Spoilers of The Maiden's Rhapsody FFXI, I can't believe this, XI and XIV crystals

[Cilia]

-FF1 and FF9 are linked. Necron is like an advanced final form of Chaos, then there's the 4 orbs/crystals of light (Desert Star/Falcon's Claw/Maiden's Earring etc) which are shards of Alexander-plus the 4 Fiends are there. I know FF9 was a medley of all FF themes, but FF1's were the strongest present.

Necron is a physical manifestation of death, sort of we think. Chaos is a demon lord.

The four crystals in I are elemental. In IX, they're all non-elemental (or rather Holy elemental).

The Four Fiends are there as fanservice, as IX deliberately homaged many previous franchise titles and took the series back to its European fantasy roots after VII and VIII's more modern / postmodern settings.

-FF7-X are linked. Sphere and Materia are synonymous. Orbs of energy that contain memories, whether it's a video recording, or teaches the user magic. FF7 probably takes place on a different planet from FFX maybe tens of thousands of years in the future, when Spira's machina has advanced enough for space travel or something.

This actually has sketchy canon confirmation.

-FF12 and FFT are linked. According to the FFT creator, FFT takes place thousands of years after FF12, when a great calamity destroys the advanced civilization.

This is canonically true, but I tend to leave Tactics out of things since, despite being one of the most beloved, it is a side game.

-I wonder if FF8 is linked to another FF? There's some much Lore in the game that's never fully developed. The Centra had these mobile 'shelters' which are really like Airship cities. There's also this Lunar Cry business which is never explained really, and the whole story of the Great Hyne who split his body and created the Sorceresses. Hyne was a great Mage in FF3. There's also the Tomb of the Unknown King, which is never explained either.

The lore of VIII is pretty sketchy, or rather, more deliberately spelled out in an Ultimania, but that's because the main focus of VIII was Squall and Rinoa's romance. We don't need an in-depth history lesson of VIII's world to understand that.

In III, Hein (not Hyne) was a minor villain who uprooted an important tree (whose name escapes me at the moment) and used it as a mobile fortress. The Warriors of Light offed him, so he couldn't pass his power down to future generations of women.

• The theory that the first Lunar Cry mentioned to have happened once in the past in FFVIII was actually the time in which the Crystal Pillar falls from the moon in FFIII. It's theorized that the Crystal Pillar is actually within Lunatic Pandora (Lunatic Pandora was built around it... also, gotta love that name, right?), and that it is the lit up section we can see within the structure when Adel is drawn out from the Lunar Cry. This would also explain why some of the building is mechanical, while other parts remain crystalline (as seen when you actually go into it), and it is stated in one of Laguna's flashbacks that the Estharians (??) were excavating the structure and building something around it (the one where They almost die and have to jump from a high cliff).

Nothing falls from the moon in III. The Crystal Tower is just there, unexplained, like many things in the game.

The Lunatic Pandora was built around a Crystal Pillar Esthar excavated for the purpose of making the Pillar mobile, that Sorceress Adel might use it as a weapon. Nobody's quite sure when the Pillar fell from the moon, but it can be used to trigger calamitous Lunar Cries, so the Esthar government under Laguna sank it. (Then Seifer got it back during the game's events, and... yeah.)

• Hyne is referenced several times in FFVIII as the progenitor of the sorceress line (when Rinoa is named a sorceress they refer to her as Hyne's descendant), and that the continuing theme of Gardens raising SeeD (essentially child soldiers) to fight Sorceresses is a continuation of the war against Hyne continued all the way from FFIII (which also involved children fighting against him).

True, but III's villain is named Hein, not Hyne. Semantics aside, Hein is a minor villain and was killed in the first half of III.

Gardens raising SeeD to fight Sorceresses was an idea a time-displaced Squall gave to Edea Kramer after the final boss in VIII, making a time loop.

• Battleship Island (the Deep Sea Research Facility) is in the exact same spot as the floating island in FFIII. It is assumed that it was built over top of the crashed island (unable to stay aloft without the one person who kept it that way) and that the Research being conducted there was related. The fact that Bahamut is found there serves as proof, as it is also the same place in which he is found in FFIII. His line of questioning, in which we have to give the "secret answer" for why we fight to obtain him ("Because it's our nature") is also considered to be a reflection of the events concerning children being caught in a conflict with Hyne. It basically says flat out that it's their legacy, and Bahamut agrees to it because he bore witness to it in both games.

Surprisingly, comparing the two maps between the games does show some similarity...

