Dark And Troubled Past / Final Fantasy

Seriously, This series has examples of really really fucked up backstories. Ranging from heroes, villains, supporting cast, and even random NPCs, we could be here ALL DAY.

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Subpage Examples

• Doomed Hometown: Final Fantasy
• The Woobie: Final Fantasy

Examples

Dysfunction Junction

• Dysfunction Junction:
  • Final Fantasy IV's main character, Cecil, spends most of the first half of the game angsting over the heinous crimes he committed at the behest of his king (who is also his surrogate father), and wielding a weapon which is known to drive its users insane. His childhood friend Kain is an orphan who hated his strict father and who is brainwashed into betraying his friends. Tellah and Edward both struggle with grief at the death of Anna, their daughter and fiancée, respectively, Rydia and Edge both saw their parents murdered in front of them, and not even FuSoYa, who resolved to guard his sleeping race completely alone for hundreds of years, gets off lightly.
  • Final Fantasy VI also has the universal tragic past syndrome. All of the characters are a) being hunted by the Empire (even before the story begins), b) are imprisoned by the Empire, c) are harassed or misused by the Empire, d) have lost a loved one to the Empire, or e) some combination of the above.
    • No, not all your party members were wronged by The Empire. Gau's mother died in childbirth and his father was so grief-stricken that he went insane and abandoned Gau on the Veldt, whereas Relm's father is (very) heavily implied to be Shadow, who walked out on her because of his career as an assassin; even Shadow has had plenty of problems of his own, even before selling his skills to The Empire and nearly getting killed for his trouble. Setzer is reasonably unhappy with The Empire, yet is considerably more unhappy with the time his Love Interest died in an airship crash. Since a large theme of the game is hope and keeping that hope strong even in the face of hardship, most characters get better, but it helps that most of them have a lot of getting better to do.
    • Consider the team's angst levels doubled after Kefka damn near destroys the world and separates the party, thus kicking off the World of Ruin phase of the game.
    • Celes is the one the player first controls in the World of Ruin, and she's stuck on a tiny island with nobody around but her surrogate grandfather, Cid, who reveals that there used to be others on the island...until they all flung themselves from the northern cliffs in despair. If you don't feed the fastest fish to Cid constantly, he will die, and Celes will also try to end her life at the northern cliffs. it's possible that the esper Quetzalli is the only thing that keeps her from dying then and there; her only hope comes from the minute possibility that Locke is still alive as well.
    • Strago is so distraught with the reasonable possibility that his adopted granddaughter is dead that he's next seen as a member of the cult worshiping the guy that did it. Relm has to slap him out of it, since the intervention of a loved one is said to be the only thing strong enough to do so.
    • Even Mog, the cutesy moogle mascot of the game (and the whole series, some might argue), gets a Funky Winkerbean-caliber level of tragedy tacked onto him when the party finds him after the end of the world. Turns out he's been in Narshe's moogle cave apparently for the whole year since the end of the world, alone, staring at the wall; if you recruited him on your first chance, he'll be amazed that you're even alive after all this time, and will re-enter the party on the assumption that he has nothing better to do. Searching the wall he was staring at yields an item that only Mog can equip that completely stops all random encounters, but Fridge Horror sets in when you realize that this "Molulu's Charm" is likely all Mog has left of not just his girlfriend, but of his entire people. And when the Big Bad asks the party what it is they're fighting for, Mog's response is simply, "New friends, kupo!" D'aww...
    • If one brings Cyan to Doma Castle in the World of Ruin, a demon named Wrexsoul traps Cyan in an eternal nightmare, in order to feed off the despair Cyan still feels due to failing to save his family and his king from Kefka's poison. His grief is so great that not only is he the one that Wrexsoul attacks, but when he gets better, his confidence grows so much that he suddenly masters all of his Bushido skills.
    • The only party member who doesn't get better is Shadow. Shadow ultimately decides that he can't let go of his past and stays behind to die in Kefka's crumbling tower.
  • Final Fantasy VII
    • Cloud is a hopelessly deluded, mind-controlled Tomato in the Mirror with a borderline split personality recovering from a Heroic BSoD.
    • Tifa is too uncertain about whether or not she or Cloud was wrong about him being there when their entire hometown was slaughtered to confront Cloud about the subject.
    • Barret is locked into hate and anger toward Shinra for destroying his hometown and family, which he disguises as a higher political moral when really he just wants revenge.
    • Aerith is an orphaned Last Of Her Kind chasing after the memories of her long-lost first love in the man who is unconsciously emulating him, as well as struggling with her heritage and duty and her own personal desires.
    • Cid is so obsessed with his crushed dream that he berates the woman he thinks is responsible on a daily basis.
    • Vincent is sick with guilt over being unable to stop the woman he loved from marrying the wrong man, leading to Sephiroth being born.
    • Yuffie is highly rebellious against her father, believing him to be an impotent weakling who sold out their hometown's proud culture.
    • Red XIII believes his father to have been a coward who abandoned his mother during a battle long ago that resulted in her death.
    • Cait Sith is a robotic cat with programming, but his controller, non-corrupt executive Reeve, is actually a decent, well-adjusted guy (except for the fact he apparently believes Cait Sith is somehow useful). As far as the bad guys are concerned.
    • Sephiroth discovers he's a genetic experiment, suffers a complete mental breakdown, and becomes convinced he's God.
    • Rufus is a ruthless, Machiavellian bastard who sides with the winners and then screws them over.
    • And lastly, Hojo is an Evil Scientist who commits atrocities with little or no reason.
    • If you believe the Compilation, some of the heroes (or even the villains) get better later through The Power of Friendship. Aww.
  • Final Fantasy X being set in a world where absolutely everyone has in some way been affected by a 1000-year-old Eldritch Abomination roaming the earth and randomly snuffing out thousands (and perhaps millions) of lives, it's safe to say that the entirety of Spira is a Dysfunction Junction.
    • Among the main characters, Yuna lost both her parents at the age of seven and spends most of the game on a suicide mission, Tidus' abusive father disappeared ten years before the events of the game and it's implied his mother was thereafter Driven to Suicide, Wakka's entire family was wiped out by Sin, and Lulu is an orphan whose lover Chappu was killed by Sin and who is haunted by her failure to protect Lady Ginnem on the latter's pilgrimage. Rikku is a member of the despised Al Bhed race, Kimahri grew up shunned by his tribe and was eventually driven to a ten-year exile by fellow Ronso, and we haven't even mentioned Auron yet...
    • Resident Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds Seymour Guado takes the biscuit, however. Half-human, half-Guado, he was considered an abomination and banished as a child by his own father to Baaj, where he lived out his lonely childhood. Plus, depending on how you play the game, his own mother helps to kill him.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, all the player characters have tragic pasts of some sort. Vaan's parents died of the plague when he was younger, and his only remaining family, his older brother Reks, was killed before the game started supposedly by his trusted commander Basch. Penelo's parents and eight brothers all died in the war. Fran was shunned by her village and her older sister for believing that there was a path for her outside the village and slowly lost her ability to commune with the Wood, which to a Viera is like losing one of their senses. Balthier watched as his father was driven insane by the nethicite and neglected his family until he couldn't take it anymore and ran away to become a sky pirate. Ashe's husband and father died at the age of 17, leaving her as the heir to a kingdom that was invaded soon after. Basch's original home country was invaded which lead to the death of his mother, and he failed to protect the lord of his adopted country and was then framed for killing the king and locked in solitary confinement for two years.
  • Every single party member in Final Fantasy XIII is struggling with some sort of psychological issues and hates each other for it.
    • Lightning is a distant woman who, after her parents' deaths, was forced to become the sole guardian of her younger sister, Serah. She became a soldier to become a better protector for her sister, but believing that emotions would make her weak and vulnerable, she shuts herself emotionally. This pushes Serah away from her — and when Serah was turned into L'cie, she became consumed with guilt and frustration.
    • Snow may appear to be overconfident and easygoing. Later, it was revealed that he's struggling with a lot of insecurities and lack of self-worth, especially when he failed to protect Serah from being captured by the government and allowed Hope's mother to die during his mission to rescue Serah.
    • Vanille, who constantly behaves in an upbeat and positive manner, is actually hiding the fact that she's a former L'cie from 500 years before the present timeline, and had fulfilled her Focus by almost destroying Gran Pulse alongside Fang. She fakes amnesia to protect her friend from this painful fact but is clearly burdened with guilt from said past.
    • Hope has a lot of angst due to his father being constantly busy at work and rarely having time for his family. Then, during the beginning of the game's story, he and his mother were sent to the Purge while they were supposed to be enjoying a vacation, which eventually led to his mother's death. The grief drove him to seek vengeance towards Snow, who was responsible for his mother's death.
    • Sazh was already dealing with a lot of sorrow long before the events of the game, presumably due to his wife's death. His son Dajh was his only source of joy until the boy was branded as a L'cie and was subsequently captured by the government to bait him and his friends.
    • Fang, like Vanille, is a former L'cie who had become Ragnarok and destroyed most of Gran Pulse. She lost her memories after her awakening, but this has left her lost and confused as she tried to deal with the new situation. When she found out that Vanille actually knew what happened, and lied to her about it, she was understandably upset by this perceived betrayal (though it didn't last).
    • Outside the party there's Cid Raines. Supposedly the party's most valuable ally, he was revealed to be a puppet forced by the fal'Cie to guide the party to eventually destroy Cocoon. Later, he tried to defy his focus by killing the party and prevent them from destroying the world. He was eventually defeated, and turned to crystal, only for Barthandaelus to revive him, reinstate him as Primarch and use him as a fal'Cie spokesperson. He finally requested his subordinates to kill him, so that he'd be free from their control.

Heroic BSOD

• Heroic BSoD:
  • In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years an interesting blend of this and Villainous BSoD happens to poor Cecil. First, the Maenad forces him be Brainwashed and Crazy, to the point that he, among other things, wreaks disaster on the world, attempts to have his friend Edward assassinated, and personally raises arms against his best friend, wife, and child. After this, her control over him is broken, and he realizes precisely what it is he has done. He goes completely catatonic as a result. Fortunately, he can be snapped out of that, too.
  • Late in Final Fantasy V, the normally-optimistic and easygoing Bartz snaps and nearly destroys the airship when Exdeath apparently destroys his hometown with the Void.
  • Terra has one of these in Final Fantasy VI when she realizes that she's half-Esper. The player (along with the rest of her party) doesn't find this out until significantly later in the game, so the fact that she transforms, flies away, and becomes completely incoherent seems completely random when it first happens.
    • Terra also has another the end of the world, though not for the reason you might think. After adopting a village of orphans, she starts feeling things she doesn't understand and it saps her ability to fight completely, so Celes and Sabin have to save her (and the kids) from the monster Humbaba. When Humbaba comes back for a rematch later, Terra realizes that she's feeling love for her new family and pulls a Big Damn Heroes for the party this time around.
    • Cyan, meanwhile, is introduced as a noble samurai... and then Kefka wipes out everyone in his home kingdom (including his wife and son). Cyan's first response? Charge into a nearby Imperial camp and challenge everyone present to battle. He manages to get a hold of himself, but if you revisit Doma in the World of Ruin, you'll have to engage in what amounts to hands-on psychotherapy.
    • If Cid dies, then Celes winds up losing herself to despair and hurls herself off a cliff. Her suicide attempt fails and she wakes up to discover Locke's bandana, which causes her to realize she isn't alone and leads her to search to reunite with the rest of the party.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Sephiroth convinces the hero Cloud that he (Cloud) is not who he thinks he is; that he is in fact an attempt at "duplicating" the real Cloud, who had died several years earlier. The hero is so distraught at discovering he's the Tomato in the Mirror that he gives up the Weapon of Mass Destruction to his enemy. As all hell breaks loose, Cloud disappears, only to be found nearly comatose by his teammates a week later.
    • The prequel Crisis Core gives poor Cloud yet another BSoD during Zack's traumatic death scene.
    • Surprisingly, Sephiroth's current nature was implied to be the direct result of this, having found out his actual origins.
    • Though his BSoDs may pale in comparison to Cloud's, Vincent Valentine convinced himself that it was his fault for not protecting his beloved one, Lucrecia. So he laid in a coffin. For three decades.
    • In the original game, Barret has a good one in Midgar when one of the city's upper plates crashes into the slums below killing his friends and, seemingly, his adoptive daughter Marlene. All he could do is scream and shoot into the rubble, until Tifa recalled something Aerith had said and realized that Marlene was safe and alive elsewhere.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has Squall suffer an interesting version of it beginning with the third disc. Up until then, he'd been the taciturn and reluctant hero, doing what he'd thought everyone wanted him to do as a good soldier. Then Rinoa ends up in a coma from which she might never wake up. Cue abandonment of his friends and his post to go on a long journey with a minimal chance of success just for her, something that would have been completely antithetical to his beliefs only a week or so before.
    • The end sequence of FFVIII also involves a more standard version when Squall tries and fails to make it out of Time Compression using The Power of Friendship, getting stranded alone outside of time and having an epic Heroic BSoD complete with hallucinations.
  • Final Fantasy IX. After her mother's death (suffered whilst trying to kill her, after finding out that she never loved her and just wanted her powers) closely followed by her witnessing the epic destruction of her new kingdom on the eve of her coronation, Garnet/Dagger spends a good chunk of the later game completely catatonic, unable to talk and just dragged around by her comrades. Oddly enough, she could still join you in battle, though her hit chance went right down, and occasionally, she just gave up, with the notice "Garnet can't concentrate". Her depressed state also prevents her from using her Trance abilities, which is signified by having her Trance gauge removed from the interface.
    • And then she becomes catatonic after her homeland is nearly wiped off the map by an invasion of undead monsters and an incredibly destructive magical attack that had been stolen from Garnet herself. You can hardly blame Garnet for developing post-traumatic stress disorder after a trauma like that.
    • Also, during her death scene, Brahne apologizes for it and claims that she did it out of overwhelming (and recently realized) greed, not that she never loved Garnet in the first place.
    • Another prime case of Heroic BSoD occurs near the end of the game to Zidane. After finding out his true origins and the morbid purpose of his existence he goes temporarily insane, turning into a raging, foul-mouthed misanthrope who attacks everything in his path both verbally and physically.
    • He was having his soul sucked out by his creator. It'd put you in a foul mood. Before Garland did the soul drain, Zidane was shocked about his origins, but he immediately turned against his maker, on the grounds that his true place was with his friends; when the party finds him after the fact, he's slumped in a chair and when he walks, its at a slow stumbling gait.
    • Heck, most of the main cast suffers some form of the trope after experiencing a personal trauma. Steiner doesn't know what to do or feel after he finally sees and gets that the Queen is truly a monster bent on conquering other nations and was planning to kill her own daughter off. Freya has a minor breakdown after seeing that the love of her life lost his memories and has no idea who she is. Vivi goes into complete shock after seeing the Black Mages being mass produced in a factory and they look just like him. The only people that don't go into a meltdown are Quina (too simple minded to really care about many things), Amarant (has a personal score to settle and focuses on nothing else), and Eiko (already gone through some tragedies when she was younger, so she's mostly over it).
  • In Final Fantasy X Auron has a rather spectacular one when he finds out that the religion he has devoted his life to is all false and Braska and Jecht died for nothing because Sin can never truly be vanquished. His BSoD leads him to his death as he gets so angry that he attacks a pseudo-God.
    • Tidus also has a major BSoD when Rikku and the Al Bhed tell him that Yuna will die if she finishes the pilgrimage., Valefor comforting him is probably one of the most touching scenes in the game.
    • Though not to the same degree as the other two, Tidus has another one earlier in the game when Auron reveals to him that Jecht, Tidus's father who he had believed to have died ten years earlier, is not only alive, but is the Big Bad that the party is on a mission to kill. This is made especially clear when you compare Tidus's extremely depressed mood during his interaction with Yuna in the subsequent cutscene to the much more cheerful mood he had shown during all his previous interactions with her up to that point.
    • Yuna gets a brief one of her own (combined with a very healthy dose of Oh, Crap! that she shares with the rest of the party and first time players) during the Operation Mi-ihen cutscene. She obviously knew well before this that Sin's destructive power was unmatched by anything else in Spira, but this was the first time that she had actually witnessed the full extent of it firsthand.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, Larsa has a brief one when Al-Cid reveals that his father passed away.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • The Eidolon battles in general. Eidolons are known to appear to l'cie in moments of great emotional distress to force them to either succumb to their grief or push through and survive.
      These mystical entities reveal themselves before only to a select few l'Cie. It is said that they are saviors, come to rescue hopeless l'Cie who find themselves bound to a Focus against their will.
    • Resident Idiot Hero Snow goes through one as Hope is barraging him with rapid-fire Armor Piercing Questions. The questions force him to relive all his recent mistakes and render the optomist near catatonic. And when Snow learns that Hope is the son of the woman he couldn't save, he shuts down completely and accepts death as his punishment.
    • Sazh goes through a chilling one in Chapter 8, as the normally lighthearted, funny, friendly man is very nearly Driven to Suicide by the revelations of what happened to his son and having seemingly lost him forever.
    • At the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning literally entombs herself after Serah's death, unable to process what just happened or how she feels responsible for it.
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates:
    • Chelinka goes actually catatonic for several years after Latov dies, which combines with the effect of using her power for the first time.
    • When you find Meeth after the Time Skip, she's slipped into extended one of these as a result of being The Aloner and unable to escape Rela Cyel to help the twins.
  • Yunita in Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light falls into a self-pitying slump after Aire berates her, Brandt ditches her, the good people of Urbeth con her out of everything down to the clothes on her back, and she is absolutely nowhere close to saving Horne. When Jusqua turns up in town, she initially refuses to join him because she assumes she'll just drag him down. She snaps out of it after helping him save the town from monsters and getting up the Tower of the Sky on her own. (Because Jusqua ditched her.)
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, Alphinaud Leveilleur crashes headlong into this in the second-to-final mission of the A Realm Reborn saga heading into the Heavensward expansion when his pet project company, the Crystal Braves, had been compromised since its inception, leading to the not-actually assassination of Ul'dah sultana Nanamo ul Namo, the false accusation to her assassination towards the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (which includes you, the Player Character) and the disappearance of the group save a handful, that handful being forced to escape into exile in Ishgard.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, Noctis enters one for weeks after Ardyn kills Luna as he watched helplessly from the sidelines as he had been waiting to finally see Luna for 12 years, only to not quite make it in time.
  • In Final Fantasy XVI, Clive is thrown into this as he realizes he was the Dominant of Ifrit who killed his beloved brother Joshua while going berserk, begging Cid to kill him. Thankfully, he snaps out of it and confronts his inner feelings of guilt and suffering, gaining control over his Eikon.

