Urban Legend Of Zelda / Final Fantasy

• Final Fantasy IV has the following rumors:
  • That Golbez can join your party. While he totally does in The After Years, rumors about the original game long abounded. You have to hack to get that.
  • That the twin characters Palom and Porom are retrievable even after they commit their Heroic Sacrifice and turn to stone through a special quest accessible only at that moment. They do get better anyway (without your assistance), but they don't rejoin you (in the original version of the game; some versions do make them playable in the late game again, but that's separate from this rumor). The game designers didn't help matters by allowing you to attempt to use any item in your inventory on the now-frozen pair, implying that there is something you can do to reverse the process. This rumor would also get intertwined with the very real Developer's Room Easter Egg from the Japanese version and a Japanese-only item that removes the "Stone" status effect (in actual fact, using it on the twins will give you a message saying that it won't work for plot reasons), and thus claimed that the twins can only be cured in the Japanese version. This rumor was most likely initially propogated by a troll walkthrough. ^note A walkthrough that contains just enough real information to complete the game, but everything else in there is a lie. One writer of these walkthroughs is known as "Eggnog", whose walkthroughs are often confused with legitimate ones from a very prolific walkthrough writer from the era named "Mynock".
  • That Dark Matter can do something useful. You can steal it from the final boss in the Japanese version of the game; Americans labored under the rumor that you need to do this to beat the boss and that this requirement was removed from the US version to make it easier. When FFIV was brought to the US unedited for newer systems, Dark Matter turned out to have no effect after all. The 3D DS remake gave it a purpose by letting players carry it over to New Game Plus where it lets them access an Optional Boss.
• Final Fantasy V has a myth about a secret job class. It involves a rock shaped like a human face you encounter by using the submarine; various explanations involved beating the game first or landing a certain number of steps away from it. It does work, though, in the GBA remake, where you can get three new job classes as soon as you access it and a fourth after beating the game and a difficult Optional Boss.
• Final Fantasy VI has the following rumors:
  • That you can resurrect General Leo after Kefka kills him. It is possible, but only through a glitch that wasn't discovered until much later, so many of the rumors surrounding this are still false. Details are in Part 12 of this LP. The Game Boy Advance port of VI caused these rumors to briefly resurface — the claim was that a newly-added side quest allows you not only to bring back Leo, but also to let him permanently join your party. The same was also claimed of Emperor Gestahl.
  • That you can get an alternate character ending if you get every single one of Shadow's dream sequences. This one may well be sourced from the Final Fantasy VI Ultimania resource books, which revealed that there was more content planned for Shadow (aka Clyde, Relm's dad), including a fully-scripted-and-complete scene with Strago, but it all ended up on the cutting room floor before the game went to print in any language.
  • That there's an arcane trick to preventing Shadow from leaving after battles during segments where he can. Explanations involve doing the "three scenarios" segment in a particular order, changing the party order, or avoiding making money from battles. There are tricks to stop him running, but they're not nearly so arcane; they mostly rely on Shadow not being alive and present at the end of battles (knock him out, make him run, etc.) Beyond that, it's 100% random.
  • That you can recruit a new Imp character, which allows you to avoid setting the Imp condition on an existing character. People pointed to the presence of Imp-specific equipment, the ability to learn Gau's Rage ability, the Imp Robot joke auction in Jidoor, and a photo (easily faked) of an Imp casting black magic as proof.
  • That you can turn a character into an unstoppable new Imp character. This allegedly requires getting all the Imp-specific armor, equipping it to a character, using a Rename Card to rename them "KAPPA", and casting Imp on them. It doesn't work, although it does make your existing character a force to be reckoned with (and the rename does nothing). This rumor arose out of a notorious FAQ with an enormous list of characters you can supposedly obtain, including those from other games entirely, most of which are crazy (and not even technologically feasible).
