Headscratchers / Final Fantasy VI

Terra's Childhood

• Terra is 18 when Kefka places the Slave Crown on her head. She is abducted in swadling clothes by Gestahl, and the next time we see her, she's 18. What did the Empire do with her in the interim? They couldn't have kept her in a test tube for 16 years. Also, why don't we ever get even a hint of explanation out of Terra about what the heck she was doing growing up in the Empire?
  • I dunno about what she was up to for 16 years, but at the beginning of the game, after the Slave Crown is taken off, Terra says she can't remember anything about before it was put on her head, and the NPC who took it off her says the long-term memory loss is a side effect of the Crown. So she doesn't explain it because she doesn't remember any of it.
  • Then why does she say "I remember it all" when you get back to Zozo?
    • I think "memory loss" might be in this case "memory block", not "memory erase".
    • Maybe she was just referring to her parents' story rather than her own.
  • More importantly, if Terra was raised by the Empire, why was the Slave Crown necessary at all? You'd think she's have some allegiance to the people who raised her, even if they were evil. Yes, Kefka's a loose cannon at the best of times, but what possible reason could he have for sicing her against a group of his own soldiers, jeopardizing the Empire's faith in him long before they've reached their goal?
    • Being raised by the Empire doesn't mean she won't ever pull a Heel–Face Turn (like Celes eventually did). Especially with the horrifying research facility full of Terra's people that she might find out about eventually and the potential to wreak such destruction, which they likely had an idea of before Kefka did his 50-soldier barbecue test. The Slave Crown was security to make sure she didn't turn against them after being ordered to commit some atrocities.
    • Imagine this scenario. Terra grows up raised by the empire, becomes one of their best magic warriors. One day, Kefka secretly places the slave crown on her head, and tests it by telling her to go kill 50 Magi-tech armored warriors. Everyone else has thought that she had gone berserk. Kefka comes forward and says that he has everything under control. She went berserk, but he managed to get the slave crown on her head and now she is docile. Everyone believes Kefka because he's an important adviser to the Emperor.
    • They don't believe him so much as desire not to be set on fire by him.
    • Kefka is also completely, literally insane. This explains a lot of his actions.
    • One possible explanation: even though the Empire raised her, Terra is kind-hearted and doesn't want to kill for them. So, having exhausted all other alternatives, they force her to do it.
    • Kefka put the slave crown on Terra for the same reason he does everything else: For the Evulz. At one point, the game even mentions that he didn't need to use the slave crown; Terra wouldn't have disobeyed anyway. He did it just because it amused him to turn her into a mindless attack machine.
• Alternatively, since Terra was being sent away from the Empire on an attack on Narshe, far from Imperial control besides two other soldiers, they figured it'd be best to shove a slave crown on her to be certain she'd come back. Especially given the exceedingly important military asset she is.
• The Doylist answer is that the slave crown is a handy method to give her amnesia, allowing the writers to introduce the setting over time and develop her character as a blank slate. Without it she would have known about Kefka, Gestahl, Leo, Celes, and the entire plot up until then, and would probably have strong opinions about the Empire one way or the other right at the beginning.
• See Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII to know the dangers from having a living weapon like Terra around with no means to ensure her everlasting loyalty combined with shady circumstances surrounding her acquirement. All Terra needs to go on a murder spree directed at the empire is to learn about the factory, visit, and have a moment of realization. No no, better to put her in the Slave Crown so her obedience is ensured and she stays functional enough to serve the cause.
• It's possible the Empire did indoctrinate Terra, but, prior to the start of the game, she started to realize the Empire was evil, then they put the slave crown on her. Alternatively, she was more valuable to them as a lab experiment, and she never had real loyalty to her captors.
• At least in the GBA translation, Celes greets Terra as if they're friends when they meet in Narshe (the first time they meet after Terra lost her memory.) It's unclear exactly how close they were, though, since this is never followed up on - which is sort of odd in and of itself; you'd expect Terra to want to ask Celes tons and tons of questions in order to recover her memories. But the Empire attacks Narshe during that scene and events make it impossible - in fact, between Terra flying off and then Celes' fake defection shortly before she returns, there's no notional opportunity where the two of them could have had a quiet talk until they meet again in the World of Ruin!

Kefka Remembered to Level Grind... and Grind... and Grind....

• Where did Kefka get all that power?
  • When Kefka launches his attack on Thamasa, did anyone else wonder how the crap he got so powerful? Last time we saw him (other than when he was in the slammer) was at the Sealed Gate, where both the heroes and the Espers beat him like a red-headed stepchild. Then all of a sudden, he shows up out of nowhere, slaughters Leo, destroys three INVINCIBLE Guardians, then obliterates a dozen or so Espers, all without breaking a sweat. Seriously, how the hell did he go from gimp to God-like?
    • If I recall correctly, he appears to 'absorb' the guardians he brings with him just prior to fighting the Espers in Thamasa, so I assume he got a lot of power from them as they are never depicted fighting him but simply being absorbed. Also, I do not believe he is a gimp in the least sense. In all the battles where you are 'overpowering' him (such as when you are trying to stop him from poisoning Doma or approaching the sealed gate) Kefka doesn't seem intent on actually fighting, and just occasionally thwaks with his mace (which would be his weakest form of attack considering that he is Court Magician and specializes in magic) at you while running away. When you fight him again in Narshe he is noticably more powerful and actually posed a pretty good challenge for my party that consisted of a magical esper girl, and ex general, a martial artist, and a knight. That sounds pretty tough to me and that's actually earlier in the game. I assume he levels and gains experience much in the same way the party does, as well as having access to all manner of 1337 imperial equipment and magical augmentation at his disposal. Also keep in mind that in your first actual battle with him, in Narshe, he already has higher level spells like Drain, Poison, and Bolt 2 at his disposal, long before you even have the ability to learn magic. (Barring Terra and Celes who develop a few spells innately.)
    • He didn't destroy any Guardians, he brought them with him to seal off the town and keep Leo from escaping until he was done. As to why he left the rest of the party alive is another question.
    • Narrative causality basically. That, and if I recall he was some kind of twisted genetic freak, so it's possible that the increasing level of humiliation he suffered somehow triggered some kind of mental biofeedback that gave him an upgrade. After all, why should the party be the only ones capable of leveling up in game?
    • Chronology error: he killed Leo at Thamasa (with Imperial Magitek assistance, note), nicked a whole crap-ton of Magicite from the Esper peace delegation, and THEN summoned the Floating Continent and assumed the Warring Triad's powers. Thus, the Magicite haul from Thamasa is probably what let him level up.
    • Nicked it? He harvested it from the bodies of his fallen foes. Any one of those espers could've (and did!) whup Kefka or Gestahl, and yet Kefka curb stomped an army of the things then without even fighting!
    • He used the Vanish/Doom cheat.
    • X-Zone, look at his fight against the Ifrit Palette Swap. Also, what with his new knowledge of Magicite, he probably snagged a whole bunch of magic by using whatever Espers the Empire had left. That would also explain how he was able to impersonate Gestahl. One of the Espers must have been a master of illusions.
    • Espers don't drop Magicite when killed with Vanish / X-Zone, though.
    • Easy: At that point, Kefka is still Gestahl's Dragon. The Emperor probably had him augmented at the Magitek labs, before setting him loose on Thamasa.
    • Even easier: The Espers that burst out of the Sealed Gate surprised him with their assault, and probably weren't even the same ones that hid away near Thamasa. By the time of his comeback, he was ready for them.
    • He seems to use always the same magical attack at that point. He might have been using some sort of Esper killing item... As for me, I'm saying he found Nethecite from now on.
    • Also, the Espers don't even really beat him. He just falls to the ground (And so does the party) before being sort of swept away. Not much of a defeat on his part. Plus not all espers are really powerful. A lot of them look like faeries, and since there are espers for all sorts of spells I suspect there are some espers for some pretty lames ones, like a magikarp that teaches 'conjure water' and shit.
    • Hey, don't knock "Create Water." It's hella-useful if you ever find yourself stranded on Mars.
    • Additionally, during your party's infiltration of the Magitek Research Facility, Kefka mentions he has been absorbing magic from Espers and becoming all-powerful. While he already had undergone magitek infusion as part of his backstory, this seems to imply he has been continuously repeating the process to further increase his powers over time. This would explain the leaps in power from the events at the Imperial Camp to the Narshe invasion, as well as those in Thamasa later on.
  • Two options. 1) Kefka did some leveling up and learned some stronger magic or 2) Kefka's been screwing with you the whole game as part of the set up to obtain more espers. Remember, the Empire knew Terra's origin from the begining so they probably figured that once she escaped them she'd try to get help from the other side. The Empire's goals were all about the espers early on.
  • He says outright: "First, let's neutralize your abilities!" Kefka essentially crippled the Espers right from the get-go in Thamasa, and what attacks they could launch were easily blocked or absorbed. Finally, it's worth remembering that most of the Espers don't in fact seem to be very capable fighters. The Empire didn't have any magic whatsoever when they invaded the Espers' home, and yet they were able to subdue the Espers and drag them back to Vector without very much difficulty. Instead of fighting back with their magic, the Espers' solution is to use a magical wind to blow the Imperial troops away, something that didn't bring back their companions who'd already been kidnapped.
  • This line makes me beleive that, at this point in the sotry, Kefka has been given a spell to nullify magic. Basically a suped up form of Rnuic that allow him to sap all the magic from its target, and since Espers are magic beings, having ll their magic taken turns them into magicite.
  • Kefka was already powerful from the beginning. He is just playing with you.
    • He wasn't. The party had already encountered and trounced him a few times before. A childish, petty maniac like Kefka wouldn't "play" with people who have just beaten him, he would have slaughtered them on the spot if he really had the power. You know, like he did with Gestahl immediately after attaining the Triad's might.
  • Personal fan fiction: The experiment that gave Kefka magic and unhinged his mind also allowed him to equip several Magicites at the same time. Since the full knowledge of inheriting an Esper's power wasn't known until the party accidentally provided the information to the Empire, he'd never had a chance to do more than develop his own natural magic. Afterward however, he was able to quickly sky rocket in power, gaining multiple stat-boosts at each level and acquiring buckets of spells at a time. As for where his Magicite came from? Well, despite the devastation it suffered, Vector must have had some success in defending itself, as the Espers did eventually leave before razing it to the ground entirely. In addition to General Leo, they had at least one Guardian, and presumably at least some of their air force.
  • Likely, the Empire had been planning, in some form, for another raid on Esper-land at some point, and Kefka was their testbed for anti-esper magic (like he was the testbed for pretty much everything else, which is why he's what's clinically known as "batshit bonkers.") He has a lot of spells and abilities that don't factor in the times you fight him, because they're only useful against real, live espers, and the only espers you have access to are already dead. That, or Cutscene Power to the Max.
  • Also personal fan fiction: The planet Final Fantasy 6 takes place on has a creature of Lavos's species living deep beneath the surface. It lured Kefka to its Frozen Flame to power him up as part of a Batman Gambit to damage the planet so it could walk the surface. Just like how 'Baba, Death Gaze, and the 8 Dragons were freed from earthly containment in the main game. Glad I'm not the only one who sees the sudden jump in Kefka's power level as a glaring plot hole.

Cid's Survival

• Was Cid's survival a last-minute addition? Even if you save him, Celes still winds up with the "lucky charm" bandana she got from the pigeon that (somehow) nursed her back to health. Besides, unlike the entire rest of the cast, Cid has no scenes or lines for the rest of the game once you leave the island. Returning and talking to him just gives the tired old "feelin' fine" line.
  • It had an emotional punch for the player, especially once you find out that you could have saved him. If he dies, you think that it's just the game fucking with you so that Celes can be all emo on a clifftop. When you find out that he could have lived, you go, "Oh, shit, it was me," and it creates a sort of emotional resonance with your character (that, admittedly, would have been a better thing if you'd have known during the game).
  • I don't think Cid ought to have survived at all. If he had, why would Celes have left the island? She could have just stayed there with her granddad, or traveled around with him, or something. But Cid's death throws into sharp relief how truly alone Celes is and gives her the impetus to leave. Without him, there's nothing left for her on that island and her best shot at being happy and making a life for herself and, well, finding her True Companions again is to GTFO as soon as possible.
    • Agreed, but making Celes' failure to save him playable makes for a much more effective Player Punch. The existence of a Guide Dang It! happy ending is the price you pay for that.
    • Why would she stay on the island with just Cid for the rest of her life when she has evidence the other people she loved are still alive? The entire reason they stayed there was because they believed the rest of the world to be destroyed and everyone else dead. It's not as dramatic without the suicide attempt and survival, but it's still the same motivation. And for goodness sake, she could probably find a more hospitable place than a deserted island for her and Cid to live - presumably this is why he was building a raft.
    • They should make an alternate ending to the game where if Cid lives, Celes just lives with him for the rest of her days. No second half of the game, just THE END.
    • Even if Celes hadn't left the island, Edgar was already working to get Figero Castle working, and would have met up with Setzer, eventually getting the Falcon. Possibly Sabin would have found them as well. At that point they can unite most of the other heroes (and probably would have found Celes herself.)
    • I always save him just because I'm a huge sucker for Video Game Caring Potential (and because with the SNES translation Celes's suicide really felt narmy to me - it was much improved in later translations,) but yes, they should have made his survival have an impact in and of itself. I wish it had been possible to pick him up on the Falcon and have him interact with the party in some fashion.
    • Okay, so Cid has been living on this tiny island where the wildlife is half-dead and fish is all there is to eat. All that's kept him going is keeping Celes alive and finding a way off the island. Understandable. Now, why the hell does he not ride the raft with Celes? It's a good thing he becomes plot-useless afterward, or else we'd notice that he's living the rest of his life just as alone and helpless as Celes would have if he had died.
  • Well it seems better and would make more sense if we just let Cid die. The art justifies the means.
  • A related question: When he does survive, why doesn't your group recruit him? Why leave him on that island? He's one of the world's best experts on magitech (and therefore one of its foremost experts on magic); you would think that if your party wants to challenge Kefka, having him on your airship analyzing Kefka's abilities and maybe trying to restore some old Imperial equipment for your personal use would be a good idea. At the very least, Kefka seems to still control old Imperial weaponry (like the Guardian), and Cid could provide you with specs and tips on fighting them.
    • SNES cartridges didn't have that kind of memory space.