Other Examples

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• Abusive Parents:
  • Hojo and Lucrecia from Final Fantasy VII did genetic experiments on their son while he was still in the womb in the name of science. Lucrecia at least harbored some regret for her part in the genetic experiments, even causing her to nearly commit suicide and then willingly place herself in a Fate Worse than Death. Hojo, on the other hand, had absolutely no regret for what he did; in fact, he enjoyed every single moment of it even afterward. The child, several years after his birth, did not take this well at all upon learning of this. Who was the child, you may ask? Sephiroth.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Tidus's father often insulted and berated his son for being a crybaby. After believing Jecht had died at sea, Tidus's mother also pined and eventually died. As a result, Tidus harbored bitterness towards his father and never quite forgave him for it. While it's made clear Jecht actually did love his son, the man never, at any point in his life, told him such — throughout both that game and Dissidia, Jecht only admits his love for Tidus when the younger man is either absent or unconscious (or when he himself is dying).
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood has Yotsuyu, the cruel Boomerang Bigot Viceroy of Doma. She was adopted by her relatives after her birth parents died and endured horrific abuse from her stepmother (who played favorites with her adopted brother, Asahi) before being married off by her stepfather to an abusive drunk who died pennilessly and forced Yotsuyu into prostitution to pay off his debts. Her harrowing experiences in her formative years molded her into a cruel and heartless woman who takes pleasure in inflicting misery upon her own countrymen. Later in the Stormblood MSQ, she suffers amnesia and seems to be better off for it, only for her equally asshole-ish brother Asahi to arrange a reunion as part of his plans to restore her memories and subvert attempts at peace between Doma and Garlemald. Immediately upon seeing her, her mother berates her before her father mentions possibly selling her back into prostitution. Having regained her memories by this point, Yotsuyu viciously murders them both.
  • Cid of the Lufaine is revealed in Dissidia to be the father of Chaos, and later the Warrior of light. While he technically only acted according to the circumstances put upon him and his family by the state seeking to exploit his wisdom, he appears to be responsible for the creation of the cycle of war between Chaos and Cosmos. Thankfully, he later becomes horrified by what his desire for revenge had done and tries to correct his mistakes.
  • Final Fantasy XVI: Duchess Anabella Rosfield has a very tumultuous relationship with both her sons: she detests Clive for not being born a Dominant, while his younger brother Joshua is too sickly to realize his true potential, thus being of less worth. All of it drives her to betray her duchy, causing Joshua's death, and sell Clive into slavery while she gets a cushy position as the empress of the country she sold out to.
• All of the Other Reindeer:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud had a lonely and alienated childhood in Nibelheim. He was apparently shunned and ostracized by many of the children, especially Tifa's close friends, as well as being viewed as a troublemaker by the adults. This makes it easy for Tifa's father to blame Cloud for causing Tifa's near-fatal accident when she was eight years old when it actually wasn't his fault — running off into the Nibel Mountains was entirely Tifa's idea, not Cloud's. The years of social isolation led to deep emotional insecurities which drive Cloud to leave Nibelheim in an attempt to become a famous hero and thereby prove to everyone that he's not a loser. Unfortunately, those same insecurities prevent Cloud from getting into SOLDIER and also contribute to his mental breakdown during Hojo's experiments.
  • Final Fantasy XIV applies to trope to an entire nation. The nation of Garlemald is composed of people who are physically and intellectually superior to the other races. However, the Garleans have a genetic makeup that prevents them from using magic. According to the supplementary material in the lore book, all the other nations either ignored, bullied, or mocked the Garleans for their inferiority with magic. Once the Garleans discover ceruleum, they harvest it to make huge advancements in technology and weapons that are miles above what the rest of Eorzea uses. With the power of magitek, the Garleans form their empire and aim for the complete subjugation of Eorzea.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Marche, Mewt, and Ritz receive this treatment from their classmates in St. Ivalice for different reasons: Marche because he's the new kid, Mewt because he's painfully shy and quiet and carries his teddy bear everywhere, and Ritz because of her white hair, quick temper, and outspoken attitude. As a result, the three end up befriending each other pretty quickly. Marche's brother Doned also considers himself to be subject to this, since all the other kids can walk and he requires a wheelchair, feeling left behind because of this. It's revealed that it's just his self-defeatist attitude about his illness that's causing him to shut himself off from others.
  • Class Zero from Final Fantasy Type-0 is marginalized by most of the faculty and fellow students of the Peristylium, Class Zero, in turn, isolates Rem and Machina as outsiders and keeps them Locked Out of the Loop.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Final Fantasy VI: The Warring Triad, who willingly turned themselves to stone, may also be examples of this. Kefka's ability to communicate with them (and even encourage them to attack Gestahl) certainly proves they're still conscious.
  • Final Fantasy VII: After being hurled into the Lifestream by Cloud after the Nibelheim Incident, Sephiroth spends FIVE YEARS immobile at the Northern Creater, absorbing the knowledge of countless dead & gradually learning how to manipulate Jenova. Is it any surprise that he's a little bit ticked off at his spiky-headed nemesis? That's not even getting into the fact that he could only maintain his individuality by focusing on a few aspects of his personality and ditching the rest. In the end, the only thing left in Sephiroth's mind that wasn't related to Jenova's imperative to kill everything on the Planet and suck it dry of lifeforce was his hatred of the lowly grunt that nearly killed him.
    • Additionally, Seto's mind and awareness are implied to be intact given that he sheds tears after Nanaki's speech. Despite being turned to stone.
    • Vincent Valentine, after years of experimentation, had in fact become immortal. It doesn't help the fact that most of his life was filled with misery of losing his love, Lucrecia, and the turmoil of her giving birth to Sephiroth, among other things. Though Word of God states that in the far future, while all their friends had passed away, Red XIII has a very long lifespan, so Vincent visits him once a year to ease his friend's fear of being alone.
  • Adel of Final Fantasy VIII was locked into a technological "tomb" and launched into orbit to keep her sorceress powers sealed, and spent seventeen years this way before being freed by Ultimecia to use as a vessel. Rinoa almost undergoes the same process voluntarily, but Squall talks her out of it.
    • Just to top up your nightmare fuel tank, remember that scene where Rinoa and the SeeDs attempt to get into the TV station in Timber, and pass a big screen showing red static? Rinoa says it's caused by radio interference. If you look closely, though, it says, "bringmebackthereiamalivehereiwillneverletyouforgetaboutme" over and over again. And what, do you remember, caused the interference? I am alive here...
  • In Final Fantasy X, the only known way to defeat Sin is for a summoner and his guardian to perform the Final Summoning. The guardian (a close relative or friend to the summoner) is transformed into the Final Aeon. What the summoners and guardians don't know is that, once the Final Aeon "destroys" Sin, he is then possessed by the spirit within (known as Yu Yevon) and transformed into a new Sin. The guardian remains conscious of the carnage Yu Yevon is causing using his body but is helpless and out of his control, trapped inside Sin's shell until a new Final Aeon takes their place. The summoner at least gets a quick death by the psychic blast when Yu Yevon possesses the Final Aeon.
    • Similarly, each Aeon represents the spirit of a person who willingly sacrificed their lives to benefit a summoner. We learn later that the body and mind of that person are encased in crystal, potentially forever.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has the Cie'th Stones. In the game's story, humans live alongside strange and powerful beings, the fal'Cie. Occasionally, a fal'Cie will choose someone to perform an important task, a "Focus"; these chosen humans are known as "l'Cie", and are branded with a mark that counts down the time they have remaining to complete their Focus. If a l'Cie fails to complete their Focus in time, they are transformed into horrific shambling monsters, Cie'th. Being turned into a Cie'th is horrifying enough and involves stripping an individual of their five senses, plunging them into black flames and forcing them wander in eternal darkness, their words turning into a song of agony, their screams a curse of death, and so they remain until someone merciful enough destroys their soul... but if a Cie'th is left to wander for many years, they are eventually consumed by despair and become Cie'th Stones, living statues whose only thoughts are regret at failing to complete their Focus and no hope of release as Cie'th Stones, unlike Cie'ths, are completely harmless.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, Ardbert is prepared to perform a Heroic Sacrifice with his friends to save his world from the all-consuming light. Ardbert and his friends are already dead, so they sacrifice their souls to aid Minfilia in stemming the flood of light. She stops Ardbert from sacrificing himself, saying that he has a bigger role to play and his time to play said the role will come. For the next one hundred years, Ardbert wandered about as a ghost and was unable to interact with anyone since no one could see or hear him. He went insane from effectively being isolated and was nothing more than an anguished spirit, but his mind became sharp again when he runs into the player character.
  • In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates, this is the final fate of Galdes. He's doomed to world-jump forever to undo his defeat, but there's no world anywhere that Yuri and co don't beat him. The last thing you hear of him is a mental "Help me..."
• The Atoner:
  • Dark Knight Cecil from Final Fantasy IV becomes an Atoner after he is stripped of his command by the King of Baron for questioning his orders to steal the Crystal of Water from Mysidia. After being tricked into destroying the Mist Village (home of summoners), Cecil defects. His journey eventually leads him back to Mysidia, where the village elder reminds him that he has to go to Mt. Ordeals to become a Paladin to complete the change. *** Later, Dragoon Kain seeks atonement for his service to Golbez. And in the sequel, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, Golbez and Kain. Though it can turn into Redemption Equals Death for Golbez.
  • Celes Chere, from Final Fantasy VI, a former General of the Empire that joins the Returners, then becomes the first hope in defeating Kefka after the Apocolypse.
    • While never a completely evil character, she did commit some atrocities like burning Maranda.
    • And was complicit in Terra's enslavement, although the game doesn't really touch on this much, apart from her recognizing Terra when they meet again in Narshe.
    • Shadow could also be interpreted as this trope, as he either dies in the world of ruin protecting the party from Kefka or stays around to help the group (And watch over Relm). Shadow seems to hate himself both for leaving his friend to die, as well as for abandoning Relm and her mother. In the end, Redemption Equals Death, as Shadow remains in Kefka's tower to die while telling his dead friend that he's done running.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Rufus Shinra, after he survives the events in the game. Although never directly mentioned again, he is vaguely referenced to be donating to respectable causes for restoring the planet...after nearly destroying it.
    • Reeve Tuseti also qualifies, although he was not nearly as villainous as the rest of Shinra Electric Company's ensemble cast; he's largely just feeling guilty that he had been part of the group, and that things happened on his watch.
    • Vincent Valentine, on the rare occasions he does speak, will often berate himself over his sins. Near the end of the original game, he ponders if killing Sephiroth can possibly atone for having been a bystander to the terrible events that created him.
  • Auron from Final Fantasy X might possibly fit this trope. His "sin"? Helpless to see his two friends, Braska and Jecht, sacrifice their life and humanity, respectively, to (temporarily) defeat Sin and aid this cause by his deeds, even if he opposed the idea all the way up to the bitter end.
  • Reddas in Final Fantasy XII dedicates his life to preventing the use of Nethicite after he destroyed the city of Nabudis using the Midlight Shard during his career as a Judge Magister.
  • Dion Lesage in Final Fantasy XVI attempts to atone for the destruction he caused in Twinside while being driven berserk by Ultima and unleashing Bahamut's might upon the city.

B

• Beneath the Mask:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, lead character Cloud Strife spends some 2/3rds of the game under a mask; a persona-based seemingly on his deceased best friend, Zack Fair and former commanding officer Sephiroth. Only after a Journey to the Center of the Mind does Cloud finally become "Cloud" again, admitting that his subconscious constructed a persona to protect his fragile ego after his breakdown.
  • A classic case is Squall from Final Fantasy VIII. On the outside: cold, cynical, mean, rude, and very much a Determinator. On the inside, he is collapsing: constantly questioning himself and why he continues to do what he does, and cripplingly insecure about how other people perceive him. He uses his anti-social exterior to hold others at arm's length rather than risk the pain of rejection or loss because such feelings devastate him.
  • Zolku-Azolku, an NPC in Final Fantasy XI, discusses the concept:
    We all wear masks because deep down inside we are nothing but beasts. The question I ask you is, to which do you submit—the mask, or the beast?
  • Emet-Selch in Final Fantasy XIV is an Ascian that, unlike his fellow brethren, seems to enjoy being a massive Troll towards mortals and his antics wouldn't be too out of place if he were in a dramatic play. During the Shadowbringers story where you get to learn more about him, it's revealed that beneath his trollish nature lies a man that is very bitter, angry, and depressed towards mortals since they represent only a fraction of what used to be his people. Emet-Selch yearns for the old days where his people were powerful, intellectual, and had a utopian society. To him, the present-day people may as well be a mockery of what they once were and he is willing to do anything to bring the glory of his people back no matter the cost.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • In Final Fantasy III, Noah gave one disciple the gift of magic, another the gift of dreams, and the third the "gift" of mortality. Any guesses as to which of these goes insane and tries to unleash the game's eventual Big Bad on the world? First two don't count.
  • Crisis Core gives us the Cursed status, usually equipped to certain stat-boosting items. These items usually increase your stats by loads of points, but they make your DMW inactive, which means you can't level up or activate any of your Limit Breaks or summons.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Ellone's born power does something involved with time, making her being wanted by bad guys ever since she's a girl. Her parents are killed, she gets kidnapped, being briefly placed as a science rat, and has to spend most of the game escaping from Galbadia's Army.
  • The plot of Final Fantasy XIII revolves around l'Cie, people chosen by the godlike fal'Cie to accomplish some mission. Being an l'Cie gives you special powers but means the most powerful government in the world wants you dead and you must figure out what on earth you are supposed to do based on a vague vision and complete it within a time limit. If you fail, you become a Cie'th, a Body Horror-tastic crystal-covered zombie-like monster that lives in eternal pain and regret, unable to think of anything but their failure And eventually turns into a rock while still suffering from horrible regret. If you succeed, you turn into crystal. And the fal'Cie can revive you to force you to do another task later. The fal'Cie are utter pricks.
    • Vanille, Fang, Serah, Dajh, Lightning, Hope, Snow, and Sazh all manage to get themselves back to humans. In the case of Vanille and Fang, it isn't necessarily the best thing, as they end up crystallized again.
    • Also, when turned into Cie'th, Lightning, Hope, Snow, and Sazh manage to "will" themselves back to normal. Said cases are very rare, however.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 also has Paddra Nsu'Yeul, a seeress who is born into every generation, and forced to see various visions of the future. This may sound alright on the surface, but each vision actually drastically shortens her lifespan, meaning that no Yeul in history has ever seen adulthood. Then it turns out that the main character of the game has the exact same ability. Guess how that ends.
    • The Big Bad is also an example. He is an immortal who fell in love with the original Yeul and was devastated by her death. Thanks to his immortality, he has to watch the girl he loves be reincarnated only to die young again and again and again. By the time the game starts, he's willing to cause a Time Crash to prevent her death.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII sees all of mankind "blessed" with an indefinite lifespan. The warping of reality by the Chaos has caused every human in the world to stop aging. So although monsters, disease and the like could still end your life, keeping yourself healthy would mean living to the very end of days. But many people end up losing any zest for life after so long (five flipping CENTURIES). Some eagerly await the end of the world, others simply commit suicide. Notable characters even have crippling emotional hangups that they've spent 500 years carrying.
  • The Warrior of Light in Final Fantasy XIV has the Echo, a power that makes them immune to tempering and grants them the ability to see a person's memories as if they were with them when it happened. The downside is the Echo's ability to read memories can happen at any time and without any way to control when it happens. This means that the Echo can trigger at the wrong time during instances like the Warrior of Light being in the middle of a battle and putting them in danger (and it has happened more than once). Fordola has an artificial version of the Echo and has the same powers, but it's implied that her Echo's memory triggers happen much more frequently and she doesn't have the willpower to not breakdown after seeing so many terrible memories (most of which she caused previously).
  • The magic users in Final Fantasy XVI are known as Bearers, but instead of being treated with reverence and respect, they are forced into slavery by their countries who exploit their talents as an alternative to using limited crystals, forcing the Bearers to exhaust their abilities to the point parts of their flesh turn into stone, bringing them immense pain. They are treated unfairly in most countries, but the Holy Empire of Sanbreque is particularly cruel to them, forcing every Bearer to have a visible brand on their faces that will release a deadly toxin into their blood if removed and treating them more like toys and tools than living beings.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Final Fantasy VI: Terra starts out the game broken. Celes tries to commit suicide after finding herself alone (Cid is dead or dying then) on a deserted island.
  • The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII seems to be one long telling of how they broke the character Cloud, glued him back wrong, broke him again, then fixed him for real. Sort of. Specifically, this included being blamed for an accident that injured his childhood crush Tifa, which results in him being forbidden from seeing her, failing at the only dream he ever had (joining SOLDIER), watching his mother die (oh, and knowing she was killed by his idol, aka Sephiroth), watching his other idol — Zack — get shanked by Seph, getting shanked himself, being experimented on for four years straight, and all of this culminates with watching his beloved Zack get gunned down after being dragged across the country by him for a year because the experimentation had left him nearly comatose. Then it gets worse. Unable to cope with all that has happened in the past, he recreates his memories so Zack never existed (well, he thinks he's Zack, but same thing). And then Final Fantasy VII happens (in which we see him actually break and go comatose again). After the game Cloud settles down with Tifa, only to contract the incurable disease Geo-Stigma, which leads you down a slow and painful death. Towards the end of Advent Children, his troubles are finally solved, however.
    • Don't forget about Zack too. Sure he was already a SOLDIER that fought and killed, but he was still an adorable one that would help other lower-ranked SOLDIERS and unimportant Shinra staff. In fact, getting recommended for first-class rank was enough to make him act sort-of-childish. Then the mission to Wutai happens where Angeal disappears, then he has to see that same person, who he idolized, kill his own mother, then he has to see Angeal's hometown get blown up. Then comes the part where He has to kill him making the tough SOLDIER, who was promoted to the first rank at that point cry. It's sort of heart-breaking to see the normally cheery person turn into a strict role model in the scene that follows.
  • Final Fantasy VIII subverts this beautifully by having Selphie look at the graves of all her recently deceased friends at Trabia Gardens, and instead of teary mourning instead, she talks to them saying how proud they would have been of her. Turning what would be a cliche Tear Jerker into a moment where you see her spirit will not be crushed. Many tears ensue.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, poor Princess Garnet suffers so many traumas in a short space in time like watching her mother die, becoming the queen and never being able to see her love Zidane again, only to have her kingdom nearly destroyed by Bahamut that she goes completely mute for a good section of the game.
    • Vivi. Finds out he's a prototype model of mindless magical soldiers, watches his own kind get killed or sacrificed like cannon fodder, and then learns that all the black mages have a very short lifespan and his time could come any moment. No wonder he's The Woobie. It's also heavily implied that his "Grandfather" was planning on eating him.
    • Zidane, too, surprisingly. His androgynous looks aside, he's The Cutie because he is relentlessly cheerful and upbeat throughout the entire game. The few times that his optimistic demeanor vanishes are usually when it's replaced with righteous anger, like upon seeing enemies slaughtering helpless civilians. Just like Vivi, though, he learns that he's actually nothing more than a weapon. A highly complex and specialized weapon, but ultimately meant to bring war and destruction to the planet that is his home. This causes him to completely lose hope and march slowly towards his death during the famous You Are Not Alone scene. It is subverted, actually. When he discovered the truth, Zidane declared he would do what he was meant to do; by killing Garland. Garland then decides to rip Zidane's soul out of his body, causing his Heroic BSoD.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Vanille was a genuine cutie pre-game before she became a l'Cie. The trauma she experienced thereafter (guilt over forcing Fang to become Ragnarok alone, becoming a crystal statue and then waking up on Cocoon) ended that. Everything she's done since the start of the 13 days (i.e. guilt over Serah and Dajh, the Purge, Hope's mother — which wouldn't have happened if she hadn't lied to Fang) has only added to the stress of maintaining the mask, making her a rather extreme example of this. She gets better.
    • Hope Estheim. Over just the beginning of the game, he gets bundled up with the other people of Bodhum, where he was on vacation with his mother, and is to be sent to Pulse, a world that is basically hell to the people on Cocoon. The train gets derailed, the civilians are riled up to fight back and his mother leaves as well, only for her to die as Hope watches in horror. Now the poor guy is left alone, in a situation that he can't handle and ends up a Pulse l'Cie. Meaning he needs to fulfill a vague focus and either become a nice, crystal statue or turn into a sentient Eldritch Abomination. And then he's also forced to run away from the government, who now deem him a threat to the world and will kill on sight. And that's not even getting into his conflicted feelings of having to work alongside the guy he blames for his mother's death to begin with. The events that follow later on further break him down; he lost just about everyone he cares for in XIII-2, and after the Time Crash of that game, he gets his sanity torn apart slowly by the God of Evil, then tortured for 169 years just so that he can be shaped as the perfect vessel. Damn, the guy really needs a break.
• Body Horror:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • The boss fight against Hojo: you first fight him as a human, but after you beat him, he turns into Helletic Hojo, a freaking hideous, writhing mass of flesh that wouldn't look out of place in Resident Evil.
    • The backstory involving Jenova has quite a bit as well. As it's the weapon of choice was a virus that drives humans insane before turning them into monsters.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, the process of turning into a sin eater entails another sin eater implanting a portion of primordial Light into the bodies of their victims. The resultant aetherical imbalance causes the victim's skin to turn plaster white, their hair to fall out, and their body to become wrapped in a cocoon until hatching into a porcelain-white monster with a body that can be described conservatively as "twisted".
  • In Final Fantasy XVI, as Bearers channel magic through their body, their flesh starts gradually petrifying, bringing them immense pain until they pass away and turn completely into stone. Not even Dominants are safe from this, as Jill also shows signs of the curse after using her Eikon's powers.
• Broken Ace:
  • Cloud in Final Fantasy VII is the Ur-example of the Final Fantasy series; Cloud's aptitude with Super-Soldier gene-therapy and combat prowess is unmatched by any other character in the series, to the point that he leads a team to destroy an Eldritch Abomination who successfully exterminated an entire Precursor species with mastery over life and death, and WINS. But Cloud's mental state is... not there. He's antisocial, traumatized by watching his childhood hero murdering almost everyone he cared about, and he even has multiple-personality disorder from all the genetic experiments Hojo did on him. Disc 3 happens because Cloud easily fails a will save that let a comatose, frozen psychopath compel him to give away the "wake up genocidal titans" Artifact of Doom.
    • Cloud also leads a few other Broken Ace specialists; Barrett is still haunted by the deaths of his mining town, Cid ruined a billion-dollar space program and takes it out on his spouse, and then there's Vincent...
    • ...who is inarguably the best gunfighter on Gaia, but was betrayed by the love of his life for another man who did not love her, got murdered, was resurrected into the avatar of the Herald of Omega as well as several other monsters through the use of tainted Lifestream and ancient Artifact of Doom-esque Materia, and then proceeded to lock himself in a coffin for fifty years out of guilt, fear, and self-loathing. Even by FFVII standards, Vincent Valentine is a mess.
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal. Their issues drive the first two to villainy and the third to perform Suicide by Cop.
  • Squall in Final Fantasy VIII. He goes out of his way to come off as a stoic, professional badass who doesn't need other people, and succeeds admirably — he stands out as an exceptional soldier even among SeeDs. Much of the student population at Balamb Garden admires him for his extraordinary skills, and "gorgeous" goes without saying for a Final Fantasy protagonist. But the entire thing is just an act pretending to be a jerk to hide his massive emotional insecurities. Underneath, he's a Child Soldier with No Social Skills who avoids getting close to people because he's afraid of the pain of losing someone he cares about.
  • Auron from Final Fantasy X is revered as a legendary guardian who aided High Summoner Braska in defeating Sin. He's an unflappable badass who easily chops up dragons with a huge sword. He's the wise and snarky older mentor to the rest of the cast. All of that masks a bitter and broken man who wanted to change the world and failed. He failed to stop Braska and Jecht from sacrificing themselves to stop Sin. And when he discovered they had sacrificed themselves for false hope, he even failed to avenge them. There's also the little fact that he's Unsent. It doesn't much more "broken" than being already dead.
  • A case can be made for Lightning of Final Fantasy XIII. She's a tough-as-nails soldier in the Sanctum's Guardian Corps who wields the Blazefire Saber (itself a trophy of her acknowledged skill and strength) and was all set to be promoted to officer. But her military prowess and attitude are products of her trying to force herself to grow into a good guardian for her sister Serah after they were orphaned; "Lightning" isn't even her real name, but a call-sign she turned into a new identity. Indeed, this forced maturity does nothing to help when the events of the Purge roll around, and when we first meet her, she's already harboring guilt over not even believing Serah when her sister needed her.
    Lightning: I thought that by changing my name, I could change who I was. I was just a kid.
• Broken Bird:
  • Arguably, Cloud of Final Fantasy VII is one of these in the spin-offs of his main game. While he was never really cheerful, the character of the main game could be goofy, playful, and encouraging to his friends. In the spin-offs he's infamously become an angsty, stoic Anti-Hero due to witnessing the massacre of his entire home town at the hands of his former hero, then suffering through four-five years of inhumane experimentation, followed by witnessing the death of the person who saved him. The trauma from this was so bad that at the beginning of his game Cloud adopted a false personality and fake memories just so he could function properly. Then during the game itself, he underwent Mind Rape thanks to Sephiroth, witnessed the death of Aerith, and learned the truth about his horrible past in an excruciating manner. Honestly, no wonder he angsts!
  • Lulu from Final Fantasy X, who starts off as a Deadpan Snarker, although she later becomes a Defrosting Ice Queen.
  • Lightning from the Final Fantasy XIII series is a tough-talking soldier who has been burdened by the death of her parents and the subsequent responsibility to be the head of her household and take care of her younger sister Serah. The painstaking journey she's forced to go through to defy the gods and save the world only serves to increase her sufferings.
    • In addition, Hope becomes one of these by the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2. After working so hard to save not only his friends but the entire world, and then watch it go down in flames around him it's no wonder he went from optimistic to completely shutting down. And then the events preceding Lightning Returns break him down even more by having Bhunivelze slowly wreck his sanity by conjuring phantoms of Lightning, then kidnapping him, and finally destroying his emotions through 169 years of torture so the God of Evil can take over his body. Just... damn. Hope really needs some hugs after all of this.
• Broken Hero:
  • Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII has more than a few elements of this — he's a bullied-as-a-child People Jar escapee. He's got a dorkish, awkward side to his personality as a result.
  • Big lovable goofball Snow from Final Fantasy XIII is an orphan. You never find out about his past, per say, but there are moments where it's demonstrated just how much he really longs for the family he never had, and how devoted he is to his fiancee, slowly endearing him—uh, sort of — to Lightning.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Cloud Strife got hit by this in Final Fantasy VII. As a teenager, he dreamed of joining the elite SOLDIER unit like his idol, the great warrior Sephiroth. When Cloud finally gets to go on a mission with Sephiroth, finding out that Sephiroth wasn't as noble as Cloud thought he was in the least of our hero's disappointments.
  • Frimelda Lotice in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 had this happen to her. She was revered as a powerful Blademaster and fought alongside her friend Luc Sudarc in many battles. She, however, didn't know that Luc was hugely jealous of her, as he just wanted to surpass her but couldn't no matter how much he trained. So, he poisoned her, sentencing her to wander Ivalice as a pink zombie...until Luso and the gang rescue her. They return her to human form with the help of a special potion, and to return the favor, she joins Luso's clan. And she's cute, to boot.
    • She starts off as a Paladin with Dual Wield already mastered AND she has two swords equipped from the get-go, along with great stats.
  • Rurukuta in Final Fantasy XIV has this towards his mentor Hamon. As children, Rurukuta and Chuchuto were taken in by Hamon and decided to become his students. When Rurukuta discovered how weak Hamon had become in his old age and realized that he'd been lying to everyone about his strength, he turned his back on Hamon and the Pugilist's Guild.

