her. [[spoiler:Later on when she reveals who she is, they still accept her as their mother. The strength of her love for the children resolves her character conflict over her own half-human nature and eventually allows her to continue to exist after all magic disappears.]]
497* InterspeciesRomance: Besides Terra's parents, there is also an example during the War of the Magi between Esper Odin and a human Queen.
498* InvoluntaryGroupSplit: Happens to Sabin on the raft early on in the game, and then the entire party when their airship literally splits in half at the climactic midpoint.
499* ItsAllUpstairsFromHere:
500** After re-connecting with Varigarumanda, Terra succumbs to her Esper side and flies off, eventually collapsing in Zozo. You have to climb a network of slum tenements and beat up a gangster to gain passage. It's unclear whether she crashed into the tallest high-rise in Zozo (the relic shop) or was brought there by Ramuh. He's in hiding along with other refugees from the Esper realm.
501** The Cultists' Tower. It re-uses assets from Zozo, but there are many more floors.
502** Inverted by Kefka's Tower, in which you start on the roof and probe downstairs to kill the Triad bosses.
503* ItsPersonal: Half of the party was in one way or another screwed over by the Empire and/or Kefka: Terra and Celes were [[TykeBomb tools of the Empire from birth]], Locke's girlfriend was put into a coma after an Imperial attack, Cyan had everything he loved annihilated, Edgar's castle was attacked, and it is implied they killed his father, (which also covers Sabin), and Shadow was used and [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness discarded]] on the Floating Continent.
504* ItsUpToYou: While the story tends to focus more on Terra, Celes, & Locke, there is no single main character. A lot of the [=FMVs=] in the [=PS1=] port focus on Celes... but by the time of ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy'', Terra is considered the main character as she is the game's representative in the cast. [[WordOfGod Kitase has stated in an interview]] that he "wanted to create many characters that could all stand up to be main characters".
505** The generally-accepted reasons for this are that a) Terra is the first party member, around whom the plot of the first half of the game revolves, b) she has more parallels with Kefka than anyone else except arguably Celes, and c) her theme song, "Theme of Terra" or "Terra's Theme," is also the game's central theme song.
506
507[[/folder]]
508
509[[folder:J - L]]
510* {{Kappa}}: The result of ForcedTransformation, translated as "Imp" in the English scripts. However, in the GBA release, the exclusive Kappa Gear is more obviously themed to them, including a cloak made of reeds and a saucer as a helmet.
511* KarmaHoudini:
512** The unnamed aristocrat in South Figaro who sold his town out to the Empire never receives any comeuppance for doing so. (Though he does have a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment while the town is occupied.)
513** Cid gets no comeuppance and expresses no remorse for experimenting on and killing sentient beings, the Espers, [[ForScience only that they were used for warlike purposes]]. He does have the possibility of dying, though.
514* KilledOffForReal: Considering that [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV the last entry in the series]] made a habit of [[DeathIsCheap reversing major character deaths with little or no explanation]], the player could be forgiven for assuming the same would apply here. They'd be wrong.
515** Leo is murdered by Kefka and, despite UrbanLegendOfZelda to the contrary, stays that way.
516** If the player leaves Shadow behind on the FloatingContinent, he's [[PermanentlyMissableContent forfeited]].
517** Cid takes sick in the World of Ruin. While you ''can'' nurse him back to health, it's a bit of a GuideDangIt and if you fail, that's that.
518* {{Kirin}}: The kirin appears as a summonable beast, and it resembles a silver unicorn (but with two horns). In keeping with its benevolent reputation, summoning it casts a spell that gradually restores HP.
519* KnightsAndKnaves: The whole town of Zozo is like this, except there is only one knight. And because you have to [[spoiler:[[ViolationOfCommonSense disregard his advice about not jumping between buildings]]]], you might miss the bit of monologue that lets you know he ''is'' a knight.[[note]]It's pointed out explicitly in the World of Ruin, though.[[/note]]
520* LaserBlade: The Atma Weapon / Ultima Weapon.
521* LastDitchMove:
522** Several, but the most notable is the Magic Master, who will cast [[TotalPartyKill Ultima]]. Really annoying, since dying sends you back to the ground floor of the Cultists' Tower.
523** Some monsters have this as well. Strangely, a monster in the World of Ruin will cast Cure, Cura, or Esuna on your party as its final attack if you kill it.
524* TheLawOfConservationOfDetail: Subverted with Siegfried. This was notable enough that the entry on Website/TheGrandListOfConsoleRolePlayingGameCliches was named after him:
525-->'''Ziegfried's Contradiction:''' Just because someone is weird doesn't mean they're important.
526* LawOfInverseFertility: Duane has issues with Katarin being pregnant. Fortunately, he gets over it.
527* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Relm's pre-battle animation has her turn and give a cheery wave to the screen before picking up her paint brush.
528* LegacyBossBattle:
529** Ultima Weapon became a semi-permanent addition to the series after this. It's most-often a four-legged beast of mechanical origin. A re-skin called Omega Weapon was introduced in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' along with Ultima. As the name implies, it's a hybrid of the recurring ''Final Fantasy'' boss Omega (a robot with no organic parts) and Ultima Weapon. In due course, Omega Weapon was added to later editions of this game. Ultima is traditionally depicted with red trimmings, whereas Omega is blue.
530** Ultima Buster, another Weapon which is chilling in Kefka's Tower, made a return appearance in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX''. However, since Ultima and Omega already appeared in that game as unique enemies, "Ultima Buster" uses the same model as a previous boss.
531** One of ''VI''[='s=] many hidden enemies, Brachioraidos (a.k.a. Brachiosaur in the Woolsey translation, among other names), is another recurring monster. He hangs around in the woods near the Veldt, which is dubbed the Dinosaur Forest, and it's a good place for leveling. Its appearance always varies wildly, so you likely won't recognize it. But it usually drops a good item like a Hero's Shield, Ribbons, or food for breeding black chocobos in ''VII''.
532* {{Leitmotif}}: One of the earliest examples in video games, where every major character and key events get their own unique themes, with variations remixed into event music. In fact, this game has the most diverse amount of reoccurring themes in the series, never quite duplicated in future FF scores.
533* LethalJokeCharacter: There is specialized equipment that makes Imp-afflicted characters stronger, not to mention Cyan's infinite counter bug in his Imp form. Add the Dragon Horn or Dragoon Boots and you'll obtain the dreaded ''Death God Dragoon Imp''.
534* LethalJokeItem:
535** The Imp Equipment. Finding them all is a headache, but strap them on a character with "Imp" status and he/she becomes a Terminator.
536** The Cursed Shield seems like a pretty useless JokeItem when it's first obtained. But with enough patience, the shield will eventually transform into the Paladin Shield, the best shield in the game.
537* LethalLavaLand:
538** The Sealed Cave has a lava floor that the party can fall onto if a bridge moves out from under them. The party is then warped back to the floor's entrance and takes minor damage.
539** Downplayed with the Phoenix Cave, where the lower floor consists of rocks surrounded by lava. Some of the rocks are small enough that the party needs to hop across them. Partway through the cave, you drain the water on the upper floor down onto the lava, cooling it enough to walk on before you ever make direct contact with it.
540* LetsSplitUpGang: In the Phoenix Cave and Kefka's Tower, you are forced to form two and three teams, respectively. The game makes you do this whether you want it or not early on, when Locke goes off to stymie the Empire and then Sabin attempts to beat Ultros down... in the water...The mechanic for choosing multiple parties is first introduced in the battle for the defense of the Narshe Esper, though in that case, everyone is still working together on the same map.
541* LettingHerHairDown: [[spoiler: after defeating Kefka and helping to restore life to the world of ruin Terra's final act in the ending credits is to stand on the bow of the airship and untie her hair to flow freely in the wind, signifying her freedom from the empire's atrocities and unburdened by her past.]]
542* LettingTheAirOutOfTheBand: In the ''Pixel Remaster'', if you choose the third wrong lyric for "Maria" to sing while the orchestra plays, she will get a panicked reaction that causes the orchestra to fade out altogether.
543* LightningBruiser: A veritable legion, as due to bugs in the game[[note]], most of which were fixed in later versions[[/note]], half the characters have the ability to become invincible to attacks, run like the wind, and hit in the tens of thousands every round.
544* LikesOlderMen: A barmaid in Nikeah gets a crush on Cyan, and isn't afraid to let him know about it. HilarityEnsues.
545* LimitBreak: In the form of {{Desperation Attack}}s that occur entirely "under the hood." You certainly didn't get a chance to choose them, and they're so rare that most people have only seen them during a Tool-Assisted SpeedRun of the game.[[note]]It's a 1/20 chance of occurring when you select the Fight command when near death.[[/note]] However, they get an honorary mention because they were expanded into the mechanic we all know and love during the development of the TropeNamer, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''.
546* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Zig-zagged. Magic is almost always more powerful than physical attacks, but most of the characters also have a specialized skillset (like Tools or Blitz) that develops throughout the course of the game, and usually doesn't lag too far behind magic (and most of them don't cost MP either). But by the endgame, you get weapons like the Fixed Dice or Valiant Knife that deal obscene amounts of damage and ignore defense and evasion, and can be coupled with relics that attack multiple times. At the end, you get magic like Ultima (which does the most damage in the game) and Quick (which lets you perform a few free actions), which is not matched by anything else, at which point the major limiting factor becomes MP costs, which natural abilities and attacks do not have.
547* LoadBearingBoss: Kefka's Tower, a rare {{justified|Trope}} example, as it's literally held together by the will of the boss in question. It also turns out that Kefka's death was what was holding the world in such an unlivable state, because with Kefka's death, the world almost immediately starts to heal over the course of the credits.
548* LoadsAndLoadsOfSidequests: The second half of the game after getting the airship is essentially a series of side quests.
549* LockedDoor: Abandoned Narshe is full of these. As one might guess, they can only be opened by [[IncrediblyLamePun Locke-picking]] them, not by blowing them up or smashing them with a weapon.
550* LocomotiveLevel: The Phantom Train.
551* TheLostLenore:
552** Locke becomes a treasure hunter so that he can track down treasure to revive his dead girlfriend, Rachel.
553** Setzer mourns for Darill, his lover who died in a airship crash.
554** Cyan was traumatized by the death of his wife, Elaine (as well as that of his son Owaine). His grief becomes a plot point when Wrexsoul and the Dream Stooges invade his mind, and the thought of Elaine and Owaine help him survive the ordeal.
555* LostInTranslation: Wrexsoul was originally "Alexsoul" in Japanese, which ruins the parallel of Wrexsoul as the corrupted soul of Alexander.
556* LostTribe: The Espers.
557* TheLostWoods: The Phantom Forest.
558* LoveWillLeadYouBack: One of the themes in the Opera.
559* LowLevelAdvantage: Some magicite will give a stat bonus when leveling up, so if you want to engage in MinMaxing, it's better to grind as little as possible until you have the appropriate ones.
560* LoyaltyMission: A couple of the optional {{Side Quest}}s in the World of Ruin count:
561** The [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind Cyan's Nightmare]] sequence purges all fear and doubt from Cyan's mind and provides closure with his departed wife and son, unlocking all of his [=SwordTech=] techniques.
562** The player can take Strago to hunt the legendary monster Hidon and avenge his old friend who has been (seemingly) mortally injured by the beast. The fight also gives him the opportunity to learn the BlueMagic "Grand Train," which is on par with Ultima as one of the game's most powerful magic attacks.
