Side Post!

Another edition of Side Post is here to entertain and inform!
On this episode of Side Post, I'm going to take a look inside some of the more common and infamous monsters and summon monsters. I'm going to look into their origin and briefly talk about it. I figure a lot of the bigger figures in the game come from a mythological origin. (I know for sure that some do.)
Without further ado...

Recurring Fantasy Side Post Theater Proudly Presents
The Mythical Origins of the Final Fantasy Finest

I apologize for the lousy name, but it more or less fits what I'm about to say! I will also apologize for the "Mythical" part because not all of their names and/or origins have mythical beginnings. As for the stars of this post, the main ones I'll be going over are the summon monsters/Espers/Guardian Forces/Aeons we all know and love! I figure to go over some of the mainstays and then gloss really quickly over a couple of "honorable mentions". From there, I'll take a look at some of the most common monsters in the series. I realize that most of them don't have anything special, but it'll be cool to see what I can find! Let's start by going over the more common summons/guardian forces/aeons!


I'm going to start with a certain king among the summons...Bahamut. The Dragon King has been around since the very first title, and he's taken part in nearly every title in one way or another! Bahamut is the Dragon King for the Final Fantasy series, but before that, he was known as the Platinum Dragon and the King of Good Dragons in the Dungeons and Dragons universe. As far as it seems, Bahamut has been around since the very beginning of Dungeons and Dragons. (You can learn more here.) However, before that, Bahamut was actually taken from the name of a massive fish in Arabian Mythology. You can read the full summarized story here, but I can summarize it in song!

"There's an angel on a ruby mountain on a bull on a huge fish in the ocean above the darkness~"

"There's an angel on a ruby mountain on a bull on a huge fish in the ocean above the darkness~"

"There's a huge fish. There's a huge fish. There's a huge fish in the ocean above the darkness~"

ALSO PICTURE!

FYI, that little dark blue ball at the top is Earth.

The Angel is holding up the earth above it or something like that. It's weird. Apparently the only one to have seen it's massive size in person was Jesus...and it was only the head. If you want to know more though, you'll have to look it up yourself! (Handy Link) Let's move on!

Next on the list is everybody's favorite fire demon thinger...Ifrit! I've actually heard of Ifrit outside of Final Fantasy, but I quickly found out that there are several versions of an Ifrit (as well as multiple spellings... efreet, ifreet, afreet, afrit, etc). Despite the different versions, they are generally referred to as "Jinns" (Defined as an intelligent spirit of lower rank than angels.) and tend to be powerful and fire-y. The following two articles were the better ones I found: Wikipedia and Mythical Creatures List. (For a fun one...check on the D&D Wiki!) Other common details were about them living underground in societies with clans and leaders. They like to use their cunning and strength to trick people and such. Overall, Ifrit is pretty close to what he came from. (Pardon, I'm trying to keep these short and to the point since I have so many more to do.) I'd post a picture of an ifrit/efreet/whatever, but they aren't too far off from what Ifrit looks like, so you can find one yourself!  Next on the list is Ramuh, the old man with the lightning and such!

In the world of Final Fantasy, Ramuh always appears as an old man with a staff. He shoots lightning all over the place and disappears. He actually gets a speaking part in Final Fantasy 6 and 9., but...where did he come from? Did Square put random letters together and call it an old man summon? As it turns out, they did not! Ramuh comes from the combination of two figures, Rama and Indra. Rama seems to really only give the name here, while Indra is more of where the power comes from. Rama was one of the many avatars of Vishnu (I'm not Hindu so I won't go into details on that. You can read more here.) and was considered the "perfect man" or something along that line. Indra is the leader of the gods and lord of heaven in Hindu mythology. He is the god of war and the god of thunderstorms. (Thus the lightning-y choice of attack.) As with Rama, there is a lot to go with this, so you can read more here. I apologize for the use of Wikipedia links, but it's a nice collection of information in one place...so get over it. :< Next up...the icy goddess, Shiva!

