WMG / Final Fantasy VIII

Monsters in D-District Prison

During the breakout, an announcement is made that monsters will be released on every floor, the anti-magic field will be lifted, and all cell doors will be OPENED! The first two make a kind of sense: guards may need magic to stop the escapees, and monsters are generally fast efficient predators. But why open the cell doors? Maybe its because there's been a recent violent regime change and whatever officials that still have jobs under Edea want to ghost as many political prisoners as possible in the chaos. The breakout was just a convenient excuse.

The entire plot is the developers being trolls

There are two separate but very virulent theories concerning what is happening in the story: (1) That Squall might be dead (or dying), and the entire story is an increasingly surreal Dying Dream, and (2) that Rinoa became Ultimecia, either in a Stable Time Loop or as in some alternate reality.

In fact these two theories feed nicely into each other, so I'll tell you a master theory before shooting both out of the water, because as I say, this is really about the devs being punks.

The story went as follows up to disk one. Then Squall gets killed by Edea, apparently because there is no mark on his body. Everything gets weird from there on. You know, flying Garden, weird critters, time travel, all of that is Squall losing it. Meanwhile, Rinoa snaps and goes evil. Her sorceror's powers awaken, and alot of stuff happens in rapid succession. In a parallel universe, Squall has died already, and time compresses with others where he "survived" long enough to see Ultimecia. This explains why he has to fight the Griever GF, and why during the long cutscene at the end, he suddenly collapses, he realizes everything is not real and he's dead.

But wait! He's not dead at all! The Power of Love triumphs, and it turns out he's just been crazy all of this time. We see him alive, we see everyone on the Garden goofing about. Yay! Everything is cool. But wait... is he perhaps dead after all? On camera, the film runs out before Squall is actually seen alive, and Rinoa could be hanging out with Seifer. The scene with Squall happens off-camera.

So which is it? Who knows? They made it deliberately ambiguous.

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.
  • This is a stretch.
• 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.
  • The Tower of Owen was being attacked, which is why the floating contient was in danger of falling, not because it "needed" maintence.
• 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.
  • Just because they are both made out of Crystal does not mean they are the same structure. Further more the Crystal Pillar came from the moon,, and at no point in FFIII is it suggested that the Crystal Tower can draw monsters from the moon.
  • The other lunar cry crater, located on the planet's southern continent, roughly corresponds to the location of Doga's Manor on FFIII's map. This may allude to a civilization that grew up around the manor attempting to experiment with magic much like their namesake and obliterating their own civilization in the process.
• 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.
  • Firstly, it does not bear any resemblance to sorceress powers in general, never mind a "distinct" one. Secondly, 2 of the 3 powerful wizards that were mentioned are male.
• 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.
  • There are 0 similarities between both Hynes outside of their shared name. FFIII Hyne did not have people to enslave (he was a court Magician not a king) and FFVIII Hyne did not enslave his people, he created them cause he was lazy and found there were too many when he woke up so he culled them. He was also not defeated period (nevermind by children). When FFVIII Hyne awoke he killed children to lower the amount of people, which caused the adults to rebel against him. When FFVIII!Hyne realized he was losing, he tried to make peace by offering the people half his power (though he tricked them) and then fled.
• 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.
    • Or the crystals turned into the lifestream and the world of FFIII is the same as FFVII. It's easy to make connections when we can make anything happen without any basis for it in the games.
  • 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.
  • Is this world the only one where it's possible to be 8:15/3:40?
• You can say Unei's mastery over dreams is in tandem with Ellone's power to transfer one's consciousness into the past.
  • No; no you can't. Even if they were remotely similar, would that mean the fact that the "Fire" spell is in both games also makes them take place in the same world?
• 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.
  • There is a Thief in FFI & FFVI. Connection confirmed?
• 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.
  • No she doesn't; Time Compression is her end game; she needs the power of other sorceresses in order to make it a reality.
• 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.
    • It's not irrelevant at all, the response is. The point was "there is no orphanage reveal in FFIII", saying enough time has passed where the building wouldn't exist anymore in no way addresses this.
• Ultimecia's castle appears to reside in an interdimensional Void, similar to that of the Dark World
  • Wrong. Her castle exists in the future. The reason it appears to exist in a Void is because you are in the middle of Time Compression when you get there. You can leave her castle and see the effect TC is having on the world.
• Nobody mentioned this yet, but the city of Dollet used to be a massive empire that has since fallen. In it's similar location on the FF3 map, the largest kingdom in the world can be found.
  • And?
• Speaking of Dollet, there's a restaurant called 'The Nautilus' perhaps named after the airship in III
  • Mysidia is a town located in FFII & FFIV; does that mean those two take place in the same world?
  • Why is it that "enough time has passed between both games where anything that would disprove this theory changed", yet somehow the name of an already ancient and forgotten airship is not lost to time?

Rinoa becomes Ultimecia.