563** Shadow is a strictly [[GuestStarPartyMember temporary]] (and usually [[OptionalPartyMember optional]]) party member throughout the World of Balance. By making sure he safely escapes the Floating Continent, rescuing him from the Cave on the Veldt, and tracking him down at the Dragon's Neck Coliseum, you can gain his loyalty for the rest of the game and also find out some of his backstory via DreamSequence.
564** Helping Terra free the town of Mobliz from the demon Phunbaba in the World of Ruin frees her from protecting the town and allows her to dedicate herself to the party full-time... and also resolves her confusion over her ability to love and shows her what she's fighting for, [[PowerOfLove doubling the duration of her Morph ability]].
565* LuckBasedMission:
566** Betting at the Coliseum due to the AIRoulette the game imposes on you. You can score some rare and unique items if you wager one of equal worth, but you are forced to use only one party member and the AI controls them. Because your party members are under AIRoulette control, they can either win battles effortlessly or waste turns casting spells on themselves that have absolutely zero effect, such as casting Esuna when the character isn't under any status ailments. Characters like Mog and Gau are horrible to use for colosseum battles due to how their Dance and Rage moves makes them be stuck with a set of certain list of moves and can't change out of it.
567** Also, the fishing mission at the beginning of the World of Ruin. You can only succeed by catching Yummy Fish, [[spoiler:because these are the only ones that improve Cid's health. His health continuously depletes, the other fish are neutral or harmful to him, and the yummy fish don't spawn every time Celes goes back to the shore.]] Fortunately, if you fail there is no gameplay consequence. There is, however, a different cutscene.
568[[/folder]]
569
570[[folder:M - O]]
571* MadeOfMagic: Espers are beings made of pure magic, not simply living beings infused with magic. [[spoiler:This means that they vanish forever once magic is erased from the world.]] Several enemies also appear to be this, since they die once they run out of MP.
572* MadonnaArchetype: The mother of half-Esper main character Terra is a human woman named Madeline, or just Madonna in the original English translation, and the Esper Maduin, a member of a race of magical superbeings created to fight in the ancient War of the Magi. Their daughter, Terra, becomes the first human in a thousand years to be born with the gift of magic — only for the Evil Empire to storm the OtherWorld of the Espers, capturing Maduin and many of his fellow Espers. Madeline dies in the fighting, and the Emperor himself rips Terra from her arms. The game begins when she breaks free of the Empire's control, and joins the heroic Returners, a link between humans and Espers and the key to defeating the Empire.
573* MageTower: The Cultists' Tower in the World of Ruin. It's a dungeon where not only do the enemies all cast magic, your party members are also only capable of using magic and nothing else.
574* TheMagicComesBack: 1000 years ago, the War of the Magi ocurred, a highly destructive conflict in which espers, the magi (humans who had gained the power of magic from espers), and other humans fought. After the war, the espers went into the sealed cave and shut themselves off from the world and the magi went into exile [[spoiler:and formed a backwater settlement called Thamasa far away from civilization]]. The rest of humanity goes on to develop technology. The game begins as the Empire has rediscovered magic and is working to utilize it in its campaign for world conquest.
575* TheMagicGoesAway: [[spoiler:After defeating the Warring Triad, magic does not disappear, and the party realizes that Kefka has absorbed enough of the Triad's power and is now the source of magic. After defeating Kefka, the final boss, magic disappears forever. The espers cease to exist, and the magi lose their power. The fate of Terra, who is half-esper, was initially unclear, but as she has become attached to the human world, she survives. On a positive note, the eradication of magic means the world can finally begin to recover from the catastrophic damage that magic has wrought. After long refusing to grow, the seed a woman and her daughter planted in Kohlingen finally sprouts; the grass, flowers, and trees regain their color; and the sky's color returns to normal.]]
576* MagicIsFeminine: The game only has two natural mages, both of whom are females; the HalfHumanHybrid Terra and MagicKnight Celes. Additionally the character with the highest natural magic stat is Relm, the token little girl of the group. Two other male characters, Gau and Strago, learn magic-based attacks from monsters but their power is limited next to real magic.
577* MagicKnight: Terra and Celes. Every character except for Umaro can be turned into this with the use of Espers (Relm, Strago and Gogo require the additional use of the Merit Award).
578* MagicalLand: The Land of the Espers is accessible from a bridge hidden deep in a mountain. A human woman named Madeline falls in here, falls in love with the Esper Maduin, and [[spoiler:eventually births Terra from this union. However, the Empire eventually finds this land, and the elder casts a barrier to drive out all humans (Madeline included)]].
579* MagicVersusScience: In a way. The Returners (Celes exempted) utilize natural Magic from Magicite to combat the Empire's Magitek, which uses Magic weaponized by Science. The game's intro sets it up as the reverse, mentioning that "iron, gunpowder, and steam engines have taken the place of magic", but the Returners' use of such technologies is virtually non-existent and the Empire is presented as the more technologically innovative force.
580* MagikarpPower:
581** The Cursed Shield nerfs all your stats and inflicts every status ailment in the book on you... but, if you survive 256 battles with it equipped, it transforms into the Paladin Shield, the best shield in the game.
582** The Atma Weapon is found about a third of the way through the game. However, its power relies on the maximum HP of the user, so it doesn't start dealing the damage you'd expect from the Atma Weapon until AfterTheEnd.
583** Gau starts out with a half-dozen mediocre Rages, and that's all he'll ever get if you don't go out of your way to develop him. If you know [[GuideDangIt which Rages to shoot for]], though, a little bit of grinding on the Veldt will make him a GameBreaker throughout the World of Balance and much of the World of Ruin. He only really gets definitively surpassed in the endgame, when 90% of your team reaches GameBreaker status.
584* ManaBurn: Rasp. Unlike other games in the series without a specific mana burn spell, Rasp is notably useful ''because'' some enemies are made up of pure magic: reducing them to zero MP kills them just as effectively as reducing them to zero HP. For some enemies, this also prevents them from using a last ditch move that may kill your party.
585* ManaDrain: Osmose damages a target's MP while restoring the same amount to the caster. For some enemies, this also prevents them from using a last ditch move that may kill your party if they run out of MP to drain.
586* TheManBehindTheMan: Averted: Kefka and Emperor Gestahl both make an appearance in Terra's flashback at the beginning of the game. Kefka also makes a blink-and-miss-it appearance when you see Vector for the first time in the opening cutscene, making him the first main character you see.
587* MeaningfulEcho: Celes's TearJerker moment almost exactly mirrors the movements she goes through during the opera scene. The part where she throws the flowers from the balcony takes on a whole new meaning once you compare it to her throwing herself from the high cliff.
588* MeaningfulName:
589** Terra's mother's name is Madonna/Madeline.
590** "Intangir" = Intangible + Integer
591* MarketBasedTitle: In the west, it used to be III for consistency reasons.
592* MascotMook: The first appearance of Cactuar (or "Cactrot" in the SNES translation).
593* MessianicArchetype:
594** Terra's mother's in the SNES version is named Madonna. Real subtle, Square.
595** Kefka's final battle has the aforementioned three tiers of eldritch abominations. These parallel ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', with hell, purgatory, Jesus Christ and the virgin Mary/Heaven, and the meeting with Kefka as God, who says that life is meaningless.
596* MetaPowerup: [[ExperienceBooster The Experience egg]].
597* MetalSlime: The Solitary Island upon which Celes awakens after the near destruction of the World of Balance is covered in Peepers and Land Rays, from which Locke can steal Elixirs and Megalixirs, respectively. Unfortunately, they only have 1 HP and the Sap status, so they self-destruct almost as soon as you start fighting them. They also have two of the best defensive Blue Magic spells for Strago to learn - getting them to use said spells before they die on their own is nigh impossible.
598** Fortunately you can get around this by having Gau learn their rages and then in a subsequent battle have Gau use those rages with Strago in the party.
599* MindControlDevice: The Slave Crown, which robs Terra of her free will.
600* MonoNoAware: Being an EasternRPG, it's impossible not to see the cultural philosophy of MonoNoAware emphasized throughout the game--particularly in the latter half. [[spoiler:Mono no Aware is all about the tragedy and beauty in loving things knowing that both you, the thing you love, and the love itself are all ultimately impermanent. Kefka argues that this ultimately makes all of existence meaningless; the Returners argue otherwise.]]
601* MonsterArena: The Dragon's Neck Coliseum.
602* MoodWhiplash:
603** First, you eat in the AfterlifeExpress's board restaurant and then [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u84cH_bmTA suplex the train]]. And then the train [[TearJerker picks up Cyan's deceased family]] and he gives them a last goodbye.
604** During the journey to Thamasa, Terra converses with Leo and Shadow about love and her ability to feel which is followed immediately by Locke having a good puke into the sea.
605** The party finds the missing Espers, but they advance on the party ready to attack. As the party prepares to defend themselves, their leader arrives. Terra confronts him and magic sparks between them, terrifying Strago. It's a very tense, uncertain scene... promptly ruined by Locke reacting to Terra's power fluctuations with "I wonder if she's gonna go ballistic again!"
606** The party convinces the Espers to talk peace with the Empire, everyone is safe and sound, Locke and Celes reconcile and seem poised to explore their feelings for each other, and their awkwardness gives everyone a good laugh. Then Kefka shows up and the next twenty minutes shows that the game is on track to make sure ''everything is terrible forever''.
607** Celes gives out a heart-wrenching performance in an opera with an equally [[TearJerker tear-jerking]] song to boot, and immediately afterwards, [[FunnyOctopus Ultros]] returns to drop a metal weight on top of Celes as if the game was a ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' episode, followed by Locke and Ultros crashing onto the stage and sending the opera off the rails.
608* MookBouncer: Guards in Vector.
609* MostDefinitelyNotAccompanyingUs: After meeting Relm and Strago in Thomas, Strago insists on Relm not accompanying him, Terra, and Locke, but she sneakily follows them anyway.
610* MovingBuildings: Early, it's shown that Figaro Castle is capable of submerging.
611* MuggedForDisguise: Locke's story path dumps him in South Figaro. The only way to traverse the city, which is under military occupation, is to "Mug" merchants and low-ranking troops for their threads.
612* MultiMookMelee: The falling battle against the Air Force. In the GBA version, The Soul Shrine.
613* MultipleEndings: The general scenario doesn't change, but several characters' endings change slightly depending on whether you found certain other characters. For instance, Celes's ending changes if you don't find Locke, and Relm's ending changes if you don't find Strago.
614* MusicalisInterruptus: Ultros tries to do this by dropping a 4-ton weight onto the stage. If you manage to stop him, he and your party both end up falling from the rafters, landing on and knocking out several important actors in the process.
615* MutuallyExclusivePowerups:
616** Choosing between Ragnarok magicite or the sword made out of it in the SNES, PS and Pixel Remaster versions. You can steal the Ragnarok weapon from one of the final bosses, but in the SNES version you can't save after beating the game and in the PS and PR versions you can save but the save only serves to unlock bonus features and doesn't allow you to replay the game as a NewGamePlus, so you can't keep it or upgrade it to Illumina / Lightbringer. In the GBA version, you can save and continue after beating the final boss, so it's possible to get both (as well as ''multiple copies'' of Lightbringer, if you so choose.)
617** You also have to choose between Odin and Raiden, the former being the only Esper who increases a character's speed and the latter being the only one that teaches Quick. It is possible to use Odin for all the status buffs/magic learning you want to use, ''then'' upgrade it, but it means you miss out on Quick until late in the game. Partially averted in the GBA release with the inclusion of the Gigantuar Esper, who offers a second means of increasing speed.
618* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
619** According to the Esper legend, the Warring Triad experienced a brief moment of clarity when they realized the horror they had brought upon the land, leading to their decision to seal themselves, and their magic, away from the world.
