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There are monsters on the moon because the Hummingways are trying to invade the Earth.

All of the monsters on the moon are genetically engineered bio-weapons created by the now hyper-advanced race of Hummingways. The Lunar Cry phenomenon actually keeps happening because they are trying to get back to Earth and take over the world. They even created the space monsters just to make sure nobody could attack the moon, thus ensuring that some day, they will finally succeed in an invasion.

• The first sign of their plan, as revealed on the Headscratchers page, was the fact that every moon-based monster could be turned into a Triple Triad card.

In a later iteration of the stable time loop, Ultimecia wins.

Every time Ultimecia is defeated, she's thrown back in time and transfers her power to Edea, who already has sorceress powers from another unknown sorceress. Then Edea passes hers + Ultimecia's powers to Rinoa, who eventually passes those on to future generations, leading to Ultimecia. Thus, every time the time loop spins, Ultimecia gets a boost of her own base sorceress powers + 1. Eventually, she'll be powerful enough to kill the heroes with a flick of her finger and succesfully absorb time and space. Garland would be proud.

• Not necessarily. Edea retains some of her Sorceress powers after the transfer to Rinoa. She may have simply transferred Ultimecia's powers to Rinoa without transferring the previous Sorceress' powers as well.
• A sorceress must pass on all of her powers before she dies, so that's not a solution. The real question is, do sorceress powers stack, if you get the same one more than once?
  • That derails that particular WMG sugestion right there. If a sorceress passes on her powers when she dies, Rinoa could only have received Ulty's power. Since Edea didn't die at all.
    • It only says a Sorceress must pass on her powers before she dies, not that they can only pass them on when they die.
• Most likely, a lot of power is lost in the process of the sorceress being defeated and her power transferring to the next sorceress, particularly in the case of Ultimecia getting the crap beaten out of her in time compression and traveling through time to pass her powers to Edea. There's also no guarantee that Ultimecia is necessarily the ultimate recipient of Rinoa's sorceress power - it's never stated for certain that any character is the "last" sorceress.
• The FF8 think tank on GameFAQs has done some serious number-crunching on the matter, much of which assumes that in every loop, all of the sorceress power that Ultimecia takes on as the final boss battle approaches true Time Compression gets scattered back across time when she is beaten, thus preserving equilibrium.
  • Doesn't serious number crunching require... I dunno... some serious numbers to mean anything? As for the power she's actually using to compress time, yes, most of it scatters across time. Or rather, was already scattered across time, in the form of the sorceresses she hijacked with the Ellone machine.

The game takes place on the same planet as Final Fantasy III.

Let's take it point-by-point:

• The geography, seen here◊ and here◊, is fairly similar, moreso than any other game in the series.
• The Floating Continent in III is said to need maintenance to remain airborne. At the time of III, only one person knows how to do this. In VIII, there is an ancient ruin at the bottom of the ocean, right below where the floating continent would be.
• In III, there is a crystal tower in the eastern part of the Northern continent. In VIII, the Crystal Pillar is the focal point of the Lunar Cry. As shown in Centra, the Lunar Cry can have a devastating effect on the landscape. Where the Crystal Tower was in III, VIII has an unexplained crater which fans sometimes attribute to a previous Lunar Cry, meaning the Crystal Pillar was probably located there at some time in the past.
• III features three ancient and powerful wizards, only one of whom is properly mortal. The other two go through monstrous transformations before they can die physically, and stick around in spirit for a while beyond that. This bears a distinct resemblance to the sorceresses' inability to die while holding their powers.
• Although III's Hein/Hyne is by no means a godlike figure, there are some similarities between his story and the legends of Hyne in VIII, particularly his being a sorcerer who enslaved his people and was brought down by children.
• The elemental crystals of III's world are destroyed in the course of the game. In VIII, there are no elemental crystals.
  • Not true. The elemental crystals in III are never destroyed, and are perfectly intact at the end of the game.
    • They might be intact at the end of III, but the time involved in making the floating continent collapse into the sea, mentioned above, could permit another "Flood of Light" to occur, a few thousand years later. The new breed of Dark Warriors could come up with an unconventional method which would necessitate destroying all the Light and Dark Crystals in order to banish the Void once and for all.
  • By that logic, one could assume that Guardian Forces are born from the shard fragments. Their abilities are derived from a few Job Classes. If the Summons purchased or won derived their power from the Crystals, Light or Dark, it would help explain how each shard is now a creature. It's fairly similar in concept as to how Crystal Shards each held a different class in Final Fantasy V.
• The hands of the clock tower in Ultimecia's Castle point to VIII and III.
• You can say Unei's mastery over dreams is in tandem with Ellone's power to transfer one's consciousness into the past.
• Ellone (nicknamed Elle) shares a similar plot role with Aria (named Elia in the Japanese version), both being Barrier Maidens that help the group travel to other dimensions or worlds.
• The lowerworld of Final Fantasy III is trapped in stasis as a result of the imbalance of light and dark energies. In Final Fantasy VIII, Ultimecia locks the world in singularity in order to to more easily take advantage of the power of other sorceresses.
• The orphanage reveal: They are played out in both games almost exactly the same. American players frequently point this scene out as being "out of place" or an Ass Pull because up until 2006, they had no frame of reference to place the significance of the scene in.
  • Except that there is no orphanage reveal in Final Fantasy III, at least not the NES version. Plus, even if the two games take place in the same world, the orphanage reveal in VIII is still really hamfisted.
    • This point is irrelevant considering previous points- the amount of time it would take the floating continent to collapse in the sea wold indicate enough time has passed for the old world order to be wiped from the face of the planet. Regardless if there was an orphanage in Final Fantasy III canonically or not, chances of an insignificant structure like that surviving the millennia until the Final Fantasy VIII timeline are slim.
• Ultimecia's castle appears to reside in an interdimensional Void, similar to that of the Dark World.