Shiva is one of the recurring trio (right behind Ifrit and Ramuh) of elemental summons. She is generally depicted as a large blue and sexy lady with ice powers. Like a handful of those on the list, Shiva is a little more obvious and known, or at least I thought so...I knew it was Hindu. Shiva comes from Hinduism and is considered one of the main gods in the religion, one of the holy trinity known as Trimurti. There are a couple different sects that believe in Shiva different (Keep in mind, Shiva is a man here, not a pretty ice lady.), but the main point of Shiva is "the Destroyer" or "the Transformer". (I apologize now to any Hindus who see this. I'm doing my best to summarize without being offensive nor going into a lot of detail.) His massive and cosmic part in everything is to help re-balance the universe by dissolving it for the next cycle. (Read more here.) The main things taken from this Shiva for FF Shiva seems to be the overall physical appearance. Although I find it funny that they changed Shiva from a male to a female for the game. Shiva might not be the most drastic change, but it's still a fairly weird one.

     Shiva (via Final Fantasy X)                                                           Shiva (via Hinduism)

Figured I'd post the two Shivas next to one another for reference. Also to make the post less text-y.
Let's move right into Titan!

Titan is the giant with earth-rending powers! He generally smashes the enemy with the earth and such. He's not in as many titles of the series as those above, but he does make his appearance here and there. As for the reference, Titan is simply from the mythology of the Titans. The Titans were the earliest race of deities in Greco-Roman mythology. They were incredibly strong with a lot of stamina and immortality. They ruled during the Golden Age until they were overthrown by the better known Olympians (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, etc). That's...that is all there really is to Titan. That was easy.

Leviathan...the water-based sea dragon of epicness! Like Bahamut, Leviathan has been around since nearly the beginning! In FF3, he was one of the final super summons you have to do a side quest to get, like Bahamut. In FF7, the Village of Wutai worshiped Leviathan as a sort of water god. Now, if we go to the real world references, there are numerous ones for the word Leviathan. As far as it seems, Leviathan (in several cases) doesn't refer to a single being. The initial use of Leviathan comes from the Bible. It is used the Book of Jobs as some sort of massive sea monster. It has a few other mentions in the Bible apart from that. After that, the term leviathan is mostly used to refer to a large sea monster/creature. It has multiple references throughout pop culture aside from the sea serpent it is generally seen as. (Click here for more.)

Next in the lineage of summon monsters is Odin! As far as the game goes, Odin is a massive man that rides a very strange looking horse that has more legs than it should. He comes onto the battlefield and slices all of the enemies in half. Minus his look in-game, Odin is actually quite close to this. Odin is the major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. He's commonly associated with his 8-legged horse, Sleipnir, and his powerful spear, Gungnir. The former is the horse he generally rides into battle to slice up people, and the Gungnir is commonly placed in the Final Fantasy titles as the "ultimate spear" weapon. There's quite a bit to Odin, but he tends to keep the same look despite the interpretation. (The same goes for Final Fantasy. His overall look tends to stay the same.) Odin is associated with war, battle, victory, and death (among other things), and he has many children. The most notable of these is Thor. Odin has quite a bit more to go with him, but I don't have the time or patience to put more. So..let's learn about some Meso-american mythology!

The next two summons I have chosen to cover are from a highly unknown mythology set for me. Both Quetzalcoatl (from FF8) and Carbuncle (from various) are Meso-american mythological beings! I'll be covering them both separately of course, but I figured I would list this fun little fact here. I'll start with Quetzalcoatl.