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 Companions 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"?
    • Because it solves the moral issues that the ending presents. Also, it's not necessarily a better ending (that's up to individual opinion), but it does make more sense in terms of the time loop. Ultimecia comes to exist in the future anyway, which means either some persecuted Sorceress took the name intentionally (meaning that Rinoa and Edea had absolutely no impact on how Sorceresses are perceived), or some future idiot named their daughter after the prophesied villain (the knowledge of whom is held exclusively by people involved with a military organization that was founded for the express purposes of destroying her before she was born). A Rinoa who destroys herself over her obsession with reliving the golden days of her youth fits in far better with the story's themes about letting go of the past, accepting growth and change, and embracing the future, where with Ultimecia, it's more like "The ends justify the means, because time travel! No, really, they totally do. Ultimecia is absolutely going to kill a ton of people when she lashes out at society for persecuting her, but she gives Rinoa her sweet magic powers and gets defeated, so hey, it's all good."
    • First, those aren't moral issues, that's being hung up on the fact Ulty still comes into being hasn't been avoided. Second you didn't solve anything other then change Nameless Girl from unspecified point in the future always becomes Ulty and wrecks the future to Crazy Rinoa always becomes Ulty and wrecks the future. Three, if you look up history of the world, it has been shaped by Evil or Good Sorceresses using their powers either for the benefit or detriment of mankind. Balamb was liberated from Dollet due to a Sorceress. Paramagic was developed due to a Sorceress. You are also assuming nothing ever happens between Rinoa and how many generations it takes to get to Ulty. A string of Adel 2.0s might come along and ruin any good will peaceful sorceresses like Edea and Rinoa worked for and plunged the world into World Sorceress War 2 thus the hate isn't stupidly forgotten, it's completely justified. Ulty is still completely responsible for being enemy number one cause she caved to the hate which fits the irony of Ulty ultimately creates her own sworn enemy.
  • 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 Squall 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 SEEDs 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.
    • You're making a lot of assumptions about technology that's entirely fictional here. Why wouldn't a sorceress still get old in the "tomb"? Who said she wasn't fed and hydrated in some way? Adel could've easily been a young adult at the time of being sealed, and pushing 40 by the start of the actual game. As for inaction affecting movement, there's nothing to say it would cause disabling weakness in a sorceress of her power! If wounds can be healed so easily as the cast of a spell, I see no reason to assume this problem couldn't.
• 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.
  • On the other hand (and sorry about the wall of text), while Rinoa and Edea both gain some exposure to Ultimecia's thought processes, it's unclear just how much exposure they gain or how detailed/accurate their impressions are, and whether or not they only know what Ultimecia *wants* them to know. Her plan does seem a little bit... fishy, when you look at it from the perspective of a Stable Time Loop and her stated goal of Time Compression - Ultimecia gets killed by Squall + co, at the last minute goes back in time and passes her powers on to Edea, Edea passes her powers plus Ultimecia's on to Rinoa, and so on, until the power reaches Ultimecia again, who tries to compress time, fails, and goes back to pass her powers on to Edea and dies... again. Even though Edea and Cid are the ones who start the SeeD and Garden projects and raise/train the very heroes who grow up to defeat her. So why, after the first loss, would Ultimecia not, say, go back to Adel instead of Edea, or avoid Edea and start with Rinoa, or something along those lines? Ultimecia in Dissidia has a cold and calculating personality, which fits with her descriptions in VIII; if a group of heroes proved capable of defeating her, why wouldn't she modify her time-travel plans to avoid them next time? The only thing I can think of is that either she can't change her plans because her time-travel abilities are too fixed or already set in motion, or, alternately, because we're wrong about what her real aims are. At one point, Rinoa basically tells Squall that if she goes evil and has to be killed, she would be content if Squall was the one to kill her. At another point, she tells Squall that she doesn't want the future, that she's afraid of it, that all she wants is to live in the present with Squall forever. And what do we know about Ultimecia? She's trying to compress all of time, and it seems like Squall is always involved with her final moments (as he's the one who goes back in time with her to tell Edea to start SeeD). Plus there are a myriad of little mysteries in the game - how did Squall survive getting impaled with a magical icicle by Ultimecia-as-Edea? If Ultimecia needs Rinoa to survive to pass her powers along to her descendants so that it can eventually reach her again (or because they're the same person), why try and kill her so damn often? But if we dismiss the supposition that this is a stable time loop, that doesn't work either, because some things need to happen every time for the events of the game to make sense (namely Ultimecia's death + time jump, and Squall's going back with her and getting the ball rolling on SeeD). Those are the same events that cause Ultimecia's downfall. Why would she let them repeat, then? Well, if she's Rinoa, it would be because she wants everything to go the same way. So hypothetically, let's say the Squall dies at some point after Ultimecia's defeat - maybe ten years or so. Grieving, and without Squall around to be her knight, Rinoa begins to lose her stability, and consents to being put into stasis so that she can neither pass her powers on to anyone else nor use them herself to cause harm, but also so that she can escape her own pain. This lasts until she is woken up; possibly on purpose, possibly by accident, maybe by an ambitious new sorceress looking to steal her powers or a government that wants to use her as a weapon... there are lots of options. Awake, Rinoa is consumed more and more by her bitterness; FFVIII's world is not kind to sorceresses, after all, and at this point not only Squall but all of her friends and family are dead and beyond helping her. So what does a bitter, powerful sorceress who is obsessed with the past fixate on? Time travel, of course! Initially Rinoa's goal is to find a way to somehow warp time so that she can live, forever, in the moments where she was happy. Thus, recalling Ultimecia's plans, she looks into ways of compressing time to suit her own purposes. At some point in her quest for power over time, however, the lightbulb goes on and Rinoa looks into the mirror on morning and realizes, uh, wait a minute, time compression, powerful sorceress from the future... that's Ultimecia staring back at her. Rather than freaking out, however, (or maybe after a violent and dramatic freak-out) Rinoa/Ultimecia realizes that this was her fate all along. She has become what she was once the most frightened of becoming, but in the end, she can still dictate one last aspect of her fate to comfort herself - her death. She can accept her end if it's Squall who gives it to her, but the only way she can meet Squall again is to go back in time, and if she becomes Ultimecia she knows she will successfully go back in time and get killed by Squall. And maybe there's a little bit of comfort for her as well in knowing that by creating the stable time-loop, in a way, the happy moments of her life will last forever because they will always be destined to repeat themselves, over and over again, in every cycle. So she adopts the role of the villain she remembers, going through events, giving Squall and the others reason to kill her (yet, conveniently, never actually killing them even when she successfully impales the ultimate source of her downfall and has him enough at her mercy to subsequently imprison him), playing the part of the SeeD-hating power-hungry monster (which isn't difficult, because she's mostly filled with bitter anger and hatred anyway) until Squall unwittingly grants her request and is the one to kill her. Then she dies with some oddly subdued parting words about reflecting on memories and the cruel, inevitable march of time, passing her power back on to Edea to make sure things go exactly the same way again, and guaranteeing that the cycle with start anew and grant both of her wishes - eternity with Squall, and an end by his hands.
  • That doesn't quite serve as a motivator - this "in some way the happy moments will last forever" stuff. SHE will never again be happy, if she is Ultimecia and about to be killed. And if she's rational-minded enough to reason as you are doing, where did that rationality come from? I thought, according to the theory, she had gone INSANE? At this point, seeing as how the Ultimania has confirmed that sorceresses' lifespans are no different than other humans' (and we've been given no reason to believe anything - including the "tomb" the Estharians built for Adel - has the ability of making someone live forever), we've canon to support the idea that Rinoa is NOT Ultimecia and just more added theories to support the alternative.
• A new theory doing the rounds is that Square were going for the Rinoa is Ultimecia plotline when making FFVIII but changed it last moment as they considered that this would make the tone of the game too tragic, when Square has a history of games with positive endings and resolutions - this can be seen as to what happened to the game Xenogears, and one of the writers for that game Soraya Saga confirmed it. This seems to be the tone in JRPG creation; Final Fantasy creator Sakaguchi was ordered by Nintendo to change The Last Story's plot for being too depressing. Furthermore Square denied the theory in Ultimania, but then in Dissidia gave Ultimecia's weapons the same names as Rinoa's in FFVIII! Whatever you think of it being real or not, you can see why R=U has lived on in the fandom despite the 'debunking'; it is an attractive theory that add tragedy and weight to the plot and development to Ultimecia's character (although if you want to have a happy ending you could subscribe to the theory that Ultimecia is from an alternate timeline which is broken and doesn't occur on her defeat so they get their happily ever after).
  • The weapons in Dissidia have nothing to do with anything beyond the fact that Rinoa was the only sorceress they could base off to make exclusive weapons for Ultimecia. And if you check the items list, you can see they also gave Kuja the Whale Whisker, which originally was one of Dagger's best weapons in FFIX, and they gave several of Wakka's weapons, including his ultimate, to Tidus.
• The easiest way to reconcile the game's happy ending with the dark "Rinoa becomes the ultimate enemy" theory is simply that she could have became Ultimecia but ultimately did not in the final loop (the events of the game).
  • Ultimecia possesses Edea, setting the plot into motion
  • Rinoa absorbs both Edea and Adel's powers
  • The party battles Ultimecia and wins
  • Ultimecia goes back in time and gives up her powers to Edea, and dies
  • Squall never makes it back from time compression, Rinoa tries to save him but fails
  • Rinoa devotes her life trying to find a way to save him, eventually loses herself in the process and only subconsciously remembers what her real desire is, and becomes Ultimecia
  • This loop happens a massive amount of times, with the sorceress powers compounding from each transfer to Edea after her death
  • In the final loop, Rinoa succeeds in her attempt at the end of the game to save Squall, through possibly thousands of loops worth of sorceress powers within her
  • This Rinoa never becomes Ultimecia and the Bad Future is prevented
• Definitively Jossed in an interview with Yoshinori Kitase, who states that Rinoa and Ultimecia are similar because they're both sorceresses, but are not the same person.
  • I invoke Death of the Author then. That the producers feel that's not what happened has no bearing on what "really" happened. We have a number of reasons that a person who wants to can believe that it is her: (1) Ultimecia using Griever, Squall's keychain as a GF, (2) an area where time is sufficiently compressed to allow a sorceror several generations later (among the complaints of this theory above) in a much smaller timeframe, (3) people with the actual ability to send others mentally back in time, (4) an extended cutscene where Squall is lost in a wasteland away from the others which ends with a series of images and Squall's dead body (that flurry of feathers when Rinoa embraces him, happens for phoenix down) before the ending is over, and (5) Ultimecia saying some really creepy stuff that seems to have no connection with anything if we merely think of her as an unknown villain. (5b) In fact, Ultimecia without this wrinkle becomes a Generic Doomsday Villain with a Funetik Aksent, which makes no sense given a game that had a great deal of effort spent on other characters. In fact, if one considers that this is in fact Rinoa, the above accent becomes all the more interesting since the later version of the boss drops the accent entirely in the quotes below (implying this is her playacting to keep Squall from recognizing her). It's probably not Rinoa now (which would make this a Stable Time Loop), but rather an alternate dimension version of her. The quotes below of Ultimecia seem to suggest this, mentioning time as if at one point someone's time together ran out:
  "Reflect on your... Childhood..."
  "Your sensation... Your words... Your emotions..."
  "Time... It will not wait..."
  "No matter... ...how hard you hold on. It escapes you..."