Not my WMG, but one I've seen floating around the internet. I leave the "proof" to Wiki Magic.

• That's been Jossed by the FFVIII Ultimania guide. Specifically, the theory depends heavily on the idea that sorceresses are immortal until they pass on their powers, with the result that Rinoa would greatly outlive Squall and go insane in the centuries following his death. The Ultimania guide clarifies that sorceresses have normal life spans, making it impossible for Rinoa to live long enough to become Ultimecia.
  • Then again, considering Squall is a soldier, it's not too far fetched to believe he could have died before Rinoa even gets old. Heck, I even met people on forums claiming he died during the fight against Ultimecia and Rinoa is hallucinating during the final scene.
    • The issue is that Ultimecia lives generations into the future, well beyond the lifespans of any of the characters from the game's present, including Rinoa. Not to mention that the theory flies in the face of the game's themes about the importance of having True Companion and the Power of Love, since it means that Squall was right to start with and everyone would have been better off if he'd remained alone and unhappy.
    • The theory isn't about Squall, though, it's about Rinoa. The bigger issue here is that the Stable Time Loop and all the talk about fate and inevitability flies in the face of the supposed 'happy ending' that the characters create, as they completely fail to stop Ultimecia before she is created and instead only stop her from doing the worst thing imaginable, after she develops a grudge against SeeD and humanity. For all the talk about Nakama and the Power of Friendship and Love, respectively, they hardly make a dent in Ultimecia coming about. Personally, 'Rinoa is put into cold stasis due to her Sorceress powers for an unspecified period of time, and her hatred of what went wrong twists her into Ultimecia' makes slightly more sense than 'Squall and Rinoa live happily ever after, but Rinoa ends up passing on her powers down the line until some other woman ends up becoming an evil Sorceress because humans fear what they can't understand. By that point, it's someone else's problem'.
    • ...how is "Squall and Rinoa being together ultimately proves destructive because Rinoa goes crazy from losing Squall and becomes the monster they fought to defeat, forcing Squall to kill her" in any way a better or happier ending than "Squall is on the road to getting over his issues and, yeah, Ultimecia will rise sometime in the future but we already know she'll lose because Squall and company will travel into the future to defeat her"?
  • Wait, what? What does Ultimania state exactly? That Sorceresses have normal human lifespan, that Rinoa is not Ultimecia, or both? The last time I played the game and discussed it with a friend, we found interesting that at one point in the game Rinoa is encased in Esthar in a Adel-esque fashion because of the sorceress powers. Then Squall took the path to rescue her and she made it a point during a later discussion (can't remember the point of the game) that in the end she expected him to do so. Had Squal not done so (as he originally wasn't), Rinoa could have been in suspended animation for whatever time is needed, developing a (justified) grudge against SEE Ds and longing for the Knight Who Never Came. And there is a specific crisis point, close to the end of Disk 2, where Rinoa's mindset seems to be much alike what Ultimecia is stated to desire — in particular, something about not wanting for time to pass if Squall was not around. Pretty much what one may feel trapped IN SPACE forever, seeing that Adel him/herself was mostly partly conscious most of the time (Disc 1). Long story short, Alternate Universe Rinoa.
    • That assumes that "sealing" a sorceress the way Esthar does stops them from aging, and there's no evidence that's the case. In addition, the FFVIII world's model for time travel doesn't seem to allow for alternate timelines, what with the Stable Time Loop - everything that happens, time travel shenanigans and all, happens in a single timeline, instead of anything being altered or any branch timelines forming as a result of future characters' influence on the past.
    • I doubt anything ages when it's placed in suspended animation inside of a cryo-capsule. Besides, Adel managed to survive up in space without food or water, first and foremost, and she was already old enough (at the point in which she was sealed) to consider getting an heir. If the sealing didn't stop a Sorceress from aging, it would raise the problem of how Adel can even move after seventeen years of inaction. All she'd be fit to do at that point would be to pass on her powers to the next person in line.
• That and most of the remaining evidence is circumstancial and requires some serious Alternate Character Interpretation.
• Rinoa said she could see what was going on in Ultimecia's head while she was possessed. Shouldn't Rinoa have been able to figure it out from that? But she says nothing about it.
  • Edea also had quite a bit of exposure to Ultimecia's thought processes and also doesn't say anything to indicate that Ultimecia is Rinoa or that there might be any issues that would come from Squall being Rinoa's knight; if anything, she encourages them.
  • Additionally, Ultimecia has no problems trying to off Squall and Rinoa both several times each, something that she shouldn't want to do if she's the future Rinoa having a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum over losing Squall. Arguing that she's too crazy to recognize either of them doesn't really fly since she is aware enough to recognize Squall as "the legendary SeeD destined to face me" and, if not sane, at least functional enough to get herself made Galbadian ambassador and put into a position from which to take over.