C

• Child Soldiers:
  • Precociously Talented Type:
    • In Final Fantasy VII, no one in the game seems to consider the idea of a 14-year-old Cloud Strife joining the Shinra Army unusual (Zack Fair also joined in at a similarly young age). And then there are people like Sephiroth, Shelke, and Cissnei who started their fighting careers as mere children, although not through any choice of their own.
    • The SeeD in Final Fantasy VIII functions as a highly regarded military academy-type institution and many students enter voluntarily. Students are enrolled before puberty, but typically aren't taught in combat until their teens, and don't see actual combat outside of the training room until their graduation. Upon graduation, the SeeD sometimes also work side jobs in policing duties and receive a regular salary. The in-game encyclopedia outright states that any Garden student who doesn't graduate by the age of twenty is discharged from the school. Also, the underlying function of the SeeD is to be prepared to defend the world against an imprisoned evil sorcerer. However, see the below category to see the flip side of this.
    • In Final Fantasy IX, we have Eiko, a White Mage girl who can use Summon Magic. She happens to be 6-years-old and is the Sole Survivor of her tribe, apart from a bunch of Moogles, who keep her company. She is also Wise Beyond Her Years and not only understands the complexity of the world-threatening conflict when Zidane and his friends meet her but willingly joins them to Save the World. The rest of the cast, while not nearly as young as Eiko, are also mostly teenagers and overall Final Fantasy IX has the youngest cast on average of any main game in the series.
  • Just Plain Tragic Type:
    • Since Celes Chere from Final Fantasy VI has the rank of general at age of 18, it is safe to say that this trope applies to her.
    • Final Fantasy VIII is a deconstruction of this trope. Despite being rather quirky, all of the protagonists except one are members of an elite fighting force trained from the age of 5, and also have their childhood memories erased by the special equipment they use in combat. Early on, it's made quite clear that inexperience and youthfulness significantly screw up their jobs and lives. Seifer breaks the commander's orders and later betrays everybody out of pure ego; Quistis suddenly feels sorry for yelling at Rinoa and abandons her post; Irvine suddenly becomes doubtful of his sniper skill (he's actually more caught up over the idea of assassinating his adoptive mother); Selphie breaks down crying from the destruction of her old school; and Squall, while the most professional, is pretty much the Troubled, but Cute trope incarnated. There's also Zell, who is easily set off by being insulted and who often has trouble keeping his mouth shut, letting key info slip.
    • In Final Fantasy Type-0 the Power Crystal of the Fiefdom of Rubrum only grants the power of magic to the young and as the population ages, their skill with magic wanes. The protagonists are teenage students of a combination Wizarding School and Military Academy that is drafted to fight in the war.
    • In Dissidia Final Fantasy 012: Duodecim, Vaan, possibly in reference to the orphaned friends he had in his own youth in the slums of Rabanastre, views the fact that the young Onion Knight is also part of the Conflict of the Gods as being a tragedy (despite the fact that the latter is very capable of holding his own, to the point that everyone else on the team ignores his age and sees him as a worthy peer), and so ends up inadvertently patronizing him for his youth. Onion Knight desperately wishes that Vaan would treat him as someone worthy of respect until he realizes that it is Vaan's way of doing just that: Vaan never tries to stop him from fighting, after all.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, two guards are gleefully beating Celes and jeering over the treatment she's to receive the following day when Locke shows in to rescue her in South Figaro.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Seifer does this to Squall in D-District Prison.
  • In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII have Bhunivelze to Hope. In order to make Hope an acceptable vessel, he reverts him to his childhood form and tortures him for 169 years.
• Conveniently an Orphan: A really common occurrence in Final Fantasy:
  • The heroes of Final Fantasy II are orphaned when their hometown is invaded by The Empire just prior to the story beginning. Josef's daughter Nelly sadly ends up joining them in that camp.
  • In Final Fantasy III, all the main characters are orphans, although three had been adopted and one was working for the king by the time the game begins. Have being DS translation's quotes:
    Refia: I am thankful to Father for taking care of an orphan like me for all these years, but... this is something I have to do.
    Luneth: Wait... you're an orphan, too?
    Refia: "Too"? You mean—
    Arc: I'm one, too!
    Ingus: Wait a minute... I, too, have no parents...
  • Most of the main characters are orphans in Final Fantasy VIII as well, with the exception of Rinoa who was a Rebellious Princess. Most side characters were as well as SeeD specifically recruit from orphanages, because that is what Gardens started off as. Tyke Bomb gone into a full blown army.
  • Final Fantasy IV: Cecil and Kain were orphaned and taken in by King Baron, and Rydia becomes an orphan in-game. Edge orphans himself, killing his parents after they become chimaera. Polom and Porom are raised by Mysidia's elder and may or may not be orphans.
  • Final Fantasy V has the Idiot Hero being an orphan at the game's beginning, the rebellious princesses losing their father halfway through the game and the Sixth Ranger being a replacement for her dead grandpa, who was also her last relative. It's more done as a party of the game's theme of legacy than a plot ticket, though.
  • Final Fantasy VI has Terra, Edgar, and Sabin explicitly stated to be orphans as part of the plot. Gau is essentially an orphan. Relm may or may not be an orphan depending on whether you save Shadow, but it's at least Disappeared Dad. The rest of the cast never mention their families, including Cyan who does have a dead wife and child that feature in the plot but never mentions his parentage.
  • Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, due to Sephiroth killing his mother during his raid on Nibelheim. His father is never mentioned.
    • And Aerith (though she was raised by Elmyra for fifteen years), Tifa, Marlene (raised by Barret), Red XIII...
  • Zidane in Final Fantasy IX. Truth be told, he's revealed never to have had parents at all.
    • Eiko as well, though she actually gains parents by the end of the game.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Tidus, Yuna, Seymour, Wakka, and Lulu are all missing both parents. (Well, a case could be made for Tidus, but that's different.) Kimahri's family disowned him, Rikku's mother is dead, and we never hear anything about Auron's parents. Only two of the main characters have siblings, and one of them is dead. Probably justified to demonstrate that Sin has touched everyone's lives.
  • Final Fantasy XI has Lion, Prishe, Aphmau, and Lilith. (Although the last one is trying to avert the trope through Time Travel.) Can we get Square into a 12-step program to deal with their addiction to this trope?
  • Both Vaan and Penelo from Final Fantasy XII.
    • Ditto with Ascended Extras Kytes and Filo from the sequel Revenant Wings.
    • Ashe's father (her mother is never seen/mentioned) is killed in the opening movie. Vayne orphans himself and Larsa when he orders their father to be murdered. Basch and his sibling are orphaned during the attack on their homeland. Your party fights and kills Balthier's father during the course of the game, orphaning him as his mother was already long dead.
  • Lightning, Serah, and Snow in Final Fantasy XIII. Presumably Fang and Vanille as well, since they were in crystal stasis for several hundred years. Only Hope is the exception, and both his parents are seen during the course of the game, though his mother dies less than an hour in. Though this is averted with the Big Bad. It's unclear if, as a Mechanical Lifeform, it really has parents, but the game is fond of related symbolism in regards to it, and at the very least it was abandoned by the gods who created it. Unlike the heroes, it took the trauma of this situation rather badly. very badly actually. Unfortunately the heroes never discuss this.
  • Rafa and Malak in Final Fantasy Tactics.
  • The Player Character in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. S/he was found as a baby in the woods one day and raised by Sherlotta and the village. How and why s/he came to be there in the first place is neither explained nor relevant.
• Crapsack World:
  • The World of Ruin in Final Fantasy VI. The ground is barren and crops won't grow. Monsters inhabiting the wild have grown stronger than ever. The entire human population has taken a severe drop. There are few bastions of hope for humanity. Also, it is ruled by Omnicidal Maniac Physical God who sits on top of a giant tower and destroy towns if they don't worship him, and also occasionally does it if he gets bored, because according to him: "Nothing beats the music of thousands of voices screaming in unison!"
  • In Final Fantasy VII the Planet itself could have a very long list of reasons why it would qualify for this trope. But really it could be summed up simply by the fact that when people are exposed a large level of the life-giving force on the planet it either kills you or makes you mentally unstable. "Luckily" an international company that enforces its will and ways with a private army has industrialized sucking said life-force out of the planet, slowly turning the world into a barren wasteland in the process. On top of this, after Meteor is summoned to destroy the planet, what does the planet do in response? Release several ancient monsters upon the world in order to wipe out all of humanity since it deems that humans are too dangerous for the planet's survival, even though only one person summoned Meteor and several others want the planet to survive. The monsters that are summoned have enough power to destroy cities and level mountains. There is also Jenova, an Eldritch Abomination who can create illusions to mind rape all sentient life, mutate them into carriers of her cells, and ultimately suck the very lifeforce of the planet. AND there's her "son" who is a Humanoid Abomination instead and is basically doing the same thing except with even MORE mind rape.
  • Spira of Final Fantasy X certainly counts, which sees large chunks of its populace slaughtered by an Eldritch Abomination on an almost daily basis and is ruled by a Corrupt Church specifically designed to ensure that the suffering never ends. And that doesn't even include the Nietzsche Wannabe whose idea of ending the people's suffering is to simply kill all of them.
  • The Cocoon in Final Fantasy XIII. People living in fear? Check. Run by a corrupt Beaurocrat? Check. Willing to murder an entire city to kill two l'Cie? Check. The entire population set up as a mass Human Sacrifice? Check.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII's Nova Chrysalia. Chaos has swept over the entire world after the death of Etro in the midquel 500 years ago. The world has been slowly swallowed up by chaos in that time span, so only four locations are still safe. Nobody ages and no new life is born, but people are still capable of dying if they contract a disease that can't be cured, are fatally inured or get killed by human or monster hand. Said monsters are also frequently walking around the locations and they grow stronger the stronger the Chaos becomes. Also, the Chaos is going to swallow the remains of the world in 13 Days.
  • Orience, the setting of Final Fantasy Type-0, is in the midst of a Crapsack World War kicked off by the Militesi Empire invading the Dominion of Ruburm. War encompasses the entire region, people are dying on the streets (often violently), and people who die are wiped from the memories of those still living. Worse still, it has been like this since times immemorial, as the world is stuck in an endless loop.
  • Final Fantasy XIV may not have things seem so bleak at first until you start looking deeper. After the Calamity occurred, many locations and cities were destroyed and people are still rebuilding their homes and their lives. An ancient group of people known as the Ascians had taught the beastmen tribes how to summon deities called Primals; every time a primal is summoned, they absorb a large amount of aether, which is the planet's lifeblood. Some primals, like Garuda, exist to kill everything and gorge on as much aether as possible while other primals are more content with tempering people to their side so that the victims will mindlessly support and pray for that primal, giving them even more power. The worst part? Primals can never be truly killed, only temporarily stopped until the beastmen summon them again. When the primals aren't threatening the balance of the world, The Empire looms over the distance, trying to conquer the rest of Eoreza.
    • The city states themselves, on a smaller scale, aren't exactly pleasant places to live. Gridania, located in the middle of a forest, has its people extremely weary of outsiders. The people of Gridania are also compelled to please the elementals of the woods to keep the peace, even if it means doing very questionable things like letting a sick child sccumb to their illness. Ul'dah is supposed to be run by a democracy, but a handful of people within the group are content to keeping things as they are and not giving the other side any leeway; the merchants harass and bully people in the streets, criminal groups and corruption run rampant, and anyone who can't make a living deserves to fend for themselves because the city supposedly has no funds to spare to aid the needy. Limsa Lominsa is a city run by pirates, many who are very immoral for the sake of having freedom, that are at constant war with the Sahagin beastmen tribe who are aggressively expanding into the Lominsa territory.
    • When the Heavensward expansion came, the nation of Isghard finally opened their doors and their city is no better; there's class warfare between high born (the rich and elite members of society) and the low born (commoners and the poor), the city itself is very traditionalist to the point that during the Machinist and Leatherworker quests, it's noted that Ishgardians would rather stick to traditional means (using heavy armor for protection and using swords, shields, and lances for weapons against the dragon horde) and refuse to try something that would be more practical (using guns for long distance fighting and using leather based armor for more flexibility and warmth against the cold). The whole city doesn't take kindly to outsiders either and you'll be branded an unbeliever if you don't worship the bishop or an heretic if you even show any form of sympathy to the dragons. Heck, most of the 3.X series is about changing the nation from the inside out and while it is noted that such a change will take generations to accomplish, the city overall is at least much better now than it was back then.
    • Stormblood introduces the game world's Far East region, which is trapped under the Empire's reign. The Ruby Sea is populated by pirates, but unlike the ones from Limsa Lominsa, who are bound to the Admiral's authority, these pirates are completely lawless and have no qualms with forcing passing ships to pay a tithe, or else sink them. Kugane is a neutral island nation that appears idyllic, but is a veritable nexus of political and economic intrigue as everyone tries to screw everyone else over. And then there's the Othard mainland, where the Empire enforces its will and a previous failed rebellion has practically pushed the entire population of the country past the Despair Event Horizon. The entire region is ruled over by a cruel viceroy, a Boomerang Bigot who harbors seething hatred of her former countrymen and who takes great joy in torturing, if not outright killing, them. Her boss is an Evil Prince who is revealed to be less interested in ruling than he is in satisfying his bloodlust, and will gladly mistreat conquered peoples if it means finding a Worthy Opponent.
    • Shadowbringers has the First, an alternate dimension in The Multiverse where you learn the hard way that Light Is Not Good: with the exception of a single continent, the entire world has been laid to waste by the overwhelming power of Light. The region is trapped in Endless Daytime, which also gives birth to an unending hoard of sin eaters. Only two major powers remain in the First: the Crystarium and Eulmore. The Crystarium is like an oasis in the hellish world, where you can live in relative safety, so long as you contribute to restoring the world in whatever way you are able. The same cannot be said for Eulmore, where residents live in decadence and ignorance, whiling away the time while The End of the World as We Know It looms large. Most of the people living here have crossed the Despair Event Horizon, themselves, and await the end, while the ruler of Eulmore, Vauthry, is dead-set on ensuring the world ends.
  • The world of Final Fantasy XV is set in a Low Culture, High Tech world that is fighting over land and resources, while aggravated monsters roam the countryside, which runs the gamut from the humorous (such as people complaining about thieving goblins) to the deadly serious (Adamantoise causing earthquakes). Everything gets worse at night, as daemons thrive in the darkness and can only be held off by plasma-strength light or camping runes. Nights are literally getting longer as the Big Bad summons the apocalypse, and only a few towns can maintain the lights on 24/7.
    • Also, Bahamut thinks humans are Puny Earthlings and orchestrated the apocalypse by driving the Big Bad insane, all so he could 'fix' the world by killing a lot of people.
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles had the world at peace until a meteor crashed into the world, causing its giant crystal to shatter into several shards and the meteor releasing a toxic gas known as miasma. Those who are caught in the miasma either die or turn into monsters. Fortunately, survivors of the calamity settled down in settlements whose large crystals protect them from the miasma and life has mostly bounced back. Unfortunately, a crystal's power is not infinite and requires to be refilled with myrrh (water of life) every year. Each town and settlement send their best warriors out (known as the Caravaners) to retrieve myrrh from dungeons and other locations infested with monsters. You don't even have to imagine what would happen if a town's Caravaners fail their mission; one of the dungeons you visit is a former town whose Caravaners never returned, thus their crystal died and the town was overrun by monsters and miasma. Naturally, you do find a way to end the miasma for good.
  • Cornelia in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is one big mess, with darkness causing monsters to appear and people suffering without the elemental crystals' power. The heroes eventually defeat the Four Fiends and return the power to the crystals, but it only makes things worse, as they become uncontrollable and too powerful for others, with darkness also seeping into the world and turning people into bloodcrazed lunatics. It all turns out to be according to the design of the Lufenians, who treat Cornelia as their personal playground, changing locales without any concern for environment and people and generally playing god. It all culminates in an attempt to completely wipe that world out , with Jack and his companions intending to stop them.
  • The world of Valisthea in Final Fantasy XVI is ravaged by the Blight, an affliction that strips lands of aether and kills every life on them. While that's bad enough, the biggest countries on the continents - the Holy Empire of Sanbreque on Storm and the Kingdom of Waloed on Ash - lead devastating conquests against their opponents, and magic users, called Bearers, are basically enslaved since birth and made to serve and use their magic until their flesh petrifies from the overuse and they die in horrible pain.
• Crystal Prison:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Five years before the game begins, Cloud confronts Sephiroth at the Nibelheim power reactor when the latter returns to retrieve Jenova. Thanks to Cloud mortally wounding him, Sephiroth tumbled off the catwalk and fell into the Mako pool below the reactor, eventually winding up in the Lifestream. In the present, Cloud and his party chase "Sephiroth" across the planet, unaware it is Jenova imitating his appearance; the real Sephiroth is frozen in a block of Mako, having drifted to the North Crater during his travels.
    • Sephiroth's mother, Lucrecia Crescent, is also frozen in crystal in a hidden cave on the Western Continent. But she's there by choice in atonement for her willing participation in Hojo's experiments.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Once branded a L'Cie by the Fal'Cie, Crystal Stasis is the reward for fulfilling their focus, in contrast to failing and becoming a Cie'th (i.e. transforming into a twisted, zombie-like horror). But this also means the Fal'cie can reawaken them and use them as puppets as much as they want. This is what happened with Serah and Dajh, and Vanille and Fang were originally Pulse L'Cie brought to Cocoon and awakened by Barthandelus as his Unwitting Pawns. Ultimately, this also happens to Lightning, Snow, Sazh and Hope by slaying Orphan, but soon awaken as a result of Vanille and Fang's double Deus ex Machina Heroic Sacrifice.
  • World of Final Fantasy have Hauyn trapped in crystal cage for several hundred years by Laynn and Reynn so she's stop her from interfering when they try to open the Ultima Gate. Considering what happened to her it's understandable why she has grudge towards them.
• Cynicism Catalyst:
  • Final Fantasy VI does a bunch of this with Cyan, who was unable to save his wife and son in the siege of Doma. After an initial fit of berserker rage, he swears vengeance against Kefka for robbing him of his family. His latent guilt over the loss causes a Heroic BSoD later in the game when the heroes must journey into Cyan's subconscious to slay his psychological demons, who turn out to be the Three Stooges.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud's guilt over failing to save Zack and then Aerith inspires him more than once to complete inaction. Only an encouraging farewell from the two deceased characters at the end of Advent Children seems to have lifted this off his shoulders.
    • Vincent Valentine suffers from a grim backstory with regards to Lucrecia, though his response is the melancholic Goth to Cloud's Emo, and there's an element of the 'critical of the main hero's inability to the two of them.
    • Subverted in the online mode of Dirge of Cerberus. The main character is driven to sacrifice herself to destroy the Restrictor on the basis of memories of her little sister being cruelly murdered, only for Shelke to tell her corpse that she never had a sister; it was an implanted memory to get her to remove the Tsviets' captor so they could go on to try to bring about the end of the world.
  • Inverted by Shelke herself, for whom the sacrifice of her older sister is the inspiration for her to join the good guys and become Vincent's Mission Control.
  • Final Fantasy X
    • Wakka lost his parents when he was still a kid, resulting in him getting a Promotion to Parent for his little brother Chappu. Even as Chappu became The Ace, still Wakka felt responsible for him and that he had to be a protective big brother. Then Chappu broke with Church teachings to join the Crusaders, who use forbidden technology in their fight against the Eldritch Abomination Sin, and died in his first battle. Wakka responds by blaming Chappu's death on the Crusaders' use of forbidden weapons and becomes an almost fanatical follower of the religious laws who doesn't tolerate any challenges to the faith of Yevon.
    • Chappu's fiancee Lulu goes in the opposite direction by becoming deeply cold and cynical, and at one point she practically tells Tidus that Wakka is blaming "evil technology" for Chappu's death in part so Wakka won't have to acknowledge his own role or even Chappu's in the choices that Chappu made.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has Paine, who is extremely cynical and barely expresses anything positive unless she feels strongly about it. In the past, she was a sphere recorder for Nooj, Gippal, and Baralai during their missions and she was as energetic and happy as the guys were. The group were then thrown into an incident where Barali turned on the group (due to Shuyin possessing Barali's body) and attacked them, causing Nooj and Gippal to retaliate while Paine could do nothing but watch. The group never talked about the incident again, but there was distrust among them in the air and Paine was left with more questions than answers. The friendship among everyone was all but over, which was likely why Paine is always in a cynical mood. Right before the final battle, Paine watches a recording of herself with her friends in a time when she was happy and she wondered what happened to that side of her.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics:
    • Delita starts out as Ramza's trusted companion. But when his little sister Tietra is killed in cold blood by an arrogant, uncaring noble in his own party who sees "lesser" people as tools, he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the very society that allowed this situation to unfold. He, therefore, joins up with the Corrupt Church's Ancient Conspiracy, becomes a Mysterious Protector to a candidate to the throne, deftly manipulates, outwits, or murders any threat to The Plan, and ultimately proves to be a self-serving Villain with Good Publicity who sees everyone around him (even his former best friend) as a tool to become the undisputed King of Ivalice.
    • Wiegraf. As commander of the Corpse Brigade, he used to have enough honor to wish for the well-being of the troops drafted from commoners and peasants, and only campaigned for proper reparations for those left to rot by the nobles after the war. When he catches word of the death of his sister Milleuda, he loses his mind and seeks power at all costs in order to claim his revenge. But when Ramza later confronts him whether Milleuda would have wanted him to (literally) sell his soul, he says he has already moved past caring.
  • Clive Rosfield, the protagonist of Final Fantasy XVI, has a Trauma Conga Line inflicted upon him in a short term of events: his father's duchy gets sacked and he gets murdered, his beloved younger brother Joshua is killed by a mysterious Eikon of Fire right in front of him while Clive is powerless to do anything, and he later gets sold by his own mother into conscripted service for life. No wonder he's become completely ruthless by the time he's seen again.