  • These lines could be attributed to Ultimecia having a story of her own that was alluded in the speeches she did while in Edea's body and that has absolutely nothing to do with Rinoa (a future sorceress that was subject to hatred, fear and constant persecution until she snapped and became evil, seeing how the anti-sorceress sentiment is strong already in the period the game takes place). Also, invoking Death of the Author out of pettiness and making up evidence for this theory based on circular reasoning only serves to undermine it further.

Squall becomes Ultimecia.

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
  • I refuse to accept this. Not once does Ultimecia ever say "Whatever."

Quistis becomes Ultimecia.

Why not?

Zell becomes Ultimecia.

Taking this WMG to its logical conclusion.

Seifer becomes Ultimecia.

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

SELPHIE becomes Ultimecia!!

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.

• In the words of Ultimecia, booyaka.

Irvine becomes Ultimecia.

Just because.

Ellone is Ultimecia

After the war, Galbadia declared war on SeeD since Vinzer Deling was killed by Edea (from their POV). Rinoa is picked off early, so Squall is emotionally compromised. Ellone discovers a sudden boost in power, and she tries to alter events. This repeatedly does not work. One of her attempts has her try to save Rinoa, but all this does is allow Rinoa to pass on her powers to Ellone. Due to weird paradoxes, this is why Ellone can interfere with time travel. Eventually, Ellone gives up on altering history, but this future results in Garden being taken over and Sorceresses hunted. Squall and co. try to stop this, but they die protecting Edea/Ellone from their former SeeD comrades. Ellone is taken over by an obsessive hatred of SeeD, and the madness makes her Ultimecia over time.

