Fridge / Final Fantasy XIV

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Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. Proceed at your own risk.

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Fridge Brilliance

General

• The allied NPC combatants notoriously suffer from Artificial Stupidity in that they absolutely refuse to attempt to dodge the marked attacks, but in reality, it's the player character's Echo ability giving them a loose sense of Combat Clairvoyance; it's not exactly like the enemies try to do the same for allied and player radius attacks either.
  • Given the reveal about the Warrior of Light's true nature as a piece of one the Ancients, is it possible that they've simply fought so many enemies in their long lives that they can recognize attack tells?
  • The Echo affects both your failures and what would be your seeming deaths as well. The entire party wipes on a particularly hard raid boss or mid-dungeon? You start back at the beginning, and the entire party and multiple alliances now get an Echo Buff. You're effectively canvassing the future of the current scenario until you find the best outcome, with the buff being your increased determination and foreknowledge at your aid.
• For Triple Triad, certain NPCs will always use specific rules and some of the matches their character theme. Hab, a rotting zombie, always plays with the descension rule, which mimics how something rots and degrades over time. Gegeruju is a wealthy merchant with a monopoly on cards, thus he plays with the swap and sudden death rules so that he can always take one of your cards for himself and keeps any card of yours that he captured when it's time for sudden death. The Indolent Imperial not only uses cards based on The Empire, but he also plays with the ascension rule, mimicking the empire's "rise" to power.
• The Red Mage's icon is a White Mage's staff with the crook merged with the Black Mage's comet and flipped upside down to resemble a rapier, a clever way to signify the job.
• The Fantasia that lets you recustomize your character appearance has a canonical explanation, instead of being a polite fiction to let you adjust your appearance! One of the Ascians comments about how he can reshape any body he possesses into his "preferred" shape, it just takes time and effort. The method the Fantasia uses to take effect is "your character goes to bed, believing very hard that they're going to look different when they wake up, and when they wake, they do" - and Ascians have repeatedly commented about how the player characters with the Echo are not so different from themselves. While the concoction might work just as advertised for "normal" people, for us, the Fantasia is a Magic Feather!
• Why was the 6th Umbral Calamity a calamity of water? We know it was because of the War of the Magi draining the land's aether, but why water specifically? Well consider the spells that White and Black Mages use. White Mages use earth and wind aspected aether, while Black Mages use fire, ice and lightning aspected aether. Of the traditional six elements, water is the only one that's barely used at all (assuming White Mages even used Fluid Aura back then), puts into perspective why the imbalance was so bent towards water - it was the only one that wasn't burned up enough during the war.
• Viera are notably the only player race where the males are smaller than the females, just like actual rabbits.
• Lalafell seem to be rather.. weird, given how they tend to invoke the Uncanny Valley by being so small and child-like yet totally being able to grow facial hair, have deep voices, and all sorts of adult factors. However, if one looks at them as walking embodiments of the chibi designs of classic Final Fantasy characters, it makes a bit more sense — besides the kids, most cast members in the early series were all of similar small size by graphical limitations, regardless of how mature the plots and events around them were.

• There are many times that the Ascians represent a zodiac sign. These include:
  • Pisces (Lahabrea): Devoted yet indecisive, taking after the former in his dedication to the Ascians' goal and the latter in his Pandaemonium storyline.
  • Scorpio (Nabrieles): Loyal but also obsessive, representing Nabrieles as a devoted Ascian who sought out the Tupsimati's power.
  • Sagittarius (Igeyorhm): Independent but unemotional. Representing how she caused the Thriteenth's destruction on her own, along with her confident and cold personality.
  • Gemini (Emet-Selech): Energetic and clever yet devious and superficial, representing how he's a cunning trickster who conceals his true cynical personality.
  • Aries (Loghrif / Gaia): Independent yet moody and short-tempered. represented in her reincarnation's Tsundere traits.
  • Taurus (Mitron) Persistent but possessive. Representing his attempts to force Gaia into becoming Loghrif again.
  • Leo (Fandaniel / Amon): Confident and loyal but also stubborn. Representing his devotion to Xande's nihilistic ideals, but also how he doesn't care that he's throwing his life away.

1.0/ARR

• Several mid-to-late-level Weaver class quests involve making clothing commissioned by a miner with ridiculously bad fashion sense. The items requested improve gathering stats, exactly what a miner would benefit from. Until the level 45 quest, when Redolent Rose decides to change the commissions and bypass the client's general incompetence. From that point, the quest items are crafting gear, which is the choice one would expect a weaver to make.
• During the "Through the Maelstrom" arc, when it was mentioned that there was a man who claimed to have defeated Leviathan, Y'shtola's reaction was to look down, shaking her head. Upon hearing the report, she already knew that a certain "Tidus-Slayer" was the man in question.
• The Salute of the Crystal Braves is one fist pointing upward, and the other arm behind the back. This is symbolic of the inner manipulations of the Braves, with one part of the leadership betraying the other (left hand versus right/going behind their back).
• Trachtoum, the imposter pretending to be a member of the Company of Heroes who claim to have defeated Titan, is actually a preview of the actual Titan trial.
  • You are asked to crack open a boulder, a reference to your Granite Gaol-imprisoned allies whom you must break free.
  • Trachtoum will attack you with a line AoE attack, which is how Titan attacks with Landslide.
  • He will eventually drop bombs which you must evade or destroy (see: Boulder Bombs).
• One of the brilliant parts of the music as you progress through the story is how different tracks appear with each new successive region or area you approach in the story. Up to this point area themes had been fairly laid back to emphasize the adventurous aspect of Eorzea, but after the Garleans raid the Waking Sands, your immediate next major new area is Coerthas, with an ominous and trying series of themes that not only reflect the Ishgardians but the seriousness of the plot after the Scions are left in a broken state. By comparison, an area after that arc is the Burning Wall, which despite being a small one-off location has probably one of the most triumphant area themes in the 2.0 storyline, getting the player pumped for what's to come now that they're prepping for Garuda, which gets supplemented by Revenant's Toll not too long after being a straight up call to arms.
• The massive pointy spikes on the walls of Ishgard settlements aren't just there for aesthetics. They make it impossible for larger dragons to effectively land on the walls or do fly-by attacks. Dragons would either have to land inside the settlement, where they would be shot at by the troops on the walls, or keep their distance and attack at range, which exposes them to the ballistae.

