Trivia / Final Fantasy VI

• Author's Saving Throw: The Switch and PS4 versions of Pixel Remaster add some features to address complaints from the PC and mobile versions, such as including a retro-inspired font and the ability to use the original 16-bit soundtrack.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • Yoshitaka Amano has stated that of all characters he has drawn for Final Fantasy, Terra Branford from Final Fantasy VI is his favorite. This explains why Terra has the most Amano artworks of any Final Fantasy character.
  • Yoshinori Kitase regards Celes as his favorite character in the game.
• Dear Negative Reader: Ted Woolsey is an easygoing guy. He got his share of hate mail; he took it in good humor. He did point out in an interview that some of those criticisms came from a place of ignorance:
  "One thing that I just had to bust up on was, I saw one translation in which the whole game, it must have been a thousand pages long, all done in the Japanese syntax with the verb at the end. So like, 'I you and they want and have a good time to go.' They felt they had really preserved the essence of Japanese by having that syntax that was for them very special and that was the charm of them reading Japanese. You know, Japanese don't perceive the language that way. It's perceived more the way that most translators write it, which is digesting it and putting it out in English that makes sense."
• Dummied Out: VI has more cut content than perhaps any other entry. A lot of it is still floating around in the ROM's coding. You can read a comprehensive list on the fan wiki; it's super-interesting. The following are pertinent to the article at hand:
  • Unused bosses like the Kaiser Dragon and Colossus. The former is famously still present in the game's coding. He has introductory dialogue, so it's obvious that he was a planned Dragon boss, but no AI script. He would reappear in the GBA remake after you beat the Dragon's Den and slay all of the Dragons again. Various text in the Super NES release also alludes that a rematch with the Eight Dragons was also planned and would have used the gimmicks of their reborn selves.
  • Two events involving Baram and "Clyde" arriving in Thamasa. This indicates that one or more of Shadow's dream sequences was cut.
  • A number of character sprites, including Terra in her Esper form, a Merchant from occupied South Figaro, the Ghosts, and General Leo have a complete set of sprite animations like the main party, such as: turning their heads, wagging their fingers, wild takes, laughing, and so forth. And they all have sprites for casting magic in battle. The Imp takes the cake: it has a full spritesheet, including a chocobo-riding sprite. These dummied sprites are largely for convenience sake, as many characters make use of these animations, just not all of them.
  • Terra's father Maduin is briefly playable in a flashback to the Esper World. He actually has some set stat levels, as well as a pair of Sprint Shoes. The main menu is disabled during the flashback, so players can't see either of these.
  • Four Rages exist in the game that cannot be learned by Gau. Siegfried and Typhon don't appear on the Veldt without a hack. Neither Death Warden or Tonberry can be learned due to a programming error: Death Warden doesn't appear in the enemy arrangements on the Veldt. Tonberry actually can be learned and shows up last on the Rage list, but he can't be selected thanks to a bug which always leave such spaces blank. At least Death Warden was fixed in the Advance version. Tonberry is still unplayable.
  • The series's "got an important item" jingle exists in the game's code, but is never used and can't be heard anywhere in the game. The jingle also goes unused in the GBA version, but can be heard in the sound test.
• First Appearance: This game marks the first appearance of recurring characters Biggs and Wedge.
• Incidental Multilingual Wordplay: The Optional Boss Hidon has the same name in both the US and Japanese versions of the game, even though a character calls attention to it living up to its name: in the US version, the character refers to the fact that the monster is elusive and thus spends most of its time in hiding, meaning that you have to solve an elaborate puzzle to reach it, while the Japanese version refers to the word "hidoi", meaning "ugly", which certanly fits the bill.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The GBA version has never seen any kind of re-release in the west, but was released on Wii U Virtual Console in Japan in 2015 and was available until the Nintendo eShop's shutdown in 2023.
