10 More Embarrassing Product Placements In Video Games

In the original Life Is Strange, there’s a sort of tongue in cheek moment where Max makes a throwaway comment about wanting to watch Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on a flat-screen TV you can interact with. All in all, really pretty harmless stuff. Square Enix produced Life Is Strange and they publish the Final Fantasy games, so this is just a cute little reference on behalf of the publisher, right?

Turns out Square Enix had nothing to do with it, as the reference was actually the idea of Life Is Strange's writer Christian Divine. When asked about the reference on the Kinda Funny Games podcast, co-director Michel Koch said that writer Christian Divine considers the movie to be one of the "best sci-fi movies ever made" and that its connection with Square Enix was just a happy accident.

Now, if you’ve seen or heard of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, this might seem like a questionable opinion to hold. Surprisingly, Square Enix would agree.

According to Michel Koch, even Square Enix was confused about the reference as they were worried that players might assume the writers were forced into putting it into the game - assumedly because of Spirits Within's terrible critical reception.