... but anyway. This is pure speculation. It's a possibility, but there are endless possibilities. As I've noted twice before, Hein in III was killed by the Warriors of Light about halfway through the game, and had no lasting effect on the storyline. If he were VIII's Hyne, I'd imagine he would have a greater impact on the story. He's just a flunky to make the Scholar class necessary for a fight. (Hein changes his elemental weakness often, and Scholars can identify it with ease. This is also why XIV Amon - who was based to a degree on Hein - can use every elemental spell in his fight.)

EDIT
-Hein and Hyne are spelled the same way in Japanese, so the mistake is understandable. Still, III Hein was a minor villain drunk on the power of darkness who was killed off almost immediately upon his introduction, while VIII Hyne is more or less the original god of the world (hence Sorceress' ability to use real magic instead of relying on Odine's para-magic draw system, since they have a small fragment of his essence).

[Februs]

Necron is a physical manifestation of death, sort of we think. Chaos is a demon lord.

Not quite. In some games he is represented differently. In FFXII, for example, he is not a demon, but an Esper that was created by the gods. He is called the "walker of the wheel," which was a reference to the cycle of life. He was born into the chaos of creation, and was killed and reborn several times until he was able to meditate on the cycle, reducing the anarchy to nothingness (its no wonder he was pissed at his creators).

This actually has sketchy canon confirmation.

This is actually not as sketchy as you might think. The series writer Kazushige Nojima reportedly confirmed in a guide book that the two games are, in fact, related to one another. He elaborates further to say that Shinra (FFX-2) never gets his experiments to work on Spira, but his great descendants finish the job on Gaia (yes, after traversing through space to get there) 1000 years later. This was taken straight from one of the writers, so unless someone made a MAJOR mistake translating that article, it's a fact.

This is canonically true, but I tend to leave Tactics out of things since, despite being one of the most beloved, it is a side game.

I suppose that's a fair point... but I really don't see why anyone should leave Tactics out of any lore discussions. Regardless of how loved or hated that game is, and regardless of it being a "side-game," it's still a Final Fantasy title, and the lore of the FF Tactics game was used as the ground basis for FF XII (a "Main Series Title") as well as numerous other games in the series. Considering that there are things that are either literally copy and pasted straight out of that game, or heavily influenced by the events and lore of that game, there's no reason to leave FF Tactics out. I'd actually say that ignoring Tactics lore makes any lore discussions far less credible, because SE has been blatantly taking influences straight out of that game, especially for FFXII and FFXIV.

Nothing falls from the moon in III. The Crystal Tower is just there, unexplained, like many things in the game.

That's my mistake. I wasn't clear in my typing. The Crystal Tower falling from the moon is part of the fan theory. The idea was that the first Lunar Cry mentioned in FFVIII would serve as the event, and it's backed up by comparing the geographical information between both world maps. The Fan Theory highlighted the places on the map in which the Crystal Tower was, and the craters where Lunar Cries supposedly happened, and one of them lines up in some way (where Adel tested it in Tribia). The more convincing part for me was the fact that the crystal tower was within Lunatic Pandora in the first place. That seems to imply a link, especially given that the tower serves as the basis for a gateway. The Lunar Cry could only occur when the it was in alignment with the moon. Like I said, it is a bit of a stretch, but it's interesting that there are such coincidences that line up so nicely.

True, but III's villain is named Hein, not Hyne. Semantics aside, Hein is a minor villain and was killed in the first half of III. Gardens raising SeeD to fight Sorceresses was an idea a time-displaced Squall gave to Edea Kramer after the final boss in VIII, making a time loop.

Another interesting point is that in different versions of the game, "Hein" was actually corrected to "Hyne." It may be semantics, but the two names are often switched with one another.

More important is the similarities in the lore between the two. Hein (FFIII) and Hyne (VIII) were both known to be the origin of the sorceresses. Further, when Hyne splits his body in FFVIII, he is said to have merely given humans his skin which would make him skeleton identical in description to FFIII and XIV.

Hein's minor role in III isn't really a breaking point of the theory either. Given the stories are unrelated, Hein does not require a big role to have larger lore implications in VIII. In fact, the lore of FFVIII has bigger Hyne implications for III than it does for it's own game, because it implies that they Hein you fight in III is not actually the real Hein. It's only a piece of him which he cast off back when humans first rebelled against him, which is why his head goes missing at the end of the fight. Even if the W'soL managed to kill Hein in III, it wouldn't matter, because there are still pieces of him out there living in the bodies of young women.