The guy standing guard at the Balamb Garden turnstiles becomes Ultimecia.

Because apparently SOMEONE in the game has to!

• This WMG makes me want tv tropes to have some sort of like system.

Angelo is a Guardian Force.

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.)

Fujin uses a voice synthesiser

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.
  • This troper once read a theory about Raijin and Seifer having dared a much-younger Fuijin to drink some toxic substance to prove herself to them. This resulted in damaged vocal cords/trachea; thus for a time speaking would be both painful (necesitating short phrases unless it was truly important) and very quiet until the injury healed (Hence the CONSTANT ALL CAPS; she's used to having to shout to make herself heard!)

Rinoa is Ultimecia in the past.

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?
    • Actually, it could be. The opening scene has The Promise from much later in the game, the dry cracked terrain and Rinoa standing near the field from the ending scene, black wings around Rinoa (you have to stop the motion a bit to see it, it is right after Squall gets hit and strikes back), along with scenes from disk one. Then we see when Squall swings the blade a ton of images in rapid succession. Sorta like the game is a time compression flashback.
  • Actually, the game never establishes that you can't change the past, it establishes that Ellone can't change the past, she can only view it. It never says that sorceresses can't screw with time. In fact, the very idea of compressing time, along with the fact of Ultimecia possessing anyone in the past, whether Edea, Adel or whomever, means that sorceresses have to be able to change it. Stable Time Loop? Possibly; but such loops are caused by the future affecting the past to cause itself to happen, all the same.
• So we're just giving Ultimecia the power to create souls now? Where did the game establish that she can do this?

Ultimecia is a descendent of Squall and Rinoa

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

• This is becoming way too obvious reaching. Why are we trying so hard to connect Ultimecia with Rinoa again? To explain Griever? We already HAVE an explanation for Griever! Griever is a GF constructed by Squall’s own imagination… “drawn” from his mind, one might say. This is hinted at in the American release but made much more solid in the Japanese version, because it goes on to say that Griever gets more powerful the stronger Squall imagines it to be.
• 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).

Squall is going insane.

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.

The GF Selphie found when she was a kid was Shiva.

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.

Squall Is Dead

• "Final Fantasy" was never so literal before.
  • Squall even realizes it in the Time Compression. Note the flashing scenes, and their choice, certain things don't add up and he actually has an Oh, Crap! moment when he realizes this is a Dying Dream. The ending might be a subversion of it though, having Rinoa decide she actually loves him and either save him or... tie in with the above Rinoa Ultimecia time loop.
• Officially Jossed by Yoshinori Kitase in his Kotaku interview: "I think he was actually stabbed around the shoulder area, so he was not dead."
  • There's really no evidence for that theory. The end cutscene could just as easily be him passing out from the emotional exhaustion of all these disturbing images and thoughts clouding his frantic mind, as he panics because he can't focus enough to pull himself out. People try and say that the very end of it is his version of heaven, but why would Raine be dead... in heaven, while Seifer is alive and happy?
  • Jossed by looking at the details of the scene that shows Squall being stabbed. The ice shard didn't even hit any vital organs. So while he would pass out from excessive bloodloss, he would still be able to make it out fine, considering that Seifer would have also wanted him in top condition before he started torturing him.
    • Refer to Annoying Arrows as to why this is not the case. Also, the icicle he is stabbed with is roughly the length of an average sapling, and the diameter of an average Wii U. If he was hit in the shoulder (there's a video, he wasn't), his arm would be blown off. Actually, the only place he could have been hit and have all his body (relatively speaking) intact is his torso, meaning somewhere from his chest to his stomach now has a hole the size of a trash can pushing his organs out, and Squall will definitely die from blood loss as the ice melts. The average bullet is about the diameter of a finger, making this about 10x as wide and as tall, plus Squall is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, not to mention a severe case of frostbite. Now, it may be possible Rinoa (or Edea) saved him by healing the wound in time. But saying "there's really no evidence for that theory" means someone probably didn't look at the website. It has more stuff than just that. While it has been Jossed, fans can still invoke Death of the Author and decide this shoulder explanation doesn't add up.
    • We're talking about a setting where magic can heal wounds in an instant, and where magic resistance is a thing too. So him dying to Edea's attack doesn't really make sense, especially seeing how the intention was to torture him afterwards to pry info out of him.

Squall is dreaming the entire game, and the rest of the party is trying to perform Inception on him.

• A new spin on the whole "Squall is dead" theory, where each disc is a different dream level. Each one gets progressively less realistic. Squall had been affected by some emotional trauma early in his life (represented in the dream by the loss of Ellone), and this operation is going forward to try and reverse some of the damage. The GF-induces-memory-loss point is made to smooth over the fact that one is not always cognizant of their own memories while dreaming.
• Naturally, there is no way to refute any kind of "It's ALL ____ imagination!" theory. Even in the "real world", we cannot prove we're not really in 'The Matrix'... That being said, I find no appeal to this theory.
  • Irvine is Cobb. He is the person who breaks the whole "you actually know everyone" as a Mr. Charles gambit, and is responsible for much of the Info Dump in the 2nd dream level/disc.
  • Zell is the second in charge. While a bit more hotheaded than Arthur, he is responsible for evoking Squall's existing emotional apathy so that it can be subtly altered.
  • Quistis is analogous to Eames. A master forger, she creates the identity of Rinoa as a means to induce some kind of emotional reaction. Up until the first appearance of Edea in the Timber studio, Quistis and Rinoa are never on the screen at the same time, after which Rinoa is merely a projection of Squall's mind (like Browning). Quistis flirtations with Squall early in disc 1 are the initial attempts to create the Rinoa character, and once the projection takes hold, Quistis makes no further attempt to woo Squall.
  • Selphie is Ariadne, the architect to construct the dream. She knows her way around the world fairly well, and is a very intelligent person, albeit inexperienced with the dream world concept at the time.
  • Laguna, Kiros, and Ward represent the Saito figure in the whole operation. Laguna may or may not actually be Squall's father, but obviously has some connection to Squall. Mostly stays in the background as an observer, but steps into action if needed.
  • Edea, Adel, and Ultimecia are different forms of Mal, getting progressively more warped in appearance and power the deeper the party goes, constantly trying to derail the plan by killing Rinoa (the "sacrifice" in disc 1, rendering her comatose at the end of disc 2, using Rinoa as a Human Shield while in her Adel form). Irvine's hesitation to shoot Edea in disc 1 mirror's Cobb's inability to shoot Mal.
    • Edea reappears in disc 3, but is a shell of her former power, because this time it is another projection of Squall's mind using a form he has recently seen, taking the place of Rinoa in the party as a comatose Rinoa cannot provide the emotional feedback that Squall needed at that point.

