Final Fantasy VI/Trivia

• Fan Nickname: Kefka is called "the psycho clown" (or synonyms thereof) and "The Joker".
• Follow the Leader: Mimicking Mateus' methods of poisoning a kingdom aside, Kefka himself started a trend of villains who desired to become gods in the series.
• Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: Lone Wolf from Final Fantasy V appears as a thief being held in Figaro's prison and later takes Mog hostage. Technically, Gogo counts, too.
• Throw It In: Kefka's introduction cutscene barring Terra's flashback (specifically the part involving his shoes being dusted) was not in the original script, but was ad-libbed by Yoshinori Kitase in order to give players an early implication that Kefka was missing a screw or two from his head, and also because the scene itself, without it, seemed too boring to make completely normal.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • The persistent rumors that General Leo can join your party (as He's Just Hiding), and the existence of the Paladin Ring. And there's the General Leo Revival theory that somehow ties into Shadow having two or three more (depending who you ask) hidden dreams. Sometimes dinosaur fighting is involved as well.
  • Game Genie users found that it was entirely possible to have a party with Kefka and Gestahl in it... though they were largely non-functional and shared a character portrait with Terra. This stems from various scenes in the game where they appear in-battle with their regular character sprites (as opposed to the elaborate, motionless sprites of enemies), which necessitated writing them as some equivalent to a party character in the code. Suffice to say, this led to rumors that it was possible to have them in your party legitimately.
  • The GBA release of the game featured censorship of the scene with Celes in prison. In the original release (worldwide), Celes was beaten by her guards while still in chains. The GBA version removed the beating and showed her unchained. After fans confirmed that this cut was in the Japanese version as well, speculation that the scene was censored due to mirroring a real life kidnapping in Japan ran rampant for years. Eventually, the game's translator Tom Slattery revealed the story was far more mundane. Square was targeting a CERO-A content rating in Japan for the re-release, but violence against a restrained person gets a much higher age rating under CERO. CERO didn't exist when the game was originally released, and thus the content wasn't a problem in the early 90s.
• What Could Have Been:
  • During development, Terra was originally conceived as a 20 year-old, male half-esper who was a partner in crime to Locke.
  • Terra was also intended to have been Killed Off for Real during the game's ending.
  • According to some storyline concepts, Celes was originally going to suffer from mental instability similar to Kefka due to the Magitek process, but she would have gotten over it. In addition, she actually was intended to be a spy (albeit a conflicted one), but that ended up removed, although they reused the concept for Cait Sith in the next game.
  • Gogo's recruitment was also different. Originally, they planned it so that you will meet a duplicate of your characters in random towns. To recruit him, you must bring the character he's currently disguised as. Suddenly, the Siegfried imposter makes a lot more sense.
  • Umaro was meant to be fought in the World of Balance, which is why the Narshe mountains continue to be accessible even though they serve no further purpose in the plot.
  • Siegfried would have been part of a quest to recruit Gogo involving uncovering people Gogo was masquerading as across the world, before it was decided to give Gogo his own dungeon.
• Word of Dante: A large reason a Fanart or cosplay of the exact same character will differ so vastly from one interpretation to the next... but then, a world populated by small pixellated figures tends to leave a lot to the imagination. Especially when the same game also occasionally features Amano's Darker and Edgier fairy-tale gothic designs of the same characters. Parodied by an infamous list of "unlockable characters" that starts at General Leo, and ends with Ryu from Street Fighter, with increasingly bizarre and impossible methods for each one.