Final Fantasy is one of the most well-known Japanese role playing game franchises of all time, garnering international success and a die-hard following. Spanning across 15 main titles with multiple successful spin-off titles like Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Type-0, Worlds of Final Fantasy, and more, the series has had tremendous success and is Square Enix's most well-known intellectual property. The Final Fantasy series had its start on the Famicom in Japan and the Nintendo Entertainment System in the west with Final Fantasy 1 or just Final Fantasy. Since then, it has had titles released on every Sony console and many Nintendo consoles. The franchise has sparked an anime titled Final Fantasy Unlimited and four movies, two of them based on Final Fantasy 7, perhaps the most famous and highly acclaimed game in the series to date. Final Fantasy is revered for it's amazing soundtracks, gameplay mechanics [except for FF13 ? ], art, and above all its supreme storytelling.

Whose heart didn't break when Sephiroth's blade went through Aerith's back? Who wasn't surprised and angered by the betrayal of Ramza's brothers in Final Fantasy Tactics? Who wasn't touched by Squall literally leaping out into space to stop his beloved Rinoa from drifting away in Final Fantasy VIII? In a lot of ways the stories and lessons in the Final Fantasy series changed many lives and the quirks, jokes, and stumbles of the franchise have inspired the hilarious memes on this list.

25 It’s Gonna Blow!

When someone thinks Final Fantasy, chances are Final Fantasy VII is the first game that comes to mind, and for good reason. As of 2015, the game had reportedly sold over 11 million copies worldwide. It is to date the highest selling game in the series. The game was the first in the series to employ 3D-polygonal graphics, with all its predecessors using the traditional 2D sprites. Most importantly, the game had an encapsulating story and interesting steampunk futuristic setting. However, one silly JRPG trope that the game could’ve done without is the short victory celebrations at the end of every battle. Especially in one of the first missions in the game in which the player must escape a factory in ten minutes before their bomb detonates. This is a situation in which there’s no darn time for fist pumping!

24 A Better Class Of Criminal

This meme is both equal parts genius, funny, and on point. Combining The Dark Knight and Final Fantasy VII may seem out of the box and it is, but the result? Genius. Why? The words uttered by Harvey Dent in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight resonate not only with Dent becoming Two-Face in the movie, but also Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII going from hero of SOLDIER to the greatest threat to the world. One of the strongest points of the game was it’s funny, cute, cool, awesome, and heroic cast of characters. However, without a great villain the story can have no hero, and rest assured in Final Fantasy VII Sephiroth steps up to the plate to give both a viciously evil, yet relatable and believable villain. But who is a better villain, The Dark Knight’s Joker or Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth? We’ll let you decide.

23 Who Needs Harry Potter?

Perhaps one of the more hidden gems or underrated titles in the series is Final Fantasy VIII. The game was released on the PlayStation 1 and while less known, it was also released on the PC. The game introduced a unique magic and summoning system as well as interactive limit breaks. The story was set in a futuristic world where students attended combat schools called “gardens” in which students train their physical, magical, and tactical combat abilities in order to become hired mercenaries called “SEED.” Each region had a different garden and some gardens were allies, while others found themselves on opposite sides of a battle. Sure, in Hogwarts one could hone their magical abilities, but in Balamb Garden magic was just one small piece of the pie. I, and many other fans like me, would choose Balamb Garden any day!

22 The Only Fantasies We Need

In the Japanese video game and anime industry, there is a term called “fan service” which is used to describe content added specifically to please fans and is generally of a more adult nature. Shockingly, the Final Fantasy series is not as heavy in this department as others (see Gal-Gun and Dungeon Travelers 2). Yes, there may be some naughty dialogue here and there, but does the series have scenes where female characters trip over and somehow manage to rip their skirts off in the process? Definitely not. However, that doesn’t stop the Final Fantasy heroines from being perfectly curvy in all the right places. The heroines of the series make tough look attractive, and attractive look powerful in every game.

21 A Piercing No One Would Want

Final Fantasy is a series well known for its brooding and heroic male protagonists, but it’s also renowned for creating well-rounded love interests. In Final Fantasy VII, Aerith is one of Cloud’s love interests, although many would offer Tifa as the stronger female character. Aerith is one of the first characters that Cloud happens to meet on his journey while she is selling flowers, and then again when Cloud falls on her garden of flowers in an abandoned church. However, one plot point that no one saw coming is when Aerith is killed by Sephiroth, stabbed in the back while the player watches helplessly in horror and astonishment. It goes without saying that this is a not what people mean when they say they want their belly button pierced.