Ultima Weapon's Answer

• So, what was the answer Ultima Buster was searching?
  • Battle, perhaps?
    • So basically he's saying that he was waiting for eternity for battlers that weren't wimps to show up?
    • Well, Kefka summoned him away from an eternity in... wherever he was (note that he mentioned that he was "never once called forth") for the sole purpose of fighting for him. My guess is that he embraced this mission as his reason for being and became a Blood Knight. But that's just me.
    • You're not alone in that. Considering how (in the SNES version) after stating he found "answer", he begins to fight you. Fighting, to him at least, is the answer. Doesn't help that he is a Palette Swap of Atma Weapon.
  • Why only the Imperial Palace has toilets.
  • Who was phone.
  • Gogo's identity.
  • Who put the bop in the bop-shoo-bop.
  • "Knock Knock." "Who's there?" "Ultima Buster." Ultima Buster whoFLARE STAR
  • Trying to determine if it can see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
  • 42.

The Amazing Three-Man Diving Helmet

• How is it that Gau's one single "treasure" (apparently an old-fashioned diving mask) was enough to keep three characters alive underwater?
  • When they all compress inside the party leader, they use his lungs. Duh.
    • Just like how the party can leap across the cars in the Phantom Train because one of them has the ability to.
    • Just like in real life.
    • And yet, earlier near Doma it was apparently damn lucky there were three Magitek suits available. And I guess Cyan should've just collapsed with the party rather than trying to drive the thing.
  • Haha you guys. In the same manner of breathing underwater in a capsized row boat, they alternated, keeping the helmet upright. There was no corresponding air supply so I can only assume Magicite/Magitech or some such. Enchantments be damned in FF6 it seems.
  • Maybe Sabin (who had no problem fighting Ultros underwater earlier) used a special martial arts breathing technique, and Gau used a fish rage to emulate a fish. In that case only Cyan would need to wear the helmet.

Esper Murder

• The four new espers in the GBA remake. The moral implications of fighting three of the four and personally reducing them to Magicite bugs me. Sure Gilgamesh chooses to join, but Gigantaur and Leviathan are just battles. Battles where you end up killing an esper.
  • Yeah, but Leviathan (and maybe Gigantaur too, I can't remember) attacked you first. Plus, Diablos is already magicite when you find him.
    • And Gilgamesh is probably fine, since he's already survived using self-destruct/exploder.
    • Fuck em they'll die when magic disappears from the world anyways. My stats justify the means.

The Economics of Zozo

• Zozo is a city that was made by the poor people of Jidoor. So, how did they all make massive skyscrapers? And why is it that everybody in Zozo is untrustworthy at best, and murderers at worst? Aren't they just supposed to be poor people?
  • I always assumed it was, for the people of the FFVI world, what Australia was to Britain during the colonial days. Yet instead of developing into a functional society, they went the other way and turned murder and thieving into an industry.
    • The mental image of a hard-pressed husband heading off to his 9-5 job at the burglary factory is marvelous.
  • Yeah, it has signs and building interiors that point towards it maybe once having been going towards a real city. Of course, they do still have bigger buildings than anywhere that isn't (possibly) Vector...
  • Don't forget that crime is linked lower classes of society and poverty. In real life, the people who are most likely to stab, rob, mug, steal, and murder you are more likely to be poor than rich.
  • Was it ever mentioned how the split happened? Maybe it was a reverse-Australia. As in, all the hard-working, rich folk abandoned the city of Zozo and made their own town, Jidoor, leaving the skyscrapers and such to the delinquents.
    • I like to believe that it was an abandoned city from the War of the Magi, explaining its unique appearance and dimensions. The refugees from Jidoor sought shelter in this ghost city, renovating the interiors and repairing some of the machinery. Maybe it even started out idealistically and had some initial success, but turned out to be a failed project (hence the empty shops, the abandoned attempts at waste removal or the enforcement of law and order).
    • If the city is contaminated by some sort of low-grade dangerous magic radiation from the war, that could explain why nobody else settled in it and why you encounter magic-using opponents there.
  • Never thought about it before. Wasn't Zozo somewhat haunted, or at least affected by the curse/taint energy from Mt Zozo? And anyway, based on the existence of Narshe, I assumed that the Empire had ways of establishing places one way or another, if the poor struggling denizens of the area weren't the ones to estblish it in hopes of prosperity there. Zozo could've been built for projected population runoff that never happened or was still to so then got overrun. Also, now that this troper thinks about it, if Zozo was originally built near the native habitat of the Gigas', well then, that's your answer right there.

Vargas the Mouse

• Whatever happened to Vargas?
  • I was always under the impression that Sabin killed him.
  • He was eaten by his pets. You just can't trust bears. Because bears are an endless cycle of shit.
  • Strictly speaking, this was a hotblooded confrontation, so it's most likely Vargas gets murdered. Technically speaking it's a very classic example of Ancient Chinese Legend (or Older Than Dirt ftw lmao) because, if Sabin knows his master couldn't be killed by . . . however Vargas assaulted him, he might have spared himself the dishonor, whereas, if he were not so bright or attuned, he probably assumed the worst and killed Vargas immediately. A very Batman or Raditz type of situation.

Terra, Love, and Espers

• Why is Terra's esper heritage used as the excuse for her confusion with love? It seems more like it stems from the fact that she was a brainwashed slave for most of her life, but for some reason people keep saying that it's because espers don't feel love. In spite of the fact that we saw an esper fall in love. That esper's ability to love is the reason Terra exists in the first place.
  • She was probably really confused.
    • That still doesn't explain why people outside the game seem so insistant that her esper heritage is the reason.
    • Fan translations revealed that the Espers in Terra's Flashback were pretty creepily deadpan about everything, even when the Empire invaded, there were almost no exclamation points to be seen. (and remember, Maduin's love was something new and strange) This is compounded by the discovery of the important detail that Terra wasn't saying that she didn't want to fight, but that she quite literally couldn't. Somehow, the emotional turmoil and confusion of the strange new emotion of "love" was sapping her (Esper born) powers. Then, think back to Terra's question to Celes (the only other magic user at the time) before the battle at the snowfield: "Can you love?". The fans saw those three points and a connection was made
    • But did the espers really not feel emotion? Or did they simply keep their emotions in check to prevent them from losing control of their powers like Terra did?
    • I believe that it was Terra herself who thought she couldn't love. She was confused and blamed the fact that she couldn't love on her Esper blood instead of her amnesia.
  • There's also Odin and his unnamed Queen, who (apparently) loved each other so much they transcended the Human/Esper barrier and remained in love even after being turned to stone. Also, weren't Ifrit and Shiva pretty damn pissed off at the Empire? There were also a few Espers inside their hidden lands who were afraid of humans. Deadpan delivery in a fan translation doesn't necessarily mean "emotionless" or even "uncaring."
    • I was just explaining the rationale the fans had. Now then; frankly, no I don't get the impression that Ifrit and Shiva were ticked, nor did I get that feeling from the other captive espers. They fight you, yeah, but all of their dialogue is... well, it seems calm, almost matter-of-fact. Perhaps it's because they're close to death anyway that they speak about their own deaths so calmly, or because they don't have the energy for emotional outbursts, but I don't know. Honestly, I personally think it's more that because Esper/Human is such a strange combination; Terra's human feelings of love mess with her Esper half when she still doesn't understand what the feelings are. Once she gets it sorted out, her powers come back; much like how she learned to Morph after understanding what she is.
    • The espers that poured out of their world after Terra opened the gate seemed pretty pissed.
    • No, they only went overboard because they never knew their own strength outside of their world, they intended to free their friends because it was what they should have done but they caused far more trouble than they intended.
  • In this Troper's opinion, Leo pegged things exactly right: Terra's just young. Even in Dissidia, Terra looks and acts young for her age, at least by human standards. Given how long-lived Espers are, it's not implausible that Terra would be both longer-lived and somewhat slower to mature than pureblooded humans. She sees people her age and younger going hormone-crazed, knows just enough about her unique biology to suspect that it plays a role in why she isn't, but doesn't know enough to know when or if she'll reach that stage (which, to be fair, is not really her fault; nobody knows much about half-Espers). In other words, the whole plotline could have been called "Are you there, Triad? It's me, Terra."
    • This Troper always assumed Terra was slow on the uptake emotionally due to the way she was raised. The game itself doesn't show us any of her childhood, but the implications of being raised by lunatics who quite happliy subject their own people to torturous experiments are obvious. Her upbringing must have been completely loveless at best, and most likely traumatic.
  • I hate to break your heart, but the Espers who break out of the Sealed Gate are explicitly stated to become "enraged". The people in Vector tell you that, upon learning of the deaths of their comrades in the Factory, the Espers "shrieked"in such away that no one would ever forget it. The game makes a point of saying that the Espers aren't just out of control, they were angry as hell.
    • Given the citizens of Vector's surprise at the Espers' anger, it's entirely possible that the officially-approved version of the truth reported to the people was that Espers were non-sentient monsters just like anything else roaming around outside and thus they were justified in harvesting them for resources. Terra, having grown up with this line fed to her, would inevitably come to believe the same thing about herself. It was only when the Espers attacked Vector and it was no longer possible to pretend they didn't have emotions that the Emperor had to quickly update his stance to "not realizing" they were sentient and is totes sorry now.
  • I would challenge use of the phrase "used as an excuse" to follow into quasi-agreement with it being a result of her time under the influence of the hypnocrown. Espers are closely tied to their plane of existence and elements, so I'm guessing love is not impossible, but IS extremely rare, and NOT because it isn't picked up through observation or popularity. Unless an esper's sphere of influence readily or obviously includes affection, love will likely not come up; their minds and bodies are attuned to their purpose and magics, not their personal inklings. I say quasi-agree because, in this light, it makes the hypnocrown a highly ironic factor, because the chance of Terra gaining an understanding of love under natural conditions seems to be about the same with or without the influence of the hypnocrown since there is no evidence she suffers from any affects of a ny possible/assumed repression. Her original natural self should be restored %100 with removal of the hypnocrown, no worse for wear.

Thamasa's Magic

• How do the people of Strago and Relm's village learn magic? They don't seem to have magicite and neither of the playable inhabitants get it from leveling up.
  • They're descendents of the magi; people who received some magical power during the War of the Magi, but not enough to be turned into espers.
    • And the playable guys do have natural magic. Strago's a Blue Mage, and Relm's a Pictomancer (it's a weak magic, but it's still magic) who can mature into a Controller.

Zozoan Magic

• When going inside Zozo, you can find enemies called Slam Dancers, who know basic elemental magic. That doesn't make any sense. The only humans in the story context who can use real magic are people who have connections with the Empire, the Espers and their Magicite, or the citizens of Thamasa (And although Ramuh lives in Zozo, I'm pretty sure he has nothing to do with anybody living there). To make this stranger, the Slam Dancer enemies are probably just prostitutes, considering their name, appearance, and the "crime and villainy" theme of Zozo.
  • Well, uh... they're lying! Yeah, that's it. Like everyone else in Zozo, they're lying about using magic, and they're just waving their arms around and flashing lights at the party. The heroes, like the gullible saps they are, are convinced it's all real and get hurt somehow.
  • Easy. Ramuh, Kirin, Cait Sith, Siren, and eventually Terra had all flown to Zozo, and all of them in the throes of power overload caused by exposure to the world outside the Sealed Gate. My guess? The espers were hemorrhaging magic, and those slam dancers got enough of it to learn a spell or three.
  • You can buy several Magicite stones from Jidoor... and Zozo is supposed to be where the lower class of Jidoor was "exiled." Being thieves, it wouldn't surprise me that someone stole some Magicite from whoever it is that collects "odd stones," and that the exposure allowed some magic to seep into the people of Zozo.
  • Easy: they can do magic because they're not actually humans, they're just monsters that look like humans. So they're lying about being humans.
  • Perhaps they were kidnapped by the Empire for Magitek experiments because they are prostitutes and who will notice if a prostitute goes missing?
  • They were working as prostitutes in Vector and "serviced" people who had Magitek experiments performed on them, like Kefka. Maybe magic is a sexually transmitted disease in the FF VI world.
  • Maybe it's supposed to be Geomancy. Mog is described as a slam-dancing moogle in the US translation. His dances have effects similar to magic. So maybe the slam-dancers are meant to be using the dance skill to give fire damage or whatever, but because of the way enemy AI is programmed, the programmers just had them use spells for the same effect.
  • In conjunction with the above theory that Zozo looks like a closer to our modern world city is because it is the ages old husk of a "War of Magi" era city might explain a few lingering Magi-blooded humans around.

Flammable Figaro

• How did Kefka set fire on Figaro castle? It's made of metal and stone and is in the middle of a desert. Sure, he's already capable of magic at that point, but Edgar and Locke react to Terra's use of magic just minutes later like they've never seen anything like it before.
  • Could be incendiary bombs (such as oil and fuel) that happened to crash into walls and turrets. Could be shorthand for "the Empire is trying to destroy the castle!" and the limitations of the medium made the graphics designers go with that. Could also be that, since the architecture is meant to be as iconic as the super-deformed characters, we're really meant to "see" Figaro Castle as a huge, sprawling fortress... and the random fires on its walls represent places where the Imperials set its interior rooms ablaze and the flames are already peeking out of the masonry or the "implied" windows. Does everyone really believe that masonry sets on fire, Sabin can suplex a train and the world of Final Fantasy is populated by midgets?
    • Or alternatively, it could be the result of the several Magitek armor that Kefka brought with him blasting the castle's walls to hell and back.
    • Edgar knew they would try it and had lamp oil spread all over the castle to make its escape more humiliating to Kefka.
    • While I agree with you about masonry on fire and midgets, I don't know why it would be so difficult to believe that Sabin can suplex a train. After all, this is the same franchise that includes Advent Children, in which Cloud and Sephiroth cut down several buildings while fencing.