Reading into Ultimecia's last lines before her defeat suggests abandonment issues very much like Squall's... and as Squall's epic Heroic BSOD in the end FMV sequence illustrates, he's not the sanest guy around.

• ....facepalm

Why not?

Taking this WMG to its logical conclusion.

Well, it would explain all of the Foe Yay she had with Squall in Dissidia...

Just look at her Limit Break, it's got insanely powerful spells nobody else can use!

• The damning evidence comes up in disc 4 - Ultimecia's first lines are "Seed, Seed, SEED!" just like Selphie after passing the SeeD exam.

He can make people invincible, survive blowing up, and can follow his master anywhere. This may also account for why Rinoa has higher natural stats than anyone else.

• Jossed by the game itself; the tutorial mentions something about regular animals being affected by the moon. It is admittedly a Hand Wave as to why Angelo can use magic, however.
  • Not really a handwave. Angelo is not unique in it's abilities. Rinoa teaches Angelo these abilities through the use of Pet Pals magazines, which may only affect her in regards to gameplay but exist for anyone with a close bond to their dog. Rinoa's Limit is called Combine after all, she's mixing her power with Angelo's, creating powerful effects, just like every other character. It's no different than Squall's limits being different depending on which version of a gunblade he's using. Also note that Angelo's abilities are much less impressive when not combining with Rinoa (find an item, use a phoenix down, attack someone that attacks Rinoa, etc.)

She became mute after the incident which forced her to wear an eyepatch, its somewhat painful to use which is why she normally uses Hulk Speak but if focussed can talk for a minute or two.

• There's one bit where she talks normally, monologuing and lamenting about the Error Of Their Ways.

Before you tell me that we already have that one, let me explain. See, the theory discussed above and the one that often comes back during discussions about FFVIII is that Rinoa outlives Squall and therefore becomes evil, but as stated above, it doesn't work considering sorceress have normal lifespans. So I thought about looking at the theory the other way: in the future, Ultimecia becomes a sorceress, she goes insane due to not having found a knight, and decides to start the time compression. However, in order to successfully achieve her plan, she needs to go back in time (and the game does mention that she needs some way to influence the past). This is how she creates Rinoa, a version of herself centuries in the past. Rinoa doesn't know this, either because Ultimecia erased her memory to avoid suspicions, or due to some other contrived magical glitch. Karma comes back to bite her in the ass when her past version joins the SeeD to destroy her.

So essentially, Rinoa doesn't become Ultimecia, she always was, but she doesn't know it. By the way, following that logic, Adel is probably another past version of Ultimecia as well, and the whole brainwashing thing makes even more sense: Adel was obviously evil, and that led to her... him... it being frozen and sent into space. So to prevent this from happening again, she made sure Rinoa doesn't remember her original purpose (she doesn't have to as it is stated in the game Ultimecia only needs to temporarily take over her body for the time compression to work). Heck, that may even explain the importance of love in the scenario: Ultimecia made Rinoa hunt for a knight to make sure she wouldn't go insane after becoming a sorceress and be stopped before Ultimecia could possess her.

• Except the game establishes you can't change the past. That was what Ellone was trying to accomplish by sending the party back to relive Laguna's life, and she says you can't change the past.
  • Well, maybe she did it during the Time Compression, implying that... the entire game is taking place during the Time Compression!
    • The entire story actually taking place during the ending sequence? Why does that sound so familiar?