620** Gestahl seems to undergo one of these as well. After the escaped Espers raze the city of Vector, and [[HeelRealization realizing he helped unleash a power beyond his comprehension]], he calls a truce and asks the party to [[EnemyMine help him make peace with the Espers]]. Unfortunately, it was just an act to get Terra to [[NiceJobBreakingItHero help him track down the Espers, turn them to Magicite, and resurrect the Floating Continent]].
621** When the party tracks down the Espers that stormed out of the Sealed Gate and razed Vector, they are deeply in regret over what they did, having lost control of themselves, and harming innocents along with the Imperials. When they're informed that the Empire wants to talk peace, their first response is actually "They would forgive us?"
622* MyNameIsQuestionMarks: The "passenger" ghosts of the Phantom Train if one of them joins you. Also Terra during her first trip to Narshe under Biggs' and Wedge's command (she's amnesiac, after all).
623* MythologyGag: This game's Cid is the only Cid from the numbered series (or at least from the Sakaguchi-produced ones) who does not have any connection, even a tenuous one, with airships. But there's a scene (that you have to get out of your way to watch) in which Cid is conversing with Setzer about his airship and even suggesting some modifications (which Setzer disregards).
624* MythPrologue: The game opens with text describing the War of the Magi.
625* ANaziByAnyOtherName: The Gestahlian Empire is essentially the game's equivalent of Nazi Germany: ruthlessly conquering various countries, the various soldiers wearing mostly brown, they're doing a Nazi Salute at one point, experimenting on and killing off an entire race, and plans for two Magitek Knights to breed to produce a superior human (who uncoincidentally has blonde hair and possibly blue eyes, and is enhanced).
626** It also has many similarities to UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire, such as its Victorian-inspired Steampunk technology, and as mentioned earlier, its ruthless conquering of other countries and wiping out of another race.
627* NeutralInNameOnly: Figaro is ostensibly neutral in any armed conflict involving the Gestahlian Empire, taking no action against them and not invoking the Empire's wrath. However, King Edgar is providing political support and it is heavily implied he is also providing money to the Returners, LaResistance to the Empire who are trying to take Emperor Gestahl down. Eventually, however, events result in Figaro becoming NeutralNoLonger and siding full-time with the Returners.
628* {{Nerf}}: Espers are a far cry from the almighty demigod Summons/[=GFs=]/Aeons/Eidelons found in other games. Most of the offensive Espers are too low-powered to be of any use: The tier-two Fira, Blizzara, and Thundara spells all have higher power and lower MP cost than Ifrit, Shiva, and Ramuh, while the tier-three Firaga, Blizzaga, and Thundaga have 120 power, stronger than ''any'' Esper save for Bahamut (and only because he ignores magic defense). And while the status-inflicting ones can be useful, you then run into the problem of being TooAwesomeToUse, as you can only summon an Esper once per battle. Justified because in-story, Magicite shards (what you equip and use to summon Espers in battle) are, for all intents and purposes, the ''corpses'' of Espers, many of which you get after the Empire has drained them of much of their strength.
629* NeverSayDie: Due to Nintendo's censorship policies. This limitation initially provides an atmosphere that suggests we won't be seeing too many on-screen deaths. This does not hold true later in the game. Even when Cid mentions how the other survivors left in Solitary Island committed suicide, he "softens" the blow by saying they took leaps of faith off the cliff, which "perked 'em right up!" -- even though it's extremely clear what happened to them, it could be taken as a sarcastic, BlackComedy line. There is one exception: after Kefka gives Celes a sword on the Floating Continent, he tells her, "Kill the others and we'll forgive your treachery! Take this sword! Kill them all!"'
630* NeverSentAnyLetters: Cyan sends letters to Lola pretending to be her dead boyfriend and in the process comes to terms with his own grief.
631* NewGamePlus: Completely averted in the original [=SNES=] version. The [=PS1=] remake lets you save after the FinalBoss, but only for the purposes of unlocking bonus content. The [=GBA=] remake (and delisted [=iOS=]/Steam remake) lets you save AND keep the items you manage to steal from the FinalBoss, and opens up the [[BonusDungeon Soul Shrine]].
632* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
633** The players' entry into the Magitek Factory in Vector is what tips the Empire off to how to use Magicite.
634** Opening the Sealed Gate sets off a chain of events that allows Kefka and Gestahl to enter the Esper world, find the Warring Triad, and ultimately allows Kefka's rise to power.
635* NighInvulnerability:
636** Guardian in the World of Balance. Also Typhon in the Coliseum, and even if you ''do'' [[AIIsACrapshoot manage to kill him]], all you get is a [[DisproportionateReward paltry Elixir]]. If you can kill Typhon, you don't need Elixirs anymore.
637** The Intangir is also nigh-invulnerable; it's immune to almost everything you can throw at it. [[note]]Except Stop.[[/note]]
638** The Magic Master isn't technically invincible, but between your handicaps and his extreme speed, powerful spells, randomly shifting defenses, top-tier HP, unsurpassed MP ''and'' a brutal final attack, you're not likely to notice unless and until you bone up on the handful of unorthodox strategies designed especially for fighting him.
639* NoHeroDiscount:
640** Averted with Figaro Castle's merchants, who don't feel comfortable charging Edgar or Sabin and want to give them items for free. Sabin and Edgar insist on paying since the guys have to support themselves, but Edgar still gets a nice 50% discount.
641** Justified in the World of Ruin. Sure, item prices skyrocket, but the world has gone to hell and the cities need that cash to rebuild themselves.
642* NoNameGiven: Unless you look in the manual, you won't know the surnames of the characters until the credits roll. In the Playstation version, not even the manual shows their last names and you won't know any of them at all until the credits.
643* NoOneGetsLeftBehind: Can be played straight or averted, depending on the player's actions on the Floating Continent: if you don't wait for a certain character to catch up, you will never see him again.
644* NonHumanUndead: Several monsters, including one of the Eight Dragons.
645* NonstandardGameOver:
646** Botch the opera scene four times.
647** [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou Or lose Banon]] [[EscortMission in battle]].
648** Or get squished by Zone Eater.
649* NoobBridge: If you didn't put your characters in the back row, the first fight with Ultros can be ''very'' difficult.
650* NoobCave: Mines of Narshe, both with and without Magitek Armor.
651* NoSwastikas: While the game never used the swastika, the salute Emperor Gestahl gives his troops in the opening of the game, which they also give to him, has him raising one hand into the air in a manner highly reminiscent of the Nazi salute. The ''Pixel Remaster'' port changes this to them raising both arms. [[PuttingOnTheReich The Nazi parallels are still pretty blatant]] otherwise, but the salute was seemingly deemed to be pushing it too far.
652* NotCompletelyUseless: Rasp and Osmose. They serve as an alternate means to kill some bosses by damaging or draining MP. Osmose may also recover MP from enemies, allowing you to continue magical attacks over an extended period of time. These spells are also the only practical way to defeat the Skull Dragon in the [[BonusDungeon Dragons' Den]] which simply revives itself whenever its HP is depleted.
653** Osmose is actually effective enough in this game that it makes MP almost meaningless. You can just spam Ultima and then cast Osmose when you run out and you're basically guaranteed to get more.
654** Sketch is not usually useful except for [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement the one time it's used to shame Ultros]]. Against Cactuars, though, it's one way to deal damage that won't get evaded, since they're vulnerable to their own 1,000 Needles attack. Who needs a Sniper Eye? Not Relm!
655* NotDrawnToScale: Compared to the previous installments, [=FF6=] has a very small world with few locales.
656* NothingIsTheSameAnymore: Because someone shattered the world.
657* NotTheIntendedUse: Vanish, which makes you immune to physical attacks at the expense of guaranteeing to be hit by any magic attack. This leads to the infamous Vanish+Doom combo, which due to a bug present in the earlier versions of the game even ignores ContractualBossImmunity.
658* NowLetMeCarryYou: While defending the rest of the party in the research facility, Celes remarks that it's now her turn to protect Locke, who had previously been very concerned with protecting her.
659* ObviousRulePatch:
660** In the Japanese version, there's a bug that lets you equip any item in any slot, which requires putting it in the 256th slot of your inventory. The US release addressed this bug by not letting you put items in that slot, and nothing else. Which means that it ''still works'', but only if you can find a different bug that puts items in that slot.
661** In the SNES original, Gau could equip the Merit Award and activate what is popularly known as "Wind God Gau." Starting with the [=PS1=] re-release, Gau can no longer equip the Merit Award.
662** A beneficial bug in the SNES version that allows the player to cast Vanish, then either Doom or X-Zone on bosses, regardless if they had instant death protection or not. Starting with the GBA re-release, this no longer works.
663* OminousLatinChanting:
664** "Dancing Mad" has been performed by live orchestra, and the old synth vocalizations have been given actual lyrics.
665** Also, "the Fanatics", the theme for the Cultists' Tower.
666* OminousPipeOrgan: The opening theme to the game's title screen. There's also the epic production "Dancing Mad", which accompanies the MultiStageBattle leading up to the FinalBoss, incorporating ForDoomTheBellTolls and the chiptune equivalent of OminousLatinChanting (see above) for good measure.
667* OneHitKill: The Death spell, weapons that randomly cast Death (Death Tarot, Soul Sabre) and weapons that randomly instant-kills foes (Ichigeki, Assassin's Dagger, Zantetsuken, Wing Edge, Viper Darts). This can actually work against you, as using one of those weapons against enemies that are immune to instant-death will cause the weapon to activate its instant-death ability every time, which momentarily wipes out the foe, only for it to come back a second later, effectively making it impossible to damage these enemy types with normal attacks if you're using weapons that have a chance to hit with instant-death. One of Cyan's Bushido moves and Relm's LimitBreak will do this too.
668* OneStatToRuleThemAll:
669** Magic is the most important stat, as end-game spells easily outstrip the most powerful weapons, Tools, or Bushido, Sabin's Blitzes mostly base their power on magic. The fact that a relic that reduces MP costs for '''all''' spells exists just makes it more apparent.
670** The only exceptions to this rule would be characters that can deal multiple hits with physical attacks, such as Dragoon Edgar/Mog or dual-wielding Locke, but it still requires two Relic slots (Dragoon Boots/Dragon Horn and Genji Glove/Master's Scroll) to make the Attack command useful, and only very, very late in the game. By the time dual wielding Locke becomes viable, you're probably so overpowered it's almost not funny.
671** There's also [= MBlock=] in the SNES and PS versions. Due to a bug, the Evasion stat is worthless and instead [=MBlock=] determines your ability to dodge both physical ''and'' magical attacks. The right loadout to max out [=MBlock=] can render a character almost invincible. The aforementioned bug was fixed in the GBA version, however.
672* OpeningTheSandbox: Late in the World of Balance and after gaining the second airship in the World of Ruin.
673* {{Opera}}: The famous Opera scene. Some say that the game itself is opera-like but without the singing.
674* OptionalCharacterScene: Inevitable with so many characters and the ability to put whomever you want in your party most of the time.
675* OptionalPartyMember: Gogo and Umaro are only recruitable in the World of Ruin. Mog and Shadow only have short story appearances and can be missed as party members by the player's choices. Everyone except Celes, Edgar and Setzer are technically optional in the World of Ruin (though trying to make it through TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon with them split up all by themselves is SelfImposedChallenge of hardcore nature).
676* OurZombiesAreDifferent: The only undead enemies that have a real humanoid appearance are the "Still Goings" or the "Living Dead", and they are simply recolors of the Narshe guards. The rest of the undead enemies look far more skeletal or ghost-like in appearance. In addition, zombie-type enemies are functionally immune to instant death: anything that would kill them instantly instead causes them to regenerate with full HP.