Monster Magic

• If only those with magicite and the people of Thamasa can use magic, how can monsters use magic in the game?
  • Same way the Thamasans and Espers can- innate ability to tap into the Goddesses' power. Presumably, their ability, like the Thamasans', is simply not strong enough to leave crystalized magic behind like the Espers do, but they do have ability.
  • No. My theory is that the their used to be trillions of Espers, but the monsters killed most of them. Now they carry around Magicite and use magic just like you do. They attack the party in order to gain AP and learn new spells.
    • Well there is that "Magicite Shard" item. Perhaps magicite is extremely rare, even rarer if the gem is whole, but there is still enough around the world for monsters and other things to learn weak magic by exposure?
  • Another theory that I like, especially for the monsters in Imperial lands, is that the Magitek program was tested on wild creatures, and some of the creatures escaped after their testing and are menacing the countryside.
  • Sorry for the possible squick factor here, but aren't a lot of the Espers monstrous in form? It's also possible that some of the Espers crossbred, but not with humans, since they weren't human themselves. Or they did have human lovers, but their children had monstrous forms. Either way, the monsters could be descendants of the Espers in much the same way as the Thamasans were descendants of mages.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation, possibly? It's not as though they bother to go into much detail as to why there are monsters running around in the first place.
  • Perhaps the magic-using enemies you fight are actually Imperial creations sent to hunt you personally. The humanoid ones are assassins (mingling with the population of Zozo, say), while the monstrous ones are living weapons that hunt you relentlessly and try to kill you.
  • It is stated in the game that Espers were once humans who got caught in the magical crossfire when the Warring Triad were battling each other. It is plausible a lot of those magic-using monsters were created in the same way from random fauna and flora that were also caught in the magical crossfire and mutated into what they are in the game.

Whatever Happened to the Doman Mouse?

• What happened to that other survivor of the Doma massacre? You know, the one who was on the balcony with Cyan when people started dropping dead, and set out to find survivors? How come we never hear from him again?
  • Either the soldiers got to him or he drank the water (by thirst or despair).
  • He became Gogo. Duh?
  • Given the limitations of the SNES, I don't think we saw the entirety of the castle. One of the Imperial soldiers tells Kefka that the prisoners in Doma Castle will die too, but we never see any Doman dungeons. My headcanon is that there were actually many more survivors of the poisoning, but they were so horrified at what Kefka did that they suffered a Despair Event Horizon and surrendered. Cyan was pretty much the only Doman who refused to give up.

The Empire and Setzer's Wealth

• There's a change between the SNES and GBA versions of the game that bugs me. It's this line, from Setzer, while you're attempting to recruit him on the Blackjack and just before Celes makes her coin toss.
  
  (SNES) Setzer: Phew. The Empire's made me a rich man.
  (GBA) Setzer: Hmmm... Business has been awfully slow lately, thanks to the Empire...
  
  Did someone change the meaning outright for one of the translations? Or is there some other explanation?
  • Woolsey screwed up. Setzer was supposed to be complaining about the Empire. You'll notice that the words of Locke and Celes (and whoever else you brought) are very similar, but not identical, in meaning in both versions. You'll also notice that (in the SNES version) Setzer turns his back on the Empire that made him rich shockingly fast. The GBA version is the more correct translation here.
    • Makes sense. Anyone here know what the original line was, and why this might've happened? (Woolsey's team might have done a lot of censoring and the like, but at least usually the meaning was right. Something like this makes me wonder if the original line was particularly difficult to translate or something.)
    • Exactly that, if this is any indication. Look for Lina Darkstar's fourth post on that page.
  • I hate to be a pest, but doesn't it rough out to about the same thing? "Phew. The Empire's made me a rich man" makes it sound like, he has plenty, who cares, let the good times roll, so to speak? and "Hmmm . . . Business has been awfully slow lately thanks to the Empire . . ." soooooo, again, no misgivings, will take what he can get. Since he's got virtually no backstory, it is SO purely a matter of semantics. The Airship wasn't free :/ lol.

Celes' Implausible Deniability

• Even if Celes was under anesthetic / too young to remember at the time her Esper was infused, she was still foster-parented by the man who invented the process. It still seems disingenuous (to me) for her to innocently say that she's only heard "rumors" about what esper infusion does to the esper. Even if it was classified, she is one of the highest-ranking officials in the Empire and she had a direct source for the information if she ever had the slightest bit of curiosity. Maybe she did never find out, but it can't be said that it's because she couldn't find out.
  • Classic double standard in play, I'd wager. I wouldn't put it past Gestahl to make it look like Celes was a big authority figure just to scare people and not really give her any clearance.
  • As a kid Celes had a bad experience with something relating to the infusion process, maybe she wasn't the only one to have received it. Therefore when she is older and has the clearances she never looks for the information because she is afraid of stirring up bad memories.
    • Probably the most likely kind of explanation. What makes less sense to me is that none of the characters in the game itself point out that Celes should have been able to know if she had ever wanted to, and it could have been an interesting moment.
    • Except even Kefka and Cid somehow didn't know about magicite until the Returners attacked the Magitek factory. How they managed to never kill a single Esper during the decade and a half between the attack on the Esper World and the events of the game is a headscratcher all by itself but that's what the events of the game show us.
    • I'm guessing the Emperor considered them extremely valuable as a source of magic and ordered them to be captured alive, and then drained until no longer useful. Between that and the Espers desperately clinging to life, and the fact that even if they encountered magicite they might not know what it is or how to use it, it's not totally implausible.
  • I can't think of a specific other example at the moment but I always chalk up stuff like this to the character's ability to grasp abstract information. For instance, at first, I had a little trouble understanding all the ins and outs of Materia experimenting in Crisis Core. If at any point Celes learns about the fact that there is a factor involving the esper itself, in terms of the infusion process (which seh does), AND proceeds to seek out information about it, turns out it's too a complex issue for her to grasp fully. Some reports say it's fine, some reports say it's torturous, obv many reports will contradict one another, and eventually it just looks to her like dust in the wind. She IS military and probably quickly recognizes the likelihood of dwelling too deeply hampering her own personal improvement and performance.

Kefka's Afterlife

• Allow me to open the fridge of horror for a sec and ask something that's REALLY been bugging me... Okay, so in FFVI there is an afterlife, right? Right. We all remember that train that went there, we saw Cyan's wife and son board the train, (and still be able to interact with the player characters in Cyan's dream world at Dohma castle,) it doesn't get much more canonical than that. Now, everything that dies (and doesn't stay in the world as an undead) apparently goes to the afterlife, right? This probably goes for magic and magical beings, too, right? (Who knows, maybe that's even why magic vanished when it's source died; it died and cannot traverse the boundaries of the living/dead dimensions... Well, it's a theory, anyway.) So, here's what's been bugging me: What happened to Kefka after he died? Logically, if magic went with him when he died, he should be just as powerful in the afterlife as he was in the world of the living, right? ... Yeah, now just sit there and enjoy the fridge horror.
  • The magic he siphoned from the Triad was earthly. When he died, his soul didn't have that power anymore. Alternately, Espers don't die and go on to the Phantom Train —they're reduced to Magicite, which then crumbled and caused all Espers to outright disappear from the world. If Kefka wasn't entirely made of magic, then it stands to reason his human soul would've passed on like any other; if he was, then he was obliterated with the rest of the Espers and the Goddesses themselves.
    • That'd be all good and well if it weren't for the fact that almost everything you just said is pure speculation, and the stuff that wasn't shouldn't really have any impact on Kefka since he wasn't just an Esper, but the Physical God of magic.
    • Except that we KNOW that Espers are reduced to Magicite upon death, and that the destruction of the world's source of magic caused Magicite to crumble and Espers to vanish. Kefka himself crumbled when killed. There's no evidence in either direction that would point towards him losing OR keeping his magic in the afterlife.
  • The PS1 rerelease has an interesting bit added to the ending in CGI. Basically, it's Kefka on the Phantom Train, being chased by Shadow. Presumably, if he still had all that magical power, he wouldn't be worried about the ninja assassin coming to kick his teeth in.
    • I took it upon myself to check the CG ending on YouTube, and, unfortunately for you and your theory, the fridge is still wide open due to a couple of unfortunate details that you appear to have overlooked. The main one being that the CG ending in FFVI is a recap montage of earlier events in the game, (like Terra invading Narshe, Locke rescuing Celes down in the basement in South Figaro and Setzer dealing out some destruction to some imperial fliers,) meaning that the sequence you're referring to is from when Shadow, Sabin and Cyan were on board the Phantom Train.
    • Fair enough. I've only beaten the game's SNES version, so I haven't actually seen that CG. I just recalled reading that the ending had Kefka on the Phantom Train being chased by Shadow, so whoever I heard it from must've been mistaken.
    • Actually, in the GBA version, Maduin's magicite speaks with Terra in the ending, and tells her "We must part now. We Espers will disappear from this world. You may fade as well." Now, this could just be my mistaking his statement, but the way Maduin speaks, there's some manner of afterlife for the Espers as well. Could just be his way of saying that he's going to cease to exist, but the use of "part" and "from THIS world" leads me to feel they're not just going to stop being altogether.
    • How many real-life songs and speeches have used some variant of "leave this world"? And I doubt all of them believed in an afterlife.
  • You're assuming the Phantom Train survived the destruction of the world. Remember, the Phantom Forest didn't.
    • If the Phantom Train didn't survive the end of the world that leads to the very interesting question of how do the souls of the dead get to the other side without it?
    • This implies that something supernatural like a train to the afterlife would be impeded by corporeal destruction. It could be possible that the train is still running, perhaps in an unreachable place. But either way, the party has no reason to seek it out. Or worse, Kefka could have somehow sealed the train. Perhaps to siphon its energy or the energy of its passengers. Purely speculation, though.
    • Point of fact: In the CG ending of the PS1 release, Kefka is -on- the train, having been killed...and so is Shadow, who appears to be looking to punish Kefka personally.
    • I don't know what you guys are talking about. Kefka is not on the train in the CGI cutscenes, it only shows Shadow attacking the robed ghosts.
    • OBJECTION! This point was already refuted some seven or eight bullet points previous.
  • Hahaha, if I EVER!! play Final Fantasy VI again I'll take a legit crack at this post. Until then: Frieza. HFIL. Dragon Ball Super.

Generally Speaking

• Why are Imperial Generals◊ inside the Magitek Research Facility just plain old human beings, when the lower ranked Sergeants and their guard dogs get to be Magitek cyborgs?
  • Because 'Authority Equals Asskicking' does not apply here. And Magitek infusion can lead to insanity and death, the Generals know better.
  • We know that high-ranking members of the Empire are able to get magitech infusions that grant them powers without turning them into visible cyborgs. The logical conclusion is that the sergeants and guard dogs actually recieved cheaper enchancements (probably ones that didn't come directly from an Esper but were merely based on one, using that clunky magitek technology to fill the gaps), whereas the generals received full infusions like Celes did and therefore don't require the clunky cyborg tech to use magic. This is supported by the fact that the generals are much more powerful opponents, overall.

Terra Lives

• How can Terra not vanish with the other Espers at the end of the game? I mean, come on, she's half Esper... that's a whole half of her biology vanishing.
  • That was the whole POINT of the ending. Everyone was worried Terra would vanish too, but again, Espers and their properties are magical in nature. It's not that she's genetically half-Esper, but that her inborn magic, inherited from Maduin, allows her to change into an Esper. But physiologically, her human side seems to be as human as everything but her green hair would allow. When magic around the world went poof, Terra's human side continued to exist because she chose to remain as a human. Her Esper side, OTOH, DID disappear, as did all her other magical abilities she had access to while in human form.
    Espers disappeared because of their strong innate connection to magic, not for any biological reason. Although Terra inherited an innate connection to magic from her father, she apparently inherited enough human biology from her mother to survive without that connection. Her genetics and biology didn't change with the ending, though without magic she probably can't morph into her Esper form anymore.
  • But the real answer is: In the original ending, she did die, but it was too much of a downer for the test audiences, so they changed it. Also, Esper doesn't look like a cute monster girl to me. Least, here's the official concept◊ art◊ I found.
    • "Original ending"? —sources, if you may. What test audiences? Terra's entire character arc wouldn't make sense if she had been "originally" intended to die all along.
    • It's from a V-Jump interview. And yes, her character would make more sense if she survives, which apparently is the reason they changed it.
  • It's not as though biology is some sort of strict mathematical formula. Espers are ultimately descended from biological creatures that were modified by the goddesses, too; they're still human enough to interbreed with humans (as Terra's existence proves.) So probably, the loss of magic didn't cause Espers to evaporate entirely unless they'd already been reduced to magicite, at which point there was nothing left; it's just that their biology had become so dependant on magic at that point that they wouldn't be able to survive the loss. Terra, whose biology was more human, was able to survive it.

Terra's Appearance

• Terra also looks too human for a half-esper; even if her dad was a humanoid esper, she should at least have a more bestial appearance as a human.
  • See above. Espers are magical, they don't need to adhere to how biology works. Human Terra could look as human as she wants, and Esper Terra can look as however the magic in her decrees she should look like. There's no biological reason for why magic should make her non-Esper form more bestial.
  • The boys can't drool over a hideous beastie.
  • Some espers look entirely human. Ramuh, for instance, was able to pass as a human for years (he specifically mentions this.) And, of course, if you go by the green hair she has in her in-game art (which later versions have stuck with) she does have at least one obvious "abnormal" indicator, which makes her less able to pass than Ramuh was.

Esper Variety

• Why do espers look so vastly different from one other?
  • Once again, magic. :) Every creature that was hit by the Triad's magic (as well as any subsequent generations that might have spawned in the intervening 1000 years) became a creature made up of magic. Even their bodies are composed of magic, to the point they don't even leave a corpse but a crystal. And magic will do whatever it will to a living creature, from giving life to a steam-powered robot (Golem,) to making a sword with the power to transmute creatures into items (Ragnarok,) to giving a bird the ability to carry four people on its back at a time (Quetzali,) to combining three eternally-battling warriors into a single entity (Crusader.) Even the Goddesses of the Triad themselves look nothing like each other.

Narshe Geography

• Intro sequence. Narshe geography. Mah brain hurtz. Or, more specifically; Terra, Wedge and Vicks Biggs somehow travel from the mountain at the north of Narshe to the south entrance without actually passing through the actual bloody city like you would have to. And as for Locke's path through the mines both before (that is getting to Arvis' home) getting to Terra and after (Taking her through the dead-end room that is the Moogles' den) well, I... Uh... Can't... *POP*
  • As for the intro sequence, the developers simply reused the map as if to show the Magitek squad approaching Narshe from a distant cliff. You're not meant to think that it's the same cliff that lies at the north end of Narshe. Also, new entries go at the bottom of the page, not the top.