  • Since the Wii Shop Channel (and the Japanese Nintendo eShop, where it was also re-released) has shut down, the Super NES version can no longer be downloaded digitally. The PS1 version almost met the same fate when the PS3's storefront was going to be shut down, but was saved when Sony decided to keep it open.
  • The iOS/Steam version was delisted and replaced by the Pixel Remaster, so it's no longer possible to buy it. Notably, Pixel Remaster lacks the bonus content introduced in the Advance version onwards like the Dragons' Den and additional Espers.
• Killer App: Squaresoft's entire output for the SNES is a big reason why it remained ahead of the Sega Genesis in Japan, with Final Fantasy VI being perhaps the biggest indicator of this; it is the bestselling JRPG on the SNES, one of the most popular Final Fantasy games, and is generally considered to be one of the greatest games of all time.
• Late Export for You: The original SNES version was not released in Europe until the Virtual Console and SNES Mini years later.
• Market-Based Title: The original US release was known as Final Fantasy III due to some localization gaps with previous Final Fantasy games. While the emulated Virtual Console and SNES Mini versions kept the Final Fantasy III title, all subsequent ports have fixed the title.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
  • Lone Wolf from FFV appears as a thief being held in Figaro's prison who later takes Mog hostage. Gogo also debuted as a puzzle boss in V.
  • Moogles. They first appeared in FFIII and reappeared in FFV, both of which were only given Western releases long after FFVI. They first appeared in the U.S. in Final Fantasy Adventure (only as a status effect) and later reappeared in Secret of Mana (as both a status effect and NPCs), as well.
• Meme Acknowledgment:
  • The official Final Fantasy Facebook page mentions suplexing trains on the post that celebrated this game's 27th anniversary.
  • In the weeks leading up to the Pixel Remaster's release, the official Final Fantasy Twitter account would confirm that you can still suplex the Phantom Train.
• No Export for You: The initial Steam release for the PC is not available in Asia. Averted with the Pixel Remasters which is available in Asia on Steam.
• No Port For You: Pixel Remaster was originally PC and mobile only, but was eventually released on PS4 and Switch. Xbox owners are still missing out, though.
• Referenced by...:
  • Zero Punctuation uses Terra's sprite to represent old-school (but not old-timey) graphics in the "Fortnite/Dusk" double-bill episode. Yahtzee also points to FF6 as the last JRPG he could actually stand to play.
  • In Persona 3, a newscaster on TV says that President Tanaka would "slit his mama's throat for a five-yen piece." This reference wasn't carried over into Persona 3 Reload.
  • In Super Mario RPG, one of the desks in Booster Tower has a toy Magitek Armor on it.
  • In Undertale, Mettaton does a stage performance that parodies this game's iconic opera sequence.
• Schedule Slip: Pixel Remaster was meant to be released towards the end of 2021, but got delayed until February 2022 for some fine tuning.
• Translation Correction: Biggs' name was mistranslated as "Vicks" in the SNES version. All later versions correct this mistranslation.
• Throw It In!: Kefka's introductory cutscene after Terra's flashback (specifically the part involving his boots being sandy) was not in the original script; it was ad-libbed by Yoshinori Kitase in order to give players an early implication that Kefka doesn't have all his marbles, and also because the scene seemed boring without it.
• Trolling Creator: In the Cave to the Sealed Gate, there's a treasure chest positioned in such a way that players who go straight for it will trigger floor switches that destroy two paths to it. When you get to it in a round-about manner, the chest turns out to just contain a switch that is actually a Kaizo Trap, removing part of the bridge up ahead until you go back and re-flip it. Thankfully, the developers weren't foolproof here — a player who outsmarts the floor switches and gets to the chest without hitting them essentially glitches the trap up and the bridge won't be removed when they come to it.
