Remember, all Fridge pages have unmarked spoilers.
Fridge Brilliance
- How it is possible for Cid to conceive the idea of being not reliant on Crystals for everyday life when for a common Valisthean it is an unthinkable idea? Well, he hails outside Valisthea where magic is simply not possible outside the Mothercrystals' influence. With him already having experienced how it is to live without the Crystals, this idea comes easy.
- Why didn’t Clive show any signs of being a Dominant before Phoenix Gate? He was already empowered by a second Eikon of fire. Any of his natural abilities would’ve been written off as coming from Joshua.
- It might seem odd that the Bearers, people with awesome and dangerous magical powers, are the slaves in this world. If they rebelled, wouldn't they easily win? Except they're not the only ones with magic—anyone can use a crystal and do the same thing. This means that their slavery is ultimately for economic reasons, as they are cheaper than crystals. This parallels much more closely with real-world slavery than typical Superhuman Trafficking.
- Also, magic that isn't amplified by a crystal or by being a Dominant just isn't that powerful in Valisthea. Base-level offensive magic in this game basically does Scratch Damage without charging it, to the point that Clive typically does the bulk of his fighting with his sword or Eikonic power. To say nothing of the fact that Bearers are implied to number very few.
- In addition, the book Vivian asks you to find, From a Distance actually explains that the bearers used to be in charge because of their magic. In fact "bearer" is short for "Bearer of the Heavenly Blessing". Then non-bearers rose up and began to subjugate them. That part of history is now virtually unknown, suppressed by the Executors so that both non-bearers and bearers alike don't recognize both the humanity of the bearers and just how powerful bearers were/can be.
- Torgal is Clive's Canine Companion but in the prologue as a puppy he has an unusually close bond with Jill. Almost immediately after the story picks up in the present day, you find out that Jill is the Dominant of Shiva. And then some time later you find out that Torgal is a frostwolf descended from Fenrir, who was implied to be a familiar to Shiva herself.
- Why did Phoenix (Joshua) lose to Ifrit (Clive) in the prologue despite being the first time for both of them?
- Joshua is less battle-hardened than Clive. There's a reason why Clive is his Shield in the first place.
- Joshua becoming Phoenix is due to a Traumatic Superpower Awakening in which he saw his friends and family get murdered in front of him. His psyche isn't really ok in that situation. His initial words as a giant flaming bird deity is to tell Ifrit to leave him alone.
- Joshua is in control of Phoenix and is fighting to escape. Clive has lost control of Ifrit and is fighting to kill.
- Phoenix's abilities, while powerful, are much more tailored for healing and defense. Ifrit is more focused on damage. It is like making a support fight a DPS.
- Anatomically, Joshua is having more trouble being Phoenix due to being a bird. Meanwhile, Ifrit is bipedal with working hands which makes it perfect for Clive.
- But also, Phoenix did almost win. It’s not that difficult to make it through the battle without taking any damage, cinematics show him demolishing Ifrit, and in the final cutscene Clive is completely exhausted and battered. Phoenix just happened to abandon his ranged advantage when Ifrit seemed down for the count, and after that he couldn’t escape the Eikon’s grip.
- Why didn't we see Leviathan or even a Dominant and nation corresponding to it? Because it is too dependent on external factors to make it work. In the ocean, it is pretty much unbeatable. Leviathan will just drown any of the other Eikons (unless they can fly) fighting it, to say nothing of any navies stupid enough to attack it in the ocean. If there is any danger, it can just hide in the deep ocean and wait things out. On the other hand, assuming that Leviathan can move inland like in XV, its powers are heavily limited to its own water supply, giving it a disadvantage to the other Eikons. If Leviathan cannot move inland, it is a sitting duck that can be blasted from afar. There's a reason why most major cities in XVI are inland, to get out of Leviathan's more destructive range. Anyone who tried to form a nation around Leviathan most likely realised this and decided not to bother, as being an island chain or fully coastal nation are the only viable options to make it work. The only known islands are already taken up by the Iron Kingdom, who hate everything about Dominants and Eikons. No wonder we didn't see Leviathan at all. It couldn't find a Dominant!
- Another option as to the lack of Leviathan in Valisthea is the possibility that those that could inherit Leviathan are extinct or outside Valisthea, where the presence of the Mothercrystals is lacking which in turn makes magic practically non-existent for non-Valistheans. Cid came from outside Valisthea and he became the Dominant of Ramuh. The Thousand Tomes directly and indirectly implied for Cid and Barnabas that they descended from certain tribes which makes it possible for them to become Dominants of certain Eikons.