Quetzalcoatl (getting annoying to type out) is, as far as I know, only present in Final Fantasy 8. (I looked it up, and he appears in the off-title FFXII Revenant Wings.) He took Ramuh's place as the electric-based Guardian Force. As for what Quetzalcoatl comes from, he is a mesoamerican deity worshiped throughout many ancient cultures in the region. The name's meaning is something along the lines of "feathered serpent". It sounds weird, but it does at least describe why it looks like it does in FF8...There is several different bits and pieces to Quetzalcoatl since he was worshiped by multiple different groups. However, the best documented of the groups calls him the god of the wind, the dawn, of merchants, arts, crafts, and knowledge. I'd post more, but it would just end up making a big story right here. Suffice it to say, I've covered the big part here. Just to add more flavor to the post, I'll go ahead and throw up three pictures of Quetzalcoatl. The first two are the deity in his human and feathered serpent forms. The third one is the FF8 revision, and it is about the best image I could find. (It's kinda close to the deity version.)

Quetzalcoatl (Human form)

Quetzalcoatl (Feathered serpent form)

Quetzalcoatl (Final Fantasy 8 form)

As for Carbuncle...He's the little green guy with the red jewel in his head. He's one of the few support summons throughout the series, and he casts Reflect on the group. He's had small appearances throughout the series, but his look is almost always the same. He's a little green guy with a large red jewel on his forehead.  As far as mythology goes, I couldn't ever find a full story about it. (Might have been my slow and almost lazy searching habit, but let's move past that.) I finally located the story of it in the strangest place...or so I thought. Right here.

FF8 Carbuncle

To summarize what the link said, the carbunkel (how it spells it) is a mythical creature said to have a crystal in its forehead from the brain of a dead dragon. Catching it is supposed to be good luck. Aside form that, a carbuncle is a specific abscess caused by a bacterial infection (I know...eww.) and an old term for an unfaceted and convex gemstone, namely red or garnet in color. That's pretty much all I found. Any other site had only part of what I've said. Kinda sad really...and Wikipedia is where I read the mesoamerican part from. The Final Fantasy Wiki mentioned Spanish conquistadors. So...that's Carbuncle folks.

That does it for the summon monsters/aeons/eidolons/guardian forces. There are more I could go over, but those above are the ones I chose to look into. I realize most of this can be found quite easily, but it seemed like a good post idea at the time. It's interesting to see how many things have been taken and remolded into the Final Fantasy image. Cool stuff.

With the summon stuff covered, I figured I'd take a look at some of the more common Final Fantasy regular monsters and give them a little spotlight as well. Unlike the summons creatures, most of the regular monsters don't really come with much of a background. Sure, the bigger names like dragons and goblins will have something to go with them, but the other recurring monsters tend to just be born from and recurring for Final Fantasy. These will probably be even smaller than the previous stuff, but maybe I'll find something cool about these guys! I've only picked a select few, but (IMO) these are all very prominent monsters in the Final Fantasy series. In alphabetical order, I'll be starting with Adamantoise.

The Adamantoise is a fairly recurring monster for the Final Fantasy series. It first appeared in Final Fantasy 2, and he's appeared in all of the titles since then in one way or another. He was originally just a boss, but he soon slipped into the "common enemy" roll. As for the origin of it...I guess they just made it up. It's the combination of Adamantite (a mythical super strong metal) and tortoise (...the animal). There's nothing much more to it apart from that. I did say these would be shorter...Let's move on to the next in line, Behemoth!

Now, I know for a fact that Behemoth does actually have a little bit of lore behind it. For those who haven't played/refuse to play/need enlightening, Behemoths tend to be a later common enemy in the games. They are generally very tough and resilient to both physical and magical strikes. In later titles, they also lovingly get the Meteor ability tacked on to all of that. As for the reference/lore behind it, I spotted it while looking through some of the previous stuff. (Leviathan to be precise.) He's a mythological beast mentioned in the Bible and supposed to be extremely large and powerful. Supposedly, he's supposed to be big enough to swallow entire portions of land. What I didn't notice when looking up Leviathan is that these two (Leviathan and Behemoth) are said to fight one another on the day of Judgement. The flesh that falls from them during this battle is said to feed those who survive the judgement....Yup. That's what Behemoth is. A massive fighting food supply for end times. (I'm being a little mean here, but you can read this article for yourself if you wish.) I'd look into it more, but I've spent enough time on it. I'll close out Behemoth with the drawing from the article! (Same artist who did the Bahamut above.)