Squall's party was never meant to succeed

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.

• Cid and Martine wanted Squall and whoever he happened to be traveling with to lead the attack... because Squall was the one who had met with Edea before Garden was even thought of, and gave her the idea in the first place. He said "We had defeated her" (referring to the sorceress dying right in front of Edea). She identifies him as the future Squall and thereby concludes that the little boy Squall (also present) is destined to grow up and defeat this sorceress. While conveying all of this to Cid as Garden is established, they determine that Squall must be present for any and all confrontations with the sorceress who has just given Edea her powers and may possess her at any time. This is why so much seems to revolve around Squall and giving him mad amounts of authority left and right. They have no idea WHEN it will happen, but Squall is destined to fight her as an older teen/young adult. That's all they know. As for the rest of your theory, there is no reason to think Disc 2 onwards is some sort of dream Squall is having. None.
• 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.
  • If I recall correctly, when the party is facing NORG, he states that they weren't supposed to be used for the assassination at all, and instead were used by Martine to carry out the assassination in a failsafe plan that, if it failed, Balamb Garden and SeeD would be held responsible and not Galbadia Garden. They just happened to have arrived at Galbadia Garden at the time and were used.
  • That's what NORG thought, because he had told Martine to do it all and leave Balamb Garden (the one he considered "HIS" Garden) out of it. But Cid and Martine held true to the original purpose of Garden as an organization, which was to defeat "the sorceress", not make money and sit on it perfectly safe while the rest of the world is conquered all around them.

Squall's party was supposed to get in over their head.

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.

Ultimecia doesn't remember what she was trying to accomplish in the first place.

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.

Ultimecia was born because Squall and co. defeated her.

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.
    • "No reason to believe?" There's definitive proof:SeeD still exists in Ultimecia's time and they're storming the castle, and Ultimecia talks about being hated or persecuted herself. You can't establish an entire army of child soldiers and set them to the sole task of defeating a Sorceress and still say there's no agenda against Sorceresses for Ultimecia to be mad at. There is one, and there's been one, since long before she was born.
    • Nope. Look at the SeeDs before the plot starts. They're doing the job for many reasons- including money, ethics, homelessness, personal idiosyncrasies, and/or glory- but not to beat up Sorceresses. They're not hardened inquisitors, they're mercenaries who like to have fun and slack off like any normal person. They like doing their job, definitely, but not for sadistic reasons. It just gets them the money and stability they need to pursue their actual hobbies.

Eden is actually a future version of the Garden

• 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...).

Ultimecia was trying to initiate Time Compression because she was losing.

Maybe cribbing this idea from 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.

• This ones not too far fetched if you take into account Ulty's main line of defense and her rant about SeeD. Her guardian's are designed to counteract Junction powers and are spread throughout the Castle in a way that unless you sweep the entire thing, you may well run into Ulty or worse Omega with most of your abilities sealed. Essentially Ulty's laid down a defensive guantlet and is waiting for a rush of attackers. Then in her Rant, She compares SeeD to a swarm of locust, No matter how many she cuts down they keep coming. Its possible that Squall and Co showed up in the Lull between SeeD attacks, The First which cleared the outer defenses hence why you can just waltz up to Ulty's castle and The Second Wave which would have been an invasion of Ulty's castle proper.

Quistis is a Robot, or Cyborg

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.

Edea was the true Big Bad all along.

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

• Nothing in the game to suggest any of that...

Ultimecia is trying to compress time in a misguided attempt to understand the non-existent timeline/continuity of the Final Fantasy series.

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.

Quistis Trepe is Asexual

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.
• Isn't the fact that she THOUGHT she might be in love with Squall, enough to suggest that she isn't asexual?
  • Nope.
    • There's a difference between Asexual, and Aromantic.

General Caraway was the soldier in red watching Julia in the Hotel

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.
    • Assuming their military structure is set up anything close to ours. this is also a world where magic exists and demons do your bidding. Our Armys Are Different
• Wait, what? Red armored soldiers are only NCOs? How then would that explain Major Biggs and the Galbadian Base Commander, both of whom wear red?

Ultimecia thought Seifer was the man destined to kill her

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.
• Why would the history books make it a point to say she was killed with a gunblade? And why, if she thought Seifer was the one destined to kill her, didn't she just KILL Seifer, rather than brainwash him into being her knight? I mean, why would she take that chance of him snapping out of it and killing her later?

"Whatever."

The reason why Squall is so indifferent is because he's figured out the secret to ultimate power in the world of FF8: playing cards. Actual training is for losers.

• Following this to its logical conclusion, Squall is the FF8 world's King of Games.

Ultimecia was an insane, alternate version of Rinoa that, thanks to Squall's efforts, will never come to exist.

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.

