Explanation for the ending of Final Fantasy 8

[Serapy]

The idea is that the last camcorder FMV only contained visible images of Selphie, Quistis, Irvine, Cid, Matron, Zell, Aneglo and Rinoa which all were used a lot in the story. Squall too but he, being the main character, wasn't visible in the FMV as he's supposed to be behind the ceiling. I think that Squall should have been in that FMV more often ...

It's just strange because he obviously fainted before the FMV ... that got new players thinking "Oh, so he's dead?" ... after that, when they viewed the last camcorder FMV, they would say "Hmm... Squall isn't there, so he must be ... ??". Then Squall finally showed up in the very final FMV. I remember when I first played the game, it gave me a relief knowing that Squall didn't actually die.

I think Square intentionally did that. Just like what they did to the Edea incident -- new players say "So Edea is the bad guy?" -- later in the game -- they would say "Ahh, so that was Ultimecia after all ... "

the 'Squall fainting' event cannot be proven as we weren't given information about what exactly happened after the event -- prior to the party camcorder FMV. I noticed that Selphie waved at Angelo as the dog was running to sit down and started watching Rinoa.

Remember at Balamb Garden, your job was to look for Cid, you go to the car park, you saw Cid -- it wasn't actually himself -- it was just a cloning(ghost) device. Maybe Rinoa used this device at the end of the game to represent Squall to give the whole story a happy ending -- expressing her love in the memory of Squall.