What you said of SeeD is true, but that doesn't change the thematic similarity. The point is not who created SeeD and why. the point is that children are fighting wars against magical beings. The Warriors of Light go by a different name from the SeeD's, but they were still children. Hyne is the origin of the Sorceresses in this conflict, and Squall is the origin of the SeeD, as an organization. That does not mean that people (children or otherwise) were not fighting against sorceresses since long before the SeeD were established. Laguna, for example, fought against Adel and wasnot SeeD.

Again, it's not rock solid, and I'd have to play III again to pick out whether or not I agree with it, but there is quite a bit of evidence to support it. In the end though, like you said, it's just one of many possibilities.

[Cilia]

Not quite. In some games [Chaos] is represented differently. In FFXII, for example, he is not a demon, but an Esper that was created by the gods. He is called the "walker of the wheel," which was a reference to the cycle of life. He was born into the chaos of creation, and was killed and reborn several times until he was able to meditate on the cycle, reducing the anarchy to nothingness (its no wonder he was pissed at his creators).

I recognize Esper Chaos, but the argument was that I and IX are linked and that Chaos (I Chaos, if you're going to be pedantic like that) and Necron are one and the same. They are not.

Context is everything.

This is actually not as sketchy as you might think. The series writer Kazushige Nojima reportedly confirmed in a guide book that the two games are, in fact, related to one another. He elaborates further to say that Shinra (FFX-2) never gets his experiments to work on Spira, but his great descendants finish the job on Gaia (yes, after traversing through space to get there) 1000 years later. This was taken straight from one of the writers, so unless someone made a MAJOR mistake translating that article, it's a fact.

I consider this truth as well, but have no reference. You admitted that it was only reportedly confirmed.

I suppose that's a fair point... but I really don't see why anyone should leave Tactics out of any lore discussions. Regardless of how loved or hated that game is, and regardless of it being a "side-game," it's still a Final Fantasy title, and the lore of the FF Tactics game was used as the ground basis for FF XII (a "Main Series Title") as well as numerous other games in the series. Considering that there are things that are either literally copy and pasted straight out of that game, or heavily influenced by the events and lore of that game, there's no reason to leave FF Tactics out. I'd actually say that ignoring Tactics lore makes any lore discussions far less credible, because SE has been blatantly taking influences straight out of that game, especially for FFXII and FFXIV.

... only if the game takes place in Ivalice or relies heavily on that world's lore for its own mythology, which aside from the Ascians being named after the Scions of Light and using part of the Ivalice Espers' glyphs during their battle stance, as well as Zodiark's name, is not the case here. (Admittedly I've never played Tactics and got bored halfway through XII, but even so.) See: Belias is supposedly an Elder Primal and Cuchulainn is a Voidsent on Hydaelyn.

That's my mistake. I wasn't clear in my typing. The Crystal Tower falling from the moon is part of the fan theory. The idea was that the first Lunar Cry mentioned in FFVIII would serve as the event, and it's backed up by comparing the geographical information between both world maps. The Fan Theory highlighted the places on the map in which the Crystal Tower was, and the craters where Lunar Cries supposedly happened, and one of them lines up in some way (where Adel tested it in Tribia). The more convincing part for me was the fact that the crystal tower was within Lunatic Pandora in the first place. That seems to imply a link, especially given that the tower serves as the basis for a gateway. The Lunar Cry could only occur when the it was in alignment with the moon. Like I said, it is a bit of a stretch, but it's interesting that there are such coincidences that line up so nicely.

A Lunar Cry happened over Centra, which is why the continent is a blasted-apart mess. This is where the Crystal Pillar within Lunatic Pandora came from.

Adel tested the Lunatic Pandora in northern Trabia, creating that crater.

Another interesting point is that in different versions of the game, "Hein" was actually corrected to "Hyne." It may be semantics, but the two names are often switched with one another.

I corrected myself on that; the difference between Hein and Hyne is a result of translation.

More important is the similarities in the lore between the two. Hein (FFIII) and Hyne (VIII) were both known to be the origin of the sorceresses. Further, when Hyne splits his body in FFVIII, he is said to have merely given humans his skin which would make him skeleton identical in description to FFIII and XIV.

III Hein is not the origin of Sorceresses. He is a very minor villain with next to no foreshadowing who is dispatched almost immediately upon his introduction. He uproots the Elder Tree, rampages around in the desert with it as a mobile fortress, and is offed. That is all he does.

VIII Hyne sloughing off his skin and rendering him a skeleton (if that's indeed what happened) is merely a shout-out to III Hein's skeletal appearance. Correlation does not even imply causation.