Mr. Behemoth

Next up, we look into the CHIMERA! Chimera is a commonly used term in modern times, and it's generally to name a monster that is a combination of multiple animals into one horrific beast. As far as Final Fantasy goes, the Chimera monster (often accompanied by alternate color variants) is generally composed of a lion's head, a dragon's head, a goat's head, a snake's head for a tail and a pair of dragon-like wings. As for the true origin, it comes from Greek mythology. Chimera (a female actually) was the offspring of the powerful monsters, Typhon and Echidna. Chimera was a fire-breathing monster made up of a lion's body with a lion head, a goat head sticking out of the back, and a tail with a serpent's head. So as far as it seems, a lot of it is pretty close to the myth. Chimeras (FF-wise) do generally contain those details and tends to breath fire. So that's pretty cool. You can read more about the Chimera here.

For our next contestant, I ended up looking over the recurring monster list on the Final Fantasy wiki. I dropped a few of the more common but well known ones (Dragon, Goblin, etc) and traded those in for the Lamia monster instead! Lamia appear as giant snake-lady combinations. (Top part is more woman like while the bottom half is all snake.) There really aren't any defining characteristics of Lamia beyond being a snake-lady combo. The name and general idea of Lamia is taken from Greek mythology. Lamia was a beautiful Libya queen who became a child-eating demon. As far as further research goes, there are a lot of differing ideas and thoughts on Lamia. She was said to eat children or seduce men to drink their blood. Her form of being partially-woman and partially-snake has a couple different combinations. Of course, the most common image is the one used in Final Fantasy. You can go over the more fine details over here. I'll just leave a picture here and move right along.

FF2 Lamia Art

The next on the list is Malboro. Malboro is a common Final Fantasy enemy who tends to be a fairly tough monster to beat. They look like giant plant monsters with tentacles reaching out from a large sphere of a body. They also come with the special attack Bad Breath. As far as the reference goes, I've always identified the Malboro with Marlboro (...the cigarette), and I felt it was further implied through the "Bad Breath" attack. However, as it turns out, Malboro is made up of two words which come from the Latin and Greek meanings of mal (Bad) and boros (Breath). Beyond that...there's really nothing more to add. It's interesting to know it had a bit more to it than I realized though. Fuuun stuff.

For the final entry in this post, I've gone with another Final Fantasy favorite, the Tonberry. The Tonberry is the strange little green monster in robes armed with a lantern and knife. They tend to be enemies in later areas of the titles. They are slow moving and tend to trip, but they strike out with Chef's Knife (generally an instant kill of 9999 damage) or Everyone's Grudge (generally hits the party for a lot of damage). Much like Malboro, I didn't think there was much to it, and it seems that...there really isn't (at least nothing directly). The Tonberry is thought to be a combination of several different ideas. The lantern is possibly a reference to a will-o'-the-wisps (ghostly lights of the dead said to lead people astray). The chef's knife is thought to alude to the antagonists of slasher films (being the common instrument of a typical killer/psychopath in those films). The theory of the main look is that they are supposed to be similar to an Umibōzu. (A similar counterpart in English folklore is the sea monk.) It's a spirit that appears in the sea and capsizes ships. The general look of it is a large shadowed figure with a shaven head, in the style of a monk of the period. Not much more to say other than....image!

FF9 Tonberry art

So! That details all of the monsters I had planned! I'll admit that I dropped a few and added others last minute, but I felt that the ones added were more interesting and not as common. Maybe...maybe I'll have a part two to this post! (Don't get your hopes up.) Overall though, this has been an interesting trip. I've learned a little bit about random mythologies and stories of religions. It's also kinda interesting to see how Square Enix has twisted all of the different things into their own ideas. Sometimes it's a very subtle change, but there are often large changes into whatever spot they want to put them. And that is that! Thanks for reading my blargh of a post, but I hope that you feel slightly enlightened by it all!

~May the Crystals Guide Me~