Common Knowledge / Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy franchise has seen many popular misconceptions come about over the years:

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• Final Fantasy:
  • Thanks to Seanbaby, a lot of people believe that the spell AMUT, which cures Silence, is useless, because no monsters actually cast MUTE. There are actually four: EYEs, PHANTOMs, GrNAGAs, and WzVAMPs, bumping the spell from "literally useless" to "practically useless".
  • It's widely known in the fanbase that the Intelligence stat in the original release is bugged, and doesn't do anything. This is sort of true, but it's rather missing the fact of why Intelligence is useless: unlike most bugs in FFI, where a system has a clear function but fails to work correctly due to addressing the wrong variable or an error in calculation, Intelligence in FFI simply doesn't have any system tied to it. In the game's code, Intelligence doesn't factor at any point into calculating magic damage, healing, spell charges, status effect hit rate, or anything else you'd expect it to be tied to. It isn't failing to function correctly, it just serves no actual function. There do exist fanmade mods that "fix" the bug, but these add new systems from scratch rather than fixing an existing one.
• Everyone knows that the skill system in Final Fantasy II was widely hated, which led to its absence from Final Fantasy III. However, these two games were under development at the same time (and every line of code was written by the same person!), making it impossible for the team to take feedback into consideration when deciding fundamental aspects of the third game's play mechanics. In reality the level/experience system was kept for FF 3 because the game's main gimmick, the class system, had already been decided upon, and it would have been far too difficult to incorporate it with the FF 2 skill system that they were working out at the same time.
• Occasionally, when the topic of the ages of the Final Fantasy III 3D remake protagonists comes up, it is said that all four of them are 14. However, this is only partially true: Neither the manual nor the final game mention their ages, and while Arc's age per the unused text is 14, Refia is said to be 15 while Luneth and Ingus' ages are never mentioned. The only clue of the party's ages in the final game is that the accident that put them on the floating continent occurred 10 years before the game started, and even then, the Japanese version suggests that it was at least 10 years ago, implying that it could be more.
• For Final Fantasy V, occasionally you will hear someone state as fact that Krile and Galuf are not biological relatives despite her Galuf-specific sixth sense. It's true that Krile says that Bal has no heir in her Epilogue Letter, and that very little is known about the Baldesion family in general, but nobody in Bal suggests that either Krile or a parent of hers was adopted (compared to Relm and Strago in Final Fantasy VI, where both the Thamasans and the game Ultimania drop several strong hints that they aren't blood relatives). There are a few potential explanations for why Krile might not immediately be handed the throne, such as her age or the possibility of Bal having an elective monarchy rather than automatic inheritance, and the Ultimania lists her simply as "granddaughter". This probably has to do with the Krile Mayer Baldesion of XIV, who does say that she was adopted by Eorzea's Galuf.
• Final Fantasy VII:
  • If you take into account information not available or clear in the English version of the game, Aerith wasn't stabbed by Sephiroth. She was stabbed by Jenova, acting as Sephiroth's avatar. Sephiroth spends most of the game hibernating in the Whirlwind Maze, sending out Jenova clones from there to torment the party. Because Jenova changed its form to appear as Sephiroth and was acting on his orders, saying "Sephiroth killed Aerith" is still correct, just only technically — while Sephiroth wasn't the one who personally stabbed Aerith, he's still responsible for her death since he ordered that Aerith be killed. The "real" Sephiroth is only encountered twice in the entire game: once in the Whirlwind Maze, and once as the final boss.
  • On that note, it was the body of Jenova, shape-shifted to look like Sephiroth, which broke out of Shinra HQ and which the party was pursuing throughout Disc 1.
  • The Japanese version frames Jenova as the Big Bad who was imitating/controlling Sephiroth. The English version made Sephiroth out to be the Big Bad, who was empowered but not controlled by Jenova. The Ultimania guide for Final Fantasy VII said that the English interpretation was correct.
  • The various "clones" encountered in the game are actually the former residents of Nibelheim, injected with Sephiroth's cells and exposed to Mako energy in an attempt to create duplicates of the fallen Super-Soldier (or maybe just to give him some pawns to manipulate).
    • Much of the confusion surrounding these plot points stems from poor localization. See here for further details.