677* OutsideTheBoxTactic:
678** The Magic Master at the top of the Cultists' Tower is capable of casting some nasty, nasty spells. The safest way to take him down is to Berserk him (he's actually susceptible and a bit of a wimp), Vanish your entire party (making even his ineffectual physical attack useless) and [[ManaBurn Rasp]]/[[ManaDrain Osmose]] him to death (he can die if he runs out of MP, and this also denies his [[TakingYouWithMe last-gasp Ultima]], which is really freakin' powerful).
679** This works admirably well on the Atma/Ultima Weapon, as well, as opposed to the standard "beat him down, let him heal, beat him down again" tactic. Of course, anything claiming to be pure energy is asking for it.
680** Part of what makes The Magic Master difficult to defeat is that he keep changing his elemental resistance in a place that prevents you from using normal attacks. Some obvious tactics to get around it are to berserk your characters or use Umaro to get around the normal attack restriction or spam NonElemental magic. A less obvious one is to throw a bunch of Super Balls at him until he dies.
681** Or you could just give the entire party Reflect Rings and sit there for five minutes while Magic Master kills himself. Surviving the Ultima at the end is a bit more difficult though.
682* OverflowError: Through the Sketch Glitch it is possible to obtain 256 copies of items. Attempting to sell them all at once rolls over from 255 to 0, and the shopkeeper will pay you nothing for them because the game thinks you're selling nothing.
683* OverlyLongFightingAnimation: While definitively nowhere as long as in the later games, the attacks are noticeably longer than in the earlier ones. This can be exploited to get around Cyan's CrutchCharacter status (since his special moves require a long time to charge up).
684[[/folder]]
685
686[[folder:P - R]]
687* PartyScattering: The PlayerParty is scattered upon entering the World of Ruin.
688* ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: In order to get to the Rich Man's house in South Figaro, Locke must tell a Password: "Courage". It also serves as a ShoutOut to VideoGame/FinalFantasyII, since one of the other options is "Wild Rose" (changed to "[[Film/CitizenKane Rosebud]]" in English releases).
689* PatrickStewartSpeech: The party responds with one following Kefka's rant against human existence. To which Kefka infamously replies, "This is pathetic! You all sound like [[ShutUpKirk chapters from a self-help booklet!]]"
690* PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling: The Dinosaur Forest and the Maranda Desert.
691* PercentBasedValues: The Step Mine spell deals damage equal to 3.1% of the total steps your party has taken throughout the game, up to a {{Cap}} of 9999 HP. Furthermore, its MP cost is also equal to 3.33% of the number of minutes you've been playing the game, up to a {{Cap}} of 255 MP.
692* PermanentlyMissableContent:
693** If you don't save Shadow on the Floating Continent, he's gone from the game for good[[note]]Which is a bit of a GuideDangIt, as saving him requires waiting until literally the last few seconds before the Floating Continent collapses, with no indication before, during, or after that this is what you have to do ''unless'' you decline to leave the first time: the menu option to not run away then becomes "Gotta wait for Shadow" instead of just "Wait!"[[/note]]. There are also some weapons and armor that can vanish from the game if you don't get them when they're first available.
694** If you leave some chests un-opened that can be opened later, their contents will be upgraded. (The Figaro cave is a nice example.)
695** The GBA version has a bestiary. For 100% completion, once you enter the World of Ruin, pretty much the only time you'll ever meet any of the monsters from the World of Balance again is on the Veldt and even then, you will only encounter the ones you encountered in the World of Balance itself.
696** With two exceptions, the only permanently-missable Espers are those that can be deliberately exchanged for something else, and for that reason. And while Ifrit can be skipped (and permanently lost) in all versions of the game, only a player miserably [[FailedASpotCheck Failing A Spot Check]] would do so by accident (the Shiva and Ifrit Magicite shards appear at the same time in the same place, and Shiva's blocks the door.) In the GBA version, though, Bahamut can be permanently missed by killing Deathgaze in the Soul Shrine before doing so ''outside'' the Soul Shrine.
697** In order to get a rage for Gau, you have to first see (not necessarily defeat) that enemy formation outside the Veldt to make it appear there, then fight it in the Veldt. This makes several Rages missable if you fail to encounter that enemy formation during the window when it's available. In particular, the Darkside rage can only be learned if you ''fail'' the light puzzle at least once during the scenario where Terra returns to Narshe, since failing that puzzle is the only way to encounter them.
698* PersonOfMassDestruction: The Espers, as explicitly stated by the game. Since Terra is a [[HalfHumanHybrid human/Esper hybrid]], the Empire considers her this as well, as evidenced by her vaporizing several squadrons in seconds. In gameplay terms, she's also the only character who can learn Ultima naturally, not to mention she arguably has the best equipment list, stats, and Special Command in the game.
699* PhlebotinumRebel: The Returners refuse to use Magitek, considering it an overly destructive force that can't possibly end well. After several attempts to stop the Empire fail, however, they go right to the source and arm themselves with magic instead. [[spoiler:This ends badly, when Gestahl learns how much more powerful magic is than Magitek, and how to exploit it.]]
700* PietaPlagiarism: The penultimate tier of the final battle.
701* PilferingProprietor: : The player can stay at Vector's Inn for free, but the innkeeper may steal some gil while you're asleep in a cutscene.
702* PimpedOutDress: Maria's costume during the opera. The FMV on the [=PlayStation=] version takes it up a notch.
703* ThePlayerIsTheMostImportantResource: During the ending, the game displays its "cast list" of the approximately 14 player characters along with their pertinent scenes, concluded by "And You..."
704* PlentyOfBlondes: A good half of the cast is blonde, such as Celes, Edgar, Sabin, Terra (at least [[SuddenlyBlonde in supplementary materials]]), Kefka, Leo and DependingOnTheArtist Locke.
705* PlotTwist: The game has one of the biggest and shocking plot twists in an RPG even by modern standards: Everything the heroes did was in vain; They outright fail to stop the BigBad and the world is destroyed as a result. It's only then that you realize you're only halfway through the game and you follow a completely brand new storyline as the plot shifts from preventing another War of the Magi to PuttingTheBandBackTogether and saving what little remains of a shattered world.
706* PointOfNoReturn:
707** Midway through the game, once you walk on the steps behind Atma/Ultima Weapon and confront Emperor Gestahl and Kefka at the Warring Triad. A return to the airship is right before this and Atma Weapon, and it's recommended that one make sure they earned everything they can and save, because once the player hits the Triad, [[spoiler:the cutscenes with Kefka overthrowing and killing Gestahl, moving the Triad, and destroying the Floating Continent starts, after which the team HAS to flee; this is followed by the events of Kefka conquering and destroying the World of Balance and transforming it into the World of Ruin, starting the second half of the game and making it impossible to return to any Balance-exclusive area for anything.]]
708** Starting the final boss battle is a point of no return in the SNES version, but later versions allow you to continue afterwards with anything you obtained during the battle, but with the plot rolled back to before it, allowing you to explore the BonusDungeon.
709* PollutedWasteland: Vector is a massive city full of pollution, factories, and machines.
710* PortalPicture: In Owzer's Mansion.
711* PortTown: South Figaro, the trading city of Nikeah and the Empire-occupied Albrook.
712* PowerCopying: Three party members:
713** Strago is the standard Final Fantasy Blue Mage, who learns Lore abilities by seeing enemies use them.
714** Gau learns "Rage" monster abilities by "Leap"ing onto monster groups and spending time living with them.
715** Gogo, being a Final Fantasy Mime, uses the abilities of the other characters in your party. His/Her/Its Mimic command duplicates the last move a party member used, and his in-battle command list can be customized in the status screen.
716* ThePowerOfFriendship: The common component of the party's PatrickStewartSpeech against Kefka.
717* ThePowerOfLove: The Memento Ring, described as being powered by love from Relm's late mother, prevents instant-death moves from working on the two characters who can equip it. The fact that only Relm and Shadow can equip the ring is one of the many clues provided as the identity of Relm's father.
718* PoweredArmor: {{Magitek}} armor straddles the line between this and MiniMecha. Exact size and appearance are hard to determine because it has two dramatically different concepts: [[http://alejandro-mikros.deviantart.com/art/Terra-on-a-Magitek-Armor-110879750 one]] in box art and the PSX re-release cinematic, which is akin to a bipedal mechanical dragon that one straddles like a motorbike, [[http://daniellf.deviantart.com/art/Magitek-Armor-Final-Fantasy-VI-173980726 another]] in the in-game small character and detailed enemy sprites, which is far more resembling a conventional MiniMecha with a cockpit. In addition to conventional weaponry such as missiles, it may unleash powerful elemental attacks. It's not restricted to mooks either: the player party uses it at three separate occasions. However, it never occurs to them to [[PhlebotinumRebel hijack a suit for permanent use]], probably because of the drawback mentioned below...
719* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The Magitek Armor uses drained essence of living Espers to power itself. It is also used to infuse the Empire's [[SuperSoldier Magitek Knights]] and grant them magic power. Later we get access to magicite, the crystallized remains of dead Espers, which is even more powerful. Notably, the players use these as well in order to learn magic - apparently it's fine as long as they do it in the name of stopping the Esper killers. Some espers even sacrifice their lives to bestow the magicite.
720* PowersAsPrograms:
721** Every party member except Gogo and Umaro could be equipped with Magicite. Gogo takes it a step further - he/she/it can equip almost every ability in the game, up to three to be used in battle. If Magic is equipped, Gogo can use any spell usable by the other active party members.
722** Taken literally with some of the enemies in the Magitek Research Facility. Several of them (either machines or implied to be cybernetic) attack with special abilities called "Program __".
723* PowerUpLetDown: So you puzzled out the Zozo SideQuest (or [[GuideDangIt consulted a guide]]), and now you've got [[ChainsawGood Edgar's Chainsaw]], which does even more single-target damage than [[DiscOneNuke the Drill]] and has a 1/4 chance of causing instant death. Awesome, right? Not so fast. Against {{mook}}s, the damage difference between the Drill and Chainsaw is academic, since either one does enough damage for a OneHitKill (at least, this applies to many mooks...certainly not all of them or even most of them, especially in the second half of the game.) Against bosses, with their ContractualBossImmunity to instant death effects the Chainsaw actually has a 1/4 chance to miss altogether, meaning that on average the Drill still does more damage. Run the numbers, you know this to be true.[[note]]In the mobile and GBA versions, the chainsaw's instant death attack comes up ''far'' less than in previous versions, making it more useful.[[/note]]
724* PrecisionFStrike: Locke gets a mild one in the GBA translation onwards.
725-->'''Locke:''' Dammit, gotta get to Narshe on the fly.
726* {{Precursors}}: The Warring Triad and the Espers fit the description, even though they are not exactly this.
727* PressXToNotDie: Press X To Not Butcher The Opera: During the opera scene, the game prompts you to pick the next line in the lyrics out of a choice of two. If you're too slow, the game picks whatever your cursor is hovering over.
728* PrisonLevel: In occupied South Figaro, Locke sneaks around town until he discovers that a former general of the Empire, Celes, is locked up. He has to rescue her and both must then leave where she was jailed.
729* PureMagicBeing: Espers.
730* PuttingTheBandBackTogether: Celes traveling the second half of the game trying to reunite the party.