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• A Darker Me:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud, new to a big city and shed of all his prior identity, spends the first few hours of the game acting like a rude, aloof, cooler-than-cool, violent asshole - something that's even an act within the context of his delusions. Later we find out that he thinks of his real personality as weak and boring, even though what we see of it is quite friendly and sweet (if awkward and self-flagellating).
    • Red XIII. When we first meet him, he's being used as a research specimen by Hojo. He makes a point of acting like an impossibly old, alien being with some cool Deadpan Snarker moments - using complicated language and refusing to give his real name to the party, suggesting they call him by what Hojo designated him. Then you return to his hometown where it turns out that, despite being 48, his long-lived species means he's actually about 15 in human years. Oh, and he still lives with his beloved grandfather. After completing his quest, he drops the act, and his speech patterns and attitude become a lot more childish - in the Japanese, he even changes to a childish pronoun.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Throughout the first "arc" of the Dark Knight class quests, your teacher Fray is constantly snapping at people who come to your for help, and urge you to leave them to deal with their own problems. Yet for some reason, people seem to react as though it were you and not Fray talking to them. Then at the end of the arc comes The Reveal: Fray is you. Specifically, s/he's the part of you that is absolutely sick and tired of constantly being the hero, helping people who won't help themselves and getting nothing but a "thank you" (if even that) for it, while being restrained by laws and leaders. When you refuse to let that side of you take over and walk away from it all, it manifests itself as a doppelganger and tries to beat you down into compliance. Once you emerge triumphant, "Fray" gives up trying to take over forcefully, but promises to take over if you ever want it to.
• Dark Secret: This is the main drive of Final Fantasy XIV's Heavensward expansion: the heroes learn that Ishgard's 1000-year war with the dragons was actually caused by King Thordon I and his 12 Knights, who murdered a dragon desiring their power then stealing Nidhogg's eyes. The main expansion and the first three major patches afterwards are about revealing the truth and forcing both sides into peace.
• Death of a Child: In Final Fantasy XVI, 10-year old Joshua Rosfield gets brutally mauled to death by an unknown Eikon of Fire while his older brother Clive is unable to do anything to help him.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: In Final Fantasy games, no Player Character ever has a full set of parents by the end of the game. Most of them start with a pair of dead parents, and only two characters (Edge of Final Fantasy IV and Hope of Final Fantasy XIII) even starts the game with two living parents (the former's parents are killed in front of him, the latter loses one almost immediately). And several who do start with one surviving parent lose said parent by the end. In fact, it's not until the sixth game that you even see a parent survive and even that one is crazy and doesn't recognize his son.
  • Though Final Fantasy III does break the cycle first (numerically), it's not until its release on the Nintendo DS that the story gets fleshed out in this way. In III, each of the main characters were orphans, but were raised by kind and loving people: Luneth and Arc are raised by the elder of Ur. Refia is raised by the blacksmith of Kazus, and Ingus is raised as a soldier under the King in Castle Sasune.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud's mother was pretty much perfect before dying when Sephiroth burned down the village. The remake hammers in the tragedy by having Sephiroth personally kill her as she begged for him to spare Cloud's life.
• Death by Origin Story: Final Fantasy VII has several cases of this: Aerith's biological mother, Cloud's mother and Tifa's father being among those we're aware of having Died By Origin Story at a fairly early point in the game - in fact, the death of her father in the Nibelheim Incident, which also took Cloud's mother's life, was what prompted Tifa to join The Resistance against Shinra, since she blamed them for his death. Taking this even further though, to a gut-wrenching extreme, is Zack Fair, the SOLDIER who saved Cloud's life after the Nibelheim Incident, and whom Cloud is so traumatized at losing, he winds up with severe mental health issues that plague him for the entire original game and well into the sequel materials, including dissociation, flashbacks, and memory issues that extend to forgetting for some time that Zack ever even existed; the experience of seeing him die was so horrific it caused all of this...and therefore some of the most memorable elements of the game. Zack also falls prey to the "prequel" variation of the trope: he's the hero, Point of View Character, and Player Character in the prequel game Crisis Core... meaning any player who knows the canon of the original game, released about decade earlier, is aware that he's going to die having never made it back to Midgar. Oh, and for bonus points, we know that Cloud, by the time a few more weeks rolls around and he meets Tifa again? Will forget he ever existed, let alone the Heroic Sacrifice he made to save Cloud. Ouch.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Many main characters get dangerously close in the World of Ruin from Final Fantasy VI:
    • After spending a year in coma and seeing the destruction of the world firsthand, Cid's death proves to be Celes's final straw, driving her to toss herself off a cliff. She survives by a miracle, and seeing Locke's bandanna tied around a pigeon's wing gives her a new reason to live. This event can be prevented by successfully playing a minigame, but the path of failure is much better written.^note The developers seem to think so too, because the "right thing" to do is willfully obscure and partially luck-based and the remainder of the plot tacitly assumes that the character is dead.
    • Strago, believing that Relm is dead, allows himself to be brainwashed by the Cult of Kefka, although he snaps out of it once he sees that Relm is alive.
    • Terra completely gives up fighting thanks to her losing to Humbaba, and it takes her second encounter to be encouraged to fight.
    • Mog, after thinking that the party has died, just stares at the wall in the Narshe cave, and it takes the party encountering him to see otherwise.
    • Setzer, after losing his beloved airship, is found drinking at the bar in Kohlingen, and it takes a Rousing Speech from Celes to bring him around.
  • Rafa crosses this prior to the Riovanes Rooftop battle in Final Fantasy Tactics. Her brother, the only person who cares for her, dies Taking the Bullet for her, and immediately afterward the bastard responsible gets thrown off the building by a different villain, denying Rafa even the prospect of revenge. Her notoriously suicidal AI during the mission is Gameplay and Story Integration, as she feels that she has nothing left to live for.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • This is Seymour's motive. After a fairly crappy childhood he hits the horizon when his mother (the only person who ever loved him) sacrifices her own life to give him the power to defeat Sin. His despair drives him to plot the destruction of all life in Spira because he sees it as the only way to bring an end to all suffering.
    • It also turns out to be the motive for why Yu Yevon originally created Sin a thousand years ago. Seeing that his beloved city of Zanarkand would be destroyed, he killed every living being in it and used their souls to create an eternal Dream Zanarkand, as well as an all-powerful destructive force (Sin) to provide the power needed to keep Dream Zanarkand alive.
    • In the sequel Final Fantasy X-2, a Despair Event Horizon is the main motive for its Big Bad, Shuyin, who wants to destroy the world which let him and his beloved die a thousand years ago. To put it in perspective, Shuyin's concentrated despair festered in the cave where he died for a millennium after his death, until it reached a point where the only way he could think to end his pain would be to end the world itself.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has each of the main characters going over the DEH. Some are more destructive than others.
    • Lightning, in frustration with PSICOM's persistence in hunting down the L'Cie and Hope's ineptitude, finally goes over the edge. After what could be considered a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, she inadvertently summons her Eidolon, Odin, who wastes absolutely no time in attacking Hope. What gives this example a more literal sense is noting that as long as Hope has health remaining, Odin will always target him first in battle.
    • Hope has a number of these. The first starts as a mere lack of will to live. Nothing too major. Then, he gets pushed into a state of Tranquil Fury against Snow after the man saves him, believing he didn't save his mother, marking Snow as irresponsible. Needless to say, Hope and Lightning begin to bond due to their mutual dislike of the man, with the latter unintentionally giving Hope the will to create a premeditated murder plan. Just to add to the blunder, she also give him a Survival Knife. This marks the longest in-game grudge, spanning for at least four chapters. Eventually, he comes to a Rage Breaking Point after fighting a boss, which causes him to explode with anger, blasting Snow off of a roof, leaving him hanging over the edge while Hope attempts to kill him with the same knife given to him. However, this alerts the PSICOM forces looking for them, who blast Hope from the roof. This, however, is passed once the man saves his life. His final, albeit short, one is experienced on the surface of Gran Pulse, where Hope finds that the powerful forces of Pulse are too much for him. He goes on a Heroic Self-Deprecation rant, which unlocks his Eidolon, revealing the truth that Eidolons come when you are on your last legs to display your inner strength to you.
    • Sazh spends a good bit of his time with Vanille over the deep end. However, he has one of the more memorable ones in the game. After travelling with the girl, soon becoming rather attached to her, Sazh is confronted by Commander Jihl Nabaat, the woman who was to watch over his Cocoon l'Cie-branded son. The woman then reveals that Vanille was the reason Dajh was branded in the first place, and thus the reason he ended up as a crystal, which causes the girl to run in sadness of the revelation and Sazh to go after her in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Soon, he succumbs to the sadness of his son's fate, opting to let his then-summoned Eidolon, Brynhildr, kill him. After her defeat, he decides to attempt to commit suicide by pointing his own gun to his temple.
    • Snow has a large one after the first battle with the penultimate boss, who reveals to the group that Serah's Focus was to destroy Cocoon, instead of saving it. Snow becomes nearly catatonic, with both Vanille and Lightning having to help him out of his rut and restore his faith in Serah. Afterwards, Snow's brand is the farthest along to turning him into a Cie'th, as emotional distress increases the speed of the process. Both of these are lampshaded by Fang.
    • Vanille suffers a few of them. A famous one is her breakdown once Fang "remembers" everything, exposing Vanille's lies and her Eidolon. This is pushed to a climax after the battle, where Fang motions to knock Vanille a new one... only to stop and hug her, allowing the girl to cry into her shoulder.
    • Fang suffers two of these in-game. The first is shown when she summons her Eidolon, Bahamut, accidentally after her tirade against the Fantastic Racism Coccon is capable of. Opting to "blast Cocoon out of the sky", she very briefly turns on the group, even drawing her weapon on them. She suffers a much more emotional, but brief, one after her friends are turned into Cie'th by the stress she caused them.
  • Given the Downer Ending of the prior game, there are more than a few present in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.
    • Snow, over Serah's death, spends almost the entire game in one, which results in him becoming a Cie'th in hopes of Lightning killing him. Fortunately, Lightning is able to pull him back from the Horizon.
    • Noel, due to the aforementioned death of Serah and his role in the death of Etro, suffers from immense guilt, leading to him chasing a prophesy of him killing Lightning in hopes of reuniting with Yeul.
    • Even Caius Ballad has crossed the DEH. After killing Etro, he no longer has a purpose and longs to die — but while some of the incarnations of Yeul wish for his suffering to end, others don't want him to die and revive him each time he does, leaving him unable to die and with no purpose.
    • Lumina crosses it near the end of the game, as because she is a manifestation of Lightning's emotions that was sealed away after Serah's death, she knows that if Lightning does not accept her, she'll vanish forever.
    • In the ending, Lightning crosses it when she realizes that sealing herself with Bhunivelze in the Unseen Realm means that she'll never be with her friends again. Then Lumina arrives, and once Lightning accepts her emotions, she's able to call out for help.
  • The Stormblood expansion of Final Fantasy XIV is about the Player Character trying to pull the people of Ala Mhigo and Doma out of their own DEH and rise up against the Garlean Empire. As for more specific examples:
    • The Ala Mhigans tend to bounce up and down in this trope, but hit this pretty hard due to The Griffin/Ilberd's mad and suicidal plan to kill his people to create a brand new Primal.
    • Conrad, leader of the Ala Mhigo Resistance, hits this briefly after the Garleans raid Rhalgr's Reach, leading to the deaths of many people, including the man he wanted to succeed him. He's able to recover after awhile.
    • The Doman people have been in one due to a failed rebellion that cost them the life of their old leader (and is thought to have cost them his son as well, but he's still alive, waiting for the right time to return) and Yotsuyu's petty retribution.
    • Yugiri hits this as she rescues a group of Domans, who are now scared shitless of being punished. The Player Character is able to shake her out of it.
  • Crossing the DEH turns out to be a huge part of the plot in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, where Jack orchestrates an entire chain of events to gather enough darkness for himself in order to sever the influence of the Lufenians over Cornelia. It takes his love and friends dying and the world itself becoming a playground for monsters, but he manages to pull through in the end.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: In Dissidia Final Fantasy, The Warrior of Light's response to Garland's speech about being "trapped" by destiny is to pity Garland, explaining that being stuck in the cycle has driven the man to despair. Unfortunately, (as one might expect) Garland doesn't take this very well, and he yells a bit during his fight with the Warrior.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Twice possible in Final Fantasy VI:
    • If you fail to save Cid after The End of the World as We Know It, Celes, having lost everything, decides to climb a cliff to leap off onto the rocks below (which, according to Cid, all other survivors in the island had done when they succumbed to despair). She survives on a miracle, sees Locke's bandanna wrapped around a pigeon's wing, and regains her will to live.
    • Shadow does this in his segment of the game's ending if you have him in your party. To sum up his motivations, he'd let a friend die a very painful death instead of finishing him himself and has carried the guilt for years with him. With the world saved, he stays in the collapsing final dungeon to die and join his friend in death. Complete with him telling his dog to go on without him. Tear Jerker, ahoy.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, when Barret confronts his old friend Dyne, they duke it out. After defeat brings him back to his senses, Dyne realizes the horrible things he's done and tells Barret to keep taking care of Marlene, who was his child by birth, saying his hands are too stained to carry her anymore. Then he drags himself to a cliff and throws himself off it. The game conveniently forgets that he actually survived that same drop years before.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has Sazh almost doing this after his 6-year old son gets turned into crystal, and upon learning that his partner Vanilie was involved with his son's fate.
  • Final Fantasy XVI has Empress Anabella go through a Villainous Breakdown as her empire crumbles and her youngest child turns out to be nothing more than a disposable shell for the God of Gods. As she is confronted by her thought-to-be-dead son Joshua, she believes he's nothing more than a ghost and slits her own throat to end the suffering.
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • In Crisis Core When Zack encounters Angeal after he's been missing and considered a traitor and asks him what he's after:
    Angeal: (completely deadpan) World Domination.
    Zack: That's not even funny man!
  • Final Fantasy X has a moment near the end:
    Jecht: You've really grown.
    Tidus: Yeah. But you're still bigger.
    Jecht: Well, I am Sin, you know.
    Tidus: That's not funny.
  • In Chapter 10 of Final Fantasy XV, after the group finds a key to the generator in Fodina Caestino, Ignis asks where the generator is, at which point Prompto says "Didn't you read the sign, Iggy?" Since Ignis recently went blind, Noctis says "Not. Funny."
  • This happens occasionally in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia when one of the series villains decides to make themselves available to the party in battle. This occasionally leads characters to make flippant remarks on their Card-Carrying Villain status, to be met with coldness from the people who actually experienced the worldwide devastation wrought by people like the Emperor.

E

• Empty Shell: In Dissidia Final Fantasy the Warrior of Light (the very first Final Fantasy protagonist) was like this when he first appeared in the cycles of war. He could walk and talk (barely) under his own power but that was about it. When he was first discovered by Prishe it was assumed this was merely a side effect of being summoned. Turns out he's actually a clone and the reason he started out as a walking vegetable is a side effect of the cloning process.
• Et Tu, Brute?:
  • An Easter Egg of this exists in Final Fantasy X. The Aeon Anima, Seymour's personal Aeon, is the spirit of Seymour Guado's mother. If you summon Anima in the final battle against Seymour (the only Seymour battle you can have her for), he doesn't take it well:
    "You would oppose me as well?!? So be it!"
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Sazh had no problem fighting with Vanille against PSICOM until he realized that Vanille was the reason his son became a l'Cie he was about to kill her and commit suicide. He, fortunately, came back to his senses.

F

• Face–Heel Turn:
  • The villain from the very first Final Fantasy, Garland's Backstory states that he was once a famous hero. That all changed when he kidnapped the princess of Cornelia in a bid to take over the kingdom.
  • Kain from Final Fantasy IV, partly because of brainwashing, but also partly because of his envy for his best friend, Cecil, who was the boyfriend of the girl he had a crush on.
  • Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII goes through a particularly malignant Face–Heel Turn in the main character Cloud's flashback...the awesomeness of which also made him the ultimate Draco in Leather Pants character.
    • The PSP game Crisis Core (where you play as Zack, the guy Cloud absorbed the personality of) portrays this moment at the end. You even get to see Sephiroth before he went batshit. There are quite a few of the villains that do a Heel–Face Turn.
    • Dyne is an Evil Former Friend to Barret. When Shinra betrayed and destroyed Barret and Dyne’s hometown in the Back Story, Dyne was seemingly killed, leading Barret to adopt Dyne’s daughter Marlene while joining the Eco-Terrorist group Avalanche to fight Shinra. Except it turns out that Dyne survived and subsequently went insane, attracting the attention of Cloud’s group by going on a murder spree through the Gold Saucer, and then threatening to murder his own daughter Marlene to force Barret into dueling him to the death. More or less, Shinra drove him so far past the Despair Event Horizon that he turned into an Ax-Crazy Death Seeker who ultimately turns out to be incapable of caring about anything or anyone anymore, and kills himself after Barret defeats him in combat.
  • Seifer in Final Fantasy VIII goes through a much more low-key version of this as well.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics A2 there's a pair of paladins who were known for their superb swordsmanship and skills in combat. However, one of the paladins, Frimelda, is superior to her other paladin friend, Luc Sardac, in battle skills. Luc Sardac tries his best to match his skills with Frimelda's, but he could never get any better. Rather than accepting his limitations, Luc Sardac decides to kill Frimelda so that he would be the superior paladin. It didn't stick due to Frimelda's sheer force of will keeping her alive but as a zombie. When the zombified Frimelda and your party confront Luc Sardac over what happened, he decides to attack you.
• Failure Knight: The series's games are fond of this trope:
  • Locke in Final Fantasy VI. He acts as the knight-errant protector to Terra, especially when he finds out she has amnesia and drops hints about a difficult past. Shortly thereafter he meets Celes and becomes utterly devoted. Locke swears to protect her, mentions a promise he had made to someone, other characters ask if he's "thinking of... her," and eventually we get the story: Locke was reminded, by both women, of his girlfriend Rachel. She was injured and lost her memories trying to save him. She later died, just after regaining them. Eventually, he revives her — only for a minute. That is long enough for her to forgive him, give her blessing to Celes and Locke's burgeoning romance, and die for good.
    • Cyan also falls under this when Kefka poisons the water surrounding Doma castle, killing everyone inside, including Cyan's wife and son. Later on, after beating the Phantom Train boss, Cyan sees his wife and son depart to the afterlife, telling him that they love him and they thank him for all he has done for them. Though he tries to put it behind him, Cyan still blames himself for not being able to prevent the tragedy. In fact, during the World of Ruin, those negative emotions haunt him and cause a spirit fiend named Wrexsoul to appear in Cyan's dreams and feed off Cyan's soul. After the party defeats the monster, the spirit of Cyan's wife and son appear and they tell him to be strong and to keep living. This finally gives Cyan the strength to carry on, which causes him to fully master all of his Sword Techs.
  • Cloud and Aeris in Final Fantasy VII. It's because she is killed by Sephiroth and Cloud was unable to do anything.
  • Steiner from Final Fantasy IX is a literal failure knight. Despite his personal skills, his platoon (The Knights of Pluto) is the laughingstock of the Alexandrian military, his attempts to help or protect the Princess are undermined by everyone else in the cast (including the Princess herself), and he eventually watches his own beloved Queen die, hoist by her own power-hungry petard. Fortunately, once he's hit rock bottom, things start to get better. When Bahamut attacks Alexandria, his men start to redeem themselves when they perform specialized duties like readying the cannons, gathering information, protecting the citizens, and sending for reinforcements. You learn about which knights specialize in each area when one of the Knights of Pluto gives information (in the first Disk) that this knight is a great fighter, these knights are great cannoneers, that this knight knows all the women in town and things along that line.
  • Lulu from Final Fantasy X went on two pilgrimages before going with Yuna. Both failed, but for differing reasons. The first journey was a summoner Lulu was unable to protect when they went to see an off-the-beaten-path Aeon, something she never forgave herself for. The second was a man who, upon reaching the Calm Lands, decided to abandon his journey — something many summoners end up doing once they reach that stage.
    • Auron from the same game, however, is a Failure Knight because he succeeded in protecting his summoner (since the Final Summoning results in the summoner's death anyway). Being a guardian just kind of sucks all the way around.
  • Noel from Final Fantasy XIII-2 feels he failed to protect Yeul and everyone else in his world. He also fails to protect Serah, who dies in his arms right after they beat Caius. And then it turns out that he didn't even succeed in protecting the future, as killing Caius allows the world to be destroyed. Damn...
  • Yunita from Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light is determined to protect Aire and save Horne, but Aire berates her for being late, they're separated early on, then the two boys she travels with ditch her one after the other and leave her with a severe inferiority complex, and she's conned out of all her possessions. It's probably a good thing she didn't find out until after meeting her again that Aire spent the good chunk of the game cursed into being a cat, otherwise her Heroic BSoD in Urbeth might have gotten even worse.
  • Clive from Final Fantasy XVI is wracked with guilt after failing to prevent his brother Joshua's death at the hands of the mysterious Ifrit. His later service as a Branded soldier of Sanbreque hardens him events more, as he tortures himself mentally by deluding himself into trying to avenge Joshua's murder by finding the one responsible.
• Fallen Hero: Tons of these in the series games.
  • Garland in Final Fantasy. He was the greatest of the king's knights, until Princess Sarah rejected him.
  • Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. Especially evident during Crisis Core and its glimpses of Sephiroth's pre-fall personality — although cool and aloof, he was actually a pretty nice guy and hero-grade material before the Nibelheim Incident. His Dissidia opponents repeatedly mention this in their pre-fight quotes, especially in Duodecim. The crazy thing is that Sephiroth will alternate between calling himself one or declaring himself a general destroyer of life. "Taste the blade of a hero.", indeed.
    • It's funny: the heroes will either question how he could have turned or how he was ever a hero, and the villain quotes (particularly the Emperor) make it sound more like an Once Done, Never Forgotten moment.
    • Square Enix plays with this heavily in Dissidia. Many of his quotes are contradictory to his villainous nature, such as saying "Fear not." or "Do not despair."
    • Alternate Character Interpretation states that he would have come to his senses when he died... except the first person to kill him wasn't his genocidal former friends, or the punky, idealistic Chosen One, but Cloud. That's right. A pathetic, angsty, cowardly foot soldier, the lowest class of scum in Sephiroth's eyes, was the one to defeat a demigod through sheer force of will. That thought took the last vestiges of humanity in him, his pride as a First Class SOLDIER, and twisted it into something even worse than the Eldritch Abomination that he had become.
  • Seymour in Final Fantasy X. Subverted in that it turns out that he was never a "hero" in the first place.
    • Jecht, also in Final Fantasy X. Also subverted in that willingly turning himself into a monster is the only thing that allows the heroes to finally put the Vicious Cycle to an end.
  • Wiegraf (and possibly Delita) in Final Fantasy Tactics.
• Forced to Watch:
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Orphan forces Fang to watch him torture Vanille in order to get her to transform into Ragnarok and kill him. Fang ends up transforming into an incomplete Ragnarok but turns back into a human before she can kill Orphan. Then Orphan proceeds to torture Fang while Vanille watches. Who knows what would've happened if Lightning and co didn't pull a Big Damn Hero moment.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: Delita witnessed the death of his sister Tietra at hands of Argath.
  • Final Fantasy XVI: Clive witnesses Joshua in his Phoenix form being mauled to death by a mysterious Eikon of Fire, being unable to do anything but watch and scream.
• Freakiness Shame:
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII has Angeal states dramatically that he's become a monster (since he's grown a wing), and Zack contends that's the wing of an angel. Which it does look like.
    • Considering that the ''other'' folks with the single wings were villains who turned quite monstrous in the end, Angeal's worries may not have been completely unfounded.
    • They were also his two best friends. And Sephiroth hadn't gone off yet since he was made by a different process and wasn't dying. (Genesis might have been a little more positive about the mutation if it hadn't come with a bitch of an autoimmune disorder.)
      "Wings symbolize freedom for those who have none. They don't symbolize monsters."
    • The effect is somewhat mitigated by Zack being a total hypocrite. After a few bad encounters with Genesis's forces, he grumpily remarks at the concept, "If humans had wings, they'd be monsters." It's not until he finds out about Angeal that he basically goes, Oh, Crap!, and alters his stance.
    • Well, that is complicated by the fact that 'monster' (said in English even in the Japanese audio) is a technical term for the various mutants that experimentation and mako pollution cause in the setting, so what Zack says is correct. But when Angeal uses it he's giving it a distinct moral weight, like the English 'monster' and Japanese 'bakemono' normally carry, and it's that sense Zack is attempting to deny. Given his beloved mentor is saying things like "well, don't monsters usually want either world domination or revenge?" he's got reason to argue the point.
    • Angeal ultimately goes into one of the ugliest One-Winged Angel forms in the series in the effort to get Zack to off him. He does so, but he stays pretty pro-wings for the rest of the game, including asking to borrow Angeal's in a hallucination before breaking out of Hojo's mako tank, and when being absorbed by the Lifestream at the end, when it appears Angeal's ghost came to pick him up.
  • Ritz from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance dyes her hair pink in the real world because it's naturally white and she hates it. In the fantasy world, though, there's the Viera, an One-Gender Race of rabbit-women who regard white hair as a divine gift. Her viera companion tells her it is beautiful and that she is blessed for having it.
    • Hair Color Dissonance makes it impossible for the players to tell, mind you. The best part is her hair is the only reason she doesn't want to go home.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • The Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy IV gives this to Golbez. His father was killed by the town for teaching magic, and his mother died giving birth to his younger brother, Cecil. The hate he generated was enough for Zemus to manipulate him into stealing the crystals. According to Takashi Tokita, this was originally written down in the script, but 3/4 of the script was removed in the Super Famicom version, and it wasn't until they made the DS remake that they could implement it. In other words, the DS remake was actually more of a director's cut.
  • Downplayed with Final Fantasy VI's Kefka, who's insane because the process that made him a Magitek Knight shattered his sanity.
  • Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII was raised by his father, the evil mad scientist Hojo, who regarded him as little more than a human lab rat and was trying to turn him into the perfect super-soldier. Obviously, Hojo mostly succeeded. Being told that his mother died giving birth to him and then finding out that his "mother" is a monster couldn't have helped, either.
  • Final Fantasy VIII:
    • Everything regarding Anti-Hero Squall's screwed-up mental state can be traced back to separation issues at a very young age when Ellone was taken away from him at the orphanage. This is compounded by an apparent complete lack of emotional support following their separation, and by the fact that junctioning Guardian Forces during his training caused him to forget his childhood, making it impossible for him to re-evaluate his childhood trauma from a more mature perspective.
    • Ultimecia's whole motivation behind her evil is being feared and hated for something she hasn't even done and doesn't know she's going to do yet.
  • One was given to the recurring villain of Final Fantasy X, Seymour Guado. In a nutshell, non-human dad marries human mum, but his species' xenophobic civilization doesn't like that their leader married a human, so she and Seymour are exiled to a long-abandoned temple. Mum decides that Seymour will need to be powerful to be accepted, so she undergoes a procedure that will allow him to call on her as a powerful summon beast but will also turn her into a statue while young Seymour is crying for her not to, effectively meaning that he's been abandoned by both parents. Summon Beast Mummy is a monster who looks like a zombie trapped in a venus flytrap with a demon for lower half. Even worse is that after this, Seymour was expected to use the said beast to destroy the monster Sin, which would make him famous throughout the land... and also kill him.
  • Shuyin, the Big Bad of Final Fantasy X-2, was murdered along with his lover. He became Unsent as a result, and was then imprisoned in a device that forced him to relive those murders, over and over again, for a millennium. It is entirely understandable that, on finally escaping, he devotes himself to reactivating Vegnagun, on the grounds that obliterating the country that tortured him would keep it from ever happening to him again.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, there's the cruel Doman despot Yotsuyu, who was left with her aunt after her mother died when she was young. Her aunt had no love for her and insulted her by constantly referring to her as a weak child. She was given away to a drunken old man to be married, who'd beat her constantly. When he died, she was forced to work in a pleasure house to work off his debts. When the Garlean Empire came knocking in Doma, she grabbed hold of the chance to take revenge, first becoming a spy, then becoming the de facto ruler, using her power to crush the spirits of the Doman people in revenge for her treatment.
  • Ardyn from Final Fantasy XV has an entire Trauma Conga Line as his Start of Darkness: Initially, he was supposed to be The Chosen One, the first king of the kingdom of Lucis, appointed by the gods themselves. As part of his role, the gods sent him forth on a mission to cure people of the Starscourge, a Mystical Plague that turned humans into daemons. And he gladly did just that: Upon the gods' command, Ardyn went forth and cured countless by taking the plague into his own body. It was then that the gods decreed that Ardyn had defiled himself, appointed his younger brother to take his place as the rightful king, and barred his soul from entering the afterlife. And then Ardyn's brother branded him a daemon, had him ostracized, and struck all records about him from the books. What's worse is that Ardyn now that his body plays host to the Starscourge and his soul is unable to pass on, can no longer die. Ultimately, his Rage Against the Heavens and dedication to ending the line of Lucis comes across as nothing short of sympathetic.