It preserves everything truly tragic about the "Ultimecia is Rinoa" theory, while actually being plausible! So that's where Greiver came from.

• I always liked this idea. I'd imagine she was their grandchild or something and that she had already killed their older versions. We already know that the Guardian Forces destroy/erase your memory if you use it too much. Even Selphie that had only used Guardian Forces only recently as she transferred to Balamb had started losing some of her childhood memories. It is way to plausible to not be true, that the Guardian Forces had something to do with Ultimecia. Remember, she WAS using a Guardian Force herself that she seemed fairly familiar with. So Ultimecia must have forgotten a lot about her past.
  • While she may be a decsendant her being their grandchild is impossible. Edea explains Ultimecia exists many generations into the future, making it impossible to simply wait and deal with her when she shows up. So far into the future that details about their battle with Ultimecia become faded enough that Ultimecia doesn't have enough information to actually win as she could have easily done had she known a few things straigth out (if she'd known Squall was her nemesis she'd have just killed him during the parade instead of saving him for interogation but she doesn't figure it out until her next battle with him).

It's stated in the game that sorceresses need a knight to keep their sanity, and that they can pass on the psychological weight of being a sorceress to their knight. The game shows us that Squall isn't exactly the most psychologically well-adjusted man there is, so if you add the fact that he's now a knight, it isn't hard to believe that his mental health is becoming a wreck. Now, he does seem to get better towards the end of the game, but that's when Rinoa is with him. Before that, she is unconscious and what is the most sensible idea he can think of? LAUNCHING HIMSELF AND HIS LOVE INTO FREAKING SPACE.

Also, his attitude changes a lot towards the end of the game. Of course, many people would say it is due to him finally acknowledging the The Power of Love and The Power of Friendship, but to me, this sudden change in attitude shows that he is losing the control of his own mind.

And then of course, there's the end of the game after the fight against Ultimecia. He can't find Rinoa, which quickly leads him to getting mind raped until he suffers a Heroic BSOD. This seems to show that, due to the pressure of being Rinoa's knight, Squall got "addicted" to her and only feels good when he's around her, but every single moment when he's alone puts him in danger of descending into madness.

Add to this Seifer becoming a shadow of his former self after becoming Edea's knight, and the whole love story gets a really creepy twist.

• Uh, where did they say that bit about passing on the weight?
  • Maybe the quote is different depending on versions (I played the French version), but I'm pretty sure Edea says at some point that sorceresses can release themselves from the psychological weight (or something along those lines) by passing it on to their knight.
    • In the English dialogue what Edea says is that almost all sorceresses in history have been "hand-in-hand" with a knight, and that most sorceresses without knights have ended up using their powers in evil ways. She also says "A knight will present you with peace of mind. He will protect your spirit." She doesn't say anything about passing the stress on to the knight.
    • Uh... just what else do you think "A knight will present you with peace of mind. He will protect your spirit." means?
    • "Having a knight around to protect you will help you feel safer and less stressed out." I certainly don't see anything in the statement "present you with peace of mind and protect your spirit" that necessarily implies directly passing psychological strain from one to the other leading to the insanity that the WMG is suggesting.
    • Because you're taking it too literally, that's why. You don't have to go through some magic ritual to transplant your stress to someone. You just have to lean on them too much and let them take the brunt of it.

When GF's are hanging around loose in a place of their own choosing, they seem to gravitate towards places associated with their abilities—Ifrit in the Fire Cavern, The Brothers underground, Cactuar and Tonberry among their own kind—so snowy Trabia is where Shiva would most likely end up when she's on the loose, but then a monster managed to snag her off. Selphie thought that she let her go far enough from her Garden that nobody would find out about her, but since she was just a kid at the time her idea of "far" wasn't actually all the great of a distance. When Garden officials found Shiva they wouldn't be willing to let her keep living freely in the area since she might attack cadets, but since Trabia Garden doesn't use Guardian Forces they had to ship her off to the only Garden that would make use of her; Balamb. Once she was there they found her surprisingly easy-going about letting human junction her for a GF that, as far as they knew, had been wild, so they felt safe giving her to a cadet as a training GF, and that's how Squall got her.

• "Final Fantasy" was never so literal before.