• Troubled Production: According to Woolsey, Nintendo threw all their weight behind Final Fantasy to drive sales, but that wasn't going to cut it this time. Square tried to translate the game into English themselves, but they didn't even have a localization department at this stage, so they finally called in a professional. Woolsey was given a 30-day window to play the game and localize it. He rode a plane to Tokyo twice to deliver a script, and both revisions were scrapped for being too long. (Romanizing Japanese takes up a lot more space than simply typing kanji characters). Secret of Mana was even worse: Square were still pounding out a script as he was translating it.
  "It would have been great to have two months, two and a half months to really work on that stuff. I think at the time, as one Japanese person explained to me, they were toys for kids and chill out; let's get this thing out the door. When in fact they were really art objects, cinematic stories for adults. These role playing games skewed older."
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • Before the Aerith revival rumors became infamous, there were the General Leo revival rumors. Myths abounds about ways to revive Leo in the World of Ruin and he would permanently join the party. The most common rumor was that if one killed so many Tyrannosaurs in the Dinosaur Forest, they'd encounter a dragon (a belief prompted by a mistranslation of what the thieves on the Veldt say, specifically referring to a dragon in the forest that was meant to refer to the dangerous monsters in general) that dropped a potion that could revive Leo. This is sometimes combined with the CzarDragon rumors (next point) by claiming he was the dragon players would encounter. Years later it was found you can get Leo in the party, but it requires a very complicated glitch and comes with many restrictions on how he can be used.
  • Hacking the game revealed the existence of CzarDragon, an apparent "boss" of the Eight Dragons. The main theory on how to encounter him was to Petrify the Blue Dragon (which is impossible) and you'll get the Raiden Magicite without giving up the Odin Magicite. When you beat the Eight Dragons and get Crusader, you now have all the Magicite pieces in the game and will be thrust into a rematch with the Eight Dragons, who are now stronger than before, finishing off with CzarDragon entering the ring. This was sometimes combined with the Leo revival rumors by claiming one had to defeat CzarDragon to resurrect Leo.
  • Game Genie users found that it was entirely possible to have a party with Kefka and Gestahl in it, though they were largely non-functional and shared a character portrait with Terra. This is caused by various scenes in the game where they appear in-battle as their Super-Deformed sprites (as opposed to the static enemy artwork), which necessitated coding them as some equivalent to a party character. Suffice to say, this led to rumors that it is possible to recruit them into your party. The above are parodied by an infamous list of "unlockable characters" which starts with General Leo, and ends with Ryu from Street Fighter, with increasingly bizarre and impossible requirements for each.
  • The GBA release of the game featured censorship of the scene with Celes in prison. In the original release (worldwide), Celes was beaten by her guards while still in chains. The GBA version removed the beating and showed her unchained. After fans confirmed that this cut was in the Japanese version as well, speculation that the scene was censored due to mirroring a real life kidnapping in Japan ran rampant for years. Eventually, the game's translator, Tom Slattery, revealed the explanation is far more mundane: Square were angling for a CERO-A content rating in Japan for the re-release, but violence against a restrained person nets you a much higher age rating under CERO. CERO didn't exist when the game was originally released, and thus the content wasn't considered as racy in the early 90s.
  • Early on, there was speculation as to what might be unlocked after finding Cyan's "Book of Secrets" in the World of Ruin. Years later, it was finally put to rest when it turned out to be a censored Porn Stash.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game was one of the first 24mb cartridges for the console, but several events still had to be cut due to space limitations. They are known through sources like old V-Jump articles:
    1. Most famous is the exchange between Strago and Shadow in a bar. Strago demands to see Shadow's face for Relm's sake, to which the Shadow unmasks with his back to the camera, thanks him and tells him to share a drink together. The scene is also illustrated in a Carddass.
    2. If time runs out in the laser-ravaged Tzen (World of Ruin), instead of a standard Game Over, Sabin was planned to die in the collapsing house and disappear for good. Bringing Edgar to the site would lead to him spending all night trying to dig out his brother, even though too many in-game days have passed after the fact. This was considered too dark and was removed.