Heavensward

• The first boss of Heavensward is a Griffin, and the last boss is someone called the Griffin. A very subtle way to Bookend the expansion.
• It seems odd that a nation as xenophobic as Ishgard would have any new classes/jobs, let alone three, that would be willing to gift their knowledge to any outsiders regardless of circumstances. But when you think about it, all three of the extra Jobs are outcasts themselves within Ishgardian society:
  • Machinist is a new practice developed by the son of a lord in the Skysteel Manufactory. The practice is considered shameful compared to traditional sword or lance, and one noble sees how the firearm can upset the social status and seeks to sabotage it.
  • Astrologans study Sharlayan astrology rather than Ishgardian. The knowledge is considered useless to Ishgard at best and an affront at worst, to say nothing about Sharlayan policy against sharing their knowledge under Bibliothec influence.
  • Dark Knights are considered criminals and monsters to the Holy See and the common man because of their vigilantism and practice of dark magicks.
• The Machinist and Dark Knight jobs are new battle classes for Heavensward, yet they have no official guild and the skills are taught to you by an individual. When you sign up for one of the new classes, you're given a soul crystal, which normally teaches you new abilities based on its past bearers and their knowledge and memories. Because the jobs are brand new, there hasn't been anyone around long enough to instill their memories into the soul crystal. You can say that you will be the first one to etch your knowledge into the crystal for future generations to reflect upon. The Machinist job reflects this with the crystal's item description specifically stating it doesn't match the others, a description that is repeated for Blue Mage for similar reasons.
  Soul of the Machinist: Unlike other soul crystals, the surface of this multi-aspected stone has yet to be carved with the record of past deeds.
• There was a lot of aggravation stemming from the new jobs in Heavensward not being accessible until after you completed A Realm Reborn's story arc and got to Ishgard at the beginning of Heavensward. Machinist might be have arguments against or for it, but Dark Knight would have been very hard to justify before the A Realm Reborn arc, especially the final events of the arc and the Warrior of Light's false regicide charges, as the entire arc of the Dark Knight's storyline is all focused on the fact that all of your heroic deeds have led to a massive case of Dude, Where's My Respect? and it would actually be difficult to justify the wellspring of darkness to power the class without the events of A Realm Reborn.
  • The Machinist job story and its background tie heavily with Ishgard and the changes that are happening within it. While firearms are known in Limsa Lominsa (and one of the instructors is a Limsan), the aetherotransformer that revolutionized the way firearms are used is an Ishgardian invention. Prior to HW, when Ishgard is still heavily isolationist, it would be impossible for an adventurer to learn about machinistry. With the attack on the Steps of Faith and the rising threat of the Dravanian Horde did the city-state finally opened itself to outsiders — which made it possible for adventurers such as the Warrior of Light to master the new art.
  • Likewise for the reasons of Astrologians, coming off of being played for a fool and suffering so much because of it, it's not hard to imagine the Warrior of Light wishing they could predict the future so they could stop something like that happening again, and doing such is literally Sharlayan astrology's job description.
    • A third reason that fits all three of the classes is that the people of Ishgard are doing all they can to stomp them out before the player arrives. The Skysteel Manufactory is being taking apart and sabotaged by Tedalgrinche, who sees it as an affront to Ishgardian culture. The Athenaeum Astrologicum was all but ready to boot out Levava the second they had good reason and otherwise ostracized Jannequinard and other users of Sharlayan Astrology, claiming it useless in the Dragonsong War. The Dark Knights were hunted down for their acts of vigilantism and for the act of heresy in the eyes of the Ishgard church. Had the player character not gotten involved in their struggles, the Skysteel Manufactory would have been shut down, Levava would have been sent with Sharlayan authorities, and the art of the Dark Knight would have died off, preventing the spread of their teachings.
  • This also handily explains why they each start at level 30 instead of 40 or 50, even if the developers went on to admit it was something they regret; the Dark Knight is harnessing the raw power the Warrior of Light has at that point, but they're ineffective from not tapping into their inner darkness that is outright forced upon them. The Astrologist is the Warrior taking on Sharlayan teachings potentially for the first time in their life, besides whatever the Scions might aid them with, and it definitely clashes with the standard Gridanian Conjuration. And the Machinist is learning an uncommon weapon and a brand-new accompanying invention for it from the ground-up. The Warrior is at an uncomfortable level 30 because they're in unexpected territory and generally hampered by the new experiences at first, compared to the higher caps for later jobs implying they're adapted enough in general to take it all on much more efficiently.
• Upon meeting the new beast tribes in Heavensward, you're told by the victims that were attacked by them that the beast tribes were relatively peaceful with man until the beastmen suddenly became violent around a year ago. This can tie in with the cut scene in the finale of 2.5's story where the Ascians state that they have to speed up their plans for the land up north (Ishgard and beyond) due to the Warrior of Light killing one of their own.
• Even though they have a long and bitter history with Lahabrea, the Warrior of Light choosing to off Igeyorm first with the White Auracite is savvy. They know exactly what Lahabrea is capable of, and have made a chump of him on multiple occasions. Meanwhile they have no idea what this new Ascian is capable of, and the one time you confronted them outside of the Aetherochemical Research Facility they easily got the better of you.
• For all the hype the Au Ra race got in the previews for Heavensward, there's barely any NPCs of said race. This is easily explained by the Au Ra you meet in the Dark Knight and White Mage job quests where they tell you that some of their kind were attacked and killed by the Isghardians because the latter mistook the former as dragons. Even outside of Ishgard, the Au Ra were met with scorn and persecution by others. The first time there's a significant influx of them who aren't scorned happens with the refugees who are helped by the Scions.
• Going through one of Heavensward's new dungeons, The Fractal Continuum, you might have noticed a mob called Iksalion, which seems to be what the Ixali were before they were forced off Ayatlan (better known as Azys Lla). This connection might be apparent at first glance, but it leads to a moment of brilliance in A Realm Reborn's storyline. The Ultima Weapon, which became revealed after The Warrior of Light defeated Garuda, the primal of the Ixal and the one where Gaius sent the weapon to test it (Garuda summoned Ifrit and Titan to her domain when Gaius arrived). What would be a better test subject for a weapon of Allagan origin than an Eikon of beastmen of Allagan origin?
• For the Minstrel's Ballad: Thordan's Reign, you see that the enemies have a new set of weapons compared to the first fight. This is a first for the Trials. Shiva was given a bow in her Extreme fight, but her Sword, shield, and staff all looked the same. What makes sense on this is that the Knights are all Elezen who are turning themselves into Primals, they still start out as normal spoken. And considering that, how does a normal person get stronger in XIV? By equipping better gear.
• One from 3.2. Why did Nidhogg's attack on Vedofnir motivate the Ishgardians to call for his death once more? Nidhogg still lusts for vengeance for the death of someone dear to him. Much like the Ishgardians at the Convictory. That combined with Nidhogg's willingness to attack his kin for wanting peace made him the Embodiment of their desire for revenge, and their prior inability to let go of the past. In essence, Ishgard retained a common enemy Nidhogg.
• Most Primals you meet tend to banter with you one way or another, flinging taunts and insults and stating their victory and whatnot, while Bismarck is about as thick as the islands he habitually swallows. Why is this? Simple! The differences in the myths that spawned them. The other Primals, like Ifrit and Garuda, are all intended as relatively traditional gods, capable of speaking and interacting with their subjects in a normal, vocal manner. But Bismarck's origin-myth has him as an ascended white whale! Hence, because his origin wasn't capable of communicating, Bismarck's own thought-process is reduced to the simplicity where he can't even see through a ploy as simple as the one the Warrior of Light uses to fight him! It's even reflected in his body: the rest of the primals are relatively humanoid, whereas he's all-out bestial!
• For those who survived the challenge, most players are in agreement that Ozma is the harder boss than Calofisteri and that it should have been the final boss over her. But it's actually rather fitting that Ozma be so tough despite not being the last boss, considering his status as the infamous Superboss of IX, several magnitudes stronger than the game's own Final Boss.
• 3.4's MSQ shows The Warriors of Darkness having Crystals of Light. And them holding theirs up near the end, with the Warrior of Light holding up the Crystal from the beginning of the MSQ to allow contact with Hydaelyn (thought Minfillia). Take note that the Warriors of Darkness have a Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind and Earth crystal while the Warrior of Light has a Water crystal. Between the 6 there is a full set of Elemental Crystals, much like the ones needed for the Blessing of Light.

Stormblood

• Yda is an Archon and a member of the Scions Of the Seventh Dawn and Circle of Knowing, but is something of a ditz with a short attention span and has trouble following conversations when they get highly technical, strange when you remember that Archons are something of magical scientists/academics. It makes sense come Stormblood, as Yda is actually Lyse, who never became an Archon, and thus never had the same education that her sister did.
• A lot of the new abilities in Stormblood have logical reasons for being developed by the player character, relating to their experiences in the story.
  • All three tanks get some form of shield as their level 70 ability, and it's not hard to imagine why considering who they lost because a shield didn't hold through. Paladin's Passage of Arms plants their feet down and shields their allies, likely calling back to how Haurchefaunt did it at the cost of his life. Dark Knight's Blackest Night is a shield that beneficially helps themselves or a party member, reflecting both how Dark Knights are at their strongest when they have a charge to protect and likely because they could have saved Haurchefaunt if they had a way to shield him. Warrior's Shake it Off, in its original form was a cleanse from all negative statues ailments, given how often the Warrior of Light has been KO'd by drugs or restrained by a villain, it makes sense that they'd develop an ability that allows them to break free from anything, while post-change it's become a full-party shield, and can apply the same reason as Dark Knight.
  • With the Dragonsong War having ended, and no real need to kill dragons anymore, the Dragoon's inner dragon has likely come to understand the mortal soul it fights for dominance over, allowing a true synchronicity between them. Life of the Dragon's red coloration may also be harvesting a stain on their dragon aether from fighting Nidhogg much like what Summoners do with Bahamut's aether, allowing them to tap into his power (albeit nowhere near as destructive as Estinien's, since the player was never directly possessed by him).
• In A Realm Reborn we're taught that Ishgardian Astrologians use the "Dragon Star" to chart and plot the Horde's movements. At first this just seems like a waste of Astrology's talents (and to be fair, it is), but given some revelations we learn in Stormblood, especially in Sigmascape, it's entirely likely that the Dragon Star is the sun of Midgardsormr's homeworld, which was destroyed/razed to being uninhabitable by Omega. Given how dragons generally act, it makes sense how their movements would be traceable via it.
• In the L50-60 Samurai quests, Musosai imputes his earlier "villainy" to his Kogarashi identity. However, as the L60-70 quests proceed, it becomes clear that his Musosai name is the scorned one for cravenness (unwilling to commit seppuku) and producing Ugetsu. Even more importantly, the Kogarashi entity is widely lauded for his role in quelling a good many evildoers throughout Hingashi—Musosai as Musosai was only known to be a great duelist. That Musosai thought of his Kogarashi identity as the malign one makes more sense when you consider that Ugetsu was embittered by seeing that for all of Kogarashi's deeds, Hingashi still had its share of horrid cruelty. Musosai is blaming himself for not correcting Ugetsu's unreasonable expectations when he had the chance—that is, allowing Kogarashi to look more effective that he'd actually been, and so setting up Ugetsu's fanaticism.

