Trivia / Final Fantasy VIII

• Approval of God: Yoshinori Kitase finds the "Squall is dead" theory interesting, and said it might be incorporated if the game ever gets a remake.
• Cultural Cross-Reference: The French translation, full of gratuitous English that does not match the original English, has an item called a 9 inch nail... described as "the claw of an industrial monster." Guess the French translator must've been a fan then. The same translation also has an NPC remarking that Galbadia Garden's ice hockey team watches the Friday the 13th movies while they train. Then when you fight them on Disc 2 they're not called "Slapper" but are instead named "Jason."
• Dummied Out:
  • Originally, Selphie was supposed to have two more Limit Break spells which apparently were never programmed in. The spells were Percent, which cuts all enemies' current HP by 93.75%, and Catastrophe, which is more powerful than the ultimate spell, Apocalypse. They both can be accessed with a GameShark, and use the Fire spell animation.
  • Another example is the Chocobo World minigame for the PocketStation, which never made it out of Japan. Said minigame is still referenced in the English version and manual, probably because the decision not to release the peripheral hadn't been made yet. It is possible to play with an imported PocketStation from Japan. Chocobo World can be used to get many useful items, Guardian Forces, and of course, 100% Completion. However, the PC version has Chocobo World as a separate program.
• Milestone Celebration: Final Fantasy VIII Remastered was released in 2019, the original's 20th anniversary.
• No Export for You: Unless you imported a Japanese PocketStation or have the PC version, there is no way to play the Chocobo World minigame in the original game's international releases.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Rinoa's name was initially mistranslated as "Lenore" in a lot of magazines - and her name is "Linoa" in the French version of the game.
  • Adel was meant to be the final boss of Disc 3, following the tradition of finishing every Disc with a sorceress battle. Game data also shows that the player is supposed to be awarded 40 AP for the battle, as well as receiving the Samantha Soul item. As there is no results screen after the battle is over, the player never gets either, though the Samantha Soul can be mugged from Adel during the battle.
  • Part of the game's dummied content states that a sorceress's powers weaken whenever they're passed on. It's unknown if this is canon or not, though it is largely-accepted Fanon to explain the ontalogical Temporal Paradox that arises from Ultimecia bequeathing her powers to Edea in the past, since the power would be passed down from Edea to Rinoa at the end of Disc 2, and eventually find its way back to Ultimecia.... along with Adel's powers being added on again every loop.
  • Large amounts of data exists for more Laguna sequences that were deleted from the game. Background graphics exist for the Great Salt Lake before it dried up, Close-ups◊ of Ellone's parents' old house◊ in Winhill, a moving green truck◊ also for Winhill (and an overhead shot of some buildings◊, and for Ragnarok in the Air Station◊ before the Lunar Cry (since the sky is blue). There also unused battle formations for Esthar soldiers within the city.
  • The game's data shows that Triple Triad was originally going to have a rule called "Retry", assumed to be similar to Sudden Death.
  • Dummied dialogue for the love scene between Squall and Rinoa in the Ragnarok had Rinoa assume Squall would be jealous that she used to date Seifer. When he doesn't catch on, she comments that he doesn't care about other people's pasts.
  • Selphie was originally designed with overalls. However, Tetsuya Nomura wanted one of the females to wear a skirt and, upon realizing neither Quistis nor Rinoa would wear one, gave Selphie a mini-skirt/overall hybrid and Quistis a skirt worn over long pants.
  • A popular remix of "Eyes on Me" was supposed to appear in DanceDanceRevolution, but never appeared.

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