Hein's minor role in III isn't really a breaking point of the theory either. Given the stories are unrelated, Hein does not require a big role to have larger lore implications in VIII. In fact, the lore of FFVIII has bigger Hyne implications for III than it does for it's own game, because it implies that they Hein you fight in III is not actually the real Hein. It's only a piece of him which he cast off back when humans first rebelled against him, which is why his head goes missing at the end of the fight. Even if the W'soL managed to kill Hein in III, it wouldn't matter, because there are still pieces of him out there living in the bodies of young women.

Aside from a recollection of the mythology behind the origin of VIII's world, wild speculation. Moving on.

What you said of SeeD is true, but that doesn't change the thematic similarity. The point is not who created SeeD and why. the point is that children are fighting wars against magical beings. The Warriors of Light go by a different name from the SeeD's, but they were still children. Hyne is the origin of the Sorceresses in this conflict, and Squall is the origin of the SeeD, as an organization. That does not mean that people (children or otherwise) were not fighting against sorceresses since long before the SeeD were established. Laguna, for example, fought against Adel and was not SeeD.

As I've pointed out numerous times now, calling the fight against III Hein a "war" is embellishment at best. Yes, the fight against Xande was against a magical being, but this entire "theory" hinges on the identical name between Hein and Hyne, which simply isn't enough. Also, magic is very commonplace in III, while in VIII most people rely on Odine's para-magic draw system. Only Sorceresses can use true magic in VIII's world.

Laguna fought against Adel after he was a soldier in the Galbadian military... at 27+, aside from his at times immature mindset, I don't think it's fair to call him a child. His conflict with her was also over Ellone, not the fact she was using her magical abilities for evil ends (or hell, even because she was evil or magical at all). He does join Esthar's rebellion against her, but the conflict started when Adel kidnapped Ellone, not because Adel was a Sorceress using her magical abilities for nefarious purposes.

Sorceresses in VIII tend to keep their abilities on the down-low to avoid persecution thanks to people like Adel giving them a bad name. While there may be some superstition and persecution, it's not the fact that Sorceresses have magical abilities that causes people to go against them, but that people are afraid the Sorceresses will use their power against the common people. (And, with Adel and Ultimecia as examples, can you blame them?) While Dr. Odine's recently developed para-magic draw system evened the playing field somewhat, that's not going to erase centuries if not millennia of superstition and fear.

There is precious little information in VIII's world from before the Sorceress War waged between Galbadia and Esthar, but the reason people went against Adel is because she was a tyrant, not because she was a Sorceress (a magical being linked to Hyne).

TL;DR - Let me tell you two important pieces of information:

• 1. Correlation does not even imply causation.
  
• 2. Context is everything.

[Februs]

I consider this truth as well, but have no reference. You admitted that it was only reportedly confirmed.

https://youtu.be/e4Cy8b0cXbM The information starts around 1:33, screenshot and all. That's the "report" which confirms it... because it was actually confirmed. The information was taken straight from the official Ultimania guide for FFX which quotes the writers directly. You can even buy the guides yourself and translate them. I'm not really sure how much more of a "reference" you need beyond that, given that it's officially been confirmed by the writers.

... only if the game takes place in Ivalice or relies heavily on that world's lore for its own mythology, which aside from the Ascians being named after the Scions of Light and using part of the Ivalice Espers' glyphs during their battle stance, as well as Zodiark's name, is not the case here.

I actually laughed at this one. You say that it's not the case here, but at the same time you directly reference 3 distinct parts of FFXIV's lore which were taken out of FF Tactics. If you just don't like FF Tactics and FFXII, that's fine, but if you're implying that it's a valid excuse for telling everyone to ignore the lore and that its somehow irrelevant, you're not presenting a convincing case for that argument. It's a fact that FFXII/Tactics are a HUGE source of inspiration and lore for many of the FF titles, including FFXIV. There's actually a very long list of things in this game which are taken directly out of those two games. The 3 you mentioned don't even come close.

Does that mean that the two games are directly linked? No. Of course not. But does that mean we should all ignore the correlations between the two and pretend they don't exist? Absolutely not. If someone chooses to take lore ques from previous FF games (any of them, not just Tactics) they should be free to do so. It's completely valid, because SE is guilty of it themselves and have a long history of taking bits and pieces from past games, especially tactics.

A Lunar Cry happened over Centra, which is why the continent is a blasted-apart mess. This is where the Crystal Pillar within Lunatic Pandora came from. Adel tested the Lunatic Pandora in northern Trabia, creating that crater.