G

• Go Mad from the Revelation: Sephiroth from the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. After finding out that he was born as part of an experiment to produce people with the power of an ancient civilization that was destroyed. That just emotionally unhinges him, though. What really sends him around the bend is that the ancestors of modern humans survived by hiding and letting them get eradicated. It probably didn't help either when he somehow learned that the "ancient" that was used to clone him was actually the alien who wiped them out, or that his own father was the one who performed the experiments on him before he was even born. The fates of his two closest friends in Crisis Core likely didn't help much either. After finding out about his genetic manipulation (and instability) one committed suicide by forcing Zack to slay him in combat. The other rebelled against the organization responsible for said genetic manipulation. Sephiroth was never told the entire truth — or anything at all, really — about the Jenova Project. By the time of the events in Nibelheim, Sephiroth's personality had already gotten a lot darker...

H

• Harmful to Minors: Examples of kids being exposed to horrific violence:
  • Final Fantasy IV has Rydia, a Woobie whose mother is killed by unknowing warriors who fight a Mist Dragon as it gets in the way of their mission. Then her village is torched by a bomb ring. She accompanies you for a while as a party member, until she is thrown off a ship by a sea monster. Luckily for her, said sea monster saves and adopts her in an environment that she quickly grows out of her childhood, both physically and mentally.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Hope. Oh so much. First, he sees his mother killed by the army, then he is forced to fight against Cie'th (zombies), becomes a l'Cie and spends the rest of the game constantly hunted by the army. Oh, and that time he gets blown off a rooftop. He's only 14 by the way.
  • The Final Fantasy Legend has a shelter occupied by the deceased bodies of three children, as well as their father. When the game was released in the US as The Final Fantasy Legend, the children were explicitly stated to be dead, making this a surprising aversion of Nintendo's Never Say "Die" policy at the time of its release.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Celes betrays the Empire and joins the Returners after Locke saves her from torture. Kefka's plan to poison the entire town of Doma crosses her Moral Event Horizon. However, burning down Maranda is simply Empire evil, because she did participate in that.
    • Emperor Gestahl pretends to pull one of these creating a Disc One Ending following a Disc-One Final Dungeon, but it's a trap. The party realizes this beforehand, but they underestimate how far deep they are in.
    • When the above happens, General Leo actually pulls this off, and dies for his mutiny.
  • After defeating Zidane and friends three times in Final Fantasy IX and getting a Pyrrhic Victory after the third battle upon realizing Garnet's condition, General Beatrix joins your party for a couple of fights and seeks to atone for what she has done.
    • An unusual, less extreme example, but it counts. Steiner, even though he's in your party for a greater portion of the game, spends most of his time trying to sabotage the party and deliver Dagger back to the queen. Zidane and the others win his loyalty, eventually.
    • Even Big Bad Kuja pulls this off before he dies at the end of the game. Just when Zidane comes to pull off a Heroic BSoD to pick him up just as the Iifa Tree is about to crumble.
  • Judge Gabranth in Final Fantasy XII sides with The Empire after believing that his brother, Basch, betrayed them and his men. He even fights the party a few times but near the Final Battle, he realizes who the true evil is and assists the party for one battle. Gabranth dies after the war is over and Basch lives on in his name.
  • Libertus Ostium in Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV was among those in the Kingsglaive that turned against King Regis. However, towards the end of the film, he realizes that the Niflheim Empire are the true antagonists, changes allegiance to Nyx, and helped get Luna to the borders while Nyx battles General Glauca.
  • Meliadoul in Final Fantasy Tactics (too bad this happens after Orlandu's already joined, however; everything she can do, he can do better). Also, Mediators can use their Invite skill on most enemies (as in, those who aren't plotting characters), recruiting them on the spot to your cause (well, with a bit of luck, anyway).
  • Terra, Cloud, and Tidus in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy. Terra was originally a lackey of Kefka, but thanks to some help from Vaan and a little meddling from Kuja, she turned to Cosmos's side. While Cloud was an Anti-Villain Type IV, as he shows concern toward his opponents in Prologus, warning Lightning not to underestimate the other Warriors of Chaos, and has no real motive (or incentive) to fight any of them, let alone Tifa. Since Cloud has been through several cycles already, and more importantly, remembers them, so he's burnt out and unmotivated because he knows it's a waste of time. It's not like fighting any of the heroes or getting killed by one of them is going to change anything, they'll all just be back in the next cycle. But after Sephiroth attacks Tifa, he rebels against Chaos and got killed. His last wish to Cosmos was to keep Tifa safe. Cosmos is so touched by this that she chooses him as her warrior on the next cycle. As for Tidus, he was originally suckered into fighting for Chaos, but after taking a fatal blow from the Emperor, his father Jecht sacrificed himself to save him and left himself open to being turned to Chaos, and Yuna helped him join Cosmos's army.
• Heroic Safe Mode:
  • Final Fantasy VIII's Squall Leonhart is such a mess of emotional issues that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when or to what extent he's emotionally checked out, or when it's this trope as opposed to Tranquil Fury or a full-blown Heroic BSoD. At the most conservative interpretation, Squall goes into Heroic Safe Mode at the D-District Prison at the beginning of disc 2 and slips in and out of it at intervals up until late in the third disc.
  • Becomes an entirely new game mechanic in disc 3 of Final Fantasy IX when Garnet, overwhelmed entirely by, within the course of a few weeks, learning that she was adopted, witnessing the death of her mother, and seeing her entire kingdom completely wrecked before she can even assume the throne completely shuts down on an emotional level, losing the ability to speak. Yet she remains usable in battle, but can no longer use the game's limit break and has a 1/3 chance to fail to follow commands due to an inability to "concentrate". She recovers both her voice and her combat usefulness following a "Heroic BSoD" moment that forces her to confront her issues and overcomes them for the sake of protecting Eiko from sharing one of her greatest misfortunes. Zidane has a similar meltdown later on, but his reaction is... different.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning has been in this mode ever since her parents died (which is also when she started to call herself Lightning). She instructs Hope on how to enter Heroic Safe Mode to help him cope with his trauma:
    Lightning: Think of it like a strategy. Focus on your ultimate goal and shut out everything else. Still your mind. Move on instinct. Let doubt take over, and despair will cripple you.
  • Yuri enters this after his father's murder in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. With the family's adult neighbors missing, he becomes the only one who can care for his catatonic sister Chelinka. He spends the next few years cooking, caring for her, chopping wood, and training swordplay with a sense of dutiful routine. When Chelinka finally returns to consciousness and speaks to him, Yuri melts down with all the anguish he couldn't express.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • Cecil Harvey from Final Fantasy IV spends half of the game hating himself for accidentally destroying a village of innocent bystanders (and doing other evil deeds as well). Even after his redemption, he still goes back to reminisce about it eventually.
  • Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII as well. (And how!) He didn't so much 'put up an image' of stoicism as an attempt to adopt a totally different personality because he hated his own so much. He does this in the Kingdom Hearts series as well — more so in the second game, when Tifa is trying to cheer him up and encourage him to find his light, but Cloud essentially says, "Yeah, whatever...".
  • Vincent Valentine. While it turned out badly and was perhaps inadvisable, he sees his willingness to ignore his own feelings for the benefit of his love, Lucrecia, as his greatest mistake since he 'allowed' her to walk into danger. He basically takes all responsibility for it and sees the horrific mutilation of his body that followed as simply his just desserts. Even after helping save the world he pretty much looks down on himself as a monster and is still somewhat isolated from the team, despite maintaining contact with them over the phone.
  • Squall Leonhart, the hero of Final Fantasy VIII, acts like a stoic and a jerk in part to hide a constant struggle with crippling insecurity and a miserable self-image.
• Hidden Depths: Lots of folks in the Final Fantasy series are more complex than they let on.
  • Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII is introduced as an awesome ex-Super-Soldier mercenary, with the skills and smugness to match that resume. The truth is, he never actually made it into that supersoldier program. His "mercenary" personality is a mix of his old friend Zack Fair, his own idea of what a supersoldier should be like, mind-bending experiments with Jenova cells and Mako, and his deep sense of shame over not accomplishing what he'd told the girl he liked (Tifa) he would.
    • Meanwhile in the remake, it's shown that despite the fact that he protests about dancing in front of people, he can actually keep up with the owner of the Honey Bee Inn in a dance-off.
  • Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII appears to be an aloof, all-business warrior who doesn't give a crud about other people. He's acting like this on purpose. As a small boy, a close friend suddenly disappeared from his life, and he couldn't take the pain. To avoid ever feeling like that again, he adopted a persona based on what he thought an independent adult should be, trying to push people away so that he won't connect with them and thus get hurt by their inevitable parting. He confesses this to Rinoa, whose constant poking and prodding slowly got him to emerge from his shell... Sadly, she was comatose at the time.
  • Zidane Tribal of Final Fantasy IX seems like a selfless, heroic thief who lives by his own personal motto "You don't need a reason to help people". And he actually is like this... but the reason he devotes so much energy to other people is because he has no idea how to solve his own problems. He was brought into the thieving club Tantalus with no memory of where he originally came from, and this issue was never really resolved by the time we first meet him. So when the truth of this very mystery proves most unpleasant, he tries to confront it all by himself. Despite his attempts to leave his friends out of it, they counter with the trope namer of You Are Not Alone.
  • Lightning of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy is cold, aloof and generally unpleasant to be around, constantly pushing people away and lashing out at others in a misguided attempt to make herself feel better. Her parents died when she was young, leaving her to raise herself and her younger sister. She confesses to Hope that she became a soldier to avoid facing her problems, adopting the name "Lightning" because she couldn't face being Claire anymore. She also tries to dissuade Hope from killing Snow, despite not being particularly fond of him herself, and even puts her life on the line to reunite the boy with his father.
• Hide Your Otherness: Kuja from Final Fantasy IX. He hides his tail, as it clearly marks him as a Genome.

I

• I Let Gwen Stacy Die:
  • Final Fantasy VI has Rachel, who serves as this for Locke. One day, while exploring a cave with Rachel, he was too slow to keep her from falling down a cliff, which led to her contracting amnesia. Her father called out Locke on this and Locke left his hometown, and while he was away, Rachel was killed in an Imperial attack. Locke fully blames himself for once again not being there to protect her, like he promised he would. This is why he makes it his mission to protect Terra and Celes.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Aeris Gainsborough for Cloud. Actually, her example is to video game fans what Gwen's was for comic fans for the very same reasons. Her death provides the motive for Cloud to take down Sephiroth, but he is still angsting about it by the time the movie comes around, though Advent Children Complete and other materials make it clear that his angst in the film also relates to his failure to find a cure for the Geostigma, afflicting himself and Denzel, a hefty dose of survivor's guilt towards Zack, and depression and anxiety are symptoms of Geostigma.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: No less than three people feel this way towards Serah. First and foremost, her sister Lightning and fiancé Snow, the former for not believing her at a key moment, the latter for accidentally getting her captured by a fal'Cie, both of them blaming themselves for her subsequent transformation into a human paperweight. In this iteration, she gets better, but after dropping dead at the end of the second game, Lightning, Snow and Noel get this trope in spades. Again, she gets better, due to the universe being rebooted.
  • Noctis suffers from immense guilt at Luna's death in Final Fantasy XV, even though the way it was set up made it seem like it was inevitable.
    Noctis: All I wanted was to save you...
    • Watching Noctis break down and consequently mourn for weeks after it occurred is a punch to the gut, especially when he finally realizes just how much she must have struggled to help him, and how he had been oblivious to all the hardships she had been through until it was too late and ends up crying alone.
      Noctis: It's... so hard... Guess it was hard for you too. I'm sorry... I couldn't be there for you.
• I'm Having Soul Pains:
  • Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children: Cloud's Geostigma seemed to be I'm Having Soul Pains as a tic. He would suddenly cringe, run short of breath and flinch as if an invisible force were causing him pain.
    • Final Fantasy VII Remake: has Cloud suffering this. In Hojo's lab, just after meeting Red XIII, getting too close to Jenova triggers something in Cloud, causing him to stumble forward slowly towards the elevator before collapsing. During this time, Cloud is Hearing Voices of Sephiroth, telling him that "they have come again."
      Cloud: Je... No... Oh... Ah... Mo... ther... [collapses]
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Pictured above is Lightning, experiencing some intense pain caused by her Eidolon's first summoning. Other Eidolon hosts appear to feel some discomfort with their initial summonings as well, with Hope outright losing consciousness. Later summonings do not seem to cause any discomfort at all, however.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: In the Shadowbringers expansion, the Warrior of Light absorbs all of the primordial light of the defeated Lightwardens in order to bring the night back to an otherwise endless day in Norvrandt. They're fine after the first couple victories, but they soon begin to suffer from pangs due to the stress this is causing their soul, to the point that it's on the verge of shattering by the last one.
• Ineffectual Loner:
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Squall Leonhart is a hero version, and he never wanted to be the hero anyway.
  • Final Fantasy IX: The trope is borne out normally where Amarant is the Ineffectual Loner, and Zidane tries to teach him The Power of Friendship, or at least of discretion.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: Subverted with Delita, who exhibits the philosophy and behavior of the Ineffectual Loner, but proves not to be ineffectual at all. This can be attributed to the title's uncharacteristically (for Final Fantasy) heavy emphasis on the "cynical" end of the scale' — The Hero Ramza would be Messianic Archetype if he could, but in Ivalice, it just doesn't work that way. But it could also be considered to be played straight anyways; for all his effectiveness, Delita never really gets what he was looking for and ends up alone and unhappy, while Ramza gets what he was looking for and lives his life free, with his sister.
  • Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light:
    • Brandt tries to go on his own, ditching Yunita so he can turn himself into a badass lone hero after feeling inferior to Krinjh. It lasts exactly until he reaches Arbor, whereupon the town's defenses turn him into a plant. (Fortunately, the little white cat following him was really Aire, who found a way to turn him back... after a few steps.)
    • Jusqua and Aire (which is to say, every single main character except for Yunita, who keeps getting ditched by her teammates) also qualify. A big chunk of the game's plot revolves around the team's inability to work together. For the first half of the game, they spend more time bickering and blowing one another off than acting like proper heroes.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex:
  • Final Fantasy VII is full of these. To the extent that it could be considered one of the main themes of the game:
    • Cloud insists on showing off as much as possible, striking poses, and being flamboyantly snarky towards others. This is later revealed to be a false persona that stemmed from a complex caused by his feelings of worthlessness, exacerbated by Jenova cells and trauma. At one point, he states that as a child he dealt with his isolation and feelings of worthlessness by convincing himself that it was because everyone other than him was stupid.
    • A similar case can be made for Cloud's enemy, Sephiroth. When he learned he was the product of sick science and some sort of alien monster "lady", he... didn't take it well. To say the least. When his pride was shattered by the revelation, he went mad trying to prove himself more than a lab monster and ended up falling into delusions of grandeur, ripping through many Moral Event Horizons like wet paper in his wake. Upon realising he isn't a real human, Cloud quotes him as saying that he'd always known he was strange and different when compared to other people, "but... not like this...". A week later, he's declaring himself the 'rightful heir to this Planet' and planning to become a God. His arrogance even allows him to re-emerge five years after his apparent death falling into a reservoir of Mako energy, without having experienced the ego-death that is suffered by most people heavily exposed to Mako energy.
    • Red XIII acts haughty, intelligent, and ancient, with little time for the inexplicable behaviour of humans. To Red's embarrassment and Cloud's surprise, it later turns out that he's the equivalent of a fifteen-year-old boy and he still lives with his grandfather, and he was showing off due to feelings of inadequacy.
    • Aerith's reckless behaviour and manic levels of confidence about her Zany Schemes are in contrast to how awkwardly she talks about her powers when Tifa asks her about them. It's clear she has only a confused grasp of her abilities, doesn't know what her mother's Materia is for (calling one of the two most powerful magical items in the world 'good for absolutely nothing' and wearing it as a hair accessory), and is scared of how different she is. The Expanded Universe has it that she was mostly isolated growing up due to her surveillance by the Turks and because her abilities led people to consider her creepy. By the end of the first Disc, she has so much control over her powers that she can translate the words of spirits, interfere with Cloud's dreams to speak to him while he's unconscious, find the lost City of the Ancients, and cast her mother's spell.
    • Barret at first comes off as an aggressive blowhard who loves being in charge and is very arrogant and uncompromising about his anti-Shinra political views. He later admits that this is all an attempt to deal with his feelings of worthlessness after his initially pro-Shinra views led to his town being destroyed. When the displaced and destitute residents corner him and shout abuse at him, Barret just nods and takes it.
    • Zigzagged by Yuffie, who at one point gives a big speech about how her country has been stripped of pride after its colonisation, and she only stole from the party because she thought that if she did, she could prove herself... and immediately reverts to her usual Awesome Ego personality after using this to lure the party leader into trapping the other members in a big cage, gloating at them for being stupid enough to fall for it. However, most fans do think Yuffie's speech was about her real reasoning, even if she was using it to manipulate the others. Many of her in-party scenes show her tough-girl attitude falling apart when faced with genuinely threatening and disturbing things, like confronting the shooter in the Battle Square, saying goodbye to Aerith, or working up the courage to kiss a boy.
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake, as a Remake, has Barret directly call Cloud out on his cockiness coming from "a huge inferiority complex".
  • Final Fantasy IX has Kuja. In a race of artificial people called "Genomes", he was the only one with an actual soul due to some sort of fluke. He was always insisting due to this that he was different from his nigh-mindless peers, loudly trying to enforce his individuality. But then ANOTHER Genome was created with a soul (on purpose this time) and was scheduled to be Kuja's replacement. Kuja reacted... badly. He kidnapped the child and dropped him into the world Kuja was to help destroy, all out of a desire to prove himself superior.

K

• Knight in Sour Armor:
  • Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy VIII veers between this and just being a Jerkass (later revealed to have a Hidden Heart of Gold because Love Redeems.) Especially notable because doing the right thing, for him, means not only fighting for a world he might not think is worth fighting for (most of the game, anyway), but also serving the forces which have forbidden him from exercising his free will for his entire life. (Though, to be fair, he has been strung along most of the time because he doesn't know what he would do otherwise)
  • Lightning in Final Fantasy XIII is a female example. She does believe in doing what's right, but the world she lives in is so messed-up she has very little "right" to believe in and she bitterly laments her fate as a cursed l'Cie.
    • While we're on the subject of Final Fantasy XIII, how about Sazh and Oerba Yun Fang? Sazh's only desire is to see his son again and he's willing to turn himself in to see his son one last time before he is executed. Vanille is what keeps him going. The same is said for Fang when it is revealed that she was a Pulse l'Cie before the start of the game along with Vanille and cracked Coocoon's shell as Ragnarok. By extension, the entire main cast if you go by their backstories and their cursed fate as a l'Cie. Even Genki Girl Oerba Dia Vanille who lied to everyone about being a Pulse l'Cie so she could help them. Had she not lied at all, things would have gone differently.
  • Jack in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is an abrasive, rude and brutal man who only seeks to end Chaos, but over the course of his journey he's shown to be wanting to do the right thing for everyone, actually trying to solve problem, albeit in the most violent way possible, and he forges unbreakable bonds of camaraderie with his companions, protecting them and supporting them at difficult times.

L

• Loss of Identity:
  • This was a major plot revelation in Final Fantasy VII when we discover that Cloud Strife, due to psychological trauma and denial, had altered his own memories and adopted the persona of his dead friend Zack Fair, losing his own identity in the process.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Explicitly the fate that awaits any l'Cie who fails to complete the Focus given to them by the Fal'Cie. They slowly degenerate into mindless Cie'th, monstrous and aggressive creatures with tainted crystals jutting out of their bodies. Given that Fal'Cie tends to give VERY vague instructions when it comes to what they want done, this fate is far more common than success (and even what you get if you succeed is not that great).
• Loners Are Freaks: Frequently highlight either a brooding loner hero who gradually gets better through the support of his True Companions, or a kindly, happy-go-lucky hero who instead gathers people to him (including at least one Loner, usually The Sixth Ranger or The Lancer) and teaches them The Power of Friendship.
  • Final Fantasies VII and VIII are stellar examples of the first, while Final Fantasy IX provides an example of the second (who lapses briefly into being the first type and is then snapped back out of it). Almost all of the other games in the series feature at least one brooding loner learning that he needs to come out of his shell and join the hero crowd.
    • Then Dissidia Final Fantasy goes and turns the trope on its ear, setting Squall up in the same "brooding loner" role he occupied in his own game, only to then reveal that he chooses to travel alone because he believes in the Power of Trust and feels he can support the others from a distance. His explanation of his reasons is enough to convince the Warrior of Light... not that it prevents everyone else from continuing to pick on him about it, even after he ends up joining forces with Zidane and Bartz after all.
• The Lost Lenore:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Locke is guilt-ridden over the demise of his former love Rachel. She actually got amnesia while saving him from a bridge collapse and then died in an imperial invasion, both of which he is trying to atone for by acting protective over every woman he meets from then on (first Terra, and then Celes). Eventually, Rachel's spirit tells Locke he should move on with his life without feeling guilty.
  • In Final Fantasy VII Aerith has a Lost Lenore in the form of Zack. The reason she joined Cloud's party, to begin with, is that Cloud (for one reason and another) is similar to Zack. Naturally, she then becomes Cloud's Lost Lenore when her inevitable sled occurs.
  • A male example is Lord Rassler to Ashe from Final Fantasy XII. She keeps hallucinating that she sees his spirit following her around and it turns out the Occurria were exploiting this trope to manipulate her.
  • Serah from Final Fantasy XIII, though she has been crystallized instead of killed. It affects every main character, especially Snow and Lightning. Serah's death at the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2 evokes this in Lightning, Mog, Noel, and especially Snow in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.
  • Haurchefant from Final Fantasy XIV, for the Warrior of Light/Player character. He's the Implied Love Interest, and his death breaks and marks a painful change in the Warrior of Light's attitude, which is lampshaded by several characters over the course of the story.
  • Lunafreya serves as this for Noctis in Final Fantasy XV, as a good chunk of the second half of the story involves him overcoming the PTSD that accompanied him helplessly witness her death at Ardyn's hands, and the guilt of her using the last of her strength to protect him and ensure his destiny fulfilled.