731* PuttingOnTheReich: The Gestahlian Empire bears several similarities to Nazi Germany, including unethical experimentation on an intelligent species, genocide, most of the footsoldiers' uniforms being brown, an honest-to-God Nazi salute in one scene, constant displaying of their symbols, and technology advanced enough to allow themselves to start conquering various kingdoms. Not to mention that "Gestahl" sounds a little too similar to "[[UsefulNotes/TheGestapo Gestapo]]". On the other hand, the imperialism, mass murder and the advanced technology in comparison to the neighbours could also be taken as references to [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan Axis Japan]] or UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire. It is an [[TheEmpire Empire]], after all.
732* PuzzleBoss: There are a remarkable number of bosses, and several {{Mooks}}, rather vulnerable to the seemingly-useless Rasp spell. Not surprisingly, people who miss the hint given in-game about this tend to find them ThatOneBoss. Additionally, the method to defeat Wrexsoul is [[GuideDangIt fairly obscure]]. Unless you Banish the Soul Savers. But that's admittedly very cheap, and won't net you any experience or loot for doing so.
733** The GBA-only Dragon's Den turns half the dragons into PuzzleBosses. Skull Dragon can ''only'' be killed by draining its MP. Red Dragon can't be killed at all - you have to just survive long enough for it to die on its own.
734* PyrrhicVictory: [[spoiler:Kefka ends up defeated, but by then he has already caused TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt and it came at the cost of all espers and magic vanishing from the world forever.]]
735* QuadDamage: Master Scroll, the relic/accessory that allows the four hit combo.
736* QuarrelingSong: The third part of the opera involves Draco arriving at Maria's side, before Prince Ralse starts one between him and Draco over who gets Maria. Especially when both men sing vocally in any language in the Pixel Remaster.
737* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: The cast of heroes is certainly this -- we have everything from a king right down to a random whelp from the Veldt. And a moogle and a yeti.
738* RailCarSeparation: When Sabin, Shadow, and Cyan are being pursued by the ghostly passengers of the [[GhostTrain Phantom Train]], they decide to disconnect the car the passengers are on to lose them.
739* RandomizedDamageAttack: [[TheGambler Setzer's]] dice weapons do entirely random damage unaffected by stats.
740* RealIsBrown: The colour scheme used in most of the parts of the World of Ruin, although this is more a case of "destruction is brown," since it's only all brown due to the world being razed by [[spoiler:Kefka's attacks.]]
741* ReducedManaCost: The cost-halving Gold Hairpins as usual, and the 1-mp-cost-Ultima-Spam Economizer.
742* RegionalRedecoration: At the halfway point of ''Final Fantasy VI'', Kefka unbalances the world and completely changes the landscape. Continents are split, separating towns once a short walk from each other, a new island appears in the corner of the world, and the Serpent Trench, which used to run underwater, now sits above the surface.
743* ReligionOfEvil: The cult of Kefka. Despite the fact he rules the world at that point, the cultists really don't do much harm at all, and it's not for certain if the enemies on the Cultists' Tower are cultists themselves. It's also hinted that the cult of Kefka only serves Kefka out of fear of being killed if they don't, or in the case of Strago, being too broken by loss of your loved ones to resist. It's not even clear whether Kefka knows (or cares) that they exist.
744* RescueIntroduction: Celes.
745* LaResistance: The Returners.
746* RemixedLevel: Kefka's Tower sits on the former site of Vector, and is comprised of bits from the Imperial Palace and Devil's Lab.
747* ReviveKillsZombie:
748** Famously used to defeat the [[AfterlifeExpress Phantom Train]] in one hit.
749** This property is actually glitched in the game, leading to ghosts that somewhat hilariously kill themselves a little each turn from what was supposed to be the undead equivalent of Regen. Djibriel of Gamefaqs put it best: ''Instead, due to a bug, Whispers just waste away in their own misery.''
750* RoofHopping: Or Traintop hopping. In Zozo, you are forced to jump from holes in the sides of buildings.
751[[/folder]]
752
753[[folder:S - U]]
754* SadBattleMusic: In one of the battles vs. Ultros, when Relm joins the party, the standard battle theme[[note]]this particular fight uses the traditional [=FF6=] battle music. The first and last fights with Ultros, on the other hand, use the normal boss battle theme, while the fight at the opera house uses a wholly original theme[[/note]] is replaced by her theme.
755* SafetyInIndifference: Shadow implies that this is his philosophy when he warns Terra that some people kill their own emotions. [[spoiler:Probably because of his guilt over being unable to give his old friend and partner a MercyKill.]]
756* SaveTheWorldClimax: Starts off with a mysterious girl named Terra working for the Empire due to a form of mind control. She has no knowledge of who or what she is. When she gets knocked out in a mission, a treasure hunter named Locke quickly helps protect her. Before long she's helping TheResistance fighting against TheEmpire. The Empire itself poses a threat to the world, but the emperor himself would never go so far as to destroy it, which his seemingly comic-relief jester Kefka goes ahead and does just that. The world now in ruins, the heroes know that they at least have to stop Kefka from destroying all existence since he'd already gone that far.
757* ScaryBlackMan: Vargas and Dadaluma. Both are skilled in martial arts and bare-fist fighting, and they both also try to kill the party members for no reason whatsoever, though they are still relatively easy to defeat. Vargas may just be tanned, though, since his parents are both light-skinned.
758* SceneryGorn: Vector. In the lower part of the city the streets are dark and surrounded by a black pit, there's unfinished and abandoned scaffolding everywhere, Imperial Troops are all around, and the stores and services are mediocre, then it all gets worse when the city gets set on fire. The Magitek Research Facility starts out in a pit full of ''rotting esper corpses'', and the Imperial Palace has a view of what Vector really looks like: an industrial hellhole with a fiery orange sky set over a brown cityscape.
759* SchizoTech: There is a mechanical castle capable of traveling underground, TheEmpire has a monopoly in MagiTek and SteamPunk mechs (and, apparently, flying robot satellites), and magic is [[HereThereWereDragons considered a myth]] by most of the world before the game begins. Yet not only are firearms an extreme rarity, but apparently only one man in the world has figured out how to use a crossbow, and the rest of the world is functionally stuck in the Middle Ages with a Victorian skin. Also, Siegfried is the only person seen with a revolver, and he doesn't even use it until the Coliseum. It's also debatable whether or not Edgar is the only one capable of using crossbows and so on. You don't get much chance to see Figaro in action, and the only other countries in the world are the Empire (with its mecha that fire laser beams and missiles) and the various medieval-level countries. Which probably explains why the Empire takes them over so easily.
760* SchizophrenicDifficulty: This game has a number of factors (i.e. mostly bugs) which can easily combine into a "it was easy then hard then stupidly simple then WTF I CAN'T WIN NO MATTER WHAT" cocktail of confusion.
761** The number of gameplay bugs (most notably the "evade doesn't count for dick" bug) ensure that newbie players will be horribly confused when [[TheGogglesDoNothing the relic they paid good money for doesn't seem to work]].
762** The battle speed bug, which makes the battle speed as selected in the config menu only apply to ENEMIES. Those who know of this can turn this "bug" into a difficulty adjuster, but those who don't may wonder why they're getting curbstomped now just because they wanted battles to go a bit faster.
763** Even without the aforementioned bugs, there are still several difficulty spikes that can make the player wonder how much time the dev team really bothered to put into gameplay balance. The game is in fact quite easy... until you reach Zozo, when the Veil Dancers can kill off your party with a single high-level Ice spell and the huge guys can also do so with a high-level earth spell (Magnitude 8) if you don't run as fast as you can. Then you beat that town (mostly by running like a little girl), and go along quite nicely until you have to airdrop onto the Floating Continent, at which point the bosses liquidate your party into a fine soup-like consistency... after you have spent 20 non-saveable minutes fighting their grunts, of course.
764* SchmuckBanquet: Averted -- the Phantom Train inexplicably has a dining car with Ghosts who serve you food, and Cyan is skeptical of it being safe. Sabin wolfs it down, and it turns out it's perfectly fine, and even heals you.
765* ScriptedBattle: Several.
766** The fight with Vargas in the beginning is a one-on-one battle. The only commands available to Sabin are Attack and Blitz, and you don't know how to use Blitz until a conversation when the battle's almost over, after which you defeat Vargas by using Raging Fist[[note]]It is ''theoretically'' possible to defeat Vargas in a straight HP battle, but he has 11,500 HP at a time when you're barely doing damage in the triple digits. Because Sabin's appearance is scripted and he's immediately hit with Doom Fist, limiting the time you have available to finish the battle before automatic defeat, it's nigh-impossible to do[[/note]].
767** The battle with Kefka in the Imperial Base might as well be since the only thing he does is attack, and as soon as he's hit with any damage, he runs away.
768** The third battle with Ultros is a normal boss fight until Relm shows up, and then, after a conversation, you win the battle by having Relm use her Sketch ability to paint a picture of the boss. Though you can kill him the usual way as well.
769** The first random encounters you come across in the World of Ruin have Sap (which causes damage over time) and very low HP, so they tend to immediately die off on their own; this illustrates the bleak state of the new world.
770* SelfDamagingAttackBackfire: Setzer's special command, Slot, can roll the combination of 7-7-Bar. When that happens, everyone in your party dies. Game over, man (unless you had Reraise).
771* SenselessSacrifice: See AIRoulette. Sabin, Gau and Strago all have access to special moves which kills them in battle (Soul Spiraler for the former, Self-Destruct and Transfusion for both of the latter), so if the A.I. decides to make use of them in the Coliseum, kiss your wagered item good-bye.
772* SequenceBreaking:
773** Feeling like ''really'' [[SelfImposedChallenge giving yourself a hard time]]? It's possible to completely skip rescuing Celes in South Figaro with Locke. If you do so, she's replaced in the party by one of the Moogles who fought with Locke and Mog, which presents ''several'' problems. Said Moogle can never change its equipment or equip Espers, and eventually what equipment it has is taken away.
774** A fun little glitch lets you obtain the airship at any point during the World of Balance. [[http://lparchive.org/Breaking-Final-Fantasy-VI/ This thread]] shows off the glitch and more. One of the upsides of this glitch is that the long-standing [[invoked]]UrbanLegendOfZelda about [[spoiler:reviving General Leo]] actually becomes ''possible'' (albeit not for the entire game and with some conditions attached).
775** Often the game lets you visit places in multiple orders but all the NPC dialogue assumes you went in a specific order. For example, talking to Shadow at Aged Man's Cabin will tell you about the Imperial Camp, even if you beat the Imperial Camp first. Talking to an NPC in Jidoor will imply that you've never heard of the opera house and tell you where it is, even though there's nothing stopping you from visiting the opera house before Jidoor.
776* SequentialBoss: Not only do you fight Kefka's tiers in succession, but if he kills your characters they will ''also'' be replaced in succession.
777* SevenDeadlySins: At the Returners' hide-out, Banon reveals that one man opened a forbidden box and unleashed all the evils into the world. Five of those evils were envy, pride, greed, wrath, and gluttony.
778* SheatheYourSword: A surprisingly valid way to defeat the Magi Master {{superboss}}, if you have Reflect status on your party members. Magi Master [[PuzzleBoss changes their elemental weakness]] in response to being damaged by spells you cast, but 'not' when damaged by their own spells being reflected off your party members. Thus, your characters can simply stand there and let spells bounce off them until Magi Master's HP is depleted. [[spoiler: Though they will need take suitable measures against Magi Master's final counterattack.]]
779* ShipTease:
780** In the very beginning of the game, the dialogue writing makes it look like Terra is going to be Locke's love interest, but then he meets Celes and basically forgets all about his [[DeclarationOfProtection vow to always protect Terra]] until she actually gets into serious trouble.
