Literary Allusions

[Kalevala]

I was reading The Odyssey this morning and one scene struck me as being eerily reminiscent of another from Final Fantasy X.

After being shipwrecked on the shores of Phaeacia, Odysseus passes out and is woken up by the sound of Nausicaa and her maids playing ball. Similarly, Tidus is woken up by Wakka and his team practising blitzball on the shores of Besaid. Maybe an intentional allusion, maybe not. The two stories are pretty similar in theme, though.

What other allusions, intentional or otherwise, have you picked up on throughout the series? Clearly some are more obvious than others. What ones caught you by surprise/only dawned on you years later?

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I Want to be Your Canary in IX is a pretty obvious allusion to Romeo and Juliet. I think it also has elements from King Lear, maybe? The play is even written by Lord Avon (Avon being a reference to Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare

I'll have to give this some more thought. It's been a while since I've thought about literary allusions in FF games.

[Fynn]

The final battle with Kefka is a reference to Dante's Divine comedy, with the tiers representing Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, with Kefka's final form being a mockery of God.

[Calliope]

We just fought the Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch in FFXIII yesterday!

[The Man]

Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia, Rubicante, and Calcabrina from FFIV are all Divine Comedy references.

The Final Fantasy wiki has a pretty exhaustive list. Here's its page on FFVI's allusions, for example. Some of them are pretty subtle; I got the Pandora's Box reference the first time I played the game (it's worth noting that one of the enemies in the game is also named Pandora in the SNES translation), but others are a lot more subtle.