M

• The Mentally Disturbed: Final Fantasy VII protagonist Cloud Strife suffers from bouts of delusions, hallucinations, remembering things that never happened to him, and subconsciously appropriating his friend Zack's life for his own. At one point he even has a spectacular mental breakdown, ending up in a clinic. He eventually does come to terms with a lot of his problems after his friend Tifa takes a jaunt through his mind, and manages to be an effective hero nonetheless. Some have commented that the concept of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children - that Sephiroth will continue returning to fight Cloud for as long as Cloud lives, but that, with support from his friends, he can deal with it - works very nicely as a metaphor for recurring mental illness or depression.
• Mind Rape: All of it are Psychic Assaults:
  • Final Fantasy VII had Sephiroth doing this to Cloud to the point where he could no longer function. He needed "rape counseling" from Tifa in a Journey to the Center of the Mind before he was able to do anything at all.
    • There's even a Does This Remind You of Anything? scene in Gongaga where Cloud's lying on a bed, clearly severely traumatized, while the others try to convince him that what Sephiroth forced him to do wasn't his fault and doesn't mean Cloud wanted it. Let's add into this the way Sephiroth tells Cloud 'I am always by your side', and the bizarre sexual symbolism of Cloud being forced to find Sephiroth's Materia coffin in the center of a pink, pulsating, ring-shaped structure, and penetrating it to give him the Black Materia.
  • On a similar note, Final Fantasy IX had Zidane suffering a BSOD... not from finding out that he was an alien who was meant to be the Angel of Death for his adopted homeworld, but from actually having the man who created him rip his soul out. Fortunately, that just made him miserable until his friends could give him a sequential pep talk.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has Shuyin, who was trapped in a psychic prison and forced to relive not only his own murder, but the murder of his lover... for a millennium. Understandably, on getting out, his only goal was to destroy absolutely everything just to keep that from ever happening to him again.
  • Somewhat dissimilar to the previous three Final Fantasy entries but, the second MMORPG entry in the series, Final Fantasy XIV, has an ability called 'The Echo', granted to anyone who witnessed a strange, meteor-shower like the event at the start of the game's story (this includes player characters). The Echo allows the user to touch souls, granting the ability to speak to all sentient beings and enter and change their memories. The people on whom it's used without their consent - and are able to recognize someone invading their memories - have at times angrily highlighted the unfortunate implications.
• More than Mind Control:
  • Played straight and then subverted in Final Fantasy IV. Kain was under mind control, but only because of he wanted Rosa to love him instead of Cecil; then later when Golbez tries it again, Kain claims that he no longer holds power over him... After which he steals the crystal and takes off.
    • The second scene makes much more sense in the re-translated DS version.
    • Also in the DS version, using the pause menu to read Kain's thoughts in the final dungeon shows that Zemus tries this one last time on him as the party descends, trying to make him hate Rosa this time for loving Cecil.. He fights it off easily.
      Kain: <People's hearts are not toys for you to trifle with, Zemus!>
    • In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, Kain acts similarly to how he acts when under mind control in Final Fantasy IV, but explicitly denies (over and over again) that he's under any form of mind control at all... and he's really not. However, he's not quite Kain, either. He's Kain's dark side incarnate. The real Kain is traveling under the guise of the "Hooded Man", and acting more heroically than he'd ever done in the past.
    • For that matter, Golbez himself is also under More than Mind Control by Zemus. Basically his own self-loathing was taken advantage of and then expressed toward the rest of those of the Blue Planet.
  • Sephiroth's control over Cloud in Final Fantasy VII works a little bit like this - it magically exploits Cloud's obsession with getting revenge in order to bring him close and make him deliver the Black Materia.
    • It goes so much deeper. He's also manipulating Cloud through his loyalties, through his identity confusion, through his low self-esteem, and through the Jenova cells in his body (Re: Reunion).
  • Sorceress Edea possessed by Ultimecia in Final Fantasy VIII turns Seifer into her half-crazed attack dog by playing on his long-held romantic dream of becoming a sorceress' knight, his lingering memories of Edea being his surrogate mother when he was a child, and his complicated rivalry with Squall, plus a dose of genuine magical influence over his emotions.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Cecil and Kain, after unintentionally helping to destroy the village of Mist, in Final Fantasy IV.
  • Tidus spends the first half of Final Fantasy X telling Yuna how he'll take her to see his home of Zanarkand and all the fun things they can do together once Yuna finishes her pilgrimage. Tidus eventually learns the Awful Truth of Yuna's pilgrimage where she will sacrifice herself to temporarily rid the world of the monster, Sin. Tidus realizes that all the things he'd promised to do with Yuna after her journey was incredibly insensitive and he feels massively guilty over it. He rightfully gets angry at his party for not telling him sooner.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning doesn't believe her sister Serah when she claims to be cursed with the brand of a Pulse l'Cie, assuming it's some lame excuse to justify her marrying Snow Villers (of whom Lightning had a LOW opinion). She responded with an angry reminder that she, as a Sanctum soldier, would be charged with hunting Pulse elements down. Later, when she hears new reports that there actually WAS a Pulse fal'Cie in Bodhum's neighborhood, she puts two and two together and proceeds to beat herself up over this particular screw-up.
    • In Final Fantasy XIII-2, when the Unseen Chaos bursts from Etro's Gate and begins twisting the mortal world into a screwed-up place of doom, Noel realizes a few things. One, the goddess Etro is no longer among the living, and this is how the Chaos was able to burst out. Two, Caius held the Heart of Chaos, a manifestation of Etro herself. Three, however unintentional, Noel's own weapon was what pierced that heart. By the time Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII rolls around, Noel has spent the last five centuries convinced that he destroyed the world.
  • Gaius in Final Fantasy XIV has this realization at the end of the 2.0 story where Lahabrea forces Ultima Weapon cast Ultima, which completely obliterates the castrum everyone was standing in. Gaius, seeing the raw destruction of Ultima firsthand, realizes that he shouldn't have unearthed the ancient weapon since it can easily destroy the very land he was trying to conquer. Lahabrea has Ultima Weapon ready Ultima a second time when its HP is low and if the players fail to stop him in time, the entire party is killed instantly.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Doned has this reaction after realizing that his brother Marche was neglected back in the real world because Doned required more attention due to his illness. Doned didn't recognize that every sacrifice his family made, namely the move to St. Ivalice, their parents' divorce, and Marche's ongoing neglect, was either for his sake or a negative consequence of his illness on the rest of the family, instead choosing to resent Marche for being healthy and having friends, and thinking that he himself had nothing to be thankful for while Marche had a perfect life. Marche then finally reveals his resentment towards Doned for the ongoing neglect and the divorce, which he couldn't express before because Marche is the older brother and Doned is just a sick little boy. This segues into Doned's realization that he's been extremely cruel and selfish to his brother in his attempts to stay in fantasy!Ivalice.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud feels regret over several failures. His failure to become a SOLDIER, the death of Zack who died trying to protect him, and blaming himself for not being strong enough to protect his childhood friend, Tifa, when she falls into a ravine and slips into a coma (also didn't help that Tifa's father blamed Cloud for Tifa's injury) leads to Cloud suffering from psychological disorders like Trauma-Induced Amnesia and Split Personality. He also regrets failing to prevent the death of Aeris, which motivates Cloud to take down Sephiroth.
    • In the prequel Crisis Core, Zack's failure in capturing Genesis and preventing the death of Angeal also falls into this category.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Crystal Braves is this for Alphinaud; Alphinaud had intended for the Crystal Braves to be the saviors of Eorzea, but his hubris caused him to miss the smaller details and not realize the Monetarists for Ul'dah had gotten their hands on them via funding. This allowed the scheming Teledji Adeledji to seemingly assassinate Ul'dah's Sultana Nanamo Ul Namo and frame the Scions of the Seventh Dawn for it.

N

• Never Be Hurt Again:
  • Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII. The reason for his cold, detached demeanor was because his fellow orphan and sister, Ellone, left him alone as a child and he developed abandonment issues. He feels that, eventually, all friends and family will die or go away, and the only way to avoid the pain from that is to never let anyone in again. Even from the beginning of the game, however, it's clear that he's fooling himself, and can't help but care about people.
  • Elsewhere in the series, Shuyin in Final Fantasy X-2 was subjected to a thousand years of Mind Rape, forced to relive the murder of his lover and himself over and over again. By the time he escapes, his only goal is to active Vegnagun and reduce Spira to its component atoms so that this can never happen to him again.
• No Social Skills:
  • Played with by Cloud in Final Fantasy VII Remake. At first, he talks like an edgy coolguy hero, but it soon becomes apparent that his rudeness is an awkward attempt to push people away to protect himself while also impressing them, and that in real emotional or romantic situations he's hopeless. However, other scenes in the game make it clear his social skills are in some ways very good - it's just that he exploits them to play a heel instead, in order to inspire positive changes in people. This can be seen in the way he starts insisting on extortionate payments to return a key, in a scene that's intended to be read as Cloud encouraging the man to take care of his own problems, and also in him riling up Gwen of the Neighbourhood Watch into organising her community by demonstrating that she can't rely on mercenaries to be on their side.
  • Several of the main cast members of Final Fantasy VIII spent at least part of their childhoods in the training academy of a mercenary company. The ones who enrolled around the age of ten or so got away with relatively mild emotional issues, but Squall, who enrolled at about the age of five or six, was given no help getting through his separation trauma, and immediately began a form of training which eroded his long-term memory, might as well have been Raised by Wolves. Atypically for the trope, Squall is perfectly aware (and frankly doesn't care) that he's not behaving according to social norms...but, having never bothered to learn how to act like a normal human being, when he tries, he's generally horrible at it.
  • The Warrior of Light from Dissidia Final Fantasy is a downplayed example. All of the other characters have identifiable personalities, but the Warrior of Light seems to have no personality or ability to interact with the other characters outside of a grandiose heroism, and comes across as rather robotic. Since he has no memory of a life before the war, being that he was a manikin created during the cycles, this is less than surprising.

P

• Parental Abandonment (Missing Mom and Disappeared Dad): All of the Final Fantasy games are like this. You could probably count the number of characters in the whole series that actually have a named parent on one hand, and forget finding a character with both a named mother and father.
  • All heroes in all versions (so far) of Final Fantasy is amnesiac and, thus do not remember their parents. True, this doesn't necessarily imply that they are dead... but the overall effect is the same, and given the series' track record...
  • Final Fantasy II: Maria and Leon's birth parents, who are also Firion and Guy's adoptive parents, get slaughtered by Imperial troops right at the start of the game. As for Guy and Firion—Guy was abandoned by his actual parents at birth and raised by wild animals (specifically a beast named Mauza) until Maria and Leon's family took him in. They also took in Firion, who had been orphaned in the city of Salamand. The dragoon boy named Kain in Deist lost his father and then loses the man who promises to raise him, and Josef's daughter Nelly ends up orphaned after Josef's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Final Fantasy III: The four main characters all turn out to have been orphaned by the same event — Cid's airship was torn apart by the cataclysm that froze most of the world in time, and only the four children and Cid himself survived the event, with their birth parents all perishing. They aren't the only ones either, since Prince Alus had already lost his mother sometime before the events of the game, and then his father, King Gorn, tries to kill him as he sleeps and eventually has to commit suicide to prevent himself from carrying out the deed. At least Gorn was being controlled by Garuda, making his actions that bit less horrific.
  • Final Fantasy IV: Parental Abandonment plays a big role in Theodor's transformation into Golbez and Cecil's adoption by the King of Baron. On the same day, Kluya died at the hands of angry humans and his wife Cecilia died giving birth to Cecil. In addition, Rydia's mother is inadvertently killed by Cecil's hands near the start of the game. She later finds a new family of sorts in the Land of Summoned Monsters. Kain's mother is never mentioned, and it's All There in the Manual that his father died when Kain was a child. Edge's parents are turned into monsters by Dr. Lugae, and commit suicide upon realizing what they have become. Edward's parents are both killed in the assault on Damcyan and are never seen by the player. Rosa's father is dead, but remarkably, her mother is still alive.
    • Also inverted, since Anna dies before her father, Tellah, albeit not by very long.
  • Final Fantasy V: Bartz lost both of his parents to natural causes before the events of the game, while Lenna lost her mother in similar circumstances, and then her father is killed by Exdeath partway into the game. Faris initially has no knowledge of who her birth parents are, having apparently been orphaned in a shipwreck and raised by pirates. It later turns out that she's actually Lenna's older sister, a fact which is confirmed just in time for her to watch their father die. Poor old Krile has it the worst, however, as not only did she lose both of her parents prior to the game's events, but her last surviving relative Galuf, her grandfather, dies battling Exdeath in the game's Tear Jerker moment, leaving her completely alone in the world. Well, apart from the other player characters, anyway
  • Final Fantasy VI: Relm's mother died and her father ran away and became a Ninja mercenary with a pet dog who's Made of Iron, although Relm was raised by her grandfather — Relm's true parentage is never explicitly stated. Gau's mother died in childbirth, causing his father to go insane and abandon him on the Veldt. Terra loses her parents both at the same time — her mother Madeline/Madonna is killed when The Empire raids the Esper world, and her father Maduin, being an Esper, is taken by the Empire's scientists as a laboratory subject who dies over the course of the game. Edgar and Sabin lose their mother in their very early childhood, and their father dies in their teens, strongly implied to have been killed by The Empire. Locke's mother is never mentioned and his father is dead by the start of the game.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Tifa's mom died when she was 8-years-old^note Which led to an additional tragedy when, confused and upset, she wandered off to Mt. Nibel believing she could meet her mother if she crossed the mountains; there was an accident, Tifa got hurt, and Cloud (who'd been following to protect her) got blamed for it, Cloud's dad is never mentioned, and both of their remaining parents (Cloud's mom and Tifa's dad) were killed by Sephiroth in the "Nibelheim Incident"^note  Sephiroth went insane, torched the town, then tried to release an Eldritch Abomination from the Mt. Nibel Mako Reactor before disappearing (believed killed). Cloud's mother was killed in the fire. Tifa's father and a mob of survivors pursued Sephiroth into the mountains; she found them all butchered at the steps of the reactor. Aerith is not only an orphan but the last of her race. Barrett is raising a little girl, Marlene, the orphaned daughter of a former friend of his (his wife, and presumably, the rest of his family, were killed in the Corel Massacre by Shinra troops. Sensing a pattern yet?). Red XIII's father was turned to stone by monsters. The two optional characters (Yuffie is understandable). Vincent's dad was killed in a materia experiment performed by the woman he loves. Yuffie hates her father (who was a disgraced warrior after Wutai lost a war with Shinra) and left to find a way to restore honor to her village (somehow this involves thievery).
    • Sephiroth was told that his mother, Jenova, died during childbirth. In truth, he was taken away from his biological mother shortly after he was born. She then tried to commit suicide, but failed, and then sealed herself away in a crystal to atone for her misdeeds. His real father, Hojo, neglected to ever mention that he was his father.
    • The Turk member Cissnei from Crisis Core was raised by Shinra after being found in an orphanage, her parents' death never explained.
    • In Dirge of Cerberus Shalua and Shelke Rui's parents are dead years before the Compilation takes place.
    • Weiss and Nero's mother gets sucked into darkness when she gives birth to Nero.
    • Denzel from Advent Children lost his parents when the Sector 7 Plate collapsed.
    • Zack is an inversion: he abandoned his parents in order to join SOLDIER, without their knowledge. They still have no clue as to what happened to their son (as we assume that Cloud and company never bothered to fill them in).
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, almost all of the main cast are orphans, which becomes something of a plot point.
    • Their surrogate mother-figure, Edea, abandoned them when they were still very young because she became possessed by an evil sorceress from the future. Their surrogate father figure, Cid, had all of them trained to be elite mercenaries, and allowed (if not actually arranged) for their memories of Edea to be wiped, in order to later send them to assassinate her.
    • Although Quistis, Zell, Selphie, and Irvine were all adopted, only Zell still appears to have a loving relationship with his adopted mother; Selphie and Irvine's adopted parents are never mentioned, and Quistis' adoption "didn't work out," causing her to be sent to Garden by the age of ten. Seifer was never adopted at all.
    • Rinoa's mother died in a car accident when she was a little girl, and she and her father are estranged over political conflicts.
    • And Squall takes the prize for Parental Abandonment issues: on top of the abovementioned abandonment by his surrogate mother and father, he also got abandoned by his other surrogate mother/big-sister figure at the age of about four, and between one and the other is left with crippling emotional issues that he struggles with throughout the game. On top of that, he eventually learns that his mother died in childbirth and his father is the president of a prosperous nation and had no idea he ever had a son.
    • Even when they do meet, Squall's father only awkwardly hints that they have some things to talk about, and Squall doesn't indicate openly whether he's aware of the connection or not.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Zidane not only has no parents, but is phenotypically unique on Gaia (and in that game's verse, that's really saying something) and doesn't know anything about his origins. Garnet's an orphan who's been raised by Queen Brahne, who also dies part-way into the game. Vivi also is unique and unaware of his origins. Eiko is an orphan who lives alone in the ruins of her hometown... I think what we can take away from this is that Final Fantasy loves this trope.
  • Final Fantasy X is another winner.
    • Tidus' father went missing when he didn't return from swimming practice in the sea, and his mother died when he was eight and it left him to Auron to be taken care of.
    • Yuna's father is a legendary hero because he sacrificed himself to defeat Sin ten years ago. Her mother's own demise was the inspiration for her father's act of heroism.
    • Wakka's parents were killed by fiends when he was a child and so were Lulu's.
    • Rikku's mother was killed when malfunctioning machina went on a rampage.
    • Seymour gradually turned bad because when he was a child, his mother died to become an Aeon. And then he later killed his own father.
  • And Final Fantasy XII. Vaan and Penelo are both orphans (Vaan's parents died in a plague, Penelo's parents and Vaan's Promotion to Parent brother died in war with Archadia). Ashe's parents (and presumably the rest of the royal family) were wiped out two years ago. And Balthier keeps dropping vague references to unresolved issues with his own dad which are perfectly understandable, since his old man Cid is now a mad scientist who'll stop at nothing to unlock the secrets of immortality and ultimate power. Interestingly, while it's All There in the Manual that Basch believes his mother to be dead (his father is never mentioned), there's no confirmation one way or the other.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII Lightning's and Serah's parents died some years ago, causing Lightning to deny her emotions to care for her younger sister.
    • Snow is an orphan, everyone in NORA is..
    • Sazh is a single father and cares for his son Dajh alone.
    • Hope's mother Nora (who is tough) dies in a failed attempt to help the purge victims escape from PSICOM. He's also very distant from his father and only visits him to tell him what happened after heavy convincing by the other party members. However, his father is devestated by the news of Nora's death and there are several pictures of her in his home, so it's unclear if they actually lived seperated.
    • The final boss Orphan should be one because of his name.
    • That's actually a fair point to make, considering Orphan's genocidal plot is only formed because the fal'Cie wish to call back the Maker, the creator deity which allegedly abandoned the world and all his creations millions of years ago.
  • In Final Fantasy XV Noctis's mother has died when he was an infant and his father, along with Gladio's and Iris's father, gets killed during the sacking of his city.
    • Ravus's and Luna's mother dies when the Niflheim Empire conquers their nation.
    • Prompto has no idea about his parents and is desperate to find out anything about his family. He later learns that he is actually a clone of the Empire's chief scientist, raised only to be a grunt for their army.
  • Final Fantasy XVI pulls no punches when it comes to this trope: Clive and Joshua's father gets decapitated in front of the latter, while their mother slits her own throat in a fit of delusion while they look on. Dion's mother is said to have cut any ties with him in exchange for money (she was actually executed on his father's orders), and he accidentally spears his own father while trying to kill his half-brother who is the puppet of the Big Bad. Mid doesn't know what happened to her biological parents, and her adopted father dies protecting Clive.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance goes back and forth with the trope. Marche's parents are never seen, but are mentioned to always being busy taking care of his sick brother, Doned. Ritz's father is never mentioned and her mother only gets a single mention over how sad she looked every time she dyed Ritz's hair. Mewt is a special case regarding his parents; his mother passed away when he was young, causing his father, Cid, to be "crying in the gutters" (or an alocholic in the Japanese version). Most of the plot revolves around Mewt using the powers of a magical book to make his own life better again by making his father a powerful judge master and reviving his mother back to life to become queen of Ivalice. Turns out that Mewt's mother isn't real and is a powerful magical being who is preying on Mewt's emotions.
    • Final Fantasy Tactics A2 doesn't use dead parents as the main plot point, but it's still there. Luso's parents aren't mentioned at all except for one scene where it's revealed that both of his parents died while he was young, leaving him in the care of his aunt. Adelle's parents also died while she was young because her entire village came down with a plague and she was the sole survivor.
• Parental Neglect:
  • In Final Fantasy X has Tidus's mom always ignore Tidus if Jecht around. When Jecht never come back, his mom died because of a heartbreak. This is the reason why Tidus hate his dad.
  • In Final Fantasy XVI Duchess Anabella despises her older son Clive for not being born the Dominant of Phoenix, barely acknowledging him and her ward Jill.
  • Cid of the Lufaine from Dissidia Final Fantasy was originally a very caring parent to Chaos before starting the cycles of war. However, he was a very lousy father to the Warrior of Light, who shortly after being born, was thrown into the conflict by his father without an identity or a childhood to speak of.
• Past Experience Nightmare:
  • Haunted by his actions in the attack of Mysidia, and distraught by the King stripping him of his rank, Cecil from Final Fantasy IV suffers from bad dreams on the night before his assignment on the Village of Mist. Rosa is there to comfort him.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Shadow's backstory is only revealed through his flashback Bad Dreams when you rest at an inn.
  • Cloud from Final Fantasy VII experiences these regularly over the course of the game (sometimes while he is wide awake).
• People Jars:
  • Final Fantasy VI had espers... in jars.
  • Final Fantasy VII had Zack and Cloud stuck in tanks during their years of experimentation at the hands of Mad Scientist Hojo.
    • In the spin-off game Dirgeof Cerberus, Vincent gets this treatment as well when he is put in a tank by Lucrecia to save his life. This one's a more benign example, but he wouldn't be in that tank in the first place if it weren't for Hojo shooting him and performing horrendous experiments on his half-dead body. Especially jarring in that the cutscene is shown in first-person POV from Vincent's perspective, so essentially the player is the one inside the tank, looking out of it and unable to move.
  • Final Fantasy IX had the Genome, some of whom are seen in jars. They also have creepy tendencies, but they aren't clones since they have sex.
• Pre-Insanity Reveal: Crisis Core shows more of what Final Fantasy VII Big Bad Sephiroth was like before going insane and trying to destroy the world. As in the flashback sequences in Final Fantasy VII, pre-insanity Sephiroth is cool and somewhat detached but does show genuine care and humanity, especially towards his few friends.