Dovetailing with the Squall is Dead theory, Squall's party was never meant to succeed in assassinating Edea. Seriously, why would SeeD send fresh-from-training, wet-behind-the-ears cadets on such an important mission? No, much like the protagonists of Spies Like Us, Squall and his party were meant merely as a distraction, claiming the Sorceress' attention so that she would not notice the true threat, coming to her from within her own ranks... Seifer. After Squall was mortally wounded and went into his delirium, Seifer flew into a rage (Hey, he may have bullied Squall, but in the end, they were both SeeD, even if Seifer had to pretend not to be) and slew Edea right then and there. He then rendezvoused with Rinoa, debriefed her group, and they all mourned their fallen comrade together. Seifer and Rinoa went on to live a long and happy life together.

• But Squall has the GFs. Plus, he beat Seifer in the duel right before Edea. If Edea can beat the guy who beat Squall, plus Irvine and Rinoa, how would Seifer win?
  • In the immortal words of Haley, "SNEAK ATTACK!" Also, you're assuming Seifer didn't have a GF of his own, just because he didn't use it on Squall. They're on the same side, remember? Seifer was intentionally holding back.
  • So, Seifer has a secret GF that's undrawable, he's way more powerful than anyone else, and he was always one of the good guys? This isn't WMG, this is just a bunch of Fanwank.
    • Dear boy, what did you think WMG was?
  • Ignoring the Dead All Along aspects, this actually could be plausible with Seifer as a triple agent as well. Meant to carry out a plan like this, but then deciding he likes being a Knight too much to go along with it.

Because causing Squall and co. to panic enough is what was needed to summon Gilgamesh into their world. Cid planned for it to happen while fighting Edea, but it failed. They later panicked enough after seeing Odin bisected.

How long did she have Griever junctioned? There's no telling what she might have forgotten. Maybe her goal wasn't originally to compress time, or maybe she had a different reason to try.

• Always thought Ultimecia created Griever in that fight in an act of psychological warfare on Squall (since Griever was sort of his ideal image of strength and power) and was only junctioned to him for as long as it took you to beat that form.
  • Uh, there was nothing in the game to suggest that.
    • It's suggested by the Scan data, which says (in the English translation) that in Squall's mind, Griever is the most powerful Guardian Force. I seem to recall that the Japanese version of the Scan blurb stated more specifically that Ultimecia created Griever out of Squall's mental image, but I can't find a translation now to doublecheck it.
    • French version says this also; Griever is basically the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. This troper is also informed by a Spanish player that their version said this also. Square Enix do allegedly like their non-English localisations translated directly from Japanese after all.

Okay, try to bear with me. I found this one on GameFAQs. So, Squall and Co. defeat Ultimecia and are hailed as heroes. Now people know that there will be a evil sorceress in the future called Ultimecia. Eventually, this information is lost and found, twisted, and so forth, and people start hunting down sorceresses. This keeps going on and on, like witchhunts. Eventualy, one sorceress snaps: "God damnit, I haven't done anything yet but still you claim I will kill millions of people! FINE! LET'S KILL THEN!" So she starts killing and BECOMES Ultimecia trough her actions. Now, she knows she will be killed, but figures: "Screw you fate, I will win" and goes on with her Time Compression plan. She refuses to acknowledge that history can't be changed and we get our game. This creates a stable time loop, where Ultimecia is defeated, sorceresses are persecuted and eventually one of them snaps, creating Ultimecia.

• Isn't that what actually happens? The ending of the game as is isn't exactly a happy one, after all.
  • Not really. Between Adel, Edea, and others implied before them, this never happened. No reason to believe that fear of something so distant from people would propagate like that so far into the future. Nice Fanon/Fanwank, though.

• Eden derives from the Garden of Eden, which is the ultimate paradise that Adam and Eve were banned from, if the stories are to be believed. The art, which at times suggests a jellyfish, might actually be a futuristic air/space ship - essentially a powered up superversion of the current Garden. And given all the time-traveling themes within the game, the ship might actually be under orders to help the group as a summon in order to keep the stable-time-loop from crashing. Animation does suggest that it appears from a vortex-type hole that closely resembles a supernova/blackhole. (All credit goes to this troper's brother, who claims he saw a version of this once on the internet. Troper does not know where though...).

Maybe cribbing this idea from The Terminator, but check out the future environment. There were dead SeeD soldiers literally within sight of Ultimecia's castle. She had no working defenses, relatively few troops (if you'd even consider the monsters her soldiers) and hell, parts of her castle look like they've been recently bombed by artillery. And she's desperately obsessed with initiating Time Compression. The conclusion is rather interesting: the future SeeDs were on the verge of actually defeating Ultimecia at that point, and she was trying to engage Time Compression to escape inevitable defeat at their hands. Like Skynet sending assassins back to find Sarah Connor, Ultimecia sent herself back to either destroy Garden or find Ellone to engage Time Compression.

