Trivia / Final Fantasy V

• Dummied Out: The enemy ability known as Resploder in the PS version and Chain Detonation in the GBA version. (ゆうばく in Japanese.) It's included in the attack lists of several bosses, including Ramuh, Sandworm, Exdeath, and Gilgamesh. Crystal Dragon has it as a Catch/Release ability, but when used, it acts the same as a normal Attack. They apparently removed it from the iOS version.
• Executive Meddling: According to Ted Woolsey, one of his biggest regrets is not being able to finish his localization of V. The suits in Tokyo nixed the idea of releasing V in America so soon after after the sales underperformance of IV. Enix was breathing down their necks, so Square wanted to move 1,000,000 units. But IV was one of the earliest SNES titles, so the user base was small. They decided that a "training" RPG would sell more copies. They rushed out Mystic Quest, "which is basically a Game Boy game that was put out on the SNES."
  "I thought FFV was spine-tingling with the sound of the wind and bells in the background and dragons to ride on. That was where I really got hit deep into this style of RPG. The sheer fact of not being able to bring that one out here, that's where I was worried about being met in a dark alley by someone who was pissed off. I would have understood being bludgeoned for that. That was a mistake. We should have brought that out I thought."
• Fan Translation: The SNES/SFC game was translated by fans and was one of the very first fan translations ever made. It's one of the most well-known fan translations and was released months before the PlayStation version came out and is considered far superior to that translation. The newer official translation for the game's GBA release onwards, however, was received very well in its own right and is considered to be on par with the fan translation or even better thanks to avoiding common pitfalls official translations have and being very faithful to the original, to the point that the newer official translation has been ported back by fans to the original SNES/SFC game.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: With Square Enix delisting the mobile/Steam versions of the game in anticipation of the Pixel Remaster re-release, this has become the only way to play said versions, which still include the bonus content introduced with the Advance release of the game (since the Pixel Remaster cuts out the bonus content).
• No Export for You:
  • The original SNES release wasn't released outside Japan. It took until the game was ported to the PlayStation that the game saw a Western release for the first time.
  • The Steam release for PC is not available in Asia.
• Reused Character Design: An enemy in Phoenix Tower called the Lemure appears as a brown-haired woman in a pink dress and hair ribbon, partially shrouded by flowers. The concept art (and cleaned-up versions in re-releases) shows a strong resemblance to Aerith Gainsborough. Tetsuya Nomura designed both.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the concept phase for the game, Exdeath had two designs, one of which ended up being discarded. If Square had not chosen for the villain to be a Tin Tyrant, he would have been a Demonic◊ Centaur◊. Parts of his alternate look ended up being incorporated to Neo Exdeath.
  • Early in development, Kelger was going to be human◊.
  • Minor boss Magissa's design was a prototype for Lenna. The final design has fair hair and longer robes.
  • V was originally planned for a US release under the name Final Fantasy III (which eventually became the North American title for VI), and then later under the name Final Fantasy Extreme due to the Job system being so complex for the time. Square decided the market wouldn't take to it after Final Fantasy IV underperformed and canceled the release. The cancellation was done so late that Ted Woolsey had nearly finished translating the game.
  • Faris was originally a female gambler named Eva Scherwil, and she was unrelated to Lenna. That concept was later reworked into Setzer Gabbiani from Final Fantasy VI.
  • Much like its predecessor, Square had plans to completely remake the game (and VI, for that matter) in polygon form for either the DS or 3DS, but the systems expired before they ever got around to it.

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