On like my tenth playthrough of this game. I think I always knew there was some quest to do with the Fisherman, but I always just got the Occult Fan from him and left. Turns out if you talk to him again in that small window of time when you first get to FH, there's a whole other sequence of conversations that eventually reveal more about Mayor Dobe and how FH was founded by people who broke off from Esthar because of differences in ideals.
It's little things like that that make VIII, and really all JRPGs of this generation, so awesome. The world is so rich and well-designed and (in VIII's case) gorgeous. There's really no room for it to move up my rankings, but I feel like I love this game more every time I play it.