Xtreme Kool Magitek

• Why do we still call it "Magitek"? Even in the revised script for the GBA version. You'd think we'd have switched to calling it "Magitech" by now.
  • Becuz puar lituracy iz kewl!
  • It's not a real word, they can spell it however they want to.
  • After Magitek, comes the TekWar.
  • magic—magick—magitek not magic—magich—magitech

Gestahl and Kefka

• Am I the only one who was bothered by the fact that the Emperor did not see the possibility of Kefka stabbing him in the back? Why did the Emperor not see it? Is he a Smug Snake? Too Dumb to Live? Held the Villain Ball or Idiot Ball for too long? I mean, seriously, any guy with eyes should have seen that Kefka was too dangerous alive and should be have been killed off long ago!
  • New entries go at the bottom. Anyway, he had no reason to believe Kefka would betray him. He's dangerous, yes, but also obedient; however successful he was in his missions, Kefka always did everything that was commanded of him. Gestahl didn't see him as any more dangerous than a wild dog on a leash —HIS leash. And the instant he declares that "You Have Outlived Your Usefulness," he tries to kill Kefka with extremely high-level spells of his own. The only reason he failed was that Kefka had entered the Triad's balance and was momentarily immune to magic. THEN Kefka retaliated, mostly out of childish revenge, but he never set out to overthrow the Emperor or take over the world himself. That's the point of the character: he never had any plans, he was too mad for them. He only did whatever seemed fun at the time, up to and including taking on godlike power and frying the guy who had tried to kill him moments before.

Recognizing Sabin

• How in the world does Edgar still recognize Sabin? They've been separated for ten years, and I doubt he looks the same! (Sprite can't depict this, really.) And since he's past his teenage years, his voice must have gotten a little deeper.
  • They're brothers, for a start. And having changed in 10 years doesn't mean that every recognizable feature that he has is completely gone and replaced. I've run into people I haven't seen in longer than that and recognized them before.
  • Not just brothers, twins. While nutrition and lifestyle (court life vs ascetic training) would certainly make their appearances differ due to muscle mass, fat, and wrinkles, their facial structures would remain the same as each other's. Sabin's face would just look a little more weatherbeaten, maybe a deeper tan (or not, since Edgar lives in the desert and all.)

Terr'a Hair-a

• So is Terra's official hair color green, or blonde? I've been wondering that for a long time.
  • Her Amano artwork has it as blonde. In-game, it's green. I'd say that the official color, therefore, is blonde. Just like how Cecil's hair should be officially blonde, and not lavender.
    • That's a shame. I actually prefer her with the Green hair. It's somewhat unique, since only one other character in the entire game series has that color while there are plenty of blondes, and even more Brunettes.
  • My theory is that normally her hair is blonde, but when after she first transformed into her Esper form, she had green hair, and kept that color until the end of the game.
  • Her hair was blonde in the FMVs for the Anthology version. It's more than likely just a way to distinguish her from Celes in-game.
    • I could've sworn they couldn't pull off the proper blond in-game, so they made do with green.
  • I tend to ignore Amano's artwork because it ends up looking ridiculous. Like official artwork of Bartz from FFV makes him look like more of a girl than Faris. So personally, I pretend it doesn't exist, and Terra has green hair.
  • She's also been portrayed with green hair in Dissidia and other subsequent appearances.

Imperial Poverty

• Why are Albrook and Vector so poor and dilapidated? They're both the most important cities in the Empire, and the Empire itself is no joke; It almost took over the entire planet, but the apocalypse destroyed it. Yet Albrook still trashed after being the Empire's main port, and in Vector, there are abandoned construction projects and shabby houses all over the place, but no nobles or politicians, outside of Emperor Gestahl.
  • The Gestahlian Empire may be diverting most of its wealth to its military and magic research, leaving little for infrastructure or other civic projects.
  • We do not see the entirety of Vector. The PCs simply never visit the neighborhoods where the nobles and politicians live.
  • It was probably the result of the soldiers being there, even in Real Life soldiers aren't exactly known for being clean.
    • Albrook, on top of being a playground for imperial soldiers, isn't even an active port. It's mentioned that the imperials close off their ports.
    • The military isn't know for being CLEAN? What are you smoking, I'd like to share it. Every modern military worth mentioning has rigorous personal hygiene standards, and requires work and living spaces kept in a high state of police. General coming to visit? Better put everything away and shine everything, it's better he thinks we never actually do anything than risk he thinks we're dirty. Hell, the USN is touching up the interior paint of its ships literally everyday. And before you try to argue that this is a new development, this is an extension of thousands of years of practice. Every non-barbarous military has felt the same way. More likely Vector is crapsack because steampunk.
    • Militaries have also been historically known to be lax and uncouth during extended occupations. If military forces are stationed somewhere that isn't on the minds of the top brass or politicians, things won't be as strict and regulated as in the capital city or some other location of importance. Only with the dawn of modern media have things changed, as a cell phone recording of a single soldier misbehaving could spark international outrage. Since Vector's history isn't revealed in detail, there are plenty of ways to speculate how their current internal affairs came to be.
  • You think a lover of fine arts like Gestahl would decorate the place. Or at least live in a fancy looking palace than what looks like a factory.
  • The factory might be a symbolic thing. If you're spearheading a technological revolution of military might, an ivy-covered manor isn't as good a visual as a more techy-looking structure.
    • Or, more pure speculation, the palace that looks like a factory is fancy-looking, as Gestahl's is the only country that is capable of building such a structure. Its nearest competition is Figaro castle, which is apparently made of stone and ventilation fans. We might think it's an industrial hellhole, but there's no accounting for taste.
  • When we first see Vector it's a grim, oppressive place, and far larger than even places like Doma Castle and Figaro Castle. That conveys the impression of power, might and strength, something you don't necessarily get with fountains and statues. Gestahl's doing it deliberately to show just how powerful the Empire is, and how powerless any other land would be against it. Besides, Gestahl loves the fine arts for himself. He doesn't give a damn about the squalor anyone else might have to live in.
  • To play up the Empire's A Nazi by Any Other Name parallels. Germany was under crippling sanctions after World War I, which is what allowed Hitler to rise to power in the first place, by promising to "make Germany great again." We don't really know anything about the backstory, but it's possible the Gestahlian Empire was in similar straits, and their techno-magical revolution was a way of asserting a dominance and power they'd long ago lost to their neighbors.
• There's a reason the Whitechapel district of London is the page image for Wretched Hive. The British Empire was the mightiest entity in the world in the Victorian Era, but Charles Dickens made a career writing about the squalor many common people lived in. There are lots of big cities in powerful industralized places that have The City Narrows where people live hand to mouth.

Cyan Wasn't Thirsty

• I love how Cyan is the only one who doesn't drink the poisoned water. Assuming the poison set in within a few hours, how does such a fearless warrior like Cyan survive without drinking his local water?
  • Just because Kefka polluted the river doesn't mean all the water in Doma is automatically poisoned. They probably have barrels of non-poisoned river water where Cyan could have gotten a drink.
  • Sake
  • But the scene does act as though all the water is instantly poisoned. Less than five minutes after Kefka pours it in, Cyan and that one NPC are the only people in the whole castle still standing. Everyone else dropped like flies, soldier and civilian, no matter where they were—everyone just happened to be thirsty at that exact moment?
  • Nothing about the sequence makes sense. Why did everyone drink water at once? Why did Cyan not drink? Why did the castle have no stored water? How were they able to access the river during a siege? Why do the denizens of the castle exclusively drink river water? How is Kefka able to poison a river when river water's primary attribute is that it's moving? Trying to rationalize it is fruitless. The real answer is that the writers needed a scene to keep Kefka relevant, they needed something to motivate Cyan, and they needed to establish a dichotomy between the Empire as Leo sees it and its underhanded, cruel reality. The result was Kefka's impossible plan to poison all of Doma at once, and the audience accepted it because we were accustomed to a lower standard of writing in role-playing games in the SNES era.
  • One of the Imperial soldiers mentions to Kefka that the Domans have several of their troops prisoner in the castle, and they'll be poisoned too. Despite this, we don't see any dungeons in Doma Castle. Given the limitations of the SNES, the developers couldn't include every single room and part of the castle or any other town. My interpretation was that not everyone in Doma was poisoned, but so many people died that almost all the survivors suffered a Despair Event Horizon and eventually surrendered. Cyan, of course, was the exception.
  • The Anthropic Principle applies here. Cyan was a powerful knight but probably not the only powerful knight in Doma; what distinguishes him and makes him plot-relevant is that he was the sole highly-skilled survivor (and that he ran into Sabin while seeking revenge.) It's not unreasonable that at least one knight noticed the water was poisoned (honestly, given how fast-acting it was, it's more surprising the losses were as total as they were); if it had been someone other than Cyan then that part of the plot would have followed them instead.

Conservation of Magic

• A little silly, I know, but is anyone else bothered that your party can trash the gods of magic with their spells, then Kefka, but somehow Kefka is still the one with all the magic power? I thought it was a little silly that the magic faded with Kefka instead of your party (esp. Terra) somehow being the new source.
  • Magic isn't You Kill It, You Bought It. Kefka became the new "source" of magic after he drained the Warring Triad's power to a point that he had more of it than they did, effectively making him the new focus, but he didn't kill them to accomplish this. The party themselves were surprised to find out he had done this when they killed the last Goddess and magic spectacularly failed to go away. Thus, Kefka must have used some method of extraction, assimilation, or transference to become the nexus of magic in the world. Maybe he did it on purpose, or maybe he chanced upon it when he was crushed by the Statues, but magic didn't leap into him on its own. Even Magicite requires some conscious assimilation of whatever magic lies in there after the Esper dies. The party, OTOH, didn't do anything of the sort, they just beat him up.

Kefka, God of Magic

• Might be more Fridge Logic than a Headscratcher, but Kefka shows that he's able to neutralize the Espers' powers in Thamasa. Not only that, but by the end of the game, he becomes the source of all magic - magic exists because he's around even after destroying the Triad, so presumably everyone else in the game is drawing their magical power from him in some fashion. So my question is: why doesn't he use the first ability against the heroes at any point? Even if it is just a Silencega spell (or perhaps some sort of magic-absorbing barrier), it seems like it would be extremely handy to use against a group of magic-using heroes. And even if that wouldn't work, shouldn't he be technically be able to restrict the casting of magic by other people than himself? Sure, his tower and all of his minions would die, but he's probably not too concerned about them anyways, and he would also be able to humiliate and utterly destroy the magic-using heroes that are pretty much the only hope left for the world. And even if we concede that it's a non-controllable aspect of his existence, he drained the magic from the Triad, who are individually a lot more powerful than any of the heroes (hell, even their dried-up shells are still extremely powerful, so imagine them at their full strength). So why oh why doesn't he just drain the magic from the heroes too? Yeah, there's no getting around Gameplay and Story Segregation or the Villain Ball, but it still seems like the heroes, even with an armory of game-breakingly powerful weapons and spells shouldn't have even stood a chance against him.
  • Maybe having that much magic power in him makes it harder for him to detect if some of it is being drained off for small uses like spells? Much like you don't suffer from the tiny amount of blood loss that a mosquito inflicts (just the salivary chemicals they use to get it). There are loads of monsters in the wilderness that also use magic, so it's not like the party are the only ones in the world casting things like Meteor, and when you are the font of ALL MAGIC ITSELF, even something like Ultima might just be a little blip on the radar. As for why he didn't cut them off when they came to fight him directly, uh... well, maybe he can't manage it on a scale smaller than espers, I dunno.
  • His ability to neutralize the Espers' powers might have been related to the technology used to drain the Espers' powers. It might not have been a spell, essentially, but some magitek-related tool that goes unexplained. He simply might not be able to perform the move on the protagonists because only one of them is half-esper. As for the fact that he himself was the source of magic, that might not be enough to prevent others from tapping into that force. If a lake is the source of water for a river, the lake would have to dry itself to stop the river from flowing, and even then the river is going to keep flowing for a small period of time after the lake dries. Maybe this is quite literally why we see the espers disappear slowly right after Kefka perishes. So even if he could shut it off, it's an extremely stupid move.
  • It is easier to understand if don't think of magic like a water, try thinking of Kefka as the god of magic like being something closer the sun. He RADIATES magic to all those to are attuned or whatever to it to call upon spells. To shut off their power, he would have to discard is own because like a sun, the energy it outputs is simply the side effect of the reaction that keeps it going. As for why he doesn't use his Cut Scene Power To The Max ability on the party, it may have something to do with that. Maybe the technique/magitek only works by severing the connection between the Espers and the Warring Triad. It worked, because the Triad's power was still stabilized at that point and the espers were far far away from them. Meanwhile in the final battle the party is RIGHT NEXT TO the source of all magic. Any technique/magitek powerful enough to shut down their ability to call forth magic would probably jam his abilities as well.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Bandanna

• I think I should preface this by saying that I had no sympathy for Celes at all, so "because of emotional impact" isn't (to me) a good explanation for how the Hell did Locke's bandanna make it into her hands on the cliffside? First of all, he's still wearing it when you find him again, even in the Anthology remake FMV's. Secondly, he spends most of his time underground, in caves, which don't tend to have a whole lot of birds in them, much less any seagulls who don't go that far out to sea except to die. And really, what makes her think that a scrap of Locke's clothing suggests he'd be alive, and not that his corpse had washed up somewhere, or even that it doubtlessly belonged to him in the first place? Even if she was just using it as an excuse to not kill herself and convince herself Locke may have survived...what prevented her from just deciding to go and find other people on her own?
  • It wasn't just "a scrap." Small as it may be, the pixel art clearly shows that the bandanna is tied around the pigeon's wing. She recognized it specifically as Locke's bandanna, and it's not far-fetched that it really is a unique item that can be thus recognized (he can probably get another one, or even a more ordinary one, after the fact.) Seeing it tied to the pigeon's wing also tells her that he took the time to care for an injured bird, so even if she doesn't know if he's safe now, she knows she survived the Ruin, and had at least one moment of peace to spare. When we see him next he's in the depths of the Phoenix Cave, but surely he didn't spend an entire year in there —even if he did nothing but explore caves, he would've surfaced at some point to move from one cave to another. And if Locke survived at least the catastrophe, then the notion that she and Cid were the only survivors (which convinced her to take the flying leap) is false, and by extension, there might be someone else (which convinces her to leave.) Now, the thing about the bird flying out so far into the sea? That's a good point that can only be answered with "Rule of Drama."
    • Might be easier to think of it like this, Celes and Cid ended up on that island with some unnamed people who committed suicide by cliff jumping. They never clear up what happened during that year Celes was in a coma. Most of the seems to have landed on the mainland or got carried away. Maybe after the initial aftermath of the airship the Locke searched along the cost for Celes, coming to the mainland where Celes later travels to after she decides to live. He may even just been there shortly before Celes woke up when he fixed a bird's wing. Without any details of what everyone else was doing, Locke and Celes might have missed each other by a week or so. This makes her suicide attempt even more tragic if he was just there, so close and yet so far. As to why he still has his bandana, it would be prudent to point out several factors the major four being; 1)Is it really hard to come by a bandana? didn't they sell them at one shop or another?, 2) Locke is a resourceful "treasure hunter" and has back up bandanas or stole some(he can steal the cloths off of TRAINED SOLDIERS IN MID COMBAT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!), 3) the first to could have been accomplished simply because of the Year Celes was in a coma. 4) if the bandana is something truly unique to him, maybe he makes them himself and it really isn't that hard to make a replacement for them.
  • I took a more stoic approach than bird repair because, personally, I can't imagine finding a bird with a broken wing, splinting it, and then being on my merry way (um especially since cure spell). As it's stated above, as Locke was a trained thief of sorts(thank you, thank you) I figured he had some knowledge of messenger birds, for espionage and whatever all else, trained the bird (or many birds for other party members as well) to at least recognize Celes somehow and approach her, bandana secured. Turns out suicide cliff was the best venue for this.

