- Love Hina: Mutsumi Otohime's character design is based on Aerith Gainsborough, even wearing clothes with a similar color scheme.
- Gundam:
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: Shinn Asuka gives Stellar Loussier a lake burial similar to what Cloud Strife gave Aerith Gainsborough. Amusingly, Aerith's Japanese VA also voices Lunamaria Hawke who eventually becomes Shinn's Second Love. Even better is Shinn's Japanese VA himself voices Zack Fair, Aerith's First Love. To say nothing most of the Japanese cast already voicing and will eventually voice FF characters.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00: After activating Trans-Am mode for the first time, Gundam Exia performs an attack similar to the Omnislash. Its successor units, the 00 Raiser and 00 Qan[T], are both equipped with gunblade-like weapons and even perform a maneuver similar to the Blasting Zone Limit Break.
- Great Teacher Onizuka: Onizuka asks to borrow Noboru's copy of Final Fantasy VII.
- Time Stop Hero: Kuzuno Sekai carves healing stone into small orbs and inserts them into a bunch of weapons to grant them power. He outright refers to them as Materia. There is also a monster that looks like a Bomb enemy.
- Undead Unluck: Upon seeing UMA Burn for the first time, Chikara considers it being similar to a summoned beast from "FF".
- Scott Pilgrim:
- The last chapter of volume 5 is called World of Ruin
- The Power of Understanding take the form of what appears to be Zangetsu. Either that or a Buster Sword.
- In the final battle when Scott enters Ramona's mind, it is very reminiscent of the scene in Final Fantasy VII where Cloud enters the lifestream to finish off Sephiroth. Compare this
to this.
Fan Works
- Arcanum Universe: Scarlet Heists: Cerise screams "Son of a Sandshrew!" after he's thrown off a bus.
- In PreCure in a Nutshell, Cure Finale gets the parody name of Cure Final Fantasy.
Films — Animated
- Ark: Halfway into the film, there's a massive chase scene where the protagonists hijacks an orange scorpion-like mecha (complete with a laser-shooting tail) which looks suspiciously like the Guard Scorpion.
- Wreck-It Ralph: An "Aerith Lives" graffiti could be spotted in one of the walls in the train station during an earlier scene.
Films — Live-Action
- Charlie's Angels (2000): Immediately after the Halfway Plot Switch, one of the eponymous Power Trio asks help from two kids playing a two-player Final Fantasy VIII.
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Scott plays a song from Final Fantasy IV on his guitar, though he says it is from Final Fantasy II.
Music
- The music video for the song "Sonata of Temptation" features a reenactment of the fight between Tifa and Loz from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, except Tifa wins this time.
- Kenny Omega's finisher is called "One-Winged Angel". He also cosplayed as Sephiroth once, while using the song "One-Winged Angel Rebirth" as his entrance music.
- From mid 2020 until late 2021, Hikaru Shida's wrestling gear was a Whole Costume Reference to Tifa Lockheart's.
- At WrestleMania 33, The New Day cosplayed as the Warriors of Light, specifically the Samurai and Red Mage, a chocobo appeared in their entrance video, and Xavier Woods played the Final Fantasy victory song on his trombone.
- Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden:
- The title screen has a rotating series of messages, the first of which is "You don't need a reason to help people" - a quote from Final Fantasy IX.
- The game has two language options: English and Al Bhed.
- The final boss's first form has a single angel wing, just like Sephiroth. Its second form is Diablo (the dinosaur from Primal Rage) with Barkley's head badly photoshopped onto it.
- Some of the battle backgrounds used in the game were heavily modified from those used in Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, and Lunar: Eternal Blue. The battle background for the Dragon's Neck Coliseum from Final Fantasy VI, meanwhile, was imported into the game without alterations.
- A plot-important substance is named "Manufacted Slamicite", spoofing the Manufacted Nethicite in Final Fantasy XII.
- Bayonetta: The Umbran Armor looks a lot like Magitek Armor.
- Borderlands 2:
- Axton the Commando includes the head Warrior of Light.
- One of the challenges is A Squall of Violence.
- Fly-Boy is constantly name-dropping Final Fantasy references."TOUGH TIDUS!""You can go kefka the taint.""None of you hojos can compare to me!""Now midgar out of here!"