R

• Rape as Backstory: Rapha from Final Fantasy Tactics is implied to have been raped by her surrogate father, Duke Barrington. Her brother Marach is unaware of this, holding the Duke in great regard for taking them in after their village was razed, unaware that the Duke ordered the village to be destroyed when they refused to hand over the children to him so he could exploit their powers.

S

• Sad Clown: This type of archetype is present in Final Fantasy, usually on the party members' side.
  • What do Barret Wallace, Irvine Kinneas, Wakka, Balthier, and Sazh Katzroy have in common? They all use silly theatrics in one form or another in order to cover their personal tragedy—mainly losing loved ones to a devastating attack.
  • Prompto from Final Fantasy XV spends a lot of time cracking jokes and being the Plucky Comic Relief, covering up his insecurities and his origins as a clone created for military purposes by the Niflheim Empire.
  • Then there's the villain Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI, who is given this as an Alternative Character Interpretation in Dissidia Final Fantasy. He's trying to kill everyone and destroy everything while laughing maniacally because he can no longer see the point in anything else, and his last laugh (after he dies) is a sobbing, sad one.
    Firion: [pre-match, if facing Kefka] I've never heard a sadder laugh.
  • In Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Jed always tries to keep a smile on his face even in the most desperate times, but his happy-go-lucky facade hides a pained man unsure of his purpose and considering himself inferior to others.
• Safety in Indifference:
  • Shadow implies that this is his philosophy in Final Fantasy VI when he warns Terra that some people kill their own emotions. Probably because of his guilt over being unable to give his old friend and partner a Mercy Kill.
  • This is also Squall's viewpoint throughout most of Final Fantasy VIII. After growing up in an orphanage, and then watching everyone he cared about slowly go away one by one, he decided that if people were going to die or otherwise leave him alone, it was better to be alone in the first place to avoid the pain of losing them. He intentionally pushes everyone away to avoid developing bonds with them.
  • Jack claims that "it's a mercy to forget" in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, clearly not trying to remember who he was before and why he's seeking Chaos to kill. Over the course of the game, he gets called out on this attitude, and a lot of it starts making sense after it turns out he had his memories regularly wiped by Lufenians to avoid bringing darkness into their world.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Kefka in Final Fantasy VI. He was once a general, but he starts disobeying orders and has lost his rank by the time the game's narrative begins. And he just keeps getting worse from there, culminating in the development of a massive god complex and an urge to destroy everything.
  • Edda in Final Fantasy XIV starts out as a simple, if timid, healer in a group of adventurers looking to make money and a name for themselves. Her boyfriend, who is the party's tank, constantly belittles her subpar healing skills and the others make fun of her for having to rely on potions to heal. When Edda's boyfriend runs ahead of the group in a dungeon, his act of recklessness gets him killed, but the others blame Edda for his death (for not keeping up to heal him). One would show sympathy towards the poor girl, but then her former party reveals that she's been carrying her boyfriend's severed head around. From there, she goes completely nuts by using dark magic to revive her boyfriend as a monster and invites the player character to her "wedding" in order to use their body as a vessel for her revived lover.
    • The tooltip for the debuff caused by the Dark Knight's Scourge in Final Fantasy XIV is "Sanity is slipping, causing Damage Over Time."
• Sins of Our Fathers:
  • Final Fantasy X: The main antagonist of the story is literally a gigantic Sin of the Father conglomerate monstrosity.
    • First, Sin was originally created after Zanarkand lost a war against Bevelle. The ensuing destruction brought by Sin caused machina to be all but abolished and caused the descendants of everyone else to forever live in terror of Sin. This then starts the primary ruling order by the Yevon Clergy, which is based around desperately trying to atone for their sins of machina so they don't all get obliterated by Giga-Graviton ever again. This lasts for a total of 1000 years, more or less.
    • Even worse, Sin couldn't care less about the peoples' attempts to atone. Sin's only purpose is to protect Dream Zanarkand's Fayth cluster and its summoner Yu Yevon (what's left of him). The frequent attacks on Spira's population centers are meant to stunt Spira's growth as a civilization to prevent anyone from endangering the Fayth cluster.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: This is the ultimate reason the Dragonsong War continued for 1000 years. Ishgard originally started the war, by ambushing and murdering a dragon to claim the strong magic powers housed within a dragon's eyes. Nidhogg, the brother of the murdered dragon, flew into a fit of rage and retaliated along with his brood. Nidhogg continued the war up to the present day (when the Warrior of Light was able to negotiate a truce with the more peaceful/less war-happy dragons of Anyx Trine) and justified it by saying that despite the fact that 1000 years had passed (and the original perpetrators of the crime being long dead), they still will not forget what happened and, to the perspective of much-longer-lived dragons, it may as well have happened yesterday. Nidhogg and his brood also claim that man are forgetful creatures that are doomed to make the same mistakes as their ancestors. It isn't until Nidhogg is defeated for good that the war finally comes to an end and a truce is made.
    • This also presents in the Samurai job questline: Hingashi law dictates that a criminal's family and associates are just as culpable in any wrongdoings as the criminal themself. Ugetsu's murders and attempted revolution against the shogunate not only implicated his teacher Musosai, who was sentenced to committing Seppuku as recompense (but failed to do so and instead escaped to Eorzea under the alias of Kogarashi), but to his family, including his sister Kagetsu (who escaped from Kugane, herself, and took up the name of Makoto).
  • Final Fantasy XV: The protagonist is Noctis Lucis Caelum, crown prince of Lucis and 114th in the royal line. The main villain, Ardyn Izunia, seeks to exact revenge on him for the deeds of Somnus Lucis Caelum, the Founder King, and Ardyn's brother. The two had been seeking to end a scourge that plagued the land through different means, and Somnus was deemed by the gods to be the purer one, whereupon he demonized Ardyn, killed his girlfriend, and chained him up in Angelgard for millennia. Ardyn wants to end Somnus' legacy by killing off his last surviving descendant. He originally went for Noctis' father, Regis, but Bahamut's long game to be rid of the Starscourge forever involved convincing Ardyn to wait for Noctis first.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside:
  • Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII puts an extraordinary amount of effort into being brusque, unsociable, and unsympathetic to others in order to keep anyone from getting too close to him. As the game progresses, it reveals that he does this because he's actually cripplingly insecure and desperately afraid of coming to care about and rely on others only to lose them, which he believes is inevitable.
  • Lulu from Final Fantasy X is a milder example; she puts up a very cold, alienating front - being outright abrasive to Wakka, Tidus, and (very occasionally) Yuna - but is revealed to just be an exceptionally sad person inside as the game progresses, due to the loss of her fiancé, Chappu, Lady Ginnem, her first Summoner due to her own inability and the fact that Yuna will die too once they finish the pilgrimage.
  • Lightning qualifies as this in Final Fantasy XIII, at least in the first few chapters of the game. She comes across as confrontational, aggressive, and outright cold with people she has just met. In reality, she's deeply concerned about her sister Serah and, considering that she herself was branded a L'Cie, had pretty firm justification for being under some heavy stress. She begins to open up to Hope and show more of her inner fragility as the plot advances.
• Self-Made Orphan:
  • Averted in Final Fantasy IV with Edge, who saw the results of Dr. Lugae's horrific experiments on his parents, the King and Queen of Eblan. Edge is forced to fight his parents, who have become monsters, but he is saved from having to kill them by their coming to their senses, saying farewell to him, and killing themselves.
  • Genesis from Crisis Core killed his adoptive parents, though we never find out who his biological parents are.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Seymour kills his own father before the game starts. The reason why is because his father had him and his mother exiled after several Guado, in a case of Fantastic Racism, decried the Unholy Matrimony. Guado's father's statements in the sphere indicated that he accepted his fate fully as atonement for this sin.
  • In Final Fantasy XVI, Dion tosses his lance at his half-brother who is possessed by the Big Bad, but his unaware father gets in the way and is impaled, bleeding out shortly after.
• Start of Darkness:
  • About one third of Crisis Core is spent on telling us how Sephiroth became the One-Winged Angel he is in Final Fantasy VII. Including remaking Cloud's flashback scenes from the original game to the actual moment he snapped, also a Start Of Darkness in their own right. This took advantage of advances in animation and allowed for Cloud's serious amnesia problem. (Also the Epileptic Trees spawned when he had dialogue right for a scene he was not actually present for. Some fans believe his delusion of Zack-ness was largely caused by some kind of Hojo-induced memory transfer.)
    • The game proved that he didn't suffer a sudden sanity loss, but rather more of a long line of betrayals that started as early as Gast's death and ended with the very facts of his own existence, which overall is both more believable (even allowing for Jenova's clear ability to mess with his brain) and more tragic. Due to Crisis Core we know that he had lost absolutely everything by the time this happened.
    • His Start of Darkness could be pinned at conception, at the moment he broke, or just described as 'his whole damn life.' The man was born one of Hojo's experiments. Their suffering has been unquestioned more or less since Hojo was introduced. Though he still had just enough innocence left during that fateful practice duel that events afterward could almost be labeled 'Break the Cutie'.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics has the Chapter 1 "The meager". The entire chapter is a flashback that shows both Delita and Wiegraf starts of darkness, both triggered by the murders of their respective sisters.
  • Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is an entire game about this, featuring the origins of Garland, or as he is known here, Jack.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Yuna from Final Fantasy X plays with this trope in a very interesting way: it's made very clear that she deliberately takes on the role of 'heroic savior of Spira' so as to inspire hope in the rest of the world even though she's much more scared and sad than she lets on, but it's not just a simple matter of her putting on a totally fake mask. In the infamous laughing scene, Yuna admits that she tries to smile even when she's feeling sad, and the more she does it the less sad she feels. Sure enough, as she encourages a reluctant Tidus to force himself to laugh with her, they end up actually falling over each other laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing is. So Yuna definitely does pretend to be much more happy, confident, and perfect than she actually feels, but to her it's less about putting on a mask as deliberately turning into that kind of person inside and out.
  • Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII is a perfect Depressed example. Her unnaturally happy and positive attitude was just a way of running away from her past failures. She has an authentic death wish and blames herself for everything that has happened.
  • Aerith from Final Fantasy VII Remake is heavily implied to know how the events of the original story are "supposed" to go, including her fated death at Sephiroth's hands. She knows her days are probably numbered but she still clings to the idea that fate can be changed. She also maintains a cheerful demeanour and is a bona-fide Nice Girl.
• Stepford Snarker: Squall Leonhart in Final Fantasy VIII. Incredibly surly and standoffish, largely because losing so many of his loved ones early in his life makes him afraid of getting too close to other people.
• Street Urchin: Vaan and Penelo from Final Fantasy XII are this.

T

• They're Called "Personal Issues" for a Reason: Squall in Final Fantasy VIII takes this attitude for a good half of the game, believing that everyone has to deal with their own personal issues on their own and there's no point in discussing them. The rest of the cast disagrees.
• This Loser Is You: Final Fantasy VII starred Cloud, who started tough and independent but turned out to be the exact opposite of what you thought you were getting. When he was younger, he picked fights with the other kids to hide his insecurities and decided he would join SOLDIER in order to impress the girl he'd had a crush on for years but never had the courage to ask out. When this attempt failed due to his stated insecurities and mental fragility, followed by his hometown being burned down by the man he idolized, followed by his best friend in the world — an actual member of SOLDIER — being gunned down before his eyes, he lost his mind and believed he was that best friend, with all his memories and triumphs. The Cloud we play as for most of the game is a shell of a man who believes he is a great hero because that's the only thing keeping his mind intact at all. Many people missed the point of this.
  • The same people forget that Cloud pretty much started the stereotype of the angsty brooding hero in JRPGs.
  • Even though he was hardly angsty or brooding during the game. He was just really serious, even though he did plenty of goofy things during the game, such as cross dressing (albeit unwillingly).
  • He does face his problems eventually and become the supreme Ascended Fanboy, capable of taking Sephiroth one-on-one. It's a positive message overall. It's about admitting you suck and overcoming it to be awesome.
• Tomato in the Mirror:
  • Final Fantasy VII: One of the earliest examples in video games as well. Cloud Strife, the protagonist, suffers from freaky headaches and weird disjointed flashbacks. It turns out that Cloud was never in SOLDIER, let alone had ever been a 1st Class SOLDIER, as he had been proclaiming throughout the game. Cloud had instead been a Shinra Infantryman, but the combined trauma of having been experimented on by Dr. Hojo for five years turning him into a "clone" or "copy" of the villain, Sephiroth, and has been acting under Sephiroth's Mind Control for the game so far^note which ironically, did involve a key component of SOLDIER creation, giving him genuine SOLDIER abilities. Even more, it is eventually revealed that much of his memories were not his own, but were in fact partly borrowed from that of his dead best friend Zack Fair, and watching his best friend, the actual Zack, get shot to death by Shinra soldiers, caused Cloud to have a mental breakdown in which he adopted Zack's identity as a 1st Class SOLDIER, and replaced his memories featuring Zack with memories of himself doing what Zack did. When Sephiroth reveals this to Cloud, he doesn't take it well. At all. Even more confusingly, when he recovers from said Heroic BSoD, he realizes he was never a clone to begin with (what he really is, is quite complicated, but it involves the way the Super Soldiers are created, and how The Virus contains the genetic memories of those infected). However, when he finally regains his true memories, he finally develops into a fully-fledged person.
  • Final Fantasy X: Tidus discovers he isn't sent a thousand years into the future; the Zanarkand he grew up in - and, by extension, everyone in it - is part of a dream generated by the fayth.
  • Final Fantasy XV: Prompto Argentum, one of Prince Noctis' retainers and friends, goes missing in Chapter 11. When he gets back, he reveals that he's one of the clones created by Chief Verstael Besithia of the Niflheim Empire for the express purpose of being daemonified and sublimated into a power source/processing unit for the Magitek Troopers. A Lucian break-in and abscondment is the only reason why he met with a different fate than the rest. In the main game, this comes across your standard Dark Secret Reveal, but Episode Prompto shows him going through the Tomato in the Mirror revelation.
  • Final Fantasy XVI: Clive Rosfield is looking for the mysterious Eikon of Fire who has killed his brother Joshua thirteen years ago. Eventually, he is confronted with the fact that he was the one controlling the Eikon and has slaughtered Joshua in a fit of blind rage, not realizing what he was doing, and it sends him into a brief Heroic BSoD.
• Tragic Dream:
  • Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth just wants to be reunited with Mommy (oh, and to become a god.) Jenova isn't really his Mommy, just an insidious Virus. Sephiroth doesn't even know about Lucrecia, and by the time he figures out what Jenova really was...well, he decided to become the next version of her as the original One-Winged Angel.
  • Final Fantasy X has one, where Tidus slowly falls in love with the Summoner Yuna, joining her on her quest to defeat the Big Bad Sin and telling her about the places they'll visit after they're done. Except that the Big Bad can't be defeated, only sealed away at best, and doing so requires the sacrifice of someone close to the Summoner and the Summoner him/herself. Tidus is the only one not aware of this, and does not take The Reveal well. In this case, it's averted by the party having discovering the Religion of Evil behind Sin, and defeating it once and for all by attacking the God-figure that keeps regenerating it. This leads to another Tragic Dream since Tidus himself is a construct like Sin, and will dissolve along with it. In the sequel, Tidus gets reborn and reunites with Yuna at the end.
  • In Final Fantasy Type-0 has itin the tie-in novel all of them mention one before their death, except Nine who can't think of anything. Ace wants to own a Chocobo ranch, Deuce to be a musician, Jack a comedian, Trey a scholar, Queen a teacher of traditional subjects rather than magic and weaponry, Cinque to travel the world, Cater to find love, Eight to become a competitive martial artist, Seven to make an orphanage for the children who lost their parents in the war, Sice to be a chef and King a police officer. While Machina and Rem live, they share a dream of rebuilding the county.
• Tragic Monster:
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Edge's parents are transformed into monsters controlled by one of Rubicante's minions. They eventually recover their minds and commit suicide. Rubicante does express sorrow for this and apologizes to Edge. The minion did this against the orders of Rubicante's, who implies he would have killed the minion for this were he still alive.
  • In Crisis Core, Zack has to kill his mentor, Angeal, who actually makes himself monstrous to make it easier for Zack to kill him.
  • The whale-like destroyer Sin in Final Fantasy X is the shell around the Final Aeon that defeated it last; in this case, Tidus's father Jecht.
    • The summoner that died under Lulu's protection.
    • Yu Yevon may have been responsible for all the death and destruction for the past 1000 years, but that's probably because his mind died and mutated into something alien and unknowable a long time ago. That... thing that is left of Yu Yevon shows just how much he sacrificed to keep Zanarkand alive.
  • In Final Fantasy Adventure, Amanda gets bitten by Medusa and begins turning into a Medusa herself.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy:
    • It hints that Sephiroth is one, as Cecil, in a pre-battle quote against Sephiroth, mentions that there's "sorrow in (Sephiroth's) wintery eyes."
    • Kefka also gets this treatment in his final moments. Lamenting the pointlessness of life and how even destruction — his entire reason for being — is senseless.
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles:
    • The player gets the option to become friends with De Nam, a selkie you meet in the Shella. He's a scholar and wishes to find a way for humans to live alongside the miasma, so he heads to the swamp areas of Conall Curach and starts drinking the miasma-infested waters. He sends you letters, telling you how his research is going, being overall hopeful about the whole thing. His very last letter is written in a broken manner for you to come to Conall Curach. You can't find him there, but you can run around and beat the monsters as per normal. Eventually, you come across a monster who, after you beat it, drops a "Worn Bandanna". Inscribed on the bandanna is De Nam's name. GUESS WHO YOU JUST SLAUGHTERED?
    • Another Crystal Chronicles example, adding to the De Nam thing, it's heavily implied that the humanoid enemies, such as Skeletons and Sahagins, a fair bit of them have mutated humans, driven insane by miasma and hopelessness. Have fun playing through Tida and Conall Curach now!
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, the protagonist's brother Zalbag is teleported to a place of unknown horror by a Zodiac Demon. He reappears a few battles later and is forced by the Big Bad to fight his brother. Zalbag cannot control his body, but is still self-aware, and begs Ramza to kill him. Wiegraf could also qualify as one, although his status as That One Boss may garner a little less sympathy for him...
• Tragic Villain:
  • Final Fantasy IV has Golbez, really Theodore Harvey, Cecil's brother, who may cross the Moral Event Horizon several times in the game, except that he was under the control of Zemus and takes full responsibility for his actions once freed from Zemus's control.
    • In the DS remake, it's much worse. The implication is that Golbez wasn't brainwashed, and that it was the darkness in his own heart that led to him being controlled. The remake makes a much bigger deal out of his Reformed, but Rejected status after the spell is broken.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 has Caius Ballad who wishes to destroy reality/time as he sees this as the only way to free his surrogate daughter from a cruel cycle of death and rebirth. To do this he would commit genocide on the civilization of Cocoon, which will unleash the chaos from Valhalla, the world between life and death. In the end Caius sacrifices his life and lets the hero Noel kill him which releases the chaos.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers has its chief villain: Emet-Selch, one of the three "unbroken" Ascians, along with Elidibus and the late Lahabrea. Whereas Lahabrea was a malevolent sociopath and Elidibus is a conniving schemer with an undying hatred towards Hydaelyn, Emet-Selch's motivation is much more personal: he is lonely. He is pursuing the Rejoining of the shard worlds to the Source, which would result in the end of the world of Hydaelyn as it is known, so that he could resurrect the ancient civilization from whence he hailed, a Utopia where the people were capable of creation magics on an scale unfathomable to modern mortals, a paradise of intellectual pursuit and societal advancement before a terrifying calamity resulted in the summoning of Zodiark and Hydaelyn and the world's subsequent "Sundering". Compared to the world he hailed from, Emet-Selch cannot see the post-sundered worlds as anything more than pale, ephemeral imitations, in spite of his efforts to adjust to the new reality. When he is dealt the finishing blow in the story, his Last Request to the Warrior of Light/Darkness is simply to remember that he, his people, and his civilization existed.
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • In Final Fantasy IV: Cecil has a crisis of conscience after being ordered to commit an immoral act for the King of Baron. Then he gets demoted for questioning the king and manipulated into carrying out another immoral act, which results in the destruction of an innocent village and the apparent death of his best friend Kain.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Before the game even starts, Cloud Strife has already: (1) endured a lonely, alienated childhood; (2) been wrongfully held responsible for putting his childhood crush, the mayor's daughter, in a coma by the mayor and everyone in the town (3) been told he's not good enough to become a SOLDIER and gets stuck as a humble grunt trooper; (4) watched his hero Sephiroth destroy his hometown, kill his mother and nearly murder both his childhood crush Tifa and his good friend Zack; (5) suffered over four years of sadistic experimentation by a Mad Scientist which reduces him to a catatonic vegetable; and finally (6) helplessly watched Zack die in a gut-wrenching heroic last stand to protect him. All this results in Cloud suffering his first Heroic BSoD, a very understandable case of Trauma-Induced Amnesia, and identity confusion.
    • THEN, during the game itself, Cloud ends up being mind raped by the Big Bad Sephiroth into: (1) nearly killing his teammate Aerith not just once, but twice; (2) handing over the Artifact of Doom to Sephiroth (again, twice); and (3) questioning not only his memories but his very identity as a real person. He's also forced to stand by and watch Sephiroth murder Aerith while being unable to do anything about it. Cue a second massive Heroic BSoD that requires a Journey to the Center of the Mind to fix.
    • Advent Children throws him back into massive depression and despair by making him and the orphan he's adopted suffer the painful and deadly disease Geostigma. The disease also allows Sephiroth to constantly Troll Cloud's subconscious, thereby making Cloud obsess about the promises he'd failed to keep and the lives he failed to save.
    • Fortunately, Cloud manages to avoid further major physical or emotional trauma in the sequel Dirge of Cerberus. Vincent, however, is not so lucky.
    • All that said, Sephiroth himself suffers from this. At the start of Crisis Core, one of his best friends, Genesis, deserts Shinra. After failing to bring him back, Sephiroth's other best friend, Angeal, also deserts. He is tasked by Shinra to hunt them down and kill them, if necessary. During this, Genesis keeps trolling Sephiroth. Eventually, he learns that he is the result of a science experiment. Afterwards, he plans to leave Shinra because, well...it's Shinra, but before he can, on his last mission, he finds out that he is part Ancient. The Ancients died in a catastrophic event while the humans survived by hiding. And so begins his life of evil...hard to blame him, really.
    • Aerith also endures a lot of horrible things in her life, though she handles them much better. Her father was murdered when she was just a baby, then she and her mother were taken hostage so that Hojo could experiment on them. Her mother dies, and she spends the majority of her youth fleeing from the Turks. Then she is captured again, where the resident Mad Scientist tries to mate her with Red XIII. Shortly after this, she discovers she's the last remaining Cetra, and then Sephiroth kills her. Despite this, she remains an eternally hopeful Iron Woobie.
    • Zack Fair himself is one as well. He starts as a Genki Guy who wants to be a hero, and ends up deserted by his Big Brother Mentor, who later ensures Zack has no choice but to Mercy Kill him, since he Cannot Self Terminate otherwise. Then he finds out that he actually works for an evil corporation that has conducted human experimentation. Then his other friend Sephiroth goes insane and burns an entire town and attacks him. Then he spends 4 years being experimented on. Ah and his friend Cloud has gone catatonic thanks to all the mako poisoning. Now, both of them are on the run from literally everyone, including former friends like the Turks. 4 years of experiments did not go well for him either, and his mind is slowly eroding as he takes his Last Stand to protect comatose Cloud from an entire army. Despite ALL of that, Zack emerges as an Iron Woobie, and keeps his positive attitude until the very end.
  • Final Fantasy XIII pretty much puts each of its protagonists through one. But the prize goes to Hope Estheim. He was merely on vacation in Bodhum when the active Fal'Cie was discovered and everyone was sent to be purged. Before knowing that it meant killing them, it was thought that this meant sending them to Pulse, which people in Cocoon had been told was practically hell. After the train he's on is derailed, the civilians are riled up by Snow's group to fight back and Hope is left alone by his mother, who leaves to fight and protect him. Hope watches in horror as his mother falls to her death and he begins to blame Snow, whom he follows into the Vestige with Vanille. In the Vestige, Hope has to fight his way through, only to be branded a Pulse l'Cie. Now, he is the enemy of the entire planet and will be killed on sight, if the government gets their hands on him. And, unless he fulfills his Focus and turns into a crystal statue, he'll turn into an abomination. No wonder the kid's big scene included a Freak Out! It gets worse for him in the sequels: by the end of XIII-2, he's separated from everyone he cares for, and is at ground zero of a Time Crash, leaving him to deal with the fallout of having to lead humanity by himself. All of this lead to his sanity becoming susceptible to being whittled down, which is exactly what Bhunivelze did (by using phantoms of Lightning, whom Hope cares for a great deal), before kidnapping him. Poor Hope is then tortured for 169 years, wrecking him to the point of his body regressing back AND damaging his emotional psyche, all so that Bhunivelze can shape him up to be the perfect vessel and keep tabs on Lightning when she wakes up. Just... damn.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud Strife suffers a perfectly understandable case of Trauma-Induced Amnesia, considering the incredible Trauma Conga Line he suffers before the game even starts.
  • As a kid, he'd hoped to join the SOLDIERs but didn't end up strong enough. So he joined the regular military, befriending SOLDIERs Zack and Sephiroth. The three of them are sent to check up on something in Cloud's hometown... when Sephiroth finally figures out why he and his friends are so different from everyone else, and why he had to help kill them. Sephiroth handles it well. Cloud and Zack manage to defeat Sephiroth, but only after all but one villager is butchered, the village is set on fire, and Cloud and Zack themselves are mortally wounded.
  • As their reward, the two of them get nabbed up by the military's local Mad Scientist and experimented on. Zack doesn't break through the sedatives for years, and after he breaks both of them out, Cloud is horribly poisoned by the experimentation and comatose. Zack spends days if not weeks or months carrying Cloud around, telling him about himself, his past, and his goals, trying to get his companion and best friend to revive. When the two of them are finally cornered by the army, who have been told that they're dangerous, Zack walks away after hiding Cloud, so as to confront the military head-on. Alone. A brilliant plan. Not that he had much of a choice. Cloud's first movement on his own is weakly reaching one hand for Zack, unseen, as Zack walks away. By nightfall, Cloud's managed to get to his feet... and finds Zack where he was left alone to bleed to death, in time for Zack to give him his sword.
  • Between the trauma, the experimentation, the coma, the talk during a vulnerable and suggestible state, and now more trauma... by the time Cloud reaches the nearest city, he still remembers his childhood, but thinks Zack's adulthood and career was his own, can't remember half of what happened for the massacre at home (and thinks he was Zack for the other half), and isn't even quite sure why he's at this city again.
    • He was injected with a large amount of Jenova cells during the experiments. Jenova, being The Virus, tends to have nasty effects on a person's body and mind. The only plus side to all this was that the experiments weren't all that different from the process used to create a SOLDIER, meaning Cloud now does have the skills and abilities of a SOLDIER 1st Class that he claims to be...
• Troubled, but Cute:
  • Invoked by Cloud's Sexier Alter Ego in Final Fantasy VII, a hardened and highly-decorated mercenary with a mysterious past, a disaffected, sulky attitude, and a love of striking poses and riding motorbikes. This attitude leads to women swarming around him, with Jessie outright telling Cloud she finds him attractive because of his bad-boy attitude. He later shifts to a slightly different form of 'troubled' once it becomes clear that he's insane, and Tifa and Barret continue to adore him anyway. Once he has a Heroic BSoD and admits to Tifa that in reality, he'd just been a lonely, angry town misfit who'd been trying to prove his strength by picking fights so that people would like him, she admits she found that part of him fascinating as a teenager.
  • Squall Leonheart from Final Fantasy VIII is a handsome loner who is plagued by a deeply troubled past and his inability to communicate with other people. He's also a schoolboy in a white T-shirt and leather jacket, playing off the stereotypical appearance of this type. While genuine Wangst material, him being surrounded by quirky friends especially the Plucky Girl love interest causes him to come off as a dorky super-soldier who facepalms and snarks a lot. That, and he has a tendency to show his actual cares toward friends as he develops more as a person, usually through monologues.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Lightning as a rare female example. She's a beautiful soldier who was forced to become the head of her house at a young age following her parents' death, and fought long and hard as a soldier in order to support and protect her younger sister, Serah. She puts up a cold, stern mask to hide her vulnerability, but in doing so estranges the very person she sought to protect, not even realizing when Serah was turned into a l'cie during her absence. When trying to save Serah from the government captivity, Lightning herself was turned into l'cie and was hunted as a fugitive.
    • Similarly, Cid Raines, a young Brigadier General who, despite his high position and good looks, holds a very dark secret: namely that he is a l'cie working under Barthandaleus in order to help the heroes (themselves were turned l'cie) to destroy Cocoon. His datalog in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII expands his Back Story further, mentioning how had sought to defy the gods and free humanity from the Fal'cie's rule, but lost the fight and was cruelly turned into their puppet.
• Tyke-Bomb:
  • Final Fantasy VI has both Celes and Terra. Justified in Celes' case, as the Magitek infusion process is said to be incredibly dangerous and painful when used on an adult. The last one they tried it on was Kefka, and that didn't turn out well. Terra herself was captured as an infant and raised as a tykebomb due to her natural gifts.
  • Compilation of Final Fantasy VII:
    • Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. He was engineered by Shinra scientists to be the perfect soldier, implanted in the womb with alien DNA to endow him with superhuman strength and intelligence. The procedure killed his mother in childbirth, though she remained Not Quite Dead. He was then raised by his "surrogate" father (who never told him they were actually related) and grew up to be one of the world's most famed war heroes... until he discovered (most of) his secret origins, went Ax-Crazy, and decided to destroy the planet and become a god in the process. He damn near succeeded.
    • Sephiroth's remnant, Kadaj, also qualifies from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. After Sephiroth's defeat, he wills this guy (and two others) into existence with the mentality and appearance of a teenager, for the purpose of insinuating Reunion and bringing Ol' Seph back from the Lifestream, and sacrificing his own body in the process. It's unknown how much Kadaj actually knew of what would happen. He was programmed to press for it to happen. He also wanted his mommy, which is kind of hard to explain. Loz and Yazoo also count, but they don't get as much screentime.
    • In Dirge of Cerberus, the three Tsviets who were born and raised in Deep Ground Weiss, Nero, and Rosso) apply.
    • Crisis Core introduces Genesis and Angeal, Sephiroth's fellow First-Class Soldiers. They were created in project "G" by Hojo's rival Hollander. Angeal's mother Gillian was infused with Jenova cells while pregnant with Angeal, and she was later harvested to expose Genesis' mother to Jenova cells while she was pregnant. Sephiroth, Angeal, and Genesis would become the star Soldiers of Shinra.
  • Though not raised from birth, the SeeDs in Final Fantasy VIII are generally trained from a relatively young age, with the youngest accepted students being only five-years-old and the oldest being fifteen. Ostensibly they're being trained as supercharged mercenaries, but in reality they're being prepared to wage war against the Sorceresses.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics had Rafa and Malak, who had their village destroyed, so they could become these after their elders refused to let the villain use them for his own purposes. Rafa turns and Malak follows shortly.
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 is built around this trope. The playable cast are all members of Class Zero, an elite squad of fourteen teenagers with special powers, each of whom was taken from their parents at an early age and trained to master a particular weapon. As a result, they're devastating in battle but have little understanding of civilian life, to the point that learning about anything besides combat seems foreign to them. In part due to this, they're isolated from their peers but form a close-knit group among each other.