  • During development, Terra was originally conceived as a 20-year-old male (but still a half-esper) who was Locke's partner in crime. Parts of this concept were later incorporated into Zidane and Tidus. In concept art, this character heavily resembles Squall.
  • Terra's father Maduin was originally going to be the frozen Esper discovered in Narshe.
  • Terra was also originally intended to die during the game's ending, this would later be incorporated into Final Fantasy X for Tidus.
  • Long-considered a 16-bit game par excellence, VI was originally going to be set entirely in Terra's world (dubbed the "World of Balance" by the fold-out map which came with the SNES cartridge). An April 2019 interview in Famitsu revealed that the game was initially intended to end with the heroes stopping Kefka before he could destroy the world. But the game was completed way ahead of schedule, so Square doubled its length with the free-roaming "World of Ruin", caused by the Empire disturbing the Warring Triad.
  • According to some storyline concepts, Celes was originally going to suffer from mental instability similar to Kefka due to the flawed Magitek process, but she would have overcome it. In addition, she actually was intended to be a Double Agent who infiltrated the Returners (albeit a conflicted one). They reused that concept for Cait Sith in the next game. Notably, other characters speak of her as a "traitor", but what she actually did to earn the ire of the Imperials is never brought up in the story, likely the result of a last-minute cut.
  • Gogo's recruitment was also different. Originally, you will run into a doppelganger of one of the party members in random towns. To recruit Gogo, you would have to bring his/her double to meet them. The Siegfried "imposter" makes a bit more sense in hindsight.
  • It's pretty clear Umaro was originally intended to be recruited in the World of Balance. Aside from the World of Ruin being a later addition in development anyway, there's unused boss data for Umaro that has much lower stats, on par with a boss that would be fought shortly after the Returners defended Narshe from Kefka (Level 14 with 1000 HP). His lair also has an event that creates a cave entrance on the world map in the World of Balance; presumably it would have allowed players to leave his lair and come back without having to backtrack through Narshe and the mines.
  • Relm was going to paint Yoshitaka Amano artwork, and later paint a mural depicting the party's adventures in the ending.
  • One of Square's initial plans for VII was to make it a direct sequel to VI.
  • The CzarDragon rumors (see Urban Legend of Zelda) were helped along by a lot of dummied content that made the rumors seem credible; there is dummied battle text for several members of the Eight Dragons' powering up in some way, text for each of them calling in the other for back-up, and of course the CzarDragon itself. When the Gameboy Advance version came out, the new bonus dungeon Dragons' Den contains rematches with the Eight Dragons, who use the same gimmicks described in the dummied battle text, and the boss of the dungeon is KaiserDragon, which shares its Japanese name with CzarDragon and uses a modified sprite of it. And then when you beat Kaiser you unlock the Soul Shrine, a gauntlet of 128 battles ending with the Eight Dragons and Kaiser. The dummied assets make it clear that Dragons' Den and Soul Shrine, or something like them, were planned for the Super NES release, but left out for time or technical reasons.
  • Much like they did for IV, Square had plans to create full 3D polygon remakes for both V and VI for the DS and afterwards the 3DS, but they never got around to it before the handhelds' lifespans came to an end.
• Word of Dante: A large reason a Fanart or cosplay of the exact same character will differ so vastly from one interpretation to the next... but then, a world populated by small pixelated figures tends to leave a lot to the imagination. Especially when the same game also occasionally features Amano's Darker and Edgier fairy-tale gothic designs of the same characters.
• Word of Saint Paul: Soraya Saga was one of the scenario writers of the game and the person responsible for creating Edgar and Sabin. She wrote a doujinshi which detailed the background history of the Figaro family such as the death of King Figaro and Edgar's mother issues. She also wrote that the reason Sabin, Gau and Cyan got along so well was because they found a surrogate family with each other. However, Square has not confirmed or denied how much of that is considered canonical, and Saga even said it's just a side story.

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