The Show Must Go On! Six Things You Didn't Know about FFVI Thread 2.0

[Wolf Kanno]

366. Kitase revealed back in 2019 during an interview celebrating FFVI's 25th anniversary, that despite Sakaguchi insisting on no game sequels/spin-offs of numbered FFs, Kitase had tried to make a spin-off of FFVI. The game would have starred Strago and been a town building simulator, described as SimCity but simpler. The game never made it out of the pre-planning phase, but it was noted by some fans that Square did make a Chocobo themed town building game for the WonderSwan in the early 2000s.

367. Odin being turned to stone by a mage, may be clever allusion to FFV (of which VI is rife with) as petrify is one of the very few status ailments Odin is not immune to in his boss battle in FFV.

368. Valigarmanda may look like the Aztec Thunder god, but his name doesn't actually stem from any real mythology. It is speculated that his name is meant to be a combination of three different mythological entities. Namely the Ice Serpent Vritra of Hindu origins, the lightning bird and steed of Vishnu, Garuda. And finally the mythical version of Salamnader. This also plays into his attack Tri-Disaster as it is a spell that does Fire, Ice, and Thunder damage.

369. Working off the above point, Tri-Disaster is actually a pretty awful attack. Despite having a Spell Power of 110 at 68 MP cost, but unfortunately the mutli-elemental nature of the spell works against it because any immunity or absorption defense for any of the three elements, regardless of having a weakness to one or two of the other elements, will tally the damage in the defense stats favor, making the summon pretty useless to a lot of things.

370. Odin and Raiden's design are interesting as they reference previous Final Fantasy games. Odin's design is based off a mix of his design from both FFIII and IV. From IV, he takes his color scheme, from FFIII he takes being left-handed in his summon form (his boss form is right handed). Likewise, this is the last mainline FF where Odin sports a shield. Raiden on the other hand, though a unique design, seems to be partially based on Odin's FFV redesign as Raiden uses the same pose as Odin did in FFV and even uses the sword right handed like he does. Interestingly enough Raiden doesn't use Zantesuken, he uses an unnamed katana which goes along with his more Japanese naming scheme.

371. FFVI is the final FF that has Odin hiding out in the basement of some castle, or more correctly in a castle that happens to be underground. This was a unique tradition of the summon since his introduction in FFIII.

372. Zone Seeker is the only Esper that has never been referenced again within the FF series. Many of the other summons were either old legacy summons, some became new legacy summons, some became monsters, and even obscure ones like Seraphim, Valigarmanda, and Lakshmi have reappeared in XIV or in some mobile title. Zone Seeker is the only one who has never reappeared again in any form outside of FFVI.

373. Some might scoff at Diabolos being the prize for beating Kaiser Dragon in the Advance/Steam versions of FFVI, but mechanically speaking, he's a pretty cool summon who teaches a very underrated spell, Gravija. The main reason being that both Gravija (Single Target) and Dark Messenger (All opponents) actually ignore Death Immunity unlike Gravity and Graviga. Which is a complicated way of saying that nothing is immune to their damage. In fact, Gravija will likely do max damage to an opponent with over 10k health since it reduces an opponent down to 1/8th of their health. The real issue here is that in order to get Diabolos, you have to beat Kaiser Dragon, but then again, it's useful for Soul Shrine.

374. Runic has some weird properties that only eagle eyed fans will probably notice. For one thing, the MP Celes gains back from a spell is not always the MP cost of the spell, it can be altered based on what Celes' elemental defenses look like. If she's weak to the element of the spell, she will actually gain 2x the MP. If she has resistance to the element, then 1/2 mp, if she is immune to the element, she will get no MP back, and if she absorbs the element, she will actually lose MP.

375. For some unknown reason, Runic only absorbs the Imp and Banish spells in the original 16-bit entries. This was removed from all later ports starting with the PS1.

376. The Imp status of VI is fairly unique to VI, up until FFXIV brought it back for a fun FFVI themed battle with Ultros and Typhon. But there are some weird elements to this status effect, one of the biggest being the fact it has never been translated correctly. The spell is actually called Kappa in the Japanese version, and that's what the design of the form is meant to represent, but for some reason, across all version of the game, it has not been translated back despite the fact Western players would likely be more familiar with the Japanese folk demon. What makes this even weirder is the fact the Imp equipment, barring the Imp Partisan, all directly reference the Kappa demon.

377. The Imp status is pretty bad. It reduces a characters Attack to 0, Reduces all weapon's attack stats to 1, and makes a characters defense stat only work off their base defense, meaning all equipment is moot. The Imp equipment pulls a Onion Knight and will give the character nearly maxed out attack and defense power, but only when equipped while under the Imp Status.

378. The Imp status also disables most character abilities except for a weird few. Jump and Dualcast are the only ability changing skills that are unaffected by the status. Terra's Revert ability is also unaffected as well as Gogo's Mimic skill. The two weirdest ones are Banon's Pray ability and Leo's Shock ability. Of course, Pray will fail due to the fact the ability is essentially a 0mp cost Cura spell on the party. Since Imps are only allowed to cast the Imp spell, this ability doesn't work.

379. When a character is turned into an Imp, they will retain their normal form outside of battle. This only seems weird because they Imp sprite actually has a full sprite sheet like all of the party members, including ones for riding Magitech Armor and Chocobos within the game code. It's unknown why it goes unused.

380. I mentioned before that the Imp equipment all reference the Kappa demon with the helmet being a saucer referencing their saucer like head that hold the water in them that keeps them alive, the turtle shield that references their turtle back and the reed cloak being a reference to their hair. The Imp Partisan on the other hand references a character from Journey to the West, Sha Gojō. The actual translation of the weapon is Spear of Sagojo and references the character. In the Chinese novel, he is a vague demons associated with a river of sand, but in the Japanese versions of the story, he is often represented by the Kappa demon, despite being a demon associated with water and not sand.