Trivia
This game was never released in Europe.
In Elfland, there are three tombstones next to the White Magic shop the furthest to the left says
"Here lies Erdrick"
"837 - 866"
"R.I.P."
This is a reference to a character in Dragon Warrior but in the Japanese version of FF1, the tomb says "Here lies Link" instead. Link, of course, is the hero of the Zelda series.
It is rumored that composer Nobou Uematsu composed the Final Fantasy theme song in just five minutes.
The name of the monsters of the Final Fantasy series are often taken from different mythologies of the world. Here is a small list of some popular FF monsters, and what mythology they are taken from:
Usual monsters:
Behemoth - Jewish mythology. A huge monster and a symbol of evil.
Ahriman - Persian mythology. Personification of evil (In FF games, ahrimans are those one-eyed flying things, looking like bats).
Asura - Hindu mythology. A class of deities, as opposed to the "deva" (gods).
Grendel - English mythology. "Beowulf", anyone?
Tiamat - Babylonian mythology. Chaos, the mother of all things.
Kali - Hindu mythology. A mighty and often dangerous goddess of time and destruction.
Monster a character can summon:
Ifrit - Arab mythology. A wicked spirit, also known as Jinn.
Shiva - Hindu mythology. One of the greatest gods, sometimes regarded as the God. Unfortunately for all fans of the Final Fantasy version of Shiva - he is a man ;)
Ramuh - my guess is that "Ramuh" is a form of "Rama", the incarnation of Vishnu in Hindu mythology. Can't see the connection to the thunder element, though.
Phoenix - Phoenician mythology, of course (Phoenicia was where now is Lebanon, populated by Phoenicians, a nation similar to the Jews). But the name "Phoenix" is Greek. A bird that resurrects itself after dying (the item "phoenix down" also comes from there).
Titan - Greek mythology. Titans were a class of deities that fought against the Olympic gods.
Siren - Greek mythology. A beautiful woman who charms sailors by singing to them.
Leviathan - Jewish mythology. A huge water creature (Modern Hebrew: "livyatan" = "whale").
Fafnir - German mythology. A wolf that was defeated by the hero Siegfried.
Hades - Greek mythology. The world of the dead and also its ruler.
Quetzalcoatl - American Indian (Central America) mythology. One of the greater gods of aztecs.
Odin - Scandinavian mythology. The most powerful god, the ruler of gods.
Gilgamesh - Babylonian mythology. A great hero. Not a god and not a monster, actually ;)
Bahamut - Last but not least. Arab mythology. Is actually a translation of the Hebrew "behemoth". In Arab mythology, it is a big fish, and not a dragon! Well, whatever... ;D
"Final Fantasy" is the only game of the series (except "FFXI", which is an online game and which I know nothing about), where you can choose four characters from six different classes before starting the game.
The most popular (and usually the most powerful) "summonable" monster of the Final Fantasy games makes his appearance already in the very first Final Fantasy. In this game you still can not summon the king of the dragons, but he TALKS to you! Imagine this in "FFX"... ;)
The first Final Fantasy game was called "Final Fantasy" because its creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, wanted to retire from the gaming business and by calling the game "Final Fantasy" wanted to say precisely that this game would be his final fantasy. The game's composer, Nobuo Uematsu, has deliberately contradicted this claim, however, and claims that the "the bigger reason, the real reason, was that Square was going to go bankrupt and the designers believed that it would be the company's swan song."
Who could have known that within fifteen years there would be ten direct sequels and many side-games under the very same title?