781** Terra also gets ShipTease later with both General Leo and Shadow in the span of about thirty seconds of gameplay. Of course [[spoiler:this is almost immediately followed by one of the ultimate {{Player Punch}}es in game history when Leo gets killed later in the mission, and Shadow's apparent suicide in the ending makes the latter moot as well]].
782** Edgar, being a CasanovaWannabe, gets ShipTease with every female party member at one point or another, even [[{{Moe}} Relm]]. [[DependingOnTheWriter Depending on the translation]], he either has the decency to be {{squick}}ed about it or implies that he's up for a JailbaitWait.
783* ShootTheDangerousMinion: Subverted by Emperor Gestahl. Let's just say that [[spoiler:trying to kill Kefka on a Floating Continent miles above the surface is a BAD idea, especially when Kefka is wielding the power of three gods combined]].
784* ShoutOut:
785** The Imperial Palace is visually based on Tyrell Corporation's arcology/pyramid from ''Film/BladeRunner''.
786** ''Franchise/StarWars'' ones all around: [[Film/ANewHope Biggs and Wedge]]. "Aren't you a little short for a soldier?" And, Kefka throwing Gestahl much like Darth Vader does to Palpatine, although unlike [[RedemptionEqualsDeath Vader]], Kefka's action only serves to shove him even further beyond the MoralEventHorizon.
787** [[WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead "Fire! Fire! Heh, heh, heh..."]]
788** The entire final battle against Kefka is derived from [[Creator/DanteAlighieri Dante's]] [[Literature/TheDivineComedy Divine Comedy]].
789** The Air Force boss boasts a wave cannon and a minor enemy called a Bit that absorbs attacks, just like the R-9 starfighters in R-Type.
790** [[Film/TheThreeStooges The Three Dream Stooges]] (which are named Moe, Larry and Curly in the SNES and PS versions, and [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed Curlax, Laragorn, and Moebius]] in the GBA version).
791** Also to opera, especially Wagner: Siegfried is a mini-boss in the early game, and Bruin is a bear enemy (in the opera Siegfried, Bruin is his pet bear). Edgar's castle is in Figaro (as in the Marriage of Figaro).
792** In the SNES translation during the march on Narshe, Kefka says "Read my lips!" This is a possible reference to former United States president George H. W. Bush, who had uttered the phrase in 1988 as a promise never to raise taxes, only to have it used against him during the 1992 presidential campaign by both Bill Clinton and Pat Buchanan when he was forced to raise taxes.
793** At one point (in the SNES and PS translation anyway), Terra states, [[Music/ForeignerBand "I want to know what love is... now!"]]
794*** And before that, Edgar remarks that Celes is "Cold as ice..."
795** In Locke's scenario after he delivers the cider to Duncan at his house in South Figaro, one of the (incorrect) passwords Duncan's grandson gives as an option is "[[Film/CitizenKane Rose bud]]".
796** Kefka's second "I don't believe this!" scene is accompanied by a pose that practically screams [[Manga/OsomatsuKun "Sheeeh!"]].
797** In the GBA and iOS translations, the Guardian says "None shall pass!", a reference to the Black Knight in ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail''.
798** Edgar's Chainsaw has a 25% chance to inflict Instant Death. When this triggers, [[Franchise/FridayThe13th he puts on a hockey mask and the chainsaw becomes a hedge trimmer]].
799** In the SNES game, Sabin's Aura Cannon Blitz is preformed by doing a [[Franchise/StreetFighter quarter circle and then pressing A]]. Similarly, his most powerful Blitz, Bum Rush, is performed by doing the same motion as the most powerful special from the same game.
800** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgUI94Lxik Techno de Chocobo]] is done in the style of ''Music/YellowMagicOrchestra's'' song [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFADf3CW8zI Technopolis]], even including a robotic voice.
801** In the original Japanese versions, the relic that gives Setzer access to Coin Toss/GP Rain is Heiji's Jitte, named for the main character of the {{Jidaigeki}} detective stories ''Zenigata Heiji'', who carried a jitte as proof of his station and frequently defeated foes by throwing coins at them.
802* TheShowMustGoOn: After the party and Ultros crash into the scene.
803* ShowWithinAShow: The opera, again.
804* SingleStrokeBattle: The Espers Odin and Raiden when summoned, as well as Cyan's Oblivion and Shadow during the Anthology ending cinematic against some spectral mooks.
805* SinisterSubway: Well, it is a Train Station for the "departing" people.
806* SituationalDamageAttack: Step Mine, a BlueMagic attack, does damage according to how many steps the party has taken. It is devastating when used against the party, but because of HealthDamageAsymmetry is less effective when used against monsters.
807* SmashMook: Gigas enemies. Having the appearance of [[OurGiantsAreBigger tall and incredibly muscular humans bound in broken chains]], they fight with their bare hands and their own strength.
808* SoleEntertainmentOption: The player has to lead Celes through an opera in order to entice Setzer and his [[GlobalAirship Airship]] to where the party is. This really is the only form of entertainment, other than the Coliseum, that the world will experience.
809* SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear:
810** Largely [[AvertedTrope averted]]. All the characters who are technically 'guest' characters (Banon, [[spoiler:General Leo]]) have locked equipment sets, meaning you can't give them anything of any import. Terra is even kind enough to shed all her armor and relics before having a HeroicBSOD and flying to Zozo for a nap.
811** Played straight, albeit temporarily, with Shadow in the World of Balance. Anything you equip him with stays equipped until the next time you get to use him, which can be very annoying considering that he has a random chance of bailing on the party at the end of ''every battle'' the first two times you get him, so it's entirely possible for him to tie up rare and powerful equipment like a Ribbon or Genji Glove for long stretches of the game. Hey, jerk, I agreed to pay you 3,000 GP, not a Hero Ring![[note]]Once you gain access to the airship (after the Magitek Research Facility), you can strip any equipment and relics off Shadow, but not (in the SNES and PS versions) any magicite. Later versions correct this by allowing you to strip magicite from any character at any time.[[/note]]
812** {{Inverted}} by Mog. You gain control of him as a guest character while rescuing Terra in the game's opening minutes, and it's possible to strip him of his Mythril Spear and Shield [[SequenceBreaking earlier than they would normally come up]] in the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness. The spear isn't a big deal since only Edgar can equip it and he normally uses tools, but the Shield is a nice defensive item (at least in versions of the game that don't have the Physical Evade bug that makes [[ArmorIsUseless shields useless]]).
813* SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness:
814** Justified when going from Kohlingen and Jidoor to the southern continent, as it makes sense the Empire will have access to stronger equipment... then you find even better stuff at Thamasa. Played straight at the beginning of the World of Ruin and abandoned by the time of Kohlingen, as you reacquire the airship shortly after and thus the shops of the world sell all sorts of varying equipment with no logic or reason one way or the other.
815** In general, if an Esper acquired in the World of Balance teaches a spell at a learn rate of 1 or 2 percent, odds are in the World of Ruin a new Esper will teach the spell at a much faster rate. Two of your best Espers in the first part of the game will be Seraph, who teaches the five elementary healing spells quite quickly, and Maduin, who teaches the level two FireIceLightning spells.[[note]]Although Ifrit and Shiva both teach Fire 2/Fira and Ice 2/Blizzara faster than Maduin[[/note]] In the World of Ruin, Lakshmi and Phoenix teach all the spells Seraph teaches but do it faster and with a few new spells as well, and Valigarmanda teaches the level three FireIceLightning spells.[[note]]Though at the slowest possible rate[[/note]] The only Espers of the World of Balance who don't become completely outclassed by another Esper later are ones that don't teach anything much worth learning in the first place, like Phantom[[note]]though Vanish and Berserk both have situational uses[[/note]] or Catoblepas.[[note]]Though Bio is an excellent mid-tier damage spell that ignores most standard elemental defenses[[/note]]
816* SourceMusic: All of the music during the Opera scene, up to and including the battle theme with Ultros, are provided by the in-game orchestra.
817-->'''Impressario:''' May as well make the best of this. MUSIC!
818* SpeakingSimlish: The Opera House scene, with both the generic performers and Celes doing it. The SNES (English) version doesn't quite match the words to the music; the GBA remake is better about that.
819** And completely averted in the Pixel Remaster, with actual singers performing the roles of Celes, Draco and Ralse.
820* SpeedyTechnoRemake: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgUI94Lxik Techno de Chocobo]], without the speedy part.
821* SphereOfDestruction: The Ultima spell and Crusader. There's also lots of them during TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
822* SpoiledBrat: A kid at the auction house in Jidoor will scream at his father when certain items come up for bid, who will then bid an obscene amount of money and win the item for him no matter how much you were willing to bid on it. Even if [[MoneyForNothing you actually have enough cash to outbid him]], the game won't give you the option.
823* SpookyPainting: Owzer's Mansion is full of these. One of them attempts to eat your head party member, and the end boss of this sidequest is the queen mother of these.
824* SquishyWizard: Terra, Celes and eventually almost everyone else avert this with the ability to equip heavy armor and weapons except for Relm and Strago, who play this trope straight for most of the game.
825* StaticRoleExchangeableCharacter: After Terra's reinclusion to the party, the players can arrange the fourteen-member party however they like, barring one or two places where a certain character is fixed for plot purposes. The character in the "party leader" slot is assigned the same lines regardless of who's placed there, which can result in some wildly out-of-character dialogue.
826* SteamPunk: Has elements of this, most notably in Narshe, Figaro Castle, and Vector. Jidoor and the Opera House also both have Victorian era themes.
827* AStormIsComing: The opening cinematic even has a thunderstorm foreshadowing how the first act does not end well.
828%%* StormingTheCastle
829* StraightForTheCommander: This is a tactic in several battles, notably any battle involving switching between multiple parties to prevent an enemy advance and Cyan's defense of Doma Castle.
830* {{Stripperiffic}}: The original Siren summon was a woman wearing a gray tank top and no bottoms. In the SNES release, she's wearing a pair of hot pants which are clearly just her bumcheeks recolored gray. The GBA re-release turned it into a loincloth, while the PS version brought back the original uncensored sprite.
831** Chardanook in its goddess form is a woman who is only covered enough using clouds. In the Japanese versions and the PS version, her tummy shows.
832** The Esper Lakshmi is nude, save for blankets on her alter or bed covering her up enough.
833** Goddess is only covered enough in a long sash of sorts. In the SNES version, it looked like she was wearing shorts as well.
834** The Kefka effigies and other humanoid beings who appear on Kefka's Tower are all scantily clad (or [[FullFrontalAssault nude]], depending on the version of the game).
835** During the final battle, Kefka is only wearing a single length of purple cloth around his hips.
836* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: It's what allows the Empire to create {{Magitek}}, as they figured out how to "extract" magic from Espers, refine it into some sort of fuel or power source, and create machines powered by it.
837* SummonMagic: Possibly the weakest in the series, although it's justified in that we summon the dead Espers, and the fact that the main point of Espers, or rather the magicite, is to enable the use of magic for normal people. There is also a lot of variety. It has the traditional "major elemental attack" set (Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, etc.) and status inflicting ones (Cait Sith, Catoblepas, Phantom, etc.). Then it has a few oddball ones, like Golem, which acts as a physical damage absorbing shield till he runs out of HP, or Quetzalli, which initiates a full party jump attack. You may only get to summon an Esper once per character per battle, but they at least serve more strategic roles than arguably any other game in the series.
838* {{Superboss}}:
839** The Eight Dragons, Atma / Ultima Buster, and many other bosses from the World of Ruin.
840** Intangir is hard to find, completely optional, and tougher than anything else in the World of Balance. It's the same with the Brachosaur in The World of Ruin.
841* TacticalSuicideBoss: Ymir (also known as Whelk in the SNES and PS versions) in the Narshe mines.