Shadowbringers

• At first one might be confused as to why the Warrior of Light's turn into The Warrior of Darkness is symbolized by the Dark Knight rather than the Black Mage, as despite how it ties into the darkness of the WoL, Shadowbringers is all about bringing Darkness, as a metaphysical force (to the point that it allows night to happen) into the world of the First, something that a Job that is tied to the Void should specialize in. But then we see the actual living conditions of the people in the First, where the social differences are staggering, to the point in which those who are poor barely have shacks to call homes, while the rich indulge themselves to the point of obesity while waiting for the world to end. Considering that the Dark Knights are vigilantes that defend the people from the higher classes, then the symbolism fits entirely too well.
• The gremlin in the Shadowbringers trailer seems very out of place. After all, why would a weak voidsent be on the First? But looking back on gremlins in past content, the places they appeared the most was the Black Shroud: The Lost City of Amdapor, The Palace of the Dead, and with a particularly strong specimen skulking the South Shroud as an A-Rank Hunt Mark. Even after clearing Diabolos's influence from the Lost City of Amdapor, gremlins continue to appear in its Hard mode, when the city has been taken over by the Winged Lion and Kuribu. Then it hits you: Gremlins aren't voidsent. They're sin eaters. The gremlin is on the First because it's always been there. They were only classified as voidsent because nobody on the Source knew about the Flood of Light on the First.
  • Some things that do cast this in doubt is that gremlins do not have a Forgiven prefix like many of the other Sin Eaters do and as of 6.2, gremlins can be found in the Void.
• Zenos' desire to return to Garlemald and attempt to reclaim his position as heir before resuming his hunt for the Warrior of Light has a logical explanation: while Zenos is Axe-Crazy and completely bonkers, he's still rational, and knows that he can't go on a one-man murder spree in his current state. He needs the protection of being Heir to prevent any consequences from his psychopathy, and he has to regain it before he can resume his "hunt".
• In Shadowbringers, a new piece of music appears, being a melancholic yet gentler version of "The Maker' s ruin", a track commonly associated with Ascians (especially important ones). At first, the theme might seem like it is Ardbert's one, but as the story progresses it becomes evident it's actually the Warrior of Light's theme. Then it's later revealed that The Warrior of Light and Ardbert are parts of the same soul, explaining why the theme is used for both of them. The real kicker? The Warrior of Light is actually an Ascian, making the fact that this is another version of their theme extremely meaningful, as well as heavy foreshadowing.
• There are no Primals faced during the main story for Shadowbringers. While this seems odd, given the First is nearing what is essentially the end of the world, the reason Primals appear is simply because the people of the world have lost hope and faith things will change. With no hope or faith that things will improve, theres no source for a Primal be born from.
• All but the most powerful of the Sin Eaters have a naming pattern of "Forgiven [Sin]", but aside from a form resembling an embodiment of that sin, there's no clear indication why they're "forgiven"... until the encounter with the first Sin Eater, Eden. It resides in its own personal paradise within The Empty. For them to be worthy to enter "Paradise" like the Guardians Eden summons, they must be absolved of their "sins" to reside in the only realm free of it on the First: The Empty.
• Shadowbringers shows how Renda-Rae, one of the Warriors of Darkness, was an exceptional Archer back in her day and manages to kill the beast that slayed her friends. She initially does it alone since she feels responsible for her friends' deaths and didn't want her current comrades to be put at risk. When you fight her in Heavensward, she is a Bard. What are Bards known for? Aiding their allies with songs. Renda-Rae had basically learned that fighting as one is better than fighting alone, thus becoming a Bard would let her support her allies.
• When playing as a Dark Knight, the Warrior of Light has to deal with manifestations of their own anger and guilt which try to turn the Warrior away from their course. This is not normal for Dark Knights, and is an experience unique to the Warrior of Light. With the Shadowbringers reveal that the Warrior is an Amaurotine(or a fragment of one) then Fray and Myste make sense as emotional constructs given shape by the Warrior's state of mind and made more real by a lesser version of the power of Creation.
• Since 2.0, Thaumaturges swapped between Astral Fire and Umbral Ice to spend and regenerate MP, respectively. Seemed kind of strange that the "active" Astral Fire would halt MP regeneration while the "passive" Umbral Ice supercharges its regen. Then Shadowbringers reveals that the Source has the polarities mixed up: Light is Umbral, and Darkness is Astral. Thus, if the terms "Astral Fire" and "Umbral Ice" are meant to be read as "Light Fire" and "Dark Ice" by Eorzeans, their effects suddenly make more sense.
  • Alternatively, it could be that rather than describing the flow of MP, the terms could simply be referring to what the caster is actually doing; Astral Fire being a period of high activity where the caster pumps out their most powerful spells, and Umbral Ice being a comparatively slower recovery period. Activity and Stasis are relative terms, after all, and Light (which turns out to align with the Umbral aspect, and which the Eden raids establish has strong connections with Ice elementally) is often associated with rest and recovery in many other places in the game as well.
• The dungeon introduced in 5.3 is called The Heroes' Gauntlet and sees the player fighting their way through Novrandt to reach the Crystarium while being attacked and hindered by shades of other Heroes/Warriors of Light called from other shards. In each area of the dungeon you're helped by friends you made along the way, who join you in battle themselves (or use constructs that do in the case of Amh Areng). In Amh Areng, the workers of Twine send Talos down to clear your way and help you fight the Shades, in Il Mheg the Fae folk join in the fight, and in Lakeland you're joined by Crystarium soldiers and the bounty hunters who were hunting the Cardinal virtues from the role quests. In that light, the name The Heroes' Gauntlet doesn't just refer to the shades of heroes who are the player's opponents, it also refers to people of Novrandt, who now help you take up arms against the shades and fight to help you free their home once and for all.
• After the reveal of the Warrior of Light's true nature, it suddenly makes a lot more sense why Haurchefant and Ysale's spirits return to help you and Alphinaud save Estinien. The stress of the moment and desire to save a friend likely tapped into Azem's weaponized The Power of Friendship and let their souls come back from the Lifestream, just like how much later on the Warrior does the same thing with Hades to save them from Elidibus.
• During the Eden's Promise battle, it does junctions with four of the primals between Leviathan, Garuda, Ramuh and Ifrit, then Combination Attacks. The only ones that don't have a combination together are Garuda and Ifrit since they were defeated together as Raktapaksa.
  • Meanwhile, its ability to fully emulate Titan and Shiva's most devastating attacks is due to the Warrior's recollection of those two primals being the strongest for them.
• Throughout the entire Eden storyline, there have been inklings of Final Fantasy VIII references all over, but what some may not get is just how deep the references went. All the time you've been summoning references to Primals from the Warrior of Light's mind? This is the same as Ultimacia summoning Griever from Squall's mind, which was merely his own image of what the ultimate Guardian Force would be like.
• In the cutscene leading to the Final Boss of Shadowbringers, the Scions all throw themselves at Emet-Selch to stop him, each one going down as he effortlessly beats them. The brilliance of this is that it completely disproves Emet's point made before you unlock the Amaurot Dungeon, as Emet had basically asked an Armor-Piercing Question about if the mortal races of the Shards/Source could do what the Ancients did to save their world. The Scions are fighting him to help you, and with the sole exception of Alisaie who is the first to charge in and be knocked down, all of their actions are to support you or someone else present. They all are willing to sacrifice themselves knowing they stand no chance to help you, essentially proving Emet wrong.
  • Additionally, despite Emet pointedly saying that he didn't believe the Sundered to be truly alive, "ergo it is not murder if I kill you", he non-lethally (if painfully) incapacitates the Scions even after making it clear he could kill them with hardly any effort - it's another small proof that what he says isn't quite the full truth of what he feels.
• Since Shadowbringers takes place completely disconnected from the Source, it implies the Warrior of Light came up with the new job skills learned between lv70 and lv80 on their own. For some classes, this amounts to new ways of using their existing weapons, but the Machinist comes up with three entirely new weapons: a poison gas gun (Bioblaster), a hook on chains (Air Anchor), and a whole robot to fight alongside them (the Automaton Queen), which seems awfully ambitious for the WoL to invent wholesale on their own. However, throughout Shadowbringers, they use biological warfare in the form of sleep powder on the Eulmorans, build a device that will grab onto a floating mountain and anchor it to the ground, and work alongside engineers specializing in building Talos; it's possible they got some help or took some inspiration from their adventures in the First to devise their new combat toys.
• The two "outlier" members of the Convocation of Fourteen have differences in their uniforms that display them as being different from the other twelve: Elidibus's white robe, and Azem's black mask. Not only do their jobs not typically involve the use of creation magic like the rest, but: Elidibus's role was an Emissary. Someone who is sent out to maintain relationships with other organizations or governments. That is to say prevent the relationships from changing too drastically. What is a lack of change indicative of? Light, represented by the color white. While Azem's role was the Traveler, someone who never stayed in one place too long and whose job it was to create bonds with individuals. As the most active Convocation member, it only makes sense that their uniform is entirely black - the color of Darkness. Appropriately, in the present day, Elidibus has completely stagnated, while Azem is ever changing.
• The revelation that Elidibus is the Heart of Zodiark paints his Affably Evil actions from A Realm Reborn in a new light; Zodiark was born out of the will to save the Star from the Final Days, and therefore he wishes no ire (at least to useful pawn pieces) until his plans are genuinely jeopardized, because he is a savior, not a destroyer. One could say being the original Warrior of Light even helped produce this image, as being what his people would consider The Hero of their species' story encouraged him to play the part to perfection. Even his method of trying to upend the First via Warriors of Light from the other reflections is essentially weaponizing Azem's penchant for The Power of Friendship from the opposite side of the coin.
• Another case of Bookend; The first primal the Warrior of Light fought was Ifrit. The last boss of Shadowbringers is Lunar Ifrit. And depending on how the story handles the future threats we've seen in previews (whether they're primals or something else) maybe the last primal we fight period, but at minimum will likely be the last Eorzean primal we ever fight, with the Beast Tribes finally making peace with mankind.
• Though their reasons and mysteries are not yet explained in full, it makes sense why the Sharlayan Forum seemingly dictates that what looks to be the Final Days isn't worth their intervention; Fandaniel's and Zenos' plans are artificial — a recreation of the Final Days through a twisted and sundered Ascian's Omnicidal Maniac incomplete ideas with inspiration from Emet-Selch's recollections. Whatever would cause or force the true Final Days is clearly something that Sharlayan has been studying, so naturally a likely-inaccurate simulation of it isn't quite the same.
• The reveal of Light and Darkness being Stasis and Activity respectively makes certain concepts make much more sense retroactively, specifically necromancy: if Dark Is Not Evil, why do necromancers tend to focus on Dark-aligned spells? Because by using Darkness, you're filling a corpse with activity. It also makes sense why Holy/Light aligned spells (such as Kuribu's attack in Palace of the Dead or Lost Banish in Bozja) do increased damage against Undead and Voidsent: they are bringing an entity full of activity towards stasis.
• Elemental sprites are ubiquitous on the Source, and can be found in nearly every zone as regular enemies. While easily missed, sprites are by contrast extremely rare on the First, and never appear as regular enemies. The reason for this? Same reason the Empty is bereft of elemental activity—as manifestations of the elements, they are being held back by the stasis brought on by the overabundant light aether. There is even sidequest in the Raktika Greatwood that involves summoning what looks like the very same sprites.
• If you look at the timing of the events on the First, the Crystal Tower appearing one hundred years in the past makes perfect sense. That's around the same time as the Flood of Light, which coincides with the Warriors of Darkness being sent to the Source at the end of the Heavensward expansion. G'raha Tia wasn't one hundred years too early - he arrived perhaps a few months before the Eighth Umbral Calamity, exactly the right time to avert it and save everyone. It only seemed too early because of the time difference between the First and the Source.
• Some have balked at Time Travel even being a plot point, except technically it always was; the Echo in 1.0 explicitly allows the Warrior of Light to travel into the past, not just mentally like in A Realm Reborn onwards but physically. They can't change history, but they could physically acquire items and bring them back to the present if it doesn't change history (ie. dungeon loot). The Crystal Tower effectively embellishes the concept to its maximum degree, breaking a strained rubberband by physically producing an alternate future — which makes sense, as it's the peak of Allagan technology which itself was created by an empire secretly manipulated by the Ascians. G'raha Tia effectively stumbled into inheriting the legacy of research and technology all sourcing back to magicks that might as well make one a Reality Warper and got the right push from the Garlond Ironworks, who legacy-wise have broken meta-physics already in the Omega raids and partly experienced time travel in the Alexander raids, to finally change what should've been immutable and alter the concepts of the Echo far beyond even an average Ancient's capability.
• Back in Heavensward Alexander makes note that it cannot see the Warrior of Light's future despite its ability to calculate endless permutations of the past and future. At the time, it was a cute way of saying that we write our own future (or that we're just that chaotic), but come Shadowbringers there's another explanation. Alexander can see through time, but not into alternate universes; as far as it knew, the Warrior continued on and then just... vanished. No death, no body, just... gone, with no way of telling where they had gone or why.
• In the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raids, Her Inflorescence is able to take damage from the Warrior of Light and their alliance of adventurers, despite the fact that usually these beings require Dragons to be able to even so much as harm them in the Drakengard series. Except the Warrior of Light is effectively using Wrong Context Magic versus it, empowered by Hydaelyn's Blessing of Light that might as well be a counter-God to the God of the other world, and packing Midgardsormr's dormant presence alongside them to boot. There's quite literally no one else quite so fit for taking the fight to such beings.