  • Final Fantasy VII is often thought of as one of the games that started the "killing God" concept in JRPGs. Except Sephiroth isn't a god, and neither is Jenova. They are closer to the Gnostic Demiurge — a figure that's perceived to be a god, but isn't one. Jenova has more in common with the monster from The Thing (1982) or Who Goes There? than a god. The fact that Sephiroth's second form is the Trope Namer for One-Winged Angel (complete with Ominous Latin Chanting) and obvious Christian Imagery does help lead to this misconception, especially since Sephiroth views himself as a messiah.
  • Due to the one-winged trope, many believe the final fight with Sephiroth is with him being reduced to having only one wing. He actually grows wings in this form to a total of seven, with the titular one-wing just referring to the wing that one of his arms turned into. The term “one-wing Angel” comes from the name of the boss theme, not the boss itself. This form is also technically not Sephiroth’s final form, though his true final form cannot be lost against.
  • The idea of JRPGs being anti-religion (specifically anti Christianity or Catholicsm) comes largely from retellings of the game that mix it up with Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenogears, Breath of Fire II, or Lunar: Eternal Blue. Final Fantasy VII does not actually take any stance for or against religion.
  • Cloud's characterization as "emo" is largely due to the perception that he was. In the game proper, Cloud was a cocky punk who grew into a confident leader at the game's end, and that's after realizing that said "cocky punk" attitude was more of Zack's behavior that Cloud had imprinted onto his own memories. And while Cloud does have some moments of angst in the game (namely about how Sephiroth burned down Cloud's hometown and killed his parents, something anyone would rightly be upset about), the worst of it is after a massive Mind Rape that leaves him stuck in a wheelchair, babbling incoherently. And even then, after Tifa helps him snap out of it with a Battle in the Center of the Mind, Cloud stops angsting about everything and focuses on defeating Sephiroth to save the world.
  • Advent Children has Cloud suffering from the effects of Geostigma, and while Cloud is pretty whiny here (supplementary material explicitly notes that they wanted to play up the angst because it would make Cloud feel "familiar"), it's heavily implied that the disease is messing with his mind and he may even have PTSD. It stops him from applying boot to rear not very much at all. Notably, after the Geostigma is cured at the end of the movie, Cloud is seen smiling and happy.
    • Properly "emo Cloud" is thought to be mostly a spinoff thing, which for several years, used a version of his Advent Children personality without the Geostigma context and portrayed him as a lot more taciturn, stoic, and generally miserable-looking, not to mention often giving his design a somewhat edgier rework. This version is probably most recognizable through Kingdom Hearts.
    • Cloud's alleged "emo" characterization has itself led to the idea that all Final Fantasy protagonists after him are basically walking balls of tragedy, misery, and whining when they aren't staring off into the middle distance trying to look cool. This fits Squall from Final Fantasy VIII, who was the one right after Cloud and solidified the idea, but it kinda stopped there. Zidane, Tidus, and Vaan are all pretty upbeat chaps for the most part (barring one or two points where they react to a significantly bad event), Lightning (despite being explicitly based on Cloud) is more of a professional stoic hardass than anything, and Noctis is much more evidently angsty, especially later on, but even he comes across as fairly affable and social, with much of the game being built around his close bond with his companions. In fact, more protagonists before Cloud were noticeably angsty (Cecil and Terra are introduced as pretty miserable), but Cloud's still generally remembered as the originator of the whole thing.
  • Tifa is known as having the Most Common Superpower... thanks mostly to fan art that depicted her with huge boobs. While Tifa is indeed busty, how big her breasts are in official depictions varies quite significantly Depending on the Artist. For example, her Advent Children design◊ shows her without gag boobs. Even in the original game, her breast size was wildly inconsistent between her field model◊, her combat model◊, her FMV sequence model◊, and even her concept art.
  • You'll often hear people say Aerith is a prostitute (or at least a Compensated Dater) and that this was hidden behind subtext involving flowers. Where this one comes from is anybody's guess, since there's no evidence to back up this idea. Aerith sells flowers, and that's it. At most the job is unusual because Midgar is suffering Gaia's Lament and nothing will grow there. It may be a misinterpretation of a scene that can be read as suggesting that Aerith is subjected to this misconception In-Universe, and that she takes advantage of it to jack up flower prices.