Look no further than her Limit Breaks. She starts of with Laser Eyes, and from there learns to generate high frequency sounds, shoot lightning from her heart, fire missiles from her wrists, bullets from her face(!?), homing lasers, an even bigger laser, and whatever Degenerator is. What's more, any of these things she learns by integrating components of the various mechanical enemies faced throughout the game (missiles, laser cannons, power generators). The only conclusion is that Quistis is a partially, if not wholly mechanical being.

• Actually, a number of those abilities are learned by using non-mechanical, i.e, biological items, "Spider's Web" being a good example. This Troper gets the principles of your theory, but Humanoid Abomination or just plain old Lovecraftian Superpower would probably be more accurate.... oh, wait, this is explained in the game by Quistis being a Blue Mage, which is supposed to use enemy abilities. Never mind.

She pretended to be good and manipulated everyone. After the ending she blew up Balamb Garden and took over the world.

In Ultimecia's time period, she spent a lot of time playing the games of the series. However, she believed that all of the games shared a single timeline and constantly tried to formulate one on the series' Wild Mass Guessing page on This Very Wiki. After seeing all of her Epileptic Trees Jossed, it just so happened that Ultimecia received her Sorceress power. The best thing she could think of doing with this power is to make a Final Fantasy chronology herself. Ultimecia then added this WMG: The entire series makes sense because Ultimecia achieved Time Compression. And so she began compressing time to make her theory come true.

She is the only character of the main group who doesn't show a romantic desire for anyone. Squall is paired with Rinoa, Selphie with Irvine and Zell lusts after the girl with the pigtails. It is a long time before Quistis realizes that her feelings for Squall are actually those of a big sister. After that, she displays no interest in romance whatsoever and seems to have a lack of understanding of it in general.

• The girl with the pigtails lusts after Zell, not the other way around. He's fairly oblivious about it unless you do a time consuming and completely skippable sidequest.

After Julia invites Laguna to her room there is a soldier in red (therefor officer) who says he'll post Laguna far away. Next time we see Laguna he has indeed been posted far away. We later learn that Julia married a General Caraway who comforted her after her first love disappeared. No wonder his daughter dislikes him, he's a complete douche.

• Unlikely. The red-armored officers are non-commissioned officers, whereas Caraway was a general when Julia fell in love with and married him. That would require fast-tracking so swiftly that heads would be spinning.
  • Maybe he got ascended so much for getting rid of that loon of Laguna.
    • The gap between NCO and General is a little too wide for that to be plausible.
• Wait, what? Red armored soldiers are only NC Os? How then would that explain Major Biggs and the Galbadian Base Commander, both of whom wear red?

The fact that a sorceress Ultimecia, who hailed from the future, was going to cause death and destruction is something we already know the people of the world know. The fact that she was killed by a gunblade specialist - a very rare trait - would also be carried to the future. So, when Ultimecia saw a man of the right age and using the right weapon to kill her, she thought this would have to be the man - who else knows how to use a gunblade, much less at such a young age? Not to mention that Zell had just said that they were all from Garden - where she knew the man destined to kill her was from.

• Given that Seifer does keep a higher profile than Squall, this one is fairly plausible.

The reason why Squall is so indifferent is because he's figured out the secret to ultimate power in the world of FF 8: playing cards. Actual training is for losers.

• Following this to its logical conclusion, Squall is the FF 8 world's King of Games.

In her time-line, Squall never came back after their defeat of Ultimecia, so she spends the rest of her life waiting for him. He never returns, and over a very long period of time completely forgets who she is and exactly who or what she is looking for, but not her desire to find it. It was supposed to be an unending Stable Time Loop, but Squall defied it during the last cycle and was able to return to Rinoa, breaking the loop forever and making sure that Ultimecia will never exist in the future.

• The game seems to use the You Already Changed The Past model of time travel rather than the "branching timelines" model, though. The Stable Time Loop is, by definition, stable - it's a loop because the past is influenced by the future in a way that is only possible because the past was already influenced by the future, not because anyone has to live through it more than once.

Why not? I mean, think about it. Holds together better than "Zell is Ultimecia."

• Okay then, who revived her? After Advent Children, she looks quite happy to be dead with Zack, Cloud has finally moved on and she's no longer a source of Angst for him, and there's no one else who'd have the motive. And then there's the whole issue of them being in different worlds.

Disc 1 ends with Squall impaled and falling several stories, and later he wakes up uninjured in the Galbadian prison. What happened in between? A mental time travel episode, courtesy of Ellone. Since we know that vital stats, among other things, transfer between Laguna and Squall during these episodes, Ellone managed to save Squall's life by sending his mind into the past before he hit the pavement. Once the junction is established, Squall's life and his health are determined by Laguna's status in the past, rather than his own body, allowing him to survive injuries that should be fatal, and easily make a full recovery because LAGUNA stayed at a Trauma Inn.

