Laura Aikman voices both Desiree and Eloise in the English dub.
Octavio Rojas voices both Elwin and Zoltan in the Latin-American Spanish dub.
Author's Saving Throw: Game producer Naoki Yoshida confirmed that the story of XVI will be complete at launch, and that the player shouldn't need any supplemental material to understand what's going on. This attempts to address criticisms of Final Fantasy XIII being heavily reliant on players reading the in-game datalogs to get required bits of backstory, and Final Fantasy XV being a multi-media project, where getting the complete experience and/or the full story also required you to watch the prequel movie, play the DLC episodes, and read the sequel novel.
Banned in China: Even before the game was released, it got banned in Saudi Arabia, with only the vague statement that Square Enix was "unwilling to make necessary modifications" as to why it was banned. Later reporting would suggest that the game contains a prominent LGBTQ+ character, which was later revealed to be Dion, who gets a brief onscreen kiss with his male lover Terence. The developers refused to remove Dion or the kiss scene, which led to the aforesaid ban.
Distanced from Current Events: Interviews released in June revealed that the "Dominance" trailer was delayed from its expected release date of March 2022 due to the war breaking out in Ukraine, under the belief that some of the clips could be distressing for viewers.
Dub Name Change: As is tradition in the Spanish ports of the series, Ultima in the Latin Spanish dub and the European Spanish localization is renamed to Artemanote (likely from how the name is written in Japanese, Arutema), possibly due to "última" (meaning "last/final") being an existing and common word in the Spanish language.
In Memoriam: The end credits feature a segment dedicating the game to Stephen Critchlow, Byron's first voice actor, and Square Enix NA's Head of Marketing Kevin Kraff (who passed away in July 2022).
Killer App: Intended to be this for the PlayStation 5 given that it's the only third-party developer console exclusive so far in time where select first party titles of Sony headed to PC. Taken almost quite literally in one boss fight that may be able to overheat the console (to the point of forced shutdown) in high-quality configurations.
The PlayStation achievement for petting Torgal five times is named "You Can Pet The Dog", a nod to the meme that spawned in the wake of an early trailer revealing that petting Torgal would be a game mechanic... which in turn was a response to fans clamoring for the aforementioned mechanic the moment Torgal was introduced.
For killing 10 notorious marks in game, you will recieve the 'Think, Mark' trophy, obviously a nod to the meme that spawn from Invincible
Musical Nod: A minor key rendition of the overworld theme from Final Fantasy plays during various scenes exploring the history and lore of Ultima, first popping up in the chapter "Cloak and Dagger."
In a first for a Square Enix game, the game isn't dubbed to European Spanish, despite the setting of the game would make the use of European Spanish as the more logical choice being a story set in a quasi medieval society, and originally was planned to have one over the Latin American one (see below), especially considering the original dialogue is spoken in British English rather than American. To compensate this, the game features European Spanish subtitles, so they can be used with the original English dialogue instead.
Related with the above, the game lacks an Brazilian Portuguese dub; this is particularly relevant, considering that the Spanish-speaking Latin America region got one.
Posthumous Credit: Stephen Critchlow, who died two years before the game's release, is listed alongside Ewan Bailey in the credits as one of Byron's voice actors.
Ben Starr has been a fan of the franchise since Final Fantasy VIII. He first auditioned for a minor role under a code-named script to keep the work a secret, but was asked to read several other lines for the character that would become Clive. After a few days he was told he won the lead role, but it wasn't until another week later that he found out it was for a new mainline game in his favorite series. To him, becoming Clive was “an overwhelming honor and a terrifying privilege” and the worst part was keeping it a secret for years.
Stewart Clarke (Dion) is a fan of the series and said he felt privileged to have his character join the ranks of other complexly written dragoons like Kain Highwind and Estinien Varlineau.
Clive has the same voice actor for both his younger and older selves in all dubs save the Japanese one.
In the Japanese, French, and Latin American Spanish dubs, Megumi Han, Claire Baradat, and Angelica Villa respectively voice Jill throughout, younger and older.
Trolling Creator: With a dose of Exact Words. During the months leading up XVI's announcement, the fanbase was convinced that Naoki Yoshida was going to be involved with the game, likely as the director. Yoshida in response said multiple times that he was not going to be the director for the game. Which is true; he's the producer.