Espers on Gogo are a No-Go

• Something more gameplay-wise that story-wise, but... WHY. THE. DEVIL. CAN'T. YOU. EQUIP. ESPERS. ON. GOGO? I don't want to make him/her learn his/her own spells, I just want be able to enhance his/her stats a bit, are they specifically trying to make Gogo not useful?
  • Gogo doesn't need stats. He copies what the last person in the party did for his/her action. It doesn't matter if his ultima spell doesn't do just quite 9999 damage like Celes just did, as long as he has the MP to carry it out, he can be used to double heal the party, double nuke the enemies, double 9999x4 damage thanks to the ultima sword, master's scroll, Genji Glove, and Quick spell...
    • Gogo can't mimic equipment set-ups.
  • Maybe shkle's not human....
  • Mog isn't human either and can equip espers just fine.
    • Maybe he's an actual, full-blooded Esper who just happens to default to miming humans. He can't equip Magicite because he is Magicite.
  • Gogo's entire mission in life is to copy others. Gogo sees something done, therefore Gogo must do it too. That's the very reason Gogo joined the party, was to copy whatever you're doing. If, say, Celes handed Gogo some Magicite, Gogo would probably refuse unless there's an exact copy of it for Celes to use first. At least, that's how it can be explained in Watsonian.

Leo's Country, Right Or Wrong

• What, exactly, was an honorable soldier like General Leo even doing serving a brutal tyrant like Emperor Gestahl in the first place? Sure, everybody admires Leo as a decent, upstanding fellow, but he was still playing a central role in helping Gestahl enslave the world. So how does he manage to be seen as a Knight in Shining Armor when he's ultimately still going to help conquer the entire world?
  • He's not helping to conquer the world, he's helping to unite it. We don't know much about the world prior to Empire vs Rebels war but what we do know is that as far as we can tell Doma and a small group of rebels were the only people actively fighting against it. The entire south continent is the Empire, Figaro are "allied" to the Empire, Narshe is neutral Thamasa and the Veldt are apparently sufficiently isolated that they aren't even part of the conflict. Judging by Celes, Cid and Leo there were always good people in the Empire and a most of the soldiers were just doing their jobs. So Leo is seen as a Knight in Shining Armor because even if he's fighting on the wrong side he is fundamentally a good man. He tried to spare Doma unnecessary deaths, changed sides in Redemption Equals Death turn. The problem is we see the entire conflict from one side.
    • The world is being "united" by force. Celes burned Maranda, and the scars are still there (one person in Maranda when you first visit says 'Look what the Empire's done to it!'); Tzen's royal family was slaughtered by the Empire, and along with Albrook the people of all three cities are miserable under Imperial occupation. And Figaro was fighting the Empire, albeit subtly. While Edgar pretends to be an ally of the Empire, he's secretly working with the Returners. Leo's even horrified when he "learns" what Gestahl's true goals were, and asks what he was even fighting for. Granted, he was talking to Kefka's illusion of Gestahl, but it's quite likely that Kefka was reiterating what Gestahl's actual motives were. The closest reason I can think of for Leo willingly fighting for the Empire is because he genuinely thinks things would be better under a one-world government, and if the people resist he thinks that it's For Your Own Good. Sort of like how the old European empires forcibly conquered other peoples with the claim that they were going to "civilize" these supposedly backwards peoples.
    • In his story arc in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia Leo explains that he believed that the Empire ruling everything would lead to world peace. He then immediately followed that up admitting he may have been mistaken.
  • Also incredibly likely that Leo was born in the Empire/Vector, and would naturally be simply fighting for his home country.
    • Confirmed in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia. Leo says that he loves his homeland, its people, and its natural beauty, and it's only natural that he'd want to fight to protect them, but now that there is no Empire he doesn't know what to fight for anymore. He eventually concludes that even if it no longer takes the form of a country, the people and the land are still there all the same, and joins the Returners to aid in fulfilling that goal of continuing to protect them.
    • The Ultimania guide confirms he was born in Vector, so this is likely a big part of it. This Troper's headcanon is also that Leo is well aware that if he were ever to make too much of a fuss or ask too many questions, there is a psychotic clown ready and eager to take his place. Therefore he probably thinks it's better to follow the Emperor's orders but use his own power to limit the amount of damage done when undertaking them, than to possibly do anything to jeopardize his position and make room for Kefka to butt in and just burn everything to the ground (the events surrounding the Doma genocide is basically a microcosm of this). This would also explain why he never helped Terra even though we know it was eating him up inside having to watch her suffer. And it is indeed when Leo is taken out of the picture that things go to hell VERY quickly.
  • It's possible that Leo simply doesn't view imperialism as inherently wrong, which has been a commonly held belief throughout our own world's history. He only openly objects to war crimes, not war in itself.

Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards, Zig-Zagging Espers

• The Espers tear apart Vector when they come into our world, destroying things left and right with their magic. So how come they never displayed this kind of badassery when the Empire originally invaded their homeland some 16 years ago? Remember, at that point the Empire didn't have any Magitek weapons, any enhanced super soldiers, any genetically-mutated monsters, or anything like that. And yet, in the present day the Espers manage to ravage the Empire when they have all of these things.
  • Didn't the Espers seal themselves away after the War of the Magi 1,000 years ago? It's possible that they got complacent from living in peace for such a long time, and the Empire caught them by surprise. They did repel the Empire at that time, and resealed the cave. Otherwise, the Empire would have totally conquered them. But the Empire had time to get baby Terra, and maybe the other Espers seen in the Magitek Factory, before they were repelled.
    • ^That, and the fact that the Espers that rip Vector a new asshole were furious at the Empire for its horrific treatment of their people. Magic + Rage Adrenaline against Mooks? No contest. Another point to consider is not all Esper's powers are offensive in nature, thus limiting their ability to repel invading Magitek Soldiers. The stronger ones that the Empire capture may have been taken down not for lack of any power on their part, but because they defended the weaker Espers from attack.
  • It is unlikely that the empire's military might without magic was ineffective against the espers. We see Edgar's tools, powerful bushido from Cyan, Gau learning how to harness the power of monsters, and so on. It's not unbelievable to think the Empire had some super-powered steam punk tech that simply relied on missile or bullet spam. They could have unleashed monsters to soften up espers, or what we don't see is how much the empire lost just to bag a handful of espers.
  • To that point, four espers managed to escape the magitek factory. This troper can't recall if the escape was recent or sometime during the intervening 17 years, but clearly not push overs if they could manage that. Furthermore, some espers may have managed to evade capture but were busy holding off the empire outside the gates, seeing as espers like Golem are available in Wo B but not directly linked to the magitek factory in any way. Also a curious idea: Maybe the empire's reliance on magitek made them worse, not better, at battling espers?

Celes on the Floating Continent

• For a moment, it seems as though Celes is about to betray the Returners again on the Floating Continent, when she's about to use the sword that Kefka gave her to stab one of her companions. Fortunately, she comes to her senses and stabs Kefka instead. But why would she even consider listening to Gestahl and Kefka in the first place, given all of the shit they've done in the game so far?
  • Because she's probably not considering it; she's just pretending she is to keep their guard down so that they'll drop their guard and make them easier to stab. She is a decent enough actress to get through the Opera. Taking half a minute to act like she's going to obey a couple of men she's been working for her entire life is a piece of cake.
    • Sorry, doesn't wash. She raises her hand (presumably with the sword in it...stupid cheap game companies), and holds it there for a second, then lowers it, and hangs her head in shame, guiltily muttering to herself about how "power only breeds war." This looks like (and indeed, seems intended to look like) she was seriously considering it, and I'd chalk it up to an artifact of her original status as The Mole, before the game was rewritten.
    • What?! You seriously don't believe she could act like she was seriously considering it?! Is every movie a true story to you?
    • It's not that she couldn't, but that it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. If you're playing along with someone's demands in order to trick them into lowering their guard for a sucker punch, you then proceed with the sucker punch - not make a big scene of having a change of heart and completely ruin the very element of surprise you were trying to achieve.

The Mechanics of Magicite

• Do espers have control over what happens when they die? I ask because I just got through the Magitech Factory and knowing what we know about espers two things are really shocking. First Kefka, as insane as he is, isn't usually stupid and was still listening to the Emperor. Why would you throw a dying esper into a pit instead of finishing it off and either keeping the magicite or giving it to someone you found deserving (surely even if we never see them Kefka must have had at least one person he liked enough to give piece of magicite to!)? More than that several of the espers (Ramuh, Ifrit and Shiva and all the other espers in the research station) volunteer to give up their power. Cid freaks out when he sees the magicite and the pit is filled with what look to be either broken statues or possibly bones. How had the empire been torturing espers for years without ever killing one by accident and apparently nobody ever went and checked the pit ever either if they were turning to magicite.
  • Curiously enough, it doesn't seem as though the Empire truly realized just what Magicite was capable of until after the Magitek Factory was destroyed. A thief breaks into the facility and steals the Seraphim Esper, which you can buy in Tzen after you get the Blackjack. Golem and Zone Seek both appear for sale at the Auction House in Esper form, and it's unlikely that the Empire would have let them go if they thought they could still use them. Owzer buys Starlet at the Auction House later in the game, too. When you meet Ramuh, he mentions that the Empire is still using its inefficient method of draining magical power directly from the Espers. It seems as though the Returners' stealing all of that Magicite made Kefka and Gestahl aware of what Magicite was truly capable of. Chances are that Kefka spent some time developing a way to forcibly convert Espers into Magicite, as we see him do in Thamasa, after the Returners escape from Vector. After all, if the Returners find these glowing stones so valuable, they must be worth something, right?
  • There's two possibilities: First, that magicite, despite the empire knowing of the phenomena, has no idea how to extract power from it, and assumed espers still-living forms were the best to extract power from. Second possibility is that the espers held out and tried not to turn into magicite, hence Ifrit and Shiva, Ramuh, etc. trying to hold out until the heroes get there. They don't want the Empire figuring out their magicite forms are remotely useful. Either way, Cid's reaction to the magicite is a clear indication they had no idea how useful magicite truly was.
  • Most likely the same methods used to extract magic from living Espers is abysmal at squeezing magic out of the dead esper stones, so the scientists assumed they were as worthless as most corpses. This maybe why some magicite turns up at the Jidoor Auction House. some sly Vector scientist thought s/he could make some easier Gil by selling off rare and beautiful, yet apparently useless, crystals to people willing to spend money on rare and unique things.
• Another thing is that they never explain how the party equips magicite in the first place? Does the head sized crystal just meld into their bodies or something? Could explain why they can only equip one at a time and how dead Espers are all natural protagonist enchancements.
  • haha, good observation. First, do they keep their entire stock of magicite in a sack all together, and then "equipped" is the chosen magicite in their pocket? A more organized format would be a slotted or pocketed length of leather that could be rolled up (oh, excuse me furled) for ease of carryment. These scenarios drive the point to me that the in game menu is purely aesthetic, a Fourth Wall breaker by every definition, because it is purely for the player, in that, however the party is carry their stock of magicite, however they choose to select/ready it for use in battle is a matter of personal preference. This obv begs the question: Does the magicite know by whom it is to be used based purely on physical possession? Weird.
  • My headcanon is that it works like the Guardian Forces in Final Fantasy VIII or the Espers in Final Fantasy XII. The character who's learning the magic forms a mystical bond with the Esper, and acquires the Esper's spells through combat experience while bonded. An Esper and a person can each only have one bond at a time, but switching bonds is easy and harmless.
• Also how does everyone know a Esper's name from their Magicite? Is it carved on the stone or something when they die?
  • Some sort of mystic/psychic impression, maybe.
  • Considering Maduin and several other espers communicated to the party as magicite, this could be very likely. Or at minimum, if only certain espers could talk while magicite, they would likely know one another's names.

The Fate of the Figarans

• When Figaro Castle is trapped underground there is still an exit from the cave, which "Gerad" uses to get in. Why doesn't he lead out the suffocating people of Figaro?
  • Because then all those civilians would have to traverse a dangerous underground passage to get back outside, and cross the wilderness to get back to South Figaro. He probably reasoned that it was faster to make the whole thing rise above the sands again than to risk leading a castle's worth of people through that cave.
  • It's possible that he intended to, or that at least that was his plan B if he couldn't get the castle running again. Fortunately it turned out to be easy enough to deal with the issue that had left it trapped - and after that, why would he want to evacuate it?

Amphibious Falcons

• In a similar vein to Gau's magic diving helmet: as awesome as raising the Falcon is, the gondola is open-air and apparently has four people on deck as it rises from underwater. Putting aside the fact that a blimp underwater probably wouldn't move like that on the ascent....
  • Probably whatever same force kept it from getting crushed when the world was being exploded. Plot-tonium Alloys in the Falcon and its surrounding structure.
  • Headcannon attack, even with a double check. Wasn't the Falcon resurrected from that tomb dungeon? Second I agree with Plot-tonium as the balloon portion looks to be a solid metal shell. So: 1)it gains momentum rising in the tomb space below the water 2)ceiling opens (or Falcon busts through ftw) water pours down onto metal shell of balloon and 3) the metal balloon shell is magicite powered and unaffected thereby "floating"/bursting out of the ocean or 4(or I mean yes amphibious) doubles as the body of a submersible, towing the lower attached flight deck, still levitated my magicite, up into, and, out of, the ocean. Period. #Phlebotinope.