• Small correction: Squall was impaled, but ended falling about... a meter, maybe a meter and a half. He only fell from Edea's charriot, which wasn't tall at all.

Sure, they might have passed the exams and proven martial prowress, but you've got Squall who is totally apathetic, Selphie who.... we don't know what's up with her, and Zell, who's too spastic to be reliable on the battlefield. Not quite the "professional" image you want to present. So let's put them on this hopeless mission in a backwoods area where they really can't embarrass us!

Naturally, this being a jRPG, the reject brigade saves the entire universe.

Specifically, around fifteen years or so after the ending, Rinoa's secret of being a Sorceress is revealed to the world. The wounds from the previous Sorceress conflict still not entirely healed, this goes about as well as you'd expect, and most of the world rises up to kill her before she goes Axe Crazy. Squall declares war on the entire world in order to protect her. Sadly, War Is Hell, and no matter how much of a Badass Army he commands, the forces of several entire nations wear them down over a number of years until, eventually, the heroes from the game are pretty much all that's left. As they slowly fall, Rinoa starts edging towards the slope, with Squall as the main force holding her in check. And, once he finally falls, Rinoa finally snaps a la Lucy, unleashes her powers in full, and lays utter waste to every remaining military power in the world.

Rinoa resolves to somehow go back and Set Right What Once Went Wrong, and knows from experience that by achieving Time Compression, she can be with her beloved again. However, she doesn't have the time or experience wielding Time Magic to accomplish this, so she spends the rest of her life researching a way to transfer her mind along with her powers when she dies. In this way, she'll have until the end of time to learn what she needs to. However, she uses the name of the current host Sorceress instead of her own.... and untold generations later a woman by the name of Ultimecia is born... Ultimecia becomes the latest host to Sorceress Rinoa, and it is in this period that she finally figures out how to achieve Time Compression.

However, the White SeeD have been fighting a war of attrition across generations to try and stop this, and they actually come close to winning because Rinultimecia has been occupied with her studies, and only rarely gets involved with the battle herself, normally leaving it to the monsters summoned in repeated Lunar Cries.

Just as she nears her goal, though, Rinultimecia suddenly realizes that Time Compression would be really, really bad - i.e., a Negative Space Wedgie of horrific proportions - and alters her plan at the last minute to using Junction Machine Ellone so that she can Junction herself to her original self. However, Rinultimecia Terrifies Rinoa, which results in something kind of like an Angst Coma. This is when Rinoa's passed out/possessed in Disc Three. Rinultimecia has a stronger will, which means she can move their shared body around, but not enough so that she can move it fluidly, resulting in the Zombie Gait when Rinoa gets up and moves. However, because she can't communicate effectively with Squall or Rinoa to explain what she's doing, everything goes horribly wrong almost when she gets the chance to reunite with her love. Only having what information is available to them, the Five-Man Band surmises that Ultimecia is a villain who must be stopped, but Time Compression is the only way that they can Time Travel to the future and put her down. Once they achieve Time Compression and arrive to kill her, Rinultimecia starts down the road to a Villainous Breakdown. And hey, given that the man she spent who-knows-how-many-centuries trying to reunite with is now actively trying to execute her, can you really blame the poor girl? Still, she sends out her servants to escort the group to her so that she can try to explain in person. In an effort to try and discourage them from fighting, she sealed off their abilities, and the heroes took this completely the wrong way. Come the final battle, Rinultimecia has resorted to using force on the heroes so that she can make them listen to her and, if need be, befriend the hell out of them. Normally, this would be a cakewalk, but she still remembers them as her friends from way, way back in the day, and can't bring herself to use the full extent of her power. The heroes, only knowing one side of the story, don't have such limitations.

Rinultimecia tries everything she can think of to calm the heroes, or at least Squall, down. She creates Griever, the Squall's ideal of strength and pride, as a sort of Trust Password, but Squall doesn't take the bait. She ends up resorting to temporarily removing the other heroes from the timestream to get Squall alone, but he mistakenly believes that his True Companions have been Killed Off for Real, and flips out. Upon realizing that there's no way to make Squall recognize who she is, her heart finally breaks completely, accepts that You Can't Fight Fate, and lets her once and future husband-to-be put her out of her misery after ensuring that all of her magicks will undo themselves upon her death, allowing Squall and past-Rinoa to live Happily Ever After.... but only for a time.

To summarize: Ultimecia is basically a fusion of the Diclonius Lucy and Gendo Ikari, whose methodology is a less monstrous take on that of Master Xehanort.