Ultimecia is Aerith, revived, with Mako madness because of swimming around in the Lifestream

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

• Okay then, who revived her? After Final Fantasy VII: 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.
  • Someone found Hojo's notes about Cetra and records of one who saved the planet. S/He decide to bring her back for some reason and suceeded. But in addition to Mako madness, being forcibly ripped from the lifestream has a really bad effect on the sanity so she camebackwrong.

Ellone saved Squall's life at the parade.

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.
• The above correction is true. They only blurred out the ground for dramatic effect (It would've been silly to showcase him falling just a few feet). As for the theory that it was Ellone who saved his life, the only problem with it is, Why isn't Seifer shocked that he's alive? Why does he just carry on as if he knew already that Squall had been healed, and take him straight to a room already set up for him to be interrogated in?

Squall and company were sent to help the Forest Owls because they were literally SeeD's "reject brigade" and SeeD's (corrupt at that time) leaders wanted them out of the way

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.

• Much more likely they chose Squall to go on this mission because they needed to expose Squall to President Deling (and by extension the sorceress) ASAP, and they chose the others to go with him because they assumed (because Squall had no actual FRIENDS) they would be the most supportive of Squall, the man they knew was destined to defeat the sorceress.

Ultimecia is a horribly broken future Rinoa.

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 tension 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?
    • 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.
    • This isn't supported by the game text, though; Edea tells Squall and company after the fact that "the only thing I could do was surrender my soul to Ultimecia and lose control of my mind." Although Edea was aware of Ultimecia's intentions, she had no control over or awareness of what Ultimecia was doing with her body by the time the game began - she even asks Squall and the SeeDs what's happened as soon as she regains control, because she doesn't know how things have played out. Possessed!Edea's actions in Timber and Deling City are all Ultimecia, and the New Era Speech is all Ultimecia talking.
    • OP: That is exactly what Edea wants us to think.
• Why is Seifer's Rinoultimecia's Knight? Maybe herecognized Rinoa and decided to help her, knowing full well he had no chance with her? Maybe he believed she would fall in love with him if he helped her? Maybe Edea picked him because she knew he always wanted to be a knight and Rinoultimecia went along with it because Seifer died trying to protect her? Or for all I know, Future!Seifer promised Squall he would keep an eye on Rinoa for him.

Ultimecia is possessed by the Dark Cloud.

Feeding off the theory that Final Fantasy VIII 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.

Seifer is Adel's kid.

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 Manipulation.
• 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?
  • I'll take your word for it, but it'd still be nice to see a link to some Word of God on that. Also, it could be that there was no Mind Control involved, just normal manipulation - Seifer wanted to be a romantic hero, and what would fit that role better than being The Champion to a non-villainous Sorceress? We know he's had authority problems with the Garden faculty, and we've also seen NORG's lackeys prevent Cid from trying to comfort and reassure Seifer. Even without his memories, if Edea told Seifer that the Garden faculty were evil - and also reminded him that she was once his Matron, well then..... Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas.

Seifer will become Odin

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.

Rinoa is Yuno

This is, according to the Ultimicia is AU Rinoa concept. Both attain a level of control over time, send themselves back in the identity of a former version of themselves, to spend time with their lost loved ones. Both willingly try to unload this secret onto their lost loved ones, and in the end, said second-universe lovers are forced to fight and then kill Yunoa. After their apparent death, their loved ones end up in a void of space and time, trapped and being unable to return. to both characters, this appears as a space of white blankness. They are then revived by their loved ones, who they assumed dead, and bring them back to their home world. Squall and Yukiteru are both ineffectual, dark-haired, blue-eyed whiny social isolation junkies who spend most of their time in their own heads. Meeting their respective loves, both turn into relatively good and kind-of bad ass human beings who become much more extroverted. Finally, at the time of FFVIII's conclusion, Rinoa and Squall kiss under the stars. Where do Yuno and Yukiteru go after their ordeal is over? UNDER THE STARS.

Ultimecia did not enact Time Compression

I was watching a friend play the game and it said that to enact Time Compression, the Sorceress in question had to be in the past, present and future to cast a spell in three different points in time, yet at the same time simultaneously. However, Ultimecia goes back in time twice, thus nixing the whole ‘Past, Present, and Future’ bit.

• It doesn’t state how said bit above has to work, but my bet would be though mental recognition for Ultimecia because Ultimecia’s mind is the only thing that actually goes back while he body stays in whatever time it’s in. As such, her magic recognizes it as Present, Past, and further in the Past. What she should have done was first reach Adel’s time, and then send herself into Squall’s time, which would fulfill the requirements of the spell.
  • Except it was SPECIFICALLY STATED that she couldn't go back that far in the game. That's why she needed Ellone.
• The spell that she had cast, specifically at the time was not a Time Compression, but Time Alteration, where she or anyone in Time Alteration could change any aspect of the time period from between Adel as a young Sorceress to the exact moment she had sent herself back. So that makes just about every reasonably AU fanfiction come true!
• Also, in terms of how I view time and AU:
  • Person A will be Ultimecia. Ultimecia has two choices in front of her. She can go back join the Garden which she is convinced is evil, or she can die. She Takes a Third Option, going back in time. Each timeline can happen, and does, for every decsion made is a couple hundred that can happen.
  • Person B is Laguna. Laguna can accept the movie offer, or he can reject it. Laguna Takes a Third Option and burns the outfit into dust and they rewrite the script, thus having a much more dark version of the movie Seifer bases his dream on, which Seifer never sees, and therefore never has his dream.
  • Person C is Seifer. He can stay at Orphanage, or he can go to Garden. He also Takes a Third Option and runs away, removing himself as Ultimecia's knight. Squall meets Rinoa and falls in love and never meets Laguna.
  • Ellone succeeds or fails by sending Squall and co. back in time. So she sends Laguna back to himself and alters the entire timeline. Laguna is then stuck with two minds in one body, or his mind is taken over by himself.