20 All Shapes And Sizes

Being a JRPG series, the Final Fantasy titles have a large array and variety of weapons spanning: guns, rods, axes, bows, blunt weapons, and much, much more. However, one particular area of weaponry that gets special attention is swords. Final Fantasy swords have mythical and unforgettable names, creative functions, and stunningly beautiful art. It’s hard to forget a name like “Lion Heart” with Squall’s gunblade in Final Fantasy VIII, and it’s impossible to unsee Sephiroth’s “Masamune” katana piercing Aerith’s back in Final Fantasy VII, but a sword that has become iconic for the series as a whole is Cloud’s “Buster Sword” in the same game. This meme shows characters from Final Fantasy VII and Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII holding the sword, making the point that still, 6 titles later, the “Buster Sword” is the best sword of all.

19 A Little Out Of Character

With almost every JRPG and most anime, there is always at least one brooding male character who thinks he’s too cool for school and seems to care about absolutely nothing. In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall Leonhart is that character. Despite his cool exterior he starts to open up to the characters that join him in his journey, especially Rinoa, his girlfriend and love interest in the game. However, despite all that, he manages to remain as anti-social as a pre-pubescent WoW gamer. However, one surprisingly fun mini-game in FFVIII is “Triple Triad,” a global card game. The player can challenge anyone by walking up to them and pressing the square button. However, going up to random strangers and asking them to play cards is unfitting for our brooding hero.

18 A Social Kinda Girl

On the completely opposite side of the spectrum, another character in Final Fantasy VIII is Selphie, a fellow Balamb Garden student like Squall and SEED team member. She is loud, outgoing, clumsy, silly, and cute. As the meme points out, ironically her name is Selphie and she is supposedly the first Final Fantasy character in the series to use social media. In the game, she talks about her website featuring the school’s activities and her own personal blog. Although those examples are no Facebook or Instagram, seeing that the game was released in 1999 all this was quite far ahead of its time. Unfortunately, she’s never seen to take an actual “selfie” in the game, but she is shown using a video camera during the game’s end credits.

17 An Awkward Valentines Day

For anyone that even remotely follows Final Fantasy news or just gaming news in general, it’s common knowledge that Final Fantasy XIII was not well received by fans, and that’s putting it extremely lightly. Many people consider the game to be a massive flop in the franchise’s history. The game employed a completely new paradigm battle system unlike anything seen in any past Final Fantasy title. However, due to the game's suffocating linear style and massively massive amount of cutscenes, many gamers gave up on the game before the halfway mark. It seems like such was the fate of this particular PS3 copy of the game, and it seems like Jamie’s girlfriend couldn’t get through it either. Hopefully this gift didn’t end their relationship.

16 The Elephant In The Room

Alongside Cloud is Barret Wallace, the leader of AVALANCHE, an environmental activist “terrorist” group. Barret’s weapon in the game is a gun-arm attachment in place of a hand he lost to due getting shot at. Aside from his loud haircut, gritty fashion, and obnoxious and rather violent tone of voice, there is one trait that separates him from the rest of the Final Fantasy VII cast: he’s black. There is no denying that the Final Fantasy series has it’s lack of cultural diversity. Most games feature an all-white or all-Japanese cast of characters, with most characters having pale skin. However, Barret is an exception to that. Perhaps the creators of Final Fantasy VII were trying to break that pattern.

15 What’s That Gotta Do With Saving The World?

Final Fantasy VII is revered as a masterpiece by many gamers not only because of its comical cast of characters, but also its funny and over-the-top storyline. There are some silly and outrageous moments in the game, and one of them is described in the meme above. Yes, the player HAS to do a few mini-games and other tasks merely to acquire a cross-dressing costume for Cloud so he can infiltrate and rescue the female characters from an adult business. This is not a side-quest or an extra mission; this is necessary to the main plot of the story. It was the first game in the series to require a player to cross-dress in order to complete the game. Talk about out-of-the-box storytelling!

14 Oversized Poultry

Appearing in many Final Fantasy titles, the Chocobo are giant birds which the player can catch, ride, and in some games use in battle. The Chocobo is the most iconic animal or monster in the franchise. The Chocobos were adored enough to warrant their own spin-off series: Chocobo Racing on the PS1, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon on the Nintendo Wii, and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales on the Nintendo DS. In many of the main titles, Chocobos are sometimes needed to complete certain tasks, or play a small role in the story. Often there are mini-games involved with them. This meme is a play on words of the over-used chicken crossing joke and the Chocobo’s cry, which sounds exactly like “WARK!”.

13 An Unlikely Foe

Over the many years of the Final Fantasy series, there have been a wide array of villains from sorceresses and gods to killers and kings. Although villains being extra-terrestrials seems to come a little to far out of left field, this is exactly the case for Jenova in Final Fantasy VII. As the meme above humorously points out, Jenova is an alien; that is, a being not from the world of the story. The being is genderless and said to have come to the earth via meteorite. The Shinra Company uses the alien’s cells to produce other villains, like Sephiroth, in the game and movie. So although Sephiroth is not an alien himself, one could say that he is made from one.

