I must say, I love how we're right back on track with the "Final Fantasy VII is YoshiPs favorite Final Fantasy" fan service train with Shadowbringers, after Stormblood was fairly subtle in those allusions, not that they weren't there with 4.0, but they were much more minor and overall underwhelming IMO. 1.x gave us Nael doing his best Sephiroth impressions, 2.0 copied VIIs Ultima Weapon design, 3.0 gave us Knights of the Round, now we're back on track with Hades after 4.0s brief respite.

Goes much further though, the entire first half of Tempest brings to mind the City of the Ancients from VII, at least IMO, although Amaurot itself leans in a very different direction. Prior to the final dungeon, Emet does the Sephiroth-walk-through-fire (which I actually didn't like, given we'd already had Nael do that...), and the events surrounding The Final Days actually brings to mind the backstory of the Ancients in VII as well... Mysterious "noise" infecting the planet and terrifying the Ancients and causing their magic to run amok? Hopefully we're not dealing with space herpes here, but one can't help but note the frequency of meteor showers during The Final Days... Zodiark and Hydaelyn as a "solution" also strike me as a mirrored parallel to the White and Black Materia, respectively (Zodiark I feel having more in common with the White Materia than the Black you'd expect His Darkness to), although that's not a perfect comparison just due to the different nature of both games lore.

That's not to say we're only dealing with VII allusions though, I'd say there are plenty of VIII and IV peppered in there. Actually the entire Ancients/Zodiark plot seems reminiscent of IV IMO. The Ascians are Zemus, the Ancients who summoned Hydaelyn are Fusoya, and while the majority of the Ancients aren't slumbering away on the Moon, Zodiark is sealed away in/as the Moon, and his explicit purpose at this point is to screw over the current population of the planet in order to revive the 75% of the sacrificed Ancients population, so you could say those 75% are sleeping, and I'm fairly sure Hades even refers to them as slumbering... Heck, his whole design and fight is somewhat reminiscent of Zemus/Zeromus' design...

Moving forward though, I'd say we have even more VII in store with Zenos, who is pretty much just Sephiroth at this point, right? Long hair, messed up result of various experiments, thing for superior nippon steel, came back from the dead, killed the President of Shinra Varis, has set his goals on supping on Zodiarks aether to do battle with us next? Actually that last one has mean leaning towards more VIII, Zenos is going to need some way to access Zodiark for that plan, and I can't see him completing the remaining Rejoinings for that, which leaves him doing something to the Moon, much as the devs joke about us going to the Moon next, I can't actually see that happening... More likely I think we're going to see a Lunatic Pandora/Moons Tear style event, with Zenos ready to absorb whatever he cracks out of that egg... Actually that's a bit VII with Sephiroths whole plan of absorbing the Lifestream as well, come to think of it...