  • That you can buy the 1/1200-scale airship model and Imp Robot at the auction house. The gentleman there will always outbid you severely, even going above your Gil Cap.
  • That you can find and fight a ninth dragon. This came from an NPC mentioning a "terrible dragon" living near the Veldt Cave — it turned out to be a mistranslation from the Japanese line ("dinosaur" in Japanese is 恐竜 (kyouryuu), which literally means "terrible/fearful/dreadful dragon"), which refers to a dinosaur and probably references the many dinosaur enemies there. It was popular around the same time as the resurrection of General Leo rumor, so the two are often linked.
    • A different dragon rumor, though, got a lot more traction: if, by some obscure method, you re-fight the Eight Dragons again in sequence, you can allegedly face off with a superboss called "Czar Dragon". This one has merit to it — the game's code does have a Czar Dragon, with its own stats, sprite, and even dialogue; you can also find evidence that the Eight Dragons could once be re-fought. The common myth about getting there (petrifying the Blue Dragon) turned out to be bunk, though. The GBA Updated Re-release does let you re-fight the Eight Dragons, after which you fight Kaiser Dragon, which is pretty much the same thing. ^note "Kaiser" and "Czar" are, respectively, the German and Russian variants of the title Caesar, after all. That said the original Czar Dragon is still in the data, with Kaiser being a newly created enemy. His sprite however is edited from the Czar Dragon's to add wings.
  • That Gogo is actually General Leo, Darill/Daryl, Emperor Gestahl, or a send-up of the politician Adlai Stevenson (the rumor including fake quotes from his works). The truth is, he's a homage to an Optional Boss from Final Fantasy V, who may even be the same character. But since V didn't see an English release until the Anthology release on the PlayStation several years later, the explanation for who Gogo is was lost to English players.
  • That there are hidden Espers who grant various absurd and powerful spells if you can find them. They arose out of the presence of two empty spaces in the complete Magicite menu. They're there for a reason, though; one is vacated by the Odin Esper when it evolves into Raiden (destroying the original in the process), and the other is there to let you remove an Esper from a character. But this only encouraged rumors, fueling speculation that you can get Raiden without losing Odin. A popular one involves killing the dragon in the underground castle using Break; possessing all the Espers (including Odin and Raiden) is another claimed method to unlock the Czar Dragon battle. The GBA Updated Re-release includes four new Espers, though.
  • That the Japanese solution to the "The World is Square" puzzle in Darill's Tomb (ともよ　やすらかに, meaning "rest in peace, my friend") is an anagram for "rot and wither." Often parroted who Final Fantasy fans who aren't fluent in Japanese, but simply not true.
• Final Fantasy VII has the following rumors:
  • That you can revive Aerith. It's one of the most dramatic and shocking moments in video game history, so this naturally has an abundance of possible explanations. The game's producers categorically deny that there's a way to revive her, claiming that it would ruin the dramatic impact of her death. (Well, most of them. Supposedly, someone who actually worked at Squaresoft started this rumor in the first place, which may be what gave it so much credibility in the first place. Some players just wanted to believe.^note It is also possible that this is a holdover from early in development- as noted below, according to some credible sources, originally there was supposed to be a mechanic involving hidden affection values in place where your interactions with the other characters prior to and during the Gold Saucer would matter, and the person with the most or least affection points will die instead of Aerith. The mechanic was allegedly ultimately cut either due to Executive Meddling, memory or storage issues.). And for proof, if you use a save game editor to reinsert her into your party, the game will crash or preemptively remove her at various points. But that didn't stop the tide of rumors, which include:
    • The use of the relatively-useless "Underwater" Materia, which serves no purpose in the original Japanese version and only removes a time limit during an optional boss fight in the other releases. It was said that if the materia AP is maxed (something that in itself takes months of level grinding), you can travel underwater in the area of the Forgotten City where she bites it and bring her back to life. It turns out that maxing the AP of the Materia just sets it back to zero.