Endwalker

• The Triple Triad cards of Hydaelyn and Zodiark have the same numbers: A, A, 5 and 3; however, while Zodiark has the two As to the sides, 5 at the top and 3 at the bottom, Hydaelyn has the exact opposite positions. Not only is this to show their duality, but the fact that Hydaelyn was meant as a counter to Zodiark and thus would be stronger where Zodiark is weaker!
• Reaper can best be described as a selfish DPS with utility as a side-benefit for their power, like only buffing the party for Plentiful Harvest, and healing the party as a consequence of protecting themselves with Crest of Borrowed Time. This selfish "Help you while I'm helping myself" look makes the job even more fitting for Zenos, who has a Hazy-Feel Turn to help save all of existence for a purely selfish reason in drawing the Warrior of Light into one final showdown.
• The fact that Vtra speaks directly in Eorzian, rather than projecting understanding while using Dragonspeak like all the other members of the first brood we've encountered, is the first indication he is sincerely fond of mortals and dedicated to his nation and citizens.
• Elidibus sends the Warrior of Light into the past via the Crystal Tower, ending them up in Elpis — except it's a Stable Time Loop and this was seemingly always fated to happen, as Elidibus himself says the future won't be able to be changed. As mentioned in the time travel part in Shadowbringers above, the Echo accomplishes the same effect on a far smaller scale; Elidibus may have control over the Tower to accomplish this, but it's very limited given his faded existence, and he lacks G'raha Tia's or the Garlond Ironwork's expertise and knowledge to accomplish time-altering travel. With the concepts of the Echo essentially being a fragment of the Ancient's natural capabilities, Elidibus all but gave the Warrior a higher-scale Echo travel that actually transported them but was still rendered immutable. It just so happens that it will always happen.
• Meteion's breakdown is the ultimate indictment of Amaurotine society - as a familiar, she was essentially an organic robot to them, with even Hermes, her creator, ultimately regarding her as a tool for his plan to explore the universe, and because of that impatiently sent her sisters out without submitting his plan to the Convocation for peer review. To him, he was just getting his new toy up and running without Emet-Selch interfering, when in reality she had the emotional maturity of a newborn and simply seeing her as a person who needed to be emotionally prepared for it, which Emet-Selch immediately recognized. Cut to her discovering the truth, and rather than admit he did something awful to her, Hermes uncritically accepts it to confirm his own growing biases and disaffection from society, sabotaging any attempt to subdue her. And Venat remembers it all - no wonder she decided to begin the Sundering when she realized that the Amaurortine are planning to sacrifice a full three-quarters of their population just to bring it back to status quo, by that point it was no great loss in her eyes.
• In Elpis, the Ancients realize that although the Sundered are much weaker at manipulating aether than they are, it also gives them much more control over dynamis, as shown when you're the only person that can hear Meteion when she tries to hide. It's also implied that Limit Breaks use dynamis. Sure enough, if you run the Elpis dungeon as a Trust, none of your Ancient teammates will use a Limit Break.
• In the Heavensward Bard questline, you are searching for a song that "wins battles." Eventually it's revealed that this song is a myth known as the "Ballad of Oblivion" performed by a saint of the heavens. Given what happened to Midgardsomr's world, it's entirely possible that this filtered into the tales and myths of ancient Coerthan peoples.
• In the same vein, the Dancer questlines involve a secret ancient duty of the dance troupe where they use a specific dance technique taught down the generations while traveling the world specially performing for the downtridden, with a hidden aim to dispel a darkness accumulating in people's essence in regions suffering from accute despair, which would otherwise overtake and consume them. Sound Familiar?
  • Additionally, the Dancer job and its techniques originate from Thavnair and it can be easily surmised that this ancient duty originated from exactly where the aetheric protection against Meteoin's song was the weakest. Implying they were dealing with a depowered version of the blasphemy transformation.
• Be it by design or by coincidence, the worlds that Meteion shows you in The Dead Ends reflect certain crisis faced by Etherys and its reflections. The Grebuloff can represent many different plagues, but can especially reflect the Sin Eaters on the first, as an analogue to a disease so horrible that death is considered a better option. The Global Community can call to mind Garlemald, with their pursuit of wholeness and domination, no matter the cost (and would have, identically to The Peacekeepers, eventually wiped themselves out as well with their ultimate weapon in Black Rose). The Plenty are a possible future path that the Ancients themselves could have taken, driven to find purity of peace, no want for anything but no suffering to make living worthwhile, it's not hard to imagine that had Meteion never came to be, the unsundered world may have found the same end.
• Fourchenault disowning his children to make them come home is definitely a dick move; however, according to his wife, he would turn pale and leave the room every time one of their letters arrived, meaning the only information on what his children have been up to has been mildly - and possibly heavily - sanitized by Ameliance. In that light, he would be unaware of the character development Alphinaud and Alisaie have gone through - he's expecting to deal with the young brat who doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does, and the girl who throws herself into danger because it's there, instead of the thoughtful young man all too aware of his failures and... all right, overly enthusiastic - but aware of her limits - young woman they've become. In his eyes, they've been running around Eorzea "having adventures" for the fun of it and coasting on their grandfather's name; by removing them from House Leveilleur, he's taking away whatever standing the name gave them and forcing them to come home, unaware that they've earned just as much, or more, respect from their own actions.
• Now that we know about the Emotional Powers of Dynamis, it comes to light that a number of Jobs draw more on the power of Dynamis than Aether when looked at with the new perspective.
  • The Dark Knight's source of power has always been described as an "abyss" of emotion, drawing from a Void of negative emotions and entropy instead of "The Void" of the 13th shard. This also explains why tapping too deep into the Darkside can be lethal as without Meteion heading up Dynamis' effects, it might just be fatal instead of twisting someone into a horrible monster.
  • Dynamis only affects those whose emotions match those manipulating Dynamis, it's why only people who gave into despair were transformed into blasphemies by the song of oblivion (powered by despair). A Bard's Magic Music only empowers their allies because the Bard empathizes with their fellow fighters. It's why the art nearly went extinct. Minstrels who never knew combat couldn't empathize with soldiers when they were hired as Bards and existing Bards started embellishing their stories to the point of emotional disassociation.
  • Dancers go so far as to emulate Metieon's song of oblivion, though to a benevolent end. The Kriegstanz takes a person's negative emotions and turns them into physical monsters, just like terminus beasts. The difference is that the Dancers then destroy the monsters to destroy the negative emotions in people's hearts, rather than turning the monsters loose on people.
• Dynamis also handily explains why the Warrior of Light is capable of feats that trounced the Ascian efforts at every turn. The Ascians, even in diluted, sundered states, are so aetherically powerful — and so detached from actual, genuine appreciation and love for life thanks to their broad acceptance of the aetheric cycle, which dilutes them of their capability of Dynamis. They care more about the Star and its growth, than themselves. Venat, Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus are rare cases of individuals that personally care for their fellow ancients and the life around them in their own ways, explaining why they can use Limit Breaks in the Ktisis Hyperboreia, but the Ascians that follow were devoted to Zodiark in tempering or in restoration, only cherishing what they had lost in restoring the Star. The Warrior of Light isn't just empowered by Hydaelyn's blessing, but their raw empathy and their refusal to lose more than what they already have; their forward progression and The Power of Love are their perfect counter for those that can't help but focus on the past with blinding nostalgia and apathy or even downright malice.
• Garleans use not a small amount of latin in their terminology and lingo. When Zenos Yae Galvus is declared anathema to his people and nation for his horrific actions, he is branded with the title his great grandfather Solus Zos Galvus (aka the ascian Emet-Selch) reserved for the worst traitors in their history, Zenos "Viator" Galvus. Viator means "Traveler" in Latin...
  • This in turn, only serves to further his position as the Warrior of Light's dark mirror.
• It's mentioned multiple times in the expansion that the Scions are given pay which they live off of, which is why Estinien is able to maintain himself after joining the Scions. A player might think this is Gameplay and Story Segregation due to Warrior of Light never really getting a stipend as a Scion, except they do: in the form of gil rewards in quests and Daily Roulettes!
• The revelation of Dynamis as a substance is a tonal and thematic opposite to Aether. Aether is heavily associated with the Primals, constructs that are typically made to resemble gods or prominent figures in Eorzean history, and are known to brainwash people within their vicinity if they aren't proficient with Aether themselves. Thus, they represent the desire to place your fate in the hands of grander figures. Dynamis, meanwhile, responds to intense emotion and pound for pound isn't as strong as Aether, but in greater quantities, such as being used to perform a Limit Break, it has time and again counteracted Aetheric beings throughout the many Duties you complete. Put it simply, it's the desire to take hold of your own fate.
• When the party first reaches Ultima Thule, Meteion launches an attack on their aether, causing their bodies to shut down and their organs to fail. Only Thancred is able to struggle to his feet and attack her. One reason for this is that he is used to fighting in similar conditions. Back in Shadowbringers, he displayed the abilities Perfect Deception and Souldeep Invisibility, which respectively slow and halt his internal aether to aid in stealth at the cost of potentially killing him through organ failure. The effect of Meteion’s attack is similar, making him uniquely suited to struggle through it and take a swing.
• The Endsinger's second phase has only one attack, named Telomania. Telo, from Greek telos, meaning end, finish, arguably final, and mania, from Latin through Greek, meaning delusion or madness, arguably fantasy. Once again, the final boss's ultimate attack is literally called Final Fantasy.
• Hythlodaeus's weapon is the bow and arrow because, with his advanced soulsight, it would be incredibly easy for him to snipe targets.
• Zodiark and Hydaelyn look very similiar in design to Voidsents and Sin Eaters respectively: the former has a dark color scheme, black wings, tentacles, horns and its attacks come in the forms of magic circles and runes; the latter has white angelic wings, a white halo and a bright design with unnaturally pale skin; one of her attacks is even a literal "Flood of Light". It seems even in Primals, Darkness and Light have preferred forms. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to consider them the proto-Voidsent/Sin Eater.
• Mixed with Fridge Horror: The Metea witnessed many horrors in her travels across the universe, one of them being a sphynx-like construct absorbing and wiping all life on a planet; the final and most powerful Terminus Beast in the original Final Days was Therion, a sphynx-like monster that could fly in space. It's more than possible that the appearance of the Terminus Beasts/blasphemies were generated from the Meteia's own subconcious fears and memories.
• During the Omega story, Omega sought to find what unknown quantity allows heroes to claim victory against greater, more powerful foes who should logically destroy them every single time. It did so in order to try and gain enough power to travel through space again and reach its home planet. At the end, Omega learns some measure of the soul and emotions that drive heroes, and determines that this is what it was seeking. Come Endwalker, we learn that this power of emotion is a real, quantifiable energy, but one that most instruments are incapable of measuring; Dynamis. It is also revealed that this power can be and has been used to travel the cosmos; Meteion did just that. Endwalker also confirms Cid's suspicions that a being with a soul and emotions would not be able to endure the solitary trip through space, even if they had the physical power to make the journey; the loneliness and despair would break anyone with a heart. This very thing happened to the Meteia during their journey through space.
• So, why do Nald'thal's scales instantly kill you even if it tips over to the virtuous light side? Because the scales are a judgement for the dead, if it tips over on the side of virtue you win a ticket straight to the Heavens.
• Emet-Selch's parting words serve two purposes 1: he very specifically called out Azadaal's Legacy as a place to adventure to because he knew of the voidgate, and having accepted his defeat and the lives of the sundered, he wanted to make sure the Voidgate there was dealt with. And 2: He sent the Warrior of Light, knowingly, to raid the treasure vault of one of their allies in Vrtra, almost certainly as one final parting Troll to their friend-turned-enemy-turned-friend.
• Both Sharlayan's plan to evacuate the world and their general isolationism and secretive nature make more sense in-universe if you remember the nation's origin: a group of refugees whose leader foresaw the Sixth Calamity coming and persuaded as many people as he could into fleeing in an ark. Naturally, when their descendants learned the apocalypse was on its way and there was an escape awaiting them, they jumped right on board with the plan to leave. In addition, the Sixth Calamity was caused by Mhach and Amdapor running amok with Black and White Magics respectively, spreading their forbidden knowledge with no care for how it was being used or the impact they had on the world around them. It's only natural that the survivors of the Calamity that followed decided that knowledge was a kind of power that people needed to prove themselves worthy of handling. Even the intense practicality of their culture, at the expense of art and flourish, can be seen as an effect of having been refugees that could only afford to keep things that had a clear use.