Urban Legend of Zelda: There's a Fallen door in the Dim that cannot be opened, yet Clive remarks upon it when first finding it. The Dim is also home to a Fallen tower that is visible throughout Rosaria on the horizon, but it seems to be inaccessible, and it isn't located that far from the mysterious door. Shortly after the game's release there was rampant speculation about what they could be and if they could be unlocked somehow in New Game Plus and/or on Final Fantasy mode. It's now widely assumed that the door and tower were put in as set-up for DLC content, but the staff said they had no plans for such on release, so perhaps it was something that was Dummied Out. Further fueling speculation is that fans noticed the tower was visible on the world map in some pre-release footage but isn't in the final release, confirming it was supposed to be important at some point and probably accessible. In the "Echoes of the Fallen" DLC, the door in the Dim leads to the tower as fans assumed, and the tower briefly appears on the world map when traveling there, implying it may have been accessible during the main game and was either cut or repurposed as DLC.
A PlayStation 4 version of the game was planned around the time the Awakening trailer for the game was shown, but was cancelled due to the technical limitations of the console.
Joshua originally had a different voice actor for the English dub, but he went through puberty part way through recording his lines to the point that he no longer sounded remotely like an 8 year old child. At this point, Logan Hannan (notably the voice of Hugo in A Plague Tale: Innocence and its sequel) was chosen to voice Joshua. The original voice actor can be heard in the initial Awakening trailer with a notably lower voice than Logan's voice heard in later trailers.
Originally, the game was planned to be dubbed into European Spanish, but, due to the popularity of the franchise in Latin America compared with Spain, as well than Latin America alone dwarves Spain in player base, despite the latter being an European country member of the EU, Square Enix chose to dub the game into Latin American Spanish instead.
Ben Starr (Clive) first auditioned for Tiamat, Jonathan Case (adult Joshua) auditioned for Clive, and Stewart Clarke (Dion) auditioned for Sir Tyler. Localization director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox also recorded one line for the Hideaway boatman Obolus which was scrapped.
Megumi Han (Jill), Yasuhiro Mamiya (Hugo), Yuichi Nakamura (Dion), Yu Shimamura (Jote), and Mitsuaki Kanuka (Goetz)'s previous roles were respectively Iris Amicitia, Dave Auburnbrie and Ifrit, Ravus Nox Fleuret, Cidney/Cindy Aurum, and Libertus Ostium in Final Fantasy XV.
Random Trivia
This is the first Final Fantasy game when the voice recording was done in English first, with the Japanese version as a dub of the former. Usually, it's the other way around.
This is also the first mainline single-player Final Fantasy game whose English voice acting was recorded exclusively in the United Kingdom, following in the footsteps of fellow JRPG franchises like Dragon Quest and Xenoblade Chronicles. Final Fantasy XII was primarily dubbed in the UK with some additional recording done in the USA, while Final Fantasy XIV started out being dubbed in the US before the production moved to the UK beginning with the Heavensward expansion.
Also, this is the first Japanese-developed Square Enix game with a Latin American Spanish dub, ever, and the second title published by the group overall to have such an option since the Canadian-developed Deus Ex: Human Revolution. FFXIV debuted French and German dubs beginning with A Realm Reborn to go along with their text options in those languages, but the lack of a LatAm Spanish (or any Spanish) translation and dub has been a sticking point for XIV's fanbase for more or less its entire run.note As an additional note, this is also the second Final Fantasy production dubbed to Mexican Spanish since Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, since the last FF dubbed to Latin American Spanish, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, was dubbed in Argentina.
Likewise, this is also the first game of the franchise with an Italian dub.
This is the third Final Fantasy game to receive a Mature rating by the ESRB, behind Final Fantasy Type-0 and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, the first to receive an 18+ rating by PEGI and the second to receive a D rating by CERO, behind Stranger of Paradise.
This is the first Final Fantasy game to feature a plot-important openly gay character in Dion, the Dominant of Bahamut.note XIV was the first overall game to have explicitly gay characters, but it was a minor NPC couple at the Wanderer's Palace who weren't given names. Dion even shares a kiss with his lover Terence, which is shown on-screen during one cutscene. This scene ended up getting the game banned in Saudi Arabia when Square Enix refused to remove the characters or the kissing scene.