  • Everyone knows that Aerith was Incorruptible Pure Pureness while Tifa was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but a lot of people forget that Tifa was actually a compassionate and motherly The Heart of the group, and can be quite a Shrinking Violet, and that Aerith once threatened to rip off a mob boss's balls if he didn't talk. This is largely due to the flanderization of Aerith's character over the years. She's lost a lot of her edge and instead become Cloud's innocent Lost Lenore who died a martyr's death. On Tifa's side, she's an athletically-dressed Ms. Fanservice who works as a bartender and is best known for punching things, so common knowledge is that she's more Hot-Blooded and snappy than she actually is. Some people were genuinely shocked upon seeing Aerith's characterization in Final Fantasy VII Remake as an upbeat, fun-loving, danger-searching, somewhat tomboyish, foul-mouthed ("Shit!") girl, even though it's actually closer to her personality from the original game; still sweet, but with a good deal of spice.
  • In wake of the "politics in games" discourse in the mid-2010s, many people took to crediting FFVII as being a game where you play as an eco-terrorist group fighting a corrupt corporation. While technically true, it leaves out the fairly crucial facts that Cloud is just a hired mercenary with no interest in AVALANCHE's ideals, and this only lasts for the first section set in Midgar, with the majority of the game being squarely about stopping Sephiroth and Jenova. Both the original game and remake are also not exactly unafraid to call out Barret's ideals as deeply flawed in their own right, with him bitterly admitting later into the story that he had only committed himself to fighting Shinra as a result of having lost so much in his life.
• Final Fantasy IX: A lot of people believe that the names of Quina's Limit Glove attack and the boss Valia Pira were mistranslations of Limit Globe and Barrier Pillar respectively. One look at the katakana for both disproves this, as they both deliberately use "v" katakana - Valia Pira's name is written as ヴァリアピラ (Varia Pira)^note Barrier Pillar would be written バリアピラー (Baria Pirā) with a long "a" sound and Limit Glove is written リミットグローヴ (Rimitto Gurōvu).^note Limit Globe would be リミットグローブ (Rimitto Gurōbu).
• Final Fantasy X:
  • The Celestial Weapons are generally believed to do more damage the more HP their user has (MP for Yuna and Lulu's weapons), with this being used to promote the CWs as being better than anything the player can otherwise obtain. This is untrue, as the only unique advantage that CWs have over other weapons is their ability to ignore enemy Defense with physical attacks. CWs actually do normal damage when the user is at full HP/MP, and they do less damage the less HP/MP the user has; they have a unique disadvantage compared to other weapons. (Masamune is an exception, as it does more damage the lower Auron's HP is.)
  • The game has the infamous laughing scene from Tidus and Yuna, where Tidus engages in some very over-the-top forced laughter that sounds incredibly awkward. The scene has generated a ton of mockery over the perceived low-quality voice acting, and some fans also believe that the Japanese version of the same scene sounds better. It doesn't. The laughing in the Japanese version sounds just as out of place and awkward as the English version; in both cases, this awkwardness is intentional. In-context, Tidus had just learned that his father, Jecht, had become the Eldritch Abomination Sin, and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Tidus's laughter, thus, is incredibly forced, because he doesn't have a lot to be happy about. Once Tidus and Yuna catch themselves on how silly they sound with the fake laugh, they burst out into actual laughter, which sounds a lot more genuine and not forcibly over the top. The point of the scene was to show how forcing yourself to laugh or smile makes you look weird. The game even points out how their laughter was supposed to sound forced, as every other character in the scene looks on puzzled at Tidus and Yuna, with Wakka saying he was "worried that you guys might have gone crazy" after hearing it.
  • The famous "I want to be a blitzball when I grow up" statement from the kid in Kilika is very commonly stated to be a "Blind Idiot" Translation in the western script. In truth, the line was originally a typo in the Japanese version, and ended up being more or less translated exactly the same into English, making it technically a "correct" translation. While the re-releases of the game in Japanese would correct the mistake, the Western script kept the line the same seemingly because of how popular the line became.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Minfilia has been the subject of memes about how she's "always being kidnapped and never does anything". This stems from her being a non combatant compared to her fellow Scions which all have combat experience. Many players forget that Minfilia performs a lot of research vital to the story and has political clout with the city leaders. While she does get kidnapped, she is only kidnapped twice and both times she was held captive by someone far stronger than she is and she was willing to die both times to not give her kidnappers what they wanted. (Plus, one of those times most of the "badass" members of the Scions were held captive right alongside her, and the player has to rescue them too.)