Suicidal Espers

• Is every Esper in the game suicidal? Ifrit and Shiva are near-death anyway, so their sacrifice makes sense, but Ramuh seems more or less okay and Tritoch doesn't seem much worse for the wear after a few thousand years on ice. Yet they cheerfully off themselves the minute you show your face (or in Tritoch's case, smack him around a little). Why wouldn't they join you and fight alongside you instead? Isn't that sort of the equivalent of you or I wandering into Bill Gates' mansion and having him spontaneously slit his wrists and use the blood to pen us into his will?
  • Ramuh specifically says that his friends fell on the way to Zozo from Vector, and that he's greatly weakened as well. He was likely holding on waiting for someone to come for Terra. Tritoch (Valigarmanda in the remakes) has a better-translated line about how, after being frozen for a thousand years, nothing has changed (the world is still in ruins), and essentially gives up, turning his power over to those who freed him. The espers aren't necessarily suicidal, but they are tired of being used by humans obsessed with greed. And there's very, very few of them left alive by the time the party meets them.
    • Ramuh gives no indication that he's weakened, no. He specifically says that he "narrowly avoided" the fate of having his powers drained; and when he kills himself, he specifically says that it's to give you his power. At no point does he suggest, or even remotely hint, that he has been weakened, injured, or is dying in any way shape or form, and in fact he more-or-less states the opposite (that, unlike the other espers, he's totally fine until he decides to sacrifice himself.) The magicite he gives you also isn't particularly amazing - nowhere near as valuable as his knowledge and expertise would have been later in the plot. On top of this, when he does move to kill himself, the characters react with horror and try to stop him; afterwards, they ask "why would you do such a thing?", and his answer is basically "you need to stop the empire", ie. emphasizing that he killed himself to give them his power and for no other reason. If he was weakened or dying anyway, he would have said so in order to salve their concerns, but at no point in the conversation does he say anything that could be interpreted that way.
  • Wasn't it explicitly said somewhere that Espers were made by the magical fallout of the Warring Triad's conflict? They have lived for so long and seen so many wars they are seriously tired of fighting. Given the fact that the Espers at the Magitek Research Facility seemed to be able to cling to life from sheer willpower, it might be that an Esper has to want to live to keep living. Nearly all the ones you talk to are all suffered from something or another. They are all just worn down, depressed and possible suffering from PTSD.
  • Actually, aside from Tritoch pretty much all the Espers the party acquires are either already dead and crystallized (e.g. Alexander, Bahamut, Palidor, etc.) or are in the same bad state as Ifrit and Shiva (e.g. Phantom, Maduin and the other Espers the party frees from the Magitek Research Facility) so it makes sense for them to become magicite too. The Advance version adds a new twist where the party has to kill some of the Espers in self-defense (Leviathan, Catuar and Gilgamesh) and they become magicite when the party wins.

The Nihilism of Destruction

• This may just cross over into the "straw" part of Straw Nihilist, but if Kefka saw absolutely no meaning in pretty much anything, why did he even bother trying to destroy everything? According to his view, that would be just as meaningless. Alternatively, if something about its meaningless bothered him, then it would have to have meaning.
  • He's Kefka. He doesn't think logically.
    • Or alternatively, he still ENJOYS destruction despite its meaninglessness. Unless you subscribe to the WMG that he LET the heroes kill him at the end because of his belief in Nihilism.
  • Depending on what version of his final rant you look at (I, personally, don't know Japanese, so I can only work from the various translations), part of Kefka's definition of meaningfulness has to do with permanence. Destroy something thoroughly enough, and you can't rebuild it, only replace it. Meanwhile, things that are created decay, erode, degrade, or are otherwise gradually destroyed without regular effort to preserve them. And sooner or later, the preservers themselves are going to die out or lose interest or something. So, since only a state of "having been destroyed" (with non-existence being the Platonic ideal) is the only one that can remain indefinitely, it's the only one that, to Kefka's mind, has meaning.

Whatever Happened to the Returners?

• Regardless of what exactly happened to Banon and Arvis after the last time we see them in Vector (most likely they were killed when the Empire dropped the fake truce act), why do Edgar and Locke not even seem to care? Banon and Arvis have been their friends since long before the start of the game, yet they forget they even existed!
  • There was a year between the end of the world and the time Celes finds them again. There's no reason not to think that they did their mourning in that time. If you're specifically asking about why they don't say anything after Thamasa, they kind of have something more important on their hands: the Floating Continent and the implication of the unstoppable nature of Gestahl. Presumably, they were waiting until later to break the news, and then it became irrelevant.
    • But Banon is the leader of the Returners and knows more about fighting the Empire than anyone else, making him a valuable resource; furthermore, Vector (where Banon and Arvis were) is, in theory, part of the Floating Continent. Shouldn't they have described rescuing Banon and Arvis, if they're still alive, as part of the goal of the assault on the Floating Continent? The game allows you to worry about Shadow, and is deeply worried about everything that happens to Celes, but not those two. From an out-of-character standpoint it's because party members matter more than NPCs (or a temporary party member in Banon's case), but from an in-universe standpoint Banon and Arvis should be every bit as important as if two of your party members were likely being held hostage on the Floating Continent (and possibly dead, but you don't know that so it's worth searching for them.)
    • Vector is most definitely not part of the Floating Continent, it's still right there on the map where it always was after the continent rises. Vector is in fact abandoned at this point of the game by both the Returners and the Empire, so Banon and Arvis could be doing relatively unimportant stuff off-screen; I would assume they died in the apocalypse.
  • My first impression was similar to what was made apparent of the Thieve's Guld in FF 9. The Thieve's Guild "sort of" gets disbanded, I think, somewhere around the 3rd disc. Not officially, just in that much of the conflict that was generating their need/profit of thievery had been resolved, especially due to the companionship between Zidane and Garnet. Logically, dramatic, or, rather, heavy emphasis on Thieve's Guild related ties, went by the wayside. Similarly, Banon and Arvis were significant companions of Edgar and Locke, but also weren't the only two others who were part of The Returners, just the two "showcased" for plot effect, so they stand out to the player as, probably omg (pardon lol) "the most important" friends-of-Edgar-and-Locke/members-of-The-Returners. Further, Edgar, as royalty, saw a constant "flux" of personel, and probably wrote off the "extravagance" of their companionship by default experience. Locke is technically a hair's breadth from cold-blooded when it comes to getting sidetracked by "goose-chases" by the Floating Continent portion of the game. These two personality traits combined with the direness of the situation lead me to believe, srsly, there was no time to try and find them, have a little pity-pot or back slapping party, and tell them, "Look, screw you guys, we're getting involved with the source of all magic, probably some head's are gonna fly, and probably they will be yours if you insist on following.". Given the likelihood of this scenario, they chose not to search for their friends, also, only to inform them that they themselves would be leaving them promptly, and likely perishing. Ugh, even after all that I realize they could have at least mentioned them and their intentions at some point (there was damn opera for crying out loud) but THAT made me realize, that aside from Celes solitary segment, there really are exactly zero portions of the game where the party gets together to solemnly consider any type of anything. Waiting for Gau on the Veldt does not count.
  • I always assumed that the party members who stayed behind in Vector had to fight their way out before they took the Blackjack to Thamasa. The Empire's lured the Returners and Narshe guards right where they wanted them and massacred them after Locke and Terra left. Edgar and the rest of the player heroes were probably the only ones who survived, which means that Edgar probably saw Banon and Arvis die when the Empire attacked. He also probably told Locke and Terra off-screen. The game didn't focus on it because the player heroes are the only ones who could prevent Gestahl and Kefka from conquering the world.

Rebellion Against Kefka

• In the World of Ruin, how exactly did towns rebel against Kefka, resulting in his retaliating against them with the Light of Judgment? All we ever see Kefka do is sit in the heavily guarded and tricky to access inner sanctum of his glorified trash dump that is Kefka's Tower and create bizarre, hideous monsters. Did he go out of the tower and demand to be worshipped at some point, or something (which could explain the Cult of Kefka), and retaliated when the townspeople said no? Why would he even care what the townspeople even thought?
  • Kefka probably has some way of seeing what's going on on the ground magically and his stated goal in before the final fight is the desire to destroy hope and love and all that. The most obvious answer is that when Kefta saw people trying to rebuild their old lives he viewed it as rebellion and punished them.
  • When Celes visits Tzen in the World of Ruin, one of the townsfolk mentions that he was on "lookout duty" (translation: was a spy) for Kefka before he deserted. It's implied this is one reason Kefka blasted the city. Kefka likely has spies in other cities who function as Les Collaborateurs out of genuine loyalty (e.g. Cult of Kefka members in disguise) or are simply too afraid not to work for him.

Cyan's Suspicions

• Why does the game treat Cyan's accusations against Celes as unreasonable? When you first meet up after getting both, he tries to attack her, and Locke gives a speech about how "the Empire is evil, but not all of its citizens are!" Except... Celes isn't just a random citizen, she was an imperial general who committed specific war crimes (Cyan says that she was the one who 'torched Maranda', and she doesn't deny this, though she does totally ignore it. Then Locke gives his speech about how not all the Empire's citizens are evil. Yes, Locke, but the people who burned down cities probably are evil. Cyan isn't attacking her because she's an imperial, he's attacking her because she has committed specific, horrific war crimes for which she expresses no remorse.) It's entirely reasonable for Cyan to hold her responsible for her past crimes, even if she's now changed her mind, especially when one of those crimes is burning down a city. Yes, sure, maybe she deserves a chance to strive for redemption, but the game treats it as if Cyan's accusations are outright unreasonable and as if Celes has nothing to try and redeem, when he is able to accuse her of specific straight-up atrocities against civilian populations back when she was an imperial general.
  • Even if she torched the city, there's a lot of room between, Kefka doing it while laughing away, and Celes doing it solely because she's a general and those were her orders. I sincerely doubt Celes enjoyed it or even wanted to do it. Or even did it personally.
    • But this doesn't explain why Celes makes no effort to even answer Cyan's accusation herself. Even if she wasn't directly responsible, any non-horrible person would feel intense guilt over even peripheral involvement in something like that; you'd assume, either way, that she'd want to get that off her chest at some point. Yet she remains completely silent, leaving Locke to interject with "not everyone in the Empire is evil!" as if Celes was a random Imperial citizen rather than one of their three leading generals, and as if Cyan had brought up some random unrelated crime rather than one he clearly at least believes she was directly responsible for.
    • The GBA translation says the Decimation of Maranda, so it's unlikely that she literally torched Maranda. It's no different from General Leo's initial assault on Doma. She basically just conquered the place (many men from Maranda were later drafted into the army, and at least one soldier from there was willing to die for the Empire) Also consider that she was appalled by the idea that Kefka was going to poison Doma. It's unlikely any war crimes were committed by Celes, and Cyan remembered her from taking over Maranda. Also she does tell Cyan to see for himself what side she's on. She doesn't apologize, because there's nothing to apologize for. She only did her job, and upon learning the true face of the empire, she deserted.
    • Decimation reads a lot more severely than just conquering a city. And "she only did her job" sounds an awful lot like "she was just following orders", which is a... loaded way to defend someone for committing war crimes. Even if her ignorance at the time excuses her, the fact remains that Cyan is accusing her of specific crimes he claims she, as an individual, committed, whereas Locke turns around and defends her with platitudes about not blaming all Imperial citizens for the crimes of their leadership (leadership like, you know, Celes), as if she was a random citizen who Cyan was accusing of stuff utterly unrelated to her rather than things he says specifically happened under her command. No matter how you cut it Locke's response is baffling.
    • idk peoples. Maybe Cyan had never been in strategically/morally compromising situations but certainly Locke has been in his fair share, and it all suddenly just hit too close to home for him to, I guess, ease into it for Cyan or the player. Looking at it from the way things are done in anime oftentimes it makes a little more sense. First of all, isn't Cyan a little bit of an alcoholic? In any case, isn't there a Cyan glitch that causes him to furiously and continuously attack dinosaurs? If the game treats him unjustly it's because Cyan has already proven himself to be somwat unhinged (already this sounds like Locke). From Locke's perspective, who is probably good at reading people since he's a thief, he immediately recognizes Cyan is going for the jugular, but knows that the fight is (and always was) with the Emperor/Kefka. He recognizes that everything that has been happening has been happening on a militaristic level, and now they themselves have cooperating with them a force that was once in opposition to them strategically, not just some former enemy trash. It is probable Cyan was aware of all this yet still made his choice after weighing everything, including his own burden of lost loved ones. Again, the guy could barely care less and Locke picked up on this right away.
  • It's a case of one character (Cyan) not knowing something that another character (Locke) and the player both know. Cyan wasn't there when Locke met Celes, and didn't see the dialogue between them that suggests how she's changed. All he knows is that the Empire destroyed everything he loved, and then suddenly one of its highest-ranking officers is in the same room as him. Her seeming Heroic Sacrifice probably redeemed her in his eyes. Notably, if Cyan is at the Imperial banquet in Vector, General Leo will apologize to him and Cyan will say it wasn't his fault.
    • But that doesn't match what Locke said! He doesn't say she's become a different person or is trying to redeem herself, he says that the empire is evil, but not all its citizens are, as if Celes is simply a random Imperial citizen rather than one of its generals, responsible for (at least according to Cyan) specific, named war crimes.
    • Celes is an Imperial citizen - citizens are people that live in a city/country. So by all counts, Locke's quote can also refer to Celes. Do not mistake "citizen" for "civilian" - while "civilians" are "citizens", "citizen" also include the military corps.
    • Yes, but the point is, Locke's defense of her only makes sense if Cyan is accusing her of being evil simply for being an Imperial citizen (ala All Germans Are Nazis.) That's clearly not what Cyan is saying - he says that Celes, specifically and personally, committed specific individual crimes which he feels she needs to account for. Locke's response makes no sense in that context. He doesn't say "yes, she did those things but she's different now", he implies that Cyan is only accusing her of crimes because she's an Imperial citizen through guilt by association, which is nonsense that totally ignores what Cyan actually said.
  • For what it's worth, the GBA translation (which is generally more accurate) actually makes this worse; in that version, Cyan specifically says that Celes is personally responsible for the decimation of Maranda.
  • Are we assuming that we're supposed to see Cyan as unreasonable? We can see Locke's side because we've met Celes as Locke, but that doesn't mean we're not supposed to see Cyan's side too. Locke immediately defending her (even with a particularly weak defense) makes sense in light of his "protect women" personality trait rooted in his own trauma; Celes being completely uncommunicative out of shame is a personal flaw that impacts her relationship with Locke down the line as well, so that's not a random oversight in her writing either.