- The Crystal of Kings: The player character, Lustro Furia, is a rather transparent Captain Ersatz of Cloud Strife, sharing the same blonde hairstyle, preference of using gigantic swords, and their backstories of a former soldier-turned-mercenary.
- Cuphead:
- During Sally Stageplay's fight, her third phase sees her appear as an angelic figure highly similar to Kefka's final boss form in Final Fantasy VI, using magical attacks that are labeled in the corner of the screen, including summoning a meteor. If you used a chandelier to kill her husband back in the first phase, he'll join the fight here posed similarly to the "Rest" sub-boss.
- Also involving VI, the Phantom Express bears a lot of similarity to the Phantom Train.
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: When Monokuma decides to perform a One-Winged Angel transformation, he states that it's customary much like a certain RPG game before he gets cut off.Monokuma: This game... is over...? No no no... I'm not gonna let you finish yet... There's no way this can end before I've even transformed.
Sonia: ...Tr-Transform?
Monokuma: A transformation is customary in a final boss battle, right? You know, like that one role-playing game. You know what game I'm talking about. Final...
Kazuichi: D-Don't say it!
Monokuma: Now then... allow me to show you... I'll skip the second and third forms and go straight to... MY FINAL FORM!! - Henry Stickmin: In "Infiltrating the Airship", Henry can fight Right-Hand Man in the style of Final Fantasy VI before striking himself with a Self-Damaging Attack Backfire.
- In Later Alligator, Sweet Geraldine's final request of a claw game prize is a doll of the protagonist of Final Friendcity, Clod Stripes. Interestingly, his hair is more similar to Zack's than Cloud's.
- Lunar: Eternal Blue has large avian pack animals used by Jean's troupe. The characters nearly call it a chocobo, but eventually settle on chuckaboo.
- Parasite Eve: A chocobo could be seen in a banner at the entrance to the Museum of American History. The game itself was actually conceived from an earlier draft of Final Fantasy VII.
- Parasite Eve 2: The gunblade could be unlocked as an optional weapon.
- The 3rd Birthday: One of the unlockable costumes is that of Lightning's. Lightning and protagonist Aya Brea are both voiced by Maaya Sakamoto in the Japanese version.
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game:
- Wallace's Mystery Shop sells "Never-ending Fantasy" and "Speedy the Porcupine" video games for stats. We can see a blue turtle shell and the dwarf's axe from Golden Axe in the background.
- Gideon literally sprouts one angel wing during one of his attacks. His Battle in the Center of the Mind form brings to mind Kefka's final form.
- Stephen Stills' clear-out move is a localized Power Geyser, taken straight from Terry Bogard of Fatal Fury fame. In a similar vein, Scott uses a Tatsumaki Sempuukyaku, Kim does a Spinning Lariat WITH DRUMSTICKS, and Ramona appears to have stolen a trick from May's playbook (spinning around wildly with an odd weapon outstretched, in this case a bag).
- Sonic.exe: Whenever the titular character catches someone, he laughs like Kefka Palazzo.
- South Park: The Stick of Truth: Stan's victory pose at the end of battle is reminiscent of Cloud Strife's. On top of that, Stan's 'Way of the Sword' skill is similar to Cloud's Omnislash.
- Terraria:
- The 1.0.5 update introduced Vanity slots, allowing players to wear decorative outfits over their armor. The items included with its introduction include a clown costume.
- The Breaker Blade looks identical to Cloud's Buster Sword, complete with Materia embedded in the handle. It's even more hilariously huge than Cloud's one too.
- Undertale:
- The opening of Mettaton's dramatic opera trap is very similar to the Opera scene from Final Fantasy VI. The two themes related to it also use very similar instruments. The background music for the following scene is also highly reminiscent of the background music for the battle that follows FFVI's opera scene.
- Encounter Undyne after you've befriended her in a previous playthrough, and she'll end her pre-battle speech by defiantly proclaiming that she, Undyne, will knock you down.
- One of Asriel's attacks is the HYPER GONER, named after Kefka's Goner attack in the Super Nintendo version of Final Fantasy VI.
- Aerith (using the Aeris spelling) can be seen mourning at a grave in YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG, and the game will note if you use the names of Final Fantasy characters during the name entry sequence at the beginning of the game.