    • Another Materia, reachable after she dies, which says, "You hear voices" upon activating, making it seem like she does special things with the White Materia.
    • Being very nice to her in all of your dialogue options while being downright cruel to Tifa. It was rumored that doing so will make Tifa die instead during the infamous scene. It was also rumored that doing the reverse (being really mean to Aerith but really nice to Tifa) will make Tifa die instead.
    • Players who dug through the games files actually found scenes of Aerith in the party after her Death, as seen here.. Or that she has a final limit break which will never be unlocked in a proper playthrough of the game. This fueled the rumors that Aerith could be revived, but it was eventually clarified that these were just artifacts in the game's code. A theory by some fans is that Aerith was supposed to die later in the story.
    • The New Threat mod alludes to this. After the encounter with Sephiroth in the Temple of the Ancients and her death, the player can use a Phoenix Down on her if one is in their inventory, with Cloud remarking that even though they don't have a Lv. 4 Revive spell, the item works just as well. After a subsequent scene, the player can choose to either follow the "new" timeline, which has a different ending, or play the canonical version of events (where Aerith stays dead).
    • It is possible for speedrunners to "save" Aerith via Sequence Breaking. Using a glitch called Yuffie Warping which can allow the player to take their extant party (which can include her) to any area in the game including straight to the Final Boss. Puwexil performs such a glitch at Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 here. This glitch is however is patched in later versions of the game and not present in the PlayStation 1 version of the game.
  • That you can get infinite Gil. This cheat made the rounds not only on the Internet, but in magazines and printed video game hint books, over and over again, despite the fact that the method itself is insanely, obscurely stupid. It revolves around a nonexistent item (a "time card") and nonexistent town ("Manchuria"). And it's trivially easy to have more cash than you can ever spend; either abuse the duplication trick or find a mastered All Materia (which most people will have lying around somewhere around Disc 2), and start selling.
  • That you can revive Zack. While not as popular as Aerith resurrection rumors, they're just as varied. The theories include:
    • That the sick Sephiroth clone you find living in a sewer pipe in Midgar is Zack, and that Aerith's mention of "Sorry, I'm too weak to heal him" means that you have to buff her up to ungodly levels and talk to him again. Given that the area is only accessible (with Aerith, anyway) for a brief period in which there are only fairly weak enemies to level-build on, one can only imagine the wasted hours and snapped controllers sacrificed to this rumor.
    • That you can use the 1/35 SOLDIER, Super Sweeper, and Masamune Blade (which are useless items you can win from the Speed Square at the Gold Saucer) on the ruined reactor in Gongaga. This one was printed in an issue of the UK's Powerstation magazine.
    • That it requires an item that can only be obtained by fighting the infinite Mooks at the end of the subway tunnel when heading to the second mako reactor for a solid hour.
  • That you can unlock Cloud's sister Gale. The explanation of this one is very detailed and even seems plausible until the very end, where her second Fourth Level Limit Break is "beating you to a pulp for believing such a stupid rumor." Naturally, this deterred no one. And a female Cloud (as opposed to just a crossdressing one) is more Hilarious in Hindsight at this point than anything, considering Square Enix has basically admitted that Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII is meant to mirror Cloud (she can even use some of his equipment as a pre-order bonus). Even better, Lightning even has a sister, who is playable in the the sequel!
  • That you can find a White Chocobo, which can travel anywhere the Gold Chocobo can plus underwater. This often ties into other rumors, because doing so is said to lead you to the White Materia, Aerith's body, or another WEAPON.
  • Due to the existence of Ruby and Emerald, fans began to speculate that there were possibly more WEAPONS lurking around the world map. The most ridiculous of these is Cheese WEAPON, which would presumably be fought in space. Someone even created a mock-up image of the enemy in question.◊
  • A rumor exists that in the Japanese version Aerith is secretly either a prostitute or Compensated Dater, alluded to using Japanese metaphors and symbolism. This is not true.