Addendum: This also explains the Foe Yay in Dissidia - because of the war of the gods, Ultimecia has forgotten the exact nature of her feelings about Squall, but still remembers that they were quite strong, and would act accordingly... if only she could remember if it were love or hate....

• What's your explanation for Ultimecia's attempts to kill Rinoa in the past?
  • Original poster here: Rinultimecia remembered how those attempts had made her original self stronger as well as being important points in her relationship with Squall, and had to ensure that it was a Stable Time Loop until she saw an opportunity to drive everything Off the Rails.
    • But if that's the case, why wouldn't she also remember that her past self would be terrified of and resist her, and that her efforts would result in Squall fighting against and trying to kill her? Why is she coherent enough to make a whole New Era Speech in disc 1 and verbally identify Squall as "the legendary SeeD destined to face me" in disc 2, but not enough to try to communicate to him that she is in fact Rinoa and just trying to reunite with him?
    • OP: <raises hand and opens mouth, promptly shuts it> .... Beat Hrm. That..... is a really good point. I'll get back to you on that one. EDIT: Rinultimecia herself had forgotten about the whole Future Me Scares Me thing, the speech was Edea mistaking Rinultimecia for an actual villain and trying in vain to orchestrate a Heroic Sacrifice/Taking You with Me by painting a big red target on herself. Throwing her consciousness back in time used up a lot of Rinultimecia's concentration, so she wasn't able to adequately explain herself to Edea, and that was her making those remarks. Edea was genuinely under the impression that Rinultimecia was villainous, she was trying to do what she thought was right as best she could in her situation. Yes, there were probably better ways of handling it, but by the time of the battle with Edea in Disc 2, Ultimecia is only just then reawakening. However, after seeing how royally Edea has screwed up her plans, and also (re-)learning that Time Compression would be The End of the World as We Know It, she decides on the Sharing a Body plan with her past self. However, as mentioned before, Rinultimecia unintentionally terrifies Rinoa, who promptly shuts down, which leads back to the original post.

Feeding off the theory that Final Fantasy VII is the same world of Final Fantasy III mentioned above, it is possible that during her quest for power Ultimecia learned of the powers of the Void and tried to harness them to amplify her powers. However, the void consumed her original power-hungry personality. As the Dark Cloud is just a physical manifestation of the Void concerned only with returning all existence back to its natural state, possessing Ultimecia would make her knowledge one with the natural desires of the Void. Compressing time would be a means to turn all back to the Void before the universe was even born.

Going off on a tangent here.

Adel died nearly eighteen years ago. It never says when she goes mad, specifically, just that she suddenly starts recruiting girls to pass her powers onto. So say that she got pregnant with Seifer. It never says that Sorceressess have children and maybe since Seifer's the only one who uses Chi/Ki in the group, he has a notable relation to a sorceress. Adel loses her husband, which is what makes her snap. Saying that Alexander is her husband's name, she goes entirely batty when her son is born and it seems to be a still birth (AKA dead, like her husband). She leaves her child alone and Ifrit decides to save his life, thus his fire affinity. Odin at some point had decided to make Alexander Almasy a Guardian Force (GF) out of sympathy, which gave him and his kid (Seifer, who had yet to be born at the time) immunity to his attacks. Ultimecia found out Seifer's heiratage, and by that point in the far, far future, they had learned about Sorceresses's children enough to ID Seifer as one (considering Squall and Rinoa have a kid, if you follow canon), which labels a massive targent on Seifer's back, because Sorceress born children are suceptible to Sorceress magic more than the norm. Thus, Seifer is a child of a sorceress and this whole mess could have been averted had Seifer never been born.

• That's rather cruel of you, but ignoring that, what do you call Zell's Limit Break? Meteo Barret and My Final Heaven in particular look a lot like Ki Attacks.
• Zell could be a child of a sorceress, but he had mental stability in the form of a family, which Seifer was lacking. Also, Seifer is the only one to specifically be stated to have a physical manifestation of his Chi/Ki. All fighters have Chi/Ki.
  • And what scene would that be, specifically stating that Seifer has a physical connection to his Ki?
  • The creators did. While it might not be true, it's taken as truth. Hence my assumption. I have nothing against Seifer, personally, but if a sorceress had attempted to recruit all of them, then why did Seifer fall first?

It'd be interesting. Let's see how:

• He kills Odin.
• He is capable of fighting the group, but is obviously holding back.
• He's named after Final Fantasy VII Sephy 'Safer'/Seifer Sephiroth who is 'God am I' and stuff.

Final Fantasy VII

WildMassGuessing/Video Games

Final Fantasy IX