Other

• Every expansion the player classes get new skills that are always more extravagant and have more stopping power than the last. Besides showing the Warrior's growth and refinement, it's also showing their increasing strength with the Blessing of Light and, likely, touching more and more on their heritage as one of the strongest of the Ancients - a people so magically potent they could create complex life by complete accident.
  • However, in yet another case of Gameplay and Story Integration, the Warrior of Light is unfathomably powerful, yet not as capable as some of the Soul Crystal holders, never mind long-standing veterans. Raubahn can pull off feats no ordinary Gladiator or Paladin can accomplish, select members of the Bozjan Resistance have straight up stronger Samurai arts than the Warrior's expertise in the class, and certain Job Quests have the trainers pull off feats the Warrior never recreates. In terms of raw capability, you're a proverbial wrecking ball, which Aldis can attest to just by sensory, but in terms of skill, the Warrior of Light is still fairly new to all of these Jobs, keeping them from hitting the same proficiency yet.
  • Some might find it strange that a Ranged, Caster or Healer Warrior of Light might suddenly perform some rather surprising martial feats, but given how quickly they pick up every single prospective art given to them, from managing the land, to crafting things, to handling firearms and swords or mastering the styles of song and dance, it can be reason to believe that they're just inherently a bit of a Renaissance Man that is naturally talented in everything. And perhaps a bit of that comes from their origin's world-traveling days...
• Hearing of Sharlayan's adamant loathing for war in any capacity gives a solid reason for why the only Jobs whose origins trace to Sharlayan, Astrologian and Sage, are healers.
• Zenos, in essence, is effectively a strawman of the hardcore MMO raider, and can indeed be seen as a dark mirror of the player; not the Warrior of Light, the player. Zenos doesn't care much about the world or its people, and shows sociopathic disinterest in anything that doesn't involve violence and fighting, similar to some players who simply skip the story to reach endgame content, but he has mastered combat to an extent barely anything gives him that adrenaline rush, that "time between the seconds". To Zenos, the Warrior of Light is a particularly hard raid boss that somehow gets stronger and stronger the more time passes, and to him it's fun. He can even switch Jobs like players, 'maining' Samurai in Stormblood purely due to personal interest and wanting to master it, like players maxing out a newly released Job, before eventually getting bored of it and switching to Reaper in Endwalker.
• The reason why Endwalker is so littered with references, if not ending up being a Whole-Plot Reference to Final Fantasy IV is because 2021 is the 30 year anniversary.
• If anyone ever wondered just how so many outlandishly exaggerated monsters could evolve naturally on the Source and its reflections, Endwalker provides the answer: they didn't. Almost every creature that exists was in fact purposely engineered by the Ascians and evaluated via peer review before being released into the wild of Ethyris. The main reason so many of them are over-the-top is because the Ascians were apparently very fond of gigantic, ridiculously deadly creations. It should be noted that they do have a facility where they study natural selection meaning evolution may still be a thing, they designed monsters that were built to last.
• The modifications to the 6.1 A Realm Reborn story retroactively make a lot of other various plot threads make a whole lot more sense in retrospect; having Rhitatyhn tap into Dynamis to go into a mode that can basically be called a extended Limit Break helps to lay down that no, Limit Breaks are not something that just exists for gameplay convenience and there is a reason behind them, while Hydaelyn stepping in to help you defeat Ultima Weapon by granting you a level 3 Limit Break and resurrecting the Warrior of Light with a 11th-Hour Superpower (as opposed to the original where she only shields you from Ultima, which is very merited) gives significantly more weight to Midgardsormr's question of your worthiness in 2.5, you would be literally dead if not for Her powers having brought you back from Lahabrea's ultimate attack, so his reasoning to test what you can be without them becomes even more valid.
  • The Duty Support team that follows you through most of the Scion-related plot until post-Bloody Banquet also adds a nice bit of continuity. As an adventurer ascended to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, the team gradually shifts from standard adventurers and Grand Company members to full on Scions in their own right. They also do not take up vocations like the Black and White Mages, which would clash with the canonical Job Quests outright stating how rare, exclusive and potentially banned they are; instead they have customized extensions of Conjurer and Thaumaturge off of their ever-growing experience in battle, like how certain main Scion members became their own unique jobs through story circumstances. Once Heavensward hits, your actual accumulated team of Alphinaud, Ysayle and Estinien, combined with other characters like Haurchefaunt, also implement a strong Gameplay and Story Integration.
• There is repeated references to the idea of the humours when it comes to health and medicine. This seems extremely archaic, especially considering the technology and medical knowledge of the setting which is far beyond that of ancient Greece. However, the Greeks also subscribed to the idea of elemental balance in the body - earth, fire, air, and water, with ailments often being ascribed to having too much of one element or too little of another. And once one delves deeper into the lore, it is clear that everything in the setting is made up of Aether, which tends to be aspected toward one of several elements, and adjusting the balance of Aether can heal people or the environment. The concept of humours and elemental balance, while complete nonsense in real life, is legitimate medicine in this universe.
• The revelation that Reincarnation is the natural cycle of life and death in the setting adds a ton more weight to the Dotharl clan's individual beliefs, but there's probably a little bit more to it. Clap Your Hands If You Believe has also been an extremely predominant part of the setting as well, so with those two factors together it's very likely the Dotharl's various beliefs (always reincarnating back into the clan if you died in combat, an outsider dying saving a Dotharl being reborn as a Dotharl, ect. ect.) are all actually true, because the clan believes with such genuine fervor that if it wasn't true to begin with, it eventually became true.