Setzer the Creep

• Why doesn't anyone care that Setzer is straight-up trying to kidnap a woman? What exactly was his plan when he abducted the opera singer he loved using his airship? He's (at best) a kidnapper, and it's entirely reasonable to at least suspect that he intended to do worse. Yet nobody mentions it at all, and he's treated as a totally sympathetic character after that. For that matter, since the issue was never resolved, it's entirely possible that he goes and kidnaps her successfully after the game is over.
  • Because Setzer is an internationally known playboy and celebrity, and if I remember correctly has some kind of pre-existing relationship or acquaintance with Maria. It's not like he's some thug out of nowhere. It's more along the lines of, say...Bruce Wayne absconding with the Russian ballet in The Dark Knight.
    • This troper always assumed that Setzer and Maria were romantically involved, and the "abduction" was mostly just a big publicity stunt/spontaneous vacation. That the Impresario wasn't in on.
  • If Setzer is a kidnapper and would-be rapist, he's a pretty stupid one. He puts on a grand show of abducting Maria and letting the Impresario know ahead of time, when he could have just had her kidnapped in the night or something like that. It's heavily implied that Setzer is a Chivalrous Pervert, and as a Lovable Rogue he is likely trying to impress Maria by making a grand entrance and sweeping her off in the Blackjack, where he'd try to charm her. If she refused, he'd return her unharmed. Just look at what happens when he learns that Celes cheated him out of a chance to marry her. Instead of trying to take her by force, or throwing her and the rest of the Returners off the Blackjack, he simply laughs it off and agrees to help out. Driving the Impresario crazy is a bonus, since he's the kind of fussy, uptight snob someone like Setzer would enjoy trolling.

Setzer's Empty Casino

• Who exactly does Setzer gamble with? He's got a small but apparently-functional casino aboard the Blackjack, apparently the only one in the world, and we never see it put to use. For that matter, what's up with the merchant and the healer on board? Where do they eat and sleep and go to the bathroom? Do they have families, or hobbies, or anything to do but stand in one spot and dispense items and healing?
  • We can only speculate, but a logical guess would be that Setzer runs the casino for-profit, taking it from city to city and earning money like that (somewhat similar to a traveling circus.) The healer and the merchant are likely employees and normally help him staff the casino, but have been shifted to supply duty while he's fighting the Empire. Presuming there are laws against gambling in much of the world, he could even avoid them by taking on passengers, then bringing them to the international sky over the ocean somewhere before the casino opens.
    • This is actually implied in the game, when Setzer mentions how bad business has been because of the Empire. It's quite likely that many of his would-be patrons are either being bled by heavy Imperial taxes, restricted in their movements, or simply killed, as one NPC in Tzen mentions happened to that city's royal family. With so much of the world under the Empire's control, Setzer's lost most of his customer base.

Lone Wolf

• Is Lone Wolf supposed to be an Esper? His Palette Swapped sprite is used for several Espers.
  • They're just being economical with their sprites. Think of him as a man wearing a wolf pelt, and then people nicknamed him 'Lone Wolf' because of said pelt.
    • The problem with this is that the game has tons of human sprites. If they wanted him to be human, they could have just chosen one of those. In fact, given that he's a recurring character from other games in the series, it's more likely that Lone Wolf's (intentionally non-human) sprite was reused for the Espers rather than the other way around, since the random side-espers who use that sprite are actually less important than he is.
  • Another possibility is that beastmen are just a thing in the setting - descendents of other modified humans from the War of the Magi or somesuch. It would explain some of the human-ish monsters you encounter, too.
  • Also, for what it's worth the Doylist answer is that (like Gogo) he's a reference to a character from Final Fantasy V, which did have beastmen. They included him in Final Fantasy VI, even though there's no real indication that Final Fantasy 6 has any beastmen other than him. People who played the international release when the game first came out were confused because FFV hadn't been released internationally and they therefore didn't get the reference.

Figarans Can Breathe in Space

• There's a year-long time skip in between the Floating Continent and Celes waking up on Solitary Island in the World of Ruin. During that year, Figaro Castle is trapped in bedrock with Sand Worms in its engines and no way to replenish its oxygen supply. As the air runs out, everyone falls to the ground, choking... and stays there unconscious, for a year, and then gets up like everything is fine as soon as the castle breaks the surface. What the hell? No, seriously. What. The. Hell?
  • Possibilities: Figaro Castle was buried quite recently; Figaro had a huge oxygen supply due to its extensive size; 3. the people were able to find oxygen sources, for a while, but ultimately those sources failed. Regardless, Edgar arrived just in time to bail them out.
    • The time between passing out from lack of oxygen and suffering permanent brain damage is on the order of minutes. If it's absolutely necessary to come up with an explanation, another possibility is that Figaro had anticipated the possibility of being trapped underground or otherwise being unable to surface, and had some sort of concoction or treatment that put everyone into hibernation. This doesn't really fit with what we see, though (which looks like everyone just passed out where they were standing.)
  • They had a direct connection to a cave and an ancient castle.
    • But then why did they pass out at all?
    • I'm starting to think that Figaro Castle's problem wasn't an oxygen shortage, but a food shortage. The people survived for a while on the food stores they already had. Edgar knew those supplies wouldn't last forever, which is why he was so desperate to find a way in. Once he repaired the engines and got the castle to surface, he could send soldiers to South Figaro for aid.
  • Head canon: I thought the situation was caused by the demon/Esper in the castle vault which the party had to defeat to, not only gain the contents but, release the inhabitants of the castle from it's curse.

How Does Anyone Know About Terra and the Espers in the First Place?

• So, after Edgar, Locke, and Terra flee from Kefka at Figaro, Edgar notes that the Esper at Narshe "seemed to ... react" to Terra, thus kicking off the "Use Terra to get the Espers on the Returner's side" leg of the plot. Except how does Edgar know about this reaction? The only two witnesses, Biggs/Vicks and Wedge, were vaporized or banished or something, never to be seen again. Was Arvis hiding in the corner, watching?
  • Actually, Arvis did drag Terra out of the mines after Tritoch 'reacted' to her. There's no other way she could wind up in Arvis' bed. Arvis likely saw Tritoch calming down or made some logical conclusion as to how three magitek suits got fried in the fight, and sent word to Edgar (we know he sent word to Locke, too). Maybe they used the term 'react' because they really have no idea what happened during that fight.
  • Most of the townsfolk probably saw the Magitek soldiers go into the mines. Arvis probably followed them in to see what they were up to so he could report to the other Returners. He kept his distance so they wouldn't know he was following them, and by the time he'd caught up to them Wedge and Biggs were gone, Terra was unconscious, and all their mech suits were fried. Arvis figured out what happened, saw the slave crown Terra was wearing, realized she was Brainwashed and Crazy and not truly responsible for her actions, and took her back to his house for treatment. While he was treating Terra, he also sent word to Edgar and asked him to send Locke to help get Terra out of Narshe.

Solitude for Dummies

• Okay, so Celes is sad because she thinks she's going to be alone forever because Cid is gone and she thinks she's the only person still alive in the world of ruin, but she has absolutely no reason to think that.
  • She's weak enough to get imprisoned by mooks and Cid was a frail old man, so if they lived, chances are other people did too.
  • There are birds flying between the island and the mainland. If there were really no other land masses in the world, that island would be carpeted in birds both living and dead.
  • She knows exactly which direction to sail when she gets the raft and it's a short trip, implying it was visible from the island.
    • She probably saw the land, but didn't think it was worth checking out while she was under the assumption it would be just like the island. People commonly tend to think of disasters and world ending events are neat, tidy affairs where everything just dies/gets destroyed ignored the logistics of total annihilation in an emotional response to the devastation witnessed.
  • The Light of Judgment is apparently visible for an extremely long distance. Flashing lights in the sky would be pretty noticeable even if they were faint ones on the horizon.
    • This assumes the weather isn't some post-apocalyptic permanent overcast or something.

• And then when the Bird of Hope drops Locke's bandana, she suddenly decides to try to get somewhere with it, but:
  • Locke's still wearing his bandanna when you find him and it hasn't changed, so it probably wasn't his.
  • If it was his, he's not wearing it anymore, which would imply that he's dead because the bird would have gotten it off his corpse.
    • Celes' monologue states that the bandana was applied deliberately, to wrap a wound.
    • Why couldn't he simply get another bandana just like it during the Year Celes was in a coma? Assuming it is something significantly and uniquely his, maybe he makes them himself.

So which is it? Is she so consumed with despair that she completely ignores her surroundings, or is she so desperate for hope that she'll gamble on the longest odds possible for the slightest chance of meeting someone she once knew?

• It is most likely both. Honestly if this one ever got a 3D remake we should be seeing Celes having nightmares of the Airship cracking apart followed by her fall into a sea of burning fire during a hurricane of building fragments. She had front row seats to the end of the world then she wakes up a year later and doesn't have nightmares or trauma? No, SNES was just far too limiting for the grand scale of FF6's story. If there was one game from the 2D era to pick to be remade into modern FF style, it would be this one.
• If I recall correctly, Cid was the one who brought up the idea they might be the only people left, and he's her father figure, so his word carries a deal of influence. Cid's own motivations for saying this and how much he believed it are also subject to interpretation, since he did have the raft ready for her.

Sabin and Nutkins

• How can Sabin dislike Nutkins when they are not found within the game?
  • When he's behind their unavailability, as This Very Wiki speculates.
  • Maybe they're docile animals in this game and thus never attack you, ergo there's no random encounter with them. Also, there is a Nutkin Suit kigurumi item, so the concept of them can be verified to exist in this world.

Puny Mortals Defeating a God

• When Kefka absorbed the magic of the Warring Triad and ascended to godhood, he had unfathomable magical power and was powerful enough to destroy entire towns using the Light of Judgment. How could the players defeat a being that strong in the final battle? As the new god of magic, Kefka should have been might enough to destroy them with a snap of his fingers.
  • Magic defense stat?
  • The powers of the Espers and Terra. Also Kefka is not sane and therefore likely wasn't using his power to it's full potential and couldn't use his really big guns without hitting himself. There's also the theory that he was still firing the Light of Judgement at the world in general and that kept him from functioning at full power.
  • You're presuming he has power that he doesn't because you're attributing too much weight to the word "god." Kefka is overwhelmingly powerful, but not omnipotent. The heroes have accumulated resources, they're a tested team with numbers on their side, they're fighting for a cause greater than themselves, and they've all made themselves into legends through the trials they've overcome. All FF heroes—and indeed, any good hero from any good story—fight and overcome villains more powerful than themselves. If the reverse were true there'd be no drama.
  • The exact nature of Kefka's powers (and just about everything related to them) is extremely poorly-defined. For that matter, even the Warring Triad are pretty poorly-defined; but either way, the players managed to beat them up, somehow. The simplest explanation is that that power was never "transcendent" in the way we think of it, and that gathering enough espers-as-magicite, absorbing their power, accumulating ancient weapons and relics, etc. was enough to kill both them and him.

Kefka Shrugs Off a Sword Injury

• Celes stabs Kefka with a sword on the Floating Continent. At first, he seems seriously injured, falling to the ground as he insults Celes. A few moments later, Kefka pulls off several acts of physical exertion (hurling Gestahl off the Floating Continent, striking Celes, rearranging the Warring Triad statues) that should have been painful or impossible with a major injury. How did Kefka go from injured to formidable so quickly? Did Celes only inflict a flesh wound, to which Kefka overreacted? Was Kefka so jacked up on adrenaline that he was able to shrug off the pain of his injury? Did Kefka's wound heal after he stepped into the Warring Triad's magical field?
  • This is after the Thamasa incident and we don't really know what Kefka had been subjected to earlier. The idea that he knows Cure One and Two and Regen are easy to buy. And Life 3 isn't impossible. Also Haste is an easy one.
  • "Seems"? You can't really tell where Kefka was stabbed thanks to the sprites, so he may have been stabbed somewhere that can still leave him jumping around as he did. But then again, people wondered why a mercenary didn't die of an ice shard hitting around their shoulder in a 3D cutscene...

Kefka's hypocrisy

• Kefka's entire point is that there's no reason to live if all that happens is we end up dying, and there's no reason to build something if it'll only end up destroyed in the end. From the viewpoint of a nihilist, his logic is somewhat solid, if jaded and twisted. But why go to the trouble of building his enormous tower, his "monument to nonexistence"? By his own thought process, it's completely pointless to do so since it will (and does) just become dust someday.
  • Kefka's nihilism is an evolving trait that he doesn't necessarily begin the story with, and likely hasn't been fully though out by the time the party has their final confrontation with him. It was always this troper's interpretation that Kefka's worldview isn't something the players and the party are meant to grapple seriously with. Kefka fought and conspired for power and when he finally got more of it than he could ever need he was overtaken by ennui. He got power, became bored, played at being a god, became bored, and when there was nothing left he decided to unmake the game he worked so hard to win.
  • Also, Kefka's Tower is not his "Monument to Nonexistence", that was going to be him destroying (literally) everything.

How does Edgar know Shadow?

• When Locke, Terra and Edgar meet Shadow in South Figaro, Edgar is the one who warns Locke against bothering him. Why would Edgar be the one to recognize Shadow rather than Locke, when the roguish Locke would be more likely to run in the same circle as Shadow? My personal theory is that Edgar hired Shadow at some point to "take care" of a gang of bandits or something like that, but that's just my Fanon.
  • Edgar's a king. As a head of state, he's exactly the kind of person someone might hire an assassin to eliminate. That alone is reason enough for Edgar to assign someone to keep an eye on him. As for Locke, it's possible he specifically avoids those criminals who trade in murder-for-hire, when he operates in towns at all. So he's not familiar enough with Shadow (and his preferred costume) to recognize him on sight.
    • Especially so in the situation he is in. Think about it. He is The Mole for the Returners, and the Empire is growing stronger by the day. It was but a matter of time before the Empire wisens up to the treachery and deal with him, one matter or another. You could see Edgar being Crazy-Prepared in that behavior, but the Empire is willing to poison a whole kingdom to extinction, so it's more Edgar working his intel to prevent anything untowards, and that includes Shadow being hired to kill him.

Esper bones

• In the Magitek Research Facility, Kefka drops Shiva and Ifrit into a pit for drained, dying Espers. The floor of the pit is littered with bones, presumably from previous Espers who were left there to die. If Espers only leave behind Magicite when they die, why did those Espers leave bones behind?
  • Given how shocked Kefka was when he first sees Magicite the conditions of death must matter. Perhaps whatever process the Empire used to drain Espers drained them so much that they didn't form Magicite at death?
    • Espers seems to turn into Magicite after being killed in battle of giving up their life force for a human. Maybe extracting their power weakens their magic (Which would explain why Summons are Cool, but Inefficient in the game), and their bodies don't have the necessary magic to turn into Magicites?