  • At least one cheat site proported that it was possible to find a hidden character in the wrecked submarine, a Shinra grunt named Dobby. Dobby could apparently join the party and come packing an assault rifle, much like Laguna in the next game.
  • Naturally, after it was announced that the game would be a Playstation exclusive, there were persistent rumors among Nintendo loyalists that the game would eventually be ported to the Nintendo 64. In fact, throughout pretty much the entirety of The Fifth Generation of Console Video Games, gaming forums were regularly flooded with fake previews, videos, etc. for the Nintendo 64 version of FF7. This was all despite Square repeatedly stating that a Nintendo 64 version would've been literally impossible to make, due to the system's cartridge unit. They wouldn't have been able to port the game even if it was technologically feasible; then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi was so bitter about losing Final Fantasy VII to the PlayStation that he banned Square from publishing any game for any Nintendo console for the rest of his tenure (they only were allowed to resume developing for Nintendo hardware during the GameCube era, long after Final Fantasy VII had come and gone).
• Final Fantasy VIII has a popular fan theory that Ultimecia is Rinoa in the future and her Griever GF is Squall (somehow). Square Enix debunked the theory in the Ultimania Guides. It's based mostly on Rinoa's private talk with Squall aboard the Ragnarok in Disc 3 where she announces Ultimecia's goals as her own. While it's intended to be romantic, the way she carries on about making one moment last forever makes it easy to see where the rumor came from:
  I don't want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you.
  • Other "justifications" from this rumor come from the name of the GF Ultimecia summons being the same as what the player names Rinoa's copy of Squall's Griever ring, but Ultimecia just got the name from reading Squall's mind.
• Final Fantasy IX has the following rumors:
  • That you can get an alternate ending by beating the entire game in twelve hours. It is true that you can get the Excalibur II by reaching the final dungeon in twelve hours, but this one stretches credibility, at least in the original release, though it can be done extremely easily using the turbo features in the Steam version. Supposedly, the alternate ending involves a twenty-five-year-old Eiko killing Garnet and trapping Zidane in a crystal.
  • That if you name Garnet "Pleb", Steiner will give Vivi the Octagon Rod, a late-game weapon, much earlier than usual. There's no way to get the Octagon Rod until Disc 3.
  • That having the Hammer in your inventory at the end makes the line "No cloud, no squall shall hinder us!" appear during the performance of "I Want to Be Your Canary" in the ending. The Hammer does add an Easter Egg to the ending, but it has nothing to do with that line (which is always there). It's also rumoured that having Beatrix's sword, Save the Queen, in your inventory has an effect on the ending. The Hammer is the only item that does.
• Final Fantasy X had a rumor that Yuna can somehow learn to summon the Big Bad Sin herself, especially since throughout the group's travels they are able to find Sin's Fayth. This one is, of course, impossible due to the fact even if Yuna could make a pact with the Fayth of Sin, she still couldn't actually summon it, since at no point during the game (until the very end after the final battle) is Sin finally de-summoned, and no summoner can call upon the same Aeon at the same time.
  • "Otherworld" was rumored to be performed by Rammstein.
• For a while, a persistent Urban Legend about the franchise as a whole was that it had taken its name from the fact that the first game was a last-ditch effort by Square to fend off bankruptcy. While Square wasn't doing so well financially at the time, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi later clarified that this was not his inspiration for the name choice.
• Final Fantasy XIV had rumors pop up in the Stormblood expansion where Zenos, who had come back to life after being slain, possessed the body of Haurchefant, who was a close confidant to the Warrior of Light. Many people jumped on board of the rumor just because the possessed body in question was an Elezen, the same race of the Warrior of Light's friend. Others theorized that Zenos chose to possess Haurchefant just to break the Warrior of Light's mind for having to fight someone that was very close to them. As the story progressed in patch updates, the rumors slowly died down due to the lack of evidence and said theories not panning out.

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