842* TakeAThirdOption: The Genji Glove you can get in the Returner Hideout is far more useful than the Gauntlet you can get as an alternative, but getting the Genji Glove requires you to continually refuse Banon and miss some important plot development. However, if you refuse Banon once and then talk to the Returner walking around in the treasure room where you can get the Air Lancet and the White Cape, he will give you the Genji Glove. You can then go and accept Banon's request, and watch the Returners' strategy meeting.
843* TakeThat: In the GBA version, a Figaro guard mentions that there were some Kefka worshippers who insist on spelling Kefka's name with "C's," which is both a reference to Kefka's Japanese spelling of his name, as well as poking fun at certain fans who insist on spelling Kefka's name the Japanese way.
844* TakeYourTime: Averted in the World of Ruin, where Kefka is not in a hurry himself. Also generally averted in the main plot itself because it's clear that things are happening, but if there isn't a timer on the screen, it's generally a justifiably longer process (military invasion, massive troop movements, etc) that proceeds at the speed of plot, allowing you to level grind.
845** Played straight in WOR Tzen. The house starts collapsing as soon as you enter the city, but the timer doesn't start until you approach Sabin. Feel free to wander around the city, shopping and talking to [=NPCs=]. Likewise, you can go shopping while the mansion in Thamsa burns.
846* TakingYouWithMe: Several bosses, the most annoying example being the Magic Master on the top of Cultists' tower. The Reraise spell is your friend.
847* TalkingIsAFreeAction: If Terra casts magic during the second boss battle against the two Magitek Armors[[note]]or any battle in which she uses magic in front of Edgar for the first time before reaching the Returner Hideout; it doesn't have to be this specific battle[[/note]], Edgar has a minor freak-out which leads to Locke having one as well, leading to an in-combat cutscene. The whole thing lasts about two or three minutes depending on your reading speed, if you don't just button-spam through the resulting dialogue. Meanwhile there's these two Imperial soldiers with heavily-armed battle tanks, sitting there and patiently waiting...
848* ATasteOfPower: At the beginning you control Terra and two soldiers, all in suits of powerful Magitek Armor. The soldiers level up quickly and with the exception of the boss, everything you face is easily defeated, with damage healed quickly from another very powerful healing ability in the armors. It lasts for about 5 minutes until the two soldiers are killed and Terra's armor is destroyed.
849* TearsFromAStone: In the Ancient City, the petrified Queen cries a tear that [[SwissArmyTears transforms]] the Esper Odin into Raiden. Partially justified with a legend found in the same city that explains ''why''.
850* TechPoints: How you obtain magic in this game.
851* TechnicolorDeath: Enemies vanish in a purplish fade, and bosses flash and turn red before shaking away noisily, or they sometimes just dissipate in a sort of wave which represents escaping.
852* TeenPregnancy: Two background {{NPC}}s, Katarin with Duane's child. The subject is touched upon very briefly and without any of the themes associated with the trope. [[spoiler:The birth of their child is actually seen as a metaphor for the rebirth of the world in the game's epilogue.]]
853* TeleportationRescue: Done in reverse when Kefka ambushes the heroes at the Magitek Research Facility. Rather than teleporting the party out, Celes uses it on ''Kefka'' (as well as herself) so that the others can escape.
854* ThematicSequelLogoChange: The sixth game's logo features Terra (the protagonist) atop a Magitek Armor, a type of walking robot that can be piloted from the top.
855* TheyStillBelongToUsLecture: Kefka at one point tries to convince the party that Celes has been a mole in their ranks since joining (she's not). He actually manages to plant some seeds of doubt in Locke, causing Celes to become somewhat distant towards him later on. Locke's doubt is helped somewhat by the fact that the infiltration of the Magitek Research Facility was suspiciously easy, and the fact that Celes doesn't immediately try to counter Kefka's arguments, though he later admits that the doubt was "just for a moment".
856* ThreeLinesSomeWaiting: Early in the game, Locke goes to South Figaro to stall the Empire, and later when going through the Lethe river Sabin is separated from the party. You are then given the choice on who to play first: Locke, Sabin or the rest of the party.
857* ThrowawayCountry: Doma. The sacked cities on the southern continent also count to a lesser extent as they are still functioning towns, just under Imperial control for most of the game.
858* ThrowItIn: In-universe example: After stopping Ultros from attempting to drop a 4-ton weight on Celes, Locke accidentally ends up briefly ruining the opera by knocking out the male star and his rival suitor, and had to improvise for the mishap as best as he can by making it seem as though Ultros' duel was part of the play.
859* TimeKeepsOnTicking: The timer in timed sequences keeps going even if you go into the menu; the only way to pause it is to pause a battle (averted in the Pixel Remaster, as you can stop time by going to the main menu and restart it once you exit). The same applies for your save file's running clock that counts your total play time.
860* TimeStandsStill: The spell Quick gives two free turns, where nobody else can act.
861* TimedMission: Many, among them stopping Ultros before he drops the 4-ton weight on Celes, talking to Imperial soldiers before the banquet preparations are complete, escaping the collapsing FloatingContinent, and others...
862* TimeSkip: The second half begins with Celes awakening from a ConvenientComa one year after the cataclysm.
863* TookALevelInBadass: Every enemy in Mt. Zozo in the Advance remake. The evade bug in the Super NES and PS releases was fixed, so now suddenly all the monsters in the area have an amazingly high chance of dodging normal attacks, forcing you to rely on special attacks and magic or to equip a relic which increases the hit percentage of normal attacks.
864* TouchedByVorlons: The Espers have a way to teach humans the ability to use magic. First by draining the Espers of their life essence until they become Magicite, then by holding their remains.
865* TragicKeepsake: Darill's airship, the Falcon. When Setzer finds its wreckage in the backstory, he restores it and seals it in Darill's Tomb. After Kefka ruins the world, which destroys Setzer's airship, he retrieves the Falcon to reunite the rest of the party and to defeat Kefka.
866* TraintopBattle: During the Phantom Train sequence.
867* TrialAndErrorGameplay: Gau's rages (if you're not using an FAQ), and the fishing game.
868* TrueCompanions: The RagtagBunchOfMisfits eventually transforms into a close family.
869* TutorialFailure: Many, many players struggled to perform Sabin's Blitzes. The in-game tutorial says "Choose Blitz, press the Control Pad left, right, left, then press the A button!" While technically correct, the game fails to mention that you're supposed to input the command while an otherwise innocuous arrow is pointing at Sabin. Most new players will try instead to press A while the arrow's up (since the arrow is usually the means to select the target character of a given action), then hastily input the Blitz, which is already way too late. The game will never try to correct your timing even after dozens of failed attempts, so naturally, many players just think they haven't inputted the button combination fast enough.
870* TwoHeadedCoin: Used against Setzer [[spoiler:and in Edgar & Sabin's backstory to guarantee the former the throne and the latter his freedom]].
871* UncommonTime: The final movement of "Dancing Mad" alternates mostly between 4/4 and 7/8, although a few measures are in 2/2. "Another World of Beasts" is in 7/4 and "The Unforgiven" in 10/8.
872* UnderratedAndOverleveled:
873** Relm. Despite being a ten-year-old with no training, she joins your party at roughly the same level all your other characters will be at, ''after your party has already successfully fought the Empire to a truce''. Her magical abilities may be justified by her Thamasian blood, but her ability to swing a mace and take hits in combat is completely unexplained.
874** While not as severe a case as Relm, who joins even later and clearly less fit as a physical fighter, Setzer would also count. The game never explains why he is so good with a sword, nor where in his {{backstory}} has he ever trained or had to fight battles, yet he's still able to keep up with the others from the moment he joins. He is strong enough that the empire's strongest regular soldiers defending their capital are mere mooks to him when he joins!
875* UnexpectedGameplayChange:
876** Actually manages to shift RPG genres between Eastern and Western during the World of Ruin, where pretty much every section besides Kefka's Tower is not necessary to complete the game once you get your airship.
877** "Hey, who put this Opera in my Final Fantasy? Oh, who cares; Celes' Opera solo is a thing of beauty."
878* UnintentionallyUnwinnable:
879** Exclusive to the Platform/PlayStation version of ''Final Fantasy VI'', which only checks if Celes and Locke are the first two members in the party. Right before you go to the Opera in the World of Balance, you need Celes and Locke in the party. Only put those two in the party. Move them to the third and fourth party members, then make a team without them. Congratulations, you can't complete the game because there's no sprites for them in Narshe. Later versions prevent this from happening.
880** At several points in the game you're not allowed to leave the current area, so if you're unable to complete it and don't have a save from before you entered, you're effectively softlocked. An infamous point this can occur is the Lethe River -- if players can't manage to beat Ultros, they have no way to leave the river to resupply, and if you saved at the second Save Point, you're out of luck. This is where a saving grace comes in, that experience and levels are retained if you get a Game Over, so you can run the last segment of the river and fight the one or two battles before Ultros repeatedly to slowly but surely level grind your way to success. Another spot this can occur is the Dreamscape, which has two annoying {{Puzzle Boss}}es and is quite a long and difficult area, and you can't leave until you beat Wrexsoul at the end.
881** There's a way to softlock the game during the crane DualBoss battle. Have Gau enter the Bomb rage (which combines fire element and flying), then get Locke, Setzer and whoever your fourth party member is killed. Congratulations: Gau and the right crane have just entered a cycle of hitting each other with fire-based spells, healing themselves, Magnitude 8 always misses, and rarely-used Lightning spell is not enough to OneHitKill Gau.
882* UniqueEnemy: During the three-way party split after the Lethe River, Terra and Sabin's groups can each encounter enemies who are so rare that they don't even appear in later ports' bestiaries. Failing the Narshe security checkpoint can lead into battles with Darksides, Specters and Eukaryotes; while Sabin ignoring or hitting a locked treasure chest inside the Imperial Camp prevents him from encountering some Dobermans. Despite the lack of bestiary entries, they still have Rages for Gau.
883* UniversalDriversLicense:
884** It's debatable if Setzer was giving the tutorial of the airship controls to the party and everyone can pilot it, or it was simply for the player's benefit and he still controls it. Edgar does pilot it at some point in the plot, though (he crashes, but it's not really his fault).
885** In the SNES and PS versions, there is a scene with Sabin and Cyan where the player is lead to believe that the Magitek armor's controls are largely intuitive... for anyone who's not a complete luddite (as demonstrated by Cyan's spastic donuts in the Empire's camp after the poisoning of Doma Castle).
886* UpgradeArtifact: Magicite, though it's more of a case of speeding up the training instead of instant powers.
887* UrbanSegregation: Jidoor is an extreme case, where the middle class live in the south of the town and the rich live in the north of town, and the richest man in town stays in a very large mansion at the very north. The poor faced endless pressure by the other citizens, and they eventually left and founded a town in the mountains, named Zozo, which ended up becoming a total hellhole. Later, Vector is split into three parts. The bottom is inhabited by Returner sympathizers and thieves, the upper part is patrolled by Imperial soldiers, and the top holds the massive Imperial Palace.
888* UselessUsefulSpell:
889** {{Averted}} with instant-death spells and techniques if you're [[LoopholeAbuse willing to abuse]] a bug involving the [[StatusEffects Vanish effect]] in the Super NES release -- Vanish causes all spells to have 100% hit rate, even if the boss is immune to them, letting players cast Death/Doom on bosses and bypass ContractualBossImmunity. Played straight with most other status spells; while there are a few bosses ''not'' immune to them that are trivialized by the likes of Confuse, Berserk, or Sleep, they're not very common and outside those instances you'll probably never need them.
