What Really Put the "Final" in "Final Fantasy"

How could a game franchise that’s lasted over twenty-five years and spawned countless sequels and remakes call itself “Final Fantasy”?

To gamers, it’s a well-known story. To non-gamers, it’s an interesting tidbit. To creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, who recently spoke on the naming of his most iconic creation at a recent lecture on the history of JRPGs, it’s a misinformed legend.

As the story goes, at the time of Final Fantasy’s creation, Square Enix was in deep trouble, and they thought this would be their final game. Thus, they called their story Final Fantasy, and the rest is history. But, apparently, the legend is wrong: while it is true that Square Enix was in financial trouble, that’s not the reason they called it ‘Final’ Fantasy. In reality, they picked the word Final because their original idea for a name, “Fighting Fantasy”, was actually already being used in a board game and a series of roleplaying books. But they wanted to abbreviate the game’s name to FF, because the Japanese have a fondness for alliteration and “Final” was simply a popular word in Japan at the time.

But, he was quick to point out, any word beginning with F would have sufficed. So they could have gone with anything from Fake Fantasy to Frickin’ Fantasy, which… probably wouldn’t have done their sales any favors.

So, next time someone asks why a game with such a name could go on forever, just tell them it was a mix of lack of foresight and abuse of popular adjectives.