10 Video Game Facts That Aren’t True

Final Fantasy is one of video game’s most far-reaching series with 15 numbered entries and over one hundred side-games and spin-offs. Cue a million jokes about the name and how it can never be the “Final” Fantasy if the franchise is now celebrating 35 years and still going strong.

Popular belief is that the “Final” in the title was purely born out of despair. The popular belief is that it was Squaresoft’s last hope to succeed. However, according to director Hironobu Sakaguchi, that’s not strictly true.

In fact, the idea really just spawned from an acronym and the way it sounded. “FF”, or phonetically in Japan “efu efu”, just had a nice ring to it according to the game’s team. It was a short, punchy, four-syllable acronym. The second “F” took the word “Fantasy” from the choose your own adventure book series Fighting Fantasy. In searching for the other “F”, the team just went with whatever sounded good.

Composer Nobuo Uematsu stated that it was in part due to Sakaguchi contemplating going back to University if the game didn’t sell as Square was facing bankruptcy. However, the director has since disagreed with this and, whilst the company was in hot water, he's clarified that any F-word would have sufficed.

Okay, maybe not any F-word…