12 Reading The Fine Print

With the rise of the new generation of gaming, I’m sure I can speak for everyone when I say enough is enough with developers spamming the DLC on already high-priced games. Nowadays gamers can purchase a game for upwards of $70-$90 when buying brand new, but on top of that the player has the “option” to purchase downloadable content to improve or enhance the game. Sometimes this comes in the form of extra weapons, avatars, clothing, or even extra maps, levels, and quests. In the retro age of gaming, you purchased a game and that was it, everything was included and that’s how it should be! This meme shows what Final Fantasy VII might be like if it was released today, and the results are both silly and outrageous.

11 A Face Only A Mother Could Love

At the time of its release, Final Fantasy VIII had the best full motion videos of likely any RPG on the market, let alone the Final Fantasy series. Beautifully scripted and scored, the FMVs in the game were a treat to players and often something to look forward to. One especially beautiful FMV is when Squall and Rinoa meet for the first time. Rinoa drags Squall onto the dance floor and they dance beautifully under the stars and fireworks. However, although the in-game graphics were done as well as possible for the technology of the time, they left much to be desired. This meme is an example of that, in which Rinoa flirts with Squall saying he’s the best looking guy there, but with a face like that I’d hate to see the other guys...

10 Haters Gonna Hate

In Final Fantasy IX early on in the first disc, Zidane and his crew conspire to kidnap the princess, Garnet, while staging a mock play for the kingdom. During this scene, a mini-game ensues in which the player must have a sword fight to impress the nobles. The game is much like a rhythm based game in which the player must hit certain buttons within a short time limit without making a mistake. The more mistakes, the less nobles will be impressed. However, it seemed that no matter how hard the player tried, a 100% score was not possible. Only 99 of the nobles seem to be impressed, and there appears to be one pretentious snob that refuses to enjoy life. Perhaps it’s the shifty looking man pointed out in the meme above.

9 Who Needs Trolls When We Have Square Enix?

During the 2014 PlayStation Experience, Shinji Hashimoto took the stage and in seconds the Final Fantasy VII logo appeared on the screens behind him. Fans cheered enthusiastically as Hashimoto, a man with poor English skills, started talking about how “17 long years ago” the iconic FF VII made its debut. He then goes on to say “3 generations later, we are bringing that title back to the PlayStation.” Now, at this point, everyone is 99% sure that he’s speaking of a remake for the PS4. Why? An executive from Square Enix takes the stage, the FF VII logo is on the screen, the man says they are bringing that title to the PS4. Only problem? No one would have dreamed that something so underwhelming as a PC port would take up stage time at the PlayStation Experience. However, such was the case, and the remake fans were waiting for remained a dream.

8 Underpriced Lodging

Final Fantasy, like many other RPGs, scatter chests or item sacks randomly around the map for players to find. Sometimes the chests are in bedrooms, sometimes in back alleys, and sometimes they're in plain sight in the main lobby of a room. The player can open these chests and take what's inside to their heart's content, but maybe no one stops to think about who those chests belong to. As the meme above shows, perhaps you're depriving someone of their life's savings when you find and take 5000 gil in their house. I'm sure you agree that hotel rooms are rather overpriced in the Final Fantasy series, especially considering the characters never seem to fatigue, rendering sleep unnecessary. However, if you find something special inside the inn, you could make a healthy profit.

7 Hooves For Hands

Final Fantasy VII was renowned for both its story and graphics. Being the first Final Fantasy Game to use 3D polygonal graphics, there were bound to be a few stumbles and hiccups along the way. However, people were impressed or satisfied with the graphics at the time, but they definitely leave much to be desired, especially when seeing them again in 2017. The characters look blocky and sharp, and their eyes are the only distinguishable feature on their faces. There are also some strange inconsistencies. For example, as the meme points out, the characters are detailed enough to have spiky yellow hair, but their hands are completely squared off. We'd have loved to see what would have happened if Square Enix produced an Edward Scissorhands game.

6 Sexy Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Much like the rest of the technological fields, the video game industry has had exponential growth and remarkable enhancements in terms of hardware and software. The console power of the Nintendo and PlayStation systems can now fit in the palm of your hand with the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. The data we used to fit into four discs can now be squeezed into one. A 6-inch-by-4-inch cartridge game is now the size of a small SD card. Among all these breakthroughs, one of the strongest is improved graphics. We went from a fuzzy small character to sometimes not being able to tell the difference between a televised sports game and a video game play through. However, some retro gamers embrace nostalgia over innovation and prefer the old school look to realism.