Fridge Horror

• The story has more than a few implications that the Imperial takeovers have had their fair share of Rape, Pillage, and Burn, particularly in Ala Mhigo and Doma, and especially on the first part. And these countries have been occupied long enough for a whole new generation of children to be born; Arenvald is a star example of this as half-Garlean, half-Ala Mhigan. And his mother ended up scarring him across the face out of hatred for his blood when the thought of a Child by Rape tormented her too far. Now imagine all of the Garlean regions that have been suppressed suffering this effect upon a generation, of children persecuted and potentially murdered simply for the circumstances of their birth.
• If one ingests Dragon's blood, they can end up transforming into a dragon themselves, never mind losing your mind potentially. The Ishgardians are all carrying a semblance of this blood in their veins, so they're more susceptible to it than most, but then take into account that the species of Dragons aren't even native to Hydaelyn as a planet. Had Midgardsormr been more malevolent, never mind if any of his children had the idea of expanding Nidhogg's spiteful means of turning Ishgardians against eachother for his revenge, they could effectively convert and alter entire species to produce more dragons, a full on Alien Invasion by beings that might as well be functionally immortal in age and persistence.
• No wonder the Warrior of Light is The Dreaded among the Garleans: even with Gameplay and Story Segregation of replaying story areas aside, just the main storyline has them destroy several major bases, wipe out every troop and machine in their way, and drive the stake into the heart of their operations in multiple regions, on top of the deaths of multiple high-ranking commanders. With gameplay in mind between the world content, dungeons and raids, boss fights and otherwise (especially Bozja, which is one giant warzone against the Garlean Empire), the Warrior would likely have the highest singular body count of Garlean soldiers, and for thorough players, that's up to the thousands or even tens of thousands.
  • The Endwalker duty where you're thrown into the body of an Imperial Garlean Trooper highlights this spectacularly. The Warrior of Light has none of their powers or abilities, none of their Blessing, and only a sword and some medical salve at their disposal in a pathetically weak body that can be overwhelmed and killed within seconds by any of the Tempered or the haywire Magitek machinery. It's only through your resourcefulness that you even survive, and it still boils down to the Warrior all but crawling bloodied through the snow by their fingertips after taking an explosion head-on. These are the kinds of people that you've been casually slaughtering by the dozens throughout the whole game.
• In Azys Lla, the VIth Imperial Legion saw Ysayle turn into Shiva to fight against them (And when you defeat Regula van Hydrus, he is able to retreat unlike Gaius van Baelsar). And it's possible that they may also know about the archbishop transforming into King Thordan in primal form. With the knowledge that non-beast tribes not only are able to summon primals as well, but can turn into one, one can only imagine the trouble Eorzea will now face. This was also foreshadowed in 2.4 when the Scions learn from the Warrior of Light that Ysayle became Shiva and the group feared that the Empire would become more aggressive if they had found out that anyone could summon or become a primal.
  • Patch 3.5 makes this worse due to Ilberd's actions in Baelsar's Wall. Not only did he intentionally try to summon a primal even more powerful than Bahamut, but he basically did this on the Garlean's doorstep! Things do not look good for Eorzea.
  • Taken to its conclusion in Patch 4.3, as the Ascian-controlled corpse of Zenos instructs "Emissary" Asahi on how to summon a Primal. The summoner? Yotsuyu. The fuel? Crates of aether crystals smuggled in by the delegation, and a Chekhov's Gun Kojin Artefact Mirror. The result? Tsukiyomi, Kami of the Moon. Yotsuyu's trauma and thirst for revenge is so great that despite a substandard amount of crystals and her own lack of serious devotion to the kami, she's still one of the most powerful Primals the Warrior of Light has yet faced. Even after she's defeated, she saves the last of her energy... not to hurt the Warrior of Light, but to give Asahi a long and drawn out aether-fuelled dose of Laser-Guided Karma. The worst part is they did it all to undermine the populist faction within the Empire that they were supposedly supporting, and to burn any possible hopes of a ceasefire or peace between Doma and the Empire. One of the few positive notes to the whole debacle is that the prisoner exchange went off more or less without a hitch.
• Teledji Adeledji's plan to screw over the Scions, as well as Ul'dah, all in an attempt to get his hands on Omega, even if it succeeded, was doomed to fail. Even if he woke it up, Stormblood showed it was not an Allagan superweapon that some rich Lalafell could easily control. It would have done what it did, hunting for the planet's strongest fighters to test its theories, destroy the world and then move on. Evil Is Not a Toy indeed.
• The concept of "Tempering" in general is pretty horrifying, but that isn't Fridge Horror because it's obvious and openly discussed. A horror that's less openly discussed is that primals seem to temper those around them without necessarily even meaning to. And even they don't know how to undo the process. Not that most of them would if they could.
  • Now imagine a Primal attacking a populated city, when their mere presence can Mind Rape people and cause horrific mutations from aether overdose. The actual physical damage they'd do would be nothing compared to that.
    • This fear nearly becomes a reality in 4.1's main story, Lakshmi is summoned in the throne room of Ala Mhigo, and keeping up with her attempts to temper the leaders of Ala Mhigo's various towns is nearly impossible even for the Warrior of Light and Arenvald; it takes a Villainous Rescue from Fordola, whose Resonance is basically The Echo on steroids, to prevent a worst-case scenario.
  • The more we learn about how Tempering works, the worse it becomes. Tempering is essentially the Primal replacing part of the Aether in a being's body with its own. And if you played through the Summoner questline, it is revealed that when Bahamut was destroyed, everyone on the planet was infused with a small amount of his Aether. A sufficiently powerful Primal in a populated area could take over the bodies of countless people even if defeated.
• When you first meet Yuyuhase, you find that he used to be a member of the Immortal Flames. Given that he's among the Crystal Braves who betray the Scions for the Monetarists, it makes one wonder if he was planning to at one point betray the Flames.
• Ilberd's plan, when you really think about it. The whole scheme hinged upon incredibly detailed and in-depth knowledge of Primals and how to summon them. Where would Ilberd acquire these, you ask? The answer is as easy as it is horrific: From his time as a Crystal Brave. Ilberd pulled the ultimate betrayal, using everything he learned about stopping Primals... to summon one. And worst of all? There's a very real possibility that the only, only reason Ilberd ever became a Brave... was for this exact reason.
  • Lolorito DOES state that he had Ilberd planted in the Crystal Braves to spy on it. And that Ilberd genuinely believed that Lolorito would free Ala Mhigo once the Sultana was dealt with. So it's possible that the knowledge Ilberd gained was not his main goal, but one he used nonetheless when he and the rest of the traitors became wanted men. So in a way, Lolorito picking Ilberd to be his spy is some serious for-want-of-a-nail.
• Zenos' survival despite slitting his own throat and clearly dying after the fight against the WoL unfortunately, shouldn't be a surprise. After all, he has the Echo, just like a Sahagin who got absorbed by Leviathan.
  • Actually not an application of the Echo at all - instead, his corpse is being possessed by an Ascian, possibly Elidibus. Though Zenos himself was also shown to possess the body of a Resistance member, showing his Resonant ability after all.
• The Kuribu and Winged Lion showing up in the Shadowbringers teasers confused people for a long time. Was Amdapor going to be involved in the story somehow? That whole plotline had largely resolved in Heavensward. It sparked a bit of speculation about travel to one of the Shards and perhaps an "alt-Amdapor", but those were wild guesses. Well, it turned out to be sort of right - Shadowbringers will primarily take place in Norvrandt, the First Shard of Hydaelyn. And because of the Flood of Light that threatens to destroy Norvrandt, that world is being overrun with "Sin Eaters", beings who are basically the opposite of Voidsent (i.e., they're beings who have been twisted into horrible or eerily beautiful-yet-destrustive forms by the Light). And we find out that the scene with Thancred and the Winged Lion is taking place on Norvrandt. And we also see that the surviving areas of Norvrandt have a new "Light" weather effect that looks rather similar to the chambers below Amdapor where the Kuribu and Lion were kept.
  And that's when it hits you. The Kuribu and Winged Lion weren't "magic statues" made by the Amdapori, or not just that - the Amdapori were experimenting with the deliberate creation of Sin Eaters in a desperate attempt to counter the rampant Mhachi use of Voidsent and were risking a Flood of Light in the process. This puts the entire War of the Magi into a completely new light (no pun intended) - the overuse of magic by Amdapor and Mhach wasn't just "draining aether", it was risking causing a Flood of Darkness or a Flood of Light (or both, simultaneously) and the Elementals didn't cause an actual water flood as "punishment for sins and draining life", it was the only way they saw to stop the Amdapori and Mhachi from literally destroying the planet. It also widens the scope of the horror of the war even further than what we knew - it was armies of astral or umbral-aspected demons clashing alongside their magi masters (making them a stand in for the Espers of Final Fantasy VI).
• It's shown on-camera what happens to interlopers who the pixies have decided to "keep" - they're transformed into topiary. That's bad enough, but one sidequest in Il Mheg sends you looking for specific "leafmen" that the pixie had found photographs of. Upon locating them and returning the pixie, they cheerfully reply that it's more fun to sneak up on people and transform them. According to them, it's because they "don't look as appealing" when the unlucky soul is changed mid-run, like what happened to the unfortunate owner of the photographs. That's not the horror though - the margins of the pictures have notes that the photographer scribbled down, mentioning that the leafmen by a lake had a fishing pole next to them, as though it had been put down by someone. And then you might remember the benchmark, where a Lalafell fisherman greeted a pixie...
