Lavos Clones?

So I never played this game....I've heard a bit about it here and there...called Chrono something. Chrono Crusade? No no, that's not it. Chrono Trigonometry? Something like that.

Apparently there's a beasty in it by the name of Lavos and while I haven't played CT, I have played Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears. The former features Jenova and the latter Deus and I have heard both of them counted as clones of Lavos.

How true is this? What similarities are there?

Lavos (Vos = Big, La = Fire because of the meteor it seemed to be) is an alien that can be seen like a meteor far in the skies. He falls on the planet and then sleeps for a long time inside of that planet. He sends out spawns to collect and copy DNA of lifeforms and can also influence them mentally. So yes, basically Lavos is JENOVA. Not totally but much alike. Two animal-aliens with a destructive nature which only live out their purpose of travelling through the universe and gather what their desire/code tells them and they have an incredibly intelligence and that is developed more and more as well as their power. Or was. They both are history when it comes to them specifically.

Jenova borrows quite a bit from Lavos as Sephiroth points out they are both basically world consuming alien lifeforms, both of them are also made more dangerous thanks to humans trying to mess with them which creates bigger issues but the difference is that Lavos pretty much does right what Jenova did wrong which was it stayed the primary antagonist of the plot whereas Jenova is little less than a plot device to explain the main baddies powers.

Lavos also directly affects the history of the planet it felled on as it ushered in an Ice Age and ended the existence of the Reptites which were an intelligent reptilian race that battled the less evolved human ancestors. Lavos basically absorbs the DNA of all lifeforms that come and go on the planet using it to affect it's own evolution. While Lavos never speaks, it is not necessarily an animal life lifeforms though as it does have a will that can affect people and in the sequel Chrono Cross it evolves into an new form to wreck vengeance on those that slayed it (it gets a bit complicated...) so it is more of Lovecraftian horror creature than anything. Hell Lavos could be described as Square's take on Cthulhu to be honest.

Deus and Lavos don't actually have as much in common conceptually as much as they do as their story arcs are similar. Both end up elevating humanity as the superior species in both their worlds but in Lavos case it is kind of accidental though it's presence irrevocably removes humanity away from the natural order of evolution, whereas for Deus it was intentional since humanity turns out to be artificial except for one person. Both creatures become god-like fixtures to a sky city that rules the world and eventually they lead both to destruction but Lavos personally destroys Zeal whereas Solaris actions over centuries to revive Deus eventually leads to their destruction. Both figures also destroy humanity once they are reawaken but Deus absorbs humanity so it may revive whereas Lavos awakening is cause by absorbing enough DNA to force it's own evolution to the next stage and then leaves the world violently to find the next world, only leaving behind it's spawn and a shell of a planet.

It is not surprising that Jenova and Deus do have things in common. The Chrono Trigger team was split up after the game was finished to work on both FFVII and Xenogears. Masato Kato, CT's head writer worked on both games for instance. At one time, Xenogears was being thought of as a sequel to Chrono Trigger, the similarities between these two games is a bit staggering and it's no coincidence that Lucca from CT makes a cameo appearance in Gears.