- In the side quest "Priceless", Jill mentions that when she was still living in Rosaria as a child, she had overheard the adults discuss her "marriage prospects". As a (former) princess with royal blood from the territory Rosaria had conquered, wouldn't they just assume she should be married to Joshua or even Clive, since they would be raised together and likely have a higher affinity? This actually would have been reasonable to want to avoid, as it was possible she could have leveraged that marriage to reclaim her homeland.
- If you walk by a particular handmaiden in the prologue, you actually hear this happen as she'll note that Clive and Jill make "a handsome pair" and expects there to be a "feast" for the two of them soon. Granting Jill her seat as a Duchess(?) of the Northern Territories contingent upon her marriage to Clive was probably the exact plan.
- In the hideaway(s), even though they are a community of mostly Bearers, you seldom see magic being used, even to make their lives a bit easier. This is probably because of Cid's discovery of what the use of magic does to Bearers over time, as well as the fact that his plan to destroy the Mothercrystals will cause magic to fade from the realm and he wants them to be used to not having access to it.
- This is actually because the hideaways are in the Deadlands; where there is insufficient amounts of aether to use any magic, whether it be through the use of crystal or Bearer’s natural abilities.
- In the Dominion during Bahamut's berserk rampage, Clive's incredulous "What? Have you not looked out of the window?" to Anabella is amusing, but it also perfectly summarizes Anabella's character. She was so self-absorbed in her delusions of status and power, and her legacy through Olivier, that she hadn't thought to look at anything else—least of all the Phoenix, who is "her darling boy" Joshua, currently fighting to quell the rampant Bahamut.
- Jill notes the oppressive heat in a volcanic area, but says people could get used to it. Convection Shmonvection is in full effect, so why would she be so blase about it? Clive gets by because he's Ifrit's Dominant, and heat is no issue for him. Jill, on the other hand, is the Dominant of Shiva, the Eikon of Ice. She may be, knowingly or not, regulating the temperature of the air around her to be a bit more comfortable.
- In a less extreme example, Eikonic power probably has something to do with why both she and Clive can traipse around a desert like Dhalmek - Clive wearing dark-colored armor and Jill wearing a Battle Ballgown obviously much better suited to colder weather - with few ill effects.
- Eikons having hundreds, if not thousands of times the health and damage numbers of the normal characters isn't just for fun. It is to show the insurmountable gap between them and the ordinary enemies.
Fridge Horror
- The Reveal that Olivier was Dead All Along for being a manifestation of Ultima's will becomes this when the story and lore logs alike never reveal when he died. It could've been a possession or a Kill and Replace years ago and no one was any the wiser the entire time until Ultima's plans came to fruition; it's even entirely possible that, having birthed the Phoenix and the perfect vessel for Ifrit, Anabella was silently picked for the plan to produce another vessel, and Olivier may have never been a child but merely a puppet host from conception.
- If he truly is an Akashic, and Akashic don't age (as with Barnabas), it is likely that Olivier became an Akashic only recently, otherwise people would have noticed he wasn't growing.
- Ultima's own influence over the world, via spreading its aether across the world and creating a Zombie Apocalypse by turning humanity into the Akashic is eerily similar, if a bit more showy and blatant, to the Tempered. Given that game has had a different Ultima's influence, which itself implies a prototypical form of Tempering, it raises a lot of horrific questions about whether there's links between their species as god-like aliens influencing entire worlds for their own ends.
- Ultima did more or less the same thing at least twice in Ivalice as well, giving credence to this terrifying theory.
- Jill mentions almost in passing that she awakened as Shiva as a teenager while captive to the Iron Kingdom soldiers that threatened her. Not only is it not difficult to imagine the exact nature of said threat to a teenage female prisoner whose captives wished to emotionally break her, but there's almost no chance that she maintained control of herself the first time she primed. And even if she had to some degree, the prologue showed in graphic detail the sort of indiscriminate destruction Eikons can leave in their wake just by virtue of being that big and powerful. Point is, there were almost certainly some innocent casualties involved - possibly Bearers, probably women and children.
Fridge Sadness
- Another sad thing about Annabella's actions is that they were the impetus that allowed the world to be saved. If she had treated her former children like a good mother then the events of the game might have played out worse with Ultima winning.