Heroes Don't Need Oxygen

• In the World of Ruin, Figaro Castle is trapped underground. By the time Edgar and the other heroes penetrate the castle, its inhabitants are suffocating from lack of oxygen. However, the heroes are unaffected by the low oxygen levels. Why are the Figaro Castle residents suffocating, but the heroes are not?
  • The same way they made well in the mountains.
  • I'm starting to think that the "oxygen" shortage in Figaro Castle was actually a food shortage. The people were eating what they'd already had stocked up when the castle became trapped. Edgar knew those supplies wouldn't last forever, which is why he was desperate to find them.
  • I'm just blowing smoke here, but I remember I thought it was just the guardian of the vault gone haywire, like it was some sort of curse on the owners of the contents. I tried to find a good Esper trope to, roundaboutly explain it was Cure or Regen (or even Bubble), but all I found was this lousy other one.

Cyan's Speech Patterns

• Cyan uses "thee" and "thou" when he speaks. However, none of the other Domans do so. If Cyan's archaic speech patterns aren't a normal part of the Doman dialect, why does he speak like that?
  • In the Japanese version, Cyan speaks like a stereotypical movie/theatre samurai - yet neither his wife and son nor fellow Domans speak that way. To give an English analogue, it's like if one guy in an English class is speaking like a Shakespeare character. As for why he is the one and only character to speak that way? Without getting too deep into WMG territory, there is a scene when he is recruited again late in the game in which, thinking he's alone, he's shown speaking normally before reverting to his usual speech pattern when he notices the party has found him. It could be a personality he puts on.

The Veldt

• What the hell is the Veldt? I understand its Doylist purpose as the source of Gau's Rages, but how did a place like that, filled with monsters from all over the world, come to be? Why is the place patrolled with Imperial troops and why do the characters never comment on that? (Especially since the place first comes up in the story when Sabin and Cyan are trying to flee and hide from the Empire.) How did the monsters in the Veldt survive the World of Ruin, when they are extinct from everywhere else in the world?
  • First, barely logical in-game speculation, then 1 single WMG to hold it all together. The Veldt is analagous to the African savannah or the MidWest praries and plains, just a huge in-game versatile, robust, and self-sustaining eco-system. Since there's no rhyme or reason to flora and fauna in the series in general (besides the World of Ruin beasties, etc) we can either infer they all migrated somehow or originated from there in ancient times to then spread across the world. Imperial troop and who all else are probably there for sport or various other entertainment/prospects. My single WMG factor is a mana spring for the particular use by enemies, explaining there pilgramage to/lingering in the place, also explaining imperial presence to locate the source of sustenance for what seems to be every single enemy type on the planet. No Chocobos though :/

Stable Ground

• How is it that the two spots where Figaro can emerge haven't already collapsed in on themselves? Come to think of it, how is that grassland getting re-covered and re-grown every single time?

What happened to Maria?

• We never see her in the World of Balance. It can be presumed that she was hiding so Celes could take her place, but then we don't see her in the World of Ruin either. Is she still alive and working for the opera? Did Setzer kidnap her after the end of the game?
  • As was mentioned above under "Setzer the creep?", Setzer's "kidnapping" Maria was probably just a way to try and dazzle her with his flair and wealth. As for what happened to her, she's probably still working for the opera unless she was killed during the chaos that resulted from Kefka during the statues or the problems the world suffered afterward.

Why were the Returners convinced opening the sealed gate would help?

• That gate was sealed for a reason. When the Imperials first entered the Esper world, they completely stomped everyone there, easily kidnapping a bunch of them to drain their powers; in fact, this is the source of how the Empire got so powerful (which means that they were just some random city-state before then.) The Empire is vastly more powerful today than it was back then, and there's absolutely no reason to think the Espers have grown in power, so... wouldn't opening the sealed gate just end up giving the Empire a bunch of Espers and Magicite, further empowering them? As, in fact, happened? (This is basically the counterpoint to "how did Kefka beat, drain and capture Espers so easily" near the top of the page - the flip side is "why would anyone think the Empire wouldn't be able to beat the Espers so easily given that they did it before when they were much weaker and knew far less?")
  • Likely this is just head canon, but iirc it was supposed to be a symbolic action that they thought they were performing in secret. The empire was trying to figure out how to get through the gate to take it to the espers, whereas the Returners, knowing this, wanted to warn/help them while also getting information about Terra's heritage and abilities to hopefully give her some kind of closure. To further, yeah.
  • The Espers were strong enough to both kick the Empire back through the Sealed Gate in the backstory, and devastate Vector. However Kefka must have at some point discovered the right spell to instantly reduce an Esper to Magicite, and the Espers had no time to come up with a counter.
  • The actual plan (at least in the most recent translation) was that the Returners would attack the Imperial Capitol from the north while the Espers attacked from the east, ie. the reaseon the Espers would make a difference this time is because now they were going to be ambushing the empire in concert with human resistance. They didn't expect the Espers to be able to win all on their own.

Why did the Empire pretend to surrender, then send you to negotiate with the Espers?

• Kefka seems to have absolutely no trouble negating the powers of every single Esper and draining them after he betrays everyone at the peace conference, and it's clear the Emperor did in fact support him in this. So... what was the point of all that song-and-dance where the Empire pretended to seek peace? Why did they need you to go up the mountain, meet with the Espers, and bring them back down? Why couldn't Kefka just do that "first, I'll negate all your powers, then I'll something-that-looks-like-X-Zone you all" handwave the moment the gate opened?
  • I would have to double-check, but I think it was a purely political move. Kefka had the power to destroy the emperor, which I think he does later. Again, I definitely feel like I need to double check but if I'm right, the Esper settlement miiiight have held something of worth to exploit. So, before Kefka decides to do anything *cough cough* drastic he does things with diplomacy; this reduced the risk of losing anything to the Espers deliberately destroying something out of spite. Maybe if there were something of significant power that only the Espers could use (and teach Kefka) properly, he'd be saving himself an unneccessary headache. A last guess, again, is safety, as it might have been possible the Espers had a failsafe or doomsday fallback in case Kefka came tear assing through their ranks.
  • I don't think the Empire knew exactly where the Espers were hiding. Locke, Shadow and Terra only learn where the Espers are after Strago tells them. The Empire also needs to draw the Espers out so they can be captured. Who would be better for allaying the Espers' suspicions than Terra?

The original location of the Warring Triad statues

• We see Gestahl and Kefka approach the Gate to the Esper World. We then have a cutscene where the continent lifts up out of the ground. Then we see Gestahl and Kefka on the continent in front of the Warring Triad statues. Were the statues originally in the Esper World, and Gestahl and Kefka did something to them to bring them into the World of Balance? Were they in the World of Balance to begin with? I had thought the game implied the later because of the part where Espers talked about something in the World of Balance giving them a rush of power when they passed through the gate. Also, if the Triad were the source of all magic like they say a few times, it would make sense that they were located in the World of Balance, since people can cast magic there. This also explains why the Espers in the Esper World were able to be captured so easily when Gestahl attacked years ago, when he captured Terra. Their magic was weak since the Triad was in the other world. Though, if the Triad statues were in the World of Balance, I'm unclear why there was a shot of Gestahl and Kefka in front of the Esper Gate.

Why does almost nobody recognize Celes?

• Celes is both an extremely well-known imperial general and a dead-ringer for a famous opera star. Yet outside of a tiny number of cases where people recognizing her is required for the plot, you can bring her into random towns (including random towns in the empire!) and nobody recognizes her. You can even take her to Maranda, the town she supposedly was personally responsible for decimating, and neither the civilians nor the imperial troops notice her. What gives? Was Cyan just particularly familiar with what the imperial generals look like?

Two pairs of shoes

• How can you equip Sprint Shoes and Marvel Shoes at the same time?
  • One on each foot?
  • First put on the Marvel Shoes, and since you can buy Sprint Shoes in relic shops, just get a really big pair and put those on over the Marvel Shoes! Problem solved! :D
  • Considering the fact Relics are represented by the icon of a ring/bracelet and the universe has magic for pretty much everything, it is possible the bracelet/ring manifests their powers in moment of need, temporarily providing the user with that they seek.
    • For anything, answer is always magic.

Gogo's purpose

• What's the point of Gogo in Final Fantasy VI. He's not only a funny cameo of a boss in Final Fantasy V, but his entire skill-set changing gimmick is a throw-back to how Mimics worked in V, just like Gogo, they could change their entire skill-set, even throwing out the Item command. Suddenly, the most personality-lacking character became a hilareous cameo. It only got better when the remake of VI came along and revealed that Gogo was mimicking the main characters all along; they were saving the world, so he would save the world too. All in the name of the "true path of mimicry".
  • It can also be thought of as a deconstruction of your Designated Hero. He doesn't need a good reason to save the world. He does it because that's his style. Everyone has at least a little bit of a reason as to why they don't want the Big Bad to kick the world's ass, but Gogo is just like, "Cool. Lemme try that."
    • Also, Gogo draws a disturbing parallel to Kefka. One's a clown, one's a mime, and both of them don't take their roles too seriously. But where Kefka is having fun destroying the world, the other's having fun saving it.
    • Speaking of which, Kefka himself. It seems out of place to have a villain with such unexplained motives in a game that had more focus on its characters than any before it. But that's exactly the point - Kefka doesn't have a reason or motive aside from doing what he wants to do. When he calls the heroes out on their cliche "self-help booklet" speech, it's because he can't comprehend that the heroes have something that drives them, even though they don't enjoy fighting at all. "Hopes. Dreams. Where do they come from? And where do they take you? These things... I will destroy!" He genuinely doesn't know, and it pisses him off.
    • Some men just want to watch the world burn.
    • Interesting that one of the main themes in FF VI is friendship, and Kefka is essentially a man with no friends, and thus no connection to the world. A connection to the world is meaningful in the game via a connection with people. Terra spends her time worrying that she can't feel love and so isn't a person, but her friends and her connection to the town she adopts renders that point moot. Kefka is the villain of the game about friendship because he is ultimately alone.
    • I just realized Celes's scene in the Opera, where she throws the flowers from the top of the castle singing about despair for the future with her love Draco gone, parallels the scene later on after Kefka breaks the world, if Cid dies, when she climbs to the top of a cliff and throws herself off it for pretty much the same reasons.

Runic's purpose

• Something struck me as odd about Celes, her "Runic" ability is useless in-universe; humanity lost the ability to do magic after the war of the magi and now only specifically altered imperial soldiers can use magic. What is the point of a power that only weakens your allies? Then it hit me; why would a woman with obvious mental issues be made a general? She was a throwaway asset groomed for exactly one battle. If she hadn't turned traitor she would doubtlessly have lead imperial forces into the Esper world. Think about it: what is more frightening to an Esper; fighting enemies who, while using weapons you've never seen, are perfectly vulnerable to magic, or an enemy commander who can nullify your magic with a snap of her fingers? Really makes you realize how evil the empire is if they would control a person for her entire life to gain an advantage in one battle.
  • Furthermore; she may have also been intended as a means of drawing enemy fire away from Kefka and the Emperor.
    • Hell, I'm inclined to believe she was groomed to be a failsafe against Kefka and/or Terra. Think about it, two characters who know powerful magic...if they turned on the Emperor, he's not in good shape. Having someone to protect him from that magic, though...
  • It's also a useful ability for a general intended to command other magic-users; even aside from Kefka or Terra, they could easily fear fights between their own superpowered troops, soldiers losing control and damaging their own forces, and so on. Magic-enhanced soldiers could easily let their power go to their heads; having someone who can nullify them in charge helps ensure that the Empire can keep a leash on its own forces.
  • Assuming she's an unusually good magic-user overall (we don't have many points for comparison, but it's reasonable), her ability to absorb other people's magic could be valuable simply because they could use weaker magitek attacks to 'feed' her power which she then uses offensively.
  • A more prosaic explanation: She was already a general when they decided to augment her, and they don't know enough about Espers or the process they're using to choose which powers she got. They just got unlucky and imbued her with a power they didn't have any immediate need for.
  • They may have assigned her to take out other magic-infused traitors. Making magic worthless helps against any magic user, so that would be Espers, monsters, and any magic-infused human.

Bahumut's origins

• OK, so, in Final Fantasy VI, Espers have to die in order to produce Magicite. You find the Bahamut magicite in the mouth of the Deathgaze enemy. So, Deathgaze must've killed Bahamut. How? Well, Deathgaze's attack pattern is to open every encounter with Level 5 Death, killing everything whose level is a multiple of five. Looking through the Final Fantasy Wiki, I found that in Final Fantasy III, Bahamut's first appearance in the series as a boss (rather than an NPC), his level is precisely 50. That's a multiple of 5! Probably a huge coincidence, but I'm calling it brilliance.
  • On a similar note, you find the esper Odin petrified. In Final Fantasy V, you have to fight him and win in under one minute to gain his summon magic. On both rereleases, he is not immune to being petrified.
  • Deathgaze probably killed Bahamut during the War of the Magi. The War seems to have not only involved Espers, magically-enhanced humans and magically-powered war machines, but various other kinds of monsters that aren't easily categorized. Deathgaze ate Bahamut's Magicite out of hunger or spite, and kept it inside him after he was sealed.

How did Celes know about Edgar's double-faced coin?

• Celes uses Edgar's double-faced coin to convince Setzer to help them. While Edgar himself is fully aware of the coin (he used it to give his brother Sabin the opportunity to seek the freedom he wanted), how does Celes know Edgar has one?
  • Since the party planned this in advance, they probably discussed it - offscreen, for Unspoken Plan Guarantee reasons.

The auctioneer recogonizing Magicite

• How is it that Cid, who has been working with magic and Espers his entire life, fails to recognize Magicite, yet some random auctioneer in Jidoor not only calls it by name, but can tell you exactly which Esper it came from?
  • Most likely, the auctioneer was a long-term associate of Cid, until he quit his job due to ethical concerns.
  • The player characters seem to be able to identify Magicite right away whenever they find it, even though there aren't any labels, symbols or anything else that would tell you just which Esper the Magicite used to be. Just touching a Magicite crystal seems to be communicate to the holder who it used to be. Cid likely never handled Magicite, but we know that at least one crystal (Seraphim) was stolen from the Magitek Factory by a thief who'd snuck in at the same time as the heroes. Maybe he also stole ZoneSeek, Golem and Lakshmi, and sold them to someone else before the heroes meet him. That person then resold them to the auction house in Jidoor, where they were put on sale.