  • The Au Ra race are often called dragon people by the players due to their horns and the patchy scales seen on their bodies, even though there's nothing in the game or even in the lorebooks that indicate the Au Ra having any kind of draconic traits. Even certain Au Ra NPCs outright state that the Isghardians attacked them on sight because they mistook them as dragons, which were Ishgard's sworn enemies. The confusion likely stems from the concept art the developers showed where the Au Ra were going to be actual dragon people before their design got changed to better fit with the story.
  • The Mi'qote are a race of cat people who look mostly human, save for their cat ears and tail. Some players assume that the Mi'qote have animalistic instincts and believe they purr like an actual cat or possess other cat-like behavior. Barring the one or two NPCs that use cat-like motions for their emotes, the Mi'qote are not cats in a human body.
  • Whenever discussions of Omega confusing people with its "starboard side Cannons" and "Larboard side cannons", someone often pipes in and says that in Japanese, it's simply "Right" and "Left" and not naval terms. This is not incorrect - the words do specify left and right, but translated literally they specify "Right Ship Side" and "Left Ship Side". Thus, the naval terms are a correct localisation since it is including the contest. Of course, the use of "Larboard" instead of "Port" still confuses people - just like how real life sailors would. (Which is why "Larboard" became "Port"!)
• Final Fantasy Tactics:
  • So Grand Duke Barrington forced himself on an underage Rapha, right? The original game only had dialogue that could be interpreted that way, nothing is confirmed. Ironically, the retranslation in the updated rerelease War of the Lions amps up the rape imagery in that speech, but at the same time essentially confirms that he had not forced himself upon her (though he outright states he would eventually).
  • The game isn't necessarily anti-religion simply because the "Zodiac Brave Story" is revealed as a lie - if anything it's Matsuno showing his work in how the catholic church would frequently get involved in politics in the timeframe Tactics was based off of.
    • While the Church of Glabados is largely based off of Christianity, it's actually Polytheistic. Translator Tom Slattery mentioned multiple characters - especially Ovelia - mention Gods in the plural. The confusion comes from the fact that the Japanese language treats singular and plural words as the same.
  • "Return to Ivalice" in Final Fantasy XIV is not and never was intended to be a sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics - it was intended to be a reimagining of Final Fantasy Tactics's storyline within the XIV universe as confirmed by Matsuno himself. Even then, there were already numerous divergences that should spell out that it's not the same universe such as Goug Machine City having had an incident with an explosion, which never happened in Tactics.
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:
  • The main character, Marche, is sucked into a fantasy world with his friends and he tries to find a way to return home while his friends don't want to go back. Many fans strongly believe that Marche was being a bully by forcing his friends to go home against their wills, even if it meant that they are miserable again and that his brother, Doned, is confined to a wheelchair again (he can't walk in the real world). In actuality, Marche actually attempts to reason with his friends and brother before he does anything else, but they all ignore him. Doned hires clans to fight Marche and capture him, Ritz eventually fights Marche herself to stop him from changing things back to normal, and Mewt uses all of his power as a prince to get Marche arrested. Ritz and Mewt eventually accept the fact that they can't stay in a fake world to run away from their problems and Doned even apologizes to Marche for going against him and is willing to go back home, even if it means he will be wheelchair bound again. It is still ambiguous if he is right or not, especially because the English version does not touch upon the "fake" nature of the world as much.
  • Most people consider Ritz's reason for staying extremely selfish (compared to Mewt's mother and Doned being able to walk), she doesn't want to return because her natural hair is white instead of pink, but when the game ends, Shara convinces her that white hair is beautiful so she doesn't even have a problem anymore right? Except that is not the case. Ritz problem isn't a hair color she doesn't like, it's the fact that she is bullied because of that AND because she is a girl. Her online description says she is an ace in classes and sports and yet people "give her a wide berth", which means she isn't popular at all. When she tries to convince Marche to stay she says people will respect him and he can have many friends, but Marche never had those problems, he was the new kid, he was never bullied for real or tried hard to make friends. Those are Ritz's problems, but she will never admit it, she would rather lie to herself and blame the hair. Then when Shara convinces her the hair was never the problem at all, Ritz wants to stay to fulfill her Feminist Fantasy.