When Edea said she took Ultimecia's powers so that one of the children wouldn't, she was thinking of Selphie

Selphie is the strongest natural mage in the Final Fantasy universe. Her desperation attack, The End, is stronger than Rinoa's Sorceress Limit Breaks.

Selphie and Irvine originally came from Trabia and Galbadia, respectively

Why else would Cid separate two close friends and yet keep Seifer and Squall together? As children, both Selphie and Irvine had vague memories of their parents and their homes, and Cid and Edea thought they'd be happiest in the new gardens, where they needed to send some of their special group as sleeper agnets.

Trabian Accents Resemble British

Because why not? Based on our own world, we have every reason to assume that accents would different from continent to continent, or, really, from city to city. And I like British Selphie.

Squall knew about Laguna as a child

When it came to mind-travel, Ellone selected her friends from the orphanage to communicate with the Laguna of the past to not leave Raine and look for her. Since Ellone trusted her friends to pass along this message—without knowing that their memories had been wiped from using Guardian Forces—it's safe to say that she'd told them everything about her powers and her relationships with both Raine and Laguna. This would mean that as a child Squall knew about his father. He knew that Laguna was in Esthar after having rescued Ellone, but he probably felt deep resentment for him. Squall must have been aware that Raine died giving birth to him and knowing he had a Disappeared Dad out there in the world who as far as Squall was concerned didn't have any interest in him. This is why he became so emotionally dependent on Ellone. To Squall, Ellone was truly his sister and when she was kidnapped the resentment and bitterness he'd felt towards Laguna flared out of control. Since as far as Squall was concerned his mother died and his father abandoned him and now his sis abandoned him, he felt he couldn't rely on anyone anymore. Thus he became the emotionless hero we all know.

Of course, thanks to the Guardian Forces, Squall wouldn't be aware that he knew about Laguna as a child, and so he wouldn't know where his anger stemmed from other than Ellone disappearing. It would make sense that Squall was angry as a child and it was because of Laguna, and without Ellone he truly felt alone and abandoned.

The ending is meant to hint Laguna changed history to marry Raine

We're never given any hint that Laguna and Raine actually got married during the game, and given that it would be a big thing for him to go through, it would almost certainly be mentioned if he did.

During Time Compression, Squall and the party get to Ultimecia's time by grounding themselves in thoughts of home to travel to her time period. Perhaps Laguna did the same thing, he visualized an important place in his own past and manifested there, and took the chance he never could normally and proposed to Raine. Then, Time Compression ends, and Laguna finds himself in the present in the same meadow he proposed in, and now Raine is buried there with his name on her tombstone to show that he changed history.

Ultimecia locked herself in a "Groundhog Day" Loop

The game revolves around the stable time loop of Ultimecia going to the past to prevent her death at Squall's hands. I posit this...Ultimecia doesn't die. Rather, her consciousness is pulled back to an earlier point, to perpetuate the cycle. The main reason for this is that she knows Squall defeats her. Something she shouldn't know, unless she knows it first hand. Even with her passing her power on to Edea, I don't believe Ultimecia's name is even mentioned, let alone in any fashion that would make Squall any manner of legend. So the only reason she should know is because she saw it, before being tossed back to try again.

• Or she's a Time Mage.

Squall and Rinoa are Half-Siblings Via Laguna.

During the flash back in Julia's room there are several cut-aways, this troper's going to throw the net out there that in one Laguna and Julia played a bit of hide the GF. then after Laguna went on his mission she found out she was pregnant and married General Caraway out of convenience, then passed away. in the ensuing months of being tended to by Raine, Laguna and her had another moment, resulting in Squall.

• Rinoa is a few months older than Squall. the timing would be tight but possible.
  • The timing is not possible. Per the info menu, Rinoa was born one year after Julia married Caraway, and the marriage didn't take place until after Laguna failed to return from his mission. Unless Julia carried Rinoa for over a year before giving birth, there's no way for Rinoa to be Laguna's daughter.
    • Unless the official records were changed because it'd be unbecoming for a general to have a bastard child. That said, Epileptic Trees start strobing.

Squall and Rinoa aren't Half-Siblings via Laguna, but Ellone wasn't sure so she needed to check.

The very first dream trip to the past takes place the day after Squall meets the Rinoa, daughter of Laguna's former love interest Julia, and the event of that dream happens to be one night that Laguna and Rinoa's mother spent together. That makes it seem very likely indeed that Ellone was present at the party, saw Squall dancing with Rinoa, and remembered what she'd heard as a child about her uncle Laguna and the famous singer who wrote a love song (Eyes on Me) specifically detailing her feelings for Laguna himself. Even if Ellone knew that Rinoa was born a few months too late to be Squall's half-sister, she might've suspected the dates were forged to avoid scandal.

So since Ellone conveniently has the power to mentally travel back in time, she decided to go check for herself if anything happened that night with Laguna and Julia. After confirming that Squall and Rinoa weren't related, Ellone decided to continue exploring Laguna's past out of curiosity.

Ultimecia becomes Selphie

Because someone had to take the Ultimecia identity WMGs to their (il)logical conclusion.

We are all Ultimecia

He's Ultimecia, she's Ultimecia, I'm Ultimecia! Are there any other Ultimecias I should know about?!

• Meow.
  • I'm outta here.

This is actually the world of Remant;s past from RWBY

Think about it, the gunblade would have no problem fitting in with the RWBY weapons.

Ultimecia is still alive in our Universe and she possessed Hitler

So let's start from the end as our Beginning. At the end of Final Fantasy VIII Ultimecia has successfully completed time compression. This allows her to exist in multiple places in the space time continuum. So she concocts a back up plan during this period in order to ensure her continued existence.

So uses this period of time compression to enter the spaces between universes to travel to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Which takes place in the real world. However she cannot be physically present (IE. like Xehanort from Kingdom Hearts) so she instead sends a portion of her soul to possess Hitler.