• A quest for the amaro has you find a massive empty egg in the north of Il Mheg. The quest giver will mention that the egg had been there before the Amaro came and they don't know what hatched from it. Do the Mean questline for Gatherers and you will find that the mythical Samiel had been there, only to then later find it in Kholusia with young ones.
• Spare a thought for the poor sap who Emet-Selch possessed when arriving in the First, As he notes himself, he had to possess a new body when arriving in the first since his clone body from the Source could never survive the trip between realms. Did we kill an innocent person when fighting Emet-Selch? It's a good thing Lahabrea never morphed Thancred's body or he would have been killed off.
• The basic trash enemies found in the Amaurot dungeon take the form of various voidsent and undead seen in the game previously. Are those the creatures' true forms, or did Emet-Selch change their appearances to make them more familiar to the Scions? Or do they look like that because their true forms were too horrific for him to willingly recreate? And if the first case is true, did Igeyorhm effectively cause the End Days to happen again on the Thirteenth shard?
  • Endwalker reveals that Emet-Selch showed us exactly what had destroyed Amaurot. The Final Days spurned the Ancients creation magic to make horrors beyond compare. Considering that many of the beasts still exist in one shape or another, they either survived the Final Days long enough to remain in a more harmless shape or Igeyorhm molded the first creations of Darkness after them which simply got out of hand when the Thirteenth was lost to the void.
• Fandaniel's mere existence. An Ascian who wants to destroy everything, regardless of the Unsundered's objectives. Knowing the Ascians did indeed get tempered by Zodiark for their goals, one could wonder if (and how) Fandaniel gave Zodiark the slip.
  • It's quite likely that, since Zodiark is a blank slate itself and Elidibus is essentially the core and will of the Primal, that Elidibus' death freed Fandaniel to allow him free reign to turn against the Unsundered's plans.
  • Alternatively, considering that the tempering mostly happens by either being present during a summoning or prolonged exposure, it could be possible that all Sundered were in fact untempered and only followed the Unsundered solely due to having their memories awakened. As such, Fandaniel can easily break free once the pure Ascians are gone since he himself explained that his memories as Amon are much stronger and precious than any memory from when he had been Fandaniel.
• When the Warrior and Ardbert do a Fusion Dance, the sheer Light inside of the Warrior that was threatening turning them into a world-threatening Lightwarden is contained for the duration of the following battle against Hades and then weaponized to finish Emet-Selch off. That's two of presumably thirteen Shards of Azem together, and they managed to contain virtually the entirety of the Flood of Light inside of themselves with nary an issue. Even accounting for Hydaelyn's Blessing of Light giving the Warrior an inherent advantage, either Azem is just that ridiculously strong by themselves, or powerful and capable Ancients were singular forces of potential destruction that could change the entire world with all the latent Aether inside of them.
  • Emet-Selch himself directly provides a harrowing answer; for all it took to defeat him, it was all because Emet held back and gradually amped up instead of going all out from the start. Had he been a No-Nonsense Nemesis instead of making a show of how meaningless the sundered's efforts were, he has enough power that he could've killed all of the Scions and the Warrior outright. While they had next to nothing to defend themselves from the power of Dynamis thanks to it being an Outside-Context Problem, by the aetheric scale of Etheirys, virtually every Convocation member of Amaurot is a Physical God and localized Reality Warper in their domain of profession, and the player repeatedly has witnessed this power throughout Shadowbringers. And he's just one seated member. The fights with Elidibus/Themis go on to highlight that yes, the Warrior of Light having a portion of their original power as Azem combined with The Power of Friendship are probably the only things keeping them steady against such high-scale threats that would crush virtually everyone else.
  • And then Endwalker provides a conclusive answer by changing the way the final fights of ARR are played out. By virtue of turning Lahabrea into a Hopeless Boss Fight who outright kills Hydaelyn's Chosen with only Hydaelyn draining herself even further to resurrect them and give them the power they need to force Lahabrea to retreat preventing the story from ending then and there. And Lahabrea's still the weakest of the Unsundered.
• Slithersand, a crafting material in the First, is described with this tooltip; "Smooth granules of the mineral also known as green cinnabar, containing traces of quicksilver.", Considering quicksilver is also known as mercury, a highly toxic metal even in tiny qualities, never mind the BAGS of the stuff the Warrior of Light uses for heavy duty crafting. If so, it probably helps explain their fragile mental state.
• The inciting incident that mangled control away from the Ascians of their Creation Magic and drove them insane, supposedly a deep noise emanating from within the planet itself followed by planetary devastation and meteors falling from the sky, is still unanswered for. Eons of destruction, multiple apocalypses and civilizations rendered to dust, and what remains now to continue attempting to end the world all happened because of a completely unknown entity or factor in the world, either out of a freak accident or as part of an even greater machination than anything the Ascians could ever have planned for. Not even the Unsundered remnants of the Ancients have any conclusions, or at least don't openly speak of them, and neither do their shades. This only begs the question: what lingers beyond the Ancients and the elder Primals?
  • Amusingly, the Blue Mages of all people have the ability to learn "Eerie Soundwave", which causes vibrations throughout their body to emit an awful noise and similarly disrupts aetherial output which happens to nullify localized magic. It's simply a rebranded Dispel in gameplay and only useful for the masked carnival, yet the similarities are uncanny - and can only be learned from the Empuse, a level 59 enemy in Azys Lla, which happens to be an Allagan facility that has world-ending monstrosities like the Warring Triad within. Make of that what you will.
  • The Terminus beasts and the fall of Amaurot also highlight that the Creation Magicks of the Ancients were latent with absolutely destructive potential, and only held back by a seemingly-perfect society controlling themselves. With how this power would form the basis of producing Primals from aether by thought alone, that means that the far, far more powerful Ascians could've individually produced Primal-tier creatures by mistake or whimsy, and whatever caused the end of the world almost seemed to explicitly exploit this ability to do so.
  • Endwalker provides the source of that horror: a single misguided creation of one Ancient in his hope of seeing the living answers of civilizations across the stars ends up dooming immeasurable numbers of worlds and civilizations when they are driven to despair by how many "perfect" societies kept wanting for death or killing themselves off in the end. Everything that happens in this game and beyond stirred into motion because a single person used those powerful creation magicks and one poorly-programmed concept went awry, proving that all that fridge horror was ultimately on the mark in unexpected ways.
• The Crossover event with Final Fantasy XV is mostly a contrived excuse to fight alongside Noctis and get rewards for it, but the second quest involves a Duty battle with a Daemon. In XV, Daemons are creatures of the Starscourge — something that can infect people and spread its existence akin to a virus, creating more Daemons. Had the Warrior of Light and Noctis not been quick to kill it, there's a horrifying possibility that an Outside-Context Problem could've started a whole new crisis in Eorzea with no in-universe origins, context or potential solution for it!
• The Lifestream of the planet's aether is partly a homage to Final Fantasy VII, but with one nasty twist; instead of the villains over-exploiting the world's aether, it's the natural cultures and people of the world unwittingly doing so, draining the planet slowly but surely even as there's movements to prevent overextending. As aether composes even people's lives and souls, this means fueling a Primal summoning with crystals is akin to grabbing solidified soul and life force to summon a being that naturally drains more just by existing. Meanwhile mages that extend past their natural aether stores to draw from the land around is potentially Powered by a Forsaken Child.
  • It only gets worse with the Black Rose. As Gaius lays out, the destructive power of such a chemical gas isn't by attacking lungs and organs directly, which could theoretically be preventable or cured against: it destroys and erases all aether it comes into contact with. Unlike the Shin-Ra Corporation with Mako, the Garlean Empire isn't even interested in trying to harness Aether naturally outside of Super-Soldier experiments and as Magitek fuel — they'd rather exterminate all threats and enemies. It's not just apocalyptic for the living, it's planetary extermination down to even beneath the surface.
• Speaking of the Black Rose, it's talked about in hushed whispers and aghast horror until the cast find out more about it in full, with only the most crazy and sociopathic of the Garleans as well as the most intent on using it conversing in any sort of open matter. No one of the entire Eorzean Alliance knows anything about Black Rose except glimmers of information and what research they can gather, to the point that had Varis managed to release it the way he did in the original timeline, no one could've seen it coming. Then this gets worse when you realize how far its come despite Gaius trying to shut it down; Blue Quests in Stormblood take a silent test of it to a small, dead town practically at the doorstep of the Shroud in Ala Mhigo, still their own territory at that point, and while it horrifies the investigation, no one actually knows what they're in for, which is why its use right at the end of the expansion further confuses those around. Had it not been for the work of the Crystal Exarch subverting history at virtually the last minute, the Black Rose was practically waiting to be used right in Eorzea itself, or at least leak over the border conflict where it would've likely killed the Scions, the heads of the city-states all accumulated at the time in the immediate vicinity, and every commander on both sides, all at once.