Yes, that's right, and that's why the fan theory doesn't quite fit. Despite Trabia being in the same spot as FFIII's crystal tower, the timeline for the placement of the lunar pillar doesn't make sense.

Out of curiosity, though, I went back and looked up more about the lunar pillar. An interesting note is that it turns out that the Lunar Pillar did, in fact, fall from the moon. The first impact on Centra was so much more devastating than Trabia's because the pillar itself made the impact. This information was confirmed by the writers directly who explained all of the lore about it in the Ultimania guide for VIII. Anyone can read it, but you'd have to be able to translate Japanese.

III Hein is not the origin of Sorceresses. He is a very minor villain with next to no foreshadowing who is dispatched almost immediately upon his introduction. He uproots the Elder Tree, rampages around in the desert with it as a mobile fortress, and is offed. That is all he does. VIII Hyne sloughing off his skin and rendering him a skeleton (if that's indeed what happened) is merely a shout-out to III Hein's skeletal appearance. Correlation does not even imply causation. Aside from a recollection of the mythology behind the origin of VIII's world, wild speculation. Moving on.

It's a bit much to call it "wild speculation" when you yourself don't seem to actually know the details of VIII's lore... It's not "IF" that's what happened. It is what happened. The story of Hyne is told to Squall by the White SeeD's directly in the game. The complete and detailed account of the story was given to the fans by the authors in the Ultimania guide. You can look it up if you like. The authors were very clear, and it's all been explained. I'm pretty sure someone even posted it in a Wiki somewhere for those of us who can't speak Japanese.

Now, does this mean that the two Hein's are the same? ABSOLUTELY NOT, obviously. But, it's a theory. The whole point of it is to theorize, and the lore of FFVIII's Hein matches up in such a way that it was easily applied to speculate that the Hein fought in FFIII was (at least a part of) the same Hein from the lore of FFVIII. Hein's actual role in FFIII is irrelevant to that theory. It doesn't matter what Hein's pieces did or did not do in FFIII. They could have been the king bad boss of the game or taken up knitting and lived in a shack (much like some of the sorceresses in FFVIII who lived in peace and were not involved in the direct plot). It makes no difference. The fact is that the theory fits. The Lore of FFVIII's Hein (splitting himself into several parts and dividing them, mostly, in the bodies of women) allows for the possibility that the Hein in III is one of those pieces.

As I've pointed out numerous times now, calling the fight against III Hein a "war" is embellishment at best. Yes, the fight against Xande was against a magical being, but this entire "theory" hinges on the identical name between Hein and Hyne, which simply isn't enough.

It's at this point that I realize you've been misunderstood something. You seem to be thinking that the theory is implying that the lore of III feeds into VIII. That's wrong. It's actually the other way around. The theory states that the lore of VIII (which begins FAR before III's timeline, as it starts all the way back at the dawn of the human species) is feeding into III. The "War" I was referring to has nothing to do with Hein in III. I was referring to the war in the lore of VIII, which occurs long before the events of III. IF the theory were true, the Hein you see in that game is nothing but a remnant of the original Hein whom scattered his pieces around the world to hide them. His actual name makes no difference either (nor is that the primary proof), as the sorceresses in FFVIII do not all go by the name Hein. They are Hein, in the sense that a piece of him is within each of them, but that does not mean they all take his name. It doesn't matter what their names are. The fact that Hein has the same name in III as he does in VIII is only a nod from the developers Again, IF it's true, than it would mean that the writers of VIII were basically using Hein's name as an indication that the lore of VIII reaches much farther back than just the VIII.

TL;DR If you don't like the theory, that's fine. I don't care since I did not come up with it. It definitely has it's holes (the position of the moving Crystal Pillar being the most glaring one), but most of your points against it don't actually do anything to prove it wrong. It's fine to point out that correlation does not imply causation, but it's a theory, and the theory does fit with the lore in most cases. I've yet to read anything that does a convincing job of arguing otherwise. Especially considering that most of the arguments you made are lacking the very context you so rightly point out is important. The lore of FFVIII is very clear, and has been clarified outright for us by the writers themselves. It's kinda hard to argue against that. Though, in the end, it doesn't really make a difference, since the actual stories of the two games are unrelated.

[Cilia]

snip

I already stated that correlation does not even imply causation, as well as that context is of paramount of importance. It's impossible to argue against "theories" like this because they do not run on evidence but perception and inference, real or imagined. Burden of proof rests on the believer. I'm just gonna do what I shoulda did in the first place...