U

• Unwitting Pawn: The game's series. Multiple times.
  • Final Fantasy IV: First Cecil delivers a trapped ring to the village of Mist (which, is known as the "Bomb Ring" in some versions). Then later he's approached with a Hostage For Macguffin deal, and he hands over the macguffin (assumed at the time to be the last one Golbez needed) before seeing the hostage. Then he and his group have the door to the second-to-last Underworld crystal opened because of some disturbance inside and end up giving Golbez a way in. And then, after failing to secure the (seven!) lost Crystals, they go and unseal the door to the last one, and trudge through the Scrappy Level both ways to bring it outside, only for Golbez to re-control Kain and take it at the last second. And if you include the crystal that he retrieved for Baron in the backstory, that makes him directly responsible for Golbez getting fully half of the Crystals. Sometimes, you wonder why Cecil keeps doing things, considering that the situation gets worse every time he gets close to a macguffin.
  • Final Fantasy V:
    • Bartz and his companions head into the Great Forest of Moore, in order to stop Exdeath from taking what's sealed inside. Turns out he waited for them to get to that world's crystals... And destroy them. Wow.
    • Bartz and Krile go to seek Ghido for help after Exdeath is defeated and the worlds fuse together and at that point, an innocuous-looking splinter that Krile has enables Exdeath to return. Having overheard the conversation, he sets out to take control of the Void.
  • Terra and her comrades fall for this hard when the Empire in Final Fantasy VI insists that it wants to commence peace talks. Granted, a few party members are suspicious enough to prepare a backup plan, but Terra, Locke, and General Leo swallow the plot hook-line-and-sinker and deliver a whole bunch of Espers for Kefka to turn into Magicite. Worse, this enables him to enter the Esper World and raise the Floating Continent, where the Warring Triad are hidden away. It turns out that Emperor Gestahl was also an Unwitting Pawn: Kefka uses him and the Empire to get to the Triad, and then uses their power to kill him and take all of it for himself.
  • Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. One of the main points of his character is that Sephiroth can make Cloud do anything by manipulating him just the right way, and he makes sure Cloud knows it.
    • All of the Deepground members from Dirge of Cerberus are this to Professor Hojo. After his death in the original game, he ends up digitalizing his mind into the worldwide network and later possesses Weiss, as well for his final, final experiment, the revival of Omega.
  • Queen Brahne Raza Alexandros XVI from Final Fantasy IX thought she was behind everything but it turns out she was just a pawn of Garland and Kuja as they manipulate her war and greed to fulfill their own objectives.
  • Tidus and Yuna from Final Fantasy X. They get bounced like ping-pong balls back and forth between Yevon's plan to continue the spiral of death and Auron's plan to destroy it and free Spira. Final Fantasy X-2 seems to imply that Yuna, at least, never figured it out.
  • By the time Final Fantasy XIII rolls around, the main group is being told that they're Unwitting Pawns.
    • And in the sequel, it comes up again when Noel kills Caius, destroying the heart of Etro, killing her with him, ensuring his plan succeeds. The most infuriating part is that Noel and Serah already knew this but Remembered Too Late.
  • In Final Fantasy XVI, at the end it turns out that Cid and by extension Clive and the rest of his followers [[spoilers:were actually following Ultima's plan all along, as he intended the Mothercrystals to be destroyed so that the rest of his collective would gather and transfer their power into Mythos, who also happens to be Clive.]]
  • Almost everyone ends up this way in Final Fantasy Tactics after the dust has settled from the Gambit Pileup by the story's end. Except Delita. And Ramza..

W

• War Is Hell:
  • Final Fantasy II starts off with the heroes being orphaned by war and barely surviving the siege on their hometown. Throughout the course of the game, numerous major characters and innocent NPCs are killed, including several towns that are completely destroyed with no survivors.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, to prevent Princess Garnet from experiencing this is exactly why Steiner doesn't want her to get involved with investigating whether her mother, Queen Brahne, was responsible for an attack on Burmecia.
    Steiner: War is a terrible thing! You must never experience it like I have.
  • Similarly, in Final Fantasy XII, Basch tells Ashe that if he could but protect one person from war's horror, he would, noting that shame is nothing to him after the loss of his own homeland of the Kingdom of Nabradia. Larsa, too, aims for peace to protect the ordinary citizenry from the trials of war.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has the war between Eorzea, Garlemald, and the beast tribes' summoned primals as one of its central conflicts. As the Warrior of Light, the Player Character is at the forefront of these and other conflicts, witnessing the deaths of innocents and close friends one after another. Stormblood, in particular, shows that the wars in Ala Mhigo and Doma have not only physically ravaged the nations, but left their populace defeated and broken: it takes great effort to convince the Domans, alone, to overcome their fear of reprisal from the Empire and rise up in rebellion. Near the end of Stormblood and into Shadowbringers, the situation becomes increasingly perilous. As revealed by the Crystal Exarch, Eorzea's future was in peril due to Black Rose, a deadly chemical weapon developed by Garlemald that, combined with a massive influx of light aether from the destruction of The First, poisoned the entire planet, killing all of the heroes (including the Warrior of Light) and destroying civilization.
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 pulls no punches in showing how horrific and brutal war can be right from the start.
    • The intro shows the beginning of the war between Rubrum and Milites. What begins with an effective defense by Rubrum takes a turn when Milites deploys an Anti-Magic weapon, leaving Rubrum's forces (Child Soldiers at that) at the mercy of an invading army that has no qualms with shooting anyone that crosses their path, regardless of if they are wounded or surrendering.
    • Its opening cinematic features the graphic death of Izana Kunagiri and his war chocobo from injuries as Ace, Queen and Jack stand helplessly (and all Ace can do is weep for him). There isn't much that could make war seem less glorious than showing Machina's older brother reduced to the level of complete freakout from his pain and fear of dying.
    • Then it goes downhill from there... on all four sides of the war. In Rubrum thousands died (including all of Class Zero save Machina and Rem), and the ending reveals that the entire nation was left ravaged and would only recover after at least fifty years under Machina and Rem's guidance. On Milites thousands of soldiers and mechs died serving a charismatic leader who was Dead All Along, possessed by an Omnicidal Maniac, including those reduced to Phantoma by Alexander, the summoning of which required the Heroic Sacrifice of hundreds of Rubrum cadets, as well as instructor Kurasame Susaya and Alexander's main summoner, Caetuna. Lorica was totally destroyed, its king, Gilgamesh, left to wander Oriense without a purpose in life. Concordia was shaken by its queen's death, and the revelation that its (mostly ceremonial) king, long scheming for a return to a patriarchal rule, had a hand in it.
• Was Once a Man:
  • Final Fantasy IV: In the Game Boy Advance and PSP versions, Cecil's trial in the Bonus Dungeon includes a potential encounter with a Goblin who insists that he used to be human, and that the curse on him will wear off shortly. Indeed, if you don't attack him, the battle automatically ends and a man is standing where the Goblin was (killing the Goblin causes Cecil to fail that part of the trial, of course.)
  • Final Fantasy X does this a lot.
    • All the Aeons were human, and an optional superboss is a monk named Omega whose hatred of Yevon turned him into a gigantic, four-legged monster with the power to create novae.
    • Anima, who not only looked monstrous (a chained, gap-mouth giant corpse rising out a shell) but is Seymour's human mother, who basically had turned herself into one to give him the ability to return to his father's people. Now she rages at how evil he became.
    • The fiends you fight in random encounters were once human souls. In fact, in the cutscene where the party reunites with Yuna in Home, you can see fiends forming from the souls of recently killed Innocent Bystanders in the background. And, of course, to top it all off, there's Sin, aka Jecht.
    • Yevon himself is just a giant blue, glowy tick by the time you meet him. He was definitely human at one point considering his daughter, Yunalesca, is still human. It's discussed near the end of the game that all of the summoning he did eventually broke his mind and devolved him into a mindless Eldritch Abomination that no longer had the capacity to speak or even think, only destroy.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: All of the main characters are normal humans who were turned into l'Cie (servants of fal'Cie, the providers for Cocoon/Gran Pulse), which grants them strength and magical powers, as well as resulting in them being ostracised by the people of Cocoon. Also, it is revealed early on that any l'Cie who fail their task are turned into Cie'th, deformed crystal-covered monsters who wander the world until they eventually lose their will and turn to stone. And even then they are still alive, and awake and suffering.
  • As revealed in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward, some dragons are born as a result of Ishgardian elezens drinking dragon's blood. This is particularly true of Ishgard's highborn elite, who descended from King Thordan's Knights Twelve, who destroyed the peace between Ishgard and dragonkind millenia ago when they slew Ratatoskr, drank her blood, and devoured her eyes in a bid for power, in so doing cursing themselves and their descendents.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2:
    • In one mission, a requester asks for help as he and his friends are trapped in a mine and is afraid he will become the ghosts that haunt the place. When you get there, you encounter a gang of ghosts and its leader weakly begs for help.
    • In another mission, a requester asks for a Potion and Hi-Potion to treat some wounds/fatigue. When you meet the person, it's actually a zombie, but has retained enough sense and control to talk to Luso normally. When the zombie uses the Potion on itself, it winds up hurting itself and Luso has to stop it from drinking the Hi-Potion. That's when the zombie realizes it is dead and was wondering why clans were attacking and people at inns throwing rocks. Later on, you discover that the zombie is actually Frimelda, a former Blademaster. She fought battles with a Paladin and over time, he grew jealous of her success as a fighter while he failed to follow in her footsteps, so he drugged her and she became a zombie. You can heal her eventually and she will join your clan.
    • One of the gifted somehow turned into a dragon, originally being a hume.
• Weak-Willed:
  • Kain from Final Fantasy IV has built up a bad reputation due to the apparent ease his enemies have in brainwashing him to do evil. It actually only happened once — with a gap in the middle of the story where the signal was bad. Subverted in the end of the game, as evidenced by the "Read the lead member's mind" thing you can do in the DS version, where Zemus, the guy who controlled Golbez into mind-controlling Kain in the first place, so therefore better at mind control tries to control him again, this time by making him hate Rosa for choosing Cecil. He fights it off with ease.
    • In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, it's Cecil, not Kain, who gets brainwashed by the Mysterious Girl. You do end up fighting Kain as an enemy a lot in the base chapters, all the time claiming he's not being controlled this time. He isn't. It's actually his dark side, given form and teaming up with the Mysterious Girl, just so that he can kill Cecil.
  • Cloud in Final Fantasy VII explains that the reason he was affected by Sephiroth's control of him through his Jenova cells is because he has a 'weak will' and thus 'got lost in the whole thing'. Strong-willed individuals, like Zack, can be injected with Jenova cells without any effect except boosted physical and magical abilities, and thus are selected to join SOLDIER. Weak-willed individuals, like Cloud and the rest of the Sephiroth Clones, go mad and lose their identities. On Cloud, helped along by pre-existing mental complexes, the effect was so bad that he cobbled together a complete and functional fake identity and set of memories for himself and ended up being lucid, if compared to the shambling, mumbling Clones (although The Mentally Disturbed by comparison to everyone else). Getting over his issues gives him the strength to shake off Sephiroth's mind control.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Final Fantasy II: Firion, Maria and Guy with Leon. Even at the end, after his Heel–Face Turn, he suggests that too much has happened for them to go back to the way they were before, but Firion holds out hope.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud and Sephiroth. Or at least that's how Cloud initially frames how they know one another. In reality, Cloud and Sephiroth were never friends, but Zack and Sephiroth were and did act out this trope.
    • In the prequel Crisis Core, there's Zack and Angeal in addition to Sephiroth and Genesis.
  • Final Fantasy X-2: Paine, Nooj, Baralai, and Gippal. Nooj getting possessed two years ago and shooting at the rest of them pretty much destroyed their friendship, and there’s still resentment over that when your party eavesdrops on the latter three late in the game.
• What You Are in the Dark: In Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Kain Highwind is a morally ambiguous Anti-Hero who has spent the story up to the final tale killing off his allies (or as the game says, "puts them to sleep") so that they'll be safe and intact when the cycle of war begins again, rather than risk them fighting and permanently dying against the new threat of the Manikins. Needless to say, no one is very pleased with him over this and several don't trust him even as he accompanies them to the portal the Manikins are coming from to help them close it. Along the way they're stopped by Exdeath and a group of Manikins and Kain stays behind to hold them off while the group continues on. In a bonus scene, Golbez approaches Kain afterwards and tells him that if he goes to join his friends in their Last Stand, he'll die and no one will remember his bravery. Or he can stay behind now and live to the next cycle, and again no one will know. Kain goes to help them.
  • Kain says "put them to sleep" because once everyone on one side dies, all deceased fighters are resurrected and the fight starts over. Unless you die fighting Manikins.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?:
  • In Final Fantasy VII Remake has Marlene frequently waits up for her father, Barret to come back home and expresses disappointment when he's unable to do so.
  • In the 2016 Starlight event in Final Fantasy XIV, a young and sick boy wants only one gift and that is to see his father. Because the boy's father is a merchant, he spends a lot of time away from the city and has little to no time to rest. Seeing that his father will never show up, the boy's illness grows worse because he gave up hope. You then confront the boy's father before he sets sail to another land and it turns out that he was away for so long in order to find a cure for his son and he just found it, but it requires him to go overseas in order to negotiate a deal for the medicine. In the end, the father can't return home, but the boy bounces back with confidence once he hears the truth and vows to stay strong until his father returns.
  • Final Fantasy Legend II opens with a scene where your father is last seen leaving through your bedroom window. Throughout the game, the two of you bond through brief encounters as you try to convince him to stop working so damn hard.

Y

• You Killed My Father:
  • Final Fantasy V: After Galuf is killed by Exdeath, his granddaughter Krile takes his place in the party (and magically inherits his abilities learned). Since the game only has four characters at a time, Krile will always be present for the final battle with Exdeath.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Averted. It is heavily implied that Professor Gast was the father of Aerith Gainsborough. He was murdered by Professor Hojo, and Hojo then subjected Ifalna and their daughter, Aerith, to seven years' worth of horrific experiments, which ultimately took its toll on Ifalna when they eventually escaped. However, Aerith never knew that Hojo killed her father, and you only get to find out about this after Aerith is dead.
    • This is Tifa's personal motivation for going after Sephiroth. He single-handedly killed her father, her friends, and everyone she knew and loved in Nibelheim (minus Cloud), and he comes scarily close to killing her as well. Much of the anger towards Sephiroth still remains in Tifa's later portrayals, including physically attacking him in Dissidia Final Fantasy.
    • Sephiroth also killed Cloud's mother, though it goes unmentioned in the original game, with Cloud being simply unable to describe to his friends what he saw in his burning house, though he is seen collapsing with grief in the flashback. Cloud does get to avenge his mother and Tifa's father as well as Nibelheim as whole, at least three times in the canon.
      Give me back my mother, Tifa and the whole village... I used to admire you.
      — Cloud (stabbing Sephiroth) Last Order: Final Fantasy VII
    • In Final Fantasy VII Remake, Sephiroth brags about killing Cloud's mother, and even describes her final moments to send Cloud into a rage.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: "Moms are tough", but not tough enough to escape death. His failure in regards to the counterattack at Hanging Edge continues to metaphorically haunt Snow even as he tries to rescue Serah. It also physically haunts him in the form of Hope, the son of the woman who volunteered to assist him and misinterpreted that failure as Snow leaving her to die. It gets to the point where revenge is Hope's sole driving factor, and he almost exacts his revenge before a Sanctum mech blows them both to the streets below. They manage to smooth things out from that point forward.