890** The Sniper Sight grants 100% hit rate, but attacks miss very rarely, only a handful of specific enemies have significant enough Evasion that they can avoid attacks on a regular basis, and special attacks like Tools, Blitz, and Bushido, ignore evasion anyway.
891** The Crystal Orb gives +50% max MP. This sounds fantastic, except the game also has the Celestriad, which reduces the MP costs of all spells to 1. For that matter, the Crystal Orb is actually harder to farm than the Celestriad.[[note]]The Crystal Orb cannot be farmed directly, you need to Steal Muscle Belts from an enemy on Mt. Zozo and bet them at the Coliseum for Crystal Orbs, while the Celestriad can be stolen from an enemy around Thamasa.[[/note]]
892** The very rare Relic Tintinnabulum restores a little bit of MP with every step the party takes. Odds are if you're in a location where you need healing, walking around would trigger a random encounter and that runs a bit counter to the point of the Relic. Besides, it's far easier and more effective to just use an item or spell to heal the party.
893* UtilityMagic: Nobody in Thamasa seems to know magic. However, when you poke around, you discover townspeople using magic for things like starting cooking fires or curing a child's boo-boo. It turns out that ''everyone'' there is a descendant of the old mage warriors and has some minor magic, but the town's mayor forbids its public use. However, the citizens continue to use it in private for their own utility.
894[[/folder]]
895
896[[folder:V - Z]]
897* VertebrateWithExtraLimbs: Several monsters, most notably Atma Weapon.
898* ViceCity: Zozo and Vector. Zozo is full of burglars, insane mechanics, spellcasting dancers, and even giants, all of whom attack you in random encounters, and in Vector, there is a rather roguish man who might steal your money (1000 gil) if you sleep at his inn.
899* VideoGameStealing: Including clothes, which is necessary for Locke's sub-plot in South Figaro.
900* VideoGameCaringPotential: Some players saved and reloaded several times while figuring out the fishing game, to make sure that Cid lived.
901** For those who refused to let Shadow stay behind during the End Credits and rather let him live the rest of his days in the Coliseum if not elsewhere. His re-recruitment in the World of Ruin like many others is optional after all.
902* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Others deliberately let Cid die, claiming it gives Celes more development ([[ThatOneSidequest and that it's not worth the fishing game]]). [[note]]If Cid dies, Celes gives up as well, only to find that her friends may be alive, prompting her to set off on a journey to find them and tying into the hope theme that pervades the second half of the game. If Cid lives, he just tells Celes her friends must be alive and here! Take this raft and have fun[[/note]].
903** On repeated playthroughs only. Others, not so bad. But those like Sabin and Strago? Sabin is holding a building up, preventing it from collapsing so unless someone is brave and strong enough to go in and save the victims, he will always be holding that building part up and the victims will be left inside. As for Strago, he is seen walking with various cultists, forever like that as he lost his heart, thinking Relm perished during or after the world's destruction. And those who don't know about Gogo's existence even if he is just there? He is in that Zone Eater's dungeon belly until he decides to get out himself or mimic someone and follow them out of the Zone Eater's dungeon belly.
904* VillainOpeningScene: The story starts with the player controlling a brainwashed Terra as she invades the town of Narshe along with two other members of the Imperial Army.
905* VillainsActHeroesReact: At first, the story follows this plot--stop the empire, protect the innocent--pretty typical of an RPG. What makes this extra special is that this was the first time in a series that a villain (Kefka) was front-and-center of almost every scene. This was a conscious design choice because of the EnsembleCast: in order to make every scene feel connected, Kefka became the center of the story. Until the World of Ruin, in which case the story flips to HeroesActVillainsHinder.
906* VillainForgotToLevelGrind: For the most part, the locales of the world changed from the World of Balance to the World of Ruin, with a corresponding increase in the danger enemies pose. Zozo proper, however, has the exact same enemies it had before.
907* VillainWorld: In the World of Ruin, Kefka ''is'' God. His tower dominates the main landmass, people live in fear of him, there's another tower built by a cult dedicated to him, most of your party members have given up any hope of trying to defeat him and turned their attention to personal matters, and in some cases they've just given up on life altogether.
908* ViolationOfCommonSense: Lampshaded when choosing to jump or not to jump into the huge waterfall, where refusal is titled "Are you crazy!?"
909* VisibleInvisibility: The Invisible party members are visible as outlines. The enemies on other hand are completely invisible.
910* VoiceGrunting: During the opera scene, the performers' singing sounds like this. Averted with the Pixel Remaster, where the vocals are actually sung.
911* WaitingPuzzle: On the Floating Continent involving Shadow.
912* WakeUpCallBoss: At Narshe, Kefka prominently uses a very powerful Blizzara spell, a Drain spell to heal himself, has a decent physical blow, and a fair amount of HP. Up until him a few other bosses used magic too, but they had various weaknesses ([[SquishyWizard poor HP]], ReviveKillsZombie, etc) that made them less of a threat than they would be otherwise. Kefka did not suffer these problems, and unless you brought Celes to the fight so she could Runic his spells, he is very powerful. You're also penalized that you may not have a full party, unless you planned to fight through all his troops with one group of allies instead of dividing the load, which can potentially leave you drained of MP and/or healing items by the time you get to him.
913* WalkAndTalk: The developers seem to have LOVED this trope. If the heroes have to go somewhere else there's usually a cutscene showing them going there, which allows for a conversation (or multiple conversations) to take place.
914* WalkItOff: The Tintinnabulum relic, which restores a bit of health for the every step the wearer takes.
915* WarmupBoss: Ymir (also known as Whelk on the SNES and PS versions) the giant lightning-absorbing snail.
916* WaterIsAir: Besides the need of diving equipment, fighting in the Serpent Trench is the same as above water. One should also ask how three men are sharing a single diving helmet.
917* WaterSourceTampering: Early in the game, Kefka does this to the village of Doma.
918* WaveMotionGun: Kefka's "Light of Judgment". Magitek Armor's basic attacks are elemental versions of this. Air Force and a couple other mooks use the Wave Cannon attack, a Lightning-based attack.
919* WhammyBid: In the Auction House, if the kid wants something, expect his father to pull this off.
920* WhamEpisode: A few occur back to back towards the end of the first half of the game.
921** The Esper Cave. The party journeys to the Sealed Gate with the intention of Terra talking to the Espers and convincing them to join the fight against the Empire. Instead, [[spoiler:the Espers burst out and lay waste to the Empire in fury. Cue Emperor Gestahl surrendering.]]
922** The events in Thamasa. It seems like peace has been established between The Empire and the Espers. Then Kefka, who was last seen jailed, shows up. [[spoiler:As it turns out, Kefka and Gestahl have figured out how to directly transform Espers into magicite, Gestahl was faking his HeelFaceTurn, and he's pulled YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness on ''his own Empire''. Kefka murders every last Esper, then General Leo, then another group of Espers who try to pull a BigDamnHeroes moment.]]
923** The Floating Continent. Gestahl begins unleashing the power of the Sealed Guardians, and he and Kefka try to convince Celes to turn on the party and rejoin them. She refuses, and stabs Kefka instead. [[spoiler:He completely snaps, murders Gestahl, then moves the Guardians, destroying the World.]]
924* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
925** You could easily be forgiven for wondering this about Siegfried.
926** Banon and Arvis are nowhere to be found in the World of Ruin. It's likely they were killed when the world was demolished, or by Gestahl if they were still in Vector when he dropped the HeelFaceTurn facade. The fact that Locke and Edgar, who have been friends with them since many years before the start of the game, seemingly ''forget they ever existed'' is rather inexplicable, though.
927** Vargas is another possibility. While it's likely he was killed in his only appearance, he didn't have the usual death animation of most enemies. Nonetheless, he's never seen nor mentioned again after that.
928** The lone Doma sentry who splits up from Cyan to help him search for survivors after the castle's water supply gets poisoned by Kefka. He's never seen or heard from again after the Imperial withdrawal from Doma or the World of Ruin.
929* WhatTheHellHero: In Locke's backstory, he was too slow to keep Rachel from falling down a cliff during their cave exploration, which led to her contracting amnesia. Rachel's father and the Kohlingen citizens understandably called out Locke on this.
930* [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim Why Don't You Just Stab Him?]]: Averted in a rare heroic example by [[LadyOfWar Celes]], who rather practically [[spoiler:stabs Kefka while his back is turned right before he destroys the world]]. Unfortunately it wasn't a fatal blow.
931* WideOpenSandbox: The entire World of Ruin, after you get the airship, is nothing but voluntary character-centric {{sidequest}}s, which was a really big deal at the time.[[note]][[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV The previous game]] had done something similar with the Merged World, but the sidequests generally just revolved around finding things to make you better-equipped to take on Exdeath, with most of the character development having already happened by that point in the game.[[/note]] It fits the plot of the game at that point, as all that's left is Kefka's tower, but you need to find your allies to stand a chance.
932* WolfMan: Lone Wolf the Pickpocket, and a few Espers.
933* WombLevel: The Zone Eater's Belly. Kind of. The place isn't very organic, since it looks the same as any other cave and features the most random of enemies, like ninjas, dancers, frogs, thieves, demons, cursed samurai, and even flying zombies.
934* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: It's hinted that Kefka doesn't destroy because he finds it fun, but because he's so insane from Magitek experiments corroding his mind that he can't feel love and friendship anymore, and now causing death and destruction is the only thing that can make him happy.
935* AWorldHalfFull: [[spoiler:The state of the planet by the end of the game. Without Kefka, there's no more tyrant at the helm, so everything can start getting back on its feet, with the world becoming lush and green again. However, it's going to be done without the Espers and magic, since all of that fades.]]
936* TheWorldIsJustAwesome: The Ending sequence.
937* WorldSundering: World of Ruin. "On that day, the world was changed forever...".
938* WretchedHive: Zozo, a town far up in the rainy mountains where corpses and garbage rot in the streets, and there are actually random encounters, both indoors and outside, and even an end boss.
939* {{Wutai}}: The Kingdom of Doma is a technologically simplistic yet respectable nation guarded by samurai like Cyan. Later on, there's the Ancient Castle, where the ghosts of long-gone Samurai warriors can be encountered in random battles, along with the eastern-looking Blue Dragon and the recurring summoned character Odin making an appearance.
940* YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: Cyan in the US version. It's fixed up in the GBA version. Really well, too. His thee/thou differentiation is accurate most of the time.
941* YouAreNumberSix: Two bosses in the Magitek Lab, both presumably Magitek creations of Cid.
942* YouHaveWaitedLongEnough: Part of the Opera play.
943* YourMindMakesItReal: Somehow, enemies encountered within Cyan's dreamscape can later be found on the Veldt, and they even teach Gau Rages.
944* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: Before disc changing became a norm, the Floating Continent gave all the signs of TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon. All the empty spaces in the menus and the entire other side of the map packed in the game usually give it away, though.
945* ZeroEffortBoss:
946** In the SNES version, due to a programming error, casting Vanish and then either Doom or X-zone will instantly kill the enemy.
947** In the battle aboard the Phantom Train, Ziegfried only has 100 HP and will die in one attack. PlayedForLaughs, as Ziegfried had been [[MilesGloriosus talking about]] [[SmallNameBigEgo how good a swordsman he is]] just before the fight. This makes more sense when you discover in the World of Ruin that Ziegfried is an impostor of Siegfried, who actually ''is'' a skilled swordsman[[note]]The spelling distinction is only present in Woolsey's translation, although he sometimes spells the impostor's name Siegfried; the GBA version removed the distinction[[/note]].
948[[/folder]]
949
950----
951-->'''''Son of a Submariner!!'''''

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