Final Fantasy IV/Headscratchers

• How did Golbez get to the underworld before Cecil and co. if Kain had the Magma Stone?
  • The Tower of Babil.

• Why did Edge's parents kill themselves? Right, they look like monsters, but at least they are sentient and remember who they are, and they have someone who loves them no matter what. Why not try to live in a new form instead of commiting suicide on your child's eyes and leaving him heartbroken?
  • They only regained their senses temporarily. Knowing they would lose control again within a few moments, they instead decided to kill themselves. It probably was some mix between ritual suicide and not wanting to force their son to have to kill them himself.

• How big of a Timey-Wimey Ball is the Feymarch, considering Rydia's age-up?
  • Not that big, since it's more or less a Decade Inside Month Outside situation. The Feymarch is definitely outside of the dimension Earth is on, considering it's floating appearance and it's entrance through teleportation.
    • So then it's confirmed that Rydia is physically ten years older in body, but what about in mind? Does she act like a teenager, or is she still childlike in someways?
    • Hard to tell. She acts rather mature to start with and nothing about her personality appears to significantly change when she returns. Though I've never played The After Years so that could answer this.
    • She lived for ten years in the Feymarch, so logically, she'd have ten years' more knowledge and maturity under her belt.
• Why does Golbez bother with having vanilla human soldiers in his army? During the Siege of Fabul, The Baron Marines only fight when their Captain orders it, the Captain will run if the Marines are killed, and the Marines will get confused and will attack each other if they don't have the Captain with them. Meanwhile, the monsters in the same battle just fight. Baigan got to be transformed from a human into a monster, and he fought quite well, so why didn't Golbez just do that to the rest of the human troops to compensate for their stupidity and weakness?
  • You can't ask that question in a Final Fantasy. Any of its villains could end the plot in a heartbeat by allowing a simple mook from the later parts of the game to curbstomp 2/3 of the planet. But in Golbez's case, his entire objective revolves around humans being disposable and nobody knows the time and cost for modifying humans through Dr. Lugae's untrustworthy hands.
  • The better question is why the Marines would attack each other if their Captain is killed or otherwise incapacitated.
  • The game has multiple instances of monsters disguising themselves as humans. What makes you sure that Golbez does have vanilla soldiers in his army?
• So if a Eidolon is killed, the summoner who called it also dies, but what about the other way around? Does the Eidolon die, (or simply return to the Feymarch) if the summoner dies first?
  • And why doesn't it work that way for enemies?
• Does Rydia have a last name?
• Anyone else think Rydia was originally supposed to be "Lydia"? Then again though; not that I'm complaining, just wondering.
• Early on, Rydia berates Edward for crying over the death of literally everyone he's ever known and loved. That annoys me, as it's supposed to be indicative of her "character growth" that she somehow got from melting some ice, but it really comes across as unreasonably cruel of everyone involved, especially since Cecil is one of the wangstiest bastards in the series. And THEN Rydia grieves over the deaths of Yang and Cid later on in the Underworld- two people she has known for maybe an hour. Oh, but it's okay when SHE does it, because she's the Ensemble Darkhorse and he's The Scrappy. Man, I hate her character.
  • It's not so much that Edward was grieving, so much as him saying "I can't go on, I'll stay with Anna", meaning her corpse, in the castle full of dead bodies. Crying is fine, giving up on life really isn't. Rydia's actions were supposed to come off as a Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!.

• Whatever happened to the Dark Magic that Cecil had that is seen from the intro? We never got to use them when we have control of him.
  • Those are magic items that were dummied out of the original US release. They're available in the DS remake.