• Elidibus had moved to summon many Warriors of Light from the other Shards to the First in his attempts to stop the Scions, and one of them was Hildibrand Manderville — who, by pure unknown circumstance, accidentally stayed in the First in a manner identical to the Exarch's partial summons of the Scion's souls. Keep in mind that this meant our heroes had to kick the collective asses of many souls altogether, and we don't know the consequences of these defeats nor if any others had managed to have the staying summons. Elidibus could have destabilized the rest of the worlds, stripping them of their heroes, solely for his own goals, and the only way anyone will ever know is if we manage to start Shard-hopping.
• Take into consideration the rest of the world. There is a continent to the south that has not been seen, same with the "New World", as well as the South Sea Islands. Surely, the "Final Days" couldn't have affected just Eorzea and its own surrounding nations too, could it? And considering how little contact the (Surviving) people of Meracydia have with the rest of the world, as well as how populated the New World likely is - they had absolutely no idea what was happening. It would be a massacre.
• The most we see of Garlemald in Endwalker is its capital after it's little more than frozen wastelands and bombed-out ruins, with one sole, barely-functional subway of a shelter aside. The vast majority of it was otherwise wiped out by the massive, central Telophoroi Tower. After beating the main story, talking to Maxima at the Alliance's camp has him point out that they can begin to rebuild now, but not only is it a lot of work, there's all of Garlemald's provinces and their numerous missing Legions that are completely unaccounted for. It really hammers home the sheer scale of what the heroes are completely unaware of, and further threats from Garlemald remnants that might be lingering — if there's even much of the nation or its denizens left out there anymore to begin with.
• The Dancer quest line involves carrying out an ancient duty originating from Thavnair, where dancers perform a special technique across the world (with a focus on "entertaining" the downtrodden) which dispels a darkness gathering in people afflicted with accute despair which threatens to otherwise overwhelm and overtake them if not dealt with. Given its resemblance to blasphemy transformation, albiet in a much weaker state, and the fact the ability to counter it originates where the planets aethetic protection is at its weakest, this means that Meteoin's song was still subtlety seeping in and influencing people despite Zodiark altering the rules of reality, the planetary shield and Hydealyn's protections. It was only slowing down the process over an extensively long period of time (from a mortal perspective) and the Ascian's activities were not helping. All that sacrifice and effort only bought everyone time, it didnt solve the actual issue and in time the planet would have been consumed anyhow.
  • This also means that the ancient's and by extension, the Ascian's plans were absolutely doomed from start. Especially so in the latter's case because of all the self-defeating death and despair the Ascian's were causing with the rejoinings and their plans to feed all life to Zodiark to bring back their brethren. Over thousands of years, Meteoin's songs would have seeped into their hearts anyway and the despair of 14 entire ended worlds worth of tortured dead souls (which Meteoin is perfectly able to interact with) would have surrounded the Ancient's population, but with or without the sundering, the protection would have proven insufficient either way and the Ancient's in their tempered and dependent mental state would have relied solely on feeding Zodiark even more cultivated life (or eventually, out of desperation, falling back on sacrificing their own population) for greater shielding or even more extreme alterations to reality in a counterproductive cycle of diminishing returns versus the devastatingly exponential growth of Meteoin's endless song being fed by so much resulting loss and despair.
• The Ascian's goals of the Rejoining was already screwed for years. With the Thirteenth's collapse into the void that ended up making it literally a useless world of neverending death, it's not just that restoring Amaurot was a doomed dream since a fully-completed Zodiark would have never truly saved all of their kind, but also that one Zodiark fragment was seemingly, permanently unreachable. Even if they did manage it, it would require bringing the Voidsent from that shard into the Source in bringing the worlds together, which itself would've been a second Umbral Calamity, and as far as the story showed, the Ascians all but packed up and left once they failed the world, meaning they completely lacked the voidgates or the strategies to even begin to attempt this. Once they "won" too well in a polar contrast to the First, the entire goal of the Ascians was officially All for Nothing, and the Paragon's continuation of their goals in spite of this was effectively ignoring the giant elephant of failure in the room for centuries because they were either too far to stop now or otherwise couldn't ever hope to stop by choice.
• "A single gesture will not lighten the burden I've had to bear." might not be a light-hearted jest from Emet-Selch but actually him recalling all the atrocities he unwittingly put Allagan and Eorzean into, no thanks to Kalros wiping his memories back in Elpis.
• Seeing as The Dead Ends is possibly an Unreliable Narrator, and we only got to see three out of at least seventeen ends (Countless more, if anything), imagine how many other ends that Meteion saw as well as their various causes.
  • Worse yet - how many of those "ends" were caused by Meteion herself?
  • Meteion in general is full of fridge horror. Her song of oblivion was not silenced by the Ancients, just blocked from reaching their world. So how many other worlds that didn't have their advanced magicks were destroyed by the song?
• It's easy to forget that everything in Elpis is giant-sized by normal standards, due to Warrior of Light being temporarily sized up to Ancient height. Even the random mobs found there would be scarily huge in the present world. Now consider already gigantic beasts like the Hippokampus or the Phoinix in Pandaemonium, and then consider that the average Ancient is around 5-6 Meters tall (16-19 ft). Now try to imagine fighting those bosses in your normal size.
• Why would there be Aethyrites on Ultima Thule? Perhaps that was part of everyone's sacrifices? Unless... Oh, Crap!, you're not the first to go there.
• The Warrior of Light is an Echo user, same as Zenos and Fordola among others, and as shown in Endwalker, their very essence can be removed from their body to possess others even if against their will, like the Sahagin chief and Zenos had done. After all the power they've gained as probably one of the most recompleted Ancients, it's entirely plausible they could be killed — only to leave their flesh, and hijack another body on their own accord, or at the very least possess someone else with permission given their kindness. Imagine telling that to the Garleans and Ascians who tried to hard to murder them.
  • The removal of the Warrior's soul to be placed within another vessel by Fandaniel has its own fridge horror to it; the Warrior was turned into a Badass in Distress almost instantly with no resistance by a particularly tricky Ascian with no one the wiser. Throughout the entire game, the Ascians kept to the shadows, but were either directly confrontational, tried to complete their plans before they were interrupted, or were effectively doomed one way or another. Had any of them simply wised up and committed to ambushing the Warrior like Fandaniel did, they could've killed them ages ago. The entire reason the Warrior stands in the present is entirely through the Ascians being too prideful to be that devilish, or thinking they're above the threat.
• Fourchenault has no idea just what his children have been through. It's heavily implied that thanks to his wife, even what has been written to them has been sanitized, and we don't actually know what was written. So a father has no idea that his son had gone through the Bloody Banquet and effectively demonized by the betrayal of his own personal army, that his children had been fighting on the frontlines of a war against the Garleans or Ascian forces to the extent they already had, or that they had been brought to the First — where most of the world was dead, the twins were exposed to some rather horrifying things, and they were nearly killed outright by Emet-Selch as Hades. If he did know, he certainly didn't know the extent. Forget being unaware of their Character Development and world saving exploits, Fourchenault already goes pale hearing possible dangers going their way and doesn't realize they've teetered the brink of death multiple times over.
• The Dragonstar — or the remnants of it — that we see in Alphascape V2.0 and Ultima Thule has been rendered nearly inhospitable due to the Omicron invasion. No life, not even vegetation, other than the extremely resilient dragons could live on it. Baby dragons could be born, but they all come out horrifically mutated. Whatever isn't barren black rock is covered in sickly-green aetherochemical pools that most likely weren't there when it was a thriving planet. Now, think back on what kinds of attacks that the Omicrons commonly use. Atomic Ray, Mustard Bomb, Chemical Missile... See a pattern here? The Dragonstar became the way it is precisely because the Omicrons nuked the whole planet to oblivion, and we have been visiting the deep space equivalent of Pripyat.
• The Twelve function with retroactive Clap Your Hands If You Believe that affects their personality and relations to at least some level - which means that even if originally Althyk and Nymeia weren't an incestous couple, the belief of the people retconned them into one.
• The implication that the Heart of Sabik is a piece of Auracite derived from Ultima the High Seraph becomes this when you realize how much a catalyst for cataclysm its become: the Ultima Weapon was likely intended to replicate Ultima's power through Allagan technology, before they actually understood or even knew what she truly was, and through its design the Garlean Empire would repeatedly try to perfect and recreate it, resulting in the other Weapons that are all potential army-slaying weapons of mass destruction. The Heart of Sabik being in Lahabrea's eventual employ, and the Allagans supposedly harnessing it themselves as led by the Ascians back in the day, further implies that for whatever Hermes and Meteion didn't cause with the Final Days, Ultima has been indirectly manipulating the Ancients to ruin herself.
• The Pandaemonium raid storyline brings up an understated but very important part of Ancient society: If a Convocation member judged another Ancient to have done an unforgivable crime, they can execute the criminal on the spot with no trial. It's easy to assume that what Lahabrea did was out of the norm, but there's also no indication that what he did was illegal.