She then uses Hitler's the influence of the Nazi party to gather souls (Nazis) which will obey her without question across the entire Axis powers to send forward into time to create a point of time compression, the same way she possesses a single person to enact her plan but on a wider scale to ensure her plan does not fail

As the Axis collapses and World War 2 reaches it's end Ultimecia takes all the souls that were easily swayed by Hitler and his cohorts and sends them all to the second point in time where she begins the time compression.

After Hitler's suicide she then time travels forward to another figure in the future with enough influence to allow her army of disembodied souls to possess new bodies. With this many souls she can enact another Time Compression in the event she fails in her initial conquest in the Final Fantasy Universe.

So who could she possibly possess that holds this much influence?

The United States president of course!

By manufacturing hats that are vessels for fanatical Nazis she brings fourth a time loop that allows her to slowly but surely compress time in our universe to a single point. As events in history repeat themselves, and patterns from the past emerge surely we are seeing the work of an ancient time witch being enacted!

What's going on in Trabia?

Trabia is mentioned in Ultimania as a poor, non-aggressive country with a small population. However, in game we do not see any country or any semblance of civilization there outside of the bombed Garden. We also see a big honking Lunar Cry crater there. The survivors in Trabia Garden grieve their losses, but they do not seem to be shell-shocked: they are optimistic and cope with their traumas surprisingly well. The motto of Trabia Garden is "Take care of yourself". A lot of the gravestones in Trabia Garden look pretty old, they are not graves for victims of the recent bombing.

It seems to be that Trabia is a failed state where tragedy is a common thing and the local inhabitants adjusted to it. That Galbadian terror bombing is nothing new to them. The Lunar Cry crater hints at what happened there: Trabia was a target of Estharian aggression during Adel's wars, and they tested Lunatic Pandora as a superweapon on the unsuspecting country. Since then, there is no stable Trabian government, the region is in the state of anarchy for 17 years. Trabia Garden students are taught self-sufficiency because there's no one to rely upon in the forsaken wasteland that is Trabia.

This theory also explains Selphie's violent streaks: as a Trabian, she grew up in a failed state full of warlords where rocket launchers are the accepted way of resolving political discussions. Selphie is not a borderline psychopath, she's just a native of FF8's counterpart to Afghanistan or Somali (on top of being a war orphan like the rest of Edea's orphanage gang).

If there's ever a Remake of FF8 along the lines of FF7R, Squall should be able to challenge Ultimecia to Triple Triad

And she will be the most unfair bitch outside of anything the original or even whatever new rules the remake throws at you. To even be worthy of challenging her, you have to get each and every last Triple Triad card, and win against each and every last person across the Remake.

Adel is a Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person

The magic that can only be passed down to women says she's a woman. She has nothing to prove to anyone; might as well traipse around with her tiddies out. Saves a fortune on hormone treatments and surgeries, too!

Squall took botany as an elective class

He is adamant that SEED's main goal is to plant flowers throughout the world.

During the post-graduation dance, Squall had a leg cramp from nervousness

Just like with Laguna, Squall became nervous when Rinoa decided to talk to him. Said cramp also played a part in the early mistakes he made during their dance.

The Bottomless Magazines that gunblades and firearms use was actually created by Dr. Odine

More specifically, the magazine is based off of the "draw magic" mechanic that is well documented in-game, drawing off of the user's physical strength to power itself. It means these guns can never run out (or at least needing a small recharge after firing), but does make them less powerful than conventional ammunition. Regular ammunition still exists, as seen in Irvine's limit break, but is much harder to produce and only used in emergencies.

The Stable Time Loop has granted Rinoa a latent telepathy ability as she becomes sandwiched between her past and future Sorceress selves.

• Rinoa's role as The Face doesn't gel with the rest of her characterization, it doesn't make sense for someone to be as childish as she is and still somehow get their way all the time, but there's evidence to suggest that it runs a good bit deeper than that.
  • Her first interaction with Squall is a Jedi mind trick. She plays it off, but it absolutely works; Squall even says he can't dance and is then magically capable of perfect choreography, but only after Rinoa has waved a hand at him. (the skyward point).
  • Squall doesn't adopt Seifer's "romantic dream" of being the Sorceress's Knight until after Rinoa has absorbed Edea's powers and he's rescued her from her space coma... which is right after Ultimecia has used her to exploit that dream in Seifer to get to Lunatic Pandora.
  • Irvine is the only character to resist her influence for any length of time, she has to physically abuse him to trump his resistance to mind-affecting magic (due to a lack of GF use, since there's less "blank space" for a separate willpower to dominate) and break the rest of the party out of the D-District Prison despite that possibly being a felony for him, since he's from Galbadia Garden.
  • Her first interaction with Sorceress powers is when Edea uses mind control on her. At that moment, it's three different people, but it's the same set of Sorceress powers interacting in the present, past and future, as Ultimecia, possessing Edea, is controlling Rinoa; all three are part of the same successive lineage, and those are the necessary conditions for Time Compression. But since it's the powers that are existing simultaneously and they're all casting mind control magic, that creates a mini-compression where the moment of "The Holder of Rinoa/Ultimecia/Edea's Powers Casts Mind Control" is now an infinite moment— in other words, Rinoa herself is partially frozen in a moment where she is casting mind control, but she herself is still moving through time, so the "infinite moment of casting" manifests as a latent ability that is always passively in effect, which is how Rinoa is unaware of it. Same goes for Edea and Ultimecia, only the difference is that Edea always assumed her mind-control was her Sorceress powers and Ultimecia used it before she got her powers, which could be how she came to be feared and hated in her own time.
  • Squall doesn't do shit to look for her in the ending, we watch him give up and collapse in the Time Compression desert. She's the one to send him an angel feather, something specifically associated with her Sorceress powers, to get him to find her— in other words, using telepathy to communicate in a place where time no longer really exists. Her telepathic abilities, being the product of a time compression, can comfortably exist here.