- The Epic Battle Fantasy series features a few references:
- A Tonberry (wearing a Pyramid Head helmet), a Red Mage and a Black Waltz appear as the second, third and fifth foes in Brawl Royale, respectively. Expies of all three characters, named Pyramid Helmet, Crimson Mage and Cobalt Mage replace them in the EBF Collection version of the game.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 3: Snow sculptures of the Warriors of Light appear in Glacier Valley. The sculptures double as nods to the Black Mages series of animations Matt Roszak made before creating the series.
- Cleaver, a reocurring Limit Break for Matt, is a direct reference to Omnislash. This gets lampshaded in Epic Battle Fantasy 4:"The swordsman always has an ultimate multi-slash attack. That's me. I'm not going to be original here."
- In Epic Battle Fantasy 5, Matt may comment about an alternate name he had, which references Omnislash as well as Squall's signature attack, Lion Heart:"I considered naming that attack "The Omnislashing Lion Heart", but that was a bit of a mouthful."
- The Red Mage/Crimson Mage reappears in Epic Battle Fantasy 2, as the first of the game's two shopkeepers.
- The Chosen Four: "42 is just a number, and there is no secret to revive General Leo."
- El Goonish Shive: NP: "An NPC by any other name", the naming of the Cleric has tons of shout-outs running through Ellen's head◊, with the middle of the sixth-from-last line starting with "Final Fantasy Onions".
- Questionable Content: Marigold ends up playing Final Fantasy VI all day after the party at Emily's parent's house.
- SCP Foundation: SCP-1715 is an entity that joins into small online communities (message boards, wiki databases, etc.). It is mentioned it joined into a Final Fantasy discussion board once.
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: In Episode 8, Krillin kills the Saibamen with a Limit Break, then the Final Fantasy victory music plays.
- In the Adventure Time episode "Jermaine", the BFS seen in Jermaine's house resembles Cloud's Buster Sword.
- The Amazing World of Gumball: "The Console" episode is one giant homage to JRPGs, especially Final Fantasy VII and VIII.
- Anais at one point dresses in a hat similar to Luso's from Final Fantasy Tactics A2, and holds a rounded BFS similar to the infamous "pizza cutter" in his character artwork. According to her, the sword also doubles as a gun, similar to Squall's Gunblade in Final Fantasy VIII.
- The trio decide to enter a random battle, just to sing along with the "epic battle theme". It is the same music as random encounters from Final Fantasy VII.
- The Game Child's true form resembles Final Fantasy VIII's Big Bad, Ultimecia, with Sephiroth's hair and halo.
- When Gumball starts summoning friends, the attack greatly resembles the Final Fantasy VII summon "Knights of the Round". Richard's portion resembles "Bahamut Zero". Banana Joe's part, Thousand Blows, is an almost shot for shot recreation of the Cacture 1,000 Needles summon attack from Final Fantasy VIII.
- At one point, Gumball and Darwin get Cloud and Sephiroth's hair.
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force: In "Shaketopia", Shake pulls out Cloud's sword when he challenges Meatwad.
- Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island: The "Sir Nut-a-Lot" episode was primarily a parody of Final Fantasy VII, with Coconut Fred serving as Cloud and Butchy playing the Sephiroth expy.
- Rick and Morty: In "Bethic Twinstinct", Morty plays a video game console with a "realism" setting on it. One of the games he plays is a realistic version of Final Fantasy VII with Cloud unable to lift his buster sword.
- Robot Chicken has worked the franchise into a couple skits:
- "Final Fantasy Burger Joint" is all about the cast of VII being Burger Fools, with Cloud chopping up a potato in a battle scene, then fighting his Bad Boss Sephiroth when ordered to come in on Saturday.
- In "Spring of the Drowned Girl" (itself a big Ranma ½ parody), the Nerd briefly cosplays as Tifa while offering to "be your final fantasy".
- After Biggs and Wedge had become recurring names in the franchise for years, Star Wars would return the favor when Star Wars: The Bad Batch introduced a Cid as a major supporting character.
- Steven Universe:
- In "Steven the Sword Fighter", Steven has a collection of action figures, one of which is a Pikachu-Moogle hybrid, and another is a Cloud lookalike.
- In "Rose's Room", Steven plays a videogame that uses some Final Fantasy sound effects, and one of the characters is named Wedge (referencing two of the